Fic: Applied Mathematics
Sep. 14th, 2006 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneYes, yes, I know: this isn't more Five Things. But 'McKay and Mrs. Miller' ate my brain. It happens.
Title: Applied Mathematics
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘McKay and Mrs. Miller’
Length: ~3400 words
Summary: ‘McKay and Mrs. Miller’ tag. If McKay were snippier (which, frustratingly, he’s not) he’d say something like, “Why do you think, John?” drawing out his name the way he does, sending through John’s spine shivers of rage and something incalculable.
A/N: Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
siriaeve and trobadora for making this so much better and for catching at least one seriously embarrassing typo. Also, trobadora and fluffyllama have started a new community relevant to ‘McKay and Mrs. Miller’ and to this story, which you should check out (and write stories for!): ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mensa_au.
Applied Mathematics
“So long, John.”
*
It’s a simple equation. Subtract one. Four minus one is three. Six minus one is five. Two hundred and ninety-seven minus one is two hundred and ninety-six. Numerically, it’s barely any difference at all.
John stares at the spot where McKay was and McKay isn’t. He glances over at Zelenka, who is serious and solemn beside him. Under his stare, Zelenka says, “Do you think it worked?”
John bites his lip. “I want to run the math again,” he says.
*
The first time John realized he could see numbers, he didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. He’d always liked counting and the other basic exercises his class had done, but they hadn’t sparked anything. Not like this booklet the teacher passed around, uttering reassuring phrases to his classmates' nervous faces as the air filled with the smell of pencil shavings. John had looked down at the tiny squiggles, black on the white page, and he saw them. He knew them. He understood.
He did not understand what all the fuss was about, why his teacher called his parents in, why his mother turned to him with wide eyes and his father with eyes narrowed. He heard words like advanced and special, and that was okay. He heard the word different, and he was afraid.
“I’m not sure if that would be the best environment for him,” his father said. “I think he’d be happier here, among his peers.”
His teacher frowned. “On the contrary, I think he’ll find a more nurturing atmosphere…”
“Are you his father?”
John can remember staring up at the man in question. It felt like he was staring up for miles, toward a height he could never reach. Even now he can’t quite calculate the distance.
“It’s my decision.” A brief look at John’s mother. “Ours.”
John would stay where he was. He felt a little relieved as he realized this. But he also felt…disappointment? (Resentment.) True, no one would single him out, realize he was different. But also, no one would help him better understand the numbers. If he was going to learn them, he would have to do it himself.
Either way, he’d be giving something up.
The two feelings warred, briefly, in his chest. Then John raised his chin.
*
“Well, I’m back,” McKay says. The rest of the Daedalus’ crew is still disembarking, but nobody pays them any attention. All eyes are focused on a central, centering point. Zelenka’s jaw drops. Dr. Weir rushes forward and McKay awkwardly accepts her hug. Then Dr. Beckett is there, guiding the returning hero to the infirmary. John gulps and finds his voice. “How are you not dead?”
McKay grins as he turns his head. “It’s nice to see you, too, John.”
*
John gets to fly the jumper because 1) he’s in charge, and 2) as McKay has often admitted, with an easy laugh and a careless shrug: unlike Rod, John can fly in a straight line.
John sees the lines. He sees all the angles and possible trajectories. He can calculate exactly how long to hold a roll, and when to bank, and when to fire. In flight school, he was always just a tiny fraction of a second slower than everyone else—and a hundred times more accurate.
McKay sometimes watches him when he flies, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, looking pensive but somehow carefree. John doesn’t get that: how McKay’s interest can be so vague, like he’s intrigued, but never really enraptured by anything. There’s something oddly cold about his stare.
McKay has watched John’s hands on the controls, and his eyes moving over the HUD, and he’s asked him, “You’re thinking about everything, aren’t you?” John didn’t know how to respond. Of course he was; McKay might as well ask him if he was breathing. “Don’t you ever just…react?”
“Yes,” John had said. He’ll see the numbers in his mind, run through them in the space of an eyeblink, and respond as appropriate.
“Instinctively, I mean.” John remembers McKay leaning back, body loose and liquid. “Use the force, Luke!”
“That movie is ridiculous.” John’s response was immediate.
“I know.” McKay’s smile is always the same: slightly sardonic, friendly and welcoming and never quite full. “That’s half the fun.”
*
John would never tell anyone, but he’s jealous of the way McKay thinks, of how his mind works. Everything comes so easily for him; he is brilliant in a way John will never be: naturally, effortlessly. He is so brilliant that his brilliance speaks for itself; he’ll nod his head—“Thank you, Elizabeth”—and never for one second worry about credit.
