fiercelydreamed (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fiercelydreamed) wrote2007-07-09 11:09 pm
fiercelydreamed) wrote2007-07-09 11:09 pm
Entry tags:
Unidentified, Part 3b
Title: Unidentified
Details: PG-13, ~30,000 words, McKay/Sheppard. An SGA AU inspired by the documentary Unknown White Male.
Summary: Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days after John and Rodney meet, the clock starts all over again.
Notes: Very vague spoilers through season 3. See the index post for full headers and thank-yous.
[Go to previous part] [Index post]
John swings by his apartment to change and grab his overnight bag, then gets to the hangar just in time for his 2 p.m. booking; Clooney, unlike a lot of Copernicus' clients, is always on time. It's not until they touch down at LaGuardia (after over an hour of circling -- some days, John really detests civilian air traffic control) that he discovers his cell phone is still in L.A., presumably in the pocket of the jeans he'd worn that morning.
Because it's Copernicus policy for pilots to be constantly reachable during a trip in case of last minute changes in itinerary, this means he's stuck in the hotel from Monday night until Thursday morning. He alternates between his room, the gym, and the surprisingly adequate lap pool, detouring obediently by the front desk every time he changes locations to let them know where to direct messages. By the time he finally checks out, he's pretty sure that the staff are as sick of his fixed, friendly grin as he is of giving it to them.
When he gets back to his apartment on Thursday afternoon, there's a message from Rodney, left late the night before.
"Hey, it's -- oh, fuck, it's almost three in the morning where you are. Um. Well. That was stupid." Rodney laughs self-consciously and clears his throat. "Prior to that failure to correctly note the time and add three, I was calling to tell you that I've decided what I'm going to do -- for now," he interrupts himself, as John's heartbeat stutters in his chest, his body suddenly on alert, "at least until the next time my life suddenly upends itself, which at the current pace will be in about a month or so, but, anyway. I called one of the local universities -- UCLA? -- and they gave me the name of a music professor who takes private piano students. They also said it wasn't too late to enroll as a post-baccalaureate for the fall, which I hadn't really thought about before, but it sounded. I don't know. Appealing."
John half-sits on the arm of the couch, his legs still supporting most of his weight. "I checked with my financial advisor," Rodney continues, "to find out how long I can go without working, and she started laughing too hard to answer, so apparently, it's a while." He can hear the faint bump of Rodney's footsteps in the pauses, wandering as he tries to map his way toward what he wants to say. "Tomorrow, I'm going over there to fill out the registration paperwork. I haven't decided what to take yet, beyond a couple of music theory courses. I know you're going to ask about physics -- Jeannie will too, when I call her, and ..." The pause goes on long enough for John to register how tightly his hand is wrapped around the phone, but it doesn't seem worth the effort of loosening his grip. "I haven't made up my mind yet." Rodney says it like it's an admission of failure, though John can't tell to whom. "If I eventually get my memory back, then taking classes I used to teach is obviously going to be a colossal waste of time. And if I don't ..."
His footsteps circle and pause, circle and pause, hitting the same squeaky spot on the floor three times before he finally says, "It took me twenty years to get to where I was. It doesn't make sense to try and redo everything and hope that twenty years from now, I'll like the results as much the second time around. I have no idea if I'm any good at music, but ..." Rodney takes a slow breath, holds it for a moment, and then puffs it back out. "It makes me happy. That seems like as good a place as any to start." His tone is baffled but warm, like he's surprised, a little embarrassed, and okay with it. Staring at the carpet, John tries to place it in his memory. He can't. He's never heard it before.
In a brisker tone, Rodney says, "In the afternoon, I'm driving to Caltech to tell them that I won't be teaching there this fall, for reasons of being unexpectedly and profoundly unqualified to do so. It seems like something that might go over slightly better in person--" he delivers this with more than a little irony "--though I could be seriously wrong about that. I don't know how long it's going to take -- crap, do I have an office? I hope they have a box I can use to take stuff back, or ..." He trails off, preoccupied. John hadn't really followed the last sentence anyway, because Rodney's going to Caltech -- not going, fuck, he's there right now, and it may be summer but that just means everyone's packing in the research while they don't have to teach. Christ, half the department's probably there -- "Anyway," Rodney cuts back in, "I should be home in the evening. If you want, you could come over," he offers, oddly hesitant. "Other than that 'super-fun' medical excursion, we haven't really ..." His footsteps falter as he goes quiet. After a moment, he snorts. "Okay, you know what? This message is getting ludicrously long. I'll talk to you later."
There's the fumble of his hand as he hangs up, then the mechanical voice of John's mailbox chimes, "To delete this message, press seven; to save it in the archives, press--" He hits a couple of buttons without registering which ones they are, then looks at the phone for a long minute, trying and failing to get his head to produce anything more helpful than ... what the fuck.
The phone switches to screensaver, the time blinking across different parts of the screen. 3:14 pm. Figure six o'clock at least to be sure Rodney will get to the condo first. His mind's pulling out of the initial shock into the more intricate holding pattern of what if, what if, what if; that's actually worse, so he grabs his bag off the floor and heads into the bedroom to change. Three minutes later he's out in the crushing heat, water bottle in one hand. He takes off up Fairfax at a little above his usual pace, listening to the soles of his running shoes slap the pavement and trying to drown out the questions in his head.
John runs long enough and hard enough that he's going to regret it tomorrow, but it doesn't kick the jittery feeling, that nervous-adrenaline sense of something about to go down. He stretches out and takes a much longer shower than he really wants to stand still for, annoyed at himself for getting this amped up when there's no indication that anything's wrong. When I don't know anything at all, he thinks. As soon as that slips out, he scowls and flips the water to full cold, biting back a yelp.
Hair still damp, he heads over to the kitchen to down a glass of water and a couple of bananas. It's 6:53 by the time he's finished; late enough. Taking a deep breath, he dials Rodney, who picks up after the third ring. "Hello?"
"Hey," John says, laid-back as he can manage. "How'd it go today?"
Rodney's answering laugh is sharp enough to cut glass. "Let me tell you how much I don't want to talk about it." Then he hangs up the phone.
John stares down at his cell. "Mother fuck," he says. He grabs his keys and strides out the door.
It takes nearly forty fucking minutes to make the fucking fifteen minute drive to Rodney's. It's enough to make him wish he didn't keep the inside of his car so immaculately empty, because then he could at least throw shit at the other vehicles to pass the time. Elevator, he thinks as he punches in the door code and ducks into the lobby, elevator today. He makes it through maybe seven seconds of waiting before turning around and taking the stairs. He walks them, and the hall too, which should count as a major accomplishment since he can hear Rodney's feet tracking agitated patterns on the other side of the wall.
Rodney's at the far end of the main room when John opens the door; turning partway, he throws one hand up in a gesture of surrender. "Yeah, I had a feeling that wasn't going to work."
No fuck, it wasn't, John thinks, but he doesn't take the bait. Rodney's pacing again, both hands clenched by his sides, so John heads for the island instead. "What happened?" he asks, leaning back against the counter. Rodney scoffs and rolls his eyes everywhere but in John's direction. "Did something go wrong?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Rodney says scornfully, back turned to John as he heads toward the balcony. "I drove down there, I spent an hour talking to the division chair, he introduced me to some of my would-have-been-colleagues, I left."
"And that's it," John says.
Tilting his head back, Rodney holds up both hands in a disgusted, lightning-can-strike-anytime-now gesture. "Well, the drive back took so long that I'd started to wonder if I'd missed the freeway and made a wrong turn into a really poorly-designed parking lot, but otherwise? That's it."
John folds his arms across his chest. "Okay. So what's the part you're leaving out?" Turning, Rodney lets out a startled bark of laughter and stares at John with disbelief scrawled over his face. "Did someone say something?" John tries, watching Rodney's eyebrows climb higher. "Something ... I don't know--" he searches for a better word and can't find one "--mean?"
"What, Sheppard, are we four?" Rodney says with biting slowness, then sighs and rubs a hand across his eyes. "No, no one said anything mean."
"Look, Rodney," John says, crossing the room toward him, "you made it to the top of a field where they run online gossip clearinghouses to track each other's promotions. These people aren't really known for tact and social grace--"
Rodney groans. "They didn't do anything, all right, now would you drop it?"
"Was it Holst?" he persists, ducking around as Rodney tries to turn away. "It was Benson, wasn't it -- you know, he's never gotten over that thing back in '98 where--"
"Jesus, don't you get it?" Rodney yells, rounding on him and startling them both. Rodney recovers first, walking a few steps away and bracing one hand on the back of the couch, his head bent toward the floor. "Nobody did anything," he mutters. "I mean, yes, fine, it was weird to keep explaining to people that I had total amnesia and didn't know any of them, but once we got past that part, they were fine, okay? They asked about my health, what my plans were, a couple of them told me stories. They all seemed like basically decent people." He laughs, bitterly, with his jaw set tight. "Nice, even. And then at the end, they'd wish me luck, and they'd all say something like, Gee, McKay, I have to tell you, I think this is the nicest conversation I've ever had with you."
John stands there, stricken, as Rodney turns and levels him with the full weight of his accusatory stare. "Every person, John. I was being civil to strangers and everyone I met seemed shocked -- shocked -- when I managed that. So what am I supposed to learn from that, hmm? Given the evidence, what's the only reasonable conclusion to come to?"
"Don't," he says, the vowel thin in his dry throat.
