(no subject)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Just about everyone I could rook into it has read this part over for me. Thank you, Gina, Mona, Kelly, and to Anna for the beta.
Balderdash
Definition by Negation - Held Fast to Fly Free iv (Once Upon a Time)
John wakes up thinking ouch. His second thought is oh Christ, Elizabeth, and his third thought is Where's Rodney?
Between the pain meds and what the pain the meds are for, John's not feeling like himself. Not that he knows exactly what himself is, because it's not like he sits around deep in self-reflection about himself and... other things like that. Man, it must be time for more medication, right?
One of the stipulations for him leaving the infirmary was that he'd keep his com open at night so Carson could baby-monitor him to his weirdo, doctorly content. John picks up his headset off the pillow and whispers, "Not dead yet," and sits up. His stitches pull and he's maybe a little dehydrated, and he's definitely feeling like shit. He would moan and whine to himself, but then half the medical staff of Atlantis would come running into his quarters full-tilt to gurney him off for another round of prodding and semi-solid foods.
John hates hospitals, hates being infirm and everyone around him focused on his infirmity-but, more than that, Atlantis needs Rodney doing things with his brain, making things work and keeping them all from blowing themselves up, and if John lands back in a med bay, Rodney's gonna just sit his ass right there on John's side of the sliding curtain and stare like that puppet from Labyrinth.
No one needs that.
For one, it makes everything so obvious, and John doesn't like people in his business. Rodney and him, that's John's business and he doesn't need to feed the damned Podcast any more fodder for the city to hee-haw and snicker at.
John sort of weeble-wobbles to the bathroom, Atlantis ready with a solid wall, a basin, the shower-tub thing ready to catch him if he falls. He doesn’t have far to go, so close to the ground already.
*
"Have you noticed a pronounced lack of meat in our diet lately?" an Australian-inflected voice asks. In the background, someone curses and screams "Do you not know a base from an alkaloid?"
"No, I live off Jell-O and Athosian berries. After that whole episode with the girl on the support staff at the Diwali party, wow, I'm just sayin'-better safe than sorry," a woman answers in a rush. "Can you believe this catalyst? Fuck, it's going to eat through the table!"
*
John sits around for a while fuzzy and muddled. He thinks about Cowen "mysteriously" not waking up the other morning and knows for a fact that was Major Lorne. He wonders if Jackson had the other prisoners stranded on the Planet of the Lemurs to keep Lorne from them, too.
Getting his clothes on and off sucks. John realizes after he has to cut his shirt off that he might still need help with getting a new one on. He ponders calling Carson, but he doesn't want the babying and clucking. He considers calling Teyla, but she's just as bad, the mom to Carson's dad with her judging eyes and "Perhaps you are not ready to leave the care of others yet, John." Ronon would totally help him out, but he might rip John's stitches or something manhandling him. Ok, so maybe Jackson? He seems like the kind of guy...
"What are you doing?" Rodney stands in the doorway to John's bathroom with his hands on his hips and an expression he usually reserves for botanists and other life scientists on his face. This was the obvious answer all along, but John doesn't want to get in the habit of always calling Rodney, of expecting Rodney to just be there.
John is sitting on what they call a toilet. It's really more like a egg-shaped jut from the wall. He's at least got his pants on and his t-shirt in his hand. At his feet are his infirmary issued scrub-like pants and the wrap around shirt they gave him with the ties. Except the ties wouldn't come loose, so, in a fit of quick-thinking John had cut the shirt off with the fingernail scissors in the cabinet-thing. John looks down at the little pieces of blue fabric, his bare feet, the warming glow of the heated floor of the bathroom, and he really has no explanation that doesn't cover the ground Rodney's already covered in his mind like the Tasmanian devil spinning around every variation that could have occurred.
"Couldn't get my shirt off." He's tired and doesn't really give a shit since it's just Rodney. "Can't get this one on, either." He holds out his shirt and tries to smile winningly.
"You aren't this stupid." Rodney steps into the room and snatches the shirt away. "You can't lift your arm over your head, you don't get to wear big boy clothes." He sneers at the mess on the floor. "Come on." He hesitates, but wraps his arm around John's good side and takes most of John's weight.
"But what will I wear, Rodney?" John hears the whine and doesn't even bother to suppress it. He hurts and Rodney's a big sissy about pain, so John isn't going to be mortified that he's not being a big enough man about being shot twice at point-blank range. Except for when he is going to be mortified and manly, but that's not right now with Rodney practically carrying him back to his bed... and, wait...
"What were you doing here to start-" He winces as rodents try to eat themselves out of his shoulder. "-with?"
"Oh, I don't know, just stopping by for a rousing game of Dance Dance Revolution?" Rodney is gentle with him as he helps John sit on the bed. "I was making sure you took your medication, because who knows what kind of manly pride thing you've got going..." John squeezes the hand Rodney has wrapped around his good side really hard as another wave of pain hits, probably jarred by Rodney's enthusiastic complaining. Rodney doesn't flinch or try to pull his hand away. "I think of snow when I'm in pain. The way snow looks in the moonlight, you know? How the light refracts and reflects and it sparkles and twinkles."
John listens to Rodney ramble on about snow and ice and the pain fades before he remembers he was hurting pretty badly there.
*
"This shine on my hair comes from veshan roots," Teyla Emmagan says out of nowhere.
"Do you use it as a conditioner or what?" Major Cadman interjects; she's breathing hard.
"I am unsure of what you mean by 'conditioner'. Conditioning means to make terms, does it not?" Wood clicks on wood and a loud whooshing sounds.
Major Cadman groans and pants. "I mean, do you put it on your hair and rinse it out, or do you slap it on and leave on there until the next time you wash your hair?"
"Ah. I know now." Teyla pauses as more scuffling transpires. "There is a paste you can make and this paste allows manipulation of hair. Such as Colonel Sheppard's. He uses this paste. Is that what you would like me to tell you of?"
Then: a loud smack like a body hitting the floor.
*
Ronon sits his food tray down on the table across from John while Rodney fusses over both of their meals. Rodney's unnaturally solicitous of the food service people, but maybe if John could die from ingesting, say, milk, he'd feel the same way about that situation as Rodney does.
"So," Ronon says, cutting an apple-like fruit. "Promotion?" He lifts an eyebrow.
John doesn't really want to talk about that. He thinks it's stupid. His commendation was about stopping the war, but everyone on Atlantis knows it was all about revenge. What the idiots back at SGC think about John's professional performance really has no bearing on his life, other than being glad they haven't tried to permanently relieve him of duty, which is a scenario he has contingency plans for anyway.
"Yeah." John resettles himself a little, looking over Ronon's shoulder to watch Rodney's back shift under his jacket.
"Pointless, since you're already the highest ranking officer." Ronon eats a slice of fruit. He's had his say on this matter, and it's finished. John appreciates that. He also completely agrees with the guy.
Rodney questions the Sergeant standing beside the table filled with fruit about each variety in depth. John watches him, but there's cordite in the back of John’s mouth and burning skin in his nose and his skin feels too thin to keep the blood inside.
*
"...yeah, I don't know, comparing the Ori to the Catholic Church is a little harsh."
"The new pope looks like a Prior," Dr. Meecham replies.
"Could you people focus here? We're looking for a, quote, 'glowy orb-like thing that clicks like Caldwell's arthritis,' unquote." Sgt. Stackhouse cuts off the theological discussion.
"McKay could really work on specificity. A color or size might be helpful." Dr. Jackson sighs.
"Wait, you don't know what we're looking for?" Dr. Meecham sounds worried.
"Uh... no?" Dr. Jackson replies sheepishly. "I'm just tagging along."
*
John can’t just hang around all day reading War and Peace and getting in Rodney’s way while he works. He sits in the gate room in an unofficial capacity in Rodney’s button-down shirt (striped blue and yellow, the humanity) and “supervises” as Lorne gets ready to deploy his team through the gate.
"Don't pick up or touch anything. That means chicks, or whatever you're into-goats, Ascended Ancients-hell, ferns-but it also means objects, don't reach out and grab anything that lights up or flashes or anything. You just stand there and look bored. It's easy." He pats his tac vest, a superstitious gesture made before stepping through the gate each time.
Teyla smiles benignly at him and waves to the Athosian girl at her side. It's a training mission for the girl to learn to negotiate off world. She's a niece or a cousin or something of Teyla's. John trusts Lorne, so Lorne gets to watch Teyla's back. Not that she probably needs it, but John's maybe a little overly cautious these days. It's better to err on the side of alive.
