Mathématique: Chapter 85

This was Sheppard’s ground: night-girded architectures and alien trade winds blowing strong over water that couldn’t stay dark.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges.

Text iteration: Early.

Additional notes: The events Sheppard references in this chapter come from the Stargate Atlantis episode “Whispers.”

Chapter 85

The doors to the Nautilus Suite closed behind Young as he trailed Sheppard into the tropical night.

This fuckin’ guy.

Young’s cane rang on naquadah alloy. Water ran in a tracklit groove at the base of the parapet. Moonlight and citylight lay over the shoulders of John Sheppard’s black fatigues like silver epaulettes. 

“You gonna make me chase you?” Young called.

Sheppard slowed, halfway to the transport alcove that would take him back to Atlantis’s central spire.

“You two must think I’m pretty thick,” Young said.

Sheppard stopped. “Not sure what you’re talking about.” He didn’t turn.

“Bullshit.” Young closed the distance between them. “At a minimum, you roped Rush into an alternating sleep schedule because you’re worried what’ll happen if you’re both down at once.”

Sheppard tensed.

“Worse than that, you’ve got him covering for you about how deep the city’s worked itself into your head.”

Sheppard didn’t move.

“And I’m willing to bet that somehow, somehow, you know why, after weeks without his memories, he walked up to me in a New York alley and said ‘rough day in the quantum multiverse’.”

Still, Sheppard didn’t turn. Didn’t speak.

Young took a beat. He was coming at Sheppard with frustrated momentum, a dual-burn fueled by an audience of ascended observers and Atlantis’s habit of hijacking Nick Rush’s brain. But if Young wanted Sheppard to open up, it would take more than yelling at the guy.

“This isn’t gonna fly.” Young cooled his tone. “Your habit of clamming up and handling things yourself is what landed you in Antarctica on chopper detail; it’s why command only promotes you when they’re over a barrel; it’s what’ll get you killed. And this isn’t a good time.”

“To get killed?” Sheppard rasped.

“Yeah.”

“I know.”

The ocean breeze sang around the edges of the tower above.

“Shep,” Young tried, “I don’t report to anyone here. When the stargate opens, I batch reports to Landry that will hopefully all say: Rush isn’t dead, cypher nine isn’t cracked. That’s my official scope. You get me?”

Sheppard said nothing, his back to Young, his uniform as dark as the space between stars.

Young reminded himself that he was mostly blind to the terrain, blind to Sheppard’s day, his year, his experiences with Atlantis, that day on Altera—he might be coming in too hot. God, did Jackson make this stuff look easy. But it wasn’t. Sheppard didn’t respond well to hierarchy. To anyone following the book and holding the line.

This was Sheppard’s ground: night-girded architectures and alien trade winds blowing strong over water that couldn’t stay dark under moonlight and starlight.

Young softened the steel in his mind, hoping it’d translate into his tone. “Not sure if you’ve noticed,” he said, “but I’m neck deep in crazy geniuses right now. What’s one more on the pile?”

Sheppard angled his head, but didn’t turn.

“I’m talking about you,” Young clarified.

“I’m no genius.”

Young snorted.

Far below, waves chimed faintly as they broke on the base of Sanctuary Quay.

“Point is,” Young continued, “if I had a nickel for every time I’d seen one of you guys talk to thin air and kept my mouth shut about it, I’d have at least enough for a week’s worth of coffee.”

Sheppard rolled his shoulders and some of the tension he was carrying bled into the warm night.

“I’m not gonna out you.” Young pressed his advantage. “But I need to know what’s happening.”

“Why?” Sheppard asked.

Why?

Because Jackson had reached into the mud and pulled Young out of it? Because his neighbor happened to be one of the most important players in the galaxy and Young was trying to keep pace? Because he’d seen something himself—an apparition on a parapet not thirty feet from where he stood now?

The only thing he could think to say was, “You wanna turn around, maybe?”

“Getting there.”

Young waited, trying to work out what the hell he might be dealing with. Shep had been fine. Minutes back, talking with Rush on the balcony, he’d been fine, hadn’t he? Debating the nature of the self, holding up, awkwardly, under the full-court press of Nick Rush’s hard-driving flirtation?

The sky above was cloudless. On a world with no light pollution, the night didn’t look like a starred canopy; it looked like the space it truly was. The unfamiliar stars scattered thinly, and there was no visible galactic plane.

When Sheppard finally turned, he had a thin mask of nonchalance in place, transparent as window glass.

