The Best Things in Life are Free

by Smitty

John Sheppard was on a mission from God.

He was seventeen years old, the starting quarterback on his high school football team, it was T-minus three hours until the first big party of the school year, and his father was going to be away. All. Weekend. Long.

All John needed was a hot set of wheels and he knew exactly where he could find those. He made it as far as the living room and then realized that maybe he had miscalculated one of those key components.

Like exactly when his father was getting out of Dodge.

"John! There you are!" John's father walked out of the bedroom area of the ranch house in his fatigues. Colonel Sheppard was even taller than his son, with broad shoulders and close-cropped gray hair.

"Hi, Dad," John said, giving his father his best 'good son' smile. It fooled neither of them.

"I know that smile," William Sheppard said. "What do you want?"

John shrugged defeat. "Can I borrow the car tonight?"

"Sure," his father said. "Keys to the Chevy are in the hall table."

John bit his lip against his disappointment and tried a more straightforward tact. "Actually, Dad, there's a big party and I sorta have a big date and I was hoping I could borrow the De Lorean."

"Not a chance," his father said instantly.

"Dad!"

"I know you want to impress Elizabeth -- "

"Elizabeth and I broke up last month." It wasn't exactly accurate -- John and Elizabeth had an 'agreement' since she'd moved away to college upstate. It meant he could put his moves on the new girl at Dex's party tonight.

" -- but until your physics grade approaches acceptable and I stop getting reports of you skipping class, my answer is no. You understand me?"

John sighed silently. "Yes, sir," he answered dutifully. He looked away and saw, for the first time, the rucksack leaning on the wall by the door.

"Duty driver'll be picking me up at 1700," Colonel Sheppard said. "You going to be okay until Tuesday?"

"Sure," John said. His father had an account set up with the nearest pizza shop so John could order all the pizza he needed while the Colonel was TDY.

"All right." William smiled and clapped his son on the shoulder. "Get that physics grade up, will you?"

Whatever he was going to say next was lost in the loud, precise knock on the door, and thirty seconds later, the Colonel was gone to John-didn't-even-know-where. The house was quiet in his wake and John crossed to the front hall table and slid open the drawer. Two sets of keys sat inside, one to the 1973 Chevy Nova that had been in the family since his dad was a major and his mom was alive. The other set of keys belonged to Will Sheppard's 1983 DeLorean. PRV V-6 engine with a five-speed manual transmission, capable of 170 horsepower before emissions regulations knocked it down to 130, and the literature promised that it could go from 0-60 in eight-point-eight seconds.

John had wet dreams about that car.

He reached into the drawer and touched the keys reverently. It was one party. What could happen?

Rodney McKay shoveled mashed potatoes into his mouth and hoped no one would try to talk to him before he could escape from the kitchen table. His parents, tired of McKay Family Argument #615, Should We Return to Canada, finally stopped screaming and the kitchen fell into sulky silence.

"Rodney," his father said, in what was undoubtedly an attempt to initiate Family Discussion. "Are you still tutoring?"

"Er, yeah," Rodney answered, trying to swallow at the same time.

"Tutoring," his sister Jeannie snorted. "More like charging them to write their papers for them."

"No," Rodney snapped witheringly. "How would you know, anyway?"

"Maybe I'm not stupid," Jeannie snapped back.

"Children," Dr. McKay boomed, to little effect.

"I think it's nice of Rodney to help out the kids who aren't as smart as he is," Mrs. McKay said idly, stirring her mashed potatoes without eating any.

"Except that he's gouging them an arm and a leg," Jeannie muttered.

"Almost have enough saved for that microscope, son?" Dr. McKay asked, raising his voice to talk over Jeannie's snipes.

"Telescope, Dad," Rodney corrected, glad for a change in subject. "I got the last of it today. I'm going over to the mall tomorrow to pick it up. It's going to be great. I'll be able to observe all sorts of lunar activity over Mars next month."

Jeannie laughed. "Don't you mean the moons around Uranus?"

"Now, Jeannie, there's no need to be vulgar," Dr. McKay said as Rodney kicked her under the table.

"I think Rodney needs a nice girlfriend," Mrs. McKay said, apropos of absolutely nothing.

"Mom," Rodney groaned.

"Rodney's gay," Jeannie announced, poking at her vegetables.

"Jeannie!"

"Now, Jeannie," their father lectured. "Just because Rodney hasn't found the right girl to date does not indicate a tendency toward homosexuality. Nor is 'gay' acceptable as a pejorative. Alfred Kinsey's theories indicate that sexuality can be measured along a scale of preference on which the majority of the population -- "

Rodney rested his forehead in his hand and shoveled up some more mashed potatoes.

"Shep!"

"Woo, nice car!"

"Your old man finally let you borrow the car!" Mitch greeted John with a goofy grin and a proffered beer.

"That's a hot set of wheels, Shep," Dex agreed, gazing enviously at the car.

John stepped out of the DeLorean and took the beer, winking at the crowd gathered around the vehicle. He retracted the gull-wing doors and sauntered into the house after Mitch and Dex, inseparable as always.. A few of the die-hard machineheads stayed to gaze at the car, but most of the crowd followed John into the house.

"Teyla's here," Mitch told him, eyebrows waggling in a way that was meant to be lecherous but just looked goofy. "And she is looking fantastic."

John popped the tab on his beer and took a drink off the top. "I'm a man on a mission," he announced. He wandered through the rooms, nodding to some people and slapping others on the back. He winked at a cluster of girls who were giggling behind their hands, and finally found Teyla holding court in the living room. She was surrounded by girls who were copying her everyday style of tank tops and miniskirts, to varying degrees of success, and telling stories of the last base her father had been stationed. All the stories seemed to involve a bar or danceclub of some sort and John imagined -- in vivid detail -- that she had a real wild side.

She spotted him from across the room and winked. John was very glad he'd borrowed the De Lorean.

"This is crap, I can't see a thing," Rodney sighed, stepping away from Radek Zelenka's telescope.

"Maybe you are not looking at the right thing," Radek suggested, peering in the telescope himself.

"No, it just doesn't have enough power." Rodney sighed and scrubbed one hand through his hair. "Don't worry about it. When I get my new telescope tomorrow, we'll be able to chart anything we want."

"Yes, yes, your telescope. Your extremely expensive and high-technical new way of spying on John Sheppard."

"Oh, shut up," Rodney snapped but he didn't put much heat into it. Radek was his best friend and had known about his crush on John for nearly the entire summer. Some days it felt like Rodney had always had a crush on the boy next door and he had to remind himself that his family had only moved to the base a year and a half before. Radek's family had arrived shortly after the McKays, and it was a good thing, because nobody else at that high school was even close to Rodney's intelligence. Not even John Sheppard, Rodney knew, but his adoration was equal to his adoration of Cheryl Tiegs, Christie Brinkley, and Patrick Dempsey. Maybe even equal to his adoration of Rob Lowe. Maybe even greater, because John was real and had strong, capable hands that threw footballs and twirled his pencils in study hall, and he had hair that flopped over his eyes and jeans that were tight enough in all the right places.

Radek had picked up on his interest instantly and after an initial observation of, "So you like boys as well as girls? Why should I care?" he pretty much let Rodney obsess without comment.

Rodney found an empty patch of floor in Radek's room and sat down. John Sheppard was handsome and athletic and cool and popular. His father was a colonel and John had been accepted to the Air Force Academy pending a nomination from his representative and excellent mid-year grades. Everyone assumed he had it in the bag. Rodney was smarter than John, brilliant, in fact, but he didn't have anything in the bag. He had a lot of outstanding requests for admissions materials and twice that many scholarship applications, and he knew that they'd be knocking down his door any day now, but so far he'd heard nothing.

"You have your worrying face on," Radek said. "John is no longer dating Elizabeth Weir. They broke up when she graduated. Maybe you should see what he thinks about liking boys."

Rodney snorted. Radek didn't often give advice, which was the only reason Rodney had for not reaming him for his stupidity. That and Radek tended to think the best of people and Rodney wasn't quite bastard enough to squash that. "Right, or he and his football buddies will introduce my head to the toilet in the men's locker room."

Radek shook his head. "You have no positive thinking," he scolded.

"No," Rodney agreed, staring at the sky out the window. "But tomorrow I'll have the best telescope ever made and that'll make up for a lot."

John Sheppard stared at the sky out the window of the DeLorean as Teyla Emmagan sucked his neck. He was going to have a huge hickey, but his dad wouldn't be home until Tuesday and the swelling would be gone by then. John knew quite a lot about hickeys, the hiding and disposal of them in particular.

He'd gotten both hands up the back of Teyla's tank top and she most definitely was not wearing a bra. That was interesting. Very interesting. He'd just managed to slip his hands to her sides and move his thumbs -- yes, there, the bottom swell of her breasts and --

The car jolted hard, and John's hands were down on Teyla's waist, but he didn't even notice as he struggled to sit up. Teyla moved off him and scrambled back over to the passenger seat. John looked out the window, wiping his neck, and saw some guy in a car trying to maneuver around him.

"Hey!" he called, hitting the door release. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry, man," the guy's voice came distantly through his own car window and John's own.

John frowned. He hit the door mechanism again. The gull-wings didn't budge.

"John?" Teyla asked, her voice lilting toward a warning.

John hit the door release again and groaned at the utter lack of response.

"The doors are stuck."

Rodney and his thousand dollars of ghost-written papers and tutoring sessions spent doing other people's homework arrived at the mall the next day, half an hour before the science store opened. He paced the mall entrance for ten minutes or so, and then gave up and walked outside. It a nice Saturday morning, bright and sunny with the crisp, leafy scent of fall. The parking lot was mostly quiet with a few mothers dragging children behind them in an effort to finish their errands before the day truly started and a cluster of girls too young to have been out partying the night before waiting for the ear piercing kiosk to open. On the end, though, a glare of silver caught Rodney's attention and held it. There, parked outside the auto repair shop, was a 1983, stainless-steel, gull-wing De Lorean, and standing next to it, all snug jeans and tousled hair, was John Sheppard. Rodney knew that car. John's father drove it occasionally and washed it more.

Taking a chance, he crossed the parking lot and waved awkwardly when John turned his head.

"Hi," he said, not nearly as cool as he'd imagined. "I'm Rodney. Rodney McKay."

John nodded. "You live next door," he said.

"Yes!" Rodney agreed. "Yes, I do." Up close, John Sheppard's eyes turned out to be not brown at all. Or maybe light brown. Definitely the color they called hazel, with light rings and darker rings and green and gold flecks and Rodney was absolutely not blinking owlishly into another guy's eyes in the middle of the manliest of all manly places -- the autobody shop.

"So, uh..." John shrugged and jammed his hands in his back pockets. "You getting your...bike...fixed?"

"Um, no," Rodney said, suddenly feeling ridiculous. What was he doing over here? "I was uh, I was on my way to buy a -- a telescope, and I saw you over here and you looked like you were having trouble so I came over to see if I could give you a hand."

John nodded slowly, frowning a little at Rodney. "Doors are stuck," he said. He turned his head and nodded at the front corner of the car. Rodney followed his gaze and winced when he saw the dent.

"I guess you weren't in it at the time?" Rodney said, grinning at John.

"Actually, I was," John said shortly. "We had to call a truck, get it towed, wake up someone from the garage and have them pop the doors manually to let us out -- good times, McKay. Good times."

Rodney knew sarcasm when he heard it and Sheppard wasn't even wielding it with any kind of cleverness. Well, maybe a little bit.

"I could fix that for you," Rodney offered with calculated nonchalance. "I'm what they call mechanically inclined. It's just applied physics, really," he added, in case Sheppard needed to be reassured.

Sheppard scratched the back of his neck and looked Rodney up and down. Rodney's heart beat double-time in his chest and he started to hope. Maybe this was the way to win over Sheppard after all. The other boy leaned in close and Rodney grinned.

"McKay," Sheppard said softly. "This is a $25,000 car that my father doesn't know I borrowed...in fact, specifically told me not to borrow. They don't make these cars anymore. And my father is a colonel in the Air Force who commands a few thousand men with guns. Are you sure you can fix this car?"

Rodney was 99% sure that he could fix that car, but Sheppard was raising some truly excellent points. Especially about the guns.

"Hey!" They both turned to see the grizzled owner of the garage coming toward them with a clipboard. "Sheppard? You're the kid with the De Lorean?" He looked at John and Rodney before John stepped forward.

"Yeah, that's me," he said. "What's the damage?"

"Gotta order a part," the man said. "It's gonna be a grand. You can pick her up Tuesday morning if we get to work today. I gotta ask for half up front. This ain't no cheap car, kid."

"A what? A thousand dollars?" John exclaimed, looking as upset as Rodney had ever seen him. Even his hair was quivering. "I don't have that kind of money."

The man shrugged. Rodney noticed, belatedly, that his stitched nametag dubbed him Bob. "Let me know what you want to do, kid." He turned and ambled back into the garage.

"Great," Sheppard muttered. "This is just great."

"When's your dad getting home?" Rodney asked. He had a thousand dollars in his pocket and his brain was working very quickly.

"Tuesday," John muttered, looking around like he wanted something to kick. "God, this is just perfect." He looked up at Rodney. "You really think you can fix it?"

Rodney had to shake his head. "Needs parts, remember," he said. "Depending on what it is, I could probably find one, but the likelihood of getting it fixed before Tuesday is probably one in oh...."

Sheppard turned his back and hunched, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets. Rodney stopped calculating probability and started calculating something else.

