sga_flashfic | Sequelae, by The Spike 3/3

“This is insane!” Rodney yelled fervently into the warm, thick leather shoulder of John’s jacket. Not that John could hear him with the wind whipping over them, solid and cold as a waterfall, but he could feel the insane-type laughter rumbling through John’s chest so maybe it was just that obvious. He couldn’t believe he’d let John talk him into riding on the back of the big, black, frankly terrifyingly be-chromed motorcycle. There wasn’t even a seat -- just a backwards-slanting hard little cushion perched over the rear wheel with tiny little pegs that he had to jam his feet onto, knees somewhere around his ears, nothing to hold onto but John, who he was clutching around the middle like he was the last stanchion between Rodney and the Abyss.

Which, in fact, he was.

“I mean totally, unequivocally, irredeemably bug-fuck crazy,” Rodney went on. “Pun fully intended, by the way!” He couldn’t even hear himself over the roar of the bike, the roar of the road, the roar of the wind but he knew he was panting. He knew his heart was thumping crazily in his chest. That he was grinning or grimacing, lips pulled back off his teeth by the wind.

They were going so fast now. Way too fast. Could bikes even go this fast or was this just some expression of John Sheppard’s id, tearing down the road? It felt like utter madness, utter out of control freedom – like those ants Homer Simpson freed. ‘Freedom, horrible freedom’ – Rodney wanted to shout it out loud. The desert flashed by – black on black to the sides, silver shot blips of the road’s white lines when he looked over John’s shoulder. The only still point was the big silver dollar moon, following them along the road.

Up hill and down – the deep growl as the bike accelerated, the sucking pull of gravity when John leaned into a turn. And then the bike was slowing, slowing.

So soon? Rodney chased the fleeting thought down and hit it with a bat until it died. Thank God, he meant. John pulled the bike over to the side of the road in a lazy glide and held it there on one foot, engine idling. He unfastened his helmet, pulled it off and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

Now that they weren’t moving, Rodney could feel how deaf he’d become. How the engine vibration ran deep into his bones. He could barely tell that he was breathing, connected to warmth and stillness only where his hands came around John’s waist. He was not letting go. John twisted inside his grip and Rodney felt the knock on his helmet. He looked up, yelling: “What?” at the top of his lungs. All around him the desert was grey on brown, silver on black, crazy jigsaw shadows of brush and rock and moonlight. John was pointing ahead and to the left.

Rodney scanned the dusty moonscape until he saw the dry sinuous thread of the dirt road.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he said, shaking his head, no, no, NO. No fucking way! But John was nodding just as enthusiastically, giving Rodney the thumbs up sign and if Rodney had half a mind to just jump the hell off the back of this thing, he never had the chance to even get his legs uncramped before John had his helmet back on. Was revving the bike again, jarring Rodney as he swung his weight back into the center and hit the throttle.

If going down the highway had been like riding whitewater rapids in the dark, bumping down the winding dirt road was like riding along a current at the bottom of the ocean. Here, without the black of tarmac to contrast with, the moonlight turned the shadows indigo, sagebrush and Joshua trees made dark, alien silhouettes that flashed by fast and close, or slow and far away. Rodney held on to John and rode and rode.

Hours passed, or minutes. Rodney felt numb, battered and yet unexpectedly warm at his core. His fear hadn’t left him, but it was less of a thing spiking up inside of him and more like the cold inexorability of the wind – just there, a thing to be borne. This time when he looked up to find the anchoring moon, it felt like the bike had gone still inside its bubble of noise, while the desert ground away under its wheels, slowly, slowly turning the planet under the sky.

It felt uncomfortable and terrifying and…good. Inexplicably good.

He hardly noticed they had slowed, until John finally brought the bike to a stop and shut the engine off.

The silence was deafening – almost literally -- and Rodney popped his ears, over and over, like that would help. He scrabbled a little when John pulled away from him, settling the bike on its kickstand and dismounting. Rodney needed John’s help to get off. His legs had frozen into position, and he staggered and stomped across the dirt, trying to get some feeling back into them.

When he turned back, John was standing, hands on hips, staring off toward the distant mountains, pale blue-gray against the black sky. The moon was not where Rodney had expected it to be. He must have gotten turned around with the dark and the driving. Rodney reached up to wipe chill sweat off his forehead and encountered his helmet. No wonder he was deaf. He yanked the helmet off. The sound of his steps in the dirt seemed very loud, as was the chilly wind what whistled past his ears.

