20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Merry
Challenge: Enclosed spaces
Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (give or take)
Author: Merry
Summary: There's a vast ocean surrounding the lost city of Atlantis...and we can go there.
McKay/Sheppard, R-ish, kinda silly. 7950 words
Many thanks to the usual beta hit squad: torch, kaneko, res, julad, ces, giddy, astolat. And also Sin, for out-of-control coolness and encouragement.
Note: While I was writing this, there was a little thing I liked to say to myself when I wondered something like, "Can a puddljumper do that?" or "Hm, is that even theoretically possible?" It goes like this: "Pfffffft, science." Rodney would be very, very ashamed.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(give or take)
"It's very important that we fully understand and comprehend our situation here. Important to the mission, I mean. For security reasons," Sheppard said. He threw Rodney a significant look and kicked him, hard, under the table.
"Desalinization tanks!"
Weir's eyebrows shot up. She folded her arms elegantly in front of her on the conference table and said, "Doctor?"
"Our water supply is stored in desalinization tanks under the city," Rodney said, glaring at Sheppard. "Very vulnerable. Very important." Sheppard kicked him again, and through clenched teeth he ground out, "Strategically."
"And we should protect them," Sheppard said, nodding seriously. "I suggest a weekly patrol."
"Major, we aren't even sure the puddlejumpers are built for underwater navigation. To risk one when we have so few seems unnecessary."
"With all due respect, Elizabeth, they were built by people who periodically sank their city to the bottom of the ocean. We know they're air-tight, at least when not bisected by a wormhole, so really, what danger can there be? If the Ancients didn't make them do double duty as submarines, it's time we faced the possibility that the Ancients were incredibly stupid."
"There you go," Sheppard said, "McKay trusts the jumpers underwater, and he doesn't think anything's safe."
Weir looked from one of them to the other. "Why do I get the feeling I lost this debate before it started?"
"Wisdom and instinct," Rodney said cheerfully. "You are truly a great leader."
"Thank you, Rodney," she said, with exactly the same level of sincerity. "That's very kind. Major, I assume you'll want to take Lieutenant Ford?"
Across the table, Ford's skin had taken on a decidedly greenish tint, and whites showed all around his eyes. "Sir," he said pleadingly to Weir. "Uh, ma'am. Sir. Doctor Weir." He looked wildly at Sheppard. "Sir?"
"Don't worry, Ford. I'll take McKay. I'm sure he wants to personally ensure the safety of the desalinization tanks. Plus, he's a little less likely to spin his head around and projectile vomit if things get choppy."
"Only a little," Rodney warned. "But I'm in; there's got to be all kinds of equipment under there we haven't even discovered yet, and schematics are no substitute for personal investigation. Besides -- if you don't count alternate timelines, drowning is one of the few dire fates this galaxy hasn't yet tried to inflict on me. I'm trying to collect the whole set."
"Then I think we have a mission." Sheppard slapped his hand down on the table. "Doctor Weir?"
"Why, that almost makes me feel like I have a choice, Major," Weir said dryly. "Just be sure to send a few postcards from Sea World. Every hour on the hour, okay?"
~ ~ ~
"Flight, this is Jumper One. We are now submerging."
"Roger, Jumper One. We have you on scan. You are cleared to proceed. Dr. Zelenka requests samples if you find any squid, though he referred to them as 'calamari'."
"That's a negative, Flight, we are in this for the joy of exploration and the beauty of the natural world, over."
"And the investigation of the highly strategic desalinization tanks, traditionally a favorite target for saboteurs and sea serpents," Rodney said.
Sheppard wrapped his hand around his mic and glanced at Rodney. "Seriously, desalinization tanks? That's the best you could do?"
"What was I supposed to say? You kicked me! A little warning, and I could have had something prepared."
"I wanted spontaneity. You know, to lend some authenticity to your argument."
"Well, you got spontaneity, anyway. Besides, Elizabeth was never going to say no. She brought a stuffed baby seal as her personal item."
Sheppard stared at Rodney. "She did not."
"Oh, yes. According to Kavanagh, she beats it with a club every morning before breakfast."
Sheppard shook his head and took his hand off the mic. "Flight, we are submerged."
The waterline rushed up the glass and covered them. Inertial dampeners ate away any true sense of motion, and of course everything sounded as sharp and clear below as it had above. Rodney felt muffled anyway, cocooned in water. At Area 51 he'd read a report about a submerged stargate on a world inhabited by sentient water, and the thought of being completely encased in something awake, aware, but unknowable, sent a chill skittering up his spine. He shook it off and turned his attention to the sensors, which were already reading an increase in pressure.
"Think about how deep we are," he said to Sheppard, and an obedient, translucent readout popped up -- in front of him, not Sheppard. He glanced sideways and caught Sheppard grinning, proud of himself.
"So how deep are we?"
"About twenty meters right now. The City bottoms out at 200 meters and wow, that's a long way down." Rodney frowned and checked the readings again. "According to this, the bottom is 5 kilometers down."
Sheppard whistled. "Can we go that far?"
"The Challenger Deep on Earth is 11 kilometers, give or take. I think we've gotten pretty close to the bottom of it, and if we can do it on Earth, I wouldn't bet against the Ancients doing it better here, and in a prettier submarine."
"Won't we, you know... implode?"
"If these readings are right, we won't even get the bends."
"The readings are right ... right?"
"Unless this is a homicidal submarine -- hmm." Given the utterly lunatic things that had happened to them on Atlantis so far, it didn't seem a strong enough statement. "Yes. The readings are right."
Sheppard took them down to fifty meters, reporting back to the surface at regular intervals. They slid, down and down and down the slant of the City's hull, away from the shifting columns of sunlight and bright water and into the shadows. The readouts scrolled continuously, comparing depth with pressure, noting the stresses -- lack thereof, really -- on the hull. When half an hour had passed and nothing seemed inclined to vent or buckle, Rodney started to breathe a bit easier.
"The jumper doesn't know the difference between space and water," he reported up to Flight. It was dark as space outside the viewscreen now, space without the relief of stars or planets to push away the black. "Pressure shields -- hey! we have pressure shields! -- uh, pressure shields note an increase in atmospheres but don't seem to care about it. C02 scrubbers are online and functional, and if I'm understanding these readouts, we're supplementing by pulling the basic components of breathable air straight out of the water. Life support is a go; with enough MREs and fresh water we could grow old down here."
"Official report, Jumper One?"
Rodney grinned and looked out the viewscreen. "Officially: this is very, very cool."
Laughter from Atlantis filtered in. Sheppard looked over at Rodney, smiled, and gave him a thumbs up. This was definitely Rodney's kind of mission.
He hit the comm again, cutting in on the filtered chatter from the control room. "Carson, what kind of data are you getting on us?"
"Beckett here. Looks as if your bodies can't tell the difference between space and water, either. All life signs are normal. You're experiencing no adverse effects from the increase in atmospheres, as far as I can tell. Rodney, your blood sugar is a bit low, you might want to eat a bit before you go all moody and dramatic."
"Right, right. Thanks. Major, could you--"
Sheppard handed one over -- oatmeal raisin, this week's favorite. "Flight, I'm going to take us in under the East Pier, see what there is to see. We'll be in touch again in fifteen minutes. Hey, can I have half of that?"
Still chewing, Rodney ripped off half of the power bar and handed it back. "Can we get some more light out there? Something stronger? I can't -- yes, that's good. Pan it up, I want to see our soft underbelly."
"You know, you can do some of this yourself."
Rodney inclined his head. "Yes, but then I wouldn't get to exercise my natural authority."
Sheppard threw him a look and half a grin. "Adjust your own damn lights."
Rodney thought about bright and thought about up and a beam swept around from the left and angled itself toward the city. This was definitely not his baby's best side. Above, form was melded to function, like the entire complex had been assembled at an Apple Store from the future. Down here, conduits traced crazily around one another, meeting at jumbled crossroads and racing on toward the center. There was a logic to it, a pattern, but no trace of aesthetic design.
"Welcome to the underworld," Sheppard muttered softly. "If this gets out, our property values go right down the drain."
"Do you see that -- what's that venting, over there to your left?"
"I don't see anything."
"Keep looking. There it is again."
Sheppard stared, and another readout popped up. "H20," he said. "Huh. No, wait -- it's salty. Extremely high sodium chloride content." He threw a smug glance at Rodney that said, see, I can do science.
"Concentrated wastewater from the desalinization tanks, maybe." Rodney frowned. "Is it clean?"
Sheppard popped an eyebrow at the display, which zoomed over and parked itself in front of Rodney's face.
"Okay, at least we're not putting anything into the water that we didn't take out of it."
"We're environmentally conscious intergalactic explorers."
"No, we're just lucky that the Ancients were."
Sheppard shrugged. "I'm sort of an Ancient, right? That's what this gene says."
"No, you're not sort of an Ancient," Rodney said with exaggerated patience. "You're sort of a biological sport. I tend to think of you as an aberration. A mutant, actually, when you get right down to it."
"I think I object to that label. I choose to embrace my ethnic roots."
Rodney chose to ignore him. "Let's keep going toward the City's center. I want to see what else we have going on down here."
"See," Sheppard said, "that's why I wanted you down here instead of Ford."
"My endless fascination with alien waste disposal hardware?"
"Your sense of adventure." Sheppard looked at Rodney, and for once Rodney could see he was absolutely serious.
"Oh." Rodney looked away quickly and cleared his throat. "Well, I--"
"Not that the hardware thing isn't fun, too," Sheppard added with a grin.
Let off the hook, Rodney just smiled a little, to himself and kept his mouth shut.
The puddlejumper angled away from the tanks, lights skating over another tangle of pipes and conduits. The world was shades of black and pale unearthly blue, lights picking up tiny motes of life and dust in the water.
"Look." Sheppard swept a beam over a section of exposed piping, and edged the jumper in closer. The light picked out something long, feathered, and shimmery gold, like a discarded evening dress clinging tightly to the City's hull. "What is that?" A window popped up in front of him, mirroring the viewscreen. He toggled comm back on. "Flight, are you reading this?"
"Roger, Jumper One, we are receiving external video."
"What is that?"
"It's a fish," Rodney said. "The fins, tail, and big glassy eyes are a dead giveaway."
"I know it's a fish, Rodney," Sheppard said evenly. "I was asking about the type of fish."
"I have no idea. Maybe a remora of some kind?"
"Do remoras get to be six feet long?"
