It may be that the Pegasus Galaxy hates them. After that first disastrous offworld mission where they kill off the military commander and resurrect an entire race of man-eating aliens, John figures it can only get better from there. Not so much, it turns out. In fact, it’s just the beginning of what’s going to be a long series of situations that are completely ludicrous but nevertheless involve mortal peril.

 

Once every few months they come dangerously close to bringing home a ZPM, but never quite seem to manage it. One of the more annoying instances is the Peter Pan planet, where the ZPM is real and functioning but no matter what Rodney says and John secretly agrees with, Elizabeth ethics won’t let them take it. A couple of naquadah generators could replace it for years and as Rodney points out, it’s not like the natives deserve it more than they do: their religion is based around insane suicide pacts, and they haven’t even developed past ewok houses. (Rodney is often disgustingly xenophobic, but that doesn’t make him wrong.)

 

Every world they visit has an anthropologist, a techie and two marines assigned to is in case of emergencies, plus a negotiator if it’s somewhere they can trade with. Rodney gets to be smug at his staff (like he isn’t anyway) because he’s in charge and therefore deemed too important to be hauled offworld to fix some generator or whatever. He’s only on call for Super Awesome Emergencies, a category that includes events such as imminent volcanic eruption (apparently curable by means of applied astrophysics/mechanical engineering; who knew?), malfunctioning death-rays and killer-robot uprisings.

 

Zelenka’s given repair duty for the kid planet and because he and Rodney haven’t had a proper feud in almost an entire month, he takes this as a personal insult; everyone knows that Zelenka hates, hates, hates all children. So begins another week of complicated pranks and the geek version of trash-talking, and John is once again amazed by Rodney’s ability to navigate lab politics with fiendish cunning, despite the fact that in every other area his social ineptitude is legendary.

 

The science team thrives on conflict and although there’s always the old social vs. physical sciences debate to fall back on, but McKay vs. Zelenka is far more entertaining and also, you get to pick sides. John would be worried except he’s in charge of what are supposed to be 100 of the smartest marines around but still witnesses scenes like Cadman and Flyte exchanging a seamless stream of Yo Momma jokes for over an hour.

 

“I don’t know what he’s so upset about,” says Rodney through a mouthful of Mystery Pie. “He probably won’t even have to go. They’re going to break their ZPM with what, rocks?”

 

“You hate children as well,” John points out, stealing Rodney’s fries and getting away with it because he wins at life.

 

“No, I hate stupid people. Zelenka said children were tiny demons and that he hatched fully grown from a giant egg. It’s sad that the only member of my staff even approaching competence has turned out to be nursing serious mental instability.”

 

If Radek’s gone crazy it’s Rodney’s fault for taking four months to learn his name and then misspelling it for another three. Inexplicably, this suggestion falls on deaf ears.

 

Over the course of the next few days ever piece of food in the labs is given ‘May Contain Citrus’ lable, rendering Rodney in a state of hyperactive paranoia whenever anyone hands him a powerbar, even though he’s memorised the ingredients of all the rations, just in case. Extra-large women’s underwear is requested from stores in Zelenka’s name, and in retaliation Rodney’s favourite laptop goes missing. When it reappears the password has been changed and the screensaver is stuck on a slideshow of Farscape screenshots showing Ben Browder shirtless and/or bending over things. 

 

On the other side of the fence, the marines set up a basketball tournament between the gate teams, the prize being exclusive ownership of the keg of hooch brought back from the blue ostrich planet. It starts off with good intentions but quickly degenerates into some kind of every-sport-ever Olympics and finally into a scavenger hunt when Lorne hides the ball. This is what a slow week on Atlantis feels like.

 

For an expedition that is run primarily by the military and the kind of people who had colour-coded revision timetables in fourth grade, Atlantis is surprisingly disorganised. The first example of this is before they even step through the gate, when John asks if there are going to be toilets on the other side. Everyone exchanges uncomfortable looks over the conference table because, okay, there are twice as many PhDs as actual people in the room but they’ve still managed to forget about the necessity of plumbing.

