Opportunity
Title: Opportunity
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Rodney's stuck in a time loop.
McKay looked at the pile of small Ancient devices that had been collected from across the city. He hadn't gotten around to studying them yet, but now, he had a bit of free time on his hands. He picked one of them up and looked at it, then stared as it started blinking. He reached to put it down - he hadn't meant to activate it yet, not without knowing what it did - but it disappeared out of his hand halfway to the table.
//
Rodney looked across the table, mouth open to say something, but he had no idea what, so he closed it.
"You were saying?" Teyla prompted.
"I - I was?"
"Yes, you were," Sheppard said.
"What was I talking about?"
"Subspace vectors."
"Right, right, shortest distance between two points is a five-dimensional squiggle, didn't we talk about that this morning?"
"Rodney," Sheppard said, glancing at his watch, "it is this morning."
McKay looked at his own watch, noting the date and time. "It was...it was...I'd swear it was just this afternoon. Six hours from now."
"Well, that's odd." Sheppard took another bite of his breakfast, which was some sort of sweetened cereal they'd flavored with an assortment of fruits they'd traded for. Rodney didn't think he wanted to know what kind of fruit was that shade of pink.
"How can you eat that stuff?" he asked.
"It kinda reminds me of Froot Loops."
"Am I losing my mind, or did I just lose the last six hours?"
"I dunno." John's answer was, to say the least, unhelpful.
"Maybe I'd better go see Carson."
Dr. Beckett spent most of the morning doing a thorough check-up, but found nothing wrong. Rodney grabbed a powerbar and headed back to the lab, to have a look at the device he'd picked up. They were all spread out on the table...but...not that one. It wasn't there, no matter how hard he looked. He knew exactly where it had been, and it wasn't.
He glanced at his watch. It must be almost the time when he'd picked it up by now. He headed over to the computer and started searching through the database, to see if he could find the device there.
He hadn't gotten very far when
//
His mouth was open to say something, and John, Ronon and Teyla were staring at him from around the table.
"Let me guess, it's this morning again?"
"What do you mean, again?"
"Some sort of time loop. I was just six hours from now. Twice."
"You were what?" Ronon asked.
"It was this afternoon. Five minutes ago."
"Maybe you should see Dr. Beckett?" Sheppard suggested.
"Maybe I should see Dr. Weir." He stood up and headed for her office, the three of them following him.
It took five hours of predicting what Dr. Weir was planning on talking about in the briefing, when Lorne's team was going to report in and what they would say, which scientists would report amazing discoveries over the radio and when, before everyone was convinced. Weir ordered every available scientist to look for the device or for any reference to it in the database.
An hour wasn't long enough. He'd almost found what might have been a photograph of the device, at least, if not a schematic, and was trying to get the full image to load
//
He spent the next few loops trying to convince people, in various combinations, to believe him, but it always took too much time. He even tried just convincing one person - even one extra set of eyes on the database could be useful. It always took too long, and they didn't let him go once it was clear he couldn't convince them in time; they made him keep trying to explain (or worse, sent him to Dr. Beckett) until the loop re-started and
//
Rodney closed his mouth, ignoring the odd looks from his teammates.
"Something wrong, McKay?" Sheppard asked.
"Time loop, and this time I'm not spending the entire thing convincing you I'm telling the truth." He got up and hurried back to the lab. Maybe if he spent all six hours working, he'd find something.
Zelenka stumbled on a chair as he settled into the lab. Rodney ignored the peripherals, burying himself in his research, racing the clock.
//
"Not again." Apparently that wasn't the way the others had been expecting his sentence to end.
"What again?" Sheppard asked.
"Time loop. Gotta go research."
Zelenka stumbled again, this time a few minutes after he'd gotten settled - apparently he'd shaved a bit of time off his conversation and the trip to the lab.
He finally managed to track down the picture he'd been looking at, but it was the wrong device, besides which it was just a photograph, with no other information.
//
He reached out instinctively to steady Zelenka as he settled into the lab to continue his research. He had to start from scratch every time, and the Ancients' "search and sort" function was somewhat lacking - the results turned up in a different order every loop, and he hadn't figured out a methodical way to go through them.
He'd lost five minutes that he normally would have had yelling at Sheppard for no reason beyond that he felt like it. He shouldn't have been surprised when the Colonel followed him to the lab.
"You said you're in a time loop," Sheppard said. "How many times have you been through it?"
"Thirty-two. Thirty-three if you count this loop, which I don't because it's barely started."
"Do I ask that every time?"
