FIC: A Cold Night for Crocodiles by Spacebabe (PG)
Title: A Cold Night for Crocodiles
Author: Spacebabe
Rating: PG
Pairings: Sheppard/McKay
Spoilers: Contains spoilers for The Return (and this time I will leave out the spoilers in the A/N :)
A/N: A mostly Rodney centric story. A big thank you to henrycat for her usual excellent beta services.
A Cold Night for Crocodiles
by spacebabe
The rain jumps wildly across the pavement, silver streaks in the glare of the headlights, as Rodney pulls into the small parking lot. Colorado Springs apparently hasn't seen this kind of rain in ages, and when the radio station starts up in true Weather Channel oh-my-god-it's-the-end-of-the-world spirit again, warning about flash floods and mudslides and god knows what, Rodney reaches over and turns the radio off.
Take it from one who's gotten well acquainted with the end of the world (this and several others), this isn't it.
He's been working for a few weeks already, in a temporary lab with temporary assistants and temporary tasks. Frustration has become a constant companion, chafing at him like coarse grain sandpaper, because even though Area 51 is full of Ancient technology and he's the world's foremost expert in the field, no one is trying to hide the fact that for some reason he's gone from chief scientific advisor in Atlantis to persona non grata around those things.
He can't figure out why. Sometimes he thinks they're afraid he's gone a little too native, that they need to wean him off the Pegasus galaxy. Other times he thinks it's just a power demonstration. They're doing it because they can.
So, he's stuck in the desert in Nevada doing research on things he has no interest in, and the others are scattered to the four winds. Sheppard is based at the SGC going off-world with a new team, Carson left for Scotland as soon as he was allowed, and Zelenka happily skipped on over to an east coast research position. Teyla and Ronon are still 3.34 million light years away. And with the walls Elizabeth has put up between herself and everyone else, she might as well be there with them.
Rodney pulls the smudged note from his jacket. Sam had provided the address over the phone when he called from a pay phone at Colorado Springs airport (his own cell phone had irreversibly died last Thursday) after belatedly realizing he had no idea where Sheppard was staying. He's forever grateful that Sam didn't ask any questions about why he was calling her late a Friday night asking for Sheppard's address.
His chicken scratches on the note line up with the street name and the illuminated numbers above the entrance, so Rodney finds an empty spot halfway down the parking lot. He jogs back towards Sheppard's apartment building, jacket pulled up over his head, plastic bag and DVD in hand.
It had been an impulsive thing, leaving Groom Lake and getting the hell out of Dodge for the weekend, and he hadn't let himself stop to think until he'd been in a middle seat next to an overly perfumed, middle-aged woman who apparently had been intent on talking his ears off. He'd demonstratively opened his laptop and done his best to ignore her nasal inanities, but she'd kept jabbing him with her elbow as she fluffed her bleached hair, telling him over and over how awful it was that she'd had to remove her shoes at the security check-point.
Fifteen minutes later he'd been unable to stop the heartfelt 'for the love of all things sacred, will you shut up' from escaping. She'd looked scandalized, but Rodney's outburst had had the desired result, because when he'd glanced up from his laptop as the stewardess offered him coffee, she and her stuff had been gone and hadn't returned.
While sipping the watery coffee at 28,000 feet, he'd started regretting the whole idea. He knew Sheppard wasn't off-world, but that didn't mean he was at home, or that he didn't already have plans. Or that he would welcome Rodney showing up at his door unannounced. But he was already in the air, and since he still has his apartment in Colorado Springs, Rodney figured he wouldn't be too screwed if things didn't work the way he'd planned. He needed the change of scenery, anyway.
The air inside the apartment complex smells like fried food and mothballs, and Elvis' muted voice is demanding a little less conversation, a little more action, please, from inside one of the apartments on the ground floor. A row of mailboxes is perched by the foot of the stairs. Somehow it doesn't surprise him that 3C has no name on it.
