A Sheppard suite in five movements
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With: Rodney/John, Teyla/Kanaan, Ronon/Amelia, Torren, David Sheppard
A/N: Written for raphe1, who won my services back in January in the helpbrazil2011 auction.
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There had always been music on Atlantis.
During their first months in Pegasus, ipod content quickly became a valuable commodity. It gave Rodney another reason to be glad he'd packed his extensive collection of classical music. According to Zelenka's rating of tradable items, music came second only to wares they were quickly running out of. One of the anthropologists stipulated that "Movies give their respective owners social venue during group events," but music was selected according to a person's individual mood and thus an inherently personal business.
Not all the music gracing the city was digitalized. More than a few people had brought their instruments with them. And even those who had none could always count on the sea surrounding them, an eternal rhythm of waves crashing against the piers.
The Athosians sang. Most of the peoples they met and managed to establish non-hostile relations with sang. The marines sang, albeit without artistry when in a group and certainly not with any lyrics Rodney cared to hear.
Radek sometimes sang to himself in Czech when he was in an exceptionally good mood or very drunk. Kusanagi had been known to shock innocent bystanders when joining in the marines' drinking songs.
John Sheppard held an acoustic guitar in his possession. Rodney had never heard him play, but unless it was the man's version of the none-existent piano in Rodney's quarters, it was a fair assumption that he did.
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2006 (andante)
At first, Rodney couldn't have said what woke him. His first guess would have been a night nurse, but Dr. Biro had her night shift better trained than that. When he blinked his eyes open, there was no sign of one.
The heart monitor next to Sheppard's bed beeped steadily. In the chairs they had put around Sheppard's bed, Ronon and Teyla were still asleep. It struck Rodney as odd – his warrior team mates were usually such light sleepers. There was no way anyone else had been here.
Sheppard was awake.
Carson and Biro had insisted on keeping the astoundingly healthy Colonel overnight. After their previous encounters with the Wraith enzyme, Sheppard hadn't even protested the drug cocktail Carson had put into the I.V. in spite of his findings. Rodney could hardly blame him. He certainly wouldn't have wished his own detox paranoia on – well, maybe some of his enemies, but certainly not on someone he counted as a friend. A close friend a Wraith had fed on and then brought back to life.
Carson had obviously done a subpar job mixing the drugs. Sheppard was supposed to be out for at least two more hours. From the atypical expression on his face, though, they hadn't failed entirely.
Soft was the word that flittered through his mind before it clashed too hard with his image of the Colonel and he amended it to eerily content. The man's lips were moving, but there were no real words distinguishable.
Rodney opened his mouth to speak. Do you need anything? he wanted to ask, but Teyla and Ronon were still asleep, and Sheppard hadn't acknowledged yet that Rodney was awake. Instead of interrupting whatever Sheppard was whispering, he ignored the crick in his neck and strained his ears until he could hear it over the heart monitor's beeping.
Singing.
Sheppard was softly singing to himself.
Throughout each day, there was a lot of music-related information that wound its way through Rodney's synapses.
Most of the time, it was some inane tune or other he couldn't - really couldn't – care less about. Those got filtered out along with everything else his vastly superior intellect didn't find worth processing. Impressive as it was, his brain still only had so much capacity, and that capacity had better be applied to relevant or at least interesting matters. Much like random people's names, the sounds would register, nothing more. Only in rare cases would they be retained as knowledge.
Sheppard singing was a mystery. It was not the most important mystery to be uncovered about the man, Rodney didn't think, but nonetheless a mystery about a person that had become both relevant and of high level of interest to him. So while the incident didn't repeat itself the next time Sheppard landed himself in the infirmary, it sometimes surfaced in Rodney's mind.
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2007-2008 (allegro)
It took Teyla getting pregnant for Sheppard to reach for his guitar during team nights. "I like the recordings Rodney has given me very much," she said, inclining her head at Rodney but staring at Sheppard with scary pregnant woman eyes. "As beautiful as they are, I miss forming a connection with real people. My baby requires them."
