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Rodney was too young to remember the moon landing; but he remembers it anyway.
The excitement in the air, building and building, until it was so thick he could stroke it; pressing at the edges with small, curious fingers; catching sparks. His parents calling a ceasefire in their ongoing battle, just to share this moment, as though the moon itself had reached down and touched them, soft; with a cool and silver peace. The murky footage, far clearer and sharper in his head, than it can possibly have been onscreen.
A sharp, indefinable shift in the world.
He remembers - or thinks he remembers - reaching out to touch the screen, curious as to how the moon would feel to the touch - Cold? Hard? Smooth? Like silken light? - and being sharply told no.
He definitely remembers that he talked to the moon, for a long time afterwards - not very eloquently at first (at the age of just over one, he might be forgiven some verbal limitations) but earnestly, like a friend; because now they had been formally introduced - the moon and humanity - and it felt only polite to continue the acquaintance.
He remembers, at some point, making plans for his own visit, working, with a toddler’s single-minded certainty, on the essential things to pack. His favourite toy, of course, because he would need a companion: the moon was far too big a place to be alone. Then there was the careful consideration of which cookies would suit the occasion and the equally serious question of milk versus juice.
Rodney had walked now, on a number of moons, as well as more - and more distant - planets than he could ever have reasonably imagined (on some of them, even with cookies); but he never did follow up that youthful friendship and make a visit to his first, and favourite, moon. Never had a chance to ask if it remembered him, from their long ago discussions, on life and loneliness and snickerdoodles.
Not seeing the moon before he died was far from being one of Rodney’s biggest regrets in life - those which haunted his sleep and had every right to - nor even lodged on the next layer down, the ones which which involved a lot less death, and a lot more of a certain, frustratingly magnetic, pilot. Yet, it pushed its way to the surface now, out of nowhere - all shoulders and elbows and an unexpectedly loud voice.
“You’re not going to die, Rodney. We’re going to get you out of there.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt that you’ll get me out of here eventually. What I do have some concerns about, is whether or not it happens before I run out of oxygen. Not to be morbid here, but things are not looking all that promising.”
They’d found an Ancient laboratory and he’d entered in a whirl of excitement, despite all precedent, and a nagging, cynical note in his head of ‘I’m telling you now, so I can tell you I told you so’. And - of course - it had all gone inevitably, horribly wrong. They’d been here before and they’d probably be here again. Or, Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon would, anyway.
Rodney, not so much.
He looked through the sheer walls of his prison: not plastic, not glass, but something curiously other, a material which would be fascinating to contemplate, if he wasn’t being slowly suffocated by it. He hadn’t even pressed any buttons when it happened, barely so much as breathed on a console. Sheppard had cleared the room and then Rodney had followed; and the cage had just snapped around him with no warning, having spontaneously chosen, it seemed, to adopt and keep him forever.
His only comfort was that it seemed to be alone, with no grabby little cage friends to snatch up the rest of his team and turn them into a four-piece museum display: the preserved remains of AR-1 of Atlantis, for future generations to gaze at with indifference.
“Well, maybe you should stop using up all the oxygen, until you have any actually helpful ideas, okay?”
They had worked through a lot of ideas already.
Pressing, pulling, poking, praying. Calling in Zelenka and a small team, after they’d established that the rest of the laboratory seemed free from traps.
Questioning, reassuring, pacing, growling. Sheppard had tried out all of these, like a selection of hats, before choosing the option of gazing at Rodney with a banked intensity, as if sheer determination could imbue his eyes with lasers, fine-tuned for any rescuing needs.
After the first few hours and the failure of actual lasers, as well as everything else, from cutting tools to reprogramming attempts, the science team - along with Teyla and Ronon, itching to help, to do something - left, in small groups, to cautiously search the other sections of the laboratory, looking for more tools, more buttons, more ideas. Rodney was left alone, except for Sheppard.
They had spoken little. What could you say, after another round of, ‘Any ideas?’ ‘It’ll be okay’ and ‘So this is it, I’m going to die”. Instead, there had been even more of that gazing: searing, desperate, hopeless, and breathtakingly full of something he didn’t quite dare to name.