As he climbs the stairs, he counts the steps unthinkingly - seven, eight, nine - and gives himself a mental shake as he realizes it. He really needs to stop counting things. Days in particular (twenty-six going on twenty-seven), because the chances of them ever going back is infinitely small and the numbers are bound to become even more depressing when they reach triple and quadruple numbers.
His fingers curl bitterly around the handrail. The wormhole had closed behind them to the heavy tune of their boots on the metal grating at the SGC. No one had spoken. Landry had taken one look at them and requested that an escort take them to their assigned quarters so they could rest. The IOA representative had protested loudly, and O'Neill and Landry had finally told him to shut up in stereo. The debriefings would have to wait.
Rodney thinks he understands a little better now why people are so fiercely loyal to these two men.
He'd been shown a drab, nondescript room on level 14, and he'd simply dropped his backpack on the floor and fallen face first onto the bed, burying his face in the scratchy blanket. He hadn't felt all that tired, he'd simply meant to close his eyes to try to get over the sick feeling that burned at the back of his throat, but when he'd slowly clawed himself back to land of the living, sixteen hours had passed somehow.
Two thick blankets had been spread over him, and Sheppard and Carson had been sitting by the fold-up table at the wall, playing a silent game of cards. Rodney's jacket had been hanging off the back of Carson's chair, the Atlantis patch staring at him from the sleeve.
With two hundred plus people coming through in pretty much one sweep, it had taken the medical staff several days to check them all, so Rodney hadn't really missed anything. Except for a few meals, which had left him hungry and a little shaky, but nothing worse.
The debriefing, when Landry and O'Neill couldn't postpone it any longer, had been every bit as difficult as Rodney had expected, and on top of that, he'd felt like he'd never quite woken up properly from that super-sized nap. He'd felt fuzzy and slow for days, frustratingly unable to concentrate on anything at all. He'd slept all the damn time. Not that he'd been allowed to work on anything important, anyway, but it had been a nuisance.
These days it's quite the opposite.
He sees a shrink once a week (orders from the SGC and he hasn't been able to argue his way out of them). As psychologists go, Dr. Richter isn't bad. Yes, he chews on his pen and that habit drives Rodney absolutely crazy, but they play chess during the sessions and it almost makes up for it.
The games are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Rodney can concentrate on his strategy instead of feeling self-conscious and exposed, but on the other hand, not focusing on the topic at hand makes it easier for Richter to sneak in under Rodney's radar and pin him with questions that he just doesn't want to think too hard about, and that could have been deflected had he not been distracted.
Last week, Richter suggested antidepressants, but Rodney just shook his head. Richter hadn't pushed the issue, but Rodney has enough experience with Heightmeier to know that doesn't mean he's given up on the idea, just that he's biding his time. Later that session, Richter had said again that feeling off balance and sleeping increasingly bad are both perfectly normal responses under these circumstances. The facts are starting to sink in for real now, he'd added as he'd captured Rodney's rook with his bishop.
And out of nowhere, Rodney had exploded.
Starting to sink in? Starting to? The facts had irreversibly sunk in the moment Helia and company had grown tired of their desperate attempts to change their minds and basically told them to suck it up and just deal. All those possibilities, all that hope, everything they'd dreamed of achieving snuffed out just like that. Thanks for bleeding and risking your lives, thanks for fucking dying for our city, but don't let the door hit you in the ass!
The chess pieces had scattered across the floor.
Richter had just sat back.
"Knowing and knowing, Rodney, are two very different things," he'd said gently when Rodney's anger had run out of momentum. He'd retrieved the white king from the floor and scrutinized the piece closely. "Good thing I play with plastic pieces," he'd said and placed it back on the board. "Want a restart?"
And to his mortal humiliation, Rodney had started to cry. Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, I want a restart. I want to go back and come up with some phony excuse to delay the test of the midway station so that we never run across Helia.
He'd cancelled the next two sessions. Screw them. If they wanted to pull him off the program for that, then fine, let them. Maybe he should look into JPL, like Zelenka. Or get a research position somewhere else. Cut his losses. Start over and grow old and bitter in some office somewhere, dreaming lonely dreams of blues and greens and the smell of an alien ocean.
