[fic] We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Crisis (SGA, R)
TITLE: We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Crisis
RATING: R
SUMMARY: This is a story about sex and power. And, um, monkeys and PowerPoint. (And love.) McKay/Sheppard, ~8100 words.
Follows from High As Heaven.
NOTE: So many thanks to 2am-optimism, cincodemaygirl, etben, jettdelirium, melannen, stellar-dust, and up-from-ashes. I don't know how any of them are so awesome.
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Crisis
Rodney wakes up to tinny, tiny Czech shouting coming from his bedside table.
He opens his eyes halfway and reaches across--oh, okay, reaches across John, and one crisis at a time, so he'll save the freaking out about that until whatever Zelenka's yelling about is resolved--to pick up his earpiece, and fits it into his ear as John stirs beside him.
"What, what?" Rodney says irritably into the microphone. John is still, ridiculously, wearing his wristwatch, and Rodney pulls John's hand over to check the time. It's much later than it should be.
"Rodney! Get out of bed, there's been a fluctuation in the ZPM power levels."
"What, a power drain? I told them not to hook up the full shield, we can't sustain it at the levels needed to--" It's strange, delivering a diatribe to the ceiling, but he'd dropped John's hand onto his own chest where it seems pretty happy, and well, he doesn't feel much like moving.
"No, not a drain," Zelenka says impatiently. "Power spike. The ZPM charged itself by point seven percent," and this time Rodney does sit up and then stand up and then hop around the room looking for his pants while John props himself up on his elbows and watches, amused and disheveled.
"When did it happen?" Rodney barks. "What happened? I'm, I'm on my way."
When, Zelenka tells him, they can probably track down, but how is anybody's guess, and so Rodney says, "I'll be there in three minutes. Don't touch anything," and temporarily puts his shoes on the wrong feet before taking a deep breath, fixes it, and keys off his radio to briefly fall back onto the bed and kiss John down into the pillows and say, "Can we? Later, later we can, yes, okay."
John says, "Yeah, okay, after . . . later, yeah," and Rodney scurries out the door and is gone.
***
"We did not notice until this morning," Zelenka says, handing the datapad to Rodney as they make their way back from the ZPM. The program that tracks ZPM energy consumption shows no change, no change, no change, and then blip! point seven percent increase; the ZPM itself just sat there calmly, as your traditional inanimate power sources do.
"We don't have that alarmed?" Rodney says. They've got sudden power drains alarmed, of course; there's this really spectacular flashing light and beepy thing when that happens, but apparently--
"I do not think that anyone considered that the power levels would spontaneously increase," Zelenka said. "Is alarmed now," and the rest of the morning is taken up with cross-checking every single device hooked up to Atlantis' main power to see if they can spot a correlation that will hopefully get them that much closer to figuring out how to get the kind of power that leaders of small hot countries can only dream about.
It's late afternoon before Rodney stretches his arm out for his coffee and realizes that he hasn't showered. His brain goes, shower, morning, night before, clicks into reason for questionable freshness and lands on slept with John Sheppard.
"I'm going to go take a, a break," he says, very casually. "I haven't, you know, showered or eaten or, um, showered," and he manages not to flail a hand out toward the door.
Zelenka barely looks up. "Yes, yes, go, we can run tedious diagnostics ourselves."
When Rodney gets back to his quarters, there's no sign of John, save for the rumpled bed and the slight sense that someone else has used his shower.
Rodney's very faintly disappointed, but he tells himself it's just the ZPM.
***
Rodney picks up a tray in the mess hall and starts forward and hesitates three times before just taking a deep breath and striding forward to plonk his food down next to Elizabeth and John like it's any other workday.
They all three of them show on their faces the strain of the last few days, of too little sleep and too many deaths, but now the smudges under Elizabeth's eyes look like victory, and John's wearing the tiniest smile as he forks up his macaroni. Rodney nods at them as he sits down, and smiles too.
"How soon are we fully operational?" Elizabeth says.
Rodney shakes his head. "No time at all," he says around a mouthful of food. "Very little damage to major systems, and the structural damage won't affect day-to-day." He waves the hand holding the fork. "I'll have full reports for you at the briefing later, that's all the boring stuff. The fun part is the ZPM."
John quirks an eyebrow at that. He looks like he's just woken up, sleepy eyes and quiet. Freshly shaven. Clean uniform that wasn't worn during six hours in the chair. His hair's still wet, and Rodney desperately yanks his brain away from contemplation of John Sheppard and back to the ZPM.
"Spontaneous charge," he says triumphantly. "Point seven percent. Of course, we have absolutely no idea how it happened, but we're working on that. The important thing is it can be done."
"I don't want you pulling resources from vital projects to work on this, Rodney," Elizabeth tells him. "Our main priority right now is to bring all systems back up."
Rodney waves her off. "Don't worry, don't worry, it takes the computing power of a Game Boy to run the diagnostic. We're basically checking every system in Atlantis for a power spike at 0100 last night. A monkey could do it."
John frowns, but before he can share his brilliant insight with the rest of the class Elizabeth nods and rises to leave.
"I have every faith in you, Rodney," she says to him seriously. "And your monkeys."
When she's gone, Rodney turns to John and tries to think of something that isn't worthy of a sixteen-year-old girl. "Um," he says, and John just smirks at him.
"What?" Rodney says peevishly, and stabs his fork down into a cracker.
John's smile is growing wider. He blinks slowly, once, and Rodney feels himself start to flush.
"What?" he says again, supressing a grin and playing with his fork, and that's it. He is a sixteen-year-old girl and he's sitting with the coolest boy in class and just as he decides to stab himself with the fork John says, "You free later?"
"Actually--" Rodney starts, but John cuts him off smoothly.
"Apparently a meeting with Heightmeyer is compulsory when you get your brain plugged into a weapons system for six hours, but I could come find you around 2100. If you're not busy," John says casually, and tops it off with a sidelong glance, as though that's actually necessary.
Rodney nods slowly, carefully refraining from grabbing John's jacket and pulling him across the table--traumatizing the kitchen staff at this point would probably be a bad idea--and says, "I'll, um. Yes. I'll see you then."
***
The minute Rodney's door whooshes shut behind John, Rodney's on him, pulling him close and kissing him like he's been thinking about it all day. Which, okay, he hasn't really, more like since dinner, but Rodney's always been good at fitting a full day's worth of work into a few hours, so why should this be any different?
"Hello, John," John says when Rodney finally lets him up for air. "Nice to see you. How was your day?"
"Why don't you just pretend I have manners?" Rodney says seriously into the side of John's neck as he applies himself to John's zippers and buttons. "It'll save time." Rodney's never really been particularly good at multitasking.
John, on the other hand--John is very good, and so he keeps up a running dialogue the entire time his hands are doing other things: "Hello, Rodney, it's good to see you too. Well, my day was just fine. Got laid, pretty great, slept for about twelve hours, although--" John punctuates his sentence with a kiss-- "he ran off before I could really say good morning properly."
Rodney pulls him over to the bed. "I'm sure you'll get another chance," he says, and that's the last complete sentence he manages for a while.
It's slow this time, slow and lazy like there's nothing else in the world to do. Vacation sex, Rodney thinks. Last night's almost frightening intensity is tempered--Atlantis is in their thoughts but not inside their minds, curled up in her own space safe and quiet, and they move against each other smooth and unhurried.
Until, of course, Rodney's radio yells in his ear and he hits himself in the head and says shortly, "Busy now," and throws the radio across the room.
John has collapsed and is muffling his laughter against Rodney's skin.
"Oh, shut up," Rodney says. "I hope next time Elizabeth calls you. Just watch. And you can go back to doing that, please."
"Well, yes," John says, blinking, "except that I take my radio off when I'm having sex." He goes back to doing that, and Rodney's head thumps back down onto the pillow.
Later, when John is asleep, Rodney locates his radio and has an extremely quiet conversation with the lab monkey on duty--bells, whistles, large flashing lights. The ZPM's up another point three percent.
Rodney looks across the room at the chiaroscuro study of John Sheppard: sheets twisted around his angular body, mouth open, almost snoring, and not even a ZPM could take Rodney away.
"It'll wait until morning," he says into the radio, and goes back to bed.
***
As promised, Rodney gets a very nice good morning from John, waking up in the early-morning twilight to warm hands and the even warmer knowledge that they can stay in bed all morning if they want to because for once there's no emergency, no hive ships on the way, no plagues of frogs, no crisis. Rodney's even willing to forgive John for it being five-thirty in the morning.
Which he does. At length.
When they finally make it out of Rodney's quarters, Atlantis is fully awake, bustling with people putting her back together after the frenzy of the last few days.
"So," Rodney says as they walk toward the labs, "I didn't ask, but I suppose you're back to yourself now?"
They've reached a transporter, and John gives him the trashiest eyebrow raise Rodney's ever seen.
"No, I didn't mean--" Rodney says. "Atlantis. After the chair. Is she um. Out of your brain, or can you still track lifesigns?"
John shrugs, one of his elaborately casual shrugs that fools no one. "About back to normal, I think. She hasn't told me about the ZPM, if that's what you're asking."
She, Rodney thinks, and is irrationally pleased that he shares this with John, this city-love. She, they can say casually; they can discuss her quirks and her wonders. Not even Elizabeth has that with John, not Lorne or Carson, and Rodney tries very hard to wipe the goofy grin from his face, because they've reached the populated hallways and the labs.
"Well," Rodney says as seriously as he can, "I'm a genius. I'm sure I'll figure it out."
***
The irony--or possibly the beauty--of it is that John is the one who figures it out.
"Huh," John says, and Rodney has learned by now that "Huh" doesn't ever mean "Huh." It means "I guess we are within range of their weapons" or "The jumper thinks we're upside down" or "I just realized this woman has been hitting on me for the past three hours."
