See Part 1 for summary and author's notes.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

It was a close thing, and Rodney knew full well that no other scientist could have single-handedly inferred enough about the workings of a goddamn ZPM machine (which turned out to be a depressingly small and yet insanely complex piece of equipment) in two days to effectively disable it and make it look like the victim of the ravages of time. He thought he’d done it well enough under the circumstances, however, and by night he built up the small pile of ZPM machine parts next to the dizzying sea of not 25 but 55 ZPMs – they had found another full storage unit after emptying the first. There was scarcely room to maneuver inside the cloaked jumper, and in places the ZPMs were stacked in layers two deep.

Patil turned out to be satisfyingly oblivious to Rodney’s work, elbow-deep as he was in the workings of the drone manufacturing equipment. Rodney normally would have forbidden him to touch anything for fear of Patil ruining something important, but with a reserve of well over ten thousand drones once they’d surveyed the whole facility, Rodney felt confident that Patil could break the damn machines – they’d never need them anyway.

While Rodney and Patil worked away, Ronon and John took turns watching the camp and hunting. Rodney didn’t know when exactly John had found the time to convey the necessary information to Ronon, but by their third night on the planet, it had been done. John told Rodney as they huddled into their sleeping bags, shivering in the deepening cold of the night, the last of the ZPM machine components safely stashed in the jumper bay.

“He agreed with us?” Rodney asked between chattering teeth.

“Ronon trusts me,” John said simply. “Besides, four ZPMs and ten thousand new drones…he can hardly complain.”

The faint light from Ronon’s fire outside bled through the nylon sides of the tent, casting dark shadows from John’s lashes onto his cheeks. His mouth was a dark indistinct line.

“John,” said Rodney into the quiet. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to use them? The ones we’re hiding?”

John was silent, but Rodney could see his open eyes, knew he was thinking about it. “Someday,” said John, finally, “I think we might get the chance.”

Rodney thought about it, thought how things would have to be incredibly bad (to drain five fully charged ZPMs, they’d have to be) or unforeseeably good (the Wraith no longer a threat, or maybe the IOA giving them some real latitude in Pegasus) before they could do what Rodney wished they could do. Rodney wanted to outfit every last inhabited planet in Pegasus with its own ZPM, with two, in case the first failed. He wanted to give all the Pegasus dwellers protection from their enemies, and power to last ten generations, for twenty – the legacy that the Ancients had been too wary or too shortsighted to grant to their children, and to their children’s children.

“Goodnight,” Rodney said, and closed his eyes tight against the possibilities that were not to be.

“Goodnight,” answered John.

***

The Apollo arrived just before sunrise, and after that they played out their plan as smoothly as they could have hoped. Patil fussed a little over being pulled away from the drone systems when he felt he was getting closer to figuring them out, but Rodney told him sternly that he would be needed on Atlantis to help devise safe transport and storage of the drone reserves the Apollo had beamed up. John flew three jumpers that were in good condition from the facility’s bay up into the Apollo F-302 bays, for Atlantis’s use. Rodney personally delivered the five precious ZPMs into the Apollo’s cargo hold and asked for two marines to guard them. By lunchtime on the Apollo, all was secure and John and Rodney were beamed back down so the ship could head back to Atlantis immediately.

There was no time to lose now. As soon as the Apollo had jumped to hyperspace, John and Rodney transferred their hidden cargo to the Lantean jumper still parked by the camp, took off, and headed for the fourth moon of the nearest planet. The moon was completely barren but had an atmosphere that was, if not livable, at least not noxious, and it had the added bonus of many limestone caverns in its once water-covered surface. They took turns doing the EVA necessary to move all the ZPMs and the components. This took all evening and the better part of the night, but John and Rodney were safe back on the planet by mid-morning the next day. They slept for a scarce hour in their tent, then hastened to the facility so they could appear to have been hard at work on the ZPM systems when the Apollo returned.

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard to fuck something up,” Rodney said tiredly, laying out tools all over the stone floor, pulling out crystal trays haphazardly to make it look chaotic, worked-upon.

“We did it, though,” said John, slouching down against a console, yawning. The motion made his shirt ride up a little.

“Does this make us old and jaded?” Rodney asked, taking his cue from John and slumping down to the floor too. “I mean, are we fundamentally pessimistic if we’re able to assume that our own species is incapable of handling this kind of power?”

