sga_santa | Fic: where we are in the universe (McKay/Sheppard, R)

Title: where we are in the universe
Author:

solvent90
Recipient:

maverick4oz
Pairing: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Rating: R
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Vegas AU.

When he wakes up in the hospital - it's more like a lab than a hospital, all white walls and Star Trek technology, but he's bare-assed in a paper-thin gown with an IV drip attached to him, so he's more comfortable thinking hospital for now - they tell him he has "the gene". They all call it that: the gene, like there's only one that really counts, Keller smiling down at him like he's just won some kind of lottery.

"Uh huh," John says. He goes home. Picks up his mail. Looks at his bills, throws out the junk, orders pizza, and finally sucks it up and calls work. His car's totalled but he gets a new one, second-hand and dirt-cheap but functional. The voices on his answering machine keep coming for a surprisingly long time - just under six months - and it's entertaining enough listening to official voices trying to find new euphemisms for space travel and fighting aliens that he doesn't bother to change his number. Men in dark suits show up occasionally at his door or at a crime scene when he's working. A general shows up, a couple of scientists, a lawyer. And McKay, McKay, McKay.

McKay's the only one who doesn't stop showing up at his door, even after he's gone back to work, settled back into his own life. John could probably make him, if he tried hard enough, sounded serious enough, but McKay gets so royally pissed off every time that John can't help himself; he shrugs, keeps his sunglasses on and his voice mild, and McKay's calm frays by increments, week by week, until he sounds almost like a person instead of a walking suit.

"You are being offered an incredible opportunity," McKay says.

"You have a destiny," McKay says.

"You are such a pig-stubborn bastard," McKay says and John laughs.

"I like to think of it as strength of character," he says, deadpan. "You want to come in?"

McKay stares at him for a long baffled moment and then deflates abruptly.

"Yeah," he says, resigned. "Okay."

He looks around the place with an expression of dismay. The apartment is pretty shitty - McKay's shiny watch probably cost more than all the furniture in it put together - but McKay's reaction is disproportionate. Like the fact that John lives here is some kind of major tragedy, blah blah destiny, blah blah. John doesn't especially want to hear it again so he cuts off whatever McKay's opening his mouth to say with a curt, "sit down, will you?"

McKay sits down, gingerly, his thousand-dollar suit practically shrieking its objections to contact with John's ratty old couch. John tosses him a beer; he looks like he needs it.

"Bad day at work?"

McKay blinks at him uncertainly.

"What? Yes, as it happens. There was - I'm not allowed to talk about it."

"I know," John says, settling himself down into his favourite armchair opposite the couch. "But it was bad, huh."

"Not one of my best," McKay says, still in that puzzled tone. Apparently, not that many people just ask him about his day.

"Drowning is one of my phobias," he adds, out of nowhere, and then shakes his head and focuses again, that familiar determined tilt appearing at the corner of his mouth. "Sheppard. What will it take to get you to - to -"

"Look," John says, abruptly tired of this game. McKay looks pretty terrible and he's hard to resist, right now, when he's not demanding or ordering or instructing - when he's just asking, eyes strangely hollow, like this is somehow about something more than just his job. "I'm not the guy you want, okay. Whatever this gene is, it doesn't make me the 'save the planet' guy. Trust me."

"You've already saved the planet," McKay argues.

John shrugs.

"Right," he says. "Once. By being at the right place and the right time. That doesn't mean I'm the guy you want to be in charge of saving the planet. I'm - McKay, I'm the guy who doesn't pay his bills, okay? I'm the guy who forgets to - who - "

He stops himself, takes a swig of his beer, counts to ten.

"Trust me," he says. "I'm not your guy."

McKay says nothing. He looks down at his hands, and John thinks he's finally got through to him - that McKay is going to quietly set the beer down and get up and walk away at last. But he doesn't. He just sits there, while the clock ticks loudly between them. Finally, he takes a sip of his beer and looks up, strangely tentative, all that sharp certainty leached away.

"Okay," he says. "So, uh. How was your day?"

*

McKay keeps showing up after that, at random intervals. John has no idea why, but he keeps letting him in. At first, he thinks McKay thinks he's going to change his mind, and is just biding his time. Then he thinks McKay has some kind of plan involving John and his gene that doesn't require John's active participation or consent. It doesn't matter very much to John. He doesn't gamble any more - somehow that itch, that's been under his skin all these years, ever since Afghanistan, seems to have bled right out of him in the desert - and he doesn't know what else to do with his time. Watching TV with McKay there beats watching TV without McKay there. McKay brings take-out sometimes. And if he catches McKay's eyes lingering on him too long, sometimes, if McKay looks away when John stretches and his T-shirt rides up - well, John's not asking and McKay doesn't tell. That works pretty much as well as it always does.

McKay shows up with bruises, sometimes, once with an arm in a cast, once with some kind of sucker mark on the side of his throat and a bluish cast to his skin. John doesn't ask and doesn't ask and doesn't ask; but McKay starts talking. Slowly, tentatively, in fits and starts, talking around the classified stuff, but once he starts, he doesn't stop.

"I hate politics," he says once, closing his eyes. "I used to be a scientist once, you know. A real - a pure scientist."

