Three Fates, post 5/36
Previous post: go to 4/36
Three Fates
Author: auburnnothenna & eretria
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Size: ~ 6617 words
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Rising, Before I Sleep, The Brotherhood, The Defiant One, Hot Zone, The Siege I, II & III, Trinity
Disclaimer: Not ours, not profiting, written for entertainment purposes alone.
Characters: Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Atlantis
Genre: AU, polyamorous
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard, McKay/Sheppard/Atlantis, McKay/Weir/Sheppard, Sheppard/Atlantis
Summary: "Worst case scenario?"
"We tear a hole in the fabric of the universe."
Trinity
There was no rational way to handle this.
Previous post: 4/36
"What the hell?"
Manarea is not what John expected.
Manarea is empty, grassy plains stretching as far as he can see. He stops barely two steps beyond the stargate. Rodney runs into him, a warm bump that makes John take another step forward, before he turns around. There's nothing on the other side of the stargate either, just more rolling grassland and distant, mauve-shaded mountains.
Rodney has a life-sign detector out and is slowly turning in a circle, his head bent to watch the read-out. His hair looks lighter in the bright sunlight. John's hand on his P90 tightens against the urge to reach out and ruffle it with his fingers. Rodney hasn't said a word about what passed between them. He's beginning to think Rodney is pretending it didn't happen because he hated it.
John's not sure what he'll feel if that's the case. Regret, because he won't be able to erase his own feelings or the things he's realized. Regret, because his friendship with Rodney will be damaged. A slow, deep sorrow if he hurt Rodney. That most of all.
The sun that's shining off Rodney's hair and already pinking the skin at the back of his neck is pouring warmth and light onto John's shoulders. He stretches, soaking it up, because Atlantis under the sea offers no real day or night, no sunshine, and his body craves the light. For a moment, he lifts his face to the sun, the life-giving sun, the goddess in the sky, and savors the feel of it heating his cheeks, glowing red-gold through his closed eyelids.
Afterimages linger so that he blinks at Rodney in the next moment, unsure what he sees on Rodney's face. Rodney's lips are parted and he's frowning, but there was something else. It disappears before John can interpret it.
"Colonel?"
"Christ, Rodney, I think you can use my name at this point," John snaps, despite himself.
Rodney purses his lips, looking thoughtful, then nods.
Far above them, in the azure arch of the sky, a copper-feathered raptor calls, distant as a dream, a grace note in the quiet of wind-shushed grass.
"So, what do you think happened here?" John asks. "Where are the people?"
Rodney checks his life-sign detector again. "Not here, obviously." His lips purse. "Or not here yet. Remember, planetary populations are almost nomadic in Pegasus, Col - Sheppard. Not all of them, obviously, but maybe the Manareans haven't even come here yet."
They're in the past. It's easy to forget that, even after returning to Doranda and its winter-cold ruins, because Atlantis is unchanging.
"We're here. We should look around," John says. The emptiness gets to him. There's not much to choose from in any direction.
Rodney looks at him. "Why?"
"Are you ready to go back? Because we'll have to figure out some other place to try for supplies now."
John watches Rodney as he tucks the life-sign detector back in his tac vest. "Whatever you say."
"Just a short hike," he promises. He picks a direction and points, indicating a distant stone outcropping. They'll be able to see more from its vantage.
Rodney rolls his eyes, but falls into step with John. Their strides match without effort, grass swishing around their calves, a smell that is dust and green, sun and pollen, tickling at John's nose. A trickle of sweat runs down his back and he relaxes into the rhythm of walking. He notices that Rodney is right at his shoulder, the way they've always been, and that's a good sign.
There's more than one kind of grass growing on the plain, once John starts paying a little attention. Some of it has already gone yellow and dry, almost crackling under their boots. Tougher plants are still green, shades of dusty jade, and there are flowers poking bright, determined heads above the long blades of fading grass.
"Do we always have to walk up hill?" Rodney asks.
"Why, yes, we do," John replies, suddenly happy. At least Rodney is speaking to him. "But at least it will be down hill going back to the stargate." He slants a glance at Rodney, who looks sulky and very Rodney, which John has always enjoyed.
"With our luck, we'll be running for our lives. Tell me again, why no jumper?"
"The Manareans had buildings too close to the gate to clear the jumper," John explains.
Rodney snorts.
"Yes, I noticed the incredible urban density."
John folds his arms over the butt of his P90. "Hey. They did have buildings. Or they do. Will." He grimaced. "Something."
Rodney waves his hand. "No, no, I realize, we're working from outdated information, or rather information that isn't yet valid. This sucks. We need information that's current."
John nods, agreeing. "The AI should have something that's a little closer to the situation as it is now."
Rodney stops.
"You're not going to get in that chair again, are you?"
"Why not?"
"Because - because - because it's dangerous!"
"Rodney," he says softly, "this is dangerous. Everything is now. Everything always was. You know that."
Rodney closes his eyes briefly, then nods. "Okay. Let's just, let's just go, climb up your rock and then go back ho - back to Atlantis."
¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦
The rock is at least three times John's height and more a cluster of boulders, slowly eroding away earth, tossed down like giants' dice by some age-old flood. The stone is crumbly, orange-tan, bright specks of something like quartz caught in the matrix. Plants have colonized the cracks and crevices, slowly levering them wider with each season. The surface flakes away under John's hands and feet, gritty earth working its way under his fingernails, but it's easy climbing, and Rodney scrambles to the top just behind him.
From the top they can see farther across the plain, to where a river meanders, an aimless twist of richer green many miles away. The stargate is the only sign of civilization or any human presence anywhere within sight. A haze of brown to the south resolves into a vast herd of grazing animals when John uses his binoculars. There are several somethings with six legs and a predator's slink shadowing the herd.
"Well?" Rodney demands. "Are you satisfied?"
"Yeah, I am."
John seats himself on the edge of the rock. Pop, rustle, pounce, somewhere in the crevices a bird or insect or rodent moves, disturbed by their presence. He pulls out his water bottle and sips. Rodney's shadow falls over his legs. He rests the water bottle on his knee and trails his other hand over the leaves of a small, stubborn plant clinging to the rock beside his thigh. The leaves are heart-shaped and a little fleshy, the color of faded sage, covered with long, silky white hairs that give it a frosted appearance. The scent that rises from it is reminiscent of marjoram but softer.
Rodney seats himself next to John, tac vest shifting with a nylon sound and a muffled tink from a zip tab tapping against black painted metal teeth.
John rubs his thumb back and forth over one of the heart-shaped leaves, not hard enough to harm it, an absent movement as he stares out over the plain to the cold curve of the stargate. The leaf feels velvety.
"Don't do that," Rodney snaps suddenly.
John twitches, but doesn't shift. "Do what?"
"That! Touch that. It could be the Pegasus version of poison ivy or something worse," comes the answer and when John looks, Rodney is staring down at his thumb brushing over the heart-shaped leaf. John can see the pulse at Rodney's neck, fast, and he's flushed. John wants it to mean something, but knows it could be the heat.
"It's harmless."
Rodney lifts his eyes and glares at John. "You're doing that just to torture me."
"I wasn't," John replies. He brushes his thumb over the leaf again.
"You are!"
He shrugs and lifts his hand away.
They sit in silence after that, because neither of them feels like starting back yet. One of the rock pile's denizens finally ventures into the open again. Another hexaped, this one the size of a marmot and with a squirrel tail equipped with dark brown spines, it lifts its upper body and first two feet up to peer around. It sees them when Rodney shifts and his boot scrapes over the rock. It freezes.
"Shoo," Rodney says quietly.
The little animal dashes back into one of the shadowed crevices, uttering sharp little aggrieved barks all the way. John chuckles. Rodney lets out a little puff of air that isn't quite a laugh.
John offers him the water bottle and Rodney takes it silently. His throat works as he swallows and John's eyes are drawn to the movement of Rodney's Adam's apple and the shadow of beard just under his jaw. He wants to brush the pad of his thumb over the skin just there and feel the sandpaper crisp texture of Rodney's beard coming in. It's not a thought he let himself have ever before. It's not even really sexual. John likes to touch things, to ground himself in their reality, and he wants to reassure himself that Rodney is here, beside him.
