DEX: This the house you were raised in?
SHEPPARD: One of them.
DEX: That's nice.
SHEPPARD: Yeah. Couldn't wait to get out of here.
DEX: Yeah? Why?
SHEPPARD: My dad's idea of teenage rebellion was going to Stanford instead of Harvard.
*
John Sheppard had grown up in two places: His father's large country villa and his mother's San Francisco penthouse. Sometimes he felt like he was growing up into two different people.
Dave had never had that problem. He had decided to give up on the San Francisco life early on and to become the person Dad wanted.
He was three when they got divorced. John was six. It would have been easy to go with the "we didn't love each other anymore" both their parents claimed later. Except John was six. He heard their arguments and remembered them. If he concentrated really hard, he could still hear his father's angry voice saying he didn't want to hear about gay rights and art, did he look like a hippy?
He didn't have to concentrate at all to hear his mother answer coldly that she was well aware he wasn't.
He also clearly remembered the look on her face when Dave said he didn't like San Francisco, and couldn't he stay home?
That was when John had decided he had two homes and he wasn't going to hurt anyone's feelings by liking one better than the other. He was seven then. That same year, he witnessed a gay pride parade in San Francisco, and his mother finally explained what the gay rights she'd argued about with dad were. It changed John's entire view of his father, but he was smart enough not to mention it.
Dave joined Little League.
John got put in a special math track for gifted children.
Dave went to sports camp over the summer.
John went back to San Francisco.
The town he lived in with his father was sleepy at best, unutterable dull at worst. San Francisco wasn't. John quickly developed a fondness for Chinatown and those cheesy tourist machines that flattened your penny and put stamps on them. He drank green tea in the Japanese tea house with his mother and told her about the books he'd read recently. She listened attentively and suggested others he might like.
Time passed. Junior high started. Dave joined the football team, hung out with the jocks. Even people who had never spoken to him called him Dave.
John started reading the paper and eventually used his library card to read through old editions and figure out more about politics and the world. The more he read, the less he agreed with the things he'd heard his father and his friends say. He talked less and less to his father, afraid of somehow giving away that he was innately different.
His father came home one night ranting about immigrant workers. John joined track team and started boxing the next day to deal with the anger productively. People at school knew his name but called him Shep, or Sheppard, in a respectful sort of fear.
Dave got put on AP courses. Their father forbade art class, though.
John started forging his father's signature on school documents to get into the classes he wanted.
At the end of his first year in high school, things almost came to a head. His father had just finished surveying Dave's report card with pleasure when he turned to John expectantly. John handed over his report card without thinking, having forgotten that his dad didn't exactly know about all of his courses.
"Shit," Dave said, seeing John's rather impressive grades. He hadn't known his brother was that smart before- their talks tended to limit themselves to sports, TV, or, in extreme cases, books.
"Art?" Their father asked incredulously. "'John Sheppard took part in various drama productions'?" He glanced back down at the report card. "Music? What sort of courses are you taking?"
Counting carefully to ten, John said, "You'll also notice I'm getting A's in just about anything important." His control had faded slightly by the time he reached important; the word was all but spat.
"Son," his father said, "you know as well as I do these are all things you don't need." As if John hadn't said a word, as usual.
"Why?" John asked, his fuse quietly blowing up and scattering the conversation with debris.
"Why what?"
"Why won't I need things like Drama and Art?"
Dad snorted. "That's junk, son, for fags and girls. You want extra credit, do more sports."
John hated it when his father got like that. He was impossible to talk to, and that made attempting to get through to him even harder than usual. It made John want to scream and throw things.
That probably read on his expression, because Davy was slowly backing out of the room, and his father was looking at him expectantly.
"When you say shit like that," John said, voice so tight with control it was frightening, "do you hear yourself?"
That same afternoon, he hacked into his father's college fund bank account that was only supposed to be his when he turned eighteen, and bought himself a ticket to San Francisco in his father's name.
"Unaccompanied minor?" the stewardess asked him. He nodded, and she smiled prettily, placing him between a woman who looked like someone's great-aunt and a man with crazy, curly hair.
