Sun's Still Shining

Sun's Still Shining

"I missed you, you know," Rodney said once, receding hairline barely visible over the top of his computer. He never said to whom exactly he was talking: Radek, Simpson, Katie Brown, David Parrish, or perhaps all of them.

They were trapped in a lab with a mutant robot fern, about which no one could decide if it was a case for botany or physics. The room had gone into quarantine as soon as they let it out of the sample box they'd brought it back to Atlantis with.

As one, the scientists stopped what they were doing (mostly holding the plant back or analyzing all data the computer feeds and the database gave them).

"I mean, it's not like I wasn't happy or anything, and I definitely don't regret what I did, but I missed this. Well, high school students aren't really a match for you, but I never really realized back then, you know? How much I would miss you, that is." The bit of Rodney's face they could see had gone a tiny bit redder.

"Yeah," Radek said, and if his voice sounded funny it must have been because he'd spent a large part of the last years in Prague, losing his English. "Yeah, we know."

*

In a town their size, news travelled fast. A new teacher at the local high school with high credentials was biggish news, and him living in the abandoned mansion, well, that was even more so.

He arrived just a week before term started, but he hardly left the house in that time, the only person who saw him was Sally, who ran the B&B that was down the road. Far down the road. But still. Practically neighbours.

It was the other man who came out to do the shopping and meet the locals those first days. "Ben Stevens," he said, when asked, and that he "lived with, uh, Toby, yeah. He's kinda stuck on jet lag and getting used to his new job…" and then he would stroll on to get some tomato paste, which happened to be seven aisles over.

(Jamie, the cashier, did notice there was more than one tube of lube and no condoms on the cart, though. Which she told her friends down at the pub, thus adding it to the common knowledge pool.)

The first day of school was uncommonly looked forward to, as new things generally are in rural places.

Rodney was blissfully unaware of all this when he walked in to the classroom at eight o'clock, leather briefcase in hand, almost the way he remembered it from his teachers, except for the largeish factor that they hadn't been him.

"So," he said. I'm Toby Silverman. Apparently I'm in charge of your class now. I'm awful with names, so somebody please draw me a seating chart. Any questions?"

A curvy brunette in the back (Right, Rodney thought. Twelfth grade. Old enough to be curvy) raised her hand.

"Yes…?" he gestured in her direction.

"Delilah. So are you going to tell us a bit about yourself?"

He stared at her. "Why?"

"Well…" she leaned back, obviously chewing gum. "So we can get to know each other."

"You need to know me to learn from me?"

She chewed in deep contemplation. "Well…no, but it makes it so much more nice to work together."

Rodney's expression hadn't moved an inch. "Okay, first of all, you work, I watch. Second, you want nice, go back to Kindergarten."

She was still watching him expectantly.

"Um. I teach Physics and Math. And I moved here a week ago?"

A boy two rows in front of Delilah raised his hand tentatively.

"Name?"

"Mark."

"Question?"

"If you don't mind my asking, Mr. Silverman, why math and physics?"

Rodney had been rifling through his bag, but he looked up at the question. "Do you do this to all your teachers?"

"Yes," Delilah said. "This is such a small place, everyone knows everything 'bout everyone. Not knowing your own class teacher is kinda weird."

"Ah." Rodney said. "Ah. Closed society. Nothing new there then. I've always known I wanted to do physics and math, Mark, there's no why about it."

It wasn't an answer, but it pushed the students on. A shy girl in the front row hiding behind her hair asked, "Why did you come here?"

Rodney hid a smile. "I couldn't resist the thriving metropolis. That's enough fun for today, though. I brought some quizzes, no pressure, just to figure out how far along you guys are. So if you wouldn't mind…"

*

"Wa-hoo!" Sheppard yelled, grinning as he manoeuvred the Jumper like the batmobile through the gunfire towards the Stargate in orbit around the last known wraith outpost.

Lorne spent a good three minutes gasping for breath after they'd landed in the jumper bay. "So…" he wheezed, "How was flying helicopters in Australia?"

Sheppard shrugged. "Eh, not bad. But I missed these babies, y'know…"

Yeah. Lorne knew. How could you not know? Once inside a Jumper and that was it, you were ruined for life. It was like…spending all your life bound to the ground, flying just the once, and never getting the chance again.

Except now they were getting it again.

"…Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"How did…how could…"

Sheppard looked at him, smiling his easy surfer-boy smile. "How could I give this up so completely for sixteen years?"

"Yeah."

"I think that's a first name conversation."

"John. How could you give this up so completely for sixteen years?"

"I didn't," John said conspiratorially.

"…What?" Evan asked.

