TEAM PLAY: hostage to fortune, "Fore(tune)play"
Title: Fore(tune)play
Author: florahart
Team: Play
Prompt: Hostage to Fortune
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard (mention of Keller)
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: If they can't go back to Pegasus and they're going to be stuck on a nondescript base with substandard equipment and an inadequate coffee supply and idiots in charge, which is totally unacceptable, there had better be something really good waiting on the other... wait. Really? Okay, well in that case. (just don't tell Rodney this is making lemonade, because for one thing, it's really not, and for another, he probably wouldn't appreciate the metaphor).
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**
It was about twenty minutes after they touched down back on Earth--for keeps, evidently, though he was going to work on that if they ever got any fucking equipment--when Rodney had first started cursing the equipment situation.
No, not, like, the burned out or otherwise crumpled, bent, or charred stuff in parts of Atlantis, though that was a mess, but that mess made sense because hello, intergalactic life-sucking space-zombies and machine people chasing the shit out of them for the last five fucking years, and that would put a dent in anyone's hardware despite his and everyone else's best efforts to stay ahead of the fallout.
No, the equipment situation on Earth.
Okay, maybe not twenty minutes. It took longer than that to debark and debrief and decompress and anything else that the military came up with to de-do (decaffeinate! There had been nothing resembling an adequate coffee supply and that was just cruel) besides physically being ferried to land and dragged about a dingy building on a dingy base with a startling amount of underground interconnection amongst the buildings, and introduced to levels of bureaucracy that made Borges's library look straightforward. So yes, maybe not twenty minutes. But really soon, and it felt like twenty minutes which was really what counted. It was actually the first time he found himself in what was apparently to be his new office. Or maybe that ought to be "office," since besides a desk with a computer, there was also a sort of kitchenette that didn't even make sense for one person, so it was probably--and wasn't this an occasion for nightmares--a shared space that he was going to have to work in with unknown others, possibly others who were eating lunch, probably made of lemons and lemonade with lemon zest on the side, because God knew it wasn't like this was where anyone competent or mostly-competent, like, say, Zelenka, had been assigned to do actual work. He'd seen Zelenka's office on the way here.
And then he got a look at the computer itself, and barely restrained himself from storming right back up (down? They'd gone up four and down two and...well, anyway, back there) and demanding something better, only because it had been made clear, really clear, that this situation wasn't up for negotiation, 'given the history of members of the Atlantis expedition upon return to Earth,' which as situations went hadn't been comparable anyway so that was crap. But, Christ. He'd had a better set-up when he was in grade six, which, all right, he hadn't been a really average twelve-year-old (actually, he hadn't been twelve at any point in grade six, since by that age he'd been working on narrowing his university options), but it was still a little insulting because the overall specs of, oh, everything had gone generations even in the civilian non-academic world since then. Entire species, maybe, if he were to extend the metaphor, which, why not, because for one thing it was probably fair considering half the advances seemed geared toward making everything accessible for thirteen-year-olds fixated on spelling things with numbers (definitely worth hoping they were a separate species), and for another it wasn't like he could do anything useful with the absurd unacceptable glorified adding machines in his new "office."
Because obviously after everything that had gone down, it was totally necessary to send a few hundred military personnel in to comb through logs and files, meanwhile banishing the civilians to not only mediocre substandard completely ridiculous labs (kitchens!) on a base with no fucking privileges and even less respect for their integrity because honestly, it wasn't as though any of them would score less than three standard deviations above average on an intelligence test, except maybe Ronon and Teyla but that would probably be because the test itself had cultural expectations and also tested only certain kinds of skills and yes, those were valuable skills and ones he had in spades but he had a hell of a lot of empirical evidence that other skills had serious utility and anyway the point was, they were certainly bright enough to understand nonfuckingdisclosure and besides, it wasn't like wandering out and spouting off about the aforementioned intergalactic life-sucking space zombies wouldn't be a way to get locked up in a soothing untroubling boring asylum without even the glorified adding machine and wow would that be a bad environment for Ronon. Or Teyla. Or anyone, actually. Though considering their probable responses was momentarily diverting.
Only momentarily.
Kicking the desk wasn't going to help. It wasn't, and he knew it, and he still kicked it because what the hell, the guys combing through everything wouldn't even understand half his notes and they'd better not fuck with his backups because really, proto-simian-like keysmashing was more likely to delete data than get it to do anything interesting, and all right, some military personnel weren't completely inept, but Sheppard was as debriefed and decompressed as anyone, and he was pretty sure Carter was working on something diplomatic and--and here was another point on which he and the military held diverging opinions, which only meant that the military was goddamn wrong--ostensibly way more important than playing with the databanks.
So that left him with a throbbing toe, a useless computer, and a really fucking bad attitude. And no idea which way it way to the other room assigned to him as his quarters (which, given everything in here, he suspected were probably outfitted with camouflage bowhunting gear in eighty percent of the space, with a too-narrow bed wedged in between a stuffed twelve-point buck and a singing fish).
Which was why he was in no mood--no mood, Sheppard, he said at least twice--to discuss the apparent idiocy of the former occupant of the office, apparent because the forty or so little scraps of paper with which John was apparently fascinated taped with plain cellophane tape to the entire outer frame of the monitor--had these people ever even heard of flatscreens?--were like some sort of Escher thing, in which every one was more absurd than every other one. Impossible, but then, so were half the things he did in any given week, so that alone wasn't as much of an impediment as one might logically suppose.
Still, Sheppard wouldn't take a hint, and finally while he was uncapping the beer he found himself in the decrepit refrigerator (the kind of shit sold at convenience stores near university campuses, and definitely not worth drinking, but still he could have offered Rodney one and also it pissed him off that he hadn't gone and looked for anything in there because at least he could have been ranting about terrible beer instead of kicking the desk) Rodney tore the entire mess loose--in about a hundred pieces because the tape was old and not at all acid-free because apparently some people liked to destroy the very things they were tacking up for posterity, and the paper tore and Christ, couldn't he even have a nice unbesmirched horrible work surface--and thrust the crumpled pieces at him. They scattered and fluttered, some to the floor, and John, because for a bright man with some really impressive skill-sets he wasn't doing very well at the Grasping Rodney's Mood Sweepstakes, only grinned and scooped them up into a little pile, then started pawing at them with one finger, finding matching halves and reading them out.
"Follow your instincts. They will guide you. That seems like pretty decent advice."
"It's not my instincts that do that, Sheppard. I try to use my brain for decision-making. When I'm forced to follow my instincts I end up getting shot in the ass, or swallowing nasty creatures that try to eat my brain."
John shrugged. "Eh, both of those things turned out all right in the end, didn't they?"
"Brilliantly. I sleep better every night knowing that if I lose my mind, I will take the perfectly rational step of going and waking you up at two o'clock in the morning. Because that'll help."
"Pssht. Could have made worse choices. And your instincts don't always suck. I mean, there was the time with the super-Rodney and the telekinesis, and you did all right with the whole saying--"
"Whatever. And in any case, that cookie-maker was ripping off Obi-Wan Kenobi before Lucas made a fucking travesty of the entire genre, so he hardly gets credit for his advice."
John just picked up another one. "Or it's just good advice for anyone following along on a damnfool idealistic crusade."
"Yes, my tendency to trail after idealism is my downfall every time. What are you even doing here?"
"Wasn't talking about you, and I'm cheering you up, can't you tell? Okay, how about this one? You will travel to many exotic places."
"That's not a fortune; it's a fucking history lesson."
"Oh really? Where've you been that's exotic?"
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. "Really? Really? You don't think the Pegasus Galaxy in general counts? Because I don't know very many people that aren't, you know, us that can say they've been there."
"Yeah, but I was thinking exotic like Tahiti. Sand, sun, you know."
"Ugh. Adventures in intercrural sand excavation don't exactly--"
"Interwhat?"
"Intercrural. In the--never mind. Suffice it to say, my taste in the exotic runs more to places that never mean a second-degree sunburn. My people are pale and afraid of the heat."
John leaned back in the chair he'd reclaimed and turned at an angle, propping his boots on the desk. "So the fortunes are true, then. From a certain point of view."
"God. Stop it. No. They're just statements of high-probability outcomes. I could write better fortunes than that."
