Chapter Text
NOW
“Deedee, I want a piggy back ride!” Dane demanded, pulling on Cam’s hand expectantly.
“I don’t know, sport. Aren’t you a little big to be riding on your Deedee’s shoulders?” Cam asked, pretending as though he wouldn’t give in, even though he always did.
Dane pouted, his tiny face and his thin nose scrunching up in a way that even Rodney admitted was too cute to resist. Cam tickled him to make him stop. John had discovered that defense. Thank god he had, because it was the only weapon that any of them had against Dane’s pout.
“Your are one spoiled little boy, Dane Sheppard,” Cam muttered under his breath. “Your daddy carried you around in his pouch for far too long and now you sucker me into doing it whenever he’s not around.”
Dane giggled. With a glint in his blue eyes and the slightly pointed ears that he’d inherited from John, Dane’s mischievous giggles had a way of making him look like some kind of trickster elf. “Silly Deedee. You don’t have a pouch.”
Cam rolled his eyes. John was incubating again, which had provoked all kinds of questions from their son. Dane was fascinated by John’s pouch slit, and kept poking and prodding it, which Cam saw as hilarious, remembering how sensitive John had been when he was first carrying Dane. Cam had decided to let John and Rodney deal with the kangaroos and the bees. Cam had learned much more about guild society since meeting John’s family, but he happily feigned enough ignorance to foist that burden onto Dane’s other parents.
“I don’t have a pouch, so I guess I can’t carry you,” Cam teased.
“You carry me on your shoulders, Deedee!” Dane protested. “You know that.”
Cam ignored the way his joints protested when he swung Dane up and onto his shoulders, admitting (privately) that it wasn’t as easy as it had been when Dane was younger. Recently Jennifer had been on a kick of trying to rein Cam in now that he was on the wrong side of forty. Cam did not appreciate this new bee in her bonnet, but he admitted that with Dane almost six years old, the piggy back rides might have to stop soon.
Cam took the scenic route along the exterior walkways with their magnificent ocean view, smiling at the way Dane giggled enthusiastically at the sea birds. Rodney always complained that his fascination with birds was what happened when you had a flyboy times two. John and Cam were more than happy to buy into that interpretation, completely ignoring Jennifer’s assertion that maybe it meant they had a future ornithologist on their hands. Rodney couldn’t seem to decide which was worse - another pilot in the family or a biologist for a son. Cam smiled to himself, remembering how worked up Rodney had gotten when faced with those options. Even though Rodney couldn’t seem to do anything that would drag Dane’s attention away from the birds, at least Rodney had his own little mini-me to follow him around the lab asking a million questions and trying to braid Radek’s hair.
More than one soldier nodded to Cam as he passed, but by now they all knew that Cam was off duty and any official business would have to go through Colonel Teldy. Still, a few people stopped Cam to chat. He was especially glad to see Captain Cadman back on duty after her maternity leave. Cam did not envy her the 37 hours of labor it had taken to bring her daughter into the world and John had said he postponed the greenhouse horticulture seminar that her wife taught three times that year because they were both so sleep deprived. Cam reminded himself once again to thank his mother for having him the difficult way.
It was a beautiful day on New, New Lantia. The green sea sparkled and two of the three moons were visible as the sky slowly darkened. Cam and Dane were supposed to meet Rodney in the mess hall for dinner, but over the years Cam had developed a sixth sense for knowing when Rodney would be stuck in his lab. John joked that it was a key instinct to develop if you ever actually wanted to see Rodney. Today was a particularly obvious case - Rodney buried himself in his work when he needed to lose himself and he needed to lose himself when he was worried and the fact that John was laid up never failed to produce worry.
Cam kept Dane on his shoulders to prevent him from rushing the lab doors, just in case Rodney was doing some delicate work. Of course, Cam couldn’t do anything about Dane forcing the door open using his ATA gene and shouting, “Papa!”
Rodney was standing in front of one of the whiteboards, holding a debate with himself and his tablet, hands flying and fingers snapping. His hair was sticking up, as though he had been pulling it, he had two coffee stains on a shirt that Cam was pretty sure he’d been wearing for the past few days, and his eyes had that manic glaze to them that either spelled brilliance or trouble. “Rodney, if you keep pulling your hair, you’re going to go bald one day and you know that John is going to keep all of that crazy birdsnest of his just to spite you.” Teasing Rodney was really the only way they communicated.
“Laugh it up, flyboy,” Rodney replied, rubbing at his pouch scar - it was no doubt sensitive. “I’ve noticed your hairline making a slow retreat.”
Cam touched his hair self-consciously, but put on a shit-eating grin. “Maybe. But the difference between us is that you know I could pull off the shaved head. I did it in basic training and I can do it again.”
Of course, now that he could see his Papa, Dane was squirming to be let down like worms on a bait hook. “Watch it, squirt. I might drop you.”
As soon as his feet hit the floor, Dane was running to Rodney for a hug. Rodney obliged absently, still looking frazzled. As much as Cam had tried to distract Dane with a trip through the gate to the Athosian homeworld and Kanan’s special tatoro root cookies, he was still worried about his father.
And it didn’t help that his pouchmate was on Earth visiting his cousins and would have an extended stay until John was feeling better. Normally, Dane would have gone with him, even though he wasn’t blood-related to the McKays, but Dane had just gotten over a case of the Kirsan fever. Jennifer hadn’t wanted to risk him visiting Earth, even if in all likelihood he was no longer contagious. Cam wondered if they shouldn’t send Dane for a week or two, now that he was cleared for travel. Jeannie had sent word that Max had been restless and sleepwalking, something she attributed to not sleeping next to his brother for the first time since Dane had left the pouch.
Cam approached Rodney more cautiously than Dane had, but ended up putting his arm around him in a mirror of the comfort Dane still offered by clinging to Rodney’s legs. “Hang in there, buddy. John will be fine. This is minor compared to most of John’s visits to the infirmary.”
John had been in a serious crash using a Traveler ship to try to stop the rogue Asgard four years ago. He’d not only lost his friend Larrin, but had shattered two of his vertebrae. The injury had grounded him from military operations (unless Cam could send him on something that didn’t require he leave the puddlejumper), and now the extra weight from the incubation was putting too much pressure on the weakened area. John was on bedrest while they induced Rodney’s pouch to open for a transfer, but he’d probably have to wear a brace for weeks after that. Cam wasn’t worried as much as he was pained that John would be hurting for so long. It didn’t help that John was a cranky bastard who would not follow his doctor’s orders. This made Rodney neurotic and Jennifer frustrated, which basically meant that Cam was getting it from all sides.
John had been in such a foul mood this morning that after Cam made sure John had everything he needed, he’d snatched Dane up and escaped to the Athosian homeworld. Even Rodney, who could go into high gear mother-henning when he wanted to, had finally learned to just leave John alone when he was like this and let Jennifer or one of the nurses check on him.
Cam and Rodney waited until Dane had run over to his Uncle Radek to tell him about Max’s video message before continuing the conversation. “I know John will recover soon. He’s just driving me crazy,” Rodney admitted. “I mean, last time he was this far along he managed to evade an entire city full of marines, steal a ZPM and kidnap Radek when he’d lost his memory to the Kirsan fever. Sadly, I think I preferred that. That stubborn idiot wanted to incubate even though he knew this was a possibility and he wouldn’t let me open my pouch slit just in case. He thought he could strengthen his whatever muscles enough before he started to show and now he’s sullen because we have to wait two weeks before we can do the transfer. This all could’ve been easily avoided if not for his noble pride.”
“Hey, this all could have been avoided if you guys hadn’t decided to leave off the condom just this once.”
“You’re one to talk. I’m not the one with the Jack Daniels baby.”
“Hey, if anything, Dane is a Kentucky Bourbon baby.” Cam was grateful that they could finally joke about this. It had been a sore point for such a long time. “What’s your excuse?”
“Victory high. Inventing a whole new branch of physics to charge a ZPM is not just a guaranteed Nobel Prize, but it’s sexy as hell.”
“Technically it’s reinventing, considering that the Ancients charged a ton of those things. I’ll have to take your word on the sexiness of it. Victory sex while waiting for pickup on another planet after blowing up a hive ship, I can see, but filling in a number on a white board and not making it to the supply of condoms you keep in your desk, which was probably no more than ten feet away . . . no excuse.”
“Yeah, well after this, I’ll finally let Jennifer get her greedy little hands on my balls. No more surprises.”
“Hey, I’d feel compelled to defend Jenn’s honor, except half this base would probably be happy to neuter you. I hear it’s supposed to have a calming effect on dogs, so we can always hope it holds true for humans.”
Rodney gave Cam a sour look, but six years of co-parenting had taken the vitriol out of their little tete-a-tetes. Even though the words were cutting, for them, this was almost friendly. Cam could see the relief in Rodney’s eyes, belying his scowl. Rodney was taking comfort in the fact that at least his relationship with Cam was business-as-usual, anchoring him for how out-of-balance things were with John.
Cam softened, giving Rodney’s arm a comforting squeeze. “Hey, why don’t you and Dane record a message for Max and the gang and relax for a bit? I saw Kanaan slip Dane a few extra cookies when he thought I wasn’t watching, so we can probably delay dinner for half an hour. You’ve been dealing with a lot recently. I can check on John and grab Dane’s telescope so we can do a little stargazing before bedtime. We can skip bathtime because he got covered in mud playing with Torren and Teyla very nicely gave them both a bath.”
Rodney gave Cam a grateful smile and they enjoyed a moment of peaceful silence before Dane bounded over and demanded their attention.
***
THEN
Cam didn’t know how he would have coped with the giant bombshell John had dropped on him this afternoon if not for all of the things that had to be taken care of for the Registration ceremony. Dave - or maybe one of his many employees - was taking care of the event planning, but Cam still had to read up on some obscure Guild traditions that Dave had mentioned over dinner, avoid both Alexi and John’s father, make sure his suit was ironed, field calls from his family to coordinate their arrival tomorrow morning, and pretend to meet SG1 at the airport when he was really picking them up at a beam-in sight on a nearby country road.
Jack and Sam were combining the trip with a meeting at the Pentagon tomorrow morning and Vala wanted to see the Smithsonian, so they were coming tonight instead of right before the ceremony tomorrow evening. Cam had been worried about unleashing Vala on the National Mall, but now he was grateful that his friends would be in town. He and John had been living in their own little world since he’d come back to Earth and if Cam was being honest with himself, he’d been avoiding talking about it with them, ashamed that John didn’t want to make a commitment to him and hoping to convince him before he had to discuss it with anyone else. Cam had been the bearer of bad and uncomfortable news many times, but he still hated disappointing the people he cared about, even if he was just disappointing them with his own pathetic life.
But now he needed their perspective more than he needed to avoid his own embarrassment at the situation. Cam didn’t know when he’d been more happy to see Sam’s smiling face, not even counting the many times she’d pulled his ass out of the fire. Teal’c was also a good, if stoic, ally to have at his back. And even though socializing with General O’Neill still made Cam a little uncomfortable, infectious happiness seemed to roll off O’Neill and Daniel whenever they had time to spend together with Dalila, who Daniel held against one hip. Hell, Cam was even happy to see Vala and the bubbly distraction she provided.
“Congratulations, Cam,” Sam said, hugging Cam to her. Cam didn’t really know how, but Sam had become his best friend during his time at the SGC. And he had her to thank for arranging his visit to Atlantis after receiving the email from Specialist Dex about John incubating.
“Indeed, I am greatly anticipating this Taur’i ritual and to see you as a father, Cameron Mitchell,” Teal’c added.
“Hey, we invited you to Dalila’s Registration!” General O’Neill protested.
“Daniel Jackson has informed me that Dalila’s Registration was not a typical example of such an event, O’Neill.”
The General sighed, “So it got a little interrupted by Trust operatives.”
“And wasn’t very traditional to begin with,” Daniel added. O’Neill was from a very liberal guild whose only requirements for the registration were the minimum number of guild reps and witnesses that needed to be present. There was no formal claiming, recitation of recent family genealogy, or sworn statements on the paternity of the child with room for objections (that was all taken care of with a genetic test submitted in advance). O’Neill and Jackson had avoided the stuffy formal attire and memorized speeches that now hung over Cam’s head.
“Yes, yes, we are all very happy that you have knocked up that pretty Colonel from the sparkly city, but when are we visiting the museum where they keep the document with all the signatures and the treasure map on the back of it?” Vala begged, tugging on Daniel’s sleeve in search of support.
Cam gaped. “You let her watch National Treasure? Which one of you had that bright idea?”
General O’Neill whistled not-so-innocently, making Daniel pinch him and Cam groan.
“O’Neill said it would be a helpful addition to our understanding of the nation-state to which we nominally belong,” Teal’c added.
“Alright, we are definitely not showing up in front of the Sheppard family until the only person here with an actual degree on the subject fixes this.”
“Actually, I’m an archaeologist, not a historian, and my specialty is ancient civilizations, not American colonial--”
“Trust me, Daniel, the damage is already done. Anything you can salvage at this point would be good.”
Cam managed to keep up a smile as the rest of his team mostly entertained themselves throughout the car ride, the hotel check in and an early dinner. Having Dalila around was a great distraction, especially when, with perfect timing, she started crying right when Daniel had a mind to ask about John. She was probably the only thing that could distract Daniel from his stubborn curiosity and propensity to meddle.
Vala was determined to check out the local watering hole and scam some people at pool for her so-called “shoe shopping fund.” When Daniel and O’Neill begged off in order to put Dalila to bed and Cam said he’d drop them back, Sam volunteered to accompany them a little too easily for someone who was well known on base to be the sharkiest of the pool sharks.
It was the general’s turn to take care of bathtime for Dalila, so Sam herded Daniel and Cam into the sitting room of the suite Daniel had booked under O’Neill’s name at the local Guild Inn. The general didn’t like taking advantage of his guild membership, but Daniel liked having the free child care service available in case something came up. Sam, on the other hand, seemed more inclined to help herself to the free wet bar in the corner, where she gleefully poured each of them their favorite drink and one for the general.
The tumbler of bourbon that she deposited in front of Cam was almost overflowing. “Woah there, Carter. Are you trying to get me drunk?”
Sam ignored him. “Alright, Cam, spill. You can’t convince me that nothing’s wrong, so you might as well come out and tell us. And drink up.” She gave him a winning smile.
Cam sighed, knowing that this was the moment of truth. “John asked me to marry him.”
