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.au fic: The Cold Year (McKay/Sheppard) 1.1
Title: The Cold Year
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard; bit of McKay/Beckett
Rating/Warnings: Rish for a couple of things; angst mostly.
Disclaimers: Alas, not mine.
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wordclaim50 #2 (AU) and 1fandom Theme Set 3.
Notes: This is an AU that sprang out of a drabble I wrote a couple weeks ago for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twincy. Not exactly a coherent fic as such, more snapshots of an alternate future than anything else.
THE COLD YEAR
01. Walk
He doesn’t go far these days, sticks to the bubble of heat the generator provides – a bubble that grows smaller every day, it seems – but it’s far enough to get away from Rodney, go to one of the exterior windows and look out over the Ice.
02. Beauty
Flying into Antarctica: desert of silver, sweep of ice and rock, bright even through his sunglasses and the tinted canopy of the helicopter, and back then John could understand why people risked their lives to find the center of all that ice – but not, after having lived with it, anymore.
03. Catch
The problem with being smart, Rodney’s come to realize, is that it blinds you to how fantastically stupid you can be, like being stupid enough to volunteer to stay in the ruin of Atlantis instead of taking the last jumper out with Zelenka and Lorne.
04. Speak
“We need to talk Rodney,” John says when they’re in bed together, because that’s the only time they can really talk, or disagree, which is what they’ve mostly been doing lately, and John remembers that from Elizabeth: keep your disagreements private.
05. Lack
He wishes she were here, Elizabeth, but she’s gone along with Ronon, with more than two-thirds of the Marines, pilots, and technicians, and the only scientists left other than Rodney are Beckett and two botanists.
06. Mine
Speaking of Beckett, he and Rodney have been spending a lot of time together, more than Rodney’s work on the generator should probably allow, and it’s stupid and irrational because there’s no room, no time for John to be jealous, but he is, dammit.
07. Laugh
The last time he’d heard John laugh was in the middle of sex, one night when they both weren’t exhausted, and Rodney’d done something – he still had no idea what, maybe found a ticklish spot John would never admit to – and he’d laughed, a real, unreserved laugh, but that was a long time ago now, it feels like.
08. While
When he needs to think about things other than the generator and John, and what the hell they’re going to do (in the more general “keep Atlantis alive” sense and the private “John and me” sense), he goes to talk to Carson, and sometimes while they talk, Rodney manages to figure a few things out.
09. Youth
One day at lunch, staring out at the Ice, John turns to Rodney and says with that fake-serious expression of his, “You know, it’s been a year and we still haven’t gone ice skating yet,” and even as he thinks it’s been a year, Rodney thinks John looks good right then, sounds good, teasing making him seem younger, like… like they’d been a year and a day ago.
10. Stay
“I’m sure Radek can manage it,” was what Rodney had said when John had demanded to know why the hell he wasn’t leaving, and even though his over-developed sense of self-preservation had screamed at him to get in that jumper right the hell now, he’d shoved a protesting Zelenka up the ramp instead, told John he’d figured out a way to rig up a dirty bomb to destroy the hive ship, and marched back to the control room.
11. Fill
The two botanists are really a blessing; they’ve converted part of an old lab into a hydroponics bay, and while it means once they get back home (because they are going to get back home) Rodney will never eat lima beans and spinach again, it means he eats twice a day.
12. Distraction
He likes Carson even more than he’d ever thought to like a person, likes talking to him, because Carson’s funny and his accent is great, and every now and then they’ll just talk and insult each other’s profession, and it’s like old times.
13. Fear
After several years of dealing with the unexpected (life-sucking aliens, stargates, nanoviruses, said life-sucking aliens destroying a planet), Rodney’s come to realize it’s possible to live with anything, even the bone-chilling cold, the fear than runs colder and deeper than the air outside the windows of Atlantis.
