Black&Ginger by LadyAmarra
Title: Black&Ginger
Author: ladyamarra
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John/Rodney AURodney/AUJohn
Warnings: Character death (not graphic)
Spoilers: This is a tag for Midway
Words: 2.948
Series: Ginger (red) Verse
Summary: Turns out there are alternate universes out there in which the ginger hair genes running rampant in his mother’s family have won out against the dark looks of the Sheppard’s and managed to make a heavy impact on his looks alongside the impossible elf ears.
Author's notes: This is a snippet from my Ginger verse, technically a AU in which Sheppard is a red head, civillian and Rodney ex military. (See Icon for the Sheppards ;) The story itself isn't finished yet, and has nothing to do with this one. Also, taste_is_sweet pointed out that in America you would call him red instead of Ginger, this however is basing on a joke inside the real Fic. I changed it a little.
Not Betaed (as always help would be appreciated and will be compensated with icons)
+
He is damn close to suffocation as he wriggles himself into the space suit - the details on how he has managed that miracle at all are blurry - but the look of utter relief as Rodney finds him lets him forget the aches and headache momentarily. He falls out of the suit and around the neck of his buddy, wrapping his arms around the broad shoulders of Mckay - officially of course to stay on his feet, because he’s shaky and dizzy and all - which makes the scientist stumble back for a moment but hold on to Sheppard in return and bury his nose in the other man’s neck muttering about the stupidity of flyboys.
They waste precious seconds and couldn’t care less.
+
He contemplates stunning himself for several minutes before he decides to seal himself into the front cabin of the jumper instead, unable to help himself after 24 hours of endless squabbling by two very annoyed scientists and Kavanaugh - who officially doesn’t deserve anymore to be counted as number three and if it’s the last thing Rodney will do.
After another 6 hours Rodney lets himself in, too - John may have allowed the Jumper to make an exclusion there - flops on the co pilot chair, demands one of the blankets Sheppard has with a click of his fingers and promptly falls asleep.
John spends the next 10 minutes with smiling - because yeah, they made it again and Rodney is there and as annoyed as always and in one piece, and that makes him feel far less beaten and half dead as he should, and how close it was this time around and how good the hug felt and Rodney’s hand on John’s back and the cold nose on the skin of John’s neck and… - and the rest of the following days with the attempt to scrub the fond smile off his face so nobody notices it - least of all Caldwell on the way back to Atlantis.
It’s the normal way they go, - what happens off world stays there and near death situations don’t count, they have agreed on that the first time aliens made them jerk off each other - but Rodney takes this time somehow harder than usual and Sheppard can’t help to feel the obligation to make that stop.
+
It’s late and barely anyone around in the mess as he finds Rodney bending over a laptop, empty tray and equally as empty coffee mug to his side. He has avoided Sheppard since they beamed back down and he can’t blame the other man since they were more than just forced to be close to another over the last two weeks.
He sits down and holds with both hands curled around the coffee cup before him on the table, being silent for what seems like hours.
“Oh what is it Sheppard,” Rodney snaps and can’t obviously stand the silent sulking anymore - not that Sheppard is sulking, he is nervous perhaps, uneasy.
“About the…” Sheppard starts after a while looking just at his coffee mug. “You know, as you found me in the… I nearly suffocated and…”
Mckay rolls his eyes and grabs his laptop to stuff it under his arm. “Sure Sheppard, you’ve lost your balance and were dizzy, if you excuse me now, I’ve to see how much of my work Zelenka and the trained monkeys haven’t ruined while I was gone,”
Sheppard nods and lets Rodney flee the commissary.
+
He can’t sleep and needs to pee, so he gets up to use the bathroom.
That’s when he hears a hissing sound from his bathroom and grabs his gun.
Turns out there are alternate universes out there in which the red hair genes running rampant in his mother’s family have won out against the dark looks of the Sheppard’s and managed to make a heavy impact on his looks alongside the impossible elf ears. The hair’s usual ignorance towards the laws of gravity, brushes and any known hair product however, he thinks ruefully, seem to be the same in every world.
“Hello?” The other Sheppard says, holding up his hands in a peaceful gesture.
