Love and the Art of Firearm Maintenance by liketheriver (Continuing Education Challenge)
Title: Love and the Art of Firearm Maintenance
Genre: slash, romance, h/c, angst, schmarm...you name it, we have it.
Characters: John and Rodney
Rating: T.
Word count: ~ 10,000
Warning: None
Spoilers: anything up through season 5
Author Notes: Thanks as always to Koshka for the quick beta. This fic is based on one of my twitterfics, but 280 characters just wasn't enough to tell the whole story. Original twitfic can be found here.
Summary: Rodney McKay had never really been interested in gun maintenance. John Sheppard was about to change that.
Love and the Art of Firearm Maintenance
by liketheriver
Chapter 1: How to Assemble Your Firearm
Rodney McKay had never really been interested in gun maintenance. Sure, Sheppard had walked him through it at least once before, but Rodney had always figured someone else would take care of those sorts of things. After all, that’s why they had an armory, wasn’t it? Apparently what he’d suspected all along was true− if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.
Now, if he could only remember how to do it.
Rodney honestly wasn’t sure if being equally bone-tired and brain-dead was affecting his memory, or if it was the fact that he had just never paid attention when Sheppard had gone over how to reassemble his nine millimeter in the past. Whatever the reason, now that he had the damn thing apart, he couldn’t for the life of him remember how to reconstruct it. All these parts spread in a haphazard display before him and he didn’t even know where to begin to put it back together.
He rubbed at dry, gritty eyes with the heels of his hands as he considered that maybe the gun was defective and missing a part. That could explain why the magazine had simply fallen on the floor at the most inopportune moment he could imagine, the moment he was standing face to face (or face to mask… thingy) with a Wraith ready to feed on him while Rodney held the ZedPM that could save the entire city.
He wasn’t fooling himself, if Teyla hadn’t shown up when she had, all the bravado in the world wouldn’t have saved him from the horrific fate suffered by Gall and countless others here in the Pegasus Galaxy. But she had shown up and McKay had managed to install the ZedPM and power the shield and fake their own death and all hail the conquering heroes the day had been saved. All that was left was some cleanup…cleanup, rebuilding, reassembling, putting the pieces back together. Things like rounding up the last of the Wraith who might be hiding in the city, and tallying the dead and missing, and counting their collective blessings that the Daedalus had shown up when it had before Sheppard could follow through with that ridiculous suicide run of his. Things Rodney really didn’t want to think about right then but kept creeping into his thoughts whenever he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, which was why he’d decide to work on his sidearm.
His heart rate jumped when the door to his quarters slid open. Rodney exhaled in relief when he saw it was just Sheppard and not a contingent of Wraith, although his stomach twisted in dread once more when he took a second to think about why the Major was in his room.
"Oh, God, did the Wraith come back?"
Sheppard’s own face mimicked Rodney’s panic for a split second before he realized why McKay had asked the question in the first place. "No, no, everything was fine when I left the control room a few minutes ago."
Sheppard looked like crap. He’d undoubtedly had as little sleep as Rodney over the past week, minus the short nap Carson had forced on the scientist earlier in the day. Dark circles of fatigue eclipsed Sheppard’s eyes and the Major couldn’t hide the weary slump of his shoulders. He scrubbed a hand through hair that probably hadn’t seen a shower for days.
"So, how are you doing?" Sheppard shifted awkwardly as he admitted, "I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you since things went down earlier."
"Oh, you mean since you ran off to go blow yourself up? Is that the thing to which you are referring? The ‘went down earlier’ thing you are speaking of… speaking about… of which you are speaking?"
Rodney raised his chin and tried not to show any sign that his accusation made as little sense to him as it probably did to Sheppard. Christ, maybe those drugs Carson had given him earlier hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Or maybe he just really needed to get some sleep that lasted more than two hours at a time. But Rodney managed to hold his gaze and watched Sheppard’s discomfort grow under the scrutiny. That was until Sheppard’s brow furrowed when he finally saw the array of gun parts spread on the desk in front of McKay.
For some reason, being caught like this had Rodney flushing. "I thought, maybe, I should clean it. You know, check it out for defects and the like."
"Yeaaah," Sheppard drawled, stepping in closer and reaching over McKay’s shoulder to pick up a thingamajigger. The Major no doubt knew the part’s proper name, but at this point, Rodney neither knew nor cared to know. "Teyla told me what happened with the Wraith." His eyes slid from the parts to Rodney. "And the gun."
"Oh, she did, did she?" McKay folded his arms across his chest defensively. They were actually slightly numb and tingling, as if his body was falling asleep even if Rodney’s brain refused to follow suit. "And what exactly did she have to say?"
Sheppard reached around Rodney to pick up another piece. "That you should probably turn the gun back in and have another issued to you, seeing as clips don’t just fall out of guns like that."
Rodney blinked in surprise as Sheppard slipped the two pieces together with a decisive snick.
"Oh." Not exactly the most eloquent response, but in his current state, it was pretty damn lucid. "Anything else?"
"Yeah." Sheppard moved to stand directly behind Rodney, leaning in so close that his chest pressed against McKay’s back. "She said she would hate to think what might have happened to you if she hadn’t arrived when she did." He reached an arm around both sides of McKay and slid another part of the gun into place.
Sheppard was so close, Rodney could hear his heart beating… or maybe it was his own. Either way, Rodney felt he should remain still, because if he moved he was afraid Sheppard would, too, and that was the last thing in the world he wanted to happen. "She’s not the only one who hates to think about that."
"No," Sheppard agreed as he put another part of the gun back into place, "she’s not."
The Major’s breath was warm against McKay’s neck, warm and comfortable, and Rodney had to fight to keep his eyes open instead of closing them and basking in two sensations he hadn’t experienced in what seemed like forever. But as soon as his eyelids drooped and his chin dipped, Sheppard roused him.
"Are you paying attention? This is important."
McKay blinked rapidly to bring it all back into focus. "Yeah, I’m watching."
He straightened, which only resulted in him brushing against at least three days worth of stubble on Sheppard’s jaw. Three days? Maybe it was more like four. Hell, it felt like an eternity had passed since he’d first started repairing Genii bombs and reconfiguring the chair controls to link with the Jumpers and watched the Major run from the room.
Sheppard didn’t move away, rough whiskers catching at the soft hairs at Rodney’s temple, prickling against the tender skin there. No, he didn’t move away, just kept assembling the sidearm. "Take care of your gun, and it will take care of you."
Rodney swallowed and licked his lips, but kept his eyes locked on the skilled hands as they continued to work. "And that’s important," he agreed.
"You alive is pretty damn important." Sheppard twisted another piece into place with a firm click.
"Then maybe you should have been down here watching my back instead of those Marines."
"I’m watching your back now." As if to prove his point, Sheppard leaned a little closer. "And I was watching your back before," Sheppard said softly, leaving off the part about doing it by flying a nuclear bomb to a Hive. "I always will."
Rodney couldn’t stop himself from slumping into the black t-shirt at his back with a heavy sigh. "You should be dead right now, Sheppard."
Rodney had tracked the Jumper, tracked it on the computer screen and watched it vanish, watched Sheppard die. Of course, he hadn’t died, but at that moment, when the small dot on the monitor had ceased to exist, Rodney had felt a big chunk of him no longer existed either.
"We should all be dead right now." Sheppard’s arms closed tighter around Rodney as he reached for a long spring for the gun. "But we’re not."
Sheppard smelled of sweat and exhaustion, lingering fear and near death, but he felt like a siege won and hope for tomorrow. His arms encompassing Rodney were something McKay hadn’t even hoped for a day ago; they were life and… more. So very much more. And Rodney sat there soaking it all in, watching capable hands put the pieces back together.
"Think you can do this again?" Sheppard asked, his voice was right at Rodney’s ear yet seemed to come from far, far away.
Rodney was vaguely aware that he couldn’t see the gun on his desk any longer. "Um hmm," he murmured, turning his head into Sheppard’s chest, content for the first time in weeks. Of course he could do this again; he could do this every day for the rest of his life if the Major let him.
Somewhere in the distance, the tiny part of his brain that wasn’t drug addled or sleep deprived was telling McKay he shouldn’t be doing this. Sure, Sheppard was his friend, possibly his best friend, well on the way to becoming the best he’d ever had. And, yes, maybe Rodney wanted them to be more than friends, but the Major was… well, a major in the United States Air Force, and this sort of thing just didn’t happen with officers in the U. S. military. But none of that mattered right now, because Rodney had been to Hell and back over the past few weeks, and if he could do this for just a little while longer, feel Sheppard close and just pretend it was more than a lesson in firearm maintenance, then maybe he could pretend everything that had happened, everything and everyone they had lost, hadn’t been half as horrible as it actually had been.
So, he snuffled the black shirt, pretended this was the norm, and just drifted until the arms around him flinched violently and Rodney jerked awake.
"What?" McKay demanded in dazed confusion. "What happened?"
Sheppard looked as befuddled as Rodney, and actually took a staggering step in an attempt to stay on his feet. That’s when Rodney realized Sheppard had apparently fallen asleep standing up with McKay snoozing against his chest.
"Christ, you’re literally falling asleep on your feet," McKay announced rather needlessly.
"I know," Sheppard slurred as he took another drunken step, clamping onto Rodney’s bicep as he scanned McKay’s room. "We need a bed."
Rodney barely had time to register the plural of ‘we’ and the singular of ‘bed’ before he realized Sheppard hadn’t taken hold of his arm for balance but to heft Rodney to his feet. A few lumbering steps later, Sheppard was crawling clumsily onto Rodney’s bed and dragging McKay in behind him. Sheppard was already snoring when Rodney’s head fell back onto his chest; the rhythmic buzz echoing hypnotically in Rodney’s ear and dragging him gratefully back into sleep. Rodney hadn’t even bothered to pull up the blankets; Sheppard’s arm wrapped loosely around his shoulder was warmth enough. His boots hit Sheppard’s own with a sturdy clump as he swung his khaki-clad leg across a long black one, then he exhaled as Sheppard’s cheek came to rest heavily on top of his head, the final piece dropping securely into place.
* * * * *
Chapter 2: Some Common Causes of Malfunctions
"Seriously?" Rodney snorted in disbelief. "You seriously had to put you gun together while blindfolded?"
John raised three fingers on his left hand and put his right over his heart. "Scout’s honor."
With a sputtered derisive laugh, Rodney flopped back in his chair. "You’re so full of shit." An empty beer can went flying as his arm swung to accentuate his point in typical McKay fashion.
"If I’m lying I’m dying," John countered with a grin.
Rodney leaned forward, stretching his upper body across the table between them as if to close the gap and share a secret. "Well, that wouldn’t be much of a change, now would it?" His drunken laughter showed he found his own joke a hell of a lot funnier than Sheppard did.
Rodney was flat out, balls to walls, shitfaced drunk, and John couldn’t say as he blamed him. If the situation had been reversed, he would probably be in the same condition… hell, worse… which was why John was stone cold sober. That, and the fact that after more than six months without McKay, John wanted to remember every damn second he had with the man, even if that meant he just ended up curled around his unconscious body after Rodney inevitably passed out tonight.
Six damn months for John, but less than six hours for Rodney. It was hard for John to remember the latter, and he had a feeling it was equally hard for Rodney to remember the former, especially after what McKay saw in the field when the Atlantis contingent finally arrived in the valley.
Rodney tipped a beer can back, looking at it in disgust when it turned out to be empty, too. He started to reach for the remnants in the whiskey bottle, but Sheppard decided maybe he should attempt to keep the puking to a minimum tonight, so he stopped him with a suggestion.
