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“OK, this is just pathetic,” Mitchell had said, leaning in John’s doorway and watching him fidget with the hem of his sweatshirt. “Have you even been outside the Mountain since you got back?”

John had shrugged, wanting to tell him to go away. “Maybe.”

Mitchell had grinned, the same charming grin he’d had on Atlantis, and John had shoved hard at the memory. “Get changed. You might even get to see daylight if you don’t take too long.”

John can’t remember why he said yes – maybe because he’d said goodbye to Rodney that morning, maybe because he’d been starting to feel like the Mountain was crushing him, maybe because Mitchell had kept grinning – but he had and now he’s walking out of a bar in the middle of Colorado Springs, just drunk enough to feel worse than he had when they left the base.

Mitchell, who John suspects isn’t drunk at all, fumbles for his car keys and lets John lean against him when the path swerves, suddenly and alarmingly. “You want to come back to my place?” Mitchell asks. John raises an eyebrow at him and he laughs. “To sleep it off, unless you think I want to risk running into my boss after I got you drunk.”

“Not really.” John leans against the car when Mitchell moves away. It was hard to excuse himself drinking on Atlantis, when he never knew if he was going to be called on to defend them against the Wraith, and he can’t remember the last time he drank enough to get drunk.

“Get in, then.” Mitchell’s still laughing, soft, but he fastens John’s seatbelt for him, untwists it carefully, his fingers cool against John’s neck. John’s not sure he’s that drunk.

The street lights pass in a hypnotic blur, the rumbling of the engine mixing with the low voice on the radio, and John forces himself not to think about silent flying, or how much he missed car stereos when they first got to Atlantis. He keeps telling himself not to do it and sometimes he even succeeds, but the alcohol’s made him maudlin and he’s so homesick it hurts.

“Home –“ Mitchell starts to say as they pull up, then seems to think better of it. “We’re here,” he says quietly, and lets John get out under his own power.

The lights are fuzzy round the edges and John stumbles on the step into the building.

“Whoa, hey.” Mitchell catches him with an arm round his waist, leaves it there as he calls the elevator. “You OK?”

John wants to say no, but he’s never said it like that before, and he won’t start now. Antarctica became normal, eventually, and Earth was home for a long time. This isn’t the end of the world.

His body’s traitorous, though, when he’s drunk, and he leans into Mitchell when the elevator lurches into motion. Mitchell’s still got his arm round John so he doesn’t fall, making it kind of like a hug, which is a little weird. John tilts his face up, sees Mitchell looking down at him, and then they’re kissing, hands tight on each other, as the elevator keeps rising.

It doesn’t feel like home, not by anyone’s standards, but John keeps doing it anyway, because it’s better than anything else in his life right now.

The Morning After

John’s got used to the feeling of disorientation that comes from waking up underground instead of in Atlantis, but it’s actually even worse to wake up to natural light. He blinks cautiously, waiting for the shadows to resolve into meaningful shapes.

He’s still lying there, trying to figure out why he’s alone in bed in a strange place, when he hears a familiar voice somewhere else in the apartment. The bedroom door’s open just far enough to let in a little light, but not far enough for him to be able to hear what Cameron’s saying. It sounds like he’s on the phone, long pauses between the murmur of his voice.

John scrubs his hands over his face and through his hair then drags himself out of bed. The clothes he was wearing last night are in a heap by the bed, mixed with Cameron’s, but his own jeans and t-shirt are easy to pick out. He ducks quickly into the bathroom to brush his teeth – because of course Cameron Mitchell is the kind of person who has spare toothbrushes for unexpected overnight guests – then pads after the sound of Cameron’s voice, the carpet soft under his bare feet.

He finds Cameron in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, stirring milk into his coffee, nodding at whatever the person on the other end of the phone is saying. He’s got his back to John, so he leans in the doorway, waiting. He feels weirdly reticent about wandering around uninvited, considering he had Cameron’s dick in his mouth last night – he’s pretty sure that at least gives him permission to make himself some coffee for the mild hangover he can feel threatening.

