Open Your Eyes

1.

John likes that on the first day, the principal smiles at him over her large, imposing desk and says, “I know you’ve got a few spots on your record, but you’ve done good work in the past, and we’re glad you’re here.” Her lips curl up at the corners, and John thinks that she genuinely means it, that she’s not just telling him what he wants to hear. It had been hard, finding someplace that would take him in after Greenville. He kept Holland in for the last quarter of the semi-final playoff game, even though his playing had been off for most of the other three, a decision that cost John his job when he was just an assistant coach.

Now they’re giving him an entire team. The Pegasus Atlanteans, to be exact.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, smiling back.

“I just wanted to welcome you here on your first day, so I won’t keep you here any longer.” She hands him a blue and black baseball cap, PEGASUS FOOTBALL stitched above the brim, and it’s strange, feeling the weight of an entire season in his hands. There’s a hint of amusement on her face as he turns the cap in his hands before sliding it on, like she knows, like she can tell. “Go get ’em, Coach.”

There’s something stuck in his throat, and he’s not sure what to say, what he can say, but he manages to get a “Yes, ma’am,” out before he leaves.

---

His assistant coaches, Teyla and Ronon, accost him in the locker room an hour and a half hours before practice starts, while he gets lost trying to find his office. He’s met them a few times before, when he was in talks with the school, but he hasn’t gotten a chance to know them that well yet, too caught up in the move and the settling in.

They’re incredibly different. Ronon’s huge, huge enough to make John uncomfortable, and Teyla’s small, small enough that John could almost think she’s fragile. From what he’s heard, they’re good, and he can believe it.

“Coach,” Teyla says, “we’ve been looking for you.” John has seen the Atlanteans play before, back before Coach Sumner’s heart attack, and he remembers being impressed at the utter serenity Teyla manages to project at all times. Even when they were down by twenty points, closing in on the fourth quarter, she had been calm and smiling, not fazed in the slightest. She’s like that here, patient with the the new guy, and John’s wondering how she manages to keep the guys in line game after game, practice after practice, if she’s like this all the time.

“Hey, guys,” he says. “What’s up?”

Teyla raises an eyebrow and says, “We simply wanted a word with you before today’s practice, to bring you up to speed.”

“Yeah, sure,” John says. Everything feels too new, too overwhelming, and it’s hard to keep everything straight. He’s never been at the top before, and there’s just so much he has to know, has to care about.

They stick a roster in front of his face, names and numbers he doesn’t recognize, but this is it. This is his team.

Ronon starts with the defense, pointing out Stackhouse and Sherman, their two largest guys, their most experienced seniors. The rest of the line is solid, too, with some of the newer guys performing well.

The offense is spottier. “Laura Cadman?” John asks. She’s starting for the first time this year, and there was some hoopla when she joined the team last year. Not everyone in town was comfortable with girls playing football. Not everyone two towns over was, either.

Ronon shrugs. “She’s fast and she’s tough.”

Teyla gives him a look that says that she could break his balls if she wanted to. “Ronon and I felt that she was well-suited for being a wide receiver.”

John nods, figuring he’ll trust them for now, at least. From what he’s heard of her, he can believe it.

There’s Lorne, the new starting quarterback, who’d shown promise the year before; Ford, their tailback, younger and almost untested; Bates, their battle-hardened center. They’re not cohesive, not yet, but John can see the potential here, in these stats, in these names. He just hopes he can get it out of them in the end.

---

It’s the middle of summer, and practice starts when the sun is high in the sky, the hottest it’s going to be all day. John makes sure to wear his aviators, his baseball cap, and his most smart-ass smile. The team’s in front of him in full gear, minus helmets, and he thinks they look wary, defensive, not ready to trust the new guy yet. John doesn’t mind to much. He wouldn’t trust himself either.

“I think you all know who I am,” John says, “so I don’t need to introduce myself. I want ten laps. Right now.”

There’s some muffled groans from the team, but they seem to catch Teyla’s glare and quiet down. John snaps his gum and smirks as they trot off. “I think I’m going to like it here,” he says, hands on hips, a little drunk on the power. He’d missed this. He really did.

“I believe they will eventually come to be fond of you, too,” Teyla replies, her tone neutral, and John can’t tell if she’s joking or not.

They split off after that, Ronon taking the defensive line, Teyla taking the offensive. John watches them work, trying to get a sense of them here, with the guys (and girl), how they interact with the team.

Ronon’s terse and to the point, solid, grounding everyone around. Teyla’s calm and tranquil, not fazed by anything. The newer guys don’t seem to think much of her, but the second someone (Reed, John thinks) says something about her ass under his breath to Markham, she smiles and tells them to do fifty suicides without even raising her voice. They settle down after that, and no one questions her authority again. John’s actually pretty impressed.

Practice winds down, and John likes what he sees. He can trust them, he thinks, these coaches, this team. He just hopes that they can trust him in return.

At the end, John pulls Lorne aside before he goes into the locker room. “This is your first year starting, is that right?” he asks.

Lorne’s a good-looking kid with an easy smile and a good arm, and John thinks he’s got potential. “Yeah, Coach,” he says. His hair’s plastered to his forehead with sweat, his eyes bright with adrenaline, and John understands the expression on his face, because he loves this game, loves it.

“Look,” John says. “I may be the coach, but you’re going to have to be the one that leads this team.”

Lorne nods, nervously biting his lip. It’s a lot to put on him, but John thinks he can handle it. “Sure, Coach.”

“You think you can do it?” John asks.

Lorne shrugs, projecting a good deal of uncertainty, but also some resolve. “Probably, sir.”

“Good man,” John says, slapping a shoulder pad.

2.

He meets Rodney for the first time in the faculty lounge, on a rumor that it has the best coffee in the entire building (though that wasn’t saying much). John notices the shoulders first, broad and strong, as they’re hunched over a cheap wooden table. The next thing he notices is the way the guy is muttering under his breath, a red pen tucked between his fingers. He’s a teacher, John figures. Can’t really be anything else.

“Hey,” John says, meaning to introduce himself, but that seems to startle the guy, causing the table to rock on uneven legs, a pencil spilling to the floor.

“Do you mind?” the guy says, taking in the blue windbreaker. “Some of us have actual work to do. Work that does not involve yelling at overdeveloped jocks and fueling the testosterone crazed delusions that a stupid game actually means anything.”

“I was going to introduce myself,” John replies, drawing out his words, “but I see that’s not really necessary.”

The guy rolls his eyes (and John notices how blue they are, clear and sharp) and sticks out his hand with an edge of reluctance, a put-upon sigh. “Rodney McKay, physics. I’m mostly filling in for my sister while she’s out on maternity leave, and believe me, when I can get my ass out of football-worshiping Podunk, USA, I will.”

“Nice to meet you, too, Mr. McKay,” John says, shaking his hand. And if he lets it go on for one second too long, he can just convince himself that it’s just because the exaggerated irritation that flashes over McKay’s face is too priceless to pass up.

“That’s Dr. McKay to you, Sheppard,” McKay snaps, and John laughs, because he thinks he likes this guy and his big mouth, his expressive face.

“Sure thing, Doc,” John says, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner and taking a sip.

It’s actually pretty good.

---

John’s been playing football since he could walk. In the summers, he’d play catch with his dad in the back yard, the sun low and the sky orange, his father’s sleeves rolled up to his elbows after a long day of work. John knew the perfect technique to throwing a football before he could even fit his hands properly around the damn thing, and it was one of the few things he and his dad really shared, that they never lost, even when they went through the rough patch of his teenage years.

He played on teams for pretty much all of childhood, from peewee all the way up through varsity, but he was never good enough to play college ball. For those years, he was out on the stands, just part of crowd, and that had its own charms. No pressure, just the rush of the crowd all around him, like they were a force of nature, like they could do anything, anything at all, if they just shouted loud enough, if they just wanted it badly enough.

When he got his degree (in English, oddly enough), he wandered around the country a bit, odd jobs here and there, and when he ended up back home, his old peewee coach, now coaching for the middle school, asked him if he ever wanted to work for him. They’d needed another assistant coach, after their previous one took a job offer elsewhere, and John remembers the way it felt, being out on that field again, how he hadn’t realized he’d missed the game until he had a chance to get it back.

---

Summer passes quickly enough. The team shapes up pretty well under Teyla and Ronon’s careful eyes. They’re tougher, faster, stronger, and they’re still getting better. They’re learning the plays, the moves, the skills. Their heads are where they need to be when they show up day after day, practice after practice. It’s an amazing thing, watching something come together like this, the way the team learns to trust each other, learns to trust themselves. They’re not perfect, not by a long shot, but they’re doing better, and that’s all John can really ask for.

He’s not sure if he actually knows what he’s doing or if he’s managed to perfect a type of bullshit that’s almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Teyla and Ronon haven’t called him on it yet, but they might just be humoring him. He guesses he’ll find out during the first game.

In the mornings, he makes sure to visit the faculty lounge, hoping to catch McKay. He can’t pay for entertainment that good, and John actually likes him, besides. At first, it’s a hit or miss proposition, McKay only showing up a couple times a week in no real consistent order, and McKay doesn’t seem to like him much. But John’s one of the few people (apparently) who is willing to listen to McKay when he gets going, and eventually McKay starts showing up every day, looking sleepy and downing half the pot before starting up on rants about public education, the weather, and the food. After a couple weeks, John learns that Rodney’s doctorate is in astrophysics, that he usually teaches at the University of Toronto, that he hates the United States, and that he’s not entirely sure why he’s here, either.

They usually sit by the window, and John half-listens and eats his morning bagel, watching the way Rodney’s hands move in the morning light, the animation of his face, as he moves from one smug satisfaction to irritation to wistfulness.

If someone were to ask, John would probably say that the mornings are his favorite part.

3.

The school year starts too soon, and suddenly, the hallways of the school fill with students. The air gets cooler. The days get shorter.

Rodney’s rants turn more to the stupidity of the students (“It’s one thing in summer school. I expect them to be the moronic flunkies, but this is an AP class.”), and it becomes rare, finding him without his red pen in one hand, some student’s gross incompetence in the other, a frown on his face. John ends up meeting some of the other teachers in the faculty lounge, like Radek, who teaches math, and Carson, who does Bio. John likes them well enough, and they like him well enough back.

The team is raring to go for their first game, giving their all in the scrimmages. Stackhouse’s tackles are harder and better, Lorne’s passes hit every time, Ford moves like a demon possessed. Cadman, in one memorable incident, nearly dislocates Sherman’s shoulder while breaking a tackle. Afterward, Teyla chews Sherman out for going easy on Cadman, just because she’s a girl, and John’s grateful, because he didn’t want to have to go through that talk himself.

Even though they’re good, they’re not quite up to par with Greenville’s team, but maybe they won’t ever be, maybe they don’t need to be.

The pressure’s beginning to mount from other places, too. People start randomly coming up to John in public places, like the supermarket, the gas station, asking him about the team, about their game. John knows how people get about this sort of thing, but he’s never seen it from this side before. He’d never thought of himself as a figure before, but people recognize him on the street. People want to talk about Genii’s offense, NanoTech’s defense, the way the Wraith Devils have taken the State Championship for a decade running.

All the attention is beginning to really get on his nerves, so if he seems more snappish during practice, if he gets quieter and more sullen at times, he’s pretty sure no one can blame him.

---

The day before their game, Principal Weir invites him over to her house for dinner. “You could probably use the distraction,” she says, smiling with that odd, knowing air. “And Simon’s been dying to meet you.”

John says yes, because he thinks it’ll be easier than putting up a fight, and at 5:30, he tosses on a suit and a tie, combing his hair to try to make it look presentable, even though it doesn’t seem to like that.

He rings the front doorbell five minutes before six, and on the other side of the door, there’s the sound of barking and a man saying, “I’ve got it, honey.”

The man who opens the door is friendly-looking, middle-aged, holding back a dog by its collar with his left hand. “Hey,” he says, warmly, holding his free hand out. “You must be the Coach. I’m Simon Wallace. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

John shakes his hand, and slides inside, doing his best to avoid getting dog slobber on his nice suit. “Nice meeting you, too,” he says back. His smile feels a bit plastered to his face.

Dinner is rather pleasant, and John does have to admit that it’s nice to have something he didn’t cook himself, for once. Elizabeth and Simon are good company, warm, friendly, even if the conversation does entirely revolve around the upcoming season.

“So, this Lorne guy,” Simon asks, “he any good?”

John always hates when people put him on the spot like this. There’s no way he’s going to talk shit about his players, not even in private. “Yeah,” John says, glad he doesn’t have to lie at all, “Lorne’s good. He’s got some real leadership potential.”

“How about tomorrow, Coach?” Simon continues, pressing on. “How we looking there?”

John shrugs. To be fair, he has no fucking clue on how it’s going to go. “Dagan’s a pretty solid team, and we’ll just go out there play our best against them, see how it goes.”

Simon chuckles. “How about this season? You think we’ve got a chance at State this year?”

John shrugs again. “We’ll see what Wraith have got up their sleeves this time around. I wouldn’t get my expectations up.” That’s the single most-common question he gets whenever he ends up in conversations like this, and he’s already got his standard response down pat.

“That’s the good thing about being the underdog,” Elizabeth says, amusement lurking in her voice, “there’s nowhere to go but up.”

It’s dark when John finally leaves, golden light spilling from their windows, the evening air crisp and cool.

---

Athletes are a superstitious lot, and John’s not really any different. They all have their pre-game rituals, some of them odder than others.

After he leaves the Weirs’, he makes his way down to the stadium by the school, because he knows it’s quiet at this point and time, practically silent. He’s been doing this one since high school, after the first time he started JV and spent the entire game freaking out.

The school’s mostly dark, with one exception, and in the first floor window he sees a familiar figure, hunched in front of a computer. Because he can, John sneaks up and taps on the glass, smirking as McKay nearly jumps out of his seat.

“Jesus, Sheppard,” McKay says, sliding a window open. “What the hell are you doing here at this time of night?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Doc,” John replies, deflecting the question. These sorts of rituals are awfully private, and the only other person who knows about John’s is his dad, who passed it down to him when he was thirteen and needed something to keep him focused during games.

McKay sighs, and all of a sudden, John notices that he looks tired. “I’m staying with my sister while I’m here, and it’s not bad, per se, it’s just that I’m used to living by myself, and well, I’m having trouble concentrating with my niece and brother-in-law underfoot, too, both of whom are entirely too annoying for their own good. Seriously, he’s a vegetarian English professor. Can you believe that she gave up theoretical physics research for this?”

“I was an English major,” John says, mildly, resisting the urge to wind McKay up some more.

“Of course you were,” Rodney says, dismissively. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here, Sheppard.”

John shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Um, I was just here to see the field.”

McKay rolls his eyes and a huffs out a breath. He turns back to his computer screen, rubbing his face. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”

“It’s just,” John starts, because all of a sudden, he wants to tell McKay about this, wants someone else out there with him. “It’s just something I do the night before a game.”

