From the Depths (2/2)
PART ONE
4. Cabbages and Kings
It was fine that Rodney was temporarily grounded. Perfectly fine. John was able to carry on with missions without him. No problem. In fact, it was almost easier. He liked Zelenka. Zelenka’s fear was genuine. He jumped every time he saw his own shadow, but at least he didn’t complain constantly - his feet weren’t falling off; he wasn’t about to keel over from heat stroke; he wouldn’t die a horrible death from every generously offered local dish. Another bonus - John was learning Czech, which pissed Rodney off no end.
The problem wasn’t even that Rodney was temporarily preoccupied with the workings of the city. Not at all. The problem was that Rodney wasn’t even around for John to rub the whole Czech thing in his face. Every spare moment was spent with Ary’l - tours of the desalinization plants, long walks on the east pier, trips to the mainland to play games with the Athosians. And they were probably fucking too. And it would be hard to get a statutory rape trial in a galaxy where you were lucky to survive past fifty.
But then Rodney was strolling over to John’s table, little redheaded brat in tow.
“Hey, Sheppard,” Rodney wrung his hands. “You wouldn’t mind doing me a favor, right?”
“Well, at least this time you’re actually asking, McKay.” He sighed. “What is it?”
“Um . . . you see, I’ve got . . .” he gestured vaguely towards Ary’l. “And today I have to do ZedPM maintenance. Very, very delicate work. We’re actually going to use a clean room. I can’t exactly have her around, you understand.”
The girl pouted. Tough.
“Well, she’ll just have to go a day without your divine presence, I guess,” John remarked with a shrug.
“Yes, but, I . . . I was hoping that you might take her. I don’t want her to be lonely, you know? And I think . . . well, you’d take good care of her, wouldn’t you?”
Rodney’s eyes sparkled when he asked. He trusted John. And that meant something. Didn’t it?
“Okay. But you owe me.”
“Owe you what?”
John shrugged. “Something. To be specified later.”
Rodney frowned, considering. “As long as it’s within reason . . . and not highly embarrassing . . . and doesn’t involve citrus . . . and won’t make Elizabeth ration my coffee again and . . .”
“I won’t be too cruel. Trust me.”
Rodney smiled weakly. “All right then. But she’d better come back unharmed.”
“Of course she will.”
“And I don’t mean John Sheppard ‘It’s only a missing lung’ unharmed, either.”
“I’ll keep her safe, okay?” It wasn’t as though John would purposely put the girl in danger. He took good care of his people - even if they were screechy little leeches that were all wrong for his best friend.
“Fine. Good. Um . . . thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He nodded to the girl. “Come on.”
She looked longingly at Rodney then nodded and followed.
“Now, we’re going to head out to the Jumper Bay, okay? I’m sure Rodney has taken you there before. I have to go on a little mission, but um . . . I guess you can come along. Nothing dangerous, just stay quiet and out of the way.”
The girl nodded.
“Good.”
They walked in silence for the next five seconds before John realized that he really wasn’t so good at the whole awkward silences thing. Even with Ronon he liked to keep up the conversation. He didn’t think the big guy minded too much.
“So . . . uh . . . do you like Atlantis?”
She nodded.
“Me too. So you like hanging out with Rodney, huh?”
Another nod.
John too. “He doesn’t get annoying sometimes though - you know when he insults your intelligence, won’t shut up when the natives start looking insulted, complains and complains and pretty much is an overall angry egotistical know-it-all?”
Ary’l just shook her head disapprovingly.
“He doesn’t annoy you even the tiniest bit?”
She scowled. Liar. John wasn’t the most patient person, that he knew, but come on. Rodney annoyed everyone at some point. Elizabeth was a diplomat trained not to flinch no matter what the negotiation, Teyla pretty much the most patient person in the history of mankind, but they still told him to shove it. Even Rodney’s devoted little Japanese fangirl got testy with him every once in a while. It was physically impossible not to be annoyed by the man at some point in time.
John glared. “That’s nice. So, what do you like to do when you’re not following Rodney around?”
She put her palms together and pretended like she was going to sleep. Great, so Rodney couldn’t even get that this girl was some sort of deranged stalker.
“And why him anyhow?”
Here came the frantic hand motions yet again.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
The girl sighed. Resigned.
It actually made John feel vaguely sorry for her. He pulled her into a one-armed embrace. “Hey, don’t worry about it. We’ll figure something out. Maybe if you were willing to spend a couple of Rodney-free hours a day you could head over to the writing classes on the mainland.”
The girl frowned.
Did she not know what writing was? “You know, the pictures with the messages?”
She brightened, nodding.
“Hey, look, I’ve got to take my buddy Erickson for a little adventure, but we can drop you on the mainland afterwards. Would you like that?”
She smiled at him. Good. He and Rodney might actually get a few hours brat-free time to spend alone.
<<<>>>
John probably could’ve anticipated the slap on the ass and the bouncing excited energy that was Erickson preparing for an underwater mission, but really, wasn’t it better as a surprise?
“You don’t understand, Mate. I’ve been working on this whale project for months. And Dr. McKay says they’re intelligent. I mean, crickey, have you seen those things? 200 tons, easy. There’s so much we don’t know about this ocean, Johno. I can’t believe . . . Hey, who’s this, eh? Aren’t ya gonna introduce me, Mate?”
“Sorry. Um, Erickson, this is Ary’l. Ary’l, this is Erickson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss. You can call me Rick, all right?”
