"Rodney, you're gonna wear a track in the bloody floor!" Carson chastises me half-heartedly. He's nervous too, I can tell by the way he twists a pen in his hand. Without the finesse of many on my computer-geek friends, he mostly just clicks the top haphazardly and grips and twirls, grips and twirls - the rhythmic motion almost hypnotic.

The clicking is getting on my already strained nerves. "Jesus Christ, Carson, will you stop?!"

"What?"

"That clicking. Your giving me a headache ... and that's the last thing I need right now ... I mean, they could be captured ... or hurt ... or stranded somewhere ... or ..." I'm about to say dead, but Carson interrupts me - thank God.

"Will you please calm down, Rodney? They're only about 30 minutes overdue for check in."

"30 minutes is a lot of time to get captured ... or hurt ... or ..."

Carson moves from where he's been standing at the back of the Control Room to grab my shoulders. Only then do I stop pacing. His eyes are austere and piercing, commanding in a way only someone whose held the power over life and death in their hands more times they can count can. "Rodney, you need to calm down. It is possible Major Sheppard is just busy." Busy screwing some virgin farmgirl, or exotic beauty, or maybe even some tribal leader or something. He thinks I didn't know about him and Karas. But how could I have possibly missed the sparks flying between those two? For a while I thought he was mine ... though we never talked about whatever it was we had, I was able to convince myself it was exclusive.

Now that he's free of me, he can do what he pleases. "Bastard," I murmur, though apparently not quietly enough.

"What?" Carson looks slightly hurt.

"Not you." I wave my hand dismissively, resuming my frantic pacing. I should be out there with them. I might not be able to single-handedly save John from a group of hungry Wraith, but I can at least watch him - make sure he stays out of trouble. I thought it was tough watching him get choked to death by that 'tick from hell,' not able to do anything to even alleviate his pain, but it's even worse not knowing at all. And when I don't know, I always assume the worse. I've never been a glass is half full person. In fact, we physicists always say that the glass is neither half empty nor full; the container is two times too large. "I should have been there."

"At least know what you're blaming yourself for, lad, before you start." Carson grunts darkly. He's trying to be reassuring -I know- but I don't think any of it can break through this shell of guilt. "You'd probably only make it worse. I know how the two of you are when you're together." Carson, you don't know the half of it. Carson may be a brilliant doctor (though I'd never let him hear me admit that) but he's absolutely clueless about some things. He probably wouldn't get that John and I are ... were, together, if we made-out in the middle of the Gateroom.

"What if there's a problem with the Jumper? What if they need me to fix it? This was another planet with the Gate in orbit. Who knows what could have gone wrong? I could ..."

"Dr. Weir should be sending a team to investigate in a few minutes. We'll likely both be on it." Carson has given up on trying to get me to stop pacing, and is leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. I can feel his eyes tracking me.

"I should have been on the first team," I mutter.

John didn't kick me off the team. I begged off the mission at the last minute, claiming I wasn't feeling very well. I could tell by the look in her eyes that Elizabeth didn't believe me. But she let me get away with it - if only this once. John gave me this brief look of concern, and, I guess, apology, before nodding curtly and head off to gear up.

I just ... I know it's weak and pathetic and probably one of the reasons John doesn't want to be involved with me, but I just can't stand to be around him anymore. I feel the words on my tongue, the impulses in my body, everything in here has stayed the same, but the outside world has changed so I can't be myself anymore. I can't get ornery and pissy about not eating or going into certain danger or whatever. It's not that I didn't do those things before I met John. I mean, that's who I am, but somehow being with Jon transformed that. It wasn't me being a jerk because no one paid attention to me otherwise or because I just wanted something to say. With him it was a form of flirtation, a dance. I snarked; he snarked back. Before I was my own number, 'One is the loneliest number' as they sing in throaty voices in those bars with dim lighting and bartenders with unofficial psychology degrees. But John changed that number to an equation somehow, linking my number to his and somehow making it more. The only problem is, as they teach kids in elementary school, when you subtract from one side of the equation, you have to subtract from the other.

