Chapter Text
The wild panic on Rodney McKay's face burned into John's mind. The scientist could handle anything the universe wanted to throw at him. Except this, and John Sheppard saw it for the first time in the keen blue eyes that suddenly looked so lost.
"I can't shut it down."
Rodney McKay admitted failure in an impossible situation of his own damn making that was incredibly life-threatening. As in, immediately threatening his own life and John's. Barely minutes after promising not to let him down, Rodney had failed. Hard. And he knew it.
It wasn’t all on Rodney. Some part of John had known he was risking his neck when Rodney showed up to get him in his corner on it. When the Arcturus went into overload on them the first time, Rodney hadn't just lost a member of his own team, he had killed him, and John had seen it on his face every day since. Rodney wanted to make it worth it, and even for Rodney, the bullshit about the Nobel was just set-dressing because nobody would listen to anything else from him. This wasn’t for a Nobel. And it had gone well past what McKay had the capacity to deal with, on any level.
The weapon going off somewhere over the complex offered not-so-eloquent punctuation of Rodney’s words as he talked himself through the losing battle with the Ancients' failed technology. John recognized enough of it to know he was standing on the goddamned Death Star and she was about to blow.
When one of the consoles exploded, John flinched and reached for Rodney as he recovered. "Alright, that's it. We're outta here."
McKay jerked away from his effort. "What did I just say! The weapon's firing at random targets above the planet. This is the safest place to be right now."
Sheppard shoved into his shoulder to try to get the scientist's stubborn attention back. "The place isn't gonna be safe for very much longer!"
Rodney shook his head. He wasn't looking at John, not because he couldn't take his eyes off the screens, but because he was avoiding. It was that thing Rodney did when he was scared, when he fucked up, when he couldn't keep up with his own damned ego. "No, I can bring it back under control! Just give me a second-"
"No, you can't, Rodney!" said Sheppard. He stalked around the console to grab for Rodney again. McKay rolled his shoulder and twisted, but John didn't let go. They locked up for a second, staring each other down. John blinked first. "Come on, we're out."
Rodney pulled himself free and turned back to his laptop. "Just one second!"
Sheppard rounded the edge of the console to put himself as much in the way as he could, staring Rodney down over the top of his laptop screen.
"I've seen this before, Rodney. Pilots who wouldn't eject when something went wrong, trying to fix their planes. Fighting with the damn thing-" Sheppard reached out and smacked the console in front of Rodney to try to get through to him. "Right until it hit the ground."
Something worked because Rodney looked up at him. The lost expression hadn't faded, just added a new layer of fear.
"We need to leave. I've waited too long... the weapon can't discharge enough power to avoid a catastrophic overload. This whole planet's gonna go up," he rambled out, shutting the laptop and disconnecting the things he could in the seconds he felt he could waste. John caught his arm and followed him to the ladder. He near tripped on him when Rodney stopped to look back at him. "Not that your speech wasn't working-"
"Rodney!" John growled at him and the scientist finally started to climb out of the lab.
*~*~*
If it weren't for the Daedalus, they would have been dead. Instead, John and Rodney had just created a debris field out of an entire solar system and lost god-knew-what kind of civilizations and culture and information and life in general. The official report was that the solar system was uninhabited before it went up, but John cast a side-eye at convenient numbers like that considering the Ancients had set up a 'gate there.
Which, of course, meant they had also lost a 'gate. Sheppard noted that Caldwell had mentioned that prominently in his report back to the SGC.
Lt. Colonel John Sheppard was lucky he still had a job after the Arcturus disaster. Caldwell and Weir had lectured him for a half an hour between the both of them. And the only wiggle room John had on it was that it was in the military's interests that he had petitioned for the chance in the first place. Sure, they had blown it up, but in blowing it up, they came to the undeniable conclusion that the weapon was too flawed to function.