Rodney's holding the bottle out when John drags his eyes back up, watching John watch him. It makes John swallow hard. He takes back the water bottle and finishes the lukewarm contents off, licking a stray drop from his lip after he swallows. Rodney's back is angled toward him, stiff-shouldered, when John finishes.
"The Great Plains must have been like this once," Rodney observes. "Before the Europeans arrived."
John stands up and scans the horizon, noting the soft dust haze where the herd of grazers are, the wave-like ripple of the grasses, and the stillness that seems to press down on them like the vast weight of the blue sky. "Yes," he says at last. It's just the two of them and he can feel just how huge a world is, not just another country or continent, but an entire planet circling a different sun in a different galaxy. The wonder of it fills his chest, even after what has happened, what they've seen and done. He says it again, smiling, because it is so amazing and beautiful: "Yes."
He turns back and offers his hand to Rodney, pulling him to his feet, too.
"Time to go back, right?" Rodney says. He doesn't pull his hand away from John's.
"I guess so."
"No one to trade with, no supplies."
"Unless I shoot one of those grazers," John says with nod toward the distant herd.
"You'd probably start a stampede and get us both trampled."
John laughs, agreeing. Besides, he really doesn't want to gut and skin something or carry a still bloody carcass back to the stargate. He never was into hunting for sport. Though Elizabeth's reaction when he dumped it on the gate room floor would be funny, in a 'my God, you Neanderthal goon' way.
"You have a twisted sense of humor," Rodney says as they scramble down off the rock pile.
"Must be why you like me," John replies.
"Who says I like you?"
John bumps his shoulder into Rodney's. "I do."
"You're certifiable."
They walk toward the stargate at an easy pace, stripped down to T-shirts under their tac vests. John's more attuned now and he hears the contented hum of insects in the grass, undisturbed by his and Rodney's passage. The call of the raptor he saw earlier draws his attention back to the sky, always the sky, a high sharp skreeling cry that accompanies the stoop and strike that ends in an explosion of fur and fluttering feathers. The bird labors back into the sky, its kill clutched in bloodied talons. It makes John's breath catch, the speed and perfect precision of it.
"It must have been falling over three hundred kilometers per hour," Rodney comments.
"Nearly vertical," John says. He relives in his mind's eye the way the raptor folded its wings, shaping its body into a streamlined bullet as it dived from sky to earth. "It must have pulled over twenty Gs when it struck. Fast as a peregrine."
John picks his way off the course they've set to where the kill was made and plucks up one copper-sheened feather, imagining that the sensation of free flight still sings through it into his fingertips. God, to fly like that.
He walks back to where Rodney is waiting, taking his time, twirling the feather between his fingers, admiring the bars of darker bronze on it, because truthfully he's in no hurry to return to Atlantis, beautiful and fascinating as she may be. Atlantis is crystal and steel and the memory of everyone they've lost. Every breath in Atlantis tastes of salt. He isn't eager to take Rodney back, either. Rodney isn't flinching at unseen things here, isn't cowed and bent under the crushing weight of guilt.
It's probably getting to Elizabeth, too. She's stuck in the city, confined by their mutual agreement that someone has to stay behind, to raise and lower the gate shield, to eventually use one of the stasis pods - stasis pods that the city must have, though they haven't found them yet - and rotate the city ZPMs the same way the first Elizabeth from the timeline that drowned did. John hates waiting and he can't imagine doing what Elizabeth is doing. It would drive him mad.
The feather goes into a pocket and he detours to the side and plucks up a wild flower on impulse, a daisy-like fan of white petals around a yellow and purple center. Two and then three more join it in his hand, then a spike of cone-shaped red flowers, a half dozen drooping golden bells, and something that looks like larkspur.
In one of his moments of surprising awareness, Rodney says, "She'll like those."
John ducks his head, looking down at the posy in his hand, feeling his cheeks and the tips of his ears flush. "It's not - here, you can give them to her," he blurts, shoving the flowers to Rodney. Rodney backs away, holding up his hands.
"What? Are you trying to give me an asthma attack? I could be allergic, you know."
John shrugs, immediately backing off. "Whatever you say, Rodney."
"So, are you a-courtin' Elizabeth?" Rodney asks, with just a trace of snide disbelief in his tone.
John looks at the flowers again, already bruised and wilting, and sighs. "No." It was just a thought, to bring back something from this mission, to make Elizabeth smile. He's usually awkward as hell if he tries to be romantic. It's embarrassing; he feels like a fake.
"So you wouldn't give me a flower?"
They've reached the DHD. John leans against it, while Rodney dials. Rodney's hands move over the chevron emblems, as assured with the Ancient technology as John's are on the stick of a helo or an F-302. They're broad hands, big and amazingly deft. Always in motion, like Rodney's mind, finger snapping, pointing, waving, mesmerizing John, making him smile.
"You'd sneeze and complain if I did," John tells Rodney as the lights sweep around the periphery of the ring and the wormhole initializes, whoosh, then settles into its placid blue ripple. The blue light throws an odd double shadow of Rodney's absurdly thick eyelashes over his cheekbones. It reflects in Rodney's eyes.
"Yes, well, that isn't the point, is it?" Rodney replies.
John's radio crackles.
"Colonel Sheppard?"
"Lower the shield, Elizabeth. We're ready to come back," he transmits.
"Were you able to obtain any supplies?"
"That would be a big no," Rodney says.
John arches his brows.
"Tell me about it when you get back here."
"On our way," John says.
He stops Rodney with a hand to his shoulder.
"What?"
John plucks the copper feather from his pocket and tucks the shaft into the top pocket of Rodney's tac vest, like a flower in a button hole. "There."
¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦
Rodney isn't sure what to make of Sheppard's gesture. It's a feather, but he saw how Sheppard watched the hawk or whatever it was, like it was glory. He isn't sure of too many things, but he still feels better than he has a right to as they step through the wormhole and back into Atlantis. They didn't find the Manareans, they didn't manage to trade for any supplies, but no one shot at them. A useless waste of time, he might have thought once, but it felt like being able to breathe again. And Sheppard smirked and smiled and there was life in his eyes.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, looks strained. Her eyes dart from Sheppard to Rodney and back, looking for damage. The tight set of her mouth and shoulders only loosens as she takes in that they're both all right.
He can feel his own muscles tightening up. If he lifts his gaze to the control room, he's knows he'll see Edwards and Zhang consulting over the dialing console, shades oblivious to the fact that they're gone, never were or not yet. Rodney doesn't let himself look up.
"Was there a problem?" Elizabeth asks.
"No problem, except there was no one there," Sheppard explains. "It looks like the Manareans haven't arrived on that planet yet." He shrugs and smiles at her, pulling the wildflowers from behind his back. "Nothing but grass, really. Flowers. Here."
Elizabeth looks startled as she takes them. She bends her face over the flowers, holding them in both hands. The colors reflect against her skin. "Oh." The pleasure that blooms over her features makes Rodney give Sheppard a look, wondering how it feels to make someone that happy with such an easy, stupid gesture. Sheppard's head is tipped to the side and his eyes are distant, his attention obviously somewhere else.
If Rodney concentrates, he can almost feel it, too, the hum that is Atlantis. He thinks it's happy Sheppard's back.
Elizabeth is still smiling, still holding the flowers, but she is all business, too.
"So there's no opportunity for trade there at all?"
"None," Rodney says.
"We could go back and do some hunting." Sheppard's expression gives away his reluctance.
They start up the stairs together.
"We need to go over our options again, gentlemen," Elizabeth tells them. "Let's walk and talk."
Sheppard pauses with his foot on the first step. He stretches. "You want to let Rodney and me clean up first? We did a little hiking before calling it quits back there."
"A little hiking, he calls it," Rodney mutters."My blisters have blisters."
"Baby," Sheppard laughs. The sound is startling, but welcome.
Rodney opens his mouth to protest and Elizabeth forestalls him, saying, "Go on, both of you, you smell." She's smiling again, amused by them, it seems.
"Hey!" he and Sheppard both protest, but it's true, they are sweaty and grimy, stuck in the same uniforms they've had to wash and keep wearing since arriving.
"Meet me in the fourth level common room," Elizabeth tells them, "when you're both presentable."
"Good thing she didn't say decent," Sheppard remarks as he and Rodney step into the transporter. He taps the destination and they're not for less than a second, then the doors open again on the corridor their rooms are on. The lights are already on for them. "You really have blisters?" He sounds concerned.
