The Home Front by aesc, commentary by erda_3
Title: The Home Front
Author:aesc
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: keefaq
Story alone: here
Commentary Part 2
The house smells like old catering and old people and stale, expensive perfume. Susan, with her greying bun and practical shoes, who’s remained more or less the way John remembers her, moves briskly and silently in the background. She straightens things gone amiss, checks on the coffee, tells Dave his wife will call him back, and still sees to the duffel bag John had forgotten in the taxi.
This succinct descriptive paragraph captures the feeling I got from the brief glimpse we had of the Sheppard household in Outcast. Everything is efficient, practical, stale and lifeless, just the way John remembers it. In his father’s stale world things are stable, solid and unchanging, the complete opposite of John’s life on Atlantis. The ability to create such a strong mood so quickly is characteristic of aesc’s writing. Also I think calling the servant, who is clearly older than John, by her first name is so fittingly condescending of the Sheppard clan.
“Your old room will be aired out for you,” she says, her way of saying welcome in a house that had become more alien and unwelcoming the few times he’s visited since leaving.
Again, John is placed in his old room. Nothing changes here. I would guess most people feel a strange regression when staying at their childhood home, but it’s more extreme if you escaped from your beginnings and return under duress this way. I doubt Susan will be able to freshen the room enough to suit John.
“So.” Dave looks like he wants to run his fingers through his hair, but remembers the coating of shellac and ends up drumming them on the sideboard. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
The author shows us several times that John has more in common with his brother than he maybe realizes. Notice how every little descriptive detail emphasizes John’s feelings about his family. “coating of shellac” is such an unpleasant image, so hard and phony. It’s all about presenting the proper appearance to the world. Plus “I wasn’t expecting to see you again” is soooo catty.
“Yeah, I... I got leave for a few days, since I couldn’t stay for the, you know, the funeral.” John figures he was probably in space when they were carting his father’s coffin to the cemetery.
John’s hesitant almost apology shows us his discomfort in this world.
“That’s nice,” Dave says, though he looks desperately out the window. “The lawyers are coming tomorrow. For the reading.”
Dave doesn’t have any idea how to deal with his brother.
“Is Pamela going to be there?”
“Penelope.” Dave frowns at him, forgets and does run his hand through his hair this time. The strands don’t move much. “Dad never stopped loving Mom, you know. And he didn’t -”
Clearly an old argument. I love the way the author keeps emphasizing Dave’s stiffness with little details like “the strands don’t move much.”
“Dave.” He turns away toward the window opposite, the one that looks out under the portico toward the stables. A horse he doesn’t know, a ponderous warmblood-looking bay, paces the fence line along the far side of the ring. Dad’s gone, he thinks as he watches the bay dance between a trot and canter. It doesn’t feel like acknowledging death, more like thinking that he’d been gone on a business trip, or had left for the office before John had been up for school.
Contrast the warm blood of the horse outside with the chill inside. We can picture a young John escaping to the stable as often as he could while growing up here. But John doesn’t know this horse; his family has moved on while he was away. Anyone who has lost a parent as an adult knows how difficult it is to grasp that they are completely gone, but the author also gives us a little feeling for what John’s life was like as a child when she throws in the detail about John’s father leaving for the office while John was still in bed.
“You’re probably tired,” Dave says abruptly. “Susan’s got your room ready.”
I imagine Dave is frantic to cut off anything John might have been about to say. The author shows us that brothers are similar in their discomfort with emotion.
“She said.”
For all his accusations of John being the one to run, Dave escapes efficiently, feet soft on the carpet and staccato on the tile. Even as kids they’d been terrible at sharing the same space, Dave too still, John too everywhere at once. Mostly, John associates the living room with being still and bored, trying to move around and not be called out for bad behavior.
John stays behind, possibly out of some masochistic impulse, or maybe having no idea what to do. The living room has never felt like a place to live in, more like a museum with couches and memories of dinner parties, champagne he could never talk Dave into sneaking. He keeps his hands in his pockets as he wanders through a labyrinth of things, occasionally forgetting and reaching out to touch a vase from a trip to Beijing, sculpture from six continents. The rug trips him up, and he catches his balance against a battered side table Pam - Penelope - had hoarded during her antique shop phase.
Again we’re given little details that emphasize the coldness of this house, and bright, defiant John feeling so out of place even as a child.
That had been new the last time he’d been home, Penelope carrying a Tiffany lamp straight into a bitter argument that had ended with John pushing past her, knocking the lamp from her hands, on his way out the door.
John, apologize to your -
She isn’t my anything. John hadn’t paused or turned to say it, and three days later he’d been in the air, on assignment to Croatia. He’d been twenty-six then, not a teenager meeting his father’s girlfriend for the first time, but it felt - remembering, it still feels - like that.
I love that John was a bit of an ass to his step mother. It feels real. He was maybe a bit spoiled in the way the children of preoccupied but wealthy people often are. It seems probable he was immature and impulsive. I remember he seemed like a bit of a smart ass in “Rising”. I like the idea that his experiences in the Pegasus galaxy have made him grow up.
The bay tosses his head irritably and charges across the ring, weaving in and out of the jumps, hoofs kicking up rain-damp dirt in a spray when he skids to stop, wheels, and takes off in a new direction. A couple of horses indoors watch him curiously, ears pricked, and John doesn’t recognize their faces either.
He has to move too, like the bay, restlessness shifting electric under his skin. Some of it’s probably adrenaline from the replicator near-disaster. A lot of it’s Dave. Even more of it’s Nancy, and being in this place, a space shaped by privilege and his mother dying and too many fights for John to number. One door means following Dave out to the kitchen and the tangle of hallways leading to their father’s office, the other takes him past a bureau with mangy varnish and a chipped, glued-together vase sitting atop it.
The author makes the comparison between John and the horse explicit here. The glued together vase is no doubt a nod to John, due either to a fight or his general recklessness. We get such a clear picture of John’s desperation from the spare details of this paragraph.
Outside the air is dirt and dust and horse, sharp in John’s nostrils. Contrast this reality of dirt and dust with the stale perfume and catering smell of the house. Ronon had asked about them while they were gearing up for their second try at the replicator, “So what were those things? Pets?” John had replied with something vague about them being for riding and sometimes for work, depending, and “Oh, like an equox except they’ve been dehorned,” Ronon had said.
“Right, like an equox,” John had said, “except not really.”
Ha, Ronon. There is no one to one correlation between the two galaxies.
“They’re dangerous when they’ve got horns,” Ronon had told him, and checked his vest.
Thinking of Ronon makes him think of civilian contracting, and the expression on Dave’s face, and how very, very much John would have given to deck him for thinking what he knew, what he goddamn knew Dave had been thinking. John leans against the fence, holding tight to wood that threatens to splinter. He watches the bay pace, his own mind following the horse’s aimless circles. The sun glints off the horse’s coat, heats the back of John’s neck, so unexpectedly gentle that John can’t square the day with everything that’s happened, with death and the routine strangeness of his life.
John seems to be overreacting to Dave’s, uh, kind of understandable assumption about Ronon. John is just so angry about everything at this point, and his intensely private nature makes him resent anyone seeing into him in any way. The comparison to the horse is here again, as tense and anxious as John. I’m interested in the way the gentle sun gives the lie to John’s perception that everything here is against him.
Slowly, slowly he lets go of the fence, lets himself lean against it, although the board presses harshly against his elbows, riding against bones and tendons that still hurt, though that pain is small against everything else that coils in him. Around him the day moves slowly on, country-quiet where John’s used to the perpetual hum of the city and ocean, the wind in the trees almost like waves, and if there’s a hum here it’s all the history here that John doesn’t want to dig up.
The horse circles suspiciously closer, eyeing John mistrustfully, pausing every few steps as though trying to decide if John is worth the risk.
The horse and John are both pacing around suspiciously, wondering if they should even try to interact.
“Moron,” John tells him. The horse’s ears flick forward and he huffs, a weirdly Rodney-like sound, the same sort of noise Rodney makes whenever he can’t figure out if he likes something or not and is bothered by that.
Hee. Since Rodney’s not around, John has to talk for him.
And almost the exact same second he thinks of Rodney, and thinks about Rodney’s touchiness and spookishness and how he shies and circles away from things like John does, he hears the hum-crunch of tires on unpaved road. The bay’s ears go back up and he stares over John’s shoulder, and John turns in time to see a compact, practical-looking blue car zoom out from the shadows and pull up in front of the house, gravel still cannoning off the undercarriage.
