They lie together on the hard little bed with the sheets that don't turn back. Waiting; waiting for the roof to move.
McKay's having a hard time of it, keeping still. John's eyes are closed but he can feel the other man twitching beside him, small spasmings of his fingers and toes. "Shh," John whispers. And even though he shouldn't risk it: "Hold on, Rodney. It's just a little bit longer. Hold on."
*
McKay is freaking out. John should have expected this. Hell, he's more than a little freaked out himself. He just knows how to handle it better.
Or, at the very least, contain it.
"This is bad," McKay says. "This is so very, very bad."
"Yeah," John admits, running a hand through his hair, looking around them, "it's pretty fucked up."
"Fucked up?" His voice squeaks. "Fucked up? Colonel, you are the lord and master of understatement. This situation that we're in? There is not a word or phrase in the English language--or in any other, for that matter--to describe how severely screwed we are."
"Yet apparently 'bad' summed it up," John mutters to himself, but he doesn't really care. McKay, in his usual obnoxious and whiny little way, is--also per usual--absolutely, completely, and 100% correct. This. Is. Bad.
McKay is standing in the corner of the living room, tentatively pulling back the edge of a gingham curtain and peering out. Suddenly he lets the fabric drop and whirls around. "How far," he asks. "How far from the gate do you think they took us?"
John wants to say, Not that far, but he knows Rodney won't appreciate being lied to. Besides, what good will it do? "A ways, I think," he says. "I was--"
"--Counting, I know, that was smart," McKay says, and John frowns. A compliment like that? The good doctor obviously thinks that they're going to die. "I was counting, too. Four-hundred and forty-three seconds. Seven minutes--"
"--Twenty-three, yeah." John nods. "I got seven nineteen, but it hardly matters. With their stride..."
He trails off. He doesn't need to say it.
"We're fucked," McKay says anyway.
"Yeah," John replies.
*
A cursory glance, and it looks like a perfectly ordinary house. But there are little things, subtle things, things that are off. The wood is not wood but woodgrain plastic. The flowers are tiny twists of wire, the fruit in the bowls colored balls of wax. The television doesn't work.
Not to mention, the view.
*
They go over the whole house, inch by inch, room by room. McKay calms down once he starts seeing their situation as a problem to be solved. They measure everything, using John's feet because they're closer to twelve inches, which sparks a debate on standard vs. metric, which is distracting, which is good. But there are no secret closets or passageways. They check the walls for structural instability. They're sound enough but far from impenetrable. Some of the windows even open; there's no lock on the front door. The problem isn't getting out, but what they would do if they did.
They don't say this out loud, don't acknowledge it. Don't need to. They look one another in the eye and know.
McKay walks back into the living room. He runs his hand over the top of the television and his fingers come away clean: no dust. It's an old model, all round knobs and rabbit ears. McKay rotates the power button, though they've tried this before; it doesn't work. "I think," he says, slowly, "that this is what bothers me the most."
John tries for levity. "What, that you're gonna miss Battlestar Galactica? I think we've got more pressing problems, McKay."
McKay gives him his I know you're not this stupid look. "Why go to the trouble of putting a TV in here if it doesn't work? And, to ask the more gut-churning, I'm-not-sure-I-even-want-to-know-the-answer-to-this-question question, how do they know about television at all?"
John had been wondering that, too. "They didn't seem all that advanced..."
McKay holds up a hand. "Well, admittedly, we didn't get much of a chance to look. Nor did we..." He gulps, his Adam's apple bobbing. "...Er, exactly have the best...angle."
Rodney McKay, master of euphemism, John thinks, only it's really not that funny.
And it's not like he's eager to put it into words, either.
Instead he asks, "Do you think this is like the thing on M5S-224? The mind-reading fog?"
McKay actually seems to be considering it, but John's not deluded enough to think this is because he finds the suggestion plausible--he just wants it to be. Indeed: "As much as I'd like to believe this is all a massive drug-induced hallucination..." McKay says, and that's as far as he'll go. It crystalizes everything that's wrong, John thinks, that they can't even talk to each other, hash it out. That they're reduced to speaking in half-sentences and ellipses.
So John forces himself to ask the question. The question. "What," he asks, his mouth like paper, "do you think they want with us?"
McKay's eyes go wide, bottomless pools of blue. And he shakes his head, the answer unspoken still: I don't know.
*
Nothing else happens, the first day. They walk each room until John could map the whole place blindfolded--and to scale. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom (the toilet works, thank God), pair of closets, bedroom. It would all seem very innocuous if it weren't undercut by such a potent feeling of falseness, like it's a house constructed by a person who'd had a human home described to him but had never actually seen one. A copy of a copy of a copy.
