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sga_santaTitle: Forward The Happy Ending
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leyenn
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: G
Recipient:zinfic
Spoilers: Nothing in particular.
Summary: This is what happens afterward.
Author's Note: I wish I'd seen far enough to comfortably write Sam/Teyla for you. I hope some John/Rodney will suffice! Thanks go to [someone who knows who she is] for the down-n-dirty beta.
Forward The Happy Ending
You come back to yourself leaning against a gray infirmary wall, your heart hammering in your chest and something hot and sick pulsing in your gut. Teyla's holding you up. You can't see Ronon.
You can't see Rodney.
Elizabeth grabs you as you stumble forward, trying to get to the room across the hall you're standing in, the room you know you should be in right now. You bat at her hands, but your own seem to have stopped working. That's damned inconvenient.
People are talking, asking you questions, and you don't know any answers. You can't remember.
"What happened? Colonel? John? What happened?"
You don't know. You don't know what's going on, except that you want to see Rodney, you want to see Rodney right now and they won't let you. You're dripping, and it's blood, and it's all over the damned floor, and then you realise it's yours, and that's about the time everything goes black.
You wake up about fifteen feet away from that spot in the corridor, staring at the ceiling from an infirmary bed that's as uncomfortable as ever.
"Well," Rodney says from the chair beside you. "Are you going for Idiot of the Year, or was there something else behind that incredibly dumb display of bravado?"
You wish you knew what he's talking about, you really, actually do. But you've got no idea. You'd love to say so, but your head rolls to look at him and that's all your energy spent out.
Oh, great. Rodney's pissed at you and you can't even summon up your voice to argue.
"Rodney," you say, with a great amount of effort. The breathing in is a very bad idea - your stomach feels like it's been pinned to the bed, and you pick this moment to notice the nasal cannular. But you make the sound, and that's what matters.
Rodney sighs at the sound of his name like he's been waiting years for it. "You idiot," he says again, with no fight in it at all. "You complete and utter..."
But you never find out what else you are, because he doesn't say it; just sneaks his hand over yours on the bed and watches you breathe. Before you fall asleep again you think, you think you notice him smiling.
*
After a week of infirmary ceiling, you finally get on enough of Carson's nerves for him to throw you out on your bruised and battered ass. Rodney comes by to pick you up and takes great pleasure in his place behind the wheelchair they put you in. Teyla walks along beside you - just occasionally laying her hand on your shoulder, but nothing more. It's just enough to say what needs to be said: she's happy you're alive and that you're gonna be okay.
Taking the transporter in a wheelchair is a little weird. You've never really thought about how things go weightless for a second as you disappear and come back, and it's not the most comfortable thing to experience with thirty-four stitches in your gut. Rodney hears you grunt - you know he does, because his hand comes down on your shoulder opposite Teyla's and squeezes. You're reaching up to cover his hand with yours before you realise what you're doing.
Teyla doesn't say anything, but she does leave the two of you at your door.
Inside you suddenly notice how everything's at completely the wrong height, either too high to stretch or low enough that you'll probably fall out of the damned chair. Rodney catches you as you try and grab the laptop from the coffee table: his hands are warm as they stop you tumbling onto the floor like a broken egg. You swallow hard, and then the moment's gone, Rodney swiping the laptop safely out of your reach.
"Hey!"
"I'll set it up for you on the bed," he says pointedly, and you shouldn't have the thoughts you do, under the circumstances, but you're not really complaining. It's not the first time you've had those thoughts about Rodney, and there's something to be said for knowing this is obviously not the time you'll be doing anything about them, so you can sort of indulge, in a twisted kind of way.
So you let Rodney McKay make coffee with your blatantly unauthorised private kettle and even more unauthorised instant caffeine supply, in the not-a-kitchen corner of your room, and you watch him. Making your coffee. For you.
It doesn't really matter what happened, you think, if it means Rodney making you coffee -
- and helping you into bed, which he does with surprising care, even when you wince as the stitches pull a little too much and he gets that look of utter horror that usually only comes with facing small children.
"You okay? What's wrong? What's hurting?"
"I'm fine," you say. Well, you are. You've got Rodney and coffee and no blood escaping anywhere. It's all good. "I'm fine, Rodney," you say, and put your hand on his wrist, because he's leaning close enough for you to do it, so you do, and he doesn't pull away.