Really, for all it was a spectacular failure, it had saved the expedition another few months of work chasing bad ideas. They had already lost one scientist to the weapon, so it was their job now to think of the dozens of lives they had saved by shutting her down early.
It was a loophole, and John was clinging to it to save his tiny silver oak leaf pins. He still hadn't gotten to show them off to his dad, and he didn't want to lose the opportunity for a fancy, dress-blues, gloating dinner with the family somewhere before it even presented itself.
All the same, Rodney had screwed up. At the end of the day, the guy had pulled in a favor, on their friendship, and John had trusted him. The stupid thing was that John always trusted him, without being asked, but Rodney had to go and ask him to, and that had to be some kind of cheating. Rodney was on AR-1 because John trusted him and his stupid genius brain. They were friends outside of the team, went and did actual friends-stuff, because John trusted him.
Rodney had stood right there in John's apartment and lied his little heart out.
He hadn't known what would happen. He had wanted to know what would happen, but Rodney's numbers weren't locked in, he didn't have his usual ten extra backup plans, nothing was actually ready when Rodney asked him, on the trust of their friendship, to try Arcturus again. Rodney had been stubborn, impulsive, and not in his right mind.
Maybe it was grief, maybe it was shock. John had seen both on his face since the first accident cost McKay a member of his team. Crispy-fried scientist wasn't something Rodney had been prepared to witness, let alone be responsible for.
He showed up to negotiate, like he could wipe the slate clean if he got the system working. And John had fallen for it, and they had nearly been killed for it.
As his friend, that hurt, but John could get over it. He was strangely okay with Rodney screwing up and killing them both someday. Truth be told, he was more or less resigned to that being how fate would play them out. Bitching at each other to the last, but side by side on the way.
As Rodney's team-lead, though, it wasn’t allowed to hurt. It got a pass or fail grade, and had to be held up against the safety of the whole team. As team-lead, as military commander of the expedition, risking himself and the chief science officer on the expedition, created a whole situation rife with logic fail and lapse in judgement that could not be risked again. That wasn't Rodney’s fault. That was on John.
John had to sort himself out on that, too. He had gotten too close to someone on his team. He had let it compromise them both. And all it took was Rodney showing up at his door - something he did fairly often, before they would head out to the lower levels to explore, or the cafeteria, or the piers - and asking for some trust. He already had it, so John's only hang-up on saying yes was the impossibility that awaited him trying to convince Director Weir and Colonel Caldwell. There was a pull there, gravitational, and it dragged him in to find a fix. He saw grief on his friend's face and wanted to find a way around it, and instead jeopardized the security of his team, and Atlantis.
He didn't like the conclusion when he came to it, either, which proved it was true. Sheppard was too close to McKay if he wanted to do his job right. That hurt a bit. He was going to have to try Rodney's avoiding technique, make sure he could get around dealing with Rodney outside of team-stuff. Throw some cold water on that one until John could trust himself to read the guy right again.
It just sucked. He didn't want to, damnit.
John was surly for a few days after they got back and he knew it, but he couldn’t make his head line up with his gut on it. So he stayed busy and he stayed hard to find. Elizabeth knew where to find him, and his team leads could track him down, but he avoided his usual routines. Carson Beckett happened to find him, checking in for food a few hours late for lunch and a few hours early for the dinner crowd.
"Colonel! There ye are, been wondering," the doctor greeted. John managed a smile and carried on toward grabbing a sandwich. It was no surprise when Carson moved with him to the line.
"Afternoon, Doc," he replied.
"That it is, and a good one so far," said Carson. "That cheerful lass Sandy found a missing pallet of supplies, somewhere around the back end of Nowhere I hear, as part of your latest inventory. Thanks for being so thorough."
"Sandy? D'you mean Taylor?" John asked, surprised.
"Aye, that's her," replied Carson. Sheppard let out a dry laugh.
"Don't let her hear you call her a cheerful lass. She'll cheerfully kick your ass," said John, shaking his head. "Her and Cadman get together a lot. She makes Cadman seem harmless."
