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John knows what's going to happen from the first time they really touch. He knows it as soon as something clicks in his head, telling him that the aliens are flesh-and-blood but not, that they're Ancient technology at their core, but different from the city; that they're more and less.
He clamps down on the thoughts, ignores them as Rodney, Zelenka, and Kusanagi talk excitedly about the merging of technology and biology and Carson sits, calmly answering questions about surgery and what he'd need to get at the core components that John can feel are wrong, malfunctioning and slowing everything down. He looks over to where their guest – as much as someone can be a guest when he'd walked right through the gate shield like it wasn't even there - is standing, next to a doorway he'd barely fit under.
John steps away from the table and walks over. "Do you have a name?"
"Yes."
"What is it? Your name."
There's a pause before he says, "Iteration-582."
And as soon as he says that, John thinks of course it is, and he also knows there's a malfunction, something in the guy's thought-to-speech processor, part tech, part flesh, that means speaking hurts, and that it shouldn't. "Well that's no fun," John says, and he wonders if all of the guy's people are in a similarly sorry state. "Mind if I call you Jeff?"
The name doesn't suit him at all, he's about as unlike a 'Jeff' as John's ever seen. But there's no way in hell John's going to call him 582.
The alien gives John a look, long and impassive, before grating out, "No."
*
*
"What the hell are they?" McKay asks, the first time they meet.
John shrugs, because how the hell is he supposed to know? A handful of them had just shown up at the Alpha Site, waiting patiently, facing the gate, not talking, not moving, just waiting. They make the Satedans – people who, as far as John can tell, have a limited sense of self preservation and who thrive on rooting out hidden Wraith hives and inflicting maximum damage – look small, compact, and under-developed.
"Hi," he says when he steps down from the gate's dais, putting himself between Elizabeth, McKay, and the rest of the security team. "We heard you wanted to talk?"
One of the aliens shifts from watching the gate to looking directly at John. John looks up at the guy's grey face, noting the dark blue eyes, and the long-healed scar along one jaw, under a patch of tech that blinks red along his temple.
"Atlantis," the stranger eventually says, his voice low and almost-metallic, grating, his sharp teeth flashing in the bright sunlight. His hands – huge, and John guesses they could tear an arm off a Wraith with minimal effort – are clenched by his side, within easy reach of guns that look interesting and dangerous and fucked up.
John's fingers almost itch to get his hands on those weapons.
They're not exactly hiding where they're from – though they don't talk about Earth, ever – because in this galaxy, the Lost City of the Ancestors gets people to pay attention, and allies against the Wraith or whatever else is out there are always welcome. John doesn't look back at Elizabeth, and instead just nods, because she'd do the same thing. "Yes," he adds, for confirmation.
The alien's head moves the slightest bit, maybe their own version of a nod. After a moment he says, "Allies."
And John thinks thank god because he doesn't want to be on the wrong side of those hands or those guns. "Great." He flashes a smile, makes it wide and easy. "Major John Sheppard," he holds out his hand, but lets it drop again when the alien just looks at him. "Let me introduce you to our leader, Dr. Elizabeth Weir."
Elizabeth hammers out some kind of agreement that, from where John's standing, doesn't seem like it involves much negotiation. The main alien – "They look like a cross between an orc and the Borg," Rodney murmurs at one point – nods when she asks questions, answering with short sentences, or single words. He makes the most taciturn of the marines look chatty and boisterous. Eventually Elizabeth steps away from the camp table, where neither of them had actually been sitting, and walks towards John and Rodney.
"So." John asks, keeping an eye on the little group. They all look remarkably similar, though that might be the combination of identical armour, bald heads, and sharp teeth. There's evidence of fights and injuries, though. One is missing half an arm, another an eye. There are scars across faces, and armour that's sturdy, but sometimes scorched, and clearly patched.
She shrugs. "He's not exactly talkative, but the leader says there's an ancient treaty and they're here to reaffirm it. At least, that's what I think he's saying. So," she looks cautiously pleased, "we've reaffirmed it."
"Well great," Rodney mutters, "because I'm pretty sure we don't want them storming the gates."
John figures without a ZPM, they could maybe last half a day against a reasonably-sized force of these guys. So yeah, he's all for reaffirming a treaty. Whatever it takes.
They don't quite get a name for them, and they don't run into them very often either. It turns out the Satedans have stories though, told with grins and boisterous voices, about the destruction of Wraith hives in methodical, brutal, quiet ways. There are records, going way back, that suggest that the Wraith would be more widely spread today and dominating the galaxy without them. And John shudders thinking about that, because even with just a few dozen hives, hidden and scattered, the Wraith are still a species to be reckoned with.