Rodney shakes his head and turns to look at far wall, the shelf of publications in isolation there. "I think Tombrello could tell it was starting to get to me, because he kept trying to make excuses in between people -- excuses for them, but really, they just kept turning into excuses for me." He laughs again, like he's too ground down not to find it funny, and spreads his hands helplessly. John hasn't heard him sound like this in weeks, and the familiarity of it hits him like a punch to the chest, because he knows this tone, he's known it for years and he hates it, God, he's always hated it, how did he never realize--
"What kind of a person was I?" Rodney asks, sounding bewildered, defeated. "What kind of miserable excuse for a human being, what kind of an asshole--" and without thinking, John closes the few steps between them and yanks Rodney around and kisses him hard on the mouth.
It's over fast; John pulls away, because fuck, he hadn't meant to do that. He takes his hand off Rodney's arm. "You weren't," he says, dropping back a step. "You're not."
Rodney’s staring like John just threw the laws of physics out the window, like there isn't time to waste on surprise if he's going to figure out what insane thing is going to happen next. After a moment, he says, "I thought. You said we weren't ..."
"We weren't." Taking a deep breath, he knots a hand in his hair, then lets it fall back down to his side. He's so tired of carrying these things around, these truths he didn't ask for, these secrets he doesn't want to keep, and it just keeps happening. "But I wanted to."
Rodney's eyes dart back and forth over John's face, his brows drawing slightly down. "Then why," he starts, slowly.
John swallows. "You didn't," he says, and he walks over to the balcony door. Pressing his palm against the glass, he closes his eyes, because there it is. There's nothing left to say.
Rodney's feet pad up behind him until they're standing side by side. John waits for whatever's coming -- reproach or anger, excuse or, worse, acquittal, it'll be his own damn fault either way. Long seconds pass, and then Rodney says, "I think you're wrong."
His voice is pitched soft and low; when John turns his head, Rodney has an intent expression on his face, like he's watching the pieces come together. "I think I must have."
A weird shiver runs through John, and he braces himself against it. He shakes his head. "You don't know that."
Rodney's mouth twists into a smile John hasn't seen before, and he lifts one shoulder slightly. "No," he agrees. "I don't." Very carefully, he reaches out and slides his hand around John's wrist, his fingers brushing over the knobs of it. Rodney's gaze has dropped to follow what he's doing; the touch is light, but incredibly focused. John twitches again, but he doesn't pull back, and Rodney shifts his hand higher, thumb dragging over the thin skin of John's inner arm until it comes to rest in the crook of his elbow.
John can feel his own pulse beating just below the surface as Rodney steps in closer, and he shuts his eyes without meaning to. "What if you're wrong?" he asks, hearing the desperate edge in his own voice, the way the words come out frayed around the edges.
Rodney laughs softly, his breath hot and gentle over John's mouth. "I really don't care," he murmurs, and his free hand curls over the back of John's neck as he pulls John's mouth down onto his.
[2007. The end of April.]
"Montana?" Rodney says, and takes another sip of his beer. "Really?"
John shrugs and leans back a little farther against the balcony railing, hands braced on the cool metal. "Or Wyoming, or maybe even Alaska. Pretty much anywhere with a shortage of major airports and enough tourism that I could pick up charter work without having to live in the city."
Rodney raises his eyebrows. "You're seriously contemplating a career shuttling rich hippies around the ass-end of nowhere?"
"Hey, if it's a living," John dead-pans. It's past twilight now, getting cool, with a sliver moon hung off-kilter in the sky and the western horizon draining from orange into the strange, muted color John's never seen outside of a California sunset, chlorofluorocarbon green. He swallows another mouthful of his lager. "It's got to be better than L.A."
"Okay, I think that's flawed logic to base the rest of your life on," Rodney says, but he's rolling the bottle between his hands, frowning thoughtfully. "How long do you think it'll take you? To save up what you need?"
"Five and a half years." Rodney looks over at him, and he holds a hand up, ticking things off as he goes. "Chunk of land in the backwoods, cabin, plane, fuel, insurance, and enough savings that I could make it on a charter a month, maybe less in the off-season."
"You factor in land appreciation?" Rodney asks, and his eyebrows jump a little higher when John opens his mouth to give the long version of the answer. Busted. John chips at the flaking paint on the railing, and Rodney smacks his hand away, griping, "And I'll thank you to quit driving down my property value."
John grins and twists around until he's leaning forward over the edge, forearms propped on the railing. They watch the stoplights down below change colors, cars weaving through the dusk. "How long have you been doing the math?" Rodney asks quietly.
"I'll be doing it a while longer, McKay," he drawls, and he can feel Rodney roll his eyes without needing to see it. He shrugs. "A year, maybe."
Rodney takes another drink of beer. "You told anyone else yet?"
"Just you."
Rodney makes a noncommittal noise that might be gratification if it were less distracted. He's frowning at the cityscape, eyes flickering over the empty air as he runs his own numbers. "You have to have enough saved for a plane by now," he says, "why not just ...?"
John shakes his head. "Renting hanger space would set me back another two years at least. Better to wait. Besides, Copernicus isn't bad, this is just ..." He picks at the edge of the label. "Something to look forward to, I guess."
"So this is your grand ambition," Rodney pronounces sarcastically, "Walden Pond with a pilot's license. And what exactly do you plan to do in your month-long weekends, besides get frostbite and pioneer the exciting field of subsistence chartering?"
John scratches his head. "After I write the Great American Novel, you mean? Let's see; grow a beard, give up deodorant ... maybe take up fly fishing."
"Oh my god, I hate you so much," Rodney groans, dangling his arms over the edge and flopping forward onto them in disgust. John laughs.
"Really? I don't know," he says, and tips back the last of his beer. "But I'm looking forward to the quiet."
Rodney snorts. "Jesus, and everybody thinks I'm the misanthrope." John grins, but it fades as their banter lags. The air is laced with urban sounds: the Doppler wail of a distant siren, the bass from the stereos of the passing cars, the rise and fall of sidewalk conversations. Rodney's fingers drum on the railing; after a minute, he lets out a resigned sigh. "Well, if I'm going to be spending my vacations in some bug-infested cabin out in who the hell knows where, you'd better make room in your budget for wireless."
John turns to stare at him. "What?" Rodney demands, aggrieved. "I already know that you're not going to have air conditioning, but you're clearly delusional if you think I'm going to last more than forty-eight hours without--" which is when John rolls his eyes and snags the beer out of Rodney's hand. He sets both bottles on the ground and twists back up in one smooth motion that ends with him grabbing a handful of Rodney's shirt and sliding their mouths together.
He takes his time, makes it easy and a little messy; he's just buzzed enough to laugh at the way Rodney's cheek goes slack under his other hand, to take advantage of the unrestricted access to his lower lip when his jaw drops open, the way he's too stunned to move. It's good, even better than he'd always thought it would be. He's grinning when he pulls back, already picturing the shocked look on Rodney's face, because that's going to be just icing.
His expression is perfect, cartoon-character surprise, but John's more caught by the faint flush on his mouth, the shine of moisture smeared across his lips. Oh yeah, this is a good idea, he thinks, watching Rodney's throat bob as he swallows and says,
"What the fuck was that,"
and disappears inside before John can do more than register how wrong his voice is, before the grin has time to fall all the way off his face.
When he pokes his head around the corner, Rodney's standing in the kitchen with his hands braced on the island, head down. "Hey," John says, stepping inside. "You all right?"
Rodney twitches and takes a deep breath, letting it out with a weird shudder, like a dog coming in out of the rain. "Okay, that's kind of fast to be that drunk, even for you," he says, heading for the fridge. His voice is strange, too hoarse for sarcasm, too shaky for amusement.
John's hands have floated out from his sides, spread face-down in a balancing gesture, like his body knows something he doesn't. "I'm not drunk," he says. It somehow misses neutral and comes out slightly sardonic.
Rodney's laugh echoes hollowly out from the inside of the fridge. "That's unfortunate, because I have this feeling that the next few minutes would be a lot easier if we could just chalk this up to you being a notorious lightweight."
He comes back up with a beer and starts rummaging through the cupboard for the bottle opener. John takes it out of his pocket and slides it across the counter, holding it down for a second when Rodney reaches for it, just long enough to make him look up and meet John's eyes. "I'm sorry," John says, keeping his voice level this time. "I didn't mean to surprise you."
Rodney's eyebrows shoot up. "You didn't?"
John blinks. "... Uh, maybe a little." Rodney's mouth tugs up into a grim smirk as he fumbles with the bottle opener, trying and failing to get purchase on the cap. "But that wasn't -- I thought--"
He trails off, face getting warm; Rodney's turned halfway around and doesn't see it. "What," he says, with distracted bluntness, "that I wanted to sleep with you?" The sentence rings out clear in the room, and both of them go still. A muscle jumps in Rodney's jaw; he shifts his grip and pops the cap off with a grunt. "Thanks," he mutters, shoving the bottle opener into a drawer, "but I've got a little more self-respect than that."
John's skin goes abruptly cold, like someone's thrown a bucket of ice water over him. Rodney turns enough to see John in his periphery and his mouth twitches, but he doesn't make any move to take it back.
"Okay," John says slowly, "what the hell?"
Rodney huffs a fragmentary laugh and raises the bottle as though John had made a toast, then takes a long drink. Wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, he asks, "What was the name of the last guy you slept with?"
His spine stiffens, reflexes kicking in at the non sequitur. "Excuse me?"