"Yeah?" John took another long drink of his bad beer and then pointed at Rodney with the neck of the bottle. "Maybe that's your new career, then. Now is a lucky time for you--take a chance."
"Lucky? Lucky?" Rodney started to respond in outrage, then realized John had picked up another half-slip of paper and was waving it at him. "Oh, I suppose that's another pearl of dessert wisdom, is it?"
"Yup."
Rodney sat down heavily in the office chair--awful thing, no lumbar support, no decent adjustability and for the love of God, what was with office chairs and mauve? "What are we doing here, Sheppard?"
"Us, not just me? I think it's called a vacation." John swung his feet back down to land on the floor with a satisfying clap.
"It's involuntary. I don't think it's possible to take an involuntary holiday."
"Sure it is. We've done it before, right?"
"Yes, once when we were being lulled to death by one of those amazing exotic locales, and once when a bunch of minuscule evil machines stole Atlantis from us. But I meant, I don't think it constitutes a holiday when it's involuntary and conducted in a prison with asinine quotes on tiny paper and equipment that was already old when Plato was born."
"You might have a point." There was a long pause, and then John shrugged. "Well, then at least there's beer. Though it might be about as old." He stood up and went back to the little fridge, setting the bottle on the shelf. "Want one?"
"Ugh. Old beer that was awful when it was bottled isn't exactly my idea of a night on the town, Sheppard."
"Yeah, but it still works. Besides, it has the advantage of making this a really cheap date."
Rodney pursed his lips in distaste, but had to agree with the basic sentiment. "Fine. It's not like there are other options. Next time you're taking me out for something nice, though."
"Yeah, yeah. Nice Canadian food like that stuff with gravy and cheese curds, right?"
"Fuck you."
"Ah, you've devolved into words of one syllable--better work on that." John came back with two bottles and slid one across the counter, then went back to picking through the pile of paper scraps. "Oh, here you go. Modify your thinking to handle new situations. Maybe that'd make the whole deal here more palatable."
Rodney glared for a moment and considered not dignifying the suggestion with a response, but the urge was too strong and even though he knew sounded whiny and ridiculous, well, the situation was ridiculous and the obvious thing to do was just let them all go home and it wasn't his fault the entire IOC, with a few notable exceptions, had the collective intellect of a mushroom. Plus, he did have pride, and the one-syllable shot required a defense. "Even if modifying my thinking would enable anything in this room except me to solve a simple quadratic equation, I don't know if you've noticed, but that's practically been my job description for the last several years, and arguably throughout my career, and so far I've excelled at it under circumstances no one would design for a stress test much less a daily work environment, so once again, history not fortune."
John chuckled.
"Oh, good. Laugh at my pain."
"I was--well for one thing, I'm also in the room. But jeeze, Rodney, I get that the stuff in here belongs in a museum of the Stone Age and all, but maybe that's a good reason to just get out of here. Think of something else to do. Quit obsessing. Yeah?"
"And what do you propose to do, then? Go sailing? Oh, I know. Snowboarding. That should be straightforward enough, given that as far as I can tell, we're not allowed to leave because they think we might, I don't know, try to steal Atlantis itself this time. Maybe there's a sport called stairboarding. We could try to break our necks balancing on long boards sliding down flights of cement stairs."
"Sounds like fun. And please, we weren't allowed to steal a jumper and go back the last time we had an involuntary separation from the place, so I'm not seeing that as that much of an impediment, though I kinda think we wouldn't have to work that hard to find something to do on site. Without any neck-breaking."
"So you think we should play right into their expectations about us being insubordinate and difficult."
John grinned and said, "Maybe. Or something," and for the first time in a couple of hours, Rodney thought he might be able to imagine a situation in which he might do the same. Probably that was the beer talking. He thought about it while he tipped up the bottle again.
"Right, all right, I see the appeal, but you're going to need a plan or something, and--oh for fuck's sake. That's why I have a computer my niece could outsmart with one hand tied behind her back, unhelpful literature genes notwithstanding. They think it'll preclude me helping to develop a plan. Morons."
"Good to get the respect you deserve, at least?"
"Ha. If they were doing that, they'd have me in a medically-induced coma somewhere. Although I suppose neither Carson nor Jennifer would go along with that, so maybe they're going with Plan B."
"Can't be that. They have doctors here. Not to suggest military docs are unethical or anything, but they do have a chain of command and all."
"Where is everyone else, anyway? They can't all have found useful things to do immediately."
"No idea. I only know where the military people went, and then only some of them--you know, debriefing and stuff." John picked up another sip of paper. "Oh, hey. Your short-term goal will soon be realized. Maybe that means you'll get out of here."
"Yes, probably because they've found a reason they need me to collaborate with another Wraith, or found a device they can't work and they need you to turn it on and me to fix it when it tries to kill you, or--"
"Or," John broke in, "because you decided your buddy John was pretty good at busting out of places and had a point about just ditching or at least looking for a movie to watch."
"Isn't ditching leaping out of a flying vehicle, and aren't you supposed to be opposed on general principle?"
John snorted. "Supposed to be? Sure. Every time a guy hits the eject button, the Air Force loses a valuable and expensive piece of machinery. But every time he doesn't and bites it, they lose that and a valuable and expensive piece of flesh, so no, generally I prefer not to be burned, torn up, or broken." He produced another beer from a pocket and slid it across. "Have another beer."
"Like anyone can tell, the way you go charging into dead-making scenarios at the drop of a hat. Also, you're expensive?" Rodney glanced down at his first bottle and was a little surprised to realize he'd finished it. "Oh. Did someone send you down here to get me a little drunk so I'd shut up?"
"Were you shouting at the room before I came in?"
"No. Though I was thinking really loud and negative thoughts at it, so if anyone was listening to those I hope they got a headache."
"I'm pretty sure one of us would have heard about it if the military or civilian contractors had come up with a way to detect your thoughts."
"Right, right, and besides, we've sent back a ton of data on VR stuff. I guess then they could have just given me a virtual lab and had me solve problems all day for free. Well, for the cost of an IV or something." Rodney sipped his beer. "So I suppose it's something that I'm at loose ends down here."
"Yes, I'm sure Carson and Jennifer would have gone for that. Anyway, no, I wasn't trying to get you drunk. I was just trying to depress your hyper brain into only three or four lines of thought at a time so I could persuade one of them to come with me and see what there was to see in this place."
"Oh. I don't see how that would help, since all the lines of thought are going the same place, but I suppose I might as well."
"Such enthusiasm." John picked up another slip of paper. "Huh. You have only to ask, and you will be transported."
"Only to ask?" Rodney looked at the ceiling. "Hello? I think we'd pretty much all like to get back to work now. Two to beam up. Transport now, please. Anyone?" He looked back at John. "Nope, looks like the fortunes are one hundred percent crock."
John shrugged. "Maybe you're supposed to be using them for something not work-related."
"Like what?"
"Uh. Opposite of work, so I'm gonna go with play."
"Yes, because usually I play with things where I'm supposed to trust my instincts in exotic places while getting lucky and realizing my short-term goals. And modifying my thinking about being transported."
"In bed."
Rodney had just brought his beer back to his mouth, and had to clap a hand over his mouth not to spit at the incomprehensible statement. Not that John looked like he thought he was being incomprehensible. He swallowed and croaked, "What?"
"They're fortune cookies, Rodney."
"So? Although anyone who would eat crumbly, sharp-edged cookies in bed had better not be in, on, or beside my bed at the time, since then I would have to kill them. At least the bowhunting supplies would be useful."
"Bowhunting? Do I want to know?" John frowned, then waved the thought away. "No, I mean, you've never heard anyone add 'in bed' to a fortune cookie fortune?"
"This is going to be one of those party games I largely avoided very deliberately when I was of an age to attend drunken groping parties, isn't it?"
"Could be. What about bowhunting?"
"What? Nothing. I just thought if this was my office it would follow I would have something equally unwelcome in my living space, and that was what came to mind. In bed, really?" Rodney leaned back and took another thoughtful sip of his beer. "All right, so I suppose I would have to agree that trusting one's instincts in bed is probably the right choice, but only because reading the manual is usually frowned upon and if one's partner is reasonably bright there will be feedback on a fairly regular basis which one could then use to improve one's approach."
