Blindsided by Madison [Reviews - 17]
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Category: Slash Pairings > McKay/Sheppard
Characters: Carson Beckett, Elizabeth Weir, John Sheppard, Major Lorne, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Steven Caldwell, Teyla Emmagan
Rating: NC-17
Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst, First Time, Hurt Comfort, Team
Warnings: Adult themes
Series: None

Word count: 21803; Completed: Yes

Summary: A serious off-world accident has John facing a medical discharge and his team scrambling to find a way for him to stay in Atlantis.


Story Notes:
Inspired a line from the song "Sunscreen" by Baz Luhrmann.


To my delight, Blindsided won the Puddlejumper Award for Angst/Drama in the 2007 McKay/Sheppard Awards. Thank you to whomever nominated this story and for all of you that voted for it!
When Lt. Colonel Sheppard awoke blindfolded and with his arms tied down, he spent several seconds trying to process where he was and what had happened to him. As he lay still, fists clenched but no longer fighting the restraints, he gradually became aware that the darkness was not absolute, that there was a sense of light behind it. He became aware too of the subtle hum of electronic monitoring devices and the pervasive odor of disinfectant. The infirmary?


"Hey." Ronon's voice was quiet. "You awake?"


"Ronon...why am I in restraints?" John felt a profound sense of relief that he was not a prisoner in some alien gulag somewhere, and allowed a little of 'you'd better have a good explanation for this' into his casual drawl.


"Wasn't my idea." Ronon as usual was succinct. "But they had this thing about you trying to claw your eyes out."


He sucked in his breath sharply as the memories returned: he remembered the mission to MX-whatever, the genuinely nice native people there and Teyla's evident pleasure in being able to guide them to decent trading partners for a change. He remembered too the prospect of getting some real meat, fresh off the hoof so to speak, without the long delay that supplies from Earth suffered. It had been such an uneventful mission that Rodney actually started joking as they did a little exploring around the village that it was too good to be true, that there had to be some evil catch somewhere. They had all laughed then, making jokes about what the catch could possibly be. Well, okay, maybe it was mostly him and Rodney making the jokes, with Ronon occasionally grunting in appreciation and Teyla pretending to be offended.


He remembered they had stopped alongside a body of water, a deep crystalline pool that reminded him of the local swimming hole every kid dreams of when growing up. He had stepped out on an overhang, leaning down to look in the water, when Rodney's voice had snapped from somewhere behind him.


"Don't you read any science fiction, Colonel? The watering hole is always where the predators hang out in hopes of snagging an unsuspecting meal."


"What does that have to do with science fiction, McKay?" He glanced over his shoulder to see the physicist struggling up the embankment. He turned back to the water. "Sounds more like one of those nature programs to me."


"Did you ever notice how many assistants Marlin Perkins went through on Wild Kingdom? He called them all 'Jim' but I swear it wasn't the same man." Rodney's voice was sharp with concern. "Still, we're talking Pegasus Galaxy
here, so yes, science fiction. I'm not sure this bank is stable. You should come away from the edge."


He wondered then what it was like to live in Rodney's world, where everything in the nature was a potential threat to life and limb, but he was oddly comfortable manipulating weapons and technologies of awesome destructive capabilities. Perversely, just to tease, he leaned back down over the water. "You should come on over here, Rodney. There's some cool fish down there."



As though they were tame park fish, accustomed to being fed by people, the startlingly colorful orange and white fish began to lazily gather in the shallower water beneath him. He spared another quick glance back at Rodney and had just turned to observe the fish once more when he noted one of them cresting the surface. It paused, delicately balanced with its head out of the water, gills flaring and closing, before its eyes winked shut and its cheek panels ballooned out. John felt a strong hand suddenly grip his shoulder and jerk him backwards, but it was too late. The spittle from the fish hit him with deadly accuracy in the face.


He staggered backwards, nearly taking Rodney down with him, as his eyes began to weep and burn. "Shit! Fuck!" He dropped the P-90 and began to scrub furiously at his eyes, stomping one foot at the intensity of the pain. Hands guided him to the lower path; he sank to his knees on the sandy soil even as he continued to wipe at his face.


"Teyla!" Rodney's voice was urgent. "Tip his head back."


He felt Teyla's hands on either side of his face, tilting his head back into the warm planes of her abdomen, holding him steady. He heard the sound of a canteen being opened and the felt the splash of cool water being poured over his face.


"Colonel." Rodney's voice had a slight tremor to it. "You must hold your eyes open."


He forced the lids apart as more water poured down from above, but instead of bringing soothing relief, the pain only intensified. With a gasp, he knocked Rodney's hands away and twisted out of Teyla's support. He crumpled to the ground on his side, digging the toes of his boots into the ground, hands scrabbling at his face as he started to scream. The last thing he remembered was Ronon shouting for everyone to stand back and the whine of his stunner.


"You shot me." He spoke aloud to Ronon now. Ronon was starting to make a habit of shooting him, it would seem.


He heard the slight creak of leather as Ronon shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah."


Gotta love Ronon's conversational style. Obviously being stunned had been preferable to the continued agony. "How long have I been here?" He flexed one hand against the restraints, vaguely indicating the room with a little circle of his index finger.


"Two days now. They had you on the good stuff at first. They've been cutting you back since yesterday." He could hear Ronon get to his feet; had the sudden sensation that he was now standing beside the bed looking down at him.


"Soooo," he drawled again. "How bad is it?"


"I'll get Beckett." And with that Ronon was gone.


Shit. This is not good.


When Carson returned with Elizabeth, it only confirmed for him that he was about to get some very bad news. Carson went about unbuckling the restraints before telling John anything, the reluctance to speak almost a tangible force in him. When he did start to explain, it was in a long rambling approach to the subject.


"Cut to the chase, Doc," John had finally interrupted when Carson seemed willing to go on ad nauseam about the physiology and feeding habits of the spitting fish. "Am I going to be permanently blind or not?"


"We don't know yet, John," Elizabeth said smoothly, but he could hear the 'everything's going to be just fine when it's not' tone in her voice. Whether she was conscious of the fact or not, she believed the disability was permanent. "The Myneerans state that the condition is usually irreversible among their people, but you have reacted somewhat differently so far."



"Differently?" He couldn't help it; he cocked his head in her direction. "How so?"


"Well," Carson jumped back in, "that's the really interesting part. Normally the mixture of ordinary water and the venom from the fish results in a melting of the corneas and intense pain, presumably so the victim is disoriented and falls into the pond, where upon the feeding frenzy begins."


Ouch. Rodney will really appreciate being right on this one.


"However, in your case, a sort of scale has developed over your eyes," Carson continued. "A tightly adherent scale, mind you. We tried removing it under general anesthesia but it wouldn't budge, not without damaging the integrity of the globe. The Myneerans feel really badly about this by the way, well, it never occurred to them to warn visitors of a hazard every child knows about as soon as they can crawl. Anyway, they have mention of this particular side effect in their medical histories."


"And?" John prompted. Part of him wanted to kick and slam things around, to make Carson just spit it out. That wouldn't change anything though, and it would just upset Carson. Elizabeth too. He reached up to feel the bandaging material covering his forehead and eyes.


"Stop that," Carson said automatically before continuing. "The information is pretty vague and based on what happened to another visitor to their world many thousands of years ago..."


"An Ancient," John guessed.


"It would seem possible from the description. Unfortunately, they didn't stick around and let the Myneerans know of the outcome. However, the working theory is that perhaps the scales function in the role of healing and that eventually they will come off on their own."


"But you have no way of knowing that...or what kind of vision, if any, I will regain if that does occur?"


"No, lad." Carson sounded deeply regretful.


"I see," he said quietly and then had to resist the hysterical urge to laugh because seeing? Not so much.


"We're still gathering information." Elizabeth sounded like the quintessential diplomat she was. Well hooray for the home team. "Rodney and Teyla have gone back to Myneer and are searching the records." She startled him with sudden contact of her hand on his lower leg where it lay under the blanket and he involuntarily flinched. She withdrew her touch abruptly.


"Aye," Beckett added. He wondered if Carson and Elizabeth were trading knowing looks at each other. "And Ronon was instrumental in collecting some specimens of the fish for further study."


"What? Is he insane?" Hmmn, better not examine that question too carefully. "How'd he manage to do that without getting spit on?"


He could hear the grin in Carson's voice as he explained. "Oh that. Rodney rigged a depth charge for him and they blew the suckers up. Stunned them until they all floated to the surface."


He laughed a little then, warmed at the thought that his team would go to such lengths. More than a little pissed too, that they were taking such risks. He was reminded of the incident with the retrovirus. Had he been more rational during that whole thing, perhaps Walker and Stevens would be alive today.


"You should get some rest now." Elizabeth's suggestion felt like a dismissal and in a moment he was alone in the dark with his thoughts once more.


***


Without vision, it was ridiculously easy to spend most of his time asleep. There didn't seem to be any point to being awake. Beckett obviously wasn't going to let him out of the infirmary and he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, so drifting in and out of sleep seemed like a good idea to him. Possibly he had the excuse of shaking off the remains of the pain medications Carson had pumped into his system, but that seemed less and less likely as time passed. He dreamt once of Ford, and woke with a sudden crystal-clear image of his face, healthy and whole again, telling him that all he needed to do was take some of the Wraith enzyme...it had been harder to sleep after that.


Without vision he also lost tract of time. He had no idea how many days he had been in the infirmary or how much time had passed since when Carson and Elizabeth had first prepped him for the worst and when Teyla sat down by his side.


"John." Funny that he'd never noticed before how melodious her voice was, as though she were a trained musician. Her voice had depth and layers too, warmth and concern, and that indefinable stillness that made everything she said seem somewhat profound. That she was a beautiful woman had unfairly overshadowed the richness of her voice until now. "How are you feeling?"


Somehow when Teyla asked, he was tempted to actually answer truthfully. Elizabeth asked the same question every day when she stopped by to visit with him, but he always felt that she really didn't want to hear any answer other than 'fine' and it irritated him that she kept asking. How did he feel? Useless, washed-up, crippled, bored, dysfunctional...old. He felt old. He gave a short laugh. "Sorry for myself."


"I have heard your people profess that honesty is the best policy," Teyla began solemnly, "but I have observed they do not always put it into practice. Thank you for proving me wrong."


He felt himself giving a genuine smile, his first in days, he was sure. "So Teyla," he drawled. "Since they let you in to see me, I'm guessing we're reasonably sure this isn't going to be another bug thing, huh?"


"Dr. Beckett assures me that this is not a 'bug thing' as you put it. He also told me that he is planning to release you from the infirmary in the morning."


"Uh-huh." He squashed down the almost bile-like surge of bitterness that welled up suddenly. Release him? To go do what? There was a long silence that threatened to become awkward. "Just between you and me," he said at last, "I'm thinking the doc's just a little disappointed it's not a bug thing."


He could hear the smile start and then fade in her voice when she spoke. "Perhaps that is because he knows the solution to the bug thing now."


"Yeah." It seemed ironic to think that a few months ago he nearly died as the result of being infected with the retrovirus, mutating into something less than human. Walker and Stevens had died during the attempt to retrieve the genetic material needed to reverse the infective process, died to try and save his life. When lucidity first begun to return during his long recovery process and he fully comprehended what had occurred, it made him sick inside. Even now, sometimes he would be struck by the sudden realization. Two guys died trying to save your sorry ass. How you gonna make up for that?


Teyla's voice jerked him back from his dark thoughts. "Dr. McKay feels very much responsible for what happened to you on the planet."


He felt himself frown under the bandaging material still covering his eyes at Carson's insistence. "That's just nuts, Teyla. Anyone would have done the same, given the circumstances. He couldn't have known that water would make things worse—no one would have expected that."


"Perhaps you would consider telling him that."


"Rodney's considerably more mobile than I am at the moment." Not to mention, I'm easier to find.


He heard the little exhale of air through tightened lips—not quite a sigh, but a small noise of exasperation just the same. He wondered which of the two of them Teyla was the most irritated with.


"Very well. Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime? Anything that I might bring you?


He wasn't even remotely tempted to be flippant. "Nah, I'm good."


She warned him with a brief touch on his shoulder before she leaned in to press her forehead against his own. She smelled good; something wild and sweet and slightly floral. It reminded him of honeysuckle and hammocks and long sunlit afternoons with bees droning somewhere in the background. A strand of her hair brushed his cheek as it fell forward and he imagined its coppery tint as it glowed in the sun, resisting the urge to trap it between his fingers, as though by touching it he could see it once more.


