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After Rodney had solved the Wraith problem (via the use of mass miniaturisation, so that they were angrily reduced to striking terror into the hearts of beetles and grubs and any spiders that didn’t pounce first) he felt that he was entitled to a little bit of purely whimsical invention time.
First, Rodney created a special backpack, (which he claimed was inspired by the Tardis, because he wasn’t admitting to Mary Poppins) in which he created a pocket of folded space, so that you could fit inside it everything you could possibly need for use in the field.
Unfortunately, unlike Ms Poppins’ very practical carpet bag, Rodney found that retrieving exactly what you wanted, when you wanted it, was fraught with difficulty, as everything useful always seemed to migrate to the very bottom of the space-pocket, even though it didn’t technically have one. And much of what Rodney had to pull out to get to, for example, his power bars or his second-best laptop, he swore that he hadn’t even put in there to start with (such as three huge golfing umbrellas, the complete works of Shakespeare, and a pair of frilly, pink underwear - large enough to cover the modesty of a good-sized hippopotamus - which was baffling on every level).
Making organisational sections so that the backpack was actually functional was far more tedious and frustrating, and uninteresting to posterity, than creating a ‘magic’ bag, so Rodney passed that job to his team - who seemed oddly ungrateful for the opportunity - and decided to go for something less complicated for his next ‘What-the-hell Sunday’ project.
He might also have possibly had an ulterior motive with this one.
It had been slowly dawning on Rodney that John Sheppard was looking considerably less happy these days than you would expect from a man whose main enemies were now only problematic if you didn’t look carefully enough where you walked and had to scrape the goo out of your boot-grips.
In fact, if you weren’t looking straight at him - so that he sensed your gaze and immediately plastered on that wry smile and the ‘I’m fine’ look, that wore thinner every day - Sheppard often looked positively miserable; like a wet, kicked puppy.
This had been going on for quite a while. Though John had brightened up for a brief time. Rodney remembered it particularly, as it was just after he had finally realised that a tolerable friendship, and lots of amazing sex, didn’t make up for the fact that Jennifer had begun sounding increasingly like his mother, whenever they weren’t actually fucking.
John had been as sympathetic a best friend, in the aftermath, as Rodney could wish for and he seemed to have got back his spark a little too, for a while there, in his heroic determination to comfort Rodney, with companionship and dinners and chocolates and even getting him a bunch of non-allergenic flowers once, for a joke.
They had been pretty nice flowers, too.
But then John had drifted back to morose again and Rodney couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. It had happened about two weeks ago, around the same time that Lieutenant Garrett had started having problems with her showers and, for some reason, kept asking Rodney to fix them. Every time. Once, while she was still using it.
It had taken him five, increasingly exasperating, visits, before Rodney realised that he was still instinctively being polite for Jennifer and passed off the task to Dr Hana, with a feeling of relief.
He had tried to joke about the whole thing with John, but the man had gone all moody and inexplicable whenever he raised the subject. But this happened from time to time, and Rodney had gotten used to it as just a John-thing.
Never let it be said that Rodney McKay couldn’t be sensitive and forbearing. Sure, it sometimes took three tries and a run-up, but he could manage it.
Mostly.
Still. The moody and inexplicable phase was now getting very old and ‘sensitive and forbearing’ was not a guise that Rodney could wear for very long without severe chafing.
Besides, Rodney had just the thing to help.
It took Rodney three days straight, living only on coffee and power-bars and few stray muffins that he had found under a desk, that were barely dusty. The hardest bit was in surreptitiously calculating Sheppard’s exact size and weight and developing a new math to account for the variable aerodynamics of Sheppard’s hair.
Rodney should possibly have slept before giving his gift to Sheppard. He should also possibly have waited for a time that wasn’t 3:00 a.m. But time was relative, impatience was one of the fundamental driving forces of the universe and there was a very real chance that Rodney might erupt in a violent fountain of blood and bone and frustration, if he had to wait a second longer to share.
John answered his door looking fully alert and dangerous, despite the cute panda pyjamas.
“Rodney, this better be an emerge…”
Rodney bounced. “I made you this! Well, go on. Put it on! Oh, though we should probably go outside, in fact.”
John blinked and looked down at Rodney’s gift.
“You got me a… teeny, tiny backpack?”
“What? No, of course not, it’s… well, yes, that’s what it looks like, because obviously I had to fold them down into a space pocket for practicality and… oh, just trust me, okay?”
Rodney didn’t use those words very often, harbouring, as they did, uncomfortable memories and an overspill of badly-folded guilt, but John just shook his head slightly, grabbed a jacket and boots and followed Rodney out to the pier.