It’s not at all surprising that Rodney appears as John is thinking about him, given that the author has imparted the idea that John thinks about Rodney all the time.
Dave’s out of the house too, and Susan hovering anxiously in the doorway. The horse rockets off in an explosion of muscle, twisting his neck angrily and rolling his eyes at John.
“It’s not my fault,” John says, and watches as Rodney catapults out of the car (the hybrid car), something familiar showing up in a dream. He doesn’t see John, but he does spy Dave in his yuppie day uniform of grey sweater and trousers and zeroes in on him like a drone.
Even though I like Ronon, and I’m not opposed to a little Ronon/John now and then, John/Rodney is my OTP, so naturally I was disappointed when Rodney didn’t accompany John to earth in Outcast. I’ve read a couple of stories that just substituted Rodney for Ronon, and they were fun, but I like this much better because it’s completely canon compliant. There’s nothing in the episode that says that Rodney couldn’t have shown up just like this after the last scene we saw. I also laugh every time I read this paragraph with Rodney catapulting out of the car and zeroing in like a drone. I can just see this so well. The author knows exactly how to quickly create a vivid picture in the mind of the reader.
“This had better be the Sheppard residence,” Rodney says, brilliant, agitated life and volume against a monotonous day and Dave’s subdued welcome, “because I’ve been driving around for hours and if I ever find the woman who did the voice on my GPS system I’m going to personally amputate her vocal cords.” There’s a brief, suspicious silence - suspicion on Rodney’s side, John knows, and possibly shock on Dave’s. Most people have that reaction to Rodney. John had had that reaction to Rodney.
What a beautiful explanation of John’s attraction to Rodney. He’s everything the Sheppards aren’t. It just makes me gleeful to have him barrel into this staid household. He’s brimming over with life and passion.
“You don’t look very related,” Rodney says at last, loud enough for Jeannie to hear him in Vancouver.
It’s hilarious and strangely touching that John’s view of Rodney is not romanticized in the conventional sense, and yet, it is romantic in a weird Sheppard way. The author lets us enjoy that John can see how obnoxious Rodney appears and that it’s a big part of his attractiveness in John’s eyes.
“I’m his older brother,” Dave says, but Rodney’s already moved on, turning to scan the garden, the lawn, and there, even across the wide expanse of grass John knows when Rodney’s seen him.
Rodney’s so wonderfully unimpressed and unaffected by the things that weigh on John.
“John!” Rodney brushes by Dave like he’s one of the lab minions and, like everyone else upon their first encounter with Rodney, Dave watches in stunned, silent helplessness. Rodney, new target acquired, heads straight for John, quick and purposeful, and the tight, twisted thing in John’s chest loosens enough to let him straighten and offer Rodney the closest thing to a smile he’s been able to find in days.
I love Rodney to the rescue.
“Finally!” Rodney stops a couple steps away either because, like John, he has no idea what to do, or else because he knows Dave’s watching and isn’t stunned enough to miss Rodney kissing him. “Can you believe Sam told me I couldn’t transport here from the Apollo? I had to go to Cheyenne and then get some idiot to fly me up to a civilian airport and then rent a car, and this is coming out of my vacation time, by the way, so you had better be grateful.”
“I am,” John says, and if he’s surprised by his own sincerity, then Rodney’s overcome: whatever he’s about to say falls back down his throat, and he stares at John with surprise that hovers on the edge of pleased. His mouth stretches cautiously into a smile that becomes realer, truer, when John presses quick fingers to the inside of his wrists, their bodies angled so Dave can’t see.
This is just so, I don’t know what to say. I’m utterly charmed by this exchange, John’s sincerity, which is given so rarely, Rodney’s surprise, the little touch to Rodney’s wrists, the way John hides the gesture from Dave. It’s perfectly written.
“You going to introduce me?” Dave, recovered from his first exposure to Rodney on the wrong end of inconvenience and putting up with idiots, walks up, plain and austere, and way too much like their father, only moving and breathing, the contrast sharp when he stands next to Rodney in his t-shirt with its slogan-of-questionable-appropriateness.
All the emphasis on the contrast between Rodney and everything Sheppard just makes me so happy.
“Dave, this is Rodney McKay.” John makes vague this is, and this is gestures between Dave and Rodney, who peers at Dave as though at a quantum singularity. “Rodney, you’ve met Dave.”
“I guessed by the hair,” Rodney says, eyes flickering above Dave’s hairline. He takes Dave’s offered hand perfunctorily, the way Rodney usually observes social graces. Dave stares at him, long enough for Rodney’s brain to process that more needs to be said. “I’m um, very sorry for your loss,” he adds, and that’s so abruptly, achingly honest that even John - who’s used to being bludgeoned by Rodney’s moments of unexpected empathy - has to brace himself against a flash of grief.
Gotta love this characterization of Rodney. It’s grounded in hints from canon, but takes it further, like the best SGA writers are wont to do.
“Thank you,” Dave says. He clears his throat, shifts from one foot to another, looking from John to Rodney and back again, and grief ping-pongs back to irritation when John realizes what Dave’s wondering. “Are you a civilian contractor too?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve worked for the Air Force for fifteen years.” Rodney frowns, his what-the-hell-kind-of-a-question-is-that? frown, the frown that means Rodney will take it upon himself to make people suffer for their stupidity. He looks at John. “Is that code for something? It sounds like code.”
Ok, the line about civilian contractors was hilarious in the actual episode. I don’t really think the writers meant it the way many of us took it, but to have Rodney referencing code here so tactlessly cracks me up.
“He met Ronon at our dad’s wake,” He shivers with the impulse to tell Dave he and Rodney are sleeping together, have been for weeks, or recklessly exaggerate it into years and add a couple kids.
This somewhat childish impulse reminds us how unbalanced John is feeling, dealing with his father’s death and just being back with his family.
“Oh, I see.” Rodney’s tone says otherwise, but he lets it go. His gaze sidles back over to Dave irresistibly, cataloguing the differences between the Sheppard he knows and the Sheppard he doesn’t. “I hope you have food somewhere around here.”
“The caterers gave us the leftovers,” Dave says faintly. John wants to laugh; he’s seen Dave irritated and superior, and something that passes for pleased in Dave’s world, but he’s never once seen him back on his heels and stunned. “Susan can make you a plate, and John knows the way to the kitchen.”
I like the characterization of Dave so much in this story. He keeps falling back on his upbringing, but it hasn’t prepared him to deal with people like McKay. The very wealthy are often quite sheltered, and the author has unobtrusively captured this in Dave’s reactions to Rodney.
“So long as someone does.” Rodney jitters, hands lifting to grasp at air, falling and letting go. He glances the horse, who’s hovering a few feet from the fence, and starts a bit. “You have horses.”
“Horse family,” Dave says, sounding almost friendly.
“Hay fever,” Rodney says and inspects one hand for hives.
This whole section amuses me greatly. Again Dave tries for politeness and Rodney tactlessly rejects everything Sheppard . He’s so unimpressed by the wealth and privilege. No wonder John loves him.
“How about lunch?” John asks.
Hee, John is so caught in the middle.
* * *
Rodney looks less than grateful for old tea sandwiches and pastries that have seen better days. But, he says with some attempt at being philosophical, they keep body and soul together and stave off the hypoglycemia that threatened him on the trek back across the lawn. Susan, used to two generations of hostile, unpredictable Sheppards and familiar with how to soothe them, ignores Rodney’s muttered comments about watercress and pâté and keeps him supplied with coffee. John tries not to laugh as Rodney keeps forgetting to put the cup - the paper-thin porcelain coffee cup - in the saucer, and keeps forgetting he can’t hold it like a mug, fumbling it between fingers used to being much more skillful.
“A travel mug would be easier,” he tells Susan. “I have one in the car.”
Again we see how little Rodney cares about this world of excessive politeness. He’s all practicality.
She nods and turns to Dave. “If you would be so kind, David?”
“Is the car unlocked?” Dave asks.
“Mmmmph,” Rodney says. John tells Dave that means yes, and Dave obediently pushes away from the table and heads outside.
Susan retreats to the kitchen, possibly to recharge the coffee maker. “There hasn’t been much call for it,” she’d said when Rodney had given “coffee, and a lot of it” as his drink request. “John’s father never drank it after he retired, and David never quite acquired the taste for it.”
“That’s not natural,” had been Rodney’s verdict, followed by further speculation as to whether Dave and John were, in fact, related, which segued into how John at least understood the value of caffeine, even if the rest of his family seemed deficient.
Could there be a more perfect summing up of Rodney’s attitude toward John and the rest of his family? Unnatural is a great adjective for their stodginess.
