FIC: Take My Hand, Friend, and Come With Me [PG (1/1 :: Officially)]
All right. I know that I don't fiction directly in my LJ anymore, because my IJ has taken its place and I post in my comms, but I'm not a member of any Rodney/John comms, so I posted where I could. : )
Danielle
ETA: Pfft! I forgot to add a summary for this fic. It's been a while and I had to absolutely rush to get this up. I thought I'd add that now. Hee.
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Title: Take My Hand, Friend, and Come With Me
Author: dmitchell1985
Rating: PG - for all of the swearing
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Warnings: None, really.
Disclaimer: I don't own these dudes.
Spoilers: Uhrm. Nothing major or current.
Word Count: 2,407
Summary: “Rodney snorted and asked how often these things could go wrong, because it really was mathematically impossible for things to go wrong a hundred percent of the time.”
Author’s Notes: OH. MY. GOD. How did a drabble, then a double drabble, then a triple drabble, then "just 700 words," then "just 1,000 words," then "just over 1,000 words" balloon into this?! I kept trying to end the fic, but it could literally continue on well after where I managed to hack it off due to the library closing on me and my having to relocate to the lobby. I even ended up changing the intended ending in the process because it no longer fit, which made it longer still. Well, I changed it slightly, because the fic buzzed on past where it was supposed to go. It's still in there. (Guess where! = D)
Chark, I do hope that you like this and I did the friendship angle well enough. This fic wanted to head over into the relationship area, because I am obviously incapable of writing two people being "just friends." Either way, I do wish you the happiest of birthdays, darlin'. You deserve it, liek woah.
--
John muttered angrily to himself after listening to Rodney shout for him to ‘please, shut the hell up, because yelling at me will not make me work any faster!’ He decided to deliver an unhelpful kick to the side of the puddle jumper in return and instantly regretted it.
“I heard that,” came Rodney’s voice over John’s yelps of pain from inside the ship, “and it’s not helping anything. So, let’s not damage the ship anymore than it already is, okay? Thank you!”
John clutched at his boot and cursed the position he had found himself in once more. Rodney had simply had to continue digging through the Ancients’ wildly unreliable database for worlds to explore for new energy sources. Although they certainly needed all of the power they could get, John was beginning to seriously doubt the sanity of seeking out these types of go-see missions. When he brought this up at the staff meeting, Rodney had rolled his eyes and sighed as though all of the grief in the world was his alone to manage.
Rodney then pointed out the fact that military people were supposed to "excel" at reconnaissance missions and there really wasn’t any other choice for them, as there was no other way to find gate addresses outside of randomly pressing the DHD's buttons. That, of course, would only lead to certain death. At least, that was the way Rodney sold it.
Since Rodney sold all of his ideas the same way, immediate danger or not, John tended to take the whole ‘we’re going to die’ frenzy with two shakers of salt. This was Rodney, after all. No matter how brilliant he might be, panicking at the slightest sign of trouble was not outside of his routine responses for times of crisis and leisure alike.
But now, more or less stranded on a world Rodney had been absolutely convinced contained a horde of ZPMs, John almost wished he had gone along with Teyla and Ronon to visit the monks of M50-437. Even an entire day of mediation sounded more appealing about now, if it held a chance of him getting back to his own bed on Atlantis once they were done.
John had warned Rodney about writing off the traps that might have been left behind or programs that may not have been functioning properly when the Ancients made another one of their famed hasty retreats from a planet they probably shouldn’t have been on in the first place.
Rodney snorted and asked how often these things could go wrong, because it really was mathematically impossible for things to go wrong a hundred percent of the time.
John told him to think back on every mission they had been on that was supposed to be the cakewalk Rodney had promised, but turned into them being kidnapped by rebels. He also told Rodney to think about all of the times Rodney himself had insisted that a minor detail that might cause them all to blow up into billions of formerly well-armed pieces, but snowballed into them running for life and limb and barely making it through the stargate as things went to hell completely. He didn’t feel the need to bring up the missions that they knew going into them that they would be utter cluster fucks to deal with and attempt to withdraw from safely.