He's been distant, professional, for the past week or so. I'm glad we can still work together without some sort of emotional breakdown, but Ford and Teyla and Elizabeth have all noticed. Teyla keeps asking me if I'm okay. I think maybe she thinks I got my black eye from the losing end of a fistfight. And yesterday, Elizabeth called me into her office to ask if John and I had some kind of argument. She gave one of those smiling, implicit orders for to fix it - even Elizabeth knows it's all my own stupid fault, even if she couldn't guess the details. And Ford looks lost without our usual banter, and tries to pick up the slack telling jokes and generally babbling at John. John smiles, and leans back in his chair as though he hasn't a care in the world, and even laughs - which is more than I can do. But the laugh never spreads to his eyes, which are constantly darkening.

I haven't been taking meals in the dining area, but rather returning to hide in my lab, but I hear from Carson that John hasn't been eating because he's lost some weight, and we can all see the dark circles under his eyes. I want so badly to reach out to him, even though it's my fault that whatever demons he's been hiding so convincingly have returned.

Maybe I should have told Carson something about it. I could have just told him that I caught John having some sort of episode and that he's been keeping me at arms length since. It's the truth, I suppose. This doesn't even have to have anything to do with the fact John and I are ... were, sleeping together. I betrayed his trust as a friend. It's that simple.

Then we hear the alarms going off ... Dr. Wu's voice over the speaker system, "Incoming wormhole."

Elizabeth is hovering behind Wu, shoulders squared in confident determination. Still, the plea hidden beneath the curtness in her voice is enough to show her concern.

The time between when the gate springs to life in an explosive column of water ... well, it's not technically water but ... Anyway, the second between the activation of the Gate and Dr. Wu's tense by somehow soft and silky voice announcing that he's receiving Lieutenant Ford's IDC seems to last an eternity.

And John thinks that us being apart will make things better ... he thinks that getting too close will make us somehow vulnerable - that he can't let me into whatever it is that he's going through because it's his problem and he doesn't want to make it mine. But what he doesn't realize is that it's far too late for that. It already is my problem, because no matter how far he pushes me away, I don't think I can stop caring about him. Each second like this one -when I'm not there with him, when I can't be with him and know that he's alright- is going to be just as painful.

A few seconds later, with the shield lowered, Jumper One limps through, laying itself down on the Gateroom floor unevenly, not even rising to the Jumper Bay.

Teyla is the first one out. She isn't smiling, but I can't read a single hint of panic in the smooth lines of her body. I let out a breath of relief, knowing that everything is all right. I trust Teyla on that. In fact, out in the field, I trust Teyla more than I do John. She looks up to the control center and calls Carson down, nonetheless.

You wouldn't think so from looking at the tubby Scotsman, but Carson can really hustle. It's only seconds before he's down the steps and waiting at the door of the Jumper. Elizabeth is down there too. I hesitate, looking down on the scene from above. A week ago, I'd have been right behind them. Well, actually, a week ago, I would have been in the Jumper to begin with. Now, I stand watching the scene from afar, things that were my life a week ago, nothing but a play, John's indifference the 4th wall between us. It's as though he's revoked my privilege to care about him, chained me to the spot. I'm feeling those old tremors of claustrophobia welling up, even in this wide-open space.

It's a second before Ford appears, covered from head to toe in mud and looking as though he's been scared out of his mind by the ride home, yet as though he's trying to contain a huge smile.

Only after Ford has waved Beckett away from him with a laugh, does John appear. His hair is ruffled and he has mud smeared through it and down his cheek. In fact, he's even dirtier than Ford. He's clasping his left wrist in his right hand, but I can't see anything else wrong.

"What happened to you, Major?" I hear Elizabeth's voice, and the laugh she's hiding beneath her stern look, floating up from the Gateroom floor.

