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FIC! FIC! FIC!
Yes, you guessed it. I actually wrote the story! And, although I'm not sure about the title, I'm ridiculously proud of the rest of it.
For those of you who have been reading along, this is not quite the same thing. I've edited a lot of the earlier parts, making clearer things I liked and cutting out parts I didn't care for, and I've pretty much entirely rewritten Sheppard's part, and stuck it at the end. Which all goes to say, for those of you who've been following along: Read it again! tell me what worked and what didn't! Tell me you love me! (or, ok, don't. fine.)
But, on the flipside, if you haven't been following along, there's no need to go back and read the earlier parts. This is the whole story, the sum of which all my earlier posts have been parts.
So, story!
Settlement: Five Stories About a Shirt, More Or Less
By etben
Length: 7755 words. Yeah, I know. I'm a little surprised, too.
As they round the fifth or the twenty-sixth corner, Sheppard’s asking her whether or not it will turn anyone “green? Blue? Red-orange? Any other color they aren’t, normally?” She shakes her head to each one, though, and they continue on. When, after a moment’s thought, he starts asking about the possibility of explosion, she sighs, and thinks that, just maybe, this was not the best idea she’s ever had.
Well, not the idea itself. The basic idea — the objective, here — was and is excellent. She knew, right from the moment she saw it, that this was it: this was Rodney McKay’s Christmas present. She’d seen it, and she’d known, and she’d sworn to do whatever she needed to make it happen, no matter how awkward, embarrassing, or downright illegal. McKay deserves this: partly for being his completely intolerable self, sure, but partly — a small part, of course — because, from what she’s been reading and hearing, things haven’t been entirely easy for them, out there, and for him maybe more than for the rest of him.
He’s out of his depth — who wouldn’t be? — and he’s too smart not to know it. She knows he’s freaking out, because, despite what some people have been saying about him since they reestablished contact, not that many people have died. If he weren’t nervous, the entire expedition would have died long before now. He’s in one of those situations where a carefully controlled state of panic is an entirely reasonable response, the only response that keeps people alive and working. Still, that doesn’t make it a warm fuzzy feeling. You can read it in his reports, the way he’s clearly taking a list of several hundred things that need to be done absolutely right now and worrying about them all, in order of importance. She knows how that feels, having to choose your crisis, having things really actually depend on you. If anyone in the world can deal with that feeling, it’s McKay, but she can’t help feeling a little bad for him.
Only a very little, though. Mostly, when she thinks about the gift, she thinks about the look on his face when he opens it. A look, it occurs to her, that she will never see if John Sheppard doesn’t shut the hell up. She wonders, again, whether he’s really her best choice. She knows other people in Atlantis, and most of them, she knows better than she knows Sheppard, who she’s only met a handful of times, after all. She could have asked one of them - but, no. They’re all frightened of McKay, on some level, and with varying degrees of justification. Sheppard is the one for the job - she just needs to make him understand that. She stops then, cutting him off before he can finish asking his latest question.
“No, it won’t explode, turn anyone strange colors, influence their brain chemistry in unfortunate ways, cause the downfall of the Western World — am I missing anything?”
“I actually didn’t ask about the downfall of the West — kind of figured it wouldn’t, what with being in the wrong galaxy and all.” Sheppard grins at her, and she rolls her eyes. Charming, sure, whatever, but she has a plan here. She is a woman on a mission.
“Listen, I promise it won’t damage anything, except possibly McKay’s ego. Can you just give it to him without knowing what it is? And take a picture of his face when he opens it?” She’s smiling up at him — hell, if he gets to try to charm her, she’s not going to play fair either — but he’s paused, thinking.
“Only possibly?” She blinks. “His ego — we’re only maybe going to damage it?”
“Oh, no,” she smiles, knowing that she’s got him now, “I only said that so you’d go along with me. His ego will be,” and god, it’s a delicious thought, and she shivers a little, “destroyed. Thanks for your help—” but no, he’s pulling back again, his face freezing in that charming mask. She gets a brief flash of what it must be like to work with this man, who sees so much and shows so very, very little, who thinks of everything and just smiles, right up until he rips someone’s throat out. Samantha Carter has read the reports.
He must drive McKay insane. For that alone, she’s willing to let him waffle a little. She just cocks her head, waits for him to spit out his objection.
“How destroyed are we talking, here? I mean, I know McKay’s obnoxious, and I get that you want to take him down a peg or two, sure, but,” and he looks up and down the hall, so fast she nearly doesn’t catch it, and leans close, says “he’s a good guy, you know? And the ego — well, after a guy saves your ass a couple hundred times, you kind of just go with what works. If ego works, you deal with it.” Sheppard’s as serious as she’s ever seen him, and her respect for him increases accordingly.
“Don’t worry, Sheppard. It’s just going to shake him up, deflate him enough to be bearable again. Here.” She didn’t want to do this, wanted to keep the surprise, but John Sheppard understands Rodney McKay nearly as well as she does, and so she undoes the top flap of the box, pulls it open, hands it over. He looks in, looks again, then breaks into the most genuine smile she’s ever seen on the man. He’s been smiling at her since she caught up to him, and this is the first time she can believe it. She understands, then, how he could be considered charming.
“So,” he says, folding the flaps back down, “a picture when he opens it, and I bet you want me to wrap it, too? Of course you do. What about a picture of him wearing it?”
“Sure, if you can get one, but I really don’t expect it—“ He cuts her off with another grin, this one ever-so-slightly conspiratorial.
“You’d be surprised what I can manage, Carter. Be seeing you.” With that, he turns on his heel and is gone.
Maybe, Sam thinks, he knows Rodney McKay even better than she does. The idea makes her smile.
***
Rodney doesn’t drink much. It’s not for lack of opportunity – despite what he knows people say about him, he does have a social life outside of his lab. He goes out, goes out with other people, goes out on dates with other living, breathing people. He asks people out on dates, and they say yes, and they go, and it’s all very straightforward, except sometimes they ask him first, which tends to startle him. Still, when you’re as brilliant as Rodney McKay is, working on the kind of stuff he works on, you get used to being startled by the incredible things the world does. You get used to it, or you get killed, usually in wildly improbable ways.
Rodney is completely capable of functioning while startled, so he says yes, and he goes on dates with people. Not so much on Atlantis, of course, which for one thing is mostly like one enormous lab everywhere you go, with so many things to do and see and fix and discover that he really, really doesn’t have that much time for things that don’t involve saving them all. For another, Atlantis is the mother of all closed communities, the great holy fishbowl in the sky, and he’s been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Atlantis brings a whole new dimension to dating within the workplace, and even Rodney’s socially aware enough to know that that’s something you really, really don’t want to do if you can avoid it.
Still, he dates, some, if only because he knows, intellectually, that variation in social environments is said to be important. Personally, he likes his unvarying social landscape – the lab, yelling at Kavanagh and arguing with Zelenka; meetings, rolling his eyes at Caldwell and arguing with Elizabeth; missions, running after Teyla and Ronon and arguing with Sheppard. Constants are a good thing, he thinks. Still, Rodney McKay is a rational man. He may not trust medicine very much, but there’s no sense in shooting yourself in the foot (or, rather, in some part of your psyche) when you can avoid it easily by asking a pretty girl out once in a while. If it’s important for people to get out more, then by God, Rodney McKay will get out as much as is necessary.
So he dates – awkwardly, because he’s still not good at this, probably never will be, doesn't really want to be – and they offer him wine, sometimes, or beer, or whatever the gate techs are brewing in the still this week. There’s alcohol, too, on off-world missions, usually something that resembles beer in method, at least, if not in flavor, or else a sort of fruit-punch. Either way, he drinks some and talks a little extra, to cover it up. They never notice.
He doesn’t like to drink because he doesn’t respond to alcohol like other people do. Most people have a drink, or three, or eight, and they get loose-limbed and friendly, chatty, gesturing too widely and speaking too loudly. Some people get mopey, or angry, or violent, and some just get strange. Rodney’s a scientist, and he’s observed them all, watched them laugh and shout and scream and cry, and everything he’s seen has just gone towards his theory: in this, as in so many other things, Rodney McKay is not like the others. It’s completely unfair, but Rodney’s gotten used to it. At this point, he thinks he’d be more surprised if, for once, he ate something and had a completely average response to it.
When he drinks alcohol, nothing happens. He doesn’t feel any different from normal, no matter how much he drinks – and he’s tested this hypothesis. He can get sick, if he drinks enough, but he never feels any more relaxed, any happier. He’s drunk so much that the hangover lasted for days, but he’s never been drunk. He just goes on, getting annoyed but not intoxicated, until he falls over the edge and stumbles for the bathroom.
The doctors he’s talked to about this all agree: they don’t know why it happens. They all say something vague about different body chemistries, connections in the brain, the body processing chemicals; many words to say that they just don’t know. Buck up, sonny boy, the second-to-most-recent quack had said, just think of all the embarrassing stories you’re sparing yourself! Rodney had thought of that, and on his way out had asked to be transferred to another physician. Because, really, if the man was going to insist on being depressing, Rodney had better things to do with his time. The most recent doctor had been sympathetic, and Rodney had been about to ask her on an alcohol-free date, figuring that she already knew all of his stupid body tricks and probably would manage not to serve him anything he couldn’t eat. Then, though, there had been Antarctica, and the chair, the drone, Sheppard, Atlantis, and he didn’t think about Dr. Desmoulins very much any more.