"Usually? I'm gonna have to go with pretty much always frowned-upon."
"You go with your instincts when the manual is not only useful and full of new information, but also doing the tango on your shoulder, Sheppard."
"If the manual is doing the tango, I start wondering when I ended up in a computer-generated reality again."
"Still, all right, instincts are good in bed. Exotic places, though?" John waggled his eyebrows, and Rodney rolled his eyes. "Unless you're about to tell me you have a third eye embedded in your ass, I don't think there are really any exotic places on the human body."
"A third eye in my ass? Really?"
"It was the first thing that came to mind. Still, nothing exotic. Now, getting lucky..."
"Bed is good. See?"
"Yeah, but so is not-bed. Getting lucky in an elevator is perfectly good, at least in principle, though I will admit it's nice not to have to worry about the doors opening."
"True. Or on a table, that's good too."
"I eat on the table. I'd rather not contemplate your ass having been there possibly just moments ago."
"My ass? With its extra eye, like, crying all over the place from being crushed?"
"Anyone's ass. You were just convenient, since I know it's not my ass doing anything lucky on the table that isn't about extra dessert."
John shrugged. "All right, what about on a jumper?"
"Not if it's distracting the pilot."
"Yeah, it probably would. All right, so getting lucky is an in or out of bed fortune. Short-term goals?"
"How many short term goals can I have in bed? Sleeping, waking--"
"Getting laid, being awakened with sex..."
"Both of which also fall under getting lucky, which we have previously determined is an in or out of bed activity." Rodney tipped up his beer again and noticed he'd finished this one, too.
"Yeah, but having goals of sleeping and waking is just sad."
"Fine. Reading. My goal of reading will be realized. Although again, location is irrelevant to the goal, and also there's nothing in here to read, and ENIAC over here probably doesn't have anything interesting to show me."
"Porn?"
"The previous tenant stuck fortunes all over the face of the thing. If there's porn, it probably involves, I don't know, geriatric bondage play with toothpaste as lube."
John grimaced. "Wow. Please tell me that's a concept you made up, Rodney, because I don't know if I can keep having this conversation if you're in the habit of watching grandma get it on with--"
"It was supposed to be an example of something I would not want to watch, Sheppard. Honestly. I wasn't asking you to watch anything."
"Good. But now I don't think I can even look at that computer again without thinking of it. You said you had quarters?"
"Yeah, down the hall... somewhere. That way. Possibly full of anti-Canadian ostriches or a bowling alley or something."
"Come on. I'll chase away any flag-waving ostriches, and if there's bowling, it's something to do." John hit the floor with both boots at once and stood, leaving his second bottle but scooping up the handful of fortunes, and Rodney found himself following along as though he'd fully mean to calm down and leave his dreadful office to discuss fortunes in bed with John Sheppard.
Well, not discuss in bed, presumably, since that was a whole other line of reasoning and one that seemed pretty far-fetched and anyway, first they had to find the damn room and oh, hello. "Oh. They put my name on the door."
"They give you a key?"
"What?"
"To get in? A key?"
"Oh, right. No, just had me make up a passcode."
John looked at the 10-key under the sliding panel. "Is it Jeannie?"
"I'm not telling you my password."
"Atlantis?"
"No."
"Pegasus?"
"Could you just move out of the way and let me let us in?"
"Aw, no fun." John moved aside and leaned against the wall while Rodney punched in a seven-digit sequence. "Madison? Really?"
"No peeking. Isn't that one of those rules we sort of all comply with when we're among friends, in general?"
"Wasn't. Still, it started and ended with the same number, and was seven letters."
"I hate you. I'm changing it as soon as you leave. And I figure out how, since I have no idea where the software lives and someone who is not me has my laptop still. And my other laptop. And everything else I might use to connect to, oh, anything."
John grinned. "Whatever. I bet I can still figure it out. But back to bed--asking and being transported?"
"In bed? Usually not my experience, no. But then, I guess asking isn't usually one of the things I-no, not that I mean to suggest I'd just bull on through without asking but just, it doesn't come up, because once the bed is there and the, well, all right, transported in the sense of, but then, what about the ring things and being sent to God knows where and I can't say I really want to ask for any such thing in or out of bed because all I actually want it to just get back to the damn city and back to useful work, possibly with a somewhat increased supply of crop materials and a handful of fresh science minds because I'm pretty sure at least one of the good schools has graduated at least one non-moron per year. So as for being transported, not in bed, I think I don't think that's something I can just ask for, and the other answer is, I don't tend to." Rodney looked around. "Huh. No ostriches."
"Or emus or llamas or anything. And no bowling alley. I guess we'll just have to find some other way to entertain ourselves."
"Because the fortunes game isn't going to last forever? Funny, I thought it already had."
John shook his head and held up his crumpled bits of paper. "Smartass. You will soon gain something you have always desired. In bed, obviously.” He pointed at the not-too-small, not-boxed-in bed visible through the door off the little living area. "See?"
"The fact that there is a bed in the living quarters I was assigned is a demonstration that I will go in there and gain something I've always desired?" Rodney scrunched his lips into a confused twist. "I don't think so."
"Foreplay has to end at some point." Sheppard sounded impatient, though Rodney wasn't entirely sure why, but in any case the sentence seemed to be a bit of a non-sequitur.
"What?" He belatedly noticed the slip of paper in Sheppard's hand. "Oh. Another--wait, no. No. I would definitely have noticed if one of the fortunes tacked absurdly on my horrible temporary workstation included the word foreplay."
"Really? Did you read them all?"
"No, but I skimmed, and that's a word that would tend to leap out. You're making up my fortunes?"
Sheppard shrugged, though he also didn't quite meet Rodney's gaze. "Not all of them."
"But some? Why would you make up one about foreplay? Are you..." Rodney blinked. "But the only thing that makes... Are you hitting on me? Because that wouldn't make any sense either. Why would you want--I mean, not that I'm not, okay, not that I haven't ever thought, but that's different from, wait, are you?"
"That was the least sentencey sentence you've ever spoken, Rodney."
"That's not a word. You have to use words to have a conversation, John. But, all right, I'll let it slide and ask again. Are you hitting on me? Five words, interrogative, yes or no."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?"
"Is that a yes? Also, bullshit; patience is a good way getting stuck waiting for things when one could instead be getting some work done, or, in the case of this conversation finding out what's going on."
"That too, but if you spend all your time getting things done, you miss opportunities."
"Is that on another of the fortunes?"
"No."
"Good, because I'd hate to think what opportunities exist in bed that I am missing by working on what I see."
"Are you?"
"What?"
"Working on what you see. Are you?"
Rodney opened his mouth to answer that, then stopped and brought up a hand like it was going to help him make his point which, all right, he didn't have a screen so it wasn't like there was going to be a Venn diagram explaining the overlap of ways in which Rodney and John interact anywhere, and holding up one finger was a time-honored if fairly useless method of demonstrating that one was saying something, so, okay, hand up, and it also wasn't like John didn't know Rodney sucked at this kind of whatever this was, but he clearly needed reminding. He took a breath and nodded sharply once. "Okay, really. What are we doing? Because maybe I should just explain that if you're flirting, then you're probably going to have to tell me, because Jennifer had to explain to me about that buying a drink thing, and I'm not sure how to interpret, I mean, there've been a hundred conversations about, you know, everything, and for us that includes galaxies and time travel and fucking alternate universes, so it's pretty encompassing, but this is a whole other thing and I assume... I guess, actually, you're asking me to ...to play, and if you're playing with me--"
"Well I wasn't asking you to play alone."
"Not what I meant."
"Yeah." John leaned against the wall, feet crossed at the ankle, in the pose that Rodney recognized as faux-relaxed, but ready to move. Which was a little disconcerting because it wasn't like there was anything here to make him nervous or ready to attack. "But it also was."
"It--what? I think I'd know what I meant?"
"Right, but it'd be really unfair to suggest I'm hanging you out to dry here."
"Oh. Well yes, I suppose you might not--I suppose I know you better than that. But still, that doesn't explain what we're doing."
"Do we really have to do the explaining part before anything else? Because I'm no slouch at theory when it's a numbers game or involves making something fly, but when it's, uh." John grimaced and gestured back and forth between them. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't really discuss."
