It was, before anything else, a vague, distracted awareness--a low grade recognition that Rodney kept active for strange trends in graphs or weird outliers in scatterplots.
And it was so subtle that it'd actually taken two months before the slight inconsistencies had started to ping as anything other than just random, Atlantis oddness on Rodney's mental radar. After two months, Rodney's satellite started noting a Doppler effect: excessive smiling among the female contingent of his science teams, a sudden abundance of Athosian Sort Of Sheep wool cluttering up the back lab tables where people dumped personal effects, books, and other things scientists played with while running lab simulations, and again, the smiling.
Then one day Cadman actually came into the labs on what Rodney knew was her day off because Carson had been seen wooing her with his sheep-herding ways in the mess earlier that day, which had taken Rodney on a bizarre tangent about the Sort Of Wool from the Sort Of Sheep that had gotten sort of weird.
"So did you give it to him?" Simpson demanded, seeing Cadman and turning away from her incredibly delicate and painfully important systems analysis, all bright eyes.
But before Rodney could shout about incompetence and why he had a rule about military goons being in his workspace, Cadman just grinned, near manic and nodded her head, which set off a chain reaction that led to Cadman and Simpson clutching hands and giggling in high-pitched voices. It drew the attentions of Miko and Kusanagi, who buzzed toward them equally red-faced and excited, and soon the hum between the four women rose to a terrifying white noise that had the male scientists literally leaning away from the source, eyes wide and afraid.
Rodney had half a mind to go over there and tell them off, but Miko, Kusanagi, and Simpson were all working on what was supposed to be their day off, and he knew there was only so far he could push any of them before Miko burst into tears and wept all over Rodney's lab coat, babbling in high-pitched Japanese.
"He says he likes it a lot," Cadman reported, flushed with pride.
"Of coursed he does!" Simspon scoffed. "You chose just the right colors!"
"The green looks so good against his skin," Cadman agreed with a sigh.
"And it's right in time for the winter," Miko agreed. "He'll be wrapped up in your love!"
The women burst into giggles and Kusanagi looked torn between agony and hilarity, saying, "I can't believe you just said that, Miko." Rodney couldn't believe she'd just said that either, but now he had a Clue--one which led him directly to the voodoo practitioner that claimed to be the chief surgeon of Atlantis.
Rodney was slipping out of the labs, leaving his own very important work (an attempt via mIRC to badger the botanists into growing cacao trees that involved not a little bit of manipulating Katie Brown's lingering, latent--and they were very, very latent--affections for his person) to interrogate Carson.
"Ohmigosh! I know! You should make him--" Simpson shrieked, but the rest of what she said was blotted out by a scandalized yip from Miko and Cadman yelling, "Alison!"
This had gone on long enough, Rodney decided.
Carson was, in a twist of gross irony that he probably wouldn't find very funny, reading a backdated journal about zoology when Rodney found him in the infirmary. Biro was nowhere to be seen, and the nurses (Andi, Sandi, Bobbi, and Ted) were chatting amongst themselves in a corner, winding beautifully red, gold, and green skeins of yarn into balls. Ted said something in a low voice and Andi laughed, Sandi hit him in the shoulder, and Bobbi just rolled her eyes.
Rodney just didn't want to know how Carson had chosen these underlings.
He shook his head and bounced into the room, plopping onto an exam table and kicking his feet, snapping his fingers until he caught Carson's attention and said, "So there's something going on."
"There's always something going on," Carson said, turning back to his--oh God, was that actually an article about sheep?
"Well, it involves your scary lesbian girlfriend this time," Rodney snapped.
Carson rolled his eyes. "Aye, well, out with it then."
According to rampant rumor, Rodney and Cadman had become grudging friends after their bizarre cohabitation, but that was what it was--rampant rumor. Sheppard had borne witness to how much Cadman and Rodney still disliked one another when he'd had to keep her from clubbing Rodney to death with a sack of wheat one day on a routine supply trip to the mainland. "Christ! Why don't you just pull each others' pigtails for God sakes!" Sheppard had snapped, and Rodney and Cadman had been so horrified they'd actually dropped the wheat.
"Don't be stupid," Rodney snapped. "If I knew the specifics would I ask you? No. Now, come come, share. You were given a gift recently by one Scary Crazy Cadman--and it was green. Consensus among the female contingent of my science team that is shirking work--"
"Rodney, it's Saturday."
"--agrees that it looks great against your coloring," Rodney finished stubbornly. "What's going on? Did she make you a dress?"
"Yes, Rodney," Carson said patiently. "Laura made me a dress."
Rodney scowled.
Carson rolled his eyes and snapped the zoology journal shut. There was a sheep on the cover. This was just too easy, Rodney thought a little hysterically.
"She made me a scarf, you bleeding lunatic," Carson said, and then his face melted into an expression of stupid contentment. "Aye, she's a lovely girl! She said she learned to knit just to make me the gift--said it gets nippy on the mainland around this time of year and wouldn't want me to catch cold when I go to do my rou--"
"She knit you a scarf?" Rodney asked, bewildered. He couldn't imagine Cadman's hands, with all the same calluses as Sheppard's hands from fighting and holding guns, doing anything but making Rodney's life miserable and hitting him with sacks of wheat.
Carson's grin turned decidedly wicked. "She says she'll knit me some knick--"
Rodney held up his hand. "Please. Please stop."
Carson looked smug. "Frustrated, are we, Rodney?"
"I'm leaving," Rodney declared, and stomped out of the room.
The wicked, distracting image of Carson wearing green, knit underpants made by his One True Love haunted Rodney like a bloody specter all day and all through his continued harassment of the botanists, who finally just got the hell off of IRC since they'd realized Rodney couldn't be assed to walk down to their hydroponics lab, which was approximately six thousand and four miles away from everything else on Atlantis.
Rodney finally gave up on managing any actual work--after all, it was Saturday--and trudged up to the mess only to find yet another horrifying visual hallucination:
John Sheppard lounging with what had to be a dozen female Atlantis personnel, laughing and chatting. His hair was messier than usual and he was dressed down, in a black t-shirt and jeans and there was no thigh holster--Rodney observed with a little note of regret--and he was wearing sneakers. Also, he was helping them make balls of yarn and eating banana pudding.
Oh my God, Rodney thought, it's the end of the world.
Rodney gaped some. Then he gaped some more.
Then John saw him and waved brightly, which made all the women at the table laugh and poke one another, which led to poking John, who did his thing where he raised his eyebrows and made a face as if he were an anime character or something, which set the women off into gales of laughter again. They were talking, but in low enough tones that the only word Rodney caught from a distance of a few meters was, "clueless," which made Rodney uncomfortably certain they were talking about him.
Rodney got some food, and carrying his tray, he walked purposefully toward Sheppard and his new harem, only to find once he got there that all the women had clumped in more tightly, closing off the open space to Sheppard's left. Then Rodney noticed the mischievous smiles on all of their faces.
"Oh what is this?" Rodney said. "Girls only corner?"
John smirked. "Yeah, Rodney. Boys have cooties."
Kate Heightmeyer, who was sitting directly opposite John, her blond hair gleaming and very pretty in the pale, wintry Atlantis light, had to cover her mouth to stop from laughing out loud--though the ringing giggles from everybody else at the table more than made up for the silence.
Rodney narrowed his eyes. "Aren't you a member of one of the most homophobic and maladjusted organizations in the world? That trains its members to kill things?"
John pulled a face of total innocence. "The Air Force is the most progressive branch of the U.S. military you know," he said. "We've even got girls' bathrooms in the Academy now."
Cadman snorted.