"Want me to prove I can do it?" When Rodney’s hand halted mid-reach, John pushed his advantage. "I’ll even race you. I’ll reassemble my gun while wearing a blindfold and you do yours without one."
Rodney’s gun maintenance skills had vastly improved since the day his clip had fallen out in front of a Wraith, but they still couldn’t hold a candle to Sheppard’s even when McKay was sober.
Bloodshot blue eyes narrowed at the challenge. "This some Jedi mind trick you learned during your meditation training in the time dilation field?"
"Nope," John assured, leaning back in his seat with a swaggering grin. "It’s a Jedi mind trick I learned back in OTS."
McKay studied him a second longer before standing abruptly and nearly tipping his chair over in the process. "You’re on." He staggered his way to his dresser and started dropping t-shirts and underwear onto the floor until he raised a bandana triumphantly. "Behold! The agent of your doom!"
Sheppard couldn’t help but smile. "Bring it on." God, he’d missed that cocky son of a bitch.
Rodney did his best to fold the bandana as he walked back toward the table and John took the time to pull their guns, clear the chambers, and empty the clips. The last thing he wanted was McKay accidently, or intentionally, shooting either of them in his current state.
Satisfied both weapons were safe, John waved a hand at his eyes. "Ready to have your ass spanked royally?"
"You wish," Rodney scoffed.
"You’re right," John agreed cheerfully as McKay placed the kerchief over his eyes. "We’ll save that for later."
Rodney didn’t have the most nimble fingers even when sober, and John could feel them clumsily trying to tie the blindfold in place. But when he finally had it secured, those broad hands gently cupped John’s jaws and thick thumbs brushed a delicate trail across his cheeks. "I’m glad you shaved the beard."
"It itched like crazy, but the razors there sucked." That was only half the truth, the other half was that John had been desperately trying to become someone else in hopes that the hurt of no longer having what defined him as John Sheppard of Atlantis would eventually subside.
It hadn’t worked. No matter what he did, it hadn’t worked, and Rodney, genius that he was, had picked up on a few things that John had tried to do to dull the pain.
John’s heart pounded as Rodney stood silently caressing his face before finally asking the inevitable. "Did you sleep with her? That woman in the field…Teer? You slept with her, didn’t you?"
And here was the other reason John wanted to stay sober, the same reason he knew Rodney wanted to get as drunk as possible. Because there was no denying the truth of what Rodney was asking, and if McKay wanted to be pissed and angry he deserved to be, but John wasn’t going to further jeopardize what they had by being drunk and pissy in return.
"Yeah, I did," John confessed with a sigh, looping his fingers around McKay’s wrist before he could pull away.
Rodney’s forehead dropped with a clunk on top of John’s head. "I was working as fast as I could. Doing every goddamn thing I could think of to get you out of there and you couldn’t wait? You couldn’t give me a few hours to figure it out?"
"It was six months, Rodney," John stressed again. "Six months and nothing, not a sign or hint or anything to suggest that you were even trying to get me back."
Six fucking months of hoping and waiting, knowing deep in his gut that Rodney would try to rescue him, knowing if anyone could, it would be McKay. And eventually coming to the conclusion that if Rodney couldn’t do it in six months, he never would.
"Why her?"
At first Rodney’s question seemed odd, as if John had chosen someone else to fool around with, Rodney would have been fine with the whole thing. After his next question, though, Sheppard realized that maybe Rodney would have been okay if it had been someone else.
"She seemed so… nice," Rodney accused. "Normal. The kind you take home to meet your parents, not a bimbo offering up her cleavage like an hors d'oeuvre tray. Why her?"
Teer had been all of those things. She was the type of girl you settled down with, had kids and dogs and a home with. She wasn’t a one night stand type of woman. But the truth of the matter was much simpler than that.
"Because she wasn’t you," John answered honestly.
She was as far from Rodney McKay as a person could get and still be the same species. John wasn’t looking to settle down into domestic bliss with her, he was just looking to forget the best thing that had ever happened in his life with a person who had the least chance of reminding of him of what he’d lost.
This time Rodney’s snort was thick with emotion. Blindfolded, John couldn’t see Rodney, but it gave him a chance to concentrate on the others things…the soapy smell of Rodney’s skin under the potency of the alcohol on his breath, the way his fingers trembled against John’s face, the familiar press of weight against his back that John had never thought he’d have a chance of feeling again.
It took a while, but Rodney finally asked, "So why didn’t you go with her when she wanted you to ascend?"
John’s grip tightened on Rodney’s wrists and his own voice cracked. "Because she wasn’t you."
There was no way he could take back what he’d done, but as soon as he saw McKay in that field, he knew there was no way he could go on pretending he didn’t want or need Rodney in his life.
Rodney tipped John’s chin back with a less than gentle touch, but when Rodney’s mouth landed on Sheppard’s, John kissed him back with all the hunger of a starving man being given his favorite meal. Six months he’d waited for this, dreamed of this, woke in the middle of the night aching for this, been pissed as hell he couldn’t have this, and Rodney pulled away after less than a minute leaving nothing but the sharp tang of liquor on John’s lips. Six never-endings months of John missing the hell out of him, but only a few hours for Rodney to come to terms with what Sheppard had finally given into during the short time he’d been missing from Atlantis.
"Damn straight she wasn’t me," Rodney replied hoarsely. The blindfold had shifted enough for John to see a sliver of light and make out Rodney feeling his wobbly way around the table to take his seat opposite Sheppard once more. "And don’t you ever forget it."
John tugged the blindfold down to look Rodney in the eye, so the man knew he meant what he was saying. "I’ll never forget it." The truth was, as much as he’d tried to forget it back in the time dilation field, he never had.
McKay met his gaze for a few seconds, and what John saw there gave him hope that eventually Rodney would forgive him for fucking up majorly and doubting Rodney would come for him. Then Rodney cleared his throat and turned his attention to disassembling the gun in front of him. "No peeking," he grumbled.
"Oh, right." John pulled the blindfold back into place and disassembled his sidearm with practiced efficiency. He waited until it sounded like Rodney had finished his own teardown before asking, "Ready?"
There was a moment of silence, followed by the distinct sound of metal parts sliding against one another as McKay started his assembly, then Rodney snapped, "Go!"
John grinned despite himself. Cheating bastard. But who was he to complain? In fact, he waited a few more seconds before starting his own work. Even with McKay’s head start, Sheppard easily beat him, placing the fully assembled gun on the table and lifting his hands with a victorious, "Done."
"Son of a bitch!" Rodney exclaimed, which just made John grin wider.
"Want to go again?" Sheppard didn’t even try to keep the gloating tone out of his voice. Actually, he was using it to cover those much more vulnerable emotions that were skimming right under the surface.
And McKay couldn’t keep the sulking out of his. "What? Best two out of three?"
"As many as it takes," John told him with a shrug.
"As many as it takes for what?" Rodney demanded.
"To get you naked."
"Naked?" Rodney’s voice was a mixture of surprise and outrage. "So now we’re playing strip gun repair?"
John simply shrugged again and waggled beckoning fingers. "Pay up. I want your shirt."
"My shirt?"
"Well, I really want your pants, but that seemed a little to presumptive to start with."
It was a gamble, a big gamble, to see if Rodney would be willing to forgive him or would throw Sheppard’s ass out of his room. John waited, arm extended, trying his damnedest to look cool and collected and hide the fears and insecurities he was feeling. After a short eternity, a wad of soft cotton landed across his palm. Even from arms length, it smelled like Rodney, it smelled like home. John fisted the shirt tightly, never wanting to give it up.
"There," Rodney grumped. "Happy?"
John placed the shirt in his lap and held as tightly to his arrogant grin as he did to the fabric across his legs. "Not until I have your boxers."
"Then you better get to work, Sheppard." By the sound of it, Rodney was already disassembling his gun again.
John was in no hurry to take his apart. Instead, he lifted a bit of the blindfold to look across the table at a shirtless McKay.
Rodney, noting the lack of activity across the table, looked up and frowned. "No peeking!"
"Sorry, just wanted to check out my winnings so far."
The waggle of John’s eyebrows had the blindfold slipping, but it also had Rodney’s lip twitching in amusement he couldn’t hide as he shook his head in disbelief of Sheppard’s nerve. It was a sign, a good sign that things could work out in the end.
Rodney dropped his gaze back to the gun in his hand. "This thing’s not over yet, Sheppard."
"I sure the hell hope not." This time the false confidence was gone and the raw desperation showed plainly on his face. Whatever it took, John was prepared to do it if it put things right between them again. Whatever it took, if Rodney let him, he’d do it.
Rodney glanced back up and assured, "It’s not."
Heartened, John lowered the bandana back into to place and set to taking his nine millimeter apart piece by piece, anxious to set to work on making it whole once again.
* * * * *
Chapter 3: How to Perform an Emergency Repair
There was a saying Rodney was quite fond of− if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If only his science staff would live by that edict, he’d avoid a great deal of late night repairs and skipped meals. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Easy words to live by. But what the hell was he supposed to do if something was broke and he couldn’t fix it? What if he was faced with the Humpty Dumpty scenario and if all those broken pieces he couldn’t put back together belonged to Sheppard?
John’s breathing was fast and labored. Rodney reached a blind hand behind him to try to find John in the darkness by sound alone while still listening for the approaching footfalls of their pursuers. His fingers brushed across the cotton of John’s t-shirt and he gripped it tightly, pulling Sheppard a little closer and doing his best not to panic further over the tacky wetness he felt.
"John?" he asked in a whisper. "How’re you doing?"
"Peachy," Sheppard ground out before his knees buckled and he went down, taking Rodney with him.
The tunnel was so dark that Rodney couldn’t see anything more than a few centimeters from his face. That’s why he’d come down here in the first place, because if he couldn’t see anything, chances were the troops chasing them couldn’t see them either. Unfortunately, it also meant he couldn’t see Sheppard or the wound in John’s gut or the one gun they had that wouldn’t fucking fire, which was how John ended up shot in the first place.
Rodney tried the radio once more as he took off his jacket and used it to press against John’s abdomen. "Ronon, Teyla, do you copy?" Nothing but static answered him. "Carson, do you read me?"
Their two teammates had been out in the village delivering medical supplies with Carson while Sheppard and McKay stayed back to negotiate the additional demands the Regent of this world suddenly came up with when they tried to collect the promised ZedPM− weapons.
So much for peaceful agrarian civilizations.
Although, unlike the Genii, these people didn’t seem to have any secret military stockpile of their own; they just wanted to take what Atlantis already had to offer. When Sheppard had refused the request, the spears and swords had come out and the guards had taken their guns and other gear by force. John and Rodney had been ushered into a holding cell where they sat twiddling their thumbs for several hours. Eventually, they were called back to explain a few things about the guns. One P-90 was in pieces on the table, as was one of their radios, and the Regent’s military advisor was holding one of the nine-millimeters. The second set of fully assembled guns and radio were also sitting on the table, mere meters from where they stood.
Sheppard had taken a gamble that the man with the gun didn’t know how to operate it, and wouldn’t be able to figure it out before he could reach the other gun on the table. A few punches to the guards with spears and John and Rodney were lunging for their weapons. Rodney managed to tangle his hand in the strap of the P-90 as he dove for cover and Sheppard easily wrapped a hand around the grip of the sidearm… only when he pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t fire.
The firearm in enemy hands, however, didn’t have that problem and John staggered back a few steps with his hand to his abdomen.
Rodney had yelled something. He couldn’t remember exactly what. It was probably some incoherent word that tried to combine ‘no’, ‘son of a bitch’, and John’s name, but it was doubtful anyone even heard it over the P-90 fire he sprayed around the room. Then there were fireworks bursting behind his eyes as one of the guards John had incapacitated a few second earlier hit Rodney with the butt of his spear. Rodney dropped to all fours blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He turned in time to see Sheppard straddling the guard and delivering a vicious punch with the inoperable gun. It might not be able to fire, but it was hard enough to knock the guy unconscious. Their eyes met and Rodney blinked again to bring him into better focus, then watched John slump slowly off the guard and to the floor.