The first day rolls inevitably into the first night. John knows that neither of them is particularly keen on sleep at the moment, but they have to keep their energy up if they're going to find a way out of this, and for that, they'll need to be well-rested. "Rodney," he says, after McKay stalks past him into the kitchen and starts going through the cupboards (tall skinny boxes that look like they should hold cereal; aluminum cans that are actually molded quasi-plastic; thin, rectangular pieces of wood wrapped in gold foil--all covered in serpentine alien writing, all empty of anything that resembles actual food) for the seventh time. "We should--"
"--Sleep, I know." He's squatting next to one of the lower cabinets, an object that from far away would look deceptively like a container of coffee grounds hanging loosely from his hand. He glances at John over his shoulder, his eyes weary and red. "Forgive me, but the sheep aren't exactly jumping. Besides, there's only one bed."
It's barely an afterthought, the way he says it--one more excuse, icing on the cake. Yet somehow it bothers John. Maybe because he knows what's expected next: "Fine," he says, giving his eyes a dramatic roll. "I'll take the couch."
"Huh?" says McKay, not breaking the staring match he's having with the jar of not-coffee. "What? No, I just meant you could have the bed first if you wanted. Since I'm not..." He swallows. "Tired."
"You're offering to take the first watch?" John asks, feeling an eyebrow shoot up: surprise, skepticism.
McKay's hand cuts a vague line through the air. "If translating my generous sacrifice into pointless military parlance makes you happy, sure."
John isn't sure. He's on another planet from sure. He's on another planet, and, he's rather shocked to realize, he doesn't want to let McKay out of his sight. He doesn't want to leave him alone.
He doesn't want to be left.
If it were just the first, that would be one thing. But it's not, so John nods his head and mutters, "Great, thanks. Wake me in three hours, or as soon as you get tired."
McKay hasn't moved, which in and of itself is disconcerting. "Sure, fine, I'll come jump on the bed and hit you in the face with a pillow."
The pillows are made of plastic and are stuck to the bed, but John doesn't feel the need to remind Rodney of that.
*
When John wakes it's--well, not morning, exactly, but the room is bright again, even though he turned off the light before he went to bed. (And how odd to have to do that with his hand instead of his mind; and, odder still, to find a return to what for thirty-five years constituted normalcy odd.) He jerks up, his back aching like he spent all night sleeping on the floor--which, let's be honest, he might as well have. He's alone. No surprise there, except... "McKay?" he calls, his heart whirring like a motor in his chest, "Rodney?"
No answer. John is on his feet in an instant. He slept in his clothes, of course, but he did allow himself to take off his vest, his boots, and the majority of his weapons. They're all stacked neatly next to the bed, but the P-90 is the only thing he grabs.
Barefoot and armed, he races past the bathroom with barely a glance (empty) and into the living room (also empty). The ridiculous little cuckoo clock in the dining room tick tock ticks as he walks past and John wants to smash it with the butt of his gun, watch all the cogs and wheels spill out onto the floor.
The kitchen door swings loosely on a hinge; John nudges it with the side of his foot and steps inside, his chest too tight. Rodney's slumped in the corner, his body propped up against one of the cabinets, and John is--relief, fear, a long exhalation of held breath--quiet as he lets the P-90 drop to his side. The stupid bastard fell asleep.
He walks over, silent and stealthy, all that training good for something. McKay's head is slumped against his own shoulder in a position that he's really going to regret later, and a small patch of fabric directly beneath his gently-parted lips is wet with drool. It's kind of pathetic, and John feels a stab of--sympathy, probably. McKay is in so far over his head.
Yet that's how they've learned to live, this last year and a half. "McKay," he says, nudging Rodney's leg with his bare toes in a way that feels oddly intimate. "Hey, wake up."
Rodney's eyes stir behind closed lids, but he doesn't open them. "No," he says. "Yesterday was just a bad dream and if I give it another couple of seconds it's going to turn out that we're back in Atlantis. And, erm, that I'm in bed with a hot blonde."
John's mouth twitches into a smile. "If you're gonna fantasize, you might as well go the whole nine yards."
McKay opens his eyes, blinking owlishly up at John. "That's what I always--oh God, my neck."
"Yeah, well the bed wasn't much better," John says, setting the gun down on the kitchen counter where it doesn't look any less out of place than the knife block stuck with blades less likely to pull loose than the Sword in the Stone, or the tea kettle that'll never steam, never whistle, never budge from its proud perch atop the burner. Beside him, Rodney scrambles to his feet, rubbing at the back of his neck. John's hands are free; he has the oddest urge to reach out and help him, straighten the kinks in those broad, weary shoulders. His fingers throb. He picks up the P-90 again, loving the hard, familiar weight of it, cradling it against his chest.
