graphic by jchalo

Of course Rodney knows that Sheppard has been inside the cloister for six months—he had calculated the time-passage ratios himself, after all—but it doesn’t truly hit home until while on his way toward the village, Rodney glances up from his data pad and sees Sheppard for the first time since they'd lost him. Knee deep in golden-green grasses, Sheppard stands motionless, his forehead creased with a wary bewilderment, as though he isn’t quite certain what he’s looking at.

“Colonel Sheppard!” Elizabeth shouts breathlessly. Her upraised arm is a solitary mark against the empty sky, her voice an unsettling slash of sound through the valley’s silence. “John!”

ZPM, ZPM, Rodney had been thinking a moment earlier, but now he can’t think of anything but Sheppard’s face, open and shaken, even through the camouflage of his startling new beard. Six months, and has Sheppard forgotten everything he’s every known about subterfuge? Seeing his rescue party ought to be cause for celebration, and instead, Sheppard just stands there and looks utterly gut-punched as Rodney trudges toward him, the sun bleeding heat through his uniform jacket the whole while.

Elizabeth reaches him first and explains things in a rush, and then once again in greater detail as Sheppard slowly thaws, every shift in his stance a small degree of relief. Finally, he breaks his gaze away from Elizabeth to really see the rest of them, so incredulous and so hungry that Rodney falls back from the group, unexpectedly self-conscious.

“It’s good to see you, Colonel,” he says awkwardly, and lifts a hand in greeting. And then, because it is the only way he knows how to make amends, he turns his attention back to the ZPM.

***

It takes Rodney twice as long as everyone else to accept that the power source isn’t accessible like they thought it’d been; ten days of searching the entire valley for a device which doesn’t seem to exist at all. The others accept their fate right away—“We’re going to be here for at least six months,” Elizabeth says, scanning the scope of the sky with awe-filled eyes—but Rodney keeps searching, plowing through the idyllic valley until there’s nothing left to do but admit defeat.

“At least six months until someone comes, assuming the backup plan works,” she says, at which Rodney huffs, “Of course it will work!” even though the first plan has left them stranded with no other options.

And Sheppard…Rodney expects him to rail against the idea of more time in this prison, but he instead slaps Rodney heartily on the back and trots off to the house he shares with Teer, a wisp of a woman with eyes so sharp Rodney thinks he could easily find himself cut clean open on the edge of her vision. It’s the same oddly domestic scene every night, Sheppard stomping the dirt from his boots before entering Teer’s tidy threshold. Rodney can scarcely wrap his head around the idea of it, and eventually, he gives up trying. By then, he’s realized that he’s the only one with an anxious list of questions, and the only one left who still wakes in a cold sweat over what’s happened to them.

****

Rodney keeps waiting for Sheppard to round everyone up for a debriefing, a meeting, something to remind everyone of their places. He waits, but it doesn’t happen. The closest thing to an official command is when Elizabeth asks Rodney to draw up plans for a shelter to fit the Atlantis team during their stay. Part of him wants to protest—it’s too permanent—but he’s tired of crawling out of his tent every morning and sitting, miserable and aching, at the breakfast table while Teer serves up plates of her nut bread with light, graceful steps. She always gives Sheppard the largest piece, and touches his arm as she serves him. So desperate, Rodney thinks, disgusted, like so many other women when they’ve set their sights on Sheppard.

It’s not that he has any particular reason for the immediate aversion he feels for Teer--besides, of course, her complete lack of experience in anything which could be considered remotely useful or interesting. But when he listens to her speak, watches her move, he can’t help but notice that it is with the same lackluster quality that marks Sheppard, these days. It might be a result of Teer’s influence, or possibly all the meditation. Either way, Rodney is tired of seeing Sheppard hanging back away from the crowd, watching the unremarkable days pass by without comment.

They work on their shelter for two weeks, a stretch of sunny weather that seems almost too good to be true. But Rodney has found that everything here is real, no matter how badly he rails against it. The full reality sinks in when Sheppard brings him a homespun outfit similar to his own, pushes it at Rodney’s chest, and says, “I think it’s time to lose the uniform, McKay.”

By then, with his blue uniform top constantly damp and stale-smelling, Rodney can’t even argue. He forgoes the vest and makes do with a blousy white shirt that breathes so beautifully he thinks he might actually survive this, and a pair of pants similar to Sheppard’s—tighter than his Earth clothing, but undeniably functional.

They work though a dozen languid afternoons, Sheppard and Ronon stripped down to their waists, the pervasive sunlight bright on their bare skin as they raise beam to beam, arch to anchor. Teyla drags her share of refined timber from the heap with a bounce in her step that Rodney can’t understand but doesn’t question, because each time she bends her head to Elizabeth’s, there is an eruption of mirthful laughter, a sound he hasn’t heard in a very long time; not from them. Not like this.

Carson’s head turns toward the sound, as well. “This whole place is mad,” he says, even as his smiling eyes follow the two women about their work. “If I hadn’t tested everyone myself, I’d suspect something amiss.”

“Please; you love it here,” Rodney grumbles. Carson is exactly like the rest of them, sitting dutifully through the daily meditation, rigid with concentration even though Rodney has frequently and loudly expressed the concern that one of them will simply ascend to the hereafter, too late for regrets.

***

When they meditate, the village is too quiet. Elizabeth is always in the front row, earnestly searching, for which Rodney can’t blame her. No aspect of Atlantis has ever made her eyes light up like the mention of ascension can do, so at least someone is able to pursue their work while they’re stuck here. Regardless, the whole practice makes him uneasy. While everyone else sits and wastes their time, he explores the valley and surrounding woods. Deep down, he hasn’t given up on the ZPM.



Rodney had tried meditating exactly once. Within five minutes he’d been bored out of his mind, eyes open and staring at the back of Sheppard’s head so intently that Sheppard had turned around and mouthed, “Stop it,” before returning to his own practice.

Afterward, Avrid had caught up with Rodney. “John used to disturb us all with his snoring,” he had said, his head bent conspiratorially toward Rodney’s. “You will learn.”

“I’d rather learn how to get out of here,” Rodney had said, which had just caused Avrid to smile even more.

“You are just like him! Or, how he used to be,” he’d corrected himself. “But he shares our peace now that he walks with the Ancients.”

