TexasDreamer01

Title and Platform: To Commit An Act of God (SquidgeWorld) (tumblr)
Rating: Explicit
Fandoms: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: McShep, Rodney McKay & AR-1, Rodney McKay & Radek Zelenka, Rodney McKay & Samantha "Sam" Carter, Rodney McKay & Daniel Jackson, Rodney McKay & Sha're, Miko Kusagani
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Rodney McKay Ascends, Ascended Rodney, De-Ascension, Psychic Rodney, Temporary Character Death, Temporary Major Character Death, Mentioned Canonical Character Death(s), Author Pretending John Has An Actual Bed, Getting Together, Social Bonding, Worldbuilding, Scientific Concepts As A Metaphor For Ascension, Clue By Four, Implied/Referenced Grief/Mourning, POV Rodney McKay, Ascension Diner, First Kisses, Hand Jobs, Rodney McKay Gets A Hug, Teyla Emmagen Gets A Hug, Ronon Dex Gets A Hug, Bottom John Sheppard, Top Rodney McKay
Summary:
"Chance was, statistically speaking, a calculable, inevitable event. He supposed he should have seen this one coming."

He's listening with one ear to everyone in the lab, a bustle and background noise that hums along with his thoughts in synchronicity. It's not something he'd ever tell anyone, but the abstract chaos is comforting, and one of the only reasons he'll linger at a table in the communal labs rather than the one designated for his personal use as head of the division. Silence is useful when he needs to bend his nose to the grindstone, but it can make the static of roiling background thoughts too overwhelming with nothing to temper it from outside his head.

Turning the slim, pen-like device over in his hands, he wonders - not for the first time - how the Ancients contrived so many various pieces of technology. With the amount of labs and experiments paused in situ around the city, the power draw must have been enormous. Surely they had some means of regularly maintaining the ZPMs, and he frowned into the middle distance, trying once again to parse the delicate presuppositions of ideas about how this was accomplished.

It was his responsibility to make sure the city stayed afloat, and literally so. He tapped the device against the table, the sound lost among the myriad patter of movement around him. Surely there's some sort of maintenance code? He blinked a few times, letting his vision filter back to the screen in front of him, still paused on a spreadsheet tracking the projects in each department. Columns of numbers greeted him, completely arbitrary in their reflection of progress, the process rubber-stamped by the IOA despite being a galaxy and then some away. Something… something in the numbers. Has to be.

Everyone knew better than to interrupt him when he was off taking a mental walk like this, too used to how his innocuous process of thinking produced results. He brings up another window, remembering at the last minute that the over-engineered soldering pen he had been fiddling with was still Ancient technology and thus not advised for normal interaction, setting it down above the function buttons on his keyboard to prevent it from rolling away. The file directory stared back at him, impassive as he drummed his fingers over the keys in thought.

Re-tracing his whisper of a thought took a bit of effort, but when he did, he mumbled an 'aha!' to himself, locating the root directory mirroring what they had been able to compile from the main Ancient database. It was a beautiful application of colour-coding, if he did say so himself, articulatable to himself unto a fairly steep exercise in exhaustion - his normal state of mind when rescuing everyone from the inanities of a ten thousand year old creaking structure that some days seemed hellbent on killing them all out of sheer decrepitude.

Sorry, he thought anyway, refraining from patting his keyboard, and by extension Atlantis, in apology. Picking up the pen-thing again, he resumed rolling the cool metal around his fingers, mind once again sinking back into the currents of one of the many background problems he toiled with when there was time. If the crystals can be modified for different circuitry layouts, then that presumes the transistors contain different permutations of use…

He walked himself through the argument, muttering pertinent facets under his breath. If you convert the gate of a diode on the third level of circuitry, then the flow is redirected based upon the direction of the other levels, he frowns, tapping the pen against the table, If you have opposing factors in the directions, then the energy flow is based upon the resistance of alloys along the stream.

Not for the first time, he wondered how the Ancients had figured out how to convert a connection to subspace to electricity. It was scarcely the same thing, too many factors at play for physics to catch up. But it did - obviously so, if they were sitting in a ship full of proof. Staring at the pen, he held it between both hands, contemplating it.

An electric flow is dependent upon the magnetization of materials and thus its quantum state, he thinks, Energy is the transfer of matter, and can be modified based on its state.

But how did they connect? He frowned, thinking back to some of the basic schematics he had been able to pull from Earth's ZPM. They were the same technology as Atlantis', of course, so the principles carried over, but the way they interfaced with Earth's stargate and Atlantis itself was a branch or two off of similarity, enough to puzzle over its differences. What he learned there was almost useless here.

He sighed, nearly silent in comparison to the cacophony of his thoughts. State-dependent modifications rely upon sufficient energy to transition to a new form. To alter the path on a crystal, one must modify multiple states at once in order to achieve proper transmission flow. Impediments would be-

"Would be what?" He mutters to himself, staring at the monitor. The root directory told him little, only that power flowed out of the ZPM and to different parts of the city like snowmelt running down the crevices of a mountain - a source from a different system, distributed with the same force but not the same volume.

… A logic gate is transformed upon the basis of individual changes on multiple levels, at different points in the system.

The pen feels all at once too heavy and too light in his hands, drooping in his shock-loosened grip. His mind was flitting ahead, the conclusion almost in his reach. Habit, absently, had him reaching toward it, silence filling his ears.

To adjust for different phase states, one must precipitate a change in the path at multiple points in the system.

It- it explained everything. His mind buzzed at the epiphany, and he couldn't help his fascination leaking forth in one, unprompted, "Oh."

The pen clanks against the edge of the table, falling to the floor with a clatter in the afterimage of gold dust floating away.

---

When he next blinks, it isn't to a monitor or his thoughts or his realization at all. Instead, it's to midday light, something not visible from the main labs due to the obvious lack of windows. Gold is filtering out of his view, a pretty wave of light that he understands intuitively is the play of photons around him.

He blinks again, scattering the vestiges with bemusement.

"Sir?" A woman's voice sounds from off to his side, sounding as if she's said it more than once, and a bit odd in the manner of hearing two things at once. It occurs to him that he's hearing English, even if that might not be what she's speaking. He blinks again, turning his head toward the voice - a waitress, smiling at him patiently, "Might I take your order?"

"Uh," And damn if that isn't an articulate answer. He flushes, trying not to squirm in place in embarrassment and realizing abruptly that the distinctive twinge in his back was no longer there. Too discombobulated to think about that for too long, he shakes his head, "I'm sorry, who are you?"

The waitress' smile neither dims nor grows, but maintains its placid patience. He can't help but think the overall effect is calming, if nevertheless disorienting - he hasn't met a single waitress that can keep their keel so evenly.

"I'm here to take your order," She says, this time with a hint of humor as she tilts her notepad toward him, "Do you something in mind?"

"Um, uh-" He shakes his head, trying to put two and two together. The memory is a bit blurred, but he retains that distinct feeling of being at work, and then all of a sudden, poof. Nothing after that.

"He'll have something off the breakfast menu," Another voice interjects, familiar enough to draw his attention. His brow furrows at the man smiling across from him in the other booth, too sly to be anything other than real. A hand extends toward him over the table, "You should remember me, Rodney - Daniel?"

"Jackson," He breathes, the dots finally settling into place at seeing the SGC-rumored Mister Ascended himself talking to him. The expected kick of panic at the knowledge of his death never comes, and he exhales in a whoosh, shaking the other man's hand, "What is this place?"

Daniel smirks, albeit in a wholly good-natured manner that he feels should irritate him on principle, the man slouching back into his seat like he was moulded from it, "Oh, take your pick- most people call this the afterlife. You ascended."

"Huh," He looks back up at the waitress, who seemed to be lingering rather than stuck in some freeze-frame out of the Matrix, and then out the window, which held nothing in particular at all unless he concentrated on a specific sight, "Okay, I'll accept that. How did I get here? I mean- ascending, obviously, but-"

Snorting, Daniel shook his head, looking much younger than he remembered him from last meeting, "I'm sure you'll figure it out, if you want to remember it."

"What does that mean?" He asked, frowning, "Am I not supposed to remember, or- Or is there something I am supposed to remember, and-"

"Rodney," Daniel interjected, shaking his head. The smile on the man's face wasn't as reassuring as he probably thought it was, and he said as much, "It's fine. Sometimes you'll want to know, sometimes you won't - it's all up to you."

He watched the flicker of emotions cross Daniel's face, and thought about all the ways that, up until now, he could have died from. A shudder rippled through him, remembering all the mundane and terrifying things he could recall - and recall in perfect, painstaking clarity, "Point taken. But… why now? I could have ascended before, with that- that machine, but this is. This is completely arbitrary, I didn't even plan this."

Daniel raised an eyebrow, an echo of his own death reverberating between them in tangible detail, making him bite back a grimace at the shared memory of radiation eating away at flesh and bone long past what medicine could alleviate. It combined with a faint stretch of precognition, layers of possibilities where that was his own predicated fate among many other routes that led right back to this diner.

They stared at each other for a moment, sharing the mental travelling of what could be, what will be. When he clenched his hands into fists on the table, feeling the emotional burn of nausea if not the physical, Daniel asked, "Would you want to?"

