They brought him back in the middle of the night, strapped down and stunned.
John had detailed two of his men to bear him out and another two to walk
point while he and Ronon kept an eye on their prize. Teyla had their
six, hanging back with that look on her face that made him feel like he’d
been caught writing on the walls with crayons again.
He woke up twice on the way to the jumper. Ronon knocked him out
with that hand cannon of his both times, before John even had a chance to
draw his stunner.
“Jesus,” John said, because his head had snapped back kind of hard on the
last one, “try not to scramble his brain before the doc gets a look at him,
will you?”
Ronon only bared his teeth in a feral grin. John sighed and kept
walking.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He didn’t see much of Rodney for the next few days, both of them having
their own respective headaches to deal with. John figured he’d take
some time to do those personnel evaluations he’d been putting off, especially
since the SGC had been screaming for them for a month now. Sure, okay,
leadership was part of every officer’s training, but everyone (except Elizabeth,
apparently) knew pilots weren’t the kinds of guys generals tended to like
to put in charge of anything, whether or not they had black marks on their
service records. He never thought he’d ever be given command of a
squadron, let alone the military component of an expedition to a mythical
city in another galaxy. The responsibility he could handle, but the
paperwork – now, that just might kill him.
The thing was, the subtle changes Caldwell had made when John had been
busy morphing into a Kafka nightmare had ended up being good ones, improving
the efficiency of what he freely admitted had been a fairly inefficient
system. Organization wasn’t John’s strong suit; spreadsheets and schedules
and the minutiae of bureaucratic procedure drove him up the wall.
His first day back, he’d found an instruction manual for the military’s
latest HR administration software on his desk – a not-so-subtle gift from
Caldwell that had ended up saving his ass on more than one occasion.
Add to that the two pencil-pushing warrant officers who had shown up on
the Daedalus’ next run, and he was now able to manage a military
staff of two hundred and twenty without wanting to tear out his hair every
damned day.
After about ten hours of reading reports and dictating his summaries of
the senior officers’ performances (excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent,
excellent), the text on the monitor started to swim in front of his eyes.
Closing the laptop, he stretched and rose, making the executive decision
to call it a day.
After a run and a shower he ended up at the medlab, where he was surprised
to find Rodney watching the Wraith as he slept.
“Hey.” John spoke softly, but Rodney still jumped. He turned and
blinked at John as if he didn’t quite recognize him.
“How’s he doing?” John asked. The lights were pretty dim, but he
could see that he was starting to look fairly human. He remembered
the two weeks he spent becoming human again, the way his skin had itched
like it was being overrun by ants. Carson had finally agreed to strap
him down, because if he hadn’t he would have torn through his rapidly molting
skin. He wondered absently if the guy was going through the same thing,
then pushed the thought aside.
“Carson’s got him pretty heavily sedated, but as you can see he seems to
be coming along nicely,” Rodney said. “Time will tell.” John
looked over at him and saw him chewing on a knuckle. That was always
a bad sign.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. You know me – I hate leaving our fates in the hands
of the soft sciences.” He sighed. “Also, it’s a little annoying
that he’s turning out to be better-looking than I am.”
John made a face.
“Come on,” Rodney said. “You have to admit that apart from the whole
life-sucking thing, they’re pretty sexy. Those high cheekbones and
all that leather?”
John eyed him. “You had a crush on Freddie Mercury when you were
a teenager, didn’t you?”
Rodney lifted his chin. “Maybe.”
John shook his head. “He’s not human. Just keep telling yourself
that and you’ll be fine.”
After a moment he turned to see Rodney watching him. “What?” John
asked.
Rodney only shook his head. After a couple of moments, they both
went back to watching the Wraith sleep.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
A couple of days later Rodney apparently decided he’d gone long enough
without sex, so he showed up at John’s door late one night with a DVD of
the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie, a gallon of Coke and a bowl of popcorn
big enough to feed the population of Dubuque.
John didn’t have the heart or the strength to tell him he wasn’t in the
mood; Elizabeth had agreed to release the Wraith in the morning over his objections,
and something told him he wasn’t going to be getting much sleep after tonight.
On the up side, having Rodney around tended to make you forget your own troubles,
because Rodney could find trouble in the most insignificant shit imaginable.
“Oh, please,” Rodney complained (it was, John believed, his forty-seventh
complaint since the movie had started half an hour ago). “Where did
they dredge up this airhead? That –” he pointed at the laptop
screen accusingly “– is not Trillian.”
John shook his head. “You knew you were going to hate this movie
when you got it, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did! It’s an overblown, sappy, romanticized version
of one of the greatest science fiction classics of the last forty years.”
