“It's been four months,” Cadman said. “I want to have sex.”
Rodney folded his arms. It still felt awkward, and he had to adjust his position twice. “You've got to be kidding me.”
Cadman sneered. It was an expression Rodney recognized, and he thought it was an especially cruel twist of fate that he should have to have it directed at him. “No, I am not kidding,” she said. “Exactly how long do you expect me to wait?”
“Until we fix this!” Rodney said, shrill. He looked to Heightmeyer, desperate for her support. “You can seriously be planning to sit there and let her...violate me like this!”
Heightmeyer's face was, as usual, annoyingly neutral. Blank. “Laura's question is a reasonable one, Rodney. How long are either of you supposed to wait before resuming something resembling your normal lives?”
“Normal?” Rodney coughed and attempted to lower his voice. “Are you both blind? How is anything going to be remotely normal until this is fixed? And you—” he added, turning on Cadman with an emphatically pointed finger. “If you can't keep your libido in check until then, well—” His gaze flickered back to Heightmeyer. “You're trained at treating nymphomania, right?”
Beside him, Cadman crossed her arms and snorted. She had no problem with it: her movements were easy—had been, from almost the beginning. She looked comfortable in her chair; she was slouching.
Rodney hated her.
“Laura's expression of sexual desire is perfectly normal, Rodney,” Heighmeyer was saying, blah blah blah. “What I think may be the bigger issue here is the difficulty you're having accepting this situation and moving on. Maybe Laura's right—maybe reintroducing normal aspects of your lives, such as sexual intercourse, will aid you both in accepting these bodies as your own.”
Not not NOT my body, Rodney's brain screamed, as it did a dozen or more times a day: every time he passed a mirror, or looked down at his hands typing on his laptop, or looked up and saw himself in someone else's eyes.
He knew better than to say any of that, however: it would just set Heightmeyer off again. Instead he issued a snort of his own, and tried to ignore how fucking dainty it sounded next to Cadman's. “Oh, please. Like any sex we could have in this state would be remotely normal.”
Cadman grinned, a big, wide spread of lips. “Speak for yourself, McKay.”
Rodney raised his chin. “And who are you going to have sex with, hm?” He instantly wished he hadn't asked, as a possible answer immediately supplied itself. He choked violently on the air in his mouth. “Oh, God—not Carson!”
Cadman's grin grew a bit tenser. “No,” she said. “He—no.”
She and Heightmeyer exchanged a look. Clearly this was something they would discuss further in their private sessions.
“Anyway, it's none of your business, Rodney,” Cadman said.
Rodney sprung to his feet, drawing himself up to his full five feet two inches of height. “It is so my business!” he said. “It's my body!”
If Cadman had followed his example and stood, she would have towered over him. But instead she stayed where she was, legs crossed, her (his) arms sprawled out lazily across the back of the chair. He had never seen himself looked so relaxed.
“And that's mine,” Cadman said, steady and level, eyes scraping over him. He wanted to hug his arms to his chest, but he still didn't like to touch himself. “But since it's been four months—four months, Rodney, and you still haven't been able to figure out a way to reverse this—well, I'm giving you permission. Do whatever you want with it. Stop exercising, eat a gallon of Ben & Jerry's every night, dye your hair. But I want the same consideration.” Her gaze flickered to Heightmeyer, then back to him, steady. “I'm sick of feeling guilty every time I jerk off in the shower.”
Rodney felt a blush creeping up his throat. “You haven't!”
He watched Cadman's mouth slant down, broad familiar lips made alien. “Four months, Rodney. Of course I have.” She scoffed, looking him over again. “You're not seriously telling me you haven't—”
“None of your business,” he said quickly.
The sad thing was, he really hadn't. He tried playing with—with Cadman's breasts, standing in front of the mirror and trying to enjoy them as he would have had he not been attached to them. But the scrape of Cadman's delicate thumbs and sharp nails over hi—the nipples made him squirm, made him want to close his eyes and stick his hand between his legs. But he couldn't do that, because that would be admitting that this was something he was allowed to do. Touch himself like this was his body. Which it wasn't.
He stared at her, at his own face: chin lifted, mouth set, determined. He knew better than to argue with that face—there was no point. Like everything else he'd tried, it was useless.
“Do what you want,” he ground out. “I don't ever want to hear about it.”
“Right, because I'm just dying to discuss my sex life with you, McKay,” Cadman said, but Rodney already knew that she wouldn't ever have to say anything: he would see her walking the halls of Atlantis, loose and comfortable in his body, and he'd never feel normal, never be able to shake the feeling that she was handling it better than him.
The room was a cube; in the center was another cube, small, like a box someone had carelessly dropped on the floor. And carelessly, Sheppard had nudged it with his foot. Sometimes, Rodney wanted to hate him for that. If he was honest with himself, however, he'd admit: if it hadn't been the colonel, it would have been somebody else. It might have been him.
And anyway: it was enough that he was in the room. Him and Sheppard and Radek. And Cadman.
Rodney remembered: a bright flash as Sheppard's toe tapped the box, and then a wave of dizziness that ended with him flat on his back and his eyes clearly damaged for life, judging by the thick yellow stripe cutting across his field of vision.
“Fabulous, Colonel—what have you done now?” he said—or started to; he hadn't gotten much beyond “fab—” before realizing that his voice was wrong. He raised his head and thus got a glimpse down his body, at which he let out an undignified noise that, while girly, was not something that anyone could really berate him for.
“Um. Everyone stay calm,” said Radek, with much more authority than he usually possessed. Also, his pronunciation seemed—
“Great, not this again,” said his own voice with Cadman's odd, flat cadence, and right, yes, he got it: he didn't even need Sheppard blinking into the dark and saying, with a slight hint of a Czech accent that clashed badly with his natural drawl, “Colonel, you really have remarkable night vision...”
“No offense, Radek,” said Sheppard—and Rodney could tell it was Sheppard, even though it was Radek himself who was standing up, walking toward him with hand extended—“but your vision sucks.” He stood above Rodney, his posture, the cocky angle of his hips, odd on Radek's small frame. He held out his hand.
Rodney rolled his eyes, but his back—er, Cadman's—had undoubtedly suffered damage from its unrestrained fall. Wincing, he let Sheppard help him up. You do realize I'm McKay, he was about to say, but Sheppard looked him straight in the eye and said, “Rodney, how about getting us all back where we belong?”
“Yes, please,” said Cadman, running her—well, his—hands over her (his!) chest in a manner that Rodney thought was seriously inappropriate. “This is not the fond reunion I've been desperate to make.”
“Believe me,” Rodney said, staring down at her breasts, seriously weird from this angle, “I'm not enjoying it any more from this side.” He walked forward, awkwardly—his center of balance was definitely off, and when Radek, a wiry coil of energy in Sheppard's lanky frame, stumbled forward to help him, it shocked him to realize how short he was, tilting his head up to stare at Sheppard's face.
“So, this should be pretty simple,” he told Radek, as they both knelt over the device.
“Yes, it should merely be matter of—” Radek said, raising a finger to boost his glasses up his nose and nearly stabbing himself in the eye when he found none. He muttered something in Czech—cursing out the Ancients, most likely, for ever thinking it was a good idea to built an outpost or a device such as this.
On the other side of the room, Sheppard and Cadman were bent together over the radio, standing awkward and uncomfortable in the unfamiliar bodies and trying to convince Lorne, with whom they were speaking, that Doctors Zelenka and McKay had not gone insane, and that it would really be a wise idea if the major, Teyla, Ronon, and Sergeant Shelmerdine kept out of the room for now. “We wouldn't want a repeat of what happened on M93-622,” Cadman said pointedly, and Rodney tried to comfort himself by listening to Lorne stutter uncomfortably. Then he shook himself, ignoring the blonde strands floating past his face, and focused on the task at hand.
It was pretty simple, thank God for that—not quite an on-off switch but a fairly basic on-off sequence, that, between him and Radek, took mere minutes to figure out. “Okay,” he said, in what he meant to be an authoritative voice but to him seemed ridiculously high-pitched. “We're going to try this now, so...stay close to the ground so you don't damage what few brain cells you possess.”
Cadman snorted, which made Rodney feel uncomfortably like there was some sort of bizarre mental echo in the room. “Ready?” Radek asked, forming a nervous expression that Rodney had never before seen on Sheppard's face.
“Ready,” Rodney said. They initiated the sequence.
Bright lights, dizziness. He passed out again. When he opened his eyes, Sheppard was leaning over him. “Lieutenant?”
“Colonel?” he said, incredulous—and yes, still high-pitched. And also, increasingly nervous. “Sheppard?”
“Rodney,” Sheppard said—with his own voice, his own mouth. “Why didn't you switch back?”