Rodney strapped his gift on securely, double and quadruple-checking the tightness, until John pushed him impatiently away and Rodney conceded that it was probably safe.
And then did one more check anyway, despite being ungratefully swatted for it. It was a long way up.
“Okay, so you just press… oh, you found it.”
Naturally, John wouldn’t wait for instructions, but just go poking wildly at anything and everything, as if that wasn’t an excellent way to get yourself killed (or rewired on the cellular level and maybe Rodney wasn’t entirely innocent in this department).
Not that Rodney would ever give John something that would get him killed, of course. Or, not intentionally.
Rodney found this whole train of thought carrying him swiftly towards a very dark chasm indeed, so he wrenched his mind back from the abyss of ‘everything that could possibly go wrong (and a few that couldn’t, but irrationally scare you anyway)’ and focused on the look of sheer astonishment on John’s face, as he stroked the enormous wings that had popped out of his back.
They were a deep, brooding black, to fit John’s clearly preferred aesthetic, and delightfully soft. Rodney had had to invent a whole new material to make the pseudo feathers both strong enough and light enough to work, when layered over a slim, flexible framework. Rodney very nearly launched on the story of exactly how he had made them, in deep and fascinating detail, but then he stopped himself; and just watched.
John had already figured out the mental connection and was flapping the wings, slow and steady, then building in speed and excitement.
He ran and flew, all in one gorgeous flowing movement. Rodney’s heart bounded up into his mouth and hung around there for a while, hugging his tonsils for reassurance, while John swooped and stuttered and came perilously close to a plummet, before recovering himself and rising high, like a dark demonic angel, if any such supernatural being had a habit of singing Johnny Cash tunelessly into the wind and lurching unexpectedly to the left.
Then John was landing, looking a little pale and shell-shocked, and he launched himself at Rodney and kissed him full on the mouth.
“You made me wings.”
Rodney, still processing the whole mouth-kiss thing, took a moment to respond.
“Well, yes. You’ve been all down and mopey for months, it seemed the obvious solution. And, okay, working on the wings wasn’t technically as important as retro-engineering the personal shields or giving the Jumpers a Hyperdrive… which, actually, I have some very, very solid ideas on…mmph!”
There was that kiss thing again. Rodney was confused - was this something they did now? - but also pleasantly tingly, so he experimented a little with tongue-sharing: getting excellent results. When they broke off to breathe, Rodney was surprised to find that his hands had infiltrated John’s shirt and appeared to be quite happy there. Curious.
John looked equally happy, gazing at Rodney with eyes so sparkly, they were a probable fire-hazard.
“Maybe I should have just jumped you in Antarctica.”
And then they were kissing again, which was starting to make Rodney seriously rethink just how amazing his sex with Jennifer could actually have been, because, while it had had fire and oomph and all of the technique of two very intelligent people, with superlative research skills (one of whom was even limber enough to follow through on some of the more unlikely positions) it didn’t have this… this John-ness about it.
It turned out that John-ness was an important ingredient.
Rodney did retain just enough rationality to drag them both inside, before too many clothes came off, but, after they got to his quarters - or it could have been John’s, or possibly even some random stranger’s who didn’t know how the lock function worked and was due a massive surprise when they got home - his higher brain functions signed off from work, took up some cold drinks and snacks, then flopped expectantly onto lounge chairs, to relax and enjoy the show.
By round two, they had almost run out of popcorn.
***
Rodney’s free time was now somewhat less than it had been, as it turned out that the kissing/making-out/bone-melting sex thing hadn’t just been a very emphatic ‘thank you’ for the wings, but the seal on a lifetime’s commitment to mutually gloopy adoration and a whole lot more sex, with a side-dish of bickering and hauling each other out of danger so often that the skin on their teeth was getting loose and baggy and easier to grip.
Besides these very important demands on his time, Pegasus was always throwing out a few more curveballs, usually of the potentially deadly kind; so that Rodney felt obliged to finish up the personal shields, and most of the Hyperdrive, before giving in to Ronon’s reproachful looming and making him some wings of his own.
Ronon’s air of ineffable menace didn’t work on Rodney anymore, because of that whole trust and friendship thing, but skilfully induced guilt always brought him down as easily as a kitten whose scruff has been taken into custody by its mother.
