TOO MANY MAYBES

Too Many Maybes

The pure suddenness of it surprised him more than the act itself.

It was night and lighting in the streets was virtually nonexistent. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the shapes of buildings and he struggled to find which he was supposed to be entering. But in an instant, even those shapes were no longer visible.

He struggled against the darkness, against the rough thing that had found his mouth. He struggled to let out a cry for help. He struggled to see what was happening. He struggled to understand what was happening to him. But no amount of struggling could answer those questions…

/-

Dr. Rodney McKay turned as he reached the bottom of the ramp. The blue puddle wavered in the still air. A last couple of people stepped through it, their feet clomping heavily against the metal ramp. He didn’t pay them any attention; instead he stared off at the Naquada that made up the Stargate.

It was different than the one on Atlantis. He had known this fact but it wasn’t until that moment that such a thought sunk in. It was a different shade of colour, different shape- the Milky Way stargates were slightly larger. The constellations were lines, not dots as on Atlantis. It was different. He wasn’t sure why he was noticing now.

“Dr. McKay?” He turned back around. He noticed the floor then. The Stargate had shut off at some point without his realizing.

“Yes?” The voice sounded flat to his ears; he didn’t realize that it was his.

He noticed that a General stood before him, standing erect in his leather jacket. “I was just informed that you would be coming through.”

“Yeah. Short notice thing.”

“You’re going to have to be inspected by the doctor as soon as one of them gets a spare moment.”

Rodney had looked away as the general spoke to him, finding the Stargate again. It disturbed him that he seriously never noticed the differences. “Hmm?” The General had finished talking and seemed to be awaiting a reaction. But Rodney had none. Instead he stepped off the ramp and walked himself to the Infirmary.

The layout was fresh in his mind, as was everything that had happened during his short stays on the base.

The Infirmary was crowded. Beds were reserved for those in need of medical care returning from the Pegasus Galaxy. Sitting in chairs were the few minor casualties of the SGC and the Atlantis members returning home. He stood at the door; it would be a while before the line got to him. He could probably spare a few minutes to get something to eat- some how he doubted anyone would be bothered.

His short excursion to the commissary was uneventful. No one recognized him and no one cared to check on him, even though he still wore his Atlantis uniform. He didn’t fit in with them, he didn’t flow perfectly in sync with these people. Someone had suggested that he get a job in the mountain for a while, but he wouldn’t be able to do it. He worked seamlessly- almost seamlessly- with his team and with Atlantis. These people were alien to him. He couldn’t work with them.

He looked down at the food. It seemed almost disgusting. It really wasn’t- it had to be better than most of the food on Atlantis- but for the first time that he could remember in ages, he wasn’t hungry. He didn’t want food. He didn’t have an appetite. Rodney thought it should alarm him, but it didn’t.

He needed a meal. The chicken looked good- oh, it was lemon. Never mind. Mashed potatoes. He cringed, the wrinkles deepening as he looked at the veggies. His eyes moved slowly to the desserts. Jell-O. He could live with some Jell-O. Setting the tray back with the rest, he raised the plastic screen and picked up one of the bowls. He pulled it out, looking down, then returned it, grabbing a different one. Blue looked better.

Taking a seat off in the corner, he picked at it. It took nearly five minutes for the spoon to make it into mouth. He swallowed, but didn’t taste anything.

Rodney sighed, dropping the spoon and sending it clattering onto the table. The balls of his hands dug into his eyes. Darkness plagued his eyes, but his mind still played and rewound and fast-forwarded and then stopped and played again. He opened his eyes and looked around. He saw the tables, the walls, the people. He tasted the food, felt his feet against the floor, but he had trouble believing that he was really there. He couldn’t quite believe that he had left that planet.

/-

It wasn’t so much awe as it was amazement that oozed from every pore of his body. It fascinated him just as much as it bored him to see yet another primitive society. But it was how un-primitive that this particular one was that intrigued him.

Some six decades into their industrial revolution, they were well on their way to becoming the second most advanced culture in the Pegasus galaxy. They only had two problems…

/-

Rodney sat with his feet crossed ankle to ankle, toes on the floor, his body slouched in his chair, his head tossed back, and his eyes staring up at the ceiling. For hours he had sat and rocked his seat slowly back and forth with a few jerky moments. An empty soda can and a few power bar wrappers littered his desk. A notepad was set near his laptop. All he did was stare at it.

He couldn’t sleep that night. Eyes opened or closed, it haunted him. So instead he stayed up, pumping his body with power bars, coffee, and pepsi. Work was impossible, and yet no matter how long he sat and stared at the computer screen he couldn’t convince himself that it was useless.

The words had long ago started to blend together and the graph had started to loose focus. He had forgotten sometime around then what he was supposed to be working on or why it was important.

Rodney groaned, rubbing his eyes. He forced his tired body out of his chair, crumbling the wrappers in his hand as he headed for the kitchen.

It wasn’t his apartment- there was probably no food there. The Air Force owned an apartment complex for people like Rodney, for the aliens that come to stay for a while. It was a nice flat to spend some time in. The food they had stocked in it wasn’t bad. The neighbourhood was… well weird with all the aliens but generally nice. Quiet. There weren’t any kids around. He might pretend that he hated them, but that was just a show- like most of his life.

The dishes were modest, but the cupboards housed a couple of coffee mugs and there was a good supply of coffee. Rodney had gone through nearly half already. He supposed a shopping trip was in order. He had plenty of money- over a year of Air Force pay deposited into his bank account. He paused as he went to put the pot back down. He hadn’t thought about how it felt to not worrying about bills or about money or going out to buy food.

He sighed, sipping at the cool coffee. Life as a scientist taught him not to mind the taste. It was all about the caffeine. Not that he needed more.

He’d been back on Earth for four days. The first had been spent in the mountain, but he found that he was just in the way. He didn’t know everything that was going on; he was too tired to work; no one understood his personality, he couldn’t work with them. Sam Carter wasn’t even around. On some six day mission somewhere. He didn’t know if he was going to go back and see her tomorrow. He doubted she wanted to see him.

He settled back into the couch. He had thought about going back to Canada, back to his lonely apartment in some rich neighbourhood. His sister lived a few hours away from there. He thought about going and seeing her, but they hadn’t talked in a while. He thought about phoning her, but he couldn’t even muster the desire to eat, he couldn’t find any to pick up the phone.

He’d never felt the way he did before. Depressed. Anxious. They sent him back to Earth to get him to rest, to relax, to talk to someone. He could have done all that on Atlantis.

/-

It wasn’t so much awe as it was amazement that oozed from every pore of his body. It fascinated him just as much as it bored him to see yet another primitive society. But it was how un-primitive that this particular one was that intrigued him.

Some six decades into their industrial revolution, they were well on their way to becoming the second most advanced culture in the Pegasus galaxy. They only had two problems:

Natural resources were already near depletion and it was a race to see who could replace them first with something more advanced.

Three factions existed, each trying to crush the others in an international battle over a new, great power source. It was an energy race and the first to win would hold all the power…

/-

After a week on Earth, Rodney felt no more relaxed than he even had on Atlantis. Sleep was evasive, coffee was dwindling and he had no energy to go out and get himself more.

The SGC had other ideas however. He didn’t know what they were working on, but the new General had invited him down to help out. He didn’t care, didn’t want to go, but he found himself showering early in the morning and then dressing in something other than fleece pants and an old t-shirt. It wasn’t the uniform he normally wore, nor was it something professional, but jeans were something other than his pajamas.

He drove somewhat clumsily- it was a car the Air Force had lent him- after not driving for so long. It didn’t help that American’s couldn’t drive- not that Canadians could either, but he was used to them. His semi-conscious mind probably did nothing for him either.

He pulled into the lot, eyes barely staying open. He walked past the guard, forgetting at first to produce his ID. It wasn’t something he needed on Atlantis and so it took a moment of fumbling to find it. He was shocked he had it at all. After annoying the guards, taking them away from their challenging cross word puzzles, he entered the elevator in silence and brushed his hand over the number he wanted. When it didn’t light, he pushed it again, punching it several times more than necessary. It was the most energy he had produced in weeks. With a breath, he stepped away, riding down the levels, listening to the mechanically humming. He walked off, checking in again before turning into the next elevator. The monotony didn’t bother him, it was no longer an irritation after the previous week.

His eyes drooped dangerously as he leaned against the side wall. His chin dropped to his chest. It shot back up when he heard a female voice call out to hold the elevator. He responded quickly, holding out his hand to stop the door. The woman jumped in. Rodney didn’t pay attention to her, but he noticed that she didn’t hit any of the buttons. He went back to his wall, staring at his feet. They started to blur and he realized his caffeine fix that morning was wearing off.

“McKay?”

“Mmm?” He wasn’t sure what kind of sound he had made, but he also wasn’t sure how to form a word at that moment. He stared at her, blinking. Suddenly a word came to mind; it took another few minutes to realize it was her name. “Sam.”

“When did you return to Earth?”

Rodney sighed. His mind was sluggish- he didn’t know what help he would be- and her words were slow to be processed. Another pause, and then he answered, “Uh… Tuesday.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, breathing deeply to avoid yawning.

“You sleeping all right?”

“Yeah, it’s, um… it’s getting better.”

“Better?”

“Caffeine wearing off,” he smirked, but Sam only vaguely smiled back.

“What are you doing here?”

“Um…” he racked his brain, shaking his head, “No idea. Your new General invited me. Not sure what good I’m going to do.”

“You following me?”

“Hmm?” It was the first time he noticed they had been walking, and had now walked through the doors of her office. “No, just- um… um…”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Tired.”

“And you’re here to work?”

“I’m here for something to do.”

Sam just nodded, setting her things on her desk and walking around to start her computer up. She turned around and found him standing there watching her. His look unnerved her. She would have expected him to look cockier about it, with more desire or lust or something more characteristic of McKay. But his face was blank, his eyes were blank. His shoulders were slouched and his hands resting in his jeans’ pockets. She had the vague sense that he didn’t realize where he was; that he wasn’t actually there. Circles had formed under his eyes and she no longer trusted his word that he had had any sleep. She knew that it was not just because of a wired system. Something was wrong with him, the same something that was the reason for his stint on Earth, she could only assume.

“Rodney?”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t you just go home?”

“Home?” he paused, as if the word meant nothing to him. “Uh, sleep, you mean.”

“Yeah. You look like crap.”

“Great way to say hello after all this time.”

“Sorry.” Rodney continued to stand there, worrying Sam. She looked him over again and the thought struck her that he looked good wearing a simple pair of faded jeans. She looked down, shaking her head. “Are you going to stand there all day or am I going to have to drive you home.”

“Hmm?”

Sam sighed, looking to the screen of her computer. With a keystroke, it shut down again. She grabbed her coat, swinging it around her back, sliding it over her arms, and shrugging it into place. Grabbing her purse, she pulled him with her out into the hall. It took him until she actually touched him to realize what was happening. He immediately jumped, pulling his arm from her grip. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you back to your apartment.”

“I’m supposed to go see the General or something.”

“I’ll tell him what happened.”

“That’ll be embarrassing.”

“Come on.”

/-

It was cold. That was his first conscious realization. The air was frigid and utterly still. He could feel the condensation forming on his lips; his tongue rolled over them and his next breath only served to make them colder.

He was on the ground, of that he was sure. It felt like stone- something hard. The paving seemed uneven- like stone blocks awkwardly set together. At least something hard was digging into his shoulder and his hand was starting to go numb. He wanted to shift, to find a more comfortable position, to ball up in hopes of warmth, but he didn’t dare move.

Slowly he let himself blink his eyes open. They opened briefly, but closed shortly after. There was no light, or at least none shinning too brightly. He opened his eyes again; there was nothing. He blinked once, trying to clear and focus his eyes. Once again he was met with utter darkness. Finally the fear of it startled him and he moved his head suddenly. But this only made him wince and ball up against the stone floor anyway. Something was right by his forehead- an unevenness in the floor. He was sure his forehead was bleeding, but he couldn’t be sure. Again he just tried to blink and, as he calmed down and took a few quick, deep breathes, he realized that something was around his head. A blindfold. There was something- the knot perhaps- was digging into the back of his head.

And finally, after he stopped, he noticed for the first time a sound. He wasn’t sure what it was. A pinging. A loud, echoing something…

/-

“McKay! McKay! Rodney!”

He jumped in the seat, his eyes springing opened and his head smacking against the window. He groaned, half from grogginess, half from pain. Bringing his hand up with the intent of protecting his wound, it changed its course and rubbed his right eye instead. Using his left, he looked over at Sam. She was watching him worriedly and for a short time Rodney couldn’t comprehend why. Then it hit him.

He never used to have nightmares. He never really dreamt and if he did, they were distorted, erotic, things he never remembered a few hours later. But lately his nights had been plagued with images. A distorted rush of jumbled moments. He woke up- if he managed to fall asleep- twisted in his bed sheets and sweating.

“Where are we?” was the first thing that came to mind and before he had time to process it, the words slipped past his lips.

“The apartment you’re staying at.”

“Right.”

“You’re not sleeping at all anymore, are you?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Besides the circles under your eyes and what happened in my lab?” Rodney cocked his head to the side, then shrugged, looking to her as if he was awaiting an answer. “How bad are the nightmares?”

His face wasn’t shocked, he knew he must have mumbled or yelled or had been tossing about- he didn’t think he could muster the emotion even if that wasn’t true. But he wasn’t hesitant either; wasn’t hiding it from her. He just didn’t know what to say. She’d been out there longer; he wondered how many nightmares she had suffered from. How many old ones came back to plague her on lonely nights? He wondered how he could compare his to hers.

“Depends. Some are bad.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Are you talking to someone?”

Rodney made some kind of gesture, one she took as a mixture of a nod, a shake of the head, and a shrug. “Don’t really need to.”

“No? McKay, if you can’t sleep, you’re having nightmares, and obviously did something back at Atlantis to get you shipped here, then yes, you need help.”

“I don’t need help. Thanks for the ride. I’m gonna go now.”

“Rodney.” Hours later, hoping and dreading sleep as he lay awake on his bed, Rodney would contemplate what had made him turn back around after leaving her car. Was it the tone- the softness in her voice she had never bothered to use with him? Was it the fact that she used his first name? Or was it the way his name rolled off her tongue in a way he had only dreamed of? Was it the pleading in her crystal orbs that made him stay? That kept him from slamming the door shut? Or was it just him knowing that she was right and not able to admit it?

“Give me a call if you ever want to talk.” He would contemplate her offer as well. Should he look her number up? Should he call her? Would she prefer if it were to her line at the SGC, or her home phone? Would she invite him over? To her house or to her office? Should he call her? Did he want to talk about it? Of course he didn’t. But he knew he should. She had offered it; she seemed to want to help.

A quiet, “yeah,” was his terse response. Hanging his head, he thanked her, then closed the door. Rodney felt her eyes on his back as he walked around the car. He heard her window being rolled down and wondered if she had more to say. But he didn’t look, wanting to escape back into the darkness of his apartment where cold coffee and a stale, half-eaten power bar awaited him.

/-

The pure suddenness of it surprised him more than the act itself.

It was night and lighting in the streets was virtually nonexistent. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the shapes of buildings and he struggled to find which he was supposed to be entering. But in an instant, even those shapes were no longer visible.

He struggled against the darkness, against the rough thing that had found his mouth. He struggled to let out a cry for help. He struggled to see what was happening. He struggled to understand what was happening to him. But no amount of struggling could answer those questions.

It was a prink. Just a simple annoyance on his upper arm. He didn’t think much of it at first. His mind was more focused on the darkness and the silence. The silence filled with grunts of effort and feet scrapping against the stone road. But the darkness became even more pronounced and his voice became even more impossible to use against the rough thing covering his mouth and finally the grunts of effort calmed to complete stillness…

/-

Rodney awoke the next morning from a restless sleep. He had spent a total of sixteen hours lying in bed. The first three were spent staring and thinking. He slept for at least five of them out of sheer exhaustion. Another couple left him staring and thinking again, but he didn’t want to think. His mind kept wandering to two dangerous subjects: the object of his nightmares and the object of his affections.

His dreams were too grotesque for him to think about. Too real even so many days later. And the woman he wanted wasn’t interested in him. To think about her on Atlantis was one thing for the possibility of seeing her again was slim. But back on Earth, she became real again and his desires became more pronounced. He couldn’t think of her anymore than he could think of it.

He drifted between sleep and restless thought, between thought and pointless wandering through the apartment, between wandering and sitting, between sitting and laying down, between laying down and sleeping, between sleeping and staring. The process itself was more tedious than Atlantis ever seemed to be.

He stepped out of the shower at some point the next morning, feeling somewhat back to normal. With a towel around his waist, he stood combing his hair. He looked at his face. It was still haggard, still marred by exhaustion, but he imagined that it didn’t look so much like the zombie it must have two days before.

Reentering his room, he threw on his boxers and then tossed the same shirt back on. It was an old, MIT shirt he had bought way back when. It was still comfortable, a little baggy but it fit. He stood with one leg in his pajama pants before he decided against it. He grabbed the same jeans he had worn to the base and stepped into them, zippering them up as he searched out socks amongst the chaos. Locating some, he put them on while hopping around, looking for his shoes. One day he swore he would become more organized, but he had more pressing problems that needed to be addressed for the next couple of years.

Dressed, he grabbed his keys from the counter, his wallet, and lastly his leather jacket before he realized he had no car. Muttering under his breath, he called himself a cab.

Some time later he arrived back at his apartment with an armload of groceries and a plastic bag holding four kinds of ice cream. It wasn’t something he spread around, but he had a thing for ice cream. It was something of a comfort food for him. Woman had chocolate, he had cookie dough ice cream. And sherbet of course, chocolate for the bad days, and Napoleon on occasion. That week called for everything.

He changed quickly, donning on his favourite pair of fleece pajama bottoms, cuddled up with a quilt, popped the lid off the chocolate ice cream and turned on the first movie he could find. He spent the entire day like that, slowly working his way through half of each container before working his way back around. He weaved in and out of consciousness throughout his marathon, sometimes waking at a shriek or banging of some western or war movie. He changed those, then continued eating his melting ice cream. He wasn’t sure how long his marathon lasted, but it was well into the next morning when he got off the couch to make himself a sandwich. It was the first time in weeks he felt like eating. Topping it off with a soda, he retired back to his couch and watched the end of some sappy romance.

At ten in the morning, after four hours of straight sleep, a car backfired, sending him bolt up on the couch. He swallowed, but his heart continued to pound in his throat and in his temples. He took a deep breath, but that didn’t quench his need for the excess oxygen. He tossed the blanket off, heading for the bathroom sink. The water was ice on his burning skin. He splashed it on his face over and over again, but the sinking in his stomach wouldn’t dissipate.

Finally he just collapsed onto the bathroom floor, putting his face in his hands like a five year old as he waited. It felt like hours, felt like days, felt like time slowed and no time had yet to pass. After a while, when his breathing had slowed and his heart was no longer racing and he felt safe to stand without hurling, he picked himself up. He stripped down, running the water as hot as it would go and stepped under it. It hurt, burned, as the droplets streaming down his flesh, but he did nothing. He didn’t flinched, didn’t adjust the temperature. He waited until his nerves didn’t feel it any more and the water became cold before he stepped out and dried himself.

Normally, he would grab an old shirt, a pair of jeans that hadn’t been washed in weeks, and call it a perfectly fine outfit. But that day he walked into the closet, pulled out a good pair of jeans and buttoned down shirt. He rolled it up comfortably, buttoned it only part way. Looking around his room, he frowned at the scattered clothing, dirty socks, and hidden shoes. Slowly he began to pick some of it up. He folded some, placing the shirts and some pants back into their proper places. Other things he tossed onto his bed until he could locate his laundry basket. He found it a while later under a pair of jeans. Then he made his bed for the first time since he arrived and moved the laundry basket into the hall, then moved on to the living room. He folded the blanket, tossed the empty ice cream cartons, and turned off the TV. In the kitchen, he restocked the cupboards with some of the food he bought and took a few minutes to put the dishes in the dishwasher.

It was only once there was some order returned to the apartment that he reentered the bedroom and grabbed a pair of the shoes he had managed to uncover. He didn’t know where he planned to go, he really had no plans, he just grabbed his wallet and keys and walked out the door.

His jaunt had taken him downtown and his legs had wandered him into a nearby coffee shop

His jaunt had taken him downtown and his legs had wandered him into a nearby coffee shop. Sitting with a fresh coffee in hand, he watched the coming and goings of those outside. Some wore BDU’s, obviously base personnel. Others were civilians. Or perhaps officers out of uniform.

There were children. He hadn’t seen Human children since he left- Rodney wasn’t sure why he thought of such a thing. People were laughing, joking, talking. They were all so naïve. So innocent. So close to the mountain, but they had no idea.

Gulping down the last of his coffee, he slammed it back on the table. He needed to get away from these people. Needed to get around people who understood the pain he was in. Who understood what he was going through.

He wandered farther, debating if he was really willing to return to the SGC. When a side finally won, he found himself standing outside the mountain’s gates, paying a taxi driver. The guard gave him a weird look, but McKay ignored it, presenting his ID and walking through the lot. He needed his car, which was mostly the reason he had come. But, even as his eyes found his car off to the left, his legs led him to the mountain entrance. The elevator creaked as it began its descent. It climbed down all the levels, halting only half way down the mountain.

