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: Witchingest hour.

Additional notes: Sorry for the delay kids, really goin’ through some stuff over here. The events Sheppard references in this chapter come from the season 5 Stargate Atlantis episode: Whispers.

Chapter 85

The doors to the Nautilus Suite closed behind Young as he followed Sheppard into the warm night. Young’s cane rang hollowly on the naquadah alloy beneath their boots. Water slid in grooves on either side of the walkway, glittering in the moonlight.

“See y’round.” Sheppard threw the words over one shoulder, already making for the transport alcove at the end of the parapet that would take him back to Atlantis’s central spire.

Young stopped.

Sheppard slowed.

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

Sheppard stopped, but didn’t turn. His hair caught the starlight, the moonlight, the stray light of the city itself. “Not sure what you’re talking about.” And still, he didn’t turn.

“Bullshit,” Young said. “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’s shoulders tensed.

“Worse than that, you’ve got him covering for you, badly, about how deep the city’s worked itself into your head. I’d say there’s a good chance he’s minimizing what he’s experiencing because he’s following your lead.”

Sheppard’s head angled down and away.

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

Sheppard didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Young took a breath. Reined himself in. Prepped for some fancy verbal footwork. “This isn’t gonna fly,” he said. “I can’t operate in the dark, and your habit of clamming up and handling things yourself has done you zero favors. It’s what landed you in Antarctica on chopper detail; it’s why command only promotes you when they’re over a barrel; it’s what’s gonna get you killed. And this isn’t a good time.”

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

“To get killed?” Sheppard rasped.

“Yes.”

“I know.”

“Shep,” Young began, “I don’t report to anyone here. You get me? I email dispatches to Landry when the stargate opens every few days.”

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

Young was in danger of overplaying his hand. Blind to the terrain, he was, maybe, coming at Sheppard too hard after a mission Young knew nothing about.

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.

Young took a breath. Softened the steel in his mind, hoping it’d translate into his tone. This was Sheppard’s ground: night-girded architectures and alien trade winds, blowing strong over water that couldn’t stay dark.

“Not sure if you’ve noticed,” Young said, switching up his strategy, “but I’m neck deep in crazy geniuses right now. What’s one more on the pile?”

Sheppard angled his head. Still, he didn’t turn.

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

“I’m no genius.”

Young snorted. “Since when?”

Far below, waves chimed faintly as they broke at 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, letting a good chunk of the tension he was carrying bleed into the warm night.

“I’m not gonna out you. 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?

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 was dealing with. The guy’d 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. A study in vastness. The unfamiliar stars were scattered more thinly than in the Milky Way. There was no visible galactic plane.

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

“What’s wrong?” Young asked.

“Nothing.” Sheppard’s cortical suppressors, normally concealed under his hair, 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 led Sheppard back through the doors, through the dimly lit receiving room of the Nautilus Suite, and along a dark hall of silver-inlaid shell. 

“Nice place,” Sheppard said softly.

They nodded at James, sitting quietly in the small monitoring station off the main hall, artificial light illuminating the planes and angles of her sharp features.

Young waved a hand and opened the door to his room. As they entered, track lighting at the base of the walls glowed warm and indirect.

“Woolsey set this up for you?” Sheppard rasped, probably to have something to say.

“Yup.” Young led the way across the space, past the massive bed, and into the bathroom, where he turned the lights to maximum.

Sheppard hovered in the doorway, spectral in the silver-white glow. Backed by mother of pearl paneling, his skin was bone white. The shadow of a forming bruise peeked above the collar of his black jacket, as though someone had grabbed him by the throat earlier in the day. Dried mud and dust streaked along the side of his uniform—arm, flank, thigh.

“You get dragged?” Young asked.

“Tackled.”

“Keller look you over?”

“No need,” Sheppard replied. “Not my first rodeo.”

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

Sheppard exhaled, short and amused. “You serious?”

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

Hesitantly, Sheppard set the towel on the sink next to him. Still in the doorframe, still blocking Young’s exit, he began unfastening jacket snaps. “We can talk now.”

Young frowned, confused.

Sheppard unzipped his jacket, moving stiffly. The bruising at his neck extended down beneath the crew-neck collar of his undershirt. “My day came straight outta Resident Evil.” Sheppard slipped out of his jacket and handed it to Young. He knelt, unlacing his boots. “I spent most of it getting hunted.”

