.fic: Rodney McKay, Godhead (McKay/Sheppard PG13) 3.3
Title: Rodney McKay, Godhead
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating/Warning: PG13ish? Very bizarre, possibly crackfic-like.
Disclaimer: Not mine, which disappoints me profoundly.
Advertisements: um... ummm... sanctified!Rodney? For wordclaim50 challenge #11 (Humor).
Episode One
Episode Two
Notes: And now, the conclusion. Written at headlong--and, dare I say it, blinding--speed for newkidfan, who has had a rough day.
CHAPTER THREE
“Save us! O High Macay, save us!”
“Please spare your servants!”
“You can spare them any time now, Rodney, really. Any time now.”
“Shut up. Being omnipotent isn’t as easy as it looks.”
Rodney shifted from foot to foot, glancing back and forth between John and the terrified Imdari. Over the unending rain, John could hear the wasp-like hum of Wraith darts circling overhead.
“The trees will protect us, O High and Beneficent Macay,” Cahula said, bowing yet again. The priests behind her did likewise and the Imdari outside collapsed in unison. “The Wraith birds cannot easily sense us through them,” Cahula continued, her voice muffled, “or come through; they will circle, though, until they find a way down.”
“Or they carpet bomb up the entire forest,” John said under his breath.
“The vegetation is blocking the Wraith sensors,” Rodney said impatiently and not at all softly. “They’re registering plant, not human, life. We’ll be fine so long as everyone stays inside and no one does anything stupid.”
“Sensors?” Cahula looked up, the tattoos on her face creasing in puzzlement. “I know not what these are, but I do know the Wraith will come if you do not protect us, O Mighty Lord. It has been long since they have come for us; they will be hungry.”
“Right,” Rodney sighed. “Okay. Col - I mean, my consort. Do you have a plan?”
“Not a one,” John said. And this? Would be a whole hell of a lot more satisfying if there weren’t a handful of darts shrieking around above the canopy. Rodney’s mouth was tight with annoyance, and he was very obviously trying not to fidget, which would have not been a particularly dignified (not to mention godly) thing to do. Cahula, the priests, and the rest of the Imdari had pulled themselves up and were watching him with quiet desperation, with utter faith, which John had a hard time... well, believing.
Distant cries echoed from somewhere near the settlement walls.
“Trouble?” Teyla asked.
“Scouts have reported,” Cahula said after a tense moment, “and the Wraith have found an opening in the canopy, near the Eye. They will be here soon.”
“Not good,” Rodney muttered. “Okay... your P90’s out. Teyla’s is out. The only weapons we have around here are spears; not that those are going to do a lot of good against Wraith weaponry.”
“What about that Ancient device?”
“The what?” Rodney snapped.
John shrugged. “The piece of Ancient technology you mentioned, the one you said wasn’t working properly? Maybe you could fix it.”
“And maybe I could totally waste the last few minutes of my life,” Rodney hissed. “We don’t even know what it does. It could... it could be an Ancient rice cooker, for all we know.”
“Don’t say that too loudly, God. People might hear.” Significant glance in the direction of Cahula and the rest of the Imdari, who were watching anxiously.
Rodney glared, but relented. “Okay, it’s worth a shot. Teyla should probably start getting the Imdari together and find some place to hide in the very likely event this doesn’t work.” He nodded. “Yes. Okay. I’ve got it. Cahula, fetch... I mean, bring unto me my holy toolkit. Iahu - ” one of the previously nameless priests stepped forward “ - I need my holy thigh holster and sidearm.”
“As you command, O All-Seeing and Thrice-Blessed Macay, so do I most humbly obey.” Iahu smirked triumphantly at the other priest, and darted out.
“You didn’t want the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?” John asked.
“You know, you are a really disobedient and blasphemous consort, you know that?” Rodney adjusted his field vest and the jewelry attached to it. “For that, your punishment is to guard me while I try to save all our lives. Again.”