Sheppard's door is the last one on the left. The brass number hangs a little crooked on the door, and Rodney frowns at the big, ugly sticker beneath it. It shows a snarling Doberman. 'Beware of the dog.'
He checks the address again to make sure.
The two of them have kept in touch this far, talked a few times a week, wasting half an hour - sometimes more, sometimes less - on the phone. Their arguments have been a little flat and Sheppard's choices of subject have been frustratingly neutral. But until he's proven wrong, Rodney will attribute that to dealing with being kicked out of Atlantis and breaking in a new team and not being able to open doors with his mind any longer.
He still can't label this thing, can't decide which side of the equation is the dominant one: the quick, wordless blowjobs or fucks when time was sparse and their nerves were shot to hell, or the more complicated side when his mattress would sometimes dip at 2 am and Sheppard's arm would drape over his side, and Rodney would always complain that he slept like crap because Sheppard was like a living furnace.
Maybe the sides are equally weighted, he thinks. Or maybe one side cancels out the other, and yeah, that sounds about right, because that's what it feels like he's left with some days. Nothing.
He takes a deep breath and quenches the urge to turn around and walk away with the same stubbornness he'd learned to curb his gun flinch. He will do this. He needs to do this, despite the risk of being proven right.
He knocks twice before he can change his mind.
"Go away. I'm not home." Sheppard's muted voice sounds tired.
"Open the damn door," Rodney calls out.
There's a dull sound, like something is dropped, and Rodney can hear Sheppard swearing under his breath. Three seconds later the door opens.
"You can't turn me away," Rodney says by way of greeting. "I brought food and drooling aliens and it's raining." He waves the Alien DVD in Sheppard's face. "Director's cut," he adds.
Sheppard stares at him blankly and Rodney lowers the film.
"I mean, if you don't have any other plans..."
Something changes in Sheppard's eyes. A moment later, his body language follows, and Rodney is waved in with a tired grin. "Well, if you've gone through all that trouble, I guess I'll have to cancel my hot date with Heidi Klum."
The small living room opens up into the kitchen, and both rooms are basically empty. A couple of cardboard boxes stapled in a corner. A couch. A TV flickering by the wall. A half-empty bottle on the floor. Next to it a cell phone (brand new if the box beside it is any indication) and a knocked over glass.
"Aren't you going to offer me a drink?" Rodney turns and asks just as Sheppard grabs him and pushes him back against the wall.
Sheppard's hands are everywhere, in Rodney's hair, in Rodney's shirt and his mouth is hungry and warm and not at all hesitant. "No," he says into Rodney's mouth and Rodney goes almost weak with relief.
Sheppard licks and bites Rodney's lip when he doesn't open up fast enough, and Rodney drops the DVD on the floor to be able to do something besides standing around like a damn statue. But he refuses to jeopardize the food that way, so he'll have to be content with wrapping one arm around Sheppard and kiss him back as best as he can.
Sheppard's mouth leaves a last, wet mark on him and it comes up, this time brushing against his ear, and the warmth of Sheppard's stubbly cheek against Rodney's is so achingly familiar.
"God," Sheppard exhales. He sounds just as worn and as thinly stretched as Rodney has felt since they left Atlantis.
"Sorry, wrong number," Rodney mumbles.
It's a bad joke, but Sheppard's breath is warm against Rodney's skin as he laughs soundlessly.
Rodney relaxes into Sheppard and pushes his free hand in under the warmth of his shirt. Around them the smell of jasmine rice and Panang Gai rises from the takeout boxes in Rodney's bag. Outside the rain-streaked windows, a pearl string of red taillights and blinding headlights are reflected in the wet pavement, and his mind flashes an image of Atlantis at him - majestic towers glittering with rain and lights and life against a distant night sky.
"You must be psychic. I was going crazy here," Sheppard sighs.
"No," Rodney replies. He blinks away the halos around the stop lights below as they go from green to amber to red. "Just horny."
~ The End ~
ETA: I kept my word, I didn't put any spoilers in the A/N. This time I put them in the summary. *head:desk* I am just that pretty.