"John?" Rodney was already crawling the short distance to where Sheppard lay on the tiles looking at the blood coating his hand. He wrapped his hand around John’s wrist, squeezing tight at the sight of the red stain. "Shit."
"Need to…get outta’ here," John groaned as he rolled to his side in an attempt to gain his feet.
"Right," Rodney agreed, trying to hold his worry about John at bay and think of the best way out and back to their teammates.
Radio! They needed the radio and a goddamn gun that worked. He climbed to his feet, and took a few swaying steps toward the table and the radio that sat there, then he started looking for the P-90 that had gone flying across the floor when he was hit.
"Rodney," John called tensely as the sound of approaching footsteps indicated reinforcements were on the way. "Move."
"Shit!" Rodney repeated, gave up on his search for a gun, and went to pull John to his feet.
John’s knees went limp again as soon as McKay had one long arm wrapped around his shoulder. When his chin dipped forward, Rodney gave him a sharp shake. "Oh, like hell you’re going to pass out on me. Sheppard!"
Hazel eyes opened little more than slivers and he waved the useless gun in the direction of the back door to the room. "Go," John ordered in a garbled voice.
Rodney took the sidearm and shoved it unceremoniously into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back and headed off toward the door while simultaneously calling to the rest of his team through the radio to quickly tell them what happened and where they were. The troops in pursuit were gaining on them, and Rodney took advantage of a doorway leading down into what looked to be a cellar or underground tunnel.
That’s where he found himself now with a fading Sheppard, a radio that apparently wasn’t working underground, and a gun that wouldn’t fire. Three giant eggshells and Rodney was feeling an awful lot like one of the king’s men. John was way beyond any medical aid Rodney could offer, there was no way to boost the radio’s signal down here, but the gun… he could maybe do something about that to keep them safe until help arrived.
"Rodney…" John practically panted the name.
"I’m here," Rodney promised, placing Sheppard’s hand on top of his jacket and forcing him to press down.
"Shouldn’t be… should go… find the others."
"And you should shut up so I can work. Keep pressure here. Okay?"
McKay wasn’t convinced the pressure was as firm as it should be, but at least John’s hand seemed to stay in place as Rodney started to disassemble the gun in the dark.
"Not safe," John warned again, biting off a low moan. "No weapons…"
"I’m working on that," Rodney countered in a whisper, laying the pieces out systematically and within easy reach as he’d learned to do over the years during his multitude of blindfolded competitions he’d had with Sheppard. He’d even managed to win a few, usually when John was in the mood for a spectacular blow job from a very smug victor. "They disassembled the P-90 and the radio, so I’m assuming they probably took apart the handgun, too." He cringed at the way the metallic click of pieces coming apart echoed through the underground chamber. "If that’s the case, and they’re as inept as they’ve proven themselves to be with tech, I’m hoping they just screwed up and didn’t reassemble the gun properly."
Rodney froze when he thought he heard something, hoping like hell it was the sound of boots echoing as the guards passed by in the hallway above. The soldiers hadn’t found them yet, and he just needed a few more minutes to complete the repairs. Ronon and Teyla knew they were in trouble and were on their way to help. McKay just had to hold on and hold it together a little while longer and everything would be fine. The gun was what needed to go to pieces right then, not him. Convinced no one had discovered their hiding place yet, Rodney was about to turn his attention back to his work when John made a gurgling sound of pain and his hand reached out in a distressed search for McKay.
Rodney took it in both of his, holding it tight and scooting the short distance to where John slumped against the wall. Once there, he leaned in and kissed the injured man with a pleading desperation before resting his forehead against John’s.
"Sheppard, listen to me. I’m going to get us out of this, I promise. You have to believe me. But I need a little bit of time and you have to give it to me. Okay?" Another spasm of pain had John’s body tensing and Rodney kissed him again until it subsided. "There was one time when you didn’t wait for me when you should have. You should have and you didn’t. But I need you to wait now."
Rodney had never thrown Teer in John’s face, as much as he might have wanted to over the intervening years, he’d managed to keep her out of all their arguments they’d had since that whole time dilation fiasco. They’d rebuilt the trust slowly and eventually more strongly than ever, but Rodney had never been faced with something this terrifying in a long, long time. If it meant guilting Sheppard into staying alive for him, then so be it.
"You have to wait; give me the time I need. You owe me that much. You owe me."
John sucked in a harsh breath before nodding his head weakly. "If we…had…other gun…could race."
Rodney managed a hoarse chuckle then kissed him again. He tried not to think about how much John’s kiss in return felt like goodbye. Then he placed John’s hand back over his other still on the jacket and pressed down again to reiterate the need for pressure before turning back to the gun.
The metal was cold against his fingers as he twisted another piece free. "I’ll be collecting your shirt in a few seconds."
"Shirt…kind of…a mess," John managed to choke out.
He was right, and the only reason Rodney would want that blood-soaked garment would be to burn it. The thought had Rodney’s hands shaking even more than they had been before, so he closed his eyes and focused on his work and pushed the panic down a little further.
"Then I’ll take your pants. Rather have them anyway." McKay ran his fingertips along the recoil assembly and exhaled in a combination of relief he’d found the problem and annoyance there had been one in the first place. "The idiots didn’t put the spring back in properly."
His relief was short lived, however, when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Shit, the guards had found them, or they would shortly.
"Rodney," John practically begged in a harsh whisper, "go… please…"
He understood John’s anxiety, he really did. If he’d been the one bleeding out on the floor, he sure the hell wouldn’t have wanted to sit by and watch John die when he didn’t need to. But there was no way, absolutely no fucking way, McKay could leave him behind. If that meant they went out like Butch and Sundance against the Bolivians, Rodney at least planned to have a little firepower in his hands as they made their last stand.
The pieces slid back together by rote, easily, automatically. In a few seconds, Rodney slammed the clip into place and fired toward the approaching lantern light. He was rewarded by a cry from one of the men and the sound of the others scattering. One down but how many others were left? The lack of return fire suggested the functional guns Rodney had lost in the room above had yet to be located, or the people who knew how to use them were dead. As he fired once more, McKay sincerely hoped it was the latter. However, it was doubtful sixteen shots would hold off all the guards for long.
Rodney eased back until he felt John’s shoulder against his spine. As long as he was between them and Sheppard, he’d keep firing and everything would be okay. Everything had to be okay. The clatter of metal off to the right had him firing toward the sound, then to his left when another noise caught his attention. It was dark, so goddamn dark, and the troops had been smart enough to leave their lanterns behind when they started advancing on him. He was firing blind, literally, and that was his only option. He had to be smart, save the bullets for when he had a chance to actually hit something. He had to hold it together.
Just a little longer, he told himself. One way or another, this would be over in a matter of minutes.
He could feel himself shaking, and apparently, so could Sheppard. John’s hand pressed flat against Rodney’s shoulder blade, more of a consolation than encouragement, and Rodney leaned back into it even as he fired again.
He wasn’t sure how many rounds he had left, and he found himself trying to count in recollection even as he shot another one. Hell, he wasn’t even sure how long he’d been firing. Seconds? Minutes? Days? It doesn’t matter, he tried to reason with himself. Just shoot until you can’t shoot anymore. So he concentrated on the feel of the textured grip in his hand and the press of John’s hand on his back, and fired until he finally heard not an ear-shattering bang, but a heartbreaking click.
John’s grip moved to Rodney’s shoulder, and Rodney reached up and entwined their fingers, silently saying all that needed to be said between them. They’d go together. Rodney honestly couldn’t imagine any other way, because life without John wouldn’t be any kind of life he wanted to live. He could hear the guards approaching in the darkness, scurrying closer like rats…goddamn rats with big ass swords… and tightened his hold on John’s hand. It wasn’t that bad, he decided, facing the end with John right beside him. It wasn’t that bad at all. Then there was the sound of P-90 fire, the distinctive zip of Ronon’s gun discharging, and the impossible happened… the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang swooped in and kicked a little Bolivian ass.
The funny thing was, now that it looked like they might make it out of this mess alive, all the calm Rodney had felt a few seconds earlier vanished and the simmering panic bubbled to the surface once again. He could hear someone yelling at Carson to do something for John, and it wasn’t until Ronon took him by the scruff of his shirt and shook him that Rodney realized he was the one screaming.
"McKay," Ronon ordered, "get it together!"
Rodney looked around at his teammates as if he was truly seeing them for the first time. "I…I can’t."
Teyla placed a comforting hand on his chest, glanced to where Carson was working on John, then turned back to Rodney. "You must. For John’s sake, you must."
Rodney wanted to laugh. She had no clue, no fucking clue, how he’d been doing just that for exactly that reason for what seemed like an eternity. But then Carson was saying they needed to get John back to Atlantis as soon as possible, and Ronon was carrying him as Teyla and McKay cleared a path through the remaining guards back to the Jumper, and then Rodney was piloting them back through the gate.
Once they were back in Atlantis, once the initial rush to the infirmary was over, and once John was in surgery, Rodney slid down the wall, pulled up his knees, buried his face in hands still stained with John’s blood, and finally, finally allowed himself to shatter into a million pieces. It was with a sudden clarity that Rodney finally saw that he’d been the one playing Humpty Dumpty in this scenario all along.
Ronon didn’t stop him, just dropped to a squat beside him in the hallway, and Rodney barely felt Teyla’s arm around his shoulder. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Sometime, though, if it breaks, it helps to let it stay broken for a while longer. Fortunately, this time, his team not only understood the sentiment, they encouraged it.
* * * * *
Chapter 4: Reviewing Your Work
"John!"
Ah, the beckoning bellow of the love of his life.
John looked up from the newspaper he was reading as he ate his bowl of Lucky Charms at the kitchen table. "What?" he yelled back around a mouthful of milk and cereal.
Apparently Rodney hadn’t heard him as he shouted even louder this time. "Sheppard!"
"I’m eating!" John informed him from the kitchen, but he stood and headed out through the living room and upstairs in the direction of McKay’s voice. Rodney didn’t sound like he was in distress, but nearly three decades on Atlantis had taught him never to take anything for granted, especially when it involved McKay.
"My marshmallows are doing to disintegrate by the time I get back," John informed him as he took the stairs with a wince at the ache in his knee. Weather must be coming in. Yeah, that’s the reason, Sheppard thought dryly, it wouldn’t have anything to do with turning sixty-five in a couple of months. "They dissolve and when they do, they turn my milk that funky gray…what the hell are you doing?"
The last was asked when he saw the lower half of Rodney’s body sticking out of the ceiling as he stood on the pull down ladder that led to the attic. He was wearing khaki pants similar to those he’d worn the first year on Atlantis. Sheppard actually liked the pants, they brought back memories of earlier times when they had to sneak around to be together, and as a result, the sex had been smoking hot. Not to mention, even to this day, he liked the way McKay’s ass looked in them. He could have done without the sweaters Rodney insisted on wearing over them, however. John had tried, God knew he’d tried, to gently steer Rodney away from the Mr. Rogers apparel his holographic image had been wearing nearly fifty thousand years in the future. Despite his best efforts, he had failed miserably. Of course, Rodney had done the same thing when it came to John’s preferred daily attire of jeans, t-shirt, and tracksuit jacket, but when your days primarily consisted of a little yard work and walking the dog, who needed anything else? Although, by the looks of things, Rodney had plans for the day other than housework and pet care.
"Where are your discharge papers?" Rodney asked from his perch on the ladder.