“As you command, O All-Seeing and Thrice-Blessed Macay.” John jumped down into the mud outside the hut, bypassing the ramp and the knot of Imdari gathered around it and pointedly ignoring Rodney’s satisfied grunt. Rodney followed at a somewhat statelier pace. The Imdari parted like water in front of him.
“Do you think saviors are unionized?” Rodney asked as they squelched down the path leading to the shrine where the Ancient device was kept. “Because we really should be.”
* * *
“What is the Great Macay doing, O Holy Consort?” Cahula whispered to John.
“The Great Macay works in mysterious ways,” John said seriously. And Rodney really did, he thought.
Rodney was hunched under the control panel, crystals and wires distributed over its surface. The ZPM glowed softly in its metal cage, its hum masked by the low, fervent muttering emanating from beneath the console.
The high whine of the darts still intruded, coming at closer intervals now, the Wraith fine-tuning what had to be a mess of sensor readings, each pass giving them more accurate data. Occasionally the treetops shivered as a dart passed low over the canopy, which frightened Cahula and Iahu terribly. It didn’t do much for John’s peace of mind, either, and it took a lot to keep from looking back over his shoulder to check Rodney’s progress.
“Looks like a weapons array,” Rodney was saying to himself, low and distracted, the way it got when only Rodney and technology existed. “Massive electromagnetic pulse... would disable any ship or weaponry... matter of bridging this...”
“Will the Great Macay save us?” Iahu materialized at John’s elbow, face drawn and pale. A Wraith transporter hummed nearby, the narrow white beams of it sweeping the ground - that had been happening, too, and Iahu had nearly run the first time and would have been caught if John hadn’t tackled him. The transporter winked out, and a moment later the high whine of the dart’s engines began to fade.
The rest of the village was mercifully silent; Teyla must have persuaded the other villagers to stay inside. Thank God for that, John thought. The actual God, not Rodney.
“He will save us?” Iahu asked again.
“Sure he will. He’s... Well, he’s sort of helped me out before,” John said. Not even close to an adequate description of what was going on between the two of them, but he hadn’t even worked things out for himself yet. “He’ll come through.”
And, yeah, he did believe that. Suddenly the Imdari’s faith, bizarre as it was, made a lot more sense.
“Of course he will,” Cahula said firmly. “Have faith, Iahu.”
“Got it!”
John did turn around this time and saw Rodney pulling himself to his feet, relief and satisfaction on his face.
“It is a weapons system,” he said. Cahula and Iahu stared in incomprehension at this pronouncement. John nodded knowingly.
“Matters of the divine,” Cahula whispered to Iahu, who nodded reverently.
“The Anc - I mean, my people installed this thousands of years ago, probably during the first Wraith attacks. But some time between then and now someone must have moved the array or done something to break it.”
“And you’ve fixed it,” John said.
“Do you think I’d be wasting my time talking to you if I hadn’t?” Rodney snapped. “Of course I’ve fixed it.”
“Praise Macay!” Cahula and Iahu said in unison.
“You might want to wait to see if this works,” Rodney told them. He tapped a few buttons, and the four of them watched as the console flickered to life. The glow from the ZPM brightened to gasps of awe from Cahula and Iahu, and even John had to admit it was pretty impressive, all technological-looking and mysterious and Rodney did look sort of amazing, face tight with concentration and finger flying over the controls, and there was that goddamned humming of the dart coming back -
And then there was this... this sound. Only it wasn’t a sound, which made no sense, maybe a vibration, John thought - yeah, a vibration like being inside a giant bell - and obviously something was happening because the whine of the dart spiked in pitch, rising on a note of something that sounded a lot like pain, and then it exploded.
Three more explosions in the distance - one of them far away, barely audible - and then silence.
“Did it work?” Rodney whispered.
“You’re the god; you tell me,” John said. He took a cautious step outside the shrine, Rodney’s sidearm at the ready - which was a ridiculous gesture, but better than nothing - and saw that, yes, those were shards of Wraith dart littering the mud in front of him. Nothing big enough for salvage and nothing recognizable.
“Damn,” he said quietly.
