OK Computer part 5
When Rodney opened his eyes, he found himself sprawled on the floor of the lab, limbs tangled with McKay's. Sheppard was on his knees above them, pale and sweating and apparently trying to pull them apart. "Jesus Christ," Sheppard swore, blowing out a breath and sitting back on his heels. "You scared the fuck out of me. The both of you, you just passed out and collapsed-"
Beside him, McKay groaned and rolled onto hands and knees. "The VE," he said, struggling to his feet. "I wasn't thinking; we should have been sitting down-"
"Yes, and thank you for all the lovely bruises." Rodney gripped the edge of the console and pulled himself up. "We're lucky we didn't crack our damn skulls open-"
"You're both assholes," Sheppard said, looking shaken.
"Us? Ha," McKay crossed his arms. "Tell me about it, you manipulative bastard-"
Sheppard blinked at him. "Uh-excuse me?"
Rodney barely looked up from his typing. "John blew up the VR," he explained. "McKay's pissed."
Sheppard looked pretty pissed, too. "Yeah, well, I didn't do anything! I was just standing here-"
But Rodney just tsked and said, "Yes, well, we all have to take responsibility for our actions: past, present and-" He stopped then, because here was the log list: last action - write to zero. The bastard had really done it: pushed McKay out into the world and burnt the bridge that led back. The whole virtual world was gone, John included, and Rodney was trying to find the right words to break this to McKay when McKay pushed next to him at the console. "I'm sorry," Rodney said, and meant it with all his heart.
McKay stood at the screen. His eyes were fixed and staring. Rodney bit his lip and debated hugging himself. "Don't be," McKay said slowly, "because I think this log file is bullshit," and Rodney's eyes immediately snapped back to the screen, where McKay had brought up another scrolling list of commands. "Look, see?" McKay said, gesticulating wildly at the screen. "It's-" and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, he saw it, and the sly, pink-shirted bastard had faked his own virtual death. He threw a nasty glance over his shoulder at Sheppard, who was behind them, craning his neck and trying to see.
"What!" Sheppard demanded. "I'm just standing here!"
"Look," McKay said, jabbing his finger. "There. He's hiding an upload; I think the bastard uploaded himself to Atlantis," and Rodney tried to muscle McKay out of the way so he could get to the keyboard, but McKay wouldn't budge an inch.
YEAH, BABY! *dance of glee* This is John's test, his big "So what?" How much is cyberJohn capable of affecting the material world? How much agency does he have? Is he a real boy? The moment when the construct seizes the reins from the author ("I swear," we say to each other, "the story just took on a life of its own!") is critical to this type of narrative. Ashby, quoting from Donna Haraway's famous Cyborg Manifesto: "She also privileges writing as an act of cyborg reproduction and resistance: 'Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other' (2002:94)."
"Run a search," Rodney said finally, gritting his teeth. "I checked your drive just before I uploaded Sheppard, so I can give you his specs, likely file size-"
"I know the profile," McKay gritted back.
"Okay, but be careful. He might have changed the numbers," Rodney pointed out.
"Wouldn't put it past him," and they both glanced at Sheppard, who threw his hands up and stomped away to lounge on the windowsill, arms crossed.
"There," McKay said, voice rising. "There, there! That's-isn't that-?" Rodney forced McKay away from the keyboard with a full-body, lateral shove, and yes, something new was running in Atlantis, visible despite John's clever but amateurish attempt to conceal himself, which was the equivalent of hiding behind a slowly-moving and not at all realistic shrub on a stick.
"Yes." Rodney's fingers were tingling with adrenaline. "That's him, that's totally him. See? I told you everything would be-" but he was stopped by the look on McKay's face, on his own face. "What...?" Rodney began tentatively, except he already knew what, because he was Rodney McKay and he knew his own mind.
McKay locked eyes with him, and hesitated only briefly before reaching out to clutch at his arm. "Will you?" McKay faltered. "Help me, will you?" and Rodney let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding and said, "Yes. Yes, yes. You locate the-while I rewrite the-" They bent over the scanner and began working furiously.
"Wait, what are you..." Sheppard began; Rodney waved him off and kept working.
McKay finished his part of the job first. "Come on, come on," he moaned, pacing, hands clenching and unclenching. "I could do it myself in half the-"
"You are doing it yourself," Rodney snapped. "Make yourself useful, set up the test phase-"
"Test phase?" Sheppard was off the windowsill now. "What-?"
"Test phase?" McKay threw up his hands in exasperation. "There's no time for a-" but Rodney shot him a look so supercharged with derision that McKay gave in immediately. "Fine, then!" McKay said with barely concealed, thin-lipped fury, and immediately strode out the door, Rodney's bathrobe flapping behind him.
"Rod-ney," Sheppard said dangerously, edging close, now. "What test phase?" Rodney didn't know what to say; he was pretty sure Sheppard wouldn't be on board with this. Sheppard said, in a low voice, "What the hell are you-?" but Rodney was saved from answering by McKay, who had reappeared, dragging a large plant behind him.
Sheppard visibly boggled. "What the-" and Rodney took advantage of Sheppard's distraction to double and triple-check the code; if he screwed this up because McKay was haranguing him, he'd never forgive himself. But everything looked all right; it was a minor modification, all things considered, and when he looked up, Sheppard was helping McKay drag the plant into the circle he'd chalked onto the floor.
"Okay," Rodney said. "Everybody get back!" and then the glowing yellow light was enveloping the tree, turning it a sickly yellow-green. A moment later, a horizontal beam formed across the tops of the leaves, but instead of moving slowly downward, it fell like an anvil-bam!-and the tree vanished in the sudden sweep of light.
"You transported a tree?" Sheppard asked as Rodney bent to check the numbers, which looked fine; looked great, in fact.
"No," McKay replied, looking visibly relieved when Rodney straightened up from the console and gave him the thumbs-up. "Uploaded. And I'm next," he said.
"Wait," Sheppard said. Rodney could almost see his mind working through the possibilities, trying to put together what this meant. He actually did see the moment Sheppard figured it out. "Wait," Sheppard sounded strangled. "Where's the output?"
"There isn't," McKay said. "But John's in there. I'm going after him."
Sheppard immediately stared into a corner of the room, like it was fascinating; his face clouded over. "You," he began, and then he was biting his lip, his mouth pursed together. He still couldn't meet McKay's eyes. "Don't," he said. "This isn't a good idea."
McKay actually laughed. "I know," he said, and stepped into the chalk circle. Sheppard looked at him, then, and McKay said, with a kind of hysteria, "I'd do it all again, you know. I'm perverse like that." He glanced over at Rodney, and said, "Um, thanks."
"No problem," Rodney replied awkwardly. "Are you, uh..." and when McKay said, "I'm ready," he pressed the button. McKay was immersed in yellow light, and Rodney felt a sudden and unexpected surge of hope and shouted: "Good luck! Give my best to-"
And then McKay was gone. Rodney looked down, saw the data that was his future self streaming through Atlantis, and felt an odd kind of euphoria: he'd made it, maybe they'd both make it. He turned to share this with Sheppard, but Sheppard was just standing there, looking drained and a little bereft. The sun was fully up now, and bright light was streaming through the lab's window. Dust motes were slowly turning in the air.
In a couple of the anime narratives Ashby discusses in her essay, the cyborg heroine achieves her freedom and fulfillment by uploading herself fully into cyberspace and becoming its secret master. Yeah. So. I'd have more to say, except I haven't actually seen the movies in question, though I've now got a download of Ghost in the Shell waiting for me on my hard drive. Thought it was worth mentioning anyhow. Clearly there's a Thing going on here.
"Did it work?" Sheppard raised a vague hand to his head, rubbed his temple.
Rodney showed him empty hands. "He's in there," he said. "John's in there too, for what it's worth. The data's intact. Their programs are running."
Sheppard looked disoriented. "So is that-what happens now, is that it?"
"I guess," Rodney said helplessly. "I mean..."
"Did we just kill him?" Sheppard's face was turned away, but his voice was tight. "No, wait; I don't think I want to-" and then he was touching his ear and saying, in a hard voice, "Sheppard, go ahead." A moment later, he glanced down at his watch. "Right, yes. On my way." He looked at Rodney. "I've got to go," he said. "See you at senior staff."
"I-yes. Okay," Rodney said, then added, uncertainly, "What-what should we tell them?"
Sheppard face was intense. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing. No one else needs to know about this," and then he was turning on his heel, and leaving the lab, and gone.
Poor Sheppard. I don't much blame him for needing processing time. (Oh! Ow! Pun! Sorry!)
Exhaustion turned the rest of the morning into a kind of waking dream, which Rodney experienced in a number of hallucinogenic flashes. Taking the scanner apart so that no one could upload themselves by accident. Going back to his room and taking a shower, bracing his arms against the smooth walls so the hot water beat down upon his neck and shoulders. Coming out swathed in towels only to realize that McKay had stolen his bathrobe. Arriving at Carter's morning meeting and watching Sheppard stroll in.
And maybe it was the post-stress endorphins running through him, making all the colors extra sharp, but he couldn't feel bad about it; any of it. Because John Sheppard was alive and sitting right across the table, looking tired but wearing a clean black shirt and blandly lying through his teeth: yeah, it had been a slow day, a slow week, really, but all was quiet on the Western front. Rodney couldn't take his eyes off him.
"McKay?" Carter said, and something about how she looked made Rodney think this wasn't the first time she'd said his name. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, fine," Rodney replied, cheerfully slapping the table. "Fit as a fiddle." Everyone was looking at him, so he added, hastily: "I didn't get much-well, any, actually-sleep last night, so I'm kind of-you know." He fluttered his fingers. "High."