Rodney turned from the viewscreen and stared. "Do I look like a marine biologist? For all I know, Atlantis is under attack by a six-foot-long goldfish with sucker...things...on its head. Maybe it's trying to eat the City. Maybe it's sabotaging the desalinization tanks. Maybe it's in love!"
The look Sheppard gave him was dark and desert-dry. "We should keep recording, just in case."
"Just in case we really are under attack--"
"Just in case someone in the City has a little intellectual curiosity to spare."
"Hey, I have intellectual curiosity, but I got over my aquarium stage in third grade, when we started in on fractions." Rodney crossed his arms and blew out a breath of air. "I can't believe you think I don't have intellectual curiosity."
"Oh, I think you're just oozing with it."
"Of what possible use is my sense of adventure if I don't have intellectual curiosity?"
"None at all," Sheppard said, smiling. "Because in about ten seconds I'm going to shoot you in the head, and then you won't have either."
"Ah, Jumper One, Flight," Grodin's voice said cheerfully. "Clarification of last transmission: we are also receiving audio. Loud and clear."
Rodney rolled his eyes, but there was no way to hide the grin so he didn't even try. Sheppard laughed out loud, and said, "Roger that, Flight. We'll be here all week."
~ ~ ~
"This isn't as fun as I thought it was going to be."
"No," Rodney said. "Really not so much."
"The suckerfish are cooler in theory than in practice."
"So many things are."
The underside of Atlantis, in the two hours they'd been exploring it, had revealed itself to be what they'd seen in the first half hour, times five miles. Pipes and suckerfish. And every now and then, just for variety, more pipes and suckerfish.
"Maybe they're like Ancient underwater Hoovers." Sheppard waved his hand up at more piping, and to his credit it did all seem very, very clean. Rodney wasn't sure, but he felt like there should have been lichen or something. Maybe coral. Sponges. Whatever. Instead, the entire bottom of the City was pristinely bare.
"Maybe," Rodney grunted, but only because he couldn't think of any reason that idea was stupid. He glanced up from his readouts just long enough to confirm that yes, the pipes were still there, and clean, and no, nothing interesting had presented itself in answer to his heartfelt prayers. "If so, they're very good at it."
"You want to see if there's anything cool further down?"
Rodney nodded without looking. "Whatever. You're the pilot."
The jumper spiraled. And spiraled. And spiraled. Rodney knew the inertial dampeners would nullify any physical cause for dizziness, but he still felt safer not looking. He had a history of motion sickness dating back to his first grade summer vacation, when Jeannie had fed him three milkshakes and half a liter of orange juice in the backseat while his parents fought about directions in the front. A few abrupt turns later, his parents had something else entirely to yell about.
"Weird that there aren't any other fish."
"Mmm."
"Just ... suckerfish. You can't really call that an ecosystem, now, can you?"
"You never quite made it out of your aquarium phase, did you."
That earned a dark look and a grace period, but Rodney was too well-versed in the ways of Sheppard to expect such things to last. A few minutes and a few more suckerfish later, later, Sheppard shook his head in amazed disappointment. "I really would have thought there'd be more fish."
"Maybe we just haven't seen them yet, Aquaman."
"We've been down here for hours, McKay."
"Look, when we get back to Earth, I promise to take you to Sea World. Until then, I can't help you with your fish problem. We're very big and probably very noisy to fish ears--"
"Do fish have ears?"
"Your faith in my boundless knowledge is … actually a lot more annoying than I would have expected. Anyway, probably the fish are hiding from us."
"Huh." Sheppard's voice grew thoughtful. "Maybe they're hiding from that."
Rodney looked up, registered BIG and LOOM and TEETH and immediately grabbed for the arms of his chair, but by then it was already far too late.
~ ~ ~
"Probably I should have said 'brace for impact'," Sheppard said from somewhere off to Rodney's left. "Sorry about that."
"That's all right, Major. As much as it pains me to say it, a broken arm is actually the least of my worries right now."
"Is your arm really broken, or is this one of those things where you say things are ten times worse than they are to make yourself feel better?"
Rodney pressed his lips together in annoyance.
"Right. So what's actually worrying you?"
"I'd started developing a theoretical model for harnessing solar energy through the gate to supercharge the City's shields, but it involves stealing a second stargate and parking it in orbit around the sun. Unfortunately we just got killed by a sea monster, and I don't think Zelenka's going to be able to follow the math."
A hand groped at Rodney's leg, then his waist, and finally his shoulder. When it landed, it squeezed warmly. "Rodney."
"Don't reassure me. I hate it when people reassure me in the face of unspeakable danger."
The hand slid up and eased around the back of his neck. It was too black to see anything at all, but in his mind, Rodney could see Sheppard leaning over him, kind of pissed off, kind of worried. About him, about Rodney, his physical and emotional well-being. The sharp, off-putting thing he'd been planning to say dried up in his mouth as warmth ran from the point of contact down to his chest. "My neck hurts," he said instead, instantly regretting it when Sheppard's hand tensed, then dropped away.
"Sorry," Sheppard said.
"It wasn't -- it's all right. It wasn't you." Rodney's tongue felt thick and stupid shaping the words.
"We're not going to die."
Rodney dropped his head down against the floor of the jumper and sighed. "That's easy for you to say."
Confusion radiated from the patch of black where Sheppard sat, probably scratching his head.
"You're the kind of person who survives things like this, Major. I'm the kind of person whose name always gets mispronounced during roll call."
"What?"
"Do you know how hard it is to mispronounce 'McKay'? English would have to be your sixteenth language. But somehow, they always managed. You, I'm sure, will come out of this completely unscathed. I'll die of explosive decompression, or suffocation, or starvation, and you'll be towed up to Atlantis by helpful suckerfish who provide mouth-to-mouth until you reach the surface."
"Okay," Sheppard said. "First, that's disgusting. And second... still just really disgusting."
"Their little suckerfish friends will probably sing on the way."
"Yes, you're probably right. It'll be like the director's cut of Wes Craven's The Little Mermaid."
"Fine. Laugh now. Just be sure to have 'I told you so' inscribed on my tombstone."
"I promise."
"And no open casket. That's barbaric. A nice, tasteful cremation. Maybe a wake, after. No Athosian food, though. I like Italian."
"Should I be taking notes?"
"And don't bury me in Pegasus, either. If I have to die to get out of this galaxy, I want to actually get out of this galaxy."
"Feel better now?"
Rodney took an experimental breath. And then another. The physical quality of the blackness had receded; it didn't seem to be crushing down on him quite so heavily. Sheppard's sarcasm seemed to have a calming effect on Rodney, a fact Rodney noted with relief and more than a little unease. "I think so."
Sheppard's hand squeezed Rodney's shoulder again, gently. "Okay then. Let's save the suckerfish rescue for a last resort, and see what else we can do about getting home."
~ ~ ~
The first thing they did was fix the lights. They didn't need a whole lot of fixing. Sheppard said, "First, let's see what we can do about the lights," and the light flooded in.
"Ow!" Rodney said, and threw up an arm to cover his eyes. It was the sore arm, so he said, "Ow, fuck," and yanked it back down, tight against his chest. He blinked until the spots faded from his vision, then glared at Sheppard hard enough to light the entire shuttle with his eyes.
"Sorry." Sheppard shrugged. "I have an extremely powerful mind."
"Did you lose consciousness on impact?"
"You mean, did I pass out?"
"I mean, did you hit your head." Rodney struggled to his feet one-handed. "Recently."
"Maybe a little."
"Great, the jumper probably responded to your little nap by going dark." He sighed, and ran his good hand through his hair. "How did I know this would all turn out to be your fault."
Sheppard's eyebrows went up. "What about you, Rodney? Did you black out?"
"That's hardly the point. Can you get us moving?"
For a second, Sheppard frowned, presumably in concentration. It made him look a little like a chimp trying to solve for x. The jumper didn't budge.
"What about the outside lights?"
Another second of that intense look, and the outside lights flared up, pushing back the darkness. Rodney leaned in until he was almost touching the viewscreen and gave a low whistle. "I wonder how far down we are."
The lights swept around in a wide, slow circle until they picked out glittering silver sand.
Sheppard leaned back in his chair and let out a shaky breath. "I think...all the way."
~ ~ ~
"Now, don't panic."
"I'm not panicking," Rodney said between huge, gasping breaths.
"Don't hyperventilate, either."
Rodney stopped breathing. "Why? Do we need the oxygen? Are we running low on oxygen?" His hand spasmed and he found himself clutching at Sheppard's arm.
"No," Sheppard said gently. He pried at Rodney's fingers. "It'll give you a headache."
"Right. Yes, right." Rodney nodded. "Okay. Slow, even breaths. I can do that."
"You know, you might have reminded me about this claustrophobia thing before we left."
Rodney's jaw fell open. "Are you living in some fantasy denial-world where we're not trapped in an airtight coffin five kilometers beneath the surface of an alien sea? You think I have to be claustrophobic to be a little unhappy with this situation? Tell me, Major, were you born without adrenal glands, or did the Air Force have them removed at the Academy?"
Sheppard frowned. "So that slow, even breath thing..."
"Not so much happening, no."
Sheppard stopped tugging at Rodney's fingers. He wrapped his hand around Rodney's death grip instead. "Hey, come on. We'll get out of this. When we don't report in, Elizabeth will send another jumper down for us."
"Which will get eaten by the sea monster that tried to eat us."
"I--" Sheppard's head tilted. "Okay, possibly. But they'll be ready for something out of the ordinary. They'll have their scanners out to full range--"
"We had our scanners out to full range."
"Well...then...they'll also have their weapons ready. We weren't expecting to have to shoot anything. How were we supposed to know there'd be sea monsters?"
"I think the relevant question is why on Earth we ever thought there wouldn't be."
"I have an idea," Sheppard said. He leaned in close, pulling Rodney toward him. Rodney could feel the warm push of Sheppard's breath against his face, a sensation that didn't predispose him toward even breathing. He was aware, all at once, of Sheppard's hand curled tightly around his own.
"What...what?"
"I propose a division of labor. I'll sit here and think of all the reasons we're going to be absolutely fine, and you pull out that little crystal-wire-pen-thingy you love so much and save our asses."
"I'll need another power bar," Rodney said breathlessly, and without looking away, Sheppard pulled one out of the front pocket of his jacket. He held it up just inches from Rodney's face.
