14 Valentines 12: The Trees on Memory Lane (McKay/Sheppard, PG)
Title: The Trees on Memory Lane
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3,000
Warnings: Character death. I've been changing my posting schedule (again), so everyone I warned about reading the story for the 13th: this is it, the story that made me cry while I was writing it.
Summary: John Sheppard was doing fine.
Notes: This AU was inspired by Stephen King's "Lisey's Story", which is a surprisingly decent book (after "Cell" I hadn't dared to hope). Beta-read by jayel_fox, broet-chan and houseinrlyeh.
14 Valentines Essay: Day 12: Economics & Work
~~~
John was standing in Rodney's sunlit office, looking at the two desks with their three laptops on top of them, at the haphazard stacks of papers, at the shelves with their journals and books and sonic screwdrivers made of plastic, at everything Rodney had picked up over the years. He looked at the pictures on the wall, and the diplomas; at the drawers that held the secrets of Rodney's work and probably a half-eaten bag of Cheetos or two. At the comfy office chair that had cost a small fortune but which Rodney had sworn had done wonders for his back, the polished hardwood floor, the stack of books teetering at the side of one desk. He took it all in - fifteen years of Rodney living and breathing and working in this space - and tried to decide what to keep, and what to throw away.
He'd probably keep the desks. They were still good, no use throwing them away. Also the laptops, because Rodney had loved them - "Mankind's greatest invention since the wheel," he'd said - although he'd have to look through the files before he stowed them away. Zelenka would want Rodney's unfinished theories. Carter would want Rodney's unfinished theories, too, but John would be damned if he gave them to her. He wasn't above petty jealousy, even after it had become redundant.
Whatever he ended up doing with all this stuff, though, it would probably take a while for him to clear everything out, either to throw it away or to give it away or to put it into storage. Rodney's family tree had to have more than a few pack rats in there, interbreeding with the occasional magpie because that man was virtually unable to let anything go once he'd deemed it shiny.
Had been. Had been unable to. John would have to get used to the past tense now, wouldn't he? He'd also have to get used to an empty house, to sleeping alone in a bed made for two, and to being his own company. That was probably what had driven him to Rodney's office in the first place: a restlessness he couldn't seem to shake, that grew worse the longer the silence dragged on. Only now, standing in the comfortable room that was inarguably Rodney's, not his, John couldn't help but wonder if coming here had been such a good idea.
He'd been doing great so far. No middle-of-the-night breakdowns, no tearful phone calls to their friends detailing how he couldn't live alone anymore, no weird urges to throw himself on Rodney's grave just to feel close to him again. No, John Sheppard was doing fine.
Except... Except sometimes, he'd turn around and say, "Hey, look at that, isn't it-" and then swallow the rest of the sentence because Rodney wasn't there. He'd go into town and see some crazy gizmo and carry it all the way to the checkout before he remembered that Rodney's eyes wouldn't light up with glee, that Rodney wouldn't like it, because Rodney was gone. Had been dead for almost three weeks now. And then John would feel vaguely guilty, because he was certain that he should grieve more. After all, the guy he'd spent more than fifteen years with had died far too young.
John ran a finger over one slightly dusty desk and grinned despite himself. More than fifteen years. Rodney would have ripped him a new one for inaccuracy if he'd been there. Would have pointed out that John had been with his parents for longer and still hadn't grieved when his father had died. Would have pulled out the big words and the wavy gestures and talked and talked and talked until John admitted he was wrong and Rodney was right just to make him shut up.
"Always right, weren't you?" John murmured, picking up a framed picture of Rodney and himself that stood between two silent laptops, showing the two of them in front of the magnificently ugly Stockholm Concert Hall, wearing dark suits. Rodney was grinning like a maniac, his cheeks flushed with triumph and the cold. It had been a bright day, not a cloud in the sky, the air crisp with frost. John was grinning, too, though his expression was less triumph and more pride. His boyfriend was about to receive the Physics Nobel Prize.