"And so I should, what, jump in--okay, literally or otherwise--in bed with you because I'm the scary one? Please."
"You're occasionally a little scary, but that wasn't really my point."
"I rarely notice the world bending to my whims, which I would think it would do a lot more often if I were scary. For instance, right now, if I were doing this the way I preferred, for one thing there would be lot less freaking out on my part, and also a better room." Rodney said, turning to wave around the room at their surroundings because speaking of freaking out, he was, "And also did you know they didn't even have any instant coffee, or they didn't offer any, anyway, and acted like I was asking if they had any spare Wraith enzyme to sprinkle on my toast or something. Which is unlikely since it's not like we even keep that around on Atlantis in the first place and I would think they would realize we would all know why it would be a catastrophically bad idea anyway, and--oh!" Rodney turned back around to find John had come closer, apparently in stealth mode, which was a little frustrating when it was used against him except he couldn't deny John was good at it and also it was maybe a little bit startlingly appealing to be, what, stalked? Which wasn't news exactly, but it was still startling all over again in context. "Hi."
"Hi. So what you're saying is, if I offer you coffee, I can have my way with you?"
"What? No!"
"No?" John's eyebrows quirked, and he took a half a step back. "Is this just a game, then?"
"No, I'm saying, um. Right, well, you have to be able to deliver the coffee, but I guess that can wait, but..." Rodney paused. "You're flustering me, you know, which is totally unfair because the only thing about you that gets flustered is your hair, and that's not relevant to anything going on here, but it's unfair."
John laughed one short disbelieving huff and shook his head. "Yeah, okay. What's the most weirded out you've ever seen me?"
"Um. Besides the basically daily times when Teyla makes you hold Torren?"
"Besides those. Those are just sort of uncomfortable because babies are... they're babies."
"Yeah, I know. But you don't really--I mean, besides that, you get nervous around unknowns but that's just because you're working out how to shoot them if they do anything crazy. So, um. I have no idea. What do you want me to have noticed?"
"That when I get, oh, bitten by something that wants to turn me into a fucking bug, or I start dream-attacking people, or people die because I can't run fast enough--"
"That's never why anyone dies."
"Not the point."
"Totally the point. You don't freak out about that."
"Yeah I do. I can't believe you don't know that, Rodney. I can't believe you don't know that just because I don't speak in 200-word sentences when that shit happens--"
"Oh, well okay, so now you're talking so it's still unfair because you came to me, voluntarily, which means you are not at all doing that hiding thing that sometimes, you know, licking your wounds or whatever."
"Right," John said, using the slow drawl that drove Rodney crazy because okay, usually when he used it it meant Rodney wasn't getting something and he was good at getting things so that was kind of infuriating, but also here they had been talking about bed and foreplay and in that context his usual way less cerebral response was a little overwhelming and damn it, he needed to stop being distracted. He focused back on what John was saying. "Right, so you do know what flustered looks like and why at this point not talking any more would be really all right."
Rodney frowned and looked at John more closely. "Oh. But. But okay, I know, stop talking, but just to review, you showed up, started flirting, started flirting more obviously because I was slow, which, really I'm usually not slow about--"
"I know, Rodney."
"Right. Where was I? Got more obvious until I started asking questions about what the hell, because as I was saying, we've talked about a lot of things over beer, but so far they haven't involved you propositioning me and here we are back on Earth where the pool is a lot less limited and the whole stupid you're military and there are idiotic rules-or-maybe-suggestions issue is a lot more present, so obviously I would have some questions, and then, um. So that's where we are?"
"That's where we are."
"And are you going to answer the pool and rules question?"
John looked past Rodney's left ear. "Uh. I don't need any of the possibly kinds of pool; I need circumstances under which they can't really ship me back here and let you stay there? I wasn't doing this if I couldn't do it, you know. And at this point the shipping and sending scenario could still happen but for the foreseeable future it seems kind of unlikely."
Rodney blinked. And blinked again. "Oh."
"So I repeat, that's where we are."
"Right." He licked his lips, suddenly aware they were dry and that actually so was his mouth so licking wasn't in fact helpful but it was better than nothing (sort of), and really, this was happening? He thought about it for a fraction of a second and decided to assume it was. Assumption: this was happening. Assumption: they both wanted it to be happening and were saying so. Assumption: five years of foreplay, if that was the word they were going to use, and it seemed fair enough if one took the previous assumptions as given, should mean they knew each other pretty well and maybe wouldn't totally suck at it. Question: "So, where should we be next?"
"What?"
"This is where we are. Where are we going?" Rodney grinned, finally feeling like the rules of the game--not a game, really, but it felt light-hearted and that was close enough--made sense. "What? You're the tactics guy."
"I'm the tactics... This doesn't really seem like the sort of thing where I tell you where to go and you do it."
"One, as if I ever do what you said if I have a better idea. Or a different idea which may or may not be better depending upon one's perspective but it generally seems better at the time and in any case I wouldn't go doing what you said just because you said, unless, well, never mind. Two, frequently these tactics of yours include instructions to do things like crouch down or huddle up behind you, or--"
"Jesus, Rodney. Dirty mind, much? Three, usually those situations involve more people than just us, and what was the unless?"
"There is that, and please, that can't possibly be news." Rodney looked around, then turned on the sad little television to find it showed a wide range of three channels, turned off the overhead light, sat down on the couch and bent forward to untie his shoes. "And the unless was a never mind." Because explaining about the whole John in the uniform with dirt and growling thing was only going to serve as a diversion right now, and plus, keeping it in reserve seemed like a good plan, since usually keeping something in reserve was, and anyway, later.
Just as he finished speaking, John sat down next to him. "So, I don't actually have a tactical proposition here."
Rodney nodded. "Good. I don't have a brilliant plan or any sort of helpful technology. I was going to say we find something to watch, but it looks like our choices are public broadcast opera and a painfully watered-down physics explanation. And a soap. Take off your shoes."
"I thought I was tactics." John toed and kicked off his boots, then snagged the remote and turned back to the opera. Without discussion, he lowered the volume and reached for Rodney, turning and pulling at the same time so they were half-sideways, Rodney on top of John and aware of his own heartbeat against his ribs. "Least likely to distract you," he said shortly as he maneuvered a hand to the back of Rodney's head and pulled him down more.
As distractions went, Rodney was pretty sure even the bad science would have faded to nothing compared to the sensation of John's mouth; the opera didn't stand a chance. "So," he gasped, breaking off, "We're doing this here?"
"You think, what, we should find a gate room?"
"No, I mean..." Rodney groaned when John mouthed his way down Rodney's throat, but he still managed to make a mostly-coherent question. "Is this where we're seeing what there is to see? After all your commentary as to the relevance of bed to all fortunes?"
"You want to take this there?" John didn't really lift away from Rodney's skin, instead just mouthing his way right back up and near Rodney's ear, which was no help at all with concentration but which was still improving his mood with every lick, suck, nibble, and pull.
"I'm too old for contortionist activit--goddamn, John. Too old for contortionist activities on a couch."
"Mm-hm. Right. I can feel how too old you are." John's hands had wormed their way up into Rodney's shirt, and all right, moving sounded like a pain in the ass, but seriously, he was going to end up spraining something, and mid-sex spraining of anything, or for that matter any spraining of anything in the first place, was a serious buzz-kill, and besides, he sort of wanted--not that he was quite prepared to voice the thought, at least not completely--to spread John out and undertake his own program of seeing what there was to see.
Which there totally wasn't room for on the couch.
"Fine. I'm not old; I'm picky. You can't argue with that. And we're taking this to bed." Rodney squirmed away from John's clever hands and wound up half on the floor (unsprained, thank God) with John mostly on top of him. "See? Too much potential for pain. Come on." He pushed John up and got himself to a crouch, then led the way to the next room. "This is me, modifying my thinking, being creative, and, uh, what else?"
"Asking and being transported?"
"Yeah, that." Rodney shoved John down onto the bed and followed along, ignoring the scraps of paper that fell out of his pocket and pushing up his shirt. "Transport me."
John pulled Rodney down again, murmuring, "On it."
Maybe this interlude wasn't completely unacceptable. Though it had better not be an interlude.
Or if it was, it had better be a really long one.
