"And finally, we of the Yaeti would like to thank our visitors for their generosity and present them with these tokens of our gratitude, so that they too might flourish as the Yaeti now can, thanks to our visitors' aid," said the chief, gesturing magnificently toward the kitchens.

"Oh God, what now?" John said sideways out of his mouth to Teyla.

Teyla made a quiet shh-ing sound and went back to staring intently at the chief and his entourage. It was entirely possible that there was a cause for nervousness there, but then again, Teyla used that same stare on her breakfast Jell-O – it wasn't exactly a sure sign of danger. It was just enough to get John's heart rate spiking a little. Across from her, Rodney was staring at the roast in the middle of the long table and looking like he was going to jump over and start eating it at any second, and Ronon was looking bored. John would have bet money that he was playing with one of his knives under the table.

". . . Therefore we would like to offer our visitors the chance to partake in one of the most ancient ceremonies of our people," the chief was saying, "one which we only offer to those whom we hold in the highest regard . . ."

"You look tense," John whispered. "Why do you look tense?"

Teyla frowned. "I know that our hosts have been nothing but hospitable, but something makes me think that there is more to these people than it would seem," she whispered back. "I would advise against participating in any ritual of theirs until we know more about them."

"Wasn't exactly planning on it," John said.

". . . and so we would like for the Great Feast of Algoon to begin this year with our guests," the chief continued. Trumpets sounded from along the sides of the room, and the huge pair of double doors at the end of the room opened to reveal a beautiful young woman in a sparkling white robe carrying an enormous golden platter loaded with what looked like very fancy dessert.

She walked up to the end of the long table and said, "Who shall be the first to participate in the Feast?"

"I do not know much about these people," Teyla said quietly, "but I have heard rumors of many strange things—"

Teyla was still talking, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Rodney talking to the Yaeti woman holding the tray, then making an enthusiastic grab for one of the cakes.

"Rodney, wait!" John yelled, but it was too late: he'd already taken an enormous bite of it, smearing chocolate all over his face.

"This is delicious," Rodney said happily, and passed out.

*

When Rodney came to, he was in a room full of women. It was kind of bizarre. Whatever it was he'd eaten, it was awesome—it had kind of tasted like a fudge nut brownie, and better yet, it had taken the edge off his hunger. He wasn't hungry at all, actually, which was weird—he couldn't even remember the last time he was completely not hungry. Probably when he was still on Earth, that night he cooked four Hungry Man XXL dinners and ate them all in one sitting. That was a good night. Usually he couldn't think about Hungry Man dinners without getting totally hungry again, but right then not even that was enough to make him hungry. Totally bizarre. He was pretty sure there had to have been some kind of drug in that brownie, because he couldn't figure out how else that would have been enough to fill him up. He was also pretty sure of it because he was in a room full of women, and ordinarily that would be enough to make him break out in hives that looked a whole lot like the ones he got when he consumed something that contained citrus and came close to death, but right now he was feeling pretty calm about the whole thing.

Really calm, actually, and the air felt different than usual—heavier, like it was actually water instead of air, or maybe it was just his arms that were heavy, and God, yes, there had definitely been drugs, and that should have been freaking him out, that there had been drugs, but the drugs were even taking away his ability to freak out, which, okay. He was okay with that. Thanks to the drugs.

Anyway, the women were all wearing shiny low-cut robes in various bright colors. They were also all really incredibly pretty—like, quite possibly the prettiest roomful of women he'd ever been dropped into in his life. He felt a little bit like he'd just been dropped into the middle of a Miss Yaeti pageant. He was even wearing a robe like the rest of theirs, which was just weird, although at least his was navy blue and not hot pink or something.

"Oh!" one of the women said. "Look, Dr. Rodney McKay is awake!"

"Um, yes," Rodney said. "Yes, I am. What am I doing here exactly? And where is the rest of my team?"

"Oh, do not worry about them," said the woman nearest him, a brunette in a bright blue robe. "They are perfectly fine."

Rodney was reasonably sure that under ordinary circumstances he'd be very freaked out right now. He was in a room full of women—there had to be at least fifty of them—and usually that would be an extremely stressful environment for him. It was kind of hard to freak out when he felt so calm, though.

"Okay," he said. "So what am I doing here?"

"Preparing to participate in the ritual, of course," said a younger woman in a green robe.

"Oh, yes, of course," Rodney said. "What am I going to have to do, exactly?"

The women giggled. It was a good thing the drug was keeping him so calm, because otherwise he would have been out of there so fast. Fifty women giggling all at once! That was creepy.

"Well, first you need to choose one of us to join you in performing the ritual," the blue-robed woman explained.

"Choose?" Rodney said. "Any one of you? It doesn't matter which one?'

The women all looked baffled. "Whichever one of us you'd most like to join you in the ritual," the same woman said.

"All right, then." Since he didn't have a clue what the ritual was going to entail—and if there was one thing he'd learned since he'd been in the Pegasus Galaxy, it was never to assume that the aliens weren't going to make you do something totally crazy, like have three-legged races with dog-like creatures chasing after you (and Rodney was so never going to back Axeilu ever again)—Rodney picked a women who looked like she'd be good in a fight: a youngish brunette in a pale green robe.

"Megya," the woman in the blue robe said. "She is a good choice."

"Yes, of course, I have excellent taste," Rodney said, turning toward a sound coming from behind him: a set of doors had opened out of the wall, and he and Megya were being herded toward them. "What's going on? Where are you taking us?"

"To perform the ritual," Megya said, placing a hand on Rodney's arm.

"Oh, okay," Rodney said. He thought vaguely that maybe he should push her hand off, but that would have been too much effort.

She led him down a long hallway that might have had curved walls—although that might have been the drugs talking—and then through another set of doors onto what looked to be some sort of platform. It might have been a stage, but there were these really bright lights shining directly into his eyes, so he couldn't be entirely certain.

Megya took his hand and led him to the center of the platform, where there was a piece of furniture that looked like an extremely large and comfortable bed. Lying down on it would probably feel amazing right now. It looked like it would have silk sheets. Rodney liked silk.

"It is time to perform the ritual," Megya said.

"Which entails what, exactly? I'm still not quite clear on—"

Megya looked pointedly at the bed, then at Rodney, toying with the edge of her robe.

"Oh dear God, 'perform the ritual' was just a terrible euphemism all this time," Rodney said weakly. "You want me to have sex with you?"

Distantly Rodney was aware that there were other voices in the room with him, but the lights were very bright and he was on a lot of drugs and the voices may very well have been in his own head anyway, so he ignored them for the time being and concentrated on the very pressing issues at hand, which was Megya biting her lip and saying, "Indeed, that is part of the ritual."

"Oh," Rodney said, breaking free of her grip and backing away quickly. "I'm sorry, Megya. You're a very beautiful woman, and I'm sure lots of men would love to, uh, perform the ritual with you! But I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't?" Megya said, looking deeply troubled. "But you have to. You ate the Fruit of Sagoon. You have to perform the ritual."

"No, I mean, I can't," Rodney said. "I'm gay."

The voices Rodney had been hearing in the background went completely silent, except for one.

"Seriously?" Sheppard said.

Suddenly Rodney could see past the lights and into the room. He was back in the banquet hall, which was filled with all the people from before, including Ronon, Teyla and Sheppard, all of whom had front-row seats near the stage, right next to the chief.

The entire room was giving him the same puzzled look as Megya, who said, "I do not understand this word 'gay'. What does it mean?"

"It means I don't sleep with women," Rodney said serenely. "It means I prefer men."

Ronon and Teyla exchanged a look that Rodney was reasonably sure he should be getting worked up over—a look that contained a whole lot of, "I thought so." Sheppard's expression was unreadable.

"Oh dear," said the chief. "That does change things, doesn't it."

Rodney looked down at his robe. "Can I have my clothes back now? And can somebody please tell me what's going on?"

*

Rodney felt a whole lot better after he lost the robe. The drug was definitely still in his system, though, because Sheppard was doing that hissing thing he did when he was too angry to yell, and it wasn't even fazing Rodney. It was kind of incredible.

"You don't have any idea what you ate, or what effects it could be having on your body right now, other than that it apparently made you agree to participate in a sex ritual—"

"I didn't agree to it," Rodney told him. "And I didn't actually participate in it, anyway!"

