Three Wishes by liketheriver (Fairy Tale Challenge)
Title: Three Wishes
Category: John/Rodney Humor
Word Count: ~ 8,600
Rating: T
Characters: John, Rodney, and others
Spoilers: Set sometime in the future of Season 5 so some casting spoilers/rumors
A/N: There is something about these challenges that brings things out in me that I would have swore I would never do... gender switching being one of them. But if you take this fic seriously, you have more problems than I do. *G* Thanks as always to Koschka for the beta and THIS IS ALLLLLL HER FAULT!
Summary: When Rodney gets a little too in touch with his feminine side, John realizes how dangerous wishes can be.
Three Wishes
by liketheriver
“What the fuck just happened?”
Rodney wasn’t happy. Sure the exclamation had been shrieked in something much more akin to alarm bordering on all out panic than anger, but he was pissed as hell that he was in that emotional state, not to mention his new physical one.
John’s eyes widened to see his teammate standing on the Ancient platform totally nude, then squinted as he screwed his face up in disgust when he took in the details a little closer. There was Rodney, the same old Rodney with the square jaw and crooked mouth and receding hairline and blue eyes and wispily hairy chest and pudgy middle and thick hairy legs. Yep, same old Rodney… only now he had two breasts and no dick.
Rodney with two breasts and no dick. That sure the hell wasn’t what John had been expecting.
“What the fuck did you do?” Rodney demanded again, this time aiming the accusation directly at Sheppard who quickly removed his hands from the control console.
“I just threw up a little in my mouth,” John told him honestly, fighting the gag reflex that was threatening once more, because, damn, McKay did not make an attractive woman. Hell, John had seen more attractive female gym teachers and professional golf players.
Behind him, Ronon looked up from where he was bracing himself against the wall and wiped at his mouth. “I just threw up on the damn floor.”
Rodney looked down at himself for the first time, finally realizing it was more than the fact that his clothing had disappeared that had disgusted his two teammates so much. “Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ, where is my goddamn penis? And what the hell are these?” He cupped the breasts more out of irritation than anything else, as if he couldn’t decide which cantaloupe was the freshest and it was pissing him the hell off.
Teyla walked back into the room at that moment and covered her mouth with her hand as she gasped, “Oh, by the Ancestors, you have breasts!”
John did have to admit that Teyla was correct and, yes, Rodney had breasts. Although, in all honesty, the scientist was practically a natural A cup as a man and now that he was a woman… at least in the purely technical sense… he was little more than a B, so it wasn’t that much of a change. Although, the nipples were…
“Holy shit! I’m a woman!”
Yeah, Rodney was definitely a woman now.
“A hairy woman,” Ronon pointed out.
Teyla was already looking around for something to cover Rodney with, evidently slipping into female bonding mode whereas John and Ronon and McKay, for that matter, were still in the holy crap gawking stage.
“It is not as if women are naturally hair-free, Ronon,” she pointed out as she handed Rodney a coverlet from the equipment they had found in the Ancient lab. “John, give me your jacket; mine is too small.”
John came out of his daze enough to do as Teyla instructed, even as Ronon asked, “Well, the machine got rid of his clothes, why not the hair?”
“Perhaps because hair is as natural on a woman as it is on a man,” Teyla told him in a huff as she handed over the jacket after Rodney had managed to tie the wrap around his waist… her waist.
Dear God.
“It’s gross,” Ronon countered and Rodney barked bitter laughter.
“Says the man who has enough to be mistaken for Sasquatch in the wild. You know what? Screw Sheppard’s jacket. Why don’t you shave and knit me a fucking sweater dress?”
When Ronon growled menacingly, John stepped in. “All right, enough. Evidently, something went awry here but that’s no reason to start insulting each other.”
“You practically said the sight of me made you puke!” Rodney reminded.
With a wince, John tried to gloss over that fact. “I was shocked is all.”
“You were shocked? You? You!” The sarcasm changed to accusation with a narrowing of icy blue eyes. “You did this, didn’t you? You were the one at the controls when I was on the platform. You activated it. You turned me into a woman you cowardly piece of shit! You!”
John flinched away as Rodney slapped him repeatedly across the shoulders until Teyla and Ronon pulled the irate former-man away still cursing Sheppard to high heaven.
Yeah, okay, John had done this… somehow. But, somehow this didn’t seem as much a wish come true as he had thought it would be.
* * * *
Two days earlier….
“What the fuck just happened?”
Rodney was pissed. Not that he didn’t have good reason to be, but John always pictured these things going better in his head than they ever did in real life.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” Sheppard tried in his most sincere voice that McKay just wasn’t buying. “Or actually it is you but it’s because you’re a guy and I’m a guy and I’m in the military and…”
“You’re breaking up with me?”
“It’s not like I want to,” John justified zipping his pants.
Rodney was pulling up his own pants. “But we’re not even dating, not unless you count frenetic sex on my lab bench after years of flirting dating.”
“Look, I know this isn’t exactly the best timing…”
“I’m still sticky!”
John took a hard look at the man standing before him, pants still unbuttoned, shirt askew, hair standing up, face flushed, lips swollen, and a hickey already forming on his neck and sighed, because frumpled Rodney was better than he had even imagined. Stepping in, he wrapped his arms around Rodney and kissed his jaw before whispering in his ear. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. I can’t trust myself.”
Turning abruptly, Sheppard made a bee-line for the door, only to hear, “Evidently neither can I,” mumbled behind him.
John tried to not to wince as he walked back to his quarters as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself. When the head of military operations on Atlantis went running through the halls while wearing his uniform and not a jogging suit, it tended to start a panic. Normally if he was running and it wasn’t for a workout, it typically meant the city was being attacked by Wraith or invaded by Genii or about to crash into a sun or something along those lines. So he did his best to walk quickly but calmly to his room, avoiding eye contact with anyone in the corridors.
He succeeded, went straight for his bed and put the pillow over his face and considered that it might have been easier just to suffocate himself than do what he had to McKay. Because John had told Rodney the honest to God truth; he couldn’t trust himself. He couldn’t trust himself because he was actually a little tiny bit… maybe… well, in love with Rodney. And a one night stand wasn’t going to be possible unless he absolutely laid down the law with himself that that was all it was going to be.
The thing was, he couldn’t even let himself have the one night. As soon as he had started kissing Rodney, felt McKay’s lips soft and warm moving against his own, he knew he didn’t want to stop. He also knew he was screwed. There was no way this would be the sort of buddy fucking fling where he could occasionally drop by McKay’s room, work out a little sexual tension, and then go back to work. No, that first kiss had the feel of toothbrushes on each other’s sinks and spare boxers in each other’s dressers and planned leave together back on Earth with hotel suites and room service and staying in bed all day and smitten smiles that wouldn’t leave his face and fucking A he was more than a little tiny bit in love with Rodney and it was definitely more than a maybe.
So as much as John knew he’d done the right thing by breaking it off so soon, he also hated the hell out it, and it was all because of that stupid Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rule that he lived under. Why the fuck did Rodney have to be a guy? Why couldn’t he have just been the same McKay only with breasts and a vagina then this wouldn’t be a problem? Hell, Rodney was even a civilian so they wouldn’t have to worry about the whole fraternization technicalities. Yeah, if Rodney were just a woman, then everything would be perfect.
John was still thinking about that as he walked behind Ronon and Rodney the next day as the team tracked an energy reading on the beach of an alien planet. McKay wasn’t speaking to him, not that he was surprised by that fact. But when McKay was pissy, he stood a little straighter, clenched his ass, and dear God, Sheppard needed to find someplace else to look while he walked.
That’s when he spotted it… a sparkle of red glass in the sand.
John didn’t even notice that Rodney had also stopped to look at the readings on the detector in his hands. “Huh, it should be right here somewhere.”
Teyla looked over Sheppard’s shoulder when he squatted and started clearing away the wet sand around the glass. “What is that?”
“I don’t know… a bowl maybe?”
After a few seconds of digging, John pulled a bottle out of the sand. It was about the same size as a beer bottle only with a bulbous bottom and long, slender neck that was corked at the top. Holding it up to the sunlight, he and Teyla both looked at it.
“It appears to be empty,” Teyla noted.
“Yeah,” John agreed, barely even hearing what she said over the din of the waves that seemed to get louder until they were roaring in his ears. And each crash seemed to say, open me.
So, he did.
He pulled the cork and looked inside and confirmed what Teyla had said… the bottle was empty. John, however, was suddenly filled with the belief that he could have anything he wanted. Any goddamn thing that he wished for would be his.
Rodney bashed a hand against the detector. “What the hell? The reading just vanished.”
“So, there’s no energy reading?” Ronon asked in that tone of his that could have been confusion or irritation or both… it was really hard to tell the difference sometimes and John often wondered if it was the confusion itself that pissed him off more than the situation at hand.
“Well, there was one, but it’s gone now,” Rodney told him in frustration. “I guess we can write this mission off as complete waste of time.”
“I don’t know, we got to spend the day at the beach,” John told him with a grin as he recorked the bottle. “People actually take vacation time to do this exact same thing.”
“Long walks on the beach?” McKay rolled his eyes. “Just think, Colonel, you can use your mission report for a personals ad after Woolsey reads it.” The crooked mouth downturned angrily as Rodney started back toward the Jumper. “That is if you can trust yourself to do it.”
Teyla and Ronon raised questioning eyebrows at the physicist’s obvious snit. John just sighed and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he told them as he started after McKay. But he stayed behind and let Rodney take the lead and watched his ass for most of the walk back and wished once again that McKay were a girl.
A breeze whipped across the sand and Sheppard shut his eyes against the grit.
Your wish, my command.
“What did you say?” John asked Teyla and Ronon as they caught up to him.
Ronon shook his head. “We didn’t say anything?”
“I did not hear anyone speak,” Teyla told him.
Rodney hadn’t slowed in his stalk back to the Jumper, so it couldn’t have been him.
John shrugged. “Must have been the wind, then.”
With his new souvenir tucked safely under his arm, Sheppard continued on to the Jumper.
The next morning they were working on the ascension machine that had nearly killed McKay. To say John hated the thing and wanted nothing more than to blow the piece of shit to kingdom come was an understatement. Rodney, however, refused to destroy something that was a potentially valuable insight into Ancient technology. Sheppard had been able to talk Rodney out of working on the thing directly every time he’d brought it up in the past. But seeing as McKay wasn’t even talking to him in the first place, it kind of blew any chance John had of convincing him to let Radek fool with it once again. The best John could do was insist that he go with him to the lab. Of course, Rodney wouldn’t be alone with him and had invited Ronon and Teyla to come along as some sort of bizarre chaperones. To do what, Sheppard wasn’t sure since Rodney wanted to have sex and John wanted to but wouldn’t. So, best he could figure, their teammates were there to keep them from not not having sex with each other or something. Regardless of why they were there, the two were quickly bored out of their minds.
Sheppard at least had the ATA gene and could help Rodney out with his work. He was sending commands, pushing buttons, while McKay stood on the interface platform and took his readings. And that’s when it happened. One minute Rodney was standing in his uniform taking notes on his electronic pad, the next he was a she and proving it to everyone in the room.
And not the least bit happy about it.
* * * *
“Well, it’s definitely more than just superficial changes,” Keller was telling them as the entire team plus Woolsey had gathered around Rodney’s hospital bed. “Based on every test that I’ve run, Rodney is now a woman.”
“What does that mean… exactly?” John took a step back when McKay glared daggers at him when he asked the question.
“Aside from the obvious anatomical changes, including the fact that Dr. McKay now has an apparently fully functioning female reproductive system…”
“What?” Rodney demanded in alarm. “You mean like a uterus and ovaries and the whole baby making ball of wax?”
Keller shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“Did you hear that, Sheppard? We can go off and make babies together,” Rodney practically growled the suggestion in a tone that suggested he would eat a hearty breakfast of babies on wheat toast before he’d let something like that happen.
Ronon bolted for the nearest trashcan and emptied what was left in his stomach at the thought and John was tempted to join him.
“Eventually that might be a possibility,” Jennifer told him with a glance at his chart. “Right now your hormone levels are still balancing out.”
Woolsey shook his head. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me this machine completely rewrote his genetics? That he now has two x chromosomes?”
“Technically, she has two x chromosomes.” Keller gave Rodney a somewhat apologetic smile at the correction. “Although, the fact that the anatomical changes were limited to simply the breast and sexual organs and not the rest of his features is a little… odd.”
“On the bright side,” Sheppard cut in, “you can actually go by your first name and not get funny looks.”
Ronon looked up from the trashcan. “His name is the least of the reasons he’s going to get funny looks.”
Ronon was right. Rodney kind of had the appearance of a Barbie doll body with G.I. Joe’s head and appendages attached. Teyla, however, was having none of his comments, no matter how true they might be.
“Ronon!” Teyla chastised. “It could have just as easily been you who was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Woolsey didn’t seem very pleased with the observation either. “My mother had a very bold jawline and what some would consider masculine features, but she was a charming woman whose company everyone enjoyed immensely.” Having made his point, at least in his mind, he turned back to Sheppard. “Exactly how did this happen?”
“I’ll tell you how it happened,” Rodney volunteered, finger jabbing toward John in accusation. “He did it. Him. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard did this to me and I want him arrested, locked up, and court martialed.”
“Is this true, Colonel?”
John winced at the expedition leader’s question, because he hadn’t meant to do it, but it was just too much of a coincidence that this had happened so soon after him thinking about wanting this to happen. “I may have accidently been thinking about Rodney becoming a woman. You know, one of those fleeting moments sort of random thoughts that come into your head. I may have been thinking that if the machine could change Rodney’s DNA and make him evolve into an Ancient, what else could it do? That sort of thing.”
Honestly, he didn’t remember thinking that at all, but maybe subconsciously he had. That was the only logical explanation Sheppard could come up with for how this whole mess had happened.
“I guess you have the answer to that question now. Don’t you, Colonel?” Rodney waved a hand to encompass the entire new body. “Or should I say, soon to be former Colonel?”
“It doesn’t sound like this was a malicious act, Dr. McKay,” Woolsey pointed out. “Reckless and careless, perhaps, especially considering the nature of the device you were testing, but definitely not intentional.”
“Fine, it was a mistake.” McKay didn’t seem too convinced by his own words. “Why am I still here? All we have to do is undo what Sheppard did to me the same way we did when Carson reversed the ascend or die process before.”
“We would,” Woolsey told him, “but the machine won’t work.”
“What?”
At Rodney’s outburst, the man raised his hand to stop the rant before it started. “Dr. Zelenka is working on it now, but so far, he can’t even get it to turn on. But I assure you, we are doing everything possible to remedy this situation.” Woolsey placed a hand on Rodney’s leg. “Although, I just want you to know that if this goes on for some time and you feel the need to talk, or just the desire for some companionship, my door is always open.”
When Woolsey squeezed the leg under his hand, John frowned. What the hell? Here John had gone and evidently subconsciously made a woman for himself and Woolsey was hitting on her. That pretty much broke every guy code Sheppard could think of. Fortunately, McKay wasn’t very impressed with the offer either.
“That’s it; I’m out of here.” Throwing back the covers, Rodney stood and padded barefoot toward the door. At least they had provided scrubs for McKay to wear instead of a see-through wrap and Sheppard’s jacket.
“McKay, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” John tried to reason with the scientist.
“My future ability to pee standing up rests in the hands of a man who thought Elizabeth’s nipples were a second set of eyes that he could look at instead of the ones on her face. If you think I’m going to remain a woman so he can do that to me at every one of my science staff meeting, not mention have to contend with lover boy here,” an irate hand waved in Woolsey’s direction, “your hair gel really has pickled your brain, Sheppard.”
“Actually, John has a point,” Teyla tried. “Dr. Keller probably has more tests to run.”
Jennifer shook her head. “There really isn’t anything else I can do. According to all the results, Rodney is a perfectly healthy woman.”
“Well, at least I have that going for me.” Taking that as a medical release, Rodney headed out the door.
* * * *
Rodney still wasn’t able to pee standing up the next morning. Sheppard hoped that almost twenty-six hours as a woman had made the situation a little more bearable for the victim. Unfortunately, when John stopped by McKay’s quarters to see if he… goddammit, she wanted to go to breakfast, it didn’t seem to be the case.
“McKay?” John called warily as he entered the quarters. Typically, if Rodney’s door was unlocked, that meant Sheppard was free to come in. Sometimes he got lucky and Rodney was just coming out of the shower with pink skin and wet hair and nothing more than a towel around his waist and that would just make John’s entire morning. But now that McKay was a woman, John felt a little odd about just barging in.
“In here.”
John followed the voice into the bathroom where Rodney was standing fully dressed and looking at her profile in the mirror, turning this way then that with a disapproving expression on her face as she ran two hands over her breasts.
“What do you think?”
John blinked at the question, his mind scrambling to remember the proper response to these sorts of inquiries when they came from a woman and not a man. Vague, yes. Complimentary, yes. Honest, rarely.
“Nice?” Fortunately, McKay didn’t seem to catch the questioning inflection.
“They aren’t exactly Hooter’s material, I know, but the bra helps some.” Rodney didn’t seem completely convinced. “Doesn’t it?”
“Ah, bra. Yes, it helps. You know the whole…” John’s hands fumbled in front of his own chest. “Lifting and separating function. It definitely helps.”
“I had no idea how hard a bra was to get into. It took me almost half an hour to figure out you practically put it on upside down and backwards. It’s like trying to parallel park using only the rearview mirror.”
“Yeah, I get the impression they’re easier to get out of than into.”
Giving up on judging the perkiness of her new breasts, McKay narrowed her eyes at John. “You’re probably one of those guys who can unsnap one using one hand.”
“It’s actually a pretty simple sliding motion once you get the hang of it.” Sheppard gave a weak smile then glanced around the bathroom awkwardly until his eyes came to rest on the blood soaked towel on the floor. “Holy shit, McKay, what did you do?”
“Oh, shaving accident.” When John looked at Rodney’s face and didn’t see any visible nicks, McKay lifted a pants leg to show off the myriad of bandages and confetti of blood-stained toilet paper tufts on the newly smoothed legs. “I went through a whole goddamn box of Band-Aids and I’m pretty sure my plumbing will never recover from the hairball that’s currently residing in my pipes.”
“So, you’re apparently giving this whole woman thing a chance?” John asked cautiously.
“The ascension machine won’t turn on no matter what we do.” Rodney sighed and went into the living area of the quarters. “I even hooked it directly to a naquedah generator and it still won’t power up.” Sheppard sat next to the newly-transformed woman where she flopped dejectedly onto the couch and scrubbed her face. “It’s starting to look like I don’t have a choice in the matter.”
John decided now might be a good time to broach the subject he had been thinking about most of the night. Sure, things hadn’t turned out exactly like he had planned, but Rodney was still Rodney at the core, even still looked like Rodney…from the neck up. And if John had found those features attractive when McKay was a man, why should he let the fact that they were now on a woman stop him? If he could just muscle past the initial gag reflex whenever he thought of that bat shit crazy combination and get to the point where his dick realized it was going to get some action and took over all rational thought, John believed that he might be able to work with what he had here.
“You know, this may not be such a bad thing.” Scooting a little closer, John slipped his arm up on the back of the sofa and behind McKay. Still no response from down below, but it was early yet. “It definitely removes those problems we had before with the whole military restrictions and opens the door on a whole new set of possibilities.”
“You did do this to me, didn’t you?”
“No! Not intentionally anyway. But the truth is, yes, I would like to be with you, and, out of desperation, my subconscious might have accidently come forward and mistakenly activated the device.”
McKay frowned at the confession and crossed her arms, looking down in a bit of surprise when she felt the still unfamiliar sensation of breasts beneath them, then back up at Sheppard in irritation. “I don’t suppose you ever thought about converting yourself into the woman instead of me.”
Actually, no he never had considered that option… thank God. “Look, Rodney…”
“Meredith,” McKay corrected.
“Really? But you hate that name.”
McKay spread arms wide. “Hello! Woman! You don’t think I hate that any less, do you?”
Taking a deep breath to keep from screaming at McKay to just shut up and try to see the glass half full for fuck’s sake, John moved in even closer. “Okay… Meredith, this doesn’t change the way I feel about you. And I’m sorry for the way I acted the other day.”
“When you dumped me?” Meredith noted a little too blandly.
“It was a mistake. A huge mistake and you have to believe me that I didn’t want to do it. It’s just that we never could have been together the way I want us to be with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But now we don’t have to worry about that… after what I’m sure will be an extensive battery of psychological testing and reams of paperwork… but at least it’ll be legal and I won’t be risking my job just because I want to spend the night with you.” When McKay remained silent, John pushed his advantage. “Besides, as you’ve pointed out many, many times in the past, I have a rather extensive background in the art of pleasing women. Now you have a chance to experience those talents first hand.”
“Well, I was always a little curious about why women found you so appealing,” Meredith admitted grudgingly.
“Yeah?” John gave a small smile as he bent forward and kissed McKay’s jaw. It was smoother than before and John figured those hormones were finally setting in like Keller had suggested they would. When Meredith didn’t protest, instead tilted into the touch, John nuzzled lightly. “Ready to find out more?”
“From a purely scientific basis, I wouldn’t complain.” McKay turned enough to find John’s lips and Sheppard couldn’t think of the person he was kissing as anyone other than Rodney, because it felt like it had when he’d kissed Rodney a few days before... same remnants of coffee on the breath, same firm press of lips and slide of tongue and, yeah, okay, things down south were definitely heating up.
Moving his mouth to McKay’s neck, he let his hand slide up to cup one breast. The bra was padded, a pushup no doubt to help with the whole size limitations, and sure, he’d dealt with that before and never let it slow him down. But, damn it was totally freakish to be fondling Rodney’s breasts. Still, when McKay let out a satisfied little sigh, he figured Meredith was enjoying the new experience and John circled his thumb over the nipple seductively.
McKay’s hands were still the same big, broad ones that had moved over John’s body so amazingly the one time they had been together before, and when one landed on his thigh and kneaded, an index finger brushing against his crotch, John sighed himself and sucked where he’d been kissing McKay’s neck.
Yeah, this could work, this could definitely work.
“Oh, God, Teyla…”
Then again, maybe not.
John sat up and stared at McKay who just demanded. “What? What’s wrong? Why did you stop?”
“You just called me Teyla.”
Rodney’s mouth started opening and closing in that way that said she was trying to figure out how to get out of the mess she’d just been caught in. “I did not,” she snorted.
“Yes, you did. I distinctly heard you moan Teyla’s name while I was touching you.” That’s when Sheppard finally realized what he’d done, what he’d really done. “Holy shit! You’re a lesbian!”
“Technically, I’d have to say that I’m still bisexual. But seeing as I tended to go for men more when I was a man, I’m guessing that this switch has had me leaning toward the opposite end of the spectrum.”
“So, what? You have to fantasize about women now to get turned on by me?”
McKay nodded academically. “It’s rather fascinating when you stop to think about it. I used to imagine I was with you to get the motor running when I was sleeping with Katie, and now that I’m a woman, you really don’t do much for me physically without a little mental role playing.” Now it was John’s turn to do his impression of a stupefied goldfish. Meredith, however, gave a sincere pat to his leg. “But I still feel for you emotionally like I always did.”
For some reason McKay’s appeasement didn’t help matters much. “That’s supposed to make everything okay? Just accept that you’re in love with me but not attracted to me?”
Blue eyes rolled at the allegation. “Come on, Sheppard. You’re telling me you never imagined being with someone else than whom you were actually having sex with?”
“Never with you,” John snapped, standing and heading for the door.
“Oh, you mean the one and only time you were with me and you used the light of the afterglow to gather your clothes so you could get the hell out of Dodge?”
Sheppard stopped and turned on McKay. “Is this what this is? Are you getting back at me for that? I told you I screwed up when I broke it off with you.”
“No, I’m being honest with you. There’s a dictionary on the bookshelf if you need to look that word up.”
John pointed a finger at Meredith sitting on the couch with her arms crossed and head tilted, waiting to hear his response. And he suddenly had a flashback of Nancy and one of the last fights they had ever had before they started calling in divorce lawyers. So he told McKay the same thing he had his ex-wife. “You are a raving bitch.”
“And who do we have to thank for that?” Rodney yelled after him as John stormed out into the hallway.
Somehow, John knew McKay was right and he had only himself to blame.
* * * *
Ronon had been more than willing to go to the gym and beat the living shit out of John when Sheppard had asked him to spar, probably since the Satedan also blamed Sheppard for this entire mess and his resulting nausea. At one point the large man had even grumbled, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bodily fluid stains out of leather?” during a particularly nasty blow with his practice sword.
John was about to offer to send the damaged clothing back to Earth to a really good dry cleaner he had used for a similar problem that involved a flight attendant from Norway, too many Jagermeister shots, and a vintage bomber jacket, when Teyla called on the radio to tell them McKay had summoned a medical team to her quarters and was being transported to the infirmary.
By the time they arrived, Meredith was curled into a ball on the gurney groaning in pain. “Where’s Keller with those drugs?”
“Jesus, McKay, what happened?” John demanded as soon as he reached the bed.
“John, thank God,” McKay breathed in relief, grabbing Sheppard’s hand. “You carry morphine in your field vest. Give me some. NOW!”
Teyla rubbed Meredith’s back soothingly. “You are in the infirmary. All will be well. Jennifer and her staff will take care of you.”
“Then where the hell is she?” McKay whined, clinging to John’s hand.
Sheppard had a thousand thoughts running through his head about what could be causing Rodney so much pain… food poisoning, appendicitis, a gallbladder stone, a genetic breakdown brought on by the ascension machine… and he squeezed McKay’s hand in his in as much worry as reassurance.
“All right, here we are,” Keller announced as she walked back into the room and handed over a couple of pills. “Two Midol and a heating pad and you’ll be good to go.”
“Midol?” John asked in bewilderment. “You mean McKay’s…?”
“A true woman now.” The physician smiled. “At least that’s what my grandmother told me when I got my first period.”
McKay apparently didn’t care what Granny Keller had said. “Midol? Midol? Where the fuck is the Darvocet, the Oxycodone, the goddamn morphine drip?”
“Sorry, Meredith.” Jennifer gave a benevolent pat to McKay’s arm. “Women have been dealing with menstrual cramps since the dawn of the human species and very, very few require anything more than a simple analgesic.”
“I’m bleeding so much I’m going to need a transfusion by nightfall and you’re giving me over the counter pain killers?”
Keller rolled her eyes and shook her head when John’s eyes widened at the news. “It’s a relatively light flow. She’ll be fine.”
“I will not be fine! I’m dying here. I’m bleeding out like a hemorrhagic fever victim whose insides feel like they’re being eaten out by a rabid badger.” McKay gave a sharp shake to Sheppard’s arm and squeezed John’s hand so hard he could feel the bones grinding together almost as tightly as Rodney’s molars. “Get your field morphine and get it now!”
John had grown up in a house of men, lived in a fraternity in college and male barracks in the Air Force during deployments. In every relationship he had ever been in that lasted over a month, he’d figured out when the woman’s period was and found an excuse to stay away. Even when he was married, he’d requested assignments whenever Nancy reached the little blue pills in her birth control pack. So Sheppard really was clueless when it came to these sorts of feminine issues. Even the boxes with mysterious paraphernalia wrapped in pink wrappers that resided behind the extra toilet paper rolls in his bathroom all those years he lived with Nancy were a total enigma to John. Which left him completely at the mercy of the only two people in the room who he knew did have any experience with this sort of thing.
“You know, maybe Dr. Keller is right and you just need to ride it out for a while. Maybe give the pills a shot.”
“Traitorous son of a bitch,” Rodney snapped but refused to let go of his hand.
“Meredith, this is part of being a woman,” Teyla tried to explain before giving a small laugh based on personal experience. “When you give birth to a child, you will know the true meaning of pain.”
“Ha!” McKay barked. “That will never happen. Never!” Using John’s arm to pull the man close enough to grab the collar of his shirt, Meredith fisted the fabric tightly and twisted until it was closing off John’s airway. “Do you hear me, you piece of shit? It will never happen! Never in a million goddamn years!”
John was struggling for breath, trying to peel Rodney’s hands away from his throat, and call for help all at the same time. McKay was turning as red from exertion as Sheppard was from lack of oxygen until the others in the room finally managed to pry Meredith off and John staggered back out of reach, gulping air.
“This is all your fault, you selfish bastard!”
“Okay,” Keller announced almost as breathless as Sheppard and McKay, “Maybe something a little stronger than Midol isn’t such a bad idea given the unusual stress associated with this particular case.”
Standing there with his back against the wall as the medical team sedated McKay, it really, truly hit home that John had made the biggest mistake of his life wanting Rodney to be a woman. It was then that the same feeling came over him that had the day on the beach. The feeling that anything he wanted he could have. The door slid open behind him as a nurse came in and the hiss sounded almost like it was saying, Choose. Two remain.
And it was an incredibly easy choice. He wished Rodney was a man again. He wished Rodney was his normal old self again with the tendencies toward men and a penis and inability to put on a bra no matter how many mirrors he could use.
The door opened again… your wish, my command… and Radek beamed happily at the room in general.
“The Ancient device is operational once more,” he announced.
Keller looked up from where she was administering the drugs to McKay. “Too bad Meredith is out for the count.”
John shook his head. “No, it’s not. Wheel the gurney down there. If we’re lucky he’ll think it was all a bad dream when he wakes up.”
* * * *
When Rodney opened his eyes again, John leaned forward from his seat beside the bed with a comforting smile. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”
“Less like killing you than I did before,” he admitted. “You might want to invest in whatever drugs those were that Keller gave me if you plan to keep me on your team.”
John smirked happily. “Actually, I found something better.”
Sitting up with a grimace that quickly changed to hesitant hopefulness, Rodney reached under the sheets. “Oh, thank God, I have a penis!”
“Yes, you do,” Sheppard agreed with a wolfish grin as he leaned closer and murmured under his breath. “And a pretty damn nice one, I might add.”
As if to make sure he really was a man again, McKay looked down his scrub top to confirm the boobs were gone, too. “Are you serious? You’re flirting with me? You’re actually flirting with me?”
“Can’t get anything past you, can I?” John returned the delighted expression Rodney wore when he had indeed ascertained that bras were a thing of the past for him.
As if realizing he should still be pissed at Sheppard, McKay crossed his arms. “I thought you couldn’t trust yourself doing that around me?”
“I can’t,” John admitted. “But I realized while you were out that there is someone I can trust. I can trust you. I always have in the past so it seemed kind of stupid to stop now.”
“Trust me to do what?” Rodney’s eyes narrowed warily.
“To keep us a secret. That is if you’re still interested in having an us after everything that’s happened over the past few days.”
“Depends. Are you still interested in having a relationship with a raving bitch?”
“Nah, just an annoyingly arrogant, son of one,” John told him, slipping his hand through the rails to rest on top of Rodney’s. “How about you?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, when it comes to relationships, an annoying son of a bitch like you was never my first choice.” John started to straighten and pull away and try to hide his disappointment with a ‘hey, no big deal’, even though it was a fucking huge deal. Before he could, though, Rodney twisted his hand and linked his fingers with the ones resting on top of his. “But, it ends up I was wrong, and you’re the only one I really want to be with now.”
“Yeah?” John smiled as he studied their hands twisted together on the mattress. “What changed your mind?”
“Well, as I was lying here convinced I was dying, I realized something. First, if women truly live through that sort of pain on a monthly basis, we should thank our lucky stars that they don’t castrate us in our sleep on principle alone. And second, even though you ran away the other day, you kept coming back. No matter what I did or said or how many times I tried to kill you with my bare hands, if I needed you, you were there. To me, that means you’re either crazy about me or just plain crazy, so I figured I should take a little pity on you and keep you off the streets. You know, for the health and welfare of the general public.”
Smiling broader at the compliment that he was pretty sure was hidden in there somewhere, Sheppard asked him, “So, does that mean you’re willing to give it a go and try to keep it a secret?”
“I don’t know,” Rodney grinned in return. “Do you think you’re capable of blowing me speechless?”
Ends up John couldn’t blow Rodney speechless, but he did leave McKay babbling incoherently before he passed out in a snoring heap in Sheppard’s bed. And that was fine with John. In fact, it was as close to perfect as he dared to imagine.
Although…
Settling down in the bed beside Rodney, he couldn’t help but think how great it would be if the Air Force would cut them a little slack and just let them do this without John worrying about losing his job. McKay shifted in his sleep, throwing an arm across John’s chest, burrowing his face against John’s neck, and murmuring something that sounded a lot like, one remains.
“One what?”
When Rodney didn’t answer, John ran his fingers leisurely along McKay’s arm and decided the man in his bed must be dreaming. Or maybe John was the one dreaming because having Rodney here like this was just too damn good to be true. And if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell didn’t exist it would be fucking amazing. To be able to smile affectionately at Rodney in the hall, drape an arm around his shoulder at movie night, maybe a quick kiss goodbye at the door to the lab… it wasn’t like he wanted to pin Rodney to the gate for some hot man on man action in the control room.
Then again…. No, no, just a little PDA in the hallways would be more than enough for John, if only they could. If only John could have that, he wouldn’t need anything else. Yeah, if the United States military were just a little more accepting of this sort of thing, life would be great.
“Your wish, my command,” Rodney mumbled as he snuffled and tightened his hold on Sheppard, still sound asleep.
John snorted quietly, figuring McKay was having one hell of a dream. Wrapping his arms around Rodney, John kissed him softly before leaning his head against McKay’s and drifting to sleep himself.
* * * *
“What the fuck happened?”
John had been expecting something a little less aggressive from Rodney on their first morning together. Maybe a sleepy smile and, “hey,” as he stretched against John’s naked body, legs shifting just enough to brush against the proper body parts so that Sheppard could roll them over and take Rodney’s weight to increase that sweet pressure as the morning sunlight spilled in…
Wait, morning sunlight?
There was morning sunlight shining through the window.
“What the fuck happened?” John demanded as he grabbed for his alarm clock that didn’t go off at four a.m. like it was supposed to do so that McKay could slip out without anyone seeing him.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Rodney was already out of bed, grabbing random clothes off the floor. “And how the hell am I supposed to keep this a secret when you can’t even set a goddamn alarm clock?”
“I set it, I turned it on, I swear. We must have slept through it.”
John watched as Rodney pulled on the boxers Sheppard had been wearing the day before, started to point out the mistake, then stopped himself when he thought about how incredibly hot it was to know McKay was going to be in his underwear all day until John personally removed them that night.
“I have never slept through an alarm in my life. Never in my life!” Rodney stripped off the pants he’d put on when he couldn’t snap them and realized they weren’t his.
“Yeah, but you’ve never spent the night with me before either.” Sheppard shot him a slow, smug grin. “After that sort of workout, sleeping like a coma patient is a common side effect.”
Rodney leaned down and pushed the pants into John’s chest before planting a firm, quick kiss on his mouth. “How about a dishonorable discharge? Is that a common side effect for you?”
Sheppard cupped the back of Rodney’s head before he could pull away and kissed him back, only slower and deeper until he could feel the tension slipping from McKay’s shoulders and felt Rodney’s thumb running along his jaw. “If anyone is worth it, it’s you.”
McKay kissed him again before straightening with a sigh. “As true as that may be, I’d like to avoid it if at all possible. It’s kind of hard to have sex with you if you’re back on Earth working at the corner Starbucks.”
“Hey, medical benefits, stock options, and free coffee. Sounds like your perfect mate.”
Rodney had found his pants and John slipped into the ones McKay had given him… minus any underwear. Rodney’s eyes glazed over for a second and his lips curled at the sight and John waggled his eyebrows at him in response.
Sitting on the end of the bed, Rodney started tying his boots. “I have the perfect mate right here, thank you very much. That is if you’ll get your ass dressed so we can go find that coffee.”
Sheppard just stared at Rodney’s back as the man worked on his shoes, stunned by the ease with which McKay had just confirmed that they were a couple. An honest to God couple. And it took Rodney looking back with an impatient, “Hellooo? Caffeine withdrawal taking place as we sit here,” to snap him out of his reveries.
“Oh, right.” John shook his head to clear away his amazement and pulled the shirt over his head.
Rodney was already standing and moving toward the door. “Okay, so here’s the plan. I stopped by to get you for breakfast but you’d overslept and I’ve just been hanging out waiting for you to get ready. Sound good? Would you buy it?”
“Sounds good,” Sheppard confirmed. “But leave the talking to me. You get all twitchy when you try to lie and then you start rambling on and on and giving way too many details that you can’t remember two minutes later.”
“Good idea,” McKay agreed easily enough.
But when they opened the door and ran into Lorne, Rodney’s started stammering. “Sheppard overslept and I had to wake him up… well, not literally shake him awake because that would mean I was in his quarters while he was still asleep and I most certainly wasn’t. But when I rang the bell and he didn’t answer, I started banging on the door, and he eventually woke up…” The scientist finally went silent when John elbowed him hard in the ribs.
Lorne just shook his head. “Evidently you two haven’t heard the news.”
“News?” John asked curiously.
“It came in on the morning databurst from the SGC. Apparently, the Department of Defense decided to overturn the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rules.”
Sheppard’s mouth fell open. “You’re shitting me.”
“No, Sir, I shit you not,” the major grinned. “In fact, they issued a statement announcing an initiative to accept more openly gay applicants in order to increase the number of homosexuals in the ranks.”
“No goddamn way.” McKay was staring at Lorne with the same disbelieving expression.
“I know, I’m as shocked by the news as you are,” Lorne confessed with a chuckle. “On top of that, they’re giving special consideration of sexual preference when evaluating promotions. Which is why I have to get going; I’m actually on my way to ask Radek out. I saw Stackhouse was already heading toward the labs, but I happen to know Zelenka is working on the solar panels this morning.” Lorne rocked back on his heels with a smug expression. “I figure if I have a steady boyfriend, I’ll have a better chance at making lieutenant colonel next year.”
As the major headed down the hallway, Sheppard narrowed his eyes. “He was just yanking our chain, wasn’t he?”
“Had to be,” Rodney dismissed with rolled eyes. “There is no way in hell we would get so lucky.”
But they hadn’t made it halfway to the cafeteria when they heard an insistent pst! from one the storerooms they passed. Radek’s head darted out in a very rodent-like manner and he motioned them over before ducking back into the room. When John and Rodney joined him, he looked behind them to make sure they weren’t followed.
“Radek, what the hell are you doing…?”
Zelenka cut Rodney off with a nervous flutter of his hands. “The military contingent has gone insane,” he hissed in a harsh whisper. “Ever since news that gay is in fashion, every man wearing military uniform has tried to ask me out! Sgt. Devon pinched my ass in cafeteria line and Lt. Barrows punched him in face and then offered to carry my tray. Although I believe Barrows was not serious with his intentions and is perhaps a secret heterosexual searching for a beard. Still, I had no idea I was such tasty morsel of man meat that marines would be fighting over me.”
McKay ignored the Czech’s lamenting, instead turning to Sheppard. “Holy crap, Lorne wasn’t messing with us after all. It’s true!”
John just smiled broadly. “Then what the hell are we still doing in this closet?” With a gentle shove, he had Rodney out in the hall and pinned against the far wall in deep kiss.
Behind him Sheppard could hear two of his men complaining, “Son of bitch, we should have known he’d snag McKay.”
The other man scoffed, “Yeah, like no one saw that coming.”
But Sheppard hadn’t seen it coming, not at all. Because, who would ever imagine he could get his fondest wish? The thought triggered something that had been tickling at the back of John’s head for a few days now. He’d been thinking about how he’d wished Rodney was a woman and the machine had transformed him. Then when he realized it was a mistake, Radek figured out a way to get the device working again. And now that he wanted nothing more than to be openly dating McKay, the biggest hurdle had been miraculously removed. Three wishes. Three wishes and every one of them had come true.
When Rodney furrowed his brow at the grin on Sheppard’s face and asked, “What is it?” John decided to go for another wish.
“Nothing,” he dismissed. “I’m just really hoping they have turkey sandwiches for lunch today.”
Ends up, there wasn’t a slice of turkey to be found in the entire city, and Sheppard quickly dismissed the idea that he would get another wish. He also decided not to tell Rodney he’d wasted his first two wishes putting McKay through transgender hell instead of getting the physicist that Nobel he so desperately craved. But even though John didn’t get his fourth wish, his fifth one did come true… no magical genie necessary…
… John and Rodney lived happily ever after.
The End
Category: John/Rodney Humor
Word Count: ~ 8,600
Rating: T
Characters: John, Rodney, and others
Spoilers: Set sometime in the future of Season 5 so some casting spoilers/rumors
A/N: There is something about these challenges that brings things out in me that I would have swore I would never do... gender switching being one of them. But if you take this fic seriously, you have more problems than I do. *G* Thanks as always to Koschka for the beta and THIS IS ALLLLLL HER FAULT!
Summary: When Rodney gets a little too in touch with his feminine side, John realizes how dangerous wishes can be.
Three Wishes
by liketheriver
“What the fuck just happened?”
Rodney wasn’t happy. Sure the exclamation had been shrieked in something much more akin to alarm bordering on all out panic than anger, but he was pissed as hell that he was in that emotional state, not to mention his new physical one.
John’s eyes widened to see his teammate standing on the Ancient platform totally nude, then squinted as he screwed his face up in disgust when he took in the details a little closer. There was Rodney, the same old Rodney with the square jaw and crooked mouth and receding hairline and blue eyes and wispily hairy chest and pudgy middle and thick hairy legs. Yep, same old Rodney… only now he had two breasts and no dick.
Rodney with two breasts and no dick. That sure the hell wasn’t what John had been expecting.
“What the fuck did you do?” Rodney demanded again, this time aiming the accusation directly at Sheppard who quickly removed his hands from the control console.
“I just threw up a little in my mouth,” John told him honestly, fighting the gag reflex that was threatening once more, because, damn, McKay did not make an attractive woman. Hell, John had seen more attractive female gym teachers and professional golf players.
Behind him, Ronon looked up from where he was bracing himself against the wall and wiped at his mouth. “I just threw up on the damn floor.”
Rodney looked down at himself for the first time, finally realizing it was more than the fact that his clothing had disappeared that had disgusted his two teammates so much. “Oh, Jesus Fucking Christ, where is my goddamn penis? And what the hell are these?” He cupped the breasts more out of irritation than anything else, as if he couldn’t decide which cantaloupe was the freshest and it was pissing him the hell off.
Teyla walked back into the room at that moment and covered her mouth with her hand as she gasped, “Oh, by the Ancestors, you have breasts!”
John did have to admit that Teyla was correct and, yes, Rodney had breasts. Although, in all honesty, the scientist was practically a natural A cup as a man and now that he was a woman… at least in the purely technical sense… he was little more than a B, so it wasn’t that much of a change. Although, the nipples were…
“Holy shit! I’m a woman!”
Yeah, Rodney was definitely a woman now.
“A hairy woman,” Ronon pointed out.
Teyla was already looking around for something to cover Rodney with, evidently slipping into female bonding mode whereas John and Ronon and McKay, for that matter, were still in the holy crap gawking stage.
“It is not as if women are naturally hair-free, Ronon,” she pointed out as she handed Rodney a coverlet from the equipment they had found in the Ancient lab. “John, give me your jacket; mine is too small.”
John came out of his daze enough to do as Teyla instructed, even as Ronon asked, “Well, the machine got rid of his clothes, why not the hair?”
“Perhaps because hair is as natural on a woman as it is on a man,” Teyla told him in a huff as she handed over the jacket after Rodney had managed to tie the wrap around his waist… her waist.
Dear God.
“It’s gross,” Ronon countered and Rodney barked bitter laughter.
“Says the man who has enough to be mistaken for Sasquatch in the wild. You know what? Screw Sheppard’s jacket. Why don’t you shave and knit me a fucking sweater dress?”
When Ronon growled menacingly, John stepped in. “All right, enough. Evidently, something went awry here but that’s no reason to start insulting each other.”
“You practically said the sight of me made you puke!” Rodney reminded.
With a wince, John tried to gloss over that fact. “I was shocked is all.”
“You were shocked? You? You!” The sarcasm changed to accusation with a narrowing of icy blue eyes. “You did this, didn’t you? You were the one at the controls when I was on the platform. You activated it. You turned me into a woman you cowardly piece of shit! You!”
John flinched away as Rodney slapped him repeatedly across the shoulders until Teyla and Ronon pulled the irate former-man away still cursing Sheppard to high heaven.
Yeah, okay, John had done this… somehow. But, somehow this didn’t seem as much a wish come true as he had thought it would be.
* * * *
Two days earlier….
“What the fuck just happened?”
Rodney was pissed. Not that he didn’t have good reason to be, but John always pictured these things going better in his head than they ever did in real life.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” Sheppard tried in his most sincere voice that McKay just wasn’t buying. “Or actually it is you but it’s because you’re a guy and I’m a guy and I’m in the military and…”
“You’re breaking up with me?”
“It’s not like I want to,” John justified zipping his pants.
Rodney was pulling up his own pants. “But we’re not even dating, not unless you count frenetic sex on my lab bench after years of flirting dating.”
“Look, I know this isn’t exactly the best timing…”
“I’m still sticky!”
John took a hard look at the man standing before him, pants still unbuttoned, shirt askew, hair standing up, face flushed, lips swollen, and a hickey already forming on his neck and sighed, because frumpled Rodney was better than he had even imagined. Stepping in, he wrapped his arms around Rodney and kissed his jaw before whispering in his ear. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. I can’t trust myself.”
Turning abruptly, Sheppard made a bee-line for the door, only to hear, “Evidently neither can I,” mumbled behind him.
John tried to not to wince as he walked back to his quarters as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself. When the head of military operations on Atlantis went running through the halls while wearing his uniform and not a jogging suit, it tended to start a panic. Normally if he was running and it wasn’t for a workout, it typically meant the city was being attacked by Wraith or invaded by Genii or about to crash into a sun or something along those lines. So he did his best to walk quickly but calmly to his room, avoiding eye contact with anyone in the corridors.
He succeeded, went straight for his bed and put the pillow over his face and considered that it might have been easier just to suffocate himself than do what he had to McKay. Because John had told Rodney the honest to God truth; he couldn’t trust himself. He couldn’t trust himself because he was actually a little tiny bit… maybe… well, in love with Rodney. And a one night stand wasn’t going to be possible unless he absolutely laid down the law with himself that that was all it was going to be.
The thing was, he couldn’t even let himself have the one night. As soon as he had started kissing Rodney, felt McKay’s lips soft and warm moving against his own, he knew he didn’t want to stop. He also knew he was screwed. There was no way this would be the sort of buddy fucking fling where he could occasionally drop by McKay’s room, work out a little sexual tension, and then go back to work. No, that first kiss had the feel of toothbrushes on each other’s sinks and spare boxers in each other’s dressers and planned leave together back on Earth with hotel suites and room service and staying in bed all day and smitten smiles that wouldn’t leave his face and fucking A he was more than a little tiny bit in love with Rodney and it was definitely more than a maybe.
So as much as John knew he’d done the right thing by breaking it off so soon, he also hated the hell out it, and it was all because of that stupid Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rule that he lived under. Why the fuck did Rodney have to be a guy? Why couldn’t he have just been the same McKay only with breasts and a vagina then this wouldn’t be a problem? Hell, Rodney was even a civilian so they wouldn’t have to worry about the whole fraternization technicalities. Yeah, if Rodney were just a woman, then everything would be perfect.
John was still thinking about that as he walked behind Ronon and Rodney the next day as the team tracked an energy reading on the beach of an alien planet. McKay wasn’t speaking to him, not that he was surprised by that fact. But when McKay was pissy, he stood a little straighter, clenched his ass, and dear God, Sheppard needed to find someplace else to look while he walked.
That’s when he spotted it… a sparkle of red glass in the sand.
John didn’t even notice that Rodney had also stopped to look at the readings on the detector in his hands. “Huh, it should be right here somewhere.”
Teyla looked over Sheppard’s shoulder when he squatted and started clearing away the wet sand around the glass. “What is that?”
“I don’t know… a bowl maybe?”
After a few seconds of digging, John pulled a bottle out of the sand. It was about the same size as a beer bottle only with a bulbous bottom and long, slender neck that was corked at the top. Holding it up to the sunlight, he and Teyla both looked at it.
“It appears to be empty,” Teyla noted.
“Yeah,” John agreed, barely even hearing what she said over the din of the waves that seemed to get louder until they were roaring in his ears. And each crash seemed to say, open me.
So, he did.
He pulled the cork and looked inside and confirmed what Teyla had said… the bottle was empty. John, however, was suddenly filled with the belief that he could have anything he wanted. Any goddamn thing that he wished for would be his.
Rodney bashed a hand against the detector. “What the hell? The reading just vanished.”
“So, there’s no energy reading?” Ronon asked in that tone of his that could have been confusion or irritation or both… it was really hard to tell the difference sometimes and John often wondered if it was the confusion itself that pissed him off more than the situation at hand.
“Well, there was one, but it’s gone now,” Rodney told him in frustration. “I guess we can write this mission off as complete waste of time.”
“I don’t know, we got to spend the day at the beach,” John told him with a grin as he recorked the bottle. “People actually take vacation time to do this exact same thing.”
“Long walks on the beach?” McKay rolled his eyes. “Just think, Colonel, you can use your mission report for a personals ad after Woolsey reads it.” The crooked mouth downturned angrily as Rodney started back toward the Jumper. “That is if you can trust yourself to do it.”
Teyla and Ronon raised questioning eyebrows at the physicist’s obvious snit. John just sighed and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” he told them as he started after McKay. But he stayed behind and let Rodney take the lead and watched his ass for most of the walk back and wished once again that McKay were a girl.
A breeze whipped across the sand and Sheppard shut his eyes against the grit.
Your wish, my command.
“What did you say?” John asked Teyla and Ronon as they caught up to him.
Ronon shook his head. “We didn’t say anything?”
“I did not hear anyone speak,” Teyla told him.
Rodney hadn’t slowed in his stalk back to the Jumper, so it couldn’t have been him.
John shrugged. “Must have been the wind, then.”
With his new souvenir tucked safely under his arm, Sheppard continued on to the Jumper.
The next morning they were working on the ascension machine that had nearly killed McKay. To say John hated the thing and wanted nothing more than to blow the piece of shit to kingdom come was an understatement. Rodney, however, refused to destroy something that was a potentially valuable insight into Ancient technology. Sheppard had been able to talk Rodney out of working on the thing directly every time he’d brought it up in the past. But seeing as McKay wasn’t even talking to him in the first place, it kind of blew any chance John had of convincing him to let Radek fool with it once again. The best John could do was insist that he go with him to the lab. Of course, Rodney wouldn’t be alone with him and had invited Ronon and Teyla to come along as some sort of bizarre chaperones. To do what, Sheppard wasn’t sure since Rodney wanted to have sex and John wanted to but wouldn’t. So, best he could figure, their teammates were there to keep them from not not having sex with each other or something. Regardless of why they were there, the two were quickly bored out of their minds.
Sheppard at least had the ATA gene and could help Rodney out with his work. He was sending commands, pushing buttons, while McKay stood on the interface platform and took his readings. And that’s when it happened. One minute Rodney was standing in his uniform taking notes on his electronic pad, the next he was a she and proving it to everyone in the room.
And not the least bit happy about it.
* * * *
“Well, it’s definitely more than just superficial changes,” Keller was telling them as the entire team plus Woolsey had gathered around Rodney’s hospital bed. “Based on every test that I’ve run, Rodney is now a woman.”
“What does that mean… exactly?” John took a step back when McKay glared daggers at him when he asked the question.
“Aside from the obvious anatomical changes, including the fact that Dr. McKay now has an apparently fully functioning female reproductive system…”
“What?” Rodney demanded in alarm. “You mean like a uterus and ovaries and the whole baby making ball of wax?”
Keller shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“Did you hear that, Sheppard? We can go off and make babies together,” Rodney practically growled the suggestion in a tone that suggested he would eat a hearty breakfast of babies on wheat toast before he’d let something like that happen.
Ronon bolted for the nearest trashcan and emptied what was left in his stomach at the thought and John was tempted to join him.
“Eventually that might be a possibility,” Jennifer told him with a glance at his chart. “Right now your hormone levels are still balancing out.”
Woolsey shook his head. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me this machine completely rewrote his genetics? That he now has two x chromosomes?”
“Technically, she has two x chromosomes.” Keller gave Rodney a somewhat apologetic smile at the correction. “Although, the fact that the anatomical changes were limited to simply the breast and sexual organs and not the rest of his features is a little… odd.”
“On the bright side,” Sheppard cut in, “you can actually go by your first name and not get funny looks.”
Ronon looked up from the trashcan. “His name is the least of the reasons he’s going to get funny looks.”
Ronon was right. Rodney kind of had the appearance of a Barbie doll body with G.I. Joe’s head and appendages attached. Teyla, however, was having none of his comments, no matter how true they might be.
“Ronon!” Teyla chastised. “It could have just as easily been you who was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Woolsey didn’t seem very pleased with the observation either. “My mother had a very bold jawline and what some would consider masculine features, but she was a charming woman whose company everyone enjoyed immensely.” Having made his point, at least in his mind, he turned back to Sheppard. “Exactly how did this happen?”
“I’ll tell you how it happened,” Rodney volunteered, finger jabbing toward John in accusation. “He did it. Him. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard did this to me and I want him arrested, locked up, and court martialed.”
“Is this true, Colonel?”
John winced at the expedition leader’s question, because he hadn’t meant to do it, but it was just too much of a coincidence that this had happened so soon after him thinking about wanting this to happen. “I may have accidently been thinking about Rodney becoming a woman. You know, one of those fleeting moments sort of random thoughts that come into your head. I may have been thinking that if the machine could change Rodney’s DNA and make him evolve into an Ancient, what else could it do? That sort of thing.”
Honestly, he didn’t remember thinking that at all, but maybe subconsciously he had. That was the only logical explanation Sheppard could come up with for how this whole mess had happened.
“I guess you have the answer to that question now. Don’t you, Colonel?” Rodney waved a hand to encompass the entire new body. “Or should I say, soon to be former Colonel?”
“It doesn’t sound like this was a malicious act, Dr. McKay,” Woolsey pointed out. “Reckless and careless, perhaps, especially considering the nature of the device you were testing, but definitely not intentional.”
“Fine, it was a mistake.” McKay didn’t seem too convinced by his own words. “Why am I still here? All we have to do is undo what Sheppard did to me the same way we did when Carson reversed the ascend or die process before.”
“We would,” Woolsey told him, “but the machine won’t work.”
“What?”
At Rodney’s outburst, the man raised his hand to stop the rant before it started. “Dr. Zelenka is working on it now, but so far, he can’t even get it to turn on. But I assure you, we are doing everything possible to remedy this situation.” Woolsey placed a hand on Rodney’s leg. “Although, I just want you to know that if this goes on for some time and you feel the need to talk, or just the desire for some companionship, my door is always open.”
When Woolsey squeezed the leg under his hand, John frowned. What the hell? Here John had gone and evidently subconsciously made a woman for himself and Woolsey was hitting on her. That pretty much broke every guy code Sheppard could think of. Fortunately, McKay wasn’t very impressed with the offer either.
“That’s it; I’m out of here.” Throwing back the covers, Rodney stood and padded barefoot toward the door. At least they had provided scrubs for McKay to wear instead of a see-through wrap and Sheppard’s jacket.
“McKay, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” John tried to reason with the scientist.
“My future ability to pee standing up rests in the hands of a man who thought Elizabeth’s nipples were a second set of eyes that he could look at instead of the ones on her face. If you think I’m going to remain a woman so he can do that to me at every one of my science staff meeting, not mention have to contend with lover boy here,” an irate hand waved in Woolsey’s direction, “your hair gel really has pickled your brain, Sheppard.”
“Actually, John has a point,” Teyla tried. “Dr. Keller probably has more tests to run.”
Jennifer shook her head. “There really isn’t anything else I can do. According to all the results, Rodney is a perfectly healthy woman.”
“Well, at least I have that going for me.” Taking that as a medical release, Rodney headed out the door.
* * * *
Rodney still wasn’t able to pee standing up the next morning. Sheppard hoped that almost twenty-six hours as a woman had made the situation a little more bearable for the victim. Unfortunately, when John stopped by McKay’s quarters to see if he… goddammit, she wanted to go to breakfast, it didn’t seem to be the case.
“McKay?” John called warily as he entered the quarters. Typically, if Rodney’s door was unlocked, that meant Sheppard was free to come in. Sometimes he got lucky and Rodney was just coming out of the shower with pink skin and wet hair and nothing more than a towel around his waist and that would just make John’s entire morning. But now that McKay was a woman, John felt a little odd about just barging in.
“In here.”
John followed the voice into the bathroom where Rodney was standing fully dressed and looking at her profile in the mirror, turning this way then that with a disapproving expression on her face as she ran two hands over her breasts.
“What do you think?”
John blinked at the question, his mind scrambling to remember the proper response to these sorts of inquiries when they came from a woman and not a man. Vague, yes. Complimentary, yes. Honest, rarely.
“Nice?” Fortunately, McKay didn’t seem to catch the questioning inflection.
“They aren’t exactly Hooter’s material, I know, but the bra helps some.” Rodney didn’t seem completely convinced. “Doesn’t it?”
“Ah, bra. Yes, it helps. You know the whole…” John’s hands fumbled in front of his own chest. “Lifting and separating function. It definitely helps.”
“I had no idea how hard a bra was to get into. It took me almost half an hour to figure out you practically put it on upside down and backwards. It’s like trying to parallel park using only the rearview mirror.”
“Yeah, I get the impression they’re easier to get out of than into.”
Giving up on judging the perkiness of her new breasts, McKay narrowed her eyes at John. “You’re probably one of those guys who can unsnap one using one hand.”
“It’s actually a pretty simple sliding motion once you get the hang of it.” Sheppard gave a weak smile then glanced around the bathroom awkwardly until his eyes came to rest on the blood soaked towel on the floor. “Holy shit, McKay, what did you do?”
“Oh, shaving accident.” When John looked at Rodney’s face and didn’t see any visible nicks, McKay lifted a pants leg to show off the myriad of bandages and confetti of blood-stained toilet paper tufts on the newly smoothed legs. “I went through a whole goddamn box of Band-Aids and I’m pretty sure my plumbing will never recover from the hairball that’s currently residing in my pipes.”
“So, you’re apparently giving this whole woman thing a chance?” John asked cautiously.
“The ascension machine won’t turn on no matter what we do.” Rodney sighed and went into the living area of the quarters. “I even hooked it directly to a naquedah generator and it still won’t power up.” Sheppard sat next to the newly-transformed woman where she flopped dejectedly onto the couch and scrubbed her face. “It’s starting to look like I don’t have a choice in the matter.”
John decided now might be a good time to broach the subject he had been thinking about most of the night. Sure, things hadn’t turned out exactly like he had planned, but Rodney was still Rodney at the core, even still looked like Rodney…from the neck up. And if John had found those features attractive when McKay was a man, why should he let the fact that they were now on a woman stop him? If he could just muscle past the initial gag reflex whenever he thought of that bat shit crazy combination and get to the point where his dick realized it was going to get some action and took over all rational thought, John believed that he might be able to work with what he had here.
“You know, this may not be such a bad thing.” Scooting a little closer, John slipped his arm up on the back of the sofa and behind McKay. Still no response from down below, but it was early yet. “It definitely removes those problems we had before with the whole military restrictions and opens the door on a whole new set of possibilities.”
“You did do this to me, didn’t you?”
“No! Not intentionally anyway. But the truth is, yes, I would like to be with you, and, out of desperation, my subconscious might have accidently come forward and mistakenly activated the device.”
McKay frowned at the confession and crossed her arms, looking down in a bit of surprise when she felt the still unfamiliar sensation of breasts beneath them, then back up at Sheppard in irritation. “I don’t suppose you ever thought about converting yourself into the woman instead of me.”
Actually, no he never had considered that option… thank God. “Look, Rodney…”
“Meredith,” McKay corrected.
“Really? But you hate that name.”
McKay spread arms wide. “Hello! Woman! You don’t think I hate that any less, do you?”
Taking a deep breath to keep from screaming at McKay to just shut up and try to see the glass half full for fuck’s sake, John moved in even closer. “Okay… Meredith, this doesn’t change the way I feel about you. And I’m sorry for the way I acted the other day.”
“When you dumped me?” Meredith noted a little too blandly.
