New SGA story!
In which gender does a triple axel, and I send up every fanfic convention I can think of.
Title: Tab A Slot B
Rating: R/NC-17 (though more for language than anything else)
Summary: The men spend the entire meeting trying not to stare at each other's tits and failing miserably.
Notes: This one is dedicated to rageprufrock, cesperanza, and astolat, who pretty much are my canon when it comes to SGA. Many thanks to setissma and cathexys for betaing.
*
They're on a tour of the Nimirian Hall of Culture when Rodney passes an open crate and does a double take. "Uh, excuse me. What's that?"
The Nimirian leader turns to the curator, who flips over the tag and says, "One of the artifacts from our exhibition on lost religions of the Second Age. Is it familiar to you?"
"Oh no, no," Rodney says, shaking his head. John recognizes his expression from other diplomatic missions: it's Rodney's fleece the natives of their Ancient technology without them knowing it's valuable face, which only leads to three possible outcomes. One, they get chased off the planet by angry people with spears (and from what John's seen of Nimirian tech so far, he's betting this time it'd be projectile weapons). Two, Rodney presses him into servitude as a human "on" switch and they unleash something that nearly destroys the city. Three, Rodney presses him into servitude as a human "on" switch and they unleash the Ancient equivalent of a bidet.
Rodney snaps his fingers. "-- but you know, our leader's birthday is coming up, and it's the exact color scheme of her office ..."
John mostly succeeds in not rolling his eyes. The Nimirian leader glances at the curator again, who shrugs, and then pulls the object from the crate and hangs it to Rodney. "As a gesture of friendship between our peoples," he says magnanimously.
It's a wand-like bundle of long crystals, wrapped in wire and circuitry. Ancient tech all right, unless Renaissance Faire vendors really have made it to the Pegasus Galaxy. Teyla smiles at the Nimirians and says, "We thank you for the gift, and for the spirit in which it was given," they exchange formal gestures of respect, and the tour continues.
As they pass into the next room, Teyla asks the curator about the history of the artifact. The woman apologizes and says that its story is lost to them, but they believe it was a talisman of a fertility cult once popular on the fourth continent. John stares hard at Rodney, who's lost in eager contemplation of the thing and doesn't seem to have heard this interchange.
Looks like they're headed for option number two, then.
*
That night, John's working on the mission report in his quarters (-- offered a quarter of their surplus of a native grass similar to --) when Rodney strolls in, wearing a smug expression.
"Turned your new toy on all by yourself, did you?" John says. "Did it try to eat anybody yet?"
"Really," Rodney says, dropping onto the bed pulling his shoes off, "with as much time as I lose on my highly valuable, not to mention ground-breaking and Nobel-worthy, research every time there's a crisis -- which around here is, oh, every forty-seven minutes or so -- hasn't it occurred to you that it's in my own interests to take all reasonable precautions to avoid causing one myself?"
-- Capabilities appear to include antibiotics, inoculation -- "And yet," John says.
He wraps up the last few sentences while Rodney strips out of his clothes, monologuing about the artifact ("-- testing needed to determine the function, of course, but I'm thinking it's medical from the --"), Kavanaugh's attempts to model energy loss in the environmental systems ("-- so wrong, my god, I've seen brain-damaged teenagers who repeated geometry write better equations by accident --"), and other events of the day. By the time he hits Send, Rodney's sprawled out on the bed in his boxers, hands laced behind his head.
"You know, you do have your own room," John says, tossing his shirt onto the chair as he walks away from it.
"True," Rodney says, rolling to hook his fingers in the waist of John's pants. "But yours was closer. Besides, unless there's some nifty new Ancient device you've found and haven't told me about, mine doesn't come with built-in blow-jobs."
*
Later, sweat-soaked and groggily elbowing Rodney over who has to sleep in the wet spot, John feels more than hears a far-off bing sound, like a timer going off at the base of his skull. That's odd, he thinks, but before he can ask Rodney hey, did you hear that?, sleep swarms over him like a blanket over a birdcage.
*
The alarm goes off and Rodney whines in protest until John rolls over him to smack it.
"Mmph," Rodney says, burrowing under the pillow, and John tucks his knees into the crook of Rodney's and slides his arm around to sleepily palm Rodney's --
Next thing John knows, he's on his feet. "What the fuck," he croaks.
Rodney pulls the sheet off his head and levers himself up on one arm, frowning blearily. There's a long red crease in his skin where the sheet had been tangled under him, and it runs from the left side of his jaw all the way down around the curve of his ... of his ...
"Um," Rodney says, eyes widening like someone's turning a crank, "you didn't have those breasts when we fell asleep, did you? Because I think I would have remembered."
John's hands fly up to his chest and, oh fuck -- "Same to you, buddy," he says blankly, and Rodney yanks the sheet off and stares down at himself in horror.
"Where the hell is my cock!" he yells, and runs for the bathroom. John stands, transfixed by the bouncing of Rodney's breasts, and then the sense of the words sink in. He gropes for his crotch.
"What the fuck, McKay!" John shouts, just as Rodney hollers, "I'm going to kill them! I'm going to find out what they put in the food, and then I'm going to -- every time we go on a diplomatic mission, every time, don't I tell you we should skip the ceremonial banquet and stick to MREs? Don't I --"
John runs his hands distractedly through his hair and then down his face, trying to scrub some sense together, but he yanks them away before he can be derailed by the unnerving lack of stubble. "Okay," he says, taking a deep breath, "we can figure this out. We need to go to the infirmary; Beckett can run some tests --"
Rodney storms back in, eyes wild, cupping his breasts in both hands. "Oh my god, has the vagina make you insane? We can't go out in the halls like this!" He jiggles his breasts in emphasis. John flinches. "And what exactly are you suggesting we say when we --"
They both freeze as the radios on the nightstand crackle to life. "All senior staff, please report to the conference room," Elizabeth says. "We appear to have a ... there's a bit of a ..."
*
The men spend the entire meeting trying not to stare at each other's tits and failing miserably.
The women -- though still in possession of their own -- don't do much better.
"Carson, I'd like you to scan all the affected, see if you can find a common factor," Elizabeth says.
Next to John, Rodney's glowering. "Besides the glaring absence of the Y chromosome?"
She turns to him, keeping her gaze fixed on his face as he distractedly pats his chest and crotch. He's been doing it the whole time, and John's both sympathetic and completely ready to shoot him if he doesn't knock it the fuck off. "And Rodney," she says, "have the scientists keep investigating the artifact, but I don't want you to touch it or manipulate it in any way until you've had a chance to present your findings to us. Anything that can have such a profound physical impact on half the city clearly poses a significant danger. We must proceed with caution."
"Spoken like someone who still has her own genitals," Rodney mutters, and John kicks him in the shin.
*
It takes Carson about twenty-four hours to finish the first testing regimen and bring back an initial report. By then, John's already had to deal with four Marines who got into a fistfight over who was checking who out in the locker room and three more who refused to show up for their shifts. He roams the halls all night, too keyed up to sleep, intermittently ducking down corridors to avoid Heightmeyer (whose reaction to the situation is making back-to-back "housecalls" and wearing a look of deeply Zen glee that John finds really creepy).
Labcoat buttoned to the neck, Carson launches into the preliminary findings: no apparent vector, no sign of disease or apparent effect on the women, but all the men have had their primary and secondary sex characteristics reset from the chromosomes upward. Skeletons and musculature outside of the pubic area unaffected, some redistribution of body fat but weight unaffected, body hair in excess of female norms shed but male hair loss unaffected --
"Wait," Rodney says, "secondary sex characteristics, what about --" He jerks his chin up and jabs a finger at his own Adam's apple.
Carson shakes his head. "They're more common in men, but it's not actually a sex-linked trait."