Rodney frowned harder. "You're seriously kidding me," he said.
Then Katie Brown--oh the betrayal!--said, "Nu-uh, Rodney. Girls and John only."
"This is total crap," Rodney snapped, and stormed over by a very large and pretty, reflective window, so he could stuff his face and scowl at the image of John and the women laughing and potentially gossiping about who knows what, rolling up ball after ball of colorful yarn, which after an hour John was obliged to carry for them as they all moved like the pack of ravenous hyenas they were and headed out of the mess together.
"There is a conspiracy on Atlantis and I, as chief science officer, will not stand for it."
Radek rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes. Very bad. Truly terrible. Where are those figures?"
"Will you focus?" Rodney demanded. "There are games afoot! Sheppard has signed his allegiance to the women--not that that's surprising--and there are things happening and I don't know what they are!" Rodney finished petulantly.
Zelenka sighed and turned to the laptop in front of him. "Translation, you did not do the numbers."
"I'm in the heat of discovery," Rodney said. "I have no time for petty numbers."
"You just do not want to do them," Radek scowled.
Rodney waved his hand. "That's what Kavanagh is for."
"Maybe Kavanagh is busy with this conspiracy as well," Zelenka said cheekily.
Rodney narrowed his eyes. "You'll rue this day when they take over the city and make us all wear knit caps."
Radek just sighed. "Yes, rue. Rue every day I work with you." He shrugged. "Knit caps are not terrible. Dr. Simpson gave me one the other day." Zelenka smiled. "Red. Very warm."
"I hate this galaxy," Rodney said fiercely.
The next few days, everything was back to normal. John wore his BDUs and--oh, lovely, Rodney observed--his thigh holster, was appropriately slouchy and mouthy and flirted hideously with every single sentient object in the Pegasus Galaxy and most of the non-sentient things on Atlantis. Rodney swore he saw a dead plant wave its stalks enticingly for John on Wednesday.
And then they went offworld to a planet covered in ice and snow and where Rodney nearly lost all of his extremities.
"Oh my God. It's so cold. I've never been this cold in my life," Rodney moaned.
"Aren't you Canadian?" John asked.
"Is Canada a cold land?" Teyla asked with interest. She was wearing a huge coat made out of the skins of animals she probably killed with her bare hands. It looked very warm. Rodney looked around to see if there were any animals he could kill with his bare hands--or have Ronon kill with his bare hands.
"Also, didn't you work in Sibera?" John asked, smirking. "You were definitely in Antarctica."
"I hate you," Rodney said feelingly. "So much." He tugged at John's scarf, which wasn't military issue and was also a pale green color that--may God strike him down--brought out John's eyes. "Where did you get this? Why don't I have one? Or six?"
John beamed. "Kate made it for me," he reported, and twirled one of the tassles at the end with a free hand. "Nice, isn't it? It's double-knit. She said it'd keep the cold out and made me promise to wear it today."
Rodney's brain hurt. "Kate? Who the hell is Kate?"
John blinked, and said ruefully, "Oops. I mean Dr. Heightmeyer."
Rodney gaped and Ronon grunted and Teyla only smiled indulgently.
"Hey," John said suddenly, pointing at a hill. "Is that a building?"
It was a building, but what it was not was heated, which only added to Rodney's pain.
On the other hand, amidst the cold, desolate ravages of a world that had been culled to extinction, Rodney found a ZPM, fully intact and beautifully golden, with its crystalline sides unmarked. He held it and stood in front of a window, saw what looked like the crumbling remains of a fortress around the Ancient outpost, skeletons of tanks and wild machinery he'd never seen before, blanked and muted beneath white, smooth snow, hiding all manner of sins.
"Oh, hey," John said, staring at the ZPM. "We could use another one of those."
Rodney felt like he was going to cry with joy.
"There's no way to know if it's useable," Rodney said, though he couldn't keep the hope from bubbling out of his voice, shining on his face.
John smiled at him and looped his green scarf around Rodney's neck for the trek back to the Stargate. He said, "Yeah."
The scarf was very warm and it was also very soft and Rodney smiled all the way back to the puddlejumper.
Rodney flew into action the moment they stepped out of the Puddlejumper and the only memory of his teammates he had was John's indulgent laughter and Teyla's soft smile, Ronon smirking as Rodney bolted through the jumper bay and shouted directions calling the entire science team to attention.
And then there were a lot of nervous tests which, for once, produced very pleasing results: three-quarters full, enough to sustain the city on full capacity for five or more years, more than enough to run the small area which they actually used. It meant the shield in case of attack, systems for more research, better everything, more experiments, more time, and Rodney was so busy being excited and trying not to expire from a sudden desire to do everything at once that he nearly missed the way Miko, Simpson, and Kusanagi all stopped to stare at him.
"What?" he snapped. "Why aren't we moving? What? What?"
Miko jumped, startled, looked between Simpson and Kusanagi, who were both still gaping, and shuffled away. Kusanagi just looked speculative for a moment longer before saying, "Anyway--I'm going to run those shield simulations now."
Simpson on the other hand, narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and said, "That's Colonel Sheppard's scarf."
Rodney was actually speechless for a second.
"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "Perhaps I've missed something--but was there--? Wait, what was it? Something happened. I'm fairly sure it was important--it's right on the tip of my tongue--"
Simpson looked the furthest thing from cowed, and her expression became speculative.
"--oh, that's right--the ZedPM! What are you doing? Stop standing there! Move! Be useful! Don't regret my not sending you packing on the Daedelus!"
Simpson rolled her eyes and walked away, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, "…what he sees in him," before disappearing into one of the many labs down the science complex main corridor.
Rodney didn't have time for petty idiocy among his scientists, especially not on an occasion like this, so he spent most of the rest of the day and the night shouting at everybody he could shout at and shoving people away from consoles and eating really bad doughnuts from the mess. If Miko and Kusanagi stared at him a lot and Simpson looked at him in revolted wonder, then Rodney totally didn't notice.
He also didn't notice he was still wearing the scarf until he collapsed in his bed sometime the next day. He brought his hand up to play with the green tassels, and because he was so weak and vulnerable from a mix of exhaustion and joy, he smiled, clutched the loose yarn, and slept like that, warm and loose-limbed.
By the time Rodney woke up six hours later, Atlantis was humming anew. Without the worry of imminent death and the most dramatic and horrible kinds of blackouts waiting for them, the scientists were running their current ZPM extravagantly, downloading huge chunks of the Atlantis database onto their own consoles, researching, turning on the greenhouses and gardens that they'd been curious about but never dared to seed, ever since they'd first been discovered.
The whole city seemed to be reborn, new and shiny and somehow more organic--and of course, it seemed to roll up in welcome for John Sheppard, who strolled into the control room and had a path of rosily-lit wall panels following him like Backstreet Boys groupies.
"Atlantis woke me up today," John said proudly.
Rodney stared at him for a second, trying to figure out what was different. "I--what?"
John grinned. "Six a.m., Rodney, no joke, the most beautiful music I've ever heard started to play. I opened my eyes and my curtains opened for me. There were plants in my windowbox--I have a windowbox." He rubbed his hands together gleefully. "This is cool."
"You're wearing a sweater," Rodney suddenly blurted out.
John blinked in surprise before he looked down at his chest, which was covered in a neat, black sweater--v-neck sweater. He was wearing a white shirt underneath it, and looked terribly, terribly like a disheveled grad student and it was terribly, terribly distracting.
"Oh," John said strangely, and then grinned sheepishly up at Rodney. "Yeah. Alison ordered me to send all my uniforms I owned into the laundry, since we're on stand down anyway."