"That," says McKay, looking down at the gun, "is going to do about as much good as David's slingshot."
John scratches his ear. "It's been a while since Sunday School, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure David slew Goliath."
McKay snorts. "Against all logic and reason, yeah"--and trust Rodney to expect logic and reason from the Bible. John rolls his eyes. "It can't hurt," he starts to say, but then there is a horrible booming sound and John begins to rethink that assessment.
Behind him, Rodney shrinks back against the wall. John kind of wants to do the same, but he forces himself to walk forward, the most likely useless gun held in front of him, his eyes open and alert. The cold floor trembles and shakes beneath him; he's still barefoot.
Out into the dining room; the bowl of wax fruit leaps on the table like a bucket of spasming fish. The living room: the rabbit ears vibrate atop the inert television, like they're attempting to establish contact with some distant channel. The booming grows increasingly louder; the shaking reaches a maximum pitch, worse than any earthquake John's ever experienced, worse than Northridge '94, worse the pilot's seat of an Apache right after it's been hit. But through the din, through the tremors, John is surprised to discover that Rodney is standing beside him, right beside him, feet planted and Beretta raised. His hands are shaking; but then, what isn't?
Then all at once, everything goes still.
John does not relax. If anything, his body tenses even more; beside him, Rodney's shoulders rise so high they practically scrape his ears. "Steady," John murmurs, and then, with a horror-movie creak, the front door opens.
It's fast, astonishingly fast; That's wrong, John thinks, they ought to move slowly, to lumber... But: door open, food shoved inside on a cheerful checked tray, then door shut--door drawn carefully closed, actually. And then the shaking and the booming resume, aftershocks that ripple over them and then recede, leaving everything horribly, wonderfully quiet again.
McKay lowers his gun. He's staring at the food, his conflicted emotions written all over his face. And there's another thing that they haven't gotten around to talking about yet: it's been almost 24 hours and McKay's had nothing to eat but a couple of powerbars; even if he ate John's, too, that would only be four more. John can go a long time without eating.
John doesn't have hypoglycemia.
McKay takes a hesitant step forward, and John doesn't want to witness this. He doesn't want to see Rodney fall upon the food like a starving animal, like a monkey at the fucking zoo. So he looks away, and he sees that the painting by the doorway--a dull landscape that could've been snatched from any one of the many motel rooms John's slept in--is lying in pieces on the floor, the glass shattered, the canvas torn, a sad piece of wire the only thing left dangling on the wall. Despite the recent seismic disruption, nothing else seems to have broken, so John feels compelled to investigate. He finds his answer within seconds, in the form of a 9mm round buried in the plaster. He stares at it for a moment, white dust coating his fingertips; then he begins, helplessly, to laugh.
McKay turns around, looking irritated and perhaps more than a little concerned that John's gone around the bend. He hasn't yet touched the food, John notices, and that only makes his grin grow wider, makes the tears spring more eagerly to his eyes. "You fired! You actually fired on that--"
McKay's expression turns indignant. "My finger slipped!"
"Yeah, nice aim by the way," John says--the picture'd been hanging a good yard and a half away from the door.
"Slipped!" McKay sputters. "As in, pressed the trigger unintentionally and without aiming! I'll have you know my marksmanship scores have improved by--"
John picks up the painting by its splintered frame; shards of glass rain onto the floor around his unprotected feet. "This was my favorite, you know," he says, gesturing at the pastel masterpiece. He gives McKay a look. "This is why we can't have nice things."
"Yes, the art world weeps," McKay says, rolling his eyes, losing interest again. He circles the tray, warily; while his back was turned, John guesses, McKay did this already, several times. "Do you think--"
John sighs, and sends the remains of the painting crashing into the corner. "You need to eat, Rodney," he says. And there's nothing more he can say, nothing that can take away the sharp sting of fact.
Luckily, McKay knows this--and what a blessing it is, sometimes, John thinks, that he's so smart, so practical, so devoid of a dependence on stupid social convention. John has to look out for him, sure. But he never has to feel like he's carrying him.
Rodney nods--once, twice, to himself. "Fine," he says. "But I'm not eating on the floor." He sticks his gun back in its holster, bends over, and picks up the tray. "We can have breakfast in the dining room like civilized people," but he's rolling his eyes as he says it, and yes, that's it, John thinks, that's it exactly.
*
The afternoon of the second day they spread out all their supplies, everything that's theirs, across the dining room table. The almost-oatmeal, the tiny dishes of alien fruit and too-sweet tea--what John thinks of with disgust as faerie food, food of the type likely to be served in tiny acorn cups--have all been cleared away and replaced with guns and knives, scanners and tracking devices and thick coils of rope. They do their inventory, checking again and again, but it's not enough.
