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stargateficrecShow: SGA
Rec Category: Sheppard/McKay
Characters:: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Het/Slash/Gen: Slash
Warnings: None
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aesc
Author's Website:
Links: Late Feet and I'm A Stranger Here Myself
Why This Must Be Read:
This series is set post-Atlantis and starts with Late Feet in Rodney's POV. He suffers a long-overdue epiphany after John, who is visiting Rodney, has a household accident. I'm A Stranger Here Myself, in John's POV, provides the backstory and continues where Rodney left off. The two men, who are firmly in denial on more than one issue, reach an accord in fits and starts and pitch-perfect characterizations.
Excerpt:
He opens the door and for a moment he sees John sitting on the edge of Rodney’s bed, nursing a sore thumb, one he might have accidentally whacked with a hammer, or rubbing a shoulder he’d clocked against the dresser pushed haphazardly into a corner. Has way too much invested in John sitting there with his stupid sloping grin and saying something that will make Rodney feel better and feel like an idiot simultaneously, so that for a heartbeat he doesn’t see John lying on the floor.
But no, the second heartbeat tells him, John really is on the floor. John is, in fact, lying on the floor unconscious, oh God, and not moving.
He drops the offprint, doesn’t remember carrying it up with him.
“John? Col. Sheppard?” Up close John’s face is ashen. No blood that Rodney can see – and Rodney prides himself on his ability to see a single drop of blood from miles away, sort of like a great white shark – and no horrible bruising, nothing obviously wrong other than how still John is.
Which is, of course, what’s wrong.
“Okay, think,” he commands himself. “Don’t hyperventilate, think.”
His brain doesn’t pay attention, spinning out threads of disaster in a nanosecond: John dying right here on Rodney’s bedroom floor, which means he will have to sell the house because John’s ghost will haunt it, or John waking up amnesiac with a freaked-out Canadian hovering over him, or maybe John is already dead and the bare rise-and-fall of his chest is all in Rodney’s imagination.
Rodney, breathe. Get your cell phone, is what John would say if he were awake, alive, if they were in Pegasus and it was all on Rodney to save the day.
“You don’t get to do this,” he tells John shakily as he hunts for his cell phone. Pocket, it’s in his shirt pocket goddammit, and with a shaking hand he pulls it out, flips it open, needs a moment to remember how to dial 911.
He needs another moment to remember to hit send. He wishes he had his headset, or the radio in his tac vest, which he could just smack into life and then holler unambiguously for help.
Now he has to explain stuff to the stranger on the other end of the line, like where he is and the street number, is John dead? If not, is he breathing on his own? If so, don’t move him. Can you see any blood? Any contusions? Do you know how this might have happened?
“He was trying to fix a ceiling lamp with his face,” Rodney shouts at the stranger. “How the hell do I know? I think he fell.”
The woman, damn her, is too used to dealing with hysterical people to get worked up at Rodney’s histrionics. Instead, she tells him the ambulance is on its way; they’ll be there in just a few minutes, and do you need me to stay on the line?
“No,” Rodney snarls. He slams the phone shut and shoves it back in his pocket, collapses next to John because his knees are killing him. Stays close, close enough to see John’s brow furrowed a bit in what looks like pain, or like he’s puzzled, trying to figure out what hurts.
“You’ve had worse doing some idiot stunt in one of those planes of yours,” he tells John shakily. “God only knows how badly g-forces have scrambled your brain. It’s a wonder you’re able to feed and clothe yourself. How is it you’re allowed out of the house? And for that matter, why did I agree to let you come over and handle what is obviously dangerous equipment…”
He lectures John on his carelessness and obvious mental impairment – “and if you’re not brain damaged now, then you will be” – for another minute before segueing into how, while John may be capable of seeing irony in the situation, Rodney really isn’t.
Because you do not do this, you do not fall off a ladder while adjusting a light fixture and hit your head and go unconscious, in this galaxy or any other, when you’ve survived goddamn Wraith and armed maniacs and storms and explosions and nuclear bombs and still more Wraith, and you do not do this when Carson is thousands of miles away in Scotland – so he might as well be on the moon for all the use he is – and you do not do this when there isn’t a stargate or a puddle jumper or a Daedalus to transport or fly or beam you to a hospital.
Rodney tells John all this in a very loud voice as he listens desperately for the ambulance, and keeps John’s hand in a death grip (ha!), memorizes calluses to pass the time. John isn’t wearing his stupid black wristband – he only wore it because of the P90’s recoil, no big thing, he’d explained after Rodney’d finally worn him down on the subject – only a black thready bracelet thing that serves no useful purpose except that John likes to twist it when he’s thinking.
It makes John’s wrist look delicate, the bones underneath it ephemeral, and Rodney tells himself it’s all in his stupid overdeveloped head, that John is not going to die or vanish. John will be fine. As soon as the paramedics get here.