He maneuvered through the halls, down the elevator, his mind not processing anything of his trip until he finished. His internal musings had kept him unfocused and only half aware of his surroundings until that very moment when he realized that he was standing in front of Carter’s lab and just inside he could see her hard at work on something. He stepped inside, quietly as to not disturb her. He knew how annoyed he became when someone disturbed him when he was working. Plenty of people had commented on how irked he got. He felt guilty for doing the same to her.

“Don’t tell me you’re bored again, Cameron. Go annoy Daniel or Teal’c.”

“Sorry, I just-”

“McKay?” She spun around. He had stepped back, moving towards the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I- I had to get my car.”

“Oh… right.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. He rocked on the balls of his feet; his hands worked their way into his pocket. “So I, um… you said if I… ever wanted to talk… and I don’t, I’m just… here, so, I um…”

“Close the door.”

“Never thought you’d ask.”

“Rodney,” she scolded with a roll of her eyes. He laughed, but it was nervous and distant, and closed the door. When he turned back around, Sam was sitting watching him. It only served to heighten his nervousness. He took a breath to steady himself and paced over to her desk. Laying his hands on top of the bare surface, he fidgeted, tapping his fingers. Then he moved around, pacing in circles around her lab and examining some of the tools. Most were things he himself had in his own lab.

He stopped moving, feeling her eyes on him. She was waiting for him to begin. “We, um, we had met this… race. They, um, were just hitting their industrial phase. I guess they were at something like our 1900’s, I guess. But that’s pretty advanced for Pegasus.” He paused, looking up at her. She nodded, willing him to continue. He looked down, running his fingers over the surface of her desk before he started again. “They had a lot of political problems. It actually had a lot to do with power supplies. See, they, um, got power from coal, crude oil, like us, but territorial disputes made it hard for them to… It was amazing, the one government we were called in by had practically figured out nuclear power.” He was grinning with the memory as he paused to wet his lips, glancing at her again.

But the expression fell quickly, as did his eyes. “Weir was concerned of course, but they were- they seemed peaceful. She eventually gave me permission to help them finish- mostly at my urging. Me helping the Genii had been a big mistake, I thought… I thought maybe helping them…” His eyes sought hers desperately. She meet them, inwardly cringing as he begged for someone to forgive the guilt he was carrying over him. She wanted to offer him some words of comfort, but she had none. Instead, she simply laid her hand over his arm, comforting him the only way she knew how.

“It was going well. Ja’avid- the lead scientist- we… we worked pretty well together. He picked it all up fast. I made a nuclear reactor; I gave them everything they needed to make it work. Hell, I even helped them make plutonium rather than just using uranium. They…”

Rodney’s voice trailed off. His eyes were down and unfocused. Sam was stunned by his reaction. All she had ever known about Rodney was that he was an arrogant ass. But sitting there, watching some unknown memory flash before his eyes and see how badly it affected him, she knew instantly that the harsh reality in the Pegasus Galaxy had changed him, just as the Stargate had changed so many others. How it had changed Daniel; how it had changed her.

“Rodney,” she called to him softly, running her hand softly over his arm. He started at her touch, but when he looked up at her, she knew he didn’t see her.

“I don’t… I can’t… remember what happened… I was walking back to the house I was staying at. It was a nice night… it was a dark night… I can remember the hands grabbing me, the way- the rough hand that was holding my mouth shut. The feel of the material against my face. But I can’t remember their faces, I can’t remember how they knocked me unconscious, where they took me, how long it all took- just that it happened… I… They… They wanted nuclear power too. I didn’t want… I… I helped them, Sam. I helped them…”

/-

It was cold. That was his first conscious realization. The air was frigid and utterly still. He could feel the condensation forming on his lips; his tongue rolled over them and his next breath only served to make them colder.

He was on the ground, of that he was sure. It felt like stone- something hard. The paving seemed uneven- like stone blocks awkwardly set together. At least something hard was digging into his shoulder and his hand was starting to go numb. He wanted to shift, to find a more comfortable position, to ball up in hopes of warmth, but he didn’t dare move.

Slowly he let himself blink his eyes open. They opened briefly, but closed shortly after. There was no light, or at least none shinning too brightly. He opened his eyes again; there was nothing. He blinked once, trying to clear and focus his eyes. Once again he was met with utter darkness. Finally the fear of it startled him and he moved his head suddenly. But this only made him wince and ball up against the stone floor anyway. Something was right by his forehead- an unevenness in the floor. He was sure his forehead was bleeding, but he couldn’t be sure. Again he just tried to blink and, as he calmed down and took a few quick, deep breathes, he realized that something was around his head. A blindfold. There was something- the knot perhaps- was digging into the back of his head.

And finally, after he stopped, he noticed for the first time a sound. He wasn’t sure what it was. A pinging. A loud, echoing something. Constant, but slightly irregular…

One… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… ping… one… two… ping… one… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… five… six… ping… one… ping…

His lips had gone dry; it was instinct to wet them. Each breath made them number; each breath made his throat drier.

/-

She was hugging him. He didn’t know when he had sunk down into the other chair. He didn’t know when she stood or when her strong arms had wrapped around him. He didn’t know when he had started crying, but he found that he wasn’t embarrassed in front of her. Not right then.

Rodney stilled, sniffing some time later. But despite his calmed state, he didn’t try to move away from her. She had rested his head against her chest, her hand holding it against her body as she smoothed down his hair. He was never one to pretend that he didn’t have sexual fantasies about Sam Carter and he had never denied his feelings for her to anyone, even himself. But sitting there and being held by her like that- the reality of it made his head spin. Or maybe that was his pounding heart.

She shifted against him when she noticed him quiet, pulling away from him. Rodney looked up at her. His eyes were damp and the warm liquid still traveled down his cheeks. He found himself gazing into her blue eyes, his own thanking her for helping him lift the heavy burden from his chest. Her hand was still buried in his hair. She snaked it around, wiping the right side of his face dry. He sniffed again, raising his own hand to wipe the other.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Don’t apologize. You needed that.” Rodney just nodded, no longer trusting his voice. He sniffed again, rubbing his eyes to clear it of the moisture.

“I don’t usually do this.”

“Rodney. Stop apologizing.”

“Sorry.” He sniffed again, fighting to control his breath. Once again he rubbed his eyes. They were undoubtedly red and puffy, and his face must be awkwardly spotted. “I’m disturbing you. I should… I should go. But thank-you for listening.” He rose, rubbing his nose and sniffing.

“Rodney?”

“Hmm?” He called, turning back from the door.

“You’re actually going to go out there like that?” She shook her head. “Maybe you’d like to help me with this?”

“Help you… with what?”

She gestured to her computer, cocking her head to the side. Rodney looked out the door, noticing the abnormal amount of traffic outside. With a nod he joined her at her desk.

Hours later he was amazed to say that he had found himself bickering over some inane piece of technology. They had no idea what it did and it seemed to them not to be important. Their bickering came naturally but Rodney didn’t mean anything by it and Sam knew it. It was becoming more like banter than a disagreement.

They must have worked for nearing four hours on the device with no success. Their jesting hadn’t been the cause of it; it simply didn’t appear to do anything. In four hours, he hadn’t thought once about what happened. His mind hadn’t wandered back to the Pegasus Galaxy; in fact it didn’t seem to even be in the Milky Way Galaxy for a time. It was at this point that Rodney leaned back in the chair, wheeling it back. “Is it just me or are you hungry?”

“What time it is?”

He sighed, checking his watch. “Four thirty… I don’t think I ate lunch.”

“They should be about to serve dinner.”

“I’ll take that.” He smiled, rising from his chair before her and opened the door, holding it opened to let her out.

“Why, McKay, you’ve become such a gentleman,” she teased, leaving Rodney smiling.

“Please, call me Rodney.”

She looked at him a moment with a frown drooping in her brow. “Rodney? I’ll try to remember that.”

The doctor smirked to himself, continuing down the corridor with her. After a few paces more, he glanced at her. “Does this mean I get to call you Sam now?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Think about it. Then I want to think more about you calling me Rodney.”

“Too late.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve already decided I like calling you Rodney.”

“You’ve never called- yes, you have haven’t you?”

“Yes I have.”

“That’s not fair.”

“All’s fair in love and war.” His pace slowed as he looked at her. Sam took a few more steps before realizing that he had fallen behind. Turning, she sent her brightest smile back at him. “Are you hungry or not, Rodney? Because I’m starving.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming, woman. Hold your horses.” She laughed in response and continued on her way.

They talked more than they ate as they picked at their food, discussing and rearguing the points they had already gone over. Sam was stuck on the symbols around it but Rodney was convinced they wouldn’t reveal much. “Since when does one find instruction manuals right on the alien machine?” was his opinion.

Rodney was focused on the radiation the machine emitted. Carter was certain it was a shield of some sort, despite what the inhabitants of P3X-9891 had told her when they gave her the device. She doubted they had built it, or that they had ever discovered how to make it work. Rodney wasn’t convinced it was a shield either.

Picking at the last of her meal, Sam looked up at Rodney as he finished off his soda. “Think we should take a break?”

“Tired of me already?”

“No. Just if I don’t leave before too long, Mitchell will be arriving in my lab and he has a tendency of… well, he can be worse than General O’Neill.” His thoughts drifted to the image of the General he had meet on a few occasions fiddling with Carter’s things. He didn’t know this Mitchell, but he could understand what she was talking about.

“Right. At least you manage to get home at a decent hour.”

“Sometimes. But I have a tendency of working then anyway.”

Rodney smirked. “Gonna work on this?”

“I might.”

He nodded. “Okay, so I’ll get going then.”

“Okay.”

It took Rodney nearly an hour after he and Sam parted ways to make it home. He stopped to check on the things in his locker- he had left his Atlantis uniform, his vest, and a few things that he didn’t need there on Earth in a base locker for safe keeping. There was something in one of his vest pockets, something he brought on every mission with him. Holding it between two fingers, he looked down at the picture. It was old and worn, the corners tattered, the one edge more so as it had been torn down the center years ago. A blonde haired teen hugged a young man. They both smiled at the camera. A hand crept into the corner, but the rest of the person wasn’t visible. Rodney slipped the picture into his back pocket.

He stopped at the coffee shop and sipped at the hot liquid on the way back to his car. He stopped before he reached it, deciding instead to sit outside and enjoy the sun. It wasn’t a usual habit of his- he claimed that it was because of his sensitive skin- but his mind was cluttered with several thoughts, thoughts he seriously needed to sort out. Sitting in the warm sun, his mind went over the data he and Sam had collected that afternoon and over everything they had discussed.

His mind strayed to his sister- how much he missed her, their last conversation. She had yelled at him for not coming, he had told her he couldn’t. She had asked to know what was so important, he said he couldn’t tell her. She wanted to know why she couldn’t contact him, he couldn’t answer. She wanted to know why he was so worried, he just said good-bye.

After a while his thoughts strayed to Sam herself. Old feelings and new. He still felt rather numb, but that afternoon of getting back into the thick of things helped to make him feel more like himself. She still entranced him like she had before. He still loved her smile, her laughter. He once found himself starring off into her crystal eyes- she snapped her fingers in his face and he wrote it off as deep thought.

The deeper in thought he became, the more he forgot about the people around him, the less he sipped at his coffee, the less bothered by the sounds of life around him. The deeper he got, the less he was able to control his train of thought. Eventually his mind drifted to a dark corner of his mind, one he had tried desperately to forget.

/-

Slowly he let himself blink his eyes open. They opened briefly, but closed shortly after. There was no light, or at least none shinning too brightly. He opened his eyes again; there was nothing. He blinked once, trying to clear and focus his eyes. Once again he was met with utter darkness. Finally the fear of it startled him and he moved his head suddenly. But this only made him wince and ball up against the stone floor anyway. Something was right by his forehead- an unevenness in the floor. He was sure his forehead was bleeding, but he couldn’t be sure. Again he just tried to blink and, as he calmed down and took a few quick, deep breathes, he realized that something was around his head. A blindfold. There was something- the knot perhaps- was digging into the back of his head.

And finally, after he stopped, he noticed for the first time a sound. He wasn’t sure what it was. A pinging. A loud, echoing something. Constant, but slightly irregular…

One… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… ping… one… two… ping… one… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… five… six… ping… one… ping…

His lips had gone dry; it was instinct to wet them. Each breath made them number; each breath made his throat drier.

Ping… ping…

A leaky faucet. It was the first thought that came to him after listening for a time. The incessantly irregular dripping. Water was coming from somewhere, but he was too tired and too cold and it was too dark for him to try to search the source out. Maybe he should have, maybe he shouldn’t have surrendered so easily. Maybe he should have fought harder, found a way out, found some way to escape. But for once it just didn’t seem worth the energy…

/-

He pressed his eyes into the balls of his hands, taking deep, steadying breaths to calm his mind.

Rubbing his nose, he looked around him. No one had stopped to take notice of him, no one ever did. Sam was the only one who ever did notice.

At some point he found himself back in his car, driving down the road. He steered automatically, letting his memory lead him. The scene played over, only it was silent. The sounds were gone, but so were the real sounds of the world. The road blended with the image of the planet.

A thought had occurred to him earlier when he had ordered his coffee. He didn’t recall parking his car or unlocking the door to his apartment. Vaguely he recalled removing his coat and picking up the phone, but his focus returned when he heard her voice.

“Carter.” She waited a beat for a response. “Hello?”

“Oh, sorry,” Rodney shook his head, hitting himself as he muttered about his stupidity under his breath. “Sorry, um… You know you sound very sexy when you say your last name like that.”

“I know you didn’t call just to harass me.” Her words sounded annoyed but he could hear her smiling.

“I might have.”

“Rodney.”

“Okay, so… I might have called about a serious topic.”

“Which is?”

He thought he heard a motor stop, then a car door slam. “Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Oh.”

“Oh… what?”

“Oh, I just… was kind of hopping you’d still be on the base.”

“Why?” She sighed. He heard another door open, then close. “What’s up?”

“I had an idea about that… what are we calling that thing, any way?”

“‘We’?”

“As in ‘we the people of Earth’?” The sarcasm was there, but he only half felt his old wit.

“Nice save. And I have no idea.”

“Well, the device from P3X-9891- that’s just a boring title. Can we name it something like ‘the greyish object with seventeen symbols’?”

“You don’t think that’s a bad name?”

“Yes I do, but it explains exactly what it is.”

“Are we seriously having a conversation about this?”

“Sorry, if I’m not surrounded by supposed geniuses, I’m surrounded by military lackeys. I have trouble forgetting that I can actually use big words with you.”

“So what was this thought?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing.”

“I have the computer simulation of the device here at my house.”

“Are you looking at it?”

“No. But what’s your thought.”

“That- well I’d need another look at the thing. I-I don’t know. Weird, stupid thought. Forget I called.”

“Rodney, are you just trying to get me to invite you to my house?”

He blinked, then looking up, finding only a wall to meet his gaze. “Hadn’t actually thought about that…”

“Come over; I was going to work on this thing any way.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I live on Crescent Lane.”

“Crescent Lane?”

“Yes. Number 35.”

“Okay. I’ll be over… as soon as I can find it.”

“Okay.” She laughed and he couldn’t stop the smile from gracing his features. “It’s just off Main Street. See you in a little bit.”

“Yeah. Bye.”

Rodney lowered the phone from his ear slowly. He took a moment to stare at it, as if the object itself could give him an answer. He spent the moment utterly amazed by her invitation. And then, as if rational thought had suddenly returned to him, he rushed to set the phone onto the cradle. He always left his keys in the hall by his coat. Grabbing those things, he made it half way down the hall before he realized he knew nothing of the layout of the city. He had no idea where Sam might live. Main Street was… well, he really didn’t know.

McKay was always known for his ego, his pride, but he was hardly above the traditional male stereotype of stopping at the gas station and asking for directions. It took three wrong turns, two U-turns, and stalking the street before finding the right number.

It was a normal, sub-urban house. He smirked, almost amused by the irony. Sam was nothing if not the complete opposite of “normal”. The thought of her living in a classical “white-picket” house with modest trimmings and a well tended garden brought images of a superhero in disguise. He almost imagined her with a different name when living in her house- Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter was just her equivalent to Superman or Spiderman or… well, he wasn’t up on his comic books.

Stepping up the walkway, he rapped gently on the doorway. He was fidgeting and, as if it would stop it, he turned to face the road, watching as the occasional car drove by.

“Rodney.”

“Sam,” he replied, whipping his head around first before his feet followed. For a moment he rocked on his heels, finally asking, “Can I come in?” Sam moved aside, a blush in her cheeks telling him that she was somewhat embarrassed. He shifted past her, turning to wait for her to close the door and lead him into her house. He shifted his weight, uncomfortable in the new surroundings. The computer strap shifted off his shoulder; he fixed it.

“Why don’t we work in the living room? I have my computer set up in there.” Rodney just nodded, gesturing for her to lead the way. She brought him through the hallway, past the stairs, and into an open area. There were two couches and a couple of recliners scattered about the room. A coffee table was placed near one of the couches, on which Sam’s laptop was opened. She offered him a seat, then stayed standing to offer him something to eat or drink. Against his characteristic of being chronically hungry and addicted to caffeine, he declined.

“Shall we get started?”

“Sure. What was this thought of yours?”

“Well,” he took a deep breath and started his rant.

Three hours later, after two sandwiches and one pot of coffee, the two scientists were finally on their way towards an idea of what the device did. It was Rodney’s belief that the abnormal energy readings that they were getting from the device resembled the ZPMs. Sam agreed that it could possibly be some kind of power source, but neither of them could determine how to use it.

“So do you think it’s actually Ancient?”

Rodney shrugged. “The symbols look Ancient.”

“But Daniel can’t read them.”

“Just because he can’t read it, doesn’t mean it’s not Ancient… It looks Ancient.”

“You already said that.”

“I meant the design.”

“But if they already had the ZPM, why would they make this thing?”

“I don’t know. Why would they make anything they made? Maybe it’s supposed to be portable.”

“ZPMs already are portable.”

“But,” he said shaking his fingers, slapping them together as he often did when an idea struck him, “They have to be placed in an interface between the ZPM and the device it’s powering.”

“So?”

“So? So, you’re right, that makes no sense…” he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Why don’t we take a break?”

“We just took a break.”

“Two hours ago.”

“Hmm?” Rodney relaxed away from the table, shifting his weight against the cushions to get a better look at her. He watched as Sam bit her bottom lip, staring down at the screen. He smirked; she looked cute.

“Can I ask a question?” she said slowly. Rodney couldn’t remember a time that she had sounded so hesitant. She glanced up at him. “One that’s on kind of… shaky ground?”

“Shaky ground? That sounds dangerous.” She wasn’t smiling, but he smirked nevertheless.

“How long did you stay on Atlantis before… before you came to Earth?”

Rodney sighed, looking down at the floor between his legs, looking at his hands, at the coffee table, at the clock on the far wall, anything but her big blue eyes and her round face. “Three weeks… I spent a few days in the Infirmary. I talked to the shrinks. I felt fine. And then… all of the sudden I just…”

“Just what?”

“I wasn’t sleeping well. It started to affect my work. People began to notice that I wasn’t eating and sleeping.”

“And why send you to Earth? They have doctors there who could have helped.”

Rodney just shrugged. “Because they tried. I refused to talk to them. They tried to tell me that I couldn’t go into my lab or the control room. I was supposed to rest. But I ignored that order- got myself into some trouble.” He stole a look at her, even though he was afraid to see her reaction. She seemed pitying almost. Sorrow had crept into her eyes and her face seemed to soften.

“So they sent you to another world where you’d be on vacation?” Rodney shrugged. “I wouldn’t consider that a vacation. I always need to be working on something. I imagine that you’re the same way.”

“Oh I am. Why do you think I ended up at the SGC half asleep? It’s in my nature…” At that point, he was looking at her, smiling with a hint of mischief in his eyes. Sam suspected that this was him at his most unguarded state, when arrogance and self-importance weren’t necessary to survive in the world of science. But the moment passed too quickly for her liking. His walls returned and a look of recollection told her he was considering why he was there on Earth. “I didn’t have a break down suddenly or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. Somehow I think I’d be in therapy, not on vacation.”

“That’s what you’re calling this?”

“Sure. Why not? Two years in another galaxy, first time back home without responsibilities… vacation,” he shrugged.

“So… they just sent you back?”

“I just- I’ve been working a lot lately and with everything going on… Elizabeth just thought I should come back home for a little while.” She stared him hard in the eye, watching for any sign that it wasn’t entirely the truth. But he didn’t waver under the scrutiny, something she thought a person like Rodney even telling the truth would do. She had always thought of him as something of a coward when it really came down it, but when she found out he was going to Atlantis, she would admit to being surprised. But seeing him over a year later, she was even more surprised at the changes in him.

“Right. Sorry.”

He cleared his throat and looked back at the image of the device. “So… you still think that it’s some kind of weapon?”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

He sighed. Sam looked over at him. The other day he had looked close, if not in the middle of a breakdown. Exhausted, withdrawn, confused. But sitting in her living room- which she was still trying not to think about- on her couch, he looked like she imaged she did. A little tired and running mostly on adrenaline and caffeine as they both had been since college years. Maybe they had seen the Rodney she had a few days ago, maybe they hadn’t.