"Engaging dialing sequence..." John doesn't listen to the rest of the computer crap. He watches the symbols rotate and listens to Atlantis hum around him.
Jackson appears at his elbow with a cup of coffee and some dusty old scrolls. "I'm familiar with this sort of off-duty refusal to take recuperation lying down." He smiles down at John, and John reflexively smiles back, but he's not happy or amused. Jackson's weird. Not that John has a lot of normal in his life anymore. But there's weird like Cadman, who talks like one of the guys and has a better sniper rating than just about anyone in Atlantis, but who also speaks Ancient and made a perfect score on the SAT. (John's read everyone's file.)
Then there's Jackson, who is just weird.
"You look better, not so jaundiced. That's good. Okay, well, you've got everything under control here, so I'm going to join the team exploring the library complex." He waves and walks away.
"Huh," John says and when he swivels his chair back Rodney's standing on the other side of him with his sour expression of annoyance increased by a coefficient of three.
"What a geek," Rodney says and even though John agrees 123%, he's got a role here.
"Don't be mean, Rodney. I'm sure you can win two out of three at Balderdash."
"Oh, haha! That joke would have been funnier if you said Sudoku, since Jackson probably does know all the definitions of the words in Balderdash. Because he's a geek." Rodney makes a strangled whine and John doesn't have to look over his shoulder to know Jackson's standing right there.
"The funny thing about this is, that game has all these technical and patented terms that I've never heard of. I really love that game, actually. No one will ever play with me, though, because of this whole geek thing." Jackson laughs.
John thinks he might like the guy after all, even if he is weird.
*
"What a geek," Dr. McKay says with venom.
"Don't be mean, Rodney. I'm sure you can win two out of three at Balderdash." Col. Sheppard replies in his usual dry tone.
Fingers snap. "Oh, haha! That joke would have been funnier if you said Sudoku, since Jackson probably does know all the definitions of the words in Balderdash. Because he's a geek." Dr. McKay stops suddenly and makes a hitch-pitched noise.
"The funny thing about this is, that game has all these technical and patented terms that I've never heard of. I really love that game, actually. No one will ever play with me, though, because of this whole geek thing," Dr. Jackson cuts in, sounding thoughtful and amused at the same time.
"Who wants to play Balderdash with Dr. Jackson?" Dr. Al Hadi whispers into the ears of Atlantis. "I know I do."
*
"You have got to be kidding me." John sits on one of the ass-molding chairs in the lab where Rodney's built something like a supercollider out of Ancient paperclips and rubber bands. Rodney's on his knees with his face close to a pull-out panel of crystals. John's watching his back move under his thin shirt, the wings of his shoulder blades lifting and falling as he pulls out crystals and replaces them with others that look exactly the same to John.
In this moment, John's really sick of being sick. He's lonely, even with Rodney sitting right there, and he's felt this way for a long time, felt it before about other people who he never had and never tried to have for the obvious reasons. But Rodney's right there, and he's Rodney. John feels like he's already in a relationship with the guy, passive aggression and unspoken landmines and Rodney's unreachable expectations cluttering up John's neat, carefully compartmentalized life. If he has to listen to Rodney explain his dissertation and its evolution in step-by-step, play-by-play, and wake up to him standing over his bed with medication and a bottle of orange juice wrapped in 500 hand towels, shouldn't he be able to reach out and touch the tips of Rodney's eyelashes and feel the weight of Rodney pressing him down down down, anchoring him to earth?
John thinks that the freedom of flight is only truly spectacular when it's contrasted by being held firmly to the earth by something just as important as the wide blue stretching out beneath him and Gs tossing his soul free.
John realizes Rodney's silent. "What?"
"Never mind, I'll keep my brilliance to myself." This is exactly the sort of shit John shouldn't have to put up with if Rodney doesn't also come with orgasms.
"You were complaining about the Balderdash tournament." John's winging it here.
"Noooooooo. If you hadn't tuned out imagining nubile young Athosian girls dancing topless, or whatever other unoriginal fantasy you were exploring, then you would have been privy to my genius plan to ditch this burg and be out of town when all that ridiculous Jackson-feasting transpires."
"They're eating Jackson?" John says in his most clueless voice.
Rodney makes a scoffing noise. "Nice try. You're not that stupid, because if you were, I wouldn't like you."
"You like me, huh?" John can't help himself. Rodney's virtue is really only still intact because John died twice.
"Oh, for the love of-you are utterly ridiculous. Also, oddly needy."
"Fuck off, McKay." The sad part is that Rodney's right. John knows most of the worst stuff is kept at bay by the constant drug haze he's in. He's not at his nadir yet, not by a long shot, and he's really hoping Rodney doesn't hold out on him until that abyss yawns, because then John's not going to be in any kind of shape to make it easy on the guy.
*
"Balderdash is tool of English-speaking oppression," Dr. Zelenka says morosely. "I speak five languages, but I could not win this game."
"I live in a village full of idiots. I am the village genius," Dr. McKay retorts with a loud scoff.
Dr. Golden’s laughter spirals into everyone’s ears. “I wonder if we could rig it so they play each other?”
*
John's dreams reach out for him and hold him down in spirals of purple-black and blue-red. He hears screaming in the distance, a constant, sustained wail, and he's been trying for nights and nights, for a decade's worth of nights, to get there, to stop the screaming, to save the screamer. He never gets there-he's trapped in Kabul, in Oman, in Antarctica, on a nameless planet in the Pegasus galaxy. He falls from the sky, his ejection seat jammed. He picks up his gun and realizes his magazine's empty. He gets caught in a sudden updraft and his propeller craps out. He reaches for Elizabeth and she falls apart like ash.
*
Dr. McKay laughs uproariously to himself and launches into song "I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold, we'd fire no guns, shed no tears, now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier..."
"This song is obnoxious, Rodney," Dr. Zelenka murmurs. "Why do all North Americans respect pirates?"
A broken choir breaks out on "The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight. She'd a list to the port and her sails in rags. And the cook in scuppers with the staggers and the jags..."
Dr. Zelenka sighs heavily as a good portion of Atlantis sings along with the math and physics team.
*
When John was in college, he was in love with a boy named Brandon. He didn't know he was in love because he'd never been in love before. Sometimes, John wishes his life had progressed without finding out, never being in love. Love stains John's life, like Kool-Aid on a white shirt. Love makes people act like assholes or like children or just heedless of anything else.
John loved Brandon with daggers and pain that destroyed a very close friendship. John never said anything, never made a move because he wouldn't have known what to do anyway. He never learned on t.v. or in movies how to say to another man, "I want to touch your hair" or, "You're beautiful, more beautiful than breathing."
John didn't learn how to say those things before Brandon died in a car accident. Drunk driver, old story, everyone's got one.
Worse, John didn't learn any real lessons from that. He learned only that love was hurting and in the end everyone leaves. Or maybe they leave before the end. Sometimes people leave in the beginning or in the middle. He already knew people were disappointing (thanks, Dad) and that people were unpredictable (thanks, Mom).
He could have learned that love was pain from bad rock lyrics, so he always thought that the death was extraneous (thanks, universe).
There are many ways to lose someone, death is just the most dramatic. Sadly, it's a drama John's been scripted into for a lot of years.
John knew he was in love with Rodney way before Elizabeth died. He takes it personally that his life story has to include the motif love equals death, because John loved Elizabeth, too, for her optimism in the face of insurmountable odds, for her affection for pomegranates and lemon zinger tea, for her proximity to the most important event in John's entire life.
He knows that he's not the most stable guy on any planet in two galaxies, and that other people think his actions are often rash, but the fact of the matter is that if someone has to go again, John's not gonna be the guy left alive thinking "What if?" He's not doing that again, and if means being the one who dies, so be it.
The truth is, he'd much rather taste Rodney's exhaled breath and rub his face again the skin on his neck, but the breaks is the breaks, and John's not sure either one of them will ever be ready to shit or get off the pot.
*
"So what I want to stress the most is that when you see this specific warning in Ancient, which by now I expect you all to recognize if not actually read, turn around and walk the other way. Don't open the door or cabinet or turn on the machine-but what was I talking about? Oh, yes, the Balderdash tournament will happen in rounds with eliminations happening at the end of each full game. Seating will be random. I think Dr. Zelenka formulated an algorithm..."
*
Ok, so Rodney was serious about avoiding the stupid Balderdash thing.
"I can't travel off-world, I'm not cleared for duty." John stares up at Rodney fluttering around the room. He's got his datapad in one hand and a fruit roll-up or something in the other.