"What?" Rodney demands, and John immediately shutters down.
"Nothing," John says, darting his eyes toward Zelenka, who is staring at a laptop screen, his head propped on one hand.
"Oh," Rodney says. "Radek!"
Zelenka looks up.
"Go, um, double-check the ZPM connections, will you? There's this weird, um, there's this weird blip in the data here, so could you go. Check."
Zelenka, mercifully, gets up. "Why don't I go get lunch?" he says. "I am sure you will make much more progress without me in your way."
Once he's gone, Rodney turns to John again. "What?"
John points at the chart that shows ZPM use over the past few days. "Interesting times for it to charge," he says.
Rodney looks at it for the millionth time. Three spikes, two in the middle of the night and one more this morning, but apparently Sheppard can't ever just tell him something, so he crosses his arms and looks at him.
"Notice anything else significant about those times?" John says, and raises his eyebrows meaningfully.
"Other than the fact that they don't correlate to any sort of cycle on Atlantis, nor any natural rhythm, including the rotation of the planet or the alignment of the stars even ten thousand years ago," Rodney begins, "other than that they're . . . completely . . . random . . . "
His eyes widen and he looks up at John, agape.
John smirks. "Congratulations, Rodney. You've just discovered the secret of the zero point module."
"Oh, my God," Rodney says, and then he smiles. "We just won the Nobel Prize for Sex."
***
"We have to tell him," Rodney says, looking out over the sea.
John slowly turns his head toward Rodney and looks at him like he's finally gone insane, the setting sunlight gold and pink shadowing the side of his face.
"No, no," Rodney says. "Zelenka's like a terrier, he won't stop until he figures it out and by then everyone in the entire science department will know."
John nods, not as in agreement but just in acknowledgement, and moves from leaning on the railing of the balcony to sitting on the floor, and stretches his legs out in front of him. "If we just . . . stopped," he says.
Because that really is the simplest solution, to just never have sex again and hope that Zelenka will chalk up the power spikes to something else and forget all about it.
Except for it being the crappiest plan ever, what with the never having sex again.
"Or," Rodney says, because they are so not going with John's plan, "we could continue having the wonderful sex and incidentally replenishing our fuel source while we do it, thus combining the two best things in the entire universe. Also, we'll have to tell Elizabeth."
John buries his face in his hands.
It's true, though. They really will have to tell Elizabeth, and not that it's a conversation Rodney really wants to have, but still, she knows about the ZPM charging, she'll keep it all confidential, she'll fight for them when the SGC finds out . . .
"Wait," John says. "The SGC doesn't find out."
"What? There'll be a report, they'll know."
"No," John says more slowly, like he's explaining things to a third-grader, or a llama, "we're not telling the SGC, because then I will get fired, and then--"
Rodney sighs. "Neither sex nor power." He thunks his head back against the city wall.
John puts his hand flat on the floor, not meeting Rodney's eyes. "If we didn't mention you," he says, "if we just called it one more creepy connection between Sheppard and the city . . . "
They outline the plan between the two of them then, sitting out on the balcony until the sky is dark and the stars come out, lit up bright and sparkling like their city.
Rodney hates the plan.
Not that it's not a good plan--left to their own devices, he and John will come up with a decent plan the majority of the time, that incident with the lasagna notwithstanding--but Rodney hates that this is how they have to do it: have to hide what's between the two of them and trivialize their connection to Atlantis in the name of discretion.
"All right," Rodney says. "That's, that's what we'll do."
It's dark enough now that he hears rather than sees John turn to him, and dark enough that when John kisses him, he doesn't worry that they're in the open.
"Although," John says softly, pausing with his mouth close against Rodney's ear, "we really should test it one more time. Duplicate the results, you know."
Rodney nods. "Of course, of course," he says, and scrambles to his feet. "Colonel Sheppard, would you care to assist me in testing a theory?"
John rises next to him, dark shadows and gleaming white grin like the Cheshire Cat. "Why, Doctor McKay," he says. "It would be my pleasure."
***
Once, not long after they'd gotten to Atlantis, there had been an offworld mission during which Rodney had had to marry Teyla, and they had both subsequently been painted with some sort of blue dye that had taken about a week to wear off. Indigo-patterned and explaining the marriage customs of an alien people to the entire senior staff, carefully not looking at the blue fingerprints on Teyla, Rodney thought to himself, Well, at least we're getting the most awkward meeting in my life over with now.
He thinks about that now, as he opens the laptop so he doesn't have to look at anybody's face. "Way to jinx yourself, McKay," he mutters.
"Rodney?" Elizabeth says, jolting him into the present. "I take it this is about the ZPM?"
He looks up. "Yes, yes. We've, um, a couple of days ago the ZPM seemed to have spontaneously charged itself, registering a spike in power of point seven percent. There were additional charges," he says, and turns the laptop around to point at the screen, because setting up the PowerPoint projector is always more trouble than it's worth and he just wants to get this over with, "here and here, and the last one, um, last night."
Zelenka is doodling. Rodney wonders if he could possibly prompt Sheppard to shoot him before he has to finish the presentation. He risks a quick glance his way, but John's playing with a pen and not about to meet anyone's eyes.
No help forthcoming, Rodney continues. "The, the spikes cannot be traced to any currently operational system in Atlantis, nor do they correspond to any natural or artificial cycle in the city, but in fact seem to originate from and correspond to--" he takes a deep breath-- "Instances of sexual activity in a strong carrier of the ATA gene," he finishes quickly.
The laptop makes a horribly loud scraping sound in the otherwise complete silence of the briefing room as he turns it back around.
"Um," he says. "As Colonel Sheppard noted," and John slouches down just a little bit further in his chair.
Elizabeth turns a very delicate shade of pink as she stares at her papers. "Well, Rodney," she says. "Thank you."
More awkward silence.
"So," Rodney says loudly, pulling out the only big gun he has, the one labeled ASSHOLE, "if I can just get the cooperation of Colonel Sheppard for further testing and possibly work out some sort of a schedule that would meet our current power needs--"
He's instantly cut off by a chorus of concerned voices.
"Rodney!" Elizabeth exclaims, as John himself narrows his eyes and says, "I won't shoot you right now, McKay, how's that for cooperation? Stay the hell out of my personal life."
"Rodney, you are not to pursue this matter further," Elizabeth continues. "Unless Colonel Sheppard is willing to volunteer any information--"
"Really not," says John.
"--this matter will be considered closed to non-senior personnel and no formal report will be made to the SGC. This is sensitive material," Elizabeth says, looking around the room at them all, "and I trust that this information will not leave this room."
They all nod, getting up to leave and Carson clears his throat. "I'm going to have to insist on a medical examination, Colonel Sheppard," he says almost apologetically. "And one of the young lady concerned as well."
Rodney pretends not to notice, picks up his laptop, and panics panics panics.
John inclines his head and follows Carson out of the room.
Elizabeth nods to Rodney and Zelenka before sweeping out of the room, and Zelenka turns to Rodney. "Point seven percent," he says. "If only he could be convinced to use his powers for good."
Rodney nods, staring off into the middle distance. "Just imagine."
***
Carson escorts Rodney to a private exam room as soon as he steps into the infirmary. Possibly he saw Rodney walk past the doorway four times.
Either way, Rodney's grateful for small mercies as he hops up onto an exam bed and takes off his jacket for the inevitable bloodletting.
"Are you noticing anything out of the ordinary that could be related to the ZPM charges?" Carson asks, fastening a blood pressure cuff around Rodney's arm.
"No," Rodney says, "just the u--um. What makes you think I'm in here for that?"
The sphygmomanometer is ticking down as the pressure lets off and Carson is silent until it stops. There's a tear of velcro and Carson looks up at him with genuine surprise. "You're going to tell me you're not?"
***
Rodney is let go from the infirmary minus a lot of his bodily fluids and plus one of the small paper bags that Carson puts prescriptions in. Passing one of the packs of marines that seem to roam the hallways like schools of fish, he nods and tries to put on a face that says I am carrying industrial-grade tranquilizers because I am very, very important and stressed. I am certainly not carrying anything that will aid in my committing scandalous acts upon your CO. Heavens, no.
The marines nod back as they pass--"Doctor," one of them says politely--and Rodney escapes into a transporter, the bag rustling ominously in his hand.
***
"So," John says, sitting down awkwardly on the bed. "All clear."
Rodney nods. "Yes, we're--" he makes a hand gesture that on second thought seems really, really ill-advised-- "good to go."
"Well, then. Good."
"Yes, it's um . . . " Rodney trails off and falls silent for a moment, and then sort of lunges sideways to kiss John.
John freezes.
"What?" Rodney says against John's mouth. It comes out a lot less sexy than he'd intended.
John's quiet, and then: "Radek Zelenka knows I'm having sex right now."
Rodney ponders this and flops down backward on the bed. The prospect is certainly enough to kill anyone's libido.
"We could," Rodney says, "just watch a movie or something," and he turns his head to see John looking at him like he's an idiot, and yes, if he himself had to choose between sex with a side of mild embarrassment, and no sex at all, he knows which one he'd choose.
"Or, I mean," he starts, looking straight up at the ceiling, "perhaps some scientific experimentation is in order. I mean, we don't know exactly what triggers the charge." He hears the zip of John's jacket, and then John's applying himself to Rodney's shoes. Rodney continues: "I mean, it could be you, it could be me, who knows? We don't need to go jumping to conclusions that Radek necessarily knows you're having sex; it might not even be related to you."
John appears in Rodney's field of vision. "Egomaniac," he says, and moves out of sight again.
"There's certainly nothing wrong with testing a hypothesis," Rodney says as the bed dips next to him and John lays down.
"All right," John says. "But if you make a spreadsheet I'm leaving."
***
Rodney's life is perfect for exactly one week.