They both know it's not enough.
McKay drums his fingers on the tabletop. John sometimes thinks that he'd like to make a catalogue of all of Rodney's nervous habits, indexed and illustrated; then he shakes his head, because clearly his brain's stopped working if he's having thoughts like these. There is both too much and not enough to focus on, for both of them; they're stuck here, and for once it's not a situation where they can talk/flirt/MacGyver/Mensa or blow their way out. They can sit, and wait, and hope; but neither of them's ever been much good at that.
"If only we--" McKay starts, but it's a pointless thing to say. If only we had: the puddlejumper, a thousand more men, one of the Asgard's nifty "Beam me up, Scotty!" devices. If only we hadn't come to this stupid planet in the first place.
"--more rope," McKay finishes.
"Rope?" John says, incredulous. "That's your plan? More rope?"
"Well, at least it's something!" Hands flying in front of his face, as if he might somehow pluck the solution from the air; pluck it--and shove it down John's throat. "Maybe if we took the bedsheets--" There are no bedsheets. "--The curtains! If we took the curtains, and we tied them together--"
"--Then yeah, I guess we could escape from a twelve-year-old boy's second-story window." John folds his arms over his chest; it feels good to be eviscerating McKay's ideas for a change.
"At least I'm trying," McKay spits. "You know, it's hard," he says, pissy now, "really hard, to have to try to solve this thing and boost your plummeting morale. Do I look like a camp counselor to you? A girl scout leader? No."
"Wait, wait," John says, baffled in so many different ways he can't even begin to keep them straight. "You are lecturing me on morale?"
"There is a difference," McKay sniffs, "between maintaining a level of healthy realism and...and pouting! Come on, Colonel--your lower lip's been thrust out for so long, you're going to give yourself an overbite!"
John thinks, Yeah, well, your face is gonna stick like that and He's been staring at my mouth? But what he says is: "Fuck--"
And then the roof opens up.
John doesn't know how it's possible, how they could sneak up--not after their earth-shaking, bone-rattling entrance that morning. But there's nothing, no warning: just him and McKay one minute, and the next, a third presence in the room, reaching down like the hand of God and snatching Rodney away from him.
He screams. Rodney screams, but John's screaming, too, their voices mingling, shared volume and pitch and terror. John scrambles forward, climbing up onto the table, reaching out for Rodney's hand. For one horrible, hopeful second, their fingers do meet, but he can't hold on. He doesn't hold on.
Then the ceiling closes over him, and he's alone.
He spends the first fifteen minutes after Rodney's...removal completely trashing the house. He puts on his boots specifically so that he can shatter all the remaining pictures and grind the glass into the floor. He breaks the few pieces of furniture that are actually made of wood and kicks the plastic ones into the corners, forming towers of wobbly-legged endtables and torn drapes and tattered wire-and-mesh roses. The wax fruit splatters against the walls.
Even once he's physically exhausted himself, he still has other weapons at his disposal. He screams at them, stands in the middle of the wrecked living room and screams: promises, threats, mindless babble; Rodney's name, over and over and over again. He hopes they're listening. He hopes to God they're listening.
When his voice gives out, he sits on the floor, knees drawn up to his chest and head between his hands. His throat is raw; his palms a patchwork of splinters. He just wants this to be over with. If he's lucky, he thinks, if he's lucky...it won't be long until they come and take him, too.
But when the moment does come, when the world shakes and the ceiling lifts away, he changes his mind. He gets to his feet and he points the P-90 into the vast empty space, ready, waiting. After all this, after everything--what they did to Rodney, everything--he's not going down without a fight.
David and Goliath, he thinks, but then he sees Rodney, Rodney curled in on himself like an armadillo protecting its soft underbelly, and he can only stand there, open-mouthed, as they lower him down, lower him and place him with a perverse gentleness on the floor next to John. Then the roof slides back into place, and they're gone.
John drops to his knees. He reaches out, his hand hesitating for a moment, hovering over Rodney's shoulder. Then he's made his decision--a split second, just like that--but the instant his fingertips brush across the warm fabric of Rodney's shirt, McKay flinches away from him like a man burned.
"Don't," he says, sounding hoarse and broken and not like McKay at all. "Just...don't."
John thought he was angry before, but it is nothing, nothing compared to the blind rage that fills him now. His vision blurs; his hands begin to shake. They're still outstretched, a hair's breath away from McKay's arm, so close that when McKay stumbles to his feet and pushes past him, John can feel the air around his fingertips vibrate. For a long moment, John crouches, watching McKay's retreating back. Then time snaps back like a broken rubber band and John's hurrying after him, slamming his fist into the closed bathroom door and sending it rocketing into the opposite wall. Something inside it shudders and breaks; John's getting good at that.