“There are probably snakes out here,” Rodney said. “And scorpions.”

“Probably,” John said, not turning around. Rodney chewed at his lip and knew he was supposed to be saying something – maybe how beautiful it was out here, because it sort of was, in an eerie, haunted landscape sort of way. The way any huge chunk of uninterrupted nature was, if not actually beautiful, then sort of magnificent. Or… something. Was that what John had wanted to do for him? Because it seemed… odd. Un-John-like. And besides, Rodney lived in the goddamn desert. This wasn’t much different than what he saw out of his car window every day for the last five years.

Still, it obviously meant something.

“You like it out here?” he asked. John turned then and looked at him. One of those puzzled faces, as if Rodney had asked something in a foreign language. Then he shrugged.

“It’s all right,” John said. “I like open places. Yeah.”

“So,” Rodney said. “What are you going to do now? Go back to Alaska?” John didn’t answer right away. Instead he tipped his head back, looking up at the sky. Even with the moon out and bright you could still see a lot of. Rodney automatically determined the relative position of Pegasus, although he couldn’t see even the Great Square stars through the moon’s glare. It had almost set by now anyway. He wondered if that’s what John was looking for – if so, he was way off – but didn’t ask. Not with his other question still hanging in the air and had John even heard him? Maybe… no, probably, it was awkward. Probably you shouldn’t ask someone which of their third or fourth or twentieth best life choices they were going to scavenge for now that number one was off the table.

“Might,” John said, finally. “Might not. Heard they always need good pilots down in Brazil.”

“What, you’re going to run drugs now?” John just gave him a look. Yeah, okay, probably not.

The thing was, Rodney could see John down there in the jungle. The ex-pat American with the tragic past.. He’d even look great in an Indiana Jones hat. Whereas Rodney… Rodney might be leading the next expedition to Pegasus. John would probably never even know about it. Rodney wrapped his arms tighter around himself. His teeth were chattering with cold.

“You ready to head back?” John said. Rodney looked up.

“Was this,” Rodney started. “I mean was this what you wanted to show me?”

“Show you?” John said, sounding baffled, then his face cleared as realization struck. He looked down and smiled, almost shyly. “I didn’t want to show you anything, Rodney,” he said. “I just thought you might enjoy the ride.”

That night they ate a lazy dinner of fast food fried chicken and coleslaw, washed down with beer.in front of the TV. Neither of them said much, watching a little hockey, a little football, a cooking show, some nature thing, a cop show -- except during a commercial break, when Rodney had almost drifted off, John hit the mute and said:

“You know I…” and Rodney shook his head and said: “Yeah. No, that’s…” and then the show came on and he looked at John and John nodded back at him and turned the sound back on.

John had mostly packed up his stuff. The garage was probably tidier than before he came to stay. They hadn’t talked about a schedule, but he didn’t imagine John was going to hang around after he got the all clear from Jennifer. He could be gone tomorrow for all Rodney knew.

Probably that would be better. Neither of them seemed particularly good at goodbyes. John yawned hugely and rubbed at the small of his back again.

“Gonna call it a night,” he said. He looked tired. Rodney was tired too.

“Yeah,” he said and sat up.

“Yeah,” John repeated and bumped him lightly on the shoulder with a loose fist before he got up and headed off to his bed.

Rodney wasn’t sure what had woken him, but it was still dark out. He lay there listening, but the house was quiet so probably it was just the beer. Reluctantly he got out of the nice warm bed, toes shriveling from contact with the icy floor, and headed for the bathroom in the dark. Except the door to the bathroom was closed and light outlined the rectangular shape of the door and dammit, how was Sheppard’s timing so incredibly perfect?

He tsked, grimaced as his bladder asserted that it really was full and kept going down the hall to the kitchen. His foot slid in something wet on the kitchen floor at just about the same moment his hand hit the light.

Adrenaline slammed through him. There was a blood trail across the kitchen floor from the garage door and back the way he’d come. For a second he was utterly frozen, unable to even catch his breath. The blood was bright scarlet and wet. Fat, round sunburst splashes and long smears. It looked like an awful lot and Rodney actually couldn’t remember whether it always looked like there was more or less blood than was actually lost, even as he turned back to the hall and stuttered out:

“J-John?” in a breathless little croak

The bathroom door wasn’t locked and John was a pale crumple in the space between toilet and tub, skin the same colour as the tiles and not moving in the bright halogen glare. The only colour in the room was the brilliant fans and splashes of blood, a shiny cascade of it down across John’s lips and chin and t-shirt.

