Not dead yet!
This all got started when sheafrotherdon suggested that Sheppard's been naming the Wraith after his exes -- Bob, Steve, and Michael. I started a comment fic that ballooned well past the comment word limit -- so here's the whole insane thing.
Robert was John's linear algebra TA in college; he's blond and lithe, with hair like James Spader's in Pretty and Pink. He's intrigued by John, who's still a bit gawky, a year younger than the other students, all big green eyes and enthusiasm; during office hours Robert takes the opportunity to strike up an acquaintance, and suggests that John call him Bob. A month later he fucks John in his crappy studio apartment. When John confesses that he's never done this before, not with a guy, Robert lies and says he hasn't either. Afterwards John looks all of twelve years old, asleep on Robert's futon, and Bob freaks out -- God, there are rules against this, against fraternization between staff and students. The rest of the semester he can't look John in the eye, and he swaps office hours with a pretty blonde graduate student, the one that's in a ROTC uniform half the time. He gets a girlfriend -- an anthro grad student who smells like patchouli and likes to talk about tribal mask symbolism. She's boring, but at least she won't get him fired. Towards the end of the year he's with Marlene in the campus coffee shop when he sees John, staring at him from across the room. Robert swallows hard and reaches across the table for Marlene's hand; when he looks up again, John's gone.
***
Steve meets John when they both end up at Kirtland AFB. Actually, Steve's first name is really Stevenson -- some distant ancestor came over on the Mayflower, so he's also got two middle names and "the Fourth" bloating his signature. To Steve's mind this is all a little much, so he introduces himself to John as just "Steve" when they end up paired together in the Pave Hawk training module. Sheppard starts out cool and curt the first few days but warms up, especially once he sees that Steve can keep up with him. Steve's proud of that, because Sheppard has to have a photographic memory or something, the way he can recreate diagrams from memory, rattle off specs that he's seen once. It's almost creepy, so Steve tries not to feel too bad that he has to spend hours reviewing what Sheppard apparently just absorbs, thriving in the numbers and vectors like the cacti thrive in the sandy dirt outside.
Once they actually get to touch real helicopters Sheppard opens up even more -- sketching out improbable flight paths with his hands as they walk off the tarmac, grinning like a kid in a candy store. His enthusiasm is infectious, and soon Steve can't figure out if he's caught up in Sheppard's love of flying or Sheppard himself. Sheppard really wants to be here, rising up with the heat that shimmers off the dry orange cliffs of the desert, and more than once Steve finds himself in his bunk, staring at the ceiling and wondering if maybe he shouldn't have gone into the Marines, like his father'd wanted. But he doesn't want to spend days up to his neck in muddy water, or whatever it is that Marines do. He doesn't know what he wants, which is maybe how he ends up kissing Sheppard one day, pushing him against the side of a helicopter when it's just the two of them in the hangar, late red sun slanting through the high windows. When Steve lets go Sheppard looks startled, his eyes dark and wary, and Steve braces himself for a punch. Then Sheppard's grabbing his arms and kissing him hard, five-o-clock shadow rough against his cheek, and Steve feels absurdly triumphant. He has something Sheppard wants, for once, and maybe a little of Sheppard will rub off on him.
Except it doesn't work out that way. Sheppard's just better, and even as they do more -- the hangars are good for fooling around, but so are those bars in Albuquerque that no one talks about, the backseat of Steve's car on a dark backroad -- the gap between what they can do in the pilot's seat widens. What's intuitive to Sheppard isn't to Steve, and he starts to hate the easy grace of Sheppard's hands as he flies, even as he craves those same hands on his body, flying him. Eventually word comes down that Sheppard's being sent on for specialized training, and Steve's -- not. He's almost glad, despite the sting, and it's easy to tell Sheppard that sure, they'll keep in touch. Before he leaves Sheppard hands him an envelope, only his new address scrawled on the back, and Steve waits until the airport van is almost out of sight before he shreds it into bits.
***
Sometimes Michael feels like a freak, since he actually likes being stationed at McMurdo. Everyone else he meets can only talk about how long it's been since they had a good cheeseburger, or how they want to read a magazine that isn't six months old, or how tired they are of the near-constant daylight. Of course, the rest of the year everyone bitches about the near-constant dark. Michael isn't like everyone else, he doesn't have a calendar tacked up somewhere marking the days until he can go home. He's not really sure where that is anyway -- Charleston? Ellsworth? Grissom? They've all blurred together -- stinking tidal mud flats, dry plains and scrub forest, boxy base housing and cheap beige carpet. The only real constant has been the grease under his fingernails, that and the pumice soap that takes it off. So he nods when people complain, and doesn't think about where he'll end up when his time's up.
