fic: Look Back and You'll See Me There Before You (Last Man tag)

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Fic
Title: Look Back and You'll See Me There Before You
Author: Devera
Episode: The Last Man (4x20)
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Categories: angst, hurt/comfort, friendship, slash
Rating/Warning: M, gen (but feel free to wear your slash-coloured glasses), no warnings except the pre-requisite spoilers for the episode.
Words: 770

Summary: Knowing a future that will never come to pass doesn't mean it's any easier to forget



"Seriously," Rodney snaps. "What?"

John's been looking at him funny ever since he stumbled through the gate over two weeks MIA, dirty and dehydrated, claiming he knew where Teyla was going to be. The frustration of not being able to move immediately on that knowledge is showing in the permanent set to his jaw whenever anyone is talking, but occasionally he glances Rodney's way, and then there's something else there. Rodney can't even begin to translate it, but it's something, and he's had enough of Sheppard prowling about his lab like a caged lion and throwing him these looks every other minute.

"I want to go, is what," John snaps, and he's been short with Rodney, with everyone, since he reappeared, as if he's on a clock and he can just feel something vital slipping through his fingers. "Keller's checked me out; there's nothing wrong with me. My story pans. What more do you need?"

"Not that," Rodney deflects with equal sharpness. "What I mean is what? Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" John sighs, but he's not looking at Rodney now and that in and of itself is telling.

"Like I'm a math problem that doesn’t add up; like you're trying to work something out without all the variables. What happened while you were gone that you aren't telling me?"

"Nothing. What are you talking about?"

And now Rodney knows John's hiding something.

"I'm not sure, yet," he says slowly, and catches the briefly alarmed look John tries to hide. "You said I programmed Atlantis to send you back, but calculations like that... They're not impossible, but I'd need to be working around the clock for... God, I have no idea how long."

"Years," John says quietly. "Years and years and fucking years."

And he's right, Rodney realises with a distant start, not because he understands what the math would involve, but because he already knows.

"Oh," Rodney breathes, as it hits him, why it is John's looking at him like... like...

"You gave up the rest of your life for me," John says suddenly, roughly, and his face is no longer the mask of mixed tension and unidentifiable relief it's been since he reappeared. "You died old and alone because you wouldn't give up looking for me. How am I supposed to look at you after something like that?!"

Rodney has no idea. Maybe just the way John's been looking at him for the past ten hours.

"Oh," Rodney says again, and he's at much of a loss as John seems to be. "Well, you know me," he tries, forcing a lightness into his voice he doesn’t feel and knows won't be believed anyway. "There's never been a problem I couldn't solve."

For one second, it seems like that was the wrong thing to say. John's never looked like that before, like he's about to explode. And then his jaw sets again and suddenly he's striding across the lab and Rodney flinches back just a little too late, only to find himself being grabbed, being wrenched forward, being...

Being hugged. John is hugging him, a full-blown, body-flush hug, his arms tight around him, his face buried in Rodney's neck, and it takes Rodney another breath, another half dozen rapid heartbeats to realise John is shaking...

"You don't," John is mumbling hoarsely into his shoulder. "You don't get it. You're the only one... the only one..."

"The only one crazy enough to give a shit what happens to you?" Rodney jokes gently but suddenly John is standing straight again, and the raw look on his face tells Rodney that it's anything but a joke. "Jesus, Sheppard. Don't you get it? Christ. Can't you just be grateful like normal people?" But he's pretty sure there's no sting in his words, what with the way he's reaching for John again, hands smoothing firm down his arms, fingers encircling his wrists, manacles of flesh and blood and bone and electrical impulses Rodney knows won't ever stop John from being taken away, but are more than completely capable of bringing him back again, come Hell, high water or the end of the world.

"I-" John tries, twitching in his hold but not trying to break away, inching closer, closer. "I am. I am. I... It was... And I would have been... If you hadn't..."

"I know," Rodney soothes, and reels John back in again, because if he thinks about it, he might start shaking too, and that's just the point isn't it. He doesn’t know, and now, he'll never have to.