Fic: Learning Wesley (FRT, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce/Evan Lorne)
Title: Learning Wesley
Author: Allyndra
Crossover: AtS/Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Wesley Wyndham-Pryce/Evan Lorne
Rating: FRT
Spoilers: Set at the beginning of SGA Season 2 and shortly after Deep Down for AtS. Spoilers through Runner for Atlantis and at least Sleep Tight for Angel.
Disclaimer: If I owned even one of these shows, I would be a happy, happy girl, but if I owned both, they'd have to lock me up for my insane giddiness.
Summary: What if the SGC were the ones trying to recruit Wesley, not Wolfram and Hart? What if they succeeded?
Note: Written for bethynyc for the Crossover round of maleslashminis. Her request was for Wes on a gate team with no character death or BDSM.
Evan was absurdly grateful that he wasn’t the only new member joining the Atlantis expedition. If he was going to be awkward and lost - and he’d been stationed on enough bases to know he would feel that way at first, no matter how much he’d wanted the assignment - at least he wouldn’t be awkward and lost by himself.
There were a handful of other military officers joining the mission with him; the Daedalus was transporting four from the Army, six from the Navy, and five counting Evan from the Air Force. He hoped the CO was a good diplomat, because integrating everyone was going to be a bitch if he couldn’t talk them into cooperating. Besides the military additions, there were several civilians on board: a pair of French chemists who goggled at Hermiod any time they caught sight of him, an Indian physicist who wore her uniform with such grace that he hoped she’d packed a sari to wear off-duty, a Russian engineer who kept trying to take apart bits of equipment without authorization, and an English linguist with a large scar across his throat.
Evan knew everyone who was joining the Atlantis expedition by sight, but he’d only met the military officers and the English linguist officially. The officers had saluted to his face and given him doubtful looks behind his back, just as he’d expected, but the linguist had been a surprise. Evan had been walking back to his quarters after lunch and had nearly crashed into the man, who was walking down the corridor while reading a leather-bound book.
“Whoa,” Evan said, pressing a hand to the man’s chest. “Maybe watching where you’re walking on the highly advanced and dangerous spaceship might be a good idea, huh?”
The Englishman took a half step back, less like he’d stumbled and more like he was settling into a fighting stance. With his left hand, he brought his book up to shield his throat and chest, while right curled into a low fist. Then he’d blinked at Evan, taking note of him for the first time, and he dropped his more obvious defenses.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. He held out his right hand, no longer clenched, and added, “Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.”
Evan took his hand and shook it, feeling calluses that hadn’t come from books. “Major Evan Lorne,” he said.
Wesley cocked an eyebrow at him. “Would you be offended if I called you Evan?” he asked.
“Do you have a problem with rank and authority?” Evan asked.
“I never have before,” Wesley said, “but I’m trying.” He’d given Evan a nod and stepped around him, continuing on his way. When Evan glanced over his shoulder, Wesley was already engrossed in his book again.
***
Colonel Sheppard, Evan discovered, was not a diplomat, but he was a hell of a delegator. Within hours of coming on duty, Evan found himself saddled with half of the training duties, more than half of the paperwork, and a boatload of administrative jobs. It wasn’t exactly what he thought he’d be doing in the mythical city of Atlantis, but Evan hadn’t lasted this long in the military by complaining.
He took the training roster to his quarters with him and looked it over while stretched on his bed. His feet hung off the end, and he wondered if miniature beds were how the Atlantis folks hazed newcomers. The most onerous duty he’d found on the list so far was supervising the Marines’ PT. Maybe they’d be more willing to accept him since they’d had an Air Force CO for a year already.
He flipped a page and groaned. He was wrong; there were worse duties in store for him than making sure the Marines stayed in shape. Sheppard had put him in charge of training the civilians in weapons and survival. He understood the need, but there was little Evan wanted less than to teach people whose life’s work was in labs and libraries how to fire guns and dig latrines.
He decided to get the hardest part out of the way first and scheduled weapons training before the sections on first aid and wilderness survival. Hell, a lot of scientists were pacifists, so he knew what he was taking on in teaching them to use guns. The first group scheduled was the batch who came in on the Daedalus with him; the people who’d been here from the start had been learning to protect themselves as a matter of necessity.
