Aegis, by Springwoof and Leah (NC-17)

[darsynia.livejournal.com]

Rec Category: John Sheppard

Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Elizabeth Weir, Teyla Emmagan, Carson Beckett, Aiden Ford, Radek Zelenka
Pairing: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard

Category: Canon AU
, romance, first time, angst, episode related
Warning: slash

Author on LJ: leahwoof

Author's Website: Authors' combined account on Wraithbait

Link: Aegis on the Big Bang site, or on Wraithbait, with some companion stories.



Why This Must Be Read:

This story is delightfully inventive and a long, captivating read from start to finish. As put by the authors:

The Ancients' genes didn't just confer the power to activate their technology. For ten percent of Earth's population, like John Sheppard, the ATA gene also gave them Gifts: special abilities that made them admired, envied, and feared.

The effect of this is a completely fresh take on the Atlantis expedition and the events from just before they step through the gate all the way through the first season. The Gifts are simply brilliant and fit into the storyline in really inventive ways. Add to that the mystery of John's strange behavior as it's slowly unveiled in flashbacks, his attraction to Rodney, and the way this impacts events we already know about. Aegis's John Sheppard is wonderfully complex, and I found myself quite literally 'on the edge of my seat' in terms of hoping everything would work out for him.

This writing duo is adept at the sort of writing that carries the reader along with the emotions of the characters, and the fact that this was an entry in sgabigbang for 2007 means that those emotional scenes have illustrations to boot.


Excerpt:
John came into his Gift during adolescence, which wasn't unusual. At first, nobody noticed, including himself. As a little kid, he'd been really cute, and had learned early on that a smile often got him what he wanted. But he didn't realize that the 'cute and flirty' routine shouldn't have worked anymore. He wasn't all that cute now--one look in the mirror showed him a skinny, gawky teenager, all knees and elbows with floppy, unruly hair, too-big nose, pimples, and braces, with a disgruntled scowl perpetually in place. He should have suffered through the typical adolescent let-down of not having 'cute' in his arsenal any longer.

Instead, he was fairly popular. He had lots of school friends--he had a damned entourage--despite being new in town and transferring into school his freshman year when his dad had been assigned to a new base.

His parents didn't notice anything strange. If John had lots of friends and hangers-on, well, John had always had the knack for fitting in and adapting to new situations really quickly, and he'd always made friends easily. And if he was tired and hungry all the time, well, then, weren't teenagers supposed to be hungry and tired all the time?

There was nobody to blame, really, the counselors all told him later, after the State Tester for Gifted Children had been to his school and identified him as a Charmer. It wasn't as if he'd charmed his teachers and school friends on purpose, the counselors said. It wasn't as if John would abuse his Gift now that he was aware of it, they told him in a tone of friendly warning. No harm done, they assured him.

No harm done.