Cameron’s wearing a red and white striped bathrobe that stops just above his knees and John suspects he’s not wearing anything under it. He’s hit by a sudden visceral flashback, Cameron’s skin smooth under his palms as he pushed Cameron’s shirt away, kissing hard on Cameron’s couch, a little drunk from Cameron’s first attempt to comfort him after Rodney left for Area 51.

“John?” John blinks back into the room, Cameron frowning at him from the other side of the kitchen, his phone call over. “You OK?”

“Yeah.” John nods. He’s suddenly unsure what to do with his hands; he doesn’t usually stay the night unless he’s involved with the person and has to. Doesn’t remember agreeing to stay either, which means they fell asleep.

“You want some coffee?” Cameron flicks the kettle on again before John’s finished reflexively nodding. “You didn’t have to – that was Sam on the phone, Landry’s put our briefing back to this afternoon so…”

He trails off and John realises that this is Cameron’s version of his own desire to shove his hands into his pockets. It’s oddly reassuring, makes it much easier to move close enough to Cameron to take the mug of coffee he holds out. “I’ll call a cab back to the Mountain,” he offers.

Cameron runs a hand through his hair before picking up his coffee again, leaving it sticking up the way John’s usually does. In his robe, with his unsure expression, he doesn’t look anything like the golden boy of the Air Force.

“I can give you a ride, when I go in,” he says, his head tilted down so John can’t see his expression.

John hesitates – he’s probably going to be seeing a lot of Cameron from the way Landry was talking – but he’s already spent the night and he can’t really imagine things getting any worse than they are. Being thrown off the Stargate programme wouldn’t even be in the top ten of bad things that could happen right now.

He puts his mug down firmly. “That thing makes you look like a fuzzy candy cane,” he says. Cameron smiles. “You should take it off.”

It sounded pretty dumb in his head, and even worse out loud, but Cameron’s eyes, when he looks up, are dark and interested, He takes a step towards John, near enough to touch, though he doesn’t. He runs a hand round the back of his neck instead. “You’d, er… you’d be a little overdressed,” he says, and his face does something weird, like he’s heard what he just said and wishes he hadn’t.

John really doesn’t know Cameron all that well, but he kind of likes him, and not everyone takes mockery as a sign of affection. Cameron’s smiling though, biting his lip a little.

“Can we pretend we didn’t just say that?” Cameron asks.

John nods, reaching up to replace Cameron’s hand with his own on the back of Cameron’s neck. “Let’s start over,” he suggests, and pulls Cameron in to kiss him.

He’s right: Cameron’s not wearing anything under the robe, and he does look much better out of it, and back in bed.

Storm

“Um,” Cam says intelligently when he opens his front door. He’s not surprised to see John standing there – he did just buzz him up – but he is a little surprised to see John standing there in jeans and leather jacket, dripping wet. His hair is flat under the weight of water in it, the collar of his shirt is curled up and almost see-through, his jeans are a couple shades darker than Cam thinks they were originally, and he’s left a trail of boot-prints from the elevator to Cam’s door.

“It’s raining,” John says, wiping at the water drops running into his eyes.

“Yes,” Cam agrees. The storm obliges with a crack of thunder to punctuate his comment. “It’s been raining for the last three hours.”

“I know.” John wipes at his face again, then runs his hand through his hair, sending water in every direction, including Cam’s.

“So you decided it was a good time for a walk?” he asks, and John just *looks* at him, the way he looks when he talks about his new team, like Cam’s so stupid John despairs of him. Cam figures it comes from two and half years of spending every day with McKay.

“Should I be worried that you think I’m an emo teenager?” John asks. Cam actually thinks he should be more worried that John’s using the word in casual conversation, but he knows better than to say this.

“I’m not the one walking around the city in the rain,” he says instead. “You coming in?”

Johns nods, brushes past him. Cam closes the door; when he turns, John’s crouched down, battling with his sodden boot laces. “I’ll get you a towel,” he offers. “And some dry clothes.”

He comes back with sweats and a towel to find John sitting against the wall, still struggling with the same boot. He looks up, gives Cam a tired smile.

“You all right?” Cam asks, crouching down to start on John’s other boot, picking apart the firmly tied knot. When John doesn’t answer, he tries again. “You want to tell me why you walked here in the rain?”