“Ronon said you were staying for a few days,” Rodney says now, after a quick glance into the kitchen to make sure Susan is occupied. “And I... well, I’m sorry for not asking, but I wanted to come.”
“It’s cool,” John tells him, and imagines his father’s corpse turning when he touches Rodney’s knee under the shelter of the table. The heady the hell with you rebellion he’d usually felt when doing something like this - making out with another boy, sneaking in his application to the Air Force and leaving the acceptance letter on the table, using his sexuality like a knife to carve away his father’s certainty and superiority - it isn’t there, in its usual place low in his stomach. Instead, he finds an anchor of muscle and bone, security instead of the drifting anger that snags him whenever he comes back here.
This little snippet of John’s past rings so true to the character. I also like that he touches Rodney to ground himself rather than to spite his father. I like to think John has grown up a bit, and isn’t a rebellious teen desperate to escape his father’s oppressive expectations any more.
“I figured they didn’t know,” Rodney says anxiously. His fingers swiftly disassemble a sandwich into bread and its thin slick of aioli, prosciutto, feta distributed in confetti fragments that Rodney eats bit by bit. The spinach he prods off to the side so it doesn’t contaminate anything. “So if they ask, I’m a... a...”
“Civilian contractor,” John supplies, and properly sets his coffee cup in its saucer.
“Yeah.” Rodney nods and looks relieved.
“They know,” John tells him, the words not much more than breath. He’s never found out what Susan thinks, though he knows she knows - Susan knows everything - but he’s never been entirely sure of what he’d do if there hadn’t been at least one person in this house who treated him like a normal human being. “Not about us,” he adds at Rodney’s confusion, “but about... about me.”
This little exchange gives me a feel for the intimacy between John and Rodney. Rodney figures “they didn’t know” and John doesn’t pretend not to understand that he’s referring to John’s sexuality. The outsider view of our beloved characters is in evidence here also, how people who know nothing of the Stargate program and Atlantis see John.
“Oh.” Rodney stares down at the ruins of his sandwiches. “That explains some things.”
Dave comes back in, quiet and contained, like the kitchen is a boardroom and he has to follow protocol. He gives Susan Rodney’s battered insulated mug and sits back down, and to John’s horror tries to be a good host and starts up the small talk that transforms Rodney into nervous potential energy. Rodney can - and frequently does - commandeer their conversations over dinner, but when presented with people who aren’t John, Teyla, or Ronon, flounders for a bit before giving answers that are, in Rodney’s version of reality, polite and restrained.
The author keeps reminding us of the Sheppard default setting, quiet and contained, and how impossible it is for Rodney to respond in kind.
“I held a postdoc at Northeastern,” Rodney says to Dave’s mention of graduating from Harvard Business School with his MBA. John counts it a miracle that Rodney doesn’t say anything about the insignificance of a Master’s degree, business or not. “Right down the street,” Dave agrees, and tries to engage Rodney in conversation about Boston. Rodney makes vague noises of agreement and disparaging comments about Percival Lowell, and mentions being dragged to Cape Cod by an old girlfriend, and the riptide pulling him almost out to Nantucket, and the Coast Guard being involved.
The riptide shows signs of turning into the one about the earthquake when Rodney was at CalTech, and John has to stop him there. “Not the earthquake story again,” he says, which Rodney protests, and Dave, in desperate politeness that is in no way prepared to deal with selections from the Epic of Rodney McKay, insists he does want to hear.
“No, you really don’t,” John says into his wineglass.
“It sounds like you’ve had an exciting life for an astrophysicist,” Dave says carefully. John looks up, and Rodney jumps, and though Dave is grey and straight-laced and boring, he’s always been hard for John to ignore. And for possibly the first time in forty-one years, John’s managed to forget him when they’ve been in the same room together.
Poor John has been so under his family in a way that is so true to me. Our families have such a profound impact on us all, and the author shows us the ways the Sheppard clan have made John the man he is.
“Very exciting,” Rodney says, blushing as though Dave’s been watching them do something other than argue. “I can’t tell you how exciting it’s been.”
“He really, literally can’t tell you.” His own face feels uncomfortably hot, and though Dave isn’t looking at Rodney with the sidelong, uncertain look he’d given Ronon, he still feels like he’s come out and said they’re sleeping together.
“Here you go, Dr. McKay.” Susan materializes with Rodney’s travel mug, and Rodney latches onto it with relief. “I’ve had a room prepared for you, should you feel like resting or cleaning up before dinner.”
“Um, thank you.” Rodney stares up at her with confused adoration, and she smiles down at him, pats him on the shoulder like she’s always done with John (one of the few touches he’s been able to stand without shifting away). Rodney watches her go wistfully. “She makes good coffee.”
Both John and Dave agree to this, even though Dave doesn’t drink coffee (which makes Rodney look at him in amazement again), and silence comes back to hover over their plates. John’s chair faces the window and the free air beyond it, but it also faces Dave, who seems to have settled in for as long as John’s going to sit there. He traces the lines of familiar, difficult features, Dave’s square jaw, pale eyes, a mouth that always makes smiling look like effort.
John’s struggle to resolve his feelings toward his brother are so subtly dealt with by the author. This is just good writing. I can feel Rodney dominating every space he moves in through the little details the author chooses to give us.
You look like your mother, his father had always said, as much affection as criticism for the son who, like his wife, would gallop off, who preferred running and flight and movement to the practicality of life on earth. In the last days before John finally left it had become an accusation, you look like your mother code for every influence that had led to John to Stanford or the Air Force or other men, as though these, along with Christina Sheppard’s death, constituted a conspiracy.
Families have a way of latching onto these little shorthand ways of defining each other, ways that can so easily cross over and become hurtful. I’m so impressed with the author’s insight into family dynamics. These characters feel like real people to me.
Rodney’s making noises preparatory to escape, fidgeting in his chair and clearly anxious to get out, even though he feels bad about leaving John to deal with his brother. He’s at his limit, John knows, because Rodney can only take so much social interaction before reaching critical mass of normalcy.
“Why don’t you go crash for a bit? Susan’ll get you when it’s time to eat,” John suggests, and Rodney almost explodes with gratitude. He doesn’t try to say anything to Dave, for which John is relieved, only an incoherent soliloquy about hoping he hadn’t forgotten to pack things and the sadism behind the design of airplane seats, which, despite everything, despite the danger, makes John smile.
“I should get some work done,” Dave says. He slides his napkin across the table and stands, tightly articulated control next to the blur of Rodney’s anxious energy. “The lawyers are coming at ten, and I have to get things ready for them.”
Again the contrast between the controlled and controlling Dave and Rodney, brimming with energy and spontaneity.
“Anything you need me to do?” John asks.
“No, no...” Dave stares at the tabletop, so brightly varnished it gives his face back in mahogany-streaked reflection. “But I’ll let you know if something comes up.”
Of course their tabletop is clean and bright. Every detail we are told adds to the horrible perfection of the family, everything clean, nothing messy or disorganized.
“Sounds good.” John watches his brother as he disappears into the corridor to the offices, the long, silent ways that, even at ten, had seemed unbearably alien to him. He looks down at Rodney’s plate and its disassembled, abandoned contents, and finally stands to take it to the sink.
Rodney’s plate, like everything about Rodney, doesn’t fit here.
* * *
The day wears on slowly, so quiet it freaks John out with wondering what disaster’s lurking around the corner, if there are Wraith in the garden or natives with arrows and spears marching up the drive, or if the house will go into self-destruct mode. It had felt like that for a while, after he’d realized his father’s plans hadn’t matched up with his own, and he’d fought and fought, the bitterest war he thinks he’s ever been in. The quiet now, though, isn’t the cold resentment of his father (There’s nothing to discuss, John) or Dave’s avoidance of him, like independence might be catching. It’s whatever sort of quiet is left after those things are gone.
Rodney’s dead to the world, sprawled out in the spill of afternoon sun across his bed. John wants to join him and sleep away the worst of the past week. He wonders when, exactly, Rodney and Pegasus became everyday to him, and when Earth and his family became even more alien than they’d been already. Rodney’s sleeping body offers only somnolence, not answers, and John leaves before he can give in.
John has a quiet space here to begin processing his father’s death and understand that his father and all he represents is truly gone. He takes comfort and grounding from Rodney, even unconscious, sprawled messily on the bed.