That paragraph is just a really great example of fanfic writing-i.e., description that so perfectly and economically captures the actor's mannerisms that I can see Rodney in my mind as clearly as if he were on my t.v. screen.
There was a muffled laugh somewhere in the room. Carter arched her eyebrow but didn't smile. Sheppard sighed and said, in a beleaguered voice, "Permission to postpone today's offworld mission until such time as..." and then Carter did smile.
"Permission granted," she said, and stood up to end the meeting. "Get some sleep, McKay," except Rodney'd learned from long experience that he had to stay awake till the next sleep cycle, so he chugged a gallon of coffee and went down to his lab. He did some routine work, checked the progress of his ongoing experiments; he found himself feeling extraordinarily grateful for the ordinariness of the day. When Sheppard walked in later that afternoon, he was pretty much right on time, and Rodney let himself believe that things were back to normal. After all, Sheppard usually came by about now to drag him off to dinner, or to suggest they go downstairs to play BioShock or video golf.
"Hey." Sheppard cocked a hip, leaned against the lab bench, and frowned at him. "I figured you'd be sleeping. I went by your room-"
"Yeah, no, better to just stagger onward," Rodney said, pressing his hands to the small of his back. "Though I should probably get some food. Have you eaten yet?"
"No," Sheppard said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "I mean: yeah, okay."
"Great." Rodney made for the door, sure at that point he was home free, except then Sheppard exhaled noisily and grabbed his arm, and said, "No, wait." Still, Rodney managed to keep his game face on, trying to seem inquisitive and vaguely impatient all at once. Sheppard let go of him. "I guess I wanted to talk," he said and shrugged.
"We don't have to talk. I mean, we really, really don't," Rodney said helplessly. "What's done is done, and I can't change anything now anyway. You want an apology? I apologize. I should never have-I didn't mean to-I never meant to-"
"Rodney, shut up, will you?" but Sheppard sounded exasperated, not angry. He leaned back against the lab bench, braced on his elbows, and tilted his face toward the ceiling, showing off a long stripe of throat; his chest hair was peeking out of the top of his collar.
Scopophilia. :o)
Finally Sheppard let his head roll forward and said the last thing Rodney expected: "I guess I wanted you to know what a disappointment I was to my father."
"What?" Rodney said, bewildered.
"Shut up and listen. I'm telling you the truth. I wasn't the son my father wanted, okay? He had a plan, all laid out for me, but I wouldn't keep to it." Sheppard stopped, bit his lip, and when he spoke again, his voice was subtly different. "A year or two of military service builds a man's character," and Rodney had no doubt of whose voice he was hearing, "but no more than that. It's not a career for an eldest son," Sheppard said.
Rodney frowned. "What did he want you to do?"
Sheppard winced, then pulled a face so outrageous that Rodney would have laughed if he hadn't been able to see all the pain in it. "God. It's so embarrassingly embarrassing," Sheppard said, eyes rolling like he was gripped by a paroxysm of dorkiness. "Choate, Harvard, Europe, the family business. Law would have been acceptable. Politics," and Rodney must have been openly boggling, because John said defensively, "Hey, it wasn't my idea. And I barely got out of Choate; I probably wouldn't even have graduated if my father hadn't, like, bought them a building-"
"Who the hell is your father, Joe Kennedy?" and when Sheppard winced, Rodney realized that that maybe wasn't the wildly outrageous comparison he had been going for. He looked at Sheppard and tried to see the scion of a wealthy family: a lawyer or banker, married to a debutante. The junior senator from the great state of Massachusetts.
"Commonwealth of Virginia," Sheppard corrected wearily, "but yeah, that's the ballpark. Look, the point is: I'm not that guy, Rodney. I was never that guy. I joined the Air Force and that was it for me. I earned my wings, got recruited for special ops, combat search and rescue, and just-" Sheppard squeezed his eyes shut. "Even after it went bad, I couldn't turn my back on them. Because they saw me, at least, and they accepted a hell of a lot more of me than my father did, even if they maybe didn't know all of me-"
This characterization of Sheppard works so well for me. In just a few paragraphs, it takes up fandom's obsessive speculations about John's past, especially his ambivalent relationship with the Air Force, and braids them into a simple, elegant cord that makes so much sense I'm just sighing with satisfaction. In places, reading this story is like watching fanon coalesce in media res.
"Rodney-" and Sheppard abruptly straightened and shot a wary look over his shoulder. Zelenka hurried into the lab, wreathed in smiles, glasses slipping down his nose. "I thought you would want to see the-" He faltered, maybe sensing Rodney's building rage, the polite thinness of Sheppard's smile. "Sorry, am I interrupting?"
"Yes! Yes, you are interrupting-"
"Nah," Sheppard said easily, and Rodney looked and saw that Sheppard was gone, slid back under the veneer of lazy charm that was his default mode. "It's nothing important," he told Zelenka, and then he looked at Rodney and said, "We can pick this up later."
Zelenka waved his tablet at Rodney uncertainly. "I just thought you would want to see the first numbers from our low-energy neutrino-"
"Actually, no; no, I don't," but Sheppard was already sliding past them and away, out the door. "No, but really: you can't have any idea how little I care about the numbers from the low-energy neutrino spectography right now," Rodney said earnestly.
"Oh." Zelenka blinked rapidly. "Well. I am sorry."
"Not sorry enough," Rodney said with heartfelt emotion, only belatedly snatching the tablet out of Zelenka's hands and glancing down at the numbers, which were, as he'd suspected, not nearly as interesting as whatever Sheppard'd been trying to tell him.
He found Sheppard where he expected: slouched at their table. He was smirking up at Ronon, who was sitting on the tabletop and telling some incredibly violent story with his hands. Beside him, Teyla was daintily eating pudding out of a cup. Rodney was halfway to the table with his tray when he stopped to look at them: his team.
He'd been eating in institutional cafeterias for...well, his whole life, really; from the linoleum-topped tables of his primary school to the university dining halls; the think-tanks; the development labs; the military mess halls; the SGC; Antarctica. He'd always scoffed at people's schoolboy anxieties about where or with whom to sit. The dining hall was like a second home to him; he'd done some of his best work in dining halls.
Still, it was kind of nice to know that this was your table, and that was your team. The mess hall was filled with meaningless cliques of scientists and marines, doctors and support personnel, and there at his table was Sheppard, sitting comfortably with the resident aliens. Was that an accident? It had to mean something that, with all the perfect people in the expedition, the best and the brightest from every nation on Earth, Sheppard had picked a team of two aliens and him: a scientific asset to be sure, but hardly the most socially adept guy in the city. None of them were; in fact, they all ranked somewhere near the bottom: eccentric, off-putting, difficult to talk to. Rodney'd always assumed that Sheppard had chosen them despite their social weaknesses. But maybe he'd just surrounded himself with people he understood.
Sheppard happened to glance his way, frowned at him, and tilted his head, and Rodney realized he was just standing in the middle of the mess, holding his tray. Rodney weaved through the other tables and slid into a chair across from Sheppard. Teyla smiled at him; Ronon cut his eyes toward him, but didn't pause in his story, "-and the whole top half was blue, but blue with other colors in it. He'd found this rock, crushed it into powder, and made his own paint, " and if it wasn't violence with Ronon, it was painting, though sometimes they amounted to the same thing. "It was a new color," Ronon said triumphantly, and then he picked up his sandwich and tore off a giant bite. "I wonder," Ronon added, with his mouth full, "if your galaxy has colors I've never seen."
Sheppard paused, an apple halfway to his mouth. "Do you mean like," Sheppard fluttered his fingers around the apple, "'is your green my green?'"
Ronon grinned hugely, still chewing, and took a lazy swipe at Sheppard's head. "You're a philosopher, man. Nah. I don't mean philosophy-"
"Of course not. You're talking about rocks," Rodney interjected, digging into his own meal. "Different planets, different minerals, ergo: different colors: yes?"
"Yeah," Ronon said.
"Except the color's not in the rocks, it's in the light, and light can only do so much in any galaxy." Rodney suddenly pictured McKay, engulfed in light and vanished into data. He added, faintly: "Of course, there's so much we don't know."
Oh, the writing underneath the writing in that whole little scene. It's beautiful team characterization, both of the individuals and their beautiful relationships with each other. And I'm so glad it's there, the presence of the team in this timeline. Stories in which the OTP apparently live in a vacuum, and never have to jigsaw their relationship in among all the other relationships in their lives, kind of creep me out, really. It's a general fanfic squick I have; in OK Computer, of course, Speranza tackles it head-on and makes it a theme. And here she is slotting one of the last puzzle pieces of that theme into place.
The scene is valuable for that alone, the gorgeous OT4 interaction, but it's doing double duty. It's about seeing. A person's true colours, from a different point of view, in a different light. Go, Rodney, go.
He turned when Teyla touched his hand. "Have you not slept at all?" she asked.
He hadn't, but he was well into his fourth wave of energy, now. "No, not yet," Rodney replied, "but I'll go to bed early. Presuming things stay quiet, which is never a good bet," Sheppard was watching him now: eating his apple and watching him with an unreadable expression. Rodney poked a fork into his salad. "I wanted to be a musician," he said.
Your salad days are just beginning! WheeEEEeee! ((oh god I am such a dork.))
Sheppard didn't react to this declaration, but there was a weird little thrum around the table, a subterranean team communication Rodney knew well. Teyla stood up and said, "Perhaps I will see you later," and Ronon balled up his sandwich paper and said, with the last of it hastily shoved into his mouth, "Hang on, I'm done." Sheppard showed them a whip-flick of a smile as they headed off. Rodney stared doggedly down at his food.
"So-a musician?" Sheppard asked carefully.
