Rodney escorted Katie back to her quarters. He’d hoped she might let him in tonight, but she cited fatigue and the late hour to put him off and he had to settle for a fairly platonic kiss goodnight before she shut the door in his face. He sighed. He wasn’t completely sure if it was still Cadman’s bizarre kiss hanging between them, or if she was just naturally reserved and cautious, but they’d been on several dates over the last couple of months and she hadn’t let him get any farther than second base. It seemed that she was going to make him wait a really, really long time for any kind of real physical affection.
He shrugged that off and mulled over the events of the day as he plodded back to his own quarters. The mission had been such a simple one—to check out the rumors of a local superhero and establish some trade relations with a backwards village. How quickly everything had gone sour when Kolya showed up. At least the bastard was dead now, but it had been touch and go there for a few minutes. First his own life had been in immediate peril and then Sheppard’s. Thank God Sheppard was fast on the trigger. It could have easily gone the other way. He rubbed the scar on his right forearm where one of Kolya’s minions had sliced him when they tried to take the city. He would have that scar for the rest of his life to remember that son of a bitch. He was glad he was finally dead.
At least picking up another shield was a bonus. He was surprised he’d been able to talk it out of Lucius, but it’d been pretty clear to Lucius immediately that the thing was depleted. Emily would charge it up and maybe he could talk Elizabeth into letting him use one of them on some of the more dangerous missions. Emily. When had he stopped thinking of her as Dr. Freedman?
She seemed different tonight. From the second he walked in the door and startled her, she seemed different. Even nicer than before, warmer. She didn’t seem to hold a grudge. He frowned. But it went beyond that. Why would she give him her last soda? Soda was more highly prized than just about any Earth-born luxury around here. Maybe she didn’t know that yet. Either way, it was still pretty generous, given that she wouldn’t be able to get more.
She’d read his mission reports; that was clear. That in itself wasn’t unusual. He himself had read many of the reports from the SGC, particularly those of SG-1. She would have wanted to know what she might be getting into before coming to Pegasus. But she had read his reports and expressed sympathy for what he’d been through over the last two-plus years. She had expressed understanding. These were things he didn’t get from anyone. No, all he got from everyone else was annoyance, criticism, and high expectations. She was different. Having her around could be good for him.
He arrived at his quarters and took off his boots and socks, wiggling his toes gratefully. It felt good to let his toes breathe after a long day in military boots. He started to strip down to take a shower, intending on rinsing off the remains of the terrible day, when he stopped suddenly, thinking. He wasn’t tired anymore. Not really. Once he tapped into a second wind like this, he’d probably just lay there awake for a couple of hours, thinking. No, no—his brain wasn’t going to shut off any time soon.
He started to put his shirt back on, but caught a whiff of it. He grunted, frowning, located a clean version of the same shirt, and pulled that on instead, ducking into the bath for a fresh layer of deodorant. He left his jacket where it had fallen on the floor and grabbed a fresh one of those too as he headed for the door. Once out in the corridor, he happened to look down and realized he wasn’t wearing shoes. He cursed, turned back, rummaged around until he found a clean pair of socks, shoes, then tried again.
He often went back to the lab at times like this, to work for a few hours until he was tired again. There wouldn’t be any harm in stopping by the archeology lab to see if Emily had uncovered anything interesting about the repository. He was certain she’d still be there. Sometimes she left the door to her lab open and he noted that she frequently was there working late into the night.
What was the right word to describe how Emily had seemed tonight? He settled on vulnerable as he strolled toward the transporter that would take him back to the central tower. He hoped she wasn’t lying when she said no one was threatening her. She didn’t seem the type to lie, though. Her admission that she felt like a social outsider was curious too. With that incredible smile and perky little body, he would have guessed she was the center of attention, not a nerdy wallflower, but he didn’t think that was a lie either. She seemed sincere, troubled, and he wondered why she had divulged so much to him.
He stepped up to the door to her lab which had been left open. He could see her inside, concentrating on the wall display above the ancient console. Damn. He would probably startle her again. She was always engrossed in something. He couldn’t see any way around it so he knocked softly on the doorframe and pasted a friendly smile on his face.
As predicted, she jumped, put a hand to her chest, and sharply inhaled as she turned to see who was there.
“Sorry. I seem to keep doing that,” he said as he walked casually through the door.
“Everyone does.” She chuckled. “I figured you went to bed.” He watched, fascinated, as she blushed three shades of pink, closed her eyes and gave a little shake of her head, saying, “I mean, you all looked so tired from the mission.”
Huh, he thought, she’s about as bad as I am. She hadn’t been so nervous earlier though. His smile was easy to maintain now and he approached her, gesturing at the Ancient display to put her more at ease. “You prefer using the console to the laptop?”
She turned back to the display. “Oh, ah, yes. I don’t know why. I just do.”
“Find anything else interesting? About the repository?”
