17.5: a love story

17.5: a love story
by Helen

"Well, this is nice," John said, wondering if it would be a breach of diplomatic protocol to loosen his belt. "Let’s move here."
"Agreed," Ronon said. They had come through the gate on MX3-526 on day seven of an eleven day chili cook-off, spent ten minutes chewing the fat with Aurin, their sixteen-year-old leader, and then been handed bowls and spoons and allowed to wander the cook-off tent freely. It was the best thing that had happened to John in two months, which said more about the shitty run of missions—bad weather, freak accidents, prison-stays, near executions—than about the chili. The chili, however, was very good.
"Too bad their technology capped off at hotplates," McKay said, already on his third bowl.
"I’m sure that’s not the case," Teyla said, giving McKay a sharp pleasant look that made him wince. "Aurin is very eager to discuss possible trade with you."
"Oh, that’s—great, hi," McKay said resignedly, as Aurin showed up with another bowl of muffins and then sat down on his other side and began to talk. John wandered over to the other side of the tent to see if anyone had heard of nachos, and, if not, to spread intercultural understanding. He was trying to explain corn chips when he noticed that McKay was yanking his tac vest closed and standing, sketching out shapes with his hands, talking a mile a minute at Aurin.
"What’s going on?" he said, when he got back to the table.
"Let’s go," McKay said briskly. "We need to check out some stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Could you tell them what you just told me," McKay said, fiddling through his bag for his data pad.
"The basic recipe for the chili has been passed down—"
"No, no no, no, no, how old are you again?" McKay said.
"Fifty-six."
"Hm," Teyla said.
"So?" Ronon said.
"So, so," McKay said, "She doesn’t look fifty-six. Obviously."
"Perhaps they calculate years a little differently here?" John said.
"I actually never thought of that," McKay said. "Truly, Colonel, I am humbled by your—never mind. Aurin, would you mind, for the simpletons in the class, explaining what constitutes a year here?"
Aurin laughed. "A year is one rotation of the stars around heaven’s rim," she said.
"Which, if any of you read the mission briefing, is exactly 1.325 earth-standard years," McKay said, impatiently. McKay, John had noticed, liked saying ‘earth standard,’ and used it whenever possible.
"So these people age differently than we do," Ronon said. "Can I have more chili?"
"Certainly," Aurin chirped, as McKay said,
"No, because the point which I am trying to make, and which could be made while the rest of you start putting on your gear, is that Aurin, when she feels sick, does a little meditation, and then goes and sits in a hut with a little doohickey thing and is magically cured."
"Oh," Sheppard said. "And here I though we were investigating their lotions and creams."
"Ha ha," McKay said. "Also, due to my superior negotiating skills, they’ve agreed to give us one."

"We’re going to have to carry that thing," Ronon said grimly, not quite a question. They were, all four of them, crammed into one of a series of huts nestled against the mountain above the town, staring at the device, which looked heavy and awkward. Outside, it began to rain, steadily. John had developed a pretty good sense of what Ronon was thinking at any given moment. Right now, it was a wistful longing for chili.
"Can you hurry it up, maybe?" John said. McKay was hunched underneath the console, mumbling to himself and poking at the crystal display.
"No, I cannot hurry it up," McKay said. "This is an incredibly delicate and beautifully-designed piece of technology and luckily, I’m the very likely the only person in the galaxy capable of comprehending what—"
"Or we could get Carson."
"Horrible idea," McKay said. "This is—I’m fairly sure that this is a device that rewinds time for a certain subset of cells; that is, it’s a machine that relies on physics and relativity, not biological processes, so Carson, as usual, would be completely useless."
"It’s raining," Ronon said.
"Excellent point," McKay said, now trying to fit himself between the wall and the device. "Perhaps you should fetch the tarp from the jumper."
"I will get the tarp," Teyla said abruptly. "I find the rain quite pleasant."
"I’ll go," Ronon said.
"No, no, do not trouble yourself," Teyla said, and smiled, with a lot of teeth, before leaving.
"Do you think she’s annoyed?" Ronon said.
"Nah," John said.
"You know, this is a moment of genuine scientific discovery," McKay said. "Maybe you’ve heard of it; it’s exciting and historic, and not an occasion for complaints and—hey, look at, huh—" He subsided into distracted mumbling. Ronon frowned at the wall, like someone who needed to be cheered up with some excellent leadership.
"Maybe it’ll blow up," John said.
The machine exploded in a thick black and grey cloud of ash and shrapnel.
John's heart was pounding out of his chest when he dragged Rodney out of the ashes and into his arms; the machine had detonated from the front, the casing zooming straight up, collapsing the ridgepole inward, showing them with clay and burning straw, but John had found Rodney, crumpled and unconscious, his body partly sheltered by a support pillar. The air was hot, thick with smoke, stinging his eyes and throat, and John scooped Rodney up and stumbled across the hut while Ronon got his shoulder beneath the ridgepole and shoved it to the side enough that they could push out the door. John was shaking with adrenaline, and Rodney felt light in his arms, insubstantial, like John could have carried him for miles.
John found a flat space a safe distance from the smoldering hut and put Rodney down carefully.
"He okay?" Ronon said.
"I don’t know," John snapped, running his hands quickly down Rodney chest. His face was smudged with ash, bleeding from a dozen little cuts, but the rest of him looked fine, no wounds, no blood on his chest or—. John yanked his sleeve up to check his pulse and Rodney’s eyes blinked open, his eyes dazed. He pushed himself up on his elbows and he was—absolutely okay, John thought, chest loosening a little, Rodney coughed, and he was—
"Huh," Ronon said, leaning closer.
"McKay," John said cautiously. "Rodney." Rodney’s shirt was loose on him, Rodney’s cheeks were narrow and sharp, the deep groove between his eyes was gone.
"He’s younger," Ronon said.
"You think?" John said.
"Are you kidnapping me?" Rodney said, his voice shaking a little. "Am I having a psychotic break?"
"No, Rodney—"
"Oh, god," Rodney said.
"We’re your friends," Ronon said, poking his head over John’s shoulder.
"Oh my god," Rodney whispered. He looked terrified.
"Look," John said. "I’m US Military, and you’re perfectly safe, you just had an accident."
"The military is kidnapping me?"
"We’re not—" John sighed, and reached for Rodney’s jacket. Rodney shrank back, throwing up a hand and grasping John’s wrist, and John had to shake him off to flip open the jacket and yank out his ID. "This is you," he said, forcing it into Rodney’s hands.
"I’m Dr., um," Rodney said faintly. "I don’t think—"
"This is yours too," Ronon said, pushing Rodney’s field notebook into his hands.
"This is my handwriting," Rodney said slowly, flipping one or two pages, "but I never—"
"You’re 39," John said. "It’s 2006. You were on a mission and discovered a device, and we said, ‘hey, McKay, maybe you should be a little careful,’ and you said ‘shut up, I know what I’m talking about’—"
"That does sound like me," Rodney admitted.
"—then the device exploded and now you’re sixteen."
"I’m twenty-three," Rodney said, a little indignantly. Behind John, Ronon coughed. "Okay, twenty," Rodney said sulkily.

"I’m so sorry," Aurin said, sagging a little. She had peered into Rodney’s eyes and mouth, his ears. "I had no idea that this would happen. I—we all generally require extensive preparation and meditation for the machines to work—"
"He doesn’t know us," John said. "He’s never seen us before; sorry doesn’t cut it."
"I—Colonel Sheppard, it was not my intention to cause him any harm, and Dr. McKay did say he was very knowledgeable about such devices and declined my instruction."
"Oh, he did, did he," John said.
"Yes," Aurin said, visibly distressed now. "I would not lie—"
"No, I—yes, I know," John said. "sorry, I—"
"He didn’t mean it," Ronon said, stepping sideways in front of John and elbowing him gently aside. "Can you fix it?"
"I—it will very likely wear off," Aurin said. "Occasionally a child or an idiot wanders into the huts, and then the effect usually does not take permanently."
"When?" John said.
"A short time—a season, or perhaps half a year?"
"A—okay," John said.
"It could be less," Aurin said, but she didn’t seem too convinced.
"His memory?" Ronon said.
"He remembers everything his body remembers," she said.
"Okay, we’re done here," John said. "Thanks for the chili."

"What kind of mission is this exactly?" Rodney said, sitting stoically while John wiped him down with the washcloth Aurin had provided, dabbed antibacterial ointment on the worst of the cuts and slapped a few band-aids on. "Am I in the military?" He pointed at Ronon. "Is he in the military?"
"It’s complicated," John said. He stowed the ointment and handed Rodney his tac vest. "And you’re going to have to, uh, suspend belief a little—"
"Um, okay," Rodney muttered under his breath. They ducked through the doorway, and Sheppard felt Rodney go silent behind him.
"We’re on another planet?" Rodney said, staring up at the burnt sky, the four moons, the nearly cerulean forest beneath them.
"You didn’t notice before?"
"I thought I was hallucinating or—"
"I know this may be difficult," John said, "but—"
"We’re on—another planet," Rodney said, and his voice was full of joy and wonder and awe.

John had radioed Teyla to tell her not to bother with the tarp and she was doing a handstand against the inside of the jumper when they got in, curved perfectly against the wall, her shirt sliding slowly down, exposing her torso; even John checked it out, and he, unlike Ronon, had seen a woman naked in the last seven years.
Teyla let herself down in a graceful half cartwheel and said "I did not realize we were to have visitors—" she trailed off, staring at Rodney, who shifted under her gaze and looked sideways at John.
"Rodney, this is Teyla, she’s part of our team, Teyla, Rodney de-aged himself and doesn’t remember anything," John said.
"Are you an Alien Warrior Princess?" Rodney said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was gawking, but very politely.
"No, I—as a matter of fact, that is largely correct," Teyla said. Rodney blushed.
"I like your handstand," he mumbled. John dropped his pack and shoved through to the front of the jumper and dropped into the pilot’s seat. Probably Carson could fix it, he thought, and powered up. Ronon and Teyla sat down behind him, and after a moment, Rodney sat down cautiously next to him.
"So, okay," he said, when they punched past the atmosphere into space. "I live with a bunch of scientists and military guys on an alien planet?"
"Yup," John said.
"Star Trek aliens or Star Wars aliens?" Rodney said, very seriously. "Also, is Earth united under one government yet?"
"It’s 2006," John said patiently.
"And?"
"So, no," John said.
"Yeah, but—" Rodney said, and waved his hands at the jumper console, the Stargate, lighting up ahead of them, the vast expanse of stars.
"I see your point," John said.

"Well, he’s twenty," Carson said, beckoning them into infirmary. Rodney was barefoot, wearing scrub pants and a saggy undershirt, sitting on the edge of one of the beds with a thermometer in his mouth.
"How do you know that?" Weir said.
"He says he’s twenty." Carson pulled the thermometer for Rodney’s mouth, squinted at the reading, and shrugged.
"What about the memory loss?"
"I’ll just consult my big book of scary ancient machines that reverse cell aging, shall I?" Carson said, pocketing the thermometer. "How would I know?"
"Dr. Beckett—"
"Right, right, I’ll look into it," Carson said, already sounding defeated. "Keep him overnight for observation, take some blood samples."
"They said it would wear off," Ronon said, slouching back against another bed, giving Rodney the covert, reassuring smile John would have given him if he'd thought of it.
"Yes," Weir said slowly.
"So don’t you think you’re all overreacting?" Ronon said. "Kid’s obviously fine."
"I’m kind of hungry, actually," Rodney said.
"I heard there was an accident," Zelenka said, racing in the door. "I—uh. Rodney, you—"
"I’m twenty," Rodney said, his fingers curled tightly over his knees. "Sorry."