"My discharge papers?" John frowned in confusion, reaching down to scratch Cash behind the ears when the black lab nudged behind his leg. "Why do you need those?"
"I don’t need them," Rodney clarified, "but apparently the accountant does. They have to be in one of these boxes up here because they aren’t in any of the files in the office."
"Why does our accountant need my discharge paperwork?" John watched the dog trot down the stairs and head toward the kitchen, a bit envious of both the dog’s ease with the steps, and the fact he was going to get to eat his breakfast and it wasn’t going to be a soggy mess when he got to it.
"How the hell should I know? If I cared to know what accountants did, I wouldn’t need to hire one." The shuffle of cardboard boxes within Rodney’s reach ceased as he reconsidered. "Actually, maybe it was the attorney that needed them."
It wouldn’t have been uncommon for Rodney to confuse the two. He’d never been good at keeping the ‘peons’ in his life straight; just ask the myriad of scientist who had come and gone from Atlantis over the years and McKay had never once called them by their actual name. Or it could have just as easily been a result of the remnants of the damage done by the space amoeba that had taken up residence in Rodney’s brain over twenty-five years ago. The docs at the SGC had said it was nothing to worry about; it wasn’t going to get anywhere near as serious as it had been when the parasite was actually in Rodney’s head. Although, the permanent damage it had done that was barely discernable back in his forties would become more noticeable the older he got. Carson had tried to explain it as things that should go in Rodney’s longer term memory would occasionally be misfiled or get reshuffled into the short term areas. John took comfort in the fact that he showed up in enough of Rodney’s memories that no matter where one of their shared remembrances ended up filed, there would be plenty more for Rodney to hold onto to know exactly what their lives together meant to them both. And if it was something John really wanted him to remember, he just told him again… and again, if necessary… until it finally stuck where it was supposed to.
Surprisingly, John was more okay with it than Rodney was. Considering all the damn allergies and mitral valve defect and high blood pressure John had lost sleep over since they’d met, a little bit of Swiss cheese in the recollection centers was a piece of cake. McKay, however, started worrying that he would forget some key piece of information at a critical time, like when the city was under attack, and had started talking retirement. John had readily agreed, not for the reason Rodney had stated, but the fact that he wasn’t as fast and agile as he’d once been, which made watching Rodney’s back harder and harder as the years passed.
John could hear the strain in Rodney’s voice that he’d possibly forgotten something again and breezed past it easily. "Well, whichever one it is, I’m sure they’ll call back and ask for it again if it’s really that important." Hefting himself up onto the ladder, John climbed to the rung below the one McKay was standing on and peered around his shoulder to look at the boxes in the dark crawl space.
"Don’t get any ideas, General," Rodney warned with a mischievous glance over his shoulder when John leaned against his back. "This is official business."
"Seeing as we’re officially retired, those ideas are supposed to be our only official business these days." Sheppard grinned and gave him a quick kiss before pointing. "I’m guessing it’s one of those two."
"Why those?" Rodney sounded genuinely curious about John’s reasoning.
"Chronology. Every time we put a box up here, the ones we put in before get pushed further back. Those three there are the Christmas decorations I just put up here a few months ago, those back in the corner are probably the stuff we never unpacked when we moved in, so the ones between are probably the ones you’re looking for."
Rodney shook his head with a snort. "I still can’t believe you have three big ass boxes of Christmas decorations. And these don’t even include all the crap in the garage."
"Hey," John defended, "a man has to have pride in his home, and there was no damn way I was going to let a podiatrist with a Beemer and a shih tzu beat me when it came to holiday spirit."
Even Sheppard had to admit that the escalating annual competition between him and the Warners across the street got a little out of hand this past winter. Rodney had threatened to cancel John’s credit cards if he came home with one more inflatable penguin dressed in a ski suit or polar bear wearing a scarf and hat. John couldn’t argue with McKay’s assessment that their front yard had looked like the deranged lovechild of Animal Planet and a Land’s End catalog. But Christmas back on Earth was always a little rough on John; it always seemed to remind him just how far away they were from their extended family back in Pegasus. As far as coping mechanisms went, John could think of worse things to do than stringing a couple miles of icicle lights on their eaves and setting up mechanized, lighted reindeers on their lawn.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "And to think, I was the one people accused of being petty." With a grunt, he reached and pulled one of the boxes toward them.
John took advantage and laid his head against the spread of Rodney’s back, closing his eyes and listening to the beat of Rodney’s heart through that damn cardigan he was wearing. He exhaled in perfect contentment.
"Hey," Rodney called quietly.
"Hey, yourself," John responded nuzzling into the sweater a little more.
"You okay?" The smile on John’s face was apparently enough to keep the concern out of McKay’s tone but not the befuddlement.
John cracked an eye to see the familiar crooked curl of lips soften the lines on Rodney’s face. For a split second he looked like the man with whom Sheppard had taken those first fateful steps into an Ancient city, who had let John push him off a balcony while he wore a personal shield, who had stood up to a super-Wraith to buy Sheppard a little more time, who had stolen John’s heart with his genius and ego shining bright, and his even more impressive bravery and selflessness hidden behind the bravado.
"Never better," John told him truthfully.
Even though they were a galaxy away from people who were more family than friends, even though he was in a grudge match with a middle-aged doctor and his yappy lap dog across the street, even though his cereal was no doubt turning into mush on the kitchen table, it didn’t matter because he had everything he needed right here.
Rodney’s smile grew as he brushed a hand through John’s hair. "Help me with these boxes and I’ll see what I can do to make it better still."
Sheppard stepped off the few rungs below him then took the boxes Rodney handed down. John had the first one open by the time McKay joined him and peeked over his shoulder.
"Is that your Medal of Honor?"
John opened the hinged box and looked at the green laurel wreath motif surrounding a gold star with Lady Liberty in the middle and ‘valor’ across the top, "Huh. I’d wondered where that had gotten to."
It wasn’t that Sheppard wasn’t proud of the commendation, it was just that every time he looked at it, he thought of all the others who had been under his command over the years who deserved as much, if not more, than him.
"Maybe you should wear that the next time you mow the lawn," Rodney suggested as he reached into the cardboard box. "No way Warner could compete with that."
"Honestly, I think he was more impressed with the giant inflatable snow globe with the dancing elves than he would be with this." John shut the box and set it aside and pulled out a folder of papers.
"Who could blame him? That snow globe won you the hundred dollar first prize from the home owner’s association. Save the entire planet from an alien invasion and all you get is a visit to the White House and a steak dinner…although I will admit, it was a pretty tasty steak."
"Well," John drawled as he flipped through the papers, "not everything comes with a monetary prize like your Nobel, McKay."
"A prize I had to split with Radek and Sam," Rodney grumbled, not for the first time.
"We all have our crosses to bear," John responded distractedly at the all too familiar bitch. "I don’t see the papers in here, maybe the other box."
As John moved to the second box, Rodney continued to dig through the first. There were a lot of things in these boxes John hadn’t thought about in years. A big chunk of it would be considered junk by most people who saw it. There were stacks of CDs labeled ‘photos’ that John had always planned to go through and never had. There were things from various planets they’d visited that had been given as gifts that Sheppard had always meant to throw out, but could never bring himself to do because they came from some alien civilization that he had visited with Rodney and Teyla and Ronon… his team, his family.
And there was more.
There was a photo of Ford’s grandparents John had taken from the young man’s room before he finally packed up the belongings and shipped them back to Earth. There was the ceramic pot John had given Elizabeth for her birthday that first year in the city. There was a hand-tied fishing lure that had belonged to Carson… the original Carson…Rodney had squirreled away decades before.
There were happier mementos, too. Hard copies of photos of his team dressed as the Fantastic Four for Halloween one year. It had taken Rodney a while to explain to Ronon why being made out of stone could be considered a superhero trait. A cork from a champagne bottle, God only knew where Rodney had found that, when don’t ask, don’t tell was finally revoked and they didn’t have to hide any more. The very detailed, and notated, list Rodney had written logically documenting why he felt they should get married. It had taken a good day and a half before John actually read the entire thing seeing as he’d said yes as soon as he saw the title written at the top of the page. There was even the two groom wedding cake topper that Radek had meticulously embellished with tiny P-90s and a life signs detector.
All these random pieces of life haphazardly stored in a couple of boxes in an attic that, when assembled in the proper order, told the story of John Sheppard and Rodney McKay. When looked at in the right way, they all made perfect sense… at least they did to John.
"What the hell are these?"
John glanced up to see Rodney lifting out two long strands of beads held together with an array of intricate knots. McKay’s forehead crinkled in something akin to disgust, but more than likely it was confusion. With Rodney, they almost equated to the same thing.
"They’re from the wedding," John told him as he turned back to the stack of papers he’d found in his box.
"Ours?" Rodney asked in surprise.
Sheppard frowned at the question. "You know, McKay, I’m not sure if I’m more insulted that you can’t remember the details of our wedding enough to know we didn’t wear Athosian family braids, or if I’m more worried that you can’t remember Torren’s wedding from two years ago."
"You know things get a little… garbled now and again." Rodney’s hands fluttered at his temple in frustration as he pulled out a few more things from the box. "But I remember the important parts of our wedding, like our wedding night."
John leaned over and pulled Rodney into a kiss, partially to distract Rodney from his irritation over his forgetfulness, but mostly because he just wanted to kiss the man.
"That was pretty damn unforgettable." John kissed him again, this time taking a more leisurely approach before asking, "You do remember the baby’s due next month. Right? Not ours, but Torren’s and Bethal’s?"
Rodney gave a whack to Sheppard’s shoulder at the grin on his face. "Yes, I remember. How can I forget when they’re naming her after me?"
John’s lips twitched as they did every time he recalled Rodney’s face when Torren and his wife had excitedly delivered the news to McKay that they planned to name their unborn daughter after him. "Hey, you were the one who always complained Teyla named him Torren John. At least he’s finally going to recognize your role in his birth with little Meredith."
McKay crossed his arms and lifted his chin. "And exactly who told him Meredith is often used as a girl’s name on Earth?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," John evaded, then held up a stack of papers victoriously. "Hey, I found it! I’ll go fax it before we lose it again."
"Who are you faxing it to?"
With a shrug, John dismissed. "I’ll send it to both of them with your name at the top. The one who needs it can use it, the one who doesn’t will assume you screwed up." He used the forms to deliver a quick double tap to McKay’s head.
"Gee, thanks," Rodney responded drolly before smiling when he found a gun case and pulled it out. "Hey, look at this. It’s our old Berettas. I’d forgotten these were even up here."
To be honest, so had John. This model had been decommissioned years before, but like so many other things, Sheppard couldn’t seem to let them go. Still, he hadn’t worn a gun in almost two years, and what did that say about their lives now that they didn’t feel the need to have the guns strapped to their thighs every waking moment? It said that they were pretty damn good lives. The best Sheppard could imagine.
Rodney held up the handgun with a wolfish grin. "What say, after you finish faxing those papers, we find some blindfolds and have a few rounds of strip firearm maintenance?"
John’s predatory smile in return vanished, however, when McKay gave the gun an enticing waggle …and the magazine dropped out onto the floor. The two them stared at the clip laying on the carpet in their hallway− Rodney in stunned silence and John in wry amusement.
Finally, Sheppard raised his eyebrows in mock concern. "I hope that’s not an indication of what I should expect of your performance when I get back."
John turned on his heels when Rodney’s open-mouthed gape of surprise transformed into a glower of outrage. Grinning, he headed for the fax machine in the office, knowing full well McKay wouldn’t let him down. God knew the man never had in the past, not since those first pieces of their lives snapped together so perfectly all those years ago. But it never hurt to give Rodney a little motivation to exceed expectations.
