Title: Love, or Something Like It

Author: wolfelements

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis

Pairing: kid!McShep

Rating: G

schmoop_bingo Card Prompt: love at first sight

Summary: Love is not easy, especially when you're five.

Warnings/Notes: AU of sorts. Aww, look, Rodney in daycare! Can life get any better? I submit it can not. Not sure if Rodney and Jeannie's age different is correct. Reference to 'Rising'.

Rodney McKay first fell in love at the tender age of five.

He had been at the horrible excuse for a daycare center that he mother insisted he attend in order to learn to socialize. He was calmly and surely explaining to some six year old why she was an utter imbecile and, therefore, not worth his time and energy playing with. She had just started crying when ihe/i had walked into the room.

Rodney ignored the doll the girl threw at his head and watched, amazed, as this boy's hair proceeded to defy all known laws of gravity. Rodney just had to find out why it did that, not to mention how and if the same results could be applied to other people's hair.

The thing was that Rodney didn't really know what love meant as a five year old. His parents argued a lot, making his mother and sister occasionally cry, and he just couldn't see how that could be a good thing. This meant the fluttering he felt in his chest and the fact that his palms were kind of sweating as he cautiously approached the new kid felt more like he was getting sick and was possibly dying, than falling in love at first sight.

As an adult, Rodney would look back at this moment with a sense of amusement and sadness, because he never really felt like that again.

As a kid, it made him consider walking in the opposite direction, but then the boy looked over at him and he could do nothing but move closer. Those eyes. They were a color that Rodney couldn't fully describe, even with a vocabulary such as his own. They were hazel and then they were green, but at the same time with an underlying hint of bronze. They were beautiful. Rodney hated it when people got poetical, but there was no other way to react to this boy's eyes as far as Rodney was concerned.

Before Rodney could actually get close to the boy, though, someone was slamming into his side and sending him sprawling into the tower of Lego's. He let out a yelp of pain, which mixed horribly with the laughter of the rowdy boys that had pushed him. This was why he hated his mother and the facility known as daycare.

He pushed himself upward and glared murder at the giggling boys across from him. He couldn't remember their names. Their names just didn't matter as far as he was concerned. He opened his mouth to tell them, exactly, why they wouldn't amount to anything and how their mothers had clearly mated with someone of limited intelligence to create them—a concept he had yet to figure out, but he was certain that it had involved their mothers and imbeciles. Before he could get a word out, however, a face appeared above him with gorgeous eyes and wild hair.

"Are you okay?" the boy asked, his voice holding a strange accent that made Rodney both suspicious and relaxed. Without waiting for an answer the boy stood and placed himself between Rodney and the bullies, causing both parties to stare in shock. "Leave him alone."

"He's a geek," one of the boys pointed out, as though that alone explained why they disliked Rodney. "You don't want to be friends with him."

"Maybe I do. I said leave him alone. So go away."

Rodney was too busy staring up at his savior in utter awe to really pay attention to the rest of the conversation. He was certain it was ridiculous and asinine, anyway. When the wild-haired boy turned back to him and helped him to his feet, Rodney finally managed to find his voice. "Really, they should be locked up in zoos. A starving lion is smarter than they'll ever be. What's your name? How does you hair do that? Did your mother make you come here, too?"

The boy slowly grinned and, really, that just wasn't fair. How was Rodney supposed to think properly with this kid around? The boy looked down shyly and scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the carpet. "I'm John. My dad's in town for business or something, so I'm stuck here for a few days. What is my hair doing?"

"It's breaking laws," Rodney informed him, reaching out and poking one of the cowlicks. John slapped his hand away with a frown, but otherwise didn't look too upset at having Rodney in his personal space.

"My dad wouldn't allow that," John said.

"Well, is he a scientist?" Rodney demanded.

"No," John drawled out, causing the word to stretch out. Rodney wondered if he could be taught to do that. It sounded kind of cool.

"Then how could he know? I'm not talking about social, uh, rules," he replied, waving a hand around like his father did when he was trying to prove a point. "Science is above all of that. Scientists are more intelligent and understand things that police officers and those silly people that study humans ever will. It's a known fact."

"It can't be too known if I didn't know it," John protested.

