Everything Old Is New Again

Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Word Count: ~10,000
Summary: Inspired by this picture, and yen for young, slutty McKay stories. Set at least a year after the end of S2, when Atlantis has lost contact with Earth again. No character death, I promise.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me, nor to I derive any profit from them.
Spoilers: Plenty of references to the events in S1 and the first half of S2, but no major spoilers.
A/N: big beta props to sp23 who can wrangle commas with the best of them.

"They're ready to see you now," said Carson over the radio. John stood up from where he'd blanked out at his desk. He was supposed to be reading reports, approving requisitions, all the boring stuff that came with command, but instead he just stared at the papers and let the time crawl by. He'd always been terrible at good-byes, and even worse at hospital bed scenes. He didn't feel a goddamn thing. It was too new.

Lorne had brought Rodney and Elizabeth back from that cold planet, but it was already too late. The lure of a ZPM had been a trap, and instead the Wraith ate their lives and left them just a few painful final days. John saw them briefly, before Carson put them in stasis pods, Elizabeth drawn and white like a faded photo of the old woman who had visited them from the past, and Rodney made unrecognizable by age, his mouth a hard line across his face.

John shut down then, and had not been able to feel anything since. Lorne offered to take on some of his duties, but John knew he couldn't take the waiting, so he organized off-world missions, and sent people to trade for supplies.

He let Teyla stand in for Elizabeth at the helm of Atlantis. If they ever made contact with Earth again, which looked less likely with every day that passed, SGC could send a replacement, but until then, they had no better diplomat in the Pegasus galaxy than Teyla.

Zelenka refused to take over any of Rodney's projects unless Atlantis urgently needed them complete. They could wait until the final word came. "If I touch his things, I will never hear the end of it," said Zelenka, as if Rodney were coming back tomorrow. When John wandered the halls, he always stopped by the lab, and saw the faint patina of dust, present even in the hyper-clean Atlantis, which settled over Rodney's equipment. Or maybe the equipment grew dull from lack of use, missing Rodney's busy hands on it.

What to say, now, though, to the people he loved most on Atlantis? Elizabeth—like an older sister, wise and strong and infuriating, and Rodney—too close a companion even to count the ways John would miss him. Comrade-in-arms, perhaps, he could say. The first person he wanted by his side in any danger, no, make that in any situation. Rodney was who he brought with him to see the Northern Lights that hung like sheets of silver over the poles.

"Solar wind hitting the atmosphere. This planet has a similar rotational axis to Earth," Rodney said when they sat side by side in the puddle jumper, and the shimmers of light looked close enough to touch.

"Leave it to you to use science to take the magic out if it," said John fondly.

"The science makes it more magical," he said, and John felt so much affection in that moment that he wanted to hug or kiss him on the top of the head, but he wasn't good at the little touches, the arm punches and head rubs that other people used to show liking, and it would have spoiled the mood, so instead he set the jumper down on the hard ice of the pole.

"We used to see the Aurora Australis in Antarctica—you probably did too," said John. They watched the lights in companionable silence, except for Rodney complaining about getting cold, and John let him fly the jumper back. Now that he had learned to fly, and fly well, Rodney liked to skim it low over the dark ocean, to see the phosphorescence in the wave peaks.

His COs always told him he got too close to his soldiers, couldn't let them go when the situation demanded. The hardest part of being a leader, they always said, as if they had all read the same training manual, the hardest part of being a leader is sending men out to die in battle, but you have to be willing to do it.

And John nodded and said yes sir, and sometimes even watched his strike teams come back smaller than they had gone out without outwardly flinching, but he never got used to it, and he never stopped falling just a little in love with the men he served with. How do you keep from getting too close when you eat and breathe and live and die together? You can't get any closer than that.

Now he walked through Atlantis's halls toward the infirmary, and the lights dimmed with mourning for Atlantis's favorite son and daughter. Atlantis's grief started to cut through to his own, deeply buried, or perhaps she reacted to him.

He heard voices coming from the infirmary, and laughter? He opened the door and saw Elizabeth talking with Carson, sitting up in her bed, her hair back to its chestnut brown, and her face unlined. Rodney's eyes were still closed, but he too, looked thin and changed, but alive. John leaned against a nearby bed to hide the physical rush of relief that nearly took him from his feet.

"Hello, John," said Elizabeth. Her smile usually crinkled up the edges of her eyes, but those stayed smooth, and she had also lost the lines around her mouth.

"You had me very worried," said John. He put some mock-parental concern into his voice to disguise the shock that might otherwise come out. Elizabeth didn't look fooled. Her mouth twisted up in her favorite half-smile, the one that said she knew more than she was telling.

"Who . . .? How . . .?" said John. His brain balked at producing complete sentences.

Rodney raised his arms above his head and yawned audibly. "What happened?" he asked. He opened his eyes, and John saw that he had been transformed even more than Elizabeth. Gone was the padding at his jaw line—his whole face and frame looked thinner.

"Rodney?" said John, as if Rodney could give some explanation for his metamorphosis. You were attacked by the Wraith." John frowned at Carson, who stepped forward.

"Ah, yes, I should explain. I've been working on an experimental procedure to reverse the aging effects of the Wraith feeding process."

"You never said anything." John crossed his arms over his chest.

"I didn't want you to get your hopes up," said Carson. "The procedure is rather delicate, and didn't work the first few times I tried it. They started aging back too quickly, but I think that by rewinding them back to several years before the Wraith attack, their bodies will stabilize around their natural age. The Wraith feeding process appears to speed up cell death and regeneration so that it accelerates aging a hundredfold, but it's an artificial process and can be reversed."

"Wait," said Rodney, "I'm younger now?"

"Biologically, you're about twenty-two. You'll notice the changes more in the next couple of weeks—increased metabolism, more energy, more stamina," said Carson. "It's not exact, though."

A slow smile crept across Rodney's face, then widened into a full grin. He reached up and touched his forehead, where hair had started to colonize areas abandoned years earlier. "I have hair!"

