Work Text:
It was some kind of miracle, even if Sheppard wouldn't admit to believing in those. He had his superstitions like everyone else, but that was different from miracles. But this… was an oddity. Three whole days back from an off-world trip, and nothing had gone wrong. Nothing at all.
The only thing Rodney had complained about in three days was that his coffee had gotten cold, and that was only because he had actually been able to dig down into some project or another that he normally couldn't get to because too many people or emergencies were demanding his time. So after three days of that quiet, the man sat on the pier beside John, feet dangling over the edge, attention alternating between the moon-rise and the spray of the water not quite reaching his sneakers, and Rodney rambled something about stars and proximity and trajectories and power sources…
It was all probably very important, and probably very smart, but John was three brews in on their six pack to Rodney's two. He could do simple math, like how he could beat Rodney to that last beer, but the more complex stuff… he was just feeling a little too calm to care. It probably made him really bad at his job. He should probably pay attention better. Knowing Rodney, there would be a test later.
John gulped down the swig he had started and then examined the can as a stall tactic against drinking any more of it. He could nurse it out, unbuzz a little, and let Rodney have the last one. The guy was rambling enough about stuff that seemed important, so he probably deserved it. Meanwhile, John had enjoyed a very quiet, unproductive week of catching up on paperwork and naps on his desk, so he couldn't exactly say the same. Also, the can had a misprint on the label, and he couldn't figure out how that was actually possible...
"You know," Rodney announced suddenly, an oomph to his volume that made it clear his brain had just jumped tracks. John set his half-full can on his knee and looked up, trying to catch the new train of thought before it disappeared on him entirely. Rodney poked him in the elbow. "Do you know? - How very ironic your name is?"
John blinked at him. "It's what, now?"
"Ironic. Irony? Unexpectedly apropos? The opposite-"
"Yeah, Rodney, I get what it means, I just don't get what you said," John replied quickly, cutting through the ramble.
"Oh. Right. Well. You're Sheppard. Like the shepherd. With his flock. And we - this expedition, Atlantis - are the… well, the flock. I suppose. I think the name then is strangely fitting. For where we ended up."
That was a thought. John forgot about the messed up can label and looked up at the second moon peeking over the distant horizon line. It was certainly one way of looking at things.
"Huh," he said, stuck thinking and not thinking enough at the same time. Still fuzzy. Damn.
"Baahh," replied McKay, just before ending on a belch. It was almost like he had been trying to mimic a sheep until that point. And it kicked something loose from the fog in Sheppard's brain. He shook his head, suddenly decided.
"Nah. You're not a sheep." He didn't know exactly what Rodney was, but a sheep wasn't right.
Rodney's face scrunched up around his nose. "I could be- no. What the hell am I saying-"
"You're more like a donkey," John continued. He was still thinking out loud but he liked that one better and nodded to get it settled in his head, all the pieces slotting together as Rodney spluttered in genuine offense. His friend backhanded his arm, confused at the perceived insult but too fuzzy himself to actually articulate his surprise.
"Excuse-"
"No, no, think about it. Donkey…” There were more frustrated noises as John tried to make words happen, snapping his fingers as things just on the tip of his brain struggled to get to his tongue, and Rodney started to find his voice for the things he thought about being called an ass. John finally landed on it and clapped his hand over McKay’s mouth so the man’s rambling wouldn’t throw it out of his head.
“You. You’re the donkey, because you’re stubborn. Like, really stubborn. Most strong-willed sonuvabitch I’ve ever met, anyway. I mean, you let me shoot you for science, so that’s dedication, okay? And you’re annoyingly loud every time I show up to a meeting with a headache, oh my god I swear... like the one I’m gonna have tomorrow? I’ll tell you right now, be quiet, and you’ll just be louder about it.”
“Oh you can bet on that now,” agreed Rodney, words muffled by John’s hand. It was sufficient reminder that he was being rude and John dropped his hand only far enough to shake a finger in his face.
“And you’re my friend, which by default, well, that tells you, you’re an ass. And you kick people around and you bite our heads off. And you’re… fuzzy,” John floundered a little as Rodney stared at him. Being called fuzzy was an added surprise and Rodney blinked at him, which John took as an excuse to surprise him more and patted him on the head, because that was the fuzzy part that had caught his attention. Then he kept his hands to himself and started to take another drink, but got distracted and pointed at his friend again instead. “And you pack around the rest of this city and everyone on it, on your back, or in your pockets, or however the hell you do it. Because you’re a good friend. And you’re clever- really smart. And you’re stubborn, which I did already say that, but it’s worth repeating.”
That suddenly felt like a lot of words so John took a breath and then slurped at his beer rather than think about what part of the sum total of all of the words were too many. The moon hung just up off the water and was really pretty and a lot safer to look at while he tried to sort out why he thought calling his best friend an ass was a good idea. Rodney stared at him for a long minute and then looked out at the water again, saving John from the urge to play dumb about the English language. He wasn’t that drunk, but maybe Rodney was enough to believe him.
Rodney suddenly backhanded his arm again and surprised him, so John dodged slightly to the side to protect what was left of his beer. “Listen, if you make me spill this, I'm gonna take the last-”
“No, dumbass. I got it. I’m not a donkey. Or a stupid sheep or whatever,” Rodney said. Since he also knocked the sheep out of the running, John wasn’t overly offended at the dismissal and just shrugged, but Rodney kept on. “You’re the shepherd, but I’m the trusted border collie. I run around, all day, every day, fixing your problems, because despite your stupid genetic advantages, you can’t do it yourself.”
That was worth considering for a moment... but then John let out a laugh. “But you’ve never listened to my orders, in your life. I know this for a fact because I met you. When you were old. And…less fuzzy.”
Getting one up on him with the part where John had gotten to time travel and Rodney hadn’t was enough to end the argument before it got going and his friend shrugged it off. He turned his attention to his own drink then instead.
“Well, collies are among the smartest of the working dogs… but I kind of have actual degrees, from actual human institutes of learning and education, in very complex fields. So it’s not like a dog is actually capable of that. So no, you’re right. Not a border collie.”
John allowed it, because the best he had come up with was still a donkey. And while a donkey or a mule could out-stubborn Rodney McKay, it couldn’t have out-smarted him. They sat in quiet, just them and the waves down below, and the calm wind, and the moon staring back at them.
“Maybe it’s really Elizabeth,” he said after a while. Rodney scrunched his face at him again.
“What?”
John waved vaguely back toward the city behind them. “Elizabeth. She’s the shepherd, not me. We’re all of us running around this place, following her orders. I mean, you’ll listen to her, you won’t listen to me.”
