Nothing at all to Do with Henry VII by Pentapus
Title: Nothing at All to Do with Henry VII
Author: Pentapus
Warnings: violence, sexual tension between people.
For the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll challenge.
Radek crouches at the center of a seven pointed star, lost in a mass of crystalline polyhedra and transparent wires. Simpson stands knee deep in the burned out circuitry beside him as they excavate the dead and damaged, revealing the real mystery underneath.
Rodney comes the rest of the way awake when the dream of the star chamber starts to merge with the reality of his quarters, dream Radek digging his way through a dark, moonlit pile of Rodney’s dirty laundry instead of a well of Ancient control crystals.
His radio babbles softly near his head, bare floor cool against his forehead, and of course, of course, he fell asleep bent over on the floor, laptop still propped against his knees and back screaming in protest when he even thinks about moving. Forget the bed and the mattress and the three extra pillows that cost him a pound of chocolate right there behind him.
He fumbles for the radio with the hand curled loosely in front of his face, numb and graceless.
“Yes, what.”
“Dr. McKay,” says the radio in the voice of some nameless Daedalus marine. “Dr. Zelenka--”
“They got it open,” Rodney finishes for her, irritation cloaking his exhaustion. “Yes, yes, I noticed. Alright, I’ll be right there.” He starts to put the radio down, creaking to his feet. His muscles are sore in the worst way, he can’t even claim the satisfaction of exercise. His ear hurts from spending the last few hours crushed between the hard floor and his skull.
“Rodney,” the radio says, and it’s Elizabeth now, speaking with professional calm, “Dr. Zelenka tells me he has it under control, and as Carson has already assured us that the health risks appear to be low, perhaps sleep--”
Bla bla bla--Rodney knows where this is going. “Regular cycles,” he says. “Every fifteen minutes. Every fifteen minutes.” When Elizabeth says nothing, he repeats, “I’ll be right there.” His voice is made of high, sharp notes. “Thank you. Bye.”
Elizabeth sighs.
Rodney closes the laptop--there is always time for proper care of vital equipment--placing it on his desk where no one will step on it. He goes to the bed to rearrange the pillows, smoothing the sheets and the extra blanket into place with a caution unfamiliar outside of the lab and the intricate technology he finds there. Before he leaves, he snaps his fingers once in front of Sheppard’s face, just to be sure, but the Colonel is solidly asleep and this time, the bandage hasn’t bled through or been tugged askew by nervous fingers.
Rodney teeters at the edge of indecision, boots creaking, before he swallows thickly, gives a nod of his head, and walks out the silent Lantean door toward the bottom of pier nine and the room of the seven pointed star.
**
Leaning against one grey-green wall, Sheppard drawls, “So--this is the airlock that other airlocks dream of being.”
There are no windows here, not even the ubiquitous bubble pillars to break the solid gleam of the metal walls. Nowhere else in Atlantis has Rodney felt so much like he’s in the interior of a spaceship. He bends over the slim control panel that folded out of the wall at their approach; Sheppard lounges a few yards away by a featureless door that won’t open even for Atlantis’ crown prince. Rodney only bothers looking up when Sheppard speaks because it would be a waste of an eye-roll not to.
Considering that they ended up here due to the fortuitous discovery of a database entry consisting of a single, shoddy scan of a handwritten page with a sector number and “still a horrendously bad idea, you drooling mirambian” scrawled across it in Ancient, Sheppard’s nonchalance is entirely feigned. On a good day, the room behind the airlock could be nothing more than the office of an envied scientific study (as a species, mirambians are still around--domesticated quite fragrantly on P45-23H--so Rodney appreciates that the insult is deserving of the best of bitter, academic rivalry) ...or it could be packed with alien death machines ready to kill them all. Which explains the dozen fully armed marines mingling with Radek and his team of engineers.
Bla bla bla, welcome to the Pegasus Galaxy, Rodney thinks, propping his Ancient scanner against the control console. Under the panels they've removed, the walls are full of machinery intricate like clockwork gone wrong, hydraulics and gears and jointed arms, interwoven with computers so advanced they make Rodney want to cry with joy (not unusual, and after a year in Atlantis, he’s almost gotten used to the feeling); all of it hidden behind three layers of security doors with digital locks rivaling those that surround Atlantis' engine rooms.
It’s all the more noticeable because aside from quarantine protocols, the control tower has no locks at all.
The people from soft sciences occasionally try to explain to Rodney something about the Ancients of Atlantis being ideological anarchists living in sector-based communes with the control tower as the ultimate commons (what with the stargate and engine controls, etc), but Rodney mostly drops empty Jell-O cups on them until they go away and talk to Elizabeth instead so he can get some work done.
In the midst of the clockwork and the electronics, there appears to be a subset of circuitry that Rodney swears resembles the inertial dampening system in the jumpers, except... better, somehow, and he can’t imagine why a dinky little room in the bowels of Atlantis would need it. He really, really wants to get that door open and find out.
Distantly, he realizes that this is how people in horror films wake up mummies. Or Godzilla. It should be more of a deterrent, really, but-- Atlantis.
Radek humors the Colonel. “Airlock is relatively simple concept. This? Very, very complicated. We do not yet know why.”
“So, is that a no to getting the door open?”
Rodney snorts. “Fundamental understanding of the theory behind technology is rarely a barrier to using it. As you would know if you’ve ever seen a linguist send an email.”
Sheppard laughs, a low, throaty sound. It’s annoying how that sound makes Rodney want to smile-- even when Sheppard’s at his most obnoxious, which isn’t now, thank god.
“Or a Genii practice science,” Radek agrees.
“So--” Sheppard drawls again, obviously, obviously about to repeat himself like a slow child, and Rodney groans, but the algorithm he’s running on the Ancient PDA finishes so-- that is a yes, Rodney knows how to open the door.
“Fine! Fine! Yes,” and types the decoded sequence into the control pad sticking out of the wall.
With the smooth whir of brilliant design, the door slides back, and though Sheppard’s standing at the front of the pack with the Marines, weapon raised and body taut, Rodney can still see the stretch of his cheek as he grins.
**
The first time Sheppard nearly breaks Dr. Biro’s wrist for coming near him (lying flat on his stomach on an infirmary bed--seriously, wow), Rodney begins to think it’s not so much a happy drug as an honest one.
The next time Sheppard says, “No”-- when Carson is stepping forward with a threaded needle-- people listen. Or rather, Carson stares helplessly at Lorne who jerks his head at the marines by the door. Rodney is sitting on the same bed, hip by Sheppard’s shoulder, hands tucked under his arms so he’ll stop trying to touch all the things he sees, because the last time Sheppard said, “No,” he also said, “Rodney.”
He’d asked for Teyla first, staring at his hands in confusion, but she’s on the mainland, and maybe Rodney is high enough that he’ll forget to hold it against Sheppard in the morning, because plotting revenge against Sheppard for liking Teyla better-- when Rodney should be more worried about the Colonel bleeding out over the standard-issue sheets-- is one of those little ways Rodney knows he’s not sober either.
**
The chamber is empty but for Radek and Simpson, wading through the puddle of dead circuitry under the missing floor panel at its center. The panel has been safely removed to a dusty storage room somewhere down the hall. The Marines are stationed outside; Elizabeth banished everyone from the star chamber except for essential personnel as soon as they realized the contagion was getting through the hazmat gear.
She was very clear in the immediate aftermath that “essential personnel” did not include Rodney. Sheppard thought that was so funny he rolled over and laughed with his face against Rodney’s hip, warm breath through his t-shirt making Rodney jerk his foot like somebody was testing his reflexes. Sheppard would have rolled right over onto the floor if Teyla hadn’t grabbed him by his skinny hips, rolling him gently back the other way, blood slicking over her fingers, smiling against her will at Sheppard’s stupid grin.
Rodney tried swearing up, down, and sideways that he was completely lucid, but in retrospect he'd been staring at the purple dinosaur chewing on the leg of Elizabeth’s chair while he said it, so maybe it isn’t so surprising that she didn't believe him.
