The Brendan Hypothesis (Harlequin Challenge)
Title: The Brendan Hypothesis
Author: Smitty
Rating: PG-13? (There is no sex? Where did my sex go?)
Pairing: McKay/Brendan Dean, McKay/Sheppard
Summary: Major John Sheppard looks exactly like Rodney McKay's ex-lover, Brendan Dean. The only problem is that Brendan died seven years ago and Rodney's quickly finding out that John Sheppard is an intriguing man himself.
A/N: I should be shot for this. My original idea for this challenge exceeded 10,000 words yesterday and I realized it was never going to get done by tonight, so I thought up this one, made up a cover blurb for it, laughed my ass off, and swore I'd never write it. But then reccea laughed too, and miss_porcupine and kerithwyn didn't stop me so...here it is. Fourteen pages and 5200 words later....
This is technically a crossover with Thoughtcrimes but I'm fairly certain you don't need to see the movie to read this. Brendan Dean was Joe Flanigan's character. Many, many thanks to reccea for what was literally an "on the road" beta.
The Brendan Hypothesis
by Smitty
John Sheppard took Rodney's breath away.
It wasn't just because he could make a boring helicopter ride from the McMurdo base to the Antarctic Stargate bunker tap-dance along the edge of the laws of physics. It wasn't just because he had an ATA gene dominant enough to make the control chair sit up and beg. It wasn't even just because his little, "Did I do that?" was charming and sexy beyond belief.
It was because he was the spitting image of Rodney's dead lover, Brendan Dean.
Brendan Dean hadn't started out dead, of course. He'd been gainfully employed by the NSA, carried a gun, and looked pretty hot in a Kevlar vest. He'd also been the love of Rodney McKay's life.
The bad news had been delivered by two men in black suits, in his doorway. He'd taken off work early that afternoon and for once, had planned on being home with dinner ready when Brendan walked through the door. Instead he got, "Sorry for your loss," in stereo and a note thrust into his hand.
The note said:
Rodney,
You were all he thought of in the end.
Love,
Freya
Freya had been Brendan's partner. She was a telepath. She had always known what Brendan was thinking.
"Watch your step," John Sheppard -- Major John Sheppard, had said when Rodney fell into his helicopter.
Rodney scrambled to his feet, desperate for a second look at the pilot's face.
"You ok?" Sheppard asked, looking at Rodney as if he thought maybe he should stock up on barf bags before taking off.
"Uh, yes, fine, of course." Rodney couldn't stop staring. "You -- remind me of someone I used to know."
"Buckle up," was all Sheppard said before settling his helmet on his head and fastening the chinstrap.
The fuss over the Ancient gene came after Rodney had been living in the Antarctic compound for seven weeks and had nearly managed to convince himself that John Sheppard didn't really look like Brendan at all. He hadn't even seen the man's eyes.
Rodney's role in the Stargate project was the culmination of years of obsessive research at the highest levels.
Married to his work, they said behind his back. Deep in the closet, clucked others who hadn't known him before. Asexual, some wondered. Heartless was the latest theory and one Rodney took no measures to disprove. When Brendan had died, Rodney had thrown himself into his work, promising himself that he'd never again let himself be distracted by love.
And now, John Sheppard had walked into the middle of his work, thrown himself down on an Ancient chair and become the worst distraction ever.
"I've asked Major Sheppard to accompany us through the wormhole," Elizabeth Weir announced as if she hadn't just committed Rodney to what would undoubtedly be years of psychiatric treatment.
"Fantastic," Rodney replied. "Looking forward to it. Fun and games for all."
Elizabeth tilted her head and squinted at him. "I thought you'd be excited. You said yourself that Major Sheppard can manipulate the technology like no one else we have."
"This is me being excited," Rodney assured her. "Happy face, see?" He beamed at her and then went back to his calculations. Work never got itself blown into a million bitty pieces on a New York street corner.
Not by accident, anyway.
There hadn't been much time to think about Major Sheppard since then. There were naquadah generators to pack and utilities to cancel and a cat to bequeath and then they were in Atlantis and then there were power failures and that business of rising, and then Major Sheppard pulled out a nasty blue arm and the next thing Rodney knew, John Sheppard was doing permutational computations.
It was hot, really, and Rodney couldn't help but wonder if he was actually doing the math in his head, or if he just remembered the number from when Rodney was doing calculations on the far-range capabilities of the Stargate. Math itself wasn't classified and he'd let Brendan play with his numbers without defining their origin.
John Sheppard, Brendan's voice said in Rodney's head, was a math geek with a gun.
"So, this uh, Stargate thing."
Rodney jumped a little and tried to hide it. It was the first night on Atlantis, the first night when imminent death was not a concern, and Rodney was out on a balcony taking it all in. He really wanted to be in the lab non-stop until he dropped dead of a hypoglycemic reaction because it was Atlantis and there was so much stuff to look at and play with and figure out, but the water lapping up against the city and the lights playing over the unexplored spokes formed a tableau whose beauty even Rodney couldn't deny.
"Major Sheppard." His voice was steady. Points for him.
"Hey, sorry." Sheppard stepped up next to him at the railing and looked out over the East Pier with him. "Nice view."
"Yes," Rodney replied. "Yes, it is."
"So, um. This Stargate thing. This is something you've been working on for a long time, huh?"
Rodney cast Sheppard a sidelong view and his chest tightened. He had Brendan's jawline, the ski-jump nose, even his nearly-pointed ears. Rodney tightened his hands over the railing to keep from reaching up and tracing one of those ears. "Yeah," he said instead. "I haven't been with the program the entire time, but I've been studying wormhole physics since I was an undergrad and at one point the Pentagon did consider me the world's foremost expert on the Stargate -- after...Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, of course."
The corner of Sheppard's mouth quirked.
"Ex-girlfriend?"
"Huh? Sam? No, no, nothing like that." Rodney sighed. He might have liked her to be at some point, but he'd known that eventually, memories of Brendan and the day Brendan died would take over and he'd become an asshole -- more of an asshole than usual -- and poor Sam would have had to figure out for herself just where it had all gone wrong. At least that was the way it always happened in his head. He always managed to anticipate a relationship through to its logical end and that took away any appeal of ever starting them.
"You didn't leave anyone behind, did you?" Sheppard asked softly. "Wife? Lover?"
Rodney shook his head. "Please. This was a one-way trip, Major. Surely they told you that before you walked through the 'Gate."
"Yeah, it's just -- guys like you, you're not going to turn down the biggest adventure in human history and anyone who'd ask you to...." Sheppard shook his head.
Rodney stared at him curiously. "I had a lover a long time ago," he said. "He died." He waited, braced for a very military recoil, or a raised eyebrow and a not-so-subtle edging away. He got neither. Instead, John Sheppard's hand pressed, warm and strong, between his shoulder blades and he murmured,
"I'm sorry."
