Disclaimer: closes eyes tight Nope, they didn't appear here. Not mine.
Title: Dial Tone
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: T
Summary: He'll always remember the phone call.
Genre: Dark/Angst, AU, fic with permanent injury.
Notes: I felt inspired by the latest episodes and I needed a break from the chicken soup fic. I'm gonna write something more for this if people like.

Rodney will always remember the phone call.

He'd been sitting at the dinner table with Jeannie, reconnecting while Carson and other people made their way through piles of personal files. He'd been talking about John, about how they'd gotten together and a kid-friendly, censored for civilians version of how they'd gotten together. Jeannie had smiled brightly at him.

She was still smiling when John had called, sounding hardened and bitter. It was over before Rodney could get a word in edgewise. There were days he could recall the sound of the dial tone in his ear as Jeannie had taken the phone from him.

It was the last thing he'd truly heard. After that it was all work for Rodney, refusing himself the simple pleasures from friends. He pushed himself so hard that he began to make clumsy mistakes; he assumed the role he had in his home, pretending to be different. It had gotten his parents to treat him almost human like. Rodney'd hoped it would work with John.

Not so.

And it hurt, so Rodney changed tactics. He tried to be brave with Ford when they found him on a planet. John and Teyla had been captured, he was alone with the hopped up weapons specialist, and later he could only say that it was the fear that had pushed him to scream at Ford as he had.

The door to his quarters slid open and it was the intrusion of the light from the hallway that made him realize it had. The lack of one's hearing, the price he paid for the argument with Ford, meant the simple things like privacy were a little harder.

John spoke and Rodney stared at him, until John remembered. He didn't do anything to communicate at that point, simply set down the dinner tray on the side table and sat down beside Rodney. His lips moved again, slowly, deliberately – Rodney could lipread it was the one thing he'd managed to master in three months. ASL was taking much longer since Elizabeth, Kate, and Dr. Membleson from Linguistics only had a few days a month to teach him.

Rodney looked away. He glanced at the food, knowing it wouldn't be anything he actually wanted. Then a piece of paper was dangled in front of his eyes.

John was sorry. It was his superiors. It was the same thing Rodney had been told for weeks and he'd stop caring. It didn't matter anymore.

Another piece of paper. Some more bitter lies that held no value.

Getting to his feet, Rodney carefully pulled the hand from his arm. He couldn't deal with John touching him then, couldn't handle it after all the things those hands had done. They'd taken away the pain of Gaul and Abrams, given him the most exquisite pleasure, helped work out math problems quicker than the science division could.

He moved to his trunk; he kicked the lid up, looking over all the things still inside. His best treasures – letters from Jeannie, his metronome, a few random pictures – were tucked inside, though the most precious of them was hidden far beneath everything. He pulled it from the trunk jerkily and tossed it at John.

The chain of the dog tags struck John in the throat, the plates smacking him in the face. John picked them up before they fell on the bed, looking at Rodney and saying that they weren't John's anymore. They were Rodney's.

Rodney turned away, hoping for the light of the hallway to penetrate his purposely dark room. It took a few minutes, but it came and when he turned around the dog tags were no where to found.

The sound of a dial tone resounded in his head.