TITLE:  Four Military Men
AUTHOR: Lady Ra
E-MAIL ADDRESS: ladyra11@yahoo.com
RATING: R
PAIRING: Mega huge crossover: Jim/Blair, Gibbs/DiNozzo, Daniel/Jack, John/Rodney
SUMMARY: Blair, Tony, Daniel and Rodney all meet in high school and become good friends.  When their twenty year high school reunion comes around, Tony decides to get them all to attend--with their significant others.   
EPISODE SPOILERS: None
NOTE: Crack fic of the finest kind.  Timelines are all screwed up.  I matched them up in a way that worked for me, paying little attention to canon.  So, this is where all the shows are for this story:
Jim/Blair: 4 years post TS by BS (and I promise, they do show up, but not for a while)
Jack/Daniel: between 8th and 9th season, so Jack is still the General at SGC, and Hammond is the Director of Homeworld Security (and still alive), and SG-1 is just Sam, Daniel, and Teal’c.  No Ori in this universe.  And the biggest hiccup in this little fantasy of mine, is that Sam never went to Atlantis to be the boss there, because I’ve backed up the SG-1 ua couple of years.  So, let’s pretend the mantle of leadership went from Elizabeth to Woolsey.
Tony/Gibbs: 7th season, middlish
John/Rodney: a few months after Atlantis landed on Earth
Just pretend with me they’re all lined up and happening at the same time.  LOL
DISCLAIMER: I know they don't belong to me, damn it, stop rubbing it in.
FEEDBACK: I love friendly feedback.  I also appreciate people pointing out typos and continuity gaffes to me, as they are BAD!  I have no patience for negative feedback.  I do this for free, so if you aren't enjoying the story, channel your inner adult and use the back button. 
THANKS: There are a lot of thanks to go around for this story.  First, thanks to my vunderbar alphas and betas.   My stories are always so much better for their hard work.  For this story that includes:  Jills Journey, Susan, Morr, Annie, and The Frogg.  And thanks to Teresa and Heidi who every year at Media West give me great suggestions for my stories.  Also thanks to this site: http://www.imfdb.org/index.php/Stargate:_Atlantis, from whom I stole ordnance info.  And last but not least, thanks to all the people who sent me awesome manips for this story. So, before you go in, remember to suspend your literary critic because this is CRACK-FIC. 
FORMATS: Available in ebook formats epud and mobi.

(Thanks to Merry-Gentry to the Cover Art)

Four Military Men

"You going to your high school reunion?" Gibbs asked, waving the invitation in front of Tony.  It was taking place in about two months.

Tony grinned.  "I'm thinking about it.  Wanna come?"

"Not if the fate of the world rested on me going," Gibbs said firmly, a tinge of horror in his voice.  Gibbs had never been to any of his, and he sure as hell wasn't going to Tony's.

"Oh, come on, Jethro, it'll be fun," Tony pleaded.  "You'll get to meet all my geeky friends."

"You with geeky friends?" Gibbs said skeptically.  "More like all the popular jocks without a brain between them."

"Hey, I was a jock," Tony protested.

"I know," Gibbs teased.

Tony lunged at him and knocked him down on the bed.  "You calling me stupid?" he asked, his eyes narrowed. 

Gibbs took advantage of the situation to rock against Tony.  The free time they managed to be off together was few and far between, and Gibbs hated to waste a second of it.  He ran his hands down Tony's back until he was cupping a handful of ass, which he squeezed.  "Geeky?" Gibbs asked.  "Trust me, you were never geeky."  Tony probably came out of the womb with a rakish smile on his face.

Tony smiled at him, pleased at the implied compliment.  "Maybe not, but my friends were."

"I don't believe it," Gibbs said.

"I'll prove it," Tony said, jumping up.

"Hey," Gibbs protested.  "I was enjoying myself."

"Hold that thought," Tony said, "I'll be right back."  He moved to the closet and pulled a box off the top shelf, bringing it back to the bed.  He sat Indian style, close to Gibbs, and opened the box.  It was full of pictures in no particular order, and Tony started rifling through them, looking for a certain one.  "Ah ha!" he said victoriously, pulling one out and showing it to Gibbs.  "Me and my geeky friends."

It was a picture of Tony, already gorgeous--just as Gibbs had expected--in his letter jacket, smiling broadly.  He was surrounded by...geeks.  Three young geeks.  One with curly dark hair with blue eyes who looked like he was about ten, one with pretty blue eyes hidden by cheap glasses who was maybe fifteen, and the last one also had blue eyes, a fairly belligerent chin, and Gibbs guessed that maybe he was sixteen.  Maybe. 

"Told ya," Tony crowed.  He pointed them out.  "Blair Sandburg, Daniel Jackson, and Rodney McKay.  The Geek Squad."

They all looked happy enough, even if the one Tony had identified as Daniel Jackson looked painfully shy.  He turned the picture over and saw that someone had written: To The Future.  It was signed by all four of them.  "Who wrote that?"

"Blair," Tony said.  He took the picture back from Gibbs.  "Man, we were the unlikeliest foursome you ever saw," he said reminiscently. 

"Foursome?" Gibbs asked sharply.

Tony let out a laugh.  "Get your mind out of the gutter.  Jeez, these guys weren't even legal yet.  When I met them, they were all under sixteen, and only Rodney was sixteen come graduation day.  He was Canadian, and probably the smartest one of the bunch, but there’d been some sort of crazy school thing in Canada- something Rodney wouldn’t talk about no matter how much I bugged him-that made him lose a year or so of school and got him transferred to a school here in the good ol’ US of A.  For all I know he was doing field work for the CIA."

"How'd they graduate that young?" Gibbs asked, ignoring that last statement, sure it was Tony’s crazy imagination at work.

"Geniuses all," Tony said, staring at the picture.  "After we graduated we scattered to the four winds.  Blair headed up to Washington State, Daniel to England, Rodney to MIT, and me to Ohio State."  He chuffed out an almost soundless laugh.  "I wonder what they're up to.  It would be great to see them again.  If there aren't at least six Ph.D.'s among the three of them I'll eat this picture."

"That smart?" Gibbs asked.

"That smart and then some," Tony said.

"Think they'll come to your reunion?"  Gibbs was almost tempted to go to see what these guys had become.

"I have no idea," Tony mused.  "They weren’t at the five-year one, and that’s the only one I went to."

"I would have thought you'd make a point of going to all your reunions," Gibbs muttered, "Glory days and all."

"That was college," Tony snarked.  "And I go to those reunions.  High school, well, high school was high school, and except for when I could play, it mostly sucked."

Gibbs nodded as if he understood.  He did, actually.  High school was a long time ago, but it hadn’t been a good time for him, either.

"I just might see if Abby can track them down," Tony said, checking the picture out again.  "I'll send them a copy of this photo and ask them to come.  I’d like to think they'd want to see me, too.  Who knows, maybe the timing will work out for all of us."  He laid the photo in the box and put the box on the floor before pushing Gibbs back down on the bed.  "Sure I couldn't talk you into coming?  There'd be lots of blow jobs involved in the convincing."

"How many?" Gibbs asked, his hands happily back on Tony's perfect ass.

"As many as you want," Tony promised with a leer and a kiss.

Gibbs found himself staring up at Tony, at his handsome face and winning smile, and wondered, not for the first time, how the hell he'd ended up with him.  It scared him sometimes just how much he wanted the man.  "That's not all I want," Gibbs finally said.

Tony's look grew serious.  "Anything you want, Jethro, it's yours."

"I want everything, DiNozzo," Gibbs threatened.  "Just like always."

A different sort of smile appeared on Tony's face, a smile Gibbs knew no one else ever saw because it was meant for him alone.  "You got it, Boss," Tony said softly.

"And I want to hear the story about you and the geek squad," Gibbs added.

Laughing, Tony said, "Later," and he leaned down to kiss Gibbs.

As Tony's tongue tangled with his, Gibbs decided later was just fine.

An hour later, Gibbs fixed them both a cup of coffee.  "So how did you meet?"

"My geeks, you mean?" Tony answered, catching on right away.  He got up and retrieved the picture he'd shown Gibbs before.  "It was summer school."

"Summer school?" Gibbs inquired with a scolding tone.

"Yes, summer school," Tony responded with an impenitent grin.  "I sucked at school, Gibbs.  Not sure how much of a background check you did on me, but until I met these guys, I was lucky I hadn't flunked out."

Gibbs helped himself to the picture again.  "How old were you?"  He leaned against the kitchen counter, near the coffee pot.

"Sweet sixteen," Tony said with a leer.  "Nothing but sex and sports on my mind."

"And that's changed how?" Gibbs mocked.  "I thought you said high school sucked," he added challengingly.

"It did," Tony said, "other than the sex and the sports."

"You better start doubling the number of those blow jobs, DiNozzo."

Tony laughed and got up to wrap his arms around Gibbs.  "You are so cute when you're jealous, especially of my high school conquests."

Gibbs grunted in annoyance, but he leaned back against Tony.

"You do get that it was over twenty years ago, right?"

Shaking his head, Gibbs kept his mouth shut.

Tony snickered, "Face it, Boss, you just wanted me to be a virgin in your bed, didn't you?  It bugs you that I've slept with other people."

"So many other people," Gibbs grumbled.

"But I'm with you now," Tony consoled him.

Gibbs sighed.

Tony nuzzled his neck.  It astonished him how insecure Gibbs was in their relationship.  For a man who took life by the horns and flung it around like the world's most fearless matador, he just couldn't seem to wrap his arms, figuratively, around the fact that Tony loved him and wasn't going anywhere.  "You're stuck with me," Tony told him.  "Forever.  And don't they say that your body renews itself every seven or eight years?  That means, in about five or six more years, there won't be a part of me that's slept with anyone but you."

Turning around, Gibbs kissed Tony, long and hard.  Every time Gibbs had a jealousy attack, he had to take control, making sure Tony knew exactly who was in charge and to whom he belonged.  There was never any doubt in Tony's mind.  Gibbs was in charge, Tony belonged to him, and that was just the way Tony liked it.

"So, summer school," Gibbs said, pulling away, sitting down, taking a casual sip of coffee, as if he hadn't just had an irrational moment.

Tony shot him a lopsided grin.  "Summer school.  And that sucked.  I couldn't believe I had to go to summer school.  My summer was blown, royally."

"Why were you in summer school?" Gibbs asked.  "What did you do?"

Tony tried out an innocent look, but Gibbs rolled his eyes.  Grinning, Tony tasted his coffee and let out a satisfied sigh.  He bought the exact same coffee Gibbs bought, he made it the same way but, somehow, whenever Gibbs made it, it tasted better.  "In hindsight," he said wryly, "I probably should have shown up for the history final."

"Probably," Gibbs said dryly.

"I was young and stupid," Tony said in his defense.  He got another eye roll for that.  "I really thought I was good enough at basketball that they'd bend the rules for me."

"I'm guessing they didn't."

"Summer school with a passing grade, or I was off the team senior year."

"Good for them," Gibbs said sharply.

"Figures you'd side with them," Tony said darkly.

"You were the one who said you were young and stupid," Gibbs pointed out.  "You know they were right to push it."

"Yeah, yeah, but I was sitting there in class on the first day of summer school, surrounded by kids who looked like they'd rather mug you than sit next to you, and geeks who looked like they loved summer school.  I was in hell, Gibbs, hell."

Gibbs let loose an involuntary laugh, and once he started, he chuckled for a while.  "Sort of like Ziva and Tim, right?"

Tony's jaw dropped.  "Oh, my God!  I never thought of it that way.  You're right.  I'm still in hell."  Then, giving Gibbs his best flirty look, the one that always got his boss shifting in his seat, he added, "Except now I get to sleep with the principal."

He got a head swat for that, even if Gibbs' eyes did darken at Tony's look--and probably his words.  Gibbs liked to play teacher/student games.  His lover had kinky depths, much to Tony's utter delight.

"It was just like one of those stupid high school movies," Tony said.  "Every cliché in the book.  Some guy in a leather jacket cleaning his nails with a knife, another kid with his face planted on the desk, snoring.  And then there were the geeks."  Tony smiled as he recalled his first look at the three geeks who would end up becoming his friends.  Daniel had been nose-deep in a book, Blair had been bouncing in his seat like he had ants in his pants, and Rodney had been glaring at everyone.

"Hey," Tony said, slapping his hands on the back of the kid's chair in front of him.  His bouncing was driving him batty.  "Settle down."

"You got a problem, pal?" the guy next to him snarled.  Surprisingly, it wasn't the guy cleaning his nails with a knife; it was one of the geeks. 