“Actually, she can’t call you anything. She’s mute.”
Ary’l shrugged apologetically.
“Well, that’s too bad. I’m sure such a pretty girl such as yourself would have a lot of stories to tell.”
Not even a blush. The kid must’ve been truly infatuated with Rodney.
“Are you ready for an amazing adventure, Ary’l?” Erikson continued. “You’re in for quite a treat. You know, Dad-o used to always say that you can never imagine what treasures you’ll find down in the depths. Do you think we’ll find a treasure today?”
Ary’l shook her head.
“Hey, do you want to go get some water and supplies for us from the cargo area while Rick and I start loading the equipment?”
The second she was out of sight, John turned to Erickson. “She’s at least in her late teens, not six.”
Erickson shrugged. “I had all brothers. And never paid much attention to girls.”
“Yeah, well, she’s Rodney’s girlfriend, so don’t . . .”
“I thought you said she was fifteen.”
“Beckett said that she’s probably older than that.”
“Yes, but what kind of desperate do you have to be to date an approximately-fifteen-year-old who can’t talk?”
John shrugged. “Rodney desperate.”
“Oh . . . oh, Johno, I didn’t mean that. Hey, I know it’s no consolation, but if you ever feel like a consolation fuck, you know who to call, right?” Erickson rounded it out with a wholly unsubtle ass-grab and a wink.
“Thanks, but . . .” John felt a small hand pulling at his arm. “What?”
Ary’l was standing there holding a turkey sandwich MRE.
“Hey, how’d you know I liked these?”
‘
Ary’l moved her hands like talking lips.
“Rodney told you?”
She nodded. Maybe she wasn’t that bad after all.
<<<>>>
“Left, Johno, left. See that there?”
“Yes, Erickson, I see the sixty foot whale, thanks.”
“Sorry, mate, I can’t help but be a little excited. Hey, look, it’s heading over here!”
“Well, they did seem pretty friendly when we were looking for Rodney. Maybe she wants to play.”
The whale moved closer, a big blue shape floating through the water. “Damn, that’s big.”
“Tell me about it, Johno. Hey, do you get measurements on this thing?”
The HUD flashed up, but John was distracted by ‘Sea Lassie’, as he’d come to think of the whales that came to Rodney’s rescue. “Not to be a party pooper or anything, but isn’t this a little too close?”
“Relax, mate. There’s not a single known species of whale that are violent. Something that size doesn’t need to fight you. And if you’re thinking of them, killer whales are technically Orcas, don’t sweat it . . .”
John couldn’t help moving the controls a bit away from ‘Lassie.’ “Yes, but before coming to Pegasus there were no known species of life-sucking immortal insects either.”
“Point. But look, she’s a friendly one. Tell him, kiddo . . .” Erickson turned around at that. “Hey, Johno, where’d she go?”
John was a little preoccupied with the sea beast closing in on them, thank you very much. “Uh . . . maybe she’s scared. Go get her.”
A soft sort of keen came from the back of the Jumper.
“Hey, kid, nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a big ‘ole whale. Not gonna hurt us. See?”
That was looking less and less likely the closer the whale creature got. John’s instincts were screaming at him to evade, but the Jumper wasn’t half as maneuverable under water as it was even in atmosphere, not to mention space. He dove left, but so did ‘Lassie.’ There was no way he was going to make this. “Grab onto something! She’s gonna ram us.”
The keening escalated to a piercing scream. John risked a look over his shoulder to find Erickson crouched over Ary’l, holding fast to the back bench. And then he was flying forward into the dash, getting his hands up just fast enough for what would be a truly nasty bruise tomorrow, if they made it to tomorrow. God, Rodney was going to kill him. Maybe he’d except forgiveness as the unspecified favor.
Speaking of which . . .
“Your boy said they were friendly!” Erickson shouted.
“You said they were friendly!” John shouted back, gripping the controls and sending them spinning downwards towards the ocean floor. They were in the shallows now. He was picking up some large rock formations down there. Erickson probably knew how they got there.
“Well, maybe he misinterpreted them preparing to eat him as them calling attention to his ship.”
“Maybe.” God, John wished Rodney’s stupid jailbait would just shut the fuck up.
John snuck a peek at the HUD. He was pushing the engines to their limits, but ‘Lassie’ was still closing. He wondered if drones would fire underwater.
Before he knew it, a blast of golden light was firing out into the darkness, speeding towards the leviathan.
“Nooooooo!” The screaming broke John’s concentration and the drone veered off, swirling off into the distance.
John spun around. She could speak? Now she was struggling past Erickson and launching herself at John. What the hell?
“You can’t kill them, Johno. Who knows what kind of ecological function . . .”
Erickson trailed off as Ary’l dove for the radio activation link on the copilot’s seat.
“Hey, stop that!”
But she ignored him, emitting a series of screeches so high that John was tempted to let go of the controls to cover his ears.
“What does she bloody think she’s doing?”
“I don’t know!” ‘Lassie’ was closing fast. There was no way they were going to make this.
John braced himself as hard as he could against the flight controls. This was not how he wanted to die. It wasn’t how he was going to die - not breaking a promise to Rodney.
The monster closed in, mouth open and . . .
They weren’t dead. Why weren’t they dead?
“Why aren’t we dead?” Erickson asked. Thanks for the obvious, buddy.
“’I don’t . . .” but then, looking over at Ary’l, screeching madly into the speakers, his eyes widened. “She’s communicating with them.”