"Yeah, because you're gay," Sheppard said. "Speaking of which, did it not occur to you anytime in the past year that that might be something I'd want to know?"

Rodney managed to get a little worked up at that even through the drugs. "Sorry if announcing I was gay to a mostly military operation didn't sound like the best idea ever, Colonel."

Sheppard made a frustrated noise. "I didn't mean announcing it to the entire operation, Rodney. I just meant you could have told me. Because we're friends."

Rodney felt like eight kinds of asshole. "We're friends?" he said.

Sheppard sighed heavily. "Yes, Rodney. We're friends."

Rodney tried unsuccessfully to stop flushing. "Oh. Very well, then." He was sort of awful at apologies; that was really about as good as it was going get. Sheppard's face relaxed a little, though, which had to mean he understood—which, huh, maybe they really were friends. The thought made something tighten in Rodney's chest.

A thought occurred to him, and then the moment was broken. "What happened to Ronon and Teyla?" Rodney asked.

"Oh," Sheppard said. "They're off talking to the Yaeti chief, trying to figure out exactly what it is you ate and what ritual you were supposed to be a part of." Any fondness that might have been on his face before was completely gone.

Rodney swallowed. "Oh. That's—yes, well. That's probably a good idea."

"I thought so too," Sheppard drawled, eyes narrowed, and they sat down to wait.

*

"I have some good news," Teyla said when she and Ronon walked in half an hour later.

"You do?" Rodney said, sitting up straight in his chair.

"Yes." Teyla hesitated, then continued slowly, "I also have some other news which might be slightly less to your liking."

"Okay," John said slowly. "And the good news is?"

"I was able to learn about this ritual that Dr. McKay was meant to have taken part in. It is . . . strange."

"Strange," Rodney said. "What do you mean, strange?" He was still speaking at about half the rate of normal—which was still about eight times faster than any normal human being—but he looked a little more stressed than he had before, actually flapping his hands around a little and snapping his fingers in exacerbation, which was good: maybe it meant that the drug was leaving his system.

Teyla hesitated, then said, "It is called the Ritual of Algoon. It is meant to be carried out as a form of worship to the god Agnot."

"Have you heard of this god before?" John asked.

Teyla nodded. "Yes. Many peoples on many worlds worship him."

"Yes, yes, that's lovely, but what was this ritual going to be, exactly?" Rodney asked.

"I am afraid that that is the bad news," Teyla said, her forehead wrinkled like she was distinctly sorry to have to be telling them this at all.

Rodney made an impatient noise. "Well, go on!"

Teyla took a deep breath. "It is a bonding ritual," she said.

Rodney stared. "A bonding ritual?"

"Yes." Teyla nodded. "The cake you consumed contains the extract of a fern called kallwot. It grows in the forests of my people as well, and our children all know that it is one of the plants of the forest that is not safe to eat."

"Great," Rodney said.

"The Yaeti claim that it is safe to consume as long as it is properly counteracted within a certain amount of time."

"How much time?" Rodney asked.

"Twenty-four hours," Ronon said.

"Oh, that's okay then," Rodney said.

John stared at him. "It is?"

"Well, it can't have been anywhere near twenty-four hours yet," Rodney said. "Just get me the antidote and everything will be fine, we can go home, no harm done."

"You do not understand," Teyla said. "There is no . . . antidote, really."

Rodney's jaw dropped. "But you just said it could be counteracted!"

"Yes, but not through the use of another medicine," Teyla said urgently. "The Yaeti claim that the only means of counteracting the plant would involve going through with the ritual."

"Really," John said slowly. "And that makes sense how, exactly?"

"I do not know," Teyla said. "But I know this: when they are children, my people are warned more strictly against the consumption of this plant than against any other plant that grows in our forests. No one in my village understands all of the properties of this fern, but they know that it is deadly. So if the Yaeti are knowledgeable enough about the uses of this fern to know that the ritual is the only way of counteracting its effects of the plant, then we might want to seriously consider trusting them about this."

"Trusting them?" John said incredulously. "Basically what you're saying here is that if Rodney doesn't have sex within the next twenty-four hours, he's going to die."

"He has to take part in a binding ceremony, yes," Teyla said.

"I think we might want to speak with Elizabeth," John said. He couldn't decide which urge was stronger: the urge to bury his head in his hands or the urge to push Rodney up against a wall and strangle him.

*

Elizabeth was silent for a long beat, then said, "So if he'd actually gone through with this ritual, Rodney would be married to a Yaeti woman right now?"

"That is correct," Teyla said, glancing at Rodney.

"Not that I'm saying it's a bad thing that you didn't do it, but why exactly didn't you go ahead with the ritual?"

"Because I'm gay," Rodney told her, and oh yeah, the drug was definitely still in his system. Saying that wasn't making him freak out at all.

"Ah, " Elizabeth said. "All right, then. So what are we going to do here, Rodney?"

"Wait, that's really all you have to say about it?" Rodney said. "I mean—that's not going to be a problem or anything?"

Even over the radio, Rodney could hear her trying very hard not to laugh. "I think we have more pressing issues at hand, Rodney," she said finally.

"Oh! Yes, that. Well, I'm sure if we come back to Atlantis Dr. Beckett will be able to come up with something," Rodney said.

"In the next . . . how long do you still have? Twenty hours?" Elizabeth sounded dubious. "Dr. Beckett is good, but you're talking about isolating an unknown drug and creating an antidote for it from scratch when people who commonly use it have already said that none exists."

"Which is a good reason not to use the drug in the first place," Rodney said.

"That coming from the guy who ingested it, never mind," Sheppard said.

"Gentlemen," Elizabeth said. "This isn't helping."

"Gee, you think?" Rodney snapped. "Tell that to Lieutenant Colonel Obvious here."

Elizabeth sighed. "Sounds like the sedative part of the drug is wearing off at least."

"Oh, huh, you're right," Rodney said. "I hadn't even realized. Maybe they were lying about how long the drug lasts, and it's already worn off, and we can go home and forget this whole thing ever happened! Right, well, I have all sorts of simulations I need to get back to, so—"

Teyla shook her head, though, and over the radio Elizabeth was saying, "We can't assume anything. I'm not willing to take that big of a risk with your life, Rodney. Are you?"

Rodney opened and closed his mouth.

"He's not," Sheppard answered for him.

"I didn't think so," Elizabeth said. "Now look, I have an idea. But you're probably not going to like it."

*

"No way," John said. "Not a chance in hell, Elizabeth. I'm sorry."

"You're not willing to do this to save Rodney's life?" Elizabeth said.

"I thought you said we were friends, Colonel," Rodney said, the corners of his mouth falling down hilariously. He looked like John had just drowned his pet.

"We are," John said a little desperately, although it was sort of weird to say it out loud like that—not like everyone didn't already know they were friends or anything, but it wasn't something they were supposed to talk about. "But don't you think this kind of goes above and beyond the lines of friendship?"

"I would do it for you!" Rodney said.

"You're gay!"

"We've established that!"

"I'm not!" John told him.

"You wouldn't be willing to sleep with me even if it meant I was going to die if you didn't?" Rodney snapped, the color high in his cheeks, and John pretty much felt like the world's biggest asshole.

"Fine," John said. "Fine! If it meant saving your life then yes, Rodney, I would sleep with you."

Rodney let out a huge breath. "You would? Oh, thank God. That's—well, yes, very good. I'm not going to die."

Elizabeth coughed. "I'm hoping it isn't going to come down to that. From what Teyla was saying, it seemed like the bonding ritual itself was the important thing, and that the, well, consummation of that bond was only part of it. I'm hoping the consummation might not be necessary."

"Aren't they the same thing?" Rodney asked.

"I'm not sure," Elizabeth said. "Teyla, do you think you could find that out?"

"I will do my best," Teyla said.

"In the meantime, Rodney, I want you to take a blood sample and send it back through the stargate with Ronon. I'll have Dr. Beckett start analyzing it immediately."

"Very well," Rodney said, digging through the pile of their gear for the emergency medical kit they'd brought with them from the puddlejumper.

"And John?" Elizabeth said.

"What?" John said warily.

"Thank you. And try not to panic."

John felt the sides of his mouth quirking downwards. "It's a little too late for that," he said.

