Fandom: SGA
Rating: R
Pairing: John/Rodney, Teyla/Ronon
Length: 2250 words.
Summary: The gate on M5R-Y34 was perfectly ordinary except for the way it took off the gate team’s clothes as they stepped through the event horizon.

A/N: Sometimes you write deep and involved stories about sexual orientation and the difference between desire and love, and other times you write stories where people are naked and it's funny.

The gate on M5R-Y34 was perfectly ordinary except for the way it took off the gate team’s clothes as they stepped through the event horizon.

“Is there a draft?” asked Rodney, then looked down. “Wait, I’ve had this dream.”

“Wow, okay,” said John, looking around at his team, and at himself.

“I believe the gate may be malfunctioning,” observed Teyla, and drew her P-90 strategically across her chest.

“Um, Sheppard?” said Ronon, paler than John had ever seen him. “I think not all of you guys made it through.” John followed the direction of Ronon’s wide-eyed gaze, which was flickering between him and Rodney, just below waist-level.

“Oh, uh. No,” said John, wishing he’d taken the time to tell Ronon some of these things when he wasn’t forced to make it a show and tell. “On Earth, we do that. Some of us do, at least.”

“Why?” asked Ronon, horrified.

Rodney was trying to pull his pack off his shoulders, presumably to hold it in front of himself, but he was stuck in one of the straps and growing more flushed and frantic by the second.

“Hey,” said John. “McKay. Breathe.”

“Oh, very easy for you to say, Colonel Draft Horse,” Rodney snapped.

John tried very hard not to look smug at this. Judging by the way Teyla rolled her eyes he had failed completely. “It’s not like you’ve got any reason to hide either, there,” John told Rodney, taking a quick inventory while Rodney hopped around on one foot, trying to hold his knee up over his groin.

“I -- I don’t?” Rodney said, startled. “I mean. No, of course I don’t. Only. I wouldn’t mind some pants anyway.”

“I got a spare pair in here somewhere,” said John, swinging his pack around and opening it.

“Oh, thank god. Gimme, gimme,” said Rodney, and lunged for John’s pack.

“Why do you think it let us keep our equipment but not our clothing?” asked Teyla, calmly rooting through her own bag and coming up with one of the standard-issue foil thermal blankets.

“Okay, but seriously,” said Ronon, worried, “have you *looked* down there, Sheppard? I really think there’s a problem.”

“It’s called circumcision and it’s very hygienically sound,” said Rodney, hauling hard on John’s spare pair of pants, apparently trying to get the fly closed without castrating himself. He glared at John. “God, what are you, Kate Moss? It’s like trying to get inside a tube sock here!”

“Well, let me have ‘em, then,” John demanded. “You can wear a blanket, like Teyla.”

Teyla was in front of the DHD, already neatly tucked into the thermal blanket like it was an elegant new style of toga. “Should we dial Atlantis and ask them to send through another pair of pants in a larger size?”

John snapped his fingers and pointed at Teyla. “See, that’s probably something I should have thought of before I let McKay put on my spare pants.”

“Oh, and a shirt,” said Rodney, grunting as he managed to fasten the button of John’s BDUs. “And what about pants for Ronon, too?”

“I’m good,” said Ronon, shrugging.

“Pants for Ronon would be great,” John contributed loudly over the clanking of the DHD.

They shuffled clear of the gate, John unfurling his own thermal blanket and tucking it around his waist like a towel, grateful that M5R-Y34 had a tropical climate. Teyla pressed the blue half-globe in the center of the DHD, and the unit made a pitiful moan before going dead.

“No,” said Rodney. “No, no, no. I’ve had this dream too.”

“At least you have pants!” said John, reproachfully.

Rodney squatted down by the DHD, reaching out to pull off the panel that protected the unit’s crystal innards. The motion was accompanied by an ominous ripping sound.

“Oh, Christ,” said John. “See, this is why I should have been the one to get the pants!”

“My dream never included this,” said Rodney, frozen with one hand flattened over the tear in the ass of the BDUs. “Colonel, give me that blanket.”

“No!” said John, backing away from Rodney’s grabby hands. “Fix the damn DHD and worry about your modesty later.”

“What’s modesty?” asked Ronon, stretching languorously in the tropical sun.

***

Chuck dialed in when the team missed their one-hour check-in.