"It's a strange mix of flesh and blood, metal and tech, but whatever works for them," says one of the Satedans, a formal liaison with Atlantis, when they ask him about the aliens. "They do whatever it takes. I heard they once ran a ship right into the side of a hive before it could land. We don't get in their way. No one does."
This is the highest praise John's ever heard from a Satedan.
"What d'you call them?"
The Satedan, a guy named Ronon Dex, who's young, fun, and deadly, shrugs again and says something that the gate doesn't quite translate, but that sounds to John almost like orcs.
"Android orcs," Rodney suggests later, to John and Elizabeth. They've got to call them something, and 'the huge, fangy guys with the big guns and some kind of integrated tech' is a mouthful.
"Maybe we should just call them our allies until we know what they call themselves," Elizabeth says after a moment, almost smiling.
"Giant robot orcs from outer space," Rodney adds, waving his hands a little, and Elizabeth actually does smile. "We could go with Grofos, for short."
"Absolutely not," John says, but he smiles too.
A shadow falls across his face and he looks up, struggling to focus and to keep his hand clamped on his bloody thigh. "Oh, hi," he manages. It's hard to breathe and he's cold, which means he's lost too much blood, and who would've expected this from farmers? Farmers who'd said they wanted to trade and maybe have a welcome feast, and who apparently also had the secret ambition to shoot at John's team with weapons that they absolutely shouldn't have, not based on the clothing they're wearing.
"Major John Sheppard," says a familiar, metallic-grinding voice, and John manages to focus his gaze long enough to see the scar along the jaw of the face looking down at him.
"That's me," he says, and coughs once, twice, and it hurts more than a cough ever should. "Though probably not for much longer." He knows how he sounds, weak and hoarse and on death's door. "You see any of my people around?"
"Yes," the alien says, leaning down, and the last thing John sees are huge hands coming towards him and the red lights on the side of his head flaring bright when he touches John. Then there's a feeling of something familiar settling in the back of his mind, before he blacks out.
He wakes up to Carson's frowning face looking down at him.
"Ah, Major," Carson says. "Good to see you awake." He holds up a hand before John can start asking questions. "One of the ah, orcs carried you through the gate – walked right through the shield, mind you – and stood there until a medical team arrived. A few minutes later, others came through with Rodney, Teyla, and Lieutenant Ford."
"They okay?" John manages, his throat feeling like it's full of pins, and the rest of him not feeling like much at all.
"All fine," Carson says, nodding. "You were the worst off. Also, you could have been a sack of feathers as far as the space orc was concerned. It was like you weighed nothing."
Yeah, I'll bet, John thinks, as he drifts back under. And through the gate shield? That must be a mistake.
Turns out it's not a mistake, because less than a week after Carson releases him from the infirmary, John's running to the gate room, gun drawn, klaxons sounding, and he gets there as one of them steps through the gate – and right through the shield – moves off to the side, and waits until ten more follow through.
The gate security team all have weapons drawn, though John's glad to see none of them have fired. "Hey there," he says as he stops in front of his friend with the scar. "What's up? And did your people just walk right through our gate shield? Because we call that rude around here." He ignores how much the run took out of him, holsters his gun, and gestures to the marines to do the same.
"Repair, Major John Sheppard," the alien says, holding out his arm.
"Uh. What?"
"Repair." A huge hand reaches out, fingers around John's wrist, and John's jerking involuntarily at the wash of sensation that's almost overwhelming, feeding him information about system weaknesses and suboptimal functioning, and oh shit.
"This is Ancient technology," he says, his voice faint, his mind almost reeling with the realization. "You're full of Ancient technology." He can't look away from the hand on him, from nails that are thick and sharp-tipped, and he's never noticed that before.
"Yes."
"Does the armour come off?" John manages, swallowing hard, and he hears, "Yes," again. It sounds strangely far away.
He shakes his arm free, steps back and watches, eyes not quite focussed, as armour and a shirt of grey, mesh-like fabric is stripped off in rough, economical movements.
"Holy shit," Rodney says quietly from behind him.
John just looks at bare chest and arms, at muscle and patches of lights glowing, soft blues and harsh reds, under grey skin and scar tissue. He looks and he thinks about what the alien needs, the feeling of anticipation, hope, and want - driving imperatives and more - that had been intertwined with the awareness of malfunctioning systems.
"They made them," Zelenka says once more, his tone incredulous. "Designed and grew and made them."
It's amazing, fantastical, and horrific all at once. And that tracks with what they already know of the Ancients and their experiments, their goals and their discards.
"And," Kusanagi replies, "abandoned them without the knowledge or skill to repair critical failures."