John huffed out a chuckle at the memory. That had been one boring evening, but the look on Rodney's face when he'd accepted the medal, the quiet awe instead of the arrogant bluster most of the audience had expected, had been more than worth it.
Rodney had also been wrong more often than not, though. John's grin faded as he remembered the big one, the one that had almost-
Don't go there.
John pulled at a random drawer, trying to distract himself. It was filled with paper: loose printed sheets, envelopes, pages torn out of a notebook. Right on top of the stack was a bundle of what turned out to be birthday cards, held together with a cheap green rubber band. John leafed through them, grinning when he came across a plain white card with a penguin drawn on it in black ink. 'The PENGUIN of DEATH', it said. John knew it was from Ronon before he even flipped it open. And sure enough, there was that familiar scrawl: Happy birthday. Ronon. Succinct as always, but they'd both liked him for that.
Against all likelihood, he and Rodney had met at a party, Ronon's thirtieth birthday party, if John remembered it right. He'd known Ronon from one of the more gruesome cases the Atlantis police had been forced to deal with, a double homicide with an honest to god pitchfork as the murder weapon. Neither Ronon nor Rodney had ever told him how the two of them had met, but John suspected that it had something to do with police work as well. Still, the chance of meeting Rodney at a party was ridiculously slim, and John hadn't even wanted to go in the first place, so he figured that their meeting had been twice as lucky. Even if Rodney later turned out to have something of a soft spot for - make that obsession with - birthday parties. He'd been strange that way, and John had loved him for it. How could they have known that Rodney would barely live to celebrate his own fiftieth?
Rodney McKay. Genius. Child prodigy. Odd one out. To John, he'd just been some guy who went red and stuttered a lot when someone asked him anything not related to physics, which of course meant that John had asked him every personal question he could think of just to see him flounder. It had been kind of cute. Almost as cute as Rodney showing up at the station four days later. He'd fumbled his way through increasingly convoluted sentences until John had taken pity on him and told him that, if Rodney wanted to ask him out, he'd be off duty in another two hours. Rodney had looked so relieved it had almost been comical. Rodney, with his broad shoulders and his blue eyes and thinning hair and pale skin and cheeks that flushed so easily. Rodney. He'd been how old, then, 32?
John sat down on the great-for-the-back chair and put the birthday cards on the right side of the desk. The side for things to be thrown away later, he supposed, if he was actually sorting stuff. The contents of a drawer seemed as good a starting place as any.
He fished out a few sheets of paper that had been stapled together, covered in small print. They were covered in equations, untitled, and John gave up trying to follow the math after a few lines. He put them in the middle of the smooth desk surface, to be handed over to Zelenka. Not Carter, never Carter, although she was nice enough. Still, John had never stopped seeing her as the-one-that-Rodney-almost, and he probably never would.
Come on, don't go there.
Except why not? Rodney was gone. Permanently, irrevocably gone, and if John wanted to drag out his grudge at Carter and examine it, who was there to stop him? No one, he thought with a surge of anger that caught him by surprise, no one, you son of a bitch, because that particular torch had fizzed and flickered out three weeks ago. There'd be no argument, no bitter accusations, no oppressive silence, because John was fucking alone. As alone as he'd been during the tour for Rodney's second book, despite following him to lectures and book-signings all over the country. Samantha Carter had been there, too. Samantha fucking Carter, Sam, with her blue eyes and blonde hair and easy smile and pretty breasts, and Rodney had fallen for her fast and hard. So hard that after two weeks of "Isn't she great?" and "I think she likes me," John had gone to the next bar that had caught his eye and proceeded to get himself so drunk that standing had become an issue. And when Rodney had finally found him, bitching about the dangers of alcohol and loss of brain cells and what would Sam Carter think, John had snapped.
John took a deep breath and pulled out the next few papers. Spreadsheets, it turned out, detailing all the articles Rodney had published and when, in which journals or magazines, how many outraged calls and admiring letters they had entailed. Knowing Rodney, the column with the outraged calls had been his favourite. Crushing egos had always filled him with an unholy glee. Just like he'd crushed that asshole Kavanagh on that book tour, three days before John had broken his nose. Rodney's, not Kavanagh's.
