(no subject)

[setissma]

So, a great many months ago, someone - perhaps trinityofone or slodwick - made mention to a particular challenge they were thinking about starting, a challenge where everyone took SGA characters and put them into an environment they knew or made them do the author's job. It was a somewhat complicated challenge, and I don't know if it ever came to light, but it planted seeds in me.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this story - it's had its ups and downs, and I think, in retrospect, it's hard to pick the thing you love the most and write about it because you never feel as if you do it justice. But it's gotten me through a lot of pain and a lot of happiness.

This story is a labor - and a tale - of love. It's about a childhood spent with my hands in tidal pools and lurking around behind the scenes in aquariums, it's about being the kid who took observational notes on zebra mussels before they became national news. It's about loving the ocean and all the things in it, and it's about believing in institutions and people who are doing their best to save this beautiful, treasured, amazing thing that's in trouble right now. It's about Chicago, a city I fell deeply and passionately in love with, a city that makes it easy to get lost and easy to love getting lost, and perhaps, more importantly, a city that makes it easy to be found.

I've taken liberties - I know - with Chicago itself and The Shedd Aquarium, which, a bit sadly, doesn't offer paid internships in the first place. I did my best to be true to detail, in as much as it was possible, but any errors are definitely my own. Thanks to all the people who have read this over the past nine months, especially those who made encouraging notes, and to my betas, the_drifter and dogeared.

This is for Jenn, who knitted me a scarf.

Wide Open Ocean, John/Rodney, R. He went home with two slices of leftover pizza and the strange impression that McKay could almost have been a nice guy, if he hadn’t been an asshole.



Wide Open Ocean



The first thing John could remember was learning how to hold his breath. There were six major requirements for working with marine mammals at Sea World, and he’d been able to list all of them since age five. Some of them were simple; CPR certification only required a class, and lifting fifty pounds wasn’t hard. Some of them only took time. Every birthday was one closer to eighteen. Not breathing for three minutes, however, had proved more challenging. He’d started practicing at age six. Thirty seconds was easy, a minute was harder, but three minutes remained elusive until he was almost sixteen, with valid lung capacity and more time to practice than ten minutes under the blankets at night.

It was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do. His father had started leaving him with the docents and trainers almost as soon as he could walk; John realized, later, that he’d probably been trouble, but no one he asked would admit to it. He’d been a cute kid, if a little gangly, and as much as everyone had hated his father - bad policies, pay cuts, too little vacation time - they’d loved him. He’d been smart, when younger, and charming; he could give the tour by the age of six. The docents he went with always got the biggest tips.

The dolphins liked him, so it seemed like an obvious conclusion to learn all the hand signals, how to take blood and do an ultrasound. He walked to the park every day after school, rode home with his father. Other kids played t-ball; John examined orcas for skin lacerations. For his sixteenth birthday, the trainers went in for a wetsuit and a scuba diving certification class. His father bought him a football.

High school wasn’t much different. John had posters of sea lions on his bedroom walls instead of naked women. He joined the drama club (public speaking experience was a must) and the track team, to keep in shape. Biology was so simple that John was taking courses at a local college by sophomore year, but he brought home D’s in history. It wasn’t interesting. He found a girlfriend who was pretty enough to satisfy his father and nice enough to make his mother happy and kept her for two years, until the inevitable pressure kicked in. He’d liked kissing her, but going much further seemed pointless.

She’d gotten him off once in the back of his car, and John figured it was exactly as described: breathless and messy and all right. The trouble was, it was more all right and messy than anything else, and he’d figured there were better things to do. Sex had seemed kind of like seeing romantic comedies and going out for chinese food. Necessary, but ultimately not all that pleasant. He broke it off a few weeks after they slept together for the first time and reallocated the time he’d spent at the movies to recording behavior patterns in otters. It didn’t seem like too much of a waste.

His mother met him at the door three months before his eighteenth birthday, with red eyes and a pale face. She had seven boxes and a suitcase, neatly labeled in block print, and his father’s car was gone from the driveway. “Go pack,” she said. “We’re leaving in half an hour.”

It took him two weeks after they were settled into the apartment in Chicago to understand what it was that had caused them to move; it took him nearly five years to understand why.

His senior year of high school slid into advanced math courses and SATs, hospital visits and chemotherapy. By Christmas break he’d started cutting classes to take his mother to the doctor’s. His college acceptance letters ended up lost in an endless sea of hospital bills and overdue notices. He carefully declined all of them. He kept the package from UC Davis under his mattress for a week, but in the end, his mother had to be checked in to the medical center for dehydration, and his father had taught him duty. It went in the trash with everything else.

His mother had forbidden him from getting a job, so John told her he was auditing some biology classes at Loyola and dropped off a resume at a corner grocery. It was enough to pay the electric and heat, and his mother was too sick to notice. He graduated because the principal pulled strings over attendance, but he had to pick up his diploma from the guidance office; graduation had coincided with another chemo appointment.

John got exactly one present for his birthday: a year-long membership to the Shedd Aquarium. It was more than he’d expected, but not really what he’d wanted. The list began with wishing his mother would get well again and descended into small, selfish things that he felt guilty for wanting. He thought it might be nice to sleep through the night instead of having to get up to help his mother out of bed to use the bathroom. He missed being able to keep his bedroom door shut at night - he couldn’t, in case she fell. He missed dolphins and swimming, having a library membership and being able to paint the walls. A little absurdly, he missed Captain Crunch cereal.

Still, it had been a thoughtful gesture, and on weekends when his mother was checked into the hospital, after visiting hours were over, he walked down from the El station and spent the last forty-five minutes of the day pressed against the cool glass of a viewing pane in the Oceanarium, watching dolphins swim by.

It took him three visits to get to know them by sight - there was an adult male with a nick out of his tail, a juvenile female, smaller than the rest - and six to know their temperaments. He didn’t know their names, but he knew that two of the females didn’t like each other, that the smallest male, little more than a baby, was everyone’s favorite. The female whose black edges weren’t as clean as the others’ spent more time doing tricks than the rest; some of the females didn’t like one of the male trainers.

As spring edged into summer, the cherry blossoms falling off the trees near the Field Museum, John’s mother spent more and more time in the hospital, and he spent more and more time at the aquarium. It was easy, when the doctors told him his mother didn’t want him there that day, to be the first into the aquarium, the last to leave. He packed a peanut butter sandwich and a thermos of coffee and ate in the cafeteria with schoolchildren.