Carson frowned at him. "Laura is perfectly harmless."
Rather than overthink their very different reads on his security teams, Sheppard just nodded and stacked more food on his plate.
"Speaking of harmless," said the ever chatty Carson, "Rodney’s under the impression you're avoiding him."
"Why-ever would I be avoiding the man who tried to blow me up in the remaining one-sixth of a solar system he hadn't already doomed," replied John, no heat and all sarcasm. It hurt a little, but it wasn't a complete lie.
"That's hardly fair, John," chided Carson. Sheppard scouted a table and headed for it, resigned to the interrogation following him. Carson slid into the chair across from him and carried on without fail. "You are friends, after all. And I dare say the man doesn't have enough of those not to notice."
"What’s a little planet-killing between friends, huh, doc?" John asked. Carson pointed a fork at him.
"I know you've done just as badly," said Carson. "It's the Wild West out here. And you lot are the ones with the six-shooters."
"Strangely enough, McKay was packing a little more firepower than that," replied Sheppard. But he nodded anyway. "It's been busy. I'm sure we'll catch up eventually."
John just wasn't in a hurry for it. AR-1 would be coming up on the rotation soon enough, and Sheppard would have to be back on his Lt. Colonel priorities by the time that happened. Shove the John Sheppard ones back in the box. It just was taking him a minute, was all. And he certainly knew better than to share that caveat with their chatty friend Carson.
*~*~*
Carson had jinxed him, because later that day, John's routine accidentally synced up with Rodney’s again, even just for a minute. Crossing paths was all it took. Rodney locked on and John was suddenly having to figure out how an asshole military team leader was supposed to deal with things. He had been stalling on that because every time he tried to sort it, he went back to the court-martial. Back to a judge and jury of ranking officers breathing down his neck for disobeying orders and costing them a helicopter and wasting the resources of an extraction team.
If he looked at it in the wrong light, the instances were remarkably similar. But between him and Rodney, they had both gotten home this time.
The fact of it was, accidents happened, doing what they did. People died. But Rodney's choices had compromised the team and John had allowed it. There had to be pushback. There had to be consequences. And Rodney had to know he could never do that again. And John had to tell him that. Which, of course, meant he couldn't keep hiding.
Shit.
"Colonel! I've been looking all over for you," said Rodney
Rodney had spotted him, so there was no sense in running like a coward. So John stopped and turned, steeled his backbone with a deep breath, and crossed his arms against whatever was headed his way.
"I heard," he said, frustrated. Rodney shuffled awkwardly and nodded, looking away briefly.
"I suppose I deserve that. Look, I just- I wanted to apologize about what happened. I was wrong. About Arcturus, about the overloads... I mean, the math was there, but..." Rodney broke off the ramble and started over. "I'm sorry. And I wanted to assure you that, uh, I intend to go back to being right again. About everything, effective immediately."
Rodney broke off on one of his hopeful smiles, and John tried to smile back, but he saw it didn't land right. Rodney was scared, and admitting it wasn't his favorite thing, and genuine, non-Canadian apologies were hardly even in the man's vocabulary, yet here they were. John knew Rodney was an egotistical jerk sometimes, and it hadn't ever bothered him. Egotistical jerks who let him shoot them in the name of science were strangely just fine in his book. And while it was slightly gratifying and validating to watch Rodney fall on his sword about something, John still felt himself wanting to fix it for his friend, and he couldn't.
"That was a joke..." Rodney clarified quickly.
Taking that as a missed cue, John pasted on another distracted, flat smile and nodded. "Good one."
Apology accepted, John wanted to remove himself from the confused mess of responsibilities raging between his ears. Maybe it was a headache, but he was used to blaming those on Rodney now. With another nod, John turned and walked into the transport room he had strategically retreated toward earlier. Rodney jumped forward, to catch him from leaving or to follow him, John wasn't sure. Not wanting to share the lift just then, John turned to face him again, arms crossed bullishly.
