John's just putting the final touches of bullshit on his latest mission report when the lights in his office flicker twice and die, leaving him with only his laptop for company.

He hits his radio. "Uh, McKay?"

The radio gives him nothing but static, which is unusual, but it's possible Rodney's in a shielded room. He tries again on a broader channel. "Zelenka? Lorne?" Static. "Anyone?"

It's dusk, and his office is dim and shadowy, his laptop an awful glowing rectangle on his desk. There's some faint sunlight filtering in from the windows, and it's brighter still outside, but across the way the entire central tower is dark. He leans back in his chair and grabs one of the emergency walkie-talkies from its charging station. The green light on the station is blinking, so the city must still have some power.

"Command, this is Sheppard. Anyone there?"

Silence. Then: "This is Sergeant Campbell, sir. I've got Dr. Zelenka and Mr. Woolsey with me in the control room."

"Hey, Chuck, who turned out the lights?"

Campbell, always two steps ahead, answers the question John didn't ask. "Short- and long-range sensors are clear. Gate's quiet. Radek says no one should have been doing anything that would lead to this. He's looking into the cause."

"That's what they always say," John mutters to himself. To the walkie he says, "Okay, sit tight. We'll get to the bottom of this. Anyone got eyes on McKay?"

He's greeted with a chorus of negatives as department heads check in from across the city.

"That's where I'll start, then. Lorne, you around?" He gives it a full twenty seconds. "Major Teldy?"

"Teldy here, sir."

"I want everyone on duty that's not already on patrol to get down to the armory. Set up extra patrols and have them check in with you every fifteen minutes."

"Copy that."

"Sergeant Ngata, you're in the armory?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Pass out the Wraith stunners that don't glow in the dark. No reason to make ourselves walking targets if this isn't just someone forgetting to pay the electric bill."

"On it, sir!"

John runs through a checklist in his head. "Medical, come in?"

A long pause. They hadn't checked in earlier so either they're all busy or no one has a walkie at hand. His laptop falls asleep and the room goes dark. He wakes it up again.

"Medical, do you copy?"

"Yeah? This is Keller."

"How are things down there?"

"Dark. We're getting the emergency lights set up now. The rest of our equipment's running and none of our patients are critical so we're good for the moment."

"Okay, stand by. Get in touch with Major Teldy if you need any extra hands."

"Will do."

John thinks about the long walk down to the infirmary and rubs his face with one hand. "Command, do we know if the transporters work?"

"The power grid seems to be functional, but I would not recommend using them until we know the source of the problem. Same for the gate." Zelenka. John can practically hear him pushing his glasses up his nose, even before his belated, "Uh. Over?"

"Are you saying the gate could be compromised?"

"It is possible. At this time I can only confirm that we have lost the lights, radios, and the silly pneumatic tube system. I'm running a full diagnostic now. We shall see. Over?"

"Do we have any teams out?" John hates it when he has to ask this many questions.

"This is Chuck, sir. No teams out, but Teyla is on New Athos and scheduled to return soon."

John swallows. "Can we contact her?"

"I'm working on that now, sir."

John blanks out for a bit, tormenting himself with the thought of Teyla stepping into the gate with TJ and never coming out again. "Zelenka, have you seen McKay today?"

"Rodney has been working out of his lab the past few days. Over?"

All right, that's getting old. "You don't need to say 'over,' Radek, these are full-duplex radios. You can send and receive at the same time, like talking on a cell phone. Mr. Woolsey, can you make an announcement and ask everyone to just stay put until we get this straightened out?"

"Certainly, Colonel Sheppard. Any idea how long this situation will persist?"

Woolsey's getting better about the unpredictable nature of most of Atlantis's problems, but he still has an almost irrational belief that the unquantifiable can be quantified if he just asks the right question of the right person. It's only John's turn because Woolsey probably already asked Zelenka.

"Not a clue," John says, and signs off.

It's starting to get dark outside. He checks his sidearm, ties his boots, and goes looking for a flashlight. He knows he has one next to his bed, and he remembers putting one in his office, too, but he doesn't see it. It was one of those big fuck-off flashlights that could double as a club, black and heavy and round and...it had rolled off the shelf and behind the bookcase. He fishes it out and turns it on and off a few times, but it's completely dead.

Plan B: Somewhere in his desk is a windup flashlight, one of ten dozen he requisitioned as part of their emergency response plan the first year. He digs around in the top drawer and finds a bunch of user manuals, various cords and cables, a cheap plastic kazoo, a piece of knotted rope he'd won for coming in last in an Athosian steeplechase, an endless supply of hex keys, and some loose trail mix, but not the flashlight. How could there be so much crap in his desk? And where did he get a kazoo?

A pleasant chime sounds overhead, and Woolsey comes on the public address system, calmly acknowledging the technical difficulties and asking Major Lorne to report to command, Dr. McKay to get to a walkie-talkie, and everyone else to stay where they are unless given other orders. He stresses that no one should use the transporters until further notice.

John mentally apologizes to Woolsey for thinking he's useless in an emergency. Woolsey's a good guy; he barely freaks out anymore when weird shit happens. John shoves his hand deep into the back of the drawer and grabs something the exact size and shape of a communicator from the original Star Trek. It's the flashlight. He unfolds the crank and gives it a couple dozen turns. It doesn't put out much light, but it's better than nothing.