He wanders the grounds for a while, remembering the paths he’d used to take. There’s effort, he finds, in pushing down memories of his mother taking him birdwatching or on trail rides, perching him in the cradle of her hips and the pommel of her saddle. If he thinks hard enough, he remembers his father riding ahead, and Dave uncomfortable on his own horse, one of those pictures that belongs in real estate brochures, or the picture that appears under the dictionary entry for the happy family.
I love that the Sheppards aren’t villains, they’re just a real family, sometimes more or less in harmony. It’s easy to picture John’s father retreating into his work with the death of his wife, and the whole family unit deeply affected by the loss of a mother’s influence.
The trees are bigger but not much else has changed, aside from fresh paint on the house and stable, and the faces that peer out of him from the stalls. John idles down the barn aisle, stroking soft, inquisitive noses, almost tripping over the barn cat. One horse, a chestnut unimaginatively named Red, looks almost exactly like Ace, down to the stripe that arrows down his face and hooks left over his nose, and John thinks back to flying and woods streaking by, the four-count rhythm he still feels somewhere inside.
The bay is still in the ring, standing still for once and dozing with one foot resting. Interesting that the horse is quiet now when John has quieted. John wonders how many circuits he’s made of that ring over the years, the only discipline he’d allowed in his life other than what the Air Force gave him - and even then, the military couldn’t make it stick. That had been another accusation, you don’t know what you want, which his father had leveled in response to every decision that had led John away from the business and heterosexuality. The last time John remembered it being used had been when he’d told the family about his divorce, never mind that Nancy had asked for it because she’d gotten tired of his secrets, which his father had flatly refused to believe.
I know what I want isn’t this. John remembers saying that, along with fuck you. They’d never finished their first fight, really, and had stayed a father and his bitter, ungrateful son for twenty-six years.
Dust settles heavily on him along with the sunlight, bringing up sweat in uncomfortable places. He hasn’t changed since yesterday, had slept in old boxers and a t-shirt borrowed from Bates because he’d forgotten to pack anything beyond his suit, jeans, and a toothbrush. Wincing, he rubs at his neck and the grit that covers it, the old sweat and a bit of dry blood he thinks might be his but isn’t sure.
Dave’s still hidden in the labyrinth of Sheppard Power Logistics offices and Susan has disappeared, but walking into the house, its sudden coolness, is like walking under surveying, waiting eyes. Enemy territory, which is how he’s thought of it for so long. His only ally is still passed out in the spare room, drooling into his pillow. When John checks in on him this time, he walks into the room, bends close enough to see the remains of green and red paint at the corner of Rodney’s temple, a smudge of blue under his ear. Rodney sighs in his sleep, still still still, fingers tightening in his pillow.
One of my favorite things about SGA (fan)writers is their willingness to accept the character’s flaws and even make a virtue of them, as here in the way Rodney is not just sleeping, but passed out and drooling. The author makes me feel how much John wants Rodney to wake up without ever saying it directly. The description of enemy territory and Rodney as his only ally pulls me back to the title, Home Front, which immediately makes me think of John’s life as a war.
They haven’t slept together - well, John supposes, they haven’t spent the night together. Sex they can do, but neither of them have figured out the semantics of a normal relationship. Nancy hadn’t helped John figure them out; he’s fairly sure Katie hadn’t helped Rodney either. He wonders briefly what Rodney would do if he slipped in beside him, in a bed four times the size of the one they’ve learned to twist themselves to fit in, what he would do, if he’d fall asleep or stay awake and try to familiarize himself with simple touch, which they don’t do beyond encouraging, manly slaps in public, or in the dark and naked, with quiet, frantic intent.
How much I love their ineptitude. John’s need is so carefully articulated here.
Telling himself Rodney wouldn’t appreciate John’s filthy carcass draped over him (which is, John reflects, exactly how Rodney would put it), he leaves again.
His room is... his room, and that freaks him out so much he grabs his kit and clean clothes from his duffel and walks out, ignoring the trophies, the few competition awards he hadn’t sacrificed to posters of fighter jets or Johnny Cash. After his father had married Pamela - Penelope - he’d shoved the photograph of his mother into a drawer, and as he strides down the hallway, John knows it’s still there, the room a square reminder of days not too long before everything changed, maybe another accusation.
Again we see how everything changed in the Sheppard household with the death of John’s mother, and how poorly John has dealt with it all.
John recognizes his own contribution to the mess of his family life. Also the fact that his room being so much his room that it freaks him out cracks me up. That’s so exactly right.
Dad regretted what happened between you two, right up to the end, Dave had said, and Dave didn’t just say that sort of thing. Sheppard men in general didn’t say that sort of thing.
Hope, then. Maybe, he doesn’t know, twenty-five years removed from the teenager who knew everything. John presses the heel of his hand to one eye, tells himself it’s a stress headache and not a question that he can’t ask himself.
John is finally growing up, understanding his family with an adult’s perspective and insight.
Rodney rouses a bit when John comes back in, peering up at him with sleepy accusation, some people are still jet-lagged, Sheppard, and don’t you have your own bathroom?
“Plumbing’s busted,” John grunts. Rodney gets in “You don’t have a plumber on retainer?” before John shuts the door.
Hee! That remark is so Rodney.
The water needs more than thought to change temperature, but the tiles are still slick and familiar under John’s hands. He stares down at his feet, the thin line of blood from another cut that works down one leg to the drain, dirt and dust, a bit of hay. Heat tries to soothe out the knots in his muscles, but tendons still pop when John twists his neck, stretches to get soap between his shoulders. Briefly he wonders if he can get Rodney to join him, because they’ve never had shower sex, and the shower smells like Rodney’s soap and shampoo, and John’s seen Rodney wet before.
He shifts against arousal, even though the sharpness is a good sharp, and he hasn’t seen Rodney for a couple days, misses him and has missed him for reasons that have to do with sex and, mysteriously, finding he’d wanted Rodney barging through the minefield of dead parents and sanctimonious brothers. And there’s probably something in there having to do with the few times he’d brought friends home and they’d curled around each other in his bed, on the couch, the kitchen, the pleasure as much from rebellion as from sex.
“Fuck,” he says to the blank, gleaming surface of tile. He switches to cold water, tells himself there are reasons he’s never told Rodney much about his family, and steps out before he can cave and haul Rodney in with him. The humid air chokes him and makes him dizzy; when he presses the towel to his face, he inhales a mouthful of Rodney and shudders and wishes, uselessly, that Rodney wasn’t so important.
John’s confusion is so beautifully delineated here. Again, fantastic writing, deft insight into the character, making him so much more of a real person that we have from canon. This is exactly what I want from fanfiction.
“So, I hope we’re having something other than rotted goose liver sandwiches for dinner,” Rodney tells him when John steps out, fully dressed and somewhat together. “Susan just radioed or intercommed or whatever,” he flaps at the intercom panel on the wall, “and she says we’re eating early because it’s her evening off.”
Rodney is again so unaffected by the wealth and privilege around him.
“Yeah,” John mumbles. Rodney stops flapping and turns to him, hair disordered from sleep and eyes a little faded from jet lag and probably coming straight here from the Kid Planet.
“So the kids doing okay?” John asks, rubbing absently at his hair.
John comforts and distracts himself by talking about his real home.
“Now they are, not that they deserve it,” Rodney says. John grins and moves closer, wanting to allow himself this, at least, something he’s come to rely on. Rodney’s eyes widen a little when John doesn’t stop at friendly distance.
“So did they paint your entire face?” He touches the small splotch of red-green, watches Rodney’s eyes sharpen and dilate, can almost feel the speaking shudder of his body.
“Most of it,” Rodney says, the words half-broken, face turning to John’s hand, shaping itself to the contour of his palm. John forces himself to stillness, terrified of this simplicity, of just the two of them. “There’s no getting the stuff off. Zelenka came up with something that works, but he isn’t sharing it, the bastard.”
“Don’t laugh at him next time,” John whispers, and thinks that they could kiss, leaning a few degrees more from vertical.
“I’ll try not - ” The words falter, die into soft breath against John’s mouth.
Late daylight filters through John’s eyelids, not the cool silver of Lantean night, but ordinary Earth afternoon turning darkness warm-red. And it’s day, it’s day and they’re kissing, like ordinary Earthlings do, Rodney uncomplicated for once and happy in the moment, accepting John’s uncertain hands and touching him in turn, smoothing in calmness when most times simple affection is a chain that needs shaking off, something the instinctual response to which is sidestepping, but no, not now, not here, when Rodney’s hands ask him to stay.
Yeah, this paragraph is, uh, wow. I can’t possibly explain it any better than it explains itself. I just want to sit back and let every perfect word of it seep into my insides.