**
Poll
Author: florahart
Team: Play
Prompt: Hostage to Fortune
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard (mention of Keller)
Rating: R
Warnings: none
Summary: If they can't go back to Pegasus and they're going to be stuck on a nondescript base with substandard equipment and an inadequate coffee supply and idiots in charge, which is totally unacceptable, there had better be something really good waiting on the other... wait. Really? Okay, well in that case. (just don't tell Rodney this is making lemonade, because for one thing, it's really not, and for another, he probably wouldn't appreciate the metaphor).
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
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**
It was about twenty minutes after they touched down back on Earth--for keeps, evidently, though he was going to work on that if they ever got any fucking equipment--when Rodney had first started cursing the equipment situation.
No, not, like, the burned out or otherwise crumpled, bent, or charred stuff in parts of Atlantis, though that was a mess, but that mess made sense because hello, intergalactic life-sucking space-zombies and machine people chasing the shit out of them for the last five fucking years, and that would put a dent in anyone's hardware despite his and everyone else's best efforts to stay ahead of the fallout.
No, the equipment situation on Earth.
Okay, maybe not twenty minutes. It took longer than that to debark and debrief and decompress and anything else that the military came up with to de-do (decaffeinate! There had been nothing resembling an adequate coffee supply and that was just cruel) besides physically being ferried to land and dragged about a dingy building on a dingy base with a startling amount of underground interconnection amongst the buildings, and introduced to levels of bureaucracy that made Borges's library look straightforward. So yes, maybe not twenty minutes. But really soon, and it felt like twenty minutes which was really what counted. It was actually the first time he found himself in what was apparently to be his new office. Or maybe that ought to be "office," since besides a desk with a computer, there was also a sort of kitchenette that didn't even make sense for one person, so it was probably--and wasn't this an occasion for nightmares--a shared space that he was going to have to work in with unknown others, possibly others who were eating lunch, probably made of lemons and lemonade with lemon zest on the side, because God knew it wasn't like this was where anyone competent or mostly-competent, like, say, Zelenka, had been assigned to do actual work. He'd seen Zelenka's office on the way here.
And then he got a look at the computer itself, and barely restrained himself from storming right back up (down? They'd gone up four and down two and...well, anyway, back there) and demanding something better, only because it had been made clear, really clear, that this situation wasn't up for negotiation, 'given the history of members of the Atlantis expedition upon return to Earth,' which as situations went hadn't been comparable anyway so that was crap. But, Christ. He'd had a better set-up when he was in grade six, which, all right, he hadn't been a really average twelve-year-old (actually, he hadn't been twelve at any point in grade six, since by that age he'd been working on narrowing his university options), but it was still a little insulting because the overall specs of, oh, everything had gone generations even in the civilian non-academic world since then. Entire species, maybe, if he were to extend the metaphor, which, why not, because for one thing it was probably fair considering half the advances seemed geared toward making everything accessible for thirteen-year-olds fixated on spelling things with numbers (definitely worth hoping they were a separate species), and for another it wasn't like he could do anything useful with the absurd unacceptable glorified adding machines in his new "office."
Because obviously after everything that had gone down, it was totally necessary to send a few hundred military personnel in to comb through logs and files, meanwhile banishing the civilians to not only mediocre substandard completely ridiculous labs (kitchens!) on a base with no fucking privileges and even less respect for their integrity because honestly, it wasn't as though any of them would score less than three standard deviations above average on an intelligence test, except maybe Ronon and Teyla but that would probably be because the test itself had cultural expectations and also tested only certain kinds of skills and yes, those were valuable skills and ones he had in spades but he had a hell of a lot of empirical evidence that other skills had serious utility and anyway the point was, they were certainly bright enough to understand nonfuckingdisclosure and besides, it wasn't like wandering out and spouting off about the aforementioned intergalactic life-sucking space zombies wouldn't be a way to get locked up in a soothing untroubling boring asylum without even the glorified adding machine and wow would that be a bad environment for Ronon. Or Teyla. Or anyone, actually. Though considering their probable responses was momentarily diverting.
Only momentarily.
Kicking the desk wasn't going to help. It wasn't, and he knew it, and he still kicked it because what the hell, the guys combing through everything wouldn't even understand half his notes and they'd better not fuck with his backups because really, proto-simian-like keysmashing was more likely to delete data than get it to do anything interesting, and all right, some military personnel weren't completely inept, but Sheppard was as debriefed and decompressed as anyone, and he was pretty sure Carter was working on something diplomatic and--and here was another point on which he and the military held diverging opinions, which only meant that the military was goddamn wrong--ostensibly way more important than playing with the databanks.
So that left him with a throbbing toe, a useless computer, and a really fucking bad attitude. And no idea which way it way to the other room assigned to him as his quarters (which, given everything in here, he suspected were probably outfitted with camouflage bowhunting gear in eighty percent of the space, with a too-narrow bed wedged in between a stuffed twelve-point buck and a singing fish).
Which was why he was in no mood--no mood, Sheppard, he said at least twice--to discuss the apparent idiocy of the former occupant of the office, apparent because the forty or so little scraps of paper with which John was apparently fascinated taped with plain cellophane tape to the entire outer frame of the monitor--had these people ever even heard of flatscreens?--were like some sort of Escher thing, in which every one was more absurd than every other one. Impossible, but then, so were half the things he did in any given week, so that alone wasn't as much of an impediment as one might logically suppose.
Still, Sheppard wouldn't take a hint, and finally while he was uncapping the beer he found himself in the decrepit refrigerator (the kind of shit sold at convenience stores near university campuses, and definitely not worth drinking, but still he could have offered Rodney one and also it pissed him off that he hadn't gone and looked for anything in there because at least he could have been ranting about terrible beer instead of kicking the desk) Rodney tore the entire mess loose--in about a hundred pieces because the tape was old and not at all acid-free because apparently some people liked to destroy the very things they were tacking up for posterity, and the paper tore and Christ, couldn't he even have a nice unbesmirched horrible work surface--and thrust the crumpled pieces at him. They scattered and fluttered, some to the floor, and John, because for a bright man with some really impressive skill-sets he wasn't doing very well at the Grasping Rodney's Mood Sweepstakes, only grinned and scooped them up into a little pile, then started pawing at them with one finger, finding matching halves and reading them out.
"Follow your instincts. They will guide you. That seems like pretty decent advice."
"It's not my instincts that do that, Sheppard. I try to use my brain for decision-making. When I'm forced to follow my instincts I end up getting shot in the ass, or swallowing nasty creatures that try to eat my brain."
John shrugged. "Eh, both of those things turned out all right in the end, didn't they?"
"Brilliantly. I sleep better every night knowing that if I lose my mind, I will take the perfectly rational step of going and waking you up at two o'clock in the morning. Because that'll help."
"Pssht. Could have made worse choices. And your instincts don't always suck. I mean, there was the time with the super-Rodney and the telekinesis, and you did all right with the whole saying--"
"Whatever. And in any case, that cookie-maker was ripping off Obi-Wan Kenobi before Lucas made a fucking travesty of the entire genre, so he hardly gets credit for his advice."
John just picked up another one. "Or it's just good advice for anyone following along on a damnfool idealistic crusade."
"Yes, my tendency to trail after idealism is my downfall every time. What are you even doing here?"
"Wasn't talking about you, and I'm cheering you up, can't you tell? Okay, how about this one? You will travel to many exotic places."
"That's not a fortune; it's a fucking history lesson."
"Oh really? Where've you been that's exotic?"
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest. "Really? Really? You don't think the Pegasus Galaxy in general counts? Because I don't know very many people that aren't, you know, us that can say they've been there."
"Yeah, but I was thinking exotic like Tahiti. Sand, sun, you know."
"Ugh. Adventures in intercrural sand excavation don't exactly--"
"Interwhat?"
"Intercrural. In the--never mind. Suffice it to say, my taste in the exotic runs more to places that never mean a second-degree sunburn. My people are pale and afraid of the heat."
John leaned back in the chair he'd reclaimed and turned at an angle, propping his boots on the desk. "So the fortunes are true, then. From a certain point of view."
"God. Stop it. No. They're just statements of high-probability outcomes. I could write better fortunes than that."