In Atlantis, Rodney doesn’t think about a lot of things, most of them having to do with Earth, and he doesn’t drink, either, except on those rare occasions when he absolutely has to. The Christmas party is not any such occasion, Elizabeth tells him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he does absolutely have to be there. This is Christmas, and they are alive, and they are going to celebrate that fact, god damn it, every single one of them, that includes you, Rodney McKay, even if all you do is lurk in the corner. Which, he notes, is exactly what he’s doing. He smiles at Elizabeth, even though she’s not actually anywhere near him, right now. He can still hear her voice, ringing in his ears like the sound of the bell-trees on MXU-087.
“Why, McKay, you’re just full of surprises,” says a voice from behind him. He spins to face it, wobbles, nearly catches himself on the edge of the table he’s been lurking by, misses, and falls onto John Sheppard. Somehow, he is not surprised. Sheppard staggers for a moment, trying to brace his weight without dropping the brightly-wrapped package he’s carrying, and then tilts him until he’s vertical again. When Rodney wobbles, Sheppard puts the box down and steers him into a chair. He’s talking all the while, but Rodney doesn’t bother to turn the sounds into words. There’s something odd about this situation, and he knows that if he just ignores everyone else for a while, eventually the rest of his brain will pick up the pattern his subconscious has already noticed. He just waits, looking around, and his attention seizes on the box.
Sheppard is ignoring it now in favor of giving Rodney a bemused look, but Rodney points, redirecting the focus. John catches Rodney’s arm when it smacks against his chest and places it gently on the arm of the chair, curling Rodney’s fingers around the end of the arm rest.
“No, Sheppard, you don’t – stop, no, you don’t – the box, you idiot, what’s in the box? - it’s important, I know it is, oh, come on, don’t be – stop, no, stop it, will you stop being so –” Without even looking, John reaches over and back, grabbing the box and setting it in Rodney’s lap. They both stare at it for a while, and then Rodney stares at John, who’s still staring at the box, and if the box could only stare at Rodney they’d have a loop, perpetual attentional motion, it would be – but, no, John’s looking up, now, looking at Rodney and shaking his head.
“Christ, McKay,” Sheppard says, “you’re really trashed, aren’t you?” Rodney starts to explain that no, he’s not drunk, can’t get drunk, and wasn’t Sheppard paying attention on MIY-986, or, no, maybe it was – “it’s a present, genius. Will you open it, already?” John’s got a camera, now – where did he get that? – and he’s giving Rodney a present, and something, somewhere, is not making sense. He’s trying to tell John that, but John doesn’t get it, just shakes his head and says “not from me, from Carter, back on Earth. She asked me to see that you got it. Now come on, are you going to open it or do I have to do it for you?”
Rodney is confused, but he’s used to confused, and it’s never stopped him from doing what needs to be done. He opens the present, layer after layer, then looks up into the glare of the camera flash, blinking past the dancing lights to glare at John. His glare is a mighty weapon, capable of reducing grad students to tears. It’s not working, though: Sheppard just smiles back, that stupid, tolerant smile that says “Hey, isn’t life fun?” Life is not fun; Rodney knows this for a fact. He proved it. There are graphs. He thinks about showing Sheppard the calculations, but weight across his legs stops him from getting up. He looks down, discovers the box, and looks back up to glare at Sheppard some more.
“It’s pink, John,” he says, and the chair wobbles underneath him. It is, too - pink, with yellow lettering. He thinks there may even be sparkles on the front. “Why,” he asks, trying to keep his balance, “is it pink?” The chair is winning, though, and he slumps sideways, letting it do what it chooses with his mass. Dimly, he hears the crowd around him – and since when is there a crowd? – talking about the fruit wine that MEJ-976 makes, and how it must be hitting McKay harder than he thought, and please, sir, take another picture, no, I won’t do anything inappropriate with it, I swear.
It comes to him, then, and he stands up, because this is important. The ground dips and weaves under him, but that’s fine, that’s only to be expected, and John catches him, anyway. He leans up, looks John in the eye, and says, over the laughter he can hear but is choosing to ignore, that he’s made a great discovery. John, of course, asks what it is, and Rodney, of course, tells him. That’s the way they work, although normally they aren’t leaning on each other. Still, that puts him close enough to poke John’s chest, and he does, on each word, for emphasis.
“I. Am. Completely. And. Ut-ter-ly (which gets three taps, one per syllable). Drunk.”
Then John’s nodding, and the world is spinning, and Rodney is floating, warm and safe and suddenly, deliriously happy. He’s in the City of the Ancients, and they’re alive, and they’re safe, and he has work he loves, and friends he loves, and a home. He’s really, really drunk. Life, Rodney thinks, is good.
When he wakes up the next morning, there’s a t-shirt on the pillow next to him and a glass of water on his night table. The shirt is bright pink, and says, in glittering yellow lettering, I’m not BOSSY… He flips it over, and reads: …I just have better IDEAS.
He smiles, and it stays.
***
Three days after Doctor McKay’s unfortunate reaction to the tuula wine, Teyla is guiding her team through a field. This world is at the beginning of autumn, and everything they can see is blue. Rodney and John had started talking excitedly when they’d first stepped through, with hand-waving and nodding aplenty on both sides. Teyla could listen, but she has learned to ignore them, when they get like this. She lets them talk, as they work their way toward the settlement, because it does no harm, but she does not feel any need to mind their speech. She does not think she would understand.
Some days she asks all the same, and then they spend the hours explaining to her in their different ways. Rodney is excited and loud, waving his hands and spinning with a grace he never shows in their infrequent training sessions. John is quieter, but has a way with images and ideas that make things clearer. He gives her a foothold, and Rodney shores her position up with a wealth of details. She has learned about internal combustion this way, and the government of John’s America; about football, and hockey, and about Mozart. In turn, she and Ronon have pooled their knowledge, and teach in their turn – more quietly, but with their own wisdom, she thinks. John and Rodney know how the moons of Sateda spin, and how the seas on Grimilan rose, and the people live in boats, and how to pick the juripet fruit, which retracts its spines only at dusk and at dawn, and must be eaten with haste. Teyla likes these days a great deal – partly for the knowledge she gains, but partly for the joy they are all taking from this chance to know each other better. They live each in the souls of the others, as Charin tells it, and Teyla smiles to see that bond grow.
Now, though, she is ignoring them. As much as she loves speaking with them, she loves the silence more, and here, on this world where old grasses crackle underfoot, she is silent. The sun shines, and a ring of tiny moons is starting to be visible. The weather is crisp, warm enough to be comfortable but cold enough to encourage activity. She knows these fields well; her first trading voyage, trotting at her father’s heels, was to this very world, in search of sweet tea. That was in spring, though, which is a yellow season, here. Now, they seek permission to forage in the mountains, for game and raw metals that have, as McKay says so often, “interesting readings.” Still, the memory is present, and perhaps there will be some sweet tea remaining. Teyla is walking in the steps of her past, with her future following her. She is content.
Three hours later, she retraces her steps, moving swiftly, urging the others on ahead. The sun has set, and the shadows are unfamiliar, but she knows the way, and she hurries them on. John and Ronon pass her, but all three turn back when they hear McKay’s shout, strangled and then stifled. They are back with him in blur of motion, John rolling him gently over as she and Ronon keep guard, he before, she behind. Teyla’s breath is rough and unsteady, as though it will fly away and leave her frozen. For a moment, she thinks that perhaps John’s breath has left him already, so still and stern he looks.
Rodney groans, and her breath returns to her, though she is watchful, still. He sits up before John can check him over, brushing away John’s hands and her concerned stare with the same quick gestures.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says, struggling to his feet. John makes himself available as a support, and she and Ronon rise at the same time, keeping in place the shield they are being. “Will you – stop, stop, I said I’m fine – have you ever known me to conceal injury, Sheppard? – Think, please, I know it’s difficult, but please!” She knows he is well – his words testify – but she worries, still, and he sees it.
“Teyla, seriously, I’m fine – well, no, not really, I’m bruised as hell and my back will be returning to the Milky Way in several discrete units, but we already knew that, so, please, can we get back to Atlantis before whatever got me comes back and –” he lifts his arms awkwardly, lets them drop back to his sides with a wet thud “- slimes the rest of you?” Before they can answer, he’s walking past Ronon, back towards the puddlejumper, wiping his hands on John’s shirt as he goes.
“Jesus, Rodney –” She ignores the rest. Everything is fine.
Back on Atlantis, Doctor Beckett pronounces Rodney “slimed, I suppose you’d say-” “isn’t that what I said? Isn’t it?” “-thank you, Rodney, that’ll do! But otherwise unharmed. It’s messy, but this stuff is completely inert, although you’ll want to be sure and wash it out of your hair before you sleep.” He is released to his own quarters, and since the rest of the team is uninjured, they walk together. Ordinarily, they would meet with Elizabeth, explain the mission and discuss what further action they might take. In this case, however, Elizabeth had seen them come back through the gate. Once she had stopped laughing at Rodney – whose clothes cling wetly to his body, glowing a pale yellow – and determined that the mission had been successful, she’d put off the briefing until the next day.