John gives up on his boot and reaches for the towel, rubbing his hair. Cam suspects it’s not a coincidence that this lets him cover his face, especially when he says, “I forgot I could get a cab until I was halfway here.”

It should be funny – it is funny, distantly, or will be, eventually – but John sounds worn down. It’s the first time Cam’s heard him sound anything other than relentlessly normal and fine since he followed his people back through the gate, barely a week ago, and it’s that more than anything else that stops him asking why John’s in his apartment. They’ve only been sleeping together for a matter of days, and they don’t have enough previous history for him to expect John to seek him out.

He finally gets John’s lace untied and pulls his boot off, then starts on the one John abandoned. “How’s the apartment hunting going?”

John drops the towel, his hair drier, but sticking up in a way that makes him look several years younger than he really is, even with the sardonic smile on his face. “Aside from the guy the SGC found me being convinced that windows are an optional extra, great.” He shrugs, watching Cam’s hands. “No, fine. One more place to see, but I’m probably gonna take the one I looked at yesterday.”

Twenty minute drive from the Mountain, Cam remembers, close enough to get there fast in an emergency. Not that Landry’s likely to call him; no-one below SG-5 gets hauled in unless the end of the world is *really* imminent. “If you need a hand moving, I know a guy who’ll lend me his truck.”

“Thanks. Figured I’d bribe a couple of marines into helping me. I haven’t got that much stuff.”

The Daedalus is due by the end of the week, bringing everything that couldn’t come through the wormhole. Cam’s never seen John’s room on Atlantis, but he’s seen his quarters on a couple of different bases on Earth, before their careers diverged. John takes travelling light to extremes.

He tugs off John’s other boot and sets them on the doormat to dry, then takes John’s hand and pulls him to his feet. John sways into him slightly and puts a hand on his waist, catching his balance. “You all right?” Cam asks again. “What’ve you been doing all day?”

“Training run with SG-13,” John says. Cam knows them – two geologists who run marathons for fun, and a couple of Air Force officers who should have been marines and kind of scare him a little bit. No wonder John looks ready to keel over, running around any planet with the four of them for the day; they consider it their duty to try and break any new recruit, and apparently two years on Atlantis haven’t exempted John from this.

“Get changed,” he tells John, taking the towel back from him. The thunder crashes again, followed by a burst of lightning that has the overhead light flickering; the storm’s set in for the night.

John pulls the hood up on Cam’s sweatshirt and pads after him, barefoot, until Cam pushes him onto the sofa. “Sit. Stay. Find something decent to watch. I’ll make some coffee.”

When he walks back in, coffee mugs in one hand, tin of brownies from his mom in the other, John’s got the remote in one hand, the other supporting his head on the arm of the sofa. His eyes are closed, and he’s almost snoring.

Cam stares at him for a long moment, wondering what the hell he’s getting himself into here, then leaves the coffee and brownies on the table, and goes to throw John’s wet clothes in the dryer.

(Mis)Adventures in the Milky Way Galaxy

John answers the door in jeans with a hole in the knee and a sweatshirt that could fit both of them, his hair sticking up in damp clumps. He looks how Cam feels, leaning on the door and smiling a tired smile.

“Rough day?” Cam asks, nudging John out of the way so he can step into the apartment and close the door. It doesn’t look any more lived in than it did the last time Cam was there. He doesn’t take this as a good sign.

John drifts after him into the tiny kitchen, watching him stow the beer he brought and pull out a couple of bottles of water, like this is Cam’s place not his. He shrugs in response to Cam’s question and catches the bottle Cam throws at him.

“You?”

Cam can’t stop the groan that escapes. He doesn’t even want to *think* about it, much less talk about it with someone who’s yet to put together a full sentence. “You’re in tomorrow?” John nods. “You’ll hear all about it then.”

John’s face scrunches in sympathy, and, yeah, sometimes Cam forgets that he knows what it’s like to do this every day, even if he’s only been at the SGC for a couple of weeks. It’s weirdly easy to forget that John’s been in Atlantis for over two years, and, from the mission reports Cam sometimes stays up too late reading, Pegasus’s natives are about as much fun to deal with as the Ori and the Lucien Alliance.