John hates him a little. He’s said, on more than one occasion—and sometimes out loud, sometimes to Rod’s face—he’s said, “You’re so lazy, McKay.” Which will earn him another eyeroll, or smirk, or careless shrug. It burns him up inside. Because John: John is anything but lazy. All his life he’s done nothing but work and work, trying to train himself in two disciplines when he was only receiving support for one. If only he can run faster, and work harder, and think more swiftly, and fly higher and higher and higher… He hates McKay, who when it counts is never out of breath, who faces every challenge and never bats an eyelash.
It was Simpson who actually started the Atlantis Mensa Society, but John goes every week. When he showed up at the first meeting (no one had bothered to tell him about it, but John had his ear to the ground, and there are other advantages to being in charge) Kavanagh made some sarcastic comments, but John put him in his place by kicking his ass at Apples to Apples. Sure, Kavanagh’s had more formal training than John has, but he’ll never be as flexible a thinker. And he’ll never have John’s level of commitment: John’s not the type to just hop on the Daedalus and go home.
John attends every meeting without fail, even when his skin was still faintly blue and his cheeks perpetually red as he tried to get over the embarrassment of having started a fight during their recent game of Taboo, then launched himself at Kusanagi while Parrish and Bryce were cleaning up the spilled cards. Afterward, everything was a little awkward, but John played a mean game of Scattergories, and he was starting to relax, feel in charge of the room again. Then McKay waltzed in (he’s never bothered to stay for more than a few minutes—“Mensa? Really? You need, what, a SAT score of 1250 to get in?”—spoken with casual disinterest, as John’s eyes had narrowed and the tips of his ears turned red), stole a handful of Cheetos, and peered at Brown’s sheet like he’d never dated her, dumped her, and made her feel strangely good about the whole thing. “A type of candy starting with ‘P,’ hm?” McKay chewed. “I bet you anything Sheppard put Pez.”
He walked out of the room, wiping orange dust from his fingertips. John made an effort not to stare after him. Well, it was either that or peanut butter cups! he thought, which he was willing to bet both Parrish and Brown had written down, just like he was positive Kusanagi’d written Pocky and that Bryce thought she was being clever with something like Parma Violet. And McKay’d actually done him a favor, because nobody was going to touch Pez now…
He crossed it out and wrote Pay Day, which turned out to have been Parrish’s pick. It was a stupid thing to be upset about, but John remembers feeling unsettled for the rest of the evening. Scrubbing off at night, his skin coughed a small cloud of blue into the air. John blocked the image of McKay out of his mind and tried to map the movement of his particles like stars.
*
John, like a cat, will die nine times for curiosity; he comes and knocks on McKay’s door when the city is silent and safe again. McKay does not look surprised to see him. McKay never looks surprised. Earlier today, he stepped back from oblivion, and his grin said that he knew it would happen this way, that he knew it all along.
McKay lets him in before turning and settling casually on the bed. John stands in the doorway, regarding him. He’s been in this room before, but he never feels comfortable here. It’s welcoming enough: there’s a poster of Neil Young on the wall, and a few family photos, and a guitar leaning in the corner. But it’s never felt lived in to John. The bed’s unmade, but otherwise it could be a motel room somewhere, a movie set.
“So,” McKay says, cool blue gaze sweeping over him. “You’re wondering what it was like?”
“Yeah,” says John. Something like that, anyway.
McKay, unsurprisingly, shrugs. “It was weird. It was…nice. It wasn’t here.”
This is the worst excuse for an answer John has ever heard. “That is the worst excuse for an answer I have ever heard,” John says.
Another shrug. “I haven’t really finished processing it.” And a grin. “But Radek was there, and Teyla and Ronon and Elizabeth. And me. And you.”
John’s about to say something cutting like, “And did the Lollypop Gang make an appearance?” when McKay adds, “And my sister.”
“Your sister?” Suddenly John's mind is racing, working toward…he doesn’t even know yet. Some sort of proof.
“Yeah, I’ve told you about her.” He has. Just like now, the first thing McKay did when a relation was mentioned was reach for his wallet. John thinks it’s really stupid that he still carries that around. But he cradles it like a badge, like an ID card. “See? That’s Jeannie and Madison and—“
“You’ve shown me,” John says. But McKay hasn’t told him about them, not really. This family whose photographs McKay flaunts: John doesn’t know anything about them. Nothing beyond their frozen faces, their names.
“You and your sister,” John says, and he can see it now, the columns of numbers lining up. “You’re close?”
“Of course.” Open and guileless.
John is going to wipe that look off McKay’s face, he’s going to make him completely shut down. John knows this. He’s seen that other expression of McKay’s. In anger, McKay can be cold and hard and somehow empty, lacking the spark that John himself both hates and loves. That painful, burning passion to be, to learn, to understand it all.