"Okay, look," he said cautiously. "I've got a proposition for you."

Sheppard muttered something unintelligible and Rodney barreled forward.

"I have a thousand dollars. I was going to use it to buy this telescope. You see -- uh, never mind," he said, because Sheppard had turned around and fixed him with a slightly confused, hazel gaze. "But look. I have the money."

"And what? You're just going to give it to me?" Sheppard narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "Right."

"No, see." Rodney stopped and took a deep breath, thinking frantically. "I give you the money. And you...pretend like you're my best friend for, oh, say, a month?"

"What?" Sheppard quirked one eyebrow upward and twisted his face into an expression of surprised confusion. Rodney was pretty impressed.

"I give you a thousand dollars. You pay the garage to fix your dad's car -- "

"I got that part, thanks."

" -- and you let me hang out with you for a month. Four weeks. I get to go everywhere you go. You pretend like you like hanging out with me. I become cool by osmosis."

"Cool by osmosis?" Sheppard repeated.

"Yes, it's a term used in cellular biology, mostly, applied to a social situation. It means -- "

"Okay, okay, never mind." Sheppard cut Rodney off with a wave of his hand. "It's a deal."

"It -- really?" Rodney blinked.

"Yes, really! Four weeks. Saturday to Friday night -- "

"Monday to Sunday night," Rodney corrected. Sheppard looked at him like he wanted to punch him in the nose. Rodney stood his ground. "I'd rather start Monday morning at school so I can get acclimated for the Friday and Saturday night party scenes. Get people used to seeing me around so they don't automatically flush my head in a toilet before you can save me. I want them all to know I'm with you in advance, sort of, you see?"

Sheppard closed his eyes and gave his head a little shake. "Okay," he said softly, then opened his eyes and glared at Rodney. "Friends, McKay," he said. "That's it. You don't follow me to class or go on dates with me and we do not hang out together outside of school and any party or sporting event, got it?"

"Can we double date?" Rodney asked.

"If you can get a date," Sheppard said, not as meanly as he could have, Rodney thought, "we can double date."

"Great!" Rodney beamed. He could always get Katie Brown to go out with him. She was in the science club, had a reasonable grasp of botany, if you wanted to call that a science, and had a mad crush on him. Even Rodney's mother would be pleased. He fished the money out of his pocket and hesitated before handing it over to Sheppard. "Here," he said. "I'm uh -- I'm gonna trust you to keep up your half of the deal on Monday."

Sheppard nodded. "Yeah. I don't go back on my bargains."

Rodney nodded back, quashing his own plans to make Sheppard pinky-swear or slice open his thumb and make them blood brothers. Instead, Sheppard took the money in his left hand and stuck out his right. Rodney took his hand and they shook on the matter.

John Sheppard's hand was warm and large and calloused and Rodney didn't even regret the loss of the telescope.

John woke up Sunday morning hung over. The party he'd gone to the night before was typical except that this time he had no car and riding shotgun with Dex was pretty much carte blanche to overindulge. Besides, he hadn't had the best weekend so far and Teyla still wasn't speaking to him.

He stood in the kitchen and drank orange juice from the carton. It helped, and so did a quick five-mile run and a hot shower. Feeling vaguely human again, he sat down at the kitchen table with his homework, but only made it through the math and English Lit before boredom settled in. He went back to his bedroom and made his bed, tucking the sheets into military corners so his father wouldn't give him grief. He straightened up and then went back to the kitchen to wash his lunch dishes from the day before and write orange juice on the running grocery list pinned to the fridge with a magnet advertising the nearest USAA branch. It was almost noon and his stomach was feeling pretty normal, so he scrambled up some eggs and squashed them between toast with a slice of cheese. It made a good enough lunch and he was probably going to have pizza that night anyway.

He dialed Elizabeth's number at her dorm room and woke up her roommate. Elizabeth wasn't in and Kate didn't know where she was. John asked that she have Elizabeth call him back and put the phone back in the cradle.

With nothing better to do, John cleaned up his lunch dishes and went outside with his skateboard. He cruised down to Dex's house but Dex was suffering the indignities of family time with his parents, grandparents, and little brothers. John raised his eyebrows at the invitation to join them and promptly backed away.

Mitch didn't have that problem, but he was on academic probation and was trying to get through his own homework. John made a half-hearted attempt to help him with the algebra assignment and then took off again. Mitch was a nice guy, but John only had enough patience to explain something once. Besides, coming off as too much a brainiac would definitely erode his cool.

The rest of his football buddies were either out or subject to family obligations and even Aiden Ford, the freshman who started at tight end and still managed to keep up his grades, was spending time with his grandparents and people from their church that afternoon. John had wavered when Aiden invited him in -- Grandma Ford's cookies were worth any amount of cool that might be lost, but John had never had a lot of faith in any being higher than his father and spending the afternoon praising the Lord with the Fords' Baptist friends scared him a little. He begged off and got a handful of cookies anyway.

He knocked on Teyla's door and got no answer. He threw a few pebbles up at her window and didn't get a reaction from that, either. She was either out or ignoring him, and he wasn't equipped for great romantic gestures involving music or oration, so he took off for the cul-de-sac on the next block. John was used to a little solitude and he spent the next half hour practicing his kick turns, a few ollies, and a grind that nearly took the skin off the left side of his face when he miscalculated and wound up in the street. Disgusted with himself, he brushed the gravel off and went back to less complicated board flips.

Dirty and sweaty, he pondered his next option. It wasn't even three o'clock yet, and he had most of the afternoon in front of him. It was too nice a day to waste on boring Sunday afternoon television and most of his friends were busy.

There was one 'friend' though, that he hadn't considered. Ok, so technically speaking, he didn't have to be Rodney McKay's 'best friend' until the next day, but McKay had more than a few things to learn about being cool and John figured it wouldn't hurt to get a head start on that. The McKays lived next door, after all, and he really should have thought of Rodney sooner. Well, he reconsidered, thinking of the guy's awkward enthusiasm. Maybe not. Still. He'd do for a Sunday afternoon diversion. Even if he sucked at anything outdoors, they could go down to the arcade and play Pole Position or pinball.

John rang the McKays' doorbell and shifted his weight impatiently. He heard the pounding of footsteps inside -- figured that McKay would be excitable -- and settled back, sliding his hands in his pockets.

A small, blonde girl threw the door open and blinked at him expectantly.

"Hi," John said, smiling at her. "Is Rodney around?"

"You're John Sheppard," she said, her blue eyes going bright and dreamy.

"Er. Yep. Live next door," he confirmed, tilting his head toward his house. "You're...Rodney's sister?"

"I'm Jeannie McKay," she said, with a sudden self-assuredness to her voice. She struck a pose against the doorframe and John had to make an actual effort not to laugh. Jeannie McKay couldn't have been more than twelve and he was pretty sure that she was flirting with him.

"It's nice to meet you, Jeannie," he said as politely as he could. "I don't suppose you could help me out, could you? With finding Rodney?"

"Oh, Rodney." The enthusiasm drained out of Jeannie instantly. "He's over at Radek's house. But," she added brightly. "I would be happy to tell him that you were looking for him."

"Yeah," John said with a nod. "You do that. Thanks." He offered her a half-smile. "See you 'round, Jeannie."

He turned and stepped off the porch and he could swear that he heard Jeannie McKay swoon behind him. He shook his head and tucked his skateboard under his arm as he walked back to his house. Maybe he'd do his physics homework after all.

"So...let me get this right," Radek said slowly and Rodney rolled his eyes.

"Yes, yes," Rodney interrupted. "I gave all the money to John Sheppard so he could get the car fixed and in return, he's going to be my best friend for four weeks."

"Oh, now my best friendship is not good enough," Radek said. "And you still have no telescope."

"But I'll be cool," Rodney insisted. "And then you'll hang out with me and you'll be cool and hell, it's only money. I can make more and by the time I do, they'll have put out the next model and I'll have a bigger and better telescope than the one I would have gotten yesterday."

Radek sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "I do not like this plan," he said. "You give all your money to spend time with someone I do not think is so very nice."

"How do you know?" Rodney challenged. "Have you ever talked to him?"

"No! And he would never talk to me! And would never talk to you if you were not giving him all your money."

"It's a business arrangement," Rodney insisted loudly. "Even if he's a grade A asshole, hanging out with him is going to make me popular and hanging out with me is going to make you popular. Aren't you tired of getting stuffed in lockers and having your head flushed down a toilet?"

"Yes," Radek said. "But joining them does not beat them. Did we not exact revenge?"

Rodney blew out air through his nose and tried not to smile at the thought of the exploding toilets and malfunctioning car stereos. "Yeah," he admitted reluctantly. Revenge was fun but a week later, they were all right back in the same place they had started, and Rodney was tired of it. "Ok, can we just try it my way? Four weeks, that's it."

Radek looked at Rodney carefully and Rodney could feel him capitulate.

"All right," Radek said. He shook his head and muttered just loudly enough for Rodney to hear, "But I do not think this will end well."

Still stinging from his fight with Radek, Rodney went home for dinner. He poked at his meatloaf and macaroni-and-cheese -- and his mother couldn't even get the Kraft powder, she had to buy the store brand because it was cheaper -- and missed Mrs. Zelenka's dumplings and porkchops sulkily.

"A boy came by to see Rodney, today," Jeannie announced, running her fork tines into the little macaroni tubes.

"What?" Rodney said instantly, sitting straight up. His hand hit his milk glass and nearly knocked it over. He reached over with his other hand and succeeded in dragging his sleeve through his macaroni.

"John Sheppard," Jeannie informed the table as if this was important information.

"That's nice," Mrs. McKay said. "Is that a new friend, Rodney?"

"Ah, yeah," Rodney managed. "John Sheppard came here? Looking for me?" he hissed to Jeannie furiously. "And you're only telling me now?"

Jeannie shrugged with one shoulder.

"Sheppard, Sheppard," Dr. McKay mused. "That name sounds familiar."

"He lives next door," Rodney said in exasperation. "What did he want?"

"How should I know?" Jeannie asked disdainfully, sucking macaroni off her fork. She turned her attention to the rest of the table. "He's the dreamiest boy in school," she said.

"He doesn't even go to your school," Rodney reminded her.

"He's the quarterback," Jeannie went on. "He and Elizabeth Weir were going steady but now he's going out with Teyla Emmagan."

"How do you even know all this?" Rodney asked, swiping at his sleeve with a napkin. "I need to go see what he wants."

"It can wait 'til after dinner," his father said placatingly.

"He's sure not your new boyfriend," Jeannie needled. "He'd never go out with you, even if he was queer."

"JEANNIE!" Rodney's face was beet red and flaming hot. Jeannie had been threatened under threat of humiliation and social ostracization never to reveal the existence of the gay porn magazine she'd found under Rodney's mattress. It didn't seem to stop her from broaching the subject of Rodney's sexuality whenever she could. Rodney took a deep breath and sat down slowly, rigid with anger and anticipation that one of his parents would finally catch a clue. "John and I are just friends," he said evenly.

"Are you tutoring him?" Mrs. McKay asked innocently.

"Yes," Rodney said immediately, because it was easy. It was something his mother understood. "I'm tutoring him."

"Oh, that's nice," Mrs. McKay said.

Dr. McKay went back to shoveling in meatloaf, without even a lecture on human sexuality, Masters & Johnson, or Alfred Kinsey. Jeannie went back to running her macaroni through on her fork. Rodney stirred his plate around for about another thirty seconds, slid his vegetables under the macaroni, and took one last bite of meatloaf.

"May I please be excused?" he asked with his mouth full.

"You may," his father said. "Whose turn is it for the dishes tonight?"

"Jeannie's," he said, making a quick getaway. The second phone was in his parents' room and he closed the door before sitting on the floor and punching in the number he'd memorized over a year ago. He chewed on his lower lip and listened for the phone ring once, twice, three times. Five. Seven. Ten. He let it ring twice more and then hung up. John Sheppard wasn't home. He was probably out with some girl, maybe Teyla Emmagan or one of the cheerleaders. He was always on the sidelines flirting with the cheerleading squad.

Rodney went slowly to his own room and opened the window. He could get out on the roof from there, so he threw his leg over the sill and crawled out on the flat ledge over the garage. Maybe Radek was right, he thought. Maybe John Sheppard was a Grade A asshole and Rodney's distant adoration would shrivel up and die when he realized what a jerk John really was. Maybe he'd made a big, big mistake, and he'd given up the telescope for absolutely nothing. Tears pricked in his eyes but he blinked them away. He'd thought this out very carefully and there was no way to fail. He was Rodney McKay and he had an IQ that broke the banks and a perfect 4.0 average.

And John Sheppard never went back on his bargains. They'd shook on it.

Rodney stood up to go back in the house and saw a dark shape on the roof next door. He stared at it for a while and finally realized that it was John Sheppard, arms tucked behind his head, face tilted up to the stars. Rodney stood and watched him for a long time before stepping quietly back into his room.

John got to school early the next morning and laid in wait for Rodney. He had some serious work to do before he could even try to pass Rodney off as cool to his friends.

Rodney walked by John's hiding place with a huge smile on his face, completely oblivious of his surroundings. He was alone, which made the smile mystifying but John's job a lot easier.

John grabbed Rodney's arm as he went by and dragged him behind the low brick wall. Rodney put up a minimum of resistance that faded as soon as he saw John.

"Why didn't you just call my name or start walking beside me, or something cool?" he asked, looking betrayed and wow, had the guy never heard of a poker face?

