The Sum of
SG: Atlantis
Sheppard/McKay
Sequel to "Hydroclaustrojohnophobia" and "Fear Mongering" (Now a completed series.)
Spoilers for Grace Under Pressure
MK

Finally, finally done.



Rodney wasn't a romantic person by nature. Not because of any dislike of the concept, or inability to follow through on centuries-old definitions of cheesy, but because of his focus. When Rodney was thinking --which was, obviously, most of the time-- he didn't see things. Didn't hear things, didn't hear himself. Rodney could read reports and skim data and answer questions without even realizing someone was asking him anything, without realizing he was speaking aloud. If those questions were brought up later, he wouldn't remember the conversation. Wouldn't remember answering.

So when it came to Romance, Rodney often just... didn't notice it. If someone paid him extra attention, it was usually when he was manic with lack of sleep and an excess of enthusiasm, up to his elbows in a project and grinning like mad. The precise worst moment to express an interest in him.

Dr. Brown had been making eyes at him for two weeks before she managed to catch him away from the lab and actually get his attention.

Outside of the chair, Rodney had barely known Sheppard existed until some time after they were already in another galaxy.

Since then, Sheppard's existence had been a constantly thrumming line of something in the back of his brain.





"You," Rodney said, his face shifting from worried to gleeful as John's eyes blinked open, "fainted."

"Nice to see you, too, Rodney," John croaked, then rubbed his throat a little. "How long have I been out?"

"Long enough," and Rodney waved Carson over with furious hand-motions and simultaneously waved off John's question. He waited, at least, for Carson to give John a glass of water. "So, what does it do? What is it??"

"What's what?"

"The device! Radek swears you disappeared for a few seconds, and I know that didn't happen when I used it--" He paused to mutter something uncomplimentary about lab staff--"So? What is it?" He was fairly vibrating in place, actually rocking a little, a very little, back and forth between the balls and heels of his feet.

John studied Rodney's face for a moment. As he had for the last few weeks, he seemed fine; normal. No obvious trace to indicate anything unusual had happened aside from his almost drowning. No hint of his aversion to John from earlier that morning.

"It's exactly what you think it is."





One of the first things Rodney had thought, upon closing his eyes and seeing Colonel Sheppard eating in the mess was man, we could have used this back when I was--




On his first guess, back in the sinking 'Jumper, lost somewhere and getting more lost by the second, Rodney had called the machine a Mind-control distance-avatar-hollogram program. An unwieldy mouthful, but a surprisingly accurate one.

"So, what does the machine do, exactly?" Elizabeth leaned forward in her seat, arms pressed down against the table in front of her.

"Exactly what I said it did before Colonel Sheppard--" Rodney paused, went a little pink and then continued, "---disabused me of the notion. It projects an avatar of yourself over distance and, apparently, time, to somewhere else. The hollogram element is the only one I'd change. The device actually allows for a certain level of physical interaction, though obviously, since he wasn't really there, the Colonel didn't feel the effects of the environment."

"But it allows you to interact with people?"

Sheppard cut him off. "--To a limited extent. It doesn't feel like reality, but it's close enough."

"And what do we know about the range of this device? How many people can the... avatar interact with? How many people saw Rodney in the cafeteria today?" This was one of the things Rodney genuinely liked and admired about Elizabeth, one of the many things that made her the best leader for the expedition. She thought on her feet, asked good questions.

"Well we haven't tested the actual range, but at least as far as from the lab to the location of the Puddle Jumper as it was sinking," Rodney rushed over the last few words.

"And back in time. Like the DeLorean."

There was another awkward pause. Clearly everyone in the room knew that John and Rodney were fighting over something -- sort of -- but just as clearly, they had no idea what.

"As for the number of people... I have someone looking into that," Zelenka added.

"And the Avatar part?"

John flushed a little this time. "It doesn't make an image of you as you are. It uh... puts you in an outfit. Or at least, it did for me." Don't know why, he muttered under his breath. Rodney almost snorted that it was a manifestation of the love all Ancient technology had for him, but saw the next three moves play out in his head and cut himself off at the pass.

"How was Rodney dressed when he appeared in the cafeteria?"

John blinked, looked at Rodney for a second and then raised his eyebrows. "He was wearing blue." He paused. "Uh... a different blue. I think." It wasn't like he paid attention to clothes except to see that his marines were in proper uniform. Sometimes.

"What, really?" That made sense, sort of. John had been dressed differently. And, now that he thought about it-- "Oh, right. You changed your appearance at will."

"How?" Zelenka asked, he and Elizabeth leaning further forward. If they weren't careful, they were going to topple their tables.

"Uh..." From half-dressed to naked, might be the next words on Rodney's lips.

"You just have to think about it really hard," Sheppard stepped in, pointedly not looking at his friend. He wasn't sure how to act, exactly, anyway.

"It might be something more easily controlled with the natural ATA gene. Or it could be just the Colonel's natural affinity."

This was going to take awhile.





John had one day been trapped in a time-dilation field. While six months of his life ran their paces on the inside, only part of a day passed on the outside. Understandably it took him a little while to adjust to the idea that he had left at breakfast and was back in time for dinner the same day, month, year.

