TEAM AWAY: Through the grapevine, "Infiltration"
Title: Infiltration
Author: villainny
Team: Away
Prompt: Through the grapevine
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG
Warnings: none given
Summary: ‘I’m hopelessly in love with you,’ Rodney said, and rolled his eyes.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
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**
M7X-709 didn’t vary far from the Pegasus norm - a little more mountainous, maybe, than they were used to, but still no progress on the little grey men that Rodney had told him Zelenka was secretly holding out for. It was edging towards the beginning of winter, and John kind of regretted not grabbing his jacket; Rodney was looking pretty snug there, zipped up to the chin, cheeks a little flushed. There was just something kind of embarrassing about wrapping up tight when Teyla and Ronon were running around dressed like it was the middle of summer. Still, goose bumps didn’t stop John from mocking Rodney gently, the scientist staying weirdly quiet, just taking his readings and shooting John the occasional exasperated glare.
Rodney waited until Ronon and Teyla were far enough ahead - an unusually subtle move which John was pathetically grateful for, later - before he planted himself firmly in John’s path and folded his arms across his chest.
“I’m hopelessly in love with you,” he said, and rolled his eyes.
John blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
Rodney’s mouth had an absurd smug tilt to it, which was probably in reaction to John’s expression; he didn’t know if he’d ever moved this precise combination of muscles in this precise way before but he was pretty sure his mouth wasn’t supposed to be that far open. He clicked it shut, then - second thought - opened it again.
“You feeling okay?”
“Depends on who you listen to, actually. There’s a contingent pushing for ‘pining away’, but the majority seem to believe that we’re hiding our epic love behind closed doors and all the arguments I win.”
That was the point where John remembered to send a quick, hunted look towards the other members of his team, posture otherwise outwardly calm. Grateful for the sunglasses that’d cover his slip, John persuaded his mouth to relax enough to curl into one of his collection of lazy smirks.
“Sure, McKay,” he said dryly, “if it wasn’t for the Air Force I’d have given you my class ring.”
Rodney snorted, a deeply unattractive sound, and John’s back ratcheted up another degree of tension.
“And you don’t want to know how much I had to rearrange the shifts to get that little snippet out of Radek. The man’s a weasel.”
John genuinely hadn’t ever managed to work out if Rodney was playing some kind of elaborate game with his mind or just genuinely didn’t know when people didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. With most people he just seemed to assume that they were too stupid to keep up, so John guessed it was some kind of compliment that Rodney started up conversations with him somewhere around the middle and expected him to be right there along with him.
Sometimes it kind of freaked John out how often he was.
Usually his tactic at this point would be to walk away and pretend he couldn’t hear Rodney, but considering the solution to that was generally just to follow John and speak louder he was willing to reconsider that pattern of behavior right now.
“Gonna have to let me in on what the hell you’re talking about, Rodney,” he drawled instead, hooking one hand over the top of his P-90 so he wouldn’t be tempted to defensively mirror Rodney’s stance. The scientist blinked a couple of times and frowned, an expression aggravatingly close to his ‘dealing with idiots’ face, and huffed out a sigh.
“Radek,” Rodney informed him slowly, “heard Miko telling Simpson about a piece of gossip that Cadman had mentioned at the latest poker night.” His blue eyes were fixed on John’s face, an exaggeratedly solicitous tone in his voice. “With me now?”
The tension drained from John’s spine and he pinched the bridge of his nose, somewhere uncomfortable between relieved and disappointed. His flailed out blindly with his other hand, backhanding Rodney lightly on the shoulder.
“Ow! Ow, what the hell, ow!!”
“Why would I care what was the latest item on the gossip mill?”
“I was just thinking about how much I went out of my way just to find out what Radek was smirking about. Imagine having direct access to that sort of information!” Rodney’s tone was loud and injured, and he pointedly rubbed his shoulder. “Although at this rate I can predict what their next bulletin will involve.”