“Annoy physicists while they’re trying to write up their papers?” McKay snorts. “Look, Sheppard, I’m not going to tattle to anyone about your freaky pre-game rituals, okay?” He pauses for a moment. “Unless it involves sacrificing virgin cheerleaders to the football gods. It doesn’t, right?” McKay looks genuinely worried for a second, and John smirks.

“Nah, we only do that before playoffs,” John says. He doesn’t wait for McKay to start on some other tangent. “Come on,” he says, nodding toward the field.

John’s not sure whether or not McKay will actually say yes, so he breathes a sigh of relief when McKay sighs and turns off his monitor. “Fine, fine, fine. But if I go home with bug bites, it’s all your fault.”

John grins and grabs a football out of his truck. (There’s always at least one there, not really by design. It just sort of happens.) Rodney’s already out of the building and grumbling, but it’s a gorgeous night, a cloudless sky, pinpricks of light overhead.

John makes his way out into the middle of the field, right at the center of the fifty yard line, Rodney lingering on the sideline. John curls his fingers around the ball, his fingers finding the laces out of instinct. He closes his eyes, and he can pretty much feel Rodney get impatient. “Shep--” he starts, but John lets out a “Shhhhhh,” and he can hear Rodney’s mouth snap shut.

There’s a slight breeze that tickles the hair on John’s arms, and in the distance, the faint rumble of a truck. It’s so quiet, empty of sound, and John takes that silence into him, memorizes every bit of it. The first time, his dad had said, “When you’re out here tomorrow, there’s going to be a lot of noise, lots of people yelling at you, Johnny, lots of people trying to distract you. But all you have to do is carry this moment with you, remember the way it feels to exist right here, right now.”

When he opens his eyes, Rodney’s still on the sidelines, looking pale and unearthly in the moonlight. “That’s it?” he yells, and John can see edges of an incredulous expression on his face.

“Yeah,” John yells back, feeling thirteen and sixteen and eighteen all over again, all of those other pre-game nights folded back up into this one. “That’s it.”

4.

Their first game goes like this:

Lorne wins the coin toss and chooses to receive the kick-off. The wind’s in Dagan’s favour, but Cadman runs the ball for thirty yards, sidestepping tackles and using Bates’s blocks like an artist, and Pegasus starts their possession with excellent field position.

Dagan comes back, though, taking down the Pegasus offensive line not with brute force, but with some sneaky moves that somehow manage to get them to Lorne around the pocket before anyone can stop them. Lorne ends up eating turf more than once, and while he doesn’t bitch about it, the way John’s seen other quarterbacks do, there’s a frown that seems semi-permanently attached to his face.

Dagan gets a quick touchdown on their first possession, their quarterback somehow finding a clear path to the endzone after a fake-out carry. The Atlanteans manage to catch up when the coverage on Ford doesn’t realize that he doesn’t actually have the ball and lets their fullback, Griffin, slide right past them. Dagan manages to get another touchdown in with a long-shot pass when Sherman can’t cover the receiver. Going into the half, the Atlanteans are barely hanging on, one touchdown behind, the score 14-7.

At this point, John’s voice feels scraped raw from yelling, and his shoulders feel tense from the weight of everyone’s expectations, so he just spouts some platitudes about getting their heads in the game, and how they can actually win if they try hard enough, but he doesn’t quite feel it himself. The team nods, their expressions determined and set, but John thinks that maybe he’s just made it worse.

The second half goes better, but not good enough. Ford pushes through the line of scrimmage on a third-and-inches play to get them another touchdown, so they tie, which gets a huge roar from the Pegasus side of the field, a wave of blue standing up and cheering.

In the last quarter, however, they call offsides on Cadman during a fourth down, despite the fact that she was still a good three inches behind the line of scrimmage. The penalty puts them back ten yards, and they lose the ball on downs. John manages not to get into the ref’s face too much, but that’s mostly Teyla’s doing, a calming hand on his shoulder. Dagan takes that opportunity and runs with it, quite literally, and John resists the urge to throw his hat onto the ground in frustration as the Dagan running back sails into the endzone.

They do manage to strike back, getting a field goal from behind the thirty-yard line, because at that point John’s willing to take their points where they can get them, but their final gambit gets shut down at the ten-yard line, Cadman not managing to spin off the safety’s tackle, so close and yet so far.

The game ends like that, Dagan winning 21-17, and John tries not to think about what this means from the sidelines, as he watches the other team celebrate.

---

The team takes the loss hard, and John does, too. All he can say to them, on the bus ride back to Pegasus is, “Good game, you guys.”

It’s dim inside the bus, only the fleeting glow of streetlights, and John can’t see their reactions, but they’re quiet, really quiet. “We’ll get them next time,” John continues, lamely, knowing that there’s really nothing he can say to make this all right.

He sits back down, slumping into the uncomfortable seat. Across the aisle, Teyla smiles warmly at him, and John’s thankful for the support, but it’s not enough. He presses the heel of his palm against his forehead, trying not to think about the next week. No one likes losers, and even though Pegasus doesn’t have the same sort of record as some of the other teams John’s worked for, it’s a real downer, not starting out the season with a win.

He spends the weekend sleeping and eating cereal out of the box, not really willing to venture out into public. Ronon drops off game tapes mid-Sunday and says, “You should probably shave.”

John rubs his hand over a couple days’ worth of stubble and says, “Yeah, I probably should.”

That’s the pretty much the extent of their conversation. After Ronon leaves, John stacks the tapes next to his television and doesn’t watch them. He’s got a week, plenty of time.

Monday morning, he slides into the teacher’s lounge, hoping that it’ll be mostly empty. He’s not really ready or willing to deal with the fallout, not before coffee, anyway. Thankfully, it’s just Rodney, Radek, and the history teacher, Peter Grodin. Rodney and Radek were having a loud argument, the sort no one should be having at nine AM on a Monday.

“Look,” Rodney says, “they’ve got to know derivatives for the AP material, and it’s definitely not my job to teach basic calculus to them, so--”

“Good morning, Coach,” Radek says, interrupting the tirade. “Please tell me you’re here to take Rodney off my hands.”

John grins at the glare Rodney shoots at the other man and nearly laughs out loud at the way McKay hisses, “Just because you don’t want to actually hear about your deficiencies as a teacher,” just before John grabs him by an arm and drags him over toward their usual window seat.

He half-expects Rodney to start bitching about coaches who stick their noses into other people’s businesses, a welcome distraction from the rest of John’s life, but Rodney just shifts uncomfortably for a few moments.

“Um,” he finally says, “I’m sorry about Friday. I wasn’t really paying attention while Jeannie was explaining the rules, but her husband assured me that those refs were being incompetent and it looked like you were playing, uh, well, adequately, so you probably deserved a win.”

John was kind of hoping to spend time around Rodney because he was pretty much the only one in this town who didn’t really care about football, but the sudden outburst from him doesn’t actually make John feel weird or uncomfortable or anything like that. In fact, kind of the opposite, a warm, gentle feeling spreading across his chest. “You went to the game on Friday?” he asks.

Rodney’s expression takes on a bit of a deer-in-headlights look. “Uh, yes?” He blinks a few times before he snaps back into himself, and says, “Well, Jeannie insisted that I should get the whole small-town experience, and it wasn’t like anything was anything to do, what with everything shutting down for the game, not that I usually leave the house on Friday nights or anything like that, but just in theory, if I needed to go to the convenience store for batteries or something, I wouldn’t be able to, though I guess the supermarket would still be open. I wonder why I didn’t think of that earlier.”

At this point, the conversation’s entirely derailed, but John doesn’t really mind. He could ride this high for the rest of the day, if he wanted.

---

His good mood only lasts until lunch, when he overhears the radio announcer (Kavanaugh, John thinks his name is) as he starts going through a litany of complaints about the team this year, starting with “the new coach” and going all the way down to “the new coach playing a girl as wide receiver”, and by the end, John wants to strangle him, just a little. What makes it worse is that every once in a while, one of the points is actually valid, which makes John wince and feel like something someone scraped off the bottom of their shoe.

During practice, there’s something lackluster in everything they do, like they’ve been drained of everything, or almost everything, just going through the motions. John gets how they feel.

Teyla spends most of her time frowning disapprovingly, and Ronon may look just a hair bit more irritated than usual, and John thinks he might be giving off bad vibes or something, because people are shooting him weird looks.

In the end, it’s Ford who explains it, during a water break. He looks a little confused. “Uh, I think we’re mostly just waiting for you to scream at us for sucking and how we really need to do better next time.” He pauses. “That or give us a speech about how we’re all winners on the inside.”

John blinks. “You are all winners on the inside,” he says, automatically.

Ford grins brightly at that. “Uh, thanks, Coach.”

“You also need to stop sucking and do better next time.”

“Right, of course, Coach.” Ford nods, expression suddenly flipping to serious, and then jerks his head toward the rest of the team. “Um, I’ll just let them know that.”

“Thanks,” John says.

---

He pulls out the game tapes that night, because all of a sudden he has this voice in his head telling him that he’s being a moron and he should get over himself and watch the damn tapes already, and weirdly enough, it sounds like Rodney (not that Rodney knows anything about football, much less anything about coaching football). John’s got a semi-used couch from the previous owners, a good-but-not-great TV he bought when he moved here, and a VCR he half-stole from the school, because for some reason, the football team has two VCRs and one TV. As he settles in to watch tapes for the night, he thinks about making popcorn before rejecting the idea. No need to get butter stains all over his notes.

It’s not any easier, watching them lose again, but this time, he notices the way there’s a hole, right between Sanchez and Miller, not as obvious on the ground, not that big, but wide enough to get a ball through every once in a while, something quarterbacks are trained to see from the first time they take a snap. He makes a note on his pad to get Ronon to train it out of them later, feeling a sense of purpose now.

There’s the way Lorne takes way too long to make his passes. It’s good in the sense that he’s not rushing things, not blowing downs in his attempts to get rid of the ball, but he needs to be quicker on his feet, needs to get better at trusting his instincts.

Ford’s a little too hesitant with the ball, not willing to run through people, force his way through the defense. John’s going to have to get Teyla to work with him on that, get him to be more aggressive.

It’s somewhere in the second quarter that he starts getting caught up in the game, even though he already knows how it ends, losing himself in the snaps, the passes, the handoffs. He slides to the edge of his seat without realizing he’s doing it, caught up in that perfect play where Lorne’s fakeout works exactly as planned, and he jumps to his feet as Griffin leads a couple of Dagan’s defenders down the field, nipping at his heels.

John forgets how beautiful the game is, sometimes, when he’s too caught up in the rest of the bullshit, the front he has to put up in public, the way there’s always someone just waiting to see you fail. But there’s none of that here, on the tape. It’s just… football, the game John fell in love with when he was five, and even as he’s watching them lose, watching Dagan kick their asses, he’s falling all over again.

5.

The next day, he gathers the team into a circle before practice. “You may have already heard this from Ford,” John says, as conversationally as you can while yelling, “but you all suck and you need to do better next time. We’ve got a game against NanoTech on Friday and you’re not going to screw this one up, got that?” He’s probably ruining the hardass effect by grinning all the way through, but he feels alive and ready, prepared. They can do better. They will do better, if John has anything to say about it.

The team’s grinning back, shouting affirmatively, and John can feel their energy, practically taste it. He needed a chance to remember this, to remember that he does this because he loves this game, to remember that losing once doesn’t mean you’re going to lose again, to remember that winning doesn’t have to mean everything. He thinks the team’s realizing that too.

“They are doing better today, I think,” Teyla says mildly, during a break, and John has to agree. He’s been keeping tabs on the things he’s noticed, making the necessary corrections where he needs to. But no one gets annoyed or angry. They just grit their teeth, dig in their heels. There’s a sense of gusto, everyone working harder, working better, and John’s been there. He knows what it’s like to push yourself to the limit for your coach, for your school, for your team.

“They’re sucking less,” Ronon says, drinking some water from a small plastic cup.

John’s still grinning. “Yeah,” he says.

There’s been a sudden heat wave, the temperature rising to late-summer levels again, and they’re all sweating like pigs under the hot sun. But no one complains when John ends their break by calling out for some blocking drills.

They just pull on their helmets and bite down on their mouth guards, lining up and waiting for John to bark out his next instructions. It’s quiet for a moment, just the sound of equipment shifting, bodies arranging themselves, and John takes the time to appreciate the way they’re shaping up, better than he could have hoped.

They look good, he thinks. They look ready.

---

After practice ends, he and Ronon and Teyla camp out in his office, watching tapes of NanoTech’s first game last week, trying to hash out a strategy. NanoTech’s a fairly new MAGNET school in the area, only a couple years old, but their team, the Bots, have already positioned themselves as a strong contender, kicking Pegasus’ ass in both of those years.

Watching them play, John can tell why. They don’t have the biggest or the fastest players, but they have some of the most stunning plays that John has ever seen, intricate chains of handoffs, fake-outs, and laterals, and it’s hard enough following what’s going on from the tape. There’s almost no chance in hell for anyone on the ground.

From the displeased frown on Teyla’s face, he can tell she’s thinking the same thing. Ronon’s expression is slightly more irritated than usual, which probably amounts to full-on annoyance. John’s been keeping them as in the loop as possible, since from what he’s heard, Sumner liked to do things unilaterally, not really listening to what they had to say, which is probably why neither of them got offered the top spot, even though there were rumblings amongst the various coaches that they were being wasted at Pegasus. John doesn’t want to waste them.

“This does not bode well,” Teyla says.

John just nods absently. He’s staring at the screen, chewing his bottom lip, because there’s got to be something here. Something that they can use.

“We’ve got to shut down their offense,” Ronon says. “Their defense sucks.”

It’s true. The Bots don’t have the sheer size and strength for a really fierce defense, so they make do with being merely competent. They’re pretty good at stopping runs, but they fall apart with the passes. John nods and continues watching. They’ve got something. They just need more.

“They like to run with the ball,” Teyla observes, her expression thoughtful. “Their passing game is not very strong. We may be able to take advantage of this.”

John’s nodding again, because he can see that, too. Their quarterback has shitty aim, every throw something of a Hail Mary, and John wonders how the game would look with more pressure on the ball, blitzes to keep the quarterback off balance and uncertain.

He glances at Ronon, seeing if he’s seeing it too. “Think we got a shot?” John asks.

Ronon nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Think we do.”

---

The next practice is all about getting their defense into shape, preparing them for what they’re going to face on Friday. He’s tag-teaming with Ronon, trusting Teyla to get their passing up to par. John’s beginning to feel more comfortable with where he fits in the scheme of things, what he has to do to get them actually ready. It’s a good feeling.

They’re usually not this aggressive with their defense. Ronon prefers a more laid back style, but that’s not going to stop the NanoTech offense, not by a long shot. The line’s rising to the challenge, at least, asking “How high?” when John tells them to jump.