This was not unlike that particular time. While he knew the date, remembered eating breakfast, doing rounds, and touching the device, part of him was convinced that he was still located sometime several weeks earlier. He found himself wondering how Rodney's head-wound was, how well he was recovering. He had made it half-way to the infirmary three times before turning himself around.

When he finally did run into Rodney, it was entirely by accident and no where near Beckett or the Med Labs. It was in a completely boring hallway that John had to pass through on his shift of rounds, and he had no idea where Rodney might have planned to get to or from with it. He also didn't have time to embarrass himself by asking how Rodney's concussion was, because almost immediately, they were yelling at each other.

"I just want you to tell me how you got it to go back that far!"

"I don't know," John yelled back, "It just did it!"

"Just tell me! I don't have time for you to be selfish and lie and pretend to be a moron!"

"I'm not! What the hell is your problem, McKay?!"

"GRIFFIN! He's dead and it's my fault and it's your fault because you're too much of an asshole to--" Rodney stopped sharply, breathing heavily and looking like he might throw up. And then he turned tail and ran.

As if John wouldn't have gone back to save Ford if he'd known how.






One of the worst things Rodney had to deal with immediately post-'Jumper was his sanity. On the one hand, he knew that the John in the 'Jumper wasn't real. Was imaginary, a figment; a side-effect of his combined trauma, and a common one at that. On the other hand, large chunks of him were convinced that he was real and that they had left him to die. Seeing the doors close and the water flood in as the shield retracted, he'd felt like he was responsible for the death of Sheppard, nevermind that another Sheppard was right there in the same space as him, piloting the second 'Jumper.

The only thing that stopped him from shouting, "We have to go back! He's drowning! He's drowning, how can you leave him there?!" was that neither Radek nor Sheppard had even glanced at John.

Rodney knew he was brilliant and noticed things that other people didn't, but a fully-fledged second Sheppard in a confined space was stretching things. So he bit his tongue and he hurt inside, and he pretended he hadn't watched his best friend die. And even if John hadn't really died, Griffin was gone, and no one had asked any questions about him. None.

Except that today it felt like John was back and sharing space with Sheppard; one person again and no longer dead in in the water or maybe eaten by a giant sea monster. And it was weird. He wanted to yell at Sheppard, he wanted Griffin to appear in the science labs, unconscious but healthy. He wanted to talk to John, but Sheppard and John were like two different people and he couldn't tell them apart.

Ancient devices sucked.




And it wasn't like, bam, Atlantis, and hey, isn't that Major Sheppard awfully pretty? It had been more like bam, Atlantis, and hey, wow, I think we're friends and I think we're all going to die. It really hadn't made sense for a long time. Sheppard was fun and snarky and secretly a giant nerd (though not always up to date on the finer details of a particular topic), and for some reason he seemed to like Rodney.

Weirder was that for some reason, Rodney seemed to like Sheppard, who was supposed to be the kind of person Rodney didn't get along with. Except that they did.





Rodney perfected the art of not making eye contact in Toronto. The people of what is probably the most famous city in Canada are remarkably polite. They hold doors open for others at buildings and apologize when someone bumps into them.

But on the subway, or the streetcar, or the bus, Torontoians had long-ago perfected that urban, international art. The first step was usually to have a distraction-- a book, a walkman, more recently, an mp3 player.

A good Toronto citizen can pretend to be enamoured of an add for erectile disfunction in the most crowded car at rush-hour if it means not making eye contact with anyone else, even if anyone else includes at least three people pressed up and sweating against them in the broiling early August heat.

If there are no ads for erectile disfunction, no newspapers conveniently left folded neatly on the seat nearby and the batteries are dead in their mp3 player, a person from Toronto will stare at their hands for the entire thirty-six minutes it takes them to get from High Park to Museum station, including the transfer at St. George. And they will stare at their hands with complete conviction so that other people might start to wonder and then stare at their own hands, hoping for something fascinating.

In Atlantis, there are no subways, no streetcars and no busses. There are crowded hallways, but the doors open and close on their own, so no one has to hold them open for anyone else, and even then, Canadians make up only a small chunk of the expedition. In Atlantis, there are no ads for erectile disfunction unless you happen to bring the topic up with Carson, in which case they are several times more awkward and embarrassing than when someone's four-year-old asks what erectile means, loudly, in a crowded subway car.

There is, however, a large quantity of things with which to occupy yourself for the two seconds of shared space in a transporter, or while walking down a crowded hallway, or while eating in the mess. Read-outs, field reports, schematics, and, on occasion, even an mp3 player.

Rodney refuses to make eye contact with John Sheppard, and he's quite good at it.




After two days of avoiding each other, John and Rodney wound up sitting at the same table, eating the same food, and somehow someone had glanced up and so had someone else and after that it was mostly okay. Rodney could steal food from Ronon again, who would steal back, and Sheppard and Teyla could try to keep the peace by slipping food from their own plates across the table to even the scores.