Rodney nods, like it was the answer he was expecting. When he drops his head to study the bottle, the light spills down along the edges of his face and finds the sharp bone of his temple, the softening edge of his jaw, but leaves his profile in shadow. "You know that after college, I never met any of them? No one you admitted to, anyway. Without an introduction, it's not like I'd know."
"What are you talking about?" They seem to have slipped into some fucked-up Socratic mode, because John doesn't know where the hell this is coming from but Rodney seems to have a destination in mind. It's like being cornered, his blood singing fight or flight, fight or flight, and he's still trying to remember when the last time was, because it's been a while -- the bar in D.C., maybe, last September, Travis, he thinks, no, Trevor? It's ridiculous, it doesn't matter, hell, it didn't matter at the time, but he feels like if he can get it it'll disprove -- something, who the fuck knows what, was it Peter ...
"I used to wonder about it," Rodney says, turning the bottle around in his hands. "What it meant that you didn't ... but I think I can probably guess." His mouth twists, and he takes another drink.
"Look, it wasn't the kind of ..." John snaps, irritated, because he's not going to get it and it doesn't matter anyway. There's something else going on here and he's missing it. "I wasn't trying to ..." Fuck, why can't he finish a god damn sentence? He shoves the heels of his hands against his forehead and takes a deep breath. "It just was never important -- I mean, if there'd been someone who mattered--"
Rodney sets the bottle down with a smack on the counter and smiles tightly. "Maybe I should reconsider your offer, then. Since I'd be in such exalted company." It catches John off-guard, like a sudden slap. When he looks up, Rodney's eyes are red-rimmed and hot, and he pins John with a glare. "Well, fuck you, John," he spits, the consonants sharp as nails. "I'm not your Saturday night special."
John's whole body flares hot and cold again. "You miserable son of a bitch," he starts, and clamps his teeth down hard on the rest. He spreads his hands out in front of him. "So that's it -- you're just going to jump to the worst possible conclusion and stick with it?"
"If that's what the evidence supports," Rodney sneers, flicking one hand out.
"Jesus, everyone always told me you were an asshole, but I never--" It just slips out before John can stop it, and it's not the first time he's called Rodney that, but it's the first time he's wholeheartedly meant it. Both of them can hear the difference, and when Rodney flinches and breaks eye contact, some spiteful little part of John is gratified to see it, because what the fuck, what the fuck. He takes a fast step sideways, bringing himself back into the field of Rodney's view, and says, "And you're really comfortable living like that?"
Rodney's shoulders droop a little, the lines of his face slipping into something less harsh, more defeated. "Well, it's gotten me this far," he says, softly, one corner of his mouth tilting upward. He turns away, but as he does there's something in his expression that makes John want desperately to take it back, all of it, have the last ten minutes somehow stricken from the books, because this isn't how he thought it would go, not at all.
He comes around the corner, not really sure what he intends to do. Set a hand on Rodney's shoulder, maybe, but his feet falter at the way Rodney flinches at his approach. "Can you just," he starts. His voice comes out rough, and his throat is painfully tight. "Can you just trust me on this?"
Rodney's hands grip the edge of the counter; his head is hanging all the way down. "Fifteen years. And now you do this? I don't understand, I just--" He pulls in a slow, ragged breath and scrubs both hands over his face. "It doesn't make any sense," he whispers behind his palms. He sounds worn thin, so lost that John takes a half-step forward, one hand coming up from his side. He pauses for just a moment, working up the nerve to reach out, and then Rodney turns and walks quickly around to the other side of the island.
"You need to go," he says, without looking at John.
Still in the kitchen, John stares at him. "What?"
Rodney's shoulders twitch, hunching down a little farther, his fingers resting on the edge of the island as if for balance or guidance. "I've got things to I have to take care of," he mutters, and the lie barely registers, because all John hears in his voice is please -- please let this go, please don’t make me finish this.
John swallows. This whole thing has gotten so far out of hand; he isn't even sure how it happened, but he can't leave it there. "Rodney," he says, and moves to close the gap between them. Rodney's eyes squeeze shut, and he holds one hand up in a gesture of warding, or maybe it's surrender, but his palm is turned away from John and blocks his face from view.
"Get out. I can't do this," he says, fast and ragged. "Not with you." He ducks into the study and pulls the door shut behind him.
It knocks the air out of John's lungs, like he'd dropped two stories and hadn't even noticed until his feet hit the ground. He stands there as the clack of Rodney's keyboard starts up in the other room, staring at the closed door and waiting for something, anything else to happen. A minute goes by, and then another. He can feel his heart kicking into higher gear, his hands clenching down on nothing, and when he can't take it anymore, he turns and walks out the door. Gravity starts to ride him on the way down the stairs, and by the time he gets to the bottom he's taken the last flight three steps at a time, less a run than a barely controlled fall. He bursts through the lobby door and keeps the pace up all the way to his car, where he jams the key into the ignition and pulls out at the first gap in the traffic.
He drives the hills for hours, nowhere close to thinking, crisscrossing six counties and somehow ending up in the hills above Calabas, where he pulls over onto the shoulder and stares out over the hood of his car, listening to the engine tick like a broken clock winding down. Ten seconds or less, he thinks. That's the time it always takes him to pull down the scaffolding from around his life, and there's no way to put it back, afterwards. Take out one screw and the whole thing just crumbles under the force of holding together for that long, all the energy bound up in what could have been. The first and foremost law of the universe: nothing stays the same, and nothing lasts.
By the time he turns the engine back on, his whole body is numb and stiff with cold; his wrists ache as he turns the wheel. He wishes he could drive back with his eyes closed so he didn't have to see the city. Five and a half years, he thinks, two thousand and eight days.
Something to look forward to.
---
It's around five in the morning, and John's standing on the balcony watching Thursday night lose its foothold on the eastern horizon, its deep blue shadows wearing to old denim gray. This is the heart of L.A. for him, eight stories up and looking north into the peaks and troughs of the densely packed buildings, the thick glow of a hundred million lights, the hills spreading out in the distance like a reminder. No matter what happens, he always seems to end up back here somehow, like these fifteen square feet are the fulcrum the rest of his life balances on, the one point that doesn't shift. He's still not sure why he likes this spot so much, but it's the highest he can get in open air on a daily basis, and that could be enough. Someday he's going to leave southern California, and he doesn't know when or where he'll go, but he thinks that when he does, this will be the one place in the city that he'll miss. Or, more accurately, the one place that he'll miss this city from.
The glass door is partway open, and through the gap he hears the soft sounds of Rodney's footsteps, just audible over the muted noises drifting up from the streets. He doesn't turn as the door slides farther back in its channel, but he shifts down the railing a little, opening up a space for Rodney to step into.
Padding up next to him, Rodney wraps his unzipped sweatshirt more securely around himself and tucks his hands into his armpits. "Hey," he says, and yawns. "It's kind of cold out here."
Leaning out over the railing, John grins a little. "It's July in southern California. Enjoy it while you can."
Rodney hums by way of an answer, the sound skeptical but soft around the edges. His shoulder brushes John's as he shifts forward to let the railing take his weight, and the contact sets off a light buzz over John's skin. "Have you been out here long?"
"Maybe half an hour." John pushes the balls of his feet against the concrete, checking his circulation. It's not unusual for him to wake up an hour or two before dawn, and he's learned to appreciate it, since getting up for a while makes it more likely that he'll be able to fall back asleep. He likes the untethered feeling this time has, the way the air gets cool enough that he can feel the bite through his clothes. He's in his jeans and a long-sleeved shirt he'd snagged out of an open drawer, which hangs soft and loose over his shoulders. He tugs the cuffs down over his wrists and weaves his fingers together. "It's a good place to think, you know?"
Rodney nods, and John turns to look at him. His profile is clean and pale in the low light, the curves of his features drawn together in contemplation. There's a faint reddish mark at the edge of his jaw, and it fills John with a bright, tenuous feeling he can't really name; he wants to press his fingertips against it and find out if it's warmer than the rest of his skin.
"You okay?" John asks.
Rodney ducks his head, and the side of his mouth tugs upward into a small, private expression. "Yeah," he says, but the word sounds like a bridge to somewhere more complicated, and his smile fades as he studies the street below.
John watches him work through whatever's going on in his head. After a couple of minutes, he slides his foot over and knocks his ankle into Rodney's. "Hey."
With a slow inhalation, Rodney lifts his head back up and sets his forearms on the railing; his hands dangle over the edge, long fingers just brushing together. "I wish I could remember," he says. "For you, I mean. I'm sorry I don't."
It takes John by surprise. He twists toward Rodney, frowning a little. "It's okay."
"Is it?" Rodney tilts his chin up, scanning the graying sky, and hunches his shoulders a little farther forward. "There are things I should know, and I don't, and I don't know if that's going to change." He catches his lower lip in between his teeth; it slides free, and he turns his head to look at John. His eyes are serious, the same in-between color as the sky behind him, and the long lines of his eyebrows are set into a downward bend, inscribing a crease in the center of his forehead.
"If you wanted this before, this can't be how you pictured it." He delivers the statement with the frankness of basic logic: a=b, b≠c, therefore a≠c, but he wraps one hand around the other like he's protecting something, or containing it. He shrugs. "It doesn't seem fair."
