Rating: NC-17
Pairings: McKay/Keller, McKay/Sheppard
Length: 25 929 words
Summary: It had changed so gradually with Jennifer, was the thing. Rodney couldn’t pick a moment when he’d felt the balance shift from “this is fucking awesome” to “wow, I’m really middle-aged”.


A/N: Huge thanks to mecurtin for being the best of betas, providing both squee and rational analysis in liberal quantities. More than anything, the story found here grew out of a year-long backlog of writing energies, but mecurtin pushed me to edit what was essentially creative writing by free association into an actual story with plot and character development and research.

This one's also for svmadelyn because, believe it or not, this grew out one of my (many) false starts for my failed undermistletoe fic in 2008. See if you can recognize my prompt in this monster at all -- I sure can't.

Website version is here, or you can read in four parts beginning below.

Waiting For My Real Life To Begin

Rodney’s fortieth birthday had come and gone without much fanfare, either from his colleagues or, thankfully, from his own psyche.

Stress levels aside, Rodney was probably in the best shape of his life thanks to Sheppard and Ronon’s sadistic fitness regime, and Teyla had this way of making sure he ate well and regularly so that he didn’t notice all that much. Rodney certainly didn’t feel any more middle-aged; and as for the stereotypical midlife crisis – hello, he was literally getting paid to be a genius intergalactic explorer. As far as life goals went, there wasn’t room for much regret when Rodney paused to compare his wildest hopes and aspirations of childhood to what he had accomplished thus far.

In fact, the first time Rodney truly felt old and tired was lying spread-eagled in Jennifer Keller’s bed, her beautiful white thighs splayed over his hips. “Are you close?” she asked, moving fast and hard and perfect.

“So close,” Rodney gasped, his heart nearly leaping out of his chest with the exertion, hips snapping up to meet hers.

“Okay, okay,” said Jennifer raggedly, and Rodney closed his eyes gratefully, ready to come, only to feel her lifting away, clambering off the bed.

“What?” said Rodney, eyes popping open, reaching out for Jennifer and her amazing thighs – which were going too far away from him.

“It’s okay, Rodney,” said Jennifer sweetly, taking a swig from the water bottle on the bedside table, naked and sweaty and too far away. “We’ll take a break.”

“A break?” said Rodney. “Why?”

Jennifer produced a little confused smile, as though she must have misunderstood. “You said you were close,” she said, arching a brow in inquiry.

“I am, I was,” Rodney protested, “but then you stopped.”

She huffed a short laugh, the smile expanding outwards. “You’ll get your turn,” Jennifer promised, and bit the tip of her tongue between her front teeth, playful. She capped the water bottle and offered it to him. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, we can sleep in. I don’t want to rush it this time.”

“You already came, like, five times,” said Rodney, baffled and exhausted and still short of breath.

Jennifer’s smile dropped away instantly. “Oh,” she said, setting the water bottle down on the nightstand. “You think I’m”–

– insatiable, Rodney thought, and nearly always horny. He said: “No, no, of course not. I just.” He waved a hand in the air and heaved himself up on one elbow, facing her. “I was just surprised. In a good way.”

Jennifer didn’t seem convinced, so Rodney took hold of her wrist in a circle between his thumb and forefinger – she was so small-boned, he used to think of her as fragile – and tugged her closer. “You’re making me crazy,” Rodney said in a goofy voice, covering up his vast frustration with a wide grin. “Come back to bed.”

So Jennifer, smiling again, tumbled down beside him and kissed him, open-mouthed, until Rodney started wondering why he was being such an asshole because she was goddamn amazing and she was pretty much the first girlfriend he’d ever had who went down on him without him asking or even hinting and so what if she liked high-impact sex and marathon cunnilingus? It was clearly worth the effort.

“Hey,” said Jennifer into his mouth, “have you ever done it up against a wall?”

“Oh jesus,” said Rodney, but then he closed his eyes and thought: unsolicited fellatio.

