TEAM HOME: Eye for an eye, "Illumination"
Title: Illumination
Author: burklesl17
Team: Home
Prompt: Eye for an eye
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: none given
Summary: He screamed as his vision was filled with the sharp metal syringe and the pastor shouted in his head as the pain hit, “An eye for an eye John Sheppard, an eye for an eye…”
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**
John struggled as they grabbed at him and tried to tie him to the chair, flailed at them with his arm, kicked out and twisted his body, but there were too many of them and they wrapped leather straps round his chest and bound up his wrists in buckles and rope. A huge hand held his head against the back of the chair and scalding light flashed into the cave making him blink frantically.
He held himself still and gasped for air as a man walked forwards and stood opposite him.
“You took his eyes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Someone else backhanded him, their metal ring cut his lip.
“You took the God’s eyes!”
And he realised why he was here. He tried to sit up but the hand on his forehead held him back and he spat out, “They mayor said we could have them, we traded for them.”
“They belonged to the God. They were not Dano’s to give and we do not recognise his authority.”
John looked around the room, but the faces were hard, no help in any of them.
“We can give you back the ZPMs. Where are the rest of my team?”
“What do you call them?”
“ZPMs. They’re power sources, but they don’t power anything here, we can use them that’s why we wanted them, if we’d known they were sacred we wouldn’t have taken them.”
He thought of Rodney practically bouncing around the statue and cradling the ZPM. “I don’t think it’s ever been used Sheppard, it’s at full power…”
“The statue is defiled.”
“Look, I’m sorry okay, and if you take me to the rest of my team I‘m sure they‘ll be sorry too…”
He trailed off as the man picked a long metal syringe off a small table. It was filled with oily, purple liquid.
“You took his eyes, we take yours. It is justice, we will let you live.”
He walked closer and John stared up at his thick, scarred arms and the liquid slipping around in the huge glass ball at the end of the syringe.
“It was a mistake! Please!”
“The gods make no mistakes.”
Another hand grabbed his jaw and he tried to struggle but there was no give in the straps at all.
“Your eyes for his.”
An eye for an eye. He remembered, suddenly and irrationally, sitting in a pew during Sunday school, the exasperated pastor with his greasy hair leaning over him and saying, “There are certain laws that are immutable John, the Ten Commandments, an eye for an eye.” Sunlight had been coming through the stained glass windows, red, orange, yellow, blue…
He screamed as his vision was filled with the sharp metal syringe and the pastor shouted in his head as the pain hit, “An eye for an eye John Sheppard, an eye for an eye…”
He woke up in total darkness. He could feel his eyelids blinking but couldn't see anything.
“I think he’s awake, Sheppard?”
“Rodney?”
He turned his head towards Rodney’s voice and tried to sit up but hands gently pushed him down.
“Hey, hey take it easy.”
“I can’t see.”
There were more people in the room now, he could hear them under Rodney’s babbling. He tried to get up again, but someone else was holding him down and then a small hand gently touched his cheek and he frantically snapped his head away, sliding out of their grip and collapsing off the bed onto the floor.
“John!”
“McKay!”
He groped forwards and Rodney grabbed his hands. He slid them up Rodney’s arms and let them settle on his shoulders.
“John, you have to sit back down. We’re trying to help you, so stop panicking.”
They just gasped there for a moment and he clenched his fingers in Rodney’s jacket.
“You’re safe. You’re in the medical bay on Atlantis, we got you out.”
The panic slowly seeped out of him and he sat back cautiously, still keeping his hands on Rodney’s arms.
“Okay.”
It was the infirmary. It smelt like hospitals, disinfectant masking the sourer smells of bodies and fear. He could hear the hospital machines too, the steady beeps and whirring.
“How did we get out of the cave?”
Rodney squeezed his arms quickly and then slowly stood up, he could sense his body moving in front of him.
“Me and Ronon broke us out and then we reached you…”
“Don’t remember you doing much breaking out McKay.”
“I helped!”
He turned his head towards Ronon’s voice and flinched as a hand settled on his shoulder.
“You want a hand up Sheppard?”
“Thanks.”
He gripped Ronon’s arm and stumbled to his feet, slid his foot back and groped for the bed, struggling to find it for a moment, before sitting back down on carefully. Someone made a noise that turned into a hoarse cough and he felt himself start to blush.
“Colonel?” He turned towards Keller’s voice. “I need to examine your eyes.”
He nodded slowly and felt a faint breeze as she moved next to the bed.
“The rest of you better leave for now.” There was a blustery chorus and he realised there were more people in the room than he’d thought. “You can all come and see Colonel Sheppard again later.”
He heard metal rattling as Keller pulled the curtain round the bed and the squeak of her shoes as she walked up to him and said carefully, “What, if anything, can you see?”
He took a deep breath and the word almost stuck in his throat, “Nothing.”
She hissed slightly and said, “What if I do this?”
“Still nothing. What did you do?”
“Shone a torch in your eyes.”
He remembered having that done to him, it hurt, made him blink and he realised he could still see his memories.
“You might not have seen it, but your pupil reacted and you blinked that’s a good sign. How do your eyes feel?”
“They hurt.”
“How do they hurt? Do they sting, ache or something else?”
He blinked purposefully and said softly, “They sting when I blink, just feel kind of sore otherwise.”
There was silence and he said quickly, “Keller?”
“Sorry, I nodded. That’s a good sign. If the nerves in your eyes can still feel pain, they can still feel. Believe me that’s very good.”
He nodded and heard her move around, the clatter of something on a metal tray, the sound of someone crying hopelessly in another room.
She was quiet through the rest of the examination, just occasionally asking him to move his head or answer questions. There was just blackness, total darkness. He tried not to flinch every time she touched his face.
Eventually it was done and she said, “Rodney brought the solution back from the planet. I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t know if we can fix this entirely or even partially, but I think your eyes are in a far better condition than we initially thought. Once we’ve worked out how they hurt you we can work on making it better.”
She put her hand on his arm. “It’s far from hopeless Colonel Sheppard.”
He took a deep breath as she walked away, wishing he could throw up the mix of fear and relief shaking in his stomach.
Foot steps came closer and he looked up sharply.
“It’s us Rodney and Teyla.”
“Good evening John.”
He heard her take another two steps forward and she put her hands on his shoulders. He leant forward awkwardly and moved too fast so their foreheads smacked together. He pulled back quickly and stood up.
“Can I get out of here?”
“Um, yes. Yes, we came to walk you to your room.”
Walking to his quarters was strange, he felt stupid and childish clinging onto Rodney’s hand and could feel his palms sweating. The corridors seemed to echo strangely, more alien than they’d felt for years and he kept tripping over or walking past corridors Rodney would have to nudge him down.
Now and again someone would walk past and he’d hear the sudden drop in conversation and creepy footsteps echoing away, like a horror film, unseen noises in the darkness.
Rodney kept up a constant stream of chatter, telling him where they were but it felt oddly meaningless without his eyes to guide him.
When they got to his room he pushed Rodney away and said roughly, “I can take it from here.” He put his palms on the door, feeling the smooth metal move beneath them.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine in a moment John, but let us check there are no obstacles.”
They walked into the room and John clung to the doorway for a moment before taking a step inside, the darkness didn’t change but the space felt different, more intimate and less echoing.
“Good thing you keep your room so tidy.” Rodney’s voice sounded fake, the way he sounded when he was trying to put a brave face on things. He did it so rarely he never managed it convincingly. “I’ll just check the bathroom.”
The bathroom door swished open with an electrical crackle and he jumped as Teyla took his hand.
“Here is your desk, and the chair.” He felt the metal and plastic against his skin and then she pulled him away, “There are two steps to the bed.”
He took three and his knees hit the side. She ignored this and said, “Would you like me to open the window.
“Why? I won’t be able to see anything.”
“No, but the breeze may refresh you.”
He felt like an asshole and nodded at her, heard the soft whisper as it opened.
“I’ve rearranged the bathroom a bit. I’ve put toothpaste, hair gel, everything like that on top on the shelf over the sink. Will you be, um…”
“You know where we are if you need us. Would you like us to stay for awhile now, or sleep?”
He sat down very slowly on the bed, sliding his hands out behind him to make sure he didn’t miss it.
“I think I’ll sleep.”
He heard them moving around, their clothing rustling and murmured goodnights until the door swished shut behind them. As soon as they left he wished he hadn’t asked them to go, the darkness was claustrophobic with no sound to break it up. He couldn't face trying to turn on the computer so he moved up the bed until his head lay against the window sill and he could hear the noise of the sea and murmuring waves.
***
If the night had been overwhelming the morning was humiliating. He’d slept badly with dreams that flickered between preachers screaming at him, “An eye for an eye John Sheppard, an eye for an eye!” and glowing ZPMs looming out of the darkness, shining like cracked crystal through bleeding stained glass.
Waking to pitch darkness was almost worse though. He had no way of telling what time it was but got out of bed anyway. He hadn’t been able to face the bathroom last night and ended up almost falling through the door.
He had to grope around for the toilet and it was more luck than judgement he didn’t piss all over the floor. When he tried to find his toothbrush he just sent everything clattering into the sink. He got most of the bottles and things, he’d never realised he had so many of them, back on the shelf but then realised he wasn’t sure what half of them were. He ended up squirting toothpaste and hair gel all over the sink and his hands before giving up on the gel completely. He didn’t even bother picking up the razor.
He couldn’t face yesterday’s clothes, they smelt of blood, dirt and disinfectant. He did manage to find what felt like a pair of BDUs and a t-shirt, although he wasn’t sure if it was a casual shirt or a work one when the door chimed.
“Who is it?”
“Rodney.”
He heard the door opening and waved the t-shirt in Rodney’s direction.
“Is this black?”
Rodney’s voice sounded slightly odd as he said, “Do you own any shirts that aren’t black?”
“Yes.”
“Did you try and do your hair?”
He touched it self-consciously, “Yes?”
“It’s, um, fine. Shall we go?”
He felt his way to the door by dragging his hand across the furniture until he was able to hook his hand around the door frame. Rodney touched his elbow and he jerked his arm away, they froze for a moment and Rodney said in a weirdly strangled voice, “You’re going to have to let people help you, I know…”
“I know.”
He reached out cautiously and felt the top of Rodney’s arm. He slid his hand down Rodney’s jacket and round the elbow and didn’t breathe out until he’d wrapped his fingers round Rodney’s wrist for a second.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes, yes, ready.”
They walked off in silence, he trailed his finger tips along the walls, feeling them humming softly in weird sizzling waves. He wasn’t concentrating and suddenly smacked into the wall just as Rodney said, “Turn left here.”
“I got that thanks.”
He rubbed his head and scowled in Rodney’s general direction.
“Tell me to turn sooner next time.”