When he had got everything important to a point at which Rodney felt he could safely leave the rest to his team (with only a few hundred closely-worded notes and warnings and last-minute ‘don’t forget to…’s before he was shoved bodily out of the door) Rodney got together as much of his new material as he could in his personal lab and constructed two more sets of wings: one for Ronon and one for Teyla. Teyla had neither asked for wings, nor given Rodney any stern or disappointed looks on the subject; but she had stared at John’s with the delight of a small child; a feeling that Rodney suspected was something she could stand to experience more of.
After they had both tried out their new wings, with an enviably swift grasp of the principles and far too much whooping, Ronon had stared at Rodney’s back pointedly and raised an eyebrow.
It was of no use to explain that Rodney didn’t consider activities which involved physical exertion, unnecessary heights, and proving, once again, that he was the clumsy comic relief of their gracefully badass little outfit, to come under the heading of ‘fun’.
Because this was now a team thing and Rodney was team.
He sighed, gathered the last bits of material and made a final pair of wings for himself. They did look pretty nice, in fact, and Rodney only had one embarrassing incident - okay, three and an ocean dunking - before he mostly got the hang of things.
And straight lines were overrated, anyway.
After that, they began doing team flights as a regular thing; or, as regular as was possible, with all of their many and demanding responsibilities.
Oddly, though, Rodney never noticed John going for a solo flight anymore, as Ronon and Teyla often did, just for fun.
Even Rodney (who had found that, once you got the hang of the awkward flying position, the rest was all mental concentration and reading the air currents) began to fly alone, purely to get some peace, some thinking time, a pleasant hour or so’s whale-watching and a sense of communion with the infinite workings of the universe.
Plus, it was just so amazingly cool.
But, whenever Rodney suggested to John that they go for a flight together, just the two of them, they ended up doing something else instead; whether that was chess or watching movies or racing cars or sending each other to more metaphorical heights, in a satisfyingly naked fashion.
Rodney was fine with that - all John-time was good time, unless Rodney was deep into a project and didn’t want to be distracted by slinkiness and thigh holsters - but it did puzzle him.
And because it puzzled him, it nagged.
Yet, because Rodney found the idea of ‘John plus wings’ such a natural one that he assumed it had been purely some administrative oversight that he wasn’t actually born with the things, it took him several months to even consider the most likely solution.
Rodney waited until after sex to ask, because John was exceptionally good at avoiding awkward questions. He had a knack of being conveniently called away to do Military things; or he would make a flippant comment, sparking a banter war; ask Rodney something in return, which Rodney would get distracted by answering; or he would bring up the possible existence of cupcakes in the Mess and all questioning would be suspended, and then forgotten, while they embarked on an important fact-finding mission.
Directly after sex, however, John was generally too floppily liquid to move far and in an unusually relaxed and unwary frame of mind.
Rodney took care not to abuse this laxness - not only would he be firmly against losing the sex, but it appeared he had some moral objections to taking advantage of John’s vulnerability - but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t okay to use it just occasionally.
When it was important.
Rodney had intended to bring the subject up slowly and carefully, but unfortunately, after sex he was similarly relaxed and unwary and, consequently, even more unfiltered than usual.
“So, what’s with all the wing-hate?”
John stiffened (well, all of him that was currently capable of the act), which, as he was currently largely on top of Rodney, was slightly uncomfortable.
“Rodney, don’t we have a ‘no talking for at least fifteen minutes after sex’ rule?”
Rodney considered.
“No.”
“Well, I think we ought to.”
John settled down again, with an apparent assumption that that was the end of it; his tension not exactly easing, but trying hard to pretend to. Rodney shifted to get more comfortable and found his irritation rising.
“Well, I’m right, aren’t I? You do hate them?”
Silence. Moody, expressive, physically heavy silence, with poky elbows.
Rodney heaved a deep, exasperated and very pointed sigh and tried to wriggle away from the elbows, metaphorical and real. The fact that he couldn’t - because John was lying on him at just that angle and wilful heaviness which it was impossible to get out from under, without a measure of violent force which Rodney really didn’t want to introduce to his sex-life - made him, first, annoyed and, second, cautiously hopeful.
John could be very complicated when it came to discussing emotional things. The fact that he hadn’t just bolted, nor even given Rodney the opportunity to do so, suggested that he actually wanted to talk about this. He just didn’t have the right toolkit for the job.
Rodney was unused to being the emotionally mature one in the relationship, but he also wasn’t used to sleeping with anyone whose body hair was profuse enough to eat his own for supper and still be hungry for more; love forced you to adapt a little.
“Look, I’m not upset. I don’t think. Wait.”
