// high above //

High above them, higher than Rodney ever remembers being, he can see the pale belly of a single moon. It hangs in the air like a sullen jewel, full and ripe and faraway, beyond his reach, even though he can make it vanish with his thumbnail pressed against the sky.

Gatharwen, he thinks, the word rising unbidden from somewhere deep inside, nonsensical enough to stay trapped behind his teeth, waiting patiently on the tip of his tongue. Tree-bark, coarse and uneven, at his back, and across from him, waist-deep in silver grass, Sheppard bites into a blood orange.

Rodney watches, the juice glinting as it slips between John’s fingers, a slow trail across his chin and throat, and even from where he’s sprawled, Rodney can smell the bright tang of citrus. There’s no fear in the scent of it, nothing more than a brief skitter of his pulse, smoothing out into the steady heartbeat he can feel echoed at his wrist. John’s teeth are sharp and white, his eyes dark and wild, the lines of his jaw shadowed as they move in a slow, sure rhythm.

Another bite into soft flesh, and Rodney’s belly tightens, and this time his pulse does skip, the rush of blood a soft thunder in his ears. He’s suddenly wide-awake, every sense sharpened into hyper-reality, tipping him headfirst into a freefall.

Sheppard grins, white, white teeth and sticky skin, moving through the silver grasses like a ghost carved from the air. Rodney gets to his feet, losing sight of him for barely a moment, but it’s enough to set his heart trip-hammering into the first spirals of panic. He curls his fingers, sets bloody half-moons into his palms, and takes a breath.

And there, just ahead, his fingers skimming through silver like a whisper, John stands at the edge of the water, his eyes closed and head tipped back, offering the lines of his throat to the cold beauty of the moon. In a single, fluid motion, he turns and slips into the river, gliding beneath the cool blue, lost to Rodney’s sight.

Numbers tumble through Rodney’s head, prime, not-prime, dates from another place and another life, lines and lines of figures stuttering across a screen, spilling out from beneath his fingertips. There was once comfort in those numbers, answers to questions he’d never found the way to ask, a sense of order in the chaos. Now the numbers are so much simpler—three years, two people, one distant planet, and a different kind of life altogether.

It’s seventy-five seconds before he sees John again, his sleek head rising to the surface in a glide of slow ripples, moonlight turning the water around him to liquid gold in a strange kind of alchemy. His eyes open and fix on Rodney, dark points of heat, every question Rodney has ever had answered in the space of a heartbeat. He watches as John rises from the water, flesh and bone and muscle, his skin damp and scented mineral-cool.

Even if there were no moon overhead to light his way, Rodney would know just where to go, how to find his way in the dark. John’s clever fingers fit into the lines of his hip, the small of back, the curve of his belly. No trace of blood orange on his skin anymore, but his mouth is open and wanting, the ghost of some dangerous secret still lingering there, just waiting to be found.

Rodney closes his eyes because he knows the way even in the dark, has been here so many times before. There’s no danger in this brand-new life, not even in the faint spill of citrus across his tongue, a tiny thrill flickering along his spine as he curls helplessly upward, John’s legs around his waist and nothing but pale moonlight filling his head.

~ for lily.

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