"I've already apologized to Elizabeth. And to Radek. And I thanked Colonel Caldwell for, uh, well, caring enough to spy on the experiment from orbit. I sent him a nice little email, actually," said Rodney, and he was probably a little proud of himself for accomplishing such a social nicety. "But I saved you ‘til last ‘cause... Honestly, I would- I would hate to think that recent events might have permanently dimmed your faith in my abilities, or your trust. At the very least, I hope I can earn that back."
Sheppard stared at him, reminding himself he couldn't deal with his friend just then. Reminding himself of the court-martial he had narrowly avoided this time thanks to good, old-fashioned practicality, and the fact that he had Caldwell dead to rights on the fact that the military wanted the weapon to work as bad as Rodney had. But a guy didn't capital-D Destroy a solar system every day, either.
"That may take me a while," John said finally. The hope on Rodney’s face fell away and what was left was grief again. Shitcrapfuck. John crossed his arms again and shuffled on his feet. Then he reached toward the controls on the wall behind him.
"I see," was all Rodney said. And John hoped to hell he didn't.
"But, I'm sure you can figure it out, if you really wanna try," he said, not even sure what he was saying, other than words to try to fix what broke. Rodney smiled at him again, and John caught himself smiling back as the door closed. When they opened again, John sagged back against the wall and breathed for a second. That sucked. He was almost mad at Rodney just for making him do it.
Then Sheppard looked up, back at the halls outside the small closet of a room. He could figure it out himself. The hard part had been done. Now he just had to make himself stick to it.
*~*~*
"Look, say what you want, but she was acting suspicious," said Rodney. John rolled his eyes.
"Oh, yes, Rodney, obviously. Carson's girlfriend is clearly the most suspicious person in the city," said Colonel Sheppard. The man shook his head, almost close to laughing. "Come on. Use your brain. Carson's too much of a... a... busybody. He would not be dating someone with any kind of nefarious intent."
"Hmm. Last I knew, most men choose their dates with their little brain, not the one that actually worked," said Rodney, dismissive. "I don't care what kind of gossipy, bedside-manner voodoo superpowers you think the man's got, they wouldn't work on someone he's dating."
Sheppard blinked like Rodney had somehow just shorted out the hamster-wheel in his head. It took him a minute of hedging before he shrugged and nodded. "Okay, that may be a valid point."
"Ha!" Rodney replied. "Besides, you’re still just sore it wasn't Kavanagh."
John shook his head, resolved. "Kavanagh's off the table. When he gets back to the SGC, he'll bring up an inquiry on Elizabeth. Can't talk about him."
Rodney sobered quickly. "Damn, really?"
"Probably." John shrugged. "He fainted, but when he woke up he was ranting about alien guard dogs. I might have barked at him just to shut him up."
That actually wasn't as surprising as it probably should have been. Rodney nodded his acceptance of it as the door out to the pier slid open well ahead of them. When no one walked through the door to explain it, Rodney worried for a moment that the sensors were faulty, but then he saw the grin on Sheppard’s face.
"Show off," he grumbled. John just smiled.
"It's fun. I'll take my happy where I can get it," he said.
The pair of them moved out to their usual spot, on the edge of the pier formed by one snowflake shaped wing of the city-ship. It felt solid as rock, no different than sitting on the edge of a cliff side back on Earth, or any other planet. Rock was rock. Some were just prettier than others, and the surface of the piers was like a dark granite, with flecks of silver hidden in the grain. It was a bitch to fight with the exterior panels of the city for repairs, but just to sit, to just live there, it was comfortable and awesome.
Rodney dug in on his paper-sack dinner as he settled in to watch the horizon. They were both on orders for short days for the time being after the last week of emergencies and crisis trying to keep the city from destroying them all. Funny how an alien parasite could screw up... everything.
"You know, maybe it's lucky it was Caldwell. Maybe I can start fighting back when he starts twisting the knife on me," said Sheppard. "It would be nice to get some traction back with the SGC."
