East Coast Gazette

Title: Shift, pt 3/?
Rating: R

Companion to Share; for previous parts of this story, go here. I’m starting to become worrisomely fond of John’s SGC team — perhaps Rodney’s not-so-latent jealousy is founded after all.

*

John’s in the middle of explaining to Bambus there is no way in hell they’re going back to MX-How Much For The Botanist? when Rodney’s instant messenger handle pops up:

rodney.mckay (gmail) : My hand-picked minions are a waste of life.
rodney.mckay (gmail) : I’m tempted to feed them to Michael, but he doesn’t really deserve them.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” John mutters, tugging the keyboard forward to type:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : what did they do wrong? was the spit shine subpar?

Bambus leans forward over John’s desk, batting his lashes and saying, “But I promise—I have no intentions of permanently joining any of their harems. I’ve discussed this with some of the anthropologists and they agree that I could bang out some sort of short term deal—”

“Yeah,” John agrees, glaring at Bambus over his laptop screen, “with ‘bang’ being the operative word here, Dr. Bambus.”

He never had this much trouble convincing Rodney human bondage was a bad idea, and he feels an ache for Teyla and especially for Ronon, who’s probably being forced to thresh or move enormous bags of wheat right now.

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : and anyway, i’m having my own personnel issues right now

Bambus makes an aggrieved face and says, “There’s no reason to be so prudish about sex, you know.”

“You say that now,” John tells him, annoyed. “But who do you think Landry’s going to roast over a spit when you come back pregnant and bitter about it?” Bambus gives him a sour look. “That’s right—me. The answer is no.”

But that doesn’t seem to dissuade Bambus entirely, who spends some time leaning over John’s desk too-curiously to stare at his computer screen, and at Rodney’s brand new screed:
rodney.mckay (gmail) : Personnel issues? What kind of personnel issues? Is this something I need to be concerned about?
rodney.mckay (gmail) : Okay, I just looked up your team – wow, what losers.
rodney.mckay (gmail) : I can’t believe you give me crap about my lab rats.

Bambus is trying to be discreet about it, but John can see the way his eyes widen just a fraction in annoyance, and he swallows back a laugh to type in:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : still better than yours
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : one of them even reminds me of you
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : loud, demanding, has no ninja skills
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : yes, i’m talking about you, bambus.
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : stop looking at my laptop screen

Pulling back, Bambus gives him a raised brow. “Your screenname is Princess Sheppardina?” he asks.

“Once upon a time, I thought I could be a ballerina,” John says easily.

The scuttlebutt around the mountain has made it abundantly clear what people think of him, and John’s past being concerned about his reputation—what tiny pieces of it might be twisting in the wind. There’d be innuendo and plenty of gay beefcake pictures stuffed into his locker at McMurdo, after the bitter and bored marine contingent there had found out about the pretty boy new zoomie, and he’d spent most of his firstie year at the academy fielding—and turning down—awkward come ons. And here, in the mountain, where he’s been busted back to middle management, he’s gotten his share of ugly looks and rumors; he knows if McKay ever knew he’d have an aneurysm on the spot, but John doesn’t really care. The truth of the matter is irrelevant anyway, now—he knows too many secrets.

Bambus grins at him, genuinely fond. “You know,” he says, “you’re not so bad.”

“Even if I won’t let you become a kept botanist?” John asks, leaning back in his chair and smirking.

“Even if,” Bambus allows, and heads toward his office door before he pauses and says, shy, “I know we’re not your first choice, but we’re good guys.”

John feels a rush of shame at that. He hasn’t been anybody’s first choice in so long that the resigned discomfort of it is natural, like breathing in and out—but Bambus, for his inability to walk and chew gum, is a good scientist, and Wallace and Holder are excellent marines. They’re green, they’re new to the program, and they deserve better in John’s hands.

“I know that,” John tells Bambus, honest. “Just let me know when I’m being an ass.”

“Will do,” Bambus says, leaving with a smile. “And I’ll just assume you get it from Dr. McKay.”

Since John has looked away from his laptop screen, Rodney’s written a small thesis, filled with threats of violence and offers to have some of the “friends” he’d made in Russia come straighten out John’s new team. It’s loaded down with exclamation points and CAPITAL LETTERS and heavy use of italics when all else had failed. John just smiles, rueful, and cracks his knuckles, turning back to his AAR and closing down the chat client.

John doesn’t get around to feeling sort of bad about it until later, but since he does, before their next mission, he lets Rodney go on for more than an hour about how he hates, hates, hates all of his employees and how they should be shot with a gun that John taught Rodney how to fire.

“I’m reasonably certain that’s frowned upon,” John tells him, putting the phone between his ear and his shoulder to reach toward his keyboard. He’s email’s lighting up: ding ding ding, and he sees General Landry’s okayed their next mission—still a softball, but one with potential. “Hey, can we continue this on gtalk? I gotta make a call about—” he says over the line.

Rodney’s hung up before John can finish his sentence, typing:

rodney.mckay (gmail) : They’re all whores.