After Teyla’s done with them, John grabs their offensive line and sets them up for a scrimmage. “All right,” he shouts at their defense, “when I blow my whistle, they’re going to try to run the ball down the field. Your job is to make sure no one crosses the twenty yard line. No one. If Cadman and Ford manage to get one inch past it, we’re doing it again. You are going to do this until you’ve got it right ten times in a row, got that?”

There are shouts of confirmation from the defensive line, and John blows his whistle when he thinks they’re ready.

In the end, it takes them twenty-seven tries, but by that last one, they’re solid as a wall. Cadman doesn’t even make it past the forty.

---

The night before the game, right after the sky goes more black than blue, John drives out to the field, because rituals are rituals, and he’s never skipped out on this one.

The school’s dark again, and John tries not to get too down about the fact that Rodney’s light isn’t on, because it wasn’t like they had a deal or anything like that. It was just an accident, last time, a coincidence. Rodney’s got better things to do with his time.

It’s gorgeous out again, though partly cloudy in a way that occasionally obscures the moon, cool and a bit windy. John zips up his windbreaker and breathes in the air. People are still asking about the game coming up, about the loss of a possible undefeated season, about whether John’s still planning to play Cadman this coming game, and while John’s not any less annoyed about the constant interference, he’s gotten pretty good at smiling and saying that they’re just going to take things one game at a time. Because that’s what they’re doing.

When John steps onto the field, he sees that he’s not the only one here. There’s someone else up in the stands, a hunched figure in the first row, right over the fifty yard line. It’s too dark to really tell who it is, and John hesitates for a moment, because there’s things he’s comfortable letting other people see, but this isn’t really one of them, as innocent as it is.

But he needs this for the game tomorrow, needs the calm it gives him, so he sets his shoulders and continues.

He makes it to the forty before the figure looks up and sees him there. “Sheppard,” it yells in a familiar voice, “about time you showed up. This lighting is horrible for my eyesight, and let’s not even get started on my back. Isn’t there some sort of set time for these things? You were here half an hour ago last week.”

John finds himself grinning. The earlier tension drains out of him entirely. “Heya, Doc!” John shouts back, jogging over to where Rodney’s sitting. Rodney’s still rolling his neck when John gets there, a displeased grimace on his face. “Didn’t think you’d be here,” John says to him, tilting his head up because the first row of bleachers is a good five feet above the ground, a railing separating it from the field.

“Well, um, I figured that uh, you invited me along last time, so maybe you would be okay with me coming, but if you want me to leave or something, I can do that.” McKay’s hands are moving twice as fast as usual, matching the nervousness in his voice.

John almost wants to place a hand on Rodney’s shoulder, let it drift down his back, calming him down, but he just leans against the railing and says, “It’s okay. It’s okay,” watching as a brilliant, relieved smile lights up Rodney’s face.

“Good,” Rodney says, nodding. “That’s good.”

6.

Before the game, John gathers the team together in the locker room and says, “Win this one for me, okay?” It’s a home game this time, so everything feels more comfortable, more familiar, and all the more important. This is their turf.

“Sure thing, Coach!” Griffin yells back. “Just for you!”

That gets some laughs and cheers, and John’s smirking as he points to Griffin and says, “Good man. You better give me another touchdown.”

“You got it, Coach,” Griffin says, getting another round of cheers.

Lorne takes them through the pre-game chant, repeating their motto, “Faster, farther, higher,” in a building chorus of voices until John’s sure that the people outside can hear them, and when they run out onto that field, John thinks they look unstoppable.

He takes a quick moment to surreptitiously scan the stands for any sign of McKay, but there’s too many people, too much going on, and after a while, Teyla taps his shoulder, asking him who he’s looking for. John does his best not to look guilty.

---

The game goes like this:

Lorne loses the coin-toss, and Hermiod takes the kick-off. John doesn’t know the kid that well, since he seems a little weird during practices, but he’s got one hell of a kick on him. It gives them some room to work with, and while the Atlanteans’ defense isn’t holding up to NanoTech’s onslaught the way John had hoped, Sherman manages to blitz on a fourth down for a change of possession.

After that, Pegasus pushes forward with passing plays, grabbing whatever yards they can get, and Cadman catches a beautiful pass into the endzone for their first touchdown. She gives the finger to Kavanaugh, who’s up in the radio booth, as she walks off the field, and John does his best to pretend he didn’t see it.

They go into the second half without managing to score again, not managing to gain any more ground (or lose any more, for that matter) in the meantime. John lets Teyla grill the offense on getting past the surprisingly determined NanoTech defense, because that’s her thing, and John doesn’t want to get in the way.

They pull off another touchdown in the third quarter, Griffin managing to live up to his promise on a long-shot pass, and John is almost tempted to hug Lorne for nailing that. Their defense gets complacent afterwards, though, Miller just missing a tackle which lets a NanoTech running back through, into the endzone. He apologizes profusely during their time out, and John doesn’t yell at him as much as he was originally planning on doing.

Ford scores another touchdown in the fourth quarter on a amazing lateral from Cadman, and the defense pulls themselves together well enough to put the right amount of pressure on the NanoTech offensive, forcing their quarterback to throw hasty passes that miss far more than they hit.

The game ends like that, the Atlanteans winning 21-7, and there’s that usual post-win rush amongst the team, gathering out on the field, raising their helmets, a mass of blue, but John stays on the sidelines, content to just watch.

---

John sees a lot more happy faces after that, but some people are always looking for a reason to hate you. John doesn’t let it get to him.

Even Kavanaugh has to concede that the team did well that Friday (though he does have some choice words about Cadman), and John grins all the way to the high school while listening to him over his truck’s radio.

Monday morning, Rodney slurps his coffee, gets into another argument with Zelenka, and tells John that he was a little conflicted at first about who to root for at the game on Friday, what with being a geek and all, but in the end, he was glad they won, and how it’s almost kind of disgusting that he actually has something vaguely resembling school spirit these days, when he’s in his thirties for Christ’s sake.

John just smirks and starts Rodney’s second argument of the day, over whether or not geeks can actually play sports.

(The third is over whether or not chess counts as a sport.)

7.

Everyone’s hyped up during practice, and John does his best to make sure their victory doesn’t go to their heads, but he’s sure he mostly fails at that. He lets it go after a while, and focuses on making sure the defense doesn’t get sloppy on them.

Halfway through practice, Teyla comes up to him, looking like she wants something, and John’s not entirely sure what that is.

“I do believe that you have not congratulated Hermoid for playing well this Friday,” she says, her tone pleasant on the surface.

It’s not that John has anything against kickers; it’s just that they freak him out a bit, and Hermiod’s got his own sort of extra-strength freakishness going on. He doesn’t really talk to anyone else on the team outside of the other kickers besides Teyla, though John’s seen him trade a couple words with Lorne, once. “Um,” he says, glancing over to where Hermiod’s practicing his kicks on the other side of the field.

“Coach,” Teyla says, and there’s a more obvious threat in her eyes this time.

John kind of likes his internal organs where they are, so he goes over to where their kicker is practicing, trying not to feel too weirded out by the way Hermiod stops and stares as he comes nearer. “Hermiod,” he says, his arm wanting to reach out and pat the kid on the shoulder and his brain telling him that it’s a bad, bad idea. “Uh, good game on Friday. Nice kicks.”

Hermioid blinks at him through his helmet, his eyes big and dark, before nodding in acknowledgment. After that, John takes off as fast as he can without it getting too awkward, giving a half-hearted wave as he leaves.

When he gets back to Teyla, she gives him a smile that vaguely reminds John of his mother, right after he handed her a crayon drawing he made of her in first grade. He does his best not to think about that too deeply.

---

At the end of practice, John ends up inviting Teyla and Ronon over for dinner on Wednesday, because they do spend an inordinate amount of time together, which in John’s mind counts for something. It’s getting kind of boring, eating by himself, anyway.

The next morning, he debates it for a moment before inviting Rodney, too, because he’s not sure Rodney will say yes, but Rodney’s eyes go bright and eager when John asks, right before they turn sharp and focused. “Teyla and Ronon,” he says. “They’re your assistant coaches, right?”

“Yeah,” John says, even though he doesn’t know why it matters.

Rodney seems to think it over for a bit, but he never elaborates, and John doesn’t really think about it again.

---

Autumn’s in full swing, the air cool and crisp and soothing. John’s never really been one for the heat of summer or the cold of winter, but autumn’s always been just about right, and this is the perfect sort, brown and a little soggy.

On Wednesday, it drizzles all through practice, gray sky overhead, and Lorne slips on the muddy ground, after taking a snap, staining the red of his QB jersey, but he comes up laughing, wiping ineffectually at the smudge on his cheek. The entire team’s in high spirits, because this it football, dirty and messy and exhilarating. John almost wants to jump in himself, though he’s pretty sure he’d just get his ass kicked really hard, so he just tilts his head up to feel the rain on his face.

He leaves the kitchen window open as he cooks dinner. It’s not loud enough to hear the pit-pat of rain, but he can smell it when it drifts in, fresh and clean.

Ronon’s the first to arrive, and John blinks a few times because he’s not used to seeing Ronon out of his usual coach gear, a leather coat instead of the windbreaker. He’s holding a plate wrapped in tin foil, and it smells vaguely of chocolate. “Brownies,” Ronon says.

“Cool,” John says. He points Ronon to the coat rack and hands the man a bottle of beer, leading him to the dining room table.

John’s always loved large windows. They make him feel less like he’s been caged in, less like he can’t reach out to touch the sky, and though he can’t afford the kind of house he wants (big, wide open rooms, high ceilings, windows that take up entire walls), the dining room’s next to the porch with a clear sliding door, letting in the evening light.

They don’t really talk, he and Ronon, they just sit back in a comfortable silence, waiting, and John watches the clouds shift over the trees.

Teyla’s next, of course, her hair piled neatly on her head instead of her usual messy, casual ponytail. She greets him with a kiss on his cheek and smiles as he blinks in surprise.

They make small talk about Teyla’s family. Her brother runs a farm at the edge of town, and her twelve-year-old nephew wants to one day play for the Atlanteans. “He is actually quite good,” she says, settling into her chair with her usual grace. “Perhaps he will show show up to try outs when you least expect it.”

Her smile is gentle, teasing, and John can’t stop his own answering one. “Just hope I’m around then,” he replies.

“I have a feeling you will be, John,” she says, simply.

Rodney’s four minutes late (not that John’s really counting or anything), but he’s smiling as he steps inside, a little fidgety and nervous, but still easy and happy, and as much as John likes it when Rodney’s being annoyed and bitchy and combative, there’s nothing like Rodney when he’s like this.

“So,” he says, by way of greeting, “the game isn’t completely moronic from a strategy point of view, but it’s got an overly complicated scoring system, and really, the Canadian version’s better.”

“Canadian version?” John asks, feeling like he’s just missed half of a conversation.

“Well,” Rodney says, “its scoring is hardly any less complex, but if you’re going to make it that confusing, you might as well go all the way. Do I smell brownies?” He grins brightly at John, and John’s considering asking Ronon for his recipe. Not that John bakes or anything, but it’s got to be a useful skill to have.

“Uh, yeah,” John says. “Ronon made them.”

McKay starts making a beeline toward the dining room, apparently following his nose, and blinks at Teyla and Ronon when he finds it.

“You must be Doctor McKay,” Teyla says, offering a hand, and for a moment, John’s almost afraid that Rodney’s going to say something horribly offensive by accident, but Rodney just shakes it and stutters out a, “Yeah, um, that’s me. You’re Teyla, right? I recognize you from games, not that I’ve ever had that good a seat or anything, but uh, yeah.”

“Hey,” Ronon says, without moving an inch.

Rodney looks a little terrified, but he gives Ronon a little wave. “He’s not going to kill me in my sleep, is he?” he hisses to John, not nearly quietly enough.

Ronon’s answering grin is a little feral, and John raises an eyebrow at him, trying to clearly convey, Hey, you should go easy on the new guy.

Ronon’s eyebrow arches in a way that says, Fine, if you say so, before he starts digging into the food.

The steak’s overcooked, if John does say so himself, and the vegetables are too limp and soggy, but thankfully, Teyla’s too polite, Ronon will eat anything, and Rodney actually likes his food bland and tasteless. Dinner conversation, predictably, turns to football, and at first, John’s afraid that Rodney’s going to just be left out, but it quickly becomes apparent that he knows all the rules, basic strategy, and oddly enough, the entire Pegasus playbook, though it’s equally obvious that even though he knows the theory, he doesn’t really understand exactly where the fine line between theory and practice is.

It gives them something to talk about at least, and even though John knows Rodney can hold entire conversations by himself, it’s more fun to push back, more fun to watch Rodney sputter and argue, flailing against Teyla’s serene calm and Ronon’s bland disinterest. John shoots back sarcastic comments, just to give Rodney more ammo.

“Where’d you even get our playbook, anyway?” John asks, after Rodney makes a disparaging comment about the on-side kick and how utterly stupid it is.

“It was on your desk,” Rodney says, with a casual wave of dismissal.

“And you just decided to steal it?” John’s actually a little concerned about Rodney’s kleptomania at the moment, because seriously, that probably means he needs to start locking his office from time to time.

“Well, yeah,” Rodney says, and John can’t quite resist the urge to reach over and smack him in the back of his head. Rodney scowls at him, but then he plunges forward to talk about how the rouge just makes sense, which gets a frown from Ronon and a smile from Teyla, and John can’t remember a time when he’s ever felt more content.

8.

Rodney starts showing up at practices for no apparent reason and occasionally spouts off suggestions and insults to everyone’s competence and intelligence that John’s not really paying attention to, because (a) his comments are frequently subject to Rodney’s incredible bias towards Canadian football and (b) Rodney’s really distracting, which John had never realized while he’d been hanging out with Rodney, because when he’s hanging out with Rodney, he’s usually hanging out with Rodney and perfectly content to let Rodney distract him as much as he wants. John can’t really let that happen here, because he’s got his job to do, and he can’t spend the time staring at Rodney’s mouth, wondering exactly how he has the lung capacity to say so much so fast.

They hang out together after practice though, relaxing on the bleachers, and it’s nice, having Rodney to bookend his day. John likes listening to McKay talk, because McKay can talk about anything and frequently does, about the way his sister is still a brat, even though she’s in her thirties and has a kid of her own; about his terrifying brother-in-law, who teaches English at Atlantis University (which is about forty miles away and the reason why they’re called the Atlanteans) and likes to inflict all sorts of vegetarian cuisine on Rodney’s delicate stomach; and about the idiots at the University of Toronto who pretty much demanded that he take an academic year off on sabbatical; about the way his students piss him off, but not naming specific names because Elizabeth already gave him that lecture; about the piano he used to play, the way he loved it like nothing else; about his parents, who didn’t love their children more than they hated each other; about physics, the way it makes the universe fit together, from the smallest neutrinos to the largest galaxies, the way it makes everything make sense, the world expressed in ratios and constants.