***


He had been back in his quarters for three solid days straight when Ronon came to see him. He knew this time exactly how long it had been because he had started a final countdown in his head ever since the last talk with Elizabeth and Carson before being discharged from the infirmary.


He heard the door chime but did not bother to acknowledge it. When the door opened anyway, he was slightly surprised, but figured he just hadn't locked it after the last time Teyla left him a tray of food. He somehow knew it was Ronon when the door opened—he sensed the briefly looming presence in the entranceway before he entered, smelled the clean, earthy scent of leather and oil that seemed to be a part of Ronon wherever he went. Ronon was the soft footfall of a predator on a loamy trail, the dark underbelly of the forest, the thin silver light of a full moon.


Ronon came over by the table and John heard him push slightly at the food tray sitting there, largely untouched. As usual, Ronon got right to the point. "How long you gonna keep this crap up?"


"Excuse me?" The apathy was too ingrained now for him to really get irritated just yet. He lay on the bed unmoving, hands clasped behind his head as he faced the ceiling.


"This. You. Hiding out in your quarters. Licking your wounds."


"Like I have a choice here, Ronon."


"Yes. You do."


"Tell me something. If this had happened to you when you were a Runner, what would you have done?"


"I would've adapted or died. I certainly wouldn't have rolled over and given up without a fight."


Even then, he couldn't find it in him to get pissed. He just pushed himself up onto his hands, frowning in Ronon's general direction. "Ronon. They're sending me back to Earth." After he said it, it occurred to him that he did not say 'sending me home.'


Ronon came closer to the bed. "Why?"


Funny how the guy could ask the really tough questions with the fewest of words. "Because I can no longer do my job. Because Beckett's no ophthalmologist. Because I'm a liability now." In his head, he heard the replay of Elizabeth's well-reasoned explanation, the reassurances overlaid with anger and frustration. There was a hint of desperation too, a need on her part to believe that this was the best thing him right now.


"What's an ophthalmologist?" He strongly suspected Ronon had just crossed his arms over his chest, but he couldn't be sure that his brain wasn't just supplying the imagery because that's what he expected Ronon to do.


"A doctor. A specialist. Who treats eyes. Anyway, Beckett's not one, they want to send me to see one."


"Uh-huh." Ronon's grunt spoke volumes. "This specialist. He ever been off your world?"


"No, but it doesn't matter." It didn't matter that no one had ever had to deal with this particular medical issue before, because no one expected a cure to be found. This was just a graceful way of removing him from Atlantis. "The Daedelus will be back in three weeks, and then staying here for a few weeks before making the return trip to Earth. Unless something changes, when she ships back, I'll be on her." And I won't be coming back this time.


There was a long silence. Not especially uncomfortable or tense. Ronon was good at just sitting and absorbing what he had been told, reflecting on what had been said or what he was about to say. He was kinda restful that way, when he wasn't plotting to attack you. Fortunately, he and Ronon had gotten past that stage in their relationship. John reached around behind him for the pillow, shoving it up behind his head as he lay back down again.


"McKay thinks you're avoiding him." Ronon spoke at last.


"That's stupid," John said wearily. God, like he had the energy to deal with Rodney's neuroses just now.


"I told him not to be such an ass—that you were avoiding everyone." There was another long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was thoughtfully slow. "It would've been a lot harder now."


"What would be harder? What are you talking about?" He lifted his chin in Ronon's direction, really focusing on him for the first time.


"Harder. This. If this had happened to me now instead of when I was a Runner."


He waited in silence for the explanation. He could picture the shrug when Ronon began speaking again. "It's harder to accept help than to do without it." He heard the movement as Ronon headed towards the door. "I gotta go talk to someone."


"You do that," he grinned faintly at the idea, suddenly picturing Ronon with his own talk show.


***


"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" Rodney steamrolled into his quarters in mid-thought apparently, with no pretense at waiting for permission to enter. Damn it, he was sure he had locked the door this time. As Rodney passed John on his way into the room, he noticed the scent of fresh coffee laced with chocolate and a hint of something citrusry, which struck him as really odd, given the whole allergy thing.


"Hello to you too, Rodney. Sorry, but I don't remember inviting you in."


"Oh." All the sound and fury went out of him in a rush and John could picture him deflating. He could clearly envision the hurt, confused look on Rodney's face and the intensity of his blue eyes staring at him. He decided he liked furious, energetic Rodney better. He sighed.


"Okay, I'll bite. What's the stupidest thing you've ever heard, because believe me, Rodney, you think lots of things are stupid."


"Sending you back to Earth because you can no longer...you know, see." Rodney began to stalk around the room once more. There was the sound of things being set down on the table; John presumed Rodney's laptop was one of the items. "What, are you no longer a valuable member of this expedition because you can't function in a military capacity anymore?"


Or fly, fire a weapon, eat in public without embarrassing myself, or find Elizabeth's office... "Having the gene alone isn't sufficient reason for letting me stay on here in Atlantis."


"You still have a brain, don't you? I mean, not that you've exercised it to any great capacity, but it's functional and moderately better than some others, who shall remain nameless or known as Kavenaugh. So what, you are being forced to rethink your career at this moment, rather than at some not-too-distant future point when the military decides they need someone younger and with more hair in the position."


Involuntarily his hand moved to his hair. He hadn't showered or changed clothes since returning to his room; his hair felt a little flat but it was still there.


"No, no, not that you don't have plenty of hair now, honestly, bordering on hirsute there, what, you've given up on shaving? Still, you don't think that's going to last forever, do you? Your having hair, I mean."


"Whatever happened to 'hey, let's be nice to the blind man?'" He felt the whole raised eyebrow thing would probably be more effective without the bandaging. He settled for crossing his arms in front of his chest, hoping the sarcasm would show through.


"Seems to me it's time for a little tough love instead...unless of course, you'd rather go home." Rodney hesitated then, uncertainty suddenly coloring his voice.


"This is home." His words were tight and clipped, angry.


"Just as I thought." Rodney seemed pleased. "Okay then, we've got our work cut out for us over the next few weeks." He snapped the fingers of both hands while simultaneously pumping his fists together with a small thud, sounds John recognized from seeing Rodney perform them a thousand times before embarking on a new, challenging task. It brought a silly grin to his face even as he felt the first little stirrings of hope.


"I trust you have a plan?" He drawled. What harm was there in hearing him out?


"Don't I always?" He could hear Rodney moving over by the table and the sounds of something being unzipped from a bag and arranged on the countertop. "We've got voice recognition software here, I've already taken the liberty of initializing it with recordings of your voice from previous missions—fortunately I had more to work with than the usual pithy goodbyes you make when headed out the door on a one-way trip. The beautiful addition here, if I do say so myself, are the modifications we made to reverse the written word into spoken sound. Radek and I did that, working with a program that we found in the Ancient database." Rodney sounded inordinately pleased with himself.


John came over to stand by him near the table. "So this means..."


"It means all you have to do is scan a written page into this device here," Rodney suddenly grabbed his hand and brought it over to the unit on the table, releasing it when he began to explore it with his fingertips, "and using this interface..." Rodney guided his hand down a cable to a small hand-held unit that felt like an iPod, "you can just hear what is written. I'm working on a link to your laptop, so people can send you information without having to have direct access to the scanner itself. Of course, this means you have no excuse now not to finish War and Peace."


"Damn," John said softly. "I was hoping for an out."


He heard Rodney snort in amusement but his voice was more serious as he continued. "Now, I've put Teyla in charge of the basic daily living skills, I'm thinking she's the only one who will have the patience to work with you on that without killing you. Ronon is going to work with you on navigating the city and there's still a lot more electronic modifications I need to make. We'll need to get you involved in a few projects too. Our goal is to make you self-sufficient enough by the time Caldwell returns that he won't be able to argue with the entirely reasonable demand that you be allowed to stay here in Atlantis."


"Rodney." His throat tightened and he was unable to continue. He was half-tempted to get angry, to tell Rodney this was all pointless and to throw him out, but it seemed more effort than it was worth.


"I don't want to hear any pissing and moaning from you about how hard all this is. No, 'Rawd-ney, I can't do that.' We don't have time for that shit. Seriously, you commit to this 100% or not at all."


"Of all the people to tell me not to complain...jeez, Rodney. Pot. Kettle." He snorted.


He heard the rustle of a shirtsleeve and felt the hand flap move the air nearby. "Yes, yes, and you were right. You were trying to instill in me some basic survival skills, I am just returning the favor now."


There was a long moment of silence. Unlike with Teyla or Ronon, Rodney's silence crackled with energy, with things unsaid and things that needed doing. "Colonel," he began at last, voice diffident where it had previously been confident, "I just want you to know how very sorry..."


John interrupted him with a growl. This at least, he could fix. "Do you know what really pisses me off about this whole situation, Rodney?


There was a pause, in which he guessed that Rodney shook his head first before belatedly realizing he needed to respond verbally. "Noooo..." his voice was wary.


"Of all the things in this universe that I thought would possibly bring me down, all the ways in which I could possibly die or end up grounded or be forced to retire...it wound up being because I was spit on by a Disney character."


Rodney made a little choked off sound of strangled laughter. "I always suspected Nemo was a sneaky little bastard."


You would. I should have listened. Mentally he sighed. It wasn't like he had any alternative ideas himself and if nothing else maybe Rodney's rehabilitation plans would give him a few options. Besides, he was bored. Feeling sorry for himself had limited appeal on an on-going basis. "Sooo, Rodney," he purposely exaggerated the drawl on Rodney's name, "what's first on your list?"


"First you eat something more substantial than a power bar. Oh yes, and shower, get some clean clothes. Seriously Colonel, you reek."


***


The shower felt incredibly good. He'd been hesitant at first, concerned that the water would bring on the return of the intense pain, but a cautious turning of his face into the water's spray did not cause any change in the sensation to his eyes. He had removed the bandaging, tacky and past time needing to go. Curiously he touched his eyes, noting the hard shell-like coverings over his corneas that he could still close his lids over. Eew.


Once he got into the stinging spray, water as hot as he could stand it, it had been a relief to get clean again. He felt somewhat like a person recovering from the flu: not quite well yet but feeling tremendously improved by the act of being able to shower again. He used the deodorant soap already present in the stall, but the scent seemed overwhelming and he wondered if he could get Teyla to get him some of that Athosian stuff they had all ended up using towards the end of the first year...the one that smelled like freshly mown hay and clean sand. He washed his hair twice and then wrapping a towel around his waist, took his time attempting to shave. The actual act itself was not so difficult; it was finding his kit, identifying the items he wanted from the ones he did not and fingering the razor without cutting himself that was challenging. That and having to keep checking with his fingertips to see if he had missed any places.
It was slow work.


Just before he left the bathroom, he picked up the dog tags that he had taken off before getting into the shower, the black-edged noise guards preventing them from cutting into his hand as he gripped them tightly. A part of him thought it was senseless to put them back on, but he could not imagine not wearing them, a least until he was ordered not to do so. As he slipped them over his head, he thought about the fact that Caldwell would finally get what he wanted, John's place as CO of Atlantis. The thought rankled with him: Caldwell may get his job, but it was still his city. Atlantis was his.


At the thought, a loud 'click' echoed in his mind, a sense of something locking into place. He frowned, waiting for a moment to see just what had occurred, but nothing further happened and he shrugged it off.


Rodney was still present when he exited the bathroom. He half-expected that to be the case; Rodney had been deep in the throes of setting up or fixing something when he had entered the bathroom in the first place, muttering a distracted acknowledgment in John's direction when he had announced he was taking a shower now, oblivious to any possible desire for privacy.


"Okay," Rodney began when he re-entered the main room, "the next time you interface..." he stopped, suddenly sucking his breath in abruptly.


John paused on his way over to the bureau. "What?"


"Nothing, nothing. What was I saying? Oh yes, well...about the, um..." Rodney's voice trailed off again.


"What?" John repeated, more sharply this time. "You're freaking me out, Rodney. What is it?"


"It's nothing, really." But John could hear that Rodney's respiratory rate had elevated and his protests sounded slightly breathless.


"Spit it out, McKay. It's like the bug thing, right? I look weird or something."


