The Weight of Water

05 August 2024 || Concord 6 Gredel Harvest 14
Pegasus || Iirijjin
P65-653 || ږϡϫϡϫᴒ

One week a year, on Gredel, the berries were ripe and everywhere. For weeks ahead of that time, groups from all over the galaxy came through the stargate and spread out to set up camps, ready to pick the berries when they ripened. Teyla told John that the peaceful meeting of so many cultures had been the inspiration for the Concord, the example she used to convince all the differing cultures to join.

On the last day of the season, everyone celebrated together.

For the week before that, they worked, picking berries, keeping camps, carrying baskets, bags, carts and wains filled with the annual bounty through the stargate to various homeworlds, Shomhai and Neriwon alongside tanned Tish fishermen and Methmari hunters stripped of their fur coats, Satedan exiles next to Genii soldiers, ex-Tau'ri with Concord ministers.

They were all sweating, dusty and scratched — gredel vines made anyone who wanted their treasure work for it.

They were all smiling and laughing, exchanging stories, even comparing scratches and rends in their clothing from the thorns.

The heat made stopping often for a drink necessary and some of the gatherers had brought bottles of cider, leaving them tucked into the cool running streams to stay chilled until they broke for a midday meal.

Anaraya scolded Ronon for eating the fruit instead of filling his basket. A trickle of sweat ran down John's temple and he swiped it away from his eye. Only a few feet away, Rodney was complaining about staining his fingers, while Teyla scolded Tanaan for teasing the younger children instead of looking out for them. He was old enough to act like a man now and if he wanted to go on a trading trip with Jinto he'd better start acting like it. Jinto and Penny had abandoned their baskets to neck in a shady spot that had already been plucked clean, something Teyla had missed, though Tanaan hadn't. Chuck had two baskets full already and was working on a third while Radek and Miko were working as a methodical team: Radek wore gloves and pulled the thorny canes aside so Miko could harvest efficiently.

John reached for another cluster of berries. The late morning air had gone so still it seemed to have a weight, pressing down, wilting the green-amber leaves, curving the canes downward, heavy on his shoulders and in his lungs. The stifling heat made him so light-headed that John swayed and stopped. Halos of white light glared off the canes and leaves. The noise of a bird, disturbed by the berry gatherers, exploded from the cane brakes and thundered in his ears, the sound of wings too much like the mad thump of his heart.

He was dreaming again, dreaming of where he wanted to be, and still trapped in the hell of paralysis and 'official' death after destroying the Agamemnon.

He watched the berries drop from his fingers into the dusty, boot-scuffed earth at his feet. They broke open, spilling dark juice to soak into the dirt. It wasn't real.

The hand on his arm, shaking him, though... John could feel that. He turned his head and realized Rodney was talking to him, his face creased in worry.

" ... heatstroke. You're not used to this after being in Colorado all those years."

Rodney tugged at John's arm. His grip around John's arm was firm. His fingers were tacky with berry juice. John could feel it sticking and pulling on the hairs on his arm. He let McKay pull the basket away from his other hand and drop it. He even let Rodney lead him back to the Lantean camp where Onda was preparing lunch. Rodney pushed him into a chair in the shade. He didn't pull himself together enough to talk until after Rodney checked his temperature with one big, sticky hand on his forehead and then pressed a bottle of water into his hands.

Condensation dripped from the sides of the bottle.

Rodney was giving orders to Onda.

"Don't let him go back in the sun, okay?"

Onda nodded and smiled at John.

John ducked his head and stared at the bottle in his hands. He turned it nervously, concentrating on the feel of the moisture under his fingers.

"John?"

Rodney's voice made him look up.

"This is real."

He'd already been warm, but John felt the heat rise in his cheeks. He hated when this happened. He'd be doing something, something that felt good and made him happy, and suddenly he'd be convinced he was hallucinating it all. He'd finally had to tell Rodney what was going on with him after one particularly drawn out fugue.

He swallowed and nodded, then forced himself to open the bottle.

"I know."

It was just too good, sometimes he got scared.

"I'm so— "

Onda interrupted him by placing Declan in his lap. "Here, if you aren't going to pick, then you can watch him."

John caught the toddler closer as he squirmed, almost managing to kick him in the balls once, and couldn't help wincing and laughing. He'd never have dreamed up Declan. Declan had Chuck's eyes and Onda's chin and would be a bruiser from how heavy he already was. Declan smelled of Athosian soap and that smell babies and small children had before puberty, the one that tripped every instinct to nuzzle and protect. Declan was very, very real, and wonderful, and John had never seen him before coming home to Atlantis.

