"It's a good thing we're not actually holding anybody hostage, because apparently we're crap at it."
Hammond lifted a brow. "'We'?"
"Just to make sure," Rodney said to Sheppard, "you see the giant lizard too, right?"
"I think it's a dinosaur," Sheppard said slowly.
"Oh, well, in that case--"
THEN John followed General O'Neill down into the super classified totally not supposed to exist and you are definitely not supposed to be here labs and poked a chair which just rolled over and moaned for him -- which you know, I can't blame the fucking chair -- before he made the most beautiful image of the universe float above us all with his a thought.
The wraith laughed and opened its hand. Jehan stumbled back, coughed, and fingered the tiny wound at his throat. He was barely bleeding. Something in the feel of the cell changed; sound grew sharper, colors clearer, and the others were suddenly surrounding him, aware of something happening and pulling him further away from the wraith. Jehan thought it must have released whatever telepathic voodoo it had been exerting against everyone else.
Mer lurched over and grabbed John's elbow. He pulled until John's hand, smeared with his own blood, came away from his neck and stared. "What the hell just happened?" Mer demanded.
"Allies," the wraith said. "Allies. Open the gates, let loose the dogs of war."
Rodney glared at both of them and returned to the lights, which turned out to be futile because two hours later when John and Jeannie had already otherwise decorated the tree between themselves and Rodney was still futzing with the wires and peering hatefully at the string of blinky lights, John said, "Oh, hey, there's a bulb missing!" after which he screwed it on and half-blinded Rodney in one eye when the whole damn rope of light exploded into schizophrenically cheerful red and green blinking.
We finally gave Bernie a bear whistle after he got lost for the third time while taking a piss behind a tree, just so we could find him. Delph even made him up a GPS map of Atlantis showing all the key points...and to give him shit about his lack of direction. To pay him back, Bernie filled his bed with plastic spiders, because Scott gets the heeby jeebies if you recite Little Miss Muffet in his presence. Paulie gets faint at the sight of blood, but when I fell down a hill and ended up nicking an artery in my leg, he sat by my side and told me the stupidest knock knock jokes he could come up with while Bernie applied the compress to slow the bleeding until Scott could bring help from Atlantis. And as soon as the medics showed up, Paul moved off into the trees and sat with Bernie with his head between his knees so he wouldn’t faint. Everyone has their weaknesses and every team leader knows what they are for the people under his command. And, yeah, they’re fair game for ribbing for those on the team. But I guarantee if someone else had put those spiders in Scott’s bed, or gave Bernie shit about his lousy sense of direction, or goaded Paulie about nearly passing out, there would have been hell to pay. And you better believe Sheppard feels the same way about the members of his team.
The jokes about Dr. and Mrs. Sheppard had been making the rounds on Atlantis for ages, a sort of absentminded jocular kidding that had snuck up on them all so slowly that Rodney had stopped—abruptly and surprised at himself—in the middle of a joke about John always having a headache before he’d realized it had happened. Even then, nobody really talked about it all that much; if gate team one was in any sort of marital relationship, it was one of the really Mormon ones.
Still, Rodney knows he and Sheppard are the Odd Couple are the Honeymooners, and so when John starts making nagging, wifey noises when they pull off of the local roads and onto the highway, all he can think is, He wasn’t anywhere this bitchy when we first got together.
Sheppard found me in the labs and told me he'd be fine and I should chill out. I don't believe him as far as I could throw him and just to spite him, I've decided to stop having a crush on him because he's clearly a liability and has the self-preservation instincts of a gnat.
Oh, lovely, Rodney thought, Fantastic. Perfect. She'd probably picked some football player or firefighter or something equally cliched and ridiculous. She was going to pop out some hairy little terror who would enjoy torturing small animals. "Hey, whatever," he said, "as long as you're happy, I suppose."
Before Teyla could speak, the voice at the other end said, "Hey there. Am I talking to the Athosian pirates?"
John was a little startled to recognize the voice. It was the older guy, the one with the Ancient gene, who had seemed to be the leader. John said, warily, "Uh, yeah."
There was a brief silence. Then the voice said, "Parlay."
Okay, I heard that wrong, John thought. The others looked baffled. John said, "Excuse me?"
He thought it was a lot more likely that Jack would be scourging the SGC for somebody with the guts to be Sheppard's 2IC. That was going to be fun. Yeah, it's a posting in another galaxy, your CO can control parts of the city with his mind, and your subordinates will include fanatically loyal native commandos and some scary-ass Marines who will frag you if you look at him the wrong way. Oh, and watch out for the scientists, they all have PTSD and they'll kill you too.
"For the love of-- Dammit!" Jack cut off the comm and stared at it in helpless frustration. "Now they're all down there. How did that happen?" he said to Hammond.
"Now you know how I felt all those years," Hammond answered, not sympathetically.
"It's a good thing we're not actually holding anybody hostage, because apparently we're crap at it."
"Why are you dating me? If you were never interested in guys before?"
"Who said I wasn't? And hello, genius? Absurdly hot neighbor think I'm attractive and wants to fall in my bed and teach my son all those stupid macho things other people think he ought to learn, am I going to be so stupid as to say no?"
"Not you," John agreed amiably, smiling goofily.
John shook his head and propped his hands on his sweat-slick hips. He raised his face to the sky and thought of what had brought them there – he thought of McKay and Jennifer, of the time Rodney and he had spent together, how they'd fought. Despite how hard he'd pushed him, McKay had always pushed back. John's heart pained him as he contemplated the road away from Atlantis and McKay.
"Look, you appear to be outwardly healthy, so the slowness, the drawl, is it some kind of neurological disorder? Abulia? Chronic fatigue syndrome? Erythromelalgia? I've given up on getting breakfast in a timely manner, so now I'm just asking out of concern for your personal well-being. I know a very good doctor, I'm sure he could help with your terrible affliction."
Sometime later, Rodney rolled off him and flopped back onto the pillows. "So," he said yawning, "you meant top as in from the bottom?"
Rodney kicked back the covers and scrambled to the edge of the mattress. "No, no, you do not get to reject the naked man in your bed!" he said, irritated now. "And don't go feeding me some bullshit line about how you don't do guys because, a) you're wearing sweatpants that have pink writing across the ass, and b) the day Sam seriously dates a guy who might be, in any way, manlier than her, I'll die of the shock." He paused. "Also? Need I add, c) your hair?"
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