On the way, however, they cross paths with Charles, who serves dessert in the dining hall. He informs them that tonight, there will be french fries. John and Rodney seem to vibrate with excitement, and Ronon cracks a rare smile. Teyla is fond of the fries herself, but it does not seem polite to abandon Rodney. He frowns, but waves them on, saying he’ll join them “in a minute, soon, hurry, just save me a plate or three, what are you waiting for? Go!” With his hair glowing as it does, it seems best to obey, and they hurry on their way.
Twenty minutes later, they have secured a table and several plates of fries (three for Ronon, one for John, one for Teyla, two for Rodney, and one for all of them) and are speculating about the creature that attacked Rodney. John, facing the door, breaks off mid-word to shake his head and laugh. As she and Ronon stare, he stands up and waves, calling Rodney’s name across the room. After a moment, Rodney drops into the chair next to him.
As he devours his fries, nodding his thanks at them, Teyla understands John’s laughter. Rodney is wearing the shirt he had received at the Christmas party, the one that John had sworn was “not from me, I swear, it was all Carter’s idea! Don’t shoot the messenger, come on, Rodney,” the next morning. Next to her, she sees that Ronon - who, it occurs to her, left the Christmas party long before Rodney received his gift - has frozen, a handful of fries halfway to his mouth. Rodney notices, too, and sets down his plate, looking Ronon in the eye.
“As of this morning, I had two clean shirts. I put one of them on, planning to wear it for the rest of the day, and possibly tomorrow, if I don’t get around to doing laundry tonight. As of right now, that shirt is coated in glowing yellow slime. There are french fries. Are you going to have a problem?” Ronon shakes his head, starts eating again.
“It’s a nice shirt,” he says, “I like it.”
Teyla looks at John, and they laugh, and they laugh.
***
Ronon will never tell Teyla this, but he's been to her planet before.
There was a tradition, on Sateda. At the end of the first eightday, the firsters, newly branded and still slightly drunk on the ceremonial wine, went back to their commons. There, the five-group students would wait, with more wine and a story to tell, a story of treasure buried by a long-dead firstgroup. Each storyteller, leaning on seniority, pretended to have the true gate code, and offered to share it with the firsters, for a share in the gold - and their first ration of alcohol. Naturally, most of the firsters hooted and jeered the storyteller, and kept their alcohol and their dignity. Every year, though, a few groups believed it, and, taking the address, headed off into the darkness.
It was all a joke, of course: each code opened to night on a harmless planet; the directions were incomprehensible and usually messy; the ‘treasure’ was a rude note or a cheap pornograph. When the firsters got back, exhausted and muddy, their alcohol was gone, and nobody would ever admit to knowing where it had been hidden. In their turn, they became part of a five-group themselves, and took their turns telling stories to the firsters.
Ronon had ignored the story when it was first told him, smirking down in his beer at his yearmates and saying nothing. When he’d made his fivegroup, he’d stayed away from the story-ritual, training hard, leaving the funning to others. As Specialist Dex, though, he’d been assigned to go along. He was to remain silent and watchful, keep the firsters from any major hurts or dangers, and call for backup if they ran into anything with more teeth than they had heads.
The firstgroup he followed went to Athos, although of course he didn’t know to call it that, at the time. He remembered it as a nice enough planet, with a gentle breeze and tall, stately trees. He’d stepped through into early summer, and moved easily through the forest behind the firsters as unfamiliar stars rose and fell. They’d mentioned that the world was inhabited, but only to tell him to keep the firsters away from the people. He’d seen the camp, from a distance, tents lit with torches and open firepits. Savages, he’d thought, and let one hand slide to his gun. Later, he’d watched and counted as the firsters slunk dejectedly back through the gate; he followed them, and didn’t think of the place for several years.
If he’d thought about it at all, he might have thought with longing of those tents and torches. He might have looked around at the cave where he was staying, or the hollowed tree, or the thick, thorny bush, and wished for an open firepit, for the flat empty calm of that life. Then again, he had his gun, and his wits, and some of his pride, still, and so he probably still would have scorned those things.
As it turned, he only thought of that planet on the day, nearly a year after his arrival in the City, when Teyla Emmagen pulled him aside one evening. She’d pressed her forehead to his, the way her people did, and traced symbols on his hands. It was only when she reached the fourth - inrish-talmi - that he realized what she was doing, what she was coding on his palms. He had to fight not to jerk away, not to tear his hands from hers and run, run until his legs gave out and his sight turned black. She must have felt him shiver, old currents threatening the new, but she gave no sign. She held his hands tighter, and continued the ritual.
It was never practiced on Sateda, although Specialist Dex had been the recipient of it a few times. He’d scorned it, then, as foolish nonsense. With the knowledge of Sateda behind him, he could find the home to any gate code he wanted, and find a code for any spinning world. What did it matter if a villager from some spotted planet told you their gate-code or not? If you wanted the code, you would get it, and you would go, and take what you needed.
The Runner had never strayed close enough to the settlements to be offered a code, but he would have scorned one, anyway. Trust was a beggar’s joke, a trinket for boys without bombs ticking between their shoulder blades. That was not his way. He composed at random, waited for an arch, and jumped through, all without caring what he found on the other end. If death awaited him there - well, death was here, too, and everywhere, so who would ask where?
Ronon Dex, though, who stands in the halls of the Great City with a queen tracing trust on his palms, understands. It's a custom, among traders from the smaller planets. Sharing a gate address is a sign of friendship, a sign that you trust someone not to come through the gate in your night and rape your family. I trust you, it says. I trust that you will come to my world with peace and with prosperity, and bring to me and mine only more of the same.
When she finishes, he flips their hands, dwarfing her palms in his, and quickly sketches the sequence that calls Sateda. She knows them already, as he could know hers, if he chose, and both worlds are so much scattered dust, now, but it doesn’t matter. Here, and now, Ronon Dex understands that the doing is the thing, no matter the results.
He rests his head against hers for a long moment more, his braids brushing her forehead and cheekbones. When they straighten, he is smiling, and her eyes are bright. Before she can go, he puts a hand to her shoulder.
“D’you know where Sheppard is?”
At first, Sheppard doesn’t seem to understand him. Ronon does not have Teyla’s gift for languages, and even though he speaks more in one month, here, than he did in all his time as a Runner, the Earth language is hard. A year spent here, and he still struggles to speak easily, naturally. He stops, shakes his head, starts again, watching Sheppard’s eyes.
“There is -” No. That is not the way. Again.
“On Sateda, we had a device. It made -” Sheppard’s nodding, and Ronon reaches for the word. “- images? pictures?” He gestures, makes like he’s using a shayda, and Sheppard nods, understanding.
“A camera? Sure, yeah - I mean, I don’t have one, but I’m sure - yeah, here, hey! Martine!” He’s waving a short, pale woman over to where Ronon stopped him in the hallway. Ronon’s never seen her before, that he remembers, but he’s not surprised Sheppard knows her first name. Sheppard’s good at that, at making friends without giving up too much. Ronon never knows how to go, now, in this new home, and he winds up standing silently by, most of the time.
Martine seems to be just as glad that he’s not trying to make nice, but she smiles at Sheppard and looks into her bag, coming up with a small silver cube. She gives it to Sheppard, who hands it off to Ronon, thanking her cheerfully. As she hurries off, smiling nervously back at Ronon, Sheppard starts to show him how it works. The mechanism is more or less the same, though - a lens, a few buttons and knobs. He thanks Sheppard, who shrugs.
“No problem. Although - you could do me a favor, actually.” He outlines what he wants, and Ronon agrees. A picture of McKay in that ugly pink shirt he wears when he’s off duty, or when he forgets to do laundry and gets slimed, is an odd request, but hey. As Ronon understands it, he’s not supposed to ask or tell about this kind of thing.
Sheppard turns pale when he says this, and flushes, and sputters, and stammers in a way Ronon’s never seen him do before. Finally, choking, he hurries off, telling Ronon to have fun.
Ronon rather thinks he will.
***
John’s in the infirmary, and he doesn’t approve. Well, he approves of the infirmary as a general rule, as a concept - he just doesn’t approve of it when it applies to him. He hates being stuck here, even though he understands that a man with two broken legs, no matter how healthy he otherwise is, can’t really be released to his quarters. Still, understanding never makes it better. He’d thought it would, when he was small - you’ll understand when you’re older, his mother had told him, and he does, and you know what? it still sucks.
In fact, it sucks about as much as being trapped in the infirmary does.
It’s not as bad as it could be, of course. He could have broken his arms, too, and not even be able to use a laptop or read comfortably. He could have fucked up his ribs, and not been able to breathe comfortably. He could be injured somewhere else - stuck on another planet, without medical assistance other than the small pharmacy Rodney carries in his vest. They did that on MT-987, the one with all the cliffs, where they had to wait until dawn to take off safely, and it was just a damn shame that it was midwinter, and the nights were 34 hours long.
He could, he realizes, be stuck back on Earth, in some quiet military hospital, with everyone interested in him but nobody caring about him. That would really suck, would suck like quicksand and like betrayal. He’s glad that, if he has to be stuck in bed with two broken legs, he’s doing it here in Atlantis, where he has friends, where he belongs.