There was a pause, and then when Rodney spoke he sounded truly puzzled. "The bug thing? Oh, like when the retrovirus started changing you? Oh, it's nothing like that...well, okay, the glowing green orbs where your eyes should be, that's a little distracting, but in a fascinating, X-Man kind of way. I'm thinking you'll need sunglasses when you go out...yes, sunglasses." Rodney made a sort of gulping sound.


"Glowing, green..." he began faintly. Just wait until he spoke to Carson again. How could he have left that out? Shit, they'd never let him out of the SGC if he got sent earthside now. Wait a minute..."So if it's not my eyes that are freaking you out, what is it?"


Rodney mumbled incoherently.


"What's that?" He folded his arms across his chest, annoyed.


"I expected you to be wearing clothes, that's all. And don't tell me a towel counts." Rodney growled. "I was a little startled, okay?"


He folded his lips shut tightly in an effort not to smile. Rodney was embarrassed, for crying out loud. "Sorry, my room and all that. A little hard to shower in clothes, come to think of it."


"I'm just saying, warn a guy, will you?"


He moved carefully in the direction of the bureau, a hand out in front of him to find it. Once he located the countertop, he grinned evilly as he opened the top drawer. "Sure, Rodney. By the way, getting dressed now." He dropped the towel from his waist.


It always amused him to hear Rodney sputter.


***


"Dr. McKay was correct." Teyla's voice came to him from the general direction of his closet, muffled slightly as she appeared to duck her head within.


"About what this time?" He concentrated on her presence, moving towards the sound of her voice and her individual scent. He stopped as he drew close to her, an indefinable something telling him that he was standing next to her.


"You keep your belongings in an orderly fashion. Such organization will make it easier for you to locate things."


He gave a slight shrug, conscious that there was already a diminishing tendency on his part to use visual cues and he wondered if it would fade altogether over time. "It's a military thing."


"We will use such training to our advantage." He heard the sound of hangers being slid along the clothes rack as Teyla obviously looked them over. He heard the brief crackle of paper as well.


"Notes, Teyla?" He smiled, suspecting Rodney had talked her ear off.


"Yes," she spoke in all seriousness. "There is a lot of ground to cover. For instance, I have been given these safety pins," he heard the pins rattle within a plastic container as she apparently lifted them up in front of her, "in order for us to use them in various patterns to identify your clothing either by color or by what items go together. The choice is yours, whichever system makes the most sense to you. This will be a temporary measure for now, as Dr. McKay is sure he can come up with a better identification method. For instance...ah yes." He heard the hangers slide again. "I believe Rodney is correct about this as well, I have seen you wear these items together. So if you like, we could identify these two items in that fashion."


He reached out towards the closet and she placed the sleeve of a non-military issue shirt in his hand. He felt the pleasurable sensation of the soft, natural fabric between his fingertips and thought he recognized an old favorite. He hazarded a guess. "The light blue cotton?"


"Yes, and these pants. I'm sorry, I do not know what you would call them—they are sand colored."


"Khaki."


"Khaki." She repeated the word, obviously committing it to memory. "Yes. So how would you prefer to identify your clothing?"


"By color." He let the sleeve fall back into place. It was just as well that Teyla was helping him in this matter. He'd seen some of the clothes Rodney chose to wear in his rare off-duty moments. Checks. Argyle. Orange. It made it that much odder that Rodney apparently noticed what he wore on occasion.


They spent a fair amount of time marking and sorting his clothing until Teyla was certain he could quickly and easily select a given outfit for the day. He didn't say much when she teased him about the fact that he wore so much black. A joke about being color-blind started in his mind, but languished there without being voiced.


"What's next?" He asked when he heard the paper rattle again.


"Navigating a dinner plate." She paused, obviously concentrating on what she was reading.


He felt suddenly weary. "Um, Teyla? Think we can call it a day for now? Come back to this later?"


"I will have you know that Ronon and Rodney destroyed many plates before successfully devising a means of permanently identifying a set of dishes for your use." Teyla's voice was mock-stern, but he recognized the real hint of steel behind her words. He sighed and gave in.


"Perhaps we should go to the table for this part," Teyla suddenly sounded less sure of herself. He followed the sound of her voice over to the table, finding and pulling out a chair with a little fumbling, catching a foot in the legs before settling into it with a sigh.


"Why do I need special plates?" Damn it, he was tired of being special.


"I confess, I do not understand this part very well." The paper rattled once more. "Rodney explained the concept of using a clock face for directionality, but this looks nothing like any clock I've ever seen in Atlantis."


He saw the problem. "That's because we rarely use that type of clock to tell time anymore. Everything you've seen has been a digital readout. But we used to tell time with numbers on a circle and moving hands in the middle that pointed to the time. Trust me, Rodney's diagram will make sense to me—pilots use the clock face for direction too." I used to be a pilot. "When I tell you to cover my six, what does that mean to you?"


"To bring up the rear." No hesitation there.


"Okay, so if I am standing in the middle of the clock face, then 6 o'clock is directly behind me and," he flattened his hand and used it to point as he spoke, "this is twelve, three, and this," shifting hands and using the left, "is nine. Got it?"


"Got it." Teyla's smile came through loud and clear.


"So if I say I have Darts coming in at 2 o'clock, relative to my position..."


"Then they would be approaching on a vector just slightly forward of your right shoulder."


"Exactly."


"So with that in mind," he heard the sound of a plate being placed in front of him, "with the notch oriented towards 6 o'clock, then the food placement will be as follows...your protein source will be from between 2 to 5 o'clock. Your first carbohydrate or vegetable will be from 9 to 7 and the second will be from 12 to 9. Liquids will be off to the side at 2 o'clock, any desserts will be at 10 o'clock."


"Always?"


"Anyone who prepares a plate for you, be it one of us or the serving staff, will follow these guidelines. What you do yourself is up to you, of course."


He fingered the notched rim of the plate. The idea that so many people were involved in trying to make his life easier was somewhat overwhelming. He pushed the plate away from him slowly. "Teyla, I just want you to know how much I appreciate..." he made a vague 'this' motion with his hand.


"I must admit, I find it interesting. I find myself intrigued by the challenges while at the same time determined to find better solutions than the ones at hand. I am not the only one. I should warn you though, some of Dr. McKay's solutions..."


"I know," he sighed. "Scaling back is not really in Rodney's vocabulary, is it?"


"For a man with such an impressive vocabulary, I am often surprised at the words that are not in it," Teyla agreed.


***


"Lorne, you do realize that you are acting CO of Atlantis at the moment, don't you?" He spoke into the headset, frowning.


"Yes sir, and I learned at the hands of the master how to delegate as many tasks as humanly possible. Especially when it comes to paperwork." Lorne managed to sound respectful and as though he was smirking all at the same time. Damn, wonder where he got that from?


"Now, Major. You know that's not my problem any more."


"Actually sir, if you would bother to check today's memos, you would see that Doc's placed you on the restricted duty roster, which means that you do have some tasks awaiting your immediate attention."


John was momentarily stunned. "I'm not so sure that's such a good idea..."


"Please sir," Lorne sounded slightly desperate. "Don't make me have to go to Dr. McKay and tell him I let you weasel out of your duties. I like having hot water in my quarters."


"C'mon Lorne, McKay wouldn't really..."


"Oh yes he would, sir. He said, and I quote, 'under no circumstances is he allowed to play the blind card.' Sir." Lorne finished rather painfully.


"Okaaaay." He stretched out the word, considering all the implications of what Lorne was saying. "Very well. I'll check out the reports you've sent me. By the way, while I'm thinking about it, new SOP for off-world missions. Whenever possible, we check in with the locals to make sure there aren't any native hazards to be concerned about."


"Like the Nemo fish, sir?"


"The Nemo fish..."

"Yes sir, that's what everyone's calling them."


He managed to sign off with Lorne before he started to laugh.



***

"I don't care." The voice sounded petulant. "I think Rodney's being mean."


John had paused in the corridor, testing his ability to correctly determine which way to turn next when the half-whispered words reached his ears. He frowned, trying to picture the speaker...what was her name? The botanist that Rodney dated a few times, the one with the perpetual expression of a wounded fawn. He had wondered at the time what the appeal was for Rodney. Not that she wasn't attractive enough, but she certainly didn't seem the type to withstand Rodney's withering disdain. He always thought that Rodney would have preferred someone with a greater ability to understand the technical details of his work, or at the very least, someone with a strong verbal backhand. On the other hand, maybe that was her appeal...at any rate, she sounded annoyed with him now.


He couldn't hear the other speaker, whoever it was had kept their voice lower than the botanist. "I don't see why we can't help if he needs it, look, he's obviously lost right now."


He was startled to realize that she was referring to him. Suddenly, she was beside him, speaking louder than necessary. "Colonel? Can I help you?"


Blind not deaf, lady. He started to speak but became aware of additional movement and recognized Teyla's scent.


"Dr. Brown." She sounded mildly disapproving, which for Teyla meant very disapproving. "I believe the Colonel is doing just fine on his own."


"Besides," he added, "guys never admit when they're lost. Even when they are. Which I'm not." He gave his 'seriously, trust me' smile.


He heard the botanist sniff in annoyance, which he presumed was with Teyla. "Just so you know, Colonel, Rodney has forbidden anyone to give you directions unless you ask. But if you ask...."she trailed off suggestively.


"In a manner commiserate with a dire emergency and not 'oozing buckets of charm', I believe was how Dr. McKay stated it." Teyla dryly clarified. Amusement warred with annoyance in her voice.


"I think I'm insulted." He paused, cocking his head at the two women. "Yep. Pretty sure. Insulted."


"Dr. McKay is currently in the Jumper Bay should you care to tell him that personally. Come, Dr. Brown." If the little squeak of protest and the stumbling footsteps were any indication, he was fairly certain Dr. Brown was being marched off forcibly against her will.


The Jumper Bay. By tacit understanding, the Jumper Bay had not been one of the locations that he had been working on with Ronon to find within the city. There seemed no point in that. In all other respects, Ronon had been brutal in his re-education methods. He had no problem with John's preference for working at odd hours of the night, at times when the halls were relatively quiet, though he had pointed out that sooner or later John would have to learn how to navigate his way around with more distractions. He was relentless in his conduction of drills. He had mapped out the most common pathways John would need to know; John had found out later that Ronon walked them all blindfolded himself so as to better identify non-visual cues to direction that he could convey to John. His appreciation for Ronon's dedication began to dwindle with the ever-increasingly complex challenges Ronon laid out for him. Still, he could now locate the infirmary, the gym, the mess, Elizabeth's office and the science labs from his quarters and navigate in between those locations as well.


It had been the hardest thing he'd ever undertaken. At first he had to walk with one hand on the wall at all times; if he used his imagination he could pretend he could feel the heartbeat of the city as he slowly walked her halls. He had only been able to move at a snail's pace at first, but under Ronon's tutelage he'd gotten much faster, able to move at nearly his normal walking speed. Running was out of the question though, and he was beginning to miss the physical activity, his body missing the regular workouts he used to perform. No running, no sparring. He needed to find some sort of outlet for his energy. He had resisted the whole white cane thing, knowing that it really made sense and would speed his ability to move but feeling somehow to accept its use would make his disability officially permanent.


He stood in the corridor and wondered if he could find the Jumper Bay. At the thought, he felt a slight tug to the left and cautiously, not knowing why, he turned in that direction. The way before him felt open, beckoning. With a frown, he kept turning until he was facing the opposite way. Now he felt as he did when he was approaching a wall, a sense of a solid object existed in front of him, blocking his way. He reached out, taking a tentative step forward. Nothing was there, but the feeling of oppressive weight bore down even more. He stopped, hesitating before turning back to face the other way. All at once, the path felt...lighter.


He tried to think about where the Jumper Bay was in relation to his current location and to his surprise, there was the slight sensation of oppression again, like a change in barometric pressure before a storm. He took a tentative step forward to the left and the pressure lessened. Don't think. Just move.


Concentrating on just the sensation of pressure given and removed, he moved down the corridors until before he knew it, he was standing in the Jumper Bay. He started to radio Rodney to tell him to come out and meet him, but he felt the pressure again and after a brief hesitation, concentrated on finding Rodney as he slowly turned in a circle. The path opened up for him and with a grin he moved forward until he came to the ramp of one of the jumpers, Jumper One he knew instinctively.


