Fiction Main

Author's Notes:

This is a response to the Atlantis Urban Legends Slash Challenge. The specific prompt in question is this one. aurora_84 and lydiabell graciously stepped in to beta this into shape. If it's at all legible, it's probably their fault. The much adored raucousraven brought the Betasticks of Immense Power and envouraged me throughout (read: listened to me whine and battled the 42.5 drafts I sent her way). rivier braved the advances copy. My thanks to all of them for their efforts. Any and all mistakes/structural oddities are my own doing and likely snuck in when they weren't looking.

If you want to be a spoilsport, you can cheat and find the list of other pairings at the end of the story. Other than that, you're on your own.



Cohesion
by Stillane

The soft noise Sheppard made wasn't enough to draw Rodney's attention. He would have missed it entirely if his focus hadn't secretly been on Sheppard to start with.

He'd been not-watching since the man sauntered into his lab. Rodney had been making his way through the assorted ancient knicknacks turned up by city explorations, giving each item at least a cursory examination before classifying it as either interesting technology, probable junk, or possibly both. Sheppard was much more entertaining.

For appearances' sake, Rodney continued fondling the device in his hands, the same one that had failed to do much of anything for the last half hour. He mustered an appropriately aggrieved expression and gave up pretending not to look. "What?"

"Oh, nothing. I just think I may have turned this thing on." Sheppard's voice was far too controlled to be natural.

Rodney sighed. "Of course. It and every other atomic-based form of matter in the galaxy. What's it doing?"

John looked puzzled, frowning and narrowing his eyes. "Not sure. Maybe... buzzing a little?"

Rodney stood to crowd him more effectively. "How typical. You've been here five minutes."

Sheppard smirked. "What can I say? Some people just have the touch."

"Yes, and they're usually the ones with all the venereal diseases." Rodney snapped his fingers. "Hand it over."

Sheppard, being Sheppard, pulled his hand back. "Just give me a minute."

Rodney drummed impatiently on his pants leg. "Well, try something."

Sheppard's cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's specific."

"Look, if you're not going to be cooperative, you can just hand it over and go away."

He was half right.

Thirty seconds of stunned blinking and three minutes of frantic radio calls later, Sheppard responded.

"Well, that was a rush."

Rodney was lucky to be alone in the lab. The first few sounds out of his mouth weren't quite language. The next few were, but not of the sort used in polite company. Finally, he settled on, "Sheppard, what the hell did you just do?"

The voice over his headset sounded entirely too pleased with itself. "Learn how to walk through walls, apparently."

"You learned... wait, what?"

He could hear the insufferable grin. "Yeah. I think I'm about three rooms down from you. From the rolls of toilet paper, I'm guessing supply closet."

Thirty seconds later Rodney was yanking the closet door open to reveal the predicted smirk. He really only noticed it in passing, though, since his eyes were busy cataloguing the rest of Sheppard. John seemed to take it in stride, leaning against some shelving and looking somewhere between smug and excited. It was about this time that the sound of Elizabeth demanding an update finally registered in Rodney's ear. He cued the mic distractedly, eyes still on Sheppard. "He's fine. I'll get back to you." He flipped it off. "Okay. So you don't seem to be damaged. Well, no more than before, at any rate. Would you like to tell me how you got from there to here?"

John's eyes were shining and he abruptly lost the forced casual pose. "I walked."

Rodney nodded. "Yes, yes, we've covered that. Apparently through walls, and would you care to elaborate on how?"

Sheppard shrugged. "You tell me. This thing starts wiggling on me, I look down, and when I look up the world is kind of... fuzzy."

"Like caterpillar fuzzy, or acid trip fuzzy?"

Sheppard gave him an appraising look. "More like bad time-travel special effect fuzzy. Hazy, maybe. When I tried moving around, I wound up here. A little bit goes a long way, I think."

Rodney frowned thoughtfully, mentally tallying a)possible ways the Ancients' device was manipulating matter, b)probable range of motion and c)how many new and different ways Sheppard could find to get hurt and/or die. "So how did you turn it off?"

"No idea. Maybe thought 'stop' at it?" Sheppard looked momentarily discomfited, and then brightened. He held up the device and flicked a look at Rodney from under his brows. "Still, this is -"

"-very cool," Rodney finished for him, nodding.

When Elizabeth, Carson and the medical team arrived a moment later, they found the two grinning at each other. Elizabeth looked uneasy; Carson only sighed and began to tally his medical supplies.

Carson removed the blood pressure cuff and made a note in a chart already several inches thick. "As near as I can tell - and bear in mind I don't have the full blood results or DNA workup back yet - the Colonel here seems fine. No apparent effects whatsoever from whatever that device did."

Sheppard was still smiling widely, and Rodney was casting impatient looks between the patient and the device, currently resting on a tray beside him. It reminded Elizabeth of nothing so much as a small, metallic sea urchin. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, bowing to the inevitable. Rodney was just opening his mouth and wearing an expression so innocent a blind man would have been wary when she cut him off. "I'm well aware you two will follow me around until I let you play with this thing. In the interests of time and sanity, I'll give the go-ahead, but gentlemen - you break it, you bought it. Am I clear?"

They were nodding at her in tandem. Rodney got in the first word. "Absolutely."

"No problem."

"It will all be extremely safe."

"We'll be careful."

She gave the unladylike snort she seemed to have picked up in this galaxy and shook her head. "Just try to keep yourselves in one piece, okay?"

They nodded some more, and then Sheppard hopped down from the infirmary bed and the two of them headed for the exit, heads together and hands flying. She shared a look with Carson, quirking an eyebrow. If they were lucky, there would be a few days of peace before the explosion.

If they were very lucky, it wouldn't be a literal one.

Two days later they came to her with a working theory.

Rodney was pacing, obviously too keyed up to sit; he held up a finger, waving it emphatically as he explained. "Here's the interesting part: the results came back the same as when he was just standing there with it off. Temperature, elemental content, pressure. All except the light spectrum analysis. The air in Colonel Sheppard's 'bubble' - for lack of a better word - was far denser than it should have been. Less dense than a human body, obviously, but still more than your average blank space."

Radek, apparently having been drafted, jumped in. "And here is the other thing: we could not get readings on this 'bubble' from outside - only when Colonel Sheppard was holding the recording equipment, and the data only registered for a fraction of a second before and after he disappeared. It is remarkable!"

They were looking at her expectantly. Sometimes, they forgot her qualifications weren't in the physical sciences. Sometimes, they forgot everyone's weren't. "Okay, and that translates as...?"

Rodney blinked. "It's a matter destabilizer. We think it works like a combination of technologies we're already familiar with: gate transport, the innercity transporters, the personal shield I found last year. Probably even some of the inertial dampening capabilities of the jumpers, to allow movement control and the like. Which, by the way, is apparently possible despite the fact that the user is molecularly deconstructed." He was practically bouncing.

Sheppard chimed in from his position on the bench along the wall. "Basically, it breaks me down into little bits moving really fast. It gets them small enough to pass through things that are usually pretty solid."