...
Rec Category: Sheppard/McKay
Characters:: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Het/Slash/Gen: Slash
Warnings: None
Author on LJ:
aescAuthor's Website:
Links: Late Feet and I'm A Stranger Here Myself
Why This Must Be Read:
This series is set post-Atlantis and starts with Late Feet in Rodney's POV. He suffers a long-overdue epiphany after John, who is visiting Rodney, has a household accident. I'm A Stranger Here Myself, in John's POV, provides the backstory and continues where Rodney left off. The two men, who are firmly in denial on more than one issue, reach an accord in fits and starts and pitch-perfect characterizations.
Excerpt:
He opens the door and for a moment he sees John sitting on the edge of Rodney’s bed, nursing a sore thumb, one he might have accidentally whacked with a hammer, or rubbing a shoulder he’d clocked against the dresser pushed haphazardly into a corner. Has way too much invested in John sitting there with his stupid sloping grin and saying something that will make Rodney feel better and feel like an idiot simultaneously, so that for a heartbeat he doesn’t see John lying on the floor.
But no, the second heartbeat tells him, John really is on the floor. John is, in fact, lying on the floor unconscious, oh God, and not moving.
He drops the offprint, doesn’t remember carrying it up with him.
“John? Col. Sheppard?” Up close John’s face is ashen. No blood that Rodney can see – and Rodney prides himself on his ability to see a single drop of blood from miles away, sort of like a great white shark – and no horrible bruising, nothing obviously wrong other than how still John is.
Which is, of course, what’s wrong.
“Okay, think,” he commands himself. “Don’t hyperventilate, think.”
His brain doesn’t pay attention, spinning out threads of disaster in a nanosecond: John dying right here on Rodney’s bedroom floor, which means he will have to sell the house because John’s ghost will haunt it, or John waking up amnesiac with a freaked-out Canadian hovering over him, or maybe John is already dead and the bare rise-and-fall of his chest is all in Rodney’s imagination.
Rodney, breathe. Get your cell phone, is what John would say if he were awake, alive, if they were in Pegasus and it was all on Rodney to save the day.
“You don’t get to do this,” he tells John shakily as he hunts for his cell phone. Pocket, it’s in his shirt pocket goddammit, and with a shaking hand he pulls it out, flips it open, needs a moment to remember how to dial 911.
He needs another moment to remember to hit send. He wishes he had his headset, or the radio in his tac vest, which he could just smack into life and then holler unambiguously for help.
Now he has to explain stuff to the stranger on the other end of the line, like where he is and the street number, is John dead? If not, is he breathing on his own? If so, don’t move him. Can you see any blood? Any contusions? Do you know how this might have happened?
“He was trying to fix a ceiling lamp with his face,” Rodney shouts at the stranger. “How the hell do I know? I think he fell.”
The woman, damn her, is too used to dealing with hysterical people to get worked up at Rodney’s histrionics. Instead, she tells him the ambulance is on its way; they’ll be there in just a few minutes, and do you need me to stay on the line?
“No,” Rodney snarls. He slams the phone shut and shoves it back in his pocket, collapses next to John because his knees are killing him. Stays close, close enough to see John’s brow furrowed a bit in what looks like pain, or like he’s puzzled, trying to figure out what hurts.
“You’ve had worse doing some idiot stunt in one of those planes of yours,” he tells John shakily. “God only knows how badly g-forces have scrambled your brain. It’s a wonder you’re able to feed and clothe yourself. How is it you’re allowed out of the house? And for that matter, why did I agree to let you come over and handle what is obviously dangerous equipment…”
He lectures John on his carelessness and obvious mental impairment – “and if you’re not brain damaged now, then you will be” – for another minute before segueing into how, while John may be capable of seeing irony in the situation, Rodney really isn’t.
Because you do not do this, you do not fall off a ladder while adjusting a light fixture and hit your head and go unconscious, in this galaxy or any other, when you’ve survived goddamn Wraith and armed maniacs and storms and explosions and nuclear bombs and still more Wraith, and you do not do this when Carson is thousands of miles away in Scotland – so he might as well be on the moon for all the use he is – and you do not do this when there isn’t a stargate or a puddle jumper or a Daedalus to transport or fly or beam you to a hospital.
Rodney tells John all this in a very loud voice as he listens desperately for the ambulance, and keeps John’s hand in a death grip (ha!), memorizes calluses to pass the time. John isn’t wearing his stupid black wristband – he only wore it because of the P90’s recoil, no big thing, he’d explained after Rodney’d finally worn him down on the subject – only a black thready bracelet thing that serves no useful purpose except that John likes to twist it when he’s thinking.
It makes John’s wrist look delicate, the bones underneath it ephemeral, and Rodney tells himself it’s all in his stupid overdeveloped head, that John is not going to die or vanish. John will be fine. As soon as the paramedics get here.
...