John squares his shoulders and says, “Did you say goodbye to her before you left?” Like you said goodbye to me?
It happens just as John imagined, McKay’s face closing up. John feels a flash of triumph, but also surprising sympathy. He wants to shake McKay between his two hands, but he also wants to hold him close, to bury his face in Rod’s neck and smell the heat and perspiration there. He wants to know that they are both real and alive, and that they both feel. That they both feel this.
For a moment McKay says nothing. Then he speaks, surprising John, and clearly himself, too.
“I didn’t even think about it.” He flexes his fingers. “I just…went.”
“It was supposed to be one way,” John says, unable to stop the anger from creeping into his voice. “You were never coming back. You were never going to see her again.” I was never going to see you again.
McKay blinks at him. “I lied, you know,” candidly, “I told them we drew straws.”
John snorts: it’s a ridiculous image. There was, and never is, any doubt: McKay will go, McKay will put himself on the line. It’s the only time he ever really seems to care, that he’s ever passionate about anything.
“Anyway,” McKay says, and suddenly all the seriousness is gone from the room, like a vacuum lock has been released and matter sucked out into space. “You would have gotten a kick out of the other me. He made you look laidback. Or maybe it was the other way around. But seriously, together you guys would be the death of any party.” He’s smiling/smirking as he says all of this. “On the plus side, you would have finally found someone to play Go with you.”
“What about you?” John says. He’s not really inviting McKay to play Go with him—although he has, and although he knows McKay could (and could probably beat him).
“Oh,” says McKay, sidestepping whatever invitation is or isn’t there. “Sheppard and I played golf.”
It’s weird to hear himself referred to as a separate, other person—and a golfer, at that. But John could play golf. He’s sure he’d be good at it. Like pool, it’s all about exploring angles and calculating force. He wonders if he, the other him, thinks of it that way. Something in McKay’s face makes him doubt it.
“You got along well?” John asks. Ever-amiable, McKay nods. “Why didn’t you stay?”
If McKay were snippier (which, frustratingly, he’s not) he’d say something like, “Why do you think, John?” drawing out his name the way he does, sending through John’s spine shivers of rage and something incalculable. Instead he says, “It’s home here,” and does something strange. He touches the wall. John’s seen him do it before, even before Dr. Beckett gave him the gene. But it always astounds him. To John, there’s no sensation as unique and intimate as what he felt when he first stepped into this city, as what he feels every time he sets foot inside Atlantis’ walls. He belongs here; it’s in his blood and his bones. And yet…McKay seems to feel it, too. That sense of connection can’t be unique if it’s shared.
But, John thinks, swallowing, feeling himself flush. It can still be intimate.
He has so many questions he wants to put to McKay. He can't let it hang here, unsolved. There are too many variables, and nothing adds up.
But he made the brave choice once, and he's done nothing but pay and pay for it.
"Welcome back," he says stiffly, and leaves McKay sitting there, his back a perfect 90-degree angle.
*
In his dream, John is staring up at a blackboard, trying to balance both sides of a vast equation. Something like this happened in real life. They'd only been here a couple of days when McKay caught him making a minute correction to one of the chemists' whiteboards. When John closes his eyes (when he's not already dreaming) he can still see Rod's face perfectly, lighting up like Atlantis did when she recognized that hidden thing inside of John.
Of course, Atlantis hadn't ruined the moment by making bad Good Will Hunting jokes. But.
But McKay had encouraged him. John had thought he would have the harder task, convincing the scientist to join his offworld team. But McKay had leapt at the opportunity. And he'd taken every chance, both at home and away, to give John things to do, to exercise his mind. Ford had started shooting him befuddled looks, confused and a little betrayed that his CO should want to spend so much time hanging with the scientists. John didn't care. That was what he had decided, years ago: he did not and would not give a damn about what other people thought. He wasn't here to make friends. He was here (thank you, thank you) to learn.
The equation stretches into infinity in both directions, and it is here to teach John something, if only his brains aren't too flight-addled to comprehend it.
John closes his eyes (though they are already closed). He can see the numbers. He can imagine that he is looking at the universe—only, only, that is not a concept as rigid and contained as it once was. The universe is infinite, and there are infinite universes, flush up against each other. John wonders if his universe is meant to balance the other. It should be so. John Sheppard should equal John Sheppard should equal John Sheppard. But from what McKay has said, it seems this is not the case. He imagines his other self, both greater and reduced. It’s a tenuous balance, and one that John can’t see as stable or secure.