"Yes but you're wearing a sweater," Rodney said helplessly. He moved his hands, but he worried that it wouldn't be enough to convey how flummoxed he was. "It's--sweater."
Rubbing the back of his neck, John almost blushed. "Yeah, I--it's not really my thing, you know? But when Alison gave it to me, I thought I should wear it."
He looked around the control room and Rodney noticed that John was wearing khaki pants, the ones that were a little tight in the ass. The world was either incredibly good to him or painfully unfair and Rodney was debating which and how depressing it was that he could make a good case for either with this given set of circumstances when John asked:
"Speaking of which, have you seen her?"
Rodney stared. "Who?"
John raised his eyebrows. "Alison?" At Rodney's blank look, he added, "Simpson? On your team? Blond? Hates Kavanagh?"
"Alison?" Rodney asked.
"You seriously don't know anybody's first name?" John asked, amused. He slipped his hands into his pockets and Rodney realized that (a) Sheppard's white shirt was not tucked into the khaki pants, (b) that was why the tails of it were sticking out underneath the sweater which led magically to (c) which was that it was painfully endearing.
"I know Miko's first name," Rodney said stubbornly. He was not inclined to point out that it was just because he didn't know how to pronounce her last name, which was Aratake and seemed simple enough until he attempted to make the "ra" sound and insulted her whole lineage or something like that.
"Right," Sheppard said skeptically and then looked around the room.
"She's doing something important and complicated that I don't expect you to understand but I hope you won't interrupt to show her your little prep school outfit," Rodney snapped. "I don't know if you've noticed but we're up to our eyeteeth in work here. I shouldn't even be talking to you right now! You're wasting precious minutes when I could be changing the face of physics or earning a Nobel Prize."
John just smiled at him. "I'm happy for you, too, Rodney," John said graciously.
Rodney made some sort of dull noise.
"Also, I want my scarf back," John added, waved, and walked out of the control room, floor panels glowing happily beneath his feet.
Sometimes, Rodney really, really hated the blatant favoritism. He looked around the control room sullenly.
"What? Not even a glow?" he demanded.
One of the lights on a heretofore unidentified console blinked hopefully.
"Oh, that's just pathetic," Rodney muttered, shooting the giggling techs in the back a glare and getting back to work.
It had to be fate, of course, that ten hours later, exhausted yet so excited he couldn't even imagine sleeping, Rodney was bouncing down the Atlantis residential hallways to return John's scarf and overheard three women coming round the corner, their voices pitched low and giggly.
"I can't believe you asked him," one of the women said, and she was a brunette, round and cozy-looking, in the blue BDUs of the science team.
"I can't believe you didn't," another one replied, and she had golden hair, a large, friendly smile, and an obvious accent that Rodney couldn't quite place.
He flattened himself against a wall as they neared him, and hoped against hope they wouldn't notice so he could continue to be a twelve year old girl and snoop for base secrets.
"There's this whole thing called Don't Ask Don't Tell for the American military, Jan," the voice of Dr. Heightmeyer reprimanded. "He could get in a lot of trouble--court marshaled and thrown in jail if anybody finds out."
Rodney tried to keep himself from making a hugely undignified choking noise, because clearly these women had to be talking about somebody else. Clearly there was no way he was hearing what he thought he was hearing. After all, wasn't Colonel Hot To Trot the babe magnet of the entire Pegasus Galaxy?
There were, after all, a small army of Marines in Atlantis, Rodney thought frantically. They could be talking about anybody else. Major Lorne, for example--he was unnaturally attractive and likeable. They had to be talking about Major Lorne, because of course they wouldn't be talking about Colonel--
"John is the military commander of Atlantis--who would question him?" Jan demanded. "Besides. It is a stupid rule."
"As a mental health professional," Heightmeyer said, amused, "I have to agree."
"He still won't tell us who he has a crush on, though," the brunette sighed.
"Oh, please, it's so obvious…" the blonde reproached, and then their footsteps and voices faded away and Rodney was alone, glued to the wall just a few yards away from Sheppard's doorway, too shocked stupid to do anything but think in frantic outlines:
One, Sheppard was gay. (Or was he?)
Two, women were still more attracted to him than Rodney--that bastard!
Three, they were knitting him things.
Four, Sheppard had a crush on somebody--somebody male.
And lastly, Rodney was, apparently, more homicidal than he had thought himself before stepping through the event horizon into the Pegasus Galaxy.
Finally, in a burst of cowardice and general sucking at life, Rodney retreated down the hallway, took a left, went down one level and crawled into his room, falling down across his mattress, suddenly weary and sullen. He threw the scarf across the room and stared at it for a bit before he got out of bed, picked it up. He wrapped it around his fist and went to sleep like that, his nose buried in the yarn petulantly.
Hah, Rodney thought meanly, I bet whoever Sheppard likes doesn't have his scarf.
Rodney was peripherally aware that he was a ridiculous person. One did not reach adulthood without feeling like a black Peep on Easter sometimes, and so Rodney rallied his sense of self-worth and burning curiosity the next day at lunch just long enough to carry him to where Sheppard was sitting alone for once, flipping idly through a file folder in front of him.
Rodney thumped his lunch tray down, and the noise made John lift his head, slow and steady and not at all surprised, until hazel eyes met narrowed blue ones and Rodney sat down as he hissed in a low tone:
"So apparently you're gay."
John actually had the gall to look completely bewildered for a good forty-five seconds, and then a wash of understanding came over him and he said, "Oh, well. That."
Rodney's eye bulged again, and that could not be good for his optic nerve. "That?" he snapped.
John closed the folder and picked at his Jell-O, looking vaguely amused. "I'm surprised you know about it--they were almost ready to swear a blood pact to protect me from the Marines."
Rubbing the space between his eyes, Rodney said, "Okay, I will never, never utter these words again, so remember them well, Colonel." He looked at John hard. "I do not understand what is happening. Please explain it to me. For you have knowledge I do not."
John bit his lip.
"There's something going on!" Rodney insisted. "There is something going on and I need to know what it is right now. There's--there's. Have you noticed the sudden abundance of knit material?" Rodney ticked it off on his fingers. "There's Carson's scarf. Zelenka has a new hat. Miko was wearing something she said was a pashmina, whatever the hell that is but it was made of yarn. There's you with your sweater and your scarf--"
"You still have that, by the way," Sheppard pointed out.
"--no interruptions!" Rodney snapped. "My point is, you seem to be the center of any and all Atlantis related weirdness, now, tell me what is going on."
John rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, which was disarmingly attractive in a way that made Rodney want to fist up his hands and bang them with futile rage against the tabletop at the unfairness of it all.
"Geez, Rodney. If anybody could make a human tragedy out of nothing it's you," he said, and it was tinged with affection.
Rodney narrowed his eyes. "I'm running on very little sleep, Colonel."
"It's really nothing," John said easily, stirring his Jell-O so it turned into blue vomit. "Simpson and Kusanagi apparently both like knitting, so they started a local Stitch'n'Bitch chapter, and then Miko made them like, a ridiculously cool blanket or something so she joined up." John pursed his lips, like he was pulling all of this out of a spotty memory it was such ancient history. "And then Simpson told Cadman and Katie Brown--hey, are you two still dating, by the way?--at ladies poker night and they got themselves a regular satellite chapter." John grinned goofily. "That's about it."
Rodney stared. "Stitch'n'Bitch," he said feebly.
"It's kind of cool," John said. "They're making some completely awesome stuff. Miko says she's going to crochet me a little puddlejumper."
"You're forgetting one very small but ultimately important detail," Rodney said, clawing at the table in an effort not to leap over it and strangle John, wrap his hands around John's very nice and probably lickable neck.