***

“What did you do?” said Sheppard irritably when Rodney hobbled his way into senior staff on Monday morning.

Across the conference table, Jennifer flushed and bowed her head to her tablet.

“It’s a—“ Rodney waved one hand and groaned as he maneuvered his way into his chair. Thank god for Woolsey and his lumbar support fetish. “It’s an old hockey…injury.”

“And it flared up how?” said Sheppard, not buying it.

“I really don’t see that it’s any of your – ow, ow.” Rodney gingerly shifted his weight onto his other hip.

“Gentlemen, if we could please be seated and start the meeting,” Woolsey said, one part amused and two parts annoyed.

Afterwards, Jennifer circled the table and paused by Rodney long enough to say, “You took the muscle relaxants I gave you?”

“Yes,” snipped Rodney in spite of himself, “this is me on drugs.”

“Okay, go back to the hot compresses alternating with cold and I’ll come by and check on you later today,” she said, and pressed a kiss to his forehead, bustling out of the room.

Rodney closed his eyes and started to contemplate how he was ever going to stand again, much less make it back to his quarters under his own steam.

“McKay,” said John, and dammit. Was he still here?

Rodney opened his eyes and glared. “What?”

John didn’t look particularly solicitous. He perched on the edge of the table and folded his arms, narrowing his gaze at Rodney. “Listen, you’ve gotta be more careful. I need you field-ready at all times, not laid up in your quarters with – hockey injuries.”

Rodney huffed impatiently. “Look, it wasn’t exactly my plan to cripple myself over the weekend, okay?”

Sheppard sighed shortly and rubbed the space between his brows, looking tired. The silence stretched between them for a moment, then John said, “You need help getting back?”

“God yes,” Rodney admitted, and Sheppard was there beside him, arm behind his shoulders and hand tucked into his armpit, and it felt so good to have someone so solid and strong bracing him up that Rodney held back all the hisses of pain he wanted to make with every move.

Sheppard got him back home, and settled him on his bed with his laptop open on a table nearby, and then he did what Rodney could only describe as fussing: hovering around the room, adjusting Rodney’s curtains, playing with the lighting and the environmental controls, until Rodney snapped.

“Will you sit down or get out?” he demanded irritably. To Rodney’s surprise, John sat, kicking back in Rodney’s armchair and getting comfortable.

They stayed that way, quiet, for a while. Rodney lay back and let the heat of the compress under him melt into his stiff muscles, and John sat quietly and stared into the middle distance.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rodney told him, some fifteen minutes later.

“Good, ‘cause I sure as hell don’t want to hear about it.”

It had been really fun at first, thought Rodney, listening to Sheppard’s noisy adenoidal breath across the room. It had been years since he’d weathered the kind of dopamine storm that Jennifer had caused in his brain chemistry.

For days, weeks even, all he could think of was Jennifer – Jennifer’s smile and her soft slippery hair and her high perfect breasts and the curve of her ass in the palm of his cupped hand. They’d fucked every day, morning and night, fucked in his quarters, in hers, in a supply closet off the infirmary, on that goddamn private jet from Nevada. Under Jennifer’s sweet uncertain exterior there was this demanding person who couldn’t seem to get enough of Rodney, and it had been intoxicating, thrilling.

He’d made her come once with just the heel of his hand pressed against the seam of her pants, broad daylight in an alcove on the way from the mess hall. Another time, she’d radioed him while he was in the locker room suiting up for an offworld mission. Rodney’d had to make up an excuse about needing the bathroom urgently so he could shut himself in a stall and jerk off in the thirty seconds left before ETD, Jennifer talking him through it the whole time.

Rodney made an unhappy noise and pushed himself onto his side, seeking a position that would stop his spine from howling in protest.

“You need the cold compress now?” said Sheppard. He’d gotten out his palm pilot at some point and he was twiddling with it, like he had nowhere better to be than playing Sudoku in Rodney’s quarters.