"It's a known fact to smart people," Rodney offered. Inside, he felt a little odd, like he was upset or something over the idea that he might already be alienating John. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to keep John. Which was ridiculous. You couldn't keep a person, unless you owned slaves, but that didn't stop Rodney from wanting to nonetheless. He decided the best way to keep John from realizing that Rodney might have insulted him was to change the subject. "Can I calculate the angles of your hair?"

That night, Rodney informed his parents that he had met a boy at daycare, who was going to let him experiment on his hair. His father told him to try not to get into trouble, while his mother claimed that that was what she had been wanting all along and how happy she was that he had made a friend. Rodney wasn't entirely sure she understood the importance of John, but if she wanted to mistake their bond for the simple status of friendship he wasn't going to stop her.

Jeannie just starting singing about him, John, a tree, and kissing. Then he threw a piece of broccoli at her head and got sent to his room.

"That's wrong," John said, leaning over his shoulder and pointing at the numbers scribbled across Rodney's piece of construction paper.

"What? No it's not!" Rodney protested. He was momentarily caught up in how close they were and the strange urge he had to hug John. He blinked and narrowed his eyes at the paper. "Where?"

John deftly pulled the blue crayon out of Rodney's grasp and began correcting his math. After a few minutes of John marking out numbers and re-writing the answers with his tongue stuck out in concentration, the boy dropped the crayon and sat back. "There."

"You…how?" Rodney turned to stare at him. "How do you know that?"

"I like math."

"I love you," Rodney informed him in as serious of a voice as a five year old could manage.

John's head tilted to the side and his mouth twitched, like he wasn't sure if the moment was funny or not. Rodney didn't care, because John looked perfect with that expression on his face. John looked perfect no matter what he was doing. Finally, John just turned back to his own coloring. "Have you figured out the average, um, thing you were looking for about my hair?"

"Oh, yes…" Rodney said, before launching into a speech about the universal angles that John's hair took on any given day. It was a speech that rivaled most upper level students and Rodney was perfectly aware of this. He smiled smugly when he was done and turned to see John's awe of him.

But John was looking at him at all. Instead, the boy was staring out the window with a slight frown on his face.

"You weren't listening!" Rodney exclaimed.

"Boys aren't supposed to love each other," John suddenly said.

"Why not?" Rodney asked, fully confused. "You're nice and have good facial features like the men my mother looks at when we go grocery shopping and you correct my math without rubbing it in my face."

"My dad says that boys who like other boys are fairies and that's what's wrong with this country," John replied. He started frowning harder, clearly not entirely sure he understood his own father's thinking. "Though, we're not in my country right now so maybe that doesn't mean its true here?"

"Oh, umm," Rodney fidgeted. "Does it matter? And what do you mean you're not from this country?"

"I'm from the United States," John told him. There was a moment of silence as each boy took in the fact that they were from different places and, apparently, Rodney was a fairy in America.

"My father says that Americans wouldn't know good manners if they dropped them on their heads," Rodney said primly. "Maybe that's what's wrong with your father? Though, my father is wrong a lot so it probably doesn't apply to you. Maybe it only applies to old people."

John broke into a wide grin and scooted closer to him. "Yeah, maybe it does!"

On their third day together, Rodney was certain that all was right in his life. Not only had he gotten his mother to agree to letting him bring his own lunch so the daycare wouldn't complain about his diet restrictions behind her back, but he was also presented with proof that John loved him back. Well, alright, so John never exactly said those words, but Rodney was pretty certain that he secretly meant them.

After all, who wouldn't love Rodney McKay?

Except, of course, the bullies at the daycare that clearly couldn't string a single brain cell between the three of them. Rodney scowled to himself as he spit out what was probably sand and attempted to push himself to his feet from where one of the boys had pushed him. He twisted around just in time to have a giant glob of mud hit the side of his face.

He opened his mouth to berate their stupidly, but just as before John was suddenly there, standing between them. Instead of telling the boys to back off like last time, John proceeded to leap on top of them and prove that American boys definitely knew how to fight dirty. Rodney was content to stand off to the side and cheer him on until one of the teacher's assistants rushed over to put a stop to their battle.

Somehow, and Rodney made it clear that he thought this was a form of tyranny, he was pulled into the director's office along with the others as an accomplice. He sat next to John, inwardly fuming, as the director of the daycare proceeded to explain to them why fighting was wrong.