"I didn't. I mean, technically, yes, I did, but what is flying, really, when you get down to it?" John looked at him expectantly, but Evan found all the words had died in his mouth. "It's not about the actual sitting in the cockpit, is it? Not about instruction manuals or actually reaching a goal. It's just that feeling, when you're up there, the exhilaration, the freedom, never wanting to touch the ground again, the speed…"

Evan nodded.

John sighed and leaned back in his seat. "You ever been in love?"

Biting his lip, Evan refrained from answer.

"The two are pretty similar. I mean, you think it'd be like being grounded, tied to someone, but it's not. It's more like…sharing the flying with someone else."

He stared out the windshield, lost in thought momentarily, then looked over, grinned. "Plus, the helicopters in Australia really rock."

And then he was gone, sliding out of the pilot's seat and walking out of the jumper, leaving Evan to contemplate a few things.

*

The Flying Doctors were a grand institution, not least because hello, helicopters. They let John live his passion for a good cause, and live it from nine to five every day so he could go home and eat dinner with his husband. Which was just all kinds of cool.

"So today," Rodney said the second he entered the door, "one of my students said her parents had been at our housewarming. And she congratulated us on our marriage."

"Cool," John said, pulling up a chair and joining in on dinner.

"I did not know this much about my teachers when I was at school. Did you know about your teacher's marital status?"

"No."

"My point exactly! I mean, it's insane! They're supposed to learn, not make friends. Do I look like a big purple dinosaur?"

"Rodney-"

"It's like…no privacy!"

"Rodney! Calm down. This is the real world, remember? People care about each other and ask stuff. They won't kick you out of your home for being gay. It's really…fine."

Rodney sighed. "Yeah. It is. I guess I'm just not used to not having much to freak out about."

"Aw. You freaking out is cute." Because John was just sometimes in need of a sharp left turn to the conversation.

Sardonic eyebrow. "You think?"

"Mmm…" Low growl. "Totally."

And then their lips and hands were all over each other and Rodney was gasping and John was moaning and they weren't going to make it to the bottom step, let alone up the stairs, and they didn't even have to care, because they were allowed to do this, and "oh, God, yeah," and "right there, yes," and ending up in a sweaty heap, limbs tangled together, lying on their own living room floor.

John had to giggle a bit.

"What?" Rodney asked, voice lower and more gravely than usual, and John loved that.

"I love you," He said, turning a bit to kiss Rodney.

"Love you too," Rodney said, resting his head against the foot of the table. "Did we just do that?"

"Yes, we did," John said, then giggled again.

This time, Rodney joined him.

*

At first, Elizabeth had had reservations about John and Rodney working together. They were married, after all, and that had to impair judgement. But the more she saw of their interaction during work, the more her worries ran in the opposite direction.

It was just as it had always been (minus youth and Wraith); she felt a little left out when they talked, and before, she'd thought that was because she was their leader and because they were…boys. Knowing there was more actually made it a lot easier to overcome the lonely feeling she got when they walked off together talking about nuclear physics and Doctor Who.

But much as before, she never would have guessed they were a couple if she hadn't known. They kept professional distance with such apparent ease it was worrying. Even their children looked a bit weirded out sometimes.

Eventually, Elizabeth started worrying they were regretting coming back to Atlantis. Their marriage was obviously suffering under the workload.

She was just considering talking to them about it when the next major crisis rolled through and someone kidnapped Rodney. Nothing extraordinary, really, but it was the first time since they'd come back.

She spent every second of the situation worriedly eyeing John when she wasn't too busy. He showed nothing. No sign at all.

It was only much later, when Rodney was back, in the infirmary, though, that she understood.

They were waiting for him to wake up, but it looked to be a long wait. The others left him to get some well-earned sleep, but John refused to budge. "You've gotta stop getting kidnapped," he was muttering against Rodney's ear. "I need you to not do that kind of crap. Christ, Rodney, if you get killed…"

Rodney's eyes blinked awake. "I won't," he said, voice low and disused.

John let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a growl, before leaning down to kiss Rodney ferociously. "I love you," he muttered between ravages of Rodney's lips. "I love you and you're not allowed to scare me like that."

Rodney's thumb rubbed over John's jaw. "You know I can't promise that. And you know how miserable we'd be if we couldn't be here, almost dying all the time."

"We weren't miserable in Australia," John said almost mulishly, and Elizabeth had just known they regretted coming back.

"We didn't know we could be here," Rodney said quietly. "And even if we die here we both know it's where we belong."

"Yeah," John said. "Yeah, we do. Just…try to cut back on the near-death experiences, okay? I've gotten used to you being alive."