"No, but my feet are tired," Rodney admits. "Like the rest of me."
"We're out of shape. We've been lolling around Atlantis too long."
"Lolling?" Rodney can't help repeating. Sulking, hiding, having nervous breakdowns, yes. He didn't notice any lolling. That's just outrageous and utterly typical of Sheppard.
"Lolling," Sheppard drawls, as though he's enjoying the word.
"Insane," Rodney says as he reaches his door and it opens.
"Lolling," Sheppard repeats once more, ambling toward his own door. Rodney stands there and watches him until he disappears with a nonchalant wave.
"Insane," he mutters to himself.
Rodney contemplates the feather as he strips and heads for the shower. Was it just Sheppard being playful or did it mean more? He sets the feather on the table next to his bed. It seems to glow there, perfect in a way that Atlantis can never be, imbued with the memory of Sheppard's fingers spinning it and giving it to him, with that speculative look in his bright eyes.
The shower is a sybaritic experience. Hot water, just exactly right, just the right pressure, and it comes from three sides of the stall, angling in response to his will, squirting out something the Ancients used for soap when he thinks about it, that foams and smells not really like anything he could name, but good and clean. He leans back against one slick wall with his face raised, eyes closed, into the warm spray. The water hits his shoulders harder, like a massage, and gentler in front, feeling good enough his dick wakes up.
He looks down, blinking water off his lashes, and considers it: sliding his hand down his chest, over the hair matted down and running with water, playing with his nipples maybe, then reaching down and taking his dick in his hand. It's not really an urgent need, just a pleasant awareness of the weight between his legs and the familiar possibility. Jerking off in the shower is something he's done since he realized during puberty that he could, back when taking the edge off was a necessity if he didn't want to embarrass himself with a hard-on during class.
It's tempting, because he hasn't, not once since Arcturus. The only time he's got off was with Sheppard's hand on him and he's really been trying to not think about that. But if he closes his eyes and just does it, he's going to fall into one of the old fantasies, maybe the one with Sam Carter in the shower with him, wet and shining, with her blond hair dark and sleeked over her head, that was a good one, a gold standard really. But Sam's gone and it isn't the same, he can't, it would be like necrophilia, and the only people he can imagine now are Sheppard and Elizabeth.
God, it's not like it's hard to fantasize about either of them. They're both beautiful. The water slicks down his arms and legs and he pictures Elizabeth and Sheppard, both graceful and naked, in the shower with him. He snaps his eyes open, but it's no good, he's picturing Sheppard now, lithe and lanky and aroused, touching Elizabeth, licking water droplets from her nipples. His dick twitches, swelling, and Rodney catches his breath and flattens one hand against the wall behind him. He gives in to the fantasy and slides his palm down his length, stroking himself, imagining sinking into Elizabeth's heat with Sheppard pressed up behind him, touching him too. His breath saws in and out and he reaches down and cradles his testicles, rolling them gently, while in his mind Sheppard's mouth is hot against the back of his neck and Elizabeth's small breasts are flattened against his chest. He gasps and comes in a rush.
He should probably feel guilty, but his body is too relaxed and happy.
He finishes washing up and retrieves his clothes from the automatic cleaner, dressing again and heading for the common room next to a small kitchen they've taken over rather than use the conference room. If Rodney had to guess, he'd say the place was the Ancients' version of a café, but he really has no idea. It has couches, tables and chairs and the windows close over with color-patterned sliding shutters that let them ignore the deep, shielded darkness outside the tower.
Elizabeth's already there when he arrives and Rodney's face burns. He can't quite meet her eyes, flashes of his fantasy are ambushing him as he sneaks looks at her. Elizabeth is lovely and part of him wonders if she looks like he imagined. The rest of him is just grateful she can't read his mind.
"Rodney, are you all right? You're red."
"Just, uhm, just showered." He stumbles over 'shower' and waves a hand, "Hot. Hot shower. You know." God. He covers his face briefly. "I'm tired."
Sheppard saunters in, providing a blessed distraction, hair spiky and still damp. He smiles at Rodney and then Elizabeth with lazy good humor. Rodney's breath hitches and he wonders exactly what Sheppard would have done if he had walked in and joined him in the shower in reality instead of a fantasy. He almost thinks Sheppard would smile at him - there's a feather on his bedside table - but he's not brave enough to risk it. He's not taking a chance with their friendship, not presuming that what happened once was more than a one-off, a desperate move by Sheppard to snap him out of a panic attack. Something that would never have happened under any other circumstances.
"Elizabeth," Sheppard greets her. "Rodney."
"Gentlemen, we need to put together a plan."
"I need something to eat and soon," Rodney announces.
"No kidding." Sheppard drops onto one of the off-white couches and sprawls, stretching his legs out before him, hooked at the ankles. Elizabeth's sitting at a table with her PDA in front of her and a stylus she found somewhere in her hand. A tall drinking glass filled with water holds the wildflowers, positioned on the table where she can look at them. Rodney decides a couch looks much more inviting than the table and claims one opposite Sheppard. Sheppard grins at him, but it's not the incandescent one, because even a shower and cleaning his clothes hasn't erased the tired shadows. He didn't stop to shave, either. "We need better intel. Everything we know is out of date," he says.
"We need to figure out where we are in regards to the Wraith culling cycles, too," Rodney adds, because it occurred to him that a dart could have gated through and scooped them up snap back on Manarea. It makes him sweat, thinking of being out in the open like that, in retrospect.
"Exactly." Elizabeth is making notes.
Sheppard leans back and offers, "Maybe we should stick to planets where we can take the jumper through the gate."
"Good idea, but we don't know what planets those are, other than the ones with orbital gates."
Elizabeth taps her stylus against the table, looking at Sheppard thoughtfully. His eyebrows go up. "Something?"
"Could you disengage some of the gene associated security protocols on the database?"
Sheppard frowns and slowly shakes his head. "Some of it, maybe, but a lot of it is hardwired, just so it can't be hacked or changed by someone under duress, you know?" He shrugs, apparently over the Ancients' paranoia. "I could get everything we need from Atenë, if I used the chair again."
"What?" Rodney jolts fully upright and points right at Sheppard. "Oh, no. No, you are not database diving with little Miss Artificial Intelligence again," he snaps. He turns a glare on Elizabeth. "You did not see him. He was having seizures."
"Atenë had to adapt some of the protocols. I've got the gene, but my physiology is still human. The Ancients weren't exactly the same."
"Seizures, Col - Sheppard."
Sheppard rolls his eyes. "John. It's John, okay? Rodney. And it wouldn't be like that again."
"No, no, and no again."
"Rodney, I'm sure John knows what he's doing and we need the information the AI can provide, as well as convincing it to let me use some of the city equipment. Try to remember how frustrating life was before you had the gene therapy." Elizabeth is being soothing again. "John, I thought you said the AI was shut down."
Rodney folds his arms over his chest and slumps back. "Bad idea. I'm telling you, it's a bad idea."
"You'll be right there, Rodney, won't you?" Sheppard says, sounding oh so reasonable. "You got me out of it before. I know you can do it again."
"Not good enough."
"John, about the AI - "
"Atenë," he corrects her impatiently. "I said it wouldn't happen again and it won't, Elizabeth. She knows your biosignature now. I don't think she can be shut down, actually. It's more like she goes to sleep if there's no one to interact with for too long. Other than that, you'd have to destroy her memory matrices and that would cripple the city."
"Interesting," Elizabeth comments, "but not something we want to do, is it?"
"Hardly," Rodney agrees. "I still say Sheppard using the chair is dangerous."
Sheppard catches his eye. "I trust you."
He blurts, "Why? Why, after - "
"Because I choose to, okay?" Sheppard answers. He shrugs again and settles deeper into the couch.
He's afraid to look at Elizabeth, of what her expression might say, because it might ruin this moment. "I - That's - " Rodney scrubs at his face with his hand. "Thank you." Then he frowns at Sheppard. "Are you trying to sweet talk me? Because I still say it's a bad idea."
"I think it might be the best solution," Elizabeth says.
"I'm okay with it."
"Oh, of course, you're okay with it. You were like someone who just had their first hit of heroin! Now you want to do it again."
"Rodney, you're making a big deal out of nothing." Sheppard's looking mulish and irritated.