Needless to say, Sheppard caved. Singing, though, remained off-limits, causing Rodney to wonder if he was incapable of carrying a tune. His unfortunate donkey laughter certainly suggested it.
The guitar became a familiar accompaniment. The Colonel mostly played Cash, which they had all heard often enough to allow Ronon to lend his voice to some refrains. Once Rodney worked up the nerve to ask, Sheppard didn't do a half-bad job at fulfilling requests of superior taste. Teyla taught him a few melodies in spite of the sadness that never left her face when she heard them.
Weeks and weeks passed. Their conflict with the Asurans reached round four, Katie broke up with him, and the Athosians were still missing. Rodney had more important things on his mind than Sheppard's relationship to music. He thought no further of it until Ronon and Sheppard returned from Sheppard's father's funeral and the team camped out in Teyla's quarters. Rodney woke to find the man absentmindedly plucking away, filling the room with a soothing melody Rodney instantly recognized.
Piacevole, his brain supplied, although he'd never heard the term in relation to guitar solos before. He took the mood as a sign that Sheppard thankfully had drawn some peace from his team's presence.
The next piece of the puzzle came to Rodney six months after Torren was born. Teyla and Kanaan had gone to New New Athos on a date and John was pacing the room with Torren cradled against his chest.
Humming.
"I know every lullaby in the English language," Rodney had told Teyla, "I went through a phase when Jeannie was born." He'd opened himself up to ridicule by singing songs he hadn't sung since his sister had been very small, and carefully failed to mention he might have drunkenly brushed up on his skills the night before he'd shipped out to Siberia.
John was humming an unfamiliar lullaby. An Air Force Major might have picked up some local ditty in Afghanistan or Somalia or wherever else he had been, but the melody didn't sound oriental to Rodney's ears.
"That's not Cash!" he blurted out before he could stop himself. John shot a curious glance in his direction.
"No, no it's not," he agreed.
The one time Ronon had let slip a strange tune that lost its lyrical value in translation, he'd had the courtesy to follow up with some long-dead songwriter's name. John, on the other hand, blantantly ignored the unspoken question and took up the melody again.
Decent pitch, Rodney couldn't help but notice. His voice was not all that practiced but… nice? Who would have thought.
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The thing was, Rodney knew music. There was a possibility that this was a sheer coincidence, but Rodney knew music, had once known it as he now knew physics. His thirty years dormant perfect technical skill still entailed the ability to recognize a composer's signature in a piece, especially when it was as easily spotted as the tell-tale three sevenths jumps followed by a barely-there syncope that John kept repeating.
He had no idea what it meant, had no way of knowing if it even had any significance at all. Except – this was John, so everything that seemed insignificant could turn out worth knowing. Rodney just didn't know exactly what he knew, yet.
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2011 (largo)
The day Rodney finally acquired a corner piece of the puzzle, Ronon brought the whole breakfast table up short by putting aside his second almost-scone. He pointed first at Torren and then out the window and said, "It's the boy's third summer."
"He's getting big, isn't he," John said with all the pride of a favorite uncle, and Rodney hastened to nod his agreement. He was pretty sure the little guy's birthday had been in January, however, so Rodney swiped Ronon's scone and became far too occupied with getting away with it to pay attention to his team mates' asinine words.
Then came lunch.
"It's your third summer," Ronon told Torren when he picked him up and lifted him into his seat. Just to be sure, Rodney did a quick calculation, but he was perfectly capable of remembering the date he'd delivered an actual baby. He almost lost a hand trying to steal Ronon's meat roll, making it hard to think of anything but his bruises.
Ronon was like a broken record. At dinner that evening, he looked Kanaan straight in the eye and repeated, "It's his third –"
"Ronon," Teyla interrupted in that tone she used that always made the natives ignore the rudeness of interruption, "is there something you feel we should be doing for my son? Since it is his third summer, as you say."
And so it was that three years and 148 days after Rodney had held a screaming, blood-covered infant that the team found itself sitting in a circle in Ronon's room with Kanaan next to Teyla and Amelia between Ronon and John. Only Jennifer was absent, held up in the infirmary by a very miserable Major Teldy.