Radek looks up, a grin plastered across his face. Rodney snaps, “You’re not accomplishing anything, are you?”
“This is-- best way to do science,” Radek says dopily.
“Oh please, it’s not even supposed to be affecting you--” which is really why Rodney should get out of here before the next cycle, before Elizabeth sends some gene-deprived Marines down to physically haul him out.
“No, no,” Radek assures him, humming as he picks his way through clumps of wire, “more slowly only, it seems. The Ancients and I-- we are both human in this way.”
Simpson hasn’t said anything, she’s bent over her work, but her cheeks and the tips of her ears are flushed, end of her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth. Someone has duct-taped the laptop she’s working on enthusiastically to the floor.
“I wouldn’t want you to feel locked out of the clubhouse or anything,” Rodney says sarcastically.
“I think I agree with our Mr. Scribbler when he spoke of this room,” Radek continues amiably, setting aside a group of damaged wires before he bends to study something at the bottom of the cavity, folding up his small body and nearly disappearing. "Perhaps best to toy with universe while sober."
There’s a crimson streak at a corner where two arms of the star meet. Rodney stares at it, wanting to demand irrationally that Radek find the off switch right now.
He hears the music begin, vibrating softly up from the floor. Rodney jumps a little.
“Oh dear,” Radek says, except of course, he actually sounds delighted, and tugs on his safety harness, double checking that the carabineer is hooked securely to the floor. (Rodney always thought Radek had hair like a hippie.)
"'Bad idea' is the understatement of ten millennia," Rodney gripes nervously, chin lifting confidently and not at all like he knows he should have left the room as soon as he heard the music start.
Radek frowns at him, puzzled, blinking rapidly behind his glasses, which are posed awkwardly like they might fall off his face at any moment. They won’t; for this job only, Radek has tied string about the ends, looped behind his head like a surfer’s sunglasses.
Radek says, “You are staying?”
Rodney hunkers down, hooks his feet below bundled cords, curls his fingers into the straps of Radek’s safety harness. Simpson throws a companionable arm around his shoulders, rubs her cheek happily against his coat. It's really, really unnerving, since just yesterday she offered him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with marmalade.
Rodney taps his radio, “Elizabeth--”
"Rodney--"
"Too late now," Rodney says recklessly, because it's true, and obviously he's gone mad. But, "Elizabeth--"
“I sent Teyla to wait with John,” Elizabeth says, and he can’t even pretend she doesn’t sound disapproving. But then the world tilts crazily and space folds out inside his brain and Rodney isn’t really worried about Elizabeth’s approval anymore, if he ever was.
**
The door opens easily with Rodney’s password. Sheppard enters first, passing through a short hallway funneling into a wide, empty room marked with deep, evenly spaced alcoves. As Sheppard steps past the hallway, he turns with a slow whistle, admiring the chamber around him. Rodney joins him, seeing that the door is actually at one of the seven points of a star and that, at some point when Rodney wasn’t paying attention, the universe rotated 90 degrees because the window across from him shows the bright light of the sun through the water’s surface not above them, but as a vertical plane to their right.
Rodney shouts, “Nobody move!” and rushes back to the way-too-complicated-to-be-an-airlock. He doesn’t bother with the controls, just whips up a crow bar and goes at it manually like at the doors of an elevator.
Sheppard calls, “So, hey, happy to play freeze tag here a little longer if need be, but--Rodney, how dead are we?”
“Minimally,” Rodney admits, grunting. Zelenka is, of course, breezily ignoring Rodney’s instructions, walking right up to squint out the far window at the misplaced horizon.
“Great,” Sheppard says. “Can I get someone to help you with that?”
“If you must, but something’s gone wonky, and no one touch anything.”
“Righto,” Sheppard promises, and Rodney lets Private Tattersall throw his considerable weight against the crowbar until they’re both staring at the Marines they left in the hallway--who are goggling at them sideways.
Which is to say, from Rodney’s point of view, they’re standing on the wall.
“Well,” Rodney says. “That explains the inertial dampeners,” and takes the crowbar back and shuts the door.
He’s half-considering sending everyone out until he or Radek can figure out how the whole thing works when the music starts.
**
Rodney is a spider on the ceiling when he says, “Some sort of redial function.”
Except it’s not actually him saying that. Radek tells him; Rodney just mouths the words along with him because the difference between them is suddenly very slight in Rodney’s head. Rodney wants to be babbling, but it’s throwing him off that he keeps thinking his mouth is occupied.
“The system never initializes completely,” he says with Radek. “The gravitational simulation cannot be meant to cycle. It is-- like-- a dial-up internet. It cannot connect, so it tries again.”
Rodney’s knees are hooked over the edge of the hole in the floor-- ceiling, whatever-- like a child on the monkey bars, his butt hanging down and his hands white knuckled in Radek’s harness straps. He can feel them pressing against his stomach-- no, Radek’s stomach. He stares at his own hands stupidly, feeling his fingers flex in two places at once, and wonders if he forgets which hands are his, will it still be his body when it hits the floor-- the floor that used to be the ceiling.
“Even if I’m willing to give up the assumption that the Ancients aren’t morons,” Rodney says very quickly while his mouth is free, though he’s lost track of his stomach, “this whole room is ridiculously counterproductive. And wow, here’s a break in the pattern-- it’s the ridiculous portion that’s mostly non-life-threatening, though admittedly weird. The gravity shift alone I could handle, I mean, really, it’s only a change of reference frame--”
“Ah, Rodney,” Radek says, like he’s just noticed Rodney there, “you still have not fallen to your ignominious death,” and reaches into one of the bags duct-taped to the ceiling. Then he’s (Rodney’s pretty sure) fastening a third safety harness around Rodney’s waist, threading it between his thighs, over his shoulders. It’s kind of perverted, the way he’s touching himself like this. Simpson giggles and it feels like it’s Rodney’s lips moving.
“Wait,” Rodney says. “I think I get--ok, I totally see why they did this now,” because minus the blood and gore, maybe this schizophrenic perspective is pretty awesome.
“Did what?” he says with Radek’s voice, distracted, humming along. Apparently the music repeats with the cycles. He attaches the last carabineer (Rodney does) and Rodney lets go, hanging without any effort in his new, uncomfortable hammock.
“This.” He waves his hands around because waving your hands in the air while simultaneously typing on a computer taped to the ceiling feels very satisfying in that special way where it’s normally impossible.
“You think gravity manipulation was recreational?” Radek says.
“No, no,” Rodney says indignantly. “The--the psychic mindmeld acid trip! Not the--well--actually--gravity manipulation would be--” He pauses, considering the dizziness. “Oh. Hmm. I think the stoned part is working faster this time.”
“You are joking, surely.” Radek sounds cheerful, handing from the ceiling and kicking his feet like a child in a swing. “I admit, the mind-meld babbles perhaps gave it away.”
“You don’t feel it? Are you--maybe the ATA--” Rodney flails towards Radek’s laptop. Like touching your ear while looking in the mirror; he keeps trying to use the wrong hands.
Radek curses in Czech, parrying the uncoordinated attacks, pressing a handheld scanner into Rodney’s hands. “Here, here, stop giving me headache. Figure out what this input is for. Stare at pretty colors.”
Rodney cradles it against his stomach, feeling disconnected and free of worry. If he turns his head, he can still see the smear on the wall, but it’s not that it’s suddenly unimportant, rather that it’s so obviously history. He hums happily to himself and in a meandering way gets to looking at the data Radek’s handed him. “--is this?”
“The cycles,” Radek explains. “Before initiating inertial dampening systems, system requests user input in this form. Form of what? Perhaps waiting to be told which way to spin gravity today. Who knows?”
Rodney settles in, poking away with one hand at the PDA in his lap, absently conducting the Ancient soundtrack with the other. He's trying to reverse engineer the format of the input file when gravity makes a slow turn ninety degrees to the left and the rhythm of the music dips towards a resolution. Rodney sways into the burnt out wires, bumping his head (Simpson’s) against his feet (really his), and now they’re hanging from a wall instead of a ceiling.
