Entry tags:

btvs, crack, fanfic, fanfic btvs, fanfic sga, sga, x-over, xmas

Fic: Physical Presence
In the midst of some idle musings, trinityofone said she'd do anything -- write anything -- for me if I gave her Rodney-and-a-certain-fave-BtVS character. It was the sort of offer I couldn't refuse.

Two weeks (and many tiny increments I dutifully posted in her LJ) later, here we go. Merry Christmas, trinityofone! And thanks for the beta job. <|| :-) >

Title: Physical Presence
Fandom: SGA / BtVS. Yes, it's a crack crossover. Ahem.
Spoilers: mild ones for SGA S2 / BtVS S6
Pairing: Rodney/?
Words: ~3,500
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Next thing, there'd be werewolves.

"Getting back to the Wraith -- so you know them well?"

She seemed to suddenly find his bare feet rather fascinating. "Oh, please. Like one drunken night of tentacle-fondling -- theirs, not mine, I'll have you know -- means I know them well."

Rodney decided to let his mind skip over this image, thankyouverymuch.

Physical Presence





"Kavanagh's in the infirmary after what?"

Funny, really, to see Elizabeth stare at Sheppard as if she suspected him of playing a practical joke on her. She really should've known better; he'd have done so in a heartbeat, yes, but was far too enamoured of his drawl-enhanced Californian Gentleman act for it to involve --

"Key parts of his anatomy. They fell off -- the male ones, I mean." Sheppard winced, just a little. Rodney wasn't sure if that was due to instinctive sympathy for another guy or just as instinctive antipathy for Kavanagh -- one really didn't want to even think about that man's dangly bits.

Not so much with the dangling any more, of course.

"You're seriously telling me that Kavanagh has lost his balls?"

"What there was of them in the first place..."

Muttered, but Rodney couldn't help it; he bit his tongue just in time not to add that Kavanagh, even without his dick, was still one, because hello, true: Wheedling and whining even louder than before, screaming bloody murder and mutilation.

Elizabeth gave Rodney a sharp look but was -- considering her very own wording -- well aware of the issue. So was John, of course; it seemed they even taught proper terminology at Flight School.

"He was working at his laptop when it happened; there was nothing and no one conspicuous in sight. Beckett has examined him and stated conclusively that both penis and scrotum simply...detached. No wound, nothing." Sheppard's gaze dropped for a second, and in the face of his genuine discomfort, Rodney reconsidered the Ken-doll jokes he'd been itching to share with the colonel later. "He's storing them in a vacuum container in a cryogenic chamber, for possible future re-attachment. We've already started looking into Ancient technology; if someone triggered this -"

"If?" Rodney stepped forward, patience fraying. "Don't be idiotic and let us focus on the how, which obviously includes finding both the device and the person who triggered it -- seriously, what else could make a man's dick and balls fall off?"





Beautiful women did not make a habit out of appearing in Rodney's quarters in the middle of the night.

So, it was hardly a surprise that, when it happened, Rodney jumped back from his desk in shock, knocking over a heap of papers outlining the city's power structure.

Even in the somewhat unfavourable blue glare from the computer screen, he could clearly see she was gorgeous, slim and blond and wearing a red dress and oh, he had a bad feeling about this...although that might just be a Matrix flashback not warranted by such a harebrained movie --

"No, no, keep doing what you were doing."

She gave him a smile that was perky and self-assured, all cheerleader turned motivational speaker.

"But I was just thinking."

"Exactly!" Far too knowing look, with a side of indulgence.

...make that Battlestar Galactica, the new series.






Rodney would've backed away, but since his shoulder blades were already touching the wall, he decided he might just as well step forward again. He started by crossing his arms and looking her straight in the eye.

"So. Hold it, right there. How did you get into my room? And how come you were aware I was thinking?"

A frank glance, and she mimicked his motion; he felt there was an eyeroll coming right up, but she seemed to catch herself and gifted him with another wide smile that would've been downright frightening if she wasn't so stunning.

"Getting in here? Not hard, let me tell you." At that, she flipped her hair. "The City's protective, but I have practice. And, oh, I'm just trying to assist you. You look like you need a little help."

Rodney hadn't heard that being said to him for twenty years (and not outside gym class even then).

"That's -- that's insane!"

"With realising what you want, I mean."

Rodney blinked.

"No, not that."

Rodney blinked again.

"You can really read my mind?"

"No, but I can read men." Her face softened for a moment, and the little smile in the corner of her mouth gave him a sharp pang of recognition: Jeannie's face after her first fiancé -- who'd been a slut; Rodney had wanted to deck him from the moment he'd first seen him -- had run off with the secretary.

"Anyways!" She looked up, brown eyes bright and encouraging again. "So, are you gonna be specific about your desire to get back to Simpson for bitching about you behind your back any time soon?"