Rodney smiled up at him, not the crooked, sarcastic one, but an open, honest smile Elizabeth could honestly say she'd never seen before. She walked away quietly, leaving them to their moment.

*

Sabaun was fifteen when it finally happened. Sarai and Yannick were both skirting the edge of their twelfth and thirteenth birthdays, respectively. Rina was hardly six.

They were all around the breakfast table when John opened the newspaper, gasped, choked, and handed it over to Rodney, who smiled slowly, closed it, folded it neatly and looked at John with disbelief and intense joy written into his blue eyes.

John looked back, gaze equally intense, but meaning something completely different.

Without breaking the look, he said, "Sab?"

"Yeah?" Sabaun looked up from his apparently very engrossing cereal.

"You'll be home tonight, right?"

He shrugged, nodded.

"Great. We won't. Don't break anything, don't drink the vodka, and make sure everyone does their homework," Rodney said over his shoulder as he left for the bathroom to back his stuff.

"We'll be back tomorrow," John said.

Sabaun, used to his parent's antics, simply nodded and raised his eyebrows at Yannick, who choked on a laugh. "What, seriously?" He asked once he'd swallowed.

Sarai rolled her eyes. "Did you see that? They were practically eating each other with their eyes."

Sabaun's head snapped over to look at her so fast it almost made a noise.

"What?!"

"You're not supposed to know about sex."

She looked suitably unimpressed. "Excuse me for living in a household with four borderline nymphomaniacs."

"Hey!" Sabaun and Yannick said.

"Also," she plowed on, "I doubt anyone could miss Ben and Toby looking at each other like they're about to tear of their clothes and frot all over the kitchen floor."

They took a moment to contemplate that. "You know," Yannick said at length, "I'm not sure you can conjugate 'frottage'."

"Which brings us back to how you know what frottage is," Sabaun said, arms crossed, every inch the overprotective big brother.

Sarai smiled her scary smile. "I read a lot."

Suddenly, the bang of a spoon against the table reminds them of the six-year-old sitting there. She smiled up at them guilelessly. "I don't know what frottage is. Will you tell me?"

-

John and Rodney drove to the next biggish, anonymous city, checked into the fanciest hotel they found and didn't leave the bed unless it was for room service.

They were both almost fifty, but the will to go at it like rabbits for about twenty-four hours straight was stronger than ever. It shouldn't have meant much, not anymore, but it did, it meant so much, and maybe that was the first clue that they weren't over Atlantis.

There was a weird sense of freedom to it, the opportunity to be loud and unrestrained without a house full of kids to worry about, the possibility to say "I love you" just like any other couple out there, even though they'd been doing that for years, and it wasn't supposed to matter, but did anyway.

-

Much later, after failing to avoid explaining the concept of frottage to Rina, nearly failing to keep a straight face when the other teachers asked why Toby had called in sick with worried faces (the temptation to say, "Oh, no, he just took off with Ben to have sex" was very large, though), and attempting to cook dinner, Sabaun finally picked up the newspaper to see what was so special about that paper.

He folded it closed again quickly.

"What's in there?" Sarai asked quietly from the doorway, already in her nightgown.

He smiled at her. "I don't see anything. Go to bed."

The look she gave him was anything but convinced, but she dropped it and left.

He went to bed, too, but only after carefully cutting out an article and throwing out the rest of the paper. He contemplated putting the article in their room, but then, he didn't want them to know he'd been snooping. In the end, he stuck it in his desk drawer along with other oddities he'd noticed.

Three years later, the day they moved to Atlantis, he finally opened up that drawer and handed the article to John.

John smiled ruefully at him, glanced the article over, and placed it reverently on the kitchen table to greet them when they came back. DADT revoked in favour of tolerance policy.

*

Just about at the same time as their return to Atlantis, talks about declassification were stirring up. By the time they'd settled back in, the official decision had been made.

A year later, the program was declassified.

John and Rodney's faces were plastered all over the news before long, of course.

Dave Sheppard hadn't seen his brother in almost twenty years. He didn't necessarily have the best picture of him in mind, especially after their father's missed funeral, but another galaxy certainly cleared things up.

He located Nancy, who, along with being mobbed by the paparazzi, had been trying to get in touch with John for years because she still held documents as his next of kin, and together they, thanks to the generosity of the SGC, got a week's vacation in the lost city of Atlantis.

Elizabeth Weir stepped down the platform and introduced herself (which was, strictly speaking, unnecessary, seeing as they knew her face from TV). "Dave," he said, shaking her hand. "Dave Sheppard."

"Oh!" she said, "John's brother?"

