Kid A by cesperanza, commentary by erda_3 Part 2

[erda_3]

title:Kid A
author : cesperanza
fandom: SGA
commentator: keefaq
Story Alone : Here
Commentary Part 2

The crisis comes on MC7-920. Rodney's leaning far over the edge of a cliff with a radiation sensor, trying to get a read on what might be a power-source in the valley, and John has a momentary heart-clench of "Rodney!" and then forces it down-because Jesus, he's not the guy's mother or anything, and it's probably fine, and Ronon's right there, and besides, he does dangerous shit all the time and he hates it when people get all over-protective. And just to make the point, John jams his hands in his pockets and turns away to see what Teyla is doing-and so he hears, rather than sees, the sudden rough sound of crumbling rocks, and he turns back just in time to see Rodney and Ronon doing an awkward dance on the cliff's abruptly eroded edge. He has a glimpse of Rodney's pale, terrified face, and Ronon's grabbed Rodney by the arms and is struggling to drag him onto solid ground while still moving carefully, because the edge is still crumbling away beneath their feet-and John's standing there with his hands in his pockets.
For a moment, he's certain that he's going to lose both of them, and then Ronon lets out something like a war cry and heaves Rodney up, off the ground, and sort of throws him toward solid ground, rolling with him in a jumble of pale and dark limbs away from the edge and practically to John's feet.
Teyla's there in an instant, pulling them apart, helping them up, and Rodney's face is scratched and dirty and his shirt is torn, and John's finally got his hands out of his fucking pockets-but they're shaking, so he quickly shoves them in again. He has never been so paralyzed; he doesn't know what to say-how to justify-how to explain what he was doing-thinking-wasn't doing-and all he wants is to throw his arms around Rodney and kiss him-just once, on his scraped-up cheek, just to make sure that he's really alive. But he doesn't, because he can't, and he's afraid that anything he says will come out wrong, and so finally he manages to half-yell: "Rodney! What the fuck?"
Teyla glares at him reproachfully, but that feels good; that feels right; yelling feels safe, somehow.
"If you're trying for a Darwin award, just leave Ronon out of it!"
Rodney's made it to his feet, with Teyla supporting his arm, but he still looks wobbly. A moment later, he gives up and sits down, sending up a little cloud of dust, and puts his head between his legs. "I-sorry," Rodney manages, and he must really be feeling lightheaded. "Oh my God, that was close."
"Yeah, it was," John says, voice slathered with sarcasm. "Nice work, Ronon," and by God, he ought to be court-martialed: it's his job to protect his people. John puts on his most irritable expression and tightens his hands into fists and hopes his team will mistake his agitated shaking for rage, because Jesus, he blew it, he can't believe how badly he blew it; he's not fit for his own damned command.
Back on Atlantis, he sketches out a bare-bones report to Elizabeth, and then goes for a run. He runs, and he runs, and he runs, all the way around the north pier, and halfway up the south, and then back again, and by the time he gets back to his room, his legs feel like rubber and he's really almost hallucinating. He almost falls asleep in the shower, and he passes out on his bed still wrapped in a towel and wet behind the ears.
He doesn't go to Rodney's room that night, or the next night, or the next, but there are no hurt expressions or reproachful stares; Rodney's just exactly the same.

This reminds me of a classic science fiction story by Kate Wilhelm called “No Light in the Window.” John believes his emotional entanglement weakens him when in fact what weakened him was his repressing his concern in a situation his intuition saw was dangerous. John would have intervened right away for anyone else; it’s his excessive concern that his feelings for Rodney will interfere with his ability to keep cool that cause him to overcompensate and ignore the danger. Relationships increase our ability to tolerate stress, but John isn’t getting that.

He keeps expecting Rodney to waylay him in order to ask just what the hell is wrong with him (a question John's never been able to answer to his own satisfaction.)

Ha! That’s probably as introspective as John’s going to get.

