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sga_flashficTitle: Death-Defying Acts
Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Notes: 10,000 words, vague spoilers through season five, future-ish, as much snark as spark. This is a jigsaw: you've got most of the edge pieces, two corners and a pile of jumbled insides. Thanks as always to Q. If the fic makes any sense, she's why.
.01
There's a ZPM in Arthrim Cadvor's hands, and he holds them and it out with the hesitance of a high priest offering his god a substandard sacrifice. He’s focused on McKay, watching him like McKay’s the only thing in the room and oh yeah, John sees this one coming a mile away.
McKay’s hands lift, circling air, their usual “Now, give me now, now, now,” holding pattern. The stifled giggling must be Kusanagi or Simpson; Teyla’s got her surrounded-by-idiots face on, so status quo there.
“You have our gratitude,” Cadvor says. “Had you and your people not come through the ring, we would have been forced into a difficult decision.”
“Between evacuation or asphyxiation by slow, painful degrees?" McKay turns the ZPM over, running his fingers across ridges and dips. “I'd say for anyone with at least the intelligence quotient of an earthworm, it's an easy decision.”
John doesn’t laugh although really wants to. McKay being McKay is better than the best VR, you can’t buy entertainment like him in any galaxy, but John does cough up one muffled, “Bullshit”—two syllables of Ancient code and redundancies like crazy and McKay, how are you so full of it?
McKay catches it, all of it, and John gets his gimme reaction: McKay's mouth tightening up, flattening out, opening around, “Over ten millennia of running at maximum power with the facility at maximum capacity for at least seven of those millennia and no maintenance, Sheppard. Even Ancient code is subject to corruption. Crystals get smashed, idiot children spill things where they shouldn't. It's called life."
“We going or not?” says Ronon.
Thin lines of red are creeping up Cadvor’s cheeks. “I apologize. I’m keeping you from your duties.” He bows, aiming his bent head somewhere in between John and McKay. “Again, thank you. The lights on the third level are wholly operational for the first time in—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said.” McKay flaps an impatient hand towards Kusanagi, “You can thank her for your present state of illumination.”
“I believe what Doctor McKay means to say is that you are very welcome,” Teyla says. She smiles and it’s a smile John recognizes, one of several variations on a theme. Specifically, the ‘I am smiling, Colonel, but I have just spent two very long days inside a sealed Ancient installation on a planet whose atmosphere gives new definition to thin air, all this in addition to degrading environmental controls and Rodney McKay’s ego, and I am not going to be smiling for much longer’ variation.
John takes the hint. “What she said. And you know, ditto on the thanks a lot, have my people call your people, maybe see you around sometime thing.”
Cadvor looks confused but he bows again, quick and—in John’s opinion—sloppy. He straightens and beams at McKay. “Doctor. You are always welcome here.”
John would roll his eyes, but McKay already as good as called him juvenile. He’s going to prove he’s the bigger man if he chokes on it. And he would prove it, but Cadvor is stepping forward and Cadvor is in McKay’s airspace and McKay is looking freaked out, and that’s when Cadvor plants one on him, right on the mouth and John starts coughing because if he wasn’t coughing he’d be laughing.
Can he call them or what?
Cadvor backs off fast and takes off faster—he’s got to know that probably wasn’t the smartest thing he could’ve done—and McKay touches a couple of fingers to his mouth. He stares at Cadvor’s retreating backside and then he turns to John and just stands there, a deer in John’s headlights, middle and index fingers hovering over his lower lip.
“I don’t know about you guys, but that was way more thanks than I needed," says John. "Someone want to dial us home?” he asks and there’s Teyla, already making it so. Picard himself couldn’t get faster service.
“About time,” says Ronon.
“It wasn’t that bad,” John says. “We came out on top of this one.” He looks back over at McKay, who’s still staring in John’s general direction, cradling his new toy and not saying anything. It’s kind of creepy. “What?”
McKay blinks at John. “Did he—did he do what it felt like he did?” His fingers twitch restlessly against the ZPM. John grins.
“Kiss you? Oh yeah.”
“Why?”
Jesus. “Because he likes you, Rodney,” John drawls, and the event horizon is glowing and McKay’s science team is moving out, Ronon in the rear.
Teyla says, “Colonel?” and John says, “On our way,” and shoves McKay at the gate before he can reroute his shorted brain/mouth connection. John goes through right behind and as rippling blue closes over his face he thinks that in the Pegasus galaxy, may you live in interesting times isn’t a threat; it’s a naquadah-bound promise.
*
“This city, this—Renatus? Is it worth the time and materials it will take to repair?” asks Woolsey.
"You mean besides cloaking technology beyond anything in the jumpers? Granted, it's not working very well right now, but."
"Yes, Dr. McKay," Woolsey says, the corners of his mouth twitching, "besides that," and John says, “Maybe,” just as McKay says, “Yes.”
“Well gentlemen, which is it?”
“Maybe,” says Simpson, and McKay closes his mouth and stares at her, looking kind of like his pet rabbit just bit him. She grins at him, not intimidated at all, and turns back to Woolsey. “If the archived intel is valid, I think we can safely assume Renatus was never meant to function as a city in the sense it does today.”
“It was originally one of eight offworld research installments built a thousand years before Atlantis sank,” Kusanagi continues. “Each facility was built on a different planet, usually one like M26-998, unable to support human life without aid. Each pursued a different branch of scientific study with ascension as a common goal. Renatus specialized in genetic manipulation.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?” says McKay. “You couldn’t have clued me in, oh I don’t know, while we were still there?”
Teyla leans forward, lays both hands on the table. “I would like to know why the gate address was not included on Elizabeth’s list of planets with Zero Point Modules. This city was built by the Ancestors. Surely it counts?”
“Not if it was presumed destroyed,” Kusanagi says and everyone, John included, looks at her. She flushes at the concentrated attention but she’s survived the Wraith and five years as McKay’s subordinate; John figures it’ll take more than a little staring to rattle her.
“Destroyed?” says Woolsey.
“All eight were slated for destruction,” Simpson says. “The Ancients were preparing to gate back to Earth and none of the installations were designed to submerge or fly. Leaving them intact…” She flicks a glance around the table. “We already know how bad a decision that would have been.”
“So they blew them up,” John finishes. “Except it looks like somebody down the chain of command didn’t get the message.”
“It was deliberate. You see,” Kusanagi says, “in Renatus, the test subjects were human.”
*
“So is it just me or was that the creepiest pause ever?” John eyes the pink thing on the end of his spork. When it doesn’t do anything but sit there, he sticks it in his mouth.
“It was... unsettling,” says Teyla. “I am not sure creepy is the word I would choose.”
“Works for me,” Ronon says around a mouthful of something that looks like stew.
“Yes, because like the Colonel you have no imagination.” McKay slaps his tray down on the table and drops into the seat next to John. “You want creepy?” he points his spork at Ronon, “I’ll give you creepy. Simpson thinks that aside from ascension, the lab’s primary focus was fertility. Or, more to the point, the lack thereof.”
“So?”
“So, those people’s ancestors were glorified lab rats. The Ancients played hell with their genome in the interests of slowed reproduction. Staggered sterility, or something like that.” McKay smirks and sucks down a bite of maybe-stew. “Keller’s drooling already.”
“That seems in keeping with their offworld colony,” Teyla says. “The population on Vartha is low, even for a culled planet.”
John tilts his chair back onto two legs and McKay says, "Don't do that, it's annoying."
"Way to make me stop, McKay."
"You're five, aren't you?"
"I know you are but what am I?"
"I take it back, you're three at the most," McKay says, disgusted. "Go ahead. Crack your skull open if you want to so badly."
"John," Teyla says, a mix of exasperation and amusement. John lets the chair's front legs down.
"Sorry," he grins at her, unrepentant. McKay sniffs loudly and starts to say something that turns into "Hey!" when Ronon kicks him under the table.
John hunches forward, props his elbows on the table. "So, Vartha. They're okay with the trade agreement, right? The grain's coming from them."
"Seemed okay," Ronon says. "Farmers," and there's a world of meaning in that one word.
Teyla's smile flickers around the corners of her mouth. "Ronon is correct. The Varthan will honor any agreement Renatus makes."
"I'm hearing a very loud but in there," McKay says.
"Your hearing is very good," Teyla says, her smile turning rueful. "I believe the Varthan are uncomfortable that we so easily gained entrance to Renatus. They are a devout people. They revere the Ancestors and Renatus is almost holy to them." Frustration ladders her forehead; John remembers when there were fewer lines. “If we had gated directly to Vartha rather than M26-998, it would have been some time before we learned of Renatus' existence, if ever.”
That's a little too close to the Genii for John's taste, and he says so.
“It is caution, nothing more," Teyla disagrees. "The Varthan are much as my people became after the cullings took so many.”
The pink things turn green when repeatedly poked. Cool. “You guys were pretty forthcoming.”
"Our situation was different." Teyla pushes John’s hand away and scoops the pink/green things onto her tray. “When your expedition arrived in Atlantis, Athosia was no more than a few scattered encampments. Renatus is fully populated and the seat of Varthan government and religion.”
“Mecca,” McKay says. John flicks a bread pellet at him. He scowls and flicks it back. “What, I’m not allowed to draw cultural parallels, either?”
“I’ll add it to the list,” John says dryly. “Is any of this going to come back around and bite us on the ass?" he asks Teyla. "Woolsey wants more than maybe, and I won’t advise wasting finite resources on a long shot.”
Teyla doesn't answer immediately, the lines back on her forehead. “I am not sure,” she eventually says. “Statesman Cadvor introduced me to the head of their church and I spoke with two lay priests on Vartha. I felt no hostility from them, overt or otherwise, but their reluctance to allow us unrestricted access to the city was obvious.”
“Which means what?” McKay abandons his tray and picks up his cup. He’s still frowning, looks as enthused about the pink whatevers as John feels. “Pitchforks and torches at midnight? Tar and feathers and you have trespassed upon the sanctuary, never darken our gate address again?”
“They’ll let us back in,” John says. “Their secretary of state’s crushing hard on you.”
McKay’s coffee damage radius is half their table and a third of the next one. Stackhouse turns around in his seat. Looks like he’s gonna need a uniform change. Whoops.
“Tar and feathers,” Ronon repeats. McKay’s still sputtering. “Sounds a lot like clay mud, honey and linguan moss.”
“Kinky.”
“When the women did it, yeah.”
McKay splits his glare between Ronon and John. "Hello, some of us are still trying to eat, trying being the operative word. Last I checked, Satedan torture wasn't on the menu."
It's mean, yeah, but... “We could always talk about farewell procedures in Renatus."
Ronon snorts and Teyla smiles at the table, and McKay? He’s got fair skin. Maybe all that red is the sunburn he keeps bitching about.
“Fascinating as this has been,” he says, not meeting anyone’s eyes, “I’m three days behind on projects currently being overseen by incompetents and people with inferior minds. Speaking of which, Sheppard, I’m going to need you to—”
“Sorry.” John pushes his chair back and stands. “Dr. Prasad already asked.”
McKay looks like someone just smacked him with a two by four. “What? Since when does geology get you?”
“Since now.”
“Prasad can have you later,” McKay says, a snotty, overgrown kid who never learned to share. “It’s geology, how important can it be?”
“Tell that to California.” Or Taranis. “You’ve got the gene—turn your whatever-it-is on yourself.”
“I already tried.”
Ronon scrapes his chair back. “Try harder. See you, Sheppard." He nods at Teyla, dumps his tray and leaves, the mess crowd parting around him like a bunch of people who know that if they don’t move they will soon be moved, and it will hurt. A lot.
Teyla rises and circles the table. “I will see you both at the briefing tomorrow?”
“Absolutely."
“Yes of course,” McKay says, flappy and distracted. Teyla smiles and shakes her head at them, and then Corporal Hawkins calls her name and she turns to answer him. They leave together, Hawkins enthusiastically miming some kind of stick fighting maneuver; nothing like getting your ass pounded into the ground on a full stomach.
McKay says, “Why can’t you just—”
“Because I already promised Dr. Prasad. Besides,” John reaches past McKay and grabs his tray, “she asked nicely. So if you'll excuse me, my superior gene and I have a date with the tectonic plate squad.”
John strolls out of the mess with Another One Bites the Dust stuck on replay in his head. He wonders idly if McKay was in an all boys choir way back when. The guy has shrill down to a science.
.02
“I think I might be getting married,” McKay says, and John pauses with his beer halfway to his mouth.
Out on the east pier, it’s a nice day. The three-tailed gulls Ronon calls quarraalos circle and screech. Occasionally one dives into the ocean and comes up out of the water with a chunk of sea life in its beak.
John’s decided he doesn’t want to know. Magenta squid things are weird enough from a distance, so if the quarraalos want ‘em, they’re welcome to them. Atlantis can provision itself just fine, thanks. Currently, John’s stomach is full courtesy of Ronon’s latest adventures in roast beast and a Washington microbrew even McKay grudgingly admits is palatable.