Rodney's gaze was still worried, but faintly amused now too. He nodded. "Stay here."

"I don't have to take your orders," John said. He didn't have to take anyone's orders any longer. He wasn't in any military any more. Earth and its governments had tossed him on the trash heap of history. "Hey, you know, I'm sick of this crap pretending I'm not John Sheppard," he said as he resettled Declan into a more secure position that wouldn't threaten his future sex life. "No more stupid fake name."

Rodney grinned. "Good, because you know how bad I am at names."

Onda slapped Rodney on the back. "Enough yammer. Get back out there. You have to pick enough berries for you and this slacker," she declared.

"What? What? That is so unfair — "

John hugged Declan a little tighter as Rodney complained vociferously. Real, real, real, he told himself, and began to feel it was.

15 February 2024 || Concord 6 City of the Ancestors Flower 10
Pegasus || Iirijjin
M35-117 Atlantis || City of the Ancestors ɤᴒϫɿɿʌ

Rodney hadn't learned the details immediately, he was too busy folding John back into his life. He had to remake his life on Atlantis at the same time, accept Teyla's offer of Concord and Lantean citizenship, the same as John had now, along with Lorne, Radek, and Vala Mal Doran. There were several others, including Miko, who had accepted Teyla's invitations. Unsurprisingly, anyone from the first expedition that was still on Atlantis during the dark days of Michaelson's tenure was sticking it out now too.

It took a while to remember how it had been when he and John were together on Atlantis. It took a little longer to realize they didn't have to live the way they had then either. There was no need for hiding or even discretion, though John would never be one for public displays. They were free of the SGOC and Earth's suffocating oversight.

He figured out quickly enough that it had taken weeks to work out the agreement between the Concord and the UNE that traded John and the sarcophagus for data from Atlantis, and that it had been less than a day after they put John in it that he'd come through the wormhole and Teyla had brought him to Rodney. It scared him, how rocky John was, and it infuriated him that anyone, but most specially those ungrateful shits that John had sacrificed everything to save, had treated him so badly. The first time John woke up, tears leaking from his eyes, and Rodney had to convince him he wasn't on Earth dreaming of Atlantis, but home, having a nightmare of there, he had wanted to destroy everyone who had a hand in John's suffering.

John wasn't the only one Earth's government had used badly, either.

Vala Mal Doran might have supplied the information that let them defeat Kefflin, but she had been screwed over pretty royally in the aftermath. She'd never been given a citizenship in the UNE and never been liked by anyone in power there. She glossed over any problems they'd given her when Rodney met her later. It was Teyla who described the UNE's vindictive attempts to incarcerate Vala on a treason charge for revealing that John was alive.

Rodney held onto the conviction that Jackson hadn't any part of any of those betrayals, any more than Sam would have. The UNE was big and ruthless, the way governments and corporations always were, because the individuals who made them up ceded personal responsibility to the institution, and institutions were constructs without inherent ethics. The difficulty of creating a new entity that would avoid those problems was one that Teyla, Ronon, and most of the Concord's founders wrestled with from the beginning. In the long run, he suspected they would fail. He hoped that they would fail in a new way, leaving behind a new rung on the ladder of knowledge humanity was climbing.

"Why didn't you tell me what was going on?" he asked over a quiet lunch on a sunny balcony outside Teyla's office.

She actually looked away to stare out over the blue waters. Sea fliers were skimming the wave tops. They flew incredible distances and had started nesting on Atlantis' piers instead of weaving seaweed into floating nests. Up close, they weren't even avians. The biologists said they were an evolutionary branch of the native fish, the way Earth birds were related to reptiles.

"You were already mourning John," she replied at last, facing him once more. "You wished to return to Earth. I believed if you knew of John's straits and I failed to bring him home, you would — "

"I would never have blamed you," Rodney interrupted. "I would have blamed them. I do blame them."

"Yes. I did not want you to go back to Earth carrying such anger," she appeared to choose her words with even greater care than usual, "Or to stay here only because you blamed the UNE for what they did to John."

"Leaving me ignorant wouldn't have been a favor." He heard how tight and angry he sounded and ate a cookie to distract himself.

"I did not visit or speak to John until the matter was settled," Teyla added. "I was selfish."

"Selfish?"