But when Rodney finally does waylay him, it's only to slide a long-range satellite photo across the table to him. John picks up the picture and turns it around a couple of times, trying to guess which way is up; it's something mechanical, anyway, floating in space somewhere. It's a...?
"It's a weapons system," Rodney says, beaming, and John sees then that Rodney's practically bouncing on his toes. "I think-and oh, you're going to love this; you're going to love this so much-but I think it's a disintegrator beam," and the thing is, John does love it, John loves it with an unholy passion; loves the idea and the thing itself and the very words: disintegrator beam.
And so he's grinning stupidly and repeating, "A disintegrator beam?" just to say it out loud, and Rodney grins back and says, "Yeah. A disintegrator beam," because obviously Rodney loves to say the words as much as he does.
"Okay, that's cool," John says, and really, his face hurts-because a disintegrator beam. "A disintegrator beam is just cool," and Rodney manages to say with a straight face, "You think the disintegrator beam is cool?" and John says he thinks the disintegrator beam is way cool.
"So how can we get it?" John asks, and Rodney says, "Ah, yes; well; that's the tricky part."

This is beyond cute. I can see where it might seem like Rodney brings John the disintegrator beam to remind him of the why of the relationship but to me it’s more about what you do when you find or see something way cool. You run and share it with the one you love, right? A joy shared is a joy doubled. Who else can Rodney share the total squee of a disintegrator beam with? Who else but John would drop their cool and jump around in fangirl glee with Rodney?

They spend the next couple of hours hunched over the table working out a plan-sketching it out, and then refining it, and then figuring out how to pitch it to Elizabeth, complete with "good cop-bad cop" contingencies, ("We need this for science!" "We need this for war!" depending on Elizabeth's mood on any given day) and when they've got something they're both pretty happy with, they break into the mess and eat an entire roll of Atlantis's highly-coveted Oreos.

“You and me against the world” again.

They peel off to their respective rooms with a wave, still covered in black crumbs, and John's almost at his door when he remembers that he and Rodney sort of have A Thing, except, huh, maybe they don't anymore. Maybe they're just friends, now, again, like they used to be before Darika. That's good, John thinks, taking off one boot, to know that Rodney's cool like that, except really, it's unnerving, John thinks, taking off the other boot, because it's like Rodney doesn't even remember that they've been fucking; like it never really happened at all.

The furious pace of the proceeding section quite suddenly goes adagio with the simple phrase “taking off one boot” so that the reader can think and remember along with John.

Except John's changed too much to believe that; he remembers Rodney's tight, wet mouth, and how it felt to fuck him halfway through the wall. More importantly, he remembers the way Rodney's cock felt on his tongue, heavy and thick, and there's no way he made that up, because cocksucking was never part of his imaginative repertoire. He never dreamed about kissing nipples or sucking cock before (or did he, and he just pretended he didn't?) He lays back and drapes his arm over his eyes, and what he remembers, mostly, is the way Rodney kisses him. And how it feels not to have to sleep alone.

Parenthetically the writer again avoids the suggestion of WNGWJLEO. John may like the whole WNGWJLEO rationale but the author tells us not to be fooled.

John reminds himself that no good can come of this, that he's the military commander of the most distant base ever known to planet Earth, and he can't afford any distractions, particularly of the gay kind-but already he's crumbling, and he's cold, and Rodney found him a disintegrator beam, and Jesus. He holds out for another couple of days, and then he's on the way back to his room when he suddenly swerves and goes to Rodney's instead, and Rodney opens the door and says, "Oh, hey," and lets him in.

John has begun to recognize and accept his behavior as “gay,” a big step for him.

They don't talk about it; John just says, "Hey," and runs his hand along the fly of Rodney's pants, and by the second upstroke, Rodney's cupping his face and kissing him. They make it to the bed, and it's almost like old times: lying there, kissing, with their hands in each other's pants. But then John breaks away, and bends to kiss Rodney's nipples, and then slides down to take Rodney's cock into his mouth, and when he feels Rodney's hands sink into his hair, he lets himself drift into happiness.
It's so easy, falling asleep next to him, like they've never been apart, that John could almost believe these last few weeks never happened. But then, a few nights later, Rodney says suddenly, "Do me a favor. Fuck me slow."
"How slow?" John asks.
"Slow as you can manage," Rodney answers, and John says okay. Rodney lies on his back and lets his legs splay apart, and John kneels between them and kind of half-leans over Rodney while he fucks him, slow and steady. He figures that Rodney wants to kiss while they fuck, so he's kind of expecting Rodney to pull him down and kiss his mouth, but Rodney doesn't kiss him-Rodney just lies there, eyes half-lidded and looking pleasure-drunk. John strokes in as slowly as he can, and Rodney's eyelids flutter, and he says, "Oh," and "God," and "Please," and then: "John. John," before he comes all over himself.