Author: Spacebabe
Rating: PG
Pairings: Sheppard/McKay
Spoilers: Contains spoilers for The Return (and this time I will leave out the spoilers in the A/N :)
A/N: A mostly Rodney centric story. A big thank you to henrycat for her usual excellent beta services.
A Cold Night for Crocodiles
by spacebabe
The rain jumps wildly across the pavement, silver streaks in the glare of the headlights, as Rodney pulls into the small parking lot. Colorado Springs apparently hasn't seen this kind of rain in ages, and when the radio station starts up in true Weather Channel oh-my-god-it's-the-end-of-the-world spirit again, warning about flash floods and mudslides and god knows what, Rodney reaches over and turns the radio off.
Take it from one who's gotten well acquainted with the end of the world (this and several others), this isn't it.
He's been working for a few weeks already, in a temporary lab with temporary assistants and temporary tasks. Frustration has become a constant companion, chafing at him like coarse grain sandpaper, because even though Area 51 is full of Ancient technology and he's the world's foremost expert in the field, no one is trying to hide the fact that for some reason he's gone from chief scientific advisor in Atlantis to persona non grata around those things.
He can't figure out why. Sometimes he thinks they're afraid he's gone a little too native, that they need to wean him off the Pegasus galaxy. Other times he thinks it's just a power demonstration. They're doing it because they can.
So, he's stuck in the desert in Nevada doing research on things he has no interest in, and the others are scattered to the four winds. Sheppard is based at the SGC going off-world with a new team, Carson left for Scotland as soon as he was allowed, and Zelenka happily skipped on over to an east coast research position. Teyla and Ronon are still 3.34 million light years away. And with the walls Elizabeth has put up between herself and everyone else, she might as well be there with them.
Rodney pulls the smudged note from his jacket. Sam had provided the address over the phone when he called from a pay phone at Colorado Springs airport (his own cell phone had irreversibly died last Thursday) after belatedly realizing he had no idea where Sheppard was staying. He's forever grateful that Sam didn't ask any questions about why he was calling her late a Friday night asking for Sheppard's address.
His chicken scratches on the note line up with the street name and the illuminated numbers above the entrance, so Rodney finds an empty spot halfway down the parking lot. He jogs back towards Sheppard's apartment building, jacket pulled up over his head, plastic bag and DVD in hand.
It had been an impulsive thing, leaving Groom Lake and getting the hell out of Dodge for the weekend, and he hadn't let himself stop to think until he'd been in a middle seat next to an overly perfumed, middle-aged woman who apparently had been intent on talking his ears off. He'd demonstratively opened his laptop and done his best to ignore her nasal inanities, but she'd kept jabbing him with her elbow as she fluffed her bleached hair, telling him over and over how awful it was that she'd had to remove her shoes at the security check-point.
Fifteen minutes later he'd been unable to stop the heartfelt 'for the love of all things sacred, will you shut up' from escaping. She'd looked scandalized, but Rodney's outburst had had the desired result, because when he'd glanced up from his laptop as the stewardess offered him coffee, she and her stuff had been gone and hadn't returned.
While sipping the watery coffee at 28,000 feet, he'd started regretting the whole idea. He knew Sheppard wasn't off-world, but that didn't mean he was at home, or that he didn't already have plans. Or that he would welcome Rodney showing up at his door unannounced. But he was already in the air, and since he still has his apartment in Colorado Springs, Rodney figured he wouldn't be too screwed if things didn't work the way he'd planned. He needed the change of scenery, anyway.
The air inside the apartment complex smells like fried food and mothballs, and Elvis' muted voice is demanding a little less conversation, a little more action, please, from inside one of the apartments on the ground floor. A row of mailboxes is perched by the foot of the stairs. Somehow it doesn't surprise him that 3C has no name on it.
As he climbs the stairs, he counts the steps unthinkingly - seven, eight, nine - and gives himself a mental shake as he realizes it. He really needs to stop counting things. Days in particular (twenty-six going on twenty-seven), because the chances of them ever going back is infinitely small and the numbers are bound to become even more depressing when they reach triple and quadruple numbers.
