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Eight weeks of having Atlantis lurk in San Francisco Bay resulted in a multitude of complaints from a curious public about inaccessible shipping lanes - prompting the city's relocation to the Arctic Ocean. Six interminable months later, Atlantis was finally cleared to return to Pegasus. Late one December evening John Sheppard sat the command chair, gratefully sinking into his familiar connection to the city, and guided it into a high-Earth orbit before engaging the two fully charged ZPMs that would allow them to traverse hyperspace. Twelve days later, when they'd made it back to New Atlantis, John felt the same sort of homecoming he'd experienced when he first set foot in the City. He pondered the oddity of that even as the sunshine through the ornate windows warmed him.
The expedition members settle into the routine of Pegasus as if they'd never left. Come to think of it, though, Teyla's wide smile when she's reunited with Kanaan and Torren John is anything but run of the mill. Woolsey, back in charge of the expedition, is ready to resume their regular off-world missions, but John holds back to give Teyla a chance to get reacquainted with her love and her first born. "How 'bout Lorne and his team takes the first couple we're back trips, Richard?"
Richard Woolsey looks uncertain until he follows John's line of reasoning. "Yes, of course, Colonel. Lorne's team is certainly competent. However, we do have a few missions that it would be more appropriate - diplomatically speaking - for your team to handle personally."
John puts a fist on the back of his hip as he stretches. "End of next week should be long enough. That okay?" At Richard's nod of agreement, John turns to leave. "That'll give you time to decide what to do with Todd," he says, ducking out to avoid entanglement in that particular discussion.
"Chuck," John says. The tech, deep in conversation with a curvy, red-headed Marine, doesn't reply. "That's two," John thinks. He glances at the watch Rodney custom-made for him, calibrated to the planet's 29-hour day, realizes it's lunchtime, and so he heads to the Mess.
This trip to Pegasus is very different from their mission six years ago. First and foremost, it's not the one-way journey they'd known was a possibility when they arrived under Elizabeth's command. With multiple ZPMs, trips to the Milky Way galaxy would be - while not exactly commonplace - available. They even have a scheduled dialout every three days, with phone calls or even videoconferences readily available for those who need them.
But the thing that hits John the hardest in the first week after their return to Pegasus is how people seem to be pairing up. Teyla and Kanaan (who John didn't catch a glimpse of for the first four days back in Pegasus) are a prime example. And there are others; many, many others. Couplehood seems to be spreading across the expedition. Walking into the Mess, John spots Teyla sitting with Kanaan and Torren John in the corner by the balcony. She's almost glowing, and John figures she'll be having a talk with him in the near future. He hopes that if she is pregnant, this baby's birth is much less eventful than Torren's.
Two tables further in, he nods to Laura Cadman, who took up with Carson (Carson 2.0 as John calls him, while Rodney usually sticks with something ending in "clone") while they were stuck in San Francisco Bay. Evan Lorne is at the other end of their table, making goo-goo eyes at a botanist - Purcell? Parnell? Parrish - that was it. John hopes the scientist gets a clue soon. His second in command doesn't need to be distracted now that they're back home in Pegasus. He grins at Lorne, who blushes before nodding back.
Nearing the serving line, John spots Ronon and Amelia, who don't even notice John pass, so rapt are they in each other. Then there's Radek, pulling out a chair for Corporal Delmar. Rodney, upon first meeting the 6'4" woman, had asked if she'd flown in directly from the Amazon. She'd cocked her head to one side, pinched Rodney's cheek, and announced in her thick Texas twang, "Sugar, I could just squish you like a bug!"
The pairing off of the Atlantis expedition; John takes it as a sign of the times. They're no longer solely an exploratory expedition. Colonization seems to be on the table, too. If only the person he's interested was also interested in him.
Well, speak of the Devil. John turns at a commotion over at the tray-return area and sees Rodney with a plastic plate twirling noisily on the floor in front of him. The remnants of a salad drip off of his uniform as new-to-Pegasus scientist Ashley Dallas quickly strides away as the plate finally comes to a halt.
John grabs a couple of premade sandwiches and heads over to Rodney, taking him by an elbow and leading him out onto the deserted balcony. "You okay, buddy?" he asks, picking an arugula leaf off Rodney's shoulder and tossing it over the railing.
Rodney sighs. "Yeah... Guess she wasn't the one, either. I swear, you bring up kids on the second date..."
John snorts. "She was all wrong for you, anyway," he says, steering Rodney to a table. "What was that, your sixteenth date since we got here?" (Not that John was counting.)
"More like my fourth," Rodney counters, jutting his chin defiantly. "And what do you mean by 'She was all wrong for me'?"
"A soft scientist, Rodney? Really?" John shakes his head.
Rodney glares defiantly. "She's a sociological archaeologist." John's answering smirk spurs him on. "I'll have you know that's a field that..." He can't continue in the face of John's expression, saying, "Okay, okay, I know. You're right. Jesus, stop with the smirk already."
John eats his sandwich to the tune of Rodney talking about settling down. He manages not to sigh or roll his eyes as he listens to the tirade he's heard at least a dozen times since planning began for Atlantis' return to Pegasus. Breaking into the part about sperm motility after 40 (a subject he could happily never think about again), he says, "It'll happen, buddy." Desperate to derail any more talk of romance and inheritable intelligence, he continues with, "Hey, we haven't taken the cars out since we got back. You game?"
Rodney cuts his eyes at John. "Only if you get rid of that illegal mod you made back on Earth."
