Relative Positions, by Merry. Sheppard/McKay. G.

First Night Challenge: Relative Positions
Challenge: First Night In Atlantis
Category: Sheppard/McKay. Pre-slash. ish. Okay, gen. But in my head, they're thinking about it.
Rating: G
Author: Merry (merryish)
Notes: Many many thanks cesperanza, astolat, kaneko and flambeau for beta and fond abuse. Also this is over 1000 words. I did it on purpose. To illustrate that, um. It's okay. to go over 1000 words. It is!
Summary: Sheppard pops the question.


Relative Positions

From the balcony McKay was stubbornly refusing to call the Observation Deck in his head, there was absolutely nothing to see. The water was pretty enough, with moonlight streaming across the waves and the stars scattered by the millions across the midnight sky, but between the City and the disconcertingly distant horizon, the ocean was a vast, wet desert. The scope of it all made McKay feel insignificant, a feeling to which he was not accustomed and which he emphatically didn't like. Besides all that, he was really, really cold.

It was the metal. Everything was made of it, everything that wasn't made of incredibly advanced, indestructible superconductive polymers anyway, and one thing it was really good at was being cold. He imagined they would find something, some system, some elegantly functional process for heating and cooling and ventilating and whatnot, but for now they had power for the lights, the computers, and the gate, and that was it. Maybe when they got all the naquadah generators up and running, maybe if they found some ZPMs really fast, maybe. By then, though, McKay wouldn't care, because if they found some ZPMs really fast, he was putting up the shield and taking his entire department on vacation someplace warm. Possibly Disneyworld.

There were footsteps behind him, and then someone was leaning against the railing just to the right of him. Sheppard, in profile, in the moonlight, was white as a ghost.

"Nice night," Sheppard said. "Good view."

"Of what, exactly?"

Sheppard stretched out an arm and pointed at the sky. "See that? Big round glowy thing? Eleven o'clock? I hear there may be another one up soon, too."

McKay ignored the pointing and the moon and turned to look at Sheppard. "Why does the military use a 24-hour clock for time and a 12-hour clock for space?"

"Contrariness."

McKay hitched his elbow up onto the rail and raised his eyebrows. The view in Sheppard's direction had just gotten a little more interesting. "Huh. I suspected as much, but I thought it would take longer to get you to admit it."

"I could see where you were going." Sheppard shrugged philosophically. "I'm all about conservation of conversation."

"Good," McKay said, "because I didn't come out here to talk about the beauty of the night or the magnitude of our endeavor or the noble futility of our mission or any of the other things everybody back there can't shut up about." He folded his arms across his chest and stared back out over the water.

"So what did you come out here for?"

"To have a panic attack. And possibly a power bar. I have no idea what's in any of that stuff the Athosians made, but it all smells citrusy." He lapsed into silence again, scowling. If he scowled enough, maybe Sheppard would start to feel oppressed, and go away.

Minutes passed, and Sheppard neither spoke nor went away. McKay was just beginning to feel a little oppressed himself when Sheppard said, "Operational efficiency."

McKay stared. "What?"

"The 12-hour clock describes a complete circle, and doesn't require clarification when you yell a number over your radio."

"So does the compass. In fact, I believe it was designed specifically for that purpose. By the ancient Sumerians. Or something." He frowned. "Come to think of it, we might have gotten that from the Goa'uld."

"Now you're just making stuff up."

McKay shrugged. "It's not really my area."

"Anyway, the compass doesn't work in space. Or on other planets." Sheppard popped his eyebrows up smugly, and McKay rolled his eyes. He might as well have said, so there. "Besides, north, south, east, west - those are absolutes, and in the middle of a firefight you can't always tell where they are. The 12-hour clock is always relative to the person at the center of it."

"Also I'd like to point out that the entire clock thing is meaningless in space. Three dimensions. In fact, it probably doesn't even work in the air. So much for accuracy and consistency. Not that I'm surprised by the lack of either from a culture that can't even embrace the metric system."

Sheppard nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on McKay's. "I agree completely."

"It's all pointless. None of it works the way it's meant to once you let your feet off the ground. None of it actually means anything at all. Step through the stargate, and the entire framework breaks down."