Tears pricked in Rodney's eyes and he turned back to stare over the ocean, blinking away the evidence of his weakness. Sheppard dropped his hand and stepped back, out of Rodney's personal space. "What about you?" he asked, determined that Sheppard wasn't going to get to him. "Have you ever been married? Madly, ridiculously in love? Owned a cat?"
"Don't ask, McKay," Sheppard said, and when Rodney turned he saw that Sheppard was in the doorway. The doors were still closed. "And I won't tell."
Rodney had a hypothesis. It was a fairly bad hypothesis but the more evidence he gathered, the more he suspected that someday it could become an actual theory. His hypothesis looked like this:
John Sheppard = Brendan Dean
Now there were certain problems with this hypothesis, such as, Brendan Dean was dead. Brendan Dean had died in a great big messy explosion that had meant identification of the body had to be done from dental records and the funeral had been closed casket. Even then, Rodney suspected there hadn't been anything inside.
Now he was even more sure that there hadn't been a body inside and everyone who watched soap operas knew that that when there was no body, it was entirely likely that the target had escaped certain death. Usually with amnesia. Probably, it was all a matter of Brendan simply forgetting that he was Brendan Dean and deciding to become John Sheppard. After all, there were certain similarities that couldn't be dismissed:
1) John looked exactly like Brendan, down to the hazel eyes and unruly hair.
2) John was a math geek like Brendan.
3) John was good with a gun, like Brendan.
4) John could fly, although he was much better than Brendan had ever been.
5) Based on the discussion on the balcony, John was gay, or at least bi, like Brendan.
Which didn't explain the military choice at all, but possibly the 'liking men' thing had been part of the amnesia, initially. Rodney knew what he had to do.
"Look what I found!"
Sheppard squinted at him and raised one eyebrow. Rodney marked that down on the list of similarities between Brendan and John.
"A...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle necklace?" he asked, frowning.
"Your disturbing predilection for Saturday morning cartoons aside," Rodney said cheerfully, chalking another one up to The Brendan Hypothesis, "this is an Ancient device. A personal shield, I think. Beckett's gene therapy took and I was able to activate it. I just don't know what its limits are and I can't very well go around hitting myself, so I thought you could help me out." At the look on Sheppard's face, he added, "Don't worry, you're not going to hurt me."
Sheppard smiled. "Don't worry. It wouldn't have been a dealbreaker."
12) John had extremely mobile eyebrows like Brendan.
13) John liked Saturday morning cartoons, like Brendan. (And if that was technically information extrapolated from a single data point, Rodney wasn't going to worry about it.)
"So," Rodney said in the hallway outside the 'jumper bay, as he followed Sheppard on shaky legs, "where did you learn to fly?"
Sheppard paused and turned to him and Rodney's heart jumped. The skin around Sheppard's hazel eyes crinkled and the major leaned in close enough for Rodney to feel warm breath on his ear. He waited breathlessly for Sheppard to name a small airstrip in northern Virginia, the same place where Brendan had learned how to handle a variety of small aircraft. He was suddenly very aware of the man's scent, the heat of his body almost pressed against Rodney's, and the low, low vibration from his throat as he leaned forward and whispered,
"Flight school."
"I think," Rodney said, succeeding spectacularly in not panicking, "that we're trapped."
"You need degrees in astrophysics and mechanical engineering to figure that out?" Sheppard said, poking around in his vest pockets.
"Actually, it was the part where the door didn't open that clued me in," Rodney replied. "Genius and all that." Speaking of genius... "How did you know what my degrees are in?" He felt hope bubble up in his chest.
"Your diplomas are hanging in your room," Sheppard said, pulling out a bit of putty. "Honestly, McKay, one personal item and you bring pieces of paper that say you're smart. Because we couldn't have just listened to you tell us all the first week." He knelt at the door and started pushing the putty between the cracks.
"You brought a football game," Rodney pointed out, feeling entirely secure in the high ground. "A football game that's over." Still, he didn't get a lot of time alone with Sheppard and he figured he might as well take advantage of it. "Have you ever lived in New York?"
Sheppard looked up from where he was poking a wire between the door and the wall. What was he doing, trying to pick the lock? "I've lived a lot of places," he said easily. "Military brat and all."
"Really?" Brendan hadn't ever wanted to talk about his family. Rodney couldn't help but feel a flash of disappointment. Did dying make you suddenly want to talk about your family? he wondered, and decided not to test that theory personally.
"Lots of questions, McKay," Sheppard said, bracing his hands on his thighs and standing up. He walked over to Rodney, stepping into his personal space, and peered down at him. "Everything ok?"
He was close enough to kiss, and if Rodney just leaned forward a little bit and exhaled --
The door blew with an eardrum-shattering noise and the moment was past and Sheppard was grinning at him.
"A little warning would have been nice," Rodney said witheringly.
"C-4!" Sheppard shouted back as if he hadn't heard Rodney at all. "A little bit goes a long way."
17) John was sarcastic, like Brendan could be.
18) John knew what Rodney's degrees were in, even if he'd read them off the wall.
19) John liked football. Brendan had spent every Sunday afternoon and evening surgically attached to the couch from early September until the Superbowl. Rodney still hated that about him.
20) John smelled good, like Brendan had, only not the same scent.
21) John had a rotten sense of humor, just as Brendan had.
Rodney looked over his last five pieces of evidence and made a face. Even he had to admit that his data was compromised by his own wishful thinking.
He'd followed Sheppard all over Atlantis, asking him casual questions, listening to everything that came out of his mouth. Sheppard had more of a drawl than Brendan ever had and he wasn't much into giving up information about himself, but there weren't a lot of things that told Rodney 'Not Brendan,' so he kept up the investigation.
Unfortunately, the next step required concrete proof. Brendan Dean had had a scar on his back, near his shoulder blade, where he'd rolled over the hood of a getaway car and landed in a pile of gravel. It wasn't so much one scar as a cluster of tiny ones, rippling the skin badly enough that it would never again be smooth to Rodney's fingertips. Rodney needed to see it or touch it and find out if John Sheppard had the same scar. And that meant he needed John Sheppard to take off his shirt.
Rodney had given a lot of thought to this problem and eventually decided that the most likely place for Sheppard to strip down with an audience would be the gym. Rodney wasn't actually sure where the gym was, or if Atlantis even had one.
So he asked someone who would know.
"Lieutenant Ford! Glad to see you."
"Really?" Ford was a nice kid, but suspicious.
"Really," Rodney confirmed, thinking that Ford was lucky he didn't take offense to such things. He could be just as much a people person as anyone else -- if he wanted. "I wanted to ask you a question. I know you military types are all...fit, and whatever. Is there a gym around here? I'm a little fuzzy on the actual nature of -- "
"You want to work out?" Ford looked like Rodney had handed him the Publisher's Clearinghouse check. "All right, Doc! Come with me, I'll show you!"