The first day went just as badly as he’d feared. The Russian engineer had done spectacularly well at dismantling and reassembling his gun, but had missed the target every single time he’d fired. One of the French chemists was terrified of firing a weapon, while the other had lit up with a frightening glee at the thought of becoming John Rambo. The Indian physicist had been clumsy holding a gun, but had shown a firm determination to learn what Lorne had to teach.
Jayanti, the physicist, was leaving with a look of sheer relief on her face when Wesley arrived for his session. “Good afternoon, Evan,” he said, his smile friendly but cool. It was a little jarring to hear his first name. Everyone else in the city seemed perfectly happy to call him Lorne or Major.
“Is it still afternoon? It feels like it should be midnight,” Evan said with a grin. “Welcome to weapons training.”
The safety and maintenance lessons went well, and Evan found himself admiring Wesley’s hands as they fit the pieces of his gun back together. There was just something attractive about competence, and Wesley’s fingers were nimble and confident. When he laid the fully assembled gun on the table, Evan smiled his approval. And then had to hide a grimace as he realized what came next. The shooting range had been the bane of every lesson today.
But when Evan stepped up behind Wesley to teach him how to shoot, he found Wesley’s body already in the proper stance, his arm raised with the right blend of tension and give, his hand steady as he aimed. He fired, and the tight cluster of holes was a thing of beauty. Evan was still admiring the target when Wesley half turned and gave him a quizzical look. It was only when he felt Wesley’s arm moving against his chest that Evan realized how close he was standing. Face firing a sudden red, Evan stepped back.
He cleared his throat. “You’re good,” he said.
He expected a smirk or a smug nod, but Wesley dropped his eyes and gave him a smile that was almost shy.
“Yes, well. We’ll see what you say if you ever test me on my precision with a battleaxe,” he said.
Evan grinned. “I don’t think we have any battleaxes in the armory right now,” he replied.
“Lucky, then,” Wesley said. He lifted his eyes and said, “Thank you for the lesson, Evan.”
There was no reason for that to make Evan blush again, but that didn’t stop the burn in his cheeks. “No,” he said. “Thank you.”
***
When Evan was a boy, he was addicted to puzzles. He graduated early from the kids’ puzzles with their big, blocky pieces to the complex ones meant for grown ups. His mother always liked to start at the border and work her way in, but Evan liked to lay out the pieces and just stare at them, waiting for a color or line to catch his attention. Once he found that perfect piece, he worked his way out from there.
Despite the obvious metaphors, he’d never really thought of people as puzzles before he met Wesley. He just took people as they came, without trying to figure them out. But Wesley ... He was such a mass of contradictions that Evan wanted to piece him together and get a clearer picture of who he was.
Like right now, Wesley, who had been hired as a linguist with no notations of combat training in his record, was sparring with Teyla and holding his own. He didn’t have her elegance of movement, but he looked comfortable with the bantos in his hands. More than that, he looked comfortable with Teyla, and that just wasn’t normal. Most of the men on Atlantis, even the ones who had been here from that start, either ogled her helplessly or were deeply intimidated by her. Sometimes both. But Wesley had given her respectful, non-sexual attention from the start, equally willing to take instruction from her and to bash her with sticks. It was as though he saw nothing unusual in a woman with the body of a dancer, the face of a model, and the skills of a warrior and an ambassador combined.
If anyone had asked, Evan would have told them that was why he was watching Wesley’s sparring session. Actually, if anyone had asked, he probably would have claimed he was just hanging out until it was time for his meditation lesson with Teyla. But Evan liked to tell himself the truth whenever possible, and the truth was, Wesley was kind of beautiful like this. He left his glasses off, and his eyes were such a light blue that Evan could see the color sometimes, even across the room. His body was lean and quick, twisting and bending as he dodged and struck. When Teyla scored a hit, he didn’t lose his temper as so many of her other partners did. Instead, he looked ... proud. Happy. Once, she took him down with a blow to the back of his knee and knelt on his chest, sticks poised to finish him off, and Wesley had laughed. Lying on the ground, disarmed and defeated, he’d laughed, and Evan had never wanted to paint anyone so badly in his life.
Wesley always seemed so caught up in his sessions with Teyla that Evan didn’t think he’d been noticed. He felt free to trace out the lines and shadows of this piece of Wesley, wondering what other facets of the man this connected to. Then one day Evan got trapped in a transporter for six hours, and he missed Wesley’s sparring and his own meditation. He walked back to his quarters, trying not to swing his arms too wide, just because he could. When he got to his door, he saw a familiar figure slouched against it, reading from a scroll.