The small wrinkle between Daniel’s eyes deepened into the worried expression that he seemed to think was more subtle than an outright frown. “Isn’t that a good thing? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you really liked John.” Cam may have been a little over-enthusiastic with his praises once he found out that they were thinking about replacing John as military commander after his first year in Atlantis. He also vaguely remembered describing John’s ass in excessive poetic detail to Daniel after he accidentally ate the offworld ceremonial equivalent of a giant pot brownie.
“I do really like him. I always have. But if I want to marry him, I also have to marry McKay.”
Both Sam and Daniel winced.
After a contemplative silence, Sam said, “That explains why he’s toned down his wildly inappropriate attempts to seduce me.”
“McKay isn’t an easy person to get along with,” Daniel added. “I don’t think being married to him would be simple, but underneath all the arrogance and pettiness and complete lack of tact, he is a very smart man, as I’m sure he will attest to.”
“Daniel, you’re not helping,” Cam complained.
“And,” Daniel replied pointedly, “he has saved the Pegasus Galaxy a dozen times. As annoying as he is, I don’t think McKay is a bad person.”
“I don’t think just not being a bad person is enough for Cam to want to marry someone, Daniel,” Sam argued. “McKay is entertainingly tactless at best and downright offensive when he’s at his worst. If you put a gun to his head, I believe that Rodney will do the right thing. The problem is that in a marriage you rarely have a gun to your head. You need good people skills to navigate all the little disagreements and disappointments of everyday life and Rodney doesn’t have that.”
Daniel nodded. “I’m not disagreeing, but I do think that McKay must have hidden depths. Sheppard seems like a smart, relatively normal guy, and if he likes McKay enough to ask him to be your secundus even though he clearly doesn’t need another partner for reproductive purposes, then there must be something that we’re missing.”
Cam sighed. “It’s obvious what’s missing. John’s in love with McKay, and he’s not in love with me. If it were anything else, he wouldn’t bother to include McKay at all.”
“How do you know he’s not in love with you both?” Sam asked.
Cam ducked his head to whisper, “He wouldn’t ask me to do this if he loved me.”
Daniel frowned, absently kissing his daughter on the forehead when O’Neill brought her back in for a goodnight kiss and let her lay down on the couch. From his experience babysitting, Cam knew that even though she wanted to stay up and talk with the adults, she’d be asleep in a few minutes. “How much do you know about triumvirate marriages, Cam?”
Cam shrugged. “They’re something noble people do. I never really paid much attention because I thought I’d never want something like that, even though plebs are starting to do it as well.”
“Triumvirate marriages started as a hedge against fertility problems,” Daniel said, already in full lecture-mode. “Nobles want to marry other nobles, but two imperials or an imperial and a women are non-reproductive couplings. Before genetic testing, it was impossible to know if a nobleman was an imperial or a royal, so if a marriage proved to be infertile, a third member could be added to aid in reproduction. It evolved beyond that, of course, so now their are triumvirates with no central couple, secunduses added for love, not fertility, and situations like what it sounds like you’re describing, in which one person loves and wants to marry two separate people.”
Cam couldn’t keep the grimace off his face. Maybe John was right when he teased Cam about his closed-minded pleb values, but even if he could see how triumvirate marriages could be biologically necessary, Cam couldn’t imagine how all those noblemen over the centuries dealt with their jealousy.
“Now, with genetic testing available,” Daniel continued, “the practice is on the decline, but still very much accepted in Guild society, especially in the case of unintentional pregnancy. In the more traditional guilds not marrying the donor of your firstborn is still considered scandalous. Before genetic tests, a carrier could and often did marry someone who was not the biological donor and assert that they were for the registry. After families started doing genetic mapping of their pedigrees, scholars found that around 15% of donors listed on the Guild registry were incorrect and thus made gene testing a requirement for Registry. This has lead to a lot of marriage that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred but are enforced for child-rearing purposes and usually ends in the taking of a secundus.”
“While that’s all very fascinating, Jackson. How does it help me?”
Daniel looked puzzled for a second, the way he normally did whenever he realized that he was a special little snowflake and probably the only person interested in some “amazing” cultural artifact. “Well, for starters, it means that Sheppard’s plan is hardly as offensive an option as you seem to think it is. Not only does it have firm roots in tradition, but it really can be an ingenious arrangement that lets people form alliances for the purposes of producing and raising children while allowing the option of injecting qualities into the marriage that it would otherwise lack with only two people. His decision is a product of his cultural context and in a way, you should be happy because it means that he wants to stand by you as the donor to his child. In the society Sheppard grew up in, love is only one of many motivating factors for marriage. If you do marry him and take McKay as a secundus, the three of you will be free to define the day-to-day of your marriage however you see fit.”
“I think what Daniel means to say is,” Colonel O’Neill added, squeezing his husband’s shoulders to stop him from protesting, “is this really that bad? I mean, the prospect of marrying Rodney McKay sends shivers down my spine, but I can tell you from experience that as complicated and messy as it looks now, it can work.”
Cam couldn’t help but sit up a little straighter, at once remembering that Colonel O’Neill was a guild man himself and that he was Cam’s superior officer, an officer Cam might have just insulted by questioning a noble tradition that he believed in. “You had a triumvirate marriage, sir?” And it obviously couldn’t have been too successful if O’Neill was with Daniel now.
O’Neill shrugged, but the tension didn’t leave his body with the slump of his shoulders. “I was an imperial who was in love with a female pleb and I was damned stupid enough to let the Air Force give me the chromosome test. I was going to leave the Guild so I could marry her, but then I got deployed. Can’t tell you where or how, but suffice it to say that we were under duress when I conceived Charlie with my second in command. I don’t think I’d ever called Frank anything other than Captain Cromwell before we were captured. After that it seemed stupid to bind my pouch, leave the Guild, and then look for a sperm donor, when I could raise Charlie with the woman I loved and the man who went back behind enemy lines in order to rescue me even though it was a lost cause.”
“And it worked?” Cam asked. “You were happy?”
O’Neill looked away from Cam, letting Daniel take his hand. It was probably the most vulnerability Cam had ever seen from his CO. He looked away, trying to respect O’Neill’s privacy, even as he was hanging on his every word. “It took work, but we were happy. If Charlie hadn’t . . .” O’Neill’s voice wavered for a moment, before he forced the slight tremor throughout his body to subside. “Even though at first Frank and Sara got along like a bag full of system lords, they grew to love each other. Hell, they’re still married. I was the one who was too fucked up to stay, after.” O’Neill didn’t have to say after what, the whole base knew that Charlie was a no-fly zone for the general. Cam couldn’t imagine losing a child, especially not one that he had carried. John had lost a neonate, not a ten-year-old and even that had scarred him for life.
“If Frank and Sara didn’t get along at first, what changed?” Cam asked. Maybe there was a path out of the mess he found himself in now, though he doubted it.
“They found some common ground, I guess. Somehow, one day when I came home they were curled up on the couch with Charlie, watching one of those period dramas I hate. I was so grateful that I wasn’t coming home to screaming spouses and a crying baby that I never asked them exactly what happened, but we bought an Imperial sized bed and never looked back.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” Cam replied. “I assume they weren’t fighting for no reason.”
O’Neill paused a moment, considering. “I’m not the best judge of these things, but I think they both felt insecure. Frank was giving up his chance to find love to raise a kid with his CO and a woman who hated him and Sara might have felt superfluous when Frank was the father and someone who I had grown to care about. Of course, it’s hard not to grow care about someone when you’ve spent months watching each other’s backs in a POW camp, not to mention that he was the donor of my child. Turns out surviving torture together is not half bad for the foundations of a marriage, even if I never would have fallen in love with Frank otherwise.”
Cam couldn’t help but grimace, trying to imagine giving up his own chance at finding someone who would love him back in order to make it work with John and McKay. It had worked for O’Neill and his spouses, but that didn’t mean it would work for Cam. John had already had years to return Cam’s feelings. If he were going to fall in love with him, wouldn’t he have done it already? Wouldn’t he have at least discussed this whole plan with Cam before he tried to concieve with Rodney?
Sam had been awfully quiet through the whole story and now she was staring at Cam with the same cool, slightly amused concentration that she applied to spaceships and alien technology. Cam tried to hide his conflicted expression, but it was too late.
“What?” Cam finally demanded, unable to support the full weight of her stare.
“It’s not just about not wanting a triumvirate marriage,” she deduced. “And it’s not just about not wanting to marry McKay. What’s the full story?”
Sometimes Cam hated how damned perceptive Sam could be, especially when Daniel and O’Neill were hardwired by many years of being on the same team to take Sam’s deductions as fact. They all looked at Cam expectantly.
“The full story is that I’ve been in love with John practically since we met. But John was engaged at the time. Then, after his fiance died, I was stuck recovering from the Battle of Antarctica and then he was in another galaxy. We never had the time to start a relationship. Then the Ancients kicked the expedition out of Atlantis and we were finally both single and stationed at the same place. The night we conceived Dane I thought was the culmination of years of feelings that never had the chance to bear fruit, but to John I think I was just a convenient distraction from the pain of being ripped from Atlantis. Less than 48 hours later he was back in the Pegasus Galaxy and not long after that he was fucking Rodney McKay.”
All three of Cam’s friends looked both pained and sympathetic as they listened.
“I don’t doubt that John cares about me. We’ve always been good friends and he has done absolutely everything to make sure that I know I will have a place in the baby’s life. But after he came back to Earth for the transfer, we didn’t start a relationship like I hoped we would. Even when I was spending all of my off time with him and taking care of his every need, John was always thinking about McKay. And now,” Cam couldn’t help the way his voice broke on the confession, “he comes back from a week visiting McKay and his sister and finally, finally has sex with me again, only to tell me afterwards that he and McKay had been trying to conceive a pouchmate for Dane the whole time he was away. Somehow he decided that we’d get married, he’d start carrying McKay’s kid and we’d take McKay as a secundus - all without discussing it with me first.”
After a long, stunned silence, during which Cam realized he was practically strangling a couch pillow and panting like he’d run a marathon, O’Neill offered, “That’s not very nice.”
“I’m not saying that Sheppard was right in doing what he did,” Daniel began. Daniel always had to be the damned devil’s advocate. “But you have to remember that he is the firstborn imperial son in a high-ranking lineage in the most prominent guild in the country. He has been raised to believe that this decision is his and his alone. And it is his body so I’m not sure how much say you should have in what he does with it. Even though he can’t make you marry him, he is the carrier of the child, possibly children, and in noble society that means he has the final word.”
“And how do you know that Sheppard doesn’t love you?” Sam asked. “He seems to be constantly shooting himself in the foot when it comes to expressing it, but if he’s stayed in the Air Force for this long as the firstborn imperial son of a prominent lineage, he’s not the kind of man to do something just because of tradition. He wouldn’t have asked you to marry him if he didn’t want to marry you.”
“He doesn’t love me as much as he loves McKay.”
“Who cares?” O’Neill demanded. “Going into it, Sara was the girl I would’ve left the guild for and Frank was just another damned good soldier under my command, not even a friend, but I grew to love him. I couldn’t measure it - I’m not sure you can measure how much you love someone - but I do know that leaving them was just as hard because of Frank as it was due to Sara.”
“But what if he never--” Cam whispered, suddenly feeling two feet tall.
“You make him, the way you made yourself learn how to walk again or the way you harassed SG1 back together,” O’Neill replied, as though it were as easy as that. O’Neill hadn’t spent years loving John Sheppard and hoping that the man returned a mere fraction of his feelings. “It might not be the epic romance your pleb parents promised you growing up, but if you have a son and a productive marriage and a husband who cares enough about you to try to find a solution that works for everyone and let’s not forget a flying city, you’re still pretty damned lucky.”
“And McKay?” Cam asked, knowing that he didn’t want to be alone in a room with McKay, let alone end up stuck married to him.
Sam laid it out clearly. “You have to decide if you love Sheppard enough to take McKay as part of the package or if you’d rather give up Sheppard to avoid McKay.”
Cam sighed. “My Momma always said that there’s no compromise in love.”
“But neither thing is what you want,” Sam said, frustrated. “What you want is Sheppard by himself, and that doesn’t appear possible. No matter what you choose, it will be a compromise. You just have to decide which compromise you can live with.”
Cam nodded, feeling that at least the fork in the road was now clear but feeling no less lost because of it.
***
NOW
Cam took a bracing inhalation before waving his hand across the door sensor and entering. John was on the couch in the living area, right where Cam had left him this morning. There was no sign that Rodney had been back today, the bastard - no crumbs on the kitchen counter, no movement on the massive mess on his desk, no clothes thrown haphazardly on the back of the couch. But there was an empty lunch tray on the coffee table and someone had drawn the blinds, so Jennifer’s staff had been doing their duty.
John gave Cam a weary wave without really smiling, pretending to be engrossed in whatever he was watching on the TV. He’d made it to the eight month mark in his gestation/incubation but just based on the pinched expression on his face, Cam didn’t want him incubating a day more. Sadly, Jennifer said that the earliest they could transfer was Friday, and even that was an optimistic estimate.
“Hey,” Cam said, sitting down next to John on the couch and slinging an arm delicately around his shoulders. “How are you doing, buddy?”
“Fine,” John growled.
“Mmmmm. I’ve heard that one before. Try again.”
John glared at him, but Cam had plenty of practice dealing with John’s stubbornness so he just stared patiently back.
John finally sighed, relenting. “I’m bored.”
Cam nodded. “But you were on bedrest for longer before Dane’s transfer,” he pointed out. “And you were a little bit of a pain in the ass, but not to the level that would make your husband not even sleep at home for fear of your wrath.”
“We both know that Rodney sometimes gets caught up in work. It’s no big deal.”
“John,” Cam said sternly.
“Fine,” John said stubbornly, massaging his stomach. “I’m in pain and I miss my kids and I should be able to fucking incubate my own son.” Ah, there was the heart of it.
“Okay, we can do something about that.” Cam looked around for the pain pills Jennifer had prescribed, surprised to find that there were quite a few missing - enough to be suspicious. He dumped the bottle out and counted - there were exactly the number missing to correspond to the recommended doses. He shot John a scrutinizing look and John looked away, pretending to be engrossed in an episode of Star Trek that Cam knew for a fact John had seen at least twenty times before. Definitely up to something.
Cam hit his com. “Banks, anything going on in ops?”
“I thought it was your day off, General,” came back.