Excited, he swung up the ramp at a rapid clip, saying, "Rodney, you'll never believe what just..." He broke off abruptly as Rodney shouted "Look out!" and he tripped over an open tool box, crashing down to the floor over top of it.


"Ow! Shit!" John gripped his shin where the sharp edge of the metal toolkit had cut into it, feeling the torn cloth and the blood oozing between his fingers as he winced and pulled his leg into his side.


"Shit, shit, shit...Colonel, I am so sorry. Please, let me look at it." Rodney was at his side, trying to pull his hand away.


"Leave it alone, Rodney, it's not that bad," he said through gritted teeth. "Here, give me a hand up." He reached out.


He felt Rodney's firm grip take his hand and he was half-hoisted to his feet. He heard the sounds of the toolbox being kicked roughly aside and it was on the tip of his tongue to take Rodney to task for the uncharacteristic abuse of tools, but his leg still hurt like a sonofabitch. He allowed himself to be guided as he limped to the pilot's chair, whereupon Rodney dropped to his knees and began trying unsuccessfully to roll up his pants leg far enough to expose the wound.


"Oh yes, yes, sure, you're fine. Blood pouring down your leg, but hey, nothing to worry about here. Hold still." There was the sound of ripping material and John realized Rodney was working on his pants leg with a pocket knife.


"You know, these pants were probably salvageable until you started hacking at them." He hissed sharply as Rodney probed the wound.


"Ow." He exaggerated the sound, giving it multiple syllables and aiming a glare (hopefully) in Rodney's direction.


"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Rodney was muttering.


"Gee, thanks."


"Not you, me."


"You couldn't have known I was going to come barreling in here..."


"Wait here. Just...sit, okay?" Rodney got up and began rummaging around in the back of the jumper, presumably for the first aid kit. He returned shortly and wedged himself under the control console between John's legs as he knelt to address the cut. John heard the lid of the kit snap open and the rustling sounds of Rodney sorting through its contents when suddenly he hesitated.


"What?" John could feel his indecision; it thrummed like a hummingbird hovering in the air.


"Well," Rodney sounded uncertain, "I was just thinking maybe you'd rather go to the infirmary...because you know, the last time I attempted any first aid on you..."


"I'd rather not go to the infirmary, if it's all the same to you." He waited until Rodney began to gingerly sponge at the cut with what felt like gauze before speaking again. "Of course, if my leg falls off later..."


He heard the sharp intake of breath, a sudden small thump, no doubt caused by Rodney elevating his head quickly and connecting with the console and then Rodney's muttered 'bastard'. He grinned until he felt the disinfectant being poured over the cut and then he winced, hissing at the burn.


"Sorry, sorry," Rodney muttered from somewhere in the vicinity of his right knee.


"It's okay, Rodney, honest." He resisted the urge to pat him on the head, like a dog.


"Look...damn it, I mean, oh, never mind, I have to hold some pressure here, okay?" He felt a folded up square of gauze being pressed firmly into his leg. "Why did you come barreling in here? You know it would really help if you used the cane like we discussed."


"I don't want to use the cane." Even to his own ears, he sounded sulky.


"Fine." Rodney gave a great, gusty sigh. "Maybe I can fit you with some sort of proximity alert system..." His voice took on a faraway quality as he contemplated the idea.


John perked up a little. "You mean like a car alarm?"


"Well no, not exactly...Oh god, that could be disastrous. Can you imagine? All your neighbors would be banging on the walls at night...'Sheppard! Shut that thing off!'" He snickered. "They'd be saying 'ohmygod, he's at it again!'"


"It's not like that and you know it, Rodney." He felt Rodney shift weight, still chuckling as he settled on the floor between John's legs, continuing to hold pressure on the cut. To change the subject, he asked, "So, whatcha working on?"


"Hmmn? Oh. Well, Lorne mentioned that Jumper One was being a little sluggish to respond to the controls. I was just running diagnostics on it but I can't find anything wrong."


John laid a longing, caressing hand on the control console. I know how you feel, baby.


Suddenly he gasped, stiffening his entire body. Rodney straightened back onto his knees again, crowding forward so as not to hit his back on the edge of the console.


"Colonel? What is it? Are you okay?"


"You can't see that?" John barely whispered. "Rodney, a HUD just popped up."


"No it didn't..." Rodney spoke slowly, in the voice one used when speaking with crazed terrorists or the mother of toddlers traveling long distance without any help.


"Yes, yes it did. In here." John tapped the side of his head, even as he felt a ridiculous grin split his face wide open.


"Holy crap!" Rodney's voice was awestruck. "What do you see?"


"A diagnostic readout...what you've been working on...but here, see here, you missed the short here in the primary coupling system."


"What? Where? Damn it, I can't see what you're talking about. Ohmygod, John." Rodney suddenly leaned in further, gripping his arms firmly and giving him a little shake. "Don't you get it? They can't send you back to Earth now." The delight in his voice was plainly audible.


Rodney really wants me to stay in Atlantis. The realization was nothing earth-shattering, just a sense of pleasure at the idea that Rodney liked his company, wanted him to hang around; after all, he had been putting in some monumental efforts into making that even a remote possibility, John should not be surprised. But he suddenly became acutely aware of Rodney leaning into him between his spread legs, gripping his arms in excitement. Something in his awareness shifted. He felt more than just Rodney's satisfaction at having found a way to beat the system, he felt...he smelled... Rodney's arousal. It was a palpable force between them suddenly. John felt his pulse jump and beat erratically in his neck. Rodney wants me.


Go ahead. He's right there. All you have to do is reach out and touch him. You know you want to. He mentally shied at the thought, losing the HUD display in his head and starting to breathe hard. Oh god. In no conceivable way did he see this coming. I can't deal with this. He started to feel panicky, claustrophobic.


Fortunately, Rodney himself provided the out. Slapping a bandage on his leg with rough efficiency, Rodney pushed himself up and out of the tight space between the chair and the console by placing a hand on John's thigh. If his hand lingered just a moment longer than absolutely necessary, John couldn't say for sure. "Come on then," he said, stepping aside to make room and then tugging at John's sleeve. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. "We need to find out what other displays you can read!"


***


The clicking sound of his headset activating awoke him from a sound sleep and without thinking he slipped it over his ear and responded, "Sheppard here."


"Sheppard." Ronon's malicious glee was clearly audible over the com. "Find me."


"What?" Memory suddenly returned. He groaned. It had been a long day. Rodney had dragged him around all over the city, causing him to bring up displays that only he could 'see' until he had developed a crashing headache. By the end of the afternoon, he had been fairly convinced that he had imagined...things...between them earlier. Still Rodney had been so wound up over the potential possibilities of his new-found gift that it had been hard to get away and he was exhausted. "Ronon, I hope that somewhere in an alternative universe, we leave your sorry ass on that planet with the homing device intact."


He heard Ronon's laugh. "Yeah, and somewhere in that same universe, you're probably King of the Bugs now. You have 20 minutes. Starting now." The headset went silent.


I hate him. I really hate him.


He swung his legs out of bed, resting on the edge for a moment and resisting the urge to cradle his head in his hands. It was a matter of seconds for him to grab the t-shirt off his chair, slip on some sweatpants and slide his feet into the boots he had just taken off what seemed like minutes earlier. In his head, he tried to picture the likely location of Ronon—of the places he knew to find and how long it would take him to get there. It seemed logical to think that Ronon was at the gym...all at once, the heavy sense of oppression bore down on him.


All right, already. He stood in the open doorway of his quarters and let go of conscious thought. Stronger than it had been earlier that day, the compulsion to turn left out of his door took him forward. He moved briskly down the corridor, feeling more confident with every stride, dropping into a light jog as the path almost seemed to light up before him. It was exhilarating. He hesitated at the first turn, felt the tug off to the right and suddenly knew that Ronon was waiting in the mess hall for him. Figures.


He slowed his pace dramatically on entering the mess hall. Of all the places he had to traverse, the mess was the hardest with its concentration of furniture and the way chairs were often haphazardly abandoned by their previous occupants. Cautiously he moved through the room towards where he sensed Ronon was sitting. As he approached, he realized quickly that Ronon was not alone. His entire team was there.


"Well I'll be damned..." Rodney said not quite sotto voce.


"Sheppard." Ronon had a fair imitation of his own drawl. "Impressive. All hail the Bug King."


"Funny." John came to stand by the table where they were seated. "Rodney." He turned his head slightly and nodded. "Teyla."


"John." Teyla's voice was rich with the warmth of welcome.


He heard a small strumming sound that he took to be Rodney's happy (or perhaps irritated, it was hard to tell with Rodney) drumming of his fingers on the tabletop. An involuntary yawn seized him. "Well guys, as fun as this has been, I think I'm going to go back to bed now."


"I got dibs on his ice cream." Ronon spoke up quickly.


"Ice cream?" He hesitated. "You got ice cream?" He heard the chink of a metal spoon scraping the bottom of a dish; Rodney's no doubt.


"With hot fudge." Teyla made the words sound more than decadent, downright sensual.


"Yum," Rodney sighed in apparent agreement with her. "Yeah, why'd you think we had a 20 minute time limit?" He heard the sound of someone opening a container and chunking down a scoop of ice cream into a bowl.


He reached out for a chair, catching the top of one as he heard Ronon push it out towards him and turning it around so as to straddle it, to sit at the table. "I thought Ronon was just being a jerk. I should've known it would have something to do with his Scarlett O'Hara complex." He made greedy 'gimme, gimme' motions with his hands.


"What?" Rodney said incredulously, even as he pushed a dish of ice cream over towards him and set the spoon down with enough noise that he could locate it. "Ronon? Scarlett O'Hara? As in, 'I'll think about it tomorrow?' As in cut down the green velvet curtains in order to make a dress to impress Rhett Butler?"


John grinned around his mouthful of ice cream, savoring the sweet silky flavor of a rich French vanilla smothered in hot fudge sauce. He swallowed and licked the spoon lingeringly, delaying giving the punchline even as he felt Teyla's amusement and sensed Ronon's machismo pricking its ears.


"No, Rodney," he said at last, unable to hold back any longer, "As in 'as God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again'."


The table exploded in laughter. John thought the best part was when Rodney tried to explain to Ronon exactly what constituted a southern belle, complete with a strident rendition of Scarlett's scrabbling in the dirt for a carrot scene. And then when Teyla suggested perhaps they watch it next movie night, Rodney punched him in the arm, saying "look what you started" while protesting that he simply could not sit through four hours of GWTW. John couldn't remember the last time he laughed so hard.


They were all headed down the hallway together in the general direction of everyone's quarters when John felt his entire team go on alert. There was a collective intake of breath, a stiffening of the bodies walking alongside him—he recognized the atmosphere change from a hundred different missions. Rodney suddenly gripped his arm briefly in warning, even as Teyla said in a tone that only he (and maybe Ronon) could hear, "Colonel Caldwell."


Everyone came to a dead stop in the middle of the corridor. "Colonel." John's voice was pleasant as Caldwell approached. "We weren't expecting you back in Atlantis for another few days yet."


"Given the circumstances, I thought it was best to push the engines a little. Colonel. Might I have a word with you?"


"Certainly." No one moved.


"In private." Caldwell's tone was dry.


John mentally sighed and then made a small nod to his team in an 'away' direction.


"We'll just be saying goodnight, then." Teyla's voice was like an encouraging pat on the arm. He heard Rodney intake a breath with which to speak but Teyla forestalled him by saying, "Come along, Dr. McKay, Ronon."


He had to bite back a smile as his team reluctantly left.


"Colonel." Caldwell's voice was grave. "How are you feeling?"


"I've been better, Colonel." It was going to take every ounce of willpower not to get pissed with Caldwell here. This was not the time to get pissed.


"Dr. Weir has been keeping me apprised of the situation here. I take it there has been no change in your condition?"


"Not exactly. There have been some recent developments that Elizabeth might not be entirely aware of yet, however."


"But as of this moment, you are blind, correct?"


"Yes." He bit off the word.


"Colonel, don't think I don't know what you're doing here. Truly, I think it's admirable, but surely you can see that it can't possibly work."


Evil John whispered in his ear. He gave in to temptation. "No, Colonel, I can't see. Perhaps you would care to elaborate?"