“Yeah,” said Rodney, more to give John something to do than anything. “Thanks.”

Sheppard got up and pulled the cold compress out of the mini-freezer. “Where?” he asked, hovering over Rodney, wrapping the fresh compress in a hand towel.

“Right above my ass,” said Rodney, past the point of modesty. He hiked up his t-shirt and pointed.

“Got it,” said John, and tucked the compress tightly against him. “Okay, roll over onto your stomach this time. It’s not good to stay in the same position, you’ll stiffen up.”

“Ow ow ow,” Rodney said, obeying. John went and sat down again.

“I get this wicked sciatica on my right side,” John offered a little awkwardly, after another few minutes’ silence. “But it only acts up if I really push it, you know?”

“Well,” said Rodney thoughtfully, before he could censor himself, “it’s not that she’s heavy. It’s more how long I had to hold her up there that did it, I think.”

Instead of making the horrified choking noise Rodney had expected, John chuckled a little. “I thought so. Did the same thing once.”

“Your wife?” asked Rodney, wanting to draw out the unexpected camaraderie a little longer.

“Nope,” said Sheppard, and went back to his Sudoku or whatever he was doing.

It had changed so gradually with Jennifer, was the thing. Rodney couldn’t pick a moment when he’d felt the balance shift from “this is fucking awesome” to “wow, I’m really middle-aged”. It had been a slow change, imperceptibly slow, and what was more, the change had been clouded by Rodney’s own periodic relapses into insane lust. He’d spent one painful night giving his jaw the workout of a lifetime while Jennifer kept saying, “Yes, more, yes,” above him; but the very next morning he’d woken up to the world’s most intense handjob, Jennifer’s delicate surgeon’s fingers bringing him off while her other hand played with the sweet spot behind his balls, and it had all seemed worthwhile.

Jennifer liked coming, and she was good at it. Unlike some of Rodney’s past girlfriends, she didn’t need him to perform interpretive dance or hold her leg at a special angle or pray to a moon goddess or anything. Sometimes all she needed was the tip of his index finger. It should have been easy; everything else about them was easy. It never felt like too much work when he was having dinner with her, or walking along the east pier with her, or watching movies together curled up on her bed. But somehow it got to be work for Rodney, keeping up the hectic pace of their sex lives.

Sometimes he’d be so tired from working in the lab all day, he could barely walk straight. Rodney would be ricocheting blindly off the walls, side to side like a pinball, as he staggered back to his quarters, and he’d find her there on his bed in her cotton underwear with the rude cartoon rabbit on the front. “Come on,” she’d say, pulling his hand down, and he’d fall asleep before he even got hard, and he’d wake up to Jennifer smiling tightly and making excuses for him about how much he worked, like she didn’t quite believe it.

“We don’t have to do it every night,” Rodney had said one time, trying to sound reassuring and instead hearing a weird tone of panic in his voice.

“I know,” Jennifer had said. “But tonight?” And she’d crawled down his body and pressed her perfect breasts together around his cock, and Rodney had thought he should really stop being a lazy bastard and let the nice lady rub him off with her cleavage.

***

Rodney must have fallen asleep. He woke to the soft sounds of John’s voice, answered by Jennifer’s. Before he could wake up enough to make sense of the conversation, they noticed him stirring.

“Hey,” said Jennifer gently, coming closer. “Feeling better?”

Rodney shifted experimentally, and noticed that the compress on his back was hot again. Sheppard had changed it while he slept, and it seemed to have done some good. His back still twinged when he moved but it was far from the shriek of pain he’d felt that morning. “Yeah,” said Rodney, grateful. “Better.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” said John, with that sarcastic bite in his tone like he was trying to convey relief, like he’d been forced to stay against his will.

“No,” said Rodney, unthinking, half-asleep. “John, stay.”