A few seconds later, forces shift again and they slump back to the floor (it feels like he does it three times at once), the music stuttering to a stop. The afterimage of Radek and Simpson fades out more slowly.
“And the timer starts again,” Radek says. He stops typing at the laptop now that it is safe to work in the floor well again.
“It’s an audio file!” Rodney says, jerking up, admittedly not from any actual understanding of the data. At Radek’s look, a dismissive hand wave: “No, you’re right, it is the parameters of the simulated gravity, but--”
He’s forgotten about the safety harness, and when he stands to gesture his genius, he falls forward instead, Simpson’s knee in his gut. It’s about the same time his altered state hits stage two and little colored bubbles start rising from the floor. “Oh,” Rodney says, not really as worried as he should be, “that’s a lot more than last time.”
Radek pushes his glasses back up his nose, unimpressed. “Thank you for your contributions, Dr. McKay,” he says dryly. “I will keep you updated of any developments, yes?”
Rodney blinks blearily up at him and doesn’t immediately understand (until it becomes physically obvious) that what Radek actually means is I am going to have the Marines throw you out now.
**
Tattersall hovers protectively at his shoulder (first year marines are all much more attentive to Rodney, whether because they properly appreciate the correlation between Rodney's survival and their own or because they’re Sheppard’s marines in ways that the new guys aren’t yet). Later Rodney will swear that for a moment he could feel the smooth grip of P90 in his empty fingers, but for now, all he hears is the low rhythm of music through the floor-- somehow he hadn't expected Ancient music to be so focused on percussion-- and one of the Marines, the one Rodney knows has the gene, saying, "Hey, do you--"
Sheppard says, "Whoa." Also, "Everybody--" except it's not clear what he wants everybody to do because at that point Sheppard and four of the Marines and Jordan fall off the floor. They fly backwards away from Rodney like the wall is suddenly down, tumbling into the crevices of the points of the star, one thud right after another, bending in improbable ways. Sheppard doesn’t fall the farthest; he misses the star arms, breaking over the knife-like corner where they meet with a stuttered shout like a balloon popping. Zelenka and Park and the rest of the Marines are already at the far end of the chamber. For them, the danger isn’t the fall; it’s the nonstandard threat of raining bodies.
Gravity returns to normal-- or almost normal, at right angles to the Marines in the hallway-- and Sheppard and Jordan and rest slide down to the floor, landing in lumpy heaps of person, going still.
The music's gotten louder, thump-thump-thumping enthusiastically in Rodney's ears, through his boots. Rodney and Private Tattersall are still standing on the floor of the airlock. For them, nothing has changed except a bit of odd music and a live action replay of a scene from Star Wars-- one of the good bits with Darth Vader.
Tattersall edges forward, looking to Rodney like he thinks Rodney can promise that’s not going to happen again. Zelenka and the rest who didn’t fall far are beginning to rise cautiously out of their defensive huddles, pulling their arms down from their faces. Some of them move towards the injured. The rest are--frozen. Wide-eyed, and Rodney used to understand the sentiment.
Instead, he's already two steps into the room without noticing, face first into an Ancient mindfuck because he saw where Sheppard hit and oh my god, it is not okay for pilots to have spinal injuries.
**
The second team radios in, the ones who went in with hazmat gear and came back loopy anyway. Elizabeth looks to Carson who says helplessly, “They seem fine--the scans--”
“Fine?” Rodney shrieks. “A care bear followed me into the infirmary!”
Carson looks pained. “And you, Colonel? Have you been experiencing hallucinations?”
Sheppard seems to have drifted off a little after attacking Biro, staring at the ceiling, eyes dark because they’re almost all pupil. His breathing is quick and sharp and regular like someone who’s counting off in his head. He’s managed to flip himself onto his back, to Carson’s horror, and his hands are very still where they rest on his stomach. Rodney’s had a sprained back before. He’d regret moving if he were Sheppard. He’d regret breathing.
“Colonel?” Carson says.
“I’m not really a people person.” Sheppard bites his lip, like he’s given away a terrible secret and not blurted out a stoned non sequitor, curling one hand into a fist, hissing through his teeth. Blood soaks his black t-shirt, ripped twice, once from impact, a second time where the med team almost managed to cut it off of him. Carson won’t administer any muscle relaxants until he knows what’s in Sheppard's system-- or until the Colonel will let anyone but Rodney near him with a needle.
Elizabeth puts her face in her hands. Rodney doesn’t think it’s because she’s worried.
Sheppard should be resting, stitched up, sleeping, medicated, but at least Carson swears there’s no spinal damage-- scans are easier than stitches, the former doesn’t require human contact-- and the Marines returning with Lorne make the latter a far more likely part of Sheppard’s future.
Except when Rodney thinks of Lorne nodding, of the Marines grabbing Sheppard’s shoulders, holding down his legs while Sheppard bucks despite the pain it causes him, Rodney starts wondering how fast he can construct a non-lethal stunner from the medical equipment by the bed. For use on the Marines-- and anyone else who blocks their escape from the infirmary.
“No, really, Colonel,” Rodney says, eyeing the rainbow colored cats rolling across the bed distrustfully. He leans into Sheppard, trying to avoid the shimmering trails their antennae leave behind. “Next you’ll tell us you don’t like to be touched.”
There’s a silence while Sheppard frowns at him, in which Lorne comes back with the Marines and Elizabeth starts to say, “Rodney--” and Sheppard lifts his hand, touching his knuckles to Rodney’s chest over his heart, staring at it like it's an experiment and he's waiting for the results.
Rodney stutters something and looks away-- anywhere-- sees Elizabeth with a mix of expressions on her face like she wants time out from being worried so she can smile so hard.
**
He staggers across the floor, patterns of light fading beneath his boots as the music dies, sliding the last few feet on his knees. Sheppard is face down at the crack where wall meets floor, motionless, silent. Rodney reaches out, smoothes both hands out along the top of Sheppard’s back over the rip in the rough black synthetic and the ends of the Velcro flaps; so that Rodney can finally triangulate where he is by knowing where he’s not, because trying to get to Sheppard when you’re accidentally everyone in the room is more difficult than it sounds, and it’s so, so good that Rodney’s a genius.
Sheppard groans, shifting like he’s trying to turn over, but Rodney spreads his fingers, pushes him back down, driven by a lifetime of paranoia regarding spinal damage that he’s never had the opportunity to apply to another human being. He’s babbling, “What was wrong with these people--lie still, you idiot-- Ascension is obviously a sign of a larger death wish, of course that would be genetic-- oh god what hurts? Don’t even deny-- I can feel it-- don’t move then, don’t move--”
He's having trouble concentrating; his head is a superposition of states. Seriously, there is something fucking wrong with this room: pushing himself (not really) to his knees at the base of a window, fingers slipping on the sweaty the grip of the scanner, reaching down to pull Dr. Jordan to her feet (or maybe he's accepting that offered hand), when really, really, he’s running his palms down Sheppard’s arms from shoulder to elbow, like it's Sheppard he's grounding with the contact.
Beneath Rodney’s fingers, Sheppard twitches, fingers scrabbling restlessly at the floor. He says hoarsely, “I’m not in my own head anymore,” like it’s a fate worse than Wraith.
**
”Environmental controls!" Rodney promises. "PA announcements from Botany twenty-four seven! Missions with Kavanagh!" He's stumbling backwards into the hallway, flailing his hands in the general direction of Zelenka’s evil space bouncers when his back hits something decidedly softer than a wall or a Marine.
“What’s this now?” Carson says. “I thought you were supposed to be sleeping with Colonel Sheppard.”
Rodney goggles at him. Carson colors. “Now--that wasn’t what I--oh dear,” and runs a weary hand over his face. He takes Rodney by the elbow, steering him towards the transporter. The whole image of the hallway is bleached out, so bright that it's strange it's not hurting Rodney's eyes. "You'll need to make sure he's not moving. I'll come by to do a scan in a few hours, to be sure there's no swelling or accumulation of fluid. Report anything to me--"
"Wait," Rodney interrupts, "you're worried about spinal cord injury and you released him? I know you're used to sheep--"
“Sorry, Rodney," Carson says insincerely, "I thought I should avoid wrestling with the spinal cord in question, and since someone built a stun gun out of-- of forceps and chewing gum and threatened me..."