That... sounded rather alarming, actually. It must have shown on her face, because Rodney leapt forward to reassure her. "It's really all perfectly safe. We think it tags all the atoms inside the 'bubble' and then sets up a force field specific to them. Somehow, it's programmed to allow gas exchange between the two zones without letting any of the... er, traveler... escape. Pretty much the way the personal shield did, really. At least we think so, since Sheppard didn't suffocate." He grimaced for a moment, then waved it off. "The great part is, it lets matter that isn't tagged pass right through it, seemingly unaffected. And when it's turned off, poof! All the little bits come back together."

She was still doing her best to take it all in. "And exactly what is the purpose of this device? Outside of entertainment, that is."

Radek was rubbing his hands together gleefully. "It does not have a convenient instruction manual, but it seems likely the device was part of the Ancients' experiments toward ascension."

Rodney nodded eagerly. "Incorporeality would be a big step on that road. When you think about it, all they need is the glowing and they're most of the way there."

Elizabeth decided to let that one pass. "All right gentlemen, what now?"

Rodney answered first. "Well, obviously I need to get some more first-hand experience with this thing. I took it on a few test runs in the labs and -"

Sheppard's throat-clearing rose from behind the two scientists staring hopefully at her. "Yes, John?"

"I was actually thinking I should maybe hang on to it. For strategic purposes."

Rodney let out a sound best likened to a squawk. "What? What 'strategic purposes' could possibly require that you walk through walls?"

"Maybe the next time the Genii show up. Or the next time we get stuck on a hive ship? Or, hey, the next mission where you get kidnapped for your ability to produce brainy offspring?" Sheppard was lounging smugly.

"Okay, the first two? Pretty much hoping those were one-time-only events."

Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "And the last one?"

Rodney looked uncomfortable. "Well, that wasn't actually so bad. The food was decent, at least."

Elizabeth decided it was time to intervene. "Okay. Here's what we do. Rodney, you and Radek have a week to do some more research on this thing." McKay smiled triumphantly. Zelenka didn't. "After that, Colonel Sheppard gets custody."

She held up a hand to forestall Rodney's indignant protest. "You'll still have visitation rights. It will just live with John on a regular basis."

Neither McKay nor Sheppard looked particularly pleased, but they seemed to sense she wouldn't reconsider. Both of them slunk out of the office, more or less together. She looked up at Radek, who was staring after the others with something akin to dread in his expression. "I take it you disagree?"

He shook his head, still watching them. "No. I do not think there is any correct answer to this issue." He turned to look at her, a wry grin forming. "I am simply waiting to see the fallout. It should be most interesting."

She wondered whether the Czech language shared proverbs with Chinese.

Everything went smoothly enough until the handover.

Sheppard waited with admirable patience throughout the seventh day. He waited rather less patiently throughout the eighth. By the evening of the ninth, he'd had enough.

Rodney answered his door with his chin set and eyes glittering. This was never a good sign.

"Ah, Colonel. What can I do for you?" There was just a hint of something taunting in his voice.

"Cut the crap, McKay. I want the kooshball." He tried glaring menacingly for good measure, even though Rodney had never before been appropriately menaced.

Rodney dropped all efforts at concealment. Now he just looked very self-satisfied. "By all means, go ahead and take it."

John stepped warily past him into his quarters and eyed the room. "Where is it?"

The bastard was giving him that lopsided, eyes-half-closed expression of contentment. "That is the question, isn't it?"

"McKay..." He tried growling for effect, not really expecting to have any.

"My, my, my. I seem to have forgotten where I put it. It's getting late now, and I'll have to look for it tomorrow. Why don't you come back then."

Sheppard knew damn well McKay's day would last at least another five to six hours. Rather than push the issue, however, he fell back on the method that had unbalanced more superior officers than any other. He smiled widely. "Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure it'll turn up."

Rodney's look of unease as John walked away was a thing of beauty.

Rodney had full confidence in his own genius for three full days.

It was on the morning of the fourth that he crawled out of bed, made his way to the labs, and moved to make the first batch of coffee of the day. Given that he had the better part of an hour before anyone should   realistically bother him, he felt safe in breaking out his private stash. He'd had to bribe three Daedalus crew members and two SGC airmen to acquire the few pounds of Jamaican Blue he kept in stock. It wasn't until he'd removed the control panel behind which he'd been hiding the precious beans that he realized anything was wrong.

The matter destabilizer which had been residing there for the last few days - and which Rodney studiously refused to call 'the kooshball' - was gone.

So was the coffee.

Sheppard was a dead man.

By the time he caught up to him, Rodney was fuming. "I can't believe you!"

Sheppard, meanwhile, was far too amused. "This coming from the guy who's been playing keep-away for the last week?"

Rodney knew perfectly well those were not equal sins. "You can't take a man's caffeine and expect to get away with it. Hand over the coffee and I might not make your life a living hell. Remember: I know where you live."

Sheppard, cocky as ever, pulled the matter destabilizer out of his jacket pocket and tossed it lazily from hand to hand. "Huh. Funny thing is, I really don't remember where I put it. Why don't you come back later. Maybe I'll have a clue."

While Rodney flirted with an aneurysm, Sheppard waved and winked out of visibility.

Well, that settled it. The gauntlet had been thrown. This was war.

Sheppard was well aware he was playing with fire. Rodney, for all his quirks, really was a genius. He was also a vindictive little shit.

It was fun while it lasted, though.

He'd quickly realized the necessity of having a hiding place for the kooshball, not to mention the emancipated coffee. He couldn't hold the device at all times, and occasionally it wasn't practical to have it near him. He wasn't quite ready to take it on missions, for instance. The last thing they needed was one more thing they couldn't necessarily control, or for it to fall into someone else's hands.

And so, before they'd left to negotiate for trade with the Gefillins, Sheppard had carefully stashed his prize - along with the coveted beans - in the one place he felt most confident he knew better than Rodney.

He knew something was wrong the second he set foot in the armory. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his skin prickled with the sensation. He had a pretty good idea of what he'd find, anyway.

When he moved the artfully arranged crates and lifted the lid of the relevant trunk, it didn't come as all that much of a surprise to find both items gone. The explosive charge, however, did catch him off guard.

He stood very still for a moment, dripping and blinking slowly. It was then that he noticed the sign.

Duct taped to the inside of the trunk lid was a large note in McKay's handwriting. Even the letters seemed to mock him. It said, "Really, Colonel. You thought I wouldn't look for them with the big guns? Oh, and the kids on M7G-677 send their regards. Remember, it washes off. Eventually."

Sheppard ripped the note off with a curse and stalked toward his quarters. Along the way, he passed several marines and one very startled botanist. All were wise enough not to comment.

Parrish stared at the ceiling. "You know, this can't end well."

Beside him, Lorne chuckled. "Oh, I don't know. I think it's kind of entertaining. It's like watching a pair of kindergarteners."

Parrish looked at him incredulously. "Yes. Kindergarteners with munitions training and an understanding of nuclear fission, respectively."

Lorne remained unconcerned. "They'll be fine. I can't say I understand it, but Sheppard seems kind of attached to McKay. They'll have their fun for a while, and then they'll get over it."

"It's not them I'm worried about. Sheppard was blue. Do you really think he'll just let that slide? Nooo. He's going to do something to McKay, and McKay will do something in return, and before you know it -" Lorne cut him off at the lips.

"You worry too much."

