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John walks out of the hospital wearing battered sunglasses and a cheap new sports coat that doesn't quite fit across the shoulders. He's pretty sure he looks like he's been in prison, or like he's on his way there. That might be true. It's not like he has a lot of choice about this.
"If you're ready," Dr. McKay says. He's waiting outside a black car. The sun glares off the hood, and the heat is the usual full-body punch as John comes out of the air conditioning. He still feels like crap, but apparently he's not going to die. He's still not really sure how he feels about that.
"Sure," John says. He wonders whether he's walking out on the hospital bill or whether that's being taken care of. It's not like he had insurance when he checked in, or like he's got anything now but the clothes on his back. "Where are we going?"
"Area 51," McKay says as they get into the back seat. There's a driver in uniform up front. John flashes him an insincere smile and then ignores him. McKay is unfolding his laptop, frowning down at it. "I haven't got clearance for you to go any further yet." He looks over at John. "General O'Neill thinks I'm insane for hiring you."
"You probably are," John says.
"Yes, well, Dr. Weir isn't thrilled about you either," McKay says. "But we need pilots, and I've seen the other Sheppard fly."
"Don't you have pilots?" John says. "You've got the whole Air Force."
"We need pilots with special qualifications," McKay says, and he explains while they drive out into the desert.
John tilts down his sunglasses eventually and looks at him over them. "I have the same genes as our alien ancestors. This is what you're telling me."
"Dr. Keller ran tests to be sure while you were in the hospital," McKay says. "It was theoretically possible that an alternate John Sheppard wouldn't have the ATA gene, but you do. Which I will tell you now you should be grateful for."
"Nice to be good for something," John says.
"You don't believe me," McKay says. "You will when you see Atlantis." He shakes his head. "There's nothing like it."
"Right," John says, and leans back against the seat and closes his eyes. He's being driven to a secret military installation where McKay's going to get him security clearance to go to the lost city of Atlantis. Or maybe he's still lying out there in the desert feverish with radiation poisoning while the vultures start checking him out. Either way, there doesn't seem to be much else to do but go along for the ride.
They spend a while cooling their heels at Area 51 while McKay argues with people John has never heard of on the phone. McKay hands him over to Dr. Keller in the mean time, which would be more entertaining if she seemed to like him better.
"Well, I've pulled your medical records from the Air Force," Keller says. "You used to be surprisingly healthy. You don't seem to have actually had a primary physician in the last six years--"
"I try not to need one," John says.
"You've been in the ER multiple times. Let's see, you were shot--"
"In the line of duty," John points out.
"You were knifed, not in the line of duty. The attending makes a note that you were really drunk."
"Is 'really drunk' a medical term?"
"You had a concussion--"
"That was work again."
"And here's another concussion. Not work-related."
"I slipped in the shower," John says.
"Right." Keller puts his file down. "I'm going to keep you on antibiotics for another week, in case the radiation exposure is still suppressing your immune system. However, I can't actually find anything wrong with you that would keep you from being posted to Atlantis. Unfortunately."
"I may grow on you."
"Sure, like a fungus," Keller says. "I'm going to wait to get your immunizations up to date until right before we leave, which I hope will be soon. I've tested you for everything that might cause problems in the Pegasus galaxy, which we actually worry about more than your running into the measles out there."
"No bubonic plague, then?" John says.
"You think that's funny," Keller says. "We've had cases in Nevada. Try introducing that into a population with no immunity." She shakes her head. "I'm supposed to ask you if you want to know your HIV status, but since I'm clearing you to go to another galaxy, I think you can figure that one out."
"Whatever," John says.
"I want you to try and get some rest," she says. "You've been pretty sick, and there's usually not a lot of down time where we're going."
"I'll try and fit that into my busy schedule."
He's spending a lot of time sleeping. He's not sure if that's because there are still things wrong with him or just because there's nothing else to do. He's asleep the third afternoon when someone bangs on his door, and he drags himself up out of the fog with an effort.
"Where's the fire?"
A woman he's never seen before opens the door, dark-skinned and hawk-eyed and looking at him with a certain degree of skepticism that he's getting used to. For that matter, he's been used to it. She's wearing the same black T-shirt and pants he's been issued under a black leather jacket that fits her like a glove. "It is time to go," she says.
"More tests?"
"We are returning to Atlantis," she says. "Have you sent your things down to the gate room already?"
"I don't really have things," John says. The clothes he wore out of the hospital are draped over the back of a chair. "Have you got a bag or something I can put these in?"
She finds him a bag, and he tosses the clothes into it. "You may want to take a deep breath," she says, looking amused. "I always find this part disconcerting."
"What part?" John says, and then the whole world is a bright blur, and his stomach drops, and he's standing in a different room, the noise of people in uniform moving around them echoing off the walls. "Shit."
"There you are," McKay says. He's standing with Keller and one of the other scientists, the one he was arguing with about back in the situation room about whether the Wraith was building a bomb. They're all wearing black uniforms and black leather. They seem to have luggage. "Dr. Weir would like us back promptly, so Woolsey's agreed to waive the quarantine at Midway station just this once. Apparently we get some credit today for saving Earth."
"Again," the woman whose name he still doesn't know says a bit sharply.
"What just happened?" John manages.
McKay glances at him impatiently. "You were transported up to a ship in orbit around the planet, and then back down here."
"Like Star Trek."
"No. Like Star Trek if it actually worked," McKay says. He taps at some kind of radio headset. "We're ready to dial out."
The other scientist leans over and drops his voice. "It is like Star Trek," he says. "Basically."
"Okay," John says.
"You may want to watch," he says, nodding toward the big circular thing at one end of the room. "It's pretty."
It is pretty. It's totally unbelievable and pretty, like a mirage, heat shimmer boiling blue inside the ring the way it boils up off highways. It would be enough to convince John that this really is one long hallucination if it weren't for the fact that so much of it has been boring.
He glances at the woman. "That's a gate to other galaxies."
"It is," she says, and smiles a little. "I will be glad to go home to my own."
She steps forward into the blue light and disappears. John follows her. It's cold and wrenching and weird, and then he's in a big metal room that looks something like the inside of a submarine. He takes a couple of steps, feeling a little weak at the knees again.
"Midway station," McKay says. "We won't be staying this time."
"It is very boring," the other scientist says.
John cranes his neck trying to see anything that doesn't look like a big metal room. "Are we in space?" The small part of him that believes that's possible really wants some way to see out. That would be worth a lot.
Then the gate on the other side of the big room is boiling blue. "You'll have plenty of time for that," McKay says, and John's still wondering what he means when McKay puts a hand on the back of his jacket and steers him through the gate.
The first thing that hits him when he steps through is that it's so much quieter. It's still a big room, but the floor is stone, not metal, and there's not the grinding whir of an air conditioning system working overtime that he's used to hearing in the background all the time. It's clean and bright, and the air smells faintly of the ocean.
There's a woman waiting at the bottom of a high staircase, its stairs chased with glowing lines. She looks John up and down, and he has the weird impulse to stand up straighter. "Mr. Sheppard, I presume," she says.
"I'm John Sheppard," John says. He holds out his hand and she shakes it firmly. She can't be more than forty-five, he thinks, but she has old eyes, and there are streaks of gray at her temples.
"Elizabeth Weir," she says. "Rodney tells me you're going to be our new contract pilot."
"That's what he tells me, too," John says.
"Trust me," McKay says from behind John.
Weir shakes her head at McKay. "I do," she says. "Or I'd have over-ruled you." She looks back at John. "Your quarters are on the fifth level of the west tower," she says. "Ask someone to show you where that is. I've asked Dr. Beckett to go ahead and show you what you'll be flying for us, so I'd like you to meet him in the jumper bay in … let's say an hour. That should give you time to get settled in."
"Trust me," Rodney says again, drawing her aside with a smile that seems a little different from any expression John's seen from him so far.