And that's how Rodney had ended up draped over one of the massive storage containers that had transported scientific equipment through the Stargate, with a makeshift barbell sitting on his chest.
"All right, all right, Doc," Ford cheered, clapping his hands together before letting them hover under the ends of the metal rod holding two thirty-pound metal boxes. "Let's go, one more rep, just squeeze out one more. One more, you can do it!"
Rodney wanted to snap back that he would be happy to do one more rep if Ford would please just shut up about it, but he really didn't have enough air to spare it on the message, and besides that, his arms were seriously protesting the idea that he might have to push them straight at any time in the next two weeks, let along in the next two minutes. He squeezed his eyes shut in hopes of shutting out Ford's voice along with his face, and pushed hard.
Suddenly, some -- but not all -- of the weight was gone and Rodney's great heave pushed the rest of it over his head.
"There you go, McKay." It was Sheppard's voice, droll and slightly mocking, as always, and Rodney froze. "Go on," Sheppard said over his shoulder, presumably to Ford. "I've got him."
Sheppard's hands were on the bar, to the outside of Rodney's, and together, they brought the barbell back to its resting place.
"Working out, huh?" Sheppard asked when Rodney struggled into a sitting position. He was wearing track pants and a black t-shirt and had his hands set on his hips. "Ford's on duty in ten. I told him I'd give you a hand," he explained as if Rodney hadn't just heard him say so.
"Well," Rodney huffed. "Much as I appreciate that, I think I'm done for the day. I'll just uh...." He was stiff and he was sore and he was hungry, how did that happen? and little white spots danced at the edge of his vision. This working out thing was definitely dangerous to one's health. "I think I'll just uh, sit here a minute."
"All right," Sheppard said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Be ready to spot me in a few?" Without waiting for an answer, he tossed himself down on an incline bench and started pumping out situps.
Rodney watched him move through the various equipment for twenty-five minutes, even standing with his hands hovering under the barbell -- with significantly heavier boxes on either end -- although Sheppard didn't need any assistance. He also didn't take off his shirt -- the closest he came was wiping his forehead with the bottom hem and that didn't do anything for Rodney except give him a flush of arousal at the glimpse of the major's sweat-gilded stomach.
"I'm going for a run," Sheppard said after squirting some water into his mouth. "You want to come with?"
"Sure," Rodney wheezed. They were going to run. How bad could that be? A little jog here, a quick dash back the other way...no problem.
His plan came to a crashing halt about three minutes later when it became clear that John Sheppard didn't jog a little, not the way Brendan used to lope around the block and come back cranky. No, John Sheppard ran, and fast, and Rodney really didn't appreciate the way he would run ahead and then come back to circle around Rodney as Rodney panted and wheezed his way up the metal bridgeway.
On Sheppard's third return, Rodney stopped and leaned over, praying for the contents of his stomach to go somewhere, anywhere else, preferably by magic and without a mess.
"Need some water?" Sheppard asked, offering his squirt bottle.
Rodney took some, swallowed, and tilted his head back for more.
"Not too much," Sheppard warned. "It'll make you puke."
Rodney handed back the water immediately. "I think," he said, his voice strained from all the panting he'd been doing, "I'm just going to go back and take a shower." Sheppard still hadn't shucked his shirt and Rodney was starting to feel a little embarrassed by his own less-than-stellar physical performance.
"Are you sure?" Sheppard asked. "I can slow down if you want."
"No," Rodney said with finality. "I'm done."
Rodney had just gotten out of the shower and into a fresh set of clothes when he heard the knock on his door. When he answered it, he found a fairly sweaty and somewhat concerned John Sheppard on his doorstep.
"You all right?" Sheppard asked, rubbing the back of his neck. One would think Rodney had been the one to go on and keep running for another forty minutes.
"Fine, fine, just fine," Rodney insisted, ignoring the discomfort of a water drop escaping his hair and trickling down his back. "Just...hit the wall, I guess."
Sheppard smiled at him, teasing, almost affectionate, and said, "You were about nineteen and a half miles short of that. Did you eat something?"
"Huh? Yeah, a Power Bar. I figured they're athletic food, you know?" Rodney beamed back at him and wondered if he stood there long enough, maybe the major would get too warm and just take his shirt off right there.
"It's all about the logic," Sheppard said, rolling his eyes. "Ok, if you're fine -- " He turned to go and Rodney thought fast.
"It was uh -- it was really nice of you to come check up on me," he said hopefully, stepping closer.
Sheppard looked back at him in surprise. "No problem," he said easily. "Can't have my team members laid out in the hall from hypoglycemia." His voice softened over the last words as Rodney took another step closer. His eyes met Rodney's and he didn't look away. "What were you really doing in the gym, McKay?" he asked, voice scratchy in his throat.
"Looking for you," Rodney admitted. He moved even closer, until he and Sheppard were breathing the same air.
"Looking for me?" Sheppard asked, and then his hand came up and rested on the back of Rodney's neck.
Rodney took it as a sign and spread both his hands on Sheppard's waist. His t-shirt had ridden up a little and Rodney could feel damp flesh against his lower two fingers. Sheppard dropped his forehead to Rodney's, Athosian-style, and then lifted it to press hot lips to Rodney's temple. Rodney leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Sheppard's neck, wondering if he really tasted like Brendan or if it was just a fanciful notion borne of too many years of living in the past.
Sheppard sighed, a deep, shuddering sound, and his other hand found its way to Rodney's hip. Rodney felt like Sheppard's life preserver as they both floated in the middle of his room.
Rodney pushed Sheppard's shirt up with his thumbs and index fingers as he licked his way down the tense cord of the major's neck to the hard swell of his collarbone. Sheppard shivered and wrapped his fist in the hem of Rodney's shirt. Rodney pressed his palm up Sheppard's spine, dizzy from so much skin, from the sharp, earthy scent in his nostrils, from the damp salt under his tongue.
For a minute, Rodney didn't even care if Sheppard had a scar on his shoulder or not. He just wanted to stand there and hold Sheppard and touch him and well, touching him some more would be nice and so would kissing. Real kissing, on the mouth, with some tongue and everything.
But then Sheppard tensed and stepped away.
"I'll be right there," he said, his fingers on the radio. He cast a troubled look at Rodney. "I have to go," he said. "I'm sorry, I -- " He was out the door without finishing the thought.
Rodney stared at the closed door for a long time and all he could think was that he never heard a voice from John's radio, and he was only six inches away.
Rodney McKay was going to die a horrible death. And he was going to do it in the back end of a puddlejumper. It was only slightly more appealing than dying a horrible death in the backseat of a Ford Pinto.