The plan is to get the radios working and get the lights on, which means finding McKay, who's probably where the problem is, so find the problem, find McKay, fix the problem, and they're all home in time for dinner.

The only problem is he has no idea where the problem is. But he has a good idea where Rodney is.

He clips the walkie to his belt and pulls up a map of the city on his laptop. Rodney's favorite lab is on A Deck, ground level, at the base of Tower 3. John's about halfway up Tower 2 and wishing he'd installed the fire pole he'd joked about when he moved into his office. It's going to take him a while to get on the ground. The map has several wrench icons in the area around Rodney's lab, the nearest right down the hall and around the corner. John makes note of their locations in case he needs to expand his search, then saves his report and shuts the laptop, figuring he'll bring it with him in case Rodney needs it.

It's not unusual for Rodney to stumble across a serious problem and decide to fix it, immediately, with whatever he has on hand while shouting over the radio for everything he doesn't—a roll of duct tape, some tweezers, the Ancient Speak & Spell, an arc welder, a pipe wrench, a gas mask—and just like that John's hit by the worry he'd been trying to hold off. They'd talked on the radio earlier, but John hasn't seen him since dinner the night before, and Rodney's favorite lab is his favorite because it's off the beaten path, remote and windowless. Maybe he was fiddling with something and broke Atlantis. Maybe it broke him. Again.

He tucks the computer under his arm and steps out the door.

It's completely dark in the hallway. John can hear the quiet bubbling of the water columns, but can't see them. His flashlight gives off a weak glow that only allows him to pick out vague shapes, and only directly in front of him. There could be anything out there, just beyond the edge of what he can see, and that's going to creep him out if he thinks about it so he just won't think about it.

He heads for the stairs. They're at the center of the tower, but Atlantis's sharp, irregular angles are softened in the dim light and after a couple of turns everything looks unfamiliar. He stops to wind his flashlight and get his bearings.

His walkie-talkie comes on: "Kitchens reporting a power loss. Refrigeration units are offline."

That's...not good. He shines his light down two hallways and picks the left one, going deeper into the tower. He walks past a transporter, pauses, and goes back to it. When he waves at the doors they open soundlessly. That's always been a big disappointment for him; he feels, strongly, that they should make a swishing noise. The lights are off inside the transporter, too, its map dark, and as much as he'd like to get out of here and find Rodney he doesn't want to risk dissolving into a glittery soup of his component parts and have to deal with Zelenka saying I told you so. He makes himself keep going, jogging down the hall, around the corner, and right into one of the dark water columns.

"Son of a—! Fuck!"

He bends in half at the waist, clutching his shoulder and breathing through his mouth. No one shows up to check on why the military commander is crying in the hallway and John congratulates himself on picking an office in one of the least densely populated towers in the city. He can go hours without seeing another human being, even, apparently, in the middle of a crisis. He gives his arm one final squeeze, straightens up, and discovers he hit his knee too, for maximum fun.

He picks his flashlight up and limps on.

The stairs are right where they're supposed to be, and next to them is a bank of pneumatic tubes. He stares at the tubes for a while, his eyes drawn to where they come up out of the floor, and tries to figure out what he's looking at. On the floor, in front of the tubes, is a single red light. He kneels down, knee complaining all the way, and almost touches his finger to the red dot before remembering where he is and who he is and that he isn't supposed to go around touching things just because.

He gets on his walkie. "Uh, Command, this is Sheppard. There's a red light on under the pneumatic tubes on my level?"

"Pah! Do not talk to me about the tubes."

Zelenka's probably right that they have bigger problems. Still, that one red light while the rest of Atlantis is totally dark is more unsettling than it should be.

He spends a minute staring at the red dot and winding his flashlight, and then gets up and opens the door to the stairwell.

The stairs are just as dark as the hallway. Unsurprisingly, the Ancients didn't believe in emergency lighting, just like they didn't believe in instruction manuals, automatic shutoffs, or labelling anything that had a good chance of killing you. He limps down the stairs, descending into what feels like endless darkness, his boots making dry, shuffling sounds on the steps, his flashlight getting dimmer and dimmer.

He's only twelve floors down, and thinking maybe he should find an office closer to the ground, when someone behind him calls out his name and he jumps. It takes him a second to realize it's Lorne on the walkie.

"Colonel Sheppard, do you copy?"

John juggles around his flashlight and laptop and unclips the walkie from his belt. "What's your status, Lorne?"

"I'm at command. I would have been here sooner, but I had a little trouble getting out of the shower."

"Been there," John says. The showers have an optional forcefield you can turn on if you have the gene. It protects you from drafts and, if McKay is to be believed, provides excellent acoustics, but it seems to have its own ideas about how long it's appropriate to shower and won't let you out if you haven't met its approval. He's started to think it might actually be some kind of decontamination protocol as, in his experience, it isn't always optional.