As the plane took off, he realized he'd done it, gotten out, and felt a little nauseous and a lot exhilarated. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to fly the damn plane himself.
In less than ten seconds, his brain went overboard with images: the toy airplane he had hanging from the ceiling in his room, calculating angles and air resistance in physics class, running, ferris wheels, fast things- it all added up to the one, extraordinary conclusion that he wanted to fly.
Maybe it didn't solve everything, but it eased the giant pressure on his heart that he had felt there ever since he first realized that he wasn't cut out to live his father's life.
He took the bus through San Francisco, up and down the hills as the streetlamps shone and the nightlife buzzed.
His mom lived in a rich area, because she was rich (which kind of sucked. John had always felt guilty for being white, rich and smart. There had to be some karmic payback, somewhere), in the penthouse of an apartment building just a block away from her gallery. She supported struggling artists and charity exhibitions about injustice in the world and had thus made herself a name as less pretentious and more interesting than some of her colleagues.
She buzzed him up the minute she heard his voice on the intercom.
"So," she said, once he'd dumped his stuff, which appeared to be about half his possessions, in his room. "Your father called. He was going insane with worry. Are we going to talk about why you're here?"
John sighed, sprawled out on the sofa and told her the whole story.
"Oh," she said when he finished. "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"
John shrugged. "I didn't want you guys to fight about me."
It looked for a moment like her eyes were misting up. She pulled him into a hug. "I'm proud of you," she said. And then she made them cocktails without alcohol and they stayed up till two in the morning watching the Sound of Music, Meet me in St. Louis and Singin' in the Rain.
He fell asleep on the sofa eventually and she picked up the phone and called her ex-husband.
The next morning, she gave John his options: he could go home, he could stay out the summer as planned, or they could reverse the agreement and have him go to school in San Francisco and vacation with his father. To no one's surprise, he chose the latter.
*
Of course he'd made tentative attempts at dating before then, on the down-low, so he wouldn't have to deal with his father's opinion about his choices in girls. The year he started tenth grade in San Francisco, he decided the time was right to expand his horizons and dated whoever he damn well pleased however he damn well pleased.
His mom made him sit through the safe sex talk despite his very loud protests, but other than that, she was accepting to the point of teenage girliness.
The first time she came in and saw John kissing a boy, she just said hello and walked on (later, when they were alone, she said, "so, he was cute," which made John groan).
He was having fun in school, too- despite being the track team's star, he consequently ate lunch with the drama club and the geeks and let them call him John, or even Johnny. He revelled in picking his own classes openly, emphasising math, physics, English lit and politics. He was Mercutio in the obligatory performance of Romeo and Juliet. He learned to play the guitar.
(He gave up Art, though. He'd always kind of sucked at it; the whole thing had been more of a subtle 'fuck you' to his father.)
In October, his father came to visit. He'd been there five months. After his mother told his father about his decision to stay in San Francisco, he'd started calling Dave and his father once a week. None of them mentioned what had happened, but big, bright pink elephants had a habit of turning up in their conversations.
His father chose just the week to visit when he was seeing Harry Lewis, a blonde kid with huge brown eyes. It didn't last long- Harry was too cute not to draw someone else's attention and they were too young not to be fickle. Harry was very much the stereotype, though- a full-blooded drama queen both on and off the stage.
When John's father let himself in with the spare key from under the flowerpot in front of the door, Harry was teaching John a spectacularly seductive dance, with John's mother's Peggy Lee record crackling out Fever in the background.
"Hey, mom," John said, not even glancing towards the door as he attempted to spin Harry awkwardly. "It's okay if I stay over at Harry's tonight, right?"
"Yeah," Harry said, winking at John, "we need to work on his hip motions."
"Um. John?" his father asked.
Abruptly, John's hands dropped off of Harry and he spun round. "Dad?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"
He shrugged. "Checking up on my son."
"I called two days ago. I'll be home for Christmas."
"Yes, well…John, I haven't seen you in five months. I'm here on business, thought I'd visit."