The rest of the details dispatched, Carson admits he's got no clue how to fix it, at which point Elizabeth turns to Rodney. "Well, let's see," he says, holding both hands up so he can tick things off as he goes. "As of right now, we're running passive scans on an device we a) aren't allowed to touch, b) aren't allowed to test, c) aren't allowed to move, and d) aren't allowed to turn off, all without e) any proof that it's the source beyond post hoc ergo propter hoc, which f) even a so-called 'social scientist' would tell you is no proof at all, so really, we should have this wrapped up, hmm, any year now."
As it turns out, the only ones making any kind of headway are the anthropologists, which makes Rodney sulk even harder. They've found references in the Ancient database to a device with the ability to "restore balance through change so that a people may bear fruit." Elizabeth assigns Rodney to work with them on making sense of the translation, asks Beckett to work on a medical solution, and sends the rest of them back to their usual duties.
"Let's try and keep everything as normal as possible," she says.
*
The thing of it is, they live in a submersible city in another galaxy, where everyday life typically includes one or more of the following: wormholes, energy monsters, alien-human hybrids, siege by space vampires, close encounters with alternate reality selves, and lunches that look like chicken and taste like pecan praline. So two more days go by without any kind of a breakthrough, and just when anyone in their right minds should be going out of them, the residents of Atlantis give up and adapt.
Later on, John will remember this as the point where things got truly disturbing.
It starts in the morning, when Parrish walks into the mess in a light blue sweater and a short skirt and Rodney spits his eggs across the table.
Parrish blushes and tugs at his hem. "It just seemed like the most appropriate thing to --"
"Have you lost your mind?" Rodney bellows, as all conversation cuts off mid-sentence. "Go back to your quarters, and I do not want to see you again unless you are in your own clothing and have found an Ancient device that will let me wipe this image from my memory!"
"Actually," Parrish says, chin coming up a bit even as he blushes harder, "if you want to know the truth, this is my --"
Rodney squeezes his eyes shut and waves his arms in the air, chanting, "fired, so fired, a whole world of fired," until the door closes with Parrish safely on the other side. He drops back into his chair and buries his face in his hands.
"You know, I never thought I'd find myself reconsidering the wisdom of 'don't ask, don't tell,'" he moans. John, mouth still ajar, whines pathetically in agreement.
*
Thankfully, everyone else sticks with their normal wardrobe. Most end up like Rodney, jackets bulging unevenly and gaping at the fasteners. Bates, tight-ass that he is, seems to be binding, and the creases in his uniform are so straight he's practically daring someone to make something of it. John's one of the lucky ones; his breasts are small and don't show much (though they ache like hell by the end of a run, which in no way contributes to his decision to double his usual mileage). Soon enough, he's so burned out by the constant visual shock that he starts expecting everyone's new contours, which is horrifying, but not as bad as when he catches himself watching the others in distracted fascination. Not sexually, because oh fuck no, but with a weird sense of: what if?
None of them really look like women. They've all got their own jaws, their broad hands and feet, receding hairlines and men's haircuts to go with them. (Except for Kavanaugh, who walks into the lab on day six with half an inch of hair and a muttered "I don't want to talk about it.") Still, his mind keeps wanting to make up the difference, wondering what they would have been like.
The answer is pretty much awkward as hell, but there are notable exceptions. With his massive tits straining through the neck of his leather vest, Ronon looks like a female version of The Rock. Rodney starts a running tally of the closeted lesbians who are outing themselves right and left by ogling, or worse, propositioning him.
"Dr. Biro!" he tells John in the infirmary, where they're getting their vitals checked.
John snorts. "I thought you were only counting the closeted ones."
"Hey, I heard he took her up on it," Cadman says as she breezes in. They stare at her.
"Wait, what are you doing here?" Rodney asks suspiciously.
"Just firming up my evening plans," she says and turns to Carson. "I'm off-shift at 1900 -- you're coming over, right?"
Carson looks from her to the two of them, turns an alarming shade of purple, and stammers, "I -- the other room -- left the Bunsen on!" He nearly tramples her in his haste to leave. She watches his ass as he goes and shrugs when she notices John and Rodney gaping at her.
"What? It's not like I've never eaten pussy before," she tells them on her way out. John strikes up a desperate conversation with the nearest nurse.
Rodney's frowning a little. John hopes to God it means he's working on the Hodge conjecture in his head.
*
"You've got to be kidding me," John says when Rodney shows up at his door that night.
"Oh, come on," Rodney says, annoyed by John's failure to share his vision. "It's not like we haven't established a clear pattern of being used as human test subjects, and relative to certain past incidents I could go into, the likelihood that this particular experiment will result in harm or death is --"
"This isn't science, dumbass!" John interrupts. "Don't tell me to lie back and think of Atlantis!"
Rodney scowls and tries to cross his arms in an offended manner. John watches him fumble until he ends up shoving his hands in his pockets instead. "What, are you implying that I'm not capable of making it enjoyable? I may have had more important things to do in the last twenty-five years than pad my little black book of intergalactic numbers -- you know, saving civilizations, reinventing physics, feeding my cat -- but I assure you that I know how to pleasure a woman, and you don't have anything I haven't seen before."
John stares in disbelief and then grabs Rodney's collar in both hands. "I'm -- not -- a woman, McKay!" he hisses, pulling him in and shaking him for emphasis. "This isn't my body, and I'm not having improbably lesbian sex with it just because you're curious!"
"Ow, stop, I don't need a vagina and whiplash," Rodney protests. John rolls his eyes and releases him; Rodney rubs his neck but stays stubbornly put. "And you're wrong, you know."
John glares. "About what?"
"It is your body." He holds up a hand when John starts to argue. "Not the same, I'll grant you, but you heard Carson's report. They're analogous structures -- same components, different configuration. Your skin, your nerve endings, they're all still there, just ... rearranged."
Rodney doesn't do smooth, but he can deliver the craziest ideas with a matter-of-factness that John has always found weirdly compelling. Rodney steps in a little and John gives him a look he knows Rodney can translate as touch me, asshole, and I'm clubbing you to death with Tolstoy. Still, he keeps listening.
"I promise you, I'm far too intelligent to think that temporarily possessing a vagina makes either of us a woman." Rodney's voice is low and steady, a little impatient; his eyes keep flickering toward John's mouth as he talks. "Other than porn, and one semi-accidental college orgy that we will not be discussing, I don't have the slightest idea what actual lesbians do in bed. But I'm still in possession of my mouth and all ten fingers, I can find the clitoris and the g-spot, and I've gotten used to having regular orgasms. So instead of freaking out and waiting around to find out what the female equivalent of blueballs is," and he's moved even closer, they're not touching but John can feel the heat of Rodney's breath as he speaks, "how about we take advantage of the opportunity and make the time it takes to reverse this suck just a little bit less."
The last couple words trailing off into silence, Rodney leans in and then stops, lips hovering just over John's. John's nipples tighten. There's a deep, electric pulse from between his legs.
"Oh, just shut the fuck up already," he growls, and shoves Rodney over onto the bed.
*
"Ha!" Rodney says, a little breathlessly, and fishes John's shirt off the floor.
Flat against the pillows, John runs a hand across his sweaty chest. "Would you get over yourself?"
"Mmph." Rodney finishes wiping his face. "Come on, I counted at least three for you."
"Hey, I was going to wear that tomorrow!" John says.
"Whatever." Rodney steals one of the pillows and stretches out next to him. "I was good and you know it."
John snags the shirt from him and mops up a little. "I miss my dick," he mutters. "I miss my prostate."
Squirming, Rodney extracts the covers from underneath them. "True, that part was kind of disappointing," he says, and hauls the blanket up.
John scowls at him. "Did I say you could sleep here tonight?"
"Oh, relax," Rodney says, rolling his eyes. "I'm heading back to the lab in a couple of hours, no one's going to catch me doing the walk of shame from your quarters at 0500." He leans over John. "You're just being an asshole because you don't want to admit you liked it."
