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"Can you stop that?" John said with what he thought was remarkable patience as Ronon beat the paper against the handle of the shopping cart.
Ronon, who was hunched over impossibly, with one elbow balanced on the thin bar and his other hand clutching the rolled up store ad, glared up at John.
"Could you both maybe draw less attention to yourselves?" said Rodney with his usual irritability.
"It's three thirty in the morning, Rodney, only stoners and white trash decide to go to department stores at three thirty in the morning." He considered this, amended, "And insomniatic keyboardists."
"And the divas who sleep on their couch?" Rodney answered snippily.
Well, there was a grain of truth in that. The lease on his apartment had run out sometime in between the tour and recording, and he'd been going back and forth from a hotel room to the couches of his various bandmates. It wasn't his fault that Rodney had the closest to a palatial estate. If Rodney had the stones, he would've kicked John out like Teyla had.
John refused to be held responsible for Ronon following him home like a Labrador so they could have a massive Madden tournament on Rodney's huge TV. And it definitely wasn't John's fault that Rodney had a tendency to get particularly twitchy in high-stress situations. The current one being the upcoming release of their highly-anticipated third album, and the enormous promotional tour the label wanted them to do. Next week alone they were scheduled for Leno, Letterman, the Today Show, and the dreaded TRL appearance. Rodney's stress manifested itself as insomnia and a need to fill up every waking hour with mundane tasks. John had been in the middle of kicking Ronon's ass for the third time in a row when Rodney came blustering into the room announcing that he needed to go to the store to restock his pantry. John still couldn't figure out why either of them had agreed to come.
Ronon drummed against the cart, against the back of his hand, against the edges of the passing shelves. There was no given rhythm, just a cacophony of various thumping sounds. It was hard to get good quality when the drumstick was paper and refused to retain its shape.
Rodney steered them in the direction of the abandoned magazine aisle, and set himself to scanning the glossy rows. John assumed he was looking for the new edition of Spin, the one with them on the cover. Ronon, meanwhile, sensing they'd be there awhile, had hopped into the cart, his ass in the child seat and his heavy boots cushioned on the six packs of gray tube socks Rodney had picked up, and was flipping through a celeb-watch rag. He reached over and nudged John, pointing him in the direction of 'Celebrities Are Just Like Us!: Cellulite Edition.' "Check it out."
"Oh, come on," John scoffed, scanning the layout. "Teyla does not have cellulite."
They both turned to look at him at that, Ronon somewhat impressed, and Rodney definitely horrified.
"What?" John defended. "Like you haven't both seen her in a bikini before."
"Yes, but I wasn't getting up close and personal with her, Hugh Hefner!"
John rolled his eyes. Rodney had theatrics about inter-band hook-ups once every three months or so, ever since he'd caught a very drunk Ronon staggering out of Elizabeth's hotel room that night in Denver.
"Relax, McKay," Ronon grunted.
"This," John said, trying to bring the conversation back around to the slight against Teyla's beauty, and jabbing his thumb against the shot of the purple bikini, "is doctored." He flipped the page defiantly. Ronon relinquished the rag easily and instead contented himself perusing the contents of a Home & Garden.
Rodney sighed elaborately and went back to studying the rows, muttering about the rampant delinquents who roamed the aisles at night and left the magazine section all in shambles.
"Hey, I'm apparently 'in talks' to play Lion-O in the live-action Thundercats movie," John reported from the sky blue blurb in the corner of the 'Hot Hollywood' page.
"You do have the hair for it," Rodney muttered derisively into Spin's table of contents.
"Lawrence Fishburne is slated for Panthro," John added to a smirking Ronon.
"Oh come ON!" said Rodney, loud enough to attract the attention of anyone in the next three aisles, and suitably take John's attention away from his nonexistent film career.
"Spell your name again wrong?" John asked, putting the celeb-watch guide back. He was, of course, referring to an article that came out back around the release of their first album, which had called him 'Mackey' and had perplexingly thought he was Lantean's DJ.
"I am hardly a footnote to the music industry," Rodney muttered, to them or to the absentee journalist, it was hard to tell, "yet everyone feels content to treat me like the wallpaper in the room Shep's in."
"At least you get to be near me," John cracked, but there was an awkward silence when Rodney didn't snap back. John shared a glance with Ronon; they had all long since gotten used to his on-stage persona of Shep getting the bulk of the public eye. And John suspected a lot of Rodney's continued perusal of online fansites was mostly just to annoy the rest of them. But occasionally Rodney seemed genuinely bothered by the abnormal amount of attention John got in ratio to the rest of the band. John had to tread carefully, and he thought about how best to appease Rodney's wounded ego.
