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My mind wasn’t on the usually fascinating schematics of the jumper laid out in front of me. Radek and I had finished mapping the circuits that morning; all I had left to do was diagram them for reference and future use, presumably not when the jumper is wedged into the gate like this last time. There was still the small matter of the corollary to Newton’s first law to compensate for: objects at rest tended to stay at rest, and we’d have to consider adding some sort of booster to overcome inertia in case something like this happened again. But I couldn’t seem to concentrate on my notes, and I knew exactly who to blame.
The same person I suddenly realized was standing in the doorway of my lab, trying to look like he wasn’t about to fall flat on his face.
“Major,” I rose, worried for him, annoyed at myself for being worried. “When did Beckett release you?” I’d been down there, what, only two hours before, and Carson had seemed to have every intention of keeping his patient a while longer.
“He didn’t,” came the shameless, cheerful answer, in a voice that was as tired as he looked. He wouldn’t have fooled someone in a coma, let alone as perceptive and observant a person as I.
I was tempted to chase him back to Carson’s waiting arms, even opening my mouth to abuse at length the stupidity of Air Force majors who had just stumbled away from death’s door and were already heading recklessly back, but two things stopped me. One was, he really did look awful, and I didn’t have the heart to tear into him with my razor-sharp disdain.
The other was, I was privately very glad to see him conscious and on his feet again.
“Well,” I grumbled without heat as I strode over to him. “Sit down before you faint and I have to explain to Carson what you were doing here in the first place.” I shooed him away from the stool he was throwing longing glances at and steered him instead toward the cot sitting by the wall. One of my well-meaning but misguided assistants had set it up a while back for my late nights in the lab, completely missing the point of why I was in the lab late at night. Sheppard didn’t utter a protest, which did little to ease my concern.
There wasn’t much to the man—he was skin and bones at the best of times—but he wasn’t easy to stop when he was set on a path, spurning Newton’s second law as he did all rules. Sir Isaac had clearly never met the stubborn Major John Sheppard. This time, however, a Wraith apparition could have knocked him over. I eased him down instead of giving him the shove I was tempted to. His neck was still bandaged from the wraith-tick, his face pale from the strain of having died and been brought back to life, not to mention the small matter of nearly complete paralysis, and a day later he was here wandering into my lab. If I needed any proof of how bad I was at this whole friendship thing, here it was: I’d managed to choose the one person in Atlantis who seemed to have a complete disregard for his own well-being. Figured.
“Now,” I stood back and crossed my arms. “Dare I ask what was so important that it couldn’t wait for another—” I looked at my watch. “—thirty-five minutes when I promised to join you for lunch?”
The grin, just sloppy enough that I knew he still had some drugs in his system, reappeared. Sometimes he reminded me of my cat, utterly unfazed by my frustration with his misbehavior. If he started tearing up my furniture and marking his territory, I was swearing off strays for good. “I wanted to bring you something.”
That caught my interest. “Oh? A souvenir of your visit with the spider from Hell? Or maybe from the long tunnel of light on the other side?” It wasn’t like he’d been anywhere else besides the infirmary since we’d gotten back.
“Nope.” Sheppard reached clumsily into his jacket, and pulled out a small paper bag he then offered to me. I couldn’t help but notice his hand was clenched to keep from trembling, but if he wasn’t going to mention it, I wasn’t, either.
I did soften my voice a fraction as I warily accepted the offering. “What is it?”
He nodded with his chin, then leaned back against the wall. “Open it.”
I did, with all the care of a bomb-disposal expert. In this state of mind, John could have been offering me dirty laundry with the noblest of intentions.
It wasn’t dirty laundry. I stared, perplexed, at the colorful contents. “Jellybeans?”
“Jellybeans.” He nodded with great satisfaction.
I couldn’t help but reach in and take one out, turning it in my fingers. Red. Cherry maybe, or cinnamon. Definitely not citrus. I ventured a taste. Cherry.
“The red ones are my favorite,” Sheppard noted approvingly.