It’s humbling, for John to know these things about Rodney, for Rodney to give them up so easily. John’s not like Rodney. He can’t tell people about these parts of himself without it hurting, but out here, where Rodney’s open, so open, he almost wants to, because it doesn’t feel right, to take so much from Rodney and never give anything back.

---

Greenville wasn’t a place he would really call home. It was another town, another football team, good kids, and John had liked it well enough while he was there. He’d never finished unpacking, that first year, and anyone who came over asked him about the brown boxes stacked in his living room. John’s excuse to them and himself was that he was being lazy and had just never gotten around to it. But it had never felt true.

Part of him thinks he knew it wasn’t permanent, even then.

John had liked the team, and Holland was a good guy and a good player, and when he said he could play, even with his dislocated shoulder, that they could win this thing, John had believed him. He doesn’t resent Holland for not being able to pull off the win, because they were down by three anyway, and it was a close thing, in the end. Real close. And besides, John knew what he was doing when he took the chance.

As a town, they were less forgiving than Pegasus, so after the game (the game), the head coach called him into his office, the room decorated with trophies and photos, some of them dull with age, and told John he was fired for overriding his authority.

John had just smirked at him, said, “Sure,” and left, because he’d never really liked the coach, and he wasn’t actually sorry for losing the game for them, not at all. If he were to go back and do it all over again, he’d still make that same decision without hesitation, because if you can’t trust your players, who can you trust?

He was untouchable after that, nobody willing to hire an assistant coach who liked to go behind the head coach’s back, so he was surprised to get the call from Principal Weir, saying that there might be a job available, if he wanted it. Coach Sumner’s heart attack had been sudden, which had left Pegasus scrambling for a last minute replacement, and John had no illusions about being anything besides bottom of the barrel.

He flipped a coin before accepting the offer, because things that seemed too good to be true usually were, but the quarter came up tails, and John decided that it was okay if he hated it, if the town hated him, because it was a chance to coach again.

It was football.

9.

They beat Taranis easily the next week, Ford and Cadman making the necessary touchdowns and Sanchez making some amazing tackles, and they come home happy and excited to be making up for their shitty beginning.

The game after that is Homecoming, and that means the school is decked out in full colors, streamers lining the hallways, a banner hanging over the entrance. Rodney complains for five days straight about the way Principal Weir somehow managed to rope him into chaperoning the dance, and when John goes to Elizabeth and asks her if she still needs people on Friday night, she looks so relieved John’s almost afraid that she’s going to hug him.

He hears things in the locker room as the Coach, even though he does his best to pretend he doesn’t. By that Friday, he already knows that Stackhouse has managed to get Norina, one of the cheerleaders, to go to the dance with him, and is crowing about that to anyone who will listen, that Cadman and Ford are going together, just as friends. Bates isn’t going at all, because he has to watch his little brother at home, and Lorne apparently has a crush on a quiet Japanese girl named Miko, who apparently has a crush on Rodney. (John asks Rodney about it, later, not that he thinks Rodney would ever sleep with his students or anything like that, but it’s very satisfying to see Rodney’s face scrunch in confusion and hear him say, “Who?”)

---

There’s a pep rally that afternoon, outside in the bright afternoon sun, and John gets up to introduce the team. He’s always hated the public speaking thing, but it’s easy enough to fake his way through it, since it’s the same words that every other coach has ever said introducing a team at a pep rally, so they know what he’s saying even before he says it.

After he sits back down, he searches for Rodney on the bleachers as the cheerleaders do their routine, since he’s always felt a little skeeved out staring at teenage girls in short skirts and besides, he’s sure the expression on Rodney’s face is priceless. John’s wearing sunglasses, the battered aviators he’s had since he was twenty-three, so he’s pretty sure no one notices that he’s not actually paying any attention to the rally itself, which is good, because it’s Homecoming, and no one wants the Coach distracted for that game.

Rodney’s up at the bottom-left edge of the bleachers, arms crossed over his chest, looking as bored and irritated as John imagined he would be, though there are phases of expressions that pass over his face, small shifting changes that make him look increasingly annoyed as the festivities drag on, and John has to fight down the smirk that’s threatening to appear on his face.

Afterwards, they have a game to prepare for, and then a game to win, and John doesn’t see Rodney until the actual dance, two hours after they blow by Olesia forty-three to ten and the deafening cheer from the crowd after the final whistle.

The gym looks nice the way it’s set up for the dance, sky-blue balloons held down by round plastic discs, silver stars glued on the walls in the shapes of constellations, and more streamers, but it still smells vaguely like old sweat, like too many basketball games on humid days. The music’s too loud, something rap. John feels really old wishing for something with less bass. He can feel this stuff in his teeth.

Some of the wooden indoor bleachers are pulled out so that students can sit relax while not actually dancing, and Rodney’s at the top with elbows resting on his knees, scowling.

“Oh, god,” he says, seeing John. “Why are you here?”

John grins and settles down next to him. “I volunteered.”

“You’re insane,” Rodney says, his eyes wide in horror. “You could be at home, sleeping or watching TV or doing moronic football coach things, and instead, you volunteered to listen to bad music and watch teenagers either sulk anti-socially or dry hump each other. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I dunno,” John says. “I think it’s kind of cute.”

Rodney looks at John like he’s grown another head, and John wants to maybe reach out and -- something, he’s not sure what.

---

There’s nothing significant about the rest of the night. The kids are mostly well behaved, and when they aren’t, Peter and Carson seem to have a handle on it.

John spends most of his time winding Rodney up, which is way too easy, considering how wound up Rodney is already, just from having to be here. John’s never going to pass up the chance when he’s got one. Rodney wastes a lot of air bitching about the punch (which apparently contains citrus, something Rodney’s allergic to), the smell (too many people in too small a space), and the utter stupidity of teenagers (John suspects some sort of adolescent trauma on Rodney’s part but doesn’t push). John spends a lot of time talking about how he really, really liked high school and watches as Rodney’s face does this twitching thing, like his brain can’t process the information.

John’s not really looking for any of the team, because there’s a few things about his players that he’d just rather not know, but he does catch a glimpse of Lorne, shyly holding out a hand to Miko, both of them blushing hard enough that John can see it from where he’s sitting. Ford and Cadman try to outdo each other with spazzy dance moves when they play “Safety Dance,” a song that John was sincerely hoping to never hear again, while Miller flirts with one of quiet, blonde cheerleaders next to the punch. It’s too dark to see much more than that, and besides, Rodney’s more interesting anyway.

At the end, they’re recruited to help with clean up, and it’s so quiet John can hear his ears ringing. Rodney’s not so much ranting as he is muttering under his breath. John glances at him out of the corner of his eye, watching the motions of Rodney’s hands, quick and impatient but also steady, the slope of Rodney’s back as he bends over to pick up a bit of streamer that’s fallen to the floor.

10.

Their next game is against Genii, Pegasus’ longtime arch-rivals, and that means that everyone has to talk a lot about how they’ve got a game against their arch-rivals coming up. Even though they’ve got a pretty good winning streak going, John’s getting a lot more annoying questions about it from just about everyone, and Kavanaugh seems to be harping on this next game like it’s the Superbowl. All of this seems to be an attempt to drive John a little insane, but at least Teyla and Ronon seem to be keeping their cool, and Rodney’s just as annoyed by it as John is.

There’s talk of going to the playoffs, too, something Pegasus hasn’t managed to get to in the last fifteen years, though the way Kavanaugh goes on about it, you’d think it had been several millenia. Whether they’ll make it to the championship game is another thing entirely, and even then, they’ll have the Wraith, who are having a slightly terrifying undefeated season, to contend with.

But right now, with their game against Genii just around the corner, tensions are running high on the team, which means that John gets dragged into Elizabeth’s office for a meeting with Cowen, Genii’s principal, and Kolya, Genii’s head coach. John hates both of them on sight. There’s something slimy about Cowen that he can’t quite put his finger on, and Kolya’s glowering silence sets John’s teeth on edge. Kolya doesn’t take off his cap (ugly Genii brown with GENII REBELS on the front), and John wonders how much effort it takes to be that rude.

“Look,” Elizabeth says, completely calm, “I realize that there’s an intense rivalry between our two schools, but I think that we have an obligation to keep this from spilling outside the football field.”

Cowen smiles, too slick for John’s tastes, and says, “Of course, of course.”

Elizabeth smiles back, tight-lipped and tense, the smile that says she totally isn’t buying this shit. “I’m worried about the teams themselves, which is why I’ve asked both Coach Kolya and Coach Sheppard here today. I thought it would be best if we had a chance to hammer an agreement out, make sure that we’re all on the same page regarding this situation.”

Kolya nods. “My boys will not, of course, participate in any such behavior,” he says, with the clear implication that John’s would. John puts on his most obnoxious smirk and slouches down in his seat, one arm tossed over the back.

“Of course not,” John replies. “They just spray painted ‘Pegasus sucks’ on the side of our high school last year.” John’s heard the story from Teyla, when she was explaining to him just how big a deal this game was, a whole list of all the things the schools had done to each other over the years.

Kolya doesn’t even flinch, but there’s something dark in his eyes as he glances at John. Cowen flinches a little, barely perceptible. “We’re sorry about that,” Cowen says. “Rest assured that it won’t happen again.”

“How’s that investigation going?” John asks. “Strange how you haven’t managed to find out anything about who did it.”

“John,” Elizabeth says, a warning in her voice, before turning back to Cowen. “As long as you manage to keep it from happening again, we can let by-gones be by-gones. I think we can all agree that escalation is not something any of us want.” She folds her hands on her desk. “I feel like we should hold a friendly wager as well. Help diffuse tensions a bit.” She smiles, warmer this time, but with an edge. “Perhaps the loser’s principal should wear the other team’s T-shirt for a day?”

Cowen seems to take it in stride. He smiles some more. John doesn’t like it this time either. “Of course. Of course. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

They shake on it, and Cowen and Kolya leave. John’s not sorry to see them go. Not at all.

When they’re finally out the door, Elizabeth fixes John with a level look. “I’m not planning on wearing Genii’s T-shirt after this game,” she says.

And John’s not exactly scared of her, per se. It’s just that getting on her bad side is not a priority, well, ever. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.

---

There are rumors that fly around a bit, that the Rebels are going to try to destroy their field, or that the Atlanteans are going to retaliate by letting loose a couple goats in Genii’s high school during school hours, but John has Teyla give the speech about respecting other schools, and strangely enough, nothing happens on either end.

Preparations for the game are charged, however, and John spends more than one night watching game tapes with either Teyla, Ronon, or both. He even gives a couple to Lorne, who looks a little annoyed, because he apparently has a test on Thursday he needs to study for, and John feels a little bad, but Lorne insists that he can handle it.

Genii’s a tough team, from what John’s seen. They like their bold, risky plays, arrogant in a way that John can almost respect, if not admire. “They do not always play the… fairest game,” Teyla says, her lips a displeased line.

“They like to make penalties,” Ronon says, a scowl forming on his face, and John really hates the idea of playing a team the likes to pull that shit, push at the rules just to see how far they can take it.

“I don’t like it,” John says and grits his teeth, because he’s seen guys hauled off the field in stretchers, and it’s bad enough when they’re complete accidents. They don’t need reckless playing to go along with it.

During practice, he makes the team do tackling drills, teaching them to take bad tackles, getting them to make good tackles. He makes sure they can cut the Genii off, keep them from pulling their usual sort of reckless plays that probably work by stunning the other team with just how stupid they are. But the Atlanteans are doing good; there’s an aggressiveness to them right now that John chalks up to the arch-rival thing. Bates’ blocks are harder than ever before, Miller blitzes like it’s a good idea to go after the QB every time, and Ford even barrels through Stackhouse at one point, plows through him like he’s barely even there. Ford’s been improving by leaps and bounds lately, stronger and faster than John ever expected him to be.

The Genii have only lost to Dagan and NanoTech so far this season, which means that Pegasus are ahead of them, as far as it goes, but they need to hold onto that lead; they still need to win this.

And besides, Elizabeth would look horrible in brown.

---

He meets Rodney at the field Thursday night, because the thing that used to be just John’s thing has sort of become their thing instead, and John can’t really say that he regrets it at all, because he finds McKay relaxing, as weird as that is. It’s easier to let Rodney be fidgety and nervous for both of them, to let John be calm and put together because Rodney’s the one who’s good at spouting absurd worst case scenarios at will.

John has never really managed to figure out exactly why Rodney always shows up, but he always does, and John tries not to question it too much. It’s good, Rodney on the bleachers, pulling a coat tight around his broad shoulders, and John out in the field, pulling the silence around him like a shield.

Afterward, Rodney just looks at him, the corner of his mouth quirked into a smile, and on some nights, he’ll launch into a rant about incompetent morons as they walk back to the parking lot, or he’ll confess some horrible thing that happened to him in junior high, but occasionally, on nights like this, he’ll look at the sky and talk about the stars, the chemical reactions that fuel them, the time it takes for their light to reach Earth, how long it will be before they collapse and explode. There’s just something about the look on Rodney’s face when he starts talking about nuclear fusion, something strangely like awe, and it’s just something so rare that it makes John ache when he sees it. He stays quiet, listening, because as long as Rodney needs an audience, John’s willing to be part of it.

When Rodney starts trailing off, John pulls the door of his truck open, because he really needs to get home to sleep. It’s too tempting to just stay out here and listen all night. “Later, McKay,” he says.

“Oh, right, yes,” Rodney says, snapping back into himself. “Of course.” He’s still smiling, the orange glow from the streetlights casting shadows on his face, revealing certain features and hiding others, and John wishes he’d smile more; it’s a good look on him.

John watches Rodney as he leaves, getting into modest-looking Camry and pulling out of the parking lot, and something feels wrong somehow, like there was something John needed to say but didn’t. He stares at the place where Rodney’s car was for a moment before turning the ignition.

11.

Their game against Genii goes like this:

When they run out onto the field, there’s a mixture of cheers and boos, which is to be expected, and he glares across the field at Kolya, who glares back. Teyla’s frowning, something John never sees during games. She’s usually serene, untouchable, calling the plays with an enviable ease, but here, she’s watching one of Kolya’s assistant coaches, the reddish-blonde woman who’s at his side, occasionally glancing back at Teyla, too.

“Friend of yours?” John asks, because there’s definitely history there between them, even though it’s probably none of his business.

“I spent some time in Genii, when I was younger,” is all Teyla says, and John doesn’t push any further. They’ve got a game to focus on.

It’s a windy night, a little chilly but not cold under the bright lights. John worries about it a bit, but then he forces himself to relax. It’s out of his hands right now. They just have to deal.

