nysalogs | [Open/Closed] There is life outside your apartment...

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[Open/Closed] There is life outside your apartment...

Who: Rodney McKay (

doubledoctornocitrus) & Annie Walker (

smithsonian), & TJ Johansen (

stargatemedic), & Felicity Smoak (

alergictonuts), & Ianto Jones (

torchwoodteaboy), & Various/Open
What: November Catchall
When: Various dates in November
Where: Olympia
Warning(s): Rodney is basically his own warning. I'm sorry.

Evening, Olympia (Closed to Annie Walker)

"You!"

Apropos of Nothing (Closed to Felicity)

Are you planetside?

Do you have a roommate?

Re: Your Destiny. (Closed to TJ)

This time, Rodney avails himself of the tools he's given, and looks up 'Tamara Johansen' in the little social media applet that's been treating him surprisingly well. With her as a medic, he should have figured she'd work in a clinic, and it's convenient that she's actually in Olympia. And, well, it's also convenient that the clinic is in Olympia as well, because he's stopped off at the...healers(????) once or maybe twice and if Beckett had practiced mystic bullshit, this planet's idea of the medical arts is beyond the pale.

Regardless. Rodney shows up at TJ's work with a smile and asks for her specifically.

A Stopped Clock (Closed to Ianto)

Whereas Rodney had, prior to his discussion with John, resolved to be Nice(tm) to Ianto, the discussion had had the surprise side-effect of forcing him to realize he actually needed to make an effort. Conveniently, the cafe-like place within which the discussion took place has pretty good coffee, which is as good an offering as any. And...honestly...Rodney has next-to-no clue what Ianto is actually like or would actually like.

Which probably wasn't good, considering the whole vague hand-gesture-y situation.

Armed with cafe coffee not made by someone whose optimal brew was 'nearly caustic with pesticide levels of caffeine', Rodney attempts to hunt Ianto down using his vague recollections of things that weren't his work and were also people-related, all while nervously trying not to admit to himself that it's important to not fuck up this actual human relationship. It's not even his relationship, which is somehow worse, because if he fucks up then it's not him who is going to be suffering the most.

And so, Ianto, Rodney comes bearing one (1) gift.

Making a Racket (Open -- Thesean Starter Housing)

Rodney keeps odd hours, even considering that they're on new planet and sometimes it can take a while for daily circadian rhythms to synchronize with diurnal cycles. Which means he's up in the middle of the night and there's crackling noises and flickering light coming from beneath his door as he does the Mad Science thing. He's bound and determined to learn how to make this world's technology for himself--and then try and apply a bit of his own know-how to it. But to do that, he's gotta break some eggs. So speak.

It's just very, very late and the apartments aren't very far apart.

Wildcard (Open -- Anywhere)

[Poke me for a custom starter elsewise! I'll match brackets or prose. Plx plot with me. :D]

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From the door, the pile of sparking nonsense just...looks like a bunch of tubes and parts with wires connecting them to other tubes and parts. A closer look might suggest what it used to be, but it isn't anything now, and Rodney's already focused on the newcomer offering coffee. What was it with people and offers of coffee? Is it his face? Whatever it is, he needs to do more of it.

With the offer of coffee, however, the stranger has jumped up a few notches in the 'will probably not murder me' scale by which he judges strange voices outside of his door in the wee hours. "Chocolate's good too, as long as it's not orange chocolate," he says, turning from the door to trundle back to his experiment and start unplugging bits until the light dies. "Or lemon. Or any kind of citrus. Just so you're aware. Not that it's likely, I imagine, this place is somewhat on the barbaric side of the technological revolution. Well, the planet is. Have you looked around planetside?"

The question is tacked on at the end, definitely afterthought.

"No citrus coffee, noted." And it really is, even if his tone is dry and lightly joking. Frank inclines his head as he studies the experiment before Rodney apparently turns it off. Hm, he's turning to go when the other man volleys a question his way. "Not thoroughly enough yet. When I get back we can play 20 Questions, how's that?"

That, ah, definitely used to be someone's television. Rodney's been dumpster-diving for entertainment systems, anything that hooks up to the magic network and connects with it. Probably explains the weird lights as Rodney takes the thing apart. He's not been gentle with it, either.

At Frank's words, however, Rodney pauses, turning from the pile and peering at him. "Fine, fine. One question first. Why were you in front of my door and what time is it?" A pause. "Two questions. And then you may go."