Rodney reached for it, and ended up with Sheppard's other hand, too. Breathlessly, he said, "You don't want to know what I usually charge for this kind of project."
Sheppard smiled widely. "We can discuss your retainer when you've gotten us back topside."
~ ~ ~
In the cabin of the jumper, Rodney pulled down a panel, expecting the lambent blue glow of activated crystals. He got row upon row of glowing blue crystals and one cloudy, cracked crystal instead. He touched it experimentally with the tip of the circuit probe, and got nothing. "I think I see why we're not moving," he said, and pulled down another panel.
"I'm thinking of renaming this thing when we get back to Atlantis," Sheppard said. "What do you think of Nemo?"
"As in Captain, or as in Finding?"
"Finding, Rodney. Stay positive."
"Hand me my notes? They're on the light pad between my seat and the -- yes. Thank you. And what I think is, don't name your ships before they're saved."
"I have complete faith in you. Oh, hey, that's interesting."
Rodney stuck his head into the cockpit. "What now?"
Sheppard pointed. Outside, a march was in progress: strange, translucent bug-like creatures, all angled legs and waving feelers. There were hundreds of them, a mobile carpet of life. A lavender carpet, lit to blazing by the external beams.
"Oh, how cute. Purple scampi, with legs." Rodney's love of nature thus confirmed, he turned and almost made it out of the cockpit before Sheppard's hand came down on his sleeve and tugged him back around.
"Come on, now. You can't tell me that's not cool. Look how they're all moving in step with each other. It's like a parade!" Sheppard's eyes were lit up with lunatic glee.
"Nitrogen narcosis," Rodney diagnosed, in the absence of any medical or nautical knowledge. "It's not helpful. If you can tear yourself away from The Secret Life of Sushi for a moment, I could use a hand with a little project I like to call 'avoiding a watery alien grave'."
"I'm telling you, we're going to be fine. It's not like we're trapped on some alien planet--"
"Actually, Major, it's exactly like--"
"Okay, it's not like we're trapped on some unknown alien planet, cut off from our team. The jumper's still scrubbing our air and piping it in, the lights are working, and we can't be more than a klick out of our planned pattern. We're coming up on check-in and we're going to miss it. We'll be rescued any minute, so look at the damn shrimp before I punch you in the nose!"
Rodney folded his arms and said nothing. He let his eyes speak for him. After a second, Sheppard's shoulders slumped and he let out a small, sad sigh. He waved back toward the cabin. "Okay, go fiddle with the circuits."
"I'm sorry, Major, but I find I can't really appreciate the riches of the sea until they're laid out on a plate next to some grilled asparagus. Maybe a little chopped portabello." Rodney stared off for a moment into the middle distance, a tiny smile on his lips. "I once took a girl to this great little restaurant in Colorado Springs that serves mussels steamed with white wine, lemon, scallions, garlic, and just a touch of butter... God, I miss that place." He sighed wistfully, then gave himself a little shake. "Of course, I wasn't expecting the lemon and I had to be taken away in an ambulance, but it was so good I almost didn't mind."
Sheppard slanted an amused look up at Rodney. "You had to be taken away from a date in an ambulance?"
"Yeah." Rodney grinned. "Strange that she never called back, don't you think?"
"Oh, very."
"You won't mind too terribly if I get back to fixing the jumper now?"
Sheppard waved expansively at the cabin. "Be my guest."
Rodney tossed off a salute that owed more to Scout's honor than military correctness, and left the madman to himself.
The problem was, they still knew relatively little about how Ancient technology worked. They could use it, and Rodney and Zelenka could usually figure out how to fix any problems that cropped up, given time for trial and error. Beyond that, most of it was guesswork.
For instance: this crystal was fried, and they couldn't move or talk to the surface. Therefore, this crystal had something to do with the engines or comm, and somewhere he would find another burn-out to match it. He pulled it and set it aside, for autopsy at a much later date.
Problem: to fix the engines, Rodney would need a crystal from another panel, and he didn't know what all the other crystals did. The Ancients weren't very big on labeling.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Necessary versus unnecessary functions."
They needed:
life support
pressure shields
engines (unless they could fix comm)
nav
light (to work by)
They didn't need:
comm (if they could fix the engines)
sensors
cloaking
dhd control
light (for shrimp-spotting)
Rodney pulled down all the other panels, one by one, until he found the second burn-out. He pulled that one, too. Then he glanced up at the cockpit, at Sheppard lounging peacefully and untroubled in the pilot's chair, and started to sweat.
He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and tugged at a crystal he sincerely hoped had nothing to do with the pressure shields. It slid free effortlessly, going dark as it separated from the panel.
Inside the jumper, everything else went dark, too.
~ ~ ~
"Rodney?"
"Shut up and bring me a flashlight."
"What did you --"
"I turned the lights off. I should think that would be patently obvious, even to you."
"On purpose?"
Rodney glared at the row of crystals glowing in his face and said nothing.
"Okay," Sheppard said. "Why don't I just bring you a flash light." A few seconds later, a beam sliced over his shoulder, targeting the panel. "Anything else I can do?"
"What else did we lose?"
"Just the internal lights, as far as I can see. Controls still light up, and the crystals you can see for yourself. External lights are fine, too. The shrimp are gone, though."
"How tragic." Rodney slid the good crystal into the slot where the burn-out had been. "Try to get us moving."
Seconds passed. Sheppard squeezed Rodney's shoulder and left his hand there, probably out of pity. "I don't think it worked."
Rodney's head sank toward his chest. "I don't think it did either."
"Hey." The light clicked off, and a moment later Sheppard had him by both shoulders. "Come on, don't freak out. We didn't blow up or anything, so we're still ahead of the game."
"This is ridiculous." Rodney sucked down a lungful of air, so deep he nearly choked on it. "We don't know what we're doing. I could have killed the pressure shields just now. We'd have been squashed like a tin can. We'd be dead right now. What were we thinking, to even come here, to try this--"
"We all thought it would be safe."
"I'm not talking about our little production of Discovery Channel Atlantis! I'm talking about this expedition, this whole galaxy. We never should have left home. We're so far behind the curve here, Sheppard, you can't even comprehend it. We're completely out of our league."
Sheppard turned Rodney around. "Why did you come?"
"To find out what the Ancients knew." Rodney stared at Sheppard, blue in the faint light from the crystals above. "To expand our knowledge of the universe."
"And have you?"
"Yes, but--"
"Rodney. Have you done that."
Rodney took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yes."
"All right, then." Sheppard took a step in closer. "We win. Everything else, that's just a bonus."
"Getting out of here alive," Rodney said. "Just a bonus?"
"Yeah." Sheppard smiled, a warm, weird, unsafe smile, and Rodney felt blood rush into his face. "A nice one, I'll admit, but--"
Rodney kissed him. He had to stretch for it, but not far, and then Sheppard was leaning down into it, hands wrapped around the back of Rodney's head. Rodney felt it everywhere, a buzz of warmth and pleasure at the very edge of tolerance. He pressed into it, held onto it. Held onto Sheppard, only vaguely aware that Sheppard was holding on, too.
Sheppard's lips were chapped and rough, then slick, then gone. His mouth was still close, almost touching, breath a hot rush against Rodney's skin.
"Rodney," he said, his eyes wide and hazy and fixed firmly on Rodney's mouth. "This is. Why did you. What--"
"Please be quiet now," Rodney said gently, and did it again.
Sheppard made a quiet, hungry sound and met him in the middle. He didn't kiss fair, he didn't kiss all at once; he kept giving it up and taking it away until Rodney thought he'd die of frustration. His skin felt tight and hot, and the scrape of his clothes was almost unbearable. He kept following Sheppard back, pulling at him, touching him, and then they were against the far wall of the cabin and there was no place else Sheppard could go. Rodney held him there with his body. He ran one hand under the back of Sheppard's shirt and the other around the back of his neck, abandoned Sheppard's mouth for the smooth, long stretch of his throat.
Sheppard's head went back and hit the bulkhead; his back arched, and yes, he was hard, not that Rodney had any realistic doubts what with the noises and the heat and the hands jerking at his hips. But he hadn't known what it would feel like and it stopped him for a second with his teeth pressing into the curve of Sheppard's shoulder, his cock wedged tight against Sheppard's thigh. He went still, and Sheppard went still, and for a second all Rodney could hear was Sheppard's breathing, heavy panting breaths in time with the rise and fall of his chest.
Then Sheppard said, "Don't stop now. I thought we were expanding our knowledge--" and Rodney slowly, smiling, scraped at Sheppard's skin with his teeth.
"Ow," Sheppard hissed, "ow, fuck, do that again," so Rodney did, and slid a hand into Sheppard's pants; felt Sheppard's cock jump in his hand and stroked, eased up, stroked again, feeling it all like he was doing it to himself. Sheppard's hands left his hips, grabbed his head, pulled him in for a kiss that was all giving it up, all the time, deep and wet and hard in ways that made Rodney pray for a future, any future with beds and doors and down time.
"I really," Rodney said into Sheppard's mouth, "really hope we -- get that bonus," and Sheppard's head banged back again and he arched again with a swallowed gasp and Rodney's hand was slick and and wet, and Sheppard's thigh moved, rubbed, slow...slow.
Rodney said, "Oh," and pressed in, and Sheppard had him in hand, agonizing slow pulls until Rodney buried his mouth in Sheppard's throat and said, "Yes, like...that..." and Sheppard said, "C'mon, Rodney, yeah, talk," and Rodney said, "Yeah, okay," and whited out.
~ ~ ~
Coming back down slow, Rodney discovered:
The lights were still out.
Sheppard's hand was still in his pants, sending shorted-out thrills toward Rodney's brain with every easy touch.
The floor of the cabin was very cold, very hard; very obviously not designed for afterglow.
"You didn't just let me do this because you think we're going to die, did you?" he asked Sheppard, glad of the dark so he didn't have to look him in the eye.
"I'm not the one who thinks this will all end with tears and suckerfish," Sheppard pointed out. "I think we're going to be just fine. Also I kind of object to the phrase 'let you'." His fingers did something interesting and far, far too good to be real. "I wasn't exactly thinking of England."
Rodney shifted to a better angle, and looked up at Sheppard's face. The glow from the crystal panel seemed to give off more shadow than light. "What were you thinking of?"
"Court martial, at first." A flash of teeth showed Rodney he was either smiling or snarling; oddly optimistic given the situation, Rodney smiled back. "Then I thought, he's probably just doing this because he thinks we're going to die."