Rodney frowned at that. He was temporarily distracted by a bite of sandwich, but when it was possible to talk again, he asked, "Huh?"
John shrugged and looked down at his little paper tray of chips. "Caldwell wanted my command and Weir wouldn't let him have it. So he's... is there a polite way to make someone's life hell? Because he figured out how to do it. He relays everything back to the SGC for us, so he can offer his two-cents, and he has to sign off on everything. I’m living under a microscope. So maybe, after they sort out this Goa'uld-thing, maybe he'll back off."
"That's assuming he gets to keep his command when he gets back," Rodney pointed out. "They'll be reading your report, and Elizabeth's this time. On him."
John nodded, looking out at the sunset with a squint. "Yep."
"Did you do it back? Twist the knife, as you so artfully put it," asked Rodney. John scoffed and made a face before shaking his head.
"Nope."
"Well. Good, then," said Rodney. He took another bite as he considered it. They both sat in companionable quiet for a moment. Then Rodney wondered how much reading John had really done on the Milky Way aliens they usually didn't have to worry about. "You do know, don't you, that it's entirely likely it was the Goa'uld who wanted your post. Not Caldwell."
John's slouch disappeared and he tilted his head, looking up out over the water. His face said oh shit, but his mouth stayed quiet.
"It's probably a good thing you didn't screw him over in your report," said Rodney. "We haven't even met Caldwell, for all we know."
"Oh." John still thought it over.
Rodney checked to make sure his friend didn't suddenly jump down into the water twenty feet down, but otherwise went quiet to finish his food. He still tried not to press Sheppard, was still feeling like he had to stay back if he wanted to keep his friend. It had been less than two weeks since he had nearly lost them their jobs. This was their first trip back out to the pier since the explosion on Arcturus, and there had been little time for anything else really since. But John hadn't been able to avoid him as they went from crisis to crisis, putting out fires from security politics to technological heart attacks, so the pain of loss wasn't there anymore for Rodney. Now it was just a fear of it coming back that kept him quiet.
"Hey, since Elizabeth said we can't go back to work tonight, short of Wraith, we could try the new motors on the RCs," Rodney realized as he finished his chips. Sheppard glanced over at him before frowning down at the water.
"Probably not. You need sleep. And I'm behind on paperwork," said John. The man clearly hadn't been listening. Or he had and he just wasn’t processing at his usual level. But rather than point out that Elizabeth had specifically told Sheppard no working for twelve hours, minimum, Rodney just nodded. No RC races for a while. Got it.
*~*~*
They dropped right back into crisis mode a week after the Daedalus left to head back for the Milky Way with their Goa'uld-free Caldwell-cargo. A simple off-world trip for AR-1 turned into a Wraith hunt and the team ended up back in the infirmary again. Sheppard took the worst of it, getting fed on by a teenaged Wraith and simultaneously exposed to the toxic retrovirus and the enzyme that had already caused everyone trouble. Sheppard’s new version of the trouble entailed turning gray and scaly as he became a human Wraith-Bug. McKay expected to be stuck with nightmares about human bugs for the rest of his life, assuming of course that any of them managed to survive very much longer in Pegasus.
For a few days, Sheppard wasn't even human anymore, just blue-green scales, yellow eyes, and open wounds that wouldn’t heal. The cure Carson eventually hobbled together was worse than poison for a solid twenty-four hours, causing obvious pain to the point of seizures. John had to be locked up in the cells below the city, had to burn it out of his system cold-turkey in the actual cold because the iratus DNA had progressed so far that they weren’t sure if he could come back from it. But he did. It took days for Sheppard’s face to even start to return to normal after the fiasco with the retrovirus. He was on leave for a couple of weeks, and Lorne took over for him, since the only other ranking military officer was likewise compromised by aliens and had already left on the Daedalus.