It's interesting and Frank definitely has more than a few questions of his own (like can he help??? he's good at taking things apart. and even occasionally putting them back together again.) But his can wait, he's obviously much more inclined towards patience than Rodney, he can tell already. He turns to face him and nods once to denote his understanding.

"I could hear you from down the hall." He doesn't specify where, but that puts them in a certain proximity. The word 'neighbor' springs to mind, but that had gotten complicated for him last time. "400 hours, plus the amount of time we've been talking." Which has been great okay, but he spins on his heel to get that coffee now. He'll be right back!!!!

Well, the time explains why being heard from down the hall would have drawn Mr. Taciturn to his door. The guy's got the vague menace of Ronon down pat, if a slightly wider vocabulary. Rodney scrunches his face into a grimace and says, a bit sourly, "And I take I disturbed you."

Notably, he does not, in fact, apologize. He's doing Science.

He does wave Frank away with a airy gesture, "Go, go. If you're trying to bribe me to knock it off, let's get on with the bribing and bother less with the chatting."

Technically, Rodney disturbed him. But it's not like there was any harm done so he shrugs a shoulder, clearly not too broken up about it. "I wasn't sleeping anyway."

Another thing they have in common. It's the last thing he says before padding back down the hall he came from and disappearing into a door just out of vision. The coffee here is instant and bitter, but true to his word Frank cuts it with some of the "chocolate milk" he found in the market and it improves things marginally. Frank changes into his more usual clothing: a black t-shirt over black pants black boots and a black jacket. That's more his speed.

He's back in maybe ten minutes, tops, pressing one of the cups into Rodney's hands and letting himself inside the room without being invited. "One bribe fresh off the press."

Rodney watches him go with a faintly baffled air, but it lasts roughly four steps into the man's retreat before he's distracted. It's not science unless it's written down, and Rodney just leaves his door open when he returns to the pile of junk to start recording on his tablet.

The man's return startles him, though he accepts the coffee with a abstract grace. "You came back. Wasn't sure you were going to," Rodney tells him, sipping the drink and making a face. "Not entirely terrible." More or less a polite compliment, Rodney style. He ruins it a moment later: "I mean, it's pretty bad, but bribe accepted."

Gesturing with his tablet, he indicates a seat at the table. "You brought me coffee so you're allowed to stay. I assume since you're drinking it yourself you're not inclined to go right back to bed."

He nods, accepting the assessment while he takes the offered seat, sitting in it sideways so he can watch what Rodney is doing. Frank takes a drink of his objectively 'pretty bad' coffee and decides to circle back, a touch of curiosity in his tone.

"Why wouldn't I come back?" He had said he would, after all.

What Rodney's doing is trying to reconnect everything to how they were originally. It's not a terribly complicated job, but once done, he's going to kick the whole thing back up and start his electronic vivisection all over again. He doesn't explain anything as he's plugging things back in and fiddling with wires. He's mildly distracted by the task, sure, but it's not taking up his whole brain. This is shop-class crap that he zoomed past in elementary school.

Soothing though.

"Because there'd be no reason to if I'd stopped doing what you came to stop me from doing. More or less. Considered it a menace well menaced. Or done more with the menace and less with the bribery."

At that thought, though, Rodney catches himself. "Not that I don't appreciate the bribe. Prefer it, actually. Bribe away." He hastily salutes with the terrible almost-mocha and takes an example drink. Honestly he's had worse. "I'm just saying that a little bit of looming goes a long way, even if I don't want to encourage you. Especially looming at me. I'm reasonably loom-proof, thanks to a—a friend, but you have one of those faces that makes me think you're someone pretty good at it."

Click. Hum. One of the tubes of the TV has power now again and Rodney pats it in satisfaction. "Now. Since I'm trusting you not to murder me, who are you, anyway?"

"I didn't ask you to stop," he points out, taking a long sip of coffee like it's something to be savored but what he's really doing is watching Rodney at work. It looks relaxing, honestly, his fingers itching to help though he knows it's only a one-man job from experience. And technically, Rodney hadn't stopped which is more to the point maybe. He's actually lost the thread of what was important at all, the early morning taking away at least some of his sharpness he's sure.

Loom-proof. It has Frank almost-smiling and hiding it behind his cup. His friends had been loom-proof because of him, though he never intended to make friends at all. This is a more active befriending, maybe the first in over eight years. He's making an Effort, he can only hope it's coming off sincere.

"I'll keep that in mind for the next time I feel like looming at you." Not that he even intended to, but whatever. He narrows his eyes at that, weighing his options. Eventually, he just spits out his name, his real name. One he hadn't intended to use when he came here, but introducing yourself as 'The Punisher' probably counts as looming in some capacity, right? "Frank."