“Don’t you worry about me sneaking in extra work,” Cam replied. “I know better than to step on Colonel Teldy’s toes. I mind my manners.”
“Don’t doubt you do, sir.”
“I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t pulling you away from anything urgent when I ask you a favor.”
“Again, sir?” Banks asked. Cam could hear the incredulous smile in her voice.
Cam sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked down at the pill bottle. “It’s lorotridoxolene this time.”
A moment later, the tv screen switched from Captain Picard to a map of the room, the corner next to Rodney’s desk highlighted red.
“Thank you, Banks,” Cam said, not bothering to hide the harassed fatigue in his voice.
“Now, you’d think you wouldn’t bother with this shit in a city capable of scanning down to the molecule,” Cam scolded. “Not to mention wasting everyone’s time and making you look like an ornery teenager to my subordinates.”
John still wasn’t looking at him.
Cam walked over to the poor cactus in the corner, digging seven pain pills out of the soil at its base. “And you’re going to get in a whole heap of trouble if you kill the plant Katie gave to Rodney for his birthday by drugging it with medication you’re supposed to be taking.”
Cam took a new pill out of the bottle and poured John a glass of water to take it.
“I’ll be in more trouble if I drug the baby,” John replied, refusing.
Cam rolled his eyes. “Jennifer already went over this with you at least five times. You don’t have to tough it out. Your pain-related stress is worse for the baby than the drugs. Not to mention that the Guilds wouldn’t have invested so much money developing and promoting a painkiller that only passes trace amounts into breastmilk if it wasn’t safe, so down the hatch.”
After a long staring match, John finally took the offered pill and swallowed it down, sticking his tongue out afterwards to show Cam that he’d swallowed it. Cam wondered why he didn’t just let Rodney deal with this.
“Now, about the kids. The only reason Dane isn’t around is because you are being such a grouch, and Max will be back soon. Plus, I pulled a few strings to sign you up for a scheduled call time during the morning wormhole opening tomorrow and sent Jeannie an email letting her know to expect the call. You just have to make it a few more days until the transfer and then Jenn can put you back in that special brace you love so much and you’ll be working from home for the rest of the school break, so you’ll be sick of the kids again in no time. And in the end, you’ll be laid up for less time that you would’ve been if you had done the full incubation like planned.”
John half-grimaced at the mention of the back brace but seemed amused by the idea that Dane and Max would have him wanting to pull his hair out within a few weeks of downtime. But bringing up the incubation made him scowl.
John’s issues obviously ran deep. Rodney was going to owe Cam something big for handling this all by himself. At the very least he’d have to come through on those promised upgrades to the 302 fleet. Hell, for this he owed Cam a starship.
“Hey, let me give you one of my patented Mitchell foot massages.” He carefully slid under John’s feet on the ottoman.
“Cam, you don’t have to.”
Cam grinned. “Don’t tell me you don’t like them. They saw you through the first part of your incubation with Dane.”
John finally relented, letting his head fall back on the couch, while Cam pulled off his socks and dug his thumbs into the arch of John’s foot. “I shouldn’t let you spoil me,” John murmured, barely stifling a moan of relief.
Cam smirked. “Hey, this isn’t me spoiling you. It’s me plying you for information: like why you’re really upset about transferring the incubation to Rodney.”
“Not fair, Mitchell,” John groaned, covering his eyes with the hand that wasn’t resting on his swollen belly. “We decided not to split the incubation for a reason.”
“I know. You can conduct all your business from the city and you really enjoyed the incubation last time. And even though Rodney only had Max for a few months after Dane was weaned, he didn’t enjoy it that much. But this is about your health. Trust me, Rodney doesn’t mind some discomfort when it comes to keeping you healthy.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” John groaned. “Transferring to Rodney is not a choice.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Over the past six years, Cam had actually learned more about John from working with him than he had from raising a family with him. John was a control freak. Beneath the laid back surfer-boy exterior, John was hiding a man who always ended up making the sacrifice play, not just because he wouldn’t ask his men to do what he wasn’t willing to do himself, but because he didn’t trust anyone else to do it right. He let his subordinates do whatever they wanted, right up until the point where they failed his incredibly high expectations through no particular fault of their own. John was an inspiring leader, but a terrible manager (like most control freaks) and in truth, things had improved on Atlantis after Cam took over the military contingent.
Cam didn’t think that John had always been this way. He’d clearly been used to having a certain amount of autonomy in his life due to his noble upbringing and he’d resisted his father’s attempts to control him, but the man who Cam met in the desert so many years ago took his privilege for granted; the fear of having his control stripped away started when John lost Leo. John had been afraid of carrying Dane and afraid of pursuing another relationship where he’d have to depend on someone else not to break his heart. He’d been so afraid that the people he cared about would leave him without his consent that he’d slept with Cam again without discussing his attempts to conceive with Rodney, though that was an old wound, now long scarred over. Now, age and illness had stripped away an important part of John’s autonomy, and he wasn’t taking it well.
“I think that what’s really bothering you is that this is the last time you’ll incubate and even though you’re not planning on more kids, you don’t like the idea of not having the option. Rodney hated incubating because it was uncomfortable and inconvenient and I don’t think you like that part of it either. But you liked being able to give us children by sacrificing your comfort.”
“Don’t tell me you’re siding with Rodney on my so-called death wish, Cam. I haven’t taken a suicide mission since I almost lost Dane. I liked to be the one to introduce my kids to the world from the pouch, and I liked the feeling of being close to them.”
“You liked it when they were basically attached to your body and you could be the crazy overprotective papa bear that you are and there was nothing they could do about it.”
“That’s just good parenting, Cam.”
Cam rolled his eyes. “I think you like providing for your kids and providing for your family and now you have to let Rodney be the one to take care of you and take care of the baby and your ego can’t take it.”
John crossed his arms across his chest and glared at Cam, but he didn’t contradict him. “Aren’t you supposed to be comforting me in my fragile state?”
“You have never been fragile, John. Brittle, yes, but not fragile. And I never said I was here to comfort you.”
Cam finished his foot massage and returned to the couch to put his arm around John. “I’m here to force you out of this mood you’re in. You’re depressing the hell out of all of us.”
John gave Cam a watery smile. “Thanks. I missed your footrubs. Though really, the bastard who knocked me up should be the one doing this. You’ve got your own family to take care of. I feel guilty getting my feet rubbed by someone else’s husband.”
Cam smiled, leaning over to touch foreheads with John in an Athosian embrace. “Hey, just because you’re not my husband doesn’t mean that we’re not family and that I don’t love you.”
John blushed a little. Even after all these years he wasn’t comfortable hearing he was loved. He also wasn’t comfortable saying it back. He hadn’t said it since Cam rejected his marriage proposal.
“Besides, I’d give a footrub to any pregnant person in need.”
John swatted at Cam lightly. “Six years with your name in the Potentia Guild Registry and you still don’t know the difference between pregnant and carrying. My father is rolling in his grave.”
Cam laughed, giving John’s arm a supportive squeeze before standing. “Those pain pills should be kicking in soon. Get some rest. Dane and Rodney and I are having dinner in the mess and then we’ll do a little bit of stargazing before bedtime. Do you want him to stay here or would it be easier if he stayed with us again tonight?”
John wrinkled his nose, looking frustrated. “I want him here, but without Max he’s been sneaking into our bed at night.”
“Don’t I know it,” Cam replied. “He may have almost caught what I was prepared to tell him was a special adult game of naked bed wrestling the other night. I have never been so grateful for all those stupid throw pillows that I can’t seem to stop Jennifer from sneaking into the supply runs. I think now she’s just doing it to annoy me.”
“That’s what you get for moving Cadman to supply when she was pregnant. I hope he wasn’t interrupting anything. I know you’ve been trying to get pregnant yourselves.”
“Well, he was interrupting something, but we’re not on a timetable and we love having him. Plus that kid is going to be great at soccer for how hard he kicks. That can’t be good for your back or for the baby. We’ll stop by so Dane can get a goodnight kiss and I’ll bring you some dinner for after the nap you’re going to take right now.”
“Yes, dad.”
“And I’ll make sure that Rodney can’t retreat back to the lab. He’s worried about you and the all the hormones he’s on to rush his pouch opening certainly don’t help. Try to be less of a grouchy pain in the ass and take your damned pills for him.”
“I’ll be all sweetness and rainbows.”
“Yeah, that will definitely happen. I’m going to grab Dane’s telescope then I’ll leave you to that nap.”
Cam thought John had already dozed off when he came back from the boy’s room and was quietly walking towards the door, but John called him. “Hey, Cam. Thanks.”
“Think nothing of it, sunshine.”
John’s eyes drooped and Cam couldn’t help but grin, taking in what was still a very attractive sight. John only ever managed sweetness and rainbows when he was asleep.
***
THEN
Cam practically sleepwalked through the Registration ceremony. Any other time, he might have been fascinated by the insight it gave him into the world John grew up in, but he was still reeling from John’s . . . he didn’t even have any idea what to call it. Revelation? Declaration? Offer? Unilateral decision?
Cam had been in love with John since almost the moment they met. He’d been his buddy, his confidant, his colleague, his best friend, briefly his lover, and he was the donor of John’s child, but he obviously still had no idea who John Sheppard was. The John Sheppard Cam thought he knew could hurt Cam in a million different little ways, but those were shallow cuts. Cam hadn’t thought John was capable of inflicting a wound that seemed to cut Cam down twenty sizes, but he’d sure as hell done it. And Cam didn’t know if the fact that John actually expected Cam to be happy, even grateful, for the insane resolution John had chosen for all of them made John more guilty or less.
On the one hand, Daniel was right: John’s decisionmaking process made a lot more sense from the point of view of how John was raised. This week with John’s family had been a revelation in and of itself, highlighting how much the silver-spoon life that John was born into differed from Cam’s plebeian farm life. But, unlike Daniel and his unremitting tendency to conflate empathy and forgiveness, Cam wasn’t willing to give John a free pass due to culture. The great love of John’s life had been a pleb and he’d done his damnedest to blend in with the plebs in the service and never get grouped with the noblemen. Cam had one week to realize how different their backgrounds clearly were, whereas John had fifteen years to figure out that the things he’d been raised to just accept were far, far outside the norm in the ordinary world! Cam could accept that John’s upbringing would lead him to come up with this crazy group marriage option as a solution, but that didn’t excuse forcing it on Cam without his prior consent. The more Cam had thought about it, the angrier he got.
If John loved Cam as he said he did, then he wouldn’t have ever thought that Cam could be on board with this. Loving someone wasn’t about loving what they could do for you or loving the way they made you feel - it was about loving a person for who they were. Not being able to figure out something as basic as Cam not wanting to be stuck in a marriage with a guy he disliked, maybe even loathed, meant that either John had no idea what it meant to love someone or the person that John loved had nothing to do with who Cam actually was.
Then again, Cam’s traitorous inner voice reminded him, if John could do something like this to Cam, then the John that Cam was in love with was not the John that had finally slept with Cam again only after he’d been actively trying to get pregnant with someone else.
The John that Cam was in love with was handsome, intelligent, stubborn, creative, determined, and fun to be around. John was still all those things. But the thing that had really made Cam fall in love with John was that John was not just a good man - he was the man that would go back for a wounded comrade against orders and against probable success; he was the man who would wait around the hospital rooms of strangers that he’d evaced in the course of his job just to make sure they were alright; he was the kind of man who cared too much and fought too hard for the people he cared about. Yes, John didn’t believe he was doing wrong by Cam, but if he really cared, he would have known that what he was doing was hurtful.
But what really bothered Cam, in his heart of hearts, was that John took for granted that the decision was his to make. It didn’t matter what anthropological reasons Daniel outlined for why it was better that the carriers of the child have the power and not the child’s sire. John had taken too much license because he’d taken advantage. John could start a relationship with someone else while he was pregnant with Cam’s child. He could make promises to that person that involved Cam’s future without consulting him. He could have sex with Cam without letting him know all the expectations behind it and even though McKay was a rival for John’s affections, Cam still thought the way that John had kept the poor guy panting after him a galaxy away while he was functionally living with his baby deedee was a shitty thing to do. But John could do it all, not because he was a carrier, but because both Cam and McKay loved him more than he loved them. They would do anything for a scrap of his affection and John had all the power because of it. Cam had never thought in a million years that John would abuse that power, but he was wrong. John had been born into a world where reproductive right was power and that power was used strategically and forcefully and John had not rejected that world as much as he had claimed.
It was a nasty thought, but Cam wondered if John actually thought that because he was the Guild man, the imperial, he was better than Cam and McKay? Did he think he had the right to use their love to force them into a situation that gave John everything he wanted and left them chasing scraps of their dreams?
Cam was spitting mad at John for the way he’d forced the issue and Cam knew that anger was deserved. But at the end of the day Cam still loved and wanted John and the baby meant that Cam couldn’t just remove himself from the situation. Sam was right: the bottom line was that Cam had to decide if he could live with John’s proposed solution.
Cam had been in love with John for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it was like not to be. Even though John was doing a damned good job of acting in a way that would make Cam fall out of love with him, Cam couldn’t help the way he felt. But love wasn’t always reciprocated, no matter what the princes in Disney films made young boys believe. Could Cam live with Rodney McKay the way General O’Neill’s first spouses had and eventually find a truce? Probably. But could he live with a John who loved Cam second best? Cam’s chest ached with the pain of knowing that John had chosen McKay first, and John would reopen that wound every day for the rest of their lives if Cam agreed to marry him.
Right now it didn’t feel like the wound could heal. This feeling of rawness felt eternal and the anger burned so bright that Cam wondered if it, too, would burn forever. The truth was, Cam didn’t like who he was at the moment. He didn’t like pathetically panting after John and begging for scraps, and he didn’t like being so angry at someone that he supposedly loved. Most of all, he hated this feeling of jealousy that seemed to crawl and itch beneath his skin.
He tried to imagine the future from this moment onward. If he married John and McKay, he’d have Dane and he’d have a family. He’d eventually stop feeling that the triumvirate marriage was unnatural and embrace how much easier it was to take care of two children if you had three parents. John’s love for Cam would undoubtedly deepen, but would probably never match what he felt for McKay. Cam and McKay would trade off nights with John. Maybe they’d even branch out into threeway sex. Cam might even conceive another child with McKay eventually. They’d live on Atlantis and continue to be badass space explorers. They’d learn to work with each other for the sake of their kids. They’d go to guild functions with John’s family and visit Rodney’s in Canada and Cam’s in Kansas and eventually Cam would learn whatever it was John saw in Rodney McKay.