"Because we need to do some work first," John said, taking in Rodney's chinos, "Mr. Fantastic" shirt, and flat hair.

"Huh, what? What do you mean by -- "

"First off," John said, finding the seam where Rodney's right sleeve met the shoulder and pulling. The stitches broke with a satisfying sound. Rodney squeaked.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. "I really like this shirt."

"Yeah, I can see why," John muttered, dragging the tail out from Rodney's pants and letting it hang over the belt. He tore off the second sleeve and thought that for a geek, Rodney's arms really weren't anything to laugh at. He wondered if Rodney could throw a football. "Ok, look." He tossed the sleeve at Rodney, who caught it and fumbled it into his pocket. John's backpack was at his feet and he'd thrown his bottle of Dep on top of his books.

"Wait, what...what is that?" Rodney asked, shying back.

"It's hair gel," John said, squirting a dime-sized dollop on his palm and rubbing his hands together. "Ok, now...don't take this the wrong way or anything." He reached out and scrubbed his hands through Rodney's hair, then took his time spiking up not-actually-random pieces.

"What -- what -- what are you doing?" Rodney sputtered, glaring up at John like a wet cat. John tried very hard not to smile at the image.

"I'm fixing your hair," he said, tweaking one last piece between his fingertips.

Rodney made a sound that indicated how utterly put out he was and John got a mean sense of satisfaction by rubbing his hand hard up the back of Rodney's head, sending all the hair the other direction.

"Great, now I look like I stuck my finger in a socket," Rodney griped.

"You haven't even looked in a mirror," John said cheerfully, shaking out the flannel shirt Rodney had stuffed between the straps of his backpack and tossing it at him. "Tie that around your waist.

"I figured it looks like yours," Rodney said, and John raised his eyebrows automatically.

"My hair is cool," he said. "My hair is the epitome of cool. And don't put that backpack on. One strap, if you have to have it over your shoulder."

"One -- I'll wind up with an irreversible back injury before I can vote! My spine will develop a curvature that will eventually lead to a lifetime of discomfort on rainy days and prescription mattresses."

"So switch off which side," John said, picking up Rodney's backpack and thrusting it at him. "And geez, try to carry around less than six books, would you?" He vaulted over the low wall and started to walk toward the school.

Rodney caught up with him just before the stairs and started babbling nervously. "So this'll be my first time walking down the cool hallway. On purpose, I mean. Because when I first moved here I had no idea and I figured it was just a quick way to get to homeroom because I was already late -- "

"Rodney," John interrupted. "Relax. We're friends, remember? Best friends. No one's going to stuff you in a locker. I promise."

Rodney's gelled head bobbed. "Ok, yes. Good, that's the deal after all."

It was 8:30 in the morning and John was already exhausted.

"Hey," he said to the cluster near his locker. He spun the combination lock, found the number easily, and jerked his locker open. They responded with various degrees of apathy and he pretended not to listen to hard to see if Teyla said anything.

"Hi!" Rodney greeted everyone. "Rodney. Rodney McKay."

"Didn't you do my homework for summer school?" Mitch asked, scratching his head.

"Er, yes. That was me. I mean, that was the old me -- "

"You guys know Rod -- " Okay, that was even worse. "Rodney. Right?" John said, cutting into the awkwardness as smoothly as he could. "He's cool."

Mitch and Dex exchanged glances. Clearly they did not agree with John's assessment of Rodney but they just cast amused glances toward him and shrugged. "Cool," Dex said, nodding solemnly.

"Hey, whatever Shep says is fine by me," Aiden Ford said, punching Rodney in the shoulder.

"Ow! Hey, I have very fair skin," Rodney said. "And I bruise really easily."

John slammed his locker shut to drown out Rodney and bared his teeth in the best imitation of a grin he could muster. "So," he said stiffly. "I think we're late for class."

"Oh, my God," Rodney sighed, lying on his back and lowering the triangle of drippy cheese into his mouth, "if my blood sugar was any lower, I'd be dead. That's all I'm saying."

"Why didn't you eat lunch?" John asked, sprawled on his own couch, watching Rodney inhale the pizza.

"Too nervous," Rodney explained, closing his mouth over the tip and just reveling in the hot greasy taste of tomato sauce and cheese. "Mm, this is fantastic." He bit off the piece, chewed and swallowed. He thought maybe he could feel the chemical balance of his blood return to normal. "Let me give you a few bucks for it."

"Nah, don't worry about it," John said, taking a bite of pizza himself. "Dad has a deal with the pizza shop down the street, so I can eat while he's gone. Just leave me a slice or two for breakfast tomorrow and he'll be home tomorrow night."

Rodney sat up. "So your dad isn't even around?"

John shook his head. "He's some big deal NATO whatever. He's gotta go a lot of places."

Rodney didn't know what had happened to John's mother, but he knew that she never lived in the house next to his own. "So, what?" he asked. "Your dad just leaves you here all on your own? With pizza?"

John shrugged. "I'm seventeen," he pointed out. "I can pretty much feed and clothe myself for three days."

"Yeah, but." Rodney looked around. He'd almost said, But don't you get lonely? but Rodney wouldn't be lonely. Rodney would love to have the house to himself for three days. No lectures from his father or stupid question from his mother or torturous whining and teasing from Jeannie. "Why don't you ever have any parties over here?"

John cast him a look. "Air Force Colonel," he said. "My dad would kick my ass."

"Oh." The house was nice, if a little spare. Manly. Blue. "Are you going to get in trouble for having me over?"

"No." John didn't elaborate, just picked up another slice of pizza and started eating it.

Rodney felt awkward. He glanced around the living room and his eyes fell on John's backpack and the books spilling out. "You're reading War and Peace?" he asked in frantic need to make conversation.

"For English class," John said. He smiled a little. "I'm on page seventeen."

"A little slow, aren't you?" Rodney said without thinking about it, squinting at the book.

"I'm right on schedule." With that, John seemed to unbend a little. He scooted up on the couch so his head was higher than his knees and hooked his elbow on the back as he chewed thoughtfully. "You read a lot?"

"Sure," Rodney said. "Have you read Heinlein? Asimov?"

"Tom Clancy?" John tried.

The name sounded vaguely familiar to Rodney but he wasn't sure why. "Nope. Douglas? Douglas is a genius."

John made a face. "Coonts?"

"Dean?"

"Stephen. Flight of the Intruder?"

Rodney shook his head and settled back on the couch to eat more pizza.

"You like sports at all?" John asked dubiously.

"Hockey!" Rodney volunteered despite still having a mouthful of pizza. He chewed quickly and swallowed even though his mother wasn't there to correct him.

"Not a real sport," John muttered under his breath and through a bite of pizza but Rodney understood him anyway. "Football?"

Rodney wavered. This getting to know John thing was failing spectacularly and unless he pulled something out of his ass, and soon, this was going to be the longest four weeks ever. "Cheerleaders," he said.

"Yeah, the cheerleaders are great," John said with a smile that looked as relieved as Rodney's. "Hey, my dad rented Back to the Future before he left -- "

"Oh, don't even get me started on that movie," Rodney exclaimed around yet another bite of pizza. John didn't seem capable of saying something that required response when his mouth was empty and he didn't seem capable of not saying something inflammatory when Rodney's mouth was full.

"What?" John asked, mystified. "I liked that movie."

"Right. Well, let me assure you that in no way, shape, or form, can one manipulate black hole technology through both space and time using a power source as esoteric as plutonium-fueled nuclear fusion and it's further ridiculous to suggest that one can use electricity to create anywhere near the power capacity of a reaction -- "

"I thought the car just needed to get up to 88 miles per hour," John interrupted. "Electricity could do that."

"Right, but the flux capacitor, whatever that's supposed to be, apparently needs nuclear power to run the first two trips and yet can bounce on back to 1985 with nothing but a lightning strike."

"So I guess you don't want to watch it again?" John asked, jerking his thumb toward the entertainment system. The corner of his mouth twitched up and the corner of his eyes crinkled.

"Oh. Well," Rodney conceded, "If you have it." A thought occurred to him. "Oh, don't tell me -- "

"We had the DeLorean before the movie came out," John said as he got up from the couch and picked up the plastic video box.

"Hm," Rodney said, sitting back and picking up another piece of pizza. "Thank goodness for small favors."

John flipped his skateboard up into his hand and rang the McKays' doorbell. He lived right next door to the guy. There was no reason they couldn't go to school together. Besides, Rodney was completely entertaining. The entire rant the day before about the implausibility of the flux capacitor had brought on periodic fits of laughter until he went to bed.

The door was flung open and John found himself shifting his gaze down to see Jeannie McKay gazing up at him adoringly.

"John!" she exclaimed. "Isn't this a surprise!"

"Hi, Jeannie," he said with a self-conscious smile. "Rodney almost ready for school?"

Jeannie nearly achieved flight through vibration, she was so pleased. "Why don't you come in?" she said graciously, opening the screen door.

"That's ok," he started to say before he found himself hustled into the foyer and down the hallway. Apparently Jeannie had the same ability to take over as her brother did. "Um, hi," he said, blinking dumbly in the sun-bright kitchen in the back of the house. Three people stared at him. No, he corrected, two people and a newspaper stared at him. Rodney stood at the counter, his backpack on his back -- by both straps, John realized with a sigh -- and a Pop-Tart stuffed in his mouth. A blonde woman in her robe and slippers, holding a rag was dabbing at his cheek. "I'm John Sheppard," he explained, trying to slide backward but Jeannie was in his way. "I live next door? I was just checking to see if Rodney was ready to go." He let his voice trail off toward the end when it was clear that everyone but the newspaper was staring at him in bewilderment.

"Yeah, yeah, all set," Rodney said quickly, pulling away from his mother. "Thanks, Mom, I gotta go." He shot John a thoroughly humiliated look, grabbed a brown paper sack off the counter and pushed by his mother and then his sister. "Are we going or what?" he called to John, already halfway out the door.

"Yeah, sure," John replied, navigating Jeannie while waving to Mrs. McKay. "Nice to meet you!" he called for good measure as he followed Rodney out into the sunny morning.

"I didn't know you were coming by," Rodney said. It would have been snappy if he hadn't been so obviously anxious.

"Sorry," John said. "Guess I should have called first." He shrugged, not displeased with the outcome. "I figured you live right next door. No reason to travel alone." He dropped his skateboard to the ground and stepped on it, using the other foot to push himself down the street.

"You're going to crack your head open one of these days," Rodney said, mussing his own hair self-consciously.

"I know what I'm doing," John murmured, letting the board slow enough for Rodney to catch up, and then reaching out to pluck at his hair.

"Would you stop that? You have some perverse fascination with my hair," Rodney snapped, lifting his hands to fix whatever damage John had wrought.

"Hey, it's your investment," John said, minding where he was going because he really wasn't into concussions. "You wanted to be my best buddy and learn how to be cool."

Rodney sighed. "Okay, fine," he said, stopping and ducking his head down.

John stopped and blinked at him. Rodney looked like he was stepping up to the guillotine rather than letting John spike his hair. "You look dumb like that," he said lightly, twisting bits of hair between his fingertips anyway. "There, we cool?"

Rodney lifted his head and looked at John with a sad sort of longing that made John frown. "You're cool, I'm fine," he said.

"You're getting there," John said kindly.

"Thanks," Rodney said, turning and walking off. John watched him trudge down the street for a minute, then put his foot on the ground and pushed off after him.

Rodney slid into his college-level physics class three minutes late and straddled the empty chair Radek had saved for him. "What'd I miss?" he hissed.

"Where were you?" Radek demanded in much too loud a whisper to escape notice.

"Shh," Rodney hissed as Mr. Simmons turned around and raised an eyebrow.

"Well, Mr. McKay, nice of you to join us."

"Yeah, well, it's a pleasure to be here," Rodney said, flipping open his book.

"With that attitude, even your grades won't carry you through any sort of undergraduate program, let alone higher education," Mr. Simmons sneered.

"And I'd be a lot more worried about that instead of how little I'm getting out of this class, except, wait, you're the one who's supposed to be teaching me physics," Rodney shot back. He'd worry about getting in trouble except that they'd done this every day that year and nothing had happened. People, Rodney thought with some disgust, were completely stupid.

"Difficult to teach an absent student," Simmons said, turning back to the board. He launched back into his explanation of Coulomb's force. Rodney had read about it the summer before and had already sat through two of Mr. Simmons' insufficient lectures on the subject.

"How goes your brilliant plan?" Radek whispered, slouching in his seat.

"Shut up," Rodney whispered back. He glanced around and leaned in. "It's going fine. John...is not a complete gorilla. For a football player."

"Oh, so he is good enough to take up all your time and your money?" Radek sounded pissy. Rodney rolled his eyes.

"Ok, look," he whispered, leaning over, "I know I haven't been around at all, but don't get your panties in a twist about it. I've been learning how to be cool. And I will pass this knowledge on to you. When, you know, I have time."

"Panties in a twist?" Radek hissed back. "What does that mean?"

"Oh, John said it the other day," Rodney said, feeling the rush of explaining something new. "It's when you get all uptight and completely, totally unreasonably irritated about something that's totally not worth worrying about. Like you're doing."

Radek hunched over his notebook, scribbling too fast to actually be taking notes and muttering under his breath in Czech. Rodney leaned back, smiling. He was going to have this 'cool' thing down in no time at all.

John found Rodney in the cafeteria at lunch.

"C'mon," he said, catching Rodney's arm and steering him out of the lunch line. "We have things to do."

