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1.
When he first joined Sheppard's team, Ronon thought McKay was a liability. Then McKay fixed a broken dialing pedestal (Sheppard called it a DHD, but he and McKay said a lot of weird stuff) that would have trapped them on Neros, which they'd gone to as McKay said there was a ruin of the Ancestors there (there wasn't). Ronon could have told him there was nothing there, just a grassy plain, a bunch of rocky outcrops, not even much game to hunt. But he hadn't been to Neros for a few years, and meanwhile, the pedestal had fallen into a hole in the ground.
"Fucking limestone karst sinkhole,"McKay had said angrily, peering over the edge to look down into the hole while Sheppard held tight onto his tac vest and Ronon held Sheppard's belt. Ronon figured karst was a swearword, but it didn't work later when he used it on the Marines.
"Atlantis will surely send a rescue party when we do not check in," Teyla said calmly, which was true, but then the rescue party would be stuck on Neros too. Ronon looked around to see if the hunting situation had improved, but it was still a wide plain, empty of game. Snares might get them a few burrowers; he'd try that.
"No, I can fix it if I can get down there," McKay had said. "Ancient tech can survive most things; a fall of a few meters isn't going to seriously damage it."
So the others had all pulled lengths of rope out of their packs (Ronon hadn't known he was supposed to carry rope, and didn't usually bring a pack). While they tied the ropes together Ronon set his snares some way off behind the rocks, where the burrowers wouldn't be spooked by Sheppard and McKay's bickering, then Ronon lowered McKay into the hole.
From time to time, complaints and muttered curses floated up, but after a couple hours McKay shouted that he'd mostly fixed the pedestal and had tied the rope around it under the dialing disc. That had been Teyla's idea—to repair the pedestal properly so no other travelers would be trapped. Fair enough, Ronon thought. With the Wraith on his tail he'd gotten out of the habit of thinking about anyone except himself, apart from avoiding settlements, but he figured that needed to change if he was going to live with people again.
It was almost too heavy to lift. ("Naquadah alloy," McKay had said in his usual baffling way. "Atomic weight's ridiculously high.") But with all three of them together, they finally hauled the pedestal up to the sinkhole's rim, and Teyla, lying flat, managed to lever the edge of the disc up and over the grassy lip so they could pull the whole thing out onto the grass. McKay was nothing to lift out after that; Ronon did it by himself.
Sheppard dug a new hole to plant the pedestal upright and well away from the sinkhole, on the other side of the Ring's death zone, and after McKay adjusted a loose crystal the Ring activated perfectly. Sheppard used his radio device to tell someone back at base what had happened, and that they'd look for any ruins of the Ancestors and would be back before the next check-in.
They already knew there was nothing there. McKay had used the small piece of Ancestors' tech he called a scanner and said the planet was a bust. But Sheppard had decided it had been a "pain in the ass" mission and what they needed was a nice rest and some lunch before returning. Ronon figured he was avoiding doing paperwork; taskmasters always had a stack of forms to fill in and they always hated it.
He left the others pulling out their nasty-tasting bags of military rations and checked his snares, which had caught two burrowers. He'd already made a fire from some bushes growing in the rocks nearby, so he skinned the animals and cooked them on a spit. They shared the roasted meat out and McKay made sex noises while he ate, which got Ronon a little flustered. He decided he'd try to find other food to make McKay moan like that, and besides, McKay had earned it, fixing the pedestal. If Ronon had been by himself, still running, he'd have died here.
McKay gave him a sweet-sharp cake in return for the meat, saying he couldn't have it or he'd get sick. Back then, Ronon just thought he meant he'd had too much to eat for lunch. He hadn’t understood.
2.
It took Ronon a while to realize Atlantis could be just as dangerous as any unknown world, even if it had been built by the Ancestors.
He and Teyla had been raised with an ingrained respect for the Ancestors, Teyla more than him—Sateda had been mostly secular. These days Ronon didn't believe in anything, except maybe his team, and it was early days for that.
"Thought Lorne's security teams cleared the area first," he panted to Teyla as they ran down a long hallway connecting the central hub to the South Tower. They'd been sparring in the gym when the emergency call crackled on their radios and had shared a brief glance, pulled on their clothes and boots and started running. The gym was closer to the disaster than the infirmary or the Marine barracks and they weren't going to be able to get there by transporter; Teyla had told him this sector had been under the ocean when the city's shield failed.
