5. FIC: What I Am edie brickell Rated G McShep
Title: What I Am
Rating: G
Pairing: McShep (also... behind the scene's McKeller)
Word Count: 2,224
Summary: John was asleep before the plane even took off. They were headed back to Colorado after another gathering of people who thought they were on the same level of intelligence as Rodney. Thankfully though, this time it hadn’t been someone taking credit for something Rodney had invented. That really only meant that it was a stupid idea, and it had been, incredibly stupid and pointless.
WARNING: This fic contains material that some people may discribe as character bashing. I don't see it that way, since everything is coming from Rodney's mind and are his feelings about the situation. If you are absolutely in love with McKeller, it may be best if you don't read this. I'd rather not be flamed for something that I wrote that displayes how I feel about a certain pairing. thanks!
Disclaimer: If Stargate was mine, it would still be on... but it'd have to be on cinemax
John was asleep before the plane even took off. They were headed back to Colorado after another gathering of people who thought they were on the same level of intelligence as Rodney. Thankfully though, this time it hadn’t been someone taking credit for something Rodney had invented. That really only meant that it was a stupid idea, and it had been, incredibly stupid and pointless.
Rodney smiled and poked John when he started snoring, John groaned and turned his head and the snoring stopped. Besides the fact that this entire trip had been a colossal waste of time, Rodney had to admit that it had been a much better experience. When it came time to sign the nondisclosure agreement, Rodney had baulked at it again. Instead of telling him to grow up and sign the paper, John pulled two ridiculously comfortable chairs out of the lobby and sat there with Rodney while he read the entire thing. Then they signed it anyway, not because they agreed with it, but because John said they wouldn’t get in if they didn’t. “Come on, Rodney, we can poke fun at them and point out the holes in their theories,” John had said, so Rodney smiled and signed the paper. John was practically bouncing as they entered the waiting area.
John hadn’t once told Rodney to be quiet, or to be nice, or that these people were his friends, in fact John said things like “You’re not going to take that are you, Rodney?” and “Oh please! Rodney could eat you for breakfast and still be hungry.” And “How about we take this outside? I’m sure someone around here has some sidewalk chalk we could use, I know that’s what you’re used to Dr. Nye.” And once they were ushered into the auditorium and the speech started, John was standing and pointing out mistakes and idiotic ideas almost as much as Rodney was. They were escorted out, John was laughing the entire way. “Damn, Rodney,” he said as they walked back toward their car. “That was fun. I wish you’d have brought me last time.”
‘Me too,’ Rodney didn’t say.
It wasn’t that his relationship with Jennifer was terrible, how could it be? They hardly saw each other. But all that meant was that when they were both free, she expected his time to be spent with her. He couldn’t even count the number of team nights he’d missed because he stayed home with her, watching some sappy movie and handing her Kleenex’s when she got too blubbery. He was kind of amazed at the fact that he hadn’t even realized these things until today. John had reminded him of what it was like to live a normal life, to be himself, a person that Jennifer obviously hated. He realized that she had fallen for him while he was slowly losing his mind, and that’s the man she wanted him to be. He tried so hard to be nice, to be what she wanted, and the quality of the work in the labs had suffered for it. Whenever he did yell at people for making stupid mistakes and not double checking their work, word always got back to Jennifer and he got the cold shoulder for a week, not to mention absolutely no sex. She was constantly fishing for compliments, but she never volunteered a single nice word to him when he came home from a stressful day in the lab. He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d let himself get so miserable, it wasn’t like he needed her company, he had John. And Ronon and Teyla of course, but it was John that he played chess with, and who shared some of his taste in movies. He supposed it could have been for the promise of regular sex, but it didn’t turn out to be all that regular, and it really wasn’t anything to write home about. Jennifer was the epitome of old fashioned, the lights were always off, they never had sex in the middle of the day, and it was always missionary position. She’d touch his arms sometimes, but she usually just laid there, like she was doing him a favor by letting him fuck her. She didn’t like to touch after either, he liked to cuddle close and hold her and feel their skin pressed together, slick with sweat and a little sticky. She pushed him away and got into the shower first thing, reprimanding him when he tried to join her. His life had become a miserable place and he hadn’t even realized it.
John was awake by the time they were an hour out of landing, and they spent the time playing prime not prime, and that was another thing Rodney missed, Jennifer didn’t “have time for silly games.”
They had about two hours before they were scheduled to leave, so the loaded their things onto the Daedalus and went to lunch. Rodney’s mind was so full of reflection and realization that he hadn’t even noticed the wedge of lemon floating in his glass until John snatched it away and yelled at the waiter. Rodney’s heart was pounding and he was sweating from the close call, but he couldn’t help but smile as John stood up and berated the waiter, right there in the middle of the restaurant. “What part of NO CITRUS did you not understand? Weren’t you listening when he said “deathly allergic?” Because it sounded clear as crystal to me.” Then John had pulled out his ID and flashed it in the man’s face. “We want new water, without lemon, and an extremely discounted bill, any problems with that, send the manager over here to handle it.”
Jennifer would never have done that. Firstly, she’d probably have been too engrossed in her menu trying to choose the thing that would be best for Rodney to eat, and she wouldn’t have seen the wedge of death in his water. And if he’d have seen it, she would have insisted he quietly call the waiter over and very nicely remind him of Rodney’s allergy.