"Let me put it in terms that perhaps you can understand." Caldwell's tone became harder. "Your people here like and respect you, with good cause it would seem. They will go to great lengths to assist you. They watch out for you. It's obvious to me that they still look to you for leadership. Do you think that's wise? They're not going to be able to accept you in a capacity of anything less than a leader, regardless of what position you actually hold and frankly, I think they deserve better than what you can offer them right now." He gave a sigh, his voice softening. "Do you want any one of them endangering themselves because they are still trusting your judgment?"


"Of course not." His answer sounded confident but he remembered Walker and Stevens and inside he died just a little. "I wouldn't let that happen."


"Colonel, you and I know the best way of keeping that from happening is for you to return to Earth, take a medical discharge and put Atlantis behind you."


***


He knew Rodney was waiting for him when he entered his quarters. The lights were a giveaway for starters, but the room just hummed with a 'Rodney' presence as well.


"Sorry for making myself at home in your absence, but I couldn't wait until the morning. What did Caldwell say?"


"Nothing unexpected." He just had to hang on a little longer. Rodney would run out of steam if he just didn't fuel the fire, and then he would be alone again. He stood in the middle of his room, thinking that if he remained standing, Rodney would take the hint and leave sooner.


Rodney remained ensconced at the table. "Well, we knew he'd be a hard sell. Tomorrow, we'll..."


"Rodney," he interrupted without turning to face Rodney's voice, not moving. "I'll be heading back on the Daedalus."


"What?" Rodney was on his feet and had crossed the distance to him almost before he finished his sentence. "What did he say to you? You were only with him, what? Two minutes? And in that time he somehow convinced you to give up? I've never seen you give up. Not when we had Hive ships bearing down on the city and no possible hope of defending ourselves. Not when we've been held prisoner and facing certain death. And do you know what the statistical odds are of someone being held captive on a Hive ship and living to tell the tale? I do, I've calculated them. And you've been in that position and survived more than once. So you tell me," he punctuated his words by suddenly moving in closer and snarling, air moving as he obviously waved his hands about, "just what the fuck that man said to you that made you change your mind?"


John remained unmoving under the onslaught of Rodney's ire.


He heard the finger snap. The 'I-get-it' moment. "Wait a minute..." Rodney began slowly. "Let me guess. He said you were a burden, right? That you were a handicap and a danger to the expedition, to your friends. I'm right, aren't I?"


"Let it go, Rodney." He felt incredibly weary.


"No, no, I'm right. That's it. That's the only argument that could have possibly worked on you. That bastard!"


"Rodney..."


He made an inarticulate noise of rage and frustration. "You know, just once I'd like to see something weird happen to Caldwell. Oh nothing permanent, you know me better than that, but just something weird and horrible and completely out of his control, so that just once, he would know what it feels like, and he wouldn't be so quick to act like there was just something about you that attracted these things."


Rodney began to stalk around the room again, coming to an abrupt standstill in front of him again. "You tell me in all honesty that returning to Earth is what you really want to do...what you want to do, not what you think you should do, and I'll walk out of this room and not say another word about it. But if you're doing this out of some misguided notion of trying to protect us...well, that's just crap and you know it."


He felt his control slipping. What did he want? He wanted to have a choice in the matter. No, what he really wanted was to be able to stay in Atlantis, where at least he felt like he could still contribute to something. He wanted to just be normal again. Snarling his frustration, he wheeled suddenly to the bureau of drawers and swept the counter top clean of his few belongings. Useless books and framed photographs hit the floor with a satisfying crash. He grasped the handles of the top drawer and heaved it out of the dresser, flinging the contents along with the drawer across the room in sweeping arc. Ignoring Rodney's yelp of surprise and his scramble to get out of the way as the drawer went flying, he turned next and stalked over to the table, prepared to overturn it as well.


"No!" Rodney shouted. "Not the hardware!" He felt Rodney's rush forward even as he reached for the table. Rodney tackled him from behind, pinning his arms against his body as the two of them fell to their sides onto his bed. He immediately began to corkscrew his body in an attempt to free his arms, but Rodney retaliated by throwing a leg across his own and hooking his shin behind John's calf, limiting his ability to turn against the softer surface of the mattress. Rodney grasped his own wrists tightly across John's chest in a locking grip so that he was unable to push himself up and roll Rodney off of him.


"Please...just please, stop." Rodney's voice was quietly desperate and as he slowly ceased to struggle, Rodney's forehead came to rest on the back of his neck. He could feel the heat of Rodney's breath through the thin material of his t-shirt as he continued to speak. "Look, no damn it, okay, you know what I mean...I...I'm glad you got mad. I was beginning to wonder about you, I mean, you were handling this whole thing with freakish calm and like ten times better than I would ever have dealt with a similar problem, and it was just bloody unnatural, so I'm glad to see that you're human after all and not St. Sheppard of Atlantis. And you can trash your room if you want, and you can smash your fist into the walls, if that will make you feel better, which it won't, it will hurt like hell, but I can't let you break the equipment, ok?"


He struggled with the effort to get his breathing and his temper under control. Rodney continued to babble into the back of his neck, as one would to a fractious horse to try and calm it down. With a deep sigh, he brought his hands up to Rodney's arms, catching his forearms where they wrapped across his chest. He should have felt imprisoned, he knew, but he did not. He felt anchored instead. "It's okay, Rodney. I'm okay now."


Rodney lifted his head from the back of his neck. "You're sure? You're not going to go apeshit on me just as soon as I let you go?"


He didn't answer. Instead, he let his fingers begin a slow exploration of Rodney's arms, tracing the muscles in his forearms, sliding his fingers as far as he could reach over Rodney's watch, out along the back of one hand, feeling the broad, square tipped fingers as they continued to hold on to each wrist. He took another deep breath and leaned back into Rodney.


Startled, Rodney released his grip suddenly and began to unwrap himself from around John, who took advantage of the greater mobility to follow Rodney's withdrawal with his body. As Rodney rolled off of him and over onto his back, John turned with him until he was facing Rodney with a hand on his chest. He was breathing as hard as John had been just a few moments before. He could feel the rise and fall of Rodney's chest beneath his hand and he marveled at the sensation, concentrating on the way it felt underneath his fingers. He continued to move slowly and deliberately across the planes of Rodney's torso, reading with his fingertips the knit fabric of his science uniform, feeling the firm muscle beneath his touch. When he brushed over a single nipple, already peaked before he touched it, Rodney made a small inarticulate noise and arched slightly up into his hand, seeking greater contact involuntarily.


John moved into the crook of Rodney's neck, breathing in deep the warm scent of his skin, still trying to place all the elements that made Rodney identifiable as a unique individual. Rodney was summer thunderstorms and fireflies after dark, elegant, complicated equations and the shimmer of the event horizon when the Gate opened.


His nose still buried in Rodney's neck, he continued his exploration of Rodney's body with his hand, moving up his chest and onto his neck, ghosting up onto his face. As he traced the contours of Rodney's cheekbones, he felt his eyes close and Rodney gave a convulsive swallow.


"Um, Colonel?" John felt his lips curve into a smile on Rodney's neck, even as he continued to breathe him in like oxygen.


"You called me John earlier today." He never stopped moving his fingers, following Rodney's jaw, prickly with stubble, up to his earlobe and from there, carding his fingers through his hair, working them into his scalp. It was one of the most sensuous experiences of his life.


"I did? Obviously an aberration on my part. It must be an indication that life as we know it in this universe is about to cease to exist." Despite the dryness of his tone, Rodney still turned his head into John's touch. "Um, what exactly are we doing here?"


Oh god. What was he supposed to say? That he didn't want to be in his eighties, sitting on a porch in a retirement home somewhere, regretting a missed opportunity? That he was getting sent dirtside anyway and that he no longer had anything left to lose? That he had wanted this on some level for a long time and had managed to fool himself into believing that there was nothing more than friendship between them? If he had to put it into words, he wasn't sure he would have the courage to follow through. His hand stilled, fingers splayed out alongside Rodney's neck. What was he doing here?


"Whatever you want." His voice was husky with intensity.


"Oh." He really wished he could see right now, he would give anything to know Rodney's expression. Was he wrong about earlier today? Had he just made a really bad mistake here?


"Okay." Rodney's tone was matter of fact. And then he felt Rodney's broad hands take him by either side of his face and turn him upward into the most breath-stealing kiss of his life. He had just enough presence of mind to think Katie Brown is an idiot before coherent thought was lost. Rodney's mouth was warm and wet and his tongue agile and determined. John felt pulled into him as though he were magnetized, suddenly crawling on top of Rodney as they continued to kiss, hands exploring each other until he could not tell where he ended and Rodney began.


Rodney was the first to stop the kissing and began to pull at John's shirt, muttering "Too many clothes," in a throaty voice that John had not heard from him before. He pushed himself up off Rodney's chest to oblige him in the removal of his shirt, trying to find the edges of Rodney's shirt at the same time and pulling ineffectively at his clothing, arms and material getting tangled with each other in the process. He brought an arm down too quickly as Rodney was half-sitting up to help remove his own shirt and he whacked Rodney on the side of the head, which resulted in his bursting into laughter.


He felt Rodney freeze. "I'm sorry," John smiled, not sounding very sorry at all. "It's just funny, that's all."


Rodney snorted. "You have a point. Do you remember where we were before you tried to knock me unconscious? I think we were here..."


He reached up and touched John tentatively at first, running a hand lightly up along the length of his arm to his shoulder, bringing his other hand up John's chest in a way that caused him to arch up above Rodney, head back and eyes closed at the sensation, drawing in a deep breath at the contact.


"Works for me." John barely managed to get the words out. He felt himself suddenly being pulled down and rolled onto his back. Rodney settled over top of him and the sudden skin to skin contact of their chests was almost enough to make him come right there. Rodney kissed him again with that talented mouth of his, but didn't stop there, working his way down the side of John's face and jaw, down his neck and lingering over the hollow of his throat. He worked his hand in between them and down John's abdomen, causing him to buck upwards.


"Wait here." Rodney's weight shifted off of him and he suddenly felt cold in his absence. A moment later, Rodney was pulling off John's boots and then kneeling on the bed above him undoing the drawstring of his sweats. He shifted his hips upward as he felt the tug of Rodney pulling down his sweats and briefs with one swift, determined move. His clothes removed, he waited in silence while Rodney sat motionless next to him.


"My god, John," Rodney's voice was thick with emotion. "You're really something, you know that?"


John pushed the heel of his hand slowly down his abdomen, pulling in the muscles of his stomach and thrusting his pelvis upward as he did so, hand coming to rest in the crease of his thigh before sliding languorously up the shaft of his cock. He felt amazingly uninhibited in the absence of sight, giving in to the unadulterated pleasure of sensation. "This would be more fun if you joined me."


"Right, right, yes, yes, of course." Rodney sounded flustered. He stood and shed his remaining clothes with gratifying speed. John felt the bed give as Rodney joined him on it again. He discovered quickly that Rodney was very much a 'hands on' kind of guy, rapidly gaining confidence once his incredibly gifted hands were actually engaged again.


"Sure you don't want me to take over there?" His hand slid over top of John's, warm and with just the right amount of pressure. John was still smiling when he felt a sudden wet heat engulf the end of his cock and he jerked upwards with a muffled exclamation.


Rodney's chuckle vibrated around his cock, while his tongue did amazing things and his hand continued to stroke up and down, following the back and forth, give and take of his mouth. John brought his hands to rest on either side of Rodney's head, stroking his hair and giving an involuntary moan of appreciation. He wished this moment could go on forever, it felt in some ways like it could. He felt free-floating at first, enjoying the pure awareness of being touched, until each stroke, each flick of Rodney's tongue began to pull out of him an increasing sensation of tension and then, oh god, there was suction and he tried to pull Rodney up, but he felt the vibration of laughter swallowed and then he was coming. Rodney held him through it, sucking him down and swallowing through the aftershocks, until he lay blissfully boneless on the bed.


"That was...you..." he tried to speak but did not get very far. Smiling, he tried again. "You should have your mouth insured with Lloyd's of London."


"That's a new one." Rodney sounded insufferably smug. "Are you sure you know what you're saying?"


"Not at all." John rolled up on one elbow, reaching for Rodney and pulling him up the bed towards him. Languidly, he began to explore Rodney's body once more, this time following every movement of his fingertips with his mouth, licking, sucking and nipping lightly the path laid out by his hands. He took his time, memorizing Rodney's body with his fingers, shutting out the brief, intrusive thought that this may be the only chance he would get to learn Rodney's body, where his hot spots were and what made him cry out with pleasure.