“Yeah,” said Cadman standing up on his legs, folding his arms across his chest. “Rodney—”
“Radek!” Rodney said desperately, and they bent over the device again, talking rapidly, even though Rodney's mind was screaming, terrified and shockingly blank.
An hour later, Sheppard and Zelenka had been ping-ponged back and forth between each other's bodies a half a dozen times—Radek was complaining of motion sickness; Rodney and Cadman, on the other hand, had stayed, and with each successive activation of the device, continued to stay, exactly where they were. In the wrong place.
“McKay,” Cadman said, after Sheppard had once again leapt dorkily to his feet—his own feet—and with a raised hand announced, “Back to normal!” “Do you think this might have something to do with what happened to us before?”
“No!” said Rodney. It had to do with the fact that the universe hated him.
“Actually,” said Radek, adjusting his glasses gratefully. He explained his theory.
“Confused!” Rodney said—his anger and bile not sounding right, not sounding right at all in Cadman's voice. “You think the Ancient technology is confused?”
“That is a greatly simplified version of what I said—” Radek started.
Sheppard's radio buzzed again. “Yeah?” said Sheppard, and then, “No, you're right, Major,” and Rodney didn't even need to hear Lorne's side of the conversation to know what was coming.
“Rodney,” Sheppard said, looking over—down—at him with stern but at least somewhat sympathetic eyes. “We need to go back. You know it's not safe to stay here overnight.”
“But—” Rodney said, without really meaning to; even Cadman already looked resigned.
“We can come back tomorrow. And who knows, maybe Beckett—”
“Carson's not going to be able to fix this,” Rodney grumbled, he had already turned, was packing up his stuff.
Sheppard's hand touched down on his shoulder: brief contact, odd and unfamiliar in every way. “But you will,” he said. “I know you, Rodney: you'll think of something.”
The one good thing that had come out of all of this was that Rodney had received incontrovertible proof that Radek was in fact the best friend ever and not just an opportunistic Czech snake who was sucking up in hopes to gain favor and get promoted when Rodney met his own messy and increasingly likely end. No mere sycophant, no matter how loyal, would be able to put up with quite this level of hysteria and whining.
“—Cadman announced her intention to use my body for disgusting carnal pursuits, and Heightmeyer, that quack, agreed with her.” Rodney slumped lower on the lab stool. “And this morning,” he said, giving Radek a long-suffering look, “Sheppard said my hair looked pretty.”
“Pretty?” said Radek, raising an eyebrow.
“Well,” Rodney admitted. “Nice. But that man is impossible! He can't resist anything with—” He gestured vaguely at his chest. “It's like I've suddenly got a giant target painted on my—” He gestured at his chest again.
“Are you, ah.” Radek thought. “Are you sure he was not merely being...polite?”
Rodney flicked his hair over his shoulder—a truly frightening habit that he had not only picked up, but which was with alarming speed becoming more and more unconscious. “Please,” he said. “Would you ever tell me that my hair looked nice?”
“Ah,” said Radek. “No.”
And there was the real reason, Rodney thought, that Radek was the best friend ever: he was the only one, almost without exception the only one, who hadn't started treating Rodney differently.
“All right,” Rodney said, after a moment. “Enough of this pity party. I have actual work to do before tomorrow, when I have to face another mission with the walking testosterone bomb.”
There was maybe one other good thing that had come of this: Cadman's body, admittedly more resilient than his own, could work for obscenely long hours without having to stop to eat.
Rodney didn't sleep well anymore. His theory—the one he didn't tell Heightmeyer, didn't tell Radek, didn't tell anybody—was that he kept having Cadman's dreams.
He dreamt someone else's childhood and someone else's family and someone else's life. He dreamt another person's triumphs and mistakes, another person's wants and longings and desires. He awoke missing things he had never had, and terrified that he was losing himself: body first, and soon, inevitably, mind.
He had learned to shower, to wash and dress, with the lights off, fingers efficient and swift.
Teyla wasn't completely unbearable. Like almost everyone else, she had at first shown the annoying tendency to be nicer to him—not because his situation made him, obviously, extremely deserving of everyone's sympathy, but as if the fact that he was—temporarily!—a woman meant that he suddenly needed coddling. On this, at least, he and Cadman were in agreement: “People are idiots,” she sighed. He couldn't have said it better himself.
But Teyla was back to sensibly agreeing with him when he offered his invaluable advice and rolling her eyes at him the rest of the time. She still stepped in front of him when they appeared to be in danger, but then, she had always done that. (And quite rightly, too—invaluable, remember?)
Ronon, too, wasn't so bad: he and Rodney maintained a relationship of comfortable hostility with occasional breaks for food-related bonding, and if Ronon had once remarked that, while Rodney was still annoying, at least he was now easier on the eyes, Rodney was willing to be the bigger man (ha!) and let it slide after that warm afternoon on M7V-468 when Ronon had reached up and plucked a pair of giant alien oranges off a tree, peeled one, and handed it to Rodney with a simple, “Try this.” Rodney had recoiled instinctively, but Ronon's implied, “Now you can” registered and he reached out with Cadman's slim fingers and took the fruit in his hand. “Go on,” said Ronon. Half of his was already gone, the juice dribbling down his chin. “It's ripe.”
Yes, Rodney thought, feeling strangely deviant, both amused and confused by his thoughts of Adam and Eve in the garden, unsure as to which role he was supposed to be playing. But he raised the fruit to his lips and bit, sweet, tangy juice exploding on his tongue, even as his body remained firm and strong beneath him.
He let out an involuntary moan, gratified that he got to have this, at least—not to mention secretly and maliciously satisfied that Cadman wouldn't get to have it anytime soon. He was grinning at Ronon, licking his fingers, peeling off another segment, when he looked up and saw Sheppard staring at him. Sheppard looked inordinately pleased—with himself, with the world. And when they went into the briefing room later that night, the colonel took care to hold the door for him.
Every minute in Sheppard's presence grated on Rodney like nails on a chalkboard.
It was their mission to M4I-759, the day after Cadman had vowed to start using his body for perverse purposes, that finally pushed Rodney over the edge. The Kentari were a fairly sophisticated people for the Pegasus Galaxy, and they had an energy storage system that was really quite fascinating. Rodney was discussing this with Ralan, or rather, Ralan was listening with appropriate attentiveness to Rodney's theories on how the Kentari could improve efficiency and thus afford to share some of their technology with the Lanteans, when Sheppard skulked in. Rodney could feel his eyes on him from across the room, burning into his back even when Ralan took Rodney's arm and led him to one of the control crannies. Rodney was just getting a good look at how the whole thing was wired together when Sheppard wormed his way into the narrow space. “Hey, whatcha guys looking at?”
“Nothing you'd understand, go away,” Rodney muttered, at the same time Ralan said acidly, “There's really only room for two.”
“Yeah, I'll bet,” said Sheppard. He grabbed Rodney's arm and dragged him back into the main room.
Rodney smacked at his hand. “What the hell is the matter with you? You're interrupting vital scientific research, not to mention causing some sort of diplomatic incident which I'm sure Elizabeth will be thrilled to hear about—”
“Yes, let's go tell her, shall we?” Sheppard said, and when Rodney continued to protest: “I'm ordering you back to the jumper, McKay.”
They were silent the whole flight back.
In Sheppard's office, on the other hand, things were quite different. “I can't believe you!” Rodney shouted, storming into the room without knocking. “The blatant unprofessionalism—!”
Sheppard slumped behind his desk, frustratingly blank-faced. “It's my job as team leader to get you out of potentially threatening situations.”
“Threatening? Was it threatening to your tiny mind that I might actually learn something, or gain some valuable technology? I can't believe I was actually foolish enough to think that you were different than—”
“He was hitting on you, McKay.” Sheppard's voice was cutting and yet perfectly flat. “He was maneuvering you into a situation that was about to turn...awkward.”
Rodney opened his mouth to say, What? He was not! You have a sick mind, Colonel, when suddenly a thousand details from earlier that day came back to him: how Ralan kept touching him, how he'd leaned very close whenever Rodney spoke (Rodney'd thought he just wanted to make sure he didn't miss a single insightful word), how he'd been so very, very eager to show Rodney the out-of-the-way, empty power station, and how tightly he'd pressed up against Rodney's body in the control cranny...Rodney was suddenly furious. He'd been imparting incredibly incisive and important information, and that idiot had been staring at—at his boobs! Rodney felt his fists clench. He felt Sheppard's eyes on him, not hungry the way Ralan's had been (for knowledge, Rodney had thought—moron), but there all the same. “Well, you're just as bad, Colonel! With your door-holding and hair-compliments, and then Ralan had to come along and infringe on your territ—Oh my God,” Rodney said, comprehension dawning. “You were jealous!”
This got a reaction out of Sheppard, at least. He pressed his fingers to his forehead, looking torn somewhere between laughing hysterically and doing himself damage with his three-hole-punch. “I was not jealous, Rodney. I was concerned. As a teammate. As a...as a friend.”