John went by the infirmary the next morning, but Rodney had already been discharged. He found him at breakfast, clutching his tray and staring out over the water. He was wearing uniform trousers and a long-sleeve t-shirt. Both were baggy on him, the shirt loose over thin shoulders, the pants belted tightly and still slipping down his hips.
"You all right?" John said.
"Yes, sir," Rodney said. There were four cups of coffee lined up carefully on his tray, three slices of toast, a pile of scrambled eggs and small pile of grape jelly packets.
"You don’t call me sir," John said.
"Oh," Rodney said. Rodney was a little shorter than he had been before, his eyes level with John’s mouth. "So can I—do I usually—you’re a Lieutenant, uh—"
"John’s fine," John said, and jerked his head toward a table. Rodney hesitated, but followed. He ate quickly, hunched, one elbow on the table, plowing through a mountain of eggs and two cups of coffee before John had really resigned himself to starting on his own eggs.
"Food’s pretty good here," Rodney said, sincerely.
"Yeah," John said, taking a single bite of his eggs, which were both rubbery and a little runny. He doctored his coffee with creamer, and noticed that Rodney was sneaking careful glances at him between bites.
"What?"
"Um," Rodney cleared his throat. "So, the military guys here are performance enhanced, right? Do you have any bionic parts?"
"No," John said. Rodney looked disappointed.
"Are you sure? They must at least give you drugs. Or, wait, are there, um, cyborg warriors? AI was really never my area, obviously, but I built a robot that would have won the interleague championships except it was disqualified on a technicality, anyhow—"
"There are no cyborg warriors."
"But—maybe it’s just classified and you don’t know about it, because the US government recruited my friend Andy Trembley for a classified project, and his specialty is robotics and miniaturization, so—"
"McKay," John said firmly. It wouldn’t have even slowed him, before, but now Rodney stared at him for a moment, his eyes wide and defenseless, and then hunched his shoulders and nodded.
"Sorry," he mumbled, and went back to his eggs. A couple of the marines sitting at the end of the table were looking at him like John was the biggest asshole in the world.
"Look," John said. "We have space ships and aliens are real—"
"Yeah, but—"
"Also, you should see computers now."
"About that, yeah," Rodney said enthusiastically. He squeezed four of the jelly packets onto his last piece of toast and smeared it around with his fork. "Dr. Zelenka said I could come down to the lab and look around today."
"Dr., um,"
"Short," Rodney said helpfully. "He’s Czechoslovakian and specializes in—"
"I know who Zelenka is," John said. "And it's the Czech Republic now."
Rodney was only on his third cup of coffee when Zelenka swept by the table and said,
"Rodney, you are ready?"
"Thanks for—sitting with me," Rodney said, already on his feet. John watched him hustle away in Zelenka’s wake and then forced himself to eat the rest of his eggs, which were terrible.
That afternoon, Weir sent them on a week-long mission to help with a wild vermin problem on M3X-361.
"Are you kidding me?" John said. "I’m not an exterminator."
"They’re 300 pound bears with mandibles," Elizabeth said, holding up a photograph of a huge cockroach-bear. "Please go kill some before they eat all the food we’ve been promised."
"But—"
"Rodney’s fine," Elizabeth said.
"I know," John said.
"So why are you still here?" Elizabeth said.
"I liked you before," John said, "when you still thought you had to earn my respect and cooperation."

"Korahm," Ronon said happily. "You know if you don’t get a clean kill, they excrete eggs everywhere?"
"That sounds wonderful," John said.
"They’re tough to kill," Ronon said. He grinned at Teyla and tightened the straps on his holster.
"It is important to aim for the gaps in the shell," Teyla said. "The shoulder, throat, eyes—"
"Groin," Ronon said.
"Thanks for the tip," John said.
Killing the bear-cockroach things wasn’t as bad as John thought it was going to be. Tracking them for days through scrub forests and stinking swamps, camping ankle-deep in brackish mud, and the egg-cleanup were a lot worse than almost anything that had ever happened to John before, though, so it evened out.
"Maybe we could just find a new planet for these people," John said, on the sixth day, trying to get the revoltingly marshmallowy cockroach-bear egg residue off his arm with a stick.
"McKay’s fine," Ronon grunted.
"What?"
"Ronon and I feel that you are not properly enjoying this cultural exchange because of your worry about Rodney’s condition," Teyla said.
"I’m not worried," John said. "And this isn’t a cultural exchange. This is—I’m not enjoying it because—"
"There—" Ronon said, throwing up his fist. "The nest; four full-grown, six young."
The nest was dank and fetid and the Korahm made high-pitched clacking noises with their mandibles when they died, and, inevitably, squirted John with eggsack residue.
"You should have aimed higher," Ronon said, making John use the butt of his P-90 to crush the cache of eggs they found when they scraped back the moss on the walls.
"I’ll keep that in mind," John said, reminding himself that he had first gained renown in his flight class for never having once upchucked during a training flight, even the time he had a cheese steak with the works for breakfast.

The eggsack goo stained his jacket and left an irregular raised rash on his arms and neck that was still there two days later when they were finally allowed to go back to Atlantis. It took Carson over three hours to give up on it and hand over a tube of cortisone and release John from the infirmary.
"I would think you, of all people, Colonel, wouldn't mind a little caution about a rash of unknown origin on your neck," Carson said.
"Yeah," John said, "thanks for reminding me."
"Oh, well, can't be too careful," Carson said. "How about some condoms?"
"I'm fine," John said.
"Just a few, then," Carson said, reaching over and shoving a strip of 10 or 15 condoms into one of the pockets on John's tac vest.
"Great," John said wearily. "That's just. thanks." He took the back way to his quarters, and was two flights away from an obscenely hot shower and some sleep that wasn't a twenty minute nap in a swampy cave when he heard the voices filtering up from the common area at the base of the stairs.
"So you saw Dr. McKay?" Lieutenant Munson; excellent marksman, although a little quick on the draw. Her voice carried clearly up the stairs; John could hear the clinks of guns being cleaned and reassembled, the quick tic-tac of a computer keyboard.
"You mean, um, call me Rodney, I don’t have a doctorate yet?" Captain Parker, ballistics, bomb squad, shy—he’d thought, anyhow—was laughing before she finished the sentence. John listened for a minute more before continuing up the stairs, two at a time; people would gossip about Rodney, no matter what, and he needed a shower; it felt like there was egg residue all over his body. He was nearly out of earshot when he heard Munson say, her voice sly and merry and careless,
"I’d hit that, anyday."
"Bet he likes it rough," Parker said, provoking shouts of laughter. John stopped on the last step, his hand tight on the banister.
"It’s still Dr. McKay," a third voice said, "Y’all are sick."
"Oh, please, Bethanne, you’d do him in a minute—"
"Well maybe I’m just not as into virgins as you are, Crystal."
"He’s a little young for you, don’t you think, Lieutenant?" John said, coming off the last step.
"Sir—" she said, straightening. Parker had a gun neatly disassembled on the scarred table, and Bethanne was slouched over a laptop, her feet tucked up beneath her. They all looked young to him, Parker blushing to the tips of her ears, Munson’s hair tucked under a pale green wool cap. They were all six or seven or ten years older than Rodney was now.
"Let me make this very clear," John said. Munson straightened further, and Parker looked at the ground. Bethanne’s eyes were wide, although John thought that was mostly because he smelled bad. "You’re—all of you—to stay away from Dr. McKay. You’re not to tamper—to take advantage of his condition, that’s an order."
"Yessir," they mumbled, although John distinctly saw Bethanne roll her eyes. He chose to ignore it.
"You can spread the word," he said.
"The civilians, sir," Munson said. "McKay is over eighteen, and—"
"No one's going to mess around with him," John said. "Understood?"
They all nodded, abashed, and John turned around and went back up the stairs. He was barely up the first flight when he heard Lieutenant Munson say, breathless,
"Oh shit, rape me now."
"Yum," Parker said, and then they all dissolved into laughter. John took the next three flights double-time.

John showered up, wincing over the latticework of deep scratches on his thighs and the deep purpling bruise on his hip where Teyla had thrown him down to save him from getting pierced in the throat with a mandible. His shoulders ached, and what he really wanted was a drink, a snack, and quick orgasm, just him flat on his back with his hand on his dick, just something to knock him out so he could sleep through until breakfast, but instead he pulled on his clothes and went down to level four to make sure no one was sexually exploiting Rodney.
The lab looked normal; busy, books and papers and laptops piled everywhere, coils of wire, spare parts jumbled on counters, a half-eaten plate of cookies beneath the "absolutely no food in the labs" sign. Rodney’s office was empty; John found himself strangely discomfited by the ball of powerbar wrappers on the shelf above his desk, the neatly ticked off Atlantis calendar, missing two week’s worth of marks.
"Colonel Sheppard?" Zelenka said. "What can I do for you?"
"How’s Rodney?"
"Rodney," Zelenka said, smiling a little, "Ah, he is wonderful. Such a mind, you know, I had no idea. Well, I had some idea because he kept telling me—regular Rodney, I mean. We’re trying to call this one Rodney-prime, but is not sticking very well."
"That’s. fantastic," John said. "I meant: how is he? Does it look like he’s going to get back to normal anytime soon?"
"Not especially," Zelenka said. "Let me tell you—three days ago we gave him a book on theoretical wormholes from 1995 to help him catch up, and yesterday he has read the thing and discarded everything that is totally incorrect and extrapolated from it three quarters of our current theories, and part of a whole new subset without any other reference materials, purely based on instinctive reasoning, I—"
"Yeah, great," John said.
"Yes," Zelenka said, his eyes shining. "It’s great."
"Let me see him," John said.
"He’s very busy—"
"Zelenka," John said firmly.
"Yes, of course, yes," Zelenka said. "In the conference room."
The conference room was octagonal, with a thin, strange six-sided table in the middle, almost entirely covered with books and dog-eared periodicals. Rodney was reading, gnawing on a thumbnail. There was a notebook next to him, already half-filled with equations in Rodney’s fanatically tiny handwriting and crammed with post-its.
"Hey," John said.
Rodney blinked up at him, and then smiled, a little toothily. "Hi. Colonel Sheppard. John. Hi."
"How’re you?" John said.
"Fine," Rodney said. "Good. um. Hi. And I said that already."
"Yeah. Hi," John said. Rodney’s eyes were tired and bloodshot and he looked a littler thinner, maybe; Rodney’s big watch made his bony wrist look too narrow. "How long’ve you been down here?" John said.
"I don’t—since this morning," Rodney said. "Dr. Simpson let me help her retrofit the MALP power sources for solar and naquadah, and then Dr. Zelenka wanted me to catch up on—"
"Do you want to grab some dinner?"
"What?" Rodney said, sitting up straighter. "I mean, yeah. Sure. I’d—I’ll go wash my hands."
He smiled at John and then walked down to the bank of sinks at the end of the hall. They still hadn’t found him any clothes that fit; the short sleeves of his science uniform shirt slopped down over his elbows, and his pants were crumpled and baggy around his hips.
"Zelenka," John said, quietly, but not kindly. "Has he been down here for sixteen hours?"
"How would I know, how long is Rodney ever down here for?" Zelenka said.
"Is this some kind of forced labor camp? I go away for a week—"
"You never worried about him before," Zelenka said.
"But—Simpson," John said, because Simpson had walked through the door carrying a sandwich and a laptop, with peripheral cables looped around her neck. "About Rodney—"
"He’s fucking adorable," she said immediately. "He's awesome. Can we keep him?"
"He—"
"And he’s better suited for the work than any of us," Zelenka said. "When I was twenty I could work for seventy-two hours straight with no ill effects whatsoever."
Rodney appeared at the end of the hallway and they all fell silent.
"Let’s go," John said, giving Zelenka and Simpson a genial smile that meant their conversation wasn't over.
"Am I in trouble?" Rodney said, as they rounded the first corner. He didn’t walk as quickly as he had before, and John kept having to slow down.
"No."
"Okay," Rodney said. "Are you checking up on me? Because I know what I’m doing, and everything gets okayed by Dr. Zelenka first anyhow, because—"
"I’m just checking to make sure you’re doing. okay," John said, stopping for a minute to really look at Rodney. Except for the bloodshot eyes, the rumpled hair, the too-big clothes, he looked fine.
"It just seems like you’d have better things to do," Rodney said.
"Like what?" John said, shrugging and starting up the stairs.
"Commander guy things," Rodney said. "Around Atlantis. Kicking ass. Talking to your number 1. Putting people in—in the brig. The usual."
"Well, we’re friends," John said slowly.
"You and me?" Rodney said.
"Right."
"Oh," Rodney said.
"That’s so hard to believe?" John said.
"Yeah, well. No," Rodney said, obviously lying.
They were getting close to the mess hall, entering more crowded corridors, and John noticed Rodney was smiling at people, nodding his head, civilians and military. Almost everyone smiled back. It was disturbing, and it only got worse when Rodney got an extra helping of stuffing and cranberry sauce.
"Can I have—" John said, pushing his tray back hopefully.
"Then there won’t be enough for everyone, sir."
"But McKay—"
"is still growing," she said, dismissing him and turning to the next person in line.
"Fine," John mumbled to himself, but staring across the table at the bony frame of Rodney’s collarbones, the narrow lines of his throat, he couldn’t blame her.
Rodney stared at him a lot, intent, a little owlish. In the week and a half they’d been gone, his hair had somehow bloomed into dark blond woolly half-curls; John could see why he usually kept it cut pretty short, although it probably didn’t do that anymore when he was older.
"So," Rodney said. "How was your. away mission?"
"Sucked," John said.
"Oh," Rodney said.
"Sorry," John said. "I, ah—how are you?"
"I’m fine," Rodney said. "Um, special effects have gotten a lot better since the 90s."
"Yeah."
"Yeah, I’ve been—I watched some movies."
"Star Wars?"
"No."
"Don’t watch Star Wars," John said firmly. Rodney nodded. John ate.
"So is this how we usually—" Rodney said tentatively.
"You usually talk more," John said.
"Oh," Rodney said. "Oh. Sorry. So. Um—am I good at being on an away team?"
"Off-world team."
"Yeah, that. I mean, I saw the equipment and it looks like I'm some kind of commando guy, and—it's a little hard to imagine? maybe?" Rodney's voice tilted up at the end of sentences, pretty much at random.
"You do okay," John said.
"Oh," Rodney said, wincing.
"That means you do fine," John said. "You've saved our asses a couple times and everything."
"Wow—"
"Pretty good shot, too," John said, embellishing, but only a little, just because it was funny to see Rodney grin shyly and duck his head. Rodney actually wasn't a bad shot at all; he would have been great if he put in a little time at the shooting range: the guy had the steadiest hands John had ever seen, steadier than Ronon, even. John hadn't noticed at first, until the fourth or fifth time Rodney fixed a DHD under fire, snapped a dozen fiddly little pieces into a different configuration and slid them smoothly, but not slowly, into the housing, shouting the whole time, his hands as still and sure as if he'd been sitting in his living room, programming a VCR. It was a fricking gift.
"I should probably get back soon," Rodney said.
"They're working you pretty hard, huh," John said.
"Well, no, I—I just—this is so cool," Rodney blurted out. "This is really amazing, and I just hope I didn't have a brain hemorrhage or a psychotic break, but at least if I did, I'm having an awesome time and everyone's being really nice to me, so you don't have to worry—"
"I'm not worried," John said. "But—look, do you at least want some new clothes, or something? Something that fits you better?"
"These fit okay," Rodney said. "I'm fine. But not that—it's, it's nice that you're being, uh. I appreciate it—"
"You need to relax," John told him. "Before you hurt yourself."
"Right," Rodney said, firmly. "I'll do that."

