There was blissful quiet in the cell for hours after John yelled at Rodney. He wished that he could have enjoyed it for longer, but shortly after Rodney had shut up, John had started feeling guilty. He hadn't meant to lose them the food, and he hadn't really meant to yell at Rodney, either. For a second, the scientist had almost seemed scared of him, and however furious John was with him at the moment, he didn't want that.

John sighed, shifting against the wall of the cell and ignoring the painful twinge from his ribs. For what was probably the millionth time, he resolved to watch what he said and how he said it, to keep a better handle on his temper.

In the future, that is. He might feel guilty, but he didn't feel quite guilty enough to talk to Rodney yet.

At least, he didn't until he glanced across the room and noticed that McKay looked almost as bad as he felt. The physicist's face was ashen, beads of sweat standing out all over his forehead, and his hands were trembling.

"McKay," John said hurriedly, pushing his anger aside for the moment. This looked different, much more serious than Rodney's usual unprompted panics or vague lists of worries. Rodney didn't respond at first, and John's stomach twisted as he raised his voice.

"Hey, Rodney, is somethin' wrong? You look...uhh…."

Rodney's eyes fluttered open, and with what looked like far too much effort, he turned his head towards John. "I told you…I'm hypoglycemic. I need to eat."

He didn't even sound accusing, just tired and scared. John felt another rush of guilt, both for losing Rodney the food and for not really believing him about the hypoglycemia. At one point or another, Rodney had claimed every ailment from asthma all the way to gangrene, and John had automatically lumped the hypoglycemia into that same category. But Rodney was very clearly neither lying or exaggerating. John wasn't sure what would happen if he couldn't get Rodney food, but he was sure that it wouldn't be good.

"Mckay…."

John used his good arm to check his pockets, and to his great relief, he found an energy bar in one of the pockets in his cargo pants. He knew there would have been more in his vest pockets, but his vest was long gone, and this was all he had to offer. He was glad he had even had this much. He handed it to Rodney, who took it with a hand that trembled so much John wasn't sure he would even be able to open it.

"What's this?" he asked cautiously.

"It's an energy bar," John said. "I...I know it's not much, but I thought it might…."

"You had food the whole time and you didn't tell me?"

There was no bite to Rodney's voice. He sounded weak and exhausted. It was almost worse than being yelled at.

"I'm sorry, Mckay, I completely forgot about it…."

"Do you have more?"

"No," John said. "Only the one."

Rodney seemed to be processing at a snail's speed, which was also frighteningly out of character for the physicist, but slowly, his eyebrows drew together.

"You...only have one?"

"Yeah, just that one. I'm sorry, I wish I had more, I'd give those to you too…."

"Don't you want it?" Rodney said.

John blinked at him. Rodney was so weak he could hardly sit up anymore, his eyes were half-lidded, his face pale and waxy. John was sure he could survive another day or two without food, but he didn't look like it, and John couldn't imagine what sort of monster could have refused Rodney food at this point.

"No," John said. "Of course not. I want you to have it. You...you look like you're dyin', Mckay."

"Feel like it too," Rodney whispered. "Thanks, Sheppard."

Rodney started trying to open the packaging, but his hands were shaking so hard he couldn't seem to get a grip on it. John took the bar back, steadying his injured arm against his body, and managed to get it open. He handed the energy bar to Rodney, stuffing the plastic back in his pocket.

An expression of deep relief crossed Rodney's pale face, and he took a quick bite of the bar. John waited for Rodney to stuff the rest of the protein bar into his mouth like usual - the physicist ate faster than anyone else John had ever met. Instead, Rodney paused, and broke off a piece of the protein bar from the untouched end. He held it out to John, his hands still shaking so badly John was scared he might drop it.

"You should have some. It's yours," Rodney said, eyeing the protein bar covetously.

John shook his head. "Nah. I'm fine. You should eat."

Rodney hesitated. "You sure?"