"Excuse me, did I say anything about you?" Rodney stops pacing and glares at him. "You don't have to worry about your narrow defeat at the hands of an über-geek being proclaimed all over the city for the rest of your life."
"People will get something new to make fun of you for next week, Rodney, come on." John almost lets the smile show when Rodney tries to fold his arms over his chest but is prevented by the stuff in his hands.
"Oh, ha ha ha."
John notices then that Rodney's really upset. This isn't the usual chicken little routine, but something bigger. John gives that two seconds to percolate as Rodney picks his pacing back up, rattling on about the inhumanity of it all. Right. Rodney must care what people think. That didn't ever really occur to John, because it's Rodney and since when does he give a shit what anyone thinks?
"You could beat him." John tries this strategy first. Rally the troops.
Rodney waves his datapad over his head and chomps on his fruit roll-up. "There's always that possibility, but it's outweighed by the facts in this scenario, which are, and I can't believe I'm saying this, that Jackson knows more than me. About something totally asinine, and what was I thinking applying myself to the fundamentals of reality when I could have been studying something so applicable to our busy lives in this day and age as slaves and concubines such as hieroglyphics, perhaps I can free us from the Egyptian slave masters with my staggering knowledge of how to read!"
John gives in and laughs at that one.
"Why don't you just pretend to have some kind of thermonuclear meltdown in the lab or something?" Strategy two: agreeing to play by Rodney's rules and working within that framework.
"Thought of that-it's too suspicious." He finishes his snack and stuffs the wrapper in his pocket. John wonders if Rodney's propensity to not litter comes from being Canadian or if it's out of some complex theory Rodney has about-
"Rodney?" John plasters on the most pathetic expression he can manage. Rodney stops and turns when he hears John's tone.
"Are you all right? What's wrong? Did you pull something?" John knows he's a bad, bad man that he gets a huge boost of self-satisfaction because Rodney is this worried about him, that Rodney'll drop his hysterics over a mortal round of intellectual embarrassment and come running if John so much as sneezes too hard.
Rodney bends over him and drops his datapad on the bed and flutters his hands around like he wants to pat John all over to make sure he's intact but is holding himself back.
Holding himself back. It's because of the injuries, but fuck it, man, John's over this.
Rodney tilts his head down and John tilts his up. And just like that John brushes his mouth against the side of Rodney's face. His stubble is fine, almost soft, even with as short as it is.
Rodney makes a clicking kind of noise and freezes. John hooks two fingers of his good hand into Rodney's collar and holds him still. He moves just enough that Rodney's startled breaths coming out of his mouth fall right on John's lips. Cherry fruit roll-up.
"Oh," Rodney says. "Now?" And he flicks out his tongue to touch John's bottom lip.
Rodney's careful, so careful, and John remembers he works with equipment that can kill you day in and day out, not unlike a soldier in that way. He presses his hands palm down on the bed on either side of John's legs and slides down to his knees, pulling at John's mouth with his own and pulling John in a pivot so their positions are reversed, John leaning down to kiss Rodney who leans up, on his knees. Rodney pivots John just like that, his mouth a fulcrum and John is the unmovable object after all, not Rodney, because Rodney lets him touch his face and his eyelashes and John hides his face right in the side of Rodney's neck like he's wanted to for a very long time. Rodney lets him.
"I'm scared to hurt you." Rodney still doesn't pick his hands up off the bed. "I'm scared I'll hurt you worse."
John almost laughs at how impossible that really is. John only got shot in the first place because he was scared of the same thing.
*
Major Lorne laughs with the sort of zeal everyone in Atlantis knows comes accompanied by his head tossed back and his hand on his chest. "No, shit. You really ended up in the middle of a sex ritual?"
"It wasn't so much a ritual as a rite of passage. Jack's probably got fifteen or so illegitimate children seeded around the Milky Way," Dr. Jackson replies, clearly not fully sober.
"No shit. Who doesn't, though." The sound of liquid pouring. "Sandbagging, can't have too many offspring, gotta keep up the bloodline."
"What amazes me about what you just said is how I don't think you're joking."
Major Lorne laughs exactly like he did when the segment cut in.
*
Zelenka has this way about him. John figures he's probably projecting, but the guy always seems to be thinking secret thoughts, hidden truths about people. Like a psychic elf or something.
"What?" John says as Zelenka regards him behind his glasses. Zelenka's clutching a stack of papers, wearing a lab coat that looks like it might double as a home for some stray animal, and watching John without blinking.
"You are helping Rodney get out of tournament?" He blinks and shifts his stance a little. Now he's just an able administrator and brilliant engineer, nothing creepy or paranormal about him.
"I don't think I have a choice in the matter." That was the conclusion he drew as soon as Rodney opened his mouth about it, but he had to fight the battle; surrender's always the last resort. John usually does what Rodney wants, after exhausting every avenue to avoid it.
"Hmmmmm," Zelenka says and consults his watch. "That is disappointing. I was hoping he would go down in flames."
John thinks about Zelenka's hockey scores and would lay even odds that Zelenka was going to rig the tournament to get even. He's sneaky. John respects that. He thinks Rodney probably deserves it for all the shit Zelenka puts up from him.
"Also," Zelenka continues, half turning to go. "Forgive him when he misbehaves. He was socialized in physics lab, not really his fault." He smiles and wanders away.
That must have been a blessing or something, because John's already seen the worst of Rodney and he's still right here, waiting for the asshole to come back from some meeting that was supposed to take fifteen minutes and it's been two hours.
That's fine, John's got a lot of reports. And Tetris.
He has day dreams about waking up without pain and getting back to active duty so he doesn't have so much time on his hands to think. To think about the honest to god fear in Rodney's eyes when he mumbles about the surgery and John sits tight-lipped and swallowing down bile. To think about what comes next and all the worst case scenarios that just tailspin into worse and worse. Rodney’s fears follow John like a contrail, and he can’t fix anything so he wishes Rodney would keep it to himself.
*
"Big Rock Candy Mountain" plays low, building to a crescendo.
"...fish sticks..."
"...I got peanut butter on the last Daedalus run..."
"...I'd trade all the Athosians' souls for a White Castle..."
"...Cadbury, but don't tell McKay, he's got a serious fiend on for Flake..."
"...I never thought the day would come I'd honestly say 'I dream about decent French fries'..."
"...real Chex Mix, you know with Worchester sauce and garlic?"
"...I would trade myself to the Genii if they had a Tim Horton's franchise on one of their worlds..."
*
John gets his stitches out the day of the tournament. Well, the first day of it. Rodney is off world with Cadman's team and Simpson and a couple other math people. John's never sure what some of the science people actually do-some seem to just mill around and get yelled at by Rodney and glared at by Zelenka, some seem to mainly play cards with the Marines.
He's drinking some coffee and shooting the shit with Lorne when the gate engages and Jackson comes through slapping his clothes and waving his hat. Three other people follow behind him doing likewise.
"Oh my fucking god, chiggers!" one of the anthropologists shouts.
Jackson whips his shirt off and sort of claws at his waistband. John watches a couple of women become seriously interested in the proceedings. He rolls his eyes but watches himself. Hey, he's got eyes in his head.
John hits his com. "Med team to the gate room."
Almost immediately, Carson answers back "John? You just got your stitches out, what did you do? Are you all right, lad?"
"Chiggers, off-world team. I'm fine."
The whole team's about down to their undies. One of them, the hot French chick, Dr. Pouillon, is wearing a red bra and green panties. Weirdly festive.
Lorne leans in to murmur, "I think I'm getting old and jaded, 'cause I just don't even give two shits about getting a free show most people would pay sticky dollar bills for."
John laughs and concurs. Amusingly, the gate redials, and the underwear-clad anthropologists have to scramble away from the event horizon so they don't all end up footy-stubs instead of living people. They run, half the room watching Jackson, the other Pouillon, and the gate whooshes back to life.
"Oh you must be joking!" Rodney screeches as he materializes. Simpson's right behind him with that super-still angry face some women get before they set your stuff on fire or run over your dog.
"I didn't see you figuring it out, either, and you're not my thesis advisor, so you'd better stop treating me like you own me or one day you're going to find lemon rinds in your coffee filter!" She stomps off. The people in underwear are momentarily forgotten as the entire room, including the underwear-clad people, are riveted by Rodney getting his ass handed to him by a waspy blond woman.
"Assert your independence then! You were still wrong." Rodney doesn't sound angry anymore, though, maybe surprised and mildly amused. "Oh, I see, there are orgies while I'm off-world working myself into an early grave to defeat the Ori?"