"Plan this?" He asked, then shook his head instinctively, answering his own question, "I mean, I'm sure all of this has its merits - but believe me, those windows are creeping me out, it feels like a bunch of TV screens if I'm not making it stay in place - but… No. Not yet, at least."

With those nightmare-inducing ideas now floating around his head, a thought suddenly occurred to him, "Are you dead, too? Like at the same time?"

"Am I?" Daniel extended his arms, encompassing the table, "Or does a drop of water hold both the salt of a rock and the cold of a cloud?"

"Linguists," He mutters in good-natured disgust, shaking his head.

Daniel laughed, rising from the table, "I recommend the pancakes."

"Of course you do," He replies, but Daniel's already gone, whisked away who knows where. Sighing, he looks at the waitress, still patiently existing for him to revisit her point in time, "Ah, I suppose pancakes will do. Do you have them in chocolate chip?"

The waitress smiles as she copies down the order, whatever she's writing with bafflingly indistinct and definitely not transcribing in English. Huh. "Of course. Did you want anything else?"

He pauses, thinking for a moment before shrugging, "Hell, I'm apparently dead, anyway. I am dead here, right?"

"A pot of water boils when there is a necessity for it," The waitress responds, and he should have figured he was surrounded by Ancients.

Sighing, he consigns himself to an innumerable and apparently eternal amount of superbly bad puns, "A cup of coffee, then, if this is what I'm gonna have to listen to. With cream and sugar," He pauses, hesitant, "And a, uh, a glass of lemonade. Please?"

Smiling serenely, the waitress nods, "Your order will be ready shortly."

Wishing he had nerves to shake out, he only mumbles something on rote, unsurprised when there was yet another Ancient sitting across from him where Daniel had been sitting just a moment prior, "Uh. Hello?"

"Hello," The woman says, and god, what a beautiful woman, too. Her smile only grows wider, in what he assumes is some preternatural ability to read his thoughts, which really falls in line with this whole instinctive multi-lingual thing death had, "No, Doctor McKay, I am merely happy to see you."

He frowns, "Do I know you? I feel like I'd remember someone, uh, someone like you."

The woman shakes her head, laughing. It's all so unoffensive, though, he can't help but feel a laugh bubble up with her, "Doctor McKay. You have seen my Dan'yel, yes?"

The name doesn't ring a bell until a his order is being set down in front of him, somehow a similar order being placed in front of the woman. Grits aren't really his taste, but the way this stranger delicately heaps more food into the bowl and eats a large spoonful makes it look appetizing. He grabs his coffee on instinct, pleased to realize it was precisely the right temperature despite the steam wafting out of the cup.

"Daniel Jackson, you mean?" He asks, smearing the pat of butter plopped on top of the short stack with a distracted swipe of his knife. The smell was superb, making his mouth water, "I, uh, I just saw him. Did you see him leave?"

The woman shakes her head, somehow looking unruffled despite the news, "I will see him again. But, Doctor McKay, I would like you to speak to him."

He blinked around a forkful of pancake, "Uh? I suppose they don't do letters here, do they?"

The pancake was delicious enough that he was almost too distracted to hear the woman's next words, and he chewed quickly, swallowing the bite to make room for another sip of coffee.

"It is alright," The woman soothed, her smile undimmed by his accidentally piecemeal attention, "But you will see him again. I miss my Dan'yel, I wish him to know all is well."

He pauses over his contemplation of the lemonade, familiar trepidation marred by curiosity over the distinct smell that usually makes his stomach roil. Settling for a halfway point of putting the glass down in between him and his pancakes, mildly disturbed at himself with how easy it was to calculate the exact triangulation of objects in doing so, he asked, "What do you mean?"

The woman nods at his juice with a bizarrely patient look of affection, "Drink that, you will like it."

Grumbling, he accepts the non-sequitur, hesitating for a moment at the familiar smell that usually heralded agony for him before taking a small, minuscule, truly tentative sip. There was no burning sensation, no heart palpitations that promised an allergic reaction that would have been doubled by sheer anxiety, no swelling of throat or fading of vision. He tightened his grip on the glass, taking another small taste of the drink.

"Oh," He says, marvelling, "Tangy. This is delicious."

The woman smiles, watching as he takes a more confident drink. He could see why so many people associated lemons with summer, now, it was almost… almost a joyful flavour. Wiggling in his seat at the revelation, it was a short order to drink the rest of it, taking the time to savour the different aspects of acid and sweetness and complete and utter lack of life-threatening reaction.

"Wow," He murmurs, tilting the glass to get a last drop, "I really have been missing out, huh?"

"You are quite brave," The woman says, tilting an eyebrow in a manner that reminds him of Teyla, if Teyla was as naturally demure as this woman. He accepts the hand laid over his own, loosening the grip on his fork, "Doctor McKay, there are many things for you to know."

He shakes his head, pragmatism too engrained for him to abide by that compliment, "I've learned quite enough, haven't I? I'm here, that- that does mean I learned enough."

The woman merely allowed her smile to blend into a different mood, "My name is Sha're. You are much like Dan'yel - always seeking, always helping."

"You are-" His voice strangles on the concept, "You are quite kind. Uh. Thank you? I think."

"You do help," She says, the words strengthened by her obvious conviction, "There are many who are helped. No path is clear, but walk along it knowing the fog of the morning will dissipate."

"And here we are on garden paths," He mutters, but the words click together nevertheless, "You- I recognize you. Your name. Sha're of- of Abydos?"

The woman nods, emphatic, "Yes. A pebble in a stream can branch into a river."

He squeezes her hand back, feeling discombobulated but also at ease. It was funny how epiphanies did that, "I think I'll finish my pancakes first, though, if you don't mind?"

Sha're laughs, her voice tinkling with delight.

---

Bracing himself to enter his own quarters in a deserted hallway is ridiculous even for him, but the sweet, ready way Atlantis opens his door is reassuring. He's still wrapping that sense of familiarity around him when the volume of people's raised voices registers, halting him with barely two steps through the door that closed with a subtle swoosh.

"What the hell is going on here," Rodney shouts, horrified, derailing three different arguments by force of presence alone. He puts his hands on his hips, muttering to himself, "I'm gone for five minutes-"

"Rodney!"

"Yes, what-"

He's not prepared for the way Sheppard vaults over the bins and boxes and tackles him, his breath thumped out of him with the gesture. The grip on him is tight, and he can swear his newly re-formed bones are creaking with the pressure, so he struggles to get his arms out from under Sheppard's grip to whack at the man's back, "Let me go!"

Sheppard does, but not before he flatly picks him up, like some deranged rendition of a teddy bear, swaying him around a little for emphasis. The smile on the colonel's face is broader than anything he's ever seen - a part of him wants to be spooked by it, the sight so unusual for a typically taciturn person. He's left flailing for the correct response when Sheppard grabs his face with both hands and presses a deep, impulsive kiss onto his lips.

"Hngh?" He can practically feel his brain rewire itself on the surprise dose of endorphins, which he doesn't presently have the wherewithal to deliberate on whether that's a good thing. It's apparently an adequate amount of time for Sheppard to decide to kiss him again, and he can feel himself melt into it, "Mmm. Ah."

He can still feel the imprint of Sheppard's uniform under his hands when the kiss peters off, briefly distracted by the way the other man's lips slide against his own. A part of him wants to lean back in, tilt his head up, but the shocked silence convinces him that he at least needs to table that particular discussion for later.

"Um," He says, blinking a few times and feeling rueful that, once again, his mind is going faster than the rest of him, "Hi."

Sheppard grins down at him, all soft and fond and other gooey emotions he can feel behind his eyes, "Hi."

"So I might have…" He shrugs, swallows loosely and feels himself flush at the way Sheppard's eyes track his throat, "Accidentally ascended?"

"Accidentally?!" Radek shouts in bewildered disbelief, "You- you- 'accidentally', můj prdel-"

"I heard that," He says automatically, still too used to the auto-translate that being ostensibly non-corporeal had granted him. Radek sputters to a stop, gaping at him. He winces, "Uh. Sorry. About that."

"Sorry about what?" Sheppard asks, and he hasn't let go yet, but nobody's making him. The slide of a thumb against the back of his neck makes his eyes flutter, Sheppard's breath stuttering as he does so.

"Mmm," He sighs, letting himself be held. It felt like an eternity since the last time he had experienced such a luxury, "Leaving. Understanding. Whole lot. Take your pick."

Sheppard huffs out a relieved laugh, pulling him closer in a protective grip, one hand still cupping the back of his head, "Apology accepted."

He's still adjusting to the waves of affection coming from Sheppard, threatening to knock his knees out from under him and turn him into a cooked noodle of appreciation, so the non-Sheppard hand tentatively touching his arm is surprising. Sheppard briefly tightens his grip, but now that he can recognize an anxious Teyla - and really, what did happen, she's the least anxious person he knows, a complete opposite of him - he slides out of Sheppard's hold with a faint sense of reluctance.

"Rodney," Teyla is looking at him searchingly, reflexively gripping his forearm, "I- is that truly you?"

Speaking feels utterly trite at the moment, much as he does, sometimes, love to hear himself talk. What he does instead is envelope Teyla in a hug, squishing her against him the same way he remembered doing with Jeannie when she was young, too afraid from a nightmare to seek anyone else out. It's definitely the correct choice, because she hugs him back with a tinge of desperation, tucking her head under his chin with a wobbly breath.

