Running the gauntlet, PG

[mayachain]

Title: running the gauntlet
Characters: Rodney, Atlantis personnel
Genre: gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~400
Summary: Everyone on Atlantis knows why the wedding didn't happen.
Notes: sequel to Honor Guard.

It probably shouldn't have taken as long as it has, but the thing is, Rodney is busy, and he sure knows how to make himself busy when he doesn't want to think about certain things, so it takes him about a week before he starts noticing the changes. It's not as if the people in Atlantis haven't always been respectful. Well, unless they're his team, or Zelenka, or Major Lorne, or, and those belong in another category altogether, scientists and soldiers not fit to stay in Pegasus for long. And it's not that they haven't all, during the past long years, learned to jump when Rodney tells them to. But. He'd been expecting shrewd looks, whispers behind his back, and pranks of varying degrees of imagination to get back at him for calling off his wedding to the expedition's most favorite doctor. It had been the right thing to do, the only thing to do, but that didn't mean Rodney hadn't spent the trip home steeling himself against a myriad of unpleasant repercussions. He hadn't expected the repercussions to be a sudden approval of the ban of all things lemon. He hadn't expected the marines to stand up straighter whenever he comes into their vicinity, to shift their stances in a manner not threatening to him, to be more alert, more attentive, just by a fraction. And it's not, as Rodney had first suspected when he realized that the lieutenants in the transporter had all but saluted him, that anyone ordered them to do any of those things. His first impulse had been to confront the Colonel directly, and thus he had barged into John's quarters, only to find his injured friend who shouldn't have been allowed to go through the Stargate yet fast asleep. Instead, Rodney had hacked John's official soldierly business email communication, then Lorne's, then Teldy's, and found no mention of coddling the supposedly heartbroken. When, in a fit of desperation, he had asked Cadman about it, she had confirmed that no verbal order had come from either of them. The scientists treat him much like they always did. There have been some expressions of regret that his relationship ended, and no-one has remarked on the fact that he's no longer getting laid, but that's it. The soldiers... The soldiers like him. He doesn't know why, and he sure as hell doesn't know what to do with it. ***

Comments

[riani1.livejournal.com]

I'm picturing the letter to Dear Abby or Miss Manners, asking whether the bride is right to be miffed that the groom refused to continue with the wedding when the best man had just been shot.