The End
Genre: slash, romance, h/c, angst, schmarm...you name it, we have it.
Characters: John and Rodney
Rating: T.
Word count: ~ 10,000
Warning: None
Spoilers: anything up through season 5
Author Notes: Thanks as always to Koshka for the quick beta. This fic is based on one of my twitterfics, but 280 characters just wasn't enough to tell the whole story. Original twitfic can be found here.
Summary: Rodney McKay had never really been interested in gun maintenance. John Sheppard was about to change that.
Love and the Art of Firearm Maintenance
by liketheriver
Chapter 1: How to Assemble Your Firearm
Rodney McKay had never really been interested in gun maintenance. Sure, Sheppard had walked him through it at least once before, but Rodney had always figured someone else would take care of those sorts of things. After all, that’s why they had an armory, wasn’t it? Apparently what he’d suspected all along was true− if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.
Now, if he could only remember how to do it.
Rodney honestly wasn’t sure if being equally bone-tired and brain-dead was affecting his memory, or if it was the fact that he had just never paid attention when Sheppard had gone over how to reassemble his nine millimeter in the past. Whatever the reason, now that he had the damn thing apart, he couldn’t for the life of him remember how to reconstruct it. All these parts spread in a haphazard display before him and he didn’t even know where to begin to put it back together.
He rubbed at dry, gritty eyes with the heels of his hands as he considered that maybe the gun was defective and missing a part. That could explain why the magazine had simply fallen on the floor at the most inopportune moment he could imagine, the moment he was standing face to face (or face to mask… thingy) with a Wraith ready to feed on him while Rodney held the ZedPM that could save the entire city.
He wasn’t fooling himself, if Teyla hadn’t shown up when she had, all the bravado in the world wouldn’t have saved him from the horrific fate suffered by Gall and countless others here in the Pegasus Galaxy. But she had shown up and McKay had managed to install the ZedPM and power the shield and fake their own death and all hail the conquering heroes the day had been saved. All that was left was some cleanup…cleanup, rebuilding, reassembling, putting the pieces back together. Things like rounding up the last of the Wraith who might be hiding in the city, and tallying the dead and missing, and counting their collective blessings that the Daedalus had shown up when it had before Sheppard could follow through with that ridiculous suicide run of his. Things Rodney really didn’t want to think about right then but kept creeping into his thoughts whenever he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, which was why he’d decide to work on his sidearm.
His heart rate jumped when the door to his quarters slid open. Rodney exhaled in relief when he saw it was just Sheppard and not a contingent of Wraith, although his stomach twisted in dread once more when he took a second to think about why the Major was in his room.
"Oh, God, did the Wraith come back?"
Sheppard’s own face mimicked Rodney’s panic for a split second before he realized why McKay had asked the question in the first place. "No, no, everything was fine when I left the control room a few minutes ago."
Sheppard looked like crap. He’d undoubtedly had as little sleep as Rodney over the past week, minus the short nap Carson had forced on the scientist earlier in the day. Dark circles of fatigue eclipsed Sheppard’s eyes and the Major couldn’t hide the weary slump of his shoulders. He scrubbed a hand through hair that probably hadn’t seen a shower for days.
"So, how are you doing?" Sheppard shifted awkwardly as he admitted, "I haven’t really had a chance to talk to you since things went down earlier."
"Oh, you mean since you ran off to go blow yourself up? Is that the thing to which you are referring? The ‘went down earlier’ thing you are speaking of… speaking about… of which you are speaking?"
Rodney raised his chin and tried not to show any sign that his accusation made as little sense to him as it probably did to Sheppard. Christ, maybe those drugs Carson had given him earlier hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Or maybe he just really needed to get some sleep that lasted more than two hours at a time. But Rodney managed to hold his gaze and watched Sheppard’s discomfort grow under the scrutiny. That was until Sheppard’s brow furrowed when he finally saw the array of gun parts spread on the desk in front of McKay.
For some reason, being caught like this had Rodney flushing. "I thought, maybe, I should clean it. You know, check it out for defects and the like."
"Yeaaah," Sheppard drawled, stepping in closer and reaching over McKay’s shoulder to pick up a thingamajigger. The Major no doubt knew the part’s proper name, but at this point, Rodney neither knew nor cared to know. "Teyla told me what happened with the Wraith." His eyes slid from the parts to Rodney. "And the gun."
"Oh, she did, did she?" McKay folded his arms across his chest defensively. They were actually slightly numb and tingling, as if his body was falling asleep even if Rodney’s brain refused to follow suit. "And what exactly did she have to say?"
Sheppard reached around Rodney to pick up another piece. "That you should probably turn the gun back in and have another issued to you, seeing as clips don’t just fall out of guns like that."
Rodney blinked in surprise as Sheppard slipped the two pieces together with a decisive snick.
"Oh." Not exactly the most eloquent response, but in his current state, it was pretty damn lucid. "Anything else?"
"Yeah." Sheppard moved to stand directly behind Rodney, leaning in so close that his chest pressed against McKay’s back. "She said she would hate to think what might have happened to you if she hadn’t arrived when she did." He reached an arm around both sides of McKay and slid another part of the gun into place.
Sheppard was so close, Rodney could hear his heart beating… or maybe it was his own. Either way, Rodney felt he should remain still, because if he moved he was afraid Sheppard would, too, and that was the last thing in the world he wanted to happen. "She’s not the only one who hates to think about that."
"No," Sheppard agreed as he put another part of the gun back into place, "she’s not."
The Major’s breath was warm against McKay’s neck, warm and comfortable, and Rodney had to fight to keep his eyes open instead of closing them and basking in two sensations he hadn’t experienced in what seemed like forever. But as soon as his eyelids drooped and his chin dipped, Sheppard roused him.
"Are you paying attention? This is important."
McKay blinked rapidly to bring it all back into focus. "Yeah, I’m watching."
He straightened, which only resulted in him brushing against at least three days worth of stubble on Sheppard’s jaw. Three days? Maybe it was more like four. Hell, it felt like an eternity had passed since he’d first started repairing Genii bombs and reconfiguring the chair controls to link with the Jumpers and watched the Major run from the room.
Sheppard didn’t move away, rough whiskers catching at the soft hairs at Rodney’s temple, prickling against the tender skin there. No, he didn’t move away, just kept assembling the sidearm. "Take care of your gun, and it will take care of you."
Rodney swallowed and licked his lips, but kept his eyes locked on the skilled hands as they continued to work. "And that’s important," he agreed.
"You alive is pretty damn important." Sheppard twisted another piece into place with a firm click.
"Then maybe you should have been down here watching my back instead of those Marines."
"I’m watching your back now." As if to prove his point, Sheppard leaned a little closer. "And I was watching your back before," Sheppard said softly, leaving off the part about doing it by flying a nuclear bomb to a Hive. "I always will."
Rodney couldn’t stop himself from slumping into the black t-shirt at his back with a heavy sigh. "You should be dead right now, Sheppard."
Rodney had tracked the Jumper, tracked it on the computer screen and watched it vanish, watched Sheppard die. Of course, he hadn’t died, but at that moment, when the small dot on the monitor had ceased to exist, Rodney had felt a big chunk of him no longer existed either.
"We should all be dead right now." Sheppard’s arms closed tighter around Rodney as he reached for a long spring for the gun. "But we’re not."
Sheppard smelled of sweat and exhaustion, lingering fear and near death, but he felt like a siege won and hope for tomorrow. His arms encompassing Rodney were something McKay hadn’t even hoped for a day ago; they were life and… more. So very much more. And Rodney sat there soaking it all in, watching capable hands put the pieces back together.
"Think you can do this again?" Sheppard asked, his voice was right at Rodney’s ear yet seemed to come from far, far away.
Rodney was vaguely aware that he couldn’t see the gun on his desk any longer. "Um hmm," he murmured, turning his head into Sheppard’s chest, content for the first time in weeks. Of course he could do this again; he could do this every day for the rest of his life if the Major let him.
Somewhere in the distance, the tiny part of his brain that wasn’t drug addled or sleep deprived was telling McKay he shouldn’t be doing this. Sure, Sheppard was his friend, possibly his best friend, well on the way to becoming the best he’d ever had. And, yes, maybe Rodney wanted them to be more than friends, but the Major was… well, a major in the United States Air Force, and this sort of thing just didn’t happen with officers in the U. S. military. But none of that mattered right now, because Rodney had been to Hell and back over the past few weeks, and if he could do this for just a little while longer, feel Sheppard close and just pretend it was more than a lesson in firearm maintenance, then maybe he could pretend everything that had happened, everything and everyone they had lost, hadn’t been half as horrible as it actually had been.
So, he snuffled the black shirt, pretended this was the norm, and just drifted until the arms around him flinched violently and Rodney jerked awake.
"What?" McKay demanded in dazed confusion. "What happened?"
Sheppard looked as befuddled as Rodney, and actually took a staggering step in an attempt to stay on his feet. That’s when Rodney realized Sheppard had apparently fallen asleep standing up with McKay snoozing against his chest.
"Christ, you’re literally falling asleep on your feet," McKay announced rather needlessly.
"I know," Sheppard slurred as he took another drunken step, clamping onto Rodney’s bicep as he scanned McKay’s room. "We need a bed."
Rodney barely had time to register the plural of ‘we’ and the singular of ‘bed’ before he realized Sheppard hadn’t taken hold of his arm for balance but to heft Rodney to his feet. A few lumbering steps later, Sheppard was crawling clumsily onto Rodney’s bed and dragging McKay in behind him. Sheppard was already snoring when Rodney’s head fell back onto his chest; the rhythmic buzz echoing hypnotically in Rodney’s ear and dragging him gratefully back into sleep. Rodney hadn’t even bothered to pull up the blankets; Sheppard’s arm wrapped loosely around his shoulder was warmth enough. His boots hit Sheppard’s own with a sturdy clump as he swung his khaki-clad leg across a long black one, then he exhaled as Sheppard’s cheek came to rest heavily on top of his head, the final piece dropping securely into place.
* * * * *
Chapter 2: Some Common Causes of Malfunctions
"Seriously?" Rodney snorted in disbelief. "You seriously had to put you gun together while blindfolded?"
John raised three fingers on his left hand and put his right over his heart. "Scout’s honor."
With a sputtered derisive laugh, Rodney flopped back in his chair. "You’re so full of shit." An empty beer can went flying as his arm swung to accentuate his point in typical McKay fashion.
"If I’m lying I’m dying," John countered with a grin.
Rodney leaned forward, stretching his upper body across the table between them as if to close the gap and share a secret. "Well, that wouldn’t be much of a change, now would it?" His drunken laughter showed he found his own joke a hell of a lot funnier than Sheppard did.
Rodney was flat out, balls to walls, shitfaced drunk, and John couldn’t say as he blamed him. If the situation had been reversed, he would probably be in the same condition… hell, worse… which was why John was stone cold sober. That, and the fact that after more than six months without McKay, John wanted to remember every damn second he had with the man, even if that meant he just ended up curled around his unconscious body after Rodney inevitably passed out tonight.
Six damn months for John, but less than six hours for Rodney. It was hard for John to remember the latter, and he had a feeling it was equally hard for Rodney to remember the former, especially after what McKay saw in the field when the Atlantis contingent finally arrived in the valley.
Rodney tipped a beer can back, looking at it in disgust when it turned out to be empty, too. He started to reach for the remnants in the whiskey bottle, but Sheppard decided maybe he should attempt to keep the puking to a minimum tonight, so he stopped him with a suggestion.
"Want me to prove I can do it?" When Rodney’s hand halted mid-reach, John pushed his advantage. "I’ll even race you. I’ll reassemble my gun while wearing a blindfold and you do yours without one."