"Yeah?" John took another long drink of his bad beer and then pointed at Rodney with the neck of the bottle. "Maybe that's your new career, then. Now is a lucky time for you--take a chance."
"Lucky? Lucky?" Rodney started to respond in outrage, then realized John had picked up another half-slip of paper and was waving it at him. "Oh, I suppose that's another pearl of dessert wisdom, is it?"
"Yup."
Rodney sat down heavily in the office chair--awful thing, no lumbar support, no decent adjustability and for the love of God, what was with office chairs and mauve? "What are we doing here, Sheppard?"
"Us, not just me? I think it's called a vacation." John swung his feet back down to land on the floor with a satisfying clap.
"It's involuntary. I don't think it's possible to take an involuntary holiday."
"Sure it is. We've done it before, right?"
"Yes, once when we were being lulled to death by one of those amazing exotic locales, and once when a bunch of minuscule evil machines stole Atlantis from us. But I meant, I don't think it constitutes a holiday when it's involuntary and conducted in a prison with asinine quotes on tiny paper and equipment that was already old when Plato was born."
"You might have a point." There was a long pause, and then John shrugged. "Well, then at least there's beer. Though it might be about as old." He stood up and went back to the little fridge, setting the bottle on the shelf. "Want one?"
"Ugh. Old beer that was awful when it was bottled isn't exactly my idea of a night on the town, Sheppard."
"Yeah, but it still works. Besides, it has the advantage of making this a really cheap date."
Rodney pursed his lips in distaste, but had to agree with the basic sentiment. "Fine. It's not like there are other options. Next time you're taking me out for something nice, though."
"Yeah, yeah. Nice Canadian food like that stuff with gravy and cheese curds, right?"
"Fuck you."
"Ah, you've devolved into words of one syllable--better work on that." John came back with two bottles and slid one across the counter, then went back to picking through the pile of paper scraps. "Oh, here you go. Modify your thinking to handle new situations. Maybe that'd make the whole deal here more palatable."
Rodney glared for a moment and considered not dignifying the suggestion with a response, but the urge was too strong and even though he knew sounded whiny and ridiculous, well, the situation was ridiculous and the obvious thing to do was just let them all go home and it wasn't his fault the entire IOC, with a few notable exceptions, had the collective intellect of a mushroom. Plus, he did have pride, and the one-syllable shot required a defense. "Even if modifying my thinking would enable anything in this room except me to solve a simple quadratic equation, I don't know if you've noticed, but that's practically been my job description for the last several years, and arguably throughout my career, and so far I've excelled at it under circumstances no one would design for a stress test much less a daily work environment, so once again, history not fortune."
John chuckled.
"Oh, good. Laugh at my pain."
"I was--well for one thing, I'm also in the room. But jeeze, Rodney, I get that the stuff in here belongs in a museum of the Stone Age and all, but maybe that's a good reason to just get out of here. Think of something else to do. Quit obsessing. Yeah?"
"And what do you propose to do, then? Go sailing? Oh, I know. Snowboarding. That should be straightforward enough, given that as far as I can tell, we're not allowed to leave because they think we might, I don't know, try to steal Atlantis itself this time. Maybe there's a sport called stairboarding. We could try to break our necks balancing on long boards sliding down flights of cement stairs."
"Sounds like fun. And please, we weren't allowed to steal a jumper and go back the last time we had an involuntary separation from the place, so I'm not seeing that as that much of an impediment, though I kinda think we wouldn't have to work that hard to find something to do on site. Without any neck-breaking."
"So you think we should play right into their expectations about us being insubordinate and difficult."
John grinned and said, "Maybe. Or something," and for the first time in a couple of hours, Rodney thought he might be able to imagine a situation in which he might do the same. Probably that was the beer talking. He thought about it while he tipped up the bottle again.
"Right, all right, I see the appeal, but you're going to need a plan or something, and--oh for fuck's sake. That's why I have a computer my niece could outsmart with one hand tied behind her back, unhelpful literature genes notwithstanding. They think it'll preclude me helping to develop a plan. Morons."
"Good to get the respect you deserve, at least?"
"Ha. If they were doing that, they'd have me in a medically-induced coma somewhere. Although I suppose neither Carson nor Jennifer would go along with that, so maybe they're going with Plan B."
"Can't be that. They have doctors here. Not to suggest military docs are unethical or anything, but they do have a chain of command and all."
"Where is everyone else, anyway? They can't all have found useful things to do immediately."
"No idea. I only know where the military people went, and then only some of them--you know, debriefing and stuff." John picked up another sip of paper. "Oh, hey. Your short-term goal will soon be realized. Maybe that means you'll get out of here."
"Yes, probably because they've found a reason they need me to collaborate with another Wraith, or found a device they can't work and they need you to turn it on and me to fix it when it tries to kill you, or--"
"Or," John broke in, "because you decided your buddy John was pretty good at busting out of places and had a point about just ditching or at least looking for a movie to watch."
"Isn't ditching leaping out of a flying vehicle, and aren't you supposed to be opposed on general principle?"
John snorted. "Supposed to be? Sure. Every time a guy hits the eject button, the Air Force loses a valuable and expensive piece of machinery. But every time he doesn't and bites it, they lose that and a valuable and expensive piece of flesh, so no, generally I prefer not to be burned, torn up, or broken." He produced another beer from a pocket and slid it across. "Have another beer."
"Like anyone can tell, the way you go charging into dead-making scenarios at the drop of a hat. Also, you're expensive?" Rodney glanced down at his first bottle and was a little surprised to realize he'd finished it. "Oh. Did someone send you down here to get me a little drunk so I'd shut up?"
"Were you shouting at the room before I came in?"
"No. Though I was thinking really loud and negative thoughts at it, so if anyone was listening to those I hope they got a headache."
"I'm pretty sure one of us would have heard about it if the military or civilian contractors had come up with a way to detect your thoughts."
"Right, right, and besides, we've sent back a ton of data on VR stuff. I guess then they could have just given me a virtual lab and had me solve problems all day for free. Well, for the cost of an IV or something." Rodney sipped his beer. "So I suppose it's something that I'm at loose ends down here."
"Yes, I'm sure Carson and Jennifer would have gone for that. Anyway, no, I wasn't trying to get you drunk. I was just trying to depress your hyper brain into only three or four lines of thought at a time so I could persuade one of them to come with me and see what there was to see in this place."
"Oh. I don't see how that would help, since all the lines of thought are going the same place, but I suppose I might as well."
"Such enthusiasm." John picked up another slip of paper. "Huh. You have only to ask, and you will be transported."
"Only to ask?" Rodney looked at the ceiling. "Hello? I think we'd pretty much all like to get back to work now. Two to beam up. Transport now, please. Anyone?" He looked back at John. "Nope, looks like the fortunes are one hundred percent crock."
John shrugged. "Maybe you're supposed to be using them for something not work-related."
"Like what?"
"Uh. Opposite of work, so I'm gonna go with play."
"Yes, because usually I play with things where I'm supposed to trust my instincts in exotic places while getting lucky and realizing my short-term goals. And modifying my thinking about being transported."
"In bed."
Rodney had just brought his beer back to his mouth, and had to clap a hand over his mouth not to spit at the incomprehensible statement. Not that John looked like he thought he was being incomprehensible. He swallowed and croaked, "What?"
"They're fortune cookies, Rodney."
"So? Although anyone who would eat crumbly, sharp-edged cookies in bed had better not be in, on, or beside my bed at the time, since then I would have to kill them. At least the bowhunting supplies would be useful."
"Bowhunting? Do I want to know?" John frowned, then waved the thought away. "No, I mean, you've never heard anyone add 'in bed' to a fortune cookie fortune?"
"This is going to be one of those party games I largely avoided very deliberately when I was of an age to attend drunken groping parties, isn't it?"
"Could be. What about bowhunting?"
"What? Nothing. I just thought if this was my office it would follow I would have something equally unwelcome in my living space, and that was what came to mind. In bed, really?" Rodney leaned back and took another thoughtful sip of his beer. "All right, so I suppose I would have to agree that trusting one's instincts in bed is probably the right choice, but only because reading the manual is usually frowned upon and if one's partner is reasonably bright there will be feedback on a fairly regular basis which one could then use to improve one's approach."