Erickson turned in surprise. “No way she is, mate. We’ve been working on a database, but that was the primary reason for this expedition - to gather more samples. The only way she’d know it was if she . . .”
Oh my God. “How do we know she’s not?”
“We don’t, I guess. You said that Beckett couldn’t explain why she can’t speak. Do you think it might be because she’s actually . . .”
“One of them, yeah. We did find her on the beach.”
They shared a look as the whale sped off into the blue, giving them just a little nudge with its flipper on the way out.
Rodney was dating a whale. It would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.
John looked over at the girl. She was sitting slumped in the co-pilot’s chair playing idly with a necklace that Teyla had apparently given her.
“Buck up, kiddo,” Erickson said, grabbing her shoulder comfortingly. “Give me and the linguists some more audio samples and we might be able to get you up and talking. Then you’ll be able to tell the Doc how much you love him.”
She perked up at that, standing and giving Erickson a hug before turning to John. Her eyes were luminescent, her thin frame soft up against him with an embrace. She was beautiful. Rodney’d probably fall in love with her the first word that came out of her perfect little mouth.
5. Sea Change
“Oh, there you are!” Rodney said, as though he’d just found John out for a walk in the park, not deep in the bowels of the city trying out his skateboard in what appeared to be an old abandoned dry-dock.
“Here I am,” John replied as casually as he could. It wasn’t as though he’d been avoiding Rodney, precisely. It was more like Rodney had been busy with his new walking-talking-Barbie-blow-up ex-whale and John was just being nice and giving them their space.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Have not.” It was an automatic response. They both knew it hadn’t been like this since Doranda.
“Yes, and you’re out alone doing a recklessly dangerous activity in one of the off-limits areas of the city for the family fun.”
Hey! It wasn’t as though skateboarding was that dangerous. And besides, he liked this place - all the derelict old ships towering like giants with the old rusted rigging hanging off them like skeletons. And all the ramps and repair platforms made for a great skate park. But the Marines had set up an official obstacle course on the west pier, and he really would have been safer there.
“Fine. Maybe I have been. A little. But you have ‘Lassie’ to keep you company.”
Rodney sighed, sliding down the wall next to John. “It’s not all it's cracked up to be. To tell you the truth, I liked her better when she was mute.”
“Nothing to talk about?”
Rodney huffed out a sigh, rolling his eyes. “I wish.” He pulled out a powerbar, unwrapped it and took a big bite in five seconds flat. “I mean, she worships the ground I walk on.”
“I thought that was a quality you were looking for in a woman.” It had sure seemed like it with Allina and with Katie. “Unless you mean literally. You don’t mean literally, do you?”
Rodney waved the powerbar at him. “No, of course not. And I don’t like women who worship me. Where did you get that idea? I’m not going to turn down a beautiful woman throwing herself at my feet, of course. Hello, genius here. But my ideal is Samantha Carter.” He sighed dazedly, probably imagining her. “Smart, sexy, feisty, not afraid to call me on anything.”
John was smart, wasn’t he? And sexy and feisty and not afraid to tell Rodney he was being an ass.
“So you’re not going to date her?”
“Date her? She’s like fifteen!”
“I could’ve told you that before.”
“No, no, Beckett said that there was no way to determine her real age and she seemed so wise - mature, reserved, you know?” It seemed to John as though it would be easy to seem reserved if one couldn’t talk. But he wasn’t about to point that out.
“But she’s not.”
“God, no. All she wants to talk about is how brilliant I am, which I don’t really need spelled out for me.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Rodney glared. “And she does understand a lot of the things I’m doing - just not enough to be helpful in any way. But if she’s not fawning then she’s asking how I feel about babies and monogamy and who is Samantha Carter and are you and that Australian biologist together and . . . are you, by the way? Because she seems pretty certain.”
John sighed. She’d overheard them. And while he could lie, he wasn’t going to do that - not to Rodney. “We were fuck-buddies for a while. No big deal.”
“Oh.” Rodney sounded really surprised - ‘oh my god, we’re all alive’ surprised, even. “I um . . . you never told me you were . . . um . . .” he waved the powerbar again. “You know.”
John shrugged. “Never came up. It doesn’t bother you, does it?” He cringed. The last time he’d come out to someone he cared about he’d walked away with a black eye and threat to request transfer out of the squadron as soon as possible.
“Are you kidding?” Rodney asked, standing abruptly, using one of the nearby consoles to pull himself up. “Do you really think I’m that . . .”
There was a loud clanging. Rodney stopped, looking at John, frightened.
“What’d you touch?” John was on his feet just in time to be slammed back to the floor as one of the large circular designs lining the wall spiraled open and a fast jet of water came shooting out.
The water was cold, the bubbles from the pressure swirling so that John could barely see anything at all. He was pushed further turned the center of the room in second, tumbling into old abandoned boxes of tools, ramps, the hulls of the Ancient sailing ships. His lungs where burning by the time he got far enough away from the jets to surface, spluttering and forcing his now-bruised body to tread water. That made three near drowning events in the past month for him and Rodney. He was seriously considering swearing off all things water related. Speaking of which, where was . . .
John looked around frantically. He didn’t hear any terrified shrieks or scathing complaints. Shit! Where was the man?!
John immediately dove back under. The water was cold and clear, but with all of the ships and derbies floating in this huge bay, Rodney could be anywhere. John swam further in the direction of the area they had been in, scanning around for the blue of Rodney’s science uniform.