Part 2
Author:aesc
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: keefaq
Story alone: here
Commentary Part 2
The house smells like old catering and old people and stale, expensive perfume. Susan, with her greying bun and practical shoes, who’s remained more or less the way John remembers her, moves briskly and silently in the background. She straightens things gone amiss, checks on the coffee, tells Dave his wife will call him back, and still sees to the duffel bag John had forgotten in the taxi.
This succinct descriptive paragraph captures the feeling I got from the brief glimpse we had of the Sheppard household in Outcast. Everything is efficient, practical, stale and lifeless, just the way John remembers it. In his father’s stale world things are stable, solid and unchanging, the complete opposite of John’s life on Atlantis. The ability to create such a strong mood so quickly is characteristic of aesc’s writing. Also I think calling the servant, who is clearly older than John, by her first name is so fittingly condescending of the Sheppard clan.
“Your old room will be aired out for you,” she says, her way of saying welcome in a house that had become more alien and unwelcoming the few times he’s visited since leaving.
Again, John is placed in his old room. Nothing changes here. I would guess most people feel a strange regression when staying at their childhood home, but it’s more extreme if you escaped from your beginnings and return under duress this way. I doubt Susan will be able to freshen the room enough to suit John.
“So.” Dave looks like he wants to run his fingers through his hair, but remembers the coating of shellac and ends up drumming them on the sideboard. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
The author shows us several times that John has more in common with his brother than he maybe realizes. Notice how every little descriptive detail emphasizes John’s feelings about his family. “coating of shellac” is such an unpleasant image, so hard and phony. It’s all about presenting the proper appearance to the world. Plus “I wasn’t expecting to see you again” is soooo catty.
“Yeah, I... I got leave for a few days, since I couldn’t stay for the, you know, the funeral.” John figures he was probably in space when they were carting his father’s coffin to the cemetery.
John’s hesitant almost apology shows us his discomfort in this world.
“That’s nice,” Dave says, though he looks desperately out the window. “The lawyers are coming tomorrow. For the reading.”
Dave doesn’t have any idea how to deal with his brother.
“Is Pamela going to be there?”
“Penelope.” Dave frowns at him, forgets and does run his hand through his hair this time. The strands don’t move much. “Dad never stopped loving Mom, you know. And he didn’t -”
Clearly an old argument. I love the way the author keeps emphasizing Dave’s stiffness with little details like “the strands don’t move much.”
“Dave.” He turns away toward the window opposite, the one that looks out under the portico toward the stables. A horse he doesn’t know, a ponderous warmblood-looking bay, paces the fence line along the far side of the ring. Dad’s gone, he thinks as he watches the bay dance between a trot and canter. It doesn’t feel like acknowledging death, more like thinking that he’d been gone on a business trip, or had left for the office before John had been up for school.
Contrast the warm blood of the horse outside with the chill inside. We can picture a young John escaping to the stable as often as he could while growing up here. But John doesn’t know this horse; his family has moved on while he was away. Anyone who has lost a parent as an adult knows how difficult it is to grasp that they are completely gone, but the author also gives us a little feeling for what John’s life was like as a child when she throws in the detail about John’s father leaving for the office while John was still in bed.
“You’re probably tired,” Dave says abruptly. “Susan’s got your room ready.”
I imagine Dave is frantic to cut off anything John might have been about to say. The author shows us that brothers are similar in their discomfort with emotion.
“She said.”
For all his accusations of John being the one to run, Dave escapes efficiently, feet soft on the carpet and staccato on the tile. Even as kids they’d been terrible at sharing the same space, Dave too still, John too everywhere at once. Mostly, John associates the living room with being still and bored, trying to move around and not be called out for bad behavior.
John stays behind, possibly out of some masochistic impulse, or maybe having no idea what to do. The living room has never felt like a place to live in, more like a museum with couches and memories of dinner parties, champagne he could never talk Dave into sneaking. He keeps his hands in his pockets as he wanders through a labyrinth of things, occasionally forgetting and reaching out to touch a vase from a trip to Beijing, sculpture from six continents. The rug trips him up, and he catches his balance against a battered side table Pam - Penelope - had hoarded during her antique shop phase.
Again we’re given little details that emphasize the coldness of this house, and bright, defiant John feeling so out of place even as a child.
That had been new the last time he’d been home, Penelope carrying a Tiffany lamp straight into a bitter argument that had ended with John pushing past her, knocking the lamp from her hands, on his way out the door.
John, apologize to your -
She isn’t my anything. John hadn’t paused or turned to say it, and three days later he’d been in the air, on assignment to Croatia. He’d been twenty-six then, not a teenager meeting his father’s girlfriend for the first time, but it felt - remembering, it still feels - like that.
I love that John was a bit of an ass to his step mother. It feels real. He was maybe a bit spoiled in the way the children of preoccupied but wealthy people often are. It seems probable he was immature and impulsive. I remember he seemed like a bit of a smart ass in “Rising”. I like the idea that his experiences in the Pegasus galaxy have made him grow up.
The bay tosses his head irritably and charges across the ring, weaving in and out of the jumps, hoofs kicking up rain-damp dirt in a spray when he skids to stop, wheels, and takes off in a new direction. A couple of horses indoors watch him curiously, ears pricked, and John doesn’t recognize their faces either.
He has to move too, like the bay, restlessness shifting electric under his skin. Some of it’s probably adrenaline from the replicator near-disaster. A lot of it’s Dave. Even more of it’s Nancy, and being in this place, a space shaped by privilege and his mother dying and too many fights for John to number. One door means following Dave out to the kitchen and the tangle of hallways leading to their father’s office, the other takes him past a bureau with mangy varnish and a chipped, glued-together vase sitting atop it.
The author makes the comparison between John and the horse explicit here. The glued together vase is no doubt a nod to John, due either to a fight or his general recklessness. We get such a clear picture of John’s desperation from the spare details of this paragraph.
Outside the air is dirt and dust and horse, sharp in John’s nostrils. Contrast this reality of dirt and dust with the stale perfume and catering smell of the house. Ronon had asked about them while they were gearing up for their second try at the replicator, “So what were those things? Pets?” John had replied with something vague about them being for riding and sometimes for work, depending, and “Oh, like an equox except they’ve been dehorned,” Ronon had said.
“Right, like an equox,” John had said, “except not really.”
Ha, Ronon. There is no one to one correlation between the two galaxies.
“They’re dangerous when they’ve got horns,” Ronon had told him, and checked his vest.
Thinking of Ronon makes him think of civilian contracting, and the expression on Dave’s face, and how very, very much John would have given to deck him for thinking what he knew, what he goddamn knew Dave had been thinking. John leans against the fence, holding tight to wood that threatens to splinter. He watches the bay pace, his own mind following the horse’s aimless circles. The sun glints off the horse’s coat, heats the back of John’s neck, so unexpectedly gentle that John can’t square the day with everything that’s happened, with death and the routine strangeness of his life.
John seems to be overreacting to Dave’s, uh, kind of understandable assumption about Ronon. John is just so angry about everything at this point, and his intensely private nature makes him resent anyone seeing into him in any way. The comparison to the horse is here again, as tense and anxious as John. I’m interested in the way the gentle sun gives the lie to John’s perception that everything here is against him.
Slowly, slowly he lets go of the fence, lets himself lean against it, although the board presses harshly against his elbows, riding against bones and tendons that still hurt, though that pain is small against everything else that coils in him. Around him the day moves slowly on, country-quiet where John’s used to the perpetual hum of the city and ocean, the wind in the trees almost like waves, and if there’s a hum here it’s all the history here that John doesn’t want to dig up.
The horse circles suspiciously closer, eyeing John mistrustfully, pausing every few steps as though trying to decide if John is worth the risk.
The horse and John are both pacing around suspiciously, wondering if they should even try to interact.
“Moron,” John tells him. The horse’s ears flick forward and he huffs, a weirdly Rodney-like sound, the same sort of noise Rodney makes whenever he can’t figure out if he likes something or not and is bothered by that.
Hee. Since Rodney’s not around, John has to talk for him.
And almost the exact same second he thinks of Rodney, and thinks about Rodney’s touchiness and spookishness and how he shies and circles away from things like John does, he hears the hum-crunch of tires on unpaved road. The bay’s ears go back up and he stares over John’s shoulder, and John turns in time to see a compact, practical-looking blue car zoom out from the shadows and pull up in front of the house, gravel still cannoning off the undercarriage.
It’s not at all surprising that Rodney appears as John is thinking about him, given that the author has imparted the idea that John thinks about Rodney all the time.