The first time I read this section I was like, oh another example of Rodney’s comfort with his sexuality and the strength of his feelings for John. These moments really make the story for me. This is the best writing I’ve seen for John, but it’s Rodney the story makes me totally love. He is so awesome. But then I kept coming back to “But then.” Because the story is from John’s POV, the reader has to interpret what is going through Rodney’s mind. Of course with my obsessive OTPness, I have no problem with this, but just in case Rodney’s mindset is too opaque, the author gives us a pretty clear tell here. Rodney’s request to John “fuck me slow” and his emoting while their fucking shows us how very worried Rodney had been, how very much he missed John, and how much he needs this reassurance. Which is very poignant without getting sappy. (That is, the author doesn’t get sappy, I get sappy all the time.)

When the weak link in the chain finally snaps, it's Rodney after all. Dr. Parrish is giving John and Elizabeth a tour of the greenhouse and babbling excitedly about the virtues of various plants they've discovered. Rodney's there, too, as the head of the science division, but he's plainly bored to the point of distraction; John himself is blinking a lot more than normal: blink and nod, blink and nod. Uh-huh, yep.
He tries to shake off his lethargy, and turns to feign interest in some nearby plants-except they're actually interesting: red, sunflowery things with a prickly yellow center and a white stalk, dangerous-looking and really pretty. John gently touches his fingertip to the pad of yellow pricks to appreciate their sharpness, and they feel neat, like bristles, and then he thinks ow, and then whoa, and then I can't feel my legs, and then he's on the floor and there are hands on him and voices shouting, and then nothing.
He seems to remember Carson's low murmur, and Elizabeth's sensible-sounding voice, but they're far away and kind of floating over him; he's made of stone, he's paralyzed: very possibly he's dead.
He smells Rodney before he sees him, what must be the blur of him, and then he feels Rodney's hand ghosting over his face-tracing his hairline, down his temple, the line of his jaw. Then Rodney's fingers are gripping his chin, and he feels Rodney's two soft, firm kisses to his mouth. "Please be okay," Rodney murmurs. "Just-be okay, okay?" and John tries to say he's okay, because he hates hearing Rodney-

“he hates hearing Rodney” Could this be any more poignant?

"Teyla," and John knows that voice: that's the voice Rodney uses when there's an absolute disaster and they're all going to die.

Ha! We all know this voice too well.

"Teyla-wait. Please," and it's only then that John realizes that this is another kind of disaster: Teyla knows, Teyla has seen Rodney kissing him-and John's mind instantly goes to its safest place, plausible deniability. Rodney kissed him, and he's unconscious, he's paralyzed; probably dead; he can't be held responsible for-
"It is all right," Teyla says softly, and John can almost hear her smile. "Do not worry about-"
Rodney's voice is soft and desperately urgent and farther away; he's gone to her and he's talking fast. "I need you to promise me that you won't say anything. Not to anybody. Promise me, Teyla; please?"
"I think you are underestimating Dr. Weir," Teyla chides gently. "Not to mention the rest of us. You and Colonel Sheppard are popular leaders in Atlantis; people will be happy for you."
"Look," and Rodney's voice is violently torn between irritation and desperation, "I don't have time to explain the way the world works to you, but trust me when I say-"
Teyla's now annoyed. "Trust me when I say that Dr. Weir would-"
Rodney cuts her off. "It's not Dr. Weir I'm worried about."
"But..." Teyla falls silent-probably confused, because God knows John is confused.
Rodney's voice suddenly sounds ragged and raw. "Teyla, look-I just-oh, Jesus, " and John's never heard Rodney sound like that; they've been under threat of imminent impending death and he's never heard Rodney sound like that. "Just-please, promise me that you won't-" and then Rodney sighs and says, "Look, he'll break it off," and the words feel like a slap.
Now Teyla sounds shocked. "How can you believe-"
"He will," Rodney says flatly. "I know he will. Look, you don't understand, but believe me, he's him and I'm me, and this thing we have-it's fragile, all right? It won't withstand-he won't stand for-look, he just can't know anybody knows. Or there won't be anything to know about, and I'd like to have this a little bit longer, if it's all the same to you."
"Rodney," and Teyla's voice is low and sad and sympathetic. "Someone is going to find out. Atlantis is a small place; sooner or later-"
"Thanks, I'm not stupid," Rodney says sharply, and no, Rodney McKay is anything but stupid. Rodney can think through a problem faster and more exhaustively than anybody John's ever known: why should this be different? When Rodney speaks again, his voice has lost its edge. "It doesn't have to be forever," Rodney says quietly. "'Sooner or later'-I'll take later; later is better. He nearly died today, if you didn't notice. I could die tomorrow, or the day after that. In my fantasies, I think-maybe something happens before he..." Rodney doesn’t finish the thought. "Mostly, I think I'd just like to have this as long as I can."
"That is not very romantic," Teyla says.