John's eyes widened. "Oh, oh--the gay thing?" He at least had the good grace to flush at that. "Well, I think there was a little misunderstanding."
"Misunderstanding," Rodney repeated.
"Well, when I kept wandering into their meetings, Jan kind of asked, you know," John said ruefully, "and I'm not about to say anything controversial on the subject because I think Elizabeth would probably kill me, so I said that it was complicated and I couldn't say."
"So now they think you're gay," Rodney said dully, "because you're dumb and you can't explain Don't Ask Don't Tell."
John made a face. "You don't have to put it that way, Rodney."
"Doesn't that bother you?" Rodney asked.
John blinked at him, guileless. "Not really," he admitted. "As military commander of Atlantis, I can't date anybody anyway, it'd be fraternization any way you looked at it." John shrugged. "Besides, if it gives them a sense of purpose to make me sweaters and treat me like one of the girls, what the hell, right? They make great snacks."
Rodney stared at him with a hang-dog expression. "I think I have to go away now."
John waved brightly. "Bye!" he said.
This time, when Rodney got back to his quarters, he threw the scarf across the room and let it stay there.
The situation continued to worsen. On the Thursday of the next week, Kavanagh, who had been sucking up to Sheppard entirely too much of late, was seen presenting Simpson with a gray sweater with a very complex molecule knitted into the front. She had squealed very loudly and yelled, "My favorite!" and Kavanagh had said, "Sorry about the tension before. I was just wondering if I could join you all sometime."
"Simpson says he looked very sad, and said yes," Radek whispered.
"She's always been the weak link," Rodney hissed darkly.
Zelenka stared at him. "Rodney," he whispered back. "I think you have lost it."
Rodney motioned for him to shut up with a quick swipe of his hand, and peered down the grate into the room beneath him. "Okay," he whispered to Radek. "I think they're starting. Do you have the camera? And the recorder?"
"You're a sick man, McKay," Radek snapped back.
Rodney rolled his eyes and turned back to staring down the grate. Sometimes, Zelenka was just so judgmental. The fact of the matter was, Rodney had tried every legitimate option for joining Atlantis' Stitch'n'Bitch circle, but was brutally rebuffed at every turn. He had promised to attempt to learn how to knit and only to mock 90% of the concept; he'd even tossed in a promise to be almost as good a gay boyfriend as Sheppard but still no dice.
"We see you enough at work," Kusanagi had said, a sour look on her face. "Besides, I think it'd make John uncomfortable." She had narrowed her eyes. "You haven't told anybody, have you?"
"Of course not," Rodney had promised.
"Good," Kusanagi had replied, threat lighting up her tone. "Because John is a very special person to us and things will be done if you hurt his feelings."
Things had almost seemed to be going well up to that point but then Rodney had scoffed and said, "John has feelings?" totally as a joke but the door had slammed in his face and he'd heard faintly through it, "…so not worth it!" and "…could do better!"
The Stitch'n'Bitch circle met every Wednesday night in the mess, and since they had Sheppard on their side, it meant they had both access to the physical keys to the physical locks and the ability to basically lock everybody out of the cafeteria because Atlantis had a big, slutty crush on John. Rodney had tried knocking, he'd tried lock picking, and he'd managed to short-circuit the whole second floor--but had to concede defeat when he realized that they'd pushed four tables against the entryway and that there wasn't going to be any give.
So he'd lied a lot and recruited Radek and looked up the ventilation systems, and thank goodness for the foresight of the Ancients, because the ducts were large and roomy and made out of metals that--though painful against Rodney's delicate knees--didn't make too much noise, and so they'd crept through a network of them to sprawl out over the cafeteria.
Sure, it was probably beneath him, but Rodney was on a mission.
"Rodney, my back hurts. I want to go," Radek complained quietly.
"Shut up," Rodney snapped, and narrowed his eyes down at the brown and red and golden heads below until he spotted Sheppard, sitting sandwiched between Katie Brown and Laura Cadman, grinning like a moron with a roomful of women thinking he was their very own personal mascot for military rough trade.
"I call this meeting to order," Simpson said imperiously, and Miko laughed. Rodney startled himself when he realized he'd never heard her do that before. In fact, mostly Rodney heard Miko squeak and her small, quiet feet as she dashed away from him.
"Firstly, congratulations to our newest member, Jeremy Kavanagh," Simpson announced with baroque pomp. "I'd like you all to notice my sweater, which depicts my most favorite molecule, which Dr. Kavanagh made for me."
There was a buzz of admiration, and then small, quiet bursts of giggles, and whatever order there had been melted into chaos as Rodney watched the fifteen or so people below him clump off to work on stitching or just chat over mugs of creamy Athosian tea.
Luck was on Rodney's side because Sheppard, Simpson, Kavanagh, Cadman, and Katie Brown all settled together at a table directly beneath the vent, and Rodney held his breath in anticipation. Rationally, he had no idea why he was interested or what had compelled him to do this other than the fact that just because Sheppard was accidentally gay didn't mean he didn't actually have a crush on somebody, and Rodney was perversely curious.
"I just want to start off by saying I'm completely over Rodney," Katie announced, tugging a large, yellow bundle of yarn out of a knapsack by her side. She sounded triumphant. "He doesn't call, he doesn't write--he's socially retarded," she trailed off, giggling.
Rodney was stung. Vicious sharks. He'd always known it.
Cadman snorted. "So finally, one of us sees the light," she said meaningfully, and then turned to John, who was helping Kavanagh untangle a skein of pale purple yarn and Jesus Christ, Rodney thought, this whole thing was more surreal than lifesucking aliens and definitely creepier than finding out there was a splinter universe out there where he'd let himself drown.
"Stop looking at me," John said, pout audible.
"I'm just saying," Cadman sighed. "You can do so much better than him, John."
Rodney nearly injured himself in an effort not to do something loud and obvious. Radek, behind him, was muffling noises that sounded suspiciously like hysterical laughter into his sleeve, and was finally recording with a gusto.
"I never said I had a crush on Rodney," John said evenly, which made everybody at the table groan like they'd all heard this song and dance a million and one times. "I just said that I don't think he's as bad as you all seem to think. I mean, I've been with him in the field for almost two years now and--"
"John, it's very cute that you're trying to defend your boyfriend," Simpson said, "but it won't work. We all know him."
Rodney made a strangled noise, and then slapped a hand over his mouth.
John only laughed at that. "Anyway," he said easily, "I think he's funny."
"And I always thought a way to a man's heart was through his co--"
"Lieutenant Cadman!" Kavanagh said, scandalized.
"Oh, don't even try to take the moral high ground on this one, mister," Cadman insisted, grinning wickedly. "It's always the quiet ones who surprise you--I mean, look at John here."
"Do I count as quiet?" John asked. He was holding his hands up like he was measuring a tiny pitiful fish, palms facing, with yarn looped over the back of his hands, the creamy white color of it contrasting sharply with his browned skin.
"You count as surprising," Cadman insisted. "Anyway, regardless what you say, I'm on a mission--a mission to find you a new man."
"I have no man," John said, amused and unaffected.
Rodney was a little insulted. If he wanted to play their gay boyfriend, he better start queering it up in there and stop denying his pretend relationship with Rodney, because otherwise, his flamer cred was totally going to go down the tubes the next time he watched football and shot aliens.
"Or to at least protect you from the current one," Katie quickly added, making a face. "Honestly, he's terrible in relationships. At least tell me he's you know, um. Providing for the uh, physical."
John hummed the theme to Bonanza very loudly. "I'm not hearing this."
