Comment fic the sixth! I am speedy like molasses!
Title: The Last of the Winnebagoes
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: ~2575 words
Summary: For
coreopsis. They’re turning into the Statler and Waldorf of Atlantis, bitching at everybody from a balcony, their own hands tied.
The Last of the Winnebagoes
Neither of them really wants to retire, but they’re turning into the Statler and Waldorf of Atlantis, bitching at everybody from a balcony, their own hands tied. Though they can both genuinely state that the Pegasus Galaxy is better off now, thanks to their coming, it’s still not safe enough to serve as a home for sprightly senior citizens. Time passes, and the final trip back to Earth becomes more and more of an inevitability.
On the day they’re scheduled to depart, Rodney goes and sits in the control room for a while, just watching. John’s somewhere else, on his own: Rodney knows that they both need to say goodbye in their own way, and though he doesn’t actually believe that it’s harder for John than it is for him-Atlantis is his city, too, dammit-he suspects that John will feel it more strongly, and not say anything, and not say anything.
They are not quite the last, not in fact the final holdouts from the original expedition: that title will belong to Sergeant Stackhouse, who was only twenty-five when they first came through; who is a colonel now, and who still remains, tucked behind a desk that John himself once occupied. He shakes their hands as they approach the ‘gate; his salute is almost, but not quite, the last thing either of them sees.
Then a familiar lurch and they are back at the SGC, back in Colorado, back on Earth. They shake hands with a couple of generals, then take a transporter (Rodney himself worked to help adapt the technology) up to the surface. There’s a small gathering of press waiting for them; they answer the standard number of questions-Rodney irascible but long-winded, John terse and tight-lipped for a man wearing such an insistent smile-before their military escort swoops in and leads them to their car. There are a pair of hotel rooms booked for tonight; after that, they’re on their own.
If this were a celebration, they would eat a lavish meal in the hotel restaurant; they’d charm/bribe a bellboy into letting them up on the roof with their dessert and a bottle of champagne; they’d put the hot tub to good use. Instead, John walks into his room and silently slips his jacket off his shoulders. He’s sitting silently on the edge of his bed when Rodney closes the door and walks one door over to his own room. He takes off his jacket; his shoes; his socks; then he stands with his forehead pressed against the connecting door, thinking.
They’ve done this a lot on Earthside leave: connecting rooms. This is how it always goes. Two doors close and one opens: Rodney walks through and lies down beside John on the bed. They turn into each other-easy, natural-and this, at least, is not something that’s going to change; is not something that can be taken away from them. Not anymore.
Eventually John’s breathing levels out and he sleeps, wisps of grey hair tickling Rodney’s cheek. Rodney stays awake a long time. Listening for the sound of the waves and not hearing it. Listening to John breathe and feeling every exhalation. Thinking, thinking.
In the morning, when John is in the shower, Rodney walks back into his own room and discreetly makes a phone call.
They have plans, they do. They’re supposed to make the obligatory visit to Rodney’s sister, then head south, head west, wash ashore at the doorstop of the house they’ve never seen except in photographs. It was found and purchased with the help of the SGC (this thing between them, him and John, present but unspoken, unspoken until John had officially left the service), two retirement destinations in one. A beach house in Malibu, just up the coast from (a still-luscious) Cindy Crawford, just around a few-canyon curves from a market and a newsstand-and at least they will have the sound of the waves again. At least they will have that.
Rodney’s joints ache. But when they finally do land at LAX, he can’t help feel a quiet rush of excitement. Beside him John is sullen and silent, hefting their luggage like a young man, stubbornly refusing the taxi driver’s help. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for them.
The cab costs a fortune. They don’t need to worry about money. Rodney’s tip is hastily handed over and generous. He struggles with his share of the bags, bitching the entire time, anxious to get inside so they can go outside again.
He dumps the luggage in the foyer. The house is sparsely but comfortably furnished: two storeys with the ground floor as the upper one, set into the cliff, and the bottom level running out onto the beach. There’s a deck which Rodney immediately makes his way out onto: he’s looking for something, a particular something, and it has to be here somewhere because he asked, he asked, and they promised him this, this one final thing.
