New Fic: Go Out Swinging. SGA, John/Rodney
Title: Go Out Swinging
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: Adult
Notes: Ha, old OTPs never die, I guess. 3200 words, post-Tracker, season 5 spoilers, and packed with so much self-indulgence I figured I should probably warn for it. Thanks to loveyouallwrong for looking it over for me!
Rodney heads back to the infirmary after his discussion with Ronon -- persistence pays, after all -- but at the last minute he decides that it might not pay enough.
This could have something to do with how it felt to see Ronon giving him that adversarial smile, the one that usually came with a blade to the throat, or it may have everything to do with the look on Jennifer's face when Ronon handed over the doll, or it might just have been his low blood sugar. Wooing took a lot out of a man, and it was probably best to start when his energy was high.
Or maybe it had something to do with spotting Sheppard in the hall, talking to a nurse but looking at Rodney with raised eyebrows and a small, sardonic smile.
"Ah, Colonel, there you are," Rodney says, not bothering to apologize for interrupting the conversation. "I was, uh, yes, just looking for you -- I wanted to discuss...the teleportation device."
Sheppard peels himself off the wall he'd been sprawling so casually against, and smiles a little wider, in a strangely inscrutable way. "Right. The teleportation device," he says. "Yeah, I'd been hoping to talk about that too." He transfers his attention back to the nurse, a tiny, perky woman, who seems to bloom into a new level of cheer under the force of Sheppard's smile. "Later, Marti," he says, and she blushes, and Sheppard wraps a hand around Rodney's arm and hauls him off before she's even finished stammering a goodbye.
Rodney allows Sheppard to tug him down the hall because, quite frankly, it's always astonishing and very interesting when Sheppard pulls this trick, if vaguely unsettling. He lets Sheppard worry about paying attention to where they're going and says, "Imagine the implications -- stealth and convenience, Colonel, we'd be able to --"
"Raid the mess for cherry pie without anyone figuring out who the culprits were?"
"That thought had crossed my mind, yes," Rodney says. "But also, it would certainly have its military uses -- "
"Trust me, the Marines would be raiding the mess for cherry pie too," Sheppard says, and Rodney's about to complain -- why should he have to be constantly outwitting Marines in pursuit of cherry pie -- when Sheppard pulls him into his quarters, turns on him, and pushes him up against the wall.
"Oof," Rodney says, not what he'd intended to say at all. His back, already jostled by Wraith and Runners, twinges miserably. But he doesn't get a chance to complain about it, because Sheppard is leaning up against him, pinning him to the wall by the pressure of his hips and a hand on Rodney's chest, fisted into his shirt and holding on tight.
Instead he says, with no small amount of panic, "Sheppard? Is this you?" because, shit, Replicators and clones and dream doubles and, and quantum mirrors; anything explains John Sheppard pinning him to a wall like this about a thousand times better than John Sheppard pinning him to a wall, and leaning against him with the unmistakable pressure of his hard dick making itself very clearly known.
Sheppard -- if that's who this is -- ignores him. "You know, Rodney, a couple months ago, I thought you and Teyla were dead, and that me and Ronon were on our way out," he says, and the intensity of his gaze has Rodney pinned to the wall as much as the weight of his body does. "And I was lying there with my gut pierced, thinking, Christ, Ronon's young. This young guy who had it tough, and survived something I couldn't even imagine, and he was about to die because he hadn't taken an easy out when it was offered. But he was still going out swinging --"
Rodney gapes at him. "Are you about to tell me that I should give up because Ronon's young, scarred, and deserves not to have to compete with me for the right to woo a woman he likes? Because I find that insulting and demeaning to, to all three of us!"
Sheppard rolls his eyes. "Ronon deserves a chance for happiness, yeah, but if you had been quiet and listened, I'd have gotten to the part where I told you that when we got pulled out of there, I was glad I wasn't dead. I was grateful I still had Ronon. Then I found out that you had made it, and that's when I felt like I was really alive."
Rodney tries to process this revelation, and can't. "Oh my God, what did you do with Sheppard." He starts struggling. "This is not Sheppard-talk! This is, this is -- are you a robot? Is this a malfunction?"