Dark haired Sheppard has to look twice, finding his confusion mirroring in too familiar eyes, scrunches up his face in a mix of irritation and abysmal disbelieve about Pegasus galaxy’s tendency to never stop throwing shit at him, steps back and waves the hand before the door sensor that belongs to his bathroom door with slumping shoulders and a firm hold to his gun.
It shuts with a satisfying hiss and he decides that 2 in the morning is not the time to deal with a second version of him standing in his bathroom in not more than a pair of kiwi printed boxers, looking badly shaven and worn out. Not after Wraith attacks on earth, a near death by exposure to vacuum, a week in a jumper with three geeks, two marines and no shower and the same Johnny Cash album over and over again, plus, eight days walking around as stiff as a board to keep Caldwell of his back while exchanging barely a word with Rodney.
Just, no…no, no.
The closed door doesn’t change that the other guy is there, sadly, that Sheppard has to call reinforcements - I need a security team at my room and get Rodney! - and that the guy is stumbling out of the bathroom and into the bedroom with wide (puffy?) eyes - and glasses for Christ’s sake - looking bouncy and exited and so not like him, just no.
“You are me!” He exclaims brilliantly and waves one finger at dark haired Sheppard in a gesture that he usually connects to Rodney, not to himself. “Well, not me, obviously, but me…” He stops and looks at Sheppard’s hair, titling his head. “Your hair’s different?”
Go Figure.
“Obviously,” Sheppard drawls.
“This is so cool,” The red head says grinning creepily and pushes his glasses up on his nose, looking around Sheppard’s room. “So this is a different universe, uhm is that a skateboard?”
“Yeah, it is,” Skateboard and other universe actually, at least he hopes so, if not then he’s gone nuts now.
“Cool,” Ginger says again. “Different set of genes, different combination… different process of history, different interests in spending our free time…”
Sheppard doesn’t feel like talking to himself and sits down on his bed, gun still in one hand and resisting the urge to make another call - would it sound like panic if he screamed for Mckay to move his ass here the fuck now? Probably yes. He rubs his eyes instead and peers at his doppelganger’s legs from between his fingers- also red hair on the legs, alright.
“Here,” He grabs blindly for a pair of sweat pants and throws it at his twin.
“Huh?” Red blinks at him wildly.
Sheppard swirls a hand. “Dress,”
Red looks at the grey pants in his hands and back at black before making the connection. “Oh, sure,”
He manages to shimmy the pants up his narrow hips in time with Mckay’s and Lorne’s arrival. They let the door to Sheppard’s room open, guns pointed on whatever may be there that makes their CO call for them at this time of the night and of course find red Sheppard first thing in their view.
“Hi,” Red says timidly doing that cross between a wave and a peace sign with which black Sheppard has made his father half way mental in his teenage years.
He shivers at that.
“Sir?” Lorne looks from the red head to the Colonel and back, eyes a little wide but that’s nothing against the eye roll and smug smirk from Rodney.
Sheppard sighs and stands up, so much for one single peaceful night.
+
The following hours are a display of how fucking much the universes - plural - must hate him, because ginger Sheppard - that’s how Biro, the on-duty Doctor, has called him and of course Rodney had to hold onto that nickname - is not only freakily bouncy, wears glasses and says cool so damn often that it’s really losing all meaning, no, he also seems to be so much of a scatterbrained geeky genius type that even Rodney thinks of it as intimidating.
Or he is just as thoroughly freaked as Sheppard is when looking at his ginger - red, it’s red - head double.
“How do you Sheppard’s survive? Huh? It doesn’t matter if brain or brawn…” Rodney shakes his head and waves a hand. “The universe must be fond of you somehow it can’t be your own doing, it is just not possible,”
John sighs. “Rodney,”
“Ginger has forgotten the device in your bathroom,” Rodney says a little helpless as they trail down the hallway back towards Sheppard’s room - taking an unholy pleasure in the name calling.
Ginger Sheppard - Lord help him, as if that wasn’t bad enough - Doctor Jonathan Eugene Sheppard - another evidence for the cruelty of the universe, Eugene for crying out loud - is walking along ahead, deep in conversation with Carter. They have instantly hit it off as they spoke with each other on the infirmary - Carter may have taken on a motherly kind of voice there - and isn’t that just fucking perfect.