"Extra patrols are armed and out," Lorne reports. "Teldy's got them checking in on channel fifteen. Doctor Z says diagnostics should be finished in four hours. Teyla's scheduled to return from New Athos with Torren in two hours. We sent a message through that she should wait until we figure out if gate travel is safe."

"A message?" John's pulse kicks up. "I thought the radios didn't work."

"They don't. It was basically a note wrapped around a brick." There's muffled talking in the background. Lorne repeats it. "Sealed in a ziplock bag."

"How will you know she got it?"

"It was one of those hot rocks we give our allies. She'll dial in and throw it through the wormhole without sending her IDC. The shield will register the impact and the radioactive signature."

John's gut lurches at the thought of anything impacting the shield.

"Chuck says it'll work, Colonel."

A familiar, irritated voice breaks in: "Would you people keep it down? I'm trying to save us all from certain doom and you're chatting about your correspondence. McKay OUT."

Whatever relief John felt at hearing Rodney's voice is quickly eclipsed by what he's saying. "Hold on, McKay. What level of doom are we talking about here? Mild? Medium? Spicy?"

Rodney doesn't answer, and John reluctantly continues up the list. "Extra spicy?" He waits a beat. "Zebra??"

This last is for situations so weird it's impossible to tell how bad things are, or if they're even bad at all. Still nothing from Rodney. John really doesn't want to have to create a new category. "McKay!"

"He says nothing's wrong with the gate." It's Ronon, which means John's team is all accounted for, even if two-thirds of them are currently driving him nuts.

"That's really great news, buddy, but can we talk about the certain doom? I'd like to know how certain it is. And what kind of doom, exactly."

"I think, like, regular." There's a pause, then the sound of Ronon and Rodney snickering. Rodney gets punchy when he's been up for too long, but Ronon laughing with him can only mean one thing. They're all going to live.

John feels suddenly dizzy and has to sit down, falling the last few inches gracelessly until he's seated on the steps, laptop clutched to his chest, hand clenched around the walkie-talkie, the light from his flashlight slowly fading. It's possible he's getting too old for this shit.

"So about this doom...?"

"It's the usual kind." Rodney's back, sounding harassed. "You know, where you only get about five minutes warning that an entire system is about to go critical." He pauses. "The radios were a surprise, though."

"And the kitchens?"

There's some clanging. "No, I'm pretty sure that's just hysteria."

"They can hear you, you know."

"Or mice! I suppose it could be mice. Now leave me alone, I'm working."

Ronon comes back on the line. "McKay needs a crystal."

"Why can't you get it?"

"I'm holding the flashlight."

"Fine." John cracks open his laptop and brings up the crystal inventory. For some reason he feels pissy that Ronon got to Rodney before he did. "What number?"

Ronon recites the ten character alphanumeric code that describes the dimensions and properties of the crystal Rodney needs. John looks it up in the database. Along with the emergency caches of weapons, walkie-talkies, medical supplies, and MREs stashed in strategic locations throughout Atlantis, there are small repair kits with crystals, clips, cords, and any kind of adaptor you could possibly want. If he's lucky, the crystal will be in the cache on his way down to the lab. If he's not lucky, he'll divert one of the patrol teams to pick it up and bring it over.

"Where are you guys, anyway?"

"The service junction outside McKay's lab."

"Were you with him when the lights went out?"

"I was in the gym."

Sometimes having a conversation with Ronon makes him regret all the times he'd answered his commanding officers' questions with the bare minimum of words. "And?"

"Woolsey said McKay had to get to a radio. So I brought him one."

John groans. "Didn't you hear the announcement? You were supposed to stay put."

"Like you did?"

"I was the one who gave the order!"

Ronon doesn't answer. He has the irritating habit of pointing out John's inconsistencies and then never mentioning them again. Like Ronon's silently judging him, except not very silently. Except silently. It really messes John up.

He needs to get out of this stairwell. "Did you use the transporters?"

"No," Ronon says, like John's not very smart. "I ran."

Rodney can be heard shouting in the background about teaching pigs to sing.

"Gotta go," Ronon says.

"Yeah, be there in twenty."

The emergency cache at the base of this tower has the crystal Rodney needs, and John feels a bit steadier as he takes the remaining stairs. Sporadic updates come over the walkie as department heads check in with command, including medical calling for assistance with their generator, and the kitchens sheepishly reporting that a plug had apparently gotten pulled loose in the excitement and their refrigerators were now back online. John checks in with Teldy, who tells him the patrols haven't found any evidence of intruders or sabotage. No reported injuries. No gate activity, and still no word on Teyla.

By the time he reaches A Deck, his knee has mostly stopped hurting and he hops down the remaining steps and comes out on the landing. The cache is in a room off the atrium, marked by one of the ten-thousand-year-old potted plants at its door. The room has a window, but the sun's gone down completely, the black of the sky broken only by what seems like a million stars. He shines his flashlight around the room and finds the hard plastic case shoved up against the foot of the bed.

The first thing he does is pull out one of the flashlights and put fresh batteries in it. It practically blinds him when he turns it on, but when he can finally see what he's looking at, he discovers the crystals are all together in an insulated pouch, and that is officially too many things to carry. He shoves the pouch into the thigh pocket of his BDUs and leaves his laptop on the bed.