On the contrary Teyla, I think it’s profoundly romantic.

"It's practical," Rodney replies. "You have to know who you're dealing with," and that's the voice Rodney uses when he's analyzing data or discussing natural phenomena, except now it's him, splayed out for dissection. The worst thing, of course, is that Rodney's right: Rodney's got him pegged as neatly as a mathematical figure or a species of butterfly.
"I think you are underestimating him," Teyla says loyally.
"Don't be ridiculous; he's the chief officer of a military outpost in another galaxy," Rodney replies irritably. "I don't expect him to-"

Yes, thank you Rodney. I also don’t expect him to- and I’m disappointed in any story that does expect him to-

John never learns what Rodney doesn't expect of him, because suddenly he opens his eyes and it's Carson, sitting there. "Congratulations, Colonel," Carson says, with a faint smile. "You've conducted a very successful medical experiment for us, thank you."
"Scared the hell out of us, more like," and that's Rodney, and when John turns toward the sound of his voice he sees that the room is full of people: Carson and Elizabeth are standing by the bed, and Teyla and Ronon are looking on. Rodney's taken a position in a chair on the far side of the room, by the door, and John knows what it must be costing him to keep his distance-like he's nobody, like they're nothing.

Rodney again shows his discretion and his ability to be safe for John. Sorry to keep repeating myself, but concerning this whole section of the story I can only keep saying: poignant, poignant, poignant.

"That too," Elizabeth agrees, "but I'm with Carson: it's better to look on the bright side."
"Uh, guys," John says, trying to sit up, and failing, "before you decide this is the bright side, I should probably tell you that I still can't feel my legs."
"Yeah, well, that's because that flower you touched turns out to be an Ancient anesthetic," Rodney snaps from the far side of the room. "We could have done open heart surgery on you and you wouldn't have felt a thing," and it's funny, but John does feel kind of weirdly hollow inside.

Wonderful line about John feeling weirdly hollow letting us in on how overhearing Rodney’s conversation with Teyla is getting to him.

When they release him, John's too exhausted to do anything but face-plant on his bed and sleep for sixteen hours. When he finally wakes up, he feels better-plus, he's starving, so he walks on unsteady legs over to the mess and eats two MREs and drinks a half-gallon of Athosian kula juice. That leaves him feeling full and happy and tired, and so he substitutes a quick radio check for the command center visit he'd been planning ("Everything's all right, sir. You just feel better, sir.") and goes back to his room.
He goes to back to bed and lies there with the pillow over his head for at least fifteen minutes before groaning and getting up again, and Rodney's not in his room yet but that almost doesn't matter-the pillows smell like him and so John gets under the covers, pulls Rodney's hypoallergenic comforter up around his neck, and passes out.
He wakes up at Rodney's surprised shout, and braces himself for the furious whispered tirade: "What the hell are you doing here? You're not well-you should be in bed, asleep; your bed; not to mention that people will be looking for you, Carson, the nurses, Elizabeth and Lorne, Jesus-"
"Shut up," John says, "and get into bed."

Rodney is more worried about being outed than John is now, though clearly not for his own sake. John is no longer so concerned about seeming gay or being gay.

"Fine," Rodney says after a moment. "But it's your goddamned fault if anything happens," and Rodney gets into bed with a lot of grumbling

Have to say Rodney’s grumbling=funny.

and shifting around under the covers, and when he finally settles down, John rolls over and presses his face into the evening-bristly skin just below Rodney's jawline. Rodney doesn't say anything, but his hand immediately comes up to cup John's head, fingers sinking into his hair just the way that he likes.

