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Might As
Well Live Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
By the time General O'Neill, General Landry, and the two IOA representatives whose names John hadn't caught came back into the room, he was as ready as he was going to be. He stood to attention and saluted crisply. Might as well do this properly. "At ease, Sheppard," O'Neill said easily. John thought he looked pretty damn chipper, given that he was about to end John's career. Well, John reminded himself, it wasn't the first time it had happened to him. He'd get through; he had before. And he'd made the right choices, he was sure of that much; he had no regrets. He thought of McKay. Maybe just one regret. Landry cleared his throat. "Major Sheppard, we have reviewed your account of your actions while the Atlantis expedition was cut off from Earth. The committee appreciates that you were not originally assigned to the expedition in a command capacity, but that you had to take on that role in the field following the death of Colonel Marshall Sumner by your hand." Here it comes, John thought. "We have concluded that your conduct in maintaining the safety of military and civilian personnel while upholding the stated goals of the expedition while out of contact with a greater command structure has been exemplary. It is the decision of the review panel that you return to Atlantis with a permanent assignment as military leader of the expedition, and that in keeping with that post you should be promoted, with immediate effect, to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel." "In other words," O'Neill said, "You did good. Well done, Colonel." John said nothing for a minute, maybe longer. Then, slowly and carefully, hiding his rising sense of utter panic, he said, "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." He was so fucked. *** He'd barely walked ten paces down the SGC hallway when he nearly collided with Elizabeth, who was coming the other way. "Is your review over?" she asked him, her surprised expression changing almost immediately to worry. "Uh, yeah," John said, looking past her, distracted. "Sorry, I have to go --" Elizabeth's face grew somber. She put a hand on his arm. "I want you to know I gave you my full backing, and I will do everything in my power to change the decision --" He looked at her, nonplussed. "What?" She looked confused. "They didn't reassign you?" "They promoted me," John said absently, still staring over her shoulder. Was that McKay's back, disappearing into an elevator? Shit, no, it was just someone who looked a little like him. A luminous smile lit Elizabeth's face. "But -- John, that's wonderful! Congratulations!" "Thanks," he said, trying to get past her in the narrow hallway. "Have you seen McKay? I kind of need to talk to him." Her smile only widened. "Of course, you want to tell Rodney yourself. I think he's down in the main science labs with Colonel Carter." Fuck, John thought. Would McKay have said anything to Carter? Maybe he hadn't. Hell, no, this was Rodney McKay. He'd probably told everyone and their second cousins by now. "Gotta go," he said to Elizabeth, and went. *** Of course, this being the SGC -- which was literally a hermetically sealed environment -- gossip traveled at something approximating light speed. It definitely traveled faster than John, because in the time it took him to go across five sections and down as many levels, he was stopped by a dozen people, all of whom wanted to congratulate him on his promotion. How they'd found out was beyond him, unless O'Neill had made a base-wide announcement which John had somehow missed. That didn't seem like O'Neill's style, though. It was more likely he'd just mentioned it in passing to one of the commissary staff and let things take their natural course from there. And if everyone knew about his promotion, John figured it was only going to be a matter of time before they knew about the other thing. The thing he'd done before he'd been given the promotion. The thing he'd done when he'd thought that a promotion was pretty much the last thing that was going to happen to him. He covered the last twenty yards to the SGC labs at something which he hoped passed as a brisk saunter, but which he suspected was actually closer to a sprint. John skidded to a halt just inside the lab doorway. There was an innocuous-looking piece of Ancient tech sitting on the main workbench, hooked up to no less than five separate laptops. Otherwise, the room was empty. "Fuck," John said, with feeling. "There you are." John spun around. Rodney was standing right behind him, holding a steaming plastic mug of SGC coffee. He gestured with the cup. "You know, I spent significant portions of the last year fantasizing about good quality coffee." He took a sip from the cup and grimaced. "And I'm still fantasizing about it." He put the cup down on the nearest flat surface and poked John in the chest. "I've been looking for you." "That's funny, I was looking for you," John said, and winced a little. It had sounded cooler in his head. "Sheppard --" "McKay --" "You kissed me!" Rodney burst out. "I know!" John yelled at him, because, Jesus, it wasn't like he didn't know that, he'd been there, he'd done the kissing, and it had been very good kissing, excellent kissing, in fact, and Rodney had kissed him back and it had all been fine and good because if his career was well and truly over, this time, he'd figured he might as well tell the rules to go fuck themselves and let himself have something he really wanted, for once, if they were going to take the only other thing he really wanted away from him. Rodney was looking at him, blinking rapidly, the way he did when he was processing new information, and as John heard his own voice fade away to silence, he realized he'd said more of that out loud than he'd intended to. Possibly all of it. "They, ah," he finished, "promoted me. They made me Lieutenant Colonel and they're sending me back to Atlantis." Rodney kept looking at him. "What, you didn't think they would?" "No," John said. "You thought --" Rodney broke off. "What did you think? That they'd make you stay here and be a human light-switch, when you saved all our lives, oh, I don't know, only about a thousand and one times since we got to Atlantis?" John shrugged helplessly. "…Yeah? Maybe?" "So, when you walked in here two hours ago, locked the door behind you, and smacked me with the single hottest kiss I have had the extreme good fortune to be on the receiving end of outside of my most fully realized fantasies -- that was because you didn't think you had anything to lose, wasn't it?" John nodded. "Except now you're a Lieutenant Colonel and you do," Rodney said. John nodded again. Rodney took a couple of paces in one direction, then turned and walked back again, as if he was delivering a lecture. "It seems to me, applying a little logic to this situation -- which is a lot more than you've done, incidentally -- that we have two options at this point. Either we agree to pretend that none of this happened and carry on exactly the way we have been, or --" He held up a declamatory finger -- "Or, we can modify our relationship in light of this new information and adjust our parameters." "Adjust our parameters," John repeated. "Yes." "And this… adjusting our parameters," John said. "What would that involve?" Rodney closed the lab door. "Well, it'd start with us having a short talk about how I am, contrary to what you appear to think, capable of keeping secrets and how I can be very discreet when required." "Assume we've covered that." "Well, then it'd go on to the part where I kiss you back. Like this," Rodney said, and walked over to John and kissed him. It was a little different to the first time, because this time John was the one being kissed, and Rodney had definite ideas about how kissing was supposed to work. He kissed like he talked, self-assurance with a hint of uncertainty underneath, like he didn't doubt his technique but still needed to know he was doing it right. John let him know by lifting his hand and putting it on the back of Rodney's head, running his fingers through his hair, which was soft and fine, over and over again. "Let's keep doing this," he murmured when Rodney had finished. "Yeah," Rodney agreed, a little hoarsely. Then he said, "I guess this means we're taking the second option, Major?" "Lieutenant Colonel," John corrected, and
kissed him again. |