“I think,” said John precisely, “that you spent too much time letting Keller tell you that you’re a fatalist.”

“I am, a little,” Rodney conceded.

“I like that about you,” John said, stubbornly.

“You would,” Rodney snorted, and kicked at John’s scuffed combat boot. “You’re old and jaded, just like me.”

John grinned tiredly and kicked back, and then his radio crackled and Ellis was hailing them.

Rodney groaned and staggered to his feet, picking up his tablet and running diagnostics on a system he knew to be fatally incomplete.

***

Of course, it didn’t end there. Ellis sent down Rodney’s team, and when they failed to find out how to fix the system, the SGC actually shuttled Carter out from Earth on the Daedalus. This gave Rodney a momentary panic – Carter was the one who’d reverse-engineered a fucking DHD before ever having seen one, after all – but for all her substantial brains, even Carter gave the SGC the same report as Rodney and his team: the ZPM machine was broken and couldn’t, with their current technology, be repaired.

This seemed to close the matter, and Rodney was finally able to return to Atlantis with heartfelt expressions of relief. John had gone back some ten days earlier with the Apollo as it headed back towards the Milky Way, taking the fourth ZPM with it, along with Atlantis’s partly charged single ZPM that had formerly been their main power source.

“God, you look awful,” said Jennifer when she gave Rodney his post-mission exam.

“How kind of you to notice,” Rodney returned.

“Well, it kind of implies that you usually look much better,” Jennifer said in her own defense. She grinned, gamine and adorable and so young that Rodney could hardly believe they’d slept together. “Look on the bright side. Know what day it is?”

“The day you vow never to draw my blood again?” Rodney said, wincing and looking away as Jennifer jabbed the needle into the crook of his elbow.

“January 5th,” said Jennifer, as if that –

“Oh,” said Rodney, brightly. “Oh, god, he’s – how old now?”

“Forty-three,” said Jennifer cheerily.

“Ha,” said Rodney, and hissed as Jennifer popped another vacuum vial onto the needle, jostling his abused vein. “Hey, leave some for me, will you?”

“Oh, don’t be a baby,” Jennifer said, and patted his head. “Look, you’re off-duty for two days, but I give you full permission to make a detour on the way to your quarters. You know how he gets on his birthday.”

***

Predictably, John was hiding out in his smelly miserable office yet again, playing solitaire on his laptop with his bad leg propped up on the crate. It was drizzling lightly outside and Rodney knew from experience that bad weather always aggravated old injuries.

“You look like hell,” John said, looking up from his computer.

“So I’ve been told,” said Rodney. He stuffed his hands in his pants pockets and walked over to the long window, staring out at the miserable weather and the grey expanse of ocean. “I want to say ‘happy birthday’ but I’m sensing that’s not the mood here.”

“Not feeling very celebratory,” John conceded. Rodney heard the quiet snick of the laptop closing, the scrape of John’s chair as he pushed it back and stood up. “Come to gloat that you’re a year younger?”

“Sixteen months,” corrected Rodney absently. “And that was the general plan.” John drew level with him, a tall steady presence by his side, and suddenly the very fact of John, his simple being, seemed overwhelmingly good. Rodney swallowed back some of the strange abrupt gratitude that was rising in his throat like a tide. “You know, now that we have a full complement of ZPMs,” Rodney said, hearing the weird thickness of his own voice, “we could probably set you up someplace a little nicer, say with ventilation and fewer mold colonies and”—

John prompted him. “And?”

“And,” Rodney said, swallowing again, futilely. “And my timing was epically awful, but I need you to know: I’m not sorry I kissed you that day.”

They both kept their gazes locked straight ahead, but peripherally Rodney sensed John drawing himself up, pulling himself in.

“And I spend, really, what amounts to a criminal amount of time thinking about doing it again,” Rodney said. “Honestly, if the SGC knew they’d be within their rights to dock my pay.”

John released a small snort of laughter in spite of himself.

Encouraged, Rodney pressed on. “I’m probably saying this out of, I don’t know, gross sleep deprivation and the fact that I haven’t had sex for nearly three months, but that doesn’t change the fact that I.” He tugged his hands out of his pockets and extended them a little, spread them out with the palms facing up, staring at them, helpless. “I guess I wish I hadn’t screwed everything up with you.”