Tony sighed.  He was in homeroom hell.  The kid in front of him looked like he was nine.  The guy to his right, the one with his nose in a book, didn’t look much older.  The kid next to him, the one currently snarling at him, appeared to be around Tony's age.  Despite his hostile demeanor, the kid looked like he expected Tony to pummel him.  He didn't think he'd ever seen so many expressions on a face at one time.  "What?" he finally said.

"He's not hurting you," the kid said.

"Yeah," Tony said back, "he is.  His bouncing is giving me a headache." 

"I wouldn't upset Rodney, if I were you," said a voice to the right of him, the kid who was still busy reading. 

Tony first checked out the now-named Rodney, and saw that he was pretending not to listen.  Then Tony leaned toward the reading kid.  "Why?"  Rodney seemed harmless enough.  Kind of soft around the edges.  Tony was sure he could take him down in a heartbeat.

"He works for the CIA," the kid said.  "They hired him after he built a nuclear bomb."

Tony's eyebrows almost lifted off his head.

But reading kid wasn't done.  "He already blew up someone's car."

Tony's eyes were so wide, he was sure he looked like some cartoon character with the eyes bugging out all over the place on springs.  "Donovan's car?  He blew up Donovan's car?"  This was priceless information.  Not that he would be giving it to Donovan, because the guy was a cretin, and only the fact that Tony played sports and had a lot of tall and bulky friends kept his face from being rearranged at the end of Donovan's fist.

He turned to Rodney, saying, "Awesome."

Rodney looked startled, then stunned, and then the corner of his lips curled up in a lopsided smile.  "Really?"

"Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy."

"Not that I'm admitting to anything," Rodney said quickly.

"Of course not," Tony said with a conspirator's nod.

"But if someone had set up a bomb to explode a car," Rodney continued, "that was a particularly nice explosion."  He looked almost wistful.

"You like to blow things up?" Tony asked, wondering if it was too late to change seats.  He wasn't positive he wanted to be sitting next to Dr. Strangelove.

The small smile had shifted back to suspicious.  "Why?"

"Oh, no reason," Tony asked, relieved the teacher chose that moment to walk in the door.

"He blew up some kid's car?" Gibbs asked, eyebrows up almost as high as Tony's had been.

Laughing, Tony nodded.  "Daniel was right.  You definitely didn't want to get on the wrong side of Rodney.  Even at fifteen he was a whiz kid and he could fix or make anything.  In the space of the year and a half I knew him, while I never saw him actually blow up a car, he mucked around with plenty of them.  Wheels would fall off or engines would drop out of the car.  It was sweet."

"He could have hurt someone," Gibbs said, frowning.

"All the stuff happened as soon as they tried to drive away, usually when they turned the car on.  Bam, engine on the ground."  Tony barked out a laugh.  "Rodney might have been a power for evil, but it was just against whoever he perceived as the bad guys.  Even when he blew the car up, at least according to Daniel, he made sure the car was away from any other cars or people, and he used a remote control to set it off.  He was very conscious about not causing any collateral damage.  Outside of the classroom, anyway."

"What does that mean?"

"He managed to almost blow up the science lab a couple of times.  Once I even saw military people come to check something out.  And, weirdest of all, Rodney never seemed to get in trouble.  Oh, he'd be in detention on a regular basis, but he never got expelled."

"You think that other kid was right?  Daniel?  That Rodney really did work for the CIA?"

"I know he was.  Not right then, but after a while, when big black Town Cars kept showing up at the school, and it was Rodney they were always coming to speak to, it was pretty clear that important people thought he was important.  Rodney, for all the fact that he was high up there on the geek-o-meter, had a scary reputation, and people messed with him at their peril." 

"Did people mess with him?"

"Only the new ones, and they learned pretty fast.  Mostly people gave him a wide berth.  Most of his mayhem was in response to people picking on his friends, although friends may be too…" Tony searched for the word, "hmm, too interactive a word.  Or maybe not interactive enough."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Gibbs asked, clearly enthralled at this peek into Tony's past.

"Rodney was part geek, part bully with a heart of gold, and had an ego as big as Canada.  He pushed everyone away with his sharp tongue and belligerent attitude, even though you could see how much it hurt when people let themselves be pushed away.  I have never met anyone who was such a mass of contradictions."  Tony snapped his fingers, "Wait, wait, he's a little like you."  He laughed out loud as Gibbs pulled him closer and slapped him on the butt a few times. 

"Keep it up, DiNozzo," Gibbs grumbled.

"Keep spanking me, and it will be up in no time," Tony teased, straddling Gibbs on his chair.

Gibbs looked like he was deliberating the situation, which only told Tony he wasn't trying hard enough.  He bit at Gibbs’ lips, which got a nice groan out of the man.  "You are insatiable," Gibbs complained, even as he returned Tony's bites with interest, nibbling along Tony's jaw and neck.

"Your fault," Tony said, as he turned his head to give Gibbs better access.

"I want to hear more about your friends," Gibbs muttered into Tony's ear before running his tongue along the edge, something that always sent delicious tingles down Tony's spine.

"Yeah, I don't think so," Tony said, "you start licking my ear like that, and we're done talking."

This time it was Gibbs laughing as Tony, with his usual wild abandon, dragged Gibbs into the bedroom.  Tony threw off what few clothes he'd pulled on, tossing them around the room. 

Then he turned his attention to getting Gibbs naked again and made sure that Gibbs wouldn't be thinking about anything but Tony's tongue on his body.

"Hey, hey," Tony yelled, pushing one of the wrestlers away from Blair.  "Jeez, he's just a kid.  Go pick on someone your own size."

"Thanks, man," Blair said, picking up his books.

"You want a word of advice?" Tony said.

"Sure," Blair said eagerly.

"Stop being so excited about everything; and stop thinking everyone else is as excited as you.  Because, sad to say, we're not."

"I was just talking about class today," Blair said with a confused frown.  "About the Fibonacci numbers.  It’s just amazing that these numbers actually appear in nature.  It's how our bodies are put together, they define beauty, and yet they've also helped prove any number of theoretical principles, and they're even used on the stock market.  I mean, that is so cool."

"Yeah, see," Tony said as kindly as he could, "it's really not.  And you need to remember that most people hate summer school.  They really don't want to be here, and they really aren't having a good time.  And the last thing they want is for someone like you to be suggesting that they have a good time."

Blair looked dumbfounded, and Tony felt bad about bursting his bubble.

"They hate it here?" Blair asked.  "You don't think Fibonacci numbers are cool?"

Making sure no one was overhearing, Tony leaned in, and said, "Yeah, I do kind of think they're cool, but I'm not gonna get beat up about it, because I'll keep that little factoid to myself.  Got it?"

Blair grinned in relief.  "I knew you were cool."

He was like a damn cork in water.  Shove him down, give him a dose of reality, and ten seconds later he was bobbing on the surface again.  Tony couldn't help but grin back.  "Where are your other geek buddies?"

"Rodney's in the lab."

Tony grimaced at that.  He'd almost gotten singed because of Rodney a few days ago.  "And Daniel?"

"I don't know," Blair said.  "He was going to meet me for lunch."  He glanced around a little anxiously.

While Tony didn't necessarily want the responsibility of keeping track of the three geeks from geekdom, somehow he'd sort of come to like the three of them, and keeping them out of trouble was turning into a full time job.  "Let's go find him.  He's probably reading somewhere, and he's lost complete track of time."

Blair was happy with that explanation, and he followed behind Tony, babbling on about Fibonacci numbers.

"Was he okay?" Gibbs asked.  "Daniel?"

"Not really.  As Blair and I got closer to the library, we saw pages of books fluttering in the air.  There were a couple of Hispanic guys who delighted in torturing Daniel.  Whether it was because the guy could understand everything they said, or because Daniel was smarter than they'd ever be, I wasn't sure, but there they were, ripping one of his books apart."

"How often did that stuff happen?" Gibbs asked, disturbed on behalf of these kids.

"Every day it seemed, but I'm sure it wasn't that often."

"Where were their parents?"

"Blair only had his mom, and she had a tendency to drop him off at the beginning of a semester and take off for parts unknown."

Angry now, Gibbs demanded, "Where did he stay?  Why was that allowed?"

Tony put his hand up to stop Gibbs' tirade.  "He was staying with a friend of his mother's, and I think no one got involved because he did so well at school and was always happy.  There was no reason to think something weird was going on.  Really, Jethro, the kid took happy pills, I swear.  The teachers all adored him."

"How about the other two?"

"Rodney was staying in a hotel, chauffeured back and forth by men in dark sunglasses.  It was very strange.  He stayed with me for a couple of weeks, once, although there was an unmarked car parked on the street the entire time."

"And Daniel?" Gibbs asked tentatively.

"Foster family.  His mom and dad died when he was eight, some accident at a museum, an exhibit fell on them, right in front of him."

"Quite a threesome," Gibbs said somberly.  "And your mom was already dead, too, wasn't she?"

"Yup.  We were all a mess in our own way," Tony said, reflecting back on them.  "Blair and Daniel seemed sort of normal if you got past Blair's being constantly high on life, and Daniel's pathological shyness.  Rodney was the really weird one."

"But you liked him?"

"I did," Tony said with a grin.  "He just had this way about him, like I said before.  He never stopped being prickly, but if you hung around him enough, you figured out his prickly nature was mostly a front.  I never ever saw his parents, even though I knew they were alive, so I think Rodney was trying to figure out life on his own, and given the fact that he was way too smart for his own good, with men in black shadowing him, I guess I can understand how he turned out the way he did."

Gibbs glanced at his watch and, with a sigh, got up and began to get dressed.

"Is it that time already?" Tony asked, disappointed.  Their weekends always flew by so quickly.  At least they hadn't gotten a case.  He hated it when half their time together was stolen by work.  "Can't you stay any longer?"

"It's already ten," Gibbs said. 

"And you do need your beauty sleep," Tony pointed out.

That got him a pillow smack in the face, but it also got Gibbs sitting back down.  "Okay, tell me one more story about your friends, and then I really have to go."

"One more story?" Tony asked, thinking.  "Okay, remember when I told you I broke my leg at Ohio State?"

Gibbs nodded.

"Well, it's not the first time I broke it.  The first time I broke it, I probably would have died if it wasn't for Rodney."

Gibbs looked intrigued.

"We were well into our senior year, when I decided that instead of going to the beach for spring vacation, I would go mountain climbing."

"Mountain climbing?" Gibbs asked, his eyebrows correspondingly climbing up his forehead.

"Mountain climbing?  Are you insane?" Rodney asked, appalled.  "Do you know the statistical probability of dying while climbing mountains?"

"Do you?" Tony asked.

"Well, no, but I bet it’s high," Rodney snapped back.  "What do you know about mountain climbing?"

"Nothing, but how hard could it be?" Tony said.  "I'm in great shape, and it's not like I'm climbing Mount Everest."

"How hard could it be?" Rodney practically shrieked.  "Are you listening to yourself?  People have to prepare for years to climb mountains, Mr. I-can-play-any-sport-on-the-face-of-the-earth.  Just because you can get a big orange ball in a basket, every now and then, doesn't mean you can--"

"Every now and then?" Tony asked, aghast.  "I have the leading average for the entire school."

"And tell me again, what's the connection between a big orange ball and looming death because of rock slides and avalanches?"

Tony rolled his eyes.  "Look, I'm only going to Mount Washington--"

"What?" Rodney yelled.  "Do you know nothing?  Some of the world's worst weather is there.  Did you know that the highest wind gust ever recorded on the surface of the Earth was recorded on the summit of Mount Washington?  Two hundred and thirty one miles per hour.  That would blow you right off the mountain!  Do you have a death wish?"

Tony hadn't known that, but no, he didn't think he had a death wish.  "Look, I'm taking the hiking way up, not the other one, the, um, the alpine route.  I checked, and the weather isn't supposed to be bad."

Rodney slapped a hand over his face.  "I'm surrounded by idiots.  Fine.  When are you going?"

"I leave Saturday afternoon." 

"Fine," Rodney said stonily, and he stomped off.

Tony shrugged his shoulders.  "Whatever."

Saturday morning, the housekeeper announced a visitor and Tony went downstairs to find Rodney at the door.

"Here," he said without a greeting, shoving a box at Tony.

"What's this?"

"It's a satellite phone."

"It's huge," Tony complained.

"Take it," Rodney said.  "You'll thank me when you're hanging on for dear life as the two hundred mile per hour wind is trying to blow your soon to be lifeless body off the top of the mountain."

"If I’m hanging on for dear life, the last thing I'll be able to do is figure out how to use a satellite phone, not to mention that the winds would have already blown my backpack away."

"Mock all you want," Rodney said scathingly, "but, oh, for God's sake," he bit out, “a two-year-old could use it.”  He dragged Tony into the living room and forced him to sit down.