"I'm heading back to my room right now to write a very pointed letter," Sheppard said, and slumped a little more obviously against the rail.

McKay snorted, and looked away quickly. "I realize you don't know me very well, Major Sheppard, but I assure you that humoring me is no way to shut me up."

"Maybe not," Sheppard said with unforgivable smugness. "But it did make you feel better. I have a sense about these things."

McKay tilted his head sideways until his neck popped. Tension drained out of his neck, and the throbbing in his head receded to a gentle roar. He did feel a little lighter in the shoulder region, like a tiny piece of the world had rolled off of him. A continent, maybe; a small one, like Australia. "A little."

"Good."

He rolled his head all the way around on his neck, listening to the snap-crackle-pop release of muscle and bone and ligament strung together way too tight. Grudgingly, he shrugged and let himself smile. "Thanks."

"Any time," Sheppard said, and turned back to the water.

This time, the quiet didn't feel so smothering. He leaned, Sheppard leaned, and miraculously no one wandered out on the deck to annoy them. In spite of himself, he felt the subtle gnawing of camaraderie somewhere in the vicinity of his diaphragm. God help him, he was bonding.

Just when he'd decided it was creepy, and that he was going back to some nice, relaxing lab where his attitude problem would never be troubled by people with any charm or social skills to speak of, Sheppard shifted a little. He didn't say anything, but he was gazing less at the water and more at McKay himself and he still didn't say anything, and McKay's neck started to hurt again, right where it had been hurting before.

"What now?" he snapped, to bleed off some of the tension.

"Aren't you even a little bit curious about why I came out here?"

McKay smiled thinly. "I naturally assumed it had something to do with my sparkling wit and charisma. Either that, or they ran out of those crispy onion-ish things."

"Both, really." Sheppard gave a one-second smile, then dropped his head forward, hiding his eyes in shadow. "Other things, too, though. As a reward for waking up the Wraith and fleeing with my tail between my legs, it seems I'm in charge of a lot more stuff now. I even get to have my own team."

"You sound absolutely thrilled."

"Oh, I am. Right after getting the life force sucked out of me by the evil undead, I love a good command decision." Sheppard looked up then, and McKay sort of wished he hadn't; his face was lined and pale in the moonlight, and something in his eyes made something in McKay's chest hurt.

"I'm--sorry," he said, looking everywhere but at Sheppard. "About Sumner. For what it's worth, I've read your mission report and I can't see what you could have done differently."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Now, about this team thing," Sheppard said with a significant look.

"Yes? What about it?"

The look got a little more significant. Sheppard did something with his eyebrows that McKay had only ever seen in cartoons before, and tilted his head. "I'm asking you to join it."

McKay's eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry, I thought I was on the team. Are you saying I'm not contributing enough? Now you want me to what, provide technical support for your PDA, write your mission reports, hack into the mainframe and make sure you get an A on the final? In what way exactly am I not a part of the team, Major?"

"Not the team," Sheppard clarified evenly. "My team. Consisting of myself and three others, which will on a regular basis travel through the stargate to other planets in search of weapons, technology, goods, allies, and maybe even ZPMs. Assuming we survive. I'm asking you to help me out with that."

"Oh."

"Yes, oh."

It was all he could say; every other word he knew was bottled up in his chest, which was rapidly expanding. Sheppard wanted him on his team. Sheppard wanted him to be on his team. McKay started to smile, and made absolutely no attempt to conceal it. "You want me to be on your team!"

"Yes. You know, I think that's what I said to start with."

"Who else have you asked?"

"I hadn't really gotten that far yet. I thought, if you said yes, we could maybe bat some ideas around."

"No, I mean --" McKay's eyes got very, very wide. "Wait, are you saying you picked me first?"

"I was told you were the smartest guy in Atlantis," Sheppard said. He was starting to sound skeptical. "I'm beginning to feel very misled."

"Not at all. I think it's safe to say that right now I'm the smartest person on this planet. Probably even this galaxy."

"Then what exactly is your problem?"

"I don't typically get chosen first for things. Difficult as it may be for you to imagine, there are those who find my charming personality too high a price to pay for my brilliant mind."