It was easy to stay in the cool, underwater dark, easier than the pressing density of the apartment at night or the antiseptic smell of the hospital, and even if the only people John had talked to some days were the doctors and small children who asked if he knew the dolphins’ names, it had been better than thinking about what it might be like in a week, a month, a year.

John’s mother died in July. He hadn’t been able to afford a funeral, but he scattered her ashes in the harbor - she’d picked Chicago because she’d loved sailboats. There was enough money in her savings account to cover four months rent, six if he moved someplace smaller, so John packed up boxes and sold the second bed before moving to a one bedroom, one bath in Morse. The carpeting had seen better days, and the ceiling fan didn’t work half the time, but he’d found an old sofa in the classifieds and the landlord’s wife was kind enough when he told her that he’d been in school until paying for it got too difficult. She’d left brown grocery bags of vegetables from the community garden on his very faded welcome mat. It was more fresh fruit than John had eaten in months.

He’d been working two jobs - one at a bookstore, because he liked the quiet, and the one at the grocery because it paid well - but he’d made sure to always have Tuesdays off, to go to the aquarium. It was easier to get out of bed in the mornings on Tuesdays, easier not to find a pay phone and call his father, easier not to beg him to fix things so John didn’t have to be alone anymore. Only the knowledge that he’d be disappointing his mother and the fear that his father would tell him to stay away kept him from dropping in spare change and calling.

Things, however, changed on a Friday evening; the grocery store was closed for a health inspection, and he’d gotten off work at lunch from the bookshop. He’d taken his backpack and gone to the lower level, his familiar corner. Someone sat down beside him at nearly five o’clock.

“Are you a university student?” she’d said. “We offer internships, you know.”

It had taken John a full minute to realize the woman - brunette, in her late twenties, wearing a Shedd t-shirt and a whistle - was talking to him. No one had in quite awhile.

John shook his head. “I just come in on my days off,” he offered.

“You were here every day this spring,” she said. “I thought maybe classes had started.”

He shook his head again. “Schedule change at work.”

“Do you like dolphins?” she’d asked, finally, after a few minutes. She was all right, John had thought. She’d told him later that she’d been trying not to scare him off; he’d found that remarkably funny.

“I used to work with them,” he said, listening to the dull roar of people filtering out for the day. “Bottlenose.”

She’d looked a little surprised. “You can’t be more than twenty.”

“I knew someone,” he’d replied. “At Sea World.”

“One of our interns quit,” she said, finally. “We usually only take college students, but it’s August. We’re shorthanded.”

John knew the dilemma. It was too late to find anyone interested in working for the summer, too early to attract fall students. “I’m sorry,” he’d murmured, watching one of the juveniles break the surface, skimming.

“The pay’s not that great, but you should put in an application,” she said, handing him an envelope, in the sort of tone that made him want to do it, even if it was impractical. “I’m Elizabeth.”

“John,” he’d said, and it had gone uphill from there.

It was lucky that he remembered the application at all. He’d left the envelope on the packing crate serving as his kitchen table before bed. It was still sitting there when he came home from work six hours early, having found a note on the grocery store that contained his last paycheck and a letter of recommendation, taped beneath the sanitation closing notice.

He’d sat down to have a cup of coffee, too tired to consider getting a newspaper to search the classifieds again, and it had been sitting there.

It turned out that he was the only applicant, but Elizabeth said she’d have turned down a lot of people to have him. The pay per hour wasn’t amazing, but it was more than he’d have made anywhere else, and they offered enough hours so that he could keep one job instead of two.

He weighed fish and ground vitamins into powder, cracked clams for the sea otters and de-beaked squid for penguins. It wasn’t a glamorous job. John got spit up on, did more pH testing than he had in high school chemistry, and came home at the end of every day smelling like herring and salt water, but it was worth it.

Six months after he was hired, holding a lamp while John struggled to fix a heater for the beluga exhibit, Elizabeth had commented that she wasn’t quite sure what they’d done without him. The next day there had been a memo in his mailbox detailing the creation of a new position, a marine mammal technician. The title wasn’t entirely accurate - John still had to work with the penguins, who took pleasure in trying to bite his ankles through rubber boots - but it came with a rather substantial pay raise and health insurance, so he hadn’t been inclined to complain.

Six months slid into a year and he started giving tours, throwing chunks of ice into the beluga exhibit as he turned the microphone up so the audience could hear them echolocate to find the new toys. He chopped less fish and learned to conduct dental exams on the dolphins. When Ronon, the sea otter keeper that John had originally suspected of being a security guard or a member of a reggae band (and possibly both), caught the stomach flu, he spent a week taking care of the otters. Behavioral notes and veterinary shorthand came back easily, so easily that he’d spent the next month observing the dolphins when the trainer who usually did it went on maternity leave.

A year became two, two became three, and in May of the fourth year he worked there, their veterinarian was offered a position at L’Oceanografic in Valencia, Spain. There was a bit of a scramble to find someone new; someone with enough experience to work at Shedd was a rare find. Everyone had liked Beckett as well, which only made it harder.

John ran more blood samples than usual and had to assist the newest beluga trainer in using the ultrasound machine to keep tabs on a pregnancy, something Carson ordinarily would have done, but things didn’t change until half-past noon in the second week of not having an official vet.

He’d propped the lower level door open, stepping outside to sit on a small set of concrete steps so he could enjoy the weather while he ate his lunch.

“This shouldn’t be open,” someone said behind him, when John was nearly done with the crust, obviously talking to himself. “But does anyone around here have any idea about air conditioning? No. No one understands air conditioning because it’s always cold in this godforsaken city.”

John was opening his mouth to point out that this particular hallway wasn’t part of the cooling system when the voice rounded on him. “And,” he said, drawing breath, “while I thoroughly respect the desire of teenagers everywhere to inhale illicit substances and destroy their own lung tissues, this is a private structure and you’re trespassing. Go find a better place to get high!”

“On what,” John said mildly, turning around. “My sandwich?”

He found himself facing a man with close-cut brown hair and a scowl that John tried not to find funny. “You’re eating lunch out here? In this weather?”

He had on what appeared to be a polar fleece jacket and fingerless gloves. John felt a little conscious of his own t-shirt, with a blood stain at the hem from that morning’s run of samples. “It’s nice out,” he said.

“You shouldn’t be eating here,” he said, eyeing his shirt before backing away. “You might attract something. Rats like garbage.”

“I don’t think there are very many rats around here,” John pointed out. “Just seagulls.”