Okay, this would've been frightening bordering on terrifying if Rodney were prone to panic, which he wasn't half as much as he was prone to making others panic.

"Oh, I can wish for something, can I?" Barely holding in the snort.

"Yes!"

He hesitated in the face of a smile that could probably be called beatific -- no trace of deception or mockery, the latter a disturbingly foreign mode of conversation. But if her offer was honest, there was still no such thing as a genie in a bottle (not that he'd seen one lying around).

Assuming, for the moment, that there was, though, and using this as the basic presumtion, then a few things were starting to make sense. Rodney drew a deep breath, the nucleus of a possible disovery spinning faster and faster in the back of his mind.

"I can wish for something...specific?"

She nodded brightly, with just a note of impatience.

"I wish I knew who wanted Kavanagh's balls to fall off."

Stupidity wasn't among Rodney's (admittedly numerous) bad traits, but he still felt triumphant when she answered without hesitation but, if he wasn't mistaken, with a touch of pride.

"Young woman with dark hair and glasses; bit twitchy, no wonder -- jerk ratted her out in front of the whole team, called her a silly girl who should've played with crayons, not computers, and become a good little teacher." Her eyebrows lifted at that, puzzled. "Why he thinks the danger of being torn to shreds is lower for a teacher, I didn't get; the mortality ratio is even higher, especially if you're the principal." Glancing at him, she took a deep breath. "Anyway, she stumbled away to cry, and I was there to lend her a shoulder to curse on."

She talked with the relish of someone who didn't get to talk about her work often enough without people running away; Rodney knew because he'd been around physicists all his life. But his mind was still stuck on a different thought.

"Miko?!" Not that Rodney saw any of this coming, but sweet, even-tempered Miko with her completely futile but secretly quite endearing crush on him? "She has desires like this about males on her team?"

A glare. "What part of my really very helpful answer didn't you get? Aren't you supposed to be smart?"

"Hey! I am -- oh, fine, let us blithely assume Miko harbours secret castration fantasies, which you...make come true!" Rodney suddenly had the urge to press his legs together.

"Well, yes!" She arched her eyebrow, looking at him as if he were short-bus material.

"Right, of course, because you're the fairy god-mother in reverse."

"Don't compare me to the competition!" It must be a trick of the light, but her face seemed to shift for a moment, melt into a grimace, bumps and ridges and searing eyes.

"Sorry! I'm sorry!"
Rodney's mind was approaching (without reaching, of course) the speed of light; all of this was most likely a very lucid dream or a hallucination -- possible culprits included that mind-melting cocktail on HH-4242 and the tiny pink spores inhaled on the mainland, which he'd mentioned to Sheppard several times but which hadn't elicited any reaction beyond that lazy smirk -- but he'd rather have smashed a ZPM with his bare hands than accepted chaos without at least an attempt at structuring it all.
"You only grant...evil wishes?"

If his voice pitched a little higher on the last two words -- well, it couldn't be helped.

"Duh." Heartfelt, that one, and Rodney realised there were even more evil things hailing from California than previously assumed. "Vengeance demon and the patron saint of scorned and otherwise slighted women. But I made an exception for you."

That --

Rodney didn't know whether to feel flattered or insulted.





"Did I have such shapely legs? Did I display maternal instincts? Did I have nice breasts?"

Did she really look at his his chest under the blue shirt with something akin to appreciation?

"In fact, now that you're asking --"

"Okay, okay, forget about my completely rhetorical and sarcastic line of questioning there, and just tell me why you chose me. Y chromosome here, after all."

A pointed look. "Impossible to forget that. Fine, it's simple enough even for a human."

The worst thing, Rodney thought miserably, was that she was serious.

"I. Was. In. The. Neighbourhood. Since I'd already come all the way and could take care of the first cry for vengeance, I figured I might just as well hang around and listen for other clients."

"So you hail from a galaxy far, far away?"

"I'll have you know Xander made me watch them all, even the ridiculous new trilogy, so I totally get your silly pop culture reference." A sideways glance. "And, yes."

"Yes??"

"Last location was Earth, which qualifies as 'a galaxy far, far away'. Not that it's not all relative."

True. Rodney felt a small but perfect spark of delight.

"You can travel space and time?"

"Space only -- and dimensions, of course."

Rodney let that echo in his mind for a moment, as always impressed by its resonance. "Interdimensional travel between...?"

"The human world and the demon realms. Obviously."

Oh, she wanted blasé? "Must come in handy when you want to go on a vacation, eh?"

By her look, she was definitely annoyed. "Before the whole thing with Xander happened, I hadn't even taken a sick day in ages!"