Overhead, the sky is a wide bowl of cloudless blue, sunshine poured out like drunk-lavish bourbon, and there’s a total lack of invading aliens trying to kill John, which he totally appreciates. Obviously, McKay is aiming to change John’s appreciation to something far less enjoyable. Because in John’s experience any sentence that starts with first person singular and ends in marriage is a lowdown piece of no-good grammar, and should be dangled from the nearest participle until dead.
“You think,” he says, slowly. “Lot of room for interpretation. Also, didn’t you almost go there already?”
“This is different,” McKay says, but his voice is uncertain, the set of his shoulders defensive.
John lifts his beer, wet glass cool against his bottom lip, and swallows the rest. He sets the bottle down on the pier and tilts his head back, squinting against the glare. “It’s not. Trust me on this one.”
“Because everyone’s marital experiences must be a match for yours.”
“That’s not what I said.” God, the sun feels good. Last week was rain, hail, rain and guess what? More rain.
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“Come on, Rodney, give me a break. All I meant was, you go ahead and think as long as you need to, okay? Okay,” John answers his own question before the inevitable diatribe erupts.
His eyelids keep drifting down behind his sunglasses. The third time he catches himself listing to one side he gives in, stretching out on the dock and basking like an overgrown housecat.
McKay shifts beside him, moving away from John’s sprawl. He clears his throat a couple of times and, “It’s not really about actual marriage, per se,” he says.
“That’s… good?” John mumbles, because hey, sleeping.
“It’s more—okay. Hypothesize someone who’s gone through life thinking a certain way, with certain goals in mind, and they know there are other possibilities, they have no problem with that, it’s just they’ve never seen how those possibilities could apply to them. And then that changes, but they’re not sure how said changes apply to the rest of their life. Can I ask you a question?”
John should be used to McKay’s abrupt subject changes, enough to not be caught off guard by them. He’s half asleep, though, and before he can stop himself he’s already said, “Sure.”
“Have you, you know, ever? With. Um. With another. Man. I can’t believe I just said that.”
O-kay. Kind of unexpected, but not as bad as it could have been. John wriggles onto his side so he’s looking at McKay’s profile. “What brought this on?"
“Things. That I am trying not to think about. So.” McKay stares straight ahead. “That would be a no then, I take it.”
“Yep.”
“Ah.”
Embarrassment, John catches that part right off. But there are too many emotions there, tangled around one syllable of sound that’s not even a word, and John isn’t going to try for the rest.
McKay glances down at him; their eyes meet briefly and McKay looks away, but not before John has time to think that McKay’s eyes are oddly defenseless, as wide open as the sky.
“The, um, thing with Carson,” McKay says. “I don’t know if it was because, well, Cadman was pulling the strings or because Carson was just a no, but it didn’t even register beyond oh god, you did that with my mouth. But.” Fingers drum the pier, scales, arpeggios of motion. “Renatus.”
He looks flushed and miserable and yeah, okay. John gets it.
“Possibilities.”
“Yes. And now I’m thinking.”
John turns his face into the slight breeze. Sea salt in his mouth and sun in his eyes. Still too bright. Still feels good. “Hey.”
“Mn?”
“Remember when you told me to tell you whenever you hit too much information territory? This is me telling you.”
“Right,” McKay says. “Well. I suppose I should—”
“Drink your beer, Rodney,” John says. He topples himself down off his side onto his back and splays his arms and legs out, stares up at the sky, blue, god so blue, he’s falling in. McKay’s talking again, something about anomalous power fluctuations and the new ZPM. John’s eyelids drift towards closed and he lets them.
McKay babbles him to sleep.
.03
It’s a foot long and three inches high. It scuttles past John on billions of legs and disappears down a hole less than two feet from his knee and John says, not whining at all, “Bugs. Why does it always have to be bugs?”
“How very unoriginal of you, Colonel Junior,” says McKay. “And thank you so much for pointing out the obvious. Again.”
“That’s Colonel Indiana to you.” Dirt cascades through John’s fingers as he tugs at tumbled rock, searching for give. “I’ve got fond memories of that dog.”
McKay shoots him a look as venomous as John hopes the bugs are not. “I cannot believe you. I’m in a collapsed mine tunnel filled with brush bugs as big as my leg, they probably want to eat my legs and I’m going to die screaming in unimaginable pain, slowly masticated alive but you, you have the gall to misquote two of the cheesiest historical butcheries ever filmed at me.”
“The hell,” John says, and watches as the rock in front of him tilts hard to starboard. He must’ve whacked his head harder than he thought; he’s seeing two of McKay, and even at the best of times one is more than enough.
Much as John hates to contradict Dennis DeYoung, these are not the best of times. He shakes his head to clear it then wishes he hadn’t because wow: that’s some nausea with serious intent. He swallows hard, just managing not to puke all over himself or McKay, who’s frowning at him.
“Turn your head if you’re going to expel. The brush bugs are bad enough without you covering me in vomit.”
John swallows one more time, just in case. The world has slowed down some, and Jesus, did he say he likes anything that goes 200 miles an hour? Because he’s starting to think that might be kind of an exaggeration.
“Sheppard?”
“Still here,” he says. “What’s a brush bug?”
“It’s a bug! That’s shaped like a brush! Like those currying things for horses and god, riding, there’s a memory I didn’t need. Or wait, no. No, the ones you use to buff leather. I always hated doing that. One of a very few good things about living in this galaxy is the dearth of shoes in need of polishing. And ties. Do not get me started on ties.”
“Wasn’t going to.” He can see antennae waving out of the corner of his eye. “What happened to genus and species?”
“Hello! Doctor of astrophysics and mechanical engineering, not entomology, are you kidding?”
McKay’s voice bounces off the walls and the inside of John’s skull. John’s brain tries to turn itself inside out. “Rodney.”
“What?”
“Ssssh.” A thread of dirt sifts down onto John’s nose. He tips his head back, slowly.
The low, distant growl of mechanical equipment suddenly sounds less distant. “Is that light?” John says.
McKay cranes his neck. “Finally. I was beginning to think they’d taken a six hour lunch break,” and then the ceiling sort of comes down.
After that, things get really blurry. John goes somewhere else, riding out waves of sick pain behind closed eyes until someone says his name. A hand touches his arm and he looks up into Teyla’s worried faces. “Are you tracking?” all three of her ask.
“Not as well as I'd like,” is what he tries to say. That’s probably not what comes out of his mouth, though, because the worry in the Teylas’ shared expression increases exponentially. Also, John thinks there might be more of her now than there were a minute ago. One of her many hands rests cool and reassuring against his cheek. John leans into it.
He can hear McKay somewhere in the background, a familiar drift of sound and fury. He’s telling someone named Incompetent Jackass that if this was a blue planet not in the Pegasus galaxy, now would be ass-in-a-legal-sling time for miners who don’t have the first clue how to properly shore up their evil, physicist-eating tunnels.
“John.” Teyla strokes his cheek and John again fails to focus on her. “Ronon and Operations Chief Gadok are going to move you now.”
“Oh good,” John says, and passes out.
*
“Aren’t you supposed to be horizontal?” McKay says without turning, and for about two seconds, John considers sticking his tongue out.
On the other hand, McKay can probably see his reflection in any of several dark computer screens. John settles for saying, “Two weeks, McKay. The nice doctor lets me walk around all by myself. I’m not going to puke on your floor or your tech.”
Finally, a reaction. McKay swivels around and frowns at John. “Are you trying to nauseate me? Because that? Was disgusting.”
“It was supposed to be funny.”
McKay crosses his arms and juts his chin. “Believe me, it wasn’t.”
“Fine,” John says. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“No we can’t,” McKay turns back to his screen. “Working.”
The tap of fingers over keys picks back up. John settles himself against the wall and waits. If he knows McKay—and after almost six years, he should—it won’t be long before McKay gets tired of John’s stare prickling the space between his shoulder blades, gets annoyed, then angry, then jerks back around and says, “What!”
“Did you actually call me Colonel Junior," asks John, "or was that the concussion talking?"
McKay just frowns at first input error: correct and re-try and then his face clears, his mouth does its smug angles thing and, "You're bored."
Well, duh. John's been confined first to the infirmary then quarters then Atlantis in general for going on three weeks. If Keller hadn't just now finally cleared him for duty, he'd have given serious thought to hijacking a jumper. Bugging McKay runs a close second, so... "You could've come around more than once a week."
Guilt and discomfort. McKay's an open book. "I've been busy," he mumbles.
"Uh-huh," John says. "By the way, your busy says hi and also, you missed dinner."
“My what?”
“Blonde, about this high, MD?”
“Oh Keller,” McKay says. "Jennifer.”
“You know," says John, "when you’re thinking about proposing to someone, first names are usually a plus. Just saying.”
“Yes, about that. I’m thinking possibly not." Not good, this is like the black hole of good. "I, I care. About her. A lot. But there's this, um, person and he—well," and now McKay's looking guilty as hell, and just like that John sees where this is going, as clear as he saw Cadvor coming on M34-997.
“Rodney,” he says. And maybe it’s the sheer amount of tension even John can hear in his voice, but McKay closes his mouth and really looks at John.
“Oh,” McKay says. And, “Oh,” again, too quiet, and John might have felt bad about that if he wasn’t grounded and on edge. But he is grounded and on edge, McKay is too good at pushing buttons John didn’t even know he owned, and John doesn’t want to be having this conversation. He hangs around McKay for the exact opposite of this conversation, and up until now that’s worked well for both of them. Looks like John’s almost six year run of luck just ran out.
He swallows around his dried-out tongue, dry enough that swallowing hurts, and McKay looks the way he did after Doranda: like something ready to be put out of its misery.
“I'm not who you should be telling this to,” John hears himself say, and after that it's almost easy. “Hell, McKay, I’m not—this isn’t some new virtual environment you're trying on for size. Get it?”
McKay blinks rapidly.
“You,” he closes his mouth. Opens it. “Yes, yes I’ve got it. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I—okay no, forget that, I’m. Sorry.”
He looks at the empty coffee cup in his hand as though he’s never seen a hand or a cup before. He sets the cup on the bench beside his work station and lets the hand drop. Fingers clench then go limp and stay that way, and John stares at them, at long fingers and wide palms that are always in motion, except now they’re not and that’s just wrong.
“I,” and, “I’m just going to,” low and stuttered and McKay is going, walking away before John can figure out how to make this not be one more screw-up on his part.
The door closes. John leans forward a few inches and knocks his head back against the wall. Does it again. Ow.
He’s batting a thousand tonight, what with smacking himself into walls on purpose post-concussion. And oh yeah, he almost forgot the part where he alienated one of three people in two galaxies he considers family. John’s so good he drove Dr. McKay, devourer of worlds and lesser scientists, out of his own lab.
Way to go, Sheppard.
.04
Unscheduled offworld activation happens at 0832; it’s Simpson’s IDC, and she wants all available electrical and mechanical engineers to get their butts to Renatus yesterday, and also Lieutenant Sanchez because he’s the only structural engineer around and the external integrity of sector four on level two is compromised. Septic is a mess and McKay’s “patches” aren’t going to hold much longer. Failure won’t be pretty.
In fact, in the succinct and extremely apt words of Radek Zelenka, it’ll draw a very large vacuum.
McKay goes because he’s McKay, because he thinks no one else can get it right without him breathing down their necks. John goes because Ronon has a hole in his leg (knife: ugly, serrated bastard), Teyla is on the mainland with Torren, and since McKay is going, John might as well. That and he’s bored. There’s only so much paperwork a man can do before he gives in and dumps the rest on his second.
“For me?” Lorne says. “Sir, you shouldn’t have. I mean that.”
“Only the best for this command,” John says magnanimously then ducks out before Lorne can go for his sidearm.
Two hours later, he’s watching McKay crawl around in the guts of what looks to John like some kind of Ancient mainframe. McKay’s muttering to himself, sometimes profanely; it’s not a real edifying way to spend a morning. John would have left half an hour ago to poke around in places he probably shouldn't and possibly bug other people, but McKay said, “Oh no you don’t. Sit! Stay!”
“You’ve got your radio,” John had whined, “Hit me if you need me,” but, “I need someone to hand me things and it may as well be you,” McKay told him. “You and your bad posture can go hold up that wall until then.”
Bad posture, John’s ass. No, he’s not sulking. Not even a little. Which doesn’t stop him from staying right where he is when McKay says, “Sheppard, soldering wand, chop chop.”
John shifts forward and examines the array of Ancient tools. Nothing there says “soldering wand” to him. “You think you could maybe give me a few more specifics?” he calls.
“God, you are so—okay. Cylindrical, blue and bronze, approximately twenty-two centimeters in length, two in diameter, three-crystal fused tip. Is that specific enough for you?”
Sure. Not that John’s about to say so. “Not seeing it,” he tells McKay. “Maybe you should get off your ass and get it yourself.”
It’s like Zelenka’s vacuum. No sound, no movement, no nothing. Then McKay backs out of the mainframe, staggers to his feet and two seconds after that he’s in John’s face. John hasn’t seen him this angry in a long time.
“You want to do this here?" he says. "Fine. I’m tired of dealing with your little snit anyway, so why don’t you go ahead tell me what the hell your problem is.”