14. Crash
John’s been up for fourteen hours – again – and shows no sign of going to bed – again – and Rodney really wants to drag him to their room and keep him there before John goes down in flames.
15. Look
John’s not so exhausted that he can’t see Rodney’s meaningful scowl from across the control room, and even though Rodney’s complete lack of subtlety annoys him enough to make him stand up straighter and pay more attention to the tech’s explanation of… something technical… he knows Rodney’ s right about whatever he’s trying to say.
16. Begin
When his day ends, memory begins: flight school, fighting in Afghanistan, a crazy-eyed scientist in a fleece jacket ranting at him, a desert planet and a dying Wraith, bouncing around the globe in his father’s tracks, what it’s like to be warm.
17. Second
Only a second, less than that – an endless, depthless light, no sound until the thunder that drowned out desperate cries – and it was over.
18. Violet
Only not over; they’re still here, and one of the botanists has set aside a tiny square of the hydroponics lab for a violet seedling, which is impractical – not even Rodney’s cat had liked violets (he loved ferns, though, and spider plants) – but nice, a reminder of the planet they’ll probably never see again.
19. Candy
“I would seriously kill for some chocolate,” Rodney says for the twentieth time, oh, that day, but John – despite his lingering irritation, his exhaustion, everything – finds the complaint comforting, and discreetly touches Rodney’s wrist to let him know.
20. Nothing
There should be a memorial or something, John thinks, a rock with “Atlantis was here” carved into it, right next to BEWARE OF WRAITH.
21. Familiar
It’s the cloak or the heat, Sheppard; the generator can’t handle both: old, stale argument they’ve had before, in private, so many times that their quarters practically echo it.
22. Show
In front of the forty or so people left, they put on a good front, military guy and science guy doing their best to keep the city going for another day, but lately John’s been wondering exactly how convincing they’ve been.
23. Day
Other than science, Rodney’s always been able to do two things very well: eat and sleep, but the starlight on the ice is like having quartz stadium lights outside his window, and he wishes they had shades or something because his circadian rhythms are shot to hell and he can’t sleep during this second daytime.
24. Ask
“You think we’re going to make it back to Earth?” Rodney asks one night.
25 Think
John thinks they probably won’t, but he doesn’t say that.
26. Hair
Rodney’s fingers are in his hair, and John loves it when he does that, running in thoughtful circles like he’s not really thinking about touching, but about something else entirely.
27. Home
Like home, and John can’t blame him.
28. Loud
“So then the man said, ‘You know, laddie, sheep are so stupid that if you put one in a one-acre field and dig a hole somewhere and you come back one hour later, the sheep will be in the hole,’” Carson tells him while he administers the stimulant shot that’ll keep Rodney on his feet for a twenty-four hour diagnostic shift, and Rodney’s surprised to hear himself laugh at a stupid story about sheep of all things.
29. Travel
He hates the stargate now, wishes he’d never even seen one, because the goddamned thing is right there, but there’s no energy to spare to dial it – and if there were there was no safe planet to run to anymore – and no way to dial Earth, if Zelenka (please God) had managed to persuade SGC to shut down the gate, and dammit, he reallyreallyreally wishes he had no idea what a stargate was.
30. Damage
The city’s barely functioning, they’re barely functioning, running on spinach fumes and the stimulants Carson reluctantly prescribes, and when John sees Rodney at the wrong end of his day-long shift, he automatically starts looking for cracks.
31. Strength
Rodney, like the city, has held together.
32. Together
John kind of hopes they illustrate the principle that two are stronger than one (or whatever), but Rodney is… Rodney, and John wonders if maybe Rodney would have survived, John Sheppard or no John Sheppard.
33. Push
“You and Carson have gotten pretty close,” John says at dinner one year and one day in, and he knows he’s pushing it when Rodney frowns and tells him they’ve all gotten close – it’s hard not to almost die with people on a daily basis and not get to know them.