He hesitated as his hands made contact with Rodney's cock, hard and arching upward with need. He felt the warm wetness of precome on his hand as he took hold of the heavy shaft, his fingers reading the surface of it, tracing up over the head, his thumb finding and creasing the slit. Rodney shuddered underneath his touch and he felt the thump of his hand flailing down to clutch at the sheets. Encouraged by the response, he took a firmer hold of Rodney, forming a tight ring with his hand and sliding up and down, finishing each upward motion off with a slight twist of his wrist. He brought his other hand down to caress Rodney's testicles, not surprised to find that he was especially sensitive there. Smiling, knowing what he liked himself, he moved down to stroke the skin of the perineum as he increased the pace of his rhythm and Rodney cried out, bucking upward off the mattress as he came.


Reaching around on the bed and finding some item of clothing, he used it to wipe his hands as well as Rodney's abdomen and his own for good measure. He felt Rodney's hand plucking disjointedly at his bicep and he allowed himself to be pulled down beside him, shivering a little as the sweat on his body began to dry. Rodney folded himself over him like a blanket, putting out heat like a furnace. Within seconds he felt warm and sleepy.


"Hah," Rodney murmured somewhere near his ear. "That was your shirt."


"I'll grab yours next time."


There was a long silence but John felt the sudden tension in Rodney's body; knew he had not yet fallen asleep. Christ, you could hear the man think. "You've never done this before...I mean, not with a guy, right?"


He hesitated, not sure how best to answer. "Well, you know the Pegasus galaxy. Learn something new every day."


"Now?" He felt Rodney lift up his head to look at him. "You chose now to try something this...ah, new?"


"Not 'now'," he said somewhat crossly. "With you."


"Oh." There was a small silence again, in which he could picture the wheels of Rodney's brain turning as he deciphered that admittedly cryptic message and then Rodney's hand was moving slowly up the side of his ribcage. "Oh," he repeated; a hint of a smile in his voice. "Good answer." He suddenly, inexplicably, withdrew.


"Where are you going?" John tried not to sound petulant, but it was hard.


There was the sound of several drawers opening and shutting. "Extra blanket. Unless you want to get up and pull down the bedding." He came back to the bed and arranged himself in the narrow space beside him, throwing a blanket over the two of them and encircling John matter-of-factly as he settled back into bed. There was a tiny click in his head when felt Rodney turn the lights off with a thought—he had forgotten all about them. He wondered as he drifted off to sleep if this was going to make things weird between them and he found himself smiling at the thought. Of course this was going to make things weird between them, after all this was Rodney he was talking about.


***


He awoke feeling half-smothered. Okay, this was so not going to work. If the two of them were going to sleep in the same bed it would have to be a much bigger one. Reality came back in as he struggled to extricate himself from under Rodney's still dead-to-the-world form. Unless he was willing to fight to stay in Atlantis, the time period in which sleeping arrangements would matter would likely be very short. He pulled his numb arm out from under Rodney's shoulder with an effort and suddenly fell backwards off the bed onto the floor. Perfect. He listened for a moment, but there was no movement from Rodney at all. He got to his feet slowly, his arm feeling as though it belonged to someone else, not cooperating when he tried to pull himself up by grabbing the edge of the bed. He started around the end of the bed towards the bathroom, only to stumble over someone's shoes and then step on the sharp edge of one of the framed photographs that had gotten tossed earlier. Even better. His room was full of landmines now.


In the shower he wondered why he felt so irritable and grumpy. Sex with Rodney last night had been good; it was something he wanted to do again. Normally this would have him in a pretty good mood, but he felt like his teeth were on edge. He cut himself shaving and threw down the razor in disgust, fumbling for some toilet paper to staunch the flow on his chin.


It took him a second longer to realize the source of disquiet was not coming from within him. Stumbling out into the main room, cursing as he stubbed his toe on the drawer he had thrown the night before, he bumped into the bed and reached down to grab Rodney by his shoulder. He registered the shock of pleasure the contact gave him even as his grip tightened and he shook Rodney abruptly. "Wake up. Something is wrong with the city."


Rodney was instantly awake. John felt him turn over to face him and he released Rodney's shoulder as he rolled. "What? Can you be more specific?"


"No." John felt his features pull down into a frown. "I can't. It's just a vibration, a harmonic...but something is off. I didn't notice it at first, but now that I have, I can't tell if it is getting worse or if I'm just cued in on it now."


There was a yawn and then, half-muffled, "Okay, right. I'll get Radek to start running diagnostics until I can get down to the lab." He got up out of the bed; John could hear him muttering to himself as he tracked down his clothing and radio headset. "What are you standing there for? Get dressed. I expect you down in the lab so we can use your super powers to figure out what's going on, Colonel X-Man."


***


In the end, they called the briefing down in the labs, Elizabeth and Colonel Caldwell joining them where most of the science department had already congregated anyway at Rodney's insistence. John found himself zoning out as Rodney and Radek brought everyone up to speed on John's ability to 'see' HUDs that no one else could and the subsequent recognition of a problem within the city. He thought instead of the moment when he had reached the labs earlier that morning, only to find Rodney had just stepped out in the hall to look for him.


"There you are." Rodney had said, grabbing him by the arm. He smelt clean, recently showered and that hint of citrus was back again. It must be his soap, John had realized. "I think I have a way to interface with what you are seeing in your head but we need to go down to the chair room."


He had started to turn with Rodney but was stopped by the grip on his arm. "Wait." Rodney sounded warm, not impatient. "You still have...here. I'll just..." He felt Rodney peel off the small piece of toilet paper still stuck to the cut on his chin. The distance between them seemed to close suddenly, though neither one moved.


"You can destroy me, you know." He wasn't sure why he said it. He wasn't entirely sure what he meant, though once the words were out, he realized they were true on many levels. Maybe he just needed to feel like he was still in control, to put some distance between them again, but instead it felt like he had flayed open his soul and laid it bare for Rodney to see.

"I know." Rodney's voice was quiet and then the smirk rolled in. "What was it Nietzsche said? 'What does not destroy me makes me stronger'?"


"Bastard," he had said then, and gave Rodney a light tap in the stomach with his fist, gratified at the small 'oof' of air released.


He dragged his attention back to the meeting at hand.


"So what you're saying," Elizabeth was summarizing carefully, "is that there is a problem with power to the ZPM?"


"More specifically, thanks to Colonel Sheppard, we've picked up an energy feedback loop to the ZPM that will eventually result in an overload if we cannot isolate and resolve the problem." Rodney continued on. "Undoubtedly, the problem is somewhere in the crystal matrix, we've re-routed a lot of systems since we've been here, calling on some systems to be used in ways they were never meant to be used as well as putting excessive, sudden demands on everything in times of emergency, such as tsunamis and Wraith attacks. Not to mention that Atlantis was meant to be run with multiple ZPMs, given that, along with the coupling with our own technologies from Earth..."


"Can you fix it?" Caldwell interrupted.


John recognized the 'military are idiots' sigh. "Yes, I probably can. But we have to find it first. There are thousands of crystals in the system, even if we can narrow it down to the primary systems, we still have to find one cracked crystal out of the lot."


"Well, can't you just disconnect the ZPM in the meantime?" Caldwell tried for a 'you moron' tone himself, less successfully in John's opinion.


"And then how would we find the feedback loop? No, the system has to stay running while we look. Which means we're on a countdown because no one wants to be around if the ZPM blows. I've got several teams standing by now so we can start the search."


"What if you leave Radek at the ZPM and have him ready to shut things down if we get too close to an overload? Then if necessary we can stop, let things cool off a bit and pick up again later if the search takes longer than expected," John spoke quietly.


"And we can only hope we don't need the ZPM on an emergency basis in the meantime," Rodney's tone was sour. "Still, that will probably work, only there may be a point at which the feedback will build up power exponentially, in which case it may not be possible to shut things off by pulling the ZPM. It's better than nothing though—we should do it. Radek?"


"I will go there now." The Czech spoke up and then left the room.


"Very well," Elizabeth said and John could hear the faint weariness underlying her voice. Poor Liz, not what you signed up for, eh? Always a crisis in our fair city. "Rodney, if your teams are ready then you should move out with all speed."


"Uh, I might be able to help."


John's statement landed in the room with a heavy 'thunk'. Hmmn, so that's what a lead brick sounds like.


"How so?" Elizabeth said at the same time Caldwell said sharply, "In what way?"


He had never gotten around to telling anyone about his connection with the city, the weird ability to navigate within her corridors. It seemed a little far out there to begin with, and something just between him and the city for another, the dichotomy of the two reasons for not telling anyone hadn't escaped him. "Well," he hesitated, not sure how to put it into words. "I can sorta 'sense' where it is I'm supposed to go. In the last 24 hours, whenever I try to get someplace, it feels like I'm being...guided towards it."


"When were you going to let the rest of us in on that little fact?" Rodney sounded outraged.


"I tried to tell you yesterday, Rodney, but I got a little distracted." As soon as the words left his mouth, he immediately hoped that Rodney did not just turn bright red and look terribly embarrassed. Knowing that was likely, he quickly added, "In the Jumper Bay, you know, when I fell over the tool kit."


"Oh! Right. Jumper Bay. Tool kit." Rodney couldn't help it if he made the truth sound clandestine.


"'Soooo, anyway," John tried desperately to get back on subject, "I think I might be able to help pinpoint the location of the bad crystal."


"Yes, yes, right, right. Let's get on it then. Sheppard, you're with me." Rodney began gathering supplies, shoving something in a bag and zipping it up. John felt a sudden, sharp, insistent tug towards the door. At first he thought it was Rodney, tugging on his sleeve, but then he realized it was not. Atlantis was calling him.


He turned towards Elizabeth. "Very well," she sighed.


"Colonel." Caldwell's voice held a warning. John inclined his head in the Colonel's direction, hoping the irritation wasn't plainly written on his face for everyone to see. Caldwell's sigh was eloquent. "Keep us posted," he said at last.


He waited no longer but headed for the door, Rodney giving a startled 'hey!' as he passed him.


"John!" Elizabeth was suddenly at his side, voice low and urgent. "Please tell me that when you were down in the Jumper Bay, you weren't trying to fly one of the jumpers."


"Heck no, Elizabeth," he laughed, momentarily diverted from the problem at hand. "I would have to be really drunk to do that."


"That's...um, comforting to know. Good luck then." Was it his imagination or did he just hear Elizabeth give herself a dope slap?


He gave a quick nod and moved off down the hall at a jog. He heard Rodney's muffled curse and then his footsteps as he struggled to keep up.


"The look just now on Caldwell's face when you took off at a run was beautiful." Rodney huffed from somewhere behind him. "Um, is there any reason we need to keep running? I mean, aside from the whole 'on-a-deadline-to-keep-the-city-from-blowing' thing? And how exactly does this contact thing with the city work?"


John slowed to walk. "I dunno. I feel a sense of urgency, I can't explain it. As for how it works, no offense Rodney, but it takes a bit of concentration here, so if you don't mind?"


He could hear Rodney tapping furiously on his laptop keyboard, could picture him hunching over it as he walked alongside. "Power levels are still in the black. Are you sure it's urgent?"


He came to a full stop, Rodney almost careening into him from behind. "Urgent but not critical," he said at last. "I think the city just wanted us to get a move on—I was starting to get very antsy while we were waiting to leave back in the labs." He took a deep breath, turning his face back and forth slightly as he took the measure of the corridor.


"The city wanted us...okay, you realize that is just crazy-talk, right?"


"Humor me, Rodney." Silently he acknowledged this was the reason he'd never mentioned in the past any sensation of having a connection with the city. "Blind man concentrating here, so shut up for a while, okay?" He felt the pull almost as soon as the words left his mouth and he indicated the direction with his hand. "This way."


***


While the rest of Rodney's teams embarked on a systematic search of the systems grids, John led Rodney on path that took them further and further out of the main part of the city, Rodney intermittently grousing as they moved that this couldn't possibly by the right direction and was John sure he knew where he was going? Even if the path had not continued to feel 'open' to him, he would have known they were getting closer due to the increasing ache in his head from the discordant, unharmonic buzzing just at the edge of his consciousness.