He knew Rodney was thinking of those mission as well. He also knew that Rodney was mulling over the fact that ‘these things’ could go wrong quickly and with more frequency than any of them seemed to remember after the fact.
John knew all of this, because Rodney had shut up then and pressed his lips together for a moment before muttering that he was more right than wrong. John let that one slide, because Rodney usually was and he wanted to get this damned retrieval mission over with.
They had no problem finding the cache of ZPMs after they wound their way through seemingly endless tunnels and worked through each of the puzzles that served as locks. They’d loaded themselves down with as many of the ZPM units as the four storage cases between them would hold and headed for the exit. They were mere yards away from the door that lead out of the abandoned facility and into the surrounding field and woods when It happened.
It being the moment when Hell opted to make good on its outstanding promise to come for another visit following the last time they’d barely escaped its grasp.
Hell also opted to bring its friends Angry Natives and Miniature Ancient Drones along for the ride. This naturally had John cursing the friend who’d brought him along for the ride.
They’d had to drop or toss all of the ZPM storage cases and most of their gear to outrun the knife-wielding villagers that were screeching that they were desecrating the Ancients holy ground and stealing to boot. What wasn’t discarded aimlessly was launched in the general direction of the pursuing mob.
They’d only enjoyed the barest sense of reprieve upon reaching the puddle jumper and getting it into the air, when an ominous boom echoed through the air and shook the jumper. The HUD flashed into view, showcasing the damage their ship had taken, causing Rodney to impressively tint the air navy with the inventive strings of “Fuck!” and “Damn!” and Shit!” he cobbled together.
John gripped the controls and told Rodney to hold on as the jumper plummeted toward the forest waiting to catch them in its many branched arms. John had been in some bad landings before and he found that smashing into any convenient group of treetops that happened to be around just then wasn’t the worst they could do. They could have been flying over the open sea or a grassy field that contained nothing at all between them and the fast approaching ground. John didn’t want to think about either of those landings at the moment. However, he found he couldn’t really help it; even as he raised the shield a second too late after they’d already collided with the first of the trees.
They crashed and thumped through limbs that would have destroyed the entire ship had the shield not been active. John was able to enjoy that comfort for several seconds more before the shield too had sputtered out and abandoned them to their fate. John then comforted himself with the fact that it was okay, really, because the ground was reaching up to snatch them from the air and it all worked out well either way.
Thrown from their seats and more than slightly dazed from the impact, John and Rodney had hauled themselves up from the floor; only to discover that the jumper had not only taken out its surrounding trees, it had considerately impeded itself halfway into the dirt. Despite all of this, John knew that it could have been much worse, which he informed a snarling Rodney, who was bleeding from a deep-looking gash on his forehead. He listened to the ranting and comparisons to the last time Rodney had suffered a head injury in a downed puddle jumper until Rodney wore himself out and was panting from the exertion.
John had nodded slowly, ignoring the building headache that was gathering steam and his own bleeding wounds.
“Look, McKay. It happened, now we need to get out of here. Can you get us out of here or not?” he had asked quietly, because after all of Rodney’s screaming, someone had to be reasonable and quiet.
He knew that his ability to whisper wouldn’t last long in the face of them attempting to free themselves and head back to Atlantis with another failed mission to report. He thought he’d take advantage of it then while his headache was at its worst. They both knew that it would only be a matter of When he started yelling back at Rodney for his incompetence in choosing this planet.
There were the same halted assurances of yes, maybe, possibly, probably Rodney could repair whatever had been hit to cause them to crash. To this, John responded that they should at least make sure that communications were functional first, for the instant Elizabeth tried to dial in to contact them once they had officially missed their scheduled time of return or status report.
Rodney agreed wholeheartedly.
That had been three days ago and Rodney appeared to be no closer to repairing communications than they were to sprouting wings and bodily flying to the gate instead. They’d managed to get the jumper’s rear hatch open, but little else had responded to any of the manual or mental commands John and Rodney initiated.
Amazingly, along with now miraculously showing a preference for mediation with monks, John wished that he had went ahead and spent the time with Rodney that he’d originally asked for. Then, he might not be stuck in the middle a forest weeks away from the gate by foot and ready to strangle anything that so much as looked at him.