Elizabeth sometimes thought fingerpaints and Play-Doh should have been part of the standard mission equipment when they packed for the Pegasus galaxy. She also suspected that somewhere on a little blue planet in the Milky Way, Jack O'Neill was laughing his ass off.

The head of Atlantis' military contingent was staring balefully at her from across her desk. The fact that he was a mottled shade of indigo didn't really surprise her as much as it should.

That the head of Atlantis' science department was standing next to him, looking all too pleased with himself, wasn't much of a shock either.

They opened their mouths at the same time, and she cut them both off. "I don't know what's going on, and quite frankly I don't want to. If you harm anyone in this city, I will have you quarantined to your rooms for the foreseeable future. That do-no-harm includes each other. Other than that, I don't want to hear about it and I don't want to see it. Work it out."

Their mouths snapped shut, and they looked distinctly nonplussed. Finally, they trudged out with tails appropriately between their legs.

She made sure they were far out of range of sight or sound before she curled over her ribs, laughing hard enough to hurt.

John hit the mat for the third time in as many minutes. If he stayed there a little longer each time, it was understandable. He was regrouping.

Teyla gave him the look from under her eyebrows that meant she was too polite to laugh. He rolled back to his feet with an unnecessary flourish, and the corner of her mouth turned up.

"You are preoccupied."

He twirled one stick to buy time. "Nah. Just having an off day."

"Perhaps it is your new coloration. It does not suit you." She circled lithely, only the subtle placement of her feet warning of her readiness.

He couldn't argue with that. The blue had faded enough that he just looked vaguely ill. "Take it up with McKay."

He feinted left, then attacked low with both weapons. She didn't bother following the first move, and simply leapt over the second.

Four times. His ribs hurt.

"I would, if I believed Rodney solely at fault." She offered him a hand, and he took it, trying to look wounded and innocent.

"C'mon. The kooshball is mine. I just... returned it to its rightful owner, after all. He's the one who's gone all master thief." He caught the sticks as she tossed them back. "Do you really think he should have it?" He pouted winningly.

"You are both far too valuable to the safety of the city to possess such an unknown device." She looked far too serene about that declaration.

He knew it was a mistake to ask. "What should we do with it, then?"

"I think Major Lorne should be given its keeping. He has the gene, and is of slightly less vital standing within the command structure. He is also directly responsible for city security. As such, he is the most ideal candidate to wield such a weapon and to bear its consequences."

She attacked while he was still trying to make his mouth work. Five times, now.

She wasn't finished, either. At least he was already on the mat. "I also do not think you are seeking the device."

He raised his head and squinted up at her. "Oh yeah? What am I after?"

"Rodney." She turned away to grab her towel, and he tried to get his face back to blank. "His attention, that is. You are unchallenged without it. Unfocused. It is why you spend as much time among the scientists as you do here."

"So I'm bored. It's a little harmless fun. He's doing it, too." Okay, so it wasn't the most mature answer he could have fielded.

And there was that look again. The laughing on the inside one. Then she raised her brow and tossed another towel his way.

He draped it over his face and let his head fall back against the floor.

Any good commander knew when to call in the reinforcements. With Teyla officially off the roster, his options were narrower.

Sheppard found Ronon cleaning his weapons in the dining hall. When all was said and done, the man had a natural love of attention and a twisted sense of humor. There was a three table radius of empty around him.

At first, Ronon just raised an eyebrow and kept cleaning.

Sheppard made his voice a bit more wheedling. "He did something to the controls to lock me out. I'm not sure how he managed it, and it still lets him in just fine." He went a little heavier on the conspiratorial air. "I just want to see whether or not it reacts to everybody else the same way, or if it's just me."

Ronon looked torn. Sheppard decided to press the advantage. "Come on, buddy. It'll be fun."

Ronon seemed to think about it, flipping the knife in one hand absently. Finally, he shrugged and put down the rag. He sheathed the knife. "I was bored anyway."

When Radek stumbled upon them near Rodney's door, Ronon looked very, very angry. It was one of the two expressions Zelenka had learned to recognize on him, the other being gleeful. He could never decide which was more frightening.

The current look was definitely fury, however. If nothing else, the hair gave it away. At the moment it was looking singed, and the smell in the air was one of burning.

Dex gave one final growl at Sheppard and stalked away, leaving the Colonel alone at the drawing board with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. Radek turned on his heel and started back the way he'd come, hoping -

"Zelenka! Just the man I need to see." So much for that.

He suspected he would regret it, but turned anyway. "Yes, Colonel?"

Sheppard's eyes gleamed evilly, and his smile showed far too many teeth. "So I heard you had a fight with Rodney the other day. Something about relay conduits?"

It was a fair attempt. He had a fight with Rodney approximately once every 4.6 days, by his count. The latest had been about power allocation to the farthest reaches of the city's underwater shields, but close enough.

Sheppard seemed to take his silence for assent. "How would you like to give a little bit back to him?"

Radek knew this was most likely a very, very bad idea. McKay was very smart, and very creative. McKay was not always so smart as he thought, however, and Radek couldn't pass up the chance to prove it.

"What did you have in mind, Colonel?"

When Rodney reached under his bed to retrieve the device, his hand hit paper. He pulled out the note, which read simply:

"Ha."

Lorne let out a sound that wouldn't have been dignified in a ten year old girl, let alone a man of his years and experience. The man sitting in his quarters, however, definitely wasn't the one he'd become accustomed to seeing there.

"Dr. McKay! What...Sir, what the hell are you doing here?" He had his handgun half out of its holster and was reluctant to release it. Not that he'd ever shoot McKay. On purpose.

McKay was in the shadows at the back of the room. "Colonel Sheppard has crossed the line this time. I know perfectly well only one person in this city has the skill level to have hacked the system I arranged without getting enough pure current through their shifty little body to make them think twice." Lorne thought he could hear knuckles cracking. "Zelenka's turned traitor."

"Yeah... Alright. How exactly does this involve me?" Lorne had a sneaking suspicion he already knew, but hoped he was wrong.

"It's time to fight dirty. I like the poetry of it. He recruits my second in command, I recruit his." McKay sounded far too rational to be sane.

Lorne squinted at him sideways. "That's nice. What's in it for me, outside of humiliation and the promise of immediate and painful disciplinary action?"

"Oh, not much. Just the sudden necessity of a trip to the mainland to study the plants there. Say, one member of the botany department and a single escort for a few days."

As McKay outlined his plan, complete with assurances of success and anonymity, Lorne thought, David's going to kill me. But how often did you get the equivalent of an all-expenses paid vacation in the Pegasus galaxy?

Sheppard hadn't expected to be training today. He should have been spending some down time in his room, progressing through War and Peace. Or possibly Tess of the D'Ubervilles. He'd decided to add some variety.

Instead, he'd spent the morning running drills with Lorne throughout the city. He couldn't fault his 2IC's dedication, but his timing needed work. Of course, Sheppard was well aware that was McKay's fault.

It was so obviously a setup that John almost felt bad for him. He'd tucked the kooshball into a pocket of his vest before leaving his quarters, fully expecting them to be thoroughly ransacked.

When his door opened to reveal an untouched room, he felt a prickle of unease. He reached for his pocket, lifting the velcro to find...

Nothing.

Well, shit.

Taped to the inside of his door was another note. It read, "Ha. And also, HA!"

Time to stop messing around.