“Wonderful,” Rodney had said, because of all the things Avrid could have said, it had been the very last thing Rodney wanted to hear. “I’m very happy for him.”

“It is a gift well-earned,” Avrid had gone on, though his smile had faded at Rodney’s harsh tone. “He rid us of our great beast.”

“Of course he did. And you thanked him with an endless loop of brainwashing,” he had snapped in return, and no one has asked him to join them since.




Today, Rodney goes further into the woods than he normally ventures, and ends up on the bank of a small lake edged with large, smooth boulders. It’s a fair distance from the village, so it’s a surprise to discover Sheppard swimming aimlessly about in the water, his wet hair plastered to his head.

“Colonel?” Rodney stumbles down the incline and catches himself on one of the large, flat rocks that flank the water. “Shouldn’t you be back with the others, striving for communion with the ancients?”

After weeks of working in the sun, Sheppard’s shoulders are a deep golden brown, and through the ripples of water, Rodney can see the place where the color leaves off, pale white skin far beneath the surface. Oblivious to Rodney’s critical eye, he shakes the water from his hair and smiles.

“Nah; that stuff gets a little boring after a while, if you know what I mean,” he says. When he floats up onto his back, Rodney averts his eyes.

“I thought you were into that stuff,” he retorts, prickling all over with discomfort. “The new, improved John Sheppard.”

“Hey.” Sheppard frowns and paddles over to Rodney. “I’m just trying to make the best of it while we’re here.”

Lowering himself down into a sitting position, Rodney snorts. John Sheppard, contentedly making the best of what could essentially be viewed as a hostage situation? It doesn’t make any more sense now than it had the day he’d seen Sheppard abandon the search for the ZPM in favor of primitive farming and high-spirited barn-raising.

“What, I can’t be happy?”

Rodney snaps his head up and glares at Sheppard. “Yes. If it made any sense. But the question is why you’re so happy, and it makes even less sense after talking to Avrid.”

Sheppard treads water, unimpressed.

“He told me that for the past six months you’ve been doing nothing but searching for a way out of this place…that you belittled their ways and ignored Teer and refused to accept anything they told you as the truth.”

With one hand shading his eyes from the sun, Sheppard squints up at Rodney, water dripping from his fingers. “Is that what he said?”

“Yes, and don’t bother denying it, because that sounds exactly like you, Colonel. So what I’d like to know is how you suddenly find the situation so tolerable that you can walk around here like everything is fine!” Rodney waits, his throat tight with unanswered questions, until Sheppard grabs onto the edge of Rodney’s rock and hoists himself up enough to prop his elbows on the smooth-grained stone.

“Because, Rodney,” he says, each word carefully controlled, as though there is a firestorm beneath them, “If I can spend six months here thinking my team didn’t bother to mount a search and rescue on my behalf, I figure I can handle a few more knowing they did, with the bonus of being able to sleep at night.”

He looks from Sheppard’s shadowed eyes down to his dark beard, and finally down at the water pooling on the stone; scores of dark patterns as random as the one beating away in his chest. Somehow, Rodney’s accusation has been horribly reversed. It can’t come down to this, that the reason for Sheppard’s happiness is the simple discovery that he hadn’t been left behind. He can’t have been so faithless, except Rodney knows in Sheppard’s place he might have thought the same thing.

“Well. As you can see, we did our best. Such as it is,” Rodney says, as normally as his constricting throat will allow.

“And that’s very good to know,” Sheppard says breezily. For him, that’s the end of it, and he pushes himself off the rock to slip beneath the water. One thing is the same about Sheppard: the way has to be so infuriatingly difficult, all the while giving the impression of being easy.

Rodney can still see him, a blur of motion beneath the surface of the lake. The water that Sheppard dripped all over Rodney’s resting place is already nearly dry in the late afternoon heat, but beneath Rodney’s tunic, his skin is wet with perspiration. His instinct is to leave, but the problem is that there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do, and this thing with Sheppard isn’t finished by far. Rodney is bothered by the weight of some apology owed to Sheppard, and he can sympathize, because beneath it all, he feels wronged, too; stuck here with this unsettlingly passive Sheppard.

Against his better judgment, he begins to unlace his boots.

Sheppard surfaces in a messy explosion of water, shaking his hair out like a dog and laughing at Rodney’s scowl. “Coming in?”

“Assuming you’re not going to want to wrestle, dunk me, or any of the other reasons I opted out of swimming classes in school, then yes.”

“So, no Marco Polo?”

Rodney shakes his head and peels off his clothes quickly before diving in. “Do you come here often?”

“Sometimes.” Sheppard circles him in the water like a lazy shark, a trace of a smile on his lips. “It’s like this every day, you know.”

“Like what?”

“The weather. You’ve already seen it rain, right? It does that once a week, and then it’s like this again--sunshine and partly cloudy skies. Perfect weather, except they’ve never even seen a thunderstorm.”

“And that bothers you.”

“It bothers me that they don’t care.”

Rodney thinks about that while he floats in the water, face tipped toward the looming trees and the blue patch of sky above them. “Did you know there were dissenters among the ancients? They were ardently opposed to ascension; considered it comparable to suicide.” Maybe that’s what Sheppard is getting at, maybe it isn’t, but it quiets him for a while, and they splash around one another until Rodney can’t deny that they’re playing in the exact way he’d claimed to hate.

“It’s not the ascension I’m opposed to,” Sheppard says later on, when they’ve climbed out and stretched out on Rodney’s rock to dry. “It’s this part; the way they live. It’s a waste,” he says.

Rodney, thinking of his depleted laptop batteries and a far off city in need of his care, cannot agree more.

***

They’ve almost reached the edge of the village when it happens; the abrupt feeling that something is off, followed by a beacon of light that shoots straight up into the sky before fading out into nothing.

“-Zelenka?” Sheppard asks, stepping up his pace.

Rodney shakes his head. “Enough time hasn’t passed,” he says. It’s not a rescue; it’s this god-awful place merely fulfilling its function, Rodney already knows. Someone has ascended.

Teer’s eyes are still on the sky when they reach the crowd. Rodney doesn’t know her, so he can’t guess whether or not she’s pleased with the events, not even when she reaches for Sheppard and clings to him, her tiny frame appearing impossibly fragile within the circle of his arms. “Hedda,” she says shakily. Rodney sucks in a nervous breath. Sheppard is fond of the girl, though Rodney can’t understand why.

