The door to John’s quarters slid open and Rodney slipped inside.
It was weird, being in there without John. The room felt too big, too empty. Rodney felt like he was trespassing which, technically, was true, but it was for a good cause. Carson had started John on the road to recovery from the retrovirus, which he’d pointed out would be a long road and not just an overnight miracle cure.
To that end, Rodney had come to gather some of John’s things. He hoped seeing some familiar items might help get John out of his bug mind a bit quicker. But what to bring? The guitar was too big. Golf magazine? The special candle Teyla had made him, the one that smelled like oiled leather?
Rodney’s eyes fell on the book. It was a running joke between them, how slowly John was working his way through War and Peace – the never-ending book. He dropped down on John’s narrow bed and picked the book up, just holding it in his hands for a long moment.
He’d never understood it. Why bring such a long, dull thing to read to a whole other galaxy? Why not something more exciting, like HG Wells or Ray Bradbury or Jules Verne? Jeannie had read him bits of Anna Karenina when she’d been assigned it in school, and he’d been bored to tears.
Rodney flipped the book to the first page of text.
Toward the end of the year 1811 the powers of Western Europe began a more active armament and concentration of their forces, and in 1812 these forces, consisting of millions of people (including those who transported and fed the army), moved from the West to the East, toward the boundaries of Russia, and the war began, that is there took place an event which was contrary to human reason to all human nature.
He scowled at it. Why on earth would John purposefully inflict that type of writing on himself?
But then Rodney flipped through more of the book and saw there were notes and highlighted sections, some written in pen and some in pencil, but all in the same hand. Footnotes and opinions and running commentary. Was John really that into Russian history? Maybe he’d gotten it from a used bookstore.
He went back to the inside cover and the title page, and saw it had been stamped.
From the library of Grace King.
A week later, John was sitting up in the infirmary bed with the book in his hands. He was mostly back to normal; some stubborn blue scales still clung to the side of his neck and part of one hand, but the claws and the funky yellow eyes were gone.
“You’re looking refreshingly human again,” Rodney said, dropping into the chair next to the bed. He’d been spending a lot of time there during John’s recovery, sometimes working on his data pad and other times just babbling away about whatever was on his mind.
“Thanks for bringing this,” John replied, holding up War and Peace.
“You could get a new copy, you know. One that hasn’t been scribbled all over.”
“It was my mom’s.”
That gave Rodney pause. He was the first one to bitch about his family and all the ways they’d hampered his development as a genius scientist destined to change the face of astrophysics for generations to come, but John was notoriously tight-lipped about… well, everything.
“She loved history.”
Rodney wasn’t always the most socially aware, but he got a pretty good picture from those three words. It wasn’t Tolstoy that John was so attached to; it was the piece of his mother that lived on those pages – her thoughts, her ideas, her reactions to the text. Rodney had a hard time understanding that kind of child-parent bond, but he could see how much it meant to John.
“Thank goodness, because I was despairing of your taste in literature.”
That got a smirk out of John. “I’m a big fan of Louis L’Amour, actually.”
Which naturally segued into a lively discussion about why John’s taste in novels was as atrocious as his taste in music and gave Rodney the idea to get some ebooks with the next batch of requisitions so he could broaden John’s horizons.
John gave as good as he got in his own defense, keeping his mother’s book in his hand all the while, and Rodney felt as if things had maybe shifted between them a little, as it had the day John had tossed him over the balcony to test out the personal shield. There was a closeness in sharing confidences.
Rodney just wasn’t ready to share yet how close he wanted to get to John.
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.” (Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace)
Fill: Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard + Rodney McKay
It was weird, being in there without John. The room felt too big, too empty. Rodney felt like he was trespassing which, technically, was true, but it was for a good cause. Carson had started John on the road to recovery from the retrovirus, which he’d pointed out would be a long road and not just an overnight miracle cure.
To that end, Rodney had come to gather some of John’s things. He hoped seeing some familiar items might help get John out of his bug mind a bit quicker. But what to bring? The guitar was too big. Golf magazine? The special candle Teyla had made him, the one that smelled like oiled leather?
Rodney’s eyes fell on the book. It was a running joke between them, how slowly John was working his way through War and Peace – the never-ending book. He dropped down on John’s narrow bed and picked the book up, just holding it in his hands for a long moment.
He’d never understood it. Why bring such a long, dull thing to read to a whole other galaxy? Why not something more exciting, like HG Wells or Ray Bradbury or Jules Verne? Jeannie had read him bits of Anna Karenina when she’d been assigned it in school, and he’d been bored to tears.
Rodney flipped the book to the first page of text.
Toward the end of the year 1811 the powers of Western Europe began a more active armament and concentration of their forces, and in 1812 these forces, consisting of millions of people (including those who transported and fed the army), moved from the West to the East, toward the boundaries of Russia, and the war began, that is there took place an event which was contrary to human reason to all human nature.
He scowled at it. Why on earth would John purposefully inflict that type of writing on himself?
But then Rodney flipped through more of the book and saw there were notes and highlighted sections, some written in pen and some in pencil, but all in the same hand. Footnotes and opinions and running commentary. Was John really that into Russian history? Maybe he’d gotten it from a used bookstore.
He went back to the inside cover and the title page, and saw it had been stamped.
From the library of Grace King.
A week later, John was sitting up in the infirmary bed with the book in his hands. He was mostly back to normal; some stubborn blue scales still clung to the side of his neck and part of one hand, but the claws and the funky yellow eyes were gone.
“You’re looking refreshingly human again,” Rodney said, dropping into the chair next to the bed. He’d been spending a lot of time there during John’s recovery, sometimes working on his data pad and other times just babbling away about whatever was on his mind.
“Thanks for bringing this,” John replied, holding up War and Peace.
“You could get a new copy, you know. One that hasn’t been scribbled all over.”
“It was my mom’s.”
That gave Rodney pause. He was the first one to bitch about his family and all the ways they’d hampered his development as a genius scientist destined to change the face of astrophysics for generations to come, but John was notoriously tight-lipped about… well, everything.
“She loved history.”
Rodney wasn’t always the most socially aware, but he got a pretty good picture from those three words. It wasn’t Tolstoy that John was so attached to; it was the piece of his mother that lived on those pages – her thoughts, her ideas, her reactions to the text. Rodney had a hard time understanding that kind of child-parent bond, but he could see how much it meant to John.
“Thank goodness, because I was despairing of your taste in literature.”
That got a smirk out of John. “I’m a big fan of Louis L’Amour, actually.”
Which naturally segued into a lively discussion about why John’s taste in novels was as atrocious as his taste in music and gave Rodney the idea to get some ebooks with the next batch of requisitions so he could broaden John’s horizons.
John gave as good as he got in his own defense, keeping his mother’s book in his hand all the while, and Rodney felt as if things had maybe shifted between them a little, as it had the day John had tossed him over the balcony to test out the personal shield. There was a closeness in sharing confidences.
Rodney just wasn’t ready to share yet how close he wanted to get to John.
“For a few seconds they looked silently into each other's eyes, and the distant and impossible suddenly became near, possible, and inevitable.” (Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace)