In which I try not to sound like a complete twat...
sdraevn made a post recently asking for DVD commentaries, which is what put the idea in my head, because I was writing this fic at the time. I don't often have a lot to say on my writing. Part of me feels that if I could properly articulate what it was I was trying to get across, I wouldn't need to/be inclined to write the story in the first place. Often, the characters do things that seem to me to be in character, but I couldn't tell you why they do them, what it says about them, or what particular character trait/flaw/piece of backstory is driving them. Also, a lot of the time with writing? I don't really know what I'm doing. Knife's Edge is a little different for me because I somehow managed to figure out some of that stuff. So, I have Thoughts... I've been up all night, so I hope they make sense.
(Also, I've mentioned several authors and stories that influenced me. I don't know what the fannish etiquette is for this, but I hope it won't offend anyone).
I had the original idea for the story about 14 months ago. There was this advert at the cinema, and I can't even remember what it was for but I do remember being particularly struck by the way it was shot -- the screen was split with each half showing the same man going about his day, but in one half he meets a girl, and in the other half he never does. I'm not doing it justice -- it was a very cool ad. At any rate, it got me thinking about the SG-1 quantum mirror eps, which were some of my favourites, and the general idea of parallel realities, which I'm also a complete h0r for.
The original outline was pretty similar to what I ended up with -- somehow *technobabble handwave* Rodney ended up in an alternate Universe, where things had gone very wrong and the population of Atlantis had had to leave the city. Problem was that when I started to try to write it the first time around, it was as pretty standard, linear prose, which would've ended up being longer than my attention span could deal with, so I abandoned it.
Then a couple of weeks ago I was reading bottle_of_shine's beautiful Defining the Fall for the second or third time when I had An Epiphany. She tells her story non-linearly, which also reminded me of auburnnothenna's Rosebud, and in short, sharp, painful paragraphs, similar to rageprufrock's Edges. Three fantastic writers, three stories that I love and that affect me deeply, and suddenly it all came together and my brain went, 'dude, experiment a little! Why don't you try something like that?' And so I did.
*
Deciding how to label the sections really gave me a headache for a while. I didn't think it would be clear enough with just a standard divider, and numbering it just seemed too obvious and maybe a little crass. I was thinking about trying something like Auburn did in in Up Into Silence, but that made me uncomfortable in a plagiarism kind of way. I settled on characters when I remembered what brighidestone did in "Small Stories" (I can't find a link for this one, sorry). The intention is that the different characters symbolize where the action is taking place: stars for the alternate universe, tildas for the normal SGA verse, and an equals sign for subspace (my keyboard doesn't appear to have a hash key...)
'John?' Rodney asks, staring in horror, 'What are you doing?'
For a split-second John gets a wide-eyed, trapped-animal look, and then it melts away into dark anger. 'What? You think it meant something? A couple of fucks and I'm under your thumb?' John strides up to him. Grabbing him by the shoulders, he leans in. 'I'm not yours,' he spits, shaking Rodney a little. 'I never was.' Above them, the ceiling is shaking with him. Around them, everything is shaking.
Whee! OOCness! Or is it? O.o It didn't occur to me that this would be considered out of character, because obviously I knew what was going to happen. I'm wondering now if it sent any readers hitting that back button with righteous fannish scorn? And then I remember that I shouldn't care about that stuff, so.
Rodney thinks, he's lying. A second later he realises that no, he isn't.
There's a booming in his ears. John's eyes never waver from his, dangerous, alight. 'Get the hell out of my world, McKay.' The words are hot; his face, eyes, the explosion.
Ah metaphor, the pretentious person's friend. Originally I wrote this scene with the actual wraith bombs going off overhead, and actual explosions down the hall, but I was never really happy with it as the scene that was going to set the tone of the story. I don't know why I think this works better, though. Reaching for some sort of lyricism, maybe. Also, it's that bit less obvious than saying, look, the Wraith are bombing them while they're having a big ole relationship melt-down: feel the drama.
Turning, leaving John behind, Rodney thinks, it's like the end of the world.
That line is from when this scene was more along the lines of the apocalypse. I don't really like it now, but I don't know what I'd change it to.
~
The first version of this scene had both sides of the conversation, like so...
'Rodney, I'll be frank,' Elizabeth says. 'I'm worried about you, and I'm not the only one.'
Rodney rolls his eyes. 'Don't tell me, Heightmeyer's been tattle-tailing again?'
'You haven't been going to your sessions,' she says.
'Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed the memo that said having your head shrunk is now compulsory.'
Elizabeth frowned. 'I could make them compulsory, you know.'
'And what are you going to do if I say no? Take me off duty?' Rodney demands, crossing his arms over his chest. She returns his stare steadily. 'We both know you're not going to do that.' But it comes out as more of a plea.
Elizabeth sighs, slumps a little, leans an arm on one of the workbenches. She says, 'Rodney, you have to talk about what happened sometime. It's starting to affect your work.'
'Who-?' he begins, but Elizabeth holds up a hand.
'Even I've noticed how distracted you've been,' she says. 'And Colonel Sheppard-'
'Stop, Elizabeth. Just... please stop.'
...but it was going on too long, so I axed Rodney's dialogue. I'm not sure why I decided to do it in the first place, but I like the sense of isolation it throws over him.
*
Rodney rolls onto his side and smiles sleepily. 'Hey,' he says.
'Hey,' John replies, smiling gently back at him. It's a softening of the mouth, but mostly it's in the eyes, and Rodney realises how rarely he's seen John smile like that. Like he's truly happy. The depth of it makes Rodney's heart clench.
It's true, you don't see many genuine smiles from John.
He reaches out and runs his fingertips down John's cheek and along his jaw, down his neck and along his bare flank. His hand looks pale against John's skin, turned golden in the dim yellow light. He spreads his fingers out on John's side, feeling his warmth, trying to absorb it.
When he looks back up, the smile has faded and John is watching him with intense dark eyes. 'Come here,' he says, pulling Rodney closer, and holds him so tightly as he kisses him and kisses him, as though he's afraid Rodney is going to disappear.
I'll admit, the placement of this scene is mostly for misdirection/confusion purposes. Is it really bad, admitting to trying to confuse your readers? Okay, maybe not confusion so much as maintaining suspense. I wanted there to be a slow unraveling of understanding on the part of the reader, and putting a scene like this here was one of the ways I was trying to do that. Also, the image in my head is really pretty.
~
'McKay,' John says. Sheppard says. Fandom cliché ho! I like to tell myself it's justified in this case, because, you know, actually two different people. More or less. The distinction seems small after everything that's happened. Ridiculously small. And yet he suspects it's the only thing keeping him from falling off the knife's edge. That just came out of the imagery in my head, of teetering on something very narrow. But I liked it, so, title.
'Colonel,' Rodney replies, terse, impatient. It's only half for show.
Sheppard looks him over, face neutral. 'Everything okay?'
'Yes, yes, fine,' Rodney mutters, turning back to his work. He's so definitely busy.
Sheppard doesn't say anything for what feels like a long time. When he speaks again, it startles Rodney a little. 'Okay,' is all he says, and turns to go, but a troubled expression is flickering across his face, somewhere just out of sight. A lot of individual sentences got repeatedly rewritten and tweaked in this yar fiction, this being one of them. cathexys commented on my characterization of the two Johns, how it was clear to her which was which. It wasn't really a conscious thing on my part, but looking at it with that in mind, that's why this sentence was so important for me to get right, because of all the differences it illustrates.
*
Rodney awakes groaning, squinting up into the sky. He's lying on his back, the gate looming large to his left. He calls. There's no answer.
He props himself up on his elbows, irritated. Obviously he's been unconscious, his head hurts like a train wreck, his team has disappeared, and (his eyes fall on the dented, battered-looking DHD) radioing for help may prove difficult.
He's just heaving himself to action when a click sounds from behind. Spinning around on his knees in the dirt, he comes face to face with the shining black barrel of a pistol. Rodney closes his eyes and sighs before raising his hands.
'Just when I thought my day couldn't actually get any worse.'
Opening his eyes to glare up at his soon-to-be captor, he sees a man wearing skins and shades of brown leather, Pegasus haute couture. But as Rodney's eyes travel further up he meets the incongruous sight of a pair of aviator shades. John in those shades, in leather? Hot in any universe, imho.
And just as Rodney's opening his mouth to say, 'Colonel?' the man whips the shades off and stares down at Rodney, eyes so wide the whites are shining, like he can't believe what he's seeing, like he's seen a ghost.
So this is where the story actually starts in time. Yet another scene that originally had a lot more dialogue and description. As much as anything, this story was an experiment with style for me. Once I realized what exactly I was trying to do, everything got stripped away as much as I could, just leaving the bare bones of the story. My thinking being that, with everything else stripped away, some True Meaning would shine through.
One of the main problems I have with my fic is the lack of meaning in them, a lack of poignancy. What I mean to say is, I don't seem to ever say anything Deep and Meaningful about the characters. So I guess I was hoping that, with a bare bones style, something would have to jump out at me because I wouldn't be able to disguise the emptiness.
=
Gate travel will never not be disconcerting for Rodney: he knows how it works. Dematerialised, transmitted through subspace as information rather than life, to be reassembled impossibly far away. And yet, it's not the technology that unsettles him.
Physical exposure to subspace is eerie. There's no other way Rodney can describe it. You can't exactly think when your brain is a disjointed collection of ones and zeroes, so everything comes to you as perception: the colour of your transit, the shape of a memory, the sound of someone's face. It's dreamlike -- sometimes you don't remember what you saw until later. Sometimes you just forget straight away.
Sometimes it feels like you're never going to get out of it.
So while he has every confidence in the technology (he is the foremost expert, after all), there's always a thread of perception, weaving around the swirl of his consciousness, wherein he wonders (in spiky orange and the silently thunderous crashing of waves) what's taking so long, and shouldn't he be there by now?
But you can't count in subspace -- the physical time of normal space is meaningless there. And yet, Rodney knows when it's been too long.
Once you've been through the gate a handful of times, you begin to get a sense of the patterns of things. Rodney has privately theorised that you begin to recognise your own existentialised brainwaves. So when something goes wrong, he senses it in the unfamiliar shape of the song he'd been humming that morning, the texture of the ZPM power outputs, the colour of Colonel Sheppard.
This is pretty much my brain dissected for your entertainment. I tend to make weird associations -- one friend of mine I used to see in my head as a certain piano chord, and certain words have colours and shapes associated with them. Every scene in this story has a specific colour, for example. I wanted to get across an almost precognitive sense of wrongness. The entire scene is pretty much a set up for me to say that John was the wrong colour. In my head, that's just all levels of unsettling.
I didn't plan it, but this scene also let me get creative with the imagery in the last scene, which is my favourite in the fic. So, yay.
*
'So this is interesting,' Rodney says. 'I'm pretty sure this wasn't supposed to happen.'
'Could you point that thing somewhere else?' he says, 'Like not in my face?'
He says, 'Listen, Colonel, obviously there's been some kind of mistake. If I could just take a look at the control crystals..?'
Sheppard says, 'Major.'
He says, 'Who are you?' and it sounds like a betrayal.
For once, this scene is pretty much as I first wrote it. I liked the rhythm of the earlier scene with Elizabeth, and felt that mimicking the structure here gave it a nice sense of symmetry. Kind of balanced it out.
~
Every evening, doing his rounds, Sheppard calls into the lab to check on him. Rodney can't decide if this is more or less annoying than Elizabeth and Carson's hovering. At least they come out and say what they're thinking.
And every time he appears, something in Rodney whispers wrong; the rest of him is screaming right!
I think this is more or less where I figured out what my Shining Truth was going to be. So many stories show John as the one running away, for whatever reason, but Rodney, you know, he's got plenty of his own fear.
*
The facility is mostly subterranean, and it makes him think of the Genii, though less sophisticated. They had to abandon Atlantis, Sheppard explains. Have to hop around from world to world, trying to stay one step ahead of the Wraith. They've been here a couple of months now, and his people are getting antsy -- Rodney can feel the electric snap of anxiety in the air. But it's the most secure they've been in a long time, and Sheppard is reluctant to move them on just yet. They're so tired.
They talk some more, Rodney trying to pinpoint divergences. Another of those Sentences of Eternal Fiddle. I never wanted to come out and actually say 'alternate universe,' but I didn't want to be too cryptic, either. The clues needed to all be there, and seeing as no one's told me it sucked and they didn't get it, I'm going to tentatively assume that I managed it (tentatively because I realize most people are less likely to comment on the bad stuff. Uh, if you're reading this and you want to, though, please go ahead. I'd be interested to hear.) He has only half an eye on the people they're passing, the looks they're giving him, until he sees Peter Grodin. Poor Peter. He just can't win. And then, in the manner of these things, realises several things at once.
'Elizabeth?' Rodney asks. 'Carson? Me?' Sheppard looks away, then back again. His mouth moves as though to speak, but he doesn't. Rodney imagines there aren't words for it.
~
Rodney has stepped out onto the control room balcony. He needs... he doesn't know what he needs anymore, except to get away, except to breathe. Elizabeth is right, he knows it. Knows it but can't quite bring himself to recognise it. I'm not sure if I like the idea of Rodders letting his emotional issues get on top of his work, because it is sentimental and unheroic, but from where I'm sitting, it seems like a reasonable human reaction. Plus I wanted to juxtapose the alternaverse with Elizabeth being dead, to the sga verse where she's very much alive. As a marker, I suppose.
Leaning his forearms on the railing he lets his head fall, closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind of everything unimportant. His mind, though, seems to have other ideas about the nature of importance.
After a few minutes of staring at the turbulent sea, he hears the doors open further down the balcony. Turning his head he meets Sheppard's eyes. He's standing there, the wind pulling at his hair, cradling his P90 that little description I added in after its echo later on, along with the vision of flames. I really like that image. It's, like, my hero shot. I seem to have gone in a lot for repetition of themes and images. I think it works, though and looking at Rodney, just looking at him. And Rodney begins to understand (as he sees flames that aren't there licking around the Colonel's body) the existence of ghosts in another pair of those eyes. That thar, "another pair," I dislike that for it blatantness (alas not actually a word, according to MSWord). Like, after all the dancing around it, I've just come out and said that there really are two of them. In retrospect, though, it's probably not that important.
Rodney straightens to face him. Something seems to pass between them, something Rodney can't name, but he feels the weight of it, and he wonders, Does he know? How can he possibly... Does he know?
There's a line of dialogue that never made it out of my head, wherein John explains to Rodney that he knows because he felt it when Rodney first stepped out of the wormhole and looked at him; because he would have done the same thing.
*
Rodney knocks at Sheppard's door late at night, tired, grimy, but energised by his success.
'I think I know how to fix it,' he says, 'I can go back!'
Perhaps it's because he's woken Sheppard up, perhaps it's simply because he doesn't know him like he assumes he does, but suddenly everything is there on Sheppard's face in a way it's never been before. I like the idea of alternaJohn being almost exactly like real John, except in those startling, revelatory moments when he isn't at all.
He stares wide-eyed, whispers, 'Oh.'
'I didn't know,' he says. 'We aren't -- in my --'
That little construction again. I think I probably used it here to add a pause (I tend to grope my way through structure and such things).
Sheppard looks at Rodney, just looks at him, and it feels like a gravitational pull, like the death spiral around a black hole. Yay physics! Actually, physics similes are starting to annoy me a lot recently. Mostly because the same ones get recycled over and over. And yes, I know this has almost certainly been used before, but I was reading about gravity recently (Roche lobes, natch), and the image seemed perfect for the feeling of helpless freefall Oh look, he thinks faintly, there goes the event horizon. No escape now.
He licks his lips. 'John,' he says, the word dry, uncharted, but oddly familiar in his mouth. 'I don't have to go straight away.'
~
Rodney has always wanted John Sheppard, for as long as he's known him. In my original, 14 month old plan, Rodney was going to be blindsided by alternaJohn's and alternaRodney's relationship, the thought actually never having occurred to him, so that when he goes back, *everything* has changed. For the way this story turned out, the sense of yearning seemed more appropriate. Plus, having Rodney suggest that he stays the night cuts out the need for actually talking about it. It's neater this way, methinks Or so it sometimes seems. Late at night, wringing his hands over his work and the Wraith and the impossibility of their situation, he has rediscovered, redefined desperation.
And isn't this just another aspect in the understanding of it? Sheppard between him and the wall, their bodies barely touching, touches faint and fleeting, as though that can excuse any of this? It only occurred to me after I'd declared a fiddling embargo that this scene was supposed to be set in the lab. My colour for this scene is a sterile white, and I wanted the lab to symbolize that. Coming back to it, though, I like how it works sandwiched between the two alternaverse scenes before and after, because you can almost read them straight off as three bits of one sex scene. Just, skewed a little. Which is kind of cool.
Sheppard kisses him hungrily, high, frantic sounds rising in his throat. Rodney's fingers tremble as he doesn't quite hold on, doesn't quite cup Sheppard's face or run a hand up his chest, heat and breath and a world still between them.
Symbolism, oh yes. When I wrote this, I meant it literally -- they really aren't touching in the pictures in my head. But I guess it also means more than that, with Rodney figuring out that he can have what he wants, if he's just brave enough to accept it. And as of yet, he still isn't. He's still somewhere else, with that guy that looks just like the one he's kissing. It's ironical, see, that the alternaverse was so dangerous, and at the same time so much safer.
*
'You never were one to beat around the bush,' John says after. He lies with his head resting on his fist, running the other hand slowly over Rodney's chest, shoulders, arms, stomach, tracing the planes of his body and the contours of his face.
'Tell me,' Rodney murmurs, drowsy, content, captivated.
'After the mission to Proculus,' John says, smirking slightly at Rodney's obvious distaste. 'You said it was your duty to protect me from myself.'
'I was angry,' Rodney says.
'You were jealous,' John corrects, looking smug. 'Nothing happened, but there was no telling you. You always hated it when I...' he trails off and it's startling how his eyes can change, how that changes his face. He hooks a leg over Rodney's, an arm over his chest, and lowers his head to Rodney's shoulder. 'I missed you,' he whispers.
Rodney strokes his back, staring at the ceiling.
I like this scene, the way they both know it isn't really real, but how they're both more than happy to act out the fantasy.
~
Just as Rodney has always wanted John Sheppard, he's always known that it can't happen; knew that before the fact of his wanting him.
It can't happen, and yet it did, somewhere else, not that long ago. He wonders how that changed things for them. He wonders if, somehow, it changed everything. I'm not saying that it did, but that would be one of the more glaring differences between their worlds. Also, at this stage, he's so far in he's grasping for anything that'll get him back out again
And he's afraid.
It can't happen. This is still the truth. (Though not the only one).
Truth being what you make of it, and all. The bracketed sentence was a late addition. It's probably very Bad and Wrong to admit this, but it was inspired by a lyric ("It's like how you shrugged when you knew the truth was the only way out/ But not the only way") from the song 'If I Wrote You', from lierdumoa's vid, which I love immensely. I think it adds a bit of necessary hope to threads that were getting impossibly tangled up in the angst.
*
The Wraith are coming, Teyla had said, returning from Geratha. Two days out, maybe less. The only reason I put Teyla in here is just as a reminder that things were exactly the same up to some indefinable point where their universes split. They still made contact with the Athosians, still woke the Wraith and had to take her people in. She's still with them, fighting for them.
'It's time for you to go,' John is saying. His voice is steady but he won't look at Rodney, won't meet his eyes. 'Do what you have to do, and then go.'
'You have to leave, too,' Rodney says. 'John, you have to leave, too,' because maybe he doesn't know him as well as he assumes, but maybe he does.
'Promise me you're going to run,' he says, turning cold somewhere deep inside.
'We're running,' John says, and he looks tired and a little sick, but Rodney believes him because he wants to.
~
One of my main concerns before posting was the chronology of the story. I was fairly confident that people would get the parallel universe thing, but the order is, well, there's no pattern. The alternaverse scenes slot in where they best add to the 'real' universe scenes. And the real universe scenes are told in order, but often things have happened between them that I just haven't explained. John and Rodney could've still been out on the balcony while they were kissing and not-touching, because I never said the setting had changed, or that time had passed. Same thing here. It's a couple of hours after that kiss, from which Rodney ran away and hid. And John's just tracked him down. Ultimately I don't think it matters that much, but it makes me realize how differently I see it to how people are probably reading it.
Sheppard sits down next to Rodney on the pier, crossing his legs and resting his arms loosely on his knees. The lights from the city shine brightly behind them, but in front there is nothing but darkness and stars. I don't really like that -- too clumsy.
'Do you know,' he asks after a long moment, shaking his head, 'how weird it feels to be jealous of yourself?' This is probably my favourite sentence in the whole thing. It just seems to me to be such a desperately honest thing to say.
He says, 'Frankly, Rodney, I think I have more to be worried about here. So maybe you could tell me exactly what it is you're afraid of?' I find it really tough to avoid the gay-in-the-military issue altogether. It makes sense to me that it would be at least one aspect of the decision on John's part.
Rodney thinks about not answering, only to realise he's already talking. 'What if,' he's saying, 'what if I was distracted and that's why? What if I was too busy begging you not to fly a nuke into a hiveship to notice... to notice something important? What if I was too worried about you to think? So worried I couldn't think. John...' he says, pleading, but there, yes: it's already too late.
The downfall of Rodney McKay. The fear of everything he could lose is still there, but he's just about to figure out that he's past kidding himself that he can actually physically exist without it.
*
So this is where I rub the dirt off the first scene, and show it to you true. Since writing the first scene, it was always my intention to go back to it and shine light on it from a different angle. I've tried that method before, and bottle_of_shine does it particularly eloquently in Defining the Fall. Don't think I managed that level of gut-punch here, but it does help with the sense of unraveling the mystery, I think.
Rodney asks John to run, but two days later, coming to find out why no one else is heading for the gate, he finds him geared up in his old Lantean uniform and combat vest, armed to the teeth and fastening more ammunition to himself as Rodney watches in horror.
John speaks in words -- words that cut and wound and strike him in places that weren't vulnerable before. But John also speaks in other ways, and as impacts shake the room and explosions boom loud and too close, Rodney realises what he's doing.
He hates himself for the moment he silently agreed that he doesn't belong here, but it's too late now because he's already running. Running. Running, I've never been happy with this repetition, but it felt worse without it, so I left it in and he can't make himself stop.
At the gate, an intense flash of light washes over his back, and as he turns to see, the shockwave knocks him sprawling into the event horizon. That being the facility and alternaJohn going up in flames. I never was sure if that was clear.
=
When Rodney falls through the event horizon: the grating-mellow sound of silver-green-grey eyes; the blood-red and sunrise gold of their lovemaking; the twisting, fibrous shape of the explosion; the pale blue of his understanding; the bright white of his grief.
It goes on forever; it's over too soon.
~
'What if,' Rodney says, 'you died?'
The words stand heavy between them, and Rodney remembers a man watching him run away, cradling a P90, hair being pulled about as the air rushed to another explosion, flames blazing blood-red and sunrise gold behind him. I can't say why I repeated the colours of their lovemaking here exactly, except that it seemed to complete some circle.
*
I don't write sex all that much. I'm not even sure if this qualifies as NC-17 (I suspect it probably doesn't). But I wanted to have a go at the meaningful kind of pr0n that I admire so much in mmmchelle's writing. It's a first time for Rodney, and for John it's just everything else. It seemed right to show how they are together, intimate like this.
John is heat against Rodney's back, he's sweat and breath and movement and life.
He holds Rodney tightly, legs drawn up to Rodney's, arms tight around him, pressing kisses to his neck, his shoulder, and rubbing himself with slow desperate shudders between Rodney's cheeks. Rodney reaches back to clasp John's thigh, trying to bring him closer -- they're touching everywhere they can be but it isn't enough. He's so hard he aches, and he wants to touch himself but that won't be enough, either. It can't happen but it is happening and Rodney wants it so badly he barely dares breath.
Fingers, fumbles, a huff of frustrated laughter and then a moan, long and deep. John moves slowly within him, whispering brokenly into his skin, and it's not enough, it's not enough, but it's too much, and his toes curl up, mouth opening to silence as he comes uncontrollably.
Just before he comes, John whispers, I forgot how to breathe without you. That bloody line. I must have rewritten it about fifteen times. How would John say "I love you" without actually saying it, and in fact have it mean everything that just "I love you" doesn't say? One of the things I hate to see most in other people's writing is sappiness and melodrama. Stands to reason, then, that I'm a frequent offender. I think the line I settled on here is fine, so long as the emotional build-up has been sufficient, but that's hard to tell after several hundred re-readings. Quite a few people have commented that that line hit them particularly hard, though, so that's encouraging.
That's when Rodney knows he has to go home.
~
'What if you died?' Rodney says. 'John, I can't... I wouldn't be able to. If I lost you. I couldn't...'
But the word and the breath and the thought evaporate as John puts his mouth to Rodney's, breathes him in, gives him breath.
*
'I'm not yours,' John says. 'I never was.'
It's an odd truth, true only through a trick of the light. (In fact Rodney thinks it might be something to do with the unified effects of gravitational waves and quantum fluctuations, which he should be very excited about, but isn't). Rodney loves John more than a possible grand unified theory of everything ever. I so knew it all along.
Rodney wonders what the truth will look like when he goes home.
~
'Please,' Rodney breathes in between kisses, 'Don't,' and, 'Please,' and, 'John.'
'I can't lose you,' he says.
John says, 'You're an idiot,' and hooks a hand around Rodney's neck, keeping him from pulling away. 'Shut up,' he gasps, 'You're an idiot.' I really like the idea of Rodney being afraid of what his distraction with John could mean for every single person on Atlantis. It's a legitimate fear, but in the end, the distraction's going to be there whether or not they're together, because you can't just stop caring like that. So obviously all he can do is give in. Hurray!
Some part of Rodney is singing, another part is still resisting, but mostly he's realising that finally, finally, the touch is real. You know, I don't know what this means. I have a couple of half-baked ideas about him finally being able to let go of alternaJohn, and truly reach out and touch real John. Or that he's finally let his fears go enough that he finally allows himself to really feel it. But, yeah, I don't really have a clear idea. It just came out. Suggestions on a postcard?
*
'I'm not yours,' John says, and Rodney runs home.
=
On their next mission, Rodney remembers nothing from their trip through subspace except the impression of a plant, continually wilting and blooming, dried brown leaves furling out and turning green, to shrink back down and die, to unfurl again, over and over. It's like the pulsing of a heart, he thinks. Like breath in a lung. I love this para. Can I say that about my own writing? I just think it says more than a side of prose could about Rodney's state of mind, where he's at and where he's getting, and where John fits into all of that. I'm very pleased with the way it came out.
He looks over at John and smiles ever so slightly, a feeling of relief pushing tentatively at him. Again, I'm not exactly sure why it's relief he's feeling. It's another thing that just came out as I was writing. And yet, it just feels right to me. I dunno. My brain is very... special sometimes.
He breathes in. In a way, I feel like this is a pretty unresolved place to leave it. I toyed with linking things back to the title, some comments about 'allowing the edge to fall away from him', but really, I think this says everything as is.
As I said above, this is my favourite scene. Which is cool, because it's what you take away.
To round things out -- I was listening to the soundtrack from the film Serenity while writing. If anyone's interested, I can upload.
(Also, I've mentioned several authors and stories that influenced me. I don't know what the fannish etiquette is for this, but I hope it won't offend anyone).
I had the original idea for the story about 14 months ago. There was this advert at the cinema, and I can't even remember what it was for but I do remember being particularly struck by the way it was shot -- the screen was split with each half showing the same man going about his day, but in one half he meets a girl, and in the other half he never does. I'm not doing it justice -- it was a very cool ad. At any rate, it got me thinking about the SG-1 quantum mirror eps, which were some of my favourites, and the general idea of parallel realities, which I'm also a complete h0r for.
The original outline was pretty similar to what I ended up with -- somehow *technobabble handwave* Rodney ended up in an alternate Universe, where things had gone very wrong and the population of Atlantis had had to leave the city. Problem was that when I started to try to write it the first time around, it was as pretty standard, linear prose, which would've ended up being longer than my attention span could deal with, so I abandoned it.
Then a couple of weeks ago I was reading bottle_of_shine's beautiful Defining the Fall for the second or third time when I had An Epiphany. She tells her story non-linearly, which also reminded me of auburnnothenna's Rosebud, and in short, sharp, painful paragraphs, similar to rageprufrock's Edges. Three fantastic writers, three stories that I love and that affect me deeply, and suddenly it all came together and my brain went, 'dude, experiment a little! Why don't you try something like that?' And so I did.
*
Deciding how to label the sections really gave me a headache for a while. I didn't think it would be clear enough with just a standard divider, and numbering it just seemed too obvious and maybe a little crass. I was thinking about trying something like Auburn did in in Up Into Silence, but that made me uncomfortable in a plagiarism kind of way. I settled on characters when I remembered what brighidestone did in "Small Stories" (I can't find a link for this one, sorry). The intention is that the different characters symbolize where the action is taking place: stars for the alternate universe, tildas for the normal SGA verse, and an equals sign for subspace (my keyboard doesn't appear to have a hash key...)
'John?' Rodney asks, staring in horror, 'What are you doing?'
For a split-second John gets a wide-eyed, trapped-animal look, and then it melts away into dark anger. 'What? You think it meant something? A couple of fucks and I'm under your thumb?' John strides up to him. Grabbing him by the shoulders, he leans in. 'I'm not yours,' he spits, shaking Rodney a little. 'I never was.' Above them, the ceiling is shaking with him. Around them, everything is shaking.
Whee! OOCness! Or is it? O.o It didn't occur to me that this would be considered out of character, because obviously I knew what was going to happen. I'm wondering now if it sent any readers hitting that back button with righteous fannish scorn? And then I remember that I shouldn't care about that stuff, so.
Rodney thinks, he's lying. A second later he realises that no, he isn't.
There's a booming in his ears. John's eyes never waver from his, dangerous, alight. 'Get the hell out of my world, McKay.' The words are hot; his face, eyes, the explosion.
Ah metaphor, the pretentious person's friend. Originally I wrote this scene with the actual wraith bombs going off overhead, and actual explosions down the hall, but I was never really happy with it as the scene that was going to set the tone of the story. I don't know why I think this works better, though. Reaching for some sort of lyricism, maybe. Also, it's that bit less obvious than saying, look, the Wraith are bombing them while they're having a big ole relationship melt-down: feel the drama.
Turning, leaving John behind, Rodney thinks, it's like the end of the world.
That line is from when this scene was more along the lines of the apocalypse. I don't really like it now, but I don't know what I'd change it to.
~
The first version of this scene had both sides of the conversation, like so...
'Rodney, I'll be frank,' Elizabeth says. 'I'm worried about you, and I'm not the only one.'
Rodney rolls his eyes. 'Don't tell me, Heightmeyer's been tattle-tailing again?'
'You haven't been going to your sessions,' she says.
'Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed the memo that said having your head shrunk is now compulsory.'
Elizabeth frowned. 'I could make them compulsory, you know.'
'And what are you going to do if I say no? Take me off duty?' Rodney demands, crossing his arms over his chest. She returns his stare steadily. 'We both know you're not going to do that.' But it comes out as more of a plea.
Elizabeth sighs, slumps a little, leans an arm on one of the workbenches. She says, 'Rodney, you have to talk about what happened sometime. It's starting to affect your work.'
'Who-?' he begins, but Elizabeth holds up a hand.
'Even I've noticed how distracted you've been,' she says. 'And Colonel Sheppard-'
'Stop, Elizabeth. Just... please stop.'
...but it was going on too long, so I axed Rodney's dialogue. I'm not sure why I decided to do it in the first place, but I like the sense of isolation it throws over him.
*
Rodney rolls onto his side and smiles sleepily. 'Hey,' he says.
'Hey,' John replies, smiling gently back at him. It's a softening of the mouth, but mostly it's in the eyes, and Rodney realises how rarely he's seen John smile like that. Like he's truly happy. The depth of it makes Rodney's heart clench.
It's true, you don't see many genuine smiles from John.
He reaches out and runs his fingertips down John's cheek and along his jaw, down his neck and along his bare flank. His hand looks pale against John's skin, turned golden in the dim yellow light. He spreads his fingers out on John's side, feeling his warmth, trying to absorb it.
When he looks back up, the smile has faded and John is watching him with intense dark eyes. 'Come here,' he says, pulling Rodney closer, and holds him so tightly as he kisses him and kisses him, as though he's afraid Rodney is going to disappear.
I'll admit, the placement of this scene is mostly for misdirection/confusion purposes. Is it really bad, admitting to trying to confuse your readers? Okay, maybe not confusion so much as maintaining suspense. I wanted there to be a slow unraveling of understanding on the part of the reader, and putting a scene like this here was one of the ways I was trying to do that. Also, the image in my head is really pretty.
~
'McKay,' John says. Sheppard says. Fandom cliché ho! I like to tell myself it's justified in this case, because, you know, actually two different people. More or less. The distinction seems small after everything that's happened. Ridiculously small. And yet he suspects it's the only thing keeping him from falling off the knife's edge. That just came out of the imagery in my head, of teetering on something very narrow. But I liked it, so, title.
'Colonel,' Rodney replies, terse, impatient. It's only half for show.
Sheppard looks him over, face neutral. 'Everything okay?'
'Yes, yes, fine,' Rodney mutters, turning back to his work. He's so definitely busy.
Sheppard doesn't say anything for what feels like a long time. When he speaks again, it startles Rodney a little. 'Okay,' is all he says, and turns to go, but a troubled expression is flickering across his face, somewhere just out of sight. A lot of individual sentences got repeatedly rewritten and tweaked in this yar fiction, this being one of them. cathexys commented on my characterization of the two Johns, how it was clear to her which was which. It wasn't really a conscious thing on my part, but looking at it with that in mind, that's why this sentence was so important for me to get right, because of all the differences it illustrates.
*
Rodney awakes groaning, squinting up into the sky. He's lying on his back, the gate looming large to his left. He calls. There's no answer.
He props himself up on his elbows, irritated. Obviously he's been unconscious, his head hurts like a train wreck, his team has disappeared, and (his eyes fall on the dented, battered-looking DHD) radioing for help may prove difficult.
He's just heaving himself to action when a click sounds from behind. Spinning around on his knees in the dirt, he comes face to face with the shining black barrel of a pistol. Rodney closes his eyes and sighs before raising his hands.
'Just when I thought my day couldn't actually get any worse.'
Opening his eyes to glare up at his soon-to-be captor, he sees a man wearing skins and shades of brown leather, Pegasus haute couture. But as Rodney's eyes travel further up he meets the incongruous sight of a pair of aviator shades. John in those shades, in leather? Hot in any universe, imho.
And just as Rodney's opening his mouth to say, 'Colonel?' the man whips the shades off and stares down at Rodney, eyes so wide the whites are shining, like he can't believe what he's seeing, like he's seen a ghost.
So this is where the story actually starts in time. Yet another scene that originally had a lot more dialogue and description. As much as anything, this story was an experiment with style for me. Once I realized what exactly I was trying to do, everything got stripped away as much as I could, just leaving the bare bones of the story. My thinking being that, with everything else stripped away, some True Meaning would shine through.
One of the main problems I have with my fic is the lack of meaning in them, a lack of poignancy. What I mean to say is, I don't seem to ever say anything Deep and Meaningful about the characters. So I guess I was hoping that, with a bare bones style, something would have to jump out at me because I wouldn't be able to disguise the emptiness.
=
Gate travel will never not be disconcerting for Rodney: he knows how it works. Dematerialised, transmitted through subspace as information rather than life, to be reassembled impossibly far away. And yet, it's not the technology that unsettles him.
Physical exposure to subspace is eerie. There's no other way Rodney can describe it. You can't exactly think when your brain is a disjointed collection of ones and zeroes, so everything comes to you as perception: the colour of your transit, the shape of a memory, the sound of someone's face. It's dreamlike -- sometimes you don't remember what you saw until later. Sometimes you just forget straight away.
Sometimes it feels like you're never going to get out of it.
So while he has every confidence in the technology (he is the foremost expert, after all), there's always a thread of perception, weaving around the swirl of his consciousness, wherein he wonders (in spiky orange and the silently thunderous crashing of waves) what's taking so long, and shouldn't he be there by now?
But you can't count in subspace -- the physical time of normal space is meaningless there. And yet, Rodney knows when it's been too long.
Once you've been through the gate a handful of times, you begin to get a sense of the patterns of things. Rodney has privately theorised that you begin to recognise your own existentialised brainwaves. So when something goes wrong, he senses it in the unfamiliar shape of the song he'd been humming that morning, the texture of the ZPM power outputs, the colour of Colonel Sheppard.
This is pretty much my brain dissected for your entertainment. I tend to make weird associations -- one friend of mine I used to see in my head as a certain piano chord, and certain words have colours and shapes associated with them. Every scene in this story has a specific colour, for example. I wanted to get across an almost precognitive sense of wrongness. The entire scene is pretty much a set up for me to say that John was the wrong colour. In my head, that's just all levels of unsettling.
I didn't plan it, but this scene also let me get creative with the imagery in the last scene, which is my favourite in the fic. So, yay.
*
'So this is interesting,' Rodney says. 'I'm pretty sure this wasn't supposed to happen.'
'Could you point that thing somewhere else?' he says, 'Like not in my face?'
He says, 'Listen, Colonel, obviously there's been some kind of mistake. If I could just take a look at the control crystals..?'
Sheppard says, 'Major.'
He says, 'Who are you?' and it sounds like a betrayal.
For once, this scene is pretty much as I first wrote it. I liked the rhythm of the earlier scene with Elizabeth, and felt that mimicking the structure here gave it a nice sense of symmetry. Kind of balanced it out.
~
Every evening, doing his rounds, Sheppard calls into the lab to check on him. Rodney can't decide if this is more or less annoying than Elizabeth and Carson's hovering. At least they come out and say what they're thinking.
And every time he appears, something in Rodney whispers wrong; the rest of him is screaming right!
I think this is more or less where I figured out what my Shining Truth was going to be. So many stories show John as the one running away, for whatever reason, but Rodney, you know, he's got plenty of his own fear.
*
The facility is mostly subterranean, and it makes him think of the Genii, though less sophisticated. They had to abandon Atlantis, Sheppard explains. Have to hop around from world to world, trying to stay one step ahead of the Wraith. They've been here a couple of months now, and his people are getting antsy -- Rodney can feel the electric snap of anxiety in the air. But it's the most secure they've been in a long time, and Sheppard is reluctant to move them on just yet. They're so tired.
They talk some more, Rodney trying to pinpoint divergences. Another of those Sentences of Eternal Fiddle. I never wanted to come out and actually say 'alternate universe,' but I didn't want to be too cryptic, either. The clues needed to all be there, and seeing as no one's told me it sucked and they didn't get it, I'm going to tentatively assume that I managed it (tentatively because I realize most people are less likely to comment on the bad stuff. Uh, if you're reading this and you want to, though, please go ahead. I'd be interested to hear.) He has only half an eye on the people they're passing, the looks they're giving him, until he sees Peter Grodin. Poor Peter. He just can't win. And then, in the manner of these things, realises several things at once.
'Elizabeth?' Rodney asks. 'Carson? Me?' Sheppard looks away, then back again. His mouth moves as though to speak, but he doesn't. Rodney imagines there aren't words for it.
~
Rodney has stepped out onto the control room balcony. He needs... he doesn't know what he needs anymore, except to get away, except to breathe. Elizabeth is right, he knows it. Knows it but can't quite bring himself to recognise it. I'm not sure if I like the idea of Rodders letting his emotional issues get on top of his work, because it is sentimental and unheroic, but from where I'm sitting, it seems like a reasonable human reaction. Plus I wanted to juxtapose the alternaverse with Elizabeth being dead, to the sga verse where she's very much alive. As a marker, I suppose.
Leaning his forearms on the railing he lets his head fall, closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind of everything unimportant. His mind, though, seems to have other ideas about the nature of importance.
After a few minutes of staring at the turbulent sea, he hears the doors open further down the balcony. Turning his head he meets Sheppard's eyes. He's standing there, the wind pulling at his hair, cradling his P90 that little description I added in after its echo later on, along with the vision of flames. I really like that image. It's, like, my hero shot. I seem to have gone in a lot for repetition of themes and images. I think it works, though and looking at Rodney, just looking at him. And Rodney begins to understand (as he sees flames that aren't there licking around the Colonel's body) the existence of ghosts in another pair of those eyes. That thar, "another pair," I dislike that for it blatantness (alas not actually a word, according to MSWord). Like, after all the dancing around it, I've just come out and said that there really are two of them. In retrospect, though, it's probably not that important.
Rodney straightens to face him. Something seems to pass between them, something Rodney can't name, but he feels the weight of it, and he wonders, Does he know? How can he possibly... Does he know?
There's a line of dialogue that never made it out of my head, wherein John explains to Rodney that he knows because he felt it when Rodney first stepped out of the wormhole and looked at him; because he would have done the same thing.
*
Rodney knocks at Sheppard's door late at night, tired, grimy, but energised by his success.
'I think I know how to fix it,' he says, 'I can go back!'
Perhaps it's because he's woken Sheppard up, perhaps it's simply because he doesn't know him like he assumes he does, but suddenly everything is there on Sheppard's face in a way it's never been before. I like the idea of alternaJohn being almost exactly like real John, except in those startling, revelatory moments when he isn't at all.
He stares wide-eyed, whispers, 'Oh.'
'I didn't know,' he says. 'We aren't -- in my --'
That little construction again. I think I probably used it here to add a pause (I tend to grope my way through structure and such things).
Sheppard looks at Rodney, just looks at him, and it feels like a gravitational pull, like the death spiral around a black hole. Yay physics! Actually, physics similes are starting to annoy me a lot recently. Mostly because the same ones get recycled over and over. And yes, I know this has almost certainly been used before, but I was reading about gravity recently (Roche lobes, natch), and the image seemed perfect for the feeling of helpless freefall Oh look, he thinks faintly, there goes the event horizon. No escape now.
He licks his lips. 'John,' he says, the word dry, uncharted, but oddly familiar in his mouth. 'I don't have to go straight away.'
~
Rodney has always wanted John Sheppard, for as long as he's known him. In my original, 14 month old plan, Rodney was going to be blindsided by alternaJohn's and alternaRodney's relationship, the thought actually never having occurred to him, so that when he goes back, *everything* has changed. For the way this story turned out, the sense of yearning seemed more appropriate. Plus, having Rodney suggest that he stays the night cuts out the need for actually talking about it. It's neater this way, methinks Or so it sometimes seems. Late at night, wringing his hands over his work and the Wraith and the impossibility of their situation, he has rediscovered, redefined desperation.
And isn't this just another aspect in the understanding of it? Sheppard between him and the wall, their bodies barely touching, touches faint and fleeting, as though that can excuse any of this? It only occurred to me after I'd declared a fiddling embargo that this scene was supposed to be set in the lab. My colour for this scene is a sterile white, and I wanted the lab to symbolize that. Coming back to it, though, I like how it works sandwiched between the two alternaverse scenes before and after, because you can almost read them straight off as three bits of one sex scene. Just, skewed a little. Which is kind of cool.
Sheppard kisses him hungrily, high, frantic sounds rising in his throat. Rodney's fingers tremble as he doesn't quite hold on, doesn't quite cup Sheppard's face or run a hand up his chest, heat and breath and a world still between them.
Symbolism, oh yes. When I wrote this, I meant it literally -- they really aren't touching in the pictures in my head. But I guess it also means more than that, with Rodney figuring out that he can have what he wants, if he's just brave enough to accept it. And as of yet, he still isn't. He's still somewhere else, with that guy that looks just like the one he's kissing. It's ironical, see, that the alternaverse was so dangerous, and at the same time so much safer.
*
'You never were one to beat around the bush,' John says after. He lies with his head resting on his fist, running the other hand slowly over Rodney's chest, shoulders, arms, stomach, tracing the planes of his body and the contours of his face.
'Tell me,' Rodney murmurs, drowsy, content, captivated.
'After the mission to Proculus,' John says, smirking slightly at Rodney's obvious distaste. 'You said it was your duty to protect me from myself.'
'I was angry,' Rodney says.
'You were jealous,' John corrects, looking smug. 'Nothing happened, but there was no telling you. You always hated it when I...' he trails off and it's startling how his eyes can change, how that changes his face. He hooks a leg over Rodney's, an arm over his chest, and lowers his head to Rodney's shoulder. 'I missed you,' he whispers.
Rodney strokes his back, staring at the ceiling.
I like this scene, the way they both know it isn't really real, but how they're both more than happy to act out the fantasy.
~
Just as Rodney has always wanted John Sheppard, he's always known that it can't happen; knew that before the fact of his wanting him.
It can't happen, and yet it did, somewhere else, not that long ago. He wonders how that changed things for them. He wonders if, somehow, it changed everything. I'm not saying that it did, but that would be one of the more glaring differences between their worlds. Also, at this stage, he's so far in he's grasping for anything that'll get him back out again
And he's afraid.
It can't happen. This is still the truth. (Though not the only one).
Truth being what you make of it, and all. The bracketed sentence was a late addition. It's probably very Bad and Wrong to admit this, but it was inspired by a lyric ("It's like how you shrugged when you knew the truth was the only way out/ But not the only way") from the song 'If I Wrote You', from lierdumoa's vid, which I love immensely. I think it adds a bit of necessary hope to threads that were getting impossibly tangled up in the angst.
*
The Wraith are coming, Teyla had said, returning from Geratha. Two days out, maybe less. The only reason I put Teyla in here is just as a reminder that things were exactly the same up to some indefinable point where their universes split. They still made contact with the Athosians, still woke the Wraith and had to take her people in. She's still with them, fighting for them.
'It's time for you to go,' John is saying. His voice is steady but he won't look at Rodney, won't meet his eyes. 'Do what you have to do, and then go.'
'You have to leave, too,' Rodney says. 'John, you have to leave, too,' because maybe he doesn't know him as well as he assumes, but maybe he does.
'Promise me you're going to run,' he says, turning cold somewhere deep inside.
'We're running,' John says, and he looks tired and a little sick, but Rodney believes him because he wants to.
~
One of my main concerns before posting was the chronology of the story. I was fairly confident that people would get the parallel universe thing, but the order is, well, there's no pattern. The alternaverse scenes slot in where they best add to the 'real' universe scenes. And the real universe scenes are told in order, but often things have happened between them that I just haven't explained. John and Rodney could've still been out on the balcony while they were kissing and not-touching, because I never said the setting had changed, or that time had passed. Same thing here. It's a couple of hours after that kiss, from which Rodney ran away and hid. And John's just tracked him down. Ultimately I don't think it matters that much, but it makes me realize how differently I see it to how people are probably reading it.
Sheppard sits down next to Rodney on the pier, crossing his legs and resting his arms loosely on his knees. The lights from the city shine brightly behind them, but in front there is nothing but darkness and stars. I don't really like that -- too clumsy.
'Do you know,' he asks after a long moment, shaking his head, 'how weird it feels to be jealous of yourself?' This is probably my favourite sentence in the whole thing. It just seems to me to be such a desperately honest thing to say.
He says, 'Frankly, Rodney, I think I have more to be worried about here. So maybe you could tell me exactly what it is you're afraid of?' I find it really tough to avoid the gay-in-the-military issue altogether. It makes sense to me that it would be at least one aspect of the decision on John's part.
Rodney thinks about not answering, only to realise he's already talking. 'What if,' he's saying, 'what if I was distracted and that's why? What if I was too busy begging you not to fly a nuke into a hiveship to notice... to notice something important? What if I was too worried about you to think? So worried I couldn't think. John...' he says, pleading, but there, yes: it's already too late.
The downfall of Rodney McKay. The fear of everything he could lose is still there, but he's just about to figure out that he's past kidding himself that he can actually physically exist without it.
*
So this is where I rub the dirt off the first scene, and show it to you true. Since writing the first scene, it was always my intention to go back to it and shine light on it from a different angle. I've tried that method before, and bottle_of_shine does it particularly eloquently in Defining the Fall. Don't think I managed that level of gut-punch here, but it does help with the sense of unraveling the mystery, I think.
Rodney asks John to run, but two days later, coming to find out why no one else is heading for the gate, he finds him geared up in his old Lantean uniform and combat vest, armed to the teeth and fastening more ammunition to himself as Rodney watches in horror.
John speaks in words -- words that cut and wound and strike him in places that weren't vulnerable before. But John also speaks in other ways, and as impacts shake the room and explosions boom loud and too close, Rodney realises what he's doing.
He hates himself for the moment he silently agreed that he doesn't belong here, but it's too late now because he's already running. Running. Running, I've never been happy with this repetition, but it felt worse without it, so I left it in and he can't make himself stop.
At the gate, an intense flash of light washes over his back, and as he turns to see, the shockwave knocks him sprawling into the event horizon. That being the facility and alternaJohn going up in flames. I never was sure if that was clear.
=
When Rodney falls through the event horizon: the grating-mellow sound of silver-green-grey eyes; the blood-red and sunrise gold of their lovemaking; the twisting, fibrous shape of the explosion; the pale blue of his understanding; the bright white of his grief.
It goes on forever; it's over too soon.
~
'What if,' Rodney says, 'you died?'
The words stand heavy between them, and Rodney remembers a man watching him run away, cradling a P90, hair being pulled about as the air rushed to another explosion, flames blazing blood-red and sunrise gold behind him. I can't say why I repeated the colours of their lovemaking here exactly, except that it seemed to complete some circle.
*
I don't write sex all that much. I'm not even sure if this qualifies as NC-17 (I suspect it probably doesn't). But I wanted to have a go at the meaningful kind of pr0n that I admire so much in mmmchelle's writing. It's a first time for Rodney, and for John it's just everything else. It seemed right to show how they are together, intimate like this.
John is heat against Rodney's back, he's sweat and breath and movement and life.
He holds Rodney tightly, legs drawn up to Rodney's, arms tight around him, pressing kisses to his neck, his shoulder, and rubbing himself with slow desperate shudders between Rodney's cheeks. Rodney reaches back to clasp John's thigh, trying to bring him closer -- they're touching everywhere they can be but it isn't enough. He's so hard he aches, and he wants to touch himself but that won't be enough, either. It can't happen but it is happening and Rodney wants it so badly he barely dares breath.
Fingers, fumbles, a huff of frustrated laughter and then a moan, long and deep. John moves slowly within him, whispering brokenly into his skin, and it's not enough, it's not enough, but it's too much, and his toes curl up, mouth opening to silence as he comes uncontrollably.
Just before he comes, John whispers, I forgot how to breathe without you. That bloody line. I must have rewritten it about fifteen times. How would John say "I love you" without actually saying it, and in fact have it mean everything that just "I love you" doesn't say? One of the things I hate to see most in other people's writing is sappiness and melodrama. Stands to reason, then, that I'm a frequent offender. I think the line I settled on here is fine, so long as the emotional build-up has been sufficient, but that's hard to tell after several hundred re-readings. Quite a few people have commented that that line hit them particularly hard, though, so that's encouraging.
That's when Rodney knows he has to go home.
~
'What if you died?' Rodney says. 'John, I can't... I wouldn't be able to. If I lost you. I couldn't...'
But the word and the breath and the thought evaporate as John puts his mouth to Rodney's, breathes him in, gives him breath.
*
'I'm not yours,' John says. 'I never was.'
It's an odd truth, true only through a trick of the light. (In fact Rodney thinks it might be something to do with the unified effects of gravitational waves and quantum fluctuations, which he should be very excited about, but isn't). Rodney loves John more than a possible grand unified theory of everything ever. I so knew it all along.
Rodney wonders what the truth will look like when he goes home.
~
'Please,' Rodney breathes in between kisses, 'Don't,' and, 'Please,' and, 'John.'
'I can't lose you,' he says.
John says, 'You're an idiot,' and hooks a hand around Rodney's neck, keeping him from pulling away. 'Shut up,' he gasps, 'You're an idiot.' I really like the idea of Rodney being afraid of what his distraction with John could mean for every single person on Atlantis. It's a legitimate fear, but in the end, the distraction's going to be there whether or not they're together, because you can't just stop caring like that. So obviously all he can do is give in. Hurray!
Some part of Rodney is singing, another part is still resisting, but mostly he's realising that finally, finally, the touch is real. You know, I don't know what this means. I have a couple of half-baked ideas about him finally being able to let go of alternaJohn, and truly reach out and touch real John. Or that he's finally let his fears go enough that he finally allows himself to really feel it. But, yeah, I don't really have a clear idea. It just came out. Suggestions on a postcard?
*
'I'm not yours,' John says, and Rodney runs home.
=
On their next mission, Rodney remembers nothing from their trip through subspace except the impression of a plant, continually wilting and blooming, dried brown leaves furling out and turning green, to shrink back down and die, to unfurl again, over and over. It's like the pulsing of a heart, he thinks. Like breath in a lung. I love this para. Can I say that about my own writing? I just think it says more than a side of prose could about Rodney's state of mind, where he's at and where he's getting, and where John fits into all of that. I'm very pleased with the way it came out.
He looks over at John and smiles ever so slightly, a feeling of relief pushing tentatively at him. Again, I'm not exactly sure why it's relief he's feeling. It's another thing that just came out as I was writing. And yet, it just feels right to me. I dunno. My brain is very... special sometimes.
He breathes in. In a way, I feel like this is a pretty unresolved place to leave it. I toyed with linking things back to the title, some comments about 'allowing the edge to fall away from him', but really, I think this says everything as is.
As I said above, this is my favourite scene. Which is cool, because it's what you take away.
To round things out -- I was listening to the soundtrack from the film Serenity while writing. If anyone's interested, I can upload.