Like all good predators, Sheppard knew his prey's habits. He waited until midnight had come and gone before creeping into McKay's lab. As he'd expected, the scientist was the only one present, head bent over his laptop and fingers moving swiftly. They froze when he registered John's approach, then started again more tentatively. His eyes stayed on the screen.

"What can I do for you, Colonel?" Rodney wasn't nearly accomplished enough to keep the nerves from his voice, but John gave him points for effort.

"Well, first of all, I'd like the thing back. Then I'd like to know how you got it in the first place. Then I'd love to know what you used to get my second in command in on it." Sheppard kept up the steady prowl forward.

"Huh-uh. All's fair in love and war, Sheppard. Don't even pretend you didn't get to Zelenka."

John shrugged a shoulder negligently. "Okay, we'll call that even. That still doesn't tell me how."

Rodney stopped typing entirely to invent something new and interesting to do a few feet farther away from Sheppard's advance. "Not all that difficult, really. Remember when you used the transporter on Level 3 in the southwest corridor?"

"Yeah..."

The faintest hint of smugness made its way across McKay's face. "I just programmed the system not to transport anything with the molecular makeup of the matter destabilizer. You went, it stayed."

Sheppard wasn't about to admit to being impressed. "Huh. Interesting. Now give it up."

"Oh, please. You don't even really need it. The transporters are a perfectly adequate means of... well, transportation."

Sheppard snorted. "That's like saying the subway is as good as a Porsche."

Rodney's chin went up. "Aha! See, you admit it. It's all about the status symbol."

Sheppard shook his head and squinted at him. "No, Rodney. It's all about the walking through walls." He put on his best flyboy grin. "The status symbol is just a perk."

Rodney stared at him for a second. Then he shook himself and focused back on whatever task he'd been busily creating for himself. "Yes, well, unless and until you can come up with another master plan, you'll just have to settle for the subway."

"I'm thinking I'll go the direct route instead." Sheppard eased around the worktable, movements all fluid and smooth.

By now, Rodney was looking at him out of the corner of his eye, realizing Sheppard was still coming. Finally, he couldn't ignore it any longer and looked directly at John. "What are you doing?"

John didn't answer immediately, just took another step into his personal space.

Rodney backed away from him, stuttering a little. John followed, herding him into a corner. He smirked. "Taking what's mine."

Rodney's back hit the wall. John placed a hand on either side of Rodney's head and leaned forward a little, upping the intimidation factor. Whatever good that would do him. He figured he had about a minute before McKay pulled himself together and unleashed the tongue legendary in two galaxies. He needed to use his window of opportunity wisely and frisk Rodney before the man's brain engaged.

In fact, just now Rodney was... Rodney was pressing up against the wall as far as he could go and looking far more nervous than he should. His breathing was fast and his eyes were wide and John thought maybe he'd missed something. He'd honestly thought he was one of the few things in the universe Rodney was completely incapable of fearing. He was just about to pull back when Rodney's shoulders went down and his chin rose. John realized the window had slammed closed just as Rodney's hands grabbed his jacket and pulled him forward the last inches between them. He had just enough time for a what the hell? before Rodney's lips were on his.

It was sudden and over and John was still blinking as Rodney pulled back and gave him a look that screamed victory. "Nice try, Colonel, but I left it in my sock drawer. Better luck next time."

He brushed John's arm aside and left the lab. John barely managed to catch himself before he hit the wall, and then rolled so that his back was against it to stand staring into the empty room and licking his lips.

Seriously. What the hell?

Rodney spent a good two days panicking. Given that he spent quite a lot of his time this way, no one seemed to notice.

He'd kissed John Sheppard. Really and truly gone out of his mind and done it. Now he was just waiting for the - in all probability painful and messy - backlash. Surprisingly, it didn't seem to be coming. Rather than hunting him down, Sheppard was quite obviously avoiding him. Rodney wasn't sure which was worse.

He was just beginning to think he'd pulled off the half-assed deflection better than he'd thought when their next mission was announced. When Elizabeth made a point of asking whether or not they were all up to it, and then further raising her brows in their direction,, he waited for Sheppard to lodge some form of protest. Instead, the Colonel gave a typically laconic affirmation and Rodney was left to stumble through one of his own.

He watched Sheppard as they suited up and gathered weaponry. He watched Sheppard as they strolled up to the gate and out the other side into rolling hills of sandy dirt and scrub brush. He watched Sheppard as the Colonel took point along the narrow path that would lead to the Ferimuns, a people the Athosians had been friendly with for generations. The only time his eyes actually left Sheppard was when the sand on either side of them sprang up and became men. Men with very many, very large weapons focused directly on the four of them.

Teyla, Ronon, and Sheppard closed ranks around him instinctively, and if he hadn't been busy dividing his efforts between gratitude and terror, he might have been a bit offended. As it was, he hadn't had time to clear the holster, and the apparent leader of the newcomers tsked when he tried to do it stealthily. The man was large and ugly, wearing the latest in homeless chic, and Rodney decided not to push it.

Teyla tried for reason. "I am Teyla Emmagen of the Athosians. My people and yours have long been friends. We mean you no harm, and come seeking only further prosperity for all." Rodney noticed she kept her weapon up and trained.

The leader chuckled darkly. "My people don't know you. My people know only hunger and need. Your people seem to know neither. I believe your people will prove most helpful to mine."

Sheppard snorted, eyes still sighting down his P-90. "Where are the cops when you need 'em?"

Rodney's eyes flickered over the men surrounding them. "This galaxy really needs a highway patrol. Preferably with very large guns and strange headgear."

He caught the dangerous smile on Sheppard's face out of the corner of his eye. "How about a citizen's arrest?"

It was all the warning he got before the world went to hell. It was enough to let him pull his own gun and begin firing on anything that wasn't one of his teammates. Some part of him was rather proud of that.

They'd been outnumbered at least four to one at the start; by the end, the odds were better, but not good enough. Their opponents seemed to have stun technology, and only needed to catch each of them with a lucky shot. Teyla and Ronon were each quickly surrounded by their own personal guard. Rodney couldn't see much of either of them through the legs.

Beside him, enclosed by a circle of bodies, Sheppard groaned and made a valiant attempt to sit up. Rodney stayed on his back, content with letting his head do all the movement. Around them, their own weapons were being passed about for inspection.

The leader towered over them. In one hand, he carried one of their handguns. Rodney hoped fervently he'd shoot himself. Instead, he pointed it at the ground and pulled the trigger, watched the puff of dirt that rose, and then looked at the gun appraisingly. Just their luck they'd get a savant.

The leader put the other hand to his upper arm and drew back blood, then raised his eyebrows and nodded appreciatively. "Not bad. A fairly competent assault, really. Not good enough, but I commend you for trying. Now, let's get down to business."

He raised the injured arm and calmly shot Sheppard.

Rodney could distantly hear Ronon bellowing and Teyla protesting sharply. There were sounds of a struggle in their direction. Somewhere much closer, someone was cursing loud and long. He was too busy trying to hold the blood in Sheppard to think too hard about any of these things. The sound of another gunshot brought everything to a standstill again, although his hands stayed clamped to the hole in Sheppard's thigh.