Even worse, John Sheppard was currently dying a horrible death on the floor near his feet. He was dying a death by disgusting blue bug and if Rodney wasn't so busy being terrified, he'd be completely grossed out.
The real problem, though, he realized, frantically touching his stylus to the control crystals, was that his terror hadn't come when the puddlejumper had gotten itself lodged in the Stargate. His terror had come when he realized that John Sheppard was going to die and Rodney was going to miss him.
He didn't even care if Sheppard was now, or had ever been Brendan Dean. He'd loved Brendan, loved Brendan a lot, but Sheppard was here, now, and Sheppard gave as good as he got, and shared his popcorn, and came to check up on Rodney after Rodney had made a fool of himself trying to run. It was quite possible that John Sheppard was the only person on Atlantis who genuinely liked Rodney and Rodney hadn't even gotten a chance to kiss him right.
The Brendan Hypothesis went out the back of the 'jumper with the not-quite-dead bug and the rest of the atmosphere. Rodney had already jumped through the event horizon after John Sheppard and didn't watch them go.
"Do you, uh, have a few minutes?" Rodney asked, hovering.
John closed his book and set it on the bedside table. He spread his hands and shrugged artlessly. "Got nothing but time," he said. "What's on your mind?"
Rodney hopped up on the empty hospital bed next to John's and let his legs swing. "Years ago," he started. "Years and years, really. Seven. I was dating this guy. I mean -- " He paused to swallow around the lump in his throat. "I really loved him. I was in love with him. And I think -- I know he felt the same way. His name was Brendan and he was killed in an explosion. He looked -- you look -- the two of you could be twins. I promised myself I'd never love anyone the way I loved him. So I threw myself into my work and, well, here I am." He glanced over at John, who was watching him with calm, serious eyes. Brendan hadn't been capable of staying that calm, he had been like an overeager, concerned puppy, but Rodney pushed that aside. "When I first saw you, I wanted you to be Brendan. I tried to find evidence that you were Brendan, I tried to trick you into admitting similarities in your past...I wanted you to be Brendan so badly, I tried to convince myself that somehow, you really were him. But today, seeing you in so much pain, with that -- " Rodney's hands sketched a shape in the air. " -- bug on your neck, having to watch you die? It's like I blinked and when I opened my eyes, I was in love with John Sheppard. And I'm not sure how that happened but -- "
"Oh, hell," John sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "I should have told you. I should have told you right away. Hell, I should never have left. I knew what you were doing, Rodney. I just couldn't -- it wasn't that easy to -- "
"Wait, wait, what are you saying?" Rodney slid off the bed. "Are you trying to tell me -- ?"
"Yes." John sighed and let his head drop back against the pillow. "Yes, seven years ago, I was Brendan Dean."
"But you're supposed to be dead," Rodney said, even though he'd spent the last month coming up with ways that maybe Brendan wasn't dead. "Freya even said -- "
"Freya was in on it," Sheppard -- Brendan? -- said, turning his head to look at Rodney. "We were getting death threats. I was getting death threats. Plausible ones. People threatening to kill Freya, kill her sister, kill you unless I dropped the investigation."
"You're such an asshole," Rodney said.
"We faked my death," Sheppard went on, "and I finished up the investigation deep undercover. It was easy to pass information to Freya, all we had to do was pass on the street. I testified under a concealed identity -- "
"The unknown Verlucci witness? That was you?" Rodney exclaimed.
Sheppard nodded. "And then they gave me the John Sheppard identity and sent me off to war."
"Your government does a really lousy job of saying thank you," Rodney said because he couldn't say the hundred other nasty things spinning around his head.
"I asked to go, Rodney," Sheppard said with a sigh. "I wanted to fly, I wanted to help....but most of all I wanted to forget. I left you behind. I was lonely without you. I didn't want to be with anyone else and I didn't want to pretend to have a life without you. I missed you and -- "
"You died on me!" Rodney cut in. "I thought you were dead! How could you do that to me? Why didn't you take me with you?"
"Because -- because you're Rodney McKay! How were you going to be able to publish under an assumed name? How could I ask you to keep everything quiet, to stay in hiding, to live a boring, rational, mediocre life and not attract attention to us when you're brilliant and you need to be...doing things like that?"
"You could have told me." Rodney's voice was low and bitter.
"No. I couldn't have." Sheppard's eyes pled with him. "I tried to look you up once, when I thought they were going to kick me out of the Air Force, and you were heading up some kind of ultra-classified research project in Siberia, and I thought, I can't do this to him. He's moved on."
"I never 'moved on'," Rodney said unhappily.
"Yeah. Neither did I."
The atmosphere in the infirmary was thick was tension. Rodney looked at the floor. Sheppard looked at the wall over Rodney's left shoulder.
"Freya said you thought of me at the end."
"You were never far from my thoughts."
"Why didn't you tell me right away? Why not on the balcony that first night?"
"I didn't know how." Sheppard -- and why the hell was he still Sheppard, when Rodney had been waiting this long to call him Brendan? -- looked frustrated again. "It's been...it's been a long seven years, Rodney. I'm not Brendan Dean anymore. Not the Brendan Dean you lived with, who died on that street corner. I've killed people, I've ordered people to their deaths, I've disobeyed direct orders -- "
"You killed people when you were with the NSA," Rodney said. "And you've always disobeyed orders you didn't like." When Sheppard didn't answer, he went on. "There's a lot different about you. But I meant it. Even if you weren't Brendan Dean, even if you were never Brendan Dean, I'm in love with you. I'm in love with John Sheppard, whoever or whatever he used to be." Rodney stepped forward and ran his thumb lovingly down the curve of Sheppard's -- John's jaw. "Which doesn't mean," he added matter-of-factly, "that I'm not going to kick your ass for keeping secrets from me when you get out of here."
"No?" John asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"No," Rodney said, leaning down and pressing his forehead to John's. "But it does mean that when I'm done, I'll kiss it and make it better."
"Oh, well, in that case," John said, reaching for Rodney's collar. For the first time in seven years, Rodney was kissing Brendan Dean.
And for the first time ever, he was kissing John Sheppard.
The End
Rodney McKay was madly in love with Brendan Dean until that fateful day when Brendan's partner came to the door and told Rodney that Brendan had been killed in an explosion. Rodney threw himself into his work, promising himself that he'd never lose anyone the way he'd lost Brendan.
But then, Major John Sheppard walks into the biggest project of Rodney's professional career. Besides being the spitting image of Rodney's dead lover, Major Sheppard is wickedly funny, stunningly intelligent, and irresistably sexy. But he has a secret too -- one that causes him to run from Rodney whenever things heat up between them!
Is John really Rodney's long-lost love, Brendan? Or is he Rodney's only hope for a blissful future?