"You're not the only one with a backstory." Rodney stabbed his salad. "Yes, I wanted to be a-" pianist, he used to say, but he'd had trouble with that word, "-to play the piano. Classical. Obviously. I wanted to play professionally, but-" He shrugged.
"Really?" Sheppard's face broke into a more genuine smile. "You?" and then: "Can you sing?"
This was an unexpected question. "I-well, I mean, yes, I can carry a tune, but-"
"I can't. I think I'm actually envious. Huh." Sheppard seemed to think it over. "You: a musician. I gotta say, from where I'm sitting, I'm glad you're not a musician."
"Well, that's just my point." Rodney leaned forward over the table and said, in the lowest audible voice he could manage, "Same here. I mean, a thousand times over, same here. I can't imagine this place without you: surviving this without you. So all right: maybe we disappointed some people. And maybe we couldn't-" His throat went tight; he swallowed. "-be everything we wanted. But look where we are!"
He'd meant this to be greatly inspiring, but the corners of Sheppard's mouth were twitching. "Wow." Sheppard whistled softly. "I must be really bad at this."
"No, no," Rodney said uncertainly, and then he felt Sheppard's boot knock against his. He shifted his leg away, and Sheppard moved with him, leg hard against his and-oh. He went still, and Sheppard's knee snugged in, muscled calf warm against his.
Footsies. Of course Sheppard communicates romantic interest via footsies.
"I was trying to tell you that the Air Force was everything to me. It didn't matter... what else I gave up." Sheppard looked at him meaningfully; Rodney's mouth went dry. "But now..."
"Oh," Rodney said; Sheppard's leg was still warm against his.
"Yeah."
"I, uh. I don't think I fully appreciated the, uh-import of your-"
Sheppard sighed and said, "Well, I'm also pretty bad at this."
Rodney licked his lips, then screwed up his courage. "Sex?" he asked, and began to push his leg against Sheppard's.
Sheppard glared. "Relationships." Then he slouched back in his chair in a way that was at once fantastically sexy and so clearly a studied attempt at cool that it was very nearly middle-school. [It is so true.] "I'm actually pretty good at sex."
"Oh," Rodney said faintly. "Well, that's good."
"Yeah," Sheppard agreed, and then, shifting and leaning forward awkwardly: "So. You're not actually going to make me say, 'your room or mine', right?"
"Mine," Rodney said immediately. "Your bed's much too small," and Sheppard grinned at him again, one of those surprisingly doofy smiles he showed when he wasn't being all cool. Then Sheppard leaned in, like he was about to say something; leaned in further. When he still didn't say anything, Rodney leaned forward, too, straining to close the distance.
"So what are you waiting for?" Sheppard murmured. "I'll be right behind you," and Rodney stood up so fast he nearly knocked the chair over.
Sheppard wasn't lying; he followed Rodney at a discreet distance through the Atlantis halls, but was pressed up behind him before Rodney'd even finished getting the door open. Sheppard turned him, cupping his face and kissing him and pushing him into the room backwards. The door slid shut; it was dark, and Rodney fought a momentary desire to turn on the lights before just pulling Sheppard into his arms and opening his mouth. Sheppard's hands were still on his face, warm and calloused, and Sheppard was kissing him just the way he liked it. Kissing his mouth, his chin, the side of his face, before sliding in deep and hot and wet. Sheppard's mouth was surprisingly soft, and Rodney became aware that he was groaning softly, hands clutching at Sheppard's lean, muscular sides. Just the way he liked it, exactly how-
He'd always had trouble ignoring ideas once they occurred to him. "You slept with him, the other-McKay," Rodney blurted. "Didn't you." His brainless dick was still trying to get some friction against Sheppard's leg. Sheppard was rocking into the motion, hips tilting suggestively. "Didn't you," Rodney repeated. Sheppard sighed and stepped back.
"It was more like the other way around, Rodney, okay?" Sheppard's face wasn't quite visible in the dark. "He wanted to, and I guess I wanted to, too. He saved my life."
And that was it: the thing that needed facing. "I'm not him," Rodney said.
Sheppard was there immediately, holding his shoulders. "I know, Rodney."
"I didn't save your life. I didn't build a time machine. I didn't rescue what was left of you or devote my life to building a world whose only virtue was that you were in it. I just-" The words were tumbling out of him now; he had to confess this, they had to be clear about this, otherwise he'd never know if he was just the stand-in for the insane geezer who had done all those things. "I just showed you the VR. And I saved your file for-all right: totally prurient reasons. I liked to watch those girls having sex with you. I used to watch it all the time. I'm not a hero, I'm a pervert, I-"
"He knew me, Rodney. He knew everything about me, things I've never told anybody. But I didn't know him." Sheppard's voice was soft. "What happened to him, it changed him. You think I want you to be him? I don't. I mean, I-" and Sheppard shook his head, laughing, but fierce. "I really, really don't."
If anything, it should be Sheppard who worries Rodney wishes he were more like gentle, articulate, good-at-math VR John. But he's not the sort to say so, and Rodney's not the sort to intuit it.
"Oh, thank-" and Rodney was on him and kissing him before he'd gotten the words out. But Sheppard was making himself hard to kiss, because he was laughing and pushing at Rodney like he was a big, slobbering dog. "For god's sake, have sex with me already-"
"Just for the record," Sheppard said earnestly, "I'm okay with you being a pervert."
*adverb love*
Rodney had no answer for this, focused as he was on unbuttoning Sheppard's shirt and then the buttons of his BDUs. Sheppard's hard-on was outlined in his striped boxers. Rodney ran his palm over the cotton, feeling the hard flesh quivering beneath, and touched his mouth to a tiny patch of unshaved skin on Sheppard's cheek about the size of a nickel. It drove him wild.
Sheppard stopped laughing; he was breathing hard, chest rising and falling. "Go on," he said raggedly. "Come on," and he grabbed the hem of Rodney's shirt just as Rodney slipped his hand into Sheppard's boxers to grip silky hot skin, and suddenly they were tottering together, kissing messily, tripping over each other's feet. Rodney curled the arm he wasn't using to grope Sheppard's cock around Sheppard's neck and tugged him over to the bed. The moment Sheppard's knee hit the bed, he was shoving Rodney down and crawling on top of him and worming his clothes off, and it turned out that his frantic whispers of, "let me, come on, let me," meant let me fuck you.
My kinks, let me show you them. I have little patience for sex scenes in which everybody's all suave and coordinated, like they had a dry run with a choreographer before taking the show on the road. This "I want you so bad I'm inept with it" clutching and reeling, on the other hand? Yeah. Hot, endearing, funny and, most importantly, so very, very them. Also, "tottering" is an ace verb.
"Yes. God-" and how had he ever thought Sheppard was passive? Because of the lesbians, how he'd been with the lesbians, but what was entirely clear now as he lay there with his face pushing against the sheet and Sheppard's cock in his ass was that Sheppard liked boys; Jesus, did he. Sheppard's sweaty face was tucked against the back of his neck and he was groaning softly-"Rodney, Jesus, oh, God,"-and Rodney shuddered through full-body convulsions just hearing him sound like that, all undone and needy like that. Every time Rodney shuddered, Sheppard's arms tightened around him until he was squeezing hard enough to hurt. Rodney'd been afraid the fucking would hurt, but it hadn't: with Sheppard it was the hugging that hurt. He didn't complain.
Bwahahaha! Bwah! Ahaha! Sheppard the terrible hugger. Skittish because the alternative is bone-crushing, bottomless-pit needy. Oh, I loves him so.
Sheppard's breathing went fast and ragged and he skittered an unsteady hand down Rodney's belly to his dick. "I'm really-close," he said, and gave Rodney's cock a long, slick squeeze and then a couple of quick, tentative jerks, and Rodney's eyes closed heavily as he came over everything. "Oh-oh, yeah-f-fuck-" and then Sheppard was smothering his moans and gasps against Rodney's neck and coming, too.
One of my favourite things about this fandom is its collective attitude toward Rodney's body. He has a tummy. Receding hair. (Totally tangential personal aside: my own measure for desirability has long been, "Does he look like he could absorb an airport tacklehug with a 20 metre running start, or would I knock him over?" Rodney passes that test, yep.) So what a joy, what a joy, to see him win that goofy Best Of meme from I-forget-where in the category of "Best Ass." I was so tickled by the implications that I didn't even mind him beating out John Crichton.
Rodney was having trouble breathing until Sheppard rolled them both onto their sides, which freed up some lung capacity. Rodney inhaled deeply, and Sheppard's arms relaxed just enough to let him do it before tightening up snug again.
"Rodney," Sheppard murmured against the back of his head. "You okay?"
"Mhm." Rodney's hand found Sheppard's arm. He squeezed it, and Sheppard mumbled something about how this had been great, so great, which, yes, obviously. Sheppard was a comforting background rumble, a gust of warm breath in his hair, and he wasn't really listening until Sheppard mumbled, from far away, "...I'm staying, okay?" Rodney was too far gone for speech, but he tightened his grip on Sheppard's hand and fit it against him, and he felt more than heard Sheppard's laugh and whisper of, "Okay, Rodney. Okay."
The story starts with Rodney falling out of bed in a panic. And ends with him tucked up safe. Perfect.
Epilogue.
"Shut the door," Rodney said, jerking his head toward it. Sheppard rolled his eyes, then went back to the lab door and palmed the keystrip.
"Okay, what?"
Rodney gestured toward his laptop. "Come and have a look at this," he said. Sheppard came over and bent down to look at the screen.
"My God," Sheppard said, looking up again. "It's science!"
Snort. I love that line.
Rodney blew out an irritated breath. "Okay, funny guy, seriously, in all the time you've known me, have I ever-ever!-wasted your time with pointless observations?" Sheppard appeared to be thinking this over, and so Rodney yelled, "No! No, I haven't!"
