It had been a long month, stuck aboard a deteriorating satellite built by the Ancients in their glory days that was now little more than a hunk of metal doomed to collide with the planet it orbited in a matter of weeks. Sheppard questioned, as he often did, the wisdom of accompanying McKay and his scientists on these sort of 'safe' missions. It seemed whenever he babysat, something inevitably went wrong. Certainly, the sudden loss of artificial gravity and the slow descent from high orbit had made for irksome times. Luckily, some of McKay's science team had clocked time as astronauts back on Earth, and had helped those of them without prior experience in zero-G adjust relatively quickly.

What John was now finding, back home in Atlantis, was that there existed another adjustment period, one the astronauts had not prepared him for.

"... And then," Sheppard said to Ronon and Teyla, standing in line in the mess hall, queuing for lunch as he and Rodney described events in detail to their team members that had been taking care of an issue for the Athosians, "the jumper dislodged from our point of ingress; just shot off like this!" He brought his fork sharply up and away from his currently empty tray. "Next thing you know," John said, absently releasing his grip on his fork and grabbing his also empty cup, having forgotten to fill it with any liquid, "the entire access hatch fell apart and-" He stopped, confused, the empty cup held up to demonstrate the access hatch, which had impacted the jumper as it had drifted away. Problem was, his fork/jumper wasn't still in the air.

Hiding a grin, Ronon pointed to the floor, where the fork had, naturally, fallen.

John gave a short grunt of exasperation, then quickly crouched to retrieve it. "Right, anyway, so we're watching the access hatch and the jumper collide." He held the cup and fork in one hand, the other still clutching his tray that had substituted for the Ancient satellite. "Then whoosh!" He let go of both cup and fork, his hand imitating an explosion, the utensils clattering on the tray and then falling onto the floor. "The power drive got hit and they're spiralling away from each other like-" he went to grab the cup and fork out of the air again, his eyes shooting up and around before looking down.

No longer hiding his smile, Ronon openly snickered, and grabbed the utensils for John.

"Thanks," John said with an eye roll at his own expense. "Stupid gravity."

Rodney laughed at that. "Yeah, Mickens warned me about that, the whole gravity thing. It's something of an inconvenience. "

John pulled a fake smile. "How nice of Mickens to warn you. You didn't see fit to share that generosity?"

Rodney didn't answer, only indicated the line had moved.

They reached the food, fully past the beverages now, and only then did Rodney exclaim, "We can have drinks in cups!"

His outburst helped John remember that that bothersome gravity also meant liquid wouldn't disperse into droplets and become a huge annoyance. "Damn, we'll have to get back in line once we have our food."

"It is only to be expected that the two of you will require more than a few hours to readjust to life planet-bound," Teyla commented.

"Seriously though Sheppard," Ronon began, "how do you not notice the sound of the stuff you keep dropping?"

John shrugged. "It's a little louder than we got used to here."

A wicked grin lit up Ronon's face as they finally left the queue with their food. "So I shouldn't sneak up on either of you and yell as loud as I can?" He asked in a tone that made it clear he had no intention of listening to whatever John said on that matter.

Reading his chances of successfully ordering the man not to as zero, John went straight to pleading. "Please don't?"

Ronon's grin only grew wider.

"We work together then," John said in an aside to Rodney as they sat down at a free table.

Rodney's eyes were on Ronon, warily regarding the Satedan. "Agreed."

The two spent the next few weeks constantly on alert, watching each other's backs. Ronon certainly seemed to hang around much more than usual, but when John mentioned it to Teyla, she suggested they were being paranoid.

"Ronon knows when a joke has gone too far, give him more credit."

After that conversation, John and Rodney put her down for possible collusion.

Of course, the amount of bickering between them increased due to the lengths of time they were spending together. The largest point of contention was where they should be spending most of their time- at the gym ("No, Ronon's always there, Sheppard!") in the labs ("That's where he expects you to be, Rodney!") or near the other command staff so there would be witnesses ("I don't think Weir's too happy since you dropped that artefact in her office and broke it." "Yeah and do we really think witnesses will discourage Ronon?"). After careful consideration they started working in the noisy rec room, the sooner to desensitise themselves again to the bustle of Atlantis. Those actually on break took it in their stride and swarmed around the pair like a river around rocks.

"See, there's always noise here, so Ronon can't startle us," Rodney stated in satisfaction.

As if to drive home his point, a team of Marines started a game of table tennis, loudly rousing each other over the ever-shifting score.

"It's perfect," John replied. In truth, he was getting sick of McKay constantly looking over his shoulder. It had been funny at first, when it had been accompanied by a sense of camaraderie, but he couldn't keep letting Ronon's threat hang over their heads. John was increasingly certain that Ronon was enjoying their paranoia more than the thought of getting them with a jump-scare. And it was really interrupting his normal schedule.