She'd threatened to take the Concord to war with Earth if they didn't turn over John and the sarcophagus. Rodney paused on that thought. Spending so many lives over one person, over another person's loyalty to them, wouldn't have gained the Concord anything. John would say that was selfish, if the person in question was him. Teyla had to know that, but like John for Rodney, she'd done it anyway. Rodney was selfishly glad she had, no matter what the consequences would have been.

"I could not bear to give him hope without the assurance I could fulfill it." Teyla looked at the water again. "I could not see him so wounded while I was still helpless."

"But you did it," Rodney said.

"I did," she admitted, "but it weighs on me."

The UNE and the Concord had teetered on the edge of an intergalactic war, until the UNE folded.

Teyla hadn't been bluffing.

27 January 2024
Milky Way
Earth, SGOC Cheyenne Mountain Facility

John hadn't believed the sarcophagus could really help him, even when he was loaded into it. Neither had the SGOC doctors. He heard them arguing with Teyla. According to current understanding of the sarcophagus, it wouldn't fix anything that had already healed. Scars stayed. Amputated remained. What was lost, was lost.

"Without this equipment to breathe for him, he'll die," one doctor had snapped.

John hoped so. He thought that Teyla had found a way to release him.

"I have seen the sarcophagus revive the dead," Teyla declared. Rodney. She'd seen it give Rodney back to them. That's what she was thinking. "It will work."

His head was already been swimming as they closed the lid over him, oxygen deprivation graying out everything, but he'd tried to smile for Teyla, because she looked so solemn. God, he loved her. She'd come for him. Whatever happened, he would hold on to that.

There was no sense of the time he spent inside. John snapped awake as the lid opened, the white light just fading behind his eyes, energy thrumming through him from his fingertips to his toes.

He pulled in one deep breath, then another, then scrambled out, not caring he was naked, and mostly fell into Teyla's arms. Vala was there too, hugging him and helping him into cargo pants and a gray t-shirt, while Teyla ordered the doctors from the room.

"Rodney?" he asked, looking around the room for him, expecting him to be there because John had just been saved and that was what Rodney did. He half-expected to find Ronon there too.

"He is in Atlantis," Teyla said, "where Ronon will make sure he is safe," short-circuiting the worry and disappointment blooming in his chest.

"Where — ?"

"Come on, come on," Vala urged them both. "We need to go before something goes wrong."

John pulled the t-shirt down over his head — he could move, he could feel, he wanted to sob and laugh and spin in circles just because his body was his own again — and asked as he pulled it down, "Is this an escape?"

"Not quite," Teyla replied.

The two women steadied him between them and walked him from the room with the sarcophagus out into a corridor he recognized. They were in the Mountain. There were scars from fighting in places. Others had fresh paint covering damage from the incursion. His feet were bare and the floor was cold. He didn't care. Even the institutional ugliness of the SGOC seemed wonderful to him right then, along with every sensation.

The corridors were curiously empty as they headed straight for the Pipe. John frowned in perplexity. There should have been some signs of security. The lights on the security cameras were out too.

The direction of his gaze registered and, "No witnesses," Vala explained. "Too many people would recognize you and you're officially dead. That's the deal."

"What deal?"

"The deal to let us take you to Atlantis," Teyla said.

John started to object then bit his tongue. He'd resigned. He'd done everything he could for Earth. He had been stuck there for so long the idea that Earth might finally let go of him hadn't occurred to him. He was like an animal caged so long it was afraid to run when the cage door finally opened.

"Are you coming with us?" he asked Vala. Leaving her behind would be the only thing that hurt.

She laughed, the bright, fake laugh John knew covered bone-deep disappointment.

"I may have worn out my welcome here. Too many people are really annoyed with me. There was talk of jail and you know how boring that is."

"I am sorry if you wished to stay here, John," Teyla added gently. "It is impossible."

"I don't care." He didn't. "I just want to go home."

Teyla's arm tightened around him and then they were facing the watery blue event horizon in the ring and walking through. John didn't look up to check if anyone was observing their departure and he didn't look back. The promise of joining Ronon and Rodney and the knowledge Teyla and Vala were coming with him was more than enough for him. He wasn't leaving anything behind.

22 October 2024 || Concord 6 Frost 14
Pegasus || Iirijjin
M35-117 Atlantis || City of the Ancestors ɤᴒϫɿɿʌ

John ran beside Ronon and tried to ignore that he kept up better than he had when they'd done this every morning. He hadn't lost a step, but he wasn't any faster than he'd been.