He still felt guilty about that, even now, even though it really had been Rodney's own fault. He'd just kept pushing and pushing and John had been drunk, and he'd been sorry afterwards even though he'd told Rodney to finally shut up about fucking Sam Carter. Just... really. It made him grin now, filled with a bitter kind of amusement, the memory of how Rodney had blinked at him and said, "But I haven't fucked her yet." So typically Rodney.
They had broken up that night. As far as John knew, Rodney had never started anything with Samantha Carter, not even in the seven miserable months they'd stayed apart.
John shoved the memory aside. He wasn't here to reminisce, he just wanted to clean out Rodney's office. Occupy himself. Maybe figure out what to do with the room. Preferably something that wouldn't lead him in here all that often.
Rummaging through the drawer, he pulled out sheet after sheet of paper. Some of them went into the middle of the desk, most of them landed on the right side. A ratty old notebook filled with Rodney's sarcastic observations of their last vacation to Peru - Rodney hadn't wanted to go, but John had wanted to see Machu Picchu - and the horrible, horrible service he'd been subjected to. John hadn't even noticed Rodney writing into the notebook, though he did remember the bitching, but the notes were too hilarious to throw them away.
Clearly, at the speed he was going, cleaning out the office would take him only, oh... four or five months.
Eventually, though, the drawer was empty, contents neatly sorted on the desk, except for a small air cushion envelope that John pulled out last. Final Theory of Unification was written bold and underlined on it in Rodney's meticulously neat handwriting, and beneath, smaller: The answer to life, the universe and everything. By Dr. M. Rodney McKay. John wondered if he should just put it on the stack to hand over to Zelenka, but his curiosity got the better of him. Instead of the manuscript he was expecting, though, the envelope only held a single photograph. John blinked.
The picture had to be at least five or six years old, taken at one of the birthday parties Rodney had insisted on every year, for each of them. John thought it might have had something to do with a lack of birthday parties in Rodney's childhood, but he'd never asked. He supposed that if he wanted to know now, he'd have to ask Jeannie. This particular birthday party had been in their garden. John recognised the oleander they'd had for three years before it had died. It was blooming in the background, which meant it was summer, which meant it was Rodney's birthday party, not John's. In the picture, the two of them were sitting on a bench in front of a low table with an enormous cake sitting on top of it. They were grinning at each other, identical smitten looks on their faces, and when John traced the picture with his fingertips, he noticed that Rodney was holding a cake shovel in his right hand.
The number on the cake, written in bright red frosting: 42.
Startled, John started to laugh. He laughed until he hiccuped, a painful thing that made his eyes water and his throat hurt, made something in his chest clench up so hard he didn't think it would ever relax again.
God, Rodney. He missed him so much.
"I miss you, buddy." There, out loud, and it was horribly, achingly true, the force of it nearly bringing him to his knees. He missed Rodney. He missed grinning at him like he did in the photograph, brimming with love and possessiveness and a sense of belonging so strong it had scared him sometimes. He missed cracking bad jokes and laughing at worse ones. He missed rolling over at night and mashing his nose painfully against a shoulder blade. He missed the bitching, the familiarity, the easy affection between them, the smell, the warmth, just... everything. Every damn thing, but Rodney was gone and John had been left behind to cope with life without him, and he couldn't. He'd thought he could, but he couldn't, and that son of a bitch wasn't even there to yell at.
Angrily, John wiped away the tears that had rolled down his cheeks while he hadn't been paying attention. He wasn't crying, it was just... the office, Rodney's damn office, that still looked like Rodney might come in any moment and sit down and boot up one of his laptops and yell for more coffee. Only he wouldn't because he was dead, and there was a fine layer of dust on everything, and John surprised himself with a single, painful sob that died halfway up his throat and came out as a harsh cough, fresh tears shockingly hot as they spilled down his face. God. Rodney was dead, he was really dead, and the truth of it made John gasp for air, made him bend over and hold his stomach because it hurt, not like a knife being turned in his gut but a deep, empty ache he didn't know how to fill.