What followed was a surprisingly interesting lesson on how to use a satellite phone, and Tony had to admit it was sort of cool.  He bet he'd be the only one on the mountain to have one, and it might help him score if he found some cute girls.  "Where did you get this?" he asked.

Rodney looked shifty for a moment.  "It doesn't matter.  They won't miss it."

"Did you steal this?" Tony was momentarily charmed at the thought of Rodney as a cat-burglar.  Although it was hard to wrap his mind around it, imagining Rodney, with all his not-grace, tiptoeing across roofs.

"No," Rodney said stiffly, "I'm just borrowing it."

"Right," Tony said.  "Cool.  Anything else?"

"Yes," Rodney said, reaching into the box and pulling out a box of energy bars.

"These look military," Tony said.  He'd seen them in some movie.

"They are.  You never know when you might run out of food, and all that stands between you and certain death is an energy bar."

"You're not the most optimistic kind of kid, are you?" Tony mused.

"It's a miracle I'm still alive," Rodney said brusquely.

Tony let that one pass and peered into the box.  "Anything else?"  But, the box was empty.  "Rodney, I'm disappointed.  I was sure you'd have some sort of ray gun to loan me."

"They wouldn't let me take it," Rodney grumbled.

Tony burst out laughing, even if he wasn't entirely sure whether Rodney was kidding or not.  "This stuff is great, Rodney, thanks."

"Really?" Rodney asked, as if he'd been expecting to get thrown out, his energy bars and satellite phone lobbed out behind him.

"Really.  Hopefully I won't have to use them, but I really appreciate it."  And Tony did.  Lord knows his father didn't give a shit.  Tony just paid for his gear on Daddy's credit card and never heard a word about it, unless he went over whatever arbitrary limit his father had set that month.

"Okay then," Rodney said, standing up, brushing his hands together as if it had been a dirty job.  "Try not to die."

"I'll give it my best shot," Tony promised him.

Rodney shot him a narrow-eyed look as if he didn't believe Tony, but then he left without another word.

"What happened?" Gibbs asked, leaning against the head-board, looking completely captivated.

"I broke my leg," Tony said with a wry grin.  "I yelled myself hoarse for help, but no one was around."

"You went by yourself?" Gibbs asked, as if just realizing the fact.

"Sure," Tony said, "Jeremiah Johnson?  One man against the mountain.  I was cool, Jethro."

"You were stupid, DiNozzo," Gibbs responded.

"I know that now," Tony said, "but back then, I was all sorts of cool."

"So, you broke your leg," Gibbs prompted.  "Badly?"

"Is there a good way to break your leg?"

Ignoring him, Gibbs asked, "Why were you yelling?  Why didn't you use the satellite phone?"

"Because, idiot that I was, I forgot I had it.  It's not like I was used to carrying around something like that.  But, eventually, I remembered, and I called Rodney."

"Did he give you shit?"

"Oh, yeah.  Mountains of it, but as it started getting colder and darker, and as I started to think I'd be spending the night up there, the entire freaking army came for me.  I'm serious.  Helicopters with men climbing down rope ladders, dozens of people coming from the woods, all of them armed to the teeth.  There were even men in black suits."

"FBI?"

Tony grinned.  "FBI."

"I thought Rodney worked for the CIA."

"Apparently the CIA thought this belonged to the FBI because it was a domestic crisis."  Tony patted himself on the chest proudly.  "I was a domestic crisis, Gibbs, at the age of sixteen.  It was like they were extracting the president."

Gibbs stared at him for a long moment and then started to laugh.  "Jesus Christ, DiNozzo.  Do you know what Fornell said to me after meeting you for the first time?"

"Nope," Tony said.  "What did he say?"

"You sure it's wise to have a domestic crisis on your team?"

Tony's eyebrows went up.  "He said that?  How did he know?"

"How the hell does Fornell know half the stuff he knows?  I thought he meant that you were good-looking.  He knew I swung both ways, and he knew my marriage was already on the rocks, so I figured he was telling me that I'd end up falling into bed with you and really end it."

Tony snickered.  "You thought I was a marriage wrecker?"

"The thought occurred," Gibbs said.

"Glad you waited.  I think, at least I hope, I would have said no if you were still married, and once I said no, you might not have tried again.  Although, now that I think about it, it was me that propositioned you."

“It took you long enough.”

“I had a lot riding on your answer,” Tony defended himself.  “My job, my friendship with you, my face.”

“What did your face have to do with it?”

“In case you felt the urge to rearrange it,” Tony said.

Gibbs rolled his eyes.  “Right, because that’s what I do.”

“It could have happened.  They might have found my unrecognizable beaten-to-a-pulp body, only my DNA telling Ducky what my identity was.  You’d have some perfect alibi with some redhead, which everyone would believe, because you’d actually show some emotion I was dead, maybe even shed a tear.  All fake, of course, because if anyone had checked the scrapes on your hands--which you said you got when you weren’t paying attention and ran some sandpaper right across your knuckles—they’d have found my DNA there.”

“You don’t think I would have washed my hands?” Gibbs asked.

“No,” Tony said, “because you liked knowing my death was actually, literally, on your hands.”

Gibbs chuffed out an amused laugh.  “And this was all on your mind, and it kept you from propositioning me?”

“I’m just saying that I had a lot riding on your answer.”

“Then I guess it was a good thing my answer was yes.”

“It was more: ‘get your ass in the bedroom, strip, and get into bed, DiNozzo’, than yes.”

“Same thing.”

This time Tony laughed.  He liked to think that Jethro hadn’t wanted to give Tony a second to change his mind.  Not that Tony would.  Ever.  He glanced down at the picture of his three friends.  He’d ask Abby to start tracking them down first thing in the morning.

It was a full week later before Tony had some time on his hands to go see how Abby was doing.  “You find my friends, Abs?”

“I found Blair Sandburg,” she said.  “He was easy.  The other two?  Whatever they do, they’re hidden pretty deep.”

“I might be able to help out with that,” Tony said, “but first tell me about Blair.  Where is he?”

Abby made a face.

“What’s that face for?  He’s all right, isn’t he?”

“You having any luck with your geek squad?” Gibbs asked, as he strode into Abby’s lab. 

“Abby’s making faces,” Tony complained.

“About what?”

Abby clicked a button and an article appeared on the large screen in her lab.  “Look for yourself.”

Tony and Gibbs both moved closer to the screen.  Tony read the title out loud.  “Student declares himself a fraud.”  He snorted quietly.  “I don’t think so.  Not Blair.”  He began to read the article; about half way through he asked Abby, “Did you find a copy?”

“Yeah,” she said, handing him something.

He glanced down at it and saw, The Sentinel, by Blair Sandburg.  “I don’t believe it.  He actually found one.”

“He said it was a work of fiction,” Abby pointed out.

“He’s the one who said he was a fraud,” Gibbs added, after reading the headline on Abby’s screen.

“Where’s he working now?” Tony asked.

“Cascade, Washington.”

“He got his degree?”

“Yeah, he’s got a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Sociology.”

“And does he still work with this guy,” Tony took another look at the article on the screen, “Jim Ellison?”

“They’re partners,” Abby said.  She snapped her fingers.  “You think Blair was protecting this Ellison guy?”

“He had to have been.  How else do you explain that they’re still partners, that Blair managed to get his Ph.D., and he’s still in the same town?  Some people high up on the totem pole in Cascade must have been in on it, too, and somehow managed to smooth all the ruffled feathers.”

“What’s a Sentinel?” Gibbs asked.

“Jesus,” Tony said, “an actual Sentinel.  I met Blair when he was a thirteen-year-old who looked like he was ten.  It didn’t take long before I was learning all about these mythical humans who had senses way above any ordinary human that would enable them to sense changes in the weather, or figure out where the herds were, or how to sense out sickness, or probably find a McDonalds out in the Sahara desert.  He was obsessed with the idea.  And he’s probably half the reason I ended up becoming a cop.”

“I sense another story,” Gibbs said.

“Ooh,” Abby said happily.  “Do tell.”

“What are you doing?” Tony asked Blair.  The kid was staring hard at a bunch of students across the football field from where Tony and Blair were.  Tony had been planning on cutting across the field to get to his next class, when he’d found Blair.

“Shh,” Blair said.

“Oh, my God, are you playing Sentinel again?”  Tony rolled his eyes, wondering how on Earth he’d ended up with such a loon as a friend.

“Can you imagine?” Blair said excitedly.  “If I was a Sentinel, I could hear everything those guys are saying.  Maybe they’re planning a crime, or they’re choosing their next victim.  If we could hear it, we could stop it.”

“There are other ways to actually hear what they’re saying, other than playing make believe, you know.”  Considering the fact that one of them was Donovan and he was with four of his hoodlum friends, they probably were planning their next crime.

Blair looked up at him.  “Like how?”

Tony crooked a finger at him.  “Follow me.”  Tony started his way across the field, staying far enough away from the other students, to keep them from being suspicious.  When he and Blair were back on pavement, Tony led them in between two buildings.  As soon as they were out of sight of the five kids, Tony put his finger to his lips, cautioning Blair to be silent.  He snuck around another building, orienting himself and his line of sight to the five kids.  “Not a word,” he mouthed to Blair.

Blair nodded excitedly.

Tony crept down the alley between the buildings until they were almost near the opening.  About six feet past the opening was the table around which the five boys were talking.

“He blew up your car,” one of the kids was saying, a worried look on his face.  “I think you should leave him alone.”

Tony exchanged a look with Blair.  There was no doubt they were talking about Rodney.

“I don’t care,” Donovan said loudly.  “That fucker needs to get taught a lesson.”

“I like my car,” the other kid said.  Tony thought his name was Lucas.  “And he didn’t just blow up your car, he also broke the next one.  Whatever you do to him, he’ll do it back to you in spades.  The dude’s scary.”

“We’ll wear masks,” Donovan said.  “He won’t even know it’s us.”

“He knows everything,” a third boy said.  “I think this is a bad idea.”

“You pussies,” Donovan said scathingly.  “Scared of a little geek boy?”

They all looked embarrassed at Donovan’s insult.  “Just grab Jackson.  He’s a little freak, too, all that staring and never saying a thing.  What’s up with that?  Just grab him and we’ll get him to call McKay.  McKay will come get him.”

Tony rolled his eyes at that.  Yeah, McKay will come get him along with the United States Marine Corps.  Had none of these guys noticed the brass coming to visit McKay?

“He’ll just call for help,” the first kid said, the only one of the bunch who seemed to have a brain.

“Not if we tell him we’ll kill Jackson if he doesn’t come alone.”

“Maybe we should grab DiNozzo,” the second boy said.  “McKay and him seem kinda tight.”

“Nah,” Donovan said.  “DiNozzo’s got money.  You leave money alone, Brantley.  Always.”

“How about that stupid curly haired kid?”

“He’d yell too much,” Donovan said.  “The kid never shuts up.  Just grab Jackson, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I still think this is a stupid plan,” the first kid said.

Tony was reevaluating his opinion of the first kid, as he was still planning on going along with the scheme, regardless of how stupid it was.

“McKay needs to be taught a lesson,” Donovan said grimly.  “We do this tonight, at nine.”

Tony waited until they all stood and sauntered off, like they were the kings of the playground and nothing could touch them.  He was almost tempted to tell Rodney their plan so he could see McKay wreak his revenge.  But Rodney was scary enough on a regular day, without throwing gasoline on an already constantly brewing fire.

“Wow!” Blair said, looking up at Tony as if he were a Sentinel come to life.  “They really were planning a crime.”

“And we didn’t even need to be Sentinels,” Tony said.  “Instead, we were like cops.”

Blair let out a gasp.  “Can you imagine if a Sentinel became a cop?  They’d be like a human crime lab.  How cool would that be?”

“Could we focus, here, Blair?  We need to stop them from grabbing Daniel.”

“Right, right,” Blair said, reddening a little, shoulders hunched.  “Sorry.  What do we do?”

“I’ll stick with Daniel, just in case they decide to move early.  Then, the four of us spend the night together.  We can go to Rodney’s and order room service.”

“It’s a school night.  Daniel’s foster parents might not let him go out.”

Tony wasn’t sure Daniel’s foster parents even knew he was alive.  “It’ll be fine.  Just go to class, and I’ll keep an eye on Daniel.  You tell Rodney that we’re getting together.”

“I think you should tell Rodney that.”

Tony snorted.  To love Rodney was to fear him.  Rodney never took well to being told what to do.  It was always a treat when the guy started in on one of his teachers, especially when he’d decided they were too stupid to live.  “Just tell him that we heard some kids talking about grabbing Daniel and we need to stay together to keep him safe.  Just don’t tell him the other part.  And don’t tell him who it was.  I’ll take care of that.”

