kyizi

Disclaimer: Stargate: Atlantis and all related items do not belong to me. Only this Story and its related original ideas and characters are mine. No copyright infringement intended.
Spoilers: One mention of a S5 main character (from 5x02 on)

loriel_eris, I suspect you know this already, but it's up to you if you want to read.

Five Things John Does Around Atlantis That No One Will Ever Suspect of Him

1. He likes to finish Rodney’s equations sometimes. Just to fuck with his head a little. Partly because he’s not completely convinced that Rodney’s worked out it’s him, but mainly because Rodney keeps pissing him off about the whole MENSA thing. He doesn’t do it often, or Rodney totally would figure out it’s him (by the handwriting if nothing else), but often enough that he knows it really pisses the man off. Knows because he always makes sure to turn up, casually, discreetly, just so that he can watch the fireworks.

He thinks it’s funny the way the tips of the man’s ears turn red, the way his hands clentch into fists as he blusters and flails and generally tries to pick the numbers apart. He never has, but John admires that he’ll never give up trying. Just like he’ll never actually voice his suspicions that it might be John, because part of him really wants to believe that John’s smart and part of him doesn’t really believe it’s possible. It’s the latter that makes John figure it’d serve him right if he was the one to finished the equations Rodney hides in his office and made ZPMs obsolete. The thing is, that’s the one set of equations John’s never touched and never will. Not because he couldn’t -- because he’s looked at them and the numbers started singing to him perfect pitch right away -- but because he just wouldn’t do that. Because even though he knows Rodney might not always think he’s that smart, he takes pleasure in knowing that most of him kind of does. So he’ll never touch those numbers; Rodney could blow up another solar system and John still wouldn’t take his Nobel.

2. He does his own paperwork. Yeah, he knows there are rumours that Lorne bears the brunt of all the shitty requests and performance reviews, knows that Woolsey thinks he gets his team to do his mission reports (he really hasn’t been here long enough to realise that they might love John, but they don’t love him that much), knows that the SGC are pretty sure he even gets his men to write out the lists and reminders he brings to the bi-annual reviews.

He’s not really sure where the rumours started, who started them, or why people seem to think he’s completely incapable of stringing together enough words to do them himself. Part of him wonders if he should be insulted by it, but the rest of him sees the fond way they all say it; sees that they’re not really suggesting he’s a slacker, or even that he’s incompetent. He lets it slide completely, because he can see that they’re all so sure that he could get someone to do it for him. Without complaint.

So he does it all himself, shakes his head when Lorne offers and makes sure to pull together his own lists and reminders. Because, even though he could ask, it’s enough for him to know that they value him so much, that they like him so much that they would do it.

3. He gives the science team coffee without them knowing it’s him. He’s been on Atlantis for a long time, but he still remembers when the first lot of coffee ran out in the first year cut off from Earth. Remembers how it was to see Rodney’s beady eyes dart around when he dipped into his personal store, remembers the crazy withdrawal and sleep deprivation that followed them around, almost as much as he remembers the insane glee that enveloped them all when they realised the Daedalus had been their salvation in more ways than one.

He doesn’t give them it all at once, waits instead until they’re on their last few bags and each starting to do late night coffee bean pilfering in the hopes to save a little extra for themselves before he plays Coffee Santa. He doesn’t make it easy for them, makes sure they have to work a little for the caffeine -- one hidden in the broken device they put aside when they got bored, one in the stationary cupboard behind the box of glitter glue that no one can quite explain the existence of, one in the console of the jumper he calls ‘Betty’ -- because he’s got to have a little fun somehow.

The truth is that he doesn’t really mind that much that he wastes a little of his own requisition allotment by adding all the bags of rich Columbian coffee, because he’d rather see them happy and caffeinated than sad and miserable. And if, in the long run, they’re happier and more caffeinated and totally saving his ass with smiles on their faces, he’d waste his whole damn request on more coffee.

4. He sends Miko emails in Japanese. It’s not that he’s fluent, but he was friends with the Japanese kid on the corner when he was growing up. He remembers enough to get by and knows that she doesn’t mind that much when he slightly butchers the words she makes flow like poetry.

He’s can’t quite remember exactly when it started, other than sometime in the first year, sometime after he’d heard her murmuring to herself forlornly and picked up words like ‘lonely’ and ‘don’t want to forget’ and ‘I miss the sounds’ as she tinkered with a device that he thinks might have ended up saving them a few times. He doesn’t really know what made him send the first one, remembers staring at it for a long time before finally hitting send, but he’s glad he did.

He knows she knows it’s him that speaks to her in halted sentences and broken phrases, but she’s never said a word to anyone. Maybe she’s worried it’ll make him stop (it won’t), or maybe his half assed attempt at masking his email worked (he knows it didn’t, because she’s a lot smarter than he is), but mainly he thinks she gets that it’s their thing and that she doesn’t want to change it any more than he does.

So every second day, as long as he’s in the city, he sends her something new. And every following day he gets something back.

5. Sometimes he fixes things. Nothing major, nothing that’s more complicated than the inside of an engine, or that computer he’d pulled apart at university, just something little that will really fuck with whomever is sent to fix it when they can’t find (or won’t notice) anything wrong.

The first time, he fixed the transporter that kept sending people to the transporter directly above or below the one they wanted to go to. Well, not so much fixed it as almost fixed it. He’s still waiting to see who’ll figure out the algorithm he added that means it sometimes doesn’t sent them anywhere at all.

The second time, he tinkered with the lights in the staff corridor, stopped them from flickering incessantly when someone without a strong gene tried to turn them on. He thinks it’s pretty funny that he keyed them specifically to fuck about when activated by Lorne’s gene. Lorne doesn’t share his opinion, but he can’t prove a damn thing and John knows he’ll never actually call him on it.

The third time, Rodney catches him in the act, but John’s pretty persuasive at times and they work together even quicker. He wonders how long it’ll take Chuck to work out that it’s not his fault his laundry keeps turning pink.

loriel_eris and

purple_shoes, I will get to your Five Things prompts, I promise!