"This is the first time you've followed me. Normally we don't get in a fight over breakfast."
"If you can convince me you're really time-looping, I can help you research."
"I've tried that before. Took most of the loop to convince you and Dr. Weir, and by then there was so little time left it wasn't worth having the entire science team working on it."
"Fine." Sheppard didn't ask for proof, just pulled up another computer. "What are we looking for?"
"There's a device, it's about the size of my fist, sort of rectangular, silver with black markings, blinks blue when it's activated. That's all I've got to go on, and I haven't found anything yet."
* * *
Rodney glanced at his watch, noticing how long they'd been working, still with no luck. "I'm going to disappear in a few minutes," he warned. "If you've found anything, tell me now or we'll lose it next loop."
"No, nothing." John looked at him, thinking for a minute. "Hey, since you're about to loop back in time, you can pretend this never happened, if you want..." and he kissed Rodney.
//
Rodney closed his mouth, then opened it again. "We need to talk." He grabbed John's arm and dragged him out of the room and back to his favorite balcony.
"What's wrong, McKay?"
"I'm stuck in a six-hour time loop, and last time around, you kissed me." And hey, if he said the wrong thing this time around, he could always try again next time.
"Is that a problem? I mean, I'm sure if that were the case, which I'm not entirely sure I believe, I would have told you you could forget it if you wanted to."
"Yeah, and what if I don't want to forget it?"
"You - you don't?" John wasn't as surprised as he was acting. Rodney wasn't sure how he knew that, but he did.
"No, I - " He gave up on words and kissed John. "But that's it for now, because it's bad enough you'll never remember our first two kisses, I want you to remember our third, at least."
"I'm still not sure I believe this whole time-loop thing," John said.
Rodney spent the next four hours proving it.
"I can't waste this much time every loop," he said. "You'll pardon me if I don't always get you involved."
"I can help you, Rodney," Sheppard protested. "You'll go out of your mind trying to figure it out on your own, you'll need at least one person keeping you company and sorting through the database with you."
"Fine, then. Tell me how I can make you believe me in under five minutes."
"I..." John thought for a minute. "Zucchini. It was my last boyfriend's safeword, that'll convince me you know more than you should."
"Why your boyfriend's and not yours?" Rodney asked.
"I...can't actually remember mine," John admitted. "I know I had one at some point, but I never used it."
John wanted to spend the rest of the loop making out, but he understood when Rodney insisted that he didn't want to do anything John wouldn't remember.
//
"I'm on my seventy-third time through a time loop," Rodney announced, interrupting himself mid-sentence, though he couldn't remember which sentence it had been the middle of. "You and you," he pointed at Teyla and Ronon, "I've never been able to convince quickly enough to be useful. You," he pointed at John, "Zucchini. Science lab, now. You're helping me."
They'd almost found something last time around. He caught Zelenka as he stumbled on a chair, not even bothering to look.
"You'd just found something when I looped back," he told Sheppard. "You didn't have time to tell me all of it, but it's something more clear to search for." He typed in the name of the device John had told him at the end of the last loop.
"Is that what started the time-loop?" John asked.
"It is," Rodney said, staring at it in joy once he'd gotten the page loaded. "That's it." They spent a few hours translating, trying to figure out how to get it to stop.
"There's another device," John finally figured out. "They work in pairs, this one disappears when the loop starts, the other one stops the loop." He pulled up a diagram.
"I've seen that one," Rodney said. He hurried over to the table where the devices were spread out. "Where is it, where is it...hah!" He picked it up. It didn't do anything right away. "What do I have to do with it?"
"I don't know."
Rodney glanced at his watch. "Better figure out quickly, I've only got another five seconds..." Time hit, though, and the device started blinking, and he stayed there. "It worked! I'm back in normal time! Well, hopefully."
* * *
Dr. Weir glanced down at the report, then back at John and Rodney. "So this device caused a six-hour time loop when you picked it up, and you were able to research and stop it using this other device?"
"Yes," Rodney said. "I know it may sound hard to believe, but I've managed to translate the entire entry about these devices, and that is what they were meant to do."
"But why? What good is that kind of time loop?"
"They were meant for preventing disasters. Like, I don't know, the reactor would go critical and they wouldn't be able to stop it in time, so someone would loop back and take as many loops as necessary to figure out what went wrong and fix it."
"In six hours?"
"The length is actually adjustable."
* * *
The sunset over the city's towers that evening was quite spectacular. Rodney was too busy dragging John back to his room to notice. Although perhaps dragging was the wrong word, since John was anything but reluctant.
