FIC: MATCH GAME
Apr. 15th, 2008 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockTitle: MATCH GAME
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ebonlock and moonlightnrain
Rating: R
Spoilers: Through "Outcast"
Word Count: 16,672
Genre: Humor, First Time
Summary: John discovers that trying to fill in Rodney's blanks can be a risky proposition.
He'd stayed towards the back of the gaggle rushing a groaning and red-faced Rodney down to the infirmary. As they passed her, Carter had given him that look when they moved out of the gate room. The look that said, 'You know this sort of thing never happened when Jack was in charge of SG-1.' He knew it was a complete and utter fabrication, he'd read the mission reports after all. Still, it unsettled him.
He tagged along the entire way, certain that if he could just explain…. Well, ok maybe explanations would have to wait until after an apology. Yeah, that seemed like a winning formula.
When he tried to follow them inside the infirmary Ronon merely turned around, effectively blocking the doorway. John raised an eyebrow. Ronon raised one right back, then folded his massive arms over his equally impressive chest.
"C'mon, move."
"Nope."
John hadn't felt so close to stamping his foot in years. "But I'm team leader!" He was immediately ashamed at just how much he currently sounded like his least favorite ex-girlfriend.
"Sorry."
Sheppard could hear the increasingly high-pitched yelps from inside and his whole body shook with the need to know, to see, to do something about McKay's distress. Even if he, totally inadvertently, had caused it. "Do I need to make it an order?"
"You could do that," Ronon agreed almost amiably, "but he's the guy who controls the hot water in my room."
"Yeah well I'm the guy who watches your back and... and occasionally hits you with sticks."
"Very occasionally." The big warrior grinned and actually reached out to scruff his commanding officer's hair.
"Hey!" John ducked and fussed with his slightly tousled locks.
"Just go tell Colonel Carter what happened and I'll make sure McKay's all right."
"But..."
"Go."
Sheppard sighed, knowing full well that even if he made it past the Satedan he'd still have to face Teyla's cool, maternal disdain. She'd all but growled, "Can I not leave you two alone for ten minutes?" while helping the shaken scientist to his feet back on the planet. The relatively short walk back to the gate had passed in near silence, with Rodney's occasional moans and Teyla's soothing words the only interruption. She hadn't even let John begin to explain that this entire fiasco was so totally not his fault.
And Rodney wouldn't even look at him.
He'd expected a thorough cursing out, to have his entire lineage compared to the most mentally defective beasts McKay's fertile imagination could come up with. He'd expected to be told in no uncertain terms just where he could go, what he could pick up when he got there, and which orifice to ram it up, right down to the angle and force requirements necessary. Hell, he'd been looking forward to it. Instead he'd gotten the silent treatment.
The weird thing was that for the first year he knew McKay he’d actually found himself occasionally fantasizing about pissing the man off sufficiently to shut down the perpetual motion machine that was his mouth. But somewhere along the way he’d grown used to the constant chatter, and he was just beginning to understand that there was more to it. He’d begun to depend on it.
If McKay was talking then he was ok, maybe not exactly happy, but ok. And by some weird extension if McKay was ok, then so was he, and so was the universe in general. He wasn’t quite sure how it worked exactly; he just knew that the silence was starting to get to him in a profound way.
It didn’t get any better when Carter just sighed and shook her head over his hastily delivered debrief. When he admitted that McKay probably would demand to be removed from the team after the whole fiasco she just gave him a tight smile and offered, “Perhaps you could look at this as a sort of reprieve?”
John sank further into his chair and wondered just how everything had gone so quickly and completely to hell.
When Sam finally waved him away he wandered back down to the infirmary for the promised update from Ronon. The Satedan was as good as his word and rumbled a mildly amused, “He’s fine. Just a strain. Doc already let him go.”
Sheppard nodded gratefully. “I really screwed up today.”
“Yeah,” Ronon returned mildly. “So you wanna’ go try to hit me with some sticks?”
“Oh yeah.”
***
Two hours later Sheppard had a plan; perhaps not a brilliant one, but workable. He made his way to Rodney’s lab before he could chicken out. Just outside he paused when he heard Rodney muttering to someone.
“I’m reasonably sure that new Russian engineer is engaged in the most elaborate form of suicide imaginable. Trouble is she seems to want to take all of us with her.”
“Suicide?” Zelenka’s voice was heavy with disbelief.
“I can’t come up with a better explanation for the plans she’s come up with for the new power coupling on the back up generators. Anyway aren’t all Russians melancholy like twenty-four/seven?”
“Ukrainian.”
“What?”
“Ukrainian, not Russian.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” Radek replied in growing annoyance, “it is not.”
“Did somebody forget to tell me it was ‘Slavic Solidarity’ week or something?” There was a slight pause before McKay continued testily, “Fine, fine, Ukrainian. So they aren’t known for being particularly melancholy then?”
“Not generally, though after three months working for you…”
“Oh ha, and again, ha. So what are Ukrainians known for then?”
“Easter eggs as I recall.”
“Really? Huh. That’s um…well, pretty lame. If I came from a country best known for its Easter eggs I can promise you the thought of suicide would sound more than a little appealing.”
“Ah, yes, is so much better to come from country best known for maple syrup.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Is true. Now why do you think our Ukrainian engineer is wishing to end her life?”
“Well look at this.” John heard the scraping of one of the stools and soft footsteps. “I think she really wanted to be a dentist but the Island of Misfit Toys required engineers, so...”
“As usual I have no idea what you are…. Oh,” Radek’s voice stumbled to a startled halt. “I see, yes well on plus side it would appear that the resulting explosion should only kill nearest dozen or so, not the entire science team.”
“Ah yes, well it’s nice to know that even this cloud of stupid has its silver lining. I swear to God, Radek, the SGC is doing this on purpose. We’ve become some sort of fucked up social Darwinism experiment. I look at the work that half of them turn in and suddenly I’m turning into Wolfgang Pauli.”
There was a slight pause, then a soft chuckle. “’It’s not even wrong.’ Yes.”
“Exactly. I’d ask them what the hell they were thinking but I’m not convinced they can string together the puffy clouds that pass for rational thought drifting aimlessly in the vacant skies of their heads. And these are the best and brightest that Earth has to offer? Seriously? No, I’m just not buying it.”
“You know,” Radek countered, clearly interested by something, “this may not be workable solution but it is intriguing.”
“If by intriguing you mean ‘likely to cause pain, dismemberment and death’, then sure I’ll grant you that.”
“No, I mean, you see the flow modulation here…”
“No, no…wait, yeah, yeah, yeah I see where you’re going with this. We take Dr. Ylenko’s obvious cry for help…”
“…But do not use two crystal configuration…”
“…We use three, and we re-wire this bit…”
“…Yes, yes, exactly!”
There was a long pause where Sheppard was absolutely certain the two scientists were simply standing and beaming at one another, reveling in their shared brilliance. It was a pattern Sheppard had to admit he never got tired of. The two of them just seemed to compliment each other so perfectly, their minds in nearly complete harmony with one another. Words almost seemed superfluous between them most of the time. John found himself feeling the strangest spark of jealousy at the thought.
And suddenly he got it. Suddenly everything fell into place with a frightening thud. He actually leaned against the wall, profoundly startled. Rodney was used to talking to people who could fill in his blanks, who knew where his brilliant mind was headed just a few seconds after he did. And John had originally tried to keep up, but when he couldn’t he’d gone all passive-aggressive and turned the whole thing into a game at Rodney’s expense. A stupid, juvenile game, and for that he was going to lose one of the best teammates he’d ever had.
“Radek,” McKay’s voice was surprisingly soft and John had to lean closer to the door to even make it out, “do you…do you respect me? I mean, if not as the greatest scientist it’s ever been your incredible good fortune to work for, then at least as, well, as a person?”
“Rodney, are you sure you did not injure your head as well as your shoulder today?” There was a long, drawn out pause. “Oh very well, of course I respect you, even though you are frequently the most maddening individual I have ever met. Why else would I be spending the best years of my life as a slave to your overblown ego? It is not for my health, I assure you.”
“Good. I mean, I’m glad. Well, not about the overblown ego part, but…you know, the rest. And, um, yeah.”
“You know I do not think the Colonel meant any harm.” Radek’s voice was surprisingly kind, though there was just the slightest undertone of amusement. “Though it would probably be best to ask him yourself as he is standing just outside of lab.”
Sheppard blushed and ducked his head. Ronon would’ve laughed himself sick if he’d been standing there. Being caught by oblivious, near-sighted Dr. Zelenka was a bit of a blow to the ego. But then he told himself he hadn’t really been trying all that hard to be stealthy. With a weary sigh he slouched into the lab and managed a feeble smile. “Hey.”
Radek returned the expression a bit ruefully and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. Both their eyes slid over to Rodney who snapped his own mouth closed abruptly. McKay had slipped his right arm out of his sling and was using it to type furiously on his keyboard, doing his best to ignore any other presence in the lab.
“Uh, Rodney,” John began.
“Radek, be so kind as to tell the Colonel that his genetic services aren’t currently required, so he can just….” Rodney made a little shooing gesture then went quickly back to typing.
Zelenka paused, lifted his glasses and wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. Then, with a complete lack of expression he met Sheppard’s eyes and repeated McKay’s words to the letter. Or, at least John assumed he’d done so…only he did it in Czech.
His superior slapped his hand down on the workbench and exploded, “Why did you…? That was utterly pointless, I mean it’s not like he couldn’t just hear….”
“Ah, yes, so you still understand basic concepts of acoustics. Very good.” Zelenka stood abruptly and closed his laptop with a definitive click. “You have spoken, he has heard and understood you, and now I am going to bed.” With that he turned on his heel and stalked out muttering under his breath.
“Hey! I do happen to know the word for ‘children’ in your crazy moon language!”
Radek popped his head back into the lab long enough to mutter, “Good! Will save me the trouble of translating for you!”
“Right, just for that you’re on Ylenko babysitting duty for a week.”
“No I am not, because you need me to fix holes he,” Radek paused to point accusingly at Sheppard, “put in his Puddle Jumper two weeks ago.”
“I said I was sorry,” John whined.
“Sorry does not fix ship, I do! But first I sleep and you two resolve this…this nonsense between yourselves.”
“You’re getting awfully uppity in your old age, Zelenka, but you’re still my minion and I can make your life a living hell if I choose to.”
“I am thinking you are four years too late for that,” the other man huffed in return and stomped off in earnest.
“Bastard’s too damn competent and the hell of it is he knows it.”
John gave Rodney a sidelong glance and asked, “So, um, we’re talking again?”
“I don’t seem to have much of a choice do I?” The physicist ran a hand over his eyes wearily and adjusted his injured arm back into the sling. “What do you want, Colonel? Keller’s painkillers are starting to wear off and I’d really like to go to bed before I fall over.”
“Oh,” Sheppard lifted the laptop he’d been carrying and laid it on the workbench, “I can’t seem to connect to the intranet.”
“Two PhD’s, a fast track to at least a half a dozen Nobel prizes, and here I am the most highly paid sys admin in the Pegasus Galaxy. Wouldn’t mom and dad be proud.” McKay gestured abruptly with his left hand, muttering, “Gimme.”
John slid it over a little reluctantly and settled onto Zelenka’s abandoned seat. Two sharp blue eyes landed on him immediately. “Don’t get comfortable, this won’t take long.”
“Ok.” He hadn’t really expected a warm welcome, and he knew Rodney would see through his pathetic bit of sabotage in pretty short order so he’d have to talk fast. The problem was he still didn’t have a clue what he was going to say. What could he say really? He’d screwed up…inadvertently, of course, but that wasn’t the point. “Uh, Rodney….”