"Major Lorne's men check structural safety and ensure the absence of obvious dangers," Teyla replied, barely out of breath, "but it sounded as though the scientists triggered an explosion." Ronon picked up the pace. Sheppard and McKay were part of the exploration team.
When they got to the lab, three scientists Ronon didn't know were slumped against a wall. They looked soot-smudged and scratched, but not badly hurt. Sheppard, and the Marine who'd been the science team's security detail, were worse off. Sheppard had burns on his arms and face and was cradling his right arm—which looked broken—and the Marine was lying unconscious with blood in his hair. Someone, most likely Sheppard, had put him on his side.
"Where's—" Sheppard said urgently.
"Others are coming. Transporters don't work here; we ran," Ronon said. "McKay?"
Sheppard looked sick. "Inside. The thing they activated brought down a wall, trapped him in a back room. He's not badly injured but he doesn't have much air, and the smoke... Tried to get him out but there's a red hot slab blocking the door, and with this…" He gestured angrily at his arm.
Ronon didn't wait to hear more. The smoke was thick, but less choking if he crouched low. He crawled through chunks of rubble and found the slab of metal Sheppard hadn't been able to get past. Not too big for him to lift, and not red hot anymore, but still far too hot to touch—even putting his hand near it was hard to bear. It had fallen up against a door, maybe to a storeroom.
He could see how to shift it; one good shove would do it. A bunch of Marines would be here soon, but he couldn't see how they'd move it either—they'd have to wait for the engineers and special equipment. And McKay was running out of air.
Ronon stripped off his shirt—luckily it was one of the leather ones, not homespun—ripped it in two at the side seams and wrapped each part around his hands. Then he got in under the roasting-hot, slanted slab of metal (stench of burning hair), set his feet against the opposite side of the doorway and got his wrapped hands on the slab, forcing it away. The shirt burned through in seconds and the pain was agonizing, but Ronon rode through it like he'd learned to all those years, injured and alone.
He roared in pain and triumph as the slab fell aside, clanging to the floor and leaving the door free. Inside, McKay was slumped in the far corner and Ronon hauled him up into his arms clumsily, trying not to use his burned hands, and staggered out, crouched over and coughing, McKay pressed to his chest.
The medical team had arrived by the time he burst from the smoke-filled room, and there were people pulling McKay away, and shocked exclamations about his hands, and finally the sting of a needle and blissful unconsciousness.
He came to in the infirmary, surfacing muzzily a few times before the drugs they'd given him dragged him under again. Eventually, he woke properly, to the bird-peck sound of McKay tapping on a laptop. Ronon lay there, assessing his body. His hands hurt a lot, despite the drugs that were still in his system, but he could bear it. He opened his eyes. His hands were white balls of bandages at the ends of his arms. Ronon swallowed, with difficulty; his mouth tasted like shit.
"Water," he croaked, and McKay looked up immediately, setting his laptop aside.
"Hey, you're awake," he said, grabbing a cup with a crooked straw off the side table and holding it for Ronon to drink.
Ronon drained the cup and McKay set it aside. "You okay?" Ronon asked, trying to check out what he could see of McKay. He didn't look burned, or injured.
McKay waved a dismissive hand. "Minor smoke inhalation. I'm fine." His eyes got big and serious. "Thanks to you. You saved my life."
"You've saved mine before. And Sheppard's, Teyla's."
"Well, yes, but," McKay waved unhappily at Ronon's hands.
"How bad are they?" Ronon asked. He figured McKay knew. He knew most things.
McKay glanced sideways to where the medical staff hung out. "I should get—"
"Just tell me," Ronon said. He didn't feel up to being poked at by doctors yet.
McKay nodded, his face set, mouth slanted unhappily. "Badly burned, but they think you'll mend and still have good movement in your hands. They used the Ancient tissue healer on them, but you'll still have scars."
Ronon grunted; he had plenty of scars. A few more were nothing, as long as he could use his hands. "Worth it, then."
McKay's mouth sagged down some more. "I don't know how to repay you…"
"Got any pudding cups?" Ronon asked. He was starving, he realized.
"Ha! I brought some from the mess hall, in case you were awake," McKay said smugly, pulling three out of his laptop bag. Chocolate, Ronon's favorite.
McKay ripped the top off the first one and got a spoon from his pocket. "Open up," he said, nudging Ronon's lower lip with the pudding-laden spoon.