“Come on, come on,” he urged as he surfaced, swimming around panels and toolkits and bolts. Where could he have gotten too?
It was getting harder to see the closer he got to the jets. Harder to swim too. He was already tiring. But then he saw something: a speck of blue pressed up against the dark hull of the ship closest to the jet they had been sitting practically against. It had to be Rodney.
John swam forward, his muscles and his lungs burning. Rodney was pressed up against the hull, trapped there the way John kayaking instructor had always warned him about the support beams on bridges. Fuck. John could barely swim into the invisible force of the jet’s stream.
Rodney’s body was limp, almost lifeless as John was forced towards him. Only a quick kick-off that almost crippled his knee was enough to save him from the same fate. He was lucky that he’d managed to grab Rodney by his belt loop on the way past, yanking with all his might until Rodney scraped towards him, away from the hull, and they were blasting off, pushed calmly away by the entering water.
It was seconds before John stopped being dazed enough to kick up and towards the surface, getting a solid stroke beneath him and dragging Rodney’s limp body towards the nearest vessel. The water level had risen enough so that John could latch on to the loading steps on the side, dragging Rodney up and onto a platform.
“Goddamnit!” Rodney wasn’t breathing, his lips still and blue. John clasped his hands together, pushing on Rodney’s diaphragm and hopefully forcing the water out of his lungs. Water spilled out of Rodney’s mouth involuntarily and John tilted his head back and breathed for him, simultaneously pushing his fingers to his friend’s neck and checking for a pulse.
It was there - weak, but steady. That meant Rodney hadn’t been deprived of oxygen that long. John knew the man had an incredible lung capacity.
More rescue breathing - Rodney’s lips cold, sliding against his, almost reminding him of that first kiss in the jumper. “Rodney. Shit, Rodney, please!” John gasped between breaths. He’d had enough of his best friend almost drowning. Where were insane sea stalkers when he needed them?
“Rodney, I swear to god, if you . . .”
And then Rodney was coughing, water spilling out of him with each relieved choke. John yanked him up and forward, patting his back in encouragement. “It’s okay, buddy, I got ya. Just cough it all out.”
Rodney nodded weakly into John’s shoulder, sniffling a little and shivering.
A minute later, when the coughing had finally quelled, Rodney’s sea blue eyes met John’s, worried and bewildered. Then his hand came up to his lips, brushing softly against them as he studied John’s. “You kissed me.”
John made a show of snorting, even when he was panicking on the inside. “It’s called Rescue Breathing. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
But Rodney still looked shocked - perhaps even a little awed. “No. Before. I kissed you. And you kissed me back.”
Shit. He remembered. John’s spirits fell. These past weeks, all he wanted was for Rodney to remember, but now that he did, John wanted nothing more than to run away. Whatever Rodney’s motivations had been the first time, this whole whale-woman debacle was nothing more than evidence that Rodney didn’t want a repeat performance.
Then a smile bloomed, slow and lovely, across Rodney’s features. “You kissed me back.”
John smiled shyly, bewildered and shaking and cold, even as Rodney’s hand was warm against the nape of his neck, guiding him down for a gentle kiss. John nibbled on Rodney’s lower lip, dipping his tongue in to explore Rodney’s mouth. It was a salty kiss, tasting of sea and waves and the depths of the vast ocean that surrounded them, but Rodney’s mouth was warm and there was a sweetness lurking beneath it all that John couldn’t ignore.
The kiss would have turned fiery if Rodney didn’t pull back to choke out another cough. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” John meant it. All of it was okay - right down to the inter-species pedophilia. He pulled Rodney tighter into him, both of them shivering with cold and arousal. It would all be okay now.
6. Whales Weep Not
The chime on the door was loud. John groaned, pushing himself up and out of bed. His knee twinged as he put pressure on it, getting up and limping over to the pile of clothes on the floor and grabbing his sweat pants. “Coming.”
Rodney was snoring, spread-eagled across nearly the whole bed, and while John missed his warmth almost immediately, it was good for his stiff muscles to get moving. He tapped the intercom. “Who is it?”
He figured if it was Lorne or one of his marines he could just talk to them out in the hallway. They weren’t allowed to question him. Though it was probably Elizabeth or Teyla anyhow, and he really didn’t mind if they found out. Elizabeth had drunkenly expressed her disapproval of DADT at the harvest festival a year back, and Teyla, well, she accepted the Eravian ritual of anointing one’s entire body with beetle dung and then fucking oneself on a sea cucumber without a blink, so he figured she wasn’t going to be the judgmental type.
But John wasn’t expecting the cool mechanical voice of the voice translation device linguists had presented Rodney’s biggest fan.
“Could I come in, John?” the voice asked.
“Um . . .” He didn’t really want her to catch up to them like this, but then again he always preferred quick and to the point - like ripping a band-aid off. “Come on in.”
The door slid open, revealing Ary’l standing there. She was wearing a flowing cream-white dress, fire-red hair swept back into a swirling bun. She didn’t seem surprised to see Rodney snoring happily away in John’s bed. If anything, she looked resigned.
“So this is how it must be?” The voice synthesizer was cold, but her eyes betrayed the emotion beneath.
“I’m sorry.” John felt bad, truly he did, but he couldn’t control who he loved anymore than Rodney could control not loving her.
“Don’t be. It was foolish of me to have come here. The procedure is forbidden for a reason.”
“Procedure?” John pulled her back out into the corridor and then onto the small balcony just across the hall from his room.