There was an awkward pause, and Rodney couldn’t see the faces of either John or Jennifer from his frozen vantage point. Something must have passed between them, though, because when they spoke again, both their voices sounded a little different.

“I should really be getting back to the infirmary, I just wanted to check in on him,” said Jennifer cheerfully.

“I can work here just as well as anywhere on base,” said John, conciliatory.

Jennifer’s fingers combed through Rodney’s hair, then the door opened and closed and Rodney exhaled slowly. “Thank you,” he said.

Instead of making a caustic comment about being prisoner to Rodney’s needs, John’s fingers landed on the small of Rodney’s back, checking the compress, readjusting it. “You’re really better? You’re not just being a tough guy for her?”

“Please,” huffed Rodney. “When have you known me to be a tough guy?”

“You’ve got a point there,” acknowledged John. His hand patted Rodney’s shoulder, and then he could be heard to settle back in his armchair.

***

Rodney was fully mobile again by Wednesday, if still a bit sore. He had the marines bring one of Woolsey’s luxury conference room chairs down to his lab so he could celebrate his return to productivity in comfort. Rodney wheeled around the lab giddily, heedless of the toes of his slower minions, because it was so good to be back, good to be upright and working.

Teyla came by with Torren and a lunch tray, and later on Ronon dropped in to make threatening noises about getting Rodney back into the gym. Then it was Sheppard, this time with a power bar and a bottle of water, and the two of them shot the shit for a while about the relative awesomeness of the first two Terminator movies (the third didn’t merit discussion). After Sheppard, Rodney enjoyed a few hours of having the lab to himself before someone coughed in the doorway behind him and he wheeled around to see Jennifer standing there.

“Oh!” said Rodney, keeping his happy work-smile rigid perforce. “Hey, you.”

“Hey,” said Jennifer, coming closer, hands clasped tightly in front of her. “I said you were cleared for light duty, not all-nighters in the lab.”

“Psh,” said Rodney, flicking a glance at his laptop’s clock. “It’s only – huh. Oh. Two a.m.”

“Come on,” said Jennifer, extending a hand. “Bedtime.”

“No,” said Rodney. “Just – I need ten more minutes, you go. I promise, I’ll go straight to my quarters, ten minutes.”

Jennifer went still but didn’t let go of his hand. “Rodney,” she said. “I’m not going to ravage you.”

“Really?” said Rodney, sounding pathetically relieved in spite of himself. “I mean, I do enjoy being ravaged by you, but”–

“You need your rest,” said Jennifer, and smiled wearily. “So do I.”

She didn’t want to rest, though; she wanted to talk.

“I want you to tell me about stuff like this,” Jennifer told Rodney, curling around him and resting her head on the pillow next to his.

“Stuff like what?” said Rodney, wondering if there was time to fake falling asleep before Jennifer could speak again.

“Sex stuff,” she clarified, far too quickly for the sleep fake-out to work. “Rodney, if doing something is going to put your back out, you have to say so.”

“Right,” said Rodney, a little bitterly, “I love drawing attention to my decrepitude.”

“You’re not decrepit,” Jennifer said, a little too tenderly. “You’re in your forties now, and I’m a doctor. I know that you have limits. But I can’t read your mind.”

Rodney kept his eyes closed and forced his breathing to stay slow and steady. Sleep breathing. He threw in a light snore on the next inhale for realism.

In another minute, Rodney heard Jennifer click the lamp off with a sigh.

***

“Times have changed,” said Rodney, backing his racer up to get it around one of the obstacles in the course, a packing crate from the latest Daedalus run. “I mean, you remember the eighties. Back then, it was dirty for a girl to – you know. Perform certain acts.”

“I didn’t care for the eighties very much,” John agreed, and knocked over a stack of plastic cups as he drilled past it with his racer.

“Suddenly it’s required,” Rodney continued. “And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Far from it! Hey, cut that out, that’s cheating.”