John's next biggest problem, right after not asking Rodney how his concussion was and then a really stupid fight was that he had died. Right before waking up there had been a dark, sunken 'jumper filling with water, a giant sea monster circling outside and Rodney had stepped outside and left with the stupid version of John.

And he had died.





The only time Rodney ever called the Colonel John had been when he'd been testing to see whether or not the Sheppard on the other side of the rear-doors was real in an attempt not to effectively commit suicide. On both ends of the hallucination, John had made a surprised face and then gone with it. On one side of the doors, knocking, he'd figured, hey, the guy's been down here for hours, sick and injured and probably thinking he was going to die. On the other side, half-naked and watching as Rodney dove under the water to find the manual release, he'd wondered why Rodney couldn't bring himself to call his own supposed hallucination-- a hallucination that had tried to seduce him as a distraction --by the same name.

For a moment, back in Atlantis and on his own two feet again, he'd replayed the sound. And then he got back to work.





Kissing was awkward for the same reasons that working in teams within a science department was awkward. Every time you tried to do something cool, someone else stepped in and interfered. When he was young and just getting into the swing of the whole mouth-on-mouth idea, Rodney had been atypically frustrated with the process where other people his age had been rolling with the punches.

He would be excellent at it, he thought, if someone would just hold still and not do anything.





John Sheppard was very good at something not unlike holding still. It was unrelated to lab work or kissing, sure, but he was good at it. Holding still usually meant waiting someone out, listening to their orders and plans and decisions and then, when the holding still was done, running off and doing whatever he wanted instead. It usually worked out better in the end.

When he had been young, other people had been getting into the swing of the whole mouth-on-mouth thing, but John had been distracted by planes and running and surfing and anything that went fast. Until someone had grabbed him, held him still, and demonstrated why it might be a good idea to check out something a little slower. John had held still for all of a minute.

And then he had done what he wanted, instead.





John wasn't great at social stuff. He tended to either avoid a problem all together or just try to hit it as hard and as directly as he could, but this didn't look like the kind of problem he could push through with brute force. So instead, he fell back on the one thing he'd seen work for other guys having a fight with... well, with a friend, he supposed. Though it was all getting kind of fuzzy and hard to define.

Sports.

"Can you please, please," Rodney whined, "shut up about football for ten minutes?"

"Jeez, McKay, I know you like hockey and all, but you should give it a chance! Football's great! It's cool!"

Rodney pinned him with a withering glare. "Yes, I do enjoy hockey, but point of fact, I actually prefer lacrosse, not that you'd know anything about such an obviously superior game. A game which, might I add, requires speed, skill, strength and intelligence in equal measures, where much of your football seems to rely simply on tackling the other guy before he gets into your territory."

"Lacrosse?" Really?

"It is Canada's national sport, despite international misconceptions to the contrary."

Lacrosse. Who would've thought? Didn't that have guys in shorts running around with little nets on sticks?





Lacrosse, he figured out later, was kind of like the ultimate combination of every other sport ever, except that it kind of came first. They didn't have much footage though, because apparently the people who liked lacrosse best were, surprisingly, mostly scientists who didn't have a lot of time for watching sports or who, if they did, spend that time back in the labs. For fun.

John kind of got it, but he kind of didn't. What he did get was a slight widening of his eyes as he watched his first game, followed by,

"Cool."


After that, it's easier. Not easy, but easier. Rodney will puff himself up and preen about the numbers for this planet or that problem and how his genius is the only thing that could be applied to the situation with any success. Across the briefing room, or next to him, or leaning side by side in the control room, John will make dry, sly comments half-undermining Rodney and half baiting him, making him go further. Then they'll hop over to the planet and Rodney will whine and complain and then glee, and John will snark and roll his eyes and continue to bait him. Sometimes John will show off a little, but usually right after that they're running for their lives or planning their escape. When they get back or they have to sit around working out a solution, John will work nerdy references to 1960's Batman, Dungeons and Dragons, and Hitchhiker's Guide into the conversation.

Just for fun. Not seriously because it makes Rodney grin and pause and get completely de-railed from his work so he can debate Batgirl or dice or improbability drives with John. And absolutely not for the shit-eating grin that gets pasted across his face that makes his eyes kind of squinty.

No, really. It's just for fun. He swears.







Immediately after the crash, Rodney had to see Heightmeyer and talk about trust issues ("It's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of ability! I am the most capable person in this city!"), his fear of drowning ("Look, it's a bad way to die. No one likes opening their eyes underwater. Even less people like trying to breathe water."), why Sheppard would be his hallucination ("Head wound! Head wound! What part of concussed and hypothermic and in shock didn't you understand?!").

Shortly after his experience with the device, John had to see Heightmeyer and talk about trust issues ("I didn't lie to him, I just... misled him a little. For his own good!"), his fear of drowning ("I died, I think I'm allowed to freak out a little, thanks.") and why he would have such easy control over his appearance (He shrugged a little, smiled charmingly, and Heightmeyer made that face that said she was writing something down as soon as he left the room.).

Elizabeth read Kate's notes on both of them and then wrote an executive summary:

Just a little more screwy than usual. Fit for missions.

Followed by her signature, and those of Drs Carson Beckett and Kate Heightmeyer.