"Right, tell me that when your brain is turned into pudding. Oh, wait, that's right," Rodney snaps his fingers, "you won't be able to, will you? I want to remind you, we don't have a doctor here now, not that the voodoo bone rattlers could do anything for you if something did go wrong."
"Honestly, Rodney, you'd think you cared."
"Hah!"
"Gentlemen, focus," Elizabeth says, a thread of laughter in her voice. How often has she said that to the two of them? No wonder she's amused. It's the Sheppard and Rodney show, back on the road, and it feels good and right, even if underneath it Rodney really is worried about what will happen if Sheppard sits in that chair again.
She starts detailing exactly what supplies are left from the jumper, a distressingly small amount, and prompts Sheppard for ideas about what the city can provide. Rodney slumps deeper into the couch, ignoring the grumbling from his stomach, and interjects a suggestion now and then. Exhaustion drags at him, the legacy of too many nights of interrupted or nonexistent sleep.
"Where do you suggest we try?" Elizabeth asks.
"Athos," Sheppard says.
"Do you have a reason beyond - "
"Actually, yes. I'm pretty sure Teyla's people were living on Athos before the Ancients evacuated Atlantis," Sheppard explains. "When we arrived, remember, Col. Sumner had hoped we'd find a ZPM in the ruins of their old city. Teyla showed me around - "
"Alerted the Wraith," Rodney mumbles.
"That, too." Sheppard nods. "The point is, the Wraith drove the Athosians out of the city during the last years of the war. It may have been one of the last planets lost to them before the siege. If we go there, we can count on finding someone. And, unless Teyla's ancestors were very different, they'll be good people and traders."
Elizabeth's nodding, too. "Plus, you're both familiar with Athosian customs, though they may have changed somewhat, along with the language. Not to mention, we have at least some experience with their foodstuffs. If there's nothing in the database to contraindicate a mission, I think we - you and Rodney - should try Athos next."
"Tomorrow?" Sheppard asks.
"Tomorrow you should use the chair again," Elizabeth says.
"No one's listening to me, are you?" Rodney grumbles. "I thought we'd all decided Athos was a bad idea?"
"Did you hear something?' Sheppard asks.
"Very funny. Very funny, not."
"No, I guess it was my imagination."
"You're like, four and a half, aren't you?"
Sheppard just snickers. Elizabeth shakes her head at them both and bends her attention to the PDA. Rodney closes his eyes. Just for a minutes. "Athos, then, barring new developments," Elizabeth says and he mutters a sleepy acknowledgment.
¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦
When she looks up from her notes, the silence from both men strikes her. She leans back and surveys them, amused: they are both asleep.
Atlantis is quiet around them, almost as if it's trying to be especially considerate toward John and Rodney after their long, taxing day.
She smiles.
Rodney is slumped to the side, eyes closed, his neck at an obviously uncomfortable angle, his mouth slightly open. Seeing him asleep and still, not restlessly plagued by his nightmares, is good. Better than good. He's used to be so loud, so obnoxiously sure of himself, so full of energy, that it's strange how much seeing him this way makes her want to protect him. Maybe it's just maternal instinct, maybe it's what's left of their friendship, but it is there, in her, and feeling it is a relief. She'd begun to believe all she would ever feel again was worry and anger and soul-eating sorrow.
One glance at John shows her that he is fast asleep as well - only he is leaning against the side of the couch, shoulders hunched and legs stretched in front of him, his face smooth and relaxed. The gray-brown earth of Manarea is still caked in the tread of his boots. A soft crumble of it dusted on the floor makes her shake her head.
She chides herself for not noticing just how tired they were and pressing on with the meeting. But it doesn't stop her from drinking in the sight of them, now that she finally has them back.
The long hours alone on Atlantis had gnawed at her, and their return was, despite the disappointment on Manarea, a vast relief. Every time a team came back through the gate, before, she'd been relieved, but it was wrenching this time.
She consciously stops dwelling on those thoughts for now. They're both here, warm and alive and breathing, and she can relax again.
Rodney mumbles in his sleep and slings his arms around himself in a protective, warming gesture. John shivers.
They haven't eaten yet and Rodney's hypoglycemia will be wreaking havoc with his body, but they both look too peaceful and content for her to have the heart to wake them.
She slips from the common room and collects a blanket from each man's room. Rodney's pack yields a packet of glucose tablets. She takes one, leaves the wrapper where he'll see it. It would be simpler to nudge them awake, and tell Rodney to eat something, but she doesn't want that. Life in Atlantis has seldom afforded any of them even a moment to be unguarded. Letting them rest is a small thing, a thing she can afford to give them, a counter-balance to the times she has had to ask them for more than anyone could sanely give.
She notices the feather on Rodney's table and looks at it curiously. Rodney collects technological trinkets, but a feather? She's careful not to disturb it, though. It's the only thing in the room that marks it. Pretty, too, she thinks, though she likes her flowers better.
Back in the common room, she sets the blankets aside and takes the glucose tablet over to Rodney. He snuffles when she touches his shoulder. "Rodney," she whispers, "you need to take this."
Bleary eyes open and regard her without recognition. "Huh?"
She pushes the tablet into his mouth, eliciting a grimace of disgust. "Open up. Don't worry, it's sweet."
"Oh," he mumbles, accepts the tablet, "Sweet," and falls back asleep.
She spreads one of the blankets over Rodney. It's light gray and softer than it looks; Rodney immediately burrows deeper into the warmth it provides, his nose almost vanishing under it.
She combs her fingers through Rodney's soft brown hair on impulse. Seeing him acting almost normal again reminds her how much she cares about him and always has. He's been, in his acerbic fashion, utterly loyal to her since they met in Antarctica; she's tried to offer him the same support, within the strictures of her own wider responsibilities. John's unlikely friendship with Rodney allowed her to let the friendship between them fade into a more professional relationship, because she knew John would give Rodney the support she had previously. She put it aside, the way she put aside Simon, the life she left behind on Earth, even the flicker of physical attraction that sparked between them the first time they met. Elizabeth the expedition leader didn't have time for more than cordial but distant working relationships, though she knew she slipped into bias too often anyway. John and Rodney in conjunction were a force of nature.
Objectivity and personal bias don't count for much now. She goes on petting Rodney's fine hair, watching him sleep. It isn't the first time she's noticed them, but for once she allows her gaze to linger on his thick lashes and the soft shadows they cast on his cheekbones. The connection allows calm to seep into her slowly, making her drowsy, too. She bends down and rests her cheek on the crown of Rodney's hair, feeling and hearing him close to her, before ghosting a small kiss to his forehead. She is glad that he's here and safe.
"And he thinks I get all the attention."
Elizabeth jerks back when she hears John's voice. His eyes are tired, but sparkling. His posture on the couch hasn't changed.
"I thought you were asleep," she says, unsure of how to explain why she did what she just did.
He looks sheepish for a moment. "Sorry about that."
She smiles and shakes her head. "It was a long day."
"Does a guy always get kissed and tucked in after a long day here?" he asks.
She allows her smile to grow bigger. "When he's been good."
He nods, lazily, smiling. "It's like Santa, then. You know who's been naughty," John teases, "and who's been nice." A beat, then he adds winsomely, "I've been nice."
Elizabeth snorts softly. "Oh, I'm sure."
She walks over, crouches and begins unlacing his boots. John's eyes widen, then he smirks. "If anyone ever saw this ..."
That earns him a swat to the knee. "Do you want to sleep in your boots?"
"No, but I should go back to my room. Why didn't you take off Rodney's boots?"
"Rodney's boots aren't filthy."
The first boot comes off. Elizabeth braces one hand against his knee, bony and warm through the fabric of his BDUs, and levers the second off, too. She retrieves the second blanket and stops any further protests by pushing him back until he's lying on the couch, and then draping the blanket around him as well.
"Go back to sleep."
He gives her a tired, stubborn glare that transforms into a smothered yawn, then gives in. "Just for a little while." His eyelids lower, lashes shadowing hazel to a darker green.
Her hand glides over his head and through his hair. It's silky and cool. John tenses for a breath, then relaxes into her touch, his eyes closing again and the fine lines under them easing. Sleep softens his face, betraying the distance he keeps around himself while awake, smoothing away the constant watchfulness.
His breathing evens out not long after that and only then does she touch her lips to his temple. "I'm glad you're safe," she murmurs.
In his sleep, John smiles, and Elizabeth feels more content than she has in weeks.