John looks up at the ceiling of the room and thinks about the city, trapped and waiting underwater for thousands of years, coming so close to collapsing. "Is anyone surprised?"
There's a long silence before Rodney says, "You said they need – repairs. Is repairs even the right word?"
John isn't sure either, but the word doesn't matter. "Some small things. Some bigger. I'll need time with each of them to figure out the details. Carson too."
"They are biological," Carson says. "In all the ways that matter, they're made of flesh and blood and DNA. Just not that alone. Surgery will still be surgery, even if there are extra steps to it."
John nods and jerks his head in the direction of the leader. "We'll start with Jeff over there."
He ignores Rodney's raised eyebrows at the name, and Kusanagi's startled smile.
"Zelenka and I will work with Dr. Keller to draw up a schedule," Rodney says, after a moment.
Nodding, John wonders how many of them are out there in the galaxy, slowly degrading, and just waiting for help, now that Atlantis is inhabited again.
"Better?" John asks, after hours of directing Rodney and Zelenka in repairing glitches and breakdowns, and watching Carson stitch Jeff up, methodical and thorough.
The alien nods, and John knows now that the tiny inclination of his head when they'd first met had been the result of a build-up of injuries, scar tissue mingling with glitching components.
"You're going to have to rest," he says, and the beds are too small, but they'd improvised with sturdy tables for recovery. "A couple of days, Carson says. So lie down. Rest."
"And you," Jeff says, his voice unchanged, still low and metallic.
Yeah. Food. Rest. He's got a schedule to keep.
He walks away, but he can still feel it thrumming through his veins, the knowledge of what's going to happen, eventually.
He doesn't doubt it, and he doesn't question the anticipation.
"How old are you?" John asks before the small group prepares to leave Atlantis. They're back in their armour, and they don't look all that different. Maybe their skin is a little brighter, maybe some of them stand a bit straighter.
Jeff just looks at him, because of course John knows. He knows how old they are, and how vast their numbers used to be, and how much they've dwindled, though they're still a force to be reckoned with, still deadly to the remains of the Wraith dominion.
Then the gate engages and they're gone, the gate closing down behind them.
Most of the time, John doesn't think about it. He doesn't think about Jeff's hand on him, curved loosely around his wrist. He doesn't think of the jolt of electricity or whatever the hell it was, so much like sitting in the Antarctic chair the first time, so similar except not at all.
He doesn't think about Jeff's teeth, sharp and gleaming in the sunlight at the Alpha site, or in the bright, blue-tinted light of Atlantis. They're teeth that could tear into the throat of a Wraith, and that shouldn't make John's pulse jump, it really shouldn't.
But it does.
He ignores the certainty that he could, if asked, pinpoint Jeff's location on a star chart, even though they have no way of communicating with the aliens, or any real idea of what their ships are like, or if they have a home base.
They know next to nothing about them, even as John feels like he knows them better than almost anything in his life, except for the city and maybe flying.
But sometimes, late at night, and alone in his quarters, he lets himself remember, with the briefest nod to sentiment, the flash of relief on Jeff's face, when John had let himself really think about the malfunctioning components; when he'd said, "We can probably do something about this." He lets himself linger on the look of curiosity and longing on Jeff's face as he'd gazed up at the high windows of the gate room, bright even against the night sky, before he'd walked through the stargate, leaving the glow of the city behind.
He thinks about that, and about corded muscle and hands that could break him in half, but that had been meticulously careful when touching him.
He imagines what it would be like - what it will be like - to straddle broad hips, his legs stretching almost too wide, huge hands keeping him steady. He plays out the fantasy, thinks about fucking himself, slowly and carefully, and then fast and not careful at all, down on Jeff's cock, big and hot, and almost too much, but not quite.
He thinks about how his hands would feel, splayed out along Jeff's chest, palms against warm skin and knotted scars. How he would lean forward, his spine curving as he moved, as hands with almost-claws tightened around his hips and urged him on. There'd be so many points of contact between them – fingers, hands, legs, cocks – and John would be able to feel it, the connection with what Jeff is, with what made him, like he does with the city, but so much better, visceral and messy and encompassing.
And he jerks off, fast and efficient, thinking about being stretched wide, about shaking apart from the inside out, and being put back together after.
He never says anything about it, not to anyone. He grins and laughs with women who flirt with him, and he slides out of the way, still grinning, when Rodney looks at him with something approximating want.
He turns down Ronon Dex when he offers, relaxed and happy at an Athosian birth ceremony, to keep John company for the night. "It's good luck," Ronon says, passing a mug of wine to John. "The Athosians know how to do things."