McKay's standing in the shower with all his clothes on, the torrent of water plastering the fabric to his body, highlighting the sharp lines of his heaving shoulders. His eyes are closed, his chest moving in and out in a series of painfully regulated breaths. "Go away," he mutters, rivulets of water running down his cheeks and into his mouth. "For God's sake, Sheppard--if you know what's good for you, leave me alone."
He says the last flatly, without a hint of annoyance or ire. Like he's just stating the facts, plain and simple. Cutting straight through, right to the heart of everything.
It should be unacceptable. John wants it to be; wants to feel justified in storming the rest of the way into the room, jerking open the shower door, pulling McKay out. Talking some sense into him. Comforting him. Doing something.
John doesn't know what's good for him; never has. But he thinks he knows what is, if not good, then necessary for McKay, so he lets his hand drop, lets the bathroom door swing shut. He walks across to the bedroom and sits down on the edge of the bed. He picks at the shards of wood embedded in his skin. And he waits.
*
McKay comes into the bedroom wrapped in curtains. "You look like Scarlett O'Hara," John says, 'cause that's what he would say under normal circumstances, and he wants so badly for this to be normal, for this bed and this room and this easy banter between them to be real.
"Yeah, well," McKay says, voice flat. "Frankly--"
"--You don't give a damn," John finishes, realizing suddenly how essential it is for Rodney to keep caring, to keep giving a damn, to not become cold and withdrawn and numb, like other people John's known.
"Right," McKay says, sitting down on the other side of the bed, his back to John. "My clothes were soaked, and they've--" Slight hysterical hitch, there, but only slight. "--Never heard of towels, apparently. So." The bed doesn't move beneath them, but John can feel the other man adjusting himself, straightening his hideous gingham toga. "I see you redecorated," he adds, after a moment.
John swallows. "What can I say? The decor simply wasn't me."
Long silence. John feels it descend, like a great wave, dark and terrible. For a while they just float together, him and McKay on their little plastic raft; then Rodney turns to him and says, "They didn't hurt me. Not really. Not..."
Not in a way that matters, John thinks he was going to say, but of course it matters, it fucking matters more than anything John's let himself...
And he knows what he wants. John knows what he wants. He wants to open the fingers of Rodney's tightly clenched fist, pull free the coarse knot of cloth. Loosen it, wind it back, until Rodney's free of the whole messy business.
And.
And he wants to make sure--needs to make sure--that Rodney's all right, that he's whole and intact, every inch of his pale skin clean and unbruised, unblemished, unmarked. John doesn't trust his eyes, even less his ears, but his hands--his hands he'll believe.
A cursory glance and it looks like a perfectly ordinary house. His fingers know better.
"Rodney," he says, turning to him, his hands outstretched, but the other man just shakes his head and lies back against the dip of plastic that from far away, almost looks like a pillow.
"My turn for the bed, I think," McKay says.
*
They come for John two days later and it's like the first time in reverse: him struggling, Rodney scrambling, both of them screaming and straining to hold on. The outcome is the same, too, except instead of Rodney rising, he just drops away.
Up, up, up--they lift him, and John holds on, trying to think of it like an amusement park ride: sweat and grease and rocketing into the air, a little taste, just a taste, of everything you've ever wanted. But for once all John wants is back down on the ground--is to be back down on the ground, so he continues to fight against the hands that clutch, but it's like fighting fate. You can't.
They carry him into a room so huge and cavernous John can't even begin to get a sense of it: the walls seem to stretch on for miles; the ceiling is so far above his head, it might as well be the vast blue sky, and him grounded, without wings. If I fell, he thinks, and imagines the long, slow plummet to earth. More rope, he thinks, and it's almost enough to make him want to laugh.
They put him down on something long and flat and wooden, and if John squints his eyes he can almost pretend it's a basketball court, the floor of a conference room or concert hall when all the chairs are stacked and put away. For a few minutes they just stare at him--waiting for him to do something, John guesses. But of course, he isn't going to give them the satisfaction. He wonders what McKay did, whether he yelled and screamed, as John had yelled and screamed, whether he talked their ears off. Or maybe he knew, for once, that it was better to be silent, and he just stood there, and said nothing at all.
After a while they get bored and they take to poking him, prodding him with their fingers, scooting him forward a few inches with the sides of their hands. He endures it stoically, hoping, praying that they'll lose interest, find some other--
They wrap their fingers around his arms and make his limbs move, jostling him up and down, maybe hoping he'll take the hint. He tries to stay loose, worried now, a different worry: it would be so easy, far too easy for them to snap something, make him break.