Yawning, John rolls over onto his side and burrows into the bedding. "Quit while you're ahead, McKay," he warns as Rodney curls up around him, and he feels Rodney grin against the back of his neck.
*
Ironically, the day Kavanaugh shaves his head is also the day Rodney and the anthropologists have a breakthrough in the translation.
"So the 'tower of the sun' is obviously this crystal here," he says excitedly, scribbling diagrams on the whiteboard, "and this bit of circuitry is the 'word of the root.' All I have to do is re-route the current through here, leave it alone to charge for about eleven hours, and we can all go back to normal before anyone starts menstruating."
Bates has a coughing fit, which Elizabeth tactfully ignores. "You're sure about the translation?" she asks the anthropologists, who nod. She turns to Zelenka. "And the rest of the science team agrees this is the best way to go?"
"Rodney's logic is sound," he says, pushing his glasses up his nose, "and translation suggests the device does not have ability to kill." He shrugs. "Frankly, is better to try and risk non-lethal mistake than to continue with present ... uncomfortable circumstances."
Elizabeth surveys the room, looking concerned. "Gentlemen, do you all concur with Radek's opinion?" John joins in the vigorous nodding.
She laces her fingers together. "Given the situation, I think it's only right that I defer on this decision." Turning to Rodney, she starts, "You may proceed --" He's up and out the door before she can finish her sentence.
*
"Colonel?" Lorne says, catching up with John in a corridor that afternoon. "Do you have a moment?"
"Sure, Major -- what can I do for you?" John says.
Lorne clasps his hands behind his back and looks off to one side, shifting a little on his feet. John frowns. "Is there a problem? If you'd rather talk in my office --"
"No, that's all right, sir," Lorne says. He takes a deep breath. "I just wanted to ask -- Dr. McKay's solution, what happens if it doesn't work, sir?"
John smiles, going for reassuring. "The man's got a pretty good track record of saving our collective asses, Major," he says. "I wouldn't worry too much."
"Yes, sir, I know, sir, but ... what if it doesn't work?" He meets John's eyes as he says it, twitching his shoulders like he's readying himself for orders.
John looks at him. Halfway to parade rest in the hallway, Lorne is tidy despite the poor fit of his uniform over his current shape. He watches John with an anxious but determined expression, clearly prepared to accept whatever answer his commanding officer gives him. Even now, he still looks like what he is: a good soldier.
"If it doesn't," John says, after a pause, "... well. Then I guess we'll each have to figure out how this works for us."
Lorne swallows and then nods once, crisply. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." His face clears a little as he says it, and he salutes John before he turns to go.
Out on the pier to watch the sunset, John stays there until the last golden light has faded and given way to true dusk, looking at the horizon and wondering what he could be.
*
John's bladder wakes him up around dawn. He stumbles to the bathroom with his eyes still closed and doesn't register the difference until he's reaching down to flush the toilet.
In less that thirty-five seconds he's dressed and racing through the corridors. "Aaah! What, what?" Rodney groans as John runs in and jumps onto the bed, the room's lights flaring at his excitement.
"All right, you're a genius," he grins, yanking the pillows off of Rodney's head so he can kiss him, "I take back everything I ever said about it not being worth the trouble to feed you."
Rodney tries to fight him off. "Jesus, what time is it? I was up most of the night monitoring that stupid --" and oh look, now he's awake. John shifts back onto his heels as Rodney fumbles frantically at the covers.
"Ha! Ahaha! Morning wood -- you're goddamn right I'm a genius!" he crows, and John pushes him down and bites the flat expanse of his chest as Rodney starts jerking at his zipper.
Twenty minutes later, Rodney's radio crackles and Elizabeth, sounding decidedly less than calm, says, "Rodney? Rodney! We need you in the conference room right away! ... Rodney? Are you there ...?"
"Christ, now what?" John moans into Rodney's shoulder, and Rodney reaches back to grab John's hip.
"Fuck it," he pants, still moving. "She'd be calling all senior staff if it were really serious. I'll tell her I was in the shower. Just keep --"
*
They're stumbling toward the bathroom when a radio goes live again. This time it's John's, and the voice coming through it is Teyla's. "John? I am sorry to disturb you, but I have encountered an unexpected problem and did not know who else to call. Would it be possible for you to come by my quarters with a spare set of clothes?"
They stare at each other. "Crap," Rodney says, and John grabs the radio and says, "Uh, sure, Teyla, I'll be right over."
*
She meets him at the door with a sheet wrapped around her. He's used to not staring at her cleavage. It's harder not to stare now that she doesn't have any.
"I hope I have not inconvenienced you," she says with a grateful smile. "I have always thought the clothing of my people practical enough, but I find they are now rather loose and I did not wish to give offense through indecency."
"No problem," he says, and hands her a pair of drawstring sweats and a t-shirt.
"Do you think this is due to the artifact that caused the previous transformations?" she asks as he turns to step back into the hall.
"Yeah," he says, facing the door. Cloth rustles behind him. "Seems likely."
"It is quite impressive," she says, "to resolve an imbalance in numbers between the sexes by changing the body. Though I imagine the Ancients must have known how to limit the effects. I am clothed, you may turn around."
With the shirt hanging loosely from her shoulders and the sweats rolled up at the waist and cuffs, she looks like a drag queen taking a sick day. She studies herself. "Yes, these will work far better. I thank you for the loan."
He blinks. "You're welcome." They start the walk to the conference room. "I've gotta say, you seem to be taking this pretty well."
She shrugs. "I was startled at first, but I see no cause for alarm. It is hardly the strangest thing that has happened during my time in Atlantis, and clearly Rodney has succeeded in restoring you to yourselves. I have faith that he will solve this as well."
*
"-- is unacceptable!" Elizabeth is shouting at Rodney as Teyla and John come through the doors. The two of them freeze. "I cannot believe you were so careless as to act without exploring all the possible consequences!"
"You --! you told me to!" Rodney sputters. "I also had the approval of the science team and half the senior staff! What did you expect me to do, build a scale model and go through three rounds of animal testing?"
Elizabeth plants both hands on the table and leans across it, glaring dangerously. John puts a foot back to slide out into the hall; Rodney spots the movement and turns, projecting desperation. The sight of them in the doorway catches Elizabeth pre-holler.
"John, Teyla," she says, retreating to her chair. "We were all just -- getting caught up on the current situation." She pastes a smile on her face; John notices she's wearing lipstick. He smiles weakly and slides his foot back across the threshold. "Won't you join us?"
The two people closest to her (Lorne and a biologist whose name John can never remember) practically levitate in their hurry to offer up their chairs. John feels his smile start to unhinge at the corners, and Teyla elbows him in the ribs. They take their seats.
*
"Jesus," Rodney says forty-five minutes later, after an impressive display of micromanagement on Elizabeth's part has yielded a plan best described as second verse, same at the first, a little bit louder and with progress updates every hour on the hour, "what the hell took you so long? I seriously thought she was going to start cutting off limbs for every question I couldn't answer."
John smirks and ladles some more of the porridge-soup-stew-thing into his bowl. "I could swear I remember someone planning to slaughter a whole civilization the first time this happened," he says as they head over to a free table.
"Hey, we have no proof the Nimirians didn't set us up on purpose," Rodney rejoins, waving his fork in the air. "But seriously, could she have gotten any more worked up about it? We've already got the files half-translated; it won't take more than a day or two to get this straightened out. No one's in danger, we know it isn't permanent -- in short, this isn't a crisis by Atlantis standards, this is the time Kavanaugh tried to 'improve' the environmental circuitry and made all the showers run purple."
John shrugs. He can see Elizabeth sitting alone by one of the windows, picking morosely at her tray of food. As a woman, no one would deny that she's beautiful, in an aesthetic, fine-drawn way. With her few curves gone, she's gaunt, gangly: she looks exactly like the scrawny debate geek that John suddenly realizes she must have once been.