Ronon did, shutting his eyes as he sucked the pudding off the spoon then swallowed. Mmm. Sweet, creamy, chocolatey. He realized he'd let out an appreciative moan and opened his eyes. McKay was flushed, shifting a little in his chair.
Ronon grinned and opened his mouth for more.
3.
"Shit! Fuck!"
Ronon had never seen Sheppard so frantic. It made Ronon frantic, too, inside where his guts clenched. Even Teyla was thrown; he'd never seen her look so helpless.
The food the Inod had given them had seemed fine, and Teyla knew them well; she'd vouched for them. But after a few bites of the grilled meat McKay had gone pale, touched his mouth, and said, "Oh no, lips're tingling. Citrus, there must be—" and then he was struggling to breathe, gasping, his face going pale, then bluish, and he was falling sideways as Sheppard grabbed for him and then clutched at his tac vest, swearing and frightened.
Sheppard fumbled a pocket open and pulled out a thing like a thick pen, but yellow and orange. By now McKay was wheezing horribly, his lips blue. Sheppard pulled one end off and jammed the thing into McKay's thigh muscle through his pants, all the while saying, "Breathe damn you, Rodney, don't you dare die on me!"
After a terrifying minute, McKay did, shallowly at first, then more normally, his color less gray, his lips less blue.
"What'd you do to him?" Ronon said, glaring at the Inod headman, but Teyla put a hand on his arm.
"It is a sickness Rodney warned us about. An allergy."
Ronon had never seen anything like it. Allergies were sneezing your head off when the mirrin trees bloomed. They didn't make you stop breathing. But he wasn't a doctor like Melena had been; he didn't know anything except how to treat wounds, and injuries from fighting.
Teyla went to soothe the Inod but Ronon didn't care about that. He only cared about McKay, anxiously watching his chest rise and fall. McKay seemed a bit better, but then he rolled over and threw up.
"You sure it's not poison?" Ronon muttered to Sheppard, helping him hold McKay on his side while he retched.
"Nah, this is from the drug I gave him, the one that made him breathe again. He told me it makes him sick." Sheppard looked around, biting his lip, deciding. "Look, we gotta get him back to the city fast. This isn't fixed yet. It can come back again and he needs Carson, the infirmary."
"Ring's only minutes away if I run," Ronon said. Sheppard shot a look across at Teyla. "You stay, look after Teyla, deal with the Inod."
"Okay, yeah." Together, they got Rodney up and into Ronon's arms. He carried Rodney like a husband cradling his wife at a wedding in the fire-jumping ceremony. Slinging him over one shoulder in what Sheppard called a fireman's carry didn't seem like a great idea. It'd make it harder for McKay to breathe, make him throw up again.
Ronon took off at a run, the Inod villagers parting, people pulling children out of his path. He was at the Ring in ten minutes, jabbing in the code for Atlantis one-handed, his aching arm muscles shaky and Rodney clamped up against him, limp, but still breathing. Then he sent the extra code that stopped you getting splattered into nothing like a dart hitting a cliff-face, and a technician was telling him to come through, medical were on their way.
McKay was still pretty pale the next morning, and sleepy from the drugs they'd given him. He'd perked up by the afternoon though, when Ronon visited after hand to hand training with the Marines.
Ronon had stopped by his quarters to shower and pick up the piko set he'd gotten at the summer market on Tyros. It was flat wooden tiles that you lined up end to end or side to side so the Ring patterns burned onto them matched. The player who used all their tiles up first was the winner. He figured McKay might be bored.
McKay was definitely bored, baiting Carson to let him go back to his room. He brightened when Ronon laid the set out on a tray from the mess hall, and grasped the rules in no time, although he insisted on calling it dominoes, a word Ronon didn't know.
"Well, Pegasus dominoes," McKay said, as Ronon propped him up on pillows. "Since the patterns aren't just numerical dots but Gate addresses and you need to know what the worlds they represent have in common."
Ronon knew them all, but McKay did pretty well for someone who hadn't grown up here, who hadn't traveled Ring to Ring whether he liked it or not, for seven years. He let McKay win once, then told him he needed to learn them all, and stopped going easy on him. McKay had the best memory of anyone Ronon had ever met.