Blair grimaced.  “I won’t.”  Like Tony, he was probably imagining the carnage the next day if Rodney knew who was threatening one of his weird family members.

“So you all got together?” Abby asked.

“We spent all night together and, as usual, Rodney went totally overboard.”

“What do you mean?” Gibbs asked.

“We get to the hotel Rodney was staying in and there were security people everywhere, like the secret service, 1980’s version of ear buds in their ears.  We get up to the room and the door was covered by at least three agents; we could see they had guns under their coats.”

“I really want to meet McKay,” Gibbs admitted. 

“He was a piece of work.”

“What happened?” Abby asked. 

“We spent the night watching TV, calling on room service repeatedly, and then we all fell asleep.  The next day, I snuck out of the room and asked to speak to the man in charge.  I told him that the real reason we’d all gotten together was a threat to Rodney, and I told him about Donovan.”

“You did?” Abby said, her eyebrows high.

Tony winced.  “I thought he’d get yelled at and that would be the end of it.”

“I take it from the look on your face that there was more to it?” Gibbs asked.

“Donovan disappeared.  Not like ‘boy missing’ disappeared; there was never a hue and cry about him disappearing.  But he never came back to school and then his family moved away, and that was all she wrote.”

“Wow,” Abby said.  “What was Rodney working on that got him that kind of protection?  How old was he?”

“Fifteen,” Tony said.  “And I don’t know.  I hated school, and I totally hated learning anything unnecessary, and whenever Rodney would start blathering on about whatever he was working on, my brain checked out.”

Gibbs grinned.  “I see some things never change.”

“Ha ha,” Tony said with a sneer.

“I didn’t realize you’d started your career as a cop so early,” Abby said.

“Early bloomer.”

Gibbs pointed at the screen.  “Sentinels?”

“I think he found one.  I think Jim Ellison is a Sentinel.  And I’m definitely going to mail Blair a personal invite to the reunion with that,” Tony pointed at the copy of the picture of the four of them that Abby had made and taped to the wall, “and hope like hell he comes.”  He turned to Abby, “How about the other two?”

“Daniel Jackson’s been declared dead,” Abby started, but she put a hand up to stop Tony from saying anything, although not fast enough to keep Tony’s chest from tightening at the thought.

“Twice, actually, but he’s not dead anymore.  But he was, for a year.  Twice.  Once about eight years ago, and once about two years ago.  His career as an archeologist sort of tanked a long time ago after he was accused of talking about aliens and the pyramids.  Now he apparently works for the Deep Space Telemetry Network, although what an archeologist is doing working for them is beyond me.  He lives in Colorado Springs.  I think.”

“How many Ph.D.’s does he have?”

“Two that I could find,” Abby said.  “Archeology and Linguistics.”

“That’s three,” Tony told Gibbs.

“That leaves three for Rodney,” Gibbs said, “or you’ll be eating that picture of yours.”

“All right, Abs, how many Ph.D.s does Rodney McKay have?”

Abby grinned.  “Three.  Two in Astrophysics, one theoretical and one mechanical, and one in Engineering.”

“Ha!” Tony said, vindicated.  “Where’s he living?”

“He’s been all over.  He’s been everywhere from Siberia to Nevada, and is now, apparently, posted in Antarctica.  And he,” she said, eyebrows rising and falling, pausing for dramatic effect, “also works for the Deep Space Telemetry Network.”

“Siberia?” Gibbs asked, eyebrows high.

“He and Daniel work together?” Tony asked.  He found himself a little jealous.  Then again, if he worked with them, he wouldn’t be working with Gibbs, so never mind.  “Got an address?”

“I’ve got two ‘in care of’ addresses,” she said.  “That was the best I could do.  And I’ve got Blair’s too.”  She held up three slips of paper, an address on each one.

“You’re a goddess,” Tony said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.  “I’ll give Rodney’s sister a call, too, see if she knows anything.  Can you track her down for me?  Jeannie McKay.  Canada .”

“Sure,” Abby said with a roll of her eyes.  “I’m sure there’re hardly any McKays in Canada .”

“I haven’t heard any stories about the sister,” Gibbs mentioned, as if that was an unacceptable oversight on Tony’s part.

“I only met her a couple of times when Rodney’s family would roll into town.  Rodney said she was totally ga-ga over me.”  He grinned.  “Of course, she was only twelve at the time.  It was Blair who was nuts over her.”

“Wasn’t he young, too?”

“Around fourteen, then, I think.  Not that it mattered.  He may have been short, but I’m convinced his libido came on line when he was eight.  He lost his virginity before I did.”  Tony frowned at that.  It still didn’t seem right.

Gibbs snorted while Abby laughed out loud.  “I want to come to your reunion.  Can I?”

“No,” Tony said, “but you could conveniently be in the neighborhood so if we go out for drinks, you could join us.”

Abby grinned happily.  “I can do that.  New York’s not that far away.”

“Good times,” Tony said.

Gibbs was reading the newspaper when Tony made a phone call.  He raised his eyebrows.

“Rodney’s sister.  Abby tracked her down.”

He debated the merits of pretending to read the newspaper, but the truth was Gibbs was getting more and more curious about these geeks of Tony’s.  Gibbs honestly hoped that Tony found them, and he got to meet them.  He patted the couch next to him, and Tony sat down, holding the phone out a little so Gibbs could hear.

“Hello?”

“Jeannie?  Is this Jeannie McKay?”

“Who wants to know?”

Tony laughed at that.  “God, you sound just like Rodney.  This is Tony DiNozzo.  Do you remember me?”

“Oh, my God,” she shrieked.  “Tony?  Tony “the heartthrob” DiNozzo?”

Tony reddened and Gibbs laughed silently at the moniker.  “Heartthrob?” he mouthed to Tony. 

“Shut up,” Tony mouthed back.

“Let’s just stick with Tony, okay?”

“Well you were,” Jeannie said.  “You were so handsome.  All the girls looked at you with stars in their eyes, including me.”

Tony rolled his eyes when Gibbs kept laughing.

“How are you?” Tony asked.

“Married.  But if I’d known you were going to call me out of the blue I might have saved myself for you.”

Gibbs could hear the humor in Jeannie’s voice, but his eyes still narrowed at her words.  He’d like to see her try to take Tony away.

“Are you happy?” Tony blurted out.

“I am.  Thanks for asking.  That’s more than Rodney does, although he’s getting better at it.”

“He never was one for small talk.”

She laughed.  “I’m guessing you’re calling for him, and not because you’ve suddenly decided I’m the one you let get away?”

“Sorry.”

She laughed again.  “Don’t be.  Although I am curious as to why you’re suddenly trying to track him down after all this time.”

“High school reunion.  It’s in a few weeks, and it just got me thinking.  I’m tracking down Rodney, Daniel and Blair.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, “the geek squad.  I still don’t understand why you were friends with them.”

“I liked them.”

“Felt sorry for them.”

“No, I really liked them.  And I never would have graduated without their help.  I was useless at school.  I’d be a high school dropout without them.”

“And they’d probably all be dead without you.  That high school might have had a good reputation for academics, but it was brutal to be a geek there.”

“Is Rodney happy?”

“I’m still not convinced that Rodney knows how to really be happy.  He can’t stop worrying long enough to relax, but he’s happier now than I’ve ever seen him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

There was a long pause.

“Jeannie?”

“The stuff he does, Tony, it’s really, really, really classified.  Really.”

“Does he work with Daniel?”

“Sort of,” she said.  “I can’t really explain.”

“Can you get a message to him?  To them?”

 “Yeah.  I can do that.  Hold on, let me get a piece of paper.  Actually, you picked a good time to call.  He’s actually on Earth.”  There was a long pause.  “I can’t believe I just said that.  Forget I said that.”

“On Earth?” Tony echoed.  He sent a ‘what the fuck’ look Gibbs’ way.

“Metaphorically,” she said quickly.  “You know how Mer is, head in the clouds, never on Earth like the rest of us mere mortals.  He’s sort of between projects.”

Gibbs watched Tony’s face, astonished at the look there, as if he was reading a whole lot more into Jeannie’s words than Gibbs would have.   

“Do you have a number?”

Tony rattled off his cell phone number.  “Tell him I want him to go to the reunion.  Tell him I’ll be there.  And tell him to bring whoever he’s dating, cuz I’m bringing mine.”

“Someone caught you?” she asked.

“Yup,” Tony said with enough satisfaction in his voice to make Gibbs preen.

“Lucky girl.”

“Guy.”

“What?”

“Lucky guy,” Tony corrected her.

“Oh.  Oh!  I guess you really weren’t calling to see if I was still available.”

Tony laughed.  “No, I really wasn’t.  But tell that husband of yours that he better treat you right or I’ll come up there and break his kneecaps.”

“You sweet talker, you.  Are you still completely delicious?”

“Yes,” Gibbs said.  “He is.”

Jeannie giggled.  “Send me a picture.  I want to drool.”  She gave Tony her e-mail address.  “Keep in touch.”

“I will,” Tony said.  “And have Rodney call me.  You know, while he’s here.  On Earth.”

“Forget I said that.  Seriously.”

“Bye, Jeannie.”  Tony shut his phone off.  “Huh.”

“Did she call him Mer?” Gibbs asked.

“Meredith Rodney McKay.  Named after some grandfather or grand-uncle or something.”

“Meredith?”

“I know, brutal, right?  It’s like that Johnny Cash song: A Boy Named Sue.  I think one of the reasons Rodney was such a jerk all the time was dealing with that name.”

“Was he your favorite?  Of the three?  It sounds like you have more Rodney stories than any others.”

“Yeah, he was.  I liked Rodney.  He was an asshole, but it’s like he had this huge heart, too, you know?”  His eyebrows raised high.  “Oh my God, that sounds just like someone else I know.  He was like my Gibbs training wheels.”

Gibbs smacked him on the back of his head.

Tony yanked him in for a kiss.  “Kinky bastard.” 

“What was all that ‘on Earth’ stuff?  You sort of looked like you believed her.”

“If there’s any possibility that we actually are in touch with aliens and going to other planets and shit like that, Rodney would totally be a part of it.  And remember how Abby said that Daniel tanked his career with talk of aliens?  And now he works with Rodney.  Maybe they’re both…” he trailed off.

“Both what?” Gibbs asked skeptically.  “Traveling on spaceships to other galaxies?  Do you really think the government could keep something like that a secret?”

“Kind of crazy, right?”

“Very crazy.”

“But she seemed freaked that she said that.  Why be freaked if you didn’t mean it?”

“Maybe he’s working on some secret satellite project, or the space station.  There are other reasons why he could be back ‘on Earth’ without him having to be fighting space monsters on Planet X.”

Tony snorted.  “You know what I don’t get?  In those movies the scientists of Earth call the planet Planet X, but when they get to the planet, the aliens say, ‘We are the residents of Planet X’.  Don’t you think they’d have their own name for their own planet?”

Gibbs stared at Tony.  “I hope that’s code for let’s go have sex.  Is it?”

“Totally.”

Rodney and John

“Put it on speaker phone.”

“Stop ordering me around,” Rodney complained, although he did as asked.  “You’re so bossy all of a sudden.”

John made a sound of outrage.  “Me?  Pot meet kettle squared.  No, cubed.”

Rodney mocked him silently as he dialed the number.  It felt weird to use a cell phone while in Atlantis.  They were sitting in Rodney’s quarters, the door to the balcony open, the sound of the ocean comfortably close, even though it was a different ocean than the one to which they’d grown accustomed.

There was a sizeable file on the table in front of him; sitting on top was a picture of one Tony DiNozzo.  “Jesus, he’s good-looking,” he muttered.  “He was already handsome in high school, but now he’s just ridiculous.”

John smacked him.

“Hey!”

“No drooling over other men allowed.”

“Says the bisexual Captain Kirk.”  Rodney sniffed in disdain.

“DiNozzo,” came over the phone.

“The plague?  Seriously?  Did I teach you nothing about staying away from deadly germs?”

There were a few moments of silence, and then, “Rodney?”

“The one and only.”

“Holy shit.  Wait a minute.” 

Tony had obviously put his hand over the phone, but Rodney could still hear him yell, “It’s Rodney!”

Rodney grinned at John.  “He still likes me.”

“Give him time,” John said.  “He hasn’t spent any time with you in twenty years.  I’m sure he’ll change his mind.”

“Asshole.  Wait, are you teasing?  This is teasing, right?”

John laughed at him, even as he leaned in for a kiss.

“Rodney?” Tony was back.  “How did you know I had the plague?”

“I have a file here on you,” Rodney said without an ounce of apology.  “Before I called I needed to make sure you weren’t a convicted felon, or some disturbingly effeminate fashion designer.”