At the door, he stops to check in with command. "This is Sheppard. I'm leaving Tower 2 now and heading to Tower 3. Nobody shoot me."

"Roger that, Colonel Sheppard."

It's fully dark outside, like a post-apocalyptic landscape, the city a lifeless shell lit only by the wavering beam of his flashlight. It makes him feel anxious and exposed, and he skirts along the base of the tower, then runs, quick and low, across the shortest distance to Tower 3.

He's walking around the tower trying to find the doors, and learning Ancient architecture all looks the same in the dark, when his walkie-talkie crackles to life.

"Colonel Sheppard, come in."

He pauses in a niche that isn't a door. "Yeah, Lorne?"

"Thought you'd like to know that Teyla received our message. New Athos dialed in just a minute ago and the shield registered an impact commensurate with the brick. She'll wait until we call her before coming home."

Teyla and TJ are safe. John takes a deep breath and leans back against the tower, weak with relief. "Thanks, Evan. Good work."

"Also," Lorne says, in a way John's come to dread. "Park and Kuznetsov broke up a brawl in one of the plant labs. Park said they were yelling about a moss?"

"Sure," John says.

"Seven people were involved. One took a pretty good hit to the head. Three others had minor injuries. They evacuated the lab and escorted everyone to the infirmary for observation. We're waiting on medical to determine if the moss is...dangerous."

"Okay," John says, because what else do you say to that.

Lorne signs off and John takes a moment to consider his life choices, then resumes his hunt for the door, which, once he finds it, looks just like all the other bits of art deco Ancienty nonsense until it opens up in front of him.

It doesn't take him long to get to the lab, which is deserted, and from there he starts looking for the junction Ronon mentioned. John's pretty sure he and Rodney raced their RC cars down there once. He remembers it being right on the other side of the lab, but there's just a long, empty corridor. He can hear voices coming from that direction, though, so he heads down that way.

The tracks join him at the next intersection. Set into the deck, they're rusted dull green and pitted with age. The going theory is that the Ancients used them to move materials from the piers to a manufacturing plant, but so far they've found no sign of the cars or the plant. It bothers John, sometimes, just how little they know about this alien city they live in.

The corridor opens up into something that looks a lot like a subway station, with the tracks sinking down into a shallow channel and a raised metal platform running parallel to it. In the center of the platform, there's a standing light hooked up to a naquadah generator and a bunch of stuff on the deck, tools and hoses and powerbar wrappers. Rodney's down in the floor, Ronon holding open the access panel and aiming an enormous rechargeable flashlight down where Rodney's working.

At the sound of John's footsteps, Ronon turns to look at him, and McKay pops up like a gopher coming out of its burrow, bright-eyed and grabby-handed. "Mine. Mine mine mine."

For one crazy second, John thinks Rodney's talking about him, and his entire body says Yes.

But then his two remaining brain cells bump into each other and he realizes Rodney, still making grabby hands from the floor, wants the crystal.

"Gimmie," Rodney says.

"Oh," John says, unfortunately, out loud.

Luckily, Rodney doesn't seem to be registering anything beyond the fact he's not getting what he wants. "You are literally the only thing standing in the way of me getting the lights back on. Come here."

John pulls the pouch of crystals from his pocket and holds it out, knowing even as he does it that it's not at all helpful. For one thing, he's too far away for Rodney to reach.

Rodney scoffs and slides back into the floor. "Do I look like I need thirty different crystals that would almost work if we had any comprehension of how to alter them after they've been cut and sealed? No. I just need the one." His hand comes up out of the floor and points. "Ronon knows."

Ronon looks bored but repeats the identification code.

John's always been impressed by Ronon's memory. He's good with names, gate addresses, even phone numbers. He could probably still give John the number of his favorite Vietnamese place in San Francisco even though it's been months since they left Earth. John doesn't know if he was like that before the Wraith took him, or if it was something he had to learn while he was running. It's not really a question he can ask.

"Hey, did you guys hear?" John says. "We reached Teyla."

"Yes," Rodney says. "I told you she'd be fine."

"No you didn't," John says.

"Huh, well I meant to. Maybe I told Ronon."

A walkie-talkie squawks with an update from the science department and Rodney's hand comes out of the hole and gropes around for it. He has three of them scattered across the deck. John nudges the active one towards him, and then steals one of the others, changes it to the military channel, and sits down to pick through the crystals. The pouch comes with an identification sheet with the codes and an outline of each crystal, so you can slide the crystals over the figures until you find one that matches. John works backwards, finding the outline he needs and searching for a crystal with the right number of notches. It's calming work. Except for McKay, of course.

"I'm growing old in this hole, Sheppard. Any longer and you'll have to bury me here. Just push my tools in on top of me and drop the panel back down. It'll be fine. Though you will have to get someone else to fix the lights. Because I'll be dead. In this hole."

Ronon rolls his eyes and kicks a powerbar down into the hole.

"Ow! Ooh, peanut butter brownie."

There's some crinkling and the hole stops complaining for a moment.

John tries to focus on the crystals and not his emotional problems. He's got it narrowed down to two, but can't tell which is the right one. The hole has stopped chewing and has progressed to the finger licking and lip smacking that indicates it's gearing up for another barrage of sarcasm. John gets down on his stomach, head just even with the hole in the floor, and holds out the two crystals.