34. Safe
Rodney asks Carson if he thinks Radek and Lorne made it back to earth, and Carson meditates on this for a moment before saying “I’m sure they’re safe and sound, Rodney,” but Rodney doesn’t hear the answer so much as the way Carson rolls his r’s, and thinks it’s crazy he never noticed.
35. Private
Once upon a time, their disagreements weren’t disagreements so much as foreplay; but now their disagreements are disagreements, and sex is an apology, and both these things are done in private.
36. Light
Rodney’s lost weight, not the good kind of weight loss that comes with exercise and a sensible diet, but the bad kind that comes with short rations and lack of appetite brought on by overuse of stimulants (and overconsumption of lima beans and spinach), and when John takes him in his arms at night (a year and three days now) he’s surprised to feel muscle and prominent bone at the curve of Rodney’s spine.
37. Big
Afterwards, when Rodney mentions he’ll commit murder for some chocolate, John tells him he’d do the same for a hamburger, then Rodney says I’d commit two murders for a bag of Cheetos, and John counters with mass murder for roast beef and mashed potatoes, and the imaginary feast – and body count – only gets more extravagant from there.
38. Want
The best nights are when they don’t talk, and even when they don’t have sex, when they just lie there and breathe, and Rodney realizes that’s all he wants out of life right now: to lie there and breathe, uncomplicated.
39. Law
A year and a week: John’s caught one of the lower-level techs skimming rations from the commissary – for the fourth time, and that means a day and a night out on the Ice (they capitalize it now) instead of the brig, which means the tech will probably die, but that’s the rule and Sheppard’s eyes are merciless.
40. Canine
That night John’s mouth is cruel, bites along Rodney’s chest and stomach, bruising nip at his jugular, hands just as harsh, but afterwards he’s apologetic, and Rodney accepts both these things.
41. Truth
In Rodney’s more honest moments, he admits he likes Carson – really likes, in a way different from the way he likes John, just as indefinable, but just as certain.
42. Smoke
Trees – they could cut down trees to set a fire to alert passing ships… but this is a planet, not Gilligan’s Island, and oh yeah, there aren’t any trees anymore, and anyway, who would see the smoke – the Enterprise?
43. Order
Golding, the food-stealing tech, never came back, and it’s a weak, Monty-Python sort of yay for martial law, when there’s only thirty-nine people left to keep the city going.
44. Feel
John, brilliant John, found some old insulation hangings in an abandoned storeroom and has hung them up as curtains, which means Rodney can’t see his face anymore, has to feel his cheekbones, the tension in his body, the blind shudder when he comes.
45. Finish
“Ever feel like we’re living on seriously borrowed time, and someone’s going to come to collect?” Rodney asks Carson, sometime around one year and three weeks.
46. Through
“It’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings,” Carson says reflectively, and that sort of fatalism has Rodney hung up for a second.
47. Race
Fuckfuck, he’d been talking to Carson and then the generator alarm went off and it’s a long run from Carson’s office to the generator room and the thing is going critical and through sheer incompetence Rodney McKay’s going to do what the Wraith never could: destroy Atlantis.
48. Need
Living like this (or, as Rodney’s started to think of it, not living like this) strips everything down, away – he wants chocolate but doesn’t need it, he needs John, and thank God he has him.
49. Splash
Almost two years in, they’re still there, still kicking, and Sheppard’s out with an ice harvesting crew when he sees it: a different reflectiveness, moving, shifting, living water.
50. Thrill
“Wow,” John says.
-end-
Notes: Part of the fic is predicated on the SGA team managing to construct a chain of stargates back to Earth. The general premise is that a hive ship explodes in the atmosphere above Atlantis and due to some nuclear winter sort of chain-reaction climatic thing, the planet freezes over--not exactly scientific (I don't think that much water can freeze over that quickly), but it sounded cool, so there you go.
In other news: More "Hours" tomorrow or Sunday (I hope).