"Shh," He murmurs, making sure he doesn't let go until Teyla wants to, listening to her unsteady breathing. The words that come to mind are old, disused, but he dusts them off because Teyla needs them, "Everything's alright, I'm here. Shh, shh, it's okay."

He'd always known he was one of the oldest by a thin margin, but in the little group of friends and colleagues he's made in Atlantis he'd never felt it - not for real - until just now, feeling the tension in the room go down by proxy as Teyla calmed down with his hushing. It made his heart ache, remembering the way Daniel had smiled when they talked, the shared acknowledgment that knowledge was not always a blessing.

Teyla's hair was soft under his hand, smelling faintly of the bleach and hair dye some of the women had convinced her to use. It was one of her few indulgences with her appearance, and he felt an incongruous twitch of his lips that she still stuck with an element of Earth-based fashion. He found himself reassured by this - Teyla adapted to anything in front of her, so easily he was often awed by her ability to blend in to new crowds. Whatever happened, there Teyla would be.

Swaying together echoed all the times he had done so with Jeannie, before things inevitably deteriorated. He was grateful Sheppard had found a way to patch things between them, and it compelled him to squeeze Teyla tightly, listening to her startle with amusement, "C'mon. Better?"

He felt her nod against his shoulder, the way she bolstered herself before withdrawing. The tilt of her head was expected, and he leaned his forehead against hers, soaking up the feeling of strength she seemed to derive from the gesture. When she looked up, her eyes were red-rimmed, and he brushed away a stray tear track.

"I missed you," He said, because Teyla was rarely anything but honest, and also because it was true. She smiled at him, bright and reassured, "It really was an accident."

Teyla's smile managed to get even brighter, almost on par with Sheppard's, and god, they had missed him back, hadn't they? He had known the truth, in that makeshift highway diner, but being confronted with it was another thing entirely.

"I believe you," She replied, sounding happy, in that way that was stripped of bitter undertones, only joy left over. He couldn't help but grin back, pulling her into a quick hug just to contain the emotion better.

Sheppard was lingering at his back, protective and watchful. It allowed him to look around the room, the way Ronon and Radek were still holding some hastily-constructed cardboard box between them like he'd interrupted their tug-of-war. A scatter of scientists mixed with a handful of soldiers, making his quarters feel like a public common rather than the one place he wasn't required to share.

Letting his hands fall from Teyla's arms, he gestured at the paused cacophony, "Y'know, when I said throw me a party, I didn't mean a riot."

A slew of abashed faces met him. Ronon still took the time to scowl at Radek, yanking the box away. He felt like he was probably going to need to take the box away from Ronon, and what would those two even be arguing over, anyway?

Sheppard had shifted closer, hands ghosting along his sides, telegraphing the intent to resume cosseting him but refraining by a hair. The murmur brushing by his ear made him shiver, Sheppard's lips forming a smirk, "It's more of a custody fight."

"Get a lawyer," He said automatically, then blinked, "Actually. Sam. Is she here?"

He had meant in the general sense of Atlantis, because he didn't actually know how long he'd been gone, but it seemed to have been interpreted in such a way that everyone reflexively looked around them, as if the woman would pop out of the woodwork. Rolling his eyes, he thought, I've got my work cut out for me.

One hand reached to tap his ear, but found that while the Ancients were nice enough to let him de-ascend with memories, clothes, and motor skills intact, an earpiece had been considered optional. He made an annoyed sound, spinning on one heel to look for the closest replacement.

Sheppard blinked at him bemusedly when he leaned forward and plucked the device out of the man's ear, but he had no time for frivolities like that, "McKay to Carter."

If Sam was still the way he remembered, she was probably awake for longer hours than him, and always available in an emergency. Being right was gratifying, and so was listening to her sharp inhale, "Rodney?"

"Hi," He said summarily, "I'm told you know a Sha're? She says hello."

Sam floundering over her words was unusual, but he leaned absently into the hand Sheppard pressed against his back, letting the other take his weight as Sam worked her way through the conundrum, "Rodney, what the fuck."

He grinned, "So that means you do."

"Of course I do," She barked, bewilderment drawing her out of the habitual placidity she wore around him in Atlantis, "What- how- you ascended. She ascended?"

"I also talked to Daniel," He confirmed, humming thoughtfully, "Though I don't think we were there at coinciding times. You get me?"

There was a lot of muttering on the other end of the line, and he split his attention to the way everyone slowly decompressed around him. Huh, he thought, I'm not sure whether to be flattered.

"You're writing a report," Sam eventually demanded, when her self-solved revelations petered off. He smirked, which Sam seemed to have a sixth sense for, "Don't even make that face. Also, Rodney?"

"…Yes?" He hazarded, the hand at his back pressing closer in response.

Sam's smile was obvious in her exhale, "Welcome back."

---

The whole to-do about coming back over the next couple of weeks was both over- and under-whelming, if anyone asked him. Even if he were still as oblivious as before - and that particular self-reflection had been cringe-worthy to discover, something that had been meticulously gone over in the therapy sessions he was herded into - he would have been able to pick up on the way everyone was tightly wound-up in his absence.

"You know," He said absently over his chocolate pudding, feeling the bizarre need to apologize, "I really, really didn't do it on purpose."

Ronon made a disagreeing sound, which Sheppard copied with a nod, "You do have a habit of doing things accidentally, buddy."

He grimaced, remembering all of those particular flaws. Nothing better to keep himself grounded, he thought, than to remember all of the stupid shit. The pudding tasted a little less nostalgic in that particular wake, and he sighed, pushing it away and blatantly ignoring the concerned looks lasered into him from everyone at the table, "I swear I didn't do it on purpose. I just… had an epiphany."

Sheppard smirked, even if he got the bizarre feeling that the other man had to muster the energy for it, "Hazards of the job?"

"Exactly," He said, relieved, slumping into his seat, "Could happen to the best of us."

Teyla looked down at her food, a neutral expression on her face that he learned boded unknown realms of danger. It seemed to coordinate a silence around the table, unsettling him. He shifted in his seat, glancing at all of them, "What?"

Ronon gave him a frowning, narrow-eyed look, his version of a pout, if Ronon was the type to do it in his direction, "You left."

"Not on purpose," He insisted, sighing in exasperation. There was a chill from everyone, he just knew it, and he cut his losses with an aching heart, "Fine. I'll just- I have some work to do. I'll catch up later."

Nobody called him back to the table, and the taste of the pancakes he had at that ascended diner lingered in his mouth.

---

Radek was looking at him warily, but he'd had it with apologizing for something everyone presumed he had explicit control over, so he glared and pulled his attention back to his computer. Everything was, disturbingly, exactly where he had left it.

Luckily, the man was smart enough to figure out what his disgruntled mood meant, and they worked in silence for a while. There were others in the room, but they kept to themselves. Eventually the studious ambiance lulled him into something approaching normalcy. His shoulders didn't quite settle from around his ears, but he could focus better on the simulations he had left running in his absence.

Funny, he could swear the numbers made more sense before.

Swearing under his breath, he dumped the results into a spreadsheet and re-ran everything, needing the fresh start of it. Fatigue swept over him, making him wonder if he ought to get up and brave the coffee maker. He scrubbed a hand over one side of his face, sighing.

Radek hadn't committed to the clue of fucking off, but there was a cup of fresh, steaming hot coffee being pressed closer to his hand, so he figured he could forgive the transgression of encroaching on his personal space. He ignored the way Radek was staring at him, forehead obviously wrinkled in concern, focusing on taking a bracing gulp of the drink in his hand despite the way it burned his tongue.

It even had just the right amount of cream and sugar in it. My god, he thought in frank, despondent realization, Things must have really fallen apart.

"How many things am I fixing?" He asked, peering down at his cup in suspicion, "Nobody ever makes me a perfect cup of coffee, what did all of you do?"

"A perfect cup, you say?" Radek smiled.

"Oh, fuck off," He grumped, feeling better when Radek just grinned at him in that typical insouciant, Czech manner.

Radek switched his attention to his monitors, peering at them, "Did you not already get the results on these?"

"Bad data," He muttered, taking an obscuring sip of coffee, "Had to re-run it."

Disconcertingly, Radek merely shrugged, "Perhaps not bad data, but bad interpretation."

He squinted at the other man, wondering which entendre he was going to be wrangling today. Radek merely looked back at him in a crap interpretation of innocence, "Those glasses only make you look bug-eyed, you know."

"And your insistence on regretting de-ascending is demoralizing everyone," Radek shot back immediately.

"Wh- I am not," He protested, putting his cup down. His stomach cramped, and he told himself it was because the coffee had been too hot, not because Radek had hit the mark, "Where are you getting these ridiculous ideas?"

Radek gave him a hard stare, then turned to grab his mouse, shutting down the simulations over his protests. There was a brief - very brief - moment where he debated wrestling the mouse and keyboard away from the bastard, but in the end he just sighed, slumping on his stool. Everyone else was pointedly normal, providing an adequate smokescreen of plausible deniability.

"You," Radek pointed a finger at him, pulling his hand back to shake it in futility, looking away, "You must stop this. You are here, be here."