Author: Smitty
Rating: PG-13? (There is no sex? Where did my sex go?)
Pairing: McKay/Brendan Dean, McKay/Sheppard
Summary: Major John Sheppard looks exactly like Rodney McKay's ex-lover, Brendan Dean. The only problem is that Brendan died seven years ago and Rodney's quickly finding out that John Sheppard is an intriguing man himself.
A/N: I should be shot for this. My original idea for this challenge exceeded 10,000 words yesterday and I realized it was never going to get done by tonight, so I thought up this one, made up a cover blurb for it, laughed my ass off, and swore I'd never write it. But then reccea laughed too, and miss_porcupine and kerithwyn didn't stop me so...here it is. Fourteen pages and 5200 words later....
This is technically a crossover with Thoughtcrimes but I'm fairly certain you don't need to see the movie to read this. Brendan Dean was Joe Flanigan's character. Many, many thanks to reccea for what was literally an "on the road" beta.
The Brendan Hypothesis
by Smitty
John Sheppard took Rodney's breath away.
It wasn't just because he could make a boring helicopter ride from the McMurdo base to the Antarctic Stargate bunker tap-dance along the edge of the laws of physics. It wasn't just because he had an ATA gene dominant enough to make the control chair sit up and beg. It wasn't even just because his little, "Did I do that?" was charming and sexy beyond belief.
It was because he was the spitting image of Rodney's dead lover, Brendan Dean.
Brendan Dean hadn't started out dead, of course. He'd been gainfully employed by the NSA, carried a gun, and looked pretty hot in a Kevlar vest. He'd also been the love of Rodney McKay's life.
The bad news had been delivered by two men in black suits, in his doorway. He'd taken off work early that afternoon and for once, had planned on being home with dinner ready when Brendan walked through the door. Instead he got, "Sorry for your loss," in stereo and a note thrust into his hand.
The note said:
Rodney,
You were all he thought of in the end.
Love,
Freya
Freya had been Brendan's partner. She was a telepath. She had always known what Brendan was thinking.
"Watch your step," John Sheppard -- Major John Sheppard, had said when Rodney fell into his helicopter.
Rodney scrambled to his feet, desperate for a second look at the pilot's face.
"You ok?" Sheppard asked, looking at Rodney as if he thought maybe he should stock up on barf bags before taking off.
"Uh, yes, fine, of course." Rodney couldn't stop staring. "You -- remind me of someone I used to know."
"Buckle up," was all Sheppard said before settling his helmet on his head and fastening the chinstrap.
The fuss over the Ancient gene came after Rodney had been living in the Antarctic compound for seven weeks and had nearly managed to convince himself that John Sheppard didn't really look like Brendan at all. He hadn't even seen the man's eyes.
Rodney's role in the Stargate project was the culmination of years of obsessive research at the highest levels.
Married to his work, they said behind his back. Deep in the closet, clucked others who hadn't known him before. Asexual, some wondered. Heartless was the latest theory and one Rodney took no measures to disprove. When Brendan had died, Rodney had thrown himself into his work, promising himself that he'd never again let himself be distracted by love.
And now, John Sheppard had walked into the middle of his work, thrown himself down on an Ancient chair and become the worst distraction ever.
"I've asked Major Sheppard to accompany us through the wormhole," Elizabeth Weir announced as if she hadn't just committed Rodney to what would undoubtedly be years of psychiatric treatment.
"Fantastic," Rodney replied. "Looking forward to it. Fun and games for all."
Elizabeth tilted her head and squinted at him. "I thought you'd be excited. You said yourself that Major Sheppard can manipulate the technology like no one else we have."
"This is me being excited," Rodney assured her. "Happy face, see?" He beamed at her and then went back to his calculations. Work never got itself blown into a million bitty pieces on a New York street corner.
Not by accident, anyway.
There hadn't been much time to think about Major Sheppard since then. There were naquadah generators to pack and utilities to cancel and a cat to bequeath and then they were in Atlantis and then there were power failures and that business of rising, and then Major Sheppard pulled out a nasty blue arm and the next thing Rodney knew, John Sheppard was doing permutational computations.
It was hot, really, and Rodney couldn't help but wonder if he was actually doing the math in his head, or if he just remembered the number from when Rodney was doing calculations on the far-range capabilities of the Stargate. Math itself wasn't classified and he'd let Brendan play with his numbers without defining their origin.
John Sheppard, Brendan's voice said in Rodney's head, was a math geek with a gun.
"So, this uh, Stargate thing."
Rodney jumped a little and tried to hide it. It was the first night on Atlantis, the first night when imminent death was not a concern, and Rodney was out on a balcony taking it all in. He really wanted to be in the lab non-stop until he dropped dead of a hypoglycemic reaction because it was Atlantis and there was so much stuff to look at and play with and figure out, but the water lapping up against the city and the lights playing over the unexplored spokes formed a tableau whose beauty even Rodney couldn't deny.
"Major Sheppard." His voice was steady. Points for him.
"Hey, sorry." Sheppard stepped up next to him at the railing and looked out over the East Pier with him. "Nice view."
"Yes," Rodney replied. "Yes, it is."
"So, um. This Stargate thing. This is something you've been working on for a long time, huh?"
Rodney cast Sheppard a sidelong view and his chest tightened. He had Brendan's jawline, the ski-jump nose, even his nearly-pointed ears. Rodney tightened his hands over the railing to keep from reaching up and tracing one of those ears. "Yeah," he said instead. "I haven't been with the program the entire time, but I've been studying wormhole physics since I was an undergrad and at one point the Pentagon did consider me the world's foremost expert on the Stargate -- after...Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, of course."
The corner of Sheppard's mouth quirked.
"Ex-girlfriend?"
"Huh? Sam? No, no, nothing like that." Rodney sighed. He might have liked her to be at some point, but he'd known that eventually, memories of Brendan and the day Brendan died would take over and he'd become an asshole -- more of an asshole than usual -- and poor Sam would have had to figure out for herself just where it had all gone wrong. At least that was the way it always happened in his head. He always managed to anticipate a relationship through to its logical end and that took away any appeal of ever starting them.
"You didn't leave anyone behind, did you?" Sheppard asked softly. "Wife? Lover?"
Rodney shook his head. "Please. This was a one-way trip, Major. Surely they told you that before you walked through the 'Gate."
"Yeah, it's just -- guys like you, you're not going to turn down the biggest adventure in human history and anyone who'd ask you to...." Sheppard shook his head.
Rodney stared at him curiously. "I had a lover a long time ago," he said. "He died." He waited, braced for a very military recoil, or a raised eyebrow and a not-so-subtle edging away. He got neither. Instead, John Sheppard's hand pressed, warm and strong, between his shoulder blades and he murmured,
"I'm sorry."