“Hedda,” Teer says again, and when she lifts her face from Sheppard’s chest, she is radiant with a pale joy, the only type of joy these people seem to know. Sheppard is right; everything is diminished here, diluted by the absence of any brilliance, any creativity, any risk. But he still keeps his hands at Teer’s waist, and simply raises his eyes to the sky where Hedda had disappeared.

Rodney turns and marches toward the shelter he shares with the rest of the team, sick to his stomach.

“Rodney? Are you all right?” Carson is inside, sitting on his own bed, talking quietly with Teyla.

“No. No, I am not all right,” he says. “This place.” He can taste the bitterness in his words, as certainly as Teyla and Carson can hear it, a hard emotion that’s been rising ever since he had walked across that field and been caught so completely off-guard by the damage—or, is it damage?—done to Colonel Sheppard.

“You saw the ascension?” Teyla asks gently. “I was at Hedda’s side when it occurred. I have heard all my life of such things, but it did not truly prepare me for such an experience.”

“It was something, all right,” Carson says. “Right up she went…” He trails off, his eyes wide.

“Yes, I saw,” Rodney says sharply--too sharply, judging by Teyla’s expression, but he doesn’t want to hear any more talk about it, even from his own mouth. He’s tired of warning them against searching too hard for things they don’t fully understand. Intentions are meaningless here, he’s told them a dozen times, but they’d stopped listening to him as soon as they’d witnessed the undeniable gifts of these people; the blessings of the Ancients. This is Elizabeth’s realm, not his, and for the first time in Rodney’s life, he lacks the credibility to convince others that he is right.

***

It’s not all miserable. Over time, Rodney can admit there are things about this place which aren’t completely awful. For instance, it’s impossible to begrudge Teyla and Ronon the chance to experience a threat-free existence for the first time in their lives. They smile easier these days, and Ronon is downright playful, likely to swing small children over his shoulder until they shriek with delight. Occasionally, Rodney will see him out in the village unarmed, and remember a time when he wouldn’t have dared step outside without a small arsenal at his disposal.

Elizabeth has also been transformed. Gone is the carefully set hairdo and the rigid posture which bears an impossible weight of responsibility. “I spent too much time in Atlantis waiting,” he hears her say one evening at the supper table. “Waiting for news, for results, for information...and it feels damn good to get my hands dirty, for a change.”

With a glance at the place where Elizabeth’s shoulder is pressed lightly against Ronon’s bicep, Rodney wonders exactly how dirty she’s getting, these days.

And he enjoys the times Sheppard skips out on meditation. On those days, Rodney sometimes meets up with him, except for the times Sheppard isn’t up for company. From what Rodney hears, Sheppard spends a great deal of time wandering the woods on his own. Rodney goes through phases where he feverishly searches for the power source, and Sheppard knows—of course Sheppard knows—but he doesn’t say anything, for which Rodney is grateful. This is shaping up to be the second biggest failure of his life, and it’s a tender spot he can’t stop prodding at, painful enough without Sheppard’s two cents.

Of course, this new Sheppard would never twist the knife, would he? That would require some kind of heat, something Sheppard hasn’t had since they’d found him. At this point, it’s beginning to feel like a punishment; a withholding of Sheppard by Sheppard that leaves Rodney half lonely and half annoyed, because now that Sheppard knows the truth, Rodney thinks he really ought to start getting over it.

***

He wakes with a start, homemade quilt bunched around his waist and an echo of thunder in his head. It strikes again before he can get his bearings, a clap like a starting pistol, and Rodney pulls the covers to his chest and presses them tightly against his runaway heartbeat, eyes darting everywhere as he fully comes awake. There’s something wrong, something beyond the slashes of light outside his window.

Beyond that, there’s something else, something that raises the hairs on his arms and leaves him cold. He recognizes this feeling from before. Just as Hedda had ascended there had been this same nearly imperceptible buzz of electricity in the air.

Adrenaline shoots through his veins like anaphylactic shock as Rodney stumbles to his feet and pulls on his jacket. Sheppard, he thinks wildly. It can’t be Sheppard, except that he can hear Sheppard’s lazy drawl now: perfect weather, and if anyone could make this happen, it’s him.

His heart stutters with fear when he remembers what had sent him up out of bed, the glow that had lingered a moment too long outside his window, a bolt of light into the sky, and Rodney is a smart man--he can catalogue the phenomenon in his sleep. It may have been a dream, but he has to know for sure. Sheppard. It can’t be true.

Outside, the village is battered by winds that push Rodney along and tug persistently at his clothes. Gifts, Elizabeth calls these things, and why does Sheppard always have to be the one with the golden touch, the ability to make heaven and earth move in accordance with his careless, irreverent whims? Rodney can barely get his bearings through all the rain. The flashlight he’d grabbed from his field pack barely makes a dent in the darkness, and every time lightning streaks across the sky—in every direction at once, as though the storm, like Rodney, is unable to escape this small sphere of earth—the world tilts madly.

He catches himself on the side of the Atlantis team’s shelter and then launches himself toward the center of the village, toward the house Sheppard shares with Teer. It appears intermittently as a block of pitch black against an electric sky. Between the stream of water in his eyes and the confusing cast of shadow and light, Rodney keeps losing track of it.

The soggy ground sucks at his boots with every step he takes, but he doggedly continues, gasping for breath and coming up with nothing but rain and thick, hostile air. It pisses him off, the amount of difficulty in simply reaching Sheppard’s house, because this is important, he can’t do this here without Sheppard, and his heart twists right in his chest when he even considers that the light he’d seen means anything more than bad weather.

He falls near the drinking well, thunder quaking against his knees as he catches himself, hands grasping for purchase in stone-scattered sludge. Finally, he drags himself far enough to lurch toward Sheppard’s door and catch himself against the heavy wood.

His hands are raw from scrabbling through the mud, but that doesn’t stop him from pounding at Sheppard’s door, a whirlwind inside him, winding tighter and tighter until he could break down the door with his trembling fist. It takes ages for the door to finally open, not that it matters. When it finally swings open far enough for Teer to peer out, backlit by a low fire—warm and golden, so unlike the white-hot frenzy outside—Rodney can’t even speak, just pushes past her and storms into Sheppard’s house.