He can’t see it. He can’t see it, and he’s starting to panic because really, there are only so many places one can hide something that...and he must be going senile because of course he can’t see it; that’s half the point, isn’t it? It’s their little secret, sort of.
He turns back to the front hall, momentarily distracted as John pushes past him on the way to the kitchen. But then there it is, hanging right by the door. Dangling from a keychain, and one of those crappy The Lost City...of ATLANTIS! keychains at that. Someone has a sense of humor. Not a very good one, but it doesn’t matter. He has the remote.
He goes back out onto the balcony, pretty sure now how this is going to play out. Presses the button and yes, yes, there it is, half-tucked under the deck. He would jump for joy except, ow, his back, and also-ahem-he has far too much dignity for that.
Instead he walks slowly back into the house, into the kitchen. John is standing with his head bent, his hands braced on either side of the sink. His eyes flicker, and after a moment’s consideration, he looks at Rodney. Deliberately rakes a hand through the empty air under the faucet: the water comes on, swoosh, beckoned by movement, motion sensors. “Just like home,” John says, bitterly, so bitter, and Rodney wants to see him smile again, see the wrinkles curving at the corners of his mouth, even though the last time he remembers seeing such a thing as that, there were none.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing John’s arm, “come on, outside, I want to show you something.” And John comes along: down the stairs and across the little gravel path, around the side of the house.
The sun is shining brightly, gleaming against her hull, blanketing her body in light and shadow. John stops walking very abruptly and stands stiffly at Rodney’s side. Surprise! Rodney wants to say, but John isn’t smiling. He’s not smiling.
“What’s this?” John asks. “Our consolation prize?”
Rodney’s own smile shuts down.
“What am I supposed to do?” John continues. “Fly a jumper to the local 7-Eleven when we run out of milk?”
“You can, you know,” Rodney says. It’s true: the project’s been completely declassified, and almost everyone’s seen a puddlejumper by now, though they would have to travel to the Smithsonian to see one up close. Like The Spirit of St. Louis and the moonwalker: curious, but outdated.
But: “We’ll never have to worry about any of the neighbors having a cooler car than us,” Rodney points out. “They’ll be talking about gas mileage and you can say, ‘Yeah, but can your Beemer go into space?’”
It’s the wrong thing to say. Rodney, an expert at saying the wrong thing, knows right away that it is. John turns away from the puddlejumper, looking odd and forlorn with its body half sticking out from under the deck; he stands staring out at the ocean with his back ramrod straight. Rodney follows his gaze, watches the waves crash lazily against the beach. It’s the wrong color, he thinks, this pacific sea; and maybe they should have gone to live in the mountains somewhere, away from this poor copy of a copy, this mockery of the place they still called home.
“I’ll have it sent back,” he says, turning around, going inside. His bags are still where he left them, right by the door.
That night he sleeps on the couch. It’s not really fair, he thinks, that John should get the bed when John’s the one that’s being difficult, but Rodney finds he can’t get too worked up about it. He feels tired, like all the fight has gone out of him. He feels old.
Sometime during the night, he thinks he hears John moving around downstairs, shifting in his sleep. They are neither of them good sleepers. In their old hotel rooms with connecting doors, Rodney would sometimes wait until he heard John begin his restless turning, and then he would get up, and go to him. The muffled knocks he hears now are probably just water moving through the pipes: John is down another level, and farther away than ever.
He drifts: he’s asleep and dreaming. A variation on a common theme: a field of alien grass, bending and waving slowly in a breeze he can see but not feel. He’s following John, watching the steady progression of his back as he moves through the rushes, and Rodney is nervous without knowing why.
Someone shakes him, then, strong fingers on his shoulder, and he comes awake reaching for a gun that isn’t there. Pegasus has done odd things to him. Not the least of which being that when John puts a finger to his lips and gestures for him to follow, Rodney goes without question, without a thought.
They creep downstairs like they’re hiding from something. John’s hand is a cool weight on his arm, and he shivers, wishing he had a jacket. Yet it’s warmer outside, somehow, and the cool shift of the sand is pleasant against his bare feet. The sound of the waves is old and echoing.
John stops when they reach the deck, the wooden boards and steel supports arcing out over the sand, blocking out the stars. Casual, his wrist snaps, his hand darts out, and an object glides into the fingers Rodney extends without thinking. The Lost City...of ATLANTIS! he reads, sucking in a breath as he thumbs the button, as if his pressing it could summon the city across light-years, bring it back to them.