“Sorry.” Rodney took his elbow, “Come on this way.”
They walked on a bit further, but he didn’t trust his own feet and stumbled as heard footsteps and voices behind them. The voices stopped suddenly and he said, “Does everyone know?”
“Sam sent round an email.”
“Right.”
He sped up but the feet passed them anyway, they started talking again once they were slightly ahead of them. Their voices were unnaturally high and fake.
He almost fell over twice more, nearly twisting his ankle on some steps before they got to the mess.
“Sit down, I’ll bring breakfast.”
He flopped into a chair and put his head into his hands, listening to the cutlery clanking around them before Rodney came back and shoved a tray in front of him.
“It’s toast, apple juice and coffee. I put Blotchy Purple Fruit jam on the toast.”
“Thanks.”
He groped awkwardly for the coffee and managed to get his hand round the cup. It burnt his lip as he got the angle slightly wrong and he put it down it too quickly so it splashed across his palm. He snapped his hand back and Rodney grabbed at it, pulling him across the table so he put his other hand in the toast.
“McKay!”
“I’m sorry! I was just trying to see if you were burnt!”
“I’m fine, but covered in fucking jam!”
The rest of the mess had gone quiet and he nearly stood up but Rodney caught his wrist and said quietly, “There isn’t a single thing about this that doesn’t suck, but storming out right now won’t help.”
He slowly relaxed back down and Rodney passed him a tissue, saying quietly, “Wipe up the jam and I’ll get more toast.”
He sat there, feeling like he was going to throw up as Rodney walked away and then took a very careful sip of apple juice. When he managed that he tried the coffee. He sighed as he managed that too and drank it slowly until Rodney came back, concentrating on coffee and nothing else.
He jumped slightly as Rodney put a plate in front of him.
“John.”
He looked up towards Rodney’s voice and didn’t flinch at all as Rodney took his hand and pressed it against the plate, saying softly, “Here’s the toast.”
“Thanks.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes and then Rodney said. “We’re going to fix this. If I have to go back to Earth and speak to specialist doctors for months we’ll fix this. I had two doctorates before I was thirty, the human eye can’t be nearly as complex.”
He stared at the table, wondering what was showing on his face and what he was missing on Rodney’s, but managed to say, “No, why does it take doctors so long to qualify anyway?”
“I have no idea.”
***
There were more tests after breakfast, Keller kept up a constant drone of medical speech but it was still horrible. Hands he couldn’t see coming kept touching his skin and his eyes still ached.
After the tests she said she’d call Rodney to help him and he heard her move away. It didn’t seem like anyone else was in the room and he cautiously slid off the bed and stumbled his way to the door. Something he’d grabbed clattered to the floor and he sped up as he lunged out of the room and groped along the wall until he heard a transporter swish open.
It seemed to be empty and he pressed his hands against the screen, felt it flare against his skin. He touched blindly and it sped him away before spitting him out into a corridor that smelt of dank water. It was silent and he staggered for a few paces before his radio jerked and Rodney said in his ear, “You’ve gone into the old flooded levels. What the hell are you doing down there?”
He spun round confused and his foot splashed into a puddle of water.
“John, John are you there?”
“I’m here.” He clung to the walls and felt them start to buzz.
“Do you need help?”
“No I don’t, they aren’t flooded anymore.”
“Well what are you doing there?”
He backwards and clutched at the transporter.
“Going for a stroll.”
“You should get back here.”
“I’m fine.”
He stumbled back into the transporter and pressed his fingers against the screen again.
“Are you back in the transporter?”
“Yes.”
“Try voice activating it.”
“That’s never worked before.”
“We didn’t need it to before.”
He felt slightly stupid as he said, “Laboratory one.”
Nothing happened and a moment later he heard Rodney say, “It didn’t work.”
“I know that.”
He heard Zelenka say, “Maybe you need to speak Ancient?”
“Because I’m so great at that.”
He dropped his head against the wall as his radio chattered insensibly. Then Rodney said, “I think it’s the mental component, it’s not just what you say, it’s what you think. Really concentrate on where you want to be.”
He shut his eyes, although it made no difference, and pressed his palm in the centre of the transporter screen. He thought of Rodney’s lab, of the chemicals and coffee smell and the nape of Rodney’s neck as he bent over his laptop. There, he thought ridiculously, take me there.
The transporter jerked and then it opened and Rodney pushed inside, saying excitedly, “See it worked, you don’t need to be able to see to get the round the city!” Big hands clasped his shoulders as Rodney said, “With your sense of direction it will be an improvement, just think of where you need to be!”
Later he lay in bed listening to the Empire Strikes Back, brought round by Rodney because, “You can recite it anyway, you know what’s happening without seeing it.”
He did know it, all the details, from the swirling snow storm at the beginning to the expression on Luke’s face as he lost his arm.
Rodney sat by his head and said things he didn’t need to be told like, “This is the part where…” Ronon munched popcorn at his feet and Teyla scolded him for getting kernels on the floor.
He tried opening and shutting his eyes at first, but then gave up and kept them shut. As the Death Star exploded he saw trails of fire streak across his brain and it left him feeling brittle like paper thin glass.
The next morning he woke panicking as he lurched from dreams bleached by stained glass to darkness. He lay there gasping and covered in cold sweat for a moment before stumbling to the bathroom. He managed to get the shower on and shook under it for a moment as the water scorched his skin and washed away the nightmares.
He ran his hand across his cheek, irritated by the stubble and walked into Rodney when he got to the door.
“I came to walk you to breakfast.”
He tried to protest for a moment but ended up shrugging his shoulders and nodding, “Fine.”
“You did your hair again didn’t you?”
“Why?”
“Nothing.”
They walked slowly and he kept a hand on the wall. He remembered the route from yesterday and half smiled when Rodney caught his arm to steer him round a corner and help him down some steps.
“I know where I’m going.”
“Of course you do. You know this place like the back of your hand and other trite expressions of familiarity.”
He snorted as they sat down to breakfast and pressed his palm against the window. The glass felt cool, the sun hadn’t had a chance to warm it through yet, and he knew exactly which bit of Atlantis he should be able to see. It was both a comforting and painful thought.
He didn’t go wandering for the rest of the day but stayed in his quarters and listened to Cash and country so loudly the gravely, raspy voices filled all the spaces in the room. He ran his fingertips along his eyelashes, but although he could feel his eyelids fluttering under his hand he couldn’t feel it on his eye.
He rolled over and let his hand hang out the window as Johnny sang about a far away criminal in a far away galaxy.
The door chimed, he heard leather squeaking and then Ronon said, “Sheppard, coming for a run?”
He rolled on his back and said, “How am I supposed to run?”
“Same way you always do.”
He heard Ronon moving forward and tried to sit up but he was too late and was pulled off the bed.
“Ow.”
“We’ll go the South tier, run round that balcony ten times, no corners or steps.”
“It curves.”
“You know how to run it, come on.”
He let Ronon deal with the transporter as he really wasn’t sure he wanted to try running enough to get him there. Ronon turned him round and said, “Run.”
“Ronon.”
“Run Sheppard!”
And then legs were pounding past him, echoing in the empty corridor. He ran into the wall at first, but he worked out the gradient of the curve. Once he’d got that it was simple, although weird, running forward into darkness. He wasn’t going as fast as normal, but feeling the muscles in his legs stretch, the air rush past him and the matched panting of Ronon’s breathing felt fantastic.
He ended up stopping before Ronon and sank down onto the floor, gulping water that spilled onto his chin and shirt.
“Feel better?”
He didn’t bother looking in Ronon’s direction, instead he turned his head towards the window, pressing his cheek against the wall and feeling Atlantis hum, “Yeah.”
The next day was similar, although his eyes hurt more when Keller put drops in them, which she decided was probably a good sign. He slipped away from the infirmary and walked carefully through Atlantis, following the walls and realising just how well he knew this place.
It was reassuring, to realise he recognised this corridor, that this cold stairwell lead to Rodney’s lab, this bend that smelt of baking from the kitchens to the gym, this door frame that arched so sensuously under his palm was a corridor from the gate room. He followed the last one carefully until he walked into the rush of people that always seemed to be in there.
He could hear Chuck flirting with one of the marines and the gate wooshed to life as a team came home from off world. He edged round the outskirts of the room and paused as he heard Rodney saying anxiously, “You cannot seriously mean that? I can’t believe you’d even suggest it!”
Carter replied, “I have to think of the entire base Rodney, not just Colonel Sheppard.”
“We need him here, sending him back will not protect Atlantis.”
He leant back against the wall and clenched his fingers as though he could dig into it. It vibrated sharply under his hands.
“I don’t want to send him back Rodney. But you have to understand that if we can’t cure him Atlantis is not the best place for a blind man.”
“He won’t be any safer on Earth. He’s got no sense of direction and not much more common sense, he’ll fall under a bus in ten minutes. And Earth isn’t his home, here is. Give him another week or two and he’ll know his way around as well as he did before.”
“And what about when the Wraith attack? Or the Genii decide they aren’t our friends after all? Or the next lot of people we end up fighting?”
“He’d still be…”
“No, McKay he wouldn’t.”
“He’d be no more useless than the half my science team who have yet to get past the ‘you hold this end of the gun and point this end’ stage!”
He couldn’t listen anymore and stumbled out of the gate room, not paying attention to where going. He realised he was lost and panicked as he couldn’t get his bearings, couldn’t recognise the texture of the wall and felt like he was spinning in circles. He jumped and lashed out as someone grabbed his shoulder but they caught his fist and Teyla said, “John!”
They froze there, he was gasping like he’d run a race and could smell the spicy, herby scent of her. She carefully dropped the hand holding back his and then released his shoulder. He could still hear her though, her breathing as she carefully stood back and said, “I was looking to see if you wanted to spar.”
“I can’t even see.”
“No you cannot and you need to learn how to defend yourself this way.”
“I’m not going to be allowed off Atlantis.” Or even to stay on Atlantis and that thought was something so crushing he was forced to put his hand on his chest.
“Atlantis is not always safe.”
“I won’t be able to see what I’m doing, I could hurt you or the baby.”
She laughed and it was the sweetest thing he’d heard since the darkness had started.
“You will get that close to me John Sheppard!”
Teyla steered him to the gym, but he still couldn’t quite follow where they were, the landmarks that seemed so clear earlier had splintered in his panic and he couldn’t bring them together. He wasn’t certain until he felt the soft floor of the gym under his feet.
“Just one to start with.” She carefully wrapped his fingers round the worn wood of the stick and stepped away.
“You could be on the other side of the room.”
“You need to listen.”
He heard her take two slow steps, the mat squeaking under her feet. He listened as her feet sped up and swung round to where he thought she was. He stumbled as his stick hit air and she tapped him on the shoulder blade.