At first, it looks empty. Rodney looks around, frantic, lightheaded with horror, and just as he feels an accusation on his tongue--for Teer, who else?—he sees a movement at the corner of his eye.

“Rodney?” Sheppard steps out nowhere, rumpled and sleepy. “What’s…” he trails off, and there’s a bit of the old Sheppard in his immediate reaction, the way he straightens his posture and strides over to the place where Rodney is still reeling. And it’s awful to be here like this, but Rodney can do little more than reach out for Sheppard and cling to his solid shoulders when what he really wants is to explain. Relief is so sharp it hurts, and instead of words, a sob tears out of his throat.

“Hey, Rodney, no,” Sheppard says softly, and guides him to the fire, where they sink to the rug in a tangle of muddy limbs. He’s here, he’s here, it didn’t happen, but Rodney can’t unclench his hands from Sheppard’s shirt and can’t stop shaking, even with Sheppard holding him fast.

“Did- did you-” he starts, teeth chattering too hard to finish, and instead presses his face into Sheppard’s neck, feeling as wild as the night outside and cold for the first time since he’d come here. He sucks in deep, shuddering breaths, unable to calm down even with a hand petting the back of his neck and Sheppard’s voice in his ear.

At the far edge of the room, Teer stands watch. Rodney can feel her eyes on him and Sheppard both. She moves only when Sheppard tells her to fetch a blanket from his bed, and then retreats immediately.

“Geez, Rodney, what happened to you?” Sheppard asks, untangling himself from Rodney long enough to wrap his shoulders with the blanket.

You, that’s what happened, he thinks furiously. Sheppard brought on this storm with his charmed genes and Rodney isn’t stupid; he knows that this means something, even if it doesn’t mean what Rodney had initially feared. Sheppard has made some kind of connection with the Ancients. Rodney isn’t even sure if he’s shaking with residual fear or anger, but he does know that he’s kneeling on Teer’s rug in front of her fire, holding onto her…husband, or whatever.

Teer’s claims to Sheppard aside, the last thing Rodney wants right now is an audience, and her presence alone makes his belly burn with a fierce territoriality. He’s known Sheppard for far longer than she has, and she’s never seen the way Sheppard can light up a city with just the touch of his hand. She’s got no idea…but she’s somehow gotten Sheppard.

Rodney wrenches out of Sheppard’s grasp and turns toward the fire, away from Teer. “I should go.”

Sheppard doesn’t let him go so easily. “Wait. What was this?” he asks, nothing but concern on his face. His hand creeps up Rodney’s arm, rubbing gently through the blanket. It feels good, even though just the small touch might cause Rodney to crack open like the obedient sky under Sheppard’s command.

“Just a, uh, a bad dream, I guess.”

The storm sits between them, unmentioned.

“Must have been some dream.”

Rodney nods. It’s beginning to feel slightly ridiculous, but not so much that he wants Sheppard to get up and leave him. The half-imagined light is still too real, even here on this warm, dry rug that smells of smoky wood and ripe fruit. Sheppard’s hand doesn’t stop rubbing, hypnotic in its steady pace, and when Sheppard pushes Rodney toward a pile of pillows, he shuts his eyes and goes, even though it’s undoubtedly Teer who had brought them.

***

The next day, Rodney’s palms are scraped and sore, and his head aches from sleeping through mid-afternoon. It had been strangely disappointing to wake on the cool hearth of an empty house. He reacts by finding Elizabeth and Carson so he can pick apart everything Sheppard had done since they’ve arrived in the cloister.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth says doubtfully. “I think he’s just coping, like the rest of us.”

“That means nothing; the rest of you have gone insane, too!” he argues. “Look!” He flings one arm out toward Teyla, who is stirring soup over a fire pit for a throng of admiring young men. As Ronon walks past, he tucks a daisy behind her ear and continues on his way. “Did you see that? Under no circumstances could that be perceived as normal!”

“It is a bit odd,” Carson says. “But I’ll admit I’ve had to expand my own horizons, since we arrived. You’ve got to find some way to pass the time.”

“Yes yes, I saw you at your quilting bee, or whatever you call it.” Rodney waves him away just as Sheppard walks over, his rough drying-cloth draped over his shoulder.

“Dr. McKay, walk with me,” he says, with a friendly wave for the rest of them. Rodney is momentarily taken aback; it’s been months since anyone has called him by his title. He’s even tempted to refuse, but after last night, he’s not in any position to deny Sheppard anything.

They walk until the village is a hike back. On the way, they pass downed branches and pools of rain overflow without saying a word, until finally they come upon a blackened tree split right down the middle, at which point it seems silly to keep avoiding the issue. Rodney stops.

“Can we talk about this?” he asks, and points at the tree. “Or are you sensitive about being different from the other boys?”

Sheppard sighs loudly and rolls his shoulders, which is as good as permission.

“Do you get what it means that you did this?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Sheppard shrugs.

“It doesn’t matter; the important thing is that you’ve made it. Forget sucking up to the Ancients, you’re already there. Do you know what this means?”

“Don’t go out without an umbrella?”

“It means you can communicate with the ancients! You can explain what happened and ask them to let us out of here.”

“No, Rodney. I can’t. I tried; believe me. I tried.”

Rodney’s heart thumps hard, a plummet of disappointment. “No,” he says weakly. “You…you did?”

“Yes.”

“Then try again!”

“I did. Trust me, I spent months begging the ancients to let me out.”

“But after last night...”

“Not going to happen. I’m sorry,” Sheppard adds, and it’s more than Rodney can take, because Sheppard doesn’t say sorry, not for something like this.

“Ah. Right,” he says. “Fine, then. Fine. Is there a reason you asked me out here?”

He has to give Sheppard this: even in the worst of circumstances, he’s smooth. “Yeah,” he says in a charming sort of way that Teer probably swoons over, and scratches shyly at the back of his neck. “I was thinking we could talk about last night. You scared me a little.”

Rodney steps back, immediately on the defensive. He’s been doing his best not to think about last night and his embarrassing display. “Oh, I scared you? Then how do you think I felt, waking up and finding out you could go anytime you pleased?”

“It’s not like that. I wouldn’t,” Sheppard says, pleading.

“How am I supposed to believe that?”