It was the weirdest damn thing, when he realized it. John’s a pretty easy-going sort of guy, always has been, and he wasn’t surprised when he did just fine in Atlantis. He’s always been the sort of person for whom one place is pretty much the same as the next, provided he has food and a place to sleep and something to think about. And, sure, Atlantis was neat, was beyond neat, was amazing and awesome and scary and fun and so much more than he’d ever thought he’d have, and that was great, but it was still just another place - a nicer place, sure, but nothing more than somewhere to be.
Things didn’t start getting weird until he went back through the gate, going to the SGC for his mandatory combination of leave and brain-picking, once every year, whether you wanted it or not. He usually didn’t. “No, John,” Elizabeth had told him, “you can’t just stay here and not do anything important, you need to go back to Earth - yes, I know you don’t want to, come on, John, I let you try that last time, and you remember how well that went -” And, actually, she had a point, although the monkey had been all McKay’s fault. He’d sighed, and smiled, and gone on through.
He’d stepped through, still snickering at Rodney’s offer to infect him with something “non-lethal, but itchy enough to keep you here—remember those strawberry-monkey things? There’s one in bio-3; the cage is locked, of course, but that’s hardly…” and for a while, Earth had been fine. After a few days, though, he’d gotten - bored, some, and lonely, and fidgety.
He’d gone out, after they’d had enough of his brain for a while, and climbed a rock, and then a bigger rock, and then a mountain. Up on the top, it almost looked like the view from the catwalks above the jumper bay, late in the afternoon, except he didn’t have Ronon jogging beside him, or Rodney yelling at someone on the radio, or the sweet hum of the city all around him.
The rest of his two weeks on Earth had just been more of the same. Earth was nice, sure, and there were things he was glad to see and do and have again, but mostly he just kept noticing all the ways it wasn’t Atlantis. When he’d come back through the gate, seen his city again, he’d realized that, somewhere along the line, things had changed. Not only was Atlantis easy, fine, good—it was easier, more than fine, the best place for him. In some crazy fucked-up way, Atlantis was home, now, in a way no other place had ever managed. And Earth? Earth, he’d realized, was really not all it was cracked up to be, and that didn’t particularly bother him.
So, really, he’s not as annoyed as he could be about being in the infirmary. People stop by, here - not to see when he’s going to be useful again, or to ask him questions, but because they want to see him, and they know how bored he is. Lots of people come by, actually - pretty much everyone he knows here has been in at one point or another, and he knows more or less everyone on Atlantis. Mostly, though, his team are the ones keeping him from going stir-crazy.
Ronon comes by in the mornings, tells him how the training’s going - he’s started training some of the scientists in basic self-defense. Some of his stories have John laughing so hard that he almost falls out of the bed, except that Ronon catches him with one enormous hand and rolls him back.
Teyla comes by in the early afternoon, and mostly they just sit together. Sometimes she reads to him, claiming she wants to learn to read English. Her pronunciation isn’t bad, but she doesn’t always understand the words she’s reading, and he helps her. Sometimes she sings to him, soft songs in the language she grew up with. They’re pretty, kind of folksy. He asks her to translate them, sometimes, although he’s started being more careful about that, recently. One song about cutting a bird up to make soup, and then killing all your friends when they eat the soup, is more than enough for him, thanks.
Rodney comes by at mealtimes usually, bringing John the best bits of whatever they’re having that day. He says that it’s because he’s busy the rest of the time, but John doubts that. If he were doing as much work as he claims, he wouldn’t have time to dig up black-and-white movies for John to watch, or to find John a curly straw when John complains about the modified sippy-cups that are, for some reason, the only cups the infirmary has, anymore. Rodney doesn’t answer when John asks what his curly straw - which is blue, except when it’s green, and loops around itself in ways that don’t seem possible - used to be. John almost asks him again, but instead he settles back to watch The Maltese Falcon again.
In the evenings, John’s generally on his own. Elizabeth stops by now and again, and Beckett checks in on him around 6, but for the most part he’s alone, staring at the ceiling or the walls and thinking about things, or trying to sleep. He almost never does, though, so he’s glad when there’s a knock at the door.
He doesn’t expect to see Ronon - he’s already been by once, with a story about Zelenka, Heightmeyer, and one of the not-quite-pigs on TR-353 that made John laugh so hard he almost choked. Ronon had patted him gently on the back, except for the part where Ronon doesn’t exactly do gentle. John has been shifting around all day, trying not to lean on his bruises. Still, he welcomes Ronon in, waves him to the chair next to the bed, asks him what’s up.
It’s the camera, the one that John convinced Martine to give to Ronon. He’s been carrying it around for the past month or so, snapping pictures of this and that, going up on balconies and out on piers and once, memorably, persuading John to open the back of the jumper in midair so that he could look back and take a picture of Atlantis from the air, without the front window in the way. John’s not surprised to hear that he’s filled up the disc.
He wants to know how to make - John thinks the Sateda word is shayda-een, but Ronon just smiles when he tries to say it, so maybe not - and John explains about digital cameras, how you transfer the pictures to a computer, and then to a disc, and then you send them to someone else to get them printed. Ronon clearly thinks it’s a stupid system, and John offers to do this part for him. It’s no big deal, he assures Ronon, no trouble at all; he has to send Carter the pictures of Rodney in the pink t-shirt, so he’ll just ask her to make prints. It’s the least she can do for him.
He asks Ronon which ones he wants prints of, and Ronon stares at him for a moment.
“All of them,” he says, as though it’s obvious, and John stares right back, because there’s easily two hundred pictures on this disc. He nods, though, and gets Ronon to hand him the laptop before he leaves.
It’s not hard to transfer the photos off of the camera, and then he starts looking through them. He finds the pictures of Rodney pretty easily - the pink shirt is hard to miss - and notes down the numbers, for Carter. A couple of other pictures catch his eye, things he thinks Carter might like, and he notes them, too - pictures of Atlantis, mostly, or of Rodney looking like an idiot after missions, or of some of the stranger planets they’ve seen. Clearly, Ronon got a handle on the ‘delete’ function, because these pictures are good, catching all the best and brightest parts of Atlantis. John wonders, a little, what exactly it was that Ronon did, on Sateda. He’ll ask, someday - he’s just not sure how, yet.
When his list hits the edge of the screen, he gives up, deletes it, decides to just give Carter the whole damn disc and tell her to make as many prints as she wants for herself, plus a set for Ronon. He fluffs his pillows and settles in to look through the rest of the pictures, sipping water through his curly straw, adding captions to some of them. After about half an hour of browsing, endless views of this city and these people, one picture pops out at him.
It’s the team, his team, sitting around in Rodney’s lab one afternoon. He remembers the day - Rodney had found something, thought that maybe it was another personal shield, but for people without the gene. He’d dragged John along to activate it, and Teyla, to test it on, and Ronon had come along, wanting to hear the story about the first shield device, the one that got trashed by the energy-sucking creature. By the time Rodney had finished the story, the device was humming cheerfully in John’s hand, and Rodney had snatched it from him and advanced on Ronon, offering to test it on him. Ronon, who’d seemed particularly struck by Rodney’s description of not being able to eat through the shield, had backed away in a hurry, landing awkwardly on one of the lab tables.
John doesn’t remember Zelenka taking the picture, but it must have been him - he’d come into the lab, taken in the situation, and walked back out again without saying anything. It’s not the best picture of the bunch - poorly cropped, and kind of blurry - but Radek has an excellent sense of comic timing, and it shows.
Rodney is standing next to Teyla, trying the device on her and watching in comic dismay as it falls straight off her chest, trying to grab it before it hits the ground. He’d missed, and the device had sputtered and rolled around a bit before turning dark. They’d tried for weeks, but it hadn’t come back on, and eventually John had given it to Elizabeth as a paperweight.
Ronon is sprawled on the table, staring over at Rodney at Teyla. From his perspective, it must look like Rodney’s staring at Teyla’s breasts and feeling her up, because his face is split in a rare and slightly scandalized grin.
Teyla, in the middle, is the only one who’s looking directly at the camera. John thinks she must have tried to give Zelenka her Mona Lisa smile, only Rodney had poked her in the stomach, trying to catch the shield. She’s doubled over slightly, breath ‘oof’ing out of her, kind of bug-eyed.
John, in the picture, is leaning against the wall, eyes closed, laughing so hard he can’t stand up to help Ronon up. He looks like even more of an idiot than he usually does in pictures, with his face all scrunched up and his ears sticking out even more than usual. He looks happy; they all do. He thinks for a moment, then writes a note to Carter.
Maybe the infirmary doesn’t suck quite so much, after all. There are worse things, anyway.
Carter -
1 full set of prints, for Ronon Dex;
1 set of prints for you (the pictures of McKay are all on here, and you can make prints of any of the others, if you like);
1 print of #156, for me.
I’ll tell the payroll guys to pay for it from my account.
Sheppard
Feedback of any sort makes me spin in circles. I'm not kidding. It's pretty funny to watch, I'm told.
Thanks and blame to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
out_there, who didn't tell me no, and to permetaform, who told me yes, yes, yes! and who helped me figure out how it ended (and, um, what it was about). Thanks to you both - you're rockstars.