The rest of lunch went pretty smoothly, John insisted that since they agreed to give them a 60% discount, that they order enough food to bring the bill back up to the regular cost of the meal. By the time they were beamed up to the Daedalus, Rodney was so full he could barely walk.
The trip back to Atlantis was great. John and Rodney spent almost all of their free time together, watching movies, listening to music, and making fun of each other’s favorites, eventually admitting that it wasn’t really that terrible. They came across a wraith hive once, and that was kind of frantic, but the Daedalus ended up flying away from a new pile of space debris, just a little worse for the ware. John and Rodney went back to playing John’s new racing game on his laptop.
They were beamed into Atlantis just a little after their scheduled time, and Rodney slowly trudged toward the transporter.
“See you later, buddy,” John said as he got off in his hallway. Rodney smiled and waved, wondering if he actually would see John later.
He paused outside the door and sighed, silently hoping that Jennifer was in the infirmary. After a short moment, he opened the door and stepped into the empty room. Jennifer wasn’t there, and Rodney was thankful for that little moment of peace after the great time he’d just had. He moved a little further toward the couch and stopped, looking around the room. The couch was covered in a floral print slid cover, the DVD rack was sitting perfectly beside the desk, the DVD’s on the top were hers, the ones on the bottom were his. There was a plant that always made Rodney sneeze when the window was open sitting on the table, the coffee pot in the kitchenette was empty and sparking clean, the throw rug on the floor perfectly flat. There two laundry baskets sitting in the corner with little signs above them that read J’s dirty and R’s dirty. Her basket was empty, his was still full because he hadn’t washed his clothes before he left and Jennifer refused to touch his dirty underwear. The room was too clean, sterile, like a hospital. His things had their places and they were never to be mixed with her things. Rodney sighed and closed his eyes, only opening them when he heard the soft swish of a door open. Jennifer walked out of the bathroom, already dressed with her hair pinned up neatly.
“Hi, Rodney,” she greeted happily.
Rodney looked at her for a moment, his stomach churning slightly. He blinked at her once, twice, then he turned around and left the room. His stomach started to calm as he wandered the halls of the city, finding himself standing outside John’s quarters. He swiped his hand over the sensor and a moment later the door opened.
“Rodney,” John said, “I thought you’d be with Jennifer.”
Rodney pushed him back into the room, the room that had a small pile of clothes in the floor and an empty sandwich container on the desk with the crust of half the sandwich still in it.
“Rodney?” John asked confused.
“I can’t do it anymore, John. I just… I can’t.” He went into the entire story, telling John all the things that he’d realized, how he felt about his life, what he wanted and what he missed. Several hours later, after the story, and coffee and chocolate pudding, Rodney was cuddled behind John, both of them sweaty and sticky and absolutely sated. Neither of them moved, and in the morning when they woke up, they showered together. Before they were even dressed, they had sex again and it was just as perfect as it had been the night before. After their second shower, Rodney realized that he was going to have to go back to his and Jennifer’s quarters because that was where all his clothes were. John just shook his head and opened his closet door and started rifling through his shirts until he found what he was looking for.
“I don’t remember when exactly, but you left that here one day,” John said and tossed the shirt to Rodney.
“I wondered where that went,” he said. His heart gave a little flutter at the realization that his shirt had been tucked away in John’s closet, mixed in with John’s own things. Awkwardly enough, it turned out that John had a pair of Rodney’s pants too, and Rodney started wondering if they’d had sex before and he’d just forgotten, he couldn’t find that memory though so he just left it alone.
A week later, all of Rodney things were moved back into his old quarters although he spent most of his time in John’s. He did have a small stash of clean clothes hidden in amongst John’s though, that way he didn’t have to bring clean clothes all the time.
Things were still a little touchy with Jennifer, but Rodney supposed that was to be expected after a break up. The day after he’d left their quarters without so much as a single word, Rodney had gone back. Jennifer was sitting on the couch with a box of cookies, something she never ever did. He sat down in the chair in front of her, took a few of the cookies and explained everything.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her tears, “I didn’t mean to make your life so horrible.”
He moved over to the couch and put his arm around her, and told her that he knew it wasn’t intentional.
“I don’t dislike you, Jennifer,” he said. “I just… don’t want to be with you.”
“We could make it work, Rodney. I could just… I could let you be whatever you want to be.”
He shook his head, “I’ve been on the side of the relationship where you’re being asked to change, so I won’t ask you to change to make it work. It’s not going to work out, Jennifer. We’re just too different, but I can guarantee that you’re going to find the person that you won’t have to change to make you happy. We both deserve that, we both deserve to be genuinely happy.”
“John makes you genuinely happy?” she had asked then and Rodney just smiled for a moment, thinking back to the time they’d spent on Earth.
“Yes, he makes me insanely happy.”
She’d patted his leg and nodded at him. “Alright then,” she dried her tears and smiled at him. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Rodney echoed, kissed her forehead and left, telling her that he’d get his things over the next few days. He found John after that, they had lunch in John’s quarters, and had sex again. Rodney could already tell that this was going to me much easier, he’d be much happier. His scientists noticed the change too, and although they grumped about the old Rodney being back, Rodney could see the working environment improving.
Oh yes, he thought as John showed up to get him for lunch. This is definitely going to work. Rodney was Rodney after all, and John didn’t just get that… he encouraged it. Rodney smiled and left the lab, it was time for lunch.
FIN