*

Astonishingly, it turned out that Elizabeth was right: it really was just the bonding that mattered, and not the sex. The Yaeti chief was baffled as to why Rodney wouldn't want to take part in the worship of Agnot, and there was a particularly tense moment when Rodney insisted that he wasn't going to marry any of the Yaeti whether the chief went and hunted down potentially willing men or not, but eventually Teyla managed to smooth things over.

John sort of wished she hadn't, because that meant that he found himself standing next to Rodney in the middle of the Yaeti ceremonial hall while the chief called upon Agnot to bless their union and the Yaeti sang and chanted and Teyla looked on. It wasn't that different from a wedding on Earth, really, except for how it was by far the strangest thing that had ever happend to John, and since that list included relocating to another galaxy and turning most of the way into a giant bug, that was kind of saying something.

After what seemed like a good twenty minutes of calling upon Agnot, the chief pulled out a pair of matching gold rings—pretty much identical to every other pair of wedding bands John had ever seen—and handed one to each of them. "The bond will not be completed until you have placed these on each other's fingers," he said, and so John took Rodney's hand and slid it onto his ring finger and Rodney did the same for him. It felt a little weird as the band went on, like it was shrinking to fit him.

The chief said, "The bond is complete," and the ring bit down on John's finger.

"Ow," John said, just as Rodney yelled, "Jesus, what was that?" but by then the biting sensation had already stopped and instead his hand just tingled a little.

"The bond is complete," the chief said, spreading his arms out wide.

"What now?" Rodney hissed. "Do you want to, uh, shake hands or something?"

John wasn't entirely sure what made him do it. Maybe it was just because this was a wedding, and that was what you did at weddings, even ones where you were marrying your gay best friend to save him from the poisoned pot brownie he'd eaten. Or maybe it was just because he was completely insane, but John ignored Rodney's outstretched hand, grabbed Rodney by the shoulder and kissed him.

Rodney made a surprised little mmph noise and leaned in toward John, grabbing both of his shoulders and really kissing him, mouth open and everything, and John pretty much fell over in shock.

It wasn't long before Rodney pulled away—it couldn't have been long—and the crowd started clapping.

"Uh," Rodney said, flushing. "That was—sorry about that." He was breathing hard. So was John.

"You know that wasn't—we aren't going to—" John tried to say.

"Right, no, of course not," Rodney said hastily.

"Good. Because—yeah. Can we never speak of this again?"

"Definitely," Rodney said. "Not speaking. Done."

They didn't say anything for a long, awkward moment. John looked at his feet.

"Anyway!" Rodney said brightly. "Can we get back to Atlantis now?"

"That's the best idea I've heard all day," John said. When he clenched his left hand into a fist, he could feel the ring digging into his skin.

*

"I've got some good news, and I've got some better news," Beckett said. "The good news is that Rodney isn't going to die."

"Oh, thank God," Rodney said. Beckett was his favorite person in the world. Beckett was his favorite person in every galaxy that existed.

"I still can't figure out just what that toxin was that was in your blood—it's terribly complex—but the important thing is that all of it is gone. There's not even a trace of it left in your system."

"That is good news," Elizabeth said, glancing between Rodney and Sheppard. "So the bonding ceremony must really have worked."

"Or something," Beckett said. "I don't know what did it, but as long as the toxin's gone, we'll consider that good enough for the moment."

Sheppard was standing on the far side of the counter and looking anywhere but at Rodney. Rodney wondered if Sheppard was as completely aware of the ring as he was. It didn't hurt or anything, it was just that he couldn't seem to stop playing with it, that was all.

"And the better news is, I know what those rings released into your bloodstream when they pinched you," Beckett said.

"Wait, what?" Rodney said. "How is that better news than the fact that I'm not going to die?"

They all completely ignored him, heartless bastards that they were, and Elizabeth said, "So what was it, exactly?"

Beckett coughed. "An aphrodisiac."

Sheppard's eyes snapped to Beckett. "A what?"

"Just a mild one," Beckett said quickly, "but it seems to be geared toward, ah, how shall I say this. The wearer of the other ring."

"So what you're saying is, there's a customized aphrodisiac in my system right now?" Sheppard sounded about as dangerous as Rodney had ever heard him. "Customized to McKay?"

Beckett actually took a step backwards. "Well, yes, but—"

"Can you fix it?" Sheppard said. "Or block it or something?"

"I should be able to, yes," Beckett said, his brow wrinkled. "Just give me half an hour."

Sheppard relaxed visibly. Rodney swallowed. So that probably explained why Sheppard had kissed him. Rodney wasn't disappointed; that wasn't the right word, because Sheppard was only doing this because he had to do, to save Rodney's life, and Sheppard was straight, and nothing was ever going to come of this. Rodney was just going to put the whole thing out of his mind and take off the ring, and everything was going to go back to being normal.

*

The ring wouldn't come off. John had tried every goddamned thing he could think of in the hour since Beckett had sent him and Rodney away—to their separate quarters, because no way in hell was John going to stick around Rodney when he was under the influence of an aphrodisiac that was supposedly making him want to sleep with Rodney—and the ring wouldn't freaking come off, not even when John ran his hand under hot water and used soap or rubbed oil on it or beat it against the wall.

His hand was throbbing from all of it by the time Beckett finally called him back to the clinic and gave him and Rodney a shot.

"Thank God that's over with," John said afterwards. He didn't really feel any different, but then again for all he'd been worrying about, he hadn't really wanted to jump Rodney's bones even when the aphrodisiac was in him.

Beckett ran a couple more tests and decided that the antidote had worked, so they could leave, so John said thanks and left.

As soon as they were outside of the clinic, though, Rodney cornered him. "Colonel Sheppard," he said, getting a little closer in to John's personal space than he really would have liked. "Your ring. Have you tried—"

"Taking it off?" John said in a low voice. "Yeah, about that." He held up his hand. It was still red and splotchy from the hot water. "No such luck."

"Me neither," Rodney said. His hand looked just as bad as John's. "That's sort of—worrying, don't you think?"

John clenched his jaw. "I'll say."

"We should maybe go look in the lab," Rodney said. "See if the Ancients had anything about this in their database."

John definitely should have thought of that before he started whacking his hand against the wall. "Right," he said, exhaling heavily. "Let's get on that."

But before they could, their headsets came on and Elizabeth said, "Rodney? John? I'd like to see you in my office, if you have a minute."

Rodney looked at John, then said to Elizabeth, "Can it wait?"

"It's probably better if it doesn't," she said.

*

"Gentlemen," Elizabeth said as they walked into her office. "I've got some news."

"Isn't this just a red letter day," Rodney said.

"Good news or bad?" John asked. Elizabeth hesitated a second before answering, so John just went ahead and said for her, "I'll take that as a bad."

"Not bad so much as interesting," she amended.

"I'm not a huge fan of interesting. I'm a much bigger fan of 'really, really good', myself," John said, while Rodney fidgeted next to him.

"Aren't we all," Elizabeth mused. "Are you all right, Rodney?"

"Yes!" Rodney said. "Yes, yes, I'm completely fine, really, don't have any idea why you would ask."

"Are you sure about that? Because you look a little—"

"It's the rings," Rodney blurted out. "They won't come off."

"Rodney. I thought we were going to look in the database before we said anything," John hissed.

"She was giving me a look!" Rodney said.

"Traitor," John said, glaring at him.

"John," Elizabeth said. Then, to Rodney: "What have you tried?"

"Everything short of looking in the Ancient database," Rodney said. "You called right before we got around to that."

"That's somewhat troubling," Elizabeth said, "but yes, do check the database and see if the Ancients have anything to say about this. Hopefully it won't end up meaning anything—"

"Yeah, because that's likely," John said.

"—but I'm afraid that I have some more news about this ritual," Elizabeth continued. "I spoke with Teyla a little while ago. She said that one of the Yaeti elders approached her as you were leaving."

"She did?" John said.

"Yes, she did," Elizabeth said. "And apparently the elder told her that there's a certain . . . condition that needs to be carried out, after a bonding ceremony has taken place. He said it was important that the newly bonded pair sleep in close proximity."

"In close proximity," Rodney said. "That's—that's not particularly convenient, but I think there might be an open set of quarters on the next corridor over from mine—"

"I'm not moving out of my room!" John said.

"Gentlemen." Elizabeth's tone of voice was enough to make both of them stop talking and look at her, which in Rodney's case was really saying something. She sounded tired, or possibly like she wanted to hit somebody. Probably Rodney, if John had to guess—he just had that kind of effect on people. "Being on the next corridor over isn't going to cut it. The elder told Teyla you need to be in the same bed."