"I had breakfast with Rodney," Teyla said the next day, and whacked him in the ribs with a stick.
"Ah," John said. "Ow," and brought his sticks up under hers, landed a weak hit on her thigh.
"He seems well."
"I guess," John said.
"He is—nice," Teyla said, her brows knit with concern. She parried both John’s sticks with one hand. "I can understand how it might make you uncomfortable."
"He’s lost nineteen years and no one seems worried," John said, panting with effort, trying to catch her. "That’s what makes me uncomfortable."
"On the one hand," Teyla said, "it is true that Aurin said it would wear off."
"Well, yeah."
"But, on the other hand, he is very friendly and accommodating, and it is—"
"Weird."
"Yes," Teyla said. "Weird," and hit him in the shins so hard that he fell down.

Rodney didn't change back—not the first week, or the second or the third. John told himself he'd stopped expecting it to happen any minute, but he still felt queasy with shock almost every time he saw Rodney's enthused, soft, weirdly almost-pretty face.
Rodney worked the same hours he had worked before, possibly more, and John saw him often in the mess hall before the breakfast rush and late after lunch, the skin beneath his eyes shadowed with blue veins, cheeks a little puffy. He was usually carrying a laptop or a stack of books, and piling snacks into a bag to take back to the lab with him. John came up behind him enough to know that he was fetching snacks for Zelenka and Simpson and half the lab, as well.
"Hey, you don’t have to get them snacks," he tried, once, but Rodney just tucked a bag of doughnuts up under his chin, and said, "I know, but they asked nicely."
"Rodney," John said.
"Yes." Rodney always gave his full attention to whomever was speaking, his blue eyes fixed on their faces with interest. That was new.
"Never mind."
John tried to eat one meal with Rodney every day; at the very least, he wanted to make sure he wasn't being worked into the ground, although Rodney seemed perfectly happy—thrilled, even—to work as much as he was allowed. John thought about trying to instill some good habits in Rodney—regular exercise, maybe some weight work—but gave it up. It was too much like what he worried about everyone else on Atlantis pulling—the idea that someone might take advantage of Rodney's ignorance about himself, to try to change him. It set his teeth on edge, so instead he just commed Rodney, every day, sometimes before lunch, but more often at dinnertime, and Rodney would always come up and meet him, leaning against the wall just outside the mess hall with his hands stuffed in his pockets, brightening a little when he saw John coming down the hallway, giving him a big, wide-open grin.
Sometimes John found himself saying things like "How's it going, you're making friends?" which always made Rodney shrug while John remembered, uncomfortably, the nine separate guidance counselors he'd had in high school alone, and how little help they'd been in anything.

"Am I the only one who’s worried about Rodney?" John said, at the next semi-senior staff meeting.
"Yes," Lorne and Zelenka said at the same time.
"It’s only been a month," Elizabeth said gently. "And he seems to be fitting in very well; he fixed the lighting problems in here just yesterday, and—"
"What are we supposed to do without Rodney when the Wraith regroup?" John said.
"We have Rodney," Carson said.
"No we don’t," John said. "I’m glad you all think Rodney’s a sweet kid, but am I the only one who seems to care that—"
"Colonel Sheppard," Zelenka said. "I think perhaps you don’t understand that little Rodney has an intuitive understanding of all the things that big Rodney had begun."
Rodney-prime hadn’t stuck, and neither had Rodney 1.0. Finally, everyone had just started to call him little Rodney.
"I understand plenty, and intuitive understanding isn’t knowledge," John said. "And little Rodn—Ro—McKay isn’t—won’t be—up to speed, not like big—the older one."
"He is making great progress on the shield generators," Zelenka said. "I do not deny that it will be nice once he’s a little more caught up on molecular physics, but—"
"I’d like to devote at least a small percentage of this meeting to agenda items we actually have control over," Elizabeth said.
"Fine," John said, slumping back and crossing his arms, watching Weir and Zelenka exchange a glance he wasn’t supposed to see.
It wasn’t what he had expected of the scientists who had come to Atlantis, frankly, who had always seemed like a bunch of psychotic workaholics, but now, every time he turned around it seemed like there were people in blue shirts eating regular meals or talking about non-work topics or occasionally getting some sun. John was forced to admit that he had underestimated Rodney’s motivational skills when he saw Miko tucked into a chair in the sunroom, drinking a cup of tea and reading a paperback, her face almost unrecognizable with content.
"Where’s Rodney?" he said, stopping in front of her chair.
Miko shrugged, tucking her finger into the book, which was neither a scientific periodical nor a textbook. It had a picture of shoes on the cover. "In the lab," she said. It wasn’t that people weren’t allowed to take time off, or relax, now and again, but John happened to know that Zelenka was off-world with Lorne’s team and Simpson was in the infirmary with strep throat.
"Alone?"
"He is very capable," she said. "Extremely advanced for his age."
"Yeah, great. What’s he doing?"
"Running some simulations, cleaning up the logs, testing a few proofs we have in progress—"
"Is he doing your work?" Sheppard said.
"It’s all of our work," she said. "Also, he volunteered."
"Oh," John said. "Well, that must be really nice for you."

Rodney had narrow hips, prominent cheekbones and a soft, warm-looking mouth. He had a hot ass. John kind of missed older Rodney, who had been thick through the middle, solid, with thin irritated lips and crumpled skin around his eyes, and John was the only one, apparently. He’d expected everyone to stare at Rodney at first, but even after the first six weeks, no one stopped.
"It’s because they want to fuck him," Ronon said, unhelpfully.
"No one’s going to fuck him," John said.
"Whatever," Ronon said.
"He just looks different," John said.
"He looks fuckab—"
"Shut up, Jesus Christ," John said. "Not everything’s about sex."
"Says you, who threatened to shoot people who fucked McKay."
"Just—keep an eye on him, will you?" John said. "We’re the ones who are going to have to deal with him after all this, and I’d rather not—" he shrugged. Ronon nodded; first contact had been delegated to Lorne's team anyhow, and Ronon probably had nothing better to do.

John meant 'keep an eye on him' in the most general sense, in the sense that the Wraith could show up, or any number of other disasters might mean he could count on Ronon to grab Rodney and get him someplace safe. He hadn't exactly meant this:
Ronon crashed around the corner towards him, laughing, and it was so unfamiliar—not just Ronon's dry chuckle, but a real laugh, his voice going a little thin and wheezy, that John stared for a moment before realizing that Rodney was clinging to his shoulders, piggyback, his face red with laughter. Ronon listed to the left and nearly slammed Rodney's head into the wall which sent them off again, Rodney clinging to a sconce and wheezing in laughter.
"Hi," John said. Ronon startled and dropped Rodney on the floor.
"Whoops," Rodney said. Ronon tried to muffle a laugh and it came out as a snort; Rodney staggered to his feet, giggling weakly. Ronon finally looked at John and the smile dropped off his face; he straightened, elbowing Rodney in the shoulder.
"Sheppard," he said.
"Hi, John," Rodney said, obviously trying to look serious, even though his mouth was still trembling with laughter.
"Care to let me in on the joke?" John said; he'd had a lot of practice saying things like that, but it didn't make him feel any less old when Rodney rolled his eyes. Ronon just stared at the floor.
"You've been drinking," John said.
"Duh," Rodney muttered. Ronon's eyes almost bugged out of his head with his obvious effort not to laugh.
"It's three forty-five in the afternoon," Sheppard said.
"Not on P3X-523," Rodney said, eyes wide and serious. Ronon snickered.
"That's hilarious," John said. Ronon almost never drank; a couple sips off-world to be polite, when necessary, but never on Atlantis that John had seen. He'd assumed it was a cultural thing. "Where'd you get it?" he said.
"Hey, it was a perfectly above board trade," Rodney said, "goods for services, and Ronon is off duty, and I'm not even technically allowed to do anything, and we didn't even have much—"
"McKay," Ronon said, almost gently.
"Total lightweight," Rodney said confidingly, at the top of his lungs, seeming to have forgotten his indignation. "He only had three. Or. seven."
John stared at them. Rodney was staring moonily back at him, but Ronon looked a little woozy, and, while John watched, he put one hand on the wall to brace himself. "Oh, for God's sake," he said. "Go back to your rooms and sleep it off," he said. The minute he was around the corner he heard them start giggling again.

All John had meant was for Ronon to make sure Rodney didn't work too hard, keep people from fucking him, make sure he had someone to talk to who knew him, the real him. He knew Ronon would do exactly as he said, but he hadn't expected more, hadn't expected to see them hunched over some project on the docks, heads tipped together, pale and dark, Rodney sketching shapes in the air with his hands while Ronon tucked his knee up against his chest and talked and talked.
He went around to Ronon's quarters the next morning at six am in his running clothes, bent on a little gentle revenge, but Ronon wasn't there. They were only supposed to use the subcutaneous locators in emergencies, but John checked Ronon's from the nearest console; in Rodney's quarters now, and at the last three automatic updates.
John went running alone. He got it, he did; he'd been out-of-his-mind horny when he was twenty, ready to fuck anything that moved, used up most of his free time and not a little of the time he should have been doing something else thinking about fucking. Ronon was a good guy, and he wouldn't take advantage or hurt Rodney—the opposite, John thought glumly, thinking about how gentle Ronon had always been with Rodney, teaching him to fall, to block a punch; they'd obviously gone back to Rodney's quarters and had drunken, stupid sex. Thinking about the casual way Rodney had clung to Ronon's back, John assumed it hadn't been the first time.
Ronon came by his office just after noon, looking not even a little the worse for wear, which figured.
"I shouldn't have been drinking," he said, looking serious. "It won't happen again."
"It's fine," John said.
"But I—"
"You're allowed to take time off," John said. "Relax. Do—whatever."
Ronon grinned, a little shyly.
"It's not that," John said, unable to help himself. "It's—look, it's not my business, but how do you expect it to work with Rodney when he turns—gets older again?"
Ronon shrugged. "The same, I guess. Better."
"Better," John said, weakly.
"I know why he's how he is, some," Ronon said.
"Look," John said. "I don't want to—to tell you want to do, but if it creates a problem on the team, I—"
"I don't—"
"Just, Rodney's not too experienced, that's all," John said. Ronon's eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline.
"Do you think I'm fucking him?"
"I said I didn't need to know the details," John said, holding up one hand. "And by the way, that's not the nicest way to talk about it."
"I'm not, we're just—"
"I said no det—"
"Sheppard," Ronon said. "We're not. I fell asleep on his floor."
"Oh."
"And," Ronon said, sounding almost nervous. "I like—women."
"Oh," John said.
"Is that okay?"
"Why?" John said. "Wait, no. never mind," and spent the rest of the day scheduling goodwill visits with Teyla, an exercise which involved planetary charts, a box of tide charts and calendars, a graphing calculator and a comprehensive knowledge of days considered lucky throughout the galaxy.
"You seem concerned," she said, "Were they causing a disruption?"
"No," John said.
"Or endangering—"
"No, no, nothing like that."
"Ronon is not close friends with many people near to him in age," Teyla said. "The marines who come on the Daedalus are not here for very long, and it is difficult for him to build bonds of trust."
"I know that," John said.
Teyla stared at him and John stared right back, waiting for her to make the same kind of mysterious enigmatic mystical bullshit connections she always made.
"Dr. McKay is quite close in age to Ronon, is he not?" she said, after a long pause.
"I guess," John said, even though he personally thought Teyla was maybe slipping a little. Anyone could have figured that out. "I don't know."
Teyla sighed.