“It’s lateral problem-solving,” John argued, and knocked over another plastic cup tower. (Cheating.)

Rodney carefully navigated around a pile of old magazines. “It’s strange. Jennifer’s whole attitude is different from women I’ve dated before. It’s like sex is just assumed to be the most important thing we do together. And I’m the one who’s weird because I like to have some boundaries.”

“Right,” said John, toppling a tin can and rolling it ahead of his racer. “Lights off, under the covers, close your eyes and think of Canada.”

“Shut up,” Rodney shot back, rolling his eyes. “I mean, what about making it special? What about building anticipation? What about just – you know. Regular stuff?”

“What are you talking about here?” asked John, crossing the finish line. (Still cheating.) “I mean, what’s normal? Missionary position? Or light bondage and a little infantilism?”

“Normal is sex that doesn’t last three hours every night,” Rodney returned in a rush. “Normal is not having to feel guilty if you can’t do her against the shower wall every morning.”

“Jesus,” said John, not without sympathy. “Hey, Rodney, she’s – she’s only, like”—

“Twenty-nine years old,” sighed Rodney. “God, I’m decrepit.”

***

That night, Rodney went to Jennifer’s quarters at eleven o’clock – early enough that she’d still be awake, late enough that she wouldn’t be too chatty. She was cross-legged on her bed, already in her flannel drawstring pants and tank-top, pretty and messy and sleepy and looking a lot like one of Jeannie’s slumber party friends.

“Hey,” he said, and undressed to his t-shirt and boxers. Before Jennifer could make any moves, he clambered onto the bed beside her and kissed her shoulder. “Lie down,” he said, and tugged her pants down and off. When she tried to wriggle down, to get her hands on him, Rodney shook his head and caught her by the wrists. “Let me,” he said. Once she stilled, Rodney rifled through the bedside table, rolled on a condom.

Rodney moved in her, over her, slowly and steadily, kissing her mouth and listening to her breath grow shorter. He paced it right; she came just seconds before he did, and when he lowered himself onto her, shaking, he said, “That was exactly what I wanted.”

Jennifer laughed. “That’s it? That’s your big secret fantasy?”

“I’ll have you know,” Rodney told her seriously, pulling out and disposing of the condom, snuggling them both down under the covers, “that in my youth the missionary position was considered the height of eroticism.”

“Long live Molly Ringwald,” said Jennifer, rolling her eyes, but she was still smiling. “That was nice, Rodney.” She stroked his chest, rolling close again. “Kinda sweet.”

Nice and kinda sweet, thought Rodney, was not really what he’d been going for.

***

A week later, Sheppard stepped in an alien gopher hole on M6Y-378 and pitched forward with uncharacteristic clumsiness. “Ahhhh, fuck!” he said, lifting up his dirt-smudged face, wincing.

“Are you all right, John?” asked Teyla as Ronon hauled him upright.

“I’m fine, I’m – shit, shit, shit,” said John, trying and failing to put weight on the bum leg. “I fucked up my knee.”

Rodney pulled out his medical kit and helped Teyla get an ace bandage around Sheppard’s rapidly swelling knee. John kept trying to bear weight like the idiot he clearly was, swearing and half-falling again every single time. Finally Ronon intervened, half-carrying John back to the gate, and from the gate room to the infirmary.

“It’s a torn ligament,” said Jennifer, to John and to the rest of the team hovering beside him. “Sorry, Colonel, I’m going to need to operate on this”

“I’ve fallen down and messed it up before,” protested Sheppard warmly, making as though to sit up, ready to hop off the examination table – the moron. “It’ll heal up.”

“Yeah, I can tell you’ve done this before,” said Jennifer with a smirk, holding him down by putting her palm flat on his chest. “Stay put or it’ll be no good to you anymore. I warned you about this at your last physical.”

“Nice application of doctor-patient confidentiality there,” snarled Sheppard, throwing a dark look at Keller and then at the rest of his team.