Pulling away from the rail, John leans into Rodney's space, using the weight of his body to turn Rodney around to face him. He sets a palm between Rodney's shoulder blades, spreading his fingers out to feel the broad planes of Rodney's back, the firmness of muscle over bone. Tilting his head down, he nudges his mouth up and into Rodney's, savoring the faint rasp of stubble where their cheeks brush, the way Rodney tips his face up into the kiss, simple and thoughtless. His hands settle onto John's hips and slide slowly around to the small of his back, where his fingertips press tiny circles of spots of cold into the skin above the edge of his jeans, under the borrowed shirt. The tip of Rodney's nose is cold too, but his lips are warm, and the taste of his mouth is sweet and unfamiliar. John could wrap himself in the newness of it, in these things he didn't know.
By the time John pulls back, his whole body feels shivery and bright, like there's electricity singing just under the surface of his skin. "It's a lot more than ..." he starts, and can't finish the sentence. This isn't fair or not fair; he can't begin to weigh what's happened on that scale. It isn't what he pictured, but ... it's what he wants. And he didn't think he'd ever get to have that.
Leaning in, he kisses Rodney again, just a brief brush of lips. "Really," John whispers into his mouth, "it's okay," and some of what he means must be getting through, because Rodney's breath hitches. He fists his hands into the hem of John's shirt, and John wraps his other arm around Rodney's shoulder and pushes his face into Rodney's neck. They can do this now, it's allowed.
"Go back to bed," he says, "I'll be in soon." He unwinds his arms from around Rodney, who nods and slips past him, one hand brushing sleepily across John's stomach as he heads for the door. The faint ghost of that last touch lingers after Rodney's footsteps have faded into the condo, after John's settled his hands on the railing again and turned his face to the east.
The thing is, he's starting to be okay with the idea that Rodney may not get his memory back. The past isn't gone just because he can't remember it. It's archived in letters and emails and international phone bills, in journals and textbooks, in twenty years of notepads filed in the study, in boxes in Ontario and the thousand photos lining The Wall. It's still there in Carson's memory, in Laura's and Ronon's and Teyla's. It's there in Jeannie's. It's there in John's. They can never replace that firsthand knowledge, but they can reconstruct it for him, lay out the pieces of the past they all keep -- for him to choose from, what to take and what to leave, and to shore up the foundations for each other.
Watching the first traces of dawn seep out over the city, what John thinks about are the proofs Rodney didn't finish, the research he hadn't published, the Nobel prize he never got to win. He thinks of that great holy grail, the Theory of Everything, and how other people are going to have to tie the pieces together, never knowing how much longer it will take without him, what difference he would have made. He remembers the way Rodney's hands moved when he lectured, the fierce eloquence of his math. And he thinks about that last fight, the one they never had a chance to find their way back from. What, if anything, they might have salvaged in its wake.
He stands out there until the last of the night has retreated, leaving Los Angeles and all her inhabitants to the unknown providence of this pale morning. Light brims along the hills, the day preparing to spill over, and when the horizon is almost too bright to look at, John draws in one more breath of the crisp early chill and then heads inside, pulling the door shut behind him.
---
Epilogue.
[2007. October.]
John's on his way to work when his cell phone rings. It's Rodney; he slides onto the 405 interchange and thumbs the loudspeaker button. "Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?"
"Um, I had to miss it. Something kind of came up." There's a muffled resonance behind the words, either an echo from the space he's in or a problem with the line.
Frowning, John shifts his grip on the phone and merges over a lane. "Are you okay?"
"Yes?" It's difficult to read his tone with the echo. He doesn't sound bad, exactly, but vagueness from Rodney is generally a sign that something's out of whack. "It's kind of hard to tell, actually -- can you come meet me?"
He checks the clock: 1:22 p.m. "If I turn around now, I'm not going to make it in on time. What's going on? If I need to call in--"
"No," Rodney says, "it's not -- I'm at VNY right now, in hangar, um ..." He pauses briefly, like he's checking a sign or a piece of paper "18-L. Do you know where that is?"
"Yeah, that's one building over from Copernicus," John answers distractedly, "I'll be there in fifteen minutes -- what's this about?"
"I'm sort of hoping you can tell me that when you get here," Rodney says, with just the slightest touch of irony. "Now get off the damn phone before you kill someone trying to shift and steer one-handed." The phone beeps as the call cuts off, and John smirks and tosses it onto the passenger seat. He's keyed-up now, because why the hell is Rodney in the hangars at Van Nuys Airport, but whatever's going on can't be that bad if he's got the presence of mind to rag on John's driving.
It's been more than five months since Rodney lost his memory, and nothing has come back to him. Other than a few follow-up screenings at Cedars-Sinai, he hasn't gone to see anyone else about it. It took the two of them half an hour on Wikipedia to determine that psychiatric medicine didn't have anything to offer and that all a psychologist could do is try to "help him adjust." Reporting this over speakerphone to Jeannie, Rodney had rolled his eyes and said, "Wait, was I ever well-adjusted?" There'd been a long enough pause that he and John had stopped fighting for control of the keyboard, and then Jeannie said, "More now than before, actually." So that had been the end of that idea. It's the fall quarter at UCLA, and he's taking piano, music theory, music history and analysis, and (in a fit of paranoia everyone finds generally amusing) a politics course on arms control and international security. Every now and then someone in the physics department crosses paths with him and nearly chokes on their own tongue, but other than that, things are good.
They're good.
Half of John's stuff has migrated to Rodney's condo, his own apartment turning into storage for the things he doesn't really need. It's not as strange as he would have thought to share someone else's space, which he hasn't done since he left the Air Force, or to spend five nights out of seven in someone else's bed, which he never really did at all. There are some days where he feels like they're moving in two directions at once, with the present rolling steadily forward even as the two of them slowly fill in the blanks of the past. John's told Rodney the gist of the fight they had, if not exactly what was said, and other things, like the court-martial, that they'd never really talked about before. Maybe Teyla’s right and some kinds of knowledge go deeper than memory, because Rodney seems to get that these places are still raw for John, even months or years later. He seems content to wait for John to offer up the details at his own pace.
They’re good, and John's starting to be okay with that.
He parks his car in the lot at VNY and grabs his duffel out of the back, then jogs over to Hangar 18. It leases to a pretty mixed bag of tenants: smaller recreational craft, a few light jets owned by local businesses, and newer charters doing only short-to-midrange, wooing investors who'll give them the backing to build a better fleet. It's possible that Copernicus had started out in here, back before John signed on. Slot L is halfway back on the left, and John slows to a walk and then a dead stop, because parked in the space is a brand new Cessna Turbo Skylane T182T, its gray stripes sleek and gleaming in the fluorescent lights, and standing next to it is Rodney, an envelope in his hand.
"Hi," he says, and rubs a hand over the back of his head, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "So after you left, I got a call from some very efficient woman who said my order had been delivered, and did I want to notify the recipient myself or would I like her to do it. I didn't really want to go through the whole hi, amnesia, I have no clue what you're talking about, so I convinced her that I wanted to look over whatever the hell it was and got the address, which ended up being here. They had someone here to meet me. He gave me the keys and also this."
He holds out the envelope. The only word written on it is John, in Rodney's cramped and impatient handwriting, and it's unopened. John looks sharply up at Rodney, who shrugs. "I figured I should call you first. After all, it's addressed to you." One side of his mouth quirks up slightly, but the rest of his face is alert with nervousness and anticipation. Taking the envelope from him, John walks slowly under the wing and tears it open, pulling out the folded note inside.
John,
They tell me it's going to be about six months before this thing is ready. I don't
know if you'll be speaking to me by then. I don't think I'd really blame
you if you weren't.
This five and a half years plan of yours is crap. Not the whole backwoods of
Montana thing (though believe me when I say I think you're completely
insane for voluntarily going to a place where dirt is considered an acceptable
substitute for pavement). It's just a stupidly long time to stay somewhere you
hate.
You've been here seven years now, not counting Caltech. That's too long
already. Hopefully, this will speed up the process (approximately two years,
if the discrepancies between your calculations and mine aren't too great).
There are a couple inches of space between the last paragraph and the bottom of the page; for a moment, he thinks that's all there is, and then he spots the faint spider-web traces of ink bleeding through from the back. When he flips the paper over, the writing gets smaller and more slanted, like Rodney had scribbled the words down in a rush.
You were right. I'm an asshole, and I have no idea how to be happy, and you should find
someone who does because really, you're pretty awful at it too. But if for some
reason that doesn't happen, then when you get your cabin, maybe you can save
me a spot on the last flight out.
-R.
P.S. The hangar lease is paid up for a year. Don't let them tell you otherwise.
The only other thing written on the paper is the date scrawled on the front side, in the top right-hand corner: 2007-05-06. May 6th.
John closes his eyes and presses his knuckles against the center of his forehead. There's a strange sensation deep behind his sternum, like some bone long out of alignment has suddenly knit back into place, and it knocks a sound loose in his throat, quiet and hiccuping. It's laughter, he realizes, and he doesn't know where it's coming from but it doesn't seem to want to stop. Setting his other hand back on the plane, his plane, he slides down until he's perched on the edge of the landing gear, and he just lets it go, all of it, lets the laughter run out of him like water, until he's breathless and lightheaded and free.
Rodney's hand closes down over his shoulder, his thumb pressing gently into the muscles of his neck, and John tips his head back to look at him, feeling the brightness of the smile that's taken up residence on his face. A notch has crept in between Rodney's eyebrows -- curious, a little concerned -- and his eyes scan intently over John's face.
John can’t wait to take him flying.
"I don't know if I can explain this right," he says, slowly, "but I'll give it a shot."