Rodney sat down across from him at dinner the next day, clutching his tray nervously.
"Is it okay to sit here?"
"Yup," John said, around a forkful of freeze-dried reconstituted spinach.
"Oh, fuck, I was rude, I pissed you off," Rodney said. "I'm sorry, I—I don't have an excuse, but—"
"I'm not mad," John said. "You can drink—well, technically you're underage, so."
"Technically," Rodney said, "I'm 39."
"You know, you're a smartass at every age," John said.
Rodney shrugged and dug into his limp beef stroganoff. "Do you, uh—would you tell me something about myself?"
"Sure."
"Do you know if my family is okay?"
"You don't really talk about that stuff much," John said. He didn't even know if Rodney's parents were still alive. "Jeannie's okay. She has a kid."
"Oh," Rodney said. He ate a few bites, in silence.
"I don't really—"
"I take it back," Rodney said, his voice cracking. "I don't—I shouldn't—don't tell me."
"Rodney—"
"This is weird for me," Rodney said softly. "I miss knowing people. You're—you've—everyone's been really nice to me, but it's not. It's hard not remembering, and. Do you think I'm going to—to go back, soon?"
"Yes," John said. "Of course. You're. You'll be fine."
"Okay," Rodney said. He didn't look convinced.
"Everything’s going to be fine," John said. Rodney had been so fucking cheerful, the entire time, and John had been stupidly reassured by it. Rodney always bellyached about every little thing at the best of times, loudly, and John had no idea what to do now that Rodney was staring at his half-eaten tray, biting his lip. "I promise," John said. "Rodney, we'll fix it."

What John really wanted to do was dump Rodney back in a puddlejumper, take him back to MX3-526, and get the whole thing straightened out. Elizabeth vetoed that before he got the first sentence out, so he was stuck trying to be supportive, which had never been his strong suit. No one made it easy, even Rodney, who'd bounced back so quickly John felt like he'd imagined the whole thing.
"You're messing with his timeline," John said, the next time he stopped by the lab just to see how things were going.
"Okay, you are aware that I haven't actually gone back in time," Rodney said.
"Be quiet," John said. Rodney shrank back a little and Miko and Zelenka glared at him. "Sorry," John said.
"He does not have a timeline," Miko said patiently. "And without big Rodney—"
"we’re very shorthanded."
"We’re fucked without him," Simpson said, from across the lab.
"I know," John said, "but what if by changing the types of problems he’s doing from the work he was doing on at that specific age—"
"Is already solved," Zelenka said. "By him. Years ago."
"But—"
"Why do you want him to solve them again?" Zelenka said. "We give him the background."
"Because it could be a bad thing," John said, although he wasn’t so sure anymore. "What if he can't properly absorb this stuff without going through the proper learning—thing. He’s not your science fair project. You can’t just plug him into a problem and see what happens."
"Why not?" Zelenka said. "With proper guidance, who knows what he could become?"
"He doesn’t need to become anything more than what he already is," John snapped.
"Yes, yes," Zelenka said soothingly.
"If this turns into a disaster," John said, "don’t come crying to me."
Three days later Rodney fixed the power fluctuation problem in the staff quarters, boosted the shields by fourteen percent, and reverse-engineered a wraith stunner.
"It’s still a prototype," Rodney said, glancing uncertainly over his shoulder at Zelenka.
"Does it work?" Elizabeth said.
"It works on chickens," Rodney said. "And it’s a nearly exact replica of the stunner system, except without the organic components, and I modified it for more precise control, so you can shoot to kill, if—if you want. Or not."
"Chickens," Elizabeth said, smiling indulgently at Rodney, who ducked his head. John suspected he thought Elizabeth was hot.
"And one goat."

Nothing slowed down, just because Rodney had three times as much hair now. Finally, John gave up and started having Teyla and Ronon double up on other SGA teams. Science was running short-handed; not just Rodney, but a couple broken arms and a whole lab bench with pneumonia, so there weren’t really any scientists to spare for a fourth on their team, and it put the kibosh on internal Atlantis exploration as well. John trained fifteen people to fly puddlejumpers, and took care of some internal matters, including tagging along with Lorne to smoke out a family of raccoons living on sublevel six.

["Not really raccoons, actually," one of the zoologists had said in the meeting where they discovered that the raccoons had cleaned them out of peanut butter, Snicker's Bars and dried apricots; in short, an emergency.
"Right, right, right," John had said.
"If you could capture a few alive, preferably a mating pair—"
"Look Dr.—uh, have you ever actually tried to capture a raccoon? It’s really not that easy," Lorne said.
"Claws," John said.
"They’re not actually rac—"
"Mating pair, gotcha," John had said, grabbing the tranq gun off the table.]

"We can send a couple extra guys tomorrow, right?" Lorne said, when they were sitting at the end of the tunnel, crunched up against the wall, wearing nightvision goggles.
"Why’s that?"
"Well, Dr. McKay's going with SGA-4 to MX4-241 and he hasn't had weapons training, right—" Lorne said, trailing off when John turned his head and whacked him in the face with his goggles.
"Whose idea was that?" John said.
"I thought—you sent that e-mail that said not to let Dr. McKay in the shooting—"
"No, the mission," John said. "Whose idea was it to let McKay go on a mission?"
"Dr. Weir said—"
"Great, thanks," John said, standing up.
"Sir—"
"We’ll pick this up later," John said. "I’m pretty sure the girls have an extra tail stripe, by the way."
It took him four minutes to get from sublevel 6 to Elizabeth’s office; she didn’t look surprised to see him.
"He'll be perfectly safe," she said, folding down the top of her laptop just enough to look like she was paying attention him but not enough to actually put it to sleep.
"What—safe?" John said. He’d been pretty sure it was a mistake, so he hadn’t bothered to come up with anything to say to Elizabeth. "Safe."
"As safe as we can make him."
"First, you could have done me the courtesy of asking, and second, no way."
"I already knew what your response would be," Elizabeth said.
"Oh, you mean, cautious and prudent—"
"Overprotective," Elizabeth said. "Which is admirable, of course, but Rodney’s a civilian, and he’s not going on this mission as a part of your team, so isn’t under your jurisdiction."
"Can I just voice my reservations, here?"
"Rodney volunteered."
"Rodney's a dumbass kid," John said.
"Rodney's legally an adult, and has been working at an adult level for—"
"He's a fucking idiot," John said. "He's a baby. He can't even shoot a gun, he—"
"I've made my decision," Elizabeth said. "We've been to MX4-241 multiple times."
"That's a trade world, it's crawling with mercenaries and—"
"Crawling?"
"Fine," John said. "But I'm going."
"Sorry," Elizabeth said. "No one with dark hair is allowed in the learning compound, so you'd be cooling your heels in the city."
"Are you serious?"
"It's a few hours at a university," Elizabeth said.
"Learning compound—"
"Learning compound, fine."
Elizabeth sighed. "I understand that you're worried," she said. "And honestly, this isn't my first choice, but Rodney has been handling himself in the labs with exemplary maturity, and I think it's time to integrate him more fully into missions."
"What for?" John said. "He's doing just fine right here."
"If he doesn't change back," Elizabeth said, "it will be difficult to keep him here if we can't establish that he's able to continue to work to his full capacity."
"He’s going to change back."
"They'll send him back to Earth."
"He's going to change back," John said.
"John."
"He—fine," John said. "fine."

"You have to be careful," John said. He'd found Rodney in the lab and jerked his chin towards the nearest quiet balcony, walking quickly with Rodney tagging along in his wake.
"I will," Rodney said. "Do you think—is something going to happen?"
"No, but—there's a lot of crap out there," John said. "You don't have to do this."
"I know. Elizabeth said—"
"You shouldn't have to," John said. "Just—let me talk to Elizabeth; she'll send someone else if you just say—"
"I want to go," Rodney said quietly, folding his arms tightly over his chest. "I know I'm not—who I was before, but I should try, don't you think?"
"I—" John looked out at the ocean. "You ever fired a gun?"
"A rifle," Rodney said. "My dad took me hunting a few times."
"Come on," John said, and took him down to gallery 3; it was right before dinner, and the shooting range was empty. They kept around a couple Walther P22s for the scientists to learn on, and John showed Rodney, once, how to load and unload the clip, take off the safety, how to adjust his grip to the gun wouldn't rip apart the skin between his thumb and index finger, how to aim and fire, and then put the gun in Rodney's hands and watched him do the same. He wasn't wild about sending a raw beginner into the field with a gun, but it beat sending him in unarmed, and it wasn't much different than the way Rodney had started out the first time.
"Don't let anyone take the gun away from you," John said, when Rodney was practicing reloading. "If it looks like that might happen, get rid of it; throw it in a river, dump it out a window, whatever."
"Do you think that might, uh, happen?" Rodney said, looking anxious for the first time.
"No," John said. "But. watch your back."
"I wish you were coming," Rodney said.
"Then who would mount the daring rescue?" John said, and handed Rodney a new clip.

In fact, the mission was a complete success until Rodney got kidnapped by a couple locals.
"Fuck," John said, when the report came in, turning on his heel and heading toward the jumper bay. "Fuck."
"Yes, sir," Lorne said; he was practically jogging to keep up with John. He looked grim, but not exactly surprised.
"How bad are we going to have to fuck these assholes up?" John said, giving up on sounding professional.
"It's unlikely that they plan to harm Dr. McKay," Lorne said. "There's a slave market about two clicks from the learning compound—"
"Fuck," John said, and broke into a run.

"Sir," Lorne said, as the jumper skated across the wide plane outside the city, top speed, spinning up dust. "We can involve the local authorities but it would be helpful if we established a familial, um, relationship."
"Cut to the chase," John said. There were seventeen marines packed into a space that was really more comfortable for eight, but the puddlejumper was eerily quiet.
"Maybe if we just explain to that Dr. McKay's your son," Lorne said, and then saw John's face and straightened. "Nephew, then. But son really—"
"No," John said.
"People have kids young here, sir," Lorne said.
"We brought that ax, right?" John said, scavenging under the seat.

In the end, he broke down a couple doors, and found Rodney, who was fine, although his face was spectacularly bruised. Then there was just the matter of bringing in the authorities, wiping out the black market in slavery and bringing down corrupt law enforcement, but John left most of it to Lorne, who had done it maybe fifteen or sixteen times before. John mainly stood around looking nuts, holding his ax, and trying to get an ice pack for Rodney's eye.

"I'm sorry," Rodney said, much later, on his third tray of dinner. He'd tried to say it at the learning compound, and then again in the puddlejumper, and then a few times while Carson checked him out, and John had been too fucking worked up and pissed off to realize he should say something back. Teyla had to do it for him, putting her cup of tea down and leaning across the table to say,
"Of course it was not your fault, Rodney."
"I know. But I—everyone had to come get me," Rodney said, blushing around the edges of his bruises.
"We have to rescue people all the time," Ronon told him matter-of-factly.
"We were in the neighborhood anyhow," John managed, finally. Teyla smiled at him.
"I threw away the gun, like you said," Rodney said, when Ronon got up to get everyone a second round of dessert.
"That's good," John said. "Good job."

Fine, John thought, just. Fine. And he gave up, for at least a couple weeks, until they were running some routine maintenance on the jumpers and he walked in on Zelenka and Rodney arguing over something or another.
"No, no no no," Zelenka snapped. "This is wrong, Rodney. This is—you haven’t begun to compensate for the kind of drag a heavy grav planet will generate—"
"It’s not wrong," Rodney said. "You need to—"
Zelenka threw out one hand and snapped his fingers a few times in Rodney’s face, and then said, "Don’t waste my time with idiocy—"
Rodney blinked, hesitated, just for a moment, before launching back into his counterargument, but John had to look away.
John remembered twenty well enough, organic chemistry, the first time he sixty-nined with a girl, driving out to Colorado, pretending he was on his way to Vegas but really just aiming for the red rock desert, pushing his car past 100, past 130. He remembered never being hungover, no matter how much he'd had to drink the night before. He remembered the shock of Ford, and how young he’d seemed, five years older than Rodney was now.

"I need to talk to you," John said, intercepting Rodney in the hallway on his way back from the lab, late.
"Oh, um—" Rodney said. He had been kind of stuttery when he was younger, John thought. He seemed pretty much as loudmouthed as ever around Zelenka, but maybe the military made him nervous. They were near John’s quarters, so John walked him down the hallway and opened the door.
"You can sit down," he said, when he saw Rodney hanging near the doorway, looking uncertain.
"Okay," Rodney said, looking around. After a minute, he sat gingerly on the edge of John’s bed.
"Look," John said. He crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them. Rodney stared at him. "Your work is very important to you."
"I know that, I—"
"No, your work," John said. "Not whatever Zelenka and Miko think might be fun to see you work on."
"How would you know?" Rodney said.
"Because you talk a lot," John said. "And I know you don’t remember me, but I—you shouldn’t be fetching and carrying their data."
"Dr. Zelenka and Dr. Miko aren’t idiots."
"I know, but—" John sighed. Rodney stared at him expectantly. "You’re a hell of a lot smarter than Miko. You’re better than—you’re special," John said, determined. "You’re—really smart."
The tips of Rodney’s ears went pink. "I know that," he said.
"Right, then," John said.
"Right."
"So if you need to talk or whatever," John said, after an uncomfortable pause. "You can always come by."
"Here?" Rodney said.
"Sure."
"Oh," Rodney said. "Really?"
"Yeah, definitely," John said, and almost ruffled Rodney’s hair.
"I—okay," Rodney said. It seemed to make him feel better, from the way he beamed at John the next time they met up for dinner.