"You didn't ask me to..." That tidbit catches Rodney by surprise, and he looks up from the guts of the machine to blink at his guest. He repeats, "You didn't. Huh." Well then.

Regardless, "I would warn you off from looming. I have--I have sharp elbows." That seems like a threat enough. "Just because I'm immune doesn't mean I like it."

He dumps his tools beside his project and sticks out his hand. "Doctor Rodney McKay, Phd, Phd. I'm not entirely sure it's a pleasure to meet you, considering the hour and the coffee. But I can't be bothered to come up with any proper pleasantries, and anyway you're here regardless."

He didn't. Frank enjoys watching people do their thing, he also enjoys listening to them talk. So really, he's in the right place. The rejoinder has him snorting, caught off-guard by Rodney's "threat" so that he has to put down his cup before he can spill it.

"I'll keep that in mind," he pledges and to his credit, he sounds sincere. His eyebrows lift at the man's introduction, wondering if maybe he should have kept his title after all. That is a lot of degrees. "Yeah, I'm here and I'm nobody to impress."

He's just hanging out, two kind of nerdy guys who don't sleep.

"Nobody to impress--?" Rodney asks, a bit baffled by (what seems to him) the non-sequitur. He goes back to his half-repaired TV, and as much as he's tsked over the coffee, he's definitely taking pretty substantial gulps in between trying to get the thing back up and working.

After drinking, he sets the cup down just out of the way of anything vaguely electric and declares, "I'm terrible at small-talk, so you're going to have to make yourself useful if you intend to just sit there and gawp." He gestures Frank to a near-er chair and points imperiously at a small array of various tools that Rodney may have liberated from his lab at the Institute. "Hand me the one that looks a tiny hammer mated with a tiny chisel. And the one next to it. With the hook. Like at the dentist. And then tell me why you're here."

"With all those fancy degrees," he says, but you never have to ask him twice to lend a hand. He sets down his coffee and slowly gets up to hunt down what Rodney is looking for. Most people think he's dumb, but he doesn't mind. It only helps him to be underestimated most of the time. Maybe Rodney would know a thing or two about people like that. "I thought I'd be in the way. Just ask, next time."

He hands the tools to the other man smoothly and waits for his next set of orders while he works his jaw and considers that seriously.

"Couldn't sleep. You were up." And he wasn't a hostile so the rest is (more or less) history.

"You don't have to be somebody to be impressed," Rodney points out, a little impatiently. "I can't say it doesn't help, but it's more important that you're aware that my proper form of address is 'Doctor.' Well. In formal settings. Or informal. Regardless. I'm used to having minions, and you did manage to bring me...something. So I going to consider temporary minion-hood your reward, which means you get to see what I'm doing. Which is."

And here's a grimace. He takes the tools from Frank and makes a handful of precise, almost frenetic little nudges and adjustments and the guts of the TV come back alive with a flicker and a ripple of power. It's an exploded sort of alive, but nevertheless.

"Which is trying to divine fundamental principles from mostly-nonfunctional technology." He is deeply, deeply annoyed that he's back to square one with anything and he sounds it.

"I haven't broken the connection to the network because it's magic." Oh the disgust there. "But there might be pyrotechnics when I do. Unclear."

"Is this a formal setting?" he asks, far too bemused about this entire thing. Frank puts his hands on his hips and watches Rodney at work with no small degree of interest. He tips his head like a dog at the sparks. He's honestly not a huge fan of magic either. "It's definitely impressive, doc. Whatever it is you're doing."

See, he can be a good minion? And he's honestly obnoxiously happy to be here for as long as Rodney will have him.

Rodney pauses at the question and says, "No? Not formal." Rodney's in his own rooms, after all. Though the fact that Frank says 'impressive' and sounds like he means it...

Well, Rodney preens a bit. He's been recognized for his genius. Frank's just earned a measure of goodwill with Rodney, and he gestures at another tool with a slightly awkward, "Yes, well."

When he's not trying to convince people he's worth paying attention to, he's rather not sure what to do with himself. "There's a lot more to do and we've barely scratched the surface."

Probably. Rodney has no idea. It's magic.

"You may stay. Until I'm done."

And that's that. The rest of the evening will be rearranging the electrical components of the gutted TV until the magic gives up and then starting over again, testing tolerances. Not glamorous, beyond the sparks, but very important if Rodney wants to make any really large explosions later.

And, well, it's nice to have someone there to hand him tools.

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[Open/Closed] There is life outside your apartment...

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