Title//Of Gold and Red
“Hey McKay, you ready?” Sheppard’s voice drew Rodney from his musings, and he quickly gathered his pack and climbed to his feet, but not before the major caught the look on his face. “Rodney? You ok?” And it was John Sheppard at his finest, warm and concerned with just that right touch of humor coloring his voice. Rodney didn’t trust his own voice at the moment, afraid that if he opened his mouth, all his idle musings and wasted wishes would come pouring out to the one person that he couldn’t tell. So instead of barking out some inane, snarky reply, Rodney simply nodded his head then turned towards the jumper. John had no choice but to follow. ~*~ “Can I come in?” John stood just outside the door, feeling more like some snot nosed teenage boy checking out the new kid then the ranking military officer of Atlantis. Rodney stood just inside the door, looking just like the new kid in town, the one who’d left his friends and his dog and the tree fort he’d built in the backyard with his dad. And that just struck John as really, really wrong. There was a moment of awkward silence before Rodney moved, ushering John in with an absent wave of his hand. Like John asking was just a formality, and he would come in whether Rodney liked it or not. And he was right. “So…Rodney, today on the planet…” This was a new sensation for John, not knowing exactly what to say, how to say it. “You were a little…off? Care to explain?” The door slid shut behind John, he could feel the little whooshes of air as they sealed. Rodney turned away from John, shrugging his shoulders and staring out at the endless ocean. “I was off, sorry.” John waited silently for the rest of it, for the wild hand waving and the ridiculously brilliant theories and the frantic pacing. And waited. And waited. Rodney seemed to have fallen asleep standing at the window. “And?” This was wrong, this version of Rodney McKay was just wrong. Rodney leaned against the window, staring at the muted reflection of John behind him, “I was remembering when I was a kid.” There was something crucial here, some make-or-break line that John could either cross or back away from and never come near again. John crossed the room, stripping off his jacket and slipping the straps free on his thigh holster, “Oh yeah? I bet you lived in the same house your whole life, didn’t you?” He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the laces on his boots and toeing them off. He did not miss the almost grateful look Rodney threw over his shoulder. “Yeah, we moved in when I was one, but I lived there until I could move into the dorms during college.” Rodney edged closer to the bed, eyeballing the spot next to John. “So what specific memory sparked your little…off episode?” John waved his hand in the air, then grinned and patted the bed next to him. “The year I was eight, my dad started taking his vacations in September…” ~*~ The huge old maple trees, the ones that were probably older than Canada itself, always started turning colors the end of August, and this year was the first time Rodney actually noticed the transformation. Mom drove him into town to the library, took three year old Jeannie to story time and then out for a girls only lunch while Rodney devoured all the books on the subject. She also threatened the librarian with the seventh level of hell if she tried to keep Rodney out of the age restricted rooms again. Just because Photosynthesis and Procreation were in the same section wasn’t enough justification to Mrs. McKay. Mom did things like that, she may not have known ninety percent of the stuff her Rodney knew and talked about, but she would fight tooth and nail to give him the opportunity to learn more. Rodney checked out three books, because that’s all the library would let him, and spent the rest of the week looking up all the unfamiliar terms and taking notes. By the time his dad took his vacation in September, Rodney could reasonably predict the order in which the leaves would turn. That first Saturday morning, Dad gave Rodney his first pair of chamois gloves and a rake just long enough for his arms, taking him out to the back reaches of the yard before Mom and Jeannie got out of bed. Rodney spent the first hour telling Dad all about the process, the experiments that he had set up and why drying leaves in Mom’s oven was a bad idea. Dad listened with that careful, thoughtful expression he gave his accountants and stock holders, the one that told Rodney ‘You are worth my time’. Then Dad sat him down next to a pile of leaves, made him take off his gloves and close his eyes. “What do you smell Rodney?” Rodney could hear the brittle crackle of dried leaves being crushed; he could feel his dad pressing in close, sitting right next to him in the mound of leaves. It smelled dry, dusty. Like the dirt Jeannie liked to play in. It smelled like wind and sunshine and the promise of rain. Like school books and mystery meat lunches and old Mrs. Carmichael’s blue hair. “Don’t ever lose that Rodney. Life isn’t just about the next formula, or the next experiment. Don’t forget what a dried up old maple leaf smells like, just because you know how it got all old and dried up.” They spent the rest of the morning raking leaves, Dad telling Rodney about his trip to Rome and wanting to go back with the whole family. Mom called them in for lunch, serving hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches to her wind-swept men, then bundled Jeannie up in her mittens and muffler, turning her loose on the nice neat piles Dad and Rodney had worked so hard on. ~*~ “I’d forgotten that leaves smelled like that, actually.” Rodney shifted, turning his head to face John. He noticed absently that they had both had lain down at some point, and were pressed shoulder to shoulder and that John’s knee was wedged up close to his. “Like dirt and tomato soup.” John turned his head to face Rodney, smiling at the dopey sleepy look Rodney gave him. “Thank you Major, I’ve never told anybody about that before.” Rodney closed his eyes, and when John felt Rodney brush his pinkie against John’s thumb, John closed his eyes too. |
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