By: HF
Email: aesc36 @gmail.com
Pairings: McKay/Sheppard; bit of McKay/Beckett
Rating/Warnings: Rish for a couple of things; angst mostly.
Disclaimers: Alas, not mine.
Advertisements: For
wordclaim50 #2 (AU) and 1fandom Theme Set 3.Notes: This is an AU that sprang out of a drabble I wrote a couple weeks ago for
twincy. Not exactly a coherent fic as such, more snapshots of an alternate future than anything else.THE COLD YEAR
01. Walk
He doesn’t go far these days, sticks to the bubble of heat the generator provides – a bubble that grows smaller every day, it seems – but it’s far enough to get away from Rodney, go to one of the exterior windows and look out over the Ice.
02. Beauty
Flying into Antarctica: desert of silver, sweep of ice and rock, bright even through his sunglasses and the tinted canopy of the helicopter, and back then John could understand why people risked their lives to find the center of all that ice – but not, after having lived with it, anymore.
03. Catch
The problem with being smart, Rodney’s come to realize, is that it blinds you to how fantastically stupid you can be, like being stupid enough to volunteer to stay in the ruin of Atlantis instead of taking the last jumper out with Zelenka and Lorne.
04. Speak
“We need to talk Rodney,” John says when they’re in bed together, because that’s the only time they can really talk, or disagree, which is what they’ve mostly been doing lately, and John remembers that from Elizabeth: keep your disagreements private.
05. Lack
He wishes she were here, Elizabeth, but she’s gone along with Ronon, with more than two-thirds of the Marines, pilots, and technicians, and the only scientists left other than Rodney are Beckett and two botanists.
06. Mine
Speaking of Beckett, he and Rodney have been spending a lot of time together, more than Rodney’s work on the generator should probably allow, and it’s stupid and irrational because there’s no room, no time for John to be jealous, but he is, dammit.
07. Laugh
The last time he’d heard John laugh was in the middle of sex, one night when they both weren’t exhausted, and Rodney’d done something – he still had no idea what, maybe found a ticklish spot John would never admit to – and he’d laughed, a real, unreserved laugh, but that was a long time ago now, it feels like.
08. While
When he needs to think about things other than the generator and John, and what the hell they’re going to do (in the more general “keep Atlantis alive” sense and the private “John and me” sense), he goes to talk to Carson, and sometimes while they talk, Rodney manages to figure a few things out.
09. Youth
One day at lunch, staring out at the Ice, John turns to Rodney and says with that fake-serious expression of his, “You know, it’s been a year and we still haven’t gone ice skating yet,” and even as he thinks it’s been a year, Rodney thinks John looks good right then, sounds good, teasing making him seem younger, like… like they’d been a year and a day ago.
10. Stay
“I’m sure Radek can manage it,” was what Rodney had said when John had demanded to know why the hell he wasn’t leaving, and even though his over-developed sense of self-preservation had screamed at him to get in that jumper right the hell now, he’d shoved a protesting Zelenka up the ramp instead, told John he’d figured out a way to rig up a dirty bomb to destroy the hive ship, and marched back to the control room.
11. Fill
The two botanists are really a blessing; they’ve converted part of an old lab into a hydroponics bay, and while it means once they get back home (because they are going to get back home) Rodney will never eat lima beans and spinach again, it means he eats twice a day.
12. Distraction
He likes Carson even more than he’d ever thought to like a person, likes talking to him, because Carson’s funny and his accent is great, and every now and then they’ll just talk and insult each other’s profession, and it’s like old times.
13. Fear
After several years of dealing with the unexpected (life-sucking aliens, stargates, nanoviruses, said life-sucking aliens destroying a planet), Rodney’s come to realize it’s possible to live with anything, even the bone-chilling cold, the fear than runs colder and deeper than the air outside the windows of Atlantis.