But the person who may or may not be Sheppard is strong, and clearly has Sheppard's skills at hand-to-hand and, when he laughs a little, breathless, it's as dorky as Sheppard's laugh. When he leans in close, closer, and Rodney starts taking in quick, panicked breaths, he even smells like Sheppard; Aqua Velva, guns, and fresh laundry washed in that weird US military detergent he favors even though the Athosian stuff makes everything much softer. And, when his mouth touches Rodney's, it's firm, a little chapped and rough, but very gently seeking.
If this is a copy of the real Sheppard, it's a damn good one, Rodney thinks, and it feels good, and Rodney's not exactly the guy who resists pleasure -- helpless against it, he kisses Sheppard back, and just hopes he isn't going to die.
"We all got another chance to have what we really want," Sheppard says to him, drawing back, the hand not wrapped in Rodney's shirt cupping his face. Sheppard's long, callused fingers are holding him with what seems like an inordinate amount of care for a Replicator and damn it, this just feels real.
Plaintively, Rodney asks, "And what do we really want, exactly?" but Sheppard is dropping to his knees, his black BDUs stretched tight over his thighs and crotch, his long, tan fingers going to work on Rodney's zipper, light catching and glinting in the hair on his leanly muscled arms, and all doubts about what he wants go right out the window.
Rodney says, "You want me?" and Sheppard's mouth is busy licking his hip, but his eyes say yes when he looks up, and his hands on Rodney's ass say yes, and the splay of his thighs says yes, and Rodney says, "Yes, okay, yes," too.
~~~
Sleeping with Sheppard does not kill his...feelings for Jennifer. It just takes up a lot of the time he might have otherwise spent thinking about her.
It's problematic, though. He reconciles it in his head as sex with his best friend, who is surprisingly passionate and affectionate, but still not likely to give him what he's almost surprised to find he wants -- a home, family.
"I'm not going to give up on this thing with Jennifer," he says one night when Sheppard is sprawled on top of him, drowsing while Rodney worries his way through what this means, exactly. Sheppard's hips are cradled between his thighs, and his chin is tucked against Rodney's neck, but the fingers that had been making lazy circles on his arm still as Sheppard shifts up on his elbows, smiling.
"Oh yeah?" he says, low, drawling. "Well, I'm glad you don't feel the need to stop on my account."
"I just think I could grow old with her, John," Rodney babbles, nervous, shifting under Sheppard's weight, finding his movements echoed by Sheppard's hips, their dicks growing hard again -- like being seventeen again; ridiculous.
"She'll make a very nice grandmother," Sheppard says, and then he's pushing back inside of Rodney, slow, because Rodney may love a second round but that doesn't mean he hasn't made it clear how he feels about being fucked sore.
Sheppard slows it down even more than usual this time, leaving Rodney desperate and begging for something, anything that will get him to just the right place. Sheppard is quiet and intense, hot like Rodney had only imagined, and coming with Sheppard inside him, hand hot and slick on his dick, those eyes watching him, is better than Rodney had ever dreamed.
~~~
Pursuing Jennifer is not easy. If Rodney brings her a bouquet of wildflowers he picked on Turleane, carefully choosing all of Katie's old favorites, even the ones that make him sneeze, then Ronon will show up with a bag full of a wild herb that eases coughs better than any Earth syrup when it's brewed into a hot tea.
If Rodney memorizes a dictionary of medical jargon, Ronon tells stories about the diseases cured and patients saved by his poor dead first love.
And if Rodney shows off the slightly trimmer physique that he's gained through bouts of energetic sex, Ronon flexes a bicep attractively, and anyway Sheppard is back to tempt Rodney into another round.
"You're making this very difficult, John," Rodney pants as he jerks Sheppard off, kissing him between words because his mouth is so generous, even though it doesn't look like it should be, especially since Sheppard had been frowning when he'd come across Rodney with the medical dictionary again and dragged him away.
"Sorry," Sheppard grunts, and then he comes with a long, low groan. Rodney just has to lick his neck when his head falls back, nuzzling it, feeling his pulse race.
"Actually, it's not that bad," Rodney says, dazed by how fucking hot this is and how Sheppard's sweat tastes.