Rodney found himself staring back, holding on to John’s gaze with all his strength, because, if he could have chosen the last thing he got to see, this would be it, John’s eyes clinging onto his own, spilling out wordless promises, curses, pleas. Adjurations to hold on, just a little while longer, because John wasn’t giving up and he was damned if Rodney was allowed to.
But Rodney could already feel the oxygen diminishing, bit by bit: his head being repeatedly run over by an old, and creaky, lawn roller; the act of breathing moving from unconscious ease, to an all-out fight between air and lung. His mind was slipping, with practised ease, into hallucination, so that the moon itself made a surprise guest appearance behind John’s head, thin and transparent at first, then growing larger and larger, until they seemed to be standing on the surface together.
“I would have liked to have gone there for real, just once. You and me, we could have danced on the moon, a slow waltz, as the Earth rose into the sky.”
“Rodney, if you just hold on a bit longer, until we can get you out of here, I’ll take you there. Hell, you know what, I’ll bring it to you, have it packed and shipped and dropped off in orbit. Or I’ll slap an engine on it and a set of wings and I’ll fly it here myself, if I have to - and then we can go up there together, in our fanciest evening spacewear. Waltz, Watusi, Macarena, whatever you want.”
It was absurd and ridiculous and as solemn a vow as Rodney had ever heard. He smiled, fear falling away in a sudden rush of happiness, too strong to be pushed back by the pain in his head and his lungs.
“I’d like to see that. John Sheppard, moon pilot.”
“Then you’d better live, Rodney, because I don’t fly the moon for just anybody. Only you.”
Rodney’s hand was on the wall between them and John’s was too, pressed hard against his palm, so perfectly matched he could almost feel it.
And maybe it would be different if Rodney wasn’t dying, maybe John would reel all of this part of him back inside again and make it stiff and starched and prim; acceptably hidden away.
But it would be such a terrible shame never to find out.
The moon smiled up at him, as warm as an old friend, and shrank down coy and small. Floated up to his ear and whispered secrets.
“The console on the left … I think they almost had it … sequence was wrong … try this …”
The world was spinning and spinning and spinning, like one of those fairground rides you regretted the second the bar closed on you, like a trap: so Rodney wasn’t quite sure if he had managed to relay all the instructions to John, before there was one spin too many and he passed out altogether.
***
“Hey, Rodney.”
“Hey.”
Rodney felt floaty, but he didn’t feel dead, and he was pretty sure that he wasn’t in that box any more, because he had spent far too long inside it to have missed the part where it was concealing a reasonably-sized bed.
This feeling of having strolled to the gates of death, poked his nose through, and still come home afterwards, was getting to be a familiar one. He wondered if, at some point, he would just stop assuming he was going to die altogether.
Wraith cocooning him for a midnight snack? A minor inconvenience. His body disintegrating steadily from disease or some hiccup with an Ancient device? Meh, take two aspirin and sleep it off.
John had come back from the brink a good few times too, but, even if it happened every day, Rodney could never imagine a situation in which John Sheppard, in mortal danger, could induce that sort of apathy inside him.
Could feel like anything other than the end of the world, knocking on his door and trying to get in.
Yeah, he was pretty sure this was love. Raw, fierce, and painful. Warm, enfolding, and safe. Giddy and full of stupid, rib-poking, joy.
“So, I guess I owe you a moon.”
“Personally flown by one John Sheppard. With space-goggles and a little aviator scarf.”
“Dang. I can do the goggles, but you might just have to wait for the scarf.”
Rodney smiled at him and opened his fingers, just slightly, in invitation. John’s hand slipped into his with no hesitation whatsoever.
“Maybe you could give me something better than the moon.”
“I think there’s definitely some room for discussion. When you’re better.”
Medical personnel swarmed them suddenly, an air of brisk professionalism dispelling the mood, and John stood up to leave, his boots dragging slow and heavy, as he moved reluctantly away.
“The scarf is non-negotiable, though!”
John laughed, soft and low and made Rodney a little bow.
“As you wish.”
***
History never recorded the fact that Dr Rodney McKay and Colonel John Sheppard were the first people to Waltz, Watusi, and Macarena on the moon; nor the fact that, in the first few minutes of their arrival, Rodney had a quiet, earnest conversation with a crater, about snickerdoodles.
But then, there were only two people to whom it really mattered.