Tears pricked in Rodney's eyes and he turned back to stare over the ocean, blinking away the evidence of his weakness. Sheppard dropped his hand and stepped back, out of Rodney's personal space. "What about you?" he asked, determined that Sheppard wasn't going to get to him. "Have you ever been married? Madly, ridiculously in love? Owned a cat?"
"Don't ask, McKay," Sheppard said, and when Rodney turned he saw that Sheppard was in the doorway. The doors were still closed. "And I won't tell."
Rodney had a hypothesis. It was a fairly bad hypothesis but the more evidence he gathered, the more he suspected that someday it could become an actual theory. His hypothesis looked like this:
John Sheppard = Brendan Dean
Now there were certain problems with this hypothesis, such as, Brendan Dean was dead. Brendan Dean had died in a great big messy explosion that had meant identification of the body had to be done from dental records and the funeral had been closed casket. Even then, Rodney suspected there hadn't been anything inside.
Now he was even more sure that there hadn't been a body inside and everyone who watched soap operas knew that that when there was no body, it was entirely likely that the target had escaped certain death. Usually with amnesia. Probably, it was all a matter of Brendan simply forgetting that he was Brendan Dean and deciding to become John Sheppard. After all, there were certain similarities that couldn't be dismissed:
1) John looked exactly like Brendan, down to the hazel eyes and unruly hair.
2) John was a math geek like Brendan.
3) John was good with a gun, like Brendan.
4) John could fly, although he was much better than Brendan had ever been.
5) Based on the discussion on the balcony, John was gay, or at least bi, like Brendan.
Which didn't explain the military choice at all, but possibly the 'liking men' thing had been part of the amnesia, initially. Rodney knew what he had to do.
"Look what I found!"
Sheppard squinted at him and raised one eyebrow. Rodney marked that down on the list of similarities between Brendan and John.
"A...Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle necklace?" he asked, frowning.
"Your disturbing predilection for Saturday morning cartoons aside," Rodney said cheerfully, chalking another one up to The Brendan Hypothesis, "this is an Ancient device. A personal shield, I think. Beckett's gene therapy took and I was able to activate it. I just don't know what its limits are and I can't very well go around hitting myself, so I thought you could help me out." At the look on Sheppard's face, he added, "Don't worry, you're not going to hurt me."
Sheppard smiled. "Don't worry. It wouldn't have been a dealbreaker."
12) John had extremely mobile eyebrows like Brendan.
13) John liked Saturday morning cartoons, like Brendan. (And if that was technically information extrapolated from a single data point, Rodney wasn't going to worry about it.)
"So," Rodney said in the hallway outside the 'jumper bay, as he followed Sheppard on shaky legs, "where did you learn to fly?"
Sheppard paused and turned to him and Rodney's heart jumped. The skin around Sheppard's hazel eyes crinkled and the major leaned in close enough for Rodney to feel warm breath on his ear. He waited breathlessly for Sheppard to name a small airstrip in northern Virginia, the same place where Brendan had learned how to handle a variety of small aircraft. He was suddenly very aware of the man's scent, the heat of his body almost pressed against Rodney's, and the low, low vibration from his throat as he leaned forward and whispered,
"Flight school."
"I think," Rodney said, succeeding spectacularly in not panicking, "that we're trapped."
"You need degrees in astrophysics and mechanical engineering to figure that out?" Sheppard said, poking around in his vest pockets.
"Actually, it was the part where the door didn't open that clued me in," Rodney replied. "Genius and all that." Speaking of genius... "How did you know what my degrees are in?" He felt hope bubble up in his chest.
"Your diplomas are hanging in your room," Sheppard said, pulling out a bit of putty. "Honestly, McKay, one personal item and you bring pieces of paper that say you're smart. Because we couldn't have just listened to you tell us all the first week." He knelt at the door and started pushing the putty between the cracks.
"You brought a football game," Rodney pointed out, feeling entirely secure in the high ground. "A football game that's over." Still, he didn't get a lot of time alone with Sheppard and he figured he might as well take advantage of it. "Have you ever lived in New York?"
Sheppard looked up from where he was poking a wire between the door and the wall. What was he doing, trying to pick the lock? "I've lived a lot of places," he said easily. "Military brat and all."
"Really?" Brendan hadn't ever wanted to talk about his family. Rodney couldn't help but feel a flash of disappointment. Did dying make you suddenly want to talk about your family? he wondered, and decided not to test that theory personally.
"Lots of questions, McKay," Sheppard said, bracing his hands on his thighs and standing up. He walked over to Rodney, stepping into his personal space, and peered down at him. "Everything ok?"
He was close enough to kiss, and if Rodney just leaned forward a little bit and exhaled --
The door blew with an eardrum-shattering noise and the moment was past and Sheppard was grinning at him.
"A little warning would have been nice," Rodney said witheringly.
"C-4!" Sheppard shouted back as if he hadn't heard Rodney at all. "A little bit goes a long way."
17) John was sarcastic, like Brendan could be.
18) John knew what Rodney's degrees were in, even if he'd read them off the wall.
19) John liked football. Brendan had spent every Sunday afternoon and evening surgically attached to the couch from early September until the Superbowl. Rodney still hated that about him.
20) John smelled good, like Brendan had, only not the same scent.
21) John had a rotten sense of humor, just as Brendan had.
Rodney looked over his last five pieces of evidence and made a face. Even he had to admit that his data was compromised by his own wishful thinking.
He'd followed Sheppard all over Atlantis, asking him casual questions, listening to everything that came out of his mouth. Sheppard had more of a drawl than Brendan ever had and he wasn't much into giving up information about himself, but there weren't a lot of things that told Rodney 'Not Brendan,' so he kept up the investigation.
Unfortunately, the next step required concrete proof. Brendan Dean had had a scar on his back, near his shoulder blade, where he'd rolled over the hood of a getaway car and landed in a pile of gravel. It wasn't so much one scar as a cluster of tiny ones, rippling the skin badly enough that it would never again be smooth to Rodney's fingertips. Rodney needed to see it or touch it and find out if John Sheppard had the same scar. And that meant he needed John Sheppard to take off his shirt.
Rodney had given a lot of thought to this problem and eventually decided that the most likely place for Sheppard to strip down with an audience would be the gym. Rodney wasn't actually sure where the gym was, or if Atlantis even had one.
So he asked someone who would know.
"Lieutenant Ford! Glad to see you."
"Really?" Ford was a nice kid, but suspicious.
"Really," Rodney confirmed, thinking that Ford was lucky he didn't take offense to such things. He could be just as much a people person as anyone else -- if he wanted. "I wanted to ask you a question. I know you military types are all...fit, and whatever. Is there a gym around here? I'm a little fuzzy on the actual nature of -- "
"You want to work out?" Ford looked like Rodney had handed him the Publisher's Clearinghouse check. "All right, Doc! Come with me, I'll show you!"