He misses Sheppard's smug smile because he's too busy coming, but he doesn't need to see it to know it's there.
~~~
"Teyla kicked the asses of seven Marines in a row today," Sheppard says, stripping off the hooded sweatshirt he'd worn out; it was chilly during autumn on Atlantis, and he'd gone for a long run before startling Rodney by coming back to his quarters. He tossed his t-shirt behind him, then went to work on his belt. "Then the eighth one still thought he stood a chance."
"The ninth one probably did too," Rodney says, frowning at his tablet. Medical scans still did not look like real science to him, hard as he was trying to have more respect for them. Mostly they just seemed like loose rip-offs of his own work -- by which he meant, of course, the work of all respectable scientists back through history, but still.
Sheppard's pants hit the floor. "The ninth soldier was me, actually. And I don't have any illusions about my ability to take down Teyla."
"You are also not a Marine," Rodney points out, and he flips the tablet upside down -- ah, yes, that makes more sense.
"Well, you've got to give them credit for optimism," Sheppard says dryly, and then the water level in Rodney's bath is rising dangerously high and he yelps as he holds the tablet up, "Be careful, be careful, what are you doing?"
"Hey, I'm just wondering if this bath thing is as good as it looks," Sheppard says, sliding in behind Rodney, slick and lean and solid. He reaches around, plucks the tablet out of Rodney's hands, and drops it on the shelf behind them with a sigh Rodney can feel in his own chest, they're pressed so close together.
Frowning, flailing, trying not to splash too much water onto the floor, Rodney slips around as he tries to turn and look at Sheppard. There's nowhere to brace his arms comfortably, but Sheppard's thighs bracket his hips pretty well, and an elbow to Sheppard's stomach doesn't seem like a rude thing, per se, at the moment.
"You said you wouldn't take a bath with me before," Rodney says, frowning at Sheppard when he's finally turned around enough.
"Before, I wasn't sleeping with you," Sheppard says, smiling a little, running a wet hand over Rodney's head to mess up his hair. Then he settles himself more comfortably, half-closing his eyes, tugging Rodney's arm with wet fingers until he grudgingly stops resting so much weight on the elbow digging into Sheppard's firm abdomen. "C'mon, relax," he says. "This feels pretty good, doesn't it?"
Of course it did. Wet, naked bodies sliding against each other in warm, scented water on a cool, rainy night? Hell yes. "I suppose," Rodney sniffs, and then he settles down with a sigh, closes his eyes, and relaxes.
The scans aren't going anywhere, after all.
~~~
The next morning, when Rodney is daydreaming a little about Sheppard jerking him off in the bath while he's pretending to care about the virus on Spatona that Ronon had identified as ditune, easily cured by an herb Ronon knew of that still grew in the ruined gardens of Sateda -- yes, Jennifer, it is amazing, the amount of medical knowledge Ronon had accumulated -- he gets a call.
"Yes, what?" he snaps into his headset.
"Colonel Sheppard...appears to have been swallowed by a wall," Woolsey says slowly, as if he can't believe the sentence is coming out of his own mouth, and it doesn't matter because Rodney believes it; of course Rodney believes it. This is Sheppard, and Atlantis, and Rodney is running for his lab as fast as he can go.
~~~
Six hours later, Rodney uses seven laptops, a long hallway, a tuning fork, and a new branch of physics to make Atlantis cough Sheppard up -- literally; the city opens something that is almost not unlike a wormhole at the end of the hall, and Sheppard spills out on a river of goo that shines like Ancient technology.
For a moment, no one moves. Then Sheppard, naked, his clothes dissolved maybe by the slime that covers him, struggles up onto his hands and knees in the middle of the sticky hall. He looks up. His eyes are glowing too, just like the goo, like something in Atlantis had decided it was going to reach out and touch him, light him up for a change. But he must know Rodney is there because he coughs, retches, says, "Rodney? What --"
Then the light leaves him and he slowly crumples to the floor, lying there still and quiet, like he's dead.