"I am here," He said quietly, resisting the urge to rub at his sternum, if only to feel his heartbeat for himself, "It doesn't- doesn't feel like it."

Radek put his hand on the edge of the table, tilting his head at him with a potent frown, "How do you mean?"

And this was better than having the therapist sicced on him - none of them could quite do the whole deduction thing like another professional in the hard sciences. And, he thought to himself, an engineer like Radek, who wouldn't let shit go even if you gave him the opportunity.

He shrugged, "I don't know. Just… it felt real there, too."

The way Radek looked at him, all wide-eyed and upset, made him cross his arms. He hadn't expected to be weighed down with this sort of world-weariness, and wondered idly if Daniel had felt the same way. And good god, that man had done this multiple times. No wonder the archaeologist was such an incongruous nut, sometimes.

"Come," Radek announced, "I have a jumper that needs repairing, and you must tell me how I fucked up the crystals again."

"Well," He said, grabbing his coffee as he stood, "If you insist."

---

Who gave a shit what anyone else thought, doing banal repair work was the best sort of meditation. Radek handed him a toolkit and promptly disappeared to his own corner of the jumper. If he concentrated, he could hear the faint litany of swearing in Czech, therapeutic in its regularity.

He was barely concentrating on his task - some hotwiring at the front to try and coax the jumper's system to let them in to more areas. It was just annoying enough in its aberrations that he couldn't lose himself, and he could let himself wander and process things in the background of the work.

However much amount of time had passed, it was enough to startle him when a foot kicked his own, the thump of some wrapped food landing on his stomach almost making him drop his pliers on his face, "Ow! Oh hey, tuna."

"Tuna lookalike," Radek corrected him with a smile, sitting next to him, shoulders resting against the edge of the copilot seat, "New shipment this morning."

"Ah," He sniffed the sandwich, "That smoked stuff from Ilriga?"

Radek nodded, already tucking into his sandwich. They ate quietly together, and he couldn't help but notice the way Radek was doing that thing people do, where they pretend they're not checking up on you but really are. He was disappointed that he could recognize the look, now, having spent too much time in and out of the infirmary for various reasons.

A stale bag of chips was produced out of thin air, and they passed it between themselves, the hum of the jumper's idling systems a pleasant mental counterpoint.

"I had chocolate chip pancakes," He said, breaking the assiduously-applied silence Radek had gifted him with, "With a cup of coffee. And some lemonade."

"Lemonade?" Radek asked, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged, "I had never gotten the opportunity to try it out without, you know, asphyxiating. Tasted pretty good."

"It does," Radek agreed, swiping one of the smaller rounds of a chip and offering him the bag with its sundry broken bits. He huffed, taking the bag and letting the chips fall into his mouth with a practiced pour.

"It was…" How could he explain it? The vast, intimate stretch of infinity, its nexus where you could look at galaxies through the diner window if you wanted, or a specific, constrained scene. In a way, it had felt a bit like a truck stop, a place you could always visit, but never the same way twice.

Radek shifted in place, his head now resting against the seat. It made him look attentive, if disheveled, washing away some of the weariness he had spotted upon his return and letting natural curiosity shine through. He felt himself mimicking the posture, twisting himself against the console and feeling the pointed edge of metal dig into his back.

It was reassuring, this discomfort, "There was no pain."

"No?"

He stared past Radek, to the open back door of the jumper but also into his memories, "No. I didn't realize how much of a pain in the ass getting older was until I had a mortal body again," He pursed his lips, "That sounded weird, didn't it?"

Radek shrugged, "One of my great-grandmothers had a stroke once, we think. She laid in bed for days. Woke up, told my grandfather the strangest thing."

"Yeah?" He felt like he would be able to see it, if he pushed himself. It scared him, a little, how relative everything was - the pinch of aligning two different points in space time, just with the thought of it.

He was apparently transparent, as well, because Radek laid a leg over the two of his own. The warmth, human warmth, one that came with its own composite package of memories and thoughts, made him sigh, sinking into the grounding sensation. The look Radek sent him was understanding and chiding all at once.

"She had told him that death was final, but mortality was confining," Radek continued, "None of us could ever understand what she had meant with that."

Humming, he nodded, "She was right."

"Was she?" Radek asked, still sprawled out and looking unlikely to move any time soon.

He quirked a smile, remembering his disorientation in the diner, and how it had felt like a different sort of disorientation putting himself bodily in this plane of existence. It felt bittersweet, now, rather than the pervasive vertigo of waking from a dream.

Picking up the empty bag of chips, he wrapped it in the plastic wrap the sandwich had come in. He could still taste the saltiness of the chips, and the fatty smokiness of the fish that the mayonnaise couldn't disguise. It made him smile, and he felt the way it relaxed Radek, whatever the other man was perceiving.

"Mortality has its perks," He admitted, "Even if you need some Tylenol for it."

Radek laughed, groaning as his leg was shoved back, "Hear, hear."

---

Things seemed a little more real after that. In comparison, he could see how other people had been concerned - now that he had the benefit of perspective, he hadn't been quite connected, drifting around like some ghost that was confused where it was.

Teyla had been perfectly happy to take him up on a bantos lesson when he had asked, her smile wider than normal even as she gave him a few good whacks that would probably bruise through the padding of his training gear. Still, it was good, spending time with her as he futzed his way through the beginner's forms.

"You seem…" She tilted her head, "More settled. All is well?"

"All's well," He promised, parrying the obvious strike she made. It was drawing their lesson out, but he found himself the calmer for it, letting her dictate their interaction.

"I had worried," She confessed, pushing him through the steps of a kata that still didn't have a concrete name in English. Teyla was nice about it, though, letting him avoid the rolled ankle that most people got caught in part-way through by pushing rather than batting at his elbow when he turned.

"I'm sorry."

Teyla shrugged, a rolling motion of her shoulders he had always admired. Everything was always so well-controlled with her, and it made him sharply miss Elizabeth with how similar the two women were. Are. His stomach swooped, an intuition about Elizabeth he wasn't sure he wanted to acknowledge.

He must have made a face, because Teyla stopped, placing a hand on his arm in concern. She drew him into a head-touch, and he lingered there, using the sensation to ward off the roiling, metaphorical pitch of his stomach. Feeling it with your gut, ha.

Eventually they found themselves in a hug. He didn't think he had hugged so often in his life, and certainly not here on Atlantis, despite how tactile people in the Pegasus galaxy could be to reassure themselves of their humanity. Approximate humanity at least, he thought, mind unerringly flitting back to the Replicators.

"Rodney?" Teyla brushed a thumb over his shoulder, coaxing a sigh out of him.

"I miss Elizabeth," He said, "And I've got just- this is going to sound weird, alright? I have this feeling about her."

Teyla disentangled herself from him enough to look up at him. Her gaze was speculative, and he hated the gleam of hope in them, putting faith where he didn't want it to be warranted, "What sort of feeling?"

"I don't know," He muttered, "And I don't want to look too closely at it."

"That is understandable," Teyla said, even if he didn't quite believe the veracity of her reassurance. It was a tightly-controlled excitement lurking underneath her calm, but it was there, nevertheless, making him feel like an ass.

He bit his lip, trying to figure out the conflicting emotions that just barely reached where he could grab them, knowing instinctively at the same time it was one of those side effects of ascending that he was still trying to avoid. One personal prophecy was enough for him.

Teyla squeezed his arm, speaking quietly, "I am sorry. This must be very disturbing for you."

"Yeah, that's one way of putting it," He replied, rummaging up a smile even as he gave her the quick bow all students gave her after a lesson. She reciprocated, accepting the bantos rods he held out for her, "Teyla, I- thank you, for, well-"

"Being here?" She asked, looking fondly amused. It was an expression he hadn't realized he had missed, and he returned her smile a little more naturally.

"Yeah," He said, relieved that she was still there, and he was still Rodney, "I'm gonna, uh, catch up with you later?"

"I will see you later, Rodney," Teyla replied, warm enough that he could still feel it all the way to the transporter.

---

Sheppard was still lurking just out of reach, but he figured his ambling around the city would lead him somewhere.

That somewhere ended up being in Ronon's way, a close shave compared to the way others in the city alternately looked spooked at his presence or ready to hound him for their deepest confessions of questions. It was frankly relieving the way that Ronon stared in gruff silence at him, and he clutched literally at that, startling his team mate.

"Oh thank god," He breathed, already tugging Ronon down a corridor, "A normal person. And I don't say that typically, mind you, but I really think it's pertinent in this case."

Ronon's eyebrows scrunched together, still following him despite shaking off his grip, "What?"

He waved a hand, "You- you- you're not staring at me like I'm some, I don't know, revenant? Honestly, if I see one more person cross themselves-"

Ronon made a bemused noise, "I was wondering what that was about."

"Remind me to fetch you one of the great fictions known as a bible one of these days," He muttered, "You'd think they'd realize I'm me and get over themselves, but no- it was more gratifying when they were terrified because I called them morons, not because of some inexplicable mortal phenomenon."

Listening to Ronon grunting in disinterest was reassuring. All was well with the world, because the big man couldn't give a shit at the new weirdness of the day. He flustered out a sigh, herding his friend to a transporter a little quicker than he liked, but almost quick enough to avoid the people turning the corner.