And that's how you end up in bed with a mug of coffee that Rodney gave you from his own hands, which no one will ever believe, and while the laptop boots you listen to Rodney tell you all about what happened - all the answers to those questions you couldn't answer because you (had a concussion, according to Carson) were too stupid to tell them you'd taken a three-foot bronze saber in the midsection, according to McKay. At that point you forget the laptop and do try to protest that you didn't actually remember, and anyway, it probably didn't seem that bad -
"Not that bad?! Are you even qualified for field medicine, Doctor Heroic?"
"It was the only way to get you out of there alive," you say, without thinking, and Rodney says;
"Oh my god, you do remember," but you don't, it's just obvious. Why else would you accept a duel to the death with what sounds like an extra-galactic Neanderthal when you had a perfectly good gun strapped to your thigh?
"They weren't nearly advanced enough to be able to treat bullet wounds successfully," Rodney says.
"I mean I could have just shot them."
"They weren't actually trying to you know, kill us," Rodney says. "They just thought I'd make a good sacrifice."
"Someone always thinks you'll make a good sacrifice," you say. It's true. Rodney has built in altar-radar. It's a pity, really, with all the other things he claims to be allergic to - citrus, other people's sarcasm, hideous ugly death - that he couldn't add alien sacrificial worship to the list. Your midsection would really appreciate it.
"It's not my fault I'm such a fine specimen of sacrificial manlihood," Rodney says.
"There's no such word, genius." You think he's preening even though that would just be ridiculously self-centered, and that's not like Rodney at all.
"Scrabble fiend," Rodney smirks. "Manlihood. The manly version of womanlihood, of which I am most definitely not a specimen, fine or otherwise."
"Did you bring a dictionary for your one book?"
"I brought Watchmen and you know it." Of course you do; you also know that he didn't bring a physics text because he could blag all those on cd and thus considered it a waste of resources, and that he's finished his book sixty-two times to your fifteen pages.
You know a lot of things about Rodney McKay. That's how you know what you did back on this week's planet even though you don't remember, because you don't think straight when he's in trouble, not any more. You didn't think you were capable of losing your head like that any more, and it's fucking scary. You don't even realise he's staring at you until he says,
"You know it," in a different voice, in that official McKay just give me a minute voice, and you open your mouth to interrupt, but it's too late. He's had a week's head start: you, you're still drugged up and not nearly caffeinated enough to get with the programme in time.
"You're - you want - You!" You can hear it click together when he says it. He does that hand waving thing that makes you want to pin his arms down with your own, and his eyes are wide with astonishment. "You want me, don't you? Oh my god, you do. You do. In that way. In a stupid get-yourself-killed-for-me way. Oh. Oh, my god."
You sigh. "Yeah." Like you're going to try denying it. What would be the point? You have a great slash across your stomach to prove how stupid you can be about Rodney McKay, and he's supposed to be a damned genius.
"Oh my god. Oh. Oh. My god."
Really, you think, would it kill him to stop saying that? It's not helping. It's not going to help. God is not going to come down and absolve you of this messy little problem. Yes, you want your best friend, your teammate, your geek movie buddy where geek movie buddies are scarce. You've had every conceivable carnal thought you can about Rodney McKay and then a few extra for good measure. Hell, you've even had a few romantic ones, and those haven't happened in... well, frankly, you're amazed he's just never realised before now. Genius. Right.
He's sitting there silent, staring at you, and you say, because you can't help it, because being outed always makes you defensive, "Now who's being the idiot?"
Rodney just glares. "Well, you, obviously," he says, and you completely agree-
Wait. What?
But he's still glaring. His eyes are really too damned blue when he's glaring at you, especially when he waves his hands in the general direction of your stomach and says, "Why in Einstein's name did you wait until now to tell me this, you complete bastard?"
This is not how it's supposed to go.
"Aren't you going to yell about how I should have told you I was gay, the ruin this could do to my career if it got out-"
"Excuse me? When have I, Doctor Vain von Selfish, ever given you the impression that I care what your backwards American military system has to say about anything?"
If you were scoring here, which you're not, because you'd be losing, that would be another point to Rodney.
"Must have forgotten. With the concussion."
"Have I said how much of a complete bastard you are? Why yes, I have. Maybe you forgot that as well. Now be serious or I'm leaving. And I'll steal your coffee on the way out."
"You're not having my coffee, McKay." On at least one point you are going to stand firm and if it can't be Rodney's rampant hysteria then fuck it, it's going to be the coffee.
"As if you could stop me," he says. "Which oh look, brings us right back to what are you doing telling me this now?!" He points a finger at you, right in your face. "And don't say it's the concussion or I'll hit you."