John glared at him. "And you're alive," he added.

"Yes, yes, nice job with that, Carson. Do you have a mirror?"

Carson pursed his lips. "Time enough for that later, Rodney," he said. "I'd like you to check in every few days, but there's no reason you can't go back to your rooms, and start light duties again."

Rodney swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood up. "Ooh, pins and needles, pins and needles." He bit his lip briefly, but then stood up straight. "Wow, I feel great. My back is just . . . wow. Um, I'll see you later."

"Do you need any help?" asked John.

"No, no, I'm fine." He put a hand up to his face, and his lips twitched into a smile again, then without a word, he turned and walked out of the infirmary.

"Elizabeth," said John, "do you need any help?"

"No," she said carefully. "I think I just need to re-acclimate myself. Thank you for your hard work, Carson."

"You know, you could make a fortune on that treatment," said John to Carson, once Rodney and Elizabeth had left.

"You mean if we get back to Earth?" Carson shook his head. "It only works against Wraith-induced aging."

"You tried it on yourself?" asked John, wrinkling his forehead. "That's not allowed, is it?"

He frowned at John. "Well, I had to try it on someone after the mice, and I admit being younger was a wee bit tempting. Not all of us naturally have the metabolism of a twenty-year-old, Colonel," said Carson.

"You could always spar with me and Ronon," said John. Carson made a face.

***

John ran into Rodney a few weeks later trying to requisition some new clothing from the supply officer.

"None of my clothes fit," said Rodney, sounding inordinately pleased. He lifted up a baggy shirt to reveal a pale, flat stomach with fine, dark blond hairs on it, and the waistband of his pants held on with safety pins.

"Carson said it won't last very long—six months and you'll be back to normal."

"You can't ruin this for me," said Rodney. "The last time I was this cute, I was too busy getting my first Ph. D. in three years to do anything about it. And people have told me I wasn't the most pleasant person in the world back then."

"Back then?"

Rodney gave him a look. "I have a second chance, and I'm not going to waste it."

"You look about the same to me," said John, determined not to feed Rodney's ego. He did still look like Rodney, but also beautiful and fragile—words John would never have associated with Rodney before. His eyelashes were still absurdly long, but in his thinner face his eyes looked enormous, and his lips full.

"Are you kidding? I look so much better now. You're just jealous that you're not going to be the pretty one anymore."

John filed away the notion that Rodney thought he was pretty for later consideration. "What do you mean you're not going to waste it?"

"Duh. I'm going to get some." He gestured when he spoke, and his hands were still the blunt, capable hands John remembered. "Maybe even find someone who'll like me when I age back," he said, just a little wistful.

"Norina liked you," said John.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Norina liked you," he said.

"Maybe she was just making up her mind," said John.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "I'm young, I'm cute, and now I know what to do with it."

"Oh yeah, what's that?"

He smirked at John. "I'll do what you do. Just show up."

John thought Elizabeth was dealing with her own younger face and body with her usual grace, until he saw Ronon coming from her room one morning. Ronon lingered in the doorway and Elizabeth pressed her fingers to his lips. John saw the edges of Ronon's lips curl up as he kissed her fingertips, and then she cupped her palm around his chin and drew his face down for a light touch of lips.

"You and Rodney both, huh?" he said to her after Ronon walked away.

"Ronon and I aren't excusive," she said, with a shrug. "He is welcome to have sex with whomever he wishes."

John blinked a few times. "That's not what I meant," he said. "But thank you for that mental image."

"I can tell there's something on your mind," she said after a beat, "but this is not really the time. My office, later?"

That afternoon John sat in the opposite chair rather than perching on the edge of her desk. He never should have said anything. Talking to Elizabeth about her sex life was on the other side of the planet from what he wanted to be doing right now. If he thought about it at all, he thought Elizabeth must still be carrying a torch for that Simon guy Carson had mentioned. Evidently she'd decided she had waited long enough.

"What is this about?" she asked, cool and impatient as always.

"Well, you and Rodney both seem to be taking advantage of your new . . . situation. I'm just wondering if you're both feeling okay."

Elizabeth slouched back in her chair, fluid in a way she hadn't been before. John licked his lips nervously and sat up straighter. "I feel great, John, but thank you for asking. Carson has given me a clean bill of health. As for what I do with my personal life--,"

"Ronon is on my team. Under my command," said John. Elizabeth put her fingertips together and rested her chin on the point of them, but remained silent. "And I'm under yours." He hated this conversation.

"And you are not-so-subtly implying that puts him in my chain of command," she said. John shrugged. "He's a soldier. He's a refugee. He's an independent contractor. His legal status is what I say it is, and right now, it's not a problem."

"Okay, fine. What about McKay?"

"Has he done something I should know about?"

"He's acting like a horny teenager."

"Then just think of his new appearance as truth in advertising." She smiled tightly. "It's natural to wish to affirm life after a near death experience. I'm sure that's all it is. Let me know if it becomes a problem."

"She asked me," said Ronon, the next time John saw him, before he even had a chance to say anything. John rubbed the back of his head—Ronon being forthcoming about anything personal, or really anything, wasn't usual. Elizabeth must be rubbing off on him.

***

That summer it seemed like the Athosians had some celebration every other week, and both Rodney and Teyla wanted to go to all of them, Teyla because she was proud of her growing people, and how they dug into the ground of the mainland and raised up families and houses from it, and Rodney because most of the celebrations ended with the drinking of Athosian wine around a campfire, and, these days, some opportunity for him to exercise his newfound charms.

John went with them on Rodney's first trip since his brush with the Wraith. He enjoyed the Athosian customs, and their baby-naming ceremony was much more exciting than the Episcopalian christenings he sat through as a kid. In this ritual the child was passed around to every Athosian present, each of whom greeted it solemnly, and pressed its soft little forehead to his or her own.

Even Rodney did it without complaint. He took the baby from John, and frowned at it. The baby, of course, was too young to distinguish faces, but it seemed fixated on Rodney's eyes, and reached up to try to grab his bangs where they had finally grown in. "I greet you, Loran, son of Athos." He pressed the child's forehead gingerly to his own.