 

Like everything in the city, the toilets turn out to be gene-sensitive and so no one can operate them. John’s fairly sure that Beckett develops the gene therapy so quickly because otherwise he’d have to continue joining John on his daily sweep of the living quarters, thinking on, on, on, at everyone’s bathrooms. Similarly, it takes them a week to find the showers and two before McKay has them working so anyone can use them, by which time John’s seen way more of some of his colleagues than he ever wanted.

 

Elizabeth gets an administrative assistant during the second year. Her name is B’okeng O’Hara and she spends 90% of her time in her office overlooking the gateroom, surrounded by more computers than McKay. Everyone is instantly in awe of her because a) she’s in charge of pretty much everything and b) she looks like a runway model.

 

Within three days of her arrival several anonymice have posted messages on the informal public server, documenting how they want to see her in leather, with whips, etc. John would do something about it except he’s afraid she might cause him physical harm if he tried to help out. Also, Lorne is his new administrative assistant, allowing John to ignore all this stuff and concentrate on his real job of flying the cool spaceships and flirting with Hayley the hot paleoanthropologist.

 

Rodney starts to stalk O’Hara after he finds out than in addition to being scary hot (and really just kind of scary), she can do long division in her head. (John can as well but he’s keeping quiet about it until he really wants to freak Rodney out.) “She’s a borg!” he hisses, watching avidly as she catalogues mission reports with one hand and writes on a datapad with the other.

 

“And that’s an attractive quality in a woman?” The attractive quality in Seven of Nine was that she used to be an underwear model, not that she could program computers with her mind. Or at least that’s what people tell him.

 

“It really is.” Rodney peers at O’Hara through the glass wall of the conference room.   

 

Rodney is completely weird. “You’re completely weird,” says John. “And is it just me, or does she look sort of like a guy?”

 

Unfortunately this comment brings them to a very awkward place, with Rodney expressing in louder and louder tones his disbelief at how John could know him for over a year and not be aware that Rodney likes cock. They’re in the commissary and every one of John’s new marines is listening in. This is just another instance of John completely failing to see it coming.

 

It seems the Ancients were way too obsessed with Ascension to spend much time thinking up recreational activities. There is no mention of TV in the database, although about three months in Bates’ exploration team find mind-controlled air hockey. It’s briefly popular until someone realises it’s actually the temperature controls for bio Lab 3 and therefore the cause of countless previously inexplicable alien shellfish deaths.

 

On the second run of the Daedalus, John receives an email detailing his various duties as Atlantis CMO. He reads it from beginning to end out of morbid curiosity, wondering if they really expect him to do all this stuff. After al, they let him keep the post and they promoted him, which you’d think would be an indication that he did an okay job the first time around.

 

Attached is a note from General O’Neill. It reads, “Feel free to ignore all of this. P.S. Sam sends her love to McKay.” John purposely forgets to forward the postscript but is more than happy to take O’Neill’s advice to heart. He already knows what he’s here to do, namely 1) keep Atlantis afloat, 2) stay on the good side of the civilians and 3) never leave a man behind. He likes these rules. They are concise and easily memorable, and require no explanatory footnotes.

 

It is an unwritten rule that Gate Team 1 has to end up in jail on a semi-regular basis. The first time it happens everyone freaks out and Ford blows a hole in the wall, collapsing the entire building on their heads. After that, though, it becomes clear that this is going to be a common occurrence and they settle into a routine.

 

Between them they have over twenty years of military experience (more, when Ronon joins them), two PhDs, and Teyla’s supernatural negotiation skills. However, her habit of wearing cleavage-bearing leather halter-tops has saved them more times than any other one of their pooled skills. There is one occasion when Ford has to seduce the guard, and that’s one of the things that doesn’t make it to the official report. (Sometimes those reports are by necessity so censored John thinks he might as well draw a smiley face on a piece of paper and file it under “still not dead”.)