Ronon raised an eyebrow at him, leaning against the wall of the transporter and watching him run a hand through his hair and debate which section of the map to press.

"You're like one big lion, you know," He muttered, eventually picking some place on a pier that he presumed would be a short walk and probably uninhabited at this hour, "All staring and leaning."

"Isn't that Sheppard?" Ronon asked with a smile.

He snorted, not entirely certain where his next words came from, but they felt appropriate to the subject, "Sheppard's like a bunch of cooked spaghetti. … Don't tell anyone I said that."

"Sure," Ronon agreed amiably, following him out of the transporter when the doors opened.

Fresh air, that was what he needed. He couldn't believe he let himself be cooped up indoors for this long, running hither and thither catching up on things that had screwed up while he had a brief bout of death. The smell of the ocean air was just as invigorating as it ever was, and he took in a deep, bracing breath.

Ronon easily kept pace with him, for a while keeping shoulder to shoulder as they strolled the deck. The usual thread of anxiety that would have him checking for emergencies was there, but not so overwhelming that he felt the urge to turn right back around. He stuck his hands in his pockets, letting the late afternoon sunshine warm his face.

As they walked, he found himself appreciating that Ronon had different qualities of silence. It wasn't the same as Sheppard and Teyla, of course, prone to mischief in a way that reminded him of a younger brother. None of that was here, at least for the moment, only the quiet enjoyment of each other's company.

If given the opportunity, Ronon would never speak first, or rarely so. He drifted into Ronon's side, gently shoulder-checking the other man and letting Ronon push him back.

"Radek was pissed at me," He said, watching a bird soar in the distance, not quite close enough for them to hear its call. They gathered to a pause, watching it ride the eddies of the wind, looping around a few times.

The ability to calculate its speed by sight alone, and the angle of its turns, was still there, but he didn't feel the urge to reach out and grasp the knowledge of its data points. Reducing a phenomenon of happenstance to a series of numbers, like he easily could when he was ascended, didn't have the same luster or scope.

He shook off the thought and its accompanying moroseness, shrugging limply when Ronon made a questioning noise, "Nothing. Just… thinking."

"You do that a lot," Ronon replied, turning his head down to watch him instead of the bird that crossed their paths. They weren't arranged in line of the sunlight, but the slow degree of its setting nevertheless added shadows to the man's face.

It made the faint line of accusation deeper. He frowned at it, uncertain how to assuage that.

"I feel like I'm doing things in reverse," He confessed, blinking and looking out across the pier. Ronon grunted, pushing him to continue, "Usually the dying do all the motions of comforting before they die. Here I am, doing the opposite."

Ronon laid a hand on his shoulder, gripping it firmly and turning him around. His friend had a complicated expression on his face, lips twisted in a blend of amusement and unhappiness. It was a similar enough face that people had been making at him the past few days that he reflexively sighed, shoulders slumping despite the way Ronon clasped his other shoulder, holding him upright under the misery.

"You do your best," Ronon said seriously, pressing his thumbs into the hollows of his shoulder, as if to impress the gravity of the words, "When it counts. You always do."

He sighed wearily, "But?"

"But," Ronon rumbled, drawing him in. The hug was encapsulating - they didn't often hug, and usually only after a life-or-death situation, but it was difficult not to appreciate the way Ronon committed to it the same way he committed to everything else in life, "What you think of as giving your best is giving too much of yourself."

"I-"

Ronon squeezed his arms, silencing him without a word, "You're my friend, McKay. My team mate. Don't go marching off too soon."

"Big words," He sniffled, letting himself twist his hands in Ronon's tunic, unable to forget the brief glimpse Daniel had allowed him to witness of his own life. There were many futures, that was true, but once you knew the variables, you could calculate the equation. 'Soon' was merely a matter of perspective, "For someone that thinks with his gun."

"It's a cool gun," Ronon rebutted gently.

"It is," He agreed, letting Ronon change the subject, swallowing some of the last vestiges of his grief, "If you'd only let me attempt to replicate it…"

"Not a chance," Ronon chuckled, running a rough hand down his back before releasing him.

He quirked a smile, scrubbing at his face when Ronon took the opportunity to glance down the pier, "I'll convince you one of these days."

Ronon smirked, "I'm sure you will."

---

Considering that he was the one who ascended, he did feel a little ridiculous that he was one of the ones experiencing an emotional reaction about it, annoyed about having disproved the peace and presumed quiet of an afterlife. The mess was perturbingly nice to him about the whole affair, and he gave one of the soldiers on KP duty a gimlet eye when a substantial helping of baked chicken and lookalike rice was heaped onto his plate.

The soldier merely gave him the well-trained blank face of innocence, handing his plate back to him.

He huffed, grabbing the plate back and wondering when he could get back to his regularly-scheduled bitching about whether or not he was going to be accidentally poisoned by cross-contamination. Not a single bit of citrus! For days! If Sam somehow managed to have something to do with it, he was going to find himself rather cross with her.

Still, he grabbed one of the multitudes of stacked cups, filling it with some infirmary-approved concoction botany quite literally cooked up. It reminded him a bit of V8, but reliably tasted like a disappointing tomato and was never formulated with any allergen he could think of.

Adding it to his tray, he found a spot open on Sam's table. She was busy with a power lunch, scrolling through a tablet with one hand while she absently speared a bit of chicken with her fork. It was probably something from one of his departments, because Sheppard rarely ever submitted so substantial a report that it needed close attention.

Well, He thought, setting his tray down with a quiet clack and sitting catty-corner to Sam. She gave him a brief glance and a grunt of acknowledgment, finally eating her bite of chicken and summarily ignoring him for her reading material, At least it won't be boring.

The peace and quiet Sam exuded by dint of being a very busy expedition leader that rarely appreciated interruptions extended over to him, and he took advantage of that to eat undisturbed. It gave him time to actually taste his food, and he thought wistfully that chicken probably wasn't going to taste this good for a while.

Eventually, though, all good things came to an end. Sam clicked off the screen of her tablet, tucking into her meal for a moment before leaning back in her chair, "So."

He sighed.

Sam ignored that, giving him an assessing smile, "How are you holding up? Re-acclimating well?"

"You're much more attractive when you aren't being all leader-y," He groused, spearing one of the salad vegetables on his plate and eating it with exaggerated chewing motions.

She had obviously been inured to his indubitable charms, merely raising an amused eyebrow while she waited him out. He parried the look by continuing to eat, knowing she had the same squeamishness of talking with one's mouth full as Sheppard. Both of them would eventually have to get back to work, and he reckoned she would need to cut the conversation to the end before he would.

"'Leader-y'?" She asked coyly, when he had eaten through the last turnip-fennel thing, smiling in that way he knew he shouldn't have complimented her on.

He took a vindictive sip of his juice, internally bemoaning that he was back to a strict no-citrus life even as he could, in fact, admit the tomatoes weren't as bad as they could be, "Oh, shut up. You know what I mean."

Sam must have been affected by some enormous level of grief-driven insanity as many others in the city, because all she did was laugh, "I do, yes."

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" He complained, waving his fork at her when she raised her eyebrow, "That! That- that thing. I hate it."

She continued to raise her eyebrow, pushing her tablet to one side and re-settling in her chair in the same way their resident psychotherapist had done during his mandated therapy sessions. He frowned at her, hoping to ward off whatever it was she was going to say, but she only glanced casually around the mess before speaking, "We didn't have any idea what happened, Rodney. It's going to take everyone a bit to realize you're here to stay."

"What does that-" He swallowed, throat drying at her implications, "What does that even mean?"

"It means, Rodney," Sam said, leaning toward him, firmly compassionate, "That once we realized you ascended, we believed it had been on purpose. You came back right after the paperwork had been filed to clear your quarters."

"Is that what that was about," He muttered to himself, shaking his head, "Anyway, why would I do that? I have too much- I actually like being here. All the insanity with the Wraith and everything else is, surprisingly, not as much of a deterrent as it could be."

Sam peered at him. It had the effect of pinning him in place, all gentle and caring and those other nice adjectives he tried not to think too hard about in conjunction with Sam, lest he be somehow thwarted by it and end up in some remote outpost doing back-burner work. She raised her eyebrows at him, obviously catching some facial expression he didn't hide fast enough.

"That's good to hear," She said seriously, subtly letting him out of her verbal grip, "And I believe you have someone to talk to about that."

"I've been talking non-stop," He said, setting his fork down with an aggrieved clang.

"Rodney."

He sighed, "Yes, I know."

Sam pursed her lips, "I expect you to get on that."

"O wise leader," He replied, only half in jest. Sam was right, and they both knew it. Gathering up his things, he said, "Fine, alright. But that's the last of it, understand?"

She gave him a winning smile, sweet and what he now realized as, for him, only objectively attractive. It made her look years younger, making him realize that his absence had in fact been noted. He felt himself smile in return, shaking his head as he gathered up his tray.

---

'Last one' ended up, naturally, being Sheppard. He licked his lips, unaccountably nervous, remembering the tingle of them after Sheppard had kissed him. Clearing up that contemporaneous situation of his living quarters had been the most he'd actually seen the man, their shared meals as a team often cut short by one thing or another.

