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Just a little thing for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sga_genderfuck Grab Bag Challenge.
Title: Storm Damage
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceitie
Genderfuck: genderswitch AU
Characters: Sheppard, McKay
Rating: R (for language and mature theme)
Words: 1,334
Summary: There had been nothing to say.
Warning: Mention of possible non-consensual sex
A/N: I stole the term 'resolve face' from Willow and BtVS, because I'm a stealer.
As soon as her weekly meeting/pissing contest with Bates was over, Sheppard headed over to the labs, determined to track down McKay and drag her off to dinner. They hadn’t eaten together as a team since the storm, nearly a week ago now, and this time Sheppard wasn’t going to listen to any of Meredith’s excuses or allow herself to be thwarted by Zelenka running interference.
The invasion of the city by the Genii had left everyone shaken, but McKay in particular had been uncharacteristically quiet and moody ever since and it was starting to freak Sheppard out. She could almost ignore the fading bruises on McKay’s face and neck, pretend she didn’t notice the way McKay’s fingers worried obsessively at the bandage wrapped around her arm, but a silent Meredith was downright disconcerting. It threw Sheppard off her game, left her uneasy and stumbling for words in a way that she hated.
Enough was enough; if Meredith felt the need to brood over the events of the storm, well, Sheppard couldn’t blame her, but she was damned if she was going to let the woman brood alone in the lab.
She strode into the mostly empty main lab with her resolve face firmly in place, ready to fling herself head-first into what was likely to be a memorable piece of McKay-wrangling, only to come to an abrupt halt upon spotting her intended target.
Meredith was bent over a laptop, staring intently at the screen and muttering under her breath. It was a reassuringly familiar sight, but – Huh. Sheppard stared for a moment in surprise.
Having lost her earlier momentum, she sidled up to Meredith’s lab bench and tried to reorganize her tactics around this unexpected development. A frontal attack no longer seemed like such a good plan, but she wasn’t sure how to work up to the subject gradually.
“You cut your hair,” Sheppard blurted, then tried not to wince. Fuck. So much for subtlety.
Meredith glanced up from the screen, startled. She half-lifted a hand to her hair self-consciously before catching herself, yanking the hand back down to reach for her coffee mug instead.
“Major! Oh, uh, yes, I did,” she said, flushing slightly and taking a quick drink of coffee.
Sheppard floundered for a second before her manners kicked in and she said automatically, “It looks really good. I mean, it – suits you.”
She consoled herself with the fact that she wasn’t actually lying, McKay did look good. Her fine shoulder-length hair had always looked somewhat lank and untidy when it wasn’t yanked back in its perennial ponytail, but the newly short layers made her look younger and almost chic. It also made the faint ring of bruises circling her pale throat even more visible.
“Thanks,” Meredith said off-handedly, but her flush grew darker and she turned back to her laptop with a kind of desperate focus.
With some difficulty, Sheppard yanked her eyes away from McKay’s neck and attempted a casual lean against the bench at her back. She couldn’t seem to stop her hands from clenching tightly at her sides, nor could she erase the scenes that had started flashing through her mind on constant repeat as soon as she had seen McKay’s hair.
Kolya, his hands wrapped around McKay’s throat, striking her face, holding a knife to her arm. Gripping her long hair and yanking her head back, leaving her trapped and vulnerable. The threats he must have made, calm and certain in his ability to carry them out regardless of her struggles.
Sheppard gritted her teeth, her stomach turning over unpleasantly. “Did you cut it – I mean, was it because of –?” she asked, then wanted to kick herself when Meredith’s fingers froze over the keyboard, the side of her mouth turning down sharply.
Meredith said nothing, just hunched her shoulders and stared at the screen, and Sheppard wanted to have Kolya in front of her so she could kill him again, only slowly this time, with knives maybe. Bile burned up her throat. She clasped her hands behind her back, trying to hide her agitation.
There had been people in the past that she’d wanted dead. She had even made some of those people dead, but she’d never wanted to take her time with it before.
Silence hung between them, and Sheppard stared blankly at the side of Meredith’s face. She should be better at this, goddamn it, should have something to offer for this kind of situation, even if it was only a half-remembered bullshit platitude from an officer training course.
A memory skidded in, unwanted, of crouching on a grimy bathroom floor as Lt. Lavelle, a girl whose first name Sheppard could no longer remember, knelt over a toilet and sobbed between bouts of vomiting. They hadn’t been friends, just part of the same Air Force crowd at a smoky, trashy bar; Sheppard had had the bad luck to be the only other woman around when Lavelle had staggered drunkenly off her bar stool and announced that she was about to puke.
She’d dragged Lavelle to the bathroom and patted her back, mostly concentrating on not tipping off of her unsteady high heels onto her ass and wishing she’d passed on that last tequila shot. Then Lavelle had started crying, mascara smearing across her face as she choked out the story of how she’d been cornered in a room at the last off-base party, how she’d been drunk and confused and she thought she’d blown maybe two guys, maybe more. How she’d woken up half-naked on a stranger’s sofa, and that maybe she had been drugged.
