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Fic: "Radek's Flock" (1/1) (Zelenka/Lorne)
Finally! Here's my piece for the "The Czech is in the Male Thing-a-Thon". Late, as most of my writing has been of late, but at least I'm writing again. And, again, over 500 words. I must be on a roll or something.
Anyway, here's a little Radek Zelenka /Evan Lorne piece I hope you'll like. It's not very slashy, but I like the potential is presents.
Title: Radek’s Flock
Author: Rowan![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seticat
Pairing: Radek Zelenka / Evan Lorne
Rating: PG [only because it implies the possibilities]
Recipient: rosewildeirish
Word Count: 2303
Spoilers: S4 “Quarantine”
Summary:
Author's Note: This was written for the “Czech is in the Male” fic exchange. The prompts given me were ‘snark, affection, peril’. Well… two out of three ain’t bad unless you count being around Rodney as always being in peril of some sort. There is one that fits all three concepts running around in the back of my head, but it’s refusing to come out of its burrow right now. Perhaps another time. The inspiration for this comes from several canon areas – I’m sure no one will have trouble guessing what. The fact that Radek has a sister is canon, but the name used here is one I gave her in a back story challenge fic I wrote called “Wings”.
I have been ‘way behind on getting things done so my pure and heartfelt thanks toamycat1959for her lightning fast help in the dark of the night.
===================================
It had been a rough day for Zelenka’s engineering team. No, to be honest, it had been a rough week which was rapidly becoming a rough month and so on, but Radek did what he always did when things began to weigh him down: he put his head down and plowed forward. After all, what else was there to do? It wasn’t as if he could request a vacation and even though the administration tried to make sure its people had the occasional day off, even with the best of intentions, that was spotty at best. Elizabeth had tried as she was able, and so did Col. Carter, but sometimes the best of intentions simply could not happen. Wraith attacks and replicator invasions waited for no one, least of all the people populating Atlantis. Everyone developed their own coping mechanisms for dealing with the long hours and high stress environment in which they often found themselves. Radek felt himself lucky – several of the habits and hobbies he’d developed to deal with various stressors he had when he was Earthside worked well for him here: the challenge of chess or the ebb and flow found in the beauty of mathematics. But the one thing that had been his bastion since he was a teenager simply wasn’t possible here.
Atlantis had no pigeons, not was it likely to have them at any time in the future.
Radek missed his birds. When he was a young man, they were his helpmeet and his mainstay. No matter how rough the day at University might have been, no matter how cut-throat the people he worked with might be to him and each other, at the end of the day he would come home to his apartment, climb the narrow stairs to the building’s roof and lose himself in the needs of his birds. Each one was an individual to him and each had its own personality and quirks and needs. Haughty Princezna, forever standing just a bit apart from the other birds, making Radek come to her and give her her undoubted due along with her meal. Vilem the defender, always on the look-out for any stray crow or sparrow trying to steal food from those he had chosen to protect . Gentle Miláček and sweet Nedezda, two of the best mothers in his little flock. And Jakub the devious one, always sneaking up behind the others, tugging on tail feathers or causing some sort of strife. He had no true idea how thoroughly and completely those small bundles of feathers and sinew had worked their way into his heart until that last evening in Prague, when he gave over the keys to his loft, and his heart, to his downstairs neighbor Mikuláš. That simple action hurt far more than he ever thought it might.
He had yet to find a living substitute available to him in this new ecology. Certainly not the local equivalent of seagulls. They were as dirty and nasty as their terrestrial avian relatives. After seeing the movie for the first time, Radek knew that the creators of “Finding Nemo” had obviously never had to deal with a flock of Lantian pseudo-gulls intent on stealing food out of their hands. The birds depicted on screen were far too polite to have been modeled after any gulls Radek had ever encountered.