The scientist held up a single finger and muttered an annoyed, “Busy.”
“Look, I’m sorry, ok? I didn’t mean….”
“Like hell.” The words were clipped and every bit as prickly as expected. “Like hell you didn’t. Now just shut up and let me do my job.”
“I’m serious, Rodney, it was just…I just blurted it out. I didn’t think about it and I sure as hell didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Fine, you didn’t do it on purpose, I get that. This whole stupid…game wasn’t intentionally created to hurt me. Got that too. The thing is,” Rodney paused and met John’s eyes steadily, “it didn’t even occur to you that it might, did it? You just didn’t care enough not to hurt me. But you know what? I’ve been dealing with this kind of juvenile shit since high school so it’s not like this is all new and different. I just thought…I just hoped…Fuck!” He slammed his hand down on the workbench, then used it to knead his forehead. “Look, if I just had to deal with this in the lab that’d be fine, I don’t need my minions to respect me, so long as they quake in terror of my righteous wrath. But in the field…”
“Okay,” John said quietly, “I get it. And I’m sorry you think I don’t respect you. I do, but I’ll leave it for your brilliant mind to look at my actions -- the majority of my actions -- and work that out. For instance, you’re the first person I go to when I get an idea that might not be as hair-brained as, well, most of my ideas.”
“And that would be when, exactly?” Rodney smiled sardonically.
“Well, okay, like for instance…” John shuffled his feet a bit. He was always prepared to be laughed at when he proposed plans to McKay, but today his misgivings were a hard stone in the pit of his stomach. He took a deep breath and continued. “What if we could do to the Replicators what they’re doing to the Wraith?”
“Kill off their food supply? Sheppard they’re machines, they don’t….” McKay began to snap his fingers in quick succession. “Wait! Neutronium. If we could alter their fuel supply… maybe create a massive cation effect…. But, wait, how can we possibly do that without getting us all killed?”
“I don’t know,” John spread his fingers wide, “that’s why I bring all my ideas to you. Because I respect you enough to know that you’ll figure something out.”
“Yes, I do believe that’s called the ‘hard part’. You just come in here with some weird idea that popped into your head in the shower, lay it at my feet and skip off to go hit Ronon with sticks.”
“I already did that. And how did you know I got the idea in the shower?”
Rodney shrugged. “It’s where I get all my best ideas.” Rodney tapped the radio on his ear. “Zelenka, wake up and get back here. I have an interesting idea I need to bounce off of you.” There was pleasure in his voice, and his chest puffed out with pride. All thought that this had been Sheppard’s idea had clearly been extracted from his thoughts with surgical precision.
“Zelenka?” Rodney paused and tilted his head like a confused Labrador.
“Maybe there’s some sort of problem with his radio,” John suggested helpfully.
“Yes, thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Obvious,” Rodney said with long-suffering impatience. John noted, however, that he’d used his proper rank and smiled. “Now go get Zelenka for me, I need to see if we can figure out a way to create neutronium ions from a safe distance.”
“Does that mean we’re okay?”
“You’re wasting time!” McKay answered in a singsong voice.
John stood his ground.
“Yes, yes, fine, you respect me. You’re just an incredibly insensitive oaf. Now GO!”
John smiled sincerely, turned on his heels and headed for the Puddle Jumper bay. The first part of his plan had gone better than expected.
***
John had observed that Rodney’s interaction with Ancient tech followed its own fascinating pattern, not unlike the five stages of grieving. Watching the man in one of the new labs they’d recently declared “safe enough” to work in, Sheppard couldn’t quite contain the smile that was quirking the edges of his lips. Rodney was bent over a console deep in stage one, denial, the sling he was supposed to be wearing for his very injured right shoulder had been casually tossed into a corner of the room and forgotten.
“I’m…I’m missing something here. There’s gotta be a…where the…No, no, I know it’s here somewhere…”
Within seconds he’d moved on to stage two, anger. “You stupid piece of crap! Oh you may think you’re not going to open for me, but let me assure you that you are so very mistaken. I’m right and you’re wrong. Filled to the brim with wrong-ability, that’s what you are. You. Will. Open!”
When bullying and the furious application of a screwdriver had no discernable effect, the scientist slid effortlessly into stage three, bargaining. “C’mon, you know I only want what’s best for you so a little cooperation would really be appreciated right now. Could you just…please…”
Another ten minutes of fruitless pleading and fiddling didn’t seem to be doing much good so Rodney slumped to the floor burying his face in his hands. “Fine, just stay closed then, this is a total waste of time. I don’t know why I even bother. Even if I did find out what you’re for it’d probably be something stupid and useless at best or pointlessly dangerous if not deadly.”
And there was depression, right on schedule. Sheppard almost spoke up then, asking if he could help, but before he could Rodney’d forged ahead into acceptance and muttered, “Ok, ok, you win, if you want me to call your boyfriend to come do this I will. Are you happy now?” John’s eyebrows shot up at that, but he refrained from comment. Rodney tapped his radio and growled, “Colonel Sheppard?”
“Right here.”
McKay nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the other man’s voice directly behind him. “Why did you…? Wait, how long were you standing there?”
“Oh hours.”
“You know that joke just keeps getting funnier. Um, why are you here?”
Sheppard smiled mildly and returned, “I didn’t see you at breakfast.”
Rodney paused and blinked at him for several long seconds as if he were expecting something further. When Sheppard just continued to smile and even bounced on his toes a bit, McKay shook his head and said, “I was right in the middle of something and…”
“Did you actually sleep last night?”
“Sleep? Um, yeah I think I got an hour or two in the lab. I’m assuming I did anyway, Zelenka and I were talking and then suddenly he was gone and the lights were out. Also I think I drooled on my keyboard a little.” He paused to scrub a hand wearily over his eyes.
“I brought you a croissant.” John held out the pastry.
“Oh. Oh, that’s, uh…thanks.” He snatched it out of the Colonel’s hands and crammed a good half of it into his mouth. Between bites he waved a free hand at the console and muttered, “Go molest that panel.”
Sheppard’s right eyebrow climbed his forehead, but he refrained from comment and simply walked over to lay hands on the panel. As expected it lit up like a Christmas tree and popped open with what could best be described as a happy little chirp that made the Colonel grin like an idiot. He turned back to Rodney to see the scientist turning an ugly shade of purple; the remains of the croissant fell to the floor forgotten.
Without missing a beat Rodney turned away, flung his screwdriver at the far wall and shrieked, “You whore!”
“Hey!” John pouted, the Kirk cracks were bad enough, but this was definitely crossing a line.
“Not you,” he threw his arms wide and glared at the ceiling accusingly. “Her! This entire fucking city! I slave my life away trying to keep her running, me, not you, but does that influence the little trollop? Oh no, you just wave your genes at her and she’s flat on her back faster than you can say ‘Lieutenant Colonel’.”
“You know I’ve really always preferred to think of Atlantis as more of a friendly puppy, myself.”
“I can’t even begin to address how many kinds of messed up that is.”
John frowned and muttered, “Yeah ‘cause your Atlantis as loose woman metaphor is so much healthier.”
“God, why isn't the intense heat of my hatred melting you into a puddle of goo right now?” Rodney just stared at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Just forget that, forget that you’ve basically turned me into a cuckold, because, you know what? That’s not even what I’m really angry about.”
“It’s not?”
“No, no it’s not. First those nancy boy Ancients roll bottoms-up for the Wraith without leaving so much as a single goddamn instruction manual for their endless supply of broken, retarded, or homicidal experiments. I mean seriously would it really have killed them to write up the Ancient equivalent of ’10,000 Year Old Space Tech for Dummies’?
Ok and the Wraith? Who ever heard of a hive species made up predominantly of males? Jesus, that doesn’t even make any fucking sense! And they dress in a manner not entirely dissimilar to me during a brief and embarrassing summer in the mid 80's. Let's just say I thought I was Robert Smith for about 8 weeks and leave it at that. So it occurs to me that we build these guys a kickass goth club and our worries are over. Oh, oh and, the Replicators are all pissed off because mommy and daddy didn’t love them enough so they’re out to destroy all their stuff and us along with it. I mean we’re fighting the machine equivalent of your average disaffected teenager! Maybe we should just sign them all up for some intensive therapy. We might want to avoid the Freudians, though, I just don’t see how that could possibly end well.” Rodney finally wound down and simply stood flushed and panting for several moments.
“Uh, Rodney?” John tilted his head and eased toward the twitching scientist as if he were a high power nuke primed to go off. “You ok there, buddy?”
McKay ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and groaned, “I think…yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Got it all out of your system?”
“Probably. Unless my minions have started screwing around with what they think is the Ancient equivalent of a food processor only to discover it’s actually some sort of freakish genetic manipulation device. I might just work myself up to a good frothy rant when faced with the very real possibility of being turned into a sea slug.”
“Sea slug?”
“Why the hell not? It makes as much sense as any of the other experimental devices we’ve bumbled into.” Blinking, Rodney mumbled, “Wait, why are you here again?”
“Um, breakfast and molestation as I recall.”
McKay gazed down at the remains of the pastry sitting sad and abandoned on the floor of the lab. “Oh,” he moaned mournfully, “oh that’s just tragic.”
“On the plus side the console’s open.”
“That’s…good?”
“This may sound crazy but somehow I just don’t think an hour or two of sleep is quite cutting it for you today, Rodney. Maybe you should sack out for a while?”
“But,” McKay gazed at the open console with bleary, worried eyes, “but I just got it open…”
“You mean I just got it open,” John returned, gently throwing an arm around his friend’s hunched shoulders and leading him towards the door. “And you know what, it’ll still be open a few hours from now when you’re actually awake enough to figure out what it does. And if it’s not still open you just give me a call and I’ll come take care of it for you.”
“You will? You promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Ok.” An exhausted Rodney was an astonishingly passive Rodney, and he allowed himself to be led just outside the door before he stiffened and pulled away from Sheppard. “Wait a second, I’ve just got to, um…” He stumbled back inside the lab and over to a small pile of equipment that included his second favorite laptop and his favorite tool roll. Digging through it all he plucked out a notebook and Sharpie and quickly scrawled a note. With a satisfied smirk he perched the note on the open console. It simply read ‘Lab monkeys: touch anything in this room and I will end you. Sincerely, Dr. Rodney McKay.’
With a quick nod he returned to Sheppard’s side. The Colonel just smiled at him and asked, “You think that’ll work?”
"Oh it’ll work, because they're well aware that if they disobey me their lives will begin to make Dante's Inferno seem like a perfectly lovely way to spend an eternity by comparison. I think I've drilled it into their pointy little heads that this place isn't like the
SGC or Area 51, rather more like the Acme Warehouse from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. It’s like survival of the fittest, thwarted by a few centuries of medical science, is trying to reassert itself on this city. Fortunately most of my minions seem to have at least a vestigial survival instinct."
"Ok then, your minions have been duly warned and your work here is done. Time for a nap. And then I was thinking we could, you know, grab some dinner or..." he paused as if searching for just the right word, then blurted out, "something."
"Dinner?"
"Yeah, you know, last meal of the day, often shared with friends or family."
"So...dinner." Suddenly McKay's blue eyes widened alarmingly. "Wait...dinner...pigtails...Oh my god, you're asking me out aren't you?"
John's brain flat out refused to parse that question for a good thirty seconds. This seemed, at least for McKay's purposes, to be the equivalent of an admission. His eyes widened even further and Sheppard noticed for the first time just how dilated they were. It was vaguely unnerving. "I should have...I mean the juvenile mind games...and the teasing...oh my god you've even checked out my ass, haven't you? You totally have! On PX5-937, you said you were looking for leeches, but you were totally checking me out!"