Rodney frowned. "So...basically, you took advantage of what you thought was my mortal terror."
Sheppard nodded smugly.
"That's depraved."
Sheppard's smile widened, and he nodded again. His hand was still moving, slow, tender slides with a wicked little twist at the end.
Rodney bit his lip, twitched his hips forward, and sighed. "I really, really love this."
Sheppard leaned in, ran his tongue gently between Rodney's lips. He made a sound that Rodney liked, low and greedy. "Me, too."
~ ~ ~
"You know what's funny?" Rodney said, half an hour later. "I really thought I'd be killed by the Wraith."
Sheppard, stretched out lean and naked along the cabin floor, flung an arm up over his eyes and groaned.
Rodney, sitting beside him cross-legged and equally naked, gave Sheppard's shoulder a shove. "Fine, laugh, but I'm absolutely serious. I think I'm almost happy it's ending this way." He traced a line down Sheppard's side with his fingertips, firm enough not to tickle. He was annoyed, but not post-coital tickling-level annoyed. "I don't think I should have to call you Major, after this."
Sheppard's arm shifted; one eye caught a faint blue gleam. "Oh, really."
"It just seems sort of twisted." Rodney shrugged. "Sort of kinky."
Sheppard's mouth stretched into a slow, wide smile.
Rodney's eyebrows went up. "Oh. Hm."
"We'll sort it out topside," Sheppard said. He flailed out with an arm, and ended up holding Rodney's knee. "Because we're going to live."
"You always think we're going to live."
"And we always do," Sheppard pointed out.
"Yes, so far, but statistically speaking, you're due for a bad call. I'm simply saying, I think it's this one. We're under five kilometers of water with no engines and no way to call for help, we're in the dark..."
Rodney stopped. And blinked.
Sheppard shoved at his knee. "McKay?"
"No way to call for help," Rodney said slowly.
"You said that already."
Rodney leaned over and kissed Sheppard, bit at his lips, dipped his tongue between. He stayed there, kissing, cheerfully and roughly kissed in return, until his knees ached and his lips stung. When he pulled back, he was smiling with his whole face and all of his teeth.
"What," Sheppard said, gasping for breath, "What was that for?"
"Call for help," Rodney suggested.
"I don't need help," Sheppard said, indignantly, reaching up for him. "I can handle this just fine--"
"Call for help, Major."
Sheppard fell back against the cabin floor. He sighed. "Help," he said sulkily. "Help, help, help--"
A tiny, plaintive beeeep sounded from the cockpit.
And another, and another, and another.
"Ah, crap," Sheppard said. "Great. Now we have to get dressed."
~ ~ ~
"I am brilliant," Rodney said, smiling cheerfully out the viewscreen while they waited. The response from Atlantis had been loud and immediate, short tones followed by more short tones followed by more. Rodney had no idea what it meant, but Sheppard said it meant they were coming, and Rodney believed him. Looking over at Sheppard, remembering what he tasted like and how he moved, Rodney was prepared to believe just about anything.
Sheppard looked back, a lazy grin lighting up his face. "So I've heard."
"I knew we'd survive all along. It's really a shame you give in so easily to despair, Major. It's bad for team morale."
"Oh, really," Sheppard said, and threw a power bar at Rodney's head.
Rodney peeled it open and bit it in half. "I'm sure you'll try to be more upbeat in the future," he said, chewing happily. "You're very good about learning from your--"
"Brace for impact," Sheppard said, clamping one hand on Rodney's arm and the other on the console, and once again, everything went dark.
~ ~ ~
Impact. The ship jolted, spun, jolted again. Rodney had himself and Sheppard had him, too, and after a second the jolts stopped and the screech of metal on metal faded and everything was still. Rodney took an experimental breath, discovered he wasn't drowning or suffocating, and tried it again. Breathing back online, he thought. Check.
"McKay?"
He wasn't even scared. He'd been well into his post-traumatic stress symptoms and didn't have anything left to give. He sat quietly, his legs braced against the console, Sheppard's hand bruisingly tight around his shoulder, and thought about home.
Sheppard shook him. Weird that he could feel Sheppard shaking him but he couldn't feel himself being eaten by a sea monster.
"Rodney!"
Weird, too, that in his head he was seeing his lab, the cot over in the corner, the dysfunctional coffee pot Zelenka kept making tea in. Everything came out of it tasting weird. The swing-arm lamp with the arm that had never actually swung, the whiteboard covered with equations so complex they made his heart beat faster just to look at them.
Hands touched his face, thumbs smoothing over his cheekbones. "Hey."
Rodney laughed crazily, dizzily. "I'm not freaking out," he said, "I know. We're going to be just fine."
"Okay, then," Sheppard said. "So you're taking a little psychotic break. That's understandable. I won't hold it against you."
"No, I'm fine, really. Can you get any of the external lights on?" Rodney thought on, but nothing happened. And then a few seconds later: light.
"How's that?"
"Blatant favoritism," Rodney said. "But at the moment, I don't particularly care. Swing it down."
"You want to look inside the sea monster that just ate us? I know I said the quest for knowledge was worth it for its own sake, Rodney, but this is kind of --"
"There." He moved behind Sheppard's chair and pointed, letting Sheppard sight along his arm. "See?"
Sheppard squinted. Then he leaned forward, and squinted some more. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a control panel," Rodney said, beaming. "Note the classic design."
"That's not possible," Sheppard said. "--is it?"
"Oh, those wacky Ancients," Rodney said.
~ ~ ~
"...and then suddenly, it all made sense." Rodney grinned at Zelenka madly over the conference table, and waved his arms for emphasis. "The suckerfish, the lack of any other fish, the shrimp marching in time. This entire area has been ecologically restructured for waste removal. Our sea monster was just the heavy lifter. It must have thought we were debris at first. It's been roaming around down there with very little to do for ten thousand years; that's long enough for a coffee pot's programming to get a little eccentric, let alone the near-AI stuff the Ancients were screwing around with. When it heard our distress beacon -- I told you how I figured out the distress beacon, didn't I? -- another routine kicked in and voila! Instant search and rescue vessel, with teeth."
"And all this," Zelenka said, "all this, you deduce from synchronized shrimp and lonely suckerfish."
"Well, that and the sound it made trying to eat us. It was sort of like an angry trash compactor."
"You have the luck of the damned," Zelenka said in an awed, hushed voice. "Anyone else on this base, they would have been eaten. Anyone else on this base, it would have been a real sea monster." He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and glared cheerfully at Rodney. "It is very unfair, that you are still alive. In my heart, I had already redecorated our lab."
"Oh, my deepest apologies for not dying so you could have more desk space," Rodney said. "I should really try to think more of others."
Elizabeth smiled warmly. "We're all just very glad to have you both back safe, in one piece."
"Thank you, Elizabeth." Sheppard gave her his best, most charming grin. "We're happy to be back."
Rodney's cheer dimmed a little. Not very much; after all, they were home, and alive, and unless it was an extremely detailed panic-induced hallucination, he'd recently had sex with John Sheppard. Still, something was off. As much as he was smiling, Sheppard didn't actually look happy. Maybe it was just different, seeing him without the darkness and mind-numbing terror.
Elizabeth rose, and Sheppard jumped to his feet, all officer and gentleman. Rodney and Zelenka stood, too. "I'll expected detailed reports of this little adventure, gentlemen," Elizabeth said. "But I think I can wait till tomorrow afternoon. Until then, why don't you both let Carson check you over and get some rest?"
Rodney pulled his gaze away from Sheppard and smiled at Elizabeth for half a second. When Sheppard said, "Thanks, I will," Rodney was suddenly looking at him again. Weird how he couldn't go more than a few seconds without that happening.
Elizabeth and Zelenka filed out; Sheppard tried to follow, but Rodney caught his arm, turned him around.
"Yes, McKay?"
Rodney blinked. He dropped his hand, frowning. "Is something wrong?"
"Everything's fine." Sheppard smiled. "I told you everything would be fine."
"Everything doesn't seem fine. You're -- what are you? You're behaving very strangely."
Sheppard sighed, and finally looked Rodney directly in the eyes. The smile dropped away, and Rodney was glad, because it had looked about as real as a smile made with legos. "We're here, we're fine, we're no longer in mortal danger."
Rodney waited.
Sheppard waited, too.
"So?"
"So," Sheppard said. "So now you go back to your lab and I go back to my room and then we go to some other planets and we forget the whole thing ever happened?" Sheppard folded his arms across his chest and glared. "That sucks."
Rodney's eyes had widened so much it hurt. "What? Of course it sucks! Whose idiotic idea is that?"
"Yours!"
"Are you disturbed, Major?" Rodney shook his head in wonder. "I mean, seriously, are you hearing things, seeing things? Have disembodied voices started telling you what to do?"
Sheppard's arms unfolded. "Wait, so that's not what you want to do?"
"Oh, so now you think I'm disturbed."
Sheppard took a step forward, glaring. "Rodney..."
"What I want to do," Rodney said, "is go somewhere private, figure out exactly how fast I can get you to make that hot little moany noise at the back of your throat, and then repeat the process as often as necessary to perfect it. It's kind of a turn-on, along with quiet evenings by the fire and impending death by mechanical sea monster."
"I happen to have a little experience in the areas of romance and sea monsters," Sheppard said slowly. "And I would be happy -- more than happy -- to help you out with that experiment." He took another step in, and another. His smile was warm and real. "Any time, Rodney."
"Oh." Rodney swallowed. His brain veered cheerfully off-line. "Well. That's good. That's -- very, very good."
"I can't really touch you here," Sheppard said softly. "Not like I want to. I'm not really a PDA kind of guy."
"We could always examine the question back in my lab."
"Zelenka's in your lab."
"Or your lab," Rodney said quickly, thinking, I am a genius. "Let's go."
Sheppard's smile widened until he was grinning. Rodney stayed very carefully where he was. "Rodney, " Sheppard said, "I don't have a lab."
"Okay, fine. Your quarters. My quarters. Ford's quarters, as long as he's not in them." Rodney grabbed Sheppard's arm. "If none of that works for you, I know where there's a very nice, slightly battered jumper we could use."
"Do you, now," Sheppard said, laughing as Rodney walked them both out of the room.
"I do," Rodney said, pulling him along even faster. He threw a smile over his shoulder, but didn't let it slow him down. "I think it's called the Nemo these days."