Are we really friends? Rodney wanted to ask, but that question seemed too girly, so he simply folded his arms and glared. “And—and you and Ronon. You regularly compliment him on his ‘do?”
“When he hides knives in it, sure,” and when Rodney looked unamused, Sheppard sighed. “Look. Friendship is something I'm not very...good at. Talk to Teyla if you don't believe me. But seriously, Rodney: I only paid you a compliment—which I now know better than to ever do again!—because I was trying to be reassuring and friendly, and believe me, I am not hitting on your or expressing any of that kind of interest, okay? No offense to Cadman, but...”
Rodney had a truly insane moment of wanting to defend Cadman's body, to point at his chest and say, These breasts are very pert, you know! Instead he sputtered, “I'm still in here, yes. I thought,” he added loftily, “that you were at least smart enough to remember that.”
“Trust me, I am,” Sheppard said wryly. “And you know,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, “if you want to start coming to team movie night again, I can almost guarantee that I won't lose control and grope you or Teyla.”
And just like that, Rodney felt ridiculous. Sure, Sheppard might be a total Kirk with everything else in the galaxy lacking a Y chromosome, but he was on the level with his team; there had never been a problem with him and Teyla even though Rodney had thought, at the beginning, that Sheppard had a thing for her. (Although in retrospect he might have been projecting—had you seen her legs in that skirt?) In fact, despite the “gender divide” or whatever, Sheppard and Teyla were incredibly close; sometimes, Rodney had maybe even envied them a little.
It felt like Sheppard was offering him that now, that friendship, that closeness, and while the timing was still suspect (Sheppard had never stared up at him sincerely and said, “As a friend, Rodney” when Rodney still had a cock) it was an offer that Rodney simply couldn't refuse.
“You guys better not have eaten all of the popcorn,” he said.
“Rodney, you look better,” Heightmeyer said.
“Hmm,” said Rodney. To be honest, he'd felt better...until Cadman had come strutting in, carrying his body like he never could, slouching around like she'd just gotten laid. “Just don't. Say. Anything,” he told her.
Cadman flashed him a grin and mimed zipping her lips and chucking away an invisible key.
“I don't think not speaking is going to be especially conductive to therapy, Rodney.” Heightmeyer tilted her head in that faux-sympathetic way that made Rodney want to wallop her.
“Oh, I don't know. I find her not speaking to be extremely therapeutic.”
Cadman apparently forgot that she was a locked box. “You're just jealous, McKay.”
“Right, right, jealous. Jealous that my natural good looks have enabled you to do...whatever you did, while this,” he gestured down the body he happened to be wearing; that is to say, hers, “isn't exactly doing me any favors.”
“Well,” said Cadman, voice surprisingly tight, “maybe if you stopped dressing yourself in shirts twice the size of Wisconsin, your luck would improve!”
“What's wrong with this shirt?” Rodney plucked at the worn cotton. “This is one of my favorite shirts!”
“It's a man's shirt, Rodney! You—your body is not a man's!”
“I know!” Rodney bellowed back. “It's not like I don't have the jiggle twins to remind me every five minutes! And while we're on the subject of gender appropriateness, could you please stop prancing around in my body like a—a—”
“A fag, Rodney, is that what you were going to say?”
Rodney hadn't really been sure what he was going to say, but luckily Cadman had plenty of talking to do in the meantime.
“Do you have any idea how fucked up this is for me, Rodney? I make the male Marines uncomfortable, because I've got a girl brain with boy parts, and any lascivious thoughts I might have in their presence might inadvertently gay them up. Meanwhile, the female Marines are totally cool with it—except they won't let me change with them or use their showers anymore, because it's too ‘weird.' I have to go out of my way to be unthreatening and make everyone comfortable, even if that means basically being a fucking robot all the time. So just shut up about prancing, and if the jiggling bothers you that much, wear a goddamn bra!”
She sank back in her chair, her eyes wide and wild with a look Rodney knew only too well. He glanced at Heightmeyer: she was jotting something in her notebook. Rodney sighed. He pushed up his shirt (Cadman was right—it was kind of big) and fumbled in his pocket. “Here,” he said, handing her a powerbar. “You need to eat something. When I—when my body gets stressed, it increases the risk of going into hypoglycemic shock.”
Cadman was still frowning, but she took the powerbar somewhat graciously. “You know,” she said. “I always used to think you were exaggerating about all these health problems...”
Rodney smirked. “Now I guess we both know better, don't we?”
“Well!” said Heightmeyer, brightly. “I think today went well.”
“Good to see you, Rodney,” Teyla said, smiling up at him. She patted the couch beside her. “We saved you a seat.”
“Right, good, thanks.” Rodney pushed awkwardly past the long splay of Sheppard's legs and sat down. Ronon had claimed the big easy chair from the first time they'd gotten together to watch Back to the Future (Sheppard had tried to look innocent—like that ever worked), and ever since had been unshiftable, like the big tomcat everyone was afraid to move; it meant he had to reach a little farther to get to the snacks, but that's what obscenely long arms were for. He used them now to push the popcorn in Rodney's direction. It turned out to be caramel corn; Rodney wondered who they'd had to bribe to get that.
He was bending over to grab a handful when he got that itchy feeling at the back of his neck that meant someone was staring at him. Rodney turned his head in time to see Sheppard glance quickly away, refocusing his attention on the server menu. “So today we've got a choice between V for Vendetta, 12 Monkeys, and…Sense and Sensibility?” Sheppard raised an eyebrow.
“Colonel, if you so much as look at me…” Rodney started, but before he could think of a plausible (or even sufficiently scary-sounding) threat, Ronon said, “What's wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Sheppard said, leaning back against the couch. “In fact, for a change I think I'll vote for the Austen over the apocalypse.”
“Oh, come on!” said Rodney. “I have a rule! No movies with Hugh Grant. That's my rule!”
“Rules are made to be broken, Rodney,” Sheppard said cheerily. “Pass the popcorn.”
Rodney pretended not to have heard him and pulled the bowl more tightly into his lap.
The movie bored Rodney, mostly because Rodney told himself he intended to be bored. Luckily, Teyla didn't seem to be enjoying it much either (she had surprisingly little patience for any film in which buildings, cars, or people weren't frequently blown up), so they were able to whisper together for a little while until Ronon got pissed at them and told them to shut up. Rodney was willing to forgive him, because his timing had been good: Teyla had just said, “You look well today, Rodney. Is that a new top?” and it was his stuttery, “Um. Cadman gave it to me,” that Ronon's censure cut off.
Without a conversation to keep his mouth and his brain occupied, Rodney decided to do his best to satisfy the former. He still had the popcorn bowl pressed between his knees; he dug a hand in and nearly upset kernels all over the floor when he felt his fingers brush another set. “Sorry,” Sheppard muttered, his eyes remaining focused on the screen. Rodney pressed a hand flat against the cool metal curve of the bowl and took a breath. He hadn't even noticed that Sheppard had—had been reaching there, and it was his own fault for hogging the food and Sheppard clearly hadn't meant anything by it, but. But—
But Rodney was suddenly painfully aware of Sheppard's thigh pressing against his, of the heat of him, of the faint, not unpleasant, smell of his sweat… He was aware of Sheppard—or rather, he told himself frantically, this body was aware of him; Cadman had probably had to deal with that—also not entirely unpleasant—clenching between her legs whenever Sheppard flopped lazily into a chair, or smirked, or ran his thumb over his holster straps. She was probably used to it, just like he'd been used to feeling his dick twitch whenever Teyla wore her swishy skirt or Elizabeth put on her forceful face. It was a biological response; perfectly natural, Heightmeyer would say.
Stupid Heightmeyer.
On screen, everyone took forever to make their painfully stilted declarations of love and then they all got married and lived happily ever after.
Repression and denial helped Rodney through another month or so. Then one evening, he and Sheppard were sitting in Rodney's quarters, playing a perfectly ordinary game of chess (which Sheppard was not winning, thank you very much) when Rodney realized that he'd been taking far more time with his next move than could be passed off as brilliant pondering. It didn't help that Sheppard had one of Rodney's captured pawns in his hand and the longer Rodney took to decide, the more Sheppard fiddled with it, circling his thumb around the pert round head, rubbing it lightly with a concentration that somehow managed to be both absent-minded and intent. Rodney could feel his nipples hardening, pushing against the soft cotton of his bra; God, it was almost painful, and meanwhile Sheppard just sat there, studying the board, gently wetting his lips.
“I think we should have sex,” Rodney said—sudden, loud.
For a moment the words seemed to hang there like he'd written them on the wall. Then, “Uh,” said Sheppard, eloquently.
“I mean,” said Rodney quickly, “I'm currently…ah, borrowing a female body that appears to be very attracted to you, and you, well, I know you like sex, all guys like sex, I'm a guy so I know. So we should have sex. Fun, issue-free sex. All right?”