"What?" McKay said, frowning at the tile for Athos, trying to figure out what to match it with. Eventually he slid it in beside the one for Sateda, giving Ronon an apologetic look. Ronon just shrugged; it was a true play, since the cullings. "I've got what's called eidetic memory. I remember almost everything I see or hear. Not as well as when I was young, not since getting concussed a few times." He raised his voice at Sheppard who was pretending to work on the Inod mission report, laptop balanced against McKay's feet. "Because Sheppard keeps taking us places where the locals hate me!"
Sheppard just smirked. "If you talked less, people might not feel like hitting you upside the head so much, Rodney."
Ronon left them bickering and went to bring back dinner. He got McKay an extra slice of peach pie with cream, and beat him at piko another few times.
Later, lying awake in bed, Ronon remembered the packaged cake McKay had said he couldn't eat. Tomorrow, he'd get some of those yellow-orange pens from Carson and keep them in his belt pouch.
4.
Ronon ducked as the flying machine fired at him. The red beam it shot out was like his blaster, but narrower. Ronon had seen it cut through a small tree, topple it cleanly; he didn't want to find out what it'd do to him.
The planet they were on had an outpost of the Ancestors. They'd have left it alone if they'd known it still had power, was defended by a flying machine like this. McKay called it a drone—it was as wide across as Ronon's arm and it was flat, tipping itself sideways to follow him through the close-packed trees, or just felling them to get at him.
He'd led it away so McKay could work on the consoles in the outpost and find a way to kill the machine. Sheppard had already taken Teyla back through the Ring after she sprained her ankle on a tree root. McKay had told him to stay away when the drone turned up, but Sheppard insisted he'd be back with a jumper. That was twenty minutes ago, and Ronon was still scrambling, running, hiding, barely able to stay ahead, stay out of the thing's reach. It was tracking his every move, every noise he made, McKay said, sounding desperate over the radio.
There was a cave up ahead, a small, narrow slit. If it didn't lead anywhere, didn't have any other exits, Ronon would be dead. But he couldn't keep up this frantic pace for much longer, and maybe he could trap the drone there, box it in.
He made his decision, ducked in through the entrance. It was a tight squeeze, but not so tight the damn thing wouldn't fit. Inside, the cave opened up, a larger space with a chimney far above sending down a slanting beam of light. No other exit. Ronon saw a side passage off the entrance, ducked into it, hefted a solid tree branch he'd picked up outside. He tried to quiet his breathing.
He heard the thing coming, the faint buzzing it made, and held his breath. When it passed the entrance to his passage he'd try to smash it, disable it.
It came, but didn't pass him, stopping in midair, sensing him there. Then it started maneuvering in the tight space, backing and filling to get turned around. He tried to lift the branch but realized he'd miscalculated in the dark. The alcove roof above him was too low to raise his arm fully and just poking at the thing wouldn't work.
"It's got me, McKay," Ronon said. "Sorry."
"No," McKay snapped coldly, and the drone shuddered, its lights going dark, and dropped like a stone. For a moment it stuck there, rim in the dirt, then it toppled sideways, rocked a little, and lay inert.
"Ronon? Ronon? Are you there? Are you okay? Talk to me, damn it!"
Ronon came back from wherever he'd gone when he knew he was dead. "Fine," he said hoarsely. " 'm okay. You got it."
"It's a temporary one-off fix. I overloaded it but it'll reboot in a minute. Have you got a power bar on you?"
Ronon always carried a couple in case McKay needed one, but what the fuck? "Yeah, but it's not good timing for a snack."
"Chew the damn thing then stick the mashed up stuff over the sensor. It's just to the left, your left, of the gun port where the laser comes out. See it?"
Ronon was already ripping the wrapping off a bar, cramming it into his mouth, chewing furiously. He spat the mess into one hand, grabbed the downed drone with his other hand and smacked the masticated food over the small gray glass bubble beside the laser port. It was sticky, so it stayed in place. "Done."
He backed away a couple of steps. The drone hummed, rose a hand span up off the ground. Ronon froze. But all it did was hover there, lights flashing around its rim in a pattern, then repeating, repeating, repeating.
"Think it's confused," Ronon muttered. "It's awake, but stuck in a loop." His pulse was beating at the base of his skull, in his ears. He felt hollowed out and shaky. Adrenaline crash, Sheppard called it.
"Oh thank god," McKay said, sounding wrecked. "It should stay that way until the power bar falls off its sensor, but that won't happen anytime soon so we have time to get away. Sheppard's coming in the jumper to get us. Can you find a clearing so he can land and pick you up?"
