The Aquarians by aesc

[aesc.livejournal.com]

Title: The Aquarians
By: HF
Rating: PG13ish
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Disclaimers: Not mine!
Word count: c. 2,000

Notes: AU set in 1969. Between that and the title, you may be able to guess what's going on.

Written around 1am, which is its own kind of mind-altering drug for me.


THE AQUARIANS

“Oh. My. God.”

“Rodney, one more word and I swear…”

“What? That you’ll kill me? I thought this was supposed to be all ‘peace and love’ and crap like that, because you sound pretty hostile right now.”

“Get a move on, Rodney.”

Rodney McKay scowled out at the morass that had once been some idiot’s cow pasture. God only knew what he was stepping in. Cow crap was probably the least of it, judging from the sea of the great unwashed surging back and forth on top of it.

Was someone actually naked? Rodney thought about doing a double-take to check – weren’t these people worried about social diseases or something? God. – but then realized if he did check and the guy was naked he would run away, and then Carson would haul him back to be butchered and eaten by his paint-wearing savage friends.

Because that’s what they were. He caught a short Asian girl beaming glassily up at him, and dear God, she had a daisy painted on her forehead and she was offering him a joint and he did most emphatically not do psychotropic drugs, thank you. He could see people’s auras after a couple aspirin as it was.

He hurried to catch up.

After about five seconds, he had something else to add to Carson Beckett’s list of shortcomings: not only was he a medical student – which was, as far as Rodney was concerned, the same as being an initiate into the Masons, Harvard Med or no – but he was short. Way too short to be seen through a screen of… naked… dirty… sweaty… swirling human flesh.

Someone’s hair was sticking to his arm, and someone was breathing marijuana smoke right in his face and could you get high off of second-hand marijuana smoke? He didn’t know and didn’t want to find out, and he was probably inhaling God only knew what. Maybe he should collect samples for Carson… There’d probably be at least a few thousand previously undiscovered microbes lurking on the various naked… dirty… sweaty… human surfaces brushing up against him.

“You come for one band – one band and of course they’re not playing until Sunday – and this is what you get.” Rodney dropped his duffel bag and tried not to think about first, the fact that it had landed in a mud puddle, and second, the fact that unless coincidence struck, he wouldn’t see Carson until Sunday evening. Or maybe, considering that the mud had a grip like iron and also considering the savagery of the people milling around him, not ever.

Sighing, he picked his bag up again, which left a nice streak of viscous misery up his right side, and trudged on in the hope of finding someplace dry. He didn’t find anything dry, or even slightly damp, just endless churned-up dirt liberally mixed with water, and a lot of crazy people. Someone offered him a bottle – “Drink, man?” – and unthinking he grabbed it and swallowed prodigiously.

It tasted like someone had actually distilled it from a ditch at the edge of the field. Seriously, it tasted exactly like that.

He spat, cursed, and stumbled further on into chaos. No Carson, no Carson and he was starting to get tired and even more cranky than before, if such were possible. Place to sleep, then, and all he would require was a place slightly elevated, with a shower and working bathroom… But that didn’t seem to be in the offing. Instead, people had campsites set up, others sleeping bags spread over tarps, some nothing at all.

Rodney had his sleeping bag strapped over one shoulder.

Carson had the tarp.

Fuck.

He was debating hiking the miles upon miles back into town, finding a cab, and getting the hell out of there and back to Boston, where people were civilized and didn’t roll around in the mud, when he heard it.

Guitar. Not bad guitar.

In fact, really fucking terrible guitar.

He pivoted on his heel and saw a really hot guy playing really fucking terrible guitar, and yeah, he definitely looked a lot better than he played. Colored all over like all the other crazy people, like an idiot had attacked him with finger paint, no shirt and a pair of paint-stained jeans, sunglasses, and a guitar with stickers plastered all over it.

Dark, messy hair that infuriated Rodney for some reason, and tanned skin that made him want to touch.

“Is that supposed to be “All Along the Watchtower” or did a mouse die in the sound hole?” he asked.

The guitar player stopped and Rodney could tell he was surprised, even behind the ludicrously oversized aviator glasses. He recovered swiftly though, lazy grin stretching the designs splattered across his cheeks.

“I was hoping it was the first one,” the guy said.

“Oh, please. Dylan would kick your ass.” Rodney paused. “Of course, your friends are probably too stoned to care, but it’s the principle of the thing.” He nodded at the man and woman sitting next to Bad Guitar Guy, both of them in suede and denim and looking like they’d gone native long before 1969. The guy had dreadlocks and the woman’s hair was tied back in braids and beads.

“Guess you want to give it a try then?” Bad Guitar Guy held out his guitar.

“I don’t play,” he said, but then added, “Piano,” like that made it any better. Though it did because it at least meant that he wasn’t tone deaf or anything and knew about things like keys and time signatures, which Bad Guitar Guy clearly thought were for other people. He added this in as well when Bad Guitar Guy didn’t say anything.

Bad Guitar Guy smirked instead.

Rodney scowled.

“I’m John Sheppard,” Bad Guitar Guy said after a moment of smirking and scowling crossfire.

“I’m Rodney,” Rodney said unwillingly. “Rodney McKay.”

“Well Rodney, like I said, I’m John and this here’s Teyla and Ronon.” Rodney gaped as Bad Guitar Guy – John – made the introductions. People actually called themselves names like that, like Teyla and Ronon? He wondered if it was a disease, something contracted through marijuana smoke or sweat, or that finger paint smeared so nicely over John’s skin. Would he come out of here with a name like Moonflower or River or Sun or something similarly horrifying?