"Loran?" Rodney mouthed after he passed the baby along, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Major Lorne saved the mother when that tree fell on her leg last year," said John, sotto voce.

"In that case, there should definitely be some Rodneys running around here," said Rodney. The ritual part of the event finished, and some of the Athosian men started lighting a bonfire.

"I think there's a Rodina," said John, smirking. "You want to be introduced?"

"No thank you." Rodney shuddered dramatically. "I think I've done my kid duty for a while."

When the dancing started, John watched as Rodney let himself be pulled into a meandering circle dance through the trees. The Athosian had hung paper lanterns on poles, and the whole thing looked like a Disney Theme park version of a quaint native celebration. One of the side effects of Carson's treatment was that Rodney no longer abhorred physical activity; either that, or the pretty girl clasping his hand helped him overcome his natural laziness.

John wandered around the party, exchanging pleasantries with the Athosians he knew, and smiles with the ones he didn't. He kept a weather eye on Rodney, and saw him bring a cup of Athosian wine over to a young woman. Suddenly it didn't look like Disney world anymore.

Rodney offered the wine to her and whispered something in her ear. She smiled and covered her hand with her mouth, and took the cup from him, resting her fingers against his. John wondered what he said, but it wouldn't much matter, not with Rodney's intense eyes on her, and sensual mouth so close to her cheek.

John looked away. He missed stammering, awkward-with-women, Rodney, but if he was happy . . . when he looked back Rodney and the Athosian girl had melted into the forest. John watched the fire until the smoke started to bother his eyes, and he went back to sleep in the puddle jumper.

"Just show up?" John asked as they flew back to the mainland.

Rodney shrugged. Sex, or youth, favored him. He looked relaxed for the first time since John had met him.

"You didn't need my advice this time," John continued.

"Yeah, well, if you haven't noticed, your advice sucks. I think it only works if you are in fact, you."

***

"So, uh, Rodney's not causing any problems on the mainland," he asked Teyla when they sparred next.

"He is fitting in quite well," she said. "I had no idea he could be so personable."

"Yeah, me neither—ow." Teyla landed a hit on his shoulder. "Aren't I supposed to be getting better at this?"

"You allow yourself to become distracted too easily." She whirled the staves around her wrists and kept her eyes locked on his. John forced himself to hold the eye contact; she always read something into it when he looked away, and she was usually right.

They finished off the rest of the practice in silence except for the smack of wood on wood, and wood on flesh—his own, and never hers. That was disappointing. These days, he could usually land at least a few blows.

"Well, you let me know if he's annoying anyone," said John after they touched heads and sat down on the edge of the mat. He admired her smooth brown limbs and long neck as she took a swig of water, and wondered briefly why she'd never shown any interest in him beyond sisterly. Then she turned her direct gaze back to him, and he remembered that she looked too deeply, saw him too clearly, and he couldn't see into her at all.

"Do you think he will cause some kind of problem?" she asked.

"Well, it's McKay."

"My people welcome him and his seed," she said seriously. John choked on the water he was drinking.

"His what?"

"Our population is small. It is a blessing for our mothers to have children with someone from the outside." She seemed to register John's confused expression for the first time. "This is strange to you?"

"Yeah, it's strange."

Teyla shrugged. "It is our way. I am sorry it troubles you."

And there was another reason he'd never gotten together with Teyla—she seemed just like a cooler, stronger version of everyone else until she blindsided you with something like that. Eventually he asked Elizabeth and she explained to him that the Athosian population often shrunk to such a small level that increasing the genetic diversity in this way was the only viable option, and like many such necessities in the Pegasus galaxy, this one had become enshrined in custom and taboo, so now the Athosians considered it somewhat obscene to have two children with the same man.

He tried to explain that to Rodney, but leaving his progeny all over the mainland didn't seem to hold the horror for Rodney that it would for John. "I'll make sure they know I'm not, like, fatherhood material right now, and if they still want to . . ." he trailed off and shrugged. "Most of them already have husbands anyway. You could say I'm providing a valuable service." John fought the urge to smack the back of Rodney's head.

That summer also, he asked Teyla to see if any Athosians might like to train with the Earthlings and beef up their numbers. The past year had waged a war of attrition against the Atlantean forces in the form of plagues, Wraith attacks and Genii splinter groups, and they had no fresh replacements from Earth.

Some of them fought almost as well as Teyla, and soon Atlantis was filled with serious-eyed men and women in Athosian costumes, and John became friends with a few of them. Still, they seemed so young and even more alien from him than Teyla; when he sent them out on missions, he realized he had finally learned to keep his distance. Maybe it helped if they were from another planet.

***

The days and weeks since their last contact with Earth stretched out into months, and when Rodney opened the weekly wormhole to send back their mission reports, they received no reply. The Daedalus refused to appear on the Atlantis long-range sensors, and they didn't have enough power to take the Orion back to Earth. Rodney spent the time that he wasn't wooing Athosians scouring the database for rumors of ZPMs on planets in the Pegasus Galaxy.

It was winter near the gate on M4P-112 when they visited. The headman of the village near the gate looked at Rodney's picture of a ZPM and gestured wildly. These natives did not use much verbal speech and communicated instead with a series of intricate hand signals, but they got their point across, nonetheless. They insisted that Rodney and John remain behind while John sent Teyla and Ronon back to Atlantis to get a linguist to help translate and work on a lexicon.

The headman put them in a leather tent hung with animal skins. It contained two low cots made of hide, and these were piled high with furs.

"These guys seem pretty primitive," said John as he lay back. He could hear the muffled swish of snow falling on the outside of the tent.

"Advanced enough to give their guests the best," said Rodney. "But I agree with you. I can't imagine if they have a ZPM, they have any use for it." Rodney leaned up on one elbow. The oil lights in the tent lit up the panes of his face, his cheekbones and the shadows around his eyes.