Rodney took him up on it fast. Barely a week later, John came home from escorting Elizabeth and Teyla on a diplomatic mission— four hours round-trip ride out to the site, eight hours of standing quietly behind Elizabeth holding a P-90 and trying to look both dangerous and non-threatening—and found Rodney in his room. The wind had kicked up on the flight back to the gate; they were several hours overdue and Rodney was asleep in his bed on top of the covers, face down, his hands hanging carelessly over the edge, open.
Rodney’s—McKay’s—back was long and slender, his thin t-shirt pushed up over his back to his shoulder blades. He was wearing his old pants with a belt, but they were low on his hips. The bedside light flicked on, obligingly, quietly, letting John see that Rodney’s back was pale, still, unscarred, a few faint freckles on the edges of his shoulders. The moonlight was different than on Earth, although John couldn't have said how.
"Hey," he said. Rodney turned over, tugged his shirt down a little self-consciously, and wrapped one almost puppyish hand around the back of John’s leg, just above the knee.
"You’re back," he said, his voice scratchy from sleep.
"Are you hungry?" John said. "The cafeteria’s still open, we could—"
"I’m fine," Rodney said. "Sorry about—I came by, and you weren’t here. Guess I fell asleep."
"That's fine," John said. "You’ve done it before."
Rodney used to be able to fall asleep anywhere, at any point that he determined that his time would be better conserved by resting. He had fallen asleep on John’s bed on any number of occasions, and he had been drunk less than half the time. It was kind of nice to have Rodney here now, kind of like old times. John shucked off his jacket, vest, side-arm, sweater, thigh holster, washed his hands and face, and dropped down on the couch to unlace his boots. Rodney got out of bed and got himself a glass of water.
"Can I have some of that?" John said.
Rodney—old Rodney, big Rodney, whatever—would have slanted a look at him that meant "no, absolutely not, get your own," but this Rodney just handed over the water and sat down on the couch next to him.
The glass was cool in his hand and slightly slippery, and John drank half the water and then slid down a little in the couch, passed the glass back, fingers bumping Rodney’s hand.
"Can you come down to the lab tomorrow?" Rodney said. "There’s a device I wanted you to try."
"Sure," John said.
"Did you hear about Nakamura and Kendall?"
"What about them?
"They had a bet riding on the way the sublight engines were organized—" John closed his eyes; he found listening to Rodney talk about idiots soothing, comfortable. If Rodney had time to discuss it, the world wasn't coming to an end anytime soon.
He had his eyes mostly closed, one leg flung up on the coffee table, so he missed what happened next until Rodney put one careful hand on his arm and kissed him.
"Rodney—" John said, but it came out wrong, and Rodney slid up against him, somehow got one hand just inside his shirt collar, thumbed down the zipper, fingers sliding over his throat and collarbone, and he smelled like Rodney, the bitter Athosian soap they all used, the smell of naquadah that clung to everyone who worked with it, dry erase markers. The hair at the nape of Rodney’s neck, which had always looked bristly and annoyed, was soft against John’s palm, and he dragged his hand down over Rodney’s bunched shoulders, down his back, over his too prominent ribs—
"Wait, wait—wait," John said, his mouth caught against Rodney’s.
"Okay," Rodney said, softly, and slid down a little against John’s chest, his legs opening around John’s thigh, his lips brushing against John’s throat, his t-shirt crumpling up enough John’s hands were on warm bare skin.
"Hold up for a minute," John said, a little weakly. "I don’t think this is such a good—"
"I wouldn’t say anything," Rodney said, quickly, "I mean, I’m not going to tell anyone."
"Oh," John said.
"Yeah," Rodney said, and kissed him again, eagerly, sucking on John's lower lip. John had to take his tongue out of Rodney's mouth to say,
"That’s not—just. Have you done this before?"
"Sure."
"Sure," John said flatly. There was no good place to put his hands. Rodney was still on top of him, practically in his lap; John tried to pretend that it was uncomfortable. "You have to understand—"
Rodney smiled crookedly. "It’s cool if you don’t want anyone to know."
"Yeah, I bet," John said, already feeling like a complete asshole. Rodney dipped his head, obviously nervous; he had freckles, John realized, on his cheeks, across the bridge of his nose.
"If you want," he said, "you can fuck me. I like it—"
"Oh god shut up," John said, before he could help himself. Rodney flinched. "I mean, I’m sorry," John said. "but, you barely know me, so you shouldn’t just go around—"
"Yes, I have heard of safe sex," Rodney said. "And they cured AIDS, right?"
"Not—no," John said. "Not yet, actually."
"Oh, well, that’s just great," Rodney said. He sounded irritated, and the tip of his nose was flushed, the way Rodney always got when he was drunk or annoyed or sunburnt.
"Rodney—" John said, and this time he was ready when Rodney kissed him, and didn’t kiss back.
"I could just, I could go down," Rodney mumbled.
"That, ah, wouldn’t be a good idea," John managed.
"Oh," Rodney said. "Okay." He pushed himself up off John, a little awkwardly, and slid back into the opposite corner of the couch, folding his legs up against his chest.
"Sorry," John said.
"It's okay," Rodney said.
"I just—I’m not even sure where you even got the idea that—"
"I thought this was what you meant," Rodney said, "when you said I could come by sometime."
"To talk," John said. "I said to talk."
"And you said—" Rodney's voice almost cracked, but he took a quick breath and kept talking, "you said I was special, and you took off your clothes—"
"These are my quarters," John said. "I’m not allowed to take off my sidearm without seeming to make a sexual advance?"
"Well, you didn’t seem that surprised that I was in your bed—"
"I’m laid back," John gritted out, between his teeth. "And you said you were tired."
"I was," Rodney said.
"That’s right," John said. "You were tired, was I supposed to make a federal case out of it?"
"You’re yelling," Rodney said, sounding smug but miserable. John clamped his mouth shut and tried to stop thinking about how his cock felt in his pants. Rodney stared at the floor.
"It’s not that I’m not flattered," John said finally.
"Yeah, I get it," Rodney said, nodding a little too much. "It’s no big deal. Sorry."
"Rodney," John said. "Look, you—older you would never want this, and I can’t just—"
"Right, I’ll regret it when I’m older and you know better," Rodney muttered, refusing to meet John’s eyes.
"That’s not what I meant, exactly," John said.
"I’m gonna. go," Rodney said. His voice sounded a little funny.
"Okay."
Rodney stuffed his feet into his boots without tying them and yanked on his sweater, back hunched and defenseless, and John stared pedophilicly at his ass and hoped Zelenka wouldn’t poison his food for hurting Rodney’s feelings.

Five hours after Rodney left, John lurched up out of sleep so horny and desperate, he came after half a dozen quick pulls on his cock, starbursts behind his eyelids.
Lying in bed, arms flung wide, heart jackhammering, John could remember every goddamn thing about Rodney kissing him, but he made himself stop before he could get hard again. He’d never, ever, in his life been that guy, the guy who looked at privates fresh off the bus, their too-new boots, barely out of high school. He had never in his life thought that another guy had a pretty mouth; he wasn’t going to start now.
In the morning, John went on a two day turnaround with Ronon and Teyla, trading portable water purification devices for grain and vegetables, and tried not to think about how Rodney kissed—too fast, too hard—about the girl who’d sat next to him in English comp who had married some professor fifteen years her senior, about what would happen if it never wore off and Rodney just had to grow up again the regular way, and whether he’d turn out different, and, most of all, whether there had been a lot of guys who hadn’t wanted anyone to know they were fucking Rodney. He slept badly.

He’d hoped to avoid Rodney for at least a week, without seeming to, obviously. He usually dealt with people who had crushes on him by acting like a dick until they kind of hated him, but that clearly wasn’t an option this time. John didn't know what to say to Rodney, and it pissed him off, feeling like he was the one who was barely out of his teens, like he should know what the hell to do about stuff like this by now. Of course there was some problem with the puddlejumpers interfacing with the docking slots and he ran into Rodney the very next day, sitting cross legged on the benches in the back of Jumper 4 with a tablet in his lap.
"Hi," John said.
"Hi," Rodney said, giving him a quick nervous smile and sliding off the bench, standing up.
"So," John said. "I think the problems originated from—"
"I’m sorry," Rodney blurted out. "I shouldn’t have. I got—I thought you liked me, and I wanted—"
"I like you fine," John said.
"Oh," Rodney said, a little breathlessly.
"But not—"
"That’s okay," Rodney said. "I get why you wouldn’t—I mean, I thought you probably had a girlfriend, but I asked and everyone said you didn’t, and you’re so—hot, you’re really, um. So I see why you’re not interested."
"I—"
"And I know I’m, I talk too much, and I’m embarrassing, and I’m not, my body isn’t—"
"Rodney—"
"And I—"
"Rodney," John said firmly. He had to take a step forward, crowd Rodney back against the bench, just to get Rodney to look up at him. "There’s nothing wrong with you," he said quietly. Rodney blushed.
"I like girls," he said, after a minute, looking carefully at John's left shoulder.
"I know."
"I do."
"I know you do," John said. "It’s cool."
It wasn’t cool. Rodney avoided him now, enough that John finally got how much Rodney had been around, around to get meals with or show sections of Atlantis he knew Rodney’d get a kick out of—stuff Rodney had already gotten a kick out of, and John had liked giving him discovery all over again. Rodney had timed his breakfast schedule to John’s, John realized, the third day that Rodney didn’t drift through the door, as though by accident, just as John was squinting at pancakes and trying to decide if he felt lucky.
Rodney had laughed at his jokes, John realized, the fourth day, retrospectively embarrassed; they hadn’t been that funny.

