"Dammit! How the hell am I supposed to concentrate with all this…" Rodney flapped both hands around his head, his fingers spread wide as if shaking a giant ball of his own frustration. "All this… cacophony going on! Graargh!" He beat at the air with clenched fists, then let his arms fall and took a desperate slurp of tepid, bitter, coffee-substitute. He'd kill whoever it was that'd finished the last morsels of his private coffee supply - rip them apart with his bare hands.

A few wisps of hair and two curved semi-circles breached the barrier of Zelenka's computer monitor. "Rodney…" The Czech scientist's tentative sotto voce barely registered and his glasses didn't rise above the horizon - because Radek had grown up in Communist Prague and knew when he was in dangerous territory. "Rodney, it is just you and me here. And I had fallen asleep."

"Huh, well, sorry if I woke you," snapped Rodney. Not, he added mentally, because if he was awake and going crazy, then Radek could damn well join him.

There was a small, apologetic sound, which Rodney actually didn't hear that often, because Zelenka gave as good as he got most of the time. "You said cacophony?" Radek whispered, into the silence.

"Oh, well, it's not out there, is it?" Rodney rapped on his own head with his knuckles, which hurt, but he didn't care. "It's in here! Zipping around my neurons in a continuous loop, whiting out my thoughts like some kind of McKay-targeted jamming signal!" He waved an accusing finger at the sky. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's a Wraith attack, or Genii - designed to take me out. Me - their greatest arch nemesis, constantly working to bring them down. Or trying to work!"

"Oh. But there are no ships in orbit, I am sure. Should I call Dr Beckett?"

"No." Rodney pushed away his keyboard and collapsed, his forehead resting on his crossed arms. "Don't bother, Radek, it's not an attack." His weary sigh steamed up the surface of his workbench and then faded away. "It's that stupid poem."

"A poem?"

Rodney sat up and scrubbed his hands through his hair. "I went to that poetry reading last night. Katie Brown asked me to go with her."

"Katie Brown? I thought that was over."

Rodney scratched his chin. "Yes, so did I." It had been over - hadn't it? They'd been 'taking a break' and then there'd been a couple of tearful scenes and he'd interpreted that as It being over. "But she asked me and I said yes."

"To a poetry reading? That does not sound like you, Rodney."

"No, well, it wasn't. She took me by surprise, when I was in the Mess Hall eating jello and thinking about how to fix that issue with the power flow so that it reaches the end of the West pier without fading. I'd just come up with a brilliant solution - as usual - and then I said, 'Yes! Of course!' before I'd even heard what she said."

"You solved it? How?"

Rodney folded his arms and frowned at the drapes over the glass which hid the lab from prying eyes. "Sadly, I've forgotten. Because there was Katie, smiling and looking all pleased and talking about Keats and Shelley and that lot, and I realised she was actually expecting me to sit and listen to a whole load of romantic claptrap for hours on end - it drove my cunningly ingenious scheme completely out of my head."

"I can imagine. So, you went?"

"Yes, against my better judgement."

"And how was it?"

"It was tedious beyond belief, of course - what did you expect?"

"It would not have been tedious if anyone had read the work of the great Czech poets - Miroslav Holub, for example. A fine poet and scientist - you would admire his work."

"Well, they didn't. In fact a staggering number of random soft-scientists (whose appraisals will reflect their lack of discrimination) and even some suitably shame-faced Marines had chosen the exact same damn poems to read out. The only real variety was in the extreme turgidity or wild over-acting of their performances. There were at least six renditions of Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? and If all of those Kipling-fans could actually keep their heads while under Wraith attack I'd be a bit more forgiving of the ten times I had to sit through it!"

"Ah, so it is Shakespeare and Kipling who stop you from concentrating."

Rodney shook his head. "Byron," he said, with all the ground-down depression the word deserved.

"Ah. I see."

"He walks in beauty, like the night…"

"You mean she. She walks."

"Oh. Did I say he? Well, you get the gist, anyway."

"It has become, as you might say - an ear worm?"