Sheppard opened his mouth, realized belatedly that he had absolutely no idea how to respond to any of it, and snapped it shut once more.
"This is, wow...I mean I'm really flattered, hell who wouldn't be? But, wait, that is what you meant, right? Because this would be oh my god so embarrassing if that’s not what you… Oh Jesus! Of course that's not what you meant...I'm, god I'm tired, I'm not even making sense. Look, just forget everything that came out of my mouth a minute
ago. Chalk it up to extreme fatigue, or space dementia or, you know, whatever." As McKay's mania drained away he slumped again and waved a weary hand. "I'm just going to go and be unconscious for a while. Maybe I’ll get lucky and slip into a coma."
"So, um, dinner?"
Rodney's eyes narrowed a bit as if he were waiting for a punch line. Finally he relaxed marginally and nodded in a stiff and jerky fashion. "Sure, yeah. Just...just dinner, yeah."
John smiled and said, "Ok then. But, uh, no comas. . What do you say we have burgers in my quarters tonight and decide how best to approach Sam with your latest hair-brained scheme. 1900 hours work for you?"
Rodney flushed and fluttered his fingers about his head.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'."
***
John pulled two Athosian ales out of a bucket of ice. They had swing-top porcelain caps, a fact that John found rather charming. He broke the seal on one, levered open the top, and handed it over to Rodney.
“Thanks. It’s uh… kind of a weird top. On this.” He pointed needlessly to the cap now resting against the base of the beer’s neck.
“Like a Grolsch,” John said, and took a long, satisfying swig of his own beer. “Aren’tcha going to taste it?”
“Um, sure,” Rodney said, but then set the beer down on the nearest flat surface – namely, John’s floor. “Burgers. Didn’t you say there would be burgers?”
Rodney seemed nervous.
“There will be, a little later. I thought we’d start with a couple of these and maybe, I don’t know, talk a bit.”
“Talk?” Rodney squeaked and reached for the beer.
“I have an idea.”
“Oh?” Rodney asked politely and took a small sip. He made a face and set the bottle back down quickly.
“Did you ever play Questions?”
“Questions?” Rodney repeated.
“Yeah, it’s a drinking game… like quarters.”
“Quarters?” Rodney repeated again.
“Oh boy. I take it you didn’t do much drinking in college.”
“Well, no, I was only 16 when I graduated with a double degree… and then I started on my double masters….”
“Okay, okay,” John tried to cut off Rodney before he recited his entire curriculum vitae, “I get the picture. So Questions goes a little something like this: Person A asks Person B a question – hence, the name – and Person B then has to immediately ask Person A a question in return. If Person B answers Person A’s question instead of asking another….”
McKay snapped his fingers “Yes, yes, yes. We played something similar at Area 51, only it involved naming a theorem instead of asking questions and if the second person couldn’t name another theorem in ten seconds….”
“They had to take a swig,” John ended McKay’s sentence for him and downed the rest of his first ale to illustrate.
“No, no,” Rodney said testily, “in our version the winner got their pick from the loser’s Magic the Gathering deck.”
“Oh,” John replied disappointedly.
“It was a collectible card game. Very popular in 1995.”
“By then you must have been old enough to drink.” John hadn’t meant to whine, but he had a feeling his idea was going over like a lead balloon.
“Of course I was, I just didn’t….” McKay’s voice trailed off and he averted his eyes briefly. “So what was it you were saying about having an idea? Hmm?”
“Oh, right.” John gulped as the full power of McKay’s open blue eyes turned on him once again. “Well, we could play a drinking game, like Questions,” he lifted the lever on another swing-top bottle to punctuate this suggestion, “But instead of questions….”
“We use half-finished sentences!” Rodney ended John’s sentence correctly. His face lit up almost like it did when he discovered a new piece of Atlantean technology… and got it to work correctly. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning. Only, not quite. Maybe more like a kid on Easter morning.
“Exactly,” John agreed and gave an appreciative look to the pale amber liquid in his bottle. This stuff must be stronger than he’d thought. His brain was starting to ramble as much as Rodney’s mouth normally did. Rodney’s mouth No, no, he shouldn’t think about that. Not right now. It’s so... pink.No, he definitely didn’t need to think about Rodney’s mouth.
John came back to the present and realized Rodney was whining something about leaving his deck back on Earth. Before John could correct him his face went momentarily blank like it did whenever he came to the sudden realization that he’d committed another social faux pas. It was sorta cute. Stop that! John thought. Maybe it was time to switch from the Athosian ale to a better-known quantity.
“Oh, of course. We’re not betting collectible cards, we’re going to drink this yummy ale,” Rodney said with a smirk.
“Well if Athosian ale isn’t to your taste….” Sheppard reached behind his Johnny Cash poster and pulled a full bottle of fine Russian vodka out from his favorite hiding spot. Perhaps he shouldn’t have done that in front of Rodney…. Oh well, he’d just have to get the man drunk enough that he’d forget. Or maybe even drunk enough to forget how to get back to his own bed. What the hell has gotten into me? John thought. But out loud he said,“What the hell do they put in this stuff?”
“Athosian ale? Well, hops, barley, some weird native herb they call Hraka. Or Harka. Something like that. I dunno, do you want me to ask Katie?”
“No!” John bellowed, louder than he’d intended.
“Okay, okay,” Rodney held up his hands defensively, but he smirked smugly.
“I happened to win this vodka from Zelenka in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em last week. How about we use this instead?”
Rodney swallowed nervously and nodded once in agreement.
“Well, okay then,” John grinned. He was happier about Rodney accepting the terms of the game than he could reason why.
“Who starts?” Rodney asked and broke the seal on the vodka with a grunt.
“I could start, but…” John drawled.
“Then we’d be here all night while you tried to come up with something witty to say?” Rodney suggested.
“Drink,” John pronounced and treated Rodney to his most devil-may-care grin.
“What? I didn’t even know we were starting!”
“That’s no excuse. Drink.”
Rodney tipped the bottle gently to his pale pink lips.
“That’s not a drink!” John complained.
“Oh, god, it burns,” Rodney said with tears in his eyes.
“Just for the first couple of sips. Besides, you’re lucky. This is the good stuff. The cheap stuff would… would….”
“Set my whole body on fire?”
“Drink,” John said with a laugh. “Oh, this is too easy.”
“I’ll tell you what else is too easy…” Rodney said, wiping the remnants of vodka from his lips. He took a long swig and looked at John, challengingly.
“Katie?” John suggested. He knew he was going to have to drink, but somehow he’d begun to believe that the vodka might thin the Athosian ale in his system and help him think straight. Besides, there was never a bad time to belittle Rodney’s ex.
“Very funny. Drink.”
When John had finished taking a very large swig, he handed the bottle back to McKay.
“You know, at this rate, we’re both going to be extremely drunk before we have any dinner,” Rodney said. But then he took another pull at the bottle.
“So?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying.” Rodney fluttered his hands dismissively and sipped more Vodka.
“Has anyone ever told you, you have nice….” John trailed off.
“That is so unfair, you smug little….”
John grinned and bowed his head. “Now you’re getting it. All you have to do is….”
“I demand respect, and common courtesy, and...."
“A kiss.” John couldn’t believe he’d said it again.
“That’s what you said last time.” Rodney had an expression on his face like he was trying to solve a complex equation.
“I know,” John said, the annoyance creeping into his voice.
“Why?” Rodney asked plainly.
“I don’t know.” This came out almost like a growl.
“Do you think you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Kiss me.”
“Hand that over,” Sheppard growled. He took the bottle of vodka from Rodney’s outstretched hand, unscrewed the lid and gulped several ounces as if it were water.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Rodney pointed out as John was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I know that.”
“Okay, fine, I get it.” Rodney got unsteadily to his feet. Once up he swayed like a strand of kelp anchored to the ocean floor.
“Where are you going?” John asked.
“I’m leaving.”
“Why?” John blinked in confusion. Or maybe it was the lights. It was too damn bright in his quarters. He reached over and flicked off the bedside lamp.
“Because you keep growling, so obviously I’m irritating you, and despite the proof from recent events that you feel quite the opposite, I, for one, do not enjoy pissing you off. I just… do it accidentally a whole bunch.”
“No you don’t,” John protested and reached for Rodney’s wrist. He missed and ended up grabbing his hand.
“Why did you turn out the light?” Rodney asked in an unnaturally quiet voice.
“Because. It was too bright. Now sit.” John tugged on Rodney’s hand, but it was unnecessary. As soon as he barked a physical command, Rodney always jumped to comply. He’d been trained to do so from countless field missions, no doubt, but John sometimes wondered if it wasn’t his preferred mode of being. While the man was undeniably a genius, he often seemed at a loss as to what to do with his own body. John thought his tendency to gesture wildly had something to do with that too, but he couldn’t put those two thoughts together in any coherent way at present.
“I was thinking…” they both started at once.
“You go ahead,” John said.
“No, that’s okay. You first.” Rodney’s voice was cracking the way it always did when he was nervous.
“I was just thinking, maybe it would be helpful if I just got this out of my system,” John confessed.
“I thought that was what we were doing. I thought that was what all this ‘fill in the blank’ nonsense….”
But John didn’t let him finish that sentence. He set the bottle on the nightstand, turned to Rodney, grabbed his face with both his hands and kissed him for all he was worth.
***
Rodney McKay was a brilliant man; some (including himself) would even say a genius. His prodigious mind, as a result, zipped along at a pace few could hope to achieve as John kissed him. He thought of all the times the man had looked him up and down when he entered a room. He thought of the disconcerting way John had stared at his lips in the Mess Hall until Rodney was certain there was a dollop of whipped cream still clinging to his mouth from a recently finished dessert (or two). He thought of all of the times John had grabbed him, protectively, possessively, and forced him out of harm’s way. But most of all he thought: I’m drunk! He got me drunk! He’s trying to seduce me! And though Rodney McKay was nearly infallible when it came to applied theory, in this one instance, he was dead wrong.
John Sheppard was a brave man, a good leader, and loyal to a nearly suicidal fault. But he was not gay. This was the thought that kept repeating in his head, in a staccato: Not gay, not gay so so so not gay! But try as he might, even this litany could not dismiss the fact that he was enjoying kissing Rodney McKay, enjoying feeling him squirm in his arms as though he wanted to pull away (but John was having none of that), enjoying hearing his little moans of defeat as Rodney eventually slacked and melted against him, enjoying the surprisingly soft pink lips and even, so help him, enjoying the rough stubble of his chin as it scraped against John’s own.
“Lay down,” John said throatily, finally releasing Rodney from his grip. Rodney didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch, but quickly flopped down on John’s bed. Great, now what? John thought. The tiny little bed wasn’t going to accommodate them both very well. Not that John even had any idea of what he wanted to do with Rodney. He’d mostly just wanted to tell him what to do and watch him jump to comply. But with little room to do much else, John straddled Rodney’s chest, pinning his arms against his sides. Rodney looked slightly uncomfortable, but he was surprisingly quiet.
“What?” John growled, uncomfortable with the silence.
“Nothing,” Rodney said. He sounded… almost content.
“Good.” John stared down at Rodney. He knew he was supposed to do something, was supposed to have some plan in his head, some scenario to guide Rodney into, but his mind was completely blank.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Rodney asked with a frown.
“Shut up, I do so!” John protested like a 12 year old.
“Prove it,” Rodney said with his patented half-smile. John didn’t like that at all. It felt like Rodney was suddenly the one in control, even though John had him pinned to his bed but good.
“Okay,” John said, rising to the challenge, “take your shirt off.”
“Um.” Rodney raised his eyebrows and looked at John’s crotch meaningfully.
“What now?” John was reasonably certain his arousal wasn’t to the point of showing through his BDUs, so he had no idea what Rodney was looking at.