"So," Ronon asked between deep breaths, "you got plans?"

John glanced to the side. Ronon still had the same beard. Time had flecked it with white. Unlike a Tau'ri, Ronon wouldn't want to hide his age. All those times he'd teased John, calling him 'old man', he'd been showing his respect too. It would be many generations before the Iirijjinii no longer venerated anyone old enough to have white hair. The scars the Wraith had left in the collective psyche of this galaxy would remain when they were forgotten.

"No."

Ronon ran silently beside him for a stretch.

"Got something you might try."

"What?"

Ronon smirked at him and stretched his stride. He passed John to run up a set of stairs two at a time ahead of him. The burnt orange steps creaked under his boots. John growled under his breath because Ronon had done that deliberately to tease and make him wonder. He pushed hard and ran up the stairs after Ronon to come even with him on one of the wide, arching catwalks. Memories of running with Ronon under the same cathedral-like ceilings merged with the present and John felt hard-tied knots in his chest coming undone. Atlantis had welcomed him back as if he'd never been gone. He hadn't known how much he'd missed the place, as well as the people.

Just to get Ronon back, John didn't ask again.

"Come have dinner with Anaraya and me," Ronon said when they reached the fork where John would head back to Rodney's quarters — their quarters now — and Ronon would take a transporter to the level where he lived with his partner.

"Rodney too?" John asked.

Ronon snorted through his nose quietly.

"I'll tell her to make enough for six."

John laughed. Rodney loved Anaraya's cooking. He wouldn't have any trouble over accepting the invitation without consulting Rodney.

"Okay."

"Hour twenty."

"Got it."

22 October 2024 || Concord 6 Frost 14
Pegasus || Iirijjin
M35-117 Atlantis || City of the Ancestors ɤᴒϫɿɿʌ

Rodney managed to not talk by concentrating on the sublime flavors of Anaraya's cooking. John didn't talk much either, though he ate slower than anyone else. He smiled sometimes at the native foods on his plate. Earth might have had Thai, Vietnamese, Afghan, Moroccan, Italian, French and a thousand other cuisines you used the GTS — before the Fundies blew it up — to eat right there where they came from, but it couldn't offer peipin tu disi nin wei made with from fillets of Tish slicer fish or a sorbet of noa.

John loved both, as Ronon knew.

Rodney aimed a grateful look Anaraya's way. Getting hold of tender new noa leaves couldn't have been easy. He was pretty sure most of the worlds where the trees grew were in their winter season.

Anaraya smiled back with a serene expression she had to have copied from Teyla.

Ronon talked about his job as Minister of Balance. He talked a lot more than he had in Rodney's company in years because they'd all been so careful to not know the things the others were doing. Ronon and Teyla must have fought long and hard to not force any choices on Rodney or any of the rest of the expedition before it all came to the sticking point.

He still couldn't believe nothing had come of him shooting Concord soldiers during the invasion, but it balanced out to the Iirijjinii: he had been part of the effort that drove the Wraith from Iirijjin. There would be no Concord without the Tau'ri and because of that the Iirijjinii would never be Earth's enemy the way UNE feared.

"The ships we're building now are basically designs the Ancestors left behind," Ronon said.

Rodney's interest perked up.

Ronon gave him a sly glance. "We need ships designed for our purposes."

John looked intrigued.

"Could use some 'civilian consultants' on the project," Ronon added.

"Me," Rodney said in delight.

"You and Sheppard," Ronon corrected.

John smirked at Rodney and it was so familiar and right Rodney forgot to be annoyed and just stared at him until John frowned at him. "Hey, Rodney, you in there?"

"Yes, yes."

"Figure Sheppard would keep you on track, plus he knows about plenty of stuff from your galaxy."

"Not my galaxy anymore," Rodney insisted.

John sat back in his chair. "I won't — "

"Not asking for secrets."

Ronon's assurance made John slowly relax. "Okay. Actually, if you want to know more about the Milky Way, you should hire Vala."

Anaraya punched Ronon in the shoulder, not all that lightly, as he grinned and said, "Already have."

"That woman — " Anaraya muttered. "She should not be so free with her hands." She leaned forward to John. "We want you to consult with our military and trade ministers along with some of the Travellers and synthesize what we need to build and then liaison with Rodney to build them."