“just the way that he likes” and this story is touching and romantic just the way that I like.

But things don't feel quite the same, even though life goes back to what passes for normal on Atlantis.
The disintegrator beam works, though it has a limited range, and Rodney rigs it up to a jumper so that John can fly stealthy nighttime raids to destroy key pieces of Wraith equipment-which succeeds as a strategy by baffling the Wraith as much as anything else.
John sleeps in Rodney's room most nights, and he spends a lot of time watching Rodney suck his cock and wondering what else Rodney knows about him that he isn't saying.
They narrowly escape being eaten by a hideous, fast-moving beast on M8L-140, and are saved only because Teyla draws their attention to the increasingly agitated chittering of the planet's bird-like creatures. John impulsively decides better safe than sorry, grabs Rodney's arm and drags him into a dense thicket of shrubs; Ronon and Teyla have just ducked behind their own bushes when the thing bursts out of the forest-a green, scaly wall of eyes and teeth and tusks-and runs past them, making the leaves rattle and the ground shake beneath them.
"What the hell?" Rodney whispers.
"Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal," John replies, and Rodney's flat line of a mouth crooks upward at one corner, and the name Traal sticks to the planet, though only the scientists get the joke.

Reminding us once again of the closeness of their geek factors, but also note that John has worked through his self doubt and is back to trusting his instinct for threat assessment, thereby no longer hesitating to protect Rodney.

John thinks about asking Rodney to fuck him, but he can't figure out if he wants it, or if it's just guilt. In the end, he sort of guides Rodney's hand to his ass one night when they're kissing, though he freaks out and nearly breaks Rodney's wrist when Rodney makes a first, tentative exploration with his finger.
"Sorry," John manages, and he can barely breathe; inside, he feels almost hysterical, like he's going to crack into pieces if something doesn't break soon, if something in him doesn't break. "I- Rodney, I-"
Rodney slings a warm arm around his neck and kisses him. "Shh, yes; it's all right. Jesus, calm down."
"Yeah, okay," John gasps, and hangs on.

The author doesn’t give us much chance to anticipate the “now John shows he’s completely over his problems by rolling over for Rodney” trope before squashing it. I would have been very disappointed to see that here. All along we see the theme of Rodney accepting John as he is, however screwed up that may be. Wouldn’t we all love to be loved like that, without any pressure to change? You gotta love this Rodney, he is so awesome. I’ve never liked romances where the characters are all perfect because it’s just too great a reach for me to identify with them.

On Strungi, they set out on a day-long hike up into the mountains to search for the remains of a highly-technological people that Sateda used to trade with; Ronon thinks they might have survived the Wraith because they rarely ventured into the open and lived instead in a network of shielded underground caves. They've walked for maybe four hours under the hot sun, mostly uphill, when John realizes he hasn't heard a word of complaint out of Rodney-and then he sees that's because Rodney's doing fine. Rodney's got a good stride, and he's barely sweating, and his hand is relaxed but just near enough to reach for his gun.
"What?" Rodney says, and Jesus, he's not even breathing hard.
"Nothing," John replies.
But Rodney sort of squints at him. "You're quiet, even for you-and you've raised laconic to an art form."
"Nah. I'm just the strong and silent type," John says.
"Hmph. I was never going to be strong or silent," Rodney says, "so I had to overcompensate by being brainy and rich." John tries to stifle a smile and says, "Rich? You never told me you were rich," and Rodney says, airily, "Oh yes; didn't I say? I'm loaded; stinking with it. I could show you my bank statement, but you'd have to brace yourself for the zeroes."
John loses the fight with his smile. "Oh yeah? Well, in another life, I was a cowboy."
Rodney snorts at this. "A surfer, you mean. Maybe the guy who sells people those shell-bracelets."
"Okay, a surfer-cowboy," John allows. "Who plays country music on the side."
"They made that one already," Rodney replies. "I think Keanu Reeves was in it. It sucked."
"Fine, then," John says, rolling his eyes. "What would your movie be?" and he's expecting a funny answer like Weird Science or Buckaroo Banzai, but Rodney thinks about it seriously as they hike together in the hot sun, and in the end he says, "You know, I don't think my movie's been made yet."