Rodney grimaced. "I wouldn't say! Ear worm!" He shuddered. "That just comes too close to some of the stuff we've actually seen. Imagine a brainsucking Byron-worm, crawling in through your ear and taking over so that you turn into some kind of… zombie poet."

"I would prefer not to imagine." Radek pushed back his chair and stood up. "And I would prefer to sleep in my own bed, rather than on my keyboard." He rubbed the side of his face, which was covered in key-shaped depressions. "And you should get some sleep too, Rodney - perhaps your Byron-worm will have crawled away when morning comes."

"I'll be lucky if I can sleep."

Zelenka said 'dobrou noc' and left.

Rodney stared at his screen of scrolling Ancient characters.

He walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies.

"She. She walks in beauty. For God's sake."

He massaged his aching scalp. He should follow Radek to bed. Well, not follow, because it wasn't as if they shared a bed, or the whole science department slept together in one giant puppy-pile or anything.

And all that's best of dark and bright, meet in his aspect and his eyes.

He wouldn't be surprised if some of the Marines did, despite their closely-guarded sexual orientation of which no one must ever speak. A heap of black-clad limbs sprang to mind, which was ridiculous, because you could be sure that most Marines slept in the buff. The image changed to tangled naked limbs. No. No, that was all wrong, because then they wouldn't be ready at a moment's notice to defend the city. The nakedness became clothed once more.

He walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies.

Those two first lines, around and around, again and again, twining their way like strangling creepers in his thoughts - there was no way he was going to be able to sleep.

"Fresh air," said Rodney. "In default of fresh coffee, the dubious pleasures of chilling myself to the bone it will have to be."

He stomped out of the lab, his feet marching to the hypnotic beat of iambic tetrameter, and made his caffeine-deprived, snarling way to the transporter.

oOo

The West Pier - a more exclusive venue than the East Pier, where great crowds of burly Marines kicked balls around or engaged in stupidly competitive feats of athletic prowess. Not that they'd be doing that at this time of night. Okay, so Ronon might be and maybe Sheppard. But anyway, the East Pier, for some reason, was the popular venue for the cool kids. Rodney, never having been a cool kid, preferred the West. The very far end of the West pier where he could sit on the cold metallic surface, or stand if he didn't want a numb ass, and know that he wouldn't be disturbed. Even when the sun poked its over-cheery rays above the horizon, (if he stayed out here that long), his half of the starry skies would be undisturbed for quite some time.

… cloudless climes and starry skies…

God, not again.

Screaming might be an option.

Rodney stood at the edge of the pier (a safe distance from the edge) and looked out over the black water. It was a calm night; calm and still and mild. And yes, okay, cloudless. It was cloudless and he could see all the stars, so yes, score another one for Byron.

He screamed.

Then he sat down.

He rested his arms on his bent knees and his head flopped forward, hiding the beauty of the night from view.

Why had he gone with Katie? He could've just explained that he was saying 'yes' to his own ingenuity and not 'yes' to her invitation. It was over between them anyway. He'd got the message - and it'd been her damn message, sent with tears and whimpering and sharp, angry sniffs, which told him better than words that he'd fallen short of her expectations in just about every way. So why had she asked him on another date? If a poetry reading could be described as a date.

Maybe it was a punishment date.

He huffed at his bent-up knees. His butt, as predicted, was going numb.

Things just didn't seem to work out with women. They never did. Every time he tried to do the normal thing - get himself a girlfriend, have a proper relationship - it all just went to hell. And he knew it was probably his fault - he forgot them, or pestered them, tried to make love and got it wrong or didn't try to make love soon enough and that was wrong too. And he was so used to being right about everything else, that being wrong was just… wrong.

Maybe he just hadn't met the right woman. He needed someone who didn't make him feel that sense of wrongness. Or someone who was as wrong relationship-wise as him, so then they'd match. Did such a woman exist? Someone who understood the complex tangle of brilliance, arrogance and crippling hang-ups that was Meredith Rodney McKay? Someone who made him feel right and safe to be himself and just… loved?

He huffed again. His back was stiffening up from his hunched position. He straightened up and eased it out.