“You stopped listening.”
He whirls round and the stick cracked on his lower back, making him arch his spine.
“Listen John. You have more senses that just sight. Where am I right now.”
He could hear her feet and pointed.
“But I can move fast.”
Her feet sped up and he lunged after her, she darted past him and he thrust his arm out, but her foot caught him from behind and he fell to the floor. He bit his lip as he hit the floor.
“Not going easy on me then.” His mouth tasted of copper.
“The Wraith will not.” Her voice was hard as he pushed himself off the floor and onto his hands and knees.
“John,” he sensed her moving the air as she knelt in front of him.
“Like it or not you are more vulnerable now and you must learn.”
He sat back and wished he could turn away, stare into space, pretend to be distracted by something.
“Is there really any point.”
It wasn’t a question and she sighed as she stood up slowly.
“This will always be your home John.”
He stood up and allowed her to lead him out of the room. He hadn’t even known which direction the door was.
The next three days weren’t much better. The feeling that his friends and co-workers weren’t doing much more than tiptoeing round him didn’t help. He went wandering, away from the packed hallways and conversations that ebbed off sharply when people saw him walking slowly past.
Eventually he was cornered by Rodney who steered him into his lab and said quickly, “You must be really bored. I’d be going out of my mind if I was you. I um, got you, well I got you something.”
He sat down carefully, groping for the swivel chair so it wouldn’t roll out from under him. He could hear Rodney clicking the mouse, hitting the keyboard once and then a soft, English voice rolled through the room.
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with..."
“That’s War and Peace.”
“Yes, I, well I asked someone at the SGC to send me the file, I’ve uploaded it onto your iPod. You don’t have to listen to it but I thought you might like it. I’ve also adapted that tracking device so you can hold it when you’re walking and it will beep and vibrate if there’s anything on the path big enough to trip you up…”
“Rodney.”
He reached forward and Rodney was a lot closer than he’d thought because their hands touched. He felt the top of Rodney’s hand, the skin and veins. He hesitated for a moment, not sure what his face showed as Anna Pavlovna said, “Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?"
He heard Rodney breathe in sharply and the muscle under his palm tensed. He started to pull his hand away just as Rodney turned his over and carefully wrapped his fingers around his wrist, one lying along a vein leading to his heart.
“John?” He sounded nervous and Prince Vasili spoke like a wind up clock as John slid forward, feeling oddly uncontrolled. Atlantis was floating away from him with every blink he couldn’t feel and every second the world stayed dark and Rodney’s burst of unexpected kindness illuminated something in his mind. It burnt up the Rodney walls he’d put up for his own safety years ago, where he thought everything had started to rust.
He slid out of the chair and heard it hit the edge of the desk as he put his arms awkwardly round Rodney’s neck. Rodney didn’t move for a second and then grabbed him, pulled him close and his face was crushed into Rodney’s neck, their chests were pressed together and he was breathing in the smell of the man, no aftershave or soap, just skin and the faintest smell of the burn from soldering irons. He let his hands move slowly to Rodney’s back, land on his shoulder blades and then move cautiously down to the small of his back.
“I’m so glad you’re alive.”
He hadn’t been expecting that and stiffened but Rodney clutched him closer and said, “I know you hate your life right now, but we’ll fix it, we’ll find a way and if we don’t, even if we don’t, I am still so glad you’re alive.”
Rodney’s lips were moving against his ear and he shivered, not certain yet whether he agreed or not. Rodney’s hands slid up and then his lips moved against his cheek as he said, “There is nothing, no one, who I will let take you away from here.”
He shivered and stood back, let his hand fall against Rodney’s cheek, felt the stubble scrape his hand, the softness and he breathed, “It’s not up to you.”
“And do you seriously think anyone could beat me?”
He smiled, felt it stretch his skin unfamiliarly, smiling for the first time in a week, like something he’d forgotten how to do. He felt one of Rodney’s hands rub his upper lip, the other tighten on his waist.
“No, no I don’t.”
And he meant every word as he moved his face down. He missed Rodney’s lips and ended up pressed against his cheek, but Rodney caught his head and steered their mouths together. It was a brief, dry tentative kiss that deepened into something deeper and richer that made his hands tremble. When they eventually pulled apart Rodney said his name in a voice that was shaky and edging into wonder and cupped his face with his hands.
“Why did you do that?”
He shrugged, didn’t have an answer but ran his fingers through Rodney’s hair and desperately wished he could see the expression on his face.
“I thought you were straight.”
He snorted and moved forwards again, tracing the edge of Rodney’s ear with his nose.
“You’re not very observant.”
Rodney’s arms came around him again and he kissed his neck. They held each other like that for awhile and he found himself taking weird, shuddery breaths that had nothing to do with the warmth of kissing Rodney.
“What if I can never fly again?”
Rodney was silent for a moment and then said, “We’ll get an F-16 from Earth and teach Ronon to fly. He can take you up. You’ll still be in the sky.”
There was nothing to say to that and he just held onto Rodney even tighter.
The next morning he didn’t realise he’d woken up. He went straight from the dream, (the pastor’s breath hot in the air, lemonade light and the first creepy sensation of a hand cupping his hip,) to a faint gray light. It spread across the world and then blinked out again. He rubbed his hand over his eyes, scratching at the odd light, until he got it, he was blinking, he could feel his eyelids closing over his eyeballs.
He shut his eyes firmly and opened them. He couldn’t see anything but gray fog, but still, it was gray. He turned towards the window and the gray lightened, towards the door it was darker.
He hit his radio and croaked into it, “Rodney?”
There was shuffling and throat clearing and then Rodney said in a voice that might have been slightly more hoarse and intimate than the morning before, “Yes?”
“I can see light.”
There was another endless silence and then Rodney said, “Just light? No shapes?”
He waved his hand in front of his face and felt crushed by disappointment when it made little damn difference.
“No.”
“Doesn't matter, even just being able to tell the difference between light and dark is great, we didn’t think it would happen for another week at least.”
“I can see.”
“Yes you can and that’s amazing. God John, that’s amazing and it’s going to get better, I’ll be there in a moment.” There was the noise of bed covers, of Rodney practically falling out of them, skin and material rubbing together. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”
“I know.”
He stood up, felt the sheets fall away from his body and pulled on the same pants he’d been wearing for days, turned his head towards the light and remembered Rodney saying he wouldn’t let him leave, never mind anyone trying to make him go, that wasn’t a choice he was even allowed to make for himself at the moment.
He touched his lips and wondered if he‘d have woken up with Rodney if another minor crisis hadn‘t demanded Rodney‘s immediate attention. It was the same potential disaster now it had been for years, but in this world of darkness and gray fog he couldn’t bring himself to care. If this was all he was going to get before a life on a planet where the gravity that was subtly wrong tied him to the ground, he was going to have it completely. Fill himself on it until there was nothing else in his head.
The door chimed, he didn’t bother with a shirt and moved round the furniture without realising it, not even using his hands to guide him and opened the door. He leant against the door frame and said, “Didn’t take you long.” His voice wasn’t quite as smooth as he’d thought it should have been, his eyes vaguely stunned by the sudden bright glow of light.
There was silence and he said very cautiously, feeling embarrassment spread up his spine and round the curve of his hips and skull, “Who’s there?”
He could hear the amusement in the pause before,
“Ronon.”
“And Teyla.”
“Right, um come in.”
Teyla sounded like she was trying not to laugh as she said, “Who were you expecting?”
He grabbed at a the chest of drawers and groped to find the one with t-shirts in, turned it round in his hands until he’d found the label and pulled it over his head.
“No one, um…”
Ronon snorted and then Rodney burst into the room. John felt and heard him like the room had suddenly become charged with static electricity and Rodney grabbed at his arms and pulled him round so he almost fell.
“What can you see, what exactly can you see?”
“Light,” he looked up and could make out a vaguely human shaped shadow in front of him. “You’re blocking out the light, but you’re just a blob.”
Keller ran in then and he was dragged to the infirmary where he was poked and prodded and tiny pinpricks of brightness that made him blink frantically were shone in his eyes.
He could feel the moisture from the eye drops running over his eyes and the ashy, chemical taste in the back of his throat had a build up at last.
After Keller had cleared him he walked out of the infirmary, heading for the light. He suddenly remembered his great aunt Christine sitting down and fanning herself in the humid summer heat, talking about her heart attack, how she’d walked away from the light. She’d died six months later, heading towards the light, as her heart strangled the oxygen in her veins.
“John.”
“Sheppard.”
He turned towards Ronon and Teyla, vaguely making out their shapes.
“Hey.”
“We came to see you for a reason this morning, we have something to show you.”
“What?”
He heard the smile in her voice as she said, “You will see.”
Ronon snorted and he let himself be dragged into a transporter.
“I won’t see.”
“You will. That’s the point.”
They got out of a transporter and Teyla said, “Where are we?”
Ronon didn’t answer and John gave a frustrated sigh and said, “How would I know?”
“You have six senses John.”
“What?”
He felt the air move as she circled him and said, “Your sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste and general sense of the world around you. They are all crucial to how you feel the world and your environment. All these years you’ve spent relying on your eyes your other senses have still been working and assimilating your surroundings.”
“I still don’t know where I am.”
“Don’t you?”
He felt Ronon drop a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Try Sheppard.”
He held out a hand, feeling stupid, and touched the wall, felt smooth metal cut into the shape of diamonds.
“This is your home John and you know where you are.”
He clenched his fingers in the groove and it was familiar.
“Don’t just trust your hands.”
He took a deep breath but the smell was nothing notable. He took a step forward and moved over to the other side of the corridor. The walls had the same diamond shaped pattern but his palm slid onto a window, he struggled to open it and then heard the whispering of the sea and the tinkling of a fountain.
“The corridor from the mess to Rodney’s lab.”
Teyla laughed happily and Ronon clapped him on the back and said, “Next one!”
They spent the rest of the afternoon dotting all over Atlantis, Teyla and Ronon talked about hunting and tracking, about how to remember the sound of depth and hollows, the different smells the sea made from different points in the city.
And he got it, that was the wonderful thing. He felt like he was seeing the city in a new way, but it was familiar too, because he’d known this stuff even if he hadn’t known he knew it. When he got back to his rooms he was smiling and felt happier than he had since he’d been to the stupid planet.
He struggled to get the computer set up, but after a burst of Starship he was really glad no one else heard, he managed to get War and Peace going.
He’d only just lain down when he heard the door chime and Rodney came in.
“I ran into Ronon and Teyla. Are you, are you feeling, um, better?”
He shrugged and said, “Yeah.”
“I was wondering…” He heard Rodney walk heavily across the room and the bed dipped as he sat down. “I was wondering if you wanted a shave. It’s been days and you’re getting, well, you’re turning into the wolf man.”