She watched as he played with his fingers. She had learned over the past few hours that it was something he occasionally did when in deep thought. He leaned into the cushions, tossing his head back against them, groaning with the strain of the movement. It was then she realized how casual they were. Back in her office, it was as professional as she might be with Siler or another scientist. Perhaps she would even say that by the end of it, it was as professional as she would be with Daniel. They sat sometimes next to each other, sometimes apart; sometimes talking, sometimes fixated on the device or on data; sometimes they bantered, broke their strain of thought to stave off the inevitable frustration while other times they argued, because of that frustration. But Sam knew it was also because, in those hours, they had found that arguing was only a derivative of their odd banter.

But sitting and working in her house was not professional at all. It wasn’t even something Daniel and she had ever done. But there was McKay, a man she would have called an arrogant bastard not worth her time days ago, sitting with her, chatting amicably between long rants about theories, about data, about laws of physics and laws of science. She was sitting next to him, with her feet curled underneath her, wearing jeans and a thin shirt, leaning into her couch watching him as he, dressed just as casually, reclined with his eyes closed and legs crossed beneath the table. If someone who didn’t know them walked in, she was sure they would think he was a good friend, maybe boyfriend. The scary part of that thought was that it didn’t bother her.

The scary part of the past few days was that she found herself thinking back to a few years ago when she first meet him and then their second encounter. He had pissed her off, irked her so badly, but in the end she realized that it wasn’t his cockiness or his attitude that did it- well maybe the first time- but it was the fact that for the first time in a while, she had finally meet someone who could keep up with her on a level no one else had ever come close to. Not Pete, not the Colonel, not Teal’c or Daniel, not any of her boyfriends in the past.

It had bothered her then. It had blinded her to a few facts that now she saw quite clearly.

Grey blue eyes were suddenly focused on her. She returned his gaze. It wasn’t the first time she had thought he had beautiful eyes. It was, however, the first time she let herself really look at them and take them in- let herself be taken in by them. They were soft, capable of displaying every thought, every feeling. The capability of being so opened, and yet Rodney built walls around himself and blocked off the world from him.

She let herself see him for the first time as a man and not another scientist. She let herself see the softness in his eyes when he looked at her. The subtle way his face relaxed and the corners of his lips twitched with a smile. His feelings for her were something he never bothered to keep a secret, but it was also something he made sound so under him, a simply lustful attraction or some insignificant crush. The way he was looking at her had her thinking otherwise. Something about the way he looked at her pulled at the pit of her stomach and compelled her to do something.

He was still watching her. It seemed like a long time later, but her rational mind told her it had only been moments. His smile was faltering and confusion was slowly creeping into his brow.

Rodney wondered what was running through her mind in those minutes. Was she thinking about him or someone else perhaps? Or maybe it wasn’t a person that had captivated her thoughts, but something else entirely. Maybe her gentle face wasn’t meant for him. Maybe it was an old memory. A fond one. Or maybe…

It was this rant that Rodney’s mind was on before he realized Sam’s eyes were getting bigger- no, closer. She had shifted her weight and had started to lean closer to him. The feeling of her breath against his cheek was the most amazing feeling. So gentle, so warm, so real. For a long time he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real or an imagined thought of his, the situation so like the many scenes that had played through his mind. It was when her lips touched his, sending a jolt through his system, that he believed it was really happening. Rodney leaned into her, his eyes falling shut.

The kiss was short compared to others, but it was still pleasant. Rodney pulled away, sucking on his bottom lip in thought. He was still staring at her lips when the urge to lean forward began to over power him, pleaded with him to capture her lips and to not submit so easily to being rational. His control only came when he looked up and caught her eye. Shock was most obvious, but it was not the only thing that clouded her blue orbs. What he saw made the compelling pull of lust fall too dramatically to a sickening trepidation. He searched her eyes for any sign of disgust; he didn’t know what he had found.

Against his desire to stay, he leaned back away from her. He couldn’t help but notice her face relax ever so subtly. He looked away, biting the inside of his cheek. His first instinct was to leave before she changed her mind. Before she was able to open her mouth and tell him that it had been a mistake. But he didn’t want to leave. The hope that she would lean back into him and kiss him again overpowered the anxiety of anything she might say. Overpowered the dread that was slowly growing.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said quietly. Rodney shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

He started to shake his head more forcefully. “It’s okay,” was the only response that came to mind. “I-” Rodney paused. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. If he wanted to tell her that he liked it, that it was perfect. That she was lovely, gorgeous. Or should he insist that he should go?

He looked down at the coffee table, at the floor, at the fold in her jeans just below her knee. The curves led his eyes back to her face. “I should probably go.” All she could think to do was nod. He nodded back until he slowly realized that it was the only movement he was making. “Unless…” Rodney trailed off again. He knew what he was trying to say to her, he just didn’t have the nerve to actually ask it of her. He saw in her eyes that she understood- understood that he wasn’t asking for more kissing, more anything sexual- but she made no motion to suggest it.

“Okay,” he whispered softly, “I’m gonna go then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It was… there is no word to describe it that’s not cheesy.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Later that night, Rodney wouldn’t dream his usual nightmare. He would instead relive the feeling of the despair he felt when he stood and she didn’t grab his arm, or when he made it to the door and she stood holding it for him but didn’t ask him to stay. But this would be followed by the reality of their kiss, extending into more erotic thoughts, only to be crushed, blending and blurring and returning to the rejection and the heartache he felt when he left.

He wouldn’t wake up until late that morning. He would eat, then drown his sorrows in an early morning cartoon before taking a cold shower and trying to pretend that he didn’t care.

“Jennifer, I’m fine!” Rodney groaned as he padded through his small flat. His foot hit something; he cringed as he hopped several inches. Suppressing a shiver, he cursed himself for not staying in the bathroom three minutes more to get dressed and for not at least bothering to finish towelling off. “I’m trying to-” he cut himself off, realizing that that trail of thought wasn’t something he wanted to share with whoever was outside the door. “I don’t need-” he cut himself off again just as he threw the door open. Sam was standing out in the hallway, clad with a tight blue top and formfitting jeans, a leather jacket draped over her shoulders, and a laptop case slung over the right. He gapped at her a moment, suddenly realizing he was standing, open to the world- but mostly Sam Carter- with nothing covering him but a towel. “You’re not Jennifer.”

“No.” Sam’s eyes trailed over his dripping body and Rodney tried to pretend that it wasn’t flattering. She looked back up at his face, pretending that she wasn’t surprised by his muscular physique or affected by the droplets of water running down his bare chest. “Who’s Jennifer?”

“She’s the woman down the hall from… somewhere unpronounceable… Was that jealousy in your voice?”

“Casual curiosity,” she shrugged.

He just nodded, though there was a shadow of a smile on his lips. “You wanna come in?” She raised an eyebrow at his question, allowing her eyes to glance his body once more as a means of explanation. He looked down at himself, almost as if he had forgotten what he was wearing. “I could go get dressed.”

Sam just shook her head. “No, um… I just brought your laptop.”

“Oh… I didn’t… realize that I forgot it.” His voice trailed off near the end of his sentence. He took the case from her, setting it down on the floor near the wall. He only took his eyes off her for a few seconds to do so. “Sure you don’t want to come in? We, uh, we never did finish.” He stopped, eyes widening and mouth gapping opened as he read into his words. “Work. I mean we never did finish working on- on the, um, thing.”

She just laughed at him, smiling at his nervousness. Rodney was mesmerized by it. He couldn’t look away from the gleam in her blue eyes. “No… No, I-I really should get going.”

“Okay. Thanks for bringing this back.”

“Yeah. No problem.”

She turned to walk away, but made it only a few steps before Rodney called out after her. “Sam?” She turned slowly to look at him, her face a question, asking him to continue. “About last night- I-I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to… I just thought… I thought that you didn’t and so I-I just-” Finally he just sighed, hanging his head in defeat. She smirked at him, but Rodney didn’t see it.

“I know, Rodney.”

“Okay. See you later?”

Her mouth opened to respond with a good-bye, but she paused, mouth half-opened as she considered something else. “Rodney?” He looked at her. “I have this… thing tomorrow night I have to go to. One of those stupid cocktail parties to suck up to the higher ups…” She sighed, looking away from his eyes and finally settling on the doorframe near his head. “Anyway, Daniel has this archaeology thing and Mitchell agreed to baby-sit to get out of tomorrow evening. And Teal’c’s going to see his son and Bra’tac. And so basically I’m on my own. So-”

“You want me to be your date?”

She tossed her head from side to side, making a gesture somewhere between a shrug and shaking her head. “Yes,” she finally decided.

“I’d love to. What time?”

“Pick me up at seven?”

“Seven it is.”

She tossed him a smile. Rodney knew it wasn’t the brightest her eyes could shine, but he knew it was genuine, that the offer wasn’t out of pity or her own need for anybody to come. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow… This is a dressy thing, right?”

“Tie and everything.”

“Yeah…”

Her smile transformed; Rodney watched as it turned cocky, seductive. She took a few steps closer to him, as if predicting his desire to walk out into the hall and stopping the thought before it had a chance to be processed. “I always bring a change of clothing and leave it in the car, that way the guys and I can go out after.”

“You saying you want to go out afterwards?”

She laughed. Rodney had learned recently that the sound was musical, intoxicating. “I can’t believe that’s what I am doing.”

He smirked back, matching her previously coy smile with his own sarcastic wit and cocky ego. “I’m gonna go get dressed.”

“You do that.”

“And maybe get some work done.”

“Okay.”

“Or I could go get dressed,” he continued. His voice was low, nearing a whisper. They were standing close together, so close that he was nearly whispering in her ear. His voice was gentle, pleading but there was no begging tone present. “And make you some coffee.”

Sam wet her lips, stepping even closer despite the screaming protests of her rational mind. He felt her breath brushing against his skin, coming in uneven waves, attacking his nerves. She met his grey-blue eyes with her bright blue and he could almost tell that she was fighting the urge to lean into him. He fought harder not to do it for her. “It almost scares me that I want to say yes.”

“Scares you?”

“Doesn’t it scare you?”

He wanted to smile. To be his cocky self. To say something sarcastic. McKayish. But he had nothing. His heart threatened to leap from his chest. His lungs threatened to stop working. His mind was determined to confuse him. “Come in for some coffee,” he managed to get, leaning into her. He thought for a moment he would kiss her, perhaps she did too, but just before their lips would have made contact, he turned his head and rested his temple against hers.

She closed her eyes. She was surprised at her awareness of his touch, and even stunned by the fact that she didn’t mind his touch. That she didn’t mind the feel of his skin against hers, of the heat that radiated from his still damp body, that she had enjoyed the taste of his lips and what she imaged the gentle caresses of his hands over her back would be like. It truly did surprise her that she hadn’t thought so much about these things. That, standing there next to him while he was practically naked, she wasn’t bothered, wasn’t disturbed by his state.

“I really should go,” she said again, into his ear. But this time, unlike the others, she felt no compulsion to leave. No interest in moving. She felt for the first time during that conversation like being lead into his flat. Felt like sitting and drinking coffee with the Canadian. Like trading stories of her youth- she realized she never told the General or Daniel or even Janet much about that topic and yet she wanted Rodney to know at least a crumb of it. Maybe she even felt like more than talking, more than coffee, more than a night on the town tomorrow. Her lips grazed across his freshly shaved cheek as she pulled away from him.

“Tomorrow?”

He nodded, flashing the dimples she didn’t know he had. Rodney wasn’t smiling, not in a happy sort of way. He didn’t feel rejected really- he knew she probably wasn’t going to accept- but somewhere deep within him had desperately hoped that she would. He hadn’t had many girlfriends in his life as he had always been too busy with other things to keep them around, but he knew what he had asked, and he knew that she had understood what he meant. He wanted her- what idiot wouldn’t- but what he really wanted was to know her. To know her life. To know about her mother and much more than he already knew about her father. Wanted to know if she had any siblings. He wanted to tell her about his fall out with his parents and about his baby sister.

“Okay.”

Maybe tomorrow he would. Maybe she would like to take a walk with him so they could just talk. Or maybe they could go visit the coffee place down the street he had seen the other day. And, somewhere in his ranting thoughts, he realized that maybes ruled his life far too often.

She turned and walked away from him. He stayed at the door, watching her walk away. He wondered if she would turn. He watched and smiled when she did. She waved and he raised his hand in a half wave, half awkward gesture. She smiled and then disappeared down the stairs. He smiled at her.

Fate was cruel- he had learned that throughout his life, but mostly since he had joined the Stargate Program. Too many people promised to return to their families and spouses and children. Too many of them never did. Fate seemed desperate to keep Sam and him apart- perhaps it hadn’t yet gone to any drastic measures and it had after all returned him to Earth- but he had a feeling. A feeling that too many more maybes were ahead of him.

“Why don’t you get some clothes on!”

“Oh god!” He started, surprised by the shrill female voice down the hall. Rodney jumped back into his room and slammed the door closed. Looking down at his laptop abandoned on the floor, he knew he would never get anything done. With a sigh he retreated back into his bathroom, swearing as he stubbed his toe again on the side of the couch.

/-

It had plagued him since he first realized that it was in question. He had been standing in his bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, his hair wet and askew, bent over his sink brushing his teeth when it hit him. He was almost positive that Sam had begun to think of him as a friend and she had invited him to this thing. And, even though she called it a date, it seemed to him more like she needed a friend of some sort to talk to than a date. And, so, since that moment, he had battled with the question of whether or not he was about to embark on his first date with Sam Carter or not.

It struck him that she wouldn’t see it as a date. They were friends- if they were that. He was a friend who was there to save her from boredom, and that was the answer he had stuck too for a while.

Clothing wasn’t much of a debate- he had one outfit to choose from and that was a suit and tie he had rented from a nearby place.

Hair- well, he couldn’t do much to the short tuffs he had. He brushed it out and left it at that. He wondered for a moment if he should gel it, but he never liked that way it felt to run a hand through gelled hair and he wondered briefly it Sam disliked the feeling as much as him. He stopped, shook his head as if it could erase the thought, and moved on.

That was when his problems began anew. He stood staring into his closet of not even twenty pieces of clothing- the allotment that U.S. government had made on his wardrobe. Two pairs of jeans, a couple of worn shirts, and finally a well used sweatshirt. She had told him it was a dress down kind excursion after the dinner, but for some reason he feared looking too casual. Then he began thinking over each shirt and how well they exhibited- or didn’t exhibit- his form. At first he wanted the tighter ones, a shirt to show that he did in fact own muscles. Then he changed his mind and decided that he wanted something safer. In the end he sighed and shook his head, and finally just grabbed the first shirt he saw and the closest pair of jeans and tossed them in a pile on his bed.

Money was his next consideration. He had plenty of it in his wallet- only because he had gone out to an ATM not long after she had left- but he wasn’t sure whether he’d be expected to pay for anything at the dinner, or if he would be expected to pay for anything they did after the dinner. It was at about that point that he began worrying over what they would actually be doing after the dinner- a movie, a stroll somewhere, a second dinner, dessert, drinks. He tried to remember places he knew in the area as he organized a few last minute things, but the fact was that he knew almost nothing of the city. He knew that coffee shop down the block, a good dry cleaners three blocks over, and he had found a tux rental place. Other than that, the city was a mystery, one he hoped Sam might unlock for him.

Twenty minutes later he was out the door and in his car, his mind actively trying to find the right street and debating the unanswered issue of whether or not he was about to enter into a relationship with the smartest and undeniably most lovely woman he had ever met.

/-



The room had been stifling. That, combined with a reminder of why he hated ties and Sam in her dress uniform, was all he remembered.

Someone had made a speech, but what was said and why it was said would forever be a mystery to him. They served something expensive, he was sure, but he didn’t eat much of it. He wasn’t a drinker, and didn’t often enjoy champagne and wine was far from his cup of tea. But someone still managed to get some concoction into his hand. There was soft music playing in the background, but no one was dancing and so he didn’t feel comfortable extending the invitation to Sam.

After they ate, Sam had led him to a small group of Air Force officers. She spoke briefly like she knew them, but it was as if she were at her High School reunion, recognizing the faces but not much more. They introduced themselves to Rodney and he awkwardly corrected them, saying he and Sam were just friends, acquaintances from work. One of them scoffed and it was clear they all knew what kind of “work” Sam did. He didn’t bother defending the stargate. It was the first time he had encountered the challenge of knowing something the rest of the world would never understand.

Sam saved him from the group by spotting another Colonel. Rodney wasn’t excited about meeting the man, but found that he at least knew what the stargate was. They talked for a short while; Rodney even managed to convincingly look interested the entire time. He didn’t check to see whether Sam was impressed, but he noticed that she too was only half engaged. The Colonel excused himself and they stayed there, swirling their drinks and observing the stiff crowd.

“You wanna try to escape?”

“They won’t notice?”

“Don’t you think everyone else wants to do the same thing?”

“I guess.”

“Come on,” she said with a smirk and a tilt of her head. He grinned back at her, glancing off into the crowd before he followed.

And so three hours after they had entered the party, they escaped out into the parking lot where she easily stripped out of her uniform, surprising him when she reveal the t-shirt she had been wearing underneath. He laughed and removed his tie and dress shirt, replacing it with a more comfortable button down. He considered changing into the jeans he brought, but felt too awkward to do it at first. Sam laughed at him, throwing the jeans at him just before she slammed the car door closed to change out of her skirt. When she opened the door, he was fumbling with his zipper. She laughed when he swore at her, having been startled by the door. She wouldn’t stop laughing and only laughed harder when he threw his dress pants at her.

“Where are we going?” she asked a few minutes later when they were situated in the car. Rodney just shrugged as he backed the car out of the parking space.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Do you play pool?” Rodney turned his head to look at her, shaking it as he did. He recognized the wicked smile as it pulled over her lips, but didn’t yet know its meaning. Twenty minutes later, they pulled into restaurant down town. It was nice, well decorated, and with a mellow vibe to it.

“So is this where you guys hang?”

“Oh, not too often anymore.”

“Why not? It’s nice here.”

“Yeah, well we really haven’t come back ever since we were kicked out.”

“Kicked out? For what?”

Sam laughed, looking up at him as she prepared the table. “Starting a brawl.”

“A brawl?”

She shrugged, as if the entire event was no big deal. “Some biker called Daniel a geek.”

“You were defending Daniel’s honour in a bar fight?”

“Well, you have to realize that we were under… certain influences at the time.”

“Ah!” Rodney said with a dramatic flare, nodding his head in understanding. She smirked back at him as she finished raking the balls.

“So you’ve never played before… ever?”

“Well not really. I know the rules. It’s just geometry and physics, really, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

Two hours, a couple of won and lost bets, and some number of rounds later, they left the bar and had found themselves wandering around in the nearby public park. It was dark, Rodney had no idea of the hour, and the night was steadily becoming colder. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, easily continuing their conversation as they walked.

“So,” he said carefully, “what happened to the cop?”

“You knew about him?”

He looked to her, his face scrunched together as if saying she was insane. “Everyone knew about that.” She looked at him for a long moment before she remembered the Osiris report and Rodney’s inevitable access to it. “Sorry,” Rodney said slowly, sure he had seen pain flash across her face. He didn’t know how fresh the wound was or how long ago it had ended. “Bad topic.”

“No, it’s okay.” She paused to stop about. “He- he bought a house… he was thinking about the white picket kind-” Rodney nodded, knowing she meant a perfect house, a normal life, the kind people like them would never have. “With an open yard, maybe a dog… the possibility of kids…”

“And you saw the destruction of the world. Aliens and bad guys with glowing eyes.”

“Sort of, I guess. He was a cop- he’s seen bad things before but- I don’t- is it contemptuous for saying that I don’t think he could understand what you or I have been through? What we’ve seen and done and know? We had problems because I didn’t open up to him, but I didn’t think… he’d have never understood.”

“I don’t think it’s contemptuous. I don’t think most people will ever understand. Honestly, whenever the ‘gate goes public, I… I honestly think the majority with hate us, not peg us as heroes. And those that do- those that worship the ground we walk on and want to give us metals- will never understand. They’ll never know how much we’d rather not talk about it. Call me a pessimist but… they’ll never get it, no matter how much we try to open up. So we’ll stay quiet and then they’ll be pissed at us because of it.”

“Yeah. It’s a loose, loose situation no matter how you look at it.”

“Pretty much.”

The pair fell silent, strolling casually down the path. Rodney looked up around them, inspecting the Colorado trees spasmodically placed around the path. “I’m not much of a tree person.”

“Sorry?”

“Trees are everywhere. Every country here, every planet out there. But I’m not much of a tree person.”

“No?”

“No.” He looked at her and, without a hint of a smile, said, “I got stuck in a tree once, it wasn’t very pleasant. But that was a while ago.”

“Haven’t got stuck in any since?”

“Oh, no, one other time. But we’ll save those stories for later.”

“Okay,” she laughed. “I rather like trees. We used to have this huge tree with lots of branches- a great climbing tree. Mark and I were going to build a treehouse, but we moved.”

