Rodney had never actually been in love before.
His mom says that he was a late bloomer. But, since he didn't go on a date until he was twenty-three, Rodney is pretty sure that it's moved a bit beyond that.
And even then, he thinks the girl said yes to dinner and a movie less because she liked him and more because she liked that he was running his own lab at MIT with a slew of undergrads scurrying around him, doing his bidding.
He didn't care that much, though. Rodney is a pragmatist, and geeky brilliant boys with skinny arms and unfortunate hair don't start to attract girls until they're in their mid-thirties.
There were a few girls between then and now. Rodney isn't a virgin. Exactly. He didn't often get to sleep with each girl more than once or twice, which has left him more than a little paranoid about his sexual savoir-faire.
Things are better, now. He's filled out in the right places, and, to his surprise, there are women who find sarcasm to be almost intoxicating.
But still, he's no good at the mating dance. Other people have to point out to him that he's being hit on. His own skills in that area are nothing to write home about, either. He has several horrid memories of telling Carter that her equations were sophomoric.
In retrospect, he realizes that girls don't like to be told that they're stupid. But this is how he relates to people: confrontationally. If he doesn't respect you, he ignores you. He'll only argue if you're a worthy adversary.
Men usually understand this. Zelenka, Sheppard—oddly, sometimes, Dr. Weir. Barring her, however, women react less well. Dr. Zhang, his lab's third in command, has burst into tears several times because he told her that her bacterial cultures had all the finesse of a retarded monkey's.
Carter once told him that she thought he probably had a mild case of Asperger's. Rodney has to reach i hard /i to understand that people find him abrasive, so he thinks she might be right.
Most people are not personally significant to him. It's not that he won't protect them, that he won't work hard to keep them safe. It's just that they're not entirely real to him.
Carter is entirely real to him.
And, hidden in the storage shack of this tiny village they've come to inspect for signs of a ZPM, that's the last thing Rodney thinks before the Wraith beam sweeps over him and he dematerializes.
He wakes up, if you can call it that, cocooned in a slimy shell. Faintly, he can hear a man screaming as one of the Wraith feeds on him.
Rodney is curiously unafraid. He has wondered before if the Wraith don't inject their prey with something to make them docile while in storage. Now he is almost sure of it, because this is, objectively, pretty fucking terrifying, being bundled up like a fly in the spider's web, cut off from everyone he's ever known, his only proof that he's not the only man left alive the screaming in the distance.
He knows he should try to escape. He can still move his left hand, a little, and he keeps a utility knife in his boot. It's hard to focus his thoughts, though. Instead of reaching for the knife, he thinks of how strange it is that Rodney McKay has become a man who carries a knife with him at all times.
Atlantis has changed him. Made him both harder and softer. He likes himself more, now. He thinks his mother and sister and Sam Carter would like him more now, too.
With tremendous effort, he is able to concentrate long enough to contort himself enough to pull out the knife. He falters then, though. He can't remember exactly what it is that he's supposed to be doing. The knife dangles in his slack fingers, and almost slides free.
Rodney, a voice whispers.
He half-starts out of his doze.
Shhh, the voice continues. Quiet. You have to stay awake, Rodney.
"M-mom?" He says, his voice cracking.
No, it's Carter, the voice says. It sounds exasperated. Why would you think your mom was here?
Rodney gives this some thought.
"Well, it's not like it makes any sense that you're here."
Rodney. Pay attention.
The voice, which Rodney realizes he isn't hearing with his ears, exactly, is commanding, and he obeys. He almost feels like laughing, not that anything's funny.
Cut through the threads here, Carter's not-voice says.
He does as he's told, and the webbing gives way, easily.
"You're not real," he says. "You're not here."
He pushes the webbing aside.
"You're on Earth. You're a figment of my imagination. You're perfect. I think I'm in love with you."
He pauses. He hadn't meant to say those last two things.
