SGA: Getting Lost Is Easier Than Losing Your Mind (1/2). McKay/Sheppard, NC-17.
Getting Lost Is Easier Than Losing Your Mind
Stargate: Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard, NC-17. 18,000 words.
Late S3, with incidental spoilers for previous material.
Notes, and a disclaimer.
"Look," Sheppard was saying as the jumper door opened, "all I'm saying is, I think we could get a lot out of a relationship with these people."
"Like what?" Rodney snorted. "Space herpes?"
Sheppard clapped him companionably on the shoulder. "Dare to dream, McKay," he said.
*
There was a bowl of fruit on the conference table, and Rodney helped himself to a fistful of berries while they waited for Elizabeth.
"Anyway," Sheppard was saying, "what I really don't get was why you and Ronon got the local cheer squad and all I got was a tour of some sacred bathhouse." He examined a berry, tossed it in the air and caught it in his mouth. Show-off. "Clearly, not as psychic as they'd like us to believe."
"Oh, whatever," Rodney said. "You got off easy. I couldn't lose that blonde with the wine and the, you know," he said, making an ample gesture in front of his chest. "I mean, it was flattering for the first three or four hours, but-"
A meaningful look from Sheppard cut him off mid-expostulation. Elizabeth took her seat, folded her hands and looked around with her best shining expectant first contact face. "So?"
"No dice," said Sheppard. "Gotta keep operations small so they have the best chance of hiding from the Wraith. Don't think we have much they're interested in, anyway."
"As far as trading is concerned," Rodney muttered. Elizabeth gave him an inquiring look. "Listen, they're not viable trading partners, let's just move on," he continued, loudly.
She turned the inquiring look on Sheppard. "Colonel?"
"Well," Sheppard hedged, "they were friendly, and everything, but." He frowned a little. "Sort of-"
"Overly amorous," Teyla supplied diplomatically, just as Rodney said, "Creepy."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow.
Rodney sighed. "Look, even if they had anything to trade, we'd have to join them in an orgy just to get their attention long enough to negotiate."
"Yeah," Sheppard was nodding, "even the guy they sent to rub my feet seemed kind of, how shall I put it-"
"Faggy," Ronon supplied, taking a bite of the crunchy blue fruit he had selected from the bowl.
"Ronon!"
"It means when you like dick," he went on helpfully around a mouthful of not-quite-apple. "One of the Marines told me."
(Rodney was aware he wasn't exactly noted for his tact around here, but at least he knew enough to shut up when Elizabeth used her mom voice. Her expression of horror, which he'd already have pegged at about a six on the scale, jumped right up to an eight point five.)
"Well, not you," Ronon clarified. "A guy."
The briefing went more-or-less downhill from there.
*
With Rodney, it was mostly food - in fact, he didn't even notice anything weird for the first few days. A piece of fruit finding his hand as he groped for a scanner on his desk. A PowerBar he must have forgotten in the pocket of his tac vest. Then, chocolate pudding - and that was at least a little bit weird, because he'd actually just been thinking about lunch, and what dessert was likely to be today (along with the continuum hypothesis, how exactly Miko's hair did that thing it did, and whether a retarded monkey really would have done a better job coding this diagnostic program than Dr. Levine) - and because it really wasn't the kind of thing he normally kept lying around the lab. A sandwich, maybe, or some of that weird grain they'd gotten from the people on P36-9L4, which popped like popcorn but tasted like bacon, but-
Oh.
"Look, if you're trying to fatten me up so that I'll be less competition for the alien princesses-" he began, turning half-around in his chair to glare up at Sheppard. Sheppard just gave him his best Rodney, what? face - not the innocent who, me? one which meant he really had done something sneaky, or the what the fuck, McKay one which meant he was pissed, just the plain old perplexed one. (Rodney got that face kind of a lot.)
"Well, if you're not the Secret Pudding Fairy," -and that was probably one of those things he was supposed to save for the internal monologue, but whatever, really- "then where did that come from?" He indicated the dessert in question with his chin.
Sheppard - whose expression had been evolving into one which, if Rodney knew how to read him, indicated irritation bleeding into the simple confusion - frowned suddenly.
"It's not yours?"
"Well, you can't have it, if that's what you're asking," said Rodney, shifting protectively toward the pudding.
"No, look, I mean. Did it just sort of, um - appear?"
Now it was Rodney's turn to make a face. "What?"
"Listen, have you noticed-" Sheppard broke off. He wasn't meeting Rodney's eyes, which probably meant he was embarrassed about what he was about to say, which probably meant it was something stupid. Rodney could grow old thinking of all the stupid things John Sheppard could possibly have to say to him, and he wasn't exactly a patient man at the best of times.
"Spit it out, Colonel," Rodney said.
Sheppard shrugged, unsnapped his vest pocket, and held up a small, brightly-painted object.
Rodney could actually feel his eyes going wide. "Is that - oh, wow," he said, way more reverently than he really wanted to deal with right now, but - "Can I touch it?"
Sheppard's lips twitched.
"Oh, shut up," Rodney said, but he was too preoccupied to put his heart into it. "Where the hell did you get this? I thought there were only, like, a dozen prototypes ever made." He was still turning it over in his hands. "Oh my God, it actually fires."
"Yeah, yeah, hand it over," Sheppard said, swiping the thing back. "Anyway, the point is, I have no idea where I got it. I got back to my quarters after the mission debrief and it was just standing there on my desk."
"Hm," said Rodney.
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"Hm," said Rodney.
"Yeah, I think we've established that, Rodney. Anyway, doesn't it seem sort of weird to you?"
"Maybe you have a secret admirer," Rodney said, still not really paying attention. His mind was already ticking over the possibilities; talking was mostly just a way to keep Sheppard occupied at this point.
"Yeah, no, I don't think so," Sheppard said. "How many people on this base do you think would know a rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure ever even existed?"
Rodney looked pointedly around the lab, his gaze taking in two theoretical physicists, an analytical chemist, a computer scientist, and Sheppard himself.
"Okay, point taken. But still. Unless this is your way of asking me out on a date, McKay," - Rodney rolled his eyes - "I just don't see anyone on the base doing it."
Rodney opened his hands in a shrug. "Well," he said, in the voice he reserved for the stupidest of questions and Marines, "if it wasn't someone on the base, Sherlock, who do you think put it in your quarters? The Magical Gods of Lucasfilm? Maybe the Ancients? Their way of saying 'hey, we've got your back in that fight against the Wraith, except, oh wait, we totally don't, but here, have an incredibly rare and highly prized but ultimately useless piece of 1970s sci-fi memorabilia instead'?"
Sheppard gave him a pained look. "Well, it's not completely useless," he said. "The rockets really do fire."
Rodney grinned. "That is pretty damn cool, actually. Let me see it again," he said.
"Rodney."
"Yes, yes, okay," he said. Because it was weird, and even if weird was sort of everyone's specialty these days - there really were only about a dozen of these things in existence, and Rodney would have bet two weeks' dessert that none of them belonged in this galaxy. "Maybe there's some sort of wacky Ancient Santa Claus program running amok, I don't know. I'll look into it."
"Cool," Sheppard said, getting up to leave. "Anyway, I'm supposed to, uh, I have a thing. Let me know if you come up with anything on the, you know." He waved his hand vaguely.
"Hey, nice doll," said Zelenka, coming through the door behind him.
"Shut up," said Rodney.
*
The people on P4M-778 called their world Calmyria: blue skies, golden fields, and buxom milkmaids everywhere they turned, and the mission looked like it was going smoothly until Rodney's mysterious energy readings led them straight into a cave so dank and forbidding that only its lack of legs saved it from being a walking cliché. Two hours and several close encounters of the reptilian kind later, the readings turned out to be emanating from an Ancient artifact which was (a) not a ZPM and (b) not looking like it was going to be good for much of anything, at least until Sheppard touched it and turned invisible. This made P4M-778 officially the best mission ever for about five minutes - until Sheppard got over the indignity, realized that he could still touch things, and started to investigate the ten thousand ways he could use this power to annoy Rodney.
In the end, the effect wore off on its own a few hours after they got back - which was good, because it meant Rodney didn't have to kill Sheppard. Not that he'd really miss him if he were gone, or anything, but it would probably be one of those things Elizabeth tended to frown upon.
"So I just ran into Ronon," Sheppard remarked without preamble the next morning, setting his breakfast tray down and slipping into the seat across from Rodney. "He had a kitten on his shoulder."
"Yup," Rodney confirmed around a mouthful of waffles. "He was out running yesterday, found it on one of the outer piers. I guess Elizabeth said he could keep it. I think he's calling it the Destroyer of Worlds. Or possibly Sparkles." He smiled into the middle distance, fork paused in mid-air and dripping syrup. "Kind of sweet, really."
"Kind of weird, is more like it," said Sheppard. He looked around, then leaned in toward Rodney, lowering his voice. "You don't think this is related to, you know, the thing, do you?"
Rodney was just opening his mouth to respond when Teyla appeared, looking faintly perturbed, and put her tray down next to Sheppard's.
"I have just seen Ronon," she began, tone uncertain.
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"He had - an animal."
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"It was attached to his shoulder."
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"Ah," said Teyla, meaningfully.
"It's called a cat," Rodney said, shooting Sheppard a dirty look and spearing a piece of sausage from his plate.
"I do not believe we had such animals on Athos. They are not dangerous?"
"Not unless you're made of string," Rodney said. Teyla gave him a blank look. "Never mind. Here comes the man of the hour," he said.
Ronon sat down next to Rodney, and the kitten climbed cautiously off his shoulder, down his stupid oversized pecs, and into Ronon's lap. Ronon was having his usual ascetic breakfast: only about as much meat as one would find on a rather small boar. He fed bits of bacon fat into his lap with one hand while eating with the other.
"What are you calling it?" Rodney asked. "And don't say Schrödinger, that joke is so old." He rolled his eyes.
"How about 'Meredith'?" Sheppard suggested.
"I call him Ronon," Ronon said.
Sheppard blinked; he looked at Rodney, then back at Ronon. "Wait, what?"
"Uh, won't that get a little confusing?" Rodney asked.
"It's a good name," Ronon said, frowning.
"Yup," Sheppard nodded. He looked at Rodney. "Sure," Rodney agreed.
The cat woke up, yawned, gave Ronon's thigh a methodical kneading, rearranged itself into a different curl, and promptly fell back asleep.
Ronon smiled.
*
Some days, Rodney couldn't help wondering if this galaxy didn't hate them just a little.
On LS6-944 there was fighting. Just fighting; no argument, no misunderstanding, no secret alliance with the Wraith or the Genii or that dickhead Brad McAllister who used to beat Rodney up every day in Grade 5; no good reason any of them could think of. And sure, they got home, because they were good, and getting better every time they did this, which Rodney wasn't sure he liked very much at all - but then, that wasn't really something he wanted to think about, either. The point was that they got home: dirty and stinking, with Teyla's right arm in a sling made from half of Rodney's jacket and her left slung about Ronon's shoulders, but home, together and more-or-less intact. Rodney had what felt like a pretty good shiner on his cheekbone, though, from where he'd gotten up close and personal with a rock in the ditch they'd used for cover.
Dirty and stinking, and hot, too, because the planet was mostly desert, except where it was swamp - and something had bitten Rodney right on that part of his elbow that he couldn't quite see, so he couldn't tell if it looked inflamed or blue or like he was about to turn into a bug or a pumpkin or whatever - not that he was entirely sure what that would look like, but he figured he'd know it if he saw it - and whatever it was, it really itched, and he hadn't eaten in at least three hours, and God, he really needed a shower. He palmed the door to his quarters open, threw his pack on the floor and the remnants of his jacket over the back of his desk chair, and peeled articles of clothing off in twos and threes as he went, leaving a trail which culminated in a pair of swamp-dredged boots right at the shower door.
He turned the water on full and gathered it in his palms, scrubbing face and chest and armpits and elbows: it felt like microscopic alien grit was permeating his soul, that awful prickly sand-in-the-elastic feeling he always had for days after going to the beach, only ten times worse. He'd just towelled off, changed into clean clothes, and pitched the wholly unsalvageable parts of the others when the door chimed.
"I was just - hey," Sheppard said, stepping through the door and getting his hand around Rodney's jaw to turn him into the light, "hey, what happened to your face?"
"I smashed it on a rock in that ditch you shoved me into," Rodney snapped. "Thanks a lot, by the way."
"Oh," said Sheppard. The door shushed closed behind him. He was still looking at Rodney's cheek, eyes intent with an expression Rodney couldn't decipher. His fingertips skimmed the bruise - the touch sort of tingled, more than really hurt, but it was still kind of weird. Kind of weird, too, that Sheppard hadn't come back yet with some remark about how he'd be sure not to inconvenience Rodney by saving his life the next time the opportunity arose.
