John stopped in precisely the wrong spot, and someone slammed into him from behind and cursed. He ignored it. "McKay," he said, slowly, "you told me we were here to pick up Elizabeth."

McKay waved a hand and pointed at the check-in counter. "I lied," he said, in the same tone one might say "nice weather we're having". "Come on, I left us extra time to clear security, but I wasn't expecting a line like this."

The "line like this" overflowed the ropes. John took one look at it and closed his eyes. He ran through all the hundred different ways he could possibly say no, no, absolutely not, forget about it.

"Where are we going?" he said instead.

McKay beamed. "Somewhere far away from here. With beautiful women wearing very little clothing and those frozen drinks in the coconut shells. Oh, hey, now that I don't have to be secretive anymore, you can take this." He unloaded one of the backpacks he was carrying -- John had thought it was suspicious for McKay to be hauling two of them, particularly just to pick someone up from the airport, but he'd learned better than to question -- and shoved it against John's chest. It took John a second to realize it was his own.

"I might have mentioned," he said, slowly, "how much I despise commercial air travel."

"It'll be fine," McKay said. "Besides. Coconut shells."

Someone ran over John's foot with a luggage cart.

*

The wand beeped. John gritted his teeth. The wand beeped again.

"Sir," the man in uniform said. "I'll need you to step over here for a minute."

"This is so your fault," John hissed at McKay.

McKay looked far too smug. "Someone's gonna be in tro-ouble," he singsonged.

John decided right then and there: McKay was on blowjob hiatus. Perhaps for the rest of his natural life.

*

"It's not like you can't get them back," McKay said. "They even let you mail them to yourself and everything. I didn't think you'd be carrying that much, though. Have you been taking lessons from Ronon?"

John let his head rest against the plane's window and thought longingly of his nice, plain, boring room in BOQ. His quiet room in BOQ.

"I mean, they didn't even need to run your ID," McKay said. "Which was nice of them. But, you have to admit, kind of worrying. I mean --" He sat up, suddenly. "What if you hadn't been who you said you were? You could have been some kind of --"

John reached over without even looking. His palm smacked against McKay's mouth like a homing beacon. "Shut up," he said. McKay subsided, grumbling softly against John's hand; John gave it a minute, and then let his hand fall.

"Besides," McKay said, every inch of it imbued with a false sense of cheer, "they haven't taken off yet, so we couldn't have delayed the flight too much."

Which, of course, was the cue for the intercom to crackle into life. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the pilot speaking. We've, uh, run into a few mechanical difficulties..."

Maybe "the rest of his natural life" wasn't harsh enough.

*

"Just another ten minutes, folks, we've just got some more paperwork to fill out..."

"He said that fifteen minutes ago. And fifteen minutes before that. Is it hot in here, or is it just me? I'm starting to feel a little, you know. Cramped. But it really is hot in here, right, because you're sweating too. I think I heard once that they can't run the air conditioning while the plane's on the ground. I --"

Hand. Mouth. "I will kill you in your sleep, McKay."

The kid behind them started kicking John's seat.

*

John slowly and carefully, with exquisite control, removed his fingernails from his jeans and forced his hands flat against his thighs. Any landing you could walk away from was a good landing, he reminded himself. That must mean, by extension, that any takeoff you were still in the air after was a good one. Right?

"Wow," McKay said. "I have never appreciated inertial dampeners more in my entire life."

"Your sleep," John said, for the hundredth time.

"Bikinis," McKay shot back. "Coconut shells. Nobody trying to kill us."

"Nobody trying to kill me. Jury's still out on you."

"You wouldn't kill me," McKay said, far too smug. "You haven't figured out where I stash my coffee yet."

In the front of the cabin, a baby started crying. John wondered if it was too late to kill the co-pilot, hide his body in the luggage compartment, and take his place.

*

"You didn't mention the layover."

"You didn't ask."

"You didn't mention the layover when we were sitting on the ground for two hours, making us miss the layover."

"They said there were a few seats left on the next plane out."

"They will never find your body. Ever."

The old guy sitting next to John in the waiting area burped again. John held his breath until the fumes dissipated slightly.

*

"I can't believe you made me threaten to handcuff you to the seat to get you back on this plane."

John stayed firmly silent.

"I can't believe you made me actually drag you by the belt loop."

He did his very best to project "la la la la I can't hear you" without actually stooping to saying it.

"I can't believe what you said to that poor man who is just doing his job, and believe me, I can believe a lot of exceedingly rude conversations."

La la la.

"Fine," McKay huffed, and turned around to drop back into his seat -- of course they hadn't been able to get seats together. John was beginning to wonder if they would have been luckier to get seats on entirely separate sides of the plane.

The woman sitting in the window seat looked up at John over her knitting. "Scared of flying?" she asked, full of sympathy.

"Scared of other people's flying," John said, grimly, and tried not to think about the landing.

*

"How could you have even checked baggage in the first place? You didn't take anything out of the car with you."

McKay paused in haranguing the harassed-looking woman sitting behind the Lost Luggage counter long enough to throw an annoyed look at John. "I had someone bring it over earlier. They'll find it. Eventually."

"We recover 80% of lost luggage within 24 hours," the woman said.

John counted to ten. In Farsi. When it didn't help, he ran through all the prime numbers under 100, and then did it all again in Serbian.

"Look on the bright side," McKay said. "Only half the things I packed were yours."

*

"Okay," John finally said, after he'd gotten a chance to shower the airport filth off his skin, after he'd put McKay through the carefully-calculated duration of silent treatment, and, most importantly, after three beers from the swim-up bar. "Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all."

"Told you I was a genius," McKay said smugly from underneath his beach umbrella.

John adjusted his sunglasses and stretched out on the towel. "But you're paying for the plane we're chartering so I can fly us home."

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