“You want something to eat?” John asks. Cam keeps his eyes from going to the open-but-still-packed boxes on the kitchen counter. He doesn’t think either of them are up to the amount of work it’ll take to find stuff to cook with, even assuming John actually has any food, which is by no means certain.

“Nah, I’m good.” He swallows half the bottle of water, though, ridiculously thirsty. He doesn’t remember drinking anything all day, which might explain it, or might just be his memory.

“You want to go to bed?” John’s still leaning in the kitchen doorway, his body tilted at an uncomfortable looking angle, so Cam’s not sure if he means for sleep or for sex: he thinks it’s probably not a good sign that he’s kind of hoping for the former, when this is the longest continuous period they’ve ever been together.

“Yeah.” He drains the last of the water and takes John’s unopened bottle from him, replacing it on the kitchen counter. When he turns back, John pushes away from the door frame and into his personal space and they kiss, soft and slow. He’s definitely in way over his head, because he can’t imagine this ever getting old.

John’s hands are on his shoulders, holding him still; his own hands settle on John’s waist, and John gasps, pulling away. The gasping he’s sort of used to, but it’s not usually followed by pulling away, or accompanied by the grimace on John’s face. “What?” he asks, letting his hands fall away.

“Nothing.” John steps back, twisting his whole upper body like he’s trying to shrug something off. Cam remembers the weird angle he was leaning at and grabs for the hem of John’s sweatshirt before John can stop him. “Hey!” John says sharply, then shrugs and lets Cam pull it up.

His entire right side is dark with bruising, the skin rough with abrasions, hot to Cam’s careful touch. He casts his mind back to John talking about the mission he had with his new team. “I thought you were cataloguing rabbits or ducks or something. What the hell happened?”

John pushes Cam’s hand away and pulls his sweatshirt back down. “Three-legged hens,” he corrects, dead-pan, making Cam grin. “Let’s just say babbling brooks and Marines don’t mix.”

Cam’s dying to ask because, even if it’s left him with obviously painful bruises, it sounds like John had more fun on his mission than he did, but John looks so utterly miserable, he bites down on the urge. His job’s mostly a step up from what he was doing before, while John’s is a massive step down, in a place he doesn’t want to be. Plus, three-legged hens – their own galaxy is supposed to be less freaky, not more, and anyway, who in their right mind cares about cataloguing hens, however many legs they have?

Aware that he’s rambling, even if it is only in his mind, Cam pulls it together, and slings his arm carefully round John’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s go to bed. It’ll look better in the morning.”

John leans into him, just slightly, and says, “no, it won’t.”

Keep On Living

John suggests it while they’re eating lunch, both in the Mountain at the same time for once, feeling like an idiot and trying not to sound like it’s a date.

“A carnival?” Cam repeats, raising an eyebrow over his coffee mug, so John can’t see the rest of his expression.

“I like carnivals,” John says, poking at his food. At least on Atlantis the food tasted odd for a reason, he thinks, then forces himself to stop.

“I guess.” Cam sounds dubious now, though he’s half-smiling. “If you don’t mind risking your life on some of the rides.”

“And that’ll be different from your day job how?” John asks.

“At least with the Ori you can run away,” he says, then shrugs and nods. “All right, fine. But don’t blame me if you lose a limb on some ride that hasn’t been replaced since before we were born.”

“Deal,” John says, and abandons his probably-meant-to-be pasta for dessert.

“You’re making deals without asking my advice?” asks a voice by John’s ear, but when he looks up, Vala’s looking at Cam, not him, her head tilted and her eyebrows drawn together in a parody of disapproval. He looks around automatically until he spots Jackson putting a salad next to two coffee mugs and glaring at her.

“Would I do that?” Cam asks innocently, drawing John’s attention back just in time to see Vala’s hand slide over his tray towards his slice of cake.

He closes his hand round her wrist at the last moment and growls, “don’t even think about it,” in his best scare-the-Marines voice, the one he doesn’t need to use any more, because his Marines do what he tells them without question. He’s not at all sure he likes it, but there’s plenty of things he could say that about, and it’s been a month, so he’s decided it’s time to start getting over it.