Rodney thought about it before nodding. “That makes you the border collie.”
John frowned over at him, squinty at being called a dog and absolutely refusing to consider the fact that he had just called Rodney a donkey; he had given very good reasons, damn it. “Not exactly.”
Rodney scoffed at him, gave a dismissive wave. He took another drink and shrugged. “You and your no man left behind habits. Border collie. Sheep. Cattle. Rounding up… Ringing bells?”
“Oh, yeah… I guess.” John had to give him that point, too. Rodney nodded.
“I’m not a donkey,” he said.
“Not a sheep,” agreed John.
“Okay, then what?”
“What, what?”
“Where does that leave me?”
Maybe it was a stupid debate about barn yard animals, but Sheppard had his stupid thing about leaving no man behind and McKay sounded very let down about not being a sheep or a donkey or a border collie. So John slouched over his knees and stared out at the water and thought it over. He finished off his beer and considered tossing it out into the ocean but he figured Rodney’d just smack him for it again and that was at cross purposes to the current mission. So the empty went on the pier behind them and John leaned back, watching the sky, like it would have a hint. And maybe it did; something clicked.
“Okay, so maybe you’re… just… whatzit…” John could see the thing in his head and if he squinted hard enough at the stars he could almost get it. “Yeah, that’s it. Babe. You’re Babe.”
Rodney tilted his head and stared, mouth hanging open. “Come again?”
“Babe. You know? Like the thing. The pig. From the movie. Not a dog. But you listen to Lizabeth, get everything done. So… Babe.”
It took a minute to realize that Rodney was being quiet, so John looked over at him, unsure if he needed to duck or not. He saw Rodney consider his beer, still looking confused, and set it down behind them. It seemed to still be at least a little full, because it didn’t roll over on its side automatically like John’s had.
“Huh,” was all he said. Which wasn’t exactly a record for Rodney, but wasn’t exactly normal when he wasn’t staring at a computer graph of wonky power signatures.
“What?” John asked.
“I like it,” Rodney said, nodding. “Pigs are remarkably smart, you know.”
Feeling pleased with himself, John nodded, clapped a hand on Rodney’s shoulder as he sat up again. “See? That’s how it works out. You’re the pig, I’m the border collie, and we’re best friends, and we work together, and we… try to keep everybody safe inside the fences, away from the… space vamps.”
“Right. That’s how that goes…” Rodney tilted his head at him again. “You realize that if you hadn’t argued with me and had just let me pun off your last name, we wouldn’t have just sat here, all this time, calling each other farm animals, right?”
John shrugged and leaned away, considering the last of the beers. Rodney obviously wasn’t going to take it. But he was relaxed well enough and they should probably save it. Or rather, John should save it… Rodney’s loss. He scooped it up, grinning to himself.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. He looked up at Rodney then. “But then you wouldn’t be Babe.”
Rodney snorted. “Yeah, gotta save the cattle from the space vamps.”
“Sheep don’t save the cattle from the space vamps,” John agreed.
“What was the dog’s name?” asked Rodney suddenly. John blinked at him. Damn it, he knew there was going to be a test. He shoved the beer in his jacket pocket to keep idle fingers from opening it.
“Damned if I remember,” he finally admitted. John remembered dragging his brother to the movie as a joke when it first came out; he told him they were going to the new Ace Ventura movie and instead the theater tickets cleared up the mystery. David had been so pissed off that he’d actually sat there and made them both watch it. But John didn't remember the dog's name.
Rodney started to stand up off the edge of the pier on his creaky ol’ knees and John smirked at him again, until he realized standing up meant leaving, and he wasn’t quite so amused by that part.
“Come on then,” said Rodney, grumbling about something new now. John wanted to whine about it because he hadn’t said anything that time.
“What-”
“Let’s go. Come on. Move,” Rodney said, explaining his words and illustrating by pulling at John’s jacket to get him away from the edge and standing, too.
“Yeah, but why-”
“Because we have to go watch a movie. Because you don’t remember the dog’s name.”
“Neither do you.”
“Yeah, but you started this, so we watch the movie and we figure it out.”
“Fine, it’ll take like, five minutes, right? Just to figure out the dog’s name. I don’t want to watch a kid’s movie, Rodney-” John grumbled back at him as they walked back to the city, their empty beer cans shoved in the paper bag that had held their sandwiches from dinner. He suddenly stopped. “Wait. Why the hell’d you bring a kid’s movie with you to another galaxy?”
“I just dumped everything I could find to a drive on the server. I figured we’re going to be gone a while, some of us might go senile or something and need the kids movies,” Rodney replied. John thought it over, and he didn’t trust it, but he followed after Rodney again to go watch a kid’s movie.
And it wasn’t exactly a waste of a good buzz, either. Kids movies didn’t exactly suck. And eventually John remembered the border collie’s name.
The problem was, of course, that Rodney remembered the dog's name, too. He remembered it after they’d watched the movie. He remembered it the next day on the way into a briefing and again just before they headed off through the stargate. There were a few choice comments whenever John did anything remotely like a border collie, whether he realized the connection or not.
McKay still remembered the whole conversation a day later at lunch when John stepped in front of him in line, only to end up spilling sauce on his hand as he plopped chicken onto his plate. That’s how he learned that the chicken-thing tasted a little lemony, so he suggested that maybe Rodney should go with the chilli-thing instead. Rodney detoured away from the buffet set up then and a few minutes later caught up at the table, with a loaded tray devoid of chicken-thing.
“Well, that’s one disaster avoided for the day. First one yet, so thanks for that, Fly,” said Rodney as he tucked into his salad. John tilted his head at him, genuinely confused for precious seconds. Then Rodney looked up at him again, waved his fork vaguely off toward the buffet line. “Even cutting in line, no man left behind. I talked to Graddy. The New Kid didn’t know about the citrus allergies. But he did remember the celiacs and the vegans.”
That wasn’t exactly good news, but the newest reminder of their stupid buzzed-movie night was a welcome one. John smiled, patted him on the shoulder, and gave a nod. “Anytime, Babe.”
They were, thankfully, the only two at the table. And the both of them broke into a laugh that was barely better than giggling.
“Hmm, what’s this?” Teyla asked as she joined them. John shrugged at her as he shuffled over to make room at the end of the table.
“Nothing much. The New Kid tried to kill Rodney. I saved the day. Same as usual,” he replied. And he could practically hear Rodney’s eyes rolling in his head but their in-joke was not helpfully elaborated upon. McKay actually started laughing quietly again, which just set John off.