14. Crash
John’s been up for fourteen hours – again – and shows no sign of going to bed – again – and Rodney really wants to drag him to their room and keep him there before John goes down in flames.
15. Look
John’s not so exhausted that he can’t see Rodney’s meaningful scowl from across the control room, and even though Rodney’s complete lack of subtlety annoys him enough to make him stand up straighter and pay more attention to the tech’s explanation of… something technical… he knows Rodney’ s right about whatever he’s trying to say.
16. Begin
When his day ends, memory begins: flight school, fighting in Afghanistan, a crazy-eyed scientist in a fleece jacket ranting at him, a desert planet and a dying Wraith, bouncing around the globe in his father’s tracks, what it’s like to be warm.
17. Second
Only a second, less than that – an endless, depthless light, no sound until the thunder that drowned out desperate cries – and it was over.
18. Violet
Only not over; they’re still here, and one of the botanists has set aside a tiny square of the hydroponics lab for a violet seedling, which is impractical – not even Rodney’s cat had liked violets (he loved ferns, though, and spider plants) – but nice, a reminder of the planet they’ll probably never see again.
19. Candy
“I would seriously kill for some chocolate,” Rodney says for the twentieth time, oh, that day, but John – despite his lingering irritation, his exhaustion, everything – finds the complaint comforting, and discreetly touches Rodney’s wrist to let him know.
20. Nothing
There should be a memorial or something, John thinks, a rock with “Atlantis was here” carved into it, right next to BEWARE OF WRAITH.
21. Familiar
It’s the cloak or the heat, Sheppard; the generator can’t handle both: old, stale argument they’ve had before, in private, so many times that their quarters practically echo it.
22. Show
In front of the forty or so people left, they put on a good front, military guy and science guy doing their best to keep the city going for another day, but lately John’s been wondering exactly how convincing they’ve been.
23. Day
Other than science, Rodney’s always been able to do two things very well: eat and sleep, but the starlight on the ice is like having quartz stadium lights outside his window, and he wishes they had shades or something because his circadian rhythms are shot to hell and he can’t sleep during this second daytime.
24. Ask
“You think we’re going to make it back to Earth?” Rodney asks one night.
25 Think
John thinks they probably won’t, but he doesn’t say that.
26. Hair
Rodney’s fingers are in his hair, and John loves it when he does that, running in thoughtful circles like he’s not really thinking about touching, but about something else entirely.
27. Home
Like home, and John can’t blame him.
28. Loud
“So then the man said, ‘You know, laddie, sheep are so stupid that if you put one in a one-acre field and dig a hole somewhere and you come back one hour later, the sheep will be in the hole,’” Carson tells him while he administers the stimulant shot that’ll keep Rodney on his feet for a twenty-four hour diagnostic shift, and Rodney’s surprised to hear himself laugh at a stupid story about sheep of all things.
29. Travel
He hates the stargate now, wishes he’d never even seen one, because the goddamned thing is right there, but there’s no energy to spare to dial it – and if there were there was no safe planet to run to anymore – and no way to dial Earth, if Zelenka (please God) had managed to persuade SGC to shut down the gate, and dammit, he reallyreallyreally wishes he had no idea what a stargate was.
30. Damage
The city’s barely functioning, they’re barely functioning, running on spinach fumes and the stimulants Carson reluctantly prescribes, and when John sees Rodney at the wrong end of his day-long shift, he automatically starts looking for cracks.
31. Strength
Rodney, like the city, has held together.
32. Together
John kind of hopes they illustrate the principle that two are stronger than one (or whatever), but Rodney is… Rodney, and John wonders if maybe Rodney would have survived, John Sheppard or no John Sheppard.
33. Push
“You and Carson have gotten pretty close,” John says at dinner one year and one day in, and he knows he’s pushing it when Rodney frowns and tells him they’ve all gotten close – it’s hard not to almost die with people on a daily basis and not get to know them.