“You know me, Rodney.” This time, it’s a warning.

“True. But in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not exactly that man, anymore. And I’m sure Teer finds it all very attractive; this whole gentle, pacifist thing you’ve got going on; but having known you before, I find it a little disturbing.”

“Pacifist? That doesn’t even-“

“-oh, please. It’s like you don’t care at all! I could do anything, and you’d just go back to churning butter.”

“That’s not true.”

“No?” Rodney can feel his face getting hot, can feel himself working up toward something ugly, while Sheppard stands there looking like some longsuffering diplomat. “What if I do this?” It’s a bad idea, but he can’t stop. His hands reach out and shove Sheppard squarely in the chest.

“Hey! I know you’re upset, but-“

“No? How about this, then?” This time he shoves hard enough for Sheppard to stumble back, but he doesn’t look angry, just confused.

“Look, just stop and we’ll-“

“No, I don’t think I can.” Sheppard is retreating, and Rodney isn’t ready for that, not when nothing has happened yet. And then there’s something, a glimmer of surprise on Sheppard’s face when Rodney pulls him back by the arm.

“Damn it, Rodney!” he says, his voice high, and then they’re locked into a scuffle. Rodney isn’t even sure what he’s trying to do. Blindly, he grabs for Sheppard’s hair, swings toward his face, but Sheppard is strong, and hasn’t forgotten any of his moves. They struggle in a deadlock for a few minutes, hard muscle and bone against the same, until Rodney thinks he’s going to have to give. “Let’s just settle down,” Sheppard grates out, breathing hard.

“Let’s not settle down, Colonel. You do remember that part, right?” Rodney manages to say as they stumble together and nearly fall. “Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, US Air Force?” With a vicious stab of suspicion, he changes his tactic too quickly and tumbles them both to the ground. He hasn’t been paying very much attention to his own words, just rattling off accusations as they come to him, but this one—this one can be easily answered, and he has to know. Sheppard is strong, but Rodney pins him down with sheer, desperate determination, yanking his tunic up and out of his tac belt, and struggling the whole while against Sheppard’s attempts to dislodge him.

They ought to be visible in those loose tunics, but Rodney doesn’t remember having seen them once since he’d arrived. Today, it’s impossible since Sheppard is wearing a t-shirt underneath, so Rodney searches them out beneath worn thin cotton, scrabbling across Sheppard’s hairy, heaving belly and up to where his heart is beating a pattern of alarm against his chest. Then his fingers close around cool metal and Rodney shouts “Thank God! You really had me-” just as Sheppard gasps, “Rodney,” his eyes so dark and wide and caught that the relieved ramble dies on Rodney’s lips.

Abruptly out of steam, he sits back on Sheppard’s thighs. The fight seems to be gone from them both. Sheppard’s stomach tightens against Rodney’s wrist as he raises himself up, braced with his elbows in the dirt. Oh, Rodney thinks dimly, because the tags are still wrapped around his hand, too tightly even for his own comfort. Carefully, he slips fingers out of the chain. “I, uh. Didn’t mean to choke you.”

Sheppard’s face is strange, his eyes too intent on Rodney, when he licks his lips and says, “You weren’t choking me.”

“Oh.” Rodney glances down at where Sheppard’s shirts are rucked up above his waist, and cringes. “Still. I suppose there might have been a better way to make my point. Which, as it turns out, is moot,” he finishes nervously, trying to slide his hand out of Sheppard’s shirt in a casual manner while warm skin trembles against his fingertips.

Something about their position has stolen Rodney’s ability to speak, every thought interrupted by Sheppard’s voice playing over and over in his head; that shocked, half-pained gasp of his name tripping him up every time he thinks he’s gotten a handle on the situation. Unsteadily, he crawls off Sheppard and sits down, hard. His knees are stained with dirt and grass that he rubs at absently as a way to avoid looking at Sheppard. No matter how hard he searches, there’s no good explanation for this. And he’s got a lot of nerve accusing Sheppard of anything, because as worrisome as Sheppard’s behavior has been lately, Rodney is the only one acting completely out of his mind. He’d always known he’d snap someday, he’d just always thought it would be over something important, like quantum physics or the last cup of coffee.

Finally, Sheppard sighs, and pulls himself all the way up into a sitting position. “Why are you so determined to piss me off?”

Rodney uses his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face, flush with exertion and the unusually humid morning. “I’m not. I’m sorry, I’m not—not really. I was just looking for a reaction.”

Sheppard huffs a small laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. “There are other reactions, you know. Besides anger.”

“Yes, I realize that,” Rodney says, thinking of the reaction he’d gotten, of that nameless tone in Sheppard’s startled “Rodney”. He can’t begin to know what it had meant. What he does know is that Teer would be stoically unhappy with the press of Rodney’s hand against John’s belly—no matter how brief—and a mean, petty part of him hopes that tonight, when she and Sheppard are lying in bed, she will somehow sense that mark and all the things that lie behind it, even if Rodney doesn’t know what they are.

***

“I know you don’t believe me, about how I asked the Ancients,” Sheppard says on the way back to the village. “And I know you’re dying to try it for yourself.”

“Oh, please. I hardly think-“ Rodney stops, because if he can tap into that power, he might be able to get them home. “On second thought, yes. I suppose it can’t hurt to try.”

“Cool.” Sheppard looks like he’s about to say something else, but there are approaching voices, and then Teer and some others appear, collecting fallen nuts in a large square basket.

“John,” she says, though her eyes are on Rodney alone. “Did you forget the roof?”

“I was just getting to it. Rodney’s going to give me a hand.” He smiles easily, close-mouthed, giving nothing away to either of them.

“There is other damage, as well,” Teer says. “Last night was very unsettling.” For once, she seems less than composed, a bit ruffled around the edges. Her curls have begun to frizz in the increasing humidity, and Rodney is struck by the sudden suspicion that last night had been just the beginning. The storm last night had been the equivalent of a temper tantrum spurred by the same frustration Rodney has been railing against from the start, and Sheppard wouldn’t upset the natural way of things if he were as happy as he claims to be.

“Not so unsettling,” Sheppard says. “Right, Rodney?”

“Not entirely,” he says, and if Teer can detect even a fraction of the smugness he feels, then it’s no wonder she sweeps off into the woods.