Rodney was gone. He'd loved the guy and he was gone, and John didn't even... he didn't know... had he even told Rodney that he loved him, at least once? He didn't know. Seventeen fucking years together, and he had no idea if they'd ever talked about this thing between them; didn't think they had, not even Rodney, who usually wouldn't shut up if his life depended on it. It wouldn't have been so hard to say it, would it, and maybe he had and just couldn't remember, but he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure and now it was too late and he'd never get to say it, and Rodney would never know-
John pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and took a deep breath, and another, and another, telling himself to calm the fuck down because Rodney had known. He'd known as surely as John had known that Rodney loved him. It was right there, in the Stockholm picture on his desk, in the photo John still held in his hand, in the little things they'd said and done every day. In the way his heart had still started beating faster, after seventeen years, every time Rodney had smiled that wide, delighted smile at him.
John stood up from the office chair, clutching the photograph and blinking while he rummaged around Rodney's desk for some tissues. He blew his nose one-handedly when he found one, swallowing the last of his grief to get it back inside, where it belonged. His eyes felt gritty and his nose hurt - and his throat, and his chest - but weirdly enough, he felt better somehow. More ready to face a world that held double-beds with just one person in them, and expensive coffee in the back of the freezer that no one would ever drink.
He walked to the door, then turned around with his hand already on the handle, letting his gaze sweep over the room once more. The office of a dead man. It looked exactly the same, bright rays of late-summer sunshine falling through the large windows, touching desks - one of which was now covered in paper - and shelves and walls and John, who could feel the warmth through his clothes. He knew this probably wasn't going to be his last slip, although he'd be better prepared for the next one. But maybe... just maybe, you know, because he wasn't actually in a hurry... he'd postpone this whole cleaning the office thing until later. Keep the memories undisturbed, just a little longer.
John's grip tightened on the handle, then he nodded, walked out and closed the door behind him, taking the picture of Rodney's unifying theory with him to figure it out. In the silent office, the dust began to settle again.
~~~
End.
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3,000
Warnings: Character death. I've been changing my posting schedule (again), so everyone I warned about reading the story for the 13th: this is it, the story that made me cry while I was writing it.
Summary: John Sheppard was doing fine.
Notes: This AU was inspired by Stephen King's "Lisey's Story", which is a surprisingly decent book (after "Cell" I hadn't dared to hope). Beta-read by jayel_fox, broet-chan and houseinrlyeh.
14 Valentines Essay: Day 12: Economics & Work
~~~
John was standing in Rodney's sunlit office, looking at the two desks with their three laptops on top of them, at the haphazard stacks of papers, at the shelves with their journals and books and sonic screwdrivers made of plastic, at everything Rodney had picked up over the years. He looked at the pictures on the wall, and the diplomas; at the drawers that held the secrets of Rodney's work and probably a half-eaten bag of Cheetos or two. At the comfy office chair that had cost a small fortune but which Rodney had sworn had done wonders for his back, the polished hardwood floor, the stack of books teetering at the side of one desk. He took it all in - fifteen years of Rodney living and breathing and working in this space - and tried to decide what to keep, and what to throw away.
He'd probably keep the desks. They were still good, no use throwing them away. Also the laptops, because Rodney had loved them - "Mankind's greatest invention since the wheel," he'd said - although he'd have to look through the files before he stowed them away. Zelenka would want Rodney's unfinished theories. Carter would want Rodney's unfinished theories, too, but John would be damned if he gave them to her. He wasn't above petty jealousy, even after it had become redundant.
Whatever he ended up doing with all this stuff, though, it would probably take a while for him to clear everything out, either to throw it away or to give it away or to put it into storage. Rodney's family tree had to have more than a few pack rats in there, interbreeding with the occasional magpie because that man was virtually unable to let anything go once he'd deemed it shiny.