And that's how Rodney had ended up draped over one of the massive storage containers that had transported scientific equipment through the Stargate, with a makeshift barbell sitting on his chest.
"All right, all right, Doc," Ford cheered, clapping his hands together before letting them hover under the ends of the metal rod holding two thirty-pound metal boxes. "Let's go, one more rep, just squeeze out one more. One more, you can do it!"
Rodney wanted to snap back that he would be happy to do one more rep if Ford would please just shut up about it, but he really didn't have enough air to spare it on the message, and besides that, his arms were seriously protesting the idea that he might have to push them straight at any time in the next two weeks, let along in the next two minutes. He squeezed his eyes shut in hopes of shutting out Ford's voice along with his face, and pushed hard.
Suddenly, some -- but not all -- of the weight was gone and Rodney's great heave pushed the rest of it over his head.
"There you go, McKay." It was Sheppard's voice, droll and slightly mocking, as always, and Rodney froze. "Go on," Sheppard said over his shoulder, presumably to Ford. "I've got him."
Sheppard's hands were on the bar, to the outside of Rodney's, and together, they brought the barbell back to its resting place.
"Working out, huh?" Sheppard asked when Rodney struggled into a sitting position. He was wearing track pants and a black t-shirt and had his hands set on his hips. "Ford's on duty in ten. I told him I'd give you a hand," he explained as if Rodney hadn't just heard him say so.
"Well," Rodney huffed. "Much as I appreciate that, I think I'm done for the day. I'll just uh...." He was stiff and he was sore and he was hungry, how did that happen? and little white spots danced at the edge of his vision. This working out thing was definitely dangerous to one's health. "I think I'll just uh, sit here a minute."
"All right," Sheppard said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Be ready to spot me in a few?" Without waiting for an answer, he tossed himself down on an incline bench and started pumping out situps.
Rodney watched him move through the various equipment for twenty-five minutes, even standing with his hands hovering under the barbell -- with significantly heavier boxes on either end -- although Sheppard didn't need any assistance. He also didn't take off his shirt -- the closest he came was wiping his forehead with the bottom hem and that didn't do anything for Rodney except give him a flush of arousal at the glimpse of the major's sweat-gilded stomach.
"I'm going for a run," Sheppard said after squirting some water into his mouth. "You want to come with?"
"Sure," Rodney wheezed. They were going to run. How bad could that be? A little jog here, a quick dash back the other way...no problem.
His plan came to a crashing halt about three minutes later when it became clear that John Sheppard didn't jog a little, not the way Brendan used to lope around the block and come back cranky. No, John Sheppard ran, and fast, and Rodney really didn't appreciate the way he would run ahead and then come back to circle around Rodney as Rodney panted and wheezed his way up the metal bridgeway.
On Sheppard's third return, Rodney stopped and leaned over, praying for the contents of his stomach to go somewhere, anywhere else, preferably by magic and without a mess.
"Need some water?" Sheppard asked, offering his squirt bottle.
Rodney took some, swallowed, and tilted his head back for more.
"Not too much," Sheppard warned. "It'll make you puke."
Rodney handed back the water immediately. "I think," he said, his voice strained from all the panting he'd been doing, "I'm just going to go back and take a shower." Sheppard still hadn't shucked his shirt and Rodney was starting to feel a little embarrassed by his own less-than-stellar physical performance.
"Are you sure?" Sheppard asked. "I can slow down if you want."
"No," Rodney said with finality. "I'm done."
Rodney had just gotten out of the shower and into a fresh set of clothes when he heard the knock on his door. When he answered it, he found a fairly sweaty and somewhat concerned John Sheppard on his doorstep.
"You all right?" Sheppard asked, rubbing the back of his neck. One would think Rodney had been the one to go on and keep running for another forty minutes.
"Fine, fine, just fine," Rodney insisted, ignoring the discomfort of a water drop escaping his hair and trickling down his back. "Just...hit the wall, I guess."
Sheppard smiled at him, teasing, almost affectionate, and said, "You were about nineteen and a half miles short of that. Did you eat something?"
"Huh? Yeah, a Power Bar. I figured they're athletic food, you know?" Rodney beamed back at him and wondered if he stood there long enough, maybe the major would get too warm and just take his shirt off right there.
"It's all about the logic," Sheppard said, rolling his eyes. "Ok, if you're fine -- " He turned to go and Rodney thought fast.
"It was uh -- it was really nice of you to come check up on me," he said hopefully, stepping closer.
Sheppard looked back at him in surprise. "No problem," he said easily. "Can't have my team members laid out in the hall from hypoglycemia." His voice softened over the last words as Rodney took another step closer. His eyes met Rodney's and he didn't look away. "What were you really doing in the gym, McKay?" he asked, voice scratchy in his throat.
"Looking for you," Rodney admitted. He moved even closer, until he and Sheppard were breathing the same air.
"Looking for me?" Sheppard asked, and then his hand came up and rested on the back of Rodney's neck.
Rodney took it as a sign and spread both his hands on Sheppard's waist. His t-shirt had ridden up a little and Rodney could feel damp flesh against his lower two fingers. Sheppard dropped his forehead to Rodney's, Athosian-style, and then lifted it to press hot lips to Rodney's temple. Rodney leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Sheppard's neck, wondering if he really tasted like Brendan or if it was just a fanciful notion borne of too many years of living in the past.
Sheppard sighed, a deep, shuddering sound, and his other hand found its way to Rodney's hip. Rodney felt like Sheppard's life preserver as they both floated in the middle of his room.
Rodney pushed Sheppard's shirt up with his thumbs and index fingers as he licked his way down the tense cord of the major's neck to the hard swell of his collarbone. Sheppard shivered and wrapped his fist in the hem of Rodney's shirt. Rodney pressed his palm up Sheppard's spine, dizzy from so much skin, from the sharp, earthy scent in his nostrils, from the damp salt under his tongue.
For a minute, Rodney didn't even care if Sheppard had a scar on his shoulder or not. He just wanted to stand there and hold Sheppard and touch him and well, touching him some more would be nice and so would kissing. Real kissing, on the mouth, with some tongue and everything.
But then Sheppard tensed and stepped away.
"I'll be right there," he said, his fingers on the radio. He cast a troubled look at Rodney. "I have to go," he said. "I'm sorry, I -- " He was out the door without finishing the thought.
Rodney stared at the closed door for a long time and all he could think was that he never heard a voice from John's radio, and he was only six inches away.
Rodney McKay was going to die a horrible death. And he was going to do it in the back end of a puddlejumper. It was only slightly more appealing than dying a horrible death in the backseat of a Ford Pinto.
