Title: Answer All the Questions

Author: Alli Snow

Fandom: SGA (McKay/Weir friendship)

Requested by: Islay (pre-Antarctica, Jell-O and a cat)

1.

The important thing to remember was that it was Tuesday. Unexpected things always happened to Elizabeth on Tuesdays.

She had gotten her first – and only – speeding ticket on a Tuesday (the very first year she’d had her license, which was more years ago than she cared to admit). Simon had proposed on a Tuesday (although he’d subsequently agreed that the current arrangement was better, and just as meaningful, and that they didn’t need a piece of paper from the state to tell them that they were in love and would always be together). The day that the President of the United States had told her that a rather iffy military division was the only thing standing between Earth and a galaxy full of evil, marauding aliens – also a Tuesday.

This Tuesday she was late to the Complex because a freak thunderstorm had closed down a few key roads; even in a state accustomed to sleet and snow, the first heavy rain of the season seemed to freak out motorists like nothing else. In the parking lot she dawdled, checking her cell phone for messages, finding a few – but not the one she’d hoped for. Then she called Simon to let him know that it would be a few more days before she could get home. She let his voice mail know, in any case.

The memory of their last real conversation still rang unsatisfactorily in her ears.

“I never thought I’d see the day when you’d be working for the U.S. military.”

“I’m not working for them, Simon. I’m working with them.”

“And there’s a difference?”

“Yes, there’s a difference. The President specifically asked me to take this job. You don’t say ‘no’ to the President.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t at least discuss this with me first.”

“What’s there to discuss? If I was taking an assignment with NATO or the UN you wouldn’t have made an issue out of this. Besides… I can’t tell you exactly what I’m doing.”

“Because it’s some big military secret. I get it.”

And so on.

She hurried through the rain and into the first checkpoint, where a freckled Sergeant – Elizabeth had never seen him before, but he looked young enough to be her son – checked her photo ID and then witnessed her palm scan. Neither had changed, and with a perfunctory smile he waved her towards the elevator.

Then again, maybe it was just a problem she was having with men in general lately. Her last conversation with Jack O’Neill had been almost as frustrating.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“General, I’m sure you understand how important this is… why I’m looking for the best of the best.”

“Yes, and Carter is that. But she’s not available.”

“Why not?”

“Because Antarctica doesn’t hold a lot of pleasant memories for either of us.”

“I tend to think this is a decision she should make for herself.”

“And I think that seeing as how I’m still the Lieutenant Colonel’s commanding officer and she’s still a crucial part of this program, I get to decide where she goes and what she does.”

The truly appalling thing, Elizabeth reflected as the elevator began to descend, was that Carter herself had been there for most of the discussion, although neither of them had known it – until Elizabeth had turned around to see the other woman standing in the open office doorway. Arms crossed. Rolling her eyes.

Her attitude could very well have been considered insubordinate, reflected Elizabeth, as the elevator car stopped on sub-level 2 to admit a gaggle of uniformed men. O’Neill, however, had seemed to find it fairly amusing.

Carter had sought Elizabeth out in the commissary later, bringing along two cups of blue Jell-O as a kind of peace offering.

“I’m honored, really. But I tend to agree with General O’Neill.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

A pause. “I’ve had a lot of experience with the different kinds of technology out there, yes. Goa’uld, Asgard, and some Ancient. You’re right about that. But that doesn’t mean I’m the only possibility out there. There’s technology in that outpost that no one has ever seen. Whatever you discover down there, in a way you’ll be starting from scratch.”

“Doctor Jackson is coming.”

“Ah, yes… I heard he was on loan. But Daniel Ascended. He doesn’t remember everything, but he can still help you in ways no one else can. Me… I’m just another scientist.”

“If you were just another scientist, I doubt O’Neill would be putting up this much of a fight.”

“He… has his biases, yes. And like I said…”

“You’re honored.”

“Yes. But I’m not ready to leave the SGC right now, not even temporarily.”

“I see.”

“What I will do is compile a list of recommendations for you… people I’ve worked with, people I trust.”

And this was welcome… it really was. Elizabeth had actually requested recommendations from certain department heads she’d grown friendly with during her brief tenure at the SGC, including O’Neill himself. She did want the true cream of the crop on her team, because when she dealt with the other heads of state she needed a fine product to back up her claims… and because this really was an important matter for the entire world.