The air shivers and the puddlejumper blinks back into existence. Rodney looks at it, then back at John: he’s never been easy to read and it hasn’t (quite unfairly) gotten easier with time. Even now, Rodney’s not sure what John expects from him, what John wants. What Rodney can do to make this all okay or even-just-liveable again.
Sometimes he thinks that John wishes they’d died as they lived: in the field, fighting, in action. And suddenly Rodney is angry, furious: You’re a fool, he wants to say; John, you are an idiot. Funny that after all these years, he’s finally learned how to bite his tongue.
So instead of moving his mouth he moves his body, stomping around to the back of the jumper and clicking the button to lower the hatch. “Get in,” he snaps, and John follows him with cool, dark eyes. He pauses at the barrier between the front compartment and the rear; “Well?” Rodney says. He’s already in the co-pilot’s seat. “Are we going to sit here until we’re dead or what?”
John shakes his head. “You fly,” he says, his hand on Rodney’s back, guiding him up out of the right-hand chair and into the left. He sits down with an awkward lurch: he really wishes he could tell what John was thinking, but unfortunately, that’s not the kind of thing that’ll pop up on the HUD. Possibly John’s just being weird, anyway.
“Well, if I crash and kill us, it’s your fault,” he says, and John just smiles-the too-familiar, tight-lipped one-and fastens his buckle tight.
They glide out over the ocean. It’s been a while since Rodney’s ridden in a jumper, and even longer since he’s piloted one, but it’s not hard to slide back into his former level of...okay, competence. He’d say it’s like riding a bicycle, except that Rodney’s minimal experience with those two-wheeled terrors involved skinned knees and bruised elbows and an unpleasant close encounter with a fire hydrant. That was a long time ago.
Out over the ocean: and they don’t look so different, from up here, the Pacific and Atlantis’ broad blue sea. There were times, so many times, when the waves almost swallowed them, but they made it, they survived, and here they are, living still.
“Which way?” Rodney says.
“Doesn’t matter,” says John.
It does, though. It does matter-he wants it to matter, needs it to matter. He needs some direction, some goal; or at least for John to tell him that they don’t need any of that anymore, that just living can be enough.
And yet...maybe that’s his job, his last task. John’s never liked taking orders, but maybe he’s waiting for a final one, for permission of some sort. Rodney’s hands are on the controls, squeezing tight. Watching the ocean spinning below them, staring at John’s face in the darkened glass: and he just...lets go.
The jumper doesn’t drop or plummet or anything melodramatic like that; Rodney’s had enough of that sort of thing to last a lifetime, thank you, and besides, autopilot, hello. But John’s head jerks up sharply, sharp eyes boring into Rodney’s. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“This is stupid,” Rodney says, and the ocean spins, the ocean rolls. “Why are we doing this? What are we fighting against?”
Death, he thinks, maybe; or decay, decline. Or desertion. And they are alone out here, yes, a tiny dot above the vast, blue sea. But they’re together, and even though the home they’ll eventually have to return to isn’t the one they sweated into, bled for-it is waiting. It is there.
“We won,” Rodney says, getting up, standing on creaky knees. He undoes the buckles holding John back and pulls him out of his seat. Touches John’s chin-funny that it should be the truly stubborn one-and strokes a thumb over his lips, trying to trace the memory of a smile.
“We won,” he says, turning them both around, guiding John back to his rightful chair. And he whispers, “You can take us home now, John.”
The jumper comes alive under John’s hands like it never has under his. Rodney thinks he can hear it humming, purring. John guides it with infinite grace, arching around, the great canvas of the horizon laid out broad before them. Higher and higher they tilt, until they’re staring straight up, right into the stars.
“It goes on forever,” John says quietly, “doesn’t it?”
They stand suspended, the jumper and everything in it, as the world continues its slow revolve.
************
coreopsis asked for “John and Rodney and something happy/fluffy and/or porny concerning puddlejumpers.” Um. Two out of three?
Title from a story by Connie Willis, in her collection Impossible Things. This story is a cheerfest in comparison, but you should read it, because it’s fabulous.