Well, okay, perfect except for either rebuilding or sealing off the portions of the city that were damaged in the battle; except for attending the funerals of four people who were in said sections of Atlantis; except for that he's never quite sure if he means one Earth week, in which case the perfect week started at eight o'clock in the morning on the morning after, or one Atlantean week, in which case he gets to count from before the time John wandered into Rodney's quarters and drifted one hand across the wall (but then, of course, he has to count the part of that day where he had to manually rewire part of the shield after it took damage, lying in shards of glass and metal, his hands up inside a console like he was some country vet delivering a cow).
Either way.
One week of John mostly off-duty and bored, and Rodney learned in high school that when you let smart people get bored they get creative, although in high school he never considered that he would reap such spectacular benefits from boredom.
Rodney's considering this with one of his two functioning brain cells as he stares up at the ceiling, lying tangled both with John and with the sheet. The other neuron fires, and he really hopes that there isn't a fire in the next few minutes, because he doesn't think he'd be able to extricate himself.
There's a noise, and it isn't a smoke detector--does Atlantis even have smoke detectors, or would she just quietly put out the flames?--but the sound of two radios urgently going off at once.
John flails a hand out to the table and grabs one, listens for a moment, and hands it off to Rodney before fitting the other one into his ear, snapping, "Sheppard," as he vaults out of bed, kicking off the sheet wrapped around his ankle, and yanks on his pants.
Rodney can't help but be impressed, because it's about all he can do to parse Radek's panicked shouting into actual sentences.
When he does, though, he's up and dressed almost as quickly as John, who's just disappearing into the hallway, two steps into running as the door shuts behind him.
***
"Secondary shields!" Radek is yelling as Rodney runs down the hall to the transporter.
What? "We don't have secondary shields," Rodney says, and emerges at his lab.
"We do now," Radek says from where he's pointing at the screen, not missing a beat. "Building-specific or, in some cases, specific to rooms. Isn't using as much power as the main shield--"
"That's good," Rodney says.
"--but came online suddenly, without prompting, and started in an area where a team was fixing structural damage."
" . . . that's bad," Rodney says. Even at a low power, anybody in the way of a shield powering up would at least get a moderate electrical shock. At worst . . . well.
Rodney taps his earpiece to eavesdrop on the medical channel and hears burns and stable and bringing them to the infirmary, and allows himself a small sigh of relief before switching it off again and turning to his laptop to check the whole damn system again.
"Okay, okay, they're down now," Rodney says, almost to himself, and takes a deep breath. "Let's see what you're doing."
***
"Look," John says awkwardly, not meeting Rodney's eyes, "what happened today. I think I should . . . I don't know if there's going to be another surge or anything, so it's probably best if I'm in my own quarters. Just in case."
"Oh," Rodney says, because there probably won't be another surge, but John's wearing his jacket, like he hasn't for the past week; John's back shouting military shorthand into his radio and coordinating the movements of a hundred guys with guns.
"Of course," Rodney says, and John heads down the corridor to the transporter, leaving Rodney in his too-bright, too-empty lab. Vacation over.
"Right, thank you," he says sourly to the empty room, and shuts his laptop with a click. "We now return you to your regularly scheduled crisis."
***
Later that night, Rodney finds himself sifting through primary and secondary and why-would-you-ever-want-this systems and muttering, "Seriously, what are you doing to us? What the hell just happened?"
There's no answer--he wasn't really expecting one--but he keeps up the monologue anyway.
"Not really your fault anyway, is it?" he says. "Damn Ancients."
***
"The ZPM," Rodney says to the assembled senior staff, "was never meant to be used as a one-time battery. A population of Ancients as large as Atlantis could charge three of them more or less continually--the only time they would deplete to any noticeable extent would be when a great deal of power was used in a short period of time."
"Such as opening a gate to Earth," Elizabeth says.
"Or heavy use of the chair and drones," Rodney says, nodding, and uses his lecture tone so he can keep his voice from shaking. "Which is what happened here. So when the ZPM started charging again after the battle--"
Zelenka broke in. "Atlantis assumed that everything was back to normal and that all standard systems could be brought back up in turn."
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. So did John, but John wasn't saying anything, just pretending to take notes.
"I thought you said that all standard systems were functional," she said.
"Yes, yes," Zelenka said, "all of the systems we rely on never stopped working."
Rodney cut in. "But as is frequently the case, we seem to disagree with Atlantis on what are and aren't vital systems. Yesterday, case in point. We didn't even know the shields could do that--Atlantis is bringing systems online that we didn't even know existed."
"It's going to keep happening, isn't it?" John said, very lightly. "If the ZPM keeps charging."
All of them became extremely interested in the walls, or the table, or their own hands.
Zelenka cleared his throat quietly. "We are working on creating a delay between system readiness and system implementation," he said. "But at the moment, yes, it is very possible that more systems will activate."
John finally looks up, and although he isn't really, it feels like he's looking straight at Rodney. "Then we're not taking that chance," he says.
"But--" Rodney says, "you don't know what could--"
"More people could get hurt, is what could happen," John says darkly.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Which, okay, clearly we're not trying to electrocute any more marines, but it, it could be defensive systems, transporters, weapons, you don't know. It could be worth the risk."
"I'm not giving anyone else second-degree burns because I--"
"Gentlemen!" Elizabeth says loudly, and Rodney realizes that he's fighting with John Sheppard about sex in the middle of the briefing room, and sits back and tries to calm down.
John is simmering too, across the table, and this time he isn't just pretending to argue.
"Gentlemen," Elizabeth says again. "I'm sorry, but Colonel Sheppard is right. The risk is too great. If a delay can be created so that we at least have advance warning of system implementation, then further experimentation can be conducted at his discretion." She looks down. "I'm sorry, John."
"Don't be," John says, the bastard. "I was considering calling it off anyway."
***
Oddly, the second night without John is worse than the first, and Rodney tosses and turns in the shining midnight. Atlantis doesn't seem to want to shade his window, but it's okay; Rodney flops onto his back and stares at the stars, unwilling to close his eyes.
Okay, except, fuck this; Rodney's always been a man of action, and barring some accident in which the mind of a romance-novel heroine gets popped into his brain, he's not about to go beat his head against a tree and cry, "Sheppard!" because John's not lying beside him.
So he gets up, gets dressed, goes out the door with singleminded purpose, and strides down the nighttime-lit corridors until he reaches John's quarters.
When John opens the door, not really looking like he'd been asleep either, he keeps one arm stretched out to the doorframe, hard as steel. No, you're not coming in, and thanks, Rodney'd figured that out for himself. It's not like he was planning on molesting John under the watchful eye of Johnny Cash. Rodney folds his arms and lifts his chin.
"Early warning system," he says. "Is that the only thing you need?"
John smiles. "I'm sorry, you seem to be under the impression that I want to have this conversation." He moves to palm the door controls, but Rodney grabs his wrist.
"Given an early warning system," Rodney says again, "what's the probability of . . . another charge?" It's killing him to bite out the short vague sentences, to talk like all he cares about is the ZPM, but it's not like anyone ever gets any sleep in Atlantis and there are people wandering down the corridor all the time. Rodney's never been much for airing dirty laundry in public and like hell he'd go into Sheppard's room right now.
John considers this, staring at Rodney hard for what seems like an eternity, still caught in Rodney's grip.
"Seventy-thirty," he finally says, and breaks Rodney's hold and hits the door control in one fluid movement. As the door whooshes shut, he frowns suddenly. "Against."
As Rodney turns away and heads down the corridor slightly more slowly than he arrived--his thinking walk--two thoughts come to his mind.
For one, he hopes like hell that he and Radek can design and implement some sort of delay between the charging of the ZPM and the powering up of new systems . . . triggered by . . . hmmm?
He begins mentally drawing diagrams in his conscious mind while the second thought floats just beneath the surface: that Atlantis will deliver to John the bitchslap he so clearly deserves.
***
Of course, there are still quite a few repairs to be done to Atlantis; there's the shield to calibrate and the structural damage to be fixed, so it's a good week before either Rodney or Zelenka have spare time to devote to the ZPM charging delay. (To tell the truth, Rodney's almost relieved to not have time, because the seventy-thirty thing doesn't sound so good; he's good at beating the odds but John Sheppard's won every bet he's made since he's come to Atlantis, so maybe Rodney doesn't mind so much putting off the inevitable.)
It's a week of long days and odd breaks and conveniently never running into John at mealtimes although he does see him frowing across the mess once or twice, and Rodney's not sure if it's the stress or that he usually rants at John about his personal problems (and, of course, this time John is the personal problem), but Rodney finds himself talking more and more to the city.
The second time he mutters something like, "I don't know why we're the ones sleeping on the couch, he's the one with the boatload of issues," while running programs in the lab and sees Zelenka give him an odd look, Rodney retreats to the soundproof cave of his office where he can go insane in peace.
Rodney almost never uses his office, mostly because it's a you-walk-in-you-back-out sized room and too far from the main desks of the lab for Rodney's minions to be within range of a thrown pen. It's where Rodney keeps the really cool stuff and the really valuable stuff and a lot of reference texts. The important thing is it has a door, and Rodney clears just enough space for himself and his laptop, and reaches out one foot to nudge the door closed.
Four hours and two PowerBars and one disgustingly cold cup of coffee later, John pokes his head through the doorway.
"You rang?" John says, and looks around Rodney's office. "Is this a closet?"
Rodney ignores him and tries to swivel his chair to show John the laptop screen, bumping his knee for his trouble. "Look," he says, "this is probably as good as it's going to get. First: a possible list of subsystems that haven't been initialized--this one's iffy but with each system Atlantis tries to power up we'll have a better idea of what the next one will be. Which, I might add, will only help our understanding of the city.
"Second: a bottleneck in place for all power routed from the ZPM, so only as much power will come out of it as we allow it to."
John frowns. "How do you know she won't black something out to power up whatever new system's next?"