"I will show you your quarters, if you like," the woman he hasn't actually been introduced to yet says to him. "I am Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tegan. I work with Dr. McKay on the gate team."
"John Sheppard," John says. "What is a gate team?"
His quarters are a big empty room with a desk and a chair and a single bed with white sheets. It's clean and spartan, with bronze walls, the only touch of color coming from the big stained-glass windows looking out over the ocean.
Teyla sets up a laptop on the desk and shows him how to pull up a map of the city. "The quartermaster's office can issue you more uniforms and some basic supplies," she says. "The mess hall is open around the clock, although hot food is limited to usual meal times. Here is the jumper bay where Carson will be waiting for you." He at least isn't getting the impression that she hates him on sight, but her manner doesn't really encourage a lot of questions.
"Are you seriously from another galaxy?" John can't help asking.
"I am from this galaxy," she says. "My people are from the planet Athos. I have lived in Atlantis for five years, fighting the Wraith."
She must take something in his expression for skepticism, because she tugs down the collar of her shirt hard, in a way that doesn't look a thing like flirtation. He can see the raised scars against her skin, the constellation he was getting used to seeing on dead bodies. "Ronon pulled this one off of me when he had only just begun to feed. I have killed many others."
"I don't actually have a problem with taking women seriously," John says, because he thinks they may have a misunderstanding, here. "I just got off on the wrong foot with Dr. Keller."
"That may happen in first meetings," Teyla says, but he thinks the best he can say is that she's reserving judgment. "I'll let you get settled in."
That doesn't take long, since all he's got to do is put his one change of clothes in the closet. He steps out into the hall and the door slides shut behind him. It takes him a minute to figure out the elevator, or whatever it is, since elevators don't normally make everything go bright and sparkly around you. He's pretty sure he's on the right level, but he's not sure which way he's supposed to be going, and then a door opens in front of him and he steps out onto a balcony and looks up at the city.
The towers are blue and silver in the sun, climbing up against a very blue sky. He wants to say it looks unreal, but it doesn't. It looks a lot more real than the Vegas strip. The ocean stretches out beyond the city to the horizon, the sun glittering gold off the water.
It actually feels like something, watching the city. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't feel like nothing, either, which doesn't seem right for him. There's a weird little flutter in his chest when he looks up at the city. It's possible that there is still something wrong with him.
"Hi," he says to the first person he runs into. "Can you tell me where to find the jumper bay?" The woman tells him, politely but without paying any real attention to him. Everyone here seems busy, not frantic but like they know what they're doing and are planning on doing it without getting distracted.
The jumper bay is full of spaceships.
"Let's see if you can fly these things," Beckett tells him. He's the first person who's looked really glad to see John since he's gotten to Atlantis. "Because, let me tell you, I am tired of everyone expecting me to play bus driver for them. No offense," he says hurriedly. "But I'm a medical doctor, and this isn't exactly why I came to Atlantis--"
"Show me the bus," John says.
Beckett shows him the controls as he guides the ship up out of the bay through a roof-top access hatch out into the air above the city. "Feel like trying your hand?" he says. "Let me get some altitude, and then she's all yours."
This would be the moment to say that he hasn't flown in six years, and that he's not actually sure he wants to anymore. But Beckett is moving already, sliding out of the chair with his hands still on the controls, and John takes his place, and it's easy -- the jumper levels out from its climb under his hands, and as soon as he wonders where they're going, a heads-up display pops out in front of his eyes, showing him a map and their current heading. The readouts change as he thinks about altitude and pitch and speed.
"It doesn't usually do that for me," Beckett says.
"Maybe it likes me," John says.
He's joking, but Beckett says seriously, "It might."
Flying the jumper is a helicopter pilot's wet dream. It'll hover in midair, reverse direction on the fly, roll at speed like a fighter plane and tear through a corkscrew in the air. Beckett looks a little ill, but there's hardly any feeling of acceleration, just enough for John to feel their motion. He climbs until the sky starts going dark, near-silently with no shuddering of engines and no whistle of an oxygen mask, only the steadily mounting figures on the display proving that he's really climbing out of the atmosphere. The stars start coming out against a black, black sky.
"Wow," John says eventually.
"Thank God," Beckett says sincerely. "I think you're going to work out. I hate flying this bloody thing."
For the next three weeks things are pretty quiet. John flies a lot of science teams over to the mainland, which isn't really exciting but is easy. Four times he gets to go into space, once to take some scientists to check out some solar energy readings, twice to ferry teams to planets that only have space gates, and once because McKay's team is in trouble above PX9-321 and needs backup.
"I wouldn't send you, but the backup team is out on a mission, too," Weir says.
"I'm on it," John says, already running for the jumper bay.
"Try not to engage the enemy," Weir says over the radio. "We just need you to create a distraction."
As far as he's concerned, the best way of creating a distraction is to engage the enemy. He comes out of the stargate nearly on top of a Wraith dart, swears and rolls wildly, nearly clipping one of its wings. He's never actually fired drones before except once in practice, but this would be the time, and he launches them one-two-three, feels them peel away in different directions and hopes they're smart enough not to seek out the other jumper.
"McKay, this is Sheppard," he says over the jumper's comm system. "I think I've got their attention."
"Understood, Sheppard," Colonel Lorne says over the radio. "We've taken some damage. You may need to hold them off for a minute here."
"Will do," John says, bringing the jumper around for another run. The darts are firing, and he weaves a course between them, hoping wherever they came from won't notice they're here for a few more seconds.
"We'll need you to dial the gate," McKay says over the comm system. "We're a little busy over here."
"I can do that, too," John says, slapping at the console in what he seriously hopes is the right pattern. He hasn't had a lot of chances to do this.
"Great," Lorne says. The other jumper threads the eye of the stargate, visibly venting atmosphere -- at least, venting something -- and John brings his jumper through a tight loop. The darts try to hammer him between them, but they're not quite fast enough, and he skates the jumper through the event horizon just ahead of them.
"Get the shield up!" Lorne calls, out of the other jumper already, and John brings his to a stop and lets it settle to the floor. He runs a hand through his hair. He's a little shaky, but he'll be damned if he's going to let it show.
He steps out as the other team is climbing out of their jumper. Weir is down the steps already, looking at the damaged jumper ruefully. "Everybody okay?" she says.
"We are fine," Teyla says.
"We ran into a little trouble," Lorne says.
"That's one way of putting it," McKay says. "I think we can safely say that our plans to make that planet an alpha site aren't going to pan out." He looks at John and nods, looking satisfied about something. "We're still here, though." It's not exactly thank you, but it actually works for John.
"Let's debrief," Weir says. "Colonel Lorne--"
"I'll go put the jumper away," Lorne says. "Meet you in the conference room in ten. This is not a good place for there to be a new Wraith base."
Weir's shoulders sag a little. "I know."
The rest of the team heads up the stairs, and John gets back into the jumper, getting it into the air above Lorne's, because while he doesn't think it's that badly damaged, he'd still rather stay out from underneath it. He brings it into the jumper bay and settles it back into its cradle. Lorne lands the other jumper further out onto the floor where there's more room for the repair team that swarms around it, followed by the scientist John has finally learned is Radek Zelenka.
"Oh, lovely," Zelenka says, scowling as he looks at the damage, his fingers skating over the long scores in the jumper's side. "Structural damage the length of the hull. And we will have to pull out all the control crystals and make sure there isn't any damage there."
"It's not that bad, I think," Lorne says.
"Yes, well, we will see," Zelenka says, in a tone that from a doctor would suggest he was just waiting for the x-rays to show a horrible malignant tumor. "How bad is Jumper Three?"
"Fine," John says. "They didn't actually hit me."
Zelenka glances up at him as if taking in that he's there for the first time. "Good," he says. "Do that again next time. We are very short on jumper parts, and even more so on pilots."
"Shorter on jumper parts than pilots," Lorne says. "I'm not ancient and irreplaceable." He looks at John. "Nice flying," he says.