"How are the Athosian women?" John asked. He looked up at the ceiling of the tent, where the animal skins were stitched together. Why he asked this, he couldn't say. He saw less of Rodney now than ever. He never realized how much Rodney sought out his company until suddenly he wasn't there anymore.

"What makes you think it's only women?" said Rodney with a leer. John didn't say anything. "Sorry, I shouldn't tease. They're fine," said Rodney. "They'd love for you to join the fun too. You don't have to be so alone."

"I'm not good at the casual stuff."

Rodney snorted. "Yeah, right. That's all you're good at." John could hear Rodney roll over on the other cot.

The conversation brought back echoes of another, in another tent, a galaxy away. Night training maneuvers in Korea, sharing a tent with Mitch—they talked about the girls they left behind and the girls available in Korea.

"They all want you, Shep," said Mitch.

"I'm not good at the casual stuff," said John. "I always want something more." He was younger then, and not as good at keeping his mouth shut. "You love Christi, right?"

"Yeah, man, but she's back in Florida, and I'm here. She won't mind." John at least knew enough not to ask how he could really love her and cheat on her a world away, but then again, he never understood how you could love someone without knowing them, the way Mitch seemed to love Christi.

"But how do you know you love her?" he asked when the were both blitzed on tequila, too drunk even for Mitch to do much more than absently stroke the hand of the little bar girl sitting on his lap.

"I dunno. She's pretty, she's nice, she wants kids, what else?"

He started to hate Mitch just a little for being so simple as to love someone just for loving him, as if that was all it took.

"What if one of those Athosian women wanted more than just a one night stand?" asked John into the dark of the tent.

"I should be so lucky," said Rodney.

"You'd marry one of them, as long as they wanted you?" The lamp-lit night seemed to inspire confidences.

"Well, I didn't say marriage, but . . . people don't fall in love with me every day, Colonel, not the way they do with you. I think it might be nice to be loved for once, rather than the other way around."

"People don't fall in love with me every day," said John.

Rodney looked at him seriously. "Yeah, they do."

John's eyes traveled over Rodney's lips, the way the bottom one tugged down to the right, as if someone had bitten it too hard one night and it just stayed like that. Dangerous territory.

"When did you get so maudlin, anyway?" asked Rodney when the silence got too heated. "Someone waiting for you back on Earth?"

John didn't answer, because he never did. Better unexplained silence than the truth, that no, there never was anyone back on Earth, because he never figured out how to love women the way they loved him, and never figured out how to keep enough distance between himself and the men he served with.

"Fine, be that way," said Rodney. "My sex life in an open book, but Colonel Sheppard, he gets to be private and mysterious and . . ."

"There's nothing to tell," said John as he looked away. He got up and extinguished the oil lamps and they both went to sleep.

When they woke up the next morning, a ZPM was standing on the floor between the two cots.

"Well, that was uncharacteristically easy," said Rodney when he woke up and saw it. "I don't suppose these fine folks have anything that passes for coffee."

John poked his head outside the tent and into a raging blizzard.

"You have snow in your hair," said Rodney. He reached up to brush it out, but then an odd expression crossed his face and he pulled his hand back.

"You should take this back to Atlantis, and I'll see if I can't find the headman, and thank him for this fine gift."

"You want me to get hypothermia, Colonel?" asked Rodney.

"The gate is a hundred yards north of the village. Just follow your scanner and you'll be fine."

John wandered around for hours in the snow, after the blizzard stopped and the sun came out, but the life signs detectors only showed sporadic readings, and theirs was the only tent left.

"I don't know," he told Elizabeth. "Maybe they thought we were gods or something. I heard that happened to the SG teams all the time back on Earth."

She raised one eyebrow. "That was because in the Milky Way there were Goa'uld who pretended to be gods, Colonel. Rodney's found that the ZPM is mostly depleted anyway—only enough power for a few days of shielding, not enough to get us back to earth."

"A few days could still be useful when the Wraith come back," said John. Elizabeth nodded.

***

Later in the summer, the Athosians had another festival, this one for the early harvest of what they'd all taken to calling plums and peaches. They weren't exactly replicas of the Earth fruit, but close enough, and they served the peaches mashed up into their twice distilled brandy. It was sweet and burned, and it tasted like summer back on Earth.

John watched Rodney where he sat on the edge of the fire circle. The firelight made his skin glisten, set his hair and his lips aglow. Then a young woman and man sat down next to him, on either side. They seemed to know Rodney already, because it took very little invitation before the woman took Rodney's face in her hands and kissed him with her lips soft and open, while the man on the other side leaned down and dragged his lips along the side of Rodney's neck.

John's pants felt uncomfortably tight, and he got up to walk around the campsite. The moon filtered through the mainland foliage, basking the reaches beyond the fire in a cool glow. He saw Teyla's head in a woman's lap, and they smiled toward each other, although that did not seem sexual. Still, most of the other people around the fire were in pairs or threesomes of some sort, some friendly, some more than that.

He glanced back at Rodney, where things had proceeded further. Now Rodney's lips intertwined with the young man's and his hands snaked under Rodney's flimsy t-shirt. John's stomach turned over, half pleasurable half painful.

"I'm going back to Atlantis," he told Teyla. Teyla sat up, and looked at him, concern written on her face.

"Are you feeling well, Colonel?" she asked

"I have a feeling if I stay here, I'm going to ruin everyone's fun."

Teyla's glance flicked toward the fireside where Rodney and his new friends had been sitting, John followed her gaze and saw that they had vacated their spot by the fire. John clenched and unclenched his fists a few times.

"I'll be back in the morning to pick everyone else up," he said.

"You do not need to be lonely tonight," said Teyla. "I have seen Sevana watching you."

"No, I'm better off away from here." He stood up and walked back toward the jumper.

Teyla murmured a few words to her companion and got up to follow him. "John, if you will forgive me, you have been acting very strange in recent days."

"I'm fine, Teyla. Go back to your party."