"We . . . " Rodney trails off. "Okay, we don't really, but we're fairly sure she won't."
"How sure?" John says, and Rodney gives him a hard look and crosses his arms.
"Seventy-thirty," he says.
John nods slowly, because yes, ha, Rodney thinks, he did deserve that, and stretches one arm out to lean on the clear wall of Rodney's office. "Already implemented?" John says.
Rodney's already nodding and turning the laptop around, bringing up the grids and the charts and he looks up to see that his window is now completely opaque.
"Huh," John says. "Tested?"
"Um," Rodney says, "um, no, not tested yet, obviously, but the theoretical trials all indicate that--" and John isn't going go put Rodney out of his babbling misery, so Rodney takes matters into his own hands and kisses John and John responds like he hasn't seen Rodney in a week.
There's some undignified shuffling as they attempt to fit two people into a one-person space, and hands everywhere and, "Ow," Rodney says, "I--ow!--I don't bend like that, stupid office!"
"Oh, sorry," John says, slightly muffled, "hold on," and he manages to reverse their positions, and wow, it turns out that John does bend like that, and Rodney loves, loves his office.
***
"So," John says, still lying across Rodney's desk, looking very very debauched and breathing hard, "it's been brought to my attention that I've kind of been an asshole."
Rodney manages to lift one hand and weakly make go on, go on motions, and John points to the ceiling. "She's not terribly subtle about things like that," he says, and Rodney nods.
"Besides," John says, "you know. Good of the city."
"Was that an apology?" Rodney says. Because really, he deserves something after having put up with John's bullshit the last week, and they're all out of ice cream.
John looks pained, like he's trying to speak in a language he doesn't actually know, but is spared from actually having to answer by the alert suddenly shouting in both their earpieces.
Rodney seriously considers devoting an entire day to thinking about how to punish the people responsible for Atlantis' communications system, because these damn radios have interrupted them once too often, but that'll have to wait a few weeks, because the Wraith are coming.
***
The funny thing is, Rodney thinks as they're leaving the usual meeting--the Wraith are coming, they're all going to die, oh, C-3PO, what will they do?--is that the Wraith unintentionally sowed the seeds of their own destruction (okay, well, some Wraith sowed the seeds of some other Wraiths' destruction, but it was a good analogy and poetic anyway, so he's just going to go with it); without the last attack, they wouldn't even be considering solutions other than, "Hide. And possibly die horribly."
Now they're thinking about drones, they're considering additional shields, they're wondering if they can sink the city. Now they have options, none of which they'd even be thinking about if John hadn't spent six hours in the control chair and come out of it wired into Atlantis and seeing Rodney through her eyes.
They sit together at lunchtime same as always, only John's talking about tactics and asking Rodney about the secondary shields, lines beginning to etch on his forehead.
And he doesn't stay the night, hasn't since the Wraith showed up three weeks out and changed whatever was between them from play to work.
Not that it feels like work.
"What do you think?" John says from where he's collapsed, soft and easy in Rodney's bed and hogging the pillow. "Point nine?"
"Mm," Rodney replies, pushing at him to get some pillow, failing, and just using John instead. "We hit point nine once. That one time, when you--"
"Oh, right," John says. He sounds like he's smiling. "We should do that again."
"Yeah," says Rodney, and trails off because he's remembering the point-nine night, and already starting to think about what to do to replicate it. Rodney learned about the scientific method when he was eight years old, and has never looked back.
"Well," Rodney says, "let me check this one," and slips from the bed, out from the circle of John's arm, because it's either he gets up now, or in about a minute John will unceremoniously say, "All right, see you tomorrow at the meeting," and get up and dressed, and Rodney likes to delude himself that he's at least partially in control in this relationship.
He's in the Science systems with a couple of clicks, and: "Point seven," he says.
"Respectable," John says, putting on his pants, and Rodney snorts, because nothing they just did could really ever be called respectable.
"Well," John says. "I gotta get going," and jerks a thumb at the door.
"Right," Rodney says, "well, see you at the, um, meeting," and goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower so he won't hear John leave.
***
Three, two, one, Wraith, and suddenly they're there. Rodney's on his back under a console--clearing the relays so the imminent shield collapse doesn't sever a naquadah generator and blow up the city, rendering the work of the last several weeks entirely moot, which will really piss Rodney off, he thinks, if there are enough of his molecules left to be pissed off--when the call comes, Carson yelling in his ear to get to the control chair.
Rodney thinks for a brief second, oh God, he's dead, John's dead, before Carson says, John's injured, his heart starts again and he screams for Zelenka to take over for him, and he's running for the transporter before Zelenka even finishes ordering Simpson in his place.
Transporters are instantaneous but the trip takes forever, and when he gets there, Carson's hovering over John on the floor, who--something in Rodney's chest goes thunk--is yelling something. Alive, anyway. Rodney skids to a stop and realizes that John and Carson are both yelling: "The chair, Rodney, get in the bloody chair!"
Which is weird, because Carson's supposed to be John's backup for chair control; Rodney isn't even on the list, but he supposes Carson has other things to worry about and he sits down, praying for Atlantis to grant him this one thing, to let him in, because the shields are falling and darts are screaming overhead and--
--his mind is suddenly slotting into place with deadly clarity: tactics, what needs to be done, exactly perfectly, feeling like a god in that first second.
He can feel the entire city thrumming along his body, can almost taste the diagnostics, he's thinking in blinking reds and greens and can look up, through, long-range to the sky. He sees in a flash the chair room, ten minutes ago, the blast, John beloved hit with shattered ceiling. Rodney feels the Wraith darts scream overhead like bombadier mosquitoes, feels them along his mind.
It's almost too much, but only almost; he's dumped back down into his own head again, although he can feel her, and Rodney breathes and says, gently, "Oh. Hello," and Atlantis responds, sweetly, asskicking? and Rodney flexes his fingers on the pads and says, "Yes, let's, shall we?" and sends a line of drones out like he's conducting a symphony.
He doesn't know how long he's there, with her, directing the fight; he does know that the hive finally explodes in a perfect soundless burst of blue fire and Atlantis says, satisfactionlove.
Rodney has enough time to say, love, before hands--Carson's--pull him out of the chair.
The real world slowly coalesces around him, tingles of gold still at the edges of his vision, and Atlantis echoes, love, quieter, like a kiss on the forehead.
Gratitude, Rodney says, and reaches out to pull the nearest person--oh, hi, Elizabeth!--into a hug, or maybe he's just holding on so he won't fall.
Elizabeth and Carson have to lead him gently to the infirmary, catching his arms as he reaches out to touch the walls, the door controls, almost uncontrollable because he's still completely high.
"The hive ship blew up! Did you see, yes, of course you saw the hive ship blow up. Good, good, and the shield is mostly good, except get Zelenka to check the, um, and probably we should take the stargate offline, just for a minute, because okay, the ZPM's still drawing power from something, and Carson. Carson, I can feel where you are, and there's, there's, I think there might be a Wraith out on pier five--okay, no, she took care of that, although we'll probably want to send someone to clean up, and oh, my God," he says as they come into the infirmary, because the first person he sees is John, and Atlantis says, guiltlongingfearlove when he sees him.
" . . . you're in love with me," Rodney finishes, and passes out.
***
"Hey," John says quietly from the doorway, looking very much the tragically wounded hero in pale blue scrubs with a bandage wrapped around his head.
"Hey," Rodney says from where he's propped up in his bed, too wired to sleep but too tired to do anything other than wish he could. Carson has had a couple of burly nurses deposit Rodney in his quarters after pronouncing him basically fine, if a little too in tune with Atlantis for his mental health.
She's fading from his mind fast--he can't feel everybody in the city and he isn't thinking in diagnostics or sensors--and he's trying to focus on something else. This isn't exactly the type of distraction he was thinking about, though.
"Carson said I should stay away from Ancient tech for a while," Rodney says, because small talk is good, small talk is so not the subject of how Rodney outed John in the infirmary. He points at the screen of the laptop he's holding. "I have X-Men."
John nods vaguely. "Yeah, it should go away by morning." He's not quite meeting Rodney's eyes, and if there was dirt on the floor of Rodney's quarters, he probably would have scuffed a toe through it. Instead he points at the door behind him with his thumb, and says, "I should probably--"
"Stay," Rodney says, cutting him off and setting aside the laptop to stand up on shaky legs, because he knows that if John goes now, if he walks out Rodney's door, he might never be back, and when did Rodney's life turn into a romantic comedy?
John's gone a little white and takes a step back, but the door doesn't open and Rodney's across the room in that second. Seeing John's face show fearlove, cradling it in his hands, kissing him, desperation and love and--"Stay," Rodney says again, a little hoarsely.
John's lashes are lowered and Rodney can't see his eyes. It's a breathless minute and he lets his hands slip down slowly, wishing that Atlantis would show John what she showed Rodney in the infirmary. His connection is fading, though, and so they're left standing three inches from each other and not touching.
"I'm not," John starts, "I don't think I'm really feeling up to--" and Rodney almost smacks him in the head before he remembers John's dashing head wound.
"Oh, my God," Rodney says loudly instead, grabbing John's hand and turning to drag him toward the bed. "Look," he says, jabbing a finger toward John, "Wake me up when you figure it out, because I am really too tired to have this conversation, with or without the help of a third party."
He pulls John, slightly stunned-looking, down next to him and reaches over to slide the laptop underneath the bed. When he turns back, it's into the waiting circle of John's arms and to his steady gaze, amused and full of love.
"Oh," Rodney says. "Good. I, uh, I was worried I might have to make a graph or something."
John shuts him up with a kiss like a promise for tomorrow, and the light turns off.
Rodney settles into John, warm and close in the moonlight, and feels one last touch from Atlantis like a benediction. Love, he thinks.