"Now that I've got your attention, let's set some terms." The man lowered the gun from its position above his head. "One of you will go back to your people and gather what I ask for. Don't worry, it will be a simple enough list. The rest of you will stay with me and mine until the other returns. You will make three trips. For each successful run, you will get one of your people back. If you do not come back, I kill them. If you do not bring the supplies, I kill them. If you bring anyone else, I kill them. Understood?"

His voice remained oddly pleasant throughout, and Rodney wanted very much to hurt him. "Fine. We'll drag Sheppard to the gate with the list, he can tell them where to send it, and you let the rest of us go when it gets here." Sheppard drew breath to protest and Rodney closed his hands tighter on the wound to prevent stupidity.

It was a wasted effort. The leader laughed. "Oh, no. That would defeat the point of putting a hole in him to start with. He'll be the last to leave. No, I think you'll go."

Rodney was nothing if not quick on his feet, metaphorically speaking. "Fine, then. Just let me wrap the injury and I'll scamper off."

The leader shrugged and waved a hand to hurry him along. While Rodney pulled out the field dressings, he could feel Sheppard's eyes on his face. He didn't look up.

Sheppard's voice caught him by surprise. "Just what is it you're looking for? We'd probably be willing to establish trade with you, maybe even overlook all this."

Rodney wasn't sure how much of that was a bluff - he, for one, had no intention of giving these people anything - but the leader chuckled. "Do we seem as though we have goods to spare? The strong rarely wish to share with the rest."

Sheppard's tone had a bit more of an edge. "We share a lot better when we aren't getting shot."

Rodney leaned a little farther over him.

Tall and Ugly grinned. "You will forgive my skepticism." He held up the gun. "We will want more of these. Will you share these willingly as well?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Sheppard's tone was far too flippant, and Rodney flicked a look at his face. He saw an understanding there that he didn't like. Elizabeth couldn't afford to be arms dealer to the galaxy.

He could hear Ronon and Teyla being herded closer, and glanced up. Teyla's expression of worry and anger he expected; Ronon's look of barely controlled rage made him falter, mainly because it was aimed directly at Rodney himself.

He'd managed to pull his eyes back down to his hands when the snarl came. "Go ahead. Run away. Go hide somewhere safe. We'll deal with it."

Rodney froze. Sheppard's voice was slower than it should have been on the rebuke. "Ronon."

Rodney forced himself not to look up, and made his tone as light as possible. "Well, be that as it may, I'll need help to wrap this. Why don't you stop grumbling and get down here. He's not exactly light."

The muttering that 'he' was right there was comforting.

The leader gestured Ronon over with apparent amusement. Rodney kept his eyes on his task, and they had the bandages in place around the entry wound quickly. There was no exit. They were just propping Sheppard against Ronon's arm when Rodney felt a hard edge against his fingers behind Sheppard's back. His head snapped up, and he saw something hiding in Ronon's expression beyond the fury. He inhaled quickly and dragged his eyes away, palming the knife pressed into his hand.

Sheppard whispered urgently at him, too pale and face drawn. "Get out of here. Bring back everything they want, and throw in a little extra. Just to show our good will."

Rodney nodded. Message received.

He stood to go, and the ranks of guards closed around his team. A few went with him to the gate, where he dialed the first uninhabited planet's address he could remember. He walked through the wormhole without looking back.

By the time he'd redialed and sent his code through, the plan was already set in his mind. He came out the other side calling orders and running for his quarters.

John had been in worse situations. He wasn't sure whether that knowledge was encouraging or depressing, but it was the truth.

Their current captors were ruthless and fairly intelligent, but they had nothing on the Wraith. Although, when he thought about it, that would be some impressive irony. Surviving the scourge of the galaxy, only to be knocked off by a bunch of glorified highwaymen. As a rule, John liked irony. Just not when it was pointed at him.

At the moment, he was propped against a wall in their cell in what was obviously the robbers' camp. It looked suspiciously like a minimally redecorated ruin, complete with drafty stone architecture and the odd gaping hole. Their particular room had no door, and guards were stationed on either side of the entryway. The people who occasionally passed by seemed gaunt and worn, and John might have felt some sympathy toward them if he weren't bleeding.

Ronon prowled back and forth in what space they had, and Sheppard wondered if he should warn their guards not to feed the lions. He decided it would be more fun to leave it a surprise.

Teyla crouched beside John and did what little she could to keep him comfortable. It wasn't much more than a hand in his own and a scrap of cloth across his brow, but he appreciated the effort.

By his count, they'd been there for just over three hours when the ugly son of a bitch in charge came in, flanked by a few others. Ronon made a low sound and Sheppard called his name warningly.

"It seems you are men of your word. The first shipment has arrived. No weapons, but we will let that go for now. Time for one of you to go home." He looked among them almost benevolently.

Teyla tried. "Colonel Sheppard -"

"Will be staying for the duration. But I'm not a man lacking all compassion. I believe I will send you home first, little one." John tightened his hand on Teyla's, anticipating her reaction to that assessment. To his left, Ronon just smirked.

"Go with it," John whispered. "We'll be right behind you."

She looked doubtful, but nodded and stood. Her eyes locked on Ronon's for a long moment as she followed their jailers from the room.

Once the quiet had settled back in, John squinted up at the other man. "So, you two. I've been meaning to ask about that..."

Ronon was on a slow burn. He'd had no intention of leaving Sheppard behind. Had planned, in fact, on staying until the third shipment came through and carrying Sheppard out himself. The note that their captors brought when they came for him after the second group of supplies arrived forced him to reconsider.

It was in McKay's handwriting, according to Sheppard. Just two words. "Trust me."

The gun the leader pointed at Sheppard's head helped make up his mind. Ronon didn't know how many bullets were left in it, or whether the bandits had learned to reload, and he couldn't afford to test them. Instead, he'd looked long and hard at Sheppard, and made dire promises inside his own head as he stalked from the compound. Killing a man was easy. Saving one wasn't.

McKay was waiting for him by the gate, hands wringing anxiously. As they dialed an address that definitely wasn't Atlantis', Ronon spoke out of the side of his mouth. "You'd better be right. They'll kill him."

Just as they entered the wormhole, he heard, "I know."

On a planet he didn't bother to identify, Rodney dialed Atlantis' coordinates. "Thanks for the knife, by the way."

Ronon shrugged. "Shouldn't be unarmed. Isn't safe."

When they reached the Atlantis gateroom, Ronon wasn't surprised to find Lorne's team and Teyla waiting with a jumper.

John was well aware things weren't looking good. He was shot and bleeding on an alien world, with only the nasty bastards who'd shot him in the first place for company. Elizabeth couldn't play by the rules, and any attempts to storm the castle were going to be messy. His team had been taken away one at a time, and the only reassurance he had that they'd made it home safe came from the aforementioned nasty bastards. All in all, he'd had better days.

To top it all off, he was pretty sure infection was setting in nicely. The room felt warmer than he remembered it being, except when the chills stole over him. Yep, much better days.

And so when Rodney appeared suddenly in front of him where previously there had been no Rodney, John thought he could be forgiven for not instantly catching on.

As it was, Rodney had John's arm slung over his shoulders and was levering him to a standing position by the time John managed, "What took you so long?"

If the tone was a little less flippant than he'd aimed for, Rodney didn't call him on it. He grunted. "Traffic."