*
"Sad news." And Dr Golden sounds truly saddened. "Balderdash tournament postponed until Dr. Jackson gets out of the infirmary."
*
John finds Rodney later in the evening, when the sun's set fully, the long, Atlantian day finally giving up its existence to night. He's leaning against a whiteboard that's more Greek letters than numbers, hunched over his laptop with the dry-erase pen clenched in his teeth and a pencil behind his ear. The side of his neck along his hairline is sunburned, like his sunscreen sweated off in patches.
The lab's almost empty-John assessed the room by habit as soon as the door opened. Half the lights are off, and the entire place has a dull, hollow feel to it, like the life's bled out to tumble into bed, leaving Rodney and Zelenka and Dr. Simpson to ignore each other.
John crosses the room and lays his hand on Rodney's neck next to the burn. Rodney doesn't flinch or move away, and he's not startled.
"I thought you were going to just stand there in a fugue state," he sighs. Rodney's exhausted and upset enough about something to skip the hysterics and move straight on to calm dread.
John leans his hip on Rodney's shoulder and glances over the calculations on the board. Energy transfer and fluid dynamics. "I thought you'd be glad the tournament was postponed."
Rodney looks up at him, the dry erase marker now tossed on the worktop in front of him, stranded among the computer components and Ancient crystals.
"The what..." Rodney starts and cuts off to clamp his mouth in a firm line. "Oh that. Minor personal catastrophe put on hiatus due to the looming greater, universal catastrophe of running out of power to keep up the city's shields." He looks up at John with his eyes wide open and blinks like John's got some kind of answer, like he's just going to pull that ZPM right out of his pocket and fork it over.
Rodney doesn't trust many people, but, apparently, when he does, it's blind trust, and John wants nothing more than to live up to those unattainable expectations, but he's just a guy. He's a guy who fucks up a lot, and he's never felt so acutely aware of that as he has lately. He wants to save Atlantis-hell, they all want that-but, so much more importantly, he doesn't want to let Rodney down. He let Elizabeth down.
"Come on. You're not gonna solve the mysteries of the conservation of energy right now, and I'm tired." John pushes back and Rodney steadies him with a huge hand on John's hip when he sways slightly.
"Ok, fine, fine. Let me just..." Rodney starts typing furiously and John almost snatches the machine away, but he doesn't want to pull back a nub.
"I'm going to take measures in five...four...three..." John looks at his watch like he's really timing it.
Rodney rolls his eyes and saves his work. "All right, all right. You're such a pain in-Radek!" Rodney stands up, rolling his neck. Zelenka's head pops up from behind a computer. "Go to bed and tell that harpy Simpson to get her beauty sleep because she needs it."
John sighs and shakes his head.
"Good night Colonel Sheppard," Dr. Simpson calls from somewhere on the far side of the room.
John waves in her direction. "Night, Simpson. Just ignore Rodney."
*
Fiddle music plays, something close to a reel but off somehow, the meter not quite right. People clap and feet tap the ground.
“Play the Athosian song about the lantantan, Katie,” Dr. Perrish calls out.
“Okay, wait,” Dr. Brown answers. A finger slides across a string emitting a high pitched, resonant twang. “All right, here we go…” the music picks back up as the Botany department dances.
*
Three days later is Elizabeth's birthday, and Atlantis takes this as a holiday, only a skeleton crew left in the gate room, rotating through out the day.
John lights an Athosian lamp at the memorial service and watches the flame flicker, exposed and delicate, but with the power to bring humanity from one level of development to another. Fitting somehow to have so many open flames in memory of Elizabeth.
The rotunda in the Atlas Tower flickers with shadows cast by one hundred seventy-three flames, one each for all of them. Rodney lit his and left. John and Teyla have been sitting quietly side by side, cross-legged on the warm stone floor, for hours. She's probably meditating and communing with the dead. John's glad to have her with him, her solid, steady presence reminding him in some ways of Elizabeth. Maybe just because she's a strong woman in a way that doesn't demand attention to how strong she is. John's never understood women of any kind, but the ones who ask for more burdens, who volunteer to account for other people's lives, those sorts of women are like hieroglyphs to him. When you already are burdened with so much, for mothering and bearing children, for having to fix relatives and lovers, why take on more? Why take on the world when there's already so much they have to be responsible for that no one even asks about or notices?
John doesn't understand that. All of his burdens he has shouldered willingly, because it was the right thing to do, but he wasn't born with the expectation that he would already there.
John took on Elizabeth as his responsibility, and then he failed.
At some point, Ronon walks through the crawling shadows and drops to the floor on John's free side. He sits like John and Teyla for a spell and then folds over to press his forehead to the floor, murmuring to himself. Teyla opens her eyes and watches him, her eyes holding John's when he turns his head to watch her.
He wonders how much of their serenity is real and how much of it is a projection of what everyone around them wants to see. The noble savages.
Teyla turns her palm up on her knee and John takes it.
*
"...yisborach v'yishtabach v'yispoar v'yisromam v'yismasay, v'yishador v'yis'aleh v'yisalal, shmay d'kudsho, brich hu, l'aylo min kl birchoso v'sheeroso..."
"...bismillāhir rahmānir rahīm. Al hamdu lillāhi rabbil 'ālamīn. Ar rahmānir rahīm. Māliki yawmid dīn. Iyyāka na'budu wa iyyāka nasta'īn. Ihdinās sirātal mustaqīm..."
*
John’s cleared for duty, but he’s already been working pretty steadily for a couple weeks. He’s not training, no jogging or stick fights with Teyla, but he oversees the drills and wears his gun again.
No one even pretends Jackson is really in charge from what John can tell. It's as if without Elizabeth, people don't feel the need to respect any kind of real authority. They're in another galaxy anyway. They aren't at war anymore, and they have no need to subordinate personal desires for the greater good. People don’t blindly follow in Atlantis.
Jackson himself seems to just sign anything Zelenka or Janette puts in front of him. The science teams and support staff run independently, a certain kind of natural autonomy that John himself assumes for the military personnel.
This is how John sees it: Atlantis is their city, and as much as they all technically work for the US government or some international oversight whatever, who knows when things will go to shit and they'll be stuck out here alone with only themselves? Best just to let the cards fall where they will and figure out how keep on keepin' on. Jackson just likes to dig things up and coo over books anyway; he's a nerd like all the other scientists. John sees a leader in him, saw it during the Genii conflict, and he thinks when the time comes, Jackson will earn everyone’s respect by getting his own blood and other people’s on his hands. John already respects him for not trying to take Elizabeth’s place and finding his own way to fit in.
John's still aching inside, oh the metaphor, when the Daedalus arrives for its scheduled rendezvous with Planet Atlantis.
John's there to greet Col. Caldwell, all meet and greet, and Caldwell is Caldwell.
"Here." He hands John a military-issue jewelry case that John knows contains his silver eagles. That's that. Good old Caldwell.
"Thanks," John says.
"What you did was reckless but human. I respect you, Col. Sheppard." And John realizes everyone was right about Caldwell having a thing for Elizabeth. Way to ruin the moment, Caldwell.
"Alrighty." John almost salutes, instead sticks his hand out for a manly shake and turns away to appear busy "supervising."
Rodney's watching him from over the top of his datapad, eyebrows up and sarcasm all over his face. John didn't know sarcasm could be a facial expression until he met Rodney. Now he sort of enjoys trying to reflect that back at him. They could have a facial-expression-off.
"Balderdash? What?" John hears behind him, Caldwell’s obviously being railroaded by Jackson who laughs full-throated and pleased with himself.
Situation normal: Rodney's in a snit, Jackson's acting dumb to pull someone's leg, and John's twitching to get into the air.
*
I haven't done this in a while, but here are two music files to go with this fic. The first someone else used a lyric from for a fic (and, yeah, so perfect). The second I robbed myself.
Stan Rogers - Northwest Passage
Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers
If you're not Canadian or haven't ever lived in Canada, you probably have no idea the impact that Stan Rogers has had on the folk music consciousness in there. He's something more than just a singer-songwriter, more like an institution. These are probably his two most famous songs. Most people I know can sing them without a whole lot of prompting.
The funny talk in the podcast is Hebrew and Arabic. Both prayers.
So, this is the end of the main storyline here. Personally, I'm disappointed I couldn't work Vala into it, so there might be a Getting To Know Daniel series of shorter stories at some point where I self-indulgently INSERT HER OMG!
Thanks for reading. I appreciate everyone's comments, support and criticism.
