Work Text:
John makes Rodney a card with a sheet of graph paper and the goldenrod-colored sheet from the triplicate requisition form and a glue-stick and a lot of false starts. There are some hearts on it, which are carefully shaded in pencil. The requisition form ends up in the middle of a heart so John fills it in:
Item Description: Rodney McKay. Quantity required: 1.
Rodney blows him off that night and he probably would have wimped out of giving it anyhow; he sticks it in his desk drawer and uses the rest of the graph paper and the glue stick to make paper airplanes.
*
Rodney commissions Simpson to make him a card; her current rate is one 25oz bottle of tequila or rum or four chocolate bars or a 100% cotton t-shirt, women's size medium, any color or a bottle of Oil of Olay or similar moisturizer. Rodney doesn't have any of those, and he's desperate, so she offers him a special rate of telling her who it could possibly be for or her first pick of the new projects. A month later she snakes a puddlejumper navigation project from Zelenka, who is pissed at him for a week.
As specified, the card has glitter and lace and red satiny-looking paper and Rodney feels a twinge of unease when he sees it; it's—bigger than he expected, even though he told Simpson he wanted the best.
He's supposed to see John but something goes wrong with something or another, anyhow, it's urgent, which is what he tells John, and he tucks the card away in his desk, meaning to give it later.
*
John finds the card three months later, when the Genii have invaded in force and cut them off from the gate room. Ronon's holding the mess hall with a bunch of the marines, Lorne and Zelenka are preventing access to the puddlejumper bay, there are any number of minor skirmishes going on in the botany labs, the music lounge, the infirmary, and conference hall B, and John and Rodney are holed up in the labs, feverishly scrabbling through desks for supplies.
"Huh," John says. The lace is a dog-eared and crumpled, and when he flips it open, a shower of glitter falls on his arm. On the inside, it says: To: John. Then, at the bottom, it says: Love, Rodney, all in neat capital letters. There's a big space in between; the card is roughly the size of his head.
"What?" Rodney says. He's holding a brick of C-4 in one hand and naquadah-grenade in the other and there's a rapidly forming bruise on his cheekbone where he got punched when they were trying to get to the lab. "—oh."
"Hm," John says, and tucks the card into the narrow document pocket on the backpack that's already half-full of explosives and knives.
"But—" Rodney says, and then shuts up and starts stuffing C-4 into his pockets. His hair is rumpled, sticking up, scrubbed back off his forehead.
"This is for me, right?" John says.
"Yeah, of—of course it's for you," Rodney says.
There's still glitter in John's wristband when he shows up at the infirmary, after, to get the cut on his arm stitched up.
*
Rodney finds his card after a malfunctioning gate flings a puddlejumper into Sam's office and smashes up most of the gate room. John's office is big and conveniently located near a transporter. Sam moves in half a dozen extra chairs and everyone takes turns showing up early to appropriate the desk so they don't have to balance their laptops on their knees. They're on the second hour of a routine senior staff meeting, having a fairly heated discussion about training rotation when John glances over at Rodney, who had gotten the desk this time around. Rodney looks bored and is rummaging through the drawer, obviously searching for food. John turns back to tell Lorne a few fun facts about burnout, and the next time he looks back, Rodney's easing the drawer shut, his face quiet and carefully blank.
Rodney sticks around after the meeting and, even though they have a rule about not doing it anywhere but their quarters, gives John a handjob, leaning him against the wall and kissing him just underneath his collar. John's not sure what Rodney does with the card, but it's gone when he checks later. John keeps his card in a box in the bottom of his dresser, but only because, even years later, it still gets glitter on everything it touches.