 

It’s a bad sign when the team is split up as it implies competency on the part of the kidnappers; anyone stupid enough to expect four such trained professionals as themselves to remain locked up is clearly no security expert. On the other hand, the primitive prisons are often the most effective: if you’re really smart you can fool an iris scanner or laser beams, but a big motherfucker of a boulder for a door is going to put a dampener on anyone’s plans.

 

On one of their very first trading missions Beckett is with them when they’re captured, and he has to treat the guard’s STD in exchange for springing them. You’ve got to feel a little sorry for the guy because the only time he gets to visit strange new worlds is when there’s a plague or someone’s grievously injured, and so he always misses out on the vanquishing of killer-robot armies and flying over active volcanoes just before they blow.

 

Given a choice, John likes to be partnered with Ford. He doesn’t freak out and although he sometimes seems about fifteen years old, he’s an SGC marine and has had specific training in how to escape alien jail. As a cellmate, Ronon turns out to be far worse. The longer he stays in captivity the more aggressive he becomes, and Teyla is the only one who can calm him down when he’s in a prowling mood. John is far better at dealing with McKay.

 

The most entertaining night he spends in captivity would have to be on the Vegas planet. Someone roofies Lorne’s drink and when John starts a bar fight over it he, Lorne and McKay are thrown in the slammer for the local equivalent of drunk and disorderly. There’s a period of medium-level panic that Lorne’s going to be permanently damaged in some way, but it soon becomes clear that whatever he’s been slipped is recreational, not murderous. He takes six hours to come down off his high, and spends most of that time convinced that Rodney is Winona Ryder, repeatedly asking him why he’s throwing his career away.

 

The first time they meet Ronon he ties them up, which is how John discovers that some people are more comfortable then others when it comes to involuntary bondage. Teyla, for example, leads to a world of pain. Although he secretly finds her tininess adorable, it’s no fun being bound back to back with someone a foot shorter than you are, especially when you’re freezing your ass off on the floor of a damp cave.

 

Rodney’s his favourite, despite the fact that he whines continuously. He’s always warm and is capable of untying pretty much any knot, his sole survival skill before Pegasus. His parents sent him to summer camp in fifth grade as part of an attempt to speed up his social development, and the only workshops not involving physical exertion were Knotwork and Morse Code. Morse code comes in useful during long meetings, McKay tapping messages out on Johns knee beneath the conference table. It always ends up with Elizabeth using her Mom Voice because John’s started to laugh for no apparent reason in the middle of someone’s reports on trade relations with the planet of obscene cave paintings, or how they’ve learnt to fabricate toothpaste from molluscs or whatever-the-fuck.

 

*      *      *

 

After the siege most of Atlantis takes the Daedalus back to Earth, leaving behind a skeleton crew. For John, the entire month-long trip is consumed by organising a year’s worth of mission reports, staff evaluations, recommendations for promotion and records of every debriefing. Rodney delegates all his paperwork to Simpson so he can spend every day attempting to dismantle the Daedalus to see how it works and then getting into fights with Hermiod when he’s told that’s not allowed.

 

As a result, John spends more time with Caldwell than with people he can actually stand (i.e. pretty much anyone else on board). The Colonel makes it abundantly clear that he is John’s replacement and that John will be lucky to so much as sniff at a command position after this, never mind return to the Pegasus Galaxy. John starts to fantasise about punching Caldwell in the face and yelling things like “I’m fighting a war with 112 marines and a bunch of science nerds, you motherfucker!” and “You might have seniority but at least I have hair!” or perhaps just asking Teyla to beat him up and then blaming it on a cultural misunderstanding.