She looked at him, and as always, saw too much. John dropped his gaze. "My people have been cut off from each other many times," she said. She walked toward the path around the village and gestured for him to follow her. "Each time, we mourn, and we find a way to go on. Many cling to their loved ones in such a time, or find love where they did not look for it before." She must have felt him pulling away from her, growing uncomfortable with the conversation. "You do not have to talk. Just listen," she said, and her voice was gentle, like a mother's should be.

"My father Tagar never married, although he fathered me on a dear friend, Charin's daughter, who was culled soon after my birth. Orin was his lifelong companion, his brother-in-arms. My father never married, staying true only to Orin."

"Are you saying . . . ?"

She turned to face him and held her hand up for silence. "I know once you would have desired me--that it is in your nature to seek out other warriors. But I am not for you." John frowned at her. He knew that, but hearing Teyla spell it out so definitely still hurt. He opened his mouth to say something else, but saw her expression and closed it again. She touched his arm and they continued walking.

"Dr. McKay is not a warrior as we measured such things on Athos, but he has saved more lives—."

"Wait, you're telling me we don't have a chance, which I had figured out, by the way, and then trying to fix me up with McKay?" John's voice echoed between the trees, and he glanced around guiltily.

Teyla frowned at him. "I think he would be honored to have you, John," she said.

"Rodney . . . it's not like that," said John.

"I apologize then, Colonel. I misunderstood your anger back at the fire circle." Her voice was smooth as silk.

"That? I was just, uh. . . yeah, well, don't do it again." He smiled half-heartedly. "Why don't you tell me about your first happy memory on Athos." She did, and they walked the long way around back to the fire.

When they got back, Rodney and his companions were still gone, and John curled up in a blanket on top of some cushions taken from the jumper, and watched the foreign stars wheel overhead. Teyla had looked too clearly at him, like that damn shrink in Washington.

"So, women are for fucking, men are for friendship," he had said to the psychiatrist, before they decided whether to ship him to Antarctica or boot him out entirely. He didn't remember anymore how the conversation got there. The shrink was asking him personal questions, things that had nothing to do with the botched rescue. He was thinking of Mitch, in Korea with a girl at home and a girl on his lap. He was thinking of a guy he liked too much just to let him die, no matter who asked him to.

So you shut down, right? he wanted to say. You don't tell anyone anything, and no one can get close. You're friendly and make sure no one looks past the surface. And no one realizes what you think until you can't just say "aw fuck" and pound back some beers with the guys when your buddy doesn't come back, that instead, you go quiet and deadly, and you're the one it takes five guys to hold down so you don't rush off into the mountains after them.

Then one time no one held him back. No one saw what he was doing until it was too late.

He was too angry to stay quiet that day in Washington. Usually he could let it all slide off. "That's what passes for healthy around here, huh?" he asked.

"What bothers you more, Major? That men aren't for fucking or that women aren't for friendship?" John didn't answer. "Why do you have to draw that distinction?"

"I'm not the one who made the rules," said John, biting his tongue too late.

"Major, you can talk to me; I'm not going to report you."

"I'm not a fag," he said. He said the hard words, the rude words, to make himself hard and rude. "That's not why I went after him. You shouldn't leave your men behind. That's all." There were men on the base who screwed the pretty Korean boys, and each other, but John was never attracted to any of them, to their casual flings. And he'd been good since he'd been in the Air Force. That Sheppard, keeps his nose clean, they always said. Isn't he a little too pretty? Nope, always has a girlfriend back home. He's the loyal type, that's all. Flies straight and true, that one.

They didn't say that after Afghanistan. They called him a fuckup instead.

Now, Teyla saw it too plain, that he was stupidly, irrationally jealous about McKay, of all people. He shivered as the Lantean night grew colder, and wrapped the blanket around tighter.

He woke up at first light with Elizabeth's voice in his ear.

"John, I need you and Rodney to come back to Atlantis immediately. There's a problem with the gate shield," she said.

"Copy that," he acknowledged. He got up and walked over to where he'd parked the jumper, a few dozen yards away from the village.

He wished the jumper had a horn he could lean into to wake everyone up, but instead he said into his radio as loudly as possible without actually yelling, "McKay, rise and shine."

After a few minutes, he heard, "Murrrrphh," and then, "ow, get off my arm." He thought he heard some slurping noises, and then, "oh yeah, you too, yeah, mmmm." It sounded like things were getting heated again.

"Rodney, get out here or I'm leaving without you."

"You wouldn't do that," said Rodney over the radio.

Rodney stumbled out into the clearing a few minutes later. His hair was a mess, he had a dark bruise on his neck, and his eyes looked tired and heavy, but he grinned at John and waved through the windshield of the jumper. "Oh God," he said when he got in and flopped down next to John. "I need a nap. Teyla told me to tell you she's going to stick around here for a few days and settle some land disputes that Halling thoughtfully saved for her." He yawned hugely. "What's the hurry this morning, anyway?"

"I thought I should save you from tripping and falling into another Athosian."

"Ha ha. What's wrong with you? Didn't Sevana . . .?"

"No."

"Why not? She was all over you during the dance."

"I don't think that's really any of your business."

"Okay, but you're missing out. Those Athosians, wow. I've never been in the middle of . . . ." He rubbed his fingers along his hip, and a dreamy look crept across his face. John's throat got tight.

"If you can get your head out from between your legs for a few minutes, there are some problems with the gate shield that Elizabeth thinks you should take a look at. I think it might be sabotage."

"Really? How on earth would you know that? Zelenka," he said into his radio, "can you send me the schematics for the shield?"

Rodney tapped on his tablet for a while, and punctuated the sound of the wind skimming over the jumper with only "hmmm" and "ah".

"So, were those two married or what?" asked John after a while.

"Working," sang out Rodney, but he put down the tablet. "Sanda and Meelo? Yes, they are."

"How seventies of you. How does that even work?"

"They asked me, I said yes. As for more prurient details, you'll just have to wait until after I'm done saving everyone's asses again."

***

It got bad in a hurry—bad enough someone had raised the base shield before they got to Atlantis. The jumper warned him just in time and he skimmed over the top.