“One of the greatest crackheaded science fiction classics of the
last forty years,” John amended. “At least the Vogons were cool.”
“Yes, but one positive does not make up for all the – ”
“And Alan Rickman has a sexy voice.”
“For an android with the head of Frosty the Snowman –”
Calmly, John picked up the mostly depleted bowl of popcorn and set it on
the floor, then shut his laptop. He looked up at Rodney, who was staring
at him, bug-eyed and outraged.
“I have enough energy for one thing,” John said slowly, “enduring the rest
of this movie with you or a blowjob. Take your pick.”
To his credit, Rodney changed horses with lightning speed, going from pissy
to grinning and eager in approximately one point three seconds. “I’d
like the second option,” he said brightly.
Jesus Christ, John thought as he reached for the button on Rodney’s
pants, I think I’m married.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The message was waiting for him when he returned to his quarters, downloaded
and unzipped from the weekly packet sent from the SGC. Some fucking
REMF sitting in a cubicle had e-mailed him complaining that his fucking
personnel reports for the non-coms still hadn’t arrived and where were they
because everyone knew the military couldn’t function without a constant
flow of meaningless, bullshit paperwork –
John was startled by the loud crash as his laptop hit the wall and
fractured into its component parts. He stared at the scattered remains
stupidly for a few moments, then frowned; he honestly couldn’t remember
even picking the damned thing up.
Turning on his heel, he walked out without cleaning it up and went directly
to his now-deserted office, where he sat down in front of the computer and
stared at the monitor for God knew how long. Finally, he positioned
his hands over the keyboard and began painstakingly typing out all twelve
performance evaluations, one after the other.
When he was done with that, he started on the letter to Cole’s wife.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rodney followed him down the hall after the meeting, keeping up his low-level
bitching all the way to John’s quarters, where he followed him inside, still
bitching. John did his best to tune out practically everything Rodney
said, because if he actually listened to him he was afraid of what he’d
do. Surges of frustration were zinging along his nerves, making his
muscles bunch and jump as he walked. He wanted to beat the living
shit out of something; he knew that Ronon was probably already in the gym,
hopefully taking out his aggression on an inanimate object.
“You haven’t heard a single word I’ve said in the last five minutes, have
you?”
John shook his head and stripped off his t-shirt. “Nope.”
“Don’t you think—”
“Rodney,” John said, as patiently as he could, which was to say not at
all, “I don’t want to think any more. If I start thinking I’m going
to start hitting something. Repeatedly.”
He wasn’t sure if it was the tone of his voice or the look on his face,
but Rodney’s eyes widened and he took a step back, and fuck, John hated himself
in that moment. “The wall, Rodney. Not you.”
Rodney relaxed slightly at that, but he still looked scared. Pointing
a finger at the door, he said, “Well, ah, perhaps I’d better let you…”
“Yeah,” John said, before the silence could graduate beyond awkward, “that’d
probably be a good idea.” He turned away before he could watch Rodney
walk out, heading for the bathroom. He pretended he didn’t hear the
whoosh of the door as Rodney left.
Ten minutes later he was under the pounding spray and wondering if he was
ever going to feel human again when he felt a rush of cool air at his back.
He turned so quickly he overbalanced and would have slipped if not for the
strong hands bracketing his upper arms. When he was finally steady
on his feet, he wiped the water from his eyes and met Rodney’s concerned
blue gaze.
“Sorry, sorry,” Rodney said, finally releasing his biceps.
“You should be,” John returned, deadpan. “Cracking my skull in the
shower is not exactly the heroic end I envisioned for myself.”
Rodney eyed him then, and John did his best not to squirm under the familiarity
of that gaze. It surprised him to realize that Rodney was getting
to know him, was starting to understand when to push and when to pull and
when to leave well enough alone. It should have made him want to run,
but for some reason he couldn’t make his feet move.
Probably for the best, really; he didn’t want to land on his ass.
Rodney’s hands reached out again tentatively, finding their home on the
jut of John’s hips. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, one corner of his mouth
lifting. “Elizabeth would have delivered a stirring eulogy free from
any reference to embarrassing bathroom accidents.”
Feeling some small yet significant measure of wildness slough from his
skin and disappear down the drain, John lifted his own hands and rested
them on Rodney’s shoulders, thumbs tracing the tendons of his neck.
Rodney’s eyes widened in what John hoped was a good way, and then John was
leaning in and touching his forehead to Rodney’s, and Rodney stood with
him in silence while John closed his eyes and let the water scour them both
clean.