"Yeah," John murmurs. "Me too."
END
RATING: R
SUMMARY: This is a story about sex and power. And, um, monkeys and PowerPoint. (And love.) McKay/Sheppard, ~8100 words.
Follows from High As Heaven.
NOTE: So many thanks to 2am-optimism, cincodemaygirl, etben, jettdelirium, melannen, stellar-dust, and up-from-ashes. I don't know how any of them are so awesome.
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Crisis
Rodney wakes up to tinny, tiny Czech shouting coming from his bedside table.
He opens his eyes halfway and reaches across--oh, okay, reaches across John, and one crisis at a time, so he'll save the freaking out about that until whatever Zelenka's yelling about is resolved--to pick up his earpiece, and fits it into his ear as John stirs beside him.
"What, what?" Rodney says irritably into the microphone. John is still, ridiculously, wearing his wristwatch, and Rodney pulls John's hand over to check the time. It's much later than it should be.
"Rodney! Get out of bed, there's been a fluctuation in the ZPM power levels."
"What, a power drain? I told them not to hook up the full shield, we can't sustain it at the levels needed to--" It's strange, delivering a diatribe to the ceiling, but he'd dropped John's hand onto his own chest where it seems pretty happy, and well, he doesn't feel much like moving.
"No, not a drain," Zelenka says impatiently. "Power spike. The ZPM charged itself by point seven percent," and this time Rodney does sit up and then stand up and then hop around the room looking for his pants while John props himself up on his elbows and watches, amused and disheveled.
"When did it happen?" Rodney barks. "What happened? I'm, I'm on my way."
When, Zelenka tells him, they can probably track down, but how is anybody's guess, and so Rodney says, "I'll be there in three minutes. Don't touch anything," and temporarily puts his shoes on the wrong feet before taking a deep breath, fixes it, and keys off his radio to briefly fall back onto the bed and kiss John down into the pillows and say, "Can we? Later, later we can, yes, okay."
John says, "Yeah, okay, after . . . later, yeah," and Rodney scurries out the door and is gone.
***
"We did not notice until this morning," Zelenka says, handing the datapad to Rodney as they make their way back from the ZPM. The program that tracks ZPM energy consumption shows no change, no change, no change, and then blip! point seven percent increase; the ZPM itself just sat there calmly, as your traditional inanimate power sources do.
"We don't have that alarmed?" Rodney says. They've got sudden power drains alarmed, of course; there's this really spectacular flashing light and beepy thing when that happens, but apparently--
"I do not think that anyone considered that the power levels would spontaneously increase," Zelenka said. "Is alarmed now," and the rest of the morning is taken up with cross-checking every single device hooked up to Atlantis' main power to see if they can spot a correlation that will hopefully get them that much closer to figuring out how to get the kind of power that leaders of small hot countries can only dream about.
It's late afternoon before Rodney stretches his arm out for his coffee and realizes that he hasn't showered. His brain goes, shower, morning, night before, clicks into reason for questionable freshness and lands on slept with John Sheppard.
"I'm going to go take a, a break," he says, very casually. "I haven't, you know, showered or eaten or, um, showered," and he manages not to flail a hand out toward the door.
Zelenka barely looks up. "Yes, yes, go, we can run tedious diagnostics ourselves."
When Rodney gets back to his quarters, there's no sign of John, save for the rumpled bed and the slight sense that someone else has used his shower.
Rodney's very faintly disappointed, but he tells himself it's just the ZPM.
***
Rodney picks up a tray in the mess hall and starts forward and hesitates three times before just taking a deep breath and striding forward to plonk his food down next to Elizabeth and John like it's any other workday.
They all three of them show on their faces the strain of the last few days, of too little sleep and too many deaths, but now the smudges under Elizabeth's eyes look like victory, and John's wearing the tiniest smile as he forks up his macaroni. Rodney nods at them as he sits down, and smiles too.
"How soon are we fully operational?" Elizabeth says.
Rodney shakes his head. "No time at all," he says around a mouthful of food. "Very little damage to major systems, and the structural damage won't affect day-to-day." He waves the hand holding the fork. "I'll have full reports for you at the briefing later, that's all the boring stuff. The fun part is the ZPM."
John quirks an eyebrow at that. He looks like he's just woken up, sleepy eyes and quiet. Freshly shaven. Clean uniform that wasn't worn during six hours in the chair. His hair's still wet, and Rodney desperately yanks his brain away from contemplation of John Sheppard and back to the ZPM.
"Spontaneous charge," he says triumphantly. "Point seven percent. Of course, we have absolutely no idea how it happened, but we're working on that. The important thing is it can be done."
"I don't want you pulling resources from vital projects to work on this, Rodney," Elizabeth tells him. "Our main priority right now is to bring all systems back up."
Rodney waves her off. "Don't worry, don't worry, it takes the computing power of a Game Boy to run the diagnostic. We're basically checking every system in Atlantis for a power spike at 0100 last night. A monkey could do it."
John frowns, but before he can share his brilliant insight with the rest of the class Elizabeth nods and rises to leave.
"I have every faith in you, Rodney," she says to him seriously. "And your monkeys."
When she's gone, Rodney turns to John and tries to think of something that isn't worthy of a sixteen-year-old girl. "Um," he says, and John just smirks at him.
"What?" Rodney says peevishly, and stabs his fork down into a cracker.
John's smile is growing wider. He blinks slowly, once, and Rodney feels himself start to flush.
"What?" he says again, supressing a grin and playing with his fork, and that's it. He is a sixteen-year-old girl and he's sitting with the coolest boy in class and just as he decides to stab himself with the fork John says, "You free later?"
"Actually--" Rodney starts, but John cuts him off smoothly.
"Apparently a meeting with Heightmeyer is compulsory when you get your brain plugged into a weapons system for six hours, but I could come find you around 2100. If you're not busy," John says casually, and tops it off with a sidelong glance, as though that's actually necessary.
Rodney nods slowly, carefully refraining from grabbing John's jacket and pulling him across the table--traumatizing the kitchen staff at this point would probably be a bad idea--and says, "I'll, um. Yes. I'll see you then."
***
The minute Rodney's door whooshes shut behind John, Rodney's on him, pulling him close and kissing him like he's been thinking about it all day. Which, okay, he hasn't really, more like since dinner, but Rodney's always been good at fitting a full day's worth of work into a few hours, so why should this be any different?
"Hello, John," John says when Rodney finally lets him up for air. "Nice to see you. How was your day?"
"Why don't you just pretend I have manners?" Rodney says seriously into the side of John's neck as he applies himself to John's zippers and buttons. "It'll save time." Rodney's never really been particularly good at multitasking.
John, on the other hand--John is very good, and so he keeps up a running dialogue the entire time his hands are doing other things: "Hello, Rodney, it's good to see you too. Well, my day was just fine. Got laid, pretty great, slept for about twelve hours, although--" John punctuates his sentence with a kiss-- "he ran off before I could really say good morning properly."
Rodney pulls him over to the bed. "I'm sure you'll get another chance," he says, and that's the last complete sentence he manages for a while.
It's slow this time, slow and lazy like there's nothing else in the world to do. Vacation sex, Rodney thinks. Last night's almost frightening intensity is tempered--Atlantis is in their thoughts but not inside their minds, curled up in her own space safe and quiet, and they move against each other smooth and unhurried.
Until, of course, Rodney's radio yells in his ear and he hits himself in the head and says shortly, "Busy now," and throws the radio across the room.
John has collapsed and is muffling his laughter against Rodney's skin.
"Oh, shut up," Rodney says. "I hope next time Elizabeth calls you. Just watch. And you can go back to doing that, please."
"Well, yes," John says, blinking, "except that I take my radio off when I'm having sex." He goes back to doing that, and Rodney's head thumps back down onto the pillow.
Later, when John is asleep, Rodney locates his radio and has an extremely quiet conversation with the lab monkey on duty--bells, whistles, large flashing lights. The ZPM's up another point three percent.
Rodney looks across the room at the chiaroscuro study of John Sheppard: sheets twisted around his angular body, mouth open, almost snoring, and not even a ZPM could take Rodney away.
"It'll wait until morning," he says into the radio, and goes back to bed.
***
As promised, Rodney gets a very nice good morning from John, waking up in the early-morning twilight to warm hands and the even warmer knowledge that they can stay in bed all morning if they want to because for once there's no emergency, no hive ships on the way, no plagues of frogs, no crisis. Rodney's even willing to forgive John for it being five-thirty in the morning.
Which he does. At length.
When they finally make it out of Rodney's quarters, Atlantis is fully awake, bustling with people putting her back together after the frenzy of the last few days.
"So," Rodney says as they walk toward the labs, "I didn't ask, but I suppose you're back to yourself now?"
They've reached a transporter, and John gives him the trashiest eyebrow raise Rodney's ever seen.
"No, I didn't mean--" Rodney says. "Atlantis. After the chair. Is she um. Out of your brain, or can you still track lifesigns?"
John shrugs, one of his elaborately casual shrugs that fools no one. "About back to normal, I think. She hasn't told me about the ZPM, if that's what you're asking."
She, Rodney thinks, and is irrationally pleased that he shares this with John, this city-love. She, they can say casually; they can discuss her quirks and her wonders. Not even Elizabeth has that with John, not Lorne or Carson, and Rodney tries very hard to wipe the goofy grin from his face, because they've reached the populated hallways and the labs.
"Well," Rodney says as seriously as he can, "I'm a genius. I'm sure I'll figure it out."
***
The irony--or possibly the beauty--of it is that John is the one who figures it out.
"Huh," John says, and Rodney has learned by now that "Huh" doesn't ever mean "Huh." It means "I guess we are within range of their weapons" or "The jumper thinks we're upside down" or "I just realized this woman has been hitting on me for the past three hours."
"What?" Rodney demands, and John immediately shutters down.