“Yes, but--you! You!” Rodney manages, tripping into the transporter.
Ronon nods in greeting they arrive, standing guard outside the door, his arms folded impassively across his chest. Rodney sways towards him, setting his weight against Carson’s hand on his arm, but when asked, Ronon only shrugs, rumbling, “He doesn’t like it when I’m in there.”
Rodney frowns. Because he thinks he wouldn’t have talked Elizabeth into getting John a puppy (actually he’s pretty sure he didn’t do this) if John were just going to get high and kick it around. The Rescue Rangers start hopping around his feet until Rodney waves at the one with the fedora, which seems to placate them.
Ronon shrugs. He’s not a verbose kind of guy, so Rodney reasons that if he’s repeating himself, the rejection must sting badly. He puts it on a to-do list to-- to-- well, Rodney’s not sure actually, but it’ll be something. Then the door opens and he practically falls into the room.
Teyla’s speaking in the background when the door snaps shut in Beckett’s face, hiding Ronon’s determined stare at the opposite side of the hall. Rodney takes a step backwards, landing on something that goes splat!-- and doesn’t that just drive the cartoon characters wild, dancing around the tiny, crumpled carton. He looks up blearily, sees the upturned cardboard box from the mess and the ruins of a tower of creamer cups spilling across the floor near Sheppard’s dangling hand.
The Colonel himself is stretched across the bed on his stomach, cheek resting on a forearm, eyes closed. Teyla is crossed-legged by Rodney’s pillow, leaning forward over Sheppard who’s looking sort of morose and pouty-faced even though he appears to be asleep. The window behind her is dark, dawn still hours off.
As Rodney watches, Teyla continues stroking her fingers down Sheppard’s side below the bandage, smiling with a slow twist of her mouth as she replies soothingly to a conversation Rodney missed.
She says, “Such survival takes great skill, and is worthy of respect among my people.”
Rodney freezes for a moment, staring. Sheppard’s half-naked (who needs a repeat of the nightmare it was getting the first shirt off of him), and Teyla doesn’t really wear a lot of clothes to begin with; the whole picture is-- the sort of accidental discovery between coworkers that Rodney likes to back out of quickly except oh yeah, it’s in his room.
So he strides over to his laptop on the end table, eyes front (well, not really), trying for pornography? What pornography?, and doesn’t mean to walk through what’s left of the creamer tower, but he's high and really, really distracted.
“I’m not,” Sheppard protests, eyes still closed, apparently unaware of the destruction. He’s tracing aimless shapes on the floor with the hand hanging off the bed.
“Um,” Rodney says, clutching the laptop to his chest.
Sheppard looks up at him, lazily and sleep-dazed except for the tightness around his mouth and the way he’s careful to move only his eyes, not his head, not an inch. “She said--” he starts, and Teyla makes a face like she can’t help it and laughs.
Rodney narrows his eyes at her. “You aren’t high too, are you? Oh god, this is just like my day--”
“She says her people respect me because I’m so old,” Sheppard says mournfully, tracing out fractals on the out-of-this-world linoleum. He seems to notice the destruction of his creamer tower and his mouth takes a definite, heart-breaking downturn.
“Oh,” Rodney blurts. “Sorry. I-- uh-- let me--” and sits down by the bed, gathering up the scattered building blocks.
He’s laid out the foundations for a simple pyramid when he realizes he has a box of several hundred blocks at his disposal (heaven for the child at the local diner always restricted to a measely dozen), and-- maybe more importantly-- Sheppard’s unsteady hand, pointing vaguely at the pile, musing, “Hey, ramparts. And oh, man, like-- a moat--” boyish interest layered under all too obvious exhaustion.
So Rodney opens up his tablet, sketching out plans for a walled fortress of four towers, a keep, and maybe a little flag of toothpicks and a ketchup packet, flying proudly at the top. He tries to show it off for approval, but Sheppard only says, eyes sliding shut under Teyla’s soothing hands, “Yeah, yeah, build it already.”
“Excuse me,” Rodney sniffs, “considering the ruin of your last architectural endeavor, I hardly think--”
But when he looks up, he catches Teyla smiling and rolling her eyes in his direction, sliding a palm up Sheppard’s back, who looks like he’d purr if he could, which is just surreal. Rodney bends over the creamer packets instead, assembling his-- Sheppard’s-- fortress with quick precision. He finds no toothpicks, but makes do with a paperclip and a post-it note, marked in blue sharpie with a really horrific winged, possibly equine stick figure, which he adds to the top of the white keep.
It feels like hours when he pulls back, straightening and feeling his spine protest. Sheppard’s there, eyes wide open and clear, staring at the (really not that impressive) creamer fortress with exaggerated awe and a strange, shy smile.
“Oh,” Sheppard says softly, lifting his hand like he wants to touch but learned early on not to poke at his hallucinations lest they vanish into thin air. Rodney has his hand around Sheppard’s wrist before he even knows what he’s doing, no intent except for maybe a quiet envy of Teyla’s ability to spread her palm over Sheppard’s pain and have it vanish. Rodney tried to help, but Radek kicked him out, his brain no help at all, left with nothing but a misappropriated box of condiments.
Sheppard arches a brow.
“I-- uh-- you-- ” Rodney fumbles. “If you knock this over, I’m not building you a second one. My time is--” but then Sheppard’s saying with him (not at all like the star chamber), “--a valuable resource and should not be--”
Rodney stops. Sheppard doesn't. “--wasted except on productive pursuits such as comic books, porn, and beating Lindsey’s high score in Tetris.”
“I was not going to say that,” Rodney snaps. “And Lindsey doesn’t have the coordination for breathing, much less high-speed puzzle games..”
“Ah, yes,” Teyla says suddenly, the traitor, “I believe I remember Dr. Kavanagh announcing that his was the highest achievement in this... Tetris.”
Rodney scowls at her.
He realizes suddenly that he’s still holding Sheppard’s wrist, rubbing his thumb in small, distracted circles over Sheppard’s pulse point; he drops it like it’s covered in acid, scooting back a foot, sending a tremor through his fortress. Sheppard--
Sheppard’s eyes are shut. He looks asleep. Rodney’s heart stops flirting with cardiac arrest.
In his ear, he hears the buzz of radio static and Zelenka’s voice, saying, “We have shut down the redial sequence.” And then, reluctantly, “Perhaps you are right, and Ancients are stupid enough to put lives and gravity into hands of mp3 for sake of crazy Atlantean rave.”
“Oh thank god,” Rodney blurts and doesn’t even gloat. He can feel the truth of it. There's no longer a strange shaped room hovering at the edge of his subconscious, no more cartoons he felt really silly for watching in grad school crawling over the furniture. Aside from the inevitable weeks of analyzing data taken upside down with safety harnesses and duct-tape, it's over. It feels like all of it happened in his absence, like he wasn't even necessary. He pokes at the wall of the creamer fortress, but he built it too well; it only shudders and does not fall.
“Hey,” Sheppard says drowsily, eyes open to slits, sliding into cowboy twang, “does this mean I can have muscle relaxants now?”
He reaches out, rests his hand in Rodney's palm.
**
Sheppard’s fingers are curled tight in the short hair at the base of Rodney’s neck, and he’s bleeding, and Rodney doesn’t even have to look at his face to know that something hurts, but Sheppard won’t let the med team into the room, too dangerous to bring anyone in they don’t have to. None of the marines are too injured to get out on their own, he says. There are handholds in the wall, they’ll hang on just in case, get out before gravity has another chance to go whammo.
The gene-free guys, which thank god includes Radek, are safe in their heads, and it’s Radek’s job to make sure the damn thing stays off because the only other person who might be brilliant enough is on his stomach at the edge of the floor, head to head with Colonel Sheppard, the one guy they can’t move, or shouldn’t, and it doesn’t occur to Rodney--not until hours and hours later--that he might have a more vital place to be.
