I once had a professor who said that there were no indeterminate statements - that you were either on thing of you were another - inbetween was a state of being all to itself. Of course, this was the linguistics course I was taking to fulfill my humanities/social sciences credit, and I was looking at it like a mathematician: logic, equations, explicit statements about what was and what was not. In logic, like computer programming, there is no maybe.

Obviously neither logic nor computer programming apply to John Sheppard. If that idiot epistemologist, Holmes, tried to tell Sheppard that he had to conform, John would probably just give that half-obedient/half-sarcastic smile of his and wander off in search of something that moves faster than the monotone ramble of a stuffy old academic. Holmes would not be happy with that. He liked definitive statements, and tweed suits with the tags sometimes still attached.

John is a sack full of contradictions, as far as I can tell - an input that will fry your circutboard and melt all your logical reasoning capacity with a single one of his seemingly-effortless smiles. He's a tough guy who claims he just wants to fly, but he'll do almost anything to protect people he barely even knows. He can be so sweet that you don't think you could stand to be without him and a complete and utter bastard at the same time. He's charming and well loved, but he seems to prefer solitude. He's childish and immature but he's the one you trust to make those hard decisions. And sometimes he smiles so bright you think it might have come out the other end as a frown.



And right now, he's doing just that, curled up in a ball in the frame of one of Atlanis' deep-set stained-glass windows. The warm colors are drifting over him, making his skin shine in such a natural way that I can almost believe that the light is not lighting him, but simply allowing some sort of inner-light to shine through. Yet, the rigid lines, the shift between panes of glass set his face in a grid - prison bars, war paint. The light almost obscures the sterile white of the bandage wrapped around his left eye, but not quite.

"Major, you shouldn't be here."

He shrugs, slouching down even further, tall frame folded yet seeming to sprawl throughout the entire space. He looks natural lying there, though I'm surprised to see him. "I was in the neighborhood."

"I don't really see how the corridor outside my lab is 'in the neighborhood' of the five meter radius around your hospital bed, Dr. Beckett says you're supposed to be traveling." I try to sound annoyed, and I am, because he should take his health more seriously, damn it! If not for himself, then for me. But, at the same time, I'm touched that he's dragged himself all the way over hear and out of the Doctor's . . . errr . . . capable hands, just to see me. Of course I don't know that he's her to see me but . . .

"It's in the neighborhood of Atlantis." He smiles boyishly, staring up at me through a single emerald green eye. He looks so at ease, lying with his belly exposed, like Copernicus when he wants to be scratched, letting me look down at him from above. I wonder if he can see my nose hairs . . . I take a step back.

I know better than to argue with him, but I can't let him off scott-free, even looking so adorable lounging in the radiance of the sun like that. He would probably insist on taking me to the infirmary if I let him get away without a fight. "Yeah. Right. As much as I appreciate you coming down here to annoy me in person, I really think you should get back in bed. Beckett says you need constant monitoring . . . that he still thinks there's a possibility of infection. And, trust me, Major, you don't want to get an infection. Things swell up and you won't be able to see and it can spread and before you know it . . . you're . . . you're dead-Sheppard not sitting-here-without-a-care-in-the-world-ignoring-my-pants-off-Sheppard and I don't think either of us wants that."

If I'm being perfectly honest with myself (which I'm sometimes not) I would say that I don't think I could handle dead-Sheppard. Things have been spinning further and further out of control since we got here. It seems that our mission is almost destined for failure, all the cards stacked against us, but John Sheppard gives me hope. It's funny, I've never actually heard John say that he knows we can defeat the Wraith. There have never been any sweeping speeches or even quiet encouragements in times of darkness, yet I can still believe. Maybe I believe in the man. Maybe its because he doesn't have to say it, that I know it to be true. John doesn't make promises. He doesn't even threaten people directly. You can't pin him down as one thing or another, but you know that he's fallible, practical, and oftentimes cynical, and yet he's still willing to try, and that gives you hope.

John rolls to his feet, catlike and graceful, even with half his vision impaired from when the Wraith took a swipe at him with its claw. I don't know how he seems so calm, walking into my lab like he owns it. If I were him I'd be fiddling with the eyepatch, pestering Carson, reading every fact in the database about scratched corneas and nervously fiddling with things. And the sad this is, my vision isn't all that important to me. My eyes are what gets the data to my brain, and there are definitely other ways.

But John, John's life is flying, shooting, commanding. His eyes give him life, his eyes are the artists that make to decisions about bobbing and swooping when we're accelerating fast enough to liquefy our eyes in their sockets. Yet, even the contradiction, he's stretching himself out, arching his back in yet another movement that reminds me of Copernicus - who, in turn, reminds me of home. I wonder if we would all be better off (Me, John, Elizabeth, this entire galaxy) if we had stayed back on Earth.