Genii wins the coin toss, and they manage to hold off the first onslaught, Sanchez making that last crucial tackle for the turnover. When they get possession, Genii starts pulling their stupid underhanded crap, and John snarls at the referee when a Genii linebaker grabs Markham’s mask, dragging him to the ground, and no one calls it. They lose the ball on a blitz, Lorne fumbling as he takes the tackle, and the Genii defensive back takes it all the way into the endzone. John rubs his face with his hands and grits his teeth.

They do better after that, keeping the Genii from scoring again in the first half. The Atlanteans don’t manage to score either, their attempts at field goals going wide, carried off by the wind. Genii starts racking up penalties, both called and uncalled. There’s the numerous offsides, a couple false starts, pass interferences on Ford and Griffin, a hold on Cadman, and another facemask, this time to Stackhouse. No one gets hurt, at least, but John still really wishes these refs would get some fucking glasses. From what he hears, it sounds like the crowd agrees with him.

During halftime, they’re down seven to zero, and John maybe attempts a speech, but it comes across a little garbled, so he gets Lorne to do it instead, and that works out much better.

They make some headway in the second half, Hermiod pulling off some brilliant field goals, managing to compensate for the wind. Genii manages to hold their ground, though, scoring a couple of field goals as well.

It comes down to the final quarter, Genii with the possession, and they do that thing, that stupid, reckless thing, attempting to run the ball on their fourth down, but their fakeout doesn’t work, and Sherman takes out the Rebels’ running back, who fumbles the ball, and they make it all the way down to the thirty before Genii’s offensive line manages to stop them.

The Atlanteans seem to wake up after that, and their next play is a beautifully executed double handoff which gets Cadman into the endzone and the rest of the team on their feet. The crowd’s roar is almost deafening.

This still leaves them behind, thirteen to twelve, with thirty seconds on the clock, and John calls a time out, gathering their offense together with Teyla.

“Should we go for it?” he asks, and everyone knows exactly what it he’s referring to. John’s feeling it already, the high of that one perfect long-shot play, but he needs to keep a cool head. In the end, it’s his call.

Lorne’s face is set and determined. “We can do this, Coach,” he says. “This close to the endzone, they like to play deep. I can fake a pass, and Ford can run it in.”

Ford nods, and there’s a fire in his eyes that John’s not used to seeing. “I can do this,” he says, and there’s no doubt in his voice.

That’s all John needs. “Go for it,” he says, because he trusts them, and if they say they can do this, he believes them.

Watching it unfold feels like slow motion, from the moment Lorne pulls the ball away from Hermiod’s fake kick, stepping back once, twice, his helmet turning as if looking for open receivers, his arm in the air, waiting to throw, but then Ford coming through, taking the handoff, running toward the Genii defensive line, who aren’t ready, but they’re coming at him, fast, so fast. Ford’s faster, though, pushing forward, landing inches past the line. The ref raises his arms, and John’s mouth is still hanging open as the world around them explodes into chaos.

---

It’s a fucking rush after the game.

He’s still riding on the adrenaline of the last play, faking his way through the post-game handshakes, and there’s always something after a win, a spark under his skin, but it’s rarely ever like this, everything hinging on that one final moment.

The crowd’s beginning to clear out, taking the chatter and rumble of people with him, and over John’s shoulder, he catches a glimpse of Elizabeth and Cowen meeting on the field, Cowen looking tight-lipped and displeased, Elizabeth looking slightly smug. She hands over the Pegasus T-shirt, which gets some hollers from a few straggling players and fans.

John’s still feeling giddy, like that one time he drove 140 on that empty stretch of highway in Colorado, like there’s nothing between him and the entire universe, and he stays on the field, trying to keep that feeling for as long as he can.

He stays until they shut the lights off, until he’s the only one left, so he nearly jumps when someone taps his shoulder. It’s Rodney, smiling, warm and happy, and John says, “We won.”

Rodney says, “Yeah, you did.”

He’s so close, only inches away. John reaches out, presses his hand against Rodney’s cheek. Rodney’s eyes go wide, and John’s not sure what he’s doing until he feels his lips fitted against Rodney’s, warm and sweet and perfect. The kiss is soft and close-mouthed, and when John pulls back, he says, “We won,” again, because part of him still doesn’t believe that the last hour has happened.

Rodney blinks at him, looking a little stunned before his eyes narrow. “Shut up,” he says, fisting a hand in John’s shirt, dragging him closer. This kiss is wet and dirty, Rodney’s arms winding their way around John’s neck, John’s hands coming to rest on Rodney’s hips, Rodney’s tongue pushing into John’s mouth, and John doesn’t know why or how, but here, it feels like everything’s coming together, like everything’s falling into place.

12.

John’s first kiss was Angela Lanskin when he was ten and she was twelve. She had freckles on her nose and wore too-sweet cherry lip gloss that John didn’t like very much, but he still remembers the way his heart had beat in his chest when she’d done it, like he’d just run around the neighborhood, and when she started going out with Bruce Clarke, who was fourteen, it had felt a little like getting kicked in the chest.

John’s first kiss with a guy was Kevin Michaelson when he was sixteen and Kevin was seventeen. They were in the locker room after practice -- Coach had kept them late to run a few more drills -- and pretty much alone, and John had just pulled off his sweaty shoulder pads when Kevin had spun him around, leaned in and kissed him, pressing him back against the lockers.

John doesn’t remember much about the kiss itself. It’d been too much, too fast. But he does remember the way he felt when Kevin pulled back, strung out, tense, and he remembers the way he bolted, leaving as soon as he could, avoiding Kevin’s eyes.

They never talked about it again, never acknowledged it, but there were a couple times when he caught Kevin watching him, right before Kevin would turn away.

That was pretty much the closest John’s ever been to being gay. He’s had plenty of girlfriends, though none of them really stuck. He’d even been married for a while, because Melanie had been smart and pretty and everything John wanted, except that wasn’t enough, not enough to keep them together, not enough to make them work.

---

They go back to John’s place, because he doesn’t live with any four-year-olds. Once they step through the door, Rodney grabs him by the face and kisses him, fierce, urgent kisses that leave John panting and wanting things he can’t really express.

Rodney’s big and warm, and John thinks that maybe he should be freaking out more, because Rodney’s a guy, and John’s never been gay before. He’s not sixteen, though, and Rodney’s not Kevin Michaelson, and somehow, now it’s okay. There’s the scrape of stubble against John’s lips, and he doesn’t have the urge to run this time, because even though this is big, this is scary, it’s still Rodney, and John, as weird as it is, trusts him.

They tumble into bed, John on his back, looking up as Rodney straddles his legs, before leaning down for another kiss. Rodney pulls back and starts stripping off their clothes. “Off, off, off,” he mutters under his breath as he slides John’s shirt over his head.

His hands still over John’s fly, and John absolutely does not whimper, even though Rodney’s hands are right there and not touching him. “Have you--” Rodney stutters out, “with a guy before?” John almost wants to lie, so that they don’t have to have this conversation, but Rodney’s eyes are big, and his face is so fucking open.

“No,” John says, and he wishes he could look away from Rodney’s face as he says it. Rodney’s eyes go wider, and then he’s kissing John again, quick and gentle.

He smiles, confident with a tint of smug. “It’s okay,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “I’ll make it good. Not that you had any doubts, I hope.” And then he’s biting at John’s neck, running his big hands over John’s body, and everything about this feels like it’s almost too much, too everything. Rodney still smells faintly of coffee, of sweat, of the autumn wind. John buries his nose in Rodney’s hair and breathes it in.

He hisses and grabs at Rodney’s shoulders when Rodney cups him through his jeans, just enough pressure to feel fucking amazing, but not enough to get off. He pulls at Rodney’s shirt next, wanting skin, and when he does, he takes a moment to stare at the wide chest, the light dusting of hair, the softness of his stomach. It’s so strange, so undeniably male, but John just wants. He kisses Rodney’s collarbone as Rodney’s hands undo John’s fly and slide inside his boxers, wrapping fingers around John’s cock.

“Jesus,” he says, gasping, because Rodney’s got big hands and one of them beginning to stroke, slow and firm.

Rodney’s smile only gets more smug, and he speeds up, squeezes just a bit tighter, and then John’s coming all over Rodney’s hand, all over his stomach. He feels spent, tired, and it takes him a moment to catch his breath, but it doesn’t feel as weird as it could be, to have another guy jack him off.

Rodney’s still wearing his pants, the bulge of his erection obvious through the denim. John wants to go after it, but Rodney’s licking John’s come off his fingers, and Jesus, that’s hot. It’s like porn, and John’s leaning in to get a taste himself. It’s salty and weird, but it’s totally worth it for the stutter of Rodney’s breath and the spark of lust in Rodney’s eyes.

From there, it’s a rush to get Rodney’s pants off, John’s hands colliding with Rodney’s at the buckle of Rodney’s belt, and when John manages to get hold of Rodney’s dick, Rodney’s eyes slide closed.

It’s new and strange and a little freaky, holding another guy’s cock, but it’s Rodney’s, and that somehow makes it okay. He uses his free hand to guide Rodney’s head down to his, bring their lips together as John tries to do this from a different angle than he’s used to. It’s a little awkward, everything’s upside-down and backwards, but he gets used to the rhythm, and Rodney gasps out a, “John,” right as he comes.

Afterward, when they’ve both cleaned up, Rodney stands there, uncomfortably, in the middle of John’s bedroom with his shirt off and his belt unbuckled and says, “I could, uh, go. If you want.”

John doesn’t want that at all, so he says, “Stay.” He shifts over to make room on the bed.

And Rodney stays.

---

John wakes up with a heavy arm tossed over his torso and a face smushed against his shoulder. He rubs his eyes and waits for the freakout to happen.

But it doesn’t. There’s no rising need to panic, to get out of here as soon as possible, to push Rodney away and never speak to him again. Instead, he feels warm, comfortable, like he could stay here all day. It’s midmorning, as far as he can tell from the light spilling in from the bedroom window, a spot of sunlight on the floor.

As much as he wants to just stay there, John does itch to go on his usual morning run, so he quietly pulls out from Rodney’s arms somewhat reluctantly and heads out. The weather’s nice, clear and dry and brisk with bright sun overhead. He waves to Dr. Biro, who lives two houses down and is outside to pick up the morning newspaper, as he passes by and doesn’t freak out about the whole ‘sleeping with a guy who just may be his best friend’ some more.

He’s feeling awake and still not freaked out when he gets back to his house to find Rodney in his kitchen, raiding his cabinets. He’s looking half-asleep and caffeine-deprived, grouchy in such a familiar way that John can’t help but feel amused.

“How the hell do you not have any coffee in this house?” Rodney demands, his voice verging on panicky, and John finds that weirdly cute.

He shrugs. “Don’t really need it on weekends, and on weekdays, I get it from the teacher’s lounge.”

There’s a growing look of horror on Rodney’s face, and that’s familiar, too. It’s almost like nothing’s changed between them, and while John’s glad Rodney’s not going to be weird about it (or, at least, any more weird about it than he usually is), he kind of wants to make sure last night meant something, so John leans over and kisses him. Rodney’s mouth tastes like morning breath, and his lips are dry and gummy, but John still likes it, still isn’t freaking out.

Rodney blinks at him. “So, um. Everything’s good? I mean, between us?” He looks a little scared, and John sometimes really hates that Rodney wears everything so obviously on his face.

“Yeah,” he says and smiles in a way that means, Yeah, everything’s good, everything’s better than good, hoping Rodney can read him.

Rodney smiles back, almost tentative. “Good. Uh, that’s good.”

---

Somehow, Rodney ends up staying for the day, and they camp out in front of the television. John microwaves some popcorn, while Rodney claims the remote control. There’s a Star Trek marathon on the SciFi channel, which leads to an argument over whether or not “The Trouble With Tribbles” is a better episode than “The City On The Edge Of Forever”, and to Rodney’s annoyed glare as he says, “Did you just out yourself as a geek to me?”

They end up making out on the couch before Rodney can pick apart just how bad John’s taste in science fiction is, and it feels almost weird, being allowed to reach out and touch the spot just behind Rodney’s ear with his tongue, to run his hands over Rodney’s broad shoulders, to feel Rodney’s quick, mobile mouth against his own.

13.

John really needs to stop underestimating Teyla, because he’s really not prepared for her when she comes into his office before practice on Monday and says, “I think it would be helpful for morale if we had some sort of team dinner.”

He’s really more focused on watching the tape of them kicking Genii’s ass for the twentieth time, because seriously, that game was awesome, so he doesn’t quite manage to register what she’s said before he says, “Sure, yeah. Sounds great,” and apparently volunteers his house for the occasion.

He kind of freaks out about it to Rodney after practice, because now he’s got to cook and clean and actually host dinner for a bunch of teenagers by himself. If there’s anything in the world that can get John to freak out, it’s that.

Rodney just rolls his eyes and huffs out a breath, and John kind of stares at the way the wind ruffles his hair, making it stick up at odd angles. They’re still keeping their relationship a secret (though Jeannie probably suspects), mostly because John’s not sure how people will take it, and he’s still trying to figure out how he feels about the whole thing beyond the fact that he hasn’t freaked out about it for three whole days. Rodney hasn’t said anything to anyone, as far as John can tell, and it’s weird, because John’s never thought of Rodney as the kind of guy who can keep secrets.

“Fine, fine. I’ll take care of it as long as you make yourself useful and actually do what I tell you,” Rodney says, and John once again has that feeling of missing out on half of a conversation.

“Um, okay?” he says, even though this was pretty much the sort of thing that got him into this sort of mess in the first place.

---

Rodney drags him to the supermarket the next night and shoves him a shopping cart, glancing down at the list in his hands. John realizes early in that all he’s expected to do is push the cart as Rodney tosses stuff into it, and every time he tries to make some sort of contribution, Rodney glares in a way that means that if he keeps this up he’ll never get laid again, which John thinks would be something of a travesty.

They get a few odd looks from various people, and John’s wondering if they’ve figured anything out, but he tries to look as confused as possible to throw people off their scent. When he runs into Cadman’s mother, they make small talk until Rodney starts making impatient noises. John shrugs and says, apologetically, “He’s helping me with the team dinner this Thursday.”

Cadman’s mother smiles and looks like she buys it, so John waves a goodbye and chases after Rodney’s snapping fingers as he disappears down an aisle.

There’s a small mountain of food stacked on the cart by the time they’re ready to go, and the kid at the cash register (“Chuck” in block letters on the name tag pinned to his apron) raises his eyes at it before he starts pulling things off and scanning them. Rodney’s muttering to himself, which is never good, and John decides that he’ll just start bagging things so he’ll feel less entirely useless.

He does his best not to smirk at Rodney’s confused expression when Chuck says, “Have a nice night, Dr. McKay,” and John kind of wants to maybe slide an arm around Rodney’s neck, maybe press a kiss to his hair.

But they’re in public. So he doesn’t.