"Yeah," Rodney said, a bit uneasily, and tried to twist away from the touch, but Sheppard was holding his jaw pretty firmly, which was definitely starting to move into the official territory of weird. And then Sheppard's other hand was on his bicep, and that was weird, too, and Rodney was getting ready to ask what was up with Sheppard today, honestly, had he forgotten to take his normal pills or something, when Sheppard said "sorry," absently, and then did something a whole lot weirder where he sort of brought Rodney's mouth to his and - the word you are searching for is kiss, Rodney, Sheppard is kissing you, he thought frantically-
Things happened kind of quickly after that.
Somehow Sheppard managed to get him backed up against the wall by the door; he planted one hand a span above Rodney's shoulder, rubbing the back of his own neck with the other, and gave him a look that Rodney recognized, with a feeling of mounting panic, as roughly the one Ronon gave a good steak. And then Sheppard brought that free hand down to Rodney's hip in a tight, unmistakable hold, one which said hello, Rodney, here I am with my improbably strong hands and my improbably fine ass and my really stupid hair, invading your personal space in new and confusing ways, and there's not one goddamn thing you can do about it, and hooked two fingers down into the front pocket of Rodney's BDUs to haul him in close, and Rodney was just marshalling his thoughts to ask if he'd maybe inhaled some alien sex pollen or had a psychotic break or something when Sheppard stuck his tongue in Rodney's ear and he stopped thinking entirely.
Later, Rodney's brain switched back on and his hands started working again, so he got them all tangled up in Sheppard's ridiculous hair and kind of pulled a little, and okay, maybe Sheppard kind of liked that, because he made this breathless, indescribably goddamn hot sound all around Rodney's dick and sucked harder, loud and messy and hollow-cheeked - and then pulled off with his mouth all shiny and wet and sort of rubbed the head around on his lips a bit before going back down, which was, oh, okay, okay, and he wasn't sure how much he'd really wanted to know about what got John Sheppard hot and bothered, but if sucking Rodney's dick in the dirtiest way imaginable was what did it for him - well, Rodney thought charitably, who am I to rain on his parade, and came wildly, half in Sheppard's mouth and all over his lips, too, and a little on his cheek, and hands tight in Sheppard's hair like clinging to life, and heartbeat so thunderous in his ears he thought it would drown them both.
*
In the morning Sheppard was gone, and Rodney woke up in one of those weird positions he sometimes found himself in when he'd had trouble falling asleep: on his stomach, with one arm kind of awkwardly bent up under him, the other flung out to the side, and a little puddle of drool on the pillowcase where his mouth had gone slack in sleep. He took a three-minute shower, got his shirt most of the way on before he was all the way out the door, downed two cups of coffee and poured a third to go, and made it to the briefing room just barely on time: tablet in one hand, coffee in the other, bagel stuffed in his mouth for lack of anywhere else to put it.
"Nice, McKay," Sheppard said, giving him a wink and a thumbs up. (Rodney had the sneaking suspicion this might not have been an entirely sincere gesture.) But no secret smile, no lingering look, no hint whatsoever that the Colonel standing before him in mission jacket and freshly-laundered t-shirt had been naked in Rodney's bed - taking up most of it, for that matter - two hours earlier.
Well, what were you expecting? Rodney scolded himself. Secret handshake? Decoder ring? Obviously they'd have to keep this on the DL (this was how he figured Sheppard would put it, anyway); he was reasonably sure "blowing astrophysicists" was on the list of stuff which could get a guy thrown out of the Air Force, and frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted the word getting out, either. Even if the quietly-disseminated information that he was getting some would only make him that much more desirable to the female population of the Pegasus Galaxy, the blow to his reputation from letting it be known that it was Sheppard he was getting it from might not be worth it. Also, he wasn't really entirely sure he wanted it to happen again, and he wasn't ruling out the possibility that it had been some sort of elaborate hallucination, either. Maybe he'd inhaled the alien sex pollen. Maybe-
Okay, Rodney thought, playing it cool. I can play it cool. No problem.
It had been two weeks, three days, and one unconfirmed (but, Rodney prayed with all his soul, wholly true) rumour concerning Major Lorne and a rubber duck in the showers before Elizabeth, in her infinite wisdom, decided there might be a situation warranting investigation here. It hadn't really taken Rodney long to figure out the problem, once he was convinced there actually was one; all he'd needed to do was think back to the last time he was off-world and work out all the ways Zelenka could have fucked up in his absence.
(In the end he'd had to go back a couple missions - back to the planet with the nymphomaniacs and the wreaths and Sheppard's gay foot-rub, and that memory made him smirk a little, because maybe they were more psychic than he'd thought, after all - and it turned out that, yes, two science teams had been exploring new areas of the city while Rodney'd been off-world doing his best not to get syphilis and/or killed, and yes, they had maybe touched an unknown piece of technology in one of the rooms, in direct contravention of Rodney's Standing Order Number One, and some lights had come on but they really didn't think it was, like, a big deal, or anything, and - well, Rodney had pretty much stopped them right there, because if the explanation had gone on much longer he'd have had to strangle someone, and he was pretty sure that would be bad for his blood pressure.)
Elizabeth cleared her throat delicately, and the chatter in the briefing room settled. "Rodney?"
He tapped a key on his laptop, bringing a schematic up on the wall display. "Yes. Well, here we have a basic schematic of the device activated by Doctors Levine and Martineau, which we believe to be responsible for the objects which have been appearing around the city. From our preliminary scans, it appears to have both biometric and psychometric capabilities. It constantly monitors the heart rate, respiration, blood glucose, and serotonin and dopamine levels of subjects, in addition to a sort of passive telepathic field which listens for... prompts."
"But this is not new," Zelenka added. "Every door, panel and-"
"-and toilet, yes, all Ancient technology does seem to possess this sort of basic functionality, at least for those with the ATA gene. It's just a different implementation of the same interface we use to fly a jumper, or-"
"-or fire the Ancient weapons system, yes, I understand," said Elizabeth.
"But it gives us whatever we want?" asked Lorne.
"We have psychic toilets?" asked Sheppard.
Rodney rolled his eyes in a fashion encompassing the briefing room at large and the US military in general. "No," he replied, mostly to Lorne. "We're not talking about the drive-thru window at Wendy's, okay? It's more like - how do I put this? It doesn't respond to conscious commands. It was designed for the full-time care of children, to fulfill all their physical, emotional and intellectual needs in an anticipatory and organic fashion."
"So we can't always get what we want, but we get-"
Rodney shot him his best withering look, and Sheppard changed tack. "Anyway, doesn't this all seem awfully, I don't know, irresponsible? Leaving their children to be looked after by a computer?"
"These are also the people who created an army of self-replicating machines bent on destroying the universe," Zelenka pointed out.
"Right."
"Also, we think is experimental," Zelenka went on. "Maybe…" He waved his hand a little. "Not ready yet."
"Lot of that going around, huh," said Sheppard.
"Listen," Rodney said again, because clearly nobody was. "This is a serious problem, people."
"So - wait a minute, why does it affect everyone?" Elizabeth asked. "Radek doesn't have the Ancient gene, but he's gotten - items, yes?"
"Yes, well, uh, we have some tentative-"
"You don't know," Sheppard interrupted.
"-well, we don't have a working theory as such, no," Rodney finished, lamely. He glared at Sheppard, but the Colonel was already talking again.
"Okay," he was saying. "Maybe I'm just being dense here, but what exactly is the problem? So people are getting a few toys. It's kind of weird, and maybe I could have lived with knowing a little less about Sergeant Stackhouse's inner child and its affinity for whoopee cushions, but what's the big deal here?"
"First of all, it's not just a few toys," Rodney snapped. "Dr. Zhukova got stuck in a transporter last week and it created the exact tool she needed to get out. A tool we'd never even seen before. Believe me, it's not much of a step from a harmonic resonator to a P-90."
"True," Sheppard nodded seriously, looking at Elizabeth. "And Ronon got a cat. Imagine the chaos if it tried to give McKay a girlfriend. Or a personality."
Rodney seemed to be using the death glare a lot today. "Oh, ha, ha. Sure, it's all fun and games until Major Lorne's subconscious decides a thermonuclear device would really give him that warm fuzzy feeling-"
"Yeah, because I'm sure the Ancients really included the H-bomb on their list of supplies necessary for the care and feeding of infants," Sheppard interrupted, but Rodney, whose many congenital gifts included a superior vocal tract, just talked over him.
"Look, you're not getting it. These idiots activated the system, but they didn't input any parameters. It's like-" He waved his hands a little, feeling for the metaphor. "It's like an improper integral, okay? They didn't set any limits, so-"
"-so it's acting over all space, yeah, and-"
"-and in this case, that means it's taken everyone in the city under its tender and loving wing, and it will continue to evolve until it feels it's meeting whatever needs it thinks they have."
"We have," Zelenka corrected.
"And the system felt that Colonel Sheppard's requirements included... a doll," Teyla broke in. (She was really good, Rodney noticed, at that thing where you paused just long enough to express utter disdain without actually saying anything offensive. He needed to work on that.)
"Action figure," Rodney and Sheppard muttered in unison.
(At this Ronon and Teyla exchanged that look they sometimes did, the one that Rodney was pretty sure meant what the fuck are we doing hanging around with these lunatics, or possibly you know, we could probably take this place over with a banana and a roll of duct tape.)
"Anyway," Sheppard said, wounded, "I was having a very stressful week."
*
At some point in the last few weeks Elizabeth had sat Ronon down for a chat about linguistic sensitivity, which meant that, even though Rodney saw him roll his eyes when they were finally ushered into the presence of the Supreme Autarch of Delonia, he kept his mouth shut.
It was kind of hard to figure out where to look, though. The Supreme Autarch was packed into this sort of shimmery gold unitard which made it really, really hard to look directly at him, but looking around the audience chamber - at the guards (naked, well-oiled) or the statues (multiple penises) or the murals (anatomically improbable to say the least) - didn't exactly feel like much of an option, either.
At least, Rodney thought, he could take comfort in being probably the least uncomfortable person in the room. Teyla was wearing that utterly serene expression which meant she was either really freaked out or really pissed off, or both, and expending a lot of effort to keep it all under control; Sheppard had a shifty look which Rodney would have called cornered, except for how they were alone in the middle of a cavernous hall. Ronon just looked like he was intently focusing all of his superstrength on keeping his mouth shut.
And heck, Rodney was a scientist. So what if there were a few more dicks in the room than he was used to? Nothing he hadn't seen before. He could deal. Especially if the readings they'd taken from orbit indicated the presence of a vein of naquadriah two miles outside the city, which he was pretty sure they did. A couple of ounces of that stuff could power the city for months, maybe years. Not to mention blow the crap out of any number of Wraith hives, or Replicators, or whoever else felt like getting up in their collective grills that week. Really, having to spend a couple of hours in the Great Hall of Erect Penises was a small price to pay for the potential benefits.
To science.
That thought made Rodney feel a bit better. He raised his chin a little, and looked around confidently: nothing he couldn't handle. (Crimes against fashion were, after all, Sheppard's department.)
One of the guards winked at him. Rodney snapped his gaze back to the floor. He really hoped that tingly feeling in his face didn't mean he was turning bright red, but he was pretty sure it did.
"Can we get this over with?" he hissed to Sheppard, who was way ahead of him, studying the (mercifully non-pictorial) mosaic on the floor with great interest.
Sheppard took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said, a little too loudly. He raised his head, and managed to look right at the Supreme Autarch without wincing noticeably. Rodney was impressed.
"So I'll just, uh, get right to the point, then," Sheppard said, after a few beats in which it became clear that the Autarch wasn't going to lose a staring contest anytime soon. "As you know, we are, uh, travellers-"
"From a distant land," Teyla put in.
"Yeah, and we're interested in exploring the caves outside your city. We'd like to bring a few more of our friends, too, and if we find what we're looking for we'd like to arrange a trade."
Rodney poked him in the ribs. "Ow! I mean, uh, Your Highness."
The Supreme Autarch adjusted himself in his unitard, but didn't say anything. Rodney shot Ronon what he hoped was an eloquent look, but judging by his distinct failure to hit Rodney over the head with the nearest blunt object, Ronon didn't get the message.
At last, one jewelled, manicured hand rose in a vague gesture, and one of the guards nearest the dais - it was difficult not to notice that these were, in all imaginable senses of the word, the most imposing of the guards - boomed, "Approach."
Startled, all four of them looked at each other and then set forward at once, but the hand raised sharply. "Halt," said the guard, and then, with a leer Rodney could only pray years of therapy would one day allow him to forget, pointed to Sheppard. "Only him."
Sound reverberated, cathedral-like, in the great hall, but Sheppard was so close to the Autarch that Rodney, thirty feet away, couldn't make out what they were saying. He could, however, see the Autarch's fingers: jewels winking as they danced in the air, skimming Sheppard's hair, grazing his jaw, circling his bicep. Something - the air, probably, this was exactly the sort of place where the incense would be some sort of horrible aphrodisiac, and they were probably all about five minutes away from getting date-raped by Gigantor, and - something was making the blood rush to Rodney's face and pound in his ears at the sight, and he felt queasy and surprisingly annoyed, like it was him up there getting felt up by Liberace - but he couldn't quite look away, either.