 

They have eight weeks on Earth before the Daedalus returns, so everyone is given the first fortnight to visit friends and family before they’re called back for interviews and yet more debriefings. John’s given a small, bland room at Cheyenne Mountain, and appears to be the only person without anyone to visit. He’d be depressed about this except he’s already fully booked being depressed about how Caldwell’s going to be his new boss, his XO is a junkie and MIA, and he still hasn’t thought of a good way to explain why he totally shouldn’t be court-martialled, even though he shot his original commanding officer in the head less than twelve hours into the mission.

 

For the first three days he watches ESPN and porn and samples all the junk food he can get his hands on without having to venture into the outside world. On the fourth and fifth days he hitches rides to Colorado Springs and has unsatisfying one-night stands with a women who seems completely uninterested until he mentions he’s a pilot just back from a war zone.

 

By day six he’s considering calling his ex-wife, even though any conversation they might have would be free of communication but rich in awkwardness and veiled hostility. Luckily, Rodney and Elizabeth arrive that afternoon, both wearing civilian clothing for the first time he can remember. They both look hungover and have obviously spent the last week in the same way as John (Rodney’s been “visiting a friend in Toronto”, which is a code for “booty call” if ever John’s heard it. He doesn’t ask about Rodney’s sister). This cheers him up immensely; misery loves company.

 

In the time they’ve been away, Britney’s got married and had a kid with one of her backing dancers, the vice-president’s shot a guy in the face and every newspaper is filled with articles either about terrorists or about this movie about gay cowboys (sometimes the two are combined). Also, everyone in the entire world now has a type of MP3 player called an iPod.

 

Because he’s a tremendous nerd who can’t bear to be behind any technological trend, Rodney buys one for himself, John, Elizabeth, Carson and Zelenka. John’s just about to point out that iPods look like bathroom appliances when Rodney says, “They don’t come in black. I checked,” and gives him a look. John’s only comeback is to glower impotently because Rodney is right far too often.

 

He fills his with Hank Williams, the Violent Femmes, Patsy Cline and the entire Johnny Cash back catalogue. Rodney spends a whole day and many, many dollars on iTunes, which is how John finds out about his truly horrifying taste in music.

 

A while before the siege, Gate Team 1 hatch a drunken plan that if they ever contact Earth and if Teyla ever gets clearance, they will show her the greatest American tradition, the interstate road-trip. The route is a meandering line from Fayetteville, Carolina, where John was born, to Toronto, where Rodney was born. Of course, this is before John sees Rodney’s idea of a decent playlist, which renders the idea of them sharing a car radio completely impossible. (Also, Rodney inexplicably knows a thousand and one Appalachian jokes, meaning the locals would probably kill him before John got a chance to do it himself.)

 

The problem isn’t so much all the gloomy, pompous classical music (he is, John finds out later, capable of listening to Dido & Aeneas in its entirety, on repeat, for days on end) as the other stuff.

 

John likes songs about divorce and homicide whereas Rodney, who used to be a child piano prodigy or something, owns what might well be ever 80s hair rock album ever. If Spinal Tap were a real band, Rodney would probably pay to see them. Even worse, when they return to Atlantis Rodney gets to Teyla first and, in the way children are always influence by the music their parents play, he infects her with an improbable love of REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Meatloaf and Judas Priest.

 

*      *      *

 

The day before the rest of the expedition team is meant to be back at the Mountain, John sitting on his bed reading War and Peace and listening to Johnny Cash sing about shooting his wife. McKay is lying on his stomach on John’s floor, humming chord notes along with the music and sorting through zillions of CVs. Every so often he snorts and reads something aloud, like, “Good grief, horse-riding? I’m supposed to be impressed by this? How likely are we to encounter a horse while re-calibrating the incoming missile sensors?” Eventually he looks up. “Shouldn’t you be doing this? I mean, presumably they don’t just pick marines out at random, even if it seems like that most of the time.”

 

John doesn’t say anything.

 

“Sheppard, I know you’ve got some kind of command complex but you’re going to have to choose some new marines. It can’t be that hard.”