“I need control of my arms to take my t-shirt off.”
The word “control” caught John’s ear. He didn’t want to give McKay control of anything.
“No.”
“Okay, but kinda hard to take my shirt off when….”
“Be quiet. I don’t want you speaking unless I tell you to.”
Rodney shut his jaw so quickly his teeth clicked together.
“Now, I’m going to stand up, but you’re not going to move one muscle. Understand?”
Rodney nodded silently.
“Good.” John rose slowly, never taking his eyes off McKay. “Raise your arms above your head. “
Rodney did as he was told, his wrists limp and hands hanging together as if bound by a rope. John smiled, reached down and tugged McKay’s shirt up exposing the bare white skin of his belly. There was a trail of surprisingly dark hair there that crept downward into his waistband, but John couldn’t look at it without musing that it was cute, so he averted his eyes.
“You could help me out a little here,” John growled as the shirt wouldn’t budge any further.
“You didn’t say to…” Rodney’s voice trailed off when he realized he was speaking out of turn.
“Oh, right. Raise up off the bed a bit, would ya?” John had to suppress a smirk. McKay was suddenly a stickler for following the rules. Not out in the field where it might actually save his life, oh no, but here where he could be a royal pain in the ass….
John finished peeling Rodney’s t-shirt off his torso and slowly trailed it up his arms before tossing it on the floor. It wasn’t so much that he was going for slow and sensuous, as he needed to buy himself a few seconds to think. Contemplating Rodney’s half naked body and pleading pale blue eyes in the dim light, he reached for the open bottle of vodka and took a long swig. Setting the bottle back down with a decisive bang, he pulled his own shirt off in a practiced one-handed maneuver, tossed it in the corner, then laid himself out on top of Rodney, pulling his face up to catch his crooked lips with his own. Rodney’s legs moved apart, and John fell softly to the mattress in their gap. They gasped simultaneously as each became aware of the other’s cock through layers of rip-stop, and John began to grind into Rodney’s crotch.
Their lips parted and Rodney began a high, happy litany of, “Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes,” until he opened his eyes, caught John’s stern stare and said “okay, shutting up now.”
“Yes, you are,” John pronounced and pushed himself up off the man by placing his full weight on McKay’s biceps. While this provided less skin-on-skin contact, it also meant that John gained some leverage and could twist and push his cock more insistently against Rodney’s own.
Rodney gasped, “please” so quietly John wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.
“What was that?”
“Please. That was ‘please.’ Oh by heaven’s mercy, please…don’t stop.”
“Okay, that’s enough talking.” John really wasn’t in the mood to think about heaven, merciful or otherwise at the moment. He was, however, trying desperately to weigh the events of the evening in his well-worn mental scale of gay versus not gay. And it looked like things had slid pretty irretrievably into the gay column tonight. But maybe if they just kept their pants on, it wouldn’t really count by the bleak light of dawn.
Aww, fuck it. If he’d done Tamara Winthrop in the back of her daddy’s ancient Buick Roadmaster and forgiven himself, surely he could forgive a trespass of Meredith Rodney McKay’s full lips.
He stopped grinding and abruptly stood up.
“But…,” was McKay’s one word protest before he snapped his mouth closed once again. Then John unzipped his pants in that same, one-handed, practiced motion he’d used on his own shirt and Rodney’s eyes went wide. “Really?” he asked in disbelief.
“Suck it,” John commanded and Rodney was up out of his bed and down on his knees before him faster than he’d ever seen him move, even when he was being chased by one of Michael’s pseudo-Aliens.
John smiled. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine anyone was sucking his cock. And then that wasn’t really gay, was it? Except, for some reason, he kept opening his eyes and watching Rodney administer sweet, almost ticklish, flickering licks along his shaft. John shut his eyes. Brenda… Rosenbaum? Was that her name? He couldn’t recall. College was a long time ago.
He smiled at the blissed out look on Rodney’s face as he took half his length into his mouth in one go.
“That’s it,” John cooed, and caressed McKay’s temple, running his fingers into his thinning hair. He sensed more than saw motion below him and peered to the side of Rodney’s bobbing head to watch as the man stroked his own cock with the same rhythm. “Yeah, that’s good. You like this, don’t you?”
“Ermm hmm,” Rodney mumbled past his mouthful of dick.
McKay wasn’t the only one getting into it, and abruptly John groaned, “Hang on, gotta’…”
Rodney leaned back, a shiny string of drool on his lips and a frown marring his forehead. “Huh?”
John collapsed in a boneless heap on the bed, and then gave the scientist a lazy wave that eloquently said, ‘You may continue now.’ When his twitching cock wasn’t immediately enveloped in the other man’s hot, wet mouth, Sheppard lifted his head and one eyebrow. “What’s the hold up, Rodney? C’mon, get to.”
“’Get to’? Jesus, how romantic.” Rodney’s swollen lips had taken on that unhappy crooked cant again. “Wait a minute, what the hell is happening here, Colonel?”
“’Colonel’? Rodney you can’t get all formal with me after you’ve had my dick in your mouth. There are rules about this sort of thing.”
“Oh forgive me, John,” McKay managed to make his first name sound even more formal than his title. “I mean it’s not like this entire evening hasn’t turned into a really weird after school special about the evils of alcohol. I’m not even sure what the hell I’m doing here. Ok, maybe it might have something to do with the promise of burgers. Burgers, which I might add, I still haven’t received.”
Sheppard couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Rodney are you seriously going to pass up sex because I didn’t cough up a few faux hamburgers? I promise you’ll get your damn burgers, but first could you, you know, finish what you started here, huh?” Ok that might have come out a tad whinier than he’d intended, but given the circumstances John cut himself some slack.
“No, I’m just…I’m just saying that we’re drunk and I’m…god right now I don’t even like you. And yeah, ok, I’m a huge, flaming slut, which I totally cop to I might add; but even I have standards. Also I’m reasonably sure that you were closing your eyes while I was blowing you and picturing some hot buxom alien babe so you could avoid the whole homosexual freak-out thing.” Rodney’s chin jutted out stubbornly and he crossed his arms over his pale chest. “But you know what happens tomorrow? We both wake up with hangovers, I go back to being pissed at you about your stupid mind games and you never speak to me again because you got drunk and inadvertently went gay for me.”
John leaned back on his bed, stared at the smooth gray ceiling and ran through some of the toughest equations he could remember battling in grad school. With a long, slow breath he said, “Rodney, I swear to god if you don’t get over here right now a hangover is going to be the least of your problems tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah,” Rodney muttered, “That’s hot. Listen, it’s not that I’m not physically attracted to you. I mean, Jesus, parts of me are applauding even as we speak. The thing is this….” He gestured vaguely between the two of them. “It’s not going to fix anything between us, in fact it’s going to make things a whole lot worse. And the thing is I hate breaking stuff, it’s against my personal code, if you will.”
“God do you have to over think everything?”
“Hello, genius here. Yes, in a word, I do have to over think everything. It’s what I do, it’s who I am.” Rodney’s expression was an almost endearing combination of abject misery and profound determination.
“C’mon, Rod-ney,” John sing-songed, pouting in what he could only hope was sexy and irresistible manner. “I’m hot.”
“I never argued that point.”
“And naked.”
“Couldn’t really miss that.”
“Smart too.”
“Yeah well I’m smarter.” John could tell Rodney was weakening when he actually leaned into his leg.
“’Course you are. Oh, did I mention I’m also rich?”
Rodney rubbed his head against John’s thigh, and Sheppard moaned low and deep. “Pfft, my bank account, like my I.Q., is at least double yours. And I have no interest in playing Julia Roberts to your Richard Gere in some fucked up Pegasus Galaxy version of Pretty Woman. But, um,” Rodney nibbled the inside of John’s knee, then continued, “just out of curiosity, how rich?”
“Estates, Rodney, estates. I could easily keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed.”
“Hmm, all the MRE’s and chocolate chip Power Bars I can eat, huh? Well, when you put it that way….”
John leaned back with a rather goofy smile on his face as Rodney licked and kissed his lower abdomen. God the things he could do with that mouth. Sheppard made a silent mental vow to never again daydream about gagging the man, it would, he determined, be a crime against humanity. “Knew you’d see it my way in the end.” He let his hands slide down to roam over Rodney’s short-cropped hair and broad shoulders as the other man turned his enthusiastic attention back to John’s dick. So much for the whole not gay thing. John promised himself he’d have a good long freak-out about it first thing in the morning. Yeah, that sounded like a plan.
Rodney, meanwhile, was busy demonstrating his usual workmanlike proficiency, even humming happily to himself as he went down on John. It took Sheppard a few seconds to place the tune, but when he did he couldn’t help giggling, “’You Sexy Thing’? I wouldn’t have figured you for a Hot Chocolate fan.”
Shrugging, McKay plunged down, nearly swallowing John whole. Sheppard groaned, “Jesus god I’m not going to…” A little twist of Rodney’s tongue on his cock head was all it took to finish him off, and he came with a sharp, almost pained gasp. “Jesus,” he panted, splayed on the bed loose limbed, “Jesus.”
“Nope, just Rodney McKay, super genius,” the other man grumbled, reaching down to work on his own straining erection.
John glanced down at him through half lidded eyes. “C’mere.”
“Just a….”
“No, c’mere.”
With a put upon sigh, Rodney shoved himself onto the bed. “What? What! I need to…”
John swatted his hand away and took the other man’s cock firmly in his own hand. “Oh,” Rodney sighed, flopping down on his side next to him. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” John smirked and took up an even rhythm that had Rodney all but purring. He leaned in for a kiss that started out sloppy and desperate with teeth clicking and tongues battling for dominance. After a few seconds Rodney began to relax and let the other man take the lead, which was just the way John liked it.
It was over altogether too quickly, as Rodney came with a generous spurt all over John’s stomach. He groaned and sagged into the mattress. “Sorry. S’been a while. And, well, booze…”
“Nah, it was good. It was real good.” It was also, John decided, real gay and he was going to have to give that some serious thought. Tomorrow, definitely tomorrow.
“Should I…I mean, do I need to…?” Rodney gestured vaguely towards the door.
“You can stay.”
“But….”
“Stay.”
“Ok.” A slow, almost shy smile spread across Rodney’s face.
“So I guess breakfast is on me.”
Rodney did a quick double take. “Ooh, literally? Because that would be kind of kinky. I mean good kinky, of course, I’m not sure there could be a bad kinky where you’re involved. Well, ok maybe I can because my imagination scares even me sometimes, but….”
“Rodney.” John reached out and laid a hand on McKay’s mouth, running a calloused thumb over his lips.
Taking a deep breath, Rodney began again, “I was serious about what I said before. Not that this wasn’t fun because it really, really was, but what happens now? I mean do we pretend this never happened once we sober up?”
“Well, here’s what I’m thinking. First we get a good night’s sleep. Then a shower…”
“And more sex?”
“And more sex,” John agreed amiably. “After that I’m thinking breakfast during which I and Ronon will apologize publicly and you’ll agree to return to the team.”
“I will?”
“Yes, yes you will.”
“Hmm.” Rodney appeared to consider the proposition for several seconds before saying, “Throw in a blow job and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Don’t push your luck. After breakfast I’m going to go out to the east pier for an hour or so to, um…”
“Have your big gay freak-out?” McKay chirped helpfully.
“I was going to say ‘reflect on the events of the past few days’, but yeah, it’s mostly to have my big gay freak-out.”
“And, uh, after that?”
“I dunno’, lunch maybe.”
Rodney smacked him on the shoulder. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“There are some blanks not even I can fill in, Rodney. Why don’t we just wait and see?”