He stared at the sunlight on John’s shoulder and pondered that for a moment.

John shifted in place, nice movement of skin and muscle that made the sun slide like water. He had a red sun painted on his right pectoral, squiggly lines radiating from a circle, and Rodney wanted to straighten them out.

Dimly, it occurred to him that maybe he was a bit buzzed. Or hypoglycemic. Did Carson have the food?

Did someone slip him something? He tried to be horrified about that, to remember if he’d taken anything, like maybe he’d shot himself up with heroin and not realized it, or slipped a tab of acid on his tongue thinking it was a piece of gum. Or… maybe the evil hippie virus had invaded his central nervous system already.

Or the moonshine that guy had given him. But he’d only had one swallow of the stuff. Then again, one swallow of paint thinner was enough to kill most people. Shroedinger only needed a couple drops of hydrocyanic acid to kill his hypothetical cat.

Of course, this was assuming the cat was dead, which of course you couldn't tell because the box was closed, and that was the whole point really. But why, Rodney asked himself and the sun on John's chest, did it have to be a cat? Would the thought experiment have worked if they'd used a penguin?

“You okay?” John was asking. Rodney reluctantly dragged himself back from the edge of a full-on contemplation of quantum ontology. “Teyla” and “Ronon” – Jane and Billy on their birth certificates, probably – looked worried despite the undoubtedly large quantities of hallucinogens coursing through their systems.

“Fine,” Rodney croaked. “Long day.”

“Of course,” John said, nodding like he understood. And Rodney decided that he wouldn’t waste time drawing stupid primitive suns and flowers on John’s pretty skin… No, equations. Delta and chi and alpha. E = mc2 because John looked an awful lot like energy, like he was glowing with it.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” John’s brows were crinkled behind his glasses, which Rodney suddenly and irrationally thought was terribly cute.

“I think I’m high,” Rodney mumbled. “But…” He tried to remember the qualifier. “Hypoglycemic. Yeah. That could be it, too.”

“You and thousands of other people,” John said. “High, I mean, not hypoglycemic. You need food for that, right?” So not just another pretty painted face. He could swoon. Between the moonshine, lack of sugar, and John’s pretty smartness, he could swoon.

Or, you know, pass out. One of the two.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” John said, standing up, and the light spilled over him like water again. Rodney grinned idiotically. “C’mon, we got stuff in the van.”

Rodney couldn’t tell if the van actually was painted in livid swirls of green, blue, and pink or if it was that guy’s still liquor or what. A Volkswagen, vehicle of choice for hippies and escaped lunatics, and Rodney thought of his own car, somewhere on a back road between Bethel and Ithaca. If it was still there, for that matter, and he would be concerned if John’s hand wasn’t on his arm, guiding him up the steps and into the Volkswagen, which smelled of sweat, incense, and diesel.

“Crash here for a second.” John pointed to the driver’s seat. The sun couldn't get through the filthy windows, and John's skin was mostly shadows now. Rodney wanted to lift the shadows up, see if the light and energy wasn't still underneath them.

Rodney collapsed in the driver's seat with alacrity, watching as John sifted through a cooler. For being a crazy painted person he was very smart – Rodney had noticed this, of course – and he moved with a certain competence, like maybe he didn’t smirk all the time behind those sunglasses of his.

John straightened and turned around, paper-wrapped package in one hand and a thermos of something in the other.

Turkey sandwich under the newspaper and the thermos held water, thank God; Rodney didn’t know what he would have done if it’d held orange juice, because John’s not being able to read his mind would have disappointed him horribly. He inhaled the sandwich and drank the water half-reluctantly, staring owlishly at the sun on John’s chest and wondering, if he poured the water on it, if the sun would go out.

“I’m a bit drunk,” he confided. "I think." He determinedly squelched whatever whimper of reason was trying to talk him out of this, out of making a fool of himself and also propositioning a random stranger for sex.

But this isn't a random stranger, he told the voice, it's John, and like they say 'free love.' And besides, he's given me a turkey sandwich.

“That’s cool,” John said, and smiled. A real smile, not a smirk, warm as the sun on his skin, warm as John, and that was nice.

“I want to straighten those out.” Rodney poked John in the chest, right over one of the distressingly wavy lines.

John looked down, brows crinkling again, and the light in the VW was dim enough that he actually had to take his stupid glasses off.

Nice hazel eyes when John looked back up, and there were lots of colors in there, like there were on the side of John’s van, like there were all over his body. Rodney wondered if the painting went on under the jeans, and if maybe he should ask.

“You don’t like them bent?” John asked, and his voice oscillated against Rodney, rough-smooth.

“Hm.” Bent was okay – Rodney was a bit bent himself – but still… It would give him an excuse to touch John. “Light does travel in waves,” he admitted at last, “but I still think they should be straightened out.”

“Maybe you can take care of that for me,” John suggested, smiling bright and real in the dimness of the van.

* * *

And so Rodney did, or tried, and in the end realized that he couldn’t, so the only alternative was to erase all of creation and steal someone else’s paints and brushes and start over.

The next sun John got had straight lines, and a smiley face in the middle, and Rodney got a sun of his own.

* * *

Afterward, Rodney made a note to find Carson when the weekend was over and tell him what a wonderful idea it had been to come here. This was going to be the best weekend ever.


-end-