"All right, fine." Sheppard raised his hands in apology. "Look, I see science on a screen. You're going to have to give me a little more information, here."
Rodney was somewhat mollified. "Okay, fair enough," he said, "but here's the thing: I didn't do this science."
"What do you mean?" Sheppard looked concerned.
"I mean," Rodney said, "that I didn't write that! That's the answer to a problem I was only beginning to think about working on; I just had rudimentary notes, basic approaches-"
Sheppard frowned. "So somebody else...Zelenka..."
"Yes, yes, because that's what scientists do; we break into each other's labs in the middle of the night and solve each other's problems without signing our names to-okay, no, just: no." Rodney wiped at his hairline with the back of his hand. "Besides, it doesn't read like Zelenka. Scientists have styles, just like other great artists." He pretended not to notice Sheppard's eyeroll. "I'm saying Zelenka didn't write this! In fact," he said, and crossed his arms, because here's where it got interesting, "at a guess, I'd say you wrote it."
"Me," Sheppard repeated, and raised an eyebrow. "Riiight. Because my scientific prose style is so-" and Rodney saw exactly when Sheppard got it, because he set his jaw and looked a little afraid. It was a familiar expression. "Oh, fuck. You think it was-"
"Yeah. I've seen his work. And did I mention my files were password-protected?"
"Great," Sheppard muttered, and then, suddenly prickling under Rodney's gaze, "Hey, don't look at me! I've got nothing to do with this. Blame yourself, if you want to blame anybody; some version of you's in there, right? Why don't you stop him?"
Rodney sighed. "I don't know that we want to stop him. I mean, do we want to stop him?" He looked toward the proof he hadn't written. "It's beautiful work," he admitted, and then he bit his lip. "Besides, I'm-I think I'm part of the problem."
Sheppard's shoulders slumped, and he scrubbed at his face. "Color me shocked."
"I did a little searching around after I found this. And, well..." Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "Reviewing my work over these last few months, I find I've been-incredibly productive. Like 'it's impossible that I could have done all this' productive-"
Sheppard glared at him.
"Hey, I do the work of four people around here as it is! Things are fixed, they go right, problem solved, my initials: who's going to red-flag that?"
"So you're telling me they're both running around Atlantis, interfering with-"
"Interfering, yes, for some definition meaning 'being very, very helpful'-"
Elves! In the woodwork! Same way our stories are the elves in the canonical woodwork, really, spackling plot holes, naming the peripheral characters, inching closer to the Unified Theory of Everything....
"-our programs and procedures? Hacking our computers? Intercepting-"
Er...
"Sheppard, they're in our computers; they live there, remember? And yes, I grant you it's disturbing, but they don't seem to have done anything that-"
Sheppard crossed his arms and stared him down. "So now you trust them?"
"I-" The question stopped him; did he trust them? Rodney frowned. "Yeah, I guess. I guess I do. I mean..." Rodney swallowed uncomfortably; he'd thought McKay was crazy, but now that he had John, he thought he'd go a hell of a lot crazier than McKay had if anything ever happened to him. "They're us. I mean, not exactly. But..." But McKay had been him, once. And now that Rodney had access, he knew that there were a lot of pastel shirts in Sheppard's closet.
Sheppard's eyes narrowed. "You said he was crazy. You said he was a mad scientist-"
"Yes!" This was a sore point. "And I notice you slept with him anyway!"
"Oh my God," Sheppard groaned, arms falling limp to his sides. "I'm not having this argument with you again," but actually, Rodney liked having this argument: it usually ended with him coming his brains out while Sheppard whispered, You, it was always- "Can we please stay focused on the gremlins in the machinery?"
Rodney couldn't hold back his snort of derision. "Gremlins? They're more like pixies with security clearance. I just-" He looked at Sheppard, slouched there in his faded BDUs and untucked t-shirt, and loved him, Christ, so much. "Just. I'd have done the same. If-"
Okay, brownies, technically.
Sheppard surprised him by kissing him; fast, but deep enough to make him wobble a little. "I know," he said. "And-I mean, I would too, if you..."
"Yeah." Rodney leaned toward Sheppard's neck, breathed in the warm smell of him. "But I'm still a genius, and even reduced to data, you're a born hero, so..."
Sheppard blew out a long breath. "So, all right. Jesus," he said softly. "If you really think it's all right, then-all right." He looked at the computer. "But if this has been going on for months, why did we just find out now? Are they getting careless, or-?"
Rodney forced his eyes back to that tantalizing, picture-perfect proof. "I think it's you, actually. Him; John. He's letting himself be seen-sticking his tongue out, actually, thumbing his nose at us. Whereas I'd guess that the virtual me probably has delusions of being, you know, well." Rodney coughed. "The secret master of the universe."
"Oh, so totally unlike you, then," Sheppard said.
Rodney frowned. "Actually, hm. I wonder if he's trying to open a dialogue."
"Who?" Sheppard asked with mock-patience.
Rodney looked around the lab helplessly, realizing for the first time that their virtual counterparts probably could see everything, be anywhere: here, now. "You."
Sheppard's eyes darted around, too. "I don't think I want a dialogue."
"Shh," Rodney said, and grabbed his arm.
Sheppard shook him off. "Don't be stupid, McKay. Either they can see us, and they've always been able to see us, or they can't. No point in whispering-"
"Shhhh! Shhh-hhhh!" Rodney slashed at the air violently. Sheppard made a face, then crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling, looking deeply aggrieved. Rodney cleared this throat, and said, "Er, hello? John?" He coughed nervously. "John, is that you?"
The overhead lights flickered and went out, casting the lab into darkness.
After a moment, Sheppard said, "You know, I probably think this is really funny."
"Did you just do that?" Rodney stormed up the beach, one hand flailing to keep his battered straw hat [to...prevent virtual sunburn? I bet it was a present from John. :)] from flying off in the wind. "I thought we agreed on a strategy of surgical precision, minimum interference, so we don't muck up the timeline! You're violating the prime directive-"
The what now? Rodney, you are such an arrogant ass.
John was sprawled on a beach chair, wearing swim trunks daubed with huge purple and pink flowers and a ludicrous pair of white plastic sunglasses. Beside him, on the table, were his laptop and a fruity drink. "I think we can say they made first contact."
Neerrrrrrrrd!
Rodney flung his hands in the air. "Only because you- That proof! You deliberately-"
John nudged Rodney's calf with the ball of his foot; his hairy leg was streaked with sand. "Like you haven't," he said. "I've seen your sneaky little cryptograms: you're just begging to be noticed." John's lips curved into a smile. "You're not built for unacknowledged genius, Rodney. Admit it; it drives you crazy that they haven't-"
"It does! Jesus! What are they, stupid?" Rodney grimaced. "I thought for sure Sheppard would have figured it out by now; I mean, he's no you, but he's got a good mind for puzzles. And me-God, what the hell's wrong with me?" This wasn't a rhetorical question. "I'll tell you what's wrong with me: he's a maniac, that's what. Never stops to smell the roses. Just goes obsessively back and forth between today's crisis and Sheppard, tomorrow's crisis and Sheppard-"
"You're one to talk." John hooked his foot around Rodney's ankle and tried to tug him off balance. "Mister I-Gave-Up-My-Body-"
Rodney tried to keep his feet. "Excuse me, but that's Doctor I-Gave-Up-My-Body-For-You-"
"Yeah." John caressed Rodney's ankle as he pulled his foot away. His eyes were hidden behind his stupid glasses but his lips were curving. "Because you're a lunatic."
"Hardly. Perfectly rational; best thing I ever did. Saves me from allergies, backaches, and hypoglycemia, not to mention-" and John launched out of his chair and took Rodney down, tackling him in the sand. They wrestled for a minute, knocking Rodney's hat off, but Rodney couldn't take John on his best day. John scrambled on top of him and pinned him, just to show he could, Rodney thought. John's sunglasses had been knocked askew, but he was grinning down at him. Rodney lay back in the warm sand, almost unbearably happy, and John kissed him, hot and sloppy, until he moaned.
It's so uncool, in the media industry, in our culture at large, to get attached to things, to be too impassioned. To be a fanatic. Speranza, bless her, Godspeeds this tale in the opposite direction. Future!Rodney's excessive love yields a happy ending for him, and pushes present!Rodney into happiness as well.
Dominance established, John eased up a little. His skin was golden and little beads of sweat glistened in his chest hair. "Bodies are good for some things," he said.
Rodney was hard before he felt John's cock digging into him. "No, no," he said, and swallowed: his mouth was full with wanting it. He brushed sand from John's cheek with his thumb. "You've got it all wrong." He was just bickering for the pleasure of it; in fact, they understood each other with unnatural clarity, having taken to sometimes trading each other bits of data and chunks of their programming as a form of sexual interpenetration. John called these brief data merges algorgasms, and they were his favorite thing to do in bed after sucking cock. "As everybody knows, and as the internet has definitively proven, sex is in the brain. Which is why I'm the all-time sexiest-" and John snatched Rodney's hat off the sand and began beating him about the head with it, and Rodney laughed and yelped, "Stop. John. Jesus. Asshole. Just. Stop."
I am unduly amused by the fact that the last word of the novel is "stop."
Phew. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this story, so I hope people pipe up in the comments if they notice cool things I skipped. The real challenge here was not letting myself devolve into Oh my God that is ANOTHER gorgeouswittyathletic sentence, SQUEEEEE at every damned turn. Take all that as given. Cheers.
The End
Comment at Speranza's LJ
Good Reads:
Madeline Ashby's essay in TWC: Ownership, authority, and the body: Does antifanfic sentiment reflect posthuman anxiety?
Lawrence Lessig's lecture on read-only vs. read-write culture.
princessofg's detailed review of Coppa's chapter in Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse's Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet.