Tony let out a laugh.  “Nope, but I do wear designer clothes.”

“Maybe when you see him you can rub off on him,” John said.

“Says the man who wears nothing but black.  Ever.”

“Who’s that?”

“That is John Sheppard.”

“Hello, John,” Tony said.

“Hello, Tony,” John said. 

“And I’m going to out on a limb and say that the person sitting next to you who isn’t saying a thing is Leroy Jethro Gibbs,” Rodney said.  “Am I right?”

“How the hell did you know that?  I know that’s not in my file.”

Rodney snickered.  “No, it’s not.  But Jeannie told me you’d turned gay and given your closure record, you’re clearly a workaholic, so you wouldn’t have time for an outside relationship so it has to be someone at work.  I can’t see you with that guy, McGee, you’d eat him up and spit him out.  You always did like people with power but the thought of you and Vance just does bad things to my brain.  So that leaves Gibbs.”

“Wow,” Tony said.  “That’s pretty scary, Rodney.  And what do you mean I like people with power?  How would you know?”

“Please.  Every time you got called to the Principal’s office you got hard.”

“Rodney,” John said.  “TMI there.”

They could hear someone laughing, but it didn’t sound like Tony.

“I think I resent this conversation,” Tony finally said, although Rodney could hear the humor in his voice.  “Nice brain work there, though, Rodney, and I sincerely hope the aliens on Planet X appreciate you, or at least I’m glad they haven’t sucked your brains out.”

Rodney and John stared at each other for a moment.

“Oops,” Tony said.  “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?  You and aliens, Rodney.  Talk about getting hard.  Every time we watched Dr. Who, Star Trek, Star Wars….”

“Shut up,” Rodney said fiercely, although the damage was done, and John was howling.

“Color me so not surprised that you hang out with them.”

“You are really, really, not supposed to know that,” Rodney said.  “Really.  Is this a secure phone?”

“Secure enough to tease you about working with aliens because of something goofy your sister said, but I have no idea if it’s secure enough if you really do work with aliens.  Jesus Christ, Rodney.  Really?”

“If you’re not shitting us, then no, this isn’t a secure line,” Gibbs said. 

The offer was on the table to just laugh it off, to say they were kidding, but Rodney found he didn’t want to.  He’d never broken a confidentiality clause in his life, but he was thinking about it.  He glanced at John who was shaking his head.  “It’s Tony,” Rodney said, as if that would make an ounce of difference to John, who’d never met the man, and had, in fact, never heard of him until the other day.  He’d have a rough time convincing John that Tony could be trusted.  Rodney didn’t really know that to be true, but he believed it.

“I don’t care if it’s Gandhi,” John said sternly. 

“Send us some confidentiality agreements if you’re not going to laugh this off,” Gibbs said.  “We’ll sign them.”

“Rodney will call you back,” John said, and he disconnected the phone.  “Rodney, I can’t believe you were about to talk about the Stargate Program with people who are practically strangers.”

“Tony isn’t a stranger.”

“You haven’t talked to him for a long time.  Decades.  He could be anyone.  Anything.”

“He was my first real friend.  And I don’t want to lie to him.”

“Then don’t call him.”

“Suppose I can come up with some reason to bring them in?”

“Then do it, but I have no idea what excuse you’ll come up with.”

“I never should have thrown Jennifer over for you,” Rodney said with a pout.

John snorted.  “Right, because the two of you had such compatible long-term goals.”

“How was I supposed to know she’d suddenly get all weird about me spending time with you, and expect me to get a job and find a house, like I wouldn’t be going back to the Pegasus Galaxy when you fly Atlantis home?  It was like she became this pod person.”

“That’s because you never should have been with her, and she knew it.  She was jealous.”

“Of what?”

“Of me.  Because we had more fun together than you guys did.”

“That’s true enough,” Rodney said.

“And we have better sex.”

“That’s true, too, although in my defense, I didn’t know that at the time.”

“That’s because you’re stupid.”

“Smartest man in two galaxies,” Rodney said, flipping him his middle finger.  “Wasn’t the Navy Chief of Staff just saying he wanted an Agent Afloat on Atlantis?”

“And you think they’ll just hand that prize over to someone like Tony DiNozzo?”

“Why not?”

“I get that he was your friend, and yes, he’s won a few medals, but he doesn’t have the best record.  Jesus, he’s been accused of murder.  Twice.  What’s up with that?”

“You’ve been a bug,” Rodney pointed out.

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“And he’s been an Agent Afloat, on the Seahawk, and he got high commendations for his performance.”

“It’ll never happen.  On Atlantis, in the Pegasus Galaxy, we could call the shots, but you know no one really cares about what we think here on Earth.  O’Neill doesn’t seem like he’s crazy about any of us.”

Rodney frowned.  “O’Neill just likes to act like he doesn’t care about anything.  But Sam cares.  She has access to O’Neill, and O’Neill has access to Hammond.  Doesn’t Atlantis fall under him through Homeworld Security?”  He snapped his fingers.  “Daniel has even better access to O’Neill.  He can ask him when he’s giving him a blow job.”

John’s jaw dropped.  “What?  Daniel Jackson and General O’Neill?”

Rodney sent him a pitying look.  “Do you never pay attention?”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.  You still don’t know half the names of your staff.”

“I know their faces,” Rodney said indignantly.  “And I know the names of the ones who have an infinitesimally remote speck of a chance of accidentally saving our lives sometime.”

“Like Radek?” John asked dryly.

Rodney snapped his fingers.  “Exactly.  Like Radek.  See?  I remember his name, don’t I?”

“It seems to me that he’s actually saved our lives on purpose a time or two.”

Rodney waved a dismissive hand.  “Whatever.”

“Tell me about Tony.  Who is he that you were about to do something that could land you in jail?”

Rodney let out a sigh and studied John for a minute.  He wasn’t sure how to explain Tony.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No.  We were kids.  Well, I guess, theoretically, we were old enough to have sex, but not all of us lost our virginity right after puberty.”

John rolled his eyes.  “Tony?”

“I guess you could say he’s the reason I’m as well-rounded as I am,” Rodney finally said.

This time not only did his jaw drop but his eyes bugged out of his head.  After John managed to pull it together he said, “I find that sentence to be inconceivable.  Well-rounded?”

“I said as I am.  As well-rounded as I am.  I didn’t say I was the poster child for Well-Rounded-R’-Us.”

“Explain.”

Rodney thought for a moment, stared at John for another moment, then looked down at the picture of Tony who just seemed to get better looking by the second.  “Okay.  It’s like he was my first John.”

“You were a prostitute?” John squeaked out.  “I thought you said you didn’t have sex with him.”

“No!  John like as in you.  A name.  Not a sex thing.  I mean, you are a sex thing.  With me.  It was like he was my warm up for you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Rodney let out a sigh of frustration.  “I was fifteen when I met Tony, when we all met Tony.  Me and Daniel and Blair.”

“Daniel?  Daniel Jackson?  You knew Daniel Jackson when you were a kid?  What the fuck?”

“Yeah, I knew him when we were kids.  He was fourteen, I was fifteen, and Tony was sixteen.  This other kid, Blair Sandburg, was the youngest; he was thirteen.  We spent about a year and a half together before we all graduated and went our separate ways.  We always meant to keep in touch, but, well, it didn’t happen.”

“Keep going.”

“The three of us, me, Daniel, and Blair, we were total geeks.”

“Color me shocked,” John said with a grin.

Rodney made a face at him.  “I don’t know what happened to Blair, but you can see what happened to Daniel.”

“Yeah, he buffed out and he’s gorgeous.”

“He’s a geek,” Rodney huffed out.  “One hundred per-cent geek.  And you’re not supposed to notice the gorgeous part.”

“Hey, you’re drooling over Tony.  I can look all I want.  Besides, you were the one falling in love with women all over Atlantis and thinking about getting married every time I turned around.”  He glared at Rodney.  “Idiot.”

“Well, come on,” Rodney said, picking up the picture.  “Would you kick him out of bed?”

“I would if you were in it.”

Rodney’s heart melted a little.  He laid the picture down and leaned in for a long kiss.  “If I’d thought I had a chance in hell of landing you, I never would have looked at a woman on Atlantis.  You had me from the moment you knew how many gate addresses were left to try to find Sumner.”

John smiled smugly.  “You had me from the moment you showed me the puddle-jumpers.”

“All that time wasted when we could have been having sex.” 

“Back to Tony,” John directed him.

“We could be having sex, instead.”

“We’ll get to it.  I want to hear the rest of this well-rounded business.”

“So here we are, advanced studies, all of us significantly ahead of the grading curve, although, of course, Daniel and Blair were both embracing soft science, so I’m still not entirely sure why I ended up being friends with them, but there you are.”

“There you are,” John agreed.  “And why was this Blair kid so much younger than you guys?  Was he an uber-genius?”

“No,” Rodney scowled.  “He traveled all over the world with his mother, and every time he ended up back in the states, they’d test him to see what grade he should be placed in.  He was smart enough, and well-adjusted enough, that they kept advancing him.”  It made Rodney wonder for the first time how Blair had fared in college.

“Okay, back to Tony,” John said.

“All of a sudden there was this other kid.  Tony DiNozzo.  Rich, you could tell just by looking at him.  Popular.  Good-looking.  Played sports.  A lethal ability to charm like some other person I could name.  Someone who had zero probability of doing anything but seriously mocking all three of us.”

“But he didn’t?”

“No,” Rodney said, still confused about it, to be perfectly honest.  “He became our friend.   He stuck up for us, kept people from beating us up, or beating Blair and Daniel up.  It didn’t happen to me that often, although he did keep it from happening at least once.  He doesn’t think I know, but I do.”  Rodney got lost for a moment in a memory of one of his omnipresent CIA watchdogs telling him how Tony had foiled that asshole Donovan’s plan for beating the crap out of Rodney. 

“And?”

“And he took us to games, and played ice hockey with us, or me, anyway.  Daniel didn’t skate, and Blair got slammed around a few too many times because he was so small, so they’d watch us play.  He made us go to the movies, and hang out watching Star Wars, eating popcorn and soda and candy.”

He watched John’s eyes get it all of a sudden.  “He’s why we became friends.”

“He’s why we could be friends.  Most of us, geniuses, that is, we’re not particularly well-socialized, and keep your snide comments to yourself.  I wouldn’t have had the vaguest idea of what you were offering me if I hadn’t seen it, experienced it, with Tony.  I wouldn’t have given you the time of day.  But I missed it, after we all moved on.  Missed it, but never looked for it, never made time for it.  Until you.  He was my first you.”

“As long as I wasn’t your second him.”

“No, you weren’t.”  He studied John, the second person in his life that had looked beyond Rodney’s brains and acerbic nature to find the kid inside who wanted to hang out.  Both of them equally improbable, handsome, popular, and rich.  Rodney knew John came from money, just like Tony had, but he didn’t think it had done either of them any favors. 

“You haven’t spoken to him for twenty years,” John said.  “You really don’t know anything about him now.”

“I know, but I don’t care.”

“Rodney.”

“All right, all right, I promise I won’t just blurt it out, but I am calling Daniel to see if I can do it through proper channels.”

“It’ll never happen.”

“You’re underestimating the power Daniel has over Jack O’Neill.”

“Even General O’Neill can’t make this happen.”

“I’ll bet you twenty bucks,” Rodney said.

“You’re on.”

Jack and Daniel

“Jesus, Daniel,” Jack gasped out, as he lay back on the bed after almost curling his body in two he’d come so hard.  “And what the fuck did you just get me to agree to?”

Daniel licked his lips, smacking them a little as if tasting something yummy, and if Jack had been twenty years younger, it would have gotten him hard again.  As it was, Jack didn’t think he’d be able to get it up for about a week.  Then again, Daniel was a bit of a magician in the bedroom, so it might conceivably be sooner.

“I want you to get this guy I know to be the Agent Afloat for Atlantis.”

“This guy you know?”  Jack could still barely think straight.  No pun intended.  He let out a beleaguered sigh, reminded himself that sex with Daniel was worth the consistently abbreviated afterglow because Daniel always wanted to freaking talk afterwards.  Jack tried to convince his brain to engage.  “What?”

“Rodney and I went to high school together.”

That was such a startling thought that Jack actually sat up.  “You what?  Rodney McKay?  I thought you hated him when he was at SGC a few years ago.”

“It was you guys who all thought he was an asshole.  I was in Russia for most of that.  By the time I got back, it was all over but for the grand finale of bringing Teal’c back and then Rodney was gone. ”

“And you don’t think he’s an asshole now?”

“Oh, he has his moments, like other people I know, but I like him.  You do, too.  Even Sam likes him.  She told me that Atlantis has really changed him.  And John.”