“Really not caring here, McKay,” John said, and turned on his heel to head towards Ronon and Teyla, ignoring Rodney following in his wake and muttering about ‘domestic abuse’.
*
Five days later and Rodney hadn’t given up, popping up at all hours and in all sorts of places to tell John about his latest plans for spying on Ladies’ Poker Night and selling the information he found there on the Atlantis black market. It was that aggravating McKay mix of annoying and bizarrely cute, so John was mostly just keeping his mouth shut and hoping some mission would come up soon to distract him.
When one finally did, Rodney was walking beside John and expostulating on the various practicalities of air vents as a mode of transportation when one wasn’t as freakishly small as certain Czech scientists. John had a lollipop in his mouth that he’d picked up from the infirmary in an effort to prevent himself from getting drawn into a conversation about Mission: Impossible style wire-assisted descents, and grinned around it in relief when Carter and Keller showed up and Rodney switched gears mid-flow. It was no kind of hardship at all to beg off the mission, to wave them off with the promise of a day free entirely of ridiculous infiltration plans.
It was slightly less pleasant to find out in what state they’d come back, John gnawing on the inside of his lip as he followed the trail of dust to the infirmary to make sure there was really nothing more severe wrong with McKay than a couple of lacerated palms.
That Rodney had apparently disappeared with Keller to get a drink before he got there really wasn’t a problem.
At all.
*
“Sheppard!”
The voice, distorted by hissing as it was, was unmistakably Rodney’s. John looked around the mess, confused, before he saw the seat McKay had chosen, hidden - John had the sinking feeling that it was strategically so - behind a particularly verdant bush thing. He dumped his tray on the table and watched, resigned, as Rodney stole his dessert a little more clumsily than usual.
“How’re the hands?” he asked, watching the innovative method Rodney had devised to peel the lid off the pudding cup, the way he balanced his spoon carefully between bandages and the curve of his thumb.
“Agony,” Rodney answered happily, through a mouthful of butterscotch. “How’s the planning?”
“The planning?” John raised an eyebrow, digging a fork into the heap of weird purple bean things that tasted almost like bacon before Rodney could get done with his pudding and start in on them, too.
“Well I couldn’t exactly get much done on the infiltration front, being out of commission and all.” Rodney gestured a little with his hands and gave a wince that John was pretty sure wasn’t entirely for show. “Although I did hear that Etheridge has some Moosehead that he might be willing to trade for being set up with Lt. Madhana.” It took a second or two of McKay’s hopeful expression before John worked out -
“McKay!”
“What?”
“I can’t pimp out the Marines, Rodney. They tend to frown on that at the SGC.”
“Valuable piece of gossip, though, right? I mean, it could hypothetically be passed along to the right ear with the return of some kind of commission.”
“Hypothetically?” John looked at the hopefully smug smile still hovering around Rodney’s mouth and groaned slightly. “Yes, hypothetically, it could be useful.”
“Excellent.” Rodney made as if to clap his hands together, the movement swiftly aborted with a more noticeable wince. John grabbed hold of his hands and checked quickly for blood stains, frowning. “So you’re in, then,” Rodney continued.
“Approximate chances of you leaving me alone until I say yes?” John’s hands were wrapped around Rodney’s wrists, and he could feel the pulse against his fingers, strong and reassuring and a little fast.
“Negligible.”
“Right,” he said on a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m in.”
Rodney’s smile, wide and genuine, kind of almost made it worth it.
*
“It’s okay,” Rodney was saying, which should have been a clue all by itself, “I’ve already done the groundwork. One offhand comment about Jon Stewart and you’re right back at the top of the gossip heap.”
“…wait. We want to be gossiped about, now?”
“Shh shh,” Rodney said, making a quelling gesture with one hand. “Wait for it -“
“Wait for wh- “
“I just - “ Rodney cut across him, his words over-articulated and voice a little too loud. “I can’t do this any more, John. I’m sorry.”