Rodney was too cold to feel sick. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing, only the next thing he knew he was kneeling over John, shaking him, and getting blood all over his cellphone and Jennifer was saying in a tiny voice in his ear:

“Rodney, did you hear me? Call 911.” He still couldn’t make his voice work properly but he was certain of this one thing.

“No,” he said. “Please. Just you. Just come.”

It turned out to be less blood than Rodney had thought.

“Maybe two pints,” Jennifer said, impatiently, adjusting the blood pressure cuff on John’s upper arm. She was crouched over John in the narrow space, trying to monitor his vitals.

She hadn’t wanted to move him yet – just enough to get some pillows under him and blankets over him. John had come back to some kind of semi-consciousness while Rodney had waited for her to arrive, but he was in and out, not making a lot of sense.

“That’s not too bad, right?” Rodney asked, anxiously watching over her shoulder. “You can lose two pints.”

“Well,” she said. “It’s not good. He needs to be in a hospital.”

“But it’s stopped,” Rodney said. “It was a nosebleed. I get them all the time. It’s the dry air – you know there’s less than 3% humidity in the desert air this time of year. I keep meaning to get a humidifier, because let me tell you—“

“Rodney,” she snapped. “It’s not a nosebleed.” Rodney went silent, felt his cheeks heat.

“I know,” he said. “I just…”

“I know you promised him you wouldn’t call in the SGC, but Rodney…” She glanced at John. His eyes were moving erratically under his closed eyelids. His lips moved a little like he was muttering, but no sounds were coming out.

“Look,” she said, more gently than he ever remembered her being and he wanted to put his hands over his ears. He recognized that gentle tone. Elizabeth had used it all the time. He listened anyway.

“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Keller said. “It’s not the retrovirus per se, it’s the serum that’s causing his system to break down. The retrovirus had co-opted a number of John’s systems – integumentary, hormonal, neurological. Circulatory. The old iratus stem cells – they don’t… they’re just too defective. I had hoped there were enough human cells left to pick up the slack but…”

“What does that mean?” Rodney said. “What do we do now?”

She looked at him, pointedly.

“No, no, no…” he said. “We don’t give up.”

“Of course not,” she said. “But remember I said there might come a point where we wouldn’t have a choice about calling in expert help. We’re there.”

“No,” Rodney said. “Make another batch. They can’t all be bad cells.”

“I’ve been making batches continuously since I started, Rodney. What I gave John was the best of them. Every batch before and since has shown nothing but more and more advanced degradation.”

Rodney stared at her. The blood pressure cuff beeped.

Jennifer turned her attention back to John. Even Rodney could see that fresh blood was welling from his nose and mouth and when Jennifer pulled his shirt up, John’s stomach looked hard and swollen.

Keller injected something into John’s arm and listened with her stethoscope.

“Dammit,” she said. With her free hand, she pulled a phone out of her breast pocket and flipped it open. It occurred to Rodney that he could knock the phone out of her hand, stop her from calling anyone, even push her away and crouch over John’s body like some wounded grizzly bear. He didn’t do it. He just sat there while she spoke into the phone, giving details in that clipped doctor jargon that Rodney often wished he didn’t understand as well as he did, and watched John dying on his bathroom floor.

Whoever she’d called, they took it seriously. He heard the siren, literally within minutes. They looked like ordinary paramedics, but they didn’t ask nearly enough questions, and Rodney recognized SGC personnel when he saw them.

“I’m riding in the ambulance,” he said, and when they turned to Jennifer for verification, he shoved his ID card in their faces and said: “I have higher clearance than God. Don’t try to stop me.”

Nobody did.

The ambulance ride was short and hellish. Rodney took a position that seemed to be in everybody’s way, but he had a hold of one of John’s hands and he wouldn’t (couldn’t) let go. John, oxygen-masked and intravenous-ed, rolled in and out of consciousness.

“It's going to be okay,” Rodney said, one time when it looked like John was actually coming around. “You know you can trust me.”

But John knew SGC personnel when he saw them too, and he gave Rodney a look of such infinite hurt and betrayal it was like the last week of reconciliation had never happened. Then he shut his eyes and turned his face away and if he regained consciousness after that, Rodney didn’t know it.