It’s the fight John’s been spoiling for. Looking forward to, even. Now that it’s here and happening, he just feels numb. McKay’s righteously pissed off, though, and nothing short of inbound Hive ships or chocolate-covered espresso beans will derail inertia, so John figures he might as well do this right.
“You know what they say about assumptions,” he says.
“And which assumption am I supposed to have made?” McKay wants to know. “We haven’t exchanged more than ten words at a time in a month!”
“You got a wild hair and decided that at some point must I have too, so dumping on me was okay,” John says. “I haven’t and it isn’t. We clear?”
“Crystal. Did I ask?”
“Yeah, you kind of did. Have you ever. Remember?” He makes it dirty, drops his voice like he does when he’s about to get laid, and McKay goes very, very red.
“So that’s—you mean this is—” It’s a visible effort for McKay to stop the rush of thought into speech. He shuts his eyes briefly then opens them again, looks at John and, “Tell me something,” he says. “Is it the fact that I might not walk a completely straight line that’s pissing you off, or the fact that I thought you might not?”
And that’s it. That is about fucking it. “Shut your wiseass mouth before your smartass brain trips all over it,” John says, low and even because he’s not going to yell.
He’s surprised when it works. McKay’s mouth snaps shut and he goes perfectly still, hands frozen mid-flight.
John scrubs a palm over his face, presses in against closed eyes, spinning fractals on the backs of his eyelids.
“You know me,” he says.
“I thought I did.”
“Guess we both did.”
And yeah, it does kind of bother him, no, it bothers the hell out of him that he and McKay don’t know each other as well as both of them obviously believed. It pisses him off that McKay doesn’t have one clue about John’s boundaries, and as little respect for them.
“What does that even mean? What is that supposed to mean?” Uncertain, like McKay never is. “You throw these—these non sequiturs out like idiots in parks throw coins at fountains, and how am I supposed to know?”
How should I know, John wants to ask. You’re the one with all the words.
“Stuck with you, that's, you said it. I'm saying it now." McKay's looking down at his hands, open and empty. “Just, you have to tell me things sometimes, Sheppard. I can't see inside your head, and honestly, I don't want to.”
And that’s a problem, see, because, “I don’t,” says John.
“What did I just say? Non sequiturs. You don’t what?”
It’s funny how sometimes slow and simple is the only way to get through to someone as smart as McKay. “I don’t talk. About this stuff. To anyone.” Look at me, damn it. “Ever.”
Just that easy, it’s light-bulb time in genius land. “You don’t,” McKay says, like this is his favorite new epiphany.
Which is good because John’s had enough. He rolls his head from side to side, a continuity of snapping vertebrae. Going to have a bitch of a headache later.
The door hums open, making McKay jump. Zelenka sticks his head in and looks from John, slouched against a workstation, to McKay, vibrating like a live wire. Both Zelenka’s eyebrows go up. “Problem?”
“No, absolutely not, no problems here,” says McKay. “Why? Did someone tell you there was a problem?”
“Shut up, Rodney,” John says. “We’re good,” he tells Zelenka. “What’s up?”
“I thought you would like to know that power has been restored to all control stations. It may not last long—the volume of damaged hardware and corrupted code is significant—but long enough for the dike to be plugged, so to speak. As well, the leak in the secondary waste conduit on the fourth level has been stabilized, though that has little bearing on this.” Zelenka’s gaze sweeps over McKay and his handiwork. “You are making progress.”
“I’d have made more if the Colonel here would get off his slouchy horse and fetch,” McKay says with a dark look for John.
Zelenka laughs. “Ask, do not tell, Rodney. I promise you, it will get better results.”
It’s a good thing Zelenka’s turning toward John as he speaks; McKay sucks at hiding what he’s feeling, and that little ask/tell comment hit him like a hundred volt charge.
Zelenka hovers in the doorway, his eyebrows and mouth concerned lines in the round of his face and, "Though by now I should not have to warn either of you of this danger," he says, "be careful of what you touch. We have already found or been shown several of what we think are experimental ascension devices and these, unfortunately, are not specific to those with the gene.”
The door closes after him with a thin hiss, sealing in silence.
The in-out of McKay's breathing is loud in John's ears. Too harsh in too-abrupt stillness John needs to break, and he says, “They really were a bunch of selfish bastards.”
“You’re just now getting that? Try to keep up, Colonel.” McKay moves, time shattered around them, wires and crystals and alien tech. He grabs his soldering wand and crawls back inside the gutted mainframe. It’s a long time before either of them says anything else.
.05
The thing is, one of two things, two important things, and the first is easy because it’s the truth. Everything John’s said, everything he’s told McKay is true.
He’s not into guys; never has been. He’s not into random fucking, either, got it out of his system somewhere around twenty-five. These days there’s not enough trust in his universe for that brand of stupid.
Important thing the second is also true but it’s hard, hard because it’s true, like thing number one turned the wrong way around.
Rodney McKay isn’t some guy. He’s not some random fuck. He’s Rodney McKay.
.06
The warlord of P66-175 has the ATA gene and two stone fortresses, one of them shielded. Her army is equipped with weapons similar to Ronon’s; her private bodyguard and harem together are an amalgam of Pegasus sentience. She’s well-spoken and seems intelligent, even if she looks like she could take Ronon apart with one hand, and during AR-1's third visit to her planet she offers Teyla half the contents of the Ancient outpost her primary stronghold is built on in exchange for John.
McKay makes stifled noises while Ronon’s mouth curls in silent contempt. Teyla smiles and tells the warlord that she couldn’t possibly trade away her most valued bondsmen. Any of them.
John keeps his mouth shut and himself armed. When he moves his left hand brushes unfamiliar textures, the hilt and sheath of one of Ronon's knives. The whole time they’re on-planet he never really stops moving, scanning for potential aggression, for possible hostiles. He never looks directly at the woman sprawled across dark green stone.
Her regard is pressure against his skin, unvoiced heat, but it’s nothing John hasn’t felt before. Others’ wants, fantasies painted on his body, over his face until he can’t recognize himself in anyone’s eyes, not even his own.
Life is pretty much all labels and John knows which ones usually get slapped on him. Which neat little slots he's crammed into. It's what people do, he knows that, and they give it their best shot but he’s already been compartmentalized by the best. What the USAF couldn’t do to John, no one person ever will.
It’s weird, now that he thinks about it, but John’s earliest memory isn’t of either of his parents. Not his brother or his father’s house or a favorite toy. What John remembers is a hand, coming towards him. He remembers—not fear but annoyance, remembers wishing whoever was reaching for him would go away. He remembers hitting out with his own hand and after that… voices? Surprise, maybe. He’s not sure, but he has this feeling they did go away, the person behind the hand.
He’s kept himself to himself since he was a kid, but no shrink his dad sent him to—and there were a bunch of them—ever believed his behavioral patterns weren’t the product of his mom’s death. That they weren’t the manifestation of some mental break that needed fixing. It's all him, though, one-hundred percent stay the hell away, and you know? John’s always liked himself just fine.
In high school, his sphere of self-containment became sullen don’t or I’ll break your face. He thinks he might have done some actual face-breaking then. He’s not sure. He’s over forty now; what’s left of fifteen to eighteen is a blur of hormones, defiance and the drive to get out, get away, get off the ground already. MIT bought him the first two. The Air Force gave him everything else, including the training to back up his back-off.
Somewhere in there he got some tempering, a hamon of common sense beat into him by life and a few good commanders. Regret is sealed memory, his dead, a luxury he doesn't allow himself. It’s taken most of his forty-odd years, but he’s learned to understand if not appreciate expedience. He may not like or agree with a lot of US military policy, but he gets the reality of military life, uses it, wears the Air Force like McKay wore his personal shield. A mirror, it throws back whatever whoever's looking wants to see. He looks out from behind it, smiles slow and mean and easy and he thinks, That’s it, that’s all you get. He walks away, leaves nothing of himself behind, and the feeling, Christ, feels so good it’s like flying, like it’s pain, the good kind that’s not his.
On the green dais, Teyla talks circles around the warlord. Ronon breathes menace at anyone who looks at her wrong. AR-4 and 5 mark the circumference of the room, Earth weaponry and training woven through local muscle.
John respectfully requests Teyla's permission to leave the room, bows his head in thanks when he receives it. Then he walks away from one more person who wants a piece of him. He goes looking for McKay.
Like everyone else, McKay wants things from John. They’re just not the same things almost everyone else wants. McKay wants John to listen to him, to puddlejump him where he wants to go so he doesn’t have to do it himself. He wants John to sit here, touch this, throw him over that balcony. He wants John to be around, and maybe to just be.
John’s okay with that. All of it.
Which is why instead of pretending to eat food he doesn't trust not to be doctored with some kind of mind-altering substance, he’s standing in a deserted hall outside an open doorway, watching McKay sort through a pile of Ancient junk.
Both of P66-175’s suns have set. There’s still light but it’s getting dimmer by the second. McKay doesn’t seem to have noticed, so John performs his designated on/off duty, this time with an Earth-style switch and torchiere lamp instead of the Ancient think-me-on equivalent.
McKay blinks up from a pool of expanding light and, “Oh it’s you,” he says. “Still a free agent, I see. For a while, I thought Ronon was going to have to physically guard your virtue from Lola the barbarian.”
John lays his weapon down beside the futon closest to McKay’s workspace. Lays himself on the futon. “I think her name’s Laki.”
“Lola, Laki, whatever.” McKay does something to his scanner, hums in satisfaction when it buzzes softly. “The names and faces are interchangeable, but there’s always some ridiculously attractive female or other skulking around, ready to club you over the head and drag you by your gravity defying hair to her lair.”
The mental image John gets surprises a laugh from him. “Tell me you’re messing with me, McKay. Because that’s just scary.”
McKay's answering laugh is sharp and unamused. “Not so much, no. You’re too pretty for everyone else’s good health, especially mine. Remember R16-3X3? That harpy thing practically clawed me open trying to get to you.”
“At the time, I was kinda busy keeping both our asses intact.”
John gets McKay’s “Whatever, Sheppard” look and a wall of miffed silence, which is fine by him. Right now, unconsciousness seems like a better way to kill off the evening than listening to McKay bitch about every single time something in this galaxy has tried to jump John.
Ten minutes later John’s mostly asleep. McKay huffs an exasperated breath and says, “Here, take—Sheppard?” His voice drops to a loud whisper. “Are you sleeping? Because if so, you seriously suck.”
“‘M awake.”
“You are so not awake.”
John yawns and opens his eyes. “Sure I am, Rodney. What’s up?”
“Not you.”
“Well, aren’t you mister happy joy-joy tonight.”
“I hate this stupid pseudo gene Carson gave me. It’s clearly substandard.” McKay frowns at the thing he’s holding; it remains stubbornly quiescent.
To John, it looks like a blown-glass dish, frosted grey faint with blue tracery, veins dark under dead skin. More fucked up imagery John doesn’t need or want. He lifts his head and finds McKay watching him.
“Would it help if I said I know I’ve been acting like an asshole but I’m going to stop?” he asks.
“Never promise the impossible,” McKay says, enough irony to choke a Wraith. “Also, how is this new?”
“I, uh, thought you were pissed at me?”
“How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?”
John feels the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. “So we’re okay.”
“As long as you stop asking stupid questions, yes.” Yet another aggravated glance. “For some reason I believed, erroneously, that you understood logic well enough to reach the correct conclusion on your own.”
“Cool.” More than cool, it’s relief and a return to normalcy. Which means John’s allowed to say, “Hey McKay.” He rearranges the words in his head ten times before McKay’s impatience kicks in.
“What, Colonel?”
No good way. “You still thinking?”
“What do you—oh.” John can almost hear the snap and sizzle of genius-class synapses. McKay is silent for longer than is comfortable. Then, “Yes,” he says. “I, not yet. Still.”
Dull grey sits forgotten in McKay’s palm. Discarded. Disregarded.
John reaches out. He lays his hand over McKay’s hand, touches Earth skin and Ancient design. He sees grey flare to brilliance and his sight goes blue; the light, the room, McKay’s eyes looking back at him.
.07
Two months ago, John sat slumped over on one of jumper four’s benches. He turned his head, slow enough that his skull couldn’t fall off his neck by accident, and when he’d moved just enough that he could see Teyla he said, “Can we not do this again?”
Today, John crosses his arms and stares Woolsey down across the briefing room table. “We’re not doing this again,” he says.
“Colonel.” Woolsey looks harried and exasperated and John can empathize, he really can. He knows what it’s like to be surrounded by demanding women. But sometimes a guy’s gotta take a stand, and this one is John’s. He just wishes it had more of a Teddy Roosevelt feel to it. G.A. Custer isn’t really his style.
“It’s quite all right,” says Sora. “I understand if the Colonel’s team is unable to participate. The stress of leading physically active lives can’t be easy for those who aren't as young as they once were.”
“I assure you,” Teyla says before either John or Woolsey can speak, “we are very able. Are we not, Colonel?” She smiles, lots and lots of exposed white.