She shook her head. “Not really. It’s frustrating how they always seemed to leave out precisely the details we want when they were so verbose otherwise. Dr. Jackson thinks that these are the things that were common knowledge among them.”
“He thinks that’s why they left things out? So people wouldn’t get bored?” He wasn’t bored. He was admiring how she filled out her uniform. Not too shapely—she had more of an athletic body type. Trim. A nice package, overall, really.
She shrugged. “If that was their goal, they weren’t always successful. The author of this particular entry liked to embellish his writing with a lot of flowery prose. It’s a bit of slog to get through the whole thing.”
“Hm.” He frowned. He’d been hoping she’d found something interesting, so he could stick around and chat about it for a while. He turned and noticed there was a large device laid out on a nearby bench with the housing off. Hello. Now there was something he could sink his teeth into. “What’s this?” he asked nonchalantly, whilst peering avidly into the guts of the device.
“Oh, ah, Dr. Graden’s been working on that. I believe it’s a DNA sequencer. I thought it could be useful to Dr. Beckett’s work, if we can figure it out. We do know that it came from a genetics lab based on its location when it was discovered. We have several artifacts from that lab, but there wasn’t a lab inventory listed in the database, so we’re flying blind as far as specifics.” She looked at him inquisitively and came closer.
He frowned. She was going on dates with Carson, doing him favors. If he had to guess, based on Carson’s non-stop jabbering, they would be an item in no time. “Has Neumann taken a look at it yet?” he asked.
“Not yet. She’s been working on another device.” She looked as though she were going to gesture at another bench, but faltered. “She must have put it away at the end of the day. She’s very tidy.”
“Yes, she’s good. Graden’s smart but sloppy,” he said as he reached in and adjusted something Graden had clearly knocked loose. “A DNA sequencer, huh?” He looked around for a light source, found one nearby, and turned it on.
Emily indicated the housing. “I believe so. See—the housing says something like: DNA portrait delineation. I’ve never seen these words combined quite this way before, but then I haven’t read too much about Ancient genetics techniques.”
He tested a large component, saw that it easily disengaged, and lifted it out to see what was underneath. “Could you, uh,” he said, gesturing to the light.
“Of course,” she said, moving the light closer for him. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked softly.
“Hm?” Even as the sound came out of his mouth, he realized he actually had heard her question. He straightened and looked at her. She held the light source close to her hair, making it glow, the individual curls gleaming like golden sparks, casting uneven shadows on her pale face. She smiled, even now, just slightly, as though with amusement, but not in a negative way. Her brown eyes were shining, expressive. Her smile warmed him somehow. He was taken aback. He hadn’t realized before that she was actually beautiful. He suddenly felt sort of dumbstruck, but after a moment’s hesitation managed, “Oh, ah, didn’t even bother. You?”
“I just do this. It’s a bad habit.” She pushed her hair back from her face and the light wavered, breaking the spell.
“Never enough hours in the day, anyway,” he mumbled and hunched back down into the disassembled machine, squinting at the unfamiliar parts.
“Don’t you have a hobby or something?”
“Are you kidding? This is my hobby.” He gestured with a tool he’d found lying nearby, indicating the device, then double-checked it to make sure it was the right size, before putting it to use.
“You mean work? Oh, you mean the devices? Oh, of course.”
He frowned and didn’t look up. He hadn’t meant to be so transparent. He could hear her moving around and metal rasping and clicking into place. Then, in his peripheral vision, he could see her setting up a stand for the light. He glanced up to see her adjusting it, concentrating on flooding his work zone with light.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, as he briefly met her eyes.
She nodded and turned, striding purposefully to a set of stainless steel cabinets that lined one wall. He watched as she fished a key out of her pocket and unlocked each cabinet individually, opening the doors to reveal the contents. Inside were most of the devices he and his team had collected over the last two and a half years. She opened a drawer, pulled out a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on.
“Which ones do you want?” she asked.
He looked from her to the cabinets and back again. “What?”
“I’ll set them aside for you. As many as you want. Surely you must have had your eye on a few of them?”
He took a step back and straightened up, not sure what was going on, exactly. “Well, I. . . .”
“Just let me do my part, first, ok? Then I’ll send them over with a report and you can take it from there, whenever you have time.”
“Really? You would do that?” Why was he floundering like this? He was the boss. He should man up and claim his territory. It was a good idea—one he should have thought of himself—it would have been better than ignoring her and pissing her off.
“Of course. Dr. Lee was the same way. He’d wander into my lab late at night after he’d already been home to put his kids to bed. He’d just putter around and see what everyone was doing, but I knew he was looking for a good one to pull apart and figure out. There were certain devices that would just. . . fill him with glee.” She chuckled. “After a while I could guess which ones they might be and set them aside for him. Why didn’t you just say something before?”
