Of Duct Tape and Prayer
Word Count: 3,000 + (I...have nothing to say.)
Rating: PG-13 (big stretch, though.)
Warning: Post episode for Lifeline, so spoilers for anything up to and including that.
Author's notes: Apparently the trick to writing fic is saying to yourself, "Self, I want these two to kiss. How are we going to make that happen?" And it's a backwards process from there.
When Rodney opens the door to the South Tower balcony, he’s only half surprised to find that it’s already occupied. It’s not as though these last couple of days have turned out the way he planned, to say the least, and it would seem to be too much to ask for a small bit of breathing room before the next crisis de jour.
The other person stares at Rodney as he stands indecisively in the doorway, before turning and leaning onto the railing as though he weren’t there.
For a moment he considers turning around and heading back inside to go…anywhere else, really, but then a voice drawls, “In or out, McKay. Were you raised in a barn?”
Rodney resigns himself to fate as he steps out fully onto the balcony and lets the doors close silently behind him.
It’s cold out, much colder than he’d expected, and he shivers as he burrows deeper into the faded Caltech sweatshirt he had thought to throw on his still shower-dampened body. There’s a chill wind blowing off the ocean, one seemingly identical to the other they had just left the day before. Yet somehow this ocean feels as alien as anything Rodney has ever experienced since coming to this galaxy, and his eyes move up and away from the gray expanses.
Overhead long, dark serpentine clouds twist their way through an unfamiliar star-field, partially obscuring the glow of the dual moons. Rodney bounces the laptop he’s carrying lightly on his thigh, wondering why he thought this would be a good place to do this.
“Got kicked out of the Control Room, too?” Sheppard asks from his spot at the railing, not turning to look at Rodney as he speaks. There’s something in his voice that’s almost like sarcasm, but not, and Rodney feels his face flush despite the night air.
(What Rodney wants to tell him: in fact, he left the Control Room of his own freewill. He couldn’t stand the pitying looks that Sam kept giving him; the concern Radek couldn’t keep out of his voice; the overall “you’ve made me an orphan puppy” vibe that was coming off of Chuck in waves.
Plus, if he didn’t leave he was bound to stab Bill Lee in the eye with a screw-driver eventually, kids and wife be damned, and that probably wasn’t the nicest way of saying “thank you” to a man that had just helped save him and his city.)
Instead he says, “Colonel Carter suggested I try and get some sleep now that we’ve got our feet back on the ground.” He gestured needlessly around them. “So to speak.”
There might have also been some pointed hints about finding a shower, which, after three days, even Rodney’s sensitivities were willing to give a pass.
“So you decided to take a nice evening stroll instead.” Sheppard’s voice is all drowsy-sharpness, the tone that is intended to mean oh, well gosh, isn’t that nice, but actually means I’m two steps ahead of you and your bullshit.
It should make Rodney’s skin crawl, that tone, but it doesn’t. Somewhere along the way he stumbled upon the Super Secret Sheppard decoder ring, and since that point has learned to read beyond the words-when he’s willing. It’s the reason the two of them get alone as well as they do on most days. It’s also the reason things go so far south on the days when they don’t
“I couldn’t sleep.” He says simply. Despite not having slept in almost 70 hours, it’s not a lie.
(What he doesn’t mention: when he got to his room initially, he could barely keep his head up and eyes focused. Then he had opened his door and the adrenaline had once again taken a zinging path through his veins.
The place was a disaster. Furniture had been toppled, books and papers were strewn on the floor, diplomas and photos had fallen from their hangings. It looked like a scene out of a cheesy police serial, and Rodney had had his hand halfway to his radio before words like explosion and vacuum and a leaf kissing a pond filtered through his fog-addled brain. He had found a path to his bathroom without a second glance at the room, pausing only long enough to grab up a pair of relatively clean sweats and to dump the laptop he had been carrying on his bed.
After he had scrapped enough soap off of the walls to do a half-hearted job of scrubbing off the last three days, goddamn vacuum, he had had every intention of crawling into his junk laden bed and dealing with it, all of it, in the morning. Halfway to the bed, though, his foot smashed one of the fallen frames, splitting the glass inside. He had been relieved that nothing sharp had imbedded in his foot, and he had bent to pick up the frame.
His fingers never closed over it. Instead he stood bent over the photograph, hands brushing at air. Eventually he straightened, grabbed the laptop off of his bunched comforter, and made a beeline for the door.)