~ ~ ~
Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (give or take)
Author: Merry
Summary: There's a vast ocean surrounding the lost city of Atlantis...and we can go there.
McKay/Sheppard, R-ish, kinda silly. 7950 words
Many thanks to the usual beta hit squad: torch, kaneko, res, julad, ces, giddy, astolat. And also Sin, for out-of-control coolness and encouragement.
Note: While I was writing this, there was a little thing I liked to say to myself when I wondered something like, "Can a puddljumper do that?" or "Hm, is that even theoretically possible?" It goes like this: "Pfffffft, science." Rodney would be very, very ashamed.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
(give or take)
"It's very important that we fully understand and comprehend our situation here. Important to the mission, I mean. For security reasons," Sheppard said. He threw Rodney a significant look and kicked him, hard, under the table.
"Desalinization tanks!"
Weir's eyebrows shot up. She folded her arms elegantly in front of her on the conference table and said, "Doctor?"
"Our water supply is stored in desalinization tanks under the city," Rodney said, glaring at Sheppard. "Very vulnerable. Very important." Sheppard kicked him again, and through clenched teeth he ground out, "Strategically."
"And we should protect them," Sheppard said, nodding seriously. "I suggest a weekly patrol."
"Major, we aren't even sure the puddlejumpers are built for underwater navigation. To risk one when we have so few seems unnecessary."
"With all due respect, Elizabeth, they were built by people who periodically sank their city to the bottom of the ocean. We know they're air-tight, at least when not bisected by a wormhole, so really, what danger can there be? If the Ancients didn't make them do double duty as submarines, it's time we faced the possibility that the Ancients were incredibly stupid."
"There you go," Sheppard said, "McKay trusts the jumpers underwater, and he doesn't think anything's safe."
Weir looked from one of them to the other. "Why do I get the feeling I lost this debate before it started?"
"Wisdom and instinct," Rodney said cheerfully. "You are truly a great leader."
"Thank you, Rodney," she said, with exactly the same level of sincerity. "That's very kind. Major, I assume you'll want to take Lieutenant Ford?"
Across the table, Ford's skin had taken on a decidedly greenish tint, and whites showed all around his eyes. "Sir," he said pleadingly to Weir. "Uh, ma'am. Sir. Doctor Weir." He looked wildly at Sheppard. "Sir?"
"Don't worry, Ford. I'll take McKay. I'm sure he wants to personally ensure the safety of the desalinization tanks. Plus, he's a little less likely to spin his head around and projectile vomit if things get choppy."
"Only a little," Rodney warned. "But I'm in; there's got to be all kinds of equipment under there we haven't even discovered yet, and schematics are no substitute for personal investigation. Besides -- if you don't count alternate timelines, drowning is one of the few dire fates this galaxy hasn't yet tried to inflict on me. I'm trying to collect the whole set."
"Then I think we have a mission." Sheppard slapped his hand down on the table. "Doctor Weir?"
"Why, that almost makes me feel like I have a choice, Major," Weir said dryly. "Just be sure to send a few postcards from Sea World. Every hour on the hour, okay?"
~ ~ ~
"Flight, this is Jumper One. We are now submerging."
"Roger, Jumper One. We have you on scan. You are cleared to proceed. Dr. Zelenka requests samples if you find any squid, though he referred to them as 'calamari'."
"That's a negative, Flight, we are in this for the joy of exploration and the beauty of the natural world, over."
"And the investigation of the highly strategic desalinization tanks, traditionally a favorite target for saboteurs and sea serpents," Rodney said.
Sheppard wrapped his hand around his mic and glanced at Rodney. "Seriously, desalinization tanks? That's the best you could do?"
"What was I supposed to say? You kicked me! A little warning, and I could have had something prepared."
"I wanted spontaneity. You know, to lend some authenticity to your argument."
"Well, you got spontaneity, anyway. Besides, Elizabeth was never going to say no. She brought a stuffed baby seal as her personal item."
Sheppard stared at Rodney. "She did not."
"Oh, yes. According to Kavanagh, she beats it with a club every morning before breakfast."
Sheppard shook his head and took his hand off the mic. "Flight, we are submerged."
The waterline rushed up the glass and covered them. Inertial dampeners ate away any true sense of motion, and of course everything sounded as sharp and clear below as it had above. Rodney felt muffled anyway, cocooned in water. At Area 51 he'd read a report about a submerged stargate on a world inhabited by sentient water, and the thought of being completely encased in something awake, aware, but unknowable, sent a chill skittering up his spine. He shook it off and turned his attention to the sensors, which were already reading an increase in pressure.
"Think about how deep we are," he said to Sheppard, and an obedient, translucent readout popped up -- in front of him, not Sheppard. He glanced sideways and caught Sheppard grinning, proud of himself.
"So how deep are we?"
"About twenty meters right now. The City bottoms out at 200 meters and wow, that's a long way down." Rodney frowned and checked the readings again. "According to this, the bottom is 5 kilometers down."
Sheppard whistled. "Can we go that far?"
"The Challenger Deep on Earth is 11 kilometers, give or take. I think we've gotten pretty close to the bottom of it, and if we can do it on Earth, I wouldn't bet against the Ancients doing it better here, and in a prettier submarine."
"Won't we, you know... implode?"
"If these readings are right, we won't even get the bends."
"The readings are right ... right?"
"Unless this is a homicidal submarine -- hmm." Given the utterly lunatic things that had happened to them on Atlantis so far, it didn't seem a strong enough statement. "Yes. The readings are right."
Sheppard took them down to fifty meters, reporting back to the surface at regular intervals. They slid, down and down and down the slant of the City's hull, away from the shifting columns of sunlight and bright water and into the shadows. The readouts scrolled continuously, comparing depth with pressure, noting the stresses -- lack thereof, really -- on the hull. When half an hour had passed and nothing seemed inclined to vent or buckle, Rodney started to breathe a bit easier.
"The jumper doesn't know the difference between space and water," he reported up to Flight. It was dark as space outside the viewscreen now, space without the relief of stars or planets to push away the black. "Pressure shields -- hey! we have pressure shields! -- uh, pressure shields note an increase in atmospheres but don't seem to care about it. C02 scrubbers are online and functional, and if I'm understanding these readouts, we're supplementing by pulling the basic components of breathable air straight out of the water. Life support is a go; with enough MREs and fresh water we could grow old down here."
"Official report, Jumper One?"
Rodney grinned and looked out the viewscreen. "Officially: this is very, very cool."
Laughter from Atlantis filtered in. Sheppard looked over at Rodney, smiled, and gave him a thumbs up. This was definitely Rodney's kind of mission.
He hit the comm again, cutting in on the filtered chatter from the control room. "Carson, what kind of data are you getting on us?"
"Beckett here. Looks as if your bodies can't tell the difference between space and water, either. All life signs are normal. You're experiencing no adverse effects from the increase in atmospheres, as far as I can tell. Rodney, your blood sugar is a bit low, you might want to eat a bit before you go all moody and dramatic."
"Right, right. Thanks. Major, could you--"
Sheppard handed one over -- oatmeal raisin, this week's favorite. "Flight, I'm going to take us in under the East Pier, see what there is to see. We'll be in touch again in fifteen minutes. Hey, can I have half of that?"
Still chewing, Rodney ripped off half of the power bar and handed it back. "Can we get some more light out there? Something stronger? I can't -- yes, that's good. Pan it up, I want to see our soft underbelly."
"You know, you can do some of this yourself."
Rodney inclined his head. "Yes, but then I wouldn't get to exercise my natural authority."
Sheppard threw him a look and half a grin. "Adjust your own damn lights."
Rodney thought about bright and thought about up and a beam swept around from the left and angled itself toward the city. This was definitely not his baby's best side. Above, form was melded to function, like the entire complex had been assembled at an Apple Store from the future. Down here, conduits traced crazily around one another, meeting at jumbled crossroads and racing on toward the center. There was a logic to it, a pattern, but no trace of aesthetic design.
"Welcome to the underworld," Sheppard muttered softly. "If this gets out, our property values go right down the drain."
"Do you see that -- what's that venting, over there to your left?"
"I don't see anything."
"Keep looking. There it is again."
Sheppard stared, and another readout popped up. "H20," he said. "Huh. No, wait -- it's salty. Extremely high sodium chloride content." He threw a smug glance at Rodney that said, see, I can do science.
"Concentrated wastewater from the desalinization tanks, maybe." Rodney frowned. "Is it clean?"
Sheppard popped an eyebrow at the display, which zoomed over and parked itself in front of Rodney's face.
"Okay, at least we're not putting anything into the water that we didn't take out of it."
"We're environmentally conscious intergalactic explorers."
"No, we're just lucky that the Ancients were."
Sheppard shrugged. "I'm sort of an Ancient, right? That's what this gene says."
"No, you're not sort of an Ancient," Rodney said with exaggerated patience. "You're sort of a biological sport. I tend to think of you as an aberration. A mutant, actually, when you get right down to it."
"I think I object to that label. I choose to embrace my ethnic roots."
Rodney chose to ignore him. "Let's keep going toward the City's center. I want to see what else we have going on down here."
"See," Sheppard said, "that's why I wanted you down here instead of Ford."
"My endless fascination with alien waste disposal hardware?"
"Your sense of adventure." Sheppard looked at Rodney, and for once Rodney could see he was absolutely serious.
"Oh." Rodney looked away quickly and cleared his throat. "Well, I--"
"Not that the hardware thing isn't fun, too," Sheppard added with a grin.
Let off the hook, Rodney just smiled a little, to himself and kept his mouth shut.
The puddlejumper angled away from the tanks, lights skating over another tangle of pipes and conduits. The world was shades of black and pale unearthly blue, lights picking up tiny motes of life and dust in the water.
"Look." Sheppard swept a beam over a section of exposed piping, and edged the jumper in closer. The light picked out something long, feathered, and shimmery gold, like a discarded evening dress clinging tightly to the City's hull. "What is that?" A window popped up in front of him, mirroring the viewscreen. He toggled comm back on. "Flight, are you reading this?"
"Roger, Jumper One, we are receiving external video."
"What is that?"
"It's a fish," Rodney said. "The fins, tail, and big glassy eyes are a dead giveaway."
"I know it's a fish, Rodney," Sheppard said evenly. "I was asking about the type of fish."
"I have no idea. Maybe a remora of some kind?"
"Do remoras get to be six feet long?"