Whoa. “Uh.” Both Teyla and Sora are looking at him. The back of his neck is crawling. “I guess if Teyla’s sure about—”
“Wonderful,” says Sora. “The choice of playing field is yours.”
“Colonel?” Teyla says.
Cultural exchange, that’s what they’re calling it. What Elizabeth would have called it. And in Atlantis, as much as the Ancients were once gods, Elizabeth is now reverend mother, virgin saint and holy martyr rolled into one.
Note to self: have Teyla commission a triptych. Note to self number two: wait until she’s done being scary.
Elizabeth, John thinks, would have praised the Marine who’d taught a few Genii teens the basics of soccer. She would have been thrilled when it caught on with the rest of the Federation and flared into what’s become a hugely popular interplanetary sport. She would have been all for the monthly Atlanteans/Athosians versus Genii matches, which as far as John can see aren’t much more than an excuse for Sora and Teyla to go at each other like a pair of rabid wolverines.
And the freakiest part of the whole mess? McKay loves it. McKay goes voluntarily without the threat of violent death or Teyla hanging over his head. It’s bizarre enough to fry John’s last few functioning brain cells.
“I didn’t spend all my childhood indoors,” McKay told John when John made a few incredulous noises after the first game. “Okay yes, my mother signed me up and wouldn’t let me out of it. Early socialization or something like that. But I sort of... liked it," almost defiant. “I had fun which, believe me, was as much of a surprise to me as everyone else. Anyway, I seem to spend half my time running for my life. How is this different?"
Uh-huh. Why couldn’t Sergeant Masters have taught those kids how to play real football?
“Colonel?" says Woolsey.
“P3R-076,” John says. “Lots of grass, good weather, uninhabited except for us.” He slants an eyebrow at Sora. “Sound good?”
She doesn’t answer. Not John, anyway. She looks John up and down, smiles like a shark and says, "You surround yourself with pretty things, Teyla. Where do you find room for them all? Or do you throw them away when you grow bored?”
Ouch.
“I do not throw the old away to make room for the new,” Teyla says, and Jesus, is that a growl? “What is mine, I keep.”
If John was a whimpering kind of guy, this would be the time for it. It’s definitely time for something. Say, industrial strength cattle prods.
An image of McKay, sweaty and grinning, glowing under his mud and not giving a damn superimposes itself over five tons of never-happen. John regretfully puts the cattle prods back on their mental shelf.
“Right,” he says. “Let’s do this.”
.08
Some days John feels like his life is one huge intergalactic, interplanetary incident.
Then he thinks about it for a second, mentally crosses out the some days he feels like and yeah. That.
.09
When John’s office door slides open, he’s wading through the backlog of Lorne’s Revenge. He looks away from his screen, glad of any interruption, and McKay’s standing in the doorway, arms wrapped tight around his chest. He’s showered and changed his clothes; he’s wearing one of his old science uniforms. His long, crooked mouth is more crooked than usual, the corners at odd angles. He looks pissed off and unhappy, and John wonders what happened in the last two hours. When the game ended, McKay was damn near incandescent.
He’s also wondering why McKay isn’t moving. The door’s wide open. “Hey. Mi casa es su casa and so on and so forth, so come on in and let the door close already.”
McKay stares blankly at John and then he looks at the doorway and his ears go kind of pink. “Oh. Sorry.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.” John’s laptop powers down, barely audible hum there and then not. “Should probably stop,” he tells McKay. “It’s weirding people out.”
McKay’s chin goes up. “Thank you for your opinion, Colonel. It’s been noted and rejected.” He steps forward; the door closes behind him and he hovers in front of it, looking anywhere but at John.
John waits for McKay’s monologue function to kick in. It doesn’t. “Something I can help you with?” John suggests, and gets the you-are-so-moronic-you-make-morons-look-good eyeroll.
“I know it’s hard, but you can endure the silence for more than five seconds,” McKay says. “I’m trying to decide how to say this.”
John leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “You can’t come up with one lousy sentence? You?”
“Patience is a virtue,” McKay says, sounding more pompous than virtuous, and John says, “Considering the source...”
"This is your fault, you know," McKay accuses. “I can’t think with you doing that—that eyebrow thing.” Arms loosed from around ribs, hands loose in the air and, “For god’s sake, Sheppard, stop doing that.”
“So basically, my eyebrows scramble your brain waves. Wow, Rodney, I had no idea. I think I’m touched.”
“In the head,” McKay mutters, and John grins at him, and something like pain twists McKay’s mouth. He turns his head like he has to, like looking at John is inducing an allergic reaction or something.
“What I wanted—am trying to—” stumbling and uneven and McKay looks back at John and, "This is ridiculous, you and your stupid eyebrows and why?”
He stares at John, mouth a tight unhappy line, and he's asking without speaking, asking John not to make him do this, whatever this is, but John isn’t making McKay do anything. He doesn’t know how to make McKay stop.
“Rodney,” he says, “it’s good. Whatever, it’s good.”
“Good, that’s—” and finally, John remembers where he last saw that look on someone’s face, except it was McKay on the receiving end of it then and now it’s John. McKay's looking at John like John’s it, the end. “I stopped,” McKay says. “I stopped,” and John is up out of his chair and moving before McKay can say anything else.
McKay takes a step back and John goes after him, corners him, up against the wall, the wide of his eyes so exposed John wants to yell at him, tell him to shut it down, shut it off. Nobody should ever be that open to another person. Bad enough when you're looking at it. Worse when you don't want it to stop.
John slaps his hands forward against the wall. He lays them flat to either side of McKay’s shoulders and part of him notices the wider stretch, the difference between male and female. He leans in, not much, just enough to feel the heat of McKay’s body. To smell him, soap and skin and god, so different.
“You don’t,” he says, and McKay’s breath is hot, uneven against his skin. “You don’t get to change your mind later.”
“Yes, whatever, I don’t care just stop talking and do things to me,” which John figures really means shut up and let me do stuff to you because that’s what he gets, McKay’s hand on the back of John’s neck and McKay’s mouth warm against John’s mouth and kisses, open-mouthed, no tongues, slick without being wet and hotter than the most explicit kiss John’s ever given or gotten.
He presses in, his mouth to McKay’s mouth, himself against the sturdy heat of McKay's body and McKay’s hands are on John’s ass, pulling him in hard, lining chests and legs and hard dicks up. John swears against McKay’s mouth, shaky and shaken because it’s just that fucking good. McKay’s fingers dig bruises into John’s ass and McKay’s dick is thick hot pressure against John’s hip and John’s hands are sliding down McKay’s back. Over his ass, quick and everywhere, all over McKay, John can’t stop touching. Doesn’t want to stop. He licks a line up McKay’s throat and Mckay’s skin is smooth and rough at the same time under John’s tongue. McKay must have shaved again when he showered. He tenses under John's hands and mouth, his hands curl tighter around John's hipbones, nails scratching against rough fabric, and his head thumps back against the wall and he says, “Ohfuckyesthatagain.”
John pulls away because he wants to look, needs to see, and McKay looks wrecked and it’s John’s fault, all of it. Mouth blurred open, pupils blown wide and he’s, fuck he’s so, “God McKay, you—”
“Yes, me,” McKay pulls John back in, his mouth moving slow against John’s, words licked into, inside John's mouth, “But god works, too.” And then his hand is working between them, working its way down the front of John’s pants, closing tight and sure around John’s dick and Jesus fucking Christ.
John hasn’t come in his pants since he was sixteen, and oh look, there goes one more chunk of dignity out the airlock. Between the Pegasus galaxy and McKay, he’s lucky he’s got any left at all.
.10
“Did we just have fully clothed wall sex in your office in the middle of the day?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Right. Just checking. Being, you know, clear. On things.”
John shuts his eyes and rests his head against the wall. “Hey Rodney.”
“What?”
“We're clear.”
.11
Dawn on M35-117 comes in pale orange and red, smudged horizon, blurry, pink washed out, drowning yellow spilling past daybreak straight down into morning.
John meets it the way he usually does on those days the universe isn’t doing its damnedest to kill him, wheezing his lungs out two meters behind Ronon as they pound through the city’s deserted walkways.
At five miles he’s seeing spots, the green and purple kind, and he thinks, Getting too old to play the ego card, Sheppard. He slows his run to a jog.
It takes Ronon a few seconds to catch on. He flips fluidly around and slows as well, jogging backwards and baring his teeth at John. John’s not stupid enough to mistake the expression for a smile.
“You done?”
“You know,” John says in between gulped breaths, “I think I am.”
Ronon slows further down until they’re in step. “Should keep going,” he tells John. “Your ass won’t look so pretty dragging dirt.”
Screw cool-down. John jerks to a stop which is, okay, not so smart. He can feel his heartbeat in his glands, in his sinuses, but he’s going to get some answers right now.
“What is with the pretty crap? Do I have it stamped on my forehead or something?”
Ronon shrugs. “It’s a woman thing.” He’s jogging in place, his amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes and mouth. “Don’t know why. I never figured it out.”
“Well I’m not!”
“I know. They don’t. Stupid.”
“Oh yeah.”
They grin at each other, perfectly in sync. No explanations needed.
“So I’m just going to go be in pain somewhere else now,” John says. “Something I need to take care of.”
That gets him another flash of teeth and, “Later.”
“Lunch,” John calls as he peels off, jogging towards the nearest transporter. He arrives at his room sore, sweaty and in need of a shower, and does an immediate double-take: it isn’t every day he gets back from a run and finds McKay passed out cold on his bed. He doesn’t waste time wondering why McKay’s here as opposed to his own room. He probably stayed in the labs all night, thought of something he wanted to discuss with John on the way to his room, then crashed in John’s room before John could make it back. In a few hours, he’ll be up and whining about his back, because that’s just McKay.
Whining aside, John can almost—if he squints—see McKay’s presence as an extremely screwed up form of serendipity. Because that thing John needs to take care of?
“Hey McKay. Come on, off and on.”
“Coffee,” McKay groans, and rolls over onto his stomach.
“McKay,” John says again, louder, because this is important, he really feels it needs to be said. “McKay!”
“What, what?” And McKay is sitting up, hair sticking up all over his head in tufts, and John swallows his laughter; serious business, right here.
McKay frowns blearily. He blinks and then his eyes focus, narrowing on John and, “This had better be good, Sheppard.”
“Call me pretty again,” John says, “I will kill you slowly and with extreme prejudice.”
McKay blinks again. “Wait, what?” then, “Are you insane? You got me up to tell me—oh god, you are insane, empirical evidence is mine, and now you’ve infected me as well. Fabulous.” He flips his hand at the door, “Go away, and don’t come back unless you have coffee,” and flops back down on John’s bed.
John opens his mouth to say that this is his room and if McKay doesn’t like the house rules he can get the hell out, but McKay’s breathing has steadied and McKay’s body is relaxing by slow degrees.
“What the hell?” John asks the back of McKay’s unconscious head.
He thinks about shoving McKay off the bed. He strips down instead, dumping his sweaty running gear on top of McKay’s discarded uniform jacket with malice that’s what you get for calling me pretty and hogging my mattress aforethought.
The bathroom door opens in silent invitation. John can hear the shower going already.
The water is always the right temp; no matter how cold or hot John wants it, Atlantis gives him what he needs without his having to ask. Or maybe he does ask without realizing; maybe the content of his subconscious is enough. God knows it’s more than enough to stand beneath wet, streaming heat and let desalinated water pound aching muscle into submission.
John tilts his head back. He squeezes his eyes shut against the spray, and for no good reason he’s grinning, holding himself in so tight he’s shaking with it.
He stays under the water until his pores feel swollen and liquid, until he’s floating away inside his skin. His palms and feet are supersaturated ridges. There are thumps and other audible signs of discontent coming from his room.
“Sheppard,” McKay yells.
“What?” John yells back, and reaches for a towel.
“Three and a half hours. You woke me twice and moreover, you disrupted my cycle before REM set in. I can feel it. You owe me four hours and thirty minutes of sleep.” McKay appears in the bathroom doorway and scowls at John. “Or a blow job.”
“Fuck you,” John says.
“I don’t think so. What kind of cheap, easy date do you take me for? Um. Don’t answer that.”
John’s not laughing. Really.
“So,” he says, “blow job now, penetration later?” and McKay’s mouth and eyes go wide, McKay croaks, “Yes, okay, yes please?” words and sounds tumbling over each other, and John can’t keep this up. He cracks, splitting open along all his seams and laughing for real, so hard it hurts.
Later or now, it’s all the same to him. It’s 200 miles an hour, feet dragging the ground face to the sky, flying cities, death-defying acts of sheer idiocy in a galaxy far, far away, and it’s McKay.
Works for John.
Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Notes: 10,000 words, vague spoilers through season five, future-ish, as much snark as spark. This is a jigsaw: you've got most of the edge pieces, two corners and a pile of jumbled insides. Thanks as always to Q. If the fic makes any sense, she's why.