Maybe she hadn’t been around Stargate Command long enough to have the same context on the situation as the old-timers like O’Neill, Carter and Jackson. Maybe reading up on mission reports couldn’t tell you everything you needed to know. But Elizabeth was no dummy. Advanced alien technology could lead to breakthroughs for diseases like cancer or AIDS, or energy sources that would erase the world’s dependence on oil, or agricultural technology that could make hunger and malnutrition a thing of the past. Maybe they could learn something from the Ancients’ history, or even their defensive weaponry, which would allow them to stop wars before they started.

If this information couldn’t be found at the outpost itself, maybe something there would lead them elsewhere. Perhaps, if Daniel Jackson was correct, to the lost city itself.

Stepping out at sub-level 21, the end of the line as far as this elevator car was concerned, Elizabeth repressed a shiver of anticipation.

Atlantis.

What would it be? And where? Would it still be populated by corporeal Ancients, or visited by those who had Ascended? If it was abandoned, what could be learned?

Everything, said a voice in her mind. Everything is out there, just waiting to be discovered.

2.

She was not the only person to get off at 21; a man about her age followed her down the hallway connecting the first lift to the one that would lead them to the SGC proper. Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed when he had gotten on.

Another airman was stationed at the next checkpoint, the conspicuous bulge of a firearm at his hip. As Elizabeth signed off on the clipboard, the young man waved a long silver bar across her front and then her back; ostensibly, he was checking for explosives or hidden weaponry, but Elizabeth could recognize the naquadah detector for what it was.

They had learned the hard way that Goa’uld infiltration could come from without as well as within.

The sensor made no incriminating signals. “Ma’am,” said the officer pleasantly, waving her on to the second elevator.

The man who had followed her off passed the station with less efficiency; she heard him say something snappish to the guard, a low retort, and then another, unmistakably sarcastic reply. Elizabeth, stepping into the elevator, hoped that he’d be delayed long enough that he would be forced to wait for another car, or that perhaps he would be kicked out altogether. She’d only glimpsed the stranger out of the corner of her eye, but something about him looked… disagreeable.

Her prayers, if they could be called that, were not answered. The man – average in every regard, unmemorable except for the cross expression on his face – slipped through the doors at the last second. He was wearing an identification tag around his neck now; it declared he was a VISITOR, but the lighting in the elevator glared against the plastic sleeve and made it impossible to read his name with a casual glance.

Just as well she felt no need to make small talk. Elizabeth toggled the button for the commissary level – she was meeting Carter there – and leaned back against the wall, studying her companion without his knowledge. He could be military – although she doubted it – or a civilian scientist – yet she’d never seen him before – or even clerical. Not everyone who worked in the SGC knew what the acronym really stood for, and even fewer knew what the Stargate actually was. No doubt this unpleasant individual was coming in to fix a copy machine or something, and would get off at one of the upper levels.

But the elevator began to descend and he didn’t press any buttons. Well, the commissary was open to everybody. Maybe he wanted some coffee first.

As though he felt her watching him, the man suddenly looked over his shoulder at her. She smiled perfunctorily but was rewarded with only a deeper scowl. “What?” she asked, defensive.

“Did you feel that?” he asked.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to ask “feel what?” but was interrupted by an unexpected flickering of the lights.

“That can’t be go—“ began the man.

The lights flickered again, and stayed off. The elevator was suddenly a toy in the hand of an angry child, shaken and jolted and rocked from side to side, dropped and caught, and Elizabeth’s stomach bounced into her chest.

Metal squealed in protest, then shrieked in pain.

How far had they fallen?

In the blackness she stumbled forward, desperately seeking stable footing where they was none to be found, telling herself that she should drop onto her stomach, but a sudden and complete stop caught her off guard and she pitched forward, sensing the wall without seeing it, no time to throw her hands up to stop the—

3.

Elizabeth woke abruptly, flat on her back on a very hard bed.

Having never been knocked unconscious before, she decided now that she didn’t like it much. Her head ached where she had struck it, her neck was sore and her left ankle felt that she had taken a misstep. Then there was the disorientation of being standing one moment and in another instant laid out on your back, one place and then another, and persistent dizziness that blossomed more than once into vague nausea.

On the bright side, she was alive.