They jiggle him around for a while until he starts to get nauseated; he grits his teeth and tries to hold it in--he's a pilot, for God's sake--but his stomach, spoiled by the beautiful, awful jumpers, gives up on him. He pukes, splattering the wooden surface and the toes of his boots, but getting one of them a little, too. He's pleased about that.
And yet still they don't let go, and their laughter rolls above him, like a cannonade, like thunder.
*
Rodney's waiting for him when he gets back: sitting in the living room, on the couch, staring at the silent TV. He's cleaned up the mess John made the last time, and at first John is furious--wants to scream and yell and shake his fist. But he knows what McKay will say in response, knows almost word for word the conversation that'll ensue, and John...John doesn't want to talk.
"Colonel," McKay says, standing stiffly once the roof has been returned to its rightful position. "Are you-- Is there anything...?"
"Yes," John says, flush full of new resolve. "Shut up."
McKay nods, seeming to accept--even expect--this. "I'll be," he says, and gestures toward the kitchen.
John grabs his arm. Jerks him around. "I said 'shut up,'" he says, his voice a low growl he barely recognizes, "not leave." And those are all the words he has for now, for tonight. Possibly forever.
(McKay, too, is oddly quiet, reduced to little more than gasps and tiny whisper-moans. Funny: John always figured him for a talker. But it's all right, because nothing, nothing, can silence his eloquent hands.)
Afterward, they lie together on the bed. John's limbs ache from being jerked around, from spending too much time on this flat, unforgiving surface. And yet, he's remarkably unwilling to move, to get up. His hands move on Rodney's back: restless, sweeping motions. Like he's searching for some small patch of skin he hasn't yet touched.
"Well," says Rodney, slowly, some time later. "That was...unexpected."
John finds his tongue, heavy and thick, lolling at the bottom of his mouth. "Was it?" he asks. "Was it really?"
John can feel the movement of Rodney's eyelashes against his bare shoulder as he rolls his eyes. "Right, silly me: I forgot that I'm an intergalactic playboy who expects everyone to whom I toss half a smile to try to jump me. No, wait--" Voice slippery with sarcasm yet teasing, gentle. "--That's you."
Rodney's tone is oddly light, and something in John's chest rolls over. He's still feeling strangely bold, however; maybe it's because he's naked, or light years away from every person who's ever known him, save one. "Seriously," he says, pulling back so that Rodney's features sharpen, unblur. "You never...?"
"Sometimes," Rodney admits, his hand on John's chest, not moving, just resting there. Fingers splayed. "But you know me: when I fantasize, I go the whole nine yards. Or the whole 8.2342177493 meters, I should say."
John buries his face in Rodney's shoulder when he laughs. Rodney tentatively threads his fingers through John's hair and murmurs something against the side of his head. "Still," it sounds like he says, "why now?"
But McKay's too smart to have asked a question like that, and John's not dumb enough to answer.
*
The walls have ears. The roof has eyes. But John's spent too much time cowering, afraid. If he wants to bend Rodney over the dining room table and fuck him, he will. If he wants to suck Rodney off in the middle of the kitchen, he can. If he wants to pass Rodney in the hall and catch him by the wrist, spin him around, kiss him so hard they both forget how to breathe, well--it's not like there's anybody here to stop him.
And it's not like they have much else to do with their time, anyway.
Both of them are bored out of their minds. "There's nothing to do!" Rodney complains one morning, after their meal has been delivered, consumed, and put away. Then his expression changes, the corner of his mouth moving just so. It's a facial adjustment that John must've seen a thousand times, back in--before; a thousand times, and he never gave it a second thought, except maybe to roll his eyes, knowing that--"What are we going to do today, Brain?"--once again, McKay was up to something. But now John sees it, that tiny quirk of a lip, and every nerve ending in his body lights up like Christmas. Like...like the city did once, under his touch.
But really: momentary distractions aside, sweet Jesus, are they bored. For a while, they try coming up with mathematical puzzles for each other to solve, but the thrill of problem-->intellection-->solution only works for as long as it can distract them from the larger problem they still haven't solved. Which is to say, not very long.
Not to mention.
"Well, after all these years working with the military, I guess I'm finally getting to experience what it's like for your average jarhead," Rodney says one day, coming back from above, jumpy and jittery and bruised. They're too smart, their hosts, their captors, to take both of them at once, you see. "You know," Rodney says, holding up a hand to stave John off a minute longer, "'Hours of intense boredom punctuated by moments of abject terror.'"