.01
There's a ZPM in Arthrim Cadvor's hands, and he holds them and it out with the hesitance of a high priest offering his god a substandard sacrifice. He’s focused on McKay, watching him like McKay’s the only thing in the room and oh yeah, John sees this one coming a mile away.
McKay’s hands lift, circling air, their usual “Now, give me now, now, now,” holding pattern. The stifled giggling must be Kusanagi or Simpson; Teyla’s got her surrounded-by-idiots face on, so status quo there.
“You have our gratitude,” Cadvor says. “Had you and your people not come through the ring, we would have been forced into a difficult decision.”
“Between evacuation or asphyxiation by slow, painful degrees?" McKay turns the ZPM over, running his fingers across ridges and dips. “I'd say for anyone with at least the intelligence quotient of an earthworm, it's an easy decision.”
John doesn’t laugh although really wants to. McKay being McKay is better than the best VR, you can’t buy entertainment like him in any galaxy, but John does cough up one muffled, “Bullshit”—two syllables of Ancient code and redundancies like crazy and McKay, how are you so full of it?
McKay catches it, all of it, and John gets his gimme reaction: McKay's mouth tightening up, flattening out, opening around, “Over ten millennia of running at maximum power with the facility at maximum capacity for at least seven of those millennia and no maintenance, Sheppard. Even Ancient code is subject to corruption. Crystals get smashed, idiot children spill things where they shouldn't. It's called life."
“We going or not?” says Ronon.
Thin lines of red are creeping up Cadvor’s cheeks. “I apologize. I’m keeping you from your duties.” He bows, aiming his bent head somewhere in between John and McKay. “Again, thank you. The lights on the third level are wholly operational for the first time in—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said.” McKay flaps an impatient hand towards Kusanagi, “You can thank her for your present state of illumination.”
“I believe what Doctor McKay means to say is that you are very welcome,” Teyla says. She smiles and it’s a smile John recognizes, one of several variations on a theme. Specifically, the ‘I am smiling, Colonel, but I have just spent two very long days inside a sealed Ancient installation on a planet whose atmosphere gives new definition to thin air, all this in addition to degrading environmental controls and Rodney McKay’s ego, and I am not going to be smiling for much longer’ variation.
John takes the hint. “What she said. And you know, ditto on the thanks a lot, have my people call your people, maybe see you around sometime thing.”
Cadvor looks confused but he bows again, quick and—in John’s opinion—sloppy. He straightens and beams at McKay. “Doctor. You are always welcome here.”
John would roll his eyes, but McKay already as good as called him juvenile. He’s going to prove he’s the bigger man if he chokes on it. And he would prove it, but Cadvor is stepping forward and Cadvor is in McKay’s airspace and McKay is looking freaked out, and that’s when Cadvor plants one on him, right on the mouth and John starts coughing because if he wasn’t coughing he’d be laughing.
Can he call them or what?
Cadvor backs off fast and takes off faster—he’s got to know that probably wasn’t the smartest thing he could’ve done—and McKay touches a couple of fingers to his mouth. He stares at Cadvor’s retreating backside and then he turns to John and just stands there, a deer in John’s headlights, middle and index fingers hovering over his lower lip.
“I don’t know about you guys, but that was way more thanks than I needed," says John. "Someone want to dial us home?” he asks and there’s Teyla, already making it so. Picard himself couldn’t get faster service.
“About time,” says Ronon.
“It wasn’t that bad,” John says. “We came out on top of this one.” He looks back over at McKay, who’s still staring in John’s general direction, cradling his new toy and not saying anything. It’s kind of creepy. “What?”
McKay blinks at John. “Did he—did he do what it felt like he did?” His fingers twitch restlessly against the ZPM. John grins.
“Kiss you? Oh yeah.”
“Why?”
Jesus. “Because he likes you, Rodney,” John drawls, and the event horizon is glowing and McKay’s science team is moving out, Ronon in the rear.
Teyla says, “Colonel?” and John says, “On our way,” and shoves McKay at the gate before he can reroute his shorted brain/mouth connection. John goes through right behind and as rippling blue closes over his face he thinks that in the Pegasus galaxy, may you live in interesting times isn’t a threat; it’s a naquadah-bound promise.
*
“This city, this—Renatus? Is it worth the time and materials it will take to repair?” asks Woolsey.
"You mean besides cloaking technology beyond anything in the jumpers? Granted, it's not working very well right now, but."
"Yes, Dr. McKay," Woolsey says, the corners of his mouth twitching, "besides that," and John says, “Maybe,” just as McKay says, “Yes.”
“Well gentlemen, which is it?”
“Maybe,” says Simpson, and McKay closes his mouth and stares at her, looking kind of like his pet rabbit just bit him. She grins at him, not intimidated at all, and turns back to Woolsey. “If the archived intel is valid, I think we can safely assume Renatus was never meant to function as a city in the sense it does today.”
“It was originally one of eight offworld research installments built a thousand years before Atlantis sank,” Kusanagi continues. “Each facility was built on a different planet, usually one like M26-998, unable to support human life without aid. Each pursued a different branch of scientific study with ascension as a common goal. Renatus specialized in genetic manipulation.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?” says McKay. “You couldn’t have clued me in, oh I don’t know, while we were still there?”
Teyla leans forward, lays both hands on the table. “I would like to know why the gate address was not included on Elizabeth’s list of planets with Zero Point Modules. This city was built by the Ancestors. Surely it counts?”
“Not if it was presumed destroyed,” Kusanagi says and everyone, John included, looks at her. She flushes at the concentrated attention but she’s survived the Wraith and five years as McKay’s subordinate; John figures it’ll take more than a little staring to rattle her.
“Destroyed?” says Woolsey.
“All eight were slated for destruction,” Simpson says. “The Ancients were preparing to gate back to Earth and none of the installations were designed to submerge or fly. Leaving them intact…” She flicks a glance around the table. “We already know how bad a decision that would have been.”
“So they blew them up,” John finishes. “Except it looks like somebody down the chain of command didn’t get the message.”
“It was deliberate. You see,” Kusanagi says, “in Renatus, the test subjects were human.”
*
“So is it just me or was that the creepiest pause ever?” John eyes the pink thing on the end of his spork. When it doesn’t do anything but sit there, he sticks it in his mouth.
“It was... unsettling,” says Teyla. “I am not sure creepy is the word I would choose.”
“Works for me,” Ronon says around a mouthful of something that looks like stew.
“Yes, because like the Colonel you have no imagination.” McKay slaps his tray down on the table and drops into the seat next to John. “You want creepy?” he points his spork at Ronon, “I’ll give you creepy. Simpson thinks that aside from ascension, the lab’s primary focus was fertility. Or, more to the point, the lack thereof.”
“So?”
“So, those people’s ancestors were glorified lab rats. The Ancients played hell with their genome in the interests of slowed reproduction. Staggered sterility, or something like that.” McKay smirks and sucks down a bite of maybe-stew. “Keller’s drooling already.”
“That seems in keeping with their offworld colony,” Teyla says. “The population on Vartha is low, even for a culled planet.”
John tilts his chair back onto two legs and McKay says, "Don't do that, it's annoying."
"Way to make me stop, McKay."
"You're five, aren't you?"
"I know you are but what am I?"
"I take it back, you're three at the most," McKay says, disgusted. "Go ahead. Crack your skull open if you want to so badly."
"John," Teyla says, a mix of exasperation and amusement. John lets the chair's front legs down.
"Sorry," he grins at her, unrepentant. McKay sniffs loudly and starts to say something that turns into "Hey!" when Ronon kicks him under the table.
John hunches forward, props his elbows on the table. "So, Vartha. They're okay with the trade agreement, right? The grain's coming from them."
"Seemed okay," Ronon says. "Farmers," and there's a world of meaning in that one word.
Teyla's smile flickers around the corners of her mouth. "Ronon is correct. The Varthan will honor any agreement Renatus makes."
"I'm hearing a very loud but in there," McKay says.
"Your hearing is very good," Teyla says, her smile turning rueful. "I believe the Varthan are uncomfortable that we so easily gained entrance to Renatus. They are a devout people. They revere the Ancestors and Renatus is almost holy to them." Frustration ladders her forehead; John remembers when there were fewer lines. “If we had gated directly to Vartha rather than M26-998, it would have been some time before we learned of Renatus' existence, if ever.”
That's a little too close to the Genii for John's taste, and he says so.
“It is caution, nothing more," Teyla disagrees. "The Varthan are much as my people became after the cullings took so many.”
The pink things turn green when repeatedly poked. Cool. “You guys were pretty forthcoming.”
"Our situation was different." Teyla pushes John’s hand away and scoops the pink/green things onto her tray. “When your expedition arrived in Atlantis, Athosia was no more than a few scattered encampments. Renatus is fully populated and the seat of Varthan government and religion.”
“Mecca,” McKay says. John flicks a bread pellet at him. He scowls and flicks it back. “What, I’m not allowed to draw cultural parallels, either?”
“I’ll add it to the list,” John says dryly. “Is any of this going to come back around and bite us on the ass?" he asks Teyla. "Woolsey wants more than maybe, and I won’t advise wasting finite resources on a long shot.”
Teyla doesn't answer immediately, the lines back on her forehead. “I am not sure,” she eventually says. “Statesman Cadvor introduced me to the head of their church and I spoke with two lay priests on Vartha. I felt no hostility from them, overt or otherwise, but their reluctance to allow us unrestricted access to the city was obvious.”
“Which means what?” McKay abandons his tray and picks up his cup. He’s still frowning, looks as enthused about the pink whatevers as John feels. “Pitchforks and torches at midnight? Tar and feathers and you have trespassed upon the sanctuary, never darken our gate address again?”
“They’ll let us back in,” John says. “Their secretary of state’s crushing hard on you.”
McKay’s coffee damage radius is half their table and a third of the next one. Stackhouse turns around in his seat. Looks like he’s gonna need a uniform change. Whoops.
“Tar and feathers,” Ronon repeats. McKay’s still sputtering. “Sounds a lot like clay mud, honey and linguan moss.”
“Kinky.”
“When the women did it, yeah.”
McKay splits his glare between Ronon and John. "Hello, some of us are still trying to eat, trying being the operative word. Last I checked, Satedan torture wasn't on the menu."
It's mean, yeah, but... “We could always talk about farewell procedures in Renatus."
Ronon snorts and Teyla smiles at the table, and McKay? He’s got fair skin. Maybe all that red is the sunburn he keeps bitching about.
“Fascinating as this has been,” he says, not meeting anyone’s eyes, “I’m three days behind on projects currently being overseen by incompetents and people with inferior minds. Speaking of which, Sheppard, I’m going to need you to—”
“Sorry.” John pushes his chair back and stands. “Dr. Prasad already asked.”
McKay looks like someone just smacked him with a two by four. “What? Since when does geology get you?”
“Since now.”
“Prasad can have you later,” McKay says, a snotty, overgrown kid who never learned to share. “It’s geology, how important can it be?”
“Tell that to California.” Or Taranis. “You’ve got the gene—turn your whatever-it-is on yourself.”
“I already tried.”
Ronon scrapes his chair back. “Try harder. See you, Sheppard." He nods at Teyla, dumps his tray and leaves, the mess crowd parting around him like a bunch of people who know that if they don’t move they will soon be moved, and it will hurt. A lot.
Teyla rises and circles the table. “I will see you both at the briefing tomorrow?”
“Absolutely."
“Yes of course,” McKay says, flappy and distracted. Teyla smiles and shakes her head at them, and then Corporal Hawkins calls her name and she turns to answer him. They leave together, Hawkins enthusiastically miming some kind of stick fighting maneuver; nothing like getting your ass pounded into the ground on a full stomach.
McKay says, “Why can’t you just—”
“Because I already promised Dr. Prasad. Besides,” John reaches past McKay and grabs his tray, “she asked nicely. So if you'll excuse me, my superior gene and I have a date with the tectonic plate squad.”
John strolls out of the mess with Another One Bites the Dust stuck on replay in his head. He wonders idly if McKay was in an all boys choir way back when. The guy has shrill down to a science.
.02
“I think I might be getting married,” McKay says, and John pauses with his beer halfway to his mouth.
Out on the east pier, it’s a nice day. The three-tailed gulls Ronon calls quarraalos circle and screech. Occasionally one dives into the ocean and comes up out of the water with a chunk of sea life in its beak.
John’s decided he doesn’t want to know. Magenta squid things are weird enough from a distance, so if the quarraalos want ‘em, they’re welcome to them. Atlantis can provision itself just fine, thanks. Currently, John’s stomach is full courtesy of Ronon’s latest adventures in roast beast and a Washington microbrew even McKay grudgingly admits is palatable.
Overhead, the sky is a wide bowl of cloudless blue, sunshine poured out like drunk-lavish bourbon, and there’s a total lack of invading aliens trying to kill John, which he totally appreciates. Obviously, McKay is aiming to change John’s appreciation to something far less enjoyable. Because in John’s experience any sentence that starts with first person singular and ends in marriage is a lowdown piece of no-good grammar, and should be dangled from the nearest participle until dead.
“You think,” he says, slowly. “Lot of room for interpretation. Also, didn’t you almost go there already?”