John was off-world with Ronon and Teyla when it happened; they missed almost the whole thing. It was a tough mission, a hostile three-hour negotiation bracketed by a brutal eight hour round-trip hike in high gravity, but John forgot how wiped he was the minute they were back in the empty gate room.
"What," he barked at the two marines on duty, and then waved them off, comming Elizabeth.
"John," she said, and John's stomach sank. "We're in section 34, second floor."
They were silent on the way there, three long hallways and a couple transporters, rattling down staircases on tired knees—it was what he hated the most, the stuff of his worst nightmares, that something might happen on Atlantis while he was gone. They rounded the last corner into chaos, ankle deep water on the floor, medical, science staff, marines, sparks flying off the saw they were using to slice a careful hole in the wall, and it took John a minute to see the contorted bodies, pressed up against the clear walls in the next room.
"There was an accident," Elizabeth said. The armpits of her shirt were ringed with sweat, and her hair clung limply to her forehead. "Some—" she swallowed, and then straightened. "Two teams were trapped for—we think it was some kind of training facility or possibly a—punitive device, but even though we were able to override multiple security protocols, we couldn't. We weren't fast enough."
"Okay," John said. "It's contained?"
Elizabeth nodded, and Teyla stepped forward to put a reassuring hand on Elizabeth's arm. Ronon was already across the room, just behind Zelenka's shoulder, holding something that looked heavy.
"What do you need?" John said.
Elizabeth shook her head. "It's just—cleanup," she said.
"I'll take this," John said. "You need to get some rest."
"No," she said. "No, it's important that I stay. It won't be much longer anyhow."
"I see," John said, and then he saw Rodney, sitting alone on some steps on the far side of the room, keeping out of the way. He looked small, his clothes soaked and clinging, pants torn open at the knee, his face soft and tired. There were cuts on his hands, and a swollen, black-blue spot on his temple. He looked up when he saw John coming towards him, and tried to smile.
"Did you get that looked at?" John said. It was bad light, so he couldn't t really see much, but he tilted Rodney's chin up to get a better look at the bruise.
"It's from earlier," Rodney said. "Carson said it was okay."
"Good," John said. He caught Elizabeth's eye and she gave him a quick nod. "All right," John says. "Let's go."
"But I still, I’m supposed to—"
"Dr. Zelenka will handle it," John said. They were pulling the first of the bodies out of the split in the wall, Carson elbowing his way through to the front, and John put his hand on Rodney’s shoulder and turned him before he could see, held his body in front of Rodney as he moved him into the transporter.
Rodney’s quarters weren’t far, but Rodney was stumbling with fatigue by the time John sat him down on the toilet seat and flicked on his shower. Rodney stared at him for a moment, and then nodded and started to struggle with the soaked knots on his boots, wincing. In the harsh light of the bathroom, John could see that his fingertips and palms were covered with dozens of tiny electrical burns, and in the end John had to kneel down and cut the knots open anyhow.
"Thanks," Rodney said. His voice sounded rusty and sad. "I can shower on my own."
John dug through the dresser to find something that looked comfortable and left it on the bathroom counter. The room was messy, cluttered with equipment and rations, dirty clothes on the floor; Rodney had been pretty compulsively neat before. John shoved a bunch of the clothes in the closet and straightened out the bed, half an ear on the bathroom, and before long the shower went off, and Rodney came into the room, dressed, wrapping his palms around his elbows.
"Okay," John said. "I think you should try to get some sleep."
Rodney nodded. He sat down on the bed slowly.
"You have everything you need?" John said.
"Sure. Yes," Rodney said.
"If you're hungry—"
"No. no."
John nodded. "Then I’ll just—"
"Could you stay?" Rodney said.
"Rodney—"
"I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, I’m not going to jump you or anything, I just, I keep—I saw them die and I couldn’t, I can’t stop thinking, if I had, it’s my fault."
"I’ll stay," John said.
He took off his boots and sidearm, and after some hesitation, his belt and jacket, and then lay down on the bed. Rodney was shivering, his lips pressed tightly together.
"Hey," John said. "It’ll be—" Rodney rolled into him and clung as tightly as a starfish, his face buried in John’s chest.
"I knew them," he said, his voice choked, hesitant. "And they just—died."
"I know," John said. "It's not your fault."
"But I should have—"
"You did everything you could."
"You weren't even there."
"I didn't need to be there," John said. He put his hand carefully on the back of Rodney's neck, Rodney's wet hair curling over his hand, and then he patted Rodney's back a little. "Just. It wasn't your fault, okay?"
"Okay," Rodney whispered. His breath evened a little, but he didn’t move; after a few minutes, John drew the blanket up around his shoulders, and settled back into bed, closed his eyes, thought out the lights.
He woke warm. His shirt had ridden up in the night and Rodney’s bare arm was wrapped loosely around his waist, his hand splayed over John’s stomach. He twisted a little, wondering if he should wake Rodney up, but it was dark, and Rodney was soft and solid and John fell back into sleep before he could think about it properly.
"John," Rodney muttered, in the morning, sleepily against his neck.
"Hm," John said. It was the most comfortable he’d been in a while, and he didn’t feel like moving. Rodney was big and warm, one thick thigh tucked up between John’s—
"Oh holy shit," Rodney said behind him, and fell off the bed.
"Rodney," John said, rolling over.
"Hey—"
"Wow—"
"Yeah, that’s—
"You’re back," John said.
"That’s one word for it."
"You remember—I mean, you do remember," John said, "right?"
Rodney slanted him a scornful look, and John said, "Okay, sorry. And you remember all the other—uh—"
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Rodney said. "Why are you here?"
"Um, this might be a little difficult to believe," John said, "but you were—something happened to you that made you younger, and—"
Rodney rolled his eyes and said, "Yes, I do remember everything that apparently made it perfectly okay for you to snuggle me like some perverted uncle."
"Hey," John said. "You were fucked up about it, I was just—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah," Rodney said hurriedly. "Fine, right."
"Great," John said. He rolled his shoulders nervously. Rodney’s clothes fit—his shirt was snug across the shoulders, almost tight against his biceps; it was weird.
"Yes, I’m old," Rodney said sulkily. "Jesus, get an eyeful."
"Maybe I’ll just get some breakfast and let Elizabeth know you’re back," John said, managing a very successful smile. He sat down on Rodney’s bed and started pulling on his boots. Rodney was silent, throwing himself down in his deskchair and poking at his laptop. He huffed a little to himself; John ignored him and started tugging at the boot laces. Rodney was frowning at his screen, but his eyes flickered to John once, slowly, thoughtfully, and then again. By the time John was buckling his holster, Rodney was just staring at him, sideways, slit-eyed.
"What," John said, finally.
"Nothing."
"Fine," John said.
"Well, excuse me," Rodney said, "Five minutes ago you were this hot old military big brother sex fantasy—"
"I was old?" John said.
"You were twenty years older than I was," Rodney said. "Can you just give me a minute?"
"Eighteen," John said loudly.
"Hmm?"
Eighteen years older," John said. "Seventeen and a half."
"You were old," Rodney said.
"But hot."
Rodney’s mouth tightened. "If you like that kind of thing."
"Apparently, you do."
"I did," Rodney said. "I used to have a real thing for assholes, but now I don’t, so—"
"I’m not an asshole," John said. "I, in case you hadn’t noticed, was very nice, and didn’t sleep with you when you all but threw yourself on my dick, so—"
"Yeah, they should give you a medal," Rodney mumbled.
"Great to have you back," John said, and went to find Elizabeth.

Rodney talked so much at top volume that he lost his voice on his third day back; his voice was still growly and uncertain at the end of the week, but everything else was more or less back in order. John felt a visceral jolt of relief every time he walked into a meeting and Rodney was twice as big as Zelenka again, but no one else seemed to find having Rodney back strange, at all. Rodney, for his part, wasn't avoiding John—they had a heavy off-world schedule that had kicked off once Rodney was cleared for work—but he didn't make it easy for John to find him, and it was another week before John was able to get him alone.
"Did I do something I need to apologize for?" he said, cornering Rodney at breakfast, when the mess hall was practically empty. It was still dim outside; the harsh overhead lights made Rodney eyes look hollow and haggard, the fine skin beneath his eyes creased.
"No, you’re fine," Rodney said. Rodney's tray had a cup of coffee, an apple, and half a bagel, burnt around the edges; before, he had never been much of a morning eater.
"Because I was just looking out for you," John said, hesitantly. "It wasn’t—you were just. so."
"Yes, big surprise, Rodney McKay was socially awkward in his youth."
"That’s not what I meant."
"I was there," Rodney said. "I’m sorry I tried to suck your dick. Can we maybe stop talking about it?"
"Okay."
"Okay?" Rodney said belligerently.
"Did you sleep with a lot of people who didn’t want anyone to know about it?" John said, quickly.
"What?"
"When we—when you and I were, well," John said. "You said—"
"I know what I said."
"So," John said.
Rodney opened his mouth and then closed it.
"I said I didn’t want to talk about it," he said, finally. "We didn’t have to have a special talk about your behavior when you were turned into a bug or almost killed those fifteen times, so I don’t see why this is any different."
"It’s not," John said. "I was just worried, is all."
"It was 1991," Rodney said. "Please relax."
"I will not relax," John said. "You—"
"What, did you find an alien device that’ll let you go back in time to tell me not to blow Peter Gorowicz?" Rodney said sourly.
"I just—"
"look, 1991 was not a—a terrific year for me, okay?" Rodney said. "I was in a program—the best program, finally. I was a lot younger than everyone, and they didn’t like me much, imagine that, and on top of that, every single fucking thing that came out of anyone’s mouth sounded wrong to me. And not a little bit wrong, but wrong as in the opposite of right."
"Oh."
"Nothing made any sense, I was barely scraping by on the work—"
"You were just starting out—"
"I was wrapping up my first Ph.D," Rodney said. "And the next semester I realized that they were, in fact, entirely as wrong as I had suspected all along."
"What?"
"They were wrong, I was right, I essentially pioneered an entirely new branch of theoretical physics," Rodney said, waving his hand dismissively.
"I see," John said.
"You caught me at a bad time," Rodney said, in apology.

Of course, Rodney and Ronon were closer, and that was good for the team. Ronon took him jogging—John had seen them from one of the observation balconies, Ronon running backwards, Rodney trailing after him doggedly. Ronon waved his hands around more when he talked, now. It was good.
John tried to become closer friends with Teyla, in revenge, but she was a little bit boring, and almost never got his jokes. To tell the truth, it seemed as though she was too polite to tell him she'd really rather meditate or whatever the hell Teyla liked to do than spend time with him; there was always a strange air of expectancy around her, as though she was waiting, very politely, for him to tell her why he was there. John did blow away one staff meeting with his knowledge about the handcrafting tradition in Pegasus, though, and he found out that Teyla knew her clothes were sexy and just pretended they were normal to make people feel ashamed of their dirty minds and get the upper hand in any social or trade interaction.
"I thought you were aware of this tactic," she said, at the time.
"Not—no," he said.
"It’s not what you’re doing?" she said.
"Hey, I don’t show off my—middle," John said.
"On the contrary, I often see your bare skin," she said. "And also, I do not ever show my undergarments."
"Hey, I don’t—"
"It is very interesting, the color variations of underthings on Earth," she said thoughtfully.
"That’s nice," John said.
"I am always nice," she said.
They were sitting in one of the lounge areas, looking out over the ocean.
"Does Rodney seem different to you?" John said.
"Speaking of nice?" she said.
"No, just—do you think he’s okay?"
"He seems well," she said, after a moment. "I am glad he is restored to himself. You seem relieved as well."
"Yeah," John said. "I'm—relieved."
Rodney was fine—of course he was fine, he had gun calluses and a few pale grey hairs at his temples and bad knees and that fucking ugly scar from Kolya, but John had gotten used to worrying over him, so it was strange not to check in with Zelenka every few days or stare at the shadows under his eyes when they ate together and wonder if he should make him take a day off or drink some milk or if he had nightmares or got homesick. John didn’t miss it, but he wasn’t used to it being gone, either.

There was a fifteen planet energy-signals-worth-investigating backlog and they whipped through half in six days, sometimes two a day. It was a lot of time in the puddlejumper; Rodney was uncharacteristically quiet.
"What’s going on?" John said, one afternoon when they’d split off from Ronon and Teyla and were eating a quick lunch in the middle of a ruin that had been a huge waste of time.
"Nothing." Rodney was eating quickly, even for him, bent over, shoveling food into his mouth.
"Okay," John says.
"I should go back to MX3-526 and use the machine again," Rodney said, after a few more minutes of silent eating.
"What?"
"Do all that meditation crap this time, make it permanent."
"What are you—are you insane?" John said.
"It wouldn’t take me long to catch up on my research," Rodney said thoughtfully. "I was almost up to speed last time, and I could make up a study guide; it wouldn’t be difficult."
"You’d—go back there?"
"Yes," Rodney said loudly. "Rodney go to planet. Rodney use machine."
"Elizabeth would never let you," John said. "So forget about it."
"Why? She approves every stupid thing you want to do—"
"So you admit it’s stupid," John said. Rodney stabbed at the dregs of his MRE obstinately.
"Everyone liked me better," he said. "They’re sorry I’m back."
"No—"
"Yes—"
"So fuck them," John said. "Who cares? Some people liked me better as a bug."
"Shut up," Rodney said. "I mean it. I was—easier to work with. And Radek and I did some pretty amazing work. It is irritating to contemplate forgetting fifteen years of study, but I know I could catch up, and I had already come up with some very interesting applications of—"
"You wouldn’t be able to be Chief Science Officer."
"I don’t care."
"No."
"No, what? It’s my life—"
"I missed you," John said, devoting all of his attention to getting the packet of peach pound cake open without ripping it to shreds.
"I thought I was on your jock the whole time," Rodney said
"No," John says. He shrugged, uncomfortable. "You were gone. It was—you were dead."
"And now I’m chubby and old and I can’t synthesize new information as quickly or creatively," Rodney said. "Also, my face is really jowly. Was I this jowly before?"
"You’re not jowly," John said.
"Well, not compared to you," Rodney said, "you’ve got jowls like Huckleberry Hound."
"Thanks," John said.
"They suit you," Rodney said. His dessert was the lemon poppy-seed cake and they exchanged packets wordlessly.
"Okay," John said.
"Is this about when I tried to fuck you?" McKay said. "In college I had some, you know—" he flapped his hands vaguely, "ongoing issues—"
"McKay—"
"I slept around a lot, and I had this problem getting involved with guys who liked sluts—"
"I don't really need to—"
"You know," Rodney said. " Maybe if I went back a little further, to thirteen or fourteen—"
"Oh Christ," John said.
"And went through adolescence in a supportive environment that didn't destroy my sense of personal worth—"
"You can't become thirteen," John said loudly.
"Right; not really practical," Rodney said. "And I’d need a guardian."
"Yeah, that’s the key problem with that plan."
"Although I bet Elizabeth would do it," Rodney said. "But then I might get a crush on her, which would be kind of sick and disturbing. Since she’d be my mom, and all."

John dropped by Elizabeth’s office when they got back.
"Just so you know," he said, "Rodney might want to go back to that planet."
"I’d imagine so," Elizabeth said. "I think he was profoundly affected by his time as a younger version of himself, and I can imagine he might want to spend some time exploring—"
"I meant, he’s thinking about going back there and using the—you know, being young again."
"Oh," she said.
"But permanently."
"I see," she said.
"Yeah, FYI."
"Well, that’s—"
"If it becomes necessary, we could put him in the brig until he comes to his senses," John said helpfully.
"Mm-hmm," Elizabeth said. "Noted. If you’ll excuse me, I need to locate Zelenka and have an important discussion about desalinization tanks."

