The Grift of the M.A.G.I

Major Lorne was an honest and ethical man; John hated that about him. He interrupted Lorne’s litany of, "And here. And here. And again at the bottom," to ask yet again why Lorne couldn’t just sign this stuff for him. Who was going to know since it was all electronic signatures now? It wasn’t like NCR forms in triplicate could be sent in the weekly databurst. John was more than willing to surrender his digital signature code to Lorne. Lorne was, after all, an honest and ethical man.

Besides, Lorne was getting fingerprints all over John’s nice clean laptop screen.

"But, Colonel, I couldn’t possibly…" Lorne huffed and averted his eyes as John keyed in the string of numbers that only he was allowed to know, here. And here. And again at the bottom.

John would do anything that allowed him to fly. He’d let them send him to war zones and Antarctica. And Pegasus. But paperwork? If he was stuck being commanding officer of Atlantis, couldn’t he at least get someone else to do his paperwork for him?

"Okay. That’s the last of the mission reports. Now for the duty rosters." Lorne flipped screens. "If you could just sign here."

Ford had never had any trouble doing John’s paperwork for him. And signing it. The fact that they hadn’t had anywhere to send it for as long as Ford was John’s second didn’t really affect anything. They’d kept it up on the off chance that someday they’d get back in touch with Earth. Good thing they had, too, because the first thing Uncle Sam and the SGC had wanted were mission reports and death certificates and all the stuff John would have hated to have to go back and try to think about afterwards. God, John missed Ford. And right about now, he even missed Sumner. Even though John had been technically Sumner’s second, the Colonel would never have trusted John with anything so important as bullet inventory or the supply master list. John had made sure of that.

During the brief period A.F. (After Ford) and B.L. (Before Lorne), John had tried to find someone else to do his paperwork.

"My people have long since mastered bureaucracy," Teyla had said. "Besides, in his position as acting leader of the Athosians, it is Halling’s duty to assume the details of leadership on my behalf." And how she got away with saying stuff like that was one of the things John most admired about her. Next to her breasts and stick technique, both of which she had no qualms about showing off to her best advantage.

"Weapons Specialist," Ronon clarified, raising terse to an art form and making John a little nervous.

Only to be outdone by McKay’s snort and Elizabeth’s eyebrow arch.

John had been so glad to get a new second-in-command, until he found out about the honest and ethical part. Still, Lorne was a good soldier, and the scientists seemed to like him. Especially that Canadian guy from Botany.

John sighed dramatically, his little histrionic totally ignored by Lorne, who merely touched the screen again. "And here, Sir."

What John really needed was an off-world mission right about now. And a head wound. Just a minor one, but one that bled dramatically and that would force Lorne to assume command and leave John the fuck alone.

"Aren’t we done yet?" John wasn’t whining. Lt. Colonels don’t whine.

Lorne looked at him with disbelief. "Inventory reports and purchase orders still need to be checked and approved."

John was just starting to consider if he was the kind of leader who could just order his second to do his paperwork, or if that was one of the places in his personal murky, ever-changing swamp of morality that he wouldn’t cross when Rodney came rushing into his office. Now that it contained three large men, it seemed to John like maybe he should be pondering less on slippery uncomfortable issues like ethics and more on practical stuff like how to get a bigger office.

"They told me I could find you here. When did you even get an office? Why don’t I have an office?"

"Plenty of rooms in Atlantis, Rodney. Pick one, and I’ll get my guys to find you a desk." And wasn’t it convenient that the original Lanteans had left behind a whole whack of furniture; furniture so similar to what they’d had on Earth that it could have been purchased at any Ikea. John figured some things were just universal, literally.

"Well, yes. We need to go off-world, Colonel. As soon as possible." McKay glanced over his shoulder, a look of dread on his face. "Now would be good."

John smiled broadly. "Okay."

"It’s just that— Okay?" McKay was never slow on the uptake. "Well, good. I’ll go get ready. Where are we going?"

"Anywhere but here," John answered, ignoring Lorne’s withering look. "M7B-837 sounded nice when Fitzpatrick’s team did the initial reconnoitre. I’ll go round up Ronon and Teyla."

"Great," Rodney said. "It’s supposed to have some sort of cave drawings. I’ll get Dr. Smythe, as well. He’s our resident expert on pictographs."

~ ~ ~

M7B-837 did turn out to be nice. It had a beach and no obvious dangers. They set up camp near the caves, which had Nigel Smythe swooning and uttering unintelligible Briticisms that confused John and Rodney every bit as much as Ronon and Teyla. Apparently, Nigel was completely "gobsmacked" by the "brilliant" cave paintings even if his translations were a bit "dodgy". He’d let them know when he got "knackered".