"Nothing," John says, darting his eyes toward Zelenka, who is staring at a laptop screen, his head propped on one hand.
"Oh," Rodney says. "Radek!"
Zelenka looks up.
"Go, um, double-check the ZPM connections, will you? There's this weird, um, there's this weird blip in the data here, so could you go. Check."
Zelenka, mercifully, gets up. "Why don't I go get lunch?" he says. "I am sure you will make much more progress without me in your way."
Once he's gone, Rodney turns to John again. "What?"
John points at the chart that shows ZPM use over the past few days. "Interesting times for it to charge," he says.
Rodney looks at it for the millionth time. Three spikes, two in the middle of the night and one more this morning, but apparently Sheppard can't ever just tell him something, so he crosses his arms and looks at him.
"Notice anything else significant about those times?" John says, and raises his eyebrows meaningfully.
"Other than the fact that they don't correlate to any sort of cycle on Atlantis, nor any natural rhythm, including the rotation of the planet or the alignment of the stars even ten thousand years ago," Rodney begins, "other than that they're . . . completely . . . random . . . "
His eyes widen and he looks up at John, agape.
John smirks. "Congratulations, Rodney. You've just discovered the secret of the zero point module."
"Oh, my God," Rodney says, and then he smiles. "We just won the Nobel Prize for Sex."
***
"We have to tell him," Rodney says, looking out over the sea.
John slowly turns his head toward Rodney and looks at him like he's finally gone insane, the setting sunlight gold and pink shadowing the side of his face.
"No, no," Rodney says. "Zelenka's like a terrier, he won't stop until he figures it out and by then everyone in the entire science department will know."
John nods, not as in agreement but just in acknowledgement, and moves from leaning on the railing of the balcony to sitting on the floor, and stretches his legs out in front of him. "If we just . . . stopped," he says.
Because that really is the simplest solution, to just never have sex again and hope that Zelenka will chalk up the power spikes to something else and forget all about it.
Except for it being the crappiest plan ever, what with the never having sex again.
"Or," Rodney says, because they are so not going with John's plan, "we could continue having the wonderful sex and incidentally replenishing our fuel source while we do it, thus combining the two best things in the entire universe. Also, we'll have to tell Elizabeth."
John buries his face in his hands.
It's true, though. They really will have to tell Elizabeth, and not that it's a conversation Rodney really wants to have, but still, she knows about the ZPM charging, she'll keep it all confidential, she'll fight for them when the SGC finds out . . .
"Wait," John says. "The SGC doesn't find out."
"What? There'll be a report, they'll know."
"No," John says more slowly, like he's explaining things to a third-grader, or a llama, "we're not telling the SGC, because then I will get fired, and then--"
Rodney sighs. "Neither sex nor power." He thunks his head back against the city wall.
John puts his hand flat on the floor, not meeting Rodney's eyes. "If we didn't mention you," he says, "if we just called it one more creepy connection between Sheppard and the city . . . "
They outline the plan between the two of them then, sitting out on the balcony until the sky is dark and the stars come out, lit up bright and sparkling like their city.
Rodney hates the plan.
Not that it's not a good plan--left to their own devices, he and John will come up with a decent plan the majority of the time, that incident with the lasagna notwithstanding--but Rodney hates that this is how they have to do it: have to hide what's between the two of them and trivialize their connection to Atlantis in the name of discretion.
"All right," Rodney says. "That's, that's what we'll do."
It's dark enough now that he hears rather than sees John turn to him, and dark enough that when John kisses him, he doesn't worry that they're in the open.
"Although," John says softly, pausing with his mouth close against Rodney's ear, "we really should test it one more time. Duplicate the results, you know."
Rodney nods. "Of course, of course," he says, and scrambles to his feet. "Colonel Sheppard, would you care to assist me in testing a theory?"
John rises next to him, dark shadows and gleaming white grin like the Cheshire Cat. "Why, Doctor McKay," he says. "It would be my pleasure."
***
Once, not long after they'd gotten to Atlantis, there had been an offworld mission during which Rodney had had to marry Teyla, and they had both subsequently been painted with some sort of blue dye that had taken about a week to wear off. Indigo-patterned and explaining the marriage customs of an alien people to the entire senior staff, carefully not looking at the blue fingerprints on Teyla, Rodney thought to himself, Well, at least we're getting the most awkward meeting in my life over with now.
He thinks about that now, as he opens the laptop so he doesn't have to look at anybody's face. "Way to jinx yourself, McKay," he mutters.
"Rodney?" Elizabeth says, jolting him into the present. "I take it this is about the ZPM?"
He looks up. "Yes, yes. We've, um, a couple of days ago the ZPM seemed to have spontaneously charged itself, registering a spike in power of point seven percent. There were additional charges," he says, and turns the laptop around to point at the screen, because setting up the PowerPoint projector is always more trouble than it's worth and he just wants to get this over with, "here and here, and the last one, um, last night."
Zelenka is doodling. Rodney wonders if he could possibly prompt Sheppard to shoot him before he has to finish the presentation. He risks a quick glance his way, but John's playing with a pen and not about to meet anyone's eyes.
No help forthcoming, Rodney continues. "The, the spikes cannot be traced to any currently operational system in Atlantis, nor do they correspond to any natural or artificial cycle in the city, but in fact seem to originate from and correspond to--" he takes a deep breath-- "Instances of sexual activity in a strong carrier of the ATA gene," he finishes quickly.
The laptop makes a horribly loud scraping sound in the otherwise complete silence of the briefing room as he turns it back around.
"Um," he says. "As Colonel Sheppard noted," and John slouches down just a little bit further in his chair.
Elizabeth turns a very delicate shade of pink as she stares at her papers. "Well, Rodney," she says. "Thank you."
More awkward silence.
"So," Rodney says loudly, pulling out the only big gun he has, the one labeled ASSHOLE, "if I can just get the cooperation of Colonel Sheppard for further testing and possibly work out some sort of a schedule that would meet our current power needs--"
He's instantly cut off by a chorus of concerned voices.
"Rodney!" Elizabeth exclaims, as John himself narrows his eyes and says, "I won't shoot you right now, McKay, how's that for cooperation? Stay the hell out of my personal life."
"Rodney, you are not to pursue this matter further," Elizabeth continues. "Unless Colonel Sheppard is willing to volunteer any information--"
"Really not," says John.
"--this matter will be considered closed to non-senior personnel and no formal report will be made to the SGC. This is sensitive material," Elizabeth says, looking around the room at them all, "and I trust that this information will not leave this room."
They all nod, getting up to leave and Carson clears his throat. "I'm going to have to insist on a medical examination, Colonel Sheppard," he says almost apologetically. "And one of the young lady concerned as well."
Rodney pretends not to notice, picks up his laptop, and panics panics panics.
John inclines his head and follows Carson out of the room.
Elizabeth nods to Rodney and Zelenka before sweeping out of the room, and Zelenka turns to Rodney. "Point seven percent," he says. "If only he could be convinced to use his powers for good."
Rodney nods, staring off into the middle distance. "Just imagine."
***
Carson escorts Rodney to a private exam room as soon as he steps into the infirmary. Possibly he saw Rodney walk past the doorway four times.
Either way, Rodney's grateful for small mercies as he hops up onto an exam bed and takes off his jacket for the inevitable bloodletting.
"Are you noticing anything out of the ordinary that could be related to the ZPM charges?" Carson asks, fastening a blood pressure cuff around Rodney's arm.
"No," Rodney says, "just the u--um. What makes you think I'm in here for that?"
The sphygmomanometer is ticking down as the pressure lets off and Carson is silent until it stops. There's a tear of velcro and Carson looks up at him with genuine surprise. "You're going to tell me you're not?"
***
Rodney is let go from the infirmary minus a lot of his bodily fluids and plus one of the small paper bags that Carson puts prescriptions in. Passing one of the packs of marines that seem to roam the hallways like schools of fish, he nods and tries to put on a face that says I am carrying industrial-grade tranquilizers because I am very, very important and stressed. I am certainly not carrying anything that will aid in my committing scandalous acts upon your CO. Heavens, no.
The marines nod back as they pass--"Doctor," one of them says politely--and Rodney escapes into a transporter, the bag rustling ominously in his hand.
***
"So," John says, sitting down awkwardly on the bed. "All clear."
Rodney nods. "Yes, we're--" he makes a hand gesture that on second thought seems really, really ill-advised-- "good to go."
"Well, then. Good."
"Yes, it's um . . . " Rodney trails off and falls silent for a moment, and then sort of lunges sideways to kiss John.
John freezes.
"What?" Rodney says against John's mouth. It comes out a lot less sexy than he'd intended.
John's quiet, and then: "Radek Zelenka knows I'm having sex right now."
Rodney ponders this and flops down backward on the bed. The prospect is certainly enough to kill anyone's libido.
"We could," Rodney says, "just watch a movie or something," and he turns his head to see John looking at him like he's an idiot, and yes, if he himself had to choose between sex with a side of mild embarrassment, and no sex at all, he knows which one he'd choose.
"Or, I mean," he starts, looking straight up at the ceiling, "perhaps some scientific experimentation is in order. I mean, we don't know exactly what triggers the charge." He hears the zip of John's jacket, and then John's applying himself to Rodney's shoes. Rodney continues: "I mean, it could be you, it could be me, who knows? We don't need to go jumping to conclusions that Radek necessarily knows you're having sex; it might not even be related to you."
John appears in Rodney's field of vision. "Egomaniac," he says, and moves out of sight again.
"There's certainly nothing wrong with testing a hypothesis," Rodney says as the bed dips next to him and John lays down.
"All right," John says. "But if you make a spreadsheet I'm leaving."
***
Rodney's life is perfect for exactly one week.