Part Two
Part Three
Just about everyone I could rook into it has read this part over for me. Thank you, Gina, Mona, Kelly, and to Anna for the beta.
Balderdash
Definition by Negation - Held Fast to Fly Free iv (Once Upon a Time)
John wakes up thinking ouch. His second thought is oh Christ, Elizabeth, and his third thought is Where's Rodney?
Between the pain meds and what the pain the meds are for, John's not feeling like himself. Not that he knows exactly what himself is, because it's not like he sits around deep in self-reflection about himself and... other things like that. Man, it must be time for more medication, right?
One of the stipulations for him leaving the infirmary was that he'd keep his com open at night so Carson could baby-monitor him to his weirdo, doctorly content. John picks up his headset off the pillow and whispers, "Not dead yet," and sits up. His stitches pull and he's maybe a little dehydrated, and he's definitely feeling like shit. He would moan and whine to himself, but then half the medical staff of Atlantis would come running into his quarters full-tilt to gurney him off for another round of prodding and semi-solid foods.
John hates hospitals, hates being infirm and everyone around him focused on his infirmity-but, more than that, Atlantis needs Rodney doing things with his brain, making things work and keeping them all from blowing themselves up, and if John lands back in a med bay, Rodney's gonna just sit his ass right there on John's side of the sliding curtain and stare like that puppet from Labyrinth.
No one needs that.
For one, it makes everything so obvious, and John doesn't like people in his business. Rodney and him, that's John's business and he doesn't need to feed the damned Podcast any more fodder for the city to hee-haw and snicker at.
John sort of weeble-wobbles to the bathroom, Atlantis ready with a solid wall, a basin, the shower-tub thing ready to catch him if he falls. He doesn’t have far to go, so close to the ground already.
*
"Have you noticed a pronounced lack of meat in our diet lately?" an Australian-inflected voice asks. In the background, someone curses and screams "Do you not know a base from an alkaloid?"
"No, I live off Jell-O and Athosian berries. After that whole episode with the girl on the support staff at the Diwali party, wow, I'm just sayin'-better safe than sorry," a woman answers in a rush. "Can you believe this catalyst? Fuck, it's going to eat through the table!"
*
John sits around for a while fuzzy and muddled. He thinks about Cowen "mysteriously" not waking up the other morning and knows for a fact that was Major Lorne. He wonders if Jackson had the other prisoners stranded on the Planet of the Lemurs to keep Lorne from them, too.
Getting his clothes on and off sucks. John realizes after he has to cut his shirt off that he might still need help with getting a new one on. He ponders calling Carson, but he doesn't want the babying and clucking. He considers calling Teyla, but she's just as bad, the mom to Carson's dad with her judging eyes and "Perhaps you are not ready to leave the care of others yet, John." Ronon would totally help him out, but he might rip John's stitches or something manhandling him. Ok, so maybe Jackson? He seems like the kind of guy...
"What are you doing?" Rodney stands in the doorway to John's bathroom with his hands on his hips and an expression he usually reserves for botanists and other life scientists on his face. This was the obvious answer all along, but John doesn't want to get in the habit of always calling Rodney, of expecting Rodney to just be there.
John is sitting on what they call a toilet. It's really more like a egg-shaped jut from the wall. He's at least got his pants on and his t-shirt in his hand. At his feet are his infirmary issued scrub-like pants and the wrap around shirt they gave him with the ties. Except the ties wouldn't come loose, so, in a fit of quick-thinking John had cut the shirt off with the fingernail scissors in the cabinet-thing. John looks down at the little pieces of blue fabric, his bare feet, the warming glow of the heated floor of the bathroom, and he really has no explanation that doesn't cover the ground Rodney's already covered in his mind like the Tasmanian devil spinning around every variation that could have occurred.
"Couldn't get my shirt off." He's tired and doesn't really give a shit since it's just Rodney. "Can't get this one on, either." He holds out his shirt and tries to smile winningly.
"You aren't this stupid." Rodney steps into the room and snatches the shirt away. "You can't lift your arm over your head, you don't get to wear big boy clothes." He sneers at the mess on the floor. "Come on." He hesitates, but wraps his arm around John's good side and takes most of John's weight.
"But what will I wear, Rodney?" John hears the whine and doesn't even bother to suppress it. He hurts and Rodney's a big sissy about pain, so John isn't going to be mortified that he's not being a big enough man about being shot twice at point-blank range. Except for when he is going to be mortified and manly, but that's not right now with Rodney practically carrying him back to his bed... and, wait...
"What were you doing here to start-" He winces as rodents try to eat themselves out of his shoulder. "-with?"
"Oh, I don't know, just stopping by for a rousing game of Dance Dance Revolution?" Rodney is gentle with him as he helps John sit on the bed. "I was making sure you took your medication, because who knows what kind of manly pride thing you've got going..." John squeezes the hand Rodney has wrapped around his good side really hard as another wave of pain hits, probably jarred by Rodney's enthusiastic complaining. Rodney doesn't flinch or try to pull his hand away. "I think of snow when I'm in pain. The way snow looks in the moonlight, you know? How the light refracts and reflects and it sparkles and twinkles."
John listens to Rodney ramble on about snow and ice and the pain fades before he remembers he was hurting pretty badly there.
*
"This shine on my hair comes from veshan roots," Teyla Emmagan says out of nowhere.
"Do you use it as a conditioner or what?" Major Cadman interjects; she's breathing hard.
"I am unsure of what you mean by 'conditioner'. Conditioning means to make terms, does it not?" Wood clicks on wood and a loud whooshing sounds.
Major Cadman groans and pants. "I mean, do you put it on your hair and rinse it out, or do you slap it on and leave on there until the next time you wash your hair?"
"Ah. I know now." Teyla pauses as more scuffling transpires. "There is a paste you can make and this paste allows manipulation of hair. Such as Colonel Sheppard's. He uses this paste. Is that what you would like me to tell you of?"
Then: a loud smack like a body hitting the floor.
*
Ronon sits his food tray down on the table across from John while Rodney fusses over both of their meals. Rodney's unnaturally solicitous of the food service people, but maybe if John could die from ingesting, say, milk, he'd feel the same way about that situation as Rodney does.
"So," Ronon says, cutting an apple-like fruit. "Promotion?" He lifts an eyebrow.
John doesn't really want to talk about that. He thinks it's stupid. His commendation was about stopping the war, but everyone on Atlantis knows it was all about revenge. What the idiots back at SGC think about John's professional performance really has no bearing on his life, other than being glad they haven't tried to permanently relieve him of duty, which is a scenario he has contingency plans for anyway.
"Yeah." John resettles himself a little, looking over Ronon's shoulder to watch Rodney's back shift under his jacket.
"Pointless, since you're already the highest ranking officer." Ronon eats a slice of fruit. He's had his say on this matter, and it's finished. John appreciates that. He also completely agrees with the guy.
Rodney questions the Sergeant standing beside the table filled with fruit about each variety in depth. John watches him, but there's cordite in the back of John’s mouth and burning skin in his nose and his skin feels too thin to keep the blood inside.
*
"...yeah, I don't know, comparing the Ori to the Catholic Church is a little harsh."
"The new pope looks like a Prior," Dr. Meecham replies.
"Could you people focus here? We're looking for a, quote, 'glowy orb-like thing that clicks like Caldwell's arthritis,' unquote." Sgt. Stackhouse cuts off the theological discussion.
"McKay could really work on specificity. A color or size might be helpful." Dr. Jackson sighs.
"Wait, you don't know what we're looking for?" Dr. Meecham sounds worried.
"Uh... no?" Dr. Jackson replies sheepishly. "I'm just tagging along."
*
John can’t just hang around all day reading War and Peace and getting in Rodney’s way while he works. He sits in the gate room in an unofficial capacity in Rodney’s button-down shirt (striped blue and yellow, the humanity) and “supervises” as Lorne gets ready to deploy his team through the gate.
"Don't pick up or touch anything. That means chicks, or whatever you're into-goats, Ascended Ancients-hell, ferns-but it also means objects, don't reach out and grab anything that lights up or flashes or anything. You just stand there and look bored. It's easy." He pats his tac vest, a superstitious gesture made before stepping through the gate each time.
Teyla smiles benignly at him and waves to the Athosian girl at her side. It's a training mission for the girl to learn to negotiate off world. She's a niece or a cousin or something of Teyla's. John trusts Lorne, so Lorne gets to watch Teyla's back. Not that she probably needs it, but John's maybe a little overly cautious these days. It's better to err on the side of alive.