Ronon's suddenly there, then, and Jennifer, and a medical team with a gurney, shouting orders back and forth to each other as they struggle down the hall. Ronon lifts Sheppard's limp body without even a grunt and rests him carefully on the gurney, and Jennifer takes his pulse, wipes his eyes and mouth free of the goo. Ronon helps the team push the gurney back down the hall, all of them but him slipping and sliding, and Rodney hears their voices from far away, as if the hall is much longer than it had been before.
All he can see of Sheppard through the crowd is one hand, which bounced off the mattress when someone slipped. His fingers are curled in a way that Rodney has become very familiar with recently; Sheppard sleeping in Rodney's bed, on the couch in Rodney's quarters, taking a blissed-out sunshine nap like a cat, in the bath as they curled up together, drowsy from sex and heat and a long day, relaxed, content together.
"Oh," Rodney says, and then the medical team is sweeping Sheppard past him, and abruptly Rodney is alone with the laptops, the goo, the tuning fork, the long hallway where he'd torn the universe a little bit in order to make the city give Sheppard back.
He stares at the mess around him, then rubs his hands through his hair, flattens his palms over his eyes. He abandons the laptops to their slowly creeping, sticky blue fate as he turns to clean up the other huge mess in his life --
Then he thinks about Atlantis' goo getting its hands on his laptops, and goes back to save them before the city starts calling him Dave.
~~~
Cleaned up and resting peacefully in the infirmary, Sheppard looks okay. His spiky lashes rest on his pale cheeks, and his dark hair looks limp against the pillow, but he's all right. Rodney had gotten him back unharmed.
Teyla sits on the edge of the hospital bed, holding Sheppard's hand in hers and crooning a soft lullaby; both Sheppard and Tagan are sleeping. Rodney stands at the foot of the bed, very aware of Ronon looming behind him, and Jennifer standing beside him.
"I just want to say that I'm sorry, Jennifer," he says, looking over his shoulder. Her eyes are warm and affectionate, even as she raises her eyebrows at him and tilts her head. "Colonel Sheppard has, has a thing for me, you see. It would be cruel to indulge him, shall we say, while pursuing a relationship with you."
"Oh," Jennifer says, looking gratifyingly surprised. "I didn't -- Rodney -- I'm sorry, too. I thought you knew that about that. After you got sick, when you were calling for him, I thought you and Colonel Sheppard were already --" and she makes a complicated hand gesture that could mean any number of things, but mostly looks like a spider strangling a giraffe.
"Not then," Rodney says, shaking his head. "I didn't understand it fully -- and you know how hard that is for me to admit. This may come as a shock to you all, but I can sometimes be insensitive to the emotions of others. It's a failing I work hard to overcome."
"You do very well, Rodney," Teyla murmurs, and she's smiling when Rodney looks at her. But he barely notices, because Sheppard is awake, looking at him, eyes as warm and affectionate as Jennifer's, but dark with something else too, something so obvious that Rodney was amazed he'd missed it; there's obtuse, and then there's just blind.
"I really didn't realize," he says, apologetic, and Sheppard smiles at him a little, just a tired quirk of his mouth, and says, "I know."
He holds out a hand and Rodney moves to take it, feeling his callused skin and the strangely fine bones between his rough knuckles, and realizes that he's never touched Sheppard like this before, to just hold his hand. It's so interesting and new that he doesn't even notice when everyone else leaves, Teyla bouncing her son in her arms, Jennifer and Ronon smiling at each other.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Rodney asks, staring at Sheppard's hand in his. "You told me you wanted me. You couldn't tell me this?"
"I was waiting for you to figure it out on your own," Sheppard says. "I just didn't think it would take you so long. Christ, you're hard to clue in."
"But I never forget something once I've learned it," Rodney says reassuringly. "Which comes from having the best mind in two galaxies, and from not getting hit in the head very often, and only being shot once or twice, and rarely being swallowed by cities, unlike some people I could name."
Sheppard tugs on his hand and Rodney frowns at him, tightens his grip; no escape now. But Sheppard is smiling, still tugging at him. "I have bad luck," he admits. "You should probably stick around and keep getting me out of trouble until I'm too decrepit to get into it."
Rodney isn't so blind that he can't tell when someone's asking to grow old with him. He licks his lips, nervous, but when Sheppard raises an eyebrow at him, still smiling in that tired, quirky way, he leans forward and kisses him, and says, "I can do that."