"Soccer." He replies with a smile - one of his self-satisfied little-boy grins, which soon shifts to a wince as Dr. Beckett pries his fingers from around his wrist. "Ow, watch what you do with that, Doc!"

"Think about that the next time you decide to break your wrist playing bloody football!" Beckett huffs.

"It was diplomacy!" John exclaims. "Getting friendly with the natives - introducing them to our culture! They were loving it, right Ford?"

"Yes, Sir." Ford looks like he's about to choke on whatever witty comeback he's hiding behind the 'Yes, Sir.' Before I met Lieutenant Ford, I didn't know you could say the phrase so many different ways. I've even heard him say it to John where I thought I heard, 'Fine, because even though you're an insufferable bastard, I kind of worship you and want to have your babies if such a thing is possible.' I must have been imagining it.

Elizabeth turns around to walk back up the stairs and I can see her rolling her eyes. "Next time, Major, let's try for diplomacy with no shooting, threatening, arms dealing, or violent sporting events."

Carson is trying to lead John off to the infirmary and he's batting the doctor's hands away. "Football, violent?" Carson huffs.

"Yeah, be glad McKay felt sick. We could've been playing hockey," John snarks before he even seems to realize it. I fight the urge to yell down that I don't even know the name of a single hockey team. They just assume that because my country's full of bloody-minded insanos on skates that I'm one too. I mean, why the hell would anyone want to slide around ice that could crack in drown you trapped beneath the ice of a sub-zero pond, on a pair of blades that are more likely to slit your throat than do any good. Though the physics of it is actually quiet interesting ... you see, the pressure of the blade actually melts the ice, causing you to hydroplane and ... Wait! I suddenly find myself grinning like an idiot. That's the first time he's insulted me in over a week, and, oddly, it makes my heart flutter for just a brief second before Carson laughs.

"Speaking of which, what happened to that crazy Canuck? I was afraid he was going to give himself a heart attack worrying about you." John puckers his lips in that slightly petulant frown of his.

Carson turns and looks up at me and John follows suit. For a brief second our eyes meet and I feel my heartbeat pounding in the forge of my chest, binding us together in that look of apology that passes between us. I turn away, unable to deal with his detached pity.

As I walk off toward the lab I hear John ask Carson if he has any good drugs on him, an odd tremble in his voice - like the small jumps and hops on the seismometer before the big explosion. It's so unlike John to admit that kind of weakness that I pause in my step. Is he hurt that badly? Does he want me to hear him admit to this? He's probably just trying to distract Carson from my embarrassing behavior.

I hurry out of the Control Room as fast as I can without actually running. I can't stand this. I hate myself for hanging on his every word like this. I hate how I can't stop caring. I hate how I can't do anything with this caring spreading through me and metastasizing like the most virulent of cancers, crippling me.

I can hear my breathing speeding up, teetering on the edge of hyperventilating. I cross my arms over my chest to cover up the sweet-stains on the armpits of my long-sleeved blue shirt. When I've finally reached my destination I sag against the wall, forcing myself to take slow deep breaths.

Since when did I, Rodney McKay, become such a goddamn emotional wreck? This is really screwing with my efficiency. Damn you, John. It feels like there are ants crawling through my blood. Everything is just so ... wrong. It's not supposed to be like this. I've long given up on a picket fence, a fetching blonde bride, a troop of smiling little Rodneys (I shudder to think), but I guess even the most cynical of us can't help but hope ... that something will work out.

... And, if it doesn't, that we'll be thick skinned enough to deal with it. And if not that, that it will hurt the other person more than it hurts us. Hey, I never pretended that I wasn't a vengeful person. But nobody can hurt John but himself - that was part of our relationship all along. I was at his mercy, free to please him only by his grace. Sure, he's hurting as much as I am, if not more, but it's all up to him. He can look at me without feeling that painful tightening of his chest. He can lose himself in joking and charm. He can go back to how he was before - alone.

My problem, as John has joked a hundred times, is that I'm too greedy. I get something and I immediately want more. I've had a taste of what its like to be with John Sheppard, and now I can't let go. But John ... John's used to letting go.