---fin---
[ETA: If you like, you can continue on to the Coda, which also comes with its own soundtrack.
Details: PG-13, ~30,000 words, McKay/Sheppard. An SGA AU inspired by the documentary Unknown White Male.
Summary: Fourteen years, eight months, and seven days after John and Rodney meet, the clock starts all over again.
Notes: Very vague spoilers through season 3. See the index post for full headers and thank-yous.
[Go to previous part] [Index post]
John swings by his apartment to change and grab his overnight bag, then gets to the hangar just in time for his 2 p.m. booking; Clooney, unlike a lot of Copernicus' clients, is always on time. It's not until they touch down at LaGuardia (after over an hour of circling -- some days, John really detests civilian air traffic control) that he discovers his cell phone is still in L.A., presumably in the pocket of the jeans he'd worn that morning.
Because it's Copernicus policy for pilots to be constantly reachable during a trip in case of last minute changes in itinerary, this means he's stuck in the hotel from Monday night until Thursday morning. He alternates between his room, the gym, and the surprisingly adequate lap pool, detouring obediently by the front desk every time he changes locations to let them know where to direct messages. By the time he finally checks out, he's pretty sure that the staff are as sick of his fixed, friendly grin as he is of giving it to them.
When he gets back to his apartment on Thursday afternoon, there's a message from Rodney, left late the night before.
"Hey, it's -- oh, fuck, it's almost three in the morning where you are. Um. Well. That was stupid." Rodney laughs self-consciously and clears his throat. "Prior to that failure to correctly note the time and add three, I was calling to tell you that I've decided what I'm going to do -- for now," he interrupts himself, as John's heartbeat stutters in his chest, his body suddenly on alert, "at least until the next time my life suddenly upends itself, which at the current pace will be in about a month or so, but, anyway. I called one of the local universities -- UCLA? -- and they gave me the name of a music professor who takes private piano students. They also said it wasn't too late to enroll as a post-baccalaureate for the fall, which I hadn't really thought about before, but it sounded. I don't know. Appealing."
John half-sits on the arm of the couch, his legs still supporting most of his weight. "I checked with my financial advisor," Rodney continues, "to find out how long I can go without working, and she started laughing too hard to answer, so apparently, it's a while." He can hear the faint bump of Rodney's footsteps in the pauses, wandering as he tries to map his way toward what he wants to say. "Tomorrow, I'm going over there to fill out the registration paperwork. I haven't decided what to take yet, beyond a couple of music theory courses. I know you're going to ask about physics -- Jeannie will too, when I call her, and ..." The pause goes on long enough for John to register how tightly his hand is wrapped around the phone, but it doesn't seem worth the effort of loosening his grip. "I haven't made up my mind yet." Rodney says it like it's an admission of failure, though John can't tell to whom. "If I eventually get my memory back, then taking classes I used to teach is obviously going to be a colossal waste of time. And if I don't ..."
His footsteps circle and pause, circle and pause, hitting the same squeaky spot on the floor three times before he finally says, "It took me twenty years to get to where I was. It doesn't make sense to try and redo everything and hope that twenty years from now, I'll like the results as much the second time around. I have no idea if I'm any good at music, but ..." Rodney takes a slow breath, holds it for a moment, and then puffs it back out. "It makes me happy. That seems like as good a place as any to start." His tone is baffled but warm, like he's surprised, a little embarrassed, and okay with it. Staring at the carpet, John tries to place it in his memory. He can't. He's never heard it before.
In a brisker tone, Rodney says, "In the afternoon, I'm driving to Caltech to tell them that I won't be teaching there this fall, for reasons of being unexpectedly and profoundly unqualified to do so. It seems like something that might go over slightly better in person--" he delivers this with more than a little irony "--though I could be seriously wrong about that. I don't know how long it's going to take -- crap, do I have an office? I hope they have a box I can use to take stuff back, or ..." He trails off, preoccupied. John hadn't really followed the last sentence anyway, because Rodney's going to Caltech -- not going, fuck, he's there right now, and it may be summer but that just means everyone's packing in the research while they don't have to teach. Christ, half the department's probably there -- "Anyway," Rodney cuts back in, "I should be home in the evening. If you want, you could come over," he offers, oddly hesitant. "Other than that 'super-fun' medical excursion, we haven't really ..." His footsteps falter as he goes quiet. After a moment, he snorts. "Okay, you know what? This message is getting ludicrously long. I'll talk to you later."
There's the fumble of his hand as he hangs up, then the mechanical voice of John's mailbox chimes, "To delete this message, press seven; to save it in the archives, press--" He hits a couple of buttons without registering which ones they are, then looks at the phone for a long minute, trying and failing to get his head to produce anything more helpful than ... what the fuck.
The phone switches to screensaver, the time blinking across different parts of the screen. 3:14 pm. Figure six o'clock at least to be sure Rodney will get to the condo first. His mind's pulling out of the initial shock into the more intricate holding pattern of what if, what if, what if; that's actually worse, so he grabs his bag off the floor and heads into the bedroom to change. Three minutes later he's out in the crushing heat, water bottle in one hand. He takes off up Fairfax at a little above his usual pace, listening to the soles of his running shoes slap the pavement and trying to drown out the questions in his head.
John runs long enough and hard enough that he's going to regret it tomorrow, but it doesn't kick the jittery feeling, that nervous-adrenaline sense of something about to go down. He stretches out and takes a much longer shower than he really wants to stand still for, annoyed at himself for getting this amped up when there's no indication that anything's wrong. When I don't know anything at all, he thinks. As soon as that slips out, he scowls and flips the water to full cold, biting back a yelp.
Hair still damp, he heads over to the kitchen to down a glass of water and a couple of bananas. It's 6:53 by the time he's finished; late enough. Taking a deep breath, he dials Rodney, who picks up after the third ring. "Hello?"
"Hey," John says, laid-back as he can manage. "How'd it go today?"
Rodney's answering laugh is sharp enough to cut glass. "Let me tell you how much I don't want to talk about it." Then he hangs up the phone.
John stares down at his cell. "Mother fuck," he says. He grabs his keys and strides out the door.
It takes nearly forty fucking minutes to make the fucking fifteen minute drive to Rodney's. It's enough to make him wish he didn't keep the inside of his car so immaculately empty, because then he could at least throw shit at the other vehicles to pass the time. Elevator, he thinks as he punches in the door code and ducks into the lobby, elevator today. He makes it through maybe seven seconds of waiting before turning around and taking the stairs. He walks them, and the hall too, which should count as a major accomplishment since he can hear Rodney's feet tracking agitated patterns on the other side of the wall.
Rodney's at the far end of the main room when John opens the door; turning partway, he throws one hand up in a gesture of surrender. "Yeah, I had a feeling that wasn't going to work."
No fuck, it wasn't, John thinks, but he doesn't take the bait. Rodney's pacing again, both hands clenched by his sides, so John heads for the island instead. "What happened?" he asks, leaning back against the counter. Rodney scoffs and rolls his eyes everywhere but in John's direction. "Did something go wrong?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Rodney says scornfully, back turned to John as he heads toward the balcony. "I drove down there, I spent an hour talking to the division chair, he introduced me to some of my would-have-been-colleagues, I left."
"And that's it," John says.
Tilting his head back, Rodney holds up both hands in a disgusted, lightning-can-strike-anytime-now gesture. "Well, the drive back took so long that I'd started to wonder if I'd missed the freeway and made a wrong turn into a really poorly-designed parking lot, but otherwise? That's it."
John folds his arms across his chest. "Okay. So what's the part you're leaving out?" Turning, Rodney lets out a startled bark of laughter and stares at John with disbelief scrawled over his face. "Did someone say something?" John tries, watching Rodney's eyebrows climb higher. "Something ... I don't know--" he searches for a better word and can't find one "--mean?"
"What, Sheppard, are we four?" Rodney says with biting slowness, then sighs and rubs a hand across his eyes. "No, no one said anything mean."
"Look, Rodney," John says, crossing the room toward him, "you made it to the top of a field where they run online gossip clearinghouses to track each other's promotions. These people aren't really known for tact and social grace--"
Rodney groans. "They didn't do anything, all right, now would you drop it?"
"Was it Holst?" he persists, ducking around as Rodney tries to turn away. "It was Benson, wasn't it -- you know, he's never gotten over that thing back in '98 where--"
"Jesus, don't you get it?" Rodney yells, rounding on him and startling them both. Rodney recovers first, walking a few steps away and bracing one hand on the back of the couch, his head bent toward the floor. "Nobody did anything," he mutters. "I mean, yes, fine, it was weird to keep explaining to people that I had total amnesia and didn't know any of them, but once we got past that part, they were fine, okay? They asked about my health, what my plans were, a couple of them told me stories. They all seemed like basically decent people." He laughs, bitterly, with his jaw set tight. "Nice, even. And then at the end, they'd wish me luck, and they'd all say something like, Gee, McKay, I have to tell you, I think this is the nicest conversation I've ever had with you."
John stands there, stricken, as Rodney turns and levels him with the full weight of his accusatory stare. "Every person, John. I was being civil to strangers and everyone I met seemed shocked -- shocked -- when I managed that. So what am I supposed to learn from that, hmm? Given the evidence, what's the only reasonable conclusion to come to?"
"Don't," he says, the vowel thin in his dry throat.