Author: Pentapus
Warnings: violence, sexual tension between people.
For the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll challenge.
Radek crouches at the center of a seven pointed star, lost in a mass of crystalline polyhedra and transparent wires. Simpson stands knee deep in the burned out circuitry beside him as they excavate the dead and damaged, revealing the real mystery underneath.
Rodney comes the rest of the way awake when the dream of the star chamber starts to merge with the reality of his quarters, dream Radek digging his way through a dark, moonlit pile of Rodney’s dirty laundry instead of a well of Ancient control crystals.
His radio babbles softly near his head, bare floor cool against his forehead, and of course, of course, he fell asleep bent over on the floor, laptop still propped against his knees and back screaming in protest when he even thinks about moving. Forget the bed and the mattress and the three extra pillows that cost him a pound of chocolate right there behind him.
He fumbles for the radio with the hand curled loosely in front of his face, numb and graceless.
“Yes, what.”
“Dr. McKay,” says the radio in the voice of some nameless Daedalus marine. “Dr. Zelenka--”
“They got it open,” Rodney finishes for her, irritation cloaking his exhaustion. “Yes, yes, I noticed. Alright, I’ll be right there.” He starts to put the radio down, creaking to his feet. His muscles are sore in the worst way, he can’t even claim the satisfaction of exercise. His ear hurts from spending the last few hours crushed between the hard floor and his skull.
“Rodney,” the radio says, and it’s Elizabeth now, speaking with professional calm, “Dr. Zelenka tells me he has it under control, and as Carson has already assured us that the health risks appear to be low, perhaps sleep--”
Bla bla bla--Rodney knows where this is going. “Regular cycles,” he says. “Every fifteen minutes. Every fifteen minutes.” When Elizabeth says nothing, he repeats, “I’ll be right there.” His voice is made of high, sharp notes. “Thank you. Bye.”
Elizabeth sighs.
Rodney closes the laptop--there is always time for proper care of vital equipment--placing it on his desk where no one will step on it. He goes to the bed to rearrange the pillows, smoothing the sheets and the extra blanket into place with a caution unfamiliar outside of the lab and the intricate technology he finds there. Before he leaves, he snaps his fingers once in front of Sheppard’s face, just to be sure, but the Colonel is solidly asleep and this time, the bandage hasn’t bled through or been tugged askew by nervous fingers.
Rodney teeters at the edge of indecision, boots creaking, before he swallows thickly, gives a nod of his head, and walks out the silent Lantean door toward the bottom of pier nine and the room of the seven pointed star.
**
Leaning against one grey-green wall, Sheppard drawls, “So--this is the airlock that other airlocks dream of being.”
There are no windows here, not even the ubiquitous bubble pillars to break the solid gleam of the metal walls. Nowhere else in Atlantis has Rodney felt so much like he’s in the interior of a spaceship. He bends over the slim control panel that folded out of the wall at their approach; Sheppard lounges a few yards away by a featureless door that won’t open even for Atlantis’ crown prince. Rodney only bothers looking up when Sheppard speaks because it would be a waste of an eye-roll not to.
Considering that they ended up here due to the fortuitous discovery of a database entry consisting of a single, shoddy scan of a handwritten page with a sector number and “still a horrendously bad idea, you drooling mirambian” scrawled across it in Ancient, Sheppard’s nonchalance is entirely feigned. On a good day, the room behind the airlock could be nothing more than the office of an envied scientific study (as a species, mirambians are still around--domesticated quite fragrantly on P45-23H--so Rodney appreciates that the insult is deserving of the best of bitter, academic rivalry) ...or it could be packed with alien death machines ready to kill them all. Which explains the dozen fully armed marines mingling with Radek and his team of engineers.
Bla bla bla, welcome to the Pegasus Galaxy, Rodney thinks, propping his Ancient scanner against the control console. Under the panels they've removed, the walls are full of machinery intricate like clockwork gone wrong, hydraulics and gears and jointed arms, interwoven with computers so advanced they make Rodney want to cry with joy (not unusual, and after a year in Atlantis, he’s almost gotten used to the feeling); all of it hidden behind three layers of security doors with digital locks rivaling those that surround Atlantis' engine rooms.
It’s all the more noticeable because aside from quarantine protocols, the control tower has no locks at all.
The people from soft sciences occasionally try to explain to Rodney something about the Ancients of Atlantis being ideological anarchists living in sector-based communes with the control tower as the ultimate commons (what with the stargate and engine controls, etc), but Rodney mostly drops empty Jell-O cups on them until they go away and talk to Elizabeth instead so he can get some work done.
In the midst of the clockwork and the electronics, there appears to be a subset of circuitry that Rodney swears resembles the inertial dampening system in the jumpers, except... better, somehow, and he can’t imagine why a dinky little room in the bowels of Atlantis would need it. He really, really wants to get that door open and find out.
Distantly, he realizes that this is how people in horror films wake up mummies. Or Godzilla. It should be more of a deterrent, really, but-- Atlantis.
Radek humors the Colonel. “Airlock is relatively simple concept. This? Very, very complicated. We do not yet know why.”
“So, is that a no to getting the door open?”
Rodney snorts. “Fundamental understanding of the theory behind technology is rarely a barrier to using it. As you would know if you’ve ever seen a linguist send an email.”
Sheppard laughs, a low, throaty sound. It’s annoying how that sound makes Rodney want to smile-- even when Sheppard’s at his most obnoxious, which isn’t now, thank god.
“Or a Genii practice science,” Radek agrees.
“So--” Sheppard drawls again, obviously, obviously about to repeat himself like a slow child, and Rodney groans, but the algorithm he’s running on the Ancient PDA finishes so-- that is a yes, Rodney knows how to open the door.
“Fine! Fine! Yes,” and types the decoded sequence into the control pad sticking out of the wall.
With the smooth whir of brilliant design, the door slides back, and though Sheppard’s standing at the front of the pack with the Marines, weapon raised and body taut, Rodney can still see the stretch of his cheek as he grins.
**
The first time Sheppard nearly breaks Dr. Biro’s wrist for coming near him (lying flat on his stomach on an infirmary bed--seriously, wow), Rodney begins to think it’s not so much a happy drug as an honest one.
The next time Sheppard says, “No”-- when Carson is stepping forward with a threaded needle-- people listen. Or rather, Carson stares helplessly at Lorne who jerks his head at the marines by the door. Rodney is sitting on the same bed, hip by Sheppard’s shoulder, hands tucked under his arms so he’ll stop trying to touch all the things he sees, because the last time Sheppard said, “No,” he also said, “Rodney.”
He’d asked for Teyla first, staring at his hands in confusion, but she’s on the mainland, and maybe Rodney is high enough that he’ll forget to hold it against Sheppard in the morning, because plotting revenge against Sheppard for liking Teyla better-- when Rodney should be more worried about the Colonel bleeding out over the standard-issue sheets-- is one of those little ways Rodney knows he’s not sober either.
**
The chamber is empty but for Radek and Simpson, wading through the puddle of dead circuitry under the missing floor panel at its center. The panel has been safely removed to a dusty storage room somewhere down the hall. The Marines are stationed outside; Elizabeth banished everyone from the star chamber except for essential personnel as soon as they realized the contagion was getting through the hazmat gear.
She was very clear in the immediate aftermath that “essential personnel” did not include Rodney. Sheppard thought that was so funny he rolled over and laughed with his face against Rodney’s hip, warm breath through his t-shirt making Rodney jerk his foot like somebody was testing his reflexes. Sheppard would have rolled right over onto the floor if Teyla hadn’t grabbed him by his skinny hips, rolling him gently back the other way, blood slicking over her fingers, smiling against her will at Sheppard’s stupid grin.
Rodney tried swearing up, down, and sideways that he was completely lucid, but in retrospect he'd been staring at the purple dinosaur chewing on the leg of Elizabeth’s chair while he said it, so maybe it isn’t so surprising that she didn't believe him.
Radek looks up, a grin plastered across his face. Rodney snaps, “You’re not accomplishing anything, are you?”