“No, sir,” Vala says with a mock salute and falls into the chair next to him, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin on her clasped hands to gaze at Cam, who leans back slightly, though John’s fairly sure she doesn’t notice. “So? What’s the secret deal?”

“We’re in the middle of the commissary,” Cam points out reasonably. “Not the best place for secret deals.”

“So you won’t mind telling me, will you?” Vala asks, and John can’t help smiling when Cam meets his eyes with a resigned expression. He’s done comparing SG-1 with his own team, but the prospect of putting her on a team with Ronon is almost entertaining. He doesn’t remember them meeting when SG-1 came to Atlantis.

“There’s a carnival in town,” Cam tells her. “Sheppard’s trying to talk me into going with him to risk our lives on the rides.” He nods at Jackson as he takes the last free seat and hands Vala the salad and a fork, batting her hands away from a plate of something potato based.

“Rides?” she asks, stabbing Jackson with her fork and smiling sweetly when he glares at her. “Like on a… what are they called… ass?”

“Donkey,” Cam corrects quickly. John watches in amused surprise as he looks down and away, and wonders what stories he’s told her about donkey rides as a kid. “And no, they’re like… people sit in carriages and – like a slide, or some of them go in circles…”

Even Jackson looks up from the file he’s got open in front of him as Cam trails off. “Do you need me to find you a picture book?” he asks, sounding like it’s a genuine offer.

Cam glares at him. “I’m fine, thanks, Jackson. Though you’re the linguist, actually, why don’t you give it a try?”

Jackson, of course, does – he’s like Rodney in that way, can’t resist a challenge, unlike John’s new scientist who actually has, on occasion, run *away* from a challenge - and he talks at length about different types of rides, and the history and tradition of traveling carnivals. When he starts on the folklore attached to them, Vala puts down her spoon and puts her hand on Jackson’s arm, leaning sideways to look at Cam from under her eyelashes. John suspects she knows it’s pointless, just does it to mess with Cam’s head.

“It’s for fun, right?” she asks. “People go to these places to have fun?”

“And eat too much junk food,” Cam agrees. He glances across at John, who nods, knowing what Vala’s going to say next.

“I want to go!” she chirps brightly, and Jackson stops talking. Looks like he knows what’s coming next too. “Daniel… “ She turns her smile on him. “Take me to the carnival, Daniel!”

“I’m sure –“ Jackson starts to say, but he must catch the way Cam and John both stiffen because he changes the sentence. “I don’t like carnival rides,” he says instead.

Vala pouts, and John gathers the remains of his lunch. “Well, I’ve got mission briefing in ten minutes, so you kids have fun without me.”

He can hear Vala pleading as he leaves the commissary, but he suspects the outcome’s a foregone conclusion.

*

“So,” John asks, leaning one elbow on the security desk. “We’ve got company, I assume?”

Cam leans against the wall next to him and closes his eyes, visions of paperwork dancing in his head until he rubs his eyes and John replaces them. It’s easier to stare like this, when no-one but him can see what he’s looking at, and he catalogues John’s posture, his hair and his eyes and thinks that he actually looks relaxed, or as relaxed as Cam’s seen him, outside of right after they’ve had sex. He’s not stupid enough to point it out. “Yeah. Vala insisted.”

John huffs a laugh, and Cam opens his eyes to watch him smile. “Thought she might.”

“That OK?” Cam asks. He’s feeling kind of weird about the whole evening, and he’s actually glad, in a way, that they’ve got other people along, making it more like a group outing and less like a date. Not that he’d mind if it was a date, but…

He’s cut off from his own rambling thoughts by bouncing footsteps and turns to watch Vala come round the corner, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt that must belong to Daniel, her hair in pigtails again, grinning at them both. “Ready, boys?”

“Where’s your chaperone?” he asks. She was still working on Daniel when Cam left them to it, but Daniel’s the only one who doesn’t believe Vala can persuade him of anything given enough time.

“I thought that was your job,” Sam says, grinning at him from the end of the corridor, and Cam does a bit of a double-take.

“Colonel Carter,” John says, his voice mocking and warm.