“You guys moved a lot?”

“Well, we were military brats.” She smirked. “Yeah, I lived all over the U.S. I was actually born in Ireland.”

“Really? You’re Irish then?” She just laughed, mostly at the horrible attempt at an Irish accent, and slapped him on the shoulder as they continued on their way. “I lived in the same house from birth to the age of seventeen.”

“Then off to college?”

“Yep.” He paused, then asked, “So Mark is your brother?” She nodded. “Is he the only one?”

“Yeah. He’s… four years older than me.”

“You get along well?”

“We used to.” She looked away and Rodney turned his eyes to her. “That is, until our mom died. He got distant, he was so angry. We didn’t speak much after he went to college and then he got married and I was in the Air Force. We just started to get back in touch a little while ago.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.” She looked over at him, he was staring off at the swings down the path. “You have any brothers or sisters?”

“Hmm? Yeah, a little sister. We’re… three years apart.”

“You two close?”

“Used to be, yeah. Kind of hard to explain.”

“Had a falling out?”

“My parents and I did, and she sort of got pulled into it. I told you once, I don’t know if you really listened-”

“Your parents hate each other and you blame yourself for it.” He looked sharply at her, but then nodded. “I listened, I just might not have shown too much interest at the time. I had, after all, just been electrocuted and was facing imminent destruction.”

“Excuses, excuses… well, I used college to get away from them. Came here to America.”

“Really?”

“You didn’t know that?” She just shrugged. “MIT.”

“Wow. Never would have guessed.”

“My sister and I talked a lot for a while. But she… she just kept pestering me to come up and see our parents and I just didn’t want to. Then I started work and got too into it- you know how it is. So… we just sort of… lost touch.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Saw her? Um… before I went to Antarctica.”

“You didn’t go see her before you left for Atlantis?”

Rodney gave a half shrug, half shake of the head. “Didn’t have time. I know, that sounds horrible but…” his voice trailed off. Sam turned to look at him, slowing and stopping when she realized he was no longer following behind her. His gaze was off in the distance; she let him pause to consider his words. Eventually he looked up at her and forced a smile to his lips. “Want to go sit on the swings?”

“What?”

“Come on,” he beckoned her, already moving off the path towards the swing set. He swaggered backwards, smirking at her in a silent dare. She laughed and shook her head, but joined him. They swung back and forth absently, allowing the sounds of night to fill the void of words.

“Ever thought about getting married?”

An eyebrow rose at the randomness of her question; the corner of his lips twitched. He leaned forward, gripping the chain as he looked at her. “Yes, actually. Once… Mariska Herrington. I almost proposed.”

“What changed?”

She searched his face as she waited for an answer, noting the pain that flashed in his eyes. “I caught her with a woman, actually.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

“How long ago?”

“Well, it was right before I found out about the stargate program, so… a long time ago. You? I mean besides, uh…?”

“Pete. Yes. There was Jonas. A huge mistake.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “We were engaged for a little while, then I broke it off.”

“Didn’t work out?”

“No,” she made a face and he laughed. “Oh, and there was, of course, Jonathon Flint.”

“Jonathon? Jesus girl, how many guys you got?”

Sam’s face creased with her laughter and Rodney laughed with her. “It was in the third grade I’ll have you know.”

“Grade three?”

“He proposed in the school yard.”

“Aw, how romantic.”

“Yes. The next day we got married. There was a big ceremony and everything.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Tina Marsh was the maid of honour and Kyle… Kyle something was the priest and- oh what was his name, he was this little dorky kid with glasses was the best man. He was Jon’s best friend… Anyway we got married,” she said, making air quotes with her fingers, “and then at the end of the year I had to move. When I came back for sixth grade, a bunch of the old group remembered the whole thing.”

“Ah, and brought back the joke?”

“Yes. So I was Mrs. Samantha Flint again.”

“Really?”

“Mmhmm. We were actually dating that time. He was basically my first boyfriend. When we broke up, it was this huge thing. There were these fake divorce papers, and court, and… oh god, it was so pathetic but-”

“So I’m dating a divorcee. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

She reached awkwardly past the chains to slap him, but he veered away from her. “Oh shut up!”

“Any children I should know about?” She laughed but chose not to answer. Rodney smirked, shaking off the topic with a different question, “What is your most embarrassing memory?”

“Embarrassing memory? Oh god, um… well there was this one time when we went to… I don’t remember what the planet was called, but they had this ceremony to celebrate our arrival and they had this drink,” Rodney started to chuckle, “it was really good and I think- I know I drank way too much of it before I realize-”

“That it was alcoholic.”

“Yeah. I was rather drunk. Apparently I tried to remove my shirt,” Rodney started to laugh out loud, finding it all too easy to picture the scene with Sam surrounded by poorly dressed natives and the males members of SG-1 as she danced awkwardly, attempting to strip in front of the group. Sam looked at him. Her smile faltered as she realized that she’d never heard him really laugh until that night. “I was never really told everything that happened that night, but I can be pretty sure it was rather embarrassing.”

“I can imagine,” he said once his breathing calmed.

“Okay, and what about you? You’re most embarrassing memory?”

“The time I got the laws of thermodynamics wrong.”

“Rodney.”

“No, seriously. That was a traumatizing moment for me.” She glared at him, but his face was straight. It took a while for a smirk to crack over his face, his lips spreading into a smile. “Umm… that probably would have been… oh, god, um… okay, so you know how I told you about not being a tree person?”

“Yeah?”

“Well… we were on this planet and, well it’s a long story, but anyway, I was walking- or rather running and wasn’t paying attention and I got… my foot got caught in a trap and I got stuck in a tree.”

“Stuck in a tree?”

“Alright, I was tied upside-down to a tree. Go ahead, laugh. You wouldn’t be if you’d ever hung off a tree.” She tried to shake her head and apologize but couldn’t stop laughing. With one hand on her stomach, she gripped the chain to keep from falling off the swing.

If he were on a date with any other woman- not that he was actually on a date with her- he might have asked if she had any interesting scars. But Rodney didn’t need to ask, he already knew that there must be some scar hidden beneath a layer of make-up. Or that there must be a burn or a crooked line or some discoloration against her perfect skin. Something hidden beneath the clothing she wore. He didn’t have to ask to get an idea of where most of them came from or how she got them. He didn’t need to be told that for every physical scar, a hundred others laid deeper, buried somewhere back in the deepest crevasses of her brilliant mind.

“Any interesting scars?”

He looked at her quickly, and he was afraid that she noticed his shock. He had assumed that she would be grateful he had skipped the question. But he flashed a smirk, hoping to keep her from realizing what he had been thinking, and with ease he slid into the story about the pox marks on his chest- explaining that it was all Dominic Bradley’s fault in grade two. She was laughing by the time he finished; she was more amused than others had even been at the narration. Encouraged, he trailed into an anecdote about the scar on his stomach from when he had had his appendix removed and how he had been sure he was going to die when he arrived at the hospital.

“You were that sick?”

“Oh hardly,” he said with a laugh, brushing off the thought. “But for a nine year old, I’m sure I was in terrific pain.” She snorted. Silence fell over them as Rodney raked his brain for any scars he had received recently. One was a story he’d never tell any one else. For the longest time he could only come up with the scar on his arm where Kolya had cut him, but that wasn’t something he wished to share right then, leaving them to sit there quietly, swaying lightly in the fading light. Then he remembered the burn on his finger. His features softened, his face cracking into a smile, after a moment of reliving the memory, he began to laugh.

“What?”

“I just remembered one.” He held up his finger as proof, even though he himself hadn’t been able to find the scar for some time. “Can’t really see if any more but on one of my first missions-” Sam snorted. He tossed a glare at her, not entirely sure why she found that particularly funny. “I- I was trying to help Ford build a fire-” He looked to her and saw her biting her bottom lip, obviously trying to suppress the thoughts coming to mind and stave off her laughter. “Long story short, Ford made me burn my finger- not badly of course- but if you weren’t laughing so hard-” this comment only served to cause Sam to actually begin laughing, “Then I would tell you the whole thing.”

“Tell me,” she said through giggles.

“No.”

“Fine.” She tried to hold a straight face, but with only one look to him, she relapsed into another fit of giggles. When she finally calmed herself, she realized distractedly that it must have been nearing midnight. She pulled herself up off the swing and Rodney followed her lead. She started heading back towards the path and he worried for a moment that she was heading back towards the car. Instead she continued deeper into the park. “You haven’t asked me yet.”

“No,” he sighed quietly, his eyes finding his feet.

“That’s very sweet, Rodney.” She paused for only a moment, remember the anecdote about on zigzagged scar on her hip. “Ever had one of those… those- well, it looked like a house or a fire truck or whatever, but it was made out of monkey bars.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, whatever, but we used to have a bunch at one of my schools… in New York, maybe. Anyway, we used to be allowed to climb all the way to the top. And once,” she started to smirk. Rodney watched her but she wasn’t looking at him, too lost in the memory. “This boy- James… something… Griffin, James Griffin.”

“Your first crush?”

“More like I was his first crush. He climbed up and was sitting next to me. I think it was a dare or something but…”

“He kissed you on the jungle gym.” Rodney smirked, imagining a miniature Sam on top of a house constructed of bars with some kid supporting a scruff of brown hair and horrible seventies’ clothes.

“Yes.”

“Wait, we’re on scars, not old romances.”

“I’m getting there,” Rodney laughed at the scold, holding his hands up, mockingly surrendering to her. “So, when he went to kiss me, he knocked me off balance and- since I was so little in fourth grade- I slid right through the bars and landed on some poor kid’s toy car.”

“Ouch. That had to hurt.”

“Got stitches for it.”

“I don’t get to see?”

Rodney smiled dumbly as she walked coyly in front of him, halting their roaming through the park. She was smiling at him- it wasn’t one had have ever seen her direct toward him. It was seductive, but not in a lustful manner. Her eyes looked him over; Rodney felt heat rush to his cheeks. She stood close to him, their stomachs rubbing together. She even surprised him by looping her fingers through the belt loops on his jeans and pulling him against her body. She brought her lips to his ear. Rodney felt chills run through his body at the contact of her cheek against his. “Not today.”

He smirked despite himself. “Where is it?”

Sam leaned back, smiling and cocking an eyebrow. She titled her head to the side as she walked away. Rodney laughed, hurrying to catch back up to her. “You’re back?” She just looked at him. “Your thigh?” he said quieter, but she didn’t respond. “Don’t tell me it’s on your-”

“On my hip.”

He just laughed and after a few steps Sam joined him, laughing because she could. Laughing because it felt good. Laughing because she didn’t know if she would find anything funny in a few days.

They continued their banter, wandering their way around the park path and eventually coming to Rodney’s car. Without pause, they slipped into their seats. Rodney laughed as he pulled out and turned onto the dark road. Twenty minutes later, he pulled up into her driveway, sighing as he turned off the car. He glanced over at her and saw her open her mouth, fearing that she was about to say goodbye. He turned off the engine and pulled out the keys, looking to her to see if she was going to open her door. She smirked at him, but he didn’t see as she was looking out the window.

Rodney smirked and got out, rushing around the nose of the car to catch up with her. He walked her up the walkway to the patio. She stopped at the door, fishing out her keys. He could see that the drinks and the time was finally getting to her as her hands shook trying to unlock the door.

“I was thinking about coming into work tomorrow- well, today, but I might not be there until later, if at all.”

“Well I’ll unfortunately be there. I’ll save you a cup of coffee even.”

“How kind.”

“I always am.”

He smirked at her as she offered a coy smile. “I had fun tonight… after leaving that place, of course.”

“Of course,” she smirked, “Too bad you can’t play pool.”

“I can to! I won.”

“Once.” He shrugged. “But I’ll admit: you’re better than the other guys. Daniel and Cam are pathetic. The General still gives me a run for my money though.”

“Well, as long as I’m some kind of competition.”

“You’re a bit of a challenge,” she said as she pulled open the door. She turned and looked up at him, leaning with her cheek against the side of the door. He smiled, finding her stance adorably childish. He could barely contain the urge to bring his hand to her cheek. It was a power curiosity, a thought that had plagued his mind- he wondered how cool her skin was, how soft, how delicate. His eyes glanced over her lips, full and inviting. He wanted so badly to just step forward, lean his body against hers and run his hand along her cheek, along the back of her neck, through her silky hair, to capture her lips with his. But some rational thought halted him and instead he found himself whispering the words, “I should probably go.” She nodded and he vaguely felt as if she was asking him to leave. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I guess. If you come to the mountain.”

He half shrugged, half nodded at her comment. And then, softly, he sighed, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she called after him, slipping into her dark house. He waited there for a moment, feeling the late hour getting to him. His eyes drooped and he took a deep breath to force himself to walk to his car.

/-



Leaning back against the elevator wall, he mindlessly tapped against it, bobbing his head to the beat. Some damn song on the radio was stuck in his head. It wasn’t even a good one and he couldn’t remember more than two lines of the refrain.

The elevator slowed to a stop. He pushed off the wall, stepping out into the concrete hallway. As he walked down, heading for Sam’s lab, he didn’t notice the subtle spring in his step or the fact that he was softly humming to himself. It took a passing airman smirking at him for him to notice that he was doing it. He paused for a moment and straightened his shirt, pulling his jacket more comfortably over his shoulders. Glancing back at the officer, then around to make sure no one else had seen, he shoved his hands in his pockets and continued towards her office.

Knocking, the door creaked open. He peeked inside; it was dark but that didn’t mean much to him, he had his days where lights were an inconvenience. He called her name but no one responded. Flicking on the lights, he glanced over the room but found no one.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Rodney jumped at the Sergeant’s voice. He spun so quickly that he bashed his head against the doorway. Swearing under his breath at the man, “No I’m fine.”

“This is Colonel Carter’s lab.”

“Yes, I know that.” He sucked in a deep breath and looked up at the Sergeant’s eyes. “I was just looking for her. She’s not in there.”

“No.”

He shook his head as he rubbed his forehead. He stung, but there was no blood. Didn’t mean it wouldn’t bruise- he bruised easily, but he didn’t bother telling the man that. Instead he simply brushed past him and followed his original path.

Sam spent her time between four places- her lab, the control room, the infirmary, and the commissary.

The elevator took him down a few more levels. The song keep playing in his head, agitating him more, but he stopped himself from tapping or humming again. The hall led him up a spiral set of stairs, which lead him to the control room. A few technicians were at their posts, silently typing, but no Sam. He sighed, turning towards the stairs. He figured his best bet would be somewhere with coffee. The commissary maybe.

His hand grazed over the rail, but the sudden shrieking of the klaxons startled him, causing him to yank his hand back away from the railing out of reflex. He looked over at the technicians as they promptly came alive and tilted his head to hear the footsteps above him. He looked up at the General as the man rushed down the stairs, and then to the stargate’s inner ring spinning into place. The General silently took his place behind the chief sergeant and waited to see what happened. Rodney turned his eyes back to the gate. He wasn’t needed, he knew that, but he stood there waiting to see the worst.

The event horizon burst opened, leaving a shimmering puddle behind it. He waited, holding his breath as he watched the iris close over it. He spared a glance at the technician, listening as the General asked, “You have something to report, Colonel?”

“We found the underground chamber the locals told us about.”

“And what have you got?”

“Not much yet. But I can tell you that I’m almost certain we’ve found where the device came from.”

The General nodded. “Otherwise, how does it look?”

“We haven’t seen anyone else but the small settlement. They’re very helpful.”

“No problems then?”

“None, sir.”

“Good-”

“Sir? Dr. McKay wouldn’t happen to be nearby?”

Rodney’s head perked up and he looked up to see the General’s eyes on him. Landry seemed shocked to find him there, but nodding his head to gesture him forward. Rodney glanced back at the stairs before walking towards the computer.

“He’s right here.”

“Sam? Thought you were saving me some coffee.”

“Have to take a rain check. We think we’ve found the planet where the Ko'tal found the device.”

“You think?”

“Well, we had one of them tell us about this planet.”

“That it? Those kinds of sources aren’t always reliable.”

“Yeah, that’s what we were concerned about. But I found some of the same symbols in the room as on the device.”

“The weird Ancient?”

“Yeah.”

“Does Daniel have any idea what they say yet?”

“Not the last time I checked.”

“He’s not there?”

“No, he’s still on P45-3329.”

“I’ll have him recalled, if you think he could help,” Landry interrupted. Rodney looked over at him, before shrugging at the image of Sam.

“Sure. But, along with Daniel, I could use Rodney and the device. It might help us to figure out what it does.”

Rodney sighed and shrugged, already dreading his next trip to some unknown planet. He turned and retreated down to the locker room, as per the General’s orders, hearing the gate shut down in the distance as he rounded the corner.

Thirty minutes later and Rodney was standing in the gate room, shifting the pack on his shoulders as he waited for the last chevron to be dialled into place. He looked up at the control room. It struck him how close their design was to that of the Ancients. Almost creepy, he thought, but he was glad that Atlantis was far more open.

The gate opened and the General gave him the go to walk through. He stepped up, the clang of the metal alien to his ears. It felt bizarre to be walking through the Milky Way stargate, but even more bizarre to be heading through alone.

The sensation of the going through the gate was no different than in the Pegasus galaxy. He stepped through, feeling the shakiness and cold slipping away nearly immediately as he stepped down from the platform, looking behind him out of habit. It wasn’t the same gate, as he had noticed when he returned home, and it was a strange thing to watch it disengage behind him before his team was there to greet him.

He turned back to see the two Marines lower their weapons and return to guarding the gate. He grinned as he looked up to see Carter and another Colonel approaching him. He watched as her eyes looked him over, then as her lips stretched into a smirk. He looked down at himself, then back at the partial SG-team.

“What? I’m not big on the green thing.”

“You stick out like a sore thumb,” she laughed. He scowled at her as he looked down at his Atlantis uniform. His grey did clash against their green.

“And you don’t?” He shot back at her. She humoured him by looking down at her BDU’s. Purposely shifting her P-90, she caught his eye. “Besides,” he continued, stepping past the Marines and over to where she and the Colonel had stopped. “I get by just fine in Pegasus with Wraith after me. Kind of feel weird not worrying about them.” He looked off into the tree line as he spoke. She noticed the motion, realizing somewhere that his months away had taught him some military discipline.

“You’ve got plenty else to worry about.”

“Thanks,” he slurred back at the Colonel, “I feel much better now.”

“You look a little shaky,” the Colonel smirked. Carter smacked him for it.

“Just not used to walking through the ‘gate,” he shrugged, earning him an odd glance from the two Colonels. “Oh, we use Puddle Jumpers.” His words only served to make the Colonel cock a brow at him and Sam tilt her head to the side. “You know, the Ancient ships, kind of round, it’s- you know what it is!”

The two laughed at him, both shifting so quickly from their serious confusion. “We knew what you meant, just didn’t know what you called them.”

“I wanted to call them GateShips, but Sheppard wanted Puddle Jumper.”

“Gateship’s… a very good name.” He nodded at her, Sam shaking her head as she watched his grin stretching into a cocky smirk. “But Puddle Jumper-”

It disappeared in an instant. “Oh, not you too.”

“You two coming or what?” They both looked up to see the Colonel metres ahead of them, half turned around to see where they were.

Rodney leaned over to Sam, keeping his eyes on the other Colonel as he asked. “Who is that?”

“Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell.” Rodney looked to her, face blank of recognition. “He lead the X-302’s over Antarctica-”

“During the Anubis thing?”

“Yeah. The President gave him his choice of assignments after he recovered from his injury.”

“And he chose SG-1?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Not as a first choice, no.”

She smirked, rolling her eyes. “Shall we get going?”

“After you.”

Carter led him down a path and straight into the dense trees he had noticed earlier. She entertained him with a short explanation of why they left so suddenly from the base on their expedition- she said it was mostly because Cameron had wanted something to do. He listened even as he kept on eye on the surrounding area, ears perked for the looming danger of a Wraith attack that he knew would never come. Slowly they made it to a cut out area of woods where Rodney finally caught sight of man-made stone. As they grew closer he could see that it was an archway carved into the sloping landscape.

Sam smiled at him, gesturing for him to go through first. He ducked inside, eyes darting around as a slow grin formed, as it did whenever he set eyes on some interesting find.

He recognized it as Ancient design almost immediately, but found the symbols alien, unreadable even to his broken Ancient. Entering farther into the room, he approached the center where a control console stood. It was similar to those in the control room on Atlantis. He heard Sam coming in behind him. Just as he reached a hand out to touch it, he heard her say, “We haven’t been able to get it to work.”

He just looked at her before looking back at the device. “Someone just has to initialize it.” With that, he touched it tentatively, the lights humming to light and glowing beneath the glass plates. Then he turned to her, a coy smirk. Sam sighed, shaking her head; she saw the McKay she remembered leaking through. “Didn’t you get the gene therapy?”

“Yeah, a while ago. It didn’t take.”

He nodded. “Should try again. Beckett’s done some work on it since then.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” he said slowly, looking around again. It was an Ancient lab like any other on Atlantis. The only difference was the symbols he was surrounded by. “Definitely Ancient.”

“Definitely.”

“What else have you found?”

“Nothing yet. Hoping you might know how to turn that thing on.” She pointed to the console. He looked down at it, then smiled up at her.