“He did not tell you?” she cocked her head to the side. Her eyes truly were beautiful in the morning light.
John shook his head.
“The Ancients, as you call them, created a machine so that we might see the world as they did. It is a transfer of consciousness process that they borrowed from some of their allies. A clone is created from one of the many biological profiles stored in the database and the consciousness is transferred while the original body hibernates. I came here to be with Rodney. I listened to his radio waves. I watched him and I fell in love with him.”
“You’re the one who saved him before. You circled him until I saw?”
She nodded. So that’s what all of the hand motions had been about. “But that was not enough.”
“It generally isn’t.” John thought back to his father, to Josh and that look of anger on his face before they parted with a solid beating and promises to never see each other again.
“I sacrificed everything for him. And yet I am not the one he loves.”
She certainly had the melodrama of a fifteen-year-old. “What exactly do you mean by ‘everything?’”
She sighed. “My old body has been too long in hibernation. I cannot go back. That is why she was warning me - the one who attacked us.”
“Why didn’t you go back?” John cringed. Even though he knew they often were, he didn’t want be believe sacrifices could be in vain. He thought back to the soul sucking heat of the desert, shots and crashes and pleas for help and later a court marshal for the rescue that never happened, more stark and empty than even that goddamned wasteland.
“Use of the machine is forbidden. Men are beautiful but careless. Your souls are noble, noble enough for the Wraith to feed.”
Oh. John supposed that if he too could hide under the sea to protect himself from the Wraith, he might do it. “I could see why you might want to stay down there.”
“Not just want to. The punishment for trespass of the law is servitude, and the administrator of justice is harsh. Not even my status could save me from her punishment.”
“But why would you risk it?” Even as close as he felt to Rodney, John hadn’t even had the courage to tell him, let alone break the law and give up his entire life for the chance to be with him.
“I fell in love. What else was I supposed to do?”
John shook his head. “I don’t know, wait for someone else to come along?”
She smiled softly at that, nodding towards the door to John’s quarters. “Is that what you would do? He told me about your rules. You know the possible consequences of your own actions.”
John nodded, looking out across the ocean, enjoying the sea breeze. He hoped that it wouldn’t try to kill him again today. “I guess you’re right.” She was much more perceptive than Rodney seemed to give her credit for. “How’d you get to be so damned wise?”
She shrugged. “Not wise enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“You promise never to tell him?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“My body is deteriorating. It needs . . . if he were to love me, to share himself with me completely, then I could live until the end of his life.”
“What do you mean by share himself completely?” The girl seriously needed to stop it with all the euphemisms.
“Genetic donation.”
“You mean . . .”
“Sex.”
“Well, you could . . . I mean, we can talk to Beckett. He can figure something out. Hey, you’re a beautiful girl. Hang out around here and I’m sure you’ll find something. If it’s between that and dying, I would even . . .”
“No.” She was firm. “My kind . . . we fall in love but once.”
<<<>>>
John kept his word. He didn’t tell Rodney, even though he and Carson spent a fair amount of time in the lab, trying to arrange blood transfusions, sperm donations, anything they could think of.
But nothing seemed to work.
“Bastards” Carson grumbled. "It’s as though they constructed the machine specifically to do this. No stored samples, no blood transfusion. Nothing!”
John shrugged. “Maybe they did. It was at the height of the war with the Wraith - maybe they wanted to keep their experiments on a very short leash.”
“Or maybe they just wanted to have sex all the bloody time.”
“That too.”
Carson sighed, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I hate to say this, but we might have to face the possibility that there’s nothing we can do about this. If you can’t convince her, I’m not liking our options.”
John nodded. “I’ll try. Again.”
<<<>>>
Maybe she wouldn’t consent to anyone else, but of course she’d agree if it were Rodney, right? She was in love with him, after all. And being in love with Rodney, like heroin, was pretty addictive. He didn’t think she’d given it up. So, all he had to do was convince Rodney to go with her.
Beside him, Rodney grumbled, his grip tightening around John’s waist. He looked so peaceful in his sleep, still expressive, but tension-free. John wasn’t so romantic as to stay up and watch him sleep - Ary’l probably would, though. But not wanting to watch a guy sleep didn’t mean that he didn’t enjoy the secretive looks, the new innuendo added to their banter, the amazing sex. It would be hard giving all of this up, but maybe having had it was good enough.
John slipped out of bed and back to his own quarters. Now what would make Rodney break up with him? Actually, what would make him break up with someone?
‘Ah-ha!’ John grabbed a duffle and his laundry bag.
<<<>>>
Three days later, Rodney noticed the mess and determined that this was John’s way of moving in with him. John would’ve objected, but that was pretty hard to do with someone’s mouth wrapped around your cock.
John needed another plan. He’d had plenty of women (and men) break up with him, but normally they did it because he was too ‘emotionally detached’ or unwilling to make sacrifices or commitments for them. But he wasn’t capable of being emotionally detached from Rodney. Hell, he’d lasted a measly two weeks after Doranda, and it’d been two of the hardest weeks of his life. Sacrifices, too - it was impossible to claim that when you routinely risked your life for someone. And as far as commitments went, he’d already fucked that one up by apparently moving in with Rodney.
Maybe he should just break up with the guy himself.
<<<>>>
A week later, Ary’l and John were playing ping-pong in the rec room, when Rodney stumbled in, eyes wilted and tired, stinking of alcohol and with the edges of his shirt singed.
