Title: The Last to Know
Author: Soul
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Summary: For a genius it can sometimes take Rodney a little while to understand what's going on around him.
Rodney scowled at the screen of the laptop, viciously pounding away at the keys in an attempt to distract him from his pounding headache. Carson had assured him that aside from a nasty cut and quite a bump there was no actual, permanent damage done, though it felt much like his head was attempting to explode. It wasn't helping that in his absence Zelenka had assigned projects that were tabled for him to work on to go to Miko, who while fairly competent when it came to her own speciality wasn't a patch on Rodney when it came to, for example, recalibrating and upgrading the interfaces between the Ancient technology and the Naquada Generators they relied upon for most of their power, keeping their lone ZedPM in reserve.
"Rodney."
Rodney's scowl deepened and he ignored Zelenka.
"Rodney!" This time Zelenka's call was followed by an impatient string of Czech that Rodney recognised as phrases Zelenka normally used when he was reaching his wit's end. Rodney looked up.
"What? What is it now? Can't you work without my holding your hand and going over everything for just five minutes?"
Radek did not look in the sort of mood to let Rodney's usual harsh and acerbic words roll off him. "Now you are trying to break fingers with typing. Desist. Beckett will not want to have to keep you in infirmary again."
Sighing Rodney flexed his fingers. They were sorer than they'd been since he'd woken up in the Infirmary under Carson's watchful eyes. "Anything else you'd like to add?" he said, already turning his attention back to the laptop in front of him.
Zelenka huffed but said nothing further for a while, in fact Rodney did not realise that he was not just working quietly away in his section of the lab until a mug of fresh, steaming hot coffee was plunked down just in front of his right hand.
"If you will not leave to take care of yourself, at least drink this," Zelenka said, pulling out the Ancient equivalent of a lab stool (far more comfortable than the versions found on Earth due to the polymer the seat was formed out of) and seating himself beside Rodney. "Colonel Sheppard will not be pleased. He was on way here himself when Lorne radioed for his presence. You must be gone from the lab by the time he frees himself from whatever disaster is occurring."
Rodney snorted. "Please. I'm fine, and the Colonel has more important things to worry about than even me."
"Hmm. It seems that he is especially worried for you since you returned from M3X – 170. Even before he is always coming to get you to eat and sleep when even we cannot persuade you to leave labs," Radek said, sipping from his own mug of coffee. "He stops by even more frequently since you returned to duty."
"Come on Radek, you know Sheppard, he'd rather put himself in the path of a speeding train than see one of us get hurt, it's that stupid heroic bravery and utter lack of anything near a concept of self-preservation," Rodney replied, keeping one eye on the numbers his calculations were returning.
Radek shook his head but before he could say anything Rodney held his hand up and replied to the call from Beckett – he was late to the Infirmary for his daily check up, the condition upon which his early release from the Scottish doctor's clutches had rested.
"On my way. Later Radek," Rodney said, then disconnecting his laptop he scooped it up and hurried out of the lab, towards the waiting doctor.
Carson was clearly not pleased, even after Rodney gave one of his rare apologies he was still tetchy.
"Hey! Head wound! Would you watch how hard you prod that? I'd like to keep my brain as it is, thank you very much!" Rodney yelped, leaning away from Carson's gloved hands.
"Now, now Rodney," the doctor replied tersely in his rolling Scots accent. "You do want me to check it thoroughly, wouldn't want you to get a nasty infection now, would we?"
"Oh yes, let's give the injured man even more to worry about!"
"Well next time be sure to actually turn up to prearranged appointments – I released you on the condition you would come and that you wouldn't be working yourself as hard as you normally do! I'd half a mind to send Colonel Sheppard to chase you from the labs!"
Rodney pursed his lips. "Oh like you haven't already!"
Carson looked surprised and whatever rejoinder he had intended upon was lost. "What're you on about? I ha'nae sent Sheppard to fetch you before."
Rodney rolled his eyes, then winced at the effect on his head. "Like you haven't, he's been by to make sure I've been on my way here on time almost every day since you let me out of this place!"