Part of the reason they'd wound up going to Delonia in the first place was that a week of solid effort on the nursery program - well, a week of solid effort, except for time spent eating, or sleeping, or fixing the other hundred things that went wrong on a daily basis, or having implausibly spectacular sex with Sheppard - had turned up absolutely no results. Unless Rodney's overwhelming desire to throttle Zelenka counted as a result, and he was pretty sure it didn't, since that was kind of an all-the-time thing. The rest of the team was going stir-crazy, anyway, and on Sheppard's recommendation - "A mission. Any mission." had been his exact words - Elizabeth had dispatched them in a jumper to check out a few of the space gates which had been piling up on the to-be-checked-out list.
If nothing else, Rodney had figured it would take his mind off the voice which had been whispering in his ear lately that this thing with Sheppard, which had happened three and a half more times since the night after LS6-944, wasn't quite right: that just standing around being hot and good at math had never caused Sheppard - or, well, anyone - to throw himself at Rodney before. (Why it hadn't was an entirely different, though no less compelling, question.) It didn't seem to be working, mostly because Sheppard was his usual professional self anytime they were off-world, or in the briefing room, or anywhere outside Rodney's quarters, really.
(Well, as professional as Sheppard ever was on a mission. Which wasn't saying much beyond the fact that he managed to keep his pants on at least 75% of the time, but he was scrupulously resisting the temptation to make out with Rodney, and Rodney had good reason to believe that required quite a bit of effort on Sheppard's part. And that was admirable, and all, but really really not helping with the whole not-thinking-about-it thing; in fact, it was making Rodney think about it all the goddamn time, and that was starting to be sort of a problem.
He had a pretty good view of the way the aforementioned pants fit Sheppard's ass from back here, too.
Damn.)
"Well, we'll just be, uh, calling our friends, then," Sheppard was saying, already backing away from the dais as quickly as he reasonably could. "Pleasure doing business with you," he called.
When the twenty-foot gilt-embossed doors finally crashed shut behind them, Rodney let out a sigh which felt like it could have powered a small wind turbine for a year.
"Well," said Ronon, "that was quite homosexual."
*
The day after they got back from Delonia the environmental controls went on the fritz, and when Sheppard batting his eyelashes at a console didn't seem to do the trick, it meant that Rodney got to spend the better part of seven hours on his back with his head in a plasma conduit, condensation dripping into his eyes. Around hour two, right when the twinge in his neck was threatening - well, Rodney wasn't quite sure what, but he was sure it was serious; could you get a hernia in your neck? He'd have to check - a familiar-sounding someone cleared his throat outside the conduit.
"What," Rodney asked tetchily, squirming out and craning his neck.
Sheppard was holding out a glass of some liquid. Its composition was totally and utterly immaterial; it could have been fermented yak milk for all Rodney cared, because the glistening beads on the outside of the glass said that it was cold.
"Iced tea," Sheppard said. Rodney, who had been in the middle of grabbing for the glass, shot him an accusing glare, and Sheppard looked defensive.
"No lemon," he said quickly, sounding hurt that Rodney would even have to ask. "Scout's honour."
"Thanks," Rodney gasped; he gulped down half the glass, and started to cough.
"Easy, there," Sheppard said. He laid a hand on Rodney's back, halfway between a pat and - something. It almost felt like they were on their way to some kind of Awkward Moment, but then Sheppard took his hand away, just before it would have gotten weird, and Rodney regained the ability to breathe.
"You'd think the stupid nanny program could deal with this," Rodney grumbled. "I'm only an astrophysicist, but I'm pretty sure being roasted alive is bad for child development."
"You'd think it could bring you the iced tea, too, and save me the trip." Sheppard smiled crookedly. He slid down the wall to sit next to Rodney.
"Well, now that you mention it," Rodney said, raising a finger, "this could use a touch more sugar. And maybe one of those little umbrellas." He looked around hopefully, as if one might materialize.
"Yeah, it hasn't exactly displayed what I'd call a logical behaviour pattern so far," Sheppard continued, ignoring Rodney. "I'm pretty sure it gave Ronon that kitten, and I don't know about you, but he's not really the first guy who springs to mind when I think about who to put in charge of small mammals."
"Huh," said Rodney. He looked sideways at Sheppard. "What have you been getting, anyway?"
"Just these," Sheppard said, fishing a couple of crinkly plastic-wrapped objects from his pocket and holding them up.
"Lollipops?" Rodney asked. "That's all?"
"Yeah," said Sheppard. "Oh, and a trampoline."
*
One night they'd been sitting on Rodney's couch, playing Portal on the Xbox which had appeared in his quarters a few weeks back ("This isn't even out yet," Sheppard had said, tone somewhere between reverence and pure boyish delight), and Sheppard's thigh had brushed Rodney's, and they'd looked at one another, and then things had sort of devolved until Rodney was on his back with his hands up behind his head, clutching at the arm of the couch.
Just because Rodney didn't believe in rewarding incompetence didn't mean he was incapable of giving praise where it was genuinely due, and the fact could hardly be denied: John Sheppard was a seriously expert cocksucker. And Rodney had told him so, said his name, which wasn't really something they did, normally, but it was awfully good and Rodney did tend to forget the rules at times - and Sheppard had stopped sucking Rodney's dick for a minute and said, with one of those funny little smiles of his, "you know, you could maybe call me John," and Rodney'd said, "okay," and that was sort of that. But at the morning briefing the next day he was Colonel Sheppard again, and had pants on and stuff, and Rodney wasn't really sure whether calling him John violated the whole don't-ask-don't-tell thing they had going on here. So in the end he kept on calling him Sheppard to his face, and John in his head, and mostly just "oh, fuck, yes" when they were doing it.
He couldn't really say when it had slipped into a routine. It always seemed to be John setting the rules: John coming to his quarters, never the other way around, and John leaving before Rodney woke up and showering back in his own room and coming to morning briefing looking fresh and composed and not at all like the guy who'd kept Rodney up half the night with his hot, desperate mouth and his "come on, Rodney, make me take it". It didn't really occur to Rodney that it was a bad thing, or a problem, because even though John was always gone when Rodney woke up, he did usually stay for a while - and he was kind of nice to throw an arm over in the night, reassuringly solid, and he didn't hog the covers and usually stopped snoring when Rodney gave him a good jab in the ribs - and anyway, it was easier for Rodney to sleep in his own bed in his own room where he always knew where his clean underwear and his EpiPen were.
Besides, he kept on coming, so it wasn't like he had some kind of big gay issue with the whole thing. And obviously they had to be discreet; it wasn't like they could just roll out of Rodney's quarters together and into Elizabeth's office, wearing each other's pants and "by the way, totally doing it" looks on their faces. Anyway, the last thing Rodney needed was for this to turn into some kind of relationship.
So mostly things just went on, and Rodney worked on the nursery-device problem whenever he wasn't occupied by more pressing issues, like the imminent demise of the universe - which, as John said, only happened a couple of times a week, really, and couldn't Rodney maybe hurry it up just a bit? And Ronon walked around with the Destroyer of Worlds on his shoulder, and John seemed to have a lollipop in his mouth at every single briefing, which, as Rodney had pointed out one night after John had done something truly impressive with said mouth, was just not fair, and John had just smirked and shrugged and stuck Rodney's hand down his pants. And sometimes John would bring him a sandwich while he was working, and sometimes he'd just come by to bother Rodney when he was alone in the lab late at night, in that annoying way he had which Rodney was, to his considerable alarm, coming to recognize as caring. And once, at two in the morning when the code Rodney had been compiling for five hours terminated with a fatal error, John had prised the keyboard gently from his hands before he could smash it, and rubbed the tension out of Rodney's neck and shoulders until they went loose and liquid; and then he'd shoved coffee cups and stacks of old journal articles off Rodney's desk and jumped up, tugged Rodney to stand between his thighs, and kissed him and let him put John's legs over his shoulders and fuck him until neither of them could stand. Later he'd gotten Rodney back to his quarters and bullied him into bed, and the next day Rodney had gotten up bright and early, fixed the code, and saved two solar systems before breakfast.
On M5X-993 they got thrown in prison, which shouldn't really have surprised Rodney - or any of them - at that point, although hey, at least this isn't the worst alien prison I've been in had to be in the running for Worst Silver Lining Ever. They were all together in one cell, which was nice, because it meant they got to chat in between their fourteen-hour boulder-smashing shifts, and play tic-tac-toe in the dirt, and try to plot their escape, and stuff; and it was pretty big, which was nice, so there was room for even Ronon to stretch out and sleep full-length on the ground.
They'd been there for three days, which was pretty worrying in and of itself, because even though they'd been meaning to stay a week - this was one of those planets, Rodney's very favourite kind, where the people seemed all nice and friendly and interested in trade and cultural exchange and group hugs and not being backstabbing assholes and everything, so that after their initial visit through the gate they'd agreed to come back with some Marines and help dig wells for a new irrigation system in exchange for a share of the harvest - they'd still scheduled daily check-ins with Atlantis, and by now they'd missed two. Rescue was starting to look a little conspicuous by its absence, and after they'd attempted escape twice on the first day and gotten suckerpunched and denied their ration of watery gruel for their trouble, John's glower just got more glower-y every day. Three days' growth hadn't improved his looks, either. Ronon paced a lot and proposed wildly improbable schemes involving the tearing off of limbs, or the use of Teyla's hair ("I saw it in a play," he said, defensive), and Teyla herself meditated more and more and somehow still managed to look increasingly pissed with each passing hour. Mostly Rodney just concentrated on trying not to freak the fuck out.
That was getting kind of harder, though, as another night descended with no sign of shock, awe, or rescue in any form. And the rules had been getting kind of blurry anyway, because there was that time in the lab, and the other day at lunch John had given him his Jell-O, which was a public display of affection if Rodney had ever heard of one - and John had looked so frustrated all day, and Ronon and Teyla were sleeping and couldn't see them in the dark and probably wouldn't care anyway, so Rodney reached - overbalanced a little - steadied himself with one hand - found John's mouth with his fingers - and finally got a hand under his stubbly jaw and kissed him, firm and warm and sweet.
"Um," John said, when Rodney pulled back, and Rodney thought, damn, shit, damn, but John didn't really seem angry or anything - not angry with him, Rodney mentally corrected - and after a moment he said "um," again, and then, finally, "thanks," and his voice kind of softened and he said again, "thanks, Rodney," and patted him a little awkwardly on the shoulder, and so Rodney figured they were probably okay, even if he had broken a rule after all.
(Much later, after the Marines had come and they'd gotten home safely, and after he'd eaten and showered and eaten again, it occurred to Rodney that he was maybe a little bit in love with John. After all, they'd been imprisoned and beaten up and covered in alien dirt and neither of them had brushed their teeth in three days, but Rodney had kissed him anyway: and if that wasn't love, Rodney didn't know what was.)
*
Zelenka looked up when he came in. "Oh, good," he said. "Come here, I have something to show you."
It was twelve-thirty, maybe one in the morning, but Rodney hadn't been able to fall asleep, and after extricating himself from the covers and one of John's legs, thrown carelessly across his hip, he'd gotten dressed and come down to the lab to see if he could make any progress with the override code they'd been writing that morning. The problem, as always, was that the Ancient systems adapted so damned quickly; by the time they'd finished analyzing one set of data and started working up the code that would turn the system off, it was already rewriting its own algorithms, rendering their program useless before they'd even finished compiling it.
It had only been a week since they'd gotten out of prison, and yesterday Rodney had accidentally married a high priestess on M2L-478, but the rest of the team had managed to bust him out before the natives could sacrifice him to the statue of the Goddess (which looked a lot like Eleanor Roosevelt, if she'd had three eyes and been made out of macramé), so that was okay. It was the team's tenth accidental marriage, too, so they'd had cake and beer when they got back to Atlantis, and Teyla had brought out the musical instrument which had turned up in her quarters three weeks ago - it looked almost exactly like a five-stringed banjo, but she called it a zatak, and John was teaching her what he called the sacred music of Earth - "Who is this 'Four-Chord Gord' Rodney speaks of?" Teyla had asked, and John had frowned and shaken his head disapprovingly - and John had put his arm around Rodney's shoulders and said "Congratulations," and stuffed a piece of cake in Rodney's mouth, smearing blue frosting all over his lips and chin, and Rodney had looked at the smug grin on John's face and thought, with sudden and perfect clarity, Jesus, I love this retard.
(Then he'd realized that this thought was causing a dangerously stupid look to spread across his face, and John to give him a funny look in turn; and instead of answering the question hanging, inchoate, in the air, he'd turned to Ronon and stuffed a piece of cake in his mouth, too.)
Zelenka was pulling schematics up on one screen and waving in the direction of an enscribbled whiteboard with his other hand. "So," he said, "I was thinking. Our problem is the adaptability of the Ancient program, yes?"
"Yes," Rodney said slowly, not quite seeing where - if anywhere - this was going.