“You didn’t,” said John, and cleared his throat right after. “I’m the one who dumped all of this on you.”

“I want you to dump on me,” said Rodney, as sincerely as he could, passionately. And then he realized what he’d just said.

John figured it out about the same time, and they both started to chuckle helplessly, bodies bending with laughter and escalating until they were gasping for air and swiping at their eyes, and John was holding Rodney’s shoulder for support, and Rodney was clumsily swatting at John’s chest. “You’re a kinky bastard, McKay,” John finally managed, and then, so easily, they came together with laughter still rising up between them, pressing smile to smile.

John was tall, up close like this, taller and slighter than he looked from across the room, from a couple of feet away. But his hands were strong where they held onto Rodney’s arms, and his mouth was soft and open and wet.

Curious slow kisses at first, asking questions, intently reading answers given, and then they got the knack of kissing each other and it was easy, effortless – the way it had been under that console except better. Rodney’s hand slid down John’s back, spread wide over his lower spine, and pressed John’s hips closer in, and oh. John was hard, John was really hard, and then so was Rodney, and it was impossible to work against each other standing up in the middle of the room but they tried for several minutes anyway.

John pulled back first, soothing the motion with small apologetic kisses along the way. “What, what is it?” said Rodney, dazed, but then John’s hand was on Rodney’s fly – not working it open, just feeling Rodney up, checking him out, cupping him and then giving him a nice firm stroke through the layers of fabric. Rodney made a choked sound, bit it off, and with a herculean effort, pulled John’s hand away. “We need a room with a bed,” he said, “a room that doesn’t smell like ten-thousand year old dead fish.”

“What, are you a princess now?” said John, palming Rodney’s hip.

“No,” answered Rodney, rolling his eyes, “but as everyone keeps telling me, I look like shit because I’m dropping over from exhaustion and that means that wherever I come, I’m also passing out. I’d prefer that place to have lumbar support.”

There was also the matter of John’s sore knee, but Rodney knew better than to say so.

They settled on Rodney’s quarters, and headed there with as much decorum as they could manage in their current state – stupid with lust, giddy with reunion, and, in Rodney’s case, staggering with fatigue just barely kept in check by the overwhelming nature of his other feelings.

John didn’t give Rodney a chance to do anything other than stumble obediently in his wake after they were safe in Rodney’s quarters. Almost right away, John had Rodney pressed back into the mattress, one hand in Rodney’s pants, jerking him off messy and fast. “God,” said John, who apparently got kind of talkative when he was having sex, “you feel good.” And then, “Are you close? You look like you’re close.” And, “Hey, hey, I’ve got you, come here,” and kissing and kissing Rodney’s mouth while Rodney shook and came and shook and came all over John’s hand, Rodney’s shirt, his belly.

“Let me,” said Rodney, trying with his big tired-numb hands to return the favor, but John pushed him away and curled up against Rodney’s side, throwing one thigh over Rodney’s and riding Rodney’s leg slowly, dreamily.

“It won’t take long,” said John, and his breath hitched. “Every night in that damn tent I wanted to roll over and do this, just – this.” And his hips lifted into Rodney’s leg harder, faster, and John made a short pained sound and Rodney could feel John coming, the flex and release of his cock against Rodney, and god. God.

Some time later, Rodney woke in the dark. The rain outside had escalated from a drizzle to a certified shower, and it made the small room seem even closer, warmer. John stirred beside him, made unhappy snuffling noises, and kicked his way out of his pants and boxers, which, yeah, were probably a bit unpleasant by now. Rodney followed John’s example, stripping off his sticky shirt as well. Together they managed to get under the covers and dropped back into deep sleep.

***

Too soon, Rodney woke again, this time in the grey light of predawn, Sheppard sitting on the edge of his mattress, bare from the waist up. He was sticking his feet into yesterday’s socks.

“Right,” said Rodney, because of course John couldn’t stay until morning.

John twisted around to look at Rodney, hearing him speak. They stared at each other for a long moment. John was chewing on his lower lip the way he did when he was thinking.

“Wanna meet for breakfast?” Rodney asked finally, lifting up one hand and stroking it down John’s pale bare back.

“Yeah,” said John, uncrossing his legs and standing up, stooping down to get his t-shirt. “Oh eight-thirty hours?”