“You’ve been favoring your right leg for some time now, John,” Teyla said quietly. Ronon didn’t speak, but shrugged his agreement. Rodney, who hadn’t noticed anything like that, raised his eyebrows, mildly surprised.

John sighed heavily and let his head sink back into the pillow. “This sucks,” he complained, heartfelt.

“You’re in your forties now,” said Jennifer with a comforting pat to John’s shoulder. “You’ve got to listen to your body when it tells you to slow down.”

John reacted to this advice just about the same way Rodney had: by abruptly, and pretty obviously, faking unconsciousness.

***

Jennifer had to graft a piece of tendon from the front of John’s knee to the two torn ends of John’s ligament. There was a drill and a screw involved and when Jennifer started describing it in detail Rodney was reminded of the old oak coffee table with the wobbly leg that his father had repaired over and over with increasingly industrial-looking hardware. He had visions of John ending up with bolts sticking out either side of his leg, like a Frankenstein’s monster of leg joints. But as it turned out, Jennifer’s gory procedure only left two small incisions as evidence; though right afterwards, John’s normally skinny knee was immense and wrapped in huge white bandages.

When John first woke from the general anesthetic, Jennifer had him hooked up to a morphine drip via one of those patient-controlled analgesia boxes, and every time it beeped Ronon would press the button like the overgrown cave-child he was. This resulted in John being lucid and chatty at fifteen-minute intervals and then drifting away as Ronon sent him under again. It was kind of entertaining; John on opiates was a lot like a kindergarten teacher, full of gentle smiles and doe-eyed fond looks.

Then, the next morning, Jennifer took away John’s morphine and John went from a kind early childhood educator to a grumpy humorless high school algebra teacher, circa 1950, back when they could still inflict corporal punishment on the students. The big white bandage on his knee got replaced by a smaller dressing and a giant space-age leg brace that kept the joint rigid between arduous PT sessions. When John walked he had to swing his injured leg from the hip, which would have been hilarious if John hadn’t also been wielding potentially lethal aluminum crutches.

On the third day, having proven that he could make it to the washroom and back on his own recognizance, John got to leave the infirmary with a handful of painkillers he would never take and a dire warning from Jennifer that he had better show up for daily wound check and rehab or face having his return to active duty postponed in perpetuity.

“Most of the time people have very positive results from this kind of surgery,” said Jennifer, a little more gently, “but it’s going to take a lot of work, and even then it might not be quite the same. You’ll be able to run as fast as before. But – maybe not climb.”

Rodney could see the small muscles of John’s jaw flicker tight and forcibly relax again (though as far as Rodney was concerned, anything that prevented John from doing more free climbs up the sides of towers was just fine by him.) “Right,” said John, and with a terse, “Be back tomorrow,” crutched his way out of the infirmary, bad leg swinging like a pendulum with every step.

***

Over the past five years, Rodney had seen John get injured a few too many times for his taste; he’d seen John doubled over with pain, hobbled by healing incisions, stricken from the gate team roster for several weeks at a time. He’d seen John’s invariably grouchy moods stemming from the pain of rehabilitation, from forced immobility, from restrictions placed on his activities around Atlantis. At this point, Rodney had honestly thought he’d seen John in just about every iteration of the irascible, bitchy, snotty, and sullen mood swings that always accompanied his recovery from a serious injury.

He’d been mistaken.

Though the knee surgery was relatively minor and John’s return to health was as disgustingly quick as usual, John descended into the deepest blackest sulk Rodney had ever witnessed in him or any other person. Far from fighting Jennifer’s carefully planned post-op routine, pushing for more and sooner and faster, John was weirdly compliant and occasionally edged into actual apathy, as though he didn’t care how soon he recovered. John failed to show up as a limping glowering presence in the hallways of Atlantis, and when Rodney asked Lorne where the Colonel was spending his time, Lorne gave Rodney a truly helpless look and answered, “In his office” – to which Rodney, of course, replied, “He has an office?”