The buzz in his head reached appalling proportions when they entered the small room at the end of the final corridor. John froze midway into the room, stopping to place hands on either side of his head and wincing. "Here," he ground out. "It's somewhere in here."


"Here?" Rodney's incredulity could be heard...barely...over the noise in his brain. "There's nothing here to precipitate a feedback loop—this is so far off the beaten path, not even remotely connected to any main systems..." Rodney's griping continued, though dropping to a grumbling mutter as he began to pull down an access panel somewhere and talk to himself as he checked out the circuitry.


John sank to his heels in the middle of the room. "You okay?" Rodney called out.


John flapped a hand feebly in his direction.


"I take that as a 'yes' but that I should hurry it up? Right, right."


Radek's voice sounded in John's ear, speaking to both of them. "Colonel, Rodney? The feedback is increasing and the power levels to the ZPM are starting to fluctuate wildly."


"Damn it, we should be pretty close to the source, Radek." Rodney's tone was sharp, as though the fault lay with the Czech scientist. "If we stop now, we'll have to search every circuit by hand and even then, we might not find a small crack in a crystal...wait a minute, okay, I think I know why we are down this far now..." There was the sound of rapid typing over the keyboard. "Shit, I was afraid of that. Radek, we need to keep the ZPM powered up if possible. We re-routed some systems last year after the whole nanovirus thing to protect the containment fields in the labs we have not yet explored...but the power that was formerly supplied by the naquada generators was switched over to the ZPM once it was installed. If we shut off the ZPM, those fields will collapse, and we do not have time to connect the generators again. If those fields collapse, who knows what we will end up releasing into the city..."


"If we keep ZPM powered up for much longer, release of unknown agents will be of small priority." Radek's grasp of the English language had a way of becoming more tenuous in times of stress.


John moved as though through mud over to Rodney's side. "Keep working," he said as he placed a hand on Rodney's shoulder for balance. He lifted his other hand out in front of him, palm flat as he used it to try and scan the bank of crystal circuitry. He felt the muscles of his arm tremble with the effort; the closer he got to the wall of crystals, the more he felt a tingling, electrical sensation in his hand. He was starting to pick up a faint burning smell now and an odor like ozone after a thunderstorm. He continued to sweep his hand slowly over the open panel until he paused over one crystal, moved on, hesitated and then moved back. The pain in his hand was becoming intense and he had to grind his teeth in an effort to stop the reverberations in his head. "This one—but be careful, it's hot."


"Not for long." Rodney's voice sounded strangely angry. John could hear the sounds of Rodney pulling connections in the surrounding area, and then a grunt of satisfaction when he pulled the one that John had indicated. John almost sagged against him with relief when the buzzing stopped and the pain began to recede. He clapped Rodney on the shoulder with the hand that was still resting there. "That did it."


"Rodney!" Radek's voice was excited. "Whatever you did, power levels are stabilizing."


"Good, good," Rodney said rapidly. "Keep an eye on things though, because I am going to have to re-route this whole mess down here, and who knows how long that will take. Pull the other teams back and get someone working on a way to have the generators tied in as a back-up power source for these containment fields, in case we ever have to pull the ZPM in the future for whatever reason." The sound of cables being pulled out from the wall panel could now be clearly heard without the background noise in his head.


Flexing the fingers of his right hand against the sensation of having been burned, John withdrew, leaving Rodney to his work. "I think I'll just go sit down...or lie down...over here."


"Yes, yes, right, right, you do that." Rodney was already deep in the throes of the problem facing him.


He suddenly woke with a start when he felt Rodney nudge him with his foot. "Hey," Rodney was saying. "We're all done here. I patched the system for now, Radek and I can come back later with a team and fix it properly. You know, it's freaky the way you can drop off to sleep anywhere, anytime, any place. Like mattresses are superfluous. Did you bring anything to eat with you, because I'm starving here."


John merely held up his hand. "Give me a hand up."


He felt Rodney take his hand in a firm grip and he rolled to his feet with the assistance. "What are you grinning like a maniac for?" Rodney asked.


"Nothing," John tried to hide the smirk. "Just you being you, that's all."


"I take it this means no food?" Rodney gave a martyred sigh. More quietly, he added, "Headache gone?"


"Yes to both questions." He rolled his neck tentatively, feeling the tightness from having dozed propped up against the wall.


They started moving towards the door. John automatically felt for the direction but there seemed to be nothing there, so he allowed Rodney to take the lead. Something was bugging him though, and he felt himself frown. "Rodney," he said at last, "doesn't it strike you that this whole thing was just a bit too easily solved?"


"Oh, don't start that. You know what happened the last time we had a similar conversation." Rodney's voice was sharp with displeasure. "Wasn't it serious enough for you? Entire city in jeopardy, last minute push to find the damaged circuitry while the clock was ticking, both you and I manage to save the day at the last minute—don't think I missed the part where you moved in with grim determination and overcame horrific pain to isolate the problem." Oh-ho, so that's what had pissed him off earlier.


They moved out into the cool darkness of the hallway, the smell of saltwater not too far off and the sensation of dampness around them. "I'm just saying," John argued, "that this was a relatively quick, uncomplicated fix for us. You know, I would've expected some other added crisis, like the Wraith suddenly appearing over the city, or a surprise attack by the Genii, or giant squid infiltrating the city's water supply..."


Rodney abruptly came to a stop. "Giant squid?"


John shrugged as he straggled to a halt. "Could happen. Pegasus Galaxy, you know."


"You're complaining because this potentially serious catastrophe was too easily solved? Colonel, you realize there is something really twisted about that."


John smiled inwardly, recognizing that because they were on a mission, he was 'Colonel' to Rodney again. "It's like that scene in Galaxy Quest—you know, where they disarm the self-destruct but it keeps ticking down because it always stopped at the last second on the TV show? That's what I feel like here, like the clock is still ticking and I don't know why." He hesitated. "This whole thing wouldn't have been one of your schemes to make me appear useful here in Atlantis, would it?"


Rodney gave a short bark of laughter. "I was thinking the same of you! Great minds and all that. No, this wasn't my bright idea. Are you kidding? I would have made the problem closer to the Gateroom. We must have walked for miles here today." He paused in his speech, adding somewhat thoughtfully, "It was a little weird about the system that shorted though. I couldn't find any obvious problems with it after I re-routed around it. Oh, well, that's a puzzle for another time."


They began walking again. Rodney seemed to notice that he was moving a lot more slowly on the way back than on the way out and slowed accordingly—or perhaps he was just grateful to be walking more slowly himself. John was tempted to reach out for his arm and allow himself to be guided, but he resisted the urge to give into weakness. He hesitated however, when they reached an intersection of hallways and Rodney took an unexpected turn to the right.


"Rodney?" John stood in the center of the intersection, a strong sense of oppression holding him there.


"There's no need for us to take the convoluted route you followed out here earlier in order to get back to the city. I have the city schematics with me, there's a transport chamber not too far off if we cut back over this way. Seriously, if we had come this way the first time, we could have saved ourselves quite a bit of time and legwork." Rodney was already partway down the corridor, but he stopped to see if John was coming.


"I think we should go back the way we came." John knew he sounded as though he were merely being stubborn and really, without a solid reason, he was going to have a hard time convincing Rodney not to take his shortcut back to 'civilization'...and food.


"Let me guess, because the city doesn't want us to?" John winced internally at Rodney's ultra-sarcastic tone. "Colonel, despite the fact that Atlantis rolls over and plays dead for you at your slightest whim, you do realize the city is not sentient, yes?"


Okay, maybe there was a good reason for non-fraternization policies because right now, he really wanted to strangle Rodney, while at the same time he was strongly tempted to play the 'new relationship' card, or the 'blind' card or Go Fish for all he cared if it would somehow make Rodney listen to him. "I can't explain it, Rodney. It's just a feeling I have."


"Yeah. Uh-huh. Right." He could hear Rodney moving off down the corridor he had chosen. "Well the feeling I have is the one of my stomach trying to gnaw a hole in my backbone. Tell you what, you go your way and I'll go mine and we'll see who makes it back the Gateroom first, hmmn?" He could picture the 'kiss-off' wave Rodney was likely throwing over his shoulder right about now.


He stood in place for approximately five seconds, fuming. Part of him recognized that he should actually be flattered that Rodney trusted his ability to find his own way back enough to leave him on his own—he could think of few people who would cheerfully abandon a blind man in a deserted portion of an alien city that had been known to have its lethal surprises. The other part was annoyed that the trust did not extend to accepting the possibility that he might be right, as that would make Rodney wrong. When he started to turn in the direction that they had originally traveled, the oppressive weight became almost crushing. Follow him.


Grinding his teeth, he headed down the hallway after Rodney.


"Glad you decided to join me, Colonel," Rodney smirked as he caught up.


"Save me the trouble of having to go look for you later," he said sourly. He said nothing more as they walked, but Rodney appeared not to notice, holding forth his opinions on the work that he had done that morning, on the need to create back-up systems for important protected areas, on the need to have emergency protocols in place for future disabling of the ZPM for whatever reason.


"You're not still sulking, are you?" Rodney asked abruptly as John heard a door 'whoosh' open in front of them.


"Gee, no Rodney, why would I do that?" John drawled. "Just because you treat me like a human divining rod all morning and then when I tell you you've picked a bad way to go, you stop listening to me."


The room they had just entered smelled very strongly of seawater and somehow seemed much dimmer than even the darkened hallway. John stopped abruptly, reaching out to grab at Rodney's sleeve and getting the sensation of just having missed him when his hand closed on empty air. "Where are we? Rodney, seriously, I think we should turn back."


"Oh for heaven's sake," Rodney said crossly from somewhere just ahead of him. "The transport chamber should be just on the other side of this room. We're almost there now."


"I dunno, Rodney, I got a bad feeling about this."


"Not listening, Colonel..." Rodney was saying in a sing-song voice when there was the ominous sound of metal groaning.


"Rodney!" John's voice was sharp. "Get back over here, now!"


"Yes, right. I think maybe..." Rodney began but then his voice was drowned out by the shrieking sound of tearing metal. John could feel the vibrations in the floor from where he stood.


"Oh shit!" There was the sound of Rodney throwing down his backpack. John started forward. "No!" Rodney yelled, the terror in his voice stopping John in his tracks. "The floor is rotten in here, rusted through in several places. Go back, go back, it won't support us both! It looks solid over here...I'll just..." he broke off with a yell as there was the sound of something giving way, followed by a large splash somewhere beneath them.


"Rodney!" John yelled out, but there was no answering reply. He touched his headset. "This is Colonel Sheppard, we have an emergency down on level..." he hesitated a second as the HUD outlining their exact location popped up in his head. He gave out the coordinates and continued. "We need rescue teams and medical down here STAT. Rodney's gone through a hole in the floor into water below and he's not responding. I'm going in after him."


He heard Elizabeth squawking into the headset as he wrenched it off his ear and left it on the floor, channel still open to assist in pinpointing their location. Lying flat on his abdomen, he crawled forward until he came to the weakened section of flooring, discovering the sheared off edges that gave at his touch, as well as the sharper spears of supports that had given way. He called for Rodney again, listening hard for any reply.


What he heard was the soft lapping of the sea at the underside of the supports in the room below. And then...the tiny sound of bubbles being released to the surface. Locking in on the sound, he fixed the location in his mind as he swung his legs over the edge and dropped down into the water below. There had to be a reason why Rodney did not re-surface when he fell. Either he was knocked unconscious by the debris that fell with him or something was holding him down under the surface—either way, John had to avoid the same problem.


The drop into the icy water about 10 feet below took his breath away with the shock of contact. A piece of rotten wood promptly jumped up and smacked him in the back as he landed on it, but its pulpy mess did little damage. He struck out for the spot that he had fixed as Rodney's location and moved his hands around under the surface seeking his goal. He had no way of knowing how deep the water was in this location, but he got the impression that the area was flooded as opposed to being open to the sea. When he reached the spot where he was sure the bubbles had originated, he took a deep breath and dove down, hands reaching out in front, seeking Rodney. As his hands searched, he came across a small current that seemed warmer than expected and he focused on it like a heat seeking missile. It was with relief when his hands contacted the lapels of Rodney's jacket and he felt Rodney clutch at him. He didn't understand why it seemed like Rodney was trying to push him down until he tried hauling Rodney up towards the surface and was met with marked resistance to his efforts.