***
***

“I know it’s weird at first, but you have to take it seriously or else it won’t work.”

Rodney swallows down a dozen cutting responses and shifts on the warm, smooth surface of the rock until he’s comfortable. He’s glad there’s no one around to see this. No one but Sheppard, who has brought him to the familiar place where they swim and tugged Rodney down to sit with him, cross-legged, knees touching. Above them, the sky is a mass of gray clouds.

“It’s not just about sitting; it’s tapping into everything that’s out there,” he says, his voice a murmur just above the sound of water, tossing restlessly against the shore.

“The Ancients.” His own voice sounds strange to him, and Rodney’s cheeks fill with heat over their closeness, Sheppard’s heavy eyes, the whole situation; all too intimate to be appropriate.

“Yeah. Among other things.” Sheppard’s fingers twitch against Rodney’s, a flash of warmth, and then he says, “Shut your eyes.”

Rodney obeys. An indefinable shimmer of sensation is already fluttering its way across his skin, raising goosebumps and heightening his awareness until everything narrows down to a single synchronized event; his heartbeat, Sheppard’s breathing, the water and the insects, all pulsating with a potential he’s never even imagined. It’s too much, and his eyes fly open, hands clenched where they were limp a moment before. “I don’t know,” he says. “This is, there hasn’t been nearly enough research done on ascension and its effects, what it really means. Even with the information in the database, there’s no way to know this isn’t some kind of mass hallucination or some carefully constructed alien deception.” As he speaks, Sheppard hooks his fingers into his own, a loose fit that leaves the pads of their fingers pressed together.

“If you do this long enough, everything starts to quiet down,” Sheppard says, just as thunder rolls above them, a distant warning.

It feels the opposite to Rodney, like it’s building up to some unbearable pitch, but he keeps his eyes shut until it begins to coax him toward a place he’s not ready to go. “Colonel-“

“Maybe it’s time you started calling me John.” His words slide over Rodney like honey, as unexpected as the slide of his hands onto Rodney’s own. Rodney has always wondered when this invitation would come—if it would ever come, and now that it has, he’s not sure what to do with it.

“Fine,” he says, eyes still shut, the sky still beckoning. It feels as though Sheppard’s hands are the only thing anchoring him to this rock, and then nothing is, because he slips past the thud of his heartbeat, over the claustrophobic treeline, until he’s skating on light. It goes on and on until he’s suddenly wide awake—had he dozed off?—and blinking into Sheppard’s face. They’re both wet, but not soaked, as though it’s just begun to rain; warm, fat drops that pelt Rodney’s bare skin like a wakeup call.

“Time to call it a day,” Sheppard says. He squeezes Rodney’s hands one last time, fingers slick with rain, and lets them go.

On the way back, Sheppard stops him right behind Teer’s house, beneath the shelter of the overhang. “Wait,” he says, licking the rain from his lips. The way he moves in close means he’s going to tell Rodney a closely guarded secret, like the key to ascension, or--oh God, maybe he knows how to find the power source. Rodney responds and meets him halfway, his eyes bright on Sheppard’s, expecting anything but Sheppard’s mouth on his, brief and sweet, like a greeting from an old friend. A secret, then—just not the one Rodney had expected. Instinctively, he shrinks back toward the wall, but Sheppard follows him with gentle hands cupped to his face, and then there’s nowhere to move, nothing to do but allow the intimacy of Sheppard’s lips and tongue, as wet and warm as his rain.

He’s never contemplated this aspect of Sheppard before; not really; he’s always been too busy paying attention to what Sheppard might do next, what he might say. But as he lets himself relax into Sheppard’s slow, drawn-out kisses, there is an undeniable sense of continuity in the act. The last few days have been made up of touch, more than they’ve ever shared up until now, and it makes an odd kind of sense that Sheppard would make this leap as though it’s the most natural progression in the world.

“Someone might see us,” he says, turning his head, but Sheppard’s hands don’t fall away; instead, they slide over his jaw and down to his neck, skimming lightly over rough stubble.

“You weren’t kissing me back,” he says, his expression turning thoughtful. One of his hands goes lower, flat against Rodney’s chest, which feels vastly unfair; his every reaction right there for Sheppard to read against his palm.

“I was! At least, at the end, I was. Somewhat. I was getting into it,” Rodney adds, though he knows how he must look; completely flummoxed.

“I might wonder, if it weren’t for the other night,” Sheppard says knowingly, as he moves in closer. Rodney can smell the sweat and rain on him, can see the way his wet tunic clings to his chest, nearly transparent. It makes him think of his own clothes, and when he looks down, he sees the same; sees his own nipples as two dark spots of color, the pointed tips embarrassingly prominent against the fine weave of fabric. When he looks up, Sheppard is noticing the same thing.

“The other night?” he manages to ask.

“Even Teer noticed, and she thinks she’s smart, but she only sees what the Ancients want her to. She doesn’t like it; doesn’t like you.” Sheppard’s voice has gone low and thick, and while he talks, he keeps his eyes on Rodney’s chest while his thumb brushes one nipple and then the other, far too precise to be accidental.

“She’s certainly not very hospitable,” Rodney says, on a shudder.

“Not where you’re concerned. I can’t blame her, though; can you?” The thumb keeps up its path, from one tight nipple to the other, light scrapes of sensation that burn Rodney right down to the core, and no, of course he can’t blame Teer for not liking him, not when he’s leaning up against the side of her house and having his nipples teased to aching by her knight in shining armor.

The sound of rain drowns out everything else, falling in driving sheets that give them plenty of cover. “You’re going to ruin the crops if you keep this up,” Rodney says, ridiculous even to his own ears, to try and discuss the weather when Sheppard is breathing hot, damp air onto his neck.

“I don’t really care,” Sheppard says, just as his soft breath turns to hard, sucking kisses on Rodney’s throat and his right nipple is caught between Sheppard’s thumb and index finger.

“Shep- John,” Rodney gasps. His cock, already full and heavy with arousal, lengthens in his snug pants; more friction, more sensation, and then Sheppard’s mouth on his again, this time with tongue and teeth and all the things that had been so carefully kept in check the first time. Rodney moans, half in frustration, half in pleasure, at the way Sheppard’s tongue curls against his own, slick and demanding. Tongue-kissing is like admitting you want to fuck, Sheppard had once said, which sets Rodney to rock-hard and throbbing, but also gives him the determination to pull away panting, and say, “Wait, no, stop, not here.”