Dave’s out of the house too, and Susan hovering anxiously in the doorway. The horse rockets off in an explosion of muscle, twisting his neck angrily and rolling his eyes at John.
“It’s not my fault,” John says, and watches as Rodney catapults out of the car (the hybrid car), something familiar showing up in a dream. He doesn’t see John, but he does spy Dave in his yuppie day uniform of grey sweater and trousers and zeroes in on him like a drone.
Even though I like Ronon, and I’m not opposed to a little Ronon/John now and then, John/Rodney is my OTP, so naturally I was disappointed when Rodney didn’t accompany John to earth in Outcast. I’ve read a couple of stories that just substituted Rodney for Ronon, and they were fun, but I like this much better because it’s completely canon compliant. There’s nothing in the episode that says that Rodney couldn’t have shown up just like this after the last scene we saw. I also laugh every time I read this paragraph with Rodney catapulting out of the car and zeroing in like a drone. I can just see this so well. The author knows exactly how to quickly create a vivid picture in the mind of the reader.
“This had better be the Sheppard residence,” Rodney says, brilliant, agitated life and volume against a monotonous day and Dave’s subdued welcome, “because I’ve been driving around for hours and if I ever find the woman who did the voice on my GPS system I’m going to personally amputate her vocal cords.” There’s a brief, suspicious silence - suspicion on Rodney’s side, John knows, and possibly shock on Dave’s. Most people have that reaction to Rodney. John had had that reaction to Rodney.
What a beautiful explanation of John’s attraction to Rodney. He’s everything the Sheppards aren’t. It just makes me gleeful to have him barrel into this staid household. He’s brimming over with life and passion.
“You don’t look very related,” Rodney says at last, loud enough for Jeannie to hear him in Vancouver.
It’s hilarious and strangely touching that John’s view of Rodney is not romanticized in the conventional sense, and yet, it is romantic in a weird Sheppard way. The author lets us enjoy that John can see how obnoxious Rodney appears and that it’s a big part of his attractiveness in John’s eyes.
“I’m his older brother,” Dave says, but Rodney’s already moved on, turning to scan the garden, the lawn, and there, even across the wide expanse of grass John knows when Rodney’s seen him.
Rodney’s so wonderfully unimpressed and unaffected by the things that weigh on John.
“John!” Rodney brushes by Dave like he’s one of the lab minions and, like everyone else upon their first encounter with Rodney, Dave watches in stunned, silent helplessness. Rodney, new target acquired, heads straight for John, quick and purposeful, and the tight, twisted thing in John’s chest loosens enough to let him straighten and offer Rodney the closest thing to a smile he’s been able to find in days.
I love Rodney to the rescue.
“Finally!” Rodney stops a couple steps away either because, like John, he has no idea what to do, or else because he knows Dave’s watching and isn’t stunned enough to miss Rodney kissing him. “Can you believe Sam told me I couldn’t transport here from the Apollo? I had to go to Cheyenne and then get some idiot to fly me up to a civilian airport and then rent a car, and this is coming out of my vacation time, by the way, so you had better be grateful.”
“I am,” John says, and if he’s surprised by his own sincerity, then Rodney’s overcome: whatever he’s about to say falls back down his throat, and he stares at John with surprise that hovers on the edge of pleased. His mouth stretches cautiously into a smile that becomes realer, truer, when John presses quick fingers to the inside of his wrists, their bodies angled so Dave can’t see.
This is just so, I don’t know what to say. I’m utterly charmed by this exchange, John’s sincerity, which is given so rarely, Rodney’s surprise, the little touch to Rodney’s wrists, the way John hides the gesture from Dave. It’s perfectly written.
“You going to introduce me?” Dave, recovered from his first exposure to Rodney on the wrong end of inconvenience and putting up with idiots, walks up, plain and austere, and way too much like their father, only moving and breathing, the contrast sharp when he stands next to Rodney in his t-shirt with its slogan-of-questionable-appropriateness.
All the emphasis on the contrast between Rodney and everything Sheppard just makes me so happy.
“Dave, this is Rodney McKay.” John makes vague this is, and this is gestures between Dave and Rodney, who peers at Dave as though at a quantum singularity. “Rodney, you’ve met Dave.”
“I guessed by the hair,” Rodney says, eyes flickering above Dave’s hairline. He takes Dave’s offered hand perfunctorily, the way Rodney usually observes social graces. Dave stares at him, long enough for Rodney’s brain to process that more needs to be said. “I’m um, very sorry for your loss,” he adds, and that’s so abruptly, achingly honest that even John - who’s used to being bludgeoned by Rodney’s moments of unexpected empathy - has to brace himself against a flash of grief.
Gotta love this characterization of Rodney. It’s grounded in hints from canon, but takes it further, like the best SGA writers are wont to do.
“Thank you,” Dave says. He clears his throat, shifts from one foot to another, looking from John to Rodney and back again, and grief ping-pongs back to irritation when John realizes what Dave’s wondering. “Are you a civilian contractor too?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve worked for the Air Force for fifteen years.” Rodney frowns, his what-the-hell-kind-of-a-question-is-that? frown, the frown that means Rodney will take it upon himself to make people suffer for their stupidity. He looks at John. “Is that code for something? It sounds like code.”
Ok, the line about civilian contractors was hilarious in the actual episode. I don’t really think the writers meant it the way many of us took it, but to have Rodney referencing code here so tactlessly cracks me up.
“He met Ronon at our dad’s wake,” He shivers with the impulse to tell Dave he and Rodney are sleeping together, have been for weeks, or recklessly exaggerate it into years and add a couple kids.
This somewhat childish impulse reminds us how unbalanced John is feeling, dealing with his father’s death and just being back with his family.
“Oh, I see.” Rodney’s tone says otherwise, but he lets it go. His gaze sidles back over to Dave irresistibly, cataloguing the differences between the Sheppard he knows and the Sheppard he doesn’t. “I hope you have food somewhere around here.”
“The caterers gave us the leftovers,” Dave says faintly. John wants to laugh; he’s seen Dave irritated and superior, and something that passes for pleased in Dave’s world, but he’s never once seen him back on his heels and stunned. “Susan can make you a plate, and John knows the way to the kitchen.”
I like the characterization of Dave so much in this story. He keeps falling back on his upbringing, but it hasn’t prepared him to deal with people like McKay. The very wealthy are often quite sheltered, and the author has unobtrusively captured this in Dave’s reactions to Rodney.
“So long as someone does.” Rodney jitters, hands lifting to grasp at air, falling and letting go. He glances the horse, who’s hovering a few feet from the fence, and starts a bit. “You have horses.”
“Horse family,” Dave says, sounding almost friendly.
“Hay fever,” Rodney says and inspects one hand for hives.
This whole section amuses me greatly. Again Dave tries for politeness and Rodney tactlessly rejects everything Sheppard . He’s so unimpressed by the wealth and privilege. No wonder John loves him.
“How about lunch?” John asks.
Hee, John is so caught in the middle.
* * *
Rodney looks less than grateful for old tea sandwiches and pastries that have seen better days. But, he says with some attempt at being philosophical, they keep body and soul together and stave off the hypoglycemia that threatened him on the trek back across the lawn. Susan, used to two generations of hostile, unpredictable Sheppards and familiar with how to soothe them, ignores Rodney’s muttered comments about watercress and pâté and keeps him supplied with coffee. John tries not to laugh as Rodney keeps forgetting to put the cup - the paper-thin porcelain coffee cup - in the saucer, and keeps forgetting he can’t hold it like a mug, fumbling it between fingers used to being much more skillful.
“A travel mug would be easier,” he tells Susan. “I have one in the car.”
Again we see how little Rodney cares about this world of excessive politeness. He’s all practicality.
She nods and turns to Dave. “If you would be so kind, David?”
“Is the car unlocked?” Dave asks.
“Mmmmph,” Rodney says. John tells Dave that means yes, and Dave obediently pushes away from the table and heads outside.
Susan retreats to the kitchen, possibly to recharge the coffee maker. “There hasn’t been much call for it,” she’d said when Rodney had given “coffee, and a lot of it” as his drink request. “John’s father never drank it after he retired, and David never quite acquired the taste for it.”
“That’s not natural,” had been Rodney’s verdict, followed by further speculation as to whether Dave and John were, in fact, related, which segued into how John at least understood the value of caffeine, even if the rest of his family seemed deficient.
Could there be a more perfect summing up of Rodney’s attitude toward John and the rest of his family? Unnatural is a great adjective for their stodginess.
