Past and Present by Black Goddess

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Body Modification Challenge
Title: Past and Present
Author: Black Goddess
Archive: Ask first
Email: ripe_black_goddess @ yahoo.co.uk
Disclaimer: Not mine, not true, not for profit
Pairing: McShep
Rating: Mild.
First SGA fic and also unbetaed - very sorry, and please point out any mistakes!

Despite not being a very active man, at least not before Atlantis, Rodney McKay had his fair share of scars. The first year in Atlantis, he added so many more he almost lost count. Almost.

"What do you want now, Colonel?" Rodney asked impatiently. Sheppard leaned against his workstation, giving Rodney an amused look.

"Now, Rodney, is that any way to talk to your friend?" Rodney made an impatient snorting sound.

"You are not only wasting my valuable time, you're blocking my light," he told him. "Say what you've come to say and then leave,"

"It's 3 am," Sheppard told him. "Everyone else has called it a night."

"Yes, well," Rodney said, tapping away at his laptop. "Everyone else is welcome to waste their valuable time. I, however, have work to do,"

"And a mission in two days," Sheppard reminded him. Rodney did not dignify this with a reply. "A mission where you'll need to be alert,"

"I hardly think that will be a problem," Rodney said. "Unless you know something about the coffee supply that I don't, which frankly is extremely doubtful."

"No one knows more about the coffee than you do," Sheppard agreed, reaching to pick up one of the Ancient objects on the desk.

"Don't touch that, Colonel!" Rodney snapped, as he pressed the keys to save his work. He must have sounded sharper than usual because Sheppard snatched his hand back.
"Why, what does it do?"

"I've no idea and no intention of finding out at this time of night." Rodney shut down his laptop and closed the lid. "I don't know," he muttered, gesturing to Sheppard to move out of the lab. "You're a danger to yourself, God only knows how you've managed to survive this long..." Rodney allowed the Colonel to lead him back to his quarters, keeping up a steady litany of complaints until they were actually outside his door.

"Well, good night, Colonel," Rodney said. For a moment, he wondered...

"Goodnight, Rodney," and Sheppard was walking off down the hall towards his own quarters. Rodney let himself inside, allowing himself just the faintest flicker of regret before the lights came on. His quarters were exactly as he'd left them, cluttered and seemingly disorganised, and he left a trail of clothing on top of yesterday's trail as he headed for the bathroom. All too soon he was climbing between cold, stale sheets, and tonight, dammit, was one of the nights he really missed his cat. Rodney, as he liked to remind everyone on a very regular basis, was not a stupid man; he recognised the dangers as well as the stupidity of pointless regrets. Still, as he huddled beneath the wrinkled sheets, he couldn't help thinking about her.


He had been walking home through the park after a fight, first verbal and then actually physical, with the by-then-ex boyfriend of the time ("Oh. My. God, you're far, far stupider than I could ever have possibly imagined you to be! What in God's name were you...OW! Oh, my God, I can't believe you actually hit me! We are not just completely and totally over, we never even happened in the first place, in fact I never even met you"), and had been too busy nursing his split lip and feeling sorry for himself to notice her at first. She had been lying by the side of the path, and as he approached she mewed feebly. He didn't notice her until he was almost past her, but then the pitiful mewing got past his enraged mutterings (something he was always trying to control, because he didn't mind being most of the clichés of the brilliant scientist, but being the man who talked to himself was one he wanted to avoid) and he stopped.

"What have we got here then?" he said, and that was OK because he was quite clearly talking to the cat and not to himself. He crouched down and looked closely at her. She was fairly small, a little bit dirty and obviously lacking a collar, but didn't seem to have any obvious injuries. He reached out a cautious hand, and she clawed at him. Rodney yanked his hand away but not quite quickly enough.

"Silly girl," he scolded the kitten. "I'm only trying to help you," he told her indistinctly as he sucked the blood from the surprisingly deep scratch on his hand. Obviously she wasn't starving. He looked at her consideringly; she appeared to be looking at him the same way.

"OK, here we go," he said and deftly picked her up, despite her protests and attempts to claw him again. "Let's have a look at you." The kitten seemed to settle down a bit when he held her against his chest, but Rodney kept a good firm grip on her just the same as he carried her home.

The kitten turned out to be a little bit older than he had thought she was at first, and probably abandoned rather than born stray, if the fact that she'd been spayed was anything to go by.

"Probably because of her bad temper," the vet said sourly, looking at her mauled hand.

"Don't be an idiot," Rodney told her. "If you go round harassing animals for a living, you've got to expect them to hate you." The vet muttered something about it taking one to know one as he left the room.