John still hadn't so much as smiled, even a little. "Who's taking care of Davy?"
His father had the grace to blush. "Sylvia." Sylvia was his girlfriend, a horrendously respectable platinum blonde single mom he'd met at a PTA meeting.
John stared at him for a second before turning to Harry and saying, "I'll be home some time around eight. Trust me, you don't want to be here for this." And in a move perhaps braver than buying his own plane ticket and running away, though that had been mildly illegal, he leaned over and kissed Harry before bringing him to the door.
The phone rand before John's father could say anything. It was a friend of his, and he took the opportunity to vanish into his room.
When he resurfaced, his mother had come home. She was arguing with his father.
"All I want to know," his father was saying, "is why no one told me my son's a fag."
"That's the reason, Patrick," his mother said. "You open your mouth and you sound like a Texan redneck. And neither John nor I have said he'd gay."
"He was kissing a boy! I'd say that's fairly obvious."
"So? He's kissed girls, too, that doesn't make him exclusively straight."
John's father looked at her questioningly.
"For god's sake, Pat, he's not even sixteen. Did you know exactly who you were then? He's a person, not a yes-or-no question."
Not needing to hear anymore, John pushed past them with his overnight things. "I'm staying at Harry's tonight," he said, to both and neither of them, careful not to make eye contact.
After that, his father, and through him, Dave, assume he's sleeping with every one of his friends.
*
His mother didn't laugh at him when he said he wanted to fly. He was eternally thankful to her for that.
When he told her he was thinking about joining the Air Force, she didn't say anything for a while. Then, finally, she looked at him, a bit sadly, and said, "If there's anyone I trust to do that job the right way, it's you, Johnny."
He smiled at her, tremulously, but nonetheless radiantly, because she wasn't saying that she was a pacifist and didn't approve, or that it was a bad decision because he was at least partially gay.
She opened her arms to hug him. "Do some good, mm-kay? And…be careful."
When he told his father he was joining the air force, his father said, "Do they let people like-" before he remembered that they hadn't once talked about John's sexuality since the afternoon when he kissed Harry Lewis.
That didn't stop John knowing he'd meant to ask, Do they let people like you in?
It was the final wedge in a great big wall of wedges between father and son.
*
NANCY: Yeah, he is. He's, uh ... yeah, he's doing well. (She smiles awkwardly again, then looks serious.) You know, your dad was always very good to me.
SHEPPARD: Well, in *his* mind, marrying you was probably the best thing I ever did.
-
NANCY: I haven't seen you in over four years and now you want me to put my job on the line and you won't even tell me why?!
SHEPPARD: All right, when you put it that way, it sounds a little crappy.
NANCY: Well, I'm glad you noticed! It's too bad you didn't a little bit earlier – say, like when we were still together? When I think back to all those times that you would just take that call and leave – no apologies, no explanations ... For all I knew, you were halfway around the world, flying secret missions into Somalia.
*
Nancy was a fling. Originally, that is. A cute, smart, funny fling, but a fling nonetheless. He was on leave for just a few days in Vegas, and they met at a bar on his first night.
"Where do you work?" he asked randomly the first morning, and had been pleasantly surprised when she said, "homeland security," revealing a brain under all that hair- in his experience women like her didn't need to use their brains to get money.
"You?" She asked.
"USAF," he said, and was surprised again when she said, "that…is pretty sexy."
She'd given him her number before he flew back to his latest station, and when he went on leave the next time, he called her on a whim, and it turned into a thing.
He didn't introduce her to his parents till they were engaged.
His father loved her, as did Dave. His mother winked at her and said, "she's cute, John," the same thing she'd said about most of his partners, a running joke between them.
Nancy loved his father right back and went over for dinner even when John was flying secret missions in god knew where. She didn't take to his mother, though, which struck John as odd.
They got married on a Wednesday in March in as small a ceremony as she would allow.
Six months later, she showed the first signs of disliking his job.