Rodney’s gun maintenance skills had vastly improved since the day his clip had fallen out in front of a Wraith, but they still couldn’t hold a candle to Sheppard’s even when McKay was sober.
Bloodshot blue eyes narrowed at the challenge. "This some Jedi mind trick you learned during your meditation training in the time dilation field?"
"Nope," John assured, leaning back in his seat with a swaggering grin. "It’s a Jedi mind trick I learned back in OTS."
McKay studied him a second longer before standing abruptly and nearly tipping his chair over in the process. "You’re on." He staggered his way to his dresser and started dropping t-shirts and underwear onto the floor until he raised a bandana triumphantly. "Behold! The agent of your doom!"
Sheppard couldn’t help but smile. "Bring it on." God, he’d missed that cocky son of a bitch.
Rodney did his best to fold the bandana as he walked back toward the table and John took the time to pull their guns, clear the chambers, and empty the clips. The last thing he wanted was McKay accidently, or intentionally, shooting either of them in his current state.
Satisfied both weapons were safe, John waved a hand at his eyes. "Ready to have your ass spanked royally?"
"You wish," Rodney scoffed.
"You’re right," John agreed cheerfully as McKay placed the kerchief over his eyes. "We’ll save that for later."
Rodney didn’t have the most nimble fingers even when sober, and John could feel them clumsily trying to tie the blindfold in place. But when he finally had it secured, those broad hands gently cupped John’s jaws and thick thumbs brushed a delicate trail across his cheeks. "I’m glad you shaved the beard."
"It itched like crazy, but the razors there sucked." That was only half the truth, the other half was that John had been desperately trying to become someone else in hopes that the hurt of no longer having what defined him as John Sheppard of Atlantis would eventually subside.
It hadn’t worked. No matter what he did, it hadn’t worked, and Rodney, genius that he was, had picked up on a few things that John had tried to do to dull the pain.
John’s heart pounded as Rodney stood silently caressing his face before finally asking the inevitable. "Did you sleep with her? That woman in the field…Teer? You slept with her, didn’t you?"
And here was the other reason John wanted to stay sober, the same reason he knew Rodney wanted to get as drunk as possible. Because there was no denying the truth of what Rodney was asking, and if McKay wanted to be pissed and angry he deserved to be, but John wasn’t going to further jeopardize what they had by being drunk and pissy in return.
"Yeah, I did," John confessed with a sigh, looping his fingers around McKay’s wrist before he could pull away.
Rodney’s forehead dropped with a clunk on top of John’s head. "I was working as fast as I could. Doing every goddamn thing I could think of to get you out of there and you couldn’t wait? You couldn’t give me a few hours to figure it out?"
"It was six months, Rodney," John stressed again. "Six months and nothing, not a sign or hint or anything to suggest that you were even trying to get me back."
Six fucking months of hoping and waiting, knowing deep in his gut that Rodney would try to rescue him, knowing if anyone could, it would be McKay. And eventually coming to the conclusion that if Rodney couldn’t do it in six months, he never would.
"Why her?"
At first Rodney’s question seemed odd, as if John had chosen someone else to fool around with, Rodney would have been fine with the whole thing. After his next question, though, Sheppard realized that maybe Rodney would have been okay if it had been someone else.
"She seemed so… nice," Rodney accused. "Normal. The kind you take home to meet your parents, not a bimbo offering up her cleavage like an hors d'oeuvre tray. Why her?"
Teer had been all of those things. She was the type of girl you settled down with, had kids and dogs and a home with. She wasn’t a one night stand type of woman. But the truth of the matter was much simpler than that.
"Because she wasn’t you," John answered honestly.
She was as far from Rodney McKay as a person could get and still be the same species. John wasn’t looking to settle down into domestic bliss with her, he was just looking to forget the best thing that had ever happened in his life with a person who had the least chance of reminding of him of what he’d lost.
This time Rodney’s snort was thick with emotion. Blindfolded, John couldn’t see Rodney, but it gave him a chance to concentrate on the others things…the soapy smell of Rodney’s skin under the potency of the alcohol on his breath, the way his fingers trembled against John’s face, the familiar press of weight against his back that John had never thought he’d have a chance of feeling again.
It took a while, but Rodney finally asked, "So why didn’t you go with her when she wanted you to ascend?"
John’s grip tightened on Rodney’s wrists and his own voice cracked. "Because she wasn’t you."
There was no way he could take back what he’d done, but as soon as he saw McKay in that field, he knew there was no way he could go on pretending he didn’t want or need Rodney in his life.
Rodney tipped John’s chin back with a less than gentle touch, but when Rodney’s mouth landed on Sheppard’s, John kissed him back with all the hunger of a starving man being given his favorite meal. Six months he’d waited for this, dreamed of this, woke in the middle of the night aching for this, been pissed as hell he couldn’t have this, and Rodney pulled away after less than a minute leaving nothing but the sharp tang of liquor on John’s lips. Six never-endings months of John missing the hell out of him, but only a few hours for Rodney to come to terms with what Sheppard had finally given into during the short time he’d been missing from Atlantis.
"Damn straight she wasn’t me," Rodney replied hoarsely. The blindfold had shifted enough for John to see a sliver of light and make out Rodney feeling his wobbly way around the table to take his seat opposite Sheppard once more. "And don’t you ever forget it."
John tugged the blindfold down to look Rodney in the eye, so the man knew he meant what he was saying. "I’ll never forget it." The truth was, as much as he’d tried to forget it back in the time dilation field, he never had.
McKay met his gaze for a few seconds, and what John saw there gave him hope that eventually Rodney would forgive him for fucking up majorly and doubting Rodney would come for him. Then Rodney cleared his throat and turned his attention to disassembling the gun in front of him. "No peeking," he grumbled.
"Oh, right." John pulled the blindfold back into place and disassembled his sidearm with practiced efficiency. He waited until it sounded like Rodney had finished his own teardown before asking, "Ready?"
There was a moment of silence, followed by the distinct sound of metal parts sliding against one another as McKay started his assembly, then Rodney snapped, "Go!"
John grinned despite himself. Cheating bastard. But who was he to complain? In fact, he waited a few more seconds before starting his own work. Even with McKay’s head start, Sheppard easily beat him, placing the fully assembled gun on the table and lifting his hands with a victorious, "Done."
"Son of a bitch!" Rodney exclaimed, which just made John grin wider.
"Want to go again?" Sheppard didn’t even try to keep the gloating tone out of his voice. Actually, he was using it to cover those much more vulnerable emotions that were skimming right under the surface.
And McKay couldn’t keep the sulking out of his. "What? Best two out of three?"
"As many as it takes," John told him with a shrug.
"As many as it takes for what?" Rodney demanded.
"To get you naked."
"Naked?" Rodney’s voice was a mixture of surprise and outrage. "So now we’re playing strip gun repair?"
John simply shrugged again and waggled beckoning fingers. "Pay up. I want your shirt."
"My shirt?"
"Well, I really want your pants, but that seemed a little to presumptive to start with."
It was a gamble, a big gamble, to see if Rodney would be willing to forgive him or would throw Sheppard’s ass out of his room. John waited, arm extended, trying his damnedest to look cool and collected and hide the fears and insecurities he was feeling. After a short eternity, a wad of soft cotton landed across his palm. Even from arms length, it smelled like Rodney, it smelled like home. John fisted the shirt tightly, never wanting to give it up.
"There," Rodney grumped. "Happy?"
John placed the shirt in his lap and held as tightly to his arrogant grin as he did to the fabric across his legs. "Not until I have your boxers."
"Then you better get to work, Sheppard." By the sound of it, Rodney was already disassembling his gun again.
John was in no hurry to take his apart. Instead, he lifted a bit of the blindfold to look across the table at a shirtless McKay.
Rodney, noting the lack of activity across the table, looked up and frowned. "No peeking!"
"Sorry, just wanted to check out my winnings so far."
The waggle of John’s eyebrows had the blindfold slipping, but it also had Rodney’s lip twitching in amusement he couldn’t hide as he shook his head in disbelief of Sheppard’s nerve. It was a sign, a good sign that things could work out in the end.
Rodney dropped his gaze back to the gun in his hand. "This thing’s not over yet, Sheppard."
"I sure the hell hope not." This time the false confidence was gone and the raw desperation showed plainly on his face. Whatever it took, John was prepared to do it if it put things right between them again. Whatever it took, if Rodney let him, he’d do it.
Rodney glanced back up and assured, "It’s not."
Heartened, John lowered the bandana back into to place and set to taking his nine millimeter apart piece by piece, anxious to set to work on making it whole once again.
* * * * *
Chapter 3: How to Perform an Emergency Repair
There was a saying Rodney was quite fond of− if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. If only his science staff would live by that edict, he’d avoid a great deal of late night repairs and skipped meals. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Easy words to live by. But what the hell was he supposed to do if something was broke and he couldn’t fix it? What if he was faced with the Humpty Dumpty scenario and if all those broken pieces he couldn’t put back together belonged to Sheppard?
John’s breathing was fast and labored. Rodney reached a blind hand behind him to try to find John in the darkness by sound alone while still listening for the approaching footfalls of their pursuers. His fingers brushed across the cotton of John’s t-shirt and he gripped it tightly, pulling Sheppard a little closer and doing his best not to panic further over the tacky wetness he felt.
"John?" he asked in a whisper. "How’re you doing?"
"Peachy," Sheppard ground out before his knees buckled and he went down, taking Rodney with him.
The tunnel was so dark that Rodney couldn’t see anything more than a few centimeters from his face. That’s why he’d come down here in the first place, because if he couldn’t see anything, chances were the troops chasing them couldn’t see them either. Unfortunately, it also meant he couldn’t see Sheppard or the wound in John’s gut or the one gun they had that wouldn’t fucking fire, which was how John ended up shot in the first place.
Rodney tried the radio once more as he took off his jacket and used it to press against John’s abdomen. "Ronon, Teyla, do you copy?" Nothing but static answered him. "Carson, do you read me?"
Their two teammates had been out in the village delivering medical supplies with Carson while Sheppard and McKay stayed back to negotiate the additional demands the Regent of this world suddenly came up with when they tried to collect the promised ZedPM− weapons.
So much for peaceful agrarian civilizations.
Although, unlike the Genii, these people didn’t seem to have any secret military stockpile of their own; they just wanted to take what Atlantis already had to offer. When Sheppard had refused the request, the spears and swords had come out and the guards had taken their guns and other gear by force. John and Rodney had been ushered into a holding cell where they sat twiddling their thumbs for several hours. Eventually, they were called back to explain a few things about the guns. One P-90 was in pieces on the table, as was one of their radios, and the Regent’s military advisor was holding one of the nine-millimeters. The second set of fully assembled guns and radio were also sitting on the table, mere meters from where they stood.
Sheppard had taken a gamble that the man with the gun didn’t know how to operate it, and wouldn’t be able to figure it out before he could reach the other gun on the table. A few punches to the guards with spears and John and Rodney were lunging for their weapons. Rodney managed to tangle his hand in the strap of the P-90 as he dove for cover and Sheppard easily wrapped a hand around the grip of the sidearm… only when he pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t fire.
The firearm in enemy hands, however, didn’t have that problem and John staggered back a few steps with his hand to his abdomen.
Rodney had yelled something. He couldn’t remember exactly what. It was probably some incoherent word that tried to combine ‘no’, ‘son of a bitch’, and John’s name, but it was doubtful anyone even heard it over the P-90 fire he sprayed around the room. Then there were fireworks bursting behind his eyes as one of the guards John had incapacitated a few second earlier hit Rodney with the butt of his spear. Rodney dropped to all fours blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He turned in time to see Sheppard straddling the guard and delivering a vicious punch with the inoperable gun. It might not be able to fire, but it was hard enough to knock the guy unconscious. Their eyes met and Rodney blinked again to bring him into better focus, then watched John slump slowly off the guard and to the floor.