"You've got to admit it wasn't your best week ever," he says.
Rodney grumbles through a mouthful of roll and lets his eyes wander around the mess. "You know," he says, swallowing, "not that I thought this was going to happen, but if I had, I'd've thought the women would, I don't know, be better at it than we were. Seriously, Miko looks like the kind of nerd that other nerds would've beaten up for replacement lunch money."
John rolls his eyes. "Hey, it's not like any of us looked that great as women."
Nibbling experimentally at the vegetable-banana-thing, Rodney says, "Well, you and Ronon were -- oh, hey, this is actually good!" He proceeds to shovel his lunch down with gusto, oblivious to the fact that John's converting three-digit segments of pi to hexadecimal to try and ward off the existential horror.
*
"Reporting as directed," John says with a mock-salute as he strolls into the infirmary.
"Won't be a moment, Colonel," Carson calls from the other room.
Cadman's lounging on one of the beds while a scanner beeps placidly over her. "Did Teyla kick your ass too, sir?" she asks, grinning. "She's holding court in the gym and so far six people have come up for ice-packs and painkillers."
With her long hair and a respectable two day's start on a beard, she looks rakish, like the space-pirate hero of some B-movie. John grins back. "No, Lieutenant. Dr. Weir ordered the men to start coming in for follow-ups now that all the women have been checked out."
"I think I'm technically the last of them," she says. "I forgot to come in yesterday."
He hops onto the bed next to her. "How're you holding up, anyway?"
She shrugs. "I've got no complaints."
Carson comes around the corner, walking with a stiff, kind of bowlegged gait. John glances involuntarily over at Cadman. She smirks.
"Are you all right, Colonel?" Carson frowns. "You look a little pale." The skin around his mouth is red and abraded. John gropes for a response and can't find one, and then Carson's eyes get wide and kind of terrified.
"Damn," Cadman says, shifting uncomfortably. "How do you guys deal with these things all day? I swear to God, every time my mind wanders the wrong direction I have to shove my hand down my pants and rearrange."
They're saved when John's' radio goes off. "Senior staff to the conference room," Elizabeth says. Carefully avoiding any eye contact with Carson, John lopes out the door and radios Rodney on the way to the transporter.
"You figure it out?" he asks.
"I think so," Rodney says, "and it's about time. I haven't seen this many flat chests and plucked eyebrows since that one time Jeannie dragged me to a Pride Parade, and I really didn't need those flashbacks."
*
"You know," John says that night, "not that wacky sex-change hijinks aren't preferable to Wraith attacks --"
"-- or you turning into a giant bug," Rodney calls from the bathroom.
"-- or that," John agrees, punching Rodney's second pillow before settling his head onto it, "but I'm going to be glad to have everything back to normal."
"No kidding," Rodney says, wandering around the corner in his boxers as he tugs a worn t-shirt down on. His head pops free, and he pauses, looking confused.
John props himself up on his elbow. "Something wrong, McKay?"
"No?" Rodney tries, but it comes out more like a question. "I just thought -- not that I mind, of course, especially since -- I mean, I've stayed at your -- but you said it was a bad idea if --"
John raises his eyebrows; Rodney goes red and mutters, "Oh, fuck you too, Major."
"I didn't know you were up for another," John drawls, and Rodney gets even redder. "I know I'm breaking my own rule here, but there's no way I'm going back out in the city tonight."
"Why not?" Rodney asks.
"You do not want to know what combinations of people I saw ducking into each other's quarters on the way over," he says sincerely. Rodney perks up and John glares a little. "And I'm not telling you, so don't even ask. I'm going to have to give a really hypocritical lecture on fraternization as it is, and I'm not up for any more visual trauma."
"Oh. Okay." Rodney blinks and climbs under the covers, not quite moving into John's space.
They lay there in silence until John sighs and rolls over, arm sliding over Rodney's midsection. "You're such a girl, McKay."
"It is way too soon for that joke to be funny," Rodney says, scooting down to shift John's head onto his shoulder.
John yawns and scratches his lower back. "Besides, the way this last week's been going, if one of us is going to get called out of our quarters in the middle of the night, it's obviously going to be you."
*
At 0437, Elizabeth's voice crackles through the radio. "Rodney? I thought you said it should have changed us back by now."
John blinks. He's got a face full of tit. He sticks his hand down between his own legs.
"Oh for Christ's sake, not again," he says, sitting up. Rodney cracks one eye open, swears creatively, and slaps the radio to an open channel as he gropes for his pants.
"Yes, yes, the farce continues, let's skip the part where we all show up to the conference room in an irrational panic," Rodney snaps, struggling with his fly. "I know what went wrong, I know how to fix it, I'm heading down to the lab right now to flip two crystals and reroute the main circuit, after which the device needs to recharge again. Everything will be back in its proper place and configuration by 1700 hours, so all non-essential science personnel, congratulations, you have the day off, and if the heads of our military and civilian contingents have any sense at all, they're about to make the same announcement."
John grabs his radio. "Confirmed."
"Fine by me," Elizabeth says wearily.
Rodney toes his feet into his shoes. "Fantastic, it's official -- everyone not needed to maintain this city's basic bodily functions, stay the fuck in bed." He grabs his laptop off the desk and runs out the door without a backward glance.
About twenty seconds later, his voice comes on over the radio again. "All right, as that terrifying hallway encounter just demonstrated, I apparently need to clarify my previous statement: I meant your own bed. And on that note, I have three announcements for those of you who have taken this opportunity to launch the Pegasus galaxy's first intramural and cross-genderal sexcapades. First, anyone who tells me anything about them ever is fired, fired, fired. Second, those of you currently possessing penises -- in case you've forgotten your junior prom, let me remind you that the so-called 'withdrawal method' is not actually a contraceptive. And third and most importantly, those of you currently possessing vaginas, please stop and contemplate the many unpleasant and disturbingly possible outcomes should you get pregnant and then have that vagina go away. McKay out."
Pressing the pillow down over his head, John hunkers down to try and sleep for the next eleven hours. Maybe if they're lucky, the next planet will have a memory-wiping device they want to trade.
Afterword
While this story plays with issues of gender and embodiment, it wasn't written to address the real experiences of intersex and transgendered people. Their struggles are not as easily resolved as those of the characters in this story.
Because the bodies of intersex people do not match medical norms of maleness and females -- norms that are in some ways quite arbitrary -- they are often subjected to a battery of medical efforts to bring them into conformity. These interventions can include aggressive hormone treatment and genital surgery beginning in infancy, often carried out in the absence of health risks, to the detriment of adult sexual functioning, and without the understanding or consent of the person. Activists like Cheryl Chase of the Intersex Society of North America are working to end unnecessary medical intervention on intersex infants and helping intersex individuals grow up with understanding, without shame, and with the right to determine their own identities and bodies.
While intersex people have their natural bodies taken from them, transgendered people are often held hostage by their bodies and by what legal, medical, social, and cultural systems say those bodies mean. Moving beyond the gender they were assigned at birth means passing through an endless series of gatekeepers: clerks, judges, psychiatrists, and physicians, to name a few. Transpeople are frequently denied the rights to have their gender identities recognized on legal documents, to receive equal work for equal pay, to safely and affordably make physical changes to their bodies (or to stop short of full gender reassignment if they do), to be guardians of their children when custody battles occur, and to live with safety, respect, and the full protection of the law. The National Center for Transgendered Equality believes we can do better, and so do I.
These may not seem like women's issues, but the technologies of power that have long defined women by our bodies are the same as those that seek to control the bodies and identities of transgendered and intersex people. Both of these organizations support all kinds of women too often marginalized, ignored, or exiled by more traditional women-centered groups -- as well as all kinds of men, and people who identify as both, or neither, or whose identities are too fluid and complicated to be easily named. Empowering women doesn't mean strengthening walls -- it means building bridges.