"So, hey," John said, swinging by the lab a week and a half later and finding Rodney alone, slumped over a couple of the computers in his office. "Are you almost done?"
"What’s that?" Rodney said, giving him a quick narrow glance and then tucking down again into his chair. John didn’t take it personally, he never had; you had to bring the goods to warrant Rodney’s attention.
"Because I," he said, and yanked his hand out from behind his back with a flourish, "scored this bottle of strange alien wine."
"Huh," Rodney said, staring at the bottle, which John had put down on his desk with a showy clank. "Chemistry’s two doors down."
"I planned to drink it," John said. "I thought you—we could. I have food, too. Back at my place."
"What’s going on?" Rodney said, a little suspiciously.
"Nothing," John said. "I thought we could drink the wine, hang out—"
Rodney snorted, and then said, "Oh, you’re serious."
John pushed on. "If you’re done with work, we could spend some time together, and then—mess around."
Rodney blinked. A lot. "You thought we could mess around," he said.
"If you want," John said, which he thought admirably soft-pedaled the time he’d spent contemplating screwing around with Rodney, kissing, maybe, slipping down in the couch while Rodney’s hands slid nosily beneath his shirt, letting Rodney pin him down and maybe suck his dick.
Rodney got up and closed the door to his office. Wow, John thought. Wow and okay, then. But on the other hand, the wine had cost him probably the equivalent of a week’s pay, in favors and contraband, so he couldn’t be too surprised that Rodney wanted to get right to it.
But Rodney didn’t touch him, or kiss him; he just hunched his shoulders awkwardly and said,
"Are you okay?"
"What do you mean?"
"Come on," Rodney said impatiently. Maybe, John thought suddenly, this hadn’t been the greatest idea.
"Fine," he said. "By the way, sometimes I sleep with guys."
"No kidding," Rodney said.
"And you seemed interested," John continued, doggedly.
"It’s nice to know you set the bar high," Rodney said.
"Okay, I get it, you don’t want to," John said.
"No, thank you," Rodney said.
"Right, I got it the first time."
"What, is this the first time anyone’s ever turned down a chance to bone you all night?"
"No, but—"
"Oh my god, it is," Rodney said, with some cruel glee, before sobering. "Sorry. It’s nothing personal."
John forced himself to lean back casually against the wall. Rodney was blushing.
"You never, uh, thought about it?" John said.
"Not when I was in my right mind," Rodney said crossly.
"Oh," John said.
"Yeah."
"Not even once, it never even crossed your mind?"
"You and me and a romantic evening of messing around?"
"Not like," John snapped his fingers, "what about when we’re practicing the hand-to-hand stuff?"
"You think about sex?" Rodney said, his eyes widening.
"I—yeah," John said. "I mean, in a general way, at least. You weren’t?"
"I think about not getting an elbow in the balls, thanks," Rodney said, puffing out an exasperated breath, and dropping back into a chair. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, and then leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees.
"Look, this is all very flattering," he said. "Your crush or—"
"It’s not a crush."
"I’m being serious. This doesn’t happen as often as you might expect, given the fact that my staggering intellect should be a magnet for—anyhow. You’re very—um—good-looking and intelligent—but I think that it would imperil our working relationship."
"What?"
Rodney smiled patiently. "I think it could be a bad thing for our—"
"Yeah, I know what imperil means," John snapped.
"Oh."
"What, that surprises you now?"
"Of course not—"
"Never mind," John said, pushing himself away from the wall and swiping his hand down quickly over the door mechanism. "Keep the wine."
Leaving the wine was a mistake. John jerked off roughly, alone in his quarters, fueled by fucking annoyance. He didn't mind getting turned down so much, but it was a little much how astonished Rodney had seemed, like it never occurred to him, when John had actually meant it when he said he missed him.

"Are you mad?" Rodney said, sitting down cautiously next to John in the puddlejumper the next afternoon. He had two styrofoam cups of coffee, and extended one to John, in direct violation of Zelenka's no-drinking-in-the-puddlejumpers rule. His t-shirt was snug, John could see the shadow of chest muscle, nipple; he looked away.
"Nope," he said, taking the cup.
"Okay," Rodney said. "Look, I’m thinking maybe I didn’t handle that—uh—last night as well as—"
"What, you changed your mind already?"
"I didn’t change my mind."
"Oh. You handled it fine," John said.
"Well, I—"
"I cried into my pillow all night because I was so lonely."
"Hah fucking hah," Rodney said. "My apologies for exhibiting concern for your feelings."
"Further south and we'd be in business," John said.
"Does this actually work on anyone?"
John shrugged. "If you're into jerks."
"I'm not!"
"I am," John said and smirked at Rodney until Rodney's ears went red.
"Not fair," he said. "Why do you even want to, anyhow?"
"Seems like a thing," John said. "And I already had the wine."
"Sweet talker," Rodney said.

John had never thought about fucking Rodney before, except as the vague speculation he gave to almost everyone; he'd spent more time thinking about Elizabeth, for god's sake. Elizabeth led a lot of meetings which required only his cursory attention, which meant he had given some thought to her sharp elbows and the little mole she had in the hollow of her collarbone. Now, well. He would have liked to sleep with Rodney, it was true, but from the way Rodney had started to sneak freaked-out, standoffish glances at him, he had to admit that his prospects didn't look good. It came as a surprise how disappointed he was, even after the sting of rejection wore off.
He banged a couple women instead—or, not banged, not in a disrespectful way. He just didn’t say no, when he could have, when he'd gotten used to saying no, just out of habit. The women were all beautiful and nice and he made sure they weren’t looking for a husband well in advance—this usually made them laugh a lot, and John tried not to be offended. But he had been married once before, and he had been a good husband, loved her, and came home on time as much as he could, cleaned her long, long hair out of the drain and did her taxes and slept with one hand wrapped around her, his fingers against her sternum, knuckles against the soft skin of her breasts, and it had fucked him up when she left, but eight years was long enough to be pissed off, to wonder what the fuck he'd done. Sometime in there, he'd decided to give it another go after all.
It made him irrationally cheerful, even if Rodney wouldn't fuck him, even if Rodney wasn't ever going to come around; he'd carried around the smashed up shards of his marriage around for so long that he'd never expected to start getting hopeful again.
"What," Rodney said, half a dozen times, looking suspicious. "What?"
"Nothing," John said.
"Stop comparing me," Rodney said, the seventh time.
"I told you already, I like this version better," John said. Rodney looked around the hallway anxiously, and then glared.
"I don't—I told you to knock it off," he said. "Isn't Lorne going to have to kick you out or—beat you with a sack of oranges or something—if you keep making gay advances?"
"I think we could keep it quiet enough," John said.
"Not that I'm entertaining the idea," Rodney said. "Because I'm not."
"Okay," John said.
"Because we’ll sleep together, and it’ll be great, and then after a suitable period of bliss, I’ll do something wrong, or we’ll fight, and we’ll—you’ll kick me off the team, or you won’t, but it’ll be just as bad, and—
"That’s cheerful."
"I don’t understand why people persist in being optimistic about human relationships," Rodney announced. "There is absolutely no rational basis for the sorts of assumptions that people make every day."
"It could work out," John said. "I think it could—um. work out."
"Oh, it could work out?" Rodney said. "That’s your analysis of this whole situation?"
"Yup."
"So—what, you’re an optimist now?"
"Always have been."
"Newsflash, Pollyanna," Rodney said. "Not giving a shit isn’t the same thing as optimism."
Everyone touched Rodney, all the time: Zelenka offering him a hand and yanking him upright when Rodney rolled out from underneath a console, Simpson straightening the collar on his shirt, patting it flat in back. Rodney didn't seem to notice. John tried not to touch him, but found he did it all the time, anyhow. It was hard not to remember Rodney's features as a little bit pretty, even though they weren’t especially anymore. Rodney was—broad and sharp and hard and losing his hair and touchy about it, even though the new jut of his forehead made him look smarter, less naive, and kind of fucking good.

There followed a regrettable period in which John slept with three scientists, a bounty-hunter, a princess, a mechanic, and a diplomat from Norway who was in Atlantis for the week long Daedalus turnaround, although, fortunately, not all at once. They were all pretty and smart and hot and two of the scientists didn’t count because John was the subject in a neurology experiment, running on a treadmill wearing shorts and electrodes and not much else; they were pumping a different oxygen mixture into the air which was probably the reason he ended up between the two of them, shorts around his knees, kissing one of them while breasts rubbed against his back and chest.
"Well, that was, um—" Dr. Casey said after, wiping the side of her swollen mouth with her thumb. Her hair had fallen out of her ponytail, a fuzzy mess down over her shoulders.
"Yeah," John said. "Look—"
"It's okay," Dr.—Something—the redheaded one said.
"Okay," John said, trying to be agreeable.
"How long has it been since you had any time off?" Dr. Casey said.
John shrugged. Dr. Redhead said, "Sorry about getting grabby," but she didn’t sound that sorry, even though it had hurt a little when she'd ripped off the electrodes on his chest and pushed him down on the floor.
"Look, it's fine," Dr. Casey said, tugging her shirt over her head. "It was just one of those things that—happens. Sometimes. In space. I've heard."
Dr. Redhead grinned. John smiled noncommittally, like this wasn’t the kind of thing that happened to him all the fucking time.

In between they were working hard: two and three off-world missions a week to make up for lost time, and Rodney spent every free minute he had in the lab yelling at Zelenka, who was even less fazed by it than before. Once, passing by, John even saw Miko squeeze the back of Rodney's neck proprietarily. Rodney barely noticed, but he was kind of twitchy around John, making Teyla take the front seat in the jumper, and making Ronon go with him when they split up on missions.
"Look, this only makes sense," he said. "This way we have a gene carrier with both groups, and Ronon can save me if necessary—"
"It was my idea," Ronon said.
"Hey, I can save you," John said.
"Sure," Rodney said. " But don't you think—"
"I really think I should get to be in charge of who goes where," John said. "Not to be authoritarian about it, but it is my job—"
"Of course, this way," Teyla said, smiling reassuringly back over her shoulder at the assembled group of townspeople who had showed up to see the off-worlders investigate their cave system, "if Dr. McKay and Ronon were to become captured, we would be in a much better position to rescue them."
"Well," John said.
"Can we just put Teyla in charge?" Rodney said.
"Don't think I haven't thought of it," John muttered, and then they split up and he didn’t see Rodney again for the rest of the day.

It should have been awkward but it wasn’t awkward in the way of any of John's other gay hookups, even the really awful ones where the guy at the bar turned out to be a second cousin by marriage or a commanding officer or the husband of a commanding officer or his brother's Boy Scout leader. Of course, the hookup with Rodney had never quite gotten off the ground, but he had to work so closely with Rodney that it might as well have, and so John was pleasantly surprised by how easily they fell back into their old patterns, and if Rodney was a little tentative when he called John an idiot now, like he was still coming up to speed, John could ignore it pretty easily. The only problem was that he couldn’t quite seem to stop hitting on Rodney.
The city was the size of Minneapolis, but Atlantis was still close quarters, somehow—bodies brushing in the jumper as they slid past each other, his chest slipping across Rodney's back, separated with clothes and gear, and Rodney's bare neck was still close, close. John told himself he was acclimating to Rodney's body again, its solid width, the heavy muscles of his back and thighs. It didn’t keep him up nights, but in quiet moments—well, quietish, Rodney leaning heavily against his shoulder and yelling "pull up, pull up, I said pull up, pull up." John thought about it. And the thing was—the embarrassing thing, he was starting to realize, is that he had never wanted to sleep with someone as much as he wanted to sleep with Rodney and not been able to. People didn’t turn him down. They didn’t, in general, wait for him to ask.

"What if you wanted to sleep with someone and he didn't want to?" he asked Teyla, on another mission where Rodney had buttonholed Ronon and disappeared off to a research facility, leaving Teyla and John to guard the door. Teyla considered it, staring up at the sky.
"Why doesn't he want to?" she said.
"Because he thinks it wouldn't work out," John said.
"I'm not attracted to people who let negativity cloud their thinking," Teyla said. She tucked her feet underneath her on the bench they were sharing.
"Maybe that's not the real reason," John said.
"I—if you want to know the truth," Teyla said, "I would assume that this person is not actually attracted to women."
"No, he's attracted to women," John insisted. "Very attracted. To you, in fact."
Teyla frowned. "Is this a riddle?"
"What—no," John said. "What, no one ever turned you down before?"
"I—no," Teyla said, and then gave him a smile that would have been sheepish on anyone else.
"Oh," John said. He didn’t have the nerve to bring it up with Ronon, so he was stuck, touching Rodney a little too much, pressed tightly shoulder to hip to thigh on benches and couches across the galaxy.