“Run out of room to read in your office?” Evan asked.
“You weren’t in the gym this afternoon,” Wesley said, rolling up his scroll. “I wanted to be certain you were all right.”
Evan bit his lip and studied the patterns on the wall. “You noticed me watching, huh?”
“You’ve seriously underestimated my powers of observation if you think I could overlook fourteen stone of Air Force major staring at me twice a week.” The wall was really quite fascinating.
“Is there,” Wesley asked slowly, “a reason why you’ve been stalking me?”
Evan started and forgot to keep his eyes away from Wesley. “I have not been stalking you,” he insisted.
“No, certainly not. The silent observation is nothing remotely like stalking. I merely wondered if your motive was distrust.”
“No.” Evan swallowed hard. “I think ‘motive’ might be a strong word, but I just ... I like watching you.”
Something in Wesley’s eyes lightened, and he smiled. “Very well then. Would you consider escalating the stalking to conversation? I can hold one of Teyla’s bantos rods if it would make the transition more comfortable for you.”
Evan grinned, feeling that bright surge of success that always meant he’d discovered a connecting piece. “I think I can manage without weapons,” he said. He ran a hand over the crystals by the door. “Come in?”
Wesley gave him a rueful look. “I keep forgetting it’s safe to say things like that here,” he murmured. But he came inside, so Evan just counted it as another hidden piece of Wesley.
Someday he’d find them all.
***
It was no secret that Evan didn’t like Dr. McKay. He tried to, really he did. If Colonel Sheppard, Dr. Weir, and Teyla all found him worthwhile, there had to be more to him than his whining suggested. Whatever they saw in him, Evan didn’t, and he really didn’t care enough to find out. And at the moment, he doubted those redeeming qualities even existed.
Because the MALP had registered large life forms, Dr. Weir had insisted that two teams share the mission to M65-3X9. Colonel Sheppard had decided to take the mission for his own team and include Evan’s to meet Dr. Weir’s requirement. It had gone fine for the first hour. Dr. McKay had complained about the rocky terrain, Teyla and Ronon had taken point, scouting for signs of danger. Parrish scanned the barren ground for vegetation, and Sergeant Valdez had brought up the rear. Evan and Colonel Sheppard had taken the left and right, respectively, and Wesley had walked quietly in the middle.
They reached the ruins they’d been aiming for after an easy hour’s walk, with no signs of the large life forms. There had been writing in Ancient and in what looked like two other languages, so Wesley had hunkered down to translate while the others explored the ruins. Evan stayed to guard Wesley, and he pretended he didn’t see the smile on Teyla’s face when he volunteered.
“You getting anything out of that?” Evan asked, looking at the blocky Ancient and the spidery alien writing skeptically.
“Hmm? Oh, yes,” Wesley said distractedly. “It’s talking about power. This is the seat of power, all shall tremble and bow before the holders of the power, those who control the power shall shape the world.” He looked up with a mischievous smile. “Rather like your average religious tract.”
“What do you think it means?” Evan asked, squatting down beside him. “Is it social power, or something we could take home and run the shield with?”
The mischief bled out of Wesley’s face in an instant. “I can translate the words,” he said stiffly. “But if you want to know what things mean you’ll have to speak with a philosopher. It’s not my field.”
Evan reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Hey, it was just a question. No biggie. You translate, and Dr. McKay can figure out if it’s talking about a real power source or just bragging about Ancient penis size.”
“What the hell?” a voice behind them demanded. Evan didn’t even have to look to know who those histrionic tones belonged to. “Penis size? Where did you get your degree from, a cereal box? I know linguistics isn’t a real science, but considering you came all the way to another galaxy, I would think you’d take a little time to actually learn the languages you were supposed to translate. Finding another ZPM could save people’s lives, and you sit here making dick jokes instead of doing your job? I didn’t walk five miles over jagged boulders to indulge your sense of humor.”
He stopped, and Evan took advantage of the quiet to breathe deeply and focus on why killing the Chief Scientist would be a bad idea. He risked a glance at Wesley and found him looking supremely unruffled.
“I assure you I take my job quite seriously,” Wesley told Dr. McKay. “If you give me a few more moments, I’ll have a full translation.”
“You better,” McKay said darkly. Evan could hear him stomping away. Even once he knew they were alone, he had to count to ten before he could speak.