“What’s wrong?” Young asked.

“Nothing.” Sheppard’s cortical suppressors glowed like lost stars.

“Really? Because you look like a guy doing a pretty solid impression of a panic room.”

Sheppard smiled, empty of everything but death and repression.

“C’mon.” Young tipped his head in the direction of the Nautilus Suite. “Even if we’re not gonna talk about teaming up, we still gotta do it.”

As Sheppard weighed Young’s offer, a hint of insubordinate delight turned his smile a little less spectral. 

Young entered Moros’s receiving hall of night sky and spun glass, trusting Sheppard to follow. Young slowed his pace. He’d hurt himself that morning when he’d dropped his cane and crossed the room to peel Rush’s hands away from his cortical suppressors. He focused on what was left of the pain after Vala had done her passes with the healing device in the afternoon. Her work seemed to be making a difference.

Sheppard caught up, and they walked beneath maritime chandeliers, aglow with captured starlight.

“Can you believe this place?” Young asked.

“Woolsey’s always saying Moros was a student of ‘being’ rather than ‘seeming’,” Sheppard said, “but this seems like a ‘seeming’ room.” As Sheppard looked up at the glowing lights, Young caught the hint of a fresh bruise peeking above the collar of his jacket, like someone had grabbed him by the throat earlier in the day.

“Shep, if you wanna get that deep, the least you can do is buy me a beer first.”

Sheppard’s side-eye tore a hole in Young like a needle.

As they passed through the sunken well of the alcove, Sheppard whistled the chorus of “Hurt,” by Johnny Cash, breathy and haunting and echoing off the blue-tiled walls. 

James sat in the monitoring station off the main hall, artificial light illuminating the planes and angles of her features. She nodded at them as they passed.

They didn’t speak as they coiled back into the suite. In Young’s room, tracklights lit the walls at their bases, warm and indirect. The concealed spiral door to Rush’s quarters glowed a pale violet; probably an indicator of recent transit. Young swept his gaze over the balcony and saw nothing but the risen moon.

“C’mon.” Young led the way past the massive bed and into the bathroom, where he dialed the lights to maximum.

Sheppard hovered in the doorway. Backed by mother-of-pearl paneling, his skin was bone white. Dried mud and dust streaked the side of his uniform—arm, flank, and thigh.

“You get dragged?” Young asked.

“Tackled,” Sheppard said.

“Keller look you over?”

“No need.” Sheppard brushed dirt from his fatigues, then grimaced as it showered the tender shoots of plants twined around the grates at the base of the walls. “Not my first rodeo.”

Young pulled a towel off a floating shelf. “Get cleaned up. I’ll find you something to wear.”

Sheppard couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Yeah?”

Young pressed the towel into Sheppard’s hands. “Shower. Then we’ll talk.”

Sheppard didn’t look up as he set the towel in the dry bowl of a limestone sink. “Let’s talk now.” He unzipped his jacket, eased out of it, and folded the dirt-encrusted sleeve inside. The bruising at his neck extended down below the collar of his undershirt.

“Okay.” Young leaned his good hip into the counter. “You wanna start with your day?” He waved a hand that took in the red and purple ring at Sheppard’s throat, his stained uniform.

“My day came straight out of Resident Evil.” Sheppard handed his balled-up jacket to Young, then knelt to unlace a boot. “I spent most of it getting hunted.”

Young set Sheppard’s inverted jacket on the counter next to the sink.

“The Wraith like to experiment.” Sheppard switched boots. “Particularly this one guy. Michael.”

Young smiled faintly. “The Wraith’s name is ‘Michael’?”

“Yep.” Sheppard pulled his boots off and offered them to Young. “Not to be confused with Todd. Todd’s more respectable.”

“Okay.” Young tangled his fingers through the crossed laces of Sheppard’s boots and let the other man talk his way into sealing off whatever’d almost broken free under the stars outside.

“Michael was experimenting on local villagers. Combining their DNA with various predator species. The Iratus bug. Other things. His creations were hunting us.”

“So—mutant villagers.” Young was sure that kind of day hadn’t done Shep’s mental state any favors.

Sheppard gestured at his face. “Yep. They were eyeless? Don’t get why that had to be a thing. Lotta teeth. Hunted without weapons. Pretty classic zombie stuff.” He pulled his cotton undershirt over his head, revealing a wall of red and purple bruising from his shoulder to his belt.

“You got any broken ribs under there?”

“Nope.” Sheppard handed Young his shirt.