He held out the kooshball in the hand not locked around John's waist. John looked at it suspiciously. "Not that I'm complaining, but is this going to work?"

He felt Rodney's shrug under his arm. "No idea. Just, just try to think outside, okay?"

What John actually thought was, Oh shit.

After that, he wasn't sure it could be classified as thinking. The hazy, disconnected feeling he'd come to associate with being destabilized was there, but it was accompanied by an entirely new sensation. It was like being very, very drunk, when mind and body weren't parts of the same whole. It was like being pulled apart.

He decided, rare as the event was, Rodney had been wrong. John didn't need to think anything. John needed to stop thinking entirely and just let himself go. Once he did, the tearing sensation fell away and it was only a matter of moments before they were rematerializing in the middle of an empty gully just a few hills over from the compound.

He was depending on Rodney to hold him up, which turned out to be a mistake since no one was holding Rodney up. John hit the ground hard enough to jar his leg badly. The last thing he saw before blacking out was Ronon and Teyla stepping from thin air. People really needed to stop doing that to him.

The first time John came to, it was in the midst of the typical pre-surgical chaos of the infirmary. He could hear Carson giving instructions somewhere above him. John's full range of motion seemed to be limited to opening or closing his eyes, and it occurred to him that he was most likely doped to the gills. For a moment, the torso blocking his vision shifted to the right, and John saw Rodney sitting in a chair across the room. He was rolling something in his hands, end over end, and his eyes were on John. When John's eyes closed, the white of Rodney's infirmary scrubs stayed imprinted on them.

When he opened them again, the infirmary was much quieter. Carson was bending over him, checking the readouts on various pieces of equipment. He reached to adjust John's oxygen and noticed his patient's attention. His voice was low and soft. "Well now. It's good to see you back in the land of the living."

John opened his mouth to speak, but Beckett cut him off with the ease of long practice. "Before you go making yourself hoarse, let's get you a drink and I'll fill you in." He spooned a few ice chips into John's mouth. "You're going to be just fine. You'll make a clean recovery, so long as you do as you're told and stay off that leg for a bit."

By then, John was ready to contribute, albeit scratchily. "Rodney?"

"Is going to be fine as well." Seeing that that wouldn't be sufficient to end the questions, Carson sighed. "He's got a dose of infection in him. To be expected, really, given that the two of you seem to have merged for a time there. As nearly as we can figure it, that gadget couldn't decide which of you to attribute the infectious bacteria to, and it seems to have left a little for you both. I've got Rodney on some antibiotics, and his fever is very well managed."

He patted John's shoulder. "Now, it's the dead of night and I'll thank you to get some rest so the rest of us can do the same."

He smiled gently, and John relaxed. He was asleep again almost before his eyes closed.

When he left the infirmary a week later and hobbled back to his room, John found the destabilizer on his pillow. Under it was a note in a familiar script.

"Until you can learn to dodge better, you should at least be bulletproof.

                                                         - R

P.S. - I'll expect you to save my ass next. It's your turn."

John smiled to himself as he sat on the edge of the bed and rolled the device through his fingers.

He was after a different kind of game this time, but the same rules applied.

It was after midnight, and the labs were dark save for the glow of display lights and laptops. Rodney was running some type of simulation on one of the larger screens, a vision of one of the city's turrets crumbling over and over. He was mumbling intently under his breath, making occasional notations on the electronic tablet in the crook of his arm. His back was to the doorway, and John quietly took a seat at the lab table behind him.

Rodney turned, eyes still on his notes, and reached absently for a cup of what John assumed was coffee. John nudged it forward into his hand. Rodney's eyes snapped up and he froze, blinking. "Oh."

"Hi."

"Yes... you... Should you be, you know, gallivanting?"

John grinned. "Nah. I'm cleared for moseying, though. Maybe even a little sidling, if I'm feeling adventurous."

The corner of Rodney's mouth quirked up. "Don't strain yourself." He took a sip from the cup, grimacing at the taste. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Same thing I was the last time." John uncoiled from his seat. Rodney looked confused, but he wasn't backing away this time.

"But, you're not looking for anything."

"I wouldn't say that."

"You have the destabilizer."

"I know."

"But it's... there's no reason to...but -"

"Rodney?"

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

"I can work with that." John was pretty sure Rodney met him halfway on that last step. He was absolutely certain the hands fisted in his jacket were McKay's.

There was no doubt in his mind that the lips on his were.

His last coherent thought was, Wow, that really was bad coffee, before he ceased to care.

His hands slipped inside Rodney's jacket, calluses dragging slightly on the finer weave of the shirt beneath. Rodney hummed low in his throat and slid a hand over the back of John's neck. His thumb stroked a light pattern in the hollow behind John's ear. His other hand pushed the edge of John's shirt up, fingertips ghosting over the inch of skin uncovered. They walked around to John's back, palm splaying out low in the center, warm and broad.

Rodney pulled him in and John went easily, chest against Rodney's and legs meshing. John's left hand fisted the shirt in the middle of Rodney's back, and the fingers of his right brushed the skin just under the button of Rodney's pants. Rodney was breathing fast and warm on his lips, and John couldn't have stopped the slow grind into the hips against his own if he'd tried.

Which was when his knee bumped the table. He didn't catch the hiss in time. Rodney pulled back just enough to search his face, then rested his forehead on John's and closed his eyes. "I think this might be a little above the moseying."

John sighed. "Damnit."

Rodney's laugh was low, and it sent a charge skittering down John's spine. "Same bat time, same bat channel?"

John pulled back and nodded reluctantly. Then he changed his mind. "No, wait. Raindate? My room, say, a week?"

Rodney looked... really good, actually. Flushed and a little flustered. "That's... yeah. That's good. Where there are horizontal surfaces, even. Not that I'm... oh, hell. Of course I am."

John couldn't help it. He laughed, and kissed him again, lingeringly. His hands stroked down Rodney's sides lightly, and Rodney groaned as he pulled away. "'Night, Rodney."

This time it was John who walked out. Whistling.

Rodney was unaccountably nervous. Well, alright, so that was strictly untrue. Rodney knew exactly why he was nervous, he just had no intention of acknowledging the reason.

John Sheppard had kissed him. That in itself was a very good thing and no cause for anxiety at all. There was no thinking involved, and therefore no overthinking. John Sheppard had also made a date with him, however, which was considerably more of a source of worry.

Rodney had changed shirts three times before realizing that he couldn't afford to look like he was on a date. It was all well and good for Sheppard, who carried off basic black like it was made for him, but Rodney wanted all the help he could get. He went with the grey shirt that set off his eyes and was just pulling it over his head when Zelenka's voice came over his headset.

Five hours later he knocked on Sheppard's door, sweaty, smudged, and tired. Sheppard answered looking amused and wearing black, and Rodney swallowed the apology on his tongue. Maybe not so tired after all.

"There was a thing."

Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. I guessed."

He grabbed a fistful of Rodney's shirt and pulled him into the room, smiling. Rodney let himself be towed as far as the bathroom before his brain engaged. "What are we doing?"

Sheppard released the center of his shirt to grab the hem, pulling it over Rodney's head. Rodney raised his arms obligingly. "You are going to get clean. We are going to get dirty."