 

“It’s fine,” he says sharply, eyes still on his book. Rodney looks up.

 

“Well now I know it’s clearly not fine, you might as well explain what’s getting you all uptight and snippy.”

 

“I think the fact that I’m going to be fired qualifies as reason enough to get snippy, Rodney.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous. They can’t fire you!”

 

John sighs tiredly. Rodney has no idea how the military works. He doesn’t understand about orders, or politics, or any of the unfair shit that John has learnt to accept and move on from. “I shot my commanding officer. That’s kind of frowned upon in some circles.”

 

Rodney looks at him for a moment and carefully gathers together his stack of personnel files. “I’m going to get some more coffee,” he says loudly, and leaves. John doesn’t see him again until after dinner, when he turns up at John’s quarters again.

 

“You’re not going to be fired,” he says triumphantly, and when John gets suspicious and asks what he’s done, he just says “Nothing,” in an infuriatingly innocent tone. The next day General Landry emails him the personal files of fifty Stargate marines, and John goes to Rodney’s quarters with a DVD of the new Star Trek movie because he’s not sure how address this in the form of actual words and sentences. Rodney doesn’t seem to realise that John’s trying to thank him, and ploughs on like he’s not just done God-knows-what to preserve John’s career, and they don’t talk about it.

 

 

*      *      *

 

Cheyenne Mountain is once again flooded with Atlantis team members, leading to a sense of vague confusion amongst the natives. Daniel Jackson wanders into the mess hall, looks blankly at the crowd and then walks straight back out again. Rodney actually leans over the table to watch his ass leave the room.

 

John scrubs tiredly at his eyelids. “Jesus, McKay. I can’t believe I ever thought you were straight.”

 

“Don’t blame me for your idiocy,” says Rodney, cheerful and completely without shame.

 

“You remember we’re on a military base, right?”

 

“So?”

 

“So maybe you could, you know. Not be whatever the gay version of an enormous letch is called.”

 

“I’m pretty sure it’s just ‘enormous letch’. Anyway, it’s a compliment.”

 

“Yeah, right up until they notice you’re not a girl and they beat you up.”

 

Rodney snorts. “Please. I’ve saved the ass of everyone in this place at least once. They all owe me.”

 

“I’m pretty sure someone once said something about bigotry knowing no logic.”

 

“God, who died and made you a gay rights activist?” He rolls his eyes. “Everyone in the Stargate program has to do like a million tests before they’re allowed to even see a Stargate. The government isn’t going to let anyone stand on the front line of intergalactic exploration if they’re not open to new ideas.”

 

“Huh. Really? I never even got a psych evaluation.”

 

“That explains a lot.” He gives him a superior look. “If I’m making you uncomfortable, you can just say.”

 

“I’ve been drinking your coffee for the past ten minutes. I’m pretty sure that’s an indication that your gay cooties hold no terror for me.”

 

Rodney glares. “What’s wrong with your coffee? Asshole.” He takes John’s and slurps it down, grimacing at the impurities otherwise known as cream and sugar, and John smirks.

 

*      *      *

 

When John’s promoted to Lt. Colonel, Elizabeth takes them (“them” being John and Rodney, the friendless orphans) out to celebrate the government’s somewhat confusing decision not to fire their collective ass. It takes about five minute for them to realise that they’re three workaholics who are bound by law not to discuss work in public, and have nothing to say to one another.

 

(John finds it difficult to reconcile the ideas of “Atlantis” and “work”. He knows that people who say that their work is their life are crazy-eyed comic-book villains or antisocial depressives or both, but the truth is that by now everything in his world now revolves around Atlantis. Work is something people pay you to do because otherwise you wouldn’t do it, and by that definition he hasn’t worked since the summer of ’87, teaching preteens how to surf for eight dollars an hour.)