“I think that man had his sense of humor and decency stripped away in a science experiment,” he muttered.
“Dr. McKay?” Wesley smiled. “He’s not a patch on my father. I can handle Dr. McKay’s vitriol.” He reached up and patted Evan’s hand, which still gripped his shoulder. Like Evan was the one who needed comforting.
Evan shook his head and stood, bringing his P-90 up to meet any threat. He had to remind himself firmly that astrophysicists didn’t count as threats.
***
Evan never asked where Wesley got the scar on his throat. He figured that Wesley would tell him if he felt like talking about it, and if he didn’t want to talk about it, he probably really didn’t want to talk about it. But that didn’t stop him from wondering about it.
He made up scenarios in his mind sometimes. Maybe Wesley was in a car accident and the windshield glass cut into his throat. Maybe he was mugged by a kid with a switchblade and no sense of right and wrong. Maybe he fell onto some machinery. Maybe he tried to commit suicide like the cop in that Ellroy novel.
Evan tried to stop himself from speculating like that. Not because he felt guilty or intrusive, but because every scenario ended with Wesley bleeding and alone, terrified and unable to cry out. The very thought made him nauseous and jittery.
Wesley had gotten good at reading him, and when Evan showed up at his door, twitchy and tense, Wesley never asked why. He just pulled him inside and locked the door. He let Evan strip him down, stroking gently over the scars that he never asked about, and that Wesley never talked about. The one on his throat wasn’t the only one, just the most frightening.
Wesley never asked about Evan’s scars, either. He laid gentle hands on the bullet graze on Evan’s left thigh, the rough patch on his back where his jacket had ridden up when he’d fallen off a motorcycle, the line of raised skin on his palm where he’d fallen on a palette knife when he was first working with oils.
One night, when they were lying together on Wesley’s bed, tangled in the sheets and in each other, Evan lifted his head and kissed the scar on Wesley's throat. He didn’t ask, not aloud, but he knew Wesley could feel the question anyway.
After a long silence, Wesley said, “Good intentions don’t just pave the way to hell. One doesn’t know where the path will lead, but sometimes ... sometimes the journey is worth the price one paid to take it.”
“I have no idea what you just said,” Evan replied, kissing the words into Wesley’s skin. “But I’m glad you’re here, too.”
Author: Allyndra
Crossover: AtS/Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Wesley Wyndham-Pryce/Evan Lorne
Rating: FRT
Spoilers: Set at the beginning of SGA Season 2 and shortly after Deep Down for AtS. Spoilers through Runner for Atlantis and at least Sleep Tight for Angel.
Disclaimer: If I owned even one of these shows, I would be a happy, happy girl, but if I owned both, they'd have to lock me up for my insane giddiness.
Summary: What if the SGC were the ones trying to recruit Wesley, not Wolfram and Hart? What if they succeeded?
Note: Written for bethynyc for the Crossover round of maleslashminis. Her request was for Wes on a gate team with no character death or BDSM.
Evan was absurdly grateful that he wasn’t the only new member joining the Atlantis expedition. If he was going to be awkward and lost - and he’d been stationed on enough bases to know he would feel that way at first, no matter how much he’d wanted the assignment - at least he wouldn’t be awkward and lost by himself.
There were a handful of other military officers joining the mission with him; the Daedalus was transporting four from the Army, six from the Navy, and five counting Evan from the Air Force. He hoped the CO was a good diplomat, because integrating everyone was going to be a bitch if he couldn’t talk them into cooperating. Besides the military additions, there were several civilians on board: a pair of French chemists who goggled at Hermiod any time they caught sight of him, an Indian physicist who wore her uniform with such grace that he hoped she’d packed a sari to wear off-duty, a Russian engineer who kept trying to take apart bits of equipment without authorization, and an English linguist with a large scar across his throat.
Evan knew everyone who was joining the Atlantis expedition by sight, but he’d only met the military officers and the English linguist officially. The officers had saluted to his face and given him doubtful looks behind his back, just as he’d expected, but the linguist had been a surprise. Evan had been walking back to his quarters after lunch and had nearly crashed into the man, who was walking down the corridor while reading a leather-bound book.
“Whoa,” Evan said, pressing a hand to the man’s chest. “Maybe watching where you’re walking on the highly advanced and dangerous spaceship might be a good idea, huh?”