The source of their amusement wasn’t ever explained, to Teyla or Ronon either one, but they both eventually caught on that there was some kind of joke. ‘Fly’ and ‘Babe’ weren’t necessarily terms of endearment in the Pegasus galaxy, so the joke would slip out around their team without anyone worrying.
And after a week or two, the joke faded off. It was something more of a habit for John after that. He surprisingly remembered where the nicknames had come from, but that wasn’t quite so much the important part as the fact that he got comfortable with it. It was Rodney. Babe was just… easy.
That was probably a problem. Sheppard wasn’t a fan of thinking about it much. He just rolled with it. Rodney did, too. As the usual Atlantis Trouble kicked up around their ears, John heard his new nickname a little less just because Rodney was back to shouting about broken crystals and spare parts, and John was running from one end of the galaxy to another when he wasn’t jogging across the city. The problems just kept getting closer to home and nobody liked it. They were barely keeping their collective heads above the not-so-proverbial water.
But somehow, randomly, Rodney was still Babe. It was stuck in John’s head and it wasn’t leaving.
One day, after a week of a scrambled power-supply that nobody could figure out, Rodney didn’t show up for the All-Hands meeting on that very problem. The city would just drop half the grid at a time, completely without warning, no discernible pattern to it, and they definitely had no answers. But they had even fewer answers if their expert was too busy fighting the problem to report on it.
“I reminded him of the meeting. He knows where he is expected to be,” said Radek when Elizabeth asked if he had seen Rodney recently. The scientist held up his hands. “I am not the man’s secretary, believe it or not.”
It hadn’t exactly been a nice week to Zelenka, either. Sheppard tapped his pen on the table before shoving himself up out of his chair. “I’ll track him down. Gimmie ten.”
He was not at all surprised to find Rodney in the central power room. It was probably where Zelenka had last seen him. He had four laptops on different consoles, some connected with wires and some not, and a tablet that paced from one computer to the other as Rodney did. Sheppard walked into the room, leaned against one of the stations, and waited to be noticed rather than spook him out of whatever he was working on. But McKay didn't actually acknowledge him and minutes ticked by.
"How's it going down here, Babe?" John asked finally.
"I cornered an anomaly. And I don't think it's our system," said Rodney, not looking up. It was his 'Leave me alone, I'm busy.' voice, but it was his Nice one. John crept a little further into the room, figuring the comment passed as an all-clear.
"Which system?" he asked. Rodney shook his head.
"None of them. It's not us, it's not Atlantis, it's not any of the parts we salvaged from the debris of the galaxy…"
John tried to peek at the screen Rodney was looking at. "What kind of an anomaly?"
"If I knew that, would I call it an anomaly?"
And he had a valid point. So John quietly pried around at a few more questions, trying to wheedle enough out of him to get an idea of what little they did know. Zelenka could fill in the rest if John could just get the most current status. When he figured he had what he was going to get, he clasped Rodney's shoulder and tried to will a little good luck his friend's way, then turned for the door.
"Hey, John," Rodney said. John waited, almost headed back, because it wasn't often that Rodney stopped an intruder from leaving when he was otherwise busy. Rodney waved vaguely toward the hall again. "Thanks. For handling that. I can… well, I can do more good here. It's a worthless meeting otherwise."
It seemed Sheppard was more transparent than he had thought. The man had sorted out what the careful interrogation was aiming at and knew John planned to cover for him. No amount of waiting would have pried him out of the room. John nodded then.
"Just chase it down, McKay," he said. And then he left to translate the report to the top staff.
It took another twelve hours for Rodney to find the culprit, an almost literal ghost in the machine, and another twenty for the team to get the thing out. Thankfully they still had some of their ZPM left once they did.
The next time they had an emergency, it was off-world, and they just had themselves and their team. That wasn't anything to underestimate, but it hurt a little more than running around the city with the lights off. And while they were running on this foreign planet, scattered by the threat of Darts overhead, Sheppard was the idiot who fell down a goddamned hole. He landed wrong and probably broke something but he was a little blurry on the full scope of his situation because he was pretty sure he passed out for a minute.
When he realized where he was again, Rodney was down in the hole with him. He was touching and grabbing and moving John backwards somehow… "What?"
"Shh!" Rodney was just at his ear, kneeling at his side but keeping his back to the wall of the hole. And Sheppard realized it was a wall, and he had fallen into some sort of tunnel. McKay had gotten him away from the wash of light from the collapsed section of the tunnel ceiling but they still had to be careful. John rolled his head a little to Rodney's chest, just to close his eyes for a minute. If his friend was going to make sure they stayed hidden, then it was okay to relax.
"Sheppard, wake up. Colonel," came McKay's voice, insistent.
"M'wake," John muttered back.
"Not exactly," replied Rodney. And then John did wake up, because Rodney tried to help him stand up, and it hurt like a sonuvabitch.
"Ow, ow, Babe, no…" John tried to slink back against the wall as pain shot through from his foot to his thigh and his leg refused to hold him up. He looked down and saw a lot of blood and looked quickly away when he saw something that looked like rebar because that didn't make sense and made him nauseous. But Rodney tried again, levering under John's arm that time to try to take more of his weight.
"Well, I'm sorry, but we have to get out of here, so we keep trying," he said. And so they kept trying. And they managed to hobble further into the dark tunnel… until it opened up into an underground facility of some kind that actually had lights in little glow-stick lines along the ceiling. It wasn't great but it was better than nothing. John could help lever off the wall and a little less on Rodney. They got to some stairs and John tried to sit, to take a break.
"When we get up out of this place, the radios will work," Rodney said. Still, he helped John down. He was right there. Right up close. In John's space even though he had fallen through leaves and mud and who knew what else- some of it was blood, but John hadn't put the effort into tracking that yet. And since Rodney was right there, John leaned on him. Shoulder, forehead… and he kissed him and got mud on him worse than he already had from Rodney helping him walk.
Rodney stayed where he was, long enough for John to actually comprehend what he had done. When he edged away, Rodney moved with him. He actually got in John's face a little, stared at him from right up close, so no hiding.
"Look, I get you're… was that the pain?" he asked. And John couldn't tell if the stress was because he had screwed up or because he had fallen down a hole and McKay had chased after him without help. He still didn't feel like he could pull off the lie just then. So he shook his head until it stabbed at him for the effort.
"Probably not."
Rodney still watched him a moment. Then he nodded. And leaned in again, staying close with another kiss and John blamed the fall for the sudden jumbled up feelings. Like he was a raw, squishy mess and needed to go cry. That was the pain. Crying, that came from pain. Not… the other stuff. But there was a lot of static between his ears from the other stuff, the Rodney stuff.