"Oh, man, if I got to date John, I'd be providing until my hips gave out," Simpson moaned.
Rodney's eyes went huge and he made a mental note to put Simpson on midnight watch rotation for the next three weeks. It was one thing if everybody thought he was dating Sheppard but quite another if they all thought he was dating Sheppard and had designs on John's virtue anyway.
"Also not hearing this," John said warningly.
"Okay, I can see why you lobbied for another man," Kavanagh said to John, amused.
"This is the funniest thing I've ever heard," Zelenka whispered seriously. "I forgive you."
"Shut up!" Rodney hissed.
"That's right," John said to Kavanagh below. "Football. Football and beer. We need to talk about these things. They're important, they're symbolic, they're iconic."
Simpson reached over and patted his knee comfortingly. "You don't have to pretend with us."
Rodney's entire lower body was starting to cramp, but he was willing to soldier on in the name of discovery.
But there was nothing else to hear because John apparently couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing, which started everybody else off and soon they were just chatting quietly amongst each other, knitting things: colorful things, long things, wide things, curvy things, and Miko, in her corner, satellite to John, was using one single, shiny stick to knot grey yarn into circles. John offered to hold Katie Brown's yarn--which was the same color as her hair--and he watched her knit row after row with a strange peacefulness.
After ten minutes, Rodney said, "Okay, maybe we should go."
"Are you sure?" Zelenka asked, concerned. "Perhaps more pictures of your husband."
"I'll kill you," Rodney warned.
"He's very pretty from this light," Radek commented happily. "You are lucky to have him."
"Seriously," Rodney added.
"A thousand deaths are worth this tape," Radek said brightly. He then took said tape out of the recorder, stuffed it down his pants, and started to shimmy out of the duct. "Your life is in my hands now, McKay--I want Thursdays off."
Rodney scrambled after him. "Zelenka! Get back here, you squirrelly Czech bastard!"
On Zelenka's new day off, Rodney confronted John again, which involved a lot of muffled laughter on John's part and a lot of furious hissing whispering on Rodney's part, and then Rodney said, "This is utterly ridiculous! If you have to work through your inner rainbow drama or whatever, that's fine--just don't take it out on me!"
Then John's eyes had gone all dark and dangerous, and he'd said, "You still have my scarf."
Rodney was bewildered. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"
Apparently, a lot, because at that exact moment, like he'd timed it, Simpson and Kusanagi strolled by and John said, in a slightly elevated tone of voice, stiff and strong as though stricken by distress, "I understand, Rodney. If--if you've changed your mind." Then John had dipped his head in a painfully over-the-top expression of defeat and whispered, "I don't want to hold you back from your dreams."
Rodney dropped his fork.
Kusanagi nearly dropped her tray. Simpson, her eyes flaring like the heart of a fire, shoved her own tray into Kusanagi's hands, put her hand on John's shoulder and said dangerously, "Is everything all right, John?"
Rodney gaped at her, opened and closed his mouth and looked between her venomous expression and John's downcast face and thought that this was what Satan's ass must have looked like.
"I wasn't--this isn't--!"
"Dr. McKay, with all due respect," Simpson snapped, "I'm not talking to you!"
John looked up at her and smiled weakly. "I'm fine, really." Then, because John was an amazingly huge prick, he reached over, put his hand over Rodney's and flashed him a wavering smile. "I--it's okay."
Rodney wanted to die.
John's mouth was trembling, and Rodney could tell from the way his eyes were dancing that Sheppard was about to burst into uncontrollable laughter, which was why John said in a broken whisper, "Excuse me," launched himself out of his seat, and walked out of the mess hall very quickly.
"I'll see you in hell, Sheppard!" Rodney shouted after him.
Rodney's eyes followed Sheppard's exit with a distinct feeling of hopeless doom, and when he finally managed to make himself look at Kusanagi and Simpson again, he saw the true nature of death itself written across their expressions. He laughed weakly and made a meaningless gesture with his hands, saying, "Hah--that Sheppard, what a kidder."
Two hours later, when he was sitting in Elizabeth's office complaining about workplace harassment, she, too, had her mouth in a fine, unhappy line, and while Rodney was trying rub the stains from that day's lunch out of his jacket, Elizabeth said:
"Well, I can't say I approve of Simpson's methods, but honestly, Rodney," she said with a disapproving, matronly air Rodney hadn't heard since at least two weeks ago.
Rodney stared. "You believe this crap?"
Elizabeth's frown intensified. "Maybe that was the problem, Rodney? Lack of faith?" She smiled at him encouragingly. "It's not too late to make amends. I'm sure he'll forgive you."
"I seriously, seriously hate this galaxy," Rodney said with great sincerity.
Rodney was suddenly Stitch'n'Bitches Enemy #1..
Rodney's laundry was done late and there were bleach spots on his favorite t-shirt. All of his underwear was pink. The supply clerk "lost" Rodney's requisition forms for a new set of sheets. It was impossible to order Simpson around, and even Kavanagh was quietly aligning himself with the females, though Rodney suspected it was more out of fear than anything else. And most insultingly, Rodney was actually getting smaller portions in the mess now, and when he tried to complain, the server on kitchen duty had just narrowed her eyes and said, "It's hard enough without jerks like you!"
Finally, a week of snubbing later, Rodney stalked into John's room and shouted:
"I'm going to kill you with my hands!"
John smirked and
leaned back in his bed, folding his arms behind his head.
"That's real unfortunate, Rodney. We had such a beautiful life
together."
"With my hands!" Rodney repeated hysterically.
"You do not understand what I have suffered this week, Sheppard, at
the mercy of your vindictive army of hags! I've gone without hot
water for two days, somebody stole my shoes, Miko drew a
terrifyingly good picture of my face and then Simpson burned it in
effigy in an "accidental" lab fire."
"It could have really been an accident," John pointed out.
"She was in the computer sim lab!" Rodney bellowed. "This is ridiculous! Call off your dogs!"
John sighed and relented, his shoulders going slack, and in a move that seemed almost to look like remorse, he set down War and Peace and opened his hands.
"Look, in retrospect, it was a rotten thing to do. Sorry." He looked at Rodney expectantly.
Rodney stared. "That's it?"
"There's not much else I can do," John said, shrugging. "I never confirmed anything, I never implied anything--everybody drew their own conclusions." And as if he couldn't resist, he hesitated and said, "For the record, McKay? If you weren't acting like such a jerk, I wouldn't have done that, anyway."
"Oh," Rodney said, furious. "Oh, now it's on, Sheppard." He pointed. "You want hot gay romance? I will give you hot gay romance! It will be so gay and so hot that you will have never seen the likes of it--not even in the Air Force's fake boot camp!"
"It wasn't fake boot camp," John said sullenly.
"You just wait, Sheppard," Rodney hissed, stalking out of the door. "I will take you down."
Despite Rodney's bravado, he didn't know much about hot gay romance.
And by "much," he meant "anything."
Rodney's experiences with the "romance" part of hot gayness were basically limited to lying to somebody in a bar about their relative attractiveness before taking them home or meeting them in the bathroom. It wasn't as if Rodney was proud of it or anything, but cultivating an atmosphere of attractive queerness required entirely too much effort and too many trips to the gym for his tastes and he figured if he kept his standards low, everything would even out. Rodney's most serious relationship to date was still with his cat.
But he knew of a secret stash of romance novels somebody in his staff--and he had the sickening sensation, given the lovely, lotus-flower design being carefully knitted into his next project, that it was Kavanagh's--and he forced himself to blow through three entire volumes. He was nearly certain he'd shortened his lifespan or at least compromised his worth as a human being but then he'd hit page thirty-four in The Love of Our Lives and Judy and Thomas' doomed love lit a fire under him.