And then you get it.
Oh.
Oh.
No, this is not how it works. They never like you back. Where would you be if they liked you back?
Not in the Pegasus Galaxy, that's for damned sure.
Oh, sure, the women do. Women are easy for you - too easy, or you'd have never married Clare. But they're easy because you don't really care, not the way you do right now, not the way that makes your heart thrum through your chest and your head feel like you're flying. It's only the guys that have ever made you feel like you do right now, staring at Rodney McKay - who, against all previous rational evidence, is right in front of you liking you back.
"Um," you say.
"Oh, you - you anti-genius," Rodney says, rolling his eyes, and leans forward to kiss you.
His mouth is as soft as it looks and as hot as you've imagined, and you've imagined Rodney's mouth a lot. He kisses the way he talks, not holding back for a moment, like he doesn't care that he's showing how much he really wants this.
And right now, right here, what he really wants is you, which is just... it's fucking unbelievable. Someone sliced you open with a three-foot blade a week ago, and whatever smart comments he makes about your indefatigable hairstyle, you know for a fact that it shows. You feel like a doped up kitten, you're still grey and bruised and slightly wild on the morphine. The dull pain is a reminder that there are some black and ugly things about you, things you know he doesn't know, and you know that because he's kissing you, his hands are on your face and your wrist and he's kissing you with his mouth, with his fingertips, with the way he's leaning into you. You never thought...
"Get it?" he says, in that low come on, work for me voice that makes your head tingle. And you do. You get it. You get Rodney.
"Yeah," you say. He smirks.
"Idiot," he says, and grabs the laptop. "Move your incarcerated ass over, already." He flips the screen up and drags it onto his lap, and you find yourself being manhandled until you're on the wrong side of the bed, the opening theme of Star Trek playing out while Rodney shifts around and mumbles until he's comfortable.
You know he won't believe you if you say it: if you tell him how this is probably a hallucination on your part, how he's the first guy you've wanted who's ever looked twice at you or just you know, not thought you were perverted or crazy, so you don't. You just lie there with him and catch half an hour of Wrath of Khan before you fall asleep, Rodney an unfamiliar bulk along your side, his hand light on your chest.
When you wake up it's the middle of the night, and he's snoring.
You're not sure you'd hallucinate that.
*
Author:
leyennPairing: John/Rodney
Rating: G
Recipient:
zinficSpoilers: Nothing in particular.
Summary: This is what happens afterward.
Author's Note: I wish I'd seen far enough to comfortably write Sam/Teyla for you. I hope some John/Rodney will suffice! Thanks go to [someone who knows who she is] for the down-n-dirty beta.
You come back to yourself leaning against a gray infirmary wall, your heart hammering in your chest and something hot and sick pulsing in your gut. Teyla's holding you up. You can't see Ronon.
You can't see Rodney.
Elizabeth grabs you as you stumble forward, trying to get to the room across the hall you're standing in, the room you know you should be in right now. You bat at her hands, but your own seem to have stopped working. That's damned inconvenient.
People are talking, asking you questions, and you don't know any answers. You can't remember.
"What happened? Colonel? John? What happened?"
You don't know. You don't know what's going on, except that you want to see Rodney, you want to see Rodney right now and they won't let you. You're dripping, and it's blood, and it's all over the damned floor, and then you realise it's yours, and that's about the time everything goes black.
You wake up about fifteen feet away from that spot in the corridor, staring at the ceiling from an infirmary bed that's as uncomfortable as ever.
"Well," Rodney says from the chair beside you. "Are you going for Idiot of the Year, or was there something else behind that incredibly dumb display of bravado?"
You wish you knew what he's talking about, you really, actually do. But you've got no idea. You'd love to say so, but your head rolls to look at him and that's all your energy spent out.
Oh, great. Rodney's pissed at you and you can't even summon up your voice to argue.
"Rodney," you say, with a great amount of effort. The breathing in is a very bad idea - your stomach feels like it's been pinned to the bed, and you pick this moment to notice the nasal cannular. But you make the sound, and that's what matters.
Rodney sighs at the sound of his name like he's been waiting years for it. "You idiot," he says again, with no fight in it at all. "You complete and utter..."
But you never find out what else you are, because he doesn't say it; just sneaks his hand over yours on the bed and watches you breathe. Before you fall asleep again you think, you think you notice him smiling.