The same fury had raged through Sheppard then as did now, the same sense of uselessness and strangled anger. She’d patted Lavelle’s back, and said nothing, then. There had been nothing to say.
She thought of Afghanistan, of the acrid heat and sweat running down between her breasts, and the way the men there had stared sometimes, their gaze darting between her chest and her legs and the short spikes of her hair but never looking her in the eye. The guilty relief she’d felt when the cold weather had come and she could hide underneath layers of clothing, just another American uniform.
Sheppard couldn’t explain any of those things to McKay, couldn’t say I hate feeling small and I understand protective camouflage, wanted to give her something more than silence and a pat on the back. But they weren’t the type of friends who hugged, and Sheppard had never been any good at telling the comforting kind of lies.
So instead she cleared her throat and said, “Anyway, I was just wondering if you wanted to go get some dinner. Teyla and Ford are saving us a table.”
Meredith turned away from the laptop and gave her a measuring stare. Sheppard smiled an apology and tried not to squirm. Finally, Meredith nodded, closing her laptop and stretching a little. “Sure, I’m a little hungry.” She slid off the stool and offered Sheppard a small, forced smile. “And hey, it’s brownie night, it pays to get there early, right?”
“That’s the plan,” Sheppard said as cheerfully as she could, and as they headed for the door, she added, “If you want to come to my quarters afterwards, we could watch movies or something. I have some vodka that I could be persuaded to share.”
McKay shot her a quick, sideways glance, but said softly, “Yeah, alright,” then more loudly, “but it better not be that homemade crap that the chemists are trying to pass off as actual booze.”
Sheppard grinned. “Only the best for you, McKay, don’t worry.” She ruffled her hand through Meredith’s cropped hair, laughing and dodging as Meredith swore and swatted at her. McKay would be okay, they both would be, Sheppard would make sure of it somehow.
And if by any chance she came face to face with Acastus Kolya again, it would be the last time. She’d make sure of that as well.
sga_genderfuck Grab Bag Challenge. Title: Storm Damage
Author:
ceitieGenderfuck: genderswitch AU
Characters: Sheppard, McKay
Rating: R (for language and mature theme)
Words: 1,334
Summary: There had been nothing to say.
Warning: Mention of possible non-consensual sex
A/N: I stole the term 'resolve face' from Willow and BtVS, because I'm a stealer.
As soon as her weekly meeting/pissing contest with Bates was over, Sheppard headed over to the labs, determined to track down McKay and drag her off to dinner. They hadn’t eaten together as a team since the storm, nearly a week ago now, and this time Sheppard wasn’t going to listen to any of Meredith’s excuses or allow herself to be thwarted by Zelenka running interference.
The invasion of the city by the Genii had left everyone shaken, but McKay in particular had been uncharacteristically quiet and moody ever since and it was starting to freak Sheppard out. She could almost ignore the fading bruises on McKay’s face and neck, pretend she didn’t notice the way McKay’s fingers worried obsessively at the bandage wrapped around her arm, but a silent Meredith was downright disconcerting. It threw Sheppard off her game, left her uneasy and stumbling for words in a way that she hated.
Enough was enough; if Meredith felt the need to brood over the events of the storm, well, Sheppard couldn’t blame her, but she was damned if she was going to let the woman brood alone in the lab.
She strode into the mostly empty main lab with her resolve face firmly in place, ready to fling herself head-first into what was likely to be a memorable piece of McKay-wrangling, only to come to an abrupt halt upon spotting her intended target.
Meredith was bent over a laptop, staring intently at the screen and muttering under her breath. It was a reassuringly familiar sight, but – Huh. Sheppard stared for a moment in surprise.
Having lost her earlier momentum, she sidled up to Meredith’s lab bench and tried to reorganize her tactics around this unexpected development. A frontal attack no longer seemed like such a good plan, but she wasn’t sure how to work up to the subject gradually.
“You cut your hair,” Sheppard blurted, then tried not to wince. Fuck. So much for subtlety.
Meredith glanced up from the screen, startled. She half-lifted a hand to her hair self-consciously before catching herself, yanking the hand back down to reach for her coffee mug instead.
“Major! Oh, uh, yes, I did,” she said, flushing slightly and taking a quick drink of coffee.
Sheppard floundered for a second before her manners kicked in and she said automatically, “It looks really good. I mean, it – suits you.”
She consoled herself with the fact that she wasn’t actually lying, McKay did look good. Her fine shoulder-length hair had always looked somewhat lank and untidy when it wasn’t yanked back in its perennial ponytail, but the newly short layers made her look younger and almost chic. It also made the faint ring of bruises circling her pale throat even more visible.
“Thanks,” Meredith said off-handedly, but her flush grew darker and she turned back to her laptop with a kind of desperate focus.
With some difficulty, Sheppard yanked her eyes away from McKay’s neck and attempted a casual lean against the bench at her back. She couldn’t seem to stop her hands from clenching tightly at her sides, nor could she erase the scenes that had started flashing through her mind on constant repeat as soon as she had seen McKay’s hair.