Young took it. “You left your team behind,” he said mildly.

Sheppard peeled off his socks. “I wasn’t alone. I was with a clone of our original expedition doctor. And Major Teldy’s recon team.” Sheppard straightened, then laid a hand on the closed stall of the shower. Mist sprayed from a spiral aperture.

“A clone of your doctor?” Young echoed.

Sheppard sighed. “He was another experiment of Michael’s, believe it or not. The Wraith are really into genetics.”

“Great,” Young said.

Sheppard unbuckled his belt.

Young averted his eyes as Sheppard stripped and stepped into the misting water. Nacre batwing doors concealed his body from knee to shoulder.

Young took a beat.

Everything Sheppard had just done amounted to a clear nonverbal message. 

Stay.

Wraith-made zombies would rattle anyone.

But there was, probably, more to it than that.

Young boosted himself onto the counter near the sink, and guarded Shep’s six while he took a sunstone and shell Lantean shower.

Behind Sheppard was a nautiloid trellis backed by a silent slide of falling water. Already, small green shoots wound around its stylized coils.

“So.” Young raised his voice to be heard over the hiss of misting water. “What do you think happens if you and Rush sleep at the same time?”

“Joint nightmare, probably.” Sheppard lathered himself with Athosian soap, and the smell of lavender and ginger wafted through the air. “Doubt it’ll go further than that.”

“Why haven’t you told Keller?” Young watched soap slide over sunstone tile and spiral into the drain.

Sheppard averted his eyes. “I’ve been half a step from getting permanently benched ever since Altera. And Keller’s got her hands full. She’s working on a gene therapy that’ll make it possible for the Wraith to eat regular food. We’re hoping to present it as an option to Todd. Maybe form a little alliance. I get benched, and it won’t go well. Todd knows me.”

Young braced his hands on either side of his thighs and shifted. His back ached with the old familiar sting that even a Goa’uld healing device couldn’t kill for long. He shut his eyes, feeling the distance between himself and Cheyenne Mountain. His instincts were to throw his weight into the chain of command, into what should happen.

But this was a remote outpost. Civilian run. A place to do things differently, to start again, three million light-years away. And Sheppard, with his unique command style and his instinct for combat and alien tech, had kept it safe for years.

“Rush and I put together a schedule for our little unit,” Young offered. “You can look over it. Maybe we figure out how you’re both gonna sleep.”

There was a short silence as Sheppard rinsed shampoo out of his hair. “Figured you’d insist on reporting it,” he finally said.

“I mean, I’d favor that, yeah,” Young admitted. “But I’m turning over a new leaf. Jackson’s made me a protege. Not sure it’ll take.”

Sheppard considered this, one hand braced against silver metal as he let warm mist play over his bruises. When he met Young’s eyes, his gaze was solemn and evaluative.

“I think you know as well as I do that, sooner or later, Nick Rush will get asked to step up. I want to build SG-68 into the kind of team that can tag along. The kind of team that’s hard to come by when all you do is follow regs and file reports on time,” Young said. 

Sheppard’s hair was night black in the thickening steam. He tangled a hand through it, tugging it into a soaked semblance of its usual spikes. “What are you saying? You want to cut your teeth on a little Wraith work before you go back and face the Ori?”

“That’s a step too far,” Young said. “But to the extent we can integrate into Lantean Ops—” he trailed off. “It’ll go better if you’re involved.”

Sheppard shut off the water. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but—none of this sounds like you.”

Young tossed Sheppard his towel. “Not sure if you heard, but the by-the-book hardass who thought he’d pulled David Telford off an ash-covered mountain died in the SGC infirmary.”

Sheppard toweled himself off. “Rite of M’al Sharran?”

Young nodded, his mind full of the end of summer, the yellow tips of turning leaves. 

Sheppard stepped out of the shower, the towel slung low on his hips. “Who did it?”

“Jackson,” Young said. “Just about killed the guy to hang on.”

“You coulda called me,” Sheppard rasped.

Young smiled. “Next time.”

They looked at one another in the bright mist.

Sheppard didn’t cross the space that separated them.

Young cleared his throat. “I’ll find you something to wear,” he said, and left the bathroom.

In the dim light of his quarters, he paused, leaning into his cane.

He hadn’t gotten anything out of Shep about the quantum multiverse. Yet. But that didn’t mean there weren’t other frustrations that might be worked out. 

As he went to the shell and stone dresser beside his bed and pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a clean shirt, he did his best to throw cold water over his brain.