"So what we need is another program which - ha!" Zelenka said suddenly. "Yes, here, look for yourself." He pushed Rodney into a chair in front of the terminal, pointing excitedly at something on the screen. It took Rodney half a second to realize what he was looking at, and another full second to wrap his mind around how completely insane Zelenka must be to be proposing this as a solution. He pushed his chair back from the desk.
"Are you nuts?" he asked. "Wait, stupid question; let me rephrase. Have you completely and utterly lost it?"
"It will work," Zelenka insisted. "Look, here. We can remove these subroutines-"
By the time Rodney got back to his quarters it was past four, and John was gone. Well, Rodney could wait to tell him in the morning; they wouldn't be ready to test their plan for a day, at least. He retrieved the good pillow from John's side of the bed, punched it into an acceptable shape, and fell into a heavy, satisfied sleep.
*
"You want to do what?"
"Well, they wouldn't be that kind of Replicator."
"What's that, the kind that tries to kill us or the kind that tries to kill us?"
"I know, I know," Rodney said, hands raised in a "bear with me" kind of gesture. "That's what I said, too. But I've checked Zelenka's code twice. I really think it's our best shot."
John looked unimpressed. "I don't know, Rodney." He turned to Elizabeth. "Do you really think it's worth the risk?"
"I heard it painted your quarters pink," Ronon remarked.
"Worth the risk," John confirmed quickly.
Elizabeth, however, still didn't seem convinced. She pursed her lips, and looked like she was about to say something about proceeding with caution or exploring all our options.
Rodney was getting pretty tired of exploring all the options.
"It's started making people," he blurted out. Elizabeth paused, mouth half-open; all eyes turned to Rodney.
"Teyla was in the gym yesterday and it generated some kind of holographic sparring partner for her," Rodney explained, looking to Teyla for confirmation. She nodded. "Only it wasn't like any of the holograms we've seen before," he went on. "You can't normally hit a hologram, and they can't hit back. We think it was using some kind of dynamic force field technology - it could really come in handy in the field, actually, we're trying to replicate the effect-"
"Your point," John prompted.
"The thing is, from what Teyla's told us, it looked just like a real person. She probably wouldn't even have known it were a hologram, except that she didn't recognize it, and, well, it ceased to exist when she left the room. But it talked, it breathed, everything."
Elizabeth nodded, her face serious. It was finally starting to look like the potential for Very Bad Things was sinking in, here.
Rodney rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Also, it might have created a hologram of Zelenka this one time, because he swears I never told him to run a diagnostic on the environmental systems the day before they failed, but it's equally possible that he's just lying." He paused. "Or, you know. An idiot."
"Wait a minute," Elizabeth said, frowning. "I thought there were only holographic projectors in very limited areas of the city."
"Well," said Rodney. He'd kind of been hoping nobody was going to pick up on that minor detail. "It's, uh. We're not really sure, but it's, uh, possible they're not holograms at all. Technically."
John straightened out of his slouch, getting about half a foot taller in the process. "Rodney," he began, voice low and warning, "if you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting-"
"Well, they wouldn't be that kind of-"
"Rodney."
Rodney waved his hand dismissively. "They would have at most a rudimentary intelligence. Their behaviours would be highly programmed, with little to no autonomy. More to the point," he continued loudly, looking back at Elizabeth, "they'd be sucking huge amounts of power from our already-depleted ZPM. Now, remind me again, Colonel, how many of those do we have? You aren't hiding one in your hair, are you?"
"So let me get this straight," said John, clearly unable to muster a comeback to that. "Our brilliant plan to fight the Replicators is… more Replicators."
Rodney folded his arms across his chest.
"And how exactly is this not your worst idea yet?"
Elizabeth sighed and leaned forward, cupping her chin in her hands. "I'll admit I'm very concerned by the possibility that it could be duplicating members of the expedition, not to mention the potential drain on our energy reserves. But we still don't have any reason to believe the system would do anything to damage us, and I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with a solution which involves such a serious security risk to address a program which only gives us things it thinks we need. Right?"
That was right about when the dildo materialized on the conference table.
*
Things Rodney Really, Really, Really Misses About Earth:
1. Maple Dip donuts.
2. The Richmond Night Market.
3. The way large purple silicone dicks hardly ever appeared out of thin air.
4. Porn.
*
"I'd just like to state one last time that this is really Dr. Zelenka's plan, and I accept no responsibility if it somehow backfires and kills us all."
John raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, yeah."
It hadn't taken much longer to convince Elizabeth the plan (Rodney had wanted to call it "Operation McKay"; John had voted for "Operation Shut Up, Rodney") was worth the risk, especially once Rodney had pulled up a simulation demonstrating how much energy half a dozen of the androids could drain from the ZPM in under a week.
Rodney rubbed his hands together briskly. "Here goes." A six-key sequence activated the program.
"That's it?" John asked after a moment.
"What were you expecting, lasers?"
"Well, I don't know," said John. "Maybe a Replicator busting through the wall and killing us all."
Rodney gave him a look.
"Or lasers," John agreed.
"It's going to be a while before we know. Want to grab some dinner?"
"Yeah, okay," said John, and jumped down off of Rodney's desk. Dinner was chicken and salad and almost-rice with almost-pineapple, and afterward they ran into Teyla and persuaded her that the fact that she hadn't seen Tron represented a grave defect in her comprehension of Earth culture and one requiring immediate rectification. Ronon and Zelenka joined them when they heard there was going to be popcorn - or almost-popcorn, anyway. They watched the movie in the common area. Ronon sat cross-legged on the floor, peering at the screen like a three-year-old; Teyla and Zelenka sat in chairs, and Rodney sat on the same couch as John and noticed that they crossed their legs in exactly the same way, right foot on the opposite knee - had they always done that? He couldn't remember - and threw popcorn at Ronon's dreads. ("Ten points for every one that gets stuck," he whispered to John. John won, 160-90.)
"Hey," John said later, in the corridor. Rodney was standing at the door to his quarters, just about to palm it open. "Are we going to get to keep the stuff?"
"Huh?"
"The things the program created, are they going to, you know." He made kind of an exploding motion with his hands. "I mean, that Boba Fett's worth a lot of money."
Rodney tilted his head to the side. "Huh. I hadn't really thought about it, actually." He rubbed his chin, then shrugged. "I don't see why not. They're as real as anything else. The code we wrote will just shut the system down, not undo everything it's done."
"So-"
"So you'll probably have to repaint your quarters, yes." Rodney smirked. "Although I think Springtime Dream is really your colour."
*
"Shut it down! Shut it - oh, get out of the way, you imbecile, let me-" Rodney shoved the blond biophysicist - Bayliss? Bateson? Rodney always called him "Baywatch" in his head; someone that good-looking couldn't be a real physicist, and it showed - away from the terminal and began frantically typing commands.
To no avail, as it turned out. At least John wasn't there to - oh, hell.
*
"Replicators so aren't going to take over the city," John was saying, falsetto, the next morning. "Don't be ridiculous, Colonel. What could possibly go wrong?"
Rodney glared daggers over his eggs and speared an innocent piece of sausage with unnecessary force.
"Operation McK- ow!" Rodney had flicked a grape at him, hitting him square in the middle of the forehead.
"Oh, shut up," Rodney said. "You should just be thankful I'm here to fix Zelenka's screw-ups. If it weren't for me-"
"Way to go, McKay, I think that's your third time almost destroying the city this month," Ronon chimed in, joining them.
"And it's only the second week! You're ahead of schedule," John added, reaching across the table to pat Rodney on the shoulder.
Rodney swatted the hand away. "Believe me, you'd learn to appreciate my work pretty quickly if I weren't around."
"Also the extra food," Ronon commented.
Rodney narrowed his eyes.
John finished his oatmeal and pushed his tray away, stretching briefly before he rose from the table. "Mission briefing in twenty," he called back on his way out of the mess hall.
"I can't believe we're still going on this stupid mission," Rodney muttered, stabbing at another piece of sausage. "Especially after we were up half the night dealing with the stupid Replicators." Absently, he put his coffee cup to his lips, then grimaced when sweet life-giving nectar failed to flow forth. He got up, with a vague wave of the cup in Ronon's direction to indicate he was going for his - third? fourth refill?
He cracked his neck from side to side as he waited for Dr. Biro to finish adding cream to her coffee. At least, that was what he'd initially assumed she was doing; at this rate, it was starting to look like she was performing a titration. A very, very slow one.
"Take your time, it's not like I'm a busy person or anything," he muttered.
Finally the line moved up, and the redheaded Marine who'd been behind Biro shot Rodney a dirty look, but really, it wasn't like he was budging, or anything; he was just getting coffee, so it was perfectly reasonable for him to go to the head of the line. That was where the coffee was. (He debated clarifying this point, but decided the polysyllabic words might be too much for a military mind, impressive rack or no. Besides, justifying one's actions only detracted from the aura of genius.)
His neck still felt stiff. He'd slept weirdly again - well, actually, he'd hardly slept at all. John hadn't come by, but then, that was understandable, seeing as how he'd been up most of the night trying to keep the Replicators at bay while Rodney worked on finding a real solution. And now that they'd saved the city, what thanks did they get? Some stupid diplomatic mission where he'd probably have to sit around smoking patchouli with the village elders, watching his brain cells die one by one while John went on some kind of vision quest as prelude to trade negotiations and the maidens (there were always maidens) oohed over Ronon's biceps. Worse, Teyla had gotten out of the mission with some sort of flimsy excuse about the "funeral" of a "friend" on the mainland, so they'd be taking some clueless grunt as backup, which would probably mean getting them all killed as a bonus.
(In the end, it was actually the Wraith who nearly got them all killed, which Rodney supposed he couldn't really blame on their backup - even though said backup had turned out to be the hot Marine who'd glared at him in the coffee line-up that morning, and who could have easily had it in for him. At least she hadn't made anything worse, and he had to admit it'd been helpful having her there to keep the Wraith from eating him while he performed a minor technological miracle involving the DHD, the power cell from Ronon's blaster, and the piece of gum John had been chewing all morning.)
Later, after they'd made it back through the gate, after they'd showered and eaten and Rodney had flopped into a quick postprandial nap, he swung by the mess hall for a cupcake and a caffeine refill and made his way to the lab.
On the way to the station where he'd been monitoring the Replicator code's progress, a flash of colour caught his eye, and he did a double-take.
"Is that a Gameboy?"
Zelenka sat up and looked over his shoulder, instantly defensive. "We didn't have these things, okay? You had-" He gestured vaguely, feeling for a suitable cultural reference. "You had Rainbow Brite, we had Comrade Monochrome."
Rodney raised an eyebrow.
Zelenka huffed impatiently. "Leave me alone, Rodney."
"Fine, fine, play with your little toy." He turned back toward the terminal, but he could still feel Zelenka rolling his eyes.
Ronon showed up a few minutes later; he picked up a culture dish one of the biologists had left lying around, turning it over in his hands, and then just sort of loomed there in his usual disconcerting fashion until Rodney finally snapped, "Yes? What?"
Ronon continued to loom.
"Oh, right, your power cell. I forgot." Rodney rummaged around in a few bins on the far bench, looking for the spare he'd been repairing last week, then remembered that the cell which had been in Ronon's blaster was the spare; the old one had been lost in a regrettable but wholly unavoidable incident which had been in no way Rodney's fault.
"I'll have to replicate you a new one," he called over his shoulder. "Be ready in the morning."
Ronon nodded, and turned to go. Rodney thought of something.
"Hey, Ronon?"
He turned back. "Yeah?"
"Still got your cat?"
Ronon smiled. "Yeah. I'm training him to attack my enemies."
Rodney rubbed his temples. "Ronon-"
"Yeah?"
"-never mind," he said, at length. He shook his head. "Night."
"Night."
"Interesting," Rodney muttered to himself, after Ronon had left. "That must mean - huh." He opened his laptop and scanned a couple of files. Nobody had reported android sightings - or the appearance of new objects - since the modified Replicator code had gone into effect; it seemed to have worked, minor glitches and attempts to take over the city aside, which meant Ronon's kitten must have been a one-time creation, rather than a dynamically generated one like Teyla's sparring partner. Which made sense, really, since the level of computational complexity, not to mention the power, required to model a human being with the semblance of higher brain functions would have to be much more intensive than that to create a relatively simple animal like a cat. Even Zelenka could probably have done it: subroutines for eating, sleeping and chasing moving objects, and they'd be most of the way there already. (Come to think of it, they'd be most of the way to simulating Ronon. A few extra Marines wouldn't be too hard, either; this could be worth looking into. Rodney made a mental note.)
He spent forty-five minutes checking over the data the program had returned before running haywire, and then another hour beginning to take apart the device Lorne's team had retrieved from the ruins on P7X-467, which he'd been hoping was some kind of ultra-compact Ancient energy source but was turning out to look more like an ultra-compact Ancient nose-hair trimmer. Around one he finally gave up and hit the sack. John didn't come by that night, either, but then, it wasn't like they had a date, or anything. No big deal.
