Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or any of its characters. Do you THINK I would be here if I did?! So I do not, in any way shape or form own any of the plot or the characters. They belong to whoever owns 'em. I just took the general idea for a test jaunt. So, don't sue me...not that it would be beneficial, as I am a poor university student, yadda yadda yadda.

Warnings: This is a Mckay and Sheppard slash story, boys and girls. Thus, here be smut and man-on-man goodness. If that's not your style, well then, toodles!

Spoilers are considered fair game up to the end of the Season three and four-sh. And while this story doesn't really have a set place in the storyline, just consider it occurring at a time when Elizabeth was still on Atlantis, and Carson either didn't die, or this is his clone, (I usually just repress the thought that he died anyway! Heh!), and Ronon is on Atlantis.

Authors Note: Please read and review. I am excited to see what you all think. I am open to comments, advice, and constructive criticism. I totally blame this story rabid plot bunnies. I have NO idea where this story came from. Really. I was innocently sitting at my desk doing homework, when THIS popped into my brain. (*pauses to snuggle brain, because seriously the mental images were AWESOME*) So, instead of taking down chapter notes from my Tudor England text book, a few pages of loose leaf morphed into this! (Then I got interrupted by my roommate with coffee! But that's another story for another time! HA!).

PS: I totally got inspired by those new Starbucks VIA ready-to-brew packets of coffee-tubie-thingies! (Yes they actually exist! And no, I unfortunately do not own them.) I could totally see Rodney being transported into his coffee-happy-place with those. (I know I was! Ha!)

Why Astrophysicists shouldn't wear Leather Pants

Rodney stepped out of the puddle jumper in someone else's pants.

That was the first thing that occurred to him. The second thing was that they were leather pants....

Well...shit.

It was like getting hit right in the face by something as subtle as an Ancient drone, or forgetting to duck and getting punched in the gut during a sparring session by Ronon when he was having one of 'those days', such as when the cafeteria had run out of his favourite pudding, and the kitchen staff were in a bad enough mood to be immune to his roguish charms, or intimidated enough by his pointed glares to make some for him.

Those were bad days to be the big guys sparring partner, even the Marines avoided him like the plague when they scented one of those no-butterscotch pudding days on the wind. He really didn't want to be here to experience the day that their supply of pudding actually ran out....Scary thought.

All he could do was stare, tilting dangerously to port from his casual slouch against the wall, ending up over-correcting himself and stumbling slightly to the left as he tried and failed to gracefully regain his balance.

Tight, leather...pants...

And it was right about there that he had had to pick up his jaw from the metaphorical floor, as he reminded himself that dropping into a dead faint right there in the middle of the jumper bay was probably not the most suave and manly of reactions for the Military commander of Atlantis to have. Not to mention that NO ONE would ever let him live it down either...

But suddenly, despite all thoughts of 'manliness' and purported rules of military conduct, everything else seemed remarkably unimportant when he was faced with the sight before him.

Because...well...PANTS.

Therefore he figured it was rather appropriate that about his fourth and a half thought, in the space of time it had taken for Rodney to have moved about three steps down the jumper ramp, was that he was so monumentally, and entirely.. screwed..

And not in the good way either. Which in hindsight was really the crux of the whole problem.

Mckay was wearing leather pants.

Leather-freakin'-pants!

They were clearly Athosian made, the craftsmanship unmistakeable, you could tell with just one look that they were obviously the result of a long and dedicated effort, lovingly crafted by both hand and awl. The supple, dark brown leather had been cured and tanned expertly, the legs stitched up both sides with the strong, light brown rawhide strings done in the tightly woven criss-crossed fashion that Telya and her people seemed to favour. It was maddening; he doubted he had ever seen both so much and so little of Rodney's skin at the same time. Stupid pants.

They were the 'smell-like-they-had-been-just bought-leather-pants', completle with that unquie, and unmistakeable scent. It was a dangerously wild scent that did awful, nasty, delicious things to his brain.

Mckay and leather pants shouldn't even be used in the same sentence. The thought alone was enough to fry his brain synapses and make him stupid and flushed as his other head decided to add in it own opinion about the ....pants. Damnit.

He was going to find whoever made Rodney those pants and strangle them. Then send them a gift basket. He hadn't decided on which to do first.

He nearly strangled himself on his own tongue trying to take it all in. And worst of all, it seemed as though the bomb shell had not yet completely dropped, because then he noticed those other little things, things that while shocking in their own right, when compared beside the ...pants, made them seem down right conventional.

Rodney was wearing a simple black t-shirt that he had never seen before, one that accentuated his broad shoulders and surprisingly developed biceps. The shirt was just on the shy side of being tight, form fitting in all the ways that his science uniforms never tended to be. He looked slightly tanned, like the 'been out on a sunny day' kind of tanned, the slightest of sun kissed flushes coloring his high cheek bones despite the visible smear of missed sunscreen lotion that still lingered near his right ear. Even his hair was different, all ruffled, and stiffened into sea salt spikes by the ocean spray...

The man literally oozed sex appeal like it was going out of style, and of course, in true Rodney style, the man remained entirely, and totally oblivious to it.

And worst of all, to top it all off, the man was smiling hugely as he got off jumper. Smiling! His smile turning into a full on happy, high voltage-like beam when he spotted him from across the bay. It wasn't that snarky, half smile, half imposing smirk that he usually reserved for everyone from his lab minions to the occasional band of technologically backward natives, or even him when he managed to say something stupid, like attempting to tell him that the method he was using to calculate a set of mathematic variable vectors was outdated, just to get a reaction out of him.