“Seagulls,” the man began, “can transmit chlamydia. But I wouldn’t expect you to know that. Just -” he gestured vaguely in the direction of Navy Pier, looking irritated. “Find somewhere else to eat your lunch. Not on my steps.”

“I could try the break room,” John hazarded.

“Right,” he muttered. “The break room.” He rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you just go back to campus and eat your lunch in this - break room, so you’re not taking up any more of my valuable time.”

“You’re sort of in my way, for one,” John pointed out.

He sputtered. “You work here?”

“Well,” John said. “Going by the last few paychecks, I assume so.”

“In what? Accounting?” There was a slight pause. “I imagine you’re very skilled at taking tickets.”

“I’m a technician,” John said, finally. “The technician, actually.” He extended a hand. “John Sheppard.”

“Dr. McKay, the new veterinarian,” he snapped, finally, without bothering to take his hand. He kicked the doorstop out. “And don’t leave this door open.”

He jerked it shut, leaving John with an outstretched hand, an unfinished apple, and a completely locked door.

There was an introductory meeting with some sort of cake that John missed by virtue of being in the middle of showering half-digested fish off of himself. He heard things, however, about how the new vet thought Ronon was out to get him because he’d offered to share his lemonade at lunch. There was slightly infuriated gossip on the part of the interns - they’d finally succeeded in locking Elizabeth and Radek Zelenka, the Czech biologist on loan to study deep sea fish, in a storage closet, and Rodney McKay had let them out again. That sort of thing was unheard of.

Ronon grudgingly admitted, however, that even if he did spend twenty minutes checking for lemons every time they had a discussion, McKay knew what he was doing with the otters, and his lab workups were - as far as John could tell - better than Carson’s. He ran more tests, and his directions were difficult to follow for someone who hadn’t attended vet school, but it was obvious that he knew what he was doing with the animals.

Most of them, anyway.

The next time John saw McKay, it was three days later, and he was trying to get a blood sample from a dolphin. John was finishing up for the night - it was past seven, and he was hosing off the rock behind the standing platform.

He almost tripped over McKay before he saw him, lying on his stomach at the edge of the pool with a small bucket of fish and a syringe. He was muttering under his breath.

“Come here,” he was saying, with a repeated hand signal, and there was a dolphin hovering just underneath the water, eyeing him. “Come here, I knew there was a reason they didn’t keep dolphins in Monterey. Second-most intelligent my -”

“That’s not going to work,” John interrupted, finally. “That’s Jump.”

“That’s jump,” McKay muttered. “What, is that some sort of hipster aquarium code? Do I look like an intern to you?”

“No, that’s Jump,” John said. “His name.” He turned off the hose and went to stand next to McKay.

“Let me guess,” McKay said. “There’s also a Spin, a Twirl, and a Tango.”

John laughed. “I didn’t name him,” he said. “He’s not going to let you draw blood, though. Wait until tomorrow morning.”

“He rolls over, he just won’t stay still.”

“You have to ask Katie or Teyla,” John said, kneeling. The dolphin twisted, going right side up, and nudged his head into John’s hand. He could feel vibrations that would have been audible underwater, soft, searching clicks.

“Are they somehow more adept veterinarians?” He sounded irritated. John felt a little sorry for him.

“No, he doesn’t like men,” John said, rubbing just in front of his dorsal fin.

“He seems to like you well enough,” McKay muttered.

“Because he knows me,” John explained. “I still wouldn’t try to draw blood off him, though. They hold grudges.”

“I have to finish these labs tonight,” McKay said. “I’m on a schedule.”

“I mean it,” John said, finally. “He won’t like it, even if you can get him to hold still.”

“From the man who cuts up fish for a living?” McKay said.

“Suit yourself.” John coiled the hose again, and went to get his jacket.

By the time he’d shut down the other lights and come back to check on McKay, he’d succeeded in getting Jump into a hold position on his back. “He’s not going to let you,” John called, leaning against the glass in front of the auditorium seating.

“Shut up, Sheppard,” McKay said, and slid the needle in, leaning close to see in the dim light.

It was almost comically funny when the dolphin’s tail came up, hitting him squarely in the face, and John laughed for the ten seconds it took before McKay started yelling at the top of his lungs.

It probably hurt like hell, he reflected, as he went around the corner at a jog, but he doubted he was seriously hurt. He stopped next to McKay, who was dripping blood from a split lip and his nose, and tugged him back from the edge of the water before he fell in. “Shut up,” he said. McKay continued to shriek about his nose, so John hit him, lightly, against the back of his head. “Dr. McKay,” John said, pointedly, and he went quiet.

“Hold still,” John said. “Take your hands down.” McKay shook his head, tightly.

“Take your hands down,” John repeated, in what he hoped was a fair imitation of Elizabeth’s authoritative voice, and McKay obeyed, finally.

It looked worse than it probably was. There were bruises forming already along Rodney’s sinuses, his lip was split, and his nose was bleeding badly. “I don’t think it’s broken,” John said, and Rodney began to protest again, something that sounded like yes, it was.

“It’s not broken,” John said, firmly, and guided him over to the hose. “Tilt your head back.”

“Umsanibary,” Rodney protested, loudly, and John resisted the urge to tell him that he was obnoxious. “It’s clean. The dolphins might get sick otherwise.”

Rodney said something under his breath about what, exactly, he thought of sick dolphins, but John turned the water on low and began washing the worst of the blood off McKay’s face and hands. He didn’t entirely blame him for getting hysterical, he decided, finally. He obviously hadn’t worked with dolphins or whales much, and he’d seen people who were used to them flip out over less.

“Here, come on.” He guided a still protesting McKay into the staff room, locating a package of frozen shrimp in one of the deep freezers. “Hold that on for a moment.”

McKay looked like he was going to protest, but he did so, obediently, while John found a cold pack. People twisted their ankles a lot when water was involved.

John traded the ice pack for the shrimp, settling his hands in his pockets and leaning against the counter as he waited. “I should go get your kit,” he said, finally, knowing full well what was liable to happen if the syringe fell into the water.

“I can do it,” McKay managed, finally, voice still a little nasal. “You should go home.”

“Keep the ice on,” John said, and came back a couple minutes later with an empty bucket - none of the fish had gone to Jump - and McKay’s medical box. “I’ll get Katie Brown to take it for you in the morning,” he said, then considered. “Or you could ask her yourself.”

McKay looked a little more contrite than he might have otherwise. “Sorry,” he said finally, sullen, and obviously in pain.

“You should listen,” John said, finally, tugging the ice pack down to gently press his thumbs to McKay’s sinuses, checking.