Next post: 6/36
Three Fates
Author: auburnnothenna & eretria
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Size: ~ 6617 words
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Rising, Before I Sleep, The Brotherhood, The Defiant One, Hot Zone, The Siege I, II & III, Trinity
Disclaimer: Not ours, not profiting, written for entertainment purposes alone.
Characters: Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Atlantis
Genre: AU, polyamorous
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard, McKay/Sheppard/Atlantis, McKay/Weir/Sheppard, Sheppard/Atlantis
Summary: "Worst case scenario?"
"We tear a hole in the fabric of the universe."
Trinity
There was no rational way to handle this.
Previous post: 4/36
"What the hell?"
Manarea is not what John expected.
Manarea is empty, grassy plains stretching as far as he can see. He stops barely two steps beyond the stargate. Rodney runs into him, a warm bump that makes John take another step forward, before he turns around. There's nothing on the other side of the stargate either, just more rolling grassland and distant, mauve-shaded mountains.
Rodney has a life-sign detector out and is slowly turning in a circle, his head bent to watch the read-out. His hair looks lighter in the bright sunlight. John's hand on his P90 tightens against the urge to reach out and ruffle it with his fingers. Rodney hasn't said a word about what passed between them. He's beginning to think Rodney is pretending it didn't happen because he hated it.
John's not sure what he'll feel if that's the case. Regret, because he won't be able to erase his own feelings or the things he's realized. Regret, because his friendship with Rodney will be damaged. A slow, deep sorrow if he hurt Rodney. That most of all.
The sun that's shining off Rodney's hair and already pinking the skin at the back of his neck is pouring warmth and light onto John's shoulders. He stretches, soaking it up, because Atlantis under the sea offers no real day or night, no sunshine, and his body craves the light. For a moment, he lifts his face to the sun, the life-giving sun, the goddess in the sky, and savors the feel of it heating his cheeks, glowing red-gold through his closed eyelids.
Afterimages linger so that he blinks at Rodney in the next moment, unsure what he sees on Rodney's face. Rodney's lips are parted and he's frowning, but there was something else. It disappears before John can interpret it.
"Colonel?"
"Christ, Rodney, I think you can use my name at this point," John snaps, despite himself.
Rodney purses his lips, looking thoughtful, then nods.
Far above them, in the azure arch of the sky, a copper-feathered raptor calls, distant as a dream, a grace note in the quiet of wind-shushed grass.
"So, what do you think happened here?" John asks. "Where are the people?"
Rodney checks his life-sign detector again. "Not here, obviously." His lips purse. "Or not here yet. Remember, planetary populations are almost nomadic in Pegasus, Col - Sheppard. Not all of them, obviously, but maybe the Manareans haven't even come here yet."
They're in the past. It's easy to forget that, even after returning to Doranda and its winter-cold ruins, because Atlantis is unchanging.
"We're here. We should look around," John says. The emptiness gets to him. There's not much to choose from in any direction.
Rodney looks at him. "Why?"
"Are you ready to go back? Because we'll have to figure out some other place to try for supplies now."
John watches Rodney as he tucks the life-sign detector back in his tac vest. "Whatever you say."
"Just a short hike," he promises. He picks a direction and points, indicating a distant stone outcropping. They'll be able to see more from its vantage.
Rodney rolls his eyes, but falls into step with John. Their strides match without effort, grass swishing around their calves, a smell that is dust and green, sun and pollen, tickling at John's nose. A trickle of sweat runs down his back and he relaxes into the rhythm of walking. He notices that Rodney is right at his shoulder, the way they've always been, and that's a good sign.
There's more than one kind of grass growing on the plain, once John starts paying a little attention. Some of it has already gone yellow and dry, almost crackling under their boots. Tougher plants are still green, shades of dusty jade, and there are flowers poking bright, determined heads above the long blades of fading grass.
"Do we always have to walk up hill?" Rodney asks.
"Why, yes, we do," John replies, suddenly happy. At least Rodney is speaking to him. "But at least it will be down hill going back to the stargate." He slants a glance at Rodney, who looks sulky and very Rodney, which John has always enjoyed.
"With our luck, we'll be running for our lives. Tell me again, why no jumper?"
"The Manareans had buildings too close to the gate to clear the jumper," John explains.
Rodney snorts.
"Yes, I noticed the incredible urban density."
John folds his arms over the butt of his P90. "Hey. They did have buildings. Or they do. Will." He grimaced. "Something."
Rodney waves his hand. "No, no, I realize, we're working from outdated information, or rather information that isn't yet valid. This sucks. We need information that's current."
John nods, agreeing. "The AI should have something that's a little closer to the situation as it is now."
Rodney stops.
"You're not going to get in that chair again, are you?"
"Why not?"
"Because - because - because it's dangerous!"
"Rodney," he says softly, "this is dangerous. Everything is now. Everything always was. You know that."
Rodney closes his eyes briefly, then nods. "Okay. Let's just, let's just go, climb up your rock and then go back ho - back to Atlantis."
¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦
The rock is at least three times John's height and more a cluster of boulders, slowly eroding away earth, tossed down like giants' dice by some age-old flood. The stone is crumbly, orange-tan, bright specks of something like quartz caught in the matrix. Plants have colonized the cracks and crevices, slowly levering them wider with each season. The surface flakes away under John's hands and feet, gritty earth working its way under his fingernails, but it's easy climbing, and Rodney scrambles to the top just behind him.
From the top they can see farther across the plain, to where a river meanders, an aimless twist of richer green many miles away. The stargate is the only sign of civilization or any human presence anywhere within sight. A haze of brown to the south resolves into a vast herd of grazing animals when John uses his binoculars. There are several somethings with six legs and a predator's slink shadowing the herd.
"Well?" Rodney demands. "Are you satisfied?"
"Yeah, I am."
John seats himself on the edge of the rock. Pop, rustle, pounce, somewhere in the crevices a bird or insect or rodent moves, disturbed by their presence. He pulls out his water bottle and sips. Rodney's shadow falls over his legs. He rests the water bottle on his knee and trails his other hand over the leaves of a small, stubborn plant clinging to the rock beside his thigh. The leaves are heart-shaped and a little fleshy, the color of faded sage, covered with long, silky white hairs that give it a frosted appearance. The scent that rises from it is reminiscent of marjoram but softer.
Rodney seats himself next to John, tac vest shifting with a nylon sound and a muffled tink from a zip tab tapping against black painted metal teeth.
John rubs his thumb back and forth over one of the heart-shaped leaves, not hard enough to harm it, an absent movement as he stares out over the plain to the cold curve of the stargate. The leaf feels velvety.
"Don't do that," Rodney snaps suddenly.
John twitches, but doesn't shift. "Do what?"
"That! Touch that. It could be the Pegasus version of poison ivy or something worse," comes the answer and when John looks, Rodney is staring down at his thumb brushing over the heart-shaped leaf. John can see the pulse at Rodney's neck, fast, and he's flushed. John wants it to mean something, but knows it could be the heat.
"It's harmless."
Rodney lifts his eyes and glares at John. "You're doing that just to torture me."
"I wasn't," John replies. He brushes his thumb over the leaf again.
"You are!"
He shrugs and lifts his hand away.
They sit in silence after that, because neither of them feels like starting back yet. One of the rock pile's denizens finally ventures into the open again. Another hexaped, this one the size of a marmot and with a squirrel tail equipped with dark brown spines, it lifts its upper body and first two feet up to peer around. It sees them when Rodney shifts and his boot scrapes over the rock. It freezes.
"Shoo," Rodney says quietly.
The little animal dashes back into one of the shadowed crevices, uttering sharp little aggrieved barks all the way. John chuckles. Rodney lets out a little puff of air that isn't quite a laugh.
John offers him the water bottle and Rodney takes it silently. His throat works as he swallows and John's eyes are drawn to the movement of Rodney's Adam's apple and the shadow of beard just under his jaw. He wants to brush the pad of his thumb over the skin just there and feel the sandpaper crisp texture of Rodney's beard coming in. It's not a thought he let himself have ever before. It's not even really sexual. John likes to touch things, to ground himself in their reality, and he wants to reassure himself that Rodney is here, beside him.
Rodney's holding the bottle out when John drags his eyes back up, watching John watch him. It makes John swallow hard. He takes back the water bottle and finishes the lukewarm contents off, licking a stray drop from his lip after he swallows. Rodney's back is angled toward him, stiff-shouldered, when John finishes.
