Work Text:
1.
John is lying in a crumpled heap just out of reach of Rodney's hands, no matter how hard he strains and stretches against the unbending bars that separate them.
Rodney's eyes are glued almost unblinkingly to John's chest, where he can just make out the rise and fall of John's breathing in the dim light. The light isn't dim enough to hide the alarming pool of blood by John's side.
"John?" Teyla calls from somewhere else in the jail. "Rodney? Ronon? Are you all right?"
"Yeah," Ronon grunts. "You?"
"I have a headache and a bit of a lump where they hit me, but I am otherwise fine," Teyla replies. Then she calls again, "John? Rodney?"
"He's unconscious," Rodney stammers, turning his head slightly to call over his shoulder but never taking his eyes off the rise and fall of John's chest. "There's a lot of blood. I can't reach him."
"The others will be here soon," Teyla says soothingly. "Are—"
"You can't possibly know that," Rodney snaps. "One day they won't make it in time. What if that's today?"
"Rodney, you must remain calm," Teyla says, still maddeningly serene. "Panicking will not help our situation. Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine," Rodney replies irritably. "I'm not the one who's unconscious beside a pool of blood."
Although he does have an excruciating headache. He touches a hand tentatively to his forehead and his fingers come away sticky with blood. Oh, he thinks numbly.
"R'dney?" John asks. Or, more accurately, John groans and Rodney is fairly sure he hears his name in there, but either way John is awake.
"John!"
"Ev'ryb'dy here?" John mumbles.
"Yes," Rodney answers quickly, "but they've put us in separate cells. We're scratched up a bit but you need to lie still!" The last bit comes out in an angry squeak as John tries to sit up.
John yelps in pain, but manages to scoot over a couple inches. Rodney is torn between the desire to kill him for moving when he's bleeding to death and the need to touch him because he's close enough now. He settles for spluttering incoherently while running his fingers through John's hair, avoiding the patch on the left that's sticky with blood.
"You okay?" John asks blearily.
"I'm not the one bleeding to death," Rodney snaps.
"You've got blood," John says, twitching his fingers vaguely. "On your face."
"Yes, well, they knocked us all out and I'm sure we'll all have shiny matching concussions and I've lost more of my irreplaceable brain cells. But they also appear to have taken a knife to your stomach and I really don't need to see your intestines spilling out so if you could just lie still like a normal seriously injured person I would greatly appreciate it."
Rodney pauses, still staring at the red stains on the floor around John, and then strips off his t-shirt.
"Aw, Rodney," John says, waggling his eyebrows weakly. "I don't really think this is the time for that."
Rodney gapes at him for several moments before spluttering angrily, "Shut up, you moron. You're bleeding to death. Put that over your stomach and try to put a bit of pressure on it. I know it's awkward to do it yourself, but I can't reach and if you try to move again I'll kill you myself."
John silently takes the t-shirt and presses it to his stomach, wincing.
"Okay," Rodney says. "Now. Tell me about your favorite airplane."
"What?" John asks, turning his head slightly to look up at Rodney.
"Your favorite airplane," Rodney repeats. Then he adds, "Or helicopter. Or both. Or every flying thing you've ever flown. Just keep talking until the rescue team gets here."
John doesn't say anything for a moment. Then, "T-37 Tweet. First plane I flew. Godawful noisy. Blue sky that day. No clouds. Just—" His breathing is ragged and his face twists in pain. "I can't do this," he chokes out.
"Okay," Rodney says quickly. "Tell me about a different plane. Or football. Give me the play-by-play of that stupid Hail Mary video we've watched a thousand times. Just keep talking."
"I don't feel so great, Rodney," John whispers, closing his eyes.
"No! Sheppard, stay with me!" Rodney begs frantically. "Keep talking. John!"
But John doesn't stir.
Rodney slumps against the bars, running a hand lightly over John's fevered forehead, the blood on his fingers mixing with the blood on John's skin. He's vaguely aware of Teyla's voice, but he's not listening to the words. There's so much blood, still leaking from John's body. Rodney leans his head against the cool metal bars, closing his eyes against nausea and dizziness, and the distant sound of weapons fire is red red red.
2.
"Major, think about where we are in the solar system."
Earth, John thinks. Then, to be quite clear, he adds, Between Venus and Mars.
There are a few gasps and then everyone starts talking at once. John looks up and sees a blue starmap of the entire Milky Way Galaxy hovering over his head, like his own personal planetarium, with Earth a small glowing red dot right above his eyes.
"Did I do that?" he asks uncertainly.