So maybe he’s (as much as he hates to admit it) wrong: maybe each universe has to find balance within itself. Weigh each person’s strengths with another’s weaknesses. Math on a cosmic level, everything (and everyone) adding up. Two hundred ninety-six plus one equals two hundred ninety-seven, five plus one equals six, three plus one equals four. One plus one equals two. If he opens his eyes (but they’re still closed) he can see where the center lies.
John opens his eyes. He feels electrified. He wants to slide into his shoes and go for a run; he wants to pull his laptop tight to his chest and work this out now.
He can see the numbers, clear and bright, but as usual he faces the same old problem: he doesn’t know what to do with them. He knows his ideas are abstract and beautiful, and his calculations flawless, but when it comes time to actually implement anything, he has to hand everything off to McKay. John is smart, John is brilliant, but he’s not a genius, not really. He’s just himself; and that, like so many things, is something he’s never been quite sure what to do with.
Somehow he finds himself at McKay’s door. He can’t consciously remember making the decision to movie; he wonders if this is instinct, if this is him operating with the blast shield down.
The door slides open, and he walks inside. McKay is sitting on the floor beside his bed with sweat ringing the arms of his cotton shirt, clearly interrupted during a set of interminable sit-ups. He straightens up and his eyes look a little wild, a lot weary. John can tell at a glance that he hasn’t slept.
He doesn’t say anything. John waits for him to say something, and he doesn’t say anything. He watches John with a calm, evaluating stare that isn’t calm at all.
In his head, John’s ideas are always right. Enacted, his record is not so stellar.
Nevertheless, John lifts his chin.
When he grabs at McKay’s shirt and tries to yank him up, they stumble. McKay has to steady him with a solid hand to his arm. John is already panting. He’s breathless, but he trusts McKay to have enough air for the both of them.
Their kiss is gentle, slowly feeling each other out. John is relieved that McKay tastes of sweat and coffee and human things, and that his mouth is warm and pliant and even faintly desperate against his. In fact, coming together, being together, feels so right it’s almost scary. John remembers the moment of that horrible subtraction, and the subsequent addition that brought breath back into his lungs. This feels like that and more, a cosmic balancing so essential and inherent that he can’t believe he didn’t see it before. How could he not have recognized that he needed this? They need this: each fractured pieces of themselves, together made whole.
When they break apart, McKay still holds him, clutching his arm, fingers tangled in his shirt. “I left because I knew I was missing something,” he says, breathing the words out on a gasp. “I thought I could find it…or at least go out saving the world and look very dashing doing it.”
He’s smiling, lips stretched wide but held naturally, his eyelashes dark and gentle against his cheeks. John feels a need so intense that it rocks him. He can’t put a number to this want.
“The other me…he reminded me of you. And it was so easy to slip into his life, to have what he had. But I was still stealing it instead of sharing it.”
John has his forehead pressed against McKay’s, unconsciously in the Athosian style. He’s staring at the slow movements of McKay’s mouth. “You’re my team,” McKay is saying. “I mean, you’re mine…” But to be honest, John’s not really listening.
“I don’t think going and coming back made me see things any more clearly. I still don’t understand this at all.”
And John says, “I don’t care.”
“I don’t care,” he says, touching Rod’s cheek. “We don’t need to understand this. We just have to want it.”
He’s never seen McKay want much more than a good meal and a nice view, but when Rod looks up at him now his eyes are filled with a heat and an intensity that’s reassuring in its incalculability. They are both more and less than they should be, and in practice, in action, that adds up to something…
“Oh, I want it,” Rod says, and pressing John back against the bed, proceeds to show him exactly how much.
Title: Applied Mathematics
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Spoilers: Through ‘McKay and Mrs. Miller’
Length: ~3400 words
Summary: ‘McKay and Mrs. Miller’ tag. If McKay were snippier (which, frustratingly, he’s not) he’d say something like, “Why do you think, John?” drawing out his name the way he does, sending through John’s spine shivers of rage and something incalculable.
A/N: Many thanks to
siriaeve and trobadora for making this so much better and for catching at least one seriously embarrassing typo. Also, trobadora and fluffyllama have started a new community relevant to ‘McKay and Mrs. Miller’ and to this story, which you should check out (and write stories for!): mensa_au.Applied Mathematics
“So long, John.”
*
It’s a simple equation. Subtract one. Four minus one is three. Six minus one is five. Two hundred and ninety-seven minus one is two hundred and ninety-six. Numerically, it’s barely any difference at all.
John stares at the spot where McKay was and McKay isn’t. He glances over at Zelenka, who is serious and solemn beside him. Under his stare, Zelenka says, “Do you think it worked?”
John bites his lip. “I want to run the math again,” he says.