His fingers curl bitterly around the handrail. The wormhole had closed behind them to the heavy tune of their boots on the metal grating at the SGC. No one had spoken. Landry had taken one look at them and requested that an escort take them to their assigned quarters so they could rest. The IOA representative had protested loudly, and O'Neill and Landry had finally told him to shut up in stereo. The debriefings would have to wait.
Rodney thinks he understands a little better now why people are so fiercely loyal to these two men.
He'd been shown a drab, nondescript room on level 14, and he'd simply dropped his backpack on the floor and fallen face first onto the bed, burying his face in the scratchy blanket. He hadn't felt all that tired, he'd simply meant to close his eyes to try to get over the sick feeling that burned at the back of his throat, but when he'd slowly clawed himself back to land of the living, sixteen hours had passed somehow.
Two thick blankets had been spread over him, and Sheppard and Carson had been sitting by the fold-up table at the wall, playing a silent game of cards. Rodney's jacket had been hanging off the back of Carson's chair, the Atlantis patch staring at him from the sleeve.
With two hundred plus people coming through in pretty much one sweep, it had taken the medical staff several days to check them all, so Rodney hadn't really missed anything. Except for a few meals, which had left him hungry and a little shaky, but nothing worse.
The debriefing, when Landry and O'Neill couldn't postpone it any longer, had been every bit as difficult as Rodney had expected, and on top of that, he'd felt like he'd never quite woken up properly from that super-sized nap. He'd felt fuzzy and slow for days, frustratingly unable to concentrate on anything at all. He'd slept all the damn time. Not that he'd been allowed to work on anything important, anyway, but it had been a nuisance.
These days it's quite the opposite.
He sees a shrink once a week (orders from the SGC and he hasn't been able to argue his way out of them). As psychologists go, Dr. Richter isn't bad. Yes, he chews on his pen and that habit drives Rodney absolutely crazy, but they play chess during the sessions and it almost makes up for it.
The games are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Rodney can concentrate on his strategy instead of feeling self-conscious and exposed, but on the other hand, not focusing on the topic at hand makes it easier for Richter to sneak in under Rodney's radar and pin him with questions that he just doesn't want to think too hard about, and that could have been deflected had he not been distracted.
Last week, Richter suggested antidepressants, but Rodney just shook his head. Richter hadn't pushed the issue, but Rodney has enough experience with Heightmeier to know that doesn't mean he's given up on the idea, just that he's biding his time. Later that session, Richter had said again that feeling off balance and sleeping increasingly bad are both perfectly normal responses under these circumstances. The facts are starting to sink in for real now, he'd added as he'd captured Rodney's rook with his bishop.
And out of nowhere, Rodney had exploded.
Starting to sink in? Starting to? The facts had irreversibly sunk in the moment Helia and company had grown tired of their desperate attempts to change their minds and basically told them to suck it up and just deal. All those possibilities, all that hope, everything they'd dreamed of achieving snuffed out just like that. Thanks for bleeding and risking your lives, thanks for fucking dying for our city, but don't let the door hit you in the ass!
The chess pieces had scattered across the floor.
Richter had just sat back.
"Knowing and knowing, Rodney, are two very different things," he'd said gently when Rodney's anger had run out of momentum. He'd retrieved the white king from the floor and scrutinized the piece closely. "Good thing I play with plastic pieces," he'd said and placed it back on the board. "Want a restart?"
And to his mortal humiliation, Rodney had started to cry. Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, I want a restart. I want to go back and come up with some phony excuse to delay the test of the midway station so that we never run across Helia.
He'd cancelled the next two sessions. Screw them. If they wanted to pull him off the program for that, then fine, let them. Maybe he should look into JPL, like Zelenka. Or get a research position somewhere else. Cut his losses. Start over and grow old and bitter in some office somewhere, dreaming lonely dreams of blues and greens and the smell of an alien ocean.
