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The night shift was usually the odd ducks. The weirdos and the stoners and the guys who had just lost their second-to-last buck at the tables and the dancers who had claimed a few of them before that happened. It was usually quiet, though.
That was why Henderson had given John the job. Night Shift manager. Guaranteed night-shift, quiet, not a lot of people, and he could set the radio station that piped in through the archaic speakers in between the ceiling tiles and fluorescent lighting.
It was either a temporary full-time gig, or it was a permanent one, so John showed up and tried to learn it, not just phone it in. The badge on his shirt said "John" on it, not "Sheppard," and the only pins anywhere near his collar were the buttons there for flair and personal amusement. The smiley face was pinned sideways on the lanyard with his keys, and the American flag was just there to make something feel some kind of normal.
It was supposed to be a real job, not a freebie for some kind of thank you from Henderson and his wife for saving their kid. Mark was John's friend, he wasn't looking for handouts when he went to pull the guy out of a tight spot, but he hadn't exactly expected to come home to a lengthy investigation, no paycheck, and a looming court-martial, either. John needed the job, and the Hendersons wanted to feel like they were helping while their son was stuck at the VA in rehab for a ruined leg.
It kept John where the Air Force could find him, out of trouble and anonymous, and far away from home and his father's business. If he was going to flame out for playing the hero, John wasn't taking down his family name, too.
At least his picture wasn't making it into the papers anymore. It made it a lot easier to stand at the front of the store and learn how the cash registers worked when there wasn't his face right there on the newspaper rack.
After a month, John had figured out how the cash registers worked, how the safe worked, how the security cameras worked, and mostly felt like he had a handle on corralling the other night shift employees. So when Chuck Henderson brought in the new automated check-out machines, John had set to work learning those.
The two automated monsters were brand new, and a still somewhat unproven technology that posed a big security risk, even though they were supposed to be some new wave of the future and change the face of retail. It didn't exactly mean less work for the employees; the things were glitchy, the customers didn't know how to use them, other customers knew how to sneak products by them without scanning and paying up, and an employee had to babysit them. If it had been one of the slot machines by the door, sure, the customers would have been fine, but the automated check-out was not a solid bet.
Henderson's twenty-four-seven, high-tech store, however, was still just a grocery store on the outskirts of Las Vegas. John was the only employee with a university degree, and it happened to be one with an emphasis in technology. So that was where John spent most of his shifts, somewhere near the front of the store, keeping an eye on the self-checkout kiosks in case a brave customer decided to chance it.
And, thanks to those glitchy beasts, John's quiet Wednesday night shift went unexpectedly loud and entertaining around two AM.
“Unexpected item in bagging area.” The familiar report could be heard where John was helping restock the soup a few aisles away. He sighed and left the cart to the supervision of the empty row and headed for the self-checkout. The kiosk let out another annoyed complaint about thievery but John wasn't exactly worried about it; the machines were glitchy, people usually figured it out about the time he got there if he moved slow enough.
He slowed a little more when he heard someone talking to the machine, though, curious more than in a hurry. It was two AM, the kiosk blaring had interrupted God's Gonna Cut You Down over the speakers, so if he was going to go and interrupt Johnny Cash, the errant customer could just rant if he wanted to; John was game for the free laughs.
“It’s not unexpected, you digital fuck," came the annoyed grumble of the hassled-looking customer glaring at the kiosk touch-screen. The guy was probably John's age and talked with his hands, waving very adamantly at the weight table and then stabbing at the screen without touching it. "You literally just told me what it is. It’s right there. On the screen. I did the wavy-wave. You did the bleepy-bleep. Up until the point where you decided to have an electronic stroke, things were going exactly according to plan.”
John watched the man pick up the offending packet of tuna and wave it at the scanner again. It seemed to work, as he seemed to exhale and put it back down on the bagging tray. He picked up another item from his basket and prepared to scan it. Was that a Lunchables?
“Unexpected item in bagging area.”
Looking on from the edge of the aisle, John thought the man was going to blow a gasket, and he was very bad at not smiling about it. The customer lit into the computer screen again like he was used to a computer screen talking back.
“No. What you mean is that you haven’t been programmed right. Don’t go putting this on me, like I’ve somehow gone out of my way to surprise you. I’ve got places to be, man. I can’t be playing hide-the-actual-salami with the Terminator’s younger, shittier cousin.”
That got to him and John snorted, getting caught out for snooping as the customer looked over the top of the machine at him. John took it in stride and headed out of his hiding place. The customer continued to complain at the computer, but he had lowered his voice significantly.