“It’s not really that funny,” said Rodney into his radio, cross-legged on the ground with control crystals scattered around him like broken teeth.

Chuck managed to speak through the waves of giggles. “Sorry, no, it really really is.”

“Would you just send some damn clothes?” said John, scowling at the event horizon.

“Right, sir, right away,” snorted Chuck.

A pack flew through the gate about a minute later, and Rodney pounced on it. “Food!” he exclaimed. “Oh, and pants for Ronon, thank god. Keep ‘em coming, Chuck!”

The gate coughed and went blank.

“Oh, come *on*!” said John, clutching the slippery edges of his blanket, which kept threatening to slide apart.

“I believe the gate is still malfunctioning,” said Teyla, thoughtfully, while Ronon stepped into the single pair of pants that had made it through.

***

“Okay, next time Atlantis dials in, this is what we say,” said Rodney, one hand behind his back to hold the ripped pants together. “We say that we need a T67 dash Q DHD control crystal, because ours --” he held it aloft -- “has a giant hole through it.”

“So T67 dash Q is the crystal in charge of nudity,” concluded John, filing the fact away for future reference.

“It’s the crystal in charge of matter coherence and it plays a role in stabilizing the event horizon at this end, which is why we’re royally screwed unless Atlantis can get a spare crystal over here,” said Rodney. “Also? We’re damn lucky we just lost our clothes. It could have been --” He pressed his lips together, grimly. “Let’s just say, Ronon getting circumcised might have been one of the milder side effects.”

John squinted across the clearing to where Teyla and Ronon were pacing the perimeter. “But Atlantis can dial in, right?”

“They can dial in,” confirmed Rodney irritably. “Didn’t I just say they could dial in? Didn’t they just *dial in*?”

“Well, the way the gate died, I thought maybe--” John returned, annoyed.

“They can dial in all they want,” said Rodney, “but unless I can jury-rig something to stabilize the event horizon here, nothing’s coming through in one piece. That last dial-in is what blew out this crystal.”

“Well, what if they try again and blow out another?” asked John, worried.

“I pulled the power to prevent that,” Rodney said dismissively. “They’ll try again at the two-hour check-in. I’ll try to have something in place by then.”

John nodded, as though Rodney needed his approval. “Good,” he said, then added, “Um.”

“What?” sniped Rodney, head back inside the DHD.

“Turns out the thermal blankets are kind of warm,” said John, apologetically. “Teyla’s catching some shade over there. I might join her. You okay to keep working here by yourself?”

“Yes, yes, go. Luckily,” said Rodney, bending back to his work with a sigh, “these pants have their own ventilation system.”

***

“Lorne?” asked Ronon.

“Uh, yes. Yes, definitely,” said John, after a moment’s thought.

“Huh. Parrish?”

“Don’t know,” replied John, frowning.

“What about Zelenka?”

“Nope!” contributed Rodney loudly from his place by the DHD.

“I just never want to hear how you know that,” John said, making a face.

“Like you’re one to talk,” said Rodney. “You’ve just proven that you know way too much about the penises of every one of your men.”

“They’re called locker room showers,” said John, defensively. “Not everyone is paranoid about someone seeing their Daffy Duck boxers.”

Rodney sat up and pointed a crystal at John. “You were sworn to secrecy about those.”

“Yeah, well,” John said, “consider it payback for telling me that Zelenka’s not cut.”

“What about Warner?” asked Ronon.

John stared at Ronon. “Warner’s a woman.”

Ronon’s brows came together. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” John reassured him, squirming a little as more perspiration rolled down the crack of his ass.

“So why does everyone say ‘Warner’s got the biggest balls on Atlantis’?” Ronon asked.

“Because she does,” said Rodney, unhelpfully.

“Rodney!” John said, flapping the edges of his blanket to try and get a breeze going underneath.

“Oh, come on, Sheppard, have you *seen* the woman handle a bazooka?” said Rodney. “She carries those things around like they’re the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels!”

“Plus all that chest hair,” said Ronon, nodding.

“That’s it!” said John, pushing to his feet. “I’m taking off the blanket before my ass starts pruning up from my own sweat.” He faced the jungle greenery and whipped the thermal blanket away, sighing with relief as the humid air hit his sweaty skin.

“Yates?” asked Ronon after a brief silence.