Maybe after years even the jealousy and anger would disappear. But what if the hurt never faded? What if living a good life wasn’t enough to make up for the fact that the man Cam was in love with would never return his feelings in the same way? Could he sit back and watch John love McKay the way Cam himself wanted to be loved?
General O’Neill had done it and John’s brother did it and they were happy. But Cam wasn’t a noble and as stupid and romantic and possibly harlequinesque as it was, Cam wanted to marry for love. So what if his pleb values were impractical and quaint? Cam knew that he didn’t deserve to be treated the way John had treated him and would continue to treat him. He deserved to have his hopes fulfilled, no compromises.
The bottom line was: Cam couldn’t live with John’s solution so he’d have to live apart.
***
NOW
Cam was amazed at the transformation that had taken place in the city over the past six years. What had once been a military outpost was now an intercultural mecca, a center for trade and education for people from the many different worlds of Pegasus. They weren’t yet at their goal of having full-time residents from other worlds, but rather than a city warship, Atlantis had become a symbol of hope and aspirations of transforming the galaxy now that the Wraith threat was no more.
Cam wished he could say that it was all his achievement, but in reality he had done very little to achieve it. It had been John’s vision and drive and Richard’s handling of the politics back on Earth that had made it happen. The only thing Cam contributed was to help defeat the Wraith.
Well, that and unknowingly cause the situation that put John in the position to have a vision for Pegasus. Ironically, when Cam thought about it, all of this was the result of Cam’s decision to seduce John one fateful night. If Cam and John hadn’t hooked up and John hadn’t carried Dane, then John never would have been on light duty and Cam never would have come to Pegasus, which meant that it would have been business as usual with John in charge of military matters and Dr. Weir in charge of civilian affairs. But the shakeup caused by John’s incubation and Cam’s appointment made the IOA see an opportunity to set its own stooge to lead the expedition. They split the role of civilian leader into two separate jobs - offworld relations and city management. John had fought bitterly to keep Dr. Weir on out of loyalty, even though they had always clashed, but once he finally accepted his role as essentially a diplomat (something Rodney was still laughing about) he had jumped in head first.
Instead of approaching it from the angle of trying to get as much out of the resources of Pegasus for the expedition and for Earth, he instead tried to make Atlantis a useful and necessary part of society in Pegasus, finding creative ways for the people of Pegasus to use the resources that Atlantis had to offer. Now, instead of wandering onto other worlds looking for allies and Ancient technology and getting shot at in the process, people came to the city looking for alliances and asking for assistance exploring and utilizing whatever the Ancients had left behind on their worlds. The expedition staff had quadrupled in size just to be able to process everything that came to them. And as the first children to live in the City, Dane and Max opened the doorway to Atlantis taking on the role of a true colony and forced the expedition to step up its city exploration mission and make the whole city, not just small areas, truly habitable.
Dane had been a mistake, one that, in retrospect, was a result of frustration and obsession and entirely the wrong kind of unrequited love. But he was the best mistake Cam and John could have ever made.
Cam was relieved to reach their quarters - Dane was drooling on his shoulder by that time. But Cam was grateful that his son was still at the age where he could be carried around like a ragdoll whenever he was asleep. He hadn’t wanted to leave his daddy and had ended up falling asleep next to John on the couch about five minutes after John had said he could watch one episode of Star Trek with his parents. Both John and Rodney were grateful that they didn’t have to deal with Dane in addition to the painful process of John moving up to their bed (after Cam told John he couldn’t call up the Bellerophon and have himself beamed into bed after he’d whined at Cam that morning to help him to the couch against Cam’s better judgment).
Cam spotted a blonde head of hair from the back of the couch as he and Dane entered, taking Dane straight to his room and tucking him into bed. When he emerged, Jennifer was already putting away her iPad in accord with their moratorium on work taking up family time. Cam couldn’t hold in the smile when she came over to kiss him. Even in pajama pants and her ratty old Mayo Clinic Residency sweatshirt, Jennifer was still the most gorgeous thing Cam had ever seen and he couldn’t believe how lucky he was. He pulled her up against him, deepening the kiss until she giggled and pushed him away, looking over at Dane’s room nervously.
Cam rolled his eyes at her shyness. Yes, getting caught in the act a few days ago had been traumatic for all parties, but, “Do you think that John and Rodney never make out when the boys are around? Trust me, there’s nothing scandalous about me giving my wife the coming home kiss she deserves.”
Jennifer blushed a little, made more embarrassed by her own embarrassment. Cam found it adorable and kissed her on the nose for punctuation. “Where’s Professor Dex?” he asked. “I would have thought he’d at least come home to devour the rest of the leftover meatloaf from last night.”
Jennifer laughed. “His trainees haven’t finished the tracking course he set for them yet. I called him on the radio and he said that on Sateda trainees wouldn’t be allowed to sleep until they had completed their instructor’s test and hung up on me. I’m pretty sure he was saying that more for their benefit than mine.”
“And now they all know that they’re standing between Ronon and his hot young wife and refined old husband and there’s going to be hell to pay.”
Jennifer punched Cam playfully on the arm. “Refined? Not the word I would use to describe you, sweetie. If I were them, I’d be more worried about standing between our husband and the meatloaf.”
Cam sat down on the couch, pulling Jennifer into his lap. “Oh? What word would you use to describe me, then?”
“Handsome. Sexy. Adorable. Smart. Experienced.” She followed each word with a kiss, running her fingers up under Cam’s shirt as she spoke. “Late.” He pinched her ass in retaliation. “Sassy,” Jennifer added with a laugh.
“I’m sorry I’m late. Rodney got carried away explaining to Dane why the stars twinkle and then he wanted to spend time with John. He missed his dad, so I just waited for him to fall asleep before coming back.”
“Mmmm. I guess I’ll have to add ‘good parent’ to the list, too. Even if you are home late.” They kissed gently for a little while longer before Jennifer pulled back. There was clearly something on her mind, but Jennifer always needed a little warm-up before she brought things up. She slid off his lap to cuddle against his side, a clear signal that the conversation was about to turn serious. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Rodney lately. Do we need to worry?”
Cam couldn’t help the inelegant guffaw that came out in response to that. He really hoped that wasn’t what had Jennifer worried. If it was, he’d have to start re-evaluating his estimation of her intelligence. “In the eight-odd years that I’ve known Rodney McKay I have not for a single second thought I might like to have sex with him. This thing with John’s back has both me and Rodney really worried. I’ve been trying to help out, that’s all.”
“You’re not a member of their marriage, Cam,” Jennifer reminded him. That ship had long since sailed. “You’re not obligated to solve their problems for them.”
“No, but we do share custody of Dane and they are my friends.” Cam’s relationship with the McKay-Sheppards had always been a sore point with Jennifer. She hadn’t even agreed to go out with Cam until he could convince her that he was over his romantic feelings for John and even though she loved Dane, she had always struggled with the stepmother role in a way Ronon didn’t. “Look, if they have problems, Dane has problems, which means I have problems, and by extension, we have problems.”
“Oh, Cam, you can’t fix everyone and everything. Sometimes you have to focus on what’s yours.” Even though Cam knew she was right, so many years of dedicating himself to Air Force and its mission had trained him to think of the good of the unit before he thought of himself. Since Dane emerged, Cam had been better - taking more off days, delegating more, cultivating a network of friends who would support him if he had to drop what he was doing and leave Dane to whoever he could find in the middle of a crisis, which for some reason seemed to end up with Dane getting babysat by the botany team more often than not. But now that his spouses were trying for another kid, Cam admitted that he needed to shift his focus and trust John and Rodney to keep their house in order.
But he found himself oddly reluctant to let go in this particular case and if he dug down deep, he knew why. “I’m sorry, Jennifer. You’re right, of course.” That was one of the reasons Cam loved Jenn. As much as she loved the man she married, she always held Cam to higher expectations that helped him aspire to be a better man, the way his drive to succeed in the Air Force once had forced him to meet high expectations professionally. “But this particular situation drags up bad memories. You have no idea how scared I was after John had that Pasteur rupture - seeing him battered and bruised and worrying constantly about both his health and Dane’s. I know that there’s a lot less risk now and it’s not my baby this time around, but seeing him incubating and laid up is dredging up some old protective instincts that I can’t seem to shake. I don’t know if I should shake them.”
Jennifer considered it for a moment. “That’s fair. Like you said, we’ve got a kind of symbiotic relationship with John and Rodney because of Dane and Max, and I’d prefer that you are a little too close to them rather than have you be in some nasty custody struggle.” Cam liked how reflective Jennifer was about her decisionmaking. She said it was a result of being put on probation for sharing confidential medical information with Ronon - the information that Cam was more than grateful for, because it made him aware that John was carrying his child. Cam preferred to believe that Jennifer would have grown into the strong but wise woman she was now even without that humiliating kick in the pants.
“So you’re okay with me being a little more involved with the McKay-Sheppards at least until John is back on his feet?”
“So long as you don’t forget about us.”
Cam leaned over to kiss her. “You really think I could forget about you, darlin’?”
Cam would prefer to end the discussion back in the bedroom, teaching Ronon a lesson about what he’d miss out on if he kept staying late in a tropical jungle on the mainland just to spite his trainees, but Jennifer obviously wasn’t finished. She pulled back from the kiss, looking away from Cam when she murmured, “I just wonder: do you think you made the right decision when you turned down John’s proposal?”
“Jenn, I thought we were past this. I love you and Ronon. There’s nobody I would rather be with, even Dane’s father. If I had to choose between you guys and John and Rodney, I’d pick you a thousand times over.”
“I do know that, Cam. I wouldn’t have married you if even for a second I thought otherwise. But that’s not what I asked. I asked if you think it was the right decision at the time, not if you’d make a different choice now.”
Cam frowned. “I guess these are the perils of being married to a genius. I’m sorry, but I don’t follow, sweetheart.”
“I mean, you ended up moving to Atlantis to follow John anyway. The three of you are surprising cooperative co-parents. You balance each other and I think that if John and Rodney didn’t have you in their lives, even though you’re not their husband, both their relationship and their parenting skills would be worse off for it. And now you not only voluntarily spend time alone with Rodney, but you’re actually friends. Leaving aside the fact that we never would have gotten together if you hadn’t rejected the proposal, don’t you think you could’ve been happy married to John and Rodney?”
Cam thought about it. He was very happy with his relationship with John and Rodney now. Once he’d been able to put down the hurt and the anger, he’d been able to focus on being a good donor to Dane and on having a good relationship with his co-parents. Realizing that even if John loved him, he would never be in love with him the way he was with Rodney and had been with Leo had hurt more than anything that had ever happened to Cam, but it forced him to face the fact that sometimes beautiful, fairy tale unrequited love would always remain unrequited. With Jennifer and Ronon, Cam had learned that it was more romantic to cultivate love together with people who also dreamed of a shared future.
“I think that if I had accepted, we’d all still be great parents. I would have eventually grown to tolerate and even like Rodney for the sake of the marriage. Maybe we would have eventually been able to sleep together, maybe even conceive a kid together. But I don’t think I’d be anywhere near as happy as I am with the two of you and I don’t think my relationship with John and Rodney would be as strong as it is now even with marriage propping it up. John would have loved both of us, but Rodney and I would probably have both been too insecure to see that. Even if we grew to enjoy each other, I don’t think that amount of insecurity in a relationship is healthy and I don’t think it ever would have gone away. That’s no way to live.”
“But you’d have John.”
“I’m not sure John’s the prize I thought he was. Don’t get me wrong, John’s one of my best friends and he’s still a very attractive man, but he put me through hell and I was too blinded by my desire to win him over to see it. I don’t doubt that he really thought he was doing me a favor by offering to marry me, but his choice wasn’t really the choice to have both - it was a choice to pick Rodney.”
Jennifer frowned, and Cam cursed the fact that he found even her frowns cute. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and the truth is that John wanted to marry me because he wanted to marry the donor of his kid - that’s what nobles do. If he had wanted me as a husband, he would never have bothered with Rodney in the first place or he would have called it off with him. If you get knocked up by someone who you love and want, the path is clear. The fact that he didn’t ask me if he could include Rodney in the relationship before conceiving Max meant that he’d chosen Rodney. Asking me to marry him at that point was asking me if I wanted to join him and Rodney in a relationship. It was his relationship with Rodney that was non-negotiable. Rodney was his choice. Being equal partners the way you and Ronon and I are was never on the table. Being married to John the way Rodney is, being together, heart and soul and lineage, that is a prize, but that’s not what I was offered and it’s not what I would have had. I would have with John what I have now only with sex and that’s not enough. I sure as hell know that now, but I had an inkling of it then.”
Jennifer nodded, smiling. “So there’s no regrets?”
“None at all. I love you and I’m starting to get really mad at Ronon’s trainees because I want to show you exactly how in love with both of you I am.”
***
THEN
John and McKay had been surprisingly respectful to Cam both during and after the ceremony. McKay sat obediently in the audience with SG1, made quiet small talk with John’s family and avoided Cam like the plague. John helped Cam practice his part of the ceremony, sitting on the other side of the wide dining room table with a hand on his belly and no cheat-sheet. Cam wondered when and why John had memorized the Registration ceremony, but he hadn’t felt in the mood to ask. John was obediently giving Cam his space, but the little hopeful glances that he kept shooting Cam when Cam wasn’t looking just served to remind Cam that in looking out for his own future, he would be robbing John of his happy ending. Not that John deserved a happy ending more than Cam did, but it still made Cam feel guilty that he couldn’t be like O’Neill’s ex-husband or like Alexi and marry a man who wasn’t in love with him for the sake of their family.
After the departure of all the guests, most of whom were fellow Potentia Guild members or business partners of Sheppard Industries, Cam found John in the family library. The library was all rich woods and shelves upon shelves of old hardbound books that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a museum or a Harry Potter film. John was standing on a raised dais that housed the alcove containing the family history. Someone had already returned the family pedigree to its place in a large display case that hung on the back wall of the alcove. It only encompassed the past five generations, but still the gold leafed emblems, family watermark and intricate calligraphy that depicted generations of Sheppards - and now included Cam - made for an impressive, imposing sight. John had opened a glass case that resided beneath the pedigree. It was an ancient looking tome that Cam thought he recognized from the ceremony.
John smiled when he noticed Cam. It was an uncharacteristically soft expression from John, almost tender. “Come over here, Cam.”