The main infirmary at Area 51 was large, bright and, tonight, mostly empty. All of Rodney’s clearance couldn’t get him past the waiting area and into the emergent care room. Or maybe it could have, but Jennifer said:

“Let us work, Rodney,” and squeezed his arm once before she disappeared behind the double, swinging doors. Rodney stood there staring as the doors flapped to stillness. He could probably push his way in on sheer bluster -- he’d done it before, on different worlds, under different stars – but it wouldn’t get him anything but banished most likely. There wasn’t anything more for him to do here now but wait, and he hated waiting.

Besides, he had work to do.

The first thing he did when he got to the lab, was strip off his clammy, blood-stained shirt, shuddering as he scoured John’s blood off his hands and chest with wads of damp paper towel. He threw the whole mess in the trash and covered it with more paper towel. Then he prowled through the locker room until he found an unlocked locker with a spare shirt in it. It didn’t fit and wasn’t clean, but it was better than nothing.

After that, he booted up his computer and hacked into the medical mainframe using the false ID he’d created for the purpose. It was the work of minutes to set up a system that would message his cell-phone if any orders were given to move the patient brought into the infirmary under the care of Dr. J. Keller.

It took a little longer to find the other information he wanted and by the time he was done, Radek and some of the other staff were meandering in, bright and early. They had – Rodney checked his watch – exactly 9 hours and 14 minutes before the puddlejumper’s first official field test in front of God and Generals and everything. Rodney took a deep breath. The thought of what he was going to do made him feel more than a little ill.

Just like the good old days, he thought bitterly and then put on his best ‘everything is just fine’ face and went out to join Radek on the floor.

He spent the next seven hours utterly engrossed in his work on the puddlejumper – testing every crystal, cross-checking every system, assessing every seam; tightening every bolt, running every possible last minute simulation and pausing to panic only every fifteen or twenty minutes or so and frantically check his cell phone for alerts. There were none. He still felt like he was about to have a heart attack.

It had been years since he’d worked this kind of insane pace and he was, he had to admit is as his heart thumped terrifyingly in his chest and cold sweat broke out on every exposed inch of skin, an old man now. Forty five. Middle aged. And he hadn’t managed to pass on his genes and…

“You okay?” Radek asked him, coming to sit beside Rodney on the low edge of the workbench. “You look a little…” He made an unhappy face.

“Nerves,” Rodney said.

“Yeah,” Radek laughed. “Me too. Can you believe it? All these years and suddenly I have performance anxiety. You’d think this was my wedding night.”

Rodney looked at him, slightly horrified.

“Okay, remember that talk we had about things that were too much information?” Radek laughed again and bumped Rodney with his shoulder.

“It’s been good, this,” he said. “Getting this working. It’s been good for you most of all, I think. Got you out of your slump finally.” No, Rodney thought. That was John. A wave of guilt washed over him.

“Listen, Radek,” he said, impulsively. “You…” He stopped, closed his eyes for a second. Took a calming breath and looked up again to find Radek, watching him, face full of concern. Kindness. Yeah, that didn’t help. “You’ve been a decent friend,” he said finally. “You probably won’t believe this but, I, uh, I always noticed. That.”

“I think you told me this once already,” Radek said. “You’re not dying again, are you?”

“What? No,” Rodney said, scowling.

“Good,” Radek said. “Because somebody has to make the presentation to the Generals and it’s not going to be me.”

“Oh, Christ,” Rodney said. “The presentation!”

“Do not, under any circumstances, tell me you forgot to prepare it.”

“No, no,” Rodney lied. “I just…” He checked his watch. There was just over an hour before they’d be taking the jumper out to the testing area. “I, uh, better go, uh, polish it…” He pointed vaguely at the door.

“You better,” Radek yelled after him, only half joking, Rodney suspected. “Or, you better not come back.”

It took him nearly twenty minutes to get back across the huge Area 51 complex to the medical unit, and another ten to find Keller’s personal office. It was, thank God, dark and locked and took him only a moment or two of fiddling with the electronic lock to get into.

Once he was inside, he had to stop for a minute in the dark to wipe more cold sweat off his forehead and still his shaking knees. Really, seriously not cut out for this shit anymore. And there was no time to waste. He turned on the light and took quick stock of the office. The surfaces were tidy except for a few loose files, a stolen cafeteria tea-pot, an inbox full of mail. There were some books on the shelves, a few photographs of people who looked plump and pleasant and parental; a laptop, a few knick knacks…

He opened the drawers of her desk – more files, more paper – the file cabinets under the bookshelves – accordion files, black ring binders. There was a matching freestanding cabinet beside the desk. He had to pick the lock to open it and inside he found her safe. Dammit. He didn’t have time--

The door opened. Jennifer Keller stepped inside. They stared at one another, completely speechless. Then Jennifer closed the door behind her.