*
After a week of infirmary ceiling, you finally get on enough of Carson's nerves for him to throw you out on your bruised and battered ass. Rodney comes by to pick you up and takes great pleasure in his place behind the wheelchair they put you in. Teyla walks along beside you - just occasionally laying her hand on your shoulder, but nothing more. It's just enough to say what needs to be said: she's happy you're alive and that you're gonna be okay.
Taking the transporter in a wheelchair is a little weird. You've never really thought about how things go weightless for a second as you disappear and come back, and it's not the most comfortable thing to experience with thirty-four stitches in your gut. Rodney hears you grunt - you know he does, because his hand comes down on your shoulder opposite Teyla's and squeezes. You're reaching up to cover his hand with yours before you realise what you're doing.
Teyla doesn't say anything, but she does leave the two of you at your door.
Inside you suddenly notice how everything's at completely the wrong height, either too high to stretch or low enough that you'll probably fall out of the damned chair. Rodney catches you as you try and grab the laptop from the coffee table: his hands are warm as they stop you tumbling onto the floor like a broken egg. You swallow hard, and then the moment's gone, Rodney swiping the laptop safely out of your reach.
"Hey!"
"I'll set it up for you on the bed," he says pointedly, and you shouldn't have the thoughts you do, under the circumstances, but you're not really complaining. It's not the first time you've had those thoughts about Rodney, and there's something to be said for knowing this is obviously not the time you'll be doing anything about them, so you can sort of indulge, in a twisted kind of way.
So you let Rodney McKay make coffee with your blatantly unauthorised private kettle and even more unauthorised instant caffeine supply, in the not-a-kitchen corner of your room, and you watch him. Making your coffee. For you.
It doesn't really matter what happened, you think, if it means Rodney making you coffee -
- and helping you into bed, which he does with surprising care, even when you wince as the stitches pull a little too much and he gets that look of utter horror that usually only comes with facing small children.
"You okay? What's wrong? What's hurting?"
"I'm fine," you say. Well, you are. You've got Rodney and coffee and no blood escaping anywhere. It's all good. "I'm fine, Rodney," you say, and put your hand on his wrist, because he's leaning close enough for you to do it, so you do, and he doesn't pull away.
And that's how you end up in bed with a mug of coffee that Rodney gave you from his own hands, which no one will ever believe, and while the laptop boots you listen to Rodney tell you all about what happened - all the answers to those questions you couldn't answer because you (had a concussion, according to Carson) were too stupid to tell them you'd taken a three-foot bronze saber in the midsection, according to McKay. At that point you forget the laptop and do try to protest that you didn't actually remember, and anyway, it probably didn't seem that bad -
"Not that bad?! Are you even qualified for field medicine, Doctor Heroic?"
"It was the only way to get you out of there alive," you say, without thinking, and Rodney says;
"Oh my god, you do remember," but you don't, it's just obvious. Why else would you accept a duel to the death with what sounds like an extra-galactic Neanderthal when you had a perfectly good gun strapped to your thigh?
"They weren't nearly advanced enough to be able to treat bullet wounds successfully," Rodney says.
"I mean I could have just shot them."
"They weren't actually trying to you know, kill us," Rodney says. "They just thought I'd make a good sacrifice."
"Someone always thinks you'll make a good sacrifice," you say. It's true. Rodney has built in altar-radar. It's a pity, really, with all the other things he claims to be allergic to - citrus, other people's sarcasm, hideous ugly death - that he couldn't add alien sacrificial worship to the list. Your midsection would really appreciate it.
"It's not my fault I'm such a fine specimen of sacrificial manlihood," Rodney says.
"There's no such word, genius." You think he's preening even though that would just be ridiculously self-centered, and that's not like Rodney at all.
"Scrabble fiend," Rodney smirks. "Manlihood. The manly version of womanlihood, of which I am most definitely not a specimen, fine or otherwise."
"Did you bring a dictionary for your one book?"
"I brought Watchmen and you know it." Of course you do; you also know that he didn't bring a physics text because he could blag all those on cd and thus considered it a waste of resources, and that he's finished his book sixty-two times to your fifteen pages.
You know a lot of things about Rodney McKay. That's how you know what you did back on this week's planet even though you don't remember, because you don't think straight when he's in trouble, not any more. You didn't think you were capable of losing your head like that any more, and it's fucking scary. You don't even realise he's staring at you until he says,
"You know it," in a different voice, in that official McKay just give me a minute voice, and you open your mouth to interrupt, but it's too late. He's had a week's head start: you, you're still drugged up and not nearly caffeinated enough to get with the programme in time.