"Thanks," John says.
Lorne looks like he's trying to decide whether to say something, and then like he's resolved to. "You're probably going to hear that I didn't want you here," he says. "I don't like hiring contractors for positions that should be military. It screws with the chain of command, and it gets people hurt. You should know it's not personal."
"Okay," John says. He's not sure whether that's really better than it being personal, since it means he hasn't got much chance of bringing Lorne around. On the other hand, he's pretty sure the words "dishonorable discharge" make that a lost cause anyway, so whatever.
"I can send down a couple of guys to give you a hand," Lorne says.
"Yes, that would be welcome," Zelenka says. He looks up at John as John is leaving, watching him go with what looks like a certain amount of interest. John's not sure what's so interesting, or if it's just that he's also wondering when John's going to start fucking things up.
Then again, he doesn't care what people think. He reminds himself of this in the lunch line, gets his tray and heads back across the mess hall to go eat in his room. McKay, Lorne, Teyla, and Ronon Dex are sitting at one of the tables by the window. McKay and Lorne are in animated if not particularly happy-looking conversation.
Teyla is saying something in a lower tone to Ronon, and John follows her gaze a few tables down to where Zelenka is eating lunch with one of the young Marines. Or maybe that's what she's looking at. Ronon looks up, catching John watching them, and John looks away.
He's not paying any more attention to people than he usually does, or at least he doesn't intend to, but somehow he learns a lot of things by the time he's been in Atlantis a month. Part of it is the sheer volume of the rumor mill; there's not much to do on a base like this but talk. Ronon is apparently dating Keller. McKay and Weir have some kind of long-running thing going that they don't really talk about. Popular opinion is apparently divided between the people who think that Teyla and Lorne have been screwing since Lorne got to Atlantis four years ago and the people who think neither of them ever does anybody.
There's really not much to do. There are some TVs, but watching TV means being social with people he still isn't sure what he thinks about. There's a reading library, and he thinks about starting War and Peace just because that'll be sure to take him a while, but he settles for James Michener instead. He spends some time in the evenings just walking the length of the city's long balconies, watching the sun set over the sea.
He's not sure how he seems to have so much time. He's also not sure how he seems to have so much energy. It's like there's more oxygen in the air or something. It maybe helps that he's eating hot meals instead of things that come out of plastic bags, because it's easy to just go to the mess hall. He doesn't have to microwave dinner or think about how much anything costs.
Which is a good thing, because he isn't sure how he'd spend any money. His paycheck is presumably being deposited into an account back on Earth, but it's not like he can stop by an ATM. Anyway, the Atlantis gray market seems to run mainly on barter, and he hasn't got any actual possessions to trade, which is why even though apparently there's alcohol around, he hasn't managed to get his hands on any of it. There's no night life, no off-base, no Strip. He can't remember the last time he didn't have anything to do after work.
He starts waking up at six not really wanting to go back to sleep, instead of dragging himself out of bed hung over twenty minutes before he's supposed to be at work. After the first few mornings, he gives up on sleeping in and starts working out in the mornings, not really pushing himself but at least trying to get back to where he was before he got shot. The gym is usually full of Marines who ignore John. He ignores them right back, because anything else is probably a bad idea.
The city's shrink, Heightmeyer, sends him a email saying that she's available if John wants to talk about how he's settling in. He deletes that along with Keller's reminders to all personnel to keep their vaccinations up to date and Zelenka's memos about computer security. The days are starting to get routine.
Then one of the Marines escorting some botanists to look at plant life touches a weird crystal growing on a tree, and twenty-four hours later three people are dead, and one of them is Elizabeth Weir.
John runs into Teyla in the hall outside Weir's quarters. "It's Elizabeth," she says when John asks what the problem is. "I was supposed to meet her for breakfast, but she didn't show up, and she's not answering her radio. I've called Dr. Keller, and she can override the lock, just in case--"
"What's the problem?" McKay says, coming up beside Teyla, and John has a sudden twisting feeling in his stomach like this is going to be bad. It's the radio -- people leave them off or leave them lying around, but he would bet Dr. Weir doesn't ever take hers off except when she's sleeping, and then he'd bet good money that it's by the bed.
"Dr. Weir is not answering her radio," Teyla says. "Can you let me in?"
"Well, yes," McKay says. He swipes a hand across the door panel like he knows it'll open for him, which John supposes means the thing about him and Weir is true. "I'm sure she's not here, though, or she'd answer the door --"
The door slides open, and John knows immediately, because no one sleeps like that, so rigid and awkward and still.
"Elizabeth?" McKay says, his voice already rising toward panic, his hand going to his radio. "We need a medical team to Dr. Weir's quarters, and I mean now." He's bending over the bed, and John can't seem to look away, even though that means seeing the moment when he touches her and realizes she's cold. "Elizabeth."
"Rodney," Teyla says, trying to draw him away from the bed. "Rodney, Dr. Keller is coming--"
"It's too late," McKay says, and then, "I can't -- this can't be--" He looks like he can't believe this and like he always expected this to happen. It hurts to watch him moving like he's been shot, like any minute now he'll feel it and fall down.
"What's the -- all right, out of the way," Keller says briskly, and John gets out of her way, but he can see that there's nothing she can do.
"Rodney," Teyla says, and there are tears in her eyes, and John's got to get out of here, as McKay reaches blindly for her hand, because this isn't anything they'll want him to see, and because he can see McKay's spare jacket still draped over the back of a chair across the room and for some reason that's like a punch to the gut. He doesn't understand his own sense of betrayal, like he somehow expected this not to happen in Atlantis, for things to be fair.
He goes back to his quarters and tries not to think about a uniform jacket draped over the chair by his bed and stays out of people's way for a while. They deal with the alien crystals, and McKay takes Weir's body back to Earth, and after that apparently McKay is the new temporary commander of Atlantis, until various people back on Earth can stop arguing about who's supposed to replace him.
It's not that anything goes horribly wrong for a while after that, but nothing seems to be right. The mess hall is full of people huddling in little groups for a while, talking in the tone of voice you use for funerals, and then after a couple of weeks people start drifting back to their usual tables, but there's not a lot of laughter. The Marines look tense, and the scientists look tired, like they've been pulling long hours.
Apparently things aren't going well with the Wraith. No one really fills John in on the tactical situation, but McKay does put his tray down at John's table one morning when John's eating in the mess hall instead of his room because for some reason leaving seemed like too much trouble. McKay opens his laptop and works while he eats, which doesn't seem to invite conversation.
"Are you settling in all right?" McKay asks eventually without looking up from the laptop screen. He looks terrible, with dark circles under his eyes, and he sounds like he doesn't really care what the answer is.
"Fine," John says.
"Good, good," McKay says, not really like he's listening. "I want you to take a Marine team to PR2-687 this afternoon. Apparently there's some wreckage that might be a Wraith cruiser."
"No problem," John says. He can't help feeling cheerful at the prospect, and he's aware of McKay noticing. "It's just, I get to fly in space," he says. "I'm still not over that being cool."
McKay smiles just a little. "I guess not," he says. "It is 'pretty cool.'" John can hear the quotation marks around the words, though.
"The jumpers are good little ships," John says. "I wish they had more firepower."
"You're telling me," McKay says. "It would be nice if they were hyperdrive capable, too. Radek has some ideas about that, but personally I think he's full of it. At least he keeps them flying."
"I take it we can't make more."
"A nice idea," McKay says. "But, no. We have six jumpers still operational, and three battle cruisers back home, none of which is stationed in the Pegasus galaxy. The Wraith have forty hive ships."
"That sounds bad," John says.
"We just need to …" McKay says. He spreads his hands in a gesture that doesn't fill John with confidence about there being an actual rest of that sentence, and pushes away his half-eaten breakfast. "We're not doing too well. Actually."