“Yeah.” Sheppard sighs the word, and Rodney can see his breath when he speaks. When he finally turns to face Rodney, there’s resignation and, god, guilt scribbled all over his features. “Join the club.”
For the first time, Rodney notices that John looks like shit, or as much as the man can at any rate. There are bags under his eyes that have probably decided to take up permanent residence, and the stubble is well past the five o’clock shadow variety. The sleeves of his BDUs are undone and hanging loosely down to his wrists, something Rodney has never seen his friend do before. Most striking is John’s flat hair mashed to his scalp, and Rodney chalks it up to sleep deprivation that he finds that fact so alarming.
Neither says anything as Rodney comes to stand by the balcony’s edge, though John tracks him with half closed eyes. The metal of the railing sends chills up Rodney’s arm, and he’s struck by how dead the city feels under his fingertips. He shivers again as he clutches the laptop one handed to his stomach.
There’s a moment of calm as they stand together, gazes focused out on the city beyond. Rodney unconsciously starts building teams in his mind to survey the damage, and he wants to laugh at how it’s becoming almost a routine.
There will be equipment to fix or replace, paper-work to fill out, treasures to be catalogued as lost beyond his ability to repair. Inevitably during the process, someone will piss off the gods, call down the plagues, pull a Pandora and open what they should have learned by now to just leave well enough alone.
But then again, they might find something at the back of a wardrobe, or turn the key in the door to the garden. They might fall down the rabbit hole, or get sucked up in a cyclone and set down some uncharted elsewhere. His days rivaled the strangest fiction, and it was a crapshoot what genre he’d wake to each morning.
Sheppard stirs next to him, and surprisingly is the first to break the silence.
“Come out to catch up on some work?” John asks, gesturing to the laptop in Rodney’s hand. His voice is scratchy, low and curious. “Labs would probably be more productive. And, you know, warmer.”
Rodney wants to lie, or walk away and leave Sheppard to assume what he wants.
“It’s not mine.” He says quietly. “It’s Elizabeth’s.”
(What Rodney doesn’t share: the tears that had been tracking down Teyla’s face when she had handed the laptop to him on her way out of the Control Room. He had searched for words to comfort her, to fix her pain, yet none had come. She averted her eyes as she stooped to grab the box, full of all the touches that had made four walls into the reflection of its occupant. As Teyla walked away she left a dark, vacant space in her wake that stabbed at Rodney’s heart.)
Sheppard doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, but in the moonlight Rodney sees something cold and dark pass behind his eyes. His gaze flickers away, back to what lies ahead of them. Rodney watches John’s jaw tighten an increment.
“She made me promise…a long time ago.” Rodney’s unsure why he’s saying this, needing to justify himself to the other man. “She said that if anything happened, she wanted me to take care of this for her. I promised.” He takes in a gulp of air that burns down his throat and into his lungs. “So I am.”
Sheppard nods, his face unchanged. “Good of you to keep your word like that.” The words are acidic and damning. “Thanks for keeping me in the loop.” He turns away and begins walking to the door. “Night.”
Rodney feels something break inside him, and before he knows what he’s done the laptop is on the ground and he’s spinning Sheppard around halfway across the balcony.
“Don’t you dare!” He screams in Sheppard’s face, angry in a way that he’s not used to. His usual temper is like a flashbulb, quick and bright and gone in an instant. But this is a well stoked fire, hot embers catching onto ample fuel. “Don’t you fucking dare go off to sulk somewhere, thinking this is all my fault! I tried! I tried to save her; I didn’t want to leave her!”
Rodney can feel John’s arm muscles bunching under his grip, and the tiredness in his face is gone. In its place is a gathering storm of emotions, fronted by anger that could rival Rodney’s own.
“I didn’t say it was your fault, McKay!” Sheppard’s voice is not as loud as Rodney’s yet, but just as sharp.
“You might as well!” He screams, and god, he regrets coming out here. He didn’t want to do this, now or ever, and it’s suddenly too late to avoid the oncoming collision. Rodney feels like he’s bringing a sledge hammer down on one of the few human connections he truly cares about. Cares about too much when he’s honest.
But what the hell. It’s just one more thing in his life suddenly broken, some more shattered glass on his floor, another thread of the lifeline he’s been grasping onto gone.
It’s just another facet of a city in ruins.
