Okay, it would probably help if you'd seen every Nikki ep, but a familiarity with 'GX-1' in particular would really help. However, the most important thing is that they really annoy each other *g*.
This is probably going to read largely like a Jack O'Neill fic, mostly because Mac basically turns *into* Jack when he's around Nikki. Heh. Can you see why I love them now?
Oh, and I told you this was cheesy, right? Mac/Nikki.
Many thanks to nel_ani and svendra. You know why.
*
It was official - he had a new favourite activity: glaring.
And it was beginning to bother him how much he was enjoying it. Mostly because, where she was involved, there wasn't much else to enjoy. He had to try and derive *some* kind of pleasure from their 'association'. God knew he wasn't about to find said pleasure in any other way.
He liked to think he was a pretty good-natured guy in general. Sure, like everyone else he had his bad days, but he generally got along well with everyone (well, apart from all those people who tried to kill him on occasion - but what did they matter?).
Not her. Ohhhh, but not her. Every. Little. Thing. she did seemed designed to aggravate him. And it aggravated him that it aggravated him.
Because he was a good-natured guy. He was!
Yet take right now, for instance. Just the fact that he could feel the pressure of her back against his was *irritating* him, because it reminded him all too much of how they'd ended up like this in the first place.
It was ridiculous that they'd ended here again (obviously he must have been a pretty nasty guy in a former life, because he seemed to be paying off karma at an astounding rate) - half way up a mountain trail, sharing a sleeping bag.
Heck, they shouldn't have even been near each other! She'd clearly never wanted to work with him again, even going so far as having a clause put into her contract that stipulated that she worked alone unless circumstances absolutely dictated otherwise. And yeah, while his name wasn't mentioned specifically, he was in no doubt that what she actually wanted it to say was:
'I'll never work with MacGyver again! Ever ever ever!'
It would have bothered him that someone could actively dislike him so much, were it not for the fact that he felt exactly the same way about her.
So he glared. It didn't matter that she couldn't actually see him glaring 'at' her; the fact that he was doing it at all managed to illicit some vague feeling of satisfaction. In fact, he'd been doing it a lot lately.
Those times they passed by each other in the corridors of the Foundation, or when they were occasionally in Pete's office together. The entire time - looking at her or not - he'd be glaring.
Pete had asked him if he'd developed an astigmatism.
At the very least, though their sleeping arrangements seemed identical to those they'd been forced to share before, at least the situations leading up to them had been different.
This time, it wasn't a crashed plane he was looking for, but a weather balloon, one that - courtesy of the Phoenix Foundation - had been accompanied by the latest in weather telemetry equipment, specifically designed to measure how far the spread of pollution was travelling. Not only did they want the equipment and information, but naturally they also wanted to know what caused the thing to crash in the first place.
MacGyver had actually been looking forward to it. His entire life he'd enjoyed this kind of thing - walking through forests, up mountains; in a way it felt like giving to the land rather than taking away from it. He'd been calm, relaxed, and entirely at peace.
Until he'd heard that voice.
He'd thought he'd imagined it at first, even hoped he had (maybe a flashback to prior unpleasantness in similar surroundings? Completely understandable, really...), but no.
The voice only got louder, and closer. And it was definitely calling his name.
Nikki had appeared soon after he stopped, stumbling through the brush (at least there was a path she could follow), looking as bedraggled and unprepared as last time - with nothing but the clothes on her back and the shoes on her feet.
MacGyver had quietly chosen to ignore the fact that that was how *he* faced most situations, and quickly asked her what the heck she was doing there.
She'd been vacationing of all things (no wonder Pete hadn't told him. If he'd known she was going to be in the general area he would have asked if someone else could handle this one - a sad testimony to just how much his loathing of this woman was taking over his life.), but in her own words, she 'should have known that wouldn't get me away from Pete for long'.
Yeah, he knew how that felt.
Having foolishly giving her contact information to the Foundation, Pete had used said information, knowing it'd be the fastest way to get to MacGyver.
And the news she'd brought to him *was* useful *and* important... but did it really have to be brought by her?
In any case, someone had gotten their figures wrong; he would have been looking in completely the wrong search area - something that would have set him back days. So once again, he'd been forced to grit his teeth and thank her.
As dusk had fast been approaching it wasn't safe for her to head back down the trail, so they'd had to set up camp. Together. Again.
And he couldn't - in all good conscience - let her risk exposure; and also not wanting the same fate for himself he had no choice - he offered the use of his sleeping bag again.
The only good thing about this, he mused, was that it was big enough for two.
Well, that and the glaring.
Body heat. That was another plus. Should the temperature plummet, that'd help keep both of them comfortable. He was a pragmatist after all; he could assess a situation and know precisely what the pros and cons were. Sure, he *preferred* to be optimistic, but that didn't mean he didn't understand realism.
MacGyver's glare lessened a little, as he began to feel more like his usual self.
And the biggest pro of all? Since they'd climbed into the sleeping bag some two hours ago (the name 'sleeping bag' being something of a misnomer - he hadn't approached anything even resembling sleep) she hadn't uttered a single word. That alone was enough to give him some vague feeling of relaxation so - finally - stopping the glaring at some pine tree that was unfortunate enough to be seen most easily by the light from their fire, he sighed heavily, closed his eyes, and stopped thinking about her.
"Will you *please* go to sleep?"
Mac's eyes snapped open. The glare returned. "Well now that you've ordered me to, of *course* I will."
"You've been muttering and mumbling over there for the last two hours," she told him, "and it's grating on my very last nerve."
Ohhhh. Oh! "Maybe you should practise what you preach."
"What does that mean?"