“Ow!” McKay almost shouted, jerking back, guilt obviously gone. “Are you trying to make it worse?”

“It’s not broken,” John said, dryly. “I used to -” He considered. “Well, I used to try to play football. Wasn’t any good. Hence the knowledge of whether or not your nose is broken.”

McKay put the ice back on and glared. “If I end up permanently disfigured at age twenty-seven - ” he started.

“Keep the ice on and take some ibuprofen,” John said. “And you’re going to look like hell tomorrow, so you might as well milk it for all it’s worth with your girlfriend.”

McKay muttered something.

“What?”

“I said, I don’t have a girlfriend,” McKay said, a little louder. “I don’t know anyone in this stupid, overly cold, congested, grimy excuse for a city.”

“I don’t even know where to get dinner,” he added, drawing breath to go on. “Probably because all the restaurants are in violation of the health code, or they specialize in citrus glazes, like there aren’t people out there with citrus allergies who need to eat, and -”

“There’s a good chinese place off the Red Line Washington stop,” John offered.

“Red line?” McKay sputtered. “You want me to use public transportation?” He looked appalled. “People get knifed.”

“Yeah, like, one a year,” John said, trying not to laugh. “It’s the L.”

“I,” McKay said, drawing himself together, “am not going to be that one!”

“Here,” John said, drawing a packet of take-out menus from the drawer. “Find something you like, take it home, bring it back.” He gestured. “They do good pizza. Deep-dish.”

McKay looked like he was going to protest, so John grabbed his keys and coat. “Keep the ice on,” he reminded him, and made a quick escape, before he could be subjected to another tirade about Chicago.

John heard all sorts of interesting rumors in the following week about how McKay had gotten the rather spectacular bruises and why he was wearing a nose splint. His favorite was the one involving a 7-11 and armed bank robbers, but only Katie Brown seemed to know the real story. “He had a bit of an accident with a dolphin,” John overheard her telling an intern. He was glad McKay had been honest enough to tell the truth to someone.

He didn’t see him much for about two weeks; past stomach-pumping an otter who had eaten a stray quarter and handing over some penguin eggs for incubation, they barely said anything to each other.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. McKay cornered him on a Friday night as John was locking up, looking stubborn - a bit ridiculous, considering that he was still wearing the splint - and difficult. “I owe you dinner,” he said.

“How’s that, exactly?”

“You found me a restaurant,” McKay explained, as if there were some sort of logic behind it.

John wasn’t particularly keen on going out to eat with him. “I have plans.”

“Oh,” McKay said, looking a bit put-out. “I didn’t -” His eyes narrowed. “You do not.”

“I do, actually,” John said, mildly. He didn’t feel like mentioning they involved boxed macaroni and watching a taped football game.

“No, you don’t,” McKay said, practically pressing him into a corner. “You’re still covered in fish. If you had a date, you’d have showered and brought a change of clothes.”

John blinked at him. “I -”

“And you can’t be going home to shower because you have to take the L home, and it has to be more than a few stops because otherwise you’d walk because -” McKay gestured. “You’re that type. So by the time you got home and showered, it’d be past nine, and no one has dates that start past nine, it ruins all your prospects for getting laid.”

He looked oddly triumphant. John felt as if he’d been run over by a steam roller. “Okay,” he said, finally. “Did you have someplace in mind?”

McKay drove somewhat competently, much to John’s surprise, though there was a lot of swearing, and he privately felt that it was good they’d made a left, or the trucker Rodney had flipped off would’ve come after them.

They went to Giordano’s - if nothing else, John figured he’d be well fed - and to John’s surprise, it only took a minute to get a table.

“I made reservations,” McKay said, a bit smugly.

“You’re very well-prepared,” John replied, dryly. “Also very self-assured.”

“Oh, shut up,” McKay muttered. He disappeared toward the restroom and returned just as a waitress was handing John a menu.

“I’ll have a diet coke,” John said. “Lemon, extra ice, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

McKay didn’t bother to sit down before snatching the menu out of his hand. “Oh my god,” he said. “You’re trying to kill me!”

“Uh,” John said, glancing at the rather dull knife and fork and the candle holder.

“I’m deathly allergic to citrus!” McKay almost shrieked.

“Hold the lemon, then,” John informed the waitress. “Jesus.”

McKay drew a breath. “And I cannot believe you drink diet coke,” he continued.

“What’s wrong with diet coke?” John said.

“Oh, sure, nothing,” McKay said. “If you want to die of cancer.”

John felt himself go a little pale, but McKay didn’t seem to notice. “Because that’s what aspartame will do to you. If people even bothered to look at the chemical structure -”

“Make that regular,” John said, finally.

“He’ll have a regular coca cola,” McKay informed the waitress. “No ice, make sure it’s chilled, and certainly no lemon. I’ll take a beer, whatever the least abhorrent option available is, and don’t take the cap off.”

She disappeared, with a look in John’s direction that indicated she felt extremely sorry for him but still expected a substantial tip.

“You don’t get a lot of second dates, do you?” John muttered.

“I get plenty of second dates,” McKay said, a little too loudly.

“Women baffle me,” John said, finally.

“Oh,” McKay said, shifting a bit, looking a little uncomfortable, less offended. “I don’t really - date women.”

John decided a rather substantial part of McKay’s caustic personality was merely bravado. “No problem,” he said, because it wasn’t as if he really cared about McKay’s personal life. “Do you know what you want on the pizza?”

“Everything,” McKay decided, without examining a menu.

John watched with mild fascination as McKay opened his beer, using a strange-looking attachment on his key ring, and wiped the rim on the inside of his sleeve. “So,” he said, with an inner sigh. “Do you like football?”

“I’m Canadian,” McKay said, with a look of derision. “Hockey is the only sport worth following.”

“You’re Canadian?” John echoed, a bit dimly.

“What, did you expect a maple leaf tattooed on my forehead?” McKay muttered.

“Why are we having dinner?” John said, finally.

“People have basic biological needs,” McKay suggested. “Nutrition being one of them.”

“No, really,” John pressed. “Why?”

“I got sort of - tired of eating alone,” McKay said, finally, toying with what looked like a swiss army knife, complete with a USB port. “You were the only person at work I could ask.”

“Other people are perfectly nice,” John argued. “You just have to try with them.”

“No - ” He cleared his throat. “No one would have come.”

“And I was a sure thing?” John replied, dryly.

“I saw your pay records,” Rodney said. “You don’t make enough to turn down dinner on someone else.”