“Sure,” Rodney yawned. “I’m supposed to be off-duty today but I’m going to see if Zelenka will sneak me into the power room so I can see how the city draws off three ZPMs and where all that energy’s going.”

“Maybe we can fly the city to a planet where it’s not pissing down rain all the time,” suggested John, pulling at the faintly stained front of his pants, frowning.

John was almost out the door when Rodney got up the nerve to ask. “This isn’t it, is it? I mean, you’re not walking out of here and we’re pretending it never happened? You didn’t just want to get it out of your system or what have you?”

John’s expression was difficult to discern in the near-darkness, but Rodney thought he smiled a little. “I knew you’d be needy and emotional like this,” John said, sounding more pleased than the words themselves would suggest.

“Just, tell me you’ll take your clothes off next time,” Rodney demanded, the tightness in his chest easing.

John spread his arms wide, an uncharacteristic gesture from him – open. “I’ll dump all over you if that’s what you really want, McKay.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Rodney said, grinning helplessly. John grinned back before walking out the door.

***

Rodney hadn’t done much with guys before; there’d been about two years in his adolescence when he was still in his drama phase and he’d had a series of base sexual encounters with fellow actors, with the set designer, once even with the nineteen-year-old director of a student play. But that was all decades ago, and Rodney had honestly believed – until recently – that he’d outgrown his taste for guys along with his determination to win a Tony award. Mostly the experience had left him with two principal skills: the ability to pull off a very convincing British accent (The Importance of Being Earnest, summer of 1983), and the ability to give expert hand jobs.

“Oh my god,” said John, eyes wide and astonished, cheeks a hectic blooming red.

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” Rodney said, not a little smugly. “Actually, I think my bicycle-riding could take a lesson from my – oh, really? Already?” and John was pulling him in, dropping kisses all over Rodney’s face, working through his post-coital affection.

“You know, a closeted military guy like you,” said Rodney conversationally while John eased down onto his shoulder, “I half-expected you to run and lock yourself in the bathroom after we had sex, and start cutting up your thighs. Or maybe that you’d get off on calling me a dirty homo.”

“I’m not that closeted, Rodney,” said John, words muffled, “it’s 2010, for god’s sake, not 1973.”

“What are you if you’re not closeted?” Rodney challenged him, taking John’s hand and pulling it towards Rodney’s yet-untouched boxers as a gentle reminder.

“I’m discreet,” said John, a little proudly, and clambered down the bed until he was between Rodney’s knees. “And kind of experienced.”

And, okay, John had obviously spent all Rodney’s intervening years of wasted heterosexuality (1984 to 2009, inclusive) perfecting his own skill set. Rodney had thought that Jennifer and her freely offered fellatio had spoiled him for any other sexual relationship, but he’d failed to factor in the possibility of freely offered, truly skilled, and insanely enthusiastic blow jobs ever coming his way. “Oh my god,” Rodney panted, getting up on his elbows to watch.

John pulled off just long enough to smirk up at him and say, “Just like flying a Blackhawk – you never forget –“

“Oh, shut up and get back to it,” Rodney protested, and John did.

***

The mood in the city was nothing short of ebullient. They’d seen Atlantis at full power before, briefly, just after the Replicator take-over; but that had lasted mere hours before the SGC shipped the surplus ZPMs back to Earth for their own use in the Apollo and the Antarctic weapons platform. But now Earth had two spare ZPMs of their very own, plus the partially depleted one that had been Atlantis’s only support for the last few years. They couldn’t justify depriving Atlantis of its complement of ZPMs now, and if they’d tried Rodney would have just machinated a way of fetching back a few more ZPMs from his and John’s secret stash.

The city didn’t automatically initialize dormant systems just because of the increased power, just as it hadn’t automatically turned them off when they’d gone back to a single ZPM, so Rodney and his team spent a lot of time flipping switches and testing the resulting new systems as they came online, trying to judge their potential usefulness. Mostly the systems were redundancies of existing, functioning systems, or powering labs and experiments that Atlantis didn’t have the personnel to explore at the moment, and so by and large, the most noticeable result of the expedition’s rich power supply was twofold: firstly, they could strategically relocate the city anytime they so chose, and secondly, that they could avail themselves of some of the city’s more luxurious amenities which had heretofore been deemed too extravagant, but which now seemed as unimportant as flicking on a light switch.