Sheppard's expression remained neutral. “And this brilliant solution just came to you now?”
“Uh,” said Rodney, unconsciously mimicking Sheppard's response a moment before. In truth, it had been all Rodney'd been able to think about for weeks. Lying in bed, cupping his left breast and touching his impossibly sensitive nipple with one hand while he jerked his hips, frantically rubbing off against the base of his other fist. It wasn't sexy masturbation—not what his girlfriends had done when he'd looked at them with wide, hungry eyes and whispered, Touch yourself—no, it was needy and desperate, and he felt dirty afterward, like he had every time he'd caved and jerked off the summer he was thirteen and that asshole Billy Stuart had told him that masturbation killed brain cells. But that was stupid. As he'd long ago recognized, masturbation was awesome, and sex with a man, with Sheppard—well, if he wanted it, then damned if he was going to make himself feel ashamed for that, too.
“It is brilliant, isn't it?” he said, segueing neatly. He thought he saw something that might have been doubt on Sheppard's face. “See, I can promise I won't be clingy or weird about it—you know how women are, and I—”
But Sheppard's face had shut down, gone cold. “I'm not going to help you experiment, McKay. Not with this.”
Rejection twisted through his gut. “Is it…is it because I'm me? And you know I'm me? I mean, a guy? I can be feminine enough. I, I shaved my legs for you.”
Instantly, he wanted to slap his hand over his mouth—a gesture that would now probably make him look like a Japanese Geisha with a bad dye job. I shaved my legs for you? Could he sound more pathetic? More like this whole thing had been premeditated, some ridiculous seduction scene?
“Come on, Sheppard,” he said, even though Sheppard had stood, backing away from him and the bed, looking as warm and touchable as a statue in a museum. “Cadman's hot. Any man would have to find this body hot!”
There was something deadly behind Sheppard's stare. “Sorry, McKay,” he said, pushing past. “I'm just not that into you.”
“Colonel Sheppard quoted Sex and the City?"
"What?” Rodney stopped tugging at his ponytail and shot Cadman a confused look. “Is that what that was?”
Cadman finished chewing her bite of powerbar and nodded. “Either that or the self-help book spin-off.”
“Oh, great! So I didn't even merit an original rejection!”
Heightmeyer opened her mouth like she wanted to ask Rodney how that made him feel, but Cadman rode right over her. "What prompted him to say it?"
She wore a pensive expression that Rodney suspected he had once sported whilst pondering the secrets of the universe. Now it was being used to analyze Rodney's pathetic failure of a sex life. How they'd all come down in the world.
"I mean, what did you say right before hand?"
"Um." Rodney still felt a little uncomfortable sharing this stuff—in front of Cadman, God—but he felt so angry and indignant about the whole thing that if he didn't let it out, now, in therapy, he was liable to erupt with, "What do you mean you're just not that into me?" somewhere really inappropriate—like during the dinner rush in the mess.
He shrugged and rolled his eyes. "I said I—I said you were hot."
Cadman shot him a lascivious look—more than a little creepy on his own face. "Aww, Rodney. You think I'm hot."
"I'm hot, you mean," he said, nearly thrusting out his chest to emphasize the point. Realizing what he was doing, he flushed, his shoulders slumping forward again. "Anyway, it's kind of an objective fact. That's what I told Sheppard—that any man would have to find you hot, right?"
Cadman raised her chin and smirked at him. Rodney suppressed the urge to inform her that smugness was not her most attractive look. "Pretty much," she said. "Although there was this guy I had the biggest crush on in high school. Tony. He had these arms like—" Rodney coughed, indiscreetly. "Anyway, I mooned over him like crazy—and you know me, I do not moon. I practically threw myself at him, and he never showed the slightest bit of interest, never gave me the time of day."
Rodney frowned. "What was wrong with him?"
"Rodney." Cadman fixed him with an oddly pitying look. "He was gay."
"Oh," Rodney said. Then he blinked. "Wait. Wait—just what are you implying?" His spine was suddenly ramrod straight. "Colonel Sheppard isn't—"
"La la la, I don't want to hear about it either way!" Cadman said. She started to raise her hands to her ears, humming all the while, then abruptly cut off both actions. "Although actually—am I gay now? I mean, if I'm a woman in a man's body and I still like men—am I gay or straight? And what if I decide to experiment and have sex with a woman—would that be deviant homosexual activity or a perfectly acceptable prelude to procreation? How exactly does Don't Ask, Don't Tell apply in a situation like this?"
She was looking at him. Rodney scoffed and flipped his hair. "Oh, like I know anything about your country's ridiculous, bigoted practices."
Cadman's eyes had gone incredibly wide. Rodney had never realized—when he panicked, you could really tell that he was panicking. Or rather, that Cadman was panicking. Ha.
"Oh my God," she wailed, "am I not allowed to have sex with anybody?"
"Okay!" said Heightmeyer. "I think we're done for today."
Rodney caught up with Cadman around the corner from Heightmeyer's office. "Hey!" he called. Cadman didn't slow down, but even though she had longer legs, he was damn swift on his feet. Good lung capacity, too. Nice.
"Cadman!" he said, cornering her outside one of the transporters. She got in and angrily tapped the screen, but he slipped through before the doors could shut, and when they opened again on one of the residential levels, she had little choice but to acknowledge the fact that he was there beside her. "What?"
"Um." He was suddenly aware that there were quite a few people moving up and down the corridor and for once he thought before speaking. "Maybe this is something you'd rather discuss in private?"
"McKay..."
"Fine!" He leaned in close; it was still disconcerting to have to crane his neck up. "I thought you said you had already!"
"Had what?" she said tiredly. She showed no intention of slowing down.
"Had sex!" Rodney hissed. "Ow," he added when Cadman stopped short and he smacked his nose against her arm.
"McKay!"
"What? I warned you! Besides," he looked around furtively, "nobody cares. This? You and me? It's old news."
Cadman made a growling noise that Rodney was pretty sure his throat had never issued when he had been in charge. (Why risk—shudder—laryngitis?) She grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him down the hall.
"Excuse me!" he said, slapping her hand away. "I can do without the he-man act, thank you."
"Let's just get to my room, all right?" Cadman said.
"Well, there's no need to drag me by my hair." Rodney quickened his pace and fell into place beside her. Reaching her door, Cadman swiped her hand over the lock and walked swiftly inside. Rodney followed, and the door slid shut again so quickly it nearly took a chunk out of his heels.
"Okay." Cadman folded her arms. "When did I ever say I had had sex?"
"Well..." Rodney thought back. "You, you said you wanted to, it was all you could talk about! Remember, you kept going on about how it had been four months, and then Heightmeyer agreed with you—she got her degree off the back of a cereal box, if you ask me—and then at our next session you were all...smirky. I know that face, that's my face! My just-got-laid face!"
Cadman rolled her eyes and sank down onto the bed. "Rodney," she said. "For the last time—it is not your face. Right now? It's my face. That—" She pointed to the free-standing, full-length mirror. "—Is your face. Get used to it."
He shied away from the glass, focusing on her instead. She looked tired. She was always arriving at their sessions looking sweaty and worn—"Gym," she would say. As if a back-breaking exercise regime could turn the body of a scientist pushing forty into that of a 28-year-old, peak-of-her-physical-condition Marine. "But you wanted—"
There was no humor in Cadman's laugh. "Right. And whatever Laura wants, Laura gets."
"Ha. Funny." She glared at him. "No, really," Rodney put on his best earnest face, "that was good."
Cadman sighed. "Just what I always wanted—the approval of Rodney McKay."
Rodney found himself sighing, too. His shoulders felt uncomfortably tense. He tried resting a little against the wall, then gave in and let his shoulders roll back, let his head thunk back to rest there. "Well, you have everything else of mine, so." He stared at the ceiling. "Do you really think Sheppard's gay?"
"Jeeze, Rodney." He could hear a shuffling sound: she was taking off her boots. "It hasn't been, like, a pet theory of mine. But, ah." He glanced over and saw that she was worrying her lip. "Now that I think about it, well. The man does use a lot of product."
"Hey! That's a stereotype! And, and—and what about Carson, hmm? Not only does he use product, he copies Sheppard's look! He's like the founding member of the Colonel Sheppard Hair Club for Men!"
"Right, Carson." Cadman picked at her sweatpants where they were pilling. "Well, he certainly isn't gay." She let out a huff of air. "Not even a little," she added quietly.
"Oh. Right." Rodney felt a bit of heat rise to his cheeks. "Sorry about that."
Cadman straightened her shoulders resolutely. "Whatever." She waved a hand—a gesture Rodney was sure had been his. "I'm over it. It's ancient history." She gave him a crooked smile. "If I put my mind to it, I'm sure I can find guys for both of us, McKay."