For those of you who have been reading along, this is not quite the same thing. I've edited a lot of the earlier parts, making clearer things I liked and cutting out parts I didn't care for, and I've pretty much entirely rewritten Sheppard's part, and stuck it at the end. Which all goes to say, for those of you who've been following along: Read it again! tell me what worked and what didn't! Tell me you love me! (or, ok, don't. fine.)
But, on the flipside, if you haven't been following along, there's no need to go back and read the earlier parts. This is the whole story, the sum of which all my earlier posts have been parts.
So, story!
Settlement: Five Stories About a Shirt, More Or Less
By etben
Length: 7755 words. Yeah, I know. I'm a little surprised, too.
As they round the fifth or the twenty-sixth corner, Sheppard’s asking her whether or not it will turn anyone “green? Blue? Red-orange? Any other color they aren’t, normally?” She shakes her head to each one, though, and they continue on. When, after a moment’s thought, he starts asking about the possibility of explosion, she sighs, and thinks that, just maybe, this was not the best idea she’s ever had.
Well, not the idea itself. The basic idea — the objective, here — was and is excellent. She knew, right from the moment she saw it, that this was it: this was Rodney McKay’s Christmas present. She’d seen it, and she’d known, and she’d sworn to do whatever she needed to make it happen, no matter how awkward, embarrassing, or downright illegal. McKay deserves this: partly for being his completely intolerable self, sure, but partly — a small part, of course — because, from what she’s been reading and hearing, things haven’t been entirely easy for them, out there, and for him maybe more than for the rest of him.
He’s out of his depth — who wouldn’t be? — and he’s too smart not to know it. She knows he’s freaking out, because, despite what some people have been saying about him since they reestablished contact, not that many people have died. If he weren’t nervous, the entire expedition would have died long before now. He’s in one of those situations where a carefully controlled state of panic is an entirely reasonable response, the only response that keeps people alive and working. Still, that doesn’t make it a warm fuzzy feeling. You can read it in his reports, the way he’s clearly taking a list of several hundred things that need to be done absolutely right now and worrying about them all, in order of importance. She knows how that feels, having to choose your crisis, having things really actually depend on you. If anyone in the world can deal with that feeling, it’s McKay, but she can’t help feeling a little bad for him.
Only a very little, though. Mostly, when she thinks about the gift, she thinks about the look on his face when he opens it. A look, it occurs to her, that she will never see if John Sheppard doesn’t shut the hell up. She wonders, again, whether he’s really her best choice. She knows other people in Atlantis, and most of them, she knows better than she knows Sheppard, who she’s only met a handful of times, after all. She could have asked one of them - but, no. They’re all frightened of McKay, on some level, and with varying degrees of justification. Sheppard is the one for the job - she just needs to make him understand that. She stops then, cutting him off before he can finish asking his latest question.
“No, it won’t explode, turn anyone strange colors, influence their brain chemistry in unfortunate ways, cause the downfall of the Western World — am I missing anything?”
“I actually didn’t ask about the downfall of the West — kind of figured it wouldn’t, what with being in the wrong galaxy and all.” Sheppard grins at her, and she rolls her eyes. Charming, sure, whatever, but she has a plan here. She is a woman on a mission.
“Listen, I promise it won’t damage anything, except possibly McKay’s ego. Can you just give it to him without knowing what it is? And take a picture of his face when he opens it?” She’s smiling up at him — hell, if he gets to try to charm her, she’s not going to play fair either — but he’s paused, thinking.
“Only possibly?” She blinks. “His ego — we’re only maybe going to damage it?”
“Oh, no,” she smiles, knowing that she’s got him now, “I only said that so you’d go along with me. His ego will be,” and god, it’s a delicious thought, and she shivers a little, “destroyed. Thanks for your help—” but no, he’s pulling back again, his face freezing in that charming mask. She gets a brief flash of what it must be like to work with this man, who sees so much and shows so very, very little, who thinks of everything and just smiles, right up until he rips someone’s throat out. Samantha Carter has read the reports.
He must drive McKay insane. For that alone, she’s willing to let him waffle a little. She just cocks her head, waits for him to spit out his objection.
“How destroyed are we talking, here? I mean, I know McKay’s obnoxious, and I get that you want to take him down a peg or two, sure, but,” and he looks up and down the hall, so fast she nearly doesn’t catch it, and leans close, says “he’s a good guy, you know? And the ego — well, after a guy saves your ass a couple hundred times, you kind of just go with what works. If ego works, you deal with it.” Sheppard’s as serious as she’s ever seen him, and her respect for him increases accordingly.
“Don’t worry, Sheppard. It’s just going to shake him up, deflate him enough to be bearable again. Here.” She didn’t want to do this, wanted to keep the surprise, but John Sheppard understands Rodney McKay nearly as well as she does, and so she undoes the top flap of the box, pulls it open, hands it over. He looks in, looks again, then breaks into the most genuine smile she’s ever seen on the man. He’s been smiling at her since she caught up to him, and this is the first time she can believe it. She understands, then, how he could be considered charming.
“So,” he says, folding the flaps back down, “a picture when he opens it, and I bet you want me to wrap it, too? Of course you do. What about a picture of him wearing it?”
“Sure, if you can get one, but I really don’t expect it—“ He cuts her off with another grin, this one ever-so-slightly conspiratorial.
“You’d be surprised what I can manage, Carter. Be seeing you.” With that, he turns on his heel and is gone.
Maybe, Sam thinks, he knows Rodney McKay even better than she does. The idea makes her smile.
***
Rodney doesn’t drink much. It’s not for lack of opportunity – despite what he knows people say about him, he does have a social life outside of his lab. He goes out, goes out with other people, goes out on dates with other living, breathing people. He asks people out on dates, and they say yes, and they go, and it’s all very straightforward, except sometimes they ask him first, which tends to startle him. Still, when you’re as brilliant as Rodney McKay is, working on the kind of stuff he works on, you get used to being startled by the incredible things the world does. You get used to it, or you get killed, usually in wildly improbable ways.
Rodney is completely capable of functioning while startled, so he says yes, and he goes on dates with people. Not so much on Atlantis, of course, which for one thing is mostly like one enormous lab everywhere you go, with so many things to do and see and fix and discover that he really, really doesn’t have that much time for things that don’t involve saving them all. For another, Atlantis is the mother of all closed communities, the great holy fishbowl in the sky, and he’s been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Atlantis brings a whole new dimension to dating within the workplace, and even Rodney’s socially aware enough to know that that’s something you really, really don’t want to do if you can avoid it.
Still, he dates, some, if only because he knows, intellectually, that variation in social environments is said to be important. Personally, he likes his unvarying social landscape – the lab, yelling at Kavanagh and arguing with Zelenka; meetings, rolling his eyes at Caldwell and arguing with Elizabeth; missions, running after Teyla and Ronon and arguing with Sheppard. Constants are a good thing, he thinks. Still, Rodney McKay is a rational man. He may not trust medicine very much, but there’s no sense in shooting yourself in the foot (or, rather, in some part of your psyche) when you can avoid it easily by asking a pretty girl out once in a while. If it’s important for people to get out more, then by God, Rodney McKay will get out as much as is necessary.
So he dates – awkwardly, because he’s still not good at this, probably never will be, doesn't really want to be – and they offer him wine, sometimes, or beer, or whatever the gate techs are brewing in the still this week. There’s alcohol, too, on off-world missions, usually something that resembles beer in method, at least, if not in flavor, or else a sort of fruit-punch. Either way, he drinks some and talks a little extra, to cover it up. They never notice.
He doesn’t like to drink because he doesn’t respond to alcohol like other people do. Most people have a drink, or three, or eight, and they get loose-limbed and friendly, chatty, gesturing too widely and speaking too loudly. Some people get mopey, or angry, or violent, and some just get strange. Rodney’s a scientist, and he’s observed them all, watched them laugh and shout and scream and cry, and everything he’s seen has just gone towards his theory: in this, as in so many other things, Rodney McKay is not like the others. It’s completely unfair, but Rodney’s gotten used to it. At this point, he thinks he’d be more surprised if, for once, he ate something and had a completely average response to it.
When he drinks alcohol, nothing happens. He doesn’t feel any different from normal, no matter how much he drinks – and he’s tested this hypothesis. He can get sick, if he drinks enough, but he never feels any more relaxed, any happier. He’s drunk so much that the hangover lasted for days, but he’s never been drunk. He just goes on, getting annoyed but not intoxicated, until he falls over the edge and stumbles for the bathroom.
The doctors he’s talked to about this all agree: they don’t know why it happens. They all say something vague about different body chemistries, connections in the brain, the body processing chemicals; many words to say that they just don’t know. Buck up, sonny boy, the second-to-most-recent quack had said, just think of all the embarrassing stories you’re sparing yourself! Rodney had thought of that, and on his way out had asked to be transferred to another physician. Because, really, if the man was going to insist on being depressing, Rodney had better things to do with his time. The most recent doctor had been sympathetic, and Rodney had been about to ask her on an alcohol-free date, figuring that she already knew all of his stupid body tricks and probably would manage not to serve him anything he couldn’t eat. Then, though, there had been Antarctica, and the chair, the drone, Sheppard, Atlantis, and he didn’t think about Dr. Desmoulins very much any more.