"I didn't fight anyone," Rodney pointed out. "I'm an innocent bystander."

"But you didn't stop them, either, Rodney," the director told him.

"This is stupid," he insisted, "and why am I stuck in here without representation?" He ignored the pinched look on the director's face and turned to John. "Thank you, by the way. That was very brave of you."

"Thanks," John said brightly, poking the bruise on his jaw.

"I especially liked it when you made him bleed," Rodney added.

"Don't you think he's talking about this boy a little too much?" Rodney's father asked his mother. Rodney rolled his eyes. Really, he was sitting right there. The least his father could do was acknowledge him.

"It's just a little crush," his mother replied, sending Rodney one of her sweet and distinctly fake smiles. "I'm sure he'll get over it with time."

Rodney didn't want to get over John. And it wasn't a crush. Rodney had everything planned out. He and John were going to get a house together. Rodney would be a genius and John would correct people's math. It would be perfect.

Clearly, his parents didn't know what they were talking about.

John didn't smile for most of the next day and Rodney couldn't understand why. He did everything he could to get the boy to perk up. He even went as far as purposely doing incorrect math, hoping John would pay attention enough to tell him to stop playing around.

After a few hours of silence, in which John carefully created paper airplanes and Rodney tried to figure out a way to sneak into the kitchen and get John a cup of pudding (pudding always cheered Rodney up, after all), John finally turned to him with a sigh. John's lower lip was jutting out and Rodney wondered what it would be like to press their mouths together in what his mother called a kiss. Then he realized that would be a sure way to exchange germs, so figured anyone that would kiss a person was just idiotic.

"What's wrong?" Rodney finally asked.

"I'm going home in the morning," John told him, looking over Rodney's shoulder instead of at his face. Rodney purposely tilted his head so their eyes would meet and John sighed once more. "I'm going to miss you. Dad said I'll never see you again."

"But…you can't leave!" Rodney yelled.

And that was when Rodney did what he would later claim to be a moment of actual possession: he threw a tantrum. He wasn't about to lose his best friend, his ionly/i friend just because the boy's dad had to go home! He loved John! John was his!

"No!" Rodney yelled again when the teacher came over and grabbed him from behind before he could throw whatever toy he had miraculously grabbed a hold of. John just stood there staring in amazement at his behavior. "You're mine! You can't leave me!"

Somehow, the teacher managed to get him out of the room and into yet another small office so he could calm down without embarrassing himself further. John followed and the teacher hovered at the doorway while John rubbed his back with small circles. Rodney sniffed and kicked the wall.

"I'm sorry," John whispered, pulling Rodney into a hug and pressing his forehead against Rodney's cheek.

"You're my only friend," Rodney told him in a low voice, hoping the teacher hadn't overheard. "You can't leave. Your father is clearly out of his mind. Why would he go back to America if he is so worried about all those fairies?"

"My mom and brothers are still in America," John explained. "We have to go back."

"I hate your father," Rodney announced, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. He glared at John, before deflating and letting John wrap an arm around his shoulders.

"We'll see each other again," John said.

"Liar," Rodney retorted. "The odds of that happening are too small to be real."

"Then we'll make it happen," John replied, his arm tightening its hold.

"God, you two are cute," the teacher commented in a hushed voice, hiding a large smile with her hand. Rodney glared and burrowed deeper into John's arms.

His parents threatened to take him to see a psychologist when his mood didn't get better after a month of so without John. After three months of depression, though, his five year old mind got caught up in a new lesson from his tutor and he was able to push John to the back of his mind.

John never really left him, though. In college as a teenager stuck in a masters program with a bunch of 20-something-year-olds, Rodney couldn't help but think of John when he first realized he might be gay. It should have been obvious, of course, with that memory stuck in his brain.

It remained, even years later, one of the few memories that he kept from his childhood. It was one of a very small number that could be labeled as happy, though it had ended with him crying.

So it didn't shock him any when, in the middle of Antarctica and years later, he took one look at hair that defied gravity and remembered. Wild hair and beautiful hazel-green eyes that were wide with disbelief. Rodney bit back a happy grin and took a step toward the man who had lit the Ancient's chair up like a Christmas tree. There was no doubt in Rodney's mind who that man was, it could only be his John.

"Major, think about where we are in the solar system."