deleted scenes from 'In The Game'

[tielan]

These are a couple of scenes I had to excise for not really furthering the plot, although it had some very enjoyable interactions in it. I like Study Saturdays at the McKay household - if only for the McKays screeching at each other.

scene 1

Teyla turned around again, her satchel bouncing against her hip as she walked up to the McKays' front door and rapped the knocker sharply on the door.

"I'll get it!" Came the squeal from inside, followed by Rodney's deeper whine of complaint.

"Teyla?" John waited at the bottom of the stairs up to the porch. "How do you know Liz is going to apologise?"

She turned. "I don't know, John." The smile was brief and brilliant. "But I think she will."

The door opened, showing a wealth of short, blonde curls in a small, oval face. "Teyla! John! I see you've come for another thrilling session of study with my brother. But don't worry. He's in a good mood today."

"I was until you answered the door," Rodney told his little sister. "Now bust off, brat."

Jeannie McKay pouted. "You're so mean!"

"And I revel in it," said Rodney without a trace of sympathy.

"Hello, Jeannie," Teyla said as she stepped into the house. "Hello, Rodney."

"Hey, brat," John said more familiarly, reaching out to ruffle Jeannie's curls.

She screeched and flinched away. "John! You're as bad as Rodney!"

He grinned as he shut the door behind him. He didn't have siblings, but Jeannie was an acceptable not-sister. Annoying and fun to annoy, intelligent enough to keep up with him, and, best of all, he didn't have to live with her the way Rodney did, so he got all the perks of a bratty sister, and few of the drawbacks.

"Mom left a pan of macaroni-and-cheese for lunch," Rodney said.

"Leave some for me!"

"You'll have to get in fast," John called down the corridor where Jeannie had vanished. "Teyla pigs out. Ow!" Fast as a snake, Teyla's hand whipped out and whacked him in the chest.

"He only says that to cover his own greed," she retorted as she sat down at the table and began pulling out her books. "Your mother's mac-and-cheese would be wonderful, Rodney."

"Oh, well, you're getting it yourself. I wasn't put on Earth to be your servant."

Teyla rolled her eyes but got up and fetched herself lunch, serving some out for John, but - very pointedly - none for Rodney. In return, John got her a drink from the fridge and sat it in front of her. Rodney rolled his eyes and got his own drink and lunch.

--

scene 2

His troubles with Mara were the last thing on his mind on Saturday afternoon during the study group at Rodney's.

The McKays were screeching at each other with the kind of vocality that John had only ever seen in people who'd grown up as siblings.

Rodney had accused Jeannie of stealing some old notes he'd been planning to use for this afternoon's study session. Jeannie had denied taking them, accusing Rodney of being so disorganised he probably mislaid the papers in the pigsty of his room.

Things had gone downhill from there.

Most of the yelling was taking place at the other end of the house, leaving John to doggedly work his way through his AP Physics assignment at the kitchen table. He was determined not to be pulled aside by Ms. Carter for handing in his work late again, and wasn't thinking about last night's game or this morning's practise and certainly not about Mara Tower, who was proving to be more upkeep than John had reckoned on.

Across from him, Teyla scribed away with steady industry, the handle of a sugar pop sticking out from one corner of her mouth as she wrote. She seemed to have no trouble working amidst the noise, while John was struggling.

"Doesn't it bother you?" He asked at last, unable to take another of Jeannie's shrill accusations, or Rodney's tirades.

Her eyes flitted up for a moment, away from her paper before she returned to her notes-writing. "No," she answered before she paused. "You have no siblings, do you, John?"

"No." John frowned. "Is it always this bad?"

Teyla smiled, slightly patronisingly. "Sometimes it is worse," she said around the popsicle stick.

He had trouble imagining any of the Athos foster-kids arguing like that and said as much.