---

Ronon shows up to the dinner three hours early, even before Rodney gets there, and John blinks as he opens the door. “Um,” he says.

“McKay says I’m in charge of the barbecue,” Ronon replies.

“Barbecue?” John asks. The weather’s surprisingly nice this week, a sudden wave of warm, clear days, and a barbecue isn’t out of the question. Plus, Ronon makes some killer brownies. There is no bad there.

“Yeah,” Ronon says.

Ronon does his thing with the grill and the meat for a while before Rodney shows up and starts making him chop vegetables and tear lettuce and other stuff that John’s not really paying attention to, because he’s more fascinated watching Rodney in full on ‘I am on a mission’ mode. Rodney’s mind works so fast and in so many directions, it’s rare to see him so focused on one thing, and to be quite honest, it’s kind of hot.

They’re pretty much good to go by the time Teyla shows up and offers to help, but she brings paper plates, napkins, and drinks, so even though John may still be a little resentful about being tricked into the dinner thing in the first place, he’s willing to forgive.

When the team starts showing up, they’re ready. Rodney is still barking out orders to Ronon and Teyla, who look more amused than offended, and he seems really tense.

“It’ll be fine,” John tells him, letting himself run a hand down Rodney’s back. “You’re a genius, remember?”

Rodney glares. “At astrophysics and mechanical engineering. It’s not like I have any degrees in party planning,” he says, but he looks calmer, and John risks a peck on the cheek before going out to do his hosting duties.

John’s in charge of the front door, greeting everyone, inviting them in. He doesn’t have a giant backyard, but it’ll fit pretty much everyone, and there’s plenty of room inside the house as well.

Everything runs smoothly, for the most part. John has to admit that Ronon grills a mean burger, and they disappear almost instantly after he finishes a batch. John gets roped into more than one conversation about football and their chances of making the playoffs and a couple conversations about whether or not he thinks they’ve got a shot against Wraith, who have been undefeated so far this season and are most definitely going to the playoffs, if not the final match. He gets a couple compliments about the food, though he mostly directs those to Rodney, who seems to be avoiding everyone. John figures it’s just because he’s not a people person.

Ford’s the undeniable king of the party after that amazing last play against Genii, a crowd surrounding him as he retells the story in detail. He’s become the star of the team with the way he’s been playing lately, and John resolves to make sure his head doesn’t get to big because of it. Stackhouse and Markham decide that tossing a football over people’s heads is a brilliant idea, and while they’re pretty good, they still manage to hit someone once out of every five tries. Until Teyla takes their ball away, at least. Someone else digs John’s aged boombox out of storage (and once he figures out who it was, they’re going to have a conversation about invading other people’s space), so there’s some music and eventually, Kavanaugh’s dulcet tones. At one point, Lorne asks if Coach Emmagen made the chili, and he looks so relieved when John says no that John’s left wondering over just how bad Teyla’s cooking really is.

By the time the party’s over, John’s beat enough to put off clean up for another day, and Rodney looks inclined to agree. He waves off offers to help from Teyla and Ronon, because they’d helped enough as it was. Rodney whines a bit about clean up as they leave, poking a bit at the trash strewn across John’s porch.

“Football players are disgusting,” he declares. “And I’m saying that as someone who’s lived with grad students.”

John just laughs, because it’s Rodney being Rodney.

Rodney snorts. “I’ll have you know that there are far better ways I could spend my time than feeding overdeveloped athletes with entitlement complexes. See if I ever help you again.”

John smirks at him and says, “Aw, McKay, you’d never do that to me,” even though what he really means is, Thank you.

---

Life is pretty good after that.

Their game against Hoff is another tally in the win column. Kavanaugh stops talking about how utterly incompetent John is and starts speculating about all the horrible ways the Atlanteans could possibly crash and burn in the playoffs. Rodney stays over somewhat irregularly and teaches John all about the art of blow jobs, both giving and receiving, which John thinks it one of the best things ever.

But then things go a little crazy.

14.

Ford’s a good kid, so John doesn’t want to believe it when Lorne pulls him off to the side one day before practice and tells him, quietly, that he thinks Ford may be doing steroids.

It’s pretty much the last news John needs to hear right now, when they’re so close to the playoffs. Ford’s important to the team, important to their chances of making it to that championship game, but more than that, John actually likes the kid, and hearing that he’s started with the stupid, illegal shit is not comforting in the least.

It’s not like he can just let it go on and not do anything, but he doesn’t want to kick the kid off his team, either. He spends the next ten minutes staring at the wall, considering his options, before Ronon comes to find him. They have practice, after all.

---

John spends practice watching Ford, trying to figure it out. It’s true, that Ford’s gotten better this year, much better, but he’s never been first string before, either. John knows that once you hit that point, people expect you to step up or get out, and John knows from experience that pressure can be a surprisingly good motivator.

He watches as Ford runs past Miller and Stackhouse without even breathing hard, shit-eating grin visible even through his face mask. Ford’s always had potential, and it’s almost like he’s fulfilling it, but there’s just that bit of doubt, that this isn’t entirely because Ford’s been eating his Wheaties. Ford’s fast and he’s strong and he’s aggressive in ways he wasn’t before, and fuck, John really doesn’t want to believe it, but there’s a possibility, and he has to know the truth.

At the end of practice, he calls Ford into his office. Ford’s smiling as he comes in, but it fades when he sees the expression on John’s face.

“What is it, Coach?” he asks.

John resists the urge to rub his face with his hands. “Close the door,” he says. When Ford’s done with that, he looks a little scared, though he’s trying to hide it. “How have you been doing, lately?” John asks, trying to keep his tone as neutral as possible.

Ford shifts back and forth on his feet. “Good, sir. Cousin’s getting married.”

“That’s nice,” John says. “When’s the wedding?” Ford doesn’t seem calmed down at all by the small talk; he just gets more tense.

“January,” he says, and John can see that he’s not doing any good by drawing this out.

“I heard you’ve been doing steroids.” He lays it out on the table, because this isn’t the sort of thing you dick around about.

Ford’s expression manages to go from “scared” to “terrified” to “defensive”, and that’s pretty much all the confirmation John needs. Fuck. “Look, Coach,” Ford says, “I need them, okay?”

And no, it’s not okay. It’s nowhere near okay. It’s in another fucking galaxy from okay. “You’re going to have to say that again, and this time, it’d be nice if it made sense.”

“We’re this close to the playoffs. We can do it this year, I know it,” Ford says. He starts pacing, short, frustrated steps. “Maybe we could’ve gotten this far with out it, but if we want to win State, I can’t be off my game.”

John sighs. “Ford…” He wishes he’d gotten Teyla to do this, instead. She’s always been better with the “talking to players” thing.

“This is my decision,” Ford says, and he’s getting really angry, now. “You don’t have to let anyone else know, just forget this conversation ever happened.”

John lets his expression become more serious. “I can’t just sit back and ignore this. You know that.” He leans forward in his chair so that he’s looking Ford in the eyes.

That seems to get Ford focused. “You’re just going to have to admit that I’m right, Coach,” he says, before he turns and leaves, letting the door slam behind him.

---

When John gets home, he’s pretty much just trying not to go insane, so he ends up playing LEGO Star Wars on Rodney’s PS2 (which has somehow semi-permanently attached itself to John’s TV) until his thumbs start cramping up. That’s right around the time Rodney shows up, anyway, complaining loudly about the stupidity of students who not only cheat in class, but also cheat in class badly.

It’s nice, letting Rodney distract him. Rodney’s good at that. But the Ford thing’s still gnawing away at him, so he accidentally blurts out, “One of my players is doing steroids and he’s refusing to stop,” while Rodney’s taking a break for air between his rants on food selection in small towns and the need to drive everywhere in small towns. That stops him dead in his tracks.

“Um, okay?” Rodney says. He looks confused, and John just wants him to say something, anything, to make everything okay again.

But he knows Rodney better than that. “Nothing,” he says, waving it off. “Never mind.” For a moment, he wonders what Melanie would have said, which is not really fair to either of them, since they’re not alike, and there’s no real reason they would be. She probably would have said all the right things, that this was going to be okay, that he’d figure something out, and it would have been nice to hear that, but it would have also been far less honest in the long run.

Rodney actually looks hurt, which John wasn’t expecting. “Look,” he says, turning away so he doesn’t have to meet John’s eyes, his hands oddly muted. “I have it on the opinion of many ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends, not to mention my sister, that I’m really bad at this sort of thing, but I have no idea what to say in these sorts of situations, and when I try, I invariably get it wrong, so could we skip the part where you don’t speak to me for days and go straight to the part where you dump me because I don’t understand you? That way we can save both of us the time and the energy.”

John loves the sharpness of Rodney’s brain, the way it can connect things snap, snap, snap, but Jesus, they were jumping a little ahead of themselves here. “Are you breaking up with me?” he asks.

There’s a defiant lift to Rodney’s chin. “No. You’re breaking up with me.”

It’s surprisingly easy for John to reach out, let his hand rest on the back of Rodney’s neck, let his thumb rub the soft skin there. “No, I’m not,” he says, and he can feel Rodney relax, ever so slightly, under his palm.

15.

He talks to Teyla about it next, because she’s the obvious choice. She knows Ford better than he does, and she’s better at talking to people about stuff in general. He’d be stupid not to tell her. John manages to catch her during the school day, which is kind of rare. She occasionally runs the gym classes, teaching self-defense and reffing for basketball games, but she’s in her office during fifth period when he tracks her down.

“Ford’s been doing steroids,” John says, running a hand through his hair. “And he wants me to let him stay on them.”

Teyla frowns. “That is not good news.”

“No, it’s not,” he says. “I can’t just let him fuck himself up like this, and I can’t do this to the team. We deserve to win fairly. We’ve come too far to start cheating now.”

“But?” Teyla knows him surprisingly well.

“But he’s important to our offense, and I don’t want to lose him.” There’s all this frustration that’s beginning to build up in his system, because there are too many ways this thing could go, and all of them are bad. But Teyla’s good at this thing. She understands people, such as they are, far better than John does. She should know what to do.

There’s a moment where she watches him, carefully, and her expression is sympathetic. “If he is truly unwilling to change, I do not think it would be beneficial to keep him on the team.”

“But--” John starts, since he knows all these arguments backwards and forwards. He could argue that they should stick Ford with the peewees for a week if he had to.

“It is not my place to make the final decision,” Teyla says, cutting him off. “It is yours.” She raises an eyebrow, and John knows that he’s not going to get more out of her, so he leaves, dignity still mostly intact.

---

Next up is Ronon. He’s in the locker room, checking over the equipment, making sure it’s still good, and he doesn’t look surprised when John shows up, which means that Teyla’s probably talked to him about it already.

“I think we should bench him for a few games. Maybe get him to change his mind,” he says, when John asks. “Teyla’s right, though. It’s your call.”

“Okay,” John says. And that’s that.

---

John figures he’s got until the end of the week to make his decision, so he starts running ten times around the block instead of the usual five, mulling things over in his head, making the same arguments to himself, over and over and over again, not getting anywhere. He eventually decides that he’s not cut out for this responsibility shit. Football, he can handle. This sort of thing? Not so much.

---

Thursday afternoon, John calls Ford into his office again, and this time, he comes in with his eyes dark and his face set. Awaiting judgment. John does his best not to sigh.

Ford starts before John can say anything, though. “You need me like this.” There’s an utter certainty in his voice that John’s not sure he can shake. But he has to try.

“You’re hurting yourself, and you’re hurting this team,” John says, and Ford’s expression doesn’t change. Fuck.

“We’re one game away from the playoffs, Coach. You need me if we want to beat Wraith this year. You know that.” There’s not even the slightest waver in Ford’s voice as he says it.

John gives in to the urge to rub his face. “Not like this. It’s not worth it if we win like this.”

“This is my choice, Coach,” Ford says, again, like John doesn’t actually have any say in this at all.

“Yes, it is,” John says. He looks Ford in the eye. To his credit, Ford doesn’t flinch. “You’re off the team if you don’t go straight.”

The silence practically echoes in the room. Ford’s eyes flick off to the side for a moment before the focus on John again. “So that’s it, then?” he says. “I guess I’m off the team.”

His hand lingers on the doorknob, as he’s leaving, like he thinks John’s going to change his mind at the last minute. But John’s not, so he stays quiet as Ford pulls the door open and stomps out, stays quiet long after Ford leaves.

---

There’s fallout. Holy shit, is there fallout.

The details of why exactly Ford is leaving remains between the coaching staff and Ford, because even Ford knows better than to brag about his drug usage to the press, and they make a joint decision not to tell anything to the team. If Ford wants to tell them, he can.

Of course, this means rumor, wild speculation, and hastily flung accusations from just about everyone. Ford was good. Ford was one of the best. And now everyone wants to know why he’s leaving so close to the playoffs. Kavanaugh’s the worst, of course, coming up with everything from swelled egos to mysterious illnesses, pretty much to the point where John can’t listen to the radio anymore. Elizabeth’s probably the best, backing off when it’s clear that it’s team business and that she shouldn’t get involved.

The team is the most excruciating, because they know John and Ford had two conversations before Ford quit, and that Ford had not looked pleased when he left either time. He’s pretty sure most of them blame him for Ford’s decision to leave, and it doesn’t help that they’re right. When Teyla makes the announcement, the entire room sneaks glances in his direction, most of them suspicious and accusing.

But John’s willing to deal with it. He knew this was coming when he made his decisions, and he’s willing to face the consequences.

16.

There’s a gaping hole where Ford used to be, and everyone knows it.

Cadman’s been moved to playing Ford’s old spot, but she’s still clinging to her old habits, still needs to relearn the plays from a new position. Edison is stepping up, nicely, as the new wide receiver, but it’s not the same. He’s slower, not quite as on top of things. There’s still enough resentment on the team that John’s beginning to feel seriously at odds with his offense. Anything John wants to say to Cadman has to go through Lorne, Griffin mutters under his breath a lot, and Bates looks pissier than usual.

They beat Manaria by the skin of their teeth, Sherman sacking the Manarian QB into their own endzone for a safety in the last quarter. It means that they’re going to playoffs, which helps lift spirits, at the very least. The Wraith still have an undefeated season, and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon, so it looks like they’re going straight to the championships for the eleventh year running.

He and Rodney are hesitant around each other, too careful, and John hates the way Rodney occasionally bites back his words when John’s around. It’s just so unnatural it freaks John out. But when they watch Blade Runner together, Rodney doesn’t stiffen when John lays his head on Rodney’s shoulder, and it’s totally worth the crick in John’s neck later when Rodney’s arm goes around his shoulder, holding him closer, as Roy Batty says, “All those moments will be lost, like tears in the rain.”

---

The carnival comes into town one empty Friday between the regular season and playoffs. It looks plain in the light of day when John passes it in the morning, bare gray metal and hulking machines, but John still feels the thrill of anticipation.