"We have lunch to eat!" Rodney replied with a longing look at the food line. "Unless you've forgotten the delicate state of my blood sugar?"

"We'll get something while we're out," John said, shouldering open the side door near the gym and pushing Rodney into the sunlight.

"How will people figure out that I'm cool when I'm not eating lunch with you?" Rodney demanded.

"Because you're cutting class with me," John said, checking casually for cars before jogging across the street. "We're probably not going to make it back by the end of lunch."

"What?" Rodney sounded more horrified than usual. "I can't skip class! You can't ask me to risk my academic career for some adolescent pre-criminal folly you're planning -- what are you planning, anyway?"

"We're picking up my dad's car," John said. "What class are you going to miss?"

"Study hall," Rodney said.

John stopped and turned to look at Rodney. "You're telling me," he said slowly, "that with that great big brain of yours, your academic career is going to come crashing to a halt because you missed study hall?"

"Of course not." The corners of Rodney's mouth turned down, which somehow made the corners of John's mouth turn up.

"Part of being cool," he said, squeezing Rodney's shoulder, "is knowing the difference between what other people think is true and what you know is true." Rodney gave him a quizzical look and he dropped his hand. "Besides," he said lightly. "I know you want to ride in the DeLorean."

Rodney's eyes glazed over a little and John knew that he had won.

On Wednesday, Rodney waited on his porch for John to come out of his house. His parents were revisiting argument #615 and Jeannie was scowling darkly at him, so he figured he'd spare John -- and himself -- the pain.

All in all, it showed no sign of being anything other than an ordinary day until Rodney took a shortcut down the cool hallway and managed to get tackled for reasons other than locker entrapment.

"McKay!" Rodney stumbled as John grabbed his shoulders and pushed him out of the crowd.

"You could just wave next time," he snapped

"Yeah, but then I don't get to listen to you bitch," John said with a twitch of his eyebrows. "Look, Mitch is having a party at his place on Saturday night so meet me after school in front of the bike racks and we'll head over to the mall."

Rodney squinted at John, trying to track the logical progression of cause and effect in that sentence and then decided that logic really had very little to do with it.

"Why are we going to the mall?"

"Because you need something to wear."

Rodney winced. He had some money left over from tutoring but not a lot.

"C'mon, it won't be that bad." John clapped him on the arm. "Four o'clock, ok?"

"Don't you have football practice?" Rodney tried.

"Just a weigh-in."

"I have a meeting!"

"Skip it!"

"I'm the president of the club!"

"Then cancel it!"

Rodney huffed. "If you think I'm going to cancel a very important meeting of the Future Physicists of America club to hang around the mall with you and your ruffian friends so we can look good for a party -- is Mitch the lobotomized one? -- then you -- "

"Rodney. You're not even an American citizen. How are you the president of the Future Physicists of America club? And what are you doing that's so important anyway?"

Rodney scowled. He was already regretting telling John about the Canadian thing. "We're planning a party for Heisenberg's birthday."

"When's the party?"

"Why, you want to crash it?" Rodney sneered. "It's in December."

"Rodney. Meet me at four."

"Fine," Rodney grumbled. "Should I electrocute myself along the way so that I can fit in?"

John pointed one finger at Rodney as he walked backwards down the hall. "Don't forget," he called. "Those ruffian friends of mine are going to make you cool."

Rodney sighed, but he wound up cutting his meeting short and went out to the bike racks at four. John was showing off, sliding his skateboard along the top of one of the mostly-empty racks and twisting off, spinning in the air before landing on the grass. The crowd gathered around him made sounds of enthusiasm. Rodney rolled his eyes. John hammed it up for them a little more, then nodded and popped his skateboard up into his hand.

"You ready?" he asked Rodney as the crowd drifted off and Rodney found the several yards of distance between them filled with grass instead of people.

"Sure," Rodney said, walking toward John and the street. "You know you're going to crack your head open."

"Yeah, you told me yesterday, thanks," John said. "What'd I tell you about the backpack?" He reached out and tugged one strap down Rodney's shoulder and Rodney obediently shrugged out of it.

"Where's everyone else?" Rodney asked, realizing belatedly that it was just him and John.

"Just us today," John said. "We're all supposed to be doing homework so we can play on Friday."

"And you're going to lose the game for us by taking me shopping instead of finishing your homework?" Rodney sniped.

"My grades are fine," John said stiffly. "I'm here to hold up my end of the deal."

"I haven't been given a swirlie all week," Rodney said. "I have no complaints."

"Right, which is why I hear you complaining non-stop," John said, raising his eyebrows.

"I'm staying in practice," Rodney said with dignity. "I wouldn't want to go soft while you're coddling me."

"That would be a shame," John agreed, holding open the outer door to of the mall.

"We're not girlfriends," Rodney said half an hour later, from under a pile of jeans and shirts. "There's really no need to dress me."

"There is if you hold any hope of getting a girlfriend," John called from somewhere off to his right and behind some denim jackets.

"These are too tight," Rodney said twenty minutes after that when he hopped out of the dressing room wearing stonewashed jeans that pinched.

"Depends on how slutty a girlfriend you're looking for," John said, raising one eyebrow and regarding Rodney worriedly. "Go try something else."

"I think we should go back to my house and play Impossible Mission," Rodney said after another ten minutes of changing in and out of clothes.

"Sure," John said. "As soon as you're done here."

Rodney huffed and went back inside the dressing room.

Ninety minutes and three stores later, John pronounced him acceptable to be seen in public and Rodney was counting out ones on the store counter.

"I got it," John said, leaning on the desk and sliding over a credit card.

"What are you doing?" Rodney asked, irritated. He might not have a lot of money left over, but he had enough.

"It's my dad's credit card," John said casually. "I figure he'll never know the difference and it's going toward a good cause."

"Making me cool is now a charity project?" Rodney asked. He considered being disgusted but the idea was vaguely intriguing. "Hey, wait a minute!"

John made a face at him that clearly asked, What?

"If you had your dad's credit card, why didn't you just use that for the car repairs?"

John rolled his eyes. "Because," he said quietly as the clerk rang up Rodney's purchases, "he's not even going to blink at fifty dollars of clothes. A thousand dollars to the auto body shop is kind of noticeable. Especially when he specifically told me not to touch the car."

"Oh. Right." Rodney glanced at the trendy clothes disappearing into plastic bags. "Is he home now?"

"Yeah," John said. "Got in last night. If he's noticed anything about the car, he hasn't said."

"Well, that's good," Rodney said, feeling oddly tired and cranky. The clerk handed him his bags and John signed the receipt.

"You want to get something to eat?" John asked as they passed the food court and lovely smells hung in the air.

"Yeah, I'm starving," Rodney said. "What time is it?" He struggled with his bags to check his watch.

"Quarter of seven," John said.

"What?" Rodney nearly tripped over his bags.

"Quarter of seven," John repeated. He raised an eyebrow. "You need to be somewhere?"

"Yes!" Rodney fumbled the bags into his other hand and started digging in his pocket for change. "Is there a pay phone around here?"

John nodded at the wall next to Chinese food booth. Rodney thrust the bags at him and went to call home.

"Rodney!" his mother exclaimed when she answered. "Where are you? We were worried sick!"

"You sound like a nag," he heard his father say in the background. "The boy's seventeen. Give him a break."

"You missed dinner," his mother snapped. "I had no idea where you were."

"Look, I had things to do," Rodney said. He hated it when his parents used him as an excuse to fight and he was starting to get a headache. "I'm sorry I'm late, I'll grab something when I get home."

"It'll be cold," his mother said. "You'll have to warm it up."

"That's fine," he said. "I like cold leftovers."

"If you're not home in fifteen minutes, you're grounded, young man," his mother said, and Rodney could hear his father yelling at her as he hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes wasn't a lot of time, but they would be too busy screaming at each other when he walked in that being a little late wouldn't matter.

"I gotta go," he said to John as he turned around.

John held out a soft pretzel and peered at him curiously from under a flop of brown hair. "You in trouble?" he asked.

"Kinda," Rodney answered, taking the pretzel gratefully. It was bland but the salt was harsh on his tongue and he started feeling better almost immediately. "I'm supposed to be home for dinner at six every night. I just forgot. It'll be ok."

"Ok," John said, and the look on his face gave Rodney the sinking feeling that he had heard Rodney's parents arguing over the phone.

"Don't you have to be home for dinner?" Rodney asked snidely to cover his embarrassment.

John shrugged artlessly. "If Dad's home, he usually makes something around eight. He works late a lot. It depends on if I'm home, too." He shrugged again. "We don't have much of a schedule anymore."

"Must be nice," Rodney said, wondering what it would be like to have so much freedom.

"Yeah," John said vaguely. "Come on." He grinned wickedly at Rodney. "I'll walk you home."

"We are not girlfriends!"

John let himself into his house and blinked at the lighted hallway.

"Hi, Dad," he said to the empty hall.

"In here," his father called from the general vicinity of the kitchen.

John dropped his backpack on the floor inside the door and went to find his dad. "Smells good," he said. "What's cooking?"

"Chili," Colonel Sheppard said proudly. "I grabbed a loaf from the BX, too, so we can have garlic bread." He nodded toward the French bread sitting on the sideboard.

John crossed the room and pulled it out of its paper sack, grabbing a knife from the block and a cutting board. "I have a game on Friday," he said, hacking the bread into broad, diagonal slices. "So I won't be home until late."

"Yeah, I saw on the schedule," the Colonel said. "I should be able to make it."

"Yeah?" John's dad never made it to his games. He was usually out of town or on duty.

"I figured it would be nice to see you play once more before you go off to college," Colonel Sheppard said dryly. "I somehow missed five-foot-eight through six-oh. I'm waiting to come home and find out you're taller than me."

John rolled his eyes and grinned a little. He opened the fridge door and pulled out the butter. "I wish," he said as he slathered butter on the bread and shook garlic flakes over the slices.

"Chili's up," Colonel Sheppard said when the butter had broiled on the garlic bread. He filled bowls and set them on the table with extra onions and cheese and John rescued the bread before it charred. "So what surprises am I going to find waiting for me when I talk to the vice-principal?" he asked when they'd dug into the chili and bread and declared it edible.

John shook his head and shrugged, indicating that his mouth was full.

"Nice try," his father said. "You've got to swallow some time."

John shrugged and did so. "Depends on how much they know," he said casually. His father had once made the mistake of telling him that if he couldn't behave, to at least try not to get caught.

"John," his father warned.

"Can I have a beer?" John asked, to change the subject.

Colonel Sheppard looked flummoxed and like he was going to refuse and then he shrugged and sagged back against his seat. "Oh, go ahead." He tipped back his own bottle in resignation.

"Really?" John asked, already halfway across the kitchen to retrieve a beer from the fridge.

"I'm sure you do it when I'm not here," Colonel Sheppard sighed. "This probably makes me the worst father ever...."

"No," John said, thinking of the yelling he'd heard coming from the McKay's house when Rodney had opened the door. "I think there's probably someone out there who makes their kids completely miserable."

"I keep you around for my ego, you know," Colonel Sheppard said, helping himself to more garlic bread.

"And so you can cheer for one winning team," John offered, which turned the dinner conversation to sports and away from other sketchy topics like John's physics grade.

After he helped his father clean up, he went to his room and paged through what homework he did have. He'd done most of it in study hall and he could put off the reading until he was ready to go to bed. He slid the window up and stepped onto the roof. It was a little windy and cooler than it had been, but even at ten o'clock at night, October in Arizona was far from unpleasant. He lay on his back and stared up into the sky, wondering if he was going to spend his entire life never being home.

He wanted to fly. There was no question there. Maybe it was better, he thought, dropping his head to the side, than being home all the time and being miserable. He glanced over at the McKay's house and saw a dark shape on the roof.

There was only one person that could be and he sat up before calling over.

"Rodney! Hey, McKay!"

The shape sat up quickly and leaned into the patch of moonlight.

"Hey," Rodney's voice carried through the still, dry air.

John moved over a little. "You get dinner?"

"Yeah." Rodney quirked a grin. "I think corned beef hash is actually better cold."

"That's disgusting," John said, wrinkling his nose. "Are you grounded?"

Rodney shook his head, his face bobbing in and out of shadows. "Nah, they didn't even look at the clock when I came in."

John nodded and didn't know what else to say. "Hey," he finally called back. "We've got like, six gallons of chili in here, seriously, so next week you should come over one night when my dad's gone and we'll have some."

"Yeah?" Rodney sounded hopeful to John and he nodded back. "That sounds, uh -- "

He stopped talking and the sound of shrill twelve-year-old echoed out of the open window. He winced and shrugged, waving at the window. "Ok, I have to go kill her now. I'll see you tomorrow."

John nodded and waved a little as Rodney disappeared back into the bedroom window. He lay back on the roof and began to calculate the days until he left town and started his career in the Air Force.

"Hey, McKAY!"

Rodney blinked as he heard his name bellowed at the top of someone's sizable and very healthy lungs.

"McKay!" It was Aiden Ford, all bright eyes and teeth, grinning and slinging an arm around Rodney's neck. "Tell me you're coming to the game tomorrow night. C'mon, you can't miss it." He snugged Rodney's head in close and punched him several times in the arm.

Rodney panicked instantly, searching the crowd for John, who was leaning against a locker, trying to talk to Teyla, who had turned her head and was watching Rodney.

"Er. Well, I hadn't planned, I mean -- "

"You have to come," Aiden said. "You're going to party with us afterward, right?"