“But -“
“Don’t. Please don’t. Just - we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Rodney -“ John said, helplessly, and Rodney nodded, a delighted grin on his face. Then, before John could even work out what was happening let alone react, Rodney was well inside his personal space, one bandaged hand resting against his cheek. John swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and backed away, winking quickly at John before turning to go. John stared after him, dazed, barely noticing the mousy scientist watching him, wide-eyed, through oversized glasses.
*
“This was your plan? This was your plan?”
Rodney was hunching down a little further into his stool, looking absurdly grateful for the bench in between them. The lab was otherwise deserted apart from Zelenka, who was tapping away at his keyboard and determinedly ignoring them.
“I -“
John was still too frustrated to let Rodney finish.
“You remember what I do here? You remember what my job is, how I can’t just do things like that?” His voice cracked a little, involuntarily, and Rodney’s eyes widened. His genius didn’t usually extend to squishy human matters, but somehow over the last few years he’d gotten to know John pretty damned well. That was the whole problem.
“But -“ Rodney had never learned how to leave well enough alone. “Do you mean you’d want -“
“Finish that sentence, McKay, and I will shoot you.”
“Excuse me, but I would prefer if you didn’t.”
John almost jumped out of his skin - he hadn’t heard Zelenka approach. The man was like a tiny nerdy ninja.
“Tempting as image is I would prefer to not be handed Rodney’s job as well as my own. And if you will excuse me shattering careful illusion that I cannot hear shouting from my very close desk, I will say that it is unlikely to cause problem, Colonel. Always there is someone imagining about you and Dr McKay, and always it is quieted down.”
John, feeling suddenly queasy, braced himself on the lab bench and looked around for a stool that he could collapse onto, barely even seeing Rodney’s worried expression transform into a glare.
“You mean you took advantage of me for that information and it wasn’t even news?”
Zelenka shrugged.
”I cannot help that you are an easy mark.”
The two scientists continued bickering, familiar background noise that John had learned over time to take no more notice of than the constant soft hum of Atlantis around him. This felt a little like that, actually: his first steps into the city, no idea what he was letting himself in for, but unable to maintain the rigid tension that he should because Jesus, the city was lighting up around him, and all he’d been able to think was, just, yes..
That same dislocation, that same belonging was settling itself into the pit of his stomach and making a place for itself there, and he rubbed a barely steady hand across his mouth just to feel the disbelieving smile.
*
Somehow it’d been decided, once Rodney and Zelenka had degenerated into throwing markers at each other and John had been forced to separate them, that the invitation John had wrangled to the poker night - gained through being apparently dumped semi-publicly and judicious use of his ‘bemused’ face - was too good an opportunity to miss.
Seemed like every decision he made around Rodney lately was one he’d come to regret.
A few hours later and he was back in the labs - the only difference being that this time Zelenka wasn’t even pretending to work. Instead he was, along with Rodney, looking John up and down appraisingly.
“The jeans are good,” Rodney eventually said decisively, focused on them a little more intently than John was used to, “but I know you’ve got tighter shirts than that.”
“McKay -“
“Colonel Sheppard is right, Rodney. It is good for him to look relaxed, but his clothing on this one evening will not decide them on whether he is gay or not. He is fine as he is dressed.”
“Thank you,” John said, glad that someone was finally making sense.
“Besides, with American men it is so often difficult to tell to begin with, I think.” John folded his arms tightly across his chest, glaring at Radek. “Now now,” the scientist responded, “did I not just say that key was to look relaxed? It is not so far from your usual clothes. Think of it as -“ he seemed to be hunting for the words, then snapped his fingers decisively. “Think of it as Away strip, yes? Same, but different.”
John looked over at Rodney, confused, and mouthed ‘strip?’
Rodney’s mouth dropped open, and he looked more than a little flustered.
Zelenka rolled his eyes. “I mean team colours.”
“Right,” John drawled, one eyebrow raised. “The uniform.”
“Ah, yes,” Radek answered dryly, “because I should expect sense from nation who calls ‘football’ a game played mostly with the hands.”