He rubbed his jaw and felt the bristles scratch his hand.
“Not sure it’s worth cutting my throat yet.”
Rodney stiffened beside him and said very carefully, “Um, no, I meant I’d shave you. If you wanted.”
He stared incredulously in Rodney’s general direction and then said, “You want to shave me?”
“I was just thinking I could, if the beard was annoying you.”
He felt weirdly breathless as he said, “Okay.”
Rodney took his arm and guided him into the bathroom even though he knew how to get there.
He sat down slowly on the lid of the toilet and Rodney drew his hand carefully away, letting it linger on his bicep.
He didn’t speak as he heard Rodney moving around, foaming up shaving cream and even though he was expecting it John flinched as the brush first touched his cheek.
“Move when I’ve got the razor and you’ll regret it.”
He held himself very still as Rodney smoothed cream over his skin and brushed his fingers across his lips.
“Won’t be long.”
“What won’t?” He could taste shaving cream and his tongue glanced across Rodney’s fingers.”
“Putting on the cream,” he felt Rodney pull back, “I’m done now.”
“Right.”
Something clattered in the sink and he jumped again, tried to pick out Rodney in the fog but the bathroom window was behind him so all he could see was a wash of gray.
“Right. Hold very, very still.”
He froze as he felt the first touch of the razor to the side of his face. He almost moved into it, but held back as Rodney drew it slowly over his skin. He felt it scrape and breathed in deeply but didn’t move.
Rodney moved his other hand to the back of his neck, and he could feel his fingers lying across his nape, woven through his hair.
Rodney tilted his head up and his breath sped up. The gray wash got brighter and he felt Rodney drag the razor under his bottom lip. It almost scraped the delicate skin and he flinched. Rodney tightened his grip and said, almost harshly, “Keep still.”
He just managed to stop himself nodding and squeezed his fingers together as Rodney tilted his head to the other side and began to shave his other cheek.
“Nearly done.”
“Yeah.”
The blade nicked him and he hissed.
“Sorry,” Rodney said, sounding tense and wired. He felt desperate. Weirdly desperate but frozen as Rodney controlled the way he moved, until he felt both like he needed to gulp for breath and like he couldn’t breathe until he was given permission.
When Rodney finally drew back and let go of him he stood up shakily, grabbing at the sink as Rodney grabbed at him and they were kissing. Frantic, messy shaking kisses until he was being pushed through the door and onto the bed, grabbing Rodney closer and twisting their legs together until there was no space between them at all.
“John, John, oh God…”
They were both shivering and shaking and the kisses were getting messy and John felt alive, awake and fully in his skin .
He wanted to see, to see every detail of Rodney’s face right now, to know more clearly that he’s spinning, spinning, spinning as frantically out of control as he is, like a plane making a corkscrewing dive and giving into gravity.
There was blood in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure if Rodney had cut his lip with the razor or with his teeth. He ran his hands frantically over Rodney’s face, trying to see Rodney’s expression in the feel of his fluttering eyelashes and the shape of his open mouth as he gasped.
They struggled out of their clothes and the slowly darkening gray was frustrating, but finally they were naked and the feel of Rodney’s tongue in his mouth and hand pulling on his cock made his world explode with colour as he arched his back and came.
Rodney gasped and said hotly, “That was hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He pulled John’s hand to his cock and moaned, “Please, God do something, John anything.” As he slid down the bed and moved Rodney’s cock into his mouth he thought it tasted of freedom, of something as wild as the sky in a storm. As he pulled up afterwards, rolling the taste of Rodney’s come round his mouth, he tried to just hold onto the feeling of glad amazement and not to regret he hadn’t seen Rodney’s face.
The next morning was different again. There were odd, almost mocking dreams of people he’d had sex with in the past, vivid flashes of their skin and faces, all filtered through the stained glass, the primary colours blazing like the spun sugar of boiled sweets.
He woke suddenly, shivering as Rodney left the bed, the gray wash covered everything and he could taste sugar in his mouth.
“Go back to sleep Sheppard, John, there’s a few hours until we have to be up. I thought it would look better if everyone sees me coming out of my own quarters in the morning.”
“Okay.”
He felt fingers slide down his smooth cheek and he caught them there, pulled them to his mouth and kissed them.
Another hand fell into his hair and stroked it back for a moment before Rodney said softly, “See you later.”
He heard the door open and shut and drifted off back to sleep, this time dreaming of Rodney lying in sunlight, sweat collecting in the hollow of his throat.
In the afternoon, after more eye drops, he drifted to the East pier with a couple of bottles of beer and the War and Peace audio book. The voice sunk into his skin, the oddly discordant Russian names blending with the sounds Atlantis made, buzzing and humming, busy in some places and restrained in others. Like Rodney‘s constant energy. He let his feet dangle in the water, feeling tiny fish dart under the soles of his feet.
After several hours he stretched out and arched his back. He turned his head towards the sun and looked towards the ocean and blinked frantically for a moment because he was seeing blue.
Not just one blue either, two blues. A darker one and then a brighter one above it. The feeling in his chest was like the night before, like it might burst as he stared at the wavering line of the horizon.
He could see the sky. His vision blurred and he rubbed his eyes frantically and felt the tears on the back of his hand. He rolled on his back and fixated on the sky, he couldn’t make out clouds or perspective but he could see the sky again and something in him began to painfully knit together.
The days drifted by as colours began to darken and perspective began to deepen. He learnt the feel of Rodney’s body, always keeping the lights on even though he couldn’t make out more than white and pink on bluey gray. There was so much to learn though, the way skin felt and come smelled. The way a muscle or a vein or a tendon felt under his tongue compared to his fingers.
Hair that was rough on his body and silky on his head and how it felt to lie there quietly afterwards, wrapped up in Rodney’s arms and trying to stop the trembling that always embarrassed him after really good sex.
During the day he navigated around the city, still letting his fingers trail across the walls just to feel Atlantis shiver like a lover, like Rodney did when he bit his neck and wrapped his hand round his cock at the same time.
He loved the smell of her, the briny sea salt you never really got away from. That reminded him of Rodney too, the smell of salt and the metallic tang of semen. It made him shudder and lean against the wall.
He still leaned on Rodney even after he recognised when dipping shadows meant stairs and when a block ahead of him meant a wall. He probably looked pathetic and he hated that, but it was lucky he could disguise the first rushing weakness of love that was requited after all with disability.
The dreams calmed down so he slipped from smudged reality to dreams of sound instead of gobstopper colours. Russian names walked around Atlantis, snow drifts filled the corridors and the sea stretched ahead sounding like ice skates and skis.
The first day he woke to myopic, real vision he jerked out of the first pastor nightmare for several days. The screeching about morality and eyes for eyes had turned into the howling of wolves with colours bleached to gray.
He almost fell out of bed and ended up propping himself up on the wall looking down at Rodney and he could see him. Really see him, not just shapes. He reached out and could see his hand moving forward and landing on Rodney’s cheek, he moved it back and lost sight of his fingers in pale brown hair.
“Rodney?”
His voice sounding rasping, not like it usually did.
“Hmm, what? John?”
He moved his hand and traced under Rodney’s eye, feeling the tissue paper soft skin there drag under his finger tip. He ran the nail down Rodney’s nose and over his lips, felt Rodney say against it, “John, John can you see me?”
He couldn’t answer right away and just nodded.
“Oh my God.”
Rodney knelt up on the bed and put his hands on his shoulders.
“You can see me.”
“I can see you.”
“Oh God. Oh God John.”
They stared at each other and he could see Rodney’s bright blue eyes and long eyelashes, his open startled mouth. Happiness, sparkled like a candle flame inside him and threatened to split his face apart.
“Look at you.”
He hadn’t forgotten what Rodney looked like, but his memory had already begun to smear at the edges. He leant forward to kiss Rodney, but up close he blurred too much to really see so he pulled back and looked around the room.
Sunlight was sliding through the gap in the curtains and the flecks of glitter on them were catching the light and sparkling. Johnny Cash was growling down at them and the chair was lying in the floor where Rodney had knocked it over the night before.
He pulled himself off the bed and carefully stood it upright, walked over to the window and pulled the curtains open. His eyes swam for a moment and then focused on the sea, a beautiful blue blur stretching out as far as he could see. It was fuzzier than it had been before, but he could see it, the sea surrounding them and the sky above them.
“John.”
He turned as Rodney put his hand on his shoulder and looked at him closely. He looked sleep rumpled and was smiling a huge, crooked smile.
“We need to go look at stuff.”
John laughed, “We do.”
The day smelt, tasted, sounded like joy, he couldn‘t remember the last time he had been so simply, uncomplicatedly happy. They practically ran round the city and he laughed because smiling didn’t cover the fizzy feelings, wasn’t enough to match the views from balconies, the elegant spires and horizon reaching away. Smiling could never match Teyla’s beautiful face and swelling belly, or Ronon’s rare grin and he didn’t think he’d ever smiled wide enough to equal the one Rodney wore that day.
The beautiful, blue green silver of Atlantis was so much warmer and richer than the gray sludge he’d lived in for weeks. The stained glass panels so much more elegant and rich than the garish gobstopper colours splashed across his nightmares.
He first thought the most perfect moment of the day was seeing the puddle jumpers again. He pressed his hands against his favourite one, Genevieve, and felt her whir to life. He jumped in and the panels shot up around him, showing him where he could fly, how fast he could go, what it would be like when he got there. He laughed again and Rodney spun his chair round to kiss him. Teyla and Ronon gasped and then started laughing and asking, “How long, since when, why didn’t you tell us?”
He took the jumper and flew loops over the city, over his home. Just stared down at it as it glittered in the sunlight, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Later he went up again just with Rodney, and they hovered over Atlantis in the limitless night sky.
They made love on the floor of the cock pit and God it was good, good didn’t describe it. To put all the pieces of smell, taste and touch together and see Rodney’s face get increasingly desperate and the way he clenched his fingers around the chair leg. To fall on his back and look up and see the stars streaming above him and the deep blue sky the colour of Rodney’s, dark, dilated eyes.
If they’d done this before he’d have closed his eyes as Rodney pushed inside him but he couldn’t miss that now and saw something in Rodney’s face, in that moment, that meant he had to arch his back for one wild moment to bring their lips together until Rodney began to move and he slumped back down.
Half way through, just as tight, tense electricity was beginning to run up his spine Rodney suddenly pulled out and twisted their positions so they were facing Atlantis, Rodney kneeling behind him. He moaned and felt Rodney clutch him closer and say once, desperately, “John.”
He came with his eyes open and it was his laughter that tipped Rodney over the edge. They lay there for another hour, spinning in space, watching the beautiful planet sleep beneath them and John sleepily wondered if it was possible for a heart to break with happiness.