John couldn't see anything incoming, and the jumper wasn't picking anything up either. Maybe the shield was some trick to drain their power off.

"This is Colonel Sheppard, come in," he called over a secure frequency to the gate room.

"They can open the shield for just a second, and it should dissipate from the top down," said Rodney. "We can slip through."

"You get that?" said John to whoever was listening—one of the new techs whose name he hadn't learned yet answered in the affirmative.

John touched down on the top of the shield just as it receded. "I'm through," he said into the radio. He heard shooting through the earpiece. When he landed in the jumper bay he packed as much ammo as possible into his vest strapped an extra P-90 to his back, and tossed one at Rodney.

Rodney didn't argue but caught it gingerly, and secured it to a strap around his neck.

"What's the situation?" John asked as he took off running.

"The base shield is up because we detected incoming Wraith darts. Then the gate shield went down. Soldiers are coming through the gate. We're able to hold them off for now, but more keep coming." He heard another spatter of gunfire as the tech's voice cut off.

John crept up to one of the doors to the gate room and took a quick look inside. Bodies littered the floor, and he saw bursts of machine gun fire. Lorne and his marines still held the defensive positions, and none of the bodies looked Lantean, but even as he looked, another wave of soldiers came through the gate.

John noticed one of the wounded trying to crawl down toward the door where they hid, and he retreated back within the shadow of the door. Rodney crouched beside him. His eyes were wide and his face had gone white with fear. "You have to get me up to the control room so I can fix the shield," he said.

John held his finger up to his lips, and gestured with his chin at the man coming down the steps toward them. Rodney tried to take a peek out, but John put an arm across his chest to stop him.

When the wounded enemy soldier collapsed in the doorway John's patience wore out, so he darted out and pulled the man back into the shadows. The man was bleeding fast and steady from a wound to the thigh, but it wasn't the pulse of arterial blood, so he'd live long enough to tell them what he knew.

John put his hand on the wound, both to stop the bleeding and inflict some pain. "Trespassers," the man hissed, "your blasphemy will be punished."

"Great, zealots," muttered Rodney.

"Why are you attacking us?" asked John.

"You defile this city. We are cleansing it."

"Colonel, this is pointless," said Rodney urgently. "I have to fix the shield. That's the only way to end this."

John nodded. "Well, he's not going anywhere," he said, looking at the wounded soldier. He took a plastic tie from his vest and affixed it above the bullet hole as a make shift tourniquet. He used two other ties to secure the soldier's hands and feet.

"Major Lorne, do you copy," said John into his radio when he was done.

"Colonel, where are you?" said Lorne into his ear.

"We're just outside the door from the jumper bay. We need to get up to the gate room. Have someone cover us. In three, two, one--." One of Lorne's men lay down a blast from his P-90 that left John temporarily deaf, but he pulled Rodney off his feet and through the firefight. Half way to the stairs he tripped over an armed Wraith grenade that rolled across the floor. Rodney kept moving forward and John was thrown backward by the blast.

***

John came back to consciousness some time later, and the first thing he noticed was how quiet everything seemed. No gunfire, no shouts; he couldn't even feel the percussion of bullets hitting the walls of Atlantis. To his left was a blackened crater of twisted metal in Atlantis's floor. He lay his hand down on her skin for a moment in apology.

He rolled over on the hard floor, and oh God, every bone and muscle was bruised and gave out a twinge of complaint when it touched the ground. He saw bodies, unmoving on the gate room floor, every one clad in rough homespun. Their Genii-made weapons looked incongruous in their hands, but then again, they had looked strange when the Genii first wielded them.

They lay still as a graveyard—no more machine-gun fire—so John got slowly to his feet, wincing at every movement, since there was no one here to see him. He felt a hundred years old. Then he remembered the last instant before the blast, losing his grip on Rodney's arm. He felt a rushing in his ears, and a tingle in his fingers—that adrenaline rush most people turned into panic and he turned into deadly force. He put his hand up to his ear, but his radio had gone missing, so instead he sprinted up the stairs into the control room.

"Where is McKay?" he asked Chuck, the only person still sitting there.

Chuck frowned at him. "Everyone's in the infirmary. You should probably go there too."

John put his hand up to his head and felt something sticky, but he wasn't dizzy, so it couldn't be that bad.

"Oh thank God," said Elizabeth when she saw him come in the door of the infirmary. "Everyone thought—well, you're okay." She went to hug him, but John put a warning hand up. His skin felt sore, as if one more touch might make it just quit in protest. Every bed John could see was full, some with marines, but most with their unkempt attackers.

"You look terrible, what happened to you?" she said.

"Why didn't anyone get me?" he asked, ignoring her question

"Lorne just told me you made it over here from the mainland," she said. "We've been busy getting the wounded back to the infirmary."

"Where's McKay?"

Elizabeth gave him a confused look. "He's looking for you with Lorne and some of the others. Major Lorne, you can come back now, we got him," she said into her radio. "Are you okay, John? Your head—do you want Carson to take a look at that?" John waved her off.

"Really, you should let me," said Carson. John sat down on one of the beds and let him swab off and put on a bandage. The adrenaline drained out of his body, leaving exhaustion and a helpless anger behind.

"Your head should be as good as new in a week, but those black eyes are going to take a little longer," said Carson. John stole a look at himself in the mirror above the sink on the other side of the infirmary and winced. Deep red smudges blossomed outward from the bridge of his nose, and he knew from other black eyes, and other explosions, that these would go through every color of the rainbow before disappearing.

"Well, I'm not going to be winning any beauty contests any time soon," said John, attempting a grin.

A few minute later he heard Rodney's strident voice from outside the door, finishing some diatribe with, ". . . and this is why I am the only person who should be allowed to activate the shield."

John's whole body sagged with relief when he heard Rodney's voice, but then he came around the corner, looking too young, too pretty, and suddenly John wanted to punch him. Rodney gave him a relieved smile, which faltered when he noticed John's expression. "What?" he mouthed.