“Atlantis changed John Sheppard?”

“No, John changed Rodney.”

“And how exactly did he do that?”

Daniel looked pointedly at Jack, then wrapped his fingers around Jack’s flaccid penis.  It gave a little twitch under the magician’s hand.

“Rodney McKay and John Sheppard?” Jack asked, aghast.  “I did not need to know that.  Don’t ask, don’t tell, Daniel, for Christ’s sake.”

“Right, because you’re operating from such a moral high ground,” Daniel said dryly.  “Oh, is that some of my dried come on your stomach?”

Jack ignored that.  “And who is this guy?” 

“He went to high school with us.  He was good to us.  He kept me from being used as a punching bag on a weekly basis.”

“In high school?”

“Jack, I’d rather face ten homophobic marines than deal with puberty-crazed high school students.  I was a disaster.  I was only fourteen, two years ahead of everyone else my age, and even with that I could easily run circles around them on one leg, academically.  I was still being tossed from one foster family to another, and while Rodney, Blair, and I had a loose affiliation, similar to the weakest members of the herd banding together to avoid being culled, Tony made us a gang of our own, friends.”

Jack didn’t like thinking about Daniel’s life as a kid; it made his chest hurt.  He found himself predisposed to like this guy.  “Who’s Blair?”

“Blair Sandburg.  He was a part of our group, too.  Nice kid, also smart.”

“Was this guy…what’s his name?”

“Tony DiNozzo.”

“Was he smart, too?”  If he was a brainiac, it might make some sense to make him an Agent Afloat on a ship of super-brainiacs. 

“No, not really.  I mean he wasn’t dumb, but he was a regular guy.  Good-looking, popular, played sports.”

“Why was he friends with you guys?” 

“No idea,” Daniel said.  “But he was.  It was like he adopted us.  And we adopted him right back.  We helped him with all his classes and made sure he graduated with honors.”

“How come I’ve never heard of him?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said.  “I don’t talk about my childhood very much, and he was a part of it.  But he was a good part of it.  I never spoke to him again, though, after I left for Chicago.”

“And suddenly you want him to be Agent Afloat?  I think I missed something.”

“It was Rodney’s idea, but it’s a good one.  Apparently he works for NCIS, and he’s been an Agent Afloat before.”

Jack thought about it for a minute, flopping back down on the bed.  A memory trickled through his brain.  “Wait a minute.”  He lifted himself up by his elbows.  “You said two names.”

“Leroy Jethro Gibbs,” Daniel said.

“And I suppose you want him for President?”

Daniel grinned at him.  “No, I want them both for Agent Afloat.  Apparently they’re together.”

“More gayness?  Jesus.”

“Would you want us to be assigned different places?”

No, Jack would not.  In fact, there’d been some disconcerting talk about sending him to Washington for a desk job under Hammond, and it was making Jack think about retiring.  “Do we know anything about these guys?”

Daniel got up and left the bedroom.  Jack stayed up on his elbows so he could watch his ass; it deserved the attention.  Daniel came back with two large, and thick, manila envelopes.  “Rodney had these couriered over to me.”

“To here?” Jack asked.  They were at his house, not Daniel’s.

“Jack,” Daniel said nicely, “he knows.  And I know you like to think we’re some big secret, but we’re not.  Everyone knows.”

“They do not!” Jack yelled.

“They do.  General Hammond sent us a joint Christmas card.  So did Lou Feretti.”

“They did not!”

“They did.”

Jack collapsed back on the bed.  “Well, fuck.”

“You’ll notice that no one has tried to court-martial you.”

Jack had noticed that.  Or was noticing it right now.  “A joint Christmas card?  Made out to who?  Mr. and Mrs. Jack O’Neill?”  He grinned at Daniel.

Daniel made an oh-you-are-so-not-funny face at Jack.  He sat down on the bed and slapped the envelopes on Jack’s stomach. 

“Ow.”  He sat up, and opened one envelope, pulling out the package of papers within.  On top sat a photo.  “Who’s this?”

“That’s Tony,” Daniel said.  “Wow.”

“He looks like a freaking movie star,” Jack complained.

“Wow,” Daniel said again, taking the photo.  “He was already handsome in high school, but wow.”

“Stop saying that.”  Jack opened the other envelope and slid out another set of papers with a photo on top.  “This must be Leroy.”

Daniel picked up that picture.  “He’s a very attractive man.”  He held the two pictures next to each other and let out a growl.  “They’d be pretty to watch.”

Jack snatched the pictures out of his hands.  “Forget it.”

Daniel started to laugh.  “You’re too easy, Jack.”  He crawled over to him and kissed him.  “All I want is you.”

“You better,” Jack snapped.

“You’re not really jealous, are you?” Daniel asked, looking surprised.

“Look at him,” Jack said, holding up Tony’s picture.  “I’ve never heard of the guy, and suddenly I find out he’s your BFF from high school, and you want him on Atlantis as Agent Afloat.”

“You’ll notice I live in Colorado Springs.  John’s the one who’ll be pretending he’s not nervous about Tony and Rodney.”

Jack felt a moment’s pity for John.  Then, again, John was a good-looking guy, too.  “I think you should know that John Sheppard and I went to grade school together.”

Laughing, Daniel pushed all the paperwork aside and straddled Jack’s thighs.  “Ready for another round?”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“I beg to differ,” Daniel said, wrapping a hand around Jack’s not-so-flaccid erection.

“How do you do that?” Jack asked.  He’d never had this kind of recovery time, at least not in a long time.  Sometimes he thought it had to do with Daniel having ascended a couple of times, that he brought some sex mojo back with him.

Daniel reached for a condom from the bedside table and worked it over Jack and then lifted up and sank down.  Jack groaned as Daniel’s heat surrounded him.  Then the little fucker said, “So, Tony and Jethro?”

“No promises,” Jack managed to get out, as Daniel lifted himself up and down again.  He flipped them over so Daniel was underneath him.  “But I’ll try.  You jerk.  Now shut up and let me fuck you.”

“George?  It’s Jack O’Neill.”

“Jack, it’s good to hear from you.”

“How’s Washington, D.C. treating you?”

“Things are fine.  The girls love it here.  I was afraid when I uprooted them that they’d resent it, but they’ve taken to city living like a fish to water.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Jack said.  This was one of the nicer things that had happened since he’d been made a general.  He and George were more buddies now than senior to subordinate officer.  Hammond had been the finest officer Jack had ever served under, and it was a privilege to be his friend as well.

“I’m guessing you didn’t call to check in on my granddaughters,” Hammond prodded.

“I need a favor.  And it’s a crazy favor.  Feel free to say no.  Seriously.”

“Why are you asking, then?” Hammond said with a laugh.

“Daniel’s got some bug up his butt.  Rodney McKay, too.  How I ended up in the middle of it is beyond me.”

Hammond laughed again.  “Dr. Jackson always could drag you into his personal crusades.  I know it always meant a lot to him.”

“That I was easy?” Jack groused.

“No, that you valued him and what he believed in.”

Jack wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, not even sure how the conversation had come around to him and Daniel.  He thought of how Daniel had sworn that the Christmas card from Hammond had come addressed to the two of them. 

Kindly, Hammond got back to the subject at hand.  “What can I do for Daniel, then?”

“He has two names of people he’d like brought to Atlantis as Agents Afloat.”

“Does he now?  And who might they be?”

“NCIS agent named Tony DiNozzo, and his boss, Leroy Jethro Gibbs.”

“Jethro Gibbs?”  Hammond sounded surprised.

“You know him?”

“I do.  Our paths cross from time to time.  He’s a good man.  Someone you want on your side.”

“How about DiNozzo?  Heard anything about him?” 

“No, but Gibbs doesn’t suffer fools lightly.  If he’s on Gibbs’ team, he’s good.”

Jack felt better about the whole thing with Hammond’s endorsement of Gibbs, and his assumptions about Tony. 

“Why does Dr. Jackson want these two?”

“Tony went to high school with Daniel and Rodney.  Apparently he kept them from getting their asses kicked on a regular basis.”

“Not the normal sort of a recommendation for an Agent Afloat position, but I’ll take it under advisement.”  Hammond sounded like he was laughing again.  “Besides, I’d take it kindly thinking you’d owe me a favor.”

Jack winced, even though he said, “I’d do just about anything for you, George.  But this favor wouldn’t have anything to do with me moving to D.C., would it?”  There was a pause while Jack held his breath.

“No, Jack, I don’t think this is the place for you.   Not that you wouldn’t excel at anything you put your mind to.  No, I’ve got something else in mind.”

“Want to drop a hint?”

“Not yet.  Besides, I haven’t gotten you your two fellows yet.  As much as I’d like to do Dr. Jackson a favor, I can’t just give a position like this away to two men who might not be able to handle the job.  I need to do a little research.”

“McKay already has dossiers on both of them.  Want me to Fed Ex the info out?”

Hammond chuckled again.  “Yes.  I’m sure Dr. McKay did a more thorough job than anyone on my staff could.  I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll get them out to you today.  And thanks, George.”

“Don’t thank me yet.  And maybe you should wait until I tell you what I want from you.”

Jack took a risk and said, “As long as it doesn’t take me away from Daniel, I’ll be okay with it.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, to either of you.  True love’s a rare enough commodity without throwing up stumbling blocks.  Take care, Jack.  I’ll be looking for those files.”  Hammond hung up.

Jack stared at the phone for a long moment and then, with a grin, he hung up too.

“DiNozzo, my office.  And find Gibbs and tell him to get up here, too.”

Tony looked up at the command center and saw Vance already disappearing through the door at the top of the stairs.

“Someone’s in trouble,” Tim said in a sing-song tone.

“I know,” Tony said.  “I feel like I’ve been called to the Principal’s office.  It’s bringing back bad memories.”

“Did you do something wrong?” Ziva asked.

Tony winced.   “Not that I know of.  Or nothing I was caught doing.”

“Maybe that woman complained about you,” Tim suggested.

“What woman?”

“The woman you were questioning yesterday.  The one where in the middle of asking her questions, you decided to imitate Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot, the part where he was in drag.”

Tony smiled smugly.  “That was a great impression, though.  Wasn’t it?  Admit it.”

Tim just grumbled.

“Ha!” Tony said triumphantly.  “By the way, where is Gibbs?”  Tony hadn’t seen Jethro for a couple of hours.

“Right here,” Gibbs said.

Tony still had no idea how he did that.  “Vance wants to see us.”

“What about?”

“I have no idea.  He bellowed, and then he went back to his office.”

“Did he look pissed?”

“Does he ever not look pissed?” Tony asked.

“Good point.  Let’s go.”

They headed up the stairs.  “You don’t think he knows about us, do you?” Tony asked under his breath.

“I doubt he’d talk to us both about it, if he did.”

Tony supposed that was true.  He’d probably yell at Gibbs and then, later, fire Tony.  They entered the first door and got waved into Vance’s office by his secretary.

“What’s going on?” Gibbs said in his usual you’re-not-the-boss-of-me tone he always used on Vance.  Tony watched as Vance’s jaw tightened.  He never got tired of Gibbs going all alpha on everyone’s ass.

“You’ve been reassigned.”

Gibbs’ eyebrows went up, almost off his forehead.  “What?”

“What?” Tony echoed. 

“Both of you.  You leave for San Francisco tonight.”

“You can’t just reassign us,” Gibbs said.

“We’re civilians,” Tony added.  Although Gibbs was more military than civilian.  He was the epitome of the expression: once a Marine, always a Marine.  But Tony didn’t think Gibbs would just let himself be moved across the country.

“On whose orders?” Gibbs demanded.  He looked as flabbergasted as Tony had ever seen him.

“Major General George Hammond.”

Gibbs looked even more surprised.  “ Hammond?”

“You know him, Boss?”

“We’ve crossed paths.”  Gibbs seemed at a loss for words.  “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” Vance said irritably.  “But when I started asking questions, I was told to mind my own business.  And when I started asking about Hammond, I was told he was none of my business.  It was made clear to me that all I needed to know was that he wasn’t someone you said no to.”

Now Tony could see how angry Vance was.  He was sure it had more to do with breaking up a team with the highest closure rate, and being treated like a low-level messenger, than losing the two of them.  Deep inside, a part of Vance had to be doing a jig at the thought they might be out of his hair.

“I can say no to him,” Gibbs said stubbornly.

Tony had a sudden truly random thought.

“You just call them back and tell them we said no,” Gibbs said.

“Wait,” Tony said.  He grabbed Gibbs’ arm and pulled him to the corner of Vance’s office.  “Rodney did this.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Rodney McKay.  You told him we’d sign confidentiality agreements, and this is him, reading us in.”