“In your bathroom…” Rodney repeats shaking his head. “Why the hell would a half way sane scientist bring an artefact capable of letting the user switch universes into bathroom with him, oh never mind, it’s you, so sanity or self preservation was never very high on the agenda.”
“Hiding,” Sheppard says, he knows he would be hiding a lot if he was the other him. Not that he not liked the hair colour, no, it was one of the fondest memories of his mother when her hair sparkled like reddish gold in the sun, just… He sighs.
Ginger Sheppard needs ten minutes of searching around on hands and knees to find the little purple object he has used to end up in black’s universe and wriggles his ass in the air embarrassingly much while doing so. So much in fact, that the sweat pants slip a little at one point giving way for the hilarious shorts again. Sheppard turns away as Carter giggles softly over the picture, only to find Rodney gaping with an open mouth on his other side.
Sheppard raises his eyebrows and stares at Rodney and Mckay clicks his mouth shut, insanely focused of his Computer tablet all of a sudden. Does he blush?
“Gotcha!” Ginger calls out and emerges grinning broadly from behind the laundry damper, totally dishevelled and with his glasses nearly slipping from his nose.
Black leaves the room and walks out, crossing his arms and slouching against the wall in the hallway until the small group comes out again, Ginger hanging onto Rodney’s every word - and arm, damn it.
Damn it all.
+
It needs long to find the device in the Ancient Database, very long, but black Sheppard is the only who minds. Ginger seems to grow on anyone fast, smiles and jokes - still calls anything that blinks or beeps cool - and bonds tentatively with Rodney over the sun screen recipe and the fact that real aloe is hard to come by out here in both dimensions.
Something is off about ginger though, and it’s not merely the hair colour or the total abuse of the word cool, but more of a soft quality to ginger’s looks every time he casts eyes upon Rodney. The irises are brighter than Black Sheppard’s but seem to become even more so when ginger works with Mckay, he even sneaks in touches that Rodney seemingly doesn’t even notice and smiles that dopy smile Sheppard knows from old pictures with his ex wife - still fiancé back then - complete with dimples, freckles and the open look of fondness Sheppard tries so hard to avoid showing.
Rodney smiles back as both agree completely over the hilarity of Back to the future - the movies really existed everywhere - and even cracks one of the wide lop sided grins as ginger dares to quote the whole “Am I ginger, I always wanted to be ginger!” scene from the first Who episode with the tenth Doctor frighteningly convincing- okay, Doctor who was in every fucking universe too, all right.
Black leaves the room afterwards and knows he’s screwed - and knows he can’t blame ginger for this either.
+
The device turns out to be not more than a experiment discarded a long time ago because the scientists who tested it screwed it up a couple of times and killed themselves eventually with it. The only reason why there is something in the database at all is probably to warn others not to try it out this way and Rodney comes to the understanding that it must have worked in the other dimension and that it could not be that hard to recharge with the information they have now- and adds the whole infinite possibilities of yes or no speech all over again for good measure.
Ginger merely nods along to that theory and smiles. Black knows that smile too well to believe it and forms his own theory.
+
Ginger sits down at Sheppard’s table on the sixth night, coffee cup in his hand and not the least bit as bouncy in compare to the previous days. They are the only people left in the commissary, expect for the on duty kitchen staff and two sleepy scientists in a far corner of the room and for the first time Sheppard can see how much familiarity there really is between them both.
They may not share the hair colour or the ranks, not even the names - and Sheppard will have to do something soon to prove to Meredith that he is not called Eugene - but there are certain things they have in common. Decisions made, friends forgotten, lives lost…
Things they regret…
Things they’d love to change…
“Rodney says he is almost finished and can send me back soon,” Ginger says and Sheppard drums his fingers against his own cup of coffee.
“That’s cool,” Sheppard drawls and wants to bite his tongue - he wants him gone now and not wants to let him go at the same time, and isn’t that just fucking screwed up.
Ginger shrugs and pushes his glasses further up his nose. “My Rodney…” He starts and clicks his mouth shut again, turning his head away to the windows before starting again with a softer voice, “My Rodney is dead, you know…”
“I’m Sorry,” And he is, he can’t imagine how he would cope if… the crystal creature’s nightmares were bad enough.