“Yeah, I got that under control.”

“Good. Maybe we can find something in the database.”

“Worth a look.”

/-

Rodney swung around the corner, peaking his head inside the room. He glanced quickly around, spotting the tuff of blonde hair hiding in the back. “Daniel just got here.”

“Hmm?”

He looked closer, stepping into the room, and noticed that she was engrossed with something on her laptop. “Daniel,” he said sarcastically, “You know, the geek. The one you got banned from a restaurant for defending his honour. Remember him?”

“Yeah. When’s he coming?”

Rodney sighed, rolling his eyes. He looked over at her as she sat, hunched over her laptop taking readings. It surprised him how similar they were in that regard, becoming immersed in work when they didn’t have annoyances constantly pestering them. But, now when it was him trying to get her attention, it lost its cuteness.

Rolling his eyes, he looked over at that opened doorway, pulling the radio off his shoulder. Not having an earpiece was definitely an inconvenience. “McKay to Carter. Over.”

Her fingers slowed over the keyboard. He watched from behind her as she lifted her head and pressed the radio. “McKay?”

“Could I have your attention? Over.”

“McKay, where are you?”

“Behind you. Over.”

She spun around, having to put her feet down on the grown suddenly to keep from loosing her balance. “Rodney?” she asked, her brows coming together. He pressed the radio, moving it back to his lips to respond. “Stop with the radio. I get it.” He allowed himself a smug smirk at her tone. “What were you saying?”

“Daniel just arrived. Thought you would want to go see him. It’s about time for a break anyway.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” She turned quickly to her computer to shut it off before standing and joining him. She paused at the door and looked up at him. “You don’t really talk like that on the radio, do you?”

Rodney feigned shocked, mockingly asking, “You’re not supposed to?” She laughed, smacking his arm as she walked past him to find Daniel. Rodney shook his head and, with a parting glance inside the room, followed her.

It wasn’t exactly the first time that Rodney had ever meet Daniel, but he certainly had never spent much time with the young archeologist. He wasn’t much different from the last time Rodney had seen him. His hair might have been a bit shorter, the uniform was the newest fad of black rather than green, but other than that, Rodney could see no changes.

“So, you’ve got something for me to look at?”

“Yeah. We’ve found a database here. We know that this was an Ancient lab, we’re just not sure if the notes are actually written in Ancient.”

“You mean it’s in code or a completely different language?” Rodney just shrugged. “Okay, well, where is it?”

“Down this way.”

Rodney stepped in front, leading the way back into the main room, not sparing a glance to see if Sam or Daniel were following behind. He didn’t need to, he could hear their quiet conversation following him through the lab.

He beckoned Daniel closer as he activated the controls, using guess work to get the database back on-line. Daniel hummed excitedly as he watched the symbols write themselves, seemingly in the air. He stepped closer, eyes already glazed in concentration.

“He’ll be at this for a while.” Rodney nodded at Sam’s words, but his focus was on Daniel. He had never had the pleasure of seeing a linguist work, but he found it an amazingly pointless concept to get so engrossed in a language one had no idea how to read.

“How long is a while?”

“Until he can read it?”

He looked over at her then, surprised by the soft smile on her face. She had confidence in Daniel- a confidence that developed over a long time of learning that Daniel would always figure everything out eventually.

“Why don’t we go get something to eat while we wait.”

He smirked. “A woman after my own heart.” She laughed briefly, as one does when they hear something cheesy, and turned to leave. He followed after her, but no before looking back over at Daniel. Maybe it wasn’t such a pointless concept, after all, it was exactly what he did, just with a different medium to work with.

The MREs were stashed just on the other side of the entrance. Sam pulled one out and looked over the contence, scowling before putting it aside.

“What’s that?”

“The chicken.”

“You don’t like the chicken?”

“You do?”

“Yeah… well, no, but I don’t mind the taste of macaroni and cheese so it’s edible, anyway.” She laughed, more heartedly than he thought appropriate. She just shook her head at his raised eyebrows and he imagined that she was lost in a long forgotten memory. He just shrugged and started searching for something.

Meatloaf… dangerous.

Turkey… eh, not the best, but certainly not bad.

Ham… pretty good… Oh, but not with green beans.

“Oh just pick one already.”

He laughed, looking over to find that she had already settled down against a tree and was starting to open her lunch.

“What did you get?”

“I don’t know, I just picked at random.”

“That’s pretty gutsy.”

“I’ve learned to eat just about anything after all these years.”

“Oh yeah? I lived through Russia- I’m never going to say that I’ll eat anything every again.”

She laughed and he scowled at her. She just smiled innocently.

“You lived though, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he huffed, finally settling on the pork chops. He kicked a rock away absently before he rested his back against a tree neighbouring Sam’s and slid down it, hiding his wince when he landed on a root.

“So…”

“So what?”

“So, talk about something.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like to eat in silence.”

“Oh… um… Seen any good movies lately?”

“Haven’t had time.”

He nodded, stabbing at the meat. “Seen any good commercials for a movie lately?”

She laughed at that, titling her head until she was looking over at him. “Haven’t had time for that either.”

“Hmm… you should get out of the mountain more.”

“Amazingly enough, you’re not the first who’s told me that.”

“Shocking.”

“Well… what do you guys do on Atlantis for fun?”

“Well, I like to catch up on my mountains of paperwork and all the projects that I’m constantly being pulled off of.” She looked at him pointedly and he just shrugged. “Everyone else… sometimes as a team, we watch some of the movies people brought with them- we’ve got a pretty nice stash of them going now. There’s a mock basketball court set up, people exercise or something. You can go to the mainland occasionally and swim or whatever. Hike, I guess. There’s always something going on. Card games. Stuff.”

She just nodded, letting them fall into silence. He looked over at her before turning his focus back onto his meal. He picked at the vegetables with some distain before finally pricking them and stuffing them into his mouth.

His ears perked suddenly, his head shooting up in response. Somewhere in the distance, a heavy foot fell to the ground. And then another. And then another…

/-

One… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… ping… one… two… ping… one… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… five… six… ping… one… ping…

His lips had gone dry; it was instinct to wet them. Each breath made them number; each breath made his throat drier.

Ping… ping…

A leaky faucet. It was the first thought that came to him after listening for a time. The incessantly irregular dripping. Water was coming from somewhere, but he was too tired and too cold and it was too dark for him to try to search the source out. Maybe he should have, maybe he shouldn’t have surrendered so easily. Maybe he should have fought harder, found a way out, found some way to escape. But for once it just didn’t seem worth the energy.

… forty-seven… forty-eight… forty-nine… fifty… fifty-one… fifty… fifty… fifty…

He sighed. He had stopped counting the time between the drips and instead had taken to counting the drips. Already he had lost count several times, the cold numbing his brain, exhaustion weighing too heavily on it, the uneven stones causing just enough discomfort to keep him from slipping back into unconsciousness.

… one… two…

A noise blocked out the sounds of the drips. He paused, blinking a few times behind the blindfold. But the noise had stopped.

… one… two… three… four…

The noise started again. It was soft, unrecognizable, but insistent…

Stomping feet. Boots on stones. Finally the noise became loud, completely overcoming the pinging of the water against the stone. Louder, closer, storming to him. He let his eyelids fall closed, his breathing evened out, the cold numbing finally took hold and his shivering suddenly ceased, and so he just listened to the harsh crashing of feet against stone.

/-

“Rodney?” Rodney jumped, shocking Sam into pulling her hand away. Her breath caught and she watched him, his eyes glazed and his mind disoriented as he looked around. She only calmed once he looked back to her, his eyes somewhat less cloudy. “You okay?”

“Hmm? Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He looked up to see her watching him, her eyes scrutinizing his appearance. He chose not to comment, looking away. “What’s up?”

“Daniel just called over the radio. He thinks he’s got something.”

“Really? Already?”

“Yeah,” she shrugged, finally breaking a smile as her worry left her. Rodney was standing already, holding his half eaten lunch with a look of distain. He set it aside, looking to her for any further information. “He thinks it’s some kind of code.”

“To keep just anyone from figuring it out?”

“I guess. Or maybe the scientist was just particularly paranoid.”

Rodney shrugged. Sam swallowed down her concern as she looked at him. His face was troubled, his jaw clenched, and his eyes hard. She recognized the look- he had been wearing it often not long ago- but she had hoped that whatever was troubling him had left him. But she didn’t have time to wonder what had reminded him before she was standing in the Ancient lab and Rodney was saying, “You figured it out?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” Daniel sighed, turning awkwardly to see them walking in. A smile came over him and Sam drew in a deep breath, bracing herself for the excited explanation. She wondered if she looked just like that when she had figured something out. “It struck me that most of the symbols seemed familiar, but just slightly different. What I noticed was that-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enough with the logistical chatter. You can read it?”

“Um,” he looked to Sam. She just shrugged. “Yeah. I can read it.”

“All right.” Rodney nodded towards the control panel, “So what should we try looking for?”

He looked over at Sam. She sighed, titling her head as she thought. “Let’s try… try weapon first, see what we get.”

“Weapon?”

She shrugged at Daniel’s creased brow. “It’s our best guess.”

He nodded, though hesitantly, before a word that sounded vaguely Ancient left his lips. She watched the screen then as it seemed to shuffle through it’s entire library. The screen went blank and Daniel shook his head slowly.

“Try power source. Our second theory,” she finished with a shrug and Daniel nodded before calling something else out. She watched as the same process happened- the screen flickering through images, slowing as it neared the end. Suddenly, her face brightened and she glanced at Rodney, knowing by his wide eyes and stuttering hand that he had seen it as well.

“Wait,” he called out, his hand raised and his fingers snapping as he tried to find the words, “Go back.” Daniel glanced at him and then Sam before his fingers tapped at the console, reviewing the images one by one before both Rodney and Sam called out to him to stop.

Sam stepped closer, as if it would assist her in understanding a mess of lines that had never meant anything to her. She glanced over at Daniel, deciding to watch him instead as his eyes rapidly look over each symbol, his brain quickly adjusting it into legible Ancient, his face glowing brighter with each word he was able to understand.

“Well? What does it say?”

“Something about…” he sighed, his eyes skimming over the words again, “It… if I’m reading this right,” he glanced at them as he said that, but then looked back to the symbols as he continued. “It looks like this thing might be able to… to… recharge a ZPM.”

“Re-charge?”

“Like a battery charger?”

“I think so,” he nodded.

She turned in time to see Rodney picking up the device, his face contorting into an awkward mixture of glee and distain all at once. “How?”

“I don’t know. Hang on… something about… oh…”

“Oh what?”

He looked to them; both pairs of eyes locked on him, their breathes held in hopes of good news and dreading what was surely to be bad news. “It looks like they never finished their only prototype.”

Rodney groaned while Sam sighed in frustration. “You mean it doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t say that it doesn’t work- it’s just not done.”

“They wouldn’t happen to have left instructions?” Rodney quipped, his eyes already looking over the device, hoping that his sweeping glance could solve the mystery that the Ancients couldn’t.

“Why to you think they didn’t finish?” she asked the room, her voice reaching both sets of ears, but neither could do anything but look over at her.

Rodney finally shrugged. “They all died from the plague.”

/-

… one… two…

A noise blocked out the sounds of the drips. He paused, blinking a few times behind the blindfold. But the noise had stopped.

… one… two… three… four…

The noise started again. It was soft, unrecognizable, but insistent…

Stomping feet. Boots on stones. Finally the noise became loud, completely overcoming the pinging of the water against the stone. Louder, closer, storming to him. He let his eyelids fall closed, his breathing evened out, the cold numbing finally took hold and his shivering suddenly ceased, and so he just listened to the harsh crashing of feet against stone.

/-

He snapped his eyes opened, heart pounding in his head. He gasped in air, desperately fighting to hold his eyes opened and stave off the images floating in the blackness of his mind.

He shifted against the smushed pillow, craning his neck to see the clock on the nightstand. He groaned. It was early. Too early to eat, too early to be up.

He fell back on to the bed, lying on his back. He pulled the blankets back around him, shocked by the cold of the night. He shifting again, his eyes drooping dangerously closed. The images came back too quickly. He tried to force them away, trying instead to focus on the ceiling of his room. It was concrete, grey, and unappealing. His eyes drooped closed.

The vivid colours already started attacking his mind. His eyes fluttered back open, closing under the weight of his exhaustion. He tried to think of Sam, tried to remember an old dream involving her, hoping that she could entertain his mind long enough to drift back into the void of sleep.

It didn’t work. Sam’s face blurred between her own and another. The intimate scenery distorted into a blend of the room and the planet.

He snapped his eyes back opened, pushing the covers away, allowing the chill of the air to wake him. He swung his legs over the bed, wincing when his bare skin made contact with the cold floor.

There were no personal showers, so Rodney redressed sloppily and headed down the dark hall towards the locker room. His way was lit by soft lights and by the lights of the random office still occupied.

He stripped easily near the showers, not worried about someone seeing him. It was too late for any one on Earth hours to be roaming in there and he didn’t think any team was off world. But, honestly, he wasn’t really giving any of that much thought.

The water dripped down on his skin, burning the sensitive nerves as it streamed down. He left it that way for a while, forcing himself to feel burning, before he turned down the temperature, shocking his system with a second wave of coldness. He stood under the water, resting his head against the wall, his eyes falling and his mind fighting off sleep. But he still feared what waited for him when he closed his eyes. He started suddenly, straightening and turning off the water. He shivered, but ignored it, stepping out into the cold locker room to find a towel and his clothes.

The commissary was empty, as he expected it, but a pot of coffee sat ready for any late night visitor. He picked it up, looking into it. It was brewed not long ago. He grabbed a mug, pouring it full. Taking a sip, he cringed. It was cold but strong enough. He stared down into his coffee for a while, shaking his head to keep from collapsing.

His feet began to walk away and he knew moving was the only way to stay awake. He wandered for some time. A few guards looked up at him, but a scientist awake at ungodly hours was nothing they weren’t accustom to. Eventually he found his way into Sam’s lab. He stopped, sighing as he looked down at the device. Setting down his empty mug, he got back to work.

It was hours later before anything interrupted him. Rubbing his eyes and wishing for another pot of coffee, he typed haphazardly at the computer, collecting his thoughts. “Rodney?” He didn’t flinch, or even respond to her voice, but instead continued to type. Sam waited a moment for him to finish his thought, but he still didn’t acknowledge her. “Rodney?” He perked at her raised tone, turning his head slightly but not pulling his eyes away from the screen.

“Hmm?”

“How long have you been here?”

“I dunno,” he shrugged, “What time is it?”

“Eight.”

“Eight?” His fingers slowed for the first time and he spun to look at her. His face was haggard, his eyes dulled by the circles beneath them.

“Have you been up all night?”

“Most of it.”

“Go to sleep then. Take a break.”

“I don’t want to take a break,” he hissed.

Her jaw tensed at the tone, but she persisted, “Rodney, you’re tired-”

“I’m fine!” She leaned away from him, the harsh tone enough to make her body straighten unconsciously. Slowly she drew in a breath and looked away, ignoring his harshness by putting it off as exhaustion.

He just shook his head and rubbed at his eyes, as if it would stave off the exhaustion leaking out through his words. His feet pushed back on the floor and his body leaned back into the chair, letting him roll backwards until he could reach out and grab the ZPM. He just stared down at the thing for a while, taking in the lifelessness of it, the dulled colours, the awkward and yet perfect cutting of its shape. It had been depleted two months ago in Antarctica but, hopefully, if they could ever figure out how to use the device, that would no longer be a problem.

“If this device does actually “recharge” a ZPM, there should be some way to interface them. Have you-”

“Yes, Sam, I have tried to shove them together. Maybe it was the interface that never got finished.” Sam blew out a breath, her brows slightly raised and her lips pursed. “Maybe if we had a working translation to know exactly how this is supposed to work, we could figure this out.”

“Yeah, well Daniel’s working as fast as he can. And it can’t be that difficult to figure out how to interface these things.” She wanted to bite her tongue for the sharpness of her words, but when he spun around to face her, his slight roll of his eyes and his huff of impatience had her straightening and leaning away from the desk.

“Yes, well you’re little minions here might find it fun to just jam things together, but I actually try to find a, I don’t know, scientific reason to what’s happening and how it all works.”

“Really? This coming from the man who blew up a solar system.”

“Five eighths!”

“Same thing.”

“At least it was more impressive that blowing up a sun.”

“At least I meant to blow up a sun.”

His next retort seemed to crumble on his tongue and his eyes fell bkack down onto the machine, his hands slowly turning the ZPM in his hands.

“Could I see that?”

“What?”

“The ZPM,” she stretched her hand over the desk, palm open for him to place it in her hand.

“For what?”

“I have an idea.”

“What?”

She pulled her hand away, letting it join the other arm over her chest. It was difficult not to roll her eyes at him.

“This panel here looks like it can be removed-”

“I know. We’ve tried that.”

“Yes, manually. The ZPM itself might be necessary-”

“What? You want to just set it on there and hope that something happens? Yeah, real scientific. It doesn’t eve look like the ZPM design.”

“Just try it.”

She thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to listen to her. That he was going to lean back into his chair, look away, and start foundling the ZPM again until he figured something out. Amazingly enough, though, he sighed and his eyes fell closed. She noticed how much more relaxed he seemed when eh didn’t have tired eyes staring up at her or eyelids drooping and threatening to close. HE shook his head after a moment and sucked in a deep breath before he forced himself to stand, the ZPM still in hand. He seemed to study both ends of the ZPM before studying the device.

“There,” he said after he had set the tip of the ZPM on the flat surface of the device.

“Turn in around.”

He sighed and she imagined that he rolled his eyes at her, but he did it, taking just the one hand to twist it around. He set the flat head of the ZPM on the device. Nothing. Sam sighed, her eyes closing for a moment in defeat.

“What about…?” She looked up at his muttering, watching as he shifted the ZPM to the left and then the right, as if trying to twist it into a snug fit. She just stood there, her eyes heavy with uncertainty and drossiness, until something finally clicked into place. They both just stared, mouths slightly agape and lips just barely contorting into smug smirks, as they watched the device twist the ZPM to the left, the flat surface retracting out of the way. The ZPM was locked into place, but nothing further happened.

A smile grew over her lips, but, by the time she had looked up at him, his pout had already returned and she couldn’t help by sigh and wonder what he was going to snip at next.

Because snipping was something he was good at. She had always known that- they had worked together enough times in the past to know that he was harsh, almost to the point of abusive, with the people he worked with. But something had changed in him since he had arrived back on Earth. She had hoped that maybe it was Atlantis that was finally doing him some good, toning down his smugness and helping to find the sweet man beneath the rough exterior. But, whether the sweet guy had just been a figment of her imagination or hunger, nerves, stress, and exhaustion were just the material that made up that exterior, she didn’t know.

“We still don’t know how it works.”

She just nodded, sighing out her last breath of air as she thought just how long a day they were in for. “I’m going to go get us some coffee.”

“Yeah.”

She sighed at the dismissive tone. Then turned, hesitating at the door before deciding not to look over at him.

She had told herself not to start liking him. She had gone so many years content with thinking of Rodney McKay as the annoying ass that he can be. But she had seen a softer side to him- a side that she actually found cute and fun and funny even- and she didn’t want to see it disappear again.

It was her.

Again.

Standing there, staring down at the phone in his hand, he was tempted to answer. He wanted to hear her voice, he wanted someone to talk to, but he didn’t want to answer. He knew that she’d scold him. That she’d want to have a serious conversation. She wasn’t someone he needed to talk to just then.

He didn’t want to talk to her.

He chucked it onto the couch when the ringing finally stopped and the voice mail had picked up again. She was leaving a message… again. She had already left three. He hadn’t listened to any of them.

He kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto his bed, letting his arm fall over his face. He huffed as he looked up at the pillows just out of reach and rolled his eyes when he realized that he had no motivation to reach up and grab them. He had no desire to move at all.

He wasn’t really sure what their argument had been about. Wait, correction. He knew exactly what the argument had been about, he just didn’t know what set it off. They had been working on the device and he had made some sort of comment. She had retorted. Somehow it got more heated than it should have.

She told him he needed help.

He didn’t. He was fine. He felt fine. He was doing a lot better than he had been when he first came back to Earth. He was eating normally again. He was working fine. He was sleeping… some, but he had never slept much before. He was fine.

She didn’t know what she was talking about. She was overacting to a few tied days. He was being snappy, but he had always been like that. She had just forgotten what he was really like. She had gotten to him- that was it. And now that he was back in his game, that old part of him was coming back out. That was it. That was all she was seeing. And it was bothering her even though it shouldn’t be.

Whatever she thought was wrong- whatever she saw that made her think that he needed help- was exaggerated.

He sighed, his eyes rolling back and his arm falling off his face and onto his chest. He would have liked to fall asleep, to curl up and sleep away the entire day. But then he rolled his eyes back and looked up at the pillows just too far away and remembered that he was too tired to move to get comfortable and he sighed, realizing that he wasn’t too lazy to move but that he just didn’t want to. He didn’t want to close his eyes and fall asleep.

But that wasn’t the problem. That didn’t mean that he wasn’t fine. He was fine. He just had been having nightmares recently. They would go away. Once he figured out this latest problem, he would be sleeping better again. He just needed to work.