Chris Moriarty's debut sci-fi novel, Spin State. Space travel, AIs, VRs, clones, quantum physics, genderfuckery. Fandom, why are you not all over this book?
Beside him, McKay groaned and rolled onto hands and knees. "The VE," he said, struggling to his feet. "I wasn't thinking; we should have been sitting down-"
"Yes, and thank you for all the lovely bruises." Rodney gripped the edge of the console and pulled himself up. "We're lucky we didn't crack our damn skulls open-"
"You're both assholes," Sheppard said, looking shaken.
"Us? Ha," McKay crossed his arms. "Tell me about it, you manipulative bastard-"
Sheppard blinked at him. "Uh-excuse me?"
Rodney barely looked up from his typing. "John blew up the VR," he explained. "McKay's pissed."
Sheppard looked pretty pissed, too. "Yeah, well, I didn't do anything! I was just standing here-"
But Rodney just tsked and said, "Yes, well, we all have to take responsibility for our actions: past, present and-" He stopped then, because here was the log list: last action - write to zero. The bastard had really done it: pushed McKay out into the world and burnt the bridge that led back. The whole virtual world was gone, John included, and Rodney was trying to find the right words to break this to McKay when McKay pushed next to him at the console. "I'm sorry," Rodney said, and meant it with all his heart.
McKay stood at the screen. His eyes were fixed and staring. Rodney bit his lip and debated hugging himself. "Don't be," McKay said slowly, "because I think this log file is bullshit," and Rodney's eyes immediately snapped back to the screen, where McKay had brought up another scrolling list of commands. "Look, see?" McKay said, gesticulating wildly at the screen. "It's-" and yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, he saw it, and the sly, pink-shirted bastard had faked his own virtual death. He threw a nasty glance over his shoulder at Sheppard, who was behind them, craning his neck and trying to see.
"What!" Sheppard demanded. "I'm just standing here!"
"Look," McKay said, jabbing his finger. "There. He's hiding an upload; I think the bastard uploaded himself to Atlantis," and Rodney tried to muscle McKay out of the way so he could get to the keyboard, but McKay wouldn't budge an inch.
YEAH, BABY! *dance of glee* This is John's test, his big "So what?" How much is cyberJohn capable of affecting the material world? How much agency does he have? Is he a real boy? The moment when the construct seizes the reins from the author ("I swear," we say to each other, "the story just took on a life of its own!") is critical to this type of narrative. Ashby, quoting from Donna Haraway's famous Cyborg Manifesto: "She also privileges writing as an act of cyborg reproduction and resistance: 'Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other' (2002:94)."
"Run a search," Rodney said finally, gritting his teeth. "I checked your drive just before I uploaded Sheppard, so I can give you his specs, likely file size-"
"I know the profile," McKay gritted back.
"Okay, but be careful. He might have changed the numbers," Rodney pointed out.
"Wouldn't put it past him," and they both glanced at Sheppard, who threw his hands up and stomped away to lounge on the windowsill, arms crossed.
"There," McKay said, voice rising. "There, there! That's-isn't that-?" Rodney forced McKay away from the keyboard with a full-body, lateral shove, and yes, something new was running in Atlantis, visible despite John's clever but amateurish attempt to conceal himself, which was the equivalent of hiding behind a slowly-moving and not at all realistic shrub on a stick.
"Yes." Rodney's fingers were tingling with adrenaline. "That's him, that's totally him. See? I told you everything would be-" but he was stopped by the look on McKay's face, on his own face. "What...?" Rodney began tentatively, except he already knew what, because he was Rodney McKay and he knew his own mind.
McKay locked eyes with him, and hesitated only briefly before reaching out to clutch at his arm. "Will you?" McKay faltered. "Help me, will you?" and Rodney let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding and said, "Yes. Yes, yes. You locate the-while I rewrite the-" They bent over the scanner and began working furiously.
"Wait, what are you..." Sheppard began; Rodney waved him off and kept working.
McKay finished his part of the job first. "Come on, come on," he moaned, pacing, hands clenching and unclenching. "I could do it myself in half the-"
"You are doing it yourself," Rodney snapped. "Make yourself useful, set up the test phase-"
"Test phase?" Sheppard was off the windowsill now. "What-?"
"Test phase?" McKay threw up his hands in exasperation. "There's no time for a-" but Rodney shot him a look so supercharged with derision that McKay gave in immediately. "Fine, then!" McKay said with barely concealed, thin-lipped fury, and immediately strode out the door, Rodney's bathrobe flapping behind him.
"Rod-ney," Sheppard said dangerously, edging close, now. "What test phase?" Rodney didn't know what to say; he was pretty sure Sheppard wouldn't be on board with this. Sheppard said, in a low voice, "What the hell are you-?" but Rodney was saved from answering by McKay, who had reappeared, dragging a large plant behind him.
Sheppard visibly boggled. "What the-" and Rodney took advantage of Sheppard's distraction to double and triple-check the code; if he screwed this up because McKay was haranguing him, he'd never forgive himself. But everything looked all right; it was a minor modification, all things considered, and when he looked up, Sheppard was helping McKay drag the plant into the circle he'd chalked onto the floor.
"Okay," Rodney said. "Everybody get back!" and then the glowing yellow light was enveloping the tree, turning it a sickly yellow-green. A moment later, a horizontal beam formed across the tops of the leaves, but instead of moving slowly downward, it fell like an anvil-bam!-and the tree vanished in the sudden sweep of light.
"You transported a tree?" Sheppard asked as Rodney bent to check the numbers, which looked fine; looked great, in fact.
"No," McKay replied, looking visibly relieved when Rodney straightened up from the console and gave him the thumbs-up. "Uploaded. And I'm next," he said.
"Wait," Sheppard said. Rodney could almost see his mind working through the possibilities, trying to put together what this meant. He actually did see the moment Sheppard figured it out. "Wait," Sheppard sounded strangled. "Where's the output?"
"There isn't," McKay said. "But John's in there. I'm going after him."
Sheppard immediately stared into a corner of the room, like it was fascinating; his face clouded over. "You," he began, and then he was biting his lip, his mouth pursed together. He still couldn't meet McKay's eyes. "Don't," he said. "This isn't a good idea."
McKay actually laughed. "I know," he said, and stepped into the chalk circle. Sheppard looked at him, then, and McKay said, with a kind of hysteria, "I'd do it all again, you know. I'm perverse like that." He glanced over at Rodney, and said, "Um, thanks."
"No problem," Rodney replied awkwardly. "Are you, uh..." and when McKay said, "I'm ready," he pressed the button. McKay was immersed in yellow light, and Rodney felt a sudden and unexpected surge of hope and shouted: "Good luck! Give my best to-"
And then McKay was gone. Rodney looked down, saw the data that was his future self streaming through Atlantis, and felt an odd kind of euphoria: he'd made it, maybe they'd both make it. He turned to share this with Sheppard, but Sheppard was just standing there, looking drained and a little bereft. The sun was fully up now, and bright light was streaming through the lab's window. Dust motes were slowly turning in the air.
In a couple of the anime narratives Ashby discusses in her essay, the cyborg heroine achieves her freedom and fulfillment by uploading herself fully into cyberspace and becoming its secret master. Yeah. So. I'd have more to say, except I haven't actually seen the movies in question, though I've now got a download of Ghost in the Shell waiting for me on my hard drive. Thought it was worth mentioning anyhow. Clearly there's a Thing going on here.
"Did it work?" Sheppard raised a vague hand to his head, rubbed his temple.
Rodney showed him empty hands. "He's in there," he said. "John's in there too, for what it's worth. The data's intact. Their programs are running."
Sheppard looked disoriented. "So is that-what happens now, is that it?"
"I guess," Rodney said helplessly. "I mean..."
"Did we just kill him?" Sheppard's face was turned away, but his voice was tight. "No, wait; I don't think I want to-" and then he was touching his ear and saying, in a hard voice, "Sheppard, go ahead." A moment later, he glanced down at his watch. "Right, yes. On my way." He looked at Rodney. "I've got to go," he said. "See you at senior staff."
"I-yes. Okay," Rodney said, then added, uncertainly, "What-what should we tell them?"
Sheppard face was intense. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing. No one else needs to know about this," and then he was turning on his heel, and leaving the lab, and gone.
Poor Sheppard. I don't much blame him for needing processing time. (Oh! Ow! Pun! Sorry!)
Exhaustion turned the rest of the morning into a kind of waking dream, which Rodney experienced in a number of hallucinogenic flashes. Taking the scanner apart so that no one could upload themselves by accident. Going back to his room and taking a shower, bracing his arms against the smooth walls so the hot water beat down upon his neck and shoulders. Coming out swathed in towels only to realize that McKay had stolen his bathrobe. Arriving at Carter's morning meeting and watching Sheppard stroll in.
And maybe it was the post-stress endorphins running through him, making all the colors extra sharp, but he couldn't feel bad about it; any of it. Because John Sheppard was alive and sitting right across the table, looking tired but wearing a clean black shirt and blandly lying through his teeth: yeah, it had been a slow day, a slow week, really, but all was quiet on the Western front. Rodney couldn't take his eyes off him.
"McKay?" Carter said, and something about how she looked made Rodney think this wasn't the first time she'd said his name. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, fine," Rodney replied, cheerfully slapping the table. "Fit as a fiddle." Everyone was looking at him, so he added, hastily: "I didn't get much-well, any, actually-sleep last night, so I'm kind of-you know." He fluttered his fingers. "High."
That paragraph is just a really great example of fanfic writing-i.e., description that so perfectly and economically captures the actor's mannerisms that I can see Rodney in my mind as clearly as if he were on my t.v. screen.
