The
Space Between
by lamardeuse
Overall series rating: NC-17
Set during SGA 2x02, "The
Intruder"
After twelve nonstop days
of briefings and debriefings and poring over supply lists and resumes
and losing his mind in an entirely different way than he had been doing
in the Pegasus galaxy, Rodney called up a general he knew who owed him
a favour, and seven hours after that he was getting off an Air Force transport
at Pearson International.
He rented a blue Buick and
bought a map and drove to Markham, muttering the whole way, his palms so
slick on the wheel he almost lost control of the vehicle a couple of times.
There’d been no sense in calling Jeannie because up until yesterday he
didn’t know he’d have time to do this, and he still wasn’t sure if he was
going to take the next exit and head back to the airport. When he turned
the corner on to her street he slowed, surprised he’d made it that far, then
gripped the wheel as best he could and took a deep, steadying breath.
The last time he’d talked
to her had been at Mum’s funeral three years ago. Her pretty face
had been pinched and drawn and grief-stricken, and for a moment he’d actually
hated her for being capable of looking that way, of feeling that deeply.
He himself felt nothing—or next to nothing, which he supposed was worse.
Mom always did love you
best. Christ, his life was a Smothers Brothers routine.
Jeannie lived in one of
the more luxurious subdivisions, where there was a full ten feet between
houses. Most of them had double car garages and wide paved driveways
that ate up half the front yard.
When he knocked, there was
no answer. He checked his watch: it was a quarter past six.
A blonde head poked out
of the house next door. “Can I help you?”
Rodney blinked; he’d been
steeling himself for strenuous emotional contact, so he had to readjust
himself for something more superficial. “I’m looking for Jeannie.
Jeannie Stephenson?”
The woman’s eyes flicked
over him, assessing his potential threat level. “I’m her brother,”
he added, his impatience bleeding through.
“Oh. Oh!” The
screen door banged as she darted from her house and crossed the lawn swiftly.
“You’re Rodney!” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Jeannie’s friend,
Marg.” She made a face that might have been sympathetic or constipated.
“She’s going to be so disappointed she missed you.”
“Have they gone out for
the evening?”
“Oh, no. They’re on
vacation. She and Gordie and the kids rented a motor home.
They left Monday for a trip out west. See the Stampede, that kind
of thing.”
Rodney shut his eyes briefly.
“Is there any way to get in touch with her?”
“I’ll give you her cell
phone number, but I don’t think that’ll do you much good. She told me they’re
probably going to be out of range most of the time. She’s going to
call me Sunday night, though. Would you like me to ask her to call
you?”
“No, no thank you,” he murmured,
mouth tightening. “I’ll be—unavailable.” The SGC had provided
him with a phone, but he figured reception would be pretty poor once he
left the solar system.
An hour later he was sitting
in a diner near the airport, reading the paper placemat in front of him
as he waited for his fish and chips. It was festooned with articles
on various subjects, including a biography of Kierkegaard that was obviously
written by someone whose command of English syntax was exceeded by their
literary ambitions.
Even though he felt,
but was not sure, he was in love. Who can know for sure, he reasoned.
He believed his mind ought to be as consentual as his heart. A mighty
disturbance popped up in his psyche.
Rodney dug out his cell
phone and dialed the number Marg had given him, not really surprised when
he heard the pleasant pre-recorded The customer is outside the calling
radius message.
The waitress delivered his
fish and chips, which were surprisingly good. Once he’d inhaled the
first piece, he dialed John’s number. John picked up after the sixth
ring.
“Sheppard.”
“McKay.”
There was a pause, then,
“What’s up, Rodney?” in his terse, take-no-prisoners voice.
Rodney wanted to say, Sounds
like you’re having as good a day as I am, but since they didn’t do
that kind of thing with one another, he said instead, “Are you back at
Cheyenne yet?”
“No, but I will be in—”
another pause “—three hours.”
Rodney fiddled with the
edge of his placemat. “I’ll be there in four. When I get in,
you want to go for pizza?”