"The Great Plains must have been like this once," Rodney observes. "Before the Europeans arrived."
John stands up and scans the horizon, noting the soft dust haze where the herd of grazers are, the wave-like ripple of the grasses, and the stillness that seems to press down on them like the vast weight of the blue sky. "Yes," he says at last. It's just the two of them and he can feel just how huge a world is, not just another country or continent, but an entire planet circling a different sun in a different galaxy. The wonder of it fills his chest, even after what has happened, what they've seen and done. He says it again, smiling, because it is so amazing and beautiful: "Yes."
He turns back and offers his hand to Rodney, pulling him to his feet, too.
"Time to go back, right?" Rodney says. He doesn't pull his hand away from John's.
"I guess so."
"No one to trade with, no supplies."
"Unless I shoot one of those grazers," John says with nod toward the distant herd.
"You'd probably start a stampede and get us both trampled."
John laughs, agreeing. Besides, he really doesn't want to gut and skin something or carry a still bloody carcass back to the stargate. He never was into hunting for sport. Though Elizabeth's reaction when he dumped it on the gate room floor would be funny, in a 'my God, you Neanderthal goon' way.
"You have a twisted sense of humor," Rodney says as they scramble down off the rock pile.
"Must be why you like me," John replies.
"Who says I like you?"
John bumps his shoulder into Rodney's. "I do."
"You're certifiable."
They walk toward the stargate at an easy pace, stripped down to T-shirts under their tac vests. John's more attuned now and he hears the contented hum of insects in the grass, undisturbed by his and Rodney's passage. The call of the raptor he saw earlier draws his attention back to the sky, always the sky, a high sharp skreeling cry that accompanies the stoop and strike that ends in an explosion of fur and fluttering feathers. The bird labors back into the sky, its kill clutched in bloodied talons. It makes John's breath catch, the speed and perfect precision of it.
"It must have been falling over three hundred kilometers per hour," Rodney comments.
"Nearly vertical," John says. He relives in his mind's eye the way the raptor folded its wings, shaping its body into a streamlined bullet as it dived from sky to earth. "It must have pulled over twenty Gs when it struck. Fast as a peregrine."
John picks his way off the course they've set to where the kill was made and plucks up one copper-sheened feather, imagining that the sensation of free flight still sings through it into his fingertips. God, to fly like that.
He walks back to where Rodney is waiting, taking his time, twirling the feather between his fingers, admiring the bars of darker bronze on it, because truthfully he's in no hurry to return to Atlantis, beautiful and fascinating as she may be. Atlantis is crystal and steel and the memory of everyone they've lost. Every breath in Atlantis tastes of salt. He isn't eager to take Rodney back, either. Rodney isn't flinching at unseen things here, isn't cowed and bent under the crushing weight of guilt.
It's probably getting to Elizabeth, too. She's stuck in the city, confined by their mutual agreement that someone has to stay behind, to raise and lower the gate shield, to eventually use one of the stasis pods - stasis pods that the city must have, though they haven't found them yet - and rotate the city ZPMs the same way the first Elizabeth from the timeline that drowned did. John hates waiting and he can't imagine doing what Elizabeth is doing. It would drive him mad.
The feather goes into a pocket and he detours to the side and plucks up a wild flower on impulse, a daisy-like fan of white petals around a yellow and purple center. Two and then three more join it in his hand, then a spike of cone-shaped red flowers, a half dozen drooping golden bells, and something that looks like larkspur.
In one of his moments of surprising awareness, Rodney says, "She'll like those."
John ducks his head, looking down at the posy in his hand, feeling his cheeks and the tips of his ears flush. "It's not - here, you can give them to her," he blurts, shoving the flowers to Rodney. Rodney backs away, holding up his hands.
"What? Are you trying to give me an asthma attack? I could be allergic, you know."
John shrugs, immediately backing off. "Whatever you say, Rodney."
"So, are you a-courtin' Elizabeth?" Rodney asks, with just a trace of snide disbelief in his tone.
John looks at the flowers again, already bruised and wilting, and sighs. "No." It was just a thought, to bring back something from this mission, to make Elizabeth smile. He's usually awkward as hell if he tries to be romantic. It's embarrassing; he feels like a fake.
"So you wouldn't give me a flower?"
They've reached the DHD. John leans against it, while Rodney dials. Rodney's hands move over the chevron emblems, as assured with the Ancient technology as John's are on the stick of a helo or an F-302. They're broad hands, big and amazingly deft. Always in motion, like Rodney's mind, finger snapping, pointing, waving, mesmerizing John, making him smile.
"You'd sneeze and complain if I did," John tells Rodney as the lights sweep around the periphery of the ring and the wormhole initializes, whoosh, then settles into its placid blue ripple. The blue light throws an odd double shadow of Rodney's absurdly thick eyelashes over his cheekbones. It reflects in Rodney's eyes.
"Yes, well, that isn't the point, is it?" Rodney replies.
John's radio crackles.
"Colonel Sheppard?"
"Lower the shield, Elizabeth. We're ready to come back," he transmits.
"Were you able to obtain any supplies?"
"That would be a big no," Rodney says.
John arches his brows.
"Tell me about it when you get back here."
"On our way," John says.
He stops Rodney with a hand to his shoulder.
"What?"
John plucks the copper feather from his pocket and tucks the shaft into the top pocket of Rodney's tac vest, like a flower in a button hole. "There."
¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦
Rodney isn't sure what to make of Sheppard's gesture. It's a feather, but he saw how Sheppard watched the hawk or whatever it was, like it was glory. He isn't sure of too many things, but he still feels better than he has a right to as they step through the wormhole and back into Atlantis. They didn't find the Manareans, they didn't manage to trade for any supplies, but no one shot at them. A useless waste of time, he might have thought once, but it felt like being able to breathe again. And Sheppard smirked and smiled and there was life in his eyes.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, looks strained. Her eyes dart from Sheppard to Rodney and back, looking for damage. The tight set of her mouth and shoulders only loosens as she takes in that they're both all right.
He can feel his own muscles tightening up. If he lifts his gaze to the control room, he's knows he'll see Edwards and Zhang consulting over the dialing console, shades oblivious to the fact that they're gone, never were or not yet. Rodney doesn't let himself look up.
"Was there a problem?" Elizabeth asks.
"No problem, except there was no one there," Sheppard explains. "It looks like the Manareans haven't arrived on that planet yet." He shrugs and smiles at her, pulling the wildflowers from behind his back. "Nothing but grass, really. Flowers. Here."
Elizabeth looks startled as she takes them. She bends her face over the flowers, holding them in both hands. The colors reflect against her skin. "Oh." The pleasure that blooms over her features makes Rodney give Sheppard a look, wondering how it feels to make someone that happy with such an easy, stupid gesture. Sheppard's head is tipped to the side and his eyes are distant, his attention obviously somewhere else.
If Rodney concentrates, he can almost feel it, too, the hum that is Atlantis. He thinks it's happy Sheppard's back.
Elizabeth is still smiling, still holding the flowers, but she is all business, too.
"So there's no opportunity for trade there at all?"
"None," Rodney says.
"We could go back and do some hunting." Sheppard's expression gives away his reluctance.
They start up the stairs together.
"We need to go over our options again, gentlemen," Elizabeth tells them. "Let's walk and talk."
Sheppard pauses with his foot on the first step. He stretches. "You want to let Rodney and me clean up first? We did a little hiking before calling it quits back there."
"A little hiking, he calls it," Rodney mutters."My blisters have blisters."
"Baby," Sheppard laughs. The sound is startling, but welcome.
Rodney opens his mouth to protest and Elizabeth forestalls him, saying, "Go on, both of you, you smell." She's smiling again, amused by them, it seems.
"Hey!" he and Sheppard both protest, but it's true, they are sweaty and grimy, stuck in the same uniforms they've had to wash and keep wearing since arriving.
"Meet me in the fourth level common room," Elizabeth tells them, "when you're both presentable."
"Good thing she didn't say decent," Sheppard remarks as he and Rodney step into the transporter. He taps the destination and they're not for less than a second, then the doors open again on the corridor their rooms are on. The lights are already on for them. "You really have blisters?" He sounds concerned.
"No, but my feet are tired," Rodney admits. "Like the rest of me."