Had been. Had been unable to. John would have to get used to the past tense now, wouldn't he? He'd also have to get used to an empty house, to sleeping alone in a bed made for two, and to being his own company. That was probably what had driven him to Rodney's office in the first place: a restlessness he couldn't seem to shake, that grew worse the longer the silence dragged on. Only now, standing in the comfortable room that was inarguably Rodney's, not his, John couldn't help but wonder if coming here had been such a good idea.
He'd been doing great so far. No middle-of-the-night breakdowns, no tearful phone calls to their friends detailing how he couldn't live alone anymore, no weird urges to throw himself on Rodney's grave just to feel close to him again. No, John Sheppard was doing fine.
Except... Except sometimes, he'd turn around and say, "Hey, look at that, isn't it-" and then swallow the rest of the sentence because Rodney wasn't there. He'd go into town and see some crazy gizmo and carry it all the way to the checkout before he remembered that Rodney's eyes wouldn't light up with glee, that Rodney wouldn't like it, because Rodney was gone. Had been dead for almost three weeks now. And then John would feel vaguely guilty, because he was certain that he should grieve more. After all, the guy he'd spent more than fifteen years with had died far too young.
John ran a finger over one slightly dusty desk and grinned despite himself. More than fifteen years. Rodney would have ripped him a new one for inaccuracy if he'd been there. Would have pointed out that John had been with his parents for longer and still hadn't grieved when his father had died. Would have pulled out the big words and the wavy gestures and talked and talked and talked until John admitted he was wrong and Rodney was right just to make him shut up.
"Always right, weren't you?" John murmured, picking up a framed picture of Rodney and himself that stood between two silent laptops, showing the two of them in front of the magnificently ugly Stockholm Concert Hall, wearing dark suits. Rodney was grinning like a maniac, his cheeks flushed with triumph and the cold. It had been a bright day, not a cloud in the sky, the air crisp with frost. John was grinning, too, though his expression was less triumph and more pride. His boyfriend was about to receive the Physics Nobel Prize.
John huffed out a chuckle at the memory. That had been one boring evening, but the look on Rodney's face when he'd accepted the medal, the quiet awe instead of the arrogant bluster most of the audience had expected, had been more than worth it.
Rodney had also been wrong more often than not, though. John's grin faded as he remembered the big one, the one that had almost-
Don't go there.
John pulled at a random drawer, trying to distract himself. It was filled with paper: loose printed sheets, envelopes, pages torn out of a notebook. Right on top of the stack was a bundle of what turned out to be birthday cards, held together with a cheap green rubber band. John leafed through them, grinning when he came across a plain white card with a penguin drawn on it in black ink. 'The PENGUIN of DEATH', it said. John knew it was from Ronon before he even flipped it open. And sure enough, there was that familiar scrawl: Happy birthday. Ronon. Succinct as always, but they'd both liked him for that.
Against all likelihood, he and Rodney had met at a party, Ronon's thirtieth birthday party, if John remembered it right. He'd known Ronon from one of the more gruesome cases the Atlantis police had been forced to deal with, a double homicide with an honest to god pitchfork as the murder weapon. Neither Ronon nor Rodney had ever told him how the two of them had met, but John suspected that it had something to do with police work as well. Still, the chance of meeting Rodney at a party was ridiculously slim, and John hadn't even wanted to go in the first place, so he figured that their meeting had been twice as lucky. Even if Rodney later turned out to have something of a soft spot for - make that obsession with - birthday parties. He'd been strange that way, and John had loved him for it. How could they have known that Rodney would barely live to celebrate his own fiftieth?
Rodney McKay. Genius. Child prodigy. Odd one out. To John, he'd just been some guy who went red and stuttered a lot when someone asked him anything not related to physics, which of course meant that John had asked him every personal question he could think of just to see him flounder. It had been kind of cute. Almost as cute as Rodney showing up at the station four days later. He'd fumbled his way through increasingly convoluted sentences until John had taken pity on him and told him that, if Rodney wanted to ask him out, he'd be off duty in another two hours. Rodney had looked so relieved it had almost been comical. Rodney, with his broad shoulders and his blue eyes and thinning hair and pale skin and cheeks that flushed so easily. Rodney. He'd been how old, then, 32?
