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Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
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Published:
2020-11-04
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566
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1/1
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13
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1,039

Just Keep Smiling

Summary:

McShep PreSlash
AN Was very, very bored on a bus and started to scribble, noticed I had written the word smile, this all came from that believe it or not
Disclaimer – Don't own, just playing
Summary – John's mother had always told him to smile but now that smile is starting to crack.
Submitted through the StargateAtlantisSlash mailing list.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Just Keep Smiling
by BlackRose

John's mother had always told him to smile, `your face will stick if the wind changes,' she joked, `you might as well make as sure it's a pleasant expression you're stuck with Johnny.'

John's father had snorted, informed John that he looked demented when he smiled and had scolded him mother for filling his head with `that sort of rubbish,' John's mother had ignored him, rolling her eyes in his father's direction, grinning at John as she did so.

John's teachers had nearly always commented on it too, `such a nice happy boy, a joy to teach,' they'd say when the time for a parent teacher conference came around, `always smiling.' John would always sit next to his mother smiling modestly, he had a lot of time to practice that smile.

John's recruitment officer had commented as well, `you won't get far with a grin like that son, lose the attitude.' His training officer had said something similar too, `wipe that fucking smirk off soldier,' he'd roared, John hadn't even flinched, grinning disarmingly at him.

`Cocky,' they'd called him, right up until they'd realised just how good he actually was, at that point all talk about having him removed from the programme was stopped and he was recruited into Black Ops and God knows you needed to keep smiling in there.

Now he smiles because people keep looking at him and he knows that as long as John Sheppard, hero and saviour of Atlantis is smiling people around him will smile too.

He also knows what will happen if he stops.

So John smiles for them and himself because he's been smiling for so long now that he's realised that the only two expressions he feels comfortable with is glaring and the inane grin.

The grin is the default.

But you can only smile for so long and John thinks he's losing it because for the first time in his life it's not just a squadron who are looking at him to guide them. This time it's a city full of people, civilians and soldiers alike, all watching him for guidance and a sign that things are going to be ok, that the wraith won't come, that they're not all going to die. And John can feel his smile starting to crack

Because *everyone* is looking at him and he knows that the day he stops smiling is the day that people will panic, but he doesn't know how much longer he can stand this and no one can help him because no one knows.

Or at least that's what he thinks until the night Rodney McKay catches him in the armoury after counting their ammunition one more time and realising, yet again, that they just haven't got enough.

And John looks up, tired and Rodney says three words that no one has said to him since his mother died, the words that had become John's personal mantra ever since then.

"Just keep smiling."

And suddenly, John thinks he can because Rodney is a genius and what's more he's a brutally honest genius and John knows that if he honestly didn't think he would be able to save them then he wouldn't be saying this now.

Seven days later John is flying a bomb into the heart of a wraith hive ship and he thinks about Rodney.

And he smiles.

Fin

Notes:

This orphaned work was originally on Pejas WWOMB posted by author The Blackrose.
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