Rodney saw John watching him and saw the small smirk twist the side of his mouth. He nodded, slightly, and relief flooded Rodney.

"Yeah, sure," Rodney said instantly. The truth was, he'd made it to one football game that season -- and that was after telling Radek he was going to the university library -- solely for the purpose of watching John play. He'd had to leave in the second quarter when John got sacked and came up spitting blood. Rodney and blood didn't do so well together when it came to John.

He glanced over at John, just one more time, he promised himself, before he started quizzing Ford on when and where he had to be. John was smiling at him and the look on his face was almost...affectionate? Rodney was spellbound until Teyla reached up and tapped on John's chest, and his attention snapped back to her.

Rodney sighed and looked back to Ford. He was so doomed.

"Hey! You're just in time," John's father called as he walked through the door, still sweaty and tired from practice. "Phone for you." He was grinning and John raised one eyebrow and went into his room for privacy.

"Got it," he said into the receiver and waited for the click of his father hanging up the extension in the kitchen. "Hello?"

"Hi, John." The voice was warm and so familiar his chest ached. He could almost hear the smile in her voice.

"Elizabeth?" John kicked off his shoes and settled back against the wall. "Long time, no hear," he teased and then added in a softer voice, "I've missed you."

"I'm really sorry about that," Elizabeth said. "I was at a party the night before and I crashed in a friend's room, and then I went hiking that afternoon and I've had classes and work...oh, I feel like I have so much to tell you!"

"Sounds like a good time," John said, wondering whose room she'd crashed in and whether that was a female friend or a male friend. Not that it was any of his business, he reminded himself.

"Oh, it's fantastic," Elizabeth enthused. "My Spanish class went out to this restaurant the other night and ordered the entire meal in Spanish! And last weekend? We ate Moroccan, seven courses in one meal. It took three hours to serve the entire thing but it was to die for."

"That's kind of neat," John said, but she was already off and running to the next thing.

"I've finally found someone besides you who can beat me at chess," Elizabeth said, "and -- oh! I can't believe I didn't tell you this first! I might get to spend six weeks in Switzerland this summer. A couple of the econ classes I need are going to be held abroad and I have a really good chance of getting a seat."

"That's great. You should do it," John found himself saying when he really wanted to ask who could beat Elizabeth at chess and if she was going to send him postcards from Switzerland when he was sweating it out in BCT.

"I hope I can," she said wistfully and John remembered nights sitting on the hood of the Nova, when he told her he wanted to see the stars and she told him she wanted to see other lands. "Hey, you haven't said anything. What's going on with you? How was your day? Do you have a game tomorrow? I've missed you so much!"

"Everything's -- " John paused. "You remember Rodney McKay?"

"Rodney," Elizabeth said thoughtfully. "Very smart? Very talkative?"

"That's him," John said with a smile. "So I um, ran into him at the...mall, and we started talking and -- " He wasn't even sure what he was going to say because it absolutely had nothing to do with taking a thousand dollars from Rodney to fix the dent he'd gotten in his father's car while making out with another girl, but as it turned out, he didn't need to say another word.

"Elizabeth, you coming?" a girl's voice called from the background and John stopped talking.

"Yes, sorry, just one minute!" Elizabeth called back, muffled. "Oops, I gotta go, I'm very late. But I'll talk to you later! Call me!"

"Yeah, sure," John said to the dial tone and hung up the phone with only a little more force than necessary.

Safely encased in his fleece pullover, Rodney climbed the bleachers in search of a seat. He hadn't tried to convince Radek to come with him and he'd refused to let Jeannie tag along for the same reason. John had said, So you're going to party with us after the game? in a kind of skeptical tone of voice that clearly meant he hadn't expected Rodney and maybe didn't want him. It made Rodney all the more determined to go, but he was pretty sure John wouldn't welcome additional guests.

"Rodney! Rodney, over here!"

Katie Brown waved at him from her huddle with Jeannette Simpson and Laura Cadman.

"Hi," he said, reluctantly sliding onto the end of the bench next to Katie. "How much did I miss?"

"Only the first seven minutes," Laura said. She was tall and pretty and ran track. She also had an uncanny knack for building things that went boom, so the girls in the science club loved her.

"I've never seen you at a game before, Rodney," Katie said. "Do you like football?"

"Uh. I'm really more of a hockey fan," Rodney said, glancing back at the field just in time to see John throw a forward pass for a seventeen-yard gain.

Rodney and the girls cheered for him, and for Chuck-somone who had completed the pass, and then Laura Cadman leaned over and said, "So you've been hanging out with the football players an awful lot, Rodney. When did that start?"

Rodney shrugged, suddenly terrified. "I live next door to John Sheppard," he said. "We're friends."

"Huh," Laura said thoughtfully, but that seemed to be the end of it.

They won, 23-14, and when Rodney wandered out of the stadium and into the parking lot, Katie was still glued to his side. He didn't really know how to get rid of her or where he was supposed to go for the party and he didn't see anyone he knew. He thought about just asking Katie out for ice cream, but then he saw John standing in the parking lot, talking to an older man slightly taller and broader than him. The other man must be John's father, the Colonel, Rodney thought, watching him slap John on the back and walk off.

John turned, and he must have caught Rodney staring because he jogged over. He was still in his uniform and his face was tired and grimy with dried sweat and blacking.

"Hey, you had a good game," Rodney said before realizing how condescending he must sound. "I mean, you did really well. Except for that one time when you threw it away and Dex was wide open but nobody's perfect, right? I mean, at least you won. I mean, the team won. And you helped. Well, did a lot of it, mostly."

"Thanks," John said, cutting off the embarrassing flow of babble. He touched his hair gingerly. It was messier than usually after being crammed under his helmet. "I've gotta go shower. I'll see you at the party, right? It's at Ronon's house." He glanced over at Katie. "You coming too, Katie?"

Rodney glanced over. Katie's eyes had widened when she realized John knew her name and her cheeks flushed. Just what he needed -- the one girl in school who was actually interested in him mooning over the guy Rodney was madly in love with. How was that for equilateral irony? He was ready to work up a good sulk when John looked back to him.

"I'm catching a ride over with one of the guys," he said. "If you two want to wait around, I can get you a seat, but it might be a while."

"I've got my dad's car," Rodney said, slightly mollified. "Ronon's house is the big old one on the corner before ours, right?"

"You got it," John said, nodding. "I'll see you there." And then he jogged off, his helmet tucked under his arm.

"It's um, it's a little early," Rodney said, because he was sure Ronon was in the locker room with everyone else and didn't want to lurk around Ronon's house in the dark or worse, have to go in and make small talk with Ronon's parents. "You want to get some ice cream?"

"Rodney, it's cold out," Katie said with a pretty smile, and Rodney didn't feel quite so stupid as he might have.

"But it's ice cream," he said, smiling back. "Unless you'd rather go somewhere else."

Katie blushed and it took an awkward moment for Rodney to realize she thought he was suggesting they go somewhere to make out.

"I mean," he babbled. "If you wanted pizza or something. It's warm. Or hot. Since you're cold."

"No, ice cream's ok," she said, and Rodney breathed a sigh of relief.

"Ok. The car is over here," he said, leading the way to his father's old Buick Electra. He unlocked the driver's side and started to get in and then realized Katie was standing outside. "Oops, sorry." Rodney jumped out and ran around to the other side and unlocked her door, too. "I don't get a lot of passengers," he said, completely mortified.

He should know better, he thought, face hot as he turned on the engine. He was Canadian for crying out loud! He shifted quickly from embarrassed to indignant. After all, it wasn't his fault his father had never taught him the rudiments of taking out girls and it wasn't like his mother was going to do it.

John wouldn't have made that mistake, he thought miserably, driving to the ice cream parlor. He started weighing how embarrassing it might be to ask John versus the possible repercussions of never learning at all. He might never get laid, ever, if he didn't at least get the opening doors thing down. On the other hand, mortal humiliation in the face of the school's most popular boy was not to be taken lightly, either.

For a sudden, terrifying moment, Rodney wondered if John would mock Rodney about all the things he learned about him over the course of the month. John didn't seem like that sort of guy, but Rodney had never thought to put a gag clause in the contract and well, they'd never had a lot of contact before. He reminded himself sternly that John had never actually done anything nasty to him before and concentrated on not running the stop sign in front of the ice cream parlor.

"Rodney?"

He looked over to see Katie peering at him oddly and sighed out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Sorry," he said. "I was...concentrating. What uh, what kind of ice cream do you like?"

"I usually get chocolate chip," Katie said, sliding her hand around Rodney's elbow as they went inside.

"You want a double?" Rodney asked. "I'm getting a double." He needed the fortification for the party, he rationalized.

"Oh, no, just one scoop is fine," Katie said.

Rodney ordered her a double anyway, because he hadn't really been listening and covered by offering to eat any she didn't want. So Rodney ate two scoops of pistachio -- and he imagined John asking if he wasn't allergic to nuts and snapping out a brilliantly witty and cool response -- and three-quarters of a scoop of chocolate-chip while listening to Katie talk about saving her grandmother's African violet from the dastardly threat of overwatering.

"They don't like to have wet feet," she explained perkily.

Rodney had failed at paying attention several minutes before this proclamation and was thinking about John Sheppard in tight gray leggings that were padded in the ass and football cleats, his calves thin and hairy between them.

"Rodney?" Katie was blinking at him owlishly from across the table.

"Um, yes?"

"I asked what you thought."

"About -- ?" Rodney's mind raced to recall what might have been a question requiring his opinion.

"We've been sitting here for a while," Katie said cautiously. "Do you think maybe we should, you know, go? So we're not late?"

"Oh, yes. Excellent, uh, excellent idea." Rodney jumped up and grabbed his jacket, hustling Katie out the door and into the car. He wasn't sure if it was possible to be late to football player party, but he figured he didn't really want to find out.

When they pulled up to Ronon's house, Ford and a short, stocky player named Lorne, a junior whose first name Rodney could never remember, were spilling out of an aging Plymouth Fury.

"McKay!" Ford roared, crashing enthusiastically into Rodney, who stumbled under the assault.

"Hey, um, good job," Rodney said.

Ford beamed at him and Rodney couldn't help but smile back.

"Did you see that run I made around the Sam?" Ford asked Rodney excitedly. "I picked up twenty-four yards on that play!"

"That was great," Rodney said sincerely, even though he had no idea what a Sam was. He knew that ten yards was a down and that twenty-four yards was definitely a first down. "Do you know Katie?"

"Hey," Ford greeted her, turning his million-watt smile to her. "Aiden Ford. You're Rodney's...what?" He gave them a mischievous grin. "Friend?"

"We're, um, I mean -- " Katie looked up at Rodney from under her bangs.

Rodney shifted nervously. "We are friends," he said stiffly. "Katie is in the science and algebra clubs with me."

Ford nodded slowly, his eyebrows creeping high on his forehead. "Wow," he said. "That sounds like good times. C'mon, let's go in and get a drink!" And he was off and running again.

Rodney felt his face get hot and he didn't look at Katie as they followed Ford into Ronon's house and down the stairs to the basement. He didn't see Ronon's parents anywhere, but most of the kids at their school were military brats and their parents were often gone at odd hours.

Rodney's parents were not gone at odd hours and he hoped they didn't ask too many questions about this party.

Ronon's basement was finished and divided into several rooms. The lights were dimmed in the main room where several of the players were already well-sloshed, holding plastic cups of beer and at least one was already making time with a cheerleader, running a hand up her bare leg.

Rodney stared. He tried not to, but she was blonde and tan and well, it wasn't like he saw that kind of thing every day. Katie's hand squeezing his arm startled him away from the sight and she glanced around nervously.

"Do you uh, want anything to drink?" Rodney asked as gallantly as he could muster.

"Uh, yes?" Katie said, her voice lilting into more of a question than an answer. "If you...." She trailed off with no indication of what she might have wanted to say.

"I'll be right back," Rodney promised, pulling his arm away and looking for someone he knew. "What are you doing to that thing?" he asked, when he saw Ford and half a dozen of his teammates killing themselves in a sorry attempt at a kegstand so he detoured to show them the correct angle and rigged up a simple way to hold the tap open until the idiot in question was ready to stop. Then he asked Ford where the rest of the drinks were, and got pointed into a small room off to the side.

"Do you not have any soda?" Rodney asked the makeshift bar as he rooted through beer, cheap whiskey, and wine-in-a-box. Predictably, the bar didn't answer.

"Having fun, McKay?"

Rodney recognized that drawl. It belonged to John Sheppard and if Rodney had a better sense of human interaction than he did, he might have noticed that the tone wasn't particularly happy.

"If by 'having fun' you mean being forced to save your brain-dead teammates from death by terrible beer and not finding a single decent thing to drink that wasn't bought with a fake ID, yes, I'm having a fantastic time, thank you."

John smiled tightly. He was holding a can of beer in his hand and his hair still looked damp. "Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities," he said. He tilted his head back and poured half the can down his throat. Rodney got distracted from his ire by the sight of John's neck muscles shifting as he swallowed. "We're kind of in the mood to celebrate when we win."

"Oh. Yeah, right." Rodney bit his lip. "Did I tell you that you did really well? Because I watched the whole game and you looked really good out there. I mean, you played well. Your -- throwing arm looked good."

John grinned, slow and lazy. "You came to watch me?"

"Well, yeah," Rodney said, as if John was stupid and Rodney knew he wasn't. "And there was no blood this time, which was really good because I probably wouldn't have made it through the whole thing if there was -- well, anyway. Ford said I should come."