Rodney, for his part, was far more interested in watching the three ZPMs at work. His knowledge of how they functioned had been substantially expanded during the two days he’d had alone with the ZPM machine, and expanded a little further yet when he’d spent another week alongside Sam Carter trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed.

“Remind me again,” he said to John later, head swimming with another set of equations, “why it would be a bad idea for me to figure out how to make unlimited ZPMs on my own.”

“Civil war,” said John, ticking the reasons off on his fingers, “international war, interplanetary war, inter—“

“Right,” said Rodney. They were sitting, comfortably wedged together, on the couch in Rodney’s quarters. John wasn’t wearing pants. Rodney wasn’t wearing his shirt. It was warm and close and a little sweaty but they were both too lazy to do anything about it. Rodney turned his head a little, just enough to move his lips over the side of John’s neck. “It’d take me a few years to do, though,” he tried. “There would be lots of time for the IOA to plan –”

“Stick to the theory, Rodney,” John said, more gently. “Leave the legwork to future generations.”

“I don’t want future generations to get credit for something I could have done myself,” Rodney complained.

“Look on the bright side,” John offered, “it could be your kids or your grandkids who finish your work and they could name it after you. In your memory.”

“What, am I dead in this fantasy world of yours?” Rodney asked, indignant, and John laughed, and Rodney was forced to take off John’s shirt in retaliation.

***

Later, when John got up to leave again, Rodney said, “Do you think about that, though? About having kids, and grandkids?”

John paused, naked back curved a little to pull his t-shirt over his head, then resumed dressing. “No,” he said, simply. He didn’t look back on his way out the door.

***

It wasn’t like it had been with Jennifer, those first days and weeks; it simply couldn’t be. They couldn’t risk ducking off together midday, they couldn’t stay the night, they couldn’t openly pass little smiles back and forth over lunch, remembering things they had done. Everything had to stay the same between them, and mostly it wasn’t too hard to do it. After all, John was still his aggravating self, and Rodney was still surrounded by idiots, and they still had to go on stupid missions where people shot at them and fed them fetid stews and thought that Ronon was a demon-god.

What was different was the constant wanting. Rodney had to tell himself, over and over, to be patient. Night would fall, the day of seeing John and not touching him would end, and the two of them would find each other, fingers to skin, lips to flesh.

Rodney learned patience.

Patience was sitting in his quarters, pretending to work, watching the clock, willing the 2300h shift change to end, for the corridors to empty, for the city to settle into slumber. Patience was waiting another ten minutes after that, because John was cautious in spite of what his past actions might suggest. Patience was resisting the need to rub off against John, kissing him frantically, the moment he came in the door, because the night would end sooner if that happened. Patience was going slowly, letting John -- John -- teach Rodney things.

The first time John fucked Rodney, he insisted on doing it with Rodney on his hands and knees and he took goddamn forever getting Rodney ready, and whenever Rodney complained, John would say something about Rodney’s blushing virgin ass and Rodney would try to get angry but it was – oh. Impossible, John’s slender dexterous fingers curling in and pushing out sparks that shivered and crackled through Rodney’s cock.

Patience was rocking back a bare centimeter at a time, mouth open in a perpetual gasp of shock, while John stroked his back shakily and said, “Rodney, Rodney, god.”

It wasn’t like it had been with Jennifer, either, the next morning. Rodney woke up alone, rolled over, felt the slightest of twinges in his ass, and was glad of the pain. It felt like a prize he’d won, like proof.

***

The botanists got to replant the vast Ancient orchards now that they had fresh water, tons of it, to spare. It would be a couple of years before they grew their own tree fruits, even using the Ancients’ genetically-modified fruit trees, but the very prospect of it felt good, like permanence was taken for granted now that the city was secure at last.

The water, that was new; water to spare, water to fill the long-dry Ancient decorative fountains, water to fill the big freshwater swimming pool they’d found in their fourth year.

With twice-weekly open wormholes to and from the Milky Way, it was easier to get other things from Earth. It stopped being uncommon to see people wearing new clothes on their days off, to see visiting scientists from the SGC strolling the corridors, to see members of the expedition outfitting their formerly bare quarters with the luxuries of Earth life: electronics, appliances, decorative elements that weren’t posters in tubes. Around them, the city grew beautiful, lit up.