John did have an office, out in one of the buildings flanking the east pier. The room was a strange shape: long and narrow like a gallery in an old castle, but with a whole wall made entirely of glass looking out onto the ocean. In spite of the spectacular view, the office wasn’t at all appealing. Though structurally intact, it had clearly seen some flooding and still smelled vaguely mildewed and salty. There was even a high water mark, wobbly and dark, all along the midpoint of the walls. John’s desk was a cobbled-together affair composed of empty aluminum packing crates, a large warped and water-stained former dry erase board forming the writing surface.

John himself was the least cheerful note in the whole depressing scene, dark head bent over some coral-colored requisition forms, bum leg resting on another empty crate. He was seated with his back to the ocean, presumably to make better use of the natural light falling across that side of his desk.

Rodney hovered in the doorway for a moment, trying to decide on an approach, then realized that he was actually getting worried about talking to John of all people. It was a complete waste of energy. John was probably the only person on Atlantis with worse people skills than Rodney. Most days, Rodney could probably greet John in any way, up to and including punching him in the face, and get the same blank look of feigned interest for his troubles.

“I know you’re busy being morbid about your impending old age,” said Rodney, “but do you think you could take half an hour out of your packed brooding schedule and come to the mess? It’s taco day.”

John looked up, heavy mournfulness written all over his face. “Not now, McKay,” he said, waving a hand.

“Get up,” Rodney ordered, coming closer, making shooing gestures with his hands. “Come on, get up, we’re going before they run out of guacamole.”

“I’ll go later,” said John, not moving. “I’ll catch up with you then.”

“Now,” said Rodney. “I’m officially kicking you out of the most depressing room in two galaxies. Let’s go.”

John continued to bitch and pull angry faces but Rodney just walked over and pushed John’s space-age leg brace off the crate, handed him his crutches, and waited impatiently while John got to his feet, sighing through his nose the whole time.

“Put your back out lately?” asked John, by way of a low blow, as they made their slow journey out into the corridor towards the transporter.

“Ha ha,” Rodney returned flatly. “As it so happens, Jennifer has been convinced – by your own misadventure, I’m guessing – to lower the pressure when it comes to acrobatic sex marathons. So I suppose I have you and your decaying joints to thank for that.” Rodney smiled at the idea, remembering last night, and the night before: Jennifer over him, moving slow and long, bringing them both to shuddering climax in perfect unison.

“She’s probably worried you’re going to have a heart attack in the middle of it like one of those ninety-year-old tycoons with the gold-digger girlfriends.” John was trying to go too fast, which was refreshing if typically stupid. There was a fine dew of sweat on John’s upper lip, either from suppressed pain or unaccustomed exertion. Rodney flapped a hand at him and stooped down, pretending to tie his shoelace, giving John time to catch his breath.

“I’ll have you know I’m in excellent cardiovascular health,” said Rodney, smug.

If John was a little too quiet over their trays of tacos later, Rodney didn’t point it out. He thought that John looked a little better for having gotten out of his moldy office, anyway.

***

The enforced Sundays that had begun under Weir’s command had taken on a lot more popularity as time went by. Rodney himself had thought them a spectacular waste of time until six months ago, when he’d started seeing Jennifer. Now fake Sundays were Rodney’s favorite days, and he found himself wishing that they came more often than once every three weeks.

Jennifer had all the major medical journals spread out around her like the genius doctor version of the weekend newspaper, and she was lying in a puddle of sunshine in the middle of the floor with a pencil stuck through the base of her ponytail and a steaming mug of coffee at her elbow. She was wearing one of Rodney’s t-shirts and a pair of jeans that hugged her ass.