"Hey, not so fast," Rodney said. "I haven't yet given up on the possibility of hot lesbian sex."
Cadman's laugh sounded much more genuine this time. She leaned forward and punched him lightly on the arm. "I haven't ruled it out yet, either," she said.
"You and Cadman seem...chummy," said Sheppard, tightly.
"Yes, well, we've come to an understanding," Rodney said with an equal lack of warmth. He consulted the scanner in his hands (the fact that he was wearing clear polish seemed enormously, embarrassingly apparent to him, but he really needed to stop biting his nails and anyway, no one had said anything). "Right," he said. "This way."
"That's left."
Rodney glanced over his shoulder. Sheppard had his hand on his P-90, but otherwise he was sauntering down this intensely creepy and disgustingly smelly underground corridor as casually as if he were walking across the mess. "I know."
"You said 'right.'"
"I said—" Rodney stopped. "What is this, an I Love Lucy routine? Are you auditioning for the part of Ricky Ricardo? Just shut up and follow me!"
Sheppard did—for about two steps. Then a sarcastic, high-pitched "Yes, mother," slithered across the slimy corridor and into Rodney's ear. He lost it.
"What the hell is the matter with you?" he demanded, wheeling on him. Cadman's fists felt ridiculously tiny against Sheppard's chest, but damn, she was strong, and it wasn't difficult to shove Sheppard back against the wall. "Do you have some sort of problem with women? Because you flirt with anything in a skirt and you're always crowing about how hot some native floozie is, but to me you're completely cold—and we're talking deep-core ice sample cold, fucking Hoth cold. So if it is me, if I made you uncomfortable and ruined whatever's left of this supposed 'friendship' of ours, well then you should just come out and tell me instead of dragging it out like this is some stupid Lifetime movie we're starring in." Sheppard opened his mouth. "And!" Rodney said quickly, "If you make one goddamn crack about 'Television for Women,' I swear I will knee you in the balls."
Sheppard's Adam's apple bobbed. "You really have gone to the dark side, McKay."
"Oh, fuck you," Rodney said. He pushed away and started back down the corridor, not really caring if Sheppard followed; he was too distracting, anyway. "Some of us have actual work to do!" he called back, the echo making his voice sound funny. "You know, maybe it would be better if I switched to Cadman's team."
Suddenly Sheppard was right behind him, his breath hot on Rodney's neck. "Did she say something to you? Make you an offer?" Rodney could hear the That bitch, the all-too-obvious undercurrent to his tone.
"Oh, lay off Cadman, would you?" he snapped. "What did she ever do to you?"
"A favor!" hissed Sheppard. Then he was quiet again, his jaw slamming shut with an almost audible click.
Rodney stared at him. "What the hell does that mean?"
Sheppard looked away. "Nothing. Rodney..." He swallowed. "I'm sorry, okay?"
"Yeah, right." Rodney fixed him with an inquisitive, unashamed stare. "Tell me what's gnawing away at that pathetic little mind of yours. I am a genius," he added—a threat. "I will figure it out."
"McKay." Sheppard stepped back, a cease-and-desist gesture ruined by the squelching sound made by Sheppard's boots. "She just made things easier for me. To ignore...stuff."
"What?" said Rodney, feeling frustratingly less than brilliant. "How did Cadman..."
It came on him like a bright flash of light, a wave of dizziness. When he could see again, he had a whole new perspective; everything was clear.
"Oh my God, Cadman was right! You are gay! You're gay for me!"
Sheppard looked like he couldn't tell what about this pronouncement horrified him the most. He finally settled on, "You were talking to Cadman about my sexual orientation?"
"It's okay, she's gay now, too." Rodney waved the worry away. "Well, kind of. Anyway—you did want me! I mean—before, you wanted me. When I was a man. Because you like men. Oh." He touched a hand to the wall for support and immediately regretted it when his fingers came away stained. "Fuck."
Sheppard blinked slowly. Rodney was relieved to note he still had the P-90’s safety on. "That would sum it up, yes."
Rodney crossed his arms under his breasts. "Well, this is stupid. And typical. Both my opportunities for hot gay sex and hot heterosexual sex are ruined." He thought for a moment. "Could I interest you in a little speech about my recent discovery of the wonders of bisexuality?"
"McKay," said Sheppard, looking pained. He was saved from further discourse by the sound of both their radios crackling to life. "Sheppard, McKay," said Ronon's voice. "What's keeping you?"
"McKay took a wrong turn," Sheppard lied smoothly. Rodney glared at him.
"Women have no sense of direction," said Ronon, contemplatively. Then he grunted in pain.
Rodney tapped his earpiece. "Thank you, Teyla."
"My pleasure."
Over the next few days, Rodney began to initiate a plan he nicknamed 'Straighten-Up Sheppard.'
"You realize," said Radek, "if it were only a question of posture, still it would never work."
"Shut up. Why do I even tell you anything?"
"Because if you get cranky with me, I will never ask you, 'Is it that time of month?'"
"Ha ha," Rodney said. "And how's your romantic life lately? Still not having sex with Elizabeth?"
"I told you, it is five-year plan! Slow seduction. Courtly. Gentlemanly. Works every time."
"First time trying it, is it?"
"Zticha. Go cure Colonel of his sinful sodomite ways."
"Fine." Rodney hopped off his stool. "Oh, and by the way, I'm borrowing your collection of porn. Bye!"
Yes, Radek had definitely proved to be a good friend.
Sheppard stormed into Rodney's room waving a tattered Czech copy of Jugs. "Stop leaving porn in my locker!"
Rodney looked up from his laptop. "Don't you want to know how I figured out the combination?"
"No. Just quit it. Lorne thinks I'm a big pervert now."
"And are you? I mean, have you been having any...heterosexual urges?"
Sheppard rubbed his forehead with the base of his palm. "This is really messed up, McKay." He looked at Rodney, sitting there in one of Cadman's tank tops and her favorite old workout shorts. (They'd eventually just caved and traded wardrobes, with the exception of underwear—"I think we've done enough sharing, thanks"—and certain t-shirts Rodney claimed had "sentimental value.") "Just...really, really messed up."
"Excuse me," Rodney said. "If I can switch sexual orientations—not to mention bodies, thank you—then I think you can, too. Just put a little effort into it!"
Sheppard's eyes went dark. "Right, well. That's what my father said, too." He dropped the magazine to the floor. "Didn't take then, either."
Rodney's stomach dropped. "Sheppard—"
"You know, I really thought you'd have access to better porn than this," Sheppard said, giving the magazine a kick as he strolled toward the door. "These girls aren't even pretty."
"'These girls aren't even pretty'? Huh?"
"Don't look at me!" Rodney said. "Up until then, I hadn't thought the quality of the porn was the problem."
"Men," Cadman scoffed. Then she frowned. "You know, I really need to stop looking at everything in such sex-based terms."
"Gin," Rodney said. He grinned. It pleased him far more than it should to have found a card game he could consistently beat her at.
Cadman narrowed her eyes. "Are you counting cards?"
"Um. No?"
"Hmph. Don't make me tell Heightmeyer on you."
Rodney glanced at his watch. "Ah— We missed our session again."
Cadman turned her shrug into an impressively fancy shuffle. "Whatever. I'd rather just talk to you anyway."
There was a moment of awkward silence. Eventually, Cadman set the cards down in front of him. "So," she said pointedly. "You gonna deal?"
"Yeah," he said, slim fingers moving over the cards. "I'm dealing."
"Look, I'm sorry," Rodney said.
Sheppard didn't look up. "About what?"
"Don't be deliberately obtuse." Rodney stopped fiddling with the jumper crystals he was messing with—it was just busy work, killing time until Ronon and Teyla got back after getting delayed by a hill that had proved much easier to go down then get up. He turned to face Sheppard, who was cleaning his gun, inserting the slim metal rod into the barrel and pumping it up and down with an intense expression on his face—and really, Rodney should have known.
"I wasn't trying to, you know, ‘cure you’ or anything. I just thought...it would be fulfilling for both of us if you explored the full range of your options? And I'll admit, maybe bad Czech porn wasn't the most subtle or beguiling approach, but I couldn't exactly show up at your door in a skimpy negligee because for one I don't have one and neither does Cadman, and two, my feet get really cold and I think I'd look stupid if I wore a negligee with wool socks."
Sheppard didn't say anything for a moment. Then he said, "I really didn't need that mental image, McKay."
Rodney held up a placating hand. "Oh, I get it—girl parts are scary." He ruminated. "Although, actually, they're not; just somewhat more difficult to clean."
Sheppard put down his gun, which thankfully he had yet to reassemble. "Why are we still having this conversation?"
"Because I was hoping we could go back to what you said after M4I-759? You know, the planet where you stopped me from scoring with Ralan?"