There was a moment of horrified silence.

"This is the part where you're completely and utterly kidding, right?" John said.

Rodney snapped his fingers. "Wait, I've got it: it's April Fool's on Earth, isn't it? It has to be. It's, yes, convert the months to—No, wait, it's only mid-March. You're not kidding, are you? This is—this is not good."

Elizabeth let out the most long-suffering sigh John had ever heard, and started talking. Sometime around the middle of the sentence, "I think they might have found another set of quarters with a larger bed in them in that new wing down by the clinic," it hit John that she might not actually be joking.

*

"That's it?" Sheppard said. "That's all you've got?"

Rodney looked down at the box in his hands. It contained a pillow, his favorite of the Athosian blankets—one that finally wasn't scratchy, and probably that meant it was made out of some giant space insect's secretions, but he so didn't care—a hand towel, toiletries and his pajamas. It was a completely logical set of items to be bringing with him when they were going to be sleeping in the same room. "What do you mean?"

Sheppard stared at him. "I mean, where's the rest of your stuff? I know you have more crap than that. Elizabeth said you brought more contraband than any other person on the mission—"

"That is a lie," Rodney said. He hadn't brought that much extra stuff (nothing that wasn't absolutely vital to the success of the mission, anyway); just a few bags of coffee, that was all, things that he was fairly certain were going to run out soon—and he'd been right, coffee really did come at a premium here. Anyway, Rodney's stash was pretty well entirely depleted by now, so he didn't have that many personal items anymore. The six redundant external hard drives and the three laptops that contained his research were all team gear.

"Anyway," Sheppard continued. "What'd you do with the rest of your stuff?"

"I don't understand," Rodney said. "It's still in my room, where else would it—" And then finally, at Sheppard's puzzled expression, he gets it. "Oh my God, you're talking about actually moving in here! I never even—"

"You never even what?" Sheppard asked, eyes narrowing.

"We just have to sleep together, not actually co-inhabit!" Rodney knew exactly how bad that must have come out from the fact that his ears were turning red; he could feel it. "I'm not giving up my old quarters. You must be out of your mind."

"So you're really planning on sleeping here and showering and changing and everything else over there?" Sheppard said, one eyebrow raised.

"Yes," Rodney said. "I don't see why not." And in fact there were about a dozen reasons why it was a really good idea to keep his old quarters, actually, including but not limited to the fact that being naked in a bathroom that was attached to a room that contained Colonel Sheppard was absolutely a disaster waiting to happen, but of course Sheppard wouldn't think of that, because Sheppard was straight.

"I don't know," Sheppard said. "It just seems a little inefficient, that's all."

"Inefficient?" Rodney said. "Well, yeah, but how permanent do you really think this arrangement is going to be? Give me and Zelenka a couple hours with the Ancient database and I'm sure we'll find something."

Rodney had wanted to start searching immediately after they'd spoken with Elizabeth earlier, but Dr. Beckett, bane of Rodney's existence that he was, had forbidden him from any work until the next morning at least, because, "There might still be some lingering side effects of the drug you took." When Rodney had made the point that there weren't going to be any lingering side effects of a drug that was no longer in his system, Beckett had threatened to put him in the clinic for 24-hour observation because, "It sounds like you might need it."

"That won't be necessary," Rodney had said, which was how he'd found himself searching for a larger set of quarters with Sheppard, who apparently wanted them to live together.

"A couple hours to figure this out? Really?" Sheppard said.

"We've significantly improved our search algorithms, so yes, a couple of uninterrupted hours should be sufficient," Rodney said.

"Uninterrupted being the key word here," Sheppard muttered. "Whatever. You can do whatever you want, but right now I'm going to bed in my new quarters."

"I really hate you sometimes," Rodney said. "I just want you to know that."

Sheppard did that really hideously annoying thing where he pretended Rodney didn't exist at all. Rodney sighed in frustration and went and changed in the bathroom. He felt stupid and overly modest for changing in the bathroom instead of in the middle of the room, like he was a twelve-year-old girl blushing around the high school boys. It was stupid. He wasn't the one who had issues sleeping with other men.

He was slightly gratified when he went back into the room after brushing his teeth and Sheppard went into the bathroom to change, too. Slightly gratified, at least, until he saw all of Sheppard's stuff—every single damned thing he owned, all neatly placed all over the room—and maybe this wasn't supposed to be a contest, but Rodney wasn't about to lose, damn it. He sort of wanted to go ahead and get his stuff now, but he was already yawning, and the bed was larger and did look more comfortable than the one in his quarters. Plus it had another of the non-scratchy Athosian blankets on top of it, which was always a plus. He slid down under the covers, stuffing his pillow under his head, and fell asleep pretty much instantly.

*

John really didn't think he was being all that illogical with his whole moving-into-the-new-quarters plan. He had no interest in having half of his stuff in one place and half of his stuff in another—talk about things that would be a pain in the ass—and Rodney couldn't really have any idea of how long it would take to figure this whole thing out. Regardless of how long it actually ended up taking, John was pretty damned sure it was going to be longer than a couple of hours, and if they were going to be stuck in this arrangement indefinitely, it made a whole lot of sense to go ahead and get used to it. Plus, whether Rodney had noticed it or not, these quarters were a whole lot nicer than either of their old rooms. This place had a balcony, even, which John was looking forward to using as much as humanly possible.

This was all completely logical, at least, until it came down to the actual sharing-a-bed-with-Rodney part. It wasn't about the gay thing—John would have been willing to stake his life on the fact that Rodney wasn't going to try anything—and it definitely wasn't about the bed. The bed itself was amazing, definitely the best bed John had run across in Pegasus. He'd gotten used to thinking of them as small and slightly lumpy, with a tendency to slant toward one side or the other—when he'd first arrived, John had woken up on the floor most days—but this bed was amazing, huge and just the right amount of squishy. John had absolutely no complaints about the bed.

No, it was about the fact that Rodney McKay was by far the worst bedmate John had ever had in his life. The guy was like a combination of all of the worst things about old people and little kids: snoring like train and flailing his limbs around like he was trying to do his best impression of an octopus. And the worst thing was, while John knew for a fact that the longest Rodney had slept consecutively since 1987 was four and a half hours, during those few hours? Rodney was completely unwakeable.

It was totally fucking miserable. They hadn't gotten around to moving a couch into these quarters yet, but if they had, John absolutely would have been sleeping on it.

*

Rodney completely hated Sheppard for being right, but the next day, he didn't have two uninterrupted hours to search the Ancient database. He didn't have two uninterrupted seconds. There were about three dozen emergencies at any given moment that only he was qualified to deal with, including the fact that the generators were drawing power from the ZPM at about twenty times the normal rate—which wouldn't have been such an enormous emergency if it weren't for the fact that there was an incoming Wraith dart, apparently trying to find out if Atlantis had really stayed destroyed or not, and they weren't going to be able to get the cloak to stay in place for anywhere near long enough if the power generators weren't fixed.

It worked out in the end, but it was all very stressful for a while there, especially when it had looked like maybe Sheppard was going to have to fly a puddlejumper up again and draw the dart away from the city—which was a disturbing concept for a large number of reasons, including but not limited to the distinct possibility that it would have gotten Sheppard killed again—but luckily it never came to that. Rodney and Sheppard both passed out at a little after seven p.m., after the danger had passed, and Rodney slept straight through until four a.m. It was highly disconcerting. Rodney hadn't slept that much since . . . he didn't even know when, probably not since he was still in the womb.

Getting that much sleep left him twitchy with too much energy, so he went straight into the lab and picked up a problem Zelenka had been working on all night, which it turned out he'd been going about completely wrong, and if Zelenka had actually known when to take a break and get some sleep, Rodney wouldn't be having to clean up all of his mistakes right now. It was a really good thing that Rodney was here to check his work for him; otherwise they all might have died.

Fixing Zelenka's errors took him the better part of the morning, and then right around lunchtime one of the less-skilled off-world teams decided it would be a good idea to go and get themselves captured by Genii spies on a supposedly-uninhabited planet, and then Rodney had to help figure out a way to get them off the planet even though the Genii had done some tricky technological things to try to keep them there—and figuring that out was all so stressful that Rodney didn't even remember that he hadn't looked at the Ancient database until he was already most of the way asleep, Sheppard's face buried in the pillow beside him.