"These look the same."

"Congratulations, Colonel! They are the same." Rodney takes the crystals and inspects them.

"But the database said that pouch should only have one of these."

"Hah! Welcome to my world." Rodney hands one crystal back to John, drops down deeper in the hole and crawls halfway into a conduit, leaving John to stare at his ass as he wiggles around and curses out the crystal array for being in such a hard to reach place.

"I need a five minute warning before you turn the lights back on, McKay."

Rodney gives a kick that seems to launch him deeper into the tunnel. His voice comes echoing back: "Fine, fine. Five minute warning!"

John fumbles around for his walkie-talkie, and finally looks away from Rodney's ass to find Ronon watching him with a knowing look, but what he thinks he knows, John wants nothing to do with. He thumbs the button on the walkie: "Okay, five minute warning on the lights. McKay thinks he's got this fixed." John pauses to let the angry yelling from the hole subside. "Mr. Woolsey, if you could make an announcement that we're turning on the lights and people should probably put their pants back on, that'd be great."

"Oh dear. Ah, copy that, Colonel Sheppard."

There's some tittering from the hole.

The public address system chimes and Woolsey comes on to make a brief announcement about the lights. He reminds anyone using night vision devices to remove them, but doesn't come down on the issue of pants one way or the other.

"That's a go, Rodney."

"3 - 2 - 1."

John can't hear the new crystal being slotted into place, but he thinks he can feel it, a surge of energy running through Atlantis, the lights coming on in every arm of the city. He waits a moment to make sure they stay on, then gets on his other walkie to get an update from Lorne. Everything's pretty much the same. No gate traffic. Nothing on the sensors. No sign of intruders. He checks in with Teldy, who has more nothing to report. He tells her to maintain the increased patrols and signs off.

Rodney pops up next to him, looking satisfied. Then his eyes fix on the walkie-talkie and he zones out for a second.

"Oh," he says. "Try your radio."

John gives his radio a tap. "Rodney, please report to me."

"What?" Rodney makes a terrible face. "Oh my god, are you quoting When Harry Met Sally to me? You are, aren't you? Typical." He disappears back into his hole.

John doesn't know if that means the radio works or not. He sits up and tries the senior staff band. "Anybody out there? Rodney fixed the radios too. I guess that just leaves the moss lab, and...the pneumatic tube system."

Assorted grumblings echo down the line.

Woolsey waits until the muttering calms down. "Well done, Dr. McKay. Now that lights and comms are restored, I'd like updates from all department heads. Senior staff, if you could convene in the conference room in thirty minutes? I'll see you then." A moment later he comes on the intercom and repeats the message, adding that it's safe to resume use of the transporters and everyone is once again free to move about the city.

Both of McKay's hands shoot out of the hole and start waggling. "Help me out."

Ronon catches John's eye. "Hold this, Sheppard."

John gets up and takes the access panel from him. Ronon waits to make sure he has it, then lets go and John has to brace himself against its immense weight, staggered at how easily Ronon had been holding it up, for who knows how long. The hinges are rusted and it's a struggle to keep it open.

Ronon goes over to the edge of the hole and clasps Rodney's hands in his. "Here we go."

"Don't drop me."

"I'm not gonna drop you."

"I know, I just had to say it."

John watches as Ronon slowly draws Rodney up out of the hole, Rodney occasionally finding a toehold, but mostly relying on Ronon to get him out. Once he's close enough to the top, Rodney throws a knee onto the deck and sort of inchworms his way out, collapsing face down into a sloppy pile.

Together, John and Ronon set the access panel back in the floor, McKay gesturing weakly at a socket wrench lying on the ground next to him.

John looks around but can't see any bolts. "Where are the fasteners?"

Rodney rolls over onto his back, opens the thigh pocket of his BDUs with a rip of velcro, and shoves his hand inside. "Here. Use the eleven and a half sixteenths socket."

"Yeah, I got it."

But Rodney won't pass him the bolts, forcing John to take them right out of his warm, slightly sweaty palm. Rodney grabs him by the wrist with his other hand, eyes huge and intent. "And a half!" he says again, like a man on his death bed giving his final wishes.

"Geez, I heard you the first time. Simmer down."

Rodney lets go of him and throws an arm over his eyes.

John gets the panel bolted back down with the eleven and a half sixteenths socket, thank you, then goes over to sit next to McKay.

"You all right?"

"I hate this part. The adrenaline crash. It reminds me of being sick. The epi-pen." He makes a stabbing motion towards his thigh.

John pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. "Yeah, it's not my favorite thing either."

Ronon comes over, drops into a crouch next to Rodney, and kisses him on the forehead with a loud smack. "You got this, McKay."

John's still blinking in shock when Ronon asks him a question and he has to repeat himself.

"Am I senior staff?"

"No?"

Ronon slaps him on the shoulder and lopes off.

Rodney rouses himself long enough to shout after him. "Sure, no problem, I'll just clean this mess up myself. Half of these powerbar wrappers are yours!"

John's still dazed. "Since when is there kissing?"

