// sing blue silver //

It’s ridiculous really, like a scene from every lame teen movie he’s ever seen. His entire room is flickering with soft, unsteady candlelight, a strange glow that sits uneasy in the pit of John’s belly. Rodney will laugh at him, but that’s okay— this is something far bigger than a bruise to his ego. Rodney will laugh, and it will be just fine.



*


Rodney doesn’t laugh. He barely glances at the candles, his fingers moving restlessly as he stands at the foot of John’s bed. “This is,” he starts, but the rest of the words disappear somewhere in the lowlit room, lost to nothingness. After a moment, he shrugs, no more than a brief shimmer in the half-light. “Do you think it will work?”

John doesn’t know any such thing, only that seeing Rodney like this, so still, so seemingly out of reach, cuts right through him moreso than anything else he could ever imagine. “Sure,” he says, hoping he sounds more certain than he feels, “sure it will.”

Rodney murmurs something, too low for John to hear, but he lowers himself to the floor and sits, cross-legged, waiting. He straps the monitor band around his head, and John has to look away when he sees how much Rodney’s hands are shaking, how his careful fingers fumble over cords and wires he knows by heart. He busies himself with the laptop, waiting until Rodney has settled before sitting down opposite him.

There are a thousand things that John wants to say, all of them tangling into a stubborn lump that sits high in his chest, until he’s all-too aware of every word he’s not saying. Rodney waits, watching him expectantly, like he has all the time in the world. But he doesn’t, John knows, and that thought is enough for him to focus, to do what needs to be done.

Concentrate on your breathing, he thinks, clear your mind, go to your happy place-- a hundred different ways of saying the exact same thing, and none of them are nearly enough. But he has to try. “Okay,” he says, and it sounds far too loud in the small space between where he ends and Rodney begins. “Let’s do this.”

Across from him, Rodney nods and closes his eyes. After a moment, John does the same.



*



Blue skies. Endless blue skies, and somewhere just beyond, John can hear the faint sounds of a carousel. A dreamlike slow swoop and dive, notes tumbling through the air toward where he stands, and when he turns, Rodney is close beside him.

“A fairground,” Rodney says, a smile across his lips, and as he speaks, colours spill into John’s awareness, a hundred, a thousand of them, blue and gold and scarlet, a brilliant carnival spreading out at his feet. Towering overhead, above the jangle of sideshows and neon, a ferris wheel, spangled with silver lights, rising up into the clouds. John feels something catch in his chest, some long-forgotten sense memory that leaves the ghost of cotton candy on his tongue, his lips sticky and sugar-sweet.

“For you,” Rodney says, and his fingers are wrapped around John’s, urging him onward, and it feels like he’s floating, feet barely skimming the earth below. They’re at the base of the ferris wheel in what seems like mere seconds, and then John’s climbing aboard, Rodney pressed close to his side, solid and real. Nothing in his head but endless blue skies, the two of them travelling ever-upward, everything they’ve left behind slowly swallowed up by clouds and something older than time itself.



*



John’s eyes snap open, and for a moment, there’s nothing there, just a soft golden glow that shifts endlessly, before it coalesces into something that looks a lot like—

“Rodney?” John’s wide-awake, all-too aware, and just in time to see Rodney shimmer one more time before he’s suddenly just—not there anymore.

Time stretches out into something smeary and soft, and no matter how fast John moves, it feels like forever before he can lift his hand to tap his headset, nothing in his head anymore but helpless, blind panic.



*



“I don’t know,” John says one more time, and it’s all he can say, equal parts of fear and frustration prickling sharp like knives in his belly. Elizabeth’s questions are doing nothing to bring Rodney back, they’re wasting time just sitting here talking, when they could be doing—

Doing what, exactly he doesn’t know. Rodney’s slipped away, out of reach, somewhere beyond the city, maybe beyond even that—and John is the one responsible, no matter how many times Elizabeth tells him otherwise. He was there, he knows. He let Rodney slip through his fingers when he should have been holding on. He—

“I need to go after him,” John says, and he doesn’t care if it sounds as crazy out loud as it does in his head. "There has to be some way I can-—the Ancient device, is it still—“

“John, no.”

Elizabeth’s voice is steel, her sentiment echoed by Zelenka, who adds, “It is too dangerous. There is no way to accurately gauge the level of—“

John’s fist on the tabletop is like a gunshot, and he welcomes the sting that spreads across his palm and tingles in his fingers. “I don’t care. I let him go; I have to get him back. Am I the only one who—“

“No, you’re not. But I’m not losing both of you. Zelenka’s still working on it, and as soon as he has anything concrete we can do, we’ll be doing it. But for now, we just have to wait--”

“Fuck waiting,” John says, and there’s a tiny sliver of pleasure in the way Zelenka steps aside without hesitation to let him pass.



*



Bring him back, John thinks fiercely, making his way through the winding corridors. Not nearly fast enough, and he breaks into a jog. Help bring him back to me.

The city stirs, a slow uncoiling John can feel in his head, buzzing through his limbs, hot in his blood. She’s always slumbering there, on the edge of his consciousness, a strange kind of comfort in the knowledge. He’s never once asked her for anything, even though she’s taken plenty from him: what she’s needed, what she’s wanted.