But, there’d always been something that kept them busy and John, like anyone average joe, had found it a mite difficult to squeeze one-on-one team bonding time in between mass plagues and Wraith attacks and Ascended women that he never saw coming.
Though they’d been pretty lucky - and John considered that with two shakers of salt, as well - so far, they were still ass out as far as the big picture was concerned. As far as individual pieces of the big picture were concerned, the villagers had quickly lost their trail. Despite obviously having the advantage of knowing the woods of their own planet, they hadn’t come traipsing into John and Rodney’s makeshift clearing. The miniature drones they still weren’t sure if they’d triggered as they were leaving or were sent after them by the facility’s would-be protectors that had let them inside to begin with, hadn’t taken anymore shots at them. It seemed that they were in the clear for the time being. But with John’s admittedly shaky luck, there wasn’t any telling what would come for them next.
He hoped that it would be Teyla and Ronon and fifteen teams of marines come to extract them. For all he knew, the next thing to come along would be a Pegasus-style man-eating squirrel hell-bent on gnawing their eyes from their sockets.
He also begrudgingly figured that Rodney might have set the drones off himself to get what he had been bugging John for more and more lately as he watched Teyla and Ronon go off to the Athosians’ new home world for one occasion or another. He’d explained that he wanted to spend some time with a buddy who cared enough to bring a flash drive loaded with his favorite music or didn’t attempt to slip him lemon squares.
He just wanted to hang out with John, but they’d had team missions and near misses instead. There had been plenty of times they spent in one another’s presence, but there hadn't been chats about what their lives were like back on Earth. There had been daring rescues, but not nearly enough games of chess to argue about.
John missed those things, too, sometimes, but work was work for him. He sighed to himself as he thought all of this over.
He was jarred from his thoughts by the sound of Rodney’s joyful cries of celebration. It took him a moment to understand what was happening, but from the gleeful fragments of sentences and admonishments of “About time!” and “What took you so?!” John knew that something good must have been happening for once.
He had gotten as far as climbing up the rear hatch before there was a solid block of Rodney bowling him over in a hug he only associated with Ronon and screaming in his ear.
“I was working on the puddle jumper’s communications and I still couldn’t get them to work, when I heard the same barely audible chirping we’ve been hearing for three days. I searched until I found it, because it’s been driving me crazy like you wouldn’t believe. Turns out that our earpieces still worked and we'd just lost them in the impact instead of being crushed like I thought they had been. I found mine wedged into the back seat.
“When I got it in my ear, I found out that it was Elizabeth all along! She, Teyla, and that guy Chuck, you know Chuck, the technician, remember? Never mind. Elizabeth! They’ve been trying to hail us on the radio for days and we never even noticed, because we’d been working on the jumper’s communication system and getting the jumper itself to fly.
“They’ve been searching for us for days in five jumpers and still haven’t found us in all of this coverage.” Rodney finally drew a lungful of breath and waved at the trees surrounding them before continuing on.
“The drones gave them some problems, but Radek managed to shut them off when they finally reached the area those psychopaths were guarding. They got them, too, by the way. Well, they sent the jumpers back out to continue their sweeps for us while Radek went into the hold and retrieved more ZedPMs. We’re going home! And we’re going to have ZedPMs to show for this mess!”
Rodney dug his arms into John’s sides as he finished and inhaled another deep breath. John patted him on the back awkwardly, not quite able to find the appropriate ‘we’re not going to die’ words after Rodney had spewed out so many. Instead, he nodded and told Rodney that that was great, because peeing in the woods long term wasn’t really for him.
Rodney laughed at that and John was glad to hear it. Only five minutes ago, they had been looking at the prospect of having to spend weeks walking toward the stargate in hopes of getting off the planet. Now, they were hugging and cheering and basking in the knowledge that they had all of the ZPMs they needed.
As grouchy as time spent with Rodney sometimes made John, he thought he might give it a try more often, especially if it kept Fate from smacking him with a repeat of the last three days to get it to happen. And even more importantly, if Rodney gave him more hugs like the one they were currently sharing. John might not have been a touchy person normally, but in times like these, a little comfort went a long way.