"Oh, Halling is argumentative, and Jackie is loud when she is annoyed. She and Tricia were forever arguing over who got the bathroom, and Brian was always working on his motorbikes and leaving greasemarks on everything. So Jackie and Tricia yelled at him, too." She shrugged. "Then the motorbike made a lot of noise, and Halling would yell at him and he would yell back."

John tried to imagine the quietly malicious Halling as a lanky teenager, yelling at Blackbeard the bikie and couldn't quite reconcile the idea.

"How old were you when all this was going on?"

She considered it. "I believe I was nine," she said after dropping her pen and counting off on her fingers. "Brian moved out a year later, and Halling and Jackie four years ago. Tricia left two years ago, and Shindu has only just left in the last year. You did not meet him," she noted. "He went travelling through Asia at the start of the year."

"Is he a ninja?" The question escaped before John could quite help himself.

Teyla arched an eyebrow at him. "A ninja?"

"Yeah. Like...you had a bikie, and a hippie, and...never mind." John figured he should get out while he could.

"A bikie and a hippie?"

"Remember? When I picked you up for Homecoming?"

Her mouth twitched. "Halling is not a hippie."

"I'm not saying he was, just that he looked like...can we change the topic?" Down the corridor, the noise seemed to have let up. "Seems like they've stopped..."

A moment later, there was the sound of a door slamming, hard enough to rattle the precious china crammed into the living room cupboards. John grimaced, waiting for the tinkle of broken ceramic, but none came.

"For the moment," Teyla said, turning her attention back to her work. "They will start again when we are gone."

John figured he'd take her word for it. He didn't have much experience with yelling siblings.

Yelling parents on the other hand...

Rodney stormed down the corridor, his footsteps shivering the shelves more than Jeannie's slammed door had done. He flung himself into his chair with a grumble. "I can't believe she's related to me. I mean, she knows that I never throw notes out in case I need them, and just because my filing system doesn't dot every 'T' and cross every 'I', she thinks that I won't notice when she nicks them..."

"So you found them in her room?" Teyla inquired. John shot her a glance. Her tone of voice was entirely too sugary to be anything but intent on provoking Rodney.

"No! But I will!"

"Just as soon as she lets you in there." John muttered, not quite beneath his breath. Rodney was a prima donna all the way down to his toes.

"Did you look in your room?"

Rodney gave Teyla a disgusted look. "Of course not, because it's not there!"

John rolled his eyes at Teyla, but quickly straightened his expression when Rodney glared at him. "Sorry."

"You should be," came the grumpy response. "Because you'll have to write out all the equations in the book from Chapter Three to Chapter Six to get those notes again - and I'm not going to help you!"

There were upsides and downsides to working with Rodney. The upside was that the younger guy was good at schoolwork, equations, and knowing what to apply when - something that John didn't always get. The downside was that the younger guy was peremptory, short-tempered, and liable to get huffy or insult you without thinking. Rodney could do marvellous things with equations, but he sucked at dealing with people.

John rolled his eyes, hauled over the textbook in question - Rodney wouldn't let him borrow it even for a night - and began copying out the equations. It was a painstaking process and one that made him grumpy, especially when Teyla pulled it over to inspect the equations, ignoring John's protest.

"I am glad that I am not taking your classes," she said, absently whistling through the hollow stick of the sugar pop from the corner of her mouth. "Too much work."

"You know, you could do it," Rodney said without looking up from the notes he was frantically scribbling, like he was trying to keep up with his thoughts. "You don't have that much trouble with the abstract concepts..."

Teyla had opened her mouth to respond when the doorbell rang and Rodney groaned, tilted back on his chair and yelled, "Jeannie!"

There was the sound of the door opening. "I'm not getting it!" The door slammed thunderously, shaking the house.

With a roll of her eyes, Teyla stood. John caught her wrist. "It's not your house. Rodney can get it."

The doorbell rang again, and Teyla shrugged and pulled her arm free.

"Geeze," John muttered at the other guy. "Would it kill you to get up?"

"I'm in the middle of a thought," said Rodney stubbornly.