The cloudless climes stretched far above him, pierced with points of sharp, bright starlight, banded across with the huge sweeping mass of the galactic plane; billions upon billions of stars all overlapping to create a snow white path, rippled with diffusing clouds of interstellar gas and dust.

Rodney knew the facts behind what he saw, probably better than anyone. He could pick out planets he had been to, could point the direction the Daedalus flew to get to the Milky Way and Earth, which had once been his home but probably wasn't anymore. But facts were facts and beauty was beauty and, Rodney admitted grudgingly, Byron had known what he was talking about in that respect.

It was beautiful - the immensity of the universe, laid out for him to see. Arching above and to either side and behind, only obscured by the towers of the floating city, and even that was dwarfed to a tiny speck of insignificant flotsam when compared with the vast, unknowable secrets of creation.

And yet, here he sat, an even more insignificant mote on the shining surface of this planet's ocean, but as immovable a fact as the stars themselves, as fixed a point in time as any other object in the universe. Would Katie understand what he was feeling? Maybe. She'd seen the night sky from Atlantis too. Nobody who'd seen that view could fail to feel the immense weight of the universe and take some thought to their own place in creation.

But she wasn't the One. Perhaps there wasn't a One for him. Not in all those billions of solar systems, in this galaxy or any other.

He wiped his eyes, because the cold air had made them stream and he'd been looking so very hard.

Then there was a dry scuff of leather against metal. Rodney's heart rate launched itself up into the stratosphere, his legs and arms totally failed to coordinate themselves into an effective escape and he froze, rigid and terrified.

"Watcha doin' Rodney?"

Sheppard. It was Sheppard, blotting out a good section of the night sky, looming above him.

"Having a heart attack." He punched his friend in the leg, hard. "Don't do that!"

"What? And ow."

"That black-ops sneaking up! You totally freaked me out, Sheppard! And I'm not joking - I could really have had a heart attack!"

"You seem okay. A little antsy, maybe."

"Antsy? I'm out here on my own, in the middle of the night, minding my own business and it doesn't occur to you that sneaking up isn't such a good idea?"

"Sorry."

"If it'd been the other way around, what would you have done? You'd have had me pinned to the deck, a knife at my throat, wouldn't you?"

"I might've shot you."

"Well, that's a comfort, thank you." Rodney curled his arms around his knees and turned his face away from his friend and toward the slow lap of the oily black water.

"So, whatcha doin'?"

Rodney sighed. "I had too much in my head to sleep. So I came out here."

"Oh. Okay."

"What are you doing out here, anyway? Did you follow me? Did you find out that I was out here and follow me?"

"No!"

That was a yes. "Huh. It's like being a pet with a chip."

"My own pet Rodney."

Rodney growled.

John shuffled from one foot to another. Ha. He had nothing to slouch against out here. Although he was doing a pretty good job of looking loose-limbed and casual, nonetheless - his arms folded, his weight unevenly distributed so that his outline was a series of interlocking curves.

"You could sit down."

"Nah. I'd get a numb behind." He shifted his weight onto the other leg. "So, you went to that thing with Katie Brown? How'd that go?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"Oh. That well?"

Rodney shuffled around to face his friend. "I don't know, Sheppard. I don't know what the hell's going on between me and her. I mean, I guess nothing now, because, well, you know me - I don't exactly hide my feelings particularly well - contempt, derision and so on."

"I thought you liked her."

"Oh, not for Katie. No, I don't have contempt for her - she's a perfectly nice person, I suppose. Not that I'm a judge of what's considered 'nice'." He gave that the air-quotes it deserved. "Not being a nice person myself. Sorry?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Oh, I thought you… Oh, well, never mind. No. It was the sick-making sappy sentiment of the poetry-reading that incurred my contempt, derision and other assorted negativity. And the eye-rolling boredom, obviously."

"So, she wasn't impressed that you weren't impressed?"

"No." He'd thought there were going to be more tears, but she'd managed a reasonably dry, if tremulous, 'Goodnight, Rodney,' after the poetry fiasco. "I think it really is over now, though. I think."

"You could try saying, 'It's over.' Just to make sure."