John sat down on the great-for-the-back chair and put the birthday cards on the right side of the desk. The side for things to be thrown away later, he supposed, if he was actually sorting stuff. The contents of a drawer seemed as good a starting place as any.
He fished out a few sheets of paper that had been stapled together, covered in small print. They were covered in equations, untitled, and John gave up trying to follow the math after a few lines. He put them in the middle of the smooth desk surface, to be handed over to Zelenka. Not Carter, never Carter, although she was nice enough. Still, John had never stopped seeing her as the-one-that-Rodney-almost, and he probably never would.
Come on, don't go there.
Except why not? Rodney was gone. Permanently, irrevocably gone, and if John wanted to drag out his grudge at Carter and examine it, who was there to stop him? No one, he thought with a surge of anger that caught him by surprise, no one, you son of a bitch, because that particular torch had fizzed and flickered out three weeks ago. There'd be no argument, no bitter accusations, no oppressive silence, because John was fucking alone. As alone as he'd been during the tour for Rodney's second book, despite following him to lectures and book-signings all over the country. Samantha Carter had been there, too. Samantha fucking Carter, Sam, with her blue eyes and blonde hair and easy smile and pretty breasts, and Rodney had fallen for her fast and hard. So hard that after two weeks of "Isn't she great?" and "I think she likes me," John had gone to the next bar that had caught his eye and proceeded to get himself so drunk that standing had become an issue. And when Rodney had finally found him, bitching about the dangers of alcohol and loss of brain cells and what would Sam Carter think, John had snapped.
John took a deep breath and pulled out the next few papers. Spreadsheets, it turned out, detailing all the articles Rodney had published and when, in which journals or magazines, how many outraged calls and admiring letters they had entailed. Knowing Rodney, the column with the outraged calls had been his favourite. Crushing egos had always filled him with an unholy glee. Just like he'd crushed that asshole Kavanagh on that book tour, three days before John had broken his nose. Rodney's, not Kavanagh's.
He still felt guilty about that, even now, even though it really had been Rodney's own fault. He'd just kept pushing and pushing and John had been drunk, and he'd been sorry afterwards even though he'd told Rodney to finally shut up about fucking Sam Carter. Just... really. It made him grin now, filled with a bitter kind of amusement, the memory of how Rodney had blinked at him and said, "But I haven't fucked her yet." So typically Rodney.
They had broken up that night. As far as John knew, Rodney had never started anything with Samantha Carter, not even in the seven miserable months they'd stayed apart.
John shoved the memory aside. He wasn't here to reminisce, he just wanted to clean out Rodney's office. Occupy himself. Maybe figure out what to do with the room. Preferably something that wouldn't lead him in here all that often.
Rummaging through the drawer, he pulled out sheet after sheet of paper. Some of them went into the middle of the desk, most of them landed on the right side. A ratty old notebook filled with Rodney's sarcastic observations of their last vacation to Peru - Rodney hadn't wanted to go, but John had wanted to see Machu Picchu - and the horrible, horrible service he'd been subjected to. John hadn't even noticed Rodney writing into the notebook, though he did remember the bitching, but the notes were too hilarious to throw them away.
Clearly, at the speed he was going, cleaning out the office would take him only, oh... four or five months.
Eventually, though, the drawer was empty, contents neatly sorted on the desk, except for a small air cushion envelope that John pulled out last. Final Theory of Unification was written bold and underlined on it in Rodney's meticulously neat handwriting, and beneath, smaller: The answer to life, the universe and everything. By Dr. M. Rodney McKay. John wondered if he should just put it on the stack to hand over to Zelenka, but his curiosity got the better of him. Instead of the manuscript he was expecting, though, the envelope only held a single photograph. John blinked.