Rodney shakes his head and turns to look at far wall, the shelf of publications in isolation there. "I think Tombrello could tell it was starting to get to me, because he kept trying to make excuses in between people -- excuses for them, but really, they just kept turning into excuses for me." He laughs again, like he's too ground down not to find it funny, and spreads his hands helplessly. John hasn't heard him sound like this in weeks, and the familiarity of it hits him like a punch to the chest, because he knows this tone, he's known it for years and he hates it, God, he's always hated it, how did he never realize--
"What kind of a person was I?" Rodney asks, sounding bewildered, defeated. "What kind of miserable excuse for a human being, what kind of an asshole--" and without thinking, John closes the few steps between them and yanks Rodney around and kisses him hard on the mouth.
It's over fast; John pulls away, because fuck, he hadn't meant to do that. He takes his hand off Rodney's arm. "You weren't," he says, dropping back a step. "You're not."
Rodney’s staring like John just threw the laws of physics out the window, like there isn't time to waste on surprise if he's going to figure out what insane thing is going to happen next. After a moment, he says, "I thought. You said we weren't ..."
"We weren't." Taking a deep breath, he knots a hand in his hair, then lets it fall back down to his side. He's so tired of carrying these things around, these truths he didn't ask for, these secrets he doesn't want to keep, and it just keeps happening. "But I wanted to."
Rodney's eyes dart back and forth over John's face, his brows drawing slightly down. "Then why," he starts, slowly.
John swallows. "You didn't," he says, and he walks over to the balcony door. Pressing his palm against the glass, he closes his eyes, because there it is. There's nothing left to say.
Rodney's feet pad up behind him until they're standing side by side. John waits for whatever's coming -- reproach or anger, excuse or, worse, acquittal, it'll be his own damn fault either way. Long seconds pass, and then Rodney says, "I think you're wrong."
His voice is pitched soft and low; when John turns his head, Rodney has an intent expression on his face, like he's watching the pieces come together. "I think I must have."
A weird shiver runs through John, and he braces himself against it. He shakes his head. "You don't know that."
Rodney's mouth twists into a smile John hasn't seen before, and he lifts one shoulder slightly. "No," he agrees. "I don't." Very carefully, he reaches out and slides his hand around John's wrist, his fingers brushing over the knobs of it. Rodney's gaze has dropped to follow what he's doing; the touch is light, but incredibly focused. John twitches again, but he doesn't pull back, and Rodney shifts his hand higher, thumb dragging over the thin skin of John's inner arm until it comes to rest in the crook of his elbow.
John can feel his own pulse beating just below the surface as Rodney steps in closer, and he shuts his eyes without meaning to. "What if you're wrong?" he asks, hearing the desperate edge in his own voice, the way the words come out frayed around the edges.
Rodney laughs softly, his breath hot and gentle over John's mouth. "I really don't care," he murmurs, and his free hand curls over the back of John's neck as he pulls John's mouth down onto his.
[2007. The end of April.]
"Montana?" Rodney says, and takes another sip of his beer. "Really?"
John shrugs and leans back a little farther against the balcony railing, hands braced on the cool metal. "Or Wyoming, or maybe even Alaska. Pretty much anywhere with a shortage of major airports and enough tourism that I could pick up charter work without having to live in the city."
Rodney raises his eyebrows. "You're seriously contemplating a career shuttling rich hippies around the ass-end of nowhere?"
"Hey, if it's a living," John dead-pans. It's past twilight now, getting cool, with a sliver moon hung off-kilter in the sky and the western horizon draining from orange into the strange, muted color John's never seen outside of a California sunset, chlorofluorocarbon green. He swallows another mouthful of his lager. "It's got to be better than L.A."
"Okay, I think that's flawed logic to base the rest of your life on," Rodney says, but he's rolling the bottle between his hands, frowning thoughtfully. "How long do you think it'll take you? To save up what you need?"
"Five and a half years." Rodney looks over at him, and he holds a hand up, ticking things off as he goes. "Chunk of land in the backwoods, cabin, plane, fuel, insurance, and enough savings that I could make it on a charter a month, maybe less in the off-season."
"You factor in land appreciation?" Rodney asks, and his eyebrows jump a little higher when John opens his mouth to give the long version of the answer. Busted. John chips at the flaking paint on the railing, and Rodney smacks his hand away, griping, "And I'll thank you to quit driving down my property value."
John grins and twists around until he's leaning forward over the edge, forearms propped on the railing. They watch the stoplights down below change colors, cars weaving through the dusk. "How long have you been doing the math?" Rodney asks quietly.
"I'll be doing it a while longer, McKay," he drawls, and he can feel Rodney roll his eyes without needing to see it. He shrugs. "A year, maybe."
Rodney takes another drink of beer. "You told anyone else yet?"
"Just you."
Rodney makes a noncommittal noise that might be gratification if it were less distracted. He's frowning at the cityscape, eyes flickering over the empty air as he runs his own numbers. "You have to have enough saved for a plane by now," he says, "why not just ...?"
John shakes his head. "Renting hanger space would set me back another two years at least. Better to wait. Besides, Copernicus isn't bad, this is just ..." He picks at the edge of the label. "Something to look forward to, I guess."
"So this is your grand ambition," Rodney pronounces sarcastically, "Walden Pond with a pilot's license. And what exactly do you plan to do in your month-long weekends, besides get frostbite and pioneer the exciting field of subsistence chartering?"
John scratches his head. "After I write the Great American Novel, you mean? Let's see; grow a beard, give up deodorant ... maybe take up fly fishing."
"Oh my god, I hate you so much," Rodney groans, dangling his arms over the edge and flopping forward onto them in disgust. John laughs.
"Really? I don't know," he says, and tips back the last of his beer. "But I'm looking forward to the quiet."
Rodney snorts. "Jesus, and everybody thinks I'm the misanthrope." John grins, but it fades as their banter lags. The air is laced with urban sounds: the Doppler wail of a distant siren, the bass from the stereos of the passing cars, the rise and fall of sidewalk conversations. Rodney's fingers drum on the railing; after a minute, he lets out a resigned sigh. "Well, if I'm going to be spending my vacations in some bug-infested cabin out in who the hell knows where, you'd better make room in your budget for wireless."
John turns to stare at him. "What?" Rodney demands, aggrieved. "I already know that you're not going to have air conditioning, but you're clearly delusional if you think I'm going to last more than forty-eight hours without--" which is when John rolls his eyes and snags the beer out of Rodney's hand. He sets both bottles on the ground and twists back up in one smooth motion that ends with him grabbing a handful of Rodney's shirt and sliding their mouths together.
He takes his time, makes it easy and a little messy; he's just buzzed enough to laugh at the way Rodney's cheek goes slack under his other hand, to take advantage of the unrestricted access to his lower lip when his jaw drops open, the way he's too stunned to move. It's good, even better than he'd always thought it would be. He's grinning when he pulls back, already picturing the shocked look on Rodney's face, because that's going to be just icing.
His expression is perfect, cartoon-character surprise, but John's more caught by the faint flush on his mouth, the shine of moisture smeared across his lips. Oh yeah, this is a good idea, he thinks, watching Rodney's throat bob as he swallows and says,
"What the fuck was that,"
and disappears inside before John can do more than register how wrong his voice is, before the grin has time to fall all the way off his face.
When he pokes his head around the corner, Rodney's standing in the kitchen with his hands braced on the island, head down. "Hey," John says, stepping inside. "You all right?"
Rodney twitches and takes a deep breath, letting it out with a weird shudder, like a dog coming in out of the rain. "Okay, that's kind of fast to be that drunk, even for you," he says, heading for the fridge. His voice is strange, too hoarse for sarcasm, too shaky for amusement.
John's hands have floated out from his sides, spread face-down in a balancing gesture, like his body knows something he doesn't. "I'm not drunk," he says. It somehow misses neutral and comes out slightly sardonic.
Rodney's laugh echoes hollowly out from the inside of the fridge. "That's unfortunate, because I have this feeling that the next few minutes would be a lot easier if we could just chalk this up to you being a notorious lightweight."
He comes back up with a beer and starts rummaging through the cupboard for the bottle opener. John takes it out of his pocket and slides it across the counter, holding it down for a second when Rodney reaches for it, just long enough to make him look up and meet John's eyes. "I'm sorry," John says, keeping his voice level this time. "I didn't mean to surprise you."
Rodney's eyebrows shoot up. "You didn't?"
John blinks. "... Uh, maybe a little." Rodney's mouth tugs up into a grim smirk as he fumbles with the bottle opener, trying and failing to get purchase on the cap. "But that wasn't -- I thought--"
He trails off, face getting warm; Rodney's turned halfway around and doesn't see it. "What," he says, with distracted bluntness, "that I wanted to sleep with you?" The sentence rings out clear in the room, and both of them go still. A muscle jumps in Rodney's jaw; he shifts his grip and pops the cap off with a grunt. "Thanks," he mutters, shoving the bottle opener into a drawer, "but I've got a little more self-respect than that."
John's skin goes abruptly cold, like someone's thrown a bucket of ice water over him. Rodney turns enough to see John in his periphery and his mouth twitches, but he doesn't make any move to take it back.
"Okay," John says slowly, "what the hell?"
Rodney huffs a fragmentary laugh and raises the bottle as though John had made a toast, then takes a long drink. Wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, he asks, "What was the name of the last guy you slept with?"
His spine stiffens, reflexes kicking in at the non sequitur. "Excuse me?"