Sheppard's door is the last one on the left. The brass number hangs a little crooked on the door, and Rodney frowns at the big, ugly sticker beneath it. It shows a snarling Doberman. 'Beware of the dog.'
He checks the address again to make sure.
The two of them have kept in touch this far, talked a few times a week, wasting half an hour - sometimes more, sometimes less - on the phone. Their arguments have been a little flat and Sheppard's choices of subject have been frustratingly neutral. But until he's proven wrong, Rodney will attribute that to dealing with being kicked out of Atlantis and breaking in a new team and not being able to open doors with his mind any longer.
He still can't label this thing, can't decide which side of the equation is the dominant one: the quick, wordless blowjobs or fucks when time was sparse and their nerves were shot to hell, or the more complicated side when his mattress would sometimes dip at 2 am and Sheppard's arm would drape over his side, and Rodney would always complain that he slept like crap because Sheppard was like a living furnace.
Maybe the sides are equally weighted, he thinks. Or maybe one side cancels out the other, and yeah, that sounds about right, because that's what it feels like he's left with some days. Nothing.
He takes a deep breath and quenches the urge to turn around and walk away with the same stubbornness he'd learned to curb his gun flinch. He will do this. He needs to do this, despite the risk of being proven right.
He knocks twice before he can change his mind.
"Go away. I'm not home." Sheppard's muted voice sounds tired.
"Open the damn door," Rodney calls out.
There's a dull sound, like something is dropped, and Rodney can hear Sheppard swearing under his breath. Three seconds later the door opens.
"You can't turn me away," Rodney says by way of greeting. "I brought food and drooling aliens and it's raining." He waves the Alien DVD in Sheppard's face. "Director's cut," he adds.
Sheppard stares at him blankly and Rodney lowers the film.
"I mean, if you don't have any other plans..."
Something changes in Sheppard's eyes. A moment later, his body language follows, and Rodney is waved in with a tired grin. "Well, if you've gone through all that trouble, I guess I'll have to cancel my hot date with Heidi Klum."
The small living room opens up into the kitchen, and both rooms are basically empty. A couple of cardboard boxes stapled in a corner. A couch. A TV flickering by the wall. A half-empty bottle on the floor. Next to it a cell phone (brand new if the box beside it is any indication) and a knocked over glass.
"Aren't you going to offer me a drink?" Rodney turns and asks just as Sheppard grabs him and pushes him back against the wall.
Sheppard's hands are everywhere, in Rodney's hair, in Rodney's shirt and his mouth is hungry and warm and not at all hesitant. "No," he says into Rodney's mouth and Rodney goes almost weak with relief.
Sheppard licks and bites Rodney's lip when he doesn't open up fast enough, and Rodney drops the DVD on the floor to be able to do something besides standing around like a damn statue. But he refuses to jeopardize the food that way, so he'll have to be content with wrapping one arm around Sheppard and kiss him back as best as he can.
Sheppard's mouth leaves a last, wet mark on him and it comes up, this time brushing against his ear, and the warmth of Sheppard's stubbly cheek against Rodney's is so achingly familiar.
"God," Sheppard exhales. He sounds just as worn and as thinly stretched as Rodney has felt since they left Atlantis.
"Sorry, wrong number," Rodney mumbles.
It's a bad joke, but Sheppard's breath is warm against Rodney's skin as he laughs soundlessly.
Rodney relaxes into Sheppard and pushes his free hand in under the warmth of his shirt. Around them the smell of jasmine rice and Panang Gai rises from the takeout boxes in Rodney's bag. Outside the rain-streaked windows, a pearl string of red taillights and blinding headlights are reflected in the wet pavement, and his mind flashes an image of Atlantis at him - majestic towers glittering with rain and lights and life against a distant night sky.
"You must be psychic. I was going crazy here," Sheppard sighs.
"No," Rodney replies. He blinks away the halos around the stop lights below as they go from green to amber to red. "Just horny."
~ The End ~
ETA: I kept my word, I didn't put any spoilers in the A/N. This time I put them in the summary. *head:desk* I am just that pretty.