It was only worse the next day: the Genii apparently didn't think they were through with Atlantis yet, which was so, so wrong, by the way—Rodney would have been happy to tell them that if they'd been willing to take a moment to stop and listen, but that was exactly the problem in the first place, that they wouldn't—and Elizabeth got caught up in the whole mess, which Rodney could have told her was a bad idea from the start, seeing as anything involving the Genii was a bad idea from the start. But they got that all worked out too, more or less, at least enough so that Rodney could collapse into bed a little after two a.m. and be completely dead to the world and just not think about anything that was happening other than his head, and the pillow, and the fact that he still hadn't looked at the Ancient database at all.

Maybe he'd have some time the day after that, if the entire damned galaxy would stop conspiring against him. There wasn't really much point to getting out of bed and trying to figure it out right then, though; he'd do it in the morning.

*

After the third night in a row that he couldn't sleep for more than half an hour straight without Rodney snoring or kicking him or trying to smother him with his arm, John decided it was time to do something about it. So the next night he waited until Rodney had finally come to bed—at a little after two in the morning, and it wasn't Rodney's fault, he knew that, but still, it wasn't like the past three days hadn't been completely insane for him, too—and then John got up and took the transport back to his own quarters to actually get some decent sleep.

The whole thing about him and Rodney having to sleep in the same bed was just some made-up excuse to ensure that newly-married couples made plenty of babies, John was sure. And John hated to break it to the Yaeti and their post-ritual rules, but that wasn't going to be an issue for him and Rodney. Totally apart from the biological impossibilities there, it wasn't like he and Rodney were going to be having sex.

So yeah, the whole one-bed thing was completely stupid and irrelevant, and it was incredibly nice to have a whole bed to stretch out in, even if it was smaller than the one he'd been sharing with Rodney. It was great having all the blankets to himself too, and to know that he could go to bed without living in fear of Rodney the Human Space Heater smothering him in his sleep. John fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

*

Rodney woke up screaming. It felt like someone was drilling his skull open—not metaphorically, but like, with an actual drill, which was way more painful than it sounded, and it totally wasn't a migraine, it was so much worse than a migraine, and it was about all he could do to grab his headset off the nightstand and yell, "Beckett! Clinic!" into it before he stopped having any more coherent thoughts at all.

The next thing he was aware of was someone shining a flashlight into his eyes. "Ow, Jesus, stop that," Rodney said, trying to bat the light away.

"He's conscious again," Beckett said.

"Well yes, obviously I'm conscious," Rodney snapped.

And then from somewhere to his left he heard: "Can I get some water or something?"

"Sheppard?" Rodney said, turning his head to the side. Amazingly enough, his head didn't hurt anymore. He wasn't entirely sure when that had happened, but he wasn't about to complain about it.

"Hiya, Rodney," Sheppard said. He looked incredibly sheepish, which didn't really make a whole lot of sense. Rodney sort of wanted to pat him on the shoulder and tell him that everything would be okay.

Rodney was still trying to puzzle out what, exactly, was making Sheppard look like that, when Beckett turned to glare at Sheppard and said, "You can get some water in a minute. After you explain what you were doing trying to sleep back in your old quarters instead of in the quarters with Dr. McKay like you were supposed to be, that is."

Suddenly Rodney felt a whole lot less sympathetic. "You did what?"

"He went to sleep in his old quarters," Beckett said. "And judging from the transporter readings, you'd only been apart for about an hour when you both woke up screaming."

"Sorry that I didn't have any idea it was going to cause us terrible pain if we weren't sleeping in the same bed," Sheppard snapped.

"That's not the point!" Beckett said. "The point is that the Yaeti haven't been wrong about anything yet, as far as this whole ritual is concerned, and so if they say that you need to be sleeping in the same bed, I'd imagine you had better bloody well do it."

"So you just, what, decided to go and sleep in your old bed because you were curious to see what would happen?" Rodney said. "Brilliant plan, Sheppard, really—I don't see any flaws in it at all—"

"You kick in your sleep!" Sheppard said.

"—should always just test your ideas without even thinking them all the way through, I—wait, what?"

"You kick," Sheppard repeated, looking a whole lot like he wanted to die for saying it. "And you heat up the whole bed. And sometimes you try to smother me in my sleep."

"There's just no way I—really?"

"Really," Sheppard said miserably.

"That's lovely that we know why you did something so idiotic now, Sheppard, but do you think you could maybe put the argument on hold long enough for me to check your vitals?" Beckett said.

"Oh! Well, yes, obviously," Rodney said, and let Beckett fit him with a blood pressure cuff.

After twenty minutes of tests, it was pretty clear that there wasn't anything wrong with either of them anymore—and that Beckett didn't have any idea what could have caused the sudden-death-migraines they'd both experienced. "At least it's over now," Beckett said finally. "Now, do you think you can both refrain from being completely stupid? I would keep you here overnight for observation, but, well, based on the evidence, it's probably better for you to go back and sleep in the same bed," Beckett finished, bright red.

John completely hated his life.

The moment Beckett kicked them out of the clinic, Rodney said, "Now, where were we? Oh, right, you were alleging that I kick in my sleep—which, by the way, is a bald-faced lie."

"How would you know?" Sheppard hissed. "You're asleep for it."

Rodney was all ready with another comeback—Sheppard wasn't really on his game right now; they could keep this up for ages—but the more Rodney thought about it, the more he had this niggling memory of a grad school girlfriend (Sara? Or maybe Bethany.) who'd sworn up and down that he was the worst person she'd ever shared a bed with in her life. At the time he'd still been in the middle of the dawning revelation that he didn't actually like women at all, so he'd written it off as part of the whole, "Well, I don't like your gender, anyway," thing—but in retrospect he thought that maybe she might have had a point.

"If, hypothetically, I were to have a kicking problem," Rodney began.

"And a smothering problem, and a being-a-human-furnace problem," Sheppard added.

"You can kick the blankets off, you know, and let me finish my thought, would you?"

"Fine," Sheppard said. "Finish away. Be my guest."

"If, hypothetically, I weren't the best bedmate in the world," Rodney said, "what exactly would we be able to do about it? Short of finding a magically-enlargening bed."

"Don't I wish." And then Sheppard got a bit of a horrified look on his face and said, "I have an idea of what to do here, but I really wish I didn't."

"You do?" Rodney said.

"Yeah," Sheppard said grimly.

Which was how Rodney found himself in the bed again with Sheppard trying to spoon up against his back.

"This is your idea?" Rodney said, shifting around. He couldn't get comfortable with Sheppard's arm flung over him—it was a weird dead weight, not to mention that it was forcing his ass back against Sheppard's dick, which wasn't hard or anything but it was there and that was enough to make Rodney start getting hard anyway, just thinking about it. "This is possibly the worst idea you've ever had, Colonel, and seeing as that's coming in a long series of very bad ideas—"

"It's called cooperative sleeping, Rodney." Sheppard sighed. "As in, if I hold you down, maybe you won't beat me to death in the night, but if it's going to work you have to relax."

"Relax," Rodney said. "I'm pretty sure the last time I did that was 1987, and I only did it then because I had a concussion." Coincidentally, that had been the last time that he'd slept more for more than four hours straight.

The other problem with relaxing was that then he wouldn't even be trying to keep himself away from Sheppard's cock, but Rodney figured it was probably not the best call to say that out loud.

"Just give it a try," Sheppard mumbled against his shoulder.

"Okay," Rodney said. "Okay." If Sheppard could successfully be not freaking out about this, he could manage it too. And Sheppard was definitely doing an admirable job of not freaking out. He was a solid weight against Rodney's back, and it felt good but not entirely right—and Sheppard was probably going to finally freak out at him over this, but Rodney said it anyway: "Do you think we can flip around?"

"You mean like—"

Rodney shifted to face him, and after a long second during which Sheppard looked at him a little funny, he rolled over and let Rodney curl an arm around his middle. And yeah, it was definitely better this way—a lot better. Sheppard was maybe a little tense in his arms but he relaxed after Rodney said, "This was your idea in the first place, remember?"

Rodney thought Sheppard's reply was something like, "It wasn't supposed to be like this." He wasn't sure, though: the words were muffled, and anyway, Rodney was already falling asleep, too quickly to worry about how good the curve of Sheppard's ass felt against his cock.