When I've finally calmed myself, after God-knows-how-long, I sigh and take in my surroundings. I'm in what John jokingly called the Organ Room. John and I stumbled upon it on one of our 'sexepades.' I look away from the far left corner, where John rammed me up against the wall and fucked me dirty and hard. There's not a room in this city that John hasn't marked, just as there is no safe thought in my head - a place I always saw as undoubtedly mine. And I'm not saying that we've had sex in every single room, but rather that this base -every piece of technology, every door, every beautiful stained glass window- belongs to John. He's breathed himself into every corner of it.

Stare at the intricate patterns of glass crawling like vines from a clear glass keyboard, much like a piano, all throughout the room, down intricately carved columns and across the great arched windows that cover two of the walls.

I move to the keyboard. It's been a long time since I've played. I quite music when I realized I didn't have the art for it. I could play everything to technical perfection, execute each note like an iteration of a complex equation, a mathematical proof - but there was not art in it, no emotion. They say that music, like wine, grows finer with time and experience. Maybe now -after so many years having sworn that I would not waste my time with something I could never be good at- I finally have the experience to create art. Perhaps the equation has finally jumped out of the painful cyclical regularity of bifurcation after bifurcation and into the world without divisions, only chaos flowing into chaos, like the patterns of lights and colors that track themselves across the walls and ceilings and windows as I sit down to play.

I feel as though I should be playing something jazzy and original, not Beethoven or Chopin, or even Bach, emotion contained in a structure determined by committee, but something organic and straight from the heart. The best I can do is this one Jazz piece I once accompanied, Easy Come, Easy Go. God, I wish it were that simple. When did it stop being just sex and the simple comfort of sleeping in someone else's arms? Or was it always more?

As I try to keep the notes upbeat and positive, try to think that we can salvage our friendship out of this mess, even when I know that it's our friendship that's truly been ruined, not our attraction to each other. You can have sex without complete trust, especially when you're roughly equal in the forces you can apply to each other, but you can't have a real friendship without it.

But, before I know it, it's melted from a slinky near coquettish melody, into deep chords, despair, a gothic chant - Mozart's Requiem, the second part of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (the one anal people like me know, but no one ever asks you to play) Paris in the rain, the street light flickering and giving in to the darker side of romanticism you never see in postcards and travel brochures. And then it flows into Jazz, seedy bars in Chicago where we try to return to the days of gangsters and prohibition and big band, and from there it breaks into the moody blues, a John Coultrane blues break, screaming sorrow and booze, until you are the music, pure emotion. I close my eyes, not squinting in concentration this time, just letting the colors dancing with the echoes through what must have once been a ballroom flow over me. I know they are forming in waves and sinoid curves, all reality in a wave, a fractal, the Julia Set, the music the input into the equation, iteration after iteration of the simplest of things. Is emotion the input or is it the output?

The notes flow out of me now, and I finally understand how Yo-yo Ma must feel with that look of bliss on his face, hair flying in all direction, fingers quaking with the emotion flying through them like an electric charge. Even charges are waves ... matter too. All of the world is music and sound to a being with ears sensitive enough, a mathematics so beautiful it takes your breath away.

Then the sound changes, seems to flow back through me - wash over me like the deep purples and blues of the lights behind my eyelids. The sadness deepens and my heart aches in sympathetic rhythm, pain explodes in colors, patterns I didn't know were possible, release in a spark of beauty and destruction. Deep mauve reds, thinly leashed anger and hatred, despair black and raw and too dangerous and passionate to be my own melancholy. But it seems to harmonize with the melody already playing through my fingers, deepening and etching details into the wave, merge into it until both haunting melodies lift up, in harmony becoming lighter, fading to amber and gold like the dawn Pachebell wrote into his Cannon. I am seeing the dawn out across the horizon of an angry sea, claming the storm and painting its tranquil calm into the waves, a reflection of the harmony in the sky. After all, there can be no storms without temperature differentials, atmospheres, the butterfly flapping it's wings in China, the tiny scar, the moments that weave into this symphony of existence, a note becoming a chord, a counterpoint melody.