Author: giddygeek
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: Adult
Notes: Ha, old OTPs never die, I guess. 3200 words, post-Tracker, season 5 spoilers, and packed with so much self-indulgence I figured I should probably warn for it. Thanks to loveyouallwrong for looking it over for me!
Rodney heads back to the infirmary after his discussion with Ronon -- persistence pays, after all -- but at the last minute he decides that it might not pay enough.
This could have something to do with how it felt to see Ronon giving him that adversarial smile, the one that usually came with a blade to the throat, or it may have everything to do with the look on Jennifer's face when Ronon handed over the doll, or it might just have been his low blood sugar. Wooing took a lot out of a man, and it was probably best to start when his energy was high.
Or maybe it had something to do with spotting Sheppard in the hall, talking to a nurse but looking at Rodney with raised eyebrows and a small, sardonic smile.
"Ah, Colonel, there you are," Rodney says, not bothering to apologize for interrupting the conversation. "I was, uh, yes, just looking for you -- I wanted to discuss...the teleportation device."
Sheppard peels himself off the wall he'd been sprawling so casually against, and smiles a little wider, in a strangely inscrutable way. "Right. The teleportation device," he says. "Yeah, I'd been hoping to talk about that too." He transfers his attention back to the nurse, a tiny, perky woman, who seems to bloom into a new level of cheer under the force of Sheppard's smile. "Later, Marti," he says, and she blushes, and Sheppard wraps a hand around Rodney's arm and hauls him off before she's even finished stammering a goodbye.
Rodney allows Sheppard to tug him down the hall because, quite frankly, it's always astonishing and very interesting when Sheppard pulls this trick, if vaguely unsettling. He lets Sheppard worry about paying attention to where they're going and says, "Imagine the implications -- stealth and convenience, Colonel, we'd be able to --"
"Raid the mess for cherry pie without anyone figuring out who the culprits were?"
"That thought had crossed my mind, yes," Rodney says. "But also, it would certainly have its military uses -- "
"Trust me, the Marines would be raiding the mess for cherry pie too," Sheppard says, and Rodney's about to complain -- why should he have to be constantly outwitting Marines in pursuit of cherry pie -- when Sheppard pulls him into his quarters, turns on him, and pushes him up against the wall.
"Oof," Rodney says, not what he'd intended to say at all. His back, already jostled by Wraith and Runners, twinges miserably. But he doesn't get a chance to complain about it, because Sheppard is leaning up against him, pinning him to the wall by the pressure of his hips and a hand on Rodney's chest, fisted into his shirt and holding on tight.
Instead he says, with no small amount of panic, "Sheppard? Is this you?" because, shit, Replicators and clones and dream doubles and, and quantum mirrors; anything explains John Sheppard pinning him to a wall like this about a thousand times better than John Sheppard pinning him to a wall, and leaning against him with the unmistakable pressure of his hard dick making itself very clearly known.
Sheppard -- if that's who this is -- ignores him. "You know, Rodney, a couple months ago, I thought you and Teyla were dead, and that me and Ronon were on our way out," he says, and the intensity of his gaze has Rodney pinned to the wall as much as the weight of his body does. "And I was lying there with my gut pierced, thinking, Christ, Ronon's young. This young guy who had it tough, and survived something I couldn't even imagine, and he was about to die because he hadn't taken an easy out when it was offered. But he was still going out swinging --"
Rodney gapes at him. "Are you about to tell me that I should give up because Ronon's young, scarred, and deserves not to have to compete with me for the right to woo a woman he likes? Because I find that insulting and demeaning to, to all three of us!"
Sheppard rolls his eyes. "Ronon deserves a chance for happiness, yeah, but if you had been quiet and listened, I'd have gotten to the part where I told you that when we got pulled out of there, I was glad I wasn't dead. I was grateful I still had Ronon. Then I found out that you had made it, and that's when I felt like I was really alive."
Rodney tries to process this revelation, and can't. "Oh my God, what did you do with Sheppard." He starts struggling. "This is not Sheppard-talk! This is, this is -- are you a robot? Is this a malfunction?"