"Eat it, McKay," John ordered, but he gave Rodney a small smile as he said it, and the scientist nodded tentatively. The rest of the protein bar quickly disappeared into Rodney's stomach, but John was touched that McKay had thought to offer him any of the food at all.

It made John feel a lot guiltier over losing them the food in the first place. He shifted uncomfortably, watching as a shade of color came back into Rodney's cheeks, and his hands began to still. It wasn't enough.

"Hey, uhh, listen…." John began. God, he was terrible at this. He'd never been one for apologies, not even when it was obvious that he'd screwed up, like now. They came out stilted and hesitant and insincere, and usually John just skipped the attempt entirely, but he really did feel bad. Rodney was supposed to be his responsibility, and so far all John had managed to do was repeatedly put his life in danger.

Rodney looked at him expectantly, and John trailed off, mentally cursing himself. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Uhh, I…I really didn't know they were gonna take the food away. Or...or that you, umm, were hypoglycemic. I…sorry."

Rodney looked shocked for a split second and then actually smiled, as though John's admittedly terrible apology was the best thing he'd ever heard.

"I suppose I can accept that," Rodney said, but for once, the grudging note in his voice was false. "I mean, at least you tried something. Even if it was stupid. Which it was. And...thanks for the protein bar. You didn't have to do that."

John blinked at him, again surprised and somewhat horrified at what Rodney considered to be generous.

"Course I did," he said. "Anyone would have."

"I once passed out at Area 51 because they wouldn't let me leave the decontamination area to eat something," Rodney said. "So, not anyone. Some people wouldn't have done it even if they had another bar for themselves."

"Oh," John said, voice small. He suddenly felt a little retroactively guilty. Had he ever pushed Rodney so hard he felt that he couldn't get his physical needs taken care of? John could have easily had another soldier like Ford take the last spot on his team, but he had chosen the physicist. When he had done that, he had understood it meant he might need to make allowances. Rodney wasn't used to going without food, without rest. He wasn't used to handling a weapon, and he wasn't supposed to have to be.

He wasn't used to running fast.

John dropped his head slightly. He seemed to have lost sight of why he'd originally invited Rodney onto his team, and what that really meant. Sometimes, he might need to stay behind and defend Mckay. And in exchange, when something happened like the Jumper getting caught in the Stargate, it was Mckay who was going to fix it and save his life.

Rodney didn't seem to notice anything was wrong - another thing John both liked and hated about the man. He steamrolled on, oblivious.

"You know, I like to think of myself as sort of a connoisseur of power bars, and the ones they had at Area 51 were really good. They had all the usual flavors like cookie dough and peanut butter, but they also had white chocolate raspberry, lemon bar which I obviously couldn't eat…. You know, you should look into getting that kind of Atlantis. They were a lot better than the ones we have here. I don't quite remember the brand name, but I think it might have started with a W, and I'm sure I would recognize the package…."

"I think we just picked the ones that would last the longest," John said mildly. "And I'm not exactly getting surprise shipments of food from Earth."

"Well…."

"I think Dr. Weir would be the person to talk to about that sort of thing anyways. New protein bars don't exactly fall under the jurisdiction of Military Commander."

"They're in the emergency kits," Rodney said. "I'm pretty sure you have some say of what goes into those."

"Yeah, I mean I guess, but we still can't get shipments from Earth-"

"You know what else I miss?" Rodney said abruptly. "Pizza. I know they have that frozen stuff here, but it is not the same…."

John sighed softly, his mouth watering at the thought of a fresh slice of pepperoni. He wasn't about to pass out like Rodney had been, but he hadn't eaten since they'd left Atlantis that morning, and he was beginning to get very hungry himself.

"I do miss pizza," John admitted. Every so often, he would remember something else that he might never get to see, do, or try again. The transition to Pegasus had been, on the whole, almost shockingly doable, but there were still plenty of things that triggered a pang of homesickness. Pizza had been one of them.

"Pizza might be the food I miss the most," Rodney mused. "Pizza with sausage and peppers...mmm…."