“Colonel Sheppard,” Sam says back, and they smile at each other. Cam doesn’t get them at all, and they both shrug when he asks, but they’ve got some sort of weird quasi-friendship going on. Since they both enjoy it, he’s chalking it up to some McKay-exposure induced bond and letting them get on with it.

“Let’s go.” Vala hooks one arm through Sam’s and the other through his and propels them both towards the door. Cam resists the urge to grab John’s wrist, checking over his shoulder that he’s following instead.

The carnival’s set up in a field within walking distance of the base, and they don’t walk far before Cam can see the lights on the rollercoaster. Vala’s let go of them by then, walking a little ahead with Sam, so Cam nudges John with his shoulder until he looks over. He smiles slightly, but his eyes are lit with anticipation, like Cam hasn’t seen since John offered to show him the puddlejumpers back on Atlantis. Whatever he was going to say dies in his throat, and he just grins back like an idiot.

“Come on!” Vala calls back to them. She sends them a glare when Cam waves and starts walking again, but he watches Sam’s affectionate expression and wonders if he’ll manage to put the conversation off till the evening’s over.

Vala’s like a little kid when they get into the carnival ground, watching the rides with wide eyes and a gleeful expression. Cam puts a hand on her shoulder, half-pushing, half-leading her through the crowds, following Sam and John, who’s walking with intent. Cam’s not at all surprised when they come out at the foot of the ferris wheel set up in the middle of the ground. They may only have been sleeping together regularly for a few weeks, but he’s known John Sheppard long enough to predict a few things.

“Yes,” Vala crows happily when she sees it, and shrugs out from under his hand, already moving forward. “Can we go?”

“That’s the plan,” John drawls, looking at Cam, who shakes his head. “Mitchell?”

“No way,” Cam says firmly, taking a step back like that’ll help him. “Anything else, but you are not getting me up on that thing.”

Sam’s reining Vala in before she gets swept up in the line, and there are enough people around for no-one to notice where John’s hand goes when he moves closer to Cam. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he offers, low-voiced.

“With Vala and Sam watching?” Cam asks, closing his hand round John’s wrist but not moving his hand. He’s a good guy, but he’s not a saint, not with John’s voice sounding like that in his ear. “I didn’t know you liked an audience.”

“Two person carriage,” John points out. “Come on.”

“No,” Cam says firmly, and moves John’s hand, spotting Sam steering Vala back to them. “I’m not going up there.”

“Why not?” Vala asks, sounding genuinely curious. Cam wishes they’d brought Jackson with them instead, or even Teal’c, who knows but wouldn’t share.

“He’s scared of heights.” No such luck with Sam, of course, Cam thinks, glaring at her as she smiles innocently back at him.

“Scared of heights?” Vala asks, looking between the three of them. “Aren’t you a pilot?”

“Planes are different,” Cam says, praying he’s not blushing. John’s face on the edge of his vision is bright with laughter and he thinks for one hopelessly sappy instant that it’s worth a little humiliation.

Sam chooses that moment to take pity on him. “Go on,” she says, nudging John forward. “I’ll look after this one.”

“Sure?” John asks, and Cam swats him over the back of his head, saying, “just try not to fall to your death.”

“We’ll do our best,” John promises solemnly, and follows Vala into the crowd.

Cam watches them climb into one of the gently swinging carriages until Sam touches his arm. She’s giving him the big sister look she’s somehow perfected in the years they’ve known each other, even though he’s a couple of years older than her. “You and Colonel Sheppard?” she asks.

He thinks about denying it for about three seconds, before he remembers that Sam might not be the most observant person when it comes to people, but is also rarely wrong when she does notice. “Since the expedition came home,” he says, turning to watch the wheel circle slowly. He can’t pick out which carriage John and Vala are in.

“I thought…” He hears Sam shuffle slightly, putting her hands in her pockets. “I thought, him and McKay, when we were on Atlantis.”

Cam grins at her. He spent a week thinking that before they slept together the first time, then another week trying to figure out how to ask. “McKay’s straight.” Incurably straight, John said with a wry smile, and Cam figured he’d leave that one alone. “He wants you, remember?”

“Don’t remind me,” Sam says with a groan. She puts her hand back on Cam’s arm, and when he turns to her, she’s looking at him gravely. “You’re OK?”