He sighed and rubbed at his face and forced himself off the bed. He made his way back into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. He shifted to reach under himself to find the clicker hiding somewhere beneath him. He found the cell phone first and tossed it onto the ground. He flipped on the TV, letting some movie echo through the room. He sighed, his eyes nearly falling closed. But he forced them to remain open, to focus on the bright colours and horrible graphics of the movie.

He thought, perhaps for the first time, that he had never before been nervous about letting his eyes fall close and the abyss of sleep overtake him. He had always been a large proponent of sleep- it was just a simple fact that he didn’t often get the opportunity to enjoy it. Maybe it wasn’t as normal as he thought to fear falling asleep.

/-

“What do you mean, ‘test it’? It’s not done! You can’t just test it on a whim!”

The sound surprised him long before the pain registered. He blinked once, then stretched his jaw, before finally turning his head back.

“My scientists say it is ready.”

“Well they’re wrong.”

He was ready that time when a blow struck him in the back of the knee. He crumbled to the ground, but his hands were there to brace his fall. He found his balance on his knees before he looked back up.

“They are not wrong.”

He could only roll his eyes and push himself off the ground, bringing himself face to face once again. He knew- somewhere in his tired, addled mind, he knew better. And yet he still spoke.

“Yeah? Well whose built more nuclear reactors, huh? Let’s think about that one.”

“Enough! We shall test it. That is my final decision.”

“Fine! Test it, go ahead. But can I at least be a couple of kilometres away before you blow yourselves up!”

He knew to expect the blow. He knew he shouldn’t have said anything. And yet, when his face hit the ground and his mind was just on the edge of darkness, he was surprised by how hard the man could hit.

/-

Something loud. Something annoying. Something that just wouldn’t stop.

He couldn’t breathe for a moment as he tried to open his eyes and focus. As eh tried to process the sound he was hearing. As he realized finally that someone was ringing the doorbell.

He groaned as he tried to sit up and scrubbed a hand over his face. The buzzer rang again- this time faster, more urgently.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” he called out to the door, but it didn’t stop the person. They kept punching at the buzzer until he pulled the door open.

Sam’s hand jumped away from the doorbell, but the rest of her remained still. She just looked up at him and, he thought, he detected some relief at finally seeing him standing there. He stepped back away from the door, rubbing at his eye as he gestured with his head to let her in. She hesitated and then stepped inside just enough to let him in.

“You want some coffee?” he was already walking towards the kitchen, not caring what her answer may or may not be as he tiredly searched the room for a coffee filter. She silently handed one to him. He just glanced at her.

“Sure, thanks.”

There was silence for a while as he awkwardly scooped the coffee grains and prepared the water. And she just watched. He looked over at her only once throughout the whole process and he noticed that she didn’t seem to have any more of an idea why she was there than he did.

“Did you fall asleep on your couch?”

“Why would you say that?”

“You’re still wearing what you wore to the mountain and the TV is on.”

“Maybe I was watching TV.”

“You were asleep or I wouldn’t have been standing outside for twenty minutes.”

He just blinked, his argument gone, and yet he still sighed out a response, “Maybe I was just too lazy to turn it off before I went into the bedroom.”

“Sure… whatever.”

And, once again, the silence won over them. They stood there- Rodney leaning against the cupboard, Sam standing in the centre of the room- staring at each other and listening to the sound of the coffee dropping.

“You didn’t answer when I called last night. “

He shrugged. “I was asleep.”

“You weren’t asleep, you were ignoring me.”

“Same difference.”

“I just want to help, Rodney.”

“You want me to go see a shrink! I don’t need one.”

“How are you sleeping.”

“I’m sleeping fine.”

“You fell asleep on your couch. You’ve downing gallons of coffee every day. You’re exhausted. You’re up at all hours working on this device.”

“Exactly. I’m working. You don’t do any better with sleep when you’re obsessed with a project!”

“I do actually sleep. And I don’t generally have a horrifying experience hanging over my head.”

“You don’t have a horrifying experience hanging over your head! You’ve probably got millions of them swimming around in there, you just choose to ignore them.”

“No, Rodney. I don’t ignore them. That’s what is creating all your problems. I talk to people about what happened. I talk to the therapist, I write a mission report, I talk to my team if I need to. I talk to people, Rodney. Talk to someone.”

“I did. I wrote a report, I talked to the resident shrink on Atlantis. She suggested a vacation. I came, I vacationed, I’m ready to go back now. I even talked to you!”

“And now I’m asking that you talk to a professional again. You’re still not adjusting.”

“I’m fine! I don’t need to talk to you! I don’t need to talk to a “professional”! Look how far that got me last time! I’m fine! I just want to get back to work!”

He just stopped, not knowing what else to say. And then the only sounds that remained were the sounds of Rodney’s chest heaving and dripping coffee.

“If you don’t want to help yourself, then just leave. Go back to Atlantis and screw over your team, screw over the city. That’s your problem. But don’t stay here and snap at me and make me feel like crap because you can’t have the balls to admit that you need help.” She paused for a moment, her eyes softening as she looked back at him, “And if you ever want help or someone to talk to, I’m here.”

He couldn’t look at her as she spoke and he couldn’t say anything to make her stay as she walked out of the kitchen and disappeared into the hallway. He listened, hearing only the sounds of the dripping coffee over her feet against the wood tiles and the door slamming shut.

He just sat there a while, feeling each breathe that passed his lips, every rise and fall of his chest. He just listened, staring at nothing and the floor tile all in the same moment, as the coffee dripped ceaselessly.

It wasn’t until the constant sound had stopped that he blinked back the blurriness that had clouded his vision and turned his head to find the coffee ready. Slow, awkward movements had a cup in his hand and the pot settled over top of it.

Maybe he was just inherently an ass. He could try to hide it, to corre3ct it, to be sweet and cute and cuddly, but, in the end, maybe he was just incapable of being anything but an ass.

He hadn’t always been like that. Well, actually he had been like that since university. So, a while. Most of his life really.

What did she know? He was fine. She had just been seduced by the polite McKay, the fun McKay that sometimes made an awkward appearance. But he was gone, replaced by the real McKay.

He was fine.

Rodney bit back a cringe at the burning of the dark liquid. He kept sipping at it, despite how hot it was, or how painful it was to drink.

Maybe he wasn’t fine.

What if she was right? What if she actually knew enough about him to see that there really was more to how he was feeling than just his normal personality issues?

He scrubbed a hand over his face, sighing as he leaned back against the countertop.

Maybe he had a problem. Maybe she was right.

He couldn’t really say what was going on in his head.

He was mad. He was angry and upset and he felt sometimes like he just needed to throw something or kick something.

He was happy. It wasn’t often that he admitted to that one. But Sam brought something out in him. Something that made him want to smile and laugh and do spontaneous fun things.

He was sad. He couldn’t help but feel like a cloud was following him around, swallowing up his fun and swallowing up his desire to do things.

He was afraid. It wasn’t a physical fear. Even his unconscious mind was soothed by the thought that thousands of light years and an iris separated him from any physical threat. But he was afraid. He was afraid to close his eyes at night because he knew that they weren’t far behind. He knew that they were always there, playing just in the shadows of his mind.

He was everything in one moment and nothing in the next. He felt and he didn’t feel. He didn’t know what to think was going on in his mind.

Maybe she was right and maybe he was just an ass, but either way he was a screwed up ass and she was still right.

And he needed help.

/-

One… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… ping… one… two… ping… one… two… three… ping… one… two… three… four… five… six… ping… one… ping…

His lips had gone dry; it was instinct to wet them. Each breath made them number; each breath made his throat drier.

Ping… ping…

A leaky faucet. It was the first thought that came to him after listening for a time. The incessantly irregular dripping. Water was coming from somewhere, but he was too tired and too cold and it was too dark for him to try to search the source out. Maybe he should have, maybe he shouldn’t have surrendered so easily. Maybe he should have fought harder, found a way out, found some way to escape. But for once it just didn’t seem worth the energy.

… forty-seven… forty-eight… forty-nine… fifty… fifty-one… fifty… fifty… fifty…

He sighed. He had stopped counting the time between the drips and instead had taken to counting the drips. Already he had lost count several times, the cold numbing his brain, exhaustion weighing too heavily on it, the uneven stones causing just enough discomfort to keep him from slipping back into unconsciousness.

… one… two…

A noise blocked out the sounds of the drips. He paused, blinking a few times behind the blindfold. But the noise had stopped.

… one… two… three… four…

The noise started again. It was soft, unrecognizable, but insistent…

Stomping feet. Boots on stones. Finally the noise became loud, completely overcoming the pinging of the water against the stone. Louder, closer, storming to him. He let his eyelids fall closed, his breathing evened out, the cold numbing finally took hold and his shivering suddenly ceased, and so he just listened to the harsh crashing of feet against stone.

/-

“So… I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do.” (intro where he is)

“There is no right or wrong way to do this, Rodney. Just talk about whatever you want to talk about.”

“Right.” Rodney sighed and pulled his leg up onto his knee, his hands gripping at his ankle. He tried to look around and relax back into his chair, but he couldn’t quite get his mind to slow down or his awkward gaze to fall back on the doctor.

“Why don’t we start by talking about why you’re here?”

He looked up at her, grateful that she ahd chosen a topic for him. He nodded, “Sam, mostly.”

“Samantha Carter?” He just nodded again. “What about her?”

“She’s the one who convinced me that I… that I need… help. Someone to talk to.” Slowly, the doctor nodded and Rodney sighed at the shrink. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping… I don’t really sleep anymore. I’ve been snapping at people- worse than I usually do. I’ve been snapping at Sam, which is something I almost never do. She was… worried, I guess.”

“Rightly so, it seems, if she thought something was wrong.”

He bobbed his head up and then down once. “Yeah… She’s perceptive about me, I guess.”

“Are you two friends?”

His head remained still even as his eyes darted up to find her watching him, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose, her legs crossed easily one over the other, her hands resting on the folder in her lap. He dropped his gaze again, his shoulders rising in an uncertain shrug. “Yeah, I guess you could call us that. Friends. Colleagues. Either fits.”

“You said you’ve been having trouble sleeping. Want to talk about that?”

He shrugged again. “Not really.” He only glanced at her, but that look was long enough to tell that she would have preferred a different answer. But she hid that well from her voice; she was used to waiting a long time to hear what she wanted to hear from people.

“Do you want to keep talking about Sam, then?” He shifted in his chair, gripped his hands tighter on his ankle to pull his leg higher on his knee. “How long ago did she tell you that you should come here?”

“A couple of days ago. I had been getting snappier. I yelled at her a few times. She tried to call me; I guess she wanted to talk to me about how I’d been acting. I didn’t answer her calls. She came over to my house the next morning- I guess to see if I was still alive or something. We had another argument. I yelled at her. She yelled back. She told me I needed help and that I shouldn’t come back until I got some.”

“And you waited a few days after that to come here?”

His shoulder rose again, pausing a few moments at their height, before falling back down into a hunch. “I was trying to figure out how right she was.”

“And?”

He looked up at her, brows raised and a momentary look of annoyance his only answer for a short moment. Then he said, “I’m here, aren’t I?”

She leaned back in her chair, readjusting her folder and then her legs. “True.”

And then they said nothing. For a while he just let her watch him as he looked around her office. There were things he knew he ought to say- the real reasons why he was there. There were things he knew he could say- just to start up a conversation and break the silence. And then there were things that were coming to mind- comments about her choice of colours, of décor, of picture frames. But, instead, he choose to just look back down at his hands and watched them for a few seconds as they played with a fold in his jeans. “I have nightmares about… what happened. Sometimes… I have flashbacks, I guess you could call them.” He looked up at her, wondering what kind of reaction was clouding her face. There was none.

“What exactly happens in these nightmares and flashbacks?”

Rodney sighed, his eyes flashing down and watching the floor as he fought for the courage to keep talking. “When I was taken prisoner.” He glanced at her again, waiting for a reaction. “I was helping these people finished their power generator… I was… taken by a rival faction… I see that a lot.”

“The kidnapping itself?” He nodded awkwardly at her choice of words. “Anything else?” He shrugged and looked away. “Like what?”

He was watching the floor again. Then he sighed as flashes came back- the feet, the water, the cold, the cell, the needle, the blindfold, the voice, the generator, the…

“While I was in the cell. Being… forced to help them… I probably would have helped them anyway. They just had to ask.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened to you on that planet?”

He shook his head slowly. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened. He didn‘t want to think about what had happened. But that was why he was there- because he couldn‘t stop thinking about it. Because he couldn‘t stop seeing it playing over and over again in his mind. “I don’t really remember what happened… I was walking back to where I was staying… Something was put over my face, hands grabbed me, and I felt a needle… I woke up, what must have been hours later, in a cell… I don’t remember any faces or any voices or anything that I actually did, but I remember them wanting me to help them… making me help them build their own power source…”

His voice trailed off and his eyes strayed away again.

“Tell me about the cell.”

“The cell?” Her voice brought his eyes back to hers and he stared at her for a while, trying to decide what details she wanted. What details he wanted to give to her. His eyes trailed away and his thoughts followed. “Um… I don’t really remember it. I was still wearing a blindfold.”

“How did you know it was a cell then?”

“It was a cold, stone room and there was a barred door… they came in and out of. Where else would they have put me?”

“Cold?”

“Yeah, freezing. And… damp. Wet, really.” He could hear it, “I could hear water dripping- it drove me nuts.”

“How do you know that the door was barred if you couldn’t see?”

He shrugged and shook his head just visibly, pulling his eyes back to her. “It just sounded like it… And I could hear them walking. I could always tell when they were coming because of the sound their boots made on the stone floor…”

There was silence again, but it wasn‘t really silent. He knew the sounds weren‘t really there, he knew they were just phantoms of sound playing over in his ears. But he could still hear the pinging of the water and the echoing of the boots.

The clock suddenly caught his interest but the time didn‘t register in his head. He stood regardless. “I think it’s about time for me to leave.”

“Rodney,” she stood, hoping to keep him from leaving before she could finish. She stepped closer and touched her wrist, “You made a lot of progress today. I know how hard that was for you to say. It’s going to take time. You’re not just going to feel better over night.”

“I know,” he nodded, “Thanks.”

“I’ll see you Friday?”

He just nodded again. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

He didn‘t look back, he just pulled open the door and started to walk. He didn‘t think about where he was going. He probably should have headed to an elevator and made his way to her car. He could have gone down and visited the mess hall to get lunch. But his feet lead him away with a mind of their own.

She was standing with her back to him, her focus on her computer. She didn’t’t notice him at first, and he was fine with that. He owed her some kind of an apology. He owed her a thank-you, really.

The shrink had told him that he wouldn’t’t feel better over night. He knew that. He knew that when he closed his eyes to go to sleep that he would still see them, the blindfold, the needle, the dripping water. But already he felt better. It felt as if thousands of pounds were pressing down on his chest and now a few ounces had been removed. Not a relief, but a start.

He took a step closer and the sound caught her ear. She looked up. He wasn’t sure what was playing over her face. Shock, concern, anger, curiosity.

He sighed and glanced down as he took a few steps into the room. Their eyes caught and, in that moment, he hoped that she could see his apology and his gratitude and his confusion in that one look.

“You were right.”

“So what am I supposed to do now that I’ve been kicked out? I’ve never had this happen to me.” Sam looked up at him, not able to conceal her smirk. But she just shook her head and watched her hands as they powered everything down and organized her things.

“I don’t think I even have any food left in my apartment,” she tried not to laugh as he tiredly continued, “There’s nothing on television. Don’t have any movies. Don’t really have anything to do there.” He was still rambling and she found the smile was pulling painfully wider and the laughter was just barely controllable.

“I’m sure you can find something to entertain yourself,” she looked up at him, smirking as he processed all her words and scowled at the way she stressed the last few.

He sighed then, leaning his hip onto the edge of the lab bench. He watched her shuffle around a few things until she found their rightful spot, before, “You want to go out and grab something to eat?”

“Sorry, can’t.” She shrugged lightly, trying to make it seem apologetic.

“Why not?”

“Team night. Hey, you want to come?” She titled her head up to look at him. “We’re eating pizza and watching a really horrible sci-fi movie at Daniel’s house.”

“Um…” He shifted, readjusting his hip against the lab bench as his eyes fell in thought.

“Oh, come on. The food’s all right, the company’s good, and the movie is hysterical- in a ‘this science sucks so bad that I can’t help but laugh’ sort of way.”

“Ah, one of those,” he laughed and she smiled and shrugged her response.

“Come on,” she tried to goad him, smiling at him and hoping that he would eventually crack under her intense gaze.

“All right. All right. Do I need to bring anything?”

“Nope. We’re all heading over in about an hour. I could give you directions… or I could pick you up. Whichever.”

“You driving is probably the safer way to go about it.”

She nodded just in time to sling her computer bag over her shoulder and take a final glance around her lab. “You ready to go?”

“Um… yeah.”

He debated for a while, as he drove home, whether or not he needed to shower. He decided that he did for no real reason other than to kill the half an hour he had until Sam showed up. Absently, he flicked on the news as he walked into his room. Voices streamed through the room, but none of their words sank in as he stood in front of his closet. Jeans or khakis? T-shirt or button down? Or he could wear a sweater? Or…

He sighed, closing his eyes and randomly grabbing at one of the hangers. Jeans. He towelled off shortly, listening as the newsman told him about some coincidental arrest made in Ohio, before pulling on boxers and his favourite pair of faded jeans. He ruffled a hand through his hair as he looked back at the rest of his closet. T-shirt, he decided, but then grabbed a stripped button down as well.

He was barely dressed by the time he heard a horn honking outside. He switched the television off as he walked past it and stepped into his sneakers, leaning his butt into the wall as he tried to tie them.

He smiled up at her as he walked out the door. She was leaning calmly into the driver’s seat, watching him walk down the path to her car.

“Hey.”

“Hey. You ready?”

“Yep,” he nodded as he buckled his seatbelt.

By the time she had pulled out of the drive way, he was already mashing at the seek button on her radio. A lot of it was static and whatever he could find that was some kind of rap or country or hip-hop or some artist he didn’t know. It took a while before he just gave up and turned the volume down to nearly off.

“So…” he sighed out.

Sam glanced over at him, her eyes returning to the road as she echoed him, “So…?”

“How long have you guys had this team night?”

She shrugged at first; he watched her as she thought back. “Um, a long time. General O’Neil started it.”

“Is it always pizza and a bad movie?”

She laughed lightly and shook her head. “Naw. We go out to see good movies once in a while. We go out random places to eat sometimes. We cook for each other occasionally.” She smiled suddenly and looked over at him, “But you definitely don’t want Daniel cooking for you.”

“No?”

“No,” her head was shaking violently. “Coffee and MRIs are about the extent of his cooking abilities.”

Rodney chuckled at that and nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The dark sky just beyond the housing developments caught his eye and he watched it instead, letting the car fade into the gentle tones of whatever song they were listening to. He absently took in the gas prices, watched children playing, mulled over poor car choices, and glanced at the occasional road sign. It wasn’t long before Sam slowed the car and pulled into small communal parking lot.

She didn’t bother to knock when they got to the door; she just pulled the screen door open and pushed the wooden door out of her way. It was awkward for him to just step inside after her, but she was already shrugging out of her jean jacket and stepping out of her shoes, as she listened and picked up on the direction of the conversation happening inside, and he followed her inside without questioning her.

“Sam!” a voice called from somewhere and he looked around as he tried to find something to hang onto as he tried to kick off his shoes. Cameron appeared with Daniel only a step behind him, “What should we get on the pizza?”

“Just cheese,” she huffed, as if it was a common answer.

“Olives and pepperoni.” She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes glaring but her smile betrayed her.

“Now there’s a man after my own heart.”

“Get half olives and half cheese then.”

“But what about mushrooms?” Rodney looked over at Daniel. Somehow he felt that Daniel’s plea for toppings never got met. Rodney looked around absently, wondering where Teal’c was to break the argument.

“No one but you likes mushrooms.”

“So. If it wasn’t for McKay, no one else would like olives.”

“Teal’c eats them.”

“Teal’s eats everything.” Sam rolled her eyes, wandering towards the archway Daniel and Cameron had appeared through moments before. “You want me to just order the same thing we get every time?” The two men looked at each other and then shrugged. Sam just laughed lightly and shook her head.

“What do you get every time?”

“Large cheese. Large half mushroom and half olive.” Cam was rolling his eyes; Daniel just shrugged.

“Why do you bother arguing then?”

“Because Daniel never finishes his half.”

“Yes, but I take the rest home.” Rodney just laughed, reminded of his own team.

Cameron flopped down on the corner chair, pulling out the leg rest and settling back. Daniel claimed the cushioned leather chair and Teal’c seemed content to stake claim to the other reclined chair across from Cameron. All that was left was the love seat where Rodney assumed Sam usually splayed herself over. He smirked and collapsed onto it, his legs hanging over the armrest and his head tucked on the pillow.

“You best skooch over before Sam gets in here.” Rodney just laughed at Cameron’s warning.

Sam stopped in the archway between the kitchen and living room, her eyes narrowing as she spotted Rodney in her spot. “You better move.” He smirked. “I’ll sit on you.”