Sheppard's frown deepened. "That was a joke!" Rodney said. "All I mean is, I'd like to try that again. Being friends. Friends with no sexual tension between them."
"Right," said Sheppard, flatly. "Because we used to excel at that."
"Exactly!" Rodney said, but only because the way Sheppard had his hands braced against the bench made his chest ache. He'd agree to almost anything to stop him from looking like that.
Sheppard opened his mouth as if he were going to say something else, then paused to tap his earpiece. "Teyla, how’re you guys doing?"
"We are fine." Teyla sounded out of breath. "We are making...progress."
There was a tightness in her voice that in anyone else would have manifested itself as full-blown annoyance and in Rodney as a nuclear-grade explosion of bile. Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "Want us to come get you?"
"Tree cover's too thick," supplied Ronon. He also sounded like he would be requiring the opportunity to hit something in the near future.
"Okay," Sheppard said, sounding unusually hesitant. "We'll just wait here then."
He moved his hand away from the radio, but it buzzed to life one more time. "And Sheppard," said Ronon, "next time you can 'just check out that little valley over there.'"
"Uh-huh, you're breaking up, see you soon," Sheppard said. He took the earpiece off and set it beside him on the bench. The gun sat beside it, half-cleaned, but Sheppard remained still, his hands folded in his lap.
"What were you going to say?" Rodney asked.
"Huh?"
Rodney twirled his finger: Stop bullshitting and get on with it. "Before."
"McKay..."
"What? We're friends. Friends tell each other things. Like, like earlier I told you about, um..."
"The difficulty you experienced cleaning your vagina?" Sheppard said dryly.
Rodney flushed. "Okay—ground rules of this new boy-girl platonic friendship thing? There will be no discussion of either party's vagina. Sheesh, you're worse than Cadman."
Rodney sat down on the bench opposite Sheppard and scratched at a scuff mark on the jumper's floor with the toe of his sneaker. "We used to talk about stuff," he said. "We used to... Why don't you tell me some of your favorite science fiction movies, and I'll tell you why you're stupid to like them?"
"Gee, that does sound fun," Sheppard said. But the drawl was back in his voice; he sounded almost normal again.
"I bet you like all those bad '70s Charlton Heston movies. You do, don't you? You like The Omega Man and Soylent Green. You started a rumor in your high school cafeteria that the mystery meat was people."
Sheppard's eyes did that thing where they crinkled a little around the edges, which had the odd effect of making his whole face look warm. "Who told you that?"
"Wait, you did? Seriously?" Rodney gaped. "I think I—" He bit down quickly on what he was going to say. "I can't believe you ever fool people into thinking you're cool."
"I fool people about a lot of things," said Sheppard, with a lightness Rodney no longer believed in. Good call: "Why me, Rodney?" Sheppard said, leaning forward suddenly. "There are plenty of people on Atlantis who would have done almost anything for a crack at Cadman's body, no matter who was inside. Why make it complicated? Why choose me?"
Rodney knew the answer; for once, this was not gratifying to him. "Who says I didn't? Maybe I'm just finally getting around to you."
Sheppard just looked at him. "Is that your skeptical face?" Rodney said snappishly.
"Yes."
He huffed. "Well, whatever, Scully. You were just convenient, all right?"
Rodney didn't even want to look at Sheppard long enough to glare at him; he stood up again and returned his attention to the panel of crystals, which wouldn't even do him the courtesy of malfunctioning so he could have something other than the man sitting across the far-too-narrow jumper compartment to concentrate on.
He could hear Sheppard making some shuffling noises; apparently he'd returned to performing suggestive actions with phallic-shaped objects. Was it so much to ask for the man to be bi-curious? Life was really unfair.
Rodney studied the crystals for a while and eventually concluded that exchanging two of them could either improve the efficiency of the drive pods or cause a small explosion. Both options seemed preferable to continuing to stand here awkwardly like this; Rodney was just adjusting his clamps when he heard Sheppard let out a frustrated little sigh. "So how would you grade this friendship so far? Maybe a 'D'?"
Rodney let go of the wires and turned around. "That's generous. I knew you'd be soft."
"You're all bark, McKay." Sheppard shook his head. "This was supposed to make things easier."
"Not having to spend so much time looking at my handsome, manly form? Yes, that's clearly solved all your problems. And hey! Since when is this all about your issues, as innumerable as they may be? I have issues, too! I mean, just look at them!"
"I think those are called breasts, Rodney."
"Thank you, yes; I'm shocked you never went into medicine." He looked down at the once-odd rise of his uniform jacket (science blue, naturally, donated by a surprisingly speechless Miko); they no longer bothered or astounded him like they initially had—nor did they arouse him, except in the pleasurable-painful way they did under his touch, squirming and biting his lip in the dark.
"They're rather nice ones, too," he commented, "and I say this as someone who was once a bit of a bosom connoisseur. I suppose I...I just got a little overexcited at the thought of introducing you to them. I—I just wanted this to be okay."
Sheppard's eyes narrowed—a small change of expression that Rodney had nevertheless learned to recognize. "You mean straight."
Rodney felt his hands start moving without having sent them any sort of conscious signal to move. "Oh, stop being so simplistic! This isn't about gay or straight—as Cadman wisely deduced, pretty much any sexual activity either of us engages in from now on is going to be in some way queer. No, I just meant...before, you were my friend." He hated the way his voice went small on that word. "We were guy friends. Buddies." He tried to still his fingers. "I hadn't had much experience with that. It was nice."
Sheppard didn't say anything, but Rodney had long since stopped expecting him to help him through these sorts of conversations. Mocking Charlton Heston, Sheppard could do. Deep emotional probing? Not so much.
"But, well. With Cadman's and my little accident, there was naturally going to be a paradigm shift. I thought, if we couldn't be guy friends..."
"We could be 'special friends'?" Sheppard did him the courtesy of not actually making air quotes, but his tone was harsh. Then almost immediately it was even again, almost gentle. "Men and women can be friends. I think I saw a whole movie about that once—and it didn't star Charlton Heston."
Rodney pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, one, I'm now picturing Charlton Heston faking an orgasm in a crowded diner, and that's an image that will haunt me until I die, and two, you clearly weren't paying very much attention since there were no vampire-zombie things to shoot, because they get together at the end of that movie. They don't stay just friends."
"Because if Nora Ephron said it, it must be true. Wow, you really have—" Sheppard cut himself off and ducked his head. "Okay, I'm just going to stop with the 'you're a girl' jokes,'cause it's really not funny anymore."
"Thank you!" said Rodney. "I'm so glad you caught up with the rest of the class! It only took you, what? Eight months?"
Sheppard got to his feet, slow and menacing. "And how many times do I have to say 'I'm gay' before your genius brain registers that I don't—" He stopped. He wasn't that close to Rodney, not really, but Rodney could feel every inch of space between them, like the empty air was charged. "I don't want to fuck you," he said. "I don't want..." He waved his hand; his lip curled, disgusted. "...Cadman."
Rodney sucked in a breath. "I'm not Cadman," he said quietly. "This isn't Cadman. This is..."
He reached out and took Sheppard's hand in his much smaller one; their eyes met for a moment, full-on, and Rodney realized that he couldn't remember another time when Sheppard had met his gaze completely, without making a face or narrowing his eyes or looking away. For a long moment, for the space of a held breath, Sheppard stared at him, into him, like he was searching for the last remaining spark of light at the center of a black hole; Rodney didn't break the gaze as with a sigh he stepped forward into the palm Sheppard instinctively uncurled, cupping it gently around Rodney's breast. "This is me."
He felt them both shudder—a gorgeous, painful quiver—and then suddenly Sheppard was jumping back like a man burned. Rodney felt a stab of fear and anger and rejection, but he saw that Sheppard's head had turned swiftly to the jumper's entrance, and a second later Rodney heard why: a shuffling in the undergrowth, Ronon and Teyla returning.
"W-what took you so long?" he said with barely a quaver. "Sheppard and I were reduced to discussing the film oeuvre of Charlton Heston. Do you have any idea how torturous that can be?"
"No doubt much worse than climbing up a cliff in the hot sun," said Teyla, tartly.
"I don't know, have you seen Earthquake?"
The look Sheppard shot him was grateful.
They debriefed and went their separate ways, with Rodney unable to tell whether or not Sheppard's claim of needing to meet with Lorne was just a ploy to avoid talking about his feelings or—Rodney's preference—skipping to the sex and seeing how it went from there. He tried to track down Cadman because he figured she'd have some good advice, at least on what to wear for a possible seduction, but she wasn't in her room or the mess or the gym or the shooting range, and she wasn't answering her radio. There was a small chance that she could be in the infirmary mooning over Carson (despite what she claimed, Cadman mooned with the best of them) but going to check would involve having to engage the good doctor in conversation, and Carson still had a tendency to slip and call Rodney 'lass.' (Although Rodney was beginning to suspect that he was doing it on purpose.)