John nodded in agreement, staring longingly towards the blank wall of the cell. After a moment, Rodney cleared his throat impatiently.

"Well? What food do you miss that you can't get here?"

"Oh," John said, a little surprised. He'd thought Rodney was just thinking aloud, which was definitely something that the scientist was known for. Usually, interrupting Rodney's thought process was an invitation to, at worst, blistering scorn, and at best, being ignored. Rodney actually asking John's opinion was somewhat of a novelty. He wasn't sure where Rodney was going with this, but he decided to play along. Maybe if they'd known each other better to start with, they wouldn't have ended up in the cell. It was certainly worth a try.

"Umm, probably Cheetos," John said finally. "Doritos. Cheddar potato chips."

"Really? Fake cheese?"

John shrugged. "It's a good kinda fake. That's what I ate all through college, and I'm still not sick of it."

Rodney laughed, then made a face. "College food...okay, if you're not sick of fake cheesy chips, what's a meal you never want to eat again?"

"Canned black bean soup," John said, almost as soon as Rodney had finished speaking. "I didn't really know how to cook. I must have eaten it for three months straight."

He refrained from telling McKay that he still didn't really know how to cook, and that this hadn't occurred in college, but about a year before he came to Atlantis.

"Mine is chicken stir fry," Rodney said wistfully. "I was trying to impress this girl from one of my classes, and she said she liked stir fry, so I decided I would cook for her but I got flustered, and I may have had a little too much wine, and I ended up not cooking the chicken all the way and-"

"Ick. I get the idea. Do all your embarrassing stories involve tryin' to impress a girl?"

Rodney sighed heavily. "No. Unfortunately, only about half of them do. I suppose you've never embarrassed yourself in front of a girl, hmm?"

John squirmed, a little uncomfortably. The truth was that he hadn't actually done as much dating as everyone, especially Rodney, seemed to expect. He'd always been a little more focused on flying. That hadn't changed, even when he'd met Nancy, which was part of the reason the marriage had fallen apart. Still, even as little experience as he had with girls, he'd managed to embarrass himself plenty of times.

"Well, there was a girl I knew in high school, and I was at practice-"

"Football?" Rodney asked with an eye roll.

"Nope. Lacrosse. Anyway, she came down to say hi, and I waved, and then I wasn't payin' attention and I got hit in the head with a lacrosse ball."

"That isn't that bad," Rodney grumbled.

John winced. "I got a concussion. She watched me pass out on the field, and then throw up everywhere."

Rodney smiled, and John was surprised by how good that made him feel. "That's nothing. That the only time you've thrown up in front of a girl?"
"Who I was hoping to date, yeah."

"Well strap in," Rodney said. "Because I've done a whole lot worse. The first time I saw Alien was on my first date with this girl-"

John was easy to talk to, and Rodney could not have been more surprised. They'd spent a lot of time together, especially on long Jumper rides going to remote planets, but that...that had felt different. Rodney hated silence. He didn't understand the meaning of "awkward silence" - weren't all silences awkward? But Sheppard seemed to value both quiet and privacy - that, or maybe he just had to concentrate on making flight plans or calculating descents or whatever it was flying the Jumper actually entailed.

Ford was the most talkative of the four, outside of Rodney himself, so a lot of the longest Jumper rides had been spent chatting with Ford. Even Teyla was usually easier to pull into conversation than John was, especially because she was interested in hearing about Earth culture and Rodney was interested in talking about it.

Sheppard smiled and laughed, sometimes made snide comments, but Rodney hadn't really realized until today that he didn't actually know much about his team leader. He had learned more about John in this hour-long conversation than he thought he had during all the rest of the Jumper rides combined.

"Have any siblings?" Rodney asked.

John frowned. "One. Brother. Older. Dave. Don't, uh...don't like him much though. Or at least, it's been a while since I've seen him. Maybe it's him who doesn't like me."