*
The first time John realized he could see numbers, he didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. He’d always liked counting and the other basic exercises his class had done, but they hadn’t sparked anything. Not like this booklet the teacher passed around, uttering reassuring phrases to his classmates' nervous faces as the air filled with the smell of pencil shavings. John had looked down at the tiny squiggles, black on the white page, and he saw them. He knew them. He understood.
He did not understand what all the fuss was about, why his teacher called his parents in, why his mother turned to him with wide eyes and his father with eyes narrowed. He heard words like advanced and special, and that was okay. He heard the word different, and he was afraid.
“I’m not sure if that would be the best environment for him,” his father said. “I think he’d be happier here, among his peers.”
His teacher frowned. “On the contrary, I think he’ll find a more nurturing atmosphere…”
“Are you his father?”
John can remember staring up at the man in question. It felt like he was staring up for miles, toward a height he could never reach. Even now he can’t quite calculate the distance.
“It’s my decision.” A brief look at John’s mother. “Ours.”
John would stay where he was. He felt a little relieved as he realized this. But he also felt…disappointment? (Resentment.) True, no one would single him out, realize he was different. But also, no one would help him better understand the numbers. If he was going to learn them, he would have to do it himself.
Either way, he’d be giving something up.
The two feelings warred, briefly, in his chest. Then John raised his chin.
*
“Well, I’m back,” McKay says. The rest of the Daedalus’ crew is still disembarking, but nobody pays them any attention. All eyes are focused on a central, centering point. Zelenka’s jaw drops. Dr. Weir rushes forward and McKay awkwardly accepts her hug. Then Dr. Beckett is there, guiding the returning hero to the infirmary. John gulps and finds his voice. “How are you not dead?”
McKay grins as he turns his head. “It’s nice to see you, too, John.”
*
John gets to fly the jumper because 1) he’s in charge, and 2) as McKay has often admitted, with an easy laugh and a careless shrug: unlike Rod, John can fly in a straight line.
John sees the lines. He sees all the angles and possible trajectories. He can calculate exactly how long to hold a roll, and when to bank, and when to fire. In flight school, he was always just a tiny fraction of a second slower than everyone else—and a hundred times more accurate.
McKay sometimes watches him when he flies, sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, looking pensive but somehow carefree. John doesn’t get that: how McKay’s interest can be so vague, like he’s intrigued, but never really enraptured by anything. There’s something oddly cold about his stare.
McKay has watched John’s hands on the controls, and his eyes moving over the HUD, and he’s asked him, “You’re thinking about everything, aren’t you?” John didn’t know how to respond. Of course he was; McKay might as well ask him if he was breathing. “Don’t you ever just…react?”
“Yes,” John had said. He’ll see the numbers in his mind, run through them in the space of an eyeblink, and respond as appropriate.
“Instinctively, I mean.” John remembers McKay leaning back, body loose and liquid. “Use the force, Luke!”
“That movie is ridiculous.” John’s response was immediate.
“I know.” McKay’s smile is always the same: slightly sardonic, friendly and welcoming and never quite full. “That’s half the fun.”
*
John would never tell anyone, but he’s jealous of the way McKay thinks, of how his mind works. Everything comes so easily for him; he is brilliant in a way John will never be: naturally, effortlessly. He is so brilliant that his brilliance speaks for itself; he’ll nod his head—“Thank you, Elizabeth”—and never for one second worry about credit.
John hates him a little. He’s said, on more than one occasion—and sometimes out loud, sometimes to Rod’s face—he’s said, “You’re so lazy, McKay.” Which will earn him another eyeroll, or smirk, or careless shrug. It burns him up inside. Because John: John is anything but lazy. All his life he’s done nothing but work and work, trying to train himself in two disciplines when he was only receiving support for one. If only he can run faster, and work harder, and think more swiftly, and fly higher and higher and higher… He hates McKay, who when it counts is never out of breath, who faces every challenge and never bats an eyelash.
It was Simpson who actually started the Atlantis Mensa Society, but John goes every week. When he showed up at the first meeting (no one had bothered to tell him about it, but John had his ear to the ground, and there are other advantages to being in charge) Kavanagh made some sarcastic comments, but John put him in his place by kicking his ass at Apples to Apples. Sure, Kavanagh’s had more formal training than John has, but he’ll never be as flexible a thinker. And he’ll never have John’s level of commitment: John’s not the type to just hop on the Daedalus and go home.