“Ronon said you were staying for a few days,” Rodney says now, after a quick glance into the kitchen to make sure Susan is occupied. “And I... well, I’m sorry for not asking, but I wanted to come.”
“It’s cool,” John tells him, and imagines his father’s corpse turning when he touches Rodney’s knee under the shelter of the table. The heady the hell with you rebellion he’d usually felt when doing something like this - making out with another boy, sneaking in his application to the Air Force and leaving the acceptance letter on the table, using his sexuality like a knife to carve away his father’s certainty and superiority - it isn’t there, in its usual place low in his stomach. Instead, he finds an anchor of muscle and bone, security instead of the drifting anger that snags him whenever he comes back here.
This little snippet of John’s past rings so true to the character. I also like that he touches Rodney to ground himself rather than to spite his father. I like to think John has grown up a bit, and isn’t a rebellious teen desperate to escape his father’s oppressive expectations any more.
“I figured they didn’t know,” Rodney says anxiously. His fingers swiftly disassemble a sandwich into bread and its thin slick of aioli, prosciutto, feta distributed in confetti fragments that Rodney eats bit by bit. The spinach he prods off to the side so it doesn’t contaminate anything. “So if they ask, I’m a... a...”
“Civilian contractor,” John supplies, and properly sets his coffee cup in its saucer.
“Yeah.” Rodney nods and looks relieved.
“They know,” John tells him, the words not much more than breath. He’s never found out what Susan thinks, though he knows she knows - Susan knows everything - but he’s never been entirely sure of what he’d do if there hadn’t been at least one person in this house who treated him like a normal human being. “Not about us,” he adds at Rodney’s confusion, “but about... about me.”
This little exchange gives me a feel for the intimacy between John and Rodney. Rodney figures “they didn’t know” and John doesn’t pretend not to understand that he’s referring to John’s sexuality. The outsider view of our beloved characters is in evidence here also, how people who know nothing of the Stargate program and Atlantis see John.
“Oh.” Rodney stares down at the ruins of his sandwiches. “That explains some things.”
Dave comes back in, quiet and contained, like the kitchen is a boardroom and he has to follow protocol. He gives Susan Rodney’s battered insulated mug and sits back down, and to John’s horror tries to be a good host and starts up the small talk that transforms Rodney into nervous potential energy. Rodney can - and frequently does - commandeer their conversations over dinner, but when presented with people who aren’t John, Teyla, or Ronon, flounders for a bit before giving answers that are, in Rodney’s version of reality, polite and restrained.
The author keeps reminding us of the Sheppard default setting, quiet and contained, and how impossible it is for Rodney to respond in kind.
“I held a postdoc at Northeastern,” Rodney says to Dave’s mention of graduating from Harvard Business School with his MBA. John counts it a miracle that Rodney doesn’t say anything about the insignificance of a Master’s degree, business or not. “Right down the street,” Dave agrees, and tries to engage Rodney in conversation about Boston. Rodney makes vague noises of agreement and disparaging comments about Percival Lowell, and mentions being dragged to Cape Cod by an old girlfriend, and the riptide pulling him almost out to Nantucket, and the Coast Guard being involved.
The riptide shows signs of turning into the one about the earthquake when Rodney was at CalTech, and John has to stop him there. “Not the earthquake story again,” he says, which Rodney protests, and Dave, in desperate politeness that is in no way prepared to deal with selections from the Epic of Rodney McKay, insists he does want to hear.
“No, you really don’t,” John says into his wineglass.
“It sounds like you’ve had an exciting life for an astrophysicist,” Dave says carefully. John looks up, and Rodney jumps, and though Dave is grey and straight-laced and boring, he’s always been hard for John to ignore. And for possibly the first time in forty-one years, John’s managed to forget him when they’ve been in the same room together.
Poor John has been so under his family in a way that is so true to me. Our families have such a profound impact on us all, and the author shows us the ways the Sheppard clan have made John the man he is.
“Very exciting,” Rodney says, blushing as though Dave’s been watching them do something other than argue. “I can’t tell you how exciting it’s been.”
“He really, literally can’t tell you.” His own face feels uncomfortably hot, and though Dave isn’t looking at Rodney with the sidelong, uncertain look he’d given Ronon, he still feels like he’s come out and said they’re sleeping together.
“Here you go, Dr. McKay.” Susan materializes with Rodney’s travel mug, and Rodney latches onto it with relief. “I’ve had a room prepared for you, should you feel like resting or cleaning up before dinner.”
“Um, thank you.” Rodney stares up at her with confused adoration, and she smiles down at him, pats him on the shoulder like she’s always done with John (one of the few touches he’s been able to stand without shifting away). Rodney watches her go wistfully. “She makes good coffee.”
Both John and Dave agree to this, even though Dave doesn’t drink coffee (which makes Rodney look at him in amazement again), and silence comes back to hover over their plates. John’s chair faces the window and the free air beyond it, but it also faces Dave, who seems to have settled in for as long as John’s going to sit there. He traces the lines of familiar, difficult features, Dave’s square jaw, pale eyes, a mouth that always makes smiling look like effort.
John’s struggle to resolve his feelings toward his brother are so subtly dealt with by the author. This is just good writing. I can feel Rodney dominating every space he moves in through the little details the author chooses to give us.
You look like your mother, his father had always said, as much affection as criticism for the son who, like his wife, would gallop off, who preferred running and flight and movement to the practicality of life on earth. In the last days before John finally left it had become an accusation, you look like your mother code for every influence that had led to John to Stanford or the Air Force or other men, as though these, along with Christina Sheppard’s death, constituted a conspiracy.
Families have a way of latching onto these little shorthand ways of defining each other, ways that can so easily cross over and become hurtful. I’m so impressed with the author’s insight into family dynamics. These characters feel like real people to me.
Rodney’s making noises preparatory to escape, fidgeting in his chair and clearly anxious to get out, even though he feels bad about leaving John to deal with his brother. He’s at his limit, John knows, because Rodney can only take so much social interaction before reaching critical mass of normalcy.
“Why don’t you go crash for a bit? Susan’ll get you when it’s time to eat,” John suggests, and Rodney almost explodes with gratitude. He doesn’t try to say anything to Dave, for which John is relieved, only an incoherent soliloquy about hoping he hadn’t forgotten to pack things and the sadism behind the design of airplane seats, which, despite everything, despite the danger, makes John smile.
“I should get some work done,” Dave says. He slides his napkin across the table and stands, tightly articulated control next to the blur of Rodney’s anxious energy. “The lawyers are coming at ten, and I have to get things ready for them.”
Again the contrast between the controlled and controlling Dave and Rodney, brimming with energy and spontaneity.
“Anything you need me to do?” John asks.
“No, no...” Dave stares at the tabletop, so brightly varnished it gives his face back in mahogany-streaked reflection. “But I’ll let you know if something comes up.”
Of course their tabletop is clean and bright. Every detail we are told adds to the horrible perfection of the family, everything clean, nothing messy or disorganized.
“Sounds good.” John watches his brother as he disappears into the corridor to the offices, the long, silent ways that, even at ten, had seemed unbearably alien to him. He looks down at Rodney’s plate and its disassembled, abandoned contents, and finally stands to take it to the sink.
Rodney’s plate, like everything about Rodney, doesn’t fit here.
* * *
The day wears on slowly, so quiet it freaks John out with wondering what disaster’s lurking around the corner, if there are Wraith in the garden or natives with arrows and spears marching up the drive, or if the house will go into self-destruct mode. It had felt like that for a while, after he’d realized his father’s plans hadn’t matched up with his own, and he’d fought and fought, the bitterest war he thinks he’s ever been in. The quiet now, though, isn’t the cold resentment of his father (There’s nothing to discuss, John) or Dave’s avoidance of him, like independence might be catching. It’s whatever sort of quiet is left after those things are gone.
Rodney’s dead to the world, sprawled out in the spill of afternoon sun across his bed. John wants to join him and sleep away the worst of the past week. He wonders when, exactly, Rodney and Pegasus became everyday to him, and when Earth and his family became even more alien than they’d been already. Rodney’s sleeping body offers only somnolence, not answers, and John leaves before he can give in.
John has a quiet space here to begin processing his father’s death and understand that his father and all he represents is truly gone. He takes comfort and grounding from Rodney, even unconscious, sprawled messily on the bed.