"Yeah, okay," Ronon said, and forced himself to leave his side-passage and hop over the drone. He took a few steps toward the cave entrance then changed his mind and turned back, rearing up and and using his branch to smash the thing with all his strength, over and over until the casing was buckled and bits of tech spilled out.
"Can you bring the drone with you?" McKay was saying. "I can immobilize it properly now it's stalled, and I want to take it apart."
"Already did that," Ronon said. "It's dead." He left it behind, McKay spluttering in his ear, and went to meet Sheppard in an open glade further up the hill.
On Sateda they called a narrow escape like that "meeting your ghost". Ronon had met his ghost a few times over the years, but this was the worst. McKay would have beaten himself up if he hadn't been able to stop the thing—Ronon had seen how he got when they lost someone. He was glad McKay didn't have to go through that.
And he was really glad he carried power bars for McKay, just in case.
5.
Despite their close shave, Teyla was the only one with any sort of injury after the drone mission. Ronon hung out with her in her quarters for a while but she was irritable, annoyed with herself for having fallen and sprained her ankle, even though the crisis with the drone wasn't one she could have solved. She traded him a couple packets of hot chocolate in exchange for a promise of knife sharpening—she always had a few packets after playing an Earth game called poker (which was just boring cards, no poking at all) with her women friends.
He went back to his own room to stash the hot chocolate before hitting the mess for dinner, but the door chimed, and McKay was there, holding a tray with two covered plates.
"Come on, let me in, this is heavy," McKay said briskly, pushing past him, careful of the tray. Interesting smells were wafting from it.
"Brought me dinner, McKay?" Ronon stepped back, grinning. "Teyla's the one on crutches."
"And very grumpy she is with it, too!" McKay put the tray down on Ronon's table. "I left Sheppard to deal with her."
Ronon took the metal lid off one of the plates. "Fries and sauce?" He'd learned the names of the Earth foods he liked best, after his initial "eat everything" phase. Potatoes were a favorite.
McKay huffed. They're not fries, or, well, they are, but it's a Canadian delicacy I thought you might like. Fries with gravy and cheese curds. It's called poutine." He pushed a plate at Ronon and pulled another toward himself, sitting down in one of the chairs. "I made the gravy myself," he said proudly.
Ronon sat and tried a forkful. "Goob," he said stickily, grinning across at McKay who was also tucking in enthusiastically. They concentrated on eating—it was nice to have a companion in greed; Sheppard and Teyla were both too picky.
"Yes, well, I felt the balance was getting a little out of whack," McKay said when they were mostly done. Ronon cocked an inquiring eyebrow at him, mouth full of delicious fries and sauce. McKay flushed. "With saving each other's lives. You got me back here when I had anaphylaxis and then led the drone away from me today on P4J-383."
"You figured out how to stop it, though," Ronon said, scraping up the last of the sauce. "It had me trapped."
"Okay, all right, we both did well," McKay conceded, setting down his fork and pushing away his empty plate. "Mmm, poutine."
"It was good, thanks," Ronon said. He got up and retrieved the two packets from his wardrobe. "Got something for you, too."
"Hot chocolate!" McKay was delighted. "There's hardly any left in the city. How did you get hold of some?"
"Traded for it," Ronon said, grinning. He wasn't going to give all his secrets away.
McKay bustled around readying mugs and boiling a pot of water on the black metal cube the Ancestors used instead of a cookstove. They drank their hot chocolates, then McKay got up to wash the mugs. On impulse, Ronon stood and intercepted him mid-bustle.
"Hey." He took McKay by the shoulders, leaned in and did the Athosian head-press greeting Teyla had taught him. McKay exhaled, and kind of melted into it, his hands on Ronon's waist.
It felt inevitable, after that, to pull McKay closer, tilt his head, and kiss him. He tasted sweet, and chocolatey.
"Can I call you Rodney?" Ronon asked softly, when they broke off to catch a breath.
"For starters," McKay said, looking up, flushed and bright-eyed. "I imagine we can come up with a few other things to call each other."
"Rodney," Ronon said, testing the name in his mouth. "Rodney."
"Yeah, that's me," Rodney said, happy and baffled all at once. "You really want this? Me?"
"I like 'em smart," Ronon said.
Rodney snorted. "You're pretty smart yourself," he said. "Don't think I haven't noticed."
"Smart enough to know what I want," Ronon said, and pulled him in.