Morgue Files

"So what's it like, working with the space cadet?"

Rodney froze, a hand stilling on the wall.

"Cam," Sheppard said, sounding annoyed, and Rodney swallowed a groan -- Mitchell, he thought, anybody but Mitchell. 

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

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

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

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

Cam pushed himself away from the wall, unconcerned to be caught, and still langurous, untouchable -- still the bureau's golden boy.  "Hey, Spacey -- it's been a while."

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

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

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

"You're such a soft touch, Sheppard," Rodney sighs later, after.

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

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

*

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

*

At Quantico, when Rodney was still hailed as a wunderkind and a headcase, he'd learned about resource distribution, about knowing how to make the tough calls.  He knows the FBI doesn't negotiate with terrorists and won't negotiate for their own people in a hostage situation, and that sometimes interdepartmental cooperation is vital to the success of a mission, to keeping everybody safe. 

But Rodney's fallen from grace a dozen times over at this point, and this is what he knows now: Rodney knows he'd make any number of stupid choices to talk to Jeannie again, to ask her how she is and what she is doing and if she's happy -- wherever she let the government take her.  Rodney knows that he would never share John, even if John likes to pay lip service and pretend he doesn't mind walking back into the snake pit of the violent crimes unit, doesn't mind the way Mitchell touches him -- proprietary, invasive.  Rodney doesn't care about rules or regs or what's best for the agency -- he'd barter away weapons of mass destruction and trade off civilians to keep Sheppard safe, to keep Sheppard, period.

So when Daniel Jackson -- dissociated psychopath, Rodney had told John, told him dozens of times and told him to ignore the raving and leave the guy to his institutionalized rotting -- had kidnapped him, shoved John into the trunk of a car, Rodney -- understandably -- goes a little crazy.

He doesn't come back from it for weeks, either, not after O'Neil tells him to calm the fuck down, not after Caldwell puts him on mandatory leave.  Still, it doesn't really hit him that John is gone and that John's apartment is empty and that John could be hurt or dead or worse until after Teyla shows up at his apartment, weeping even though Rodney would have sworn Teyla was incapable of producing tears.

"Oh fuck," Rodney says, staring down at her.  "Are you crying?"

She slaps the hell out of him and Rodney doesn't even try to pretend it's because he's too stunned by her hiccuping sobs to block the cheap shot.

"You son of a bitch," Teyla snarls at him, and shoves him, hard, as hard as she can, and Rodney stumbles back into his apartment.  He knows it smells like liquor and desperation and like a frat house, abandoned, but he doesn't care: he has mustard and John's favorite deli turkey in the fridge and nobody to feed it to -- he lost John, and there's not much else he can bring himself to give a fuck about.  "You <i>son of a bitch," she shouts, slapping her fists against his chest.  "I hate you -- I fucking hate you."

"Okay, so, something we agree on," Rodney tells her, and that's when it kind of hits him -- awareness like a semi or a tsunami washing away the beach: John is alone, and Rodney is the only person who can find him.

*

A week later, the trail that Zelenka and Lee and Parrish scent out goes dead in an abandoned train car -- and Rodney finds a row of abandoned specamin tubes in deep freeze: JWS.001.321, JWS.001.322, JWS.001.336.  He feels sick, he feels like crying, and he hides the sample containers with Zelenka, who just nods and puts them away -- doesn't say anything, not one comment, and doesn't meet Rodney's eyes.  Rodney doesn't waste time wondering why anybody would take John -- it makes perfect sense that somebody else would want him, that there was something special to him all along.  When he gets back to DC, he calls Teyla to say he's sorry, that he failed, and when she answers the phone, she says, "Rodney -- Rodney, he's back."
 

AND LATER, SGA X-FILES AU DOES MILAGRO:

Rodney lives in a nondescript apartment building in one of the in-between neighborhoods of Washington, and John knows the neighborhood well enough to know the best places to park and not the best places to eat.  It's early spring, the light still thin and milky-yellow and the bite in the air is nearly sweet, John thinks, and ducks into the dusty brown hallway of 45 Hegal Place. 

John's wearing jeans and a jacket but by the time his fingers trace over the button "4" in the elevator, leaves it faint orange, he's feeling more naked than anything else.  There's a guy -- thin, weedy, dark hair and ironically unshaven -- staring unabashedly, his lips open and wet.  It's a little galling, so far into the territory of rude John doesn't even have it in him to be flattered, and he rubs a hand over the back of his neck and tries not to look down at the floor.

*

He'd been to the building before, in fits and spurts with uneven frequencies, and the Watcher had heard the man's voice before, in hallways, lingering in the doorway of the apartment next door.  His name keeps getting lost in the space of the hallway, but the Watcher knows his green eyes, the moue of his mouth, the way he moves his hips as he walks, loose, and the long, delicious stretch of his back -- his spine a perfect mathematical shape beneath button-ups and t-shirts, the black sweater that hugs his arms.  Since it's been unintentional, to call it a tease would be unfair -- but he's a startlingly beautiful man, and in absolute values, everything he does is a tease.

*

Rodney comes to the door stuffing a waffle into his mouth, and waves John in, fingers tacky with syrup.  He says something, which John doesn't deign to translate, and disappears into the kitchen again, where plates rattle and the sound of the fridge door opening and closing fill up the early-morning quiet.

"New neighbor?" John asks.  "I met him in the elevator coming up."

"Yeah," Rodney answers, voice floating through the doorway.  "He says he's a writer."

John can't help but smile at that.  "Does he."

"Yes," Rodney says, disgusted, scrubbing at his mouth with a napkin when he reappears.  He waves John to the couch, saying, "He said it wasn't anything I would know -- which obviously means he's a hack."

"Obviously," John allows, since disagreeing with Rodney on things that involve being nice to perfect strangers has always been somewhat quixotic.  Rodney's still half-asleep, dressed in sweatpants and an MIT t-shirt, his hair sticking up every which way like a baby bird.  He's flushed and endearing here, in the light of his living room, and John entertains the tenderness for a moment before the sharp edge of a sheaf of computer paper draws his eye again, stark white against the coffee table. 

"Nothing new on the case?" he makes himself ask.  Rodney's not interested in the things that John wants.

"New beyond my perfectly servicable theory?"  Rodney is flipping through his notes again, his agitated handwriting crunched together on legal pad paper. 

"Psychic surgery is not a servicable theory," John says, rote, and picks up the file again, pages through photographs. 

They're up to six victims now, pairs between the ages of 19 and 26, all in secluded areas, none of them with a mark -- "At least beyond hickies," Rodney had muttered at the crime scenes -- and all of them covered in their own blood.  Their hearts were missing, the MEs said, and when John sullenly took a second-pass at the cadavers, he'd agreed: no trauma, no tool marks, not a single knick on a bone -- just a void.