“I will not. I am a merciful god.” Rodney squished up next to John to inspect the wreckage and, this close, John could feel the tension in Rodney’s body, knew he’d still be buzzing with it later. Add the whole god complex and the throngs of worshipers likely waiting for him and he would be intolerable.
“The weapon’s essentially a generalized EM pulse,” Rodney told him after a moment, like anything other than ‘weapon’ would make sense to John. “It seems to operate on a frequency that’s especially devastating to the Wraith. Don’t know why or what that is, though, but when we get it back to Atlantis I can figure it out.”
“We’re going to have to talk about that,” John said, because this was coming close to the edges of their pre-departure agreement, Rodney’s divinity or not.
“What is there to talk about?” Rodney demanded. “I’m - oh, Cahula. Hello.”
Cahula and Iahu were standing there, and the rest of the Imdari were slowly filtering out of their huts to join them. Teyla ran up, smiling and relieved.
“Your priest, Tuahi, has just told me that the scouts from the forest have returned,” she told Cahula, “and they say the other Wraith ships have been destroyed.”
“Of course they have, Teyla Emmagan,” Cahula said calmly. “The weapon is functional again, and we thank you for your help, all three of you, but Rodney McKay especially.”
This was not the reaction John had been expecting. He’d been envisioning something involving more bowing and wailing, with sacrificial victims and maybe human flesh. And, maybe - just maybe - a slightly more comfortable hut.
And this was obviously not the reaction Rodney had been expecting, either.
“Ummm... what happened to the Most High and Most Beneficent?”
“I am sorry, Dr. McKay,” Cahula said, and she really did sound apologetic. “We must explain ourselves to you. You see, I am not a priestess - I am the leader of this village. Iahu and Tuahi are not priests; they are my sons, and Iahu will take my place when I am dead. We do worship the Ancients, you see, but not in the way you think... Not,” she corrected herself, “in the way we have led you to believe.”
“Since the Ancients left, very few people have come through the Eye,” Iahu said. “Many who came to trade, when they learned of our device claimed they could fix it in exchange for many things - the precious metals we can mine, dyes, even our own people. They never could, of course; they took what they wanted and left. And many times they would try to steal the crystal - the ZPM, as you call it - but we prevented that.”
“Until,” Cahula broke in, “we decided to trick those who would trick us.”
“And that’s where the god thing comes in, I’m guessing,” John said.
Cahula nodded. “We would tell one of the traders he or she was one of the Ancients returned, and destined to create a paradise for us. The visitors would have three days of feasting before we took them to the device and asked them to make it work. A sign of prophecy, we called it.”
“No one could, of course,” Tuahi added. “Some escaped, and many insisted they were not what we said. We let those ones go.”
“And those you see over there,” Cahula said, gesturing to a thicket of pikes and the skulls atop them, “are all the ones who tried and failed.”
And that was pretty damn crafty, John thought admiringly. You had to hand it to the Imdari, that was pretty damn crafty. Not to mention ruthless. He wondered briefly if they’d eaten the people who’d screwed them over, but didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know, to be honest.
“So you have the eternal gratitude of the Imdari,” Cahula said, turning to Rodney, and when she bowed there was no trace of mockery. “Though you may not be a god, or an Ancient returned, you have still given us paradise. The weapon of the Ancients will keep us safe for many years - until, the fates willing, the Wraith are defeated.”
“Well,” said Rodney, looking pleased.
* * *
So, after all of that, they didn’t get their ZPM.
Elizabeth had a few things to say about that, but she’d agreed with John that it was better to have three of her team return with no ZPM than to have their skulls decorating Imdari spears.
And Rodney, John thought, would have had a whole lot more to say about coming so close - so painfully painfully close - to finding a functional ZPM and not being able to get it after all, but he hadn’t. Maybe he’d resigned himself to never finding one, or maybe being told he wasn’t a deity after all had bruised him into silence, John didn’t know.
He didn’t seem unhappy, though, and with Rodney you could generally tell when he wasn’t happy about something. He’d gone through the post-op debriefing without any of his usual commentary, had let Beckett poke and prod him to make sure he hadn’t brought back any foreign pathogen without complaining about being subjected to Carson’s witch-doctoring, and had bypassed his lab, his flock of assistants, and pretty much anyone without saying anything about how he, Rodney McKay, had saved the day once again.