“You have no clue what you’re talking about, Rodney!” The steel in his voice matches the hardness in John’s eyes. “Let go.” It’s the Sheppard-in-Command voice, the don’t screw with me and just do what I say tone.
Rodney’s grip tightens. “I did everything I could to save her. I didn’t want her to die.”
“Elizabeth. Isn’t. Dead!” John is suddenly claws and venom, spitting out his words and digging his nails into Rodney’s arm. “Fucking let go, Rodney!”
Rodney somehow manages to maintain his hold. If he lets go now he’ll fall down somewhere deep and dark, and he’s not sure he’ll ever find his way back. He’s not sure John will even try to find him after this.
“You can’t know she isn’t!” It hurts so much to say it, but he’s never been one for wishful thinking. “You can’t just say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find her, we’ll save her,’ and it’ll be true. It’s never like that! Never. Not with you and Kolya, not with Ford, not now.”
The second the words are out of his mouth, Rodney wants to swallow them back up. All the fire goes out of his body as the air rushes out of his lungs.
John looks struck, like Rodney’s just laid a sound blow on him. If any other person had put that look on John, Rodney would have made their life a hell worse than Job’s. He never in a thousand years thought he could manage this.
Rodney’s hands goes slack against John’s still arms.
“I didn’t…John, I didn’t mean…John…” There’s absolutely nothing he can say to take it back, make it better.
(What Rodney can’t tell John: in his mind he hears the sound of shattering glass. He thinks of a picture of four friends at dinner, light years away from this moment, smiling and taking comfort in one another’s presence. He hears Carson telling him to smile for the camera (he wants to send a copy to his Mum), and he can practically see Elizabeth grinning at his discomfort. The John in his memory throws an arm around his shoulders and laughs in his ear. Then they’re motionless in the frame, and Rodney is the only one still visible. The others are distorted by a spider-web of tangled shards and torn bits of papers.)
“You don’t think I already know that?” John asks him quietly, in a voice that’s so lost it makes Rodney’s heart ache with remorse. “You don’t think I’ve been standing here all night thinking, ‘Way to fucking go, John. There’s another one you let slip through you fingers?’”
John searches Rodney’s eyes for something, and he can only imagine that it might be condemnation, or perhaps a way to salvation. Rodney’s already offered him one and has no clue how to give him the other.
“John--”
“If Elizabeth’s dead, it’s kind of a good thing, right?” John asks slowly, and Rodney too stunned to reply. “Because, then she’s not…she’s not waiting around for us to never find her. Suffering through the torture for nothing. Because then there isn’t a chance that we will find her, only to have the nanites shut down, or of a Wraith draining her till she’s nothing but a shadow.” John’s eyes go distant. “She won’t bleed out all over the goddamn desert.”
Rodney feels sick, like he’s going to pass out or vomit at any moment. When he came out here tonight, he had done so to escape his demons. He should have known John would be here to try and face his own head on.
“So, that’s it, right Rodney?” John asks him, and they’re still touching at arms length in a mock embrace. “We’ll box up her stuff, send it back to Earth, and say a few nice words over a bottle of liquor? You’ll erase her laptop, bury her secrets, wipe your hands of her and move on?”
John moves into Rodney’s space, fills all his senses, and he can’t breath. “That’ll be the late, great legacy of Dr. Elizabeth Weir then. ‘Dead by American Military Hubris and a Software Glitch.’ Not exactly the most poetic epitaph I’ve ever heard, but at least it’s accurate.”
“Stop it.” Rodney wants to close his eyes and shut out the words. He wants to escape from John, from this moment, but he’s trapped by all the walls tumbling down around him. “Stop.”
“And we’ll move on, and someone else will take up her mantle because that’s just what we do. But what about next time, Rodney?” John’s whispering, but to Rodney he might as well be shouting. “What are we going to do when it’s Ronon? Or Radek? Or Teyla?”
John’s grips Rodney’s arms tightly. “What the fuck am I going to do when it’s you?” Any façade of composure was long since gone from John’s body. “I won’t be able to fucking move on, because that will be IT. I will be DONE. Don’t you get that? Can’t you fucking understand…?”
He gets it, he does. He does.
When John kisses Rodney, it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t gentle. It’s a painful pressure against his mouth, pulled in by John’s fierce hold on his wrists. It’s demanding and harsh, and it makes Rodney’s heart break just a little bit more as he whimpers against the other’s mouth.
