by C.L.Finn

There are strangers in the gate room.

John Sheppard can’t help watching all the strange faces in familiar uniforms bustling around, checking out his puddle jumpers, sitting in Grodin’s chair. He’s gotten used to the same 200 faces in Atlantis, and this is just weird.

The gate room is already full of crates, more being transported in from the Daedalus as he watches. He thinks he should be much more excited about suddenly having all the things they’ve been dreaming about for months. Things like coffee and familiar food that doesn’t come in foil packaging, new laptops, fresh uniforms, and DVDs that they haven’t all passed around and watched a hundred times already. And he is excited, but it’s weird to suddenly have all the things he’s learned to live without.

“Strange, isn’t it?” Elizabeth is suddenly at his side, leaning against the rail next to him. “Feels a bit like we’re being invaded.”

“Yeah.” It’s disconcerting to have his thoughts echoed back at him, but he figures if anyone knows how he feels it’s Elizabeth. “But there’s coffee somewhere in those boxes.”

She laughs and turns back to watch the Marines pushing crates out of the way before more appear out of thin air. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Why aren’t you?” he counters and pushes off the railing. “I doubt they’re going to manage to break anything, especially with the wrath of McKay over their heads.”

Before McKay left the briefing earlier, he’d declared loudly that he was going to sleep for the next twenty-four hours and if anyone touched his ZPM or anything else in his city while he was asleep, he’d feed them to the Wraith personally. Sheppard wasn’t sure how seriously the new Marines had taken McKay, but after the meeting, he’d heard Elizabeth convince Caldwell to back it up with an order.

Elizabeth smiles sheepishly and John can tell that she’s having just as hard a time as he is accepting that they’re safe. For the time being, anyway.

“Go get some sleep, Major.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He straightens up and gives her a sloppy salute, before turning and starting down the steps to the gate room.

It’s not that John isn’t tired because he’s completely exhausted. Unfortunately, his body is still in crisis mode and he knows that if he lays down now he will only be able to get the kind of light rest that his body has been getting for the past week whenever he had a spare hour to sleep. A Ranger buddy of his used to call it a battle hangover, and that’s the best description John’s ever come across. What he needs is real sleep, and he knows he’s not going to get that until he gets the adrenaline out of his system. So he walks.

There’s a steady stream of new people and equipment moving in the corridors between the gate room and the infirmary, but the infirmary itself is quiet and darker than usual. There are a few nurses moving around silently. The worst of the injured, including Colonel Everett, were sent through the gate to Earth hours ago and the rest, who weren’t cleared to their own quarters, are asleep: four Marines, two Athosians and Dr. Eriikson from botany, who John thinks was hit by shrapnel in one of the early waves of dart attacks. Beckett is curled up asleep on a gurney next to his office, stethoscope still around his neck.

The back room where they’d been keeping Ford is empty. The still-overturned gurney feels like a silent accusation to John, even though he knows he couldn’t have done anything to stop Ford leaving. He turns away because he really wants to be out there looking for the kid. And he knows he can’t. Not yet.

One of the nurses, Dana somethingorother, smiles at John and he smiles back, shaking his head when she asks if he needs anything. He heads back out into the corridor and towards his own quarters, taking the long way through the hallways where most of his people are quartered.

It’s much quieter in this part of Atlantis. The corridors are empty and dark and even the usual hum of the city itself is somehow muted, as if it’s catching up on its own sleep. John figures Rodney would have some explanation about increased power from the ZPM or something like that, but a sleeping city is more poetic so he goes with it.

In the near-silence, he hears someone cry out and is concerned until he hears a second voice, deeper and rougher. He smiles and moves along because it’s hardly a new way to celebrate being alive and he doesn’t want to know anything about his soldiers’ private lives that doesn’t affect their ability to kill Wraith.

Other rooms are empty and he knows he’s going to have to enter them in the next few days to collect personal effects and clear them for new soldiers. Right now he puts his hand in his pocket, feels the cool edges of dogtags, and silently asks the city to keep the empty rooms locked to everyone but him.

When John reaches his own room, his body has wound down enough that he thinks he’ll be able to sleep. His door slides open at the thought, but a cool breeze catches his attention before he goes in. One of the doors onto the observation deck at the end of the corridor is open, so he lets his own door close and goes to investigate.