*
[ part two ]
Stargate: Atlantis, McKay/Sheppard, NC-17. 18,000 words.
Late S3, with incidental spoilers for previous material.
Notes, and a disclaimer.
"Look," Sheppard was saying as the jumper door opened, "all I'm saying is, I think we could get a lot out of a relationship with these people."
"Like what?" Rodney snorted. "Space herpes?"
Sheppard clapped him companionably on the shoulder. "Dare to dream, McKay," he said.
*
There was a bowl of fruit on the conference table, and Rodney helped himself to a fistful of berries while they waited for Elizabeth.
"Anyway," Sheppard was saying, "what I really don't get was why you and Ronon got the local cheer squad and all I got was a tour of some sacred bathhouse." He examined a berry, tossed it in the air and caught it in his mouth. Show-off. "Clearly, not as psychic as they'd like us to believe."
"Oh, whatever," Rodney said. "You got off easy. I couldn't lose that blonde with the wine and the, you know," he said, making an ample gesture in front of his chest. "I mean, it was flattering for the first three or four hours, but-"
A meaningful look from Sheppard cut him off mid-expostulation. Elizabeth took her seat, folded her hands and looked around with her best shining expectant first contact face. "So?"
"No dice," said Sheppard. "Gotta keep operations small so they have the best chance of hiding from the Wraith. Don't think we have much they're interested in, anyway."
"As far as trading is concerned," Rodney muttered. Elizabeth gave him an inquiring look. "Listen, they're not viable trading partners, let's just move on," he continued, loudly.
She turned the inquiring look on Sheppard. "Colonel?"
"Well," Sheppard hedged, "they were friendly, and everything, but." He frowned a little. "Sort of-"
"Overly amorous," Teyla supplied diplomatically, just as Rodney said, "Creepy."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow.
Rodney sighed. "Look, even if they had anything to trade, we'd have to join them in an orgy just to get their attention long enough to negotiate."
"Yeah," Sheppard was nodding, "even the guy they sent to rub my feet seemed kind of, how shall I put it-"
"Faggy," Ronon supplied, taking a bite of the crunchy blue fruit he had selected from the bowl.
"Ronon!"
"It means when you like dick," he went on helpfully around a mouthful of not-quite-apple. "One of the Marines told me."
(Rodney was aware he wasn't exactly noted for his tact around here, but at least he knew enough to shut up when Elizabeth used her mom voice. Her expression of horror, which he'd already have pegged at about a six on the scale, jumped right up to an eight point five.)
"Well, not you," Ronon clarified. "A guy."
The briefing went more-or-less downhill from there.
*
With Rodney, it was mostly food - in fact, he didn't even notice anything weird for the first few days. A piece of fruit finding his hand as he groped for a scanner on his desk. A PowerBar he must have forgotten in the pocket of his tac vest. Then, chocolate pudding - and that was at least a little bit weird, because he'd actually just been thinking about lunch, and what dessert was likely to be today (along with the continuum hypothesis, how exactly Miko's hair did that thing it did, and whether a retarded monkey really would have done a better job coding this diagnostic program than Dr. Levine) - and because it really wasn't the kind of thing he normally kept lying around the lab. A sandwich, maybe, or some of that weird grain they'd gotten from the people on P36-9L4, which popped like popcorn but tasted like bacon, but-
Oh.
"Look, if you're trying to fatten me up so that I'll be less competition for the alien princesses-" he began, turning half-around in his chair to glare up at Sheppard. Sheppard just gave him his best Rodney, what? face - not the innocent who, me? one which meant he really had done something sneaky, or the what the fuck, McKay one which meant he was pissed, just the plain old perplexed one. (Rodney got that face kind of a lot.)
"Well, if you're not the Secret Pudding Fairy," -and that was probably one of those things he was supposed to save for the internal monologue, but whatever, really- "then where did that come from?" He indicated the dessert in question with his chin.
Sheppard - whose expression had been evolving into one which, if Rodney knew how to read him, indicated irritation bleeding into the simple confusion - frowned suddenly.
"It's not yours?"
"Well, you can't have it, if that's what you're asking," said Rodney, shifting protectively toward the pudding.
"No, look, I mean. Did it just sort of, um - appear?"
Now it was Rodney's turn to make a face. "What?"
"Listen, have you noticed-" Sheppard broke off. He wasn't meeting Rodney's eyes, which probably meant he was embarrassed about what he was about to say, which probably meant it was something stupid. Rodney could grow old thinking of all the stupid things John Sheppard could possibly have to say to him, and he wasn't exactly a patient man at the best of times.
"Spit it out, Colonel," Rodney said.
Sheppard shrugged, unsnapped his vest pocket, and held up a small, brightly-painted object.
Rodney could actually feel his eyes going wide. "Is that - oh, wow," he said, way more reverently than he really wanted to deal with right now, but - "Can I touch it?"
Sheppard's lips twitched.
"Oh, shut up," Rodney said, but he was too preoccupied to put his heart into it. "Where the hell did you get this? I thought there were only, like, a dozen prototypes ever made." He was still turning it over in his hands. "Oh my God, it actually fires."
"Yeah, yeah, hand it over," Sheppard said, swiping the thing back. "Anyway, the point is, I have no idea where I got it. I got back to my quarters after the mission debrief and it was just standing there on my desk."
"Hm," said Rodney.
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"Hm," said Rodney.
"Yeah, I think we've established that, Rodney. Anyway, doesn't it seem sort of weird to you?"
"Maybe you have a secret admirer," Rodney said, still not really paying attention. His mind was already ticking over the possibilities; talking was mostly just a way to keep Sheppard occupied at this point.
"Yeah, no, I don't think so," Sheppard said. "How many people on this base do you think would know a rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure ever even existed?"
Rodney looked pointedly around the lab, his gaze taking in two theoretical physicists, an analytical chemist, a computer scientist, and Sheppard himself.
"Okay, point taken. But still. Unless this is your way of asking me out on a date, McKay," - Rodney rolled his eyes - "I just don't see anyone on the base doing it."
Rodney opened his hands in a shrug. "Well," he said, in the voice he reserved for the stupidest of questions and Marines, "if it wasn't someone on the base, Sherlock, who do you think put it in your quarters? The Magical Gods of Lucasfilm? Maybe the Ancients? Their way of saying 'hey, we've got your back in that fight against the Wraith, except, oh wait, we totally don't, but here, have an incredibly rare and highly prized but ultimately useless piece of 1970s sci-fi memorabilia instead'?"
Sheppard gave him a pained look. "Well, it's not completely useless," he said. "The rockets really do fire."
Rodney grinned. "That is pretty damn cool, actually. Let me see it again," he said.
"Rodney."
"Yes, yes, okay," he said. Because it was weird, and even if weird was sort of everyone's specialty these days - there really were only about a dozen of these things in existence, and Rodney would have bet two weeks' dessert that none of them belonged in this galaxy. "Maybe there's some sort of wacky Ancient Santa Claus program running amok, I don't know. I'll look into it."
"Cool," Sheppard said, getting up to leave. "Anyway, I'm supposed to, uh, I have a thing. Let me know if you come up with anything on the, you know." He waved his hand vaguely.
"Hey, nice doll," said Zelenka, coming through the door behind him.
"Shut up," said Rodney.
*
The people on P4M-778 called their world Calmyria: blue skies, golden fields, and buxom milkmaids everywhere they turned, and the mission looked like it was going smoothly until Rodney's mysterious energy readings led them straight into a cave so dank and forbidding that only its lack of legs saved it from being a walking cliché. Two hours and several close encounters of the reptilian kind later, the readings turned out to be emanating from an Ancient artifact which was (a) not a ZPM and (b) not looking like it was going to be good for much of anything, at least until Sheppard touched it and turned invisible. This made P4M-778 officially the best mission ever for about five minutes - until Sheppard got over the indignity, realized that he could still touch things, and started to investigate the ten thousand ways he could use this power to annoy Rodney.
In the end, the effect wore off on its own a few hours after they got back - which was good, because it meant Rodney didn't have to kill Sheppard. Not that he'd really miss him if he were gone, or anything, but it would probably be one of those things Elizabeth tended to frown upon.
"So I just ran into Ronon," Sheppard remarked without preamble the next morning, setting his breakfast tray down and slipping into the seat across from Rodney. "He had a kitten on his shoulder."
"Yup," Rodney confirmed around a mouthful of waffles. "He was out running yesterday, found it on one of the outer piers. I guess Elizabeth said he could keep it. I think he's calling it the Destroyer of Worlds. Or possibly Sparkles." He smiled into the middle distance, fork paused in mid-air and dripping syrup. "Kind of sweet, really."
"Kind of weird, is more like it," said Sheppard. He looked around, then leaned in toward Rodney, lowering his voice. "You don't think this is related to, you know, the thing, do you?"
Rodney was just opening his mouth to respond when Teyla appeared, looking faintly perturbed, and put her tray down next to Sheppard's.
"I have just seen Ronon," she began, tone uncertain.
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"He had - an animal."
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"It was attached to his shoulder."
"Yeah," said Sheppard.
"Ah," said Teyla, meaningfully.
"It's called a cat," Rodney said, shooting Sheppard a dirty look and spearing a piece of sausage from his plate.
"I do not believe we had such animals on Athos. They are not dangerous?"
"Not unless you're made of string," Rodney said. Teyla gave him a blank look. "Never mind. Here comes the man of the hour," he said.
Ronon sat down next to Rodney, and the kitten climbed cautiously off his shoulder, down his stupid oversized pecs, and into Ronon's lap. Ronon was having his usual ascetic breakfast: only about as much meat as one would find on a rather small boar. He fed bits of bacon fat into his lap with one hand while eating with the other.
"What are you calling it?" Rodney asked. "And don't say Schrödinger, that joke is so old." He rolled his eyes.
"How about 'Meredith'?" Sheppard suggested.
"I call him Ronon," Ronon said.
Sheppard blinked; he looked at Rodney, then back at Ronon. "Wait, what?"
"Uh, won't that get a little confusing?" Rodney asked.
"It's a good name," Ronon said, frowning.
"Yup," Sheppard nodded. He looked at Rodney. "Sure," Rodney agreed.
The cat woke up, yawned, gave Ronon's thigh a methodical kneading, rearranged itself into a different curl, and promptly fell back asleep.
Ronon smiled.
*
Some days, Rodney couldn't help wondering if this galaxy didn't hate them just a little.
On LS6-944 there was fighting. Just fighting; no argument, no misunderstanding, no secret alliance with the Wraith or the Genii or that dickhead Brad McAllister who used to beat Rodney up every day in Grade 5; no good reason any of them could think of. And sure, they got home, because they were good, and getting better every time they did this, which Rodney wasn't sure he liked very much at all - but then, that wasn't really something he wanted to think about, either. The point was that they got home: dirty and stinking, with Teyla's right arm in a sling made from half of Rodney's jacket and her left slung about Ronon's shoulders, but home, together and more-or-less intact. Rodney had what felt like a pretty good shiner on his cheekbone, though, from where he'd gotten up close and personal with a rock in the ditch they'd used for cover.
Dirty and stinking, and hot, too, because the planet was mostly desert, except where it was swamp - and something had bitten Rodney right on that part of his elbow that he couldn't quite see, so he couldn't tell if it looked inflamed or blue or like he was about to turn into a bug or a pumpkin or whatever - not that he was entirely sure what that would look like, but he figured he'd know it if he saw it - and whatever it was, it really itched, and he hadn't eaten in at least three hours, and God, he really needed a shower. He palmed the door to his quarters open, threw his pack on the floor and the remnants of his jacket over the back of his desk chair, and peeled articles of clothing off in twos and threes as he went, leaving a trail which culminated in a pair of swamp-dredged boots right at the shower door.
He turned the water on full and gathered it in his palms, scrubbing face and chest and armpits and elbows: it felt like microscopic alien grit was permeating his soul, that awful prickly sand-in-the-elastic feeling he always had for days after going to the beach, only ten times worse. He'd just towelled off, changed into clean clothes, and pitched the wholly unsalvageable parts of the others when the door chimed.
"I was just - hey," Sheppard said, stepping through the door and getting his hand around Rodney's jaw to turn him into the light, "hey, what happened to your face?"
"I smashed it on a rock in that ditch you shoved me into," Rodney snapped. "Thanks a lot, by the way."
"Oh," said Sheppard. The door shushed closed behind him. He was still looking at Rodney's cheek, eyes intent with an expression Rodney couldn't decipher. His fingertips skimmed the bruise - the touch sort of tingled, more than really hurt, but it was still kind of weird. Kind of weird, too, that Sheppard hadn't come back yet with some remark about how he'd be sure not to inconvenience Rodney by saving his life the next time the opportunity arose.