Cam obeyed, letting John tuck him underneath his arm as he reached out with a white-gloved hand to flip the book to another page. “This is our copy of the family genealogy,” John said. “It contains all the Potentia Guild Registered Sheppards tracing back to the seventeenth century. The book itself only dates back to the 1890s and has been handed down to the first child to carry since then. This book will be mine once my father passes away.” He gestured to three other books in glass cases that ringed the alcove. “That one is my mother’s copy of the Townsend genealogy for Dave and that’s Alexi’s book and Darren’s.” Cam noted that the book had no family map. Instead it was just a list of names crammed onto each page with nothing more than a date next to them. “Just in this generation alone there are more than five thousand Sheppards in our guild. My father has the book updated at the guild congress each year.”
Cam expected John to look on all of this meaningless stuff with disdain, but he looked almost wistful. “It’s not really important anymore, with the electronic guild database.”
“John--” Cam began.
John whipped around as quickly as his current condition would allow, grabbing Cam’s hands. “I’m happy you’re a part of this, Cam. It’s all old stuffy meaningless tradition, but it’s our old stuffy meaningless tradition.”
Cam couldn’t help but smile at the sentimental side of John that he’d never seen before. It was nice to see that there was something romantic and nostalgic hiding beneath John’s steely determination to set himself apart. “I guess I’m happy to have my name on that piece of paper, too,” Cam acknowledged, “if it means that Dane will have access to the benefits of nobility.”
“Dane will have only the best. We’ll make sure of it, Cam.” There was something shining and manic in John’s eyes. Cam wasn’t sure he liked the look.
“John--” Cam tried again, ignoring the hopeful way that John stared into his eyes. He needed to tell John now. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand his ground if John kept looking at him like that.
“Marry me, Cam. Marry me and raise our son with me.” John leaned forward, expecting a kiss. When he didn’t receive one he joked, “C’mon, Mitchell, don’t leave me hanging.”
Cam squeezed John’s hands, taking a deep, bracing breath. He could do this. “John, I love you. I’m so head over heels stupid in love with you that it hurts.”
John smiled, trying to pull Cam in for a kiss. The happiness in his eyes felt like a gunshot wound.
“But this isn’t what I want,” Cam insisted. “If I marry you and we take Rodney as a secundus, it will kill me. Maybe I’ll be happy for a while because I won’t have to let you go, but it’ll kill me by inches over the long run having to share you.”
John didn’t seem to even hear the rejection, pushing on, trying to persuade Cam of something that he just couldn’t feel in his gut was right. “But group marriages are normal. They’ve worked for hundreds of years, so much so that now even plebs are starting to pick up on them. You might feel jealous now, but that will pass.” John gave him an encouraging smile. “Once we all commit to each other we’ll find an equilibrium that works for us.”
“Look, the fact that you can’t understand how this makes me feel is proof of why we can’t be together,” Cam snapped. He had come here intending to put his anger aside, but instead of releasing like a pressure valve with the decision, John’s denials continued to fuel the fire of the rage that Cam realized had been simmering ever since John told him about his relationship with Rodney McKay. “You haven’t once considered my feelings the whole time we’ve been doing this. You’ll take my support and you’ll take my love, but you don’t respect me. If you did, you would have talked to me about this before you and Rodney tried to conceive another kid.”
“Like you’ve considered my feelings and what I wanted?” John yelled, pulling away. “Like you thought about what I wanted before you conveniently got me drunk and didn’t use any protection? Like you’ve kept me all cooped up in your house to protect your baby? Like you’re forcing all your stupid pleb values onto me and making my son a bastard by refusing to marry me?” John massaged his belly as though it was the baby hurting him, not just Cam.
Cam had thought of the time they’ve spent together as magical - reaffirming their friendship and deepening the bond between them. But somehow, the anger felt better, finally letting John know exactly how much he’d hurt Cam over the years. The second Cam had let that small amount of anger through - stopped being the perfect, supportive friend and donor - he couldn’t seem to stop. “I’ve done nothing but do right by you as you trod all over me! I wanted you from the first time we met, but I respected your relationship with Leo and didn’t try for more. I was a good friend to you when you two almost broke up instead of taking the opportunity. I was there for you after he died and I was there for you when you got pushed out of Atlantis. Yes, I was happy to finally be free to seduce you, but you let yourself be seduced. I fucked up by not wearing a condom, but you didn’t exactly stop me.”
“I shouldn’t have had to stop you!” John shouted. Cam hadn’t for a second considered that John might be harboring just as much repressed anger as Cam. “You knew I was an imperial and you could’ve fucking figured out that even if we were going to start a lifelong relationship with a drunken fuck, I wouldn’t want to have a baby from the first time I fucked you!”
Had this been bothering John all along? Cam was tempted to think it was Rodney trying to poison John against him, but the hurt in John’s eyes was genuine. Maybe this was why John always seemed to be holding himself back with Cam.
Cam grabbed John’s hands again, forcing him to stop the fidgeting movement against his belly. John was shaking with anger, and Cam forced himself to take a few slow breaths in hopes of calming John. He looked John straight in the eye. “John, I know that carrying and all of the restrictions of doing it, on your career, on your life, make you feel powerless and you’re looking for someone to blame. You can blame me, because, yes, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been, but you can’t think that this was all some plan of mine to force you to be with me. Don’t punish me for an outcome I didn’t intend.”
John nodded, taking another gasping breath to calm himself. “I don’t really think that you were conspiring to knock me up and I know that the decision to go through with the incubation was a decision I made knowing how many things I’d have to give up, but I’m the only one who has to suffer the consequences of what I admit was a joint mistake. Don’t you owe it to me to compromise what you want so that we can give the kid a good home?”
“He’ll have a good home, John, whether I marry you or not. Marry Rodney, give Dane a pouchmate. I’ve already sacrificed plenty and I’ll sacrifice more for our son. I’ve stood by you, loving you when you didn’t return those feelings. I haven’t pressured you or taken advantage of you, just loved you and our son.”
John looked down at his rounded belly, sighing. “Just because you’re in love with someone doesn’t make them obligated to love you back. You were never entitled to more, Cam.”
“So why dangle it in front of me like a prize, then? Why promise me love and a family when you’ll never be in love with me? You don’t have to blackmail me into doing right by Dane. I’ll do that no matter what.”
John looked stricken, his eyes watering and his cheeks flushed. “I’m not trying to blackmail you, Cam. I do love you. You’re right, you have been a true friend to me all these years and you take such good care of me. These past months have made me realize how much I need you in my life. I can’t love you the way you want to be loved. And don’t think I haven’t tried. Don’t punish me for something I didn’t intend. Raise our son with me.” John pressed Cam’s hand against his belly where he could feel the neonate shifting minutely. He had a desperate, pleading look in his eyes, but the stubborn jut of his jaw said that John would fight until he ran out of ammunition, as usual. “I don’t want to let you go.” That was probably the longest emotional confession Cam had ever heard from John. He was frankly surprised John was even capable of it. But as heartfelt as it was, it was still about John and what Cam could do for him, not about what they could do together.
“It’s not about what you want, John. It’s about what we want, which means you have to consider what I want. I want to marry you and only you. Can you give me that?”
John’s eyes were shining with tears, his hands wrapped around his belly protectively. Both of them were trembling with anticipation for his answer. Cam cursed his stupid heart for still holding out hope. After long moments, John finally shook his head.
“Then you and I are done here,” Cam said, ignoring John’s shell-shocked expression. He’d known all along that John wouldn’t pick him over Rodney, but the rejection still hurt. Of all the many times John had rejected him, this was the first one Cam truly felt. He turned and put his jacket back on and headed out the door, not wanting to give John the satisfaction of seeing how much this hurt him. He’d already put his bags in the car, but Cam felt so weak-kneed that he didn’t think he had it in him to drive all the way back to DC. He’d check into a hotel in town and drown his sorrows in mini-bar liquor and ESPN. It was raining out, the grey of winter lingering in the sky. Cam thought it fit his mood.
What he wasn’t expecting was for John to come running after him down the drive, almost knocking him over when he threw himself into Cam’s arms, clinging tight. “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. I said I’d marry you, please don’t abandon us. I tried to do what you wanted. We can all be happy. Don’t leave.”
John’s face was coated with tears. He seemed almost hysterical. Maybe he misunderstood. “I’m not going to abandon you and Dane, John,” Cam spoke slowly. The wrecked expression on John’s face made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. “I told you before, I will do anything for my son. My relationship with you doesn’t change that. But you’ve just broken my heart, so at least do me the courtesy of letting me go to lick my wounds in peace. My leave is over so you can either go back to Atlantis like you originally planned, or you can stay here with your family. Or, hey, you’re a free man - you can go wherever you want. You have my number and the SGC emergency line. If there’s a problem with the baby, I promise I will come for you wherever you are as fast as humanly possible, but I can barely stand to look at you right now, so go back in the house before you catch a cold.”
“No, Cam. No.” John was sobbing now. His legs seemed to collapse from under him, the only thing keeping him out of the muddy grass was his white-knuckled grip on Cam’s coat. “Don’t leave me,” he repeated over and over again.
As touching as this display of emotion from usually stoic, John ‘feelings, what feelings?’ Sheppard, Cam was forced to remind himself that it was still all just a tantrum by John, trying to get what he wanted. Cam tried to dislodge John’s grip without being too rough with him - a difficult task when John was a strong, combat-trained limpet.
“John, this is crazy. Let me go.”
That only made John cry out and cling tighter, dropping to the ground and latching on to Cam’s ankles. Now Cam was starting to get scared. This was beyond uncharacteristic for John; it was edging into psychosis. In fact, it reminded Cam of when John had been labor sick.
“Shit,” Cam swore. Even though he really was finally sick of John Sheppard and all his bullshit, there was no way he’d leave an incubating man in hysterics out in the rain. Only when he tried to pull John up, promising that he wouldn’t leave him did he notice that John wasn’t even wearing any shoes. This was not good.
Cam made more soothing noises, stroking John’s back and guiding him back towards the house. Cam could easily lift a man John’s size in a fireman’s carry, but he was too heavy for Cam to carry in a way that wouldn’t hurt the baby. “Come on, help me get you inside. I’m not going to let you go. I promise.”
One of the many Sheppard family employees rushed to open the door when she saw Cam and John stumble down the path. “Call one of those Guild doctors,” Cam ordered her, “and have Dave meet us upstairs.”
“Take him to one of the downstairs guestrooms,” she replied. “At the end of this hallway. I’ll call the doctor.”
Cam wasted no time pulling off John’s wet clothes and running a warm bath to help get the mud off. John’s skin was cold even though he was sweating, and his arms trembled as he kept trying to push himself closer to Cam. Cam ended up half in the tub trying to get him warm and clean.
Darren came in as Cam was struggling to towel John dry while John kept clinging to Cam’s wet clothes. “Dave’s at work. I called him and he’s on his way back. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Cam admitted, grateful when Darren pulled John away from him long enough to get him into one of the thick terrycloth robes hanging on the back of the door. In the moment’s reprieve, Cam pulled his sopping wet clothes off and got the other robe on. “We were having an argument and he just had a meltdown.”
They manhandled John into bed, pulling out all the spare blankets to put on top of him. John’s mantra of begging Cam not to leave continued in a quiet murmur. “Is it possible to have labor sickness when you’re not, you know, in labor?”
Darren frowned. “I’ve never heard of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Why don’t you hop in there with him. I’ll get you some clothes and receive the doctor.”
“My suitcase is in the trunk of the car,” Cam admitted, ashamed. He knew that he was doing absolutely nothing wrong by leaving, but John’s desperate babble and the way he clutched Cam was incriminating. Darren looked surprised, but he was gracious enough not to ask.
Cam let John wrap his arms around him even though it made him feel worse and worse by the minute. What was he doing here, catering to John’s whims once again? Why couldn’t John just let Cam have the last word for once, let him walk away from this mess with his last shred of dignity? Cam reminded himself that whatever this was must be medical, because there was no way John’s pride would allow him to do something like this.
The doctor arrived surprisingly quickly. She was a wizened old woman with her grey hair pulled back into a long immaculate braid that ran down her back. She wouldn’t have looked out of place carrying one of those old-style doctor’s bags.
She snatched the covers away from John, whose eyes widened as he grabbed onto Cam’s bicep hard enough to bruise. She took her time examining him, taking his pulse and temperature, palpitating his abdomen, moving her stethoscope around John’s belly in search of the baby’s heartbeat. With a decisive nod she pulled out a pill bottle, shook one out and handed it to Cam. “Get him to take that.”
“What is it? What the hell is going on?”
“It’s a panic attack and that’s a Valium.” She seemed perturbed to have to provide even that small description.
“It won’t hurt the baby?”
“No more than what could happen if he continues like this,” she gestured to the way every muscle in John’s body seemed to be tensed and shaking.
In the end, Cam ended up just tossing the tiny pill down John’s throat the way he’d done with his old dog. The doctor nodded her approval.
The pill seemed to take effect only ten minutes afterwards. John relaxed, but still held onto Cam as he slowly drifted into exhausted sleep.
The doctor motioned to Cam to get up and follow her outside where Darren and Dave were already waiting. Dave looked worried, his usually immaculate suit was wrinkled from when he’d been embracing Darren. Cam was glad that Dave wasn’t kept abreast of the day to day dangers of John’s job. Darren was calm and unflappable, but he was watching the doctor like a hawk, awaiting her pronouncement.
“Your fiance,” she said to Cam. He didn’t bother to correct her. “Is suffering from a severe panic attack. I take it this behavior is unusual for him?”
They all nodded.
She looked down at a file with John’s name on it and the Potentia Guild’s crest. “This is his first child, so it could be brought on by the associated stress of bringing a new life into the world. It’s not uncommon for first time carriers to develop mild symptoms of an anxiety disorder. But it also says that he has had a long career in the military and a recent note filed by Doctor Carson Beckett says that he was in an accident in which he broke his arm not long before he transferred?”
“A plane crash,” Cam offered.
Dave looked horrified.
“Well with the number of combat hours listed in this file, I’d be surprised if he didn’t suffer from some form of stress disorder and a plane crash is certainly catalyst enough.”
“He’s been in a lot of plane crashes,” Cam countered, making Dave’s expression even worse. “Are you sure this couldn’t be some kind of labor sickness? We were arguing and suddenly he was grabbing me and begging me not to leave over and over again like you saw.”