"You could try being a little nicer, but honestly, I think it would just freak people out."

McKay shrugged impatiently. "I'm not here to make friends, Major."

"So your brilliant mind doesn't have the best of all possible marketing strategies. You got chosen first for this expedition anyway."

"Yes," McKay said, "from a field of exactly one person on Earth both willing to make the trip and able to do the work. That's not the point. This is different, this is field work. This is...alien worlds, first contacts, carrying weapons... By the way, you don't need me to know how to fire a weapon, do you? I know which end of a gun to be afraid of, but--."

"We can work on that. Listen, McKay. In a few months, when we've earned some downtime and started putting together a football league, you're not going to be on my short list. But for this, I need you. You know better than anyone else what we're looking for, and I think with some training, you'll be able to handle yourself just fine."

"You don't want me on your football team?" McKay laid a hand over his heart. "That hurts me."

"What happens after the fourth down?"

"You pull the goalie?"

Sheppard blew out a breath and glared. "Okay, you get a pass on that for being Canadian, but just this once. Are you going to do this with me or not?"

"Of course I'm going to do it." Already he could see it in his head: the gun, the black vest, the glow of the gate rippling over his noble brow. The deterioration of his bladder control and the expression of utter, desperate terror on his face. "I can't do it."

Sheppard had started to smile; now his face froze, and the glare was back, and you wouldn't think dark eyes could get quite that icy. "Excuse me?"

McKay's body shouldn't have any actual physical memory of traveling through a wormhole, but his imagination was happy to supply his stomach with a reasonable substitute. His hands gripped the railing tightly as his sense of gravity sputtered.

"McKay?"

"I can't do it," he said quickly, "I've got to stay here, in the control room. In the lab. I have to run Science. That's what I'm here for. The U.S. Air Force is funneling vast sums of cash into my retirement account on a monthly basis on the assumption that I'll stay in Atlantis and run Science. It'll all be paid out to my sole remaining heir, of course, probably by the end of the week if things continue as they've started, but I have a job to do. I have responsibilities--"

"Weir cleared it already. She says you can do both."

"I can -- I can do both?" McKay stopped. He gnawed at his lip, and looked up sideways at Sheppard. "Hm."

Sheppard nodded. "Yes, Rodney, you can."

McKay felt his chin coming up of its own accord and before he knew what he was doing he'd said, "Of course I can. I'm quite adept at multitasking."

"So. You'll do it."

"I'll...yeah. Yes." McKay looked Sheppard squarely in the eye. "I'll do it."

"Okay." Sheppard leaned back against the railing, still eyeing McKay warily. "Thank you."

Silence came down again, around them instead of between them now, like they were one whole thing instead of two separate things. With utter disgust, McKay noticed that the vastness of the ocean and the gigagillion stars no longer made him feel small and the city didn't make him feel cold. Instead he felt warm and connected and filled with bonhomie. He hunched his shoulders against the sensation, which was intrusive and sentimental and unproductive and unlikely to last.

With Sheppard right there, though, bleeding warmth into him from three inches away, it was unlikely to go away on its own. McKay gave himself a mental shake and breathed in cool salt air. "So you're at, what, my three o'clock, right now?"

"Nope." Sheppard looked over at him and grinned. "You're at my nine."

"Absolutely nonsensical."

Sheppard shrugged. "Relative."

"I'm going in," McKay said abruptly, and turned away from the moon and the water and Sheppard.

"Hey." Sheppard caught his arm. "Hold up."

"Five more minutes of consciousness and I'll be trying to drain the life-force out of people, Major. Whatever it is, it can wait until I've had a shower and coffee and a nap. In reverse order."

"I just wanted to say, I'm glad you said yes." He held a hand out between them.

McKay stared at it. He licked at his lips, which were suddenly dry. "Yeah?"

Sheppard shrugged. "Sure. Now, half of anything that goes wrong gets to be your fault."

"Huh." McKay's eyebrows shot up. It wasn't a bad argument. Diabolical, but sound. "Okay, we're a team. What now?"

Sheppard rolled his eyes. His hand still hung there, waiting. Slowly, McKay reached out and took it. Sheppard's fingers closed around his in a steady, strong grip.

McKay matched it.

~