He’s surprised to find McKay sitting on one of the benches, staring out at the sky. He’s wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants and he doesn’t notice John until he speaks.

“You’re not sleepwalking are you?”

“Huh?” McKay turns and squints up at him despite the lack of bright light. “No, no. Just.” He waves his hand in front of himself, indicating the sky or the city or some other vague thing that John knows he’s supposed to understand.

“Rodney, why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Can’t. Brain won’t shut off.”

John sighs and sits down next to him on the bench. One of the main reasons they picked rooms in this corridor was this balcony and its view. Set high and near the center of the city, the balcony offers a spectacular view of half the city and some of the ocean beyond. Tonight the beauty is somewhat marred by the sections that were smashed and burned by Wraith darts, but it is no less spectacular.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” Rodney asks.

“Body won’t shut off.”

Rodney nods and turns back to looking out at the city. Sheppard leans back and stretches his legs out, crossing them at the ankles, getting comfortable. Rodney is leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. The ends of his hair are wet, probably from an earlier shower, and his t-shirt is riding up in the back, showing a small slice of skin. It’s pale and when John wonders if it would taste soap-clean, he decides he really does need sleep, because this is not somewhere he wants to go. It’s all kinds of complicated that John does not need.

“Oh hey,” he says, sitting up and digging into a pocket. “I got you a present.”

“Present?” Rodney asks, bewildered. He lights up when he sees the bright yellow package. “Where the hell did you get M&Ms?"

“One of the new Marines.”

“I think I love you, Major,” Rodney says fervently, tearing open the package and pouring a handful in his mouth. “Seriously. Thanks.”

John tries to pretend to be grossed out, but can’t help grinning back at him. “Your mother never taught you not to talk with your mouth full?”

Rodney just rolls his eyes and pops some more into his mouth before holding out the bag to offer some to John. In McKay’s World, the sharing of chocolate is a significant gesture so John takes a few M&Ms and doesn’t mention the fact that he has two more bags in his pocket.

When Rodney’s done, he crumples up the package and sticks it in his own pocket then leans back next to him, one thigh resting up against John’s. They sit in silence for a while before John asks, “So what’s going on in that big brain of yours?”

“Hm, calculating how we can maximize the ZPM to conserve power, prioritizing new systems to activate, wondering if we can make our own naquadah drones to work with the chair.”

“No wonder you can’t sleep.”

“Oh, that’s not what’s keeping me awake. I’m also cataloguing the surprisingly numerous and varied ways in which we could have all died.”

“God, Rodney. You think too much.” John turns to look at him, reaching out to wrap a hand around the back of Rodney’s neck. It’s tight as hell and seems to bunch up even more under John’s hand. “We won, Rodney. The Wraith are gone. The city’s still here. And we’re still alive.”

“Not all of us,” Rodney says so quietly that John almost can’t hear him.

“No.” John winces and thinks about the dogtags resting against his thigh. “Not all of us.”

John thinks there are a hundred platitudes he can offer-- they didn’t die in vain, war is like that, they signed up knowing they might not make it back-- but Rodney’s not military and it’s all bullshit anyway. Instead, John does what he can, digging his fingers into the worst of the knots in Rodney’s neck, and smiling when Rodney groans and drops his head forward.

They sit like that for a while, silent except for the occasional inarticulate noise from Rodney when John finds a particularly tough knot. Rodney’s neck is warm and John’s fingers tingle with sensation. It’s been so long since John actually touched anyone that touching Rodney’s neck feels almost obscene and he finds himself holding his breath to keep from breaking the spell. When Rodney slumps forward slightly and then jerks back, John is both reluctant and relieved to pull his hand away and stand up.

“Come on, Rodney. Time for bed.”

Rodney blinks up at John, eyes unfocused and lined in dark circles. “Right, right.”

Rodney follows John back inside and heads for his own room, turning around just as John’s about to go into his. “Major?”

“Yeah?”

“What are we going to do next time?”

“Same thing we do every time, Brain,” he says in his best cartoon mouse voice. “Save the universe by the seat of our pants.”

Rodney actually laughs at that and it’s such a great sound that John can’t help grinning back at him. When Rodney disappears behind his own door, John goes into his room and pulls off his boots, pants, and shirt, collapsing into his bed without even turning on a light. Before he falls asleep, he makes a mental plan to wake Rodney up with fresh brewed coffee in 12 hours or so.

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