Besides, it was one of the best hugs John had had in a long time.
--
The End!
Danielle
ETA: Pfft! I forgot to add a summary for this fic. It's been a while and I had to absolutely rush to get this up. I thought I'd add that now. Hee.
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Title: Take My Hand, Friend, and Come With Me
Author: dmitchell1985
Rating: PG - for all of the swearing
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Warnings: None, really.
Disclaimer: I don't own these dudes.
Spoilers: Uhrm. Nothing major or current.
Word Count: 2,407
Summary: “Rodney snorted and asked how often these things could go wrong, because it really was mathematically impossible for things to go wrong a hundred percent of the time.”
Author’s Notes: OH. MY. GOD. How did a drabble, then a double drabble, then a triple drabble, then "just 700 words," then "just 1,000 words," then "just over 1,000 words" balloon into this?! I kept trying to end the fic, but it could literally continue on well after where I managed to hack it off due to the library closing on me and my having to relocate to the lobby. I even ended up changing the intended ending in the process because it no longer fit, which made it longer still. Well, I changed it slightly, because the fic buzzed on past where it was supposed to go. It's still in there. (Guess where! = D)
Chark, I do hope that you like this and I did the friendship angle well enough. This fic wanted to head over into the relationship area, because I am obviously incapable of writing two people being "just friends." Either way, I do wish you the happiest of birthdays, darlin'. You deserve it, liek woah.
--
John muttered angrily to himself after listening to Rodney shout for him to ‘please, shut the hell up, because yelling at me will not make me work any faster!’ He decided to deliver an unhelpful kick to the side of the puddle jumper in return and instantly regretted it.
“I heard that,” came Rodney’s voice over John’s yelps of pain from inside the ship, “and it’s not helping anything. So, let’s not damage the ship anymore than it already is, okay? Thank you!”
John clutched at his boot and cursed the position he had found himself in once more. Rodney had simply had to continue digging through the Ancients’ wildly unreliable database for worlds to explore for new energy sources. Although they certainly needed all of the power they could get, John was beginning to seriously doubt the sanity of seeking out these types of go-see missions. When he brought this up at the staff meeting, Rodney had rolled his eyes and sighed as though all of the grief in the world was his alone to manage.
Rodney then pointed out the fact that military people were supposed to "excel" at reconnaissance missions and there really wasn’t any other choice for them, as there was no other way to find gate addresses outside of randomly pressing the DHD's buttons. That, of course, would only lead to certain death. At least, that was the way Rodney sold it.
Since Rodney sold all of his ideas the same way, immediate danger or not, John tended to take the whole ‘we’re going to die’ frenzy with two shakers of salt. This was Rodney, after all. No matter how brilliant he might be, panicking at the slightest sign of trouble was not outside of his routine responses for times of crisis and leisure alike.
But now, more or less stranded on a world Rodney had been absolutely convinced contained a horde of ZPMs, John almost wished he had gone along with Teyla and Ronon to visit the monks of M50-437. Even an entire day of mediation sounded more appealing about now, if it held a chance of him getting back to his own bed on Atlantis once they were done.
John had warned Rodney about writing off the traps that might have been left behind or programs that may not have been functioning properly when the Ancients made another one of their famed hasty retreats from a planet they probably shouldn’t have been on in the first place.
Rodney snorted and asked how often these things could go wrong, because it really was mathematically impossible for things to go wrong a hundred percent of the time.
John told him to think back on every mission they had been on that was supposed to be the cakewalk Rodney had promised, but turned into them being kidnapped by rebels. He also told Rodney to think about all of the times Rodney himself had insisted that a minor detail that might cause them all to blow up into billions of formerly well-armed pieces, but snowballed into them running for life and limb and barely making it through the stargate as things went to hell completely. He didn’t feel the need to bring up the missions that they knew going into them that they would be utter cluster fucks to deal with and attempt to withdraw from safely.
He knew Rodney was thinking of those mission as well. He also knew that Rodney was mulling over the fact that ‘these things’ could go wrong quickly and with more frequency than any of them seemed to remember after the fact.