A chill went through her body at the thought of mortal danger, and involuntarily she opened her eyes.

Elizabeth half-expected to be blinded by a sudden rush of unforgiving hospital light, bright and white and sterile, set upon by nurses and doctors who would poke needles into her veins and want to take her temperature in embarrassing places. But all she saw when she looked up was darkness, relieved only slightly by a dim bluish light, and no anxious face came into view.

Too stunned by this fact to be nauseous, more perplexed than lightheaded, Elizabeth pushed herself up on her elbows. Yes, it was true: maybe only two seconds had passed, maybe two hours, but in either case she was still in the elevator. It was dark, motionless, and silent.

Almost.

“Good,” said a voice, so brusque and unexpected that Elizabeth jumped away in fear. “You’re awake. Come here and help me.”

Shocked into compliance – although wincing at the circuit of pain in her head, neck and ankle – she scooted closer to the strange man, who was crouched down next to the elevator’s control panel. The aqua light that so faintly illuminated the area was from a PDA, his PDA, the background image a picture of a satisfied-looking striped cat lounging on blue sheets. This was the light he was working by, to complete whatever task he’d set himself.

“The backlight turns off every two minutes automatically,” said the man without introduction or preamble. “I need you to tap the screen every now and then, but for God’s sake, use the stylus, not your fingers.”

Obviously this was an individual who didn’t improve on acquaintance. Elizabeth set her jaw, pulled out the stylus, tapped the screen obligingly and then edged closer. “What are you doing?”

He’d been able to pull some of the metal plating away from the wall; now he rose to that he was eye-level with the phone. With a grimace of pain Elizabeth copied him, favoring her right foot, holding the PDA close to where he worked. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to get us out of here.”

Her headache gnawed away at her diplomatic aplomb. “Did you try the phone?”

The man looked at her directly for the first time since the – whatever it had been – with an expression of incredulous disgust. The faint light from the screen was not at all flattering at this angle, and he looked something like a gargoyle as he answered, “Gee. No. I didn’t think of that.” He stepped back. “Knock yourself out.”

Glaring, Elizabeth snatched up the receiver and held it to her ear. “Hello? Is anyone there? We’re trapped… I’m not sure which floor, but…”

Nothing. Not static, not… nothing. Just a silence that brought to mind an endless void, the feeling that she and this unpleasant man were the only two people left alive in the world. Slowly she returned the phone to its cradle. “Maybe whatever happened knocked out communication.”

The man snorted. “And maybe there’s no one left alive to answer you.” He tugged at the plating again, this time with special vehemence, and with a squeak and a sharp crack it finally popped from its moorings exposing wires of varying lengths, widths and colors.

No one left… “That’s stupid,” said Elizabeth flatly, although she could hear the nervousness in her own voice. “It was just an earthquake. It rattled us around and cut the main power, maybe, but a place like this is built to withstand… well, a lot. It was just an earthquake,” she said again, more to herself than to him.

And he gave her a look that said but what if it wasn’t.

What if it was the first strike of a terrestrial war, leveled against NORAD to blind the country against threats?

What if it was Goa’uld retaliation for their recent victory, forces loyal to Anubis, or Ba’al, or someone else who had a bone to pick with the Tau’ri? A mothership crouched over the mountain, blasting down, laying waste to everything in sight?

Or what if it was something even worse, something they hadn’t even known to contemplate? God knew the place was a magnet for trouble.

4.

Her companion began to pluck and pull at wires, seemingly at random and without consideration for what those wires might be attached to. Yes, logically Elizabeth knew that there was not one lead which, when severed, would drop the car into the abyss, or cause it to explode in a hellish fireball. Still… “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

“I know what I’m doing,” was his curt reply.

“I didn’t say that you didn’t.”

“You implied it.”

“I just think it might be a better idea to wait for rescue.”

“That is such a girl thing to say.”

“Excuse me?”

“Besides, we’re between floors… you can tell. It’s not just a matter of opening up the doors from the outside.”

“What did you mean by ‘that’s a girl thing to say’?”

The light went out so abruptly that both of them caught their breath. Elizabeth felt him go tense, and saw the look of chagrin on his face as she gave the PDA screen an obstinate jab. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sit around waiting for rescue until all the air runs out.”

“If you’re worried about the air running out,” said Elizabeth icily, “maybe you should shut up.”