"Debrief in my office in an hour," said Elizabeth. Her eyes flicked back and forth between Rodney and John but she didn't say anything. "I assume everyone will want to get cleaned up." John jumped up off the bed, and wished he hadn't as the movement jarred every part of his body.

"Glad to see you're alive, McKay," he said as he followed Rodney down the hall toward the living quarters.

"You, too," he said mildly. Then, after they walked on in grim silence for a few minutes, he stopped, and said, "What? I saved everyone's asses today, and this attitude is my thanks?"

"Maybe they wouldn't have needed saving if you weren't so busy fucking every woman—and man—on the mainland."

"Oh, so I'm never allowed to leave Atlantis, is that it. I'm just too important—well, I am important—but, Colonel, we're fine. No one's dead. No permanent damage, except maybe to the floor of the gate room." John stepped in close to him, not sure what he was going to do next, kiss Rodney or wring his neck, when Rodney's expression of self-righteous anger smoothed out and turned into something else entirely. A very smug grin.

"Wait, Colonel," he said, "I think I finally know what's going on here." Rodney brushed his hair out of his eyes. They were set in dark rings from a night of sleeplessness and then hours under attack. He was messy and dirty with sweat and bits of leaves from the mainland, but somehow it served to make him look better, not worse. John was acutely aware of the bandage on his head and his black eyes. "You're jealous," said Rodney, "but not of me, because obviously, well, look at you—if you wanted to, all those Athosian girls would still rather have you than me."

"What do you mean?"

"Now that I'm young and cute, you want me. That's why you've been acting like such a pill." Rodney grinned as if proud to have worked it out.

"No, I don't."

"Yeah, you do. I should have seen it. It's kind of disappointing that you didn't notice me before, but people are shallow, myself definitely included."

"I'm acting like this because you've turned into such a slut, I don't even recognize you anymore," said John.

"You're one to talk, playboy of the Pegasus Galaxy. That never bothered me!"

"Oh no, then what about Chaya?"

Their volume had escalated over the course of the argument, but that brought Rodney up short. "I'm not, um, proud of that, but it was a few years ago now. I've grown since then." He glanced up at John from under lowered lashes. "So you don't think I'm the least bit attractive?" he asked.

John felt light-headed. Predatory Rodney was a little tough to take after all the day's excitement. He swallowed hard. "What is it," he asked hoarsely, "that you say to the Athosians, when you whisper in their ears?"

Rodney leaned in close, and John could feel his breath on his ear. Rodney wore only a threadbare t-shirt that was a little too short and a pair of pants that hung a little too low. He smelled like sweat and sex and machine oil, and underneath it all the ozone tang of naquada.

"I tell them many things," he said. His lips were close enough to brush against John's ear. John's own lips tingled from the kiss he wasn't getting but wanted. "I'll tell you this." He put his hand on the back of John's neck and caressed the hairline. "I'm going to take a shower, and then we have a post mortem in Elizabeth's office. If you want to continue this conversation, you can meet me in my room afterwards."

He turned and left and John could have sworn he saw a little hip wiggle. "Yeah, I'm going to take a shower too," John called after him.

He needed one too—the shower did a lot to make him feel better, and thinking about Rodney's body so close to his made him hard. He grabbed on but then didn't jerk off—part of him thought he might want to save that for when he saw Rodney, and the other part wanted to wait until he could exorcise Rodney from his mind.

John dried his hair with a towel, put on some clean clothes and went down to the mess to grab some MREs for after the meeting before going back up to Elizabeth's office. Rodney and Lorne were already there when he arrived.

"As I was saying, Colonel," said Rodney when he entered, "the ZPM from M4P-112—you know, with the snow and the furs—had some kind of computer virus encoded into the interface." Rodney looked cleaner but still indecent, his eyes bruised and heavy with fatigue. "It had two pieces—one to fool our scanners into thinking that Wraith darts were headed our way, to make us turn on the shield, and another to deactivate the gate shield. As soon as the gate shield deactivated, the darts disappeared off the scanners, and we have since confirmed that they were, in fact, phantoms."

"Someone put a lot of thought into this," said Elizabeth.

"Yes," agreed Lorne. "And not those religious nuts in the infirmary."

"It was a Genii-based virus," said Rodney.

"They must have collaborated with the Brotherhood to deliver the ZPM to the natives on M4P-112, who they knew would get it to us," said John. "Weren't those guys wearing the Brotherhood of Fifteen insignia?"

"Allina? But why?" asked Rodney. "They had to know the attack would fail. Even if I hadn't gotten the shield back up, which you have to admit was pretty unlikely." Elizabeth looked at him blankly. "Unlikely that I'd fail, I mean."

"The last soldier who came through the gate was Genii, a member of Kolya's splinter cell. He's unconscious, but he has their uniform," said Lorne.

"Can we expect this to happen again?" asked Elizabeth.

"Not unless we're tricked by another phony ZPM. Which won't happen."

"Still, this worries me. If Kolya is active again, and if the Brotherhood has turned violent . . . well, there's nothing more we can do today. All's well that ends well. But let's do a little more due diligence the next time we find a ZPM."

"I was," said Rodney, "but someone had to go and turn it on before I was finished testing it."

John patted him on his arm, and said, "It's okay, everyone knows you've been a little distracted lately."

Rodney look at him, with his mouth slightly open, and suddenly it wasn't quite a friendly pat on the arm anymore. John kept his hand on Rodney's elbow as they walked out the door. It felt like a luxury just to touch him this much.

Rodney looked at the brown packets John held in his hand. "MREs, Colonel?"

"Nothing passes you by," said John. They walked down the hall. Lorne and Elizabeth both went their separate ways and soon they were alone.

"You coming in?" said Rodney when they reached the door to his room. His hair hung down almost over his eyes, and John missed when Rodney had had nothing to hide behind.

John glanced around, and followed him in. Once inside he crossed his arms over his chest. "You said we had something to talk about. We need to, uh, clear the air."