Young raised his eyebrows. He let Sheppard’s jacket fall on the counter next to the sink.

“The Wraith like to experiment.” Sheppard pulled a boot off. “Particularly this one guy. Michael.”

“The Wraith’s name is ‘Michael’?”

“Yup.” Sheppard handed Young his boot. “Not to be confused with ‘Todd.’ Todd’s a little more respectable.”

“Okay.” Young leaned into his cane, his fingers tangled through the crossed laces at the arch of Sheppard’s boot, letting the other man talk his way into sealing off whatever’d been on the verge of breaking 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—you just spent a day being hunted by mutant villagers.” Young was sure that kind of day wasn’t  gonna help the man’s mental state.

“Yep.” Sheppard gestured at his face. “They were eyeless. Don’t get why that had to be a thing. Lotta teeth. Hunted without weapons. Classic zombie stuff.” He handed Young his second boot.

Young took it.

Sheppard pulled his cotton T-shirt 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.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Sheppard peeled off his socks.

“McKay do all right with the alien zombies?” Young asked.

“He wasn’t there. I was with, uh, a clone of our original expedition doctor? And Major Teldy’s recon team.” Sheppard laid a hand on the closed stall of the shower and the mist began to spray.

“A clone of your doctor.”

“Life gets pretty wild in Pegasus. He was another experiment of Michael’s, believe it or not. The Wraith are really into genetics.”

“Great.”

Sheppard grinned weakly and unbuckled his belt.

Young averted his eyes as Sheppard stripped and stepped into the misting shower. Silver and nacre batwing doors concealed his body from knees to shoulder.

Young took a beat. He looked at the pair of boots in his free hand.

Everything Sheppard had just done amounted to a pretty clear non-verbal message. 

Stay.

Wraith-made zombies, he supposed, would rattle anyone. But there was, maybe, more to it than that.

Young dropped the boots near the door, boosted himself onto the counter near the sink, and guarded Shep’s six while he took the Lantean version of a shower.

Behind Sheppard was a shell-shaped trellis backed by a silent slide of falling water. Already, small green shoots wrapped themselves around its stylized coils.

“So.” Young raised his voice to be heard over the hissing spray. “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 filled the air. “Doubt it’ll go further than that.”

“Why haven’t you told Keller?” Young watched soap slide over sunstone tile, heading for the drain.

Sheppard averted his eyes. “Feels like 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 the outside of his thighs and shifted. His back ached. He had the instinct to throw his weight into the chain of command, into what should happen.

But this wasn’t the SGC. This was a remote outpost. Civilian run. 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.

“Nice.” Sheppard rinsed shampoo out of his hair.

“You can look over it. Maybe we figure out how you’re both gonna sleep.”

There was a short silence as Sheppard considered this. “Figured you’d insist on reporting it,” he finally said.

“I mean, I’d favor that, yeah,” Young replied. “But you’re the one who knows the situation on the ground.” He paused. “And, while we’re here, I’m hoping we can do a little more than sit in a room and slow-play cypher solving.”

Sheppard considered this, one hand braced against silver metal as he let warm mist play over his bruises. “An interesting choice for a security detail.”

“I get the feeling we might not stay a security detail,” Young confessed.

Sheppard ran a hand through his wet hair, spiking it up.

“So you wanna cut your teeth on a little Wraith work?” he asked. “Before you go back and face the Ori?”

“Don’t think we’re quite ready for that,” Young said. “But to the extent we can integrate into Lantean Ops—” he trailed off. “You’d have to be involved.”

Sheppard nodded, a dark silhouette in thickening mist.

Young waited him out.

“What are you really trying to do?” Sheppard asked, soft and incisive.

“I’m trying to build the kind of team that’s hard to come by when all you do is follow regs.”

“Doesn’t sound like you.”

“Yeah, well.” Young swallowed, then pressed ahead. “Not sure if you heard, but the by-the-book guy who thought he pulled David Telford outta the LA—he died. In the SGC infirmary. Half a season ago.”

Sheppard shut off the water. In the quiet, misted bathroom he said. “I’ve been wondering about that.” He dried himself off in silence.

Young said nothing.