Even worse, John Sheppard was currently dying a horrible death on the floor near his feet. He was dying a death by disgusting blue bug and if Rodney wasn't so busy being terrified, he'd be completely grossed out.
The real problem, though, he realized, frantically touching his stylus to the control crystals, was that his terror hadn't come when the puddlejumper had gotten itself lodged in the Stargate. His terror had come when he realized that John Sheppard was going to die and Rodney was going to miss him.
He didn't even care if Sheppard was now, or had ever been Brendan Dean. He'd loved Brendan, loved Brendan a lot, but Sheppard was here, now, and Sheppard gave as good as he got, and shared his popcorn, and came to check up on Rodney after Rodney had made a fool of himself trying to run. It was quite possible that John Sheppard was the only person on Atlantis who genuinely liked Rodney and Rodney hadn't even gotten a chance to kiss him right.
The Brendan Hypothesis went out the back of the 'jumper with the not-quite-dead bug and the rest of the atmosphere. Rodney had already jumped through the event horizon after John Sheppard and didn't watch them go.
"Do you, uh, have a few minutes?" Rodney asked, hovering.
John closed his book and set it on the bedside table. He spread his hands and shrugged artlessly. "Got nothing but time," he said. "What's on your mind?"
Rodney hopped up on the empty hospital bed next to John's and let his legs swing. "Years ago," he started. "Years and years, really. Seven. I was dating this guy. I mean -- " He paused to swallow around the lump in his throat. "I really loved him. I was in love with him. And I think -- I know he felt the same way. His name was Brendan and he was killed in an explosion. He looked -- you look -- the two of you could be twins. I promised myself I'd never love anyone the way I loved him. So I threw myself into my work and, well, here I am." He glanced over at John, who was watching him with calm, serious eyes. Brendan hadn't been capable of staying that calm, he had been like an overeager, concerned puppy, but Rodney pushed that aside. "When I first saw you, I wanted you to be Brendan. I tried to find evidence that you were Brendan, I tried to trick you into admitting similarities in your past...I wanted you to be Brendan so badly, I tried to convince myself that somehow, you really were him. But today, seeing you in so much pain, with that -- " Rodney's hands sketched a shape in the air. " -- bug on your neck, having to watch you die? It's like I blinked and when I opened my eyes, I was in love with John Sheppard. And I'm not sure how that happened but -- "
"Oh, hell," John sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "I should have told you. I should have told you right away. Hell, I should never have left. I knew what you were doing, Rodney. I just couldn't -- it wasn't that easy to -- "
"Wait, wait, what are you saying?" Rodney slid off the bed. "Are you trying to tell me -- ?"
"Yes." John sighed and let his head drop back against the pillow. "Yes, seven years ago, I was Brendan Dean."
"But you're supposed to be dead," Rodney said, even though he'd spent the last month coming up with ways that maybe Brendan wasn't dead. "Freya even said -- "
"Freya was in on it," Sheppard -- Brendan? -- said, turning his head to look at Rodney. "We were getting death threats. I was getting death threats. Plausible ones. People threatening to kill Freya, kill her sister, kill you unless I dropped the investigation."
"You're such an asshole," Rodney said.
"We faked my death," Sheppard went on, "and I finished up the investigation deep undercover. It was easy to pass information to Freya, all we had to do was pass on the street. I testified under a concealed identity -- "
"The unknown Verlucci witness? That was you?" Rodney exclaimed.
Sheppard nodded. "And then they gave me the John Sheppard identity and sent me off to war."
"Your government does a really lousy job of saying thank you," Rodney said because he couldn't say the hundred other nasty things spinning around his head.
"I asked to go, Rodney," Sheppard said with a sigh. "I wanted to fly, I wanted to help....but most of all I wanted to forget. I left you behind. I was lonely without you. I didn't want to be with anyone else and I didn't want to pretend to have a life without you. I missed you and -- "
"You died on me!" Rodney cut in. "I thought you were dead! How could you do that to me? Why didn't you take me with you?"
"Because -- because you're Rodney McKay! How were you going to be able to publish under an assumed name? How could I ask you to keep everything quiet, to stay in hiding, to live a boring, rational, mediocre life and not attract attention to us when you're brilliant and you need to be...doing things like that?"
"You could have told me." Rodney's voice was low and bitter.
"No. I couldn't have." Sheppard's eyes pled with him. "I tried to look you up once, when I thought they were going to kick me out of the Air Force, and you were heading up some kind of ultra-classified research project in Siberia, and I thought, I can't do this to him. He's moved on."
"I never 'moved on'," Rodney said unhappily.
"Yeah. Neither did I."
The atmosphere in the infirmary was thick was tension. Rodney looked at the floor. Sheppard looked at the wall over Rodney's left shoulder.
"Freya said you thought of me at the end."
"You were never far from my thoughts."
"Why didn't you tell me right away? Why not on the balcony that first night?"
"I didn't know how." Sheppard -- and why the hell was he still Sheppard, when Rodney had been waiting this long to call him Brendan? -- looked frustrated again. "It's been...it's been a long seven years, Rodney. I'm not Brendan Dean anymore. Not the Brendan Dean you lived with, who died on that street corner. I've killed people, I've ordered people to their deaths, I've disobeyed direct orders -- "
"You killed people when you were with the NSA," Rodney said. "And you've always disobeyed orders you didn't like." When Sheppard didn't answer, he went on. "There's a lot different about you. But I meant it. Even if you weren't Brendan Dean, even if you were never Brendan Dean, I'm in love with you. I'm in love with John Sheppard, whoever or whatever he used to be." Rodney stepped forward and ran his thumb lovingly down the curve of Sheppard's -- John's jaw. "Which doesn't mean," he added matter-of-factly, "that I'm not going to kick your ass for keeping secrets from me when you get out of here."
"No?" John asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
"No," Rodney said, leaning down and pressing his forehead to John's. "But it does mean that when I'm done, I'll kiss it and make it better."
"Oh, well, in that case," John said, reaching for Rodney's collar. For the first time in seven years, Rodney was kissing Brendan Dean.
And for the first time ever, he was kissing John Sheppard.
The End
Rodney McKay was madly in love with Brendan Dean until that fateful day when Brendan's partner came to the door and told Rodney that Brendan had been killed in an explosion. Rodney threw himself into his work, promising himself that he'd never lose anyone the way he'd lost Brendan.
But then, Major John Sheppard walks into the biggest project of Rodney's professional career. Besides being the spitting image of Rodney's dead lover, Major Sheppard is wickedly funny, stunningly intelligent, and irresistably sexy. But he has a secret too -- one that causes him to run from Rodney whenever things heat up between them!
Is John really Rodney's long-lost love, Brendan? Or is he Rodney's only hope for a blissful future?