But the person who may or may not be Sheppard is strong, and clearly has Sheppard's skills at hand-to-hand and, when he laughs a little, breathless, it's as dorky as Sheppard's laugh. When he leans in close, closer, and Rodney starts taking in quick, panicked breaths, he even smells like Sheppard; Aqua Velva, guns, and fresh laundry washed in that weird US military detergent he favors even though the Athosian stuff makes everything much softer. And, when his mouth touches Rodney's, it's firm, a little chapped and rough, but very gently seeking.
If this is a copy of the real Sheppard, it's a damn good one, Rodney thinks, and it feels good, and Rodney's not exactly the guy who resists pleasure -- helpless against it, he kisses Sheppard back, and just hopes he isn't going to die.
"We all got another chance to have what we really want," Sheppard says to him, drawing back, the hand not wrapped in Rodney's shirt cupping his face. Sheppard's long, callused fingers are holding him with what seems like an inordinate amount of care for a Replicator and damn it, this just feels real.
Plaintively, Rodney asks, "And what do we really want, exactly?" but Sheppard is dropping to his knees, his black BDUs stretched tight over his thighs and crotch, his long, tan fingers going to work on Rodney's zipper, light catching and glinting in the hair on his leanly muscled arms, and all doubts about what he wants go right out the window.
Rodney says, "You want me?" and Sheppard's mouth is busy licking his hip, but his eyes say yes when he looks up, and his hands on Rodney's ass say yes, and the splay of his thighs says yes, and Rodney says, "Yes, okay, yes," too.
~~~
Sleeping with Sheppard does not kill his...feelings for Jennifer. It just takes up a lot of the time he might have otherwise spent thinking about her.
It's problematic, though. He reconciles it in his head as sex with his best friend, who is surprisingly passionate and affectionate, but still not likely to give him what he's almost surprised to find he wants -- a home, family.
"I'm not going to give up on this thing with Jennifer," he says one night when Sheppard is sprawled on top of him, drowsing while Rodney worries his way through what this means, exactly. Sheppard's hips are cradled between his thighs, and his chin is tucked against Rodney's neck, but the fingers that had been making lazy circles on his arm still as Sheppard shifts up on his elbows, smiling.
"Oh yeah?" he says, low, drawling. "Well, I'm glad you don't feel the need to stop on my account."
"I just think I could grow old with her, John," Rodney babbles, nervous, shifting under Sheppard's weight, finding his movements echoed by Sheppard's hips, their dicks growing hard again -- like being seventeen again; ridiculous.
"She'll make a very nice grandmother," Sheppard says, and then he's pushing back inside of Rodney, slow, because Rodney may love a second round but that doesn't mean he hasn't made it clear how he feels about being fucked sore.
Sheppard slows it down even more than usual this time, leaving Rodney desperate and begging for something, anything that will get him to just the right place. Sheppard is quiet and intense, hot like Rodney had only imagined, and coming with Sheppard inside him, hand hot and slick on his dick, those eyes watching him, is better than Rodney had ever dreamed.
~~~
Pursuing Jennifer is not easy. If Rodney brings her a bouquet of wildflowers he picked on Turleane, carefully choosing all of Katie's old favorites, even the ones that make him sneeze, then Ronon will show up with a bag full of a wild herb that eases coughs better than any Earth syrup when it's brewed into a hot tea.
If Rodney memorizes a dictionary of medical jargon, Ronon tells stories about the diseases cured and patients saved by his poor dead first love.
And if Rodney shows off the slightly trimmer physique that he's gained through bouts of energetic sex, Ronon flexes a bicep attractively, and anyway Sheppard is back to tempt Rodney into another round.
"You're making this very difficult, John," Rodney pants as he jerks Sheppard off, kissing him between words because his mouth is so generous, even though it doesn't look like it should be, especially since Sheppard had been frowning when he'd come across Rodney with the medical dictionary again and dragged him away.
"Sorry," Sheppard grunts, and then he comes with a long, low groan. Rodney just has to lick his neck when his head falls back, nuzzling it, feeling his pulse race.
"Actually, it's not that bad," Rodney says, dazed by how fucking hot this is and how Sheppard's sweat tastes.
