Title: The Bar Brawl SGA

Author: Heatherf

Disclaimers: Not mine, no money made etc

Warning 1: English, grammar, spelling and whatever else.

Warning 2: No plot (that I could come up with)

Thanks: Mitzi beta'd (she normally does with Meg) Meg T. is out of town.

Any problems, complaints and the such, type them out and then delete them before you send them (you'll feel better and so will I.)

Characters: Team fic, centered on Beckett

Posting this now before I watch Hive and Epiphany. No spoilers that way.

Summary: There is a bar brawl but under mitigating circumstances.

It's complete. It's being parted out because---no good reason but it's what Meg T recommends. Blame her. I do.

12/01/05

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Part 1

John Sheppard leaned carefully against the infirmary wall of the 'dirty' surgery room. He gently crossed his arms over his chest. He wanted to sigh but feared his bruised ribs would protest. He wanted to lean his head against the wall but his fractured collar bone had other ideas.

As it was, he leaned both shoulders against the wall welcoming the thrumming pain as the linear bruises that spread crossed his shoulders took more of his weight. He was told he had quite a startling array of deep colors flooding out from the original points of contact.

It was amazing how barroom chairs looked the same across different galaxies and apparently inflicted similar damages to the human body.

Rodney had commented on the near parallel appearance of the deep maroon and blue bruises, however, Rodney had his proverbial bell rung and so his ability to see straight was somewhat questionable. As far as John could tell his bruises might have been running tangential. Not that it really mattered. They hurt all the same. In fact, they hurt enough that he wondered if something was truly broken and imaging had missed it.

He would wait a night and see if things didn't get better. If they didn't, then he would wait until Biro had a free moment or Beckett had his tooth fixed.

It was the damn tooth that started everything.

Sheppard watched without much concern as Beckett bent a sluggish leg, resting the sole of his sneaker on the foot of the dental chair. He had been moving with increasing frequency but without much motivation or coordinated intent. Like the few times in the last hour, the muscles in his leg gave out and Sheppard watched as the leg slipped and straightened nearly falling off the side of the chair. He watched as Beckett tried to bend it again, to no avail.

Carson must have given up on moving the leg because it stopped moving, but the doctor's cut and bruised hand lifted haphazardly a few inches and then stopped. A semi fist was formed but, like the leg, the muscles of the arm and hand stopped working in a coordinated effort and the hand fell back across his midsection next to its other battled scarred mate.

The movement had caught Dr. Biro's eye and she had turned her attention from the head of her patient to his hand and leg. Even with her surgical mask on, clear plastic eye shield, surgical blue hat and gown, Sheppard was pretty sure he'd recognize the pathologist just about anywhere. She had that mousey, geeky appearance that somehow conveyed quite clearly, 'don't bother me'. Of course, knowing that she cut up dead people for a living and examined them under a microscope also helped add to her girlish charm.

It had been Biro that patched Sheppard back together when his team and Beckett stumbled through the gate sporting various cuts, abrasions, lacerations and infrequent yet painful slight fractures.

It had been a heck of a brawl and it was almost worth all the aches and pain he now suffered. It was kind of cathartic to go ten rounds with some hulking farmers and woodsmen in a sconce lit stone walled tavern. The team was lucky to have walked away with mere bruises and aches. It was fortunate that the combatants were more interested in blowing off steam than killing one another.

It seemed universal in the Pegasus galaxy that it was better to save the killing for the Wraith and not each other, excluding the Genii of course. The Genii and their ostracized ring leader Koyla were in a sick sect all their own. Rumor had it Koyla owned a cow. Sheppard shuttered at the thought. Poor creature.

Once back in the infirmary, McKay had refused to let Biro touch him fearing that his exam would be more like a 'pre-autopsy' and wanted to avoid anything that would some day lead him to be laying flat out with a blue/grey complexion on a stainless steel metal table with drains on either end. He accused Biro of trolling for business. She retorted that even as a pathologist she had standards, and should McKay end up on one of her slabs she'd be sure to call in an expert on Necropsies. McKay had snarled and mumbled something unintelligible.

He insisted that Beckett suture his forehead laceration, even though the CMO seemed to be having trouble seeing out of both eyes himself. In the end, Beckett had stitched McKay's forehead laceration closed, dropped a bag of ice into Rodney's hand and then lifted both to McKay's swollen left eye and cheek and told him to hold it there. A hairline fracture to McKay's zygomatic arch left the astrophysicist moaning in dire pain and blaming the Scot for all the maladies that had befallen him that night.

McKay was not far from wrong, but no one was going to willingly jump on the blame bandwagon just yet. The physician was, after all, still standing, walking upright and still had a frightful tooth ache. In the course of just a few hours though, he had managed to drag SGA-1 and the regular inhabitants of some off world tavern into his little world of throbbing misery.

It was said misery loved company, and ever since Dr. Kavanaugh had accidentally snapped one of Dr. Beckett's back molars in half only 18 days ago, it seemed everyone was suffering for it.

So when Rodney blamed Beckett for his fractured cheek bone and stitches the others kept quiet and made some distance between themselves and the astrophysicist.