THE END
**
Poll Vote for this story
Author: burklesl17
Team: Home
Prompt: Eye for an eye
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: none given
Summary: He screamed as his vision was filled with the sharp metal syringe and the pastor shouted in his head as the pain hit, “An eye for an eye John Sheppard, an eye for an eye…”
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**
John struggled as they grabbed at him and tried to tie him to the chair, flailed at them with his arm, kicked out and twisted his body, but there were too many of them and they wrapped leather straps round his chest and bound up his wrists in buckles and rope. A huge hand held his head against the back of the chair and scalding light flashed into the cave making him blink frantically.
He held himself still and gasped for air as a man walked forwards and stood opposite him.
“You took his eyes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Someone else backhanded him, their metal ring cut his lip.
“You took the God’s eyes!”
And he realised why he was here. He tried to sit up but the hand on his forehead held him back and he spat out, “They mayor said we could have them, we traded for them.”
“They belonged to the God. They were not Dano’s to give and we do not recognise his authority.”
John looked around the room, but the faces were hard, no help in any of them.
“We can give you back the ZPMs. Where are the rest of my team?”
“What do you call them?”
“ZPMs. They’re power sources, but they don’t power anything here, we can use them that’s why we wanted them, if we’d known they were sacred we wouldn’t have taken them.”
He thought of Rodney practically bouncing around the statue and cradling the ZPM. “I don’t think it’s ever been used Sheppard, it’s at full power…”
“The statue is defiled.”
“Look, I’m sorry okay, and if you take me to the rest of my team I‘m sure they‘ll be sorry too…”
He trailed off as the man picked a long metal syringe off a small table. It was filled with oily, purple liquid.
“You took his eyes, we take yours. It is justice, we will let you live.”
He walked closer and John stared up at his thick, scarred arms and the liquid slipping around in the huge glass ball at the end of the syringe.
“It was a mistake! Please!”
“The gods make no mistakes.”
Another hand grabbed his jaw and he tried to struggle but there was no give in the straps at all.
“Your eyes for his.”
An eye for an eye. He remembered, suddenly and irrationally, sitting in a pew during Sunday school, the exasperated pastor with his greasy hair leaning over him and saying, “There are certain laws that are immutable John, the Ten Commandments, an eye for an eye.” Sunlight had been coming through the stained glass windows, red, orange, yellow, blue…
He screamed as his vision was filled with the sharp metal syringe and the pastor shouted in his head as the pain hit, “An eye for an eye John Sheppard, an eye for an eye…”
He woke up in total darkness. He could feel his eyelids blinking but couldn't see anything.
“I think he’s awake, Sheppard?”
“Rodney?”
He turned his head towards Rodney’s voice and tried to sit up but hands gently pushed him down.
“Hey, hey take it easy.”
“I can’t see.”
There were more people in the room now, he could hear them under Rodney’s babbling. He tried to get up again, but someone else was holding him down and then a small hand gently touched his cheek and he frantically snapped his head away, sliding out of their grip and collapsing off the bed onto the floor.
“John!”
“McKay!”
He groped forwards and Rodney grabbed his hands. He slid them up Rodney’s arms and let them settle on his shoulders.
“John, you have to sit back down. We’re trying to help you, so stop panicking.”
They just gasped there for a moment and he clenched his fingers in Rodney’s jacket.
“You’re safe. You’re in the medical bay on Atlantis, we got you out.”
The panic slowly seeped out of him and he sat back cautiously, still keeping his hands on Rodney’s arms.
“Okay.”
It was the infirmary. It smelt like hospitals, disinfectant masking the sourer smells of bodies and fear. He could hear the hospital machines too, the steady beeps and whirring.
“How did we get out of the cave?”
Rodney squeezed his arms quickly and then slowly stood up, he could sense his body moving in front of him.
“Me and Ronon broke us out and then we reached you…”
“Don’t remember you doing much breaking out McKay.”
“I helped!”
He turned his head towards Ronon’s voice and flinched as a hand settled on his shoulder.
“You want a hand up Sheppard?”
“Thanks.”
He gripped Ronon’s arm and stumbled to his feet, slid his foot back and groped for the bed, struggling to find it for a moment, before sitting back down on carefully. Someone made a noise that turned into a hoarse cough and he felt himself start to blush.
“Colonel?” He turned towards Keller’s voice. “I need to examine your eyes.”
He nodded slowly and felt a faint breeze as she moved next to the bed.
“The rest of you better leave for now.” There was a blustery chorus and he realised there were more people in the room than he’d thought. “You can all come and see Colonel Sheppard again later.”
He heard metal rattling as Keller pulled the curtain round the bed and the squeak of her shoes as she walked up to him and said carefully, “What, if anything, can you see?”
He took a deep breath and the word almost stuck in his throat, “Nothing.”
She hissed slightly and said, “What if I do this?”
“Still nothing. What did you do?”
“Shone a torch in your eyes.”
He remembered having that done to him, it hurt, made him blink and he realised he could still see his memories.
“You might not have seen it, but your pupil reacted and you blinked that’s a good sign. How do your eyes feel?”
“They hurt.”
“How do they hurt? Do they sting, ache or something else?”
He blinked purposefully and said softly, “They sting when I blink, just feel kind of sore otherwise.”
There was silence and he said quickly, “Keller?”
“Sorry, I nodded. That’s a good sign. If the nerves in your eyes can still feel pain, they can still feel. Believe me that’s very good.”
He nodded and heard her move around, the clatter of something on a metal tray, the sound of someone crying hopelessly in another room.
She was quiet through the rest of the examination, just occasionally asking him to move his head or answer questions. There was just blackness, total darkness. He tried not to flinch every time she touched his face.
Eventually it was done and she said, “Rodney brought the solution back from the planet. I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t know if we can fix this entirely or even partially, but I think your eyes are in a far better condition than we initially thought. Once we’ve worked out how they hurt you we can work on making it better.”
She put her hand on his arm. “It’s far from hopeless Colonel Sheppard.”
He took a deep breath as she walked away, wishing he could throw up the mix of fear and relief shaking in his stomach.
Foot steps came closer and he looked up sharply.
“It’s us Rodney and Teyla.”
“Good evening John.”
He heard her take another two steps forward and she put her hands on his shoulders. He leant forward awkwardly and moved too fast so their foreheads smacked together. He pulled back quickly and stood up.
“Can I get out of here?”
“Um, yes. Yes, we came to walk you to your room.”
Walking to his quarters was strange, he felt stupid and childish clinging onto Rodney’s hand and could feel his palms sweating. The corridors seemed to echo strangely, more alien than they’d felt for years and he kept tripping over or walking past corridors Rodney would have to nudge him down.
Now and again someone would walk past and he’d hear the sudden drop in conversation and creepy footsteps echoing away, like a horror film, unseen noises in the darkness.
Rodney kept up a constant stream of chatter, telling him where they were but it felt oddly meaningless without his eyes to guide him.
When they got to his room he pushed Rodney away and said roughly, “I can take it from here.” He put his palms on the door, feeling the smooth metal move beneath them.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine in a moment John, but let us check there are no obstacles.”
They walked into the room and John clung to the doorway for a moment before taking a step inside, the darkness didn’t change but the space felt different, more intimate and less echoing.
“Good thing you keep your room so tidy.” Rodney’s voice sounded fake, the way he sounded when he was trying to put a brave face on things. He did it so rarely he never managed it convincingly. “I’ll just check the bathroom.”
The bathroom door swished open with an electrical crackle and he jumped as Teyla took his hand.
“Here is your desk, and the chair.” He felt the metal and plastic against his skin and then she pulled him away, “There are two steps to the bed.”
He took three and his knees hit the side. She ignored this and said, “Would you like me to open the window.
“Why? I won’t be able to see anything.”
“No, but the breeze may refresh you.”
He felt like an asshole and nodded at her, heard the soft whisper as it opened.
“I’ve rearranged the bathroom a bit. I’ve put toothpaste, hair gel, everything like that on top on the shelf over the sink. Will you be, um…”
“You know where we are if you need us. Would you like us to stay for awhile now, or sleep?”
He sat down very slowly on the bed, sliding his hands out behind him to make sure he didn’t miss it.
“I think I’ll sleep.”
He heard them moving around, their clothing rustling and murmured goodnights until the door swished shut behind them. As soon as they left he wished he hadn’t asked them to go, the darkness was claustrophobic with no sound to break it up. He couldn't face trying to turn on the computer so he moved up the bed until his head lay against the window sill and he could hear the noise of the sea and murmuring waves.
***
If the night had been overwhelming the morning was humiliating. He’d slept badly with dreams that flickered between preachers screaming at him, “An eye for an eye John Sheppard, an eye for an eye!” and glowing ZPMs looming out of the darkness, shining like cracked crystal through bleeding stained glass.
Waking to pitch darkness was almost worse though. He had no way of telling what time it was but got out of bed anyway. He hadn’t been able to face the bathroom last night and ended up almost falling through the door.
He had to grope around for the toilet and it was more luck than judgement he didn’t piss all over the floor. When he tried to find his toothbrush he just sent everything clattering into the sink. He got most of the bottles and things, he’d never realised he had so many of them, back on the shelf but then realised he wasn’t sure what half of them were. He ended up squirting toothpaste and hair gel all over the sink and his hands before giving up on the gel completely. He didn’t even bother picking up the razor.
He couldn’t face yesterday’s clothes, they smelt of blood, dirt and disinfectant. He did manage to find what felt like a pair of BDUs and a t-shirt, although he wasn’t sure if it was a casual shirt or a work one when the door chimed.
“Who is it?”
“Rodney.”
He heard the door opening and waved the t-shirt in Rodney’s direction.
“Is this black?”
Rodney’s voice sounded slightly odd as he said, “Do you own any shirts that aren’t black?”
“Yes.”
“Did you try and do your hair?”
He touched it self-consciously, “Yes?”
“It’s, um, fine. Shall we go?”
He felt his way to the door by dragging his hand across the furniture until he was able to hook his hand around the door frame. Rodney touched his elbow and he jerked his arm away, they froze for a moment and Rodney said in a weirdly strangled voice, “You’re going to have to let people help you, I know…”
“I know.”
He reached out cautiously and felt the top of Rodney’s arm. He slid his hand down Rodney’s jacket and round the elbow and didn’t breathe out until he’d wrapped his fingers round Rodney’s wrist for a second.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes, yes, ready.”
They walked off in silence, he trailed his finger tips along the walls, feeling them humming softly in weird sizzling waves. He wasn’t concentrating and suddenly smacked into the wall just as Rodney said, “Turn left here.”
“I got that thanks.”
He rubbed his head and scowled in Rodney’s general direction.
“Tell me to turn sooner next time.”
“Sorry.” Rodney took his elbow, “Come on this way.”
