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.ficlet: Two Scenes (Missing) - John/Rodney
Scrap of something for 4.20 "The Last Man," just so I can get it out of my head.
Two Scenes, Missing
1. No one gets left behind.
Between sand and wind and desperation he doesn't have much time--which is probably ironic, considering that Rodney's had millennia of time to sleep away in the holographic emitter. He adds on 25 more years of a long, slow dying, and then however many years his body had left after Rodney McKay committed the best part of himself to crystal and wire.
"I did it," he tells John's sleeping self, voice fierce and broken. He remembers John exactly like this, his oddly old-young face, his expression serious in the dreamlessness of the stasis chamber--like nothing he remembers (loss, heartbreak, far more than a thousand years of solitude) has happened. "And I'm going to do it." Saying it, he feels young again.
He deactivates the stasis chamber and John stirs, blinks in confusion; Rodney catches the moment when memory rushes back. "Come on," he says, waving impatiently, "We don't have much time," and that makes him laugh. John shrugs and offers him a smile dry as the desert outside, and for the second time in a thousand years Rodney walks the corridors of his dead city and listens closely to the heartbeat-heavy sound of John's boots on the floor, the tenative sigh of the city stirring to half-life around them.
The walk goes quickly, nothing to say and everything after so much time. He powers up the gate, sighing as it washes blue light into the reds and ochres the dying sun has painted on the walls. In the light, John's face is pale, and exhaustion hides in the shadows under his eyes.
"You sure you've got this right?" John asks, glancing sideways at him. Even talking he leans toward the gate, toward his own time.
"Sure I'm sure." He takes a breath, deep enough for John to pause and look, really look.
"When I told you I hoped that things wouldn't be the same after I send you back?" he says, and John's eyes lock on him. "When I told you that... I meant it for a lot of reasons."
"Yeah." John looks away now
"I wasn't..." Rodney shakes his head, tell him the Flames won the 2010 and 2013 Cups, make it up, anything, "I couldn't leave you behind."
And though he can't feel John's mouth on his, or John's sand-rough cheek under his hand, Rodney can remember a lot of stolen nights when there had been more than kissing, and the remembering fills up space once only filled by light.
2. I wish some of the stories had happier endings.
John weighs minutes and seconds, and decides that he doesn't need to change and definitely doesn't need the perspective Sam suggests he should find. He needs--he needs--He shakes his head and gestures for Rodney to follow him.
Rodney obeys, quiet in the way that means either imminent disaster or that he's shaken far past the point of even his vocabulary to express it. And John hasn't even told him half, nothing beyond what's in the crystal McKay had given him, and definitely hasn't told him what McKay had only hinted at (and how it's easier to think of him as McKay, and not... not Rodney, all alone), the desolation that occupied the spaces between breaths a hologram hadn't needed to take.
"You're brilliant," he tells Rodney quietly, fiercely, when he pushes Rodney against the wall of his quarters. Rodney stares at him, about ready to say of course he his; John shakes his head, and Rodney keeps quiet. "And you're here."
"Yeah, yeah I am." And Rodney says it like being here surprises him too, and all John can think is here, here, with the reassurance of bone and flesh and Rodney's hot, hot skin. "I... I'm not going anywhere."
You didn't, John thinks as he pulls down Rodney's t-shirt collar, warmth, salt, jump of pulse, you were always, always there.
Rodney's hands splay across his shoulders and pull him close, I'm not going anywhere said clear as day, and John knows it's stupid to promise so he doesn't, but with his mouth on Rodney's, fingers on a face not yet sorrowed into wrinkles, tries to fill up an emptiness he can only guess at. And there isn't time for much (no time, God, it's getting ridiculous), only time to watch Rodney go breathless and shaky and bright-eyed, and to stare at John in the way that says he's trying to understand.
"I can't..." I can't say it "I can't tell you--" What your life was, what it was going to be, "--exactly what happens, but it was you, Rodney. You changed everything."
That's the one thing he'll need perspective on, that Rodney did this, moved millennia because things had gone wrong the first time around, had won back Sam, Jennifer, Teyla and her baby, Ronon.
John.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says, not meaning to, but when he does say it, he means it, stupid or not, and when he kisses Rodney again, tastes Rodney's smile on his lips.