Rodney forced himself to hold his wriggling, reluctant feelings up for analysis and discovered that, no, actually, he genuinely wasn’t upset. Sure, he’d put a lot of time and effort into the wings, but John hadn’t asked him to do that. And, whatever John’s feelings, they’d still have been worth the effort of creation, both from the point of view of learning new principles and adapting them to other uses and for the fact that it had been really, really fun.
Besides, Teyla and Ronon - even Rodney himself - all enjoyed their new hobby and the gift had fulfilled its original purpose of lifting John’s mood, even if not in the expected manner.
Also, the wings had led directly to here; John and Rodney, physically and emotionally tangled, in the best of all possible ways.
Well, if John would just shift an inch to the left. Okay, much better.
So, no; no feelings hurt; not even a trace of indignation at time wasted. Only curiosity and concern.
Having got all of that straightened out and arranged themselves in a more sustainable side by side position, John kissed Rodney, girded up his rusty ‘talking about stuff’ muscles and explained.
“I don’t hate the wings. Really. They’re beautiful, breathtaking pieces of engineering and you made them for me.”
“But…”
John found Rodney’s lips again and worked on them, until his sceptical rebuttal was all kissed away.
“I love the wings. What I don’t love, it turns out, is the actual flying bit.”
Rodney almost burst himself with protests that time and John had to kiss him a lot, before he managed to keep his mouth shut and his preconceptions meekly corralled, and let John talk.
“It’s like this. Obviously, I love flying. But, what I love most about flying is… okay, for one thing, there’s the speed. I’m talking serious, press you down flat to the back of your seat and make your heart feel like it’s made of bursting rockets, speed.
I didn’t have to join the Air Force in order to fly, Rodney, but I did have to, if I wanted to fly the best. The fastest. The rush of a fighter jet is just… it’s like nothing else.”
John’s eye went all wistful and dewy, so that Rodney had to kiss him, this time, before allowing him to carry on.
“I love being in perfect control of a powerful machine, meticulously designed for its purpose.
I love doing difficult manoeuvres, especially the really, really diabolical ones, the ones you make up on the fly and that make your hair stand on end and your bowels clutch at each other in terror.
And I love, I really love, knowing that this is the one thing, other than using my flukey gene, that I can do better than almost anyone else. Being a pilot means a lot to me. Whatever else has come up in my life, that’s what I am at heart, what I chose to do.
But the wings - I wanted to love them, too, but… they’re nothing like that at all. They’re slow, for a start, and kind of cumbersome. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re as aerodynamic and graceful as you could ever possibly make any wings designed for humans but… that’s just it. We’re humans. Solid bones, awkward angles. A body built for the earth. When it comes to cutting swiftly and gracefully through the air, our basic structure kind of lets us down.
When I fly a plane or a puddlejumper, I’m a perfect fusion of man and machine; a flash of lightning; a soaring eagle.
When I fly with the wings on, I’m… well, more of a lumbering airborne cow.”
John rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling fixedly.
“I’m sorry, Rodney.”
Rodney bit back his first instinct to call John an idiot.
“You’re an idiot.”
Okay, he needed to work on his self-censorship skills.
“John, I’m a scientist. I can’t work with things when I don’t have the data. Clearly, you need something more along the lines of a jet pack, but with a bit more structure to it. A highly manoeuvrable, streamlined, personal rocket pod. Transparent materials as much as possible, so that you get the views and the connection with the skies, but…hmm.”
Rodney reached over for his tablet - he never liked to be far from it, even during sex; you never knew when some orgasmic revelation might come - and began typing in specifications. This could be a very interesting project… ooh, maybe he could make John a sort of transformer suit, so that he could wear the rocket pod in the field, all packed away, and then snap it out and zoom at his startled enemies in an emergency…
“Rodney. Rodney!”
Rodney’s tablet was removed, mid-calculation.
“Much though I’m incredibly grateful and really looking forward to my new toy, I’ve just had a difficult moment of emotional exploration here and I could use a little help getting over it.”
John reached between Rodney’s legs in illustration of the type of help required, which was a relief as Rodney had briefly had a panicked vision involving lots of awkward patting and his shoulder being used as a lumpy, non-absorbent handkerchief.
He tried to file away all of the ideas neatly in his mind, before John clicked open the lube and Rodney’s upper brain took another vacation for a while.
It had got all through all of the Cheetos, most of the beer and was burping the heck out of ‘Oh Canada’ by way of cheerleading, by the time that John’s emotional hackles had been smoothed down and de-ruffled and the pair of them sank into a warm satisfied sleep; to dream of flight, each in their own separate ways; and of a future where, whatever happened, they ended their days like this; exactly where, and with whom, they wanted to be.