"You've known I was interested for the last forty loops and we didn't do anything about it?" John asked, somewhat surprised.
"Well, I kissed you once."
"You had the opportunity to do anything you wanted."
"I wanted you to remember our first time," Rodney said, simply.
They could barely keep their hands off each other long enough to make it back to the room, and Rodney really had no idea how he'd had so much self-control for the last 240 hours. Rodney pushed him up against the wall and kissed him, hard, not taking the time to enjoy it properly, just needing to feel John's lips against his and John's skin under his hands.
"Oh god, Rodney," John gasped when they finally broke apart for air. His hands were reaching up under his shirt, pulling it off over his head, and Rodney took the opportunity to unfasten John's pants and push them down.
He wasn't entirely sure how John managed it with his pants around his ankles and his boots still on, but Rodney landed on his back on the bed, while John pulled off his own clothes before taking care of the rest of Rodney's.
He grabbed John's hand and tugged him down towards the bed, wanting to kiss him again, but John had other ideas. He lowered his lips to Rodney's dick, slowly, taking the entire length into his mouth. Rodney moaned, wanting more, but John pushed his hips down on the mattress and took his time.
And then he stopped, and crawled up on top of Rodney. "I want to fuck you," he said. "Can I?"
"Yeah," Rodney said, fumbling to grab the hand lotion from his bedside table. John took it from him, and prepared him agonizingly slowly before pushing into him.
"Is that okay?" John asked, not moving.
"Fuck me already, Colonel."
"Colonel?" John asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Force of habit," Rodney said. "Sorry...John."
"No, I think I liked you calling me by my rank."
"Whatever, could you just move? You know, in and out? It's not that complicated."
"Patience is a virtue, Rodney."
"Yeah, do I look like I'm being virtuous right now? Screw virtue. No, fuck that, screw me instead."
"Yes, sir," John said, finally moving his hips.
"And just for the record? That whole giving and taking commands thing - it does nothing for me."
"But telling you the square root of 761 would, right?"
"You know the square root of 761?"
"27.586," John answered.
"Yes," Rodney said. "Yes, it would."
"You're a strange man, Rodney."
"You're sleeping with me anyway. Less of the talk, more of the sleeping with, please."
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Rodney's stuck in a time loop.
McKay looked at the pile of small Ancient devices that had been collected from across the city. He hadn't gotten around to studying them yet, but now, he had a bit of free time on his hands. He picked one of them up and looked at it, then stared as it started blinking. He reached to put it down - he hadn't meant to activate it yet, not without knowing what it did - but it disappeared out of his hand halfway to the table.
//
Rodney looked across the table, mouth open to say something, but he had no idea what, so he closed it.
"You were saying?" Teyla prompted.
"I - I was?"
"Yes, you were," Sheppard said.
"What was I talking about?"
"Subspace vectors."
"Right, right, shortest distance between two points is a five-dimensional squiggle, didn't we talk about that this morning?"
"Rodney," Sheppard said, glancing at his watch, "it is this morning."
McKay looked at his own watch, noting the date and time. "It was...it was...I'd swear it was just this afternoon. Six hours from now."
"Well, that's odd." Sheppard took another bite of his breakfast, which was some sort of sweetened cereal they'd flavored with an assortment of fruits they'd traded for. Rodney didn't think he wanted to know what kind of fruit was that shade of pink.
"How can you eat that stuff?" he asked.
"It kinda reminds me of Froot Loops."
"Am I losing my mind, or did I just lose the last six hours?"
"I dunno." John's answer was, to say the least, unhelpful.
"Maybe I'd better go see Carson."
Dr. Beckett spent most of the morning doing a thorough check-up, but found nothing wrong. Rodney grabbed a powerbar and headed back to the lab, to have a look at the device he'd picked up. They were all spread out on the table...but...not that one. It wasn't there, no matter how hard he looked. He knew exactly where it had been, and it wasn't.
He glanced at his watch. It must be almost the time when he'd picked it up by now. He headed over to the computer and started searching through the database, to see if he could find the device there.
He hadn't gotten very far when
//
His mouth was open to say something, and John, Ronon and Teyla were staring at him from around the table.
"Let me guess, it's this morning again?"
"What do you mean, again?"
"Some sort of time loop. I was just six hours from now. Twice."
"You were what?" Ronon asked.
"It was this afternoon. Five minutes ago."
"Maybe you should see Dr. Beckett?" Sheppard suggested.