The beauty of it is so overwhelming that I gasp and pull my hands from the keys, understanding that after so many years of training myself in the mundane technicalities, I have finally found art. But after my hands have left, the keyboard continues to play, a single wandering melody, resplendent in its tragedy, like the solitary bagpipe wailing out its despair from the burning of a funeral pyre, or the flute dancing through a cold night, chilling your bones even further, the sound that Orpheus must have played in the lament that lead Euripides from the grave, the song so desperate yet full of hope that it swayed even the keeper of the Underworld to bend his rules.

I turn slowly; gasping when I see the figure I know must be standing there. His eyes are clouded, lost in the music he must be playing on the keyboard. He's clean now, I can smell the fresh woody smell of whatever soap it is he uses, mixing with the distinctive bite of him own smell - the one you learn to wake up to, inhaling it off your pillow when he's in the shower. He takes a hesitant step towards me, the notes on the keyboard increasing in intensity just like the metronome of my pounding heartbeat.

His left wrist is bound in a sterile white cast and he's wearing one of Beckett's ridiculous red hospital gown tops instead of the usual black pullover in order to accommodate it. He reaches out with his right hand, running his fingers down the side of my face. I didn't realized how much I've missed the rough pads of his fingers tracing patterns only John know across my skin, until I feel them once again, instinctually leaning into the touch - wanting more.

There's a question in his eyes, in the way he tilts his head just slightly to one side. The notes on the piano climb up the scale, the golden colors of the lights melt into soft pinks and then into royal purples. My heart beats even stronger as he leans in to kiss me. I feel wonder in the notes that continue and then apology, and perhaps ... no.

His lips are swollen and red when he draws back from the kiss, hanging slightly open as he stares at me, examining me. The melody is still playing, more notes beneath it, enriching it, but still sounding almost lonely on it's own. I reach a hand down to the keyboard to complete it, but he grabs my hand, bringing it up to tangle in the soft mat of his still-damp hair.

"Close your eyes," he whispers. And I obey, unquestioning. I feel the music pulsing in me once again, extending my mind down the flights and dips of the melody, my soul soaring with each crescendo, stretching with each legato. And I add my own notes to it, first seeing hands pressing down against the sterile white of my mental keyboard, inciting the snowy white sea to colors like ripples spreading throughout the dimensions of my mindscape in echoes and waves. Then there are no fingers, no bodies, only sound and color as my lips tilt up to meet his, driven by music and art and emotion, nothing more.

He pulls me off the piano bench, presses up against my chest, hips undulating gently to the beat, the music spreading through me in a wave of warmth and pleasure. His hands pull my shirt off in one fluid motion, and mine reach down to yank his pants off with more grace than I knew I possessed.

The music is intense now, a symphony guided by two twin melodies blending together, but backed up by a thousand waves of emotion like the small eddies behind the current. Not every note is beautiful, but the song itself is pure magic. His flesh ripples beneath me with the clenching and unclenching of his muscles, so soft and supple, yet hard. I'm starved for it, driven by the need in the beat itself as it speeds up, spiraling nearly out of control as the lights pulse red, with gusts of golden flame weaving throughout.

Before I know it, my hands are at the hem of his shirt, lifting it off. I only know what I've done when I feel the scars on his back, the way Ray Charles must have felt when he caressed the familiar cold ivory of his keyboard. John gasps as I run my hands over the latticework of scars, tickling the soft fuzz of hair in the small of his back.

I open my eyes, removing my hands in apology, but I see this shy encouragement in his eyes, tinted near teal in the blue light that has suddenly melted over us. "I trust you," he whispers, voice deep and husky, nearly drowned out by the music still cascading around us.