Rodney just gives him a pitying look and John has to turn away.

The mess is pretty manageable, except... "Do these hoses belong somewhere?"

"Fucked if I know. They were just sort of crammed down there, not attached to anything."

McKay must be really tired if he's swearing. He usually considers it crass and unimaginative, unless he's been in the lab all night, in which case it suddenly becomes a time-saving method. John wonders if he'd gotten any sleep the night before.

"The Ancients make me nervous," John admits.

"Me too. Crazy bastards."

"Do you know what caused the lights to go out?"

"Oh, I have my suspicions, and if I'm right, I'm taking tomorrow off."

"Catastrophic Minion Failure?"

"Something like that."

McKay doesn't seem up to talking about it, and John doesn't want to push him for fear of what else might come out, so he drops the subject and gets to his feet. If it's important, he'll hear about it later, and if it isn't important, he'll probably still hear about it.

"C'mon." John picks up his flashlight and the pouch of crystals. "We've got a meeting and I've gotta go pick up my laptop."

"I'll come with you."

Rodney puts a hand up and John takes it and hauls him to his feet.

The walk over to Tower 2 is peaceful, the little running lights glowing beneath their feet, the waves slapping against the piers, the warm strength of Atlantis's towers lit up above them. John keeps stealing looks at Rodney, at the tired slump of his broad shoulders, his familiar dirt-smeared face.

Rodney catches him looking. "So what was that about earlier?"

"What was what?" John leads them into Tower 2 and peers down each hallway off the lobby, trying to find the dead ficus. Things look a lot different with the lights on.

"When you first came in," Rodney says. "You had this weird look on your face."

"I don't know. Maybe it's just my face."

"Oh, please. You expect me to believe that?"

John turns down the hallway with the ancient ficus and McKay follows him, still talking.

"I saw how you were looking at me. Something's up, and while I have many incredible and unique talents, patience isn't one of them. Either spit it out or tell me it's none of my business, but don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."

"Uh." John thought he'd gotten through the emergency, but apparently he'd made a mistake somewhere because now he's trapped in a small room with an angry McKay blocking the only exit, like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books where you defeat the killer robot, only to get mauled by an escaped circus lion on the next page. John always thought those things were incredibly unfair.

Rodney, contrary to his stated lack of patience, just crosses his arms over his chest, biceps flexing against the short sleeves of his t-shirt.

John's mouth waters. "Um."

He has three options: He could lie, jump out the window, or confess. Running away would only delay the inevitable, and they're on the ground floor, so it's possible, though not likely, that Rodney would chase after him, in which case it wouldn't delay anything at all and also he's not in the mood for a foot race. Lying, despite how much of it he does, is not something he's good at, and the lie he'd have to come up with in order to explain this in a way that doesn't involve his feelings for Rodney would be obvious and awful and Rodney would know he was lying and it might permanently damage their friendship and that's just not an option. Which leaves the truth. Which makes him want to hop out a window. Which he already ruled out.

It's John's turn to cross his arms, but it doesn't work as well because he's still carrying a bunch of stuff. "So what, maybe I have...a thing, for you."

Rodney actually looks surprised. "Oh, we're going to do this now?"

"What do you mean 'now'? You asked me what was going on."

"I didn't think it was going to be this."

"What did you think it was going to be?"

"I don't know! That's why I asked!" Rodney throws up his hands.

They stare at each other. John has no idea what's happening. He thought he'd grit his teeth, get through this conversation, and figure the rest out later, except he can't even figure out what's going on right now. It's not like Rodney's shocked or disgusted or flattered; instead he's acting like it's old news.

"You knew," John says slowly.

Rodney's eyes are huge. "You...didn't?"

John's reconsidering his decision not to jump out the window when Rodney abruptly waves all of this aside. "Sorry! Sorry. Come here. Please."

John takes a few steps forward, not sure what's going to happen once he gets there, but Rodney just takes the things he's carrying and puts them on an empty shelf by the door.

"Look, after Jen and I broke up, you started spending a lot more time with me, and you seemed...different."

"Different how?" John asks, wary.

"You were less, I don't know, closed off? You stopped complaining when I ate off your plate. You were constantly smiling at me, even when I was stealing your food. If I forgot to bring a jacket, you'd give me yours. You even fell asleep on my shoulder during movie night once."

"I missed you," John says, thinking of that long year, Rodney only half there, always with Jennifer, or on his way to meet Jennifer, or just coming back from being with Jennifer, and then they broke up, and Rodney was miserable for a while, but there again, his best friend.

Rodney gasps. "Was I a bad friend while I was dating Jen? Oh no, I was, wasn't I?"

"You were just trying to be a good partner," John says. He'd understood, even as he wished things were different.

"A lot of good that did me," Rodney says, with a hint of his old sadness. "Anyway, I assumed you were working your way up to making a move, which I would be into, by the way, did I say that? I meant to say that. Oh my god I'm so tired."

John just steps into him, his solid heat and welcoming arms, and Rodney holds him tight, lets him press his face into his neck. They've never hugged before. It's always been handshakes and headslaps, with the occasional shoulder lean. Once, when Rodney was dying, John held his elbows.

