Literally... Two Seconds

So, I wrote this awhile ago, but couldn't come up with a title, so it's just been sitting on the computer for like forever.

The third in the series On Atlantis.

John had been checked six ways from Sunday but had finally gotten out of Medical and had started hunting Rodney not long after his debrief. He remembered seeing him when the ship that had saved him docked but had lost him in all the confusion of the landing and unloading of supplies. Plus his debrief which had lasted longer than he had anticipated. Surprisingly, most of the scientists were not in the labs, but he shrugged it off, thinking that the new supplies and care packages had taken precedence over their lab time.

But when he couldn’t find any of his team or the lead scientists, he started to worry.

‘This is Sheppard, has anyone seen Dr McKay?’ He toggled the switch and waited. And waited.

‘Sir, have you tried your quarters?’ finally came over on his private line from Lorne.

‘I thought he would be celebrating with everyone else, actually. Thanks, Evan.’

‘Good luck, sir.’

John kind of stopped and looked around at that. He mouthed ‘good luck’ and then shrugged. He was tired, a bit achy and with all the events in the past hours, needed some downtime to process everything that had happened.

Going to their quarters sounded better and better.

He hummed a bit as he went down the corridor to their room, he wondered if their packages had been delivered and if that was why Rodney wasn’t anywhere he had looked for him. He should have thought of that, but he shrugged it off, with everything that was going on, it wasn’t surprising that he hadn't thought of him being in their quarters.

As he got to their door, he gave it a push to open and was surprised when it didn’t. He tapped and then pushed the comm on the outside. ‘Rodney, are you in there, what’s going on? Come on, open the door.’

The door whooshed open and Rodney was standing on the other side of the room, a frown on his face.

‘What?’ John walked in and looked around, several large containers were stacked in one corner, but hadn’t been opened.

‘What, you say. I can think of several things other than what that you should be saying, John Sheppard!’

‘Whoa there, what brought this on?’

Rodney started to walk around, muttering under his breath and waving his arms around. John relaxed, this was normal and even if there was an explosion, Rodney was acting normally.

‘Ok, Sheppard, from the top. Did you wait to see if anyone could come up with a better plan then ‘fly a puddlejumper into a Hive ship and blow it up’? Hmm, no, I didn’t think so, because if you had, you personally wouldn’t have jumped in a ship and tried to play hero! Did you listen to all of us trying to tell you that we had an alternative to your stupid plan? Or lack of one?’ Rodney glared at him and when he would have said something, he was waved off. ‘I’m not done! Did you know that about two seconds after you took off, Radek showed up with a device that would have allowed us to remotely fly the puddlejumper so that we wouldn’t have to endanger anyone? Literally, TWO seconds. And he just stood there, looking sick because you couldn’t be bothered to wait or to listen to us!’

John just stood and swallowed as he watched his scientist stomp up and down the room. He knew that trying to say anything at this point would just get him kicked out of his own rooms.

‘And then, let’s talk about the bomb. Now, I will admit that it was a great bomb, but, did you know that we had also figured out a way to have it eject so that the remotely flown puddlejumper could then be flown back to Atlantis? Yes, that way we wouldn’t be down TWO puddlejumpers! But the military is all, hey, we can do this better than anyone else and we don’t need to listen to the scientists that we brought with us for just these kinds of emergencies!’

Rodney stood and huffed for a couple of minutes and John just waited.

‘You know, I had to just sit and listen to you all the way to the Hive. And everyone had to just stand around with me and listen to you. Do you know how many people were in tears listening to you? And hearing you tell me just how much you loved me was not really what I wanted to hear, either.’ Rodney rubbed a hand over his face, his shoulders hunched and finally sat down. ‘I don’t know if I can do this, John, I just don’t know.’

John was moving at those words, going to his knees in front of him and hugging him for all he was worth.

‘Whoa there, baby. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to any of you, but I have to say, with those huge ugly suckers hanging in space just waiting to kill us all, well, that was all the motivation we needed. And seeing that we could blow one up, well, you’re right, that was all it took for us to think that it was the only way to get rid of them.’ John shuddered, listening to Sumner recounted everything he saw as he made it inside the Hive until he blew up his ship had been horrifying. And then it had been his turn, and he knew that he had totally ignored everything and -one around him, otherwise second thought would have scrubbed the entire mission.

‘I can’t say that I’m sorry that I told you I loved you, but I can say that I’m sorry that we weren’t paying attention to the scientists. We know better than that. And I bet that everyone has heard about it by now, right?’

Rodney sighed. ‘Yes, the yelling was epic. In all the languages. And you’re going to owe so much to the science dept, you probably won’t be able to pay it off for months!’

John nodded as he hung onto his chief scientist. ‘Right, ok, I can get behind that. And I can say, that since we will now have more access to supplies, that I will at least be able to treat everyone sooner than later.’

They stayed that way for a while longer and finally Rodney sighed. ‘You have to be getting stiff, get up, you spikey haired idiot, and get a shower. We need to get some rest before the next crisis, which knowing your Marines, will be at O’dark 30 in the morning.’

John laughed a little as he stood up and pulled Rodney with him. ‘Yeah, that’s normally how it works, but we’ll have extra guys to help handle it.’

Rodney just looked at him in horror as John pushed him toward the bathroom, ‘Did you set a bunch of greenies loose on this station?! I can’t believe you!’

John just laughed as they stripped and got into the shower, things were (mostly) back to normal and tomorrow’s alarms would be there when they got up. At least Rodney was talking to him again, and he would have the night to figure out how to make amends to the rest of the science team.