"Nice inspirational talk," John says, but McKay is already leaving. He resolves not to eat breakfast in the mess hall, because he's not sure his morale can stand any more inspirational talks like that. Across the room, Radek Zelenka is talking about something with Teyla that involves him alternating between waving his hands and stabbing at his scrambled eggs glumly. Ronon and Lorne join them, both carrying cups of coffee, and John figures he ought to go figure out where PR2-687 is.
He probably shouldn't be surprised that they're not the only ones who show up to investigate the wrecked Wraith cruiser. It's pretty thoroughly wrecked -- he's not an expert, but there's nothing that looks like it's worth bringing home -- and certainly less interesting than the darts that come buzzing through the stargate to check it out. The marines shoo the science team back to the jumper, and John slams the cloak on, and then they wait around until the wormhole collapses and they can dial out, which unfortunately means dodging dart fire, not entirely successfully.
The team goes off to report, because that's their job, but there's nothing really that John can add except "I flew there and then back and tried not to get shot up too badly," so no one argues when he hangs around the jumper bay instead of going up to the conference room with them. He's too wired to want to sit around a table and talk, still ready to shoot something but with a really limited supply of things to shoot.
The hull damage is superficial, and it's late enough that doing anything about it is going to have to wait until the repair crew comes back on duty in the morning, but Radek comes down anyway to pull the control crystals and examine them.
"This is not just something I do for fun," Radek says, holding each crystal up to the light and then seating it again with careful fingers. "If there is a hairline crack, you will be sorry if you find out when you are in space."
"Which would suck," John says. "Do we have extras?"
"Not to spare," Radek says. "Anyway, can you reprogram one? I think probably no. Which is no reflection on your intelligence, just--" He swears abruptly in Czech as sparks pop under his fingertips. "Right, right, let's--" He yanks out one of the crystals, and the sparks stop. "All right, that we will have to fix."
"Sorry," John says.
"You are less hard on them than some," Radek says.
"I try." He's watching Radek's hands, watching the look of concentration on his face as he works. Radek looks over at him, and he's suddenly aware that he's being watched, too. He's seen that look in the casinos, men on vacation who think that more than one kind of thing that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And this isn't Vegas, but he can feel himself responding, flashing a hard come-on-if-you-want-it smile.
He's expecting flustered nervousness, but instead he gets a steady, amused look as Radek slides one of the control crystals back into place. "If that's how it is."
John lifts his chin. There's something about that look that goes all the way through him.
Radek looks him up and down, and there's no way that's not deliberate. "You're very pretty," he says. "Come over here, then, and get on your knees." It's an instruction, not a request. He's watching John with a wry look that's just a little cautious, like he's wondering if John is going to tell him to go to hell or take a swing at him.
Some other guy named John Sheppard probably would have, a long time ago back when he had things to lose. He hasn't been that guy in six years. "Sure," he says, and slides down to his knees on the jumper floor, his hands already undoing Radek's fly.
"Yes," Radek says, and tangles a hand in his hair to tug him forward hard. That always does it for him, although having his hair pulled stings a little more than usual, which may be because he's sober. Everything feels too real, the hard jumper floor under his knees, hard cock in his mouth, his hands finding the waistband of Radek's pants and hanging on like he's afraid he's going to fall.
Radek starts swearing under his breath in Czech before very long, which is surprisingly hot, and John can feel him brace himself against the jumper wall a couple of breaths before he comes in his mouth. John swallows and sits back on his heels, panting. He wants to come pretty damn badly, but he's half expecting to be told that now he can get out; he's done guys like that before.
"All right?" Radek asks instead, and ruffles his hair in a way that should be insulting but feels weirdly nice.
John shrugs one shoulder. "What are they going to do, fire me?" That's supposed to sound sarcastic, although he's not sure it does.
"Please," Radek says dismissively. "I know where all the security cameras in the jumper bay are. We are not on video. Not that they would fire us for this, but I prefer not to put on a show."
"Not for the whole base," John says.
"You might like to in private," Radek says, with that wry expression again. "If you are not afraid to be seen going back to my quarters?"
There is what seems like a mile of hallway between the jumper bay and Radek's room, and John is fervently grateful that they don't run into anyone who wants to talk to him about flying or the Wraith or anything other than sex. Radek lets him in and locks the door behind them and steers him gently but firmly to the bed, and inside of thirty seconds John is lying back with his pants undone and his knees apart while Radek sucks him off.
It feels like the best blow job he's ever had in his life, which may just be that it's been too long since he got laid, or may be the being sober part, or may just be -- actually, he has no idea, and he doesn't care, and it doesn't take long before he's swearing, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," the words turning into an incoherent groan as it hits him like a hammer blow, like every muscle in his body that's been tensed for God knows how long suddenly releasing all at once.
Radek flops back on the other side of the bed, looking smug. John can't actually blame him for that. He leans his head back against the pillows and tries to remember how to breathe. He can still feel random muscles cramping in fluttery protest, the arch of his foot and the small of his back.
Radek shifts a little onto his side, and John shifts to make room for him, and then somehow they're settled next to each other, which is weirdly good. He keeps thinking that, but he's not sure how else to describe this. His hand is resting on Radek's elbow. He should be fixing his clothes and getting out, but it feels good just to get his hands on someone, to feel someone breathing warm against him.
"Just as well not to finish in the jumper," Radek says. "You are not quiet, are you?" John shrugs one shoulder. "Not a criticism," Radek says. "That was very nice."
"Yeah," John says. He moves enough to kick off his shoes, and then toes off his socks as well so that he can feel the sheets cool against his feet. He half expects Radek to argue, but he doesn't. It's getting dark, the sky outside the windows fading to midnight blue.
"I have a weakness for military men," Radek says ruefully. "All those young Marines at loose ends. There are always more men than women in the city, and the female scientists, most of them, want men with brains."
"As opposed to you."
"Well, I do have a weakness," Radek says, and John can feel him shrug. "It makes a change to have someone my own age, who is not …"
"Dumb as a box of hammers?"
"Confused," Radek says, rather tiredly. "You can stay, if you want?"
John wants to, which kind of surprises him, but it's awfully comfortable place to sleep. More comfortable than his own room, which has the world's smallest bed and pretty much nothing else. "Okay," he finds himself saying, and wraps up in the blanket, curling into Radek's warmth. It's kind of a great place to sleep.
He wakes up with a confused combination of impressions -- this isn't his bed, the sun's at the wrong angle, his foot's gone pretty much entirely to sleep, and someone's breathing steadily on the other side of the bed. His head doesn't hurt, which doesn't seem to fit the rest of the picture well. He props himself up on his elbows, memory returning as Radek stirs, rubbing his eyes at the light.
"Morning," Radek says, not so much a greeting as an expression of disapproval at the existence of mornings.
"It is," John says. He actually feels pretty good. Maybe even great. He wants to get up and work out and eat an entire plate of scrambled eggs and go fly in space. Radek is looking at him with a smile that looks a little surprised. "What?"
Radek shakes his head without answering, and so John kisses him, fast and sort of experimentally. Radek drapes an arm over him in a friendly way, and while it's weird to wrap himself around a guy the way he would a woman, it's also kind of hot. He's got morning wood already rubbing against Radek's thigh.
Radek disentangles himself with practiced ease. "Unfortunately, no," he says. "Shower, breakfast, work. That thing they pay us to do all day?"
"Right," John says. He sits up and starts fastening his pants.
"Tonight?" Radek asks from across the room, his voice carefully light.
I'll call you, John starts to say fliply, and then he considers his other options for getting laid anytime in the reasonable future. That is to say, none, and anyway, this wasn't bad. At all.
"Sure," he finds himself saying instead.
Nobody actually needs to go anywhere all morning, which leaves John bouncing around on the balls of his feet in the jumper bay, and eventually offering to help work on one of the jumpers that's been being repaired for a long time. It's still more the skeleton of a jumper than an actual functional spacecraft, which he points out to Rodriguez the puddlejumper technician, who's patiently laying wires through a section of hull.