“I’m sorry.” He tries to mumble against the bruising kiss, but John presses impossibly closer and the words are garbled. He keeps trying anyway. “I’m sorry, god I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. John. I trust you. Elizabeth trusted you. Trusts you. I’m sorry. John, John, John…”
When John takes a shaking breath and pulls back, he loosens his hold on Rodney’s wrists enough for him to break away. Rodney halts his litany mid-word.
John looks panic stricken. “I didn’t mean to…did I hurt…?”
And when Rodney slips shaking arms around John’s waist and buries his nose into the other’s neck, they both allow the silence to wash over them. Their breathing steadies and the cold wind feels less harsh with their arms secured tightly around one another.
“It’s not your fault.” John says into his temple, and Rodney quakes as the words act as a soothing salve on the wound he hadn’t fully realized he had. It’s almost enough to make Rodney believe the words are true.
“Not yours either.” He mumbles into John’s neck, and he holds him just that much tighter. “It’s not.”
“Okay.” John’s reply is unconvincing, and Rodney cannot stand to hear the doubt there. He presses a butterfly-light kiss against John’s neck, then along his jaw, and onto his chin. He smears reassurance across the skin, hoping it sinks in through the flesh and takes seed in the spirit.
This time when their lips meet, it’s a gentle slide of connection, a circuit finding a path to the greater whole. When John pushes his tongue in for the first sweet sweep of taste and heat, it’s enough to warm Rodney to his core even on this foreign, cold world.
In the morning, or maybe the afternoon for all he knows or cares, John sleeps soundly in Rodney’s big person sized bed. There’s a warm glow filtering in from the window, and Rodney thinks for the first time that they might very well be okay here. Or at least, they’ll learn to get by.
Rodney types in a command code to the laptop at his desk, whispering a small goodbye to Elizabeth as he watches all of her personal files disappear into electronic nothing. The hum of the laptop shutting down lulls him into drifty acceptance as he slips back into bed beside John.
He rests his head on the pillow near John, watching his bare chest rise and fall in sync with his own.
And Rodney thinks, if all he has is some duct tape and the power of prayer, he’s going to hold this City together. He’s going to hold John together. After all, he’s Dr. Rodney McKay, and if there’s anyone capable of fitting the pieces of his world back together, it’s him.
Rating: PG-13 (big stretch, though.)
Warning: Post episode for Lifeline, so spoilers for anything up to and including that.
Author's notes: Apparently the trick to writing fic is saying to yourself, "Self, I want these two to kiss. How are we going to make that happen?" And it's a backwards process from there.
When Rodney opens the door to the South Tower balcony, he’s only half surprised to find that it’s already occupied. It’s not as though these last couple of days have turned out the way he planned, to say the least, and it would seem to be too much to ask for a small bit of breathing room before the next crisis de jour.
The other person stares at Rodney as he stands indecisively in the doorway, before turning and leaning onto the railing as though he weren’t there.
For a moment he considers turning around and heading back inside to go…anywhere else, really, but then a voice drawls, “In or out, McKay. Were you raised in a barn?”
Rodney resigns himself to fate as he steps out fully onto the balcony and lets the doors close silently behind him.
It’s cold out, much colder than he’d expected, and he shivers as he burrows deeper into the faded Caltech sweatshirt he had thought to throw on his still shower-dampened body. There’s a chill wind blowing off the ocean, one seemingly identical to the other they had just left the day before. Yet somehow this ocean feels as alien as anything Rodney has ever experienced since coming to this galaxy, and his eyes move up and away from the gray expanses.
Overhead long, dark serpentine clouds twist their way through an unfamiliar star-field, partially obscuring the glow of the dual moons. Rodney bounces the laptop he’s carrying lightly on his thigh, wondering why he thought this would be a good place to do this.
“Got kicked out of the Control Room, too?” Sheppard asks from his spot at the railing, not turning to look at Rodney as he speaks. There’s something in his voice that’s almost like sarcasm, but not, and Rodney feels his face flush despite the night air.
(What Rodney wants to tell him: in fact, he left the Control Room of his own freewill. He couldn’t stand the pitying looks that Sam kept giving him; the concern Radek couldn’t keep out of his voice; the overall “you’ve made me an orphan puppy” vibe that was coming off of Chuck in waves.
Plus, if he didn’t leave he was bound to stab Bill Lee in the eye with a screw-driver eventually, kids and wife be damned, and that probably wasn’t the nicest way of saying “thank you” to a man that had just helped save him and his city.)