Since he had become a member of the Atlantis team, his only contact with his birds came by way of his sister who, when she wrote, would send along a ‘care package’ from Radek’s old neighbor. Marjeta would bundle the long detailed letter files Mikuláš wrote about each bird’s health and progress and included those and the full color digital photos he had taken that month and include those with her personal mail to her brother . Radek could gladly do without the rambling reports of the day to day antics of his sister’s offspring, but he always made time to read each letter about his own distant ‘children’ and to transfer the photos to his laptop and tablet so they were there for him when he needed a moment’s respite. It gave him a welcome break from the world around him; something he could do in the middle of a staff meeting, in the middle of the night, in the middle of anything. With just a flick of the finger, he could bring up his personal files, take a moment out to look and then come back to the frantic chaos that often surrounded him.
Except now. Now when he needed to look forward to something other then giving into the overwhelming desire to verbally take that ‘celek arogantní a egotistical kolega’ that was Dr. Rodney McKay right off at his knees, he was bereft. His laptop had been running an essential system backup to the Atlantis network when the ionospheric disruption caused by an undetected solar flare spiked the Atlantis power grid and triggered the Cat 5 lockdown. The power spike bled over into the network grid and back down the system to Radek’s laptop. The end result was the corruption of at least half of his necessary work files and all the small allotment of personal files he allowed himself to have on his work system. And thanks to his trying to be the ‘man with the answers’ for Colonel Carter, his poor tablet now resembled a large piece of badly burned toast rather than a piece of computing equipment. He still had the original posts so he could upload the pictures and such to the newly-issued pieces of equipment, but it wasn’t quite the same as having the photos with him to view whenever he chose. And it was something he just hadn’t found the time to do as of yet.
And now, when he could be doing that, or at least trying to get his own work done, he was trapped in his lab, suffering another round of escalating tirades with McKay over something that, in the end, wouldn’t be his problem to solve anyway. Rodney seemed to work better when he had someone to rant at and when the people in his own lab finally evicted him, he often relocated to Engineering to start in all over again with Radek as his sparring partner. Over time, Radek had learned the necessary skill of blocking out most of what Rodney said, screening and letting through only what he really needed to hear and occasionally to give back as good as he got, if not better. He considered it a sizable ‘win’ if he could get McKay to choke and lock up in mid-sentence at least once in a shift..
But his internal filter must have misfired this evening. It was only now that he’d come to realize that the lab had grown quiet several moments ago and everyone, including McKay, had moved on, leaving him alone . He picked up a clean lab rag from the bench top in front of him, wiping his hands as he turned toward the door, his goal to grab a light meal and an evening spent reading the reports and memos generated by today’s meeting and research.
But as he turned he saw he wasn’t quite alone after all. Major Evan Lorne, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, was leaning against the wall just inside the doorway. He was trying to strike an unconcerned pose, but Radek could see there was an undercurrent of tension in the solid frame.
“May I help you, Major?”
Lorne straightened up and lazily moved into the room, left arm held behind his back.
“Is it always like that?”
“Like what, Major?”
“Like… that.” Lorne waved his hand between Radek and the closed lab door. “That ‘thing’ that goes on between you and McKay?”
Radek’s face lit in understanding. “Ah, you mean ‘the snark’.”
“Yeah, that. How do you put up with it?”
Radek smiled and nodded his head. “I have simply learned to let Rodney’s verbal assaults flow over and past me. It is a survival skill I have developed since being assigned to Atlantis. Without it Rodney McKay would most certainly be dead long ago and I? I would have to carry his work load as well as my own.”
“Dead?” The unasked question was plan on the Major’s face.
“Jistěže. Most certainly. Because I would have killed him within the first week of being here and being required to work with him. So you see… it is merely a simple survival skill.”
“Ah. Well then, I guess when it’s explained like that, it makes sense.”
“Well. Yes. I would hope so.” Radek finished wiping his hands and dropped the rag on the table top beside him. “So now, is there something specific I can do for you? I was just on my way to the mess hall. Lunch was, sadly, quite a while ago.”
“Ah. Well. Yes. I , ah…”
“Major?”
“ I heard about your pigeons. I mean your laptop. I mean…”
“Yes? It was… unfortunate.”
“I meant to give this to you before but I didn’t know how to you’d take it. I mean I don’t want you to think I’m a stalker or anything but I remember hearing you talk about your birds and I asked McKay if he had any ideas and he said you had pictures and then and I thought since your laptop got fried and-“
“Major. Evan! Stop! Breathe, please. Now what are you talking about?”