He looked at her again, and blinked. As though he couldn’t believe she’d actually said that to him.

The elevator moved.

It was not a controlled move that would signal the restoration of power. It was not a side to side move that would indicate an aftershock… or another strike against the surface from above. It was a quick jolt, as though a giant were dancing on the roof of the car, or something with sharp teeth and red eyes were chewing on the cables that held it aloft.

Elizabeth had never had much time for that kind of imagery, and now she couldn’t keep it from popping into her head. Maybe she had a concussion.

The man looked worriedly at the ceiling, as though he was picturing the same kind of mischief. “Okay, I don’t like that.”

The concern in his voice stoked her own fear. “I don’t think we’ll fall.”

“Do you really want to test that hypothesis from in here?”

He was the kind of man that inspired argument and discord in general, but this was not the time to debate the logistics of the SGC’s architecture. This place had been around for a long time, obviously, and Colorado wasn’t exactly earthquake prone. If the mechanism had a weakness, any weakness…

“No,” she said finally. “I don’t.”

He looked a little surprised at her capitulation, then nodded towards the ceiling. “I think if we can get up top, there’s a ladder we can take up to the next floor, and a manual release. I think.”

“You think?”

“That’s what I said,” was his testy reply.

“You said it twice.”

“Is that better than ’I don’t think we’ll fall’?”

There were many things Elizabeth could have said to that, all of them insulting and none of them helpful. She looked up instead, swaying a little and wincing at the pain in her ankle. “How are we going to get up there?”

For the first time he looked hesitant. “Right. Okay. New idea.”

She put the PDA down. “Did you try the doors?”

He rolled his eyes, but refrained, this time, from looking at her as though she was especially stupid. “That was the first thing I did, actually.”

“Maybe the both of us.”

He seemed to look her up and down, which she didn’t exactly appreciate, but there was no point in calling him out on it. Instead she limped towards the left door, leaning against the wall, reaching out and finding the seam with her fingertips. It seemed impossibly shallow; she wasn’t going to be able to get the leverage she needed. But she waited until the man took up position on the other side, and wedged his fingers into the hairline crack, and nodded.

5.

They both pulled.

Hard.

His eyes squinched up and he grunted with the effort. Elizabeth pushed against the floor with both feet, straining and trying hard to ignore a pain that would not be ignored.

Nothing.

But it wasn’t just a matter of the doors being jammed together. “Something’s pushing them shut,” Elizabeth gasped, stumbling back.

He let go as well, rubbing his hands and staring down at them ruefully. “Safety measure. Elevators have a bad habit of stopping on the wrong floor when there’s a fire… the doors open automatically, and – whoosh. Barbeque.” His voice quailed a little on that last word.

“But there’s not a fire.”

“That we know of.”

Elizabeth frowned and pressed her palm flat against the doors. “See? It’s cool.”

In response, he crossed his arms and looked at her sullenly, as though challenging her: you’re so smart, you figure it out.

Her gaze drifted past him, at the partially gutted panel. “What were you trying to do there?”

For an instant he looked defensive, and then he seemed to realize that she wasn’t still picking on him. “I was hoping there might be an override. Elevators aren’t exactly my specialty, but… anyway, there’s no point if there’s no power.”

“But there is power.” Her ankle was screaming now, and she lowered herself back down to the ground, tapping absently at the PDA screen with her finger. “Otherwise nothing would be keeping the doors closed.”

His eyes suddenly glazed – he was gone, deep in thought – and then he was back. “If I can cut power to the failsafe… I don’t know if they’ll open on their own, but we might have a better chance of doing it ourselves.”

Elizabeth didn’t bother to ask whether or not he could do what he said – cut power, override the failsafe… whatever. She was fairly certain by this point that he was no copy machine repairman, and if he had an overabundance of confidence in his abilities, well, this wasn’t the time for a self-help session.

“Do it.”

“Okay, okay.” He sounded almost excited now. “You pull on the door from your side. I’m going to test some of these connections, and if you feel it give at all, tell me.”

Elizabeth pushed herself onto her knees, not trusting her ankle to support her, and once more gripped that barest millimeter. She watched as he dove back into the mess of wire, squinting into the dark recesses, muttering just under his breath before slowly reaching a hand towards an especially fat line.