"I have a plan," Rodney declared, striding over to Radek's desk.
Zelenka smiled at him fondly. "Are you doing something else foolish?" he asked happily.
"I will need some assistance," Rodney continued blithely.
Radek's smile widened hugely. "Oh Rodney, I enjoy it so much when you set yourself up for a crushing failure."
Over the next three days, Rodney acquired the following:
1 large
projection screen
2 stubbed toes
3 very large bruises
1 fractured wrist (despite what Carson and his x-rays said)
1 enormous bouquet of obnoxious, Athosian Sort of Roses
1 Celine Dion CD
"There is no circle of hell worthy of you," Zelenka said, half in horror and half in awe.
"Hot gay romance is the name of the plan, Radek," Rodney swore, straightening his sport coat and checking to see if his shoes were shined.
There was, in the back of his head, a tiny voice bringing up the depressing fact that he was trying harder to fuck with John's head than he had on his date with Katie Brown. But really, was that his fault? He'd been sharing a body with Crazy Cadman. Emotionally retarded indeed.
"How do I look?" Rodney asked nervously.
He could see the Stitch'n'Bitch chapter members filing into the cafeteria, which meant it was almost time. Rodney had planned it out perfectly, because even if he wanted Sheppard to rue, rue, rue the day he had decided to take on Rodney McKay, Rodney didn't really want Sheppard in jail or beaten to a pulp by the Marines--and anyway, for maximum impact, Sheppard's queer cheerleaders had to be there.
"You are the prettiest girl in the class today," Zelenka reported faithfully.
Then, from his vantage point in one of the niches, Rodney saw John walking into the cafeteria, trailed closely by a smug-looking Cadman.
Rodney took a deep breath. "Okay. It's time."
"Oh, wait--please," Zelenka said, smiling so brightly Rodney thought he would explode. "Let me get camera--this is too good not to save for posterity."
While having John on their side meant the stitching bitches could lock themselves into the cafeteria, it hardly meant that Rodney had no access. If he'd wanted to, he could have spied on them via security camera, though that would have sacrificed audio--but for his purposes tonight, all he needed was his laptop and remote control.
He checked the clock: half past ten.
"And…now," Rodney said gleefully, hitting enter on his keyboard. Radek steadied the camera.
From inside the closed doors of the cafeteria, Rodney could hear Celine Dion piped over the intercom, the voice shrill and resonant in the contained space--and the surprised, masculine yell of, "What the fuck?" was timed perfectly with a whooshing noise from the new projection screen Rodney had installed. A few more keystrokes and the slideshow had to have begun, a PowerPoint presentation to end all others, with every single annoying trick in the PowerPoint repertoire, accompanied by the sound of Celine Dion crooning her gratitude.
He set down the laptop and jogged over to the doorway of the cafeteria, holding the enormous bouquet of Athosian Sort of Roses, thought about it for a second, and then plucked one out of the arrangement to bite between his teeth and set off his huge, shit-eating smile.
"Oh hell no!" Rodney heard bellowed, which Rodney assumed was Sheppard finally noting that all of the pictures on the slideshow were fuzzy security captures of him, surrounded by ugly, photoshopped hearts and flowers.
Then, just as planned, the door to the cafeteria slid open with Sheppard looking volcanic on the other side. His face went slack in surprise, and Rodney smiled even larger around the flower's huge, soft petals.
"Oh my God," John said, looking like he was going to vomit.
"Oh my gawd!" somebody inside agreed, and it sounded like Kate Heightmeyer--so much for professional respect.
Rodney beamed, his expression filled with perfect, beautiful triumph, which bore an uncanny resemblance to love, and pulled the rose out of his mouth, taking a step forward. John backed up, mouth dropping open, eyes widening in mute horror.
"What are you doing?" John demanded.
Rodney noted with huge satisfaction that the rest of John's knitting buddies had all fallen silent and still in their corners of the room--eyes huge. Of course, the awed effect of it was a little bit diminished by Celine reminding John that it was all because of him and the eight foot slideshow of John pulling off his uniform jacket with a neon pink arrow pointed at the left half of his chest saying, "ALL MINE!!!!!"
"I was wrong, John," Rodney said sincerely, his eyes huge and watery.
John looked like he wanted to cry--or break something. "I--what?"
Rodney thrust the bouquet of flowers into John's arms, and clasped their hands together, shuffling in until they were close enough so that Rodney could see just past the naked horror in John's eyes and spot the homicidal urge rising, rising, behind hazel irises.
"If you start singing, I will break your neck," John hissed, close and quiet to Rodney's face.
"Oh, you started it, Colonel," Rodney whispered back, and much more loudly, he said, "Please, give me another chance." He crushed John's hands and the bouquet to his chest, made his most sincerely heartbroken face and said, "It's all because of you, John."
John's expression darkened. "Really not that funny anymore, McKay," he whispered urgently.
"I mean it," Rodney pressed meaningfully, and just for effect, he leaned in until they were so close their noses could have touched--and, yes! yes! Miko had just fallen out of her seat, wheezing--batted his lashes and said sweetly, "How about another try, John? Eh?"
The way Rodney had seen all of this going down had been John having a righteously homophobic freakout and shoving Rodney away to ruin his own game or scowling and caving and admitting to Rodney's superior mindfucking abilities or bursting out laughing and apologizing like he actually meant it this time, exonerating Rodney in the process and then proceeding to grovel a lot.
The way it actually played out:
John's eyes went huge and darkly green before his mouth opened and closed a little--and Rodney got distracted by the way the pink of John's soft-looking lips melted away at the corners of his mouth and how his five o'clock shadow dusted the curve of his chin--before John let out a sigh that sounded like a confession and leaned in.
In Rodney's head, if he and John Sheppard ever kissed, it would have been in a dark hallway, with nobody looking, followed immediately by Sheppard punching his lights out. Or maybe as the consequence of alien sex drugs--like so many terrible science fiction stories. Or maybe--and Rodney had only thought about this one once--after defeating the Wraith, with Atlantis safe and alive and beautiful spread out at their feet, the whole of the Pegasus Galaxy to learn, and John would laugh and shout and Rodney would laugh back and when they kissed, Rodney would feel John's smile against his mouth.
Instead, Rodney felt the Athosian flowers being crushed between them, John's fingers cutting off the circulation in Rodney's hand, John's knuckles hard against his chest--and he couldn't breathe because John kissed like he was breathing with Rodney's lungs: deep and slow and selfishly, tongue stroking over Rodney's teeth and the inside of his mouth, reckless and exploratory and curious, as easy-going as John himself.
And when John pulled away, Rodney only had enough time to gasp out, "…buh?" before John threw the bouquet in his face and stormed down the hallway, the last notes of "Because You Loved Me" playing him off.
Somewhere in the background, Rodney heard swearing in Czech.
If Rodney had thought the previous snubbing was unbearable, it was only because he didn't have a proper frame of reference. He would have gladly suffered mild malnutrition and pink underpants for the rest of his life if it would keep every single Stitch'n'Bitch member from looking at him like he was lowest scum in the universe.
"I can't believe you," Kusanagi had hissed at him Wednesday night.
"What?" Rodney had demanded. "It was a joke!" which, apparently, was exactly the wrong thing to say because it made Miko look as if she was about to cry.
And, sure, yes, Rodney had wanted her to stop having her terrifying, fixed crush on him but he hadn't really been shooting for earning her undying hatred, and apparently Miko only had two settings: love or bloodlust.