"So, that's a 'no,' then?"

"Look, difficult as it may be for your jock mind to comprehend, my thought processes are connective and interlinked! If I lose the sense of where I am, then it'll take forever for me to..." Rodney paused and his belligerent mood deflated as though someone had stuck a pin in it. "Oh. Hi, Mara."

John jerked around in time to see Mara offload her bag by the table and sit down in Teyla's chair. "Hi, Rodney," she sang out, before her tone flattened. "Hi, John."

"Hey," he managed, surprised. "I...didn't know we were meeting today."

"Well, I thought I'd just drop by, but your mom said you were over here."

John frowned. She'd been around to his place? Seen his mom?

"You could at least look happy to see me, you know," Mara said with pointed sweetness.

Behind her, Teyla rolled her eyes, scooped her books and notes out from in front of Mara, and took herself off into the living room without a further word. Mara didn't even glance at her, her big blue eyes fixed fully and entirely on John.

"I'm happy to see you," said John defensively. "But I'd be happier if you'd called first."

"You weren't home."

"I've got a cell," he said.

"You didn't have it turned on! Besides," Mara added, "I'm sure Rodney doesn't mind me dropping in."

It was obviously a cue for Rodney to say something about how it was okay, and he didn't have a problem with it.

This was Rodney.

"Actually, I do mind people just turning up at my house," said Rodney, writing in his notes without looking up. "Especially when I'm studying."

"So when would be a better time?" Mara demanded, looking angrily in John's direction.

"A better time to have a domestic? Why not, uh, never? Or, at the very least, not in someone else's house? At the very least you could have taken it outside - because do you think I particularly care about whether or not Sheppard's called you? And," Rodney added, warming to his theme, "just in case there is any doubt about it, I really don't."

When Rodney got angry - as in really angry - there wasn't any stopping him. Most of the time he settled for the occasional complaint or whine. But every now and then, he just lost it and let loose.

This was obviously one of the 'every now and then' moments.

Mara was pink with embarrassment and anger, John was pretty sure he was a lovely shade of crimson - his ears sure felt hot enough.

"Rodney--" He began.

"And don't even think about 'Rodneying' me!" The other boy snapped. Rodney had the mottled look of someone who was in a temper, knew it, and was embarrassed, but wasn't about to back down. "I've had enough of this 'interruptions to study' thing - to say nothing of having your personal life shoved down my throat, and in case you haven't noticed, I really don't care!"

"You're protesting pretty hard for someone who doesn't care," Mara sneered.

"I'm protesting at having my work interrupted," seethed Rodney. "Look, do you really think I have an interest in Sheppard's love life?"

"I think you're just jealous."

"Oh, really? Jealous of what?"

Mara was angry. Her cheeks were flushed beneath the gold of her curls and her lips pinched tight. "The fact that no girl would look at you even once, let alone date you!"

Wrong thing to say.

"Mara--"

She flashed John an angry glance, even as Rodney drew in a long breath.

"You know what? I don't give a damn about my 'unpopularity' as you term it. I don't care that you think John's too good to hang around a geek like me, I don't care who or what he dates."

"What he dates?" Mara's tone went soft and dangerous. "At least he's dating someone, which is more than can be said for you."

Rodney's mouth tightened. "For your information--" He began ominously.

"Rodney." Teyla interrupted him, raising her voice enough to interrupt the start of even Rodney's tirade.

"What?"

"Now is not the time."

"I hadn't even started!"

"That is why now is not the time," said Teyla. Her expression was tight and controlled, as she looked at Mara. "I believe it would be best for all if you left now. John, if you wish to go with her, I will drop the notes off at your house on the way home, or give them to you tonight if they are not finished."

"You're not the boss around here!" Rodney snapped.

"No," she agreed amiably. "I am not. But I think that you have said enough."

"Yes, he has," said Mara. She stood up, clearly still incensed. "John, we're leaving."

John stared at her, not quite believing his ears. Rodney made a snorting sound. In the doorway, Teyla's shoulder's sagged.