The Englishman took a half step back, less like he’d stumbled and more like he was settling into a fighting stance. With his left hand, he brought his book up to shield his throat and chest, while right curled into a low fist. Then he’d blinked at Evan, taking note of him for the first time, and he dropped his more obvious defenses.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. He held out his right hand, no longer clenched, and added, “Wesley Wyndham-Pryce.”
Evan took his hand and shook it, feeling calluses that hadn’t come from books. “Major Evan Lorne,” he said.
Wesley cocked an eyebrow at him. “Would you be offended if I called you Evan?” he asked.
“Do you have a problem with rank and authority?” Evan asked.
“I never have before,” Wesley said, “but I’m trying.” He’d given Evan a nod and stepped around him, continuing on his way. When Evan glanced over his shoulder, Wesley was already engrossed in his book again.
***
Colonel Sheppard, Evan discovered, was not a diplomat, but he was a hell of a delegator. Within hours of coming on duty, Evan found himself saddled with half of the training duties, more than half of the paperwork, and a boatload of administrative jobs. It wasn’t exactly what he thought he’d be doing in the mythical city of Atlantis, but Evan hadn’t lasted this long in the military by complaining.
He took the training roster to his quarters with him and looked it over while stretched on his bed. His feet hung off the end, and he wondered if miniature beds were how the Atlantis folks hazed newcomers. The most onerous duty he’d found on the list so far was supervising the Marines’ PT. Maybe they’d be more willing to accept him since they’d had an Air Force CO for a year already.
He flipped a page and groaned. He was wrong; there were worse duties in store for him than making sure the Marines stayed in shape. Sheppard had put him in charge of training the civilians in weapons and survival. He understood the need, but there was little Evan wanted less than to teach people whose life’s work was in labs and libraries how to fire guns and dig latrines.
He decided to get the hardest part out of the way first and scheduled weapons training before the sections on first aid and wilderness survival. Hell, a lot of scientists were pacifists, so he knew what he was taking on in teaching them to use guns. The first group scheduled was the batch who came in on the Daedalus with him; the people who’d been here from the start had been learning to protect themselves as a matter of necessity.
The first day went just as badly as he’d feared. The Russian engineer had done spectacularly well at dismantling and reassembling his gun, but had missed the target every single time he’d fired. One of the French chemists was terrified of firing a weapon, while the other had lit up with a frightening glee at the thought of becoming John Rambo. The Indian physicist had been clumsy holding a gun, but had shown a firm determination to learn what Lorne had to teach.
Jayanti, the physicist, was leaving with a look of sheer relief on her face when Wesley arrived for his session. “Good afternoon, Evan,” he said, his smile friendly but cool. It was a little jarring to hear his first name. Everyone else in the city seemed perfectly happy to call him Lorne or Major.
“Is it still afternoon? It feels like it should be midnight,” Evan said with a grin. “Welcome to weapons training.”
The safety and maintenance lessons went well, and Evan found himself admiring Wesley’s hands as they fit the pieces of his gun back together. There was just something attractive about competence, and Wesley’s fingers were nimble and confident. When he laid the fully assembled gun on the table, Evan smiled his approval. And then had to hide a grimace as he realized what came next. The shooting range had been the bane of every lesson today.
But when Evan stepped up behind Wesley to teach him how to shoot, he found Wesley’s body already in the proper stance, his arm raised with the right blend of tension and give, his hand steady as he aimed. He fired, and the tight cluster of holes was a thing of beauty. Evan was still admiring the target when Wesley half turned and gave him a quizzical look. It was only when he felt Wesley’s arm moving against his chest that Evan realized how close he was standing. Face firing a sudden red, Evan stepped back.
He cleared his throat. “You’re good,” he said.
He expected a smirk or a smug nod, but Wesley dropped his eyes and gave him a smile that was almost shy.
“Yes, well. We’ll see what you say if you ever test me on my precision with a battleaxe,” he said.
Evan grinned. “I don’t think we have any battleaxes in the armory right now,” he replied.
“Lucky, then,” Wesley said. He lifted his eyes and said, “Thank you for the lesson, Evan.”
There was no reason for that to make Evan blush again, but that didn’t stop the burn in his cheeks. “No,” he said. “Thank you.”
***
When Evan was a boy, he was addicted to puzzles. He graduated early from the kids’ puzzles with their big, blocky pieces to the complex ones meant for grown ups. His mother always liked to start at the border and work her way in, but Evan liked to lay out the pieces and just stare at them, waiting for a color or line to catch his attention. Once he found that perfect piece, he worked his way out from there.