In Atlantis, Rodney doesn’t think about a lot of things, most of them having to do with Earth, and he doesn’t drink, either, except on those rare occasions when he absolutely has to. The Christmas party is not any such occasion, Elizabeth tells him, but that doesn’t change the fact that he does absolutely have to be there. This is Christmas, and they are alive, and they are going to celebrate that fact, god damn it, every single one of them, that includes you, Rodney McKay, even if all you do is lurk in the corner. Which, he notes, is exactly what he’s doing. He smiles at Elizabeth, even though she’s not actually anywhere near him, right now. He can still hear her voice, ringing in his ears like the sound of the bell-trees on MXU-087.
“Why, McKay, you’re just full of surprises,” says a voice from behind him. He spins to face it, wobbles, nearly catches himself on the edge of the table he’s been lurking by, misses, and falls onto John Sheppard. Somehow, he is not surprised. Sheppard staggers for a moment, trying to brace his weight without dropping the brightly-wrapped package he’s carrying, and then tilts him until he’s vertical again. When Rodney wobbles, Sheppard puts the box down and steers him into a chair. He’s talking all the while, but Rodney doesn’t bother to turn the sounds into words. There’s something odd about this situation, and he knows that if he just ignores everyone else for a while, eventually the rest of his brain will pick up the pattern his subconscious has already noticed. He just waits, looking around, and his attention seizes on the box.
Sheppard is ignoring it now in favor of giving Rodney a bemused look, but Rodney points, redirecting the focus. John catches Rodney’s arm when it smacks against his chest and places it gently on the arm of the chair, curling Rodney’s fingers around the end of the arm rest.
“No, Sheppard, you don’t – stop, no, you don’t – the box, you idiot, what’s in the box? - it’s important, I know it is, oh, come on, don’t be – stop, no, stop it, will you stop being so –” Without even looking, John reaches over and back, grabbing the box and setting it in Rodney’s lap. They both stare at it for a while, and then Rodney stares at John, who’s still staring at the box, and if the box could only stare at Rodney they’d have a loop, perpetual attentional motion, it would be – but, no, John’s looking up, now, looking at Rodney and shaking his head.
“Christ, McKay,” Sheppard says, “you’re really trashed, aren’t you?” Rodney starts to explain that no, he’s not drunk, can’t get drunk, and wasn’t Sheppard paying attention on MIY-986, or, no, maybe it was – “it’s a present, genius. Will you open it, already?” John’s got a camera, now – where did he get that? – and he’s giving Rodney a present, and something, somewhere, is not making sense. He’s trying to tell John that, but John doesn’t get it, just shakes his head and says “not from me, from Carter, back on Earth. She asked me to see that you got it. Now come on, are you going to open it or do I have to do it for you?”
Rodney is confused, but he’s used to confused, and it’s never stopped him from doing what needs to be done. He opens the present, layer after layer, then looks up into the glare of the camera flash, blinking past the dancing lights to glare at John. His glare is a mighty weapon, capable of reducing grad students to tears. It’s not working, though: Sheppard just smiles back, that stupid, tolerant smile that says “Hey, isn’t life fun?” Life is not fun; Rodney knows this for a fact. He proved it. There are graphs. He thinks about showing Sheppard the calculations, but weight across his legs stops him from getting up. He looks down, discovers the box, and looks back up to glare at Sheppard some more.
“It’s pink, John,” he says, and the chair wobbles underneath him. It is, too - pink, with yellow lettering. He thinks there may even be sparkles on the front. “Why,” he asks, trying to keep his balance, “is it pink?” The chair is winning, though, and he slumps sideways, letting it do what it chooses with his mass. Dimly, he hears the crowd around him – and since when is there a crowd? – talking about the fruit wine that MEJ-976 makes, and how it must be hitting McKay harder than he thought, and please, sir, take another picture, no, I won’t do anything inappropriate with it, I swear.
It comes to him, then, and he stands up, because this is important. The ground dips and weaves under him, but that’s fine, that’s only to be expected, and John catches him, anyway. He leans up, looks John in the eye, and says, over the laughter he can hear but is choosing to ignore, that he’s made a great discovery. John, of course, asks what it is, and Rodney, of course, tells him. That’s the way they work, although normally they aren’t leaning on each other. Still, that puts him close enough to poke John’s chest, and he does, on each word, for emphasis.
“I. Am. Completely. And. Ut-ter-ly (which gets three taps, one per syllable). Drunk.”
Then John’s nodding, and the world is spinning, and Rodney is floating, warm and safe and suddenly, deliriously happy. He’s in the City of the Ancients, and they’re alive, and they’re safe, and he has work he loves, and friends he loves, and a home. He’s really, really drunk. Life, Rodney thinks, is good.
When he wakes up the next morning, there’s a t-shirt on the pillow next to him and a glass of water on his night table. The shirt is bright pink, and says, in glittering yellow lettering, I’m not BOSSY… He flips it over, and reads: …I just have better IDEAS.
He smiles, and it stays.
***
Three days after Doctor McKay’s unfortunate reaction to the tuula wine, Teyla is guiding her team through a field. This world is at the beginning of autumn, and everything they can see is blue. Rodney and John had started talking excitedly when they’d first stepped through, with hand-waving and nodding aplenty on both sides. Teyla could listen, but she has learned to ignore them, when they get like this. She lets them talk, as they work their way toward the settlement, because it does no harm, but she does not feel any need to mind their speech. She does not think she would understand.
Some days she asks all the same, and then they spend the hours explaining to her in their different ways. Rodney is excited and loud, waving his hands and spinning with a grace he never shows in their infrequent training sessions. John is quieter, but has a way with images and ideas that make things clearer. He gives her a foothold, and Rodney shores her position up with a wealth of details. She has learned about internal combustion this way, and the government of John’s America; about football, and hockey, and about Mozart. In turn, she and Ronon have pooled their knowledge, and teach in their turn – more quietly, but with their own wisdom, she thinks. John and Rodney know how the moons of Sateda spin, and how the seas on Grimilan rose, and the people live in boats, and how to pick the juripet fruit, which retracts its spines only at dusk and at dawn, and must be eaten with haste. Teyla likes these days a great deal – partly for the knowledge she gains, but partly for the joy they are all taking from this chance to know each other better. They live each in the souls of the others, as Charin tells it, and Teyla smiles to see that bond grow.
Now, though, she is ignoring them. As much as she loves speaking with them, she loves the silence more, and here, on this world where old grasses crackle underfoot, she is silent. The sun shines, and a ring of tiny moons is starting to be visible. The weather is crisp, warm enough to be comfortable but cold enough to encourage activity. She knows these fields well; her first trading voyage, trotting at her father’s heels, was to this very world, in search of sweet tea. That was in spring, though, which is a yellow season, here. Now, they seek permission to forage in the mountains, for game and raw metals that have, as McKay says so often, “interesting readings.” Still, the memory is present, and perhaps there will be some sweet tea remaining. Teyla is walking in the steps of her past, with her future following her. She is content.
Three hours later, she retraces her steps, moving swiftly, urging the others on ahead. The sun has set, and the shadows are unfamiliar, but she knows the way, and she hurries them on. John and Ronon pass her, but all three turn back when they hear McKay’s shout, strangled and then stifled. They are back with him in blur of motion, John rolling him gently over as she and Ronon keep guard, he before, she behind. Teyla’s breath is rough and unsteady, as though it will fly away and leave her frozen. For a moment, she thinks that perhaps John’s breath has left him already, so still and stern he looks.
Rodney groans, and her breath returns to her, though she is watchful, still. He sits up before John can check him over, brushing away John’s hands and her concerned stare with the same quick gestures.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says, struggling to his feet. John makes himself available as a support, and she and Ronon rise at the same time, keeping in place the shield they are being. “Will you – stop, stop, I said I’m fine – have you ever known me to conceal injury, Sheppard? – Think, please, I know it’s difficult, but please!” She knows he is well – his words testify – but she worries, still, and he sees it.
“Teyla, seriously, I’m fine – well, no, not really, I’m bruised as hell and my back will be returning to the Milky Way in several discrete units, but we already knew that, so, please, can we get back to Atlantis before whatever got me comes back and –” he lifts his arms awkwardly, lets them drop back to his sides with a wet thud “- slimes the rest of you?” Before they can answer, he’s walking past Ronon, back towards the puddlejumper, wiping his hands on John’s shirt as he goes.
“Jesus, Rodney –” She ignores the rest. Everything is fine.
Back on Atlantis, Doctor Beckett pronounces Rodney “slimed, I suppose you’d say-” “isn’t that what I said? Isn’t it?” “-thank you, Rodney, that’ll do! But otherwise unharmed. It’s messy, but this stuff is completely inert, although you’ll want to be sure and wash it out of your hair before you sleep.” He is released to his own quarters, and since the rest of the team is uninjured, they walk together. Ordinarily, they would meet with Elizabeth, explain the mission and discuss what further action they might take. In this case, however, Elizabeth had seen them come back through the gate. Once she had stopped laughing at Rodney – whose clothes cling wetly to his body, glowing a pale yellow – and determined that the mission had been successful, she’d put off the briefing until the next day.