His time on enforced recuperation despite his obviously good health - recuperating the nerves of the medical staff, more likely - seemed to only prolong how much work he had to put into fixing the odds and ends of his division. If it wasn't paperwork, it was questioning the sanity of everyone's decisions while he had been gone.

It hadn't been a picnic, and he had found himself wishing he could merely tap his comm and chat with Sheppard. There had been something preventing the notion, though, probably his newly-found good sense that he would be intruding. On what, he didn't know for sure.

But with Sam's orders bolstering his nerves, he found himself at Sheppard's door, wondering briefly if the man was even in his room at this time of day. He sucked in a breath, waving his hand over the lock, anyway, letting the doorbell ring.

He waited impatiently, and just as he was about to talk himself out of this and make his excuses to Sam, the door slid open. Sheppard looked just as surprised, hair ruffled and a stylus in one hand.

"Sheppard," He greeted, shoving his hands in his pockets and rolling on his feet nervously. There was a flutter in his stomach that felt like more than just his own emotions, but that couldn't possibly be true, not with the way his friend continued to stare at him blankly, "Can I, uh, come in?"

"Oh," Sheppard said, blinking. It looked like he realized what was going on, shaking his head and stepping off to one side, "Yeah, yeah of course."

They stood awkwardly on the same side of the door, listening to it slide shut with a quiet sshk. Sheppard looked harried, like he hadn't been sleeping well, and his heart skipped a beat at the beginning of bags under the other's eyes.

"Are you-" He said, not entirely certain what question to ask, blurting out the first thing that made it to speech, "Okay? Are you okay?"

"Rodney," Sheppard sighed, and he felt himself blink, expecting McKay, instead.

"No, really, are you?" He asked, gaining momentum as he waved a hand around, "Because I haven't seen you in ages, not really, and I- I just. Wanted to know."

Sheppard looked at him from under his bangs, the sight an odd one given that even with the hang-dog look Sheppard shouldn't be able to pull off as the technically taller person, "You tell me, Rodney."

"Tell you-" His brain hit a snag at that, "Do you not know?"

"I've been here," Sheppard shrugged, looking almost listless, "You're here."

Oh. The realization hit him like a lightning bolt, a sensation he now had an equivalent experience for, his conversation with Sam making much more sense in retrospect. He felt his mouth drop open in surprise, automatically reaching a hand out to Sheppard.

If there was any reason to suspect something was wrong, it was that Sheppard allowed the touch, slouching into it in the barest of fractions. He gripped harder, feeling Sheppard sway into his hand.

"I'm right here," He murmured, the realizations slotting into place like Tetris pieces, the gaping space it created making him lean equally as much into Sheppard's space, "I'm not going anywhere."

He couldn't bring himself to tell Sheppard a timeline of relevancy, even as it burned his tongue to say. It was more feasible to quench his fears by pressing his lips to Sheppard's, listening to the clatter of the stylus falling to the floor as hands pressed into his waist.

For a pair of people that could, if they felt like it, converse without a single word, it felt less ambiguous to communicate this way. It felt like terabytes of information was being conveyed this way, listening to Sheppard's sighs and pushing away the burgeoning ability to listen in on what must have been instinctual thoughts.

"John," He sighed, pressing the man's name into his skin, rubbing a thumb along a stubbled jaw.

"Don' need to talk," John murmured, tilting his head to allow contemplative kisses to be trailed down the length of his neck.

"Mmm."

And that was a wonderful idea, if technically betraying the spirit of Sam's tacit orders. He felt it was the better interpretation of things, at any rate, continuing on his way of pressing reassurances and comforts into John's skin in lieu of speaking them.

Their method of communication required no appendices, John taking and interpreting what he intended flawlessly, melting into him with drifting, clutching hands. It felt a little bit like the closest he would get to that liminal place he had tripped into, only circling back home by an act of faith in his own self.

He leaned into John, skimming a hand up the man's side and feeling the shiver reverberate back onto him. Lifting his head from where he had been preoccupied with tasting the quiet, barely-there moans John had kept trapped in his throat, he gathered John closer with a hand on his back, "Hey."

John's eyes were still closed, and he was absently brushing their cheeks together, the rasp of daytime stubble brushing warmth into him. He hummed, turning his head to catch John's mouth for a kiss that was barely more than an indulgent slide of lips. They stayed like that for a moment, breathing in each other's air.

"I'm here," He said, pressing the words into John's mouth like a vow, feeling like he had to cradle this flickering, uncertain light close, the sight nearly visible behind his half-lidded eyes, "I'm here, I'm not leaving."

"Promise?"

He shuddered himself, feeling all the strings attached that Daniel and Sha're and death had unearthed to him, lines in the sand that he could cross at any moment. If he wanted. And with some of them, he did want - or would, if the right circumstances aligned. It was string theory, in a tangible, personal way, hitting one note and listening to its echo in a silent chamber hall until it faded out of existence.

The pause seemed nearly enough to undo John entirely, a hitch of breath that would precipitate misery, tearful and messy. He could feel those calloused hands grip him close, as if the act alone could keep him tethered in this plane of existence.

"Rodney," John begged, for multiple things, for a singular thing. Stay.

It was the one thing he knew John would nearly never ask for, too well-trained to protest loss hammering him into the thinnest of sheet metal, until it warped and bent him beyond usefulness. He pressed a slow, careful kiss to John's mouth, mapping the grief that had been allowed to settle into the crevices for too long.

His heart thumped to say it, distracting himself with John reviving in achingly cautious measures under his touch, "I promise."

The shudder rippling across John's crumple zones let him know the weight of his own words, sealed by the choked noise John made as he kissed him back, pressing a tongue past his lips with desperation. He let it happen, soaking up the way John needed him, wondering if this was what the Ascended meant, with their ability to touch a soul.

Coaxing John to bed was easier when it clicked that he wasn't being pushed away, endless murmurs pressed into the other man's skin. The grief was slow to slake, only now truly visible to him when that the reflexive veneer of relieved joy had worn off. He took his time with the way his hands travelled over John, pushing and tugging at fabric to signal his intentions to get closer.

John was still endearingly quick-witted, squirming against him once the tacit request had been registered and shucking his shirt, fingers stumbling on the myriad clasps that were fastened to his pants. He hushed him with a smiling kiss, drawing a bite out against John's lower lip as he ran soothing hands over the other's chest.

"Hngh, Rodney-"

"Shh," He promised, finding the belt buckle by touch, "I've got you."

And he did, unequivocally. John's head thumped back onto the bed, missing the pillow by a hair. It was an easily-followed urge to press a kiss above the top of John's pants, the stiff material of the uniform brushing against his throat as he felt the reflexive ripple of John's stomach under his mouth.

The snap of the buckle being undone was loud in the lull between them. He let his hands linger, tracing as he found his way to the holster. It was tempting to follow it with his mouth, if only to feel the strength of John's thigh so intimately, but John was clutching at the sheets and he was disinclined to make him wait any longer.

He set the sidearm, holster and all, on the side table. John was quick to cling to him as he stretched over to reach the table, eagerly rucking up his shirt. Grinning, he pressed into the hands that groped and skimmed over his body, relishing that this bit of mortality he was still able to enjoy.

It was a catching expression, John's smile luminescent as his hands slowed, mapping new territory with a possessive touch. He sighed, letting his weight sink down onto John, both of them sliding into another kiss.

Time rather melted away after that, the afternoon sunshine making its slow mark on the shadows in the room their only subtle indicator that they were crossing time with languid, heated touches. Maybe it was only a few minutes, but he couldn't be bothered to pull away to check, reveling that he was too absorbed in John to keep track of the ticking of seconds.

He sighed, coaxing John to switch their places with a murmur and cupping John's ass with one hand, tasting the moan as he gave it a squeeze. The press of John's chest bearing down against his, sweat-slicked and solid, was as heady as it was reassuring of the man's presence.

"I would never be able to forget you, you know," He said quietly, easing off from their kissing just enough to speak. There was just enough of a tremble to John's lips to indicate words being perched there, and he brushed them off with a quick swipe of his lips, "I couldn't. Not ever."

John seemed to know, though, the foundation upon which they knew each other set deep into their bones. He felt the nod made against him, John hiding his face against his own even as he tentatively rolled his hips, muscles in his ass tightening under his palm.

He encouraged John with a moan, rucking the man up against the thigh he had wedged at some point between John's own with a firm hand. The jump of a cock against his own, muffled only barely by the fabric between them, made him lose his mind a little.

"C'mon," He breathed, pressing a quick, dirty kiss into John's mouth, twisting so he could get his other hand on John's ass.

John moaned into the kiss, hands clutching at him as if he needed the support. He coaxed the man into straddling his hips, taking John's weight as his hands fluttered over the button and zip of the other's pants. It was more difficult by the way John couldn't help but shove into his hands, making needy sounds and overall just inhibiting what they both wanted.

He gripped John's hips, forcing them to still with an amused huff, "Stay still," He said, voice having dropped low and rough. It made John heave, wild-eyed but obedient, and he couldn't help but dig his fingers in a little deeper, "Let me take care of you."