"Well, Ford was right," John said, and then, before Rodney could reply, tilted his head to the side and raised his eyebrows.

"What -- oh?" Rodney turned his head and saw Katie peek into the room. "Katie?"

"Rodney?" Katie's eyes were huge and she looked even paler than usual. "Would you mind taking me home? It's late and -- " She glanced at John and turned her head a little so that only Rodney could hear her lowered voice. " -- I'm not very comfortable here."

"Yeah, sure, no problem," said Rodney, who wasn't entirely comfortable there himself. "You want to go now?"

She nodded and before Rodney could say good-bye, John said, "Actually, could I catch a ride home, too? I've got to be up early tomorrow and since you're right next door and all...."

"Sure," Rodney said, just relieved to be escaping.

It took longer than expected because John's exit had to be heralded with backslaps and bellybumps and other ridiculous forms of physical congratulations on the victory. Katie looked thoroughly miserable when Rodney unlocked and opened the car door for her. He didn't know what to say, at least not with John sprawled in the backseat, so he drove to her house in silence. He'd been there once before, for an algebra club party the previous year.

"'Night, Katie," John said as Rodney held the car door for her again. "Thanks for coming out."

"Are you okay?" Rodney asked when they'd reached her front door.

"I -- I -- The only other girls there were cheerleaders," Katie said helplessly. "And they were watching this movie in the back and there was so much beer and pizza and no soda or anything and I just -- I'm sorry, Rodney. I guess I'm just not a party girl."

"I didn't know it was going to be like that," Rodney said, but Katie was already going inside and closing the door on him. He sighed and went back to the car, thinking that at least he didn't have to worry about whether to kiss her.

John was lounging in the front passenger seat, arms folded behind his head, when Rodney returned.

"That was smooth," he said helpfully as Rodney got in the car.

Rodney considered the ignition for a moment, then turned to look at John. "So you want to tell me what that was all about?" he asked, twisting the key savagely. The engine cranked to life reluctantly.

"What?" John asked, sounding believably surprised.

"That. Tonight," Rodney said waving one hand in the general direction of the house. "Inviting Katie to a party where people are doing kegstands and making out and watching porn movies. What on earth made you think that was a good idea? No, wait, let me guess. You thought it would be funny to get a rise out of the little geek girl. Because it's fun. Wow, and I just told Radek you weren't a gorilla. I hate being wrong!" Rodney threw the car into reverse and backed out into the street with more gas than was entirely required.

"Hey. I was trying to be nice," John shot back, straightening up. "She was standing right there! What were you going to do, say sorry, I'm going to a party now, have a nice walk home?"

"I don't know what I was going to do," Rodney said. "Besides, I was working off inadequate data. You didn't tell me it was that kind of party."

"Yeah, because I didn't invite you!"

"That's another thing!" Rodney replied, completely on a roll, now. "You're supposed to take me everywhere with you! That includes parties! You said so yourself."

"I didn't think you'd want to go," John said. "It's that kind of party."

Rodney opened his mouth, but paused to concede -- to himself only -- that John had a point. "You could have asked."

The resultant silence was moody until Rodney got twitchy enough to break it by speaking again.

"Do you like that kind of party?"

"You notice I'm sitting here?" John muttered. He shrugged. "I don't mind. It's okay."

Rodney glanced over at him. He was slouched back, head tilted down, his face in shadows. "Was that your dad, tonight?" he asked.

The dark head moved and then John said, "Yeah."

"He came to watch you play?"

"Yeah. And to tell me that he's on his way somewhere else. He'll be back Monday."

"Oh." Rodney didn't know anyone who was away quite as much as John's dad was. "You, uh, you wanna sleep at my house? There's an extra bed in my room somewhere and my mom makes breakfast on the weekends."

"No, thanks." John's face was shadowed still, but Rodney thought maybe he'd smiled a little.

Of course John didn't want to be around his family at breakfast. He'd witnessed one McKay Family Meal, and that was one of the ones where they all managed to ignore each other.

"Thanks for the ride," John said when Rodney pulled into his own driveway and put the car in park. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah," Rodney said, in no hurry to get out of the car. "Tomorrow."

John woke up to the sound of the phone ringing in his ear.

"Mrngh, what?" he mumbled around a yawn, rolling to his back.

"I just wanted to let you know that I'm not going to the party tonight," Rodney said matter-of-factly.

John blinked and rubbed one hand through his hair. "Yes, you are," he said. "I'll be over at eight." He hung up the phone and dragged the pillow over his face. There was still potential for another hour or two of sleep.

The phone rang again.

"This is not me wimping out or feeling socially insecure," Rodney said when John picked up the receiver, just to make it stop ringing. "It's merely a matter of self-acceptance after last night's unfortunate...unfortunateness."

"Rodney," John groaned, rolling his neck. "I don't do this emotional support shit. You said it yourself -- we are not girlfriends."

"I never asked -- " Rodney started.

"You're going to the party," John said as firmly as he could manage. He shifted on his bed. It was weird to be talking to Rodney with his morning erection still heavy in his boxers. "I'll be over at eight and we'll walk over. Be ready." He palmed himself with a wince. "And stop calling. Some of us are trying to sleep over here." He rolled to his side and set the phone back in the cradle. There was no way he was going to back to sleep, now. He kicked off the sheets wandered into the bathroom. He relieved himself and turned on the shower, stripping off his shirt and shorts while the water warmed up.

He tried to think of Elizabeth when he jerked off in the shower, her thin body arching and her strong arms wrapped around his shoulders the first time he pushed into her, but Rodney's voice kept distracting him. Elizabeth was so very far away, fading into the background, and Rodney was so very there all the time. John wondered if Rodney was a virgin or if he'd been with some girl -- probably not Katie Brown. John couldn't imagine her in bed with anyone, although if he tried hard, he could picture her small pale hands on Rodney's dick, maybe even her mouth on him --

John came into the spray of water, his back curled and shuddering. He stared at his hand, water sluicing away the pale liquid. He washed himself slowly and wondered why it didn't bother him more that he'd just jerked off thinking of Rodney's dick.

Rodney was bound and determined not to leave the house that night, even when John showed up brandishing hair gel and blow dryer.

"I don't care about your dissociative teenage existential angst," he said, holding Rodney's head under the bathroom faucet.

"My angst is not existential," Rodney sputtered. "My angst is the incredibly real fear of likely social humiliation resulting in ostracization."

"You told me this morning that this wasn't social insecurity," John said, dragging Rodney's head from the running water and throwing a towel over the top. "Dry."

Rodney rubbed the towel over his head and glared balefully at John.

"It's not going to be like last night," John finally said, his voice low so Rodney's parents -- watching television in the living room -- couldn't hear him.

"What, no porn and booze?" Rodney asked, snatching the towel away.

John rolled his eyes. "There'll be alcohol. But you don't have to drink it. Although maybe you should. You could use a drink or two."

"Right, and my bloodhound of a mother isn't going to smell that a mile away," Rodney muttered.

"Spend the night at my house," John suggested. "I'll go out and tell them some sob story about hating to be alone while my dad's away and you can save me from the terrible sucking loneliness." He turned on the blow dryer, handed it to Rodney, and left the bathroom.

Rodney aimed the blow dryer at his forehead and picked at his hair with a comb. His hair was nearly dry when John came back, shit-eating grin plastered all over his face.

"You didn't," Rodney said, dropping his aching arm to his side and thumbing the blow dryer off.

John raised both eyebrows and widened his eyes. "I'm very, very lonely at home," he said with heart-breaking sincerity. "Raised without a mother, by an itinerant father...I'm just lucky I have you as a friend to keep me from feeling abandoned."

Rodney stared at him. "You're a con artist," he accused. "You've completely suckered my parents into thinking you're some kind of -- some kind of -- "

"Shut up, you're ruining my tragic childhood," John said, taking the blow dryer and comb away and coming at Rodney with the hair gel. "Now hold still."

Half an hour later, Rodney was gelled, dressed in acid washed jeans, white t-shirt, and a vinyl jacket that was making a really good run at looking like leather.

"I really don't think I should go," Rodney tried one last time.

"I really don't think you have a choice," John said, dragging Rodney and his overnight bag into the living room.

"Oh, there you are," Rodney's mother said as they walked out. "Rodney, it's so nice of you to keep John company while his father's away."

"I really appreciate it, Mrs. McKay," John said, doing that thing with his eyes again. "You have no idea."

"He's a con artist," Rodney announced. John kicked him. Dr. McKay rustled his paper.

"Rodney," Mrs. McKay scolded. "It's not nice to joke about such things. Now run along. Be home for dinner tomorrow. John, you're invited too, of course, dear."

"Aw, thanks, Mrs. McKay," John said with a grin. "If my dad doesn't get in, I just might." He pushed Rodney out the door with one hand, waving goodbye to the McKays with the other.

"What the hell was that?" Rodney asked loudly when the door closed behind them. "Have you been possessed by the ghost of Eddie Haskell or something? That was nauseating."

"You missed the part where I was charming your sister," John said cheerfully. "Drop your bag in my garage. We'll walk over."

"Aw," Rodney groaned. "I think I'm going to hurl."

"Maybe later," John suggested, patting him on the shoulder. "You haven't even had any beer yet."

John had a beer in his hand less than a minute after he walked through the door. Rodney was so busy being delighted by the backslaps and arm punches that came with being John's friend that he didn't even see where he'd gotten it. He didn't seem to actually be drinking from it, though and Rodney didn't worry about it until Ford showed up with a trio of plastic cups, filled with something red.

"Jello shots," he exclaimed, passing them each one. "You ever done one, McKay?"

Rodney glanced at John because of course he'd never done them before -- the science clubs were well aware that such things killed brain cells and they had no need of oblivion.

"Loosen it up with your tongue," John said, demonstrating so effectively that Rodney's mouth went dry. "And then just let it slide down." He tipped his head back and dropped the shot into his mouth, throat working to swallow it whole.

Still staring at the play of muscles in John's throat, Rodney licked around the edges of his own shot. The vodka burned on the tip of his tongue. He tossed the shot back and got a lungful of air. Then John leaned forward and tapped the bottom of the cup firmly and the Jello was sliding into his mouth and down his throat. The vodka seared his sinuses and made his eyes water but he managed not to cough. A second later, warmth shot through his body, flushing his extremities.

Aiden slapped him on the back, grinning. "See? Mitch's shots are awesome!"

Rodney nodded enthusiastically.

"You seen Teyla around?" John asked in a way Rodney felt completely failed at casual.

Aiden's face lit up. "I saw her out by the pool earlier."

John's eyebrows went up and he reached out to pat idly at Rodney's shoulder. "That sounds promising," he said. "Rodney, you're on your own for a few. Don't worry. Ford here will protect you."

"Wait, what does that mean?" Rodney demanded, petulance reinforced by alcohol. "You're just going to abandon me here?"

"I think there's subs and pizza in the kitchen," Aiden said. "Want to get something to eat?"

"Huh, what, food?" Rodney said, attention successfully drawn. "Lead the way."

Ford was right -- there was pizza and subs, plus chips and pretzels, M&Ms, punch, soda, and a fridge full of beer and more Jello shots.

"This is fantastic," Rodney said with his mouth full as Aiden cracked open a beer. "Hey, can I have another of those Jello things?"

"Sure," Aiden said, passing one over.

Rodney did much better this time around, popping it free of the cup and knocking it back easily. The warmth that flowed through his body was milder, more comfortable.

"Hey, you're catching on," Aiden said, tilting his head back and swallowing one himself.

The kitchen was getting too warm so Rodney switched to punch and was getting up the nerve to ask Ford about John and Teyla when Laura Cadman walked in with a few girls Rodney knew by sight but not name.

"Hey, Rodney," Laura said easily and, with raised eyebrows, the other girls greeted him, too. They went over to the counter and started playing with the bottles stacked there, but Laura hung back. "So," she said softly as Aiden tried to talk up one of her friends. "What did you do to Katie last night? She said she's finished with you."

"Well, that's ridiculous," Rodney said, refilling his cup with more punch. "We'd have to start something for her to be finished with it." He rolled his eyes and took a deep drink. "I was supposed to go hang out with some of the players after the game and Katie was standing there, so John invited her along. The guys were being, you know, guys, so I took her home."

Laura tapped her fingers on the counter and looked thoughtful. She was a redhead, too, but more blonde than Katie. Even though she wore her hair long, down over her shoulders, and Rodney not-so-secretly preferred short haircuts, he still thought she was probably the hottest girl at school.

Not that he'd ever say so.

"She seemed pretty upset," Laura said. "Did you ask her what was bothering her?"

"Did I -- NO!" Rodney said. "She's -- she's not even my type! Why on Earth would I ask her what was bothering her? It was obviously all the -- the testosterone and porn."

"Wow, McKay," Laura said with a roll of her eyes. "You know absolutely nothing about women."

"Yes, well, thank you very much. That's extremely helpful and also, irrelevant because I do not need to know anything about women. Katie and I are not dating." Rodney scowled and swigged more punch.

"If you want," Laura offered, "I could help you out. Give you the whole woman's perspective on things."

"Were you not listening to a single thing I said?" Rodney asked, and his next words were drowned out by the distinctive whir and crash of a blender on "broken."

Laura was closer and she pulled the plug out of the wall before the appliance had time to catch fire or anything else really awful and Rodney shouldered her friends aside to examine the smoking hulk.

"I can fix it," he said, unscrewing the jar from the base and passing it to Laura. "Does anyone have a screwdriver? Wait, I think -- yes." He had a small Phillips' head in his Swiss army knife and before long, he had the thing open and spread across the counter.