On the way, however, they cross paths with Charles, who serves dessert in the dining hall. He informs them that tonight, there will be french fries. John and Rodney seem to vibrate with excitement, and Ronon cracks a rare smile. Teyla is fond of the fries herself, but it does not seem polite to abandon Rodney. He frowns, but waves them on, saying he’ll join them “in a minute, soon, hurry, just save me a plate or three, what are you waiting for? Go!” With his hair glowing as it does, it seems best to obey, and they hurry on their way.
Twenty minutes later, they have secured a table and several plates of fries (three for Ronon, one for John, one for Teyla, two for Rodney, and one for all of them) and are speculating about the creature that attacked Rodney. John, facing the door, breaks off mid-word to shake his head and laugh. As she and Ronon stare, he stands up and waves, calling Rodney’s name across the room. After a moment, Rodney drops into the chair next to him.
As he devours his fries, nodding his thanks at them, Teyla understands John’s laughter. Rodney is wearing the shirt he had received at the Christmas party, the one that John had sworn was “not from me, I swear, it was all Carter’s idea! Don’t shoot the messenger, come on, Rodney,” the next morning. Next to her, she sees that Ronon - who, it occurs to her, left the Christmas party long before Rodney received his gift - has frozen, a handful of fries halfway to his mouth. Rodney notices, too, and sets down his plate, looking Ronon in the eye.
“As of this morning, I had two clean shirts. I put one of them on, planning to wear it for the rest of the day, and possibly tomorrow, if I don’t get around to doing laundry tonight. As of right now, that shirt is coated in glowing yellow slime. There are french fries. Are you going to have a problem?” Ronon shakes his head, starts eating again.
“It’s a nice shirt,” he says, “I like it.”
Teyla looks at John, and they laugh, and they laugh.
***
Ronon will never tell Teyla this, but he's been to her planet before.
There was a tradition, on Sateda. At the end of the first eightday, the firsters, newly branded and still slightly drunk on the ceremonial wine, went back to their commons. There, the five-group students would wait, with more wine and a story to tell, a story of treasure buried by a long-dead firstgroup. Each storyteller, leaning on seniority, pretended to have the true gate code, and offered to share it with the firsters, for a share in the gold - and their first ration of alcohol. Naturally, most of the firsters hooted and jeered the storyteller, and kept their alcohol and their dignity. Every year, though, a few groups believed it, and, taking the address, headed off into the darkness.
It was all a joke, of course: each code opened to night on a harmless planet; the directions were incomprehensible and usually messy; the ‘treasure’ was a rude note or a cheap pornograph. When the firsters got back, exhausted and muddy, their alcohol was gone, and nobody would ever admit to knowing where it had been hidden. In their turn, they became part of a five-group themselves, and took their turns telling stories to the firsters.
Ronon had ignored the story when it was first told him, smirking down in his beer at his yearmates and saying nothing. When he’d made his fivegroup, he’d stayed away from the story-ritual, training hard, leaving the funning to others. As Specialist Dex, though, he’d been assigned to go along. He was to remain silent and watchful, keep the firsters from any major hurts or dangers, and call for backup if they ran into anything with more teeth than they had heads.
The firstgroup he followed went to Athos, although of course he didn’t know to call it that, at the time. He remembered it as a nice enough planet, with a gentle breeze and tall, stately trees. He’d stepped through into early summer, and moved easily through the forest behind the firsters as unfamiliar stars rose and fell. They’d mentioned that the world was inhabited, but only to tell him to keep the firsters away from the people. He’d seen the camp, from a distance, tents lit with torches and open firepits. Savages, he’d thought, and let one hand slide to his gun. Later, he’d watched and counted as the firsters slunk dejectedly back through the gate; he followed them, and didn’t think of the place for several years.
If he’d thought about it at all, he might have thought with longing of those tents and torches. He might have looked around at the cave where he was staying, or the hollowed tree, or the thick, thorny bush, and wished for an open firepit, for the flat empty calm of that life. Then again, he had his gun, and his wits, and some of his pride, still, and so he probably still would have scorned those things.
As it turned, he only thought of that planet on the day, nearly a year after his arrival in the City, when Teyla Emmagen pulled him aside one evening. She’d pressed her forehead to his, the way her people did, and traced symbols on his hands. It was only when she reached the fourth - inrish-talmi - that he realized what she was doing, what she was coding on his palms. He had to fight not to jerk away, not to tear his hands from hers and run, run until his legs gave out and his sight turned black. She must have felt him shiver, old currents threatening the new, but she gave no sign. She held his hands tighter, and continued the ritual.
It was never practiced on Sateda, although Specialist Dex had been the recipient of it a few times. He’d scorned it, then, as foolish nonsense. With the knowledge of Sateda behind him, he could find the home to any gate code he wanted, and find a code for any spinning world. What did it matter if a villager from some spotted planet told you their gate-code or not? If you wanted the code, you would get it, and you would go, and take what you needed.
The Runner had never strayed close enough to the settlements to be offered a code, but he would have scorned one, anyway. Trust was a beggar’s joke, a trinket for boys without bombs ticking between their shoulder blades. That was not his way. He composed at random, waited for an arch, and jumped through, all without caring what he found on the other end. If death awaited him there - well, death was here, too, and everywhere, so who would ask where?
Ronon Dex, though, who stands in the halls of the Great City with a queen tracing trust on his palms, understands. It's a custom, among traders from the smaller planets. Sharing a gate address is a sign of friendship, a sign that you trust someone not to come through the gate in your night and rape your family. I trust you, it says. I trust that you will come to my world with peace and with prosperity, and bring to me and mine only more of the same.
When she finishes, he flips their hands, dwarfing her palms in his, and quickly sketches the sequence that calls Sateda. She knows them already, as he could know hers, if he chose, and both worlds are so much scattered dust, now, but it doesn’t matter. Here, and now, Ronon Dex understands that the doing is the thing, no matter the results.
He rests his head against hers for a long moment more, his braids brushing her forehead and cheekbones. When they straighten, he is smiling, and her eyes are bright. Before she can go, he puts a hand to her shoulder.
“D’you know where Sheppard is?”
At first, Sheppard doesn’t seem to understand him. Ronon does not have Teyla’s gift for languages, and even though he speaks more in one month, here, than he did in all his time as a Runner, the Earth language is hard. A year spent here, and he still struggles to speak easily, naturally. He stops, shakes his head, starts again, watching Sheppard’s eyes.
“There is -” No. That is not the way. Again.
“On Sateda, we had a device. It made -” Sheppard’s nodding, and Ronon reaches for the word. “- images? pictures?” He gestures, makes like he’s using a shayda, and Sheppard nods, understanding.
“A camera? Sure, yeah - I mean, I don’t have one, but I’m sure - yeah, here, hey! Martine!” He’s waving a short, pale woman over to where Ronon stopped him in the hallway. Ronon’s never seen her before, that he remembers, but he’s not surprised Sheppard knows her first name. Sheppard’s good at that, at making friends without giving up too much. Ronon never knows how to go, now, in this new home, and he winds up standing silently by, most of the time.
Martine seems to be just as glad that he’s not trying to make nice, but she smiles at Sheppard and looks into her bag, coming up with a small silver cube. She gives it to Sheppard, who hands it off to Ronon, thanking her cheerfully. As she hurries off, smiling nervously back at Ronon, Sheppard starts to show him how it works. The mechanism is more or less the same, though - a lens, a few buttons and knobs. He thanks Sheppard, who shrugs.
“No problem. Although - you could do me a favor, actually.” He outlines what he wants, and Ronon agrees. A picture of McKay in that ugly pink shirt he wears when he’s off duty, or when he forgets to do laundry and gets slimed, is an odd request, but hey. As Ronon understands it, he’s not supposed to ask or tell about this kind of thing.
Sheppard turns pale when he says this, and flushes, and sputters, and stammers in a way Ronon’s never seen him do before. Finally, choking, he hurries off, telling Ronon to have fun.
Ronon rather thinks he will.
***
John’s in the infirmary, and he doesn’t approve. Well, he approves of the infirmary as a general rule, as a concept - he just doesn’t approve of it when it applies to him. He hates being stuck here, even though he understands that a man with two broken legs, no matter how healthy he otherwise is, can’t really be released to his quarters. Still, understanding never makes it better. He’d thought it would, when he was small - you’ll understand when you’re older, his mother had told him, and he does, and you know what? it still sucks.
In fact, it sucks about as much as being trapped in the infirmary does.
It’s not as bad as it could be, of course. He could have broken his arms, too, and not even be able to use a laptop or read comfortably. He could have fucked up his ribs, and not been able to breathe comfortably. He could be injured somewhere else - stuck on another planet, without medical assistance other than the small pharmacy Rodney carries in his vest. They did that on MT-987, the one with all the cliffs, where they had to wait until dawn to take off safely, and it was just a damn shame that it was midwinter, and the nights were 34 hours long.
He could, he realizes, be stuck back on Earth, in some quiet military hospital, with everyone interested in him but nobody caring about him. That would really suck, would suck like quicksand and like betrayal. He’s glad that, if he has to be stuck in bed with two broken legs, he’s doing it here in Atlantis, where he has friends, where he belongs.