The whole room fell silent. "Yeah," he said slowly. "John's brother."

Elizabeth glanced around. Everyone immediately pretended to be working again. "Well, you're in luck. It's his day off. Ronon, would you show Mr. Sheppard and…" she glanced questioningly at Nancy.

"Nancy Jenkins," Nancy said.

"Right, nice to meet you, Ronon, show Mr. Sheppard and Mrs. Jenkins to John's quarters?"

Ronon, a huge, muscular guy with dreads all down his back smiled dangerously. "Right this way," he said.

Walking behind Ronon, Dave had to wonder if this was John's latest fuckbuddy. He was John's type- insanely attractive but obviously not actually a man for a meaningful relationship, at least not with John.

John had never told them he was bi, at least not directly, but the string of tall, muscular guys and girls with large chests he permanently had had one of hanging off his arm ever since he was about fifteen had given them their own conclusions.

They stopped in front of a door that opened of it's own volition, which made Dave jump. Ronon was probably laughing at him behind that inscrutable expression.

"What is it?" A voice from inside called that was definitely not John.

"Visitors for Sheppard," Ronon said. Probably not a boyfriend then; those tended to call him by his first name.

"Well he's not here. Teaching Yannick to fly a jumper. Insane, if you ask me, the kid couldn't legally drive where he comes from, let alone fly, but apparently-"

"McKay." Dave would have shut up long ago with that guy hulking in his doorway.

"What?" McKay snapped.

"I think you're gonna wanna talk to these guys."

McKay looked at them expectantly. "Dave Sheppard," Dave said, holding out his hand.

The self-impressed expression melted right off his face as they shook hands. "John's…brother?"

"Yeah," Dave said slowly, wondering not for the first time that day what exactly his brother had gotten himself into.

"And you?" McKay asked Nancy.

He ignored her outstretched hand as she introduced herself, obviously deep in thought. "Nancy," he muttered, "Nancy, Nancy…Oh! Ex-wife Nancy?"

She nodded.

He didn't say anything for a minute. Then, "Come in."

Under his breath, "if they don't kill him, I will."

-

John came back soon after, looking older, greyer, but still dressed in black as always. "Rodney," he said as he walked in, "I think we need to fix the steering on Jumper One again, it's tilti- Oh."

Rodney looked up from where he had ensconced himself behind a laptop, raising his eyebrows over his glasses in a very schoolmasterly way. "Yeah. Oh."

"Dave. Nancy. This is a…surprise. Um. How's dad?"

"He died fourteen years ago."

John winced.

Rodney rounded on him. "Your dad died and you didn't know?"

"We were in Australia!"

"I kept up with what Jeannie was doing!"

"It's not the same!"

"Um," Dave interjected. "It's not his fault. I tried to send a message to his superiors, but it must have never gotten through."

"Wh- They didn't even know we went missing?"

John turned to Rodney, looking exasperated. "No, okay? I told you. You were next of kin, there was no one there on the papers to inform."

Nancy dug some papers out of her handbag. "Um, John, that's part of why I came here. I still had papers as your next of kin and I didn't know what to do with them."

Rodney looked livid. Fire-spewing, eyes-popping livid.

Wanting to avoid a scene, John pulled him through a door.

"Did…did they just go through to the bathroom?" Dave asked the kid who had come in with John.

He nodded, black curls bouncing. "They do that. Think we won't hear them there."

"When was the last time you spoke to them?" Rodney's precise voice raged from within.

John's mumbled reply was inaudible.

"Twenty years ago?! Jesus, John!"

"Excuse me," John said, sounding annoyed, "we were in Australia!"

"We've been back for a year. There were four years before that. How could you not tell them? My god, if you'd died out here before Australia they wouldn't even know because they weren't on your forms!"

"It's complicated, okay?"

"No!" Forget the bathroom, Dave wouldn't have been surprised if he'd been able to hear McKay through solid concrete. "Not okay! They're your family!"

"No, you're my family! You, and the kids, and Atlantis. They didn't want me so I have my own family now."

"It doesn't work like that, John! You don't get to pick and choose. They're your family."

"Oh, like you talked to Jeannie once in sixteen years."

Rodney paused for a deep breath, then said in a tight, controlled voice, "I didn't talk to her because we were in hiding for all intents and purposes, but if I'd gotten a hint, even the slightest hint, that something was wrong in her life, I would have been there, and you know it."

Dave could just picture John sighing, casting around for words not only mentally but with his body language. "It's different, okay? They- didn't- want- me. When they figured out I wasn't anything like them, nothing I could do was good enough. They didn't want me there."