Went about as well as it usually did.

John Sheppard was good-looking as hell and had almost been murdered by zombies earlier in the day. Young wasn’t gonna say no to the guy if he had an edge or two that wanted filing. 

Young returned to the bathroom and found Shep in front of the mirror, his wet hair spiked up. He twisted, angling for a look at the bruising that extended to his back.

“That was one hell of a tackle,” Young said.

“More of a body slam.” Sheppard grinned. “I was losing pretty bad…until I detonated my C4.”

Young snorted. “That’ll do it.” He set the clothes on the bathroom counter and approached Sheppard, leaning into his cane. “You got something to put on this?” He eyed the mottled purple of Sheppard’s torso.

“The Athosians make a salve,” Sheppard said. “I’ve got some in my quarters.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some,” Young said.

“I’ll let Teyla know.”

Gently, Young traced the edge of the bruising. It was warm and faintly raised. He ran a hand along Sheppard’s ribs, just under the worst of it.

Sheppard held himself still, arm lifted. “Looking for broken ribs?”

Young ran his fingers over intact bone.

Sheppard lowered his arm and turned to face Young, holding his ground in a shell and silver room charged with potential. All it would take was a hand on the man’s lower back, a little nudge and they’d be finding each other in a room of mist and mirrors, adrift on an alien sea. So strange that a dead landscape, ash-choked air, and a summer of misery might lead to an autumn like this one, galaxies away from the life he’d known.

“We were always gonna do this,” Sheppard breathed. “Right from the moment we figured out we had our eye on the same guy.”

“Probably,” Young agreed, “though I gotta say, I pictured waiting until he could be—involved?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, “but then I almost got killed by zombies.”

Their gazes locked.

“It’s a turn-on,” Young admitted.

Sheppard stepped in, sliding a hand to grip the half-open zipper of Young’s black jacket, like the opening of a lapel-drag takedown.

Young braced. His cane backed up his injured leg, and his free arm wrapped around Sheppard’s waist, pulling him in.

And then he was kissing John Sheppard, who drove a red Mustang through the desert of Young’s mind, Sheppard who didn’t know Kiva, didn’t know the LA, what they’d done, what they were capable of, Sheppard who’d gone from Antarctic ice to a life of sea and sky, holding a tactical line a galaxy wide.

Just like it’d been with that car, that road, that years-ago drive through the desert—nothing about Sheppard’s strength or speed or skill was unbalanced. Young was out of his clothes without so much as a twinge of pain in his back. The naquadah warmed beneath their feet. Sheppard smelled of ginger and lavender, tasted like blood and seawater, like he’d bitten his lip when something blind and hungry had slammed him into earth and stone.

Young pinned Sheppard’s good shoulder to the wall and put an arm’s length between them. “You’re outta my league,” he confessed. 