*

When John woke up, Rodney was still all over him, an arm slung across John's stomach and his cock pressing against John's ass. It was just morning wood; it happened to everyone. It had happened to John this morning too, and that had nothing to do with where he'd been sleeping.

John disentangled himself from Rodney and cheerfully jerked off in the shower thinking about Teyla's tits. It felt awesome to have gotten a good night's sleep. Rodney was already gone by the time John got out of the shower, but he didn't worry about it; he just headed to work.

For a while after that, everything went completely back to normal. Beckett cleared them for off-world missions, so they reentered the negotiations for a better wheat substitute with the Carteedans. Ronon got bitten by a rabbit-like creature on X4Z-294; it made his arm swell up to four times its usual size, and apparently didn't actually hurt, so John thought it would be pretty awesome if Ronon could use it as a club, just whack the Wraith down right and left—it was actually pretty disappointing for all involved when Dr. Beckett figured out how to make the swelling go down. Rodney and Zelenka saved them all from certain death a few times, and except for the part where John was still sharing a bed with Rodney every night, it was like the whole forced marriage thing had never happened.

That lasted for about a week.

*

Rodney wasn't entirely sure he wasn't imagining it at first. He'd turn around in the serving line at dinner and catch Sheppard looking at him, or Sheppard would be standing a little too close to him as they walked through the Stargate, or his fingers would hit against Rodney's as they both reached for the control panel on the transporter at the same time. But there were plenty of logical explanations for it all: Sheppard had stared at him plenty before this whole mess, and just because he got too close to Rodney's personal space didn't mean Sheppard wanted to sleep with him. Rodney got in people's personal space all the time, and that didn't mean he wanted to sleep with them—okay, except when it did, and that was fairly often, but it was also completely not the point. Rodney was fully aware that he wasn't a suitable social barometer.

The thing was, Sheppard didn't react to the touches, didn't turn red or stutter or acknowledge them at all—which was a lot of what made Rodney think he had no idea he was doing it. It was sort of annoying, but Rodney wasn't going to be the one to enlighten him; there was just no way that particular conversation could go over well.

But Sheppard was getting worse about it. It wasn't just the occasional touch, it was all the time, and Sheppard was constantly grabbing his arm to pull him forward to show him things, fitting himself snugly against Rodney's back when they went to bed—he still persisted in trying to be the big spoon most of the time, even though they always woke up the other way around—and it wasn't like this was something they could talk about. It was just extremely annoying and distracting—but as long as that was all of it, Rodney figured he could deal. He'd just have to learn how to ignore Sheppard more effectively. He had no idea how he was going to manage that, since he'd never been able to ignore Sheppard in the first place—even from the first moment Sheppard had sat down in that damned control chair in Antarctica, Rodney hadn't been able to ignore him—but he would come up with something. He was going to have to.

*

Enough hours at the firing range meant that Rodney had finally figured out how to defend himself decently well as long as he had a weapon in his hands, but after he nearly got taken hostage by the Ultasians it became pretty clear that his self-defense skills after he lost his weapon definitely still left something to be desired. It hadn't ever really been a problem before, seeing as John's usual off-world strategy was, "Keep Rodney in sight at all times and don't let anyone hurt him," and it hadn't actually been a real problem this time, either—John had managed to escape with plenty of time to spare to prevent Rodney from really being taken hostage—but it seemed like it would be a good idea to work on hand-to-hand combat with him, nonetheless.

It had taken less convincing than John would have expected to get Rodney out of the lab and into the sparring room, and now that he was here, Rodney was trying, even. He had that look on his face that meant he was really concentrating on this, on fighting, here in this room—the look that meant he'd tuned out everything else in the world—and that was good for fighting, it was great. The problem was that Rodney could concentrate on fighting all he wanted, but he still had no idea how to anticipate an opponent's next move. It was making his blocks come up too slowly and too sloppily, like he was still caught up in the surprise of not having known what was coming for him, and no matter how many times John tried to explain to him what it felt like—to know that the blow was coming, to block it reflexively—Rodney still wasn't getting it.

"No, look," John said finally, after he'd barely dodged losing an eye to one of Rodney's most haphazard moves. "It's more like this." He grabbed Rodney's arm and moved it for him—but John was getting it wrong from this angle, he could tell. "You know what, let me . . ." He stepped behind Rodney and moved Rodney's arm again. "Like this, see?"

"Yeah," Rodney said. He sounded strangled. "I think I've got it."

"Just try it, okay?" John said.

Rodney tried the block again, but he was still not tucking his arm back into his body quickly enough, not even when he wasn't doing it at full action speed.

"One more time, more like—" John grabbed for Rodney's arm again, leaning into him to reach it. Rodney shuddered a little and that was when John finally realized it: he was pressed all against the length of Rodney's back, his left arm curled around Rodney's waist and his cock wedged firmly against Rodney's ass—and it wasn't any different from sleeping with Rodney all over him except for how it was, because John was completely awake right now and coherent and being pressed up against Rodney felt good, and he needed to get out of here right now.

"Um," John said, scrambling backwards. "I just remembered I've got a meeting, really important one, lots of Marines going to be there—"

"Colonel?" Rodney said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, Rodney, I'm fine," John snapped. "If I weren't fine, I would tell you."

"Really?" Rodney said. "Because I'm pretty sure I still need more practice—"

"Very important meeting," John said firmly. "Leaving for it. Right now." And then he turned and got out of there as quickly as he could. That wasn't particularly quickly, since sometime in the middle of his horrified realization his cock had gone painfully hard, but Atlantis opened all sorts of corridors for him that she didn't usually share with others. Rodney didn't actually seem to be following him, but that didn't really remove any of the urgency—John still made straight for the clinic.

He had to waste a few seconds outside the door thinking about what a Wraith queen would look like naked—a thought that had never yet failed to kill a boner—but then he was in the clinic, tapping Dr. Beckett's shoulder and saying, "Hey Carson, have you got a minute?"

"Sure," Beckett said, not looking up from his microscope. "Just give me one moment . . ." He finally grabbed a pen and scribbled down a few lines of notes, muttering to himself. "All right then, Colonel Sheppard, what can I do for you?"

John pitched his voice low, even though there wasn't anyone in the immediate vicinity to hear. "Remember when we first got back from the Yaeti home-world and Rodney and I both had the"—he hated to say it but there was really nothing for it—"aphrodisiac in our bloodstream? And you gave us something to block it?"

"Yes, what about it?" Beckett said.

"I think the antidote has worn off," John said.

Beckett gave him a long, strange look and said, "I'm afraid that's quite impossible, Colonel. The antidote wasn't the sort of thing that could wear off."

John waited a beat, then said, "Sure it could, couldn't it? I mean, if you were injecting it into my bloodstream . . ."

"I promise I really do know what I'm talking about," Beckett said. "I wouldn't just say this for the heck of it."

"I know," John had to admit. "But do you think you could—can you just check my blood again, just in case?"

Beckett didn't say anything for a moment. Then he sighed. "Sure, I can check."

Neither of them said anything while Beckett was drawing the blood and examining it. "I'm sorry, Colonel. I'm not finding any traces of the aphrodisiac remaining."

John didn't think there was a facial expression in the world that could fully express the depth of his horror. "So this is just me?"

"It's not unnatural for feelings of friendship and trust to develop into something more," Beckett said gently, "particularly when you're in a situation where you're forced to spend a great amount of time together."

"Who said I was talking about McKay?" John said, too loudly.

Beckett smiled crookedly. "You just did, Colonel."

"But I'm not—" There was really no way John could finish the rest of that sentence. "You know what, just, never mind. Can we just pretend this whole conversation didn't happen and never speak of this again?"

Beckett's face was a little more knowing than John would have liked, but there wasn't a whole lot to be done about it. "Sure, Colonel. No idea you were ever here."

"Good," John said, and made his escape.

*

Going to Beckett was supposed to have been an easy fix. John was having weird thoughts, okay, that just meant something was wrong with the antidote—Beckett would have been able to fix it in five minutes flat, in John's head, and then everything would have gone back to normal, or as normal as things could get in a galaxy in which you were routinely in dangers of aliens sucking your life out through your chest. Instead, John had gotten some information about himself that he really didn't want, and a whole bunch of thoughts that just wouldn't go away.