"I understand Zelenka’s Czech better than that."

John just nodded, no idea what Smythe had said, and ordered Teyla to keep him company in the caves while Ronon scouted the perimeter.

When Rodney begged to stay overnight despite the noticeable lack of interesting power signatures, John finally clued in that something was up with him. Under the guise of collecting firewood, he dragged McKay out of earshot. "Why don’t you want to go back to Atlantis, Rodney? Is something wrong? Is someone harassing you?"

Rodney sat heavily on a convenient rock. John surreptitiously poked at it with his P-90, making sure it didn’t have eyes or, worse, a mouth. It remained fairly rocklike, so he continued his interrogation.

"McKay?" John made it sound threatening, then wondered if that was his best choice if Rodney were feeling threatened back home.

"Well, um. She’s there."

"Who’s there? You’re going to have to be more specific, McKay. Can you maybe narrow it down just a little?"

"It’s not that she’s unattractive, exactly. In fact, I’m flattered. It’s just that…"

Now John poked Rodney with his P-90.

"I’m not looking for that kind of relationship."

"So this is about a girl?"

"No, Colonel. This is about a stalker!"

John raised one eyebrow. "It’s not Miko again, is it?"

"No, no. She and that geologist are practically joined at the hip these days. In fact, I might have been a bit wrong about her being overly fond of me. Seems there’s this sort of Japanese thing about respect and leadership. And speaking of leadership—"

"So who’s your stalker, and should I be getting security on it?" Lipinski wasn’t conveniently paranoid like Bates had been, but he took his job seriously enough.

John jumped up on the sun-warmed rock beside Rodney, hips touching. Rodney shifted over a bit, but John just shifted with him because it really wasn’t that big a rock, and having both cheeks on it was way more comfortable than any sort of macho balancing act.

"It’s Gwen Titan. The M.A.G.I." Rodney pulled a powerbar out of his tac vest. The warmth of his body had melted the chocolate coating so that most of it peeled off with the wrapper. He licked the inside of the wrapper in an oddly cat-like manner that didn’t gross John out too terribly much.

"What’s a M.A.G.I?"

"M.A.G.I. M.A.G.I."

Since saying it repeatedly and with more emphasis failed to make it any clearer, John again raised one eyebrow and waited for Rodney to elaborate.

"You know. Manager, Acquisitions and General Inventory. M-A-G-I." Rodney spelled out each letter of the acronym slowly and annoyingly.

"Still not any clearer, R-O-D-N—"

"You know. The new purchasing agent. Makes sure they never send us another substandard spectrometer again."

John squinted at Rodney for clarification.

"It was a Hyundai. A frickin’ Hyundai! I think Carter does that on purpose. You call someone a dumb blonde one time…" He returned his attention to his powerbar.

"So this Gwen person is stalking you?"

"Yes. She does stuff. Like when we go over the purchase orders, she pulls her chair up really close to mine. And does, you know, girl stuff to her hair." And here Rodney waved his hand over his own thinning hair. "And then there’s make-up. Who bothers with make-up in Atlantis? Aside from you and Elizabeth. And that’s only on special occasions, right? Gwen’s high maintenance. I just know it."

John ignored the eyeliner comment. It had been one time on one planet. Couldn’t anybody let anything go around Atlantis? Besides, he thought it had looked nice… really made his eyes pop. "Oh, right. Short. Kind of cute in a Rosanna Rosannadanna way, right?"

Rodney shot him a look, as if he was insulted that John didn’t find his stalker attractive. John shrugged. "It’s the hair."

"Right. That’s her. She never leaves me alone."

"So she, what? Looks nice, and that makes her a stalker?" Rodney was notoriously oblivious to attentions of the amorous kind, so this kind of assumption surprised him. On the other hand, Miko…

"No. That’s not all. She follows me around. She offers me backrubs. Last time I was off-world, I came back to find she’d cleaned my room and done my laundry."

John wasn’t sure he was seeing the downside of this, since he was currently turning his own underwear inside out to get another day’s wear out of them.

"How’d she get into your room?"

"She has the gene, naturally. Atlantis likes her." John didn’t need to look to see the jealous gleam in Rodney’s eyes. "Seems we only recruit people with the gene these days."

"So she entered your quarters without your permission. I’ll speak—"

"Well, I may have given her implied permission." Rodney filed a rough bit of thumbnail against the rock, not looking at John.