“He saved us all,” Ginger says and chews on his lip the same way John knows he does when he isn’t quite comfortable with talking. “I… he… he made me vent the air to stop the wraith, they… were on their way to earth through the midway station, all Marines were dead, and Colonel Lorne too, he wanted to rewire the self destruct and couldn’t make it back…”
Sheppard stares into his coffee. That sounds familiar, well not the Colonel Lorne part, but the rest, very familiar, just turned around and twisted.
“He wasn’t military, not anymore,” Ginger adds as an afterthought. “It wouldn’t have been his job, he just…”
Ginger makes his mind up after what seems like hours but probably is only a matter of minutes, before standing up clasping his coffee mug. “I just, just wanted to tell you that you… you should use your chances while you can.”
Sheppard doesn’t dare to look up until Ginger is gone.
He knows, but there’s too much to lose.
+
The next day black stands in his room, probably along with half of Atlantis’s science department and watches how ginger smiles at Rodney a last time before winking out of their universe - and perhaps out of existence for good, he isn’t sure. It’s not sure why he came into the universe at all, - or if he is safely back in his own, John doubts he wants to - it makes not much sense and nobody is quite over the fact yet that Ginger has tried this hiding in his bathroom.
John however has figured it out, or thinks he has.
If ginger felt anything like Sheppard did in that nightmare months back then there is no doubt why he tried in his bathroom all alone and with a device that had best chances to not work. Sheppard still stares into his bathroom as all others but Rodney are gone. He’s pretty sure Rodney has figured something out about ginger’s reasons too, very sure.
Rodney looks at him from the corner of his eyes. “Did he tell you what happened to their Rodney?”
“Yeah,” Sheppard drawls not sure what to say else.
“Hm,” Rodney looks back at the open bathroom and neither of them moves or speaks.
Usually they turn their backs now, usually they go their ways now and fall back to the same routine, but this is not usually - Shit, shit, shit.
“Okay,” Rodney speaks eventually, steps forward and palms the door to the bathroom shut. “This is idiotic,” He says and turns to Sheppard who still stands there, looking directly at him, makes one step forward and kisses him.
Their noses are in the way, the stubble itch - they had no time to shave yet - and it takes a few seconds before the kiss half way works out as it should, then it’s just right and John couldn’t care less about the rest of the universe - no matter which one - at least for a moment or two.
Author: ladyamarra
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: John/Rodney AURodney/AUJohn
Warnings: Character death (not graphic)
Spoilers: This is a tag for Midway
Words: 2.948
Series: Ginger (red) Verse
Summary: Turns out there are alternate universes out there in which the ginger hair genes running rampant in his mother’s family have won out against the dark looks of the Sheppard’s and managed to make a heavy impact on his looks alongside the impossible elf ears.
Author's notes: This is a snippet from my Ginger verse, technically a AU in which Sheppard is a red head, civillian and Rodney ex military. (See Icon for the Sheppards ;) The story itself isn't finished yet, and has nothing to do with this one. Also, taste_is_sweet pointed out that in America you would call him red instead of Ginger, this however is basing on a joke inside the real Fic. I changed it a little.
Not Betaed (as always help would be appreciated and will be compensated with icons)
+
He is damn close to suffocation as he wriggles himself into the space suit - the details on how he has managed that miracle at all are blurry - but the look of utter relief as Rodney finds him lets him forget the aches and headache momentarily. He falls out of the suit and around the neck of his buddy, wrapping his arms around the broad shoulders of Mckay - officially of course to stay on his feet, because he’s shaky and dizzy and all - which makes the scientist stumble back for a moment but hold on to Sheppard in return and bury his nose in the other man’s neck muttering about the stupidity of flyboys.
They waste precious seconds and couldn’t care less.
+
He contemplates stunning himself for several minutes before he decides to seal himself into the front cabin of the jumper instead, unable to help himself after 24 hours of endless squabbling by two very annoyed scientists and Kavanaugh - who officially doesn’t deserve anymore to be counted as number three and if it’s the last thing Rodney will do.
After another 6 hours Rodney lets himself in, too - John may have allowed the Jumper to make an exclusion there - flops on the co pilot chair, demands one of the blankets Sheppard has with a click of his fingers and promptly falls asleep.