“Payback’s a bitch,” he mutters, but he trusts her implicitly, letting her guide him through her halls until he’s where he needs to be.


The chair comes to life beneath him, a low hum that settles deep in his bones, wrapping him in a blue glow. Above his head, light unfurls in a scatter of pale diamonds, cycling in a steady pulse, the pure heartbeat of the city.

He’s out there somewhere, John knows. He’s never been so sure of anything in his life. Rodney, who sat in this same place a handful of hours ago, constellations swirling about his head, figures scrolling in endless arrays, broadcasting his brilliance to the room. Rodney, out there somewhere, still waiting.

Blue skies, he thinks, blue like the ocean, blue like ice, blue like science. He senses it—a tiny, almost imperceptible shift somewhere behind his eyes, and then John can feel the breeze against his face, a long-forgotten melody threading its way beneath his skin, and it’s—


*

…”about time you got here,” Rodney says, and when John looks up, he can see him—waving from the next seat up, solid and real and just out of reach. There’s laughter in his words, curving his mouth into a grin, and John has never seen anything so wonderful in his life. Below their seats, miles below, the carnival is a miniature patchwork of colour and movement, tiny figures darting about. They’re back on the ferris wheel, now impossibly tall and still climbing ever-higher toward something unknown.

“We need to—“

“Get back down, yes,” Rodney says, with just a hint of impatience. “I haven’t exactly been sitting here simply enjoying the view, you know.”

John can’t help but grin. He sounds so—normal, here in this place that is anything but, and he lets himself believe that this might just work. He’s in the chair, he knows, but he’s here, too—straddling two realities like a high-wire, putting his trust in the city he carries in his blood.

“You need to come with me,” John says, reaching out to where Rodney waits, the air pressing sullenly back against his fingertips, thick like taffy, sticky and slow. “Grab my hand.” It feels like he’s moving in slow motion, and it takes all his concentration not to tip forward and spin off into nothing.

Rodney’s fingers brush past, infuriatingly close, gone again before John can grasp hold. The higher the wheel ascends, the thicker the air becomes, until his chest is tight and heavy, every breath an effort. He reaches out again, calling to Rodney to do the same, but his words stretch and snap fiercely back past him, and when he tries to speak again, they stay on his tongue, stubborn and useless.

“Can’t,” he hears, so faint it’s barely there, and Rodney’s face is not much more than a pale shadow, so very far away, threads of gold fluttering around where he sits.

Not again, John thinks, not this time, sudden bright anger flooding red-hot through him, instantly followed by a cool blue rush as the city picks him up to lift him higher than he’s ever been in his life.


*

There’s a long moment where he thinks it’s too late, Rodney’s hand just missing his once again, an absence of touch that feels like the end of everything. One last surge of blue, and John is poised on the edge of forever, ready to fall endlessly forward and never look back. He’s almost there, his head filled with nothing but white noise, when there’s a sudden heat against his mouth and long fingers wrapped around his wrist, pulling him down and down, and down.

Back down to the chair, but not quite, caught in some halfway place just above it, Rodney’s fingers wrapped up with his, Rodney’s breath hot against his throat. Close, so close, and John holds on, because he’s not letting go again, not this time. Brilliant blue light wherever he looks, pale veins of the finest silver, the heart of the city, and he and Rodney are in it somehow. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, how long it will be, just that they’re here in this secret floating place, flushed and tangled up together skin to skin.

Not quite there, John thinks, not yet, and if Rodney could read minds before, now he can do that and more—for a bare moment, he’s inside John’s head, a heated rush of thought that leaves John breathless and spinning.

Too far, sorry, Rodney says from somewhere, everywhere, then, this isn’t nearly as easy as I’m making it look. His mouth is an apology, one John accepts with no hesitation, tongue and teeth and fingers, and a sweet, sweet friction he gives himself over to completely.

Slow down, McKay, John thinks, heat pooling in the pit of his belly. We’ve got plenty of time.




*


“A ferris wheel,” Heightmeyer repeats, her voice carefully neutral, and John raises an eyebrow and shrugs.

“A giant one,” Rodney adds with a grin, and she’s still frowning at her notes when they leave her office ten minutes later.



*



“No candles,” Rodney says as he steps into John’s quarters. “That’s an improvement.”

“I gave them all back to Teyla,” John says, from where he’s stretched out on the bed. “Told her you liked it better with the lights on.”

Rodney hums softly as he sits down, the bed dipping gently. “Zelenka’s still trying to work out exactly what happened. There was a massive power spike on the east wing, but no systems seem to have been affected, and he can’t pinpoint the cause.” He smiles. “Think I should tell him?”

“Tell him what?” John’s fingers trace tiny patterns on Rodney’s back, numbers and symbols in loops and swirls, heat bleeding into his fingertips. “That it was my turn to save you?”

Rodney leans into his touch, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. “That you kissed me.”

“You kissed me.”

“You kissed me back. And I saved you.” Rodney stretches out beside John, warm and real and very much there. “I believe that means you’re stuck with me.”

John smiles into the soft hollow of Rodney’s neck, pressing his lips to the pulse that beats just beneath his skin, strong and steady. "Okay," he says. In his head, the city whispers softly, a constant blue-silver beat, giving her blessing. He knows Rodney can hear her, too.

- with thanks to lily.

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