A thousand miles away, he
heard John Sheppard smirk. “Only if I get to pick the toppings.”
“Deal,” Rodney said, and
hung up.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rodney got back to the SGC
not long before midnight local time, and the first thing they did after
commandeering a staff car was drive through the humid midsummer night to
a Taco Bell and order way too many enchiladas and fries coated in imitation
melted cheese, mystery meat and sour cream. Next was Big Macs and
Chicken McNuggets—Rodney was shocked when John asked for honey, he would’ve
bet he was a barbecue guy—and finally they picked a local place for pizza
and ordered the works on top of the works, including anchovies. To
Rodney, the back seat smelled like a fast food place in heaven.
John, on the other hand,
seemed kind of pissy about the whole thing, like he’d been duped into chauffeuring
Rodney around Colorado Springs on a quest for grease. So when Rodney
finally instructed him to turn in to the motel parking lot, he didn’t immediately
perk up. It was only when he suggested Sheppard stay in the car while
he check in that those dark eyebrows shot up in understanding.
“Don’t worry,” Rodney said
archly. “You paid for dinner, I’ll put out.” John might have
smiled, but it was hard to tell with only the faint glow of the dashboard
lighting his face.
The room was clean, if not
particularly large, and there was a noisy but functioning air conditioner
set to full blast. Rodney split the bags right open on the bed and
began sampling a fry here and a McNugget there while John started on the
pizza and watched him with half-lidded eyes.
“What?” he asked in mid-chew,
though John had to know that look never failed to turn him on, even when—or
maybe especially when—there was seemingly inevitable, gory death
looming on the horizon.
“You don’t have to be dainty
with me,” John drawled. “I’ve seen you at your slobby best.”
“Thank you very much for
your permission. I’m savouring, do you mind?”
Sheppard rolled his eyes.
“Rodney, you savour a good barbecued steak or a glass of thirty-year old
scotch. You do not savour Fries Supreme.”
“Says you,” Rodney shot
back, licking cheese goop off his fingers. “Do you know I used to
dream about this crap the last couple of weeks before the siege?”
“Does Heightmeyer know about
this?”
Rodney snorted. “I
don’t need a shrink to tell me how neurotic I am. Obviously, the
food was symbolic of comfort, safety, home. Which makes you wonder
why we’re putting all this effort into saving the world, really; if this—”
he waved his Big Mac, sending a couple of lettuce shards flying “—is representative
of Earth in all its glory, then we’re already in trouble, even without the
Wraith.”
“Maybe you should have been
dreaming about the Louvre or the Parthenon,” Sheppard said, wiping his
mouth with a paper napkin. “Something representing the nobility of
the human spirit.”
Rodney grunted and sucked
down about half of his super-sized Coke. “Given the choice between
the Mona Lisa and enchiladas, I’ll take enchiladas every time.”
“You,” John said, pointing
an accusing pizza slice, “are a Philistine.”
Rodney kept eating after
he’d already had enough, because, well, he didn’t quite know what to do
with John Sheppard in a motel room on the outskirts of Colorado Springs
where the chances were extremely good that both of them would survive the
night. Luckily, though, John seemed to sense the mighty disturbance
in Rodney’s psyche, because after a few more minutes of watching Rodney
graze, he stood up, cleared away enough of the empty food wrappers to make
room for himself on the bed, kneeled on the mattress, took Rodney’s face
in his hands and kissed him.
When he drew back almost
immediately, Rodney’s heart lurched. “What?”
John’s tongue darted out
to lick at Rodney’s upper lip. “You taste like special sauce,” John
murmured before he dove right back into Rodney’s mouth.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rodney woke when the morning
sun found the gap in the curtains that would allow a sharp ray of sunlight
to pierce his left eye. Squinting, he peered at the bedside clock
and groaned when he saw it was well past eight.
John lay on his side facing
Rodney, arms tucked in close to his body. Shamelessly, Rodney took
a moment to study his face, which in sleep was uncharacteristically slack-jawed
and vulnerable.
Okay, maybe it was several
moments.