“No you won’t.” She stopped and tapped on his legs, trying to get him to move them out of her way. He smirked up at her, daring her. She smirked back, accepting the challenge. Then she turned and sank down onto his thighs, laughing when she nearly fell on him when he tried to shake her off. “You sat on me!”

“I said I would.”

“Get off.”

“No!”

“You have to get off if you want me to move my legs.” She sighed and stood just long enough for him to sit up.

“Will you two quiet down? Some of us are trying to watch a movie over here.” The two looked at each other, trying to stifle their laughter before looking back at the TV screen, watching as the opening credits finally stopped rolling over the screen.

They were well into the movie by the time the pizza arrived. Cameron got up silently- Rodney didn’t ever notice that he was gone until pizza boxes suddenly materialized on the floor and Sam was pushing a paper plate beneath his nose.

He shifted closer to her, getting close enough to elbow her gently and whisper, “You actually like this movie?”

She shrugged and smirked at him, “Teal’c loves it. I just like to laugh at all the mistakes.”

“I can see the allure.”

“Shh!”

“You’re shhing me?”

“This is the best part.” He scowled at her, though his eyes were smirking and she knew that he would stick out his tongue if he hadn’t felt the need to squash the childish urge.

He turned his attention away from her, his eyes once again finding the poorly dressed characters, blocked awkwardly with hideously painted sets surrounding him. He listened, trying to follow the science that was suddenly pouring out of the one man’s mouth. And then he laughed. Not because he had it all wrong or because whatever he was saying was obviously some pathetic attempt to fix a plot problem, but because she was laughing. The innocent giggle that started from deep within that just spread uncontrollably to the rest of the body, lighting up her face and her eyes and even her entire body. He laughed because her laugh was contagious.

/-

The pure suddenness of it surprised him more than the act itself.

It was night and lighting in the streets was virtually nonexistent. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the shapes of buildings and he struggled to find which he was supposed to be entering. But in an instant, even those shapes were no longer visible.

He struggled against the darkness, against the rough thing that had found his mouth. He struggled to let out a cry for help. He struggled to see what was happening. He struggled to understand what was happening to him. But no amount of struggling could answer those questions.

It was a prink. Just a simple annoyance on his upper arm. He didn’t think much of it at first. His mind was more focused on the darkness and the silence. The silence filled with grunts of effort and feet scrapping against the stone road. But the darkness became even more pronounced and his voice became even more impossible to use against the rough thing covering his mouth and finally the grunts of effort calmed to complete stillness…

/- Two Weeks Later

His pillow couldn’t possibly be pounded any further into a small ball and his feet couldn’t possibly kick the blankets any further off his body. He shifted again, groaning at the sight of the slow moving clock. It took a lot of effort to just roll out of bed.

The TV flickered on as he flopped onto the couch. Voices faded into the room long before a picture ever appeared. He flipped through a couple of stations, ignoring commercials and late night shows and skipping just about everything he came upon. He stopped here and there when he noticed a movie playing but skipped past them only moments later. The history channel caught his eye for slightly longer but, finally, he just flicked off the TV altogether.

It felt almost automatic by then to flip open his cell phone that he had left lying on the coffee table and scroll to her name. It rang five times before there was a groggy “hello” on the other end.

“Sorry to wake you.”

“I’m getting used to it.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” He listened as she shifted around in her bed. Probably shifting pillows so that she could sit up. And, as his eyes fell closed and he listened to her slow movements and her steady breathing, he couldn’t help but picture her in some revealing nightwear with soft white sheets covering her. “Bad dream?”

“Hmm?” He shook himself from the fantasy. “Yeah… same one.”

“And you’ve been talking with the doctor, right?”

“Yes,” he huffed, too tired to roll his eyes at her.

“Just asking… So…”

“So… What haven’t we talked about in the wee hours of the morning yet?”

“Dunno. I think we’ve covered the spectrum of topics.” She yawned into the receiver; another apology was on his lips as she said, “Tell me about Atlantis again.”

“What specifically?”

He could hear her shrug and he knew by the tone of her voice that her eyes were drooping closed. “Tell me about your favourite place there.”

“Favourite place? Um…” He couldn’t say that he had one. The cafeteria was certainly up there. His lab was where he spent most of his time. He, unfortunately, spent a lot of time in the infirmary. “The lifts.”

“Lifts?”

“Yeah. Well, they’re not really my favourite place- claustrophobia and all- but they’re certainly one of my favourite things. They’re like elevators, only better, because they can, not only bring you a few levels up, but they can transport you to the other side of the city. I’ve always really liked them for some reason.”

“Hmm…”

“And the south pier,” he said suddenly. “It’s a little balcony and, if you’re up early enough, you can watch as the sun rising over the ocean. It’s absolutely gorgeous.” She hummed softly in response and he knew that she was almost falling back asleep.

“When are you leaving?”

He shrugged and adjusted the phone. “The Daedalus should be back in a couple of days. A week’s trip from there.”

“Yeah…”

He shifted the phone again; his eyes dropped to watch his hands play with a piece of thread on his shirt. “Have you given any thought to coming with me?” he felt almost shy asking; an awkward request that was sure to be met with an even more awkward answer.

“I, um… no, I actually hadn’t.”

“Well, I was just thinking,” his fingers were now rubbing at his brow; he was wondering desperately why he had bothered to mention it. “I mean obviously if this thing works we’ll need to bring it to Atlantis and since it’s not going to be fixed by the time the Daedalus leaves, I’ll need help with it on the flight back.”

For a long time, he held his breath, waiting to let Sam mull over his words. Her breathing was calm and even and he worried for a time that maybe she had fallen back asleep. Until finally she said, “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll- I’ll talk to General Landry about it.” A grin took over his face and he felt foolish for laying there on his couch, beaming that she had agreed to come and work with him. “Always wanted to go.”

“Maybe we’ll find time to go check out the south pier.”

“We better.”

He chuckled and nodded, silently promising to find the time somewhere in what was sure to be a busy schedule to do just that. And then he sighed as he glanced at the clock and knew that he had better let her go back to sleep. She whispered a soft goodnight and he said it back. She hung up first and he laid there for a moment, trying to force away the nervous butterflies floating inside his stomach. His eyes drooped and fell closed long before he ever found the strength to place the cell phone back on the table behind him and he fell asleep awkwardly skewed across the couch.

/-

“Hey, Sam.”

Sam smirked over at Cam briefly before she grabbed a blue jello from the shelf. She turned and let Cam led them over to a near by table. He smirked at her for a moment but she ignored him, until he said, “So… what’s going on with Dr. McKay?”

“What?”

“You and McKay?” She turned to look at him. He was smirking at her; she just shook her head, pulling her brows together to look at him oddly.

“There’s nothing going on.”

“But there’s something there.”

“No, there’s not.”

But Cam didn’t stop smirking, “Yeah, whatever.” She rolled her eyes at him as she pulled out a chair and set down her tray on the table. Cam collapsed into the chair across from her. “You have a crush on him, don’t you?”

“I don’t have a crush on Rodney.”

“Rodney? When did you two get on a first name basis?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes for effect. Her head shifted back and forth slowly as she picked up a fork and started picking at her chicken.

“Hey, mind if we join you?” Daniel and Teal’c were approaching their table with trays clasped between two hands. “What’s up?”

“Sam has a crush on this new doctor guy.”

“What new doctor?” Daniel’s fork was already in hand and a scoop of mashed potatoes was nearing his mouth.

“McKay.”

Daniel’s hacking cough and shocked eyes made Cam laugh. Even Sam was chuckling. “What?”

Sam clamed herself and looked over at Cam, her face and voice stern as she said, “I don’t have a crush on McKay.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Daniel shrugged. “If anything, McKay has got a crush on Sam.”

Cam shrugged back. “There was never any dispute there. I’m just more curious about how Sam feels about him.”

“And whatever that may be, it’s none of your business.”

“Mmhmm… Denial.”

“Shut up.” Sam’s final words left them all in silence for a while, the quiet filled only by the sounds of forks scrapping the trays and chewing.

“I’m leaving for Atlantis in two days.”

Daniel was frozen in place, hunched over the table with his elbows near his tray. Only his eyes rolled up to find her. Teal’c was stoic as ever. He looked easily over at her, surprised but not enough to show more than the casual cock of his eyebrow. Cameron’s reaction was, by far, the most interesting. Fork gripped in his hand, half-way to his mouth, he stopped and looked up at her.

Sam sucked in a deep breath, preparing herself to say, “We still haven’t figured out how to make this device work and McKay will need some help with it. It wouldn’t be for long- just until we get this thing working. Hopefully only a week or two.”

“You think you’re that close to figuring this out?”

She shrugged, “Or giving up.”

Sam’s eyes strayed towards Daniel. He had found control over his muscles once again. He was leaning back in his chair, seemingly relaxed, but the muscles in his cheeks had tightened. She could see the anger hidden in his eyes and she sighed. She had known that he would be upset that she was going before him. She reached across the table, her hand wrapping around his arm. Their eyes caught and a comforting smile pulled at her lips. “You’ll get to Atlantis before too long.”

He tried to laugh a little and the he just shrugged, finding her eyes again. He looked away, finding his food again.

“So two days, huh?”

Sam’s eyes flickered up to Cameron’s. “Yeah.”

“We get down time while you’re gone?” Sam laughed at him and shook her head; he just smiled at his own joke.

It was really an accident that she noticed him. Her eyes flickered up for just a moment and she caught sight of him. “Hey, Rodney,” she called as she watched him exit the food line, “Come over here.”

He looked over at the sound of her voice. He shrugged as he walked nearer; shaking his head as he said, “I don’t want to interrupt-”

Cam was smirking at Sam as Rodney was speaking. She tried to raise an eyebrow at him and cock her head to the side to warn him, but he just smirked wider. Looking over at Rodney, he said, “No, no. It’s okay. We were just leaving.”

Daniel glared at his tray, frowning at how much was still left on it. Then he looked back at Cam, his brows knotted in confusion. “We were?” Cam made a face at him, shaking his head to add to the effect. “Oh yeah. Right.”

Rodney shook his head as he watched the three men rise, pick up their trays, and, nodding in Rodney’s direction, retreated from the table. He kept an eye on them, shaking his head as they held onto their trays even as they left the commissary. “You have a weird team, you know that?” He sat down in Cam’s seat and looked up to see Sam shrug.

“Yep. Men.” She smirked at him and he tried only a half-assed attempt to glare at her.

“So…”

“So…?”

“What’s up?”

“Not much.”

“Hmm…”

“So, you ready to go?”

Rodney shrugged, “Eh, just gotta throw a few outfits into a duffle bag. I’m good.”

“I meant more, are you ready to leave Earth again?”

He took a moment to let his eyes stray from hers as he took a long swig from his water bottle. Finally, he just shrugged. “Wasn’t really much that I actually wanted to do here.”

“What about your family? Have you spoken to them or gone and visited?”

For a moment, his eyes couldn’t meet hers. He found his fingers grasping onto his water bottle, the gleam off his fork that he had forgotten on his plate. “Um, no. I mean, there’s not much point.”

“Not much point?”

Her tone- confused and angered- caught his attention and he looked up at her. “Yeah,” he shrugged, “I don’t really talk to my parents as it is and… well I would think that my sister is mad at me about the first time I left.”

“Mad at you for what?”

He sighed and shifted as he picked his fork back up. “When I left, I said I wouldn’t be able to call her and I couldn’t leave a number and I couldn’t even tell her where I was going or when I’d be back. She doesn’t like that I work for the US military and she hates the whole secrecy thing.”

“Why? Why does she hate you working for us?”

He shrugged. “She gave it a try for a while. It wasn’t her thing.”

“She’s a scientist?”

“Astrophysicist, yep. Gave it up though to have a family.”

“Really?” He smirked faintly up and her and nodded. If she had looked hard enough, she might have noticed the briefest glimmers of pride and an even briefer hint of anger. “And you’re still not going to see her? We have beaming technology and everything now, it’s not like you’d have to stay for long or travel there.”

He chuckled a little at that and shook his head lightly. “No… I haven’t seen her in a while and it’s probably best to just leave it that way for now.” Sam half shrugged at him. She sighed as she shook her head at him.

/-

With his butt slid so far to the edge of the chair, he was nearly ready to fall flat off and his shoulders were resting half-way down on the backrest. He had dug his heels into the floor to keep from falling but had started to shift his weight from one foot to the other, rocking himself back and forth. His head was resting against the backrest as well, keeping his eyes level with the device laid out before him.

But he had nothing. He had stared at the data for the three days he had been on board the Daedalus and yet he had come up with nothing. Staring at the device had yielded nothing yet either.

He sighed and rubbed at his face. The device itself seemed to work and they couldn’t find anything within the device that seemed incomplete. They had even mastered connecting the ZPM and the device. But it wouldn’t power up. And that, of course, was the real problem.

“It won’t spontaneously fix itself if you stare at it.”

He twisted around to look over the chair, finding Sam smirking lightly at him. She held out a hand to him as she walked in front of his chair and he reached out to take the coffee mug she was offering. “Would be nice of it.”

“Any thoughts?”

“Nope.” His focus returned to the device as he brought the edge of the mug to his lips.

The sound of material rustling and a chair groaning under new weight caught his attention. He looked over to watch as Sam slouched down in her own chair, adopting a similar position as his, her eyes staring at the device as well as she sipped at her coffee.

“Seven hundred seventy three.”

“Sorry?” He looked back at her to find her looking at him, her brows scrunched together to form her face into a question mark.

“Hmm?” He blinked slowly and his eyes widened a bit when he suddenly understood her confusion. He shook his head in apology and, “Oh… Sorry, Zelanka and I play sometimes.”

“Play…?”

“Prime, not prime. It’s-”

“Prime.”

“Um, yeah.”

“I see the rules are relatively simple.” She smirked over at him and he just shrugged.

“Relatively, yes.”

“One thousand, two hundred, and seventy three.”

“Not prime. Easy. Twenty-two eight-one.”

“Prime.”

“Hmm… Want to go grab a snack?”

She shrugged, “Sure.” He loved the fact that the mess was on the same level as the science labs. Just down the hall, turn left, then right, then straight down the hall again. Space ships were so convenient.

He mulled over it for a while, looking at all the options, checking a few off, looking at all the remaining options, checking more off, and finally finding himself stuck between two choices.

“Oh just pick one already.”

He chuckled over his shoulder at her. “Sam, this isn’t just a simple matter of choosing anything. Whichever thing I choose, I have to enjoy for not only the few minutes it takes to eat it but also the next few hours until I eat something else.”

“You’re pondering aftertaste? Rodney, just pick a damn candy bar.”

“Fine.” The quarters slipped past his fingertips, sliding into the money slot. His eyes gazed over the choices one last time before he finally settled on one. He tapped at the letter-number code and waited as the metal coil turned and the candy bar dropped from its hold.

“Coffee?” Sam made a slight face and he shrugged. Just because she couldn’t have a lot of caffeine didn’t mean that he wasn’t addicted to the stuff. He tossed a water bottle over his shoulder at her before he reached for the coffee pot.

“So…”

“So…?”

“We need to stop hanging out with each other. We’re running out of things to discuss.” She laughed lightly, nodding absently. He turned so he could lean his back against the table and look at her. “Say the first word that comes to mind.”

“What?”

“Any word.”

“Okay-”

“Bad word. I can’t work with that at all.”

She punched him in the shoulder and sighed, looking to the side as she tried to think up a suitable word. “Chair.”

“Chair? Hmm… You know, I really need to get a new chair in my lab in Atlantis. When I went to Russia- and this is the only good thing you’ll ever hear me say about that country- I had the most amazing chair ever. It was comfortable, it rolled really nicely, it was nicely padded-”

He had to stop then- both because some group of MPs were standing, waiting in a frustrated line for him to move out of the way of the coffee, and because Sam was not laughing so much that he doubt she would hear him if he kept going.

“New word,” he said after he had moved out of the MPs’ way and Sam’s laughter had calmed to nothing.

“Orange.”

“Never liked the colour orange. Probably because it reminds me of oranges- the fruit- which, inevitably, reminds me of when I was first introduced to the fruit. I was eight and I didn’t know what citric was I just knew I couldn’t have it. But I didn’t know that oranges were citric and so I tried it. Nearly died. Not a fond memory of mine.”

“Wow, you’re good at this.”

Rodney just shrugged. “It’s fun. Okay, your turn… Envelope.”

“Envelope?”

“Yeah… Go.”

“What are you supposed to say about an envelope?”

“What was I supposed to say about a chair?” She just shrugged, then sighed as her eyes rolled back and she tried to think of something to say. “Okay, I’ll be nice and give you an easier one… Light bulb.”

“Hmm… It always bothered me as a kid when light bulbs would spontaneously appear over cartoon characters’ heads. I dunno, but it never made sense to me that they could light up if there were just some suspended light bulb with no power source.”

“Weird, I was always bothered by the same thing.” Rodney smirked at her; Sam smiled, blinking her eyes closed as she ducked her head down. “Not too bad… how about…”

“Hang on.”

“What?” He looked up at her, brows pulling together. Her eyes had clouded over and were focused on some distant spot on the floor. He watched her face as it tightened and relaxed and she thoughts through something in her mind. He gave her a moment before, “What are you thinking about?”

“I’ve got an idea.” He was powerless to stop her as she nearly threw her half empty water bottle onto the table, pivoted, and marched towards the doors.

Rodney looked down at his hands, sighing as he thought about leaving the candy bar and coffee mug behind. He shrugged and started at a trot behind her, holding his coffee safely away from him and cringing when some did manage to slosh over onto his hand.

She was already at her computer by the time he caught up. The candy bar was forgotten on the nearest table; the coffee remained in his hand.

She glanced over at him, her fingers still typing as she explained, “We’ve been going at this all wrong. We’re trying to get the device to activate and power the ZPM, but I don’t think that’s how it works.”

He sipped at it as he watched over her shoulder, nodding slowly as he caught onto her train of thought. “Oh… oh, I see where you’re going… oh, that’s good.”

“Thanks.”

He smirked at her as he turned to his laptop, “You think the power needs to come from somewhere else? Subspace, obviously.”

“Right. This device only interfaces the ZPM with subspace.”

“Allowing it to recharge. Obviously.”

Sam was leaning against the counter next to him a few minutes later, absently sipping at the coffee he had forgotten about. He made a face at her but kept typing. “I think this might actually work.”

She looked at him and smirked back. “Let’s find out.”

“You remember how to connect the ZPM, right?”

He sent her another dirty look, rolling his eyes as he picked up the ZPM. “Yes, I still remember how to connect the ZedPM.”

Rodney gave her a nervous smile as he set the ZPM on the device. It lowered slightly, locking into place. They watched, their smiles faltering when nothing happened.

Rodney rubbed his face, groaning into his hand as he collapsed forward onto the tale. He glanced up at Sam’s sigh, watching as she dropped herself into her chair. “Well, it was a good thought while it lasted.”

“Yeah, it was. Well, now we can look forward to-”

The glowing startled both of them into silence, their eyes captured by the sight of a low powered ZPM. Rodney looked to Sam, his smirk firmly in place and his eyes glowing in excitement. Slowly Sam turned to look up at him, a slow smirk crawling over her face.

Rodney glanced around himself and then snatched up a scanner laying on the table nearby. “There are very faint energy readings coming from the ZedPM.” He looked up at her, “It looks like this thing might actually be charging.”

Sam smirked back at him and, rising suddenly from her chair, “Now the real question is- how long do we have to wait until it’s fully charged?”

“Hmm… my camera battery takes years.”

“And the ZMP has always struck me as slightly more complex and powerful.”

“Hmm… slightly.”

She laughed suddenly at his tone. He looked at her for a moment as his smirk threatened to break into a smile, before he joined her, his stomach flexing painfully as he laughed.

It wasn’t all that different of a view than she was used to. The table was circular, the design was foreign, the people were unfamiliar, but it was the same nevertheless. Dr. Weir, she recognized, sat at the front of the table to her left. Across from her was Colonel Cadwell. Another Colonel sat beside him and two others beside him, but she recognized none of them. The last two seemed alien. A civilian sat to the side of Weir; he looked like a scientist.

Sam’s gaze fell back on Rodney as his words filtered into her ears. She could follow every word he said, but she also knew that there was only one other person sitting there knew what the hell he was saying. “What McKay is trying to say, is that the ZPM draws its power from subspace when it’s initialized, not throughout its lifetime. This device allows it to be reinitialized-”

“Thus drawing more energy from subspace.” He turned to look at her with a smirk on his face as he finished for her, “I was getting there.”

“Not fast enough.” Sam looked back out over at the others. “It’s like a battery recharger. When the battery runs dry, you plug it in for a little while and then you’re good to go.”

“So…” They both looked to Weir, “This basically gives us unlimited power?”

They both looked over at each other, their shoulders rising simultaneously before they looked to Weir again. “Basically.”

“And we can take the three depleted ZPMs we have here and recharge them? Bring the whole city back up to full power?”