“Doesn’t work like that.” Sheppard’s eyes were the color of cloud and war in the star-bright bathroom.

~~~

A few hours later, they lay together in Young’s massive bed. The moon hung high and full. The lights—moon, sea, and track—were just strong enough for Shep to read the schedule Young and Rush had created for SG-68. Young, on his back, rested his head on Sheppard’s uninjured thigh and watched him study the pages.

“You’re goin’ for it,” Sheppard said.

“I know,” Young replied. “Nick Rush is a frontline player.”

Sheppard’s mouth tugged up at one corner. “He is.” He eyed Young. “Not sure he’s the only one.”

“Yeah, we got Jackson in the mix too.”

Sheppard glanced down at him, hesitated on the brink of saying something, then shifted his attention back to the page. “I have reason to believe this is gonna work,” he said softly. “This, or something else.” 

Young looked up at him. “Where ‘this’ means…”

Sheppard smiled and flipped a page.

“Tell me what you can about the quantum thing,” Young said, watching John Sheppard’s face in the moonlight. “Why’d you put me in that alley behind Au Coeur? Made no kind of sense. And then, then he walked up to me—” Young trailed off, remembering the evening hour in New York, the light a shade of gold that only the Earth’s atmosphere knew how to mix.

“What’d he say?” Sheppard asked. “Tell me everything you can remember.”

“Rough day in the quantum multiverse,” Young murmured. “Like a question. Like he knew me. He asked me if other people would be able to see me. Asked me about my relationship to time. About whether the word superposition meant anything to me.”

Sheppard set the draft of SG-68’s schedule aside and dropped a hand into Young’s hair. “And you’re asking me to explain it?”

“Yeah.”

“You must have a theory,” Sheppard said, almost kindly. “I know I’ve got a few, knockin’ around.”

“Why’d you put me in that alley?” Young asked again.

“I didn’t think he’d come,” Sheppard said, his eyes on the wide and endless sea. “Not with me. Not under any kind of duress. But I thought maybe there’d be a chance to send him out.”

“You didn’t know he’d recognize me?” Young searched Sheppard’s face for any hint of a lie. 

“No,” Sheppard said.

“But you know what it means to be in superposition,” Young pressed.

“Not really.” Sheppard tangled his fingers in Young’s hair and sighed. “It’s a quantum thing. Doesn’t happen on the macro scale.”

Young didn’t speak. The environmental controls began cooling the room. The air smelled fresh. Like the maritime night beyond the windows.

“You’ve gotta have a theory,” Sheppard said again.

Young thought of Jackson, sitting on the parapet, only a few yards away from where John Sheppard had stopped that very evening outside the Nautilus Suite. He thought of his vision of Nick Rush—dressed like the starlit sea. It didn’t seem wise to mention it aloud.

But yeah.

He had a theory.

He hoped to god that what he’d seen on that silver Lantean rail had been real. And whether it was Ancient players taking their forms, whether ascension and superposition were the same thing or subtly different, he hoped it all translated to—

Help.

In any form.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Sheppard asked, low and intimate, amused and didactic.

“I don’t know,” Young replied, even though he did. “Seven years bad luck?”

“Exactly.” Sheppard stroked his hair. “In other words: let’s not collapse any useful wave functions by observing ‘em too early.”

“Yeah. That.”

Sheppard’s hand turned tentative in Young’s curls.

Young was sure that if he said the wrong thing, if he pressed Sheppard about his connection with the city, if he came on too strong, not strong enough—whatever fragile thing they had growing between them would crack itself to pieces.

He stared at the silver-etched ceiling and charted a course.

“You’re gonna have to sleep here,” he said casually. “In the Nautilus Suite, I mean.”

Sheppard’s hand stopped.

“For Rush,” Young clarified.

“What?” Sheppard asked.

“It’s that, or tell Keller you’re worried about the joint nightmare issue and do a few trial runs under medical observation.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’?” Young snorted. “C’mon. Help me up. Let’s go see if he’s awake.”

“Now?” Sheppard asked. “It’s 0200.”

“Yeah,” Young said dryly, “and he probably thinks you’re sleeping. That was your original plan, wasn’t it? He stays on ‘Earth time’ until you get the nightmare thing sorted?”

“Um,” Sheppard began, “I don’t think—”

“Right now, we’ve got nothing better than a one-bed system,” Young said. “If he’s in it, you’re not, and vice versa. In the absence of a reliable schedule, which is probably gonna be a physical impossibility, you guys’ll need to split a limited resource.”

“I need to be in the central spire,” Sheppard objected.

“Woolsey, the leader of this entire expedition and your boss, has a room a few doors down. Besides. It’s not permanent. It’s just until you guys get your heads sorted out. This should have been the arrangement from day one.”

Sheppard eyed Young skeptically. “I don’t know that I want to show up at Nick Rush’s room at two in the morning wearing your sweatpants as I ask to sleep in his bed.”

“Probably shoulda thought of that before you jumped the head of his security detail in an oversized Lantean bathroom,” Young suggested.

“It’s a delicate situation,” Sheppard began. “We can’t tell him we just—”

“Pretty sure we can tell him you spent a day fighting alien zombies and needed to blow off some steam. If he asks. If.”

Sheppard sighed. “This was a bad idea.”

“Calling what just happened an ‘idea’ is probably giving it too much credit,” Young countered. “But it’s got potential. It’s got all kinds of ways to unfold. And if the three of us are alive in six months to sort out whatever tangle we’ve gotten ourselves into—well, I’ll call that a win.”

“I’m no good at this,” Sheppard whispered.

“You don’t have to be good at it,” Young replied. “You just need to help me up so we can lay down some rules about sleep with the guy in the next room. That’s it.”

Grudgingly, stiffly, Sheppard shifted, stood, and offered Young his good arm.

Young took it, and Sheppard pulled him up.

Young tried to pat his curls into behaving themselves. Sheppard re-spiked his hair. It didn’t go great in the absence of whatever styling product he normally used.

Young crossed the room, Sheppard on his heels. Gently, he pressed a finger to the center of the amethyst spiral on the wall, and the hidden door irised open.