“This is-- best way to do science,” Radek says dopily.
“Oh please, it’s not even supposed to be affecting you--” which is really why Rodney should get out of here before the next cycle, before Elizabeth sends some gene-deprived Marines down to physically haul him out.
“No, no,” Radek assures him, humming as he picks his way through clumps of wire, “more slowly only, it seems. The Ancients and I-- we are both human in this way.”
Simpson hasn’t said anything, she’s bent over her work, but her cheeks and the tips of her ears are flushed, end of her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth. Someone has duct-taped the laptop she’s working on enthusiastically to the floor.
“I wouldn’t want you to feel locked out of the clubhouse or anything,” Rodney says sarcastically.
“I think I agree with our Mr. Scribbler when he spoke of this room,” Radek continues amiably, setting aside a group of damaged wires before he bends to study something at the bottom of the cavity, folding up his small body and nearly disappearing. "Perhaps best to toy with universe while sober."
There’s a crimson streak at a corner where two arms of the star meet. Rodney stares at it, wanting to demand irrationally that Radek find the off switch right now.
He hears the music begin, vibrating softly up from the floor. Rodney jumps a little.
“Oh dear,” Radek says, except of course, he actually sounds delighted, and tugs on his safety harness, double checking that the carabineer is hooked securely to the floor. (Rodney always thought Radek had hair like a hippie.)
"'Bad idea' is the understatement of ten millennia," Rodney gripes nervously, chin lifting confidently and not at all like he knows he should have left the room as soon as he heard the music start.
Radek frowns at him, puzzled, blinking rapidly behind his glasses, which are posed awkwardly like they might fall off his face at any moment. They won’t; for this job only, Radek has tied string about the ends, looped behind his head like a surfer’s sunglasses.
Radek says, “You are staying?”
Rodney hunkers down, hooks his feet below bundled cords, curls his fingers into the straps of Radek’s safety harness. Simpson throws a companionable arm around his shoulders, rubs her cheek happily against his coat. It's really, really unnerving, since just yesterday she offered him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with marmalade.
Rodney taps his radio, “Elizabeth--”
"Rodney--"
"Too late now," Rodney says recklessly, because it's true, and obviously he's gone mad. But, "Elizabeth--"
“I sent Teyla to wait with John,” Elizabeth says, and he can’t even pretend she doesn’t sound disapproving. But then the world tilts crazily and space folds out inside his brain and Rodney isn’t really worried about Elizabeth’s approval anymore, if he ever was.
**
The door opens easily with Rodney’s password. Sheppard enters first, passing through a short hallway funneling into a wide, empty room marked with deep, evenly spaced alcoves. As Sheppard steps past the hallway, he turns with a slow whistle, admiring the chamber around him. Rodney joins him, seeing that the door is actually at one of the seven points of a star and that, at some point when Rodney wasn’t paying attention, the universe rotated 90 degrees because the window across from him shows the bright light of the sun through the water’s surface not above them, but as a vertical plane to their right.
Rodney shouts, “Nobody move!” and rushes back to the way-too-complicated-to-be-an-airlock. He doesn’t bother with the controls, just whips up a crow bar and goes at it manually like at the doors of an elevator.
Sheppard calls, “So, hey, happy to play freeze tag here a little longer if need be, but--Rodney, how dead are we?”
“Minimally,” Rodney admits, grunting. Zelenka is, of course, breezily ignoring Rodney’s instructions, walking right up to squint out the far window at the misplaced horizon.
“Great,” Sheppard says. “Can I get someone to help you with that?”
“If you must, but something’s gone wonky, and no one touch anything.”
“Righto,” Sheppard promises, and Rodney lets Private Tattersall throw his considerable weight against the crowbar until they’re both staring at the Marines they left in the hallway--who are goggling at them sideways.
Which is to say, from Rodney’s point of view, they’re standing on the wall.
“Well,” Rodney says. “That explains the inertial dampeners,” and takes the crowbar back and shuts the door.
He’s half-considering sending everyone out until he or Radek can figure out how the whole thing works when the music starts.
**
Rodney is a spider on the ceiling when he says, “Some sort of redial function.”
Except it’s not actually him saying that. Radek tells him; Rodney just mouths the words along with him because the difference between them is suddenly very slight in Rodney’s head. Rodney wants to be babbling, but it’s throwing him off that he keeps thinking his mouth is occupied.
“The system never initializes completely,” he says with Radek. “The gravitational simulation cannot be meant to cycle. It is-- like-- a dial-up internet. It cannot connect, so it tries again.”
Rodney’s knees are hooked over the edge of the hole in the floor-- ceiling, whatever-- like a child on the monkey bars, his butt hanging down and his hands white knuckled in Radek’s harness straps. He can feel them pressing against his stomach-- no, Radek’s stomach. He stares at his own hands stupidly, feeling his fingers flex in two places at once, and wonders if he forgets which hands are his, will it still be his body when it hits the floor-- the floor that used to be the ceiling.
“Even if I’m willing to give up the assumption that the Ancients aren’t morons,” Rodney says very quickly while his mouth is free, though he’s lost track of his stomach, “this whole room is ridiculously counterproductive. And wow, here’s a break in the pattern-- it’s the ridiculous portion that’s mostly non-life-threatening, though admittedly weird. The gravity shift alone I could handle, I mean, really, it’s only a change of reference frame--”
“Ah, Rodney,” Radek says, like he’s just noticed Rodney there, “you still have not fallen to your ignominious death,” and reaches into one of the bags duct-taped to the ceiling. Then he’s (Rodney’s pretty sure) fastening a third safety harness around Rodney’s waist, threading it between his thighs, over his shoulders. It’s kind of perverted, the way he’s touching himself like this. Simpson giggles and it feels like it’s Rodney’s lips moving.
“Wait,” Rodney says. “I think I get--ok, I totally see why they did this now,” because minus the blood and gore, maybe this schizophrenic perspective is pretty awesome.
“Did what?” he says with Radek’s voice, distracted, humming along. Apparently the music repeats with the cycles. He attaches the last carabineer (Rodney does) and Rodney lets go, hanging without any effort in his new, uncomfortable hammock.
“This.” He waves his hands around because waving your hands in the air while simultaneously typing on a computer taped to the ceiling feels very satisfying in that special way where it’s normally impossible.
“You think gravity manipulation was recreational?” Radek says.
“No, no,” Rodney says indignantly. “The--the psychic mindmeld acid trip! Not the--well--actually--gravity manipulation would be--” He pauses, considering the dizziness. “Oh. Hmm. I think the stoned part is working faster this time.”
“You are joking, surely.” Radek sounds cheerful, handing from the ceiling and kicking his feet like a child in a swing. “I admit, the mind-meld babbles perhaps gave it away.”
“You don’t feel it? Are you--maybe the ATA--” Rodney flails towards Radek’s laptop. Like touching your ear while looking in the mirror; he keeps trying to use the wrong hands.
Radek curses in Czech, parrying the uncoordinated attacks, pressing a handheld scanner into Rodney’s hands. “Here, here, stop giving me headache. Figure out what this input is for. Stare at pretty colors.”
Rodney cradles it against his stomach, feeling disconnected and free of worry. If he turns his head, he can still see the smear on the wall, but it’s not that it’s suddenly unimportant, rather that it’s so obviously history. He hums happily to himself and in a meandering way gets to looking at the data Radek’s handed him. “--is this?”
“The cycles,” Radek explains. “Before initiating inertial dampening systems, system requests user input in this form. Form of what? Perhaps waiting to be told which way to spin gravity today. Who knows?”
Rodney settles in, poking away with one hand at the PDA in his lap, absently conducting the Ancient soundtrack with the other. He's trying to reverse engineer the format of the input file when gravity makes a slow turn ninety degrees to the left and the rhythm of the music dips towards a resolution. Rodney sways into the burnt out wires, bumping his head (Simpson’s) against his feet (really his), and now they’re hanging from a wall instead of a ceiling.