He brings my hand up to his lips, slicking my fingers with his saliva, and peering at me with hooded green eyes. I shudder at the sensation of his talented tongue tracing patterns on my fingers, the perfect input into whatever equation the builds this wave of pleasure in me, multiplying it and pushing it onward. I think I whimper, but I can't hear it in the music that filling this hall and reverberating in on itself, pressure pumped into my already bursting heart. He trusts me.

And then we're kissing again, hungry but lingering and sweet. He brings my hand down his body and to his entrance. I squeak in surprise as I feel his warmth clench around me. John has always topped. I feel the deep rumble in his belly as he laughs at the look of utter surprise I must have on my face. I've always loved John's laugh, so deep and so sudden and sometimes so innocent that half the time you're not even sure he laughed at all - perhaps you imagined it. Of course, John likes it that way. He's no saint and he's very partial to his mind games.

I remove my fingers, a playful glare in my eyes, the music shifting to an allegro in bright yellows and greens, like Handel's Watermusic. He growls and thrusts his knee between my legs just hard enough to make me gasp at the sudden motion against the bulge in my groin. He rolls us over until he's on top, kissing down my bare chest to the line of my pants. Then he looks up at me playfully and unzips my pants, his tongue flicking out in an almost vulgar swipe as he covers my cock in the same saliva he did my fingers. The music continues to dance, but the notes lengthen into a sultry lounge-room jazz, deep reds and mauves like Marilyn Monroe in crimson satin.

He's seducing me all over again, and I'm falling hook line and sinker, the way I'm falling into the flirtatious dance of the music that curls around me like a woman's perfume. He's kissing me again, nipping playfully at my lower lip as he sinks back onto the burning bar of my heat. He can't help the speeding up of his breath or the tiny gasps of pain I can feel with a hand stroking down his chest. My concern spreads out a deep amber like molasses, a bass melody rich and full like Ravel's Bolero.

I try to stop him, but he smiles that small cocky smile of his, lifting the tune back to light and playful, with only a deep rumble of foreboding beneath it as the wave swells yet again, like the early morning sea, translucent and gray, brushing up to kiss the thick dawn fog rolling in from the cold Pacific on the shores of Vancouver Island.

The smile turns into a slight wince as I find myself sheathed in his wonderful tightness. I wonder briefly if John has ever even done this before - he's that tight. We're both gasping now, the music covers all, the way this bliss of being buried in him spills through me like the light.

I close my eyes, trying to hold on, keep from thrusting. I hear his okay in the music, the hunger, the melody flitting and dancing - aimless without a beat. We roll gently to the side, so I'm looking down into eyes filed with trust and wonder. And I drive the beat home, slow and rich, built up in a crescendo so complex yet simple that the musician in me gasps. And the beat keeps increasing, multiplying. John is gasping now, adding his song to the symphony. It's only now, seeing him so vulnerable and so utterly without control and intent, that I let the light, a melodic rainbow, so many colors like the white light that splits into a tumultuous spectrum in the prism of these two fragile bodies, pierce me to its fullest, banishing all doubt that this isn't meant to be. What are the chances of finding another melody that can so beautifully match your own, after all?

We cry out our completion together, finding harmony even there, panting down from this high in perfect synchrony, the colors and the music slowly fading until our breaths are the only sounds left echoing in this enormous room. He kisses me again as I slide out of him, snuggling close and curling himself around me like a great big kitten, a dopey grin on his face.

His hands are playing with my hair, his brow furrowed as though these few sweat-soaked locks pose the greatest puzzle of existence. "You never told me you play the piano."

I chuckle and give him a small poke in the ribs. "Neither did you."

"I don’t." The side of his lip quirks up - the same cocky trivialization I saw on his face the first time he sat in the Chair.

"Then how did you?"

"Music ... I don't know ... I dabbled with the guitar ... it's all mathematical ... I guess I just knew how to play counterpoint." He contrives to make me forget these mysteries of how and why, as always, with a kiss that makes me melt even further into the floor than my already boneless puddle.