"Yes." Rodney rubbed his chin and gazed thoughtfully at the line where the stars met the ocean. "Yes, maybe that would do it. That wouldn't be open to any interpretation other than finality, would it?"

John shrugged. "Don't ask me. She might come back at you with, 'You don't really mean that.' Or worse, something like, 'How can you say that?'" He made a baffled whooshing sound, which expressed Rodney's feelings exactly. "There's no answer you can give that's gonna go down well."

"Well, I just said it, so that's how?"

"Yeah. And get a sock on the jaw."

"Speaks the voice of experience?"

"You know me so well."

"Yes, I do. Don't I?"

"Well, yeah. We're teammates. Buddies. All that."

His voice had a false ring to it, his smile, partly in shadow, was stiff and forced. Rodney looked down into the swell of the lapping water, close to the end of the pier.

Was he being annoying? This was a question he'd frequently asked since he'd begun making a determined assault on Katie. But he never managed to completely convince himself one way or the other. Had he annoyed John, though? His friend's words had been supportive, but that last affirmation of support hadn't rung true. But they were friends. And teammates. And more.

How much more?

The thought came out of the night and the starlight and caught him unawares and Rodney, surprised, looked up at his friend; his friend whose features had lost that stiff, guarded expression, and who was now squinting at the sky as if trying to pick out all the planets where he'd been suicidal or reckless.

The two moons, one at its zenith, the other lagging behind, lit his hair and the back of his neck with cool, white light. The more diffuse starlight shone gently on his face, and from Rodney's sitting viewpoint he could see the line of John's jaw and fully appreciate its ever-so-slightly concave sweep.

He walks in beauty, like the night…

His lips were parted - that full lower lip and the relaxed swoop of the upper - and as Rodney watched, his tongue darted out, he pulled in the lower lip between his teeth and slowly let it slide and then spring free.

...of cloudless climes and starry skies.

John shifted, licked his lips again, scratched his chin and refolded his arms, his narrowed eyes still roving over the heavens.

And all that's best of dark and bright...

The moons shone and their beams landed on just the very tip of John's ridiculously pointed ear.

...meet in his aspect and his eyes.

And Rodney loved him.

He loved him. He actually loved this man, who was more than a teammate, who was more than a friend - much more. And he knew, he felt it and it felt right, with no doubt or questioning of his commitment, or debate about how he should feel or if this really was love. It just was.

How could he have been so stupid? All this time, all these years? How could he not have known? Or had he known but just refused to admit it? He was supposed to be a genius. He was supposed to have a lightning-fast intellect that leapt from point to apparently unconnected point, concluding and extrapolating so fast that he left others, even others widely regarded as brilliant, far behind. And he was a genius - he did leave others coughing and choking in his intellectual dust. But with this - with feelings, with love… he was a total idiot, sniggering like a school-boy over large breasts and blonde hair, hiding behind the convention of what 'real men' were supposed to want, blind to his own self-deception, wallowing in his own ignorance.

The waves slapped rhythmically against the end of the pier. The infinity of the sky mocked his small concerns.

"Sit down." Rodney's voice cracked. He patted the deck beside him.

"I told you, I'll get a -"

"Numb butt, yes, I know. Sit."

"Okay."

John sat. And he didn't look quite so slouchy and casual, sitting on the floor, (or the ground, depending on how you thought about these things). His legs stuck in unlikely directions, in congruence with the springing randomness of his hair, and his arms didn't seem to know where to put themselves, curling tightly around his body and then breaking free to hold an ankle or plant themselves on the deck, taking some of his weight.

"Sitting," said John, with a silly smirk.

If Rodney reached out, just raised his arm and reached a little way, with no stress or strain, he could touch his friend. Such a little distance, such a tiny space - but he didn't know how to begin to cross it.

So… approach from an oblique angle - obtain more data.

"Do I annoy you?"

"Does the Earth go around the Sun?"

"Hm. Exactly how well thought-out is that metaphor, I wonder? Obviously it's a yes to the annoyance, but do you mean that I annoy you at a constant rate, and if so, does that amount to high-frequency, overwhelming exasperation or just a slow, steady drip-feed of mild irritation? And is that annoyance necessarily a bad thing?"