Rodney turned from the viewscreen and stared. "Do I look like a marine biologist? For all I know, Atlantis is under attack by a six-foot-long goldfish with sucker...things...on its head. Maybe it's trying to eat the City. Maybe it's sabotaging the desalinization tanks. Maybe it's in love!"
The look Sheppard gave him was dark and desert-dry. "We should keep recording, just in case."
"Just in case we really are under attack--"
"Just in case someone in the City has a little intellectual curiosity to spare."
"Hey, I have intellectual curiosity, but I got over my aquarium stage in third grade, when we started in on fractions." Rodney crossed his arms and blew out a breath of air. "I can't believe you think I don't have intellectual curiosity."
"Oh, I think you're just oozing with it."
"Of what possible use is my sense of adventure if I don't have intellectual curiosity?"
"None at all," Sheppard said, smiling. "Because in about ten seconds I'm going to shoot you in the head, and then you won't have either."
"Ah, Jumper One, Flight," Grodin's voice said cheerfully. "Clarification of last transmission: we are also receiving audio. Loud and clear."
Rodney rolled his eyes, but there was no way to hide the grin so he didn't even try. Sheppard laughed out loud, and said, "Roger that, Flight. We'll be here all week."
~ ~ ~
"This isn't as fun as I thought it was going to be."
"No," Rodney said. "Really not so much."
"The suckerfish are cooler in theory than in practice."
"So many things are."
The underside of Atlantis, in the two hours they'd been exploring it, had revealed itself to be what they'd seen in the first half hour, times five miles. Pipes and suckerfish. And every now and then, just for variety, more pipes and suckerfish.
"Maybe they're like Ancient underwater Hoovers." Sheppard waved his hand up at more piping, and to his credit it did all seem very, very clean. Rodney wasn't sure, but he felt like there should have been lichen or something. Maybe coral. Sponges. Whatever. Instead, the entire bottom of the City was pristinely bare.
"Maybe," Rodney grunted, but only because he couldn't think of any reason that idea was stupid. He glanced up from his readouts just long enough to confirm that yes, the pipes were still there, and clean, and no, nothing interesting had presented itself in answer to his heartfelt prayers. "If so, they're very good at it."
"You want to see if there's anything cool further down?"
Rodney nodded without looking. "Whatever. You're the pilot."
The jumper spiraled. And spiraled. And spiraled. Rodney knew the inertial dampeners would nullify any physical cause for dizziness, but he still felt safer not looking. He had a history of motion sickness dating back to his first grade summer vacation, when Jeannie had fed him three milkshakes and half a liter of orange juice in the backseat while his parents fought about directions in the front. A few abrupt turns later, his parents had something else entirely to yell about.
"Weird that there aren't any other fish."
"Mmm."
"Just ... suckerfish. You can't really call that an ecosystem, now, can you?"
"You never quite made it out of your aquarium phase, did you."
That earned a dark look and a grace period, but Rodney was too well-versed in the ways of Sheppard to expect such things to last. A few minutes and a few more suckerfish later, later, Sheppard shook his head in amazed disappointment. "I really would have thought there'd be more fish."
"Maybe we just haven't seen them yet, Aquaman."
"We've been down here for hours, McKay."
"Look, when we get back to Earth, I promise to take you to Sea World. Until then, I can't help you with your fish problem. We're very big and probably very noisy to fish ears--"
"Do fish have ears?"
"Your faith in my boundless knowledge is … actually a lot more annoying than I would have expected. Anyway, probably the fish are hiding from us."
"Huh." Sheppard's voice grew thoughtful. "Maybe they're hiding from that."
Rodney looked up, registered BIG and LOOM and TEETH and immediately grabbed for the arms of his chair, but by then it was already far too late.
~ ~ ~
"Probably I should have said 'brace for impact'," Sheppard said from somewhere off to Rodney's left. "Sorry about that."
"That's all right, Major. As much as it pains me to say it, a broken arm is actually the least of my worries right now."
"Is your arm really broken, or is this one of those things where you say things are ten times worse than they are to make yourself feel better?"
Rodney pressed his lips together in annoyance.
"Right. So what's actually worrying you?"
"I'd started developing a theoretical model for harnessing solar energy through the gate to supercharge the City's shields, but it involves stealing a second stargate and parking it in orbit around the sun. Unfortunately we just got killed by a sea monster, and I don't think Zelenka's going to be able to follow the math."
A hand groped at Rodney's leg, then his waist, and finally his shoulder. When it landed, it squeezed warmly. "Rodney."
"Don't reassure me. I hate it when people reassure me in the face of unspeakable danger."
The hand slid up and eased around the back of his neck. It was too black to see anything at all, but in his mind, Rodney could see Sheppard leaning over him, kind of pissed off, kind of worried. About him, about Rodney, his physical and emotional well-being. The sharp, off-putting thing he'd been planning to say dried up in his mouth as warmth ran from the point of contact down to his chest. "My neck hurts," he said instead, instantly regretting it when Sheppard's hand tensed, then dropped away.
"Sorry," Sheppard said.
"It wasn't -- it's all right. It wasn't you." Rodney's tongue felt thick and stupid shaping the words.
"We're not going to die."
Rodney dropped his head down against the floor of the jumper and sighed. "That's easy for you to say."
Confusion radiated from the patch of black where Sheppard sat, probably scratching his head.
"You're the kind of person who survives things like this, Major. I'm the kind of person whose name always gets mispronounced during roll call."
"What?"
"Do you know how hard it is to mispronounce 'McKay'? English would have to be your sixteenth language. But somehow, they always managed. You, I'm sure, will come out of this completely unscathed. I'll die of explosive decompression, or suffocation, or starvation, and you'll be towed up to Atlantis by helpful suckerfish who provide mouth-to-mouth until you reach the surface."
"Okay," Sheppard said. "First, that's disgusting. And second... still just really disgusting."
"Their little suckerfish friends will probably sing on the way."
"Yes, you're probably right. It'll be like the director's cut of Wes Craven's The Little Mermaid."
"Fine. Laugh now. Just be sure to have 'I told you so' inscribed on my tombstone."
"I promise."
"And no open casket. That's barbaric. A nice, tasteful cremation. Maybe a wake, after. No Athosian food, though. I like Italian."
"Should I be taking notes?"
"And don't bury me in Pegasus, either. If I have to die to get out of this galaxy, I want to actually get out of this galaxy."
"Feel better now?"
Rodney took an experimental breath. And then another. The physical quality of the blackness had receded; it didn't seem to be crushing down on him quite so heavily. Sheppard's sarcasm seemed to have a calming effect on Rodney, a fact Rodney noted with relief and more than a little unease. "I think so."
Sheppard's hand squeezed Rodney's shoulder again, gently. "Okay then. Let's save the suckerfish rescue for a last resort, and see what else we can do about getting home."
~ ~ ~
The first thing they did was fix the lights. They didn't need a whole lot of fixing. Sheppard said, "First, let's see what we can do about the lights," and the light flooded in.
"Ow!" Rodney said, and threw up an arm to cover his eyes. It was the sore arm, so he said, "Ow, fuck," and yanked it back down, tight against his chest. He blinked until the spots faded from his vision, then glared at Sheppard hard enough to light the entire shuttle with his eyes.
"Sorry." Sheppard shrugged. "I have an extremely powerful mind."
"Did you lose consciousness on impact?"
"You mean, did I pass out?"
"I mean, did you hit your head." Rodney struggled to his feet one-handed. "Recently."
"Maybe a little."
"Great, the jumper probably responded to your little nap by going dark." He sighed, and ran his good hand through his hair. "How did I know this would all turn out to be your fault."
Sheppard's eyebrows went up. "What about you, Rodney? Did you black out?"
"That's hardly the point. Can you get us moving?"
For a second, Sheppard frowned, presumably in concentration. It made him look a little like a chimp trying to solve for x. The jumper didn't budge.
"What about the outside lights?"
Another second of that intense look, and the outside lights flared up, pushing back the darkness. Rodney leaned in until he was almost touching the viewscreen and gave a low whistle. "I wonder how far down we are."
The lights swept around in a wide, slow circle until they picked out glittering silver sand.
Sheppard leaned back in his chair and let out a shaky breath. "I think...all the way."
~ ~ ~
"Now, don't panic."
"I'm not panicking," Rodney said between huge, gasping breaths.
"Don't hyperventilate, either."
Rodney stopped breathing. "Why? Do we need the oxygen? Are we running low on oxygen?" His hand spasmed and he found himself clutching at Sheppard's arm.
"No," Sheppard said gently. He pried at Rodney's fingers. "It'll give you a headache."
"Right. Yes, right." Rodney nodded. "Okay. Slow, even breaths. I can do that."
"You know, you might have reminded me about this claustrophobia thing before we left."
Rodney's jaw fell open. "Are you living in some fantasy denial-world where we're not trapped in an airtight coffin five kilometers beneath the surface of an alien sea? You think I have to be claustrophobic to be a little unhappy with this situation? Tell me, Major, were you born without adrenal glands, or did the Air Force have them removed at the Academy?"
Sheppard frowned. "So that slow, even breath thing..."
"Not so much happening, no."
Sheppard stopped tugging at Rodney's fingers. He wrapped his hand around Rodney's death grip instead. "Hey, come on. We'll get out of this. When we don't report in, Elizabeth will send another jumper down for us."
"Which will get eaten by the sea monster that tried to eat us."
"I--" Sheppard's head tilted. "Okay, possibly. But they'll be ready for something out of the ordinary. They'll have their scanners out to full range--"
"We had our scanners out to full range."
"Well...then...they'll also have their weapons ready. We weren't expecting to have to shoot anything. How were we supposed to know there'd be sea monsters?"
"I think the relevant question is why on Earth we ever thought there wouldn't be."
"I have an idea," Sheppard said. He leaned in close, pulling Rodney toward him. Rodney could feel the warm push of Sheppard's breath against his face, a sensation that didn't predispose him toward even breathing. He was aware, all at once, of Sheppard's hand curled tightly around his own.
"What...what?"
"I propose a division of labor. I'll sit here and think of all the reasons we're going to be absolutely fine, and you pull out that little crystal-wire-pen-thingy you love so much and save our asses."
"I'll need another power bar," Rodney said breathlessly, and without looking away, Sheppard pulled one out of the front pocket of his jacket. He held it up just inches from Rodney's face.