He hadn’t even mentioned it to John, and that was sort of worrying.
Eventually, John tracked him down in his quarters. Rodney met his “Can I come in?” with a cross “I’m asleep,” but let John in anyway.
“Long day, huh?” John flopped unceremoniously down on Rodney’s bed. Rodney grunted in protest, but didn’t move. He also didn’t answer John’s question.
“Y’know,” John said slowly, one hand playing carefully, thoughtfully across Rodney’s abdomen, “your most holy consort could do with a bit of... y’know, consorting right about now.”
And say what you want about Rodney McKay, he liked sex as much as the next man. Almost as much as John, which was gratifying, and occasionally John could pry a little bit of information out of him when Rodney was really gone with it and unable to censor himself.
Rodney huffed softly, right hand covering John’s, stilling it.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s just... did you actually think I’d take the ZPM when I promised you I wouldn’t?”
Wow. No good way to answer that question. Because yeah, he’d thought that Rodney would, but then if it hadn’t meant the Imdari’s lives John would have been all for it. It had, though, and Rodney hadn’t once tried to wheedle the Imdari out of it, or had even mentioned it once Cahula let them go.
He said this, and Rodney nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s frustrating, you know?” Rodney stared at the ceiling, not really talking to John. Not talking to himself, even, addressing some middle distance. “We’ve come so close and come up empty, and we’re going to need a ZPM one day. One day soon.”
“It’s a big galaxy,” John told him. “We’ll find one.”
“Yeah.” Not really agreement, but it was better than nothing, and when John moved closer, body half over Rodney’s, Rodney didn’t protest.
“So, uh, O Most Omnipotent God...How ‘bout we get these clothes off?”
“I can do that.” Rodney obligingly sat up, already reaching for the hem of his shirt.
“Amen,” John said, and helped him pull it off.
-end-
Post-fic notes: Well, that was fun. Now to whip the WaT/N&A fic into shape.
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating/Warning: PG13ish? Very bizarre, possibly crackfic-like.
Disclaimer: Not mine, which disappoints me profoundly.
Advertisements: um... ummm... sanctified!Rodney? For wordclaim50 challenge #11 (Humor).
Episode One
Episode Two
Notes: And now, the conclusion. Written at headlong--and, dare I say it, blinding--speed for newkidfan, who has had a rough day.
CHAPTER THREE
“Save us! O High Macay, save us!”
“Please spare your servants!”
“You can spare them any time now, Rodney, really. Any time now.”
“Shut up. Being omnipotent isn’t as easy as it looks.”
Rodney shifted from foot to foot, glancing back and forth between John and the terrified Imdari. Over the unending rain, John could hear the wasp-like hum of Wraith darts circling overhead.
“The trees will protect us, O High and Beneficent Macay,” Cahula said, bowing yet again. The priests behind her did likewise and the Imdari outside collapsed in unison. “The Wraith birds cannot easily sense us through them,” Cahula continued, her voice muffled, “or come through; they will circle, though, until they find a way down.”
“Or they carpet bomb up the entire forest,” John said under his breath.
“The vegetation is blocking the Wraith sensors,” Rodney said impatiently and not at all softly. “They’re registering plant, not human, life. We’ll be fine so long as everyone stays inside and no one does anything stupid.”
“Sensors?” Cahula looked up, the tattoos on her face creasing in puzzlement. “I know not what these are, but I do know the Wraith will come if you do not protect us, O Mighty Lord. It has been long since they have come for us; they will be hungry.”
“Right,” Rodney sighed. “Okay. Col - I mean, my consort. Do you have a plan?”
“Not a one,” John said. And this? Would be a whole hell of a lot more satisfying if there weren’t a handful of darts shrieking around above the canopy. Rodney’s mouth was tight with annoyance, and he was very obviously trying not to fidget, which would have not been a particularly dignified (not to mention godly) thing to do. Cahula, the priests, and the rest of the Imdari had pulled themselves up and were watching him with quiet desperation, with utter faith, which John had a hard time... well, believing.