I run a hand down his back, over the network of scars and he shivers even in the warmth streaming through the towering columns of stained glass. I hug him tighter to me, trying desperately to protect the fragile beauty I just saw in the notes he played for me. There's still so much I don't know about him. Even after something like that. "John ... I ..."

"There are things best left unsaid, Rodney."

"But ..."

"Trust me." His voice is final, almost a threat.

But I do trust him. I really do. But I don't think this is the right thing. A small part of me is screaming that we haven't really fixed things. We've kissed and made up and maybe even taken the next step, but we've duct-taped the wires back together, not soldered the gaps closed.

I roll over on top of him, kissing him long and deep to show him I care. I pray that this isn't going to blow up in our faces - that John really will be all right. But when I pull back to look into the radiance of those perfect green eyes, I still see shadows looking there and remembering all the pain and anger he played out - the man who returned from the land of the dead.

After a few moments luxuriating in the warm patch of sun shining through the windows, we realize how sticky we are and John remembers that he's really supposed to have checked back in with Beckett by now to pick up a few pain killers. I've never broken anything so I don't know, but I was under the impression that once the bones were set, it didn't hurt that much.

He bounds to his feet and pulls me up after him. I don't understand how John can have so much energy after such an intense session of lovemaking, but there are a lot of things about John that I don't understand. We pull on our clothes rather hastily, though John lets me help him pull his shirt on over the cast.

John gives me a lingering kiss and I nod to him that we're ready to go. Everything's all right and thank God we don't have to talk about it. John smiles and the great vaulting doors pop open on his whim and Elizabeth comes tumbling clumsily in. She stands gracefully, giving me this look as though daring me to say anything. Teyla steps in as well. She was obviously sitting against the door too, but she has reflexes that still astound me.

"John, Rodney." Elizabeth nods to us and smiles. I try to look like I wasn't just having the best sex of my life about ten meters from my boss, feeling my face already burning red. I glance over at John, who, as always, appears completely unfazed, if not completely nonplussed.

"Hey guys, whatcha doing here?"

Elizabeth blushes just slightly. I wonder if she heard ... she couldn't possibly have ... the music was too loud ... and she's not the homophobic type anyway ... even if Don't Ask Don't Tell still applies here ... which it certainly wouldn't ... would it? Elizabeth's a reasonable woman. "Teyla and I were looking for the two of you, actually. We do have a briefing." She raises an eyebrow sternly.

John rubs the back of his head and avoids looking her in the eyes. "Sorry about that. We got ... distracted." He flashes me a conspiratorial grin.

"So we heard." Oh God! She knows!

Teyla smiles at John in that infuriatingly sincere way of hers. "I have never heard music such as that, Major Sheppard."

"Neither have I," Elizabeth adds with a flirtatious smile of her own. Okay, so maybe she doesn't know.

"It was a duet." John gives me a small nudge in the ribs, not looking at all like his stomach is covered in his own cum beneath the hospital smock.

Teyla gives me a brief nod and Elizabeth a small smile, though she focuses on John when she asks, "Maybe you would like to give us all a concert."

John shrugs and grins mischievously. "I'd love to, but I think Rodney might be a little stage-shy." Hell yes I'm stage shy! Elizabeth and Telya might not get it, but he's suggesting exhibitionism. Well, I wouldn't necessarily put it past him. John gives good enough blowjobs for me to know that he's not exactly a blushing novice.

"Please, Dr. McKay, I know that I, at least, would enjoy it," Teyla pleads.

"I'll think about it," I growl at John.

He just smiles at me as he bounds away, limping just slightly. "Well, ladies and ... um ... gentleman, I've got to check in with Beckett. I'll see you guys in five." He doesn't need to wink for me to know that he's smirking on the inside - the cocky bastard.

Seeing the look of yearning on the faces of the two women he's left me with sends a pang of jealousy straight to my heart. I pretend not to notice the single note of discord and the brief flash of green that flood through the room as Elizabeth turns back to me with a longing sigh and continues to implore me to play the 'organ' more often.