“Jennifer, I—“ She held up her hand for him to stop speaking and he did. Then she walked over and sat down at her desk. She looked, he realized, exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes.

“John,” he said.

“Stable for the moment,” she said. “Although it took some doing. Fortunately they’re allowing me to continue working on his case, at least up until my disciplinary hearing.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rodney said. He was still on his knees in front of the safe. He couldn’t bring himself to move.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “This was my choice.”

“Still…”

“Please,” she said, sounding angry for the first time. She cupped her face with both hands, scrubbed at her cheekbones with her fingers. “We needed to call the experts in. In fact, I’ve just come from a meeting with the top four xenopathologists in North America. They’ve spent the last few hours reading my notes, examining John’s test results. It was their intervention that got the hemorrhaging stopped.”

“Good,” Rodney said, his voice, just a whisper.

“They said there’s nothing they can do,” Jennifer said.

“Oh,” said Rodney. It didn’t seem to impact him. Like the non-feeling of steaming coffee running down the front of the personal shield. He wondered what made him think of that after all these years. “How long did they think…?”

Jennifer shook her head.

“A week?” she said. “Maybe two. Not more than that. Not without fresh iratus stem cells to make serum from.” Rodney nodded.

“John’s in room 23C,” Jennifer went on, as if it were part of the conversation. “The combination for the safe is 28713954111. You need to take everything in there, including my notes. Do you remember the gate address of the planet where the nest was found?”

“I…” Rodney’s throat closed up. “Yes. Of course I do. But… can you say that number again?” She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and smiled a very small, tired smile. Then she repeated the number slowly enough for Rodney to key it in.

The Ancient synthesizer was about the size, shape, and weight of a flat–topped bowling ball. It came in a carrier case and there was a tray of tubes and pipettes with it as well as a small, silver Notebook. Rodney took it all.

On the way out, he stopped anyway, even though there was no time, put everything down on the desk and hugged her. He didn’t have the voice to say ‘thank you’ but he mouthed it into her hair and she hugged him back tightly before she let him go.

He stole a white coat and a wheelchair and waved at the marines on duty at the infirmary door. They asked for his ID anyway, but he really did have the top clearance any scientist in the SGC could have, plus a wheelchair full of Ancient medical equipment and so they let him in.

Room 23C was fortuitously located near a service elevator.

John was awake, lying in the narrow bed in clean scrubs. He had an IV in his hand and a little canula under his nose and he was staring at the ceiling when Rodney walked in. He glanced at Rodney, took in the chair, the equipment and the doctor coat, and then went right back to staring upward.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Rodney said. “I know I promised you I wouldn’t call in the SGC but you were dying and I couldn’t… Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m not letting you… I’m taking you with me.”

John kept staring at the ceiling.

“Yeah, I think I’ll take my chances here where I know they don’t have my best interests at heart.’

“Okay, this is stupid,” Rodney said.

“What is?”

“Us fighting. I know you’re not happy with me -- and you may have some cause -- but anyway, it’s not going to matter much if we don’t get you out of here.” John still hadn’t taken his eyes from the ceiling. Rodney wished for the strength to just pick him up by the scruff of his stubborn, hairy neck. “Look, we have to work together, so ... so, so, I’m sorry.”

John’s head turned. His eyes met Rodney’s.

“Apology accepted,” he said.

“Right,” Rodney said. “Okay, we have about…” he checked his watch. “Oh God, really not enough time for pleasant chit chat. Get in the chair.”

It took them far too much time, in Rodney’s opinion, to get John unhooked and unstuck and into the chair with the synthesizer in his lap and a blanket over his legs.

“Where are we going?” John asked as Rodney pushed him down the hall.

“Oh, you know,” Rodney said, panting and sweating. “Halfway across the planet because for some reason medical and astrophysics can’t be in the same damn wing of the complex.”

“I think that’s because you guys always blow stuff up,” John said. “And where are we going, again?” Rodney just grinned, a pained, sweaty grin.

“You like surprises, right?”

“Depends,” John said, cautiously, “on the nature of the surprise.”

“Oh, you’ll like this one,” Rodney said. “You know, if I don’t have a coronary before we get there.”