And it's tempting, it really is, because he knows Ronon would do exactly what John asked, more than happily.
But he shakes his head, and says, "Thanks all the same," and watches as Ronon nods amiably before walking away, following in the wake of Rodney's not-quite-steady steps and his animated, happy chatter.
They track a hive until it meets with another one.
They've seen this before, and the Satedans have too. More often than not, it leads to one hive destroying the other.
It's nothing to worry about, until it is. Until there isn't a battle and instead of one hive disappearing from the tracking screen, they both start moving in the direction of Atlantis.
They do the best they can to prepare. They evacuate non-essential personnel and most of the Athosians to the Alpha Site and to Sateda. They accept the offer of Satedan ground troops, and John's simultaneously grateful and guilty at the knowledge that they'll likely all die.
They place the charges that will sink the city if necessary, destroying it as much as possible, rather than leave it in Wraith hands. They send a last, desperate message to Earth.
They make their peace with what's coming.
"Ready?" Ronon asks, striding up to him, Ford, and Teyla. He's grinning, armoured up, and heavily armed.
John and Teyla nod, and Ford says, "You bet," and they're all quiet for a moment, observing the last flurry of preparations around them. Eventually, Ronon asks, "You know the Genii?"
Fuck yeah, John knows them, and he wished he didn't. His leg still aches sometimes, after a long day, where they shot him, where the skin is a mess of scar tissue. "We know them."
"Not any more. They're gone. Wiped out. Whole planet's empty."
"The Wraith?" John asks, after a too-long moment, because he knows. He just knows and there's something bright about it, in his head. Something fierce and bright and good, even though there shouldn't be.
"Nah." Ronon's grin turns sharp. "Rumour is it was the orcs. Genii must have fucked up bad. Probably tried to make a deal with the Wraith. Happens sometimes. People should know better by now."
And then he's walking off, long steps, and rejoining his people.
Beside him, Ford lets out a low whistle, and Teyla says, "John, do you think –"
But then there's the reverberation of something hitting the city, low sounds that are still too loud, and there's no more time for talking.
When the gate connects, in between waves of Darts and materializing Drones, John hopes it's reinforcements – from Earth, or maybe Sateda – and he fears it's more Wraith, planning to batter the gate shield with something until it collapses. But when he sees who's stepping through, he realizes he should have known.
"Major John Sheppard," Jeff says, and there is a literal army behind him, more than the ten he'd arrived with before. A lot more.
"Thanks for coming," John drawls, his heart stuttering, his voice calm.
"It is our duty," Jeff says, his hand reaching out to press lightly against John's chest, and John knows it has almost nothing to do with duty at all.
*
*
He's known this inevitability, has known it since they touched all those months ago in the gate room, surrounded by watchful marines and uncertain personnel.
John stands at the top of the stairs, watching the activity below him. His people and the Satedans, medics and soldiers, move methodically through the gate room, treating injuries, checking wounds, quietly confirming kills and cleared quadrants.
The orcs stand along the edges, given a wide berth by everyone, though they don't seem to notice or care. John isn't yet sure how many of them were lost today, another round of attrition.
"Major?" Elizabeth asks, coming to stand by him.
"Most of the city is clear," he answers. "A handful of teams are still doing sweeps. And we'll do another round once the sun rises."
"Do we know –" she trails off, but he knows what she's asking.
"Fewer than it would have been," he nods in the direction of the aliens ringing the room, "if they hadn't arrived."
"Yes." She's quiet, for a few moments, watching the activity. "Well. I suppose –"
"I'll go do a sweep myself," he says, as Jeff walks into view, looking up to catch John's eye. "Just to be safe." Though he knows it's not necessary, because he's already done that once. Maybe she knows that too. Maybe she knows it's an excuse.
"Do you need –"
He knows what he looks like. Filthy, bloodied, his uniform torn. Like he hasn't slept in days. He shakes his head. "I'm fine."
She frowns slightly, tucking her hair behind one ear in the way she does when she’s stalling, when she isn't sure what to say. "Very well, Major. Be careful."
He nods absently as he steps towards the stairs. At the bottom he pauses, exchanges a few words with Ford and Stackhouse, and then he's walking away, ignoring the urge to stop and sit, to get off his feet for five minutes or maybe an hour.
He feels the shift of the air behind him, hears the fall of heavy steps, before he hears his name. "Major John Sheppard."
The words make him shiver in anticipation, and he's fairly certain he's not alone in that. "Hey, buddy," he replies, "let's get out of here for a while."
There's a rumble of assent behind him, and grinning, John leads them away from the heart of the city.
Ahead of them, through tall windows, the horizon glows.
End