But no one answers. Everyone is talking over and around him. He's just another experiment for these scientists. He might be annoyed by that except this is so cool. So he stares up at the map of the stars and finds each of the planets. As he names each planet in his mind, its corresponding dot in the starmap lights up red. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Pluto is still a planet, even though arbitrary powers are arguing that it is merely a dwarf planet or a really big comet. John thinks he knows how it feels. If planets could feel, of course.
Next, he starts naming all the stars he can remember, watching them each light up red in turn. Polaris, Sirius, the Pleiades, Alnitak, Rigel, Markab...
"What's your name again?"
John sits up, startled, and the starmap vanishes. He feels a vague emptiness when the stars withdraw from his mind. He looks around, slowly remembering where he is. The room is empty now except for the man in the bright orange fleece, the one who asked him to picture the solar system. He stands up reluctantly and is about to answer when the orange guy cuts him off.
"John Sheppard," he says, glancing at the tag on John's jacket. "Air Force? Hm." He frowns slightly, but sticks out his hand to shake John's. "Dr. Rodney McKay. That's academic doctor, not medical. I have two PhDs, one in astrophysics and one in mechanical engineering. I'm the leading expert on wormhole physics and Ancient technology and, well, an all-around genius. In case you haven't figured it out yet, you're rather ... unique." It looks like it's painful for him to admit that. "This gene you have, it means you have the power to unlock all this amazing technology and, unlike everyone else with the gene, you seem capable of using it without accidentally killing people. So naturally they're going to ask you to come to Atlantis and you really should. It's your duty as an ATA gene carrier." He tilts his chin up a bit.
The man sure can talk, John thinks, overwhelmed by words. Wormholes? Ancients? Atlantis? Not to mention the mutant gene he apparently has. But there is one thing he definitely understood amid all that talk. He smirks. "You're jealous. You don't have this cool gene."
"What? I am not jealous," Rodney protests indignantly. "Just because Beckett's gene therapy hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it won't."
"Jealous," John repeats gleefully. It feels good to smile. Today has been confusing (and maybe a bit frightening if he were the type to admit that sort of thing), but this man—a self-proclaimed genius who talks a mile a minute and who is wearing an awful orange pullover—this man is jealous of him.
Rodney crosses his arms over his chest and asks irritably, "So? You'll come to Atlantis, right?"
John waggles his eyebrows noncommittally, but when he brushes his fingers over the hand control pad on the chair there is the faintest flicker of blue stars in another galaxy.
"Sheppard!" General O'Neill yells from down the hall.
"Coming, sir," John calls back. To Rodney, he adds, with only a hint of sarcasm, "Nice to meet you, Dr. McKay."
"You're a moron if you don't come!" Rodney shouts after him as he leaves.
John flashes a grin over his shoulder. On the flight back to McMurdo, he finds himself thinking about the grumpy man in the orange fleece while General O'Neill tells him why he should join the Atlantis expedition. He thinks about the orange man again when he flips a coin a few days later: heads he'll go to another galaxy and learn a whole new vocabulary, tails he'll stay here in a life he comprehends. He doesn't look at the coin.
*
When they settle into Atlantis, Rodney blends in with the other science blues. Except, of course, "blend in" isn't the right phrase. He may be wearing the same color as the other scientists, but if his personality had a color, John swears it would be the same startling orange as that fleece—garish at first, but a color that grows on you over time.
3.
"Here." Rodney holds out a cloth-bound book.
"What is it?" John asks, taking it in his hands and running his fingers over the smooth yellow binding.
"A book," Rodney says with a hint of nervousness.
"Obviously." John rolls his eyes. "What's it for?" He quickly adds, "Don't say it's for reading."
"Well, it is," Rodney says, blinking. "What else would a book be for?"
John sighs and decides to give up trying to get any helpful answers from Rodney for the moment. He looks at the gold lettering on the cover, written in a foreign alphabet, and then opens the book. The pages are filled with the same indecipherable squiggles. He frowns slightly, then asks, "Is it Ancient? It doesn't look like Ancient..."
"No," Rodney answers. "It's whatever language they speak on PR7-433."
"Okay," John says slowly, still confused. "What am I supposed to do with it? Elizabeth is the language expert, not me."
"Oh." Rodney rifles through his pockets and holds something else out to John. "Here."
This time it's a small gadget, about the size and shape of a life signs scanner. John takes it in his other hand and it lights up. Definitely Ancient, then.
"I suck at this." Rodney's face crumples and he stares intently at the floor.