“It’s bullshit.  I’m not leaving my home.”

Tony leaned in and whispered.  “Aliens, boss.  Aliens.  Tell me there’s not some part of you that totally wants to fly in a spaceship.”

Gibbs glared at Tony, but he didn’t contradict him.  “That son of a bitch.  Why didn’t he call you and ask?”

“He needs to talk to us where he can control the flow of information and guarantee our silence.”  And it was typical Rodney to not call to give him a head’s up.  Even twenty years later, some things never changed.

“You really think this is real?”  Gibbs looked skeptical.

“I’m willing to take a trip to San Francisco to find out,” Tony said.  “If it is bullshit, we enjoy a little vacation, and then we come back home.”

“Gentlemen,” Vance said with deep annoyance.  “Are you done telling secrets?”

Gibbs studied Tony for a moment, and Tony put his best Trust-Me face on.  Maybe there weren’t aliens, maybe this was all Tony’s imagination running away with him, but just the chance to see Rodney made this trip important.  And if there were aliens?  Sweet Jesus.  Spaceships?  Ray guns?  Tony wanted in.

“Fine,” Gibbs said.  “We’ll go.” 

This time it was Vance’s jaw that dropped.  “Fine?  That’s it?  Fine?  You’re going?”

“On vacation,” Gibbs clarified.  “We’ll go, see what it’s about, and then, more than likely, we’ll be back.”

“You have an idea what this is, don’t you?” Vance asked.

“Yeah,” Gibbs said, “something crazy.”

Tony had to fight to keep the stupid ass grin off his face. 

“Don’t replace us yet,” Gibbs added.

“What should I do with McGee and David in the meantime?” Vance said.

“You’re the boss,” Gibbs told him.  “You figure it out.” 

“Just tell them we’re helping out NCIS San Francisco on a case,” Tony suggested.  He didn’t want to lie to them, but it’s not like he really had anything to tell them, and he suspected once he knew, he wouldn’t be able to tell them.  That would suck, but they’d land on their feet.  Tony was half-convinced McGee would be President one day, and Ziva would, well, actually Tony had no idea what Ziva would be doing ten or twenty years from now.  If she actually became a US citizen, she could be McGee’s Chief of Staff.  No one would fuck with the President if she was the one they had to go through to get to him.

Vance muttered under his breath.  He handed them their travel documents.  “Get out of my office.”

Tony was only too happy to oblige.  He strode to the door, flung it open, and crossed to the other door, flinging that one open.  Making sure Gibbs was behind him, he jogged down the stairs.

“What happened?” Tim asked.

“Got a case,” Tony said, opening his drawer and pulling out his gun, slipping it into his holster.  “In San Francisco.”

McGee had started to stand, but he sat back down.  “What?”

“Just me and Gibbs are going,” Tony crowed.  “Sorry, kids.”

“What are you going to be doing?” Ziva asked.

“That’s classified.”

Gibbs smacked him in the back of his head. 

“Sorry, boss.”

“This is stupid,” Gibbs told him.

“You better go tell Abby.  She’ll never forgive you if you just leave.”

Gibbs glowered at Tony.  “Stupid,” he said again.

Tony waited anxiously for Gibbs to change his mind.  In a lot of ways it was stupid.  Gibbs didn’t know Rodney.  Shit, Tony didn’t even know him.  Not anymore.  For all he knew, Rodney could be involved in some seriously messed up stuff.  Unsanctioned wetworks or something.  But honestly?  Tony didn’t care.  He wanted to see Rodney, maybe see Daniel, too, and get read in on something that Vance didn’t have the clearance for.  Tony laughed out loud.

Gibbs smacked him again.  “I’m going to talk to Abby.”

“I’m going home to pack,” Tony told Gibbs’ back.

Gibbs waved a hand over his shoulder, which Tony decided to take as permission to pack for him, too.  Tony threw the strap to his backpack over his shoulder.  “See you two later.”  As he left the bullpen, he started singing, “I left my heart, in San Francisco.”

Jim and Blair

“I’m telling you, Chief, there’s a city there, right off the bay, big as life.”

Blair squinted into the sunset.  All he saw was ocean, dotted with sailboats, and the orange steel of the Golden Gate Bridge.  They’d come to San Francisco for a long weekend to get away from the never-ending rainy weather in Cascade, and had decided to stroll across the bridge.  “I don’t see anything.  And if there was a city, a whole city, I think I’d be able to see something.  Are you sure you’re not seeing something much farther away?”

Jim pointed at the empty ocean with some exasperation.  “How can you not see it?  It’s all spires and glass and piers.  I can see people on it, too.  It’s got some sort of clear dome over it.”

Blair wanted to believe Jim, he really did.  He sighed.  “Can you hear what they’re saying?”

Jim concentrated for a moment but then he shook his head.  “It’s too noisy here.  Too many cars passing by.”

“Okay, let’s say I believe you.”

Jim glared at him.

“Why would there be a city there?  How could there be a city there?  A city that only you can see.  I think we should go over what you ate today.”

“In case something I ate made me see an invisible city?” Jim asked.  “Come on, Blair.  I know what I’m seeing.”

Blair watched Jim stare out at the ocean at whatever it was he was seeing.  Blair never got tired of watching Jim use his senses, never got tired of knowing that his partner, in every sense of the word, was a Sentinel.  His Sentinel.

“Several of those sailboats have armed men in them,” Jim said.  “And there’re a few too many helicopters in the sky.”

Now that Jim had mentioned it, Blair could see dots in the air, far out in the distance.  He’d thought they were birds.  “Armed men?  Why would there be armed men on sailboats?”

“And there are three submarines, too.  One of them is Russian.”

“Are you serious?”  Blair wished he’d brought his binoculars.  “Russian?”  He suddenly felt like he was in a Tom Clancy novel.

“They’re protecting something.”

“An invisible city,” Blair said dryly.

“We’re renting a boat tomorrow.”

“You’re going out on the ocean?  You hate the ocean.”

“I’ll be okay if you’re with me.”

Blair smiled at that.  “And how about the sailboats with guns and the helicopters?”

“They’re making timed sweeps.  I should be able to work around them.  Besides, if they catch us, you can dazzle them with bullshit, Chief.”

“Thanks.  I’ll start working on a good story now.”  He watched as a helicopter flew by.  “I want to go on record and say this is a bad idea.”

“If you do this with me, I’ll go to your stupid reunion,” Jim bribed him.

Blair laughed out loud.  “Right.  Because only you would equate taking our lives in our hands by going out into shark-infested waters with deadly currents to try to evade boats with armed men and helicopters armed, no doubt, with even deadlier weapons, to going to a reunion.”

“No, I’d rather go out there than go to a reunion.”

Laughing again, Blair nudged Jim with his shoulder.  “Jerk.”

“And how come I never heard anything about this Tony DiNozzo?” Jim asked.

“Are you jealous?” Blair asked, surprised.  How could Jim think anyone could interest Blair after him?  Jim had ruined him for anyone else.  “Don’t be jealous.  And you never heard of him because we don’t really talk about our childhoods very much.  You don’t talk about it because you’d rather forget it ever happened, and I don’t talk about it because you get mad about Naomi and how she left me everywhere all the time.  This was one of the times she left me for about eighteen months with some friends.”

“I get that you’re the way you are because of the way Naomi raised you, and I love you the way you are, but Jesus H. Christ, Blair, she sucked at being a mom.”  Jim was tensing up all over.

Blair sighed.  “See?  Here you go, getting angry.  This is why you don’t know about Tony.  But you know what?  You’d like Tony.  He took care of me and my other friends.  He sort of took us all under his wing socially, and made sure we didn’t get picked on.  He was one of the most popular kids at school, and most people left us alone after he made it clear we were his friends.”

“Why did he do that?”

“I don’t know.”  They started walking, although Blair could see Jim kept a keen eye on his invisible city.  “I think he liked Rodney the most, and we were sort of Rodney’s poorer relations.”  Blair snorted to think of it now. 

“Rodney was the science geek?  The one the CIA was interested in?”

Blair nodded.  He’d filled Jim in on the basics after he’d gotten Tony’s letter asking him to come to the reunion.  He’d been thrilled to get the letter; he had always been sorry that the four of them had lost touch.  He hoped Tony had managed to contact Rodney and Daniel as well.  Blair wondered if they’d be able to pick up where they left off, or if things would be painfully awkward.

“How did he like Rodney?” Jim asked.

“Just as a friend.  We were kids, Jim.  Tony was sixteen, and Rodney was fifteen.”

“Plenty old enough.  You lost your virginity at fourteen, remember?”

“Boy, do I!” Blair said with a grin.

Jim scowled at him.

“Hey,” Blair said mock defensively, “you brought it up.  I know better than to ever bring up stories of me having sex with anyone but you.”  The stuff he’d written in his Sentinel thesis, the one that had almost torn their lives apart, had mentioned a Sentinel’s territoriality, but it had nothing on a Sentinel’s sense of ownership about his Guide who also happened to be his life-partner. 

For Blair, someone who had lived almost his entire life as a will-o-the-wisp, having somebody so grounded care for him so thoroughly, claim him so completely, had an unexpected side effect of making Blair feel safe.  Safe like nothing could touch him safe.  Safe in a way that gave him, paradoxically, complete freedom.  Not to roam, never that, but to know that he was loved beyond reason, and that he’d never lose that love.  There weren’t many who could know that to their marrow, but Blair did.

As they kept walking, Jim continued to be drawn by whatever it was he was seeing out in the ocean, and Blair still thought it was something Jim ate.  He had a long list of food additives and chemicals that made Jim hallucinate.  Blair would make sure they ate something very healthy for dinner and breakfast, something Jim would no doubt squawk about. 

Blair took another look at Jim and saw he had his army ranger face on, probably timing every tack of every sailboat and every sweep of the helicopters, and committing to memory the ping tones of the submarines.  So Blair left him to it, and closed his eyes, enjoying the beautiful summer day and the light breeze that tickled his skin, and stayed close in case Jim zoned.

“Stupid,” Gibbs was still saying as they landed at Moffett Federal Airfield, south of San Francisco Bay. 

Tony ignored him.  He decided Gibbs was just grumpy because they hadn’t had time for sex before they caught their military flight.  He’d make sure to put a smile on Gibbs’ face before the night was through.

A black limousine was waiting for them, the driver picking them out easily and holding open a door for them.  There was no one inside, just packets with their names on them.

Tony grabbed a beer out of the cooler and handed it to Gibbs after he opened it.  He figured Gibbs was just pissed enough to be willing to go into this with beer breath, just to stick it to the man.  When, after a moment’s hesitation, Gibbs took the bottle, Tony retrieved one for himself.

He opened his packet and found the longest confidentiality and non-disclosure form he’d ever seen.  It had to be seventy pages long.  He flipped through it, words like treason and incarceration leaping off the page. 

“What the hell did you get me into, Tony?” Gibbs asked as he did his own page flipping.

Already paranoid and having no idea if the driver was listening in, Tony made with two fingers behind his head, like Martian antenna.  He could see Gibbs had no idea what he was doing.  Sometimes Tony wondered how the hell he’d ended up with someone like Gibbs.

“We might not be given a choice to leave after we get read into whatever the hell this is,” Gibbs said.

“We might not want to leave,” Tony countered.  He signed the ten places in the document that held a ‘sign here’ sticker.

“No movie reference?” Gibbs asked, looking fondly at Tony.

“This is a movie,” Tony said excitedly.  This was better than a movie.

Gibbs snickered.  “You sure it’s not a horror movie?”  He tapped his pen on the papers in front of him, frowning.  He shot another glance at Tony, and then signed his own document. 

As Jack watched the limousine drive up to the hangar where they currently had a cloaked jumper hidden, he had to admit he was curious to meet Tony DiNozzo.  Jack was still predisposed to like him just because he’d been something good in Daniel’s oh-so-sucky childhood. 

He’d seen the picture, was expecting good-looking, but as he got out of the limo, Jack could see the picture didn’t do him justice.  Tony bounded out of the limousine with a huge smile on his face, ready to take on the world, energy zinging off of him.  Right behind him came his polar opposite, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, cool, reserved, not putting out one damn thing except cautious vigilance.  He put a hand on Tony’s shoulder and it seemed to rope the younger man in a little.   Daniel had told Jack that the two men were romantically involved.  Jack tried to picture it, but his imagination fell short.  He could see anyone wanting to bed DiNozzo; it was just hard to put Gibbs in the picture.

“Gibbs,” Jack said.  “I’m General Jack O’Neill.”

“General,” Gibbs said in return.

DiNozzo was almost buzzing, obviously bursting with questions, but he kept it to himself.  Jack wondered how long that would last.

“You want to tell us what this is all about?” Gibbs asked.