“I heard how you really liked pigeons and how you missed the ones you had to leave behind. I mean, you kept pictures of them on your laptop and all. So I asked McKay if he could find me a couple of pictures of them and… well… I … I made this.”
And with that final stuttered phrase, he brought his left arm forward, bringing to light what he had been holding behind his back since he had come in.
A framed matted collage of several of Radek’s beloved birds, hand sketched in vibrant, living color. Radek’s voice caught in his throat. “Oh.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m being too nosy or anything. I just thought…”
A soft, hesitant voice that Radek could hardly recognize as his own asked, “Please? May I?”
Evan hesitantly held out the piece and Radek accepted it with trembling hands. Holding it close, he turned back toward the bench behind him and moved equipment from side to side until he cleared a place he could place the work so that it was braced at an angle for viewing. When that was done he leaned back and with arms folded across his chest, stood quietly looking.
The minutes passed with Radek looking and saying nothing and Lorne becoming more and more concerned that he had just angered the man before him beyond words.
“Radek? Dr. Zelenka?” Evan’s voice began to take on a worried note. “Sir? Sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. I just thought that it might be…” Radek silenced him with a quickly raised hand, but still had no words of his own. After another moment of silence Evan Lorne crossed the space between them with hesitant steps only to come to a dead stop when he saw the glint of moisture on Radek’s cheeks.
“Sir? Radek? Are you okay?”
“I am more than okay. This… this is beautiful. They are so živ, so … alive.” He reached out his right hand and gently, reverently, traced the outline of one plump pigeon breast in the sketch. “This one is Jakub. He is always plump because he steals from everyone else.”. His finger moved to another, letting his fingers drift over the wing and tail feathers. “And this one is Nadezda. That means ‘one of hope’ in Czech. She was meant to be the beginning of a new flock, such a gentle mother always.” His hand drew back and clinched slightly, then relaxed. “But she is no longer with the flock. A city hawk, my sister said.”
“Oh, God, Radek. I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to upset you.”
“No. You didn’t upset me.” Radek gestured to the art in front of him. “This picture didn’t upset me. No matter if I were home or here, she would be gone. But here, in your art, she has come back to life for me. How could you upset me with the gift of life?
His hand reached out one more time, to rest on the glowing rich wood of the frame.
“So beautiful.” He coughed slightly, trying to clear his throat. “This is too beautiful, too much work. I could never accept this. Please, how much…” He was interrupted before he could finish his request.
“Don’t you dare ask ‘how much’! This…” Evan pointed to the framed portrait on the table before them. “This is a gift.” He laid his hand on Radek’s shoulder. “Look, I know how lonely it can feel to be away from home. Even if you think it’s okay because you haven’t left family behind, you still leave everything that’s familiar. That wears on a person. I enjoyed making this. And if this helps you feel a little closer to home, then it’s worth every moment spent.” And then his voiced softened. “And I would do it again, if it makes you feel less alone here.”
“Yes. It does that. With my birds, I am less alone.” Turning his head slightly, Radek looked at him. “ And with my friends.”
The silence grew and the two stood looking at each other in the light of the lab. It was the Marine who finally broke the quietness. “So, you were talking about some dinner? I know I could do with a sandwich or something.”
“Yes, a sandwich sounds good. So you would not mind company?”
“Nah, company would be nice.” Evan stepped to one side and motioned for Radek to step ahead of him. “After you, Doc.”
They crossed the lab together side by side. Just before the door opened, Radek stopped and looked behind him, the glass of the picture frame shining gently in the lights of the lab. “ They can safely wait for me, I think. They have always been there for me and they know that I will return to them. Someday.”
“Yeah. Someday. And then you can introduce me to them.”
“Ano. That would be good.”
And the two men turned and headed off down the corridor, the conversation fading as they walked away.
Behind them Radek’s flock waited patiently for both of them to return.
Translations:
Marjeta – Radek’s sister. The name I used in the back story challenge “Wings”
Mikuláš - Nicholas
Princezna – Princess
Miláček – Sweetheart
Jakub – ‘the Supplantor‘
Nadezda – ‘One of Hope’
Vilem – ‘the Protector’
celek arogantní a egotistical kolega = totally arrogant and egotistical colleague
jistěže - certainly
ano - and
živ - alive
Czech translations courtesy of InterTran
Anyway, here's a little Radek Zelenka /Evan Lorne piece I hope you'll like. It's not very slashy, but I like the potential is presents.