“This is different,” McKay says, but his voice is uncertain, the set of his shoulders defensive.
John lifts his beer, wet glass cool against his bottom lip, and swallows the rest. He sets the bottle down on the pier and tilts his head back, squinting against the glare. “It’s not. Trust me on this one.”
“Because everyone’s marital experiences must be a match for yours.”
“That’s not what I said.” God, the sun feels good. Last week was rain, hail, rain and guess what? More rain.
“That’s what it sounded like.”
“Come on, Rodney, give me a break. All I meant was, you go ahead and think as long as you need to, okay? Okay,” John answers his own question before the inevitable diatribe erupts.
His eyelids keep drifting down behind his sunglasses. The third time he catches himself listing to one side he gives in, stretching out on the dock and basking like an overgrown housecat.
McKay shifts beside him, moving away from John’s sprawl. He clears his throat a couple of times and, “It’s not really about actual marriage, per se,” he says.
“That’s… good?” John mumbles, because hey, sleeping.
“It’s more—okay. Hypothesize someone who’s gone through life thinking a certain way, with certain goals in mind, and they know there are other possibilities, they have no problem with that, it’s just they’ve never seen how those possibilities could apply to them. And then that changes, but they’re not sure how said changes apply to the rest of their life. Can I ask you a question?”
John should be used to McKay’s abrupt subject changes, enough to not be caught off guard by them. He’s half asleep, though, and before he can stop himself he’s already said, “Sure.”
“Have you, you know, ever? With. Um. With another. Man. I can’t believe I just said that.”
O-kay. Kind of unexpected, but not as bad as it could have been. John wriggles onto his side so he’s looking at McKay’s profile. “What brought this on?"
“Things. That I am trying not to think about. So.” McKay stares straight ahead. “That would be a no then, I take it.”
“Yep.”
“Ah.”
Embarrassment, John catches that part right off. But there are too many emotions there, tangled around one syllable of sound that’s not even a word, and John isn’t going to try for the rest.
McKay glances down at him; their eyes meet briefly and McKay looks away, but not before John has time to think that McKay’s eyes are oddly defenseless, as wide open as the sky.
“The, um, thing with Carson,” McKay says. “I don’t know if it was because, well, Cadman was pulling the strings or because Carson was just a no, but it didn’t even register beyond oh god, you did that with my mouth. But.” Fingers drum the pier, scales, arpeggios of motion. “Renatus.”
He looks flushed and miserable and yeah, okay. John gets it.
“Possibilities.”
“Yes. And now I’m thinking.”
John turns his face into the slight breeze. Sea salt in his mouth and sun in his eyes. Still too bright. Still feels good. “Hey.”
“Mn?”
“Remember when you told me to tell you whenever you hit too much information territory? This is me telling you.”
“Right,” McKay says. “Well. I suppose I should—”
“Drink your beer, Rodney,” John says. He topples himself down off his side onto his back and splays his arms and legs out, stares up at the sky, blue, god so blue, he’s falling in. McKay’s talking again, something about anomalous power fluctuations and the new ZPM. John’s eyelids drift towards closed and he lets them.
McKay babbles him to sleep.
.03
It’s a foot long and three inches high. It scuttles past John on billions of legs and disappears down a hole less than two feet from his knee and John says, not whining at all, “Bugs. Why does it always have to be bugs?”
“How very unoriginal of you, Colonel Junior,” says McKay. “And thank you so much for pointing out the obvious. Again.”
“That’s Colonel Indiana to you.” Dirt cascades through John’s fingers as he tugs at tumbled rock, searching for give. “I’ve got fond memories of that dog.”
McKay shoots him a look as venomous as John hopes the bugs are not. “I cannot believe you. I’m in a collapsed mine tunnel filled with brush bugs as big as my leg, they probably want to eat my legs and I’m going to die screaming in unimaginable pain, slowly masticated alive but you, you have the gall to misquote two of the cheesiest historical butcheries ever filmed at me.”
“The hell,” John says, and watches as the rock in front of him tilts hard to starboard. He must’ve whacked his head harder than he thought; he’s seeing two of McKay, and even at the best of times one is more than enough.
Much as John hates to contradict Dennis DeYoung, these are not the best of times. He shakes his head to clear it then wishes he hadn’t because wow: that’s some nausea with serious intent. He swallows hard, just managing not to puke all over himself or McKay, who’s frowning at him.
“Turn your head if you’re going to expel. The brush bugs are bad enough without you covering me in vomit.”
John swallows one more time, just in case. The world has slowed down some, and Jesus, did he say he likes anything that goes 200 miles an hour? Because he’s starting to think that might be kind of an exaggeration.
“Sheppard?”
“Still here,” he says. “What’s a brush bug?”
“It’s a bug! That’s shaped like a brush! Like those currying things for horses and god, riding, there’s a memory I didn’t need. Or wait, no. No, the ones you use to buff leather. I always hated doing that. One of a very few good things about living in this galaxy is the dearth of shoes in need of polishing. And ties. Do not get me started on ties.”
“Wasn’t going to.” He can see antennae waving out of the corner of his eye. “What happened to genus and species?”
“Hello! Doctor of astrophysics and mechanical engineering, not entomology, are you kidding?”
McKay’s voice bounces off the walls and the inside of John’s skull. John’s brain tries to turn itself inside out. “Rodney.”
“What?”
“Ssssh.” A thread of dirt sifts down onto John’s nose. He tips his head back, slowly.
The low, distant growl of mechanical equipment suddenly sounds less distant. “Is that light?” John says.
McKay cranes his neck. “Finally. I was beginning to think they’d taken a six hour lunch break,” and then the ceiling sort of comes down.
After that, things get really blurry. John goes somewhere else, riding out waves of sick pain behind closed eyes until someone says his name. A hand touches his arm and he looks up into Teyla’s worried faces. “Are you tracking?” all three of her ask.
“Not as well as I'd like,” is what he tries to say. That’s probably not what comes out of his mouth, though, because the worry in the Teylas’ shared expression increases exponentially. Also, John thinks there might be more of her now than there were a minute ago. One of her many hands rests cool and reassuring against his cheek. John leans into it.
He can hear McKay somewhere in the background, a familiar drift of sound and fury. He’s telling someone named Incompetent Jackass that if this was a blue planet not in the Pegasus galaxy, now would be ass-in-a-legal-sling time for miners who don’t have the first clue how to properly shore up their evil, physicist-eating tunnels.
“John.” Teyla strokes his cheek and John again fails to focus on her. “Ronon and Operations Chief Gadok are going to move you now.”
“Oh good,” John says, and passes out.
*
“Aren’t you supposed to be horizontal?” McKay says without turning, and for about two seconds, John considers sticking his tongue out.
On the other hand, McKay can probably see his reflection in any of several dark computer screens. John settles for saying, “Two weeks, McKay. The nice doctor lets me walk around all by myself. I’m not going to puke on your floor or your tech.”
Finally, a reaction. McKay swivels around and frowns at John. “Are you trying to nauseate me? Because that? Was disgusting.”
“It was supposed to be funny.”
McKay crosses his arms and juts his chin. “Believe me, it wasn’t.”
“Fine,” John says. “Can we talk about something else now?”
“No we can’t,” McKay turns back to his screen. “Working.”
The tap of fingers over keys picks back up. John settles himself against the wall and waits. If he knows McKay—and after almost six years, he should—it won’t be long before McKay gets tired of John’s stare prickling the space between his shoulder blades, gets annoyed, then angry, then jerks back around and says, “What!”
“Did you actually call me Colonel Junior," asks John, "or was that the concussion talking?"
McKay just frowns at first input error: correct and re-try and then his face clears, his mouth does its smug angles thing and, "You're bored."
Well, duh. John's been confined first to the infirmary then quarters then Atlantis in general for going on three weeks. If Keller hadn't just now finally cleared him for duty, he'd have given serious thought to hijacking a jumper. Bugging McKay runs a close second, so... "You could've come around more than once a week."
Guilt and discomfort. McKay's an open book. "I've been busy," he mumbles.
"Uh-huh," John says. "By the way, your busy says hi and also, you missed dinner."
“My what?”
“Blonde, about this high, MD?”
“Oh Keller,” McKay says. "Jennifer.”
“You know," says John, "when you’re thinking about proposing to someone, first names are usually a plus. Just saying.”
“Yes, about that. I’m thinking possibly not." Not good, this is like the black hole of good. "I, I care. About her. A lot. But there's this, um, person and he—well," and now McKay's looking guilty as hell, and just like that John sees where this is going, as clear as he saw Cadvor coming on M34-997.
“Rodney,” he says. And maybe it’s the sheer amount of tension even John can hear in his voice, but McKay closes his mouth and really looks at John.
“Oh,” McKay says. And, “Oh,” again, too quiet, and John might have felt bad about that if he wasn’t grounded and on edge. But he is grounded and on edge, McKay is too good at pushing buttons John didn’t even know he owned, and John doesn’t want to be having this conversation. He hangs around McKay for the exact opposite of this conversation, and up until now that’s worked well for both of them. Looks like John’s almost six year run of luck just ran out.
He swallows around his dried-out tongue, dry enough that swallowing hurts, and McKay looks the way he did after Doranda: like something ready to be put out of its misery.
“I'm not who you should be telling this to,” John hears himself say, and after that it's almost easy. “Hell, McKay, I’m not—this isn’t some new virtual environment you're trying on for size. Get it?”
McKay blinks rapidly.
“You,” he closes his mouth. Opens it. “Yes, yes I’ve got it. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I—okay no, forget that, I’m. Sorry.”
He looks at the empty coffee cup in his hand as though he’s never seen a hand or a cup before. He sets the cup on the bench beside his work station and lets the hand drop. Fingers clench then go limp and stay that way, and John stares at them, at long fingers and wide palms that are always in motion, except now they’re not and that’s just wrong.
“I,” and, “I’m just going to,” low and stuttered and McKay is going, walking away before John can figure out how to make this not be one more screw-up on his part.
The door closes. John leans forward a few inches and knocks his head back against the wall. Does it again. Ow.
He’s batting a thousand tonight, what with smacking himself into walls on purpose post-concussion. And oh yeah, he almost forgot the part where he alienated one of three people in two galaxies he considers family. John’s so good he drove Dr. McKay, devourer of worlds and lesser scientists, out of his own lab.
Way to go, Sheppard.
.04
Unscheduled offworld activation happens at 0832; it’s Simpson’s IDC, and she wants all available electrical and mechanical engineers to get their butts to Renatus yesterday, and also Lieutenant Sanchez because he’s the only structural engineer around and the external integrity of sector four on level two is compromised. Septic is a mess and McKay’s “patches” aren’t going to hold much longer. Failure won’t be pretty.
In fact, in the succinct and extremely apt words of Radek Zelenka, it’ll draw a very large vacuum.
McKay goes because he’s McKay, because he thinks no one else can get it right without him breathing down their necks. John goes because Ronon has a hole in his leg (knife: ugly, serrated bastard), Teyla is on the mainland with Torren, and since McKay is going, John might as well. That and he’s bored. There’s only so much paperwork a man can do before he gives in and dumps the rest on his second.
“For me?” Lorne says. “Sir, you shouldn’t have. I mean that.”
“Only the best for this command,” John says magnanimously then ducks out before Lorne can go for his sidearm.
Two hours later, he’s watching McKay crawl around in the guts of what looks to John like some kind of Ancient mainframe. McKay’s muttering to himself, sometimes profanely; it’s not a real edifying way to spend a morning. John would have left half an hour ago to poke around in places he probably shouldn't and possibly bug other people, but McKay said, “Oh no you don’t. Sit! Stay!”
“You’ve got your radio,” John had whined, “Hit me if you need me,” but, “I need someone to hand me things and it may as well be you,” McKay told him. “You and your bad posture can go hold up that wall until then.”
Bad posture, John’s ass. No, he’s not sulking. Not even a little. Which doesn’t stop him from staying right where he is when McKay says, “Sheppard, soldering wand, chop chop.”
John shifts forward and examines the array of Ancient tools. Nothing there says “soldering wand” to him. “You think you could maybe give me a few more specifics?” he calls.
“God, you are so—okay. Cylindrical, blue and bronze, approximately twenty-two centimeters in length, two in diameter, three-crystal fused tip. Is that specific enough for you?”
Sure. Not that John’s about to say so. “Not seeing it,” he tells McKay. “Maybe you should get off your ass and get it yourself.”
It’s like Zelenka’s vacuum. No sound, no movement, no nothing. Then McKay backs out of the mainframe, staggers to his feet and two seconds after that he’s in John’s face. John hasn’t seen him this angry in a long time.
“You want to do this here?" he says. "Fine. I’m tired of dealing with your little snit anyway, so why don’t you go ahead tell me what the hell your problem is.”
It’s the fight John’s been spoiling for. Looking forward to, even. Now that it’s here and happening, he just feels numb. McKay’s righteously pissed off, though, and nothing short of inbound Hive ships or chocolate-covered espresso beans will derail inertia, so John figures he might as well do this right.
“You know what they say about assumptions,” he says.