Rodney nods, like it was the answer he was expecting. When he drops his head to study the bottle, the light spills down along the edges of his face and finds the sharp bone of his temple, the softening edge of his jaw, but leaves his profile in shadow. "You know that after college, I never met any of them? No one you admitted to, anyway. Without an introduction, it's not like I'd know."
"What are you talking about?" They seem to have slipped into some fucked-up Socratic mode, because John doesn't know where the hell this is coming from but Rodney seems to have a destination in mind. It's like being cornered, his blood singing fight or flight, fight or flight, and he's still trying to remember when the last time was, because it's been a while -- the bar in D.C., maybe, last September, Travis, he thinks, no, Trevor? It's ridiculous, it doesn't matter, hell, it didn't matter at the time, but he feels like if he can get it it'll disprove -- something, who the fuck knows what, was it Peter ...
"I used to wonder about it," Rodney says, turning the bottle around in his hands. "What it meant that you didn't ... but I think I can probably guess." His mouth twists, and he takes another drink.
"Look, it wasn't the kind of ..." John snaps, irritated, because he's not going to get it and it doesn't matter anyway. There's something else going on here and he's missing it. "I wasn't trying to ..." Fuck, why can't he finish a god damn sentence? He shoves the heels of his hands against his forehead and takes a deep breath. "It just was never important -- I mean, if there'd been someone who mattered--"
Rodney sets the bottle down with a smack on the counter and smiles tightly. "Maybe I should reconsider your offer, then. Since I'd be in such exalted company." It catches John off-guard, like a sudden slap. When he looks up, Rodney's eyes are red-rimmed and hot, and he pins John with a glare. "Well, fuck you, John," he spits, the consonants sharp as nails. "I'm not your Saturday night special."
John's whole body flares hot and cold again. "You miserable son of a bitch," he starts, and clamps his teeth down hard on the rest. He spreads his hands out in front of him. "So that's it -- you're just going to jump to the worst possible conclusion and stick with it?"
"If that's what the evidence supports," Rodney sneers, flicking one hand out.
"Jesus, everyone always told me you were an asshole, but I never--" It just slips out before John can stop it, and it's not the first time he's called Rodney that, but it's the first time he's wholeheartedly meant it. Both of them can hear the difference, and when Rodney flinches and breaks eye contact, some spiteful little part of John is gratified to see it, because what the fuck, what the fuck. He takes a fast step sideways, bringing himself back into the field of Rodney's view, and says, "And you're really comfortable living like that?"
Rodney's shoulders droop a little, the lines of his face slipping into something less harsh, more defeated. "Well, it's gotten me this far," he says, softly, one corner of his mouth tilting upward. He turns away, but as he does there's something in his expression that makes John want desperately to take it back, all of it, have the last ten minutes somehow stricken from the books, because this isn't how he thought it would go, not at all.
He comes around the corner, not really sure what he intends to do. Set a hand on Rodney's shoulder, maybe, but his feet falter at the way Rodney flinches at his approach. "Can you just," he starts. His voice comes out rough, and his throat is painfully tight. "Can you just trust me on this?"
Rodney's hands grip the edge of the counter; his head is hanging all the way down. "Fifteen years. And now you do this? I don't understand, I just--" He pulls in a slow, ragged breath and scrubs both hands over his face. "It doesn't make any sense," he whispers behind his palms. He sounds worn thin, so lost that John takes a half-step forward, one hand coming up from his side. He pauses for just a moment, working up the nerve to reach out, and then Rodney turns and walks quickly around to the other side of the island.
"You need to go," he says, without looking at John.
Still in the kitchen, John stares at him. "What?"
Rodney's shoulders twitch, hunching down a little farther, his fingers resting on the edge of the island as if for balance or guidance. "I've got things to I have to take care of," he mutters, and the lie barely registers, because all John hears in his voice is please -- please let this go, please don’t make me finish this.
John swallows. This whole thing has gotten so far out of hand; he isn't even sure how it happened, but he can't leave it there. "Rodney," he says, and moves to close the gap between them. Rodney's eyes squeeze shut, and he holds one hand up in a gesture of warding, or maybe it's surrender, but his palm is turned away from John and blocks his face from view.
"Get out. I can't do this," he says, fast and ragged. "Not with you." He ducks into the study and pulls the door shut behind him.
It knocks the air out of John's lungs, like he'd dropped two stories and hadn't even noticed until his feet hit the ground. He stands there as the clack of Rodney's keyboard starts up in the other room, staring at the closed door and waiting for something, anything else to happen. A minute goes by, and then another. He can feel his heart kicking into higher gear, his hands clenching down on nothing, and when he can't take it anymore, he turns and walks out the door. Gravity starts to ride him on the way down the stairs, and by the time he gets to the bottom he's taken the last flight three steps at a time, less a run than a barely controlled fall. He bursts through the lobby door and keeps the pace up all the way to his car, where he jams the key into the ignition and pulls out at the first gap in the traffic.
He drives the hills for hours, nowhere close to thinking, crisscrossing six counties and somehow ending up in the hills above Calabas, where he pulls over onto the shoulder and stares out over the hood of his car, listening to the engine tick like a broken clock winding down. Ten seconds or less, he thinks. That's the time it always takes him to pull down the scaffolding from around his life, and there's no way to put it back, afterwards. Take out one screw and the whole thing just crumbles under the force of holding together for that long, all the energy bound up in what could have been. The first and foremost law of the universe: nothing stays the same, and nothing lasts.
By the time he turns the engine back on, his whole body is numb and stiff with cold; his wrists ache as he turns the wheel. He wishes he could drive back with his eyes closed so he didn't have to see the city. Five and a half years, he thinks, two thousand and eight days.
Something to look forward to.
---
It's around five in the morning, and John's standing on the balcony watching Thursday night lose its foothold on the eastern horizon, its deep blue shadows wearing to old denim gray. This is the heart of L.A. for him, eight stories up and looking north into the peaks and troughs of the densely packed buildings, the thick glow of a hundred million lights, the hills spreading out in the distance like a reminder. No matter what happens, he always seems to end up back here somehow, like these fifteen square feet are the fulcrum the rest of his life balances on, the one point that doesn't shift. He's still not sure why he likes this spot so much, but it's the highest he can get in open air on a daily basis, and that could be enough. Someday he's going to leave southern California, and he doesn't know when or where he'll go, but he thinks that when he does, this will be the one place in the city that he'll miss. Or, more accurately, the one place that he'll miss this city from.
The glass door is partway open, and through the gap he hears the soft sounds of Rodney's footsteps, just audible over the muted noises drifting up from the streets. He doesn't turn as the door slides farther back in its channel, but he shifts down the railing a little, opening up a space for Rodney to step into.
Padding up next to him, Rodney wraps his unzipped sweatshirt more securely around himself and tucks his hands into his armpits. "Hey," he says, and yawns. "It's kind of cold out here."
Leaning out over the railing, John grins a little. "It's July in southern California. Enjoy it while you can."
Rodney hums by way of an answer, the sound skeptical but soft around the edges. His shoulder brushes John's as he shifts forward to let the railing take his weight, and the contact sets off a light buzz over John's skin. "Have you been out here long?"
"Maybe half an hour." John pushes the balls of his feet against the concrete, checking his circulation. It's not unusual for him to wake up an hour or two before dawn, and he's learned to appreciate it, since getting up for a while makes it more likely that he'll be able to fall back asleep. He likes the untethered feeling this time has, the way the air gets cool enough that he can feel the bite through his clothes. He's in his jeans and a long-sleeved shirt he'd snagged out of an open drawer, which hangs soft and loose over his shoulders. He tugs the cuffs down over his wrists and weaves his fingers together. "It's a good place to think, you know?"
Rodney nods, and John turns to look at him. His profile is clean and pale in the low light, the curves of his features drawn together in contemplation. There's a faint reddish mark at the edge of his jaw, and it fills John with a bright, tenuous feeling he can't really name; he wants to press his fingertips against it and find out if it's warmer than the rest of his skin.
"You okay?" John asks.
Rodney ducks his head, and the side of his mouth tugs upward into a small, private expression. "Yeah," he says, but the word sounds like a bridge to somewhere more complicated, and his smile fades as he studies the street below.
John watches him work through whatever's going on in his head. After a couple of minutes, he slides his foot over and knocks his ankle into Rodney's. "Hey."
With a slow inhalation, Rodney lifts his head back up and sets his forearms on the railing; his hands dangle over the edge, long fingers just brushing together. "I wish I could remember," he says. "For you, I mean. I'm sorry I don't."
It takes John by surprise. He twists toward Rodney, frowning a little. "It's okay."
"Is it?" Rodney tilts his chin up, scanning the graying sky, and hunches his shoulders a little farther forward. "There are things I should know, and I don't, and I don't know if that's going to change." He catches his lower lip in between his teeth; it slides free, and he turns his head to look at John. His eyes are serious, the same in-between color as the sky behind him, and the long lines of his eyebrows are set into a downward bend, inscribing a crease in the center of his forehead.
"If you wanted this before, this can't be how you pictured it." He delivers the statement with the frankness of basic logic: a=b, b≠c, therefore a≠c, but he wraps one hand around the other like he's protecting something, or containing it. He shrugs. "It doesn't seem fair."