It changed John’s schedule, obviously, but he showed up to remind Rodney to take a lunch break, at least every few days once he was better. Decked out in jeans and button down, loose shirts, as far from his uniform as he could get, because Elizabeth had threatened to confine him to quarters if he tried to sneak back to work. It was kind of bizarre.
Sheppard was mostly cranky, Rodney noticed, and John blamed it on the boredom of not being allowed to work. So Rodney made it a point to find out what the Lt. Colonel was missing, not spying on his temporary replacement or anything out of line, but snooping on the scuttlebutt. If Carson could do it, Rodney could do it. And he passed it along to Sheppard whenever he saw him. The news updates seemed to go over well, but Sheppard seemed to have forgotten how to smile.
Eventually Sheppard went back to work, back to the uniform. He kept the quieter tone of voice, kept the gruff greetings. They kept the lunch time chats and the occasional chess game, but their once-usual, accidentally-coordinated dinner schedules didn’t happen, except when Rodney stumbled into coordinating it with Ronon and Teyla. The team, all of them together, would still do things, but John had dropped back.
Rodney noticed it most strongly when they went off-world to scout an area Teyla thought had been culled years ago. It was just a check, on the off chance the culture had rallied and recovered. It paid off in the end, and after an hour’s walk from the ‘gate, they stumbled onto a small village, populated by faces Teyla knew, who recognized her on sight.
There was a celebration on the spot, and Sheppard wanted to radio Weir to let her know they would be setting camp and seeing what could be set up between Teyla’s friends and Atlantis to help. Rodney walked back to the ‘gate with John, and he was almost himself for the two mile hike. Almost. He poked at Rodney to make him talk, even smiled again. Taunted Rodney when the ‘gate hiccuped and stuttered before the dialing sequence completed. Crystals that hadn’t been used in too long were probably frying and Rodney started worrying about how to make sure they got home. But the event horizon lit up and the wormhole held.
“Too long since you’ve been out in the field,” said John. “You’re getting rusty. It’s just a DHD, Rodney.”
McKay harrumphed at him for it and stayed quiet because Sheppard was already on the radio with Elizabeth, relaying the news that they were camping for at least twelve hours and would check in again when it was daylight.
“Be careful, Colonel. We’ll talk to you in the morning,” said Weir. “Atlantis out.”
And they shut down the gate and walked back, shoulder to shoulder instead of Rodney chasing after John, or the Colonel dropping back to “check something.” It was weird that Rodney hadn’t noticed the differences until the normal he had once been used to had come back for a few hours.
Sheppard got absolutely shitfaced drunk that night, too caught up in the genuine joy of people glad to be alive, glad to have news that old friends had survived, glad to make new friends. Teyla assured Rodney it was okay, as even she had been drinking her friends’ honeyed mead. Rodney kept to his flask of water, content with the food that was brought out as a feast.
Hard drinks or not, Teyla and the others traded stories, and none of them had anything to do with the Wraith for once. All good news, all marriages and births and bountiful harvests, the fresh perspectives the people had found when they were starting over. There was music, a few people with hand-crafted instruments who seemed to know what they were doing.
When a few of Teyla’s friends wanted to be dancing, she and John and Ronon stood up to figure out how to not look like drunken idiots moving to dances they had never been taught. John walked over to where Rodney sat and bumped him on the shoulder with his knee.
“McKay, come on,” John said. He didn’t sound too drunk, and Rodney looked up to see him waving a hand to beckon him over. Rodney shook his head quickly.
“These two left feet keep still,” Rodney replied quickly.
“Liar,” John said, sounding amused. He moved around to stand between Rodney and the fire, looking down at him for a minute. Rodney stared up at him, openly confused.
“What?” he asked. John dropped down to crouch, elbows on his knees as he met Rodney eye to eye.
“Your file. Your name’s not even Rodney,” Sheppard said. McKay felt completely blindsided by that.
“Yes it is...” he stammered lamely. Sheppard’s bushy eyebrow quirked up on one side.