He sunk to his knees in front of John, wrapping his arms around John’s waist and pressing a runny nose into the hem of his favorite t-shirt. “I’m so sorry, John. Whatever I did, I didn’t mean it. I love you. I’m so sorry. Please, don’t leave me. Please.”
Ary’l, and pretty much everyone in the rec room (Marines included) shot John a dirty look. There was no way he couldn’t lift Rodney up, plant a kiss on his forehead and lead him back to their quarters to sleep it off.
Strike two.
<<<>>>
Ary’l was getting worse and worse by the day. Her hair was thinning, much of its brilliant red sheen lost. She was slim before, but it was verging on sickly - emaciated, even. But she continued, unafraid. John had even gotten used to her - having dinner with them in the mess, telling him all about the latest gossip (of which she knew all), excited about the things she was learning in the school on the mainland. One of the young Athosian hunters had even asked her out on the date, nervously asking John his advice the last time he’d flown a supply run out there. But after a romantic picnic on the bluffs overlooking the sea, she’d turned him down. John just couldn’t understand it.
“Ary’l is doing nicely,” Rodney commented, sighing into the pillows as John massaged his shoulders - they’d been tied up by hostile natives again today. John was seriously considering growing himself some dreads so that he could conceal weapons as well as Ronon. “Though her skills with harmonic frequencies would be better spent working with Miko on the deep space sensors than studying Athosian history out in Hicksville. Elizabeth’s against it, of course, but I think that maybe if we . . . I . . . if I adopted her, then Elizabeth would have to respect my educational decisions and . . .”
John didn’t hear the rest of Rodney’s rant. Part of him thrilled at Rodney’s Freudian ‘we’ but the other part was panicking. If Rodney was thinking of her as more of a daughter, there was no way that he was going to . . . unless Rodney was single and decided that marrying her would be the best way to gain control over her educational decisions.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
<<<>>>
John looked down at his watch. Rodney had promised to be here in two minutes.
“Is there something you must attend to, John?” Teyla asked, curiously. “We may finish early if you have other engagements.”
John looked up, shocked. “No. No, everything’s fine, Teyla. I just . . . let me go get a drink. You’re pushing me pretty damned hard today.”
“It would not be so hard if you were to practice, Colonel.”
“Yeah, yeah,” John waved her off, staggering over to his gym bag and checking the LSD he’d stashed there. There was a figure just down the hall and approaching fast. Good, just in time.
John stood up, taking a deep breath and stepping towards Teyla. “You know, I’ve never told you how attracted I am to you.”
“John?” Teyla stepped back as John stepped forward.
“I care about you, Teyla. I don’t know what I would . . .”
John didn’t see the stick coming. The next thing he knew, he was curled up in a ball on the floor, stars in his eyes.
“Oh . . . I thought you’d be done by now,” Rodney was saying, coming in, of course, just a second too late.
“Call Doctor Beckett, Rodney. I am afraid that John may have had a relapse.”
<<<>>>
“I’ve done every test I could think of, Rodney. His viral count is the same as it’s been for the past several months and the scans aren’t picking up anything unusual. My best guess would be stress, but I’ll run the bloodwork again just to be sure.”
“I’m fine! I swear, I wasn’t under the influence of anything. I just felt like . . .” John began protesting.
“You are not ‘fine,’” Teyla admonished. “When you are cured you will look back on this and understand.”
“But, he said my virus count was . . .”
“Just shut up and let the sheep-loving quack cure you, okay?” Rodney said with an exasperated sigh.
<<<>>>
In the end, Carson attributed the whole thing to low potassium levels, or something equally benign. Of course that didn’t stop Elizabeth from suspending him from active duty and Teyla and Rodney mothering him nearly to death.
John was getting desperate. What was the number one most annoying thing anyone in a relationship had ever done to him?
Rodney came tumbling through the door, already halfway through a rant about how a Cabbage Patch doll and a Dustbuster would probably get more done than Simpson and Kavanagh when John strode resolutely over to the mirror and asked, “Does this shirt make me look fat?”
Rodney looked from John to the mirror and back again then walked over, grabbed John’s wrist and dragged him out the door.
<<<>>>
“Fear of commitment is normal, John,” Heightmeyer said in way that John was sure she thought was reassuring, “the military isn’t an organization that encourages attachment - constant moves, the possibility of death, the objectification of targets.”
“I’m not afraid of commitment,” John said stubbornly. Well, maybe he was a little bit, but he was a guy, wasn’t he supposed to freak out about that?
“And I know that even after Dr. Weir negotiated the compromise on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ with the SGC you might still feel as though being in an openly homosexual relationship might end up in trouble, but sometimes we have to take risks. Everyone is afraid of getting hurt, John. But many people choose to fall in love anyway.”
John thought of Ary’l, leaving the calm wash of the surf and the blue, blue ocean. He thought about dreams and ambitions and promises people made but could never keep - his mom kissing his forehead when she thought he was asleep before slipping out in the middle of the night, Phillip Hardy and how he’d promised John that they’d stay in touch, no matter what, his drill sergeant during basic, screaming that it wasn’t a one man service, that they didn’t leave men behind.
“Sometimes,” he whispered, “those kinds of sacrifices aren’t worth it.”
Kate cocked her head to the side, making another note on the goddamned chart she’d been writing in all day. “What kind of sacrifices are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying, what if the person doesn’t return those feelings? What if you make sacrifices for them and they leave you hanging out to dry? You can’t control who loves you. It’s childish to think that if you love someone enough they’ll have to want you back.” Why couldn’t she have just stayed in the ocean where she belonged?