John knew all of this, because Rodney had shut up then and pressed his lips together for a moment before muttering that he was more right than wrong. John let that one slide, because Rodney usually was and he wanted to get this damned retrieval mission over with.
They had no problem finding the cache of ZPMs after they wound their way through seemingly endless tunnels and worked through each of the puzzles that served as locks. They’d loaded themselves down with as many of the ZPM units as the four storage cases between them would hold and headed for the exit. They were mere yards away from the door that lead out of the abandoned facility and into the surrounding field and woods when It happened.
It being the moment when Hell opted to make good on its outstanding promise to come for another visit following the last time they’d barely escaped its grasp.
Hell also opted to bring its friends Angry Natives and Miniature Ancient Drones along for the ride. This naturally had John cursing the friend who’d brought him along for the ride.
They’d had to drop or toss all of the ZPM storage cases and most of their gear to outrun the knife-wielding villagers that were screeching that they were desecrating the Ancients holy ground and stealing to boot. What wasn’t discarded aimlessly was launched in the general direction of the pursuing mob.
They’d only enjoyed the barest sense of reprieve upon reaching the puddle jumper and getting it into the air, when an ominous boom echoed through the air and shook the jumper. The HUD flashed into view, showcasing the damage their ship had taken, causing Rodney to impressively tint the air navy with the inventive strings of “Fuck!” and “Damn!” and Shit!” he cobbled together.
John gripped the controls and told Rodney to hold on as the jumper plummeted toward the forest waiting to catch them in its many branched arms. John had been in some bad landings before and he found that smashing into any convenient group of treetops that happened to be around just then wasn’t the worst they could do. They could have been flying over the open sea or a grassy field that contained nothing at all between them and the fast approaching ground. John didn’t want to think about either of those landings at the moment. However, he found he couldn’t really help it; even as he raised the shield a second too late after they’d already collided with the first of the trees.
They crashed and thumped through limbs that would have destroyed the entire ship had the shield not been active. John was able to enjoy that comfort for several seconds more before the shield too had sputtered out and abandoned them to their fate. John then comforted himself with the fact that it was okay, really, because the ground was reaching up to snatch them from the air and it all worked out well either way.
Thrown from their seats and more than slightly dazed from the impact, John and Rodney had hauled themselves up from the floor; only to discover that the jumper had not only taken out its surrounding trees, it had considerately impeded itself halfway into the dirt. Despite all of this, John knew that it could have been much worse, which he informed a snarling Rodney, who was bleeding from a deep-looking gash on his forehead. He listened to the ranting and comparisons to the last time Rodney had suffered a head injury in a downed puddle jumper until Rodney wore himself out and was panting from the exertion.
John had nodded slowly, ignoring the building headache that was gathering steam and his own bleeding wounds.
“Look, McKay. It happened, now we need to get out of here. Can you get us out of here or not?” he had asked quietly, because after all of Rodney’s screaming, someone had to be reasonable and quiet.
He knew that his ability to whisper wouldn’t last long in the face of them attempting to free themselves and head back to Atlantis with another failed mission to report. He thought he’d take advantage of it then while his headache was at its worst. They both knew that it would only be a matter of When he started yelling back at Rodney for his incompetence in choosing this planet.
There were the same halted assurances of yes, maybe, possibly, probably Rodney could repair whatever had been hit to cause them to crash. To this, John responded that they should at least make sure that communications were functional first, for the instant Elizabeth tried to dial in to contact them once they had officially missed their scheduled time of return or status report.
Rodney agreed wholeheartedly.
That had been three days ago and Rodney appeared to be no closer to repairing communications than they were to sprouting wings and bodily flying to the gate instead. They’d managed to get the jumper’s rear hatch open, but little else had responded to any of the manual or mental commands John and Rodney initiated.
Amazingly, along with now miraculously showing a preference for mediation with monks, John wished that he had went ahead and spent the time with Rodney that he’d originally asked for. Then, he might not be stuck in the middle a forest weeks away from the gate by foot and ready to strangle anything that so much as looked at him.