I stared at him, baffled, even as I savored the nearly forgotten taste of Earth fruit. “Let me get this straight. You broke out of the infirmary less than a day after you were clinically dead, risking Carson’s everlasting wrath not to mention Elizabeth’s, to come give me jellybeans.”
He looked distinctly pleased I’d understood. “Yup.”
I blinked. “You know, Major, I think perhaps we should get you back to the nice doctor. He’ll give you more of those happy drugs, and—”
“I’m tired, McKay, not retarded,” he growled, batting my hand away.
“Right.” I straightened immediately and returned to my workbench in a huff. I could still see him from there and was only two steps away if needed, but I felt a curious urge to touch base with reality for a moment. “Of course,” I said dryly. “How stupid of me—what says ‘I survived having the life sucked out of me by a tick on steroids’ better than jellybeans, right? It makes perfect sense.” Okay, maybe I was getting a little exasperated. Being visited by someone you’d watched die just the day before was unsettling enough even when it didn’t include very odd gifts.
Sheppard made a face, exaggerated by drugs. He was getting exasperated, too. “They’re for when you get hypoglycemic. Just pop one or two of ’em and you’re all set.”
That actually took me aback. He’d heard that? The tick on his neck and the jumper stuck half-in, half-out of the gate hadn’t been enough to worry about; he’d heard me complaining about hypoglycemia? Distracted, I ate another jellybean. Purple. Grape. My favorite.
“You whined enough about it,” he added, as if he’d heard my thoughts.
I drew myself up. “I wasn’t whining. I was under a lot of stress, and it was a legitimate—”
“Have another jellybean, McKay.”
I avoided the green—probably lime—and opted for a brown one. Chocolate, another flavor I missed a lot those days. I sucked on that one to make it last longer, and made a show of returning to my work, purely for appearances’ sake. A few moments later, I asked casually, “So…what else did you hear?”
A glance at the cot confirmed my theory he’d returned to his natural state, that lazy, self-satisfied smile. “Enough to know you saved our bacon big time.”
“Again,” I put in automatically.
“Again,” he allowed. He really did look tired, but always indomitable. It was one of the things I admired about him; the more frantic I got, the more calm he seemed to get. A good quality in a military leader, but confusing for a friend. “I figured you deserved a reward.”
I peered at him uncertainly. “Jellybeans?” Now this was my reward, too? “Well…thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He’d started to cant to the right, and finally put out a hand to support himself. I almost stood again, but he didn’t want to be fussed over, and I wasn’t really the fussing type, either. Apparently, he just wanted to…be here. And since I wanted him here, too, it was simple, right?
Of course, if we did things the simple way, we wouldn’t have been in another galaxy, would we?
“Hey, McKay?” I looked up, startled. “You okay?” Sheppard asked with the intensity peculiar to the drunken, or in this case, drugged.
I shook my head at the absurdity of the question. “No,” I said bluntly.
He nodded, seeming satisfied with that. “Okay, then.” John leaned his head back against the wall. “‘Cause if you were after all this, I’d worry about you.”
The logic of that was just perverted enough to make me laugh. I think I startled both of us this time. “Just promise me one thing,” I said, giving up all pretense of work.
“Sure,” he said, drawing one leg up to act as arm rest.
“Don’t do that again.”
A single eyebrow went up. “What, get an alien bug stuck to my neck?”
I studied my meaningless notes. “Actually, I was talking about dying.”
Silence. I finally glanced up, and saw a glimmer of awareness in those dilated eyes, more than I’d expected. “Not fun, huh?” he asked softly.
I glared at him. “About as much as having my eyes removed with a hot poker, yes.”
“Sorry.” He did seem to mean it.
I think that discomfited me even more. I waved off the apology before the conversation got even more unbearable. “Just…promise you won’t do it again and we’ll consider the matter closed.”
“Okay,” he agreed far too easily, and even as I gave him a suspicious look, he smiled again. “But you saved the day.”
And there was the problem. “Yes, well, there are only so many miracles even I have up my sleeve,” I said, desperate to make him understand. “Seriously, you can’t always count on that, Major, so I must insist you do your best to stay alive, too.” Sometimes I thought the what-ifs would choke me—didn’t they know what a weight that was, being the one everyone counted on to save the day? The day would come when I’d fail, and somebody died. And I was already afraid of who it was going to be.
