But he hadn’t followed up on it. She’d hoped to hear his voice outside her bedroom, find him framed in her doorway, fresh from whatever vital thing it was that had taken him away from her and ready to make good on the promise his lips had made. But he hadn’t come. Damn it. And she didn’t want to seem easy, but a girl had needs, after all. Especially after being kissed like that. She scowled, and stared out over the ink-dark sea. Presumably the universe had needed saving. Again.

• * *

“And then McKay planted this kiss on Beckett like you wouldn’t believe.” They both laughed. “You should’ve seen John Sheppard’s face.”

Katie stilled. It was two days since her strange date with Rodney McKay, and she was feeling increasingly puzzled and cross that he had so far made no effort to contact her. She knew that there had been something, some kind of crisis or other, but there was always some kind of crisis or another and the details tended to blur together. The accounts of this latest kerfuffle were decidedly confused, but as far as she could gather it hadn’t involved imminent attack by Wraith or Genii or man-eating plants from outer space, so it was pretty much business as normal. It was Morgenstern who told her McKay had been hospitalised, and then she felt like a total bitch for feeling cross with him; but by the time she got there, red-faced and clutching a handful of delicate alien flowers stolen from Merwick’s small greenhouse, he had already been released. She blushed a little when she saw Beckett, remembering the oddness of her date, remembering that spectacular kiss which he had witnessed, but his smile was kind and understanding, and he’d crossed the room to speak to her at once. He really was a very nice man. “You just missed him, dear,” he said, glancing down at the flowers. “But not to worry, he’s good as new and twice as troublesome. Back to his old self. Everyone’s right as rain, now.” He looked a little red in the face himself, for some reason, but she didn’t think about it at the time. It was only afterwards, as she was leaving the clinic and overheard the nurses gossiping that things started to resolve themselves into an unwelcome pattern.

Despite herself, Katie reached out and felt her fingers close around the speaker’s quivering shoulder. Red-brown curls brushed the back of her hand as the nurse turned around, still grinning. She was a little taller than Katie, with a generous mouth and the sort of lush, curvy figure Katie Brown had always wanted to have when she was a skinny little stick of a teenage science nerd. Evans, she was called, or Erikson, or something like that – Katie knew they had met at some party or other, but she couldn’t quite place the name. Katie found herself fighting an irrational impulse to slap the grin right off of her pretty face. She could almost hear the ringing sound, feel the sting of it on her skin. She took a deep breath and made herself be calm.

“Excuse me,” she heard herself say, her voice sounding strange in her ears, “but is that Doctor McKay you’re talking about? Kissing…kissing Doctor Carson Beckett?” The nurse dissolved into giggles again, her full bosom heaving, and nodded helplessly. Katie stared at her, turning over data and feeling more like an idiot by the second. “Doctor Rodney McKay?” There were, she knew, no other Doctors McKay on Atlantis, so this was a perfectly stupid question.

“You should have been there,” gasped the nurse, her freckled face pink with laughter. “It looked like one hell of a kiss.” Katie felt herself grow cold. Her hand fell away from the other girl’s shoulder and she stepped back. The flowers fell from the fingers of her other hand to lie forgotten on the floor.

“I see,” she said, and walked blindly away, bruising the buttery petals underfoot and never even noticing. Behind her, the nurse said something about Sheppard, and something else about Cadman, but Katie was no longer paying attention. Well, that explained why Carson Beckett had been with Rodney on their date, and why he had looked so embarrassed just now. She dug her fists into her pockets, feeling like the butt of a joke and resenting it enormously. But why bother with a date at all, in that case? And why – how – what on earth had prompted him to kiss her like that, if he hadn’t meant anything by it? “Bastard,” she muttered, shocking herself a little but feeling righteously angry nevertheless. She had not deserved this. “Rodney McKay, you utter bastard.”

She was supposed to be helping Lewis with testing the new grain samples. She should really get back to the lab. She was only going to look like a fool if she went and initiated some awkward, melodramatic scene with Rodney McKay, so she should definitely just head back to the lab and get on with her work.

She didn’t.

• * *

She heard McKay before she saw him, and she saw him long before he saw her.