"John?" Rodney was already crawling the short distance to where Sheppard lay on the tiles looking at the blood coating his hand. He wrapped his hand around John’s wrist, squeezing tight at the sight of the red stain. "Shit."
"Need to…get outta’ here," John groaned as he rolled to his side in an attempt to gain his feet.
"Right," Rodney agreed, trying to hold his worry about John at bay and think of the best way out and back to their teammates.
Radio! They needed the radio and a goddamn gun that worked. He climbed to his feet, and took a few swaying steps toward the table and the radio that sat there, then he started looking for the P-90 that had gone flying across the floor when he was hit.
"Rodney," John called tensely as the sound of approaching footsteps indicated reinforcements were on the way. "Move."
"Shit!" Rodney repeated, gave up on his search for a gun, and went to pull John to his feet.
John’s knees went limp again as soon as McKay had one long arm wrapped around his shoulder. When his chin dipped forward, Rodney gave him a sharp shake. "Oh, like hell you’re going to pass out on me. Sheppard!"
Hazel eyes opened little more than slivers and he waved the useless gun in the direction of the back door to the room. "Go," John ordered in a garbled voice.
Rodney took the sidearm and shoved it unceremoniously into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back and headed off toward the door while simultaneously calling to the rest of his team through the radio to quickly tell them what happened and where they were. The troops in pursuit were gaining on them, and Rodney took advantage of a doorway leading down into what looked to be a cellar or underground tunnel.
That’s where he found himself now with a fading Sheppard, a radio that apparently wasn’t working underground, and a gun that wouldn’t fire. Three giant eggshells and Rodney was feeling an awful lot like one of the king’s men. John was way beyond any medical aid Rodney could offer, there was no way to boost the radio’s signal down here, but the gun… he could maybe do something about that to keep them safe until help arrived.
"Rodney…" John practically panted the name.
"I’m here," Rodney promised, placing Sheppard’s hand on top of his jacket and forcing him to press down.
"Shouldn’t be… should go… find the others."
"And you should shut up so I can work. Keep pressure here. Okay?"
McKay wasn’t convinced the pressure was as firm as it should be, but at least John’s hand seemed to stay in place as Rodney started to disassemble the gun in the dark.
"Not safe," John warned again, biting off a low moan. "No weapons…"
"I’m working on that," Rodney countered in a whisper, laying the pieces out systematically and within easy reach as he’d learned to do over the years during his multitude of blindfolded competitions he’d had with Sheppard. He’d even managed to win a few, usually when John was in the mood for a spectacular blow job from a very smug victor. "They disassembled the P-90 and the radio, so I’m assuming they probably took apart the handgun, too." He cringed at the way the metallic click of pieces coming apart echoed through the underground chamber. "If that’s the case, and they’re as inept as they’ve proven themselves to be with tech, I’m hoping they just screwed up and didn’t reassemble the gun properly."
Rodney froze when he thought he heard something, hoping like hell it was the sound of boots echoing as the guards passed by in the hallway above. The soldiers hadn’t found them yet, and he just needed a few more minutes to complete the repairs. Ronon and Teyla knew they were in trouble and were on their way to help. McKay just had to hold on and hold it together a little while longer and everything would be fine. The gun was what needed to go to pieces right then, not him. Convinced no one had discovered their hiding place yet, Rodney was about to turn his attention back to his work when John made a gurgling sound of pain and his hand reached out in a distressed search for McKay.
Rodney took it in both of his, holding it tight and scooting the short distance to where John slumped against the wall. Once there, he leaned in and kissed the injured man with a pleading desperation before resting his forehead against John’s.
"Sheppard, listen to me. I’m going to get us out of this, I promise. You have to believe me. But I need a little bit of time and you have to give it to me. Okay?" Another spasm of pain had John’s body tensing and Rodney kissed him again until it subsided. "There was one time when you didn’t wait for me when you should have. You should have and you didn’t. But I need you to wait now."
Rodney had never thrown Teer in John’s face, as much as he might have wanted to over the intervening years, he’d managed to keep her out of all their arguments they’d had since that whole time dilation fiasco. They’d rebuilt the trust slowly and eventually more strongly than ever, but Rodney had never been faced with something this terrifying in a long, long time. If it meant guilting Sheppard into staying alive for him, then so be it.
"You have to wait; give me the time I need. You owe me that much. You owe me."
John sucked in a harsh breath before nodding his head weakly. "If we…had…other gun…could race."
Rodney managed a hoarse chuckle then kissed him again. He tried not to think about how much John’s kiss in return felt like goodbye. Then he placed John’s hand back over his other still on the jacket and pressed down again to reiterate the need for pressure before turning back to the gun.
The metal was cold against his fingers as he twisted another piece free. "I’ll be collecting your shirt in a few seconds."
"Shirt…kind of…a mess," John managed to choke out.
He was right, and the only reason Rodney would want that blood-soaked garment would be to burn it. The thought had Rodney’s hands shaking even more than they had been before, so he closed his eyes and focused on his work and pushed the panic down a little further.
"Then I’ll take your pants. Rather have them anyway." McKay ran his fingertips along the recoil assembly and exhaled in a combination of relief he’d found the problem and annoyance there had been one in the first place. "The idiots didn’t put the spring back in properly."
His relief was short lived, however, when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Shit, the guards had found them, or they would shortly.
"Rodney," John practically begged in a harsh whisper, "go… please…"
He understood John’s anxiety, he really did. If he’d been the one bleeding out on the floor, he sure the hell wouldn’t have wanted to sit by and watch John die when he didn’t need to. But there was no way, absolutely no fucking way, McKay could leave him behind. If that meant they went out like Butch and Sundance against the Bolivians, Rodney at least planned to have a little firepower in his hands as they made their last stand.
The pieces slid back together by rote, easily, automatically. In a few seconds, Rodney slammed the clip into place and fired toward the approaching lantern light. He was rewarded by a cry from one of the men and the sound of the others scattering. One down but how many others were left? The lack of return fire suggested the functional guns Rodney had lost in the room above had yet to be located, or the people who knew how to use them were dead. As he fired once more, McKay sincerely hoped it was the latter. However, it was doubtful sixteen shots would hold off all the guards for long.
Rodney eased back until he felt John’s shoulder against his spine. As long as he was between them and Sheppard, he’d keep firing and everything would be okay. Everything had to be okay. The clatter of metal off to the right had him firing toward the sound, then to his left when another noise caught his attention. It was dark, so goddamn dark, and the troops had been smart enough to leave their lanterns behind when they started advancing on him. He was firing blind, literally, and that was his only option. He had to be smart, save the bullets for when he had a chance to actually hit something. He had to hold it together.
Just a little longer, he told himself. One way or another, this would be over in a matter of minutes.
He could feel himself shaking, and apparently, so could Sheppard. John’s hand pressed flat against Rodney’s shoulder blade, more of a consolation than encouragement, and Rodney leaned back into it even as he fired again.
He wasn’t sure how many rounds he had left, and he found himself trying to count in recollection even as he shot another one. Hell, he wasn’t even sure how long he’d been firing. Seconds? Minutes? Days? It doesn’t matter, he tried to reason with himself. Just shoot until you can’t shoot anymore. So he concentrated on the feel of the textured grip in his hand and the press of John’s hand on his back, and fired until he finally heard not an ear-shattering bang, but a heartbreaking click.
John’s grip moved to Rodney’s shoulder, and Rodney reached up and entwined their fingers, silently saying all that needed to be said between them. They’d go together. Rodney honestly couldn’t imagine any other way, because life without John wouldn’t be any kind of life he wanted to live. He could hear the guards approaching in the darkness, scurrying closer like rats…goddamn rats with big ass swords… and tightened his hold on John’s hand. It wasn’t that bad, he decided, facing the end with John right beside him. It wasn’t that bad at all. Then there was the sound of P-90 fire, the distinctive zip of Ronon’s gun discharging, and the impossible happened… the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang swooped in and kicked a little Bolivian ass.
The funny thing was, now that it looked like they might make it out of this mess alive, all the calm Rodney had felt a few seconds earlier vanished and the simmering panic bubbled to the surface once again. He could hear someone yelling at Carson to do something for John, and it wasn’t until Ronon took him by the scruff of his shirt and shook him that Rodney realized he was the one screaming.
"McKay," Ronon ordered, "get it together!"
Rodney looked around at his teammates as if he was truly seeing them for the first time. "I…I can’t."
Teyla placed a comforting hand on his chest, glanced to where Carson was working on John, then turned back to Rodney. "You must. For John’s sake, you must."
Rodney wanted to laugh. She had no clue, no fucking clue, how he’d been doing just that for exactly that reason for what seemed like an eternity. But then Carson was saying they needed to get John back to Atlantis as soon as possible, and Ronon was carrying him as Teyla and McKay cleared a path through the remaining guards back to the Jumper, and then Rodney was piloting them back through the gate.
Once they were back in Atlantis, once the initial rush to the infirmary was over, and once John was in surgery, Rodney slid down the wall, pulled up his knees, buried his face in hands still stained with John’s blood, and finally, finally allowed himself to shatter into a million pieces. It was with a sudden clarity that Rodney finally saw that he’d been the one playing Humpty Dumpty in this scenario all along.
Ronon didn’t stop him, just dropped to a squat beside him in the hallway, and Rodney barely felt Teyla’s arm around his shoulder. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Sometime, though, if it breaks, it helps to let it stay broken for a while longer. Fortunately, this time, his team not only understood the sentiment, they encouraged it.
* * * * *
Chapter 4: Reviewing Your Work
"John!"
Ah, the beckoning bellow of the love of his life.
John looked up from the newspaper he was reading as he ate his bowl of Lucky Charms at the kitchen table. "What?" he yelled back around a mouthful of milk and cereal.
Apparently Rodney hadn’t heard him as he shouted even louder this time. "Sheppard!"
"I’m eating!" John informed him from the kitchen, but he stood and headed out through the living room and upstairs in the direction of McKay’s voice. Rodney didn’t sound like he was in distress, but nearly three decades on Atlantis had taught him never to take anything for granted, especially when it involved McKay.
"My marshmallows are doing to disintegrate by the time I get back," John informed him as he took the stairs with a wince at the ache in his knee. Weather must be coming in. Yeah, that’s the reason, Sheppard thought dryly, it wouldn’t have anything to do with turning sixty-five in a couple of months. "They dissolve and when they do, they turn my milk that funky gray…what the hell are you doing?"
The last was asked when he saw the lower half of Rodney’s body sticking out of the ceiling as he stood on the pull down ladder that led to the attic. He was wearing khaki pants similar to those he’d worn the first year on Atlantis. Sheppard actually liked the pants, they brought back memories of earlier times when they had to sneak around to be together, and as a result, the sex had been smoking hot. Not to mention, even to this day, he liked the way McKay’s ass looked in them. He could have done without the sweaters Rodney insisted on wearing over them, however. John had tried, God knew he’d tried, to gently steer Rodney away from the Mr. Rogers apparel his holographic image had been wearing nearly fifty thousand years in the future. Despite his best efforts, he had failed miserably. Of course, Rodney had done the same thing when it came to John’s preferred daily attire of jeans, t-shirt, and tracksuit jacket, but when your days primarily consisted of a little yard work and walking the dog, who needed anything else? Although, by the looks of things, Rodney had plans for the day other than housework and pet care.
"Where are your discharge papers?" Rodney asked from his perch on the ladder.