The nod John gave him was instinctive but tremulous, head dropping into a bobble of agreement that made him look, abruptly, an aching sort of vulnerable that had his own heart skipping a beat. He gentled his touch, smoothing his hands up John's side and over his chest, feeling the thunder of the man's heart as he circled the tight nipples under his touch, "Will you let me?"

"Y-" John swallowed, arching into his hands, "Yeah."

"Okay," He murmured, letting his hands drag down with the barest touch of nails, imagining the welts he might leave there at a later date. The shiver and pant was satisfying, however, and he let his fingers dip beneath the waistline of John's pants in a tease, letting a thumb circle over the button the way he wanted to do to John's cock.

It was tempting to draw things out, but he felt like both of them have been craving this for far too long. He popped the button open, hearing John's shivery moan, letting his finger dip underneath the flap to trace the zipper before undoing that, too.

John rolled his hips into his hands, eyes having fallen shut and the man's own hands reaching behind him to grip his legs. It painted an attractive picture, all wanton offering with cock peeking out over the rumple of BDUs, and he took a moment to run his hands over John from hips to knees and up to ribs with a heavy, promising touch.

He felt when John shuddered, body relaxing and legs sliding further open to sit more heavily in his grasp, head lolling in pleasure. It seemed like the words would be on repeat, murmured as he tucked his fingers under the fabric of John's clothes, unwrapping John like an unforeseen present, and framing John's cock in the crook between thumb and forefinger with his palm flat on John's skin, "I've got you, I've got you."

"You do," John gasped, just from that simple touch alone. The helpless way John rolled his hips, shifting the hard line of his cock against his hand, as if that alone would make his palm leave the warm skin of John's groin.

Raking his fingers through the hair scattered on John's skin, he listened to the drawn-out groan as he wrapped his hand around John's cock in a long, leisurely pull. John was already wet for him, leaking in unsteady spurts that dribbled over his hand, and he pumped John's cock, watching how John fell apart for him.

The other man stayed still for him, though, restricting his own movements and going with the flow of this nonverbal conversation. It made him lick his lips, compiling a wish list of things he wanted to do - later, though, too busy easing his hand over John's cock and coaxing the other's pants lower so he could get a better grip of John's ass with his other hand.

"You'll come when I say so, won't you," He murmured, listening to the way John panted as he twitched between the dual pressures on him. His cock was aching in his own pants, and he shifted his legs, pulling on John's cock and pressing with his other hand so John curled over him, rolling his hips just to hear John's whine near his ear, "Look at you. You're beautiful, do you know that?"

John was shaking his head, far too quickly to be anything other than instinctive denial, and he wasn't having any of that. He cupped John's ass, massaging it with a wide-fingered grip and a thumb sweeping over the top of the curve.

"You are," He insisted roughly, pressing a kiss to the side of John's head, the only part he could reach without removing his hands from where they were, "You are, and I'll keep telling you. Every day, if I must."

"Don't," John choked out, shuddering in his grip, "'M not-"

He slowed his hand on John's cock, making his touch delicate as he played with the tip of John's cock, fingers sliding from frenulum to slit and back, a circular loop around the top that had John leaking over his hand with a sob, "I love you," He said firmly, the words a rebuttal to John's insecurities, so visible he almost felt angry at it, using the truth of his own self as a balm to that wound,

"You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen. God, do you even know-"

John was trembling in his arms, helplessly grinding into his hand, trying to draw out roughness from him. He refused, not wanting John to use him to smother himself, to hide away the way he had been doing since he had returned from that little diner on the way through to death.

"You don't get to do that," He swore, mouthing kisses along John's jaw, rough bites that would bruise later in contrast to the gentle, gentle way he traced John's leaking cock, "Not with me, understand? None of that."

"Rodney," John clutched at his shoulders with both hands, frantic as the man held on to him, "Rodney, you died, you left, you-"

"I'm here," He said, dipping a finger in the curve of John's ass, circling the tight entrance there with the same understanding of fragility as he was with John's cock, feeling the twitch and warmth of muscle, "I'm here, I'm back. I'm not leaving."

John rocked into his touch, moaning and wet-faced with a grief that was shattering. He murmured nonsensical things, keeping John grounded with his touch, arcing that pleasure between ass and cock with a careful balance. Slowly, the spasms rippling across John began to increase, accepting the uncoordinated kiss John laid upon his mouth as he coaxed that crescendo tighter.

He felt when John began to open at his touch, just enough for him to press the tip of his finger against the rim, a promise imprinted with the way he circled and dipped his finger, an inverse echo to what his hand was doing on John's cock.

Pressing a kiss against John's jaw, he murmured, "I want you to come for me."

And John did, wonderfully so, collapsing against him so he could grind on his stomach, smearing come between them and letting him feel the way John's ass fluttered against his finger. The aftershocks rolled through John, pulsing heat that made him moan against John's cheek, moving his hand to grab John's ass so he could roll his cloth-trapped cock up against him.

John pressed back against him, letting that finger slip momentarily deeper past the threshold. They both groaned at that, and he pushed John higher up so he could unbutton and shuck his own pants down far enough, cock rubbing against the cleft of John's ass.

It was a momentary disappointment to withdraw his hand from that warmth, but John was apparently more than willing to let him get off like that, pressing against sweat-dampened skin. He could taste the way John gasped into his mouth, feeling a little breathless himself at the way John rolled his ass back against him.

Coming was almost an afterthought, absorbed as he was in their synchronous motion. He shuddered, thoughts hazy as he felt hands pressing against his chest and shoulders in warming, repetitive motions.

"Mmm," He shifted, taking more of John's weight even as he huffed at the way the man slumped on top of him, "John."

The only response was garbled sentence squished into the side of his neck. He smiled, dancing the fingers of one hand up John's side, soothing the instinctive twitch with his palm, "Much as I enjoy having you naked, I would like to put my pants back on."

John grumbled, "Only sorta naked."

He skimmed his hands over the crease of John's ass, smirking at the shiver, "It's the thought that counts."

They righted themselves with reluctance, sacrificing John's shirt to clean off the worst of it - laughing when John subtly flexed his muscles as he got out of bed, enjoying the view and kissing the pout off with a firm press of lips.

Swinging his legs over the side of John's bed, he paused, thinking, "Shower?"

John tilted his head from side to side, giving him a once-over, "Could do."

He couldn't help his smile, shaking his head fondly at John's beaming smile. Pressing his side against John's, he leaned up for another kiss, listening to the way John breathed out a contented sigh, "Come on. Lunch break's almost over."

---

It turned out that they had wildly overshot the lunch hour, but nobody had gone looking for them, anyway. John had been much buoyed by more kisses, soaking up the inherent affection of being held when the anxiety of approaching the door made his shoulders tense up. The sight wasn't the first time a deep pensiveness had reared its head, but it was a nebulous feeling to actually act upon it for once, making him sigh as he pressed his head into John's shoulder.

The inherent protectiveness emanating from the way John ran his hands down his back was easy to settle into, something he had missed deeply and unintentionally. It had that tinge of tacit territoriality, making him clench his arms around John tighter, taking in the smell of freshly-laundered clothing and soap from their joint shower.

"What's up?" John murmured into his hair, matching his reluctance to leave the bubble of the room, voice still retaining a hint of that deep pitch from earlier.

He shivered, rubbing his cheek against the BDU jacket, "Hmm. Nothing much, I suppose."

And it was true, for a given value. It would be far too easy to slip into an awareness of this bubble of time, the consequences of popping it and leaving it in the past - a linearity that was relative, true, but only making him all the more aware of the finite amount of instances. But the knowledge was a background sort, still tasting like a wax seal broken off as its lid was cracked open, flavouring everything else with its presence.

"We don't have to go," John said, sounding as if he was split on the temptations, "Could call in, make some excuses."

He sighed, shaking his head and reaching up for another kiss, lingering over the way John's mouth moulded to his with a simple press, "We'd never leave, probably."

"Hmm," John nosed at his jaw, skimming his lips over the soft edge with a façade of thoughtfulness, "Probably, yeah."

Groaning, he made himself push John away, unable to help the smile tugging at his lips as John made to mosey closer, "Really, though. I need to head back to the labs, repair some of the equipment brought back from the last mission."

John sighed, letting them disengage and opening the door with the faint pressure of thought. It still gave him a little shiver of intellectual curiosity that he could sense the edges of that, and he followed the other man through the mostly-deserted corridor back to the main areas of the city.

"Can't you get someone else to do that?" John asked, tilting a brow at him.

"Not unless you want some mystery soldering and parts from the wrong rummage bin," He replied dryly, "Most everyone is still on inventorying - a few people started up projects without Sam's explicit permission, and I'm still hunting down all the parts that were allocated to more important things."

"Things like…?"

He huffed, swiping the button for the transporter, "Oh, jumper maintenance, that transporter in one of the residential halls that still puts you to a pier one out of five requests, the like."

John nodded slowly, that innocent look pasted onto his face that stopped working on him except for special occasions, "The jumpers are important, yeah."

"And so is everything else," He shook his head, amused, "It's mostly the geological team complaining about it, since I put everyone together by department. You wouldn't happen to know anything about why that happens, would you?"

"Nnnno, absolutely not," John rocked up on his toes, keeping deliberate attention on the doors as they opened.

He snorted, shaking his head, "I don't even want to know."

John grinned, gesturing for him to leave the transporter first, "All's well that ends well."