John’s always loved carnivals. They’re bright and they’re fun and they usually have ferris wheels, one of John’s most favorite inventions ever. He went to his first one when he was five, barely old enough to remember, but his mom had held him on the carousel and his dad had bought him cotton candy, and he’d gone every year afterward, right up until he left for college and right after he started coaching. He’s always loved the cotton candy, the stupid games, the even stupider prizes, the smell of popcorn and fried dough. There’s just something about it all that never fails to make him feel impossibly young, impossibly happy.

At dusk, he leaves Rodney in the teacher’s lounge grading tests, heading out to the field when the sunset is painting the horizon pink, gold light catching in the clouds.

It’s not that busy, still just beginning to fill with people, and John spends his time wandering, not doing much of anything. He’s mostly just watching, feeling, experiencing, because this makes him feel part of this moment. This time, this place.

The carnival doesn’t really come alive until night falls, when the lights gradually come on in sections, one by one. By the end everything glows, incandescent against the blue-black of the sky.

He’s about to take his chances knocking down milk bottles when he hears a familiar voice, and when he turns, Rodney’s standing next to a blonde-haired, obviously-pregnant woman holding the hand of an equally blonde-haired daughter. They look like they might be arguing about something, similar expressions of exasperation on their faces. Rodney has a half-eaten bag of cotton candy in one hand, and John sneaks up to steal a handful. “Didn’t expect you to be here,” John says around a mouthful of pure sugar.

“Well, I didn’t expect to be here, and also, hey!” Rodney says, getting even more annoyed, but his companion looks amused.

“Hey, you must be Coach Sheppard. I’m Jeannie Miller. Formerly McKay,” she sticks out a hand, and the smile on her face is knowing in a way that makes John want to freak out a little. “This is my daughter Madison.”

John shakes her hand and smiles pleasantly. “Nice to meet you both.”

Jeannie’s smile gets a little more dangerous. “Could you watch my brother for me? He’s beginning to get really annoying,” she says, sugary sweet. “Thanks.”

“Oh, come on,” Rodney says, shoving the last of cotton candy into his mouth. “You’re the one who dragged me out here.” But by then she’s already gone, lost in the throng of people, moving faster than anyone who’s that pregnant should be.

John just grins at Rodney, because he’s just so happy to be here, right now, together. “C’mon. We should go on the ferris wheel.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Rodney says, his eyes going wide. “There is no way I’m going on that death trap. My brain is way to important to risk on foolish joyrides, and my acrophobia will act up, and--”

John lets himself grab Rodney by the wrist even though they’re in public. Someone could see them and take it for what it really means, but it’s worth it for the way Rodney bites his lip, the way he actually starts looking a little conflicted. “C’mon,” John says again. “It’ll be fun.”

“Fine, fine,” Rodney grumbles, giving in, and John half-leads, half-drags him toward the center of the carnival.

It’s a good wheel, lights outlining the spokes as well as the rim, and John thinks it’s got to be visible from miles away. Rodney looks a little unsettled as they get strapped in and their gondala starts moving upwards, and one of his hands gets a death grip on John’s thigh, just above the knee. “I hate you, Sheppard,” Rodney mutters, but then, they’re at the top, stopping so the next passengers can get on.

John’s never been on a plane, never gone flying, never could justify the expense, but he thinks it could be like this, the sky infinite around you, only barely tethered to the earth. It’s windy up here, quiet. They’re high enough up that the light of the carnival doesn’t dim the light of the stars, and they go on forever and ever, as far as the eye can see.

Rodney’s fingers have loosened, and when John looks at him, his head is tilted upward, his expression wistful. “I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger. Well, after the whole piano teacher debacle anyway.” He smiles, warm and earnest. “I wanted to go to the stars.”

And Jesus, there’s something about the way he says it, not hiding anything, and John kisses him as their gondola lurches forward, bringing them closer to the ground. It’s public and obvious and it might as well be a fucking press release, but he doesn’t care, because he can see that Rodney, in his backyard with a telescope and a brain full of ideas, looking up at the sky and dreaming, dreaming of going up there.

There’s a sudden stop, and the world comes rushing back all around them. John pulls back, a little breathless, a little giddy. They’re in full view of the line for the ferris wheel, and John can see a couple of his players staring at them, looking both amused and surprised.

It’s Cadman that they hear as they step out of the gondola. “Way to go, Dr. McKay!” she yells, teasing. “Finally managed to bag the Coach, huh?”

Rodney sputters, but John feels freer than he’s ever felt before in his entire life, and when he puts his hand on Rodney’s shoulder, leans into Rodney’s body, gives Cadman a knowing smirk, it feels like nothing and everything at the same time. “You trying to imply something, Cadman?” he drawls, clearly joking, and he’s missed this, being able to talk to his team.

“Of course not, sir,” she says, and John doesn’t believe her, but that’s okay.

17.

Weirdly enough, no one seems bothered by the whole coming out of the closet thing. John does get a few, “Seriously, Dr. McKay?” non-conversations that he’s glad he doesn’t have to go through ever again. Kavanaugh doesn’t even mention it at all, which John thinks is nothing short of miraculous.

Something smooths out between John and the team, too, and that’s good, that’s fucking essential, because they have their first playoff game this Friday, and they really have to get their shit together. Cadman’s not forgetting where she has to be during the plays, Edison’s less hesitant, and people seem less confused when they don’t see Ford’s number on the field. They’re better, but John can only hope that they’re good enough.

The Gordonville Vipers are a mean team, in the same sort of mold as Genii, ruthless and fierce. They like their trick plays, fakeouts, reversals, and when that doesn’t work, they go for sheer brute force.

But John thinks they can win this. They just have to want it badly enough, and he’s pretty sure they do.

---

Their first game in the playoffs goes like this:

They win the coin toss, and it’s Bates who catches the kick. They make it down to the fifty before Bates gets tackled for their first down, and they make another twenty yards before Griffin bites it on a fourth down. It’s like a repeat of their game against Manaria, just with their offense somewhat less pathetic this time. John makes sure Teyla chews them out, but there’s only so much she can do.

Their defensive line plays a good game, though Sherman does miss a tackle because of some pretty beautiful footwork by the Gordonville quarterback. Their offense still doesn’t quite manage to match them. Edison’s not running his patterns fast enough, which means that Lorne’s occasionally throwing into empty field, and Cadman doesn’t have the raw strength to push through the defensive line in the same way that Ford could. Lorne’s trying to pick up the slack, even running the ball in for a touchdown after an option, but he’s only one player, and there’s only so much he can do. They need more people supporting him and they’re not. John tries not to yell at them too badly, but they’re all just the slightest bit off, and they can’t do that kind of shit in the playoffs.

In the second quarter, Stackhouse lets the Vipers’ fullback through because he’s going after their tailback, and they go into the second half tied seven to seven. John gets Lorne to say some stuff about pulling together as a team during halftime, and it may or may not work. John’s not entirely sure.

There’s a critical moment at the end of the third quarter, where they’re on their third down, and somehow the snap ends up going over Lorne’s head, but he manages to get hold of it before pitching it to Cadman, who’s coming up behind him, and even though she only makes it three yards, it’s enough for a first down. It’s not much, but John thinks that maybe it’s a sign. They’re beginning to pull together as a team again, beginning to figure out how to go on without Ford.

The play after that, Lorne manages to hit Edison as he’s going down the left side, scoring another touchdown. There’s some more life in the team after that. Gordonville seems to get desperate, ratcheting up the number of penalties called against them. Cadman almost looks like she’s going to get into a fight at one point after a beefy Gordonville linebacker grabs her facemask, but Bates pulls her back, and they go their separate ways.

Griffin scores again on a clean lateral from Lorne, and they’re feeling comfortable after Hermiod nails a field goal, right up until the Vipers try to make a last minute comeback in the fourth quarter, but their touchdown in the final seconds of the game is invalidated due to an offsides call, and John breathes a sigh of relief. Given enough time, given enough practice, maybe they’ll be able to pull this off.

18.

It’s weird, because even though John had always rationally known that it was possible that they could make it to the championships, he’d never really believed that they’d make it this far.

They’re playing at the top of their game, so much so that John’s a little worried that they’re going to burn out at some point, but they practically waltz through their next two games against Hallonia (the one that John remembers as “the game where Rodney pissed John off by ogling their blond principal after the game”) and Geldar (the one that John remembers as “the game that Rodney dragged Radek to, despite protestations that he had to visit his girlfriend who worked for the math department at Atlantis U”). It’s almost a little anti-climactic, but all of a sudden they’re going to the finals.

He finds it a bit hard to believe that this is actually happening, that they’re the same team as the one that lost out to Dagan at the beginning of the season, that John’s actually had a hand in getting them here. Sometimes, he sits his office and stares at the tree of playoff games, blinking until he can be sure that “Pegasus” isn’t going to disappear from that one slot in the middle, right across from “Wraith”.

---

He and Rodney are doing surprisingly well. John’s still not quite used to the fact that he can kiss Rodney goodbye after their morning coffee in the teacher’s lounge (though Rodney has installed a coffee maker in John’s house for the weekends), that he can imagine licking Rodney’s neck while they’re out at dinner and not need to hide that at all, that it feels okay to want Rodney, even though he’s a guy, even though he’s Rodney. Despite his job, John gets itchy with too many people in his personal space, but Rodney’s managed to become one of the few exceptions. John thinks he’s pretty okay with that.

When Rodney says that Jeannie wants to invite John over for dinner, John doesn’t panic, but it does bring back some pretty horrific memories of that one time he spent Christmas with Melanie’s parents. Jeannie was probably less fussy about her plants than John’s in-laws were, but you never knew when it came to this sort of thing.

He makes sure to wear his best suit and brush his hair into something that could almost be considered acceptable, and when he shows up, Jeannie’s husband is the one who gets the door.

“Caleb,” he says, shaking John’s hand. “They’re in the kitchen right now, but I would probably wait in the dining room until they stop trying to kill each other.”

Pretty much everything John knows about Rodney and Jeannie’s relationship has come from Rodney himself, but even that is enough to convince him to avoid the kitchen at all costs. It’s hard to ignore the yelling, though.

“You really haven’t thought this through, have you, Mer?” That’s undeniably Jeannie, too female to be anyone else.

Then there’s Rodney in full-on argument mode. “It’s not like I planned for it to happen. It just sort of did. And it’s not like I’m not a genius. I can figure something--” John blinks as Rodney steps into the dining room, a bowl full of pasta in hand. “--oh, hey, John.” He looks really uncomfortable for a second, but then he’s distracted as Jeannie comes in carrying a plate of vegetables.

John doesn’t get a chance to ask, and maybe he shouldn’t pry, but there’s a low-grade uneasiness to Rodney all night. John does his best to let it go.

He discovers that Jeannie’s really awesome, full of interesting anecdotes about growing up as the genius sister to an even more genius brother. He’d never heard about the non-working model of a nuclear weapon that Rodney made for a science project before. Or that thing with April Bingham and the mono. And when Rodney gets too uncomfortable, they talk about Jeannie, the boy in her stomach (Caleb hadn’t wanted to know the gender, but Jeannie did), the classes she’s been taking toward finally getting her Ph.D. at Atlantis University, the way she dropped out of her Masters program to have Madison.

Madison herself is ridiculously cute in the way kids can be when they’re not making you want to kill yourself. John hasn’t thought about having kids since Melanie, but looking at Rodney’s niece, he’s beginning to wonder. He gives her half his desert (mostly because it’s some kind of gross non-dairy, vegan ice cream) and grins at the bright smile on her face.

He decides he likes Rodney’s family. They’re pretty cool.

---

Rodney walks John out to the driveway, and it’s really dark, even with the porch light turned on.

“Look, John,” Rodney starts, and his face is backlit by the house. John can’t quite read his expression. “Jeannie’s going to be going to be taking her job back after winter break, and I have a class I’m supposed to be teaching in the spring, and research I need to be getting back to, and…” His hands flutter nervously, twitchier than usual.

John feels a queasiness in his stomach that reminds him too much of the moment right before Sarah Cameron, the love of his seventeen-year-old life, said that she wanted to start seeing other people. “And you’re leaving,” he says. Rodney’s never talked much about his life in Canada after they started dating, and John’s never stopped to wonder why that was. He probably should have been. He definitely should have been.

Rodney’s head turns to the side, giving John a clear profile of his face. “Yeah, well, it’s more like, I wasn’t really ever planning on staying, but then, things turned out differently than I thought they would, and I just want you to not hate me for this.”

His voice gets strained at the end, in a way that John’s chest hurt, so John just says, “I don’t hate you.” It’s one of those things that John should have known, should have thought about. Rodney had pretty much told him the deal the first day they met, but sometimes, it’s too easy to forget the things you don’t want to hear.

“You could come with me,” Rodney says. “Canada’s, well, Canada, but it doesn’t actually get that cold, and the people are actually nicer, for the most part, and while my house isn’t that big, it’s definitely bigger than yours and I just don’t--” He cuts himself off, and John wishes he could see more than the outline of Rodney’s face.

The offer’s tempting, so tempting, but it’s not something John can just do. He’s got something here, in this town. He can feel it. “No,” he says, and he swears he can almost see Rodney’s face fall, and fuck, he needs to get out of here right now. “I’ll see you later, Rodney,” he says right before he drives off, trying for indifferent but missing by a mile.

---

After that, Rodney doesn’t show up at their usual places, and John hadn’t quite realized how everywhere Rodney was, most of the time. When John steps into a quiet faculty lounge, sits on empty bleachers, plays Soul Caliber 2 against the computer and not another person, he notices.

Everything feels distant, like it’s all been shifted two feet to the left of where John expects things to be, and he’s sure it shows. But the team still runs the plays he calls, he still gets up every morning and goes running, and they still get ever increasingly closer to that one final game. He needs to focus, needs to get this thing done.

It’s easier to throw himself into the football, fill his mind with plays and strategies and team stats. He watches game tapes until his eyes are so tired they can’t focus on the screen, watching and rewatching them because you really do see something new each time. Occasionally, he sleeps in his office, which makes his back ache in weird ways all day, but it’s still easier than going home at times. He works on writing new plays, something he’s been half-assing all season, but now that he has the time, he might as well.

He’s expecting the intervention days before it actually happens, Ronon and Teyla cornering him in his office and asking him very earnestly if everything’s going okay.

“I could beat him up,” Ronon offers, like they’re actually in high school instead of just coaching at one. “Wouldn’t be too hard.”

Teyla smacks him on the arm, and John finds himself grinning almost against his will. “I’m fine,” he says, because even though he’s not, he thinks he will be.

“Are you sure?” Teyla asks, and even though she looks like she doesn’t quite believe him, he thinks she’ll let it go if he asks.

It would be easier if Rodney was just a jerk, if John didn’t know that he genuinely cared. It would make him easier to write off, easier to push away. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he says.