"We're out of shape. We've been lolling around Atlantis too long."
"Lolling?" Rodney can't help repeating. Sulking, hiding, having nervous breakdowns, yes. He didn't notice any lolling. That's just outrageous and utterly typical of Sheppard.
"Lolling," Sheppard drawls, as though he's enjoying the word.
"Insane," Rodney says as he reaches his door and it opens.
"Lolling," Sheppard repeats once more, ambling toward his own door. Rodney stands there and watches him until he disappears with a nonchalant wave.
"Insane," he mutters to himself.
Rodney contemplates the feather as he strips and heads for the shower. Was it just Sheppard being playful or did it mean more? He sets the feather on the table next to his bed. It seems to glow there, perfect in a way that Atlantis can never be, imbued with the memory of Sheppard's fingers spinning it and giving it to him, with that speculative look in his bright eyes.
The shower is a sybaritic experience. Hot water, just exactly right, just the right pressure, and it comes from three sides of the stall, angling in response to his will, squirting out something the Ancients used for soap when he thinks about it, that foams and smells not really like anything he could name, but good and clean. He leans back against one slick wall with his face raised, eyes closed, into the warm spray. The water hits his shoulders harder, like a massage, and gentler in front, feeling good enough his dick wakes up.
He looks down, blinking water off his lashes, and considers it: sliding his hand down his chest, over the hair matted down and running with water, playing with his nipples maybe, then reaching down and taking his dick in his hand. It's not really an urgent need, just a pleasant awareness of the weight between his legs and the familiar possibility. Jerking off in the shower is something he's done since he realized during puberty that he could, back when taking the edge off was a necessity if he didn't want to embarrass himself with a hard-on during class.
It's tempting, because he hasn't, not once since Arcturus. The only time he's got off was with Sheppard's hand on him and he's really been trying to not think about that. But if he closes his eyes and just does it, he's going to fall into one of the old fantasies, maybe the one with Sam Carter in the shower with him, wet and shining, with her blond hair dark and sleeked over her head, that was a good one, a gold standard really. But Sam's gone and it isn't the same, he can't, it would be like necrophilia, and the only people he can imagine now are Sheppard and Elizabeth.
God, it's not like it's hard to fantasize about either of them. They're both beautiful. The water slicks down his arms and legs and he pictures Elizabeth and Sheppard, both graceful and naked, in the shower with him. He snaps his eyes open, but it's no good, he's picturing Sheppard now, lithe and lanky and aroused, touching Elizabeth, licking water droplets from her nipples. His dick twitches, swelling, and Rodney catches his breath and flattens one hand against the wall behind him. He gives in to the fantasy and slides his palm down his length, stroking himself, imagining sinking into Elizabeth's heat with Sheppard pressed up behind him, touching him too. His breath saws in and out and he reaches down and cradles his testicles, rolling them gently, while in his mind Sheppard's mouth is hot against the back of his neck and Elizabeth's small breasts are flattened against his chest. He gasps and comes in a rush.
He should probably feel guilty, but his body is too relaxed and happy.
He finishes washing up and retrieves his clothes from the automatic cleaner, dressing again and heading for the common room next to a small kitchen they've taken over rather than use the conference room. If Rodney had to guess, he'd say the place was the Ancients' version of a café, but he really has no idea. It has couches, tables and chairs and the windows close over with color-patterned sliding shutters that let them ignore the deep, shielded darkness outside the tower.
Elizabeth's already there when he arrives and Rodney's face burns. He can't quite meet her eyes, flashes of his fantasy are ambushing him as he sneaks looks at her. Elizabeth is lovely and part of him wonders if she looks like he imagined. The rest of him is just grateful she can't read his mind.
"Rodney, are you all right? You're red."
"Just, uhm, just showered." He stumbles over 'shower' and waves a hand, "Hot. Hot shower. You know." God. He covers his face briefly. "I'm tired."
Sheppard saunters in, providing a blessed distraction, hair spiky and still damp. He smiles at Rodney and then Elizabeth with lazy good humor. Rodney's breath hitches and he wonders exactly what Sheppard would have done if he had walked in and joined him in the shower in reality instead of a fantasy. He almost thinks Sheppard would smile at him - there's a feather on his bedside table - but he's not brave enough to risk it. He's not taking a chance with their friendship, not presuming that what happened once was more than a one-off, a desperate move by Sheppard to snap him out of a panic attack. Something that would never have happened under any other circumstances.
"Elizabeth," Sheppard greets her. "Rodney."
"Gentlemen, we need to put together a plan."
"I need something to eat and soon," Rodney announces.
"No kidding." Sheppard drops onto one of the off-white couches and sprawls, stretching his legs out before him, hooked at the ankles. Elizabeth's sitting at a table with her PDA in front of her and a stylus she found somewhere in her hand. A tall drinking glass filled with water holds the wildflowers, positioned on the table where she can look at them. Rodney decides a couch looks much more inviting than the table and claims one opposite Sheppard. Sheppard grins at him, but it's not the incandescent one, because even a shower and cleaning his clothes hasn't erased the tired shadows. He didn't stop to shave, either. "We need better intel. Everything we know is out of date," he says.
"We need to figure out where we are in regards to the Wraith culling cycles, too," Rodney adds, because it occurred to him that a dart could have gated through and scooped them up snap back on Manarea. It makes him sweat, thinking of being out in the open like that, in retrospect.
"Exactly." Elizabeth is making notes.
Sheppard leans back and offers, "Maybe we should stick to planets where we can take the jumper through the gate."
"Good idea, but we don't know what planets those are, other than the ones with orbital gates."
Elizabeth taps her stylus against the table, looking at Sheppard thoughtfully. His eyebrows go up. "Something?"
"Could you disengage some of the gene associated security protocols on the database?"
Sheppard frowns and slowly shakes his head. "Some of it, maybe, but a lot of it is hardwired, just so it can't be hacked or changed by someone under duress, you know?" He shrugs, apparently over the Ancients' paranoia. "I could get everything we need from Atenë, if I used the chair again."
"What?" Rodney jolts fully upright and points right at Sheppard. "Oh, no. No, you are not database diving with little Miss Artificial Intelligence again," he snaps. He turns a glare on Elizabeth. "You did not see him. He was having seizures."
"Atenë had to adapt some of the protocols. I've got the gene, but my physiology is still human. The Ancients weren't exactly the same."
"Seizures, Col - Sheppard."
Sheppard rolls his eyes. "John. It's John, okay? Rodney. And it wouldn't be like that again."
"No, no, and no again."
"Rodney, I'm sure John knows what he's doing and we need the information the AI can provide, as well as convincing it to let me use some of the city equipment. Try to remember how frustrating life was before you had the gene therapy." Elizabeth is being soothing again. "John, I thought you said the AI was shut down."
Rodney folds his arms over his chest and slumps back. "Bad idea. I'm telling you, it's a bad idea."
"You'll be right there, Rodney, won't you?" Sheppard says, sounding oh so reasonable. "You got me out of it before. I know you can do it again."
"Not good enough."
"John, about the AI - "
"Atenë," he corrects her impatiently. "I said it wouldn't happen again and it won't, Elizabeth. She knows your biosignature now. I don't think she can be shut down, actually. It's more like she goes to sleep if there's no one to interact with for too long. Other than that, you'd have to destroy her memory matrices and that would cripple the city."
"Interesting," Elizabeth comments, "but not something we want to do, is it?"
"Hardly," Rodney agrees. "I still say Sheppard using the chair is dangerous."
Sheppard catches his eye. "I trust you."
He blurts, "Why? Why, after - "
"Because I choose to, okay?" Sheppard answers. He shrugs again and settles deeper into the couch.
He's afraid to look at Elizabeth, of what her expression might say, because it might ruin this moment. "I - That's - " Rodney scrubs at his face with his hand. "Thank you." Then he frowns at Sheppard. "Are you trying to sweet talk me? Because I still say it's a bad idea."
"I think it might be the best solution," Elizabeth says.
"I'm okay with it."
"Oh, of course, you're okay with it. You were like someone who just had their first hit of heroin! Now you want to do it again."
"Rodney, you're making a big deal out of nothing." Sheppard's looking mulish and irritated.
"Right, tell me that when your brain is turned into pudding. Oh, wait, that's right," Rodney snaps his fingers, "you won't be able to, will you? I want to remind you, we don't have a doctor here now, not that the voodoo bone rattlers could do anything for you if something did go wrong."