John turned to Rodney and spread his hands a little, cocking his hip and putting himself on display.
“So am I done?”
Again, that assessing gaze, more focused than John was used to. There was a slight flush high on Rodney’s cheeks, and he was fiddling absently with the end of one of his bandages as he looked John up and down. After a moment or two he cleared his throat.
“Just one more thing, Colonel.” Beckoning John over, Rodney took hold of his wrist as soon as he was within reach and carefully tugged at John’s wristband, revealing the far paler skin underneath. He was focused intently on his task and John stared at the top of his bent head, suppressing the small tremor that ran through him when Rodney - seemingly absently - brushed his fingers carefully over the revealed skin on the inside of John’s wrist. Once the black band was removed, Rodney picked up something from the table - a cuff of dark brown leather, fastened with buckles, that looked like the kind of thing Ronon always wore. Once it was on it didn’t look that different from his usual wristband but it sure as hell felt different, cool against his skin as Rodney clumsily buckled it.
It would have been a hell of a lot quicker to have taken over and fastened it himself, but the gentle fumbling brush of Rodney’s square fingers against his skin was kind of addictive.
“Don’t think Ronon would be impressed if he knew you were taking fashion tips from him to make me gayer, Rodney.”
His voice was huskier than he’d like and Rodney looked up, his eyes dark, before smiling slightly and bowing his head back to his task. Once he was done he tugged on the buckles a couple of times and then ran his fingers once, deliberately, over the inside of John’s wrist where the cuff ended.
Huh, thought John, as he took a belated step back, as Zelenka and a pink-tinted Rodney sent him on his way, and he let his lips curl up into a little smile.
*
Another reasonable hand. John grinned a little and hooked an arm over the back of his chair, feeling more relaxed in female company than he had in a hell of a long time.
“Technically, Lieutenant, you’re not allowed to ask me that.”
“Sorry sir,” Cadman - Laura - told him, eyes sparkling. And then she turned to the other women in the room, without missing a beat; “I knew it! I knew there was more behind that arrogance than just brains.”
John choked on a laugh and ducked his head a little further behind his cards.
“You couldn’t have got this information while Katie Brown was here?”
Simpson snorted and rolled her eyes. “Rodney was a perfect gentleman,” she told him with mock-severity, and John’s mouth may have, slightly, dropped open.
“Seriously?”
“Across years,” Laura put in. “And you guys have been together, what, a couple of months?”
John remembered to wince slightly then - it saved on any questions about details - and Laura smiled apologetically and sloshed a refill into his cup. He had absolutely no idea what he was drinking, but it was violently pink and starting to make his lips go numb. So when the little scientist with the enormous glasses - Miko, he was pretty sure - leaned across to pat the back of his hand and tell him that he obviously made Rodney happy, that everyone could see it, John had a hard time feeling the smile making its way across his face. But he was pretty damned sure that it was there.
*
The corridors were deserted by the time John made his slightly unsteady way through them, pausing outside Rodney’s quarters for a good minute or two before he palmed the crystals and the chime went off inside.
Rodney, when he answered, was belligerent and sleep-rumpled, glaring at John without any sort of greeting before he took a wordless step back and allowed him inside, the door hissing shut behind him. John watched as he scratched his stomach through a wash-worn shirt and ran a hand through disordered hair, helpless against the slow-growing smile on his face.
“So,” Rodney eventually said, through a yawn that really should have been entirely unattractive, “find out anything good?”
“Sure,” John said, and even if he’d managed to get the smile off his face he wouldn’t have managed to prevent it from curling around his voice as he took a couple of steps closer. “Apparently you’re kind of in love with me.”
“I - what? That’s it? We had that days ago!”
Rodney’s scowl didn’t lessen any when John stepped closer, although it did gain a hint of confusion at quite how much closer he was when he stopped.
“Yeah,” John said quietly, “that’s not quite what I meant.”
And Rodney’s pulse jumped a little under his fingers, as he carefully brushed them against the soft skin on the inside of Rodney’s wrist.