But even if he doesn't have much to talk about, he still likes to play poker, and that's where he meets Sheppard. He heard about him before he saw him -- McMurdo's like the smallest of small towns, without even television for distraction. So Sheppard's abrupt transfer is the best kind of gossip. No one's sure what he did -- screwed his CO's wife, buzzed the control tower, wrecked one too many choppers, screwed his CO's daughter, grandmother, son -- it was bad, enough to get him sent to the bottom of the world. But Michael squints across the smoky rec room to where Sheppard sits, sprawled in his folding chair, cards splayed across the mechanics' scarred table, and he sees something he recognizes: relief.
Sheppard's quiet -- the first month or so, he barely speaks when spoken to, and moves through the low-ceilinged, prefab buildings like a ghost. He gets assigned to a chopper in Michael's maintenance group, flying milk runs out to that base that no one officially knows about. More than once Michael finds him in the hangar early, gloved hands pressed to the bird's metallic sides, staring into space. Whatever no one knows about Sheppard, it's obvious that he loves helicopters. And maybe he recognizes a kindred spirit, but Michael likes helicopters too; so he doesn't mind Sheppard hanging around while the crews wait for the weather to clear, or while Michael does the thousand small things necessary to keep a helicopter aloft in subzero temperatures. After a while Sheppard starts to help, almost wordlessly handing Michael tools, holding cables apart, greasing gears and tightening bolts. He's got an uncanny way with the machines, almost intuitive, and one day Michael finally slams a hatch shut and asks Sheppard if he wants to grab a drink.
Sheppard blinks at him, and Michael has to remind himself that they don't let slow guys fly choppers. "Sure," he says finally, and follows Michael to the one bar on base. Gallagher's got a pretty good selection, given that everything has to be flown over or hauled in on the Coast Guard's icebreakers. Over beers Sheppard opens up a little, talks cautiously about college football, even gets a little spirited when comparing the 60B model of the Seahawk to the 60F. Over the next few weeks they develop a routine -- if Michael's around when Sheppard comes in, snow gusting up from the landing pad in stinging clouds, they head over to the bar. Sheppard's good company, never bitching about the cold or the dark or the generic ketchup in the commissary, or what he's going to do once his tour's up. Just once Michael manages to ask how Sheppard ended up in Antarctica, but Sheppard just looks into his beer, watches the amber bubbles rise. "I'd rather not talk about it," he says finally, and that seems like all the answer he's going to give.
A few days later Sheppard shows up at his door, looking awkward and a little lost. He stays that way even when Michael invites him in and offers him some of his stash of New Zealand booze. Instead he wanders around Michael's quarters, coffee mug of vodka in hand, and looks at the spines of Michael's books, his neat stack of concert band t-shirts. Like all McMurdo quarters, they're cramped, so Michael sits on the bed, out of Sheppard's way, and waits to hear what's on Sheppard's mind. Eventually Sheppard blurts that he's been offered a new post and Michael gets it; McMurdo's safe, and not just because it's not a combat zone.
"What do you have to lose if you take it?" Michael asks hypothetically, and Sheppard looks at him, eyes dark.
"For one thing, this," he says, and suddenly he's in Michael's space, practically straddling his lap, big hands on Michael's shoulders and hot breath gusting past his ear. Michael's only done this once or twice, but he's not inclined to push Sheppard away -- he seems brittle, desperate, and Michael doesn't want to hurt him. Besides, Sheppard's easy on the eyes, and it's not like anybody else is begging to nip along Michael's jawline with blunt teeth, to slither down the length of his body and shove his pants and long underwear aside.
Later, in the dark, Sheppard whispers: "They might not even have planes." That doesn't make sense to Michael -- why send a pilot anywhere without something to fly? -- but he lets himself run his hand up and down Sheppard's bare back, pressed close in the narrow bed.
In the morning Sheppard's gone, and Michael's not surprised. There's a new pilot assigned to the base milk run, a guy that snaps cinnamon gum in Michael's face and complains about the frost on his windscreen. Michael ignores him and squints into the low-hanging sun, and hopes there's something to fly, wherever Sheppard ends up.