"Well, we work on it in our spare time," she says. "We can't really afford to waste anything that there's a chance of fixing." He holds a penlight for her and lets her explain what she's doing. It's possibly the most words in a row that he can remember anyone saying to him since he got here, even if he doesn't understand most of them.
He drops by the mess hall for lunch intending to grab a sandwich and take it back to his room to eat. "Come and sit with us," Radek says instead when he runs into him in line, balancing soup and coffee precariously on a tray, and he finds himself sitting down at the end of a table where Teyla and Ronon and Keller are already camped out.
They're apparently talking about movies, and he finds himself listening to a long conversation about whether the Star Wars prequels were a travesty or not. Teyla looks like she finds the whole thing mystifying.
"I liked them," Keller says. "Ewan McGregor is pretty hot."
Radek throws his hands up in the air. "An entire modern mythology, you reduce to that."
"I'm not saying I had a thing about it or anything," Keller says. "Not like some people about Princess Leia in a chain mail bikini."
"That is a formative experience," Radek says.
"Why would anyone wear a chain mail bikini?" Ronon says. Keller gives him a look. "I mean besides that."
"That's why," Keller says. She's not actually going out of her way to talk to John, but she's not glaring at him, either, which seems like an improvement in their relations.
"Of course, the whole midichlorian thing …" Radek begins, and then trails off as if he's expecting someone to interrupt him. "Some people have decided opinions about."
"Where is Rodney?" Jennifer asks, as if that makes sense.
"He said he was going to eat lunch in his office," Teyla said. "To go over paperwork."
"Again," Ronon says.
John's radio crackles, then. "Sheppard to the gate room," McKay says. "I've got a botany team here that apparently wants to go look at interesting plants." Even to John, his tone sounds sharp.
"I'm on it," Sheppard says.
"Try to keep them from touching anything dangerous," Ronon says.
John shrugs. "I don't think that's really up to me."
"I guess not," Ronon says, turning his shoulder to him and telling Teyla something about their morning's expedition. John shrugs it off and heads out to deal with the botanists. They're all nervy of touching anything right now, so it's not like he has to tell them to be careful. They take a lot of pictures and don't actually dig much up.
"That's probably not some kind of weird plant that's going to kill everybody, right?" he asks when Parrish is crouching next to what John can definitely identify as a vegetable of some kind.
"I think it's a relative of the eggplant," Parrish says. "We should probably get some samples." He's still just looking at it gingerly. John can see that he's thinking about three dead people and the dark circles under McKay's eyes.
"I could dig up the plant for you," he says. "If there's any doubt."
"You'd probably damage the root structure," Parrish says. "You could go and get one of the containers out of the jumper, though. We're supposed to bring everything into a sealed laboratory and have Beckett clear it as safe before it goes into the lab for study."
John spends the afternoon watching Parrish and Brown dig up plants and seal them into containers that look designed for bombs. He supposes they can't exactly give up doing botany for the rest of their time in Atlantis.
He brings them back and drops them off in the gate room and puts the jumper away. It's late enough that he heads up to Radek's quarters to see if he's there, although he hasn't had dinner.
He is. "I see that you survived botany," Radek says.
"That ought to be a joke," John says.
"Yes, would that it were," Radek says. "Have you eaten? I have sandwiches."
John peels the plastic off a ham sandwich, which is about what pre-made sandwiches always are. Radek's room is full of stuff, John can't help noticing, with a big flat-screen TV and a tangle of electronic cables on top of a long desk with an extensive computer setup. He sits down in front of the TV while he eats, and Radek turns on Star Trek reruns. On screen, Barclay is mutating into some kind of bug.
"That's just wrong," John says eventually.
"Yes, not very appetizing," Radek says, and flips it off. "So much for dinner and a movie. We could move on." He kisses John, which is startling but not in a bad way, and then goes to his knees in front of the couch. "I will even let you stay sitting down."
"Very generous," John says, and then Radek's got his pants undone and sucking him with expert ease, all the way back in his throat with his elbows pinning John's thighs, and John leans back and closes his eyes.
After John's returned the favor, they move to the actual bed, on the theory that maybe they'll be up for more later. Radek settles gratefully to the mattress in a way that suggests that's actually pretty unlikely. He bends his head, rubbing between his eyes like his head hurts.
"Have you actually gotten any sleep lately?" John finds himself asking.
"Not much, no," Radek says. "As busy as we are, and with Rodney fucked up, not so much."
"Is McKay all right?" He's not sure why he's asking, except that he kind of likes McKay.
"No. Not all right. And things are not good, with us and the Wraith."
"Is there actually a plan for winning?"
Radek smiles as if he's found out a secret. "There is no plan," he says. "But what can we do, give up? So we will keep trying."
There's a pause. John feels that changing the subject might be called for, although some part of his mind won't stop thinking that there's got to be something they can do, some way of changing the odds. "So what do people do for fun around here? Other than sex."
He can feel Radek shrug. "We have a chess club. There is television -- I have an extensive anime collection. There is not exactly wild nightlife."
"I'm getting that picture," John says. "What with no off-base. Not much opportunity for drinking and gambling."
"Is that what you like, then? Drinking and gambling?"
"I'm not sure 'like' is actually the word," John says slowly.
"Must," Radek says matter-of-factly.
"Maybe something like that," John says, closing his eyes. It's not like he couldn't stop either one, he tells himself, but he didn't spend a lot of time trying. Not like he wasn't showing up to work, getting through the day, but somehow everything kept getting more and more screwed.
"You will not find much opportunity for either here," Radek says. "Some people play poker. I win more at chess."
"I do actually know how to play chess," John admits, and somehow they're moving past that, and it feels like dodging a bullet he didn't even know he was expecting to hit him.
"You are too good to be true," Radek says. John digs his fingers into the back of Radek's neck and gets a surprised smile for it. "Yes, feel free to do that." It's not the look that John's used to getting in bed, the hard one that says that someone wants something and is going to use him to get it. Which is usually what he's planning to do too, of course.
"What we need is to be able to make our own spaceships," John says after a while, after he's worked the knots out of the shoulder Radek says he broke going EVA on a mission gone wrong a couple of years ago. You may have all my spacewalks in future, Radek says when it's clear that John thinks that would be pretty cool. They are all yours. "More puddlejumpers, or something with more combat capabilities -- you'd think the Ancients would have built fighters, too."
"Yes, that would be nice," Radek says. "Unlikely, but nice. If we should find a spaceship factory, we will get right on that." His voice is dreamy, on the edge of sleep.
"Have we looked for one?" John asks, but he's not sure Radek is actually awake to hear him.
He winds up having breakfast with McKay's team a lot, although McKay is hardly ever there, and Lorne isn't there very often. John steers clear when Lorne is around, because he doesn't think they probably have much to say to each other. Teyla keeps making an effort to engage him in conversation, although John gets the impression that she's measuring him up for some reason. Keller has actually started making eye contact once in a while.
There's an ambush on MRC-620, and two entire Marine teams go down. John stays out of the gateroom the next morning when they're sending bodies home. He's seen enough flag-draped coffins.
That night, Radek breaks out the vodka, and they drink sitting out on the balcony. It feels like the right thing to do. Almost like being back in Afghanistan. There's some part of him that still thinks almost like being home.
"You know, if you keep hanging around with me, you are going to get a reputation," Radek says, looking out over the ocean.
"It's not like I'm trying to get people to like me," John says. "Why, do you have one?" Radek doesn't look like the kind of person who would have a reputation, but on the other hand the expert blow jobs do suggest he's had a lot of practice.
"All those lonely young Marines," Radek says. "Colonel Lorne makes an effort not to notice, but there is talk. Especially when it all ends badly with protestations that they are of course not queer just because they like having their cocks sucked. Which maybe happens more than I like. Teyla says the problem is my taste."
"I don't think it's improving," John says.