Deciding to let a half-hour pass so as not to seem suspicious, John then made a move to end this ridiculousness. "Just going to check on something at the Gate room," he said as he stood, pretending to double-check a note on the paperwork he'd brought with him.

"Oh, should we-" McKay began.

John shook his head. "Nah. I'll only be a minute."

He left the rec room, using his considerable stealth skills to get a location on Ronon, then stalked him for the next hour.

"Where were you? You left your headset here and you were gone for well over an hour and nobody had seen you- why is your face dirty?"

John clapped Rodney on the shoulder. "Charcoal. Look, I think we're good now."

Rodney didn't seem to get past the first word. "Charcoal? What on earth were you doing with charcoal? And don't you realise we had a pact?"

"And I think it's time for that pact to come to an end," John insisted. "I trailed Ronon for ages, he's just doing his normal stuff, we should just get back to normal too. I hate giving him the satisfaction of watching us walk on eggshells."

"You spied on Ronon?" Rodney asked incredulously, "I didn't think that was possible!"

John took offence at that. "I am proficient at black ops, you know."

"Yeah, but he's... Ronon."

"Look, do we agree to just get back to things? I'm sure you're missing your lab."

Taking a moment to consider, Rodney nodded. "Okay. Are you sure about this though?"

"Positive."

It was a day later that John finally relaxed. The thought had crossed his mind that Ronon could have been waiting until they thought he'd forgotten about it, but there was no way John was going to mention it to Rodney or he'd never have personal space again. Besides, having reflected on it, if Ronon wanted to he could scare Rodney any time of day no matter the circumstances. John would've been the real prize there.

No, it was well past time he moved on. He absently drummed his fingers along the railing as he walked past the Control room, Chuck nodding a silent greeting.

"RAAAAAAARRRRGHH!"

Ronon jumped up from behind the dialing console, arms and stance wide, making himself appear as large as possible. Sheppard, thoroughly startled, instinctively moved back and, in one move, put a leg up on the railing and pushed off the way he would've on the dying satellite to go soaring out of the way.

There was still that gravity issue though.

Whumpf!

"Sheppard!" Ronon called, bewildered.

Slowly picking his face off the Gate room floor, John became aware of Chuck radioing the infirmary as Ronon bolted down the steps.

"The hell did you think you were doing?" Ronon demanded as John rolled gingerly onto his back.

"Well," John coughed, still slightly stunned from the fall, "who wouldn't want to get away from your ugly mop?"

Relieved John was coherent enough to joke, Ronon razzed John's hair. "Idiot."

"Neanderthal," John replied, reaching up and pushing at Ronon's face.

The sound of an unmistakable Scottish brogue approaching had John sighing even as Ronon nudged him back.

"Son, what happened?" Beckett asked as he rushed to check Sheppard for injuries.

"Nothin'," John mumbled as Ronon filled him in.

"What'd you do a daft thing like that for? Jumping up and scaring him like that?" Beckett complained.

John jumped in for him then. "It was funny."

"I didn't expect him to try and fly away," Ronon explained, "think he's spent so much time piloting that he thinks he doesn't need a ship anymore."

"Har har," John said, wincing as Beckett tested for breaks.

"Should be safe to move, we'll use the back brace just as a precaution," the doctor said to his assistants. "We'll get a proper series of scans in the infirmary."

Teyla smacked Ronon on the arm. "The Colonel could have been seriously hurt!"

Rodney, sitting next to John's bed in the infirmary, looked up to where Teyla and Ronon were standing. "I'm with Ronon; fly-boy should've known he hasn't got wings yet."

"That implies it's a thing that's going to happen," John said.

"With jobs like ours?" Rodney asked. He had John there.

"What happened after Doctor Beckett arrived?" Teyla pressed.

Ronon shrugged. "Doc checked Sheppard over, moved him here for obvs."

"Eloquent," Rodney commented. Ronon gently shoved his head in response.

"Ow! You could have given me a strained neck! As it is it'll be sore for weeks!"

"Stop being dramatic."

To head off the argument, Teyla re-aligned the conversation. "So what is the diagnosis?"

"Ah, just some bruising, nothing serious," John effaced. "I'll be out by tomorrow."

Rodney scoffed, then laughed. "Did you come up with something to make yourself seem less like an idiot?"

"No," Ronon answered.

"What did he say?" Rodney asked with a grin.

Making a pretence at remembering as though it were difficult, Ronon let anticipation build a moment. "Stupid gravity."

THE END

AN: Was on a island made entirely of sand chilling in a hammock when I started writing this. Am severely sleep deprived posting this. Just had a bit of fun with this one, still have the Big One in the works but my writing program of choice has locked me out so no real clue as to when the Big One will be available for you guys. Hoped you enjoyed and are having a good life! PS this was inspired by watching videos of astronauts facing similar problems re-adjusting to gravity on earth, which I find both hilarious and fascinating