Rodney cocked his head to one side and frowned. "Clear the air?" he said snidely. "That's not why you came here."

"Why did I come here?"

Rodney took the MREs out of his hand. He was so skinny now John saw, looking at him in profile—three weeks in stasis, his increased younger metabolism plus having sex for stress relief rather than eating, had melted away whatever excess weight he once had.

"You came here for me. You want me now that I'm pretty, and now's your chance." His lips pushed out in a pout. "I'm not going to stay pretty that much longer. What are you waiting for?"

"I've never, uh, you know, except some hand jobs in high school. I was never supposed to," he said. He looked at Rodney but made his eyes hard so he could get the words out.

"Well, that was stupid," said Rodney. "Half the military guys I knew in Russia were gay or at least gay when there wasn't anything else on the horizon. I'm sure you had plenty of opportunity."

"I'm not gay," he said, although he knew that protest sounded more and more feeble by the minute.

"You're not exactly straight, either," said Rodney. "Come here." He crossed the few steps to where John stood. John wanted the Rodney he knew, a little soft, a little insecure, brazen about his emotions, arrogant about everything else, not this young Rodney, sinuous and strange.

But he didn't have time to articulate that, because the Rodney here and now had licked his lips, and kissed John's neck, and it felt like he had nerves that went straight from his neck to his cock, the way his body reacted. Even if this was the wrong Rodney, it still felt too good to stop. Rodney lightly tongued his earlobe, and then whispered, "I told them I wanted them. Everyone likes to hear that."

John swallowed and said thickly, "They do?"

"Yes," he said, his lips almost against John's, tantalizing, and John kissed him then, hard and blind at first, just to feel what he hadn't felt in so long, what he'd always wanted and never had before. Then he slowed down and tasted the texture of Rodney's lips under his, the full curve of his lower lip, the ironic sneer of his upper. Rodney kissed fast or slow as the moment took him, sloppy and wet and messy no matter what.

Rodney ran his hands under John's shirt, over his nipples, then tugged John's shirt over his head. He stood staring at John's naked torso for a moment. "I always wanted this," he said slowly, without looking up from John's chest. "Even if it's just . . . always."

John tipped Rodney's chin up and kissed him again, and ran his hands over Rodney's back. Rodney kissed back in little bites now, as if he were trying to taste John, savor him and devour him. "I did too," said John, because he suddenly realized it was true.

"You don't have to say that," said Rodney in between kissing his neck. "Just want me now."

John bent down over Rodney's neck, and frowned when he saw the hickey there, left by someone else. He touched it with his fingers and Rodney stiffened, when he realized what John was doing.

He pulled back and gave John an accusing look. "Don't spoil this."

"I just have to . . ." said John. He leaned over and kissed and bit right there, hard enough to leave a bigger bruise than the one there already.

"Ow, damnit," said Rodney. He rubbed his neck where John had bit him. "That fucking hurt. Are you happy now?" Then he smiled again a little and reached down and cupped John's cock where it pushed against the front of his pants. "I guess so." He ran his hands under the waistband of John's pants and skimmed his fingers over the sensitive spots John had just south of his hip bones. John pulled off Rodney's T-shirt and threw it on the floor, and they kissed again, chest to bare chest. It felt strange and new, like he was back in high school, trying this again for the first time.

Rodney tugged down John's pants and then his own, so they both stood naked, and golden by the light of Rodney's bedside lamp. John's cock stood up painfully full, and then Rodney's hands were hot on it and he beckoned John over to the bed and pushed him down on his back. For a moment Rodney looked lost and hesitant, but the moment passed and he lay down next to John, and tugged him closer.

John pulled Rodney's face toward him while Rodney's hands worked his cock. He put one hand on Rodney's face and the other cupping his ass, but his hands seemed to be moving of their own accord—he wanted to touch Rodney all over and couldn't figure out how, while Rodney's hands were busy making his cock feel about as good as he could ever remember.

Rodney wriggled out of John's arms, and somehow ended up kneeling between John's legs. His hair fell into his eyes and his cheeks looked hollow in the lamplight. He licked his lips and bent down over John's cock and had barely gotten two good strokes in with his mouth before John came helplessly.

"Well, that's a nice start," said Rodney licking his lips, before John could apologize for going off like a teenager. Rodney took a drink of water from the glass on the bedside table, and then kissed John again before he could think of objecting. John saw that Rodney was still as hard, if not more so, than he'd been a few minutes earlier. "You better not be too tired. I was kind of hoping you'd fuck me."

John's eyes widened at that, but his dick knew better than he did, because it tried to stir back to life. And it didn't take too long before Rodney was talking him through it, with the same imperious style of giving directions that he did when speaking about any other subject on which he was knowledgeable.

"Plenty of lube, and a condom, and that's right, push in slowly, and oh yeah, you can go a little further now." Rodney let out a hard sigh, and then started rocking back against John. John held onto Rodney's hips, and then reached one hand around to find Rodney was already pumping his own cock with long even strokes to match. Rodney laughed low, and said next time, but now John should concentrate on what he was doing.

It felt amazing, of course, but more amazing because it was Rodney he was inside, Rodney who looked back at him over his shoulder, Rodney who came first and spasmed hard around him, almost painfully, dragging another orgasm out of John until his legs felt ready to collapse underneath him.

John went to the bathroom and cleaned up. By the time he crawled back into bed with him, Rodney was asleep, curled on his left side, breathing deep and even. John slid into bed next to him and turned off the light.

"I really did want you before," he said. Rodney didn't stir. "I'm not good at casual stuff, and I'm not good at sharing."

"Is that a fact?" said Rodney dryly as he rolled over to face John. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. "You don't have to share me, for as long as you want me," he said, in a tone that implied he didn't know how long that would be. "But I really am tired. I'll still be here in the morning. I hope you will be too."

John opened his mouth to say something, to protest that he'd want Rodney long after he stopped being the Atlantis sex-pot, but Rodney wouldn't believe him. Why should he? The best way to prove that was to stick around anyway.


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