“And which assumption am I supposed to have made?” McKay wants to know. “We haven’t exchanged more than ten words at a time in a month!”
“You got a wild hair and decided that at some point must I have too, so dumping on me was okay,” John says. “I haven’t and it isn’t. We clear?”
“Crystal. Did I ask?”
“Yeah, you kind of did. Have you ever. Remember?” He makes it dirty, drops his voice like he does when he’s about to get laid, and McKay goes very, very red.
“So that’s—you mean this is—” It’s a visible effort for McKay to stop the rush of thought into speech. He shuts his eyes briefly then opens them again, looks at John and, “Tell me something,” he says. “Is it the fact that I might not walk a completely straight line that’s pissing you off, or the fact that I thought you might not?”
And that’s it. That is about fucking it. “Shut your wiseass mouth before your smartass brain trips all over it,” John says, low and even because he’s not going to yell.
He’s surprised when it works. McKay’s mouth snaps shut and he goes perfectly still, hands frozen mid-flight.
John scrubs a palm over his face, presses in against closed eyes, spinning fractals on the backs of his eyelids.
“You know me,” he says.
“I thought I did.”
“Guess we both did.”
And yeah, it does kind of bother him, no, it bothers the hell out of him that he and McKay don’t know each other as well as both of them obviously believed. It pisses him off that McKay doesn’t have one clue about John’s boundaries, and as little respect for them.
“What does that even mean? What is that supposed to mean?” Uncertain, like McKay never is. “You throw these—these non sequiturs out like idiots in parks throw coins at fountains, and how am I supposed to know?”
How should I know, John wants to ask. You’re the one with all the words.
“Stuck with you, that's, you said it. I'm saying it now." McKay's looking down at his hands, open and empty. “Just, you have to tell me things sometimes, Sheppard. I can't see inside your head, and honestly, I don't want to.”
And that’s a problem, see, because, “I don’t,” says John.
“What did I just say? Non sequiturs. You don’t what?”
It’s funny how sometimes slow and simple is the only way to get through to someone as smart as McKay. “I don’t talk. About this stuff. To anyone.” Look at me, damn it. “Ever.”
Just that easy, it’s light-bulb time in genius land. “You don’t,” McKay says, like this is his favorite new epiphany.
Which is good because John’s had enough. He rolls his head from side to side, a continuity of snapping vertebrae. Going to have a bitch of a headache later.
The door hums open, making McKay jump. Zelenka sticks his head in and looks from John, slouched against a workstation, to McKay, vibrating like a live wire. Both Zelenka’s eyebrows go up. “Problem?”
“No, absolutely not, no problems here,” says McKay. “Why? Did someone tell you there was a problem?”
“Shut up, Rodney,” John says. “We’re good,” he tells Zelenka. “What’s up?”
“I thought you would like to know that power has been restored to all control stations. It may not last long—the volume of damaged hardware and corrupted code is significant—but long enough for the dike to be plugged, so to speak. As well, the leak in the secondary waste conduit on the fourth level has been stabilized, though that has little bearing on this.” Zelenka’s gaze sweeps over McKay and his handiwork. “You are making progress.”
“I’d have made more if the Colonel here would get off his slouchy horse and fetch,” McKay says with a dark look for John.
Zelenka laughs. “Ask, do not tell, Rodney. I promise you, it will get better results.”
It’s a good thing Zelenka’s turning toward John as he speaks; McKay sucks at hiding what he’s feeling, and that little ask/tell comment hit him like a hundred volt charge.
Zelenka hovers in the doorway, his eyebrows and mouth concerned lines in the round of his face and, "Though by now I should not have to warn either of you of this danger," he says, "be careful of what you touch. We have already found or been shown several of what we think are experimental ascension devices and these, unfortunately, are not specific to those with the gene.”
The door closes after him with a thin hiss, sealing in silence.
The in-out of McKay's breathing is loud in John's ears. Too harsh in too-abrupt stillness John needs to break, and he says, “They really were a bunch of selfish bastards.”
“You’re just now getting that? Try to keep up, Colonel.” McKay moves, time shattered around them, wires and crystals and alien tech. He grabs his soldering wand and crawls back inside the gutted mainframe. It’s a long time before either of them says anything else.
.05
The thing is, one of two things, two important things, and the first is easy because it’s the truth. Everything John’s said, everything he’s told McKay is true.
He’s not into guys; never has been. He’s not into random fucking, either, got it out of his system somewhere around twenty-five. These days there’s not enough trust in his universe for that brand of stupid.
Important thing the second is also true but it’s hard, hard because it’s true, like thing number one turned the wrong way around.
Rodney McKay isn’t some guy. He’s not some random fuck. He’s Rodney McKay.
.06
The warlord of P66-175 has the ATA gene and two stone fortresses, one of them shielded. Her army is equipped with weapons similar to Ronon’s; her private bodyguard and harem together are an amalgam of Pegasus sentience. She’s well-spoken and seems intelligent, even if she looks like she could take Ronon apart with one hand, and during AR-1's third visit to her planet she offers Teyla half the contents of the Ancient outpost her primary stronghold is built on in exchange for John.
McKay makes stifled noises while Ronon’s mouth curls in silent contempt. Teyla smiles and tells the warlord that she couldn’t possibly trade away her most valued bondsmen. Any of them.
John keeps his mouth shut and himself armed. When he moves his left hand brushes unfamiliar textures, the hilt and sheath of one of Ronon's knives. The whole time they’re on-planet he never really stops moving, scanning for potential aggression, for possible hostiles. He never looks directly at the woman sprawled across dark green stone.
Her regard is pressure against his skin, unvoiced heat, but it’s nothing John hasn’t felt before. Others’ wants, fantasies painted on his body, over his face until he can’t recognize himself in anyone’s eyes, not even his own.
Life is pretty much all labels and John knows which ones usually get slapped on him. Which neat little slots he's crammed into. It's what people do, he knows that, and they give it their best shot but he’s already been compartmentalized by the best. What the USAF couldn’t do to John, no one person ever will.
It’s weird, now that he thinks about it, but John’s earliest memory isn’t of either of his parents. Not his brother or his father’s house or a favorite toy. What John remembers is a hand, coming towards him. He remembers—not fear but annoyance, remembers wishing whoever was reaching for him would go away. He remembers hitting out with his own hand and after that… voices? Surprise, maybe. He’s not sure, but he has this feeling they did go away, the person behind the hand.
He’s kept himself to himself since he was a kid, but no shrink his dad sent him to—and there were a bunch of them—ever believed his behavioral patterns weren’t the product of his mom’s death. That they weren’t the manifestation of some mental break that needed fixing. It's all him, though, one-hundred percent stay the hell away, and you know? John’s always liked himself just fine.
In high school, his sphere of self-containment became sullen don’t or I’ll break your face. He thinks he might have done some actual face-breaking then. He’s not sure. He’s over forty now; what’s left of fifteen to eighteen is a blur of hormones, defiance and the drive to get out, get away, get off the ground already. MIT bought him the first two. The Air Force gave him everything else, including the training to back up his back-off.
Somewhere in there he got some tempering, a hamon of common sense beat into him by life and a few good commanders. Regret is sealed memory, his dead, a luxury he doesn't allow himself. It’s taken most of his forty-odd years, but he’s learned to understand if not appreciate expedience. He may not like or agree with a lot of US military policy, but he gets the reality of military life, uses it, wears the Air Force like McKay wore his personal shield. A mirror, it throws back whatever whoever's looking wants to see. He looks out from behind it, smiles slow and mean and easy and he thinks, That’s it, that’s all you get. He walks away, leaves nothing of himself behind, and the feeling, Christ, feels so good it’s like flying, like it’s pain, the good kind that’s not his.
On the green dais, Teyla talks circles around the warlord. Ronon breathes menace at anyone who looks at her wrong. AR-4 and 5 mark the circumference of the room, Earth weaponry and training woven through local muscle.
John respectfully requests Teyla's permission to leave the room, bows his head in thanks when he receives it. Then he walks away from one more person who wants a piece of him. He goes looking for McKay.
Like everyone else, McKay wants things from John. They’re just not the same things almost everyone else wants. McKay wants John to listen to him, to puddlejump him where he wants to go so he doesn’t have to do it himself. He wants John to sit here, touch this, throw him over that balcony. He wants John to be around, and maybe to just be.
John’s okay with that. All of it.
Which is why instead of pretending to eat food he doesn't trust not to be doctored with some kind of mind-altering substance, he’s standing in a deserted hall outside an open doorway, watching McKay sort through a pile of Ancient junk.
Both of P66-175’s suns have set. There’s still light but it’s getting dimmer by the second. McKay doesn’t seem to have noticed, so John performs his designated on/off duty, this time with an Earth-style switch and torchiere lamp instead of the Ancient think-me-on equivalent.
McKay blinks up from a pool of expanding light and, “Oh it’s you,” he says. “Still a free agent, I see. For a while, I thought Ronon was going to have to physically guard your virtue from Lola the barbarian.”
John lays his weapon down beside the futon closest to McKay’s workspace. Lays himself on the futon. “I think her name’s Laki.”
“Lola, Laki, whatever.” McKay does something to his scanner, hums in satisfaction when it buzzes softly. “The names and faces are interchangeable, but there’s always some ridiculously attractive female or other skulking around, ready to club you over the head and drag you by your gravity defying hair to her lair.”
The mental image John gets surprises a laugh from him. “Tell me you’re messing with me, McKay. Because that’s just scary.”
McKay's answering laugh is sharp and unamused. “Not so much, no. You’re too pretty for everyone else’s good health, especially mine. Remember R16-3X3? That harpy thing practically clawed me open trying to get to you.”
“At the time, I was kinda busy keeping both our asses intact.”
John gets McKay’s “Whatever, Sheppard” look and a wall of miffed silence, which is fine by him. Right now, unconsciousness seems like a better way to kill off the evening than listening to McKay bitch about every single time something in this galaxy has tried to jump John.
Ten minutes later John’s mostly asleep. McKay huffs an exasperated breath and says, “Here, take—Sheppard?” His voice drops to a loud whisper. “Are you sleeping? Because if so, you seriously suck.”
“‘M awake.”
“You are so not awake.”
John yawns and opens his eyes. “Sure I am, Rodney. What’s up?”
“Not you.”
“Well, aren’t you mister happy joy-joy tonight.”
“I hate this stupid pseudo gene Carson gave me. It’s clearly substandard.” McKay frowns at the thing he’s holding; it remains stubbornly quiescent.
To John, it looks like a blown-glass dish, frosted grey faint with blue tracery, veins dark under dead skin. More fucked up imagery John doesn’t need or want. He lifts his head and finds McKay watching him.
“Would it help if I said I know I’ve been acting like an asshole but I’m going to stop?” he asks.
“Never promise the impossible,” McKay says, enough irony to choke a Wraith. “Also, how is this new?”
“I, uh, thought you were pissed at me?”
“How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?”
John feels the corners of his mouth twitch upwards. “So we’re okay.”
“As long as you stop asking stupid questions, yes.” Yet another aggravated glance. “For some reason I believed, erroneously, that you understood logic well enough to reach the correct conclusion on your own.”
“Cool.” More than cool, it’s relief and a return to normalcy. Which means John’s allowed to say, “Hey McKay.” He rearranges the words in his head ten times before McKay’s impatience kicks in.
“What, Colonel?”
No good way. “You still thinking?”
“What do you—oh.” John can almost hear the snap and sizzle of genius-class synapses. McKay is silent for longer than is comfortable. Then, “Yes,” he says. “I, not yet. Still.”
Dull grey sits forgotten in McKay’s palm. Discarded. Disregarded.
John reaches out. He lays his hand over McKay’s hand, touches Earth skin and Ancient design. He sees grey flare to brilliance and his sight goes blue; the light, the room, McKay’s eyes looking back at him.
.07
Two months ago, John sat slumped over on one of jumper four’s benches. He turned his head, slow enough that his skull couldn’t fall off his neck by accident, and when he’d moved just enough that he could see Teyla he said, “Can we not do this again?”
Today, John crosses his arms and stares Woolsey down across the briefing room table. “We’re not doing this again,” he says.
“Colonel.” Woolsey looks harried and exasperated and John can empathize, he really can. He knows what it’s like to be surrounded by demanding women. But sometimes a guy’s gotta take a stand, and this one is John’s. He just wishes it had more of a Teddy Roosevelt feel to it. G.A. Custer isn’t really his style.
“It’s quite all right,” says Sora. “I understand if the Colonel’s team is unable to participate. The stress of leading physically active lives can’t be easy for those who aren't as young as they once were.”
“I assure you,” Teyla says before either John or Woolsey can speak, “we are very able. Are we not, Colonel?” She smiles, lots and lots of exposed white.
Whoa. “Uh.” Both Teyla and Sora are looking at him. The back of his neck is crawling. “I guess if Teyla’s sure about—”
“Wonderful,” says Sora. “The choice of playing field is yours.”
“Colonel?” Teyla says.