"Maybe I should see Dr. Weir." He stood up and headed for her office, the three of them following him.
It took five hours of predicting what Dr. Weir was planning on talking about in the briefing, when Lorne's team was going to report in and what they would say, which scientists would report amazing discoveries over the radio and when, before everyone was convinced. Weir ordered every available scientist to look for the device or for any reference to it in the database.
An hour wasn't long enough. He'd almost found what might have been a photograph of the device, at least, if not a schematic, and was trying to get the full image to load
//
He spent the next few loops trying to convince people, in various combinations, to believe him, but it always took too much time. He even tried just convincing one person - even one extra set of eyes on the database could be useful. It always took too long, and they didn't let him go once it was clear he couldn't convince them in time; they made him keep trying to explain (or worse, sent him to Dr. Beckett) until the loop re-started and
//
Rodney closed his mouth, ignoring the odd looks from his teammates.
"Something wrong, McKay?" Sheppard asked.
"Time loop, and this time I'm not spending the entire thing convincing you I'm telling the truth." He got up and hurried back to the lab. Maybe if he spent all six hours working, he'd find something.
Zelenka stumbled on a chair as he settled into the lab. Rodney ignored the peripherals, burying himself in his research, racing the clock.
//
"Not again." Apparently that wasn't the way the others had been expecting his sentence to end.
"What again?" Sheppard asked.
"Time loop. Gotta go research."
Zelenka stumbled again, this time a few minutes after he'd gotten settled - apparently he'd shaved a bit of time off his conversation and the trip to the lab.
He finally managed to track down the picture he'd been looking at, but it was the wrong device, besides which it was just a photograph, with no other information.
//
He reached out instinctively to steady Zelenka as he settled into the lab to continue his research. He had to start from scratch every time, and the Ancients' "search and sort" function was somewhat lacking - the results turned up in a different order every loop, and he hadn't figured out a methodical way to go through them.
He'd lost five minutes that he normally would have had yelling at Sheppard for no reason beyond that he felt like it. He shouldn't have been surprised when the Colonel followed him to the lab.
"You said you're in a time loop," Sheppard said. "How many times have you been through it?"
"Thirty-two. Thirty-three if you count this loop, which I don't because it's barely started."
"Do I ask that every time?"
"This is the first time you've followed me. Normally we don't get in a fight over breakfast."
"If you can convince me you're really time-looping, I can help you research."
"I've tried that before. Took most of the loop to convince you and Dr. Weir, and by then there was so little time left it wasn't worth having the entire science team working on it."
"Fine." Sheppard didn't ask for proof, just pulled up another computer. "What are we looking for?"
"There's a device, it's about the size of my fist, sort of rectangular, silver with black markings, blinks blue when it's activated. That's all I've got to go on, and I haven't found anything yet."
* * *
Rodney glanced at his watch, noticing how long they'd been working, still with no luck. "I'm going to disappear in a few minutes," he warned. "If you've found anything, tell me now or we'll lose it next loop."
"No, nothing." John looked at him, thinking for a minute. "Hey, since you're about to loop back in time, you can pretend this never happened, if you want..." and he kissed Rodney.
//
Rodney closed his mouth, then opened it again. "We need to talk." He grabbed John's arm and dragged him out of the room and back to his favorite balcony.
"What's wrong, McKay?"
"I'm stuck in a six-hour time loop, and last time around, you kissed me." And hey, if he said the wrong thing this time around, he could always try again next time.
"Is that a problem? I mean, I'm sure if that were the case, which I'm not entirely sure I believe, I would have told you you could forget it if you wanted to."
"Yeah, and what if I don't want to forget it?"
"You - you don't?" John wasn't as surprised as he was acting. Rodney wasn't sure how he knew that, but he did.
"No, I - " He gave up on words and kissed John. "But that's it for now, because it's bad enough you'll never remember our first two kisses, I want you to remember our third, at least."
"I'm still not sure I believe this whole time-loop thing," John said.
Rodney spent the next four hours proving it.
"I can't waste this much time every loop," he said. "You'll pardon me if I don't always get you involved."
"I can help you, Rodney," Sheppard protested. "You'll go out of your mind trying to figure it out on your own, you'll need at least one person keeping you company and sorting through the database with you."
"Fine, then. Tell me how I can make you believe me in under five minutes."
"I..." John thought for a minute. "Zucchini. It was my last boyfriend's safeword, that'll convince me you know more than you should."
"Why your boyfriend's and not yours?" Rodney asked.