THE END
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Authors:
ebonlock and moonlightnrainRating: R
Spoilers: Through "Outcast"
Word Count: 16,672
Genre: Humor, First Time
Summary: John discovers that trying to fill in Rodney's blanks can be a risky proposition.
He'd stayed towards the back of the gaggle rushing a groaning and red-faced Rodney down to the infirmary. As they passed her, Carter had given him that look when they moved out of the gate room. The look that said, 'You know this sort of thing never happened when Jack was in charge of SG-1.' He knew it was a complete and utter fabrication, he'd read the mission reports after all. Still, it unsettled him.
He tagged along the entire way, certain that if he could just explain…. Well, ok maybe explanations would have to wait until after an apology. Yeah, that seemed like a winning formula.
When he tried to follow them inside the infirmary Ronon merely turned around, effectively blocking the doorway. John raised an eyebrow. Ronon raised one right back, then folded his massive arms over his equally impressive chest.
"C'mon, move."
"Nope."
John hadn't felt so close to stamping his foot in years. "But I'm team leader!" He was immediately ashamed at just how much he currently sounded like his least favorite ex-girlfriend.
"Sorry."
Sheppard could hear the increasingly high-pitched yelps from inside and his whole body shook with the need to know, to see, to do something about McKay's distress. Even if he, totally inadvertently, had caused it. "Do I need to make it an order?"
"You could do that," Ronon agreed almost amiably, "but he's the guy who controls the hot water in my room."
"Yeah well I'm the guy who watches your back and... and occasionally hits you with sticks."
"Very occasionally." The big warrior grinned and actually reached out to scruff his commanding officer's hair.
"Hey!" John ducked and fussed with his slightly tousled locks.
"Just go tell Colonel Carter what happened and I'll make sure McKay's all right."
"But..."
"Go."
Sheppard sighed, knowing full well that even if he made it past the Satedan he'd still have to face Teyla's cool, maternal disdain. She'd all but growled, "Can I not leave you two alone for ten minutes?" while helping the shaken scientist to his feet back on the planet. The relatively short walk back to the gate had passed in near silence, with Rodney's occasional moans and Teyla's soothing words the only interruption. She hadn't even let John begin to explain that this entire fiasco was so totally not his fault.
And Rodney wouldn't even look at him.
He'd expected a thorough cursing out, to have his entire lineage compared to the most mentally defective beasts McKay's fertile imagination could come up with. He'd expected to be told in no uncertain terms just where he could go, what he could pick up when he got there, and which orifice to ram it up, right down to the angle and force requirements necessary. Hell, he'd been looking forward to it. Instead he'd gotten the silent treatment.
The weird thing was that for the first year he knew McKay he’d actually found himself occasionally fantasizing about pissing the man off sufficiently to shut down the perpetual motion machine that was his mouth. But somewhere along the way he’d grown used to the constant chatter, and he was just beginning to understand that there was more to it. He’d begun to depend on it.
If McKay was talking then he was ok, maybe not exactly happy, but ok. And by some weird extension if McKay was ok, then so was he, and so was the universe in general. He wasn’t quite sure how it worked exactly; he just knew that the silence was starting to get to him in a profound way.
It didn’t get any better when Carter just sighed and shook her head over his hastily delivered debrief. When he admitted that McKay probably would demand to be removed from the team after the whole fiasco she just gave him a tight smile and offered, “Perhaps you could look at this as a sort of reprieve?”
John sank further into his chair and wondered just how everything had gone so quickly and completely to hell.
When Sam finally waved him away he wandered back down to the infirmary for the promised update from Ronon. The Satedan was as good as his word and rumbled a mildly amused, “He’s fine. Just a strain. Doc already let him go.”
Sheppard nodded gratefully. “I really screwed up today.”
“Yeah,” Ronon returned mildly. “So you wanna’ go try to hit me with some sticks?”
“Oh yeah.”
***
Two hours later Sheppard had a plan; perhaps not a brilliant one, but workable. He made his way to Rodney’s lab before he could chicken out. Just outside he paused when he heard Rodney muttering to someone.
“I’m reasonably sure that new Russian engineer is engaged in the most elaborate form of suicide imaginable. Trouble is she seems to want to take all of us with her.”
“Suicide?” Zelenka’s voice was heavy with disbelief.
“I can’t come up with a better explanation for the plans she’s come up with for the new power coupling on the back up generators. Anyway aren’t all Russians melancholy like twenty-four/seven?”
“Ukrainian.”
“What?”
“Ukrainian, not Russian.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” Radek replied in growing annoyance, “it is not.”
“Did somebody forget to tell me it was ‘Slavic Solidarity’ week or something?” There was a slight pause before McKay continued testily, “Fine, fine, Ukrainian. So they aren’t known for being particularly melancholy then?”
“Not generally, though after three months working for you…”
“Oh ha, and again, ha. So what are Ukrainians known for then?”
“Easter eggs as I recall.”
“Really? Huh. That’s um…well, pretty lame. If I came from a country best known for its Easter eggs I can promise you the thought of suicide would sound more than a little appealing.”
“Ah, yes, is so much better to come from country best known for maple syrup.”
“I beg your pardon!”
“Is true. Now why do you think our Ukrainian engineer is wishing to end her life?”
“Well look at this.” John heard the scraping of one of the stools and soft footsteps. “I think she really wanted to be a dentist but the Island of Misfit Toys required engineers, so...”
“As usual I have no idea what you are…. Oh,” Radek’s voice stumbled to a startled halt. “I see, yes well on plus side it would appear that the resulting explosion should only kill nearest dozen or so, not the entire science team.”
“Ah yes, well it’s nice to know that even this cloud of stupid has its silver lining. I swear to God, Radek, the SGC is doing this on purpose. We’ve become some sort of fucked up social Darwinism experiment. I look at the work that half of them turn in and suddenly I’m turning into Wolfgang Pauli.”
There was a slight pause, then a soft chuckle. “’It’s not even wrong.’ Yes.”
“Exactly. I’d ask them what the hell they were thinking but I’m not convinced they can string together the puffy clouds that pass for rational thought drifting aimlessly in the vacant skies of their heads. And these are the best and brightest that Earth has to offer? Seriously? No, I’m just not buying it.”
“You know,” Radek countered, clearly interested by something, “this may not be workable solution but it is intriguing.”
“If by intriguing you mean ‘likely to cause pain, dismemberment and death’, then sure I’ll grant you that.”
“No, I mean, you see the flow modulation here…”
“No, no…wait, yeah, yeah, yeah I see where you’re going with this. We take Dr. Ylenko’s obvious cry for help…”
“…But do not use two crystal configuration…”
“…We use three, and we re-wire this bit…”
“…Yes, yes, exactly!”
There was a long pause where Sheppard was absolutely certain the two scientists were simply standing and beaming at one another, reveling in their shared brilliance. It was a pattern Sheppard had to admit he never got tired of. The two of them just seemed to compliment each other so perfectly, their minds in nearly complete harmony with one another. Words almost seemed superfluous between them most of the time. John found himself feeling the strangest spark of jealousy at the thought.
And suddenly he got it. Suddenly everything fell into place with a frightening thud. He actually leaned against the wall, profoundly startled. Rodney was used to talking to people who could fill in his blanks, who knew where his brilliant mind was headed just a few seconds after he did. And John had originally tried to keep up, but when he couldn’t he’d gone all passive-aggressive and turned the whole thing into a game at Rodney’s expense. A stupid, juvenile game, and for that he was going to lose one of the best teammates he’d ever had.
“Radek,” McKay’s voice was surprisingly soft and John had to lean closer to the door to even make it out, “do you…do you respect me? I mean, if not as the greatest scientist it’s ever been your incredible good fortune to work for, then at least as, well, as a person?”
“Rodney, are you sure you did not injure your head as well as your shoulder today?” There was a long, drawn out pause. “Oh very well, of course I respect you, even though you are frequently the most maddening individual I have ever met. Why else would I be spending the best years of my life as a slave to your overblown ego? It is not for my health, I assure you.”
“Good. I mean, I’m glad. Well, not about the overblown ego part, but…you know, the rest. And, um, yeah.”
“You know I do not think the Colonel meant any harm.” Radek’s voice was surprisingly kind, though there was just the slightest undertone of amusement. “Though it would probably be best to ask him yourself as he is standing just outside of lab.”
Sheppard blushed and ducked his head. Ronon would’ve laughed himself sick if he’d been standing there. Being caught by oblivious, near-sighted Dr. Zelenka was a bit of a blow to the ego. But then he told himself he hadn’t really been trying all that hard to be stealthy. With a weary sigh he slouched into the lab and managed a feeble smile. “Hey.”
Radek returned the expression a bit ruefully and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. Both their eyes slid over to Rodney who snapped his own mouth closed abruptly. McKay had slipped his right arm out of his sling and was using it to type furiously on his keyboard, doing his best to ignore any other presence in the lab.
“Uh, Rodney,” John began.
“Radek, be so kind as to tell the Colonel that his genetic services aren’t currently required, so he can just….” Rodney made a little shooing gesture then went quickly back to typing.
Zelenka paused, lifted his glasses and wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. Then, with a complete lack of expression he met Sheppard’s eyes and repeated McKay’s words to the letter. Or, at least John assumed he’d done so…only he did it in Czech.
His superior slapped his hand down on the workbench and exploded, “Why did you…? That was utterly pointless, I mean it’s not like he couldn’t just hear….”
“Ah, yes, so you still understand basic concepts of acoustics. Very good.” Zelenka stood abruptly and closed his laptop with a definitive click. “You have spoken, he has heard and understood you, and now I am going to bed.” With that he turned on his heel and stalked out muttering under his breath.
“Hey! I do happen to know the word for ‘children’ in your crazy moon language!”
Radek popped his head back into the lab long enough to mutter, “Good! Will save me the trouble of translating for you!”
“Right, just for that you’re on Ylenko babysitting duty for a week.”
“No I am not, because you need me to fix holes he,” Radek paused to point accusingly at Sheppard, “put in his Puddle Jumper two weeks ago.”
“I said I was sorry,” John whined.
“Sorry does not fix ship, I do! But first I sleep and you two resolve this…this nonsense between yourselves.”
“You’re getting awfully uppity in your old age, Zelenka, but you’re still my minion and I can make your life a living hell if I choose to.”
“I am thinking you are four years too late for that,” the other man huffed in return and stomped off in earnest.
“Bastard’s too damn competent and the hell of it is he knows it.”
John gave Rodney a sidelong glance and asked, “So, um, we’re talking again?”
“I don’t seem to have much of a choice do I?” The physicist ran a hand over his eyes wearily and adjusted his injured arm back into the sling. “What do you want, Colonel? Keller’s painkillers are starting to wear off and I’d really like to go to bed before I fall over.”
“Oh,” Sheppard lifted the laptop he’d been carrying and laid it on the workbench, “I can’t seem to connect to the intranet.”
“Two PhD’s, a fast track to at least a half a dozen Nobel prizes, and here I am the most highly paid sys admin in the Pegasus Galaxy. Wouldn’t mom and dad be proud.” McKay gestured abruptly with his left hand, muttering, “Gimme.”
John slid it over a little reluctantly and settled onto Zelenka’s abandoned seat. Two sharp blue eyes landed on him immediately. “Don’t get comfortable, this won’t take long.”
“Ok.” He hadn’t really expected a warm welcome, and he knew Rodney would see through his pathetic bit of sabotage in pretty short order so he’d have to talk fast. The problem was he still didn’t have a clue what he was going to say. What could he say really? He’d screwed up…inadvertently, of course, but that wasn’t the point. “Uh, Rodney….”
The scientist held up a single finger and muttered an annoyed, “Busy.”
“Look, I’m sorry, ok? I didn’t mean….”