“Does he look like he’s in labor, boy?” the doctor snapped. “That was a textbook panic attack if I ever saw one. Does he have any reason to be panicked about your departure?”
Cam looked at Darren guiltily, but before he could speak up, Dave announced, “He lost his previous fiance and a neonate at the same time during a mission in Afghanistan.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” she asked. “I’m just the doc on housecall duty for this district, but I suggest you get an appointment with one of our psychiatrists to follow up. Too much stress at this stage can reduce milk production and leave the child underdeveloped.”
Cam nodded absently. Dave had already whipped out his Blackberry and was scrolling through the names of guild psychiatrists. The doctor pulled Cam aside while Dave put in a call to the guild concierge.
“Look, son, obviously whatever this is centers around his fear, however irrational it might be, that he’ll lose you the way he lost his previous fiance, so stay around him if you can, at least until you can talk with an expert and get this under control.”
Cam agreed, swallowing down the the lump in his throat. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t get sucked in again to playing the loving husband when that’s not what he would ever be. “And if I absolutely cannot stay?” He hated himself the moment he said it.
The old doctor narrowed her eyes in judgment. “Then make sure he has someone to take care of him. Also, I forgot to ask you, have the two of you had unprotected sex recently?”
John and Cam hadn’t, because John would only do that with Cam by accident. “No we haven’t. Why?”
“Well, a lot of couples start thinking about giving their child a pouchmate at this stage and sometimes the second conception combined with the hormones for milk production throw a carrier for a loop. If that’s the case, he should settle down in a week or so.”
She walked off to check on John a final time and settle the paperwork for the visit with Dave.
Cam didn’t want to go far in case John woke up, so he found his way back to the house’s old library, staring at the high bookcases and listening to the somber pitter patter of the rain. He pulled out his phone and dialed the SGC switchboard.
“Mitchell, telephone access code zero, zero, six, alpha, bravo, niner. Colonel Carter please?”
It took a minute for the call to connect to Sam’s radio frequency so Cam paced anxiously.
“Cam?” she finally answered, sounding happy to hear from him. “How are things going? Did you make your decision?”
“Yes I did, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Oh?”
“I wanted to ask you a favor. Is McKay still there by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact he is. He stopped by the Ancient technology lab and saw something he didn’t like on the whiteboard. He’s been harassing Bill Lee for the past two hours about a assigning a few assistants to him so he can figure it out. Personally, I think it’s a delay tactic so he doesn’t have to go back to Atlantis without you and Sheppard, but Jack doesn’t seem in a hurry to ship him off either.”
“Can you tell him to get his suitcase and meet me at the beam-in site in half an hour? Oh, and make sure he brings an umbrella.”
“I can arrange that.”
“Thanks, Sam, you’re a lifesaver.”
“Wait, Cam, what’s going--”
Cam hung up before he’d have to answer her.
Cam had hoped to discreetly grab his coat and sneak back with McKay before anyone was the wiser, but as soon as he stepped out the kitchen entrance he found Darren waiting for him, smoking a cigarette and leaning against the trunk of an old oak tree whose leaves shielded him from the rain.
“Fine, you caught me. I’m not going to ever be a part of your family and I’m not going to marry John and I don’t even have the strength to stay when me leaving gives him a goddamned panic attack. Go ahead and judge me.”
Darren nodded to himself, as though receiving congratulations from an invisible stranger. “I suspected as much.”
“Well isn’t that great for you?” Cam shouted, knowing he was being an asshole to a guy who’d been nothing but welcoming to him, but he felt rubbed raw by the events of today. His whole world had come crashing down and instead of picking right back up and charging forward like he always did, he just wanted one moment to himself so he could fester in the rubble. “Everyone thinks they know what’s best for me when nothing’s best. There are no good choice.”
Darren moved closer, slinging an arm around Cam’s shoulders and holding his umbrella over both their heads. “Hey, man, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I didn’t make the same choice as you did and I don’t know many of us nobles who would, but if you’ve decided it’s a compromise you can’t live with, then don’t.”
“It’s not a compromise I can’t live with. It’s that I can’t live with compromise.”
Darren considered that for a moment. “I feel you. Also, mind if I borrow that? For a song, maybe.”
“Sure. Won’t make me feel any better, though.”
“I don’t expect it will. I doubt anything I could say will make you feel better at this point.”
“Well, if you’re not here to stop me and you’re not here to try to make me feel better, then why are you here?”
“To let you know that no matter what happens with you and John, you put your name in our Registry and that means we’re family now. I don’t think John will try to keep Dane away from you, but if for any reason you need us to intercede, you call me. It may look like a bunch of old traditionalist bullcrap to you and you might never want to set foot in another guild club or deal with any more stiff, prejudiced noblemen who look down on you for being who you are, but the real reason the guilds exist, the reason they started, is to create a family that reaches out its arms into the future. Your name is inscribed in the family tree and it means that we’ll protect you.”
Cam didn’t really have an answer for Darren. He still didn’t understand any of the noble traditions that had reached into the future to make John the way he was. Maybe what John meant by marriage and family was completely different than what it meant to Cam, and maybe that had been the problem all along.
Cam reached out and shook Darren’s hand. It was the only thing he could do.
Rodney was scowling, standing under a pink umbrella at the beam-in site. “You’re late,” he said, simmering. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? You tell Carter I need to beam in and then you just leave me by the side of the road, in the rain by the way, waiting for you.”
“Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want,” Cam grit out. He had no idea why he thought he could deal with seeing Rodney McKay today. He was doing it for John. Hopefully it would be the last thing Cam ever did for him.
“What’s going on? Is it John? The baby? Or is this some kind of surprise elopement, because I know that you and I don’t get along, but I think for John’s sake we can put our differences aside and even though you’re very much not a genius and annoy me like a wet rash, I’ll admit that you are not unattractive and I think that in time you will find that--”
“Let me just stop you there, McKay,” Cam said, dredging up his sternest ‘I am your commanding officer and you will not interrupt me’ voice. “John and I are not getting married. You and I are not friends and neither are me and John. We’ll share custody of Dane and that’s it.”
“Okay.” McKay surprised Cam by not crowing at his victory. In fact, he looked almost disappointed. “So why did you call me here? Where’s John?”
“John had a panic attack.” Cam held up a hand to deflect Rodney’s questions. “He and the baby are fine, but the doctor said someone he cares about should be there when he wakes up.”
“You’re already here. What do you need me for? I was supposed to gate back to Atlantis today.” While Cam was glad to hear that at least McKay thought John cared about him, it just made him feel all the more guilty for leaving when leaving had been what made John panic in the first place.
Cam didn’t answer him, grabbing the pink umbrella and getting out of the car. He pulled his suitcase out of the back, enjoying McKay’s perplexed expression.
“Where do you think you’re going? And don’t tell me some SGC emergency, because we all know that I’d be right in the middle of it if there were one.”
Cam sighed, weary. “I am going home. Turn around and follow this road for a couple miles back to the house. You can return the car to the Hertz guys at Dulles when you’re done.”
“But--”
“Better get moving, McKay. Your fiance needs you.”
***
NOW
Cam woke up with a face full of dreadlocks. It was a fairly regular occurrence in the Mitchell-Dex-Keller household, save for when Ronon was on a mission or one of the rare occasions in which Jennifer consented to sleeping in the middle, usually after some kind of crisis made her husbands feel overprotective of her, though those were happening less and less these days.
Cam blinked awake, squeezing Ronon around the waist to wake him up so he could get out of bed. When they first started sleeping together, Cam had tried to sneak out of bed in order to let Ronon sleep, but that usually ended in Ronon swinging his legs out to knock Cam down and restrain him before he even opened his eyes. Turned out only a gentle squeeze and a kiss would wake Ronon non-violently.
Ronon turned around and smiled at Cam, kissing him briefly before vaulting out of bed and heading for the closet to pull on his running clothes. After years of running in leather pants and boots, Jennifer had finally convinced Ronon to wear synthetic running gear and those annoying five-toe shoes that were so popular. Today it was black compression pants and a tight long-sleeved blue top that made Cam’s hands itch to pull it off. It didn’t help that Ronon never wore any underwear and only consented to wear a pair of briefs in bed because otherwise they rarely made it out for their morning run due to distraction. Cam put on basketball shorts and an old USAF t-shirt, feeling a bit sloppy compared to his husband, but it didn’t stop Ronon from goosing him as they made their way out the door.
Cam had been getting faster (and spending his days more tired) these past two months that John had been too big to run with them. Usually Ronon would get bored and leave the old men to run at their own pace, but without John Cam had been forcing himself to keep up.
“So what time did you get back?” Cam asked. He and Jennifer had finally given up on waiting for Ronon and had quick, playful sex on his side of the bed.
“Maybe four hours ago,” Ronon admitted. He didn’t even have the courtesy to look tired. “This group sucks.”
“Do they suck or did you make the course too hard again?” Cam asked.
“On Sateda--”
“On Sateda you learned how to fight and track early because the Wraith might come at any time. You have to lower your expectations for the guys that come over from Earth. Besides, we have completely different flora and fauna on our planet. They don’t automatically know that weaver beatles repair their nets with blue thread when disturbed or that you can use sand thistle leaves as a stimulant and sense enhancer and all the little things you take for granted.”
“Already made it easier,” Ronon grumbled, but Cam could tell by his tone that Ronon had taken his advice to heart. Cam never would have pictured himself with someone who was so taciturn when Cam himself was as socially gregarious at it got. But spending time with Ronon had taught Cam to appreciate silence in a way he hadn’t previously. Ronon didn’t say much, but he didn’t need to. After long days running meetings and putting out fires, Cam was glad to come back home and curl up with Ronon in the hammock on their balcony or take a twilight swim with him within the artificial breakwater between the northwest and north piers.
“We missed you.”
Ronon only grunted in acknowledgment. Even after three years together Ronon wasn’t used to the effusive way Cam and Jennifer expressed affection. Sometimes Cam found Ronon’s limited verbalization of his feelings uncomfortable. He knew that Ronon loved him and Ronon said the words when it mattered, but it still left Cam feeling flat footed and ridiculous the times when he wanted to heap Ronon with affection and all Ronon did was grunt.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with McKay,” Ronon said. The ‘that’s why you’ve missed me’ was implied.
“It’s like you and Jenn are reading from the same playbook. Did you guys discuss this without me?” Jennifer was much more frustrated by Ronon’s lack of communication skills than Cam. Even though Cam didn’t doubt that Jennifer loved Ronon, he wasn’t sure whether she would have married him if she hadn’t married Cam too.
“Not really. But she keeps saying, ‘Cam’s out with Rodney and Dane again.’”
“Ah. We discussed it last night. The two of you have nothing to worry about. I’m just helping Rodney out while John is out of commission.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Ronon replied, picking up the pace a little bit to signal that he was done talking.
After they’d passed through Skyway 12B, Cam slowed back down to talking pace. “I haven’t wanted to seem as though I’m keeping track, but I think Jennifer is ovulating soon. You might want to give the trainees easy courses so you can be back home at a reasonable time.”
“I thought we weren’t in a rush.”
Cam winced. Luckily he was a few paces behind Ronon so his husband ran on, oblivious. The truth was that Ronon and Jennifer weren’t in a rush - they had both just hit thirty whereas Cam was edging close to fifty. For the most part the age difference didn’t bother them. Cam was athletic enough to keep up in the bedroom and both Jennifer and Ronon weren’t engaged enough in Earth culture to make the age gap obvious in terms of interests and shared references (Jennifer because she had been a child prodigy who spent all her time studying, and Ronon because he wasn’t from Earth). Cam wasn’t even much far ahead of them professionally. Jennifer had recently been promoted to Chief Surgeon (over her own protest to Carson), and Ronon both taught survival and tracking classes and was the leader of the offworld extraction team.
The only real reminder of the age difference was the fact that Cam already had a son - two sons, really, because like most pouchmates, Dane and Max were a package deal. Ronon was Dane’s godfather already so he’d fallen right into the stepdad role. Jennifer still wasn’t entirely comfortable - she worried about overstepping whenever she needed to discipline the boys and was wary of being left alone with them, which in turn made them uncomfortable around her. Even though she very much wanted to start a family, she was more inclined to drag it out over nerves that she wouldn’t be a good mother.
Cam was trying to be sensitive to Jennifer’s fears, but he wasn’t getting any younger. Cam didn’t have to worry about his biology, since they planned for Ronon and Jennifer to be the biological parents of the kid, but he hoped to be around long enough to see the baby grow up. Even if they conceived right away, he’d be almost seventy when their kid graduated high school. If they didn’t conceive soon, the baby might not even know its grandparents the way Dane and Max had never met John’s parents.
Then there was the other goal of wanting the new baby to be close enough in age to Max and Dane so that they would still have memories of being children together. But who was he kidding? Cam’s real motivator was the fact that John and Rodney were having another baby and their worry about being too old had transferred over to Cam. It wasn’t uncommon for carriers to remain fertile into their fifties and John had the advantage of being de-aged by a Wraith who overshot his actual age by around five years, so he wasn’t going to kick the bucket anytime soon, but Rodney constantly worried with nail-biting intensity. And because he didn’t want to alarm John, he mostly worried all over Cam.
“We’re not in a rush,” Cam said. “But wouldn’t you rather have it happen sooner than later?”
Ronon shrugged. They ran a few more paces before his husband stopped altogether and turned to Cam. “You weren’t honest with us. You want this to happen right away.”
Cam hunched in on himself sheepishly. “Maybe I do.”
Ronon thought for a second and then nodded, pulling Cam in for a brief kiss. “Then we’ll try harder.” Ronon never doubted. He believed everything he said with absolute conviction, and the power of his belief seemed to make the impossible possible. Ronon had been transformed by his time as a runner. It had undoubtedly stunted his social skills in many ways, but it had also stripped away many of the pretenses that lubricated the social wheels. Ronon meant what he said and said what he meant and Cam loved him for it.
“You’re too good to me, darlin’.” He grabbed Ronon by his pesky dreadlocks and guided them both against the wall of the abandoned corridor where they ran. Before he knew it, Ronon was scooping him up and pressing him against the wall. Cam still couldn’t believe that he’d married a man big and strong enough to do that. After kissing and rubbing up against each other until they both felt raw and teetering on the edge, Ronon slammed Cam down onto the ground and engaged in his new favorite sport: competitive cock-sucking.
Cam won as usual - it was one of the only sports he could best Ronon at.