Rodney could sympathise. "Tell me about it; when I left Northwestern, I had accrued more sick days and overtime than half the department had *worked* their whole life --"

"Last time I took the day off, there were still glaciers everywhere."

On second thought, maybe he couldn’t.

The look she threw him was decidedly peeved; no wonder if she'd been around and busy since -- wait, no time for idle musings better left to the day-dreamers in the geo-sciences (if you could call them such).

"Since it's been a while and you've...been around -- ever heard of the Wraith?"

That got him a head-tilt and a curious look. "You mean the dominant race here?"

Well, put like that --

"Yes. Big, ugly monsters that suck the life right out of y-- " at her sharp look, he changes course, "out of a human."

She peered at him, bird-like, attentive. "Well, they're hybrids, like the rest of demonity on this plane of existence. But they're pretty efficient, highly organised, and generally into order, which isn't exactly the demon way, of course. The general tendency runs far more toward formless and fathomless chaos."

Her expression indicated she deemed herself above that level of identification with such basic concepts of the universe.

"Anyways, I'm not really on her side -- purely professional reasons, you understand -- but this, humanity being overrun...well, it just happens when there's no Slayer around."

She shrugged and patted him on the arm, an oddly awkward gesture that still sent a shockwave through Rodney, who had to confess, if only to himself and no one else, that he was gaping -- at her, at the spin she put on his aforementioned plane of existence.

"On the bright side, I've found humans bounce back, even after carnage and massacres. And in the end, they often win."

Rodney realised her smile was meant to soothe, and he managed a feeble grin in return.

"That's -- very reassuring, indeed."

"I know, isn't it? It came as a surprise the first few centuries or so, but now?"

The cheerful look she gave him was answer enough, but Rodney, when he could be arsed to pay attention, was able to play along.

"Now you're quite optimistic about humanity?"

It was more than Rodney would ever have said about himself, after all. But she nodded, and this wasn't about himself; Atlantis was at stake.

"Getting back to the Wraith -- so you know them well?"

She seemed to suddenly find his bare feet rather fascinating. "Oh, please. Like one drunken night of tentacle-fondling -- theirs, not mine, I'll have you know -- means I know them well."

Rodney decided to let his mind skip over this image, thankyouverymuch.

"That's fine, really, I was talking about --" Wracking his brain for a way to sugarcoat it and not finding any, "-- killing them. Permanently."

"Ah, okay." A bright nod. "Well, they regenerate, but rocket launchers work really well, even on indestructible demons. Trust me on that one." A conspiratory grin. "And hey, there are always these nuclear missiles some humans are so fond of."

If one -- namely Rodney -- was looking for a more sophisticated method of averting the Wraith threat once and for all, answers that could have been taken leaf for leaf from Sheppard's book (Fightin' For Dummies) weren't exactly the droids he was looking for.

"Let's substitute that a for an i and regard the microcosm here, shall we? We found an enzyme that enables the transfer of vital compounds on a sub-molecular level --"

"Sorry, no clue." An apologetic note, and a trace of frustration, because she frowned. "You so don't want to see my high school biology grades."

Too true. Rodney rubbed his forehead lightly and sighed.

"Do you have any idea how to kill the Wraith in a way that does *not* involve weapons, explosives, or brute force in general?"

"Duh, of course."

Thank God and all those weird Pegasus-galaxy deities... "Well, what is it??"

"Magic." A supremely self-evident answer, indeed.

Rodney rubbed his forehead a little harder. This wasn't going quite the way he'd envisioned; in fact, it was so far off-track he had little hope of making it back to the land of sanity and solutions.

"Well, we're woefully short of sorcerers in Atlantis, so are there any other Wraith weaknesses you can think of?"

"No! As I said, I'm not actually familiar with them, and --" She stopped, and one eyebrow of hers began a breathtaking ascent. "Do you ever stop asking questions and start uttering wishes?"

"Would you, if there was only a negligible chance that anyone but you could grant them?"

She thought about that for a second, then shook her head and, after a short and disapproving look around his chamber, let herself fall onto his bed with a resigned plonk.





"Why do I always end up with geek boys in cluttered rooms?"

The very question threw Rodney just a little.

"No idea. Sure, you're evil, but you're also a hot babe and could provide for vengeance in mansions and castles and palaces."

"Exactly!"

Sharing a look of mutual bewilderment, Rodney started to wonder.

"Can I --" Vague hand-motions, but she'd definitely had experience with the less formal approach.

"Oh, sure. Sit down. It's your bed, after all, and it's not like I'm adverse to the idea of having sex with you on it."

That was when Rodney had to struggle not to swallow his tongue; when he stopped coughing, he was already perched on the bed, with her patting his back none too gently.

"Xander squirted orange juice all over his place when I let my dress drop to the floor, so I have experience with this kind of shock reaction." Understanding in her voice. "It's sort of cute, actually."