"My discharge papers?" John frowned in confusion, reaching down to scratch Cash behind the ears when the black lab nudged behind his leg. "Why do you need those?"
"I don’t need them," Rodney clarified, "but apparently the accountant does. They have to be in one of these boxes up here because they aren’t in any of the files in the office."
"Why does our accountant need my discharge paperwork?" John watched the dog trot down the stairs and head toward the kitchen, a bit envious of both the dog’s ease with the steps, and the fact he was going to get to eat his breakfast and it wasn’t going to be a soggy mess when he got to it.
"How the hell should I know? If I cared to know what accountants did, I wouldn’t need to hire one." The shuffle of cardboard boxes within Rodney’s reach ceased as he reconsidered. "Actually, maybe it was the attorney that needed them."
It wouldn’t have been uncommon for Rodney to confuse the two. He’d never been good at keeping the ‘peons’ in his life straight; just ask the myriad of scientist who had come and gone from Atlantis over the years and McKay had never once called them by their actual name. Or it could have just as easily been a result of the remnants of the damage done by the space amoeba that had taken up residence in Rodney’s brain over twenty-five years ago. The docs at the SGC had said it was nothing to worry about; it wasn’t going to get anywhere near as serious as it had been when the parasite was actually in Rodney’s head. Although, the permanent damage it had done that was barely discernable back in his forties would become more noticeable the older he got. Carson had tried to explain it as things that should go in Rodney’s longer term memory would occasionally be misfiled or get reshuffled into the short term areas. John took comfort in the fact that he showed up in enough of Rodney’s memories that no matter where one of their shared remembrances ended up filed, there would be plenty more for Rodney to hold onto to know exactly what their lives together meant to them both. And if it was something John really wanted him to remember, he just told him again… and again, if necessary… until it finally stuck where it was supposed to.
Surprisingly, John was more okay with it than Rodney was. Considering all the damn allergies and mitral valve defect and high blood pressure John had lost sleep over since they’d met, a little bit of Swiss cheese in the recollection centers was a piece of cake. McKay, however, started worrying that he would forget some key piece of information at a critical time, like when the city was under attack, and had started talking retirement. John had readily agreed, not for the reason Rodney had stated, but the fact that he wasn’t as fast and agile as he’d once been, which made watching Rodney’s back harder and harder as the years passed.
John could hear the strain in Rodney’s voice that he’d possibly forgotten something again and breezed past it easily. "Well, whichever one it is, I’m sure they’ll call back and ask for it again if it’s really that important." Hefting himself up onto the ladder, John climbed to the rung below the one McKay was standing on and peered around his shoulder to look at the boxes in the dark crawl space.
"Don’t get any ideas, General," Rodney warned with a mischievous glance over his shoulder when John leaned against his back. "This is official business."
"Seeing as we’re officially retired, those ideas are supposed to be our only official business these days." Sheppard grinned and gave him a quick kiss before pointing. "I’m guessing it’s one of those two."
"Why those?" Rodney sounded genuinely curious about John’s reasoning.
"Chronology. Every time we put a box up here, the ones we put in before get pushed further back. Those three there are the Christmas decorations I just put up here a few months ago, those back in the corner are probably the stuff we never unpacked when we moved in, so the ones between are probably the ones you’re looking for."
Rodney shook his head with a snort. "I still can’t believe you have three big ass boxes of Christmas decorations. And these don’t even include all the crap in the garage."
"Hey," John defended, "a man has to have pride in his home, and there was no damn way I was going to let a podiatrist with a Beemer and a shih tzu beat me when it came to holiday spirit."
Even Sheppard had to admit that the escalating annual competition between him and the Warners across the street got a little out of hand this past winter. Rodney had threatened to cancel John’s credit cards if he came home with one more inflatable penguin dressed in a ski suit or polar bear wearing a scarf and hat. John couldn’t argue with McKay’s assessment that their front yard had looked like the deranged lovechild of Animal Planet and a Land’s End catalog. But Christmas back on Earth was always a little rough on John; it always seemed to remind him just how far away they were from their extended family back in Pegasus. As far as coping mechanisms went, John could think of worse things to do than stringing a couple miles of icicle lights on their eaves and setting up mechanized, lighted reindeers on their lawn.
Rodney rolled his eyes. "And to think, I was the one people accused of being petty." With a grunt, he reached and pulled one of the boxes toward them.
John took advantage and laid his head against the spread of Rodney’s back, closing his eyes and listening to the beat of Rodney’s heart through that damn cardigan he was wearing. He exhaled in perfect contentment.
"Hey," Rodney called quietly.
"Hey, yourself," John responded nuzzling into the sweater a little more.
"You okay?" The smile on John’s face was apparently enough to keep the concern out of McKay’s tone but not the befuddlement.
John cracked an eye to see the familiar crooked curl of lips soften the lines on Rodney’s face. For a split second he looked like the man with whom Sheppard had taken those first fateful steps into an Ancient city, who had let John push him off a balcony while he wore a personal shield, who had stood up to a super-Wraith to buy Sheppard a little more time, who had stolen John’s heart with his genius and ego shining bright, and his even more impressive bravery and selflessness hidden behind the bravado.
"Never better," John told him truthfully.
Even though they were a galaxy away from people who were more family than friends, even though he was in a grudge match with a middle-aged doctor and his yappy lap dog across the street, even though his cereal was no doubt turning into mush on the kitchen table, it didn’t matter because he had everything he needed right here.
Rodney’s smile grew as he brushed a hand through John’s hair. "Help me with these boxes and I’ll see what I can do to make it better still."
Sheppard stepped off the few rungs below him then took the boxes Rodney handed down. John had the first one open by the time McKay joined him and peeked over his shoulder.
"Is that your Medal of Honor?"
John opened the hinged box and looked at the green laurel wreath motif surrounding a gold star with Lady Liberty in the middle and ‘valor’ across the top, "Huh. I’d wondered where that had gotten to."
It wasn’t that Sheppard wasn’t proud of the commendation, it was just that every time he looked at it, he thought of all the others who had been under his command over the years who deserved as much, if not more, than him.
"Maybe you should wear that the next time you mow the lawn," Rodney suggested as he reached into the cardboard box. "No way Warner could compete with that."
"Honestly, I think he was more impressed with the giant inflatable snow globe with the dancing elves than he would be with this." John shut the box and set it aside and pulled out a folder of papers.
"Who could blame him? That snow globe won you the hundred dollar first prize from the home owner’s association. Save the entire planet from an alien invasion and all you get is a visit to the White House and a steak dinner…although I will admit, it was a pretty tasty steak."
"Well," John drawled as he flipped through the papers, "not everything comes with a monetary prize like your Nobel, McKay."
"A prize I had to split with Radek and Sam," Rodney grumbled, not for the first time.
"We all have our crosses to bear," John responded distractedly at the all too familiar bitch. "I don’t see the papers in here, maybe the other box."
As John moved to the second box, Rodney continued to dig through the first. There were a lot of things in these boxes John hadn’t thought about in years. A big chunk of it would be considered junk by most people who saw it. There were stacks of CDs labeled ‘photos’ that John had always planned to go through and never had. There were things from various planets they’d visited that had been given as gifts that Sheppard had always meant to throw out, but could never bring himself to do because they came from some alien civilization that he had visited with Rodney and Teyla and Ronon… his team, his family.
And there was more.
There was a photo of Ford’s grandparents John had taken from the young man’s room before he finally packed up the belongings and shipped them back to Earth. There was the ceramic pot John had given Elizabeth for her birthday that first year in the city. There was a hand-tied fishing lure that had belonged to Carson… the original Carson…Rodney had squirreled away decades before.
There were happier mementos, too. Hard copies of photos of his team dressed as the Fantastic Four for Halloween one year. It had taken Rodney a while to explain to Ronon why being made out of stone could be considered a superhero trait. A cork from a champagne bottle, God only knew where Rodney had found that, when don’t ask, don’t tell was finally revoked and they didn’t have to hide any more. The very detailed, and notated, list Rodney had written logically documenting why he felt they should get married. It had taken a good day and a half before John actually read the entire thing seeing as he’d said yes as soon as he saw the title written at the top of the page. There was even the two groom wedding cake topper that Radek had meticulously embellished with tiny P-90s and a life signs detector.
All these random pieces of life haphazardly stored in a couple of boxes in an attic that, when assembled in the proper order, told the story of John Sheppard and Rodney McKay. When looked at in the right way, they all made perfect sense… at least they did to John.
"What the hell are these?"
John glanced up to see Rodney lifting out two long strands of beads held together with an array of intricate knots. McKay’s forehead crinkled in something akin to disgust, but more than likely it was confusion. With Rodney, they almost equated to the same thing.
"They’re from the wedding," John told him as he turned back to the stack of papers he’d found in his box.
"Ours?" Rodney asked in surprise.
Sheppard frowned at the question. "You know, McKay, I’m not sure if I’m more insulted that you can’t remember the details of our wedding enough to know we didn’t wear Athosian family braids, or if I’m more worried that you can’t remember Torren’s wedding from two years ago."
"You know things get a little… garbled now and again." Rodney’s hands fluttered at his temple in frustration as he pulled out a few more things from the box. "But I remember the important parts of our wedding, like our wedding night."
John leaned over and pulled Rodney into a kiss, partially to distract Rodney from his irritation over his forgetfulness, but mostly because he just wanted to kiss the man.
"That was pretty damn unforgettable." John kissed him again, this time taking a more leisurely approach before asking, "You do remember the baby’s due next month. Right? Not ours, but Torren’s and Bethal’s?"
Rodney gave a whack to Sheppard’s shoulder at the grin on his face. "Yes, I remember. How can I forget when they’re naming her after me?"
John’s lips twitched as they did every time he recalled Rodney’s face when Torren and his wife had excitedly delivered the news to McKay that they planned to name their unborn daughter after him. "Hey, you were the one who always complained Teyla named him Torren John. At least he’s finally going to recognize your role in his birth with little Meredith."
McKay crossed his arms and lifted his chin. "And exactly who told him Meredith is often used as a girl’s name on Earth?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," John evaded, then held up a stack of papers victoriously. "Hey, I found it! I’ll go fax it before we lose it again."
"Who are you faxing it to?"
With a shrug, John dismissed. "I’ll send it to both of them with your name at the top. The one who needs it can use it, the one who doesn’t will assume you screwed up." He used the forms to deliver a quick double tap to McKay’s head.
"Gee, thanks," Rodney responded drolly before smiling when he found a gun case and pulled it out. "Hey, look at this. It’s our old Berettas. I’d forgotten these were even up here."
To be honest, so had John. This model had been decommissioned years before, but like so many other things, Sheppard couldn’t seem to let them go. Still, he hadn’t worn a gun in almost two years, and what did that say about their lives now that they didn’t feel the need to have the guns strapped to their thighs every waking moment? It said that they were pretty damn good lives. The best Sheppard could imagine.
Rodney held up the handgun with a wolfish grin. "What say, after you finish faxing those papers, we find some blindfolds and have a few rounds of strip firearm maintenance?"
John’s predatory smile in return vanished, however, when McKay gave the gun an enticing waggle …and the magazine dropped out onto the floor. The two them stared at the clip laying on the carpet in their hallway− Rodney in stunned silence and John in wry amusement.
Finally, Sheppard raised his eyebrows in mock concern. "I hope that’s not an indication of what I should expect of your performance when I get back."
John turned on his heels when Rodney’s open-mouthed gape of surprise transformed into a glower of outrage. Grinning, he headed for the fax machine in the office, knowing full well McKay wouldn’t let him down. God knew the man never had in the past, not since those first pieces of their lives snapped together so perfectly all those years ago. But it never hurt to give Rodney a little motivation to exceed expectations.
The End