John spends the next 10 minutes with smiling - because yeah, they made it again and Rodney is there and as annoyed as always and in one piece, and that makes him feel far less beaten and half dead as he should, and how close it was this time around and how good the hug felt and Rodney’s hand on John’s back and the cold nose on the skin of John’s neck and… - and the rest of the following days with the attempt to scrub the fond smile off his face so nobody notices it - least of all Caldwell on the way back to Atlantis.
It’s the normal way they go, - what happens off world stays there and near death situations don’t count, they have agreed on that the first time aliens made them jerk off each other - but Rodney takes this time somehow harder than usual and Sheppard can’t help to feel the obligation to make that stop.
+
It’s late and barely anyone around in the mess as he finds Rodney bending over a laptop, empty tray and equally as empty coffee mug to his side. He has avoided Sheppard since they beamed back down and he can’t blame the other man since they were more than just forced to be close to another over the last two weeks.
He sits down and holds with both hands curled around the coffee cup before him on the table, being silent for what seems like hours.
“Oh what is it Sheppard,” Rodney snaps and can’t obviously stand the silent sulking anymore - not that Sheppard is sulking, he is nervous perhaps, uneasy.
“About the…” Sheppard starts after a while looking just at his coffee mug. “You know, as you found me in the… I nearly suffocated and…”
Mckay rolls his eyes and grabs his laptop to stuff it under his arm. “Sure Sheppard, you’ve lost your balance and were dizzy, if you excuse me now, I’ve to see how much of my work Zelenka and the trained monkeys haven’t ruined while I was gone,”
Sheppard nods and lets Rodney flee the commissary.
+
He can’t sleep and needs to pee, so he gets up to use the bathroom.
That’s when he hears a hissing sound from his bathroom and grabs his gun.
Turns out there are alternate universes out there in which the red hair genes running rampant in his mother’s family have won out against the dark looks of the Sheppard’s and managed to make a heavy impact on his looks alongside the impossible elf ears. The hair’s usual ignorance towards the laws of gravity, brushes and any known hair product however, he thinks ruefully, seem to be the same in every world.
“Hello?” The other Sheppard says, holding up his hands in a peaceful gesture.
Dark haired Sheppard has to look twice, finding his confusion mirroring in too familiar eyes, scrunches up his face in a mix of irritation and abysmal disbelieve about Pegasus galaxy’s tendency to never stop throwing shit at him, steps back and waves the hand before the door sensor that belongs to his bathroom door with slumping shoulders and a firm hold to his gun.
It shuts with a satisfying hiss and he decides that 2 in the morning is not the time to deal with a second version of him standing in his bathroom in not more than a pair of kiwi printed boxers, looking badly shaven and worn out. Not after Wraith attacks on earth, a near death by exposure to vacuum, a week in a jumper with three geeks, two marines and no shower and the same Johnny Cash album over and over again, plus, eight days walking around as stiff as a board to keep Caldwell of his back while exchanging barely a word with Rodney.
Just, no…no, no.
The closed door doesn’t change that the other guy is there, sadly, that Sheppard has to call reinforcements - I need a security team at my room and get Rodney! - and that the guy is stumbling out of the bathroom and into the bedroom with wide (puffy?) eyes - and glasses for Christ’s sake - looking bouncy and exited and so not like him, just no.
“You are me!” He exclaims brilliantly and waves one finger at dark haired Sheppard in a gesture that he usually connects to Rodney, not to himself. “Well, not me, obviously, but me…” He stops and looks at Sheppard’s hair, titling his head. “Your hair’s different?”
Go Figure.
“Obviously,” Sheppard drawls.
“This is so cool,” The red head says grinning creepily and pushes his glasses up on his nose, looking around Sheppard’s room. “So this is a different universe, uhm is that a skateboard?”
“Yeah, it is,” Skateboard and other universe actually, at least he hopes so, if not then he’s gone nuts now.
“Cool,” Ginger says again. “Different set of genes, different combination… different process of history, different interests in spending our free time…”
Sheppard doesn’t feel like talking to himself and sits down on his bed, gun still in one hand and resisting the urge to make another call - would it sound like panic if he screamed for Mckay to move his ass here the fuck now? Probably yes. He rubs his eyes instead and peers at his doppelganger’s legs from between his fingers- also red hair on the legs, alright.
“Here,” He grabs blindly for a pair of sweat pants and throws it at his twin.
“Huh?” Red blinks at him wildly.