Despite the obvious metaphors, he’d never really thought of people as puzzles before he met Wesley. He just took people as they came, without trying to figure them out. But Wesley ... He was such a mass of contradictions that Evan wanted to piece him together and get a clearer picture of who he was.
Like right now, Wesley, who had been hired as a linguist with no notations of combat training in his record, was sparring with Teyla and holding his own. He didn’t have her elegance of movement, but he looked comfortable with the bantos in his hands. More than that, he looked comfortable with Teyla, and that just wasn’t normal. Most of the men on Atlantis, even the ones who had been here from that start, either ogled her helplessly or were deeply intimidated by her. Sometimes both. But Wesley had given her respectful, non-sexual attention from the start, equally willing to take instruction from her and to bash her with sticks. It was as though he saw nothing unusual in a woman with the body of a dancer, the face of a model, and the skills of a warrior and an ambassador combined.
If anyone had asked, Evan would have told them that was why he was watching Wesley’s sparring session. Actually, if anyone had asked, he probably would have claimed he was just hanging out until it was time for his meditation lesson with Teyla. But Evan liked to tell himself the truth whenever possible, and the truth was, Wesley was kind of beautiful like this. He left his glasses off, and his eyes were such a light blue that Evan could see the color sometimes, even across the room. His body was lean and quick, twisting and bending as he dodged and struck. When Teyla scored a hit, he didn’t lose his temper as so many of her other partners did. Instead, he looked ... proud. Happy. Once, she took him down with a blow to the back of his knee and knelt on his chest, sticks poised to finish him off, and Wesley had laughed. Lying on the ground, disarmed and defeated, he’d laughed, and Evan had never wanted to paint anyone so badly in his life.
Wesley always seemed so caught up in his sessions with Teyla that Evan didn’t think he’d been noticed. He felt free to trace out the lines and shadows of this piece of Wesley, wondering what other facets of the man this connected to. Then one day Evan got trapped in a transporter for six hours, and he missed Wesley’s sparring and his own meditation. He walked back to his quarters, trying not to swing his arms too wide, just because he could. When he got to his door, he saw a familiar figure slouched against it, reading from a scroll.
“Run out of room to read in your office?” Evan asked.
“You weren’t in the gym this afternoon,” Wesley said, rolling up his scroll. “I wanted to be certain you were all right.”
Evan bit his lip and studied the patterns on the wall. “You noticed me watching, huh?”
“You’ve seriously underestimated my powers of observation if you think I could overlook fourteen stone of Air Force major staring at me twice a week.” The wall was really quite fascinating.
“Is there,” Wesley asked slowly, “a reason why you’ve been stalking me?”
Evan started and forgot to keep his eyes away from Wesley. “I have not been stalking you,” he insisted.
“No, certainly not. The silent observation is nothing remotely like stalking. I merely wondered if your motive was distrust.”
“No.” Evan swallowed hard. “I think ‘motive’ might be a strong word, but I just ... I like watching you.”
Something in Wesley’s eyes lightened, and he smiled. “Very well then. Would you consider escalating the stalking to conversation? I can hold one of Teyla’s bantos rods if it would make the transition more comfortable for you.”
Evan grinned, feeling that bright surge of success that always meant he’d discovered a connecting piece. “I think I can manage without weapons,” he said. He ran a hand over the crystals by the door. “Come in?”
Wesley gave him a rueful look. “I keep forgetting it’s safe to say things like that here,” he murmured. But he came inside, so Evan just counted it as another hidden piece of Wesley.
Someday he’d find them all.
***
It was no secret that Evan didn’t like Dr. McKay. He tried to, really he did. If Colonel Sheppard, Dr. Weir, and Teyla all found him worthwhile, there had to be more to him than his whining suggested. Whatever they saw in him, Evan didn’t, and he really didn’t care enough to find out. And at the moment, he doubted those redeeming qualities even existed.
Because the MALP had registered large life forms, Dr. Weir had insisted that two teams share the mission to M65-3X9. Colonel Sheppard had decided to take the mission for his own team and include Evan’s to meet Dr. Weir’s requirement. It had gone fine for the first hour. Dr. McKay had complained about the rocky terrain, Teyla and Ronon had taken point, scouting for signs of danger. Parrish scanned the barren ground for vegetation, and Sergeant Valdez had brought up the rear. Evan and Colonel Sheppard had taken the left and right, respectively, and Wesley had walked quietly in the middle.