Lying on his right side, he turned his head as far to the left as possible. "It means that all evidence points to the fact that you're currently awake, too! It's hardly my fault that you're spending so much time concentrating on me that you can't fall asleep." Yes, that may have been nicely ironic - but it felt good to say.
"Oh!" There she went, suddenly moving in the bag, pushing him further towards his edge. Felt like she was sitting up... "You egocentric, *sexist*-"
She did that on purpose - she had to have. She knew by now how very much that word annoyed him. He moved almost before he was aware of it, twisting inside the bag (not without some struggling) until - yup - he was facing her. "I am *not* a sexist!"
Nikki wasn't even listening. "I cannot believe you're presuming that thoughts of you - you! - were keeping me awake! Like a man has to be the only thing a woman thinks about at night, right?"
He couldn't let that one go. He just couldn't. "Oh, you know that's not what I meant! But why am I surprised? You've gone out of your way to misinterpret every single thing I've said since we first met-"
"I mean it's not like I have career or a life outside of you! No, my whole *life* revolves around dreaming over the wonderfulness of MacGyver-"
"-always thinking the worst, always presuming that for some reason I'd *want* to demean or embarrass you. Newsflash, Nikki - you're not that important."
"-oh poor me, all alone, sighing over a guy who's already sighing over a Heidi or a Deborah, or whoever the latest woman is!"
"Oh please, what about Helmut?!"
Mac realised she wasn't going to stop somewhere around he 'was a pig who lived in a fantasy world'. And in fact, when they'd argued before, she'd never stopped unless Pete (noticeably absent) interrupted, or she'd stopped herself (didn't seem likely).
So after five attempts of asking as nicely as possible (well, as nicely as he could manage) that she please stop talking, he did the only thing he could.
He put his hand over her mouth.
She was so involved in ranting at him that she actually mumbled a few words before stopping, her eyes opening wide.
And there was the muffled cry of outrage.
"Look," he said, keeping his hand where it was despite her attempts at slapping it away (though he did keep as much attention as he could on how much her legs were capable of moving inside the sleeping bag - he vividly remembered the first time they'd met). "Before you go screaming about this being sexist, know that this has nothing to do with you being a woman, and everything to do with the fact that you're bugging the heck out of me. Okay?"
Nodding, she folded her arms across her chest even as she glared.
Good. "I think it's clear to every living thing in this forest that you and I don't get along. I suggest that - if only for their sake - we stop talking, turn away from each other, and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning you can head back down the trail, I can keep going up the trail, and we can forget that we were ever forced to see each other." Taking the chance, he slowly pulled his hand away from her mouth. "Now, what do you say to that?"
He should have known it was coming. He really should have.
"I cannot believe you put your hand over my mouth."
It was the last of the very last straws. Something snapped (quite possibly his sanity).
"What *is* it with you? Seriously, is it your mission in life to tick me off? Do you deliberately do everything you can to annoy, aggravate, and irritate me? You hear this tone in my voice?" He pointed at himself. "I don't like it! It's not my tone. I don't *talk* like this! Do you get some kind of perverse kick from the fact that you make me want to...want to..."
"Do what?"
"I don't know; something!" He leant closer to her the longer he spoke, determined to get his point across. "God only knows it can't be anything good, because *nothing* relating to you is goo-"
He wasn't entirely sure that it wasn't an accident, though Mac could only speak for himself in thinking that he hadn't consciously meant to end up with his lips pressing against hers.
Really.
Because kissing her? It had to be *so* much more trouble than it was worth.
Though he began to think that the longer they kissed (she wasn't pulling away and punching him? Why wasn't she punching him?), that maybe this kind of trouble would be worth it...
No. This was Nikki!
His hands - which seemed to be enjoying the way they wrapped around her - suddenly pulled away, grasping the top of her arms and pushing her back. "What the heck was that?!"
Blinking, flushed, for once she didn't seem to have a smart alec reply. Until she thought of one. "I think you kissed me."
"Woah, woah, wait a minute. *I* kissed *you*? And what do you mean you 'think'?"
"Oh you definitely kissed me, MacGyver. You're lucky I'm so forgiving or I might have to report that kind of harassment to Pete. As for 'thinking'...well, it didn't really have much impact."
"Are you saying I'm a bad kisser?" Something else that annoyed him more than it probably should have. "And you kissed me."
"I'm saying you could do with some improvement," she replied thoughtfully, "and I did not kiss you."
His imagination wasn't that good. "Yes, you did."
"No," Nikki insisted, "me kissing you would feel like *this*."
Her right hand lifted up to the back of his head, pushing it down towards hers. He would not be outdone by her. He would not. So even as he really, really enjoyed what her mouth was doing (dammit!), he tried to study every nuance of the kiss (not easy when all he wanted to do was...well, something R-rated).
When they eventually broke apart - finding it considerably more difficult to draw breath - he knew exactly what to say. "Feels pretty much like last time. Technique is good, though pressure could use a little work. Have you been eating garlic?"
She smirked. "I hardly think garlic compares to the peanut butter you've been partaking of lately. And that kiss was ten times better than when you kissed me."
"I wouldn't know," he said. "Seeing as you kissed me both times, I didn't feel any difference. But just so we have the whole picture, I think it's only fair that I kiss you."
"I told you, you already kissed me," Nikki sighed, "but go ahead. Do it again. We need to study all the empirical evidence we ca-"
He wasn't teasing, joking, or making fun of her this time. He kissed her, deeply, lowering their bodies to the ground, his right hand sliding slowly down her side.
At some point he stopped (or rather, forgot) analysing duration vs. technique, or tongue vs. no tongue; all that mattered was *his* mouth and *her* mouth and the fact that they were touching.
"MacGyver?"
"Hmm?" Stop talking; she really had to stop talking...
"You...definitely...kissed me first."
Argh!
~FINIS