Thankfully, there was a different, bulky, belligerent server on kitchen duty, and Rodney ate well, even if none of the food sat well in his stomach, because the ZPM sims were almost done, and with the way Sheppard was avoiding Rodney like the plague, Rodney was not optimistic about their ability to work as a cohesive offworld team. Plus, sooner or later, Elizabeth was going to try and do some diplomatic mediation bullshit and the only thing Rodney wanted less than to be in couples counseling with Lt. Colonel John Sheppard was to be in couples counseling with Lt. Colonel John Sheppard with Elizabeth.
So after being tripped, ignored, scowled at, and generally hissed at by a surprisingly high population of people Rodney never would have thought had a stake in these sorts of things, Rodney finally couldn't take it.
He cornered John in the puddlejumper bay, folded his arms, and stared at the side of John's face, since Sheppard refused to look Rodney in the eye.
"This has now officially gone past juvenile into stupid," Rodney snapped. "I don't know why you started hanging out with those terrifying hags or why you continue to do it, but I have had enough. You got me, I got you back, there was--" Rodney made an indistinct hand gesture "--an inexplicable and really confusing moment in there, and now it is time to move on."
Rodney carefully did not mention exactly how much moving he'd done based on the kiss, as that would have outed him as the pathetic, fifteen year old boy he was deep down inside.
Sheppard was silent for several seconds before he sighed and looked at Rodney.
"You're right," John said, smiling wryly. "You know what? You're right."
Rodney was strangely taken aback, both by the simplicity of it and the expression in Sheppard's eyes, which looked a little bit too much like the dark green he'd seen for a split second before John had kissed him in the Stitch'n'Bitch meeting--and oh God, how had his life reached a point where that sentence wasn't sarcasm?
"I am?" Rodney asked. "I mean, I am."
"You are," John agreed graciously. He smiled again, faintly, for just a moment before he laughed and added, "This has been a weird couple of weeks, sorry you got caught up in all of it." John shrugged and he looked away again, said, "It was nice--hanging out with them, you know?"
Rodney stared. "What? Learning to knit?" he asked.
"Naw," John said, and started out of the room. "Just being quiet."
He waved, and Rodney was frozen to his spot for a second before he said suddenly, "Wait a minute! Your scarf! I still have it."
John looked at Rodney over his shoulder for a second before he smirked and said, "Keep it."
And that would have been a nicely anticlimactic cap to the month's events if it wasn't for the fact that Rodney spent the whole rest of his night staring at the scarf where it was laying over the back of his desk chair. By three in the morning, Rodney was convinced he was developing a bed sore, but he couldn't make himself look away.
The next day he was cranky and due to hideous incompetence on somebody's part, the heat in Atlantis cut out and they were all buffeted by vicious sea winds and losing their extremities to cold. Immediately after the morning meeting, Rodney had dashed back to his room, wrapped the scarf around his neck, and scurried off to the labs, cursing vile idiot technicians under his breath the entire time.
When Rodney got to the lab, he could see that everybody else had gotten the same idea, and that a parade of multicolored sweaters, hats, scarves, and mittens had appeared. It was like an ice skating rink had emptied out into the Atlantis labs, and it would have been cute if they weren't all doing it to stave off frostbite.
Sheppard must have done some soothsaying, because nobody was actively out to get Rodney anymore, but everybody was giggly and distracted and seemed to be even less efficient than usual.
Radek kept catching Simpson's eyes from across the room and flushing as red as his cap, for one, and when Rodney had wandered down to the mess at lunch, Cadman had outfitted Carson with a new, incredibly stupid knit cap complete with a little fuzzball at the tip of it to match Carson's green scarf. Bates was wearing a pair of cream-colored mittens, and Rodney tried to remember where he'd seen that color yarn before Katie Brown had brushed past him, wearing a lavender sweater.
There was an idea beginning to percolate in Rodney's head, some sort of unnaturally high correlation between people who were wasting Rodney's precious, precious time mooning at one another and new winterwear.
The more closely Rodney looked, the more it showed up everywhere.
"I hope you're okay with it," Katie Brown said to him. Her eyes were huge and earnest. "I didn't want it to catch you by surprise and upset you."
Rodney frowned at her, uncomfortable. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
Katie put her hand on Rodney's shoulder supportively. "I know that you and Jeremy have always had your differences, professionally." She bit her lip. "I'd hate to think that I'd be compounding that with a personal entanglement, you know?"
It took Rodney almost a minute to figure out what she was saying, and by the time he did, he was making a face so horrible it was actually making Katie make a face like she was about to burst into tears.
"You're dating Kavanagh?" Rodney said, mortified.
"It's a very new relationship, Rodney," Katie said, a whine in her voice.
Rodney said, "Oh God," but before he could tell Katie that he didn't give a damn who she dated the unscheduled offworld activation alarm sounded.
Rodney's first thought when he saw them strapping Sheppard down onto a stretcher was Oh my God, I never said anything to him. I never told him. Only that wasn't true, he thought insanely, as Carson started barking orders and the small offworld team hustled into the infirmary.
Then Rodney yelled and stomped a whole bunch until Elizabeth calmed him down like a crazed animal, explaining that Sheppard had been on a routine run, that Rodney wasn't being cut out of the loop, that it had been an accident, and then smirking, added that it was actually Sheppard's own fault.
Elizabeth sighed affectionately. "He slipped on a patch of ice, knocked himself right out."
Rodney stared at her. "Are you kidding?"
"I wish I was," Elizabeth said, smiling. And then her lips curled up even more. "Though given your reaction, I'm guessing that the bad blood between you and Colonel Sheppard has faded."
Rodney stiffened, saying, "I don't know what you're talking about," and walked robotically to the infirmary, where he plunked himself next to Sheppard's bed and scowled at the man hatefully.
Carson assured Rodney there wasn't any brain damage, and that Sheppard would come out of it with little more than a painful concussion.
Rodney occupied himself with preparing a lengthy discourse on why Sheppard was a jerk and how he just didn't take his own safety seriously, followed by abundant mocking of his ability to walk, which Rodney hoped to segue into some penetrating questions about the knit goods trade on Atlantis.
He was outlining section C subsection a.1 when he saw Cadman wander into the infirmary, and he fell into his automatic Cadman setting, which was "scowl."
"Visiting your boyfriend again?" he said.
She only beamed at him. "Same as you, buddy," she quipped, and reached over to flick one of the tassels on John's scarf, still wound twice around Rodney's neck. She was wearing a soft-looking blue sweater. It looked very good on her. "I guess he forgave you after all," she commented.
Rodney stared at her. "What?" he asked.
"Well, at least he gave you his scarf again," she compromised, and winked. "The first step is the most important and all that other stuff." She gave him a thumbs up sign and disappeared into the back rooms of the infirmary, where her laughter and Carson's voice could be heard faintly through the half-closed door.
Rodney returned to staring at John's prone form, hand tight in John's scarf.
The problem with physics for most people was that they never learned the basic concept of frames of reference. They assumed "relativity" was high level theory, that its only applicable use was at speeds approaching that of light and when the universe slowed to a crawl around you.
What relativity really meant was that different things meant different things from different perspectives, which was apparent enough except that Rodney had been so caught up in the astonishing nature of new and exciting wormhole physics he'd forgotten the first rule of his long history of scholarship. Sheppard always looked at things with his head cocked to the side or straight on, didn't look back, and with Rodney always glancing to the side, with eyes dashing frantically from one monitor to the next, of course they would see things in different shades, different depths, different colors and meanings.
And with that suddenly clear again, he dashed in on Cadman and Carson's private time, which--thank God--had only meant interrupting them doing a six-months backdated New York Times crossword together, looking revoltingly content and domestic, to ask when Sheppard would wake.