Cultural exchange, that’s what they’re calling it. What Elizabeth would have called it. And in Atlantis, as much as the Ancients were once gods, Elizabeth is now reverend mother, virgin saint and holy martyr rolled into one.
Note to self: have Teyla commission a triptych. Note to self number two: wait until she’s done being scary.
Elizabeth, John thinks, would have praised the Marine who’d taught a few Genii teens the basics of soccer. She would have been thrilled when it caught on with the rest of the Federation and flared into what’s become a hugely popular interplanetary sport. She would have been all for the monthly Atlanteans/Athosians versus Genii matches, which as far as John can see aren’t much more than an excuse for Sora and Teyla to go at each other like a pair of rabid wolverines.
And the freakiest part of the whole mess? McKay loves it. McKay goes voluntarily without the threat of violent death or Teyla hanging over his head. It’s bizarre enough to fry John’s last few functioning brain cells.
“I didn’t spend all my childhood indoors,” McKay told John when John made a few incredulous noises after the first game. “Okay yes, my mother signed me up and wouldn’t let me out of it. Early socialization or something like that. But I sort of... liked it," almost defiant. “I had fun which, believe me, was as much of a surprise to me as everyone else. Anyway, I seem to spend half my time running for my life. How is this different?"
Uh-huh. Why couldn’t Sergeant Masters have taught those kids how to play real football?
“Colonel?" says Woolsey.
“P3R-076,” John says. “Lots of grass, good weather, uninhabited except for us.” He slants an eyebrow at Sora. “Sound good?”
She doesn’t answer. Not John, anyway. She looks John up and down, smiles like a shark and says, "You surround yourself with pretty things, Teyla. Where do you find room for them all? Or do you throw them away when you grow bored?”
Ouch.
“I do not throw the old away to make room for the new,” Teyla says, and Jesus, is that a growl? “What is mine, I keep.”
If John was a whimpering kind of guy, this would be the time for it. It’s definitely time for something. Say, industrial strength cattle prods.
An image of McKay, sweaty and grinning, glowing under his mud and not giving a damn superimposes itself over five tons of never-happen. John regretfully puts the cattle prods back on their mental shelf.
“Right,” he says. “Let’s do this.”
.08
Some days John feels like his life is one huge intergalactic, interplanetary incident.
Then he thinks about it for a second, mentally crosses out the some days he feels like and yeah. That.
.09
When John’s office door slides open, he’s wading through the backlog of Lorne’s Revenge. He looks away from his screen, glad of any interruption, and McKay’s standing in the doorway, arms wrapped tight around his chest. He’s showered and changed his clothes; he’s wearing one of his old science uniforms. His long, crooked mouth is more crooked than usual, the corners at odd angles. He looks pissed off and unhappy, and John wonders what happened in the last two hours. When the game ended, McKay was damn near incandescent.
He’s also wondering why McKay isn’t moving. The door’s wide open. “Hey. Mi casa es su casa and so on and so forth, so come on in and let the door close already.”
McKay stares blankly at John and then he looks at the doorway and his ears go kind of pink. “Oh. Sorry.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.” John’s laptop powers down, barely audible hum there and then not. “Should probably stop,” he tells McKay. “It’s weirding people out.”
McKay’s chin goes up. “Thank you for your opinion, Colonel. It’s been noted and rejected.” He steps forward; the door closes behind him and he hovers in front of it, looking anywhere but at John.
John waits for McKay’s monologue function to kick in. It doesn’t. “Something I can help you with?” John suggests, and gets the you-are-so-moronic-you-make-morons-look-good eyeroll.
“I know it’s hard, but you can endure the silence for more than five seconds,” McKay says. “I’m trying to decide how to say this.”
John leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “You can’t come up with one lousy sentence? You?”
“Patience is a virtue,” McKay says, sounding more pompous than virtuous, and John says, “Considering the source...”
"This is your fault, you know," McKay accuses. “I can’t think with you doing that—that eyebrow thing.” Arms loosed from around ribs, hands loose in the air and, “For god’s sake, Sheppard, stop doing that.”
“So basically, my eyebrows scramble your brain waves. Wow, Rodney, I had no idea. I think I’m touched.”
“In the head,” McKay mutters, and John grins at him, and something like pain twists McKay’s mouth. He turns his head like he has to, like looking at John is inducing an allergic reaction or something.
“What I wanted—am trying to—” stumbling and uneven and McKay looks back at John and, "This is ridiculous, you and your stupid eyebrows and why?”
He stares at John, mouth a tight unhappy line, and he's asking without speaking, asking John not to make him do this, whatever this is, but John isn’t making McKay do anything. He doesn’t know how to make McKay stop.
“Rodney,” he says, “it’s good. Whatever, it’s good.”
“Good, that’s—” and finally, John remembers where he last saw that look on someone’s face, except it was McKay on the receiving end of it then and now it’s John. McKay's looking at John like John’s it, the end. “I stopped,” McKay says. “I stopped,” and John is up out of his chair and moving before McKay can say anything else.
McKay takes a step back and John goes after him, corners him, up against the wall, the wide of his eyes so exposed John wants to yell at him, tell him to shut it down, shut it off. Nobody should ever be that open to another person. Bad enough when you're looking at it. Worse when you don't want it to stop.
John slaps his hands forward against the wall. He lays them flat to either side of McKay’s shoulders and part of him notices the wider stretch, the difference between male and female. He leans in, not much, just enough to feel the heat of McKay’s body. To smell him, soap and skin and god, so different.
“You don’t,” he says, and McKay’s breath is hot, uneven against his skin. “You don’t get to change your mind later.”
“Yes, whatever, I don’t care just stop talking and do things to me,” which John figures really means shut up and let me do stuff to you because that’s what he gets, McKay’s hand on the back of John’s neck and McKay’s mouth warm against John’s mouth and kisses, open-mouthed, no tongues, slick without being wet and hotter than the most explicit kiss John’s ever given or gotten.
He presses in, his mouth to McKay’s mouth, himself against the sturdy heat of McKay's body and McKay’s hands are on John’s ass, pulling him in hard, lining chests and legs and hard dicks up. John swears against McKay’s mouth, shaky and shaken because it’s just that fucking good. McKay’s fingers dig bruises into John’s ass and McKay’s dick is thick hot pressure against John’s hip and John’s hands are sliding down McKay’s back. Over his ass, quick and everywhere, all over McKay, John can’t stop touching. Doesn’t want to stop. He licks a line up McKay’s throat and Mckay’s skin is smooth and rough at the same time under John’s tongue. McKay must have shaved again when he showered. He tenses under John's hands and mouth, his hands curl tighter around John's hipbones, nails scratching against rough fabric, and his head thumps back against the wall and he says, “Ohfuckyesthatagain.”
John pulls away because he wants to look, needs to see, and McKay looks wrecked and it’s John’s fault, all of it. Mouth blurred open, pupils blown wide and he’s, fuck he’s so, “God McKay, you—”
“Yes, me,” McKay pulls John back in, his mouth moving slow against John’s, words licked into, inside John's mouth, “But god works, too.” And then his hand is working between them, working its way down the front of John’s pants, closing tight and sure around John’s dick and Jesus fucking Christ.
John hasn’t come in his pants since he was sixteen, and oh look, there goes one more chunk of dignity out the airlock. Between the Pegasus galaxy and McKay, he’s lucky he’s got any left at all.
.10
“Did we just have fully clothed wall sex in your office in the middle of the day?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Right. Just checking. Being, you know, clear. On things.”
John shuts his eyes and rests his head against the wall. “Hey Rodney.”
“What?”
“We're clear.”
.11
Dawn on M35-117 comes in pale orange and red, smudged horizon, blurry, pink washed out, drowning yellow spilling past daybreak straight down into morning.
John meets it the way he usually does on those days the universe isn’t doing its damnedest to kill him, wheezing his lungs out two meters behind Ronon as they pound through the city’s deserted walkways.
At five miles he’s seeing spots, the green and purple kind, and he thinks, Getting too old to play the ego card, Sheppard. He slows his run to a jog.
It takes Ronon a few seconds to catch on. He flips fluidly around and slows as well, jogging backwards and baring his teeth at John. John’s not stupid enough to mistake the expression for a smile.
“You done?”
“You know,” John says in between gulped breaths, “I think I am.”
Ronon slows further down until they’re in step. “Should keep going,” he tells John. “Your ass won’t look so pretty dragging dirt.”
Screw cool-down. John jerks to a stop which is, okay, not so smart. He can feel his heartbeat in his glands, in his sinuses, but he’s going to get some answers right now.
“What is with the pretty crap? Do I have it stamped on my forehead or something?”
Ronon shrugs. “It’s a woman thing.” He’s jogging in place, his amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes and mouth. “Don’t know why. I never figured it out.”
“Well I’m not!”
“I know. They don’t. Stupid.”
“Oh yeah.”
They grin at each other, perfectly in sync. No explanations needed.
“So I’m just going to go be in pain somewhere else now,” John says. “Something I need to take care of.”
That gets him another flash of teeth and, “Later.”
“Lunch,” John calls as he peels off, jogging towards the nearest transporter. He arrives at his room sore, sweaty and in need of a shower, and does an immediate double-take: it isn’t every day he gets back from a run and finds McKay passed out cold on his bed. He doesn’t waste time wondering why McKay’s here as opposed to his own room. He probably stayed in the labs all night, thought of something he wanted to discuss with John on the way to his room, then crashed in John’s room before John could make it back. In a few hours, he’ll be up and whining about his back, because that’s just McKay.
Whining aside, John can almost—if he squints—see McKay’s presence as an extremely screwed up form of serendipity. Because that thing John needs to take care of?
“Hey McKay. Come on, off and on.”
“Coffee,” McKay groans, and rolls over onto his stomach.
“McKay,” John says again, louder, because this is important, he really feels it needs to be said. “McKay!”
“What, what?” And McKay is sitting up, hair sticking up all over his head in tufts, and John swallows his laughter; serious business, right here.
McKay frowns blearily. He blinks and then his eyes focus, narrowing on John and, “This had better be good, Sheppard.”
“Call me pretty again,” John says, “I will kill you slowly and with extreme prejudice.”
McKay blinks again. “Wait, what?” then, “Are you insane? You got me up to tell me—oh god, you are insane, empirical evidence is mine, and now you’ve infected me as well. Fabulous.” He flips his hand at the door, “Go away, and don’t come back unless you have coffee,” and flops back down on John’s bed.
John opens his mouth to say that this is his room and if McKay doesn’t like the house rules he can get the hell out, but McKay’s breathing has steadied and McKay’s body is relaxing by slow degrees.
“What the hell?” John asks the back of McKay’s unconscious head.
He thinks about shoving McKay off the bed. He strips down instead, dumping his sweaty running gear on top of McKay’s discarded uniform jacket with malice that’s what you get for calling me pretty and hogging my mattress aforethought.
The bathroom door opens in silent invitation. John can hear the shower going already.
The water is always the right temp; no matter how cold or hot John wants it, Atlantis gives him what he needs without his having to ask. Or maybe he does ask without realizing; maybe the content of his subconscious is enough. God knows it’s more than enough to stand beneath wet, streaming heat and let desalinated water pound aching muscle into submission.
John tilts his head back. He squeezes his eyes shut against the spray, and for no good reason he’s grinning, holding himself in so tight he’s shaking with it.
He stays under the water until his pores feel swollen and liquid, until he’s floating away inside his skin. His palms and feet are supersaturated ridges. There are thumps and other audible signs of discontent coming from his room.
“Sheppard,” McKay yells.
“What?” John yells back, and reaches for a towel.
“Three and a half hours. You woke me twice and moreover, you disrupted my cycle before REM set in. I can feel it. You owe me four hours and thirty minutes of sleep.” McKay appears in the bathroom doorway and scowls at John. “Or a blow job.”
“Fuck you,” John says.
“I don’t think so. What kind of cheap, easy date do you take me for? Um. Don’t answer that.”
John’s not laughing. Really.
“So,” he says, “blow job now, penetration later?” and McKay’s mouth and eyes go wide, McKay croaks, “Yes, okay, yes please?” words and sounds tumbling over each other, and John can’t keep this up. He cracks, splitting open along all his seams and laughing for real, so hard it hurts.
Later or now, it’s all the same to him. It’s 200 miles an hour, feet dragging the ground face to the sky, flying cities, death-defying acts of sheer idiocy in a galaxy far, far away, and it’s McKay.
Works for John.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 02:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 03:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 04:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 04:14 pm (UTC)Great story, great dialogue. I like that you assume your reader has a brain in her head and gets it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 04:48 pm (UTC)Have you written other Sheppard/McKay fics? I looked on your Livejournal but didn't see an SGA or McShep tag.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 06:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-29 10:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 02:51 am (UTC)Very nice.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 03:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 07:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-30 09:53 am (UTC)And of course, your John and Rodney. Absolutely wonderful. Thanks for sharing. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 03:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 07:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-01 07:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-13 04:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 09:56 pm (UTC)i love it!!!
theres something about john/rodney slash that just works, isnt there?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-29 10:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-05 05:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-09 02:07 am (UTC)