John thought he probably should have been offended, but it was true. He hardly ever ate out.

“You could meet people,” he offered, finally. “Join a book group or something.”

“I don’t really have time,” Rodney said. “I’ve been working overtime.” He looked oddly tired. “I’ll probably go back after we’re done here. Things were a mess when I got here.”

“Give Chicago a chance,” John said, but then McKay changed the subject back to hockey.

He went home with two slices of leftover pizza and the strange impression that McKay could almost have been a nice guy, if he hadn’t been an asshole.

McKay started requesting his help at work, mostly with the dolphins, but occasionally with ridiculously stupid things, like when one of the Japanese king crabs cracked a claw and McKay had to apply a coat of varnish so it wouldn’t spread.

John felt sort of awkward trying to hold down five feet of very pissed off crab; at least McKay had supplied a pair of welder’s gloves so he wouldn’t be spined. “Couldn’t we just have left it alone?” John said, avoiding yet another attempt by the crab to escape its bucket and latch on to him.

The look Rodney gave him was enough to make John feel guilty, at least until McKay informed him that he’d be treating the piranha tank for an infestation of ich with copper sulfate, and that he’d better be prepared to pull them all out and into a fresh tank if there were signs of stress.

At the very least, McKay bought him dinner twice a week. John had tried to pay once, but the ensuing argument had convinced him not to try again, and it was sort of nice to have someone to talk to outside of work.

McKay even came to the Memorial Day barbecue at Ronon’s apartment complex, though he refused to get into the pool. “I don’t swim,” he said, firmly, but only screamed once when John shoved him in.

John had gotten used to solitude. Work took up too much time to have an active social life, he’d never much gotten the hang of dating - women were mysterious, difficult, and the point of it was beyond him. He’d thought, really, that he’d know when the right person came along, but the only women he’d ever felt anything for were the ones he worked with, and it wasn’t quite the same. He didn’t know people, really, and he’d gotten used to going home to an empty apartment, but he could remember when it had been different, when he’d had family and friends and people who wanted to be around him. He thought about going home, sometimes, but the truth was that Chicago had become his home, rough-edged and solitary as it was, and he’d seen too much to go crawling back to his father. Loneliness could be biting, but it was all right. Chicago was big enough to swallow it whole.

He sat in L stations at night, listening to the soft chorus of people singing along with the street musicians. The Institute of Art was his favorite, though, with bone deep silence beneath the idle chatter of schoolchildren and tourists. Sitting by the Seurat was all right, most of the time, but a specific sort of loneliness required the American galleries near closing, through an elevator half the people couldn’t find. It took dedication to find Cassatt and Hopper, dim gold lighting and wooden floors, and few people managed it.

McKay turned out to be one of them, wandering through with a map and a frown, pausing to glance at a piece of art. It wasn’t the important thing in the room, but it was John’s favorite, oils in blue and green.

“Hey,” he said, and Rodney jumped about a mile.

“What are you doing here?” he said, once he’d straightened his map again. “Are you following me?”

“There wasn’t really anywhere else,” John said, honest without entirely being sure why, and McKay’s face softened, just marginally, like maybe he understood.

“There’s a game on tonight,” Rodney suggested. “Red Wings against the Oilers.”

“Half over,” John said, mildly.

“I haven’t eaten,” Rodney continued, in that bulldozer way which didn’t take into account anything anyone else said. “I bet we could find a bar.”

“Yeah,” John agreed, with a smile. “Probably.”

It was a little strange to feel like he had a friend.

People were supposed to keep off the railing in the front of the dolphin pool, but no one ever listened, more concerned with good photographs than practical safety. John wasn’t inclined to call anyone stupid - he’d never gone to college, and most people were all right if you gave them a chance - but occasionally he agreed with Rodney’s assessments. There weren’t any shows that day. September tended to be slow, and the males had been difficult, refusing commands and harassing the females. It was prudent in animal training not to ask for anything the animal couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do, so Elizabeth had decided furthering the species took some sort of precedence over entertaining the tourists, and only two of the dolphins were doing shows; one was still nursing a calf and the other was a juvenile.

He was hosing off the rocks when he saw the woman holding the little boy over the railing. “You can’t be up there!” he called, but the water drowned him out. McKay was already halfway around the curve of the walkway, looking irritated as hell. John was about to duck around to save them from his wrath when the little boy fell in.

It wasn’t dangerous, exactly; he’d never met a dolphin that would do anything but help a kid, and the schedule said this particular pool was empty. The trouble was that the water was deep and cold, and the boy couldn’t have been more than three. John thought maybe he knew how to swim, since he hadn’t gone under yet, but there wasn’t a straight way out. It was too far down to reach in and grab him, his mother was shrieking, and he looked tired after only a minute in the water. John went in, glad he’d had on a wetsuit so there wouldn’t be the trouble of clothes to weigh him down, and it only took a minute to get to him.

He passed him up to Rodney with some maneuvering, who had barely taken a breath he was so busy yelling at the kid’s mother. “You can take him to the staff room,” John interrupted. “We’ve got towels and someone ought to make sure he didn’t hit his head.”

“Of all the stupid things - ” Rodney began, still holding the little boy, and then John watched as his whole face went white. “John -” he began, but John didn’t have a chance to move before he was distracted by the curious sensation of being slammed into a wall of glass by five hundred pounds of angry male dolphin.

He focused for a second at the sharp blast of Rodney’s emergency whistle and heard someone hit the water on the other side of the pool. He tried to inhale, and then everything went black.

John woke up once in the ambulance, an oddly disorienting experience. Rodney’s face was extraordinarily blurry and his chest hurt. “Just lie back,” the paramedic said, and John gave in to the darkness pressing in at the edges of his vision.

The second time he woke up, he was in a hospital bed, Rodney sound asleep against the foot of it while Elizabeth absently stirred a cup of coffee, looking tired.

“What happened?” John managed, voice rough. He felt more than little woozy, and there was an IV in his arm.

“You’re awake,” she said, looking a little startled, then leaned in and cupped his face with one hand, just for a moment. “If you ever pull that sort of stunt again…”

“Not intentionally, anyway,” he said, trying for dry.

“Jump got put in the wrong pool by one of the interns,” Elizabeth murmured, glancing at Rodney, who was still fast asleep. “He hit you pretty hard.”

“I think something might be broken,” John suggested. “Like my entire body.”

“Three ribs, your lung was punctured, and no one’s really sure about a concussion.” Her face went soft - John realized it was relief. “You’re lucky your back wasn’t broken.”