Kolya, his hands wrapped around McKay’s throat, striking her face, holding a knife to her arm. Gripping her long hair and yanking her head back, leaving her trapped and vulnerable. The threats he must have made, calm and certain in his ability to carry them out regardless of her struggles.
Sheppard gritted her teeth, her stomach turning over unpleasantly. “Did you cut it – I mean, was it because of –?” she asked, then wanted to kick herself when Meredith’s fingers froze over the keyboard, the side of her mouth turning down sharply.
Meredith said nothing, just hunched her shoulders and stared at the screen, and Sheppard wanted to have Kolya in front of her so she could kill him again, only slowly this time, with knives maybe. Bile burned up her throat. She clasped her hands behind her back, trying to hide her agitation.
There had been people in the past that she’d wanted dead. She had even made some of those people dead, but she’d never wanted to take her time with it before.
Silence hung between them, and Sheppard stared blankly at the side of Meredith’s face. She should be better at this, goddamn it, should have something to offer for this kind of situation, even if it was only a half-remembered bullshit platitude from an officer training course.
A memory skidded in, unwanted, of crouching on a grimy bathroom floor as Lt. Lavelle, a girl whose first name Sheppard could no longer remember, knelt over a toilet and sobbed between bouts of vomiting. They hadn’t been friends, just part of the same Air Force crowd at a smoky, trashy bar; Sheppard had had the bad luck to be the only other woman around when Lavelle had staggered drunkenly off her bar stool and announced that she was about to puke.
She’d dragged Lavelle to the bathroom and patted her back, mostly concentrating on not tipping off of her unsteady high heels onto her ass and wishing she’d passed on that last tequila shot. Then Lavelle had started crying, mascara smearing across her face as she choked out the story of how she’d been cornered in a room at the last off-base party, how she’d been drunk and confused and she thought she’d blown maybe two guys, maybe more. How she’d woken up half-naked on a stranger’s sofa, and that maybe she had been drugged.
The same fury had raged through Sheppard then as did now, the same sense of uselessness and strangled anger. She’d patted Lavelle’s back, and said nothing, then. There had been nothing to say.
She thought of Afghanistan, of the acrid heat and sweat running down between her breasts, and the way the men there had stared sometimes, their gaze darting between her chest and her legs and the short spikes of her hair but never looking her in the eye. The guilty relief she’d felt when the cold weather had come and she could hide underneath layers of clothing, just another American uniform.
Sheppard couldn’t explain any of those things to McKay, couldn’t say I hate feeling small and I understand protective camouflage, wanted to give her something more than silence and a pat on the back. But they weren’t the type of friends who hugged, and Sheppard had never been any good at telling the comforting kind of lies.
So instead she cleared her throat and said, “Anyway, I was just wondering if you wanted to go get some dinner. Teyla and Ford are saving us a table.”
Meredith turned away from the laptop and gave her a measuring stare. Sheppard smiled an apology and tried not to squirm. Finally, Meredith nodded, closing her laptop and stretching a little. “Sure, I’m a little hungry.” She slid off the stool and offered Sheppard a small, forced smile. “And hey, it’s brownie night, it pays to get there early, right?”
“That’s the plan,” Sheppard said as cheerfully as she could, and as they headed for the door, she added, “If you want to come to my quarters afterwards, we could watch movies or something. I have some vodka that I could be persuaded to share.”
McKay shot her a quick, sideways glance, but said softly, “Yeah, alright,” then more loudly, “but it better not be that homemade crap that the chemists are trying to pass off as actual booze.”
Sheppard grinned. “Only the best for you, McKay, don’t worry.” She ruffled her hand through Meredith’s cropped hair, laughing and dodging as Meredith swore and swatted at her. McKay would be okay, they both would be, Sheppard would make sure of it somehow.
And if by any chance she came face to face with Acastus Kolya again, it would be the last time. She’d make sure of that as well.
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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I'd absolutely love it if you wrote more in this universe. Thank you for this, for now.
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I'm glad you liked that line, it's a feeling I can identify with too, one that I think a lot of women share in their awareness of violence, or its possibility.
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Terrifying in what way?
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I might write more in this universe, although probably not until after I finish my WIP.
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I probably will write more of this AU, after I finish the last part of my WIP.
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I'm glad you thought it was subtle, because I hate accidentally doing the 'tell instead of show' thing.
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Bet Ford feels like a pimp-daddy.
: )
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I really like your versions of John and Rodney. Although they are women with diefferent experiences and the like they are still themselves.
I like this a lot.
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Glad you liked the story! I'm always worried when non-con enters a story in any way, because it's so easy to mess it up, so it's cool that you thought this one was okay.
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I'm not expressing myself properly, but: yes, this is wonderful. Sensitive and interesting and head and shoulders above any other they-were-always-girls fic I've seen in the fandom.
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(Also, I adored your story "always should be someone you really love", I reread it all the time and it's at least ten times better than anything I've ever written, so it's awesome that you like my story. *fangirls madly*)
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I just friended you (with my personal journal,
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Btw, I love re-reading your story, especially when I'm disappointed with the portrayal of women or rape in fanfiction. There are good stories out there, I only've got to look.
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