"Engaging dialing sequence..." John doesn't listen to the rest of the computer crap. He watches the symbols rotate and listens to Atlantis hum around him.
Jackson appears at his elbow with a cup of coffee and some dusty old scrolls. "I'm familiar with this sort of off-duty refusal to take recuperation lying down." He smiles down at John, and John reflexively smiles back, but he's not happy or amused. Jackson's weird. Not that John has a lot of normal in his life anymore. But there's weird like Cadman, who talks like one of the guys and has a better sniper rating than just about anyone in Atlantis, but who also speaks Ancient and made a perfect score on the SAT. (John's read everyone's file.)
Then there's Jackson, who is just weird.
"You look better, not so jaundiced. That's good. Okay, well, you've got everything under control here, so I'm going to join the team exploring the library complex." He waves and walks away.
"Huh," John says and when he swivels his chair back Rodney's standing on the other side of him with his sour expression of annoyance increased by a coefficient of three.
"What a geek," Rodney says and even though John agrees 123%, he's got a role here.
"Don't be mean, Rodney. I'm sure you can win two out of three at Balderdash."
"Oh, haha! That joke would have been funnier if you said Sudoku, since Jackson probably does know all the definitions of the words in Balderdash. Because he's a geek." Rodney makes a strangled whine and John doesn't have to look over his shoulder to know Jackson's standing right there.
"The funny thing about this is, that game has all these technical and patented terms that I've never heard of. I really love that game, actually. No one will ever play with me, though, because of this whole geek thing." Jackson laughs.
John thinks he might like the guy after all, even if he is weird.
*
"What a geek," Dr. McKay says with venom.
"Don't be mean, Rodney. I'm sure you can win two out of three at Balderdash." Col. Sheppard replies in his usual dry tone.
Fingers snap. "Oh, haha! That joke would have been funnier if you said Sudoku, since Jackson probably does know all the definitions of the words in Balderdash. Because he's a geek." Dr. McKay stops suddenly and makes a hitch-pitched noise.
"The funny thing about this is, that game has all these technical and patented terms that I've never heard of. I really love that game, actually. No one will ever play with me, though, because of this whole geek thing," Dr. Jackson cuts in, sounding thoughtful and amused at the same time.
"Who wants to play Balderdash with Dr. Jackson?" Dr. Al Hadi whispers into the ears of Atlantis. "I know I do."
*
"You have got to be kidding me." John sits on one of the ass-molding chairs in the lab where Rodney's built something like a supercollider out of Ancient paperclips and rubber bands. Rodney's on his knees with his face close to a pull-out panel of crystals. John's watching his back move under his thin shirt, the wings of his shoulder blades lifting and falling as he pulls out crystals and replaces them with others that look exactly the same to John.
In this moment, John's really sick of being sick. He's lonely, even with Rodney sitting right there, and he's felt this way for a long time, felt it before about other people who he never had and never tried to have for the obvious reasons. But Rodney's right there, and he's Rodney. John feels like he's already in a relationship with the guy, passive aggression and unspoken landmines and Rodney's unreachable expectations cluttering up John's neat, carefully compartmentalized life. If he has to listen to Rodney explain his dissertation and its evolution in step-by-step, play-by-play, and wake up to him standing over his bed with medication and a bottle of orange juice wrapped in 500 hand towels, shouldn't he be able to reach out and touch the tips of Rodney's eyelashes and feel the weight of Rodney pressing him down down down, anchoring him to earth?
John thinks that the freedom of flight is only truly spectacular when it's contrasted by being held firmly to the earth by something just as important as the wide blue stretching out beneath him and Gs tossing his soul free.
John realizes Rodney's silent. "What?"
"Never mind, I'll keep my brilliance to myself." This is exactly the sort of shit John shouldn't have to put up with if Rodney doesn't also come with orgasms.
"You were complaining about the Balderdash tournament." John's winging it here.
"Noooooooo. If you hadn't tuned out imagining nubile young Athosian girls dancing topless, or whatever other unoriginal fantasy you were exploring, then you would have been privy to my genius plan to ditch this burg and be out of town when all that ridiculous Jackson-feasting transpires."
"They're eating Jackson?" John says in his most clueless voice.
Rodney makes a scoffing noise. "Nice try. You're not that stupid, because if you were, I wouldn't like you."
"You like me, huh?" John can't help himself. Rodney's virtue is really only still intact because John died twice.
"Oh, for the love of-you are utterly ridiculous. Also, oddly needy."
"Fuck off, McKay." The sad part is that Rodney's right. John knows most of the worst stuff is kept at bay by the constant drug haze he's in. He's not at his nadir yet, not by a long shot, and he's really hoping Rodney doesn't hold out on him until that abyss yawns, because then John's not going to be in any kind of shape to make it easy on the guy.
*
"Balderdash is tool of English-speaking oppression," Dr. Zelenka says morosely. "I speak five languages, but I could not win this game."
"I live in a village full of idiots. I am the village genius," Dr. McKay retorts with a loud scoff.
Dr. Golden’s laughter spirals into everyone’s ears. “I wonder if we could rig it so they play each other?”
*
John's dreams reach out for him and hold him down in spirals of purple-black and blue-red. He hears screaming in the distance, a constant, sustained wail, and he's been trying for nights and nights, for a decade's worth of nights, to get there, to stop the screaming, to save the screamer. He never gets there-he's trapped in Kabul, in Oman, in Antarctica, on a nameless planet in the Pegasus galaxy. He falls from the sky, his ejection seat jammed. He picks up his gun and realizes his magazine's empty. He gets caught in a sudden updraft and his propeller craps out. He reaches for Elizabeth and she falls apart like ash.
*
Dr. McKay laughs uproariously to himself and launches into song "I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold, we'd fire no guns, shed no tears, now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier..."
"This song is obnoxious, Rodney," Dr. Zelenka murmurs. "Why do all North Americans respect pirates?"
A broken choir breaks out on "The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight. She'd a list to the port and her sails in rags. And the cook in scuppers with the staggers and the jags..."
Dr. Zelenka sighs heavily as a good portion of Atlantis sings along with the math and physics team.
*
When John was in college, he was in love with a boy named Brandon. He didn't know he was in love because he'd never been in love before. Sometimes, John wishes his life had progressed without finding out, never being in love. Love stains John's life, like Kool-Aid on a white shirt. Love makes people act like assholes or like children or just heedless of anything else.
John loved Brandon with daggers and pain that destroyed a very close friendship. John never said anything, never made a move because he wouldn't have known what to do anyway. He never learned on t.v. or in movies how to say to another man, "I want to touch your hair" or, "You're beautiful, more beautiful than breathing."
John didn't learn how to say those things before Brandon died in a car accident. Drunk driver, old story, everyone's got one.
Worse, John didn't learn any real lessons from that. He learned only that love was hurting and in the end everyone leaves. Or maybe they leave before the end. Sometimes people leave in the beginning or in the middle. He already knew people were disappointing (thanks, Dad) and that people were unpredictable (thanks, Mom).
He could have learned that love was pain from bad rock lyrics, so he always thought that the death was extraneous (thanks, universe).
There are many ways to lose someone, death is just the most dramatic. Sadly, it's a drama John's been scripted into for a lot of years.
John knew he was in love with Rodney way before Elizabeth died. He takes it personally that his life story has to include the motif love equals death, because John loved Elizabeth, too, for her optimism in the face of insurmountable odds, for her affection for pomegranates and lemon zinger tea, for her proximity to the most important event in John's entire life.
He knows that he's not the most stable guy on any planet in two galaxies, and that other people think his actions are often rash, but the fact of the matter is that if someone has to go again, John's not gonna be the guy left alive thinking "What if?" He's not doing that again, and if means being the one who dies, so be it.
The truth is, he'd much rather taste Rodney's exhaled breath and rub his face again the skin on his neck, but the breaks is the breaks, and John's not sure either one of them will ever be ready to shit or get off the pot.
*
"So what I want to stress the most is that when you see this specific warning in Ancient, which by now I expect you all to recognize if not actually read, turn around and walk the other way. Don't open the door or cabinet or turn on the machine-but what was I talking about? Oh, yes, the Balderdash tournament will happen in rounds with eliminations happening at the end of each full game. Seating will be random. I think Dr. Zelenka formulated an algorithm..."
*
Ok, so Rodney was serious about avoiding the stupid Balderdash thing.
"I can't travel off-world, I'm not cleared for duty." John stares up at Rodney fluttering around the room. He's got his datapad in one hand and a fruit roll-up or something in the other.