Rodney reached for it, and ended up with Sheppard's other hand, too. Breathlessly, he said, "You don't want to know what I usually charge for this kind of project."
Sheppard smiled widely. "We can discuss your retainer when you've gotten us back topside."
~ ~ ~
In the cabin of the jumper, Rodney pulled down a panel, expecting the lambent blue glow of activated crystals. He got row upon row of glowing blue crystals and one cloudy, cracked crystal instead. He touched it experimentally with the tip of the circuit probe, and got nothing. "I think I see why we're not moving," he said, and pulled down another panel.
"I'm thinking of renaming this thing when we get back to Atlantis," Sheppard said. "What do you think of Nemo?"
"As in Captain, or as in Finding?"
"Finding, Rodney. Stay positive."
"Hand me my notes? They're on the light pad between my seat and the -- yes. Thank you. And what I think is, don't name your ships before they're saved."
"I have complete faith in you. Oh, hey, that's interesting."
Rodney stuck his head into the cockpit. "What now?"
Sheppard pointed. Outside, a march was in progress: strange, translucent bug-like creatures, all angled legs and waving feelers. There were hundreds of them, a mobile carpet of life. A lavender carpet, lit to blazing by the external beams.
"Oh, how cute. Purple scampi, with legs." Rodney's love of nature thus confirmed, he turned and almost made it out of the cockpit before Sheppard's hand came down on his sleeve and tugged him back around.
"Come on, now. You can't tell me that's not cool. Look how they're all moving in step with each other. It's like a parade!" Sheppard's eyes were lit up with lunatic glee.
"Nitrogen narcosis," Rodney diagnosed, in the absence of any medical or nautical knowledge. "It's not helpful. If you can tear yourself away from The Secret Life of Sushi for a moment, I could use a hand with a little project I like to call 'avoiding a watery alien grave'."
"I'm telling you, we're going to be fine. It's not like we're trapped on some alien planet--"
"Actually, Major, it's exactly like--"
"Okay, it's not like we're trapped on some unknown alien planet, cut off from our team. The jumper's still scrubbing our air and piping it in, the lights are working, and we can't be more than a klick out of our planned pattern. We're coming up on check-in and we're going to miss it. We'll be rescued any minute, so look at the damn shrimp before I punch you in the nose!"
Rodney folded his arms and said nothing. He let his eyes speak for him. After a second, Sheppard's shoulders slumped and he let out a small, sad sigh. He waved back toward the cabin. "Okay, go fiddle with the circuits."
"I'm sorry, Major, but I find I can't really appreciate the riches of the sea until they're laid out on a plate next to some grilled asparagus. Maybe a little chopped portabello." Rodney stared off for a moment into the middle distance, a tiny smile on his lips. "I once took a girl to this great little restaurant in Colorado Springs that serves mussels steamed with white wine, lemon, scallions, garlic, and just a touch of butter... God, I miss that place." He sighed wistfully, then gave himself a little shake. "Of course, I wasn't expecting the lemon and I had to be taken away in an ambulance, but it was so good I almost didn't mind."
Sheppard slanted an amused look up at Rodney. "You had to be taken away from a date in an ambulance?"
"Yeah." Rodney grinned. "Strange that she never called back, don't you think?"
"Oh, very."
"You won't mind too terribly if I get back to fixing the jumper now?"
Sheppard waved expansively at the cabin. "Be my guest."
Rodney tossed off a salute that owed more to Scout's honor than military correctness, and left the madman to himself.
The problem was, they still knew relatively little about how Ancient technology worked. They could use it, and Rodney and Zelenka could usually figure out how to fix any problems that cropped up, given time for trial and error. Beyond that, most of it was guesswork.
For instance: this crystal was fried, and they couldn't move or talk to the surface. Therefore, this crystal had something to do with the engines or comm, and somewhere he would find another burn-out to match it. He pulled it and set it aside, for autopsy at a much later date.
Problem: to fix the engines, Rodney would need a crystal from another panel, and he didn't know what all the other crystals did. The Ancients weren't very big on labeling.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Necessary versus unnecessary functions."
They needed:
life support
pressure shields
engines (unless they could fix comm)
nav
light (to work by)
They didn't need:
comm (if they could fix the engines)
sensors
cloaking
dhd control
light (for shrimp-spotting)
Rodney pulled down all the other panels, one by one, until he found the second burn-out. He pulled that one, too. Then he glanced up at the cockpit, at Sheppard lounging peacefully and untroubled in the pilot's chair, and started to sweat.
He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and tugged at a crystal he sincerely hoped had nothing to do with the pressure shields. It slid free effortlessly, going dark as it separated from the panel.
Inside the jumper, everything else went dark, too.
~ ~ ~
"Rodney?"
"Shut up and bring me a flashlight."
"What did you --"
"I turned the lights off. I should think that would be patently obvious, even to you."
"On purpose?"
Rodney glared at the row of crystals glowing in his face and said nothing.
"Okay," Sheppard said. "Why don't I just bring you a flash light." A few seconds later, a beam sliced over his shoulder, targeting the panel. "Anything else I can do?"
"What else did we lose?"
"Just the internal lights, as far as I can see. Controls still light up, and the crystals you can see for yourself. External lights are fine, too. The shrimp are gone, though."
"How tragic." Rodney slid the good crystal into the slot where the burn-out had been. "Try to get us moving."
Seconds passed. Sheppard squeezed Rodney's shoulder and left his hand there, probably out of pity. "I don't think it worked."
Rodney's head sank toward his chest. "I don't think it did either."
"Hey." The light clicked off, and a moment later Sheppard had him by both shoulders. "Come on, don't freak out. We didn't blow up or anything, so we're still ahead of the game."
"This is ridiculous." Rodney sucked down a lungful of air, so deep he nearly choked on it. "We don't know what we're doing. I could have killed the pressure shields just now. We'd have been squashed like a tin can. We'd be dead right now. What were we thinking, to even come here, to try this--"
"We all thought it would be safe."
"I'm not talking about our little production of Discovery Channel Atlantis! I'm talking about this expedition, this whole galaxy. We never should have left home. We're so far behind the curve here, Sheppard, you can't even comprehend it. We're completely out of our league."
Sheppard turned Rodney around. "Why did you come?"
"To find out what the Ancients knew." Rodney stared at Sheppard, blue in the faint light from the crystals above. "To expand our knowledge of the universe."
"And have you?"
"Yes, but--"
"Rodney. Have you done that."
Rodney took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yes."
"All right, then." Sheppard took a step in closer. "We win. Everything else, that's just a bonus."
"Getting out of here alive," Rodney said. "Just a bonus?"
"Yeah." Sheppard smiled, a warm, weird, unsafe smile, and Rodney felt blood rush into his face. "A nice one, I'll admit, but--"
Rodney kissed him. He had to stretch for it, but not far, and then Sheppard was leaning down into it, hands wrapped around the back of Rodney's head. Rodney felt it everywhere, a buzz of warmth and pleasure at the very edge of tolerance. He pressed into it, held onto it. Held onto Sheppard, only vaguely aware that Sheppard was holding on, too.
Sheppard's lips were chapped and rough, then slick, then gone. His mouth was still close, almost touching, breath a hot rush against Rodney's skin.
"Rodney," he said, his eyes wide and hazy and fixed firmly on Rodney's mouth. "This is. Why did you. What--"
"Please be quiet now," Rodney said gently, and did it again.
Sheppard made a quiet, hungry sound and met him in the middle. He didn't kiss fair, he didn't kiss all at once; he kept giving it up and taking it away until Rodney thought he'd die of frustration. His skin felt tight and hot, and the scrape of his clothes was almost unbearable. He kept following Sheppard back, pulling at him, touching him, and then they were against the far wall of the cabin and there was no place else Sheppard could go. Rodney held him there with his body. He ran one hand under the back of Sheppard's shirt and the other around the back of his neck, abandoned Sheppard's mouth for the smooth, long stretch of his throat.
Sheppard's head went back and hit the bulkhead; his back arched, and yes, he was hard, not that Rodney had any realistic doubts what with the noises and the heat and the hands jerking at his hips. But he hadn't known what it would feel like and it stopped him for a second with his teeth pressing into the curve of Sheppard's shoulder, his cock wedged tight against Sheppard's thigh. He went still, and Sheppard went still, and for a second all Rodney could hear was Sheppard's breathing, heavy panting breaths in time with the rise and fall of his chest.
Then Sheppard said, "Don't stop now. I thought we were expanding our knowledge--" and Rodney slowly, smiling, scraped at Sheppard's skin with his teeth.
"Ow," Sheppard hissed, "ow, fuck, do that again," so Rodney did, and slid a hand into Sheppard's pants; felt Sheppard's cock jump in his hand and stroked, eased up, stroked again, feeling it all like he was doing it to himself. Sheppard's hands left his hips, grabbed his head, pulled him in for a kiss that was all giving it up, all the time, deep and wet and hard in ways that made Rodney pray for a future, any future with beds and doors and down time.
"I really," Rodney said into Sheppard's mouth, "really hope we -- get that bonus," and Sheppard's head banged back again and he arched again with a swallowed gasp and Rodney's hand was slick and and wet, and Sheppard's thigh moved, rubbed, slow...slow.
Rodney said, "Oh," and pressed in, and Sheppard had him in hand, agonizing slow pulls until Rodney buried his mouth in Sheppard's throat and said, "Yes, like...that..." and Sheppard said, "C'mon, Rodney, yeah, talk," and Rodney said, "Yeah, okay," and whited out.
~ ~ ~
Coming back down slow, Rodney discovered:
The lights were still out.
Sheppard's hand was still in his pants, sending shorted-out thrills toward Rodney's brain with every easy touch.
The floor of the cabin was very cold, very hard; very obviously not designed for afterglow.
"You didn't just let me do this because you think we're going to die, did you?" he asked Sheppard, glad of the dark so he didn't have to look him in the eye.
"I'm not the one who thinks this will all end with tears and suckerfish," Sheppard pointed out. "I think we're going to be just fine. Also I kind of object to the phrase 'let you'." His fingers did something interesting and far, far too good to be real. "I wasn't exactly thinking of England."
Rodney shifted to a better angle, and looked up at Sheppard's face. The glow from the crystal panel seemed to give off more shadow than light. "What were you thinking of?"
"Court martial, at first." A flash of teeth showed Rodney he was either smiling or snarling; oddly optimistic given the situation, Rodney smiled back. "Then I thought, he's probably just doing this because he thinks we're going to die."