John attends every meeting without fail, even when his skin was still faintly blue and his cheeks perpetually red as he tried to get over the embarrassment of having started a fight during their recent game of Taboo, then launched himself at Kusanagi while Parrish and Bryce were cleaning up the spilled cards. Afterward, everything was a little awkward, but John played a mean game of Scattergories, and he was starting to relax, feel in charge of the room again. Then McKay waltzed in (he’s never bothered to stay for more than a few minutes—“Mensa? Really? You need, what, a SAT score of 1250 to get in?”—spoken with casual disinterest, as John’s eyes had narrowed and the tips of his ears turned red), stole a handful of Cheetos, and peered at Brown’s sheet like he’d never dated her, dumped her, and made her feel strangely good about the whole thing. “A type of candy starting with ‘P,’ hm?” McKay chewed. “I bet you anything Sheppard put Pez.”
He walked out of the room, wiping orange dust from his fingertips. John made an effort not to stare after him. Well, it was either that or peanut butter cups! he thought, which he was willing to bet both Parrish and Brown had written down, just like he was positive Kusanagi’d written Pocky and that Bryce thought she was being clever with something like Parma Violet. And McKay’d actually done him a favor, because nobody was going to touch Pez now…
He crossed it out and wrote Pay Day, which turned out to have been Parrish’s pick. It was a stupid thing to be upset about, but John remembers feeling unsettled for the rest of the evening. Scrubbing off at night, his skin coughed a small cloud of blue into the air. John blocked the image of McKay out of his mind and tried to map the movement of his particles like stars.
*
John, like a cat, will die nine times for curiosity; he comes and knocks on McKay’s door when the city is silent and safe again. McKay does not look surprised to see him. McKay never looks surprised. Earlier today, he stepped back from oblivion, and his grin said that he knew it would happen this way, that he knew it all along.
McKay lets him in before turning and settling casually on the bed. John stands in the doorway, regarding him. He’s been in this room before, but he never feels comfortable here. It’s welcoming enough: there’s a poster of Neil Young on the wall, and a few family photos, and a guitar leaning in the corner. But it’s never felt lived in to John. The bed’s unmade, but otherwise it could be a motel room somewhere, a movie set.
“So,” McKay says, cool blue gaze sweeping over him. “You’re wondering what it was like?”
“Yeah,” says John. Something like that, anyway.
McKay, unsurprisingly, shrugs. “It was weird. It was…nice. It wasn’t here.”
This is the worst excuse for an answer John has ever heard. “That is the worst excuse for an answer I have ever heard,” John says.
Another shrug. “I haven’t really finished processing it.” And a grin. “But Radek was there, and Teyla and Ronon and Elizabeth. And me. And you.”
John’s about to say something cutting like, “And did the Lollypop Gang make an appearance?” when McKay adds, “And my sister.”
“Your sister?” Suddenly John's mind is racing, working toward…he doesn’t even know yet. Some sort of proof.
“Yeah, I’ve told you about her.” He has. Just like now, the first thing McKay did when a relation was mentioned was reach for his wallet. John thinks it’s really stupid that he still carries that around. But he cradles it like a badge, like an ID card. “See? That’s Jeannie and Madison and—“
“You’ve shown me,” John says. But McKay hasn’t told him about them, not really. This family whose photographs McKay flaunts: John doesn’t know anything about them. Nothing beyond their frozen faces, their names.
“You and your sister,” John says, and he can see it now, the columns of numbers lining up. “You’re close?”
“Of course.” Open and guileless.
John is going to wipe that look off McKay’s face, he’s going to make him completely shut down. John knows this. He’s seen that other expression of McKay’s. In anger, McKay can be cold and hard and somehow empty, lacking the spark that John himself both hates and loves. That painful, burning passion to be, to learn, to understand it all.
John squares his shoulders and says, “Did you say goodbye to her before you left?” Like you said goodbye to me?
It happens just as John imagined, McKay’s face closing up. John feels a flash of triumph, but also surprising sympathy. He wants to shake McKay between his two hands, but he also wants to hold him close, to bury his face in Rod’s neck and smell the heat and perspiration there. He wants to know that they are both real and alive, and that they both feel. That they both feel this.
For a moment McKay says nothing. Then he speaks, surprising John, and clearly himself, too.
“I didn’t even think about it.” He flexes his fingers. “I just…went.”
“It was supposed to be one way,” John says, unable to stop the anger from creeping into his voice. “You were never coming back. You were never going to see her again.” I was never going to see you again.
McKay blinks at him. “I lied, you know,” candidly, “I told them we drew straws.”
John snorts: it’s a ridiculous image. There was, and never is, any doubt: McKay will go, McKay will put himself on the line. It’s the only time he ever really seems to care, that he’s ever passionate about anything.