"What, exactly, do you suck at?" John asks patiently, looking up from the flashy lights on the Ancient device.
"Presents," Rodney mumbles.
John blinks and then looks at the book and the Ancient gadget. "Oh," he says, hoping he's getting close to figuring out what's going on. "These are presents? For me?"
Rodney nods without looking up, his hands fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.
"What for?" John asks. "It's not my birthday or anything."
"It's just for ... you," Rodney says, tentatively looking up through his eyelashes. "I'm horrible at remembering birthdays and things. So this is for whatever occasion I forget in the near future."
"Okay," John says, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Can we go over what they are again? So far all I've figured out is that I'm holding a book and a flashy Ancient doohickey."
"Doohickey?" Rodney repeats, rolling his eyes. "That"—he points to the Ancient device—"is a Babelfish. It's a handheld translator I found in one of the East City labs a while ago. It works for speaking or reading. So, you know, Babelfish."
"A Babelfish," John says, grinning. "Cool."
Rodney smiles, finally meeting John's gaze. "And the book is called Nine Stars Singing. Or something weird like that. It's some traditional epic-y thing that apparently nearly every race in Pegasus knows. Lots of battles and adventure and romance and all that other epic stuff. Anyway. I asked Teyla to help me find you a book since you've nearly finished War & Peace. And, obviously, you can order more books from Earth, but I thought maybe you'd think it was cool to read something from the Pegasus Galaxy."
"Very cool." John nods happily. "It's great. Thank you, Rodney. This is probably the coolest present anyone's ever given me."
"Really?" Rodney asks, eyes lighting up.
"Yeah." John puts the book and the Babelfish on the table by his bed and pulls Rodney into a kiss, warm and happy.
*
When John wakes up, Rodney is still asleep with his head resting on John's shoulder. The faint light of dawn is only just beginning to creep in through the windows, meaning there's still a bit of time before they have to get up and face another day of who-knows-what. John smiles and kisses the top of Rodney's head before carefully slithering into a semi-sitting position. Rodney snuffles and buries his face in John's neck as John reaches over to pull the book and the Babelfish onto the blankets over his lap. He traces his fingers over the golden squiggles embossed on the silky soft yellow cover and then places the Babelfish over the title. He watches in fascination as the squiggles dissolve into the letters of the Latin alphabet, and from there, the letters slide into words and meanings: Nine Stars Singing. He opens the book to the first page.
This is the history of the Nuna Anfari'i, the Falling of
Shadows. Only the stars now remain as witnesses to that great battle,
But we sing the songs of the Ailani and remember their great courage.
And now I, a humble scribe, record their brave deeds so that if ever a
Night comes when there are no voices left to sing, these words will live on and bring
Strength to those who come after. Let it be known that we go down singing, that
We carry on against all odds, that we still believe in a day with no
Shadows.
Let us begin in the city of Lyriay, in the Year of
Singing Stars, when a boy-child was born to Alar and Nfth. They called him Zel.
4.
"John?"
John can dimly hear Rodney calling to him from the edges of his green-walled world, but the warmth of the sun has made him drowsy so he doesn't respond immediately.
"Sheppard, where the hell did you go?" Rodney's voice is annoyed now over the radio.
"Here, Rodney," John drawls. He lifts up his right leg and wiggles his foot in the air over the two-foot-tall grass.
He can hear footsteps stalking through the grass and then Rodney is there, silhouetted against the bright blue sky. "You do know how stupid it is to just drop out of sight, no matter how peaceful the planet seems?"
John shrugs against the ground. "The grass is nice," he offers by way of an excuse. "Lie down with me?"
"Oh, not the puppy dog eyes," Rodney moans. "I'm probably allergic," he adds. But he settles down beside John.
"You'll be fine," John says.
They lie in silence for a few moments before Rodney sneezes. "See? I don't make these things up."
"I know," John says fondly. He sighs wistfully and starts to get up.
"But we can stay a few more minutes." Rodney sniffs dramatically. "I'm willing to sacrifice the ability to breathe through my nose for your happiness. But you better appreciate it."
John lets out a puff of laughter as he lies back down, scooting closer to Rodney so their shoulders and thighs are touching. "I do. I'll make it up to you later." He grins and waggles his eyebrows.
"Right," Rodney retorts, between sneezes. "Because you'll think I'm so sexy when I'm sneezing on you and my nose is dripping like a faucet."
"I always think you're sexy." John rubs his shoulder against Rodney's.
"Liar," Rodney protests, flushing.