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

“Jackson,” Young whispered. “With his bare hands. Just about killed the guy to hang on.”

“You coulda called me,” Sheppard rasped.

“Probably.”

They looked at one another in the bright mist.

Sheppard didn’t cross the space that separated them.

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

In the dim light of his quarters, he took a steadying breath.

Sheppard was built like a fighter. He carried himself with the economy of movement Young associated with sharp-shooters. It was hard not to imagine what the man would be like in bed—with his confusing blend of lethal aggression and inarticulate vulnerability. He’d be unpredictable. What he might see in Young, if anything, was a mystery, but Nick Rush?

They’d be good together. Great even. With messy, explosive chemistry. There’d be no routine with the pair of them. Both were too complicated to settle into anything. It would be sex as conversation, sex as philosophy, sex as mock warfare, sex as translation, as reassurance, as a stand in for talking about anything. At all. Ever.

He wondered how rough it might get. How much fighting there might be. How much instruction. From both sides. What it might look like when Nick Rush held a stone-cold assassin at bay with intellect alone.

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.

Worked about as well as it usually did. 

Young headed back to the bathroom and knocked on the closed door. It slid open, revealing Shep standing in front of the mirror, his wet hair spiked up. He twisted, angling for a look at the bruising that extended to his back.

“Must’ve been one hell of a tackle,” Young said mildly.

“More of a body slam,” Sheppard admitted.

Young set the clothes on the bathroom counter and approached Sheppard, leaning into his cane. “You got something to put on this?”

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

Sheppard held himself still, arm lifted. “Don’t believe me?”

Young traced his fingers over intact bone.

Sheppard lowered his arm and turned to face Young.

And it would be easy, so easy, to step in and make it happen. Sheppard held 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 admitted with a faint smile. “Though I gotta say, I pictured waiting until he could be—involved?”

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

Their gazes locked.

Sheppard stepped in, sliding a hand to grip the half-open zipper of Young’s black fatigues, like the opening of a lapel drag takedown, then jet-propelled, he stepped into a kiss.

Young clenched his muscles, his cane backing up his injured leg, his free arm coming around Sheppard’s waist. Sheppard, who drove a red mustang through the desert of Young’s thoughts more than he’d ever admitted, Sheppard who doesn’t know Kiva, doesn’t know the LA, what they do, what they’re capable of, Sheppard who went from air and Antarctic ice to a life of sea and sky, holding a galaxy all on his own.

And 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 soap and lavender, tasted like blood and seawater, like he’d bit his lip when something blind and hungry had slammed him into earth and stone.

Young pinned Sheppard’s good shoulder to the wall at his back, putting an arms-length between them. “You’re outta my league,” he confessed. 

“Doesn’t work like that,” Sheppard whispered, his eyes the color of cloud and war in the star-bright room.

A few hours later, they lay together in Young’s massive bed, half dressed. The moon hung high and full. The lights, low and blue, were just strong enough for Shep to read through the schedule Young and Rush had put together for SG-68. Young, on his back, rested his head on Sheppard’s uninjured thigh and watched him study the pages, bright with moonlight.

“You’re goin’ for it,” Sheppard said mildly, his eyes still on the pages.

“Nick Rush is a front-line player,” Young said.

Sheppard’s mouth tugged up at one corner. “I know.” 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 eyes 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. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. Gently, he flipped a page.

“Tell me what you know 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 kinds 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 countered. “Made no kind of sense.”

“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 asked, searching 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 whispered, his fingers tangled in Young’s hair. “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, softly.

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.

“Seems like bad luck, somehow.” Young whispered.

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

“Yup. That.”

Sheppard went back to stroking his hair, but it turned tentative now, and Young was sure that if he said the wrong thing, if he tried to press 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 silvered ceiling and tried to chart a course.

“You’re gonna have to sleep here,” he offered casually.

Sheppard’s hand stopped.

“For Nick,” 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.”

“Yup,” Young said dryly. “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 are gonna need to split a limited resource.”

“I need to be in the central spire.”

“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 while wearing your sweatpants…and 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. Which he wont.”

Sheppard sighed. “This was a bad idea.”

“Calling it 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 tangled mess 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.”

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, but Young decided to let it ride.

Young crossed the room, Sheppard on his heels.

And, gently, he knocked on Rush’s door.