"I kind of have a thing for you, too," Rodney says, and John's heart starts to pound. "I tried to tell you once, but you got that panicky look on your face and I didn't want to scare you off, so I let it go. I was going to be your friend until we died, John, without you ever knowing how I felt, but you've always been braver than me."

John feels, a little, like he's going to die right now. He wants to say something, to tell Rodney how important he is, how brave, but the words won't come. He pulls back so he can see Rodney's face.

Rodney just grins. "Don't worry. I know what I'm getting into."

John kisses him. Rodney laughs into his mouth, his hands coming up to frame John's face. The kiss starts off soft, then Rodney threads a hand into John's hair and uses it to take over the kiss and it turns out John likes having his hair pulled, a lot.

Rodney breaks the kiss, breathing a little hard. "Wow," he says. "Honestly, I thought maybe it'd take you another year to kiss me."

John gives him three short kisses, each one a bit longer than the last, and then pulls away. "Surprise."

Rodney grins and looks around. "Where are we? Did you move and not bring any of your things with you? Life getting too cluttered up with your guitar and that one book you own? Johnny Cash bringing you down?" Rodney's cracking himself up. He could go on indefinitely, and would, but they have a staff meeting to get to.

John grabs the pouch of crystals. "I left my computer here earlier."

"Hm," Rodney says, poking around. "This room has a closet. My room doesn't have a closet!"

John gets everything put back where it was, then picks up his stuff and herds McKay toward the door. "Meeting now, comparison shopping later."

"If we move in together, I need a bathroom with one of those huge tubs, and my own office, and you know those suites with the stained glass between the rooms? I don't like those."

John braces himself for the inevitable freak out, willing himself to ride it out for Rodney's sake, but the usual suffocating panic fails to appear. "That's cool," he says.

They're late to the meeting. The first person he notices is Teyla. She's in her travelling clothes and TJ's tucked into his sling, sound asleep. John gives her a relieved grin and she smiles back; beside him, Rodney gives them a little wave. Woolsey's on her right, at the head of the table, and Keller is on her other side, with Marie next to her. Zelenka, Lorne, Teldy, and even Chuck are all there, and as John looks around the room, he sees it's a lot more than just the senior staff. Lining the walls are the quartermaster, various support supervisors, Sergeant O'Hara from the kitchen, and Ronon, who might have escaped the Wraith but apparently couldn't outrun Woolsey. The room's full, but someone saved John and Rodney two seats next to Woolsey.

Woolsey stands, looking impeccable in his expedition uniform, and tugs his jacket down primly. "Gentlemen, thank you for joining us. We'll get started."

John flops down in his chair; next to him, Rodney sprawls out, knee coming to rest against John's.

"I know you're all tired, but I felt it was important to go over this while tonight's events were still fresh in your mind." Woolsey consults his tablet. "Over the past three hours, you have all been engaged in what is known as an emergency management exercise."

John sits up straight in his seat.

"First, Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, I apologize for the deception, but knowing how hands-on you two are, I thought you might benefit from this exercise just as much as your staff would. Plus it might have been difficult to explain why you two were sitting calmly by in the middle of an emergency. I consulted with Dr. Zelenka to manufacture a reasonable—"

"Ah ha!" Rodney breaks in, triumphant, jabbing a finger at Zelenka. "I knew it. This had your fingerprints all over it. You knew I'd have to climb into that conduit."

"Did not have to. Chose to," Zelenka says.

"It's not like you were going to do it," Rodney says. "Apparently you'd rather break things than fix them."

Radek says something back in Czech that would probably get him fired if anyone understood it. Or if Rodney had unilateral firing power, which he no longer does after the week he fired the entire anthropology department and Elizabeth put her foot down.

"Fine!" Rodney says. "You want to be in charge, be in charge. I'm not coming into the labs tomorrow! See how you like it."

Woolsey waits until they're done and then continues. "I also worked closely with Ms. Emmagan and Dr. Keller to construct a response plan if something should go wrong during our simulated emergency. I choose a time when there were no teams out, and Ms. Emmagan graciously volunteered to act as an off-world team attempting to return home during the crisis."

Teyla acknowledges this with a nod. "We felt it was wise to have a representative away from the city, in case something unforeseeable happened."

"To that end, in the event a full-city lockdown or quarantine protocol was triggered, Ms. Emmagan carried a beacon for the George Hammond, which is scheduled to be in the system within the week, and she was fully prepared to brief Colonel Carter on the situation. Closer to home, Dr. Keller had the authority to call off the exercise at any time if she felt the risk to our personnel had become too great. I tell you all this so you know I didn't make the decision lightly."

John slowly relaxes back into his chair.

"In fact, you may be wondering why I felt an exercise like this was necessary at all, since the Pegasus Galaxy has freely handed us any number of unplanned emergencies over the years." Woolsey pauses for the laughs this gets. "But after our return from Earth, things have been relatively quiet. We also have new personnel, new materials and equipment, and a larger portion of the city open to expedition members than we're used to. A controlled test—a lighting system failure—could help us assess our response procedures and strengthen our emergency protocols. You all acquitted yourselves admirably. Outside of an unfortunate fall in the kitchen, and an altercation in botany due to a moss that was originally classified as benign but that apparently releases psychotropic spores in total darkness, we had no other reported injuries."