As they caught their breath Cam reflected on how damned lucky he was to have this. Cam believed that he and Jennifer ultimately would have found each other, but getting Ronon as well was a coup. Ronon had had his eye on Jennifer before Cam had joined the expedition, but he was still young and recovering both from the death of his previous fiance and from his seven years on the run. He took their courtship so slowly that Jennifer had no idea she was being courted until Cam joined the picture and Ronon was forced to be more obvious.
Jennifer was a pleb, but thanks to her genius she had attended several schools in which most of the students were nobles, so the idea of a triumvirate marriage was not so far fetched. Even though she had always had the option at the back of her mind she seemed to have enjoyed watching both Cam and Ronon bend over backwards to try to win her over. Cam even suspected that she might have enjoyed driving a wedge between them for a while. It was practically the only fight that Cam and Ronon had since they met, not counting the grudge that Ronon still held against Cam for betting against Ronon when he and Teal’c sparred for the first time.
One could argue that Cam and Ronon and Jennifer’s relationship really started when Ronon betrayed Jennifer’s confidence to send Cam a message about John’s gestation. It was a watershed moment for all three of them: Jennifer because of the way the consequences shaped her, Ronon because he had finally felt comfortable taking a moral stance of his own instead of looking to John for confirmation that he was doing the right thing, and Cam because he became a donor because of it.
On his first visit to Atlantis, Cam had brought Ronon some homemade snickerdoodles and a book on American military history in thanks. Ronon started emailing Cam questions about the book not long afterwards, even though he was in a city full of military guys who could have answered his questions. Once Cam arrived on Atlantis while he and John were still fighting, Ronon had been one of the few people who didn’t automatically take John’s side. And he was the one to force John and Cam to finally talk to each other and settle their differences after the alien time capsule kept John, Rodney and Cam busy by making them think that Dane and Max had been taken hostage by Kolya.
Cam had noticed that Ronon was an attractive man the first time they met, and Ronon was one of Cam’s only friends when he moved to the city to replace John as military commander. A few months after arriving, Cam had been considering asking Ronon on a date until a briefing with the anthropologists explained that most Pegasus cultures saw same-gendered relationships as taboo, most likely because they were non-reproductive in a galaxy that desperately need population growth. Ironically, Jennifer had been the one Cam had asked about Ronon’s sexuality (after getting a stuttered ‘that’s not the kind of thing we talk about’ from Rodney).
According to Ronon, he and Jennifer had almost shared a kiss during the accidental quarantine that left a terrified Teyla stranded to face John going into labor (something they all still teased her about). But Ronon and Cam had kissed first, after a disastrous mission in which Cam, Jennifer, and Ronon had gone to assist a world that suffered from constant earthquakes. They had ended up trapped in an underground bunker on the verge of collapse and Cam had ended up breaking his leg in an attempt to reach the surface. When Ronon had come to help him back to his quarters, Cam’s exhausted, drug-addled brain had thought it would be a good idea to kiss the object of his affections even though he knew that Ronon wasn’t interested in men. Ronon had pushed him away gently but had taken it all in stride. They didn’t talk about that aborted first kiss for years, not even when they first got together.
“What are you thinking?” Ronon murmured, sitting up against the wall and pulling Cam back to rest between his legs.
Cam smiled. “Just remembering our first kiss and how you came to be this insatiable, expert cocksucker.”
Ronon shrugged. “I changed. I liked you before Jennifer asked me to try it with the two of you, but we didn’t do that on Sateda. It took me a long time just to figure out how John had a baby out of his butt. I didn’t know how to have sex with a man. On Sateda we had a word for men who were closer than friends: battle brothers. I thought maybe John was my battle brother before I met you, because I believed in him more than I’d ever believed in anyone as a leader. But it’s not about loyalty or about battle. It’s like being in love without having sex. I had that with you even before Jennifer asked me.”
Ronon wasn’t usually all that romantic towards Cam; even towards Jennifer his romantic side normally expressed itself through overprotectiveness and the presentation of incredibly strange gifts based on some mysterious Satedan courtship calendar that Cam and Jennifer still couldn’t figure out. Cam smiled, turning around to kiss Ronon. To Cam, Ronon openly discussing his feelings was the greatest gift.
Jennifer had told Cam, of course, about how she got Ronon to agree to their arrangement. She had envisioned that she would propose a solution that involved the three of them on the disastrous mission in which they encountered the other runner. Then they both proved to her that they weren’t ready for a relationship when Daniel and Rodney activated the Atero device - Cam because of how clear it was that he still had feelings for John after he broke his back and Ronon because of the reckless way he acted while fighting to retake the Daedalus from Todd.
Later, Jennifer had her body taken over by a thief who tried to seduce Ronon in order to escape the city. After a rescue mission to retrieve the thief’s body and switch them back, Ronon had admitted to Jennifer that the thief had briefly gotten the upper hand by kissing him. Jennifer had felt relieved to get the opening that she wanted to ask Ronon into a relationship, but Ronon followed his revelation with the statement that he had once thought there could be something between them but he thought it was clear that they both wanted someone else and in the end it would be the best person who would win that battle. All Jennifer had to do at that point was ask Ronon why all three of them couldn’t have everything they wanted.
It still took another year for Cam to be ready to be in a relationship with them, though Ronon and Jennifer didn’t exactly wait to start their end of things. Jennifer always joked about how hard they’d tried and Cam just laughed and admitted that he wouldn’t have had much self control either.
“What about you?” Ronon asked. “I remember what you wrote to me about Sheppard and McKay. You said sharing wasn’t for you. I didn’t really believe Jennifer when she said that we’d be able to convince you.”
It was a good question. Cam had been dead set against triumvirate marriages, but his previous objection barely crossed his mind when Jennifer and Ronon propositioned him. In the end, he supposed he’d never been truly against the concept, only against trying it with John and Rodney.
Objectively, Cam had plenty of reasons to be just as insecure, if not more, in his status with Jennifer and Ronon. With John and Rodney he would have married John first and have had a kid with him to cement their relationship. He’d known John longer and had slept with him first and he would be protected from a divorce by guild law. In his current marriage, his partners had been together first, were having a kid together, were much younger and probably more attractive than he was, and in reality didn’t really need him for anything vital. But they both loved him and somehow that made everything else meaningless.
“I guess I always saw triumvirate marriages as a compromise. Nobody would lose but nobody would win, either. With you, I felt like I was getting everything I ever wanted on a platter, and I’m pretty sure you felt the same.”
Ronon grinned. “I did feel the same. Jennifer too. And she helped me practice for when I’d have to have butt-sex with you.”
Cam grinned. “Have to have butt-sex with me? That’s not what I heard you scream three nights ago. Also, I’d like to see how you practiced.”
Ronon pulled Cam to his feet and immediately took off running. “Maybe later. If you hurry up, we can make it back in time to make a baby before work.”
“I don’t think it works like that!” Cam called out down the corridor, jogging in the other direction to the nearest transporter station. He’d try to race Ronon at top pace some other day. For now, he wasn’t too proud to admit that he’d rather not expend his energy pretending at youth when he could put it to better use back in their bedroom.
***
THEN
Cam had been expecting a few months reprieve from John Sheppard and everything that came along with him - get back into rotation with SG1, kill some more of the Ori worshippers, maybe go on a few dates, see a lot of sports games, visit his family and basically do all the things he wouldn’t be able to do once he transferred to Atlantis. But even if John himself seemed to want to follow Cam’s wishes, everyone else did not.
The first message Cam recieved was from Darren the night he returned to the SGC. It said, “John woke up. He asked for you but didn’t panic again. Everything is fine,” with the charming postscript, “P.S. If you get a letter from our attorney, ignore it. My husband is too overprotective and too used to having the power to force things to go his way. A week of sleeping on the couch should fix that.”
Cam appreciated the message because at least it assuaged his guilt at leaving John the way he did.
Cam absolutely did not expect the next message to come from Rodney McKay a month later:
Cam couldn’t count the number of times he’d reread the note over the years. Sometimes he read it to remind him to have patience when Rodney was being especially difficult; other times he searched the babbling text for hidden meanings. In later years he even reread it just because the cutting, sarcastic way Rodney expressed his feelings amused him. But for a long time, the email had been a kind of touchstone, a remembrance of an important moment in his life and a reminder of how forgiveness was achievable with enough work.Mitchell:
I don’t like you and you don’t like me, but John is an asshole. That obviously hasn’t stopped either of us from falling in love with him, but it’s true. I wouldn’t expect Colonel Stoic McStoic pants to tell me what the two of you talked about, but I imagine some unforgivable things were said by both parties. As someone who has said a lot of things that other people seem to think are unforgivable, I can sympathize. On the other hand, John has a way of taking everything and interpreting it in the way that most allows himself to shut down. Meaning that he has, of course, decided to interpret what I’m sure was your offer to come at a moment’s notice if anything happened with the baby as an order not to contact you unless something happens with the baby.
Also, nice way to leave the stressed-out father of your child after he just had a panic attack about you leaving, jackass. But, as my pain-in-the-ass sister has pointed out to me, you also had to look out for yourself and you did make sure that I would be there to take care of John before you left. And after what he did to you, I’m not sure he had earned the right for you to stay.
Take careful note of this, because it happens very rarely, but I owe you an apology. I assumed that when John agreed to conceive with me and make me secundus he would have behaved like a rational person and have discussed that option with you first. I don’t know why after actually knowing the man for almost four years I would ever assume that he thinks about things at all before he acts, let alone thinks rationally. If I had known that you hadn’t agreed to it, I wouldn’t have tried to conceive with John. No, that’s probably not true. I would have done anything to stay with John. But I would have made him call you. In the very least I wouldn’t have let him have sex with you again without telling you his brilliant plan. That moron still doesn’t really understand how much of an ass he is for doing that.
So, John was a jerk to you. He was a jerk to me, too, so I know how it feels. And you and I might not have been very kind to each other. I might have resented you. Okay, I hated you. But we are all going to be parents to Dane and probably to this new one as well, and I don’t want that process to be painful. Even if you hate John, which you probably have a right to, and you hate me, because you seem determined to, we can’t just settle into denialville and silent-treatment town like John would have us do. I may not always be the most personable, but even I don’t need Jeannie to remind me that communication is important to good parenting. So I’m communicating. Feel free to communicate back. And even if John is going to ignore you in a pouty huff, I will keep you in the loop.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rodney McKay, Phd., Phd., Phd.
The next person to write was Ronon. They had been corresponding briefly over Ronon’s questions about the book Cam have gifted to him and over the occasional Earth reference that Ronon didn’t want to ask anybody on the expedition about, like why was Disneyland the happiest place on Earth and how come Earth women had no hair around their private parts.
Cam marked the email from Ronon as the first time they communicated as true friends.
Cam was surprised to hear news of John’s return to Atlantis from Ronon and not through the general SGC grapevine, but SG1 had been busy tracking down an Ancient artifact that promised to put an end to the Ori and their followers forever. He was even more surprised by his next note from McKay.~Cameron Mitchell, Colonel, SG1 team leader and air support specialist, USAF, Cheyenne Mountain, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy~
Sheppard and McKay came back today. I was surprised that you didn’t. Doctor Weir told us you would be stationed here in order to take Sheppard’s role as leader of the military. I think you will like the Lantean fighting force. They are not great fighters, but Sheppard says they are skilled for your people. I will do my best to help you train them.
I joined the Lanteans because Sheppard was their leader and even though you have courted my favor with your knowledge of your own planet’s military history and tactics, I will not pledge my allegiance to you until you prove yourself to me. Most people here don’t want Sheppard to step down and they say that he has been pressured into doing it because he is a man who gets pregnant. This was what happened to pregnant women on Sateda. I don’t agree with it, but I don’t believe that Sheppard would let himself get pushed out if he didn’t want to go.
On our last mission, I found my old team from Sateda. They had changed a lot. It made me realize that sometimes clinging to things because of the past is the wrong thing to do. I don’t blame you for Sheppard’s displacement, but if I do not believe I can follow you into battle, I will leave.
By your favor,
Ronon Dex, Specialist, SGA-1 team member, Lantean Military, Atlantis, New Lantea, Pegasus Galaxy
Cam was grateful for the video of Dane. It kept him company on those empty nights when Sam was in the lab and Daniel holed up with O’Neill and their daughter. At first, he didn’t look at the image of the new neonate. The very idea of it made him so angry he could barely breathe. John conceiving another child with McKay had never be an unlikely prospect, but the way in which John had gone about it made Cam see red. At least McKay could recognize that John had been an asshole.Mitchell:
I don’t know how much you really want to hear from me, but I have been trying to be more empathetic recently. Elizabeth says I should practice that if I’m going to be a good donor and a good step-parent to Dane. It has been brought to my attention that I found it hurtful when John was on Earth with you and I didn’t have news of the baby, and Dane wasn’t even mine! If you feel only a fraction of how I felt being cut off like that, then I feel sorry for you.
I tried to make John send you a message himself, but he’s still mad. I don’t know if he’s mad at you for leaving him when he begged you not to or if he’s just throwing a tantrum because you didn’t give him the perfect little triumvirate family he was hoping for. He says you don’t want to hear from him and you don’t care about him, et cetera, et cetera. He can really throw himself a pity party once he dedicates himself to it.
Anyway, I’m writing to you because we just went in for a checkup on the new neonate. I know it’s against guild tradition to look so early, but Dr. Biro wanted to try out the neonatal scanner she found in the Ancient birthing room and John volunteered. There are no lingering effects of the Pasteur rupture on either John’s ability to transfer the new one or on Dane. John isn’t due to transfer for two more months, but that will still give them time as pouchmates.
Dane is a good size for his age and on the Ancient scanner we can see that he’s got John’s ears and your blue eyes and he’ll be a royal carrier. Just my luck, the boys and girls will be all over him.
I made a program to record and compress the imaging from the Ancient scanner. I’ve attached video of scans for both Dane and the new neonate. John says it’s bad luck to name him before the transfer, but if we don’t name him Max, I will go on a foot rub strike, I swear.
I’ll be in touch.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rodney McKay, Phd., Phd., Phd.P.S. Let me know when you’ll be arriving so I can maybe convince John to be less of a dick when you get here. And if you can keep an eye on my sister when she’s snooping around the SGC, that would be appreciated.
It wasn’t until much later, when Cam was shipping out on what could be a one-way ticket to the Ori Galaxy that he looked at the video of the neonate that might be a pouchmate for his son. It wasn’t much more than a vaguely humanoid blob in a yolk sac, but somehow, Cam found it comforting. His son would have a brother and three parents who loved him, even if Cam didn’t get the boy in the end.