The thing was, until that moment, John had been siding with Mara - mostly because Rodney was being a prick, as he did so effectively from time to time. But now that she'd issued him an order - like he was her pet and she expected him to obey - the urge to rebel rose and tackled him down in his chair.

"No."

She'd been fading to mottled pink, now the flush returned with renewed intensity. "What?"

"No, I'm not leaving." John suddenly felt like yanking at the chain. Just because they were dating didn't mean he was on her leash. "I'm here for a study afternoon and I'm going to finish it."

"What?"

"You seem to be having some trouble hearing--"

"Rodney..." Teyla said in soft undertones.

"I'm not leaving," John said, feeling stubborn and ornery. He didn't appreciate being interrogated and having demands made of him by anyone - not from his parents, not from Rodney, not from Mara.

"Fine," Mara said as she stood, tossing her curls over her shoulder. "I'll see you tonight at Luisa's."

"Luisa's?"

"She's got a party tonight and we're going."

"I've got the hockey game tonight. First game of the year."

Mara rolled her eyes. "It's just the preliminaries."

"It's the first game of the year."

"It's not like it counts."

Rodney sniffed. "Every game counts."

"Rodney!"

"It does!" Rodney could be a genius at missing the point when he chose.

Teyla sighed and vanished back into the living room. John scowled at his papers while Rodney and Mara fumed.

"Look," he said, trying to be placating. "You can go to Luisa's and I'll go to the game and we'll meet up tomorrow."

Mara rolled her eyes, her lip already set in a sulky pout. "I already told her you were coming."

John tensed. "Okay. Then tell her I won't be coming when you go tonight."

"I can't do that, John!"

"Why not?"

"Because I told her you were coming!"

"So, tell her I'm not."

She glared at him for a long moment, John stared back flatly. He wasn't going to give ground on this. For once, he was going to do what he wanted to do, not what Mara wanted him to do.

Finally, she sniffed and tossed her hair. "Fine. Call me tomorrow."

As the door slammed shut behind her, John reflected that it hadn't been a request so much as an order. And he was feeling the very strong urge to rebel. He wasn't her pet or her lapdog, a boyfriend she could drag around at will. He was the captain of the football team, for fuck's sake!

There was a rustle of notes as Teyla brought her things back to the table.

"Are you sure second base is worth that?" Rodney asked. Then he went red. "Um, I mean..."

"I know quite well what you meant, Rodney," said Teyla in a frosty voice. "I should hope that John is dating her for reasons other than that."

"What do you mean, you hope I am?"

Her sudden grin was brilliant and disconcerting, as was the pat she landed on his hair before she vanished into the living room. John frowned and ran his fingers over his head before looking at Rodney who shrugged as if to say he had no idea what she meant.

"Thanks," he told the other boy sarcastically. "It's good to know the faith you have in my character."

"What? Teyla should know about you already - she dated you."

"It was Homecoming!" Teyla's voice rang out from the room at the same time as John's, echoing that sentiment.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Okaaaay."

The study continued in silence, with Teyla returning to the table a little while later, and ignoring both guys, much to John's annoyance. But the incident with Mara had apparently cleared the air. Rodney was a lot easier to work with now that he'd blown up at someone, and even began to help John write out the notes he needed - snarking all the way, of course.

John snarked back and ignored the little smile that sat on the corner of Teyla's mouth as she worked through her homework exercises.

--

notes: This was written before S4 and the announcement that John has a brother. Or, you know, any living relatives on Earth - not counting the ex-wife. Which I also have a little trouble believing. I mean, he thinks he's going to die in S1 and he doesn't leave anyone a message? I just can't level that with John Sheppard. So, as far as this AU goes, John's an only child. Or, possibly, his brother ran away or something. I haven't worked that out yet. :P

I'm writing this story. I'm writing this story!

I can't believe I'm writing this story again! But I am! And it might even get finished! O_O