The picture had to be at least five or six years old, taken at one of the birthday parties Rodney had insisted on every year, for each of them. John thought it might have had something to do with a lack of birthday parties in Rodney's childhood, but he'd never asked. He supposed that if he wanted to know now, he'd have to ask Jeannie. This particular birthday party had been in their garden. John recognised the oleander they'd had for three years before it had died. It was blooming in the background, which meant it was summer, which meant it was Rodney's birthday party, not John's. In the picture, the two of them were sitting on a bench in front of a low table with an enormous cake sitting on top of it. They were grinning at each other, identical smitten looks on their faces, and when John traced the picture with his fingertips, he noticed that Rodney was holding a cake shovel in his right hand.
The number on the cake, written in bright red frosting: 42.
Startled, John started to laugh. He laughed until he hiccuped, a painful thing that made his eyes water and his throat hurt, made something in his chest clench up so hard he didn't think it would ever relax again.
God, Rodney. He missed him so much.
"I miss you, buddy." There, out loud, and it was horribly, achingly true, the force of it nearly bringing him to his knees. He missed Rodney. He missed grinning at him like he did in the photograph, brimming with love and possessiveness and a sense of belonging so strong it had scared him sometimes. He missed cracking bad jokes and laughing at worse ones. He missed rolling over at night and mashing his nose painfully against a shoulder blade. He missed the bitching, the familiarity, the easy affection between them, the smell, the warmth, just... everything. Every damn thing, but Rodney was gone and John had been left behind to cope with life without him, and he couldn't. He'd thought he could, but he couldn't, and that son of a bitch wasn't even there to yell at.
Angrily, John wiped away the tears that had rolled down his cheeks while he hadn't been paying attention. He wasn't crying, it was just... the office, Rodney's damn office, that still looked like Rodney might come in any moment and sit down and boot up one of his laptops and yell for more coffee. Only he wouldn't because he was dead, and there was a fine layer of dust on everything, and John surprised himself with a single, painful sob that died halfway up his throat and came out as a harsh cough, fresh tears shockingly hot as they spilled down his face. God. Rodney was dead, he was really dead, and the truth of it made John gasp for air, made him bend over and hold his stomach because it hurt, not like a knife being turned in his gut but a deep, empty ache he didn't know how to fill.
Rodney was gone. He'd loved the guy and he was gone, and John didn't even... he didn't know... had he even told Rodney that he loved him, at least once? He didn't know. Seventeen fucking years together, and he had no idea if they'd ever talked about this thing between them; didn't think they had, not even Rodney, who usually wouldn't shut up if his life depended on it. It wouldn't have been so hard to say it, would it, and maybe he had and just couldn't remember, but he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure and now it was too late and he'd never get to say it, and Rodney would never know-
John pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and took a deep breath, and another, and another, telling himself to calm the fuck down because Rodney had known. He'd known as surely as John had known that Rodney loved him. It was right there, in the Stockholm picture on his desk, in the photo John still held in his hand, in the little things they'd said and done every day. In the way his heart had still started beating faster, after seventeen years, every time Rodney had smiled that wide, delighted smile at him.
John stood up from the office chair, clutching the photograph and blinking while he rummaged around Rodney's desk for some tissues. He blew his nose one-handedly when he found one, swallowing the last of his grief to get it back inside, where it belonged. His eyes felt gritty and his nose hurt - and his throat, and his chest - but weirdly enough, he felt better somehow. More ready to face a world that held double-beds with just one person in them, and expensive coffee in the back of the freezer that no one would ever drink.
He walked to the door, then turned around with his hand already on the handle, letting his gaze sweep over the room once more. The office of a dead man. It looked exactly the same, bright rays of late-summer sunshine falling through the large windows, touching desks - one of which was now covered in paper - and shelves and walls and John, who could feel the warmth through his clothes. He knew this probably wasn't going to be his last slip, although he'd be better prepared for the next one. But maybe... just maybe, you know, because he wasn't actually in a hurry... he'd postpone this whole cleaning the office thing until later. Keep the memories undisturbed, just a little longer.
John's grip tightened on the handle, then he nodded, walked out and closed the door behind him, taking the picture of Rodney's unifying theory with him to figure it out. In the silent office, the dust began to settle again.
~~~
End.