When they were breaking up with him, or just pissed off at him for something, women always told John that he didn’t even like women; this wasn’t true. John liked women just fine—he liked having sex with them, and he liked working with them, and he loved Teyla, and even Elizabeth a little, after the first year, when she was more like a part of his family than his boss. He’d never really been dumped by a guy, though, so maybe they'd say the same thing. John liked people, but dealing with them was a strain; he'd gotten to the point of being able to crank out a halfway decent pep-talk out of necessity, although he'd always offload it onto Lorne or Elizabeth if he could get away with it. That wasn’t being bad with people, but knowing your strengths. John had been bad at things his whole life: too short for football and too quiet in class, the wrong size for helicopters, shit at taking orders, too much of a smartass, too weird, too pretty, and all it had done was make him stubborn. Most of the things he'd done had worked out pretty well in the end, so he figured he just had to keep trying, with people, with sex, with Rodney.
He took a lot of breaks, though, because trying to fuck Rodney was a lot of work; it was hard to fit it in between two to five missions a week, training, office hours (Elizabeth's idea, mandatory, 2 hours a week), Ops and Staff meetings and daily rundown with Lorne, and that was a week without emergencies, invasions, attacks or epidemics of the Pegasus flu. John took his stress relief where he could get it.

The Jemardith ambassador was on Atlantis for a week, and her aide really wanted to fuck John.
"You're going to sleep with her?" Rodney said, snuffling miserably into his handkerchief. The Flu had hit him bad this year. John would have felt sorry for him except that Rodney was being feverish and contagious right next to him.
"Yeah, I'm going to sleep with her," he said. She was pretty, and really pushy, and John had developed a new appreciation for people who seemed thrilled about him. "I'm going to fuck the shit out of her."
"That's classy," Rodney said.
"Look, the offer's still open," John said. "I don't steal the covers, I shower often, I like to make out—"
"Maybe I'm just not that interested in having a secret relationship," Rodney said, as coolly as possible for someone whose nose was badly chapped.
"Could be," John said.
He had sex with her three times, on two consecutive nights; it was pretty good. She was nice, and John tucked in and slept over the second night, without asking, just in case she said no. He didn’t really understand why Rodney would avoid having someone to sleep with, unless it was personal, unless Rodney just didn’t want him, but he knew that wasn’t true. It was obvious, in the labored, careful way he turned John down, every time, in the way he sometimes avoided looking at John's chest or hips or shoulders, or, John had extrapolated, his ass, that he did want John, very much.
Sometimes John even believed it.

Rodney got shot the next time they went on a mission; it wasn't serious, but John's gut still leapt into his throat when he saw Rodney twist and stumble as they ran for the gate. They made it through the gate, and Rodney didn't need much more than a bandaid in the infirmary.
"Crap," he said, sticking his fingers through the ragged hole in his sleeve, "I liked that coat."
"Are you in shock?" John said. "Is he in shock?"
"I'm fine," Rodney said. "I might freak out later, though, right?"
"You might at that," Carson said, and stuck on one of the Cookie Monster bandaids they kept around for the Athosian kids.
John went by Rodney's quarters, later, in case he was freaking out, and when Rodney wasn't there, dropped by the lab. Rodney was sitting at his desk, feet propped up, a tumbler with a thick two inches of Athosian-distilled grain alcohol—bittersweet, pale amber—sweating on his desk. He looked all right, from the back, but from the tilt of his shoulders, John could see that he was exhausted, probably more than a little drunk, but still intent, staring quietly at the contents of the folder in his lap.
"Hey," John said, leaning down over his shoulder. Usually Rodney’s research was only so much more gibberish to him, but now and again there was something cool, some puddlejumper modification, or the month and a half Rodney spent trying to develop a shrink-ray, but this time it was grainy eight and a half by eleven photographs of him fucking Casey and Dr. Redhead, whose name, John had found out, was Alice Merbassian.
Rodney let out a shocked breath and half-fell out of his chair, trying to stuff the photographs back into the folder.
"What—" John said. Rodney fumbled with the photographs, but they had been fanned out across his lap, a few tipped precariously against Rodney’s desk, and there were a lot of them. Almost slowly, the stack slid to the floor between them, fluttering a little in the draught from the heating vent, one of them skating over the toe of John’s boot. They were numbered and timestamped, and John was bare-assed naked except for the electrode cap, the leads on his chest and back and thighs. "How did you get those?" John said.
"They’re data," Rodney said, shoving the four photographs he still had back into the folder.
"Confidential—"
"I’m the Chief Science Officer," Rodney said. "You fucked in a science lab; you know I oversee all the experiments done here—"
"Those are—"
"within my purview," Rodney said. "You think they didn’t need my approval to conduct their stupid investigation into what an effing stallion in the sack John Sheppard is—which, by the way, violates about fifty experimental design guidelines? You should thank me for bumping Kellog’s zero-G cardiac stress thing so you could get some tail."
"So you could spy on me," John said.
"You were the one who donated your body for science," Rodney said. "Did you think no one was going to look at the data?"
"I thought—" John’s throat was tight with anger or humiliation, and the worst part of it was that the thought of Rodney sitting alone in his office staring at the photographs sent a thick scuttle of excitement up his spine; more than he had ever felt during the actual sex.
"I’m pretty drunk," Rodney said after a minute. His voice was perfectly even. "I’m sorry. I was curious. And I got shot."
"But you don’t want—" John said. There was a way to make this turn out right, to flip it over and take advantage of it, but he couldn’t quite see it.
"I'm sorry," Rodney said. "I—I’ll just clean these up and lose them in an accident and we’ll never speak of it again. I just, I still—" he crouched and started scraping the photographs towards him, and John stepped on the nearest one and made Rodney tug against it.
"You still what?"
"Nothing," Rodney muttered. "I mean. Why do you keep—doing this?"
"Because I like to have sex," John said. "I was up front about wanting to nail you, but you weren't—you wouldn't. So."
"But you want to nail everybody."
"Shut up," John said. "You know you're fucking special or—you know. Whatever."
"Uh, okay," Rodney said, sarcastically, and John said,
"Yup," and left.

John cooled off pretty fast; he wasn’t even really mad by the time he got back to his room, but he milked it for a few days in case Rodney felt really sorry about it. Rodney actually did look a little contrite, and went out of his way to be cautiously conciliatory.
"This isn't easy for me," Rodney said, finally, at breakfast, when Teyla and Ronon were somewhere else. "You're my—my friend. We're friends, right?"
"Yeah."
"So—can you give me a break?"
"Yeah," John said, although wasn’t too sure what Rodney was talking about. All the come-ons, he guessed, and knocked it off. He fucked someone a couple missions later, and Rodney seemed to relax a little after that.

"Ever feel like your personal life is—" John took a huge bite of cookie, chewing until he got the right word, "complex?"
Teyla looked at him carefully, but then nodded readily enough. "I assume we are talking about interpersonal romantic relationships?" she said.
"What? Not necessarily."
"I do not care how many people you bang," she said.
"You shouldn't say bang," John said.
Teyla rolled her eyes. "Of course I would not say it to anyone you have banged," she said. "Although, of course, my chances of seeing them are very slim. One might even say non-existent."
"Are you implying something?"
"I am only implying that there are several confused Athosian men whom I have banged," Teyla said. "Whom I must often see. And have conversations with. And I begin to very much admire your methods."
"Um, but—"
"Ronon disapproves, if that helps," Teyla said, taking another cookie, her fourth.
"Not really," John said. Teyla nodded. "Look, I do the best I can," John said. He watched a bunch of movies to keep himself out of trouble.

He started to feel a little bit bad about it—or, no, he didn’t. The women he met were nice, yes, sweet and sometimes funny, but they were using him for cheap sex. Some guy with a gun on your planet for a half day wasn’t much of a long-term prospect, and no one ever pretended it was. Maybe it was a little depressing, John admitted to himself, just about the time he was kissing Nonnie Kalro on her butter yellow couch in her rooms on Sfroda and she smiled at him and said,
"This must happen to you often."
"Yeah, kind of."
"Me as well," she said happily, and bit his neck.
Sfroda was in the middle of an industrial revolution, had pretty decent shield technology and waffles. They even had television, as John discovered when he got back to the room he was sharing with Rodney in the diplomatic quarters and found Rodney watching him fucking Nonnie on the 8x10 screen built into the foot of his bed.
"Jesus Christ," John said.
"Oh, shit," Rodney said, shoving himself up on his elbows, giving John a wild-eyed guilty look. It wasn’t very good picture—black and white and grainy, in long focus, with plenty of pillows and vases and flower arrangements in the way. Still.
"Are you drunk again?"
"No," Rodney mumbled.
"Well, can you stop watching me have sex, then?" John said.
"I don’t."
"This is the second time in three fucking weeks," John said.
"I couldn't figure out how to turn it off," Rodney said sulkily, punching randomly at a few buttons in the remote and rewinding—accidentally, John thought—to the bit where Nonnie said,
"You can do it in my ass," and John said, sounding resigned,
"Yeah, okay." The audio was excellent.
"Give me that," John said, and yanked the remote out of Rodney's hand. He couldn’t get it to turn off either, but he managed to mute it, and then threw a blanket across the screen.
"Okay," Rodney said. "I probably should have thought of that."
"Yeah," John said, and leaned down to take off his boots. There was an empty bowl with salt crusted in the bottom on the bedside table between the beds. "Were you eating snacks while you were watching me have sex?" he said.
"Look," Rodney said. "I'm sorry. I just—I'm interested in your fucking unbelievable life. It’s a clinical, scientific interest. If I were you, I wouldn't bother to put my pants on in the morning."
"Yeah, my life is great." John said, dumping some water into the basin on the table next to the bed and scrubbing off his hands and face. He had cleaned up in Nonnie’s room, so it was mostly an excuse to press the heels of his hands hard into his closed eyes until sparks were roiling, seasick, behind his eyelids, and Rodney obligingly shut up.
He flicked off the light on the bedside table between them and lay down, willed himself to sleep. It wasn’t dark, exactly; the honored-guest quarters looked down over the capital city with its network of newly installed phosphorus lights, which cast an eerie greenish light across the ceiling. John closed his eyes; he was restless, like the sex never happened, and it bothered him, like always, how wrong his voice sounded on recordings, flat and strange and higher than he expected.
"It wasn't even a big thing for you when I wanted to fuck you, was it," Rodney said quietly, into the silence.
"When did that happen?" John said.
"You know, when I was—" Rodney said. "It happens to you all the time."
"No," John said. "No, it wasn’t a big thing."
"Yeah, I thought not," Rodney said, tightly. He sounded pretty miserable, which made John want to apologize and pissed him off at the same time.
"Don't—will you stop being an asshole?" John said. He sat up, but he couldn’t see much, and Rodney was a shadowy greenish lump, five feet away. "I'm sorry I keep having sex with people in front of you, and I wish you'd stop watching."
"Oh."
"Because I'm getting some mixed signals," John said.
"Yeah, like what?"
"Well, you tried to bang me a bunch of times—"
"Doesn't count—"
"And then there were the naked pictures."
"This isn't my fault," Rodney said. "I'm not doing it on purpose."
"Okay," John said.
"I'm sorry," Rodney said. He took a quick breath, and when he spoke again his voice was heavy, unwilling. "I just. you know. I want to fuck you—I mean. Make—make love to you?"
"Um, what?" John said.
"Oh my god," Rodney said faintly. "This was a really bad idea."
"I thought you didn’t want." John swallows, and makes himself say, evenly, "I thought you weren’t interested."
"Why’s that?"
"You said no," John said. "A bunch of times."
"I said I thought it would imperil our working relationship," Rodney said. He struggled up out of the covers and thumped on the light, "That’s not the same thing as—I don’t even understand how you could think—"
"I thought you were being nice," John said. Rodney was facing him, so John swung his legs over the edge of the bed, too, relieved he hadn't bothered to take off his pants. "letting me down easy."
"You thought I was being nice," Rodney said, at the top of his lungs. "Because that’s pretty much how old Rodney is at all times. Nice. Caring, even, one might say. Careful of delicate feelings."
"You do okay," John said.
"No. I don’t. It’s just that all you assholes think—I know what you think," Rodney said savagely. His voice was angry, but his face just looked tired and sad. "You think I’m lovable."
"No," John said, lying.
"Don’t," Rodney said. "I can tell it’s true, I was there, I remember the way you looked at me, and I’m not, I’m not someone’s little puppy, I’m not lovable. I destroy solar systems and drive people to suicide with offhand remarks—or, well, the guy didn’t actually manage to commit suicide, and was, you know, pretty emotionally disturbed before even taking my seminar, but the point still stands."
"You won’t sleep with me because you’re not lovable?"
"Right," Rodney said. "And you're an idiot. And you probably have Space HPV."
"I don't have space HPV," John said.
"Well, seventy percent of the population has—
"Okay, you know what?" John said. He knew he should probably keep his voice down, but fuckit. "You were cute. You were Bambi-cute, with your pretty eyelashes and your sexy mouth and your ‘oh, Colonel Sheppard, please make a man out of me—‘ and—"
"What? Eyelashes? What? I never said that."
"Close enough," John said.
"If you wanted to fuck me, you should have done it then." <