“That’s all any of us can do, McKay—their best.” His eyes were intent, focused on me. “Nobody’s counting on more than that, including me. I’m just glad you pulled this one off.” The amused look was back.
I shook my head at the utter incorrigibility of the man. I’d just been given permission to fail to keep him alive—how was I supposed to respond to that? “Hence, jellybeans,” I said, weakly smiling.
“Hence jellybeans,” he nodded.
I turned to gaze at the innocuous little bag sitting on the table. Sheppard had staggered out of the infirmary to give me a gift for saving his life. A gift that for all its very strangeness, was thought-out and considerate and, given the lack of confectioners on Atlantis, even sacrificial. I’d saved many, many lives before, but I’d rarely gotten even a thank-you, let alone anything like this. I sputtered a laugh, turning back to John. “I don’t—”
He was asleep. Sprawled awkwardly over my cot and against the wall, head lolling against his chest like it had the day before, when he’d been briefly dead. I flinched, then caught myself. Sleep was good. Dead was bad, but then, it had been temporary. He was getting better now, staggering around Atlantis bestowing gifts. Some sleep and he’d be good as new.
I silently slipped off my stool and ventured closer. In the field I’d seen John snap awake at the slightest stir of movement, at ready even in his sleep, but this time he didn’t budge. As I got close and leaned over him, I could see what I’d missed before: the bruise that had spread past the bandage on his neck, the fine lines of pain around his eyes, the bloodless lips. For all that easygoing attitude, he was still in pain and recovering. I probably should have called Carson the moment he’d appeared in the door.
Now, I just very gently maneuvered him onto his side, and lifted his feet up onto the cot. He sighed and slowly relaxed. Shaking my head, I covered him with the blanket at the end of the cot, then went to the intercom to face Carson’s wrath.
In the end, even Beckett couldn’t condone waking up a patient just to relocate him to sleep elsewhere. Amidst growls and threats, he agreed to let the major stay there as long as I was remained in the lab, in case something happened. As if I was about to go anywhere. I crept back to my bench and started working again.
But my gaze kept returning to the bag of jellybeans, and to my sleeping visitor. It was the most peace I’d ever had from John Sheppard and still he was distracting me. Jellybeans. I had to wonder what twisted kind of mind could come up with that, then decided maybe I didn’t want to know considering how much I secretly liked the gift. What baffled me far more was the fact of the giving, that doing what I had no choice but do would merit a reward. Didn’t he know I would have worked even harder to get us home if necessary, and to save his life? A frantic thirty-eight minutes didn’t even compare.
“Simple mind, simple philosophy,” I muttered, and knew the moment I said it that it wasn’t true. I’d just had more faith and gratitude invested in me than I’d gotten from my parents in all my childhood, and yes, it was a weight that would have me continuing to wake up in cold sweats at night. But it was also a comfort. Which, I supposed, was the real gift here.
Still, the jellybeans gave me a glow of warmth whenever I looked over at them. I took out another cherry one and chewed it with pleasure, then carefully poured the rest out on top of my schematics, sorting citrus from safe ones. Okay, so he hadn’t thought of that, but I could be generous and forgive, considering. At least he’d get to have a few back to enjoy, after obviously having smuggled the bag to Atlantis for himself. Before either of us had even entertained the idea of making friends on the expedition. Before it had occurred to either one of us jellybeans were anything but simple candy.
On the other hand, maybe I would save the orange and yellow and green ones, sort of a reminder. It was the first gift I’d gotten since leaving Earth, the first thank-you I’d gotten in a lot longer. So this was what it felt like. For a physicist, I had precious little experience with Newton’s third law, not where people were concerned.
Science had always been its own reward, but this…this was gratifying in a whole different way. If I wasn’t careful, I could even get used to it.
A few feet away, John slept on, oblivious.
And I ate one more jellybean—pink—and sat back to contemplate Newton.
The End