“Like hell.” The words were clipped and every bit as prickly as expected. “Like hell you didn’t. Now just shut up and let me do my job.”
“I’m serious, Rodney, it was just…I just blurted it out. I didn’t think about it and I sure as hell didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Fine, you didn’t do it on purpose, I get that. This whole stupid…game wasn’t intentionally created to hurt me. Got that too. The thing is,” Rodney paused and met John’s eyes steadily, “it didn’t even occur to you that it might, did it? You just didn’t care enough not to hurt me. But you know what? I’ve been dealing with this kind of juvenile shit since high school so it’s not like this is all new and different. I just thought…I just hoped…Fuck!” He slammed his hand down on the workbench, then used it to knead his forehead. “Look, if I just had to deal with this in the lab that’d be fine, I don’t need my minions to respect me, so long as they quake in terror of my righteous wrath. But in the field…”
“Okay,” John said quietly, “I get it. And I’m sorry you think I don’t respect you. I do, but I’ll leave it for your brilliant mind to look at my actions -- the majority of my actions -- and work that out. For instance, you’re the first person I go to when I get an idea that might not be as hair-brained as, well, most of my ideas.”
“And that would be when, exactly?” Rodney smiled sardonically.
“Well, okay, like for instance…” John shuffled his feet a bit. He was always prepared to be laughed at when he proposed plans to McKay, but today his misgivings were a hard stone in the pit of his stomach. He took a deep breath and continued. “What if we could do to the Replicators what they’re doing to the Wraith?”
“Kill off their food supply? Sheppard they’re machines, they don’t….” McKay began to snap his fingers in quick succession. “Wait! Neutronium. If we could alter their fuel supply… maybe create a massive cation effect…. But, wait, how can we possibly do that without getting us all killed?”
“I don’t know,” John spread his fingers wide, “that’s why I bring all my ideas to you. Because I respect you enough to know that you’ll figure something out.”
“Yes, I do believe that’s called the ‘hard part’. You just come in here with some weird idea that popped into your head in the shower, lay it at my feet and skip off to go hit Ronon with sticks.”
“I already did that. And how did you know I got the idea in the shower?”
Rodney shrugged. “It’s where I get all my best ideas.” Rodney tapped the radio on his ear. “Zelenka, wake up and get back here. I have an interesting idea I need to bounce off of you.” There was pleasure in his voice, and his chest puffed out with pride. All thought that this had been Sheppard’s idea had clearly been extracted from his thoughts with surgical precision.
“Zelenka?” Rodney paused and tilted his head like a confused Labrador.
“Maybe there’s some sort of problem with his radio,” John suggested helpfully.
“Yes, thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Obvious,” Rodney said with long-suffering impatience. John noted, however, that he’d used his proper rank and smiled. “Now go get Zelenka for me, I need to see if we can figure out a way to create neutronium ions from a safe distance.”
“Does that mean we’re okay?”
“You’re wasting time!” McKay answered in a singsong voice.
John stood his ground.
“Yes, yes, fine, you respect me. You’re just an incredibly insensitive oaf. Now GO!”
John smiled sincerely, turned on his heels and headed for the Puddle Jumper bay. The first part of his plan had gone better than expected.
***
John had observed that Rodney’s interaction with Ancient tech followed its own fascinating pattern, not unlike the five stages of grieving. Watching the man in one of the new labs they’d recently declared “safe enough” to work in, Sheppard couldn’t quite contain the smile that was quirking the edges of his lips. Rodney was bent over a console deep in stage one, denial, the sling he was supposed to be wearing for his very injured right shoulder had been casually tossed into a corner of the room and forgotten.
“I’m…I’m missing something here. There’s gotta be a…where the…No, no, I know it’s here somewhere…”
Within seconds he’d moved on to stage two, anger. “You stupid piece of crap! Oh you may think you’re not going to open for me, but let me assure you that you are so very mistaken. I’m right and you’re wrong. Filled to the brim with wrong-ability, that’s what you are. You. Will. Open!”
When bullying and the furious application of a screwdriver had no discernable effect, the scientist slid effortlessly into stage three, bargaining. “C’mon, you know I only want what’s best for you so a little cooperation would really be appreciated right now. Could you just…please…”
Another ten minutes of fruitless pleading and fiddling didn’t seem to be doing much good so Rodney slumped to the floor burying his face in his hands. “Fine, just stay closed then, this is a total waste of time. I don’t know why I even bother. Even if I did find out what you’re for it’d probably be something stupid and useless at best or pointlessly dangerous if not deadly.”
And there was depression, right on schedule. Sheppard almost spoke up then, asking if he could help, but before he could Rodney’d forged ahead into acceptance and muttered, “Ok, ok, you win, if you want me to call your boyfriend to come do this I will. Are you happy now?” John’s eyebrows shot up at that, but he refrained from comment. Rodney tapped his radio and growled, “Colonel Sheppard?”
“Right here.”
McKay nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the other man’s voice directly behind him. “Why did you…? Wait, how long were you standing there?”
“Oh hours.”
“You know that joke just keeps getting funnier. Um, why are you here?”
Sheppard smiled mildly and returned, “I didn’t see you at breakfast.”
Rodney paused and blinked at him for several long seconds as if he were expecting something further. When Sheppard just continued to smile and even bounced on his toes a bit, McKay shook his head and said, “I was right in the middle of something and…”
“Did you actually sleep last night?”
“Sleep? Um, yeah I think I got an hour or two in the lab. I’m assuming I did anyway, Zelenka and I were talking and then suddenly he was gone and the lights were out. Also I think I drooled on my keyboard a little.” He paused to scrub a hand wearily over his eyes.
“I brought you a croissant.” John held out the pastry.
“Oh. Oh, that’s, uh…thanks.” He snatched it out of the Colonel’s hands and crammed a good half of it into his mouth. Between bites he waved a free hand at the console and muttered, “Go molest that panel.”
Sheppard’s right eyebrow climbed his forehead, but he refrained from comment and simply walked over to lay hands on the panel. As expected it lit up like a Christmas tree and popped open with what could best be described as a happy little chirp that made the Colonel grin like an idiot. He turned back to Rodney to see the scientist turning an ugly shade of purple; the remains of the croissant fell to the floor forgotten.
Without missing a beat Rodney turned away, flung his screwdriver at the far wall and shrieked, “You whore!”
“Hey!” John pouted, the Kirk cracks were bad enough, but this was definitely crossing a line.
“Not you,” he threw his arms wide and glared at the ceiling accusingly. “Her! This entire fucking city! I slave my life away trying to keep her running, me, not you, but does that influence the little trollop? Oh no, you just wave your genes at her and she’s flat on her back faster than you can say ‘Lieutenant Colonel’.”
“You know I’ve really always preferred to think of Atlantis as more of a friendly puppy, myself.”
“I can’t even begin to address how many kinds of messed up that is.”
John frowned and muttered, “Yeah ‘cause your Atlantis as loose woman metaphor is so much healthier.”
“God, why isn't the intense heat of my hatred melting you into a puddle of goo right now?” Rodney just stared at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Just forget that, forget that you’ve basically turned me into a cuckold, because, you know what? That’s not even what I’m really angry about.”
“It’s not?”
“No, no it’s not. First those nancy boy Ancients roll bottoms-up for the Wraith without leaving so much as a single goddamn instruction manual for their endless supply of broken, retarded, or homicidal experiments. I mean seriously would it really have killed them to write up the Ancient equivalent of ’10,000 Year Old Space Tech for Dummies’?
Ok and the Wraith? Who ever heard of a hive species made up predominantly of males? Jesus, that doesn’t even make any fucking sense! And they dress in a manner not entirely dissimilar to me during a brief and embarrassing summer in the mid 80's. Let's just say I thought I was Robert Smith for about 8 weeks and leave it at that. So it occurs to me that we build these guys a kickass goth club and our worries are over. Oh, oh and, the Replicators are all pissed off because mommy and daddy didn’t love them enough so they’re out to destroy all their stuff and us along with it. I mean we’re fighting the machine equivalent of your average disaffected teenager! Maybe we should just sign them all up for some intensive therapy. We might want to avoid the Freudians, though, I just don’t see how that could possibly end well.” Rodney finally wound down and simply stood flushed and panting for several moments.
“Uh, Rodney?” John tilted his head and eased toward the twitching scientist as if he were a high power nuke primed to go off. “You ok there, buddy?”
McKay ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and groaned, “I think…yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Got it all out of your system?”
“Probably. Unless my minions have started screwing around with what they think is the Ancient equivalent of a food processor only to discover it’s actually some sort of freakish genetic manipulation device. I might just work myself up to a good frothy rant when faced with the very real possibility of being turned into a sea slug.”
“Sea slug?”
“Why the hell not? It makes as much sense as any of the other experimental devices we’ve bumbled into.” Blinking, Rodney mumbled, “Wait, why are you here again?”
“Um, breakfast and molestation as I recall.”
McKay gazed down at the remains of the pastry sitting sad and abandoned on the floor of the lab. “Oh,” he moaned mournfully, “oh that’s just tragic.”
“On the plus side the console’s open.”
“That’s…good?”
“This may sound crazy but somehow I just don’t think an hour or two of sleep is quite cutting it for you today, Rodney. Maybe you should sack out for a while?”
“But,” McKay gazed at the open console with bleary, worried eyes, “but I just got it open…”
“You mean I just got it open,” John returned, gently throwing an arm around his friend’s hunched shoulders and leading him towards the door. “And you know what, it’ll still be open a few hours from now when you’re actually awake enough to figure out what it does. And if it’s not still open you just give me a call and I’ll come take care of it for you.”
“You will? You promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Ok.” An exhausted Rodney was an astonishingly passive Rodney, and he allowed himself to be led just outside the door before he stiffened and pulled away from Sheppard. “Wait a second, I’ve just got to, um…” He stumbled back inside the lab and over to a small pile of equipment that included his second favorite laptop and his favorite tool roll. Digging through it all he plucked out a notebook and Sharpie and quickly scrawled a note. With a satisfied smirk he perched the note on the open console. It simply read ‘Lab monkeys: touch anything in this room and I will end you. Sincerely, Dr. Rodney McKay.’
With a quick nod he returned to Sheppard’s side. The Colonel just smiled at him and asked, “You think that’ll work?”
"Oh it’ll work, because they're well aware that if they disobey me their lives will begin to make Dante's Inferno seem like a perfectly lovely way to spend an eternity by comparison. I think I've drilled it into their pointy little heads that this place isn't like the
SGC or Area 51, rather more like the Acme Warehouse from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. It’s like survival of the fittest, thwarted by a few centuries of medical science, is trying to reassert itself on this city. Fortunately most of my minions seem to have at least a vestigial survival instinct."
"Ok then, your minions have been duly warned and your work here is done. Time for a nap. And then I was thinking we could, you know, grab some dinner or..." he paused as if searching for just the right word, then blurted out, "something."
"Dinner?"
"Yeah, you know, last meal of the day, often shared with friends or family."
"So...dinner." Suddenly McKay's blue eyes widened alarmingly. "Wait...dinner...pigtails...Oh my god, you're asking me out aren't you?"
John's brain flat out refused to parse that question for a good thirty seconds. This seemed, at least for McKay's purposes, to be the equivalent of an admission. His eyes widened even further and Sheppard noticed for the first time just how dilated they were. It was vaguely unnerving. "I should have...I mean the juvenile mind games...and the teasing...oh my god you've even checked out my ass, haven't you? You totally have! On PX5-937, you said you were looking for leeches, but you were totally checking me out!"
Sheppard opened his mouth, realized belatedly that he had absolutely no idea how to respond to any of it, and snapped it shut once more.