“It was a mistake. A huge mistake and you have to believe me that I didn’t want to do it. It’s just that we never could have been together the way I want us to be with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But now we don’t have to worry about that… after what I’m sure will be an extensive battery of psychological testing and reams of paperwork… but at least it’ll be legal and I won’t be risking my job just because I want to spend the night with you.” When McKay remained silent, John pushed his advantage. “Besides, as you’ve pointed out many, many times in the past, I have a rather extensive background in the art of pleasing women. Now you have a chance to experience those talents first hand.”
“Well, I was always a little curious about why women found you so appealing,” Meredith admitted grudgingly.
“Yeah?” John gave a small smile as he bent forward and kissed McKay’s jaw. It was smoother than before and John figured those hormones were finally setting in like Keller had suggested they would. When Meredith didn’t protest, instead tilted into the touch, John nuzzled lightly. “Ready to find out more?”
“From a purely scientific basis, I wouldn’t complain.” McKay turned enough to find John’s lips and Sheppard couldn’t think of the person he was kissing as anyone other than Rodney, because it felt like it had when he’d kissed Rodney a few days before... same remnants of coffee on the breath, same firm press of lips and slide of tongue and, yeah, okay, things down south were definitely heating up.
Moving his mouth to McKay’s neck, he let his hand slide up to cup one breast. The bra was padded, a pushup no doubt to help with the whole size limitations, and sure, he’d dealt with that before and never let it slow him down. But, damn it was totally freakish to be fondling Rodney’s breasts. Still, when McKay let out a satisfied little sigh, he figured Meredith was enjoying the new experience and John circled his thumb over the nipple seductively.
McKay’s hands were still the same big, broad ones that had moved over John’s body so amazingly the one time they had been together before, and when one landed on his thigh and kneaded, an index finger brushing against his crotch, John sighed himself and sucked where he’d been kissing McKay’s neck.
Yeah, this could work, this could definitely work.
“Oh, God, Teyla…”
Then again, maybe not.
John sat up and stared at McKay who just demanded. “What? What’s wrong? Why did you stop?”
“You just called me Teyla.”
Rodney’s mouth started opening and closing in that way that said she was trying to figure out how to get out of the mess she’d just been caught in. “I did not,” she snorted.
“Yes, you did. I distinctly heard you moan Teyla’s name while I was touching you.” That’s when Sheppard finally realized what he’d done, what he’d really done. “Holy shit! You’re a lesbian!”
“Technically, I’d have to say that I’m still bisexual. But seeing as I tended to go for men more when I was a man, I’m guessing that this switch has had me leaning toward the opposite end of the spectrum.”
“So, what? You have to fantasize about women now to get turned on by me?”
McKay nodded academically. “It’s rather fascinating when you stop to think about it. I used to imagine I was with you to get the motor running when I was sleeping with Katie, and now that I’m a woman, you really don’t do much for me physically without a little mental role playing.” Now it was John’s turn to do his impression of a stupefied goldfish. Meredith, however, gave a sincere pat to his leg. “But I still feel for you emotionally like I always did.”
For some reason McKay’s appeasement didn’t help matters much. “That’s supposed to make everything okay? Just accept that you’re in love with me but not attracted to me?”
Blue eyes rolled at the allegation. “Come on, Sheppard. You’re telling me you never imagined being with someone else than whom you were actually having sex with?”
“Never with you,” John snapped, standing and heading for the door.
“Oh, you mean the one and only time you were with me and you used the light of the afterglow to gather your clothes so you could get the hell out of Dodge?”
Sheppard stopped and turned on McKay. “Is this what this is? Are you getting back at me for that? I told you I screwed up when I broke it off with you.”
“No, I’m being honest with you. There’s a dictionary on the bookshelf if you need to look that word up.”
John pointed a finger at Meredith sitting on the couch with her arms crossed and head tilted, waiting to hear his response. And he suddenly had a flashback of Nancy and one of the last fights they had ever had before they started calling in divorce lawyers. So he told McKay the same thing he had his ex-wife. “You are a raving bitch.”
“And who do we have to thank for that?” Rodney yelled after him as John stormed out into the hallway.
Somehow, John knew McKay was right and he had only himself to blame.
* * * *
Ronon had been more than willing to go to the gym and beat the living shit out of John when Sheppard had asked him to spar, probably since the Satedan also blamed Sheppard for this entire mess and his resulting nausea. At one point the large man had even grumbled, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bodily fluid stains out of leather?” during a particularly nasty blow with his practice sword.
John was about to offer to send the damaged clothing back to Earth to a really good dry cleaner he had used for a similar problem that involved a flight attendant from Norway, too many Jagermeister shots, and a vintage bomber jacket, when Teyla called on the radio to tell them McKay had summoned a medical team to her quarters and was being transported to the infirmary.
By the time they arrived, Meredith was curled into a ball on the gurney groaning in pain. “Where’s Keller with those drugs?”
“Jesus, McKay, what happened?” John demanded as soon as he reached the bed.
“John, thank God,” McKay breathed in relief, grabbing Sheppard’s hand. “You carry morphine in your field vest. Give me some. NOW!”
Teyla rubbed Meredith’s back soothingly. “You are in the infirmary. All will be well. Jennifer and her staff will take care of you.”
“Then where the hell is she?” McKay whined, clinging to John’s hand.
Sheppard had a thousand thoughts running through his head about what could be causing Rodney so much pain… food poisoning, appendicitis, a gallbladder stone, a genetic breakdown brought on by the ascension machine… and he squeezed McKay’s hand in his in as much worry as reassurance.
“All right, here we are,” Keller announced as she walked back into the room and handed over a couple of pills. “Two Midol and a heating pad and you’ll be good to go.”
“Midol?” John asked in bewilderment. “You mean McKay’s…?”
“A true woman now.” The physician smiled. “At least that’s what my grandmother told me when I got my first period.”
McKay apparently didn’t care what Granny Keller had said. “Midol? Midol? Where the fuck is the Darvocet, the Oxycodone, the goddamn morphine drip?”
“Sorry, Meredith.” Jennifer gave a benevolent pat to McKay’s arm. “Women have been dealing with menstrual cramps since the dawn of the human species and very, very few require anything more than a simple analgesic.”
“I’m bleeding so much I’m going to need a transfusion by nightfall and you’re giving me over the counter pain killers?”
Keller rolled her eyes and shook her head when John’s eyes widened at the news. “It’s a relatively light flow. She’ll be fine.”
“I will not be fine! I’m dying here. I’m bleeding out like a hemorrhagic fever victim whose insides feel like they’re being eaten out by a rabid badger.” McKay gave a sharp shake to Sheppard’s arm and squeezed John’s hand so hard he could feel the bones grinding together almost as tightly as Rodney’s molars. “Get your field morphine and get it now!”
John had grown up in a house of men, lived in a fraternity in college and male barracks in the Air Force during deployments. In every relationship he had ever been in that lasted over a month, he’d figured out when the woman’s period was and found an excuse to stay away. Even when he was married, he’d requested assignments whenever Nancy reached the little blue pills in her birth control pack. So Sheppard really was clueless when it came to these sorts of feminine issues. Even the boxes with mysterious paraphernalia wrapped in pink wrappers that resided behind the extra toilet paper rolls in his bathroom all those years he lived with Nancy were a total enigma to John. Which left him completely at the mercy of the only two people in the room who he knew did have any experience with this sort of thing.
“You know, maybe Dr. Keller is right and you just need to ride it out for a while. Maybe give the pills a shot.”
“Traitorous son of a bitch,” Rodney snapped but refused to let go of his hand.
“Meredith, this is part of being a woman,” Teyla tried to explain before giving a small laugh based on personal experience. “When you give birth to a child, you will know the true meaning of pain.”
“Ha!” McKay barked. “That will never happen. Never!” Using John’s arm to pull the man close enough to grab the collar of his shirt, Meredith fisted the fabric tightly and twisted until it was closing off John’s airway. “Do you hear me, you piece of shit? It will never happen! Never in a million goddamn years!”
John was struggling for breath, trying to peel Rodney’s hands away from his throat, and call for help all at the same time. McKay was turning as red from exertion as Sheppard was from lack of oxygen until the others in the room finally managed to pry Meredith off and John staggered back out of reach, gulping air.
“This is all your fault, you selfish bastard!”
“Okay,” Keller announced almost as breathless as Sheppard and McKay, “Maybe something a little stronger than Midol isn’t such a bad idea given the unusual stress associated with this particular case.”
Standing there with his back against the wall as the medical team sedated McKay, it really, truly hit home that John had made the biggest mistake of his life wanting Rodney to be a woman. It was then that the same feeling came over him that had the day on the beach. The feeling that anything he wanted he could have. The door slid open behind him as a nurse came in and the hiss sounded almost like it was saying, Choose. Two remain.
And it was an incredibly easy choice. He wished Rodney was a man again. He wished Rodney was his normal old self again with the tendencies toward men and a penis and inability to put on a bra no matter how many mirrors he could use.
The door opened again… your wish, my command… and Radek beamed happily at the room in general.
“The Ancient device is operational once more,” he announced.
Keller looked up from where she was administering the drugs to McKay. “Too bad Meredith is out for the count.”
John shook his head. “No, it’s not. Wheel the gurney down there. If we’re lucky he’ll think it was all a bad dream when he wakes up.”
* * * *
When Rodney opened his eyes again, John leaned forward from his seat beside the bed with a comforting smile. “Hey. How’re you feeling?”
“Less like killing you than I did before,” he admitted. “You might want to invest in whatever drugs those were that Keller gave me if you plan to keep me on your team.”
John smirked happily. “Actually, I found something better.”
Sitting up with a grimace that quickly changed to hesitant hopefulness, Rodney reached under the sheets. “Oh, thank God, I have a penis!”
“Yes, you do,” Sheppard agreed with a wolfish grin as he leaned closer and murmured under his breath. “And a pretty damn nice one, I might add.”
As if to make sure he really was a man again, McKay looked down his scrub top to confirm the boobs were gone, too. “Are you serious? You’re flirting with me? You’re actually flirting with me?”
“Can’t get anything past you, can I?” John returned the delighted expression Rodney wore when he had indeed ascertained that bras were a thing of the past for him.
As if realizing he should still be pissed at Sheppard, McKay crossed his arms. “I thought you couldn’t trust yourself doing that around me?”