“I have two movies for your viewing pleasure,” said Rodney, settling down beside her a little awkwardly, still wary of his back injury. “Number one – I believe it’s in the genre commonly referred to as ‘chick flick’ – 27 Dresses. And number two, for a slightly more refined experience: Iron Man.” He held up the two DVDs, each disc speared on his index fingers, did an enticing little hand dance. “Mmm? Which one first? I am totally open to suggestion here.”

Jennifer was engrossed in an article that involved pictures of diseased-looking internal organs. Rodney tried to avoid looking too closely while leaning closer to capture her attention. “Katherine Heigl?” he said. “She plays a doctor on TV. And she’s hot. You two have a lot in common?”

His only response was a soft humming noise, and then Jennifer blinked her way back to the surface and looked over at him. “Sorry?” she said.

“Movies,” Rodney prompted, flashing the DVDs again. “Remember? We were going to hole up in my quarters and watch movies today?”

“Oh,” said Jennifer. “We were?”

“Unless you don’t want to,” Rodney said hastily. “We don’t have to, I could sneak into my lab and get some work done if you’d rather”–

“No,” said Jennifer, sticking a bookmark in the journal and closing it. “No, it’s just – what about something different today? Maybe we could do the climbing wall or”– She stopped, seeing Rodney’s pained expression. “It’s just that I kind of promised a few people that I’d come by today,” she went on, “but maybe you can see what Colonel Sheppard’s doing and we can meet up later?”

Rodney honestly didn’t know how he ended up blurting it out; after all, he’d spent hours cooped up with Katie Brown when he’d been meaning to propose and had still choked. And yet, here he was, in the middle of a conversation about scheduling conflicts, and he heard himself say it: “I want you to move in.”

“What?” said Jennifer, her eyes snapping wide open.

“I want you to move in. With me,” Rodney said, and okay – it was true. He did want that. Things were good with them, better even than before Sheppard got hurt, and Jeannie did have a point about locking down a good thing when it came his way. “Move in with me?” he said.

Jennifer got up on her elbows, then pushed up onto her knees and hands, scattering journals haphazardly as she went. “Rodney,” she said, shaking her head, standing up, “Rodney.” Her tone was beseeching, that much Rodney could discern, but he was damned if he knew where she was going with this. He scrambled to his feet, following her, heart in his throat.

“I have a big place,” he said. “You spend half your time here anyway. I have a bathtub, a really big bathtub. And, and an ocean view.”

“We live in Atlantis,” said Jennifer. “Everyone has an ocean view.”

“Mine’s nice,” Rodney added. “And I think you should see it more often.”

Jennifer was sticking her hands in her hair, messing up the neat lines of her ponytail, avoiding Rodney’s eyes. “I don’t know, Rodney, I just don’t – is this the best time? Is this when we should be doing this? It’s only been a few months and we’re not exactly in the most normal circumstances here. We have no idea what it might be like if we”– She cut herself off, the effort involved visible.

“No,” Rodney said, jamming down every argument he wanted to make. “No, you’re right, you’re completely – I don’t know why I said it. It’s too soon.”

Every line of Jennifer’s body relaxed abruptly, her shoulders falling down and her hands opening up. She looked at him, smiling. “Right, that’s what I meant – I mean, it’s nothing against you, only”–

“Forget it,” said Rodney, making a waving gesture of ‘bygones’. “Forget it, I just – too much coffee. Like you said, this isn’t the best time for us.”

“Good, I’m glad you –” Jennifer said, “I mean, our sex life has been. Well, you know. For a while now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Rodney, even though – what? Their sex life had been what? “You know, I think I will go and see if I can find John. He got his leg brace off yesterday – oh, but you’d know that – anyway. I should probably go and keep him from joining your little climbing team and screwing up his knee all over again.”

“Good,” said Jennifer, pulling her hair loose, tying it back again. “Good. We’ll talk later then?”

“Of course,” said Rodney. He wanted to kiss her but he wasn’t sure it would be welcome, so he just did a stupid little wave and beat a quick retreat.

***

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4