“…oh, just spit it out, Major, I can see that you’ve been dying to say something all day. Go on, go on, get it over with.”

He was just around a bend in the corridor, and she felt her cheeks growing hot and her feet slowing despite themselves. Perhaps this wasn’t such a great idea after all. She paused, and thought about just running back to the lab and losing herself in work. She really did hate mindgames.

“You kissed Beckett.” That was John Sheppard’s voice. And there it was, straight from the horse’s mouth, or practically so. McKay had kissed Beckett. McKay was – what? Gay? Bisexual? A colossal jerk, anyway, to be kissing both of them within a day or so, and to be bringing Beckett along on dates with him. Katie wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but she couldn’t quite drag herself away now. She craned forward, listening to their voices retreating further down the corridor. McKay was loud enough to hear four floors away, but Sheppard’s voice was pitched lower and she had to strain to catch his words.

“Oh thank you very much for reminding me. Really, I was hoping to relive that particular humiliating memory again. Thanks. Anyway, technically it was Lieutenant Cadman who kissed Beckett. Cadman. Not me. Ghastly woman. She just happened to be using my mouth at the time.”

Katie replayed the sentences in her head several times. They still made absolutely no sense. Sheppard said something, but she couldn’t quite make out the words, and after a moment of hesitation she peered around the corner, feeling unspeakably silly but unable to resist the impulse. She needn’t have worried. They were far too busy looking at one another to notice her.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

They had stopped walking, and McKay was red faced and glaring at the major.

“But you were conscious.” There was an odd intensity to Sheppard’s voice. “You could feel it.”

“I – look, she just hijacked my body while I was asleep, the opportunistic wench, and did God knows what with it while I was unable to protect myself, and then she minced off into the night to flirt with Beckett and invite him along on my date, if you can imagine that! While wearing a Rodney suit. And she sleeps naked. I was naked. She saw me naked. I was helpless, and she took advantage of me. And she did all this exercise. I still ache. It was a thoroughly hideous experience, Major, and I’m just glad it’s over now.”

“You took Beckett along on your hot date?” Major Sheppard sounded highly entertained by this. Katie felt herself scowling.

“Yes, can you imagine? It was a disaster. An unmitigated disaster. And it’s all that woman’s fault for putting me in that position, making me look like I needed somebody to hold my hand – when all the time it was because she had the hots for Beckett, incredible as that might seem. I mean – Beckett! The nerve of her. And then she – well, the less said about that the better, although I have to admit that Katie felt very – but really, Lieutenant Cadman is the most appalling back seat driver in this or any other galaxy, Major. I am perfectly capable of conducting my own – affairs – without help from some interfering parasite consciousness, thank you very much.”

Major Sheppard cocked his head and studied McKay during this little rant, and he seemed to be smiling.

“You’re avoiding the question. You weren’t asleep when you kissed Beckett, Rodney. You were wide awake and bossing us all around. And then she took over, we could see that – which, incidentally, definitely registered on the weirdometer. But you were conscious, Rodney. So – could you feel it?”

Katie chewed her lip meditatively while she waited for Rodney’s reply. She was beginning to piece this together, and she wasn’t at all sure how she felt about it. Other than acutely, acutely embarrassed, and increasingly pissed, and baffled as to why she had ever felt anything romantic towards Doctor Rodney McKay. An unmitigated disaster.

But it had been one hell of a kiss.

“What, is there some kind of betting pool? There is, isn’t there? Oh my God. I go through five kinds of hell and my colleagues just see it as another form of entertainment.”

He was pacing back and forth, his hands darting through the air as he spoke. Rodney McKay, Katie reflected with surprising detachment, could simply not stand still for more than a few seconds.

“If I win, I’ll share,” said Sheppard.

“What good is your money going to do me here, Major?” demanded Rodney, stopping mid-pace and looking at Major Sheppard like he was quite the stupidest man in the history of the universe.

“Swiss chocolate. That’s what I stand to win.” Katie could hear McKay’s indrawn breath all the way down the corridor. Sheppard smiled, and stepped a little closer, his eyes fixed on McKay’s. “So – could you feel it, Rodney?”