Sheppard swirls a hand. “Dress,”
Red looks at the grey pants in his hands and back at black before making the connection. “Oh, sure,”
He manages to shimmy the pants up his narrow hips in time with Mckay’s and Lorne’s arrival. They let the door to Sheppard’s room open, guns pointed on whatever may be there that makes their CO call for them at this time of the night and of course find red Sheppard first thing in their view.
“Hi,” Red says timidly doing that cross between a wave and a peace sign with which black Sheppard has made his father half way mental in his teenage years.
He shivers at that.
“Sir?” Lorne looks from the red head to the Colonel and back, eyes a little wide but that’s nothing against the eye roll and smug smirk from Rodney.
Sheppard sighs and stands up, so much for one single peaceful night.
+
The following hours are a display of how fucking much the universes - plural - must hate him, because ginger Sheppard - that’s how Biro, the on-duty Doctor, has called him and of course Rodney had to hold onto that nickname - is not only freakily bouncy, wears glasses and says cool so damn often that it’s really losing all meaning, no, he also seems to be so much of a scatterbrained geeky genius type that even Rodney thinks of it as intimidating.
Or he is just as thoroughly freaked as Sheppard is when looking at his ginger - red, it’s red - head double.
“How do you Sheppard’s survive? Huh? It doesn’t matter if brain or brawn…” Rodney shakes his head and waves a hand. “The universe must be fond of you somehow it can’t be your own doing, it is just not possible,”
John sighs. “Rodney,”
“Ginger has forgotten the device in your bathroom,” Rodney says a little helpless as they trail down the hallway back towards Sheppard’s room - taking an unholy pleasure in the name calling.
Ginger Sheppard - Lord help him, as if that wasn’t bad enough - Doctor Jonathan Eugene Sheppard - another evidence for the cruelty of the universe, Eugene for crying out loud - is walking along ahead, deep in conversation with Carter. They have instantly hit it off as they spoke with each other on the infirmary - Carter may have taken on a motherly kind of voice there - and isn’t that just fucking perfect.
“In your bathroom…” Rodney repeats shaking his head. “Why the hell would a half way sane scientist bring an artefact capable of letting the user switch universes into bathroom with him, oh never mind, it’s you, so sanity or self preservation was never very high on the agenda.”
“Hiding,” Sheppard says, he knows he would be hiding a lot if he was the other him. Not that he not liked the hair colour, no, it was one of the fondest memories of his mother when her hair sparkled like reddish gold in the sun, just… He sighs.
Ginger Sheppard needs ten minutes of searching around on hands and knees to find the little purple object he has used to end up in black’s universe and wriggles his ass in the air embarrassingly much while doing so. So much in fact, that the sweat pants slip a little at one point giving way for the hilarious shorts again. Sheppard turns away as Carter giggles softly over the picture, only to find Rodney gaping with an open mouth on his other side.
Sheppard raises his eyebrows and stares at Rodney and Mckay clicks his mouth shut, insanely focused of his Computer tablet all of a sudden. Does he blush?
“Gotcha!” Ginger calls out and emerges grinning broadly from behind the laundry damper, totally dishevelled and with his glasses nearly slipping from his nose.
Black leaves the room and walks out, crossing his arms and slouching against the wall in the hallway until the small group comes out again, Ginger hanging onto Rodney’s every word - and arm, damn it.
Damn it all.
+
It needs long to find the device in the Ancient Database, very long, but black Sheppard is the only who minds. Ginger seems to grow on anyone fast, smiles and jokes - still calls anything that blinks or beeps cool - and bonds tentatively with Rodney over the sun screen recipe and the fact that real aloe is hard to come by out here in both dimensions.
Something is off about ginger though, and it’s not merely the hair colour or the total abuse of the word cool, but more of a soft quality to ginger’s looks every time he casts eyes upon Rodney. The irises are brighter than Black Sheppard’s but seem to become even more so when ginger works with Mckay, he even sneaks in touches that Rodney seemingly doesn’t even notice and smiles that dopy smile Sheppard knows from old pictures with his ex wife - still fiancé back then - complete with dimples, freckles and the open look of fondness Sheppard tries so hard to avoid showing.