There was a muffled laugh somewhere in the room. Carter arched her eyebrow but didn't smile. Sheppard sighed and said, in a beleaguered voice, "Permission to postpone today's offworld mission until such time as..." and then Carter did smile.
"Permission granted," she said, and stood up to end the meeting. "Get some sleep, McKay," except Rodney'd learned from long experience that he had to stay awake till the next sleep cycle, so he chugged a gallon of coffee and went down to his lab. He did some routine work, checked the progress of his ongoing experiments; he found himself feeling extraordinarily grateful for the ordinariness of the day. When Sheppard walked in later that afternoon, he was pretty much right on time, and Rodney let himself believe that things were back to normal. After all, Sheppard usually came by about now to drag him off to dinner, or to suggest they go downstairs to play BioShock or video golf.
"Hey." Sheppard cocked a hip, leaned against the lab bench, and frowned at him. "I figured you'd be sleeping. I went by your room-"
"Yeah, no, better to just stagger onward," Rodney said, pressing his hands to the small of his back. "Though I should probably get some food. Have you eaten yet?"
"No," Sheppard said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "I mean: yeah, okay."
"Great." Rodney made for the door, sure at that point he was home free, except then Sheppard exhaled noisily and grabbed his arm, and said, "No, wait." Still, Rodney managed to keep his game face on, trying to seem inquisitive and vaguely impatient all at once. Sheppard let go of him. "I guess I wanted to talk," he said and shrugged.
"We don't have to talk. I mean, we really, really don't," Rodney said helplessly. "What's done is done, and I can't change anything now anyway. You want an apology? I apologize. I should never have-I didn't mean to-I never meant to-"
"Rodney, shut up, will you?" but Sheppard sounded exasperated, not angry. He leaned back against the lab bench, braced on his elbows, and tilted his face toward the ceiling, showing off a long stripe of throat; his chest hair was peeking out of the top of his collar.
Scopophilia. :o)
Finally Sheppard let his head roll forward and said the last thing Rodney expected: "I guess I wanted you to know what a disappointment I was to my father."
"What?" Rodney said, bewildered.
"Shut up and listen. I'm telling you the truth. I wasn't the son my father wanted, okay? He had a plan, all laid out for me, but I wouldn't keep to it." Sheppard stopped, bit his lip, and when he spoke again, his voice was subtly different. "A year or two of military service builds a man's character," and Rodney had no doubt of whose voice he was hearing, "but no more than that. It's not a career for an eldest son," Sheppard said.
Rodney frowned. "What did he want you to do?"
Sheppard winced, then pulled a face so outrageous that Rodney would have laughed if he hadn't been able to see all the pain in it. "God. It's so embarrassingly embarrassing," Sheppard said, eyes rolling like he was gripped by a paroxysm of dorkiness. "Choate, Harvard, Europe, the family business. Law would have been acceptable. Politics," and Rodney must have been openly boggling, because John said defensively, "Hey, it wasn't my idea. And I barely got out of Choate; I probably wouldn't even have graduated if my father hadn't, like, bought them a building-"
"Who the hell is your father, Joe Kennedy?" and when Sheppard winced, Rodney realized that that maybe wasn't the wildly outrageous comparison he had been going for. He looked at Sheppard and tried to see the scion of a wealthy family: a lawyer or banker, married to a debutante. The junior senator from the great state of Massachusetts.
"Commonwealth of Virginia," Sheppard corrected wearily, "but yeah, that's the ballpark. Look, the point is: I'm not that guy, Rodney. I was never that guy. I joined the Air Force and that was it for me. I earned my wings, got recruited for special ops, combat search and rescue, and just-" Sheppard squeezed his eyes shut. "Even after it went bad, I couldn't turn my back on them. Because they saw me, at least, and they accepted a hell of a lot more of me than my father did, even if they maybe didn't know all of me-"
This characterization of Sheppard works so well for me. In just a few paragraphs, it takes up fandom's obsessive speculations about John's past, especially his ambivalent relationship with the Air Force, and braids them into a simple, elegant cord that makes so much sense I'm just sighing with satisfaction. In places, reading this story is like watching fanon coalesce in media res.
"Rodney-" and Sheppard abruptly straightened and shot a wary look over his shoulder. Zelenka hurried into the lab, wreathed in smiles, glasses slipping down his nose. "I thought you would want to see the-" He faltered, maybe sensing Rodney's building rage, the polite thinness of Sheppard's smile. "Sorry, am I interrupting?"
"Yes! Yes, you are interrupting-"
"Nah," Sheppard said easily, and Rodney looked and saw that Sheppard was gone, slid back under the veneer of lazy charm that was his default mode. "It's nothing important," he told Zelenka, and then he looked at Rodney and said, "We can pick this up later."
Zelenka waved his tablet at Rodney uncertainly. "I just thought you would want to see the first numbers from our low-energy neutrino-"
"Actually, no; no, I don't," but Sheppard was already sliding past them and away, out the door. "No, but really: you can't have any idea how little I care about the numbers from the low-energy neutrino spectography right now," Rodney said earnestly.
"Oh." Zelenka blinked rapidly. "Well. I am sorry."
"Not sorry enough," Rodney said with heartfelt emotion, only belatedly snatching the tablet out of Zelenka's hands and glancing down at the numbers, which were, as he'd suspected, not nearly as interesting as whatever Sheppard'd been trying to tell him.
He found Sheppard where he expected: slouched at their table. He was smirking up at Ronon, who was sitting on the tabletop and telling some incredibly violent story with his hands. Beside him, Teyla was daintily eating pudding out of a cup. Rodney was halfway to the table with his tray when he stopped to look at them: his team.
He'd been eating in institutional cafeterias for...well, his whole life, really; from the linoleum-topped tables of his primary school to the university dining halls; the think-tanks; the development labs; the military mess halls; the SGC; Antarctica. He'd always scoffed at people's schoolboy anxieties about where or with whom to sit. The dining hall was like a second home to him; he'd done some of his best work in dining halls.
Still, it was kind of nice to know that this was your table, and that was your team. The mess hall was filled with meaningless cliques of scientists and marines, doctors and support personnel, and there at his table was Sheppard, sitting comfortably with the resident aliens. Was that an accident? It had to mean something that, with all the perfect people in the expedition, the best and the brightest from every nation on Earth, Sheppard had picked a team of two aliens and him: a scientific asset to be sure, but hardly the most socially adept guy in the city. None of them were; in fact, they all ranked somewhere near the bottom: eccentric, off-putting, difficult to talk to. Rodney'd always assumed that Sheppard had chosen them despite their social weaknesses. But maybe he'd just surrounded himself with people he understood.
Sheppard happened to glance his way, frowned at him, and tilted his head, and Rodney realized he was just standing in the middle of the mess, holding his tray. Rodney weaved through the other tables and slid into a chair across from Sheppard. Teyla smiled at him; Ronon cut his eyes toward him, but didn't pause in his story, "-and the whole top half was blue, but blue with other colors in it. He'd found this rock, crushed it into powder, and made his own paint, " and if it wasn't violence with Ronon, it was painting, though sometimes they amounted to the same thing. "It was a new color," Ronon said triumphantly, and then he picked up his sandwich and tore off a giant bite. "I wonder," Ronon added, with his mouth full, "if your galaxy has colors I've never seen."
Sheppard paused, an apple halfway to his mouth. "Do you mean like," Sheppard fluttered his fingers around the apple, "'is your green my green?'"
Ronon grinned hugely, still chewing, and took a lazy swipe at Sheppard's head. "You're a philosopher, man. Nah. I don't mean philosophy-"
"Of course not. You're talking about rocks," Rodney interjected, digging into his own meal. "Different planets, different minerals, ergo: different colors: yes?"
"Yeah," Ronon said.
"Except the color's not in the rocks, it's in the light, and light can only do so much in any galaxy." Rodney suddenly pictured McKay, engulfed in light and vanished into data. He added, faintly: "Of course, there's so much we don't know."
Oh, the writing underneath the writing in that whole little scene. It's beautiful team characterization, both of the individuals and their beautiful relationships with each other. And I'm so glad it's there, the presence of the team in this timeline. Stories in which the OTP apparently live in a vacuum, and never have to jigsaw their relationship in among all the other relationships in their lives, kind of creep me out, really. It's a general fanfic squick I have; in OK Computer, of course, Speranza tackles it head-on and makes it a theme. And here she is slotting one of the last puzzle pieces of that theme into place.
The scene is valuable for that alone, the gorgeous OT4 interaction, but it's doing double duty. It's about seeing. A person's true colours, from a different point of view, in a different light. Go, Rodney, go.
He turned when Teyla touched his hand. "Have you not slept at all?" she asked.
He hadn't, but he was well into his fourth wave of energy, now. "No, not yet," Rodney replied, "but I'll go to bed early. Presuming things stay quiet, which is never a good bet," Sheppard was watching him now: eating his apple and watching him with an unreadable expression. Rodney poked a fork into his salad. "I wanted to be a musician," he said.
Your salad days are just beginning! WheeEEEeee! ((oh god I am such a dork.))
Sheppard didn't react to this declaration, but there was a weird little thrum around the table, a subterranean team communication Rodney knew well. Teyla stood up and said, "Perhaps I will see you later," and Ronon balled up his sandwich paper and said, with the last of it hastily shoved into his mouth, "Hang on, I'm done." Sheppard showed them a whip-flick of a smile as they headed off. Rodney stared doggedly down at his food.
"So-a musician?" Sheppard asked carefully.
"You're not the only one with a backstory." Rodney stabbed his salad. "Yes, I wanted to be a-" pianist, he used to say, but he'd had trouble with that word, "-to play the piano. Classical. Obviously. I wanted to play professionally, but-" He shrugged.
"Really?" Sheppard's face broke into a more genuine smile. "You?" and then: "Can you sing?"
