Kind of Forgotten Bliss, Sheppard/Mitchell, PG-15

vain_glorious

bluflamingo

healingmirth

Cameron Mitchell got the ATA retrovirus shot on his third day on Atlantis. This was months earlier than all the other new crew transfers, the benefits of holding the rank of colonel, of currently screwing the military leader of Atlantis, and of being the biggest pest in two galaxies to said military head until he got his way.

John Sheppard was sort of hoping it wouldn’t work. Mostly because he secretly kind of liked the way Cam looked at him when ever he did anything ATA-gene related. He got a little sad thinking about losing that. Not that he thought Cam was that shallow – that he was only attracted to the human light switch – it just seemed a little sucky to give up one of the first reasons they’d had to jump each others’ bones.

Also, he anticipated a trillion and one fights over who would get to fly the Jumpers after this.

Sheppard got a message in his e-mail inbox on the ATA-gene subject the same day Cam transferred to Atlantis. It came with the usual data dump that happened every time the Daedalus visited. He was, ahem, a little busy for the first forty-eight hours of Cam’s presence. And then most of the e-mails he got from the SGC were bureaucratic crap that should have been addressed to Lorne in the first place. But he tried to go through with it within about a week. There was less motivation to wade through the e-mails now, of course, since Cam was there.

It was a little odd to open his inbox and not see Cam’s name in there a dozen times before scrolling down, even if it was also great since it meant Cam was at the moment taking a shower in Sheppard’s bathroom.

Actually, Cam had e-mailed him during the three week journey on the Daedalus. Mostly out of boredom, evidently, since the subject lines of the later ones began with “I’m bored” and the most recent one was “Contemplating mutiny…is that bad?”

Sheppard read all of them – even though the sender was less than ten feet away – aware it probably made him an enormous dork.

He was about to click on the last one, when he realized that the date said it had been sent just prior to the departure of the Daedalus from the Milky Way and that Cam’s name was under the subject line, not sender. Sheppard paused, curious, then clicked it open. That was about the time Cam wandered out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel and dripping wet.

“I got an e-mail about you,” Sheppard said, over his shoulder.

“Yeah?” Cam ambled over, scrubbing at his wet hair with another towel. “From who?”

“Dr. Daniel Jackson.”

“Jackson?” Cam paused, arms still over his head. “What’s it say?”

“I haven’t read it yet,” Sheppard said. He frowned at the screen. “It’s really long.”

“Yeah.” Cam snorted. “You should see the guy’s mission reports. Everything is a dissertation to him.”

“Hmm,” Sheppard said. “This dissertation seems to be about why giving you the ATA gene is a very bad idea.”

“What?” Outraged, Cam walked quickly over to Sheppard. He was still wet and as he leaned over to look at the screen, Sheppard got a whiff of his own soap and shampoo.

It was sort of hard to concentrate on the boring and not naked at all text with Cam standing right there like that, but Sheppard figured this was probably an opportunity to tease Cam that wasn’t going to come up again. If the ATA therapy actually didn’t work, he knew Cam would be so bummed that razzing him about it wouldn’t be any fun. He used all of his Lieutenant Colonel reserves of self-control and calmly scrolled down, eyes skimming the screen.

“He says you…touch things? Specifically things that tend to activate particularly unpleasant Ancient devices?”

“Jackass,” Cameron muttered. “He’s the one that stuck his head in a…did I tell you about that?”

“No,” Sheppard said.

“Later,” Cam said. “Hit reply, I’d like to remind him that I wasn’t responsible for nearly as many ‘particularly unpleasant’ outcomes as he and his little crazy, thieving – and did I mention crazy – girlfriend…”

Cam then launched into a rant about events that were only second-handedly familiar to Sheppard – all the adventures Cam had had with SG-1 – and even if the man was making it sound like sequential disasters, Cam was also kind of grinning as he recounted it.

Sheppard took his time opening the reply application.

“I dunno,” he said. “Jackson may be on to something. Didn’t he Ascend?”

“A couple of times,” Cameron concurred. “Oh oh oh, I’m gonna put that, too. ‘Cause I’ve never died.”

“Appreciate that,” Sheppard said, sincerely. Then, he grinned slyly. “But I gotta take into account all aspects, and he thinks you shouldn’t get the gene. He Ascended, that’s kind of like an Ancient…”

“What?” Cam glared down at him, shoved Sheppard’s hands away from the keyboard and started to do it himself. “He’s not an Ancient. He’s just died a bunch of times and come back. He’s a contemporary glowing dude, occasionally.”

His hands busy on the keyboard, Cam’s towel was beginning to drift dangerously low on his hips.

The computer lost all interest for Sheppard. He smacked Cameron’s fingers away, deleted the rant, and typed his own reply:

Noted.

P.S. I’ll take good care of him.

Then he hit send.

“You forgot the ‘crazy-girlfriend-no-room-to-talk’ point.” Cam frowned, disappointed. Sheppard turned off the computer monitor. Cam’s face brightened as Sheppard turned towards him in the chair. “Take good care of me?” Cam asked, looking down at him.

Sheppard said nothing, just smoothly relieved the man of his towel.

~

The ATA-gene took.

Of course it did.

Cameron was gleefully happy about it, too, doing all the things every new ATA gene bearer did. Namely, that meant turning on and off every Ancient device he came near. This was why they generally made new crew wait, because every so often someone did something incredibly stupid like try to mentally launch the city. But Sheppard promised Keller that he’d be around to quickly undo it if Cameron did anything like that.

Evidently, Sheppard was the only advocate for the buddy system for new crew. That very same day, one of the new entomologists was left on her lonesome in the bug lab and managed to break something that was very, very important.

Sheppard and Cam were on their way to the Jumper bay for their inaugural fight over who got to fly, but instead they were looking at several hours trapped in a transporter when the city went on lockdown. Which was, he supposed, preferable to nasty Pegasus creepy crawlers getting everywhere.

Well, he felt that way until McKay told him the escaped insects were none other that Iratus bugs.

Sheppard might have gotten a little upset, then.

“Why the hell do we even have those things in the city?” he yelled at McKay over the intercom.

Seated on the floor of the transporter beside Sheppard, Cameron tilted his head curiously.

“To study,” McKay retorted, totally inadequately. “Why do you think?”

“But –” Sheppard began.

“Gotta go,” McKay said, voice abruptly high-pitched.

“What’s going on?” Cam asked. He put a hand on Sheppard’s thigh. “You look…agitated.”

“Iratus bugs,” Sheppard said. “On the loose. Some of the science geeks decided it’d be a bright idea to have direct Wraith ancestors on Atlantis. They didn’t run that one by me.”

“Iratus,” Cam said. “That the thing you sort of turned into?”

Sheppard scowled. “Yeah.”

Cam leaned back against the transporter wall. “Fun,” he said.

“Not so much,” Sheppard muttered.

“They’re just bugs,” Cam said. “Right? Squishable?” He paused. “Shootable?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard admitted. He patted his thigh-holster, wishing he had his P-90, too. He also wished the totally stupid and pointless as well as imaginary tickling would stop creeping up his spine.

He noticed Cam watching him out of the corner of his eye, his discomfort apparently obvious.

“There cameras in here?” Cam asked.

Not the question Sheppard had been expecting. “No,” he said.

Immediately, Cam scooted around until he was facing Sheppard. He reached out and put a deliberate hand on Sheppard’s belt.

“I think you need a distraction,” he said.

Sheppard blinked at him, as his belt was summarily unbuckled. He sat up from the wall so Cam could pull it free.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Cameron said. He looked Sheppard in the eyes. “I can take good care of you, too,” he said, and leaned forward.

~

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