Carson frowned. "If he's been doing that it's been done because he's concerned about the fact you're still not fully recovered from that nasty rockslide. You took quite a beating you know and we were all very worried when it took you three days to wake. If it wasn't for having duties he couldn't get out of I dare say the Colonel would've not left here til you'd woken and proven to be your usual fine self once more."
"Teyla and Ronon were here when I woke up, and they've not been hounding at me to get out of my lab and to my appointments, or making sure that I don't forget to go to dinner, or walk and whatever other nonsense you insist upon."
"Aye they were here, and they are worried, but…" Carson hesitated and didn't speak until Rodney had narrowed his eyes with suspicion and opened his own mouth to begin a tirade about the unfairness of setting respected team mates to hound busy geniuses into attending pointless check-ups. "If it weren't for propriety John wouldn't have left, even then he would return several times a shift and insist upon being informed of the slightest change in your condition. You were fortunate we got your lung healed up before you woke – it was hit and miss for a short while during which it's become quite plain, at least to those of us here, that perhaps it is a little more than…comradeship that kept the Colonel returning."
Rodney's mouth tightened and he pulled his shirt down over the bandages helping his healing ribs. "Don't be ridiculous. May I leave now, or have you more prodding to do?"
Beckett sighed and nodded. "Don't forget to come back tomorrow."
"I won't," Rodney snapped, and slowly walked out of the Infirmary.
He was not two hundred feet down the hallway before running into John.
"Hey, I was just coming to look for you," John greeted him with a warm smile. "I managed to get Parrish to lend me his copy of The Matrix, want to join me?" he asked waving a clear plastic DVD box labelled in Parrish's chicken scratch in front of him.
Rodney let out a slow deep breath and nodded. "Now?" A nice, distracting movie would help, he was sure.
"Sure, have you already had dinner? Or do you want to stop by the mess?"
Rodney hesitated, going to the mess meant having to put up with all the noise and fuss of a room full of extremely talkative adults, on top of straining his recovering ribs, but, he was rather peckish and it was never a good idea to let himself go without a meal for too long. A compromise swiftly sprang to mind. "I haven't had time to take apart the screen system in my room, we could go there." Where there's at least two MREs stored away, Rodney thought with satisfaction as John agreed and they set off, walking at a slower pace than usual in deference to Rodney's injuries.
Rodney fell asleep about half way through, but as he felt himself drift off offered himself the reassurance that at least tonight he'd lasted longer than the night before where he'd lasted barely ten minutes into Ocean's 11 before sleep claimed him. As with the night before he roused briefly, quietly, as Sheppard was leaving, and noticed, just as before that the other man had managed to wriggle the blankets about so as to tuck him in warmly, before succumbing once more to much needed sleep.
Rodney woke up, tangled up in blankets, thirsty and desperate for something to ease the pain in his ribs. He took a few minutes to puzzle his way out of the blankets then swiftly located an open bottle of water and the small bottle of pills Beckett had handed to him as he was discharged before heading off to get clean and ready for the day. Taking a shower was a nuisance, washing his hair had become a whole order of magnitude harder than it was before as he had to avoid getting the cut too damp, and his ribs didn't like his arms to be above his head for more than a couple of seconds at a time.
Discomfort had killed any chance to take advantage of his natural morning state, but leaning against the smooth walls of the shower, mostly comfortable, with Radek and Carson's hints and suggestions floating around in his mind in addition to the wild suppositions to the Colonel's motives he'd already been forming – and attempting to shoot down – it was irresistible to not let his fantasies reign free for a while and release a good deal of tension while he was at it. John smiling at him the way he smiled at every alien priestess and princess, John kissing him, tongue doing wicked things, John holding him, stroking him, sucking him, fucking him. It didn't take long, then he was rinsing off and dressing in his uniform.
From there the day went steadily downhill. First Rodney nearly let a line of Miko's modified code go unchecked and short out half the city, only a last minute query by Zelenka averted that disaster. Then Kavanagh, back in the city again, accidentally released a computer virus it took several hours and a restart of as many terminals as had been affected to clear. That was swiftly followed by an actual short that triggered an overload in a Naquada Generator whose integration point had been an infected terminal that had gone unnoticed. The overload only didn't take a chunk of Atlantis with it because they managed to send it through an open wormhole to an orbital gate over a planet whose inhabitants had long since been culled by the Wraith with seconds to spare.
