Five Lemons

Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Word Count: ~1800
Summary: Just a quick episode tag for SG-1 10.3 "The Pegasus Project." I was thinking up all these ways to wank the lemon thing, and then I thought I might as well write fic.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me, nor to I derive any profit from them.


1.

"Let's see if we can get Mitchell to carry this thing around?" said John. "You know, after I've washed it and everything."

"God, there really are no limits to your depravity," Rodney huffed, but he sounded more amused than anything else. "Bad enough you wanted to put it up your—‘hey, let's just see if it fits?' I thought I was the one--."

"You were the one who wanted to punish me for getting you a fake lemon. I just suggested how."

"Fine. Slut."

"Hypochondriac."

"How are you going to do it?"

"You'll see."


2.

"So there's the lemon thing," said Mitchell. "Anything else I should know?"

"Well," said John, "he's worried about radiation, so try not to fly too close to any stars. And, he can be kind of annoying, but he really means well. He'll save your ass seven different ways if he has to. If he says something is impossible, it just means it would be for everyone else."

"He's really that smart?"

John pulled himself up short, and tried to look casual without, Mitchell thought, much success. "Well, if even half of what he says about himself is accurate, then yeah. Just try not to shoot him. We need him here."

Mitchell radioed Sam and they beamed him up to the Odyssey.

"Sam?" said Mitchell, as he sat down next to her in the mess. She was sipping a cup of tea, probably to calm her nerves before the experiment. "I think Colonel Sheppard is in love with Dr. McKay."

Sam shrugged. "Rodney can be quite charming, if you like that sort of thing." She glanced around, checking for Valla, Mitchell knew. "Just don't tell him I said that."

"You don't sound surprised," said Mitchell. He grabbed a cookie off her plate. She gave him a sour look. "You think they're together?"

Sam smiled—Mitchell saw memories there that he couldn't share, things about being on SG-1 that weren't in any mission reports. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Life or death situations—they tend to bring out that sort of thing." She turned her tea cup around in her hands. "What did he say?"

"He basically gave me ‘Keeping McKay Safe 101.' And he gave me this." Mitchell pulled the lemon out of his pocket. Sam looked from it, to Mitchell's confused expression and back again.

She nodded decisively. "Oh yeah, they're sleeping together. I bet it's pretty kinky, too."

Mitchell crossed his arms over his chest. "How on earth would you know that?"

"Woman's intuition."


3.

"You can't," said Rodney, as he got dressed to go to the morning staff meeting. John was already dressed and gelled and stood in front of the door, tapping his foot impatiently. "There's no way. He wouldn't want to look that silly."

John grinned wickedly. Rodney only got to see that grin when they were alone, and even then, not that often. That grin, unlike his usual dopey ones, had volumes of intelligence in it, and the edge of something just a little unsettling. It was incredibly hot.

John raised an eyebrow. "Care to make a wager on it?" he asked in an exaggerated California drawl, which, like that smile, made Rodney's dick stand up at attention.

"Sure, what stakes?"

"Blowjobs, coffee, or jello?"

"Blowjobs are an infinite resource," said Rodney, "therefore not sufficient stakes. Plus, you like giving them."

"So do you," said John.

"So, no blowjobs."

"Ever?" John whined.

"No, dumbass, for this. Coffee, I think. Loser gives up a pound of the best coffee they can get access to. Without larceny," he added after John shrugged too casually. "This trip, too, I don't want you to refuse to pay and then I have to wait until the next time SG-1 visits to get my coffee."

"Fine," said John. He stuck out his hand so they could shake on it. "A pound of coffee if I can get Mitchell to brandish a lemon at you in a threatening manner."


4.

"That wasn't very nice," said Rodney. "The lemon thing? I mean, I am deathly allergic."

"Consider it payback."

"Oh, come on," said Rodney. "That was fake. You gave Mitchell a real lemon."

"It didn't look fake."

"And I haven't told anyone that you screamed like a girl. It wouldn't have actually hurt you."

"You and Zelenka. And you got it to move." John shuddered, just remembering. "I think this is perfect payback for putting that model of an Iratus bug in my bed."



5.

"That wasn't very nice," said Rodney. He sat down on the edge of their bed and started to take unlace his boots. His voice sounded tight and stiff, and John felt distinctly like the time his mom had caught him sneaking five dollars out of her purse. It wasn't the money, she said, it was the trust.

"What?" said John. He tried a boyish smile to deflect whatever Rodney was going to throw at him.

"The lemon thing. Making fun of deadly food allergies isn't actually all that funny. I don't carry an Epi-Pen with me everywhere because it goes nicely with my outfits."

"Come on Rodney, are you really that allergic to citrus?"

He turned toward John with his arms crossed. "Yes."