“Yeah,” Cam says. He looks back at the ferris wheel, wishing for this conversation to be over.

“He’s OK?” Sam asks, still serious, and Cam wonders if this is what it feels like to date someone’s younger brother.

“I’m not going to break his heart, if that’s what you’re asking,” he tells her, smiling, because there isn’t anyone from the Atlantis expedition that he’d describe as OK right now. Sam shakes her head at him, but they’ve known each other a long time, she knows what he’s not saying, and even if she doesn’t, Vala and John are walking back and the chance is gone.

“That was fantastic,” Vala says. “You can see the Mountain from up there.”

Cam looks up and feels dizzy. “Sounds like a blast,” he says dryly.

“How’d you ever decide to join the Air Force?” John asks, shaking his head and grinning, and Cam thinks it’s the first time he’s seen him look happy since the expedition came home.

He wraps his hand round the back of John’s neck and gives him a push back into the crowd. “Come on, let’s go get some cotton candy.”

John leans back a little, bringing his mouth close to Cam’s ear, and says, “I guess I might still make it worth your while.”

Not One Word

“Not one word,” John says, and all Cam can see is his hair, and his right hand curled round the edge of the door, but that’s enough for him to have to fight down a grin. “Seriously,” John says, not moving even when Cam rests his hand on the door to push it open. “I know Marines who’d kill you in your sleep if I asked.”

It’s not the first time John’s mentioned the Atlantis military personnel lately – Cam thinks he probably knows more about Major Lorne than he does about anyone at the SGC outside his team, and he’s only met the guy briefly, twice. Cam doesn’t point it out, but it’s just about the first time in four and a half weeks that the comment’s come without animosity behind it.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, and pushes a little harder at the door. “Do you need me to swear it in blood as well, cos if you do, you’ll have to find me a knife.”

“You don’t have a penknife on you?” John asks. “What sort of Air Force officer are you?”

Cam wonders for a moment if he’s drunk, then dismisses that idea, because John’s a morose drunk, not a joking, teasing one. Not that he minds being teased. “The off-duty kind. Also the about-to-get-reported-for-loitering-if-you-don’t-open-the door kind.”

“Fine,” John huffs, and steps back into the dark entrance of his apartment.

Cam’s first inclination is to reach for the light switch, but there’s enough light coming in from the open door for him to see John. He gets a flicker of déjà vu, reminded of the night after John’s first mission with the SGC.

“Marines who can kill you in your sleep,” John says again, closing the door firmly behind Cam.

“I sleep with my gun under my pillow.” Cam presses him back against the door, kisses him, and doesn’t give John a chance to point out that Cam locks his gun away at the Mountain every night before he leaves. Too many military horror stories for him to keep it in the house, even if he does live mostly alone.

John’s hands tighten on his shoulders, drawing him back out of his head and he finally realizes what’s bothering him about the kiss. “What the hell is that stuff? It tastes like…” he gives up, pulling back just far enough to see John blink once at the question.

“Oh,” he says, pushing Cam back far enough to walk round him into the lit kitchen. “I’m honestly not sure I want to know. Some mix of plant extracts, I guess.”

“Is it toxic?” Cam asks, then wishes he hadn’t when John gives him the look he usually reserves for the Marines on his team.

“Yeah, they let me out of the Mountain covered in a toxic substance.”

“Well,” Cam feels compelled to point out, “they did let you out of it dyed pink.”

*

M37-4XG is a pleasant planet, with a small nomadic culture that will be on the other side of the planet when they visit. There are no known predators, the planet wasn’t touched by the Gou’ald and as far as anyone can tell, the Ori are similarly uninterested in it. There are three major lakes, one near the stargate, where a type of grass grows. The grass is a staple food of the questrells Babiss is breeding in one of the zoology labs, and it only grows on this and two other planets, so John’s team have been tagged for the latest supply run.

“Wow, the thrilling life of an intergalactic explorer,” Rodney says over the phone, when John finally folds and tells him. It’s been Rodney’s response to John’s last three missions as well, and John’s pretty sure that it makes Rodney feel better to brush off John’s life as even more boring than his own.