Distant cries echoed from somewhere near the settlement walls.
“Trouble?” Teyla asked.
“Scouts have reported,” Cahula said after a tense moment, “and the Wraith have found an opening in the canopy, near the Eye. They will be here soon.”
“Not good,” Rodney muttered. “Okay... your P90’s out. Teyla’s is out. The only weapons we have around here are spears; not that those are going to do a lot of good against Wraith weaponry.”
“What about that Ancient device?”
“The what?” Rodney snapped.
John shrugged. “The piece of Ancient technology you mentioned, the one you said wasn’t working properly? Maybe you could fix it.”
“And maybe I could totally waste the last few minutes of my life,” Rodney hissed. “We don’t even know what it does. It could... it could be an Ancient rice cooker, for all we know.”
“Don’t say that too loudly, God. People might hear.” Significant glance in the direction of Cahula and the rest of the Imdari, who were watching anxiously.
Rodney glared, but relented. “Okay, it’s worth a shot. Teyla should probably start getting the Imdari together and find some place to hide in the very likely event this doesn’t work.” He nodded. “Yes. Okay. I’ve got it. Cahula, fetch... I mean, bring unto me my holy toolkit. Iahu - ” one of the previously nameless priests stepped forward “ - I need my holy thigh holster and sidearm.”
“As you command, O All-Seeing and Thrice-Blessed Macay, so do I most humbly obey.” Iahu smirked triumphantly at the other priest, and darted out.
“You didn’t want the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?” John asked.
“You know, you are a really disobedient and blasphemous consort, you know that?” Rodney adjusted his field vest and the jewelry attached to it. “For that, your punishment is to guard me while I try to save all our lives. Again.”
“As you command, O All-Seeing and Thrice-Blessed Macay.” John jumped down into the mud outside the hut, bypassing the ramp and the knot of Imdari gathered around it and pointedly ignoring Rodney’s satisfied grunt. Rodney followed at a somewhat statelier pace. The Imdari parted like water in front of him.
“Do you think saviors are unionized?” Rodney asked as they squelched down the path leading to the shrine where the Ancient device was kept. “Because we really should be.”
* * *
“What is the Great Macay doing, O Holy Consort?” Cahula whispered to John.
“The Great Macay works in mysterious ways,” John said seriously. And Rodney really did, he thought.
Rodney was hunched under the control panel, crystals and wires distributed over its surface. The ZPM glowed softly in its metal cage, its hum masked by the low, fervent muttering emanating from beneath the console.
The high whine of the darts still intruded, coming at closer intervals now, the Wraith fine-tuning what had to be a mess of sensor readings, each pass giving them more accurate data. Occasionally the treetops shivered as a dart passed low over the canopy, which frightened Cahula and Iahu terribly. It didn’t do much for John’s peace of mind, either, and it took a lot to keep from looking back over his shoulder to check Rodney’s progress.
“Looks like a weapons array,” Rodney was saying to himself, low and distracted, the way it got when only Rodney and technology existed. “Massive electromagnetic pulse... would disable any ship or weaponry... matter of bridging this...”
“Will the Great Macay save us?” Iahu materialized at John’s elbow, face drawn and pale. A Wraith transporter hummed nearby, the narrow white beams of it sweeping the ground - that had been happening, too, and Iahu had nearly run the first time and would have been caught if John hadn’t tackled him. The transporter winked out, and a moment later the high whine of the dart’s engines began to fade.
The rest of the village was mercifully silent; Teyla must have persuaded the other villagers to stay inside. Thank God for that, John thought. The actual God, not Rodney.
“He will save us?” Iahu asked again.
“Sure he will. He’s... Well, he’s sort of helped me out before,” John said. Not even close to an adequate description of what was going on between the two of them, but he hadn’t even worked things out for himself yet. “He’ll come through.”
And, yeah, he did believe that. Suddenly the Imdari’s faith, bizarre as it was, made a lot more sense.