"Yeah," Rodney said, a bit uneasily, and tried to twist away from the touch, but Sheppard was holding his jaw pretty firmly, which was definitely starting to move into the official territory of weird. And then Sheppard's other hand was on his bicep, and that was weird, too, and Rodney was getting ready to ask what was up with Sheppard today, honestly, had he forgotten to take his normal pills or something, when Sheppard said "sorry," absently, and then did something a whole lot weirder where he sort of brought Rodney's mouth to his and - the word you are searching for is kiss, Rodney, Sheppard is kissing you, he thought frantically-
Things happened kind of quickly after that.
Somehow Sheppard managed to get him backed up against the wall by the door; he planted one hand a span above Rodney's shoulder, rubbing the back of his own neck with the other, and gave him a look that Rodney recognized, with a feeling of mounting panic, as roughly the one Ronon gave a good steak. And then Sheppard brought that free hand down to Rodney's hip in a tight, unmistakable hold, one which said hello, Rodney, here I am with my improbably strong hands and my improbably fine ass and my really stupid hair, invading your personal space in new and confusing ways, and there's not one goddamn thing you can do about it, and hooked two fingers down into the front pocket of Rodney's BDUs to haul him in close, and Rodney was just marshalling his thoughts to ask if he'd maybe inhaled some alien sex pollen or had a psychotic break or something when Sheppard stuck his tongue in Rodney's ear and he stopped thinking entirely.
Later, Rodney's brain switched back on and his hands started working again, so he got them all tangled up in Sheppard's ridiculous hair and kind of pulled a little, and okay, maybe Sheppard kind of liked that, because he made this breathless, indescribably goddamn hot sound all around Rodney's dick and sucked harder, loud and messy and hollow-cheeked - and then pulled off with his mouth all shiny and wet and sort of rubbed the head around on his lips a bit before going back down, which was, oh, okay, okay, and he wasn't sure how much he'd really wanted to know about what got John Sheppard hot and bothered, but if sucking Rodney's dick in the dirtiest way imaginable was what did it for him - well, Rodney thought charitably, who am I to rain on his parade, and came wildly, half in Sheppard's mouth and all over his lips, too, and a little on his cheek, and hands tight in Sheppard's hair like clinging to life, and heartbeat so thunderous in his ears he thought it would drown them both.
*
In the morning Sheppard was gone, and Rodney woke up in one of those weird positions he sometimes found himself in when he'd had trouble falling asleep: on his stomach, with one arm kind of awkwardly bent up under him, the other flung out to the side, and a little puddle of drool on the pillowcase where his mouth had gone slack in sleep. He took a three-minute shower, got his shirt most of the way on before he was all the way out the door, downed two cups of coffee and poured a third to go, and made it to the briefing room just barely on time: tablet in one hand, coffee in the other, bagel stuffed in his mouth for lack of anywhere else to put it.
"Nice, McKay," Sheppard said, giving him a wink and a thumbs up. (Rodney had the sneaking suspicion this might not have been an entirely sincere gesture.) But no secret smile, no lingering look, no hint whatsoever that the Colonel standing before him in mission jacket and freshly-laundered t-shirt had been naked in Rodney's bed - taking up most of it, for that matter - two hours earlier.
Well, what were you expecting? Rodney scolded himself. Secret handshake? Decoder ring? Obviously they'd have to keep this on the DL (this was how he figured Sheppard would put it, anyway); he was reasonably sure "blowing astrophysicists" was on the list of stuff which could get a guy thrown out of the Air Force, and frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted the word getting out, either. Even if the quietly-disseminated information that he was getting some would only make him that much more desirable to the female population of the Pegasus Galaxy, the blow to his reputation from letting it be known that it was Sheppard he was getting it from might not be worth it. Also, he wasn't really entirely sure he wanted it to happen again, and he wasn't ruling out the possibility that it had been some sort of elaborate hallucination, either. Maybe he'd inhaled the alien sex pollen. Maybe-
Okay, Rodney thought, playing it cool. I can play it cool. No problem.
It had been two weeks, three days, and one unconfirmed (but, Rodney prayed with all his soul, wholly true) rumour concerning Major Lorne and a rubber duck in the showers before Elizabeth, in her infinite wisdom, decided there might be a situation warranting investigation here. It hadn't really taken Rodney long to figure out the problem, once he was convinced there actually was one; all he'd needed to do was think back to the last time he was off-world and work out all the ways Zelenka could have fucked up in his absence.
(In the end he'd had to go back a couple missions - back to the planet with the nymphomaniacs and the wreaths and Sheppard's gay foot-rub, and that memory made him smirk a little, because maybe they were more psychic than he'd thought, after all - and it turned out that, yes, two science teams had been exploring new areas of the city while Rodney'd been off-world doing his best not to get syphilis and/or killed, and yes, they had maybe touched an unknown piece of technology in one of the rooms, in direct contravention of Rodney's Standing Order Number One, and some lights had come on but they really didn't think it was, like, a big deal, or anything, and - well, Rodney had pretty much stopped them right there, because if the explanation had gone on much longer he'd have had to strangle someone, and he was pretty sure that would be bad for his blood pressure.)
Elizabeth cleared her throat delicately, and the chatter in the briefing room settled. "Rodney?"
He tapped a key on his laptop, bringing a schematic up on the wall display. "Yes. Well, here we have a basic schematic of the device activated by Doctors Levine and Martineau, which we believe to be responsible for the objects which have been appearing around the city. From our preliminary scans, it appears to have both biometric and psychometric capabilities. It constantly monitors the heart rate, respiration, blood glucose, and serotonin and dopamine levels of subjects, in addition to a sort of passive telepathic field which listens for... prompts."
"But this is not new," Zelenka added. "Every door, panel and-"
"-and toilet, yes, all Ancient technology does seem to possess this sort of basic functionality, at least for those with the ATA gene. It's just a different implementation of the same interface we use to fly a jumper, or-"
"-or fire the Ancient weapons system, yes, I understand," said Elizabeth.
"But it gives us whatever we want?" asked Lorne.
"We have psychic toilets?" asked Sheppard.
Rodney rolled his eyes in a fashion encompassing the briefing room at large and the US military in general. "No," he replied, mostly to Lorne. "We're not talking about the drive-thru window at Wendy's, okay? It's more like - how do I put this? It doesn't respond to conscious commands. It was designed for the full-time care of children, to fulfill all their physical, emotional and intellectual needs in an anticipatory and organic fashion."
"So we can't always get what we want, but we get-"
Rodney shot him his best withering look, and Sheppard changed tack. "Anyway, doesn't this all seem awfully, I don't know, irresponsible? Leaving their children to be looked after by a computer?"
"These are also the people who created an army of self-replicating machines bent on destroying the universe," Zelenka pointed out.
"Right."
"Also, we think is experimental," Zelenka went on. "Maybe…" He waved his hand a little. "Not ready yet."
"Lot of that going around, huh," said Sheppard.
"Listen," Rodney said again, because clearly nobody was. "This is a serious problem, people."
"So - wait a minute, why does it affect everyone?" Elizabeth asked. "Radek doesn't have the Ancient gene, but he's gotten - items, yes?"
"Yes, well, uh, we have some tentative-"
"You don't know," Sheppard interrupted.
"-well, we don't have a working theory as such, no," Rodney finished, lamely. He glared at Sheppard, but the Colonel was already talking again.
"Okay," he was saying. "Maybe I'm just being dense here, but what exactly is the problem? So people are getting a few toys. It's kind of weird, and maybe I could have lived with knowing a little less about Sergeant Stackhouse's inner child and its affinity for whoopee cushions, but what's the big deal here?"
"First of all, it's not just a few toys," Rodney snapped. "Dr. Zhukova got stuck in a transporter last week and it created the exact tool she needed to get out. A tool we'd never even seen before. Believe me, it's not much of a step from a harmonic resonator to a P-90."
"True," Sheppard nodded seriously, looking at Elizabeth. "And Ronon got a cat. Imagine the chaos if it tried to give McKay a girlfriend. Or a personality."
Rodney seemed to be using the death glare a lot today. "Oh, ha, ha. Sure, it's all fun and games until Major Lorne's subconscious decides a thermonuclear device would really give him that warm fuzzy feeling-"
"Yeah, because I'm sure the Ancients really included the H-bomb on their list of supplies necessary for the care and feeding of infants," Sheppard interrupted, but Rodney, whose many congenital gifts included a superior vocal tract, just talked over him.
"Look, you're not getting it. These idiots activated the system, but they didn't input any parameters. It's like-" He waved his hands a little, feeling for the metaphor. "It's like an improper integral, okay? They didn't set any limits, so-"
"-so it's acting over all space, yeah, and-"
"-and in this case, that means it's taken everyone in the city under its tender and loving wing, and it will continue to evolve until it feels it's meeting whatever needs it thinks they have."
"We have," Zelenka corrected.
"And the system felt that Colonel Sheppard's requirements included... a doll," Teyla broke in. (She was really good, Rodney noticed, at that thing where you paused just long enough to express utter disdain without actually saying anything offensive. He needed to work on that.)
"Action figure," Rodney and Sheppard muttered in unison.
(At this Ronon and Teyla exchanged that look they sometimes did, the one that Rodney was pretty sure meant what the fuck are we doing hanging around with these lunatics, or possibly you know, we could probably take this place over with a banana and a roll of duct tape.)
"Anyway," Sheppard said, wounded, "I was having a very stressful week."
*
At some point in the last few weeks Elizabeth had sat Ronon down for a chat about linguistic sensitivity, which meant that, even though Rodney saw him roll his eyes when they were finally ushered into the presence of the Supreme Autarch of Delonia, he kept his mouth shut.
It was kind of hard to figure out where to look, though. The Supreme Autarch was packed into this sort of shimmery gold unitard which made it really, really hard to look directly at him, but looking around the audience chamber - at the guards (naked, well-oiled) or the statues (multiple penises) or the murals (anatomically improbable to say the least) - didn't exactly feel like much of an option, either.
At least, Rodney thought, he could take comfort in being probably the least uncomfortable person in the room. Teyla was wearing that utterly serene expression which meant she was either really freaked out or really pissed off, or both, and expending a lot of effort to keep it all under control; Sheppard had a shifty look which Rodney would have called cornered, except for how they were alone in the middle of a cavernous hall. Ronon just looked like he was intently focusing all of his superstrength on keeping his mouth shut.
And heck, Rodney was a scientist. So what if there were a few more dicks in the room than he was used to? Nothing he hadn't seen before. He could deal. Especially if the readings they'd taken from orbit indicated the presence of a vein of naquadriah two miles outside the city, which he was pretty sure they did. A couple of ounces of that stuff could power the city for months, maybe years. Not to mention blow the crap out of any number of Wraith hives, or Replicators, or whoever else felt like getting up in their collective grills that week. Really, having to spend a couple of hours in the Great Hall of Erect Penises was a small price to pay for the potential benefits.
To science.
That thought made Rodney feel a bit better. He raised his chin a little, and looked around confidently: nothing he couldn't handle. (Crimes against fashion were, after all, Sheppard's department.)
One of the guards winked at him. Rodney snapped his gaze back to the floor. He really hoped that tingly feeling in his face didn't mean he was turning bright red, but he was pretty sure it did.
"Can we get this over with?" he hissed to Sheppard, who was way ahead of him, studying the (mercifully non-pictorial) mosaic on the floor with great interest.
Sheppard took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said, a little too loudly. He raised his head, and managed to look right at the Supreme Autarch without wincing noticeably. Rodney was impressed.
"So I'll just, uh, get right to the point, then," Sheppard said, after a few beats in which it became clear that the Autarch wasn't going to lose a staring contest anytime soon. "As you know, we are, uh, travellers-"
"From a distant land," Teyla put in.
"Yeah, and we're interested in exploring the caves outside your city. We'd like to bring a few more of our friends, too, and if we find what we're looking for we'd like to arrange a trade."
Rodney poked him in the ribs. "Ow! I mean, uh, Your Highness."
The Supreme Autarch adjusted himself in his unitard, but didn't say anything. Rodney shot Ronon what he hoped was an eloquent look, but judging by his distinct failure to hit Rodney over the head with the nearest blunt object, Ronon didn't get the message.
At last, one jewelled, manicured hand rose in a vague gesture, and one of the guards nearest the dais - it was difficult not to notice that these were, in all imaginable senses of the word, the most imposing of the guards - boomed, "Approach."
Startled, all four of them looked at each other and then set forward at once, but the hand raised sharply. "Halt," said the guard, and then, with a leer Rodney could only pray years of therapy would one day allow him to forget, pointed to Sheppard. "Only him."
Sound reverberated, cathedral-like, in the great hall, but Sheppard was so close to the Autarch that Rodney, thirty feet away, couldn't make out what they were saying. He could, however, see the Autarch's fingers: jewels winking as they danced in the air, skimming Sheppard's hair, grazing his jaw, circling his bicep. Something - the air, probably, this was exactly the sort of place where the incense would be some sort of horrible aphrodisiac, and they were probably all about five minutes away from getting date-raped by Gigantor, and - something was making the blood rush to Rodney's face and pound in his ears at the sight, and he felt queasy and surprisingly annoyed, like it was him up there getting felt up by Liberace - but he couldn't quite look away, either.