“I’m thinking of moving,” said Rodney, when John resurfaced in the tub, water pouring off his head and shoulders, hair weirdly sleek and flat.

“Move over, I want to add more hot water,” said John, reaching for the tap, knees bumping against Rodney’s.

Rodney moved a little, felt the fresh hot water blooming warmth against his skin under the surface. “Did you hear me? I think I’m going to move.”

John sat back again, planted one foot on Rodney’s stomach, wiggled his toes.

“I’m telling you this because I’m worried about breaking up your love affair with my tub,” Rodney continued.

John wiggled his toes a little lower.

“Stop it,” Rodney said, getting a little annoyed, pushing at John’s foot. “Woolsey finally cleared that residential area I told you about, with the two-level lofts? Senior staff get first pick. I think I’ll take that two bedroom suite so I can have a place to stick all my computer stuff. But the tub is only big enough for one person.”

“So I’ll move in here,” said John, finally deigning to acknowledge the fact that they were having a conversation.

“No,” said Rodney, “no, you’re moving with me.”

John sat up, pulling his foot back, bracing himself on the edges of the tub. The escape position.

“Oh, calm down, I don’t mean with me,” Rodney said, “I mean into the same building, the same area. Senior staff, remember?”

“I like my room just fine,” said John.

“Your room is ridiculous for a grown man,” said Rodney. “Your bed is smurf-sized. Last time we tried to have sex on it I nearly broke my hip.” He clambered onto his knees, squeaked his way over to John, settled down straddling his lap. “There’s a loft with a better bathroom,” he said, “I want to go and look at it with you tomorrow.”

“My room’s fine,” said John again, but his arms were off the sides of the tub and had come up around Rodney’s body. He tilted his head back, kissed Rodney. One hand slid lower, down Rodney’s crack, the fingers teasing at him with a familiarity that made Rodney’s heart hurt.

“So you’ll come and look?” said Rodney, reaching between them, taking John in hand, stroking him slowly.

“Turn around,” said John, instead of answering, “it’s easier if you face the other way if we’re going to do it here.”

Rodney decided to take that as a ‘yes’.

***

It took another two days of cajoling before John caved and followed Rodney to the new residential quarters. “Packing is such a pain in the ass,” he said.

“I’ll find you an apple box and do it for you,” Rodney answered. “John, you own, like, seven things. Now, shut up and look at this.” Rodney stopped in front of the door and waved his hand over the control. The building they were in was newer, according to the anthropologists, than the main tower where most of the expedition had been housed in the first year, and where John had stubbornly stayed ever since. The colours were a little lighter, the aesthetic brighter, and – in this area, anyway – the quarters were naturally lit by a breathtaking expanse of sloped skylights. They entered on the lower level, the larger part of the loft. There was a kitchen area, a table and chairs, a bathroom (complete with large tub), and then there was a set of spiral stairs leading up to the smaller bedroom loft, open to the space below with metal railings overlooking the rest of the place instead of walls. The upper loft was almost entirely occupied by a vast bed, but had some typical Ancient decorative wall moldings against its back wall.

Rodney walked up to the back wall, put his palm carefully on a recessed part of the panel. “I’m thinking you could hang up Johnny Cash here,” he said, and pressed down. The wall retracted, opening into another, slightly larger, room.

“What the hell is that for?” said John, smiling in spite of himself.

“I can’t say what it’s for,” Rodney said, “but I found it when I was checking out the other loft for myself. John – they’re adjoining.” He took John by the hand, tugged him across into the other room, and the wall slid shut again. If you knew where to look for it, the button to work the wall was obvious. “I’m thinking I can put up a tapestry or something,” Rodney said, “so it doesn’t get pressed by accident on my side either.”

John looked around, still seeming stunned. “This is the place you wanted,” he said, catching on.

“Surprise,” Rodney half-exclaimed, a little too late. “Well?” He bounced forward on his feet, pleased with himself. “What do you think? Should we move?”

John remained strangely impassive, so Rodney moved closer. “Hey,” he said, “no more sneaking around. You could stay the night. No one would know.”

And John moved so fast that it startled Rodney, one second utterly still and expressionless, the next tackling Rodney down on the bed, right there in broad daylight, pulling at their clothes.