John laughs, too loud in the too quiet of his office, but his door is shut and he has a handwritten sign up reading LEAVE ME ALONE BAMBUS, HOLDER, WALLACE – I WILL TELL YOU ABOUT OUR NEXT OFFWORLD MISSION WHEN I KNOW ABOUT OUR NEXT OFFWORLD MISSION.

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : that’s not very nice, rodney.
rodney.mckay (gmail) : Well, it’s true!
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : maybe you should do some teambuilding activities.

Picking up the phone, he dials the five digit extension into Bambus’ lab—for reasons he wants to know nothing about, Wallace has been hanging around in botany six, where Bambus grows things that remind John very strongly of weed, and make him deeply suspicious. And when Bambus picks up, John says, “Hey—go get Wallace and Holder and meet me in my office in five—we’ve got another mission and we should do some prep.”

“Like, shooting guns prep?” Bambus asks, obviously excited.

“No, like how not to fall down in rough terrain prep,” John quips. He doesn’t actually know if there’s a way to teach that, or if Bambus is just honor-bound to look battered all the time.

“Excellent,” Bambus says. “We’ll be there in five,” he adds, and hangs up.

The last time John called Rodney in for mission prep, he’d been treated to a fifteen minute whine about how nobody in biology respected him for his genius and just because he wasn’t completely fluent in the nature of mitochondrial energy production and they were didn’t mean that their “science” wasn’t any less of a joke. Rodney had bitched all through walking to a transporter, complained while being demolecularized, and defamed members of the expedition all while walking into the marines’ ready room, concluding with, “And anyway, that’s when Gene threw a beaker of something over me and told me it was Ebola, so I just wanted to say we have to push the trip back a few days in case I actually have an organ-liquefying viral contagion.”

John had rolled his eyes, reaching over to tap off Rodney’s comm, because hearing the guy complain in stereo was weird. “You do not have Ebola,” he said, and wondered how his many years of tactical training and flight school had come to this moment.

“I might,” Rodney had persisted. “And won’t you be sorry if I do and I die off world?”

“Rodney, if you die of Ebola, me and Teyla and Ronon will all have died of Ebola, too,” John points out. “None of us will be around to be sorry.”

John doesn’t know McKay got under his skin, but he’s there—the way Atlantis is, thrumming and constantly begging for attention. He misses the walls and how they seemed to curve more sweetly beneath his palms, how the floor lit up under his feet, leading his way, how he’d found the conservatory, and listened to ethereal alien music for hours, slumped against a wall, helpless against the acoustics, feeling like he was being lifted out of his head. Atlantis had been a Garden of Eden for John—a feast of delights and too many temptations, and too quickly taken away.

He misses Elizabeth, who’s still heartbroken and AWOL, disappeared; Carson, who he sees sometimes in the hallway, but seems a million miles away, lost in an ocean of sprained wrists and research papers. He misses—God strike him down—Lorne, who’s not around to write his AARs anymore. He even misses Chuck, because Chuck always had the best gossip.

But mostly John spends his time missing his city, missing his team. He misses Ronon, who had made John think that having a little brother might not have sucked as badly as he’d sworn it would be during the I |Don’t Want A Baby Brother Or Sister Campaign of third grade. He misses Teyla, so much his skin hurts, and how their silences spoke to each other in a language of sighs; she’s the only woman since his mother who’s ever held his hand to take him somewhere, to give him things, and he loves her in a complicated way that he doesn’t have words for, but that hurts still like the ache of a phantom limb.

He misses Rodney, who makes it worse by missing John enough that it feels too intimate even over a phone line, through the internet, in 12-point Arial font on a computer screen.

rodney.mckay (gmail) : They won’t even fight with me. They think I’m badass.
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : ok this is serious.
rodney.mckay (gmail) : I hate you so much I don’t even have words.

John smirks, and hears footsteps coming down the hall, so he types:

princess.sheppardina (gmail) : i figured that one out from the messenger handle you made me.
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : i’m going offworld for the next two weeks, just a heads up.
princess.sheppardina (gmail) : ok, heading out. don’t forget: teambuilding.

Before he signs offline just as the door to his office opens, Wallace holding up the yellow legal paper sign with an aggrieved look.

“I only called you twice,” he complains.

“You only called me twice yesterday,” John clarifies, and Holder rolls his eyes, muttering, “Oh for Jesus sake,” even as Bambus dashes for the nicest of the guest chairs, still vibrating with glee as he says, “Anyway. What’s our next mission? Is it dangerous? Will it be exciting?”

“Can we sell Harry into sex slavery again?” Wallace pipes up.

Holder asks, “Can I shoot Wallace?”

John points at each of them in turn, saying first to Bambus, “M6X-008, scientific mission for plant-based antibiotics; hopefully not, on both counts,” then turning to Wallace to scowl as he snaps, “No,” and lastly, to Holder, who is clearly a man after John’s heart, “Fire at will, marine.”

*

TBC