John walked over to him and put his hand on Rodney's tense shoulder. Rather than relaxing into it, Rodney hitched his shoulders up higher.

"I realize that your stupid military rules prevent you from acknowledging me, but I'd prefer not to feel like you'd be hiding me no matter what the rules said."

There was no way this conversation could go well. "I just wanted Mitchell to like me," said John. He spread his hands helplessly.

"It's kind of scary when I'm the mature one in our relationship." John cringed when Rodney said the word 'relationship,' and Rodney threw his hands up in disgust. "We're fucking and spending nights together, and if that wasn't you whispering sweet nothings into my ear last night at 0300 . . ."

John looked down at his shoes. "I thought you were asleep."

"I wasn't."

"Fine," said John. He turned around and started taking off his clothes. Rodney could never resist him naked. He lay down in the bed, and lounged in as obscene a position as he could manage. Rodney would be helpless before his goofiness.

Except not this time. "You're just like the cool kids who pretended to be friends with me so I would do their homework." Rodney said suddenly. "I'm sleeping somewhere else." His eyes lingered on John's chest for a moment, but he turned around anyway, and walked out the door, not with a flounce, as John pictured when he thought about Rodney storming out, but with a dejected sigh, his shoulders slouching forward.

John stood up and pulled his clothes back on hastily. His shirt was inside out, and his hair surely looked terrible, but if that would show Rodney that he really did care, then so be it.

Rodney wouldn't go back to his old room, he would probably be in the lab, taking things apart, channeling his anger into meticulously picking apart some piece of Ancient technolgy—it was his version of sparring with Ronon.

But he wasn't there, just Zelenka, who was examining a piece of wiring under a magnifying lamp. He didn't even look up when John came in. "You had better apologize to him," said Zelenka. Then he looked up and gave John a disappointed look through his smudged glasses. "And mean it."

John opened his mouth to protest, say ‘Who?' and ‘What?' and try to maintain his innocence, but Zelenka tilted his head slightly, as if to say, ‘don't even try it.' John remembered Rodney telling him that Zelenka had been a high school teacher in Prague when his research projects fell out of favor with the government, and John could well believe it. Zelenka looked like he'd make John stand in the corner with his nose in a circle on the blackboard if John didn't watch out.

"Where is he?" John asked instead.

Zelenka pushed up his glasses. "He said you would know."

John didn't know, and that was probably the point Rodney was trying to make. Where would Rodney go if he were upset? John pulled out his life signs detector, looking for dots off all alone, and finally saw something moving toward the far grounding station. The station where he'd found Rodney, shaken and angry a few days after the storm. Where he'd told Rodney he'd done the right thing, and told him a lot more besides.

When he got there, Rodney was methodically re-stringing the fiber-optic cable of the grounding station. "The next storm won't come for another twenty years, Rodney."

"Yes," he said, "and I intend to be prepared. All the grounding stations will be operable from the control room. I don't know why the Ancients didn't think of that in the first place."

John sat down next to him. "Guess you're smarter than they were," he said.

"Yes, I guess so," said Rodney. He sounded more angry than hurt now, which was a good thing. John could deal with angry.

"I'm sorry, Rodney. I won't make fun of your allergies again. Come to bed. I'll make it up to you."

"Did you really do that just so Mitchell would like you?"

Rodney had been working by flashlight, and he put it down on the ground when John came, so all John could see was the outline of Rodney's shoulders, still tense, silhouetted against the glowing bulk of Atlantis. "I'm an asshole, Rodney, what do you want me to say? But I wouldn't have threatened you with it."

"You just told him to threaten me."

"If someone told me, I wouldn't have done it."

"Yeah, why don't I believe that?"

"Look, come with me," said John. Rodney looked down regretfully at his tools. "You can get those later. Come on." Before John lost he nerve, he took Rodney's hand in his and started walking back toward the more inhabited areas of Atlantis.

"What are you doing?" asked Rodney in a loud whisper when they walked past the biochemistry lab. A few of the techs were still in there, and John could hear the low buzz of conversation. He tried to let go, but John held tight. John's stomach was doing somersaults, but he wasn't going to wimp out on this.

John heard a marine patrol up ahead and raised his chin. This was it. "Wait," said Rodney. He stopped, and pulled John back into the shadows of the dimly lit hallway. "You don't have to do this. I get the point, though. Nice job, apology accepted. Although it's very flattering, I don't want you to throw away your career for me."

"Oh, thank god," said John, letting out a sigh. "I really am sorry, Rodney."

Rodney grinned a little, for the first time in hours. "Apology accepted. Although, if you want to make it up to me in a way that's less public . . ."

"Greedy," said John, but he took Rodney's hand again and led him back to their room.


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