“We don’t have anything,” said Rodney even as he toed out of his shoes, tugged off his socks, whipped John’s black t-shirt over his head. “I haven’t exactly stocked the bedside table yet, I –“

“Don’t need it,” said John, freeing Rodney of his pants, pulling the elastic of his boxers up over his erection and then down his legs. “Just like this,” and pinned Rodney’s thighs open with his own, shifted them with his hand so their cocks lined up, and started thrusting. Rodney lifted his hips, tried to keep up, but John was gone, mindless like Rodney had never seen him, shuddering and making sharp pained noises, and coming almost as soon as they started.

“Here, here,” said John, getting up on his knees, flushed and sweaty, swiping his fingers through the come on Rodney’s belly, “just wait a second,” and reached behind, bracing himself over Rodney, spreading his legs wide. And then, too soon, John shifted forward, taking Rodney’s cock in hand, and lowered himself onto it.

They moved together, fast and hard, and all Rodney could think of was that they could do this now, they could fuck here in this room, they could fuck and sleep in this bed, they could wake up together and make coffee in their pyjamas and they could argue over who ate the last bagel and whose turn it was to do laundry.

Rodney came, and then John leaned down and kissed him and kissed him, and Rodney thought this could never feel like work, never in a million years.

***

But at senior staff the next day, Woolsey said, “Right, has everyone staked a claim in the new residential area?” and around the table everyone agreed they had, and then John said, “I’ll be staying put,” and “It’s bad for morale with the marines if they think I have this cushy place and they’re still in the small rooms,” and “No, it’s fine, I’m totally sure. Someone else can have the last loft if they want it.”

***

“You know, this is just one very small step up from calling me a dirty homo and cutting yourself in the bathroom,” Rodney said the second he cornered Sheppard late that night, in his stupid tiny immature quarters.

John looked up from his stupid golf magazine, bland and unconcerned. “Golf isn’t homophobic, Rodney.”

“You know what I mean,” Rodney said, and crossed the room and pulled the magazine out of John’s hands, rolled it up, and smacked him with it. “This is bullshit, John!”

“Are you housebreaking me?” said John, raising his arms to defend himself, wide-eyed.

“I’m trying, goddammit!” Rodney shouted. “You’re still pissing all over me, though!”

“I’m starting to see why Katie and Jennifer didn’t want to marry you,” said John. “Is this your usual approach to relationships?”

“Is this yours? Throwing me down on the bed and fucking the daylights out of me after I essentially ask you to move in with me and – and then changing your mind in front of my boss in a staff meeting?” Rodney returned, and smacked John’s stupid head again for good measure. “I’m shocked your marriage ended, really.”

John rolled off the bed, probably hoping to escape further physical abuse. “Look, Rodney,” he said, and seemed to lose steam, unable to look up and meet Rodney’s furious gaze.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Rodney asked, the idea slicing through his guts like a knife. “Is that what this is?”

“We’re not together,” John said, a little exasperated.

“We’re not?” Rodney said, stunned. “So all those times I put my penis in your –”

“We’re not together like, like you and Jennifer were,” said John. “You know that.” He planted one hand in his hair, pulled it free again, paced two steps away, and turned. Then he gathered himself visibly and looked up to meet Rodney’s eyes. “Rodney. We can’t be like that. Not ever.”

Rodney was at a loss for words. John was – he was, the rat bastard – he was breaking up with him.

“You can have something less fucked up,” John said warmly. “You can have the girl and the kids and the, the domesticity and the happily ever after, but not if I—”

“I liked our happily ever after,” Rodney said, because it was the only thing he could think of to say. “John.”

“There isn’t one for us,” John said, and his voice was a little thicker than it had been.

Rodney swallowed, dropped his gaze. Sat on John’s smurf-bed. Let the golf magazine uncurl and drop to the floor. Pressed his hands into his thighs until it hurt a little.

Rodney was a genius, while John was merely very bright, and yet John seemed to have figured it out much faster than him: impasse. Rodney remembered this moment with Jennifer, the sixty unbearable seconds that had ticked by before they walked away from each other for good. Sixty seconds passed as Rodney sat, John standing close by. One hundred and twenty seconds. Five minutes.

The rational thing would be to stand up and leave, Rodney knew, because it was intolerable, the knowledge that staying here only prolonged the inevitable; and yet, staying here an extra second, an extra minute, meant another second, another minute with John before everything changed for the worse.