You didn’t kiss me, thought Katie, watching Rodney McKay lick his lips. It wasn’t you. Somehow it was Laura Cadman, kissing Beckett. Kissing me. Of course. Because this is the Pegasus Galaxy, and nothing ever goes smoothly.

“I – which way did you bet?” asked Rodney, and his voice was a little rough around the edges.

“That would be cheating.”

“Oh, and you’d never dream of cheating, Major.”

Sheppard was standing very close now, Katie couldn’t help but notice. “Just answer the question, McKay. Could you feel the kiss? Did she take you along for the ride?”

“I – well, I – not that it is any of your business, but I suppose that maybe I could.” There was a long pause. Katie could see Rodney’s chest rising and falling too quickly. He licked his lips again, looking at the Major standing so close and for a moment Katie thought that he might be about to run away. “Although I can honestly say that I’ve never had a single erotic thought about Carson Beckett in my life, and the fact that I – that we – well, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen him as the first – that is – I – well. Uh. Stop looking at me like that.”

“Okay.”

And that was when Major Sheppard kissed him. And Katie found that she wasn’t really surprised at all. There was a moment while McKay’s large hands flailed wildly in the air, windmilling madly, but Sheppard kept right on kissing him, and after a very little while Rodney’s hands closed on the Major’s shoulder and on his waist and pulled him closer, and it turned out that he could, in fact, stand still after all.

“Well, crap,” said Katie Brown, with feeling.

• * *

When Katie finally found Lieutenant Cadman, she was with a rather pink-cheeked Carson Beckett. They were sitting very close together on a deck that looked out over the water. Katie marched right up to them anyway, and Laura was smart enough to look slightly guilty.

“You kissed me,” said Katie, standing in front of them with her hands on her hips. She glared her glariest glare. “You did. It was you, not Rodney.”

Laura looked up, and although her brows were crinkling apologetically, her mouth was curving into an irrepressible grin. “It was me. Sorry about that, hon.”

“You – I – god DAMN it.” She looked from Cadman to Beckett and back again, and found that she didn’t have the energy to hate either of them. Beckett looked entirely too sympathetic to resent, damn him. To her own surprise she sat down next to him on the bench and stared out at the sea. “Well, that sucks.”

“Imagine how I felt, love,” said Beckett, patting her hand. “I certainly wasn’t expecting to get snogged by Rodney McKay in front of my entire staff. Although he was a surprisingly good kisser.”

“I was. That was me,” pointed out Cadman.

“Yes,” said Katie, grimly. “That was you.”

Cadman leaned forward and beamed at her around Beckett, and there was so much honest liking in that smile that Katie couldn’t keep up her crossness. “It was me. But Rodney was making such a mess of it all - he really doesn’t have the first idea of what to do with a pretty girl.”

“No,” agreed Katie, thinking of the passionate embrace she’d walked away from a little while ago, which had been notably lacking in pretty girls. She sighed. “No, he really doesn’t, does he?” But you do, she found herself thinking, and when she caught Cadman’s eye there was an expression there that made her redden unexpectedly.

Oh.

It had, Katie reflected, feeling suddenly reckless and exhilarated, been one hell of a kiss.

Beckett’s fingers were still laced between hers. He was, she thought, a remarkably sweet man. She began to rub her thumb meditatively in circles over his skin, and when he glanced at her, something in her own expression made his eyes widen. And that was when she kissed him, hard and fierce and tender, revelling in how entirely he wasn’t expecting it.

When they broke apart for air, he looked satisfyingly tousled and taken aback.

“This is very – I mean, are you sure – that is – good heavens,” stammered Beckett. Cadman winked at her, and snaked her own hand across his lap and closed it over their interwoven fingers, and the look on her face then left very little to the imagination. Katie was wholly unsurprised when Cadman leaned into Beckett and kissed him herself.

“So,” said Lieutenant Laura Cadman a few moments later, laughter rippling just below the surface of her voice. “Your place, or your place, or mine?”

FINIS

More House/Wonderfalls:
Foreman was torn between laughter and sympathy as he watched Cameron water Wilson’s tree. “Look, Cameron, my psych rotation was a long time ago, but we could still talk about this.”

”Talk about what?” She checked to make sure the tree was getting enough light.

“You’re watering another man’s wood, girl. Catch a clue.”

