East Coast Gazette

“One Breath” pt 2 (the end):

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SGA-Files, “One Breath”

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So the preponderance of crazy homeless guys hissing “FISHWHORE!” on the subway today was high, therefore I kept my headphones on and thought about fanfiction — which inevitably led me to thinking about my new favorite guilty brain-vacation: X-Files/SGA crossovers. The more I think about it the more it makes sense to me, at least, and now I’m mired in this ridiculously romantic idea about the SGC and the NID and their finding Atlantis and abducting John to study him (a la Scully in One Breath) and Rodney going insane looking for him and this was the part where the crazy old guy yelled “WHORE WHORE!” at some guy reading the Post and ignoring him so I totally got distracted. But seriously folks! Think about this! The Lone Gunmen — aka Zelenka, Simpson, and Chuck! Jack O’Neil as Deep Throat! …Skinner as Skinner! IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE I COULD WEEP. And given the appalling number of times and episodes of the X-Files I’ve seen (read: all of them, multiple times), I really think I would love nothing more than doing AUs of the following episodes:

• One Breath (obvs.) — John’s been returned after having been kidnapped by the NID, but he won’t wake up, and John’s best friend Teyla is unsympathetic, calling McKay a coward and an ass for hiding in his apartment feeling sorry for himself and guilty instead of sitting by John’s beside.
• Grotesque — Rodney gets hauled back in to work his profiling magic with VICAP, and John spends most of his time picking fights with McKay’s detractors and making McKay eat and trying to get him to sleep in one of those delicious, Hannible-esque serial killing mysteries.
• Irresistible (because one of John’s Wraith boyfriends would totally be Donnie Pfaster) — Nobody inspires fucked up love ballads like John Sheppard. I’m just saying.
• Pusher — Cerulean blue….
• Small Potatoes (YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT, OKAY? SHUT UP) — McKay finally makes a move on him, which John realizes in retrospect should have been the first sign it was some sort of freak X-File.
• Emily — Because I’m a whore, and I want to see John’s babies that the NID created mostly so they could try to study the gene and also omg babies.
• Milagro — Rodney always knew he should hate his neighbors, and not just because they’re macking on his partner through their English literature.

There’s more, but I’m you know, withholding them to try and keep some of my (4) cool points.

At some point, once I finish with all the snapshot comments over on lj, I will be making an index post linking here, until then — this is what happens when I have five free minutes at work:

SGA, version X-Files 

“So what’s it like, working with the space cadet?”

Rodney froze, a hand stilling on the wall.

“Cam,” Sheppard said, sounding annoyed, and Rodney swallowed a groan — Mitchell, he thought, anybody but Mitchell.

“Come on, Shep, the guy is a legend,” Mitchell continued, and Rodney heard a rustling a cloth, footsteps, and he peered around the corner in time to see Mitchell trap John against a wall, palm next to Sheppard’s face, too close.  And suddenly Rodney remembered that he wasn’t the only one subject to rumors — that even before John had knocked on the door to the basement office, Rodney had heard of him, in wry, crooked grins, with whispers.

“Hey, come on, John,” Mitchell crooned, voice pitched soft and private, “you know I’d have you back in violent crimes in a heartbeat if I could swing it.”

Sheppard got that look on his face — like if Cam didn’t get away from him he was about to punch somebody else in the face, and Rodney thought the last thing the FBI needed was to have Sheppard leading tourgroups around the building, so he cleared his throat and stepped back into the room.

“Mitchell,” he said, “when did you get assigned this case?”

Cam pushed himself away from the wall, unconcerned to be caught, and still langurous, untouchable — still the bureau’s golden boy.  “Hey, Spacey — it’s been a while.”

Rodney felt his mouth tighten, turn down at the corners, but before he could say anything, he felt John’s hand on his elbow, catching his attention.  “Hey, McKay,” he said, glaring at Cam.  “Mitchell was just leaving — and I got something in the photos I think you should see.”

“Oh, good to know,” Rodney chirped, and pulled on a pair of gloves.  “By the way, we’ve got a second crime scene in the janitor’s closet.”

It turns out the assistant did it, and when John goes to bring her in, she comes quietly, dressed too-lightly for the October cold in a rose-printed robe.  Before she ever explains what their victim had been doing to her, before she pulls up the sleeves of her robe and shows John the fingerprints and bruises, John is already draping his trenchcoat over her shoulders, ushering her gently to the car.  His hands are gentle with the cuffs, and he touches her head as he helps her into the backseat.

“You’re such a soft touch, Sheppard,” Rodney sighs later, after.

“Like I didn’t see you getting her coffee from your stash earlier,” John replies, flip, and shuts down his computer.  “I’m heading out — I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rodney waits outside John’s apartment for four hours that night, sitting in the dark listening to traffic and wind and distant voices, until he sees the light in John’s bedroom window go on — and then he finally drives away, back to work, sequestering himself until morning.

*

John came by his bureau posting honestly — ex-Air Force to L.A. office to D.C. in five whirlwind years.  He’s a little disaffected and too shy, and Rodney thinks John was the kind of guy who was unremarkable until attractiveness hit him like a baseball bat in grad school — but by then it was too late for Sheppard to be comfortable in that skin, so long overlooked.  Rodney knows the rumors about why John got dispatched to the basement: sexual harassment magnet, people say, bureau retributory behavior for reporting — people think John slept with witnesses, people of interest to cases, that he’s kind of a loose cannon.  Why else would he have broken ranks and burst into a warehouse as it was about to blow?  Three agents died on his account — by Rodney’s account, in his own perusal of the files, those three agents would have died anyway, and the only crime Sheppard committed was reckless disregard for his own life.  And it’s selfish, but in the end, Rodney doesn’t care why or who or how John came to knock on the door of his office in the basement, he’s just glad John did, and that when he gets to work in the morning or sleeps in the office overnight, John is the first person he sees.

*