SquidgeWorld Archive

Thirty three years before he met Rodney McKay John Sheppard first saw a math problem, he was only just four but he can still remember the utter ease at which the numbers he recognised effortlessly from the margins of books and magazine fit together, perfectly. He'd wandered past the door of the bigger kids' class rooms and he stalled while the explanation was given for the problem, as thirty children failed to understand he'd watched the numbers pinned up on the walls of the class room join together in his head forming strings that added and minused and multiplied and divided. That night when he'd asked his mother about area and volume and how many cubic feet and inches his birthday cake was she'd nearly fallen out of her chair.

Thirty years before he met Rodney McKay John realised he wanted to fly. It was his birthday present, a trip to an airshow and it stuck with him for the rest of his life. He'd asked his father in a whisper how fast the planes were going and his father had laughed at him and jokingly told his child prodigy to work it out. That night John had sat with a ruler, a map and a recording of the show and had eventually come to the conclusion that anything that could go faster than two hundred miles an hour was okay by him. Exactly a year later on a trip to the funfair John rode the Ferris wheel for the first time and decided that this was probably the closest he could get to flying while on the ground. It instantly became his favourite ride.

Nineteen years before he met Rodney McKay John signed up, airforce naturally, despite the protests of his parents, teachers and guidance counsellor. They wanted John to become some kind of mathematical genius and John had only tried to explain once to them how math was just so perfectly logical and organised that it encompasses everything because if he doesn't have the right angle when he lands or the right trajectory or the right speed then things will go to hell very, very quickly. Besides the airforce didn't just have planes, they built planes and what's more they trained him to fly them and though he would groan and complain about the early mornings he would never come to regret the decision he made to join.

Not even when he spent the day fifteen years before he met Rodney McKay watching his men get picked off one by one with nothing he could do about it. At the end of that day a late birthday present comes in, ridiculous hours, terrible pay and no glory but no partners either, no one to watch get killed because you weren't quick enough or strong enough or just plain good enough to protect them. John doesn't even have to think before agreeing to the black ops contract.

Five years before John Sheppard met Rodney McKay he was drafted to Afghanistan, they promised he'd be out by Christmas, he'd snorted, he'd heard it all before.

Two years before John Sheppard met Rodney McKay is the day he realises just how low the military are willing to sink, three men trapped behind enemy lines, three of *his* men trapped behind enemy lines and they won't let him go and help them, John grits his teeth suits up and before five minutes have gone by his entire squadron have offered to go with him. He refuses, unwilling to let them screw their career up too, stating firmly that he'll make it a direct order if need be. They're all doing something else when he leaves, *pointedly* doing something else and he knows that no one will tell tales of where he went,

One year before John met Rodney McKay he's celebrating by himself in Antarctica, almost unwilling to admit he likes it there. He thinks of the men who'd watched him leave that night and wonders how many of them are still alive, wonders if someone would find out it he asked, wonders if anyone would care. There's no one to toast them with, after all.

On John Sheppard's thirty-seventh birthday he met Rodney McKay and something shifted, it would take him exactly a year to realise that this was the best birthday present he's ever had.

One year after John Sheppard met Rodney McKay they're both lying in the same bed, tangled up in each other on the Daedalus ship that's taking them home and John realises that he's actually happy. He kisses Rodney on the nose, unable to stop himself and then laughs as the scientist blinks confused blue eyes up at him.

"I love you," he whispers.

Rodney yawns and smiles sleepily at him and says just three words, "happy birthday John."

AN Not completely sure about the ending but just fun really, maybe even fluff so I don't suppose it matters.