"I'm guessing that's where you're wrong. They may have not known what to do with you, but they sure as hell would've wanted you there."

Brief silence.

"Now why your ex-wife is here is a mystery to me, but your brother you should talk to."

John snorted. "Oh, no. You do not get to be jealous about Nancy."

"Shut up. Go out there. Talk to them, for god's sake. I'll stay in here."

"And do what, catalogue the toothpaste? If I'm going out there, you're coming with me. You get to meet your in-laws."

They came out a few seconds later, and all three people in the room made a concerted effort to pretend not to have heard a thing. Except Ronon, who said, "If you think we didn't hear that I'm gonna start wondering about those diplomas," to Rodney.

"Shut up," Rodney said. "Um…Nancy, why don't I show you around while these two catch up?"

Looking between the two Sheppards, she nodded, and they all left the room.

"So," Dave said.

"So," John said, studying his face. "You…you look a lot like dad."

"Thanks, I think."

John rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous habit Dave remembered very well. "Sorry I…got out of touch."

Dave looked at him, searching for something, before saying, "Sorry we made you feel…unwanted."

John nodded in acceptance.

"So…you're married?"

"Uh, yeah," John smiled. "That would be Rodney. He can be a, uh, force of nature."

"I kinda noticed." They stood in silence for a while, before Dave asked, "So, you're happy?"

John looked up, smiled. "Oh, yeah. Hey, d'you…you wanna meet the kids?"

"You have kids?!"

In some ways, the reason John and Rodney felt relatively successful at raising children was because neither of them had ever really managed to grow up. They were bad at talking and doing as they were told and had minor orgasms over video games.

Unfortunately, that didn't qualify for the time Sabaun beat up a guy for messing with Sarai, or when the experiments with make up started.

Or when the kids starting getting into trouble for having gay parents.

"This was bound to happen," Rodney ranted after a particularly aggressive fight Sabaun and Yannick had gotten themselves into. "We shouldn't have exposed them to all the damn prejudice in a tiny buttfuck town in the middle of nowhere, this is-!"

John was quietly seething in front of himself. "What really gets to me is that people are beating up on them about us."

"Well, we certainly can't have them getting into fights about us," Rodney said, pacing.

"Where I come from," Sabaun said from the doorway, "People stand up for their families."

John and Rodney exchanged a look, both thinking about Ronon and Teyla.

People watched them, all the time. Friends who hadn't seen them in too long, the media once they were declassified- some people from Australia very effectively outed them not too long after Nancy and Dave visited.

Much to John's horror, Nancy and Rodney hit it off right away. After overcoming the husband – ex-wife thing. They swapped embarrassing stories about him, wrote each other emails… it was a nightmare.

Dave laughed at him about that. But that wasn't so bad, because hey, Dave liked him enough to laugh at him.

The kids prospered on Atlantis- Sabaun had been thinking of only staying for a summer and going on to study physics somewhere Earthside, but the simple fact was he'd learn way more physics in Rodney's lab than Harvard could teach.

They had a rich family of godparents, as well as aunts and uncles, biological or not. And Rodney didn't even have daily guilt attacks, because the death threat was largely vanquished.

So all in all, their lives were full and happy and all that shit (although Rodney did still claim mental scarring from that time he'd seen Radek and Elizabeth making out on their tower), and now, well, now he and John had both gone from having no real place to fit in to having two homes in the scant space of…well, twenty years, but who was counting?

Author's Note That I Really Think You Might Wanna Read, Even Though I Never Read Them Either:

So I meant to finish this two weeks ago. I didn't. But now it's done. And I'm actually sort of working on a prequel, like, before Australia, leading up to Australia. So shout if there's interest.

About this story- I still feel like I'm writing crack. I did research, though. I actually watched Outcast. I'm still in S2, show-wise, though I've seen the Return and all episodes with Jeannie. Show doesn't run in English here though, and whenever it gets Elizabeth!centric I get antsy. This is why my Elizabeth POV bit up there kinda sucks.

Anyway though, the second I started writing, I knew I was gonna need John's family in here, so I read the transcript for Outcast and watched the episode. I'm sticking as far to canon as I can here because I'm picky that way; the whole Dave-thinking-Ronon-is-John's-boyfriend thing is canon as far as I'm concerned. I mean, the look he gives John when John calls Ronon a civilian contractor, and the dubious, "right"? Where is the sub in this text?

The last two bits suck, I'm well aware, but it's pretty late right now and my vacation ends tomorrow. And I still haven't done that powepointpresentation thanks to this story. So. Right. Only this story ate my brain and I need to talk about it. Sorry if you just read that rambling trip to nowhere, to quote Owen.