'Term of Service' by Resonant, commentary by viva_gloria, 3/3
It took Kellen two days to make the arrangements. And then it was back again to the gate island, and now those weird concentric rings down into the pool made perfect sense; they weren't like stairs, they were stairs. The craft was visible in the gray-blue water. It looked sleek and maneuverable. Rodney hoped it wasn't all style.
The Council were gathering in the plaza in front of the gate, in various states of annoyance, confusion, ruffle-haired drowsiness, and obvious hangover, as though it were 8 a.m. rather than almost noon. Kellen had told him she was already a bit of a joke for letting her termsman mess around in the archives. If he failed her, she was going to be a laughingstock.
Rodney looked at the row of assembled people. "I have the solution to your water problems right down here." They looked right past him. Maybe he needed a megaphone. He looked at Kellen, and she sighed impatiently and nodded her head toward the spot, one step behind her, where a termsman ought to stand, and he glared at her and stood there.
"Knotwoman," she said. "Councilors. Thanks to Rodney's research, I have something very interesting to show you, but I'm going to require the help of Y-John."
At the end of the row was Lija, still in what was probably last night's clubwear, with her black hair tipped with silver, pretty as poison. She looked at Kellen blankly. "Yohn?"
"Yes. He's the only person who has the skill to do what needs to be done."
"You are making a formal claim of eminent domain over Lija lo Mallor's termsman?" the knotwoman said.
"Yes."
"And the particular task for which you make this request?"
"It doesn't matter," Lija said. "He's my Yohn, and he's very pretty but he has no skills whatsoever." She might at least say something nice about his efforts in bed. Or maybe they really are that bad (with her, anyway). And of course it hasn't occurred to Lija to talk to Yohn about himself, his life BL (Before Lija), or even what he's doing on Ara lo Bajo.
"We grant the request on the condition that the termsman agree. Produce him."
Lija's pout got stormier and her eyes got narrower. She whispered something to a member of her entourage, who brought out John, blinking as though it had been a long time since he'd seen sunlight. He was wearing a black garment that you could only call tights, and a short black tanktop; his feet were bare. Rodney wouldn't have believed he had any skills, either.
When he caught sight of Rodney, he actually took a step forward. It was probably only Lija's firm hand on his silver choker that kept him from flinging himself into Rodney's arms.
"Let him go," the knotwoman said, and Lija did so, with a pretty frown and many demands for kisses. John walked hesitantly across the platform. You could tell he was aware of all the eyes on him.
Rodney was abjectly thankful that John didn't try to touch him. Rodney's right on the edge too, and he doesn't want to lose it in front of Lija: more to the point, he doesn't want to jeopardise their mission. Hence the stiff, professional way he presents the task. "OK, here's your assignment," he said. "That thing is like an amphibious submarine. Down below here is a water-treatment station that used to be in a cave at the top of a mountain before sea level rose. I need you to take the sub down, through the doorway, into the hallway, up a flight of stairs, and through the cloak into the plant itself, which should be dry. The water treatment technology is based on Ancient designs, so it should look familiar to you, but otherwise just play it by ear."
For John Sheppard of Atlantis, this would have been a piece of cake. Lija's Yohn seemed to be having a bit of trouble with it. "Fly a sub from water to air," he said tentatively. That light-hearted colloquial tone doesn't mask Rodney's worry at just how much this isn't John Sheppard of Atlantis; just how broken he is.
"Yes; I suppose maybe you remember doing something vaguely like that before? Come on, for god's sake. You're not a sex slave. You're a pilot."
Something changed in the set of John's face. It wasn't as simple as Sheppard of Atlantis coming back; Rodney couldn't even tell if it was good or bad. But without another word he turned his back and climbed the steps up from the platform to the lip of the pool. Rodney was sure he wasn't alone in admiring his glutes on the way up. *helpless laughter* One moment Rodney's telling John to get a grip and behave like a Serious Grown-Up Professional: the next, he's ogling John's ass.
At the top he turned, as if to give Rodney a chance to call "Good luck" or "Godspeed" or some similar nonsense. "Well, what are you waiting for?" Rodney called. "Go save the universe again."
John actually smiled, and then he went down the shallow steps, slowly, so that they could watch his spiky hair vanishing, little by little, for a long time.
Then nothing.
It was a long time of nothing.
Rodney tried to look like someone who had completely confidence in his plan and wasn't at all concerned that his teammate's self-esteem might have been ruined by an extended term of service as Lija's personal teddy bear. The sun got hotter. The almost palpable UV rays got worse. Rodney, who had missed breakfast, felt his stomach begin to devour its own lining. The Council got restless. Lija's look went from petulant to bored to hopeful to triumphant.
There was a hiss, and from the little indentations around the edges of the plaza, water suddenly fountained up. This is so cinematic!