John blew out a long breath, his lips flapping. "I dunno. Why the in-depth analysis, all of a sudden? You just piss me off sometimes, that's all."

Rodney waited for more. You could do that, with Sheppard. If you watched him expectantly, words would crawl out through the cracks, even when he clearly didn't want them to.

"It's just you. Just part of you." He did a whole-body shrug, which was a thing few people would be able to achieve, especially while reclining on a hard, cold surface. "And I annoy you right back, in spades, so we're pretty much even. And, I guess it's kinda fun, mostly." He delivered a sidelong smirk, which was an 'over-to-you' signal in Sheppard-speak.

"Well, that's fair enough, I suppose." Rodney squirmed, so that his weight rested mostly on one ass cheek and the side of the corresponding thigh. He studied his friend, who shot him a less smirky sidelong glance, because nobody scrutinised John Sheppard with that much intensity, not unless they had a gun and the will to use it; nobody except Rodney. "So, I'm definitely declaring the whole Katie issue closed."

"Make sure you tell her that."

"I will. I'll make the matter unequivocal, even for someone of her over-romantic tendencies." Who was he calling over-romantic, when he was busy storing away the image of starlight reflected in his friend's eyes? "In fact, I'm declaring all such relationships with the opposite sex on permanent hiatus as of now."

"Come on, Rodney. You'll find someone in the end. Your dream blonde."

It was so false, when you were looking - looking for any glimmer of hope amongst the undeniably romantic moonlight and starlight. And Rodney was a genius and even though, yes, it had taken his intellect a shamefully long time to catch on to his actual, essential emotions, (and those of other potentially interested parties), now that his neurons were fully processing the facts, they were going to crack this equation as easy as x + 8 = 12.

"I was thinking of switching to brunets." Why was he hiding behind homophones? This was their moment - here and now. Maybe it wouldn't come again.

"Oh. Okay, well, yeah. Why not ring the changes?" John stretched his long legs out in front of him and turned his head away. "So… I guess I'd better hit the sack."

"Stay."

"You should get some sleep too."

"Not yet. And I mean it - stay."

"I'm not a dog, Rodney."

"Oh, I don't know - I think you'd train up pretty quickly with the right doggy-treats."

John's withering glance shut the starlight from his narrowed eyes. But there was still the moonlight on the wayward strands of hair and the slanting line as it crossed his cheek.

And it wasn't just the way he looked, anyway, that Rodney loved - or at least not in a shallow, surface-attractiveness way. For Rodney - now that he'd woken up to his fascination - the inner man was all there on display; the self-doubt in the line of his brows, the determination in the set of his jaw, and a thousand other tells that Rodney could read and understand like a technical manual. And in that manual, there was a whole chapter on Rodney McKay.

"I'm going in." The sprawled legs folded, as John prepared to perform an unlikely spring to his feet.

"Stay, please." Rodney crossed the space between them, the tiny distance, the gaping gulf - just a hand on his friend's arm. "John."

A bob of his Adam's apple, a flicker of his tongue across his lower lip - this was John Sheppard on unsteady, quaking ground. "Why? It's late."

"Because I want you to." He left his hand where it was and squeezed his fingers around the tight muscles. "Because I'm an idiot."

A huff of breath and a twitching smile acknowledged this.

"Because I'm such an idiot that it took torture by Byron to make me realise."

"What the hell are you going on about, McKay?"

"This. I'm going on about this."

Rodney leant forward, slowly. Because he'd come out here to be alone. But John had followed him. John always followed him, even when one of them was in total, blind denial and the other was bound by the cruelty of military regulations. And Rodney followed John back, even when the crushing self-suppression made his friend put him down, and heartlessly flirt with women he didn't even want.

They'd been following each other since John had first sat in that Chair.

The gulf between them didn't exist and it never had. It was a small, tiny, microscopically insignificant space and all Rodney had to do to bridge it was lean across and press his lips to John's.

So he did.

Thank you for reading! Please leave me a review!