Six minutes. Ten.

“No,” said Rodney, and stood up.

John had his arms folded across his chest, and his head snapped up at Rodney’s outburst. “No?” he said, almost comically surprised.

“No,” repeated Rodney. “No, I’m not leaving. We’re not breaking up, and if we don’t get happily ever after I’ll settle for secretly ever after. John, there’s nothing for me that’s going to be as good as this is. And you know it, too.”

“This isn’t a democracy,” griped John. “You don’t get to veto my break-up.”

“The hell I don’t,” Rodney said, grabbing John by the face, kissing him. John resisted for all of three seconds before he came alive under Rodney’s mouth, hungry and angry and resentful. When they broke apart, breathing hard, Rodney held John still between his palms and said, “I know this is a nightmare for you, but I have to say it once, so bear with me.” John blinked, lips red, eyes focused on Rodney’s. “I’m in love with you. And you’re in love with me. Now stop being an asshole and move in with me.”

“Next to you,” John corrected, always the wiseass.

“Don’t make me get the magazine,” said Rodney, and kissed John again.

***

“I told Teyla,” said John the night they moved, after they’d switched off the light and Rodney was drowsing a little.

“You did?” Rodney said, a little surprised, hauling himself up on his elbows to squint at John.

John looked over, eyes wide. “Oh,” he said, “not that. Not about”– he waved a hand at them, the bed. “Although I think that she knows, she always knows that stuff. No, I meant, I told her about the ZPMs, the cache.”

“Oh,” said Rodney, subsiding into his pillow. “Good.”

“She had some ideas,” said John. “She thought we should leave them there, though.”

“Good,” said Rodney, who liked the security of knowing the ZPMs were hidden, even if they weren’t useful.

“But she said maybe,” said John, “maybe we should leave a map.” He paused. “Not a map. A trail of clues. You know. Like – like Indiana Jones.”

Rodney thought about it, immediately interested by the prospect of being the puzzle creator rather than the breaker for once. “You mean, something to lead someone to the cache?” he said.

“Something like that,” John said, and reached over, laid his hand on Rodney’s back just above his ass. He scooted closer, pressed a kiss to Rodney’s shoulder. “Like the Brotherhood of 15, but way, way harder.”

“Instead of a 9-piece puzzle,” agreed Rodney, “the seeker should have to do advanced mathematics and physics problems – they should be able to understand the workings of the ZPM just as well as I do.”

“And philosophy puzzles,” contributed John, “and something that tests their moral compasses.” He tucked his head down onto Rodney’s back. “They have to prove they can handle the responsibility.”

“And we can leave the first clue somewhere in the city,” said Rodney, “and have it timed somehow, set it so that it isn’t revealed for – I don’t know, maybe two hundred years?”

John was edging even closer, now throwing one leg over Rodney’s thighs, his warmth blanketing Rodney, his weight comforting. “Could take a long time,” he said, apparently comfortable enough that he was dropping into sleep, judging by his abruptly drowsy consonants.

“Years,” agreed Rodney with equally sleepy diction. “Decades, even.”

“And we have to do it,” added John, “without the IOA noticing. Lots of planning.”

“We could do it, though,” said Rodney reassuringly. “We’re okay now.” He wasn’t sure, sleep-addled as he was, if he meant the city with its full power, or the two of them snugged into one bed, but he supposed it didn’t matter because John was clearly asleep anyway. And John would stay there, pressed against Rodney, until the morning light came to wake them and pull them into a new day, day after day.

***

Rodney thought, sometimes, about those fifty-five glittering gorgeous ZPMs, secreted in a soundless dark cavern away from prying eyes, about how they held a piece of space-time in their cores, a miniscule sliver of eternity wrapped in amber crystal and naquadah micro-circuitry.

They would stay there, Rodney knew – untouched by human hands, cradling their covert miracles – waiting dormant for the generations yet to come.

***

Some More Author's Notes

This story's title derives from the eponymous song by Colin Hay. Listen to it here on Grooveshark. Do you know how hard it is find songs about middle age ennui when your personal library was mostly gathered in your 20s? REALLY HARD.

That pic of John in surf shorts? Yeah. It exists. (Though of course in my imagined version, John's a little less...erm. Drunk.)

If you want to bookmark a version of this, might I suggest the version on my site, here -- just so's ya have it all in one page.