“Oh, and now you’ve sent for backup. Well done. Now I have to deal with a human person who thinks I’m either an imbecile or a thief for not being able to work what’s effectively a bathroom scale with delusions of grandeur for the fourth time…"
By then, John had stepped up beside the annoyed customer and waited patiently for him to finish muttering at the computer. "Morning."
"It is, yes," replied the customer. He wore a badge, too, but his was a different kind of familiar; government, with the clearance level right there on it. Probably based out of Nellis but John was trying not to snoop that hard to actually read the thing. He saw the name though, M. Rodney McKay, with some little sharpied letters after that part that John couldn't quite make out.
"Having trouble, Mr. McKay?" John asked in his best retail-voice.
"What-" Rodney glanced down at his badge and then snapped it off at the clip to shove in a pocket. "Dr. McKay, thank you. And yes. It's not registering. The tuna. Or the. The- this."
The man seemed to lose a little ire as he held up the Lunchable that he hadn't been able to convince the machine existed.
"Well, let me take care of that for you," said John as he stepped up to the front of the machine. He had the RFID keycard from the lanyard in his hand and waved it deftly by the scanner. Instantly, the screen unlocked from the error it had been flashing at Dr. McKay.
"Of course. I work all day long with the world's most complicated and comprehensive technological systems,- as in on this entire planet, mind you- and I can't get a damn self-checkout to work. Then you just smile at the damn thing and it rolls over like Fido." The man balked, annoyed, and he waved a hand at the offensive screen. John raised an eyebrow.
"Long day, Doc?" John asked. He carefully tucked the keycard back in his pocket, rather liking the man's interpretation of the world that said his smile controlled the self-checkout.
"All twenty-four hours of it. This is my second lunch and dinner break was a long time ago," Rodney said, grumbling. John winced, familiar enough with those days.
"Are you from Nellis?"
"Sort of," replied the man with the government badge. John decided not to ask anymore questions at that. He glanced down at the few items that had made it past the scanner and the three still in Dr. McKay's hands. He had already run his card, so John closed him out with a few on-screen button-pushes and pulled the receipt. He collected it and the items in the bag on the scale and handed them to Rodney.
"Trade ya," he said. The customer frowned as he accepted the bag and handed over what was left of his lunch; a pack of tuna, a Lunchables, and a PowerBar. They were scanned in without error, much to McKay's annoyance, and John marked them all the way down, zeroing out the cost, and printing out the receipt again. Then he tucked them in the bag he had given the customer as the man stared, confused.
"I was going to pay-" he began, but John shook his head and shrugged.
"You did. It's on the receipt," he replied.
"But you just-"
"I got a full eight and a half hours sleep this afternoon," John said, lying through his smiling teeth. "So I just added the military discount in there for you, along with the grievance coupon for testing the automated checkout for us. You're all set, Doc."
"But I'm Canadian," said McKay. "Not- not military. Just a contractor. No discount-"
Amused by the way the man had gone from angry enough to murder a computer to completely off guard, John shrugged again. "Well, I'm a pilot. So you got mine."
Rodney blinked at him but accepted it. "Oh. Good. Well. Thank you."
"Sure thing, Doc. Good luck with the rest of the day, huh?"
That seemed to knock the man back to reality and McKay was suddenly checking his watch, swearing again under his breath. He looked back up at John and nodded, but he was definitely in a bigger hurry.
"Right. I gotta get back. The timer's almost up," he said. He gave an awkward wave and then hurried for the door. John leaned against the kiosk to watch the man leave, just to make sure he didn't run into the sliding glass doors or anything. Dr. McKay made it to his car and was driving away a couple minutes later, from the glare of the headlights John saw flash across the door. He turned his attention back to the self-checkout and printed a copy of the discounted receipt so he could leave some cash and a note for Henderson to make sure the write-off got logged in the books properly.
He went back to work, more than a little entertained by the brief encounter at the self-checkout, and feeling like he had done his good deed for the day. If Dr. McKay was "sort of" contracted out of Nellis AFB, then he probably worked for one of the off-the-books projects that were littered around the desert south of Vegas, so maybe John buying the man lunch had just saved the planet from little green aliens or something. Not that John had personally seen Area 51, but he was pretty sure the Air Force overpaid for everything except salaries, so he liked to believe that extra money they spent went somewhere useful, like a secret research base in the desert.
A few hours later, at quitting time, John closed out his shift and headed for his borrowed car. That was the weird thing about his life now; he had a perfectly good car of his own back home, but he hadn't seen his dad since the visit at the hospital, and John was looking to keep it that way until after the court-martial, one way or another. He didn't want to risk his dad meddling in John's case, calling in favors and messing things up. Major John Sheppard had gotten himself into and out of trouble enough to warrant the court-martial in the first place, so he wasn't going to go begging anybody for shortcuts after the fact.