Kate frowned. “You don’t think that Rodney loves you?”
“No, he loves me. That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point, John? I know that there’s something in all this that you aren’t telling me.”
John sighed. Doctor-patient confidentiality. “It’s Ary’l. She’ll die if she can’t have a constant infusion of human genetic material - in the form of sperm. It’s screwed up, but the Ancients wanted it that way.”
“And you trying to destroy your relationship with Rodney is going to stop this?”
“She won’t take anybody else. It has to be Rodney and he won’t - not as long as he’s with me.”
“So you think that if Rodney breaks up with you, he’ll turn immediately to her?”
“No. He thinks of her like a kid. But she’s beautiful. She can convince him.”
“And you think she’ll want to be with him if she knows that he’s in love with you?”
“It’s her life. She has to value that more than the worry that it’s not real.”
“But you yourself said that she’s willing to die before she’ll accept anyone other than Rodney. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that she’d want Rodney to feel the same way she does?”
“No, but . . . I can’t let her throw her life away because she wants to find Prince Charming.”
“But it’s her choice, John. And it's Rodney’s choice to be with you.”
“But . . .”
“If you and Rodney were to break up right now, do you really think that would save her from her own choices?”
“No.”
“If you don’t believe in making sacrifices for the possibility of your own happiness, why do you keep trying to do it for not even a chance of other people’s happiness?”
John sighed. “I don’t know.”
<<<>>>
When John got home, head perfectly shrunk and so tired his bones creaked, Rodney was waiting there - the lights dimmed, the smell of home cooked steak wafting up from a covered plate on the table.
John raised his eyebrows. “A candlelight dinner?” He and Rodney weren’t really into these sorts of romantic, lovey-dovey things.
“Just sit down and enjoy the steak,” Rodney admonished. “And oh, I have wine. Elizabeth says it’s a good bottle.”
Rodney handed it over. John had no idea what a good wine even looked like, but it was dated back to the nineteen seventies and he seemed to remember that old was good, so he picked it up and grabbed the corkscrew.
“How was work?” John asked.
“Terrible. Zelenka looks all nice and cuddly, but I know he’s just a power-hungry weasel beneath all that. And Simpson and Kavanagh were at it again today. Do I look like a babysitter? Have some steak. It’s delicious.”
“What about your salad?”
Rodney waved him away. “I like to eat it in the middle, that way I can keep the taste out of my mouth for as long as possible. Endive should have its own food group - vegetarian vegetable torture.”
“If you hate it, why’d you bother?”
“Oh, Katie volunteered to do the cooking. You know, I can build a nuclear bomb from the most unsophisticated, most irradiated materials known to man on three days with no sleep, but a simple thing like marinating a slice of meat escapes me? Try the steak.”
John shrugged. He liked salad, but he dug into his steak anyway. “Wow, this is great. Is it real?”
“Yep, fresh from a real dead cow carcass. Ronon wanted me to go out and kill some ceremonial blah-blah with him on a planet with a man-eating crickets or some nonsense.”
John frowned. “Wait . . . you got Elizabeth and Ronon and your ex-girlfriend together to cook a dinner for me?”
Rodney rolled his eyes, huffing his ‘put-upon’ huff and standing. “I was going to wait until after dinner, but if you’re going to keep asking away like Oprah on steroids, then I’m going to have to do it early.”
Rodney grabbed something from off the dresser and walked over to John’s chair. John leaned back and away from him. Whatever Rodney and company were conspiring, it couldn’t be good.
Rodney looked at the floor. “Teyla says that in Pegasus people don’t kneel and my knees have been giving me problems recently - I have a history of arthritis in my family,” Rodney pronounced, thrusting a small black box into John’s hands. “So, what do you think?”
“I haven’t opened it yet,” John said, though it was pretty obvious what was inside. But as long as he didn’t open it, then he wouldn’t know for certain and it would be like the Heisenberg Uncertainty proposal and he’d never have to commit to a decision and . . .
“Fine, be a smart ass about it. I’m trying to ask you to marry me, will you just cooperate already?”
John gulped, hands shaking as he opened the box. The ring was simple - a silver band that looked almost knotted. “You can’t actually wear it until the wedding, of course, seeing as how we don’t want to have to be burdened with having to wear two rings all the time, so that’s actually the band. I was debating giving you a Playstation instead, but Kate said that a lot of people in unconventional relationships prefer to keep certain traditions as constants.”
“I think I would’ve preferred a Playstation,” John replied, distracted. Rodney really wanted to marry him? They were that serious? Sure, John loved Rodney, probably more than he’d ever love anyone again - more than he thought it was possible to love someone. But that didn’t mean they had to get married. And besides, John wasn’t exactly the marrying type.
Rodney threw up his hands. “See, I tell them that you’re really much easier to please than that, but then there’s all this psychobabble and the whole new random physical insecurities thing and . . .”
John looked up, Rodney was looking worried, babbling. He didn’t want Rodney to worry. He wanted to hug him and say that yes he did love him, yes he would commit, yes everything would be okay. Except it wouldn’t.
“I have to go,” John said, rushing out the door.
<<<>>>
The ocean was dark, angry beneath the grace of the full moon. John didn’t mind it though, not with the stars like teardrops against the dark velvet of the sky.
“You should say ‘yes,’” A mechanical voice said.