"You should have seen the last one," Radek says. "Anyhow, she includes herself in her list of my mistakes."
"I didn't know you …" John says. He's not sure whether he wants to finish with you and Teyla or you and women or what. He feels a little thrown, and isn't sure why.
"We have had our moments," Radek says. "Friends with benefits, not anything more serious. And we are not very well matched. She likes men who will follow her lead. She might do better with you."
"She's a little intense," John says. He's not going to argue with Teyla being hot, but there's hot and there's looks like she might punch you in the face for fun, and he's hooked up with too many of the second kind of guys to be sure he wants to try out that kind of woman.
"She is that," Radek says. John reaches for the vodka bottle, and Radek takes it away from him, setting it on his own other side. He's only a little pissed off about that. "Enough, or in the morning we will both hate life."
"Is there such a thing as enough?"
Radek looks at him, his eyes very dark in the light of the setting sun. "Come inside and we will see," he says.
He's not sure what he thinks about the fact that it's entirely possible that Teyla and Ronon and Keller are willing to talk to him because they think he's Radek's boyfriend. Short of making a sign that says he's not my boyfriend, we're just screwing, he doesn't think there's anything he can do about that. It's almost a relief to get sent to go ferry the botanists around again, because he thinks they're completely oblivious to anything that's not a form of plant life.
Katie Brown sprains her ankle slipping on some kind of fascinating new moss, and he escorts her down to the infirmary on his arm, with her giving him what might be hopeful looks when she's not wincing in pain. He gives her his best "I'll call you" smile, and she goes back to wincing. There are a couple of Marines in the infirmary too, looking like their team got shot up. Apparently whoever they met this morning wasn't friendly.
"We're not on the best of terms with the Genii right now," Keller says when she sees John looking curious. "Apparently they had a misunderstanding."
The question of what anybody thinks gets simpler, in a way, at lunchtime, because when John is elbowing his way into the lunch line along with half the rest of the city -- pizza day is what passes for a big deal in Atlantis -- one of the young Marines pushes him aside hard, and says, "Get out of my way, faggot."
"Say what?" John says, because he hasn't actually got anything smarter than that.
"You heard me," the guy says. He's young, rangy, his hair buzz-cut and his uniform spattered with mud. Out this morning and still looking for trouble, still all restless motion. John's been there, but right now he doesn't care.
"Back off," John says.
The guy's off, though, up in his face like he's just waiting for John to hit him so that his friends can pile on. People are starting to get out of the way and say stuff like Hey, settle down. "Sitting on your ass all day like the rest of the cock-suckers in the lab, like your boyfriend Zelenka--"
There's a time when John would have put his fist in the guy's face for that, but he's smarter than that now, and anyway he's suddenly sure he remembers seeing this one with Radek a few weeks ago, talking a little too closely over a pallet of supplies being loaded onto one of the jumpers. And if not, he's probably still not wrong. He knows the type.
"Funny, I thought he was yours," John says, and apparently for some reason he thought the guy was smarter than that too, because he's actually surprised when the guy hits him in the face.
He can hit back, then, though, which is kind of satisfying, and then there's no time to think about much except trying to knock the guy down before he winds up on the floor himself before Lorne's pulling the guy off him, scowling like the end of the world. Someone else is pulling John back and hanging onto him by the back of the jacket, not a grip he can easily pull away from. Ronon, he registers, at the same time that Lorne says "All right, let's hear it, Parker."
"It wasn't my fault," the guy says, and John could almost feel sorry for him, because that's never the right answer. His cheekbone stings, the duller ache of bruises just starting to make itself felt.
"He called Sheppard a fag and hit him in the face," one of the jumper techs says, a carton of milk still in her hand. She raises her chin a little defiantly when the other Marines give her distinctly unfriendly looks. "In front of about twenty people, so what do you want me to say?"
"Get him out of here," Lorne says wearily, and the security team he's apparently brought with him escorts Parker out of the mess hall. "We're going to have a little talk," Lorne says to the guy as he follows them out, and John thinks that's a good time to get out of the mess hall and go somewhere less full of the entire city.
He's not in the mood to go down to the infirmary and deal with Keller's so what happened to you?, but he thinks an ice pack would really make his day better. He goes down to the jumper bay and gets one of the chemical ice packs out of the first aid kit in Jumper Three. It does make his face stop hurting as much, although he's pretty sure it's going to be dramatic looking.
Radek comes in quietly and takes the other bench in the back of the jumper. There's a little while of what might be companionable silence, except he thinks that under Radek's usual wry smile, he might actually be pissed off about this.
"You will have an impressive black eye," Radek says finally.
John shrugs. "My last job involved a lot more fistfights. I was feeling deprived."
"I am sorry," Radek says, and that really isn't what John wants to hear, for some reason. "I told you that you would get a reputation."
"Well, I will now," John says. He's pretty sure that the Atlantis rumor mill is working overtime already. "Fistfight in the mess hall" should be good for at least an afternoon's entertainment. "It's okay."
"Yes?" Radek says, looking up at him swiftly, and John tries to look cool with this, like coming out to the entire city in an embarrassing way happens to him all the time. "He was an asshole," Radek adds. "I think I am swearing off Marines."
"He was wired, you know? Looking for someone to mix it up with," John says.
"And that makes it all right?"
John thinks he may have some kind of feelings about this, and he tests them out gingerly, like touching a split lip with his tongue. "I'm pretty pissed off about missing pizza day," he says eventually.
"We could go and get some pizza," Radek says, smiling like John's just said there are about forty hive ships on their way here and Radek's just said well, that will be a challenge, yes? and there's something about that smile that makes something in John's chest open, some feeling he can't even remember but that might be actually liking someone.
"We could do that," John says.
John has never in his entire life actually considered coming out, certainly not to the entire city of Atlantis. He's pretty sure that he would have said it would be worse than this, though. A number of people are weird around him for the rest of the day, which he tries to chalk up mostly to the discomfort of having someone walk into a room when you've just been talking about him behind his back.
Other people make a point of being more friendly than usual. Teyla isn't that much of a surprise, but he's a little thrown when Kate Heightmeyer offers him one of her carefully hoarded stash of chocolate bars. That may be professional interest, although he's heard that she had a girlfriend for a while, so maybe not. Lorne calls him down to his office for a talk which is maybe the most awkward thing that has ever happened to John in his life.
"Parker's going home," Lorne says. "And I want to apologize to you, personally. That's not how we do things around here."
"Okay," John says.
Lorne scrubs a hand through his hair. "So how was the botany thing?" he says, and they talk about plants in a way that is clearly intended to Put John At His Ease for a minute, which would be easier if John knew anything about plants. When John finally manages to make his escape, Lorne says as he's leaving, "You know, as far as I'm concerned, it's the Air Force's loss."
It actually takes him halfway down the corridor to figure out what that's about, and then all he can think of is the dishonorable discharge, the sealed paperwork, and of course now Lorne thinks he knows what that was about. He can't decide whether what's flooding through him is relief or shame so intense it makes a sick knot in his stomach, because at some point Lorne's still going to hear the real story.
It's not just that. He can throw that back in the closet where he keeps it and lock the door and deal with it later. It's that he thinks everyone's assuming now that he used to be out before he came to Atlantis, when he's never even admitted that he was -- okay, gay is what they're probably saying, but bi is probably more like it -- but that isn't him, he may suck cock but he isn't the kind of guy who has a boyfriend, he's --
And the only way he can finish that sentence is a total fuck-up, and maybe that isn't true anymore. He's standing out on the balcony with the incredible glass spires stabbing up toward the sky against the horizon. That's what he made out of himself before Atlantis. That's what he made out of his life. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn't have to screw it up as badly this time. He doesn't believe in second chances, but this feels like one.
"Here's the thing," he says that evening, lying on Radek's bed with most of their clothes in a pile on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. "I haven't really had relationships lately. I mean, I've had some girlfriends -- a couple of weeks counts as a girlfriend, right? But then I don't call. And I haven't really done guys whose names I knew."