Rodney frowned. "So...basically, you took advantage of what you thought was my mortal terror."
Sheppard nodded smugly.
"That's depraved."
Sheppard's smile widened, and he nodded again. His hand was still moving, slow, tender slides with a wicked little twist at the end.
Rodney bit his lip, twitched his hips forward, and sighed. "I really, really love this."
Sheppard leaned in, ran his tongue gently between Rodney's lips. He made a sound that Rodney liked, low and greedy. "Me, too."
~ ~ ~
"You know what's funny?" Rodney said, half an hour later. "I really thought I'd be killed by the Wraith."
Sheppard, stretched out lean and naked along the cabin floor, flung an arm up over his eyes and groaned.
Rodney, sitting beside him cross-legged and equally naked, gave Sheppard's shoulder a shove. "Fine, laugh, but I'm absolutely serious. I think I'm almost happy it's ending this way." He traced a line down Sheppard's side with his fingertips, firm enough not to tickle. He was annoyed, but not post-coital tickling-level annoyed. "I don't think I should have to call you Major, after this."
Sheppard's arm shifted; one eye caught a faint blue gleam. "Oh, really."
"It just seems sort of twisted." Rodney shrugged. "Sort of kinky."
Sheppard's mouth stretched into a slow, wide smile.
Rodney's eyebrows went up. "Oh. Hm."
"We'll sort it out topside," Sheppard said. He flailed out with an arm, and ended up holding Rodney's knee. "Because we're going to live."
"You always think we're going to live."
"And we always do," Sheppard pointed out.
"Yes, so far, but statistically speaking, you're due for a bad call. I'm simply saying, I think it's this one. We're under five kilometers of water with no engines and no way to call for help, we're in the dark..."
Rodney stopped. And blinked.
Sheppard shoved at his knee. "McKay?"
"No way to call for help," Rodney said slowly.
"You said that already."
Rodney leaned over and kissed Sheppard, bit at his lips, dipped his tongue between. He stayed there, kissing, cheerfully and roughly kissed in return, until his knees ached and his lips stung. When he pulled back, he was smiling with his whole face and all of his teeth.
"What," Sheppard said, gasping for breath, "What was that for?"
"Call for help," Rodney suggested.
"I don't need help," Sheppard said, indignantly, reaching up for him. "I can handle this just fine--"
"Call for help, Major."
Sheppard fell back against the cabin floor. He sighed. "Help," he said sulkily. "Help, help, help--"
A tiny, plaintive beeeep sounded from the cockpit.
And another, and another, and another.
"Ah, crap," Sheppard said. "Great. Now we have to get dressed."
~ ~ ~
"I am brilliant," Rodney said, smiling cheerfully out the viewscreen while they waited. The response from Atlantis had been loud and immediate, short tones followed by more short tones followed by more. Rodney had no idea what it meant, but Sheppard said it meant they were coming, and Rodney believed him. Looking over at Sheppard, remembering what he tasted like and how he moved, Rodney was prepared to believe just about anything.
Sheppard looked back, a lazy grin lighting up his face. "So I've heard."
"I knew we'd survive all along. It's really a shame you give in so easily to despair, Major. It's bad for team morale."
"Oh, really," Sheppard said, and threw a power bar at Rodney's head.
Rodney peeled it open and bit it in half. "I'm sure you'll try to be more upbeat in the future," he said, chewing happily. "You're very good about learning from your--"
"Brace for impact," Sheppard said, clamping one hand on Rodney's arm and the other on the console, and once again, everything went dark.
~ ~ ~
Impact. The ship jolted, spun, jolted again. Rodney had himself and Sheppard had him, too, and after a second the jolts stopped and the screech of metal on metal faded and everything was still. Rodney took an experimental breath, discovered he wasn't drowning or suffocating, and tried it again. Breathing back online, he thought. Check.
"McKay?"
He wasn't even scared. He'd been well into his post-traumatic stress symptoms and didn't have anything left to give. He sat quietly, his legs braced against the console, Sheppard's hand bruisingly tight around his shoulder, and thought about home.
Sheppard shook him. Weird that he could feel Sheppard shaking him but he couldn't feel himself being eaten by a sea monster.
"Rodney!"
Weird, too, that in his head he was seeing his lab, the cot over in the corner, the dysfunctional coffee pot Zelenka kept making tea in. Everything came out of it tasting weird. The swing-arm lamp with the arm that had never actually swung, the whiteboard covered with equations so complex they made his heart beat faster just to look at them.
Hands touched his face, thumbs smoothing over his cheekbones. "Hey."
Rodney laughed crazily, dizzily. "I'm not freaking out," he said, "I know. We're going to be just fine."
"Okay, then," Sheppard said. "So you're taking a little psychotic break. That's understandable. I won't hold it against you."
"No, I'm fine, really. Can you get any of the external lights on?" Rodney thought on, but nothing happened. And then a few seconds later: light.
"How's that?"
"Blatant favoritism," Rodney said. "But at the moment, I don't particularly care. Swing it down."
"You want to look inside the sea monster that just ate us? I know I said the quest for knowledge was worth it for its own sake, Rodney, but this is kind of --"
"There." He moved behind Sheppard's chair and pointed, letting Sheppard sight along his arm. "See?"
Sheppard squinted. Then he leaned forward, and squinted some more. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a control panel," Rodney said, beaming. "Note the classic design."
"That's not possible," Sheppard said. "--is it?"
"Oh, those wacky Ancients," Rodney said.
~ ~ ~
"...and then suddenly, it all made sense." Rodney grinned at Zelenka madly over the conference table, and waved his arms for emphasis. "The suckerfish, the lack of any other fish, the shrimp marching in time. This entire area has been ecologically restructured for waste removal. Our sea monster was just the heavy lifter. It must have thought we were debris at first. It's been roaming around down there with very little to do for ten thousand years; that's long enough for a coffee pot's programming to get a little eccentric, let alone the near-AI stuff the Ancients were screwing around with. When it heard our distress beacon -- I told you how I figured out the distress beacon, didn't I? -- another routine kicked in and voila! Instant search and rescue vessel, with teeth."
"And all this," Zelenka said, "all this, you deduce from synchronized shrimp and lonely suckerfish."
"Well, that and the sound it made trying to eat us. It was sort of like an angry trash compactor."
"You have the luck of the damned," Zelenka said in an awed, hushed voice. "Anyone else on this base, they would have been eaten. Anyone else on this base, it would have been a real sea monster." He pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and glared cheerfully at Rodney. "It is very unfair, that you are still alive. In my heart, I had already redecorated our lab."
"Oh, my deepest apologies for not dying so you could have more desk space," Rodney said. "I should really try to think more of others."
Elizabeth smiled warmly. "We're all just very glad to have you both back safe, in one piece."
"Thank you, Elizabeth." Sheppard gave her his best, most charming grin. "We're happy to be back."
Rodney's cheer dimmed a little. Not very much; after all, they were home, and alive, and unless it was an extremely detailed panic-induced hallucination, he'd recently had sex with John Sheppard. Still, something was off. As much as he was smiling, Sheppard didn't actually look happy. Maybe it was just different, seeing him without the darkness and mind-numbing terror.
Elizabeth rose, and Sheppard jumped to his feet, all officer and gentleman. Rodney and Zelenka stood, too. "I'll expected detailed reports of this little adventure, gentlemen," Elizabeth said. "But I think I can wait till tomorrow afternoon. Until then, why don't you both let Carson check you over and get some rest?"
Rodney pulled his gaze away from Sheppard and smiled at Elizabeth for half a second. When Sheppard said, "Thanks, I will," Rodney was suddenly looking at him again. Weird how he couldn't go more than a few seconds without that happening.
Elizabeth and Zelenka filed out; Sheppard tried to follow, but Rodney caught his arm, turned him around.
"Yes, McKay?"
Rodney blinked. He dropped his hand, frowning. "Is something wrong?"
"Everything's fine." Sheppard smiled. "I told you everything would be fine."
"Everything doesn't seem fine. You're -- what are you? You're behaving very strangely."
Sheppard sighed, and finally looked Rodney directly in the eyes. The smile dropped away, and Rodney was glad, because it had looked about as real as a smile made with legos. "We're here, we're fine, we're no longer in mortal danger."
Rodney waited.
Sheppard waited, too.
"So?"
"So," Sheppard said. "So now you go back to your lab and I go back to my room and then we go to some other planets and we forget the whole thing ever happened?" Sheppard folded his arms across his chest and glared. "That sucks."
Rodney's eyes had widened so much it hurt. "What? Of course it sucks! Whose idiotic idea is that?"
"Yours!"
"Are you disturbed, Major?" Rodney shook his head in wonder. "I mean, seriously, are you hearing things, seeing things? Have disembodied voices started telling you what to do?"
Sheppard's arms unfolded. "Wait, so that's not what you want to do?"
"Oh, so now you think I'm disturbed."
Sheppard took a step forward, glaring. "Rodney..."
"What I want to do," Rodney said, "is go somewhere private, figure out exactly how fast I can get you to make that hot little moany noise at the back of your throat, and then repeat the process as often as necessary to perfect it. It's kind of a turn-on, along with quiet evenings by the fire and impending death by mechanical sea monster."
"I happen to have a little experience in the areas of romance and sea monsters," Sheppard said slowly. "And I would be happy -- more than happy -- to help you out with that experiment." He took another step in, and another. His smile was warm and real. "Any time, Rodney."
"Oh." Rodney swallowed. His brain veered cheerfully off-line. "Well. That's good. That's -- very, very good."
"I can't really touch you here," Sheppard said softly. "Not like I want to. I'm not really a PDA kind of guy."
"We could always examine the question back in my lab."
"Zelenka's in your lab."
"Or your lab," Rodney said quickly, thinking, I am a genius. "Let's go."
Sheppard's smile widened until he was grinning. Rodney stayed very carefully where he was. "Rodney, " Sheppard said, "I don't have a lab."
"Okay, fine. Your quarters. My quarters. Ford's quarters, as long as he's not in them." Rodney grabbed Sheppard's arm. "If none of that works for you, I know where there's a very nice, slightly battered jumper we could use."
"Do you, now," Sheppard said, laughing as Rodney walked them both out of the room.
"I do," Rodney said, pulling him along even faster. He threw a smile over his shoulder, but didn't let it slow him down. "I think it's called the Nemo these days."
~ ~ ~