A series of much more minor hitches followed that, yet all somehow managed to need Rodney's personal attention in addition to the rest of his staff. When Sheppard arrived to herd Rodney to the Infirmary to undergo Beckett's prodding Rodney was absorbed in rerouting power around a single relay that had blown yet had managed to disrupt the power flow for the entire control tower. He was alone in the lab because he'd finally snapped and thrown the rest of the science staff sharing the lab out until they managed to learn not to be complete imbeciles and stopped making a complete hash of the simplest of tasks.
"C'mon McKay, have you even had a break yet today?" Sheppard said in a cajoling voice, "Surely they can manage for a half hour on their own. Hour tops. Atlantis will still be here for you to come back to and you can even kick them out of here again afterwards."
"That's what you think, we'd be lucky if there were any chunks of wreckage," Rodney muttered, keeping his focus on his screen and problem as much as possible. His head was aching worse than it had been the day before, and all the dashing around shouting orders to save the city from gaining a rather large hole had increased the ache in his ribs. It would almost be worth getting to Beckett to see if there was something stronger he could give him to drown out the discomfort. "I don't have that much time, this needs to be done – unless you'd like to risk the gate shield losing power when it's needed, or the tower having a complete black out."
Sheppard sighed. "Rodney, I can and will have you removed from this lab if it's necessary. I'd prefer not to, but if it's not me or my orders taking you to Beckett it'll be Beckett coming after you and he has plenty of extra poking and prodding equipment you know he only uses to harass finicky patients who've not kept their word to him."
Rodney scowled at over at Sheppard, stubbornly ignoring the plaintive look on his face. He continued to ignore it, and all the further wheedling the Colonel employed while he continued to write the commands that would tell Atlantis to send power around the affected area.
"I've finished rerouting the power, if you need me, I've got my headset," he said loudly into his radio when he finished, and waited for Radek to respond, "Yes, go, get out of here, we are not children to be watched over by you, we will manage perfectly well. Better even. Do not come back, yes – get some rest and leave us alone to work!"
As they left the lab they passed through a crowd of scientists that stood gathered around Zelenka, they were grumbling about something or other in low tones that Rodney couldn't be bothered to try to understand. Probably annoyed that they actually have to go back to work, Rodney thought as he strode past Zelenka himself, who was wearing a particularly smug expression that he got when his interference in a project proved to yield a better result than had Rodney been left to work alone. Rodney frowned and would have said something to Zelenka, but he was gone, ushering the others into the lab. Soon it was just Rodney and Sheppard alone in the corridor, making their way towards the Infirmary.
Sheppard smiled that slow, easy smile of his that uneasily reminded Rodney of his activities that morning in the shower. "We didn't manage to finish up last night, and unlike Stackhouse, Parrish's lent me the DVD til whenever I'm done with it so if you'd like to, I could stop by after you're done with Beckett? I'll even snag some dinner from the mess, save you eating MREs again."
Rodney underwent Beckett's prodding without complaint, at least until Beckett wound up with some final questions.
"You've been taking the medicine as directed then? Or do I have to get Colonel Sheppard to get you to do that too?"
"I thought you said you weren't behind his dragging me from the lab!"
"And I'm not, but whatever he's doing it's obviously working wonders – you're on time, or close enough, and I saw him at the doors today, unlike yesterday," Carson said with a broad smile.
Rodney harrumphed and pushed himself up off of the bed. He felt like saying something very childish like 'Sheppard is not the boss of me', but he resisted it, instead just snatching up his laptop and turning to walk out.
"Now just a minute Rodney, there's no need to be so defensive. If it's discretion you're concerned about you must know that I'd not say anything to –"
"There is not, nor will there be anything for you to need to be discreet about!" Rodney said, glaring at Carson before continuing on his way out to the sounds of the Scot's sigh and subsequent clattering about.