They walked on a bit further, but he didn’t trust his own feet and stumbled as heard footsteps and voices behind them. The voices stopped suddenly and he said, “Does everyone know?”
“Sam sent round an email.”
“Right.”
He sped up but the feet passed them anyway, they started talking again once they were slightly ahead of them. Their voices were unnaturally high and fake.
He almost fell over twice more, nearly twisting his ankle on some steps before they got to the mess.
“Sit down, I’ll bring breakfast.”
He flopped into a chair and put his head into his hands, listening to the cutlery clanking around them before Rodney came back and shoved a tray in front of him.
“It’s toast, apple juice and coffee. I put Blotchy Purple Fruit jam on the toast.”
“Thanks.”
He groped awkwardly for the coffee and managed to get his hand round the cup. It burnt his lip as he got the angle slightly wrong and he put it down it too quickly so it splashed across his palm. He snapped his hand back and Rodney grabbed at it, pulling him across the table so he put his other hand in the toast.
“McKay!”
“I’m sorry! I was just trying to see if you were burnt!”
“I’m fine, but covered in fucking jam!”
The rest of the mess had gone quiet and he nearly stood up but Rodney caught his wrist and said quietly, “There isn’t a single thing about this that doesn’t suck, but storming out right now won’t help.”
He slowly relaxed back down and Rodney passed him a tissue, saying quietly, “Wipe up the jam and I’ll get more toast.”
He sat there, feeling like he was going to throw up as Rodney walked away and then took a very careful sip of apple juice. When he managed that he tried the coffee. He sighed as he managed that too and drank it slowly until Rodney came back, concentrating on coffee and nothing else.
He jumped slightly as Rodney put a plate in front of him.
“John.”
He looked up towards Rodney’s voice and didn’t flinch at all as Rodney took his hand and pressed it against the plate, saying softly, “Here’s the toast.”
“Thanks.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes and then Rodney said. “We’re going to fix this. If I have to go back to Earth and speak to specialist doctors for months we’ll fix this. I had two doctorates before I was thirty, the human eye can’t be nearly as complex.”
He stared at the table, wondering what was showing on his face and what he was missing on Rodney’s, but managed to say, “No, why does it take doctors so long to qualify anyway?”
“I have no idea.”
***
There were more tests after breakfast, Keller kept up a constant drone of medical speech but it was still horrible. Hands he couldn’t see coming kept touching his skin and his eyes still ached.
After the tests she said she’d call Rodney to help him and he heard her move away. It didn’t seem like anyone else was in the room and he cautiously slid off the bed and stumbled his way to the door. Something he’d grabbed clattered to the floor and he sped up as he lunged out of the room and groped along the wall until he heard a transporter swish open.
It seemed to be empty and he pressed his hands against the screen, felt it flare against his skin. He touched blindly and it sped him away before spitting him out into a corridor that smelt of dank water. It was silent and he staggered for a few paces before his radio jerked and Rodney said in his ear, “You’ve gone into the old flooded levels. What the hell are you doing down there?”
He spun round confused and his foot splashed into a puddle of water.
“John, John are you there?”
“I’m here.” He clung to the walls and felt them start to buzz.
“Do you need help?”
“No I don’t, they aren’t flooded anymore.”
“Well what are you doing there?”
He backwards and clutched at the transporter.
“Going for a stroll.”
“You should get back here.”
“I’m fine.”
He stumbled back into the transporter and pressed his fingers against the screen again.
“Are you back in the transporter?”
“Yes.”
“Try voice activating it.”
“That’s never worked before.”
“We didn’t need it to before.”
He felt slightly stupid as he said, “Laboratory one.”
Nothing happened and a moment later he heard Rodney say, “It didn’t work.”
“I know that.”
He heard Zelenka say, “Maybe you need to speak Ancient?”
“Because I’m so great at that.”
He dropped his head against the wall as his radio chattered insensibly. Then Rodney said, “I think it’s the mental component, it’s not just what you say, it’s what you think. Really concentrate on where you want to be.”
He shut his eyes, although it made no difference, and pressed his palm in the centre of the transporter screen. He thought of Rodney’s lab, of the chemicals and coffee smell and the nape of Rodney’s neck as he bent over his laptop. There, he thought ridiculously, take me there.
The transporter jerked and then it opened and Rodney pushed inside, saying excitedly, “See it worked, you don’t need to be able to see to get the round the city!” Big hands clasped his shoulders as Rodney said, “With your sense of direction it will be an improvement, just think of where you need to be!”
Later he lay in bed listening to the Empire Strikes Back, brought round by Rodney because, “You can recite it anyway, you know what’s happening without seeing it.”
He did know it, all the details, from the swirling snow storm at the beginning to the expression on Luke’s face as he lost his arm.
Rodney sat by his head and said things he didn’t need to be told like, “This is the part where…” Ronon munched popcorn at his feet and Teyla scolded him for getting kernels on the floor.
He tried opening and shutting his eyes at first, but then gave up and kept them shut. As the Death Star exploded he saw trails of fire streak across his brain and it left him feeling brittle like paper thin glass.
The next morning he woke panicking as he lurched from dreams bleached by stained glass to darkness. He lay there gasping and covered in cold sweat for a moment before stumbling to the bathroom. He managed to get the shower on and shook under it for a moment as the water scorched his skin and washed away the nightmares.
He ran his hand across his cheek, irritated by the stubble and walked into Rodney when he got to the door.
“I came to walk you to breakfast.”
He tried to protest for a moment but ended up shrugging his shoulders and nodding, “Fine.”
“You did your hair again didn’t you?”
“Why?”
“Nothing.”
They walked slowly and he kept a hand on the wall. He remembered the route from yesterday and half smiled when Rodney caught his arm to steer him round a corner and help him down some steps.
“I know where I’m going.”
“Of course you do. You know this place like the back of your hand and other trite expressions of familiarity.”
He snorted as they sat down to breakfast and pressed his palm against the window. The glass felt cool, the sun hadn’t had a chance to warm it through yet, and he knew exactly which bit of Atlantis he should be able to see. It was both a comforting and painful thought.
He didn’t go wandering for the rest of the day but stayed in his quarters and listened to Cash and country so loudly the gravely, raspy voices filled all the spaces in the room. He ran his fingertips along his eyelashes, but although he could feel his eyelids fluttering under his hand he couldn’t feel it on his eye.
He rolled over and let his hand hang out the window as Johnny sang about a far away criminal in a far away galaxy.
The door chimed, he heard leather squeaking and then Ronon said, “Sheppard, coming for a run?”
He rolled on his back and said, “How am I supposed to run?”
“Same way you always do.”
He heard Ronon moving forward and tried to sit up but he was too late and was pulled off the bed.
“Ow.”
“We’ll go the South tier, run round that balcony ten times, no corners or steps.”
“It curves.”
“You know how to run it, come on.”
He let Ronon deal with the transporter as he really wasn’t sure he wanted to try running enough to get him there. Ronon turned him round and said, “Run.”
“Ronon.”
“Run Sheppard!”
And then legs were pounding past him, echoing in the empty corridor. He ran into the wall at first, but he worked out the gradient of the curve. Once he’d got that it was simple, although weird, running forward into darkness. He wasn’t going as fast as normal, but feeling the muscles in his legs stretch, the air rush past him and the matched panting of Ronon’s breathing felt fantastic.
He ended up stopping before Ronon and sank down onto the floor, gulping water that spilled onto his chin and shirt.
“Feel better?”
He didn’t bother looking in Ronon’s direction, instead he turned his head towards the window, pressing his cheek against the wall and feeling Atlantis hum, “Yeah.”
The next day was similar, although his eyes hurt more when Keller put drops in them, which she decided was probably a good sign. He slipped away from the infirmary and walked carefully through Atlantis, following the walls and realising just how well he knew this place.
It was reassuring, to realise he recognised this corridor, that this cold stairwell lead to Rodney’s lab, this bend that smelt of baking from the kitchens to the gym, this door frame that arched so sensuously under his palm was a corridor from the gate room. He followed the last one carefully until he walked into the rush of people that always seemed to be in there.
He could hear Chuck flirting with one of the marines and the gate wooshed to life as a team came home from off world. He edged round the outskirts of the room and paused as he heard Rodney saying anxiously, “You cannot seriously mean that? I can’t believe you’d even suggest it!”
Carter replied, “I have to think of the entire base Rodney, not just Colonel Sheppard.”
“We need him here, sending him back will not protect Atlantis.”
He leant back against the wall and clenched his fingers as though he could dig into it. It vibrated sharply under his hands.
“I don’t want to send him back Rodney. But you have to understand that if we can’t cure him Atlantis is not the best place for a blind man.”
“He won’t be any safer on Earth. He’s got no sense of direction and not much more common sense, he’ll fall under a bus in ten minutes. And Earth isn’t his home, here is. Give him another week or two and he’ll know his way around as well as he did before.”
“And what about when the Wraith attack? Or the Genii decide they aren’t our friends after all? Or the next lot of people we end up fighting?”
“He’d still be…”
“No, McKay he wouldn’t.”
“He’d be no more useless than the half my science team who have yet to get past the ‘you hold this end of the gun and point this end’ stage!”
He couldn’t listen anymore and stumbled out of the gate room, not paying attention to where going. He realised he was lost and panicked as he couldn’t get his bearings, couldn’t recognise the texture of the wall and felt like he was spinning in circles. He jumped and lashed out as someone grabbed his shoulder but they caught his fist and Teyla said, “John!”
They froze there, he was gasping like he’d run a race and could smell the spicy, herby scent of her. She carefully dropped the hand holding back his and then released his shoulder. He could still hear her though, her breathing as she carefully stood back and said, “I was looking to see if you wanted to spar.”
“I can’t even see.”
“No you cannot and you need to learn how to defend yourself this way.”
“I’m not going to be allowed off Atlantis.” Or even to stay on Atlantis and that thought was something so crushing he was forced to put his hand on his chest.
“Atlantis is not always safe.”
“I won’t be able to see what I’m doing, I could hurt you or the baby.”
She laughed and it was the sweetest thing he’d heard since the darkness had started.
“You will get that close to me John Sheppard!”
Teyla steered him to the gym, but he still couldn’t quite follow where they were, the landmarks that seemed so clear earlier had splintered in his panic and he couldn’t bring them together. He wasn’t certain until he felt the soft floor of the gym under his feet.
“Just one to start with.” She carefully wrapped his fingers round the worn wood of the stick and stepped away.
“You could be on the other side of the room.”
“You need to listen.”
He heard her take two slow steps, the mat squeaking under her feet. He listened as her feet sped up and swung round to where he thought she was. He stumbled as his stick hit air and she tapped him on the shoulder blade.
“You stopped listening.”