"This is, wow...I mean I'm really flattered, hell who wouldn't be? But, wait, that is what you meant, right? Because this would be oh my god so embarrassing if that’s not what you… Oh Jesus! Of course that's not what you meant...I'm, god I'm tired, I'm not even making sense. Look, just forget everything that came out of my mouth a minute
ago. Chalk it up to extreme fatigue, or space dementia or, you know, whatever." As McKay's mania drained away he slumped again and waved a weary hand. "I'm just going to go and be unconscious for a while. Maybe I’ll get lucky and slip into a coma."
"So, um, dinner?"
Rodney's eyes narrowed a bit as if he were waiting for a punch line. Finally he relaxed marginally and nodded in a stiff and jerky fashion. "Sure, yeah. Just...just dinner, yeah."
John smiled and said, "Ok then. But, uh, no comas. . What do you say we have burgers in my quarters tonight and decide how best to approach Sam with your latest hair-brained scheme. 1900 hours work for you?"
Rodney flushed and fluttered his fingers about his head.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'."
***
John pulled two Athosian ales out of a bucket of ice. They had swing-top porcelain caps, a fact that John found rather charming. He broke the seal on one, levered open the top, and handed it over to Rodney.
“Thanks. It’s uh… kind of a weird top. On this.” He pointed needlessly to the cap now resting against the base of the beer’s neck.
“Like a Grolsch,” John said, and took a long, satisfying swig of his own beer. “Aren’tcha going to taste it?”
“Um, sure,” Rodney said, but then set the beer down on the nearest flat surface – namely, John’s floor. “Burgers. Didn’t you say there would be burgers?”
Rodney seemed nervous.
“There will be, a little later. I thought we’d start with a couple of these and maybe, I don’t know, talk a bit.”
“Talk?” Rodney squeaked and reached for the beer.
“I have an idea.”
“Oh?” Rodney asked politely and took a small sip. He made a face and set the bottle back down quickly.
“Did you ever play Questions?”
“Questions?” Rodney repeated.
“Yeah, it’s a drinking game… like quarters.”
“Quarters?” Rodney repeated again.
“Oh boy. I take it you didn’t do much drinking in college.”
“Well, no, I was only 16 when I graduated with a double degree… and then I started on my double masters….”
“Okay, okay,” John tried to cut off Rodney before he recited his entire curriculum vitae, “I get the picture. So Questions goes a little something like this: Person A asks Person B a question – hence, the name – and Person B then has to immediately ask Person A a question in return. If Person B answers Person A’s question instead of asking another….”
McKay snapped his fingers “Yes, yes, yes. We played something similar at Area 51, only it involved naming a theorem instead of asking questions and if the second person couldn’t name another theorem in ten seconds….”
“They had to take a swig,” John ended McKay’s sentence for him and downed the rest of his first ale to illustrate.
“No, no,” Rodney said testily, “in our version the winner got their pick from the loser’s Magic the Gathering deck.”
“Oh,” John replied disappointedly.
“It was a collectible card game. Very popular in 1995.”
“By then you must have been old enough to drink.” John hadn’t meant to whine, but he had a feeling his idea was going over like a lead balloon.
“Of course I was, I just didn’t….” McKay’s voice trailed off and he averted his eyes briefly. “So what was it you were saying about having an idea? Hmm?”
“Oh, right.” John gulped as the full power of McKay’s open blue eyes turned on him once again. “Well, we could play a drinking game, like Questions,” he lifted the lever on another swing-top bottle to punctuate this suggestion, “But instead of questions….”
“We use half-finished sentences!” Rodney ended John’s sentence correctly. His face lit up almost like it did when he discovered a new piece of Atlantean technology… and got it to work correctly. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning. Only, not quite. Maybe more like a kid on Easter morning.
“Exactly,” John agreed and gave an appreciative look to the pale amber liquid in his bottle. This stuff must be stronger than he’d thought. His brain was starting to ramble as much as Rodney’s mouth normally did. Rodney’s mouth No, no, he shouldn’t think about that. Not right now. It’s so... pink.No, he definitely didn’t need to think about Rodney’s mouth.
John came back to the present and realized Rodney was whining something about leaving his deck back on Earth. Before John could correct him his face went momentarily blank like it did whenever he came to the sudden realization that he’d committed another social faux pas. It was sorta cute. Stop that! John thought. Maybe it was time to switch from the Athosian ale to a better-known quantity.
“Oh, of course. We’re not betting collectible cards, we’re going to drink this yummy ale,” Rodney said with a smirk.
“Well if Athosian ale isn’t to your taste….” Sheppard reached behind his Johnny Cash poster and pulled a full bottle of fine Russian vodka out from his favorite hiding spot. Perhaps he shouldn’t have done that in front of Rodney…. Oh well, he’d just have to get the man drunk enough that he’d forget. Or maybe even drunk enough to forget how to get back to his own bed. What the hell has gotten into me? John thought. But out loud he said,“What the hell do they put in this stuff?”
“Athosian ale? Well, hops, barley, some weird native herb they call Hraka. Or Harka. Something like that. I dunno, do you want me to ask Katie?”
“No!” John bellowed, louder than he’d intended.
“Okay, okay,” Rodney held up his hands defensively, but he smirked smugly.
“I happened to win this vodka from Zelenka in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em last week. How about we use this instead?”
Rodney swallowed nervously and nodded once in agreement.
“Well, okay then,” John grinned. He was happier about Rodney accepting the terms of the game than he could reason why.
“Who starts?” Rodney asked and broke the seal on the vodka with a grunt.
“I could start, but…” John drawled.
“Then we’d be here all night while you tried to come up with something witty to say?” Rodney suggested.
“Drink,” John pronounced and treated Rodney to his most devil-may-care grin.
“What? I didn’t even know we were starting!”
“That’s no excuse. Drink.”
Rodney tipped the bottle gently to his pale pink lips.
“That’s not a drink!” John complained.
“Oh, god, it burns,” Rodney said with tears in his eyes.
“Just for the first couple of sips. Besides, you’re lucky. This is the good stuff. The cheap stuff would… would….”
“Set my whole body on fire?”
“Drink,” John said with a laugh. “Oh, this is too easy.”
“I’ll tell you what else is too easy…” Rodney said, wiping the remnants of vodka from his lips. He took a long swig and looked at John, challengingly.
“Katie?” John suggested. He knew he was going to have to drink, but somehow he’d begun to believe that the vodka might thin the Athosian ale in his system and help him think straight. Besides, there was never a bad time to belittle Rodney’s ex.
“Very funny. Drink.”
When John had finished taking a very large swig, he handed the bottle back to McKay.
“You know, at this rate, we’re both going to be extremely drunk before we have any dinner,” Rodney said. But then he took another pull at the bottle.
“So?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying.” Rodney fluttered his hands dismissively and sipped more Vodka.
“Has anyone ever told you, you have nice….” John trailed off.
“That is so unfair, you smug little….”
John grinned and bowed his head. “Now you’re getting it. All you have to do is….”
“I demand respect, and common courtesy, and...."
“A kiss.” John couldn’t believe he’d said it again.
“That’s what you said last time.” Rodney had an expression on his face like he was trying to solve a complex equation.
“I know,” John said, the annoyance creeping into his voice.
“Why?” Rodney asked plainly.
“I don’t know.” This came out almost like a growl.
“Do you think you want to?”
“Want to what?”
“Kiss me.”
“Hand that over,” Sheppard growled. He took the bottle of vodka from Rodney’s outstretched hand, unscrewed the lid and gulped several ounces as if it were water.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Rodney pointed out as John was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I know that.”
“Okay, fine, I get it.” Rodney got unsteadily to his feet. Once up he swayed like a strand of kelp anchored to the ocean floor.
“Where are you going?” John asked.
“I’m leaving.”
“Why?” John blinked in confusion. Or maybe it was the lights. It was too damn bright in his quarters. He reached over and flicked off the bedside lamp.
“Because you keep growling, so obviously I’m irritating you, and despite the proof from recent events that you feel quite the opposite, I, for one, do not enjoy pissing you off. I just… do it accidentally a whole bunch.”
“No you don’t,” John protested and reached for Rodney’s wrist. He missed and ended up grabbing his hand.
“Why did you turn out the light?” Rodney asked in an unnaturally quiet voice.
“Because. It was too bright. Now sit.” John tugged on Rodney’s hand, but it was unnecessary. As soon as he barked a physical command, Rodney always jumped to comply. He’d been trained to do so from countless field missions, no doubt, but John sometimes wondered if it wasn’t his preferred mode of being. While the man was undeniably a genius, he often seemed at a loss as to what to do with his own body. John thought his tendency to gesture wildly had something to do with that too, but he couldn’t put those two thoughts together in any coherent way at present.
“I was thinking…” they both started at once.
“You go ahead,” John said.
“No, that’s okay. You first.” Rodney’s voice was cracking the way it always did when he was nervous.
“I was just thinking, maybe it would be helpful if I just got this out of my system,” John confessed.
“I thought that was what we were doing. I thought that was what all this ‘fill in the blank’ nonsense….”
But John didn’t let him finish that sentence. He set the bottle on the nightstand, turned to Rodney, grabbed his face with both his hands and kissed him for all he was worth.
***
Rodney McKay was a brilliant man; some (including himself) would even say a genius. His prodigious mind, as a result, zipped along at a pace few could hope to achieve as John kissed him. He thought of all the times the man had looked him up and down when he entered a room. He thought of the disconcerting way John had stared at his lips in the Mess Hall until Rodney was certain there was a dollop of whipped cream still clinging to his mouth from a recently finished dessert (or two). He thought of all of the times John had grabbed him, protectively, possessively, and forced him out of harm’s way. But most of all he thought: I’m drunk! He got me drunk! He’s trying to seduce me! And though Rodney McKay was nearly infallible when it came to applied theory, in this one instance, he was dead wrong.
John Sheppard was a brave man, a good leader, and loyal to a nearly suicidal fault. But he was not gay. This was the thought that kept repeating in his head, in a staccato: Not gay, not gay so so so not gay! But try as he might, even this litany could not dismiss the fact that he was enjoying kissing Rodney McKay, enjoying feeling him squirm in his arms as though he wanted to pull away (but John was having none of that), enjoying hearing his little moans of defeat as Rodney eventually slacked and melted against him, enjoying the surprisingly soft pink lips and even, so help him, enjoying the rough stubble of his chin as it scraped against John’s own.
“Lay down,” John said throatily, finally releasing Rodney from his grip. Rodney didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch, but quickly flopped down on John’s bed. Great, now what? John thought. The tiny little bed wasn’t going to accommodate them both very well. Not that John even had any idea of what he wanted to do with Rodney. He’d mostly just wanted to tell him what to do and watch him jump to comply. But with little room to do much else, John straddled Rodney’s chest, pinning his arms against his sides. Rodney looked slightly uncomfortable, but he was surprisingly quiet.
“What?” John growled, uncomfortable with the silence.
“Nothing,” Rodney said. He sounded… almost content.
“Good.” John stared down at Rodney. He knew he was supposed to do something, was supposed to have some plan in his head, some scenario to guide Rodney into, but his mind was completely blank.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Rodney asked with a frown.
“Shut up, I do so!” John protested like a 12 year old.
“Prove it,” Rodney said with his patented half-smile. John didn’t like that at all. It felt like Rodney was suddenly the one in control, even though John had him pinned to his bed but good.
“Okay,” John said, rising to the challenge, “take your shirt off.”
“Um.” Rodney raised his eyebrows and looked at John’s crotch meaningfully.
“What now?” John was reasonably certain his arousal wasn’t to the point of showing through his BDUs, so he had no idea what Rodney was looking at.
“I need control of my arms to take my t-shirt off.”
