As Well as Valor, by trinityofone (NC-17)

[folavril.livejournal.com]

Rec Category: Rodney McKay
Pairing: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, Rodney McKay/OMC
Characters: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Category: Drama, Atlantis
Warning: Slash, Explicit Sex
Author on LJ: trinityofone
Author's Website: Tales of an Unreal City
Link: http://trinityofone.livejournal.com/66766.html

Why This Must Be Read: In an astoundingly pithy work, trinityofone provides a brief history of Rodney McKay, showing us the origins of the man we know on Atlantis.

On some level, Rodney still thought of himself as a polite person. He always said, “Please” and “Thank you” and “Excuse me.” (Unless he was in a real hurry, and he thought he could be forgiven in cases of life-or-death emergencies.) He didn’t cut in line. (Unless the people in front of him were being morons who couldn’t make up their tiny little minds, and there were only two pudding cups left.) He was Canadian.

But he no longer cared if everyone liked him. He couldn’t. Forget what his mother had once said (on the few occasions that he still tried to call, she was always much too busy yelling at his father or being yelled at to say much of anything to him at all): at some point he had to make a choice. Either people could like him, or they could respect him, listen to him. Not both.

Sometimes, awe was almost as good as love.