“Anyway,” McKay says, and suddenly all the seriousness is gone from the room, like a vacuum lock has been released and matter sucked out into space. “You would have gotten a kick out of the other me. He made you look laidback. Or maybe it was the other way around. But seriously, together you guys would be the death of any party.” He’s smiling/smirking as he says all of this. “On the plus side, you would have finally found someone to play Go with you.”
“What about you?” John says. He’s not really inviting McKay to play Go with him—although he has, and although he knows McKay could (and could probably beat him).
“Oh,” says McKay, sidestepping whatever invitation is or isn’t there. “Sheppard and I played golf.”
It’s weird to hear himself referred to as a separate, other person—and a golfer, at that. But John could play golf. He’s sure he’d be good at it. Like pool, it’s all about exploring angles and calculating force. He wonders if he, the other him, thinks of it that way. Something in McKay’s face makes him doubt it.
“You got along well?” John asks. Ever-amiable, McKay nods. “Why didn’t you stay?”
If McKay were snippier (which, frustratingly, he’s not) he’d say something like, “Why do you think, John?” drawing out his name the way he does, sending through John’s spine shivers of rage and something incalculable. Instead he says, “It’s home here,” and does something strange. He touches the wall. John’s seen him do it before, even before Dr. Beckett gave him the gene. But it always astounds him. To John, there’s no sensation as unique and intimate as what he felt when he first stepped into this city, as what he feels every time he sets foot inside Atlantis’ walls. He belongs here; it’s in his blood and his bones. And yet…McKay seems to feel it, too. That sense of connection can’t be unique if it’s shared.
But, John thinks, swallowing, feeling himself flush. It can still be intimate.
He has so many questions he wants to put to McKay. He can't let it hang here, unsolved. There are too many variables, and nothing adds up.
But he made the brave choice once, and he's done nothing but pay and pay for it.
"Welcome back," he says stiffly, and leaves McKay sitting there, his back a perfect 90-degree angle.
*
In his dream, John is staring up at a blackboard, trying to balance both sides of a vast equation. Something like this happened in real life. They'd only been here a couple of days when McKay caught him making a minute correction to one of the chemists' whiteboards. When John closes his eyes (when he's not already dreaming) he can still see Rod's face perfectly, lighting up like Atlantis did when she recognized that hidden thing inside of John.
Of course, Atlantis hadn't ruined the moment by making bad Good Will Hunting jokes. But.
But McKay had encouraged him. John had thought he would have the harder task, convincing the scientist to join his offworld team. But McKay had leapt at the opportunity. And he'd taken every chance, both at home and away, to give John things to do, to exercise his mind. Ford had started shooting him befuddled looks, confused and a little betrayed that his CO should want to spend so much time hanging with the scientists. John didn't care. That was what he had decided, years ago: he did not and would not give a damn about what other people thought. He wasn't here to make friends. He was here (thank you, thank you) to learn.
The equation stretches into infinity in both directions, and it is here to teach John something, if only his brains aren't too flight-addled to comprehend it.
John closes his eyes (though they are already closed). He can see the numbers. He can imagine that he is looking at the universe—only, only, that is not a concept as rigid and contained as it once was. The universe is infinite, and there are infinite universes, flush up against each other. John wonders if his universe is meant to balance the other. It should be so. John Sheppard should equal John Sheppard should equal John Sheppard. But from what McKay has said, it seems this is not the case. He imagines his other self, both greater and reduced. It’s a tenuous balance, and one that John can’t see as stable or secure.
So maybe he’s (as much as he hates to admit it) wrong: maybe each universe has to find balance within itself. Weigh each person’s strengths with another’s weaknesses. Math on a cosmic level, everything (and everyone) adding up. Two hundred ninety-six plus one equals two hundred ninety-seven, five plus one equals six, three plus one equals four. One plus one equals two. If he opens his eyes (but they’re still closed) he can see where the center lies.
John opens his eyes. He feels electrified. He wants to slide into his shoes and go for a run; he wants to pull his laptop tight to his chest and work this out now.
He can see the numbers, clear and bright, but as usual he faces the same old problem: he doesn’t know what to do with them. He knows his ideas are abstract and beautiful, and his calculations flawless, but when it comes time to actually implement anything, he has to hand everything off to McKay. John is smart, John is brilliant, but he’s not a genius, not really. He’s just himself; and that, like so many things, is something he’s never been quite sure what to do with.
Somehow he finds himself at McKay’s door. He can’t consciously remember making the decision to movie; he wonders if this is instinct, if this is him operating with the blast shield down.
The door slides open, and he walks inside. McKay is sitting on the floor beside his bed with sweat ringing the arms of his cotton shirt, clearly interrupted during a set of interminable sit-ups. He straightens up and his eyes look a little wild, a lot weary. John can tell at a glance that he hasn’t slept.