"Excuse me, did I say anything about you?" Rodney stops pacing and glares at him. "You don't have to worry about your narrow defeat at the hands of an über-geek being proclaimed all over the city for the rest of your life."
"People will get something new to make fun of you for next week, Rodney, come on." John almost lets the smile show when Rodney tries to fold his arms over his chest but is prevented by the stuff in his hands.
"Oh, ha ha ha."
John notices then that Rodney's really upset. This isn't the usual chicken little routine, but something bigger. John gives that two seconds to percolate as Rodney picks his pacing back up, rattling on about the inhumanity of it all. Right. Rodney must care what people think. That didn't ever really occur to John, because it's Rodney and since when does he give a shit what anyone thinks?
"You could beat him." John tries this strategy first. Rally the troops.
Rodney waves his datapad over his head and chomps on his fruit roll-up. "There's always that possibility, but it's outweighed by the facts in this scenario, which are, and I can't believe I'm saying this, that Jackson knows more than me. About something totally asinine, and what was I thinking applying myself to the fundamentals of reality when I could have been studying something so applicable to our busy lives in this day and age as slaves and concubines such as hieroglyphics, perhaps I can free us from the Egyptian slave masters with my staggering knowledge of how to read!"
John gives in and laughs at that one.
"Why don't you just pretend to have some kind of thermonuclear meltdown in the lab or something?" Strategy two: agreeing to play by Rodney's rules and working within that framework.
"Thought of that-it's too suspicious." He finishes his snack and stuffs the wrapper in his pocket. John wonders if Rodney's propensity to not litter comes from being Canadian or if it's out of some complex theory Rodney has about-
"Rodney?" John plasters on the most pathetic expression he can manage. Rodney stops and turns when he hears John's tone.
"Are you all right? What's wrong? Did you pull something?" John knows he's a bad, bad man that he gets a huge boost of self-satisfaction because Rodney is this worried about him, that Rodney'll drop his hysterics over a mortal round of intellectual embarrassment and come running if John so much as sneezes too hard.
Rodney bends over him and drops his datapad on the bed and flutters his hands around like he wants to pat John all over to make sure he's intact but is holding himself back.
Holding himself back. It's because of the injuries, but fuck it, man, John's over this.
Rodney tilts his head down and John tilts his up. And just like that John brushes his mouth against the side of Rodney's face. His stubble is fine, almost soft, even with as short as it is.
Rodney makes a clicking kind of noise and freezes. John hooks two fingers of his good hand into Rodney's collar and holds him still. He moves just enough that Rodney's startled breaths coming out of his mouth fall right on John's lips. Cherry fruit roll-up.
"Oh," Rodney says. "Now?" And he flicks out his tongue to touch John's bottom lip.
Rodney's careful, so careful, and John remembers he works with equipment that can kill you day in and day out, not unlike a soldier in that way. He presses his hands palm down on the bed on either side of John's legs and slides down to his knees, pulling at John's mouth with his own and pulling John in a pivot so their positions are reversed, John leaning down to kiss Rodney who leans up, on his knees. Rodney pivots John just like that, his mouth a fulcrum and John is the unmovable object after all, not Rodney, because Rodney lets him touch his face and his eyelashes and John hides his face right in the side of Rodney's neck like he's wanted to for a very long time. Rodney lets him.
"I'm scared to hurt you." Rodney still doesn't pick his hands up off the bed. "I'm scared I'll hurt you worse."
John almost laughs at how impossible that really is. John only got shot in the first place because he was scared of the same thing.
*
Major Lorne laughs with the sort of zeal everyone in Atlantis knows comes accompanied by his head tossed back and his hand on his chest. "No, shit. You really ended up in the middle of a sex ritual?"
"It wasn't so much a ritual as a rite of passage. Jack's probably got fifteen or so illegitimate children seeded around the Milky Way," Dr. Jackson replies, clearly not fully sober.
"No shit. Who doesn't, though." The sound of liquid pouring. "Sandbagging, can't have too many offspring, gotta keep up the bloodline."
"What amazes me about what you just said is how I don't think you're joking."
Major Lorne laughs exactly like he did when the segment cut in.
*
Zelenka has this way about him. John figures he's probably projecting, but the guy always seems to be thinking secret thoughts, hidden truths about people. Like a psychic elf or something.
"What?" John says as Zelenka regards him behind his glasses. Zelenka's clutching a stack of papers, wearing a lab coat that looks like it might double as a home for some stray animal, and watching John without blinking.
"You are helping Rodney get out of tournament?" He blinks and shifts his stance a little. Now he's just an able administrator and brilliant engineer, nothing creepy or paranormal about him.
"I don't think I have a choice in the matter." That was the conclusion he drew as soon as Rodney opened his mouth about it, but he had to fight the battle; surrender's always the last resort. John usually does what Rodney wants, after exhausting every avenue to avoid it.
"Hmmmmm," Zelenka says and consults his watch. "That is disappointing. I was hoping he would go down in flames."
John thinks about Zelenka's hockey scores and would lay even odds that Zelenka was going to rig the tournament to get even. He's sneaky. John respects that. He thinks Rodney probably deserves it for all the shit Zelenka puts up from him.
"Also," Zelenka continues, half turning to go. "Forgive him when he misbehaves. He was socialized in physics lab, not really his fault." He smiles and wanders away.
That must have been a blessing or something, because John's already seen the worst of Rodney and he's still right here, waiting for the asshole to come back from some meeting that was supposed to take fifteen minutes and it's been two hours.
That's fine, John's got a lot of reports. And Tetris.
He has day dreams about waking up without pain and getting back to active duty so he doesn't have so much time on his hands to think. To think about the honest to god fear in Rodney's eyes when he mumbles about the surgery and John sits tight-lipped and swallowing down bile. To think about what comes next and all the worst case scenarios that just tailspin into worse and worse. Rodney’s fears follow John like a contrail, and he can’t fix anything so he wishes Rodney would keep it to himself.
*
"Big Rock Candy Mountain" plays low, building to a crescendo.
"...fish sticks..."
"...I got peanut butter on the last Daedalus run..."
"...I'd trade all the Athosians' souls for a White Castle..."
"...Cadbury, but don't tell McKay, he's got a serious fiend on for Flake..."
"...I never thought the day would come I'd honestly say 'I dream about decent French fries'..."
"...real Chex Mix, you know with Worchester sauce and garlic?"
"...I would trade myself to the Genii if they had a Tim Horton's franchise on one of their worlds..."
*
John gets his stitches out the day of the tournament. Well, the first day of it. Rodney is off world with Cadman's team and Simpson and a couple other math people. John's never sure what some of the science people actually do-some seem to just mill around and get yelled at by Rodney and glared at by Zelenka, some seem to mainly play cards with the Marines.
He's drinking some coffee and shooting the shit with Lorne when the gate engages and Jackson comes through slapping his clothes and waving his hat. Three other people follow behind him doing likewise.
"Oh my fucking god, chiggers!" one of the anthropologists shouts.
Jackson whips his shirt off and sort of claws at his waistband. John watches a couple of women become seriously interested in the proceedings. He rolls his eyes but watches himself. Hey, he's got eyes in his head.
John hits his com. "Med team to the gate room."
Almost immediately, Carson answers back "John? You just got your stitches out, what did you do? Are you all right, lad?"
"Chiggers, off-world team. I'm fine."
The whole team's about down to their undies. One of them, the hot French chick, Dr. Pouillon, is wearing a red bra and green panties. Weirdly festive.
Lorne leans in to murmur, "I think I'm getting old and jaded, 'cause I just don't even give two shits about getting a free show most people would pay sticky dollar bills for."
John laughs and concurs. Amusingly, the gate redials, and the underwear-clad anthropologists have to scramble away from the event horizon so they don't all end up footy-stubs instead of living people. They run, half the room watching Jackson, the other Pouillon, and the gate whooshes back to life.
"Oh you must be joking!" Rodney screeches as he materializes. Simpson's right behind him with that super-still angry face some women get before they set your stuff on fire or run over your dog.
"I didn't see you figuring it out, either, and you're not my thesis advisor, so you'd better stop treating me like you own me or one day you're going to find lemon rinds in your coffee filter!" She stomps off. The people in underwear are momentarily forgotten as the entire room, including the underwear-clad people, are riveted by Rodney getting his ass handed to him by a waspy blond woman.
"Assert your independence then! You were still wrong." Rodney doesn't sound angry anymore, though, maybe surprised and mildly amused. "Oh, I see, there are orgies while I'm off-world working myself into an early grave to defeat the Ori?"