He whirls round and the stick cracked on his lower back, making him arch his spine.
“Listen John. You have more senses that just sight. Where am I right now.”
He could hear her feet and pointed.
“But I can move fast.”
Her feet sped up and he lunged after her, she darted past him and he thrust his arm out, but her foot caught him from behind and he fell to the floor. He bit his lip as he hit the floor.
“Not going easy on me then.” His mouth tasted of copper.
“The Wraith will not.” Her voice was hard as he pushed himself off the floor and onto his hands and knees.
“John,” he sensed her moving the air as she knelt in front of him.
“Like it or not you are more vulnerable now and you must learn.”
He sat back and wished he could turn away, stare into space, pretend to be distracted by something.
“Is there really any point.”
It wasn’t a question and she sighed as she stood up slowly.
“This will always be your home John.”
He stood up and allowed her to lead him out of the room. He hadn’t even known which direction the door was.
The next three days weren’t much better. The feeling that his friends and co-workers weren’t doing much more than tiptoeing round him didn’t help. He went wandering, away from the packed hallways and conversations that ebbed off sharply when people saw him walking slowly past.
Eventually he was cornered by Rodney who steered him into his lab and said quickly, “You must be really bored. I’d be going out of my mind if I was you. I um, got you, well I got you something.”
He sat down carefully, groping for the swivel chair so it wouldn’t roll out from under him. He could hear Rodney clicking the mouse, hitting the keyboard once and then a soft, English voice rolled through the room.
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with..."
“That’s War and Peace.”
“Yes, I, well I asked someone at the SGC to send me the file, I’ve uploaded it onto your iPod. You don’t have to listen to it but I thought you might like it. I’ve also adapted that tracking device so you can hold it when you’re walking and it will beep and vibrate if there’s anything on the path big enough to trip you up…”
“Rodney.”
He reached forward and Rodney was a lot closer than he’d thought because their hands touched. He felt the top of Rodney’s hand, the skin and veins. He hesitated for a moment, not sure what his face showed as Anna Pavlovna said, “Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?"
He heard Rodney breathe in sharply and the muscle under his palm tensed. He started to pull his hand away just as Rodney turned his over and carefully wrapped his fingers around his wrist, one lying along a vein leading to his heart.
“John?” He sounded nervous and Prince Vasili spoke like a wind up clock as John slid forward, feeling oddly uncontrolled. Atlantis was floating away from him with every blink he couldn’t feel and every second the world stayed dark and Rodney’s burst of unexpected kindness illuminated something in his mind. It burnt up the Rodney walls he’d put up for his own safety years ago, where he thought everything had started to rust.
He slid out of the chair and heard it hit the edge of the desk as he put his arms awkwardly round Rodney’s neck. Rodney didn’t move for a second and then grabbed him, pulled him close and his face was crushed into Rodney’s neck, their chests were pressed together and he was breathing in the smell of the man, no aftershave or soap, just skin and the faintest smell of the burn from soldering irons. He let his hands move slowly to Rodney’s back, land on his shoulder blades and then move cautiously down to the small of his back.
“I’m so glad you’re alive.”
He hadn’t been expecting that and stiffened but Rodney clutched him closer and said, “I know you hate your life right now, but we’ll fix it, we’ll find a way and if we don’t, even if we don’t, I am still so glad you’re alive.”
Rodney’s lips were moving against his ear and he shivered, not certain yet whether he agreed or not. Rodney’s hands slid up and then his lips moved against his cheek as he said, “There is nothing, no one, who I will let take you away from here.”
He shivered and stood back, let his hand fall against Rodney’s cheek, felt the stubble scrape his hand, the softness and he breathed, “It’s not up to you.”
“And do you seriously think anyone could beat me?”
He smiled, felt it stretch his skin unfamiliarly, smiling for the first time in a week, like something he’d forgotten how to do. He felt one of Rodney’s hands rub his upper lip, the other tighten on his waist.
“No, no I don’t.”
And he meant every word as he moved his face down. He missed Rodney’s lips and ended up pressed against his cheek, but Rodney caught his head and steered their mouths together. It was a brief, dry tentative kiss that deepened into something deeper and richer that made his hands tremble. When they eventually pulled apart Rodney said his name in a voice that was shaky and edging into wonder and cupped his face with his hands.
“Why did you do that?”
He shrugged, didn’t have an answer but ran his fingers through Rodney’s hair and desperately wished he could see the expression on his face.
“I thought you were straight.”
He snorted and moved forwards again, tracing the edge of Rodney’s ear with his nose.
“You’re not very observant.”
Rodney’s arms came around him again and he kissed his neck. They held each other like that for awhile and he found himself taking weird, shuddery breaths that had nothing to do with the warmth of kissing Rodney.
“What if I can never fly again?”
Rodney was silent for a moment and then said, “We’ll get an F-16 from Earth and teach Ronon to fly. He can take you up. You’ll still be in the sky.”
There was nothing to say to that and he just held onto Rodney even tighter.
The next morning he didn’t realise he’d woken up. He went straight from the dream, (the pastor’s breath hot in the air, lemonade light and the first creepy sensation of a hand cupping his hip,) to a faint gray light. It spread across the world and then blinked out again. He rubbed his hand over his eyes, scratching at the odd light, until he got it, he was blinking, he could feel his eyelids closing over his eyeballs.
He shut his eyes firmly and opened them. He couldn’t see anything but gray fog, but still, it was gray. He turned towards the window and the gray lightened, towards the door it was darker.
He hit his radio and croaked into it, “Rodney?”
There was shuffling and throat clearing and then Rodney said in a voice that might have been slightly more hoarse and intimate than the morning before, “Yes?”
“I can see light.”
There was another endless silence and then Rodney said, “Just light? No shapes?”
He waved his hand in front of his face and felt crushed by disappointment when it made little damn difference.
“No.”
“Doesn't matter, even just being able to tell the difference between light and dark is great, we didn’t think it would happen for another week at least.”
“I can see.”
“Yes you can and that’s amazing. God John, that’s amazing and it’s going to get better, I’ll be there in a moment.” There was the noise of bed covers, of Rodney practically falling out of them, skin and material rubbing together. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”
“I know.”
He stood up, felt the sheets fall away from his body and pulled on the same pants he’d been wearing for days, turned his head towards the light and remembered Rodney saying he wouldn’t let him leave, never mind anyone trying to make him go, that wasn’t a choice he was even allowed to make for himself at the moment.
He touched his lips and wondered if he‘d have woken up with Rodney if another minor crisis hadn‘t demanded Rodney‘s immediate attention. It was the same potential disaster now it had been for years, but in this world of darkness and gray fog he couldn’t bring himself to care. If this was all he was going to get before a life on a planet where the gravity that was subtly wrong tied him to the ground, he was going to have it completely. Fill himself on it until there was nothing else in his head.
The door chimed, he didn’t bother with a shirt and moved round the furniture without realising it, not even using his hands to guide him and opened the door. He leant against the door frame and said, “Didn’t take you long.” His voice wasn’t quite as smooth as he’d thought it should have been, his eyes vaguely stunned by the sudden bright glow of light.
There was silence and he said very cautiously, feeling embarrassment spread up his spine and round the curve of his hips and skull, “Who’s there?”
He could hear the amusement in the pause before,
“Ronon.”
“And Teyla.”
“Right, um come in.”
Teyla sounded like she was trying not to laugh as she said, “Who were you expecting?”
He grabbed at a the chest of drawers and groped to find the one with t-shirts in, turned it round in his hands until he’d found the label and pulled it over his head.
“No one, um…”
Ronon snorted and then Rodney burst into the room. John felt and heard him like the room had suddenly become charged with static electricity and Rodney grabbed at his arms and pulled him round so he almost fell.
“What can you see, what exactly can you see?”
“Light,” he looked up and could make out a vaguely human shaped shadow in front of him. “You’re blocking out the light, but you’re just a blob.”
Keller ran in then and he was dragged to the infirmary where he was poked and prodded and tiny pinpricks of brightness that made him blink frantically were shone in his eyes.
He could feel the moisture from the eye drops running over his eyes and the ashy, chemical taste in the back of his throat had a build up at last.
After Keller had cleared him he walked out of the infirmary, heading for the light. He suddenly remembered his great aunt Christine sitting down and fanning herself in the humid summer heat, talking about her heart attack, how she’d walked away from the light. She’d died six months later, heading towards the light, as her heart strangled the oxygen in her veins.
“John.”
“Sheppard.”
He turned towards Ronon and Teyla, vaguely making out their shapes.
“Hey.”
“We came to see you for a reason this morning, we have something to show you.”
“What?”
He heard the smile in her voice as she said, “You will see.”
Ronon snorted and he let himself be dragged into a transporter.
“I won’t see.”
“You will. That’s the point.”
They got out of a transporter and Teyla said, “Where are we?”
Ronon didn’t answer and John gave a frustrated sigh and said, “How would I know?”
“You have six senses John.”
“What?”
He felt the air move as she circled him and said, “Your sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste and general sense of the world around you. They are all crucial to how you feel the world and your environment. All these years you’ve spent relying on your eyes your other senses have still been working and assimilating your surroundings.”
“I still don’t know where I am.”
“Don’t you?”
He felt Ronon drop a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Try Sheppard.”
He held out a hand, feeling stupid, and touched the wall, felt smooth metal cut into the shape of diamonds.
“This is your home John and you know where you are.”
He clenched his fingers in the groove and it was familiar.
“Don’t just trust your hands.”
He took a deep breath but the smell was nothing notable. He took a step forward and moved over to the other side of the corridor. The walls had the same diamond shaped pattern but his palm slid onto a window, he struggled to open it and then heard the whispering of the sea and the tinkling of a fountain.
“The corridor from the mess to Rodney’s lab.”
Teyla laughed happily and Ronon clapped him on the back and said, “Next one!”
They spent the rest of the afternoon dotting all over Atlantis, Teyla and Ronon talked about hunting and tracking, about how to remember the sound of depth and hollows, the different smells the sea made from different points in the city.
And he got it, that was the wonderful thing. He felt like he was seeing the city in a new way, but it was familiar too, because he’d known this stuff even if he hadn’t known he knew it. When he got back to his rooms he was smiling and felt happier than he had since he’d been to the stupid planet.
He struggled to get the computer set up, but after a burst of Starship he was really glad no one else heard, he managed to get War and Peace going.
He’d only just lain down when he heard the door chime and Rodney came in.
“I ran into Ronon and Teyla. Are you, are you feeling, um, better?”
He shrugged and said, “Yeah.”
“I was wondering…” He heard Rodney walk heavily across the room and the bed dipped as he sat down. “I was wondering if you wanted a shave. It’s been days and you’re getting, well, you’re turning into the wolf man.”