"Botany," Rodney mutters.

"I consider this exercise a success. I expected it to reveal weaknesses in our response, and it did, but it also highlighted our strengths. Well done, everyone."

There's a smattering of applause, but John squints, something not quite right. "So you turned off the lights, but what about the radios?"

"That was unexpected," Zelenka says, frowning. "Nothing I did should have affected the radios."

Rodney looks embarrassed. "Uh, that was me, actually. When we first got here, I mean, like, first stepped through the gate, we were short on time and all about to drown horribly, so I piggybacked the radio signal on the lighting grid to extend our coverage. I never meant to leave it like that. Whoops?"

Woolsey makes a note. "So when you turned the lights back on the radios were restored?"

"Yeah," Rodney says. "I'll put a team on it."

"And what about the pneumatic tube system?" John asks. Zelenka hisses like a vampire confronted with a cross, and John leans back in his chair. "And why does it make everyone so angry?"

Chuck grips the table with both hands. "Because it doesn't make any sense! What did the Ancients even use it for? They had computers and transporters. What were they sending through those tubes?"

"Sandwiches?"

Rodney puts a hand on John's arm. "Not to spoil your fun, but you're about to be murdered."

Woolsey gives his jacket a little tug, and just like that he's got everyone's attention again. "Because I value your feedback, I'm asking that each department draft a proposal with at least five ways we can improve efficiency, response time, and safety during a crisis situation. Department heads, please discuss this with your sections and turn in your ideas to me before the end of the week. Now, I'm going to open the floor. I'd like it if everyone could share something they learned from this experience." He sits down.

Everyone's looking at everyone else, wondering who's going to go first.

Lorne finally stands up. "I, uh, learned not to turn on the forcefield when I'm taking a shower."

Teldy snorts and suddenly everyone looks eager to talk about their own problems during the exercise.

Marie gets up next. "We had some trouble with the infirmary's new naquadah generator. I didn't have any difficulty switching over to the emergency systems like we were trained, but after it had been on for about an hour, the lights started to pulse."

"We decided to turn it off," Keller says. "Strobing lights can cause seizures, headaches, and vertigo, and also I wasn't entirely sure we weren't going to blow up."

"It's highly unlikely you were going to blow up," Rodney says, gently, for him. "But obviously that shouldn't be happening." He's got John's laptop open and is scrolling through the ticket system one handed. His other hand is being used to prop up his head. "It looks like Alvarez is on it. They'll figure it out."

"The walkie-talkies were good," Ronon says, "but you need better radio discipline." Which, yeah, he's right about that. They'd gotten sloppy with the radios. Too much chatter.

"And perhaps more patience with the civilians using them," Zelenka says. Then adds, with an evil little grin, "Over?"

So Radek had been fucking with him. That sounds about right.

When it's John's turn, he doesn't get up. He just says, "Keep your flashlight charged," and pretends he doesn't notice the way Rodney immediately zeroes in on him, as if searching for signs of injury. Eventually, Rodney's going to see the huge bruises on John's knee and shoulder and yell at him for bumbling around in the dark with a toy flashlight, but at the moment he looks perfectly unscathed.

John ends up being the last to speak. Normally he would have gone first, lead from the front and all that, but he was thrown by the revelation that this had all been a drill, and now that everyone's had their say, he's realizing it's good that he didn't go first because his response would have set the tone for everyone else and this isn't really about him.

A bunch of years ago, back when he was young and stupid and thought he was always right, this sort of thing would have royally pissed him off. He would have felt like a fool for working so hard in service of what was essentially a big practical joke. He would have seen it as just one more way the brass was messing with him, seeing how high he'd jump to go through their ridiculous hoops. But what did that cocky kid know. He wasn't in charge of anything bigger than his own boots. He didn't have hundreds of people depending on him to keep them safe. John's the man he is today because of the people in this room, and if Woolsey thought they needed to run around in the dark, solving made-up problems and freaking everybody out, then maybe it needed to be done.

He's startled out of his thoughts by Rodney nudging him under the table.

He looks over to find Rodney's still watching him, eyebrows pinched, like he's wondering about John's mental state. John just shakes his head and nudges him back because he doesn't want Rodney to worry about him. He's doing pretty good, all things considered. His pride's a bit bruised and he's a little annoyed with Radek, but he's surprisingly okay with Woolsey keeping him out of the loop, and more than okay with getting to kiss Rodney. He pops his eyebrows at Rodney, once, not quite a waggle, but as close as you can get during a staff meeting. Rodney rolls his eyes, but his eyebrows unpinch, and he goes back to his computer.

Woolsey turns the discussion to the situation in the botany labs, and John starts thinking about how he might have run this exercise, or even another one. He's already got a few ideas. A couple of them are likely to make him unpopular with certain personnel, but he can take it. It's a small price to pay if it means making the city safer.

His younger self would say he'd sold out, but Atlantis has changed him. Is still changing him. Who knows, maybe one day he'll even be able to talk about his feelings without being cornered. Weirder things have happened.