It was the weirdest damn thing, when he realized it. John’s a pretty easy-going sort of guy, always has been, and he wasn’t surprised when he did just fine in Atlantis. He’s always been the sort of person for whom one place is pretty much the same as the next, provided he has food and a place to sleep and something to think about. And, sure, Atlantis was neat, was beyond neat, was amazing and awesome and scary and fun and so much more than he’d ever thought he’d have, and that was great, but it was still just another place - a nicer place, sure, but nothing more than somewhere to be.
Things didn’t start getting weird until he went back through the gate, going to the SGC for his mandatory combination of leave and brain-picking, once every year, whether you wanted it or not. He usually didn’t. “No, John,” Elizabeth had told him, “you can’t just stay here and not do anything important, you need to go back to Earth - yes, I know you don’t want to, come on, John, I let you try that last time, and you remember how well that went -” And, actually, she had a point, although the monkey had been all McKay’s fault. He’d sighed, and smiled, and gone on through.
He’d stepped through, still snickering at Rodney’s offer to infect him with something “non-lethal, but itchy enough to keep you here—remember those strawberry-monkey things? There’s one in bio-3; the cage is locked, of course, but that’s hardly…” and for a while, Earth had been fine. After a few days, though, he’d gotten - bored, some, and lonely, and fidgety.
He’d gone out, after they’d had enough of his brain for a while, and climbed a rock, and then a bigger rock, and then a mountain. Up on the top, it almost looked like the view from the catwalks above the jumper bay, late in the afternoon, except he didn’t have Ronon jogging beside him, or Rodney yelling at someone on the radio, or the sweet hum of the city all around him.
The rest of his two weeks on Earth had just been more of the same. Earth was nice, sure, and there were things he was glad to see and do and have again, but mostly he just kept noticing all the ways it wasn’t Atlantis. When he’d come back through the gate, seen his city again, he’d realized that, somewhere along the line, things had changed. Not only was Atlantis easy, fine, good—it was easier, more than fine, the best place for him. In some crazy fucked-up way, Atlantis was home, now, in a way no other place had ever managed. And Earth? Earth, he’d realized, was really not all it was cracked up to be, and that didn’t particularly bother him.
So, really, he’s not as annoyed as he could be about being in the infirmary. People stop by, here - not to see when he’s going to be useful again, or to ask him questions, but because they want to see him, and they know how bored he is. Lots of people come by, actually - pretty much everyone he knows here has been in at one point or another, and he knows more or less everyone on Atlantis. Mostly, though, his team are the ones keeping him from going stir-crazy.
Ronon comes by in the mornings, tells him how the training’s going - he’s started training some of the scientists in basic self-defense. Some of his stories have John laughing so hard that he almost falls out of the bed, except that Ronon catches him with one enormous hand and rolls him back.
Teyla comes by in the early afternoon, and mostly they just sit together. Sometimes she reads to him, claiming she wants to learn to read English. Her pronunciation isn’t bad, but she doesn’t always understand the words she’s reading, and he helps her. Sometimes she sings to him, soft songs in the language she grew up with. They’re pretty, kind of folksy. He asks her to translate them, sometimes, although he’s started being more careful about that, recently. One song about cutting a bird up to make soup, and then killing all your friends when they eat the soup, is more than enough for him, thanks.
Rodney comes by at mealtimes usually, bringing John the best bits of whatever they’re having that day. He says that it’s because he’s busy the rest of the time, but John doubts that. If he were doing as much work as he claims, he wouldn’t have time to dig up black-and-white movies for John to watch, or to find John a curly straw when John complains about the modified sippy-cups that are, for some reason, the only cups the infirmary has, anymore. Rodney doesn’t answer when John asks what his curly straw - which is blue, except when it’s green, and loops around itself in ways that don’t seem possible - used to be. John almost asks him again, but instead he settles back to watch The Maltese Falcon again.
In the evenings, John’s generally on his own. Elizabeth stops by now and again, and Beckett checks in on him around 6, but for the most part he’s alone, staring at the ceiling or the walls and thinking about things, or trying to sleep. He almost never does, though, so he’s glad when there’s a knock at the door.
He doesn’t expect to see Ronon - he’s already been by once, with a story about Zelenka, Heightmeyer, and one of the not-quite-pigs on TR-353 that made John laugh so hard he almost choked. Ronon had patted him gently on the back, except for the part where Ronon doesn’t exactly do gentle. John has been shifting around all day, trying not to lean on his bruises. Still, he welcomes Ronon in, waves him to the chair next to the bed, asks him what’s up.
It’s the camera, the one that John convinced Martine to give to Ronon. He’s been carrying it around for the past month or so, snapping pictures of this and that, going up on balconies and out on piers and once, memorably, persuading John to open the back of the jumper in midair so that he could look back and take a picture of Atlantis from the air, without the front window in the way. John’s not surprised to hear that he’s filled up the disc.
He wants to know how to make - John thinks the Sateda word is shayda-een, but Ronon just smiles when he tries to say it, so maybe not - and John explains about digital cameras, how you transfer the pictures to a computer, and then to a disc, and then you send them to someone else to get them printed. Ronon clearly thinks it’s a stupid system, and John offers to do this part for him. It’s no big deal, he assures Ronon, no trouble at all; he has to send Carter the pictures of Rodney in the pink t-shirt, so he’ll just ask her to make prints. It’s the least she can do for him.
He asks Ronon which ones he wants prints of, and Ronon stares at him for a moment.
“All of them,” he says, as though it’s obvious, and John stares right back, because there’s easily two hundred pictures on this disc. He nods, though, and gets Ronon to hand him the laptop before he leaves.
It’s not hard to transfer the photos off of the camera, and then he starts looking through them. He finds the pictures of Rodney pretty easily - the pink shirt is hard to miss - and notes down the numbers, for Carter. A couple of other pictures catch his eye, things he thinks Carter might like, and he notes them, too - pictures of Atlantis, mostly, or of Rodney looking like an idiot after missions, or of some of the stranger planets they’ve seen. Clearly, Ronon got a handle on the ‘delete’ function, because these pictures are good, catching all the best and brightest parts of Atlantis. John wonders, a little, what exactly it was that Ronon did, on Sateda. He’ll ask, someday - he’s just not sure how, yet.
When his list hits the edge of the screen, he gives up, deletes it, decides to just give Carter the whole damn disc and tell her to make as many prints as she wants for herself, plus a set for Ronon. He fluffs his pillows and settles in to look through the rest of the pictures, sipping water through his curly straw, adding captions to some of them. After about half an hour of browsing, endless views of this city and these people, one picture pops out at him.
It’s the team, his team, sitting around in Rodney’s lab one afternoon. He remembers the day - Rodney had found something, thought that maybe it was another personal shield, but for people without the gene. He’d dragged John along to activate it, and Teyla, to test it on, and Ronon had come along, wanting to hear the story about the first shield device, the one that got trashed by the energy-sucking creature. By the time Rodney had finished the story, the device was humming cheerfully in John’s hand, and Rodney had snatched it from him and advanced on Ronon, offering to test it on him. Ronon, who’d seemed particularly struck by Rodney’s description of not being able to eat through the shield, had backed away in a hurry, landing awkwardly on one of the lab tables.
John doesn’t remember Zelenka taking the picture, but it must have been him - he’d come into the lab, taken in the situation, and walked back out again without saying anything. It’s not the best picture of the bunch - poorly cropped, and kind of blurry - but Radek has an excellent sense of comic timing, and it shows.
Rodney is standing next to Teyla, trying the device on her and watching in comic dismay as it falls straight off her chest, trying to grab it before it hits the ground. He’d missed, and the device had sputtered and rolled around a bit before turning dark. They’d tried for weeks, but it hadn’t come back on, and eventually John had given it to Elizabeth as a paperweight.
Ronon is sprawled on the table, staring over at Rodney at Teyla. From his perspective, it must look like Rodney’s staring at Teyla’s breasts and feeling her up, because his face is split in a rare and slightly scandalized grin.
Teyla, in the middle, is the only one who’s looking directly at the camera. John thinks she must have tried to give Zelenka her Mona Lisa smile, only Rodney had poked her in the stomach, trying to catch the shield. She’s doubled over slightly, breath ‘oof’ing out of her, kind of bug-eyed.
John, in the picture, is leaning against the wall, eyes closed, laughing so hard he can’t stand up to help Ronon up. He looks like even more of an idiot than he usually does in pictures, with his face all scrunched up and his ears sticking out even more than usual. He looks happy; they all do. He thinks for a moment, then writes a note to Carter.
Maybe the infirmary doesn’t suck quite so much, after all. There are worse things, anyway.
Carter -
1 full set of prints, for Ronon Dex;
1 set of prints for you (the pictures of McKay are all on here, and you can make prints of any of the others, if you like);
1 print of #156, for me.
I’ll tell the payroll guys to pay for it from my account.
Sheppard
Feedback of any sort makes me spin in circles. I'm not kidding. It's pretty funny to watch, I'm told.
Thanks and blame to
out_there, who didn't tell me no, and to permetaform, who told me yes, yes, yes! and who helped me figure out how it ended (and, um, what it was about). Thanks to you both - you're rockstars.