Robert was John's linear algebra TA in college; he's blond and lithe, with hair like James Spader's in Pretty and Pink. He's intrigued by John, who's still a bit gawky, a year younger than the other students, all big green eyes and enthusiasm; during office hours Robert takes the opportunity to strike up an acquaintance, and suggests that John call him Bob. A month later he fucks John in his crappy studio apartment. When John confesses that he's never done this before, not with a guy, Robert lies and says he hasn't either. Afterwards John looks all of twelve years old, asleep on Robert's futon, and Bob freaks out -- God, there are rules against this, against fraternization between staff and students. The rest of the semester he can't look John in the eye, and he swaps office hours with a pretty blonde graduate student, the one that's in a ROTC uniform half the time. He gets a girlfriend -- an anthro grad student who smells like patchouli and likes to talk about tribal mask symbolism. She's boring, but at least she won't get him fired. Towards the end of the year he's with Marlene in the campus coffee shop when he sees John, staring at him from across the room. Robert swallows hard and reaches across the table for Marlene's hand; when he looks up again, John's gone.
***
Steve meets John when they both end up at Kirtland AFB. Actually, Steve's first name is really Stevenson -- some distant ancestor came over on the Mayflower, so he's also got two middle names and "the Fourth" bloating his signature. To Steve's mind this is all a little much, so he introduces himself to John as just "Steve" when they end up paired together in the Pave Hawk training module. Sheppard starts out cool and curt the first few days but warms up, especially once he sees that Steve can keep up with him. Steve's proud of that, because Sheppard has to have a photographic memory or something, the way he can recreate diagrams from memory, rattle off specs that he's seen once. It's almost creepy, so Steve tries not to feel too bad that he has to spend hours reviewing what Sheppard apparently just absorbs, thriving in the numbers and vectors like the cacti thrive in the sandy dirt outside.
Once they actually get to touch real helicopters Sheppard opens up even more -- sketching out improbable flight paths with his hands as they walk off the tarmac, grinning like a kid in a candy store. His enthusiasm is infectious, and soon Steve can't figure out if he's caught up in Sheppard's love of flying or Sheppard himself. Sheppard really wants to be here, rising up with the heat that shimmers off the dry orange cliffs of the desert, and more than once Steve finds himself in his bunk, staring at the ceiling and wondering if maybe he shouldn't have gone into the Marines, like his father'd wanted. But he doesn't want to spend days up to his neck in muddy water, or whatever it is that Marines do. He doesn't know what he wants, which is maybe how he ends up kissing Sheppard one day, pushing him against the side of a helicopter when it's just the two of them in the hangar, late red sun slanting through the high windows. When Steve lets go Sheppard looks startled, his eyes dark and wary, and Steve braces himself for a punch. Then Sheppard's grabbing his arms and kissing him hard, five-o-clock shadow rough against his cheek, and Steve feels absurdly triumphant. He has something Sheppard wants, for once, and maybe a little of Sheppard will rub off on him.
Except it doesn't work out that way. Sheppard's just better, and even as they do more -- the hangars are good for fooling around, but so are those bars in Albuquerque that no one talks about, the backseat of Steve's car on a dark backroad -- the gap between what they can do in the pilot's seat widens. What's intuitive to Sheppard isn't to Steve, and he starts to hate the easy grace of Sheppard's hands as he flies, even as he craves those same hands on his body, flying him. Eventually word comes down that Sheppard's being sent on for specialized training, and Steve's -- not. He's almost glad, despite the sting, and it's easy to tell Sheppard that sure, they'll keep in touch. Before he leaves Sheppard hands him an envelope, only his new address scrawled on the back, and Steve waits until the airport van is almost out of sight before he shreds it into bits.
***
Sometimes Michael feels like a freak, since he actually likes being stationed at McMurdo. Everyone else he meets can only talk about how long it's been since they had a good cheeseburger, or how they want to read a magazine that isn't six months old, or how tired they are of the near-constant daylight. Of course, the rest of the year everyone bitches about the near-constant dark. Michael isn't like everyone else, he doesn't have a calendar tacked up somewhere marking the days until he can go home. He's not really sure where that is anyway -- Charleston? Ellsworth? Grissom? They've all blurred together -- stinking tidal mud flats, dry plains and scrub forest, boxy base housing and cheap beige carpet. The only real constant has been the grease under his fingernails, that and the pumice soap that takes it off. So he nods when people complain, and doesn't think about where he'll end up when his time's up.