When Carter's voice comes through into his thoughts again, there's a sense of hesitation. Many things don't make sense right now, but this troubles Rodney.
Let's go, the voice says. Down this corridor, and to the left. You'll find six escape pods.
"What about the others?"
Too late.
Rodney stumbles as he walks, but stays upright.
Turn left here, the voice says.
"I didn't mean that," Rodney says. "About the thing. I didn't mean it."
Straight ahead, Carter replies. See them?
He changes his mind. He was going to lie about the perfect, and the being in love. Rodney's pretty good at that kind of lie, because he has to tell them a lot. (Not about being in love, but about things like a missing sandwich, or about who threw out someone's carefully annotated report.)
But he finds he doesn't want to. Because—
"I'm in love with you," he repeats, insistently. A little spitefully, even. He feels mildly drunk. "You're so pretty and smart. I want to have babies with you."
Rodney, the voice says, after a long pause. This really isn't the time.
"I'm not moving until you acknowledge what I just said," Rodney states. "I'm laying my heart on the line, Carter. The least you could do is let me know you heard me."
What happened to me not really being here?
"I'm in love with you. Did you hear me?"
Yes. I heard you.
"And?"
What do you mean, and?
"This is the part where you say that you're very flattered, but—"
But--
"But you don't feel the same way, and you're a lesbian."
If I feel the same way, will you get in the pod, Rodney?
He thinks it over.
"Yes," he says, finally. "If we can come to an agreement about the babies."
Fine, she says, exasperated. We'll have babies.
Rodney feels a warm glow of success. He is going to give Samantha Carter babies. Five or six of them. They're going to be fat and incredibly precocious, and possibly named after quarks.
"Strange McKay," Rodney muses.
Rodney!
"All right," he says. "I'm coming."
A few hours later, the escape pod has been fished out of Atlantis' waters, and Rodney has been poked and prodded and examined inside (ouch) and out, and they've let him out of isolation, and he's allowed to speak again.
He notices that people seem unwilling to look him in the eye. He tries to tell Sheppard about Sam Carter's disembodied voice, but the major kind of twitches and walks away from him, and he finds himself in Dr. Weir's office.
"People won't look at me," he says, hesitantly.
She's silent for a long time before she responds. This is why he came to her. Elizabeth is a diplomat, but that doesn't mean she'll bullshit you.
"The voice in your head was Beckett," she finally says. "The Ancient device he discovered last month—it finally came in useful."
"Beckett," he says. "And Carter—"
"Carter, because you seem to react to her."
He laughs.
"And people heard me reacting, I take it."
"People heard," she says. "You were drugged."
"But not—not lying," he says, with difficulty.
"No," she says.
That's the end of the conversation. He respects Elizabeth tremendously, and will later appreciate that she didn't coddle him, but at this exact moment, he would have preferred Teyla, who would have rubbed his back and said something false and soothing.
"Rodney," she says, as he starts for the door, "you know—"
It's unlike her to hesitate, so he turns. He feels defeated in his bones. Haha, Rodney McKay, such a nerd, of course he would be in love with a woman who's not just not interested, but eleventy billion lightyears away and not interested. And of course everyone on Atlantis has to know about it. Great.
"Lots of us here know what it's like," she finishes, a touch awkwardly. "It's difficult. Feeling that way for someone who's far away."
"Far away and not interested," Rodney says. He has always done this. Say it first, before they can.
"It's the same feeling," Elizabeth says. "Whether it's returned or not, doesn't matter. It's the same feeling. And it's brave."
Rodney doesn't want to be there anymore, so he walks away, and finds a balcony to stand on. He stares out over the ocean, in the direction of the invisible mainland.
"Brave," he says to himself, and laughs.
It doesn't feel brave. It only feels inevitable.
Rodney goes back to his lab and works for a long time, until everyone else has fallen asleep.
Strange McKay, he writes on a scrap of paper. And, feeling silly, he puts the piece of paper in his pocket.
He carries it until it falls apart.
fin