Rodney moved directly beneath one of the racks. He could see needles, all connected to wires, woven through the rack. Some of them were still attached to the rotted flesh. His stomach tried to turn and he swallowed hard. "This is power conduit. These bodies were hooked up to some kind of power generation system. As if whoever did this was using them like… batteries."

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"It’d be better if…" John said, holding up his hand.

"You can’t?"

John shook his head. "My left just doesn’t seem to be as coordinated."

"Huh."

Rodney was probably able to use both hands. That figured.

"Do you want some help?"

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"You call him McKay," she says. "Even after spending so long shipwrecked together?"

John spreads his hands and does his best impression of harmless. "Habits are hard to break," he says. She purses her lips and scribbles another cryptic line, and he wonders again whether the secrets he’s allowing her to see will suffice.

"Okay, will you two idiot bastards stop fooling around and get the fuck over here and focus on the problem?" Meredith finally roars, eyes blazing, and John and Jane and Rodney and Rodney all share a meaningful look before the Rodneys scramble over to her side of the room as Other John scrambles away.

By the eighth time John Sheppard married Rodney McKay, they were old pros at the wedding thing, having weathered not only an Ouishan blood wedding, but also a twelve-hour Avalonian handfasting, a Malanese necklace exchange, and a Thurtu joining ceremony that invoked a fire god and featured seven kinds of cake.

"I touched a piece of Ancient," Rodney grimaced, "technology. Loosely speaking." He rubbed his fingers together. He could still feel the slick glass, the heat. "I think Rabh had some philosophical differences with the other Ancients."

Beneath the desk John feels his knees begin to shake, and strangely, the room seems to telescope, giving him flashes of this life that he’d never meant to lead, this world that he stumbled into on chance, the flip of a coin that took him from a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel to the United States Congress.

"Well, you don’t expect me to dance with Mt. Everest over there, do you? He’ll stomp all over my feet. Besides, if you hadn’t gone into the military, you’d probably have ended up an exotic dancer or something."

Rodney glanced at him, and their gazes caught and held a moment before Rodney turned back to his equipment. That one brief glance was all it took for the sensation of the veil brushing his skin to become a visceral sense-memory of Rodney naked, stroking him; John shifted his weapon slightly, covering himself, feeling exposed and almost uncomfortably hard.