"Yeah?" John says.

McKay smirks, humourless.

"A genius," he says. "Only S - they didn't want a genius, they wanted a guy they could rely on. So that's what I -"

He stops, rubs his hands over his eyes tiredly.

"You have to make some compromises," he says softly. John looks at his neat hands with their manicured nails, his cufflinks and tie and expensive shoes, and thinks genius. Huh. It's weirdly unsurprising. There's something so tamped-down about McKay, a sense of all this energy ruthlessly bottled up, and right now - when he's flattened out on John's couch, tired, shadows under his eyes - John can't be sure which of them is the more fucked up. He laughs a little, under his breath. McKay looks at him and John raises his bottle in a silent toast, not sure how to explain the joke.

"It's tough being reliable," he says finally, mockingly, and McKay rolls his eyes at him, a small unexpected smile quirking up the corner of his mouth.

*

Six months later, he has some money in the bank. The government made his debts disappear back when they were trying to make nice with John's gene and, for the first time in years, he hasn't been making new debts gambling. He doesn't really spend on anything much else. Just gas, rent, food. He buys a new shirt, gets a haircut. Why not? McKay gives him a funny look when he opens the door, two months later, but he doesn't say anything, just barges his way in with the bag of Chinese. He keeps darting glances over at John, though, from his place on the couch, and John finally raises an eyebrow and asks.

"What? Something on my face?"

"No," McKay says quickly. "You just, you look. Um. Good. I mean, you look well."

John grins, teasing.

"Thanks, McKay," he drawls. "Means a lot coming from you."

He's expecting McKay to duck his head or roll his eyes or something. He's not expecting the way McKay looks at him: all hope and longing, like John just walked in from one universe over, ready to save the day, just because he got his hair cut and is maybe catching a few more hours of sleep a night.

"Don't get too excited," he says. "It's still me."

"Missing the point," McKay says, eyes shining. "It's always you, Sheppard. In every universe."

John feels something ugly twist in his stomach. He never agreed to this. He never agreed to anything and yet somehow he's looking at Dr Rodney McKay's hopeful face and feeling something tighten anxiously in his chest in response, like he owes him something.

"Why are you even here?" John asks. McKay jumps at the sudden harshness in his voice but he doesn't care. Enough is fucking enough. "Aren't you supposed to be in another galaxy or something? With your team?"

McKay opens his mouth and closes it again. His eyes are wide, stricken, for the brief moment before all expression disappears from his face. John has no idea how it's possible that he, of all people, somehow has the power to hurt this guy but he hates it, that visceral twist of guilt and responsibility, all the shit he thought he'd left behind for good.

"We haven't got the power to live there all the time," McKay says distantly. "Yet. We're working on it."

"And what, there's no place on Earth you'd rather be?"

John tries to sneer the words but they come out wrong, his voice too thin and strained, and McKay blinks and stares at him for a long moment, his head tilted, his eyes sharp. He's calculating and John just has time to think, uneasily, genius, before McKay's hand is on his cheek.

"Apparently not," he says and then he kisses John, softly, experimentally. His lips are slightly chapped and the kiss is cautious, barely a brush of mouths, but John still hears himself make this low unfamiliar gut-deep sound in response. He's just dizzy with how long it's been - when was the last time someone even touched him, Jesus, he can't remember - and that's why he just surges forward, shoving McKay back into the couch, straddling him and kissing him, hard and dirty and desperate.

"Oh, this is," McKay says, his eyes wide and wild, hands clutched in John's T-shirt. John can feel the heat of him, this close. "This is actually the dumbest, most reckless thing I've done in - oh, years. Oh, please."

John huffs a laugh at that. It is a really dumb idea. But then he's the king of the bad ideas; and when he shoves the jacket off McKay's shoulders, gets rid of the tie and nuzzles his throat, McKay makes this helpless groaning noise that sounds like he's done being the responsible one for tonight.

"Please," he keeps saying, and "Sheppard," and they come like that, like teenagers, necking and dry-humping on a couch, staining McKay's expensive suit pants. It's completely ridiculous. John laughs crazily when it's over and McKay closes his eyes and shakes with laughter too. And then it isn't laughter.

"Hey," John says helplessly. "McKay. Come on."

"I think now would be a good time for you to start calling me Rodney," McKay says, his voice trembling slightly but with a decent approximation of his usual bite. He scrubs impatiently at his face with both hands.

"Sorry," he says. "It's been, ah. Quite a week. I'm fine."

"Sure," John says. "Quite a week, huh."

He hesitates. He doesn't have to go any further. McKay - Rodney's piecing himself back together, smiling tightly, glancing around for his tie, his face settling into familiar lines. They can have this. John doesn't have to go any further.

"What happened?" He licks his lips. "On Atlantis?"

The word feels strange on his tongue, unfamiliar and more familiar than any word he's ever said before; it feels exactly like the first moment he took a jet up, dizzying and new and his. Rodney drops his tie, his eyes a wide amazed blue.

"Atlantis," he says. "John."

"Tell me," John says in a voice he'd forgotten he had, hard and certain, like a promise, and Rodney does.

*