"Probably two or three hours, why?" Carson asked, bewildered.
"Shit!" Rodney yelled. "That's not enough time to knit anything!" Then he ran off again.
Faintly, he heard Carson say, "Is it just me, or is Rodney getting stranger?"
After twenty minutes of feebly attacking a yarn ball and knitting needles that Rodney found abandoned in the lab, he realized that mathematical genius did not translate into craft queen, and he did what any rational person in this situation would do--offer Miko really obscene amounts of goods to buy her newly completed knit-puddlejumper.
"Look, ten chocolate bars is my limit!" Rodney argued, and he knew it was a dirty, dirty lie even as he said it, because he had at least another six burning a hole in his pockets and he had fifty more squirreled away in his room. Cash was meaningless on Atlantis--all their bank accounts were flourishing and going to seed back home while the city's black market ran on a brisk trade of chocolate, coffee, and compressed video files of pornography brought from back home.
Miko looked uncertain. "I just finished the puddlejumper though," she said dolefully.
Her voice was small and clear, and carried a curling roll on the L's and R's, making the two noises nearly indistinguishable when she said them, beautifully foreign and not at all stereotypical, and Rodney wondered if flattering her horribly would make her give him the damn puddlejumper.
Rodney gritted his teeth. "Thirteen chocolate bars, and that's my final offer."
She considered it for a bit before she said, "Give me the chocolate first."
"What, you don't trust me?" Rodney scoffed.
She only narrowed her eyes and held out her hand, and Rodney decided he liked her a lot better when she was cowed by his genius and madly in love with him. He dug through his pockets until he produced thirteen precious bars of chocolate and deposited them in Miko's greedy clutches. She smiled brightly and passed over the puddlejumper.
"Oh!" she said suddenly, clasping her hands together over her chest, light gleaming off of her Coke bottle glasses. "Can I take pictures of you and the Colonel kissing?"
"What?" Rodney yelped. "No! No! Where did you--? No!"
Miko sighed, saying, "Such a waste," and returned to her chocolate bars.
Rodney backed out of the lab carefully, and he couldn't help but think sullenly, No, seriously, I hate this galaxy.
John was awake and being fed blue Jell-O by Brandi, Andi, and Sandi, with Ted hovering longingly in the background when Rodney returned to the infirmary. Rodney barely resisted the urge to wave his green scarf around to shoo away the vultures, but did not manage to keep himself from clearing his throat, shoving past Brandi and Andi, and sitting down on the left side of Sheppard's bed to glare at all of them threateningly.
"Hi. Rodney," John said, half-bewildered.
"It's good to see you're finally awake," Rodney said, irritated and nervous. He glared around the room. "Don't you four have somebody else to fawn all over?"
"Not really," Ted said, looking at Sheppard longingly.
"I'm fine, Ted, really," Sheppard promised, and then flashed an award-winning all-American smile that made Rodney weak in the knees and sick in his stomach at the same time for yet another fun throwback to junior high school. All Rodney needed now was to discover he had contracted mono after an abortive sexual encounter and that would seal the deal.
After Brandi, Andi, Sandi, and Ted filed grudgingly away, Rodney did not move away from where he was essentially pasted to John's side. But he did give John a new, knitted puddlejumper, and tried not to clutch at the scarf any more than was totally necessary.
"Happy concussion," Rodney said.
John's eyes were round with delight, and he looked at the puddlejumper from all angles, stroking his big hands over it and peering at the neat, beautiful loops and whorls of yarn, in four different colors of gray and pale, pale blue for the front window, two white lines mimicking the way light sheered off of the surface of it.
"Wow," John said, so thrilled he apparently did not care that he was a walking invitation to get pounded on by his subordinates at the moment, what with leaning on Rodney's hip in a very intimate way. "This is awesome! Tell Miko thanks for me."
Rodney cleared his throat. "Actually. It's from me."
John stared. Then he looked at the puddlejumper. "But Miko made it," he said, sounding confused.
"Let's call it my commission," Rodney said. "So. It's my present. To you."
Sheppard's face softened in understanding for a minute before his smile crept back, with a slightly different note to it, and from Sheppard's frame of reference, Rodney saw it shining and bright and inviting.
"Oh," Sheppard said quietly, and the smile widened some. "Thank you."
Rodney tried very hard not to feel giddy but mostly failed. "You could have said something earlier, you know," Rodney said, maligned. "I mean, you can't expect me to be able to respond properly if I'm not even clear on what's going on."
"Ah," John said, holding up one finger. "Remember, I'm not allowed to tell."
"Yes, yes, and I'm not allowed to ask," Rodney said. "But you could have given me a clue.”
John looked at him for a long time before Rodney realized that the expression in John's eyes was best characterized as fondness.
"Rodney," John said. "I gave you my scarf."
Rodney looked down to find that he was still clutching the tassels of it.
And when he looked up, it was his turn to say, "Oh," and then, "Thank you."
The Atlantis Local Stitch'n'Bitch Chapter pretty much closed up shop when spring rolled around, because all of a sudden the botanists, biologists, and even the physicists had a new and astoundingly pressing amount of work to do. And with planets all over their own star system defrosting, Sheppard proposed a goodwill visit to their few friendly partners just to look in on them and see how they'd done, which kept the gate teams hopping, too.
But then the spring and summer rush were over and the city started to slow down again for winter, and by unspoken general agreement the entire Atlantis base exhaled long and hard and shared a collective fond thought for ZPMs.
John, by twist of fate and sleight of hand, was busy dealing with Caldwell and a new battalion of marines who had arrived in Atlantis and were torn between being bewildered, being charmed, and having the knee-jerk reaction to shooting everything that moved in their peripheral vision.
It left Rodney with a huge amount of free time. That was his story and he was sticking with it.
"I can't believe he's put up with you for almost a year," Kavanagh said cattily.
"Do you never stop being an asshole?" Rodney demanded.
Katie rolled her eyes at both of them and handed Miko a ball of red yarn. "You guys really need to cut that out before I make Laura come over here and kick both your butts," she warned them.
They subsided, but Kavanagh couldn't help but mutter, "This is so unfair. I can't believe you busted me down to a beginning member again, Katie."
She ignored him.
Kavanagh glared at Rodney. "At least I didn't marry into the club."
"Upwardly mobile sex is a perfectly legitimate way to achieve your goals," Rodney said serenely.
And he became surer of it than ever when John snuck in for the last few minutes of the meeting--just long enough to see that Rodney was attempting to knit something that probably looked at least a little bit like a scarf.
"Aw, Rodney, you shouldn't have," John said, all smiles.
"I know," Rodney said tolerantly, and smiled back.
(by Spaggel)
Author's Notes:
This entire debacle comes from my saying the following two sentences: "Hey, you know what would be a hilarious fic title? The Atlantis Local Stitch'n'Bitch Chapter!" and "Haha--can you just imagine?" Apparently the answer to both those questions was "yes" followed by, I shit you not, approximately twenty-four hours of straight writing and editing. It was ridiculous.
Many, many thanks go out to Basingstoke, who I subjected to horrible pain and torment via IRC while I was writing this, Madelyn who audienced the entire thing (and came up with the brilliant summary), and last but certainly not least, Lyra Sena, who not only managed to beta thirty pages in what felt like an hour but has always proven the most understanding, smart, and eagle-eyed editor I've ever had. She also held my hand while I basically tore out the anatomy of the later scenes and restructured it, and she's absolutely right--the story is better for it.
Kiss kiss, and many apologies, Pru. (9/25/2005)