Title: Radek’s Flock
Author: Rowan
seticatPairing: Radek Zelenka / Evan Lorne
Rating: PG [only because it implies the possibilities]
Recipient: rosewildeirish
Word Count: 2303
Spoilers: S4 “Quarantine”
Summary:
Author's Note: This was written for the “Czech is in the Male” fic exchange. The prompts given me were ‘snark, affection, peril’. Well… two out of three ain’t bad unless you count being around Rodney as always being in peril of some sort. There is one that fits all three concepts running around in the back of my head, but it’s refusing to come out of its burrow right now. Perhaps another time. The inspiration for this comes from several canon areas – I’m sure no one will have trouble guessing what. The fact that Radek has a sister is canon, but the name used here is one I gave her in a back story challenge fic I wrote called “Wings”.
I have been ‘way behind on getting things done so my pure and heartfelt thanks to
amycat1959for her lightning fast help in the dark of the night.===================================
It had been a rough day for Zelenka’s engineering team. No, to be honest, it had been a rough week which was rapidly becoming a rough month and so on, but Radek did what he always did when things began to weigh him down: he put his head down and plowed forward. After all, what else was there to do? It wasn’t as if he could request a vacation and even though the administration tried to make sure its people had the occasional day off, even with the best of intentions, that was spotty at best. Elizabeth had tried as she was able, and so did Col. Carter, but sometimes the best of intentions simply could not happen. Wraith attacks and replicator invasions waited for no one, least of all the people populating Atlantis. Everyone developed their own coping mechanisms for dealing with the long hours and high stress environment in which they often found themselves. Radek felt himself lucky – several of the habits and hobbies he’d developed to deal with various stressors he had when he was Earthside worked well for him here: the challenge of chess or the ebb and flow found in the beauty of mathematics. But the one thing that had been his bastion since he was a teenager simply wasn’t possible here.
Atlantis had no pigeons, not was it likely to have them at any time in the future.
Radek missed his birds. When he was a young man, they were his helpmeet and his mainstay. No matter how rough the day at University might have been, no matter how cut-throat the people he worked with might be to him and each other, at the end of the day he would come home to his apartment, climb the narrow stairs to the building’s roof and lose himself in the needs of his birds. Each one was an individual to him and each had its own personality and quirks and needs. Haughty Princezna, forever standing just a bit apart from the other birds, making Radek come to her and give her her undoubted due along with her meal. Vilem the defender, always on the look-out for any stray crow or sparrow trying to steal food from those he had chosen to protect . Gentle Miláček and sweet Nedezda, two of the best mothers in his little flock. And Jakub the devious one, always sneaking up behind the others, tugging on tail feathers or causing some sort of strife. He had no true idea how thoroughly and completely those small bundles of feathers and sinew had worked their way into his heart until that last evening in Prague, when he gave over the keys to his loft, and his heart, to his downstairs neighbor Mikuláš. That simple action hurt far more than he ever thought it might.
He had yet to find a living substitute available to him in this new ecology. Certainly not the local equivalent of seagulls. They were as dirty and nasty as their terrestrial avian relatives. After seeing the movie for the first time, Radek knew that the creators of “Finding Nemo” had obviously never had to deal with a flock of Lantian pseudo-gulls intent on stealing food out of their hands. The birds depicted on screen were far too polite to have been modeled after any gulls Radek had ever encountered.
Since he had become a member of the Atlantis team, his only contact with his birds came by way of his sister who, when she wrote, would send along a ‘care package’ from Radek’s old neighbor. Marjeta would bundle the long detailed letter files Mikuláš wrote about each bird’s health and progress and included those and the full color digital photos he had taken that month and include those with her personal mail to her brother . Radek could gladly do without the rambling reports of the day to day antics of his sister’s offspring, but he always made time to read each letter about his own distant ‘children’ and to transfer the photos to his laptop and tablet so they were there for him when he needed a moment’s respite. It gave him a welcome break from the world around him; something he could do in the middle of a staff meeting, in the middle of the night, in the middle of anything. With just a flick of the finger, he could bring up his personal files, take a moment out to look and then come back to the frantic chaos that often surrounded him.