They reached the ruins they’d been aiming for after an easy hour’s walk, with no signs of the large life forms. There had been writing in Ancient and in what looked like two other languages, so Wesley had hunkered down to translate while the others explored the ruins. Evan stayed to guard Wesley, and he pretended he didn’t see the smile on Teyla’s face when he volunteered.
“You getting anything out of that?” Evan asked, looking at the blocky Ancient and the spidery alien writing skeptically.
“Hmm? Oh, yes,” Wesley said distractedly. “It’s talking about power. This is the seat of power, all shall tremble and bow before the holders of the power, those who control the power shall shape the world.” He looked up with a mischievous smile. “Rather like your average religious tract.”
“What do you think it means?” Evan asked, squatting down beside him. “Is it social power, or something we could take home and run the shield with?”
The mischief bled out of Wesley’s face in an instant. “I can translate the words,” he said stiffly. “But if you want to know what things mean you’ll have to speak with a philosopher. It’s not my field.”
Evan reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Hey, it was just a question. No biggie. You translate, and Dr. McKay can figure out if it’s talking about a real power source or just bragging about Ancient penis size.”
“What the hell?” a voice behind them demanded. Evan didn’t even have to look to know who those histrionic tones belonged to. “Penis size? Where did you get your degree from, a cereal box? I know linguistics isn’t a real science, but considering you came all the way to another galaxy, I would think you’d take a little time to actually learn the languages you were supposed to translate. Finding another ZPM could save people’s lives, and you sit here making dick jokes instead of doing your job? I didn’t walk five miles over jagged boulders to indulge your sense of humor.”
He stopped, and Evan took advantage of the quiet to breathe deeply and focus on why killing the Chief Scientist would be a bad idea. He risked a glance at Wesley and found him looking supremely unruffled.
“I assure you I take my job quite seriously,” Wesley told Dr. McKay. “If you give me a few more moments, I’ll have a full translation.”
“You better,” McKay said darkly. Evan could hear him stomping away. Even once he knew they were alone, he had to count to ten before he could speak.
“I think that man had his sense of humor and decency stripped away in a science experiment,” he muttered.
“Dr. McKay?” Wesley smiled. “He’s not a patch on my father. I can handle Dr. McKay’s vitriol.” He reached up and patted Evan’s hand, which still gripped his shoulder. Like Evan was the one who needed comforting.
Evan shook his head and stood, bringing his P-90 up to meet any threat. He had to remind himself firmly that astrophysicists didn’t count as threats.
***
Evan never asked where Wesley got the scar on his throat. He figured that Wesley would tell him if he felt like talking about it, and if he didn’t want to talk about it, he probably really didn’t want to talk about it. But that didn’t stop him from wondering about it.
He made up scenarios in his mind sometimes. Maybe Wesley was in a car accident and the windshield glass cut into his throat. Maybe he was mugged by a kid with a switchblade and no sense of right and wrong. Maybe he fell onto some machinery. Maybe he tried to commit suicide like the cop in that Ellroy novel.
Evan tried to stop himself from speculating like that. Not because he felt guilty or intrusive, but because every scenario ended with Wesley bleeding and alone, terrified and unable to cry out. The very thought made him nauseous and jittery.
Wesley had gotten good at reading him, and when Evan showed up at his door, twitchy and tense, Wesley never asked why. He just pulled him inside and locked the door. He let Evan strip him down, stroking gently over the scars that he never asked about, and that Wesley never talked about. The one on his throat wasn’t the only one, just the most frightening.
Wesley never asked about Evan’s scars, either. He laid gentle hands on the bullet graze on Evan’s left thigh, the rough patch on his back where his jacket had ridden up when he’d fallen off a motorcycle, the line of raised skin on his palm where he’d fallen on a palette knife when he was first working with oils.
One night, when they were lying together on Wesley’s bed, tangled in the sheets and in each other, Evan lifted his head and kissed the scar on Wesley's throat. He didn’t ask, not aloud, but he knew Wesley could feel the question anyway.
After a long silence, Wesley said, “Good intentions don’t just pave the way to hell. One doesn’t know where the path will lead, but sometimes ... sometimes the journey is worth the price one paid to take it.”
“I have no idea what you just said,” Evan replied, kissing the words into Wesley’s skin. “But I’m glad you’re here, too.”