**
Poll Vote for this story
Author: villainny
Team: Away
Prompt: Through the grapevine
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG
Warnings: none given
Summary: ‘I’m hopelessly in love with you,’ Rodney said, and rolled his eyes.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
M7X-709 didn’t vary far from the Pegasus norm - a little more mountainous, maybe, than they were used to, but still no progress on the little grey men that Rodney had told him Zelenka was secretly holding out for. It was edging towards the beginning of winter, and John kind of regretted not grabbing his jacket; Rodney was looking pretty snug there, zipped up to the chin, cheeks a little flushed. There was just something kind of embarrassing about wrapping up tight when Teyla and Ronon were running around dressed like it was the middle of summer. Still, goose bumps didn’t stop John from mocking Rodney gently, the scientist staying weirdly quiet, just taking his readings and shooting John the occasional exasperated glare.
Rodney waited until Ronon and Teyla were far enough ahead - an unusually subtle move which John was pathetically grateful for, later - before he planted himself firmly in John’s path and folded his arms across his chest.
“I’m hopelessly in love with you,” he said, and rolled his eyes.
John blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
Rodney’s mouth had an absurd smug tilt to it, which was probably in reaction to John’s expression; he didn’t know if he’d ever moved this precise combination of muscles in this precise way before but he was pretty sure his mouth wasn’t supposed to be that far open. He clicked it shut, then - second thought - opened it again.
“You feeling okay?”
“Depends on who you listen to, actually. There’s a contingent pushing for ‘pining away’, but the majority seem to believe that we’re hiding our epic love behind closed doors and all the arguments I win.”
That was the point where John remembered to send a quick, hunted look towards the other members of his team, posture otherwise outwardly calm. Grateful for the sunglasses that’d cover his slip, John persuaded his mouth to relax enough to curl into one of his collection of lazy smirks.
“Sure, McKay,” he said dryly, “if it wasn’t for the Air Force I’d have given you my class ring.”
Rodney snorted, a deeply unattractive sound, and John’s back ratcheted up another degree of tension.
“And you don’t want to know how much I had to rearrange the shifts to get that little snippet out of Radek. The man’s a weasel.”
John genuinely hadn’t ever managed to work out if Rodney was playing some kind of elaborate game with his mind or just genuinely didn’t know when people didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. With most people he just seemed to assume that they were too stupid to keep up, so John guessed it was some kind of compliment that Rodney started up conversations with him somewhere around the middle and expected him to be right there along with him.
Sometimes it kind of freaked John out how often he was.
Usually his tactic at this point would be to walk away and pretend he couldn’t hear Rodney, but considering the solution to that was generally just to follow John and speak louder he was willing to reconsider that pattern of behavior right now.
“Gonna have to let me in on what the hell you’re talking about, Rodney,” he drawled instead, hooking one hand over the top of his P-90 so he wouldn’t be tempted to defensively mirror Rodney’s stance. The scientist blinked a couple of times and frowned, an expression aggravatingly close to his ‘dealing with idiots’ face, and huffed out a sigh.
“Radek,” Rodney informed him slowly, “heard Miko telling Simpson about a piece of gossip that Cadman had mentioned at the latest poker night.” His blue eyes were fixed on John’s face, an exaggeratedly solicitous tone in his voice. “With me now?”
The tension drained from John’s spine and he pinched the bridge of his nose, somewhere uncomfortable between relieved and disappointed. His flailed out blindly with his other hand, backhanding Rodney lightly on the shoulder.
“Ow! Ow, what the hell, ow!!”
“Why would I care what was the latest item on the gossip mill?”
“I was just thinking about how much I went out of my way just to find out what Radek was smirking about. Imagine having direct access to that sort of information!” Rodney’s tone was loud and injured, and he pointedly rubbed his shoulder. “Although at this rate I can predict what their next bulletin will involve.”
“Really not caring here, McKay,” John said, and turned on his heel to head towards Ronon and Teyla, ignoring Rodney following in his wake and muttering about ‘domestic abuse’.