”It’s a living thing, Eric. I’m not gonna let it die.”

Chase wore a sardonic smirk that would have done the man himself proud. “Maybe Cameron’s gone Hindu and that tree is her husband reincarnated.”

”Could I get a differential on that?”

”Major daddy issues,”Foreman suggested.

“And I say I just care about nature and don’t want Dr. House to come in and find a dead tree.”

”It’s not just a tree, though, Allison. “ Chase pointed out. “It’s a love token, disturbing as those mental images may be. Face it, Penelope...this Odysseus may like boys.”

”Well, yeah...he was Greek.” Foreman added. When everyone looked, he said “I’m a doctor, not a homeboy consultant,okay?”

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.”

”Fifty bucks says she’s been pricing mulch.”

”I have not. But Miracle-Gro makes these little sticks...”

“Cheer up, girlfriend. Somewhere out there, there’s another pain-riddled old bastard just waiting to treat a beautiful brunette like crap, okay?”

”Gee, you really think so?” Foreman was relieved by Cameron’s sarcasm. “He’s a genius, you know? They just don’t conform to the usual standards.”

“Boring old rot like tenderness and civility, you mean?” Chase said dryly.

“Yeah...like it was chivalry that made you picture me naked when I said ‘orgasm’. I could do it again. Orgasm...climax...CLITORIS!”

Someone knocked tastefully at the door. “Maybe I was a little loud.” Cameron’s cheeks were pink.

“So, is that, like a common problem for you?”

“Shut up, Foreman.”

Dr. Wilson. A collective “Oh, crap,” went through the duckling ranks. If things played out like the oncologist wanted, Dr. House might as well have video of them screwing around on the hospital’s dime...a definite do-as-I-say, not- as- I- do situation.

“I hate to interrupt whatever the hell is going on in here, but Tyler’s missing, and incredibly enough she and PPTH’s answer to Sherlock Holmes seem to have bonded. I thought harboring a fugitive might be this year’s ‘Everybody lies.’

“Pink is the new black, though.” Cameron babbled. “Haven’t seen her.”

“It sounded as though your thoughts were occupied somewhere else, Allison.” Wilson replied, not unkindly.

“Yeah. I suppose it would. Sound like that.”

“Happens to the best of us.” Wilson noticed the tree looking so healthy and said “That’s looking well.”

“Oh, yes. Well, I’ve been watering it every day, and I bought these little stakes...”The second she said it, Cameron could have bitten her own tongue off. Wilson looked *sad*, and not his usually baseline-level, divorced-oncologist level of sad.Which was enough sad for normal people. But this was a sadness Wilson tried to cover, although within a beat, if she hadn’t spent so much time with him, she might not have noticed. “You’re watering this plant.”

“Uh huh.”She remembered that feeling of not understanding spoken English from when she, a Bio major, had made Mike’s doctor point out the thyroid in a diagram three different times.

“Ok...well, I won’t say anything about the little rap session in here, if you’ll stop looking at me like you’ve run over my dog.”

“Dr. Wilson...I-“

“I’ve got a patient to find, Dr. Cameron. We’ll have to get to the ten thousand things that are on your mind some other time. Please.”

“Dr. House lost her,” Chase pointed out. “So maybe he ought to shuffle around and...”

“Dr Chase,” Cameron said, and her voice betrayed her by quivering “If you don’t shut up right this minute, I swear I’ll shove my fist so far up your nose that you’ll die...and everybody in here knows I (continued...)

( continues...) went to Juvie...does anybody want to test me on that?”

Dr Wilson, taken aback, wondered what it was about Dr. House’s arrival at this hospital that brought out ordinary people’s urges toward assault. “Allison, dear, your passion is most admirable, but you don’t want to kill Doctor Chase.”

Fay, I don't watch SGA at all, but I felt like I knew all the characters just from what you wrote. Wonderful!

erika, obviously House's wood needs all the attention it can get, poor neglected thing.

She said that. I didn't. Dr. House has already been bad influence enough, thanks very much. Fay, wrod.

erika, fabulous as always.

And, even if you no longer need a beta, I'd love to read a little naughty Cameron/Chase action. Y'know, if you were wondering.