He wanders the grounds for a while, remembering the paths he’d used to take. There’s effort, he finds, in pushing down memories of his mother taking him birdwatching or on trail rides, perching him in the cradle of her hips and the pommel of her saddle. If he thinks hard enough, he remembers his father riding ahead, and Dave uncomfortable on his own horse, one of those pictures that belongs in real estate brochures, or the picture that appears under the dictionary entry for the happy family.
I love that the Sheppards aren’t villains, they’re just a real family, sometimes more or less in harmony. It’s easy to picture John’s father retreating into his work with the death of his wife, and the whole family unit deeply affected by the loss of a mother’s influence.
The trees are bigger but not much else has changed, aside from fresh paint on the house and stable, and the faces that peer out of him from the stalls. John idles down the barn aisle, stroking soft, inquisitive noses, almost tripping over the barn cat. One horse, a chestnut unimaginatively named Red, looks almost exactly like Ace, down to the stripe that arrows down his face and hooks left over his nose, and John thinks back to flying and woods streaking by, the four-count rhythm he still feels somewhere inside.
The bay is still in the ring, standing still for once and dozing with one foot resting. Interesting that the horse is quiet now when John has quieted. John wonders how many circuits he’s made of that ring over the years, the only discipline he’d allowed in his life other than what the Air Force gave him - and even then, the military couldn’t make it stick. That had been another accusation, you don’t know what you want, which his father had leveled in response to every decision that had led John away from the business and heterosexuality. The last time John remembered it being used had been when he’d told the family about his divorce, never mind that Nancy had asked for it because she’d gotten tired of his secrets, which his father had flatly refused to believe.
I know what I want isn’t this. John remembers saying that, along with fuck you. They’d never finished their first fight, really, and had stayed a father and his bitter, ungrateful son for twenty-six years.
Dust settles heavily on him along with the sunlight, bringing up sweat in uncomfortable places. He hasn’t changed since yesterday, had slept in old boxers and a t-shirt borrowed from Bates because he’d forgotten to pack anything beyond his suit, jeans, and a toothbrush. Wincing, he rubs at his neck and the grit that covers it, the old sweat and a bit of dry blood he thinks might be his but isn’t sure.
Dave’s still hidden in the labyrinth of Sheppard Power Logistics offices and Susan has disappeared, but walking into the house, its sudden coolness, is like walking under surveying, waiting eyes. Enemy territory, which is how he’s thought of it for so long. His only ally is still passed out in the spare room, drooling into his pillow. When John checks in on him this time, he walks into the room, bends close enough to see the remains of green and red paint at the corner of Rodney’s temple, a smudge of blue under his ear. Rodney sighs in his sleep, still still still, fingers tightening in his pillow.
One of my favorite things about SGA (fan)writers is their willingness to accept the character’s flaws and even make a virtue of them, as here in the way Rodney is not just sleeping, but passed out and drooling. The author makes me feel how much John wants Rodney to wake up without ever saying it directly. The description of enemy territory and Rodney as his only ally pulls me back to the title, Home Front, which immediately makes me think of John’s life as a war.
They haven’t slept together - well, John supposes, they haven’t spent the night together. Sex they can do, but neither of them have figured out the semantics of a normal relationship. Nancy hadn’t helped John figure them out; he’s fairly sure Katie hadn’t helped Rodney either. He wonders briefly what Rodney would do if he slipped in beside him, in a bed four times the size of the one they’ve learned to twist themselves to fit in, what he would do, if he’d fall asleep or stay awake and try to familiarize himself with simple touch, which they don’t do beyond encouraging, manly slaps in public, or in the dark and naked, with quiet, frantic intent.
How much I love their ineptitude. John’s need is so carefully articulated here.
Telling himself Rodney wouldn’t appreciate John’s filthy carcass draped over him (which is, John reflects, exactly how Rodney would put it), he leaves again.
His room is... his room, and that freaks him out so much he grabs his kit and clean clothes from his duffel and walks out, ignoring the trophies, the few competition awards he hadn’t sacrificed to posters of fighter jets or Johnny Cash. After his father had married Pamela - Penelope - he’d shoved the photograph of his mother into a drawer, and as he strides down the hallway, John knows it’s still there, the room a square reminder of days not too long before everything changed, maybe another accusation.
Again we see how everything changed in the Sheppard household with the death of John’s mother, and how poorly John has dealt with it all.
John recognizes his own contribution to the mess of his family life. Also the fact that his room being so much his room that it freaks him out cracks me up. That’s so exactly right.
Dad regretted what happened between you two, right up to the end, Dave had said, and Dave didn’t just say that sort of thing. Sheppard men in general didn’t say that sort of thing.
Hope, then. Maybe, he doesn’t know, twenty-five years removed from the teenager who knew everything. John presses the heel of his hand to one eye, tells himself it’s a stress headache and not a question that he can’t ask himself.
John is finally growing up, understanding his family with an adult’s perspective and insight.
Rodney rouses a bit when John comes back in, peering up at him with sleepy accusation, some people are still jet-lagged, Sheppard, and don’t you have your own bathroom?
“Plumbing’s busted,” John grunts. Rodney gets in “You don’t have a plumber on retainer?” before John shuts the door.
Hee! That remark is so Rodney.
The water needs more than thought to change temperature, but the tiles are still slick and familiar under John’s hands. He stares down at his feet, the thin line of blood from another cut that works down one leg to the drain, dirt and dust, a bit of hay. Heat tries to soothe out the knots in his muscles, but tendons still pop when John twists his neck, stretches to get soap between his shoulders. Briefly he wonders if he can get Rodney to join him, because they’ve never had shower sex, and the shower smells like Rodney’s soap and shampoo, and John’s seen Rodney wet before.
He shifts against arousal, even though the sharpness is a good sharp, and he hasn’t seen Rodney for a couple days, misses him and has missed him for reasons that have to do with sex and, mysteriously, finding he’d wanted Rodney barging through the minefield of dead parents and sanctimonious brothers. And there’s probably something in there having to do with the few times he’d brought friends home and they’d curled around each other in his bed, on the couch, the kitchen, the pleasure as much from rebellion as from sex.
“Fuck,” he says to the blank, gleaming surface of tile. He switches to cold water, tells himself there are reasons he’s never told Rodney much about his family, and steps out before he can cave and haul Rodney in with him. The humid air chokes him and makes him dizzy; when he presses the towel to his face, he inhales a mouthful of Rodney and shudders and wishes, uselessly, that Rodney wasn’t so important.
John’s confusion is so beautifully delineated here. Again, fantastic writing, deft insight into the character, making him so much more of a real person that we have from canon. This is exactly what I want from fanfiction.
“So, I hope we’re having something other than rotted goose liver sandwiches for dinner,” Rodney tells him when John steps out, fully dressed and somewhat together. “Susan just radioed or intercommed or whatever,” he flaps at the intercom panel on the wall, “and she says we’re eating early because it’s her evening off.”
Rodney is again so unaffected by the wealth and privilege around him.
“Yeah,” John mumbles. Rodney stops flapping and turns to him, hair disordered from sleep and eyes a little faded from jet lag and probably coming straight here from the Kid Planet.
“So the kids doing okay?” John asks, rubbing absently at his hair.
John comforts and distracts himself by talking about his real home.
“Now they are, not that they deserve it,” Rodney says. John grins and moves closer, wanting to allow himself this, at least, something he’s come to rely on. Rodney’s eyes widen a little when John doesn’t stop at friendly distance.
“So did they paint your entire face?” He touches the small splotch of red-green, watches Rodney’s eyes sharpen and dilate, can almost feel the speaking shudder of his body.
“Most of it,” Rodney says, the words half-broken, face turning to John’s hand, shaping itself to the contour of his palm. John forces himself to stillness, terrified of this simplicity, of just the two of them. “There’s no getting the stuff off. Zelenka came up with something that works, but he isn’t sharing it, the bastard.”
“Don’t laugh at him next time,” John whispers, and thinks that they could kiss, leaning a few degrees more from vertical.
“I’ll try not - ” The words falter, die into soft breath against John’s mouth.
Late daylight filters through John’s eyelids, not the cool silver of Lantean night, but ordinary Earth afternoon turning darkness warm-red. And it’s day, it’s day and they’re kissing, like ordinary Earthlings do, Rodney uncomplicated for once and happy in the moment, accepting John’s uncertain hands and touching him in turn, smoothing in calmness when most times simple affection is a chain that needs shaking off, something the instinctual response to which is sidestepping, but no, not now, not here, when Rodney’s hands ask him to stay.
Yeah, this paragraph is, uh, wow. I can’t possibly explain it any better than it explains itself. I just want to sit back and let every perfect word of it seep into my insides.
Part 2