*
Five days later and Rodney hadn’t given up, popping up at all hours and in all sorts of places to tell John about his latest plans for spying on Ladies’ Poker Night and selling the information he found there on the Atlantis black market. It was that aggravating McKay mix of annoying and bizarrely cute, so John was mostly just keeping his mouth shut and hoping some mission would come up soon to distract him.
When one finally did, Rodney was walking beside John and expostulating on the various practicalities of air vents as a mode of transportation when one wasn’t as freakishly small as certain Czech scientists. John had a lollipop in his mouth that he’d picked up from the infirmary in an effort to prevent himself from getting drawn into a conversation about Mission: Impossible style wire-assisted descents, and grinned around it in relief when Carter and Keller showed up and Rodney switched gears mid-flow. It was no kind of hardship at all to beg off the mission, to wave them off with the promise of a day free entirely of ridiculous infiltration plans.
It was slightly less pleasant to find out in what state they’d come back, John gnawing on the inside of his lip as he followed the trail of dust to the infirmary to make sure there was really nothing more severe wrong with McKay than a couple of lacerated palms.
That Rodney had apparently disappeared with Keller to get a drink before he got there really wasn’t a problem.
At all.
*
“Sheppard!”
The voice, distorted by hissing as it was, was unmistakably Rodney’s. John looked around the mess, confused, before he saw the seat McKay had chosen, hidden - John had the sinking feeling that it was strategically so - behind a particularly verdant bush thing. He dumped his tray on the table and watched, resigned, as Rodney stole his dessert a little more clumsily than usual.
“How’re the hands?” he asked, watching the innovative method Rodney had devised to peel the lid off the pudding cup, the way he balanced his spoon carefully between bandages and the curve of his thumb.
“Agony,” Rodney answered happily, through a mouthful of butterscotch. “How’s the planning?”
“The planning?” John raised an eyebrow, digging a fork into the heap of weird purple bean things that tasted almost like bacon before Rodney could get done with his pudding and start in on them, too.
“Well I couldn’t exactly get much done on the infiltration front, being out of commission and all.” Rodney gestured a little with his hands and gave a wince that John was pretty sure wasn’t entirely for show. “Although I did hear that Etheridge has some Moosehead that he might be willing to trade for being set up with Lt. Madhana.” It took a second or two of McKay’s hopeful expression before John worked out -
“McKay!”
“What?”
“I can’t pimp out the Marines, Rodney. They tend to frown on that at the SGC.”
“Valuable piece of gossip, though, right? I mean, it could hypothetically be passed along to the right ear with the return of some kind of commission.”
“Hypothetically?” John looked at the hopefully smug smile still hovering around Rodney’s mouth and groaned slightly. “Yes, hypothetically, it could be useful.”
“Excellent.” Rodney made as if to clap his hands together, the movement swiftly aborted with a more noticeable wince. John grabbed hold of his hands and checked quickly for blood stains, frowning. “So you’re in, then,” Rodney continued.
“Approximate chances of you leaving me alone until I say yes?” John’s hands were wrapped around Rodney’s wrists, and he could feel the pulse against his fingers, strong and reassuring and a little fast.
“Negligible.”
“Right,” he said on a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m in.”
Rodney’s smile, wide and genuine, kind of almost made it worth it.
*
“It’s okay,” Rodney was saying, which should have been a clue all by itself, “I’ve already done the groundwork. One offhand comment about Jon Stewart and you’re right back at the top of the gossip heap.”
“…wait. We want to be gossiped about, now?”
“Shh shh,” Rodney said, making a quelling gesture with one hand. “Wait for it -“
“Wait for wh- “
“I just - “ Rodney cut across him, his words over-articulated and voice a little too loud. “I can’t do this any more, John. I’m sorry.”