Well, okay, perfect except for either rebuilding or sealing off the portions of the city that were damaged in the battle; except for attending the funerals of four people who were in said sections of Atlantis; except for that he's never quite sure if he means one Earth week, in which case the perfect week started at eight o'clock in the morning on the morning after, or one Atlantean week, in which case he gets to count from before the time John wandered into Rodney's quarters and drifted one hand across the wall (but then, of course, he has to count the part of that day where he had to manually rewire part of the shield after it took damage, lying in shards of glass and metal, his hands up inside a console like he was some country vet delivering a cow).
Either way.
One week of John mostly off-duty and bored, and Rodney learned in high school that when you let smart people get bored they get creative, although in high school he never considered that he would reap such spectacular benefits from boredom.
Rodney's considering this with one of his two functioning brain cells as he stares up at the ceiling, lying tangled both with John and with the sheet. The other neuron fires, and he really hopes that there isn't a fire in the next few minutes, because he doesn't think he'd be able to extricate himself.
There's a noise, and it isn't a smoke detector--does Atlantis even have smoke detectors, or would she just quietly put out the flames?--but the sound of two radios urgently going off at once.
John flails a hand out to the table and grabs one, listens for a moment, and hands it off to Rodney before fitting the other one into his ear, snapping, "Sheppard," as he vaults out of bed, kicking off the sheet wrapped around his ankle, and yanks on his pants.
Rodney can't help but be impressed, because it's about all he can do to parse Radek's panicked shouting into actual sentences.
When he does, though, he's up and dressed almost as quickly as John, who's just disappearing into the hallway, two steps into running as the door shuts behind him.
***
"Secondary shields!" Radek is yelling as Rodney runs down the hall to the transporter.
What? "We don't have secondary shields," Rodney says, and emerges at his lab.
"We do now," Radek says from where he's pointing at the screen, not missing a beat. "Building-specific or, in some cases, specific to rooms. Isn't using as much power as the main shield--"
"That's good," Rodney says.
"--but came online suddenly, without prompting, and started in an area where a team was fixing structural damage."
" . . . that's bad," Rodney says. Even at a low power, anybody in the way of a shield powering up would at least get a moderate electrical shock. At worst . . . well.
Rodney taps his earpiece to eavesdrop on the medical channel and hears burns and stable and bringing them to the infirmary, and allows himself a small sigh of relief before switching it off again and turning to his laptop to check the whole damn system again.
"Okay, okay, they're down now," Rodney says, almost to himself, and takes a deep breath. "Let's see what you're doing."
***
"Look," John says awkwardly, not meeting Rodney's eyes, "what happened today. I think I should . . . I don't know if there's going to be another surge or anything, so it's probably best if I'm in my own quarters. Just in case."
"Oh," Rodney says, because there probably won't be another surge, but John's wearing his jacket, like he hasn't for the past week; John's back shouting military shorthand into his radio and coordinating the movements of a hundred guys with guns.
"Of course," Rodney says, and John heads down the corridor to the transporter, leaving Rodney in his too-bright, too-empty lab. Vacation over.
"Right, thank you," he says sourly to the empty room, and shuts his laptop with a click. "We now return you to your regularly scheduled crisis."
***
Later that night, Rodney finds himself sifting through primary and secondary and why-would-you-ever-want-this systems and muttering, "Seriously, what are you doing to us? What the hell just happened?"
There's no answer--he wasn't really expecting one--but he keeps up the monologue anyway.
"Not really your fault anyway, is it?" he says. "Damn Ancients."
***
"The ZPM," Rodney says to the assembled senior staff, "was never meant to be used as a one-time battery. A population of Ancients as large as Atlantis could charge three of them more or less continually--the only time they would deplete to any noticeable extent would be when a great deal of power was used in a short period of time."
"Such as opening a gate to Earth," Elizabeth says.
"Or heavy use of the chair and drones," Rodney says, nodding, and uses his lecture tone so he can keep his voice from shaking. "Which is what happened here. So when the ZPM started charging again after the battle--"
Zelenka broke in. "Atlantis assumed that everything was back to normal and that all standard systems could be brought back up in turn."
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. So did John, but John wasn't saying anything, just pretending to take notes.
"I thought you said that all standard systems were functional," she said.
"Yes, yes," Zelenka said, "all of the systems we rely on never stopped working."
Rodney cut in. "But as is frequently the case, we seem to disagree with Atlantis on what are and aren't vital systems. Yesterday, case in point. We didn't even know the shields could do that--Atlantis is bringing systems online that we didn't even know existed."
"It's going to keep happening, isn't it?" John said, very lightly. "If the ZPM keeps charging."
All of them became extremely interested in the walls, or the table, or their own hands.
Zelenka cleared his throat quietly. "We are working on creating a delay between system readiness and system implementation," he said. "But at the moment, yes, it is very possible that more systems will activate."
John finally looks up, and although he isn't really, it feels like he's looking straight at Rodney. "Then we're not taking that chance," he says.
"But--" Rodney says, "you don't know what could--"
"More people could get hurt, is what could happen," John says darkly.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Which, okay, clearly we're not trying to electrocute any more marines, but it, it could be defensive systems, transporters, weapons, you don't know. It could be worth the risk."
"I'm not giving anyone else second-degree burns because I--"
"Gentlemen!" Elizabeth says loudly, and Rodney realizes that he's fighting with John Sheppard about sex in the middle of the briefing room, and sits back and tries to calm down.
John is simmering too, across the table, and this time he isn't just pretending to argue.
"Gentlemen," Elizabeth says again. "I'm sorry, but Colonel Sheppard is right. The risk is too great. If a delay can be created so that we at least have advance warning of system implementation, then further experimentation can be conducted at his discretion." She looks down. "I'm sorry, John."
"Don't be," John says, the bastard. "I was considering calling it off anyway."
***
Oddly, the second night without John is worse than the first, and Rodney tosses and turns in the shining midnight. Atlantis doesn't seem to want to shade his window, but it's okay; Rodney flops onto his back and stares at the stars, unwilling to close his eyes.
Okay, except, fuck this; Rodney's always been a man of action, and barring some accident in which the mind of a romance-novel heroine gets popped into his brain, he's not about to go beat his head against a tree and cry, "Sheppard!" because John's not lying beside him.
So he gets up, gets dressed, goes out the door with singleminded purpose, and strides down the nighttime-lit corridors until he reaches John's quarters.
When John opens the door, not really looking like he'd been asleep either, he keeps one arm stretched out to the doorframe, hard as steel. No, you're not coming in, and thanks, Rodney'd figured that out for himself. It's not like he was planning on molesting John under the watchful eye of Johnny Cash. Rodney folds his arms and lifts his chin.
"Early warning system," he says. "Is that the only thing you need?"
John smiles. "I'm sorry, you seem to be under the impression that I want to have this conversation." He moves to palm the door controls, but Rodney grabs his wrist.
"Given an early warning system," Rodney says again, "what's the probability of . . . another charge?" It's killing him to bite out the short vague sentences, to talk like all he cares about is the ZPM, but it's not like anyone ever gets any sleep in Atlantis and there are people wandering down the corridor all the time. Rodney's never been much for airing dirty laundry in public and like hell he'd go into Sheppard's room right now.
John considers this, staring at Rodney hard for what seems like an eternity, still caught in Rodney's grip.
"Seventy-thirty," he finally says, and breaks Rodney's hold and hits the door control in one fluid movement. As the door whooshes shut, he frowns suddenly. "Against."
As Rodney turns away and heads down the corridor slightly more slowly than he arrived--his thinking walk--two thoughts come to his mind.
For one, he hopes like hell that he and Radek can design and implement some sort of delay between the charging of the ZPM and the powering up of new systems . . . triggered by . . . hmmm?
He begins mentally drawing diagrams in his conscious mind while the second thought floats just beneath the surface: that Atlantis will deliver to John the bitchslap he so clearly deserves.
***
Of course, there are still quite a few repairs to be done to Atlantis; there's the shield to calibrate and the structural damage to be fixed, so it's a good week before either Rodney or Zelenka have spare time to devote to the ZPM charging delay. (To tell the truth, Rodney's almost relieved to not have time, because the seventy-thirty thing doesn't sound so good; he's good at beating the odds but John Sheppard's won every bet he's made since he's come to Atlantis, so maybe Rodney doesn't mind so much putting off the inevitable.)
It's a week of long days and odd breaks and conveniently never running into John at mealtimes although he does see him frowing across the mess once or twice, and Rodney's not sure if it's the stress or that he usually rants at John about his personal problems (and, of course, this time John is the personal problem), but Rodney finds himself talking more and more to the city.
The second time he mutters something like, "I don't know why we're the ones sleeping on the couch, he's the one with the boatload of issues," while running programs in the lab and sees Zelenka give him an odd look, Rodney retreats to the soundproof cave of his office where he can go insane in peace.
Rodney almost never uses his office, mostly because it's a you-walk-in-you-back-out sized room and too far from the main desks of the lab for Rodney's minions to be within range of a thrown pen. It's where Rodney keeps the really cool stuff and the really valuable stuff and a lot of reference texts. The important thing is it has a door, and Rodney clears just enough space for himself and his laptop, and reaches out one foot to nudge the door closed.
Four hours and two PowerBars and one disgustingly cold cup of coffee later, John pokes his head through the doorway.
"You rang?" John says, and looks around Rodney's office. "Is this a closet?"
Rodney ignores him and tries to swivel his chair to show John the laptop screen, bumping his knee for his trouble. "Look," he says, "this is probably as good as it's going to get. First: a possible list of subsystems that haven't been initialized--this one's iffy but with each system Atlantis tries to power up we'll have a better idea of what the next one will be. Which, I might add, will only help our understanding of the city.
"Second: a bottleneck in place for all power routed from the ZPM, so only as much power will come out of it as we allow it to."
John frowns. "How do you know she won't black something out to power up whatever new system's next?"