Instead he says, “Colonel Carter suggested I try and get some sleep now that we’ve got our feet back on the ground.” He gestured needlessly around them. “So to speak.”
There might have also been some pointed hints about finding a shower, which, after three days, even Rodney’s sensitivities were willing to give a pass.
“So you decided to take a nice evening stroll instead.” Sheppard’s voice is all drowsy-sharpness, the tone that is intended to mean oh, well gosh, isn’t that nice, but actually means I’m two steps ahead of you and your bullshit.
It should make Rodney’s skin crawl, that tone, but it doesn’t. Somewhere along the way he stumbled upon the Super Secret Sheppard decoder ring, and since that point has learned to read beyond the words-when he’s willing. It’s the reason the two of them get alone as well as they do on most days. It’s also the reason things go so far south on the days when they don’t
“I couldn’t sleep.” He says simply. Despite not having slept in almost 70 hours, it’s not a lie.
(What he doesn’t mention: when he got to his room initially, he could barely keep his head up and eyes focused. Then he had opened his door and the adrenaline had once again taken a zinging path through his veins.
The place was a disaster. Furniture had been toppled, books and papers were strewn on the floor, diplomas and photos had fallen from their hangings. It looked like a scene out of a cheesy police serial, and Rodney had had his hand halfway to his radio before words like explosion and vacuum and a leaf kissing a pond filtered through his fog-addled brain. He had found a path to his bathroom without a second glance at the room, pausing only long enough to grab up a pair of relatively clean sweats and to dump the laptop he had been carrying on his bed.
After he had scrapped enough soap off of the walls to do a half-hearted job of scrubbing off the last three days, goddamn vacuum, he had had every intention of crawling into his junk laden bed and dealing with it, all of it, in the morning. Halfway to the bed, though, his foot smashed one of the fallen frames, splitting the glass inside. He had been relieved that nothing sharp had imbedded in his foot, and he had bent to pick up the frame.
His fingers never closed over it. Instead he stood bent over the photograph, hands brushing at air. Eventually he straightened, grabbed the laptop off of his bunched comforter, and made a beeline for the door.)
“Yeah.” Sheppard sighs the word, and Rodney can see his breath when he speaks. When he finally turns to face Rodney, there’s resignation and, god, guilt scribbled all over his features. “Join the club.”
For the first time, Rodney notices that John looks like shit, or as much as the man can at any rate. There are bags under his eyes that have probably decided to take up permanent residence, and the stubble is well past the five o’clock shadow variety. The sleeves of his BDUs are undone and hanging loosely down to his wrists, something Rodney has never seen his friend do before. Most striking is John’s flat hair mashed to his scalp, and Rodney chalks it up to sleep deprivation that he finds that fact so alarming.
Neither says anything as Rodney comes to stand by the balcony’s edge, though John tracks him with half closed eyes. The metal of the railing sends chills up Rodney’s arm, and he’s struck by how dead the city feels under his fingertips. He shivers again as he clutches the laptop one handed to his stomach.
There’s a moment of calm as they stand together, gazes focused out on the city beyond. Rodney unconsciously starts building teams in his mind to survey the damage, and he wants to laugh at how it’s becoming almost a routine.
There will be equipment to fix or replace, paper-work to fill out, treasures to be catalogued as lost beyond his ability to repair. Inevitably during the process, someone will piss off the gods, call down the plagues, pull a Pandora and open what they should have learned by now to just leave well enough alone.
But then again, they might find something at the back of a wardrobe, or turn the key in the door to the garden. They might fall down the rabbit hole, or get sucked up in a cyclone and set down some uncharted elsewhere. His days rivaled the strangest fiction, and it was a crapshoot what genre he’d wake to each morning.
Sheppard stirs next to him, and surprisingly is the first to break the silence.
“Come out to catch up on some work?” John asks, gesturing to the laptop in Rodney’s hand. His voice is scratchy, low and curious. “Labs would probably be more productive. And, you know, warmer.”
Rodney wants to lie, or walk away and leave Sheppard to assume what he wants.
“It’s not mine.” He says quietly. “It’s Elizabeth’s.”
(What Rodney doesn’t share: the tears that had been tracking down Teyla’s face when she had handed the laptop to him on her way out of the Control Room. He had searched for words to comfort her, to fix her pain, yet none had come. She averted her eyes as she stooped to grab the box, full of all the touches that had made four walls into the reflection of its occupant. As Teyla walked away she left a dark, vacant space in her wake that stabbed at Rodney’s heart.)