He misses Sheppard's smug smile because he's too busy coming, but he doesn't need to see it to know it's there.
~~~
"Teyla kicked the asses of seven Marines in a row today," Sheppard says, stripping off the hooded sweatshirt he'd worn out; it was chilly during autumn on Atlantis, and he'd gone for a long run before startling Rodney by coming back to his quarters. He tossed his t-shirt behind him, then went to work on his belt. "Then the eighth one still thought he stood a chance."
"The ninth one probably did too," Rodney says, frowning at his tablet. Medical scans still did not look like real science to him, hard as he was trying to have more respect for them. Mostly they just seemed like loose rip-offs of his own work -- by which he meant, of course, the work of all respectable scientists back through history, but still.
Sheppard's pants hit the floor. "The ninth soldier was me, actually. And I don't have any illusions about my ability to take down Teyla."
"You are also not a Marine," Rodney points out, and he flips the tablet upside down -- ah, yes, that makes more sense.
"Well, you've got to give them credit for optimism," Sheppard says dryly, and then the water level in Rodney's bath is rising dangerously high and he yelps as he holds the tablet up, "Be careful, be careful, what are you doing?"
"Hey, I'm just wondering if this bath thing is as good as it looks," Sheppard says, sliding in behind Rodney, slick and lean and solid. He reaches around, plucks the tablet out of Rodney's hands, and drops it on the shelf behind them with a sigh Rodney can feel in his own chest, they're pressed so close together.
Frowning, flailing, trying not to splash too much water onto the floor, Rodney slips around as he tries to turn and look at Sheppard. There's nowhere to brace his arms comfortably, but Sheppard's thighs bracket his hips pretty well, and an elbow to Sheppard's stomach doesn't seem like a rude thing, per se, at the moment.
"You said you wouldn't take a bath with me before," Rodney says, frowning at Sheppard when he's finally turned around enough.
"Before, I wasn't sleeping with you," Sheppard says, smiling a little, running a wet hand over Rodney's head to mess up his hair. Then he settles himself more comfortably, half-closing his eyes, tugging Rodney's arm with wet fingers until he grudgingly stops resting so much weight on the elbow digging into Sheppard's firm abdomen. "C'mon, relax," he says. "This feels pretty good, doesn't it?"
Of course it did. Wet, naked bodies sliding against each other in warm, scented water on a cool, rainy night? Hell yes. "I suppose," Rodney sniffs, and then he settles down with a sigh, closes his eyes, and relaxes.
The scans aren't going anywhere, after all.
~~~
The next morning, when Rodney is daydreaming a little about Sheppard jerking him off in the bath while he's pretending to care about the virus on Spatona that Ronon had identified as ditune, easily cured by an herb Ronon knew of that still grew in the ruined gardens of Sateda -- yes, Jennifer, it is amazing, the amount of medical knowledge Ronon had accumulated -- he gets a call.
"Yes, what?" he snaps into his headset.
"Colonel Sheppard...appears to have been swallowed by a wall," Woolsey says slowly, as if he can't believe the sentence is coming out of his own mouth, and it doesn't matter because Rodney believes it; of course Rodney believes it. This is Sheppard, and Atlantis, and Rodney is running for his lab as fast as he can go.
~~~
Six hours later, Rodney uses seven laptops, a long hallway, a tuning fork, and a new branch of physics to make Atlantis cough Sheppard up -- literally; the city opens something that is almost not unlike a wormhole at the end of the hall, and Sheppard spills out on a river of goo that shines like Ancient technology.
For a moment, no one moves. Then Sheppard, naked, his clothes dissolved maybe by the slime that covers him, struggles up onto his hands and knees in the middle of the sticky hall. He looks up. His eyes are glowing too, just like the goo, like something in Atlantis had decided it was going to reach out and touch him, light him up for a change. But he must know Rodney is there because he coughs, retches, says, "Rodney? What --"
Then the light leaves him and he slowly crumples to the floor, lying there still and quiet, like he's dead.
Ronon's suddenly there, then, and Jennifer, and a medical team with a gurney, shouting orders back and forth to each other as they struggle down the hall. Ronon lifts Sheppard's limp body without even a grunt and rests him carefully on the gurney, and Jennifer takes his pulse, wipes his eyes and mouth free of the goo. Ronon helps the team push the gurney back down the hall, all of them but him slipping and sliding, and Rodney hears their voices from far away, as if the hall is much longer than it had been before.