It wasn't that he was trying to think about Rodney. It was just that now that he'd started, he couldn't freaking stop, and it was all Beckett's fault in some way; it had to be. If he'd just said something like, "Oh, you're right, there is something wrong with your blood, let me fix it," even if he'd been lying, John was sure that he would have stopped having these sorts of thoughts. Pretty sure. It didn't matter; the point was, he hadn't been having thoughts like this, and now he was, and it really didn't make a damned bit of sense. Sexuality crises were supposed to happen when you were in college, not when you were in your late thirties. And maybe the whole-being-in-another-galaxy thing had something to do with it—but the more he thought about it, "Pegasus made me gay" didn't really seem like an argument that was going to hold water.

He couldn't really think of an argument that would hold water, that was the thing—but there had to be a reason for this. People didn't just turn gay at the age of thirty-seven; there was no way.

*

Out of nowhere, Sheppard stopped touching Rodney. It wasn't a gradual slow-down of the touches, either; he just completely went cold turkey. Rodney also wasn't catching Sheppard staring at him as often, but that wasn't quite as weird. Even before they'd gotten into this whole mess with the Yaeti, Sheppard had touched him all the time—a hand on his arm, a kick in the shins to make him shut up—and all of that, the totally-unambiguous touching, was gone too.

Rodney would have thought that it would have been a relief. It should have been a relief. Instead, it was driving him even more crazy than before, which pretty much taught him nothing but that this entire situation was hopeless—and he meant to talk to Sheppard about it, he really did, but the only opening gambit worse than, "Why are you touching me all the time?" was, "Why have you stopped touching me all the time?" and okay, so he was a chicken. He was a huge stinking chicken, and that still didn't mean that he was going to do anything about it, because he'd had an adolescent schoolboy crush on John Sheppard for ages now and it wasn't owning up to Sheppard that he'd had never been unaware of it when Sheppard was touching him was going to fix anything.

*

John hated his brain. The more time he spent not around Rodney, the more he noticed it when they were in the same place—almost as though his body was pulling him toward Rodney, like the gravitational pull toward a planet. He was doing his best not to touch Rodney, and it was helping a little—but only a little, and he wasn't even entirely succeeding at that: he still curled around Rodney every night when he went to sleep, and every morning he still woke up with Rodney's arm around his stomach. He thought about trying to stop that, but somehow it had gotten to be habit already. He didn't much want to think about what that could mean.

There wasn't even anything special going on around Atlantis to distract him anymore. They'd had a stretch of the most boring off-world missions possible—no kidnapping attempts, no freaking force-field time-warps, nobody who hadn't been culled by the Wraith in centuries. The most exciting thing out of nine missions was when the people of Bryna gifted them with a sheep as a token of their good will. John got a real kick out of trying to decide whether Rodney or the sheep was more panicked as they flew the puddlejumper back to Atlantis—"It's going to gnaw on the cables!" Rodney yelled the whole way home as the sheep baaed and skittered around the ship. It was such good entertainment that John didn't feel the need to mention to Rodney that there weren't any cables for the sheep to gnaw on, seeing as they were all safely stowed behind metal panels, so unless the sheep could use its hooves as screwdrivers—which, hey, that would be a pretty useful sheep. As it was, the sheep was adopted by the Athosians, who were probably going to make lamb chops out of it, but it wasn't exactly like the sheep could live in Atlantis.

But besides the sheep, there really wasn't anything to take John's mind off Rodney, which wasn't helping things any. John liked women. It wasn't just a case of liking them because he knew he was supposed to like them—John really legitimately liked women. He'd always liked women. But now he was starting to wonder if this was maybe not the first time he'd been attracted to a man. It wasn't something he was trying to think about—it was just that everything was so damned boring around Atlantis that he couldn't come up with anything better to think about, so he had it on his mind all the time, and he'd started to wonder.

John hadn't ever done anything with other men—he'd never really been that conscious of what he was thinking, at the time—but now that he was looking back on it, he knew he'd watched other men sometimes, not even that often. It had mostly been when he'd been drunk and maudlin in bars, wondering what had made his marriage go wrong, and watching the men from his unit buy pretty women drinks. And it wasn't that he didn't buy pretty women drinks, too, that he didn't go back to their apartments or their townhouses and fuck them with the lights off and then pull his clothes back on in the dark—but when he was in the bars, he'd been watching the men and not the women, he knew that now. It was sort of throwing him off, admitting it to himself, but it wasn't like it was going to change anything now, since he already had this stupid thing for Rodney, whatever it was.

It wasn't like John was going to act on it, though. And yeah, the not-touching was helping, but not enough. There'd been a lot of military-related stuff he'd been meaning to deal with for ages, since well before the Yaeti mess, that he'd somehow still never got around to—so he got around to it. If there was any way he was going to make it through this, he was going to need space. That was the only thing he knew. Other than that, he figured he was just going to have to wait and hope that something happened.

*

Sheppard was legitimately busy with a lot of military stuff, and everyone had to admit that it was stuff that needed doing—had needed doing for a while—but Rodney still felt like Sheppard was avoiding him. It was stupid to think so, since it wasn't like Sheppard's world revolved around him or anything, but it was still driving him crazy.

Around the same time Sheppard stopped breathing down his neck all the time, asking what Rodney was working on right now and what did that new piece of Ancient technology do and reaching for it like a toddler who just had to put everything in sight in his mouth, Rodney's time suddenly stretched wide open: for work that was meant to take an hour, he actually had an hour, instead of half that or a quarter or, "We need to know this soon like yesterday, McKay!" Rodney didn't know what to do with himself. He tried to break himself out of "soon like yesterday" mode, but he didn't actually know how—he tended to work up to a certain speed and then be incapable of slowing back down, not that he'd ever really slowed down on anything in his life. It was getting pretty ridiculous when he had so much free time that he actually found himself rearranging the massive tangle of lab power cords into neat, color-coded lines.

It still took Rodney a little while between when he figured out that he had enough time to look at the Ancient database and see what he could learn about the Yaeti ritual and the rings and when he actually went and looked in the database. He was oddly relieved when it turned out than any and all information the machines were coming up with was written in Ancient—his Ancient might have been passable, but it wasn't anywhere near good enough to translate whole paragraphs of cultural information when most of his vocabulary concerned itself with terms more along the lines of 'hyperdrive' and 'power source'.

Rodney probably could translate it, if given enough time, although it'd really be better to get Weir or one of the linguists to help him out, and there was probably something else somewhere he could be working on right now; just because he didn't know what that was didn't mean he wasn't going to find it. He just—he didn't especially want to read any more about this yet, that was all.

*

John hadn't ever really thought about it, but it seemed fairly reasonable that if he were going to have sex with Rodney, it would be just before the Wraith attacked or an asteroid hit or they were about to die in one of the other myriad unpleasant ways the Pegasus galaxy kept throwing at them. He figured there would be something that would push them into it, something they could blame it on afterwards; no one would blame them for having sex in the face of certain doom. It was like receiving last rites or something—if you then lived through the disaster, it was fine. No harm, no foul.

He hadn't ever considered the possibility that it would just happen one night. They hadn't discovered any dangerous new Ancient technology earlier or had any near-brushes with death. The day had been so tame that they'd spent most of it in meetings, discussing potential rethinking of the city's power use—not exactly a life-or-death sort of situation.

John was already in the bed when Rodney came in. He heard the rustling sound of Rodney taking off his clothes and the thump of his boots to the floor, and then Rodney was sliding into the bed beside him. John pretended to be asleep while Rodney shifted in next to him and slung an arm over John's stomach. He couldn't keep his muscles from clenching at the touch but Rodney didn't seem to notice anything, just burrowed in closer and breathed against John's shoulder—and it was fine. John woke up every morning with Rodney sprawled all over him; it wasn't like that was any different than Rodney being warm against his back right now, except that John had always been asleep before Rodney had gotten in bed with him before—except for that first night, but that didn't count, because he hadn't been thinking about Rodney like this, not then. Not consciously, anyway, and that was all the difference, because now he was completely conscious of every single place along his back that Rodney was touching him. But it was still fine. As long as he just lay there and didn't move for long enough, and thought about how very tired he was, he'd probably be able to go to sleep eventually.

At least, that's what John thought for the first five seconds, because after that, Rodney started shifting, and there was no fucking way he could ignore the fact that the hardness against his ass was Rodney's cock, and Rodney kept hitting him with it.