14 Valentines: Body Image
Title: Tab A Slot B
Rating: R/NC-17 (though more for language than anything else)
Summary: The men spend the entire meeting trying not to stare at each other's tits and failing miserably.
Notes: This one is dedicated to rageprufrock, cesperanza, and astolat, who pretty much are my canon when it comes to SGA. Many thanks to setissma and cathexys for betaing.
*
They're on a tour of the Nimirian Hall of Culture when Rodney passes an open crate and does a double take. "Uh, excuse me. What's that?"
The Nimirian leader turns to the curator, who flips over the tag and says, "One of the artifacts from our exhibition on lost religions of the Second Age. Is it familiar to you?"
"Oh no, no," Rodney says, shaking his head. John recognizes his expression from other diplomatic missions: it's Rodney's fleece the natives of their Ancient technology without them knowing it's valuable face, which only leads to three possible outcomes. One, they get chased off the planet by angry people with spears (and from what John's seen of Nimirian tech so far, he's betting this time it'd be projectile weapons). Two, Rodney presses him into servitude as a human "on" switch and they unleash something that nearly destroys the city. Three, Rodney presses him into servitude as a human "on" switch and they unleash the Ancient equivalent of a bidet.
Rodney snaps his fingers. "-- but you know, our leader's birthday is coming up, and it's the exact color scheme of her office ..."
John mostly succeeds in not rolling his eyes. The Nimirian leader glances at the curator again, who shrugs, and then pulls the object from the crate and hangs it to Rodney. "As a gesture of friendship between our peoples," he says magnanimously.
It's a wand-like bundle of long crystals, wrapped in wire and circuitry. Ancient tech all right, unless Renaissance Faire vendors really have made it to the Pegasus Galaxy. Teyla smiles at the Nimirians and says, "We thank you for the gift, and for the spirit in which it was given," they exchange formal gestures of respect, and the tour continues.
As they pass into the next room, Teyla asks the curator about the history of the artifact. The woman apologizes and says that its story is lost to them, but they believe it was a talisman of a fertility cult once popular on the fourth continent. John stares hard at Rodney, who's lost in eager contemplation of the thing and doesn't seem to have heard this interchange.
Looks like they're headed for option number two, then.
*
That night, John's working on the mission report in his quarters (-- offered a quarter of their surplus of a native grass similar to --) when Rodney strolls in, wearing a smug expression.
"Turned your new toy on all by yourself, did you?" John says. "Did it try to eat anybody yet?"
"Really," Rodney says, dropping onto the bed pulling his shoes off, "with as much time as I lose on my highly valuable, not to mention ground-breaking and Nobel-worthy, research every time there's a crisis -- which around here is, oh, every forty-seven minutes or so -- hasn't it occurred to you that it's in my own interests to take all reasonable precautions to avoid causing one myself?"
-- Capabilities appear to include antibiotics, inoculation -- "And yet," John says.
He wraps up the last few sentences while Rodney strips out of his clothes, monologuing about the artifact ("-- testing needed to determine the function, of course, but I'm thinking it's medical from the --"), Kavanaugh's attempts to model energy loss in the environmental systems ("-- so wrong, my god, I've seen brain-damaged teenagers who repeated geometry write better equations by accident --"), and other events of the day. By the time he hits Send, Rodney's sprawled out on the bed in his boxers, hands laced behind his head.
"You know, you do have your own room," John says, tossing his shirt onto the chair as he walks away from it.
"True," Rodney says, rolling to hook his fingers in the waist of John's pants. "But yours was closer. Besides, unless there's some nifty new Ancient device you've found and haven't told me about, mine doesn't come with built-in blow-jobs."
*
Later, sweat-soaked and groggily elbowing Rodney over who has to sleep in the wet spot, John feels more than hears a far-off bing sound, like a timer going off at the base of his skull. That's odd, he thinks, but before he can ask Rodney hey, did you hear that?, sleep swarms over him like a blanket over a birdcage.
*
The alarm goes off and Rodney whines in protest until John rolls over him to smack it.
"Mmph," Rodney says, burrowing under the pillow, and John tucks his knees into the crook of Rodney's and slides his arm around to sleepily palm Rodney's --
Next thing John knows, he's on his feet. "What the fuck," he croaks.
Rodney pulls the sheet off his head and levers himself up on one arm, frowning blearily. There's a long red crease in his skin where the sheet had been tangled under him, and it runs from the left side of his jaw all the way down around the curve of his ... of his ...
"Um," Rodney says, eyes widening like someone's turning a crank, "you didn't have those breasts when we fell asleep, did you? Because I think I would have remembered."
John's hands fly up to his chest and, oh fuck -- "Same to you, buddy," he says blankly, and Rodney yanks the sheet off and stares down at himself in horror.
"Where the hell is my cock!" he yells, and runs for the bathroom. John stands, transfixed by the bouncing of Rodney's breasts, and then the sense of the words sink in. He gropes for his crotch.
"What the fuck, McKay!" John shouts, just as Rodney hollers, "I'm going to kill them! I'm going to find out what they put in the food, and then I'm going to -- every time we go on a diplomatic mission, every time, don't I tell you we should skip the ceremonial banquet and stick to MREs? Don't I --"
John runs his hands distractedly through his hair and then down his face, trying to scrub some sense together, but he yanks them away before he can be derailed by the unnerving lack of stubble. "Okay," he says, taking a deep breath, "we can figure this out. We need to go to the infirmary; Beckett can run some tests --"
Rodney storms back in, eyes wild, cupping his breasts in both hands. "Oh my god, has the vagina make you insane? We can't go out in the halls like this!" He jiggles his breasts in emphasis. John flinches. "And what exactly are you suggesting we say when we --"
They both freeze as the radios on the nightstand crackle to life. "All senior staff, please report to the conference room," Elizabeth says. "We appear to have a ... there's a bit of a ..."
*
The men spend the entire meeting trying not to stare at each other's tits and failing miserably.
The women -- though still in possession of their own -- don't do much better.
"Carson, I'd like you to scan all the affected, see if you can find a common factor," Elizabeth says.
Next to John, Rodney's glowering. "Besides the glaring absence of the Y chromosome?"
She turns to him, keeping her gaze fixed on his face as he distractedly pats his chest and crotch. He's been doing it the whole time, and John's both sympathetic and completely ready to shoot him if he doesn't knock it the fuck off. "And Rodney," she says, "have the scientists keep investigating the artifact, but I don't want you to touch it or manipulate it in any way until you've had a chance to present your findings to us. Anything that can have such a profound physical impact on half the city clearly poses a significant danger. We must proceed with caution."
"Spoken like someone who still has her own genitals," Rodney mutters, and John kicks him in the shin.
*
It takes Carson about twenty-four hours to finish the first testing regimen and bring back an initial report. By then, John's already had to deal with four Marines who got into a fistfight over who was checking who out in the locker room and three more who refused to show up for their shifts. He roams the halls all night, too keyed up to sleep, intermittently ducking down corridors to avoid Heightmeyer (whose reaction to the situation is making back-to-back "housecalls" and wearing a look of deeply Zen glee that John finds really creepy).
Labcoat buttoned to the neck, Carson launches into the preliminary findings: no apparent vector, no sign of disease or apparent effect on the women, but all the men have had their primary and secondary sex characteristics reset from the chromosomes upward. Skeletons and musculature outside of the pubic area unaffected, some redistribution of body fat but weight unaffected, body hair in excess of female norms shed but male hair loss unaffected --
"Wait," Rodney says, "secondary sex characteristics, what about --" He jerks his chin up and jabs a finger at his own Adam's apple.
Carson shakes his head. "They're more common in men, but it's not actually a sex-linked trait."