"Yes, so, we have both made bad choices," Radek says. "I think Colonel Lorne may not be happy with me if I seduce any more Marines."
"We talked," John says. "It was awkward."
"He is not so bad," Radek says. "Mostly, he does not want to know, but he does not …" Radek trails off. "It was not that Colonel Caldwell said anything," he says. "But he made it clear that personal problems were not his problem. And he did not have much respect for scientists."
John isn't sure that scientists is really what Radek means there. He thinks he could be mad about the way Radek says it with a smile that makes the joke partly on him, the way that he's always maybe just a little surprised that John listens to him even when he's not saying things like now take your clothes off.
"My point is that I have not exactly been looking for someone stable to settle down with," Radek says. "So, do you like being fucked?"
"I, umm," John says, thinking very smooth, Sheppard. "Haven't done that very much." He doesn't add didn't like it all that much, because it's always sounded good in theory, and maybe he's just been doing it wrong. "I like it rough, though."
Radek's hand is absently resting on John's hip, and he digs in his fingers at that, hard enough that his nails must be leaving red lines against the skin. It feels really good. "I see that you do," he says, sounding amused. "Not the same question, though."
"Sure," John says. "Is that what you like?"
"Now he asks," Radek says. "Yes, I like fucking people," he goes on, in the same tone that he uses to explain interesting things they have found out about ways to use nuclear weapons. "Men and women both. I do not so much like to be fucked. I like blow jobs. I like men in uniform, although apparently that is one of my problems. I like telling someone else what to do."
"So tell me what to do."
"Turn over," Radek says. "Yes, like that. Now, you will please stay that way."
John's still not entirely about the whole getting fucked thing until Radek's pressing in, the weirdly slick feel of a condom against his ass, and then he's thinking that maybe he was doing it wrong before, and then that he definitely was, and that they may want to try this again sometime, because right now he's busy coming embarrassingly fast all over Radek's sheets while Radek says things in Czech that seem to bypass his brain and go straight to his balls.
In the morning he feels a lot better than he has the only other times he's gotten fucked, which have involved being drunk in hotel rooms with guys he very much never wanted to see again later. He's pretty happy with the world, and while Radek is squinting at the daylight with his usual lack of enthusiasm, John says, "Look, what we need is to be able to make more ships, right? And, okay, maybe not more ships, but more stuff."
"We need more control crystals," Radek says into the pillow. "We have cannibalized all we can from other applications, but we could repair more of the jumpers with more crystals. Maybe get the orbital defenses working again."
"We have orbital defenses?"
"Yes, they do not work," Radek says. "They need specific kind of control crystals, ones we do not have."
"They must have had some way to make the things," John says. "Some kind of … control crystal factory, or at least a machine."
"There are some devices we have not yet activated," Radek says. "More that we activated, but that seemed to do nothing." He rolls over, looking more interested. "You express the ATA gene more strongly than Carson, though. I wonder."
The lab full of devices that seem to do nothing is big and cavernous. When John touches them, most of them do something, although he's not sure what in many cases. Most of them make Radek make happy noises and scribble frantically, though. After a while, McKay looks in.
"What are you doing?" he says. "I need you to be working on a way to stabilize the matter bridge so that we can fix our power problems sometime this century."
"It doesn't work," Radek says. "This is likely to do more good."
"Huh," McKay says, looking at Radek's notes on one of the whiteboards. "Interesting, but basically irrelevant. I need you back on the matter bridge problem."
"No," Radek says, not looking up from the piece of alien technology glowing on the workbench in front of him, the one that might be some kind of sonic something, or that at least makes a really irritating noise. "You don't. And you are not in a position right now to set our priorities."
"I am actually in charge here," McKay says. John wonders if they remember he's here, and if there's any chance of sneaking out without their noticing him.
"And there is only one of you, and you must plan our strategy, the one we do not actually have, and deal with our allies, the ones who shoot at us, and what are you doing in the lab? It is not your job anymore, Rodney."
"I'm wasted dealing with administrative paperwork and -- and making long-term plans for things that will probably never happen," McKay says. "I should be figuring out a way to solve our power problem, not --"
"Rodney," Radek says, looking weary. "How are you planning to solve our problem with the Wraith?"
McKay sits down on one of the chairs by the bench. "I don't know," he says. His eyes are shadowed. "I have no idea." He glances over at John. "For obvious reasons, I'd rather you didn't share that."
"Then maybe it is time to let someone else take charge," Radek says.
"Just because you're jealous--"
"I am not jealous," Radek says. "I am worried about you. You do not sleep, you will not talk to people. You are in no shape to make these decisions. Just because Elizabeth died, that does not mean we can afford for you to fuck everything up."
The silence after that is kind of awful. Radek looks like there's more he wants to say, and like he's aware he's already said too much. "I will go look at the matter bridge calculations again," he says, and he leaves.
"Is that what they all think?" McKay says after a moment, with the strained sound of someone who has to ask the question no matter how little he wants to hear the answer.
"I think they're all worried about you," John says. "This kind of thing can screw with your judgment."
"You would know," McKay says. John thinks he means for that to hurt about as much as it does.
"Yeah, I would," John says. "That's why I'm saying."
"It's my responsibility," McKay says tightly. "I've been saving the universe on a regular basis for five years, not that you would know anything about that. And from the very beginning, Elizabeth always--" His voice breaks on the words, and he looks like he can't find any other ones.
John can. "She trusted you. She relied on you. She was right. But Radek thinks you're burned out. I think maybe he's right."
McKay looks at him. "I hear some people get better."
John shrugs. "Ask me in a year or two."
"I'll hold you to that," McKay says. He lets out a breath. "This is going to be pretty unbelievably awkward. Asking the SGC to send someone else out here because I'm questioning my own mental health."
"You'd have to be crazy to want the job," John says. "Anyway, it can't be more awkward than getting outed in front of fifty people in line to get pizza."
McKay snorts. "Yes, point," he says, sounding like that almost makes him feel better.
Radek finds John later on the balcony where they shared the bottle of vodka. It's a good balcony for being in a lousy mood on. Teyla came out for a little while, and then went back in again when he wasn't really interested in talking to her. He thinks maybe he gave her the impression that there was something wrong with him.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" Radek says eventually.
"Her name was Heather," John says. He always told her it was an awful name for a soldier, that it sounded like she should be driving a minivan. He can still hear her saying In your dreams, Shep, still see her rolling over in his bed, sandy hair rumpled by the pillow, a spray of freckles across her small breasts. I'm not winding up married with a kid and a dog.
He never had any dreams like that, not since a long time before her. Six years dead and he still can't imagine her dressed up in Arlington for a date, only fucking him like it might kill them both, both of them sweating, her uniform jacket thrown over his chair by the bed. His face against her hair as the chill of the evening set in, her forehead warm against his lips.
"She didn't make it to the transport," John says, like he's reading it off a piece of paper. "Wouldn't leave her patient. I went back for her. I fucked it up and got people killed."
"I am sorry," Radek says.
John looks at him sideways. "That's all you've got? Doesn't it at least bother you?"
Radek looks out over the rail. "We fuck up a lot," he says. "We get people killed. " He spread out his hands. "What can we do, stop trying?"
John kisses him, then, because he feels all too close to saying I like you, I like you a lot, and that will be both socially weird -- he thinks they're supposed to be past figuring that out -- and more than he really thinks he can bear to say. He expects Radek to push him away, but he doesn't, not for a long moment, not until he's ready to let go.
John doesn't meet Sam Carter until she's finished talking to Lorne and McKay and the main gate team and pretty much everybody in Atlantis who's more important than he is. She's still doing a good job of looking interested by the time she gets to him, although he's pretty sure she can't even remember everybody's name at this point.
"Sheppard," she says. "McKay tells me you're his best pilot."