Part of the reason they'd wound up going to Delonia in the first place was that a week of solid effort on the nursery program - well, a week of solid effort, except for time spent eating, or sleeping, or fixing the other hundred things that went wrong on a daily basis, or having implausibly spectacular sex with Sheppard - had turned up absolutely no results. Unless Rodney's overwhelming desire to throttle Zelenka counted as a result, and he was pretty sure it didn't, since that was kind of an all-the-time thing. The rest of the team was going stir-crazy, anyway, and on Sheppard's recommendation - "A mission. Any mission." had been his exact words - Elizabeth had dispatched them in a jumper to check out a few of the space gates which had been piling up on the to-be-checked-out list.
If nothing else, Rodney had figured it would take his mind off the voice which had been whispering in his ear lately that this thing with Sheppard, which had happened three and a half more times since the night after LS6-944, wasn't quite right: that just standing around being hot and good at math had never caused Sheppard - or, well, anyone - to throw himself at Rodney before. (Why it hadn't was an entirely different, though no less compelling, question.) It didn't seem to be working, mostly because Sheppard was his usual professional self anytime they were off-world, or in the briefing room, or anywhere outside Rodney's quarters, really.
(Well, as professional as Sheppard ever was on a mission. Which wasn't saying much beyond the fact that he managed to keep his pants on at least 75% of the time, but he was scrupulously resisting the temptation to make out with Rodney, and Rodney had good reason to believe that required quite a bit of effort on Sheppard's part. And that was admirable, and all, but really really not helping with the whole not-thinking-about-it thing; in fact, it was making Rodney think about it all the goddamn time, and that was starting to be sort of a problem.
He had a pretty good view of the way the aforementioned pants fit Sheppard's ass from back here, too.
Damn.)
"Well, we'll just be, uh, calling our friends, then," Sheppard was saying, already backing away from the dais as quickly as he reasonably could. "Pleasure doing business with you," he called.
When the twenty-foot gilt-embossed doors finally crashed shut behind them, Rodney let out a sigh which felt like it could have powered a small wind turbine for a year.
"Well," said Ronon, "that was quite homosexual."
*
The day after they got back from Delonia the environmental controls went on the fritz, and when Sheppard batting his eyelashes at a console didn't seem to do the trick, it meant that Rodney got to spend the better part of seven hours on his back with his head in a plasma conduit, condensation dripping into his eyes. Around hour two, right when the twinge in his neck was threatening - well, Rodney wasn't quite sure what, but he was sure it was serious; could you get a hernia in your neck? He'd have to check - a familiar-sounding someone cleared his throat outside the conduit.
"What," Rodney asked tetchily, squirming out and craning his neck.
Sheppard was holding out a glass of some liquid. Its composition was totally and utterly immaterial; it could have been fermented yak milk for all Rodney cared, because the glistening beads on the outside of the glass said that it was cold.
"Iced tea," Sheppard said. Rodney, who had been in the middle of grabbing for the glass, shot him an accusing glare, and Sheppard looked defensive.
"No lemon," he said quickly, sounding hurt that Rodney would even have to ask. "Scout's honour."
"Thanks," Rodney gasped; he gulped down half the glass, and started to cough.
"Easy, there," Sheppard said. He laid a hand on Rodney's back, halfway between a pat and - something. It almost felt like they were on their way to some kind of Awkward Moment, but then Sheppard took his hand away, just before it would have gotten weird, and Rodney regained the ability to breathe.
"You'd think the stupid nanny program could deal with this," Rodney grumbled. "I'm only an astrophysicist, but I'm pretty sure being roasted alive is bad for child development."
"You'd think it could bring you the iced tea, too, and save me the trip." Sheppard smiled crookedly. He slid down the wall to sit next to Rodney.
"Well, now that you mention it," Rodney said, raising a finger, "this could use a touch more sugar. And maybe one of those little umbrellas." He looked around hopefully, as if one might materialize.
"Yeah, it hasn't exactly displayed what I'd call a logical behaviour pattern so far," Sheppard continued, ignoring Rodney. "I'm pretty sure it gave Ronon that kitten, and I don't know about you, but he's not really the first guy who springs to mind when I think about who to put in charge of small mammals."
"Huh," said Rodney. He looked sideways at Sheppard. "What have you been getting, anyway?"
"Just these," Sheppard said, fishing a couple of crinkly plastic-wrapped objects from his pocket and holding them up.
"Lollipops?" Rodney asked. "That's all?"
"Yeah," said Sheppard. "Oh, and a trampoline."
*
One night they'd been sitting on Rodney's couch, playing Portal on the Xbox which had appeared in his quarters a few weeks back ("This isn't even out yet," Sheppard had said, tone somewhere between reverence and pure boyish delight), and Sheppard's thigh had brushed Rodney's, and they'd looked at one another, and then things had sort of devolved until Rodney was on his back with his hands up behind his head, clutching at the arm of the couch.
Just because Rodney didn't believe in rewarding incompetence didn't mean he was incapable of giving praise where it was genuinely due, and the fact could hardly be denied: John Sheppard was a seriously expert cocksucker. And Rodney had told him so, said his name, which wasn't really something they did, normally, but it was awfully good and Rodney did tend to forget the rules at times - and Sheppard had stopped sucking Rodney's dick for a minute and said, with one of those funny little smiles of his, "you know, you could maybe call me John," and Rodney'd said, "okay," and that was sort of that. But at the morning briefing the next day he was Colonel Sheppard again, and had pants on and stuff, and Rodney wasn't really sure whether calling him John violated the whole don't-ask-don't-tell thing they had going on here. So in the end he kept on calling him Sheppard to his face, and John in his head, and mostly just "oh, fuck, yes" when they were doing it.
He couldn't really say when it had slipped into a routine. It always seemed to be John setting the rules: John coming to his quarters, never the other way around, and John leaving before Rodney woke up and showering back in his own room and coming to morning briefing looking fresh and composed and not at all like the guy who'd kept Rodney up half the night with his hot, desperate mouth and his "come on, Rodney, make me take it". It didn't really occur to Rodney that it was a bad thing, or a problem, because even though John was always gone when Rodney woke up, he did usually stay for a while - and he was kind of nice to throw an arm over in the night, reassuringly solid, and he didn't hog the covers and usually stopped snoring when Rodney gave him a good jab in the ribs - and anyway, it was easier for Rodney to sleep in his own bed in his own room where he always knew where his clean underwear and his EpiPen were.
Besides, he kept on coming, so it wasn't like he had some kind of big gay issue with the whole thing. And obviously they had to be discreet; it wasn't like they could just roll out of Rodney's quarters together and into Elizabeth's office, wearing each other's pants and "by the way, totally doing it" looks on their faces. Anyway, the last thing Rodney needed was for this to turn into some kind of relationship.
So mostly things just went on, and Rodney worked on the nursery-device problem whenever he wasn't occupied by more pressing issues, like the imminent demise of the universe - which, as John said, only happened a couple of times a week, really, and couldn't Rodney maybe hurry it up just a bit? And Ronon walked around with the Destroyer of Worlds on his shoulder, and John seemed to have a lollipop in his mouth at every single briefing, which, as Rodney had pointed out one night after John had done something truly impressive with said mouth, was just not fair, and John had just smirked and shrugged and stuck Rodney's hand down his pants. And sometimes John would bring him a sandwich while he was working, and sometimes he'd just come by to bother Rodney when he was alone in the lab late at night, in that annoying way he had which Rodney was, to his considerable alarm, coming to recognize as caring. And once, at two in the morning when the code Rodney had been compiling for five hours terminated with a fatal error, John had prised the keyboard gently from his hands before he could smash it, and rubbed the tension out of Rodney's neck and shoulders until they went loose and liquid; and then he'd shoved coffee cups and stacks of old journal articles off Rodney's desk and jumped up, tugged Rodney to stand between his thighs, and kissed him and let him put John's legs over his shoulders and fuck him until neither of them could stand. Later he'd gotten Rodney back to his quarters and bullied him into bed, and the next day Rodney had gotten up bright and early, fixed the code, and saved two solar systems before breakfast.
On M5X-993 they got thrown in prison, which shouldn't really have surprised Rodney - or any of them - at that point, although hey, at least this isn't the worst alien prison I've been in had to be in the running for Worst Silver Lining Ever. They were all together in one cell, which was nice, because it meant they got to chat in between their fourteen-hour boulder-smashing shifts, and play tic-tac-toe in the dirt, and try to plot their escape, and stuff; and it was pretty big, which was nice, so there was room for even Ronon to stretch out and sleep full-length on the ground.
They'd been there for three days, which was pretty worrying in and of itself, because even though they'd been meaning to stay a week - this was one of those planets, Rodney's very favourite kind, where the people seemed all nice and friendly and interested in trade and cultural exchange and group hugs and not being backstabbing assholes and everything, so that after their initial visit through the gate they'd agreed to come back with some Marines and help dig wells for a new irrigation system in exchange for a share of the harvest - they'd still scheduled daily check-ins with Atlantis, and by now they'd missed two. Rescue was starting to look a little conspicuous by its absence, and after they'd attempted escape twice on the first day and gotten suckerpunched and denied their ration of watery gruel for their trouble, John's glower just got more glower-y every day. Three days' growth hadn't improved his looks, either. Ronon paced a lot and proposed wildly improbable schemes involving the tearing off of limbs, or the use of Teyla's hair ("I saw it in a play," he said, defensive), and Teyla herself meditated more and more and somehow still managed to look increasingly pissed with each passing hour. Mostly Rodney just concentrated on trying not to freak the fuck out.
That was getting kind of harder, though, as another night descended with no sign of shock, awe, or rescue in any form. And the rules had been getting kind of blurry anyway, because there was that time in the lab, and the other day at lunch John had given him his Jell-O, which was a public display of affection if Rodney had ever heard of one - and John had looked so frustrated all day, and Ronon and Teyla were sleeping and couldn't see them in the dark and probably wouldn't care anyway, so Rodney reached - overbalanced a little - steadied himself with one hand - found John's mouth with his fingers - and finally got a hand under his stubbly jaw and kissed him, firm and warm and sweet.
"Um," John said, when Rodney pulled back, and Rodney thought, damn, shit, damn, but John didn't really seem angry or anything - not angry with him, Rodney mentally corrected - and after a moment he said "um," again, and then, finally, "thanks," and his voice kind of softened and he said again, "thanks, Rodney," and patted him a little awkwardly on the shoulder, and so Rodney figured they were probably okay, even if he had broken a rule after all.
(Much later, after the Marines had come and they'd gotten home safely, and after he'd eaten and showered and eaten again, it occurred to Rodney that he was maybe a little bit in love with John. After all, they'd been imprisoned and beaten up and covered in alien dirt and neither of them had brushed their teeth in three days, but Rodney had kissed him anyway: and if that wasn't love, Rodney didn't know what was.)
*
Zelenka looked up when he came in. "Oh, good," he said. "Come here, I have something to show you."
It was twelve-thirty, maybe one in the morning, but Rodney hadn't been able to fall asleep, and after extricating himself from the covers and one of John's legs, thrown carelessly across his hip, he'd gotten dressed and come down to the lab to see if he could make any progress with the override code they'd been writing that morning. The problem, as always, was that the Ancient systems adapted so damned quickly; by the time they'd finished analyzing one set of data and started working up the code that would turn the system off, it was already rewriting its own algorithms, rendering their program useless before they'd even finished compiling it.
It had only been a week since they'd gotten out of prison, and yesterday Rodney had accidentally married a high priestess on M2L-478, but the rest of the team had managed to bust him out before the natives could sacrifice him to the statue of the Goddess (which looked a lot like Eleanor Roosevelt, if she'd had three eyes and been made out of macramé), so that was okay. It was the team's tenth accidental marriage, too, so they'd had cake and beer when they got back to Atlantis, and Teyla had brought out the musical instrument which had turned up in her quarters three weeks ago - it looked almost exactly like a five-stringed banjo, but she called it a zatak, and John was teaching her what he called the sacred music of Earth - "Who is this 'Four-Chord Gord' Rodney speaks of?" Teyla had asked, and John had frowned and shaken his head disapprovingly - and John had put his arm around Rodney's shoulders and said "Congratulations," and stuffed a piece of cake in Rodney's mouth, smearing blue frosting all over his lips and chin, and Rodney had looked at the smug grin on John's face and thought, with sudden and perfect clarity, Jesus, I love this retard.
(Then he'd realized that this thought was causing a dangerously stupid look to spread across his face, and John to give him a funny look in turn; and instead of answering the question hanging, inchoate, in the air, he'd turned to Ronon and stuffed a piece of cake in his mouth, too.)
Zelenka was pulling schematics up on one screen and waving in the direction of an enscribbled whiteboard with his other hand. "So," he said, "I was thinking. Our problem is the adaptability of the Ancient program, yes?"
"Yes," Rodney said slowly, not quite seeing where - if anywhere - this was going.