34. Safe
Rodney asks Carson if he thinks Radek and Lorne made it back to earth, and Carson meditates on this for a moment before saying “I’m sure they’re safe and sound, Rodney,” but Rodney doesn’t hear the answer so much as the way Carson rolls his r’s, and thinks it’s crazy he never noticed.
35. Private
Once upon a time, their disagreements weren’t disagreements so much as foreplay; but now their disagreements are disagreements, and sex is an apology, and both these things are done in private.
36. Light
Rodney’s lost weight, not the good kind of weight loss that comes with exercise and a sensible diet, but the bad kind that comes with short rations and lack of appetite brought on by overuse of stimulants (and overconsumption of lima beans and spinach), and when John takes him in his arms at night (a year and three days now) he’s surprised to feel muscle and prominent bone at the curve of Rodney’s spine.
37. Big
Afterwards, when Rodney mentions he’ll commit murder for some chocolate, John tells him he’d do the same for a hamburger, then Rodney says I’d commit two murders for a bag of Cheetos, and John counters with mass murder for roast beef and mashed potatoes, and the imaginary feast – and body count – only gets more extravagant from there.
38. Want
The best nights are when they don’t talk, and even when they don’t have sex, when they just lie there and breathe, and Rodney realizes that’s all he wants out of life right now: to lie there and breathe, uncomplicated.
39. Law
A year and a week: John’s caught one of the lower-level techs skimming rations from the commissary – for the fourth time, and that means a day and a night out on the Ice (they capitalize it now) instead of the brig, which means the tech will probably die, but that’s the rule and Sheppard’s eyes are merciless.
40. Canine
That night John’s mouth is cruel, bites along Rodney’s chest and stomach, bruising nip at his jugular, hands just as harsh, but afterwards he’s apologetic, and Rodney accepts both these things.
41. Truth
In Rodney’s more honest moments, he admits he likes Carson – really likes, in a way different from the way he likes John, just as indefinable, but just as certain.
42. Smoke
Trees – they could cut down trees to set a fire to alert passing ships… but this is a planet, not Gilligan’s Island, and oh yeah, there aren’t any trees anymore, and anyway, who would see the smoke – the Enterprise?
43. Order
Golding, the food-stealing tech, never came back, and it’s a weak, Monty-Python sort of yay for martial law, when there’s only thirty-nine people left to keep the city going.
44. Feel
John, brilliant John, found some old insulation hangings in an abandoned storeroom and has hung them up as curtains, which means Rodney can’t see his face anymore, has to feel his cheekbones, the tension in his body, the blind shudder when he comes.
45. Finish
“Ever feel like we’re living on seriously borrowed time, and someone’s going to come to collect?” Rodney asks Carson, sometime around one year and three weeks.
46. Through
“It’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings,” Carson says reflectively, and that sort of fatalism has Rodney hung up for a second.
47. Race
Fuckfuck, he’d been talking to Carson and then the generator alarm went off and it’s a long run from Carson’s office to the generator room and the thing is going critical and through sheer incompetence Rodney McKay’s going to do what the Wraith never could: destroy Atlantis.
48. Need
Living like this (or, as Rodney’s started to think of it, not living like this) strips everything down, away – he wants chocolate but doesn’t need it, he needs John, and thank God he has him.
49. Splash
Almost two years in, they’re still there, still kicking, and Sheppard’s out with an ice harvesting crew when he sees it: a different reflectiveness, moving, shifting, living water.
50. Thrill
“Wow,” John says.
-end-
Notes: Part of the fic is predicated on the SGA team managing to construct a chain of stargates back to Earth. The general premise is that a hive ship explodes in the atmosphere above Atlantis and due to some nuclear winter sort of chain-reaction climatic thing, the planet freezes over--not exactly scientific (I don't think that much water can freeze over that quickly), but it sounded cool, so there you go.
In other news: More "Hours" tomorrow or Sunday (I hope).
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