Using his hands to crawl down Rodney's body, he came to the area that was stuck—feeling with his fingers down Rodney's leg to the place where his calf was impaled on a sharp metal rod. It was also the source of the warm current, which John knew now to be blood. Knowing he had little choice, and alarmed by how Rodney's movements were already becoming weaker, John moved behind him and clasped him around his waist, kicking out with his legs, pushing off the pile of debris as he pulled Rodney upwards with all his might.


There was a long moment when Rodney didn't move, and John thought he was going to have to let go and head back to the surface for air for a second attempt, but then Rodney had already been down longer than he had and what would that say for his chances at survival? Suddenly, like a cork popping out of a bottle, Rodney's leg came free and the two of them shot to the surface.


Coughing and sputtering, he rolled over on his back and began to swim towards the nearest wall, pulling Rodney's limp form along with him, knocking large chunks of flooring out of his way as he did so. The going was awkward; he had to stroke with his left arm while supporting Rodney with his right and try to keep both their heads above water. He had to fight off too the sense of panic that threatened whenever he came across something he couldn't identify, objects in the water that bobbed off as he brushed them, or caught at him, impending his movement. When Rodney began to choke weakly for air, gagging up water, his struggle in John's grip almost sent both of them under the surface again. John's moment of relief when he contacted a wall was fleeting when he realized there was nothing to hold onto for support, no way to get Rodney out of the water. Okay, no need to panic. Help's on the way. All you have to do is tread water 'til it arrives, and hope Rodney doesn't bleed to death in the meantime...


Fuck, but the water was cold. His booted feet felt like they were encased in concrete, pulling his legs down as they grew increasingly numb. "Hey, Rodney," his breath came in short gasps with the effort of keeping them afloat. "You still with me, buddy?"


"Yes," Rodney choked out a reply, head lolling back against his shoulder.


"Might have known you'd have good lung capacity," John snorted out, "with as much as you use that mouth of yours." He continued to reach out behind him, seeking some sort of ledge or support to rest them against.


"Guess we're even," Rodney wheezed, his words sounding waterlogged. They had a blurry quality to them that made John wonder if Rodney had hit his head on the way down or if he was succumbing to shock and hypothermia.


"Even?" John queried. There was no response from Rodney. John gave him a little shake, readjusting his grip. "Rodney? Even for what?"


"Huh?" Rodney sounded less coherent than before.


"Stay with me, man." John went under briefly, resurfaced and spat out the salty water. "What are we even for?"


"Me not listening...you not...listening," Rodney's voice was a sigh. "We need to stop doing that."


"Deal." He couldn't help smiling. "So, Rodney," he murmured into Rodney's ear. "What are we going to do tomorrow?"


There was a long pause, but then he felt Rodney's laugh, which quickly turned into a gasping cough. "Don't know about you," Rodney choked out the words slowly, "but I'm thinking a day in the infirmary..."


"That's no fun," John said. "I was thinking about something Elizabeth said earlier. About the puddlejumpers..."


Rodney didn't answer. His head tipped alarmingly forward and John swore as he tried to juggle keeping Rodney from drowning when he had nothing to brace himself against and he had to stay afloat himself. He was growing colder by the second.


There was the sound of movement overhead and then blessedly he heard Teyla's voice calling his name. "Down here!" He shouted. "Watch the floor!"



***


It was a long soggy walk back to the infirmary, with Carson making 'tsking' noises the entire way as he walked alongside Rodney's gurney, stating aloud for the record that fortunately the coldness of the water limited the worst of the bleeding once Rodney was pulled off the stake and that hopefully there would not be too much muscle damage, all the while Rodney complained feebly that it was the pneumonia that would kill him. John squished alongside as well, allowing Teyla to unobtrusively guide him as he could no longer concentrate on the pathway back to the infirmary, having long since lost all direction and no longer receiving any input from the city. He was cold and the wet clothing was beginning to chafe damn it, but they were almost back now and with any luck, he could escape to a hot shower while Rodney got patched up.


"What happened?" Elizabeth's voice reached them first as they turned in towards the infirmary, but he just knew Caldwell was somewhere nearby as well. He explained briefly, trying to mask a shiver, while Carson and Rodney's gurney continued on into the infirmary.


"I don't understand." He could hear the frown in Elizabeth's voice. "Why didn't you come back the way you came the first time?"


"Yes, Colonel," Caldwell's voice held realms of irony in it. The I-told-you-so might only be audible to him, but the message was there for him to read just the same. "Why did you alter course on the return trip?"


He felt Teyla's light grip on his arm tighten, though in sympathy or warning he could not tell. He suspected 'Bite me, Caldwell' would not be the appropriate thing to say right now if he had any hopes of staying in Atlantis at all and he was suddenly certain that it was worth fighting to stay.


"Let me guess," Ronon's voice suddenly joined in. "McKay wanted to take a shortcut."


John was used to thinking of Ronon mostly in terms of physical backup—either as in the intimidating presence towering behind his shoulder during negotiations, or knowing that Ronon could take care of himself and the rest of the team in a fight or even as earlier today when they relied on his strength to hoist the stretcher bearing Rodney up out of the hole in the floor. But John was never so glad for Ronon's backup as he was in this moment now. He grinned ruefully in Ronon's direction.


"Oh for heaven's sake," Elizabeth's tone was exasperated and affectionate all at the same time. "I swear, I can't send you two on the simplest mission without you getting into some sort of trouble." There was an implied 'boys' in her sentence that perhaps only John could hear. "Goodness, you shouldn't be standing around in those wet things. Shouldn't you be in the infirmary too?"


"Nah," he kept his voice deliberately casual. "Doc's checked me out already. Nothing that a hot shower and a change of clothing won't fix. So if you aren't needing me anymore...?"


"Go, go." He knew she was probably making shooing motions with her hands. He smiled in the direction of her voice and then tipped his head towards where he last heard Caldwell. "Colonel." He nodded briefly, grateful that Teyla was still willing to serve as guide dog as he turned with her down the corridor to his quarters, Ronon following silently behind. He had his bearings once again, but was glad to not have to think too hard about how to get back to his room.


"Colonel." Caldwell's voice stopped him as he and Teyla had gone just a few feet. It was a nasty habit on Caldwell's part, a move worthy of Columbo when it came to throwing your opponent on the defensive. He would have to remember that move himself, actually. He stopped along with Teyla and Ronon, but did not turn fully around, merely cocked an ear back in Caldwell's direction.


"Yes, Colonel?" He kept his manner deliberately cool as he spoke over his shoulder.


"I expect a full report on this by the morning." Caldwell's tone was infinitely dry.


***


Two days later John was just leaving his quarters for the mess hall when he heard the sound of someone using a cane as they lurched down the hall towards him. "Rodney?" He said with some incredulity, "Is that you?"


"In the flesh. The very painful flesh, I might add." Rodney came to a stop next to him and John was overwhelmed with the strong, clean smell of his scent.


John felt suddenly awkward and tongue-tied. "Um, should you be out of the infirmary?"


"Carson, aka the Scottish quack, is insistent that the injury is relatively minor and that I will, as he put it, 'be back to running for your life in no time, Rodney'." Rodney's Scottish accent was remarkably accurate. "He assures me I should be walking on it and in fact, invited me to walk myself right out of his infirmary at my earliest convenience."


John had to smile at that one. He could only picture what it took to drive the normally patient Carson to kick Rodney out of the infirmary. He suddenly became aware of Rodney fidgeting in front of him.


"Um, got a minute?" Rodney sounded diffident, unlike his usual self. Uh-oh.


"Um, sure." He motioned his hand back towards his door and the two of them entered his quarters. Rodney went as far as the middle of the room before stopping, presumably turning to face him as John followed him in, the door shutting once they were both inside.


"Anything from Caldwell?" Rodney almost sounded terse. That was a faint drumming sound that John finally realized was the sound of his fingers on the handle of the cane.


John gave a short laugh. "He keeps calling meetings. Lots of meetings. And he keeps testing me on memos and paperwork, which is ridiculous, because we all know that my military career is over once the final say-so is given. But I keep showing up like nothing is wrong and keep coming up with the right, well, mostly right answers to his questions...I did not let Lorne fit me with an ear bud, by the way, so he could feed me answers, shame on you, Rodney."


He could almost hear the blush in Rodney's voice. "Um, yes, well, it was just a thought."


"Anyway," John continued, a laugh in his voice, "the gist of last night's little meeting was that he intended to place a recommendation that I be re-assigned to an alternate position within the expedition, should I end up being de-commissioned." When. A forced retirement was inevitable.


"But you're going to have to go back to Earth first." Rodney's comment was not a question, but a statement of fact, and there was bitterness in his tone.


John shrugged. "I don't know how I can avoid that, Rodney."


He felt Rodney take a tentative step closer to him. "Once they get you out the door..."


"I know." He didn't know what else to say. He had been around and around the question in his mind for the last 48 hours. He didn't see where he had a choice in the matter.


There was a long silence, and then the drumming of fingers again. They suddenly stilled and Rodney said hesitantly, "John..."


John reached forward as Rodney stepped into him and his hand collided with Rodney's chest. His fingers reflexively closed on Rodney's shirt and he pulled him in even closer. With his other hand, he moved up Rodney's chest, finding his face and fingering his lips as if to fix their location. Rodney's mouth opened at his touch and his tongue flicked out to wet his fingers, sending a little frisson of sensation straight to his cock. Letting go of Rodney's shirt, he allowed that hand to snake around behind Rodney's back and up to his broad shoulders, even as his mouth met Rodney's for a kiss. It was hungry and needy, like they had never kissed before and was breathless with want when he pulled back.


Something behind his right eyelid was suddenly uncomfortable, and he frowned, rubbing at it briefly. When he opened his eyes, there was the feeling of something slipping across his cornea and he was all of the sudden staring into an overly bright room, with Rodney's blue eyes inches away from him, filled with concern. There was a split second where they both took in what just happened, and then John saw Rodney's face erupt into an expression of pure delight. God, Rodney had the most expressive face.


Rodney shoved him back at arms length. "Ohmygod, John!" He was beaming. "One of those thingys just came off your eye. Can you see anything?"


For an answer, John pulled him in and gave him a kiss on the corner of his crooked smile. "I see a snarky astrophysicist. Am I supposed to be seeing something else?" He winced, blinked again and felt the hard shell slide off his other eye.


Rodney gave a yelp of pleased laughter and took his face in both hands, cane forgotten and fallen by the wayside. "God, I've missed your eyes."


He turned John's face slightly from side to side, as though admiring a vase or some work of art. And then suddenly, abruptly, his expression changed, the light diminishing as though it had ran out of fuel. "Yes, well, this is terrific." He stepped back and was somehow McKay the scientist again. "C'mon then, I guess we should get you down to the infirmary. Carson will want to run his little battery of tests, and I'm sure you will feel better knowing if your vision is 20-20 again."


John raised an eyebrow. "Rodney..."he began, but Rodney was taking a hopping step backwards, and bending down awkwardly to retrieve his cane. John dropped quickly down to pick up the cane, steadying Rodney with a grip on his shoulder as he threatened to lose his balance. He placed the cane firmly in Rodney's hand. Rodney did not seem to be able to meet his eyes.


"Yes, well, I'll just um, be moving along now, I'm sure you have things to do, people you need to see..."


If he had not seen with his own eyes the change that had come over Rodney's features, he would have put down their encounter the other night to one of those things that sometimes happened between people in certain circumstances and left it at that. But he had seen Rodney's expression falter and he found that he wanted to kick whoever had treated Rodney so badly that he had no confidence in personal relationships. He knew now that Rodney was one of the many reasons why he wanted to stay in Atlantis. Aw hell, we're both going to suck at this...


He leapt forward and snagged Rodney's arm as he was edging around John towards the door, shoulders hunched miserably over the cane as he leaned on it. Rodney looked down at the hand closed over his bicep and then back up at John's face, frowning as he did so. John ignored the frown, pulling himself closer to Rodney until his mouth was next to his ear.


"Beckett can wait," he whispered, gauging Rodney's reaction. He pulled at the bottom of Rodney's shirt with his free hand, sliding it up and running his hand underneath it across Rodney's abdomen. "There's a few vision tests I can think of to run right here. Privately."


The look on Rodney's face was priceless.


~fin~