Despite his best efforts to control them, John can see Rodney's shoulderblades vibrating beneath the fabric of his shirt. John reaches out a hand and lets it hover just outside of what he likes to think of as Rodney's personal electromagnetic field. He holds it there, not touching (Rodney doesn't like to be touched, after), but being there, waiting, until Rodney's breathing has slowed, until he's calm again.
But Rodney is not calm. Rodney is wide red eyes and stubborn chin and angry slash of a mouth. Rodney is the voice he's been hearing in his own head from the second this started, from the moment it all began. His hand comes up and catches John's, the barest contact like a hiss of sparks, and Rodney says, "This has to stop."
"I have a plan," John admits. "It's a really bad plan." Then he swallows, and forces himself to say it. "Especially for you."
McKay doesn't blink. "Tell me."
*
The next morning, when the ground shakes and the food slides through the front door, they both ignore it with a studied nonchalance that'd make the gods of acting weep. McKay has fashioned a set of chess pieces out of the remains of the wire and wax tchotchkes, and John carves the board directly into the dining room table, his knife-blade sending up thick chunks of taupe plastique. They spend the rest of the day alternately making fun of each other's efforts ("What's this one supposed to be? A giraffe?" "I may not be able to fly in a straight line, Colonel, but at least I can draw one!") and debating different versions of the Sicilian Defence ("The Najdorf variation isn't tame, it's sensible. And it's a hell of a lot better than your accelerated Dragon. Look at you, you're throwing yourself right into a Marocsy Bind! It's a needless risk!" "Yes, but that's half the fun."). John even wins, once or twice. All in all, he's had worse days.
("Do you need to eat something?" John asks. "The powerbars, just a piece..."
"No, let's save them, I can wait a little longer. It hasn't been that long, I'm barely even irritable."
"How can you tell?" John asks, and Rodney growls at him in response, growls and pushes him backward onto the bed. His bare shoulders rub painfully against the hard plastic, so he rolls them both onto their sides and reaches a hand down between them. Rodney moans and pushes up against him, into his hot fist. Their legs lock together, a messy tangle of limbs. "You feel that?" John asks, his hand on Rodney's cock. "D'you feel me, touching you?" And Rodney would surely roll his eyes at that if he weren't so busy squeezing them shut and coming all over, coating them both with the physical evidence of what John's done, of what he can do.
"I guess that's one advantage of a plastic bed," John says, later. "Easy clean up.")
The second day is worse. McKay becomes snappish, then sullen, staring at the uneaten tray of food by the door. John tries to distract him, but McKay can no longer concentrate; when he gets up to go to the bathroom, he stumbles--dizzy, drunk. "That's enough," John hisses, pulling Rodney into one of the closets, the illusion of privacy. He tears open the wrapper of one of the four remaining powerbars and forces Rodney to eat it, piece by broken-off piece. "Stop," Rodney says, after half of it's gone. "No, really, stop. That's enough for now. I can handle it."
"I really don't think you can," John says, glaring, looming over him in the dark.
McKay pushes past him. "Fuck you, Colonel."
("Fuck me," Rodney says. "Go on. Do it."
But John doesn't want to fuck him, not now. Right now he wants--he needs-- And so he says, "Turn over," pushing Rodney's shoulder, straddling his thighs. The air smells like cocoa butter, like the beach, and John runs his hand, slick with sunscreen, up the length of Rodney's cock. "I never thought I'd be grateful for your ridiculous radiation phobia," he mutters, and Rodney manages an indignant, "It's not ridiculous!" before John lifts himself up and lowers himself down, and then Rodney's cock is sliding hot inside his body and all John has to do is move, just move, and they'll both have their release.)
Powerbars number two and three disappear by the fifth day, and meanwhile, John's starting to feel it, too, really feel it. They spend more and more time just lying in bed, watching the oddly static shadows projected on the walls. Sometimes they still fuck, but they have less and less stamina, less and less energy to waste. When they touch each other now, it's to no purpose, and John would wonder why they bother if he wasn't already so very, very aware of the answer to that.
On the afternoon of the sixth day, John struggles to his feet to fetch them both a drink of water (because this game would be over far too quickly, if they denied themselves even that), and stepping into the living room, he sees: the old tray of food is gone, and for the first time, no new tray has been set in its place.
"Huh," John says, because his higher thought processes have pretty much taken a vacation. Water, he thinks, and he gets it, and he helps McKay to drink it, and then he says "huh" again and almost starts when through cracked lips, McKay pushes the word, "What?"
"Food's gone," he says. Every syllable an effort. "They took it away. Didn't bring more."
"Huh," McKay says, and John thinks of Echo, wasting away to nothing. "So're we...winning or...losing?"