A few seconds later, forces shift again and they slump back to the floor (it feels like he does it three times at once), the music stuttering to a stop. The afterimage of Radek and Simpson fades out more slowly.
“And the timer starts again,” Radek says. He stops typing at the laptop now that it is safe to work in the floor well again.
“It’s an audio file!” Rodney says, jerking up, admittedly not from any actual understanding of the data. At Radek’s look, a dismissive hand wave: “No, you’re right, it is the parameters of the simulated gravity, but--”
He’s forgotten about the safety harness, and when he stands to gesture his genius, he falls forward instead, Simpson’s knee in his gut. It’s about the same time his altered state hits stage two and little colored bubbles start rising from the floor. “Oh,” Rodney says, not really as worried as he should be, “that’s a lot more than last time.”
Radek pushes his glasses back up his nose, unimpressed. “Thank you for your contributions, Dr. McKay,” he says dryly. “I will keep you updated of any developments, yes?”
Rodney blinks blearily up at him and doesn’t immediately understand (until it becomes physically obvious) that what Radek actually means is I am going to have the Marines throw you out now.
**
Tattersall hovers protectively at his shoulder (first year marines are all much more attentive to Rodney, whether because they properly appreciate the correlation between Rodney's survival and their own or because they’re Sheppard’s marines in ways that the new guys aren’t yet). Later Rodney will swear that for a moment he could feel the smooth grip of P90 in his empty fingers, but for now, all he hears is the low rhythm of music through the floor-- somehow he hadn't expected Ancient music to be so focused on percussion-- and one of the Marines, the one Rodney knows has the gene, saying, "Hey, do you--"
Sheppard says, "Whoa." Also, "Everybody--" except it's not clear what he wants everybody to do because at that point Sheppard and four of the Marines and Jordan fall off the floor. They fly backwards away from Rodney like the wall is suddenly down, tumbling into the crevices of the points of the star, one thud right after another, bending in improbable ways. Sheppard doesn’t fall the farthest; he misses the star arms, breaking over the knife-like corner where they meet with a stuttered shout like a balloon popping. Zelenka and Park and the rest of the Marines are already at the far end of the chamber. For them, the danger isn’t the fall; it’s the nonstandard threat of raining bodies.
Gravity returns to normal-- or almost normal, at right angles to the Marines in the hallway-- and Sheppard and Jordan and rest slide down to the floor, landing in lumpy heaps of person, going still.
The music's gotten louder, thump-thump-thumping enthusiastically in Rodney's ears, through his boots. Rodney and Private Tattersall are still standing on the floor of the airlock. For them, nothing has changed except a bit of odd music and a live action replay of a scene from Star Wars-- one of the good bits with Darth Vader.
Tattersall edges forward, looking to Rodney like he thinks Rodney can promise that’s not going to happen again. Zelenka and the rest who didn’t fall far are beginning to rise cautiously out of their defensive huddles, pulling their arms down from their faces. Some of them move towards the injured. The rest are--frozen. Wide-eyed, and Rodney used to understand the sentiment.
Instead, he's already two steps into the room without noticing, face first into an Ancient mindfuck because he saw where Sheppard hit and oh my god, it is not okay for pilots to have spinal injuries.
**
The second team radios in, the ones who went in with hazmat gear and came back loopy anyway. Elizabeth looks to Carson who says helplessly, “They seem fine--the scans--”
“Fine?” Rodney shrieks. “A care bear followed me into the infirmary!”
Carson looks pained. “And you, Colonel? Have you been experiencing hallucinations?”
Sheppard seems to have drifted off a little after attacking Biro, staring at the ceiling, eyes dark because they’re almost all pupil. His breathing is quick and sharp and regular like someone who’s counting off in his head. He’s managed to flip himself onto his back, to Carson’s horror, and his hands are very still where they rest on his stomach. Rodney’s had a sprained back before. He’d regret moving if he were Sheppard. He’d regret breathing.
“Colonel?” Carson says.
“I’m not really a people person.” Sheppard bites his lip, like he’s given away a terrible secret and not blurted out a stoned non sequitor, curling one hand into a fist, hissing through his teeth. Blood soaks his black t-shirt, ripped twice, once from impact, a second time where the med team almost managed to cut it off of him. Carson won’t administer any muscle relaxants until he knows what’s in Sheppard's system-- or until the Colonel will let anyone but Rodney near him with a needle.
Elizabeth puts her face in her hands. Rodney doesn’t think it’s because she’s worried.
Sheppard should be resting, stitched up, sleeping, medicated, but at least Carson swears there’s no spinal damage-- scans are easier than stitches, the former doesn’t require human contact-- and the Marines returning with Lorne make the latter a far more likely part of Sheppard’s future.
Except when Rodney thinks of Lorne nodding, of the Marines grabbing Sheppard’s shoulders, holding down his legs while Sheppard bucks despite the pain it causes him, Rodney starts wondering how fast he can construct a non-lethal stunner from the medical equipment by the bed. For use on the Marines-- and anyone else who blocks their escape from the infirmary.
“No, really, Colonel,” Rodney says, eyeing the rainbow colored cats rolling across the bed distrustfully. He leans into Sheppard, trying to avoid the shimmering trails their antennae leave behind. “Next you’ll tell us you don’t like to be touched.”
There’s a silence while Sheppard frowns at him, in which Lorne comes back with the Marines and Elizabeth starts to say, “Rodney--” and Sheppard lifts his hand, touching his knuckles to Rodney’s chest over his heart, staring at it like it's an experiment and he's waiting for the results.
Rodney stutters something and looks away-- anywhere-- sees Elizabeth with a mix of expressions on her face like she wants time out from being worried so she can smile so hard.
**
He staggers across the floor, patterns of light fading beneath his boots as the music dies, sliding the last few feet on his knees. Sheppard is face down at the crack where wall meets floor, motionless, silent. Rodney reaches out, smoothes both hands out along the top of Sheppard’s back over the rip in the rough black synthetic and the ends of the Velcro flaps; so that Rodney can finally triangulate where he is by knowing where he’s not, because trying to get to Sheppard when you’re accidentally everyone in the room is more difficult than it sounds, and it’s so, so good that Rodney’s a genius.
Sheppard groans, shifting like he’s trying to turn over, but Rodney spreads his fingers, pushes him back down, driven by a lifetime of paranoia regarding spinal damage that he’s never had the opportunity to apply to another human being. He’s babbling, “What was wrong with these people--lie still, you idiot-- Ascension is obviously a sign of a larger death wish, of course that would be genetic-- oh god what hurts? Don’t even deny-- I can feel it-- don’t move then, don’t move--”
He's having trouble concentrating; his head is a superposition of states. Seriously, there is something fucking wrong with this room: pushing himself (not really) to his knees at the base of a window, fingers slipping on the sweaty the grip of the scanner, reaching down to pull Dr. Jordan to her feet (or maybe he's accepting that offered hand), when really, really, he’s running his palms down Sheppard’s arms from shoulder to elbow, like it's Sheppard he's grounding with the contact.
Beneath Rodney’s fingers, Sheppard twitches, fingers scrabbling restlessly at the floor. He says hoarsely, “I’m not in my own head anymore,” like it’s a fate worse than Wraith.
**
”Environmental controls!" Rodney promises. "PA announcements from Botany twenty-four seven! Missions with Kavanagh!" He's stumbling backwards into the hallway, flailing his hands in the general direction of Zelenka’s evil space bouncers when his back hits something decidedly softer than a wall or a Marine.
“What’s this now?” Carson says. “I thought you were supposed to be sleeping with Colonel Sheppard.”
Rodney goggles at him. Carson colors. “Now--that wasn’t what I--oh dear,” and runs a weary hand over his face. He takes Rodney by the elbow, steering him towards the transporter. The whole image of the hallway is bleached out, so bright that it's strange it's not hurting Rodney's eyes. "You'll need to make sure he's not moving. I'll come by to do a scan in a few hours, to be sure there's no swelling or accumulation of fluid. Report anything to me--"
"Wait," Rodney interrupts, "you're worried about spinal cord injury and you released him? I know you're used to sheep--"
“Sorry, Rodney," Carson says insincerely, "I thought I should avoid wrestling with the spinal cord in question, and since someone built a stun gun out of-- of forceps and chewing gum and threatened me..."