They both flinch when Teyla's voice crackles over the radio. "John? Rodney? We are at the rendezvous point."
"We're here, too," John replies, sitting up and waving. He gets to his feet and then turns to pull Rodney up. "Come on, let's go get you some allergy meds."
Rodney sneezes twelve times without pause.
*
After dinner, Rodney collapses on the bed and curls up on his side. His sniffles are not quite as exuberant now that the meds have taken effect, but he's asleep within a minute of lying down. John sighs. Non-drowsy my ass, he thinks. He strips down to his boxers and smiles as he bends to plant a soft kiss on Rodney's reddened nose before climbing into bed behind him.
5.
Blue isn't his favourite color.
If anyone asks, John says orange. (Everyone seems to find this odd. It's not really a color people associate with crazy-haired military commanders and there's not a lot of "cool" things that are orange.) But it never occurs to him to say blue.
Blue is the sky, bright in the mid-afternoon with a few lazy clouds drifting along. Blue is the sea, gently slapping the edges of the city below. Blue is the horizon, where sky and sea usually merge into the color of flying and freedom and familiarity. But the colors are all wrong today, stained with shadows that hover at the edges of his vision. Maybe he should go back to the infirmary. But he can't move, doesn't want to see what they're doing in there—trying to fix what he failed to keep safe.
His hands grip the balcony railing, clenching and unclenching, desperate for something to do. But there isn't anything to do.
His breath is ragged, as though his lungs can't decide whether to hyperventilate or stop breathing altogether. Breathe in, breathe out. He remembers the breathing exercises Teyla showed him when she taught him to meditate. It's not helping to calm him, but it's at least keeping the oxygen flowing.
And then finally, finally, his radio crackles and someone's voice asks, "Colonel Sheppard?"
He hits his radio on a little too hard and croaks, "Yeah?"
"Dr. Beckett has finished the surgery," the nurse reports. "Dr. McKay is still in critical condition, but Dr. Beckett believes he will pull through. Your team may come visit him now for a few minutes."
John turns and finds Ronon and Teyla behind him—they might have been there this whole time, he doesn't know.
"They're done," he says, voice strangled, and rushes past them towards the infirmary. Teyla and Ronon follow.
When John sidles up to Rodney's bed, Rodney doesn't look much better than when they brought him in. The blood is gone now, but he is paler than usual and there are tubes and wires and machines that beep and he's so still. But John is allowed to touch him now and let him know that he's not alone. So he gently wraps his fingers around the hand that isn't covered in sensors and murmurs, "I'm sorry."
Teyla and Ronon add words of comfort that John doesn't hear. His entire being is focused on the fragile rise and fall of Rodney's chest until—too soon, too soon—Carson comes to herd them out of the infirmary.
It's not until Rodney opens his eyes two days later and gives him a dopey morphine smile that the shadows in John's mind loosen their hold and he remembers the particular color of flying and freedom and familiarity.
Blue isn't his favourite color; it's his life.
6.
"... and there's a Dalek, see?"
"No, I do not see."
"Ooh! And that one's definitely Flutie making the pass!" John can practically hear Rodney rolling his eyes in the dark. "Come on, Rodney. What do you see?"
"Lots and lots of bright spheres of gas many light years away in the vacuum of space."
"Use your imagination. It's like connect-the-dots."
"I'm terrible at this. I didn't even see the shapes the Greeks and Romans imagined back on Earth. They're stars. Scattered throughout space according to their gravitational paths. They're not pictures."
"You're no fun."
"Don't get all sulky. I'm not the one who dragged someone out on a balcony after midnight in the freezing cold."
"You're cold?"
"What, are you a pod? It's freezing out here!"
"We could go warm up in my room," John suggests, leaning a hip against the balcony railing.
"Oh?" Rodney perks up.
"Yeah... Wanna watch some Doctor Who?"
"Oh my god, you are such a loser. When normal people suggest going to their rooms to 'warm up', they mean to make out or have sex. Not watch episodes of a show they've already watched hundreds of times."
"Hey," John says indignantly. "We can multitask."
"Also, it's after midnight and we have a senior staff meeting at 0800."
"Not sleepy."
"What are you, two? And, no, pouting does not improve your maturity level." Rodney sighs. "Oh, fine, come on. But I'm only watching if it's Tom Baker."
"Deal." John grins.
And if they end up doing more watching than making out, well—
"We are such pathetic losers," Rodney says. "Also, you better bring me a whole pot of coffee before the meeting tomorrow— er, today."
"Mmhmm," John agrees absently.