“There had better be a calf out of this,” John said, solemnly, and Elizabeth laughed weakly.

“You should get some rest,” she said. “Rodney’s going to take you home tomorrow night, he volunteered.”

“Okay,” John agreed, already sleepy, and let the drugs pull him under.

He got jello and a smuggled Snickers bar for breakfast, while Rodney went on a great deal about MRSA and hand washing. “Do you have a car?” he offered, when they finally decided to release him at nearly six o’clock.

“I’ll just take the L,” John said, carefully retying a tennis shoe. If he didn’t bend over, it was fine. “It’s not too far, I’ll be okay.” He didn’t really want to take the train, but stubborn pride was kicking in after two days of being fussed over by others. It hurt to breathe, though, and they’d downgraded him to vicodin, which was making him nauseated.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Rodney said; he hummed loudly until John gave up, and insisted that one of the nurses wheel John downstairs. (John’s protests on that front went ignored as well.) He’d set up a nest of stolen hospital blankets in the back seat, and drove extremely carefully for the two blocks John remained awake.

When he woke half an hour later, Rodney was parked near his front door, looking dubious. “Elizabeth gave me your address,” he offered. “I think MapQuest gave the wrong directions, though. I knew I should have used GPS.”

“No, it’s right,” John said. They actually managed to get all the way to the living room before Rodney put his foot down.

“I’m not leaving you here,” he said, the first time John had ever heard him sound serious instead of vaguely paranoid. He figured the apartment probably looked pretty bad, but he still tried to talk his way out of it - this time, Rodney didn’t say anything, just waited, and John gave in, a little bitterly, because he didn’t have any food in the house, and he was starting to feel woozy.

Rodney got an arm around his shoulders and they went back downstairs, John pointedly ignoring the thin set to his mouth. They got a block before Rodney finally said anything. “Don’t they pay you enough?” he demanded, looking honestly angry.

“Yeah,” John said, finally, watching the street lights come on. “I just never wanted to move.” It hadn’t been as if anyone was ever there but him, and he’d had enough extra money to go to the movies once in awhile, buy some books instead of always going to the library.

Rodney all but carried him in from the car - the dose of vicodin he’d taken before he left the hospital was really kicking in, and it was hard to think about anything but sleep. Even so, Rodney’s house was enough to draw his attention, all high ceilings and windows, light and airy even at night. He was bundled into a bedroom - too big of a bed to be guest, he decided, and it looked lived in - and fell asleep before he could think about much else.

John barely woke up at all the next day, just long enough to take more vicodin and stumble to the bathroom, but he figured Rodney hadn’t gone to work. In between naps, he examined all the books on Rodney’s bedside table - six on medicine in dolphins, something in Russian, and some sort of romance - and then stared out the window. He could see the faintest edge of Lake Michigan shoreline in the distance, the sort of blue you only ever saw in autumn. It was better than train tracks, he decided, but only drifted off again.

He woke up a little past eight when someone turned the deck lights on, suddenly hungry, sore instead of merely drugged. He found a sweater hanging over the foot of the bed and pulled it on, wandering downstairs and into the kitchen. “Hey,” he said, low and a little amused, because Rodney was washing lettuce in a way that suggested a fear of salad pathogens. “You could just use a spinner.”

“They encourage bacterial growth,” Rodney said, firmly, and John leaned over his shoulder, turning unconsciously toward body heat. “Is there dinner?” He reached to swipe a slice of tomato off Rodney’s cutting board, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but Rodney sighed, put upon.

“I should have known you’d be obnoxious,” he said, and nudged John toward a chair with his elbow.

He disappeared onto the patio and brought in a platter of grilled chicken, serving John first - there was pasta and chicken and the aforementioned salad, short one tomato in John’s portion. He finished before Rodney had even gotten to the table, but Rodney shook his head when John went for seconds. “You’ll get sick,” he warned. “Give your body time to adjust.”

“Thanks for letting me stay,” John said, finally, and Rodney took another bite of chicken.

“Don’t be stupid,” Rodney said, a bit forcefully, and John gave up. There was no arguing with him sometimes.

They got through two thirds of a movie before John realized that the vaguely antiseptic, sweat-laced scent he kept catching whiffs of wasn’t Rodney. “Am I allowed to shower, Nurse McKay?” he said, finally, dryly.

“Maybe,” Rodney said. “Think you can stand that long?”

“Of course,” John said, more sure than he felt. Rodney had to help him
with his sweater, ducking out to find some towels while John finished undressing and stepped into the shower. He decided the hot water was probably the best thing in the entire history of the universe, including baby dolphins and Hail Mary passes, and barely noticed that Rodney was laughing at him.

“If you’re going to have sexual experiences with my shower, at least wait for me to leave the room,” he said, and John flushed, laughing too, a little embarrassed.

“I think I’ll stay,” Rodney announced, and John watched him take a seat on the sink through the frosted glass. “In case you fall and die.”

“Thanks for ruining our moment,” John replied, dryly, and went back to washing up, ignoring the bruises across his torso.

He swore under his breath when he realized he couldn’t get his hands above his head to wash his hair.

“What is it?” Rodney said, a little too knowingly, and somehow, John found that he’d agreed to let him help out, entirely without meaning to.

It felt almost as good as the hot water; Rodney had pretty big hands, and he was thorough. No one had touched him for awhile, unless you counted the nurses or hauling him up and down stairs, and John wondered if Rodney would mind if he got used to it.

He huffed a little breath of laughter when he realized Rodney was humming absently, leaning into the shower, balanced against the glass door. His shirt was getting soaked, even though he’d rolled the sleeves up. “No one’s done this since I was five or six.”

“Unsurprising,” Rodney said. “I’d be afraid of your hair too.”

“Oh, shut up,” John said, and made sure to select the best towel so Rodney wouldn’t get it.

Having Rodney play nurse was more than a little strange at times - he rationed John’s vicodin and flushed a little oddly when he checked John’s ribs - but it was worth it around the third or fourth day, when John started feeling good enough to be bored. He couldn’t do much more than lie on the couch, but without high doses of drugs, he didn’t feel like sleeping. Luckily, Rodney caught on; he brought home a tank of cichlids that wouldn’t eat, and John spent an entire afternoon coaxing them with baby brine shrimp and bloodworms. The next day there was a birdfeeder outside the window next to the couch and a stack of video games - mostly football, with some ice hockey and Super Mario for variety. Rodney challenged him after dinner and won every match. John blamed the Tylenol 3.