Rodney smiles back as both agree completely over the hilarity of Back to the future - the movies really existed everywhere - and even cracks one of the wide lop sided grins as ginger dares to quote the whole “Am I ginger, I always wanted to be ginger!” scene from the first Who episode with the tenth Doctor frighteningly convincing- okay, Doctor who was in every fucking universe too, all right.
Black leaves the room afterwards and knows he’s screwed - and knows he can’t blame ginger for this either.
+
The device turns out to be not more than a experiment discarded a long time ago because the scientists who tested it screwed it up a couple of times and killed themselves eventually with it. The only reason why there is something in the database at all is probably to warn others not to try it out this way and Rodney comes to the understanding that it must have worked in the other dimension and that it could not be that hard to recharge with the information they have now- and adds the whole infinite possibilities of yes or no speech all over again for good measure.
Ginger merely nods along to that theory and smiles. Black knows that smile too well to believe it and forms his own theory.
+
Ginger sits down at Sheppard’s table on the sixth night, coffee cup in his hand and not the least bit as bouncy in compare to the previous days. They are the only people left in the commissary, expect for the on duty kitchen staff and two sleepy scientists in a far corner of the room and for the first time Sheppard can see how much familiarity there really is between them both.
They may not share the hair colour or the ranks, not even the names - and Sheppard will have to do something soon to prove to Meredith that he is not called Eugene - but there are certain things they have in common. Decisions made, friends forgotten, lives lost…
Things they regret…
Things they’d love to change…
“Rodney says he is almost finished and can send me back soon,” Ginger says and Sheppard drums his fingers against his own cup of coffee.
“That’s cool,” Sheppard drawls and wants to bite his tongue - he wants him gone now and not wants to let him go at the same time, and isn’t that just fucking screwed up.
Ginger shrugs and pushes his glasses further up his nose. “My Rodney…” He starts and clicks his mouth shut again, turning his head away to the windows before starting again with a softer voice, “My Rodney is dead, you know…”
“I’m Sorry,” And he is, he can’t imagine how he would cope if… the crystal creature’s nightmares were bad enough.
“He saved us all,” Ginger says and chews on his lip the same way John knows he does when he isn’t quite comfortable with talking. “I… he… he made me vent the air to stop the wraith, they… were on their way to earth through the midway station, all Marines were dead, and Colonel Lorne too, he wanted to rewire the self destruct and couldn’t make it back…”
Sheppard stares into his coffee. That sounds familiar, well not the Colonel Lorne part, but the rest, very familiar, just turned around and twisted.
“He wasn’t military, not anymore,” Ginger adds as an afterthought. “It wouldn’t have been his job, he just…”
Ginger makes his mind up after what seems like hours but probably is only a matter of minutes, before standing up clasping his coffee mug. “I just, just wanted to tell you that you… you should use your chances while you can.”
Sheppard doesn’t dare to look up until Ginger is gone.
He knows, but there’s too much to lose.
+
The next day black stands in his room, probably along with half of Atlantis’s science department and watches how ginger smiles at Rodney a last time before winking out of their universe - and perhaps out of existence for good, he isn’t sure. It’s not sure why he came into the universe at all, - or if he is safely back in his own, John doubts he wants to - it makes not much sense and nobody is quite over the fact yet that Ginger has tried this hiding in his bathroom.
John however has figured it out, or thinks he has.
If ginger felt anything like Sheppard did in that nightmare months back then there is no doubt why he tried in his bathroom all alone and with a device that had best chances to not work. Sheppard still stares into his bathroom as all others but Rodney are gone. He’s pretty sure Rodney has figured something out about ginger’s reasons too, very sure.
Rodney looks at him from the corner of his eyes. “Did he tell you what happened to their Rodney?”
“Yeah,” Sheppard drawls not sure what to say else.
“Hm,” Rodney looks back at the open bathroom and neither of them moves or speaks.
Usually they turn their backs now, usually they go their ways now and fall back to the same routine, but this is not usually - Shit, shit, shit.
“Okay,” Rodney speaks eventually, steps forward and palms the door to the bathroom shut. “This is idiotic,” He says and turns to Sheppard who still stands there, looking directly at him, makes one step forward and kisses him.
Their noses are in the way, the stubble itch - they had no time to shave yet - and it takes a few seconds before the kiss half way works out as it should, then it’s just right and John couldn’t care less about the rest of the universe - no matter which one - at least for a moment or two.