"I...can't actually remember mine," John admitted. "I know I had one at some point, but I never used it."
John wanted to spend the rest of the loop making out, but he understood when Rodney insisted that he didn't want to do anything John wouldn't remember.
//
"I'm on my seventy-third time through a time loop," Rodney announced, interrupting himself mid-sentence, though he couldn't remember which sentence it had been the middle of. "You and you," he pointed at Teyla and Ronon, "I've never been able to convince quickly enough to be useful. You," he pointed at John, "Zucchini. Science lab, now. You're helping me."
They'd almost found something last time around. He caught Zelenka as he stumbled on a chair, not even bothering to look.
"You'd just found something when I looped back," he told Sheppard. "You didn't have time to tell me all of it, but it's something more clear to search for." He typed in the name of the device John had told him at the end of the last loop.
"Is that what started the time-loop?" John asked.
"It is," Rodney said, staring at it in joy once he'd gotten the page loaded. "That's it." They spent a few hours translating, trying to figure out how to get it to stop.
"There's another device," John finally figured out. "They work in pairs, this one disappears when the loop starts, the other one stops the loop." He pulled up a diagram.
"I've seen that one," Rodney said. He hurried over to the table where the devices were spread out. "Where is it, where is it...hah!" He picked it up. It didn't do anything right away. "What do I have to do with it?"
"I don't know."
Rodney glanced at his watch. "Better figure out quickly, I've only got another five seconds..." Time hit, though, and the device started blinking, and he stayed there. "It worked! I'm back in normal time! Well, hopefully."
* * *
Dr. Weir glanced down at the report, then back at John and Rodney. "So this device caused a six-hour time loop when you picked it up, and you were able to research and stop it using this other device?"
"Yes," Rodney said. "I know it may sound hard to believe, but I've managed to translate the entire entry about these devices, and that is what they were meant to do."
"But why? What good is that kind of time loop?"
"They were meant for preventing disasters. Like, I don't know, the reactor would go critical and they wouldn't be able to stop it in time, so someone would loop back and take as many loops as necessary to figure out what went wrong and fix it."
"In six hours?"
"The length is actually adjustable."
* * *
The sunset over the city's towers that evening was quite spectacular. Rodney was too busy dragging John back to his room to notice. Although perhaps dragging was the wrong word, since John was anything but reluctant.
"You've known I was interested for the last forty loops and we didn't do anything about it?" John asked, somewhat surprised.
"Well, I kissed you once."
"You had the opportunity to do anything you wanted."
"I wanted you to remember our first time," Rodney said, simply.
They could barely keep their hands off each other long enough to make it back to the room, and Rodney really had no idea how he'd had so much self-control for the last 240 hours. Rodney pushed him up against the wall and kissed him, hard, not taking the time to enjoy it properly, just needing to feel John's lips against his and John's skin under his hands.
"Oh god, Rodney," John gasped when they finally broke apart for air. His hands were reaching up under his shirt, pulling it off over his head, and Rodney took the opportunity to unfasten John's pants and push them down.
He wasn't entirely sure how John managed it with his pants around his ankles and his boots still on, but Rodney landed on his back on the bed, while John pulled off his own clothes before taking care of the rest of Rodney's.
He grabbed John's hand and tugged him down towards the bed, wanting to kiss him again, but John had other ideas. He lowered his lips to Rodney's dick, slowly, taking the entire length into his mouth. Rodney moaned, wanting more, but John pushed his hips down on the mattress and took his time.
And then he stopped, and crawled up on top of Rodney. "I want to fuck you," he said. "Can I?"
"Yeah," Rodney said, fumbling to grab the hand lotion from his bedside table. John took it from him, and prepared him agonizingly slowly before pushing into him.
"Is that okay?" John asked, not moving.
"Fuck me already, Colonel."
"Colonel?" John asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Force of habit," Rodney said. "Sorry...John."
"No, I think I liked you calling me by my rank."
"Whatever, could you just move? You know, in and out? It's not that complicated."
"Patience is a virtue, Rodney."
"Yeah, do I look like I'm being virtuous right now? Screw virtue. No, fuck that, screw me instead."
"Yes, sir," John said, finally moving his hips.
"And just for the record? That whole giving and taking commands thing - it does nothing for me."
"But telling you the square root of 761 would, right?"
"You know the square root of 761?"
"27.586," John answered.
"Yes," Rodney said. "Yes, it would."
"You're a strange man, Rodney."
"You're sleeping with me anyway. Less of the talk, more of the sleeping with, please."