Their marriage ended on a Friday. Not officially, but that was the day when she asked him which was more important, her or his job, and he never answered, because he took the call and went back to work. He knew that was it, that it was over, but she clung on two more months, and he couldn't very well be the one to end things, that would just be mean.
The day she left the divorce papers on the kitchen table, along with a letter mentioning Grant, he went out to a gay club and got fucked.
Half a year later, his mother was diagnosed with third stage ovarian cancer and died, leaving him with memories and the San Francisco penthouse he could hardly enter without tearing up.
After the funeral, he declined leave of absence to mourn and took the next opportunity back to Afghanistan, leading him through a downward spiral straight to Antarctica.
*
John liked the alliteration of three of the most important chapters of his adult life: Afghanistan, Antarctica, Atlantis.
Afghanistan was a haze of pain and things spiralling madly out of control. Antarctica was cool air and the chance to organize his mind and take him that far away from the breakdown he'd felt sneaking up on him ever since his mother died.
Atlantis was the first time he'd been at home since he'd lived in San Francisco. He'd given up that home to fly.
Atlantis let him fly.
He fell half in love with the city, which sounded kind of weird but really wasn't. If he had believed in fate, John would have said he had been born to live on her.
And there was his team.
His family, even. Teyla was like a big sister sometimes, even if he was older, she was still more mature. Ronon sometimes reminded him of Dave, in the days before things got really complicated.
And Rodney was his best friend.
John'd never had a best friend before, not really. When he lived with his father, he'd been too busy trying to keep everyone at a distance to have close friends, just in case one of them went too far in and found out just how much he didn't fit into their well-ordered suburban life, which wasn't fair, but that was still how he thought of it. At his mom's, he'd had plenty of friends, but those were…well, high school friends. Rodney was different.
John found himself hanging out in the labs during downtime more often than not, turning things on for Rodney, discussing physics, or rather, asking questions and listening to Rodney's long answers. Occasionally he even proofread the more basic math.
Fairly early on, Rodney said to him, "I looked up your files, you know. You have a masters. In math. Why did you join the air force? It's a waste of brain power."
John shrugged. It was late; Rodney was reworking Kavanagh's notes on a particular ancient device. He was tossing a ball up to the ceiling and catching it while Rodney worked and talked. "I wanted to fly," he said.
Rodney put down the papers. "Oh," he said. "Oh, I get it. You're that person."
John frowned, tossed the ball a bit harder. "What person?"
"Which person, actually. You're the privileged, gifted child who gives it up to live his dream."
John caught the ball, cocked his head at it, tossed it back up. "You make it sound cheap."
Rodney's pen was scratching over Kavanagh's papers again. "Oh, do forgive me," laced with sarcasm. Then, in an effort at levity, "you do realize I'm horribly jealous, right?"
He couldn't see John's grin because he was turning slowly on the chair while they talked, but he could hear it in his voice. "Why, what person were you?"
"Which. I was the wunderkind with the tragic background."
John winced. "You're right, that sucks." He turned again and studied Rodney for a moment, trying to figure out if this was his opening to ask about the tragic background, or a test to see if he would pry. He settled on remarking, "you keep that background pretty under wraps, don't you?"
Rodney snorted. "No more than you do.
And John smiled back at the ceiling, because Rodney got him in a way he was completely unfamiliar with.
-
Arcturus scared John a little bit more than he let on, because it made him realize how much he trusted Rodney. He'd never trusted anyone that much before.
He kept his distance for a few weeks after that, no matter how much he missed Rodney. To clear his head.
Then he saw Rodney eating alone in the mess, realized how that must feel, saw a marine or two eying him and snickering, and that night he followed Rodney out to the pier.
"Hi," Rodney said, obviously surprised when John sat down beside him. "Want a beer?"
John nodded, and they sat in silence for a moment before he said, "So."
"So," Rodney repeated, looking out into the ocean. "Whisper Norbury in my ear and I shall be infinitely obliged?"1
John gave himself a moment to smile in relief before saying, "Why am I Watson?"
Rodney gave him an, "Oh, puh-lease," but it was half-hearted and he was smiling right back.