So he borrowed Mark's car while Mark was in the hospital, and he borrowed a room in the Hendersons' guest house. And he borrowed their dogs for the random game of fetch and tug o’war, too. John was kind of just limping along in someone else's life while his was in stasis.
And the borrowed car didn't want to start.
John listened to the grinding when he turned the key and tried it a third time just to really drive it all home. He stuck his head under the hood and could easily see the source of the trouble now that the sun was up. It wasn't on the top of John's list to fight with the alternator after a full shift, and he was tired, so he ditched his work gear in the backseat, locked everything up, and walked across the parking lot to wait for the bus. It would get him across town, past all the noise of the Strip, and he could walk the rest of the way to the Henderson's.
The bus was certainly interesting coming off the graveyard shift in Vegas. There were only a few other people on the bus, including the driver, and John slouched in his own space in an open bench in the middle.
A smarmy, greasy looking guy kept trying to talk up a young woman in short-shorts and a tube top. She had on bright night makeup and her hair was poofy from some kind of styling, so she was probably a stage girl, but there was a three-inch thick book in her lap that made her slightly formidable. John kept an eye on the scene all the same, but the other man seemed to just like talking. The woman and her book politely said as little as possible and tried to ignore the guy in the shiny collared shirt with the funky paisley print for the whole ride, and she got off the bus when John did, leaving the cardshark to his failure.
John offered her a smile and a nod, amused despite himself as she went to sit on the stop bench to wait for the bus to come back. The woman didn't seem to notice, her nose stuck in the book, and she knew how to handle herself. She had plans, given the science book in her lap, and probably had her shit more together than John did. So he took himself over to a nearby diner to get dinner before trying to walk out into the desert's field of McMansions.
His watch informed him it was now after 8am, so John stopped at a payphone and pulled a few coins out of his wallet. Because Mark was still in the hospital, his parents extended their paranoia to their house-guest, and John was definitely not making it home on schedule. So he let them know he was grabbing breakfast and would head back afterwards.
"It's still over two miles to the Strip, Major," Mrs. Henderson chided. "We can go get you. You should have called from the store! It's even our car that crapped out on you-"
"Nobody knew the alternator was going to give out, Mrs. H. I'm fine, everything's fine, I can walk," John tried to assure her. But she wouldn't be settled. She told him he should go enjoy his breakfast, but there would be no walking in the desert at 9am when he was done, and to look for her in an hour and wait until she got there.
"Yes, ma'am," John promised. He hung up the phone and went into the diner, because now it was an order.
There were a lot of tourists crowding the booths along the windows, and the guys with the hangovers were bent over their coffee and steak breakfasts along the bar. That seemed more John’s speed for the morning, at the end of his shift, and he headed for one of the spinning stools. It occurred to him as he sat down that he may need to actually pay for the meal, so he pulled out his wallet to be sure he had some cash before the morning-cheerful waitress showed up.
“Coffee?” she chirped. John nodded and smiled and shoved his wallet back in his pocket as he looked up.
“Sure. And something with steak and potatoes in it. Skip the whole menu-reading-thing,” he replied.
“You got it!” The woman quickly scribbled it down and scooted off to deliver the new order ticket, leaving John to himself. He glanced to the side when he felt someone staring and was surprised to see he was one bar-stool away from the customer who had argued with the checkouts that morning. He was all the way across town, nowhere near the Henderson’s store, or Nellis, and ran into the same Canadian non-military contractor. What were the odds of that happening twice?
“Hey again, Dr. McKay. On the third lunch break this time?” he asked. The man seemed tired but almost amused and he huffed at the comment.
“Done. Very, very done,” he replied. It almost seemed like he remembered John, like he was just as surprised to see him in the diner as he had been annoyed at the computer. “As I assume you are, given that the name tag has disappeared. It was… John, wasn’t it? Jack? Something J...”
At least he was honest. John nodded and grinned at him, offering his hand over. “John Sheppard, the guy with the checkouts…”
“And military discounts,” replied McKay.
“The whole rank of Major’s gotta be good for something at this point,” John said, shrugging it off. The brass was still trying to sort out if he got to keep that rank, but it wasn’t like McKay needed to know that.
“Yeah, well, don’t take this the wrong way, Major, but I hope that stupid checkout fried itself out. It set the tone for the entire rest of my day, and we were at the end of a project, so that was not helpful,” said McKay. “Like the damn thing jumped on the network and alerted the Union.”