“Don’t electrocute yourself,” said Elizabeth.

He froze, as though expecting to be struck dead on the spot, then looked at her with an unexpected glint in his eyes. “Oh, I like you. You’re funny.”

The tone was sarcastic, but she had the strangest feeling that the words were genuine.

Then the car jolted again; the little red-eyed menace on the roof was still hungry, and the giant was still having his fun. She could envision it now: the cable fraying, metal torquing, a pulley system straining towards failure. “Now!”

He pulled the cord. Elizabeth yanked on the doors. No give.

“Wrong one!” But he was already trying again, indiscriminately now, she was sure, and she closed her eyes and tried to ignore the trembling all around her and pulled hard.

And then, quite suddenly, the opposing pressure was gone.

“Got it!” she exclaimed over a menacing clunk clunk clunk from above; he abandoned the nest of wires and grabbed the door, scrambling for purchase.

The doors, whining with reluctance, parted a mere inch.

But an inch was all they needed. Elizabeth leapt to her feet, cursing loudly even as she wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door and pulled again. With a great deal of protest the doors parted bit by bit, and although the shaking and shuddering from above didn’t stop she felt that maybe she could draw a deep breath of fresh air at least – or at least as fresh as it ever got inside a mountain.

Then she saw what awaited them.

6.

“Aw, damn,” said her companion softly.

The car had indeed stopped between floors. Beyond the doors, from the floor to approximately the height of Elizabeth’s head, there was only black flatness: the inside of the elevator shaft. Then there was a break – the floor of one of the SGC’s sublevels, where the outer doors had – thank God – been opened, perhaps by a would-be rescuer.

“Hello!” she called out, standing on tiptoe. “Is anybody there?”

It seemed that nobody was.

“Well,” said Elizabeth. “You wanted a way out.” And, between the bottom of the concrete floor and the top of the elevator’s threshold, there was one. Barely. Maybe two feet of space remained, and if the car dropped again, it would be even less.

“I saw a movie like this,” said the man in a small voice, gazing up at the narrow gap. “The woman made it about halfway through, and then the evil computer raised the—“

“There’s no evil computer here,” said Elizabeth sharply. “Just a mechanical failure. And if you don’t snap out of it, I’m going to leave you here, and when they ask me ‘was anybody in the elevator that crashed all the way down at the 28^th level’, I’m going to say ‘nope, nobody I knew—‘“

“Okay, I’m coming!” He rubbed a hand over his face and gave himself a little shake, and then, to Elizabeth’s shock, dropped to one knee. She stared at him.

He looked at her like she was a moron. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m giving you a boost up.”

The PDA screen had since faded into idle darkness, and the only light was that which leaked in from the hallway, green and weak. Elizabeth hoped that it hid her blush as she grabbed hold of the Complex floor, pushed off the man’s upraised knee with her good foot, and felt his hands on her legs, guiding her up the rest of the way. The edge of the floor scraped her stomach, and she banged her knees trying to get them under her, but one moment she was half-in half-out of the elevator compartment like the hapless girl in whatever movie he’d been talking about, waiting for the car to suddenly drop and take everything from her waist down with it, and then she was on relatively solid ground, the floor cool beneath her abraded hands.

Before she could reach back into the gap there was the sound of footsteps; still on her knees Elizabeth turned towards the sound, relieved beyond measure to see two tall figures turn the nearest corner. Both carried flashlights into the dim greenness, so it was hard to make out features, but one of them had been talking rapidly and the other stopped short when he saw the tableau at the elevator doors. “What the hell…”

“Oh my God…” Carter ran the last few yards, O’Neill close behind her. “Doctor Weir? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She surprised herself by saying it, then realized that it was true. She was okay. She hadn’t suffocated or been crushed or turned into whoosh – barbeque. She was okay, and she was a little proud of the fact. “What in the world happened?”

Carter’s face, strangely shadowed by her flashlight, seemed paler than usual. “It seems like it was just an earthquake. We thought at first that it might be—“

“Hello,” called a voice, echoing slightly and laced with fear. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

O’Neill reached past her wordlessly; Elizabeth saw an arm come up, there was a grunt and a heave and her companion slithered out on his belly, the same as she had. He pulled his legs quickly free and turned onto his back, eyes closed, breathing hard. “Thanks for remembering me.”