Rodney spent a great deal of money on the kitten, more than he'd intended to and not just because she had a tendency to savage his clothing if he left her alone for too long. He found himself spontaneously buying her little toys, and having to spend ages hiding them on the rare occasions that people actually came to his apartment because the fact that he was treating the cat like a girlfriend hadn't escaped him. She was quite clearly her own woman, she also quite clearly had no patience for others, whether they be feline or human, but she had time for Rodney and that was what mattered. The scar she gave him never quite faded.



John Sheppard had always been an active man, but he had the luck of the devil as well as fast-healing skin, leaving him with fewer scars than was usual for a man of his interests. The scars he got in Atlantis didn't heal so well.

John wasn't really sure whether to blame his father or the military for his belief in ritual. He wasn't obsessive or anything, he sincerely hoped, but some things had to be done according to plan and there was definite comfort in routine. Coming off the night shift and going to chase McKay out of the labs was one of his favourites. The scientist was nearly always there, the lab was nearly always empty, and Sheppard could just relax for a little bit. The rare occasions that McKay didn't stay late, Sheppard never slept as well. He blamed it on the disruption of his routine. He grinned to himself as McKay shooed him out of the lab, complaining all the way, and fell into step beside him. There was a slightly awkward pause outside McKay's quarters, before Rodney said

"Well, good night, Colonel," and then all John had to do was reply:

"Goodnight, Rodney," and walk off down the corridor, wondering as he did so how it was that awkward silence at bedroom doors had become a familiar part of his night-time routine.

When he had first joined the military, John had found it difficult to sleep. He had been used to sleeping in silence, and to suddenly have to sleep in a room full of men was strange and difficult, even before any of them started snoring. He got accustomed quickly, of course, to the point where he found sleeping in silence almost as odd as he had originally found sleeping with noise. The murmur of Atlantis at the edge of his consciousness always helped him to sleep.


Two days and another mission gone spectacularly wrong later, they found themselves stuck quite literally between a rock and a hard place.

"You are such a moron," Rodney grumbled, prodding irritably at the huge bruise darkening his cheek. "And move over, you're hogging all the room,"

"Me?" John asked in disbelief, daubing water onto the rather impressive burn on his left hand and attempting to shift so that his legs were slotted between Rodney's, rather than jammed up against them. "You're the one that told me to hold it. And there is no room, and if anyone's hogging it, it's you,"

"And you'll notice that I said 'hold this' rather than 'make it explode and upset the creepily small natives with slingshots and alarmingly good aim by violating five different cultural taboos.' Therefore it is entirely your fault. And will you just stay still? You're making it worse, not better."

John let out an exasperated sigh and stopped moving with a killer glare and a "Yes, and if you had known what it did before you asked me to hold onto it we wouldn't be in this position," John pointed out. His arm hurt like a bitch, he was fairly sure it was going to scar and, as Rodney pointed out, the natives were indeed creepily small which mean that the extremely small cave they were hiding in was not the genius hiding place it might possibly have been otherwise. Being surrounded by rock meant that their radios wouldn't work either, so their only hope was to wait until pursuit died down and then make their way back to the jumper and hope that they didn't get caught in the meantime.

"I think the midgets went after Teyla and Ronon," Rodney said. "God knows why they thought that great hulking lump was the easiest target."

"Maybe because his touch doesn't make things explode," John said, giving up on trying to soothe his burn. The water was nowhere near cold enough and they might need it.
"Huh, I guess that was kind of cool," Rodney said, reluctantly. Despite the pain in his arm, John grinned.

"Here, let me," said Rodney. He scrabbled around in his pack for a moment, pressing their bodies together all the way down in his attempt to find whatever it was he was looking for. John shifted uncomfortably and concentrated on the pain, until McKay exclaimed, "Got it!" then reached for John's arm.

"Burn cream," he said. "Well, technically it's for insect bites but I think it will do the job." John eyed him uncertainly, but McKay already had the tube uncapped and one of those big hands was holding his arm still and the other was stroking cream into it.

"Don't know how you've survived as long as you have," Rodney grumbled, but there was a definite fondness to his tone. John sighed despite himself and closed his eyes, hoping that McKay would think it was just the relief of getting the burn seen to. It still hurt, but not as much and the tremors racing up and down his body were a definite distraction. Slightly too definite, John thought, trying to shift away from Rodney slightly.

"You can stop now," he said, just about managing not to sound hoarse. "It'll do until I get back to the jumper." Rodney put the cap back on the tube, and the movement pushed them together again. John's eyes opened sharply, and he moved his hips slightly forward.

"Colonel?" Rodney asked, uncertainly. The darkness almost, but not quite obscured his blush.

"John," said John firmly, and cupped a hand gently around Rodney's bruised cheek before leaning in to kiss him.


One heroic rescue, a great deal of complaining and some medical treatment later, John was once again going to shoo Rodney out of his lab. This time, he didn't think there was going to be any awkward silence. This was one disruption to his routine that he was absolutely fine with.


The burn on his arm did leave a scar, but John didn't mind.

End