Later, much later, Rodney would wonder if this had been a sign. He would dismiss the notion almost as quickly as it had come, because it wasn't as if their jobs couldn't have pulled any of them from a family evening.
They had performed private rituals several times in the previous years, especially while Atlantis was stranded on Earth. But it had always been Teyla who'd calmly explained some Athosian ritual to them. Never Ronon.
"Today begins Torren Emmagen's third summer," Ronon began. "On Sateda, a kid that age had developed immunity against our most dangerous childhood diseases. It was therefore –" his voice trembled – "expected to live." Rodney had to look away. The words barring the Wraith hung heavy between them. For a moment, a halting shuffle was the only sound in the room. When Rodney looked up again, Torren had crawled onto Ronon's knees.
"To welcome the child," Ronon soldiered on, "its circle of significant adults would gather like this." He let go of Torren and made a sweeping gesture at his guests. Amelia caught his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Ronon held on tightly and forced out, "They would each sing a song that, during their own childhood, had been significant to them and their siblings."
"That doesn't seem very warrior-like to me," Rodney hazarded when nobody else spoke. He held his breath and barely dared to look at Teyla, but apparently he'd managed to sound gentle enough that Ronon took no offense.
The man shrugged. "It's for the kids."
Without further notice, he lifted Torren up and put him in his mother's lap in a clear plea for her to begin. Teyla being Teyla, she barely even blinked, simply inclined her head at him, took a deep breath and filled the room with her voice.
It was a song Rodney hadn't heard since the Athosians first left Atlantis. Back then, it had made him think of the first ice-free rain in the Canadian spring. Even with new knowledge of Athosian language and the frequency of the word for sunrise, it still did.
"Charin used to sing that for the kids, right?" John asked when the last note had faded. Teyla and Kanaan beamed, clearly pleased that he remembered. Torren, far too somber for his young age from the reverent atmosphere in the room, touched his forehead to his mother's in a decidedly non-Satedan thank you.
"Since we're here for you, you decide who should go next," Ronon told him. The little boy hesitated, looking from one adult to another. Then, in a move Rodney could have predicted if anyone had asked him, he crossed the small circle and climbed right back onto Ronon.
Not quite as good at diplomacy and reading people as his mother, yet.
It took effort to enunciate in a manner that circumvented the Stargate's instant translations, but Teyla had managed just fine and Ronon was determined. Soon, a deep baritone low d marked the start of a song in a language none of them could understand.
Judging by the melody, Rodney guessed it told some blood filled fairytale, but Satedan culture apparently had softer sides than he would have believed. The refrain was catchy enough that by the third time the whole circle was attempting to sing along.
When Torren had touched his head to Ronon's and plopped into Rodney's lap, Rodney pretended to think for a while, but really, he had known what song it would have to be since Ronon had said "siblings."
Singing in front of family was not that big a deal anymore. The Athosians seemed to sing almost constantly, and when they'd been on Earth, they'd all wanted to help Teyla stay connected to her people. Even before that, all of them had in one way or another been caught singing or at least humming to Torren. This wasn't all that different. "A girl named Jeannie," he announced and then ploughed through all the fourteen verses he'd made up when he'd been seven and Jeannie three and he'd needed something to keep her quiet so they could both survive the chicken pox.
The rhymes were silly and the text a grammatical embarrassment. But Rodney had always been proud of the melody, even if he'd never been able to write anything like it again. He blamed the chicken pox for both.
When he finally rounded up with "Aaand a fine little brat-girl she iiiis!" everyone was laughing, and Rodney felt an odd sense of vindication at the sight of John wiping tears out of his eyes.
Take that, Mother.
Kanaan took over with a song Rodney was sure he'd once heard as a camp fire duet between Jinto and Wex. Amelia cut Rodney a glance and joked, "There is no way I can compare to your masterpiece," but her rendition of Music in your Soup turned out lovely nonetheless. "My kindergarten teacher's favorite," she explained when she was finished.