“I could probably go home tomorrow,” John offered on the fourth day, putting together the final corner of a jigsaw puzzle Rodney had located in his attic, and looked up to see Rodney’s spine go stiff, feeling sudden guilt somewhere deep in his chest.

“You’re not well yet,” he said, a little flatly, and John figured out what the real problem was.

“It’s not that bad,” he said. “The apartment, it’s not as bad as it looks, I just haven’t cleaned in awhile. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

“That’s - ” Rodney was obviously struggling not to lose his temper. “That’s not the point, Sheppard! If the aquarium isn’t paying you a living wage, you can appeal, you know that - ”

“They pay me plenty,” John replied, frustrated. “I’m just - saving.”

“If you have student loans,” Rodney began.

“That’s be interesting,” John said, tiredly. “I didn’t exactly go to college.”

Rodney went an odd sort of red and disappeared, and John didn’t see him again that night. He ate breakfast and took the L to his old apartment, only to find that three years of neglecting to put a working deadbolt on had finally caught up; his furniture was gone. There was an envelope taped to the wall, with directions, a highlighted L route, and a key.

John tried to sleep on the floor, but the pain meds wore off around eleven, when he was still lying awake, and stubborn pride wasn’t worth it anymore. Elizabeth’s jeep was parked on the street above the last stop, and she was sitting in the back, reading by the light of a streetlight.

“Waiting for someone?” he said, a little irritated that they’d all been in on it together, but she held out a bag of Chinese food before he could manage anything really biting.

“Try not to be too mad at him,” she murmured, while John climbed in and fished out the box of Crab Rangoon.

He didn’t say anything until they got there, inhaling the scent of sweet and sour soup. “It’s just my guest bedroom for a bit,” she said, finally. “Rodney figured you didn’t want his.”

“I didn’t,” John said, which wasn’t strictly true, but it was nice to see his mother’s bookshelves in a real house.

He went back to work two days later, doing paperwork and running blood until he could trust himself around the animals. John didn’t see Rodney for nearly a week, until he was throwing fish for the dolphins.

“Hi,” Rodney said, finally, leaning over the railing, looking into the water.

“Hi,” John said, a little tersely, and tossed another smelt.

“I guess - ” Rodney began, tiredly, then stopped. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” John replied, even though it wasn’t.

“I guess you probably don’t trust me much anymore,” Rodney offered, but John was surprised that he did, almost; he knew why Rodney had done it, even if it had been stupid.

“You could’ve just asked,” John said, finally.

“You wouldn’t have listened,” Rodney replied, a little sharply.

“It’s not like you bothered to try,” John snapped back, finally letting anger sink in.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Rodney said.

“Maybe it would have,” John retorted, too fast to really think about it. “Maybe I wanted to stay.”

There was a long pause, and then Rodney laughed. John felt relief wash over him, quiet, and when he looked up, Rodney was smiling. “If you want to come back -” he offered.

“If you don’t steal my stuff again,” John replied, then considered the larger implications. “And if it’s not too much trouble.”

“I don’t know,” Rodney replied, derisively, rolling his eyes. “I’ll have to check with my incredibly attractive Russian girlfriend, just one of the many people who live with me.”

“So that’s who was playing tennis naked,” John offered.

“She finds it liberating,” Rodney replied, blithely. John moved back in on Saturday.

Living with someone else was strange; living with Rodney bordered on surreal. He divided up the week on a schedule he stuck to the fridge, next to the grocery list and some phone numbers. John was supposed to cook Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. The schedule lasted until Rodney realized that John knew how to cook exactly three things: frozen pizza, boxed macaroni, and spaghetti. Mondays became Chinese takeout night, they ordered pizza Wednesdays, and Rodney taught him how to make real meatballs for Saturday.

It was nice, though, to have someone to come home to, even if Rodney worked late half of the time and tended to spend his evenings reading veterinary journals. It was even better to be around someone, a hand on his shoulder when he lost his footing on the stairs, someone to stand next to while drying dishes. John tried to get his pulse to stop speeding up every time Rodney got in close, but it proved a little futile; he figured, though, that an adjustment period after years of doing without proximity was probably allowed.

John was pretty sure Rodney wasn’t actually charging him a fair share of rent, so he found things to do around the house; the gutters obviously hadn’t been cleaned in years, six of the seven bedroom windows needed caulking, and the paint in the front hall had faded from too much sunlight. Rodney only noticed when he came home and found John on a ladder, rewiring a recessed light.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, pointedly. “There’s no sense in depriving the illegal workforce of a perfectly well-paying job.”

“I’d rather do it myself,” John replied, and Rodney gave up and bought him a drill so he’d stop borrowing the neighbors’.

It was peaceful and quiet, generally what John had wanted all along, which was why, standing in the kitchen at eleven-thirty at night, he greeted the fact that his heart had just turned over at the sight of Rodney McKay with incredulity.

“Hi,” Rodney said, looking tired, reaching for a carton of milk as he let his briefcase slide to the floor.

“You’re late,” John offered, pulling out the cereal, sliding it over.

“There was a problem with one of the otters,” Rodney explained, and John turned on a hockey game.

It didn’t go away, the feeling in the pit of his stomach, not even when he met someone in a bar and she slid into his lap in the back of the taxi, all soft curves and alcohol, mascara making her eyelashes rough against his skin in the dark. “I shouldn’t,” he said, and took her home anyway, pretty sure Rodney could hear through the wall behind the bed, wondering if he was listening.

“I didn’t think you had sex,” Rodney said, the next morning, over a second bowl of cereal, and he looked as worn through as John felt.

“I’m just getting something out of my system,” John said, and that should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t, though, and the feeling came back again, watching Rodney sleep over the table in the break room at half-past two in the morning, when he hadn’t come home. John had found that he’d needed to find him, worried and angry. Fighting himself with every bit of willpower he had did nothing to change the fact that things were changing in a way he couldn’t control.

He’d always thought that love couldn’t work the way people said it did, and it hadn’t, mostly. John found that it was quiet, not loud, and only fragile in the sense that it made him feel broken, half cut into pieces when he thought about it too long. It wasn’t real, he knew - these sorts of things never were - but he thought it might be bad enough while it lasted to deserve attention, so he chose a club in the furthest corner of town.

It took four shots of whiskey to slow his hands down enough to feel, five to get on the dance floor, and a sixth to let someone press him against the wall and kiss him, hot and slow.

“I think,” the man said, “you think too much,” and John figured out at least that part of the equation when his whole body slid into high gear, every bit of air leaving his lungs in a rush.