-
He finally cracked after the sinking jumper incident. Because honestly, he'd always been attracted to geeks and drama queens, and Rodney ruled those dimensions, and he'd never been close to anyone the way he was close to Rodney, it wasn't so weird he's developed feelings for Rodney, really, and then Rodney came out of a near of a near death experience babbling about Sam Carter, and John cracked.
They were sitting in Rodney's room watching Pride and Prejudice on his laptop, because letting his guard down around Rodney meant letting Rodney in on his fondness for chick lit and Regency romance and being mercilessly teased about it. Rodney was stuttering his way through an awkward "thank you," coupled with an "I'm sorry for not trusting you," that John didn't really understand, and the name Sam popped up once again.
John turned to Rodney, took his face in both hands, and kissed him.
Rodney sat in shock for a moment before melting into the kiss with all the inevitability that came with it.
He was smiling when the kiss ended, a real, gleeful smile, not the crooked, sarcastic one. "You were jealous!" he crowed.
John rolled his eyes.
"You were! You were-"
John practically snarled and backed him up against the sofa before practically ravishing his mouth.
"Oh," Rodney said, eyes wide and dark, when they parted for air. "You were jealous."
-
To his great surprise, things didn't change all that much. They were still best friends. Who had amazing sex. Every once in a while he wondered if that was what love was supposed to be like.
They still bantered, still drove Elizabeth half insane, still came up with crazy ideas, still had more near-death experiences than the entire crew of the Enterprise put together. But it was better, now, because they got something from it, something for themselves after it all.
And then, John's dad died.
He hadn't thought about his father in a long time, he realized in the shocked split second after Sam told him.
*
The wake was depressingly predictable, up to the moment Nancy came over and hugged him. He hadn't thought of her in almost the same amount of time he hadn't thought of his father. There was so much else now, so much that was more important.
It was only after the whole Ava-the-replicator debacle was over that he realized he'd best go back to see Dave. He'd been their father, after all. And Davy'd looked up to him liked he was the best fucking role model ever.
They didn't talk until there was alcohol. There must have been more alcohol before, because the first thing Dave said to John was, "So, that Ronon guy. Are you fucking him?"
John choked on his drink, both with the completely inappropriate my baby brother must not use the f-word reaction and with incredulity. "You kidding?" he asked. "He could break my arms with about two fingers. So not my type." He must have been drunker than he thought. He wasn't used to alcohol anymore, other than beer.
"You have a type?"
What the heck. John tipped back the rest of his drink. "Just because I'm bi doesn't mean I'm attracted to everything."
"Huh." Dave said. "You and him seemed pretty close, though."
"Well, yeah," John said. "He's on my team. We've saved each other's lives more often than I can count. 'S like…family."
Dave gave him a look that spoke whole novels worth of sarcasm.
"Sorry," John said.
Another long pause, refilling of glasses. "So, is there anyone?" Dave asked.
"You care?" John asked right back, alcohol making his defences shoot up and down at whim.
Dave sighed, rolling the shot glass between his palms. "I meant what I said. Dad was sorry about what happened. He just never worked out how to make it up to you. I…don't want us to end up like that. You're still my big brother."
John never looked up to see if Dave returned his shy smile. "Yeah," he said. "There's someone. What about you?"
-
When he returned to Atlantis, Rodney was waiting for him in his quarters. He was running diagnostics on his laptop and pretended not to be expectant at all.
John dumped his stuff on the floor and lay down on the bed. Staring at the ceiling, he said, "My mom would have liked you."
The laptop closed. Rodney walked over. "Yeah?" he said, sitting down by the head of the bed.
John rearranged himself so that his head was resting on Rodney's lap. "Yeah," he said.
Rodney's hand ran through his hair. John sighed.
"I grew up in two places," he began, wondering for the first time if he could maybe combine the family he'd never wanted with the family he'd chosen for himself. The thought made him happy.
1 At the end of „The Yellow Face", in the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, after Holmes has screwed up, he says Watson should do the above it he ever gets too cocky.