"Like I haven't heard that before," He rolled his eyes, pausing with a small shuffle of his steps where he knew they would have to split paths. John was likewise lingering, a wistful look to his face that wasn't quite as patted down into inscrutability as the man probably thought, "I'll, uh, see you at dinner? All of you?"

Waiting for John to melt into a slow, reassuring smile did little for his nerves - nor did the cognizant inability to settle himself with one last, lingering kiss like they had done in John's quarters. Nevertheless, it seemed his thoughts were recognized, John leaning marginally forward into his space, "Yeah. Don't get too caught up, okay?"

Feeling breathless from that little bit of proximity, he nodded faintly, "Yeah."

Heedless of the tacitly curious looks thrown their way, John winked and strode off with a swing in his step. My god, he thought faintly, No wonder the women keep fawning over him.

Catching the quizzical look one of the soft scientists - P-something, he believed - threw his way, he touched the side of his cheek, realizing he had a smile firmly affixed onto his face. What a strange sight he must have made, staring after the colonel like that.

Lips unable to fall back into their usual resting state, he thought, Mine, though.

---

Whatever his mood was, it made his minions all the more biddable when he walked into one of the main labs, and he would take the stretch of luck as far as it would run.

"You," He snapped his fingers at Kusanagi, "Have you found all the scrap alloy O'Brennon and his roving horde of miscreants squirreled away?"

She smiled, cheeks dimpling under her glasses, "Yes, Doctor McKay. I have informed them to return everything to a new bin for your inspection and filled with its own catalogue."

He beamed at her, "Excellent. Make sure you get those meteorological analytics in to the marine biologists, Sam wants them to make sure we have clear weather for a research team on that new island chain we found."

Kusanagi nodded, still having that polite grin on her face as she returned to her computer. He wanted to harrumph, but frankly it was reassuring to have that same dubiously perpetual ray of sunshine around to witness, undaunted by his brief, unintentional respite in the so-called afterlife. Pausing briefly over his keyboard, he wondered whether she ought to be given more responsibilities because of that.

Hmm. Opening up the notepad on his computer, he typed in a quick note to assess her workload and if she would benefit from some training in additional areas. Radek would probably know.

And speak of the devil, Radek rapped his knuckles on the edge of the table, announcing his presence, "Alo. Are you done sight-seeing?"

"Hmph," He responded, turning his stool around so he could grab the stack of LSDs that AR-5 had zapped. It was busy work, because he knew as well as Radek did that there were plenty of people who could solder a few chips together, but he quietly appreciated the banality to give himself an opportunity to rest the still-turbulent nature of his thoughts, "What have you got?"

Radek raised an eyebrow at him, "Rumors that you are in a good mood. I am glad to hear they are false, for otherwise I will need to train in another boss."

"Har-har," He rolled his eyes in response, "I still sign all of the paperwork you foist off on me so you can stare down a microscope, don't forget that."

"Ah, yes, that is true," Radek nodded thoughtfully, sliding onto a stool on the other side of the table, logging into his tablet with a quick set of swipes on the screen, "It is good for me, no? You would not look as handsome in glasses. Best to save that dilemma for me."

He grumbled good-naturedly, opening up his email, "To have the disconcerting appeal of a moth in daylight? You have the market cornered."

Radek waggled his eyebrows, "All the better to track down filaments for our gravity simulators, no?"

Blinking, he tore his attention away from the molecular models of some prototype drug the medical department CCed him on, leaning around his monitor, "Did you really?"

Grinning, Radek tapped his nose, "I may have found an alloy we can synthesize, but it will take much work to test whether it will work in different gravities."

"You are the best," He breathed, scooting off the stool in excitement, roundly ignoring the way Radek perked up with a smug look, "Gimme. Where is it?"

"Ah, ah, what do you say?" Radek asked with a grin.

He arched a brow, "Uh, now? So I can figure out how to fix the simulators below our waterline? Where we've been wanting to renovate for extra storage in the accessed labs we've cleared out?"

Radek rolled his eyes, huffing and waving a hand to the corner of the lab where some of the employee lockers were. They had some unlocked ones to store the smaller odds and ends they found while exploring the city, if it wasn't filled with motherboards and other spare parts. He couldn't find it in himself to be more than superficially annoyed, doing his best to restrain himself from skipping over to the locker with glee.

There was indeed a little plastic bin, neatly labeled with some masking tape and marker in Radek's obscure handwriting. Do not touch! Rodney's work was scribbled onto it, and he popped off the lid with the same enthusiasm as he would a box of the fancy TV dinners.

"Oh my," He murmured to himself, delicately tracing the iridescent metal. There wasn't very much of it, and they had yet to actually work out the production process to duplicate it in the amounts they needed to truly repair all the damaged sectors in the city, but seeing the neatly-coiled amount nestled in some tissue paper from the chemists' lab was enough to catch his breath, "Radek, this-"

"Might actually be enough to test?" Radek completed his thoughts, smiling, "Yes, it is possible. I have submitted a proposal for testing with one of the smaller superconductors, but it will need your signature as well as Colonel Carter's."

He carefully replaced the lid, clutching the tub close, "Absolutely. Is this already emailed?"

Radek waved a hand at his computer, making him hustle himself back to his seat, typing with one hand as he searched through his email. When he spotted the correct subject line, his eyes caught on the timestamp, "Radek-"

"Ano," Radek replied simply, looking at him over the rim of his glasses while he worked on his tablet.

"I-" How could he explain what he thought, the proof that this was idling in his inbox during his absence, when there had been no known possibility that it would only have been temporary? Looking helplessly at the way Radek was calmly writing something on his tablet with a stylus, he clutched the tub closer, feeling overwhelmed.

"Is nothing," Radek said, expression kind, "I knew you were looking for it."

And the thought of this little tie to mundanity, that Radek considered it more important than his own ascension - purposefully or accidental, something none of them here would be able to tell apart - was a startling level of consideration. He wetted his lips, wondering what to say as he blinked a few times, "Thank you. I'll- I'll sign off on that, tell Sam to."

Radek relaxed in his seat, looking relieved, "Yes. Be sure to review proposal, as well? I do not want any surprises during testing."

He found himself smiling, tremulous as it was, "Of course. I'll get on that right away."

Nodding, Radek returned to his work, the air between them and the lab at large losing that unfounded edge of anxiety. He felt that sharpness ease within himself, too, and looked at his screen, deciding on the spot that this was a subject better hashed out in person, "Actually, you know what, I'll just- I'll be right back."

Radek glanced up at him, "Of course."

He nodded a couple of times, "Yes. Yes, of course." Patting the container, he walked toward the door, tapping his comm and feeling everything settle into place, "McKay to Sheppard. Hey- Radek found something, you'll never guess what it is-"

Footnotes:

Ascension is... an odd concept. It seems a little odd that Ancients - or Alterans, for the broader scope across the Stargate canon - would spend so much time developing so much technology across multiple galaxies, just to have one of their most memorable points as a society be a prettily-worded death cult. What would be the point of all that technology? So... mathematics, and its applications in the sciences, as a form of philosophy that reflects back onto ascension. And for someone like Rodney, who not only had one confirmed brush with ascending (Tao of Rodney), but an unconfirmed one (The Shrine - same technological basis as in Tao of Rodney) as well, on top of multiple near-death experiences - something in his hind brain has got to be percolating that during a fair amount of the show.

I realized about partway through that the control crystals for Atlantis tech show nearly identical circuitry patterns, which I understand would have made it easier for audiences to figure out that it was Technology TM and provide a bridging point, but I kind of threw it out and substituted my own headcanon that's visible through Rodney's internal monologue in the beginning scene.

There's a background fix-it in terms of Sha're ascending, mostly because I thought her death was nonsense and also I like the idea of her and Rodney being in the same room. As for that little diner, it fits a lot of themes and motifs in other media (that I don't remember at the moment) of being a transition point between living and death, and indicative of Rodney being indecisive about actually being dead - an opposite end of that subject is discussed via Campfire Stories. This also takes place before This Mortal Coil, where Replicator!Elizabeth visits Atlantis, and after Miller's Crossing, where Rodney and Jeannie were abducted for evil plot reasons. Can't imagine anyone really dealing with Rodney's ascension all that well, in that context.

Over the course of canon, also, I've noticed Rodney has displayed some... let's call it awareness of plot-related events. He's a main character, sure, so his plot armor means death won't stick, and the writers have an interesting way of dancing around their plotholes sometimes, but somehow or another it ends up being conveyed as prescience of critical changes in a situation (Rodney picking what ultimately ended up being the correct door in Trio, for example). I wanted to convey that as a sort of quantum physics problem - Schroedinger's cat, almost, in that what could be will be and always is (a multiplicity of states, aka the quantum superposition principle). Some of this was also discussed via Interface- an effect once observed and all that, and rather fitting given Rodney's specialties.

I wanted to lean into these concepts, and go "What if Rodney ascended?", with an added dose of making it accidental because Rodney is noticeable prone to being able to come up with solutions out of thin air, and what is ascension but another revelation? It seems very in character for him, I think.

Also meet the new OC, scientist O'Brennon - he's a mechanical engineer, probably.

• Ano - yes


• můj prdel - my ass