"You're - you want - You!" You can hear it click together when he says it. He does that hand waving thing that makes you want to pin his arms down with your own, and his eyes are wide with astonishment. "You want me, don't you? Oh my god, you do. You do. In that way. In a stupid get-yourself-killed-for-me way. Oh. Oh, my god."
You sigh. "Yeah." Like you're going to try denying it. What would be the point? You have a great slash across your stomach to prove how stupid you can be about Rodney McKay, and he's supposed to be a damned genius.
"Oh my god. Oh. Oh. My god."
Really, you think, would it kill him to stop saying that? It's not helping. It's not going to help. God is not going to come down and absolve you of this messy little problem. Yes, you want your best friend, your teammate, your geek movie buddy where geek movie buddies are scarce. You've had every conceivable carnal thought you can about Rodney McKay and then a few extra for good measure. Hell, you've even had a few romantic ones, and those haven't happened in... well, frankly, you're amazed he's just never realised before now. Genius. Right.
He's sitting there silent, staring at you, and you say, because you can't help it, because being outed always makes you defensive, "Now who's being the idiot?"
Rodney just glares. "Well, you, obviously," he says, and you completely agree-
Wait. What?
But he's still glaring. His eyes are really too damned blue when he's glaring at you, especially when he waves his hands in the general direction of your stomach and says, "Why in Einstein's name did you wait until now to tell me this, you complete bastard?"
This is not how it's supposed to go.
"Aren't you going to yell about how I should have told you I was gay, the ruin this could do to my career if it got out-"
"Excuse me? When have I, Doctor Vain von Selfish, ever given you the impression that I care what your backwards American military system has to say about anything?"
If you were scoring here, which you're not, because you'd be losing, that would be another point to Rodney.
"Must have forgotten. With the concussion."
"Have I said how much of a complete bastard you are? Why yes, I have. Maybe you forgot that as well. Now be serious or I'm leaving. And I'll steal your coffee on the way out."
"You're not having my coffee, McKay." On at least one point you are going to stand firm and if it can't be Rodney's rampant hysteria then fuck it, it's going to be the coffee.
"As if you could stop me," he says. "Which oh look, brings us right back to what are you doing telling me this now?!" He points a finger at you, right in your face. "And don't say it's the concussion or I'll hit you."
And then you get it.
Oh.
Oh.
No, this is not how it works. They never like you back. Where would you be if they liked you back?
Not in the Pegasus Galaxy, that's for damned sure.
Oh, sure, the women do. Women are easy for you - too easy, or you'd have never married Clare. But they're easy because you don't really care, not the way you do right now, not the way that makes your heart thrum through your chest and your head feel like you're flying. It's only the guys that have ever made you feel like you do right now, staring at Rodney McKay - who, against all previous rational evidence, is right in front of you liking you back.
"Um," you say.
"Oh, you - you anti-genius," Rodney says, rolling his eyes, and leans forward to kiss you.
His mouth is as soft as it looks and as hot as you've imagined, and you've imagined Rodney's mouth a lot. He kisses the way he talks, not holding back for a moment, like he doesn't care that he's showing how much he really wants this.
And right now, right here, what he really wants is you, which is just... it's fucking unbelievable. Someone sliced you open with a three-foot blade a week ago, and whatever smart comments he makes about your indefatigable hairstyle, you know for a fact that it shows. You feel like a doped up kitten, you're still grey and bruised and slightly wild on the morphine. The dull pain is a reminder that there are some black and ugly things about you, things you know he doesn't know, and you know that because he's kissing you, his hands are on your face and your wrist and he's kissing you with his mouth, with his fingertips, with the way he's leaning into you. You never thought...
"Get it?" he says, in that low come on, work for me voice that makes your head tingle. And you do. You get it. You get Rodney.
"Yeah," you say. He smirks.
"Idiot," he says, and grabs the laptop. "Move your incarcerated ass over, already." He flips the screen up and drags it onto his lap, and you find yourself being manhandled until you're on the wrong side of the bed, the opening theme of Star Trek playing out while Rodney shifts around and mumbles until he's comfortable.
You know he won't believe you if you say it: if you tell him how this is probably a hallucination on your part, how he's the first guy you've wanted who's ever looked twice at you or just you know, not thought you were perverted or crazy, so you don't. You just lie there with him and catch half an hour of Wrath of Khan before you fall asleep, Rodney an unfamiliar bulk along your side, his hand light on your chest.
When you wake up it's the middle of the night, and he's snoring.
You're not sure you'd hallucinate that.
*
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