But then I would never have met John Sheppard and his seeming-nine-lives. And as close as he treads to the darkness from which no one ever returns, John never tips off the edge. He stays just on the right side of the line. If he had been a second slower, if he had hesitated for an instant, he wouldn't have only lost an eye, he'd probably be dead. But in the combination of luck and skill that seems to come to him so effortlessly, John used his ancient gene to release the clamps on the ship that hung about our heads, and take the one step back that saw the Wraith crushed and not himself. John Sheppard falls (because we never would have been there in the first place if he hadn't wanted to check out each and every one of their spacecraft) but he always lands on his feet.

He surveys the haphazard mess that is my lab. "So, Rodney, what little gizmos are you working on now?" He seems casual enough, but when does John Sheppard ever try to make small talk about my work? He spends a lot of his time trying to get me to shut-up (though he never tires hard enough to make me believe he truly wants me to).

"Nothing much," I'm distracted by the stiffness in his shoulders, the trying-too-hard-to-be-casual cadence of his voice.

He turns to me, bewildered. "Nothing much? You're not saving the world with your brilliance yet again, McKay?" Still, though he's surprised, his full wieght's not behind the tones.

"I'm not the miraculous John Sheppard." I snap. There's nothing wrong with being proud of my abilities. I hate how he makes me doubt myself, if only for an instant. John's like that - the power to make you believe, and to shake even the most unshakable truths. Like, before John, I saw soldiers as meatheads, the tools of the wise man. Sure there were physicists in the military like Dr. Cater, but people carried guns because they didn't have the brains to design them. But John refuses to be defined there as well. He's a genius - Dr. Weir told me when we were discussing overlap and secondary skills in members of this outfit - I didn't think it was necessary, especially not if she was dredging up my old PhysEd records looking for it in me. She was barking up the wrong tree, I knew that at least. Unless you count the ability to forge excuse notes to absolute perfection, which isn't actually all that hard, if you start as early as I did, and get the right ink and use computer stenciling and . . .

He grinds the words out, as though speaking through rocks and broken teeth. "Neither am I." Again, I am surprised. John sounds both angry and incredibly sad at the same time - strong, yet delicate and vulnerable. I have the sudden urge to hold him in my arms, make whatever pain this is go away.

But I don't know how to fix this! I can't tell him that it's okay, because it's not. The Wraith attacked him, and this probably won't be the last time. He looks so tired, but I can't really tell him it's okay to lay down his head to rest, not really. I need him . . . we all need him so much.

And I don't want to see him like this. I'm glad I can see him as human, but not too human. If I can't believe in an ordinary guy like myself, I can't believe in a savior with feet of clay. And John knows this, because he doesn't let me see him cry, he melts back into that natural possession of his, the way he makes even the worst situations seem like they're handlable - that he fits there.

He owns even the worry in his voice, makes it seem reasonable, tangible, fixable. "Rodney, I don't know . . ."

I refuse to let him say it. He doubts, I know it, but for John, his word is his honor, and his reality. "Look, John, I . . ." the scientist in me won't allow me to tell him everything will be fine. It's my job to panic, it's John's job to shut me up. That's how it works. "No matter what happens, I believe in you. You'll survive." Nine-lives Sheppard. The world could be falling down around him, and John would act like it's just another day at the office.

John's head is tilted to the side just slightly, like Copernicus when you dangle yarn or a mouse cord (the computer kind) in front of his nose. God, it knew it sounded corny. I expect John to laugh at me - make fun of the fact that speaking is not my strong suit. "That . . . that means a lot to me, Rodney." We're not good at these conversations. I bitch and moan, he makes fun of me, I bite back; that's how it works.

He's leaning against the lab bench now, trying to look casual, but I can tell but the small unavoidable shake in his hands that he's actually holding himself up. Beckett said a small amount of the Wraith chemical entered his bloodstream, he doesn't know the effects, though he thinks Jon will be just fine.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

His blank expression blooms into a Cheshire grin. "You can distract me." I'm good at that.

"I was thinking more along the lines of, I don't know, a glass of water, a piece of pie, a trip back to your hospital bed, a call to Becket . . ."

"A blowjob?"

"Yes, a . . . what?" I think time has actually stopped. And my jaw no longer works.

"A blowjob. That thing where you get down on your knees and you place the glanis . . ."

"I , , , " he raises his eyebrows playfully, expectantly. John Sheppard, emperor of the universe. Yes, he and Copernicus would get along just fine. "I know what it means. I just . . ."