Well, fine. His libido had had a long enough run; it was time for his intellect to get its well-deserved turn. He went down to the labs and immersed himself in work. Some time later he felt a hand on his shoulder, and there was Sheppard looking hot and inscrutable and annoying as always. Rodney's mouth formed a reflexive smile.
Sheppard didn't mirror it. "I thought, maybe, you'd come by later."
Rodney's breath caught, thinking, Oh, please let him mean what I think he means. "I thought you were meeting with Lorne," he managed to say, relatively coolly.
"I couldn't find him. Besides, that was hours ago."
Rodney brushed his hair out of his face and glanced at the clock. "Oh. Well. I've been working."
Sheppard jerked his head toward the door. "Do you wanna, maybe, take a break?"
That's very suave, Colonel. Rodney bit his lip to keep himself from saying it.
"I could use a break," he admitted, stretching. He rubbed at his eyes. "I think I'm giving myself eyestrain; Cad—I might end up requiring glasses in my old age."
Sheppard was quiet for a long moment. Rodney could feel the weight of the silence between them as they stepped into the transporter. When the doors opened again it was like the sound had been switched back on.
"It may not be permanent." Sheppard's voice was low, like he was afraid of jinxing himself. "You might still figure out a way to switch yourself back."
Rodney threw up his arms. "And we might all die tomorrow in a bizarre botany accident! Besides," he swiped open the door to his rooms, "I've always said, 'Why put off until tomorrow sex you could have today?'"
"Poetic," said Sheppard, immediately finding a wall against which to lounge. "Is this all about sex to you?"
"Aren't I supposed to be asking you that? After all, you're the man."
Rodney meant it to be light, but Sheppard didn't smile. He missed Sheppard's smiles, even his stupid, meaningless ones. If only, he thought, if only he could figure out the right thing to say like he could produce from nothing, in the face of insurmountable odds, the incredible ideas necessary to save them. What kind of genius did it take to save this?
He closed his eyes. "It wouldn't mean..." He opened them again; he had to look, had to see Sheppard's face. "Wanting me, like this—it wouldn't mean giving into your father, or society, or...or The Man. It would just mean..." He shrugged, helplessly, giving up. "It would mean whatever you want it to mean." A breath. "It would mean a lot to me."
"To be wanted?" said Sheppard.
To be wanted by you, stupid! Rodney hesitated for a moment, then thought, Fuck it. "To be wanted by you," he said; finishing with, unable to help himself, "Don't be stupid."
"Why change what I'm good at?" Sheppard said, but he was smiling a little now. "God, I feel like such a teenager."
"Horny?" said Rodney, hopefully.
"Awkward." A beat, then Sheppard grinned. "But also horny."
"Ha, I knew it!" Rodney sat back on the bed and kicked off his shoes. "Being bi-curious is ‘in.’"
"Of course," said Sheppard, "I'm having sex with you to be stylish." He stopped. "Can I—can I look at you?"
"Um. You mean you want me to—" Rodney pulled his shirt a few inches up his stomach and then let it drop.
"Yeah."
"All right." Rodney was about to make a joke about previewing before you buy, but then he saw that there were beads of sweat standing out on Sheppard's forehead. Silently, he drew his shirt up over his head and dropped it on the floor. He kept his eyes on Sheppard as he ran his hands up his sides, over the smooth muscle broken only by the points of his ribs, around back and to the little dip between his shoulder blades where his bra clasps joined. He unhooked them with practiced ease (there were anxious backseat fumblings he remembered, and more recent exhausted nights, feeling the relief of no more straps cutting into his back before tumbling into bed); Sheppard watched him. Sheppard watched as he slowly pulled each strap over his shoulder, first the right and then the left. Without anything remaining to hold it up, the bra slipped easily off his breasts with as little motion as it took to breathe. He tossed it aside; a scrap of fabric on the floor, virginal and white.
He breathed deeply, felt his breasts rise and fall. It wasn't particularly cold in the room, but his nipples had hardened to small sharp peaks. Was Sheppard looking at them, or was he staring at Rodney's face, or even over his shoulder? He wouldn't quite meet Rodney's eyes; Rodney couldn't quite be sure.
He reached for the button on his pants.
"Stop," Sheppard said. Rodney's heart lurched. "No, I mean...I want to touch you. Can I touch you?"
"Yes!" Rodney scooted back on the bed, shaking with equal parts relief and anticipation. "God, yes already. Please."
There was a pause while Sheppard fumbled with his boots. "Bye bye, wool socks," he said, and Rodney laughed as he felt the mattress shift under Sheppard's weight. Rodney was propped up on his elbows, so he got to watch as Sheppard crawled up his body, and as Sheppard's eyes scraped up his body, roving over the curves of him, the soft places and the hard. He braced himself with one hand on either side of Rodney's torso and looked down. "Hi," Rodney said.
"Hi," said Sheppard. "Is this you?"
Rodney swallowed the lump in his throat. "This is me."
Sheppard shifted his weight onto his knees. He raised his freed hand to Rodney's cheek. "This is your face?"
Rodney nodded. "Yes."
Sheppard's hand moved down, sweeping Rodney's hair aside, cradling the back of his neck. "And this is your throat, Rodney?" he said, lips hovering above the frantic pulse of Rodney's jugular.
"Yes."
Sheppard scooted down, dropping his head to Rodney's midsection. Rodney couldn't stand the temptation anymore: he touched a hand to the back of Sheppard's head, curled his fingers into his hair. He felt the catch of the soft strands and the warmth of Sheppard's scalp, hot like Sheppard's breath on Rodney's belly.
"This is your stomach?"
"Yes." The skin was sensitive, the feel of Sheppard's breath and the barely-there scrape of his stubble making Rodney's breath catch, his body move under Sheppard's hands. He fell back flat against the bed and Sheppard grabbed at his free fingers. He spread them apart, tracing over each one with his own hand, with the air from his mouth. "These are your fingers?"
"Yes," Rodney breathed, "they're mine, this is me."
"These are your breasts?"
Rodney could hear the doubt, hear the skepticism in Sheppard's voice. Reluctantly, he released his hold on Sheppard's head and touched himself, cupping and shaping a soft mound of flesh with each hand, taking pleasure in them as part of himself.
"Yes."
Sheppard's breathing had become irregular. There was a slight tremble to his voice when he spoke. "And is...is this your mouth, Rodney?"
Rodney let his 'yes' be buried in the meeting of their lips, gasping in relief as he found Sheppard's mouth and married it to his. At first he felt at a disadvantage, less in control without such wide, strong lips, but Sheppard was demanding and then gentle, moving like the tide, and when Rodney pushed on his shoulder his body moved, tumbling onto his side and then his back, kissing up into Rodney's mouth as Rodney's hair fell in honeyed waves around them.
Rodney moved so he was straddling Sheppard's hips. He felt so unbelievably sexy, bare-chested and covering Sheppard's clothed body. He laid his hands on Sheppard's chest and sat back, breaking into a wide smile when he felt the press of Sheppard's erection against his ass. "You want me!" he said, delightedly.
"Rodney—" Sheppard panted.
"It's me." He shook his hair over his back. "Take off your shirt."
He leaned forward to help Sheppard get the cloth over his head. He felt his breasts swing forward, and when the fabric had cleared his eyes, Sheppard was staring at them. He still looked hesitant. "Touch me," Rodney said, and Sheppard did: a gentle, exploratory touch that Rodney knew, first from the irritated instructions of a college girlfriend and now from personal experience, was better than a forceful grab. He sighed happily when Sheppard's thumb scraped against his nipple, and rewarded him by grinding back against his cock. Sheppard groaned, but more incredible and gratifying was the look of stunned pleasure on his face. "Have you ever?" Rodney asked. "With a woman?"
Sheppard's manly pride managed to look somewhat wounded. "In high school and college, yeah, when I still wasn't sure." He paused. "Even after I was sure, just to—to try—" He shook his head. "And at least once when I was really bored."
"You're not bored now, are you?" Rodney asked, grinding back against Sheppard's cock again.
"Umm...no," Sheppard said, and then he smiled, full and real and genuine. Rodney's heart soared.
"I want you to..." He rolled off Sheppard and lay back against the pillows. 'Make love to me' sounded ridiculous. 'Fuck' was equally wrong. "You know, do me."
"'You know, do me'?" Sheppard was laughing; he sounded like a dirty old man with a nicotine habit, and it was still a glorious sound. "Romantic, McKay."
"Hey, I am Mister Romance. Missus Romance?" He shrugged. "Sexually-Confused Romance, anyway."
"Well, that makes two of us," said Sheppard. He leaned down and placed a kiss above Rodney's bellybutton; the memory of the earlier, almost-kisses made the brief contact even hotter. "I'd be honored to 'do you,' Rodney McKay. Or do I have a legitimate excuse to call you Meredith now?"