No one wanted to become unfortunate collateral damage.

Beckett had only nodded in agreement and then simply shuffled into his office, closed his door and lay his head down on his desk, pushing the laptop and flats of slides out of his way and closed his eyes.

Earlier imaging of his skull and mandible proved he had escaped any type head trauma or fracture. It seemed truculent Scotsmen raised by their mothers were a tough lot. His tooth, however, was stubbornly still in place and more inflamed than ever before.

No one dared bother the man.

Ronon and Teyla both had their bruises looked at, poked and prodded, which they took with sickening stoicism and were deemed 'fine'. The Pegasus Galaxy's own home grown warriors smiled smugly at their battle ready fitness and chuckled while the various Lanteans found themselves being injected, numbed, sutured and wrapped.

It seemed the Athosian and Runner could handle a bar room brawl better than most.

Sheppard did take some satisfaction in knowing that his team and Beckett were able to walk away from the tavern while its own regulars were sprawled amongst broken furniture, shattered glass and spilled ale. It was a shame they had to leave the roaring fire that sat in the center of the room in a stone circular pit with a cast iron metal stew pot hanging over its flames. It was almost as difficult to leave the warmth and soft light created by the kerosene fed flames within wrought iron wall sconces as it was the cook fire. Sheppard had not really wanted to venture back out into the blustery raw wind that scoured the land in the heavy darkness of a moonless night. He certainly didn't want to listen to McKay belly ache and Beckett groan with each foot placement as they trudged 2.4 miles back to the gate.

The sudden drizzle that patted the ground only seemed right in an unjust universe. Without much coercion or forced orders, they left the marred quaint little tavern and headed into the raw, drizzling evening looking forward to a long walk on short patience.

They didn't have much choice but to leave the fire heated tavern. Bodies were left sprawled around the wood floored room, blood from noses and split lips mingled freely with spilled hops and ale. Food was scattered and spilled next to and around over turned tables and smashed chairs. Incoherent groans occasionally rumbled up from the wood pegged floor but it seemed only the Lanteans and the bar keep were able to keep their feet.

It was with some consternation that Sheppard herded his people out the door, offering a 'what can I do' smile to the barkeep before shutting the door behind himself and following his team back to the gate.

He wasn't feeling too gleeful as the group limped, weaved and berated each other on their two mile hike, through the dark, on a wooded lane that slowly turned to thick mud. McKay held his face and complained bitterly about the blinding pain that seared his cheek. Sheppard had held his ribs, careful not jar his upper body in a futile hope to protect his collar bone from any undue movement or uneven motion. It didn't matter none, it seemed as if every bone in his body was attached to his collar bone.

Beckett shuffled near the rear of the group, head still tilted toward his right shoulder with a little more of a list than had previously been present. He seemed hell bent on protecting his tooth to the best of his ability. Of course, the protective stance had been getting increasingly more pronounced as the days dragged by and the broken tooth remained unattended with nerves startling raw and stubbornly alive. At least now he had a bruise on that side of his face again. It would act to give a little visual aide to his discomfort, not that anyone on Atlantis didn't already know that the CMO had a busted tooth that throbbed with every beat of his heart and spiked with pain with every inhale.

The man was miserable and he was successfully dragging everyone down with him.

Sheppard had to concede when the tooth was first broken, Beckett had tried to be civil, tried to ignore the sharp spiking pain but a short week of incessant, unrelenting ache slowly broke down his benevolent personality and his patience slowly started evaporating. By the end of the first week, Biro and the silent tall doctor were the doctors of choice. No one thought to take the last cup of hot water in the cafeteria without refilling the pot, for fear of invoking the wrath of one overtired, short fused Scotsman.

If one thing good came out of the fight, it was this single moment--- Sheppard stood in the dirty surgery room watching Biro and a visiting doctor work on the CMO's broken tooth. The colonel watched as Beckett once again haphazardly lifted his right foot and placed it on the chair's pad and kept it there for a bit but then relaxed and let the leg straighten out. The doctor's upper shoulders and head were hidden from view by Drs Mitchell DDS and Biro.

Biro, with gloved hands, was assisting the oral surgeon brought in by the Daedalus. On this evening the duo set out to fix the broken upper molar that had plagued Beckett and subsequently all of Atlantis for nearly three weeks.

Sheppard didn't understand the fear and apprehension that drove Beckett in avoiding letting anyone near his tooth though the man himself had tried to pull the damn thing out with a pair of hemostats.

Sheppard would have sold McKay off to the highest bidder just to have seen Beckett with hemostats in his mouth trying to wiggle out a healthy, albeit broken, tooth with multiple roots. Hitting the raw nerve with metal, it was reported, sent the CMO into a dancing fit of heebeejeebbies and exquisite pain which was punctuated by fanciful, imaginative string of expletives that had the marines trying to memorize them. Sheppard would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to see Beckett with his medical version of needle nose pliers with built-in vice grip digging at his tooth.

Sheppard did however, respect the raw power that Beckett exhibited this very night when he nearly single handedly took on a whole tavern and its citizens.