“Yes, but--you! You!” Rodney manages, tripping into the transporter.
Ronon nods in greeting they arrive, standing guard outside the door, his arms folded impassively across his chest. Rodney sways towards him, setting his weight against Carson’s hand on his arm, but when asked, Ronon only shrugs, rumbling, “He doesn’t like it when I’m in there.”
Rodney frowns. Because he thinks he wouldn’t have talked Elizabeth into getting John a puppy (actually he’s pretty sure he didn’t do this) if John were just going to get high and kick it around. The Rescue Rangers start hopping around his feet until Rodney waves at the one with the fedora, which seems to placate them.
Ronon shrugs. He’s not a verbose kind of guy, so Rodney reasons that if he’s repeating himself, the rejection must sting badly. He puts it on a to-do list to-- to-- well, Rodney’s not sure actually, but it’ll be something. Then the door opens and he practically falls into the room.
Teyla’s speaking in the background when the door snaps shut in Beckett’s face, hiding Ronon’s determined stare at the opposite side of the hall. Rodney takes a step backwards, landing on something that goes splat!-- and doesn’t that just drive the cartoon characters wild, dancing around the tiny, crumpled carton. He looks up blearily, sees the upturned cardboard box from the mess and the ruins of a tower of creamer cups spilling across the floor near Sheppard’s dangling hand.
The Colonel himself is stretched across the bed on his stomach, cheek resting on a forearm, eyes closed. Teyla is crossed-legged by Rodney’s pillow, leaning forward over Sheppard who’s looking sort of morose and pouty-faced even though he appears to be asleep. The window behind her is dark, dawn still hours off.
As Rodney watches, Teyla continues stroking her fingers down Sheppard’s side below the bandage, smiling with a slow twist of her mouth as she replies soothingly to a conversation Rodney missed.
She says, “Such survival takes great skill, and is worthy of respect among my people.”
Rodney freezes for a moment, staring. Sheppard’s half-naked (who needs a repeat of the nightmare it was getting the first shirt off of him), and Teyla doesn’t really wear a lot of clothes to begin with; the whole picture is-- the sort of accidental discovery between coworkers that Rodney likes to back out of quickly except oh yeah, it’s in his room.
So he strides over to his laptop on the end table, eyes front (well, not really), trying for pornography? What pornography?, and doesn’t mean to walk through what’s left of the creamer tower, but he's high and really, really distracted.
“I’m not,” Sheppard protests, eyes still closed, apparently unaware of the destruction. He’s tracing aimless shapes on the floor with the hand hanging off the bed.
“Um,” Rodney says, clutching the laptop to his chest.
Sheppard looks up at him, lazily and sleep-dazed except for the tightness around his mouth and the way he’s careful to move only his eyes, not his head, not an inch. “She said--” he starts, and Teyla makes a face like she can’t help it and laughs.
Rodney narrows his eyes at her. “You aren’t high too, are you? Oh god, this is just like my day--”
“She says her people respect me because I’m so old,” Sheppard says mournfully, tracing out fractals on the out-of-this-world linoleum. He seems to notice the destruction of his creamer tower and his mouth takes a definite, heart-breaking downturn.
“Oh,” Rodney blurts. “Sorry. I-- uh-- let me--” and sits down by the bed, gathering up the scattered building blocks.
He’s laid out the foundations for a simple pyramid when he realizes he has a box of several hundred blocks at his disposal (heaven for the child at the local diner always restricted to a measely dozen), and-- maybe more importantly-- Sheppard’s unsteady hand, pointing vaguely at the pile, musing, “Hey, ramparts. And oh, man, like-- a moat--” boyish interest layered under all too obvious exhaustion.
So Rodney opens up his tablet, sketching out plans for a walled fortress of four towers, a keep, and maybe a little flag of toothpicks and a ketchup packet, flying proudly at the top. He tries to show it off for approval, but Sheppard only says, eyes sliding shut under Teyla’s soothing hands, “Yeah, yeah, build it already.”
“Excuse me,” Rodney sniffs, “considering the ruin of your last architectural endeavor, I hardly think--”
But when he looks up, he catches Teyla smiling and rolling her eyes in his direction, sliding a palm up Sheppard’s back, who looks like he’d purr if he could, which is just surreal. Rodney bends over the creamer packets instead, assembling his-- Sheppard’s-- fortress with quick precision. He finds no toothpicks, but makes do with a paperclip and a post-it note, marked in blue sharpie with a really horrific winged, possibly equine stick figure, which he adds to the top of the white keep.
It feels like hours when he pulls back, straightening and feeling his spine protest. Sheppard’s there, eyes wide open and clear, staring at the (really not that impressive) creamer fortress with exaggerated awe and a strange, shy smile.
“Oh,” Sheppard says softly, lifting his hand like he wants to touch but learned early on not to poke at his hallucinations lest they vanish into thin air. Rodney has his hand around Sheppard’s wrist before he even knows what he’s doing, no intent except for maybe a quiet envy of Teyla’s ability to spread her palm over Sheppard’s pain and have it vanish. Rodney tried to help, but Radek kicked him out, his brain no help at all, left with nothing but a misappropriated box of condiments.
Sheppard arches a brow.
“I-- uh-- you-- ” Rodney fumbles. “If you knock this over, I’m not building you a second one. My time is--” but then Sheppard’s saying with him (not at all like the star chamber), “--a valuable resource and should not be--”
Rodney stops. Sheppard doesn't. “--wasted except on productive pursuits such as comic books, porn, and beating Lindsey’s high score in Tetris.”
“I was not going to say that,” Rodney snaps. “And Lindsey doesn’t have the coordination for breathing, much less high-speed puzzle games..”
“Ah, yes,” Teyla says suddenly, the traitor, “I believe I remember Dr. Kavanagh announcing that his was the highest achievement in this... Tetris.”
Rodney scowls at her.
He realizes suddenly that he’s still holding Sheppard’s wrist, rubbing his thumb in small, distracted circles over Sheppard’s pulse point; he drops it like it’s covered in acid, scooting back a foot, sending a tremor through his fortress. Sheppard--
Sheppard’s eyes are shut. He looks asleep. Rodney’s heart stops flirting with cardiac arrest.
In his ear, he hears the buzz of radio static and Zelenka’s voice, saying, “We have shut down the redial sequence.” And then, reluctantly, “Perhaps you are right, and Ancients are stupid enough to put lives and gravity into hands of mp3 for sake of crazy Atlantean rave.”
“Oh thank god,” Rodney blurts and doesn’t even gloat. He can feel the truth of it. There's no longer a strange shaped room hovering at the edge of his subconscious, no more cartoons he felt really silly for watching in grad school crawling over the furniture. Aside from the inevitable weeks of analyzing data taken upside down with safety harnesses and duct-tape, it's over. It feels like all of it happened in his absence, like he wasn't even necessary. He pokes at the wall of the creamer fortress, but he built it too well; it only shudders and does not fall.
“Hey,” Sheppard says drowsily, eyes open to slits, sliding into cowboy twang, “does this mean I can have muscle relaxants now?”
He reaches out, rests his hand in Rodney's palm.
**
Sheppard’s fingers are curled tight in the short hair at the base of Rodney’s neck, and he’s bleeding, and Rodney doesn’t even have to look at his face to know that something hurts, but Sheppard won’t let the med team into the room, too dangerous to bring anyone in they don’t have to. None of the marines are too injured to get out on their own, he says. There are handholds in the wall, they’ll hang on just in case, get out before gravity has another chance to go whammo.
The gene-free guys, which thank god includes Radek, are safe in their heads, and it’s Radek’s job to make sure the damn thing stays off because the only other person who might be brilliant enough is on his stomach at the edge of the floor, head to head with Colonel Sheppard, the one guy they can’t move, or shouldn’t, and it doesn’t occur to Rodney--not until hours and hours later--that he might have a more vital place to be.