He got home well after midnight and realized what he looked like a moment after he walked in the door, when Rodney met him in the hallway.

“I was so worried,” he shouted, then, “Are you drunk?” and shoved John against the wall, hard enough to knock the chair rail John had put up a little loose, all tense anger with an undercurrent of what John figured out was fear.

“Sorry,” he managed, feeling the alcohol, a low pressure inside the back of his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think - ”

“You never do!” Rodney said, which John felt wasn’t strictly fair, considering, but then Rodney was in close, too close, all flushed cheeks and worry. It was, John thought, a little inevitable, and then kissed him with seven and a half glasses of whiskey and five years of a broken heart behind it.

“Oh,” Rodney said, looking startled, a moment later, his hand still pressed to the wall beside John’s face, the inside of his wrist close enough that John could feel the warmth.

“I didn’t - ” John began, feeling things go numb, cold enough that he couldn’t hurt, where he didn’t care, and thought about trying to shove Rodney away.

“You could have said,” Rodney said, with the hint of a smile tugging up the corner of his mouth, calmer than John would have expected. He found, a little suddenly, that he could feel his own pulse beating, too rapid, and then Rodney leaned in and kissed him again, surprisingly comfortable. John let it go deep, watched Rodney’s eyes flutter closed, and gave in to the way Rodney had been looking at him when he’d pressed John against the wall, the slick and heated press of their mouths together as Rodney licked inside, a little too delicate. John closed his teeth on Rodney’s lower lip, kissed back, breathing into his mouth. When he finally pulled back to breathe, Rodney moved his hand to brush his fingers along John’s jaw, thumb over his cheekbone.

“You taste like whiskey,” Rodney pointed out, sounding vaguely offended, and John laughed, warm all over.

He fell asleep between kisses - something he was reasonably sure Rodney would be put out by come morning - and woke to find himself tangled in the sheets in Rodney’s ridiculously large bed, with Rodney beside him.

He took a shower and slid back in, still dripping wet, intending to sleep off the dull headache pulling at the edges of his vision, but Rodney was awake.

“You’re very naked,” he observed, and John felt himself flush all over.

“I’ve never - ” he began, but Rodney took his time, licking water out of the hollow of his throat, spreading warm palms against his stomach, still slippery from the shower. He waited until John’s breath caught to kiss him, pressed a thumb against the back of his knee until he drew it up, and let John touch back, exploring the surprisingly sharp curves of his shoulder blades, the clean cut of his spine.

“That’s probably not worth worrying over,” Rodney decided, and they kissed for what felt like half the morning, deep and warm, until John was hard and aching, wanting it. John had read, somewhere, that people were different in bed - he’d expected that Rodney would fuss, like he did over nearly everything else, but he was soft and certain, a little blurry around the edges.

It was different because he wanted it, could feel desire pulling him under, and when he stopped thinking and gave himself over to it, fingers closed tight in the bed sheets and his body relaxed for the first time in as long as he could remember, it was ridiculously good, better than he’d thought it might be.

Rodney jerked him off for awhile and then went down, leaving John’s entire body suddenly drawn with something that felt right. It took him all of a minute and a half to come, feeling Rodney’s mouth warm and wet around him, and then John found that fumbling his way through a hand job while half asleep and blissed out on endorphins was easier than he’d expected.

“I like you,” Rodney said, honest, afterwards.

“Maybe,” John replied, a little dryly, “you should just ask me to the dance,” and let himself fall asleep against Rodney’s back, watching the waves crash against the shore through the glass window.

The first week was almost too comfortable. John discovered - rather abruptly - that he liked sex, and Rodney eased off on his workaholic tendencies. John privately suspected that the two events were related, but it was just the same as it had been before, even if Rodney attempted to offer John an easy way out at least twice a day. John ignored him, took over the utilities bill before Rodney could stop him, and let himself - for the first time since he’d moved to Chicago - settle in.

He came home on a Tuesday to find someone sitting on the front steps, bundled against the cold, an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. “Do you need something?” John said, coming up the walkway, wondering if there was something wrong with his car or if he was lost.

“Well,” the man said, and John had to stop, a little abruptly, when he realized that the stranger sitting on Rodney’s front stoop was his father.

“What - ” John managed, leaning hard against the side of the car.

“I got a phone call,” his father said, hesitantly, climbing to his feet. “Something about transcripts - he said you were living here - ”

“Rodney,” John offered, a little dazed.

“I looked for three years,” his father said, suddenly, “I didn’t ever stop, but your mother just up and left. I figured if you’d wanted to come home, you would’ve gotten in touch.”

“I couldn’t,” John said. He swallowed hard. “She had cancer, she wanted us - me - to stay away, so you wouldn’t get hurt - she asked me not to - ”

“I know,” John’s father offered, and stepped forward off the step to pull him in close, holding him tight. “I know.”

They caught up over coffee, trading stories, mostly undisturbed until Rodney burst in the door with, “We’ve only been dating a week, isn’t it a little early to start cheating on me!”

John drove him to the airport to catch an eight pm flight, promising to drop off the rental car, and said goodbye outside arrivals, with people coming and going all around them.

“I’ll see you soon,” his father said. “Maybe at Christmas.”

“Christmas would be good,” John said, and left again, easier this time than the first.

Rodney was waiting with an envelope when he got home, which he thrust into John’s hands.

“So I didn’t actually mean to tell your estranged father where you were living,” he said, as close to apologetic as Rodney got, “but you could have told me - ”

“It’s fine,” John said, laughing. “Honestly, fine - ”

Rodney waited for him to start opening the package before he dashed off into the kitchen, which John found a little suspicious, at least until he saw the acceptance letter - Congratulations! On behalf of the committee of transfer admissions, I am honored to offer you admission into Loyola University Chicago’s program for Biology - and had to lean hard against something for the second time that day.

“So I know I sort of stole your social security number,” Rodney admitted, five minutes later, once John had wandered into the kitchen, still dazed. “And your transcripts. And they probably shouldn’t find out we’re sleeping together or my letter of recommendation might be tossed out.”

“I,” John said.

“But you can go part time, and once you have a degree,” Rodney went on, shifting from foot to foot, “Elizabeth has a standing offer at UC Davis, and if you want to get a Masters once you take over her job, Shedd will pay for it, so if you want - ”

“I want,” John interrupted, and let Rodney pull him into a dizzying victory dance around the kitchen, laughing underneath the bright lights of their house, finally home.