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Chapter 12
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macgyverdeleted -- but in this, the non-AU AU (are you following that?), Mac and Nikki did not, in fact, do anything as sensible as jump each other's bones between chapters 11 and 12.
Nikki woke up, trying to puzzle out what was missing. The bed was very short and the rough wood of the ceiling was very close, close enough to touch – right. She was still up at the cabin, and she really needed to get out of bed and radio for the helicopter pickup that she’d had to cancel the day before. Bed was the lower bunkbed in MacGyver’s granddaughters’ bedroom – AnnaRose’s bed, apparently; Petra had the upper bunk. AnnaRose, it seemed, was the only one of Mac’s descendents to have inherited his distaste for heights.
And if she’s anything like her grandfather, she’ll cope with it by becoming a tightrope walker. Or an astronaut.
The spare bedroom wasn’t very large, but the sparse furniture kept it from seeming cramped. Morning sunlight was streaming in through a good-sized window, and Nikki could hear birds outside, and the enthusiastic clatter of the river. She had no idea what kind of birds they were. I bet MacGyver knows them. All of them. Probably as individuals. I’d better not ask. She found a large, loose flannel shirt in a cheerful red and black plaid draped over the inside door handle and wrapped it around herself, then went back to the window and pushed it open, leaning her elbows against the sill.
The morning smelled fresh and clean and alive, and was somehow both noisy and oddly quiet. Nikki spotted one particular bird in a tree barely a dozen yards away, a tiny brown thing half the size of a small pigeon, belting out enough music to drown out a radio, if there had been a radio to drown out. Okay, that was it: the missing element. There was plenty to listen to around her, but underneath it all was a deep stillness. There was no sound anywhere within earshot that didn’t have a natural cause – no hum of traffic, no half-heard radio or TV chatter, no voices calling, no bass thumping from some damned jerk’s overcranked stereo. Her ears were used to tuning out the background hum of a crowded city, and in the absence of anything to tune out, the silence seemed deafening.
MacGyver would say I’ve been in the city too long . . . but damn it, somebody’s got to keep things going.
She could smell woodsmoke, and hoped that that meant breakfast. Strange to know that the smell couldn’t be coming from a neighbour. Not with the nearest neighbour miles and miles away.
It didn’t mean breakfast; it did mean that the cabin was warm and cozy. Mac was sitting at the table, wearing what looked like the same shirt as yesterday – another plaid flannel, green and blue this time. He was bent over some task that had covered the table in white patches, too absorbed to look up when Nikki emerged from the girls’ bedroom.
“Morning, mountain man. I don’t suppose there’s a prayer of coffee, is there?” Nikki remembered with annoyance that there probably wouldn’t even be coffee makings available – Mac still didn’t drink the stuff, and he obviously wasn’t going to be feeding it to his grandkids.
“Check the cabinet by the fridge . . . I think Sam might’ve left something the last time he was up here. Lisa drinks espresso. And there’s about fifty million kinds of herbal tea.”
Mac obviously hadn’t shaved. She wondered if he had slept; but his eyes were sharp and bright, without the haunted shadows she’d seen so clearly last night.
Nikki looked at the table to see what he was messing around with. “Index cards? Isn’t that a little, well . . . ”
“What?”
“Um, quaint? Nostalgic? Low-tech?”
“Neo-Luddite?” Mac grinned.
“Yeah, that’s the word.” She cocked her head sideways, trying to puzzle out the scrawls on the cards. Mac’s writing had always been terrible: there was an old story at Phoenix that Willis had once created a nearly unbeatable code system based on Mac’s handwriting.
The full chapter is here on ff.net. It has text spacers.
'Beth
April 2010
macgyverdeleted -- but in this, the non-AU AU (are you following that?), Mac and Nikki did not, in fact, do anything as sensible as jump each other's bones between chapters 11 and 12. Reverb
Chapter Twelve: Interrogative
- - -
Nikki woke up, trying to puzzle out what was missing. The bed was very short and the rough wood of the ceiling was very close, close enough to touch – right. She was still up at the cabin, and she really needed to get out of bed and radio for the helicopter pickup that she’d had to cancel the day before. Bed was the lower bunkbed in MacGyver’s granddaughters’ bedroom – AnnaRose’s bed, apparently; Petra had the upper bunk. AnnaRose, it seemed, was the only one of Mac’s descendents to have inherited his distaste for heights.
And if she’s anything like her grandfather, she’ll cope with it by becoming a tightrope walker. Or an astronaut.
The spare bedroom wasn’t very large, but the sparse furniture kept it from seeming cramped. Morning sunlight was streaming in through a good-sized window, and Nikki could hear birds outside, and the enthusiastic clatter of the river. She had no idea what kind of birds they were. I bet MacGyver knows them. All of them. Probably as individuals. I’d better not ask. She found a large, loose flannel shirt in a cheerful red and black plaid draped over the inside door handle and wrapped it around herself, then went back to the window and pushed it open, leaning her elbows against the sill.
The morning smelled fresh and clean and alive, and was somehow both noisy and oddly quiet. Nikki spotted one particular bird in a tree barely a dozen yards away, a tiny brown thing half the size of a small pigeon, belting out enough music to drown out a radio, if there had been a radio to drown out. Okay, that was it: the missing element. There was plenty to listen to around her, but underneath it all was a deep stillness. There was no sound anywhere within earshot that didn’t have a natural cause – no hum of traffic, no half-heard radio or TV chatter, no voices calling, no bass thumping from some damned jerk’s overcranked stereo. Her ears were used to tuning out the background hum of a crowded city, and in the absence of anything to tune out, the silence seemed deafening.
MacGyver would say I’ve been in the city too long . . . but damn it, somebody’s got to keep things going.
She could smell woodsmoke, and hoped that that meant breakfast. Strange to know that the smell couldn’t be coming from a neighbour. Not with the nearest neighbour miles and miles away.
It didn’t mean breakfast; it did mean that the cabin was warm and cozy. Mac was sitting at the table, wearing what looked like the same shirt as yesterday – another plaid flannel, green and blue this time. He was bent over some task that had covered the table in white patches, too absorbed to look up when Nikki emerged from the girls’ bedroom.
“Morning, mountain man. I don’t suppose there’s a prayer of coffee, is there?” Nikki remembered with annoyance that there probably wouldn’t even be coffee makings available – Mac still didn’t drink the stuff, and he obviously wasn’t going to be feeding it to his grandkids.
“Check the cabinet by the fridge . . . I think Sam might’ve left something the last time he was up here. Lisa drinks espresso. And there’s about fifty million kinds of herbal tea.”
Mac obviously hadn’t shaved. She wondered if he had slept; but his eyes were sharp and bright, without the haunted shadows she’d seen so clearly last night.
Nikki looked at the table to see what he was messing around with. “Index cards? Isn’t that a little, well . . . ”
“What?”
“Um, quaint? Nostalgic? Low-tech?”
“Neo-Luddite?” Mac grinned.
“Yeah, that’s the word.” She cocked her head sideways, trying to puzzle out the scrawls on the cards. Mac’s writing had always been terrible: there was an old story at Phoenix that Willis had once created a nearly unbeatable code system based on Mac’s handwriting.
- - -
The full chapter is here on ff.net. It has text spacers.
'Beth
April 2010