"Stay here. I'll go up, try to get through to someone," said Rodney. And Sheppard's pride wanted to argue, but the stairs were a problem. They had better odds if the guy who could walk did the leg-work. So John nodded and stopped leaning and Rodney snuck around him up the stairs. It wasn't smart, but John slouched against the wall and closed his eyes.
Somehow it all worked out. Rodney got to Teyla and Ronon, and Ronon booked it to the stargate and home. By the time John was fully able to determine up from down again, he was being shuffled onto the stretcher board from the Jumper and dragged out of the Krior's Wraith-bunker. Carson didn't exactly have anything nice to say about the state of his leg, but he at least promised to fix it before he put John under for some sort of surgery.
There was a lot of that particular adventure that John didn't really remember a week later. He definitely remembered calling Rodney something that was not actually the smart-movie-pig’s name. And he thought he remembered kissing but he was afraid to ask for clarification on it. He had probably just checked out at some point. He hoped he had just checked out.
His team kept him company for a week while Carson ordered Sheppard to stay off his leg. Teyla and Ronon stopped by when they wanted, Ronon more than Teyla because she actually had better things to do with her time. They both cleared out after dinner, though, and Rodney practically moved in when he wasn’t actually working doing his own job. It wasn’t like John couldn’t figure out how to work a wheelchair on his own, but he appreciated the company, so he never actually kicked anybody out.
Rodney took over his couch and bitched about his back over it, so he almost got kicked out once. But he had started in on being weirdly quiet and calm, otherwise, and just hung out. They took up the same space, both of them cranky, and they didn’t kill each other, even though John wasn’t feeling up to any of their usual hanging-out things. His hand hadn’t broken or anything, but it was scraped up and bandaged, holding the controller hurt, so most gaming was out of the question, and the RCs too. Sheppard wasn’t playing around with anything that might keep him off the job longer than he had to be, and he needed both of his hands to be functioning up to par just as badly as he needed his leg to heal. He had a job, he had people to take care of, and he had to get back to it.
The old Fly taunting nickname had come back, not that John didn’t still call Rodney Babe; he had hit his head, but not that hard. That was still his and he was keeping it. He just got very careful about it because he was pretty sure he had slipped up a few times. It was a joke. It was inside fun with his best friend. Not the other thing. Rodney never mentioned John doing anything weird at the tunnels on Krior and John chickened out on asking.
It took some work, maybe a few threats to go against medical advice anyway, but he was released to work on crutches. And things were almost normal again, just a little slower because it had been a few years since John had been on crutches. Sheppard was stuck on desk duty, but he still had to show up for meetings. There were no sympathy points for limping crutches up stairs when John had asked to be allowed back to work before he was fully mobile again in the first place.
So he left a little earlier for appointments and didn't get involved in those city happenings that the ranking military officer wasn't actually supposed to be responding to anyway. Technically he was supposed to let the city staff and their support teams respond to the random emergencies of a creaky old ship that had never been fully brought online, something he was historically bad at. The lieutenant colonel was supposed to supervise, at best, not get his hands dirty, and being relegated to crutches definitely put a crimp in his ability to run from one end of the city to another in enough time to be useful. He had a feed to the security cameras that he could supervise from, and it occasionally got a little Rear Window in his office when he was really bored. John really needed his leg to heal.
His friends and teammates saw him "at work" so there was less stopping by his quarters to hang out. Normal was normal again. They did lunch, sometimes dinner when somebody could get Rodney to look at a clock, and John resorted to skipping breakfast for sit ups in his room since he couldn't go for a run in the mornings. But the one perk of the crutches was that someone usually remembered to bring him coffee, and they didn't mind so much when he asked for the favor.
So it was that he hobbled into the conference room one morning and the Director of Atlantis paid him off with a mug of still-hot brew. He smiled at her for it.
"Thank you, Elizabeth," he said.
"Thank you for showing up," she replied, smirking. "I saw you snoozing in your office."
"I closed my eyes, that's all," John grumbled back, smile faded a little at the call out. At least he hadn't been asleep enough to snore. It was just the department update, though, so it wasn't technically a meeting he had to show up for. It was mostly academic, really, since it was hard to call their operation any kind of profitable and business-minded, and none of the numbers this meeting was called to go over had to do with money. He could have slept through it at his desk and gotten away with it.
Rodney showed up with a stack of papers, two tablets, and already loud. Somebody had set him off before he got there and it was hardly o-nine hundred. John grabbed his coffee off the table to keep it from getting knocked as McKay’s stuff claimed the spot beside him like usual. It was likely, given Rodney's mood, that the cup would have been stolen, unintentionally but without apology, if Sheppard didn't defend it.
"Alright, Rodney?" Elizabeth asked, her eyebrows raised at the man's obvious attitude.
"No, frankly, it's not. I saw what somebody snuck onto the agenda again," said Rodney. John blinked. He hadn't bothered to even open the agenda email and almost wished he had suddenly. Instead, he sipped at his coffee and slunk a little lower in his chair to stretch his leg out.
"It was hardly sneaking anything. We deal with this every three months," said someone else, absolutely bold. And annoyed. At Rodney. John glanced over at the department head who had so obviously picked a fight with McKay - it was Brogden, the environmental services admin or something like that - before looking silent askance at Elizabeth. The Director, however, was too busy rolling her eyes to notice. John wracked his brain trying to catch up. He was always at these meetings; if something happened every three months, he figured he'd remember it, but he had no idea. Every three months meant it had something to do with the supply shipments off the Daedalus but that was as much as John could sort out without help.
"Gentlemen, settle down. We'll get there. It's on the agenda, as Dr. McKay pointed out," said Elizabeth.
"It's obviously the elephant in the room, Elizabeth. We might as well get it over with," said Rodney. He was in no mood to settle and, when he showed up to meetings like that, he usually put someone in their place before he would so much as sit down. John wished his coffee had come with snacks so he could better enjoy the show.
As it was, Elizabeth had to stand up to get Rodney's attention, get him to actually look at her, before he grudgingly took his seat. John cast a look back at him, but Rodney was glaring in Brogden's general direction, so he didn't interfere.
The usual business picked up then, stilted and tense but moving forward. It was updates on expected weather patterns and their impact on the food supplies on the mainland and the agriculture department's efforts to get ahead of it. Less purple corn and sunflower seeds, more salads and yellow carrots. However, they would prefer access to another building to start a hydroponics section and see what else they could get growing. Rodney grumbled about it, because they already had one of the larger buildings in the city half-converted to a greenhouse, but he said he would look into it.