John turned, watching Ary’l stalk, barefooted, towards him. In the darkness her hair looked black, her paleness not at all unnatural in the moonlight. “He told you?”
“I’m the one who gave him the idea.” She smiled, sitting down beside him and pillowing her head against his shoulder. He pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her. “I told him that I was sick - that there’s nothing that your Doctor Beckett can do to cure me.”
“But all you have to do is . . .”
She touched her hand to his lips. “No. Rodney realized how little time he might have left and he wants to spend that time with you.” My people have a story. It is very old. It is about a human - a woman. On a planet far away from here, she found a creature, a horrible creature - with pinchers and eyes without pupils and a thick putrid orange belly.” John knew that bug. He’d nearly become one.
“We call those ‘Iratus bugs.’”
“Then you know, instinctually, that that creature is bad, just as she knew. But she feared death. Man had conquered nature and spread life throughout the stars. Death was the last thing she had to fear and this monster, this Kraken, held the promise of the end of death. She experimented and from the unnatural creations she stumbled upon came the scourge that killed many of the humans of this galaxy.”
“The Wraith,” John breathed. Ever since Elizabeth had decoded the Wraith language, John had suspected that they were some Ancient experiment gone wrong, but he’d never before heard confirmation.
“It is why the surface is forbidden,” Ary’l continued. “It is not the sea that separates our people, but our fear of death. I had thought that my desire to save Rodney and my fear that he would die made me different. I thought that it meant that I, too, might live forever, like those who followed the path of the scientist, but I am not that way.”
“Followed the Wraith, you mean? We’re not those people. We’re not promising you eternal life, just a longer one. You can live with me and Rodney, we can take care of you. It’ll all be okay . . . it doesn’t have to be the end . . .”
“No.” At least the icy tone of the voice simulator could covey her finality properly.
<<<>>>
The sun was bright, spilling down through the glass windows and illuminating the Gateroom with that warm light that had made Atlantis feel like home since the moment it rose up from the depths of the sea. Rodney was a ball of nervous energy beside him, pulling repeatedly at the bow on his tux.
“Stop fidgeting, Rodney! Here, let me retie that for you,” Cadman groaned, slapping Rodney’s hands away from his neckline.
John’s own tux felt stiff and awkward on him. Had he gained weight since Carson took his measurements? And was he seriously wondering about his body image? Rodney was right to have sent him to see a shrink.
“If you’re ready, gentlemen,” Elizabeth called from the top of the steps, managing to sound exactly like she did when they inevitably ended up bickering during meetings.
John cleared his throat. “Yeah, we’re ready.” By which John meant that they weren’t even close to ready. First of all, Cadman was still messing with Rodney’s tie, but John was walking down the aisle first, Teyla looking radiant in some sort of velvety Athosian cloak and holding out her arm to walk him down the aisle, and secondly, wasn’t he going to miss breasts like that if he went through with this?
“Take a deep breath, John. You are prepared for this,” Teyla whispered. What was she, psychic? Actually, yes, she was. John scowled, only to get an elbow to the ribs.
All of the smiling faces of pretty much everyone in the expedition passed by him in a blur. It wasn’t too late to back out now, was it? Before he and Rodney were throwing steak knives and arguing over alimony payments?
But then John caught Ary’l’s eye from where she was sitting in a wheelchair next to Ronon, waiting for him. She looked resigned, but happy. He couldn’t give this away when she had risked so much just for the slimmest chance to be in his place.
Elizabeth, too, smiled encouragingly as John went to the best parade rest of his life, palms sweating at his sides. On Elizabeth’s other side, Carson was crying, Radek handing him the red silk handkerchief he’d stuffed in his pocket earlier that day. John fought the urge to mess with his collar as Rodney had until he heard a sudden laugh from the crowed. He turned around to see that Rodney had tripped coming up the steps.
John smiled and faced forward. So what if they might fuck this up magnificently? It might just be worth it.
<<<>>>
John had heard Teyla sing before, around the campfire or to greet the dawn on one of those all-too-familiar mornings when they had survived despite the immense odds against them. But he had never heard her voice so haunting. It was as though it reached inside him, robbing him of all speech, all ability to think and leaving behind the emotion of the song - hope, regret, resignation, but joy, too.
All of the deaths John had seen in the Pegasus Galaxy had been of unnatural causes. This was his first Ring Ceremony.
Rodney’s palm was sweaty in his, the silver of their rings burning hot from absorbing their body heat. But they said they would be here. Maybe it would have been different if Rodney had loved her and not John, but it was her choice.
For Teyla’s people, it was a joyous day when one knew that they were to die, instead of submitting to its inevitability. Even then, John had trouble finding the silver lining.
When Teyla finished, Ary’l smiled brightly up at them. He remembered her wedding gift to them - a simple piece of stone, a marbled mix of blue and green, washed smooth by the slow turning of the sea. When Rodney had asked what it was, she said only that it was something to believe in.
Ary’l had once told him that when her people died, they dissolved into a mist of sea foam, but she herself disappeared in a white blaze of light.
FIN
***Inspired by:
“Grace Under Pressure” and the spectacular acting involved.
The Little Mermaid, both the Disney version (which I love to this day) and much more by the sadder Hans Christian Anderson story.
Reel_sga because I originally came up with the idea as a way to remake ‘Singing in the Rain’ but someone had already claimed that, so I moved away from the original concept a bit.
Mnemosyne, which got me thinking about oceans and such things.
There’s also a little ‘How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days’ in there.