Amused, John offered a sympathetic wince and shook his head. “Nope, sorry. Just you.”
“That figures,” said McKay. He stabbed his fork at the eggs on his plate.
“Hey, I hear you. The alternator died on my rental so I had to listen to this guy recite Pi to fifty digits to some woman on the bus, and I happen to know he fucking got all of them wrong. It’s definitely been a day,” John said. McKay looked up at him again, a different kind of surprised.
“Well, I guess you win there. My car still works, so I at least wasn’t subjected to that particular level of hell,” he replied.
The waitress showed up with John’s coffee then as McKay carefully prodded at how John had any business at all knowing to recognize the wrong digits of Pi without outright asking about it.
"But you're working at a grocery store?" was the inevitable question, because pilots weren't supposed to be working at grocery stores and subtle didn't seem to be a word Rodney McKay was familiar with. John sighed, sipped at his coffee. The day just kept getting better.
"Well, as it turns out, they like to do a little bit of a review after a pilot steals a chopper to break his team out from behind the lines," he said, quietly. "And I get to cool my heels in the desert until they sort things out."
"That was you?" McKay blurted. But he did keep his voice down. John made a face at him for it.
"I didn't say it was, but if it was, good bet I would rather not advertise," he replied.
"Right, sure," said McKay. And that was the only real acknowledgment of it. "I've… worked with teams like that before. They're… pretty tight crews. The leave no man behind, sort."
"Good crews, in my experience," said John.
"One sent me to assignment in Siberia once," Rodney said, and it almost sounded like he was claiming it, proud of it. "I don't exactly fit in those teams. But I get how they work now. You don't get in their way."
John shrugged. "Nope."
"Well, if you're a pilot, did you get to work with any experimental craft? One of my early projects-" John nearly choked on his coffee as the man nearly rambled his way into state secrets in the middle of a breakfast diner. It seemed to be enough of a reminder because McKay paused, went slightly wide-eyed, and then shoved a spoonful of eggs in his mouth. "Well, I guess it depends on how early you want to go. I built a reactor as a science fair experiment when I was a kid, so I have been all over, working so many things."
"And some don't work, huh? Like that self-checkout incident," added John, amused at the odd recovery. Rodney scrunched his nose.
"As you said, it's been a long day."
"I'm starting to suspect you've been awake too long to be safe to drive, Dr. McKay," John offered, not actually joking. McKay looked over at him, considering the truth of it. He finally shrugged.
"You're probably not wrong, but I'm not leaving my car here, either," he replied. John nodded; the neighborhood wasn't the best for leaving expensive things unattended. He now wanted to know more about how a kid built a nuke for the science fair and figured the stranger was just punchy and tired enough to tell him all about it, but it would only lead the scientist into trouble in his state.
So he steered him carefully onto the topic of the nuclear energy talk scheduled for the environmental conference being held at the Bellagio that week instead. John had put up fliers for the conference at the store, walked by them every day, so he had the names on the mini-posters memorized. McKay, on the other hand, knew the speakers personally, and didn't seem to like them much.
"You realize there's a reason they chose Las Vegas for this conference, don't you?" he said, dismissive and annoyed. "It's a desert, it's a broken-statue away from being post-apocalyptic. Scare people while they're surrounded by wealth and spending money, open their wallets a little… but that's not what climate change will look like. Not exactly. They're creating an inaccurate premise right from the start and think they're being clever. I mean, have you read their work? It's like they forgot Tolkien wrote fiction."
John sniggered behind his coffee mug as Rodney worked himself up about people with their names on illuminated billboards. "So I guess you're not going then."
"Unfortunately I might have to. I already know more than them. I should take over their Q&A afterwards." This was grumbled with a scowl and rolling of the eyes that belied pure skill in the art of the Grump and John was again hiding a grin behind his coffee cup. Rodney glanced over at him then, that look of surprise peeking over again as he asked if John would be attending the environmental science conference.
"Not exactly my line of work," John replied. He sat back as the waitress brought his food, protecting the last of his drink and staying out of the way as the two plates were set down. "The Cold War Flight exhibit at the Grand is more my speed."
And McKay, unsurprisingly, had things to say about Cold War era flight technology. John settled in to listen as the stranger expounded on fully familiar topics then, offered up his own take once or twice between mouthfuls of steak and eggs. It wasn't the halting back and forth with somebody he didn't know, though, which was fully weird.
Not that John subscribed to the whole new-age scene with their vibes and auras or something, but Rodney Smarter Than the Self-checkout McKay was weirdly comfortable to be around. He was always mad at something, so far, it was right there in his voice, on every word, but it wasn't the kind of mad that promised violence or a threat at all. More like an annoyance that John felt very keenly lately; things would be fine if everyone else would just get out of the way and let them do their thing.