"Implied. Uh, huh."

"Well, she said she could sew, and you’ll recall I ripped my BDUs while running that gauntlet on M4P-365. She offered to, you know, mend."

"So you don’t want to encourage her advances or anything, but you’ll let her do your housework."

"She says she enjoys it."

"Rodney. Is she doing anyone else’s housework?"

"Uh, not that I know of." He smacked at a bug that may or may not have been this planet’s equivalent to a mosquito. John had a disquieting flashback to that horrible Ashton Kutcher movie. "So now she thinks she’s in a relationship with me."

"Did you kiss her? Sleep with her? Give her any reason to believe she was in a relationship with you? Because normally your idea of an attractive woman is one that likes you."

"No. No. Nothing like that. Jeeze. She’s Canadian. And I have to work with her every day."

John was stuck on why being Canadian would be a reason for Rodney to not find her appealing, but whatever. The heart wants what the heart wants, as the trite saying went.

"So tell her." John would have punched Rodney in the arm, but their close proximity rendered that impossible without knocking one or both of them off their rocky perch. "Just tell her you’re grateful for the mending, but you’re not interested in a relationship."

"And again, Colonel, I have to work with her every day." The "you idiot" was clearly implied. "Honesty? I expected better of you. Next you’ll be telling me to do the right thing."

And wasn’t it just this morning that John had had a similar interior monologue about Lorne’s weird desire not to fudge the truth. He could hardly advise Rodney to be straightforward while at the same time wishing Lorne would learn to lie. That wouldn’t be very honest of him. And now his brain hurt, so instead of thinking about the philosophy of ethics, he blurted out, "Just lie to her. Tell her you’re in a relationship already."

Rodney regarded him with… well, John really wasn’t that good at reading people, and sometimes Rodney’s expressive face seemed to be saying half-a-dozen things at the same time. Like now, for instance. He seemed to be saying…

"That’s not a bad idea, but what about when she sees that, say, I’m not actually in a relationship with anyone!"

"Well, then you just, um, tell her you’re in a secret relationship."

"Yes, of course. I’ll just tell Gwen that Teyla and I are in love, but she’s embarrassed to be seen with me?"

"That could work."

"I hardly think so, Colonel. I think I’d rather be honest than humiliated."

"What about Elizabeth? You could say you’re in a relationship with Elizabeth, but that she’s worried it will affect her chain of command or something. Make something up. You’re good at that."

"Yes, because physicists get so much practice making up stuff about the basic building blocks of the universe. You know, gravity isn’t a law; it’s merely a suggestion. Besides, everybody knows Elizabeth is sleeping with Ronon. Hell, who isn’t sleeping with Ronon?"

John was about to say that he wasn’t, but then he thought maybe that blowjob on M6N-875 counted, so he clamped his mouth shut. Everyone just felt sorry for Ronon. He’d been on the run from the Wraith for seven years, and he was only in his twenties now. Sorry for him, that was it. Sure.

"You could say you had an unrequited thing for Cadman and were pining for her, waiting for her to break up with Beckett."

"It’s not that I don’t appreciate your highly creative suggestions, it’s just— Wait. Wait!" Rodney held up a finger for silence. John pulled a powerbar out of his own tac vest, peeling it like a banana to avoid getting chocolate on his fingers.

"You. I could have a gay romance with you!"

John glanced forlornly at the powerbar that now lay in the dust at their feet. The five-second rule didn’t apply to melted chocolate covered in dirt.

"Me? You’re having a secret love affair with me?"

"Sure. Because your backward country won’t allow you to sleep with men, so we have to keep the love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name under wraps. It’ll be great. Thanks."

Rodney leapt off their rock and picked up the powerbar. He snapped off the dirty part, tossing it into the bush, munching happily on the rest as he walked back toward their camp. "Yeah. That’ll work."

John followed with resignation, picking up a few branches along the way since they were supposed to be gathering firewood. "Try not to ruin my career," he called after McKay’s retreating back.

The others were setting up camp by the time John and Rodney returned.

"Oh, good show. You’ve brought the faggots. Brilliant!" Smythe said, reaching to take the firewood.

John dropped them in his haste to hand them off. "I have to…" and was gone.

~ ~ ~

John let Lorne’s team escort Smythe and the other anthropologists back to M7B-837. If Lorne wasn’t going to do his paperwork for him, he could at least take the boring guard duty assignments. John swiped at the fingerprints on his screen, smudging them further.

He was, at first, relieved to see Rodney arrive in his office.

"We have to go for dinner now!"