McKay's eyes are dry; the thick, dark lashes that John only recently allowed himself to notice crusty with sleep. His irises, once a rich, vivid blue, are milky and tired. Far too ready, far too eager to close. Everything about them screams, Lie to me.
So John does.
"Winning," he says, heavy tongue slurring the word. "'S great plan. 'S gonna work."
And he says: "Hold on, Rodney. It's just a little bit longer. Hold on."
*
There's a roaring in John's ears, like a cannonade, like thunder. Sometimes he thinks it's a jumperÑTeyla and Ronon, a half-dozen marines, Beckett, maybe, at the controls. The cavalry come, hailing the call of Gondor. Sometimes he thinks it's them, ripping apart the roof, tearing the house down around their ears. Bored of playing, sick of the same old toys. And sometimes he forgets, thinks he's back in Atlantis and that the Wraith are attacking, or else he's in Afghanistan again, and the sky around him is turning black. But it doesn't matter, because he knows he can handle those things and God, is he dying for the chance to pick on someone his own size.
Sometimes...sometimes he thinks he's back where this all began, following McKay through that thick forest of strange trees with almost no trunks, going into the clearing just a hundred or so paces ahead of Teyla and Ronon. Barely any distance at all. But enough, more than enough, as the hands came down out of the sky and scooped them up, him and McKay both, scooped them up and tucked them away, like a great find, like the tin soldier he once discovered buried in the back yard, covered in mud and rust and the filth of ages. Missing one leg.
They'd been put in separate pockets, and sometimes, even though he can feel the hitching movements of McKay's chest beside him on the bed, sometimes John thinks he's back in that horrible moment, and he's never going to see Rodney, see anything but the choking press of sweat and fabric and alien lint ever again. So he'd counted--he counts--one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four, and he'd told himself that if he just kept his breathing regulated and his head level, he'd find a way out of this, somehow.
Then Rodney was there on the other side, and it became both better and worse, because he's not alone in this, he's not alone, and that means he has more than just himself to lose.
*
The last thing he remembers is his arms around McKay's back; then he opens his eyes, and his arms are empty, and Rodney is gone.
He sits up. His head spins--the hunger's still there, then, and the dehydration, but the ground underneath him is soft and warm. He is surrounded by green, a verdant tapestry with accents of golden light. Real light, natural light. Sunlight.
His skin prickles, lightly, pleasantly. He is naked and lying in the dirt, and in all respects save one, he has never been more comfortable in his entire life.
But; "Rodney?" he calls--barely more than a whisper, all that he can manage, more than he should allow. Hope, he's learned, is better left locked away; it only holds you back. But: "Rodney!" On his feet now, this brave new world spinning all around him. "Answer me, goddammit! Rodney!"
Then he sees it, coming at him through the trees, through the waving grass; and at first John thinks it's a final, hunger-induced hallucination--Get in, Constant--but...but he would never conjure up a Rodney so skin and bone, ragged, with his ribs poking claw-like through his chest. The Rodney he wants is vibrant and whole and unscarred.
But he'll take what he can get.
"You're awake," this Rodney says. Standing staring at each other across the expanse of dirt and shoots of green. "They...they left us food. I ate some. I'm sorry."
He looks upset, guilty, a shadow of the expression he wore when Kolya cut him. But John shakes his head--no. "It doesn't matter anymore," he says. "We're--" And crossing that space is as effortless as breathing.
"Look at us," Rodney says, laughing, running his hands over John's arms--compulsive, hungry touches. "Adam and Steve."
John looks down at the warm press of naked bodies--and yes, that's it, that's it exactly. He feels like Adam, like the first man there ever was. Shiny and new.
They're still holding each other and not saying anything, and it would be a little weird if it weren't exactly what he thinks he needs right now. Rodney smells like sweat and skin and nothing else, and their foreheads are touching, like Athosians, and John thinks that's a custom he finally gets.
"Hey," says Rodney, mumbling, not moving. "You wouldn't happen to know how to get back to the gate, would you?"
John shakes his head. He doesn't know. He doesn't know the answer to that question, or any other, and for once that is fan-fucking-tastic.
He says, "The world was all before them, and Providence their guide."
Rodney pulls back and gives him a look like he's a crazy bastard who's taken to quoting Milton in the nude. Which he is. "Providence?" Rodney says. "Well, personally, I'd prefer a GPS and, I don't know, a map." Then he looks down at himself, and back up at John, and it's clear from his face that it's okay, that they can be crazy naked bastards together. "But seeing as I wasn't born with either of those items attached to my person, I suppose we can try it your way, for a little while."
Blades of grass as tall as redwoods waver and part before them, ushered by an invisible breath.
"Yeah," says John. "Let's do that."
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