"Hey, now look there," Laura said with a gentle nudge to his right shoulder blade. "You're good with your hands. There may be hope for you yet."

"Oh, thank you," Rodney snapped. "Your approval means so very much to me. Now would you please be quiet so I can fix this and then you get back to being juvenile delinquents with the alcoholic equivalent of power tools. And hand me that wire, the red one." He snapped his fingers and held out his hand.

There was dead silence. After a beat, it was broken by a light sigh and couple of murmurs.

Rodney looked up and blinked at Laura owlishly as a couple of her friends made appreciative noises. She winked at him and it didn't look coy, but then Rodney really didn't know anything about women and if admitting that got him that kind of attention, he wasn't going to make a fuss. Well, not that big a fuss.

"What are you, uh, trying to make?" he asked as Laura set the wire in his palm.

"White Russians," Friend Number Two said, tossing her dark hair behind her shoulder and cocking one hip.

"You don't need a blender for that," Rodney snorted. "Is there any ice cream in the freezer?"

"I'll check," Laura offered and came back with a box of Breyers.

"Great, give me a glass," Rodney said, putting the case of the blender back together. "Look, instead of crushing the ice cubes and watering down the drink, just use ice cream instead of the cream and shake." He dumped vodka, Kahlua, and a healthy scoop of ice cream into a tall glass, slapped a styrofoam bowl on top, and shook the whole thing together. "There, shortcut." He handed the glass to Friend Number Two, and started the process over again.

He'd just finished mixing up one last batch for Laura when John and Teyla came into the room. "Hey, Rodney," John said with a smile. "Having fun?"

"Always," Rodney said, fumbling the cup he was handing to Laura. She caught it anyway and licked away the droplets that had spilled over the rim of the cup onto her hand. "You?"

"John is going to teach me to do vodka shots," Teyla said, the note of challenge evident in her voice. She was wearing her bathing suit top with a denim skirt and her feet were bare.

"Mitch has a sugar jar around here somewhere," John said, lifting a bottle of Absolut from the stash and picking the bowl of lemon wedges off the table.

"Are you doing body shots?" Rodney asked, taking a drink of his punch.

Teyla glanced at John. John was looking at Rodney.

"Oh, don't even tell me you don't know how to do a body shot," Rodney said, as if he hadn't just read about them that afternoon. "All right, all right, give me. Here." He pulled the bowl of lemon wedges out of John's hand. "Take one of these and put it in your mouth," he ordered Teyla, consciously trying not to touch any of the wedges. His last allergic reaction had been years ago, but the memory was enough to make him shy away. "The rind side. Hold it there."

Teyla held the lemon between her teeth and made a face at Rodney, the corners of her eyes crinkling up adorably. Rodney grinned back at her and managed to tear his gaze away long enough to glance around the gathering crowd. "Someone bring me the sugar bowl," he commanded, snapping his fingers. "And you," he added, indicating John. "Pour a shot."

John grinned, all slow and lazy, like he was doing it because he wanted to and not because Rodney had said so, and poured the shot. Someone produced the sugar and Rodney took the small glass from John.

"Okay, hold on to this," he said, setting the shot glass on her shoulder and tipping her head to the side to keep it upright.

"McKay," John said.

"You can do it next," Rodney said, taking a pinch of sugar as soon as he was sure the glass wasn't going anywhere. He stepped up close and took a deep breath, then ducked his head and kissed Teyla low on the extended curve of her neck. She tasted good, very good, and he wondered if John had already tasted her there. He sprinkled the sugar on the damp patch his mouth had left and felt John's eyes hard on him. Bravely, he looked back and saw John's lashes flicker in surprise. Rodney leaned forward and licked the sugar off Teyla's neck, then tilted his head to the other side, pulling the shot glass from her neck and swallowing the vodka, which didn't burn quite so much anymore. He looked up and felt a sinking sensation. "You're supposed to -- to suck the lemon next," he said, taking a step back. "I can't. I'm allergic."

John leaned forward and put his mouth on the lemon wedge. From Rodney's angle, it looked like he was kissing Teyla but his eyes opened and went straight to Rodney. He leaned back with the lemon between his teeth, then wrinkled his nose and pulled it out of his mouth.

"My turn?" Teyla asked.

"Go for it," Rodney said, crossing his arms and easing back into the crowd.

Teyla put a lemon in John's mouth and a shot in his shoulder. She was too short to get all the way up to his neck, so she licked at his collarbone above his black t-shirt and sprinkled sugar across the skin.

Rodney put his hands in his pockets to hide the fact he was getting hard, but he'd forgotten how close the jeans fit and realized the position didn't help.

Teyla licked the sugar off gracefully, wrapped her mouth around the shot glass, and went up on her toes to take the lemon from John's mouth.

"Hey, Rodney?" Laura Cadman asked, touching his shoulder.

"I have to go to the bathroom," he said awkwardly, turning and leaving the kitchen which, by now, had attracted most of the party. He found the bathroom readily enough and locked himself in. A few awkward jerks toward the toilet took care of his biggest problem and cold water took care of his red face, but he was still fairly embarrassed. He cursed the accident of genetics that had required John to finish the demonstration. Why couldn't they need a nice apple or something? He pushed himself up on the counter and kicked his heels against the cabinet until someone knocked on the door.

"Hey, Rodney!" Andrea Dumais caught his arm as he walked into the living room.

"Uh, hi Andrea. What's up?" She was in Rodney's math class and was actually reasonably intelligent for someone who managed to get invited to one of Mitch's parties. She'd also never given him the time of day, let alone grabbed his arm.

"I heard you were pretty good at mixing drinks. Do you know how to make a Cosmopolitan?"

"Of course I do," Rodney said disparagingly. "The question is why would you want one?"

"Aw, c'mon." Andrea flashed a surprisingly pretty smile. "I've always wanted to try one."

"Sure," Rodney said with a sigh. "But you're pouring the lime juice."

The crowd in the kitchen had thinned out significantly since he'd retreated and John and Teyla were nowhere to be seen. Rodney shook up the vodka and lime juice with triple sec and cranberry juice, and got a kiss on the cheek for his efforts.

He stepped into the living room and ran into someone he didn't know, requesting a screwdriver. He privately thought anyone who couldn't make a screwdriver was an idiot, but did so anyway, adding a little too much vodka to get them to leave him alone.

"McKay!"

Rodney looked up and kept on looking. Ronon Dex, easily the biggest guy on the football team, loomed into Rodney's space.

"Er, hi," Rodney said. Ronon used to spend a lot of time hovering around John and Rodney suddenly wondered if Ronon was irritated at being supplanted. "Um. Is there something I can do for you?" He cast a surreptitious glance around the room, hoping for John to appear and save his ass.

"People say you're good at mixing drinks," Ronon rumbled.

"I'm surprised the people in this place are sober enough to be forming sentences," Rodney muttered.

Ronon leaned into Rodney's personal space and slung an arm around his shoulders. "Any chance you know how to make a Dirty Girl Scout?"

"Yes," Rodney said, thinking that really, Ronon might be his kind of guy after all. "Yes, I do."

After that surreal encounter, Rodney collapsed on the nearest sofa, only to find himself shaken awake by John an indeterminate amount of time later.

"Rodney. Rodney."

"Huh, wha- ?" Rodney asked sharply, sitting straight up. "Where'd everyone go?"

"Home," John said, his mouth twitching up at the corner. "Which is where we're going."

"Home?" Rodney repeated, bouncing up off the couch. The room spun insanely and he flailed and sat down hard. "The room's spinning," he announced.

"Because you're drunk," John said helpfully.

"No, I'm not. I can't be. I kept very careful track," Rodney said, noticing that really, something wasn't quite right and maybe his tongue was a little too big. He said so.

John rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you're toasted," he said. "Let's get you walking."

Rodney made it to his feet this time without getting dizzy and he felt better the minute they stepped outside.

"So what did you drink, Mr. Boston?" John asked.

"I had," Rodney said, trying hard to remember, "a shot. With you. And Aiden Ford."

"The Jello shot," John agreed. "And then I left you alone."

"And then I did another one," Rodney added. "With Aiden."

"Okay," John said. "So, two Jello shots. Then what?"

"Then you came back," Rodney said. "And then I did the shot on Teyla."

"Yeah, remind me to kick your ass for that," John said but Rodney didn't think he was serious. "What else did you drink?"

"Nothing!" Rodney shouted, secure in his calculated sobriety. "I was mixing drinks for everyone because I memorized this bartending book my dad has and I know every drink in the world, now, but I'm not drunk, because I drank the punch instead!"

"Rod-ney," John drawled, clearly trying not to laugh. "You never drink the punch. Who knows what Mitch spiked it with?"

"What?" Rodney repeated, a sudden roiling sensation in his stomach. "What did you say? What was in the punch?"

"I don't know," John said as they walked down the street, Rodney now clutching his stomach. " Probably the cheapest swill they could get. That's why I don't drink anything I don't pour out of the bottle myself."

"Oh, my god," Rodney groaned. "There could be anything in there. I could be suffering from severe alcohol poisoning from -- from -- who knows what! I -- I -- oh, god."

"You okay?" John asked, stopping and turning to look at Rodney.

Rodney felt miserable and shivery and sick under John's scrutiny. His stomach jumped again. "I think," he said weakly.

"If you're going to get sick -- " John started.

"I'm fine," Rodney snapped. "I just have...a delicate stomach."

"It'll make you feel better," John offered. "Do it in the gutter."

The offer was too tempting and Rodney turned, waited a minute, and threw up on the side of the street. He sniffed, squeezing his eyes closed and decided that John was right -- he did feel better.

John's cool hand on the back of his neck, and John's soft voice murmuring, "See? Isn't that better?" helped some, too.

"Yeah," Rodney croaked, resting his hands on his knees for a few extra seconds, just because he didn't want to displace John's hand.

"C'mon," John said when it was pretty clear Rodney was done. He patted Rodney's back and guided him down the street. "You can stay in my room. I set up the cot and bucket this afternoon."

John had model airplanes in his room, exactingly accurate, and books of every shape and size, piled on top of each other, crammed into two bookcases beside the bed. Rodney approved. John also had posters of Carol Alt in a bikini and Phoebe Cates in a school girl outfit on his wall. Rodney wished he at least had the good taste to like blondes.

Then he caught sight of the smaller picture, framed, sitting on the window sill over the cot. It was a black and white picture of a woman in her twenties with windswept hair, soulful eyes, and a secretive, wistful smile. "Wow, who's this?" he blurted out, his mind racing to place her. "She's hot."

"It's my mom," John said with a sideways glance that Rodney wouldn't even know how to start interpreting. "She died when I was fourteen."

"Oh. Oh." Rodney looked at the picture of the late Mrs. Sheppard smiling softly at him. "She was, uh. You, um." Half sentences formed in his head, coming out before he realized how stupidly they all ended. "How'd it happen?" He peered over his shoulder at John and wanted to take it back and apologize. It wasn't any of his business, really, but he wanted to know and, well. Okay, it was rude. But it would be worse to sputter about it.

"Cancer," John said. "It was fast." He took the picture from Rodney and sat down on the cot with it.

"Oh." Rodney looked helplessly at the back of John's head. "How fast is fast? I mean, is that good? It means she wasn't in pain for long, right?"

"It didn't feel fast," John said, running his thumb down the side of the frame. "Six weeks, I think. I don't remember much of it."

Rodney sat down next to him. "Was your dad gone then?"

"No, he was here the whole time. He took leave so he could be with her. I mean, I don't think she told him for the first couple weeks, but then he came home and then she was really sick. I really don't remember very much."

Rodney's stomach felt hollow. His mother was a pain in his ass and asked him stupid questions all the time and just didn't get it, but he couldn't imagine her dying like that. Sick and in pain and when he was young. "I -- I wish I had something nice to say. I'm really sorry."

John shrugged again, and leaned over to put the picture back on the shelf. "That was nice," he said. He walked over to his bed and kicked off his jeans. "Bathroom's down the hall and bucket's on the floor if you need it," he added.

Rodney wanted to say something nicer, to explain that he was sorry for bringing it up, maybe even give John a hug. But John didn't seem that bothered or else he really just didn't want to talk about it, so Rodney undid his own jeans and climbed onto the cot, pulling the blankets around him. John turned off the light and Rodney listened to the sound of John's breathing in the dark room.

"I -- I'm sorry," he said before he lost his nerve. "About calling your mom hot. And um, about the thing with Teyla. I should have asked, first."

"If she'd minded, she would have kicked your nuts so far up your ass, you wouldn't be able to sit down," John said mildly.

"Ah, yes. There is that," Rodney admitted.

"Besides," John said, his voice low with sleep. "It was really kind of hot."

Rodney opened his mouth to answer and closed it again. He was sure John meant that actually doing the shots with Teyla was hot, but if he didn't say anything, he could pretend, just for a little while, that it was his mouth on Teyla's shoulder that John had found so arousing.

"Ha! Take that!" Rodney crowed, dropping the joystick controller and pumping both fists into the air.

John scowled at the game console. "Best out of seventeen," he tried.

"No, because thirteen is the next highest prime and even if you managed to win both games, I'll still be ahead." Rodney sat back down on the couch, cheeks glowing in satisfaction. He had woken up with a mild hangover but after a couple of aspirin and some breakfast, it was long gone. "Face it, Sheppard. I beat you."