Rodney could only hope that Carson wasn't insinuating anything like that to John himself – it wouldn't be fair to have John bring it up and laugh over it when it didn't feel funny to Rodney at all, just immensely unfair.
John wasn't in Rodney's quarters when he arrived, so he took the time to change out of his uniform and into a worn printed tee and sweats, all the more comfortable for when he fell asleep before the end once more he thought, purposefully not thinking about how much he wished he had some truly comfortable to sleep in casual clothes that were a bit more not-a-slob than what he was wearing – it wasn't like he thought he had a chance. He settled onto his bed to wait.
He was sound asleep and snoring when Sheppard arrived. The next morning he woke again to find himself covered with warm blankets he'd not been under as he drifted off, and there was a tray with a couple of sandwiches and not-quite-apple juice resting on his desk.
Rodney couldn't quite help the small smile that accompanied him as he went through his morning routines, at least until he reached the transporter to go to the control tower and found the panel open and unattended. Not that berating the member of his staff idiotic enough to leave sensitive equipment spread out willy nilly didn't bring pleasure of a different sort.
The day didn't take quite the nosedive the previous one had, yet by mid-afternoon Rodney had reached his tolerance, was running the risk of loosing his voice and thus had decamped to a lab further out from the centre of the city to get some peace and quiet to go over the various reports submitted regarding the mess that was yesterday.
He had his radio headset with him and switched on, and so was quite surprised that rather than demanding he head directly to the Infirmary over the radio Sheppard actually tracked him down to the more remote lab.
"What's the problem Colonel?"
"Nothing, so long as you remember that you need to be in the Infirmary in less than ten minutes. I just came to ask if you'd like to try again – I got delayed last night by Elizabeth, then Beckett wanted a word." Sheppard looked as though he genuinely regretted that he'd arrived too late, and sounded sincere enough, yet there was something almost implacable that was different about his offer tonight. It crossed his mind that Beckett might have been making trouble, but Sheppard wasn't reacting the way he would have expected had anything of the sort been discussed.
"All right," Rodney said, shutting down his laptop.
"I can take that back with me," Sheppard offered, indicating the computer.
"Knowing my luck the city would malfunction in some grand and disastrous way if I let that thing out of my sight for too long," Rodney said tucking it under his arm on the side that felt less battered. It was quicker for them to use the transporter to get to their destinations, so they separated there and Rodney headed off to the Infirmary.
Carson said nothing about John, nor about Rodney's punctuality or lack thereof. Rodney almost missed it.
Once again he changed into clothing that was comfortable to fall asleep in and settled down on his bed since he had time before John arrived baring dinner and the 'The Matrix' DVD. Dinner turned out to be almost-chicken pasta with actual pudding cups from Earth to follow.
They sat side by side on Rodney's bed, taking advantage of the fact it was pushed against the wall on one of its long sides to make it serve as a sofa as they had the past few nights. They chatted for a while as they ate and then John slipped the film into the DVD drive hooked up to the screen and cued it to a few scenes before the place where Rodney had fallen asleep.
"Oh, I forgot to say, I ran into Elizabeth and Zelenka in the mess, and they want you to take the morning off."
Rodney gave John an incredulous look. "Why? I'm doing fine! Atlantis would be in very tiny pieces on the ocean floor if it wasn't for me!"
"I think they're just worried that you've not been following Doctor's orders, come on Rodney you've got to admit you've not exactly been taking it easy," John said sounding both reasonable and tired.
Rodney scowled then looked away. He might not be 'taking it easy' but it wasn't as though he was off running around other planets, Teyla had even let him go without their training session that week. Still… the morning off did sound very tempting. "Fine," Rodney said tersely. "Don't come crying to me when Atlantis breaks down."
John smiled. "We won't."
Conversation fell away as they became absorbed in watching the brilliant action sequences the movie boasted.
"Oh like that would change anything!" Rodney burst out at the example of the miraculous healing powers of a confession of love on screen, rolling his eyes. When John didn't say anything Rodney glanced aside and realised that John had fallen asleep.