Finally, his conscience
got the better of him and he poked John in the shoulder. John came
instantly awake, eyes popping open, face acquiring that military tautness.
“We should be getting back,”
Rodney said, his voice rusty.
John rubbed at his eyes
like a petulant toddler. “I don’t have to report until tomorrow morning.”
Rodney frowned. Not
having the same input into the military staffing that Rodney and Carson
did in selecting the scientific and medical teams, John had left over a
week ago on some mysterious trip. When curiosity had forced Rodney
to ask Elizabeth, she said he’d mentioned visiting Ford’s family.
But surely that didn’t require an entire week.
It occurred to him then
that he knew next to nothing about John, and that John knew next to nothing
about him. He wasn’t entirely sure how to rectify that situation.
Somehow it seemed too simple to just open his mouth and let the words come
out.
So instead he opened his
mouth and said, “Tomorrow, hm? By an amazing coincidence, my schedule’s
free until tomorrow too.”
John pretended to give it
some thought. “Want to get more pizza?”
Rodney slid his hand under
the sheet, smiling when the silky hair covering the warm skin tickled his
palm. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I won’t need more pizza
for at least another hour.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The following afternoon
he was on his way to Elizabeth’s temporary office at the SGC for a meeting
when an obviously angry voice stopped him in his tracks.
“—actions constitute a breach
of security.”
“There was no breach of
security, sir,” he heard John reply. “I was exceedingly careful to
avoid specifics.”
Rodney was brought up short
not by the anger in the other voice, but by the anger in John’s. It
wasn’t detectible by anyone who didn’t know how to look for it—outwardly,
he sounded perfectly calm, and perfectly serious. That was the trick,
because most of the time John took care to never appear serious about anything.
Quietly, Rodney edged toward the door so that he could eavesdrop more effectively.
“No? Then what did
you tell them?” the other voice demanded. “That their sons and daughters
and wives and husbands were lost in some classified battle in some classified
war, and their remains are now in some classified place where their loved
ones will never be permitted to visit? Do you think it helped them
to know that?”
There was a few moments’
pause. “Colonel Everett charged me with informing the families—”
“He expected you to write
a letter, Sheppard, not visit the next of kin of every soldier we lost
in the siege of Atlantis.”
Rodney’s stomach did a backflip
as the meaning of those words sank in. He tried to remember the numbers—forty
some-odd casualties, and how many of those dead or taken by the Wraith?
Two dozen, at least, and the vast majority of those had been military.
He tried to imagine seeing
all of those people, meeting them face to face, opening himself to that
maelstrom of emotions over and over again—and failed. Hell, it had
almost been beyond his imagination to do that with his own sister;
the thought of speaking that intimately with dozens of strangers was enough
to make him feel ill.
“I decided to exercise my
initiative, sir,” Sheppard said, and now Rodney could hear that familiar
sarcastic drawl. “I’ve been told it’s the mark of a true leader—”
“Stow it, Colonel,”
the other man snapped. “You’ve forgotten the Air Force doesn’t have
a sense of humour.” Then Rodney heard a sigh. “Listen, son,
I don’t want to bust your balls. But you’ve got a hell of a job for
your first command, and you’re going to burn yourself out within six months
if you keep up this level of involvement.”
When Sheppard spoke again,
his voice was so low that Rodney had to strain to hear it. “Don’t
have much choice, General. Atlantis seems to have that effect on people.”
“Dismissed, Colonel,” the
general said wearily.
Rodney turned and fled,
finding an empty conference room to duck into just in time.
As he listened to the familiar
cadence of John’s boots echoing down the hallway, he thought about the
John Sheppard he’d known yesterday, the one whose naked body had been spread
out under Rodney’s splayed fingers like a feast.
Who can know for sure,
he reasoned.
Rodney walked out of the
room and headed for his appointment, taking care to close the door on his
way out.
End
July 2005
A/N: The Kierkegaard
biography excerpt belongs to R.D. Barton and Fact and Fancy Placemats of
Fredericton, New Brunswick. No copyright infringement is intended.
Part III: Sacrifice
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