Ronon cut in with surprising diplomacy, "Who cares what they think about any of us, McKay? So long as they like the band and like our music."
A ghost of a smile fluttered across Rodney's mouth. "Yes, well, I suppose," he said softly, and just like that, crisis averted. John raised his eyebrows at Ronon, impressed. Normally the task of McKay-defusing was best left in the hands of Elizabeth or Teyla.
"Yes," Rodney continued, voice getting louder as his usual confidence (or, more accurately, blustering arrogance) returned, "admirable sentiment coming from someone described as a," he made a show of double-checking the page for the correct phrasing, "'sullen behemoth.'"
John laughed so hard he choked on some of his own spit.
Ronon shrugged, "'S what my mom calls me."
"Color me distinctly not surprised," said Rodney. He flipped the page, but John recovered long enough to snatch the issue out of his hands.
"Put it down before you give yourself an aneurysm, Rodney."
Ronon hopped out of the cart and wheeled it in a one-eighty. "I wanna check the CDs," he announced. He started off, and since he had Rodney's cart, Rodney had no choice but to follow.
The entertainment section, flooded in fluorescent lighting, was a little less dead than everywhere else. An enormous biker with one hell of a beard was wearing a pair of the in-store sampling headphones and John caught the strains of AC/DC. A man in a plaid shirt was holding a stack of DVDs. A group of three college-aged girls browsed aimlessly, bursting occasionally into shrieking laughter.
As Ronon looked around for whatever, John asked idly, "You ever think about doing a cover album?"
"Only when I think about how best to destroy my career," Rodney retorted.
John wondered if he should even bother replying, when he heard the furiously whispered dialogue, "Yes it is!" "No it is not." "It looks just like him." John glanced over; the girls had congregated to huddle around Lantean's second album, looking back and forth from the album cover to him.
John had run into this situation before. Either they'd ask or they wouldn't. He wouldn't lie to them; there was little chance of this turning into a riot, and they seemed relatively non-crazy. Still, he smirked a little and turned his attention to the Wonder Pets DVDs.
"Buying the silence of your hoards of illegitimate children again?" commented Rodney.
"You're on fire tonight," John said. "Give up the music career, go into stand-up comedy."
"Um?" He looked up, Rodney looked over, one of the girls had approached with the others lingering back. "Hi. Sorry to interrupt, but I had to ask... are you Shep?"
John grinned and stood up. "Yeah. Hi."
The girl glanced back at her friends. "Told you!" She gave him a flattering smile. "I thought so. It was the hair, you know..." If Rodney rolled his eyes any harder, they'd fall out of his head. "And you're Rodney McKay!" the girl said excitedly.
Rodney looked surprised for half a second, then puffed out his chest a little. "Yes, yes I am."
"Then that means that other guy," Ronon, presumably, his dreads showing just above the top of one of the shelves, "is Ronon Dex?"
John kept grinning. "You caught us."
Emboldened, the two friends clamored to join their leader, clustering together for safety. "What are you guys doing here in the middle of the night?" the brunette on the left asked, while the redhead on the right said, "Are Elizabeth and Teyla here, too?"
"Nah, they're at home, enjoying the time off," John said.
"Would you mind getting a picture with us?" the lead brunette asked breathlessly.
"Not at all," John said. "Ronon, get over here."
They posed obligingly for pictures, enlisting the help of the AC/DC fan, and sent the trio on their way, all fervently swearing they were on a waiting list for the album coming out Tuesday. John almost hugged them on the way out; Rodney's mood had lifted to almost the levels of a normal happy person.
"I'm tired," Ronon announced, putting his Aretha Franklin CD back on the shelf. "Can we go?"
"Yeah, let's," said Rodney. "I could really use a nap."
"Am I hearing this right?" said John. "Did the almighty king of the all-nighter finally admit he's mortal like the rest of us?"
Rodney shrugged and set off towards checkout. Ronon said to no one in particular, "Think this album's gonna sell?"
"Like a Star Wars box set to nerds," Rodney said dismissively.
And that was the last anyone said on the matter, until Rodney started laying his purchases on the conveyer belt and shouted, "Did you use my socks as a welcome mat, you uncultured cow? Look at all the mud!"
It was a weird night all around.