John doesn't even try to suppress his eyeroll this time. "Fine, McKay," he says, standing up and tossing their trash into a nearby bin. "Or I could give your car the same overdrive?"
A grinning Rodney says, "I accept. My quarters in fifteen minutes."
()()()()()
John stops by one of Atlantis' robotics labs to grab a few parts. He figures the MALP team won't miss them, and really, it's in the base's best interest to have a happy Chief Scientist. He grabs his racecar and remote control from his room, and is at Rodney's quarters well before the fifteen minutes are up.
He lets himself in without knocking. "Where is it?" he calls.
Rodney answers from the bathroom, "Trunk at the foot of my bed." John frees the car from a tangle of science journals and winter sweaters, snags Rodney's toolkit from his desk and gets comfortable on the overstuffed sofa.
"You wanna watch?" John calls, just as Rodney appears in the doorway. Rodney's face is freshly scrubbed and he's putting on a new shirt, the errant salad greens and dressing a thing of the past. John's swallows dryly at the sight of a pebbled nipple mounding Rodney's undershirt, and quickly turns his attention to the car on the coffee table.
Rodney shakes his head. "Naah... I trust you." He sits at his desk and boots up his laptop, keeping one eye on John's modifications while he checks his email.
Rodney breaks the silence by tapping his ear and saying, "Yes?" He listens for a moment before asking, "What's the message?"
Rodney's concerned expression brings John to a standstill, Allen wrench in one hand and part of the suspension in the other. "Okay," Rodney says, tapping his radio off.
"What's going on?" John asks, though he's not sure Rodney hears him. Rodney's wearing a look of near-total concentration that's especially hard to penetrate. "Rodney!"
"What? Oh, it's Jeannie. When they opened the wormhole there was a message for me to call her right away."
Rodney sits frozen until John clears his throat. "Well," John says, pointing the Allen wrench at the laptop. "Tell her I say 'Hi'. Hey, ask her to check if Mads heard back about the 'druper' thing yet."
"Yes, yes, all your important secrets with my niece. I'm sure that's exactly why my sister left me a message to call," Rodney says, bringing the laptop and sitting on the sofa next to John. Warmth pours off Rodney; they'd shared enough tents off-world for John to know that he's a furnace. John resists the urge to move closer, still unused to the slightly chillier temperatures of New Atlantis. To remove the temptation completely, he lies down on the sofa as Rodney types up a quick email response to someone before starting up Skype.
Rodney clicks on Jeannie's speed-dial entry, sitting just far enough from John to avoid sitting on his hair. John turns his attention back to the model as the software makes a few noises as a prelude to connecting. Jeannie answers on the third ring and flinches back at Rodney's opening salvo. "Jeannie? You okay? Maddie? The English teacher?"
John leans up to sneak a peek at the screen, smiling at a flour-smudged Jeannie who's blowing a curl away from her eye. "Say hi to your Uncle Mer and Uncle John, Maddie" she says. John waves at the five-year-old, then goes back to his retooling of the model after Jeannie reappears and they exchange greetings.
"Aww," Jeannie says, a broad grin on her face.
"Yes, yes?" Rodney says, rolling one hand impatiently. "What is it that's so important?"
"Well, I was gonna tell you that I'm pregnant, but this is much better news-"
"You're pregnant? Again?"
It takes Rodney and John a second before they simultaneously ask, "Wait. What better news?"
"Duh, Mer," Jeannie says, motioning to John. "You finally told him!"
"Told him what-" Rodney starts, before the obvious truth hits him with a full-face blush. Glancing down to find Sheppard watching, he blurts, "Shit!" and slams the laptop screen down. The room is immersed in stunned silence, and John can feel the couch shaking from Rodney's suddenly jittery leg.
"Mer?" Jeannie's voice comes from the closed laptop. "Mer, what happened? The screen went black."
John looks up, but Rodney won't meet his eyes. "Dammit," Rodney says, opening the laptop, revealing Jeannie in an extreme close-up as she tries to resolve the non-existent technical issues. "I knew I shouldn't have disabled the sleep function on this stupid thing," he says to nobody in particular.
Rodney finally darts a look at John, but quickly turns away. "Congratulations, Jeannie," he says to the screen with a heavy sigh.
"You are coming for the birth, right?" Jeannie demands. When Rodney nods numbly, she adds, "And you'll bring John? Rodney, promise me you'll bring John!"
"Goodbye, Jeannie," Rodney says, hitting the key sequence to end the video call. He and John sit in stilted silence until he remembers to key his radio. "McKay to Campbell. Chuck, we're done. You can break the connection to Earth. Thanks."
The stifling silence returns. John turns the racecar in his hands just to do something. Anything. He inchworms along the sofa until he can rest his head on Rodney's leg. Wearing a guilty look, Rodney finally lets John catch his eye. John carefully sets the car on the coffee table and takes a deep breath. He reaches out, never looking away, and meets Rodney's right hand gripping the laptop. Gently working it free, John sets the laptop on the floor, then takes Rodney's hand in his, and brings their coupled hands to his chest. "I guess...maybe...we need to talk about some stuff?"
He offers a gentle smile and rubs his thumb back and forth across Rodney's until the tension goes out of him. Rodney blows out a breath, smiling back before he leans down to gently graze John's lips with his own.
Pairing off in Pegasus. John's felt like he's home since they got back, but now, as Rodney's tongue teases his own, he feels he's finally caught up with the times.