Rodney’s next message was troubling, but Cam was sitting in a hospital bed after getting beaten nearly to a pulp by replicators and was in no shape to do anything, even if the events Rodney described hadn’t already been resolved.
Cam took Rodney up on his offer and never looked back.Mitchell:
I am going to kill whoever told Ronon about the concept of a babymoon (I suspect Dr. Barbie) and lead him to suggest that John and I go spend some time delivering supplies to one of the anthropologists in this tropical paradise. I also retract my previous statements about wishing to get kidnapped by sexy aliens.
To make a long story short (though you can read the long story in my mission report, attached for your perusal), John and I got picked up by a group of paranoid, leather-wearing space-pirates who avoid the Wraith by avoiding planetfall. The found an Ancient warship that they needed my genius to repair and because of John’s condition, he got to stay back on the mothership getting pampered by a beautiful woman in a leather corset while I was getting tortured into helping the crazies who were threatening to steal Dane for his ATA gene and to expose me to toxic levels of radiation.
And now, thanks to Mr. Friendly, these people are our allies and all I have to show for it are bruises and no Ancient warship.
John and Dane and the neonate are fine. I hope I haven’t worried you.
I was actually writing in order to tell you that I heard about your defeat of the Ori. Congratulations. I assume this means that you plan to join us in Atlantis as soon as you’re out of the infirmary. I already asked Carson if you could be treated here. John’s pouch is just starting to open up again for Dane to emerge and I know you wouldn’t want to miss it. I can hack your medical records from here if that skinny mean doctor won’t let you go.
Let me know what you want to do.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rodney McKay, Phd., Phd., Phd.
***
NOW
Cam collapsed down onto the cot in Rodney’s lab, groaning and covering his face with his hands. Some days he looked out over an alien ocean and marveled at how wonderful and exciting his life was. Other days, like this one, he wished he’d just retired and left this thankless job to John.
“What has you so bothered?” Rodney asked, not turning from what appeared to be a piece of a puddlejumper that he was fiddling with.
Cam sighed. “Todd’s in town. He claims that John said to ‘drop by anytime.’” In fact, Cam was surprised nobody had told Rodney about Todd’s presence. Rodney must have really threatened his staff against bothering him today. Not that Cam blamed them for wanting to obey - Rodney looked downright haggard, no doubt from everything he was trying to get done before the transfer to his pouch.
“I wouldn’t put it past that fluffy haired idiot to give an open invitation to a Wraith.” Rodney didn’t normally agree with Cam, but they were more than on the same page about their hatred of Todd. “What does Count Creeps-a-lot want anyway?”
“He says he wants to discuss strategies for the reconciliation process with Sheppard, but I’m pretty sure he’s here for the same reason he’s always here.”
“You mean to stalk my husband?”
Cam winced. He and Rodney hadn’t been able to figure out exactly why Todd was so obsessed with John. It could be that he was simply fascinated by the whole noble birth process out of a twisted desire to make himself into a Queen, or it could be a one-sided equivalent of whatever the Wraith considered to be a star-crossed love affair. John vehemently denied both interpretations and claimed that he and Todd were just temporarily cooperating and that he’d get around to killing the wraith when he felt good and ready. It was clear to everyone that even if John was blind to Todd’s little crush, he and the wraith weren’t just temporary allies and in fact could probably be considered friends.
“Yeah. And one of my staff is about to be in big trouble because someone told John that Todd was here. Turns out he had Parrish take Dane with him to the greenhouses so he could spend a little quality time with a Wraith.”
Rodney’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “In our apartment? In his condition? He can’t even get up off the couch without help, what makes him think that he can be alone in the room with a soul-sucking monster?”
“Todd had Beckett’s treatment years ago, and even if he hadn’t, I doubt he’d do anything to John. If Todd was going to eat anybody, it would be you. I’m more worried that John will overexert himself trying to look manly in front of Todd, but he kicked me out for ‘hovering.’”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “As though it matters what a Wraith thinks about him. Knowing Todd, he’s probably salivating over the idea of seeing John like this. Whenever I have to work with him he asks me to say hello to ‘my queen’ for him.” Rodney’s expression soured. “It’s disgusting.”
“Well, if Todd and his scientists hadn’t worked with Beckett to develop the serum, the Wraith would still be eating humans and the faction that discovered the location of Earth wouldn’t have been shot down by their own kind and we’d still be talking about how to wipe them out instead of hosting reconciliation talks in which the Wraith apologize for the fact that their species has been trying to eat the people of this galaxy for the past ten thousand years.”
“I’m not disputing Todd’s value as an historical figure, though in the Disney version of this story he and John definitely would be the star-crossed lovers. But why can’t he just keep his green, slimy claws off of my husband?”
Cam shrugged. Todd made him uncomfortable, but winding Rodney up was too much fun. “Maybe he agrees with Disney about what would make a better story.”
“And my stupid Captain Kirk of a husband does nothing to discourage it. Last time Todd was here I walked in on him showing the wraith his pouch slit. I suppose he expects us to just wait here while he cavorts with his wraith buddy.”
“I believe his exact words were ‘if I see either you or McKay in the next hour, I will invite the Tellarians back for a three week diplomatic conference.’”
Rodney winced. It was Tellarian tradition to be hosted in the home of the ambassador and Tellarians were probably the most clueless, accident-prone race that Cam had ever even heard of. They’d also taught Dane and Max the Tellarian equivalent of ‘The Song that Never Ends’ which somehow managed to be about three times as loud and ten times as annoying.
“I don’t know why he likes that Wraith so much.”
“Once, after a few too many beers, he said that he and Todd were like brothers and I could never understand their connection,” Rodney complained. “Apparently feeding the life back into someone is a very intimate thing.”
“Ronon says it feels kind of good.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t see Ronon inviting wraith over for dinner.”
Cam shrugged. “With the reconciliation process John has been spending a lot of time with Todd. And they are both the only ones of their species crazy enough to dream up half the things they’ve done together for the good of the galaxy. Is it so far-fetched to think that John thinks of Todd as a friend?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he does. That man is too damned friendly for his own good. But that doesn’t mean we’re inviting the Wraith out to family picnics or to open Christmas presents with our children.” Cam smiled for a moment, imagining Todd in a Santa Claus outfit. “At least I have you to back me up if he does for some reason want to introduce Dane and Max to the creepy green giant in the name of diplomacy or whatever.” Rodney had wandered over to sit next to Cam on the cot. He deftly placed his thumbs on the side of Cam’s head and pressed in the way that never failed to remove Cam’s stress headaches. Cam sighed, finally relaxing. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, flyboy.”
In truth, Cam didn’t know what he’d do without Rodney either. Without Rodney’s emails and his willingness to act as a go-between when Cam and John were still fighting, Cam doubted that he’d have found his spouses, have a good relationship with his son, or be accepted by the expedition as the military leader. “Rodney, can I ask you a question?”
“Is it a stupid question? Because I don’t subscribe to that overly-PC hippie drivel about there being no stupid questions and I will verbally eviscerate you if you annoy me with one.”
Cam could remember a time when he would have been annoyed by Rodney’s arrogant drivel (something he and John privately referred to as ego-diarrhea), but now he just laughed, knowing that Rodney didn’t actually mean it. He fielded lots and lots of not-so-smart questions from Max and Dane on a daily basis and treated them all with the seriousness of a valid challenge to the universal laws of physics.
“Having nearly been actually eviscerated, I don’t find you particularly threatening, but I don’t think this is a stupid question.”
“That’s the problem: you’re trying to think.”
Cam rolled his eyes.
“Fine, fine, now you think you’re Bill Nye. Go ahead and hit me with it.”
“I thought you hated Bill Nye.” Cam had gotten his ear talked off about it after Rodney and John had come back from some science conference gone horribly wrong.
“I hate him less now that I’ve made sure that he’s burning with jealousy for my beautiful husband and my gigantic brain.”
“Your gigantic head, maybe,” Cam grumbled, holding up his hand to forestall the conversation deteriorating further into their usual half-hearted sniping. “Jennifer and I were talking last night and she asked me if I thought I made the right decision, deciding not to marry you guys. Do you think I did?”
Rodney looked suspicious. “Why? What did you say?”
“I want to hear your perspective first.”
“Well, if we’re talking pure cost/benefit analysis here, I think it worked out pretty well for all of us, Jennifer included, so I don’t know why she’s so concerned. Unless you’re breaking up. Are you breaking up? Or maybe just having a rough patch. You’re more than welcome to sleep in the boys’ room if that’s the case. You know John and I will support you against whatever Dr. Barbie--”
“I’m going to stop you before you get your foot even deeper down your throat,” Cam said, not particularly offended. Rodney had never hid his dislike of Jennifer after she’d breached John’s medical confidentiality, and Cam didn’t really blame him, even though he thought that the two of them would actually get along if Rodney would be open to it. “I said that Jennifer and I talked, which I know in your household means one of you is trying to pull a hail Mary before something horrible happens, but it’s something me and my family actually do all the time without having to be dragged kicking and screaming into it. You and I have been spending more time together lately and Jennifer wasn’t close to any of us back then, so I think it’s strange to her that I rejected you guys, seeing as we all pretty much get along now.”
Rodney frowned. “I guess, now that I think about it, we have been spending more time together lately. But she has no need to feel threatened. Or does she? Is that what this is all about? Have you secretly been crushing on me, because while I’m flattered, we’re both married men and it wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Don’t worry, McKay, the thought of an affair with you honestly has never once crossed my mind. I guess you can think about it as kind of a mental exercise. Without comparisons to what we both have today, do you think we could have made it work if I had said yes? I mean, when I told you my decision, I even thought you looked disappointed, though I could never figure out why.”
“Maybe because I was disappointed.”
Cam was so shocked by the statement that he actually leaned back away from Rodney. “What? I thought you hated my guts back then. It sure seemed like you wanted John all to yourself.”
“Of course I did.”
“Then having me out of the picture would have been like Christmas came early.”
Rodney stared at Cam in a rare moment of stillness for him. “You can’t tell John this.”
“Cross my heart.” Cam wasn’t in the business of keeping secrets in his marriage, but he was Rodney’s friend as much as he was John’s.
“I had convinced myself that John and I alone was an impossibility. It was what I wanted, but I couldn’t ask for it. You had a kid together and you were better than me. Not smarter, but better in the eyes of pretty much everyone. I was superfluous. So it was either I had John with you along for the ride, or I had nothing. I was so convinced that those were the only two options that when you screwed up plan A, I thought we’d all end up with nothing.”
“You know John never ends up going with plan A,” Cam joked, thinking about every damned time John came back through the gate trailing mayhem in his wake.
“You know, I knew that. I never thought to apply it to his personal life.”
“So you still haven’t answered my question: could we have made it work?”
“You know, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle makes predicting the future impossible. How am I supposed to know?”
Normally Rodney was all over hypothetical questions and he loved playing the time traveling peanut gallery when it meant that he got to insult other people’s decisions. He was being deliberately evasive. “Are you not answering me because the answer is yes or because the answer is no?”
“I’m not answering you because it’s a stupid question. The past is the past. We’re all happy now. Let it go.”
“Rodney,” Cam warned. “Don’t make me grab my lemon.”
“You don’t bluff well, Mitchell. And that thing’s a fake anyway.”
Cam hid his grin. The lemon had been a running joke between them for a long time. “Come on, McKay. Just tell me. I took care of your grumpy incubating husband yesterday. You owe me.”
“Fine, fine. It’s actually something that I thought about before you started dating Ronon.”
“You mean dating Jennifer and Ronon.”
“Chicken, egg. Remember, after Dane’s second emergence-day party, we had that beach barbecue on the mainland and Parrish made those amazing ribs?” Cam didn’t really remember events based on the food they served, but he remembered the party. “You and John were walking with the boys on your shoulders, laughing about something. I thought: they look like the perfect little family. It was a thought I used to have all the time, resentfully, of course, when John was carrying. But for the first time, it didn’t make me jealous or angry. I was happy for the kids and John, but also happy for you. I regretted that you weren’t really part of our family, because once I got to know you I realized you weren’t entirely moronic. Those tight blue swim trunks you were wearing probably also added to that regret.”
Cam laughed. Rodney never made any effort to hide the fact that he found Cam physically attractive. “Yeah, you missed your chance at this,” he pointed to himself.
“I thought about asking John to ask you again, from both of us this time. I stewed on it for weeks. I was so distracted that Woolsey took me aside and tried to have a fatherly talk with me.”
Cam thought back to that time. He had finally settled in as military commander, but Jennifer had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship and then settled down with the other object of his affection. John and Rodney and the boys seemed happy, but Cam still didn’t have anyone of his own. “If you had asked me then, I might have agreed. I was lonely. Even though I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t go back to John, it’s a lot easier to keep those kinds of promises when the hurt is fresh. Why didn’t you ask?”
“Ronon started asking me all these strange questions about group marriages and having sex with men and about you. I didn’t think he was your type and I thought he was already dating Jennifer, but Ronon is my friend. I figured I’d let him take a shot and after that was over, I’d ask. I never got the chance.”
Cam didn’t know what it meant to him that Rodney had wanted to marry him at some point, so he pushed that thought aside. “So you think we could have been happy?”
“If I asked you then, yes. Because then it would have been my choice.”
Cam nodded. “I told Jennifer that it was the right decision. I’m happy you agree with me.”
“It’s a miracle that we agree on something.” Though it wasn’t really. Professionally, there was still some clashing, rising to shouting matches, which had never happened with McKay on John’s watch. But they cooperated surprisingly well when it came to the boys.
Rodney smiled, standing. “I don’t know about you, but I think John is bluffing about the Tellarians. He was more annoyed by them than you were. Let’s go crash his playdate with the Wraith.”
Cam let Rodney pull him to his feet, leaving their hands clasped a moment longer than strictly necessary. John would transfer to Rodney. Ronon and Cam and Jennifer would enjoy trying to make a baby. Max would come back from his visit to Earth and the pouchmates would reunite with the minimal amount of mischief, if their parents had anything to say about it. The city would hopefully survive the reconciliation talks with the Wraith with minimal protest in the Interplanetary Marketplace and life would go on.
Cam smiled, nudging Rodney playfully as they walked down the corridor. “Fifty bucks says that we find John trying to get Todd to watch Star Wars again.”
“You’re on.”
They shook on it.
The End