"If we do a gradual increase on the power drain then it's fine, but we can't just turn on half the city to get one building going. Somebody send me the specs on the new lab and I'll see what I can find," he said.
"Thank you, Rodney," said Tancredi, the Ag director. She seemed nice enough, but McKay's bad experiences with botany over the last few years made it kind of surprising that the two of them were on any kind of first name basis. John got a little stuck in his head wondering about that question for a minute and entirely missed the next order of business on the agenda.
It involved more food acquisition, but this time it was the Daedalus kind that had to be approved before it could be ordered, and somebody asked for something or other to be added to the list, and Elizabeth approved it.
Anth wanted to borrow an Ag team. Tancredi approved it. Around the table it went. All nice and smooth like those meetings were supposed to go. If anyone had wanted extra security, or any out of the usual boundary-line Jumper trips, Sheppard would have been tagged in to either accommodate or deny, haggle or refuse. Whether people took pity because of the crutches leaning against his chair or it was just a low-key month, he didn't know, but nobody had anything to update or involve the local military. And John slurped at his coffee randomly to keep it safe.
And then, scarce minutes before the simmering hot pot that was McKay's brain hit the full, explosive, boiling point, Weir brought business back around to what his favorite science geek wanted to talk about.
"Now that the less complicated business is out of the way. Dr. Brogden has made a substitution request…" Elizabeth began.
"That's not a substitution request. He wants it removed from the supplies run," said Rodney.
"We don't need it, Rodney! We've all been here long enough, everyone knows how it works-" Brogden started to argue and Rodney cut him off.
"Exactly. Everyone knows how it works. And we keep running out. Ergo, everyone prefers to use that stupid hygienic convenience from Earth. And I don't think you're going to be able to convince anyone in this galaxy to make it, so we ship it. Along with everything else we need."
"Need what?" John asked, confused and not liking it as the decibel level rose higher in the room.
"Charmin," said Rodney, even as Brogden answered with, "Toilet paper."
John nearly choked on his coffee.
"I'm sorry, say that again?" he asked. "We're so tight we're rationing TP now?"
"We don't have to ration, we just have to order more," replied Rodney.
"Except we shouldn't order more," argued Brogden. "The sanitation features on the toilets here are completely sufficient, they're far less wasteful, and cheaper, and better for the city."
Rodney rolled his eyes so hard his head leaned back to accommodate. "Oh don't give me some new age hippie claptrap, Filli. Yes, it's paper. It's fully biodegradable-"
"Biodegradable or not, it clogs the city's sanitation and water reclamation resources until that paper disappears. Clogs, as in backs up, as in no longer functional until someone wades down there and breaks it all up. Which would you rather, Doctor?"
"Proper personal hygienic opportunity," said Rodney, stubborn but visibly processing it as quickly as anything else he analyzed and spit out as fighting words. He waved toward the door. "And don't try to tell me the pipes on this ship can't handle half-disintegrated mush piles. We've sent entire humans crawling through those lines before-"
"Are you volunteering?"
"Don't be stupid. You don't send a germaphobe claustrophobic crawling through a sewer, it doesn't matter how fancy the wall etchings are."
"If it's something that needs done regularly, maybe we could get Halling or Teyla to get one of the older kids to chase it down for us," John suggested. "You know, like a job…"
Teyla crossed her arms and leveled a glare at him from where she sat across the table. "If I understood you correctly, you just suggested one of the Athosian children crawl through-"
"Well, it was just an idea. Smaller people can probably do this stuff easier... There's obviously a disagreement here. Let's get more heads on it. Maybe a conversation will… sort it out?" John suggested, trying to not put an overly fine point on what he had actually said. He wanted to help, but he was pretty sure it was a losing battle and Rodney was the only one who could maybe stand a chance.
"A conversation? With Halling. About Atlantis and the city's hygienic issues." The woman let the absurd observation sit there a moment, letting John catch up before she really had to spell it out. For all Teyla was the nice one of their group, she could pass judgment with the best of them. Sheppard floundered, not sure how to dig himself out of the obvious hole he had stepped in so blindly. (Or hobbled into, anyway.)
"Oh, yes, I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation," said Rodney, equally as dismissive. John shook his head, still carefully avoiding Teyla’s arched eyebrows, and slouched in his chair again behind his coffee. He’d been distracted by his own screw up and hearing the nickname resurface only added to the disoriented feeling of stepping out of place, so he idly swung his chair side to side, unconsciously angled closer to Rodney.
"Not gonna happen, Babe," John muttered, because he had definitely caught on to that memo at least. This would teach him to show up to the department nerd-meetings unprepared.
There was a sudden quiet in the room, and Rodney stopped tapping his stylus against the tabletop. John became slightly aware of a few of the department nerds staring at him. It belatedly sunk in then what he had said as he saw the surprise on Elizabeth’s face. That was definitely a problem.
“Okay…” began Elizabeth, annoyingly slow to recover. She wasn’t even trying to save him with a redirect. There was a new elephant in the room, and it wasn’t Rodney’s demand for an imported Charmin stash. McKay met it with a surprising quiet, an almost unnatural calm like he had nothing to do with the words that had come from the Air Force Lieutenant Colonel’s mouth, and even he didn’t offer up anything to help. And there was Elizabeth across the table, making funny faces at the both of them, like she expected it would magically explain what she had heard. Sheppard huffed out a breath, frustrated and trying to play it off. He waved his hand dismissively over the table.
"What-sorry, it's a joke… you know, like Babe the pig? Fly the dog… the border collie," he said, hoping to dodge what felt like a brewing interrogation. It did absolutely nothing for Elizabeth’s understanding, which was only more annoying, because it wasn’t exactly anybody’s business anyway-
"Border collies - what?” the normally intelligent, composed Elizabeth actually stuttered trying to get words out. “That doesn't make sense."
John sat up a little, waving vaguely off toward the door as if he could point at the Milky Way, because it was all the Hollywood movie industry’s fault he was sitting in another galaxy defending himself from either an embarrassing mix-up or a career-ending outing. "It's a thing, from the movie, Babe."
Elizabeth nodded but still wasn’t catching on. Across the table, even Rodney's Ag department friend Tancredi was confused by the turn.
"I took my niece to it, but I don't recall seeing any border collies or pigs recently, and Rodney doesn't look like either of them," she pointed out.
"Yes. Well. Pigs are smart," said Rodney. It was awkward cover, and even he had to know it, but it was the only thing his genius brain could come up with apparently. And if the genius couldn’t get them out of it, John was inclined to believe he was screwed. Shit.