“But -“
“Don’t. Please don’t. Just - we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Rodney -“ John said, helplessly, and Rodney nodded, a delighted grin on his face. Then, before John could even work out what was happening let alone react, Rodney was well inside his personal space, one bandaged hand resting against his cheek. John swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and backed away, winking quickly at John before turning to go. John stared after him, dazed, barely noticing the mousy scientist watching him, wide-eyed, through oversized glasses.
*
“This was your plan? This was your plan?”
Rodney was hunching down a little further into his stool, looking absurdly grateful for the bench in between them. The lab was otherwise deserted apart from Zelenka, who was tapping away at his keyboard and determinedly ignoring them.
“I -“
John was still too frustrated to let Rodney finish.
“You remember what I do here? You remember what my job is, how I can’t just do things like that?” His voice cracked a little, involuntarily, and Rodney’s eyes widened. His genius didn’t usually extend to squishy human matters, but somehow over the last few years he’d gotten to know John pretty damned well. That was the whole problem.
“But -“ Rodney had never learned how to leave well enough alone. “Do you mean you’d want -“
“Finish that sentence, McKay, and I will shoot you.”
“Excuse me, but I would prefer if you didn’t.”
John almost jumped out of his skin - he hadn’t heard Zelenka approach. The man was like a tiny nerdy ninja.
“Tempting as image is I would prefer to not be handed Rodney’s job as well as my own. And if you will excuse me shattering careful illusion that I cannot hear shouting from my very close desk, I will say that it is unlikely to cause problem, Colonel. Always there is someone imagining about you and Dr McKay, and always it is quieted down.”
John, feeling suddenly queasy, braced himself on the lab bench and looked around for a stool that he could collapse onto, barely even seeing Rodney’s worried expression transform into a glare.
“You mean you took advantage of me for that information and it wasn’t even news?”
Zelenka shrugged.
”I cannot help that you are an easy mark.”
The two scientists continued bickering, familiar background noise that John had learned over time to take no more notice of than the constant soft hum of Atlantis around him. This felt a little like that, actually: his first steps into the city, no idea what he was letting himself in for, but unable to maintain the rigid tension that he should because Jesus, the city was lighting up around him, and all he’d been able to think was, just, yes..
That same dislocation, that same belonging was settling itself into the pit of his stomach and making a place for itself there, and he rubbed a barely steady hand across his mouth just to feel the disbelieving smile.
*
Somehow it’d been decided, once Rodney and Zelenka had degenerated into throwing markers at each other and John had been forced to separate them, that the invitation John had wrangled to the poker night - gained through being apparently dumped semi-publicly and judicious use of his ‘bemused’ face - was too good an opportunity to miss.
Seemed like every decision he made around Rodney lately was one he’d come to regret.
A few hours later and he was back in the labs - the only difference being that this time Zelenka wasn’t even pretending to work. Instead he was, along with Rodney, looking John up and down appraisingly.
“The jeans are good,” Rodney eventually said decisively, focused on them a little more intently than John was used to, “but I know you’ve got tighter shirts than that.”
“McKay -“
“Colonel Sheppard is right, Rodney. It is good for him to look relaxed, but his clothing on this one evening will not decide them on whether he is gay or not. He is fine as he is dressed.”
“Thank you,” John said, glad that someone was finally making sense.
“Besides, with American men it is so often difficult to tell to begin with, I think.” John folded his arms tightly across his chest, glaring at Radek. “Now now,” the scientist responded, “did I not just say that key was to look relaxed? It is not so far from your usual clothes. Think of it as -“ he seemed to be hunting for the words, then snapped his fingers decisively. “Think of it as Away strip, yes? Same, but different.”
John looked over at Rodney, confused, and mouthed ‘strip?’
Rodney’s mouth dropped open, and he looked more than a little flustered.
Zelenka rolled his eyes. “I mean team colours.”
“Right,” John drawled, one eyebrow raised. “The uniform.”
“Ah, yes,” Radek answered dryly, “because I should expect sense from nation who calls ‘football’ a game played mostly with the hands.”
John turned to Rodney and spread his hands a little, cocking his hip and putting himself on display.