-end-
Two Scenes, Missing
1. No one gets left behind.
Between sand and wind and desperation he doesn't have much time--which is probably ironic, considering that Rodney's had millennia of time to sleep away in the holographic emitter. He adds on 25 more years of a long, slow dying, and then however many years his body had left after Rodney McKay committed the best part of himself to crystal and wire.
"I did it," he tells John's sleeping self, voice fierce and broken. He remembers John exactly like this, his oddly old-young face, his expression serious in the dreamlessness of the stasis chamber--like nothing he remembers (loss, heartbreak, far more than a thousand years of solitude) has happened. "And I'm going to do it." Saying it, he feels young again.
He deactivates the stasis chamber and John stirs, blinks in confusion; Rodney catches the moment when memory rushes back. "Come on," he says, waving impatiently, "We don't have much time," and that makes him laugh. John shrugs and offers him a smile dry as the desert outside, and for the second time in a thousand years Rodney walks the corridors of his dead city and listens closely to the heartbeat-heavy sound of John's boots on the floor, the tenative sigh of the city stirring to half-life around them.
The walk goes quickly, nothing to say and everything after so much time. He powers up the gate, sighing as it washes blue light into the reds and ochres the dying sun has painted on the walls. In the light, John's face is pale, and exhaustion hides in the shadows under his eyes.
"You sure you've got this right?" John asks, glancing sideways at him. Even talking he leans toward the gate, toward his own time.
"Sure I'm sure." He takes a breath, deep enough for John to pause and look, really look.
"When I told you I hoped that things wouldn't be the same after I send you back?" he says, and John's eyes lock on him. "When I told you that... I meant it for a lot of reasons."
"Yeah." John looks away now
"I wasn't..." Rodney shakes his head, tell him the Flames won the 2010 and 2013 Cups, make it up, anything, "I couldn't leave you behind."
And though he can't feel John's mouth on his, or John's sand-rough cheek under his hand, Rodney can remember a lot of stolen nights when there had been more than kissing, and the remembering fills up space once only filled by light.
2. I wish some of the stories had happier endings.
John weighs minutes and seconds, and decides that he doesn't need to change and definitely doesn't need the perspective Sam suggests he should find. He needs--he needs--He shakes his head and gestures for Rodney to follow him.
Rodney obeys, quiet in the way that means either imminent disaster or that he's shaken far past the point of even his vocabulary to express it. And John hasn't even told him half, nothing beyond what's in the crystal McKay had given him, and definitely hasn't told him what McKay had only hinted at (and how it's easier to think of him as McKay, and not... not Rodney, all alone), the desolation that occupied the spaces between breaths a hologram hadn't needed to take.
"You're brilliant," he tells Rodney quietly, fiercely, when he pushes Rodney against the wall of his quarters. Rodney stares at him, about ready to say of course he his; John shakes his head, and Rodney keeps quiet. "And you're here."
"Yeah, yeah I am." And Rodney says it like being here surprises him too, and all John can think is here, here, with the reassurance of bone and flesh and Rodney's hot, hot skin. "I... I'm not going anywhere."
You didn't, John thinks as he pulls down Rodney's t-shirt collar, warmth, salt, jump of pulse, you were always, always there.
Rodney's hands splay across his shoulders and pull him close, I'm not going anywhere said clear as day, and John knows it's stupid to promise so he doesn't, but with his mouth on Rodney's, fingers on a face not yet sorrowed into wrinkles, tries to fill up an emptiness he can only guess at. And there isn't time for much (no time, God, it's getting ridiculous), only time to watch Rodney go breathless and shaky and bright-eyed, and to stare at John in the way that says he's trying to understand.
"I can't..." I can't say it "I can't tell you--" What your life was, what it was going to be, "--exactly what happens, but it was you, Rodney. You changed everything."
That's the one thing he'll need perspective on, that Rodney did this, moved millennia because things had gone wrong the first time around, had won back Sam, Jennifer, Teyla and her baby, Ronon.
John.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says, not meaning to, but when he does say it, he means it, stupid or not, and when he kisses Rodney again, tastes Rodney's smile on his lips.
-end-