As good as it feels, it’s still probably a very bad idea. Sheppard isn’t himself, and his hands on Rodney’s body are remarkably deceptive; the touch and taste of him enough to make Rodney think he’s seeing the real Sheppard, the one who had been taken away by this place. And maybe he is, maybe this is Sheppard’s way of giving him what he’s wanted all along, but Rodney isn’t sure he should take that chance.

***

Rodney walks away with the satisfaction of seeing Sheppard’s imperturbable calm disturbed for a change, and a crash of thunder overhead. When he reaches his house, the inside is lit up with fire and oil lamps, even though it’s just early evening. Everyone is already inside; Ronon sharpening a knife at the fireside, Carson offering Elizabeth pointers on the mess she’s making of her sewing.

“You look as though you could use this.” Teyla hurries over to drape a thick cloth over his shoulders.

“You look like you’ve been kissing,” Ronon says, with barely a glance up from his work.

It’s a mistake the moment he does it, he knows, but his hand flies to his mouth, which is all it takes to secure the complete interest of the entire team. “I wasn’t kissing; I was meditating, he says, which only cements their utter disbelief of his story, because he’s pretty sure he’s not even allowed in the meditation shelter, anymore. He rubs furiously at his hair with the towel, glaring at Ronon the whole while.

“It’s good to see you taking an interest,” Elizabeth says, smirking. “In meditation, that is.” She’s probably just grateful for the chance to put down her dismal sewing project.

“You think you’re funny,” he says, “But my meditation may very well be what gets us out of here.” He ducks behind the partition and begins shedding his wet clothing in favor of a clean, dry set, taking advantage of the privacy to press his lips together, feeling their rawness and wondering if there are marks on his neck from Sheppard’s rough treatment. He wonders if Teer is looking at Sheppard and seeing the same.

“You’re awfully quiet, Rodney,” Carson remarks, after a few seconds of whispering that they must be crazy to think he can’t hear.

“It’s called thinking; some of us still do it, despite our unfortunate circumstances.”

“Thinking about kissing Sheppard,” Ronon says. He’s become entirely too talkative since they came here.

“Thinking how generous I’ve been about turning a blind eye to what the rest of you have been up to,” he says loudly, and when he emerges from behind the partition, they have all gone dutifully back to their tasks. The most satisfying thing, besides their silence, is that he’s got no idea what they’ve been up to.

***

“So, yesterday,” Rodney says, the next morning.

Sheppard kicks at a fallen tree and then sits, straddling the wide curvature with an ease Rodney can’t even fathom. He hangs back, already distracted by the spread of Sheppard’s thighs.

“Yeah, uh.” Sheppard scratches at the back of his neck and smiles sheepishly up at Rodney. This is not new. This, Rodney has seen back in Atlantis. “Do I need to apologize for that?”

“What?”

There is something hard and defeated in Sheppard’s eyes when he shrugs, pressing his hands to the bark between his legs until it crumbles. “It was pointed out to me that I might have come on a little strong,” he says, the words drawn out with reluctance, tinged with bitterness.

Rodney already knows exactly who had planted this doubt in Sheppard’s mind; it had been apparent in the way Teer had served breakfast with jerky motions and downcast eyes. “Excuse me, but since when do you listen to anybody? So what if you came on strong? It’s a good thing you did, because I never would have done it; Christ, Sheppard, I didn’t even know.”

Sheppard nods, still far too reserved, but less tense.

Rodney moves to sit next to him. It’s not the most comfortable place, but more than good enough when Sheppard scoots in and insinuates Rodney between his legs. They don’t do anything but sit together; Sheppard’s chin resting on Rodney’s shoulder; Rodney cradling one of Sheppard’s hands between his own, somehow surprised when Sheppard lets him. He’s never been good at patience, especially not when he wants so badly he can hardly still the wild flutter in his belly just from being close like this, but now isn’t the time.

For a while they’re suspended in the moment, just existing and breathing, neither of them knowing what to do. There’s nothing to do; no way out of this place, nowhere to be together the way they want to be. It’s strange to have this vital, often-dangerous part of Sheppard in his hands, strange and exciting, and Rodney has never been good at sitting still. All it takes is a tilt of his head and Sheppard’s mouth rises to meet him, as though it was just waiting there all along.

***

They come in a group—a pack, Rodney thinks when he sees them—down the hill and into the clearing where John and Rodney have come to be alone. They practice their silence well, so Rodney reads their faces instead, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. What he finds doesn’t look promising.

“We do not like what is happening,” Avrid says. His stance is strong, but his voice wavers.

“Well, you’re going to have to be more specific,” Sheppard says, flippant on the surface, a world of danger underneath.

“The changes frighten us. The storms, John. We know you’ve brought them, and even now, there are other things.” Teer says.

“We know it was you who told Hedda how to go!” someone says from the back.

That, Rodney had not known.

“Yes, John,” Teer says quietly. “Why will you not help the rest of us? We thought you were sent here to help us on our path, but now we believe you are sent to test us.”

“Wait, what?” John gets to his feet in a hurry, his eyebrows twisted into a frown. “You’re the ones who wanted me to explore all that stuff.”

“And you have fared better than most, yet you will not ascend.” Teer lists his crimes with her head high, her posture stiff and unwelcoming. As far as Rodney knows, she’s never carried herself this way around John. “Your choices are led by your body, and cannot be trusted.”

“Hey, you’ve trusted my body plenty.”

“But you have never trusted mine!” she says, a blush on her cheeks. “Once, no more, and even then you were not open to me.”

“Open? How the hell did you expect that, when this whole place is built on shutting people down? Isn’t that the whole point of your meditation, your precious ascension? Shut down everything until there’s nothing left but some people who were better at it than you.”

It’s a cruel thing to say, and some of the villagers recoil at his words, but they are cruel in just being here, in turning on their savior after he’d bent over backwards to become so much like them.

And it’s exactly like the moment Rodney had arrived in the cloister, with Sheppard standing so bewildered in that field. If Teer had worried about Sheppard closing up, then she has no need for concern, because their betrayal has ripped him clean open again. He’s past indifference, past cold anger, and he probably doesn’t even remember how to step past the hurt that Rodney sees in every line of his face.