“So am I done?”
Again, that assessing gaze, more focused than John was used to. There was a slight flush high on Rodney’s cheeks, and he was fiddling absently with the end of one of his bandages as he looked John up and down. After a moment or two he cleared his throat.
“Just one more thing, Colonel.” Beckoning John over, Rodney took hold of his wrist as soon as he was within reach and carefully tugged at John’s wristband, revealing the far paler skin underneath. He was focused intently on his task and John stared at the top of his bent head, suppressing the small tremor that ran through him when Rodney - seemingly absently - brushed his fingers carefully over the revealed skin on the inside of John’s wrist. Once the black band was removed, Rodney picked up something from the table - a cuff of dark brown leather, fastened with buckles, that looked like the kind of thing Ronon always wore. Once it was on it didn’t look that different from his usual wristband but it sure as hell felt different, cool against his skin as Rodney clumsily buckled it.
It would have been a hell of a lot quicker to have taken over and fastened it himself, but the gentle fumbling brush of Rodney’s square fingers against his skin was kind of addictive.
“Don’t think Ronon would be impressed if he knew you were taking fashion tips from him to make me gayer, Rodney.”
His voice was huskier than he’d like and Rodney looked up, his eyes dark, before smiling slightly and bowing his head back to his task. Once he was done he tugged on the buckles a couple of times and then ran his fingers once, deliberately, over the inside of John’s wrist where the cuff ended.
Huh, thought John, as he took a belated step back, as Zelenka and a pink-tinted Rodney sent him on his way, and he let his lips curl up into a little smile.
*
Another reasonable hand. John grinned a little and hooked an arm over the back of his chair, feeling more relaxed in female company than he had in a hell of a long time.
“Technically, Lieutenant, you’re not allowed to ask me that.”
“Sorry sir,” Cadman - Laura - told him, eyes sparkling. And then she turned to the other women in the room, without missing a beat; “I knew it! I knew there was more behind that arrogance than just brains.”
John choked on a laugh and ducked his head a little further behind his cards.
“You couldn’t have got this information while Katie Brown was here?”
Simpson snorted and rolled her eyes. “Rodney was a perfect gentleman,” she told him with mock-severity, and John’s mouth may have, slightly, dropped open.
“Seriously?”
“Across years,” Laura put in. “And you guys have been together, what, a couple of months?”
John remembered to wince slightly then - it saved on any questions about details - and Laura smiled apologetically and sloshed a refill into his cup. He had absolutely no idea what he was drinking, but it was violently pink and starting to make his lips go numb. So when the little scientist with the enormous glasses - Miko, he was pretty sure - leaned across to pat the back of his hand and tell him that he obviously made Rodney happy, that everyone could see it, John had a hard time feeling the smile making its way across his face. But he was pretty damned sure that it was there.
*
The corridors were deserted by the time John made his slightly unsteady way through them, pausing outside Rodney’s quarters for a good minute or two before he palmed the crystals and the chime went off inside.
Rodney, when he answered, was belligerent and sleep-rumpled, glaring at John without any sort of greeting before he took a wordless step back and allowed him inside, the door hissing shut behind him. John watched as he scratched his stomach through a wash-worn shirt and ran a hand through disordered hair, helpless against the slow-growing smile on his face.
“So,” Rodney eventually said, through a yawn that really should have been entirely unattractive, “find out anything good?”
“Sure,” John said, and even if he’d managed to get the smile off his face he wouldn’t have managed to prevent it from curling around his voice as he took a couple of steps closer. “Apparently you’re kind of in love with me.”
“I - what? That’s it? We had that days ago!”
Rodney’s scowl didn’t lessen any when John stepped closer, although it did gain a hint of confusion at quite how much closer he was when he stopped.
“Yeah,” John said quietly, “that’s not quite what I meant.”
And Rodney’s pulse jumped a little under his fingers, as he carefully brushed them against the soft skin on the inside of Rodney’s wrist.
**
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