The rest of the details dispatched, Carson admits he's got no clue how to fix it, at which point Elizabeth turns to Rodney. "Well, let's see," he says, holding both hands up so he can tick things off as he goes. "As of right now, we're running passive scans on an device we a) aren't allowed to touch, b) aren't allowed to test, c) aren't allowed to move, and d) aren't allowed to turn off, all without e) any proof that it's the source beyond post hoc ergo propter hoc, which f) even a so-called 'social scientist' would tell you is no proof at all, so really, we should have this wrapped up, hmm, any year now."
As it turns out, the only ones making any kind of headway are the anthropologists, which makes Rodney sulk even harder. They've found references in the Ancient database to a device with the ability to "restore balance through change so that a people may bear fruit." Elizabeth assigns Rodney to work with them on making sense of the translation, asks Beckett to work on a medical solution, and sends the rest of them back to their usual duties.
"Let's try and keep everything as normal as possible," she says.
*
The thing of it is, they live in a submersible city in another galaxy, where everyday life typically includes one or more of the following: wormholes, energy monsters, alien-human hybrids, siege by space vampires, close encounters with alternate reality selves, and lunches that look like chicken and taste like pecan praline. So two more days go by without any kind of a breakthrough, and just when anyone in their right minds should be going out of them, the residents of Atlantis give up and adapt.
Later on, John will remember this as the point where things got truly disturbing.
It starts in the morning, when Parrish walks into the mess in a light blue sweater and a short skirt and Rodney spits his eggs across the table.
Parrish blushes and tugs at his hem. "It just seemed like the most appropriate thing to --"
"Have you lost your mind?" Rodney bellows, as all conversation cuts off mid-sentence. "Go back to your quarters, and I do not want to see you again unless you are in your own clothing and have found an Ancient device that will let me wipe this image from my memory!"
"Actually," Parrish says, chin coming up a bit even as he blushes harder, "if you want to know the truth, this is my --"
Rodney squeezes his eyes shut and waves his arms in the air, chanting, "fired, so fired, a whole world of fired," until the door closes with Parrish safely on the other side. He drops back into his chair and buries his face in his hands.
"You know, I never thought I'd find myself reconsidering the wisdom of 'don't ask, don't tell,'" he moans. John, mouth still ajar, whines pathetically in agreement.
*
Thankfully, everyone else sticks with their normal wardrobe. Most end up like Rodney, jackets bulging unevenly and gaping at the fasteners. Bates, tight-ass that he is, seems to be binding, and the creases in his uniform are so straight he's practically daring someone to make something of it. John's one of the lucky ones; his breasts are small and don't show much (though they ache like hell by the end of a run, which in no way contributes to his decision to double his usual mileage). Soon enough, he's so burned out by the constant visual shock that he starts expecting everyone's new contours, which is horrifying, but not as bad as when he catches himself watching the others in distracted fascination. Not sexually, because oh fuck no, but with a weird sense of: what if?
None of them really look like women. They've all got their own jaws, their broad hands and feet, receding hairlines and men's haircuts to go with them. (Except for Kavanaugh, who walks into the lab on day six with half an inch of hair and a muttered "I don't want to talk about it.") Still, his mind keeps wanting to make up the difference, wondering what they would have been like.
The answer is pretty much awkward as hell, but there are notable exceptions. With his massive tits straining through the neck of his leather vest, Ronon looks like a female version of The Rock. Rodney starts a running tally of the closeted lesbians who are outing themselves right and left by ogling, or worse, propositioning him.
"Dr. Biro!" he tells John in the infirmary, where they're getting their vitals checked.
John snorts. "I thought you were only counting the closeted ones."
"Hey, I heard he took her up on it," Cadman says as she breezes in. They stare at her.
"Wait, what are you doing here?" Rodney asks suspiciously.
"Just firming up my evening plans," she says and turns to Carson. "I'm off-shift at 1900 -- you're coming over, right?"
Carson looks from her to the two of them, turns an alarming shade of purple, and stammers, "I -- the other room -- left the Bunsen on!" He nearly tramples her in his haste to leave. She watches his ass as he goes and shrugs when she notices John and Rodney gaping at her.
"What? It's not like I've never eaten pussy before," she tells them on her way out. John strikes up a desperate conversation with the nearest nurse.
Rodney's frowning a little. John hopes to God it means he's working on the Hodge conjecture in his head.
*
"You've got to be kidding me," John says when Rodney shows up at his door that night.
"Oh, come on," Rodney says, annoyed by John's failure to share his vision. "It's not like we haven't established a clear pattern of being used as human test subjects, and relative to certain past incidents I could go into, the likelihood that this particular experiment will result in harm or death is --"
"This isn't science, dumbass!" John interrupts. "Don't tell me to lie back and think of Atlantis!"
Rodney scowls and tries to cross his arms in an offended manner. John watches him fumble until he ends up shoving his hands in his pockets instead. "What, are you implying that I'm not capable of making it enjoyable? I may have had more important things to do in the last twenty-five years than pad my little black book of intergalactic numbers -- you know, saving civilizations, reinventing physics, feeding my cat -- but I assure you that I know how to pleasure a woman, and you don't have anything I haven't seen before."
John stares in disbelief and then grabs Rodney's collar in both hands. "I'm -- not -- a woman, McKay!" he hisses, pulling him in and shaking him for emphasis. "This isn't my body, and I'm not having improbably lesbian sex with it just because you're curious!"
"Ow, stop, I don't need a vagina and whiplash," Rodney protests. John rolls his eyes and releases him; Rodney rubs his neck but stays stubbornly put. "And you're wrong, you know."
John glares. "About what?"
"It is your body." He holds up a hand when John starts to argue. "Not the same, I'll grant you, but you heard Carson's report. They're analogous structures -- same components, different configuration. Your skin, your nerve endings, they're all still there, just ... rearranged."
Rodney doesn't do smooth, but he can deliver the craziest ideas with a matter-of-factness that John has always found weirdly compelling. Rodney steps in a little and John gives him a look he knows Rodney can translate as touch me, asshole, and I'm clubbing you to death with Tolstoy. Still, he keeps listening.
"I promise you, I'm far too intelligent to think that temporarily possessing a vagina makes either of us a woman." Rodney's voice is low and steady, a little impatient; his eyes keep flickering toward John's mouth as he talks. "Other than porn, and one semi-accidental college orgy that we will not be discussing, I don't have the slightest idea what actual lesbians do in bed. But I'm still in possession of my mouth and all ten fingers, I can find the clitoris and the g-spot, and I've gotten used to having regular orgasms. So instead of freaking out and waiting around to find out what the female equivalent of blueballs is," and he's moved even closer, they're not touching but John can feel the heat of Rodney's breath as he speaks, "how about we take advantage of the opportunity and make the time it takes to reverse this suck just a little bit less."
The last couple words trailing off into silence, Rodney leans in and then stops, lips hovering just over John's. John's nipples tighten. There's a deep, electric pulse from between his legs.
"Oh, just shut the fuck up already," he growls, and shoves Rodney over onto the bed.
*
"Ha!" Rodney says, a little breathlessly, and fishes John's shirt off the floor.
Flat against the pillows, John runs a hand across his sweaty chest. "Would you get over yourself?"
"Mmph." Rodney finishes wiping his face. "Come on, I counted at least three for you."
"Hey, I was going to wear that tomorrow!" John says.
"Whatever." Rodney steals one of the pillows and stretches out next to him. "I was good and you know it."
John snags the shirt from him and mops up a little. "I miss my dick," he mutters. "I miss my prostate."
Squirming, Rodney extracts the covers from underneath them. "True, that part was kind of disappointing," he says, and hauls the blanket up.
John scowls at him. "Did I say you could sleep here tonight?"
"Oh, relax," Rodney says, rolling his eyes. "I'm heading back to the lab in a couple of hours, no one's going to catch me doing the walk of shame from your quarters at 0500." He leans over John. "You're just being an asshole because you don't want to admit you liked it."
