Fic: Diploma 9/25
Title Diploma
Part 9/25
Author Internetname
Rating NC-17 (eventually)
Pairing John/Rodney
Summary Sentinel X/O: Rodney McKay and John Sheppard have figured out how to live the lives they want, and things should probably stay that way.
Warnings Slash
Word Count for Story So Far 13,738
Disclaimer Er...if they were mine they'd still be on TV.
Part One is Here
"Calm down, McKay. It was just an accident."
For the first time, McKay felt the chip in his brain. Or rather, he heard it, a blank sort of roar that was preventing him from moving, from thinking. He could feel his hot face, the cramp in his lungs, his knees threatening to give out.
And he could see nothing but the blood on the bandages, the ugly little stitches, the abhorrent rip of skin, the slit of raw, opened flesh.
"Dr. McKay?" some woman was asking from another room, or from down a well, or something.
He was going to puke, or faint, or kill someone. His eyes swiveling now, he saw his hands balled into fists, one of them aimed at a beautiful woman staring at him in concern. A large presence loomed between him and the woman, and McKay realized he'd have to kill them both, and -
"McKay!" Sheppard shouted.
Rodney's ears were suddenly working again. And he got his eyes to look into Sheppard's face. He'd never seen eyes that color before.
"McKay, snap out of it!" the colonel ordered.
Rodney stepped back, tripped over the ice pack on the floor, and then turned and ran out as fast as he could.
***
Rodney McKay didn't really come back to who and where he was until he had been in his quarters for several minutes, cuddling Newton while Galileo lay curled in the curve of his leg.
He still couldn't stop thinking about what he had seen. A Guide had hurt her Sentinel. A Guide had knowingly, purposefully opened his skin, made him bleed.
He couldn't stop seeing that flesh, cut and ragged, wounded and exposed. John Sheppard was a treasure, a Sentinel of extraordinary power, though he had decided not to tap into it for reasons of his own. He was...without price. And the one person in the world designated to be his guardian, his servant, his keeper, his everything had raised a weapon and cut his skin.
McKay had read Sheppard's reports on the first eighteen months on Atlantis. He knew about the times the man had single-handedly saved the entire expedition. He knew about the day he had found Ronon, somehow managing to gentle the runner long enough to have Beckett cut out the transmitter, somehow making the man his own Little John, giving him a home and a purpose along with a place at his side.
Teyla. Teyla herself had been in great need, her people culled to within an inch of extermination before Sheppard somehow persuaded Everett and Weir to allow the few remaining survivors to shelter in Atlantis and then settle on the mainland.
He knew what Sheppard had done for Everett as well.
And she had cut him! Flayed him! Laid him open to disease and blood poisoning, and who knew what!
Newton mewled and cuddled closer, purring so loudly McKay finally lost track of his own heartbeat. Opening his eyes, he saw Pajamas standing on the desk, eyes alert to danger, fur raised.
It was none of his business. In fact, his entire behavior was perilously close to bond-interference. Sheppard could have him drawn up on charges, or something.
At least then someone might take another look at this so-called bond he's got with Teyla.
McKay buried the thought as he sunk his fingers into Newton's fur. Teyla was John's choice. He respected that above all.
Newton squirmed suddenly, wanting to be let loose. With effort, he relaxed his arms, muttering, "I should have gotten a ragdoll."
Newton send him a reproachful look, then leaped down from the bed to his food dish. Pajamas twitched.
Gathering himself, McKay lit some candles and dragged his pillow out from under the bed. Breathing deeply, he assumed the lotus position and sought to turn his mind clear and blue.
No, make that green. As green as the sea before a coral atoll. As green as the floor of a rainforest, warm with life.
Naturally, just as his heart was steady and quiet, someone rang his door.
He noted with alarm that he knew who was on the other side of the door before he opened it, but hoped that was merely a brilliant deduction on his part, and not some fault with the crystal in his brain.
She stood as a statue of serenity. He sort of wanted to punch her in the face.
"Dr. McKay, if I might come in to speak with you?" Teyla asked.
He smiled as best he could and backed away from the door, checking to make sure no cats were ready to bolt into the corridor. They wouldn’t make it past the feline-only force field he had set up, of course, but it was a good sign of their training that none of them tried.
Teyla walked in, looking appreciatively at his cat harem. "What lovely animals!" she exclaimed as the door closed behind her. "I have never seen such before."
"There are no housecats in Pegasus?" McKay asked, frowning.
"No, indeed, there are." Teyla smiled and sat in his desk chair, turning it so that she faced him as he sat on the edge of his bed. Galileo jumped into his lap, content to be adored. "But they are larger and more feral."
McKay petted Galileo and said nothing.
"I have so often wondered what my world would be without the Wraith," Teyla said next. "Would we not have domesticated animals such as these?"
She looked down to Pajamas now, as she was rubbing her face over Teyla's ankles with some abandon, purring and demanding more skin.
McKay continued petting the Himalayan.
Teyla sighed. "You must please tell me how exactly I have offended you."
"Whatever arrangement you and Colonel Sheppard have between you is none of my affair," McKay said quickly.
"But you do not feel it is a healthy bond between myself and Colonel Sheppard?"
"Healthy?!" McKay felt hysteria in his words and watched Galileo leap to the floor. Traitor.
"I must confess that no one I have ever met amongst my travels in this galaxy, before meeting the people of Atlantis, has ever challenged my understanding of myself as thoroughly as -"
"Do you have to use thirty words for every one that will do?" McKay demanded, then clamped his jaw shut.
Teyla obviously calmed herself. "I do not quite understand your meaning."