"Sing, Uncle John!" Torren commanded. John's smile didn't cover the way his fingers twitched out of nerves or a futile wish for his guitar. He started out softly, and his light tenor was still unpracticed but it was the song that made Rodney's head snap up.
He'd only ever heard this song from the vibrations of age old guitar strings. Amelia, too, clearly didn't recognize the lyrics. It couldn't be something a young John Sheppard had made up – words like moon and little stars were clearly penned for a child but the traces of country music and the deliberate leggiero were the tools of a grown-up.
John was quiet for a long while after he and Torren had touched foreheads. Rodney was about to ask Ronon if they were done when he cleared his throat unexpectedly and confessed, "My grandfather used to write songs for my grandma. This one he wrote for us."
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The anthropologists had mostly had the sense to leave Ronon alone during the years he'd spent as a citizen of Atlantis. Rodney didn't quite comprehend how a few children's songs suddenly prompted the man to seek them out on his own, but he figured that this way they'd actually be spending their time on something worthwhile.
One of the extended team was always present, not really participating but giving support. When Teyla not-so-subtly pointed out that Rodney's turn had come, he went without protest.
John, too, was different in the aftermath. It didn't take much to figure out that he had to feel really safe amid his audience to let loose, but Malcolm Sheppard's music became a regular part of team nights.
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2012 (adagio)
Whenever they found themselves on Earth, Rodney marveled at how much things had changed since Atlantis' San Francisco days. Driving south after a Canadian Thanksgiving and stopping to spend the night at David Sheppard's Manhattan apartment had become a routine.
He still had to blink twice when he entered the living room and his eyes fell upon a guitar identical to John's. It was an item he should have noticed the previous times they'd stayed here. Then again, David Sheppard was John's brother, so it wasn't that far a leap to believe he'd kept the instrument hidden in his bedroom.
Maybe it was the late hour. Maybe it was the fact that it was on display in the first place. Maybe it was simply because they had become so used to this. After a few glasses of the most expensive wine Rodney'd had since – well, since his last visit here – the guitar made its way from Teyla's to Kanaan's into John's hands. For a few minutes, they all watched him fiddle with the tuners.
The melody that followed was instantly recognizable from the flat fifth that always made Rodney wonder about Malcolm Sheppard's stance toward jazz.
David flinched.
John's grip around the neck tensed, but he continued playing. Complicated expressions Rodney couldn't even begin to decipher flickered over David's face, his incredulous stare positively unnerving. Teyla shot Rodney a concerned look. Rodney lifted a shoulder, feeling helpless and wishing Ronon were there.
John hit the first b of the second verse. Twelve beats later, it was only because he had known John for years that Rodney heard him get to the refrain and saw the tension bleed out of David Sheppard all at once.
The latter's surprise paled against John's when his brother's strong, clear tenor filled the room.
Teyla closed her eyes, relieved.
When the song came to an end, John flawlessly segued into the one with the alternating seconds and fourths. He hesitated then, but David started singing the first line of Ode to a maid's rhubarb pies. John suppressed a wicked grin and hurried to catch up with him.
With the ball back in a confident John's court, he didn't so much as glance at Torren, but the angle of his shoulders was an invitation. It only took half the opening bar for the little boy to jump from his mother's lap and climb onto the sofa. When he joined the Sheppard brothers on the top of his voice, David faltered, wide-eyed.
"And we'll walk, our feet will take us," Kanaan's light tenor picked up the verse. Rodney dodged Teyla's elbow and good-naturedly harmonized "Nowhere, everywhere" for the bridge. By then, David had recovered from the shock and looked at Teyla in a hesitant challenge.
It was as if the tension that had been underneath John's every slouch for as long as Rodney'd known him had never been there.
They made their way through every Malcolm Sheppard song John had ever taught the team and learned the lines to those he hadn't. It was well past midnight by the time they were finished. Torren had fallen asleep twice and was struggling to keep his eyes open.