Pulling away from the rail, John leans into Rodney's space, using the weight of his body to turn Rodney around to face him. He sets a palm between Rodney's shoulder blades, spreading his fingers out to feel the broad planes of Rodney's back, the firmness of muscle over bone. Tilting his head down, he nudges his mouth up and into Rodney's, savoring the faint rasp of stubble where their cheeks brush, the way Rodney tips his face up into the kiss, simple and thoughtless. His hands settle onto John's hips and slide slowly around to the small of his back, where his fingertips press tiny circles of spots of cold into the skin above the edge of his jeans, under the borrowed shirt. The tip of Rodney's nose is cold too, but his lips are warm, and the taste of his mouth is sweet and unfamiliar. John could wrap himself in the newness of it, in these things he didn't know.
By the time John pulls back, his whole body feels shivery and bright, like there's electricity singing just under the surface of his skin. "It's a lot more than ..." he starts, and can't finish the sentence. This isn't fair or not fair; he can't begin to weigh what's happened on that scale. It isn't what he pictured, but ... it's what he wants. And he didn't think he'd ever get to have that.
Leaning in, he kisses Rodney again, just a brief brush of lips. "Really," John whispers into his mouth, "it's okay," and some of what he means must be getting through, because Rodney's breath hitches. He fists his hands into the hem of John's shirt, and John wraps his other arm around Rodney's shoulder and pushes his face into Rodney's neck. They can do this now, it's allowed.
"Go back to bed," he says, "I'll be in soon." He unwinds his arms from around Rodney, who nods and slips past him, one hand brushing sleepily across John's stomach as he heads for the door. The faint ghost of that last touch lingers after Rodney's footsteps have faded into the condo, after John's settled his hands on the railing again and turned his face to the east.
The thing is, he's starting to be okay with the idea that Rodney may not get his memory back. The past isn't gone just because he can't remember it. It's archived in letters and emails and international phone bills, in journals and textbooks, in twenty years of notepads filed in the study, in boxes in Ontario and the thousand photos lining The Wall. It's still there in Carson's memory, in Laura's and Ronon's and Teyla's. It's there in Jeannie's. It's there in John's. They can never replace that firsthand knowledge, but they can reconstruct it for him, lay out the pieces of the past they all keep -- for him to choose from, what to take and what to leave, and to shore up the foundations for each other.
Watching the first traces of dawn seep out over the city, what John thinks about are the proofs Rodney didn't finish, the research he hadn't published, the Nobel prize he never got to win. He thinks of that great holy grail, the Theory of Everything, and how other people are going to have to tie the pieces together, never knowing how much longer it will take without him, what difference he would have made. He remembers the way Rodney's hands moved when he lectured, the fierce eloquence of his math. And he thinks about that last fight, the one they never had a chance to find their way back from. What, if anything, they might have salvaged in its wake.
He stands out there until the last of the night has retreated, leaving Los Angeles and all her inhabitants to the unknown providence of this pale morning. Light brims along the hills, the day preparing to spill over, and when the horizon is almost too bright to look at, John draws in one more breath of the crisp early chill and then heads inside, pulling the door shut behind him.
---
Epilogue.
[2007. October.]
John's on his way to work when his cell phone rings. It's Rodney; he slides onto the 405 interchange and thumbs the loudspeaker button. "Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?"
"Um, I had to miss it. Something kind of came up." There's a muffled resonance behind the words, either an echo from the space he's in or a problem with the line.
Frowning, John shifts his grip on the phone and merges over a lane. "Are you okay?"
"Yes?" It's difficult to read his tone with the echo. He doesn't sound bad, exactly, but vagueness from Rodney is generally a sign that something's out of whack. "It's kind of hard to tell, actually -- can you come meet me?"
He checks the clock: 1:22 p.m. "If I turn around now, I'm not going to make it in on time. What's going on? If I need to call in--"
"No," Rodney says, "it's not -- I'm at VNY right now, in hangar, um ..." He pauses briefly, like he's checking a sign or a piece of paper "18-L. Do you know where that is?"
"Yeah, that's one building over from Copernicus," John answers distractedly, "I'll be there in fifteen minutes -- what's this about?"
"I'm sort of hoping you can tell me that when you get here," Rodney says, with just the slightest touch of irony. "Now get off the damn phone before you kill someone trying to shift and steer one-handed." The phone beeps as the call cuts off, and John smirks and tosses it onto the passenger seat. He's keyed-up now, because why the hell is Rodney in the hangars at Van Nuys Airport, but whatever's going on can't be that bad if he's got the presence of mind to rag on John's driving.
It's been more than five months since Rodney lost his memory, and nothing has come back to him. Other than a few follow-up screenings at Cedars-Sinai, he hasn't gone to see anyone else about it. It took the two of them half an hour on Wikipedia to determine that psychiatric medicine didn't have anything to offer and that all a psychologist could do is try to "help him adjust." Reporting this over speakerphone to Jeannie, Rodney had rolled his eyes and said, "Wait, was I ever well-adjusted?" There'd been a long enough pause that he and John had stopped fighting for control of the keyboard, and then Jeannie said, "More now than before, actually." So that had been the end of that idea. It's the fall quarter at UCLA, and he's taking piano, music theory, music history and analysis, and (in a fit of paranoia everyone finds generally amusing) a politics course on arms control and international security. Every now and then someone in the physics department crosses paths with him and nearly chokes on their own tongue, but other than that, things are good.
They're good.
Half of John's stuff has migrated to Rodney's condo, his own apartment turning into storage for the things he doesn't really need. It's not as strange as he would have thought to share someone else's space, which he hasn't done since he left the Air Force, or to spend five nights out of seven in someone else's bed, which he never really did at all. There are some days where he feels like they're moving in two directions at once, with the present rolling steadily forward even as the two of them slowly fill in the blanks of the past. John's told Rodney the gist of the fight they had, if not exactly what was said, and other things, like the court-martial, that they'd never really talked about before. Maybe Teyla’s right and some kinds of knowledge go deeper than memory, because Rodney seems to get that these places are still raw for John, even months or years later. He seems content to wait for John to offer up the details at his own pace.
They’re good, and John's starting to be okay with that.
He parks his car in the lot at VNY and grabs his duffel out of the back, then jogs over to Hangar 18. It leases to a pretty mixed bag of tenants: smaller recreational craft, a few light jets owned by local businesses, and newer charters doing only short-to-midrange, wooing investors who'll give them the backing to build a better fleet. It's possible that Copernicus had started out in here, back before John signed on. Slot L is halfway back on the left, and John slows to a walk and then a dead stop, because parked in the space is a brand new Cessna Turbo Skylane T182T, its gray stripes sleek and gleaming in the fluorescent lights, and standing next to it is Rodney, an envelope in his hand.
"Hi," he says, and rubs a hand over the back of his head, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "So after you left, I got a call from some very efficient woman who said my order had been delivered, and did I want to notify the recipient myself or would I like her to do it. I didn't really want to go through the whole hi, amnesia, I have no clue what you're talking about, so I convinced her that I wanted to look over whatever the hell it was and got the address, which ended up being here. They had someone here to meet me. He gave me the keys and also this."
He holds out the envelope. The only word written on it is John, in Rodney's cramped and impatient handwriting, and it's unopened. John looks sharply up at Rodney, who shrugs. "I figured I should call you first. After all, it's addressed to you." One side of his mouth quirks up slightly, but the rest of his face is alert with nervousness and anticipation. Taking the envelope from him, John walks slowly under the wing and tears it open, pulling out the folded note inside.
John,
They tell me it's going to be about six months before this thing is ready. I don't
know if you'll be speaking to me by then. I don't think I'd really blame
you if you weren't.
This five and a half years plan of yours is crap. Not the whole backwoods of
Montana thing (though believe me when I say I think you're completely
insane for voluntarily going to a place where dirt is considered an acceptable
substitute for pavement). It's just a stupidly long time to stay somewhere you
hate.
You've been here seven years now, not counting Caltech. That's too long
already. Hopefully, this will speed up the process (approximately two years,
if the discrepancies between your calculations and mine aren't too great).
There are a couple inches of space between the last paragraph and the bottom of the page; for a moment, he thinks that's all there is, and then he spots the faint spider-web traces of ink bleeding through from the back. When he flips the paper over, the writing gets smaller and more slanted, like Rodney had scribbled the words down in a rush.
You were right. I'm an asshole, and I have no idea how to be happy, and you should find
someone who does because really, you're pretty awful at it too. But if for some
reason that doesn't happen, then when you get your cabin, maybe you can save
me a spot on the last flight out.
-R.
P.S. The hangar lease is paid up for a year. Don't let them tell you otherwise.
The only other thing written on the paper is the date scrawled on the front side, in the top right-hand corner: 2007-05-06. May 6th.
John closes his eyes and presses his knuckles against the center of his forehead. There's a strange sensation deep behind his sternum, like some bone long out of alignment has suddenly knit back into place, and it knocks a sound loose in his throat, quiet and hiccuping. It's laughter, he realizes, and he doesn't know where it's coming from but it doesn't seem to want to stop. Setting his other hand back on the plane, his plane, he slides down until he's perched on the edge of the landing gear, and he just lets it go, all of it, lets the laughter run out of him like water, until he's breathless and lightheaded and free.
Rodney's hand closes down over his shoulder, his thumb pressing gently into the muscles of his neck, and John tips his head back to look at him, feeling the brightness of the smile that's taken up residence on his face. A notch has crept in between Rodney's eyebrows -- curious, a little concerned -- and his eyes scan intently over John's face.
John can’t wait to take him flying.
"I don't know if I can explain this right," he says, slowly, "but I'll give it a shot."
---fin---
[ETA: If you like, you can continue on to the Coda, which also comes with its own soundtrack.