The Council members turned from side to side, eyes wide. They didn't seem to care that their hair and clothes were getting soaked. Some of them tipped back their heads and filled their mouths with water.
"It's fresh," Kellen whispered. She looked like she was going to cry.
"What is the meaning of this unconscionable waste?" the knotwoman thundered.
"I think you'll find," a familiar voice said, "that you don't have to worry about waste."
The person who climbed up the stair out of the pool was unmistakably Lt. Col. John Sheppard of Atlantis; tights or no tights, he walked like a man with a badge on his shoulder and a holster on his thigh. I can hear the stirring martial music now (actually, it sounds a bit like the A-Team music when a plan comes together). I could get pretentious and talk about heroes returning from the underworld, transformed and tempered. I probably shouldn't. But oh! John! As he crossed the plaza, the Baj began to murmur, and then to applaud, and finally to laugh. A few of the younger ones looked as if they'd like to dance. None of them made any move to get out from under the fountains.
The knotwoman wanted information from Kellen, and Kellen kept asking Rodney, until finally Rodney said impatiently, "You might as well speak directly to me; Kellen has a reasonable layman's knowledge, but this isn't her specialty." The knotwoman gave Kellen an incredulous look, but apparently decided that it was more important to actually get her questions answered than to encourage the proper respectful attitude in a termsman, which he applauded.
Once she got that far, it was pretty easy to explain the treatment plant, and to come up with hypotheses that the Baj could test. When she began asking questions about the interface and the sub, Kellen called John over, compelling Lija to break the tight hug she had him in.
The tanktop was so tight around his chest that one of the shoulder straps had fallen down. The knotwoman kept her eyes carefully on his face as she questioned him. Now they want John for his mind ...
When she was done, she turned to Kellen. "This is the termsman who was the subject of your investigation of mistreatment?"
John looked up suddenly.
The knotwoman slid open one of the ubiquitous data jellybeans, and examined the charges -- glanced at Lija, glanced back at the screen, took a good long look at John's clothes.
"It is the decision of the council," she said at last, "that the termsman Yohn be removed from the service of Lija lo Mallor while the investigation continues, and instead be placed in the care of Kellen lo Saj, for a fiveday, so that the Council may consider both the charges against Sor lo Mallor and the reward appropriate to the termsmen for their service to the Baj."
"What do you think she's going to want from me?"
John had plopped right down on the couch with his head in Rodney's lap; he didn't sound nervous, but Rodney was pretty sure he was.
"I have no idea. Sometimes it's sex, sometimes it's engineering, sometimes it's footrubs."
John was wearing Rodney's clothes, blue pants and a loose dark-gray shirt made of some kind of soft knit. Rodney absently rubbed down his upper arms, and John sighed. "You think she's going to want to go to bed with both of us?"
Rodney couldn't breathe for a second, thinking about it He's jealous of both of them: John for potentially getting the same (or a better) response from Kellen as Rodney himself, and Kellen for getting John. And OMG it's hot, in his mind. -- what John might make of that low chuckle Kellen sometimes gave, as if sex was funny to her, and what would happen to John if Kellen did that thing with her teeth, what they'd look like ... "I'm pretty sure I could get you excused from anything physical," he said, swallowing to make his voice go back to normal. "If you want."
"Are you kidding?" John said, craning his head back to look at Rodney's face. "After what she did for me? I'll kiss her feet if she wants me to."
"She's never shown any sign of being into that kind of thing," Rodney said faintly.
He was half relieved and half disappointed when Kellen was wearing the lounge clothes rather than the robe. More show-not-tell. "Oh, my," she said, looking at them appreciatively. "Aren't you a picture. Now, this is one of my favorite fantasies. You -- get the place cleaned up. You -- dial up some dinner." I really, really like Kellen: and I'm tempted to say that I'd do the same, though .... (I wonder if she is tempted in the other direction? I wonder if this is Kellen being, basically, a good person, and leaving the two of them to one another because she knows how much it matters to Rodney, and how much Rodney's told her it matters to John?)
By the next morning, the council was convinced that the water plant was no hoax. They got right to work on building retaining walls so they could get at it without the sub, and then they sent three exceptionally dimwitted engineers to come down there so Rodney could attempt to train them in understanding the interface.
It was less than a day before they were once again called before a full meeting of the council (a rather dryer one this time) and told they'd served their terms fully by virtue of their great contribution to Baj society, and would be sent home with honor and glory and half a ton of assorted minerals and metals and medicines. Not to mention orbital shielding technology and a quarter-charged ZPM.
Rodney started to go when the applause ended, but Kellen put her hand on his arm. "You'll be interested in the next item."
"It is the decision of the council that Lija lo Mallor is guilty of mistreatment of her termsman."