“I can’t,” John admitted. “But I realized while you were out that there is someone I can trust. I can trust you. I always have in the past so it seemed kind of stupid to stop now.”
“Trust me to do what?” Rodney’s eyes narrowed warily.
“To keep us a secret. That is if you’re still interested in having an us after everything that’s happened over the past few days.”
“Depends. Are you still interested in having a relationship with a raving bitch?”
“Nah, just an annoyingly arrogant, son of one,” John told him, slipping his hand through the rails to rest on top of Rodney’s. “How about you?”
“Well, to be perfectly honest, when it comes to relationships, an annoying son of a bitch like you was never my first choice.” John started to straighten and pull away and try to hide his disappointment with a ‘hey, no big deal’, even though it was a fucking huge deal. Before he could, though, Rodney twisted his hand and linked his fingers with the ones resting on top of his. “But, it ends up I was wrong, and you’re the only one I really want to be with now.”
“Yeah?” John smiled as he studied their hands twisted together on the mattress. “What changed your mind?”
“Well, as I was lying here convinced I was dying, I realized something. First, if women truly live through that sort of pain on a monthly basis, we should thank our lucky stars that they don’t castrate us in our sleep on principle alone. And second, even though you ran away the other day, you kept coming back. No matter what I did or said or how many times I tried to kill you with my bare hands, if I needed you, you were there. To me, that means you’re either crazy about me or just plain crazy, so I figured I should take a little pity on you and keep you off the streets. You know, for the health and welfare of the general public.”
Smiling broader at the compliment that he was pretty sure was hidden in there somewhere, Sheppard asked him, “So, does that mean you’re willing to give it a go and try to keep it a secret?”
“I don’t know,” Rodney grinned in return. “Do you think you’re capable of blowing me speechless?”
Ends up John couldn’t blow Rodney speechless, but he did leave McKay babbling incoherently before he passed out in a snoring heap in Sheppard’s bed. And that was fine with John. In fact, it was as close to perfect as he dared to imagine.
Although…
Settling down in the bed beside Rodney, he couldn’t help but think how great it would be if the Air Force would cut them a little slack and just let them do this without John worrying about losing his job. McKay shifted in his sleep, throwing an arm across John’s chest, burrowing his face against John’s neck, and murmuring something that sounded a lot like, one remains.
“One what?”
When Rodney didn’t answer, John ran his fingers leisurely along McKay’s arm and decided the man in his bed must be dreaming. Or maybe John was the one dreaming because having Rodney here like this was just too damn good to be true. And if Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell didn’t exist it would be fucking amazing. To be able to smile affectionately at Rodney in the hall, drape an arm around his shoulder at movie night, maybe a quick kiss goodbye at the door to the lab… it wasn’t like he wanted to pin Rodney to the gate for some hot man on man action in the control room.
Then again…. No, no, just a little PDA in the hallways would be more than enough for John, if only they could. If only John could have that, he wouldn’t need anything else. Yeah, if the United States military were just a little more accepting of this sort of thing, life would be great.
“Your wish, my command,” Rodney mumbled as he snuffled and tightened his hold on Sheppard, still sound asleep.
John snorted quietly, figuring McKay was having one hell of a dream. Wrapping his arms around Rodney, John kissed him softly before leaning his head against McKay’s and drifting to sleep himself.
* * * *
“What the fuck happened?”
John had been expecting something a little less aggressive from Rodney on their first morning together. Maybe a sleepy smile and, “hey,” as he stretched against John’s naked body, legs shifting just enough to brush against the proper body parts so that Sheppard could roll them over and take Rodney’s weight to increase that sweet pressure as the morning sunlight spilled in…
Wait, morning sunlight?
There was morning sunlight shining through the window.
“What the fuck happened?” John demanded as he grabbed for his alarm clock that didn’t go off at four a.m. like it was supposed to do so that McKay could slip out without anyone seeing him.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Rodney was already out of bed, grabbing random clothes off the floor. “And how the hell am I supposed to keep this a secret when you can’t even set a goddamn alarm clock?”
“I set it, I turned it on, I swear. We must have slept through it.”
John watched as Rodney pulled on the boxers Sheppard had been wearing the day before, started to point out the mistake, then stopped himself when he thought about how incredibly hot it was to know McKay was going to be in his underwear all day until John personally removed them that night.
“I have never slept through an alarm in my life. Never in my life!” Rodney stripped off the pants he’d put on when he couldn’t snap them and realized they weren’t his.
“Yeah, but you’ve never spent the night with me before either.” Sheppard shot him a slow, smug grin. “After that sort of workout, sleeping like a coma patient is a common side effect.”
Rodney leaned down and pushed the pants into John’s chest before planting a firm, quick kiss on his mouth. “How about a dishonorable discharge? Is that a common side effect for you?”
Sheppard cupped the back of Rodney’s head before he could pull away and kissed him back, only slower and deeper until he could feel the tension slipping from McKay’s shoulders and felt Rodney’s thumb running along his jaw. “If anyone is worth it, it’s you.”
McKay kissed him again before straightening with a sigh. “As true as that may be, I’d like to avoid it if at all possible. It’s kind of hard to have sex with you if you’re back on Earth working at the corner Starbucks.”
“Hey, medical benefits, stock options, and free coffee. Sounds like your perfect mate.”
Rodney had found his pants and John slipped into the ones McKay had given him… minus any underwear. Rodney’s eyes glazed over for a second and his lips curled at the sight and John waggled his eyebrows at him in response.
Sitting on the end of the bed, Rodney started tying his boots. “I have the perfect mate right here, thank you very much. That is if you’ll get your ass dressed so we can go find that coffee.”
Sheppard just stared at Rodney’s back as the man worked on his shoes, stunned by the ease with which McKay had just confirmed that they were a couple. An honest to God couple. And it took Rodney looking back with an impatient, “Hellooo? Caffeine withdrawal taking place as we sit here,” to snap him out of his reveries.
“Oh, right.” John shook his head to clear away his amazement and pulled the shirt over his head.
Rodney was already standing and moving toward the door. “Okay, so here’s the plan. I stopped by to get you for breakfast but you’d overslept and I’ve just been hanging out waiting for you to get ready. Sound good? Would you buy it?”
“Sounds good,” Sheppard confirmed. “But leave the talking to me. You get all twitchy when you try to lie and then you start rambling on and on and giving way too many details that you can’t remember two minutes later.”
“Good idea,” McKay agreed easily enough.
But when they opened the door and ran into Lorne, Rodney’s started stammering. “Sheppard overslept and I had to wake him up… well, not literally shake him awake because that would mean I was in his quarters while he was still asleep and I most certainly wasn’t. But when I rang the bell and he didn’t answer, I started banging on the door, and he eventually woke up…” The scientist finally went silent when John elbowed him hard in the ribs.
Lorne just shook his head. “Evidently you two haven’t heard the news.”
“News?” John asked curiously.
“It came in on the morning databurst from the SGC. Apparently, the Department of Defense decided to overturn the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rules.”
Sheppard’s mouth fell open. “You’re shitting me.”
“No, Sir, I shit you not,” the major grinned. “In fact, they issued a statement announcing an initiative to accept more openly gay applicants in order to increase the number of homosexuals in the ranks.”
“No goddamn way.” McKay was staring at Lorne with the same disbelieving expression.
“I know, I’m as shocked by the news as you are,” Lorne confessed with a chuckle. “On top of that, they’re giving special consideration of sexual preference when evaluating promotions. Which is why I have to get going; I’m actually on my way to ask Radek out. I saw Stackhouse was already heading toward the labs, but I happen to know Zelenka is working on the solar panels this morning.” Lorne rocked back on his heels with a smug expression. “I figure if I have a steady boyfriend, I’ll have a better chance at making lieutenant colonel next year.”
As the major headed down the hallway, Sheppard narrowed his eyes. “He was just yanking our chain, wasn’t he?”
“Had to be,” Rodney dismissed with rolled eyes. “There is no way in hell we would get so lucky.”
But they hadn’t made it halfway to the cafeteria when they heard an insistent pst! from one the storerooms they passed. Radek’s head darted out in a very rodent-like manner and he motioned them over before ducking back into the room. When John and Rodney joined him, he looked behind them to make sure they weren’t followed.
“Radek, what the hell are you doing…?”
Zelenka cut Rodney off with a nervous flutter of his hands. “The military contingent has gone insane,” he hissed in a harsh whisper. “Ever since news that gay is in fashion, every man wearing military uniform has tried to ask me out! Sgt. Devon pinched my ass in cafeteria line and Lt. Barrows punched him in face and then offered to carry my tray. Although I believe Barrows was not serious with his intentions and is perhaps a secret heterosexual searching for a beard. Still, I had no idea I was such tasty morsel of man meat that marines would be fighting over me.”
McKay ignored the Czech’s lamenting, instead turning to Sheppard. “Holy crap, Lorne wasn’t messing with us after all. It’s true!”
John just smiled broadly. “Then what the hell are we still doing in this closet?” With a gentle shove, he had Rodney out in the hall and pinned against the far wall in deep kiss.
Behind him Sheppard could hear two of his men complaining, “Son of bitch, we should have known he’d snag McKay.”
The other man scoffed, “Yeah, like no one saw that coming.”
But Sheppard hadn’t seen it coming, not at all. Because, who would ever imagine he could get his fondest wish? The thought triggered something that had been tickling at the back of John’s head for a few days now. He’d been thinking about how he’d wished Rodney was a woman and the machine had transformed him. Then when he realized it was a mistake, Radek figured out a way to get the device working again. And now that he wanted nothing more than to be openly dating McKay, the biggest hurdle had been miraculously removed. Three wishes. Three wishes and every one of them had come true.
When Rodney furrowed his brow at the grin on Sheppard’s face and asked, “What is it?” John decided to go for another wish.
“Nothing,” he dismissed. “I’m just really hoping they have turkey sandwiches for lunch today.”
Ends up, there wasn’t a slice of turkey to be found in the entire city, and Sheppard quickly dismissed the idea that he would get another wish. He also decided not to tell Rodney he’d wasted his first two wishes putting McKay through transgender hell instead of getting the physicist that Nobel he so desperately craved. But even though John didn’t get his fourth wish, his fifth one did come true… no magical genie necessary…
… John and Rodney lived happily ever after.
The End