But even if he doesn't have much to talk about, he still likes to play poker, and that's where he meets Sheppard. He heard about him before he saw him -- McMurdo's like the smallest of small towns, without even television for distraction. So Sheppard's abrupt transfer is the best kind of gossip. No one's sure what he did -- screwed his CO's wife, buzzed the control tower, wrecked one too many choppers, screwed his CO's daughter, grandmother, son -- it was bad, enough to get him sent to the bottom of the world. But Michael squints across the smoky rec room to where Sheppard sits, sprawled in his folding chair, cards splayed across the mechanics' scarred table, and he sees something he recognizes: relief.
Sheppard's quiet -- the first month or so, he barely speaks when spoken to, and moves through the low-ceilinged, prefab buildings like a ghost. He gets assigned to a chopper in Michael's maintenance group, flying milk runs out to that base that no one officially knows about. More than once Michael finds him in the hangar early, gloved hands pressed to the bird's metallic sides, staring into space. Whatever no one knows about Sheppard, it's obvious that he loves helicopters. And maybe he recognizes a kindred spirit, but Michael likes helicopters too; so he doesn't mind Sheppard hanging around while the crews wait for the weather to clear, or while Michael does the thousand small things necessary to keep a helicopter aloft in subzero temperatures. After a while Sheppard starts to help, almost wordlessly handing Michael tools, holding cables apart, greasing gears and tightening bolts. He's got an uncanny way with the machines, almost intuitive, and one day Michael finally slams a hatch shut and asks Sheppard if he wants to grab a drink.
Sheppard blinks at him, and Michael has to remind himself that they don't let slow guys fly choppers. "Sure," he says finally, and follows Michael to the one bar on base. Gallagher's got a pretty good selection, given that everything has to be flown over or hauled in on the Coast Guard's icebreakers. Over beers Sheppard opens up a little, talks cautiously about college football, even gets a little spirited when comparing the 60B model of the Seahawk to the 60F. Over the next few weeks they develop a routine -- if Michael's around when Sheppard comes in, snow gusting up from the landing pad in stinging clouds, they head over to the bar. Sheppard's good company, never bitching about the cold or the dark or the generic ketchup in the commissary, or what he's going to do once his tour's up. Just once Michael manages to ask how Sheppard ended up in Antarctica, but Sheppard just looks into his beer, watches the amber bubbles rise. "I'd rather not talk about it," he says finally, and that seems like all the answer he's going to give.
A few days later Sheppard shows up at his door, looking awkward and a little lost. He stays that way even when Michael invites him in and offers him some of his stash of New Zealand booze. Instead he wanders around Michael's quarters, coffee mug of vodka in hand, and looks at the spines of Michael's books, his neat stack of concert band t-shirts. Like all McMurdo quarters, they're cramped, so Michael sits on the bed, out of Sheppard's way, and waits to hear what's on Sheppard's mind. Eventually Sheppard blurts that he's been offered a new post and Michael gets it; McMurdo's safe, and not just because it's not a combat zone.
"What do you have to lose if you take it?" Michael asks hypothetically, and Sheppard looks at him, eyes dark.
"For one thing, this," he says, and suddenly he's in Michael's space, practically straddling his lap, big hands on Michael's shoulders and hot breath gusting past his ear. Michael's only done this once or twice, but he's not inclined to push Sheppard away -- he seems brittle, desperate, and Michael doesn't want to hurt him. Besides, Sheppard's easy on the eyes, and it's not like anybody else is begging to nip along Michael's jawline with blunt teeth, to slither down the length of his body and shove his pants and long underwear aside.
Later, in the dark, Sheppard whispers: "They might not even have planes." That doesn't make sense to Michael -- why send a pilot anywhere without something to fly? -- but he lets himself run his hand up and down Sheppard's bare back, pressed close in the narrow bed.
In the morning Sheppard's gone, and Michael's not surprised. There's a new pilot assigned to the base milk run, a guy that snaps cinnamon gum in Michael's face and complains about the frost on his windscreen. Michael ignores him and squints into the low-hanging sun, and hopes there's something to fly, wherever Sheppard ends up.