The word “control” caught John’s ear. He didn’t want to give McKay control of anything.
“No.”
“Okay, but kinda hard to take my shirt off when….”
“Be quiet. I don’t want you speaking unless I tell you to.”
Rodney shut his jaw so quickly his teeth clicked together.
“Now, I’m going to stand up, but you’re not going to move one muscle. Understand?”
Rodney nodded silently.
“Good.” John rose slowly, never taking his eyes off McKay. “Raise your arms above your head. “
Rodney did as he was told, his wrists limp and hands hanging together as if bound by a rope. John smiled, reached down and tugged McKay’s shirt up exposing the bare white skin of his belly. There was a trail of surprisingly dark hair there that crept downward into his waistband, but John couldn’t look at it without musing that it was cute, so he averted his eyes.
“You could help me out a little here,” John growled as the shirt wouldn’t budge any further.
“You didn’t say to…” Rodney’s voice trailed off when he realized he was speaking out of turn.
“Oh, right. Raise up off the bed a bit, would ya?” John had to suppress a smirk. McKay was suddenly a stickler for following the rules. Not out in the field where it might actually save his life, oh no, but here where he could be a royal pain in the ass….
John finished peeling Rodney’s t-shirt off his torso and slowly trailed it up his arms before tossing it on the floor. It wasn’t so much that he was going for slow and sensuous, as he needed to buy himself a few seconds to think. Contemplating Rodney’s half naked body and pleading pale blue eyes in the dim light, he reached for the open bottle of vodka and took a long swig. Setting the bottle back down with a decisive bang, he pulled his own shirt off in a practiced one-handed maneuver, tossed it in the corner, then laid himself out on top of Rodney, pulling his face up to catch his crooked lips with his own. Rodney’s legs moved apart, and John fell softly to the mattress in their gap. They gasped simultaneously as each became aware of the other’s cock through layers of rip-stop, and John began to grind into Rodney’s crotch.
Their lips parted and Rodney began a high, happy litany of, “Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes,” until he opened his eyes, caught John’s stern stare and said “okay, shutting up now.”
“Yes, you are,” John pronounced and pushed himself up off the man by placing his full weight on McKay’s biceps. While this provided less skin-on-skin contact, it also meant that John gained some leverage and could twist and push his cock more insistently against Rodney’s own.
Rodney gasped, “please” so quietly John wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.
“What was that?”
“Please. That was ‘please.’ Oh by heaven’s mercy, please…don’t stop.”
“Okay, that’s enough talking.” John really wasn’t in the mood to think about heaven, merciful or otherwise at the moment. He was, however, trying desperately to weigh the events of the evening in his well-worn mental scale of gay versus not gay. And it looked like things had slid pretty irretrievably into the gay column tonight. But maybe if they just kept their pants on, it wouldn’t really count by the bleak light of dawn.
Aww, fuck it. If he’d done Tamara Winthrop in the back of her daddy’s ancient Buick Roadmaster and forgiven himself, surely he could forgive a trespass of Meredith Rodney McKay’s full lips.
He stopped grinding and abruptly stood up.
“But…,” was McKay’s one word protest before he snapped his mouth closed once again. Then John unzipped his pants in that same, one-handed, practiced motion he’d used on his own shirt and Rodney’s eyes went wide. “Really?” he asked in disbelief.
“Suck it,” John commanded and Rodney was up out of his bed and down on his knees before him faster than he’d ever seen him move, even when he was being chased by one of Michael’s pseudo-Aliens.
John smiled. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine anyone was sucking his cock. And then that wasn’t really gay, was it? Except, for some reason, he kept opening his eyes and watching Rodney administer sweet, almost ticklish, flickering licks along his shaft. John shut his eyes. Brenda… Rosenbaum? Was that her name? He couldn’t recall. College was a long time ago.
He smiled at the blissed out look on Rodney’s face as he took half his length into his mouth in one go.
“That’s it,” John cooed, and caressed McKay’s temple, running his fingers into his thinning hair. He sensed more than saw motion below him and peered to the side of Rodney’s bobbing head to watch as the man stroked his own cock with the same rhythm. “Yeah, that’s good. You like this, don’t you?”
“Ermm hmm,” Rodney mumbled past his mouthful of dick.
McKay wasn’t the only one getting into it, and abruptly John groaned, “Hang on, gotta’…”
Rodney leaned back, a shiny string of drool on his lips and a frown marring his forehead. “Huh?”
John collapsed in a boneless heap on the bed, and then gave the scientist a lazy wave that eloquently said, ‘You may continue now.’ When his twitching cock wasn’t immediately enveloped in the other man’s hot, wet mouth, Sheppard lifted his head and one eyebrow. “What’s the hold up, Rodney? C’mon, get to.”
“’Get to’? Jesus, how romantic.” Rodney’s swollen lips had taken on that unhappy crooked cant again. “Wait a minute, what the hell is happening here, Colonel?”
“’Colonel’? Rodney you can’t get all formal with me after you’ve had my dick in your mouth. There are rules about this sort of thing.”
“Oh forgive me, John,” McKay managed to make his first name sound even more formal than his title. “I mean it’s not like this entire evening hasn’t turned into a really weird after school special about the evils of alcohol. I’m not even sure what the hell I’m doing here. Ok, maybe it might have something to do with the promise of burgers. Burgers, which I might add, I still haven’t received.”
Sheppard couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Rodney are you seriously going to pass up sex because I didn’t cough up a few faux hamburgers? I promise you’ll get your damn burgers, but first could you, you know, finish what you started here, huh?” Ok that might have come out a tad whinier than he’d intended, but given the circumstances John cut himself some slack.
“No, I’m just…I’m just saying that we’re drunk and I’m…god right now I don’t even like you. And yeah, ok, I’m a huge, flaming slut, which I totally cop to I might add; but even I have standards. Also I’m reasonably sure that you were closing your eyes while I was blowing you and picturing some hot buxom alien babe so you could avoid the whole homosexual freak-out thing.” Rodney’s chin jutted out stubbornly and he crossed his arms over his pale chest. “But you know what happens tomorrow? We both wake up with hangovers, I go back to being pissed at you about your stupid mind games and you never speak to me again because you got drunk and inadvertently went gay for me.”
John leaned back on his bed, stared at the smooth gray ceiling and ran through some of the toughest equations he could remember battling in grad school. With a long, slow breath he said, “Rodney, I swear to god if you don’t get over here right now a hangover is going to be the least of your problems tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah,” Rodney muttered, “That’s hot. Listen, it’s not that I’m not physically attracted to you. I mean, Jesus, parts of me are applauding even as we speak. The thing is this….” He gestured vaguely between the two of them. “It’s not going to fix anything between us, in fact it’s going to make things a whole lot worse. And the thing is I hate breaking stuff, it’s against my personal code, if you will.”
“God do you have to over think everything?”
“Hello, genius here. Yes, in a word, I do have to over think everything. It’s what I do, it’s who I am.” Rodney’s expression was an almost endearing combination of abject misery and profound determination.
“C’mon, Rod-ney,” John sing-songed, pouting in what he could only hope was sexy and irresistible manner. “I’m hot.”
“I never argued that point.”
“And naked.”
“Couldn’t really miss that.”
“Smart too.”
“Yeah well I’m smarter.” John could tell Rodney was weakening when he actually leaned into his leg.
“’Course you are. Oh, did I mention I’m also rich?”
Rodney rubbed his head against John’s thigh, and Sheppard moaned low and deep. “Pfft, my bank account, like my I.Q., is at least double yours. And I have no interest in playing Julia Roberts to your Richard Gere in some fucked up Pegasus Galaxy version of Pretty Woman. But, um,” Rodney nibbled the inside of John’s knee, then continued, “just out of curiosity, how rich?”
“Estates, Rodney, estates. I could easily keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed.”
“Hmm, all the MRE’s and chocolate chip Power Bars I can eat, huh? Well, when you put it that way….”
John leaned back with a rather goofy smile on his face as Rodney licked and kissed his lower abdomen. God the things he could do with that mouth. Sheppard made a silent mental vow to never again daydream about gagging the man, it would, he determined, be a crime against humanity. “Knew you’d see it my way in the end.” He let his hands slide down to roam over Rodney’s short-cropped hair and broad shoulders as the other man turned his enthusiastic attention back to John’s dick. So much for the whole not gay thing. John promised himself he’d have a good long freak-out about it first thing in the morning. Yeah, that sounded like a plan.
Rodney, meanwhile, was busy demonstrating his usual workmanlike proficiency, even humming happily to himself as he went down on John. It took Sheppard a few seconds to place the tune, but when he did he couldn’t help giggling, “’You Sexy Thing’? I wouldn’t have figured you for a Hot Chocolate fan.”
Shrugging, McKay plunged down, nearly swallowing John whole. Sheppard groaned, “Jesus god I’m not going to…” A little twist of Rodney’s tongue on his cock head was all it took to finish him off, and he came with a sharp, almost pained gasp. “Jesus,” he panted, splayed on the bed loose limbed, “Jesus.”
“Nope, just Rodney McKay, super genius,” the other man grumbled, reaching down to work on his own straining erection.
John glanced down at him through half lidded eyes. “C’mere.”
“Just a….”
“No, c’mere.”
With a put upon sigh, Rodney shoved himself onto the bed. “What? What! I need to…”
John swatted his hand away and took the other man’s cock firmly in his own hand. “Oh,” Rodney sighed, flopping down on his side next to him. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” John smirked and took up an even rhythm that had Rodney all but purring. He leaned in for a kiss that started out sloppy and desperate with teeth clicking and tongues battling for dominance. After a few seconds Rodney began to relax and let the other man take the lead, which was just the way John liked it.
It was over altogether too quickly, as Rodney came with a generous spurt all over John’s stomach. He groaned and sagged into the mattress. “Sorry. S’been a while. And, well, booze…”
“Nah, it was good. It was real good.” It was also, John decided, real gay and he was going to have to give that some serious thought. Tomorrow, definitely tomorrow.
“Should I…I mean, do I need to…?” Rodney gestured vaguely towards the door.
“You can stay.”
“But….”
“Stay.”
“Ok.” A slow, almost shy smile spread across Rodney’s face.
“So I guess breakfast is on me.”
Rodney did a quick double take. “Ooh, literally? Because that would be kind of kinky. I mean good kinky, of course, I’m not sure there could be a bad kinky where you’re involved. Well, ok maybe I can because my imagination scares even me sometimes, but….”
“Rodney.” John reached out and laid a hand on McKay’s mouth, running a calloused thumb over his lips.
Taking a deep breath, Rodney began again, “I was serious about what I said before. Not that this wasn’t fun because it really, really was, but what happens now? I mean do we pretend this never happened once we sober up?”
“Well, here’s what I’m thinking. First we get a good night’s sleep. Then a shower…”
“And more sex?”
“And more sex,” John agreed amiably. “After that I’m thinking breakfast during which I and Ronon will apologize publicly and you’ll agree to return to the team.”
“I will?”
“Yes, yes you will.”
“Hmm.” Rodney appeared to consider the proposition for several seconds before saying, “Throw in a blow job and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Don’t push your luck. After breakfast I’m going to go out to the east pier for an hour or so to, um…”
“Have your big gay freak-out?” McKay chirped helpfully.
“I was going to say ‘reflect on the events of the past few days’, but yeah, it’s mostly to have my big gay freak-out.”
“And, uh, after that?”
“I dunno’, lunch maybe.”
Rodney smacked him on the shoulder. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“There are some blanks not even I can fill in, Rodney. Why don’t we just wait and see?”
THE END
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Date: 2008-05-20 05:19 am (UTC)I also very much loved every piece of dialog you wrote for Rodney. He "sounds" animated and real.