Thoughts were already racing through Rodney's brain on how to design and manufacture all new, intergalactic capable hyperspace ships. Likely the Concord would want something in the lines of scouts, battleships, and armed merchants. He thought once the basics were worked out the same templates could be tweaked to customize production. Materials would be critical, so to location. He hadn't visited the Ancient shipyard the Concord was using presently since it had been put back into production, but the last time he'd been there it had clearly been adversely affecting the planetary ecology. They needed to either base the manufacture somewhere it wouldn't affect a planet or find a way to not do so. The latter would mean using nanites, of course.

There would be no replicators, no FRAN, if they did. He would be sure of that. Nothing would be begun until they fully understood what they were doing and had safety measures in place. He had the lesson of Doranda, both the Ancients' failure there and his own disastrous one, to keep him on the straight and narrow, along with the still aching memory of Replicator Elizabeth, left to float frozen in space forever.

"I've had some ideas for a better power source for ships than ZPMs," he said thoughtfully. There really had to be a way to utilize the untapped power of hyperspace itself. It might not be practical for powering something like Atlantis that didn't move often, of course. He'd introduce the idea of nanite manufacturing later. "I'd need to talk with Radek."

"Thought you would," Ronon said.

"You figure Earth's going to go all out and build a fleet to come after Atlantis," John said.

Ronon raised an eyebrow at him.

John made a face, shrugged and nodded all at once, wordlessly conveying that he didn't like the idea, didn't know for sure what Earth would do, but had to admit Ronon was probably right.

"Gotta be ready for anything. Liked that Roman's idea."

"Why am I not surprised," Rodney muttered. He nudged his elbow against John's. John knocked his knee against Rodney's thigh and they both grinned. "What do you think?"

John fingered his chin fake thoughtfully. "I could probably work with you."

"You should get down on the ground and kiss it for just the possibility of working with me."

"Yeah, I'd rather kiss Teyla and Vala in that case."

Without them, John wouldn't be here. Rodney figured he'd like to do more than kiss them in gratitude. Not that Rodney wouldn't mind kissing either woman or seeing John do so. Or seeing the two of them kiss...

John poked his biceps, no doubt bruising him, sadly dissolving the little fantasy video in Rodney's mind's eye to static. "I know what you're thinking."

"You do not," Rodney said primly. His face was not turning warm and pink. It was the spice from the disi nin. He'd need to remember to swallow some antacids before going to bed or he'd be burping the taste all of tomorrow.

Ronon grinned at him. "He does. So do I."

Anaraya glared at Rodney.

"I didn't say anything!"

The subject of the job offer having been derailed, the rest of the evening was spent teasing and reminiscing, both Anaraya and Ronon willing to give Rodney and John time to think and discuss it privately.

"So?" John asked later when he had his head on Rodney's stomach and they were both replete and half asleep.

Rodney didn't pretend to not follow John's thought train.

"You'll go crazy with boredom without something to do."

"And you wouldn't?"

"I wasn't thinking we'd go back to working a gate team, the Concord hardly needs anyone doing that for them here, but I was looking forward to getting back to some theoretical work and no more paperwork."

John made a disgusted noise. Then he looked up toward Rodney, hazel eyes wide with humor, "Hey, do you realize, the Ancients must have been more advanced than us?"

"What?" Rodney squawked.

"Well, that's why we can't figure out anything they left behind. They'd gotten rid of all the paperwork. No records, no reports, no minutes of the meeting of the committee on forming a study group to inquire on the feasibility of forming a committee."

Rodney stared at John, who was visibly trying to look serious and failing. His lips were quivering.

"There was brain damage, obviously," Rodney declared. He set his hand on John's head and combed his fingers into the thick black strands of hair there, still fascinated so many years later by the way the cowlicks grew. John's eyes fell half shut and he pushed his head into Rodney's touch.

"Missed you so much," John murmured against Rodney's navel.

"I want to do it," Rodney said. "I want to give something back to the Concord." Without the Concord, without Teyla's threat of the Iirijjinii ships, Earth would have kept John. "I don't trust Earth."

"We have family there."

"We have family here too."

Family that had fought for them, Rodney didn't say.

"Yeah," John said after a minute. "Yeah. Here. Let's do it."

Concord 8 Harvest 5
Iirijjin
City of the Ancestors ɤᴒϫɿɿʌ

A flower, a tower, a tree, a dragon — someone had been watching The Lord of the Rings — rocket streaks, and next a rain-patter blanket of silent explosions which John recognized as symbolic of bombardment against the city shield. The colors flared fiery and electric against the indigo-black of the Lantean sky, purple, blue, red, orange, amber, gold, green, blinding white. They were set off from the end of every pier and lit the sky in every direction, fireworks flashing high over Atlantis, visible from everywhere in the city.