He doesn’t say anything. John waits for him to say something, and he doesn’t say anything. He watches John with a calm, evaluating stare that isn’t calm at all.
In his head, John’s ideas are always right. Enacted, his record is not so stellar.
Nevertheless, John lifts his chin.
When he grabs at McKay’s shirt and tries to yank him up, they stumble. McKay has to steady him with a solid hand to his arm. John is already panting. He’s breathless, but he trusts McKay to have enough air for the both of them.
Their kiss is gentle, slowly feeling each other out. John is relieved that McKay tastes of sweat and coffee and human things, and that his mouth is warm and pliant and even faintly desperate against his. In fact, coming together, being together, feels so right it’s almost scary. John remembers the moment of that horrible subtraction, and the subsequent addition that brought breath back into his lungs. This feels like that and more, a cosmic balancing so essential and inherent that he can’t believe he didn’t see it before. How could he not have recognized that he needed this? They need this: each fractured pieces of themselves, together made whole.
When they break apart, McKay still holds him, clutching his arm, fingers tangled in his shirt. “I left because I knew I was missing something,” he says, breathing the words out on a gasp. “I thought I could find it…or at least go out saving the world and look very dashing doing it.”
He’s smiling, lips stretched wide but held naturally, his eyelashes dark and gentle against his cheeks. John feels a need so intense that it rocks him. He can’t put a number to this want.
“The other me…he reminded me of you. And it was so easy to slip into his life, to have what he had. But I was still stealing it instead of sharing it.”
John has his forehead pressed against McKay’s, unconsciously in the Athosian style. He’s staring at the slow movements of McKay’s mouth. “You’re my team,” McKay is saying. “I mean, you’re mine…” But to be honest, John’s not really listening.
“I don’t think going and coming back made me see things any more clearly. I still don’t understand this at all.”
And John says, “I don’t care.”
“I don’t care,” he says, touching Rod’s cheek. “We don’t need to understand this. We just have to want it.”
He’s never seen McKay want much more than a good meal and a nice view, but when Rod looks up at him now his eyes are filled with a heat and an intensity that’s reassuring in its incalculability. They are both more and less than they should be, and in practice, in action, that adds up to something…
“Oh, I want it,” Rod says, and pressing John back against the bed, proceeds to show him exactly how much.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 07:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 07:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:26 pm (UTC)(No, really: We're one, but we're not the same / We get to carry each other...)
I'm glad you liked it. Thank you.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:12 pm (UTC)Then John raised his chin.
This made me giggle like a loon. The cat looked at me funny.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:23 pm (UTC)Yes, it's the most magnificent thing ever! Thank you, Martin Gero, you have no idea what kind of gift you've given us!
And thank you; I'm so glad you liked it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:46 pm (UTC)and I love your snapshot of it!!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 08:58 pm (UTC)Oh, John.
Also, thanks for plugging the comm! :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:06 pm (UTC)Thanks for all your help with this.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:11 pm (UTC)And the typo wasn't that bad, really, not compared to some of the stuff which flows forth deliberately from my keyboard. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:19 pm (UTC)It wasn't a good typo, let me at least say that.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:35 pm (UTC)And I love this line: “You’re my team,” McKay is saying. “I mean, you’re mine…” It made me melt.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:52 pm (UTC)thank you
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:57 pm (UTC)how can your AU Mensa!John be so perfect?
::loves and pets him::
It's like you have an Ancient device that lets you see AU!SG Atlantis.....
just curiosity: what does his hair look like? Is it like our John Sheppard's, or is it more...orderly?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:58 pm (UTC)Gorgeous writing, and I'll definitely be rereading, 'cause I'm sure I haven't caught all the good parts.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 09:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 10:03 pm (UTC)I think my favourite thing about this, hands down, is the way Rod left John. Hands down.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 10:39 pm (UTC)But if they never do... well. *eyes you speculatively*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 10:46 pm (UTC)That line... oh, man. That line.
Excellent work; like your AUs, the strength of this fic is in the way it reflects the canon (and fanon!) while still being original. Love the balance between these two.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-15 12:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 10:55 pm (UTC)This is just how I didn't know it should be, that yin/yang balance between John/Rodney and/or Rod/John. Beautiful encapsulation of these characters, how different they are from the characters in the other (real? our?) universe. And yet also how alike. (Instead of trying to jump Teyla, *this* John jumps Miko while bugged out. *hee*)
And, in exploring John's disappointments and hurts and hangups, you make me think thinky thoughts about Rodney and how his disappointments and hurts and hangups might parallel them.
And John figures it out enough to bring himself to Rod, to bring them together. Even if he stumbles (literally) in the process. Yay!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 10:59 pm (UTC)