Lija gasped, beautiful eyes wide. "But -- I gave him every luxury! The finest clothes, the choicest foods -- he went with me everywhere! He slept in my own bed and ate off my own plate!" I had a cat like that once. She turned to John, and there were tears trembling on the tips of her lashes. "I thought you loved me!"
John looked like he'd been stabbed through the heart, John is so vulnerable to this sort of attack. He's a pushover. He's reacting just as Lija wants him to, has trained him to. He is, I'm afraid, still under her thumb. but Kellen kept him quiet while the knotwoman sighed as if she'd seen this sort of thing before. "The penalty for this violation is a hundred days' term of service. The auction will be scheduled for a fiveday hence."
The young man who'd been trying to comfort Lija stood up suddenly, as did ten other young men, glaring at one another in sudden recognition of their rivals. All over the room, data jellybeans were open as men checked their bank balances and their credit limits.
Kellen looked at her. "I'd be tempted to bid just to teach her a lesson, but I suspect she'd be even more trouble than you were." She looked at Rodney fondly. "Take care of yourself. Any time you want a vacation, come back to visit; there'll always be a place for you." And she gave him a long hug.
Rodney was surprised to discover he was going to miss her. He hasn't thought about that aspect of it at all. But then, Kellen didn't require him to. Delightful contrast with Lija's tearful blackmail. "Can I take the clothes with me?"
The first priority on Atlantis was hustling John into the infirmary, and the second priority was hustling him up to Heightmeyer's office, and Rodney was ashamed of how he made use of John's habit of obedience, except for where he wasn't ashamed at all. He's arguing with himself again. And hey, pragmatism: by any means necessary, using the tools at hand. He even made an appointment to see Kate himself, since that was the price he had to pay to see John sitting down in her chair as the office door closed.
Nothing much had changed in the labs -- no progress on upgrading the shielding, almost nothing done on the air purifiers. "What did you expect?" Radek said. "You were only gone a couple of months. Miracles, I regret to inform you, did not occur in that time."
"Really?" Rodney said. "It seemed much longer."
All day he kept running into John doing all the old stuff -- working out in the gym, having one of those low-voiced smiling conversations with Elizabeth, sending Lorne's team back for more ammunition, basically putting the skin of Col. Sheppard back over the perfumed body of Lija's Yohn. Only Rodney got to see what lurked beneath Col. Sheppard's skin. Note that he's still 'John', in Rodney's head. He wondered how long it would take before the piercings grew closed, and then he opened the file on his oldest and most annoying unsolved problem so he wouldn't have to think about it any more.
At dinnertime, it was strange to have to go get food rather than having it brought to him. "C'mere," Cadman said, sitting down at his table with four other women from the various military divisions. "McKay knows all about how to please a woman now." Way way back at the start of his contract, Rodney was hoping the tricks he learnt from Kellen would improve his standing amongst the women of Atlantis. He hasn't even had to advertise. And yet he is strangely ... casual (though I detect a hint of smugness in the next exchange).
"Sure," Rodney said. "In fact, I should probably talk to someone on earth about whether I qualify for certification."
Cadman blinked. "In sex?"
"In massage therapy."
There was a moment of silence, and then Lt. Keynes said, "Are you free for dinner tomorrow? How about Tuesday?"
When he went back to quarters after dinner, it took him an hour to stop expecting a chime summoning him to Kellen. His day was over now, and he was going to sleep alone.
Which was fine, just fine. Sleeping alone on Atlantis was normal. Oh, Rodney. Arguing with yourself again, defensive and lonely and distinctly not thinking about John at all.
He barely woke up when the door slid open, just groggily caterpillared over to make room for John to slide into the bed. ♥caterpillared♥
When the alarm went off, they ignored it.
-end-
So much for that habit of obedience! There's hope for them yet ...
Both Rodney and John change so much over the course of this story: we see John's changes more, because we're seeing through Rodney's eyes. The changes in Rodney are signalled more subtly.
I have this sudden urge to apply Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey to John's arc in this story. Or Clute's wrongness-thinning-resolution-healing theory of fantasy. I really do think the structure could stand it, and there's enough iconic images and mythic resonances (I must not pun on author's name. I must not pun on author's ...to reinforce such readings.
But what I adore most about this story is the relationship between John and Rodney: throughout they behave like men (or at least males -- see comments re: adolescent boys) and they certainly don't discuss their feelings, except in code ("whatever she paid for you, it wasn't enough"). There's the repartee, the sniping, the sheer comfortable togetherness of the two of 'em even before they're together in a sexual sense. The sex is secondary (though scrumptious) in this story. It's the connection that counts.
'Term of Service' is funny and poignant and so very easy to self-insert: I still like the notion that, due to a freak timeslip mishap, Ara lo Bajo was actually colonised not from Atlantis (as Teyla suggests early on) but from LiveJournal. .. See you there!