Yawning, John rolls over onto his side and burrows into the bedding. "Quit while you're ahead, McKay," he warns as Rodney curls up around him, and he feels Rodney grin against the back of his neck.
*
Ironically, the day Kavanaugh shaves his head is also the day Rodney and the anthropologists have a breakthrough in the translation.
"So the 'tower of the sun' is obviously this crystal here," he says excitedly, scribbling diagrams on the whiteboard, "and this bit of circuitry is the 'word of the root.' All I have to do is re-route the current through here, leave it alone to charge for about eleven hours, and we can all go back to normal before anyone starts menstruating."
Bates has a coughing fit, which Elizabeth tactfully ignores. "You're sure about the translation?" she asks the anthropologists, who nod. She turns to Zelenka. "And the rest of the science team agrees this is the best way to go?"
"Rodney's logic is sound," he says, pushing his glasses up his nose, "and translation suggests the device does not have ability to kill." He shrugs. "Frankly, is better to try and risk non-lethal mistake than to continue with present ... uncomfortable circumstances."
Elizabeth surveys the room, looking concerned. "Gentlemen, do you all concur with Radek's opinion?" John joins in the vigorous nodding.
She laces her fingers together. "Given the situation, I think it's only right that I defer on this decision." Turning to Rodney, she starts, "You may proceed --" He's up and out the door before she can finish her sentence.
*
"Colonel?" Lorne says, catching up with John in a corridor that afternoon. "Do you have a moment?"
"Sure, Major -- what can I do for you?" John says.
Lorne clasps his hands behind his back and looks off to one side, shifting a little on his feet. John frowns. "Is there a problem? If you'd rather talk in my office --"
"No, that's all right, sir," Lorne says. He takes a deep breath. "I just wanted to ask -- Dr. McKay's solution, what happens if it doesn't work, sir?"
John smiles, going for reassuring. "The man's got a pretty good track record of saving our collective asses, Major," he says. "I wouldn't worry too much."
"Yes, sir, I know, sir, but ... what if it doesn't work?" He meets John's eyes as he says it, twitching his shoulders like he's readying himself for orders.
John looks at him. Halfway to parade rest in the hallway, Lorne is tidy despite the poor fit of his uniform over his current shape. He watches John with an anxious but determined expression, clearly prepared to accept whatever answer his commanding officer gives him. Even now, he still looks like what he is: a good soldier.
"If it doesn't," John says, after a pause, "... well. Then I guess we'll each have to figure out how this works for us."
Lorne swallows and then nods once, crisply. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." His face clears a little as he says it, and he salutes John before he turns to go.
Out on the pier to watch the sunset, John stays there until the last golden light has faded and given way to true dusk, looking at the horizon and wondering what he could be.
*
John's bladder wakes him up around dawn. He stumbles to the bathroom with his eyes still closed and doesn't register the difference until he's reaching down to flush the toilet.
In less that thirty-five seconds he's dressed and racing through the corridors. "Aaah! What, what?" Rodney groans as John runs in and jumps onto the bed, the room's lights flaring at his excitement.
"All right, you're a genius," he grins, yanking the pillows off of Rodney's head so he can kiss him, "I take back everything I ever said about it not being worth the trouble to feed you."
Rodney tries to fight him off. "Jesus, what time is it? I was up most of the night monitoring that stupid --" and oh look, now he's awake. John shifts back onto his heels as Rodney fumbles frantically at the covers.
"Ha! Ahaha! Morning wood -- you're goddamn right I'm a genius!" he crows, and John pushes him down and bites the flat expanse of his chest as Rodney starts jerking at his zipper.
Twenty minutes later, Rodney's radio crackles and Elizabeth, sounding decidedly less than calm, says, "Rodney? Rodney! We need you in the conference room right away! ... Rodney? Are you there ...?"
"Christ, now what?" John moans into Rodney's shoulder, and Rodney reaches back to grab John's hip.
"Fuck it," he pants, still moving. "She'd be calling all senior staff if it were really serious. I'll tell her I was in the shower. Just keep --"
*
They're stumbling toward the bathroom when a radio goes live again. This time it's John's, and the voice coming through it is Teyla's. "John? I am sorry to disturb you, but I have encountered an unexpected problem and did not know who else to call. Would it be possible for you to come by my quarters with a spare set of clothes?"
They stare at each other. "Crap," Rodney says, and John grabs the radio and says, "Uh, sure, Teyla, I'll be right over."
*
She meets him at the door with a sheet wrapped around her. He's used to not staring at her cleavage. It's harder not to stare now that she doesn't have any.
"I hope I have not inconvenienced you," she says with a grateful smile. "I have always thought the clothing of my people practical enough, but I find they are now rather loose and I did not wish to give offense through indecency."
"No problem," he says, and hands her a pair of drawstring sweats and a t-shirt.
"Do you think this is due to the artifact that caused the previous transformations?" she asks as he turns to step back into the hall.
"Yeah," he says, facing the door. Cloth rustles behind him. "Seems likely."
"It is quite impressive," she says, "to resolve an imbalance in numbers between the sexes by changing the body. Though I imagine the Ancients must have known how to limit the effects. I am clothed, you may turn around."
With the shirt hanging loosely from her shoulders and the sweats rolled up at the waist and cuffs, she looks like a drag queen taking a sick day. She studies herself. "Yes, these will work far better. I thank you for the loan."
He blinks. "You're welcome." They start the walk to the conference room. "I've gotta say, you seem to be taking this pretty well."
She shrugs. "I was startled at first, but I see no cause for alarm. It is hardly the strangest thing that has happened during my time in Atlantis, and clearly Rodney has succeeded in restoring you to yourselves. I have faith that he will solve this as well."
*
"-- is unacceptable!" Elizabeth is shouting at Rodney as Teyla and John come through the doors. The two of them freeze. "I cannot believe you were so careless as to act without exploring all the possible consequences!"
"You --! you told me to!" Rodney sputters. "I also had the approval of the science team and half the senior staff! What did you expect me to do, build a scale model and go through three rounds of animal testing?"
Elizabeth plants both hands on the table and leans across it, glaring dangerously. John puts a foot back to slide out into the hall; Rodney spots the movement and turns, projecting desperation. The sight of them in the doorway catches Elizabeth pre-holler.
"John, Teyla," she says, retreating to her chair. "We were all just -- getting caught up on the current situation." She pastes a smile on her face; John notices she's wearing lipstick. He smiles weakly and slides his foot back across the threshold. "Won't you join us?"
The two people closest to her (Lorne and a biologist whose name John can never remember) practically levitate in their hurry to offer up their chairs. John feels his smile start to unhinge at the corners, and Teyla elbows him in the ribs. They take their seats.
*
"Jesus," Rodney says forty-five minutes later, after an impressive display of micromanagement on Elizabeth's part has yielded a plan best described as second verse, same at the first, a little bit louder and with progress updates every hour on the hour, "what the hell took you so long? I seriously thought she was going to start cutting off limbs for every question I couldn't answer."
John smirks and ladles some more of the porridge-soup-stew-thing into his bowl. "I could swear I remember someone planning to slaughter a whole civilization the first time this happened," he says as they head over to a free table.
"Hey, we have no proof the Nimirians didn't set us up on purpose," Rodney rejoins, waving his fork in the air. "But seriously, could she have gotten any more worked up about it? We've already got the files half-translated; it won't take more than a day or two to get this straightened out. No one's in danger, we know it isn't permanent -- in short, this isn't a crisis by Atlantis standards, this is the time Kavanaugh tried to 'improve' the environmental circuitry and made all the showers run purple."
John shrugs. He can see Elizabeth sitting alone by one of the windows, picking morosely at her tray of food. As a woman, no one would deny that she's beautiful, in an aesthetic, fine-drawn way. With her few curves gone, she's gaunt, gangly: she looks exactly like the scrawny debate geek that John suddenly realizes she must have once been.