"Well, if that’s the way you ask a fella out, no wonder you’re still single," John drawled.

"C’mon, Colonel. She asked me to dinner, and I took her aside and confided in her that I was involved with someone who didn’t want our relationship known. She’s in the mess hall. Let’s go be secret lovers, shall we?" Gallantly, he offered John his arm. John punched him in the bicep in a loving manner, and they set out toward the mess hall.

By the time they arrived at the mess, they’d gotten into a heated argument about Wedding Crashers, then discovered tonight’s special was that multi-armed vaguely cat-like thing from M8Y-328 that Rodney’d christened "catopus" and John had named "octopussy", and they completely forgot to be secret lovers until they were working on dessert. Their usual dinner crowd had left, so there was just the two of them at one end of the mess.

John stole a surreptitious glance at Gwen, who was sitting with some of the other administrative staff. She looked painfully sad, big brown eyes shining, mouth in a downward curve. Eventually she pushed her untouched tray aside. John resolved to look up "baleful" next time he saw a dictionary.

"Did you tell her who you were having a secret relationship with? Or that it was a gay secret relationship?" John gestured in Rodney’s direction with a forkful of cake.

"No. After further consideration, I thought I’d be vague and let her fill in the blanks." Never one to miss an opportunity for cake, Rodney leaned across the table and ate John’s forkful while his attention was on Gwen.

"Hey! That was my—" He accepted a forkful of Rodney’s pie as a peace offering, making sure to pout while doing so.

"I wonder what would make her think that is was me, then. And it’s obvious she does."

They both watched as she glared at them and left without even bussing her tray.

"Well, then, mission accomplished. We can leave now. I believe we can resolve the great Wedding Crashers debate by the simple expedient of looking at the DVD, which, I might add, I just happen to have. So, if you’ll come this way…" He grabbed John’s arm and hoisted him to his feet.

But Gwen was waiting outside the mess when they left, and it almost looked like she was going to say something to them. John was known for his courageous acts of desperation in times of crisis, so he quickly draped his arm around Rodney’s shoulders.

"You’re such a good pretend secret gay boyfriend," Rodney whispered.

"Shhh! She’s actually following us. I think you were right about the stalker thing."

She trailed after them all the way to Rodney’s quarters, at which point John was all for calling Lipinski’s security detail, but Rodney suggested they up the ante just a little further for her benefit, and John thought what the hell. It was a small community, after all, and who knew who was affiliated with whom. And in what ways.

They rounded a corner into the short hallway that contained Rodney’s quarters. Checking to make sure no one else but Gwen could see them, he drew Rodney into his arms and stroked the side of his face, his fingertips grazing over the day’s stubble. He followed his fingertips with his lips, trailing soft kisses over Rodney’s cheek until he reached his mouth, ghosting the gentlest of kisses across Rodney’s lips.

Rodney, in turn, reached his arms around John, sliding his warm hands up under John’s T-shirt, stroking and petting, and at the same time applying enough pressure to push-pull John’s hips up close to his own. And suddenly the charade was over when John felt Rodney hard against his hip.

John was so turned on (and trying so hard to hide it) that the sounds of several people coming up the hallway toward them barely registered. Gwen coughed loudly, and John pulled back and hissed, "Your room, now!"

Rodney stumbled a half step backward and palmed the door open. It slid smoothly closed behind them.

John pulled Rodney back against him, kissing, sucking, biting, as he grew more and more aroused. Rodney gave as good as he got, and they were half undressed and sprawled across Rodney’s prescription mattress before Rodney said, "I don’t actually think she can see us here."

"Maybe we should stop, then."

"Are you completely insane? Wait. Wait. This isn’t still an act is it?"

"No, Rodney, I’m not that skilled an actor. This is real. Like it or not."

"Oh, no. I like it. I really, really like it."

"Rodney?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"Shut up and kiss me."

~ ~ ~

A few weeks later, John found himself slipping away from Rodney for another kind of secret assignation. He waited tensely in the gloom, brushing his fingers over his sidearm. He checked and rechecked the darkening balcony, the spectacular sunset lost on him. Despite his wariness, he still started when Gwen Titan stepped onto the balcony behind him.

"The beagle flies at midnight," she said with a grin, to which John responded, "Huh?"

"Enough with the small talk, Colonel. Have you got what you promised?"

John handed her the large manila envelope he’d been holding.

Gwen pulled out the single sheet of paper it contained and moved over toward the glow-panel that barely lit the balcony. Holding it steady in the dim light, she read the Puddlejumper Training Schedule.