"Honestly, Rodney, you'd think you cared."
"Hah!"
"Gentlemen, focus," Elizabeth says, a thread of laughter in her voice. How often has she said that to the two of them? No wonder she's amused. It's the Sheppard and Rodney show, back on the road, and it feels good and right, even if underneath it Rodney really is worried about what will happen if Sheppard sits in that chair again.
She starts detailing exactly what supplies are left from the jumper, a distressingly small amount, and prompts Sheppard for ideas about what the city can provide. Rodney slumps deeper into the couch, ignoring the grumbling from his stomach, and interjects a suggestion now and then. Exhaustion drags at him, the legacy of too many nights of interrupted or nonexistent sleep.
"Where do you suggest we try?" Elizabeth asks.
"Athos," Sheppard says.
"Do you have a reason beyond - "
"Actually, yes. I'm pretty sure Teyla's people were living on Athos before the Ancients evacuated Atlantis," Sheppard explains. "When we arrived, remember, Col. Sumner had hoped we'd find a ZPM in the ruins of their old city. Teyla showed me around - "
"Alerted the Wraith," Rodney mumbles.
"That, too." Sheppard nods. "The point is, the Wraith drove the Athosians out of the city during the last years of the war. It may have been one of the last planets lost to them before the siege. If we go there, we can count on finding someone. And, unless Teyla's ancestors were very different, they'll be good people and traders."
Elizabeth's nodding, too. "Plus, you're both familiar with Athosian customs, though they may have changed somewhat, along with the language. Not to mention, we have at least some experience with their foodstuffs. If there's nothing in the database to contraindicate a mission, I think we - you and Rodney - should try Athos next."
"Tomorrow?" Sheppard asks.
"Tomorrow you should use the chair again," Elizabeth says.
"No one's listening to me, are you?" Rodney grumbles. "I thought we'd all decided Athos was a bad idea?"
"Did you hear something?' Sheppard asks.
"Very funny. Very funny, not."
"No, I guess it was my imagination."
"You're like, four and a half, aren't you?"
Sheppard just snickers. Elizabeth shakes her head at them both and bends her attention to the PDA. Rodney closes his eyes. Just for a minutes. "Athos, then, barring new developments," Elizabeth says and he mutters a sleepy acknowledgment.
¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦~¦
When she looks up from her notes, the silence from both men strikes her. She leans back and surveys them, amused: they are both asleep.
Atlantis is quiet around them, almost as if it's trying to be especially considerate toward John and Rodney after their long, taxing day.
She smiles.
Rodney is slumped to the side, eyes closed, his neck at an obviously uncomfortable angle, his mouth slightly open. Seeing him asleep and still, not restlessly plagued by his nightmares, is good. Better than good. He's used to be so loud, so obnoxiously sure of himself, so full of energy, that it's strange how much seeing him this way makes her want to protect him. Maybe it's just maternal instinct, maybe it's what's left of their friendship, but it is there, in her, and feeling it is a relief. She'd begun to believe all she would ever feel again was worry and anger and soul-eating sorrow.
One glance at John shows her that he is fast asleep as well - only he is leaning against the side of the couch, shoulders hunched and legs stretched in front of him, his face smooth and relaxed. The gray-brown earth of Manarea is still caked in the tread of his boots. A soft crumble of it dusted on the floor makes her shake her head.
She chides herself for not noticing just how tired they were and pressing on with the meeting. But it doesn't stop her from drinking in the sight of them, now that she finally has them back.
The long hours alone on Atlantis had gnawed at her, and their return was, despite the disappointment on Manarea, a vast relief. Every time a team came back through the gate, before, she'd been relieved, but it was wrenching this time.
She consciously stops dwelling on those thoughts for now. They're both here, warm and alive and breathing, and she can relax again.
Rodney mumbles in his sleep and slings his arms around himself in a protective, warming gesture. John shivers.
They haven't eaten yet and Rodney's hypoglycemia will be wreaking havoc with his body, but they both look too peaceful and content for her to have the heart to wake them.
She slips from the common room and collects a blanket from each man's room. Rodney's pack yields a packet of glucose tablets. She takes one, leaves the wrapper where he'll see it. It would be simpler to nudge them awake, and tell Rodney to eat something, but she doesn't want that. Life in Atlantis has seldom afforded any of them even a moment to be unguarded. Letting them rest is a small thing, a thing she can afford to give them, a counter-balance to the times she has had to ask them for more than anyone could sanely give.
She notices the feather on Rodney's table and looks at it curiously. Rodney collects technological trinkets, but a feather? She's careful not to disturb it, though. It's the only thing in the room that marks it. Pretty, too, she thinks, though she likes her flowers better.
Back in the common room, she sets the blankets aside and takes the glucose tablet over to Rodney. He snuffles when she touches his shoulder. "Rodney," she whispers, "you need to take this."
Bleary eyes open and regard her without recognition. "Huh?"
She pushes the tablet into his mouth, eliciting a grimace of disgust. "Open up. Don't worry, it's sweet."
"Oh," he mumbles, accepts the tablet, "Sweet," and falls back asleep.
She spreads one of the blankets over Rodney. It's light gray and softer than it looks; Rodney immediately burrows deeper into the warmth it provides, his nose almost vanishing under it.
She combs her fingers through Rodney's soft brown hair on impulse. Seeing him acting almost normal again reminds her how much she cares about him and always has. He's been, in his acerbic fashion, utterly loyal to her since they met in Antarctica; she's tried to offer him the same support, within the strictures of her own wider responsibilities. John's unlikely friendship with Rodney allowed her to let the friendship between them fade into a more professional relationship, because she knew John would give Rodney the support she had previously. She put it aside, the way she put aside Simon, the life she left behind on Earth, even the flicker of physical attraction that sparked between them the first time they met. Elizabeth the expedition leader didn't have time for more than cordial but distant working relationships, though she knew she slipped into bias too often anyway. John and Rodney in conjunction were a force of nature.
Objectivity and personal bias don't count for much now. She goes on petting Rodney's fine hair, watching him sleep. It isn't the first time she's noticed them, but for once she allows her gaze to linger on his thick lashes and the soft shadows they cast on his cheekbones. The connection allows calm to seep into her slowly, making her drowsy, too. She bends down and rests her cheek on the crown of Rodney's hair, feeling and hearing him close to her, before ghosting a small kiss to his forehead. She is glad that he's here and safe.
"And he thinks I get all the attention."
Elizabeth jerks back when she hears John's voice. His eyes are tired, but sparkling. His posture on the couch hasn't changed.
"I thought you were asleep," she says, unsure of how to explain why she did what she just did.
He looks sheepish for a moment. "Sorry about that."
She smiles and shakes her head. "It was a long day."
"Does a guy always get kissed and tucked in after a long day here?" he asks.
She allows her smile to grow bigger. "When he's been good."
He nods, lazily, smiling. "It's like Santa, then. You know who's been naughty," John teases, "and who's been nice." A beat, then he adds winsomely, "I've been nice."
Elizabeth snorts softly. "Oh, I'm sure."
She walks over, crouches and begins unlacing his boots. John's eyes widen, then he smirks. "If anyone ever saw this ..."
That earns him a swat to the knee. "Do you want to sleep in your boots?"
"No, but I should go back to my room. Why didn't you take off Rodney's boots?"
"Rodney's boots aren't filthy."
The first boot comes off. Elizabeth braces one hand against his knee, bony and warm through the fabric of his BDUs, and levers the second off, too. She retrieves the second blanket and stops any further protests by pushing him back until he's lying on the couch, and then draping the blanket around him as well.
"Go back to sleep."
He gives her a tired, stubborn glare that transforms into a smothered yawn, then gives in. "Just for a little while." His eyelids lower, lashes shadowing hazel to a darker green.
Her hand glides over his head and through his hair. It's silky and cool. John tenses for a breath, then relaxes into her touch, his eyes closing again and the fine lines under them easing. Sleep softens his face, betraying the distance he keeps around himself while awake, smoothing away the constant watchfulness.
His breathing evens out not long after that and only then does she touch her lips to his temple. "I'm glad you're safe," she murmurs.
In his sleep, John smiles, and Elizabeth feels more content than she has in weeks.
Next post: 6/36