They could have been down at one of the pier parties or attending one of the more swank gatherings in the control tower, but this year they'd decided to sit on their own balcony. It made it easier to watch Atlantis' Pax Celebration. The Concord's biggest holiday didn't commemorate the end of the Wraith threat or throwing the Tau'ri out of Atlantis. Teyla had insisted they celebrate building something new, not war or even the end of a war, so they partied for the idea of the Concord itself.

"It's bigger and better every year," John commented as the entire sky's worth of explosions went off in a green so bright it left afterimages burning behind his eyelids.

"Yeah, fireworks are one Tau'ri idea every Iirijjinii loves," Rodney agreed. He dug his hand into the bowl of popped bekey nuts and stuffed his mouth full of them. The shells crunched louder than popcorn ever had, but didn't lodge between the teeth so bad.

John helped himself to a couple of nuts. They would have been better with butter, but that Tau'ri idea had never taken in Iirijjin.

"So, you really want to take Jackson to see the new ships?" he asked. It would have to be them: only Vala, who had begun working as their liaison with the Ministry of Economics and Trade, knew as much about the project as they did, and she wanted nothing to do with Daniel Jackson. John didn't blame her; he would have felt the same if it had been Cam Mitchell the UNE had sent, even though Teyla had told him Mitchell had lobbied harder than anyone else to give John and the sarcophagus to the Concord. Vala had been used by the Goa'uld, so she couldn't forgive Daniel, who stood for the UNE, for doing the same to her.

Rodney chortled. "Oh yeah."

"He'll go back and he'll tell them, and it won't do any good," John said because it had to be said and he knew how the powers back on Earth thought — Rodney would say 'didn't think' and be right — and he didn't want anyone to believe this would work.

"I know."

"So we're giving away one of the Concord's tactical advantages to lord it over Daniel?" John didn't mind the last part, but while he hadn't joined the Concord's military, he figured that as a citizen he owed the Concord as much loyalty as he'd given Earth even when his heart hadn't been in it.

"No, we're doing it so when Earth sends the Fleet for Atlantis and we have to kill people to stop them, Teyla will know they made the choice knowing what they were facing." Rodney spit a shell into his palm and then flicked it off the balcony. "Why the hell do they think they can take us?"

"Dunno," John said. He didn't know. Earth was one planet. No matter what improvements they made, they couldn't catch up with the sheer numbers that an entire galaxy of cooperating planets could produce. Every Iirijjinii world was building on the works of the others, on the Ancients and the Tau'ri, and even with salvaged Wraith tech. So many minds coming at problems from so many different directions inevitably led to new and amazing discoveries nearly every day. Iirijjin was already so far ahead of Earth, Earth could never catch up.

It hurt a little. Earth's insistence on keeping everything for itself meant it only had itself to rely on. Even now it was returning to backwater status in the Milky Way too. Concord ships had visited other worlds there and were already doing business with some of them, making new contacts and allies. The stargates connected worlds to each other, not just to Earth. Cut Earth out and those other worlds and connections through the stargate went on without it, without even noticing its absence.

Another purple flower opened a golden center in the sky over the control tower. The city's lights rippled and flared to the rhythm of the music playing on the piers, a bit of programming Radek and Miko had come up with the year before. It was too pretty to let thoughts of Earth depress him.

He turned and kissed behind Rodney's ear, right where it always made him shiver and his breath hiccup. Yeah, screw Daniel and whatever the UNE had planned; this was a night for celebrating. Rodney dumped the bowl of nuts to the side and pulled John into his lap instead. His hand worked down inside the waistband of John's trousers until he realized John had gone commando. John grinned and nipped at Rodney's earlobe, then gasped as Rodney worked his hands down far enough squeeze John's ass.

"Still worry this isn't real?"

John grazed his lips over Rodney's face in a series of tender kisses.

"No."

"Mmm. Because I can think of some ways to prove it to you," Rodney offered. He seemed to want to do it by making John come his brains out, starting with kissing him, and John couldn't find any fault with that plan at all.

Peebles wandered onto the balcony and spilled bekey nuts while they made out. Neither of them cared enough to stop and clean them up before they went inside to their bed. They just left the door open so the cat could come back inside on his own.

The fireworks went on all night.