"Usually? I'm gonna have to go with pretty much always frowned-upon."
"You go with your instincts when the manual is not only useful and full of new information, but also doing the tango on your shoulder, Sheppard."
"If the manual is doing the tango, I start wondering when I ended up in a computer-generated reality again."
"Still, all right, instincts are good in bed. Exotic places, though?" John waggled his eyebrows, and Rodney rolled his eyes. "Unless you're about to tell me you have a third eye embedded in your ass, I don't think there are really any exotic places on the human body."
"A third eye in my ass? Really?"
"It was the first thing that came to mind. Still, nothing exotic. Now, getting lucky..."
"Bed is good. See?"
"Yeah, but so is not-bed. Getting lucky in an elevator is perfectly good, at least in principle, though I will admit it's nice not to have to worry about the doors opening."
"True. Or on a table, that's good too."
"I eat on the table. I'd rather not contemplate your ass having been there possibly just moments ago."
"My ass? With its extra eye, like, crying all over the place from being crushed?"
"Anyone's ass. You were just convenient, since I know it's not my ass doing anything lucky on the table that isn't about extra dessert."
John shrugged. "All right, what about on a jumper?"
"Not if it's distracting the pilot."
"Yeah, it probably would. All right, so getting lucky is an in or out of bed fortune. Short-term goals?"
"How many short term goals can I have in bed? Sleeping, waking--"
"Getting laid, being awakened with sex..."
"Both of which also fall under getting lucky, which we have previously determined is an in or out of bed activity." Rodney tipped up his beer again and noticed he'd finished this one, too.
"Yeah, but having goals of sleeping and waking is just sad."
"Fine. Reading. My goal of reading will be realized. Although again, location is irrelevant to the goal, and also there's nothing in here to read, and ENIAC over here probably doesn't have anything interesting to show me."
"Porn?"
"The previous tenant stuck fortunes all over the face of the thing. If there's porn, it probably involves, I don't know, geriatric bondage play with toothpaste as lube."
John grimaced. "Wow. Please tell me that's a concept you made up, Rodney, because I don't know if I can keep having this conversation if you're in the habit of watching grandma get it on with--"
"It was supposed to be an example of something I would not want to watch, Sheppard. Honestly. I wasn't asking you to watch anything."
"Good. But now I don't think I can even look at that computer again without thinking of it. You said you had quarters?"
"Yeah, down the hall... somewhere. That way. Possibly full of anti-Canadian ostriches or a bowling alley or something."
"Come on. I'll chase away any flag-waving ostriches, and if there's bowling, it's something to do." John hit the floor with both boots at once and stood, leaving his second bottle but scooping up the handful of fortunes, and Rodney found himself following along as though he'd fully mean to calm down and leave his dreadful office to discuss fortunes in bed with John Sheppard.
Well, not discuss in bed, presumably, since that was a whole other line of reasoning and one that seemed pretty far-fetched and anyway, first they had to find the damn room and oh, hello. "Oh. They put my name on the door."
"They give you a key?"
"What?"
"To get in? A key?"
"Oh, right. No, just had me make up a passcode."
John looked at the 10-key under the sliding panel. "Is it Jeannie?"
"I'm not telling you my password."
"Atlantis?"
"No."
"Pegasus?"
"Could you just move out of the way and let me let us in?"
"Aw, no fun." John moved aside and leaned against the wall while Rodney punched in a seven-digit sequence. "Madison? Really?"
"No peeking. Isn't that one of those rules we sort of all comply with when we're among friends, in general?"
"Wasn't. Still, it started and ended with the same number, and was seven letters."
"I hate you. I'm changing it as soon as you leave. And I figure out how, since I have no idea where the software lives and someone who is not me has my laptop still. And my other laptop. And everything else I might use to connect to, oh, anything."
John grinned. "Whatever. I bet I can still figure it out. But back to bed--asking and being transported?"
"In bed? Usually not my experience, no. But then, I guess asking isn't usually one of the things I-no, not that I mean to suggest I'd just bull on through without asking but just, it doesn't come up, because once the bed is there and the, well, all right, transported in the sense of, but then, what about the ring things and being sent to God knows where and I can't say I really want to ask for any such thing in or out of bed because all I actually want it to just get back to the damn city and back to useful work, possibly with a somewhat increased supply of crop materials and a handful of fresh science minds because I'm pretty sure at least one of the good schools has graduated at least one non-moron per year. So as for being transported, not in bed, I think I don't think that's something I can just ask for, and the other answer is, I don't tend to." Rodney looked around. "Huh. No ostriches."
"Or emus or llamas or anything. And no bowling alley. I guess we'll just have to find some other way to entertain ourselves."
"Because the fortunes game isn't going to last forever? Funny, I thought it already had."
John shook his head and held up his crumpled bits of paper. "Smartass. You will soon gain something you have always desired. In bed, obviously.” He pointed at the not-too-small, not-boxed-in bed visible through the door off the little living area. "See?"
"The fact that there is a bed in the living quarters I was assigned is a demonstration that I will go in there and gain something I've always desired?" Rodney scrunched his lips into a confused twist. "I don't think so."
"Foreplay has to end at some point." Sheppard sounded impatient, though Rodney wasn't entirely sure why, but in any case the sentence seemed to be a bit of a non-sequitur.
"What?" He belatedly noticed the slip of paper in Sheppard's hand. "Oh. Another--wait, no. No. I would definitely have noticed if one of the fortunes tacked absurdly on my horrible temporary workstation included the word foreplay."
"Really? Did you read them all?"
"No, but I skimmed, and that's a word that would tend to leap out. You're making up my fortunes?"
Sheppard shrugged, though he also didn't quite meet Rodney's gaze. "Not all of them."
"But some? Why would you make up one about foreplay? Are you..." Rodney blinked. "But the only thing that makes... Are you hitting on me? Because that wouldn't make any sense either. Why would you want--I mean, not that I'm not, okay, not that I haven't ever thought, but that's different from, wait, are you?"
"That was the least sentencey sentence you've ever spoken, Rodney."
"That's not a word. You have to use words to have a conversation, John. But, all right, I'll let it slide and ask again. Are you hitting on me? Five words, interrogative, yes or no."
"Didn't anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?"
"Is that a yes? Also, bullshit; patience is a good way getting stuck waiting for things when one could instead be getting some work done, or, in the case of this conversation finding out what's going on."
"That too, but if you spend all your time getting things done, you miss opportunities."
"Is that on another of the fortunes?"
"No."
"Good, because I'd hate to think what opportunities exist in bed that I am missing by working on what I see."
"Are you?"
"What?"
"Working on what you see. Are you?"
Rodney opened his mouth to answer that, then stopped and brought up a hand like it was going to help him make his point which, all right, he didn't have a screen so it wasn't like there was going to be a Venn diagram explaining the overlap of ways in which Rodney and John interact anywhere, and holding up one finger was a time-honored if fairly useless method of demonstrating that one was saying something, so, okay, hand up, and it also wasn't like John didn't know Rodney sucked at this kind of whatever this was, but he clearly needed reminding. He took a breath and nodded sharply once. "Okay, really. What are we doing? Because maybe I should just explain that if you're flirting, then you're probably going to have to tell me, because Jennifer had to explain to me about that buying a drink thing, and I'm not sure how to interpret, I mean, there've been a hundred conversations about, you know, everything, and for us that includes galaxies and time travel and fucking alternate universes, so it's pretty encompassing, but this is a whole other thing and I assume... I guess, actually, you're asking me to ...to play, and if you're playing with me--"
"Well I wasn't asking you to play alone."
"Not what I meant."
"Yeah." John leaned against the wall, feet crossed at the ankle, in the pose that Rodney recognized as faux-relaxed, but ready to move. Which was a little disconcerting because it wasn't like there was anything here to make him nervous or ready to attack. "But it also was."
"It--what? I think I'd know what I meant?"
"Right, but it'd be really unfair to suggest I'm hanging you out to dry here."
"Oh. Well yes, I suppose you might not--I suppose I know you better than that. But still, that doesn't explain what we're doing."
"Do we really have to do the explaining part before anything else? Because I'm no slouch at theory when it's a numbers game or involves making something fly, but when it's, uh." John grimaced and gestured back and forth between them. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't really discuss."