Except now. Now when he needed to look forward to something other then giving into the overwhelming desire to verbally take that ‘celek arogantní a egotistical kolega’ that was Dr. Rodney McKay right off at his knees, he was bereft. His laptop had been running an essential system backup to the Atlantis network when the ionospheric disruption caused by an undetected solar flare spiked the Atlantis power grid and triggered the Cat 5 lockdown. The power spike bled over into the network grid and back down the system to Radek’s laptop. The end result was the corruption of at least half of his necessary work files and all the small allotment of personal files he allowed himself to have on his work system. And thanks to his trying to be the ‘man with the answers’ for Colonel Carter, his poor tablet now resembled a large piece of badly burned toast rather than a piece of computing equipment. He still had the original posts so he could upload the pictures and such to the newly-issued pieces of equipment, but it wasn’t quite the same as having the photos with him to view whenever he chose. And it was something he just hadn’t found the time to do as of yet.
And now, when he could be doing that, or at least trying to get his own work done, he was trapped in his lab, suffering another round of escalating tirades with McKay over something that, in the end, wouldn’t be his problem to solve anyway. Rodney seemed to work better when he had someone to rant at and when the people in his own lab finally evicted him, he often relocated to Engineering to start in all over again with Radek as his sparring partner. Over time, Radek had learned the necessary skill of blocking out most of what Rodney said, screening and letting through only what he really needed to hear and occasionally to give back as good as he got, if not better. He considered it a sizable ‘win’ if he could get McKay to choke and lock up in mid-sentence at least once in a shift..
But his internal filter must have misfired this evening. It was only now that he’d come to realize that the lab had grown quiet several moments ago and everyone, including McKay, had moved on, leaving him alone . He picked up a clean lab rag from the bench top in front of him, wiping his hands as he turned toward the door, his goal to grab a light meal and an evening spent reading the reports and memos generated by today’s meeting and research.
But as he turned he saw he wasn’t quite alone after all. Major Evan Lorne, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, was leaning against the wall just inside the doorway. He was trying to strike an unconcerned pose, but Radek could see there was an undercurrent of tension in the solid frame.
“May I help you, Major?”
Lorne straightened up and lazily moved into the room, left arm held behind his back.
“Is it always like that?”
“Like what, Major?”
“Like… that.” Lorne waved his hand between Radek and the closed lab door. “That ‘thing’ that goes on between you and McKay?”
Radek’s face lit in understanding. “Ah, you mean ‘the snark’.”
“Yeah, that. How do you put up with it?”
Radek smiled and nodded his head. “I have simply learned to let Rodney’s verbal assaults flow over and past me. It is a survival skill I have developed since being assigned to Atlantis. Without it Rodney McKay would most certainly be dead long ago and I? I would have to carry his work load as well as my own.”
“Dead?” The unasked question was plan on the Major’s face.
“Jistěže. Most certainly. Because I would have killed him within the first week of being here and being required to work with him. So you see… it is merely a simple survival skill.”
“Ah. Well then, I guess when it’s explained like that, it makes sense.”
“Well. Yes. I would hope so.” Radek finished wiping his hands and dropped the rag on the table top beside him. “So now, is there something specific I can do for you? I was just on my way to the mess hall. Lunch was, sadly, quite a while ago.”
“Ah. Well. Yes. I , ah…”
“Major?”
“ I heard about your pigeons. I mean your laptop. I mean…”
“Yes? It was… unfortunate.”
“I meant to give this to you before but I didn’t know how to you’d take it. I mean I don’t want you to think I’m a stalker or anything but I remember hearing you talk about your birds and I asked McKay if he had any ideas and he said you had pictures and then and I thought since your laptop got fried and-“
“Major. Evan! Stop! Breathe, please. Now what are you talking about?”
“I heard how you really liked pigeons and how you missed the ones you had to leave behind. I mean, you kept pictures of them on your laptop and all. So I asked McKay if he could find me a couple of pictures of them and… well… I … I made this.”