“Oh really?” he challenged. Rodney frowned at him and nodded. “Fine. What’s your family call you by then? Your sister. You said you got a sister. She calls you McKay then?”
“No, she... well, she calls me Mer, but my name is Rodney. That’s what they call me by,” replied Rodney. “Colonel, where the hell-”
But the Colonel was smiling at him, watching him. Despite the weird, surreal moment Rodney found himself in, Sheppard was just relaxed and some kind of happy. “Mer?”
Rodney blinked at him. “It’s a pet-name.”
John nodded once. “For Meredith.”
“What- Stay out of my file!” Rodney hissed at him. Sheppard just smiled at him, leaned forward a little.
“Come over there with the rest of us, Mer,” he tried again. He was trying the name on, not taunting with it, and Rodney could have liked it. But the mission had him feeling off-kilter. Things were going right when everything in him said something was wrong, and McKay couldn’t get his brain and reality to quite line up. John using his nickname wasn’t offensive, but it... wasn't helping. Rodney shook his head.
“No, thank you,” he said. Sheppard shrugged it off but the smile faded to that mask he used around new people. Then he stood and stepped by him again. He flicked Rodney on the side of the head and then disappeared among the others who apparently knew how to have fun at parties. Rodney blinked at the fire pit in front of him.
It was a party, in the open air, surrounded by a village with a sturdy fence and sturdy houses nothing like what the Athosians made. Cement and rock and plaster, rather than clay and thatch and logs. They were industrially developed a little further along, and for Rodney that amounted to security, so he allowed it. He kept an eye on his team, and sat it out. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn’t ask anyone about it, either. It was tiring.
When McKay turned in, the others were still going, though Ronon seemed remarkably clear eyed. He had been drinking something, but the effective alcohol content wasn’t as strong, maybe it was only a beer. Or maybe he was keeping watch the same way Rodney was. Either way, when McKay stood up to go find a place to sleep, Ronon looked up at him and nodded. If he hadn’t been keeping a lookout before, he was upon Rodney’s exit, because he tossed what was left of his drink into the fire pit.
Rodney looked around for John and Teyla, spotted Teyla near one of the other fire pits, laughing with her friends. John... looked like he was trying to teach another couple of inebriated folk how to play hacky-sack with some kind of clay-clods or something. They were safe. It was... odd. Since when did that happen lately? But McKay accepted it and went into the meeting house where they had been told they could stay the night. Their things were still there, so Rodney set out his sleeping bag and... slept. It wasn’t terrible. It was a wood floor and a sleeping bag, with his pack and jacket for a pillow, absolutely miserable for his back, but he slept.
Sometime in the night, the others showed up, in the dark as the fires had been put out in the village square. McKay was stirred awake as John flopped out his sleeping bag at Rodney’s shoulder. They had the entire room to just the four of them, and Sheppard sprawled into McKay’s space bubble instead. He yawned and was asleep in minutes. Rodney grumbled about being woken up but he was back to sleep soon after, too.
The next morning, John hid behind his sunglasses and wasn’t moving so swift, and Rodney couldn’t help but laugh at him. “This. See! This is why I don’t drink at these things,” he said.
Sheppard scowled at him for it but didn’t have any witty comebacks to the logic. He stayed quiet all morning, taking the back seat as Teyla arranged the necessaries with her friends to set up a mutually beneficial trade deal between her once-forgotten Molanbe friends and Atlantis. They came away with the promise of grain and vegetables, in exchange for monthly visits from the medical team. And the promise of a return trip soon, with Teyla and the Athosians, for another bonfire celebration.
They walked back to the gate with Ronon and Sheppard as pack animals, carrying massive baskets of fresh vegetables. Nothing at all went wrong, the entire mission. After the last month of one emergency after another, Rodney still felt stupid for being surprised. Weir was proud of them, and the mess offered fresh salad again for a few days.
Huh.
*~*~*