He rubbed his jaw and felt the bristles scratch his hand.
“Not sure it’s worth cutting my throat yet.”
Rodney stiffened beside him and said very carefully, “Um, no, I meant I’d shave you. If you wanted.”
He stared incredulously in Rodney’s general direction and then said, “You want to shave me?”
“I was just thinking I could, if the beard was annoying you.”
He felt weirdly breathless as he said, “Okay.”
Rodney took his arm and guided him into the bathroom even though he knew how to get there.
He sat down slowly on the lid of the toilet and Rodney drew his hand carefully away, letting it linger on his bicep.
He didn’t speak as he heard Rodney moving around, foaming up shaving cream and even though he was expecting it John flinched as the brush first touched his cheek.
“Move when I’ve got the razor and you’ll regret it.”
He held himself very still as Rodney smoothed cream over his skin and brushed his fingers across his lips.
“Won’t be long.”
“What won’t?” He could taste shaving cream and his tongue glanced across Rodney’s fingers.”
“Putting on the cream,” he felt Rodney pull back, “I’m done now.”
“Right.”
Something clattered in the sink and he jumped again, tried to pick out Rodney in the fog but the bathroom window was behind him so all he could see was a wash of gray.
“Right. Hold very, very still.”
He froze as he felt the first touch of the razor to the side of his face. He almost moved into it, but held back as Rodney drew it slowly over his skin. He felt it scrape and breathed in deeply but didn’t move.
Rodney moved his other hand to the back of his neck, and he could feel his fingers lying across his nape, woven through his hair.
Rodney tilted his head up and his breath sped up. The gray wash got brighter and he felt Rodney drag the razor under his bottom lip. It almost scraped the delicate skin and he flinched. Rodney tightened his grip and said, almost harshly, “Keep still.”
He just managed to stop himself nodding and squeezed his fingers together as Rodney tilted his head to the other side and began to shave his other cheek.
“Nearly done.”
“Yeah.”
The blade nicked him and he hissed.
“Sorry,” Rodney said, sounding tense and wired. He felt desperate. Weirdly desperate but frozen as Rodney controlled the way he moved, until he felt both like he needed to gulp for breath and like he couldn’t breathe until he was given permission.
When Rodney finally drew back and let go of him he stood up shakily, grabbing at the sink as Rodney grabbed at him and they were kissing. Frantic, messy shaking kisses until he was being pushed through the door and onto the bed, grabbing Rodney closer and twisting their legs together until there was no space between them at all.
“John, John, oh God…”
They were both shivering and shaking and the kisses were getting messy and John felt alive, awake and fully in his skin .
He wanted to see, to see every detail of Rodney’s face right now, to know more clearly that he’s spinning, spinning, spinning as frantically out of control as he is, like a plane making a corkscrewing dive and giving into gravity.
There was blood in his mouth, and he wasn’t sure if Rodney had cut his lip with the razor or with his teeth. He ran his hands frantically over Rodney’s face, trying to see Rodney’s expression in the feel of his fluttering eyelashes and the shape of his open mouth as he gasped.
They struggled out of their clothes and the slowly darkening gray was frustrating, but finally they were naked and the feel of Rodney’s tongue in his mouth and hand pulling on his cock made his world explode with colour as he arched his back and came.
Rodney gasped and said hotly, “That was hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He pulled John’s hand to his cock and moaned, “Please, God do something, John anything.” As he slid down the bed and moved Rodney’s cock into his mouth he thought it tasted of freedom, of something as wild as the sky in a storm. As he pulled up afterwards, rolling the taste of Rodney’s come round his mouth, he tried to just hold onto the feeling of glad amazement and not to regret he hadn’t seen Rodney’s face.
The next morning was different again. There were odd, almost mocking dreams of people he’d had sex with in the past, vivid flashes of their skin and faces, all filtered through the stained glass, the primary colours blazing like the spun sugar of boiled sweets.
He woke suddenly, shivering as Rodney left the bed, the gray wash covered everything and he could taste sugar in his mouth.
“Go back to sleep Sheppard, John, there’s a few hours until we have to be up. I thought it would look better if everyone sees me coming out of my own quarters in the morning.”
“Okay.”
He felt fingers slide down his smooth cheek and he caught them there, pulled them to his mouth and kissed them.
Another hand fell into his hair and stroked it back for a moment before Rodney said softly, “See you later.”
He heard the door open and shut and drifted off back to sleep, this time dreaming of Rodney lying in sunlight, sweat collecting in the hollow of his throat.
In the afternoon, after more eye drops, he drifted to the East pier with a couple of bottles of beer and the War and Peace audio book. The voice sunk into his skin, the oddly discordant Russian names blending with the sounds Atlantis made, buzzing and humming, busy in some places and restrained in others. Like Rodney‘s constant energy. He let his feet dangle in the water, feeling tiny fish dart under the soles of his feet.
After several hours he stretched out and arched his back. He turned his head towards the sun and looked towards the ocean and blinked frantically for a moment because he was seeing blue.
Not just one blue either, two blues. A darker one and then a brighter one above it. The feeling in his chest was like the night before, like it might burst as he stared at the wavering line of the horizon.
He could see the sky. His vision blurred and he rubbed his eyes frantically and felt the tears on the back of his hand. He rolled on his back and fixated on the sky, he couldn’t make out clouds or perspective but he could see the sky again and something in him began to painfully knit together.
The days drifted by as colours began to darken and perspective began to deepen. He learnt the feel of Rodney’s body, always keeping the lights on even though he couldn’t make out more than white and pink on bluey gray. There was so much to learn though, the way skin felt and come smelled. The way a muscle or a vein or a tendon felt under his tongue compared to his fingers.
Hair that was rough on his body and silky on his head and how it felt to lie there quietly afterwards, wrapped up in Rodney’s arms and trying to stop the trembling that always embarrassed him after really good sex.
During the day he navigated around the city, still letting his fingers trail across the walls just to feel Atlantis shiver like a lover, like Rodney did when he bit his neck and wrapped his hand round his cock at the same time.
He loved the smell of her, the briny sea salt you never really got away from. That reminded him of Rodney too, the smell of salt and the metallic tang of semen. It made him shudder and lean against the wall.
He still leaned on Rodney even after he recognised when dipping shadows meant stairs and when a block ahead of him meant a wall. He probably looked pathetic and he hated that, but it was lucky he could disguise the first rushing weakness of love that was requited after all with disability.
The dreams calmed down so he slipped from smudged reality to dreams of sound instead of gobstopper colours. Russian names walked around Atlantis, snow drifts filled the corridors and the sea stretched ahead sounding like ice skates and skis.
The first day he woke to myopic, real vision he jerked out of the first pastor nightmare for several days. The screeching about morality and eyes for eyes had turned into the howling of wolves with colours bleached to gray.
He almost fell out of bed and ended up propping himself up on the wall looking down at Rodney and he could see him. Really see him, not just shapes. He reached out and could see his hand moving forward and landing on Rodney’s cheek, he moved it back and lost sight of his fingers in pale brown hair.
“Rodney?”
His voice sounding rasping, not like it usually did.
“Hmm, what? John?”
He moved his hand and traced under Rodney’s eye, feeling the tissue paper soft skin there drag under his finger tip. He ran the nail down Rodney’s nose and over his lips, felt Rodney say against it, “John, John can you see me?”
He couldn’t answer right away and just nodded.
“Oh my God.”
Rodney knelt up on the bed and put his hands on his shoulders.
“You can see me.”
“I can see you.”
“Oh God. Oh God John.”
They stared at each other and he could see Rodney’s bright blue eyes and long eyelashes, his open startled mouth. Happiness, sparkled like a candle flame inside him and threatened to split his face apart.
“Look at you.”
He hadn’t forgotten what Rodney looked like, but his memory had already begun to smear at the edges. He leant forward to kiss Rodney, but up close he blurred too much to really see so he pulled back and looked around the room.
Sunlight was sliding through the gap in the curtains and the flecks of glitter on them were catching the light and sparkling. Johnny Cash was growling down at them and the chair was lying in the floor where Rodney had knocked it over the night before.
He pulled himself off the bed and carefully stood it upright, walked over to the window and pulled the curtains open. His eyes swam for a moment and then focused on the sea, a beautiful blue blur stretching out as far as he could see. It was fuzzier than it had been before, but he could see it, the sea surrounding them and the sky above them.
“John.”
He turned as Rodney put his hand on his shoulder and looked at him closely. He looked sleep rumpled and was smiling a huge, crooked smile.
“We need to go look at stuff.”
John laughed, “We do.”
The day smelt, tasted, sounded like joy, he couldn‘t remember the last time he had been so simply, uncomplicatedly happy. They practically ran round the city and he laughed because smiling didn’t cover the fizzy feelings, wasn’t enough to match the views from balconies, the elegant spires and horizon reaching away. Smiling could never match Teyla’s beautiful face and swelling belly, or Ronon’s rare grin and he didn’t think he’d ever smiled wide enough to equal the one Rodney wore that day.
The beautiful, blue green silver of Atlantis was so much warmer and richer than the gray sludge he’d lived in for weeks. The stained glass panels so much more elegant and rich than the garish gobstopper colours splashed across his nightmares.
He first thought the most perfect moment of the day was seeing the puddle jumpers again. He pressed his hands against his favourite one, Genevieve, and felt her whir to life. He jumped in and the panels shot up around him, showing him where he could fly, how fast he could go, what it would be like when he got there. He laughed again and Rodney spun his chair round to kiss him. Teyla and Ronon gasped and then started laughing and asking, “How long, since when, why didn’t you tell us?”
He took the jumper and flew loops over the city, over his home. Just stared down at it as it glittered in the sunlight, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Later he went up again just with Rodney, and they hovered over Atlantis in the limitless night sky.
They made love on the floor of the cock pit and God it was good, good didn’t describe it. To put all the pieces of smell, taste and touch together and see Rodney’s face get increasingly desperate and the way he clenched his fingers around the chair leg. To fall on his back and look up and see the stars streaming above him and the deep blue sky the colour of Rodney’s, dark, dilated eyes.
If they’d done this before he’d have closed his eyes as Rodney pushed inside him but he couldn’t miss that now and saw something in Rodney’s face, in that moment, that meant he had to arch his back for one wild moment to bring their lips together until Rodney began to move and he slumped back down.
Half way through, just as tight, tense electricity was beginning to run up his spine Rodney suddenly pulled out and twisted their positions so they were facing Atlantis, Rodney kneeling behind him. He moaned and felt Rodney clutch him closer and say once, desperately, “John.”
He came with his eyes open and it was his laughter that tipped Rodney over the edge. They lay there for another hour, spinning in space, watching the beautiful planet sleep beneath them and John sleepily wondered if it was possible for a heart to break with happiness.
THE END
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