"You've got to admit it wasn't your best week ever," he says.
Rodney grumbles through a mouthful of roll and lets his eyes wander around the mess. "You know," he says, swallowing, "not that I thought this was going to happen, but if I had, I'd've thought the women would, I don't know, be better at it than we were. Seriously, Miko looks like the kind of nerd that other nerds would've beaten up for replacement lunch money."
John rolls his eyes. "Hey, it's not like any of us looked that great as women."
Nibbling experimentally at the vegetable-banana-thing, Rodney says, "Well, you and Ronon were -- oh, hey, this is actually good!" He proceeds to shovel his lunch down with gusto, oblivious to the fact that John's converting three-digit segments of pi to hexadecimal to try and ward off the existential horror.
*
"Reporting as directed," John says with a mock-salute as he strolls into the infirmary.
"Won't be a moment, Colonel," Carson calls from the other room.
Cadman's lounging on one of the beds while a scanner beeps placidly over her. "Did Teyla kick your ass too, sir?" she asks, grinning. "She's holding court in the gym and so far six people have come up for ice-packs and painkillers."
With her long hair and a respectable two day's start on a beard, she looks rakish, like the space-pirate hero of some B-movie. John grins back. "No, Lieutenant. Dr. Weir ordered the men to start coming in for follow-ups now that all the women have been checked out."
"I think I'm technically the last of them," she says. "I forgot to come in yesterday."
He hops onto the bed next to her. "How're you holding up, anyway?"
She shrugs. "I've got no complaints."
Carson comes around the corner, walking with a stiff, kind of bowlegged gait. John glances involuntarily over at Cadman. She smirks.
"Are you all right, Colonel?" Carson frowns. "You look a little pale." The skin around his mouth is red and abraded. John gropes for a response and can't find one, and then Carson's eyes get wide and kind of terrified.
"Damn," Cadman says, shifting uncomfortably. "How do you guys deal with these things all day? I swear to God, every time my mind wanders the wrong direction I have to shove my hand down my pants and rearrange."
They're saved when John's' radio goes off. "Senior staff to the conference room," Elizabeth says. Carefully avoiding any eye contact with Carson, John lopes out the door and radios Rodney on the way to the transporter.
"You figure it out?" he asks.
"I think so," Rodney says, "and it's about time. I haven't seen this many flat chests and plucked eyebrows since that one time Jeannie dragged me to a Pride Parade, and I really didn't need those flashbacks."
*
"You know," John says that night, "not that wacky sex-change hijinks aren't preferable to Wraith attacks --"
"-- or you turning into a giant bug," Rodney calls from the bathroom.
"-- or that," John agrees, punching Rodney's second pillow before settling his head onto it, "but I'm going to be glad to have everything back to normal."
"No kidding," Rodney says, wandering around the corner in his boxers as he tugs a worn t-shirt down on. His head pops free, and he pauses, looking confused.
John props himself up on his elbow. "Something wrong, McKay?"
"No?" Rodney tries, but it comes out more like a question. "I just thought -- not that I mind, of course, especially since -- I mean, I've stayed at your -- but you said it was a bad idea if --"
John raises his eyebrows; Rodney goes red and mutters, "Oh, fuck you too, Major."
"I didn't know you were up for another," John drawls, and Rodney gets even redder. "I know I'm breaking my own rule here, but there's no way I'm going back out in the city tonight."
"Why not?" Rodney asks.
"You do not want to know what combinations of people I saw ducking into each other's quarters on the way over," he says sincerely. Rodney perks up and John glares a little. "And I'm not telling you, so don't even ask. I'm going to have to give a really hypocritical lecture on fraternization as it is, and I'm not up for any more visual trauma."
"Oh. Okay." Rodney blinks and climbs under the covers, not quite moving into John's space.
They lay there in silence until John sighs and rolls over, arm sliding over Rodney's midsection. "You're such a girl, McKay."
"It is way too soon for that joke to be funny," Rodney says, scooting down to shift John's head onto his shoulder.
John yawns and scratches his lower back. "Besides, the way this last week's been going, if one of us is going to get called out of our quarters in the middle of the night, it's obviously going to be you."
*
At 0437, Elizabeth's voice crackles through the radio. "Rodney? I thought you said it should have changed us back by now."
John blinks. He's got a face full of tit. He sticks his hand down between his own legs.
"Oh for Christ's sake, not again," he says, sitting up. Rodney cracks one eye open, swears creatively, and slaps the radio to an open channel as he gropes for his pants.
"Yes, yes, the farce continues, let's skip the part where we all show up to the conference room in an irrational panic," Rodney snaps, struggling with his fly. "I know what went wrong, I know how to fix it, I'm heading down to the lab right now to flip two crystals and reroute the main circuit, after which the device needs to recharge again. Everything will be back in its proper place and configuration by 1700 hours, so all non-essential science personnel, congratulations, you have the day off, and if the heads of our military and civilian contingents have any sense at all, they're about to make the same announcement."
John grabs his radio. "Confirmed."
"Fine by me," Elizabeth says wearily.
Rodney toes his feet into his shoes. "Fantastic, it's official -- everyone not needed to maintain this city's basic bodily functions, stay the fuck in bed." He grabs his laptop off the desk and runs out the door without a backward glance.
About twenty seconds later, his voice comes on over the radio again. "All right, as that terrifying hallway encounter just demonstrated, I apparently need to clarify my previous statement: I meant your own bed. And on that note, I have three announcements for those of you who have taken this opportunity to launch the Pegasus galaxy's first intramural and cross-genderal sexcapades. First, anyone who tells me anything about them ever is fired, fired, fired. Second, those of you currently possessing penises -- in case you've forgotten your junior prom, let me remind you that the so-called 'withdrawal method' is not actually a contraceptive. And third and most importantly, those of you currently possessing vaginas, please stop and contemplate the many unpleasant and disturbingly possible outcomes should you get pregnant and then have that vagina go away. McKay out."
Pressing the pillow down over his head, John hunkers down to try and sleep for the next eleven hours. Maybe if they're lucky, the next planet will have a memory-wiping device they want to trade.
Afterword
While this story plays with issues of gender and embodiment, it wasn't written to address the real experiences of intersex and transgendered people. Their struggles are not as easily resolved as those of the characters in this story.
Because the bodies of intersex people do not match medical norms of maleness and females -- norms that are in some ways quite arbitrary -- they are often subjected to a battery of medical efforts to bring them into conformity. These interventions can include aggressive hormone treatment and genital surgery beginning in infancy, often carried out in the absence of health risks, to the detriment of adult sexual functioning, and without the understanding or consent of the person. Activists like Cheryl Chase of the Intersex Society of North America are working to end unnecessary medical intervention on intersex infants and helping intersex individuals grow up with understanding, without shame, and with the right to determine their own identities and bodies.
While intersex people have their natural bodies taken from them, transgendered people are often held hostage by their bodies and by what legal, medical, social, and cultural systems say those bodies mean. Moving beyond the gender they were assigned at birth means passing through an endless series of gatekeepers: clerks, judges, psychiatrists, and physicians, to name a few. Transpeople are frequently denied the rights to have their gender identities recognized on legal documents, to receive equal work for equal pay, to safely and affordably make physical changes to their bodies (or to stop short of full gender reassignment if they do), to be guardians of their children when custody battles occur, and to live with safety, respect, and the full protection of the law. The National Center for Transgendered Equality believes we can do better, and so do I.
These may not seem like women's issues, but the technologies of power that have long defined women by our bodies are the same as those that seek to control the bodies and identities of transgendered and intersex people. Both of these organizations support all kinds of women too often marginalized, ignored, or exiled by more traditional women-centered groups -- as well as all kinds of men, and people who identify as both, or neither, or whose identities are too fluid and complicated to be easily named. Empowering women doesn't mean strengthening walls -- it means building bridges.
14 Valentines: Body Image