Author:
noctuabunda.Beta:
ria_kukalaka (who took the time to do this even though she’s really busy at the moment, so thank you, thank you, thank you!)Genre: gen (well, in my mind it’s pre-slash, of course, but… well. Pre-pre-pre-slash maybe.)
Characters: Radek Zelenka, Rodney McKay.
Setting: pre-season one, Antarctica.
He thought of going home, sometimes. Not really, no, of course not, because he had worked so hard to get here and he’d never given up that easily before. But it was a nice little daydream: going home, back to the university, back to his old apartment with a real bed instead of a narrow cot, with old wooden furniture that took up too much room instead of practical shelves made of plastic and metal. With Anna – no, not with Anna, even in his dreams he just couldn’t see them back together, but living alone in a place he knew still seemed infinitely better than being lonely in a place that was covered in ice.
And he was lonely. So damn lonely, in fact, that he’d started to talk to himself in Czech from time to time, just to hear a familiar voice. It wasn’t that his colleagues were avoiding him. He was avoiding them. It was just too tiring. He could talk about work all the time, no problem, but as soon as they took a break, he was lost.
Radek couldn’t quite believe how stupid he’d been. He’d thought he knew the language. After all, English was the lingua franca of science. And, well, yes he knew all the important words. He knew ‘conductor’ and ‘control panel’; he knew ‘binary code’ and ‘circuitry’. He’d never thought of learning ‘cinema’ and ‘divorce’ and ‘pancakes’.
He’d tried to join the small talk, in the beginning. But listening was much harder than reading, and talking was much harder than writing had been. So they had to stop every two sentences and explain this or help him find that word and he could see they were annoyed, but far too polite to say anything about it. So he’d started to stay away from them and entertained himself with his own muttered jokes.
Over the course of the last couple of weeks, he’d been watching himself turn from ‘the Czech professor’ to ‘that crazy Czech guy’, and he just didn’t know what to do about it. He was working too much to learn the language properly in his spare time; trying to connect their computer systems permanently to the crystal-based Ancient ones was a complicated task. ‘Failed to connect.’ He couldn’t think of any combination of words more frustrating than that. But at least he could use it as an excuse. He filled his lunch breaks with work; he got to the labs earlier than his colleagues and left later, successfully avoiding any personal contact, wandering back to his room through abandoned corridors late at night. Failed to connect.
And then, one day, he got it right. ‘Connection established.’ He stared at the words on the screen for a couple of moments, took his glasses off, cleaned them properly, rubbed his eyes, just to be sure, put the glasses back on and looked again. His broad grin attracted his co-workers, and soon they were all around him, slapping his back good-naturedly and congratulating him. He made himself smile at them.
The next day, he was reassigned to Rodney McKay’s team. He’d heard of him, of course, and he was eager to finally meet him in person (even though the rumours said he was an awful person). When he got to his new workplace, early as always, he was surprised not to be the first one there. McKay was already running about the lab, scribbling a couple of formulas on a board in the far right corner, then turning abruptly and storming towards a computer on the left side of the room, hitting the keys furiously, all the while carrying a large cup of coffee in his left hand that threatened to spill its contents all over priceless Ancient machinery.
Radek lingered in the doorway for a couple of minutes until McKay saw him. “Ah. You’re there. Zedenka, right?”
“Zelenka,” Radek corrected him quietly, but he didn’t seem to care. Radek wasn’t even sure if he had heard him.
“Anyway. Go over there, I want you to take a look at those graphics. Correct them if needed. That guy Kavanagh is too arrogant to be competent.”
McKay talked like a machine gun. Radek hadn’t understood much more than ‘over there’ (and this only because McKay had pointed in a certain direction), ‘graphics’ and ‘correct’. But he was willing to work hard to stay on the team – he’d heard impressive things about McKay’s work – and if that included guessing what his instructions were, well, he could do that.
McKay kept on talking as Radek walked towards the computer. He turned to listen, thinking that maybe, if he could see him at the same time, see his lips move, it might help him understand. But then he noticed something: McKay didn’t expect him to listen. He was hunched over his keyboard, staring at the screen and seemed to have forgotten about Radek completely. Radek suppressed a smile as he went to his work – which was interesting enough, even though it contained a couple of slight errors – and let McKay’s babble fade into the background, together with the beeping and humming that filled the lab.
After a couple of days, he understood almost everything McKay said. Sure, the man talked fast, but he also repeated himself a lot, which helped Radek immensely. Sometimes, he wondered if McKay did it to help him understand or if he just liked to listen to his own voice.
Also, Radek learned a couple of new words. Moron, for example, was an expression McKay used on a very regular basis. He’d asked Dr. Kusanagi what it meant. The young scientist had shrugged a little uncomfortably. “Means that someone is… wrong.” She’d hesitated a bit before adding, “Maybe not the most polite way of saying so.” That was no real surprise. McKay wasn’t a particularly polite man.
Then there was the day of the big staff meeting. McKay wanted everyone to tell the rest of the group what they were working on exactly, which problems they still had to solve – “not my idea, but Dr. Weir seems to think we should ‘synergize our skills’, so go on people, synergize”.
Radek had written down everything he wanted to say and was sitting at the long conference table together with the others, straightening the crumpled pages out again and again, when McKay strode in. “Okay, I’m gonna go first, this’ll be over soon so we can all go back to our work as quickly as possible.” He started a sloppy, last-minute presentation about ZPMs. Radek stared at McKay’s graphics and the formulas. This was truly inspired work. McKay had come to some impressive conclusions already, yet something was… wrong. He inhaled sharply as the solution hit him at the same time as McKay was coming to an end.
“So that’s it, anyone got anything to add? Yeah, I thought so. Now, Dr. Kusanagi -”
“You are… moron,” Radek said slowly.
The room fell utterly silent. Everyone turned to stare at him. McKay sputtered: “What the- who the hell do you think-“ But he caught himself and settled for a more or less dignified: “Dr. Lezenka? Would you care to explain that statement?”
Radek nodded quickly, ignoring the fact that McKay had mispronounced his name again, and got up. He walked to the front and pointed at one of the formulas. “There. You forgot about the influence of- of- of…” He gestured wildly, searching desperately for the right term, but words eluded him. He was supposed to know that, damn it, but he was just too excited, because this was big, this was huge, if they could solve this last bit, they’d truly understand the way the ZPMs worked. (And besides, the whole room was still gaping at him as if he’d grown a second head, which wasn’t helping his calm one bit.) “The influence of-,” he tried again, but he still couldn’t find the words. He let out a frustrated breath. This was a nightmare. Like back in school, standing in front of the class while the teacher yelled at him for having forgotten his homework again. He almost expected McKay to send him back to his place.
But instead, McKay’s eyes widened suddenly. “Of course! You’re talking about the internal back-up-system, right?”
Radek couldn’t help beaming at him. “Exactly! Internal back-up-system. Makes that operation here-”
“-totally obsolete. But if we introduce a secondary system-”
“-yes, yes, yes! One without-”
“-well, of course without, what do you think I am, stupid?” McKay shook his head quickly and looked around the room. “You’re all dismissed. We’ll do this another time.”
Radek nodded and went back to his place at the table to collect his papers before he left. He didn’t come as far as three steps. “What’re you – nononononono, not you, you’re staying, Zedimka.”
Hesitantly, Radek stopped and watched as McKay shut the door behind the others.
“That wasn’t half stupid, you know,” he said appreciatively. “You want some coffee? I think this might take a while.”
Radek shook his head. “I’m good,” he said.
And to his own surprise, he was.