"I have my moments," John says.
"Colonel Lorne tells me I shouldn't be put off by your record, which since I've heard a fair bit from General O'Neill about you, I must admit kind of surprises me."
"I think he may have gotten the wrong idea," John says.
"I see that," she says. "You actually don't seem to have given anyone in the Air Force the impression you were gay."
"Bisexual," John says. "Do you want to know what kind of chewing gum I like?"
"McKay already told me," Carter says. "And Zelenka says you have some ideas about getting more of the jumpers working again, which is the one piece of information I've heard so far that I'm actually the most interested in."
"I'm a damned good pilot," John says.
"Well, that too," Carter says. "I just personally really like the idea of building spaceships. If you've got a moment, you could show me what you've found so far."
"I think we may have found an Ancient electric toothbrush," John says. "Nobody's volunteered to stick it in their mouth yet, though."
"That's the kind of thing I like to hear," Carter says.
Six weeks later, they find a machine that takes a combination of elements common in the Pegasus galaxy and turns them into perfect, unprogrammed control crystals. Radek looks like he's won a million dollars at the poker table. McKay looks sour, but that's actually a change; he's looked better since Carter put him back on the gate team, and has actually started eating lunch with people again.
It's a little bit of a change for Radek, too. He's been edgy the last couple of weeks, not as ready to lie in bed and talk, restless to get back to his lab. Maybe that's having McKay back in the lab more, or something.
They get one of the disabled jumpers fitted out with the new control crystals, and John gets to go out to test it. It's great right up until the point where he takes it through a space gate to make sure it can handle the transition and comes out into a sky full of Wraith darts, the bulk of a hive ship looming against the bright curve of the planet.
There's not enough time to get the shields up before he's hit, and no way to get back to the stargate. He's venting atmosphere, the jumper screaming half a dozen warnings at him. He's got to take her down before she comes to pieces.
The atmosphere makes a feverish glow around the jumper's shields as he dives down toward the clouds, coming in fast and fighting to hold a straight line, the ground coming up hard at the end. He hits with a sickening series of bounces and crashes, drags himself out of the jumper on the strength of sheer adrenaline, and curls up in the underbrush wondering whether a rescue team will find him before the Wraith do.
Eventually, he hears Teyla calling "Sheppard! Are you here? John!"
"Over here," he says. Teyla pushes her way through the bushes and gets him up, Lorne coming up behind her and helping take some of his weight.
"You didn't have to crash-test her," Lorne says.
"I like to be thorough," John says. "I'm bleeding."
"Yes, we see," Teyla says, bandaging his leg efficiently. "Ronon! We have him!"
"About damn time," Ronon says. "McKay's waiting with the jumper."
"Let's go home," Lorne says.
John thinks that sounds good.
Keller says at first that she wants to keep John overnight for observation, but she finally lets him go with a promise that he'll take it easy. "Stay off your feet," she says, and then, "You know, it would be a good thing for Radek to settle down."
"I have to go stay off my feet," John says, because he has absolutely no idea what to say to that. He goes back to his own room, because Radek will still be at work. It's been a while since he actually slept there. There's a book still open on the floor, but he can't remember what he was reading.
Radek turns up after a while and comes in, but instead of sitting down on the foot of the bed he walks around the room awkwardly. "Are you all right?"
"I'm okay," John says. "I got stitches. I've had lots. If you don't mind me limping, we could go back to your room and--"
"Here is the thing," Radek says, rapid-fire. "I make it a habit -- that is, I try very hard to avoid --" He makes a helpless, angry gesture. "All these complications."
"Complications," John says flatly.
"Waiting at home for somebody," Radek says, his whole body tight. "With so much to lose." He tries to smile, but it doesn't entirely work. "And I think maybe I am getting -- neither of us meant this to be -- it is too serious."
"Right." John's not sure he's ever actually been on the receiving end of this talk before. He wonders if it felt this much like a punch in the gut to any of the girls he gave it to. "Sure. It's not like we were. You know."
"I am glad we can be friends," Radek says, as if they've agreed to that. But then they're both used to letting Radek decide what they're doing. "If you would like to get some dinner--"
"I'll pass," John says. "I'm a little tired."
"Of course," Radek says. "In the morning maybe we can talk about the power readings from the control crystals." And then he's gone.
John gets up, even though that hurts, and walks over to the wall and punches it, hard enough to make him yell. This sucks. He would really not have predicted that this was going to suck this much. It feels like the bottom is going out all over again, like everything he's started to count on --
He wants to get drunk -- no, he wants to already be drunk -- and he could probably manage that now if he asked around. He could walk into McKay's office and tell him that he wants to go back to Earth. He still owes a lot of people back on Earth money, but he could just walk away from that. People do. He could stop trying.
Instead he just walks, because even though that hurts, it's something to do. The halls light up for him like they're glad to see him and wish he didn't feel like shit. And, probably not, but when he stops into the botany lab, Katie says, "Are you all right? We heard you crashed."
"Did you find any plants?" Parrish says, but he's smiling.
"I may have some leaves still in my hair," John says. "And there was some kind of prickly vine that was trying to get in my pants."
Katie says something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like who could blame it, and then has a dramatic coughing fit when he turns around. "Maybe we could go back and check it out?" she says, and it says something about her that he actually thinks the hopeful sound to her voice is about the plants.
"We could," John says. "I'll ask McKay." And he actually will. He will actually volunteer to go take these people to go look at plants for science.
He walks out onto the balcony. There's a summer thunderstorm on the horizon, and it's raising a wind that whips at his hair. It feels good.
"Are you not supposed to be resting?" Teyla says, coming up to the rail beside him.
"I think I just got broken up with," John says.
Teyla shakes her head. "I was expecting that."
John gives her a look. "You were? You could have said."
"Radek takes into his bed men who he knows will not want to stay with him," Teyla says. "And women, but it has been more often men. I think because women more often want more than he is willing to give." She shrugs. "I hoped that had changed."
John should have known that. He shouldn't have expected more.
And maybe he's still got more than he ever expected. He's standing on the balcony of an alien city beside a beautiful woman from another planet who he thinks maybe actually likes him. On the horizon clouds are flashing in a summer storm, and the wind ruffles his hair, and he flew in space this morning, and tomorrow whatever else he does, he's going to go talk about how they can build more spaceships.
"I'm okay," John says, and he thinks that maybe he actually is.
Teyla nods, and then smiles a little sideways. "Tell me, have you ever tried Athosian stick-fighting?"
"Never," John says. "But I would love to learn."
"I am interrupting something," Radek says hesitantly, coming out onto the other end of the balcony. He looks like he's embarrassed. John's not sure what that means.
"You are not interrupting anything," Teyla says, and her eyes meet John's for a moment. "I would be happy to teach you. I should like for us to be friends." She leaves before John can say that he thinks he'd like that, too.
"So," John says eventually.
Radek comes and stands beside him, his hands on the rail, looking out to sea at the storm rather than at him. "I am an idiot," he says, watching lightning flash on the horizon. "I would very much like to be able to make it so that you do not remember that the last few hours ever happened."
John leans his elbows on the rail. "Are we going for amnesia, here, or some kind of time machine? Because if we had one of those, it would fix a lot of our problems."
"Time travel is theoretically possible," Radek says. "It seems a little drastic as an approach here."
"It's possible that we might actually be dating," John says. "I mean, there seem to be these signs pointing to that."
"I am bad at dating," Radek says. "Obviously."
"Me too," John says. "I don't think we've got a lot of skill going on there between the two of us."
"Still, we should give it a try, yes?" Radek says. "Not waste …"
"Really good blow jobs?"
"I was thinking more 'not waste time,'" Radek says. "Although that also works for me as a reason."
"I think I've wasted enough time," John says, and he kisses Radek, his hand on the back of Radek's neck, making it slow and thorough, because there's not really any hurry. He's not planning on going anywhere. He's already home.