This was an unexpected question. "I-well, I mean, yes, I can carry a tune, but-"
"I can't. I think I'm actually envious. Huh." Sheppard seemed to think it over. "You: a musician. I gotta say, from where I'm sitting, I'm glad you're not a musician."
"Well, that's just my point." Rodney leaned forward over the table and said, in the lowest audible voice he could manage, "Same here. I mean, a thousand times over, same here. I can't imagine this place without you: surviving this without you. So all right: maybe we disappointed some people. And maybe we couldn't-" His throat went tight; he swallowed. "-be everything we wanted. But look where we are!"
He'd meant this to be greatly inspiring, but the corners of Sheppard's mouth were twitching. "Wow." Sheppard whistled softly. "I must be really bad at this."
"No, no," Rodney said uncertainly, and then he felt Sheppard's boot knock against his. He shifted his leg away, and Sheppard moved with him, leg hard against his and-oh. He went still, and Sheppard's knee snugged in, muscled calf warm against his.
Footsies. Of course Sheppard communicates romantic interest via footsies.
"I was trying to tell you that the Air Force was everything to me. It didn't matter... what else I gave up." Sheppard looked at him meaningfully; Rodney's mouth went dry. "But now..."
"Oh," Rodney said; Sheppard's leg was still warm against his.
"Yeah."
"I, uh. I don't think I fully appreciated the, uh-import of your-"
Sheppard sighed and said, "Well, I'm also pretty bad at this."
Rodney licked his lips, then screwed up his courage. "Sex?" he asked, and began to push his leg against Sheppard's.
Sheppard glared. "Relationships." Then he slouched back in his chair in a way that was at once fantastically sexy and so clearly a studied attempt at cool that it was very nearly middle-school. [It is so true.] "I'm actually pretty good at sex."
"Oh," Rodney said faintly. "Well, that's good."
"Yeah," Sheppard agreed, and then, shifting and leaning forward awkwardly: "So. You're not actually going to make me say, 'your room or mine', right?"
"Mine," Rodney said immediately. "Your bed's much too small," and Sheppard grinned at him again, one of those surprisingly doofy smiles he showed when he wasn't being all cool. Then Sheppard leaned in, like he was about to say something; leaned in further. When he still didn't say anything, Rodney leaned forward, too, straining to close the distance.
"So what are you waiting for?" Sheppard murmured. "I'll be right behind you," and Rodney stood up so fast he nearly knocked the chair over.
Sheppard wasn't lying; he followed Rodney at a discreet distance through the Atlantis halls, but was pressed up behind him before Rodney'd even finished getting the door open. Sheppard turned him, cupping his face and kissing him and pushing him into the room backwards. The door slid shut; it was dark, and Rodney fought a momentary desire to turn on the lights before just pulling Sheppard into his arms and opening his mouth. Sheppard's hands were still on his face, warm and calloused, and Sheppard was kissing him just the way he liked it. Kissing his mouth, his chin, the side of his face, before sliding in deep and hot and wet. Sheppard's mouth was surprisingly soft, and Rodney became aware that he was groaning softly, hands clutching at Sheppard's lean, muscular sides. Just the way he liked it, exactly how-
He'd always had trouble ignoring ideas once they occurred to him. "You slept with him, the other-McKay," Rodney blurted. "Didn't you." His brainless dick was still trying to get some friction against Sheppard's leg. Sheppard was rocking into the motion, hips tilting suggestively. "Didn't you," Rodney repeated. Sheppard sighed and stepped back.
"It was more like the other way around, Rodney, okay?" Sheppard's face wasn't quite visible in the dark. "He wanted to, and I guess I wanted to, too. He saved my life."
And that was it: the thing that needed facing. "I'm not him," Rodney said.
Sheppard was there immediately, holding his shoulders. "I know, Rodney."
"I didn't save your life. I didn't build a time machine. I didn't rescue what was left of you or devote my life to building a world whose only virtue was that you were in it. I just-" The words were tumbling out of him now; he had to confess this, they had to be clear about this, otherwise he'd never know if he was just the stand-in for the insane geezer who had done all those things. "I just showed you the VR. And I saved your file for-all right: totally prurient reasons. I liked to watch those girls having sex with you. I used to watch it all the time. I'm not a hero, I'm a pervert, I-"
"He knew me, Rodney. He knew everything about me, things I've never told anybody. But I didn't know him." Sheppard's voice was soft. "What happened to him, it changed him. You think I want you to be him? I don't. I mean, I-" and Sheppard shook his head, laughing, but fierce. "I really, really don't."
If anything, it should be Sheppard who worries Rodney wishes he were more like gentle, articulate, good-at-math VR John. But he's not the sort to say so, and Rodney's not the sort to intuit it.
"Oh, thank-" and Rodney was on him and kissing him before he'd gotten the words out. But Sheppard was making himself hard to kiss, because he was laughing and pushing at Rodney like he was a big, slobbering dog. "For god's sake, have sex with me already-"
"Just for the record," Sheppard said earnestly, "I'm okay with you being a pervert."
*adverb love*
Rodney had no answer for this, focused as he was on unbuttoning Sheppard's shirt and then the buttons of his BDUs. Sheppard's hard-on was outlined in his striped boxers. Rodney ran his palm over the cotton, feeling the hard flesh quivering beneath, and touched his mouth to a tiny patch of unshaved skin on Sheppard's cheek about the size of a nickel. It drove him wild.
Sheppard stopped laughing; he was breathing hard, chest rising and falling. "Go on," he said raggedly. "Come on," and he grabbed the hem of Rodney's shirt just as Rodney slipped his hand into Sheppard's boxers to grip silky hot skin, and suddenly they were tottering together, kissing messily, tripping over each other's feet. Rodney curled the arm he wasn't using to grope Sheppard's cock around Sheppard's neck and tugged him over to the bed. The moment Sheppard's knee hit the bed, he was shoving Rodney down and crawling on top of him and worming his clothes off, and it turned out that his frantic whispers of, "let me, come on, let me," meant let me fuck you.
My kinks, let me show you them. I have little patience for sex scenes in which everybody's all suave and coordinated, like they had a dry run with a choreographer before taking the show on the road. This "I want you so bad I'm inept with it" clutching and reeling, on the other hand? Yeah. Hot, endearing, funny and, most importantly, so very, very them. Also, "tottering" is an ace verb.
"Yes. God-" and how had he ever thought Sheppard was passive? Because of the lesbians, how he'd been with the lesbians, but what was entirely clear now as he lay there with his face pushing against the sheet and Sheppard's cock in his ass was that Sheppard liked boys; Jesus, did he. Sheppard's sweaty face was tucked against the back of his neck and he was groaning softly-"Rodney, Jesus, oh, God,"-and Rodney shuddered through full-body convulsions just hearing him sound like that, all undone and needy like that. Every time Rodney shuddered, Sheppard's arms tightened around him until he was squeezing hard enough to hurt. Rodney'd been afraid the fucking would hurt, but it hadn't: with Sheppard it was the hugging that hurt. He didn't complain.
Bwahahaha! Bwah! Ahaha! Sheppard the terrible hugger. Skittish because the alternative is bone-crushing, bottomless-pit needy. Oh, I loves him so.
Sheppard's breathing went fast and ragged and he skittered an unsteady hand down Rodney's belly to his dick. "I'm really-close," he said, and gave Rodney's cock a long, slick squeeze and then a couple of quick, tentative jerks, and Rodney's eyes closed heavily as he came over everything. "Oh-oh, yeah-f-fuck-" and then Sheppard was smothering his moans and gasps against Rodney's neck and coming, too.
One of my favourite things about this fandom is its collective attitude toward Rodney's body. He has a tummy. Receding hair. (Totally tangential personal aside: my own measure for desirability has long been, "Does he look like he could absorb an airport tacklehug with a 20 metre running start, or would I knock him over?" Rodney passes that test, yep.) So what a joy, what a joy, to see him win that goofy Best Of meme from I-forget-where in the category of "Best Ass." I was so tickled by the implications that I didn't even mind him beating out John Crichton.
Rodney was having trouble breathing until Sheppard rolled them both onto their sides, which freed up some lung capacity. Rodney inhaled deeply, and Sheppard's arms relaxed just enough to let him do it before tightening up snug again.
"Rodney," Sheppard murmured against the back of his head. "You okay?"
"Mhm." Rodney's hand found Sheppard's arm. He squeezed it, and Sheppard mumbled something about how this had been great, so great, which, yes, obviously. Sheppard was a comforting background rumble, a gust of warm breath in his hair, and he wasn't really listening until Sheppard mumbled, from far away, "...I'm staying, okay?" Rodney was too far gone for speech, but he tightened his grip on Sheppard's hand and fit it against him, and he felt more than heard Sheppard's laugh and whisper of, "Okay, Rodney. Okay."
The story starts with Rodney falling out of bed in a panic. And ends with him tucked up safe. Perfect.
Epilogue.
"Shut the door," Rodney said, jerking his head toward it. Sheppard rolled his eyes, then went back to the lab door and palmed the keystrip.
"Okay, what?"
Rodney gestured toward his laptop. "Come and have a look at this," he said. Sheppard came over and bent down to look at the screen.
"My God," Sheppard said, looking up again. "It's science!"
Snort. I love that line.
Rodney blew out an irritated breath. "Okay, funny guy, seriously, in all the time you've known me, have I ever-ever!-wasted your time with pointless observations?" Sheppard appeared to be thinking this over, and so Rodney yelled, "No! No, I haven't!"
"All right, fine." Sheppard raised his hands in apology. "Look, I see science on a screen. You're going to have to give me a little more information, here."
Rodney was somewhat mollified. "Okay, fair enough," he said, "but here's the thing: I didn't do this science."