All he can see of Sheppard through the crowd is one hand, which bounced off the mattress when someone slipped. His fingers are curled in a way that Rodney has become very familiar with recently; Sheppard sleeping in Rodney's bed, on the couch in Rodney's quarters, taking a blissed-out sunshine nap like a cat, in the bath as they curled up together, drowsy from sex and heat and a long day, relaxed, content together.
"Oh," Rodney says, and then the medical team is sweeping Sheppard past him, and abruptly Rodney is alone with the laptops, the goo, the tuning fork, the long hallway where he'd torn the universe a little bit in order to make the city give Sheppard back.
He stares at the mess around him, then rubs his hands through his hair, flattens his palms over his eyes. He abandons the laptops to their slowly creeping, sticky blue fate as he turns to clean up the other huge mess in his life --
Then he thinks about Atlantis' goo getting its hands on his laptops, and goes back to save them before the city starts calling him Dave.
~~~
Cleaned up and resting peacefully in the infirmary, Sheppard looks okay. His spiky lashes rest on his pale cheeks, and his dark hair looks limp against the pillow, but he's all right. Rodney had gotten him back unharmed.
Teyla sits on the edge of the hospital bed, holding Sheppard's hand in hers and crooning a soft lullaby; both Sheppard and Tagan are sleeping. Rodney stands at the foot of the bed, very aware of Ronon looming behind him, and Jennifer standing beside him.
"I just want to say that I'm sorry, Jennifer," he says, looking over his shoulder. Her eyes are warm and affectionate, even as she raises her eyebrows at him and tilts her head. "Colonel Sheppard has, has a thing for me, you see. It would be cruel to indulge him, shall we say, while pursuing a relationship with you."
"Oh," Jennifer says, looking gratifyingly surprised. "I didn't -- Rodney -- I'm sorry, too. I thought you knew that about that. After you got sick, when you were calling for him, I thought you and Colonel Sheppard were already --" and she makes a complicated hand gesture that could mean any number of things, but mostly looks like a spider strangling a giraffe.
"Not then," Rodney says, shaking his head. "I didn't understand it fully -- and you know how hard that is for me to admit. This may come as a shock to you all, but I can sometimes be insensitive to the emotions of others. It's a failing I work hard to overcome."
"You do very well, Rodney," Teyla murmurs, and she's smiling when Rodney looks at her. But he barely notices, because Sheppard is awake, looking at him, eyes as warm and affectionate as Jennifer's, but dark with something else too, something so obvious that Rodney was amazed he'd missed it; there's obtuse, and then there's just blind.
"I really didn't realize," he says, apologetic, and Sheppard smiles at him a little, just a tired quirk of his mouth, and says, "I know."
He holds out a hand and Rodney moves to take it, feeling his callused skin and the strangely fine bones between his rough knuckles, and realizes that he's never touched Sheppard like this before, to just hold his hand. It's so interesting and new that he doesn't even notice when everyone else leaves, Teyla bouncing her son in her arms, Jennifer and Ronon smiling at each other.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Rodney asks, staring at Sheppard's hand in his. "You told me you wanted me. You couldn't tell me this?"
"I was waiting for you to figure it out on your own," Sheppard says. "I just didn't think it would take you so long. Christ, you're hard to clue in."
"But I never forget something once I've learned it," Rodney says reassuringly. "Which comes from having the best mind in two galaxies, and from not getting hit in the head very often, and only being shot once or twice, and rarely being swallowed by cities, unlike some people I could name."
Sheppard tugs on his hand and Rodney frowns at him, tightens his grip; no escape now. But Sheppard is smiling, still tugging at him. "I have bad luck," he admits. "You should probably stick around and keep getting me out of trouble until I'm too decrepit to get into it."
Rodney isn't so blind that he can't tell when someone's asking to grow old with him. He licks his lips, nervous, but when Sheppard raises an eyebrow at him, still smiling in that tired, quirky way, he leans forward and kisses him, and says, "I can do that."