He looked to Teyla for help then, but she looked nothing but confused; John and Rodney had traded their in-joke a dozen times around their team, and never once had anyone suggested to her that John was calling Rodney a pig. There was a new level of panic as John realized this was a meeting full of Rodney’s peers more than his own, and John had spent years listening to Rodney complain about half of the people in the room bullying and annoying him on a weekly if not daily basis. And the city’s ranking military officer had just handed them all extra ammo. That awareness did absolutely nothing for John’s ability to figure out how to get himself out of the mess.
“Right,” he said, barely catching up. He strung words together on auto-pilot, because he had to do something. He picked up his coffee mug again, noticed it was empty, and dropped it again, nose scrunched at it for one more personal attack at the table. Instead, he dropped back into his chair, resigned to drawing fire until someone put him out of his misery. “Right… they’re smart. There’s a wealth of untapped genius in my bacon. Which is why we don’t get bacon in Pegasus. No four-legged geniuses, no-”
"Colonel, are you ill?" Elizabeth’s question thankfully interrupted the nonsense and John managed to look over at her and nod. That was as good of an excuse to leave the meeting as anything he had come up with. As it was, John was never going to be able to look at bacon again in his life and if they all gave him enough rope, he was sure he’d swing.
"Maybe?" John replied. He stabbed a finger at the table. “Which, just so everyone is clear, is an excellent reason to keep the toilet paper in supply because when people get really sick, figuring out that whole system is not second-nature, and it’s asking for trouble. Can’t use the Seashell Method to blow your nose, can you?”
“Teyla!” Elizabeth said quickly, leaning over the table slightly to again interrupt John’s drowning noises. “Would you please see the Colonel gets safely to the infirmary? He may have returned to work too soon, I think.”
“But he just made an inarguable point,” Rodney chimed in.
“I didn’t suggest we stop bringing in Kleenex,” said Brogden. John was afraid to move in case the topic somehow turned back to him and pigs.
“But if our fair city-ship can handle the disposal of Kleenex, there’s no reason it couldn’t handle the disposal of toilet paper, which is specifically designed to disintegrate. I’ve got the numbers, would you like to see the decomposition rates between a kleenex and a few sheets of TP?” Rodney challenged, happily turning on one of his two tablets.
That all sounded like an excellent direction for things to be turning and John dared to breathe… until Teyla tapped him on the shoulder and nearly scared the shit out of him to further prove Rodney’s point about the necessity of toilet paper. He swore, as quietly as he could once he caught himself, and Teyla handed him the first of his crutches.
“We should go, John,” she said quietly. And John had actually never once in his life agreed with her so hard. He hopped up on his uninjured leg and nearly tripped on the chair as he tried to claim the crutches while still standing a little too close to the table. Teyla smoothly assisted on the recovery and kept a hand on his back as she followed him out of the meeting room.
Within fifteen feet, John was facing stairs again. He couldn’t even escape without trouble, even when he was in the clear.
“Today sucks,” he muttered, shuffling the crutches around to try to sort out how to safely navigate going down stairs as quickly as humanly possible. Teyla took first one crutch and then the other and pointed his attention to the hand rail.
“One step at a time,” she advised patiently. “And I will be right here to help.”
The crutches seemed ridiculously tall compared to the small Athosian but John figured if anyone could actually follow through on the promise, it was Teyla. So he tried it her way and used the stair banister for the counterbalance and hopped down one step at a time.
At the bottom of the stairs however, once she gave him the crutches back, John headed left instead of right. And Teyla was quick to notice that he had gone the opposite direction from the one he had been specifically ordered to.
"John…"
"I'm fine, Teyla. It's... fine." And John kept up his steady, longer stride toward his quarters. The trouble with persistence predators, however, was that they could follow just as patiently as anything, and John heard Teyla's boots along the hall behind him. She wasn't in a hurry, as it wasn't like John could outrun her. And as she followed, he felt impossibly more stupid. And maybe annoyingly tired. So Sheppard stopped and waited for her to catch up.
"This is the hall to your rooms, not the infirmary," Teyla informed him. John nodded.
"And I told you, I'm fine. I don't need to see Carson or anybody. Just… a nap," he said, because that still seemed like a good excuse. Teyla stared up at him, not at all sold over.
"Myself and a few of your friends believe otherwise, and I think you would say with good reason," she replied. John shook his head.
"It's not like-"
"You said that you just called Rodney a pig, in a meeting. It was not normal," Teyla interrupted. "I know you both, John, and, while you will play quite rough with each other, it is not normal that you would call your friend such things for weeks-"
"I wasn't!"
The protest was met by both raised eyebrows and two crossed arms. "Do you understand why we are concerned for you, then, when minutes ago that is what you told a room full of people that you had done?"
John couldn't come up with the words to defend himself. At least, none that made sense. Sounds came out of his mouth but he was pretty sure none of them quite made it to the level of actual language. He gave up.
"I'm going to my quarters," he said. And he did.
And so did Teyla. She followed along just as before, only now her arms were crossed, and she wasn't far behind him. The persistence she maintained was the contest to see who could be the quietest, longest. She won by default, because crutches were noisey, and John was huffy.
When she followed him into his quarters, John glared at her, but then tried to ignore her. He crashed onto the end of his bed, favoring his leg a little, and slouched over his knees as he tried to straighten it out more comfortably.
"You realize, I will not leave until I have an answer that makes sense," Teyla said. She added to the threat by promising to call in Ronon. John stared down at the floor under his boots, mentally swearing because he had figured that out. And if he stalled too long, Ronon would just bully Carson into a house call.
A stupid little game was suddenly bigger than it was supposed to have been allowed to get.
"It's… look, it's a long story, but it's… just a thing," he tried.
Teyla squinted at him, like she was trying to understand why he had suddenly started speaking French at her.
"A thing," she repeated.
"A joke. It started out a joke. A me and Rodney thing…"
Teyla nodded her apparent understanding but still looked confused. "Yes, you have been calling him this for weeks. And it never seemed to bother him until today, and if you have been disrespectful this whole time, when he thought it was a joke... that is unlike you."
"The thing is, it's not just a … a pig thing, okay? There's… other stuff in that… word. And everybody there, except you, knew it. That's the problem. Everybody else thinks either one thing, or they think the other thing, and one thing is bad for Rodney and the other thing is bad for me."
"And which is the instance that just happened?"
John scowled at the floor rather than answer. He was a coward and he had tossed McKay under a bus and then ran away. On crutches.