“Of course he will,” Cahula said firmly. “Have faith, Iahu.”
“Got it!”
John did turn around this time and saw Rodney pulling himself to his feet, relief and satisfaction on his face.
“It is a weapons system,” he said. Cahula and Iahu stared in incomprehension at this pronouncement. John nodded knowingly.
“Matters of the divine,” Cahula whispered to Iahu, who nodded reverently.
“The Anc - I mean, my people installed this thousands of years ago, probably during the first Wraith attacks. But some time between then and now someone must have moved the array or done something to break it.”
“And you’ve fixed it,” John said.
“Do you think I’d be wasting my time talking to you if I hadn’t?” Rodney snapped. “Of course I’ve fixed it.”
“Praise Macay!” Cahula and Iahu said in unison.
“You might want to wait to see if this works,” Rodney told them. He tapped a few buttons, and the four of them watched as the console flickered to life. The glow from the ZPM brightened to gasps of awe from Cahula and Iahu, and even John had to admit it was pretty impressive, all technological-looking and mysterious and Rodney did look sort of amazing, face tight with concentration and finger flying over the controls, and there was that goddamned humming of the dart coming back -
And then there was this... this sound. Only it wasn’t a sound, which made no sense, maybe a vibration, John thought - yeah, a vibration like being inside a giant bell - and obviously something was happening because the whine of the dart spiked in pitch, rising on a note of something that sounded a lot like pain, and then it exploded.
Three more explosions in the distance - one of them far away, barely audible - and then silence.
“Did it work?” Rodney whispered.
“You’re the god; you tell me,” John said. He took a cautious step outside the shrine, Rodney’s sidearm at the ready - which was a ridiculous gesture, but better than nothing - and saw that, yes, those were shards of Wraith dart littering the mud in front of him. Nothing big enough for salvage and nothing recognizable.
“Damn,” he said quietly.
“I will not. I am a merciful god.” Rodney squished up next to John to inspect the wreckage and, this close, John could feel the tension in Rodney’s body, knew he’d still be buzzing with it later. Add the whole god complex and the throngs of worshipers likely waiting for him and he would be intolerable.
“The weapon’s essentially a generalized EM pulse,” Rodney told him after a moment, like anything other than ‘weapon’ would make sense to John. “It seems to operate on a frequency that’s especially devastating to the Wraith. Don’t know why or what that is, though, but when we get it back to Atlantis I can figure it out.”
“We’re going to have to talk about that,” John said, because this was coming close to the edges of their pre-departure agreement, Rodney’s divinity or not.
“What is there to talk about?” Rodney demanded. “I’m - oh, Cahula. Hello.”
Cahula and Iahu were standing there, and the rest of the Imdari were slowly filtering out of their huts to join them. Teyla ran up, smiling and relieved.
“Your priest, Tuahi, has just told me that the scouts from the forest have returned,” she told Cahula, “and they say the other Wraith ships have been destroyed.”
“Of course they have, Teyla Emmagan,” Cahula said calmly. “The weapon is functional again, and we thank you for your help, all three of you, but Rodney McKay especially.”
This was not the reaction John had been expecting. He’d been envisioning something involving more bowing and wailing, with sacrificial victims and maybe human flesh. And, maybe - just maybe - a slightly more comfortable hut.
And this was obviously not the reaction Rodney had been expecting, either.
“Ummm... what happened to the Most High and Most Beneficent?”
“I am sorry, Dr. McKay,” Cahula said, and she really did sound apologetic. “We must explain ourselves to you. You see, I am not a priestess - I am the leader of this village. Iahu and Tuahi are not priests; they are my sons, and Iahu will take my place when I am dead. We do worship the Ancients, you see, but not in the way you think... Not,” she corrected herself, “in the way we have led you to believe.”
“Since the Ancients left, very few people have come through the Eye,” Iahu said. “Many who came to trade, when they learned of our device claimed they could fix it in exchange for many things - the precious metals we can mine, dyes, even our own people. They never could, of course; they took what they wanted and left. And many times they would try to steal the crystal - the ZPM, as you call it - but we prevented that.”