A warm, fuzzy feeling settled in his chest, rivalling with smug satisfaction at still being awake. John looked so peaceful, relaxed and untroubled in his sleep the way he never quite managed to look while awake. It made Rodney almost regretful that he needed to wake John, but there was no way sleeping propped against the wall the way he was would be comfortable or good for his spine.
"Hey, hey, Sheppard, wake up," Rodney said quietly, lightly shaking the other man's shoulder – he wanted John awake, but he didn't want to risk making him jumpy.
John groaned as he awoke, hand going to the back of his neck and rubbing, making Rodney feel slightly guilty for not having noticed before.
"Here let me," Rodney said, reaching over himself and working at the muscles in John's neck with one hand. It wasn't until John's eyes had slid closed again, a smile spread over his lips, that Rodney remembered that this was John Sheppard, his team mate and not someone he should be offering massages of any kind to, let alone randomly giving them. He withdrew his hand slowly, hoping that would let him play it down.
"Why'd you stop?" John asked, sitting up from the wall and turning to Rodney, who could feel his face heat with a blush and hoped that it wasn't visible with the dimmed lighting they'd set the room to for watching the movie.
John slid forwards, leaning in towards Rodney, not appearing in the slightest unsure; Rodney confused leaned away. Surely this could not be happening. Maybe he was mistaken and John wasn't leaning in to kiss him. He could… he could…
John's hands reached up to cup his jaw and prevent him backing away, and then John was kissing him, lips soft and smooth and Rodney half thought he must have fallen asleep first after all but genius or not his dreams never managed to be this vivid, John's breath on his face, taste in his mouth and feel all reassured him of the reality.
"Okay?" John asked, pulling back only enough to talk.
Rodney didn't answer, instead running his hands down John's sides, then up again, slipping beneath the tight black tee against sleep-warm skin. He kissed John then, hot and wet, pulling John down against him as he lay back on his bed.
John pressed tightly against him, their legs intertwining, hands pulling at clothing and stroking over skin as it is exposed. They broke apart and Rodney managed to pull that wonderfully snug tee shirt off of John, and fling it away as John unbuckled his belt. He quickly sent his own shirt to join John's on the floor of his quarters, and then Rodney pulled John tight against him again, enjoying the feel of John's chest against his own.
"Oh god," John gasped and Rodney groaned in return as they rocked together sparking a desperate hurry to get even more skin against skin, in the end settling for undone and pushed aside rather than naked, more interested in the friction and feel of each other than anything else, the pace hard and quick and brilliant.
Then John was shuddering, coming and even more brilliant, then John was kissing him again and Rodney is coming too.
He hadn't managed to catch his breath by the time John rolled off him to he side, and he experienced a moment of sheer panic at the thought that maybe they shouldn't have done this and John would leave and be awkward and never speak to him again except to give orders in that tone of voice that implies he'd rather Rodney were on a completely different planet to him, but that faded when John arranged himself against his side.
"So," Rodney said, shifting onto his side to face John. He's uncertain what to say – what do you say when you've just had sex with someone you'd never have expected to do it with without sounding like your IQ has dropped a hundred points? – but unable to leave the silence alone.
"So go to sleep Rodney," John said as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, then he faltered, back stepping, "Unless you'd like me to leave?" he asked uncertainly and then it's Rodney tripping over himself to reassure John.
"No, I didn't mean – You can stay. I'd like it if you would," he offered, hoping that he would.
"Okay then," John replied, giving him a relaxed grin. He settled the covers over them and yawned as he snuggled in beside Rodney. It wasn't long before John had fallen asleep, and Rodney couldn't help but watch him for a while, smiling as a feeling of peace and contentment fell over him. He hugged John closer to him and followed him to sleep.
Zelenka was humming to himself as he walked into the lab. Rodney would have bet that it was because they'd had a perfectly wasted morning in the lab without him there to get things done, but he couldn't quite make himself be too bothered about it after the morning he'd had with John. He couldn't quite stop the large, smug grin that spread across his face. The humming abruptly stopped.
Rodney looked up and saw a very knowing smile on Radek's face.
"It's about damned time, my friend."