"I think he fixed it," he said, as much to assure himself as Teyla.
"So… that was the instance that was bad for Rodney?" Teyla asked. Because she wasn't stupid and was also determined not to go away. John shrugged but then shook his head again.
"I just shouldn't have said anything. That's all. McKay can fix it, he's fine."
There was a long quiet as Teyla waited for more of a coherent explanation, but John had hit his wall on it. Everything he'd said made sense to him, he didn't have any new ways to explain anything. She eventually moved to sit down beside him to wait him out. John scowled at the floor some more and tried to ignore her.
"Well. If I have to guess at this whole… confusing matter in order to understand any of it…" Teyla began after a while. John started to tell her to leave it alone again, but she kept talking. "Then I would guess that what I have heard you call Rodney is a term of endearment. For instance, a babe is a baby, and generally regarded softer, as important, and with care. Thus Babe is also someone who is dear to you. And not necessarily a pig in a movie."
The silence that followed likely confirmed it for her, but John had no ready defense, no idea how to redirect and avoid. Teyla was a member of his team, a friend, and he trusted her instincts and judgment every other day of the week. It was stupid to lie to her when he already knew she wouldn't believe him, and that would only do more damage.
John tried to shrug it off. "I guess that's close enough, yeah."
"And Rodney is your Babe, but Ronon and I are not," she went on. John sat up quickly to look at her again.
"No, wait, it's different is all…"
"Yes, I think I understand some of it. We are important to you, but the relationships are very different, and that is how you let him know that," Teyla said.
The observation felt like a kick to the ribs and John's attention returned to the floor, off somewhere below his knees, as he braced his elbows on them and tried not to hide behind his hands. It would hurt but the temptation was there.
"I think perhaps the question is, then, does he know that? Or does he think it is merely a joke from the movie?" she asked, because she was Teyla and she didn't pull punches.
"Look. It's… it's just from a joke. McKay's got it figured out. Nobody else has to… figure anything out," John replied.
"If that is so, you should check with him to be certain. Because while I have heard your side of the joke for many weeks, that has not been the case from him. And this joke… is obviously causing you some distress, this far on," said Teyla.
"What's causing stress is the part where I screwed up and said it around other people," John said, waving slightly between them. "And, while we're on the topic, the interrogation doesn't help, either."
"John," said Teyla, patient but no less tired. "You either declared to the administration level that your best friend is edible, as bacon… Or, from what I can tell, that you love him. And neither of those are your… usual declarations? This is not an interrogation. Consider it… a suggestion. For your own good. And Rodney's."
John shoved back on the bed, flopped dejectedly on his back and staring at the ceiling instead of the floor, definitely nowhere near his friend. It wasn't his most successful evade, however, as she eased more gracefully to her side to lean on an elbow and make sure her concerned countenance stayed in his peripheral.
After two weeks of being babysat, and almost a whole week of being not-so-casually checked up on under the guise of normal, Teyla was a familiar and welcome presence. Just because she had figured a few things out didn't mean she was right. Or that there was anything to do about it. It didn't bother John so much, anyway; he hadn't been hiding anything from her or Ronon in the first place. It mostly bugged him that he had screwed things up again. And he didn't immediately know how to fix it.
"Don't say anything. To anyone." The words were out of Sheppard's mouth before he realized it.
Teyla frowned at him for what was apparently an insult. "I was not planning to. I would encourage you to speak up to someone, however."
"When I have something to say, I will," replied John. It wasn't the answer she was looking for and she stayed quiet to wait him out. And John stayed quiet, because he could be more stubborn than her, even if he couldn't kick her out of his room with any skill just then. An eventual sigh was proof enough that he had won. Teyla patted his arm and pulled herself to her feet.
"Whatever you say, Babe," the woman said. It took a moment to register and then John did look at her. She was walking away by then, so he pointed at her to get her attention back.
"Don't you start," he said, as much of an order as he could make it. It probably fell a little flat considering he had to remember to sit up to manage what little authoritative air he might have reserved from the morning. Teyla turned back, head tilted and warning of sass when paired with the too-relaxed drape of her folded arms.
"On the contrary, you seem to have started it. If our team must adopt new language, I see no reason not to get used to it," she replied.
The logic stopped John's brain for a moment. He could keep up with Rodney McKay's mind nine times out of ten, but Teyla often snuck in sideways and he felt stupid. He blinked at her. "What the hell-"
Teyla's eyebrows arched up, joining in on the clear judgement in the rest of her body language. "John, your people have been here for three years now. And in that time, there have been many members of your expedition who have entered into and fallen out of romantic entanglements with my kinsmen. I have heard many tales of your military's rules. I can think of no reason why you would resort to jokes of eating your coworkers, other than as some odd effort at adherence to those same rules."
Guilty, John sat and did his best not to look like an open-mouthed guppy dragged in to be gutted. "It was a joke, though…"
Teyla rolled her eyes. "It was not that amusing."
"Well, maybe you had to be there," John defended, though he was not inviting anyone to any pierside beer picnics any time soon. Or ever.
"Unfortunately, I was there this morning," Teyla replied. "And while you are rarely scared, I have seen you behave much more calmly when faced with the Wraith. So if you require your team to save you from yourself, Ronon and I will join in. No one will look too closely at what you are afraid of when the whole team trades the same names between us."
Maybe it was a genius save and maybe it would work, but it felt like a low blow. John scrunched his nose in distaste at the thought. "That's… no, that's wrong. That's not how it works."
Again, with the eyebrow.
The eyebrow finally won.
"Fine. I'll figure it out. Just no doing that," said John, waving in the general direction of the woman's glare.
"I assure you, neither Ronon or I would have any trouble-"
John cut her off, frustrated. "Teyla! I get it! Fine!"
It earned him a mild grin and then she turned to leave. John collapsed back to the bed again when the doors slid closed behind her.
"Well. Crap."
There were a few minutes of quiet, just John and his busted leg and his stubborn brain. Teyla made it sound simple enough: just talk to Rodney. That wasn't John's strong suit in certain areas. He could talk when he had to; to his friends, listen to them, call them all manner of dumb names that were only funny because they didn't matter, nobody meant it. Ronon wasn't really Chewbacca, but he got the joke. Somebody was usually an idiot or lucky bastard or a sonuvabitch… they were just words people said because they could.
John Sheppard wasn't really a border collie named Fly. And the sheep-herding pig had nothing on Rodney.
The thing was that John had gotten comfortable ignoring the joke in favor of just… enjoying the stuff underneath it. It sometimes slipped out of his mouth meaning something nobody else understood. That was his stuff. He hadn't exactly asked his friend's opinion on that part, just chickened out and hid behind a joke. It maybe ignored the fact that Rodney tended to be a man with opinions.