He followed her across the room, feeling foolish. She handed him a pair of gloves and he put them on absentmindedly, gazing greedily at the contents of the cabinets.
“They’re all yours, after all, aren’t they? You were here first. You collected them. You should get dibs. So. . . which ones turn you on?”
He glanced at her, startled by her language choice. She was turning pink again, but smiling mischievously at the same time. God dammit, but she was hot. He turned back to the cabinets and pulled out a device he’d had his eye on for a while. She plucked it from his hands and carried it over to her desk in the corner, out of the way. By the time she returned, he had another one ready. She took that as well. He shoved a few things aside, still looking, and saw her crouch down, pulling something out of a bottom cabinet.
“If you liked those two, this one might do as well?” she asked, presenting it to him.
“Ah, yes, I was looking for that one,” he said gruffly, bewildered by her behavior. “That should do it. For now.”
She nodded mutely, with a knowing smile.
“Do you mind if I—?” he asked, gesturing toward the DNA device while he peeled the gloves back off.
“Of course not, go ahead. I’m glad I’m not the only night owl around here. It gets kind of creepy at night sometimes.”
“Mm. That’s true.”
She slapped a lab notebook down on the bench next to the DNA device. “Dr. Graden’s working notes are in here if you want to take a peek.”
“Paper?” he asked, confused.
“I insist on it. People are more thorough the old-fashioned way. They get lazy with laptops.”
He shot her a quizzical look as he opened the notebook. “You file your weekly reports electronically.”
“Of course I do. I do what you expect of me. They do what I expect of them. I’m not anti-technology. I just think, for some things, the old ways are better.” She turned and resumed reading at the console. He watched her go, appreciating the view of her backside. Then he realized that if she was over there reading with her back turned and he was over here. . . there wouldn’t be much talking and, well, he hadn’t really come down here to claim these devices like some kind of caveman—glad as he was to somehow have done so.
He cleared his throat. “Hm. . . interesting.” He pulled out a dispenser of a viscous, green liquid and sniffed at it, but couldn’t detect any odor. Well if it was sealed well enough to stay put for ten-thousand years, it wasn’t going to start leaking now, he supposed. He looked up and saw that she had taken the bait. He handed it to her.
“Still intact after ten-thousand years,” she said, admiring it with awe.
“So, ah, do you. . . have any hobbies?”
“Hobbies?” she said faintly, still examining the dispenser. She pulled out a magnifying glass. She seemed to be trying to determine if she could extract any liquid, perhaps for analysis, without damaging it.
“Yes. Well, you asked me if I had any hobbies, so I just wondered. . . do you?”
She smiled at him. “My answer is the same as yours. Work.”
He handed her another dispenser with a clear liquid, hoping she would say more.
“I like puzzles. I could sit and do a book of sudoku, but what would I have to show for it at the end?”
“A book of completed sudoku?”
“Exactly. I like having something useful to show for my time.” She snorted, shaking her head. “My mother is always trying to get me to pick up some kind of needlework or something—that’s her thing. She says I need to do something down to Earth. And that’s just, well, it’s completely absurd. Obviously, she doesn’t know what I really do for a living. I mean, she couldn’t possibly comprehend how ludicrous it is to suggest doing something down to Earth to someone living in another galaxy.”
His mouth turned up on one side as he considered her logic. “Well, I don’t see anything that would contradict your theory that this is a DNA sequencer. I’ll reassemble it, turn it on, and take some readings.” He started to put things back in place, starting with the liquid dispensers.
“Katie seems very nice—very, um, sweet-natured,” she said quietly. He looked up to see her studying him.
He felt a pang of regret, wishing he’d never mentioned Katie to her. He’d sort of overplayed things when he’d mentioned their relationship earlier, and he wasn’t sure why he’d done that either. He guessed he and Katie were technically a couple, though they spent so little time together, they barely qualified for the label. They had so little in common, he wasn’t even entirely sure what the attraction was between them. Katie was great. She was sweet. Jeannie had told him that if he’d found someone who would put up with him, he should hold on and never let go. Given his history with women, it was probably good advice.
It was unlikely Katie had even been aware that he’d been off-world today, much less worried about him, so why had he said that earlier? What was he doing? Trying to play hard to get? That was utterly ridiculous. Then he’d gone off, found Katie, and dragged her to the mess hall, just to prove something to himself, but he wasn’t sure what that was, exactly. Emily was still watching him closely, expecting him to comment, but he suddenly found himself on the fence, unwilling to discuss Katie further with her. He shrugged noncommittally and said, “Mm,” pretending to be concentrating so hard on putting the device back together that he couldn’t be bothered to comment further.
She seemed to take that as a signal that he was too busy to talk and walked away again, to read some more. He cursed himself, but even as he wracked his brain, he couldn’t find a satisfactory response to her query. What was he doing here, anyway? If he was attached to Katie, why was he here, trying to figure Freedman out?