“You were the one always complaining about having to run for your life.” John’s new people have only had to do that once, and that was from a rhino-like-thing that turned out to be harmless. John hasn’t mentioned that to Rodney.

“Yes, but at least it came with the prospect of exciting new science,” Rodney points out, and John doesn’t tell him that he’d trade safety and alien animals for science and running for his life any day. He thinks Rodney probably knows that already.

*

They don’t find the nomadic residents of M37-4XG.

What they do find are three members of an inter-stargate rare-breeds trading network, who’ve come for the same grasses that John’s people have, and who aren’t prepared to give it up without a fight.

“Look, we can talk about this,” John offers, hoping Tyler and Wallace aren’t aiming at the same guy he is. This isn’t the time to miss Teyla and Ronon and the semi-psychic link they had in these kinds of situations, but he finds himself doing it anyway. “We’re reasonable people, you seem…” There’s no way to finish that sentence that won’t be a massive lie or get them killed. “Babiss, how much of the grass do we need again?”

“You’re trying to take our livelihood from us,” the guy John’s aiming at – the one he figures must be the leader – says, and he really doesn’t sound like a reasonable person. “We cannot allow this.”

“We’re really not,” John says. “We just want, maybe two sacks of that stuff, a handful of seeds and we’ll be out of your hair.” Or the other way around – apparently inter-stargate rare-breeds traders don’t have hair, which, having tangled with a questrell three days ago, John can see the virtue of. “Why don’t we all just put our weapons down and –“

And let the six guys creeping up behind them while they were apparently all distracted leap on them and cover their heads with hessian sacks.

*

The traders appear, holding at gun-point and kidnapping notwithstanding, to be nice enough guys; they march John, Babiss and his two Marines, with whom John will be having strong words about vigilance when they get back, back to the stargate and dump them, but they don’t make any attempt at beating them up, which makes a nice change from Pegasus.

It’s about the only thing that does.

“We have heard of people like you,” the leader says, looking down at John, who’s reminded of his first CO, who liked him even less than the ones that followed. “People who follow honest traders through the ring, steal what they have come for and then take over their trade when there is no option remaining.”

Corporate take-over, stargate-style, John thinks. “We’re really, really not those guys,” he says, not that he thinks it’s going to do them any good. He wishes, again, for Teyla’s diplomacy, Ronon’s glare or even, at a pinch, Rodney’s distracting babble. What he’s got are two silent but not-particularly-deadly Marines and a zoologist who’s more scared than Beckett faced with the control chair. And himself. “I told you, we just want a bit of the grass. We’ve got no plans to take our questrells on tour. We’re happy to keep them for ourselves, we just need to feed them.”

“No-one crosses the Sellari and remains unscathed,” the leader intones. If he couldn’t understand every word, John would be starting to wonder if the gate translation device was working on this planet. “You will suffer our punishment.”

*

“He dyed your team pink as punishment for trying to take his grass?” Cam asks. He’s got diplomacy skills – well, some, anyway – he’s not going to laugh. Not while John’s watching him, at any rate.

“Not them. Just me,” John corrects him.

“Oh.” Cam takes a big gulp of coffee. “Any idea how long till it comes off?”

John glares for a minute, like he suspects Cam of laughing at him on the inside. “It’s not water soluble,” he says, sounding like he’s grinding his teeth. Leaning on the other side of the table, all his visible skin and the tips of his hair bright pink, he looks like a demented elf from a fantasy on LSD. “Lam gave me something that should help, but she thinks it’s going to stick around for at least three more days.”

“Oh,” Cam says again, and he can’t help the laugh that breaks through.

John holds his glare for longer than Cam would have expected, but when it cracks, he actually laughs, stupid and careless, and Cam can easily believe the Atlantis Marines would kill him if this man asked them to.

When they stop laughing, John’s *looking* at him, like he did in the bar, two days after he walked through the gate from Atlantis, and Cam’s not sure what was funny any longer, heat pooling at the base of his spine. “So,” he says, stepping round the table to hook his fingers in John’s belt loops, pull him closer. “Just how much of you did they dye?”

John presses into him, his hands on Cam’s hips. “Find out for yourself,” he says, and Cam barely notices the too-sweet cider flavor of the kiss this time.