But, there’d always been something that kept them busy and John, like anyone average joe, had found it a mite difficult to squeeze one-on-one team bonding time in between mass plagues and Wraith attacks and Ascended women that he never saw coming.
Though they’d been pretty lucky - and John considered that with two shakers of salt, as well - so far, they were still ass out as far as the big picture was concerned. As far as individual pieces of the big picture were concerned, the villagers had quickly lost their trail. Despite obviously having the advantage of knowing the woods of their own planet, they hadn’t come traipsing into John and Rodney’s makeshift clearing. The miniature drones they still weren’t sure if they’d triggered as they were leaving or were sent after them by the facility’s would-be protectors that had let them inside to begin with, hadn’t taken anymore shots at them. It seemed that they were in the clear for the time being. But with John’s admittedly shaky luck, there wasn’t any telling what would come for them next.
He hoped that it would be Teyla and Ronon and fifteen teams of marines come to extract them. For all he knew, the next thing to come along would be a Pegasus-style man-eating squirrel hell-bent on gnawing their eyes from their sockets.
He also begrudgingly figured that Rodney might have set the drones off himself to get what he had been bugging John for more and more lately as he watched Teyla and Ronon go off to the Athosians’ new home world for one occasion or another. He’d explained that he wanted to spend some time with a buddy who cared enough to bring a flash drive loaded with his favorite music or didn’t attempt to slip him lemon squares.
He just wanted to hang out with John, but they’d had team missions and near misses instead. There had been plenty of times they spent in one another’s presence, but there hadn't been chats about what their lives were like back on Earth. There had been daring rescues, but not nearly enough games of chess to argue about.
John missed those things, too, sometimes, but work was work for him. He sighed to himself as he thought all of this over.
He was jarred from his thoughts by the sound of Rodney’s joyful cries of celebration. It took him a moment to understand what was happening, but from the gleeful fragments of sentences and admonishments of “About time!” and “What took you so?!” John knew that something good must have been happening for once.
He had gotten as far as climbing up the rear hatch before there was a solid block of Rodney bowling him over in a hug he only associated with Ronon and screaming in his ear.
“I was working on the puddle jumper’s communications and I still couldn’t get them to work, when I heard the same barely audible chirping we’ve been hearing for three days. I searched until I found it, because it’s been driving me crazy like you wouldn’t believe. Turns out that our earpieces still worked and we'd just lost them in the impact instead of being crushed like I thought they had been. I found mine wedged into the back seat.
“When I got it in my ear, I found out that it was Elizabeth all along! She, Teyla, and that guy Chuck, you know Chuck, the technician, remember? Never mind. Elizabeth! They’ve been trying to hail us on the radio for days and we never even noticed, because we’d been working on the jumper’s communication system and getting the jumper itself to fly.
“They’ve been searching for us for days in five jumpers and still haven’t found us in all of this coverage.” Rodney finally drew a lungful of breath and waved at the trees surrounding them before continuing on.
“The drones gave them some problems, but Radek managed to shut them off when they finally reached the area those psychopaths were guarding. They got them, too, by the way. Well, they sent the jumpers back out to continue their sweeps for us while Radek went into the hold and retrieved more ZedPMs. We’re going home! And we’re going to have ZedPMs to show for this mess!”
Rodney dug his arms into John’s sides as he finished and inhaled another deep breath. John patted him on the back awkwardly, not quite able to find the appropriate ‘we’re not going to die’ words after Rodney had spewed out so many. Instead, he nodded and told Rodney that that was great, because peeing in the woods long term wasn’t really for him.
Rodney laughed at that and John was glad to hear it. Only five minutes ago, they had been looking at the prospect of having to spend weeks walking toward the stargate in hopes of getting off the planet. Now, they were hugging and cheering and basking in the knowledge that they had all of the ZPMs they needed.
As grouchy as time spent with Rodney sometimes made John, he thought he might give it a try more often, especially if it kept Fate from smacking him with a repeat of the last three days to get it to happen. And even more importantly, if Rodney gave him more hugs like the one they were currently sharing. John might not have been a touchy person normally, but in times like these, a little comfort went a long way.
Besides, it was one of the best hugs John had had in a long time.
--
The End!