Sam nodded. She looked to Rodney, who was already focused on Weir as he explained, “Exactly. We’ll have shields whenever we need them. We could probably figure out how to submerge the city again, if we wanted. We could explore anywhere in the city without worrying about power drainage… We can go home through the stargate whenever we want.” Rodney eyes darted off the other side, finding Cadwell leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. “No offence or anything, but a week on your ship isn’t much fun.”

“None taken.”

Sam looked to Weir again, “You also have the half-charged ZPM that’s running Atlantis now and the one from Antarctica that we brought with us. Both of them can be recharged and brought back to Earth. We can power the Antarctica chair as well as Earth’s stargate.”

Weir nodded. “Looks like you made one hell of a find.”

Rodney and Sam could only smirk at each other. Then Rodney shrugged, “It was nothing.”

“Nothing?” Sam slapped him in the gut, “You were just there; you didn’t find it.”

“But I was there for the finding of the instruction manual.”

“And Daniel read it.”

He just shrugged. “That’s not my job anyway.”

Weir coughing caught their attention. The two broke their gaze and looked back over at her. “I’m sure that you two and Dr. Zelenka are anxious to get started with recharging the ZPMs and bringing full power on-line.”

“Oh, right.” Rodney nodded quickly. Looking down, he shut down his laptop. He nodded awkwardly at Zelenka then and, with his laptop under his arm, headed out of the room. Sam shrugged over at Zelenka before they both scooped up their laptops and followed after him.

/-

“Okay,” Rodney sighed as he tapped his fingers, waiting as he watched the ZPM rise out of the console. “Removing the old mostly charged ZedPM,” Rodney commented as he carefully grabbed the crystal object and pulled it from its place. “Sam,” he nodded to her and she stepped up and around him, placing the freshly powered ZPM into the old one’s place. She twisted it into place and gave the top of it a gentle push until it began to slide down into its place on its own.

“So how do you think we should do this? Tap this one off,” Rodney lifted the one he was cradling in his hands, “And then grab one of the depleted ones we’ve got lying around? Then we can power up the station and do a little exploding as we let the other two re-charge?”

Sam nodded her agreement. “Sounds like a plan.”

Zelenka shrugged instead. “How long will it take to recharge?”

Rodney shrugged as his eyes moved over to look at Sam. “To fully charge that one took like four hours. So, thirty minutes, tops, on this one I would think.”

“Dunno. Something like that I would like. It’s still mostly charged.”

Zelenka nodded at their estimate then turned his attention to the black case they had set on the floor near the console. He picked it up and snapped the locks open and then lifted the device from its cushioned hold. He looked it over for a moment, playing with the object in his hands for a short time. “How precisely does one operate this thing?”

Sam stepped off the platform and moved over to stand across from him at the console. “It’s really simple actually, once you figure it out,” she said with a sidelong glance over at Rodney. He just grunted in response. “Just lock in the ZPM.” Zelenka glanced at her and then reached out to take the ZPM from Rodney. Rodney handed it over reluctantly, but it stood quietly watching as Zelenka followed Sam’s silent instructions to turn the ZPM around and how to set it in. “And, we’re pretty sure that you punch in a series of these buttons, we just haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Pretty sure? How did you re-charge the other one then?”

“Um…” Sam looked over at Rodney, “We just guessed.”

“We’ll use the trial and error method later to nail it down,” Rodney shrugged. “For right now, we’ve come up with a computer program that does that for us.” Zelenka nodded and let Rodney take over at his unpacked his laptop and began hooking it up to the machine. He watched over his shoulder until Rodney glared over at him. Zelenka sighed and took a step back but continued to look over Rodney’s shoulder.

“We still haven’t come up with a name for this thing yet.”

Rodney smirked, never raking his eyes off the laptop screen as he said, “What? You didn’t like my earlier suggestion?”

“‘The greyish object with seventeen symbols’ just doesn’t do it for me.”

“We could shorten it to GOSS… the goss.” She laughed at him, openly smiling as she shook her head at him. Rodney smirked up at her, but it faltered as he looked over at Zelenka, feeling suddenly odd. Zelenka’s attention, however, seemed more concentrated on what Rodney was doing on his laptop than the conversation.

“I think ‘ZPM charger’ will work just fine.”

“Boring. You could at least try-” Rodney cut himself off as the glowing of an extra light brightened their workstation. “And that’s basically it,” he explained with a shrug.

“And when do you plan on using the trial and error approach?” Zelenka looked to Rodney.

He shrugged, then looked to Sam. “We could try it once we start re-charging the Earth ZedPMs.”

She rolled her eyes at the smirk on his face. “Gee, thanks.”

“No problem… Seriously, though, we should give it a try once we start recharging the last two. It’ll take forever but…”

“And Daniel is still looking through that database we found. There might be more there.”

“Oh, sure, because they always have schematics and step by step instructions.”

“No, but occasionally they give a few hints.” He sighed but couldn’t help the smirk that had taken up residence on his face.

“Um, it is done glowing.” Both Sam and Rodney’s eyes turned almost simultaneously to first Zelenka and then down to the ZPM.

“That means it’s charged.”

“I know that.”

“Why didn’t you just say that then?” Zelenka grunted; Sam didn’t miss how he rolled his eyes at him.

“That was fast.”

“Yeah… more like thirty seconds.” Rodney tapped his ear piece, “Elizabeth, we’re going to cut power again and put a second ZedPM in.”

“Sounds good.” He smirked. He could hear her excitement seeping through the comm. link.

Rodney nodded over at Zelenka; the Czech began the sequence to cut the city’s power. Sam was already carefully twisting the ZPM to release it from the device. Zelenka took the ZPM from Sam’s hands as he walked past her. Her eyes found Rodney as she walked around the console. She could see the way he flexed his cheeks and knew that he was restraining himself from jumping in. Sam caught his eye and smiled at him.

“We’ve got a few hours then before we start exploring the city, then right?”

“Yeah,” he nodded at her, “About four or five hours, I guess.”

“Well, I’m going to head to my quarters for a while then. Take a nap or something.”

“Okay.”

She used a quick flash of a smile to be her parting words and retreated from the room. Rodney watched her go until he heard a muffled chuckle near by. “What?”

Zelenka snorted then. “It is nothing.”

“No, you’re chuckling. You don’t chuckle.”

Zelenka looked at him, brows creasing. “I don’t chuckle?”

“You chuckle, just not often. What’s so funny?”

He shrugged at first before he smirked. “So you and Colonel Carter seem to be getting along quite well?”

Rodney swallowed and looked behind them. “You think?”

“Think? McKay, we’re you even listening to your conversation?” Zelenka started laughing again. Rodney just elbowed him in the side. “Well I’m going to go get something to eat. You want to come?”

“Yeah, sure. Was it really that obvious?”

“Obvious?”

/-

“Hey, Cadman? Could I have a word with you?” he called as he took a few jogging steps closer to her.

She paused, long enough to turn around and see him falling into step with her. “Sure. What’s up, McKay?”

He shrugged, shifting awkwardly under her gaze. His hand rose to rub at his neck as he began walking a little faster. “Um… Can I ask you… some questions?”

“Concerning what?”

He looked away at that. “About…” he bobbed his head back and forth, suddenly feeling like his embarrassment might send him running away. “Women…”

He glanced over at him, almost afraid to see what her reaction would be. Her lips were twitching; he could tell she was just one controlled thought away from cracking up at him. “So you want my help now, eh?”

“Yes, well you’re not that… imposing when you’re not in my head.”

“It was easier when I was in your head.”

He laughed awkwardly at her before suddenly shaking his head, “Okay, could we agree to discuss that as little as possible.”

She laughed then, shrugging, “Sure.” He let her voice resonate into silence as they walked a little further. “So what kind of women advice do you need?”

He looked over at him, rolling his eyes as if the answer seemed perfectly obvious. But then he sighed and looked away, his tongue rolling over his lips as he tried to think of the right thing to say. “I like… this person.”

Cadman smirked at him. “And?” she groaned, making a face at him, letting him know that she wanted him to continue.

“And?” His shoulders rose and his hands flailed around uncertainly. Then he just sighed, “And that’s what I need your help with. What should I do about it?”

She shook her head at him. “You could always ask her out.”

He shook his head back. “But I don’t know how she feels about me.”

“Then ask her.”

“But what if she doesn’t like me? I mean… no one really ever seems to be able to do more than tolerate me. But she tolerates me very well. I don’t know if that means anything-”

“Rodney! Shut up!”

“Sorry.”

“Who is she, anyway?”

He couldn’t look at her for a moment, embarrassment reddening his cheeks. He only looked when she smacked him in the arm. She made a face, showing that she was still waiting for her answer. “Colonel Samantha Carter. You probably don’t know her.”

“Yeah, sure I do. Colonel Carter of SG-1.”

He shrugged. “Right. Of course.”

“So what happened to Katie Brown?”

“Um… we broke it off.”

“Really?”

“Yes, well you kind of… creeped her out.”

“Oh, sorry.” She paused in her questions and he took the time to look away and puff out a breath. “So… You like this Sam? The only way you’re going to find out if she likes you is to either ask her how she feels or ask her out on a date and find out for yourself.”

He looked at her and sighed, nodding. “Right. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Rodney nodded, snapping his fingers as he turned around and began to walk away. Cadman shook her head at him, smirking as she continued forward.

Suddenly Rodney u-turned and took a few quick steps to catch back up to her. “What should we do on our date?”

“Just do something simple. Dinner.”

“Dinner… right.”

“But not in the commissary.”

He looked at her for a moment before smiling. “Right.”

“Somewhere like, I don’t know-”

“I’ve got a spot. Thanks.”

“Sure,” she sighed, “No problem.”

He turned around again. She shook her head as she glanced behind her to watch as he walked away. She turned back to watch where she was going just in time to miss him u-turn again, his fingers snapping in thought.

“One last thing.” Cadman just smirked at him. “What should I say?”

Confusion burrowed her brows together just as amusement pulled at her lips. “Hmm… How about, ‘Hey, Sam, wanna go get something to eat with me? I know a great spot with a gorgeous view’. I’m just assuming that there’s a gorgeous view.”

He snapped his fingers together again, “Oh that’s good,” he nodded, “Perfect.” He turned again and began walking away. “Thanks,” he called over his shoulder.

Cadman just shook her head and began walking again. She stopped suddenly, turning and watching as Rodney turned a corner. She sighed and shook her head, laughing suddenly at the entire conversation.

/-

He stepped up to the door, awkwardly looking around himself, checking to make sure no one was there to see him. Swiping his hand over the access terminal, he rocked on his heels, waiting for an answer. Most people on Atlantis had taken to leaving their doors unlocked and to simply call out, but that was assuming they were ever in their quarters, which Rodney would admit he hardly saw his longer than a few hours a day on a good week. This door, however, was locked against unwanted visitors; Rodney didn’t take anything by it.

It took a moment of him waiting, wondering if maybe he had disturbed her shower or that perhaps she wasn’t even inside, just before the door slid open to admit him into the room. Just as he went to step forward, Sam appeared in the doorway. He sighed, forcing a smile on his lips before she saw his nervousness. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Her voice alone was enough to make him blush; his eyes immediately darted away. That was when he noticed her attire- simple grey jogging pants and a white t-shirt with ‘AIR FORCE’ printed on the front.

“Were you still in bed?”

“No,” her brows pulled together, her tone expression her confusion. She glanced down at herself, shaking her head at him, “I was going for a run.”

“A run? Why?” She looked at him, opening her mouth to respond, but Rodney continued, not yet finished with his rant, “That’s just… wrong,” he managed to say about her running, “People aren’t meant to get up and exercise.”

“Oh please. You must do some kind of work out to stay in shape.”

“Sure,” he said with a shrug, crossing his arms over his chest, “I do the occasional push-up. Crunches now and then.”

“Push-up? As in singular?”

“Yeah, you don’t need more than that.”

“Rodney-”

“What, being naturally fit is a crime these days?” She just laughed at him. “Oh yeah, and there’s that matter of being chased by aliens. I’d call that a workout. There’s kilometre after kilometre to walk on those damn planets. That’s a workout. See, I workout, I just don’t enjoy doing it.”

Sam was laughing at him, but Rodney found he didn’t care, because he was far more memorized by her laughter. When she finally contained herself, she asked why he was there. Rodney took a moment to hear the question and then remember an answer. “Oh, well, I was going to ask if you, um, wanted to get something to eat with me, but I guess if you’re so busy with this running thing…”

Sam rolled her eyes at him, stepping out of her doorway. “I’ll be… twenty minutes, tops. Can I meet you there then?” Rodney’s eyes found the ceiling and he made a dramatic face to show that he was considering the option. “McKay!”

The use of his last name got his attention quickly. Her smile was the only thing that kept his light mood alive. “Fine, fine. Twenty minutes? I’ll hold you to that.”

“It might be more like twenty-one minutes.”

“Nope. You’ve got twenty minutes exactly and I eat with out you. Starting… now. Better get going.”

She laughed at him, spinning back around to be facing the right direction. Rodney chuckled lightly as she took off down the hall; shaking his head he closed her door for her and headed back to his quarters. She was trying to kill him. Wearing those sweats, being all cute, and making him wait as his nerves increased exponentially.

He mostly paced as he waited. It didn’t exactly calm the nerves, or dissipate the nerves, or really do anything for them. In fact, it actually made them a little worse.

Finally her time was running out and Rodney made his way towards the cafeteria. He smirked when he noticed her- hair wet and tousled and her hands tucked into her jeans pockets as she leaned against the wall.

“Hey there.”

She smirked at him and pushed off from the wall. “Hey.”

“How was your run?”

“Wonderful. You should join me next time.” He chuckled a little at the thought and tossed his head from side to side. “Shall we?” He creased his brows at the question before he saw her gesturing to the cafeteria’s doors. Then he smirked and shook his head.

It almost wasn’t awkward when he wrapped his fingers around her elbow and pulled her gently away from the door and further down the corridor. “Actually, I had a differently place in mind.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”

“You’ll see.”

She was smirking as they neared the southern pier, still trying to prod the answer out of him. But he just smiled and shook his head, trying desperately to push away the nervousness filling his stomach again. He was focusing on remembering all the tips Cadman had given him.

“All right, close your eyes.”

“Close my eyes?”

“Trust me.” She smiled and shook her head, but shut her eyes even as she did. He took her by the shoulders and gently led her forward, releasing her right only long enough to open the door. “All right… open them.”

“Oh… wow!” She twisted around to look at him. Rodney could only grin at her face. She took a few steps forward, stopping where he knew she could see how high over the ocean they were. The sun was hanging low over the horizon, colouring the water with its red hues. “This is absolutely stunning.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty here.”

They ate in relative silence after she had taken the time to absorb the view. Rodney picked at the remains of his sandwich as the sun finally touched the horizon. “So… you leave in two days?”

“Yep. Wednesday. 1700 hours.”

“Kind of wish you could stay longer. I wouldn’t mind a sane mind hanging around the lab for a while.”

She smirked. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But my orders were to stay just until we figured out the device. Besides, I’d kind of like to bring the ZPM back.”

“Right…” Rodney shifted against the wall, looking away for a moment before he looked back at her. “So, um, this might sound weird but I wanted to thank you for being there for me a little while back in a rather… desperate situation.”

“You’re right. That sounded a little weird.”

He chuckled awkwardly, but stopped himself short as he looked away and tried desperately to remember why this sounded good in his head. “Well, um… I don’t know if you read the mission report but I was sinking in one of the puddle jumpers when it… well crashed-”

“Yes, I’m familiar with that incident. I’m just not sure how I got involved with it?”

“Right, um, you see,” he sighed and twisted to look at her, “You were there. Well, you weren’t there, obviously but you… I hit my head pretty hard,” he said with a twirling motion of his finger towards his forehead, “and I imagined that you were there helping me. Because… Well you really helped me to stay focused and keep me alive until Sheppard and Zelenka were able to get to me and I just wanted to say thank-you.”

She smiled, a sort of awkward, uncomfortable gesture of appreciation. “You’re welcome, I guess.” He just shrugged and looked back out to the ocean, resisting the urge to shudder at the creeping memories. “I wasn’t naked was I?”

“Hmm?” His eyes darted back to find hers. They were smiling and yet her face seemed on the verge of being disgusted.

“I was naked, wasn’t I?”

“Um… well, partially.” And then her expression crossed over into disgust. Her eyes rolled away from him and yet a laugh managed to escape. “Only for a couple of minutes. You make a rather dull fantasy when one is near death.”

“Thanks.”

“You ever experience something like that?”

“Hallucinations?” He looked over at her bemused expressions. He was sure she had lived through her fair share of drug induced, alien induced, and injury induced hallucinations.

“No… Well yes. I mean… hallucinating someone you trust to help you out of a tough spot.”

She smiled a little. He wondered if it was the slip about trusting her or the question itself. “Yes. Once.”

“Really?”

“I hallucinated my team while trapped on the Prometheus.”

“Hmm… When you were trapped in that… energy cloud?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they help?”

“A lot. Surprisingly.”

He just nodded, looking away again, his eyes settling on the sight of the sun lowering even further beneath the horizon. Sam’s eyes however didn’t stray from his relaxed face. She smiled lightly at him. She was surprised at him. He had changed so much since she had met him; since he had left for Atlantis really. He was… nicer was the only way to put it. His sarcasm had dulled some, making his wit funnier, cuter. And he didn’t seem to be trying as hard. As if he had finally found his place in the world and was comfortable with it.

“So…”

“So…”

“Um… What do- um… Do you want- I mean… I’m just going to shut up now.” She laughed lightly as he bumbled through his thoughts. He finally just looked at her, his face begging her to help him out.

“Are you trying to ask me what I’d like to do now?”

“Sure.”

“Just sitting here is kind of nice.”

He smiled, nodding as he shifted into a more comfortable position. “Then we shall sit here… until our butts go numb and we need to get up.”

“That would be a good time to stop sitting here.”

“I thought so.”

She laughed. And yet, despite how much he had changed, he was the same old Rodney, just a little easier to be around. She kind of liked the new him. And that kind of scared her. She wasn’t really sure what to think about the how thing. And she honestly didn’t really want to. She would be leaving soon, not knowing when the next time she would see him would be. She just wanted to enjoy what time left she had with him.

/-

He could tell that every person in the control room would rather that he leave. Chuck had long ago taken over the job of dialling Earth and monitoring the power outage. Rodney didn’t really have much of a job in the control room during such diallings anymore. And yet it made him feel better to wait impatiently, standing and looking at the computer over the technician’s shoulder.

“Wormhole established,” Chuck said as he looked over his shoulder. Rodney grunted down at him, his eyes straying not to the glowing blue circle but to where Sam was standing off to the side, hands stuffed in her pockets as she waited to go through.

He sighed. He had been dreading that moment.

“Hey, Sam.” She smiled up at him. He gestured to her from the top of the stairs to join her up there. She sighed and scooped up her bag, slinging it over her shoulder before jogging up the stairs. She followed him as he lead her a few steps into the corner and away from the hustle of moving everyone and everything through the gate.

“Um… Well this is probably kind of late to be asking this, but… Is there any chance that this-” He sighed, his fingers weaving through the air to gesture between the two of them. “Whatever this is, possibly work?”

“It would bring long-distance relationship to a whole new level,” she tried to smirk and he huffed in an awkward attempt at amusement.

“Yeah…” He sighed. “But I wasn’t really asking how we’re going to make it work… What I was more asking was… are you willing to try?”

She couldn’t look at him. There had some moments when she thought, maybe, she could stay there on Atlantis and that, maybe, something could happen. But then she thought about her life back on Earth and her job there. She sighed. “I… I don’t know, Rodney. I want to say that I’d like to have something, but… I can’t promise anything.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

“I really have no idea what I feel for you, Rodney. I’m… You- you confuse me. I thought I had you figured out. You were just another arrogant jackass genius that got on my nerves and looked at me the wrong way-”

“Sorry about that.” A blush darkened his cheeks; a soft smile pulled at her lips at how embarrassed he looked.

She stepped closer to him, her hand reaching up until it made contact wit his warm skin. “But you’ve changed a lot, Rodney,” she smiled as the pad of her thumb brushed over his jaw, “You’re actually rather cute.”

“Cute?”

“That’s a compliment, trust me.”

“As long as you say so.” She stepped away, letting her hand slowly drop to her side. He looked off to the side, watching medical staff carefully walk their patients through the gate. There was still equipment littering the gateroom floor. Sam just rocked on her heels, adjusting her bag’s strap.

“When we send through the next round of personal messages,” she looked over at him at the sound of his voice. Soft blue eyes were staring back at her. “Look for one with your name on it.”

She smiled at him. “Okay…”

“They’re almost done sending the equipment through.”

She nodded. “I should get going then.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged, his hands stuffing themselves in his pocket. Sam nodded, taking a step away. “Um?”

“Yeah?”

Rodney’s eyes shifted off to the side for a pause before they focused on her. He stepped towards her, closing the space that she had made between them. One hand reached up to cup her cheek, pulling her even closer.

“Well, I guess this is goodbye.”

“For now.” She smiled and shook her head at him. “Bye.”

He watched her take a few steps backwards before finally spinning around to jog down the stairs. She turned to smile up at him when she reached the gate. He pulled one hand free from his pockets to wave down at her. With one awkward wave of her hand and two steps backwards towards the gate, she disappeared from sight.