No, the smile that was now playing across his lips was that rarely seen, honest to god, true Rodney McKay-smile, one that was heart-stoppingly open and genuine as it broke freely across his face. It brought up the corners of his expressive mouth in the widest and most honest of grins, twisting his full lips and morphing his face into such a child-like look of pleasure and excitement, that even Ronon had been known to crack a smile at it.

It was an unavoidable reaction, like trying to stop a yawn in the middle of a particularly boring staff meeting and causing a domino-like reaction among everyone else until Elizabeth fixes the perpetrator with an accusing glare, even as she actively battled the urge to yawn as well.

And, not for the first time since they had arrived on Atlantis, he had to wonder if Rodney even knew how utterly devastating that smile of his could be...

Where was the distraction of a Wraith attack, or an overly affectionate carnivorous plant, or a rampaging herd of those not-giraffe-elephant-bear thingies from PRT-X114 when you really needed them anyway?

He nearly whimpered, but yet even he couldn't really find the energy to all himself on it.. Because, was it really his fault that McKay was wearing a pair of god forsaken, snug-in-all-the- right-places, leather pants?! Definitely not.

...It was all the pants fault.

It was the kind moment that one generally wishes that they had a video camera for. He had been leaning carelessly along the wall of the jumper bay, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he impatiently waited for the jumper to power down, responding to the excited Canadian's radio message from the mainland, he could actually picture the man bouncing up and down on his chair with barely restrained glee as he had asked, well more like demanded that John meet him as they landed. The nearly-giddy scientist refused to go into detail over the radio, but it was the happy tilt in his voice, the one that was usually reserved for the possibility of ZPM's and iced pastry products that was enough to make him double time it to the jumper bay.

Before the....pants happened he figured they would go down to the labs and work together on whatever it was they had found on the mainland, ... and by work, he meant he would act much like a sounding board for McKay's unstoppable stream-of-consciousness way of thinking, and would generally hang around and harass Mckay as he worked. Something which served to both amuse himself, but also act as a double agent, giving them both the sense of company and comfortable companionship each knew the other appreciated and had learned throughout the years to either demand or actively seek out from each other.

After a few hours he figured he could entice the man out of the labs for the night with a few of those new Starbucks VIA ready-to-brew packets of coffee that had just arrived on the Deadalous while Rodney and Radek's science team had been on the mainland. And from there he had seen the evening as gradually winding down into their usual fare, a companionable evening watching a bootlegged movie, frustrating Rodney at golf, or joining both the marines and the scientists alike in crashing the women's infamous weekly poker tournament. It was a highly circulated rumour that this weeks winners pot was a four pound bag of the coveted Kona coffee from the Hawaiian Islands, something that already had the scientists in near orgasmic raptures, and even the jarheads were literally drool.

But that was all before the pants.

Mckay and leather pants. He nearly pinched himself; half convinced he had somehow stepped into an alternate reality where Rodney McKay regularly walked around embodying sex incarnate. Funnily enough that explanation sounded far more likely then what he was actually seeing in front of him right now. Because while he had always had this ... thing for the Canadian man, he had also always managed to hide his feelings under the guise of their close friendship....but this, this was over the top!

Only in the freakin' Pegasus galaxy would there be leather pants and Rodney's ass existing in the same sentence.

The fall out was instantaneous, the two marines on guard duty almost walked into the wall. Sergeant Markham did walk into the wall, only saved from falling flat on his ass by the quick thinking of Lieutenant Miller, who after an impressive juggling act with a few of the seedling cases he was carrying for Katie Brown, managed to catch the falling man by his elbows. Down near Jumper two, Simpson looked up and gasped, dropping the small generator she was hefting on squarely on Kavanaugh's foot, who in turn didn't even seem notice because he was too busy doing an admittedly impressive imitation of a gold fish, seeming for once entirely wordless, his mouth working, yet no sound making it out.

And John kinda knew how he felt; he doubted he could have formed a coherent sentence on his life at that moment...

And if he knew one thing for sure, he knew that those pants..were evil. In a mere eight seconds flat they had caused more havoc then the time Parrish and Lorne had accidentally brought home a sample of what had later been semi-affectionately if not somewhat unimaginatively nicknamed: "Sexton the sometimes-and-sometimes not sex fern." Though on the other hand, it was a name that pretty much spoke for itself. Because really, as close as they all were on Atlantis, he really hadn't needed to know that Major Lorne, or Parrish for that matter were... that ....bendy, or that Zelenka was that hot a commodity with the female marines.

They had apparently still been finding stray panties and bras strewn throughout the labs for over a week later, the Czech's face going a shade of pink that nearly rivalled the smouldering red color of the last matching bra and panty set that he had inadvertently discovered on top of a long line of 7 foot tall spare parts cupboards, refusing point blank to answer Rodney's incredulous question of how it could have possibly gotten up there, as he headed out of the room to return the final garment to it's respective owner.

He wasn't sure what was more impressive and surprising, the fact that the Czech scientist had been the epi-center of a now infamously passionate sex orgy that had included over six female marines and had spanned over five labs and out into a number of corridors, or the fact that Radek knew exactly which undergarment set belonged to which woman. Now that was talent...

He could go on, but that would entirely be missing the point. Which was of course about the pants...the leather pants...Rodney's pants.

They were definitely evil pants....

A/N: So, continue? You tell me! I am going to leave it here for now, to see how well it is received and if anyone is interested in this story. Since I am literally in the middle of 4 or 5 stories right now, depending on the feedback I will decide on whether or not to continue. Honestly, I wish my brain would just let me finish one STORY at a time before bombarding me with plot-lines that EAT MY BRAIN. Because seriously...A Hewlett-ass in leather pants? GUH.