"What do you mean?" Sheppard looked concerned.
"I mean," Rodney said, "that I didn't write that! That's the answer to a problem I was only beginning to think about working on; I just had rudimentary notes, basic approaches-"
Sheppard frowned. "So somebody else...Zelenka..."
"Yes, yes, because that's what scientists do; we break into each other's labs in the middle of the night and solve each other's problems without signing our names to-okay, no, just: no." Rodney wiped at his hairline with the back of his hand. "Besides, it doesn't read like Zelenka. Scientists have styles, just like other great artists." He pretended not to notice Sheppard's eyeroll. "I'm saying Zelenka didn't write this! In fact," he said, and crossed his arms, because here's where it got interesting, "at a guess, I'd say you wrote it."
"Me," Sheppard repeated, and raised an eyebrow. "Riiight. Because my scientific prose style is so-" and Rodney saw exactly when Sheppard got it, because he set his jaw and looked a little afraid. It was a familiar expression. "Oh, fuck. You think it was-"
"Yeah. I've seen his work. And did I mention my files were password-protected?"
"Great," Sheppard muttered, and then, suddenly prickling under Rodney's gaze, "Hey, don't look at me! I've got nothing to do with this. Blame yourself, if you want to blame anybody; some version of you's in there, right? Why don't you stop him?"
Rodney sighed. "I don't know that we want to stop him. I mean, do we want to stop him?" He looked toward the proof he hadn't written. "It's beautiful work," he admitted, and then he bit his lip. "Besides, I'm-I think I'm part of the problem."
Sheppard's shoulders slumped, and he scrubbed at his face. "Color me shocked."
"I did a little searching around after I found this. And, well..." Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "Reviewing my work over these last few months, I find I've been-incredibly productive. Like 'it's impossible that I could have done all this' productive-"
Sheppard glared at him.
"Hey, I do the work of four people around here as it is! Things are fixed, they go right, problem solved, my initials: who's going to red-flag that?"
"So you're telling me they're both running around Atlantis, interfering with-"
"Interfering, yes, for some definition meaning 'being very, very helpful'-"
Elves! In the woodwork! Same way our stories are the elves in the canonical woodwork, really, spackling plot holes, naming the peripheral characters, inching closer to the Unified Theory of Everything....
"-our programs and procedures? Hacking our computers? Intercepting-"
Er...
"Sheppard, they're in our computers; they live there, remember? And yes, I grant you it's disturbing, but they don't seem to have done anything that-"
Sheppard crossed his arms and stared him down. "So now you trust them?"
"I-" The question stopped him; did he trust them? Rodney frowned. "Yeah, I guess. I guess I do. I mean..." Rodney swallowed uncomfortably; he'd thought McKay was crazy, but now that he had John, he thought he'd go a hell of a lot crazier than McKay had if anything ever happened to him. "They're us. I mean, not exactly. But..." But McKay had been him, once. And now that Rodney had access, he knew that there were a lot of pastel shirts in Sheppard's closet.
Sheppard's eyes narrowed. "You said he was crazy. You said he was a mad scientist-"
"Yes!" This was a sore point. "And I notice you slept with him anyway!"
"Oh my God," Sheppard groaned, arms falling limp to his sides. "I'm not having this argument with you again," but actually, Rodney liked having this argument: it usually ended with him coming his brains out while Sheppard whispered, You, it was always- "Can we please stay focused on the gremlins in the machinery?"
Rodney couldn't hold back his snort of derision. "Gremlins? They're more like pixies with security clearance. I just-" He looked at Sheppard, slouched there in his faded BDUs and untucked t-shirt, and loved him, Christ, so much. "Just. I'd have done the same. If-"
Okay, brownies, technically.
Sheppard surprised him by kissing him; fast, but deep enough to make him wobble a little. "I know," he said. "And-I mean, I would too, if you..."
"Yeah." Rodney leaned toward Sheppard's neck, breathed in the warm smell of him. "But I'm still a genius, and even reduced to data, you're a born hero, so..."
Sheppard blew out a long breath. "So, all right. Jesus," he said softly. "If you really think it's all right, then-all right." He looked at the computer. "But if this has been going on for months, why did we just find out now? Are they getting careless, or-?"
Rodney forced his eyes back to that tantalizing, picture-perfect proof. "I think it's you, actually. Him; John. He's letting himself be seen-sticking his tongue out, actually, thumbing his nose at us. Whereas I'd guess that the virtual me probably has delusions of being, you know, well." Rodney coughed. "The secret master of the universe."
"Oh, so totally unlike you, then," Sheppard said.
Rodney frowned. "Actually, hm. I wonder if he's trying to open a dialogue."
"Who?" Sheppard asked with mock-patience.
Rodney looked around the lab helplessly, realizing for the first time that their virtual counterparts probably could see everything, be anywhere: here, now. "You."
Sheppard's eyes darted around, too. "I don't think I want a dialogue."
"Shh," Rodney said, and grabbed his arm.
Sheppard shook him off. "Don't be stupid, McKay. Either they can see us, and they've always been able to see us, or they can't. No point in whispering-"
"Shhhh! Shhh-hhhh!" Rodney slashed at the air violently. Sheppard made a face, then crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling, looking deeply aggrieved. Rodney cleared this throat, and said, "Er, hello? John?" He coughed nervously. "John, is that you?"
The overhead lights flickered and went out, casting the lab into darkness.
After a moment, Sheppard said, "You know, I probably think this is really funny."
"Did you just do that?" Rodney stormed up the beach, one hand flailing to keep his battered straw hat [to...prevent virtual sunburn? I bet it was a present from John. :)] from flying off in the wind. "I thought we agreed on a strategy of surgical precision, minimum interference, so we don't muck up the timeline! You're violating the prime directive-"
The what now? Rodney, you are such an arrogant ass.
John was sprawled on a beach chair, wearing swim trunks daubed with huge purple and pink flowers and a ludicrous pair of white plastic sunglasses. Beside him, on the table, were his laptop and a fruity drink. "I think we can say they made first contact."
Neerrrrrrrrd!
Rodney flung his hands in the air. "Only because you- That proof! You deliberately-"
John nudged Rodney's calf with the ball of his foot; his hairy leg was streaked with sand. "Like you haven't," he said. "I've seen your sneaky little cryptograms: you're just begging to be noticed." John's lips curved into a smile. "You're not built for unacknowledged genius, Rodney. Admit it; it drives you crazy that they haven't-"
"It does! Jesus! What are they, stupid?" Rodney grimaced. "I thought for sure Sheppard would have figured it out by now; I mean, he's no you, but he's got a good mind for puzzles. And me-God, what the hell's wrong with me?" This wasn't a rhetorical question. "I'll tell you what's wrong with me: he's a maniac, that's what. Never stops to smell the roses. Just goes obsessively back and forth between today's crisis and Sheppard, tomorrow's crisis and Sheppard-"
"You're one to talk." John hooked his foot around Rodney's ankle and tried to tug him off balance. "Mister I-Gave-Up-My-Body-"
Rodney tried to keep his feet. "Excuse me, but that's Doctor I-Gave-Up-My-Body-For-You-"
"Yeah." John caressed Rodney's ankle as he pulled his foot away. His eyes were hidden behind his stupid glasses but his lips were curving. "Because you're a lunatic."
"Hardly. Perfectly rational; best thing I ever did. Saves me from allergies, backaches, and hypoglycemia, not to mention-" and John launched out of his chair and took Rodney down, tackling him in the sand. They wrestled for a minute, knocking Rodney's hat off, but Rodney couldn't take John on his best day. John scrambled on top of him and pinned him, just to show he could, Rodney thought. John's sunglasses had been knocked askew, but he was grinning down at him. Rodney lay back in the warm sand, almost unbearably happy, and John kissed him, hot and sloppy, until he moaned.
It's so uncool, in the media industry, in our culture at large, to get attached to things, to be too impassioned. To be a fanatic. Speranza, bless her, Godspeeds this tale in the opposite direction. Future!Rodney's excessive love yields a happy ending for him, and pushes present!Rodney into happiness as well.
Dominance established, John eased up a little. His skin was golden and little beads of sweat glistened in his chest hair. "Bodies are good for some things," he said.
Rodney was hard before he felt John's cock digging into him. "No, no," he said, and swallowed: his mouth was full with wanting it. He brushed sand from John's cheek with his thumb. "You've got it all wrong." He was just bickering for the pleasure of it; in fact, they understood each other with unnatural clarity, having taken to sometimes trading each other bits of data and chunks of their programming as a form of sexual interpenetration. John called these brief data merges algorgasms, and they were his favorite thing to do in bed after sucking cock. "As everybody knows, and as the internet has definitively proven, sex is in the brain. Which is why I'm the all-time sexiest-" and John snatched Rodney's hat off the sand and began beating him about the head with it, and Rodney laughed and yelped, "Stop. John. Jesus. Asshole. Just. Stop."
I am unduly amused by the fact that the last word of the novel is "stop."
Phew. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this story, so I hope people pipe up in the comments if they notice cool things I skipped. The real challenge here was not letting myself devolve into Oh my God that is ANOTHER gorgeouswittyathletic sentence, SQUEEEEE at every damned turn. Take all that as given. Cheers.
The End
Comment at Speranza's LJ
Good Reads:
Madeline Ashby's essay in TWC: Ownership, authority, and the body: Does antifanfic sentiment reflect posthuman anxiety?
Lawrence Lessig's lecture on read-only vs. read-write culture.
princessofg's detailed review of Coppa's chapter in Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse's Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet.
Chris Moriarty's debut sci-fi novel, Spin State. Space travel, AIs, VRs, clones, quantum physics, genderfuckery. Fandom, why are you not all over this book?