"I don't care what you call me, as long as you take off my pants," Rodney said. Sheppard grinned and complied.
From the look on his face, some part of Sheppard's brain must still have been convinced that Rodney would be wearing loose boxers with pictures of smiley-faced atoms on them under his BDUs; he caught sight of Rodney's plain blue cotton panties and made a strange choked sound. He pulled the elastic down, revealing the soft curls of Rodney's pubic hair. Then suddenly Sheppard was shoving Rodney's legs apart, pushing his nose into the rapidly dampening fabric. "You make pussy so hot, Rodney," Sheppard said.
Rodney thought this was pretty much the best compliment ever.
"There are condoms in the drawer," he said. His voice sounded faint. "Come on," he said, pushing his panties off the rest of the way. "I want, I want—"
Sheppard found a condom and shucked his pants. "C'mere," said Rodney, grabbing the waistband of his boxers and tugging. "I wanna do it." He pulled the boxers down and grinned as Sheppard's hot dick found its way into his hand. "Nice," Rodney said, stroking experimentally. "Though mine was bigger."
"Now Rodney," Sheppard said, "let's not be nostalgic for what we can't have."
Rodney stopped. He looked up at Sheppard's face. "Are you?" he asked.
"No," Sheppard said firmly. He tucked Rodney's hair behind his ear and kissed him—gentle, reassuring, hungry. "I want this now. I want you."
Rodney took a deep breath. "Well, you're a lucky man, 'cause you have me." His hands barely shook as he tore open the package and unrolled the condom over Sheppard.
Sheppard looked down at himself. "I feel like such a breeder."
"Uh, you're wearing a condom, you're not going to be breeding anything." Rodney tried to quell the rising tide of panic he felt at just the thought. "Also, I'm on enough birth control to make the entire population of several small islands sterile. Let's never talk of this again!"
"Sorry. Wasn't thinking." Sheppard positioned himself. "Do you really want to do it like this? Missionary?"
"How else am I supposed to close my eyes and think of Atlantis? Yes, let's just do it already, and yes, like this, I want to see you." He ran out of breath. "John."
"Rodney," John said, with so much tenderness Rodney almost couldn't stand it. He spread his legs wider, gasping a biting his lip when John pushed his cockhead against his opening. He wound his fingers through the sheets. The move inside was surprisingly smooth; inexorable, Rodney thought. Also, Cadman hadn't exactly been a virgin.
For Rodney, though, everything felt new and yet familiar. This feeling of fullness was new, this slower-building, shockingly intense pleasure that made him moan and press his heels into John's back, trying to bring them closer. John at first was biting his lip in concentration, but then he let it go, started moving with Rodney's body, sliding slickly in and out. "You're so wet," he said. "God, Rodney, you're so wet for me. I didn't—"
"Aaahngh," said Rodney, articulately. "John, yes. Finally, finally, yes—"
"I wanna make you come," John said. He shifted a little, sliding up to take Rodney's mouth. His right hand fumbled above the spot where their bodies were joined. "There's this 'clitoris' I've heard rumors about..."
"Oh, God, don't make me laugh—" Rodney said, laughing; and it was his laughter that metamorphosed when John found the right spot, and he came laughing and crying and muttering John's name like a perfect new formula he was trying to remember.
John's hips jerked, then stilled, and Rodney got to hold his shaking back as John spilled inside him, muttering a few formulas or prayers of his own.
"So," Rodney said, after a minute. "Were you bored?"
John laughed; kissed Rodney's throat, his collarbone, his breast.
Rodney raised a hand, touched it lightly to John's hair, feeling his heat through his scalp. "And are you still...sure?"
He worried right away that it was too soon for such a question. But John just shook his head, a little sadly, and looked at Rodney with a shocking honesty in his eyes.
"I've never been more unsure in my life," John said, touching three fingers to Rodney's cheek. "But that's okay."
"I know that smirk!" Cadman said. "I recognize that smirk!"
"Who, me?" said Rodney, innocently, hoping Cadman's features were more adept at poker faces than his had been.
Cadman grinned. "What's the proper guy response here? Do I give you a high five? Say," she lowered her voice to a deep bass Rodney had saved for Darth Vader impersonations, "'Good man!'"
Rodney shook his head. "That is disturbing. No."
Cadman shrugged. "Well, the only other response that I know is to buy you lunch and demand that you spill."
"Actually," Rodney said, "that works for me."
They brought their food up to Cadman's room. Rodney sat comfortably at one end of the little table. It was hard to believe sometimes that the first time he had been in here, he'd been naked and furious with Cadman jabbering away in his head. At the time, he would hardly have thought of his current situation as an improvement, but... Well. He could live with it.
"You seem awfully happy," he said, watching Cadman eagerly work her way through a generous portion of meatloaf. "I know my good news is cause for rejoicing, but I hardly think that you'd be so altruistically-minded that it would have you...glowing? Oh my God, you got laid too!"
"Maaaaaybe," Cadman said, slurping her drink. "You're right," she said a second later, "I totally did!"
"Who?" he demanded. He kicked her shin. "Tell me now. Who?"
She set her fork down. "I don't know if I should..."
"Oh, come on! I've told you everything, so you have to share, too! It's only fair!"
"Well..." She dabbed daintily at her mouth with a napkin—making him suffer, the witch. "You have to promise not to tell."
"Oh, please—who would I tell?"
"Sheppard!" Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe even Zelenka."
"Fine, who would I tell besides Sheppard and Zelenka—who are both very discreet, by the way."
She rolled her eyes. "Fine." She tried to keep the put-out expression on her face, but at the last second a grin slipped back in. "It was Evan."
"Who the heck is Evan?" demanded Rodney, nearly upsetting his Jell-O. "Wait. Is that that control room guy?"
Cadman shook her head. "Major Lorne," she said, flushing. "God, you are hopeless."
"Lorne? You— With Major Lorne, with my body, you— I think you've damaged my brain."
Cadman raised an eyebrow. "With the icky gay sex? Which is astoundingly hot, by the way."
"No," Rodney said. "I'm just—" He tried to picture having sex with Major Lorne, his own body, and was alarmed when the first mental image his brain provided was a large hand caressing his breast and someone moving in him—John; of course he was all caught up in John; it didn't mean that he'd stopped thinking of himself as himself and started thinking of himself as...her.
Cadman was still watching him, and when he looked up at her, he no longer felt the dizzying sensation that he was looking in a mirror. "Huh," he said.
"Confused?" asked Cadman.
"Less so," Rodney said. "Less and less, all the time."
"I thought of a great plan to mess with my father," John said.
"Mmm, what's that?" Rodney didn't look away from where he was playing with their hands, holding them palm to palm, twining their fingers together into different patterns.
"I could send him a note to apologize for being out of touch for so long and for my generally abhorrent behavior, and include in the package some lovely photos of me and my new girlfriend. Then in the letter I could subtly imply that you used to be man."
Rodney propped himself up onto his elbow and craned his neck to look at John. "You want to make your father think that I'm a transsexual?"
John’s face broke into a devious grin. "Yeah."
"Ingenious!" said Rodney. "I like the way your mind works. You know, on the rare occasions that it does."
"Hmm." John chuckled and wrapped his arm around Rodney's waist, tugging him closer.
They breathed deeply for a while, Rodney enjoying John's warmth and his presence and his scent. It was nice to be still sometimes—it happened so rarely—but his mind could never stay quite as quiet as his body.
"You don't...you don't feel like you're settling, do you? Compromising? Succumbing to the will of the patriarchy?"
It was John's turn to boost himself up and peer down his nose at Rodney. "What does that even mean?"
Are you happy with me? he thought. "I don't know," he said.
John kissed a favorite spot behind Rodney's ear. "I never expected this," he said. "That doesn't mean I don't like it.
"What about you?" he asked a moment later. "If you could switch back tomorrow, would you?"
"Of course!" Rodney said, so sure; and then an instant later, not so sure, "I think so."
"It's amazing what you can get used to, isn't it?" John said. "What you can be happy with."
Rodney's eyes narrowed. "With or in spite of?"
"With." He touched Rodney's belly, protectively, possessively.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to you," Rodney said.
"I wouldn't want you to," said John. "You might get bored and go off in search of hot lesbian sex."
"On my schedule for tomorrow," Rodney said. "Along with saving the galaxy from the Wraith and taking cheesy photographs to send to your dad."
"Excellent. We can get Cadman to snap us sharing a milkshake, taking a walk on the beach holding hands, slow dancing to Cyndi Lauper..."
"You really haven't dated a woman since the '80s, have you?"
"Shut up," John said. Then he pressed a kiss to the back of Rodney's head. "I'll even take you on a moonlit picnic, if you want."
Rodney smiled and gave John's hand a squeeze. "I bet you say that to all the girls."
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