For a second, Rodney just blinked. Then he nearly laughed himself sick. He was doubled over, hands on his knees, when he finally managed to squeeze a few words out. "Does that actually work somewhere?" He straightened up and wiped at his eyes, still chuckling periodically. "I mean, really, are there honestly people who fall for a line like that?"

He had just enough time to register the glint in Sheppard's eye before he was shoved under the shower. The very cold shower. He sputtered for a moment before remembering that the damned things were thought controlled and applying himself accordingly. As the temperature rose, he was further distracted by Sheppard shucking off his clothes and joining him. When Sheppard reached for the soap and began removing the smudges on Rodney, he thought he might even forget to seek retribution.

Apparently, John liked his showers a bit warmer than Rodney did. By the time John had him out of his pants, Rodney had given up on trying to regulate the water temperature by flat-out willpower. He certainly wasn't going to ask. It was time to use his brain more cunningly. He backed John against the nearest wall and kissed him as soundly as he knew how. He liked this plan better already.

A full two minutes later, John mumbled against his mouth, "This is all a ploy to get control of the water, isn't it?"

By that point, Rodney had forgotten. "Of course. Do you mind?"

John's hands wandered over his back. "Nope. By all means."

Rodney stroked a hand over his hip in reward.

It was slow and sweet, and somewhere in the back of his mind Rodney was incredibly thankful for Ancient waterheating technology. Finally, John mouthed his collarbone and twisted on the end of a stroke. That same part of Rodney's mind marveled at their grasp of acoustics as he thrust hard into John's hand and came. He locked his knees and lipped John's ear mindlessly for a moment as his breathing settled.

He held John carefully back against the wall and trailed his way down wet skin until he was kneeling. He kept his eyes on John's as he licked the spot where hip joined thigh and took him in his mouth. Right up until John's head thunked softly on the shower wall and his thighs started to shake. It brought Rodney back to considerations of injuries and recovery, and he picked up the pace a bit. He slipped one hand between John's legs and flicked his tongue, and John went rigid as he came.

Rodney stood up slowly, leaning against John against the wall, both of them panting. After a minute, John laughed softly in his ear. "You know, I'm not sure how I'm going to get out of here."

Rodney was actually rather comfortable where he was, but he had to acknowledge he couldn't keep them vertical forever. "Lucky for you, I'm a physicist. Mechanics and all that."

John laughed again. "And you say I have bad lines."

Dr. Weir rarely came to the labs. When she did, it was generally because they were in crisis. If asked, Radek would say that was why his heart accelerated slightly at her presence. It had nothing to do with the fact that the labs were otherwise empty, or the slender arch of her neck.

"Radek. I'm glad I caught you on your own. I have a question." She smiled, mouth closed and soft.

"Ah, yes, of course. How may I be of assistance?" His hands firmly did not fidget with the pen on his workstation.

"It's about the destabilizer. More accurately, it's about the possession thereof." She tilted her head meaningfully, bringing him into her confidence.

He cleared his throat. "Yes. Ahem. Well, I do believe it is being shared, as it were."

She looked dubious. "And that's working?"

He chuckled. "All previous evidence aside, it seems they have reached an understanding."

He carefully did not mention just how deep that understanding might reach. Rodney had been looking at the Colonel for some time now. Lately, the Colonel had been looking back.

The quirk of her lips made him wonder how much she already knew. "About time. I'm not sure how much more of that we could have survived."

Radek couldn't help snorting. "Do you think we are safer now that they have joined forces?"

She shrugged, grinning. "Maybe not. But at least it's never dull."

He responded to her goodnight softly, and thought interesting thoughts himself.

Things were quiet for a while.

They were off of mission rotation until John's leg healed completely, and everyone took the given downtime to catch up on whatever needed doing. Teyla went to the mainland to visit her people. Proving subtlety was overrated, Ronon tagged along.

John used food as an excuse whenever possible. He wasn't sure about the symbolism of dinner as a romantic gesture, but the practicality was working. Most days, he waited in the cafeteria for Rodney to arrive, hauling his own laptop along as a prop. Occasionally, Lorne would pass through. The carefully schooled features and occasional glint in his eyes said he wasn't fooled. The fact that he ate with Parrish nine meals out of ten said he didn't object.

On the days Rodney came to him, John struck up a conversation while they ate and let it carry them to one of their rooms. On the days Rodney didn't appear, John grabbed whatever parts of dinner were easily portable and hunted him down. The end result was always the same, in so far as it involved nudity and pleasant lethargy.

There was really only one problem with it all. As near as John could understand it, they were good at being friends, and good at having sex, and damn good at being friends having sex. He just wasn't all that clear on how to make them anything else, and the crazy thing was, he wanted to. John was still coming up with creative ways to test the waters without opening his mouth.

During the day, Rodney roamed throughout the city, tinkering with systems and mechanisms to his heart's content and Zelenka's consternation. John himself took up wandering the city's outer reaches, getting reacquainted with her halls and caverns. Often, he brought the destabilizer along, mostly as a good luck charm. If nothing else, the walks were good for building strength. It didn't hurt that Atlantis was beautiful in her own right.

He was in one of the towers on the western end of the city when he felt the rumble. He was just reaching to cue his mic when Elizabeth's voice came into his ear, radiating tension. "John, we need you in the control tower."

Without really planning it, the destabilizer was in his hand and he was moving through the city before her words fully registered. She sucked in a breath quickly when he appeared next to her, but otherwise seemed unaffected. The strange thread of sympathy in her face sent ice down his spine.

He didn't need to ask. She turned to Zelenka, who was shouting instructions into his headset and eyeing a schematic of the city. He broke off, putting his hand over the microphone to speak to them. "Rodney was approximately here," he gestured at the screen, "when he reported the malfunction. We believe the underwater shielding in this section," another gesture, "failed briefly. Rodney has managed to fix it, effectively generating a secondary shield around this entire area, but there was some sinking before he could do so." He ran a hand through his hair, looking rattled.

"Radek." Elizabeth's voice held an edge.

"Oh, yes. The good news is, this is the outermost tip of this branch of the city, and a relatively small area at that. The result is that the rest seems to be stable, but what is inside the second shield is structurally unsound. Additionally, the second shield is draining power from the Z.P.M. at rates it cannot sustain." His eyes flickered over the numbers scrolling rapidly by at the side of the screen.

John's voice came out more ragged than he intended. "And Rodney?"

Zelenka sighed. "Is still within the shielded zone, yes."

His eyes stayed too firmly on the readings, and John knew there was more. "He was in contact with us briefly even after the shield went up. Then the structure shifted again, and we have not heard from him since."

John felt something in his chest go hard and cold. "Where exactly was he?"

Zelenka looked at him appraisingly and then nodded. He pointed to a spot on the screen. "Approximately here. You realize you will have very little time? We will need to cut power to the shield, and once this is done the sector will begin sinking again. You will have maybe minutes."

John nodded and closed his fist tighter around the destabilizer. "Be ready to drop the shield on my mark."

Zelenka nodded back. "Godspeed."

John was gone before the word finished.

He stopped when he hit the new shield. Literally. It was roughly equivalent to running headfirst into a brick wall, and he thought he'd need to tell Rodney about the sensation later.

John turned off the destabilizer and took a single deep breath. "Do it."

