Title: Wpm
Author: kbk
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Wordcount: ~750
Summary: A little bonding in Antarctica
Notes 1: Written for the 38 Minutes challenge under the second Amnesty at lj-comm sga_flashfic.
Notes 2: Give me rules and either my imagination goes haywire or it gives up the ghost, so, oh! look! I'm typing! there's typing! there's a small amount of snark! and mentions of at least three other challenges if you really stretch! and I may be losing my mind! I'm sorry!
Notes 3: Also, Typer Shark is here and I find it utterly addictive but also credit it for my good showing at a recent temp-agency typing test. So there.

"What is that, hunt and peck? That's pathetic, no wonder your paperwork wasn't in on time."

John dropped his head and sighed. He thought about banging his head on the keyboard in front of him, but that wouldn't make McKay go away. "My ambitions of secretarial school were sadly thwarted, McKay, but my typing speed is perfectly reasonable."

The quality of the silence behind him told John that McKay was rolling his eyes. It was kinda scary that he knew that already, so he folded his arms and twisted to glare over his shoulder. "And how do you know about my paperwork anyway?"

McKay actually blinked at him for half a second before his face was overtaken with an expression that said something like, "you are actually a bigger moron than I thought you were and I didn't realise that was possible." It was kinda hurtful.

Then John realised that yes, he was a moron. "OK, science, in the thing, and you being, uh, Mr Science, OK, I'm sorry, it's just these logs are frying my brain."

McKay rolled his eyes again, and this time John saw it. "And why are you doing them in the side lab at two o'clock in the morning anyway?" McKay had already turned his visible attention to a binder full of line graphs – John had sneaked a peek at most of what was lying around, but since it was all results on things he'd never heard of, and their classification system seemed to be some bastard fusion of the work of Dewey, Mendeleev and Linnaeus, he'd given up fairly quickly and settled to attempt to work. He straightened his posture and settled his fingers on the home keys.

"No, really," McKay said, and John didn't jump in the slightest, and if his fingers tensed on the keys then that was just the extra caffeine, "I'm interested."

"I thought it would be quiet," John said, heavy on the sarcasm - perhaps a little too heavy, because McKay's shuffling behind him in a kind of flustered fashion, and he'd bet with himself as to whether McKay’s going to bow out gracefully or try to throw him out of science territory, but honestly? He'd rather have the company. "Is that why you're here?"

"Hm? Oh, no, no, I was, I actually went to bed an hour ago, for once, because I have a meeting at eight o'clock - which is a completely uncivilised hour, I hasten to add, but the military seem to believe we should get up with the sun in a theoretical model where we’re on the equator and not tilted... um, anyway, I had a thought, I needed to check something."

John tapped in a few more numbers from his log book - the actual book was meticulously inked out and up-to-date, because it was important, but somehow he always had a three-month back-log for the typed version and suddenly he had very little leeway. "It couldn't wait until the morning?" he asked.

"It... well, I wasn't about to sleep when I might have discovered that we're all going to die horribly in the vacuum of space simply in attempting to reach another galaxy."

That really got John's attention. He turned round, leaning one arm on the back of the chair. "Are we?" he asked, with what might have been a small amount of fervour.

"Well, not from this." McKay flipped through a few more pages.

John sighed and turned back to the computer. P-R-E-F-L-I-G-H-T C-H-E-C-K he slowly typed.

"All right, move," said McKay, and then he was there, at John's shoulder, pushing at one shoulder with a large, warm hand that John felt distinctly through three layers of fabric. And then McKay was in his seat, fingers flying. "This just repeats itself, it should be muscle memory, should be like typing your own name, or bolometric luminosities in my first thesis..."

"Whoa, McKay, you don't have to do this," John said, though his protests weren't entirely sincere.

"I can do this or I can go back to my room and stop my brain going by playing Typer Shark, which is essentially the same thing but with a little more variation in the words, and you can spend the next three hours doing what I'll achieve in the next forty minutes."

John blinked, then grinned.

"And if you make one comment about me painting my nails or wearing a short skirt then I will make your life miserable."

John bit his tongue. He leaned on the back of the chair, and listened as McKay's fingers clattered steadily on at four hits per second.