Back to the emphasis on the specialness of the pairing. Two dorks together. This is another example of Rodney’s ability to be emotionally vulnerable in the relationship. He could have tossed off some funny comment, but instead he tells his truth, i.e. his movie hasn’t been made yet.

He's not sure how it happens, why that day as opposed to any other. He remembers sitting at a big table in the mess, and Elizabeth and Teyla and Ronon were there, and Rodney was there, too, sitting across the table. He remembers looking down at his tray and realizing that he'd eaten all of the little skinny things that tasted almost like french fries. He remembers that Elizabeth had been talking about Wilby and Miller, who'd asked her for permission to get married, and while Elizabeth had been delighted at the prospect of the first Atlantean wedding, some debate had ensued about who had authority to perform the ceremony.
Things get a little blurry then, though he remembers someone saying that it should be Elizabeth, as governor of the Atlantis colony, and someone else suggested Caldwell in his role of ship's captain, and it must have been Teyla who suggested Halling, and he's pretty sure it was Rodney who said, what did it matter, it was all just symbolic anyway. And maybe it was that, or maybe it was Elizabeth saying it was strange that more people hadn't coupled up, or maybe it was just that Rodney hadn't finished his french fries, but John suddenly hears himself saying, "Rodney and I are sort of together," and he doesn't know who looks more surprised, Elizabeth or Rodney, who's staring at him like he's broken all the laws of physics.

The way the clauses ramble all around here make John’s coming out seem very casual and matter of fact. He needs to make this huge romantic gesture not a big deal.

Teyla looks vaguely smug, and if Ronon's surprised-well, John doesn’t even know what that would look like.

Ha! Ronon! I’d love to be able to toss off insightful little lines like that.

"Oh really?" Elizabeth says, recovering a lot faster than Rodney. "That's..."
"-great, yeah," John says, supplying the word for her, and Elizabeth says, "Well, yes; yes, of course."
And Rodney is still staring at him with an open mouth, and, as John reaches across the table and starts eating Rodney's french fries off his plate, he suddenly can't remember ever being this happy.
The End

I understand John comes out to show Rodney how wrong he is in a way. But to me it’s more another example of John extending his comfort zone a little for Rodney. The coming out is really a gift to Rodney. And John has moved all the way from "I'm not gay" to "great, yeah". How could we have a more perfectly understated ending?

I intended to leave the whole issue about the title of the story alone, but my intentions hardly ever influence what I actually do.
Sometimes (actually most times) when I’m reading a story and my mind starts wandering off the printed page into all sorts of bizarre thoughts, I’ll glance up at the title to bring myself back to the author’s intentions. I don’t know what Kid A means so it wasn’t much help to me. I do know I passed on this story the first time I saw it because I have many, many real kids in my real life, and kids are right up there with mpreg on my list of things I don’t want to read about. So the title is a bit problematic.

In closing I’d like to personally thank cesperanza for this wonderful story, a story wedded to its source. It would be a travesty to try to file it down for print publication. To try to experience this story minus its source material would be like watching “ This is How it Works” without reading “Freedom’s Just Another Word,” rendering a complex and beautiful work of art flat and incomprehensible.

Understand this: the movement is not from writing fanfiction to writing original fiction. The innovation of our time is the movement from the print media to the internet, and it is inevitable, unstoppable, accelerating, not to mention exciting, fascinating, and exhilarating.

What is happening in these cutting edge communities on the internet has nothing to do with preparing to become a pro writer or practicing for writing original fiction. This is a new form of art, springing from what preceded it but going beyond the kind of fiction I grew up with, filling a basic human need to create, imagine, and share.

Crossovers, media and pop culture references side by side with literary illusions, the borrowing, the mixing and remixing, the erosion of copyright and the embracing of multiple interiorly consistent but externally contradictory story lines have finally given us not one but a multitude of common languages.
I, who would seem to be the last person to embrace this movement, feel myself tremendously fortunate to be peripherally involved.

Art is a completely human construct. It is what we say it is, and I have no hesitancy in declaring this story a stunning work of art.

Thank you to anyone who had the patience to read this.

“Not like statuary, posed
For a vista in the Louvre. They are things chalked
On the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see.” (Wallace Stevens)