In front of him, the ground began to shake. He thought the destabilizer back on and went forward.

He found Rodney four levels down, lying still, pinned under a chunk of ceiling and next to an open control panel. By then, the whole place seemed to be shaking itself to pieces, and John didn't have time to do more than rematerialize, haul Rodney out from under the rubble and destabilize them both.

He could see vague impressions of the world crumbling around where they should have been. Like being underwater, there was no direction that he could find in the chaos. He was forced to wait until it all seemed to calm before taking them forward.

There was no feeling of being torn apart this time. It wasn't until John had them both solid again on the floor of the infirmary that it registered. Rodney was limp against him, covered in dust and streaked with blood. John was yelling Carson's name even as Rodney was being pulled from him.

He watched them lay Rodney on a bed and then the bodies between them became too thick to see any more. John put his head in his hands and ignored the hand at his elbow trying to help him up and the voice in his ear trying to reassure him.

The final tally was a concussion one step away from a skull fracture, four broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and two fingers on his right hand with hairline breaks. John already knew it would be the fingers that bothered Rodney most.

He waited for the bitching to start. Mainly because it would mean Rodney really was conscious and mending, but a little because it promised entertainment. God knew the infirmary was like a tomb at this time of night... and John was definitely not going to go there. Not with Rodney's hand next to his on the bed, their fingertips just barely touching end to end.

Carson walked quietly up, eying John sideways as he checked Rodney's readings. "I hear you've been fully vetted. Not a mark on you that wasn't there before."

John nodded, waiting for the punch line that Beckett's tone promised. It wasn't long in coming. "No thanks to using your brain, I might add." Carson's eyes stayed on Rodney. "You're damned lucky to be in one piece, lad. You both are. That was foolish and ill-advised and I thank you."

John's rising defensiveness stalled.

Carson smiled wryly and flicked his eyes John's way. "He's aggravating as a titmouse with a temper, but he's my friend."

John wasn't quite sure how to handle that. "Mine, too."

The look Beckett gave him was gently disbelieving, and vaguely amused. "Aye."

John considered that his cover might be blown.

Never one to run from conflict, he straightened in the chair, head up and eyes serious. His fingers edged just enough forward to touch Rodney's at the tips. Carson just shook his head and chuffed out a quiet laugh. He squeezed John's shoulder on his way past.

"There's an empty bed to the left there. Use it when you're tired. Don't make more work for me by falling on your head."

John was coming to like surprises.

They discovered the destabilizer was a casualty by accident. Rodney had been going ever more stir-crazy in the infirmary, and John had been willing to throw himself on the altar of boredom. He'd gotten Zelenka to help him haul some equipment down to Rodney, and figured they could spend a few hours playing with the kooshball in the name of science.

He closed his fingers around its spiny form and thought unstable thoughts. Nothing happened. He opened his hand, looked at the device, and tried again. Still nothing.

A solid hour of attempts went rapidly nowhere, even when Radek joined them to toss out ideas. Finally, they were forced to conclude that it must have been drained of power by John's rescue mission. A great deal of matter had passed through their destabilized bodies, and, as Radek put it, "Shielding each molecule from separation under such kinetic stress must have been too much. Kaput. It is not Energizer."

Privately, John thought it was a fair enough trade. But when he said so, Rodney looked so crestfallen that John wished he'd kept his mouth shut after all.

It was another six days before Rodney was allowed to go to his own room. John walked beside him, slowing his pace to an amble to keep them together. Rodney thought that it was very unfair that he should be just beginning to heal even as Sheppard finished.

The nearer they got to Rodney's door, the more fidgeting Sheppard did, and it was making Rodney twitchy in turn. John's right hand bounced something in his pocket, and his left tapped a tattoo on his leg whenever it wasn't hovering just next to Rodney's arm. Rodney cut one final, furrow-browed look in his direction before stepping into his quarters. Sheppard followed, and the door closed behind him.

Carson had insisted on changing the room's layout before releasing Rodney. At the time, Rodney had balked, irritated on general principle. Now, though, he was beginning to see the wisdom of having the head of his bed against a wall rather than a window. Chairs were not going to be amusing with his ribs for a while yet.

Rodney sat on the bed with a sigh of relief and watched John trace a finger over the edge of a cabinet. John was artfully avoiding eye contact. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and sat the destabilizer on the set of drawers. Finally, he spoke. "I, uh, thought you should have this."

Rodney was willing to blame exhaustion and drugs, but he wasn't following. "That's nice. I'm pretty sure it's too small to be a decent paperweight, though."

"No, I just... I wanted... Goddamnit." He took a breath and let it out on a huff. His eyes met Rodney's. "Jesus, McKay. I'm trying to make a gesture, here. I don't know if you've noticed, but the chocolate supply is running a little low and nobody'll deliver flowers this far out. Just shut up and go with it."

Rodney felt flattened. Like he'd stumbled onto the Autobahn and into the path of everything with four wheels he could find. Possibly a moped or two in the bargain. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to find his brain linking a drive-by Shepparding with very fast cars. "Oh. Huh."

"Yeah." The tone was agitated.

"Well, I was hoping, what with the lifesaving and the showering and the sex and all, but... huh."

Sheppard's mouth quirked up at one corner. This time his voice was quiet. "Yeah."

They stayed that way for a full minute, a few feet of space between them, just grinning at one another. Rodney broke the moment as best he could. "So, you want to watch a movie or something? I'm not exactly up to anything more adventurous yet."

Sheppard looked to the side, still smiling, and nodded. "Sure."

"Also, I'm pretty sure we've been doing this whole thing out of order." John's eyebrows rose as he carried Rodney's laptop over. "Not that I'm complaining. But we totally skipped the necking stage."

John laughed. "I kind of liked the naked stage, myself."

Rodney held up his hands, at least as far as they'd go with his current rib configuration. "Oh, don't get me wrong. Me, too. But there are certain conventions to consider, here."

"So, you're saying we should go back and hit them retroactively?" John pouted thoughtfully. "Yeah, okay. It could work." He held up a few minidisks. "What do you want to see?"

Rodney let just enough lasciviousness creep into his expression to make it interesting before he caved to the weariness. "Honestly, anything works. I'll probably be out by the time the opening credits roll."

"You sly dog, you." John sorted through the disks, making a surprised noise as he came across one in particular. "I can't believe you own this."

Rodney craned his head to see from his spot propped against the wall. "What? It's a classic. Plus, he's ruggedly handsome. Almost rakish."

John just shook his head and put the disk in. He sat next to Rodney, shoulders touching, and they settled in to watch Harrison Ford run from large, rolling objects.

Hours later, John's eyes went to the destabilizer across the room, glinting a bit in the evening light. It looked hard and lonely from this distance, like the ground when he flew a little too high. Next to him, Rodney was sleeping, just as he had been since long before Harrison brought a gun to a knife fight. He had an arm stretched across John, hand curled over his hip. He was warm and solid and snoring lightly.

It was a damn good trade. John laid a hand on the back of his neck, just because he could.

~end~

More Author's Notes:

The pairings in here are as follows: implicitly naked Parrish/Lorne, implicitly attached Ronon/Teyla, and implicitly shy Weir/Zelenka.

Incidentally, one more acknowledgement is due. Parrish's first name is stolen entirely from casspeach, with permission.