"Are you even listening?" Rodney asks suspiciously.
"Coffee," John replies, leaning into Rodney's shoulder and tucking his head under Rodney's chin. "Now shut up and watch."
7.
The daughter of the village leader on MR2-369 has, of course, taken a liking to John. The rest of the team may as well not be there for all the attention she gives them. Well, she does glance appreciatively at Ronon from time to time, but his unsmiling demeanor does not encourage sexy princesses to drape themselves over him like John's easy smiles do. (And seriously, does he have to smile like that?) But Teyla and Rodney do not get more than the barest of nods when first introduced and certainly receive no attention beyond that.
Teyla is at least talking animatedly with the village chief and getting admiring looks from the men who walk past. So really, it's just Rodney who nobody appreciates. As usual. There aren't even any interesting energy readings here. He should have stayed in his lab.
The princess, clad in a slinky golden dress, is hanging from John's arm and giggling in his ear. While impersonating a leech, she is also playing with her long sleek purple (purple!) hair, swishing it across the back of John's neck.
Rodney pokes desolately at his energy scanner, doubting that anything interesting has turned up in the past minute. Maybe some rival tribe will come along and try to kill them, thus taking John's focus away from the sexy alien princess with the stupid purple hair.
No angry rivals appear, spear-wielding or otherwise. There's still nothing interesting on the scanner, but he keeps fidgeting with it anyway.
Ronon lets out a sigh of boredom, so Rodney fishes in his pockets for a scrap of paper and a pen and then sidles over to him. He then proceeds to teach Ronon how to play tic-tac-toe while trying to look busy and important so Teyla won't yell at them. The game is not very interesting—since Rodney knows all the proper first moves to win and Ronon, of course, doesn't—but at least it's better than watching John flirt with a purple-haired twit.
They play for twenty minutes (Rodney: 11, Ronon: 5; Rodney lets Ronon win a few games so Ronon won't beat him up) before the chief finally invites them all to share the midday meal with his family. Rodney is, at first, hopeful because food, but the she-demon sits next to John so closely that she's practically in his lap and insists on feeding him his first bite. And then Rodney sees the suspiciously citrus-like fruits in the middle of the table. And, really, could this day be any more annoying?
They are finally able to leave an hour later, with the promise of a share of tilla (some wheat-like grain that Rodney thinks is hardly worth the three hours of torture) in exchange for medical supplies. The purple-haired brat actually stamps her foot and blinks out a few tears when John disentangles himself from her arms.
Rodney sulks all the way back to the gate. John and Teyla walk in front of him, discussing the new trade agreement. Ronon strides ahead as though he can't wait to get back and beat up some Marines to make up for the pointlessness of a mission that didn't require the use of his gun.
Once they finish their debriefing and post-mission check-ups, John follows Rodney out of the infirmary. Rodney heads for the labs because he feels he ought to get something worthwhile out of the day and yelling at the lack of progress the incompetent morons have made while he was away not getting hit on by alien princesses seems like a good way to unwind. John, however, has other ideas and bumps Rodney's shoulder in the direction of his quarters.
"Her hair was purple," Rodney mutters irritably. But he alters his direction anyway.
"You're jealous," John accuses smugly.
"Of course I am," Rodney snaps. "I never have any sexy alien women throwing themselves at me."
"Will I do?" John murmurs seductively, draping his arms across Rodney's shoulders and nuzzling the spot below his ear.
"I— I suppose," Rodney says, flushing. Thankfully, they have reached his room and he quickly waves the door open.
"It's not that fun, you know," John says, undraping himself from Rodney's body. He takes off his tac vest and drops it by the door.
"Mmm, right," Rodney says skeptically, taking off his own tac vest and then sitting on the bed to untie his shoes.
"No, really. The draping, it gets kind of old. And it totally wouldn't be good for your back." To illustrate his point, John stretches his own back with exaggerated care. "But I can't just shove them aside. Unless, of course, you would prefer to be shot at on every mission instead of just most of them."
Rodney stands up again and stares at John's chin. "I just— I don't like sharing you."
"You know you don't have to worry about that," John says, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. "You're not sharing me because I'm not giving. They're taking." He steps closer to Rodney and smiles lopsidedly. "Besides, her hair was purple. I prefer brown hair. And blue eyes. And, you know..." He rubs a hand against the fly of Rodney's pants. Rodney emits a sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan.
John kisses him and nudges him toward the bed. "I'm all yours," he says, breathing the words against Rodney's lips.
~ { fin } ~