“Cut,” said John, closing his eyes with bliss.

“Seriously, what are you, *studying* everyone’s dicks?” Rodney asked, astounded.

“Not everyone,” said John, defensive.

“Oh, yes, just the hot military types,” scoffed Rodney.

“It’s perfectly normal for guys to know stuff like that about each other,” John said, only a little uncertainly.

“Okay, two-hour check-in!” Rodney announced.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to look,” confided Ronon as they turned to watch the gate activate. “On Sateda, men don’t usually look at each other’s penises.”

“Well, things are different on Earth,” said John as confidently as he could. “We look all the time. It’s normal.”

“Oh,” said Ronon, while Rodney shouted at Chuck through the radio. “On Sateda, it was only the gay men who did that.”

***

Teyla gave up on her thermal toga when the second check-in wormhole collapsed before Atlantis could get the crystal to them.

“We’ve got enough parts here for one more try,” said Rodney. “I told them another hour, to make sure they have time to find the right crystal. It’d be just like Zelenka to send through a T67 dash F instead of a-- Oh, wow.”

“Dr. McKay, I apologize if I am making you uncomfortable,” said Teyla, “but the heat has become overwhelming.” She settled back down to the ground, stretching out her limbs to expose more skin to the air.

“No, not -- not uncomfortable,” said Rodney in a high-pitched voice. “I’ll just. Keep working, here.”

“We’ll just keep our eyes front and center,” promised John, demonstrating by looking straight ahead. Unfortunately, this meant he was staring at the exposed crack of Rodney’s butt. “Or, you know. Just keep our eyes closed.”

“I am not concerned for my own sake,” said Teyla. “On Athos, it was common to go about without clothing during the hot season.”

“On Sateda, if a woman exposed her breasts, it meant she was looking for a wealthy husband,” said Ronon, a little censoriously.

“Hey, same as home,” said John, smiling.

“On Athos,” said Teyla to Ronon, pointedly, “a tattoo on a man’s neck meant that he was infertile.”

“On Sateda,” said Ronon, his voice getting lower, “it meant that a man had proven himself to have great stamina.”

There was a long silence, followed by a rustling sound, followed by more silence.

John opened his eyes cautiously to discover a few waving ferns marking the place where Teyla and Ronon had apparently adjourned into the undergrowth.

“Every time, those two,” said Rodney, his teeth clenched around a screwdriver. “Put them in a hot climate and they’re going at it like monkeys.”

John flopped back onto the ground and stared up at the sapphire sky. “Wanna hear something funny?”

“Hmm,” said Rodney, preoccupied.

“Ronon told me once, when he was drunk, that his tattoo is Satedan for ‘I love my mom’.”

Half a minute later, Rodney replied, “You’re so full of shit.”

“Almost had you,” grinned John.

***

Rodney put his screwdriver down and sighed. “I actually don’t have anything else I can do until I get the control crystal,” he admitted. “I was just pretending to work so I could force myself to look away from Teyla’s rack.”

“Huh,” said John. “I thought so.”

“Sort of like how you’re pretending to look at the sky so you don’t stare at my ass,” added Rodney.

“I am not,” said John, feebly.

Rodney walked over and dropped down to sit beside John. “Are too.”

“I was just contemplating how you destroyed my pants,” John said, ignoring the way Rodney was hovering in his field of vision.

“With my fine and shapely ass,” Rodney amended.

John blinked at the sky twice, then turned his head and met Rodney’s eyes. “Okay, so. Did you ever dream this part?”

“Colonel, please,” said Rodney, smiling with half his mouth, “all my best dreams involve you lying naked in a field.”

“Oh,” said John, surprised. Then, after a moment’s thought, he offered, “We can have sex if you promise never to tell me the story of how you know about Zelenka’s uncircumcised penis.”

“Deal,” said Rodney, and wriggled out of John’s torn BDU bottoms.

***

“What if it takes our clothes off again?” asked John as they got ready to step back through the gate.

“It won’t,” said Rodney, confident. “The problem was on this end and I’ve corrected it now, anyway.”

“Okay,” John said, and took a deep breath before addressing the whole team. “Remember: if anyone in the gate room tries to take a picture --”

“I’ll shoot them,” said Ronon, hefting his gun cheerfully.

“Exactly,” said John, and led the way home.