He did managed to survive the long trip back to the lab. John had dozed off about halfway there, only starting awake as Rodney stopped to unlock his office door.

“What’s this?” John asked, fuzzily.

“Just a temporary rest stop,” Rodney said. “I have to leave you here while I take care of some things. Do not, under any circumstances, leave this room. Hello? Are you listening?”

But John was clearly not listening. His gaze was caught by the view over Rodney’s shoulder – the view from the office window onto the lab floor down below. Rodney watched the play of feelings over John’s face, the way he swallowed convulsively a couple of times before he was able to speak.

“You, uh… you have the keys to that?” John asked, voice gone tight, his whole body nearly quivering with the obvious wish to get closer.

“Yes,” Rodney said, pretending impatience as he gathered up the few tools he thought he’d need and his laptop and piled them into John’s lap. “We are going for a ride in the puddlejumper. If you stay here and don’t get caught while I’m setting things up.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” John said, softly.

Rodney looked at his watch as he ran down the stairs. Minutes. God, they were down to minutes. He stopped a white-coat whose name he couldn’t even begin to remember and asked where Zelenka was.

“At the test site, Doctor,” she said. “We’re heading over there now.”

“Good, good,” Rodney said. “Now I know it sounds a little unorthodox, but there is an old Atlantis tradition that the, uh, chief engineer, which is me, obviously, uh, needs to have a moment alone with the, um, vehicle on its maiden… voyage.” The technician stared at him blankly. “So you all have to clear out. Completely. For…” he looked at his watch again. “Seven minutes.”

“I’ll have to check with Dr. Zee,” the technician said and tapped her radio before Rodney could backtrack, informing Dr. Zelenka of the non-existent ritual while Rodney tried to think of some way he could pass this off as a bad joke, or nerves or…

“Dr. Zelenka? Are you still there?” the girl was saying. And then. “Of course. Right away, Dr. Zelenka.” She smiled at Rodney. “There’s only a handful of people left,” she told him. “It’ll just take us a minute to clear out of your way.”

“Oh, well, good,” Rodney said.

“He said to tell you he hopes you know what you’re doing.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “And by that he means the, uh, ritual thing, which of course, I do.” But the tech was already moving to clear out her fellow technicians and okay, so Radek was possibly smarter than even Rodney gave him credit for. And God, he -- they -- owed him for this.

Rodney could take some comfort from the fact that now, at least, Radek would be a shoe in for the Nobel.

It actually took him less than seven minutes to get John down the service elevator to the jumper, even though John made him stop for a few precious seconds just so he could lay his hand on the outside of the jumper’s shell. He took the remaining time to do a quick systems check and pack the precious synthesizer into one of the rear storage containers.

He helped John out of the wheelchair and there was an awkward moment when John leaned toward the pilot’s chair and Rodney had to shake his head, gesture toward the co-pilot seat on the other side. John gave a rueful shrug, but he was leaning almost all his weight on Rodney just to stay upright and there didn’t seem to be too much argument left in him.

Rodney took the pilot’s chair himself and brought up the HUD.

“Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going now?” he said, looking over at John. John was sitting back in his chair, eyes closed, a small half-smile on his lips.

“Nah,” he said. “I’m good.” Rodney bit his lip. This mission wasn’t exactly a guaranteed success. Chances were they wouldn’t even make it out of the hangar before the SGC blew them out of the sky.

Or maybe they they’d make it all the way.

“Well, I’m not so much about the journey,” Rodney said. “I’m pretty much a destination oriented kind of guy, so I actually have a place in mind.”

“Yeah?” said John, looking over at him, green eyes bright, lips curved in a familiar sardonic smile. “Where’s that?”

Rodney lay his hand on the start plate and powered up the jumper. He looked at John and then out the front viewscreen at the slowly opening hangar door.

“How about home?”

(end)

Notes:
1. Thanks to Sarah T. for having the idea and cruelly forcing me to write it. Also for brainstorming, hand-holding and serious comma-wrangling. Thanks also to Kormantic for comments and hugs and to Sageness for fast, detailed and very insightful beta. All remaining mistakes are my ow.
2. Standad fanfic disclaimers apply.
3. Some dialogue appropriated from Stargate Atlantis episode 4x01: Adrift by Martin Gero
4. John’s bike is a Harley Davidson 2008 VRSCD Night Rod in vivid black. See it here

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mellyna.livejournal.com

Wonderful story. Thanks for sharing.

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