"Oh yes, you do." McKay forced himself to look directly at the woman who could kill him with her hands tied behind her back. "You know exactly what you're doing."
"Dr. McKay, I don't -"
"You're making him behave. You're making him be a good little Sentinel," McKay told her. "You're a disgrace."
"Dr. McKay!"
"You have a Sentinel in your care! Your Sentinel! You have the most precious, most valuable possession imaginable in your hands, completely vulnerable to you! Completely open!"
He saw John Sheppard then, the long length of him, the wiry muscle, the incredible strength of him.
That was it, he thought. John Sheppard was the strongest person he had ever known. And that meant, of course, that he would be as strong against himself as he would against the world.
Couldn’t Teyla see that a man like Sheppard would need reassurance above all else? "Gentleness, tenderness, acceptance, unwavering loyalty. A Guide must care for their Sentinel beyond all else."
"I do care for John."
"You mean you love him."
Teyla nodded peacefully.
"No." Rodney stared at her while the crystal roared in his head. "No."
"Dr. McKay..."
"You're not his Guide."
Her chin came up.
"You're not a Guide at all."
"John has chosen to allow me to Guide him."
"What do you think a bond is? Being best friends?" He stood up then, moving randomly. "A Sentinel to a Guide is more than just the keeper of all that is best within ourselves. He is our child, our lover, our mentor, our champion, our student, our idol. He is whatever means love to us. His happiness, his care is our only concern. A Guide could no more injure her Sentinel than cut open the skin of the infant in her arms. She would literally die before she allowed anyone to injure him!"
Teyla frowned. "What you are describing is..."
McKay stopped pacing long enough to shoot her a look. "What? The ultimate in slavery? Being pathologically co-dependent?"
"I have seen many Sentinel/Guide pairs, and I have never seen -"
"What are you expecting? Sonnets and parades?" McKay scowled at Pajamas as she took an agitated lunge at his passing foot. "This is private, this - you have no idea how many years I had to study before I could talk like this, before I could describe what I was feeling without wanting to brain myself with a stick. And even then, we don't really talk about it. It just is."
"And this is truly what you want?"
McKay turned to her, waving arms startled straight. "Me? I'm talking about Guides here." His hands went to his hips. "You know, the thing you're not?"
Teyla looked at him, eyebrows raised.
Rodney crossed his arms. "All right, if you have to make this about me, it's true that when I was a Guide, it was not just what I wanted, it's what I needed. And considering my incredible attractiveness as a Guide, I had so many Sentinels making offers that having to deny the hordes almost drove me insane!"
"John spoke to Ronon and me about your years alone."
”It was hardly just being alone!"
"So, if I might ask a question?"
"What? Now you're worried about getting too personal?"
"Why did you not simply select a Sentinel?"
"For the love of...has it never once occurred to you to pick up a book? Or just ask one of the Guides on Atlantis about it?"
"John assured me there was no need."
"Well, big surprise here: he was lying."
Teyla stood suddenly, the first time he had seen her make any movement that wasn't perfectly controlled. She hovered, then walked to one of his windows. The spires of the city jutted up like a challenge, but she seemed to find the vista comforting.
"Look," he said. "What you've been doing with him, when you're not actually a Guide, it's very impressive."
"But it's not enough," she murmured.
"No. It's not, but I'm not suggesting, I mean, you can't just leave him or anything."
She turned to look at him, surprised.
Rodney shrugged helplessly. "You're what he's using now, and he's obviously given up looking for his real Guide, and he's functioning well, or, at least, he's functioning. It's not remotely what he could do, of course, but you can't take that away from him."
Her smile was unexpectedly fond. "You care about John."
"Well, he's the military commander and we're dealing with aliens that want to eat us, so, yeah. Everyone on the base should care about him."
"But if you were still a Guide, would you offer for him?"
"It doesn’t work like that!"
"I don't understand."
McKay cut himself off before he pointed out that her lack of understanding was the whole problem. Looking away from her, he rubbed his eyes, feeling incredibly tired, then went to his personal laptop.
"I'm going to give you some literature. Stuff Guides read when we're kids. Then we can move on to more advanced stuff." He turned, flash drive in hand. "I mean, if that's okay?"
Teyla walked to him in obvious relief to take the drive with careful hands. "I would be so grateful for whatever you feel I could use."
"What you could use is..." McKay forced himself to swallow the words down, though they burned like acid in his stomach. "Just...just don't ever hurt him again, all right? It doesn't matter if he says it's okay."
"As you wish, Dr...May I call you Rodney?"
"Uh, sure."
She folded the flash drive against her chest like a talisman. "And may I ask you to answer my personal question?"
"What? Oh, why I didn't just choose some Sentinel?"
She nodded.
"Because there is no choice in the matter. It just happens or it doesn't."
"So if you had been...as you were when Kaleig approached you at the mixer?"
"Well, I would have had sex with her, I mean, if she wanted, but unless she were the one, the bond wouldn't take."
She watched him for a moment, and he could see when they penny dropped. He thought for a moment of all those times he had woken up in some strange bed facing a disappointed Sentinel who was trying to figure out the politest way to ask him to leave.
"I cannot thank you enough, Rodney," she said, looking down at the drive before she put it in her pocket. Then she put her hands up on his shoulders and bowed her head. Slowly, he pressed his head against hers, then straightened with a jerk.
"Just read," he said, walking back and looking at the door. "And, you know, I'm here."
She nodded with beauty and walked out.
McKay stood quietly for a few minutes, swaying slightly with exhaustion. He remembered his hand hurt.
"Well," he managed finally. "Is anybody hungry?"
***
Part 10 is Here