"So what we need is another program which - ha!" Zelenka said suddenly. "Yes, here, look for yourself." He pushed Rodney into a chair in front of the terminal, pointing excitedly at something on the screen. It took Rodney half a second to realize what he was looking at, and another full second to wrap his mind around how completely insane Zelenka must be to be proposing this as a solution. He pushed his chair back from the desk.
"Are you nuts?" he asked. "Wait, stupid question; let me rephrase. Have you completely and utterly lost it?"
"It will work," Zelenka insisted. "Look, here. We can remove these subroutines-"
By the time Rodney got back to his quarters it was past four, and John was gone. Well, Rodney could wait to tell him in the morning; they wouldn't be ready to test their plan for a day, at least. He retrieved the good pillow from John's side of the bed, punched it into an acceptable shape, and fell into a heavy, satisfied sleep.
*
"You want to do what?"
"Well, they wouldn't be that kind of Replicator."
"What's that, the kind that tries to kill us or the kind that tries to kill us?"
"I know, I know," Rodney said, hands raised in a "bear with me" kind of gesture. "That's what I said, too. But I've checked Zelenka's code twice. I really think it's our best shot."
John looked unimpressed. "I don't know, Rodney." He turned to Elizabeth. "Do you really think it's worth the risk?"
"I heard it painted your quarters pink," Ronon remarked.
"Worth the risk," John confirmed quickly.
Elizabeth, however, still didn't seem convinced. She pursed her lips, and looked like she was about to say something about proceeding with caution or exploring all our options.
Rodney was getting pretty tired of exploring all the options.
"It's started making people," he blurted out. Elizabeth paused, mouth half-open; all eyes turned to Rodney.
"Teyla was in the gym yesterday and it generated some kind of holographic sparring partner for her," Rodney explained, looking to Teyla for confirmation. She nodded. "Only it wasn't like any of the holograms we've seen before," he went on. "You can't normally hit a hologram, and they can't hit back. We think it was using some kind of dynamic force field technology - it could really come in handy in the field, actually, we're trying to replicate the effect-"
"Your point," John prompted.
"The thing is, from what Teyla's told us, it looked just like a real person. She probably wouldn't even have known it were a hologram, except that she didn't recognize it, and, well, it ceased to exist when she left the room. But it talked, it breathed, everything."
Elizabeth nodded, her face serious. It was finally starting to look like the potential for Very Bad Things was sinking in, here.
Rodney rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Also, it might have created a hologram of Zelenka this one time, because he swears I never told him to run a diagnostic on the environmental systems the day before they failed, but it's equally possible that he's just lying." He paused. "Or, you know. An idiot."
"Wait a minute," Elizabeth said, frowning. "I thought there were only holographic projectors in very limited areas of the city."
"Well," said Rodney. He'd kind of been hoping nobody was going to pick up on that minor detail. "It's, uh. We're not really sure, but it's, uh, possible they're not holograms at all. Technically."
John straightened out of his slouch, getting about half a foot taller in the process. "Rodney," he began, voice low and warning, "if you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting-"
"Well, they wouldn't be that kind of-"
"Rodney."
Rodney waved his hand dismissively. "They would have at most a rudimentary intelligence. Their behaviours would be highly programmed, with little to no autonomy. More to the point," he continued loudly, looking back at Elizabeth, "they'd be sucking huge amounts of power from our already-depleted ZPM. Now, remind me again, Colonel, how many of those do we have? You aren't hiding one in your hair, are you?"
"So let me get this straight," said John, clearly unable to muster a comeback to that. "Our brilliant plan to fight the Replicators is… more Replicators."
Rodney folded his arms across his chest.
"And how exactly is this not your worst idea yet?"
Elizabeth sighed and leaned forward, cupping her chin in her hands. "I'll admit I'm very concerned by the possibility that it could be duplicating members of the expedition, not to mention the potential drain on our energy reserves. But we still don't have any reason to believe the system would do anything to damage us, and I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with a solution which involves such a serious security risk to address a program which only gives us things it thinks we need. Right?"
That was right about when the dildo materialized on the conference table.
*
Things Rodney Really, Really, Really Misses About Earth:
1. Maple Dip donuts.
2. The Richmond Night Market.
3. The way large purple silicone dicks hardly ever appeared out of thin air.
4. Porn.
*
"I'd just like to state one last time that this is really Dr. Zelenka's plan, and I accept no responsibility if it somehow backfires and kills us all."
John raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, yeah."
It hadn't taken much longer to convince Elizabeth the plan (Rodney had wanted to call it "Operation McKay"; John had voted for "Operation Shut Up, Rodney") was worth the risk, especially once Rodney had pulled up a simulation demonstrating how much energy half a dozen of the androids could drain from the ZPM in under a week.
Rodney rubbed his hands together briskly. "Here goes." A six-key sequence activated the program.
"That's it?" John asked after a moment.
"What were you expecting, lasers?"
"Well, I don't know," said John. "Maybe a Replicator busting through the wall and killing us all."
Rodney gave him a look.
"Or lasers," John agreed.
"It's going to be a while before we know. Want to grab some dinner?"
"Yeah, okay," said John, and jumped down off of Rodney's desk. Dinner was chicken and salad and almost-rice with almost-pineapple, and afterward they ran into Teyla and persuaded her that the fact that she hadn't seen Tron represented a grave defect in her comprehension of Earth culture and one requiring immediate rectification. Ronon and Zelenka joined them when they heard there was going to be popcorn - or almost-popcorn, anyway. They watched the movie in the common area. Ronon sat cross-legged on the floor, peering at the screen like a three-year-old; Teyla and Zelenka sat in chairs, and Rodney sat on the same couch as John and noticed that they crossed their legs in exactly the same way, right foot on the opposite knee - had they always done that? He couldn't remember - and threw popcorn at Ronon's dreads. ("Ten points for every one that gets stuck," he whispered to John. John won, 160-90.)
"Hey," John said later, in the corridor. Rodney was standing at the door to his quarters, just about to palm it open. "Are we going to get to keep the stuff?"
"Huh?"
"The things the program created, are they going to, you know." He made kind of an exploding motion with his hands. "I mean, that Boba Fett's worth a lot of money."
Rodney tilted his head to the side. "Huh. I hadn't really thought about it, actually." He rubbed his chin, then shrugged. "I don't see why not. They're as real as anything else. The code we wrote will just shut the system down, not undo everything it's done."
"So-"
"So you'll probably have to repaint your quarters, yes." Rodney smirked. "Although I think Springtime Dream is really your colour."
*
"Shut it down! Shut it - oh, get out of the way, you imbecile, let me-" Rodney shoved the blond biophysicist - Bayliss? Bateson? Rodney always called him "Baywatch" in his head; someone that good-looking couldn't be a real physicist, and it showed - away from the terminal and began frantically typing commands.
To no avail, as it turned out. At least John wasn't there to - oh, hell.
*
"Replicators so aren't going to take over the city," John was saying, falsetto, the next morning. "Don't be ridiculous, Colonel. What could possibly go wrong?"
Rodney glared daggers over his eggs and speared an innocent piece of sausage with unnecessary force.
"Operation McK- ow!" Rodney had flicked a grape at him, hitting him square in the middle of the forehead.
"Oh, shut up," Rodney said. "You should just be thankful I'm here to fix Zelenka's screw-ups. If it weren't for me-"
"Way to go, McKay, I think that's your third time almost destroying the city this month," Ronon chimed in, joining them.
"And it's only the second week! You're ahead of schedule," John added, reaching across the table to pat Rodney on the shoulder.
Rodney swatted the hand away. "Believe me, you'd learn to appreciate my work pretty quickly if I weren't around."
"Also the extra food," Ronon commented.
Rodney narrowed his eyes.
John finished his oatmeal and pushed his tray away, stretching briefly before he rose from the table. "Mission briefing in twenty," he called back on his way out of the mess hall.
"I can't believe we're still going on this stupid mission," Rodney muttered, stabbing at another piece of sausage. "Especially after we were up half the night dealing with the stupid Replicators." Absently, he put his coffee cup to his lips, then grimaced when sweet life-giving nectar failed to flow forth. He got up, with a vague wave of the cup in Ronon's direction to indicate he was going for his - third? fourth refill?
He cracked his neck from side to side as he waited for Dr. Biro to finish adding cream to her coffee. At least, that was what he'd initially assumed she was doing; at this rate, it was starting to look like she was performing a titration. A very, very slow one.
"Take your time, it's not like I'm a busy person or anything," he muttered.
Finally the line moved up, and the redheaded Marine who'd been behind Biro shot Rodney a dirty look, but really, it wasn't like he was budging, or anything; he was just getting coffee, so it was perfectly reasonable for him to go to the head of the line. That was where the coffee was. (He debated clarifying this point, but decided the polysyllabic words might be too much for a military mind, impressive rack or no. Besides, justifying one's actions only detracted from the aura of genius.)
His neck still felt stiff. He'd slept weirdly again - well, actually, he'd hardly slept at all. John hadn't come by, but then, that was understandable, seeing as how he'd been up most of the night trying to keep the Replicators at bay while Rodney worked on finding a real solution. And now that they'd saved the city, what thanks did they get? Some stupid diplomatic mission where he'd probably have to sit around smoking patchouli with the village elders, watching his brain cells die one by one while John went on some kind of vision quest as prelude to trade negotiations and the maidens (there were always maidens) oohed over Ronon's biceps. Worse, Teyla had gotten out of the mission with some sort of flimsy excuse about the "funeral" of a "friend" on the mainland, so they'd be taking some clueless grunt as backup, which would probably mean getting them all killed as a bonus.
(In the end, it was actually the Wraith who nearly got them all killed, which Rodney supposed he couldn't really blame on their backup - even though said backup had turned out to be the hot Marine who'd glared at him in the coffee line-up that morning, and who could have easily had it in for him. At least she hadn't made anything worse, and he had to admit it'd been helpful having her there to keep the Wraith from eating him while he performed a minor technological miracle involving the DHD, the power cell from Ronon's blaster, and the piece of gum John had been chewing all morning.)
Later, after they'd made it back through the gate, after they'd showered and eaten and Rodney had flopped into a quick postprandial nap, he swung by the mess hall for a cupcake and a caffeine refill and made his way to the lab.
On the way to the station where he'd been monitoring the Replicator code's progress, a flash of colour caught his eye, and he did a double-take.
"Is that a Gameboy?"
Zelenka sat up and looked over his shoulder, instantly defensive. "We didn't have these things, okay? You had-" He gestured vaguely, feeling for a suitable cultural reference. "You had Rainbow Brite, we had Comrade Monochrome."
Rodney raised an eyebrow.
Zelenka huffed impatiently. "Leave me alone, Rodney."
"Fine, fine, play with your little toy." He turned back toward the terminal, but he could still feel Zelenka rolling his eyes.
Ronon showed up a few minutes later; he picked up a culture dish one of the biologists had left lying around, turning it over in his hands, and then just sort of loomed there in his usual disconcerting fashion until Rodney finally snapped, "Yes? What?"
Ronon continued to loom.
"Oh, right, your power cell. I forgot." Rodney rummaged around in a few bins on the far bench, looking for the spare he'd been repairing last week, then remembered that the cell which had been in Ronon's blaster was the spare; the old one had been lost in a regrettable but wholly unavoidable incident which had been in no way Rodney's fault.
"I'll have to replicate you a new one," he called over his shoulder. "Be ready in the morning."
Ronon nodded, and turned to go. Rodney thought of something.
"Hey, Ronon?"
He turned back. "Yeah?"
"Still got your cat?"
Ronon smiled. "Yeah. I'm training him to attack my enemies."
Rodney rubbed his temples. "Ronon-"
"Yeah?"
"-never mind," he said, at length. He shook his head. "Night."
"Night."
"Interesting," Rodney muttered to himself, after Ronon had left. "That must mean - huh." He opened his laptop and scanned a couple of files. Nobody had reported android sightings - or the appearance of new objects - since the modified Replicator code had gone into effect; it seemed to have worked, minor glitches and attempts to take over the city aside, which meant Ronon's kitten must have been a one-time creation, rather than a dynamically generated one like Teyla's sparring partner. Which made sense, really, since the level of computational complexity, not to mention the power, required to model a human being with the semblance of higher brain functions would have to be much more intensive than that to create a relatively simple animal like a cat. Even Zelenka could probably have done it: subroutines for eating, sleeping and chasing moving objects, and they'd be most of the way there already. (Come to think of it, they'd be most of the way to simulating Ronon. A few extra Marines wouldn't be too hard, either; this could be worth looking into. Rodney made a mental note.)
He spent forty-five minutes checking over the data the program had returned before running haywire, and then another hour beginning to take apart the device Lorne's team had retrieved from the ruins on P7X-467, which he'd been hoping was some kind of ultra-compact Ancient energy source but was turning out to look more like an ultra-compact Ancient nose-hair trimmer. Around one he finally gave up and hit the sack. John didn't come by that night, either, but then, it wasn't like they had a date, or anything. No big deal.
*
[ part two ]