---

The problem with the upcoming game is that the Wraith Devils are the sort of team that’s just so good, it’s hard to think of any way they can win. They’re big, they’re strong, and they’re fast. The Atlanteans can’t match them in any one of those things, so they have to be smarter, John has to be smarter.

Wraith are coming into this undefeated as usual, ready to add this year to their ever-growing list. They’ve been pretty close to unstoppable so far, moving through defensive lines like they’re water, shutting down offenses without even breaking into sweat. Their starting quarterback, Michaels, is sharp on his feet, fast and strong, and their coach, Coach Queen, is eerily good at calling the right plays. It’s going to be tough to take them down.

But they’re not actually unstoppable, John knows. Pegasus will just have to prove it.

19.

The night before the game, it rains in buckets, loud enough that John can hear it against the roof of his house. He could pull on a rain coat and head out to the field, but he knows for a fact that Rodney won’t be there, waiting for him, and it wouldn’t be the same, without him.

He tries the living room, but the rain rattles against his window, there’s a crack of thunder overhead, and he can’t find that place inside himself where it’s quiet, where everything makes sense.

---

He’s at the pep rally before the game when he runs into Ford, or to be more exact, Ford comes and finds him. John’s mostly hiding at the edges, the best place to avoid people, since he’s not up for much talking or chatting or even smiling and nodding. But Ford searches him out, approaching him despite the fact that John just really wants to get out of here as fast as he can.

“Coach,” Ford says. They haven’t seen each other since that showdown in John’s office, but Ford’s not looking anything like he did then. There’s no anger this time, just something else that John can’t really describe. “I just wanted to say, good luck out there.”

It’s not said with any bitterness, just complete honesty, and there’s the Ford John remembers, the one that could have been with them right now, as they’re going to the most important game of their lives. “Thank you,” John says.

Ford cracks a hesitant grin at that. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, Coach. And I was wondering, if I’m clean in time for next season, would you be willing to let me come back?” He looks really nervous, like he knows it’s a long shot, but he’s willing to give it a chance, anyway.

John considers for a moment before responding. Yeah, it was a dumbshit thing to do, but John’s pretty sure that Ford’s not stupid enough to try it again, and he’s always liked the idea of second chances. “We could always use another good tailback on the team.”

Ford’s grin turns blinding. “Thanks, Coach,” he says, before he runs off.

John watches him go and thinks that this week hasn’t been a total wash after all.

---

The State Championship game goes like this:

When John steps out onto the field, it hits him all at once. The roar of the crowd, the cheerleaders on the sidelines, the rush of his team all around him, the smell of freshly cut grass, the barest hint of breeze. They’re at State; they’re playing at State, and John feels something tight in his chest.

Rodney’s here, probably, next to his sister and his niece, muttering about the lights, the seats, the food, and it’s strangely comforting in a way John didn’t think it would be. If nothing else, John can give him one hell of a game before he leaves.

Lorne’s smiling as he comes back from the coin toss, so they must have won it, but then everything goes downhill from there. Wraith’s defensive line batters their offense pretty good, and John’s fuming as they lose the ball at their own thirty when their line breaks and Lorne gets blitzed.

He yells himself hoarse when their defensive line collapses in on itself, letting the Wraith tailback into their endzone without even trying to slow him down.

John makes sure to grab Stackhouse by the mask after the offense takes the field. “What the hell was that?” he asks, not bothering to hide the anger. “You’re at State. Act like it.”

Stackhouse twitches a little and nods. “Yes, sir.”

Ronon gives a John a level look before nodding at the bench. “I’ll talk to them.” John has to admit, even though Ronon doesn’t say much, what he does say is pretty damn effective.

The defense gets their shit together after that, managing to hold the Wraith offense off, even though John can see they’re wearing down, inch by inch. Sanchez lets their quarterback through once on a sudden reversal, which nets him another talk with Ronon, and John’s just barely manages to keep himself from going over there himself. Their offense goes nowhere, getting beaten back down after down, and even Hermiod can’t make the kick from behind the seventy. John just grits his teeth and digs his fingernails into his palms. It could be worse; they could be losing ground, but John’s going a little crazy with frustration. He can’t let it get to him, though. He can’t lose focus now.

In the second quarter, the Devils make a break for the endzone on their third down, and John’s already planning out the lecture he’s going to give during halftime, which starts with, “You have to stop sucking,” and ends with, “No seriously, stop shitting around and play some goddamn football.” But then Sanchez is there, out of nowhere, making the tackle, stopping them barely a yard away from the line, and it’s such a close call, the refs have to bring out the tape measure. When they find him a few inches short for a first down, John only just manages to keep himself from hugging Ronon, who’s grinning, a little crazily, but John knows that, knows exactly how he feels.

They still haven’t scored by the time they reach the end of the first half, the score 14-0, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to in the future. They’ve been throwing everything they’ve got at these guys, and they’re still going nowhere.

During half-time, John tries his hand at the inspiring speech thing again. When he stands up in the front of the room, it’s silent, and he has dozens of expectant faces in front of him, waiting for him to speak. “We can win this,” he says. “I believe we can win this. There is no way we have gotten this far only to roll over and die just because Wraith expect us to or because the media expects us to or even because most of the people out there expect us to. It doesn’t have to end like this.” It almost hurts, saying it, because he feels every word. “Now let’s go out there and win.” He sees the resolve on their faces, stronger now than before, and John feels a strange surge of pride. This is his team. “Faster, farther, higher,” he yells.

And his team echoes it back, louder, fiercer, better, and John knows he’ll never forget what it was like to be right here, right now. There’s a new life to the team in the second half, but the Wraith haven’t gotten any less tough, so they’re still having a rough time. John’s almost worried that the team’s going to lose heart, that they’re just going to give up and give out, but then, with two minutes left in the quarter, Miller makes a beautiful interception, stepping neatly in front of a Wraith wide reciever. He goes down seconds later, but it’s an opening, one they didn’t have before.

John calls a time out and gets the offense together along with Teyla, who has spent the game looking mildly annoyed, which for her is about the equivalent of anyone else running around and breaking things.

“What are our options?” John asks them, because he’s running out of ideas at this point.

Cadman shrugs. Lorne frowns. Griffin stares at his shoes. Edison stares at the stands. Teyla, at least, has the decency to pretend she’s competent. “There is a play we can try. It is very risky, but I believe that it is worth the attempt.”

John’s pretty sure he’s willing to give anything a chance at least once, and heck, everything else has been falling apart. “Let’s do it,” he says.

They stack their receivers on the right side, leaving Lorne without much cover from the Wraith defensive backs, but they only need a few seconds to pull this off. At the snap, the receivers sprint downfield to the endzone, running their patterns, and John’s resisting the urge to jump up and down, he’s so nervous, but it works as expected. The defense races to cover the receivers, meaning that they don’t notice Cadman on the left side of the field, running a short hook pattern, so when Lorne fires the pass at her, she’s wide open. And when she charges into toward the endzone, the Wraith are scrambling to catch up. She goes down near the line, and it’s a terrifying sight, five huge linebackers piling on top of her, but when they get up, she’s definitely in, ball still huddled to her chest.

The cheer that goes up is almost explosive when the ref raises his arms, and John just wants to hug Teyla, because seriously, they’ve finally scored. For a brief moment, he imagines Rodney out there, cheering, bright smile on his face, but then he tamps it down. He doesn’t need the distraction right now.

But then Cadman’s getting up too slowly, left hand hung awkwardly at her side, and a medic, Dr. Keller, is rushing out to the field. John follows close on her heels, because fuck, this is one of his players, and he needs to be there.

“Hey, Coach,” Cadman says as Dr. Keller leads her off the field and looks over her hand. Her face has gone a little white, and there’s a jerkiness to her movements that John’s not used to seeing, but other than that, she looks fine.

“Looks like she’s got fractures in her middle and ring fingers,” Dr. Keller says, pressing against them lightly. “Not entirely sure, but I think they’re pretty clean breaks. You’re lucky.”

Cadman looks more irritated than in pain, and John has no idea how she pulls that off. “Can I play?”

Dr. Keller frowns, clearly not fond of the idea. “I think it would be better if you didn’t, but if you have to--”

“Just do it,” Cadman hisses, and she taps her foot impatiently until Dr. Keller’s done taping her fingers.

“Go easy on that hand,” Dr. Keller says. “I mean it.”

Cadman just grins brightly, though it’s strained around the edges. “Where do you want me, Coach?”

John’s tempted to bench her, but he knows what it would mean if he forced her to sit this one out. “I’ll let you know,” John says, slapping a shoulder.

The defensive line manages to stop the Wraith counterattack, and with five seconds left in the quarter, Hermiod manages a field goal from the thirty, which means they’ve got a chance. A slim one, but it’s still a chance.

The fourth quarter goes the same as the second, though, scoreless with no chance of gaining ground. Cadman’s still playing well, but she’s not quite as together as she usually is, and John’s watching the numbers count ever so slowly down to the end of the game. The season’s been good while it’s lasted, and at least, no one can say that didn’t put up a fight. They can come back next year, better, smarter, stronger. Heck, no one even expected them to get this far in the first place. It’s been a pretty impressive run.

But then, with twenty seconds on the clock, the Wraith quarterback fumbles the ball after taking the snap, and their offensive line breaks just enough to let Sherman through to pounce on it before the QB manages to get a hold of it again, and John’s blinking a few times, because he must have dreamed that; there’s no way that actually happened.

He calls a time out, and pulls Lorne off to the side.

“We’ve got one shot at this,” John says, trusting Lorne to know what he’s talking about.

Lorne nods, mouth set. “Yeah.”

“Can you throw that far?” John asks.

Lorn shrugs, looking comfortable and not as stressed as John would be if his coach had just hinged a last play on him. “Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Good man,” John says, patting his shoulder. And that’s that.

John tries to project effortless cool as they line up, as Lorne screams the final play, as Bates makes the snap, but he’s pretty sure he’s failing at it as Cadman and Edison sprint for the endzone. His breath catches in his throat as Lorne pulls back and throws the ball in a perfect arc, sailing through the air until it lands somewhere in the mass of people running down the field.

But then Edison’s holding the ball aloft with one hand, spiking it into the ground as the ref makes the call.

Holy shit. They won.

They won State.

If John thought the crowd sounded like an explosion before, they sound like a nuclear meltdown now, and John’s almost dizzy with the feel of it. He can’t quite believe it, can’t quite wrap his mind around it, and, Jesus, it leaves him drained and wired at the same time, like all the energy’s trapped beneath his skin. They’ve won. They’ve won against the team no one could beat, and they’re here, right now, celebrating because they’ve won State. They’re going home as State Champions.

The team’s whooping and hollering on the field, knocking each other over in their enthusiasm. The cheerleaders are doing their victory routine, bodies spinning through the air. The crowd is even more alive than they were before, still cheering, moving in shifting patterns of color. Teyla is smiling brightly and giving Ronon a brief hug, looking happier than John’s ever seen her.

John just stands where his is, taking in everything around him, not joining in the festivities, but part of them all the same.

20.

He finds Rodney’s car in the driveway when he gets home from the supermarket on Sunday, and Rodney himself is sitting on his front stoop, a hand propping up his chin. He looks miserable in the way John feels whenever he thinks about Canada or elite universities with world-class physics programs, and the mean part of John is glad.

“Um, hey,” Rodney says, looking nervous and tense. “Look, I know you probably don’t want to have anything to do with me, and I’ve been informed many times by my sister about just how shitty my timing is, and maybe this is just too little, too late, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m not actually going back to Canada next semester. Oh, and that was a good game on Friday, with, you know, the winning and all.”

John tries to fight down the hope that’s lodged itself in his throat. “What?”

Rodney starts talking faster than normal, which is actually something of an accomplishment, and John lets himself watch the movements of his hands, the line of his jaw, because he’s not sure when he’ll get a chance to again. “Well, Atlantis University is trying to improve their physics program -- which, I must say, is probably one of the worst I have ever seen -- so they’re building a shiny new lab and offering me a job.”

“And you’re taking it?” It’s far too early to think about Rodney moving in, because there’s no reason to believe that Rodney’s staying for John. Maybe he just wants to get to know his niece and nephew better. Maybe he wants to make up for all those years not talking to Jeannie.

“Well, yeah,” Rodney says in his ‘duh’ voice. “Haven’t you been paying attention?” He starts sounding a little more hesitant. “I also figured that it makes more sense for me to stay in Pegasus, since the commute isn’t too bad, and I already know where everything is, but my sister’s place is entirely too crowded, and I was wondering if maybe you’d--”

“Yes,” John says, cutting him off, because of course, yes.

A smile breaks out across Rodney’s face, and John’s missed that, missed him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” John repeats, and then they’re pulling into a hug, Rodney’s arms wrapped tightly around his ribs, and he can’t believe his fucking luck, because he’s getting everything he’s ever wanted, everything he didn’t know he’d ever want.

---

Their practice on Monday is low key, relaxed, since the pressure’s off. They’ve won big. The season’s over. It’s pretty much all about having fun now. They play a few scrimmages, and if Lorne’s passes are a little sloppy, if Miller’s letting people through like he’s a door, if Griffin’s slower than usual, John’s willing to let it go. They deserve it. The weather’s cold and clear, and everything’s bright, bright, bright. Winter’s coming soon, but right now it’s still fall, and John intends to enjoy it.

Afterwards, John starts cleaning up his office. It’s kind of fallen into a giant mess over the season, mostly because he’s got other things on his mind when he’s in this particular room, and he’s never gotten around to straightening it out. He has the time, now.

His assistant coaches stick their heads in before they head home, and John’s going to miss this, the way they pull together to go after that next win. But he’s going to see them around, make sure to have dinner together every now and again. Plus, there’s next season to think about.

“Good season, Coach,” Teyla says.

“You didn’t suck,” Ronon says.

John’s still smiling long after they leave.

---

He ends up back in Elizabeth’s office the next day, still a little flush with victory. It’s amazing to think of how far they’ve come, how much they’ve accomplished, since that first meeting he had in this room.

“Coach,” she says, smiling. “Congratulations. You’ve had an amazing season.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he says.

“As you know, your contract with the school district was only for one year, but I do believe that we are going to extend it for another five if you’re willing to sign on for that long.” There’s a hint of doubt in her voice, like she doesn’t believe that he wants to stay, and maybe in the beginning, he might not have, but he’s discovering that he loves this place, that he loves this team, and John knows that he belongs here.

“I’d love to,” he tells her.

Epilogue

One night, John rolls over and pokes Rodney in the ribs.

“We won State,” he whispers, unable to keep the giddiness out of his voice.

“Jesus Christ,” Rodney mumbles into the pillow, eyes still closed, “that game was two weeks ago. If you ever say that again, I will kill you, and they will never find the body.”

John isn’t too bothered, because seriously, they won State. Rodney’s grouchiness is no match for that high. So he just curls into Rodney’s body, mouths “We won State,” against his shoulder, and grins until he falls asleep.

FIN.