Sheppard doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, but in the moonlight Rodney sees something cold and dark pass behind his eyes. His gaze flickers away, back to what lies ahead of them. Rodney watches John’s jaw tighten an increment.
“She made me promise…a long time ago.” Rodney’s unsure why he’s saying this, needing to justify himself to the other man. “She said that if anything happened, she wanted me to take care of this for her. I promised.” He takes in a gulp of air that burns down his throat and into his lungs. “So I am.”
Sheppard nods, his face unchanged. “Good of you to keep your word like that.” The words are acidic and damning. “Thanks for keeping me in the loop.” He turns away and begins walking to the door. “Night.”
Rodney feels something break inside him, and before he knows what he’s done the laptop is on the ground and he’s spinning Sheppard around halfway across the balcony.
“Don’t you dare!” He screams in Sheppard’s face, angry in a way that he’s not used to. His usual temper is like a flashbulb, quick and bright and gone in an instant. But this is a well stoked fire, hot embers catching onto ample fuel. “Don’t you fucking dare go off to sulk somewhere, thinking this is all my fault! I tried! I tried to save her; I didn’t want to leave her!”
Rodney can feel John’s arm muscles bunching under his grip, and the tiredness in his face is gone. In its place is a gathering storm of emotions, fronted by anger that could rival Rodney’s own.
“I didn’t say it was your fault, McKay!” Sheppard’s voice is not as loud as Rodney’s yet, but just as sharp.
“You might as well!” He screams, and god, he regrets coming out here. He didn’t want to do this, now or ever, and it’s suddenly too late to avoid the oncoming collision. Rodney feels like he’s bringing a sledge hammer down on one of the few human connections he truly cares about. Cares about too much when he’s honest.
But what the hell. It’s just one more thing in his life suddenly broken, some more shattered glass on his floor, another thread of the lifeline he’s been grasping onto gone.
It’s just another facet of a city in ruins.
“You have no clue what you’re talking about, Rodney!” The steel in his voice matches the hardness in John’s eyes. “Let go.” It’s the Sheppard-in-Command voice, the don’t screw with me and just do what I say tone.
Rodney’s grip tightens. “I did everything I could to save her. I didn’t want her to die.”
“Elizabeth. Isn’t. Dead!” John is suddenly claws and venom, spitting out his words and digging his nails into Rodney’s arm. “Fucking let go, Rodney!”
Rodney somehow manages to maintain his hold. If he lets go now he’ll fall down somewhere deep and dark, and he’s not sure he’ll ever find his way back. He’s not sure John will even try to find him after this.
“You can’t know she isn’t!” It hurts so much to say it, but he’s never been one for wishful thinking. “You can’t just say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find her, we’ll save her,’ and it’ll be true. It’s never like that! Never. Not with you and Kolya, not with Ford, not now.”
The second the words are out of his mouth, Rodney wants to swallow them back up. All the fire goes out of his body as the air rushes out of his lungs.
John looks struck, like Rodney’s just laid a sound blow on him. If any other person had put that look on John, Rodney would have made their life a hell worse than Job’s. He never in a thousand years thought he could manage this.
Rodney’s hands goes slack against John’s still arms.
“I didn’t…John, I didn’t mean…John…” There’s absolutely nothing he can say to take it back, make it better.
(What Rodney can’t tell John: in his mind he hears the sound of shattering glass. He thinks of a picture of four friends at dinner, light years away from this moment, smiling and taking comfort in one another’s presence. He hears Carson telling him to smile for the camera (he wants to send a copy to his Mum), and he can practically see Elizabeth grinning at his discomfort. The John in his memory throws an arm around his shoulders and laughs in his ear. Then they’re motionless in the frame, and Rodney is the only one still visible. The others are distorted by a spider-web of tangled shards and torn bits of papers.)
“You don’t think I already know that?” John asks him quietly, in a voice that’s so lost it makes Rodney’s heart ache with remorse. “You don’t think I’ve been standing here all night thinking, ‘Way to fucking go, John. There’s another one you let slip through you fingers?’”
John searches Rodney’s eyes for something, and he can only imagine that it might be condemnation, or perhaps a way to salvation. Rodney’s already offered him one and has no clue how to give him the other.