Not that Sheppard didn't like people. The Hendersons were nice, good people, and John missed his team. But he wasn't getting the team back, and he was stuck in the middle of nowhere waiting to find out if he was a pilot or a discharge case. All he wanted was to get back to work, somewhere he didn't have to stock baby food jars. John felt the man's tired annoyance down pretty deep.
They went a few rounds, talking, debating, John listening, about planes and not-classified tech as old as they were. Rodney had finished his meal long ago and his coffee mug had been refilled twice before John had finished eating, and they were still talking the whole time. But McKay had steadily wilted as he talked, slouching over an elbow, chin in his hand.
"I've got an idea," John announced as he slid his plate away and looked around for the waitress. McKay blinked at him, making an effort to follow the sudden topic shift.
"What idea?" he asked.
"I drive you home, to make sure you get there. And my ride can pick me up from there," he said. The waitress showed up then to trade dirty dishes for the tab, giving John the excuse to dig for his wallet again rather than consider the fact that he had just offered to play taxi for a random person he had met at the store. Rodney stared at him, half asleep if he was anything, and someone that tired shouldn't have to drive in a tourist town, that was just basic public safety.
Because public safety was definitely high up on John's job description lately.
John placed the cash on the bar under his empty coffee mug before looking over at Rodney. The man still looked stuck, which John figured just proved him right. Weird or not, he was right. "Look, I kept you here talking. You could have gone home a half an hour ago. If Uncle Sam can trust me to fly a fighter, I promise to take care of your car."
"It's a rental," said McKay. John nodded encouragingly.
"See, there you go. Not even your car. Just another taxi," he said. And it worked. Rodney saw the logic and allowed it.
"For the record, I can drive myself. I did get a nap. Yesterday, I think," Rodney said. He led the way to his car, where they waited at the door for Mrs. Henderson to show up.
"You probably could," John allowed with a shrug. "But in this case you don't have to, so why risk it?"
"I work for the government. I can find out where you live," McKay added, a hollow threat against the basic security training the man had to have gotten grilled into his head as any kind of science contractor. Especially one who had built a nuke as a kid and then grew up to work on experimental aircraft projects. John just shrugged, looked out at the road that led off to the Strip.
"I'm not exactly hard to find at the moment," he pointed out.
Rodney seemed to visibly settle a little more with the plan when the old truck pulled up next to them, with little Mrs. Henderson sat behind the wheel. John cleared the plan with her and she agreed to follow. Rodney went back to talking about Russian fighter jets in the drive to his place, which turned out to be some bungalow apartments not far off the main drag out to the Hendersons' place. He pointed out the designated parking place and seemed perfectly happy to have been chauffeured home.
“Yes, well, that's a date then," he said. He held his hand over the center console for the car keys. It was John's turn to be confused and he stared back.
“It's a what now?”
Rodney waved his hand vaguely, not at all concerned. “A date. Cold War Tech exhibit at the Grand. A night time excursion on a day off. With intent to enjoy oneself rather than sit home and watch Star Trek.”
Catching up slowly, John handed the man the keys. But he was still confused, for a whole new reason, too. “What's wrong with Star Trek?”
“Nothing, aside from everything," said Rodney with a shrug. "None of their science is actually possible as they presented it. They're constantly sitting on control panels and when's the last time you sat on a keyboard and it didn't blow something up. Space doesn't fix that. The only way any of it works is if you ignore it.”
“You must love Star Wars," said John, amused but somehow feeling a little let down, too. Rodney made a dismissive noise and scrunched his face at the comment.
“You don't have to only like one or the other," he replied. John grinned at him.
“Now there's a thought. So it's a date then. Wednesday.”
As confirmation, Rodney dug into the backpack at his feet for a notebook page, scrounged a pen from the dash, and wrote it down. Along with a phone number. John took it but frowned.
"I don't actually have one of these at the moment. Kinda… between assignments," he said, waving the paper and the phone number on it.
"No cell phones in Sheppardland?" Rodney asked.
"Not for a couple of years, no," he admitted. "Haven't thought about it since the divorce, really. Everyone's always… just around."
Starting to get out of the car, Rodney shrugged. "Maybe think about it. It's not like she can take the new phone, too."
The man had a point. And before Mrs. Henderson drove John home, they stopped at one of the many tech stores in the city and John bought himself a cheap phone. The things were definitely more useful than the payphones. And maybe he had found himself a friend to talk to on the other end of the line again.