John rolled over quickly to face Rodney. Rodney's eyes went huge. "I thought you were—"

"Asleep?" John said. "Yeah, not so much."

"Then why did you let me—"

"This is ridiculous," John said, and kissed him.

It was a good. Better than good, actually. It was amazing. Rodney was arching into it, sliding his hand up John's arm and under his t-shirt sleeve, and John opened his mouth a little bit, let Rodney in, and John should have done this ages ago. When Rodney finally pulled back John couldn't help leaning forward to follow him, unwilling to stop.

"—can't believe this," Rodney was saying. "I thought you were trying to kill me."

"You thought I was trying to kill you?" John said. "Who's the one who was just humping me in my sleep?"

"That wasn't on purpose!" Rodney said defensively. "And I thought you weren't gay! You told me you weren't gay."

John looked at Rodney's mouth, his lips swollen and slick with spit. "Yeah, about that. I might," he took a deep breath, "sort of be reconsidering."

"Ha!" Rodney said. "I was right! I knew you were—"

Rodney was going to keep gloating all night if John let him, so really the only thing to do was kiss him instead. Rodney made a frustrated noise at being interrupted, but then he went with it.

John had seen just how hard Rodney McKay could concentrate when he was trying to fix a puddlejumper so they could escape from hostile aliens, or when he was trying to restore Atlantis's shield before the biggest storm in two galaxies annihilated them all, and Rodney kissed like he was concentrating just that hard—like the world was going to explode if he didn't do this right. It was hot as hell, and there wasn't even a question anymore: John was definitely gay for Rodney, and he didn't even mind, because Rodney humping against his hip felt amazing, and so did Rodney's hand shoving past the elastic of his boxers and grabbing John's cock. Rodney's grip wasn't the slightest bit hesitant, didn't leave room for uncertainty, and it wasn't worth being uncertain about what was happening here anyway, not when they'd been building to this for so long—long before the whole ritual, if John was being honest—and so John worked his hand inside Rodney's boxers too, curled his fingers around Rodney's cock and pulled.

"Yes, exactly, just like that," Rodney said, arching into it. "You can go a little rougher, if you want—"

That was all it took before John was coming into Rodney's hand. It maybe should have been embarrassing, but then Rodney was kissing him again, running his tongue along the line of John's teeth, and John completely forgot that he was supposed to have any brain capacity at all. It wasn't that long before Rodney came too, his eyes clenched shut and making a strangled sound in his throat, and if John could cause Rodney to make that sound every day for the rest of his life, he was pretty sure he'd die happy.

"Um," Rodney said as they lay panting on the bed afterwards. "That was interesting."

"That's one word for it," John said, rolling over to press a line of kisses to Rodney's throat.

Rodney pulled away, though, halfway sitting up against the pillows. "You're not going to freak out on me in the morning, are you?" he said. "I mean, you're not going to wake up and decide that this was all a huge mistake and we're never going to be able to speak again or look each other in the eye or be in the cafeteria at the same time—"

"Rodney," John said in a warning voice, and kissed him again. "This was my idea, remember?"

"Ohhh," Rodney said. "Yes, very well, I just mean—"

"We're really going to have to work on when you should shut up," John said. "I'll give you a hint. Right now? You should shut up."

"Shutting up, right," Rodney said against John's mouth, and they kissed again, lazily, until at some point they drifted into sleep.

*

John didn't freak out in the morning. Rodney tried to, a little, but John headed that off at the pass by kissing him and saying, "Another of those shutting-up times, Rodney." Rodney's eyes flared wide but he went along with it: kissing John back then working their boxers off—which were stiff with dried come, and they really should have taken them off before they went to sleep—and rolling on top of John so their cocks were sliding together, friction building until they both came, sticky all over their stomachs.

They showered together after that and John came again with Rodney's mouth on him. John was working himself up to return the favor—and the idea of giving a blowjob didn't even freak him out, which said a whole lot about just how gay he really was—but Rodney said ruefully, "It's kind of a moot point, right now," and John saw that he'd just spurted all over the shower floor.

"Next time," John said, pulling Rodney back up.

Rodney grinned and said, "I'm so holding you to that," and then they got dressed and left to go to work, and everything was totally fine.

*

Rodney should have known it wouldn't last. He'd just hoped it would maybe last longer than a couple of hours—but it wasn't even lunchtime before Zelenka came running in and saying, "That thing you were working on in the Ancient database yesterday, about the rings? I ran it through a translation algorithm and it looks like there's a way to remove them."

Rodney stared at him for a couple of seconds before he processed that. "Remove them," he said finally. "As in, take them off?"

Zelenka nodded excitedly. "I even had Booker check it for linguistic integrity, and she said it looks sound. Here, I'll show you." He started to pull Rodney toward the machine, but Rodney held back. He thought he was maybe going to throw up, and he couldn't look at it yet, there was no way he was ready for that, so he said the only thing he could think of to say.

"Let me get Sheppard first," Rodney said. Zelenka nodded, waiting, and there was nothing for it but to go ahead and call Sheppard on the radio. "Can you come to the lab? There's something Zelenka wants to show me. I think you should look at it too."

There was a pause, and then Sheppard said into his ear, "Okay, be right there."

It took Sheppard five minutes to get to the lab, but that still wasn't anywhere long enough for Rodney to be ready for it. Taking the rings off, that was going to mean the end of this—no more having to share quarters and a bed—and Rodney should have been excited about it, he really should have been, and maybe he would have been before last night, when he'd spent all of his time panicking about how utterly adolescent his crush on Sheppard was and worrying that Sheppard was going to find out about it and freak out. But now that this whatever-it-was with Sheppard had started, the only thing he could think was that Sheppard was going to want out: it was a get-out-of-jail-free card, and he'd be able to pretend that nothing had happened, go completely back to normal, and Rodney didn't want that, but it wasn't his choice to make, even though the thought of giving this up made him even sicker than before when Sheppard finally walked into the room. It hadn't even been three hours since Rodney had seen him last, but Rodney wanted him even more than he'd remembered. It was awful.

Sheppard scratched absently at the back of his neck, looking between Rodney and Zelenka, and said, "So what did you want me to see?"

"I was working on the Ancient database yesterday," Rodney said. "I mean, looking at the Ancient database, but I didn't finish, and Zelenka started looking for me, and he was the one who finished, and—" He wasn't making any sense, but there wasn't any way he was going to be able to say this.

Zelenka apparently decided to take pity on him. "There's a way to remove the Yaeti rings," he said.

And there it was, the words hanging in the room. Rodney waited for Sheppard to process them, waited for the moment when he would grin and say, "Awesome," and go look at the machine with Zelenka and then all of this would be over. Sheppard wasn't saying anything, though. It was killing Rodney—at this point he just wanted Sheppard to say it. If Rodney was going to have to go back to life as it used to be, he wanted to go ahead and get on with it; waiting wasn't going to make it any better.

But Sheppard still wasn't saying anything, and Rodney didn't understand why, and he was about to repeat what Zelenka had said to make sure Sheppard had actually heard him, but then finally Sheppard spoke.

"Do we have to look at it right now, Zelenka?" Sheppard said.

Zelenka was staring at him, looking just as confused as Rodney felt. "I don't understand what you mean, Colonel."

"I mean, we could look at it later, right?" Sheppard said, his face unreadable. "Or just—not look at it?"

Zelenka was still staring at him in puzzlement. "You do not want to learn how to remove the rings?" he asked, and the tiniest bit of hope started to worm its way into Rodney's chest, bubbling up and light.

"You mean—" Rodney began, meeting Sheppard's eyes, and Sheppard smiled at him hesitantly. "You think you want—"

"Yeah, Rodney," Sheppard said. "Yeah."

And then Rodney got it, all the way got it. "Oh my God," he said slowly. "You want this." Sheppard wanted him, actually wanted him, and then he was grabbing Sheppard's face and saying, "John," and kissing him, pulling him in close.

"Ugh," Zelenka said. "Not in the lab."

Rodney completely ignored him and kissed Sheppard more, and Sheppard kissed back. Finally Rodney pulled away and said, "You're sure? You're completely sure, I mean, you can always take it back, we can look at the thing later, and—"

"Rodney," Sheppard said. "Shut up now."

And Rodney did.