With a voice that was unmistakably amused, O’Neill replied: “Any time, Rodney.”

7.

“Obviously, if I’d known you were the person who was offering me a job, I would have tried to be a little less… annoying.” His voice was tense, as though the admission cost him.

Elizabeth smiled. It was okay to smile, now that they were safe, now that the power was back on and they were in the infirmary, now that she knew her ankle wasn’t broken, merely sprained, and that no one in the SGC had been killed or even seriously injured during the earthquake. They were seriously going to have to look at those elevators, though. “Actually, I wasn’t going to offer you a job. I didn’t even know you were coming.”

McKay sat up against his pillows. “What?”

Elizabeth relaxed. She wasn’t normally one for just laying around, however temporarily incapacitated, but she’d just had her first brush with death – or near enough – and they’d given her something for the pain and she was feeling just fine at the moment. “I was coming down to pick up a few things I left in my office, and to show General O’Neill my final list for the expedition.”

“And I’m not on it.”

He sounded extremely downcast, maybe even a little petulant. This, too, was cause for a smile. “Colonel Carter did personally recommend you, but after talking to some people in the physics department… I decided I was looking for someone a little more stable.”

“I’m Canadian,” said McKay, sounding truly wounded now. “How much more stable can you get?”

“Even the General himself hinted at some… inappropriate behavior? From you, in the past?”

“Yeah, and O’Neill’s the poster boy for professionalism. Listen, Eli- Doctor Weir. I know I’m an ass sometimes. But I’m still good at what I do.”

She wasn’t sure what was more surprising: the fact that he seemed aware he could drive people up the wall, and that he so readily admitted to it, or the fact that she believed him when he said that he was good. Well, she knew he was good. She’d known that simply from Carter’s recommendation. And yet she’d decided to pass McKay over, without even an interview, because she knew she wanted someone more reliable, who didn’t cut corners or hit on his colleagues, someone who could be expected to play the political game along with the scientific.

“What did Carter tell you?” she asked.

He was defensive. “Not much. Hardly anything. Just that you were putting together a group, some kind of team to look at technology from… ‘elsewhere’… and that she thought it was right up my alley.” His voice warmed a little with pride. “She said if I wanted a chance to be in that group I should be here, today.”

So. The newly-promoted Lieutenant Colonel had been matchmaking, in her way. “Do you know what happened in Antarctica a couple months ago?”

“Oh yes,” he said in that clipped tone she already recognized as the prelude for a barb. “They called me up at home and said ‘Hi Rodney, I know we haven’t talked much lately, but guess what’s been going on in Antarctica’…”

Elizabeth decided to take that as a ‘no’. And laying there in the infirmary bed, looking up at the ceiling and sometimes at the nearby monitors, she told McKay what there was to know: they had found an Ancient outpost full of technology, and secrets, and maybe an address. The situation was touchy, but they had to learn whatever they could. They had to tease answers from the alien machines, wrap their minds around their figures and their language, probe through the almost overwhelming font of knowledge and pull out the most important bits. They had to find the Lost City, they had to figure out where it was and how to get there, and they had to go there, and learn everything they hadn’t been able to do before: alone, maybe, and far from home, maybe, but they had to do it and that’s all the was to it.

And she realized, even before she was finished explaining, and she wanted Rodney McKay there for all of it.

Not because he was a nice guy, because honestly he really wasn’t. And not just because his record of achievement spoke for itself, because that hadn’t been enough before. Instead, it was because in talking to him she had realized exactly what a momentous task she had set up for herself and her team, and that it was overwhelming and more than a little scary.

McKay didn’t pretend not to be scared. But he never seemed overwhelmed. Not when she was telling him about the outpost… not when they’d been stuck in that damn elevator, close and nervous and waiting for the whole thing to come crashing down at any second. He had seemed so very sure of himself, his reactions, his abilities.

Elizabeth was confident too, usually, and if she wasn’t she made it seem like she was. But she realized that she wanted this kind of confidence on her side as well, this blustering assuredness that was so totally annoying and so completely endearing.

She sat up and swung her legs over the edge, waited while the room stopped spinning, and focused hard on McKay’s face. He was watching her, probably wondering if she was going to throw up, and she thought that maybe he wasn’t so average-looking after all.

“You won’t be able to bring your cat,” she told him.

Fini