"We . . . " Rodney trails off. "Okay, we don't really, but we're fairly sure she won't."
"How sure?" John says, and Rodney gives him a hard look and crosses his arms.
"Seventy-thirty," he says.
John nods slowly, because yes, ha, Rodney thinks, he did deserve that, and stretches one arm out to lean on the clear wall of Rodney's office. "Already implemented?" John says.
Rodney's already nodding and turning the laptop around, bringing up the grids and the charts and he looks up to see that his window is now completely opaque.
"Huh," John says. "Tested?"
"Um," Rodney says, "um, no, not tested yet, obviously, but the theoretical trials all indicate that--" and John isn't going go put Rodney out of his babbling misery, so Rodney takes matters into his own hands and kisses John and John responds like he hasn't seen Rodney in a week.
There's some undignified shuffling as they attempt to fit two people into a one-person space, and hands everywhere and, "Ow," Rodney says, "I--ow!--I don't bend like that, stupid office!"
"Oh, sorry," John says, slightly muffled, "hold on," and he manages to reverse their positions, and wow, it turns out that John does bend like that, and Rodney loves, loves his office.
***
"So," John says, still lying across Rodney's desk, looking very very debauched and breathing hard, "it's been brought to my attention that I've kind of been an asshole."
Rodney manages to lift one hand and weakly make go on, go on motions, and John points to the ceiling. "She's not terribly subtle about things like that," he says, and Rodney nods.
"Besides," John says, "you know. Good of the city."
"Was that an apology?" Rodney says. Because really, he deserves something after having put up with John's bullshit the last week, and they're all out of ice cream.
John looks pained, like he's trying to speak in a language he doesn't actually know, but is spared from actually having to answer by the alert suddenly shouting in both their earpieces.
Rodney seriously considers devoting an entire day to thinking about how to punish the people responsible for Atlantis' communications system, because these damn radios have interrupted them once too often, but that'll have to wait a few weeks, because the Wraith are coming.
***
The funny thing is, Rodney thinks as they're leaving the usual meeting--the Wraith are coming, they're all going to die, oh, C-3PO, what will they do?--is that the Wraith unintentionally sowed the seeds of their own destruction (okay, well, some Wraith sowed the seeds of some other Wraiths' destruction, but it was a good analogy and poetic anyway, so he's just going to go with it); without the last attack, they wouldn't even be considering solutions other than, "Hide. And possibly die horribly."
Now they're thinking about drones, they're considering additional shields, they're wondering if they can sink the city. Now they have options, none of which they'd even be thinking about if John hadn't spent six hours in the control chair and come out of it wired into Atlantis and seeing Rodney through her eyes.
They sit together at lunchtime same as always, only John's talking about tactics and asking Rodney about the secondary shields, lines beginning to etch on his forehead.
And he doesn't stay the night, hasn't since the Wraith showed up three weeks out and changed whatever was between them from play to work.
Not that it feels like work.
"What do you think?" John says from where he's collapsed, soft and easy in Rodney's bed and hogging the pillow. "Point nine?"
"Mm," Rodney replies, pushing at him to get some pillow, failing, and just using John instead. "We hit point nine once. That one time, when you--"
"Oh, right," John says. He sounds like he's smiling. "We should do that again."
"Yeah," says Rodney, and trails off because he's remembering the point-nine night, and already starting to think about what to do to replicate it. Rodney learned about the scientific method when he was eight years old, and has never looked back.
"Well," Rodney says, "let me check this one," and slips from the bed, out from the circle of John's arm, because it's either he gets up now, or in about a minute John will unceremoniously say, "All right, see you tomorrow at the meeting," and get up and dressed, and Rodney likes to delude himself that he's at least partially in control in this relationship.
He's in the Science systems with a couple of clicks, and: "Point seven," he says.
"Respectable," John says, putting on his pants, and Rodney snorts, because nothing they just did could really ever be called respectable.
"Well," John says. "I gotta get going," and jerks a thumb at the door.
"Right," Rodney says, "well, see you at the, um, meeting," and goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower so he won't hear John leave.
***
Three, two, one, Wraith, and suddenly they're there. Rodney's on his back under a console--clearing the relays so the imminent shield collapse doesn't sever a naquadah generator and blow up the city, rendering the work of the last several weeks entirely moot, which will really piss Rodney off, he thinks, if there are enough of his molecules left to be pissed off--when the call comes, Carson yelling in his ear to get to the control chair.
Rodney thinks for a brief second, oh God, he's dead, John's dead, before Carson says, John's injured, his heart starts again and he screams for Zelenka to take over for him, and he's running for the transporter before Zelenka even finishes ordering Simpson in his place.
Transporters are instantaneous but the trip takes forever, and when he gets there, Carson's hovering over John on the floor, who--something in Rodney's chest goes thunk--is yelling something. Alive, anyway. Rodney skids to a stop and realizes that John and Carson are both yelling: "The chair, Rodney, get in the bloody chair!"
Which is weird, because Carson's supposed to be John's backup for chair control; Rodney isn't even on the list, but he supposes Carson has other things to worry about and he sits down, praying for Atlantis to grant him this one thing, to let him in, because the shields are falling and darts are screaming overhead and--
--his mind is suddenly slotting into place with deadly clarity: tactics, what needs to be done, exactly perfectly, feeling like a god in that first second.
He can feel the entire city thrumming along his body, can almost taste the diagnostics, he's thinking in blinking reds and greens and can look up, through, long-range to the sky. He sees in a flash the chair room, ten minutes ago, the blast, John beloved hit with shattered ceiling. Rodney feels the Wraith darts scream overhead like bombadier mosquitoes, feels them along his mind.
It's almost too much, but only almost; he's dumped back down into his own head again, although he can feel her, and Rodney breathes and says, gently, "Oh. Hello," and Atlantis responds, sweetly, asskicking? and Rodney flexes his fingers on the pads and says, "Yes, let's, shall we?" and sends a line of drones out like he's conducting a symphony.
He doesn't know how long he's there, with her, directing the fight; he does know that the hive finally explodes in a perfect soundless burst of blue fire and Atlantis says, satisfactionlove.
Rodney has enough time to say, love, before hands--Carson's--pull him out of the chair.
The real world slowly coalesces around him, tingles of gold still at the edges of his vision, and Atlantis echoes, love, quieter, like a kiss on the forehead.
Gratitude, Rodney says, and reaches out to pull the nearest person--oh, hi, Elizabeth!--into a hug, or maybe he's just holding on so he won't fall.
Elizabeth and Carson have to lead him gently to the infirmary, catching his arms as he reaches out to touch the walls, the door controls, almost uncontrollable because he's still completely high.
"The hive ship blew up! Did you see, yes, of course you saw the hive ship blow up. Good, good, and the shield is mostly good, except get Zelenka to check the, um, and probably we should take the stargate offline, just for a minute, because okay, the ZPM's still drawing power from something, and Carson. Carson, I can feel where you are, and there's, there's, I think there might be a Wraith out on pier five--okay, no, she took care of that, although we'll probably want to send someone to clean up, and oh, my God," he says as they come into the infirmary, because the first person he sees is John, and Atlantis says, guiltlongingfearlove when he sees him.
" . . . you're in love with me," Rodney finishes, and passes out.
***
"Hey," John says quietly from the doorway, looking very much the tragically wounded hero in pale blue scrubs with a bandage wrapped around his head.
"Hey," Rodney says from where he's propped up in his bed, too wired to sleep but too tired to do anything other than wish he could. Carson has had a couple of burly nurses deposit Rodney in his quarters after pronouncing him basically fine, if a little too in tune with Atlantis for his mental health.
She's fading from his mind fast--he can't feel everybody in the city and he isn't thinking in diagnostics or sensors--and he's trying to focus on something else. This isn't exactly the type of distraction he was thinking about, though.
"Carson said I should stay away from Ancient tech for a while," Rodney says, because small talk is good, small talk is so not the subject of how Rodney outed John in the infirmary. He points at the screen of the laptop he's holding. "I have X-Men."
John nods vaguely. "Yeah, it should go away by morning." He's not quite meeting Rodney's eyes, and if there was dirt on the floor of Rodney's quarters, he probably would have scuffed a toe through it. Instead he points at the door behind him with his thumb, and says, "I should probably--"
"Stay," Rodney says, cutting him off and setting aside the laptop to stand up on shaky legs, because he knows that if John goes now, if he walks out Rodney's door, he might never be back, and when did Rodney's life turn into a romantic comedy?
John's gone a little white and takes a step back, but the door doesn't open and Rodney's across the room in that second. Seeing John's face show fearlove, cradling it in his hands, kissing him, desperation and love and--"Stay," Rodney says again, a little hoarsely.
John's lashes are lowered and Rodney can't see his eyes. It's a breathless minute and he lets his hands slip down slowly, wishing that Atlantis would show John what she showed Rodney in the infirmary. His connection is fading, though, and so they're left standing three inches from each other and not touching.
"I'm not," John starts, "I don't think I'm really feeling up to--" and Rodney almost smacks him in the head before he remembers John's dashing head wound.
"Oh, my God," Rodney says loudly instead, grabbing John's hand and turning to drag him toward the bed. "Look," he says, jabbing a finger toward John, "Wake me up when you figure it out, because I am really too tired to have this conversation, with or without the help of a third party."
He pulls John, slightly stunned-looking, down next to him and reaches over to slide the laptop underneath the bed. When he turns back, it's into the waiting circle of John's arms and to his steady gaze, amused and full of love.
"Oh," Rodney says. "Good. I, uh, I was worried I might have to make a graph or something."
John shuts him up with a kiss like a promise for tomorrow, and the light turns off.
Rodney settles into John, warm and close in the moonlight, and feels one last touch from Atlantis like a benediction. Love, he thinks.
"Yeah," John murmurs. "Me too."
END