“John--”
“If Elizabeth’s dead, it’s kind of a good thing, right?” John asks slowly, and Rodney too stunned to reply. “Because, then she’s not…she’s not waiting around for us to never find her. Suffering through the torture for nothing. Because then there isn’t a chance that we will find her, only to have the nanites shut down, or of a Wraith draining her till she’s nothing but a shadow.” John’s eyes go distant. “She won’t bleed out all over the goddamn desert.”
Rodney feels sick, like he’s going to pass out or vomit at any moment. When he came out here tonight, he had done so to escape his demons. He should have known John would be here to try and face his own head on.
“So, that’s it, right Rodney?” John asks him, and they’re still touching at arms length in a mock embrace. “We’ll box up her stuff, send it back to Earth, and say a few nice words over a bottle of liquor? You’ll erase her laptop, bury her secrets, wipe your hands of her and move on?”
John moves into Rodney’s space, fills all his senses, and he can’t breath. “That’ll be the late, great legacy of Dr. Elizabeth Weir then. ‘Dead by American Military Hubris and a Software Glitch.’ Not exactly the most poetic epitaph I’ve ever heard, but at least it’s accurate.”
“Stop it.” Rodney wants to close his eyes and shut out the words. He wants to escape from John, from this moment, but he’s trapped by all the walls tumbling down around him. “Stop.”
“And we’ll move on, and someone else will take up her mantle because that’s just what we do. But what about next time, Rodney?” John’s whispering, but to Rodney he might as well be shouting. “What are we going to do when it’s Ronon? Or Radek? Or Teyla?”
John’s grips Rodney’s arms tightly. “What the fuck am I going to do when it’s you?” Any façade of composure was long since gone from John’s body. “I won’t be able to fucking move on, because that will be IT. I will be DONE. Don’t you get that? Can’t you fucking understand…?”
He gets it, he does. He does.
When John kisses Rodney, it isn’t sweet, and it isn’t gentle. It’s a painful pressure against his mouth, pulled in by John’s fierce hold on his wrists. It’s demanding and harsh, and it makes Rodney’s heart break just a little bit more as he whimpers against the other’s mouth.
“I’m sorry.” He tries to mumble against the bruising kiss, but John presses impossibly closer and the words are garbled. He keeps trying anyway. “I’m sorry, god I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. John. I trust you. Elizabeth trusted you. Trusts you. I’m sorry. John, John, John…”
When John takes a shaking breath and pulls back, he loosens his hold on Rodney’s wrists enough for him to break away. Rodney halts his litany mid-word.
John looks panic stricken. “I didn’t mean to…did I hurt…?”
And when Rodney slips shaking arms around John’s waist and buries his nose into the other’s neck, they both allow the silence to wash over them. Their breathing steadies and the cold wind feels less harsh with their arms secured tightly around one another.
“It’s not your fault.” John says into his temple, and Rodney quakes as the words act as a soothing salve on the wound he hadn’t fully realized he had. It’s almost enough to make Rodney believe the words are true.
“Not yours either.” He mumbles into John’s neck, and he holds him just that much tighter. “It’s not.”
“Okay.” John’s reply is unconvincing, and Rodney cannot stand to hear the doubt there. He presses a butterfly-light kiss against John’s neck, then along his jaw, and onto his chin. He smears reassurance across the skin, hoping it sinks in through the flesh and takes seed in the spirit.
This time when their lips meet, it’s a gentle slide of connection, a circuit finding a path to the greater whole. When John pushes his tongue in for the first sweet sweep of taste and heat, it’s enough to warm Rodney to his core even on this foreign, cold world.
In the morning, or maybe the afternoon for all he knows or cares, John sleeps soundly in Rodney’s big person sized bed. There’s a warm glow filtering in from the window, and Rodney thinks for the first time that they might very well be okay here. Or at least, they’ll learn to get by.
Rodney types in a command code to the laptop at his desk, whispering a small goodbye to Elizabeth as he watches all of her personal files disappear into electronic nothing. The hum of the laptop shutting down lulls him into drifty acceptance as he slips back into bed beside John.
He rests his head on the pillow near John, watching his bare chest rise and fall in sync with his own.
And Rodney thinks, if all he has is some duct tape and the power of prayer, he’s going to hold this City together. He’s going to hold John together. After all, he’s Dr. Rodney McKay, and if there’s anyone capable of fitting the pieces of his world back together, it’s him.