 

Because they are masochists, what’s left of the command team get together next time they’re on Earth. It’s mainly for Elizabeth’s benefit, because otherwise she’ll just spend another month locked in her apartment refusing to return any phone calls. John’s face freezes from all the false smiling, and Rodney keeps twitching from the effort of pretending that Elizabeth isn’t on the brink of a nervous breakdown, pissing off the entire restaurant staff by asking if there’s citrus in every single dish. Luckily NORAD sends them all the bat-signal and the torture is over: back to the battle. It says something that they’re all happier to fly into a nuke and commit career suicide than they are to sit around a table and eat seafood.

 

*      *      *

 

2007

On clear days you can see the coast, grey green and faint in the distance. John doesn’t like clear days any more. The shore of their new home planet is miles away, almost below the curve of the horizon, but he feels hemmed in by it, claustrophobic.

 

It should feel the same, leaning with his forearms on the flat balcony rail, the edge digging into his elbows. Even at this hour most of the lights are still on, sharp blue points from the city’s many narrow windows. He knows that McKay’s permanently on unofficial nightshift, but in any case he recognises the footsteps without having to look round.

 

He sets down a mug beside John’s hand. It’s the tea from MS5-T34, cinnamon-scented and more caffeinated than actual coffee. McKay settles in beside him, too late to be a windbreak because half of John’s face is already numb with cold. “It’s weird, isn’t it?” he says.

 

“What is?”

 

Rodney gestures vaguely at the sea. “Here. I mean, I know it’s stupid, but I kind of miss Lantea. The air smells different here, or something.”

 

“Yeah.” He wraps his hands around the tea, letting the warmth seep through. “We’ll get used to it.”

 

“Yes, you’re good at that, aren’t you?” he says, and John feels himself freeze for a moment. Rodney pats the rail. “Just like Atlantis. You know she recalibrated half of the malfunctioning systems before we even got to them? Water purification and so on. It makes you wonder how many planets she’s been on.”

 

According to the Ancient database, the city started its life as a space station orbiting P4X-397’s sun, but there’s nothing there now. It’s a miracle they find as much as they often do, after ten thousand years.

 

They’re back in contact with Earth in the sense that Zelenka scraped together enough power to send a subspace transmission to the Daedalus to let them know Atlantis is still alive and kicking and holed up three stars to the right and straight on till morning from Lantea. Repairs are underway and will be for a long time because all they have is engineers when what is really needed is a construction crew. The main problem is the enormous hole in the control tower.

 

Elizabeth’s finally lost the neck brace but Ronon’s still confined to sickbay, being entertained by all the female medical staff. Rodney’s only just got out of his sling and spends a lot of time rubbing his weakened wrist. He’s doing it right now; he’s been quiet for a long time, for Rodney. When John turns to ask what’s wrong, Rodney’s watching him in that way he has sometimes, gazing sidelong with a thoughtful expression on his face. It’s times like this when Rodney freaks him out a little, because ordinarily you can tell what he’s thinking at a glance. Then Rodney blinks as if realising what he’s been doing, and starts talking again.

 

*       *      *

 

There are times when they’re doing nothing, when they have to wait while Teyla negotiates or when Atlantis is inexplicably managing to function without them, times when they’re just together for whatever reason. John will turn around and Rodney will be there, and he can’t help but find it unnerving because Rodney watches him. Rodney isn’t the kind of person who can lie at all, really, and John gets the impression that Rodney wants something from him that maybe he can’t help with. John doesn’t want to ask because how is he supposed to articulate a question like that? Instead he just feels vaguely guilty at the panic twisting in his stomach and tries to ignore the whole thing. It’s best just to remember that Rodney’s part of his team and that team members watch one another’s backs, it’s what they do. And if Rodney maybe watches John’s back a little more intently than is strictly necessary, it’s not hurting anyone. 