Okay, so he knows I want him. He knows I fantasize about him. He's caught me looking and given me the Sheppard-all-knowing smirk. But that doesn't . . . he can't demand. And he knows it's more than just a case of lust and idolatry. It's not love, but I care for him even when I want to strangle him - another Sheppard conundrum.

He hangs his head with a sigh. "I'm sorry, Rodney, I have no right. I just though we could . . . distract ourselves." His smile is a mix of mischief and plea.



Yes, the similarities are overwhelming. Like my cat, I can refuse John nothing. I reach out, touching a hand lightly to his chest, not expecting the feral growl that comes from the man, or the way he pounces on my, devouring me, hunting out every space of exposed skin to bite and nip and mark as his, clawing at my clothes in a worldwind of action.

He pulls down my pants, and I've lost track of his hands as they roam over my body. I stand stock still, unsure of what to do, until my body catches up with my sentences. John Sheppard is in my arms, what does anything else matter? I start at his neck, the place were the soft hair at the nape of his neck meets salty white flesh. He has a taste to him, like ginger and spice, tamed wild. It's the taste that really sets me off, ripping the red hospital gown in two (I didn't even think I had the strength to do that) I find a hardening nipple and lick it. John gives a low throaty mew and slams his hips back against the lab bench.

I yank down his pants, exposing him in all his naked glory, letting my hands run over the soft down of his inner thighs, the light fuzz dusting his chest. He stretches out long limbs, responding in throaty moans.



We haven't even touched each other's cocks yet, even though they're straining like oxen tied to immovable yokes. Somehow we know to prolong the pleasure. My hand running over him - the contact feels so right.

And then he begs. John Sheppard who would never give in to torture, who always wants the last word, begs for me to touch him. "Please." It's the most erotic word I've heard in my life. And I feel as though I could sit here, stroking and petting him forever. He's so beautiful.

But I can't refuse the plea, or the hot bar of molten liquid that was once my cock. I lean down, taking him into my mouth, rolling his balls with my tongue and stroking him with a single finger, twisting around the head, cued by his moans to increase the suction, pull him deeper, make this more than just a couple of blowjobs to pass the time, because Iím doing this because I care. I want to take his mind off things, my own pleasure be damned - though I don't mind the added bonus.

He gives this growl then a soft keen, like he's holding back and letting it all go at the same time. And then he comes in my mouth. The taste of him alone almost pushes me over the edge, but I hold on. I want to see his face.

I looked up to meet dazed ands satisfied eyes - the cat who caught the canary. He smirks and slides, mucsleless, off the table, landing noiselessly on his feet.

It's another second before he lowers himself to his knees, yanking my pants down. I'm concerned about his eye. I don't want to jar it if I accidentally thrust. I don't even know if it's safe for him to open his mouth wide enough to swallow me. But my braincells don't really have the power to protest the moment. I manage a hand in his matted brown hair and an inarticulate, "You don't have to . . ."

I'm hard as a bar of cast iron. I could take care of myself in a second, but he stills my hands, looking up at me with a stare that's got an eyeroll hidden inside. His hands clasping my arms to my hips, his tongue licks out, a flash of pink. He licks a bead of precum from the head like a kitten licking at a bowl of cream. There's more mischief in his eyes as he looks up to gauge my reaction. I'm even beyond to point of moaning, I'm so tongue tied.

But that look of mischief is always to be taken serious, because John doesn't go back on his word - or the promises he makes with his eyes. This time is no exception, for he waits until I sigh, unprepared, and deep throats me in a lightning-quick pounce. I don't remember if I make a noise. My ears are too filled with sparkling lights to hear them.

The next coherent thought I have is that my ass is cold because I'm laying on top of a lab bench. John has his head on my shoulder and I'm running fingers through the fur running from his naval to his now-deflated cock. He nuzzles his head closer, waiting for me to look down and meet his eyes. "Thank you," He barely whispers.

The only thing I think to say is "You're welcome." Some manners were hardwired into me, at least.

He chuckles, still staring at me with one penetrating green eye. And I lean down to kiss him. John makes everything natural, even laying butt-naked on a cold lab bench kissing your medically AWOL CO seems natural.

The kiss says more than the sex did. It says 'I care.' It's an admission that John is more like my cat than he is like the messiah - the statue that has feet of clay. I think John makes a better cat. Nine lives are much more useful than a lifetime waiting for the erosion of ages and the forgetfulness of history. Besides, as I find out when I hug him close, stroking a hand delicately down his spine, John Sheppard purrs too.