And with that final stuttered phrase, he brought his left arm forward, bringing to light what he had been holding behind his back since he had come in.
A framed matted collage of several of Radek’s beloved birds, hand sketched in vibrant, living color. Radek’s voice caught in his throat. “Oh.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m being too nosy or anything. I just thought…”
A soft, hesitant voice that Radek could hardly recognize as his own asked, “Please? May I?”
Evan hesitantly held out the piece and Radek accepted it with trembling hands. Holding it close, he turned back toward the bench behind him and moved equipment from side to side until he cleared a place he could place the work so that it was braced at an angle for viewing. When that was done he leaned back and with arms folded across his chest, stood quietly looking.
The minutes passed with Radek looking and saying nothing and Lorne becoming more and more concerned that he had just angered the man before him beyond words.
“Radek? Dr. Zelenka?” Evan’s voice began to take on a worried note. “Sir? Sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds. I just thought that it might be…” Radek silenced him with a quickly raised hand, but still had no words of his own. After another moment of silence Evan Lorne crossed the space between them with hesitant steps only to come to a dead stop when he saw the glint of moisture on Radek’s cheeks.
“Sir? Radek? Are you okay?”
“I am more than okay. This… this is beautiful. They are so živ, so … alive.” He reached out his right hand and gently, reverently, traced the outline of one plump pigeon breast in the sketch. “This one is Jakub. He is always plump because he steals from everyone else.”. His finger moved to another, letting his fingers drift over the wing and tail feathers. “And this one is Nadezda. That means ‘one of hope’ in Czech. She was meant to be the beginning of a new flock, such a gentle mother always.” His hand drew back and clinched slightly, then relaxed. “But she is no longer with the flock. A city hawk, my sister said.”
“Oh, God, Radek. I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to upset you.”
“No. You didn’t upset me.” Radek gestured to the art in front of him. “This picture didn’t upset me. No matter if I were home or here, she would be gone. But here, in your art, she has come back to life for me. How could you upset me with the gift of life?
His hand reached out one more time, to rest on the glowing rich wood of the frame.
“So beautiful.” He coughed slightly, trying to clear his throat. “This is too beautiful, too much work. I could never accept this. Please, how much…” He was interrupted before he could finish his request.
“Don’t you dare ask ‘how much’! This…” Evan pointed to the framed portrait on the table before them. “This is a gift.” He laid his hand on Radek’s shoulder. “Look, I know how lonely it can feel to be away from home. Even if you think it’s okay because you haven’t left family behind, you still leave everything that’s familiar. That wears on a person. I enjoyed making this. And if this helps you feel a little closer to home, then it’s worth every moment spent.” And then his voiced softened. “And I would do it again, if it makes you feel less alone here.”
“Yes. It does that. With my birds, I am less alone.” Turning his head slightly, Radek looked at him. “ And with my friends.”
The silence grew and the two stood looking at each other in the light of the lab. It was the Marine who finally broke the quietness. “So, you were talking about some dinner? I know I could do with a sandwich or something.”
“Yes, a sandwich sounds good. So you would not mind company?”
“Nah, company would be nice.” Evan stepped to one side and motioned for Radek to step ahead of him. “After you, Doc.”
They crossed the lab together side by side. Just before the door opened, Radek stopped and looked behind him, the glass of the picture frame shining gently in the lights of the lab. “ They can safely wait for me, I think. They have always been there for me and they know that I will return to them. Someday.”
“Yeah. Someday. And then you can introduce me to them.”
“Ano. That would be good.”
And the two men turned and headed off down the corridor, the conversation fading as they walked away.
Behind them Radek’s flock waited patiently for both of them to return.
Translations:
Marjeta – Radek’s sister. The name I used in the back story challenge “Wings”
Mikuláš - Nicholas
Princezna – Princess
Miláček – Sweetheart
Jakub – ‘the Supplantor‘
Nadezda – ‘One of Hope’
Vilem – ‘the Protector’
celek arogantní a egotistical kolega = totally arrogant and egotistical colleague
jistěže - certainly
ano - and
živ - alive
Czech translations courtesy of InterTran