John tossed his joystick down next to Rodney's and rolled his eyes. "Fine," he conceded. "You won. You are the Supreme Intergalactic Commander."

"You can call me 'Supe' for short," Rodney offered smugly.

"Wow. Thanks," John said, rolling his eyes. He glanced up and was hit, again, by the fact that Rodney's arms weren't entirely laughable. "Hey," he said thoughtfully. "Did anyone ever show you how to throw a football?"

Rodney's expression fell from glee into wariness. "Oh, no," he warned. "You are not recruiting me into your little band of miscreants. I'm already compromising my dignity for this 'cool' thing. There's no way I'm selling off my immortal soul."

"Rodney," John complained, rolling his head back on the back of the couch. "We don't want you on the team. It's too late in the season anyway. I just wanted to know if they teach you to throw a football in Canada."

Rodney huffed. "We do have a football league, you know. And for your information, no. I have never needed to throw a football. Hockey is obviously the superior sport."

"Which is why we won the gold in '80," John muttered.

"And didn't even make the medal rounds in '84," Rodney concluded smugly.

"Okay, c'mon," he said loudly, before Rodney could vent further about Olympic hockey. He marched through the garage and snagged a football from the sports ball bin hanging on the wall. Rodney, after crowing unintelligibly from the living room, finally followed him out and around to the back yard.

"All right," he said, setting his fingers between the laces. "See how I'm holding my hand? Fingers between the laces and seams. Both hands," he added, setting his other hand on the side of the ball and pulling it up to his chin. "Arm back." He drew his arm into position, feeling the familiar stretch. "Keep your elbow bent. Now decide where you're throwing, point at it, like this, and then -- " John stretched out his empty hand, drawing a line straight to the invisible point ten yards in front of him, and threw a hard, level pass. "Like that. If you want to throw a long pass, you need to drop your shoulder and aim up."

"Right, because I have so many opportunities to throw footballs from my roof to yours," Rodney said, but his eyes had tracked the ball and he'd obviously paid attention.

"You never know," John said. "Go get it and throw it back to me."

"What am I, your fetching hound?" Rodney asked, but he jogged off to scoop up the ball.

John watched him set up the pass, could almost see the gears turning in his head as he followed each step.

He released too early and the ball turned end over end before hitting the ground halfway to John's position.

"You let go too soon," John called to him, walking forward to get the ball. "Don't release until it's right over your head, and then snap your arm forward. If you don't follow through, it's just going to float around. Put your shoulders into it." He lobbed the ball back to Rodney, a short toss that didn't actually require much in the way of form, but he did it picture perfect anyway, just the way his dad had taught him a decade ago, so Rodney could see how to do it right.

John walked backward as Rodney wound up, every step computing in his brain, and this time when he threw the ball, John bent his knees and caught it in both hands, a foot from the ground.

"Nice," he called back, even though it was sloppy as hell and awkward to boot. "Remember to follow all the way though." He threw the ball back and Rodney ducked to the side and missed it. "Right," John muttered under his breath as Rodney ran over to get the ball. "All right," he called so that Rodney could hear him. "Nice and hard, right into my hands." He clapped his hands together and held them up to give Rodney a target.

This attempt was better and John's assessment that Rodney had a few muscles in that skinny body of his was gaining some support. He still had to lean for the ball, but it made it to him at ten yards out and that wasn't bad.

"Okay, now catch this one," he called, winging it back to Rodney with a flick of his wrist to give the ball some spin.

Rodney threw his hands in front of his face but somehow didn't manage to actually catch the ball. The result was immediate and deafening.

"Ow! Owowowowow!" The football bounced harmlessly on the ground as Rodney doubled over, his hands clamped to his face.

Shit, John thought. I broke his nose. He dashed the length of the yard in a time that would have impressed his coach. "Let me see," he demanded when he reached Rodney's side and laid one hand on Rodney's shoulder.

"Dod't touch it, dod't look ad it," Rodney wheezed.

"Rodney, let me see," he demanded, fisting his hand in Rodney's shirt and dragging him upright.

Rodney's hands were cupped over most of his face, but when John tugged them away, there was no blood.

"By dose!" Rodney protested. "Id's broked."

"It's not broken," John said, touching the bridge. It was swelling, but it didn't seem to be misshapen and Rodney wasn't indicating pain in one area more than the rest. Tears ran down both sides of his face but he wasn't bleeding or bruising the way John's nose had when he'd taken a bat to the face in Little League. He'd deserved it, his father said later, for standing up and being bossy when he was supposed to be catching, but at the time, all he'd known was the blood and the tears, his mother's hand smoothing down his hair in the emergency room, and the intense, intense hatred for Bobby Millbrook.

"I cad't breade," Rodney said.

"Try," John suggested.

Rodney glared at him and inhaled, blinking in surprise when it worked. John crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Rodney scowled back. "Oh, sure," he snapped, sniffing indignantly. "Just because my face isn't a mess of blood and bone doesn't mean I don't have cartilage injuries. I could still be horribly disfigured." He blinked hard and rubbed irritably at his damp cheeks.

"We'll go in and get some juice," John suggested, tucking the football under his arm and clamping a hand on Rodney's shoulder.

"Juice? You think juice is going to fix my eventual disfigurement?" Rodney shrieked, letting John steer him back toward the house.

"You're not disfigured," John sighed. His parents had always offered juice as an alternative to tears, even when the tears were just a result of an impact too close to his tear ducts. He pushed Rodney into a chair and pulled out a bottle of orange juice.

"Oh, God, are you trying to kill me?" Rodney squeaked.

"What, with OJ?" John asked, snagging a glass off the drainboard.

"Hello, were you paying attention last night?" Rodney asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"What, with the lemon?" John asked, wishing he didn't remember the look on Rodney's face when he's turned away from Teyla. Taking his place had been the smoothest way John could think of to cover the awkwardness of the situation.

"It's not lemon," Rodney sniffed, touching his nose gingerly. "It's citrus."

John blinked at the orange juice and put it back in the fridge.

"Coke okay?" he asked. "We have that and milk."

"Coke's fine," Rodney said. "Thank you," he added as John passed over a frosty can.

John slouched across the table with his own can and watched Rodney down half the can in one gulp. "Look," he said. "Teyla said she'd go to the movies with me on Saturday night. Why don't you ask Katie and we'll all go together."

"Really?" Rodney blurted out.

"Yeah." John shrugged. He wouldn't get that far with Teyla, not with an audience, but Katie really had looked freaked out on Friday and he felt that he should feel bad about that.

Also, John could still feel the sense-memory of Teyla's mouth on his collarbone and he could thank Rodney for that.

"The base theater is playing Top Gun," he said. "I totally want to see that."

"The one with Tom Cruise and the planes," Rodney asked, lighting up a little.

"Yeah, it's supposed to be great," John told him. He let himself feel a little thrill of knowing that Rodney was just as excited about something as he was, and then realized he'd have to spend the entire movie listening to what they got wrong.

"Cool." Rodney fiddled with his can. "I, um, I need to get home. I have a ton of homework I haven't done this weekend. Are you coming over for dinner?"

John half-shrugged. "No, thanks. I've got some stuff to do here."

"You can come over if you're doing homework," Rodney said. "I can probably give you a hand if you need it?"

"Nah, I'm fine," John said. "It's other stuff."

"Oh. Okay." Rodney looked skeptical.

"Phone calls. Working out," John explained.

"Oh, yes." Rodney got up and threw his can away. "Well. Thanks for letting me stay."

"Yeah. I'm sorry I threw a ball in your face," John said, thinking that really, it was Rodney's fault for letting it go through his fingers.

"That's all right," Rodney said. "In fifteen years when I'm giving lectures and everyone wants to know why my face is so messed up, I can tell them it's an old football injury and be telling the truth."

John snorted and shook his head. "See you tomorrow, Rodney."

Rodney offered him a slight grin. "Yeah," he agreed. "I'll meet you outside."

"Maybe if you had the first clue what was going on around you -- !"

"You always blame me for things you don't want to take responsibility for!"

Rodney looked up as his parents' yelling turned louder and discernible and then muffled again. Jeannie was closing his door.

"You ever hear of knocking?" he asked, but he pushed his chemistry text further up on his pillow and sat up to make room for Jeannie at the end of the bed.

"You always lock the door when you jerk off," Jeannie said, but with only a shadow of her standard sneer.

"Way to be observant," Rodney muttered and didn't bother to ask how she knew about jerking off already. She might not be anywhere near his level of brilliance, but Jeannie McKay was no dummy. She still came from the same set of genes, after all. "So what are you doing here?"

"What do you think?" Jeannie cocked her head to the door. "Why don't they just get a divorce already? Michelle Butler's dad moved to California and she gets to fly out to Disneyland every other weekend and for two weeks in the summer."

"If you think Dad is going to move to Disneyland, you're delusional," Rodney told her.

"He doesn't have to go that far," she admitted. "Just away."

"You know, they're probably staying together for us," Rodney said, picking up his book and resting it on his knee. He put his socked foot flat on the bed -- his mother would kill him if he did that wearing shoes -- so Jeannie could lean against his knee. "So they don't warp us or something."

"That's not true," Jeannie said. "They hate us."

"They don't hate us." Rodney sighed. "They just blame us. They blame me. Because I built that thing and we had to move and Mom had to give up her job and -- " He shrugged. "They're just not happy. It's not that bad."

"Easy for you to say," Jeannie sniffed. "You're going away to college. You won't have to live with them anymore."

"Yeah, not if nowhere wants me," Rodney said bitterly. "Which is stupid, because they should all be knocking down the door to get to me first. And throwing money at me, too, because there's no way we can afford it without scholarships."

Jeannie made a little sighing noise and rested her head against his knee.

"You should read a book or something if you're going to stay in here," Rodney said.

To his surprise, she went to his bookshelf and found his beat-up old copy of The Hobbit, and curled up on the bed next to him to read it. He reached out and put his hand on her hair and left it there while he studied.

Rodney was doing physics homework and John was reading War and Peace with their feet on the coffee table when the front door opened and, "Hi, honey, I'm home!" echoed in the front hall.

"My dad is a dork," John explained, dropping his feet to the floor without taking his eyes off the book.

Rodney tensed beside him, scooting his feet off the table as well. "Is it okay that I'm here?" he asked.

"Of course it is," John said, turning the page. "In the TV room," he called over his shoulder.

"Because last time you said that you didn't have parties here because -- "

"Parties," John said in exasperation. "You know, eighty people I don't know, underage drinking, property damage?"

"Yeah, but," Rodney started and then stopped and hopped into a straighter position, his eyes over John's head.

"Hey," Colonel Sheppard said, ambling into the room.

"Hi, Dad," John said without looking up.

"Um, hi, I'm -- I'm -- " Rodney stumbled, jumping to his feet and holding out his hand.

"You're the McKays' kid, the oldest one, right?" Colonel Sheppard said, leaning forward to squeeze his hand briefly. "Will Sheppard, John's dad." He looked speculatively from Rodney to John and back. "You giving John a hand in physics?"

"Dad!" John groaned from his slouch.

"You need help in physics?" Rodney asked quickly, his eyes lighting up.

"He's my friend," John called with doom in his voice.

"Okay," Colonel Sheppard replied, offering Rodney a grin. "He could use some help in physics," he stage-whispered.

"Dad! My physics grade is fine!"

"If you want a hand in physics, it's my best subject," Rodney said, all anxiety over meeting the Colonel forgotten. "Which class are you in?"

"Rodney, shut up," John grumbled, closing the book. "Dad, he's a friend, cut it out."

"All right, all right," the Colonel said mildly. "Rodney, you like Mexican?"

"I'm not so much on the really spicy things, the peppers and such, but anything in a tortilla is pretty much gold -- " Rodney started.

"Great," the Colonel interrupted. "I'll call your parents."

"Huh?" Rodney blinked over the couch and John grinned, picking up War and Peace again.

"You just got invited to dinner," he said, kicking Rodney gently with the bottom of his sneaker.

"But -- "

"Air Force Colonel," John reminded Rodney.

"Huh." Rodney sounded thoughtful but when John looked up, he found that Rodney was studying him before hastily turning his attention back to physics.

Half an hour later, the Colonel yelled something unintelligible from the kitchen that John recognized as their version of the dinner bell.

"Coming?" he asked Rodney.

"That was dinner? I though maybe your dad was watching football or something," he said, but he jumped off the couch and actually preceded John into the kitchen as the aroma of spiced beef and melted cheese wafted through the rest of the house.

"Grab a plate and dig in," Colonel Sheppard said. The table was practically sagging under the weight of rice and beans and enchiladas, tamales and tostadas and a large quesadilla, sectioned into eighths.

"There's, uh, there's no lemon in any of this, right?" Rodney asked.

John glanced at him. "Rodney's allergic," he said.

"A single drop could kill me," Rodney volunteered, right on schedule.

"Not that it's even remotely cool to bring that up at every possible moment," John growled, raising his eyebrows at Rodney.

"John." His father's voice was a warning and he'd almost forgotten the Colonel was there. "No, Rodney, there shouldn't be any lemon. Your father didn't say anything about food allergies when I called...."

"He forgets," Rodney said. "And John's giving me um, cool lessons. In exchange for helping him with physics."

"He's not helping me with physics," John interrupted, trying to set things straight. His father's eyebrows went up. "I mean, okay, yeah, whatever. But we're -- y'know what? Never mind." He topped his entire plate with a spoonful of beans and a glob of sour cream and collapsed into his seat.

"John," the Colonel said conspiratorially to Rod