"And so I should, what, jump in--okay, literally or otherwise--in bed with you because I'm the scary one? Please."
"You're occasionally a little scary, but that wasn't really my point."
"I rarely notice the world bending to my whims, which I would think it would do a lot more often if I were scary. For instance, right now, if I were doing this the way I preferred, for one thing there would be lot less freaking out on my part, and also a better room." Rodney said, turning to wave around the room at their surroundings because speaking of freaking out, he was, "And also did you know they didn't even have any instant coffee, or they didn't offer any, anyway, and acted like I was asking if they had any spare Wraith enzyme to sprinkle on my toast or something. Which is unlikely since it's not like we even keep that around on Atlantis in the first place and I would think they would realize we would all know why it would be a catastrophically bad idea anyway, and--oh!" Rodney turned back around to find John had come closer, apparently in stealth mode, which was a little frustrating when it was used against him except he couldn't deny John was good at it and also it was maybe a little bit startlingly appealing to be, what, stalked? Which wasn't news exactly, but it was still startling all over again in context. "Hi."
"Hi. So what you're saying is, if I offer you coffee, I can have my way with you?"
"What? No!"
"No?" John's eyebrows quirked, and he took a half a step back. "Is this just a game, then?"
"No, I'm saying, um. Right, well, you have to be able to deliver the coffee, but I guess that can wait, but..." Rodney paused. "You're flustering me, you know, which is totally unfair because the only thing about you that gets flustered is your hair, and that's not relevant to anything going on here, but it's unfair."
John laughed one short disbelieving huff and shook his head. "Yeah, okay. What's the most weirded out you've ever seen me?"
"Um. Besides the basically daily times when Teyla makes you hold Torren?"
"Besides those. Those are just sort of uncomfortable because babies are... they're babies."
"Yeah, I know. But you don't really--I mean, besides that, you get nervous around unknowns but that's just because you're working out how to shoot them if they do anything crazy. So, um. I have no idea. What do you want me to have noticed?"
"That when I get, oh, bitten by something that wants to turn me into a fucking bug, or I start dream-attacking people, or people die because I can't run fast enough--"
"That's never why anyone dies."
"Not the point."
"Totally the point. You don't freak out about that."
"Yeah I do. I can't believe you don't know that, Rodney. I can't believe you don't know that just because I don't speak in 200-word sentences when that shit happens--"
"Oh, well okay, so now you're talking so it's still unfair because you came to me, voluntarily, which means you are not at all doing that hiding thing that sometimes, you know, licking your wounds or whatever."
"Right," John said, using the slow drawl that drove Rodney crazy because okay, usually when he used it it meant Rodney wasn't getting something and he was good at getting things so that was kind of infuriating, but also here they had been talking about bed and foreplay and in that context his usual way less cerebral response was a little overwhelming and damn it, he needed to stop being distracted. He focused back on what John was saying. "Right, so you do know what flustered looks like and why at this point not talking any more would be really all right."
Rodney frowned and looked at John more closely. "Oh. But. But okay, I know, stop talking, but just to review, you showed up, started flirting, started flirting more obviously because I was slow, which, really I'm usually not slow about--"
"I know, Rodney."
"Right. Where was I? Got more obvious until I started asking questions about what the hell, because as I was saying, we've talked about a lot of things over beer, but so far they haven't involved you propositioning me and here we are back on Earth where the pool is a lot less limited and the whole stupid you're military and there are idiotic rules-or-maybe-suggestions issue is a lot more present, so obviously I would have some questions, and then, um. So that's where we are?"
"That's where we are."
"And are you going to answer the pool and rules question?"
John looked past Rodney's left ear. "Uh. I don't need any of the possibly kinds of pool; I need circumstances under which they can't really ship me back here and let you stay there? I wasn't doing this if I couldn't do it, you know. And at this point the shipping and sending scenario could still happen but for the foreseeable future it seems kind of unlikely."
Rodney blinked. And blinked again. "Oh."
"So I repeat, that's where we are."
"Right." He licked his lips, suddenly aware they were dry and that actually so was his mouth so licking wasn't in fact helpful but it was better than nothing (sort of), and really, this was happening? He thought about it for a fraction of a second and decided to assume it was. Assumption: this was happening. Assumption: they both wanted it to be happening and were saying so. Assumption: five years of foreplay, if that was the word they were going to use, and it seemed fair enough if one took the previous assumptions as given, should mean they knew each other pretty well and maybe wouldn't totally suck at it. Question: "So, where should we be next?"
"What?"
"This is where we are. Where are we going?" Rodney grinned, finally feeling like the rules of the game--not a game, really, but it felt light-hearted and that was close enough--made sense. "What? You're the tactics guy."
"I'm the tactics... This doesn't really seem like the sort of thing where I tell you where to go and you do it."
"One, as if I ever do what you said if I have a better idea. Or a different idea which may or may not be better depending upon one's perspective but it generally seems better at the time and in any case I wouldn't go doing what you said just because you said, unless, well, never mind. Two, frequently these tactics of yours include instructions to do things like crouch down or huddle up behind you, or--"
"Jesus, Rodney. Dirty mind, much? Three, usually those situations involve more people than just us, and what was the unless?"
"There is that, and please, that can't possibly be news." Rodney looked around, then turned on the sad little television to find it showed a wide range of three channels, turned off the overhead light, sat down on the couch and bent forward to untie his shoes. "And the unless was a never mind." Because explaining about the whole John in the uniform with dirt and growling thing was only going to serve as a diversion right now, and plus, keeping it in reserve seemed like a good plan, since usually keeping something in reserve was, and anyway, later.
Just as he finished speaking, John sat down next to him. "So, I don't actually have a tactical proposition here."
Rodney nodded. "Good. I don't have a brilliant plan or any sort of helpful technology. I was going to say we find something to watch, but it looks like our choices are public broadcast opera and a painfully watered-down physics explanation. And a soap. Take off your shoes."
"I thought I was tactics." John toed and kicked off his boots, then snagged the remote and turned back to the opera. Without discussion, he lowered the volume and reached for Rodney, turning and pulling at the same time so they were half-sideways, Rodney on top of John and aware of his own heartbeat against his ribs. "Least likely to distract you," he said shortly as he maneuvered a hand to the back of Rodney's head and pulled him down more.
As distractions went, Rodney was pretty sure even the bad science would have faded to nothing compared to the sensation of John's mouth; the opera didn't stand a chance. "So," he gasped, breaking off, "We're doing this here?"
"You think, what, we should find a gate room?"
"No, I mean..." Rodney groaned when John mouthed his way down Rodney's throat, but he still managed to make a mostly-coherent question. "Is this where we're seeing what there is to see? After all your commentary as to the relevance of bed to all fortunes?"
"You want to take this there?" John didn't really lift away from Rodney's skin, instead just mouthing his way right back up and near Rodney's ear, which was no help at all with concentration but which was still improving his mood with every lick, suck, nibble, and pull.
"I'm too old for contortionist activit--goddamn, John. Too old for contortionist activities on a couch."
"Mm-hm. Right. I can feel how too old you are." John's hands had wormed their way up into Rodney's shirt, and all right, moving sounded like a pain in the ass, but seriously, he was going to end up spraining something, and mid-sex spraining of anything, or for that matter any spraining of anything in the first place, was a serious buzz-kill, and besides, he sort of wanted--not that he was quite prepared to voice the thought, at least not completely--to spread John out and undertake his own program of seeing what there was to see.
Which there totally wasn't room for on the couch.
"Fine. I'm not old; I'm picky. You can't argue with that. And we're taking this to bed." Rodney squirmed away from John's clever hands and wound up half on the floor (unsprained, thank God) with John mostly on top of him. "See? Too much potential for pain. Come on." He pushed John up and got himself to a crouch, then led the way to the next room. "This is me, modifying my thinking, being creative, and, uh, what else?"
"Asking and being transported?"
"Yeah, that." Rodney shoved John down onto the bed and followed along, ignoring the scraps of paper that fell out of his pocket and pushing up his shirt. "Transport me."
John pulled Rodney down again, murmuring, "On it."
Maybe this interlude wasn't completely unacceptable. Though it had better not be an interlude.
Or if it was, it had better be a really long one.
**
Poll