Into the quiet that followed the last note David said, "There's another one." Still high from notions of family and safe, John cocked his head at him and frowned. David held out his hand. "The last one," he insisted. His hand remained outstretched until John reluctantly handed the guitar over to him.
The elder Sheppard's posture was less practiced than John's. He looked down at the guitar and fine-tuned the fourth string as if afraid to go on now that he'd broached the subject.
"…And?" Rodney demanded when the silence lasted too long. He ignored Teyla's sharp look because as she well knew, sometimes one had to push a Sheppard to get to know anything.
"He wrote it for your eighteenth birthday," David explained in a rough voice, looking up at John with a solemn expression. "He wanted us to play it at the reception Dad gave, but when the time came he was already too sick."
John's face went white.
"If you don't want to do this now, we can wait," David hedged, possibly now hoping for a time they'd have more privacy. It was too late, though. The team would not move an inch unless John told them to make themselves scarce.
"Now's good," John said in the same tone of voice he'd once used to invite Ladon Radim into a Puddlejumper.
"Okay," David croaked. His fingers were stiff as he plucked a few strings.
Rodney caught the signature sevenths-and-syncope motive immediately. It was more than a little disconcerting to hear cadences that were firmly associated with John played by someone else.
David opened his mouth to sing, then stopped and said, "I think that you should close your eyes and imagine you'd heard this back then."
When John reluctantly complied, no one commented on the way he leaned into Rodney's shoulder and let Teyla hold his hand.
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For sixty years of his life, Malcolm Sheppard had only ever sung in private. Only after partially withdrawing from the family business, after conceding majority control - Only after attaining the safety net label of "eccentric old man" had he begun to share some of his works whenever Sheppard Industries threw large-scale dinners.
Patrick Sheppard had seen his father's music as a weakness. In reality, the man had shown him the secret weapon that might have turned the tide in the war he wedged against his younger son.
In the small stationery shop nearest Cheyenne Mountain, Rodney bought a notebook full of blank staves. When he penciled in the first high C of "A girl named Jeannie", it felt a bit like coming home.
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2013 (andantino)
Rodney was aware that John was no longer beside him. A clumsy pat to his left confirmed that the sheets were no longer warm. However, the panic he'd been fully expecting during the few times he'd let himself contemplate this scenario failed to set in. The ever-present sound of waves drifted through the window. Every so often, he could hear sounds coming from the kitchen.
John was making breakfast. It had to be John. After all, who else would be singing in Rodney's kitchen if not John? A bit tentatively, yes, barely loud enough to let Rodney hear actual words, but singing.
Rodney's first impulse was to get up and score some of the coffee he could smell, but he found he didn't want to interrupt his… lover? friend? John. Not just yet. Not when the tone of voice was as genuinely happy as yesterday right after Rodney had said yes. Not when John sounded as if he had no care left in the world.
After a few lines, Rodney recognized the first love song Malcolm Sheppard had ever written for John's grandmother. In a later version, there were rare piano parts, not especially complicated but beautiful enough that Rodney almost wanted to play them sometime.
The way John was singing it, unaccompanied and uninhibited, he didn't need them.
Rodney had feared, drifting into sleep yesterday, that John wouldn't let himself believe that Rodney had meant every single word. Rodney might be good at finding words, but the words he used were not unfailingly the right ones, and he had needed to cover a near decade of emotional blindness and misunderstandings.
It had taken every bit of his courage to get them here.
By the sunlight peaking through the window, it was about eight in the morning. Rodney wouldn't have been surprised if one of them had been woken up by the frantic summons of the radio at some point during the night since his life didn't get this perfect. Yet he'd slept through the night and a good portion of the morning, and no one had called him and he'd spent the night with John, and John was making breakfast and Atlantis still stands.
His whole body felt so good. Boneless like it hadn't been in… maybe never. Since there was nobody to make him, there was no need to give up his spot just yet.
Secure in the knowledge that the outcome of yesterday was better than he could ever have imagined, Rodney let the evidence of John's happiness drift toward him and smiled as he waited for John to wake him.
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