Teyla was right. That wasn't how it was supposed to go.
So he owed the man an explanation. An explanation required a conversation. If he had learned anything from his failed marriage, it was that John wasn't so good at that talking it out part. It was, of course, also why his in-joke with his best friend had evolved to include another private joke to start with.
That settled it. He would drop the nickname game. It was easier on everybody that way. Well, mostly everybody. John was used to shoving things down. He had his team, and that was what kept him going, so there was no reason to keep playing around with ideas that could screw with the whole team. He would just stick a cork in that particular Genie bottle and forget Rodney started up the name games in the first place.
Some shepherd John was, anyway, playing at screwing things up that would scatter his whole team. The joke was that he was the border collie, so he was just there to keep everyone together. That was easy enough to do by just keeping his mouth shut.
It wasn't exactly that Sheppard spent the rest of the day hiding. He wasn't hiding. He just didn't have anywhere he needed to be. And if he showed his face anywhere near Elizabeth, she would want to know what Carson had said, when John had no intention to ask the doctor's opinion on his self-inflicted situation.
Beckett was fully qualified to check on John's leg, change bandages, check stitches, even make sure the patient didn't have a fever. But there was no way in hell John was telling the happiest gossip in the city about the time he called Rodney Babe in the nerd-meeting. If he kept his head down, maybe no one else would, either. Maybe John could drop off everyone's radar for a day and collective amnesia would strike everyone who had attended that planning meeting, preferably before they told anyone else about it, and preferably starting with John's memory.
Instead, he took his prescribed pain medicine and passed out for as much of the day as he could manage. The morning sunlight had traded off for moonlight by the time he woke up again. And he was pretty sure he only woke up because his stupid door alert kept going off. In his sleepy state, John forgot about the crutches and stood up out of bed, only to fall when his leg rudely reminded him that he had impaled it three weeks earlier and refused to hold his weight after two steps.
There was more noise than he liked and the hard landing woke him up the rest of the way. John gave up and asked the city to open the door, because whoever had dragged him out of bed could get him his damn crutches. There was a one-in-four chance it was Carson, anyway.
"Oh no."
John looked up, surprised, as Rodney showed up silhouetted as the doors slid open. He blurrily checked his watch to figure out just how late it was, but then changed his mind and pointed toward the crutches out of reach.
"Hey, buddy, want to help out-" he began. Rodney ignored the hint and instead crouched down to catch his arm and pull him up. That worked just as well. They hobbled John back to the edge of the bed and Rodney moved to get the light.
"Are you okay? I can get Carson. I know where he sleeps," Rodney offered, sounding maybe worried enough to be distracted. John scrunched his nose at the leg of his sweatpants and the bandages it hid, taking stock.
"It's probably fine," he said. He tested it out carefully before nodding. "I just fell. It's fine."
"Oh, great," replied Rodney. He wrung his hands and made unhappy faces. "I suppose it would have ended the day about like it began if I woke you up to apologize and sent you to the infirmary all over again for it. Fine is better. I'm good with that here."
It was a little rushed and it took John a moment to process what Rodney had said. He frowned up at him from the side of the bed.
"Apologize? What?"
Rodney rolled his hand and then gestured toward the closed door off behind him. "The meeting. This morning."
That was unexpected and John stared, jaw slack. He thought he was the one who was supposed to say something along the lines of a mea culpa about it, and there was Rodney McKay, beating him to it.
"We won, by the way," Rodney added.
"Won?"
"Yeah. The toilet paper order is safe at least until the next supply request," said Rodney. "I just have to back-burner a project to help Brogden with the build-up issue he pretends actually happens and I have another three months to prove he's the one full of shit."
Despite himself, John smirked and stuffed back a laugh. Rodney seemed to relax and breathe.
"Winning is good," John said. "I was a little worried I had screwed up your chances there."
The pained expression came back and Rodney fidgeted again. "Right. That. Look…"
"I didn't mean to get weird about it," John said, quick because Rodney clearly wasn't going to let him talk if he didn't. His friend blinked at him and then shook his head.
"No, that's not-" Rodney seemed to get stuck, then paced a step, and then sat down next to John. His shoulders were slightly slumped and he looked a little pinker in the face than his usual. "Well, I think maybe, a little, I might have gotten weird about it first, is the thing… I mean with the… well, Babe. I made you watch the movie, encouraged the whole name thing… it was a stupid thing to do and I didn't mean to set you up for trouble like that."
That was almost as funny as it was surprising.
"You didn't make me call you that. I'm the one that… I guess I got used to it. It was my thing and our thing," John replied. Rodney nodded, agreeing but somehow still looking anxious.
"But you only started it up because I started calling you Fly. I liked it when I heard it. And I might have maybe set you up to keep at it," he admitted.
That was news, and it took a few entire seconds for John to wrap his head around. He caught himself opening his mouth a few times, trying for words, and then changing directions and shutting down again. Finally, he figured out how to clarify.
"I'm sorry - you liked what, exactly? That I called you Babe that first time?" John asked. Rodney nodded, somehow looking guiltier than his smug face usually managed on its own. Pieces snuck into place in John's mind then. "You liked it… so you kept the joke going."
Again, Rodney nodded. "I… look, it had nothing to do with the pig. And you thought it did, so it was just a joke, and then it showed up at the meeting, and I'm not stupid… that could have been really, really bad for you. That's not something I planned on happening."
John stared at him in slack-jawed silence for an entire minute. It was probably ratcheting up Rodney's apparent anxiety, but the man had maybe short-circuited his brain and John was having to rewire.
"I didn't give a damn about the pig," he finally managed. John felt maybe like he couldn't breathe a little, but he got the words out. "I just liked it."
Rodney's blue eyes widened and his expression relaxed away from the cringed pinch to a broad surprise. "You're not serious."
John had to stop to make sure he understood the not-a-question correctly before he dared give a slight nod.
"What- then, does that mean you meant it on Krior?" Rodney asked. When John looked back at him in silent confusion, Rodney rolled a hand like it could draw the answer out of him. "You might have - I mean, there was kissing involved."
The hazy memory that Sheppard had convinced himself was nothing more than some weird fever-dream suddenly pushed back to the front of his mind. There was kissing involved because Rodney had kissed him back.
"Oh for fucks sake, McKay," John muttered the complaint before leaning in and kissing his friend again. This time on purpose. This time he would remember it was real. No jokes, no name calling. Just them.