*
"Sad news." And Dr Golden sounds truly saddened. "Balderdash tournament postponed until Dr. Jackson gets out of the infirmary."
*
John finds Rodney later in the evening, when the sun's set fully, the long, Atlantian day finally giving up its existence to night. He's leaning against a whiteboard that's more Greek letters than numbers, hunched over his laptop with the dry-erase pen clenched in his teeth and a pencil behind his ear. The side of his neck along his hairline is sunburned, like his sunscreen sweated off in patches.
The lab's almost empty-John assessed the room by habit as soon as the door opened. Half the lights are off, and the entire place has a dull, hollow feel to it, like the life's bled out to tumble into bed, leaving Rodney and Zelenka and Dr. Simpson to ignore each other.
John crosses the room and lays his hand on Rodney's neck next to the burn. Rodney doesn't flinch or move away, and he's not startled.
"I thought you were going to just stand there in a fugue state," he sighs. Rodney's exhausted and upset enough about something to skip the hysterics and move straight on to calm dread.
John leans his hip on Rodney's shoulder and glances over the calculations on the board. Energy transfer and fluid dynamics. "I thought you'd be glad the tournament was postponed."
Rodney looks up at him, the dry erase marker now tossed on the worktop in front of him, stranded among the computer components and Ancient crystals.
"The what..." Rodney starts and cuts off to clamp his mouth in a firm line. "Oh that. Minor personal catastrophe put on hiatus due to the looming greater, universal catastrophe of running out of power to keep up the city's shields." He looks up at John with his eyes wide open and blinks like John's got some kind of answer, like he's just going to pull that ZPM right out of his pocket and fork it over.
Rodney doesn't trust many people, but, apparently, when he does, it's blind trust, and John wants nothing more than to live up to those unattainable expectations, but he's just a guy. He's a guy who fucks up a lot, and he's never felt so acutely aware of that as he has lately. He wants to save Atlantis-hell, they all want that-but, so much more importantly, he doesn't want to let Rodney down. He let Elizabeth down.
"Come on. You're not gonna solve the mysteries of the conservation of energy right now, and I'm tired." John pushes back and Rodney steadies him with a huge hand on John's hip when he sways slightly.
"Ok, fine, fine. Let me just..." Rodney starts typing furiously and John almost snatches the machine away, but he doesn't want to pull back a nub.
"I'm going to take measures in five...four...three..." John looks at his watch like he's really timing it.
Rodney rolls his eyes and saves his work. "All right, all right. You're such a pain in-Radek!" Rodney stands up, rolling his neck. Zelenka's head pops up from behind a computer. "Go to bed and tell that harpy Simpson to get her beauty sleep because she needs it."
John sighs and shakes his head.
"Good night Colonel Sheppard," Dr. Simpson calls from somewhere on the far side of the room.
John waves in her direction. "Night, Simpson. Just ignore Rodney."
*
Fiddle music plays, something close to a reel but off somehow, the meter not quite right. People clap and feet tap the ground.
“Play the Athosian song about the lantantan, Katie,” Dr. Perrish calls out.
“Okay, wait,” Dr. Brown answers. A finger slides across a string emitting a high pitched, resonant twang. “All right, here we go…” the music picks back up as the Botany department dances.
*
Three days later is Elizabeth's birthday, and Atlantis takes this as a holiday, only a skeleton crew left in the gate room, rotating through out the day.
John lights an Athosian lamp at the memorial service and watches the flame flicker, exposed and delicate, but with the power to bring humanity from one level of development to another. Fitting somehow to have so many open flames in memory of Elizabeth.
The rotunda in the Atlas Tower flickers with shadows cast by one hundred seventy-three flames, one each for all of them. Rodney lit his and left. John and Teyla have been sitting quietly side by side, cross-legged on the warm stone floor, for hours. She's probably meditating and communing with the dead. John's glad to have her with him, her solid, steady presence reminding him in some ways of Elizabeth. Maybe just because she's a strong woman in a way that doesn't demand attention to how strong she is. John's never understood women of any kind, but the ones who ask for more burdens, who volunteer to account for other people's lives, those sorts of women are like hieroglyphs to him. When you already are burdened with so much, for mothering and bearing children, for having to fix relatives and lovers, why take on more? Why take on the world when there's already so much they have to be responsible for that no one even asks about or notices?
John doesn't understand that. All of his burdens he has shouldered willingly, because it was the right thing to do, but he wasn't born with the expectation that he would already there.
John took on Elizabeth as his responsibility, and then he failed.
At some point, Ronon walks through the crawling shadows and drops to the floor on John's free side. He sits like John and Teyla for a spell and then folds over to press his forehead to the floor, murmuring to himself. Teyla opens her eyes and watches him, her eyes holding John's when he turns his head to watch her.
He wonders how much of their serenity is real and how much of it is a projection of what everyone around them wants to see. The noble savages.
Teyla turns her palm up on her knee and John takes it.
*
"...yisborach v'yishtabach v'yispoar v'yisromam v'yismasay, v'yishador v'yis'aleh v'yisalal, shmay d'kudsho, brich hu, l'aylo min kl birchoso v'sheeroso..."
"...bismillāhir rahmānir rahīm. Al hamdu lillāhi rabbil 'ālamīn. Ar rahmānir rahīm. Māliki yawmid dīn. Iyyāka na'budu wa iyyāka nasta'īn. Ihdinās sirātal mustaqīm..."
*
John’s cleared for duty, but he’s already been working pretty steadily for a couple weeks. He’s not training, no jogging or stick fights with Teyla, but he oversees the drills and wears his gun again.
No one even pretends Jackson is really in charge from what John can tell. It's as if without Elizabeth, people don't feel the need to respect any kind of real authority. They're in another galaxy anyway. They aren't at war anymore, and they have no need to subordinate personal desires for the greater good. People don’t blindly follow in Atlantis.
Jackson himself seems to just sign anything Zelenka or Janette puts in front of him. The science teams and support staff run independently, a certain kind of natural autonomy that John himself assumes for the military personnel.
This is how John sees it: Atlantis is their city, and as much as they all technically work for the US government or some international oversight whatever, who knows when things will go to shit and they'll be stuck out here alone with only themselves? Best just to let the cards fall where they will and figure out how keep on keepin' on. Jackson just likes to dig things up and coo over books anyway; he's a nerd like all the other scientists. John sees a leader in him, saw it during the Genii conflict, and he thinks when the time comes, Jackson will earn everyone’s respect by getting his own blood and other people’s on his hands. John already respects him for not trying to take Elizabeth’s place and finding his own way to fit in.
John's still aching inside, oh the metaphor, when the Daedalus arrives for its scheduled rendezvous with Planet Atlantis.
John's there to greet Col. Caldwell, all meet and greet, and Caldwell is Caldwell.
"Here." He hands John a military-issue jewelry case that John knows contains his silver eagles. That's that. Good old Caldwell.
"Thanks," John says.
"What you did was reckless but human. I respect you, Col. Sheppard." And John realizes everyone was right about Caldwell having a thing for Elizabeth. Way to ruin the moment, Caldwell.
"Alrighty." John almost salutes, instead sticks his hand out for a manly shake and turns away to appear busy "supervising."
Rodney's watching him from over the top of his datapad, eyebrows up and sarcasm all over his face. John didn't know sarcasm could be a facial expression until he met Rodney. Now he sort of enjoys trying to reflect that back at him. They could have a facial-expression-off.
"Balderdash? What?" John hears behind him, Caldwell’s obviously being railroaded by Jackson who laughs full-throated and pleased with himself.
Situation normal: Rodney's in a snit, Jackson's acting dumb to pull someone's leg, and John's twitching to get into the air.
*
I haven't done this in a while, but here are two music files to go with this fic. The first someone else used a lyric from for a fic (and, yeah, so perfect). The second I robbed myself.
Stan Rogers - Northwest Passage
Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers
If you're not Canadian or haven't ever lived in Canada, you probably have no idea the impact that Stan Rogers has had on the folk music consciousness in there. He's something more than just a singer-songwriter, more like an institution. These are probably his two most famous songs. Most people I know can sing them without a whole lot of prompting.
The funny talk in the podcast is Hebrew and Arabic. Both prayers.
So, this is the end of the main storyline here. Personally, I'm disappointed I couldn't work Vala into it, so there might be a Getting To Know Daniel series of shorter stories at some point where I self-indulgently INSERT HER OMG!
Thanks for reading. I appreciate everyone's comments, support and criticism.