She batted her eyelashes, once, and Rodney thought he might just be in love. With a --

"I know it's impolite of me to ask -- not to mention ridiculous, since this is just a really strange hallucination and/or nightmare -- but what exactly are you?"

"Me?" Here it was, the raised eyebrow. "Thought that was pretty clear by now: Anyanka, vengeance demon -- but you can call me Anya, everyone but my boss and my co-workers do."

Not a spectre but a demon. Of course. Next thing, there'd be werewolves. Or vampires, who might just give the Wraith a run for their money -- if they were the cool kind, naturally, not the Stokeresque and vaguely creepy sort. Rodney was shaken out of his minimally hysteric musings by Anya continuing her merry tale.

"I've been to plenty of palaces in my time, of course; it's just that in the last millennium, they are less and less populated: People moving out, into smaller houses with central heating and altogether fewer ghosts haunting them, you know? Although I must add that the female servants there are still wonderfully creative."

Rodney strongly suspected that Anya's definition of "wonderfully creative" didn't quite match his own, but in the interest of friendly discourse -- and, possibly, sex -- he wasn't about to stress the differences between them, not when this was the most animated chat he'd had with a women who wasn't technically his superior (and therefore off-limits) in ages.

"Well, it's always good to have clients who are not afraid be specific, eh?"

"Oh yes!" Her smile was dazzling. "And nice of you to mention it; you should really make your wish so I can call it a day and get naked with you. Some of us have work ethics, you know?"

He was speechless.

For the fraction of a second, anyway.

"Look, this is hard!" Rodney, whose brain was overloading and whose body wasn't exactly unaffected, simply had to say it out loud. "You're making me wish for a million things done to the monkeys in the labs and the apes in their uniforms, and --"

"You're having trouble choosing?" The sympathy in her voice was positively killing him. "I can give you a 2-for-1 deal, if you want me to."

"No! Not only is it impossible for me to utter some cripplingly evil wish, I also need you to fix Kavanagh who, yes, deserves to have his dick and balls removed after the stunt he pulled on Elizabeth and now, Miko, but whom I really need on the science team -- and not for hitting C sharp."

She stared at him darkly, teeth worrying her lower lip.

"But why?"

Oh, for God's sake…

"Of all the people on Atlantis, you've ended up with *me* for pointers on what's right and wrong and moral?"

She shook her head, bewildered. "No, that wasn't my intention. As I said, I came to do my job first!"

Right. Rodney squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, knowing that if his mother were present, she'd tsk and tell him not to pinch his mouth into a tight line like that.

So good she wasn't.

"Right. So. Your job is to avenge slighted women?"

"Yes."

"Which is, in fact, completed when the perpetrator is sufficiently suffering."

"Ex-act-ly."

"So Kavanagh's already punished; even if you restore him to normal now, I'm sure he won't ever think of attacking Miko again -- revenge is served."

She frowned but then nodded, slowly. "Guess so."

"Fine. So, you restore Kavanagh and can *still* jot it down as a job well done."

Staring at him with sharp, appreciative eyes now, she nodded again, looking at him intently. Rodney had to take a deep breath now; he was receiving very clear signals, but experience had taught him that sometimes, there were scramblers involved, and the sender hadn't meant it 'quite like that'.

"Still on the agenda: Granting my wish, and sex with me."

For a moment, there was silence, and he half-waited for a reply either furious, incredulous, or mocking, but she looked down at his body, then up into his eyes.

"Yes."

"We can do that -- I give you my World-Renowned Scientist word on that -- only that it shouldn't be a problem reversing the order, right? So, sex first, restoration and wish then. As for the latter two, does size matter?"

The smile on her face went from Mildly Impressed to Almost Fascinated.

"You're funny. I like that in a guy."

Hooray. Rodney was an eminently focused guy, though.

"So...getting naked now?"

At that, she finally laughed, a genuinely delighted sound that went straight to parts of Rodney that someone else was currently lacking.

And the rest was loudness. Quite a bit of it.





Rodney woke up the next morning with a wide, wide smile on his face.

Otherwise, life went back to normal...if you chose to disregard the utter confusion of the science team and, of course, the notably subdued Dr. Kavanagh who, it turned out, went as far as to trade half of his ancient coin collection for yokan, which he left -- wrapped in ornate bamboo paper -- on Miko's desk.

And if Simpson found she'd develop this terrible stutter every time she foul-mouthed Rodney in any way -- hey, this was the lost city of Atlantis:

Stranger things had happened.




La fin







Addendum (with spoilers for the story and the character in question):

For SGA fans who don't know BtVS, here's a short intro to her character .

For BtVS fans who don't know SGA, here's an introduction to Rodney McKay.

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