“Hedda ascended because she stopped focusing on me, and started focusing on herself,” he says. “That’s it. There’s your big secret to ascension.”

They shuffle and murmur amongst themselves for a few seconds before Avrid speaks out again. Rodney wishes he would shut up; Sheppard is fond of him, even considers him a friend.

“Then why don’t you ascend?” Avrid asks, so full of suspicion, when he had at one time revered every word from Sheppard’s lips.

“Because I don’t want to!” Sheppard shouts. He flings his arms up in exasperation, and Avrid startles as though Sheppard is some dangerous beast.

“You are tainted by the Wraith,” Teer murmurs. “I did not want to believe it. Even after all this time, your blood carries their darkest urges, to destroy and remain in ignorance.”

Rodney wonders whether Sheppard had willingly shared his story with her, or if she had come across it in a vision, blurred with ocean-blue pain. Judging by Sheppard’s stricken expression, it’s the former, and Rodney’s chest clenches up in fury, because she has no right at all—none of them do.

Before she can say anything further, Rodney steps between Sheppard and the crowd. “There, you’ve said your piece, now go! Go on back to your pointless lives.” He makes frantic shooing motions until they begin to disperse.

They go, but leave a wreckage of what they’d found: Sheppard standing in their forest, furious and unguarded, staring after them blindly, breathing hard through his nose.

“You should go, too,” Sheppard says, still standing there as though he might bolt after them at any moment. His hands, Rodney notices, are trembling.

“And miss your return to the real world? Hardly,” Rodney snorts, just as the last dawdler disappears over the hilltop.

“I need to be alone,” Sheppard says. He turns his back on Rodney, his fists clenching and unclenching like charging weapons at his side.

“No, you really don’t.” The others may have flinched away from Sheppard, but for Rodney, it is the easiest thing in the world to go to him. It doesn’t matter that Sheppard won’t turn and show Rodney his face; he isn’t arguing anymore, or insisting on being left alone. He just stands there with his hands on his hips, looking off toward the place where the villagers had gone until finally, he shakes his head and makes a choked sound that may have begun as a sigh.

“I did everything they wanted me to,” he says. Rodney can only just hear him over the sound of leaves that whisper busily in the high, swaying trees. “Not at first, like Avrid told you, but after a while. And it worked; the meditation helped settle me down—just accepting things helped settle me down. I finally felt like I wasn’t going crazy, and for a couple hours a day, I got to fly.”

Rodney can’t think of anything worse than the slow diminishing of Sheppard’s individuality. It makes his throat hurt, and he wants to touch the tense planes of his back, as much for his own comfort as John’s.

“And then you showed up. And at first it was little things, like the way we could always hear you all laughing from your shelter.”

Not me, Rodney wants to say.

“But then, the night of the storm,” Sheppard says, crossing his arms over his chest as he slowly turns around. “Teer hadn’t ever seen anything like it, and I know she had to have been scared out of her mind, but she just went about her business like nothing was going on. And then you came barging in, dripping all over the place and acting like there was a fucking fire…” He trails off, shaking his head, looking at Rodney like he’s seeing the whole thing in his mind. “It made me see the difference between them and you. You felt something, and you just dumped it on me like you always do, and I didn’t even know until then, Rodney, how empty they were, and how much I needed more.”

“But you did know.” Rodney steps toward him, until they’re close enough to touch, before changing his mind at the last moment. “You had to have already felt some degree of dissatisfaction, or you wouldn’t have made that storm in the first place.”

“That’s true,” Sheppard says thoughtfully, his eyes smiling faintly, before drifting down to Rodney’s mouth. He looks every bit as aware of their proximity as Rodney. “And then, he goes on, in a completely different tone, “There was the next day, when you sexually harassed me.”

“I was trying to prove a point!”

“You could have just asked.”

“Like you asked me?”

Sheppard’s face goes blank for a moment, and Rodney wants to shove the words back into his mouth, but then Sheppard’s lips curve up at the corners. “Your nipples were asking.”

“Oh, very mature,“ Rodney sputters, and then ruins it by smiling.

“Begging, actually.” Sheppard says.

Rodney sways forward and slides his arms around Sheppard’s waist, quieting him with his mouth while Sheppard wraps him in a hold so desperate that it reminds Rodney of where the conversation began.

“Are you okay?” he asks when they break, and feels Sheppard’s muttered “mmm,” into his neck.

“I’m fine,” Sheppard adds. “I can feel you worrying, you know.” Soft bristles against the skin of his throat, and Rodney is willing to believe anything. “I was thinking maybe we could try meditating again,” he says after a while.

They go to the ground and sit the same as before, but this time, their hands are never at rest, a slow exploration of Sheppard’s wrist, his own knee cupped in Sheppard’s softly rubbing palm. When Rodney opens his eyes, wanting to see the glide of Sheppard’s hand stray to his inner thigh, Sheppard’s are already open and watching.

“Hey,” Sheppard says softly. “Did you get there?”

Anticipation is a warm glow that has worked its way through him entirely, until he can feel the heat on every part of his skin. “I’m getting there,” he says, and Sheppard nods like he understands completely.

***

It starts as the impression of wind at the back of his neck, the crackle of electricity in the air. John’s whole body stiffens, but he doesn’t move from Rodney’s arms, not even when the light comes pouring up from the treeline, so many at once, until Rodney is certain there can’t be any left.

“They did it,” Sheppard says grimly. “Good for them.”

“Good riddance,” Rodney says.

“That’s pretty much what I meant.”

“Should we…” Rodney doesn’t know what he’s going to suggest, but it doesn’t matter anymore when Ronon comes crashing down the hill, his arms full of Rodney’s equipment.

“Let’s go, Sheppard! McKay, come on!”

“We’ve only got fifteen minutes!” Elizabeth calls from the top, waving them on with her arm high against the sky, an uncanny resemblance to the day they’d arrived. “Fifteen minutes until the field starts back up again!”

They pull apart, in shock. “What about the ZPM?” he says; he can’t help himself.

“Rodney,” Sheppard says, and kisses him hard, while Ronon looks on with nearly lethal impatience. “Forget the ZPM.”

As Sheppard pulls at his hand and tugs him along toward freedom, for once in his life, Rodney can.

 end.