“Until,” Cahula broke in, “we decided to trick those who would trick us.”
“And that’s where the god thing comes in, I’m guessing,” John said.
Cahula nodded. “We would tell one of the traders he or she was one of the Ancients returned, and destined to create a paradise for us. The visitors would have three days of feasting before we took them to the device and asked them to make it work. A sign of prophecy, we called it.”
“No one could, of course,” Tuahi added. “Some escaped, and many insisted they were not what we said. We let those ones go.”
“And those you see over there,” Cahula said, gesturing to a thicket of pikes and the skulls atop them, “are all the ones who tried and failed.”
And that was pretty damn crafty, John thought admiringly. You had to hand it to the Imdari, that was pretty damn crafty. Not to mention ruthless. He wondered briefly if they’d eaten the people who’d screwed them over, but didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know, to be honest.
“So you have the eternal gratitude of the Imdari,” Cahula said, turning to Rodney, and when she bowed there was no trace of mockery. “Though you may not be a god, or an Ancient returned, you have still given us paradise. The weapon of the Ancients will keep us safe for many years - until, the fates willing, the Wraith are defeated.”
“Well,” said Rodney, looking pleased.
* * *
So, after all of that, they didn’t get their ZPM.
Elizabeth had a few things to say about that, but she’d agreed with John that it was better to have three of her team return with no ZPM than to have their skulls decorating Imdari spears.
And Rodney, John thought, would have had a whole lot more to say about coming so close - so painfully painfully close - to finding a functional ZPM and not being able to get it after all, but he hadn’t. Maybe he’d resigned himself to never finding one, or maybe being told he wasn’t a deity after all had bruised him into silence, John didn’t know.
He didn’t seem unhappy, though, and with Rodney you could generally tell when he wasn’t happy about something. He’d gone through the post-op debriefing without any of his usual commentary, had let Beckett poke and prod him to make sure he hadn’t brought back any foreign pathogen without complaining about being subjected to Carson’s witch-doctoring, and had bypassed his lab, his flock of assistants, and pretty much anyone without saying anything about how he, Rodney McKay, had saved the day once again.
He hadn’t even mentioned it to John, and that was sort of worrying.
Eventually, John tracked him down in his quarters. Rodney met his “Can I come in?” with a cross “I’m asleep,” but let John in anyway.
“Long day, huh?” John flopped unceremoniously down on Rodney’s bed. Rodney grunted in protest, but didn’t move. He also didn’t answer John’s question.
“Y’know,” John said slowly, one hand playing carefully, thoughtfully across Rodney’s abdomen, “your most holy consort could do with a bit of... y’know, consorting right about now.”
And say what you want about Rodney McKay, he liked sex as much as the next man. Almost as much as John, which was gratifying, and occasionally John could pry a little bit of information out of him when Rodney was really gone with it and unable to censor himself.
Rodney huffed softly, right hand covering John’s, stilling it.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“It’s just... did you actually think I’d take the ZPM when I promised you I wouldn’t?”
Wow. No good way to answer that question. Because yeah, he’d thought that Rodney would, but then if it hadn’t meant the Imdari’s lives John would have been all for it. It had, though, and Rodney hadn’t once tried to wheedle the Imdari out of it, or had even mentioned it once Cahula let them go.
He said this, and Rodney nodded thoughtfully.
“It’s frustrating, you know?” Rodney stared at the ceiling, not really talking to John. Not talking to himself, even, addressing some middle distance. “We’ve come so close and come up empty, and we’re going to need a ZPM one day. One day soon.”
“It’s a big galaxy,” John told him. “We’ll find one.”
“Yeah.” Not really agreement, but it was better than nothing, and when John moved closer, body half over Rodney’s, Rodney didn’t protest.
“So, uh, O Most Omnipotent God...How ‘bout we get these clothes off?”
“I can do that.” Rodney obligingly sat up, already reaching for the hem of his shirt.
“Amen,” John said, and helped him pull it off.
-end-
Post-fic notes: Well, that was fun. Now to whip the WaT/N&A fic into shape.