"I haven't talked to my sister in a while either," Rodney said. "It's been a year or two. I, uh, missed her birthday, and then I wasn't really sure how to get things back on track after that. She's younger though, a few years younger. Has a kid now, actually."

"Ah, you're an uncle. Bet you make kind of a weird uncle."

Rodney made a face. "Hey, there's no need to be insulting."

"It's a compliment. Weird uncles are the best. I'm sure she loves ya."

"I've actually...only met her once. When she was a baby. So I doubt she remembers me."

If there was one thing John was good at, it was understanding when not to press. "So, favorite movie?"

"Wrath of Khan," Rodney said. "It's the fourth Star Trek movie. The best one."

"Huh. Wouldn't have pegged you for sci fi," John said. Rodney looked over at him, then quickly glanced away again. Sheppard's cheek was badly swollen, black and blue, and looking at it made Rodney feel guilty without really knowing why.

"Why not?" Rodney asked. "All of this, it's really basically Star Trek. You know, a mission to explore…"

"New worlds, yeah, I get it. We're...we're not very good at the Prime Directive, though."

Rodney laughed, once again pleasantly surprised by Sheppard. "Now, see, I wouldn't have guessed that you liked sci fi, either. Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, something more like that."

John shrugged with his one good arm. "Nope. My favorite movie's Empire Strikes Back. I wanted to be Han Solo when I was a kid. Plus, lightsabers are really cool."

"You still want to be Han Solo, don't you?"

John smiled, a big, crooked smile that flashed all the way up one side of his face. "I'm a spaceship pilot in another galaxy. I basically am Han Solo."

"Fine. It's good to know one of us is achieving their dreams. How's that working out for you?" Rodney asked, but without any real heat to it.

John sighed, looking around at the walls of their cell. "Up 'til recently, pretty damn good."
Rodney let that hang in the air for a few moments while he searched for the next question. What did he want to know about Sheppard? What was John good at, aside from flying planes? The pilot was certainly no genius, but he'd been through college, and Rodney was grudgingly prepared to admit that perhaps Sheppard wasn't quite as stupid as some of the other military men he'd met. Still, he had no idea what John possibly could be interested in outside of weapons and explosions.

"Okay, okay. What was your favorite subject in school? And you can't say 'gym'."

John made a face. "Who would say gym? Only the dumb kids or the bullies said gym. Mine was math."

That was...definitely not what Rodney had been expecting. "Oh. Umm...mine too."

"Hey, look at that," John said cheerily, clearly not finding this piece of information nearly so earth-shattering as Rodney had.

"You...you don't look like the kind of guy who would like math," Rodney said truthfully, unsure of what else to say.

John's eyes narrowed slightly. "And why's that?"

Rodney found that the more nervous he got, the more he tended to stumble over his words, and that was starting to happen now. He wasn't sure exactly why - he was talking to the exact same Sheppard as he had been before. But as the conversation went on, not only was he realizing he now knew John better, but he was also realizing that he'd never really known him before.

"You...you know...you exercise and...stuff," Rodney finally managed.

John smiled again. "Just because I work out doesn't mean I loved gym, Mckay."

"That's not...that's not really what I meant...nevermind."

Rodney wracked his brains, trying to think of the next question. He didn't want to just come out and ask if John had gone to college, or what he'd majored in - he didn't really know how these things worked for members of the military, and he didn't want to either look stupid or to offend John. But he was still desperately curious to find that information out.

"What...um, what was your proudest accomplishment?" Rodney finally hazarded. The vast majority of Rodney's proudest moments were college related in some way or another, and even if they weren't, he was sure something like that would give some sort of hint as to what degree he had chosen.

"Getting chosen for Atlantis," John said, immediately and without hesitation.

Rodney swallowed back his surprise. "Oh, you mean...just getting chosen? Not...becoming the Military Commander, or the leader of SGA-1, or...anything?"