 

*       *      *

 

Recent offworld missions have been harder than usual and it’s a relief to get a couple of days pause time. It’s filed under ‘team bonding exercise’ but really it’s just a camping trip to the mainland. Teyla and Ronon agree immediately but Rodney needs some persuading.

 

“This is ridiculous,” he protests. “If we bonded any more we’d be a molecule.”

 

While John’s deciding whether to laugh or cry at this statement Ronon says with a completely straight face, “What’s a molecule?” and Rodney has a minor fit, forgetting yet again that even though Ronon wears animal skins and has dreadlocks almost downs to his elbows, he has a college-level education and comes from a civilisation where ray guns and interstellar spacecraft are standard-issue. Somewhere along the line he implies that he may be able to spare a day or so for marshmallow toasting and freezing his ass off in a tent, and  behind his back John shares a grin with Teyla.

 

Elizabeth signs off on it with a look that says a lot of things about camping and people who do it for fun. To make it look like they’re useful, John agrees to get some sample of local flora for the biologists (“Gardeners,” sneers Rodney. Katie Brown had recently told him his sarcasm was ‘upsetting’ and started dating a marine with biceps bigger than John’s head.)

 

He parks the jumper above the high tide mark and they walk along the tree line until the sun starts to turn the horizon yellow. Ronon wants to build a shelter from bits of forest because apparently, tents are cheating. No one’s stopping him, but John’s survival training was mainly desert-based and involved conserving water through peeing into a tin cup rather than bivouacking 101. Teyla bends branches over to make a roof while John lights a fire and Rodney pitches a tent “for anyone who isn’t out of their mind. No, wait, only for me then.”

 

Soon it’s dark and two of the five moons have risen. One is regular milky white but the other glows golden for some reason that Rodney’s explained already but John didn’t really absorb. Soft forest sounds surround them, a background to some animal with a repetitive howling call. A few years ago that would’ve start Rodney off on a panic about werewolves and rabies shots, but by now he’s accepted the fact that unless it’s actually a dinosaur, Ronon can probably take it down.

 

Rodney’s lying on a silver insulation blanket, mapping out the stars for future reference. Through a haze of woodsmoke, John can just make out the others putting the finishing touches on their house, weaving fleshy yellow-green leaves together so they sit like roofing tiles. It’s one of those Pegasus Galaxy skills he has no hope of ever learning, like the ability to mix a special kind of mud into hair removal cream instead of shaving, or coping after everyone on your homeworld has been culled.

 

He pokes the fire and sparks swirl upwards, disappearing just below the lower branches. When he glances down Rodney isn’t watching the sky. Instead he’s on his side, looking at John, his eyes glinting with reflected firelight. John tenses but merely raises an eyebrow in question. Rodney doesn’t move, doesn’t bother to look away, still a relaxed warm weight against his leg. “What?”

 

John shifts. “Can you not do that?”

 

Slowly he sits up, cracking his neck. “Do what?” he says, confused.

 

“You know, stare.”

 

“I was gazing into space. Not everyone’s ogling you, Kirk.”

 

John feels his heart speed up in his throat, embarrassed. “You do, all the time.”

 

Rodney opens his mouth, the closes it again. “Okay, so maybe I have a thing,” he says, flipping a dismissive hand in a gesture that could be interpreted as apologetic, if Rodney ever apologised for anything.

 

“A thing,” he repeat, and suddenly he’s thinking about all the times he’s avoided talking about this and how Rodney’s had a thing maybe even as long as they’ve known one another. After four years, John thinks, panic curling in his stomach, it’s probably graduated to something several levels above a ‘thing’.

 

He flushes. “I could stop. I mean, I got the impression it didn’t bother you.”

 

“Well, maybe it does,” says John’s mouth.

 

“Clearly,” he snaps. “You know what, I think Teyla needs my help, I’ll just, okay.” He gets up, tripping over the blanket, and stalks off in the direction of the others. John pokes savagely at the fire. This isn’t something anyone could blame on him. It’s all on Rodney, here. Fuck.