John looked down, seeming almost ashamed. Rodney saw him close his eyes. "I dunno, Mckay," he said softly. "I just thought-"

"No, that's a good one," Rodney said quickly. "Just not what I was expecting."

He half-expected John to stop at that, but Sheppard shifted awkwardly, his eyes still cast down, and continued.

"I mean, I know I pretty much only got chosen for the ATA gene, but still. This expedition…. I mean, you've heard Dr. Weir say it's the most important thing humanity's ever done…. And General O'Neill, he pushed me pretty hard to come - I wasn't sure at first, it was kinda a lot, one second I'm flyin' the General into some base and the next some alien tech is trying to kill us - but the General pushing me like that…. I dunno, I guess...that means something, you know?"

Rodney had absolutely no idea what to say. This...this was a side of Sheppard that he had never seen even a glimpse of. The pilot was one of the most irritatingly confident people Rodney had ever met, the kind of guy who had everything Rodney had ever wanted and what's worse, knew it. The fact that he usually seemed to like Rodney somehow made it worse, it was harder to resent him without feeling guilty. Rodney had automatically lumped John's ATA gene in with the rest of his natural advantages. It figured that the pilot had a superpowered version of the incredibly rare gene that unlocked Ancient technology without him even having to concentrate.

Rodney had never thought about how that could feel to someone like Sheppard, who hadn't been on the original shortlist for Atlantis. Rodney, Elizabeth, Zelenka, even the rest of the military contingent on Atlantis, had all been chosen based on their accomplishments. John had been chosen based on his DNA. And Sheppard...Rodney didn't know the whole story, but he knew the previous military commander had disliked John for some reason, something about his record. Rodney personally didn't care about things like records, and had plenty of things in his own past to be ashamed of, and apparently Elizabeth didn't either. Besides, as loath as Rodney was to hand out praise, he had to admit that John had done an excellent job filling the role he'd been in no way prepared for. It seemed like John knew that too, at least that's how he acted. For the first time, Rodney wondered if John was, perhaps, just as confused, scared, and insecure as the rest of them.

Sheppard was still looking away, and as Rodney struggled to come up with something, anything to say, John cleared his throat and pulled his injured arm into his chest a little tighter.

"I dunno. Dumb answer. Probably the blood loss, huh?"

"General O'Neill hates me," Rodney blurted out, and John turned to look at him. "Yep. It...umm, it's not really a story I want to go into now, but we don't have the greatest history. My point...my point is, if he liked me so much he pushed for me to join the expedition, that's certainly something I would have been proud of."

Rodney saw the smile cross John's face again, and he was surprised by how relieved he felt.

"Wait, did you really not know about the Stargate program at all until Carson screwed up in the chair? Like, you had no idea?"

"I had no idea. I flew a few members of the expedition out to the Gate from Mcmurdo, but I still had no idea. I thought it was just...some sort of research base. I made flights like that all the time."

Rodney shook his head slightly - he couldn't even imagine. He'd been recruited for the Stargate program almost right out of college, and he could hardly remember a time when he didn't know about the existence of other worlds.

He had also known about the existence of Stargates for many years before ever actually laying eyes on one, let alone stepping through one. He couldn't imagine discovering it was possible to get to other galaxies through the Stargate, and then actually leaving for one of those galaxies a week later. He would have thought, if he had bothered to think about it at all, that John must be pretty stupid. Now, he wasn't so sure.

"Well?" John finally prompted.

"What?"

"What's yours?"

"Oh," Rodney said. He'd forgotten he still had to answer. "It's...um, I guess when I received my Doctorate. The first one, I mean - that was mechanical engineering. The second one was nice too, but once you've got one PhD, the shine does wear off just a tiny bit, not much mind you, but…."

Rodney suddenly felt very stupid. He'd been told he had the tendency to brag, and now he was pretty sure he was doing just that. He also thought he might be making himself look somehow worse in John's eyes, which was ridiculous. How could having two PhDs make someone look bad?

But John just grinned again, and nodded like he had expected nothing less.