The driver came over and handed Jack the confidentiality statements, and Jack flipped through them to make sure every page that required a signature had one.  “You read this?”

“Enough to get the gist,” Gibbs said.  “Enough to know to keep my mouth shut.  Not enough to know if I want to be a part of it.”

“Fair enough.”

DiNozzo opened his mouth but shut it again, although he gave Gibbs and Jack a bit of a can-we-get-on-with-it glare.  Jack found himself biting back a smile.  “Come with me.”  Both men followed him into the hangar, and the driver closed the hangar door behind them, leaving him on the outside with the limousine.  “It’s safe to talk in here.”  Jack pulled out a remote control and turned off the cloak to the puddle jumper.

“I knew it!” DiNozzo said, two fists in the air in celebration.  “Spaceships.  Right?  This is a spaceship?  Just tell me there are aliens.”

“He like this all the time?” Jack asked Gibbs.

“Yes.”

“Is Rodney around?” Tony asked, ignoring the gibes.

“He’s waiting for us.”

Gibbs frowned at Jack and then at the ship.  “This is a spaceship?”

“We call it a puddlejumper.  It was made by an ancient race that we call, conveniently, the Ancients.  More on that later.  We travel to other worlds through a gate thing that creates wormholes.  We’ve been doing it for about eight years now.”  To DiNozzo he said, “I understand you know Daniel Jackson.”

“I do,” DiNozzo said with a happy grin.  “Is he around?”

“Yeah, he’s around.  He figured out how to open the wormhole.”

“I don’t doubt it for a minute.”  Tony looked proud of Daniel, and Jack started liking the guy for real. 

“What exactly are we doing here?” Gibbs asked.

“There’s a base out there,” Jack said, pointing toward the Golden Gate Bridge.  “You can’t see it, because it’s cloaked like this ship was.  It’s a city, from another galaxy.  We flew it here a few months ago.  There’s been talk about having an Agent Afloat on it.  McKay decided it should be you.  So did Daniel.”

Gibbs gave him a look.  Jack had no idea how he figured it out with so little to go on, but he could see it on Gibbs’ face that he knew Daniel had Jack wrapped around his little finger, the same way DiNozzo had Gibbs wrapped tight.

“A floating city from another galaxy?” DiNozzo asked, practically quivering.  “This is so cool.”

Gibbs laughed a little.  “Rein in it, Tony.”

“But Gibbs,” DiNozzo complained.  “A floating city from space!”

“The aliens aren’t all friendly.  In fact some of them are the stuff of nightmares.”  Not that Jack could make them understand.  Nobody understood until you had a Goa’uld frying your brain with a ribbon device, or a Wraith standing over you about to suck your life away.

“Is this real?” Gibbs asked.  “How can this be real?”

“We’re good at keeping secrets.  Go on, get in.”

DiNozzo needed no further encouraging, practically leaping into the puddlejumper, which immediately lit up for him.  Somehow Jack wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“Hey!” DiNozzo yelped.  “I can feel it in my head.  It’s talking to me.”

“You’ve got the Ancient gene,” Jack explained.  “It means you can use the Ancient equipment.”

“That’s a good thing?” Gibbs asked.

“Yes, at least where you’re going.  It makes things easier.  If you don’t have the natural gene, you might be one of the people who respond to the gene therapy.”

Gibbs didn’t say anything to that.

Jack slid into the pilot’s seat, again not surprised when DiNozzo took the seat next to him.  The guy was like a Labrador retriever.

“Border Collie,” Gibbs said as he sat down behind Jack.

“How do you do that?” Jack asked.

“We’ve learned not to ask,” DiNozzo said, although he turned his head to grin at Gibbs.

Just out of curiosity, Jack turned to look at Gibbs and saw the sparkle in his eye as one corner of his mouth turned up.  He might like to hide it, but Jack could see the guy really liked Border Collies. 

Jack put his earpiece on, cloaked the jumper, and spoke an order for the hangar door to be opened.  When it slid open, Jack urged the puddlejumper out of the building.  He took a look at DiNozzo’s wide-eyed gaze and decided he’d take a short detour.  “Hold onto your hats, gentlemen,” and he sent the puddlejumper skywards until it breached the atmosphere.  Then he turned it around so the two men could look down on the planet. 

“If you weren’t here, I’d have to have sex with Gibbs right now,” DiNozzo said.

Gibbs slapped him on the back of the head, but Jack laughed out loud.  “Play your cards right, and you might have the chance.  If you have the gene, you can fly one of these things.”

Gibbs leaned over DiNozzo, not immune to Earth’s charms from outer space.  Jack watched them, pleased that he’d brought them up, even if Hammond would probably give him hell about it.  Even cloaked, the jumpers occasionally set off radar and got everyone nervous.

“Glad we came?” DiNozzo said, leaning back into Gibbs.

“Yeah,” Gibbs said, sounding surprised.  “I am.  That’s not something I ever thought I’d see for myself.”

“Wait until you get to a planet with a dozen moons.  You can’t stop staring at the sky.”  Jack wasn’t one to wax poetic, but stuff like that stayed with you.

“It sucks we can’t tell anyone,” DiNozzo complained.  “But Rodney and Daniel know, right?”

“They’ve both been with the program since it began.  Daniel and I took the first trip through the wormhole.”  Well, actually Ernest had, but that was a story for later, if they decided to stick around.  Besides, when they stepped through the event horizon and walked on Abydos, they were the first ones who’d gone there.

“Are there aliens here on Earth?” DiNozzo asked.  “I mean, like Men in Black?”

“Yes,” Jack said.  “Not too many, but there are a few.  Most of them like to stay on their own planets.”  Jack started to take the puddlejumper down.  “Time to go see Atlantis.”

“Atlantis?” Gibbs asked.

“As in the Lost City of,” Jack told him. 

“I don’t freaking believe this,” DiNozzo said with a shit-eating grin on his face.  “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“What’s the point of all of this?” Gibbs said.  “Is the Earth in danger?”

“Sometimes, and largely because we went through the gate in the first place and let the wrong sorts of things know we were here, although they might have found us eventually.  There are benefits, though.  A lot of the new technology you’ve seen comes from stuff we’ve found.  We have to be careful how we leak it out, but there have been some amazing medical advances, weaponry, linguistic shit.  Daniel could talk to you about that.  Rodney and Sam could bore you to tears with all the advances in astrophysics.”

“Space,” DiNozzo said in a dramatic voice, “the final frontier.  Our five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”  He started humming the theme song to Star Trek.

“Does he ever stop?” Jack asked.

“Nope.”

“Oh, come on,” DiNozzo complained.  “We’re in space!  Space!  In a spaceship!” 

Jack flew the puddlejumper back into the atmosphere.

“Why doesn’t it burn?” Gibbs asked.

“Ask Rodney.”

“Rodney McKay.  Jesus.”  DiNozzo laughed.  “I don’t suppose Blair Sandburg works here, does he?”

“The fourth member of your gang?  Nope,” Jack said.

“I guess that was too much to hope for.”

Jack piloted the jumper to the shield over Atlantis, and then engaged the doohickey Rodney had placed in all the jumpers so they could slide right through it.  In moments, Jack was gliding to a landing in the jumper bay.

As soon as he landed, he opened the rear hatch and DiNozzo was leaping out.  Jack grabbed at Gibbs before he could follow.

Gibbs looked at him, waiting for whatever Jack wanted.

“I’m not worried about you, but is he any good?”

“He’s the best younger agent I’ve ever worked with.”

“The best?”

“Bar none.”

“He just seems sort of goofy,” Jack said.

“That he is,” Gibbs agreed.

Jack considered Gibbs, wondering if being goofy was DiNozzo’s secret weapon.  He bet people underestimated him all the time, charmed by his smile, distracted by his antics, when all the time he was on the job and learning things people didn’t even know they were giving away.

“Hey,” a voice said from the back, and John Sheppard walked into the jumper.  “I’m being ignored.”

“Colonel,” Jack said in greeting.

“General,” John returned with a lopsided grin.  “And hey, you must be Leroy.”

“Call me Gibbs.”

“You’re older than I thought you’d be,” John said.

“That gonna be a problem?” Gibbs gave him a steely-eyed glare.

“No,” John said quickly, his shoulders squaring. 

Jack bit back a smile.  Gibbs might not have Sheppard’s rank, but he had the do-what-I-say-and-do-it-the-fuck-now voice perfected.  

“Jim, I really think this is a bad idea.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that to me.  You’re the one who’s always saying I’m so fear-based, while you’re the one who’s always ready to run off on some adventure.”

“True,” Blair said fairly, “but usually my adventures don’t take us into military infested waters.  I really, really don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Gitmo, you know?”

“As far as anyone knows, we’re just two guys out kayaking in San Francisco Bay.  We’re not even the only ones out here.”

That was true.  There were kayaks and sailboats that looked like normal people were manning them, although for all Blair knew even the kayakers had weapons under their skirts.  “My mom would freak.”

Jim muttered under his breath.

Blair grinned.  “What was that?”

“Your mom would freak if we were taking a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway for a picnic.  I don’t care how much she flashes that weird smile at me that makes me want to hold a crucifix out in front of me or wear garlic around my neck, she hates that you’re a cop, or as good as, and blames me.”

That was true, too.  Jim and Blair’s mom had never found their way back to the truce they’d had at first.  She did hate that Blair was a cop--even though he kept telling her he was a consultant, not an actual cop, not that it made any difference; he still carried a gun and was Jim’s partner--and she totally blamed Jim for it, especially the gun part.  She didn’t even use his name anymore.  It was all “that man”.  She was also having a hard time letting go of the fact that they’d successfully sued Sid for a chunk o’ change, and Sid still wasn’t talking to her.

“We need to go a little to the right, Chief,” Jim told him, and Blair dutifully paddled in the requested direction.

“How close are we?”

“Turn it around now, we need to look like we’re heading off,” Jim said, banking hard with an oar.  “In three minutes we can head back and we should be clear for a while.”

Blair obeyed again.  Jim was completely convinced he could make his way through the security, so Blair needed to come up with some believable lies as to why they were there.  He sincerely hoped they wouldn’t need them.  Surely someone would just come and tell them they had to turn around, that there’d been a toxic spill or an unexpectedly large school of killer sharks.  Then again, Blair might be dealing with a surprised Sentinel when the invisible city proved not to exist.  Blair still couldn’t see anything that looked remotely like a city; and maybe Blair wasn’t a Sentinel, but he also wasn’t blind.

“Okay, we can turn around again,” Jim said.

Blair sighed but helped Jim turn the kayak around.  “Just let me know before we bump into your invisible city, okay?”

“It’s a floating city.”

“In the air?”

“No, on the water.”

Blair wished he was sharing this hallucination.  “If there really is something there, they’re going to stop us.  And then they’ll know we know something, and we’ll just disappear.  Maybe we should have told Simon what we were doing.”

“Right.  Tell Simon we were kayaking out to the invisible floating city.”

“Hey, I’m doing it, aren’t I?” Blair said.  “Remember me?  The guy in the front of the kayak, humoring you?”

Jim rolled his eyes.  “Just keeping rowing, Einstein.”

Tony looked around the large room where there were over a dozen of the small ships berthed.  He heard footsteps and looking up he saw two men; one had crazy dark hair, very good-looking, and the other guy was, finally, Rodney.  Twenty years older, but definitely Rodney.  He hadn’t seen Tony yet; he was talking animatedly to the other guy.

He’d put on weight, but it totally worked on him.  His build was stocky now, with broad shoulders, and a sense of solidness that Tony could appreciate.  Rodney had a little less hair, but he still had that crooked smile and the maniacal look in his eye.

“Rodney,” Tony called out.

Rodney came to an abrupt stop.  “Tony?”

Tony put out his arms as if to say ‘in the flesh’.

Rodney walked quickly over to him.  “Really, it’s disgusting how good-looking you are.”

Tony laughed.  “I like this look on you.  It’s very hot.”  Rodney was all in black, including a black leather jacket with a Canadian flag patch on the left upper sleeve.

For a moment Rodney looked smug, but then he got that vulnerable look Tony remembered so well on his face and said, “Really?”

Delighted that Rodney still had his soft under-belly, Tony said, “You know, I don’t think I realized it until right now, but I missed the hell out of you.”

The smile grew broader.  “Me, too.  It’s good to see you.”

Tony thought: the hell with it, and he yanked Rodney into a hug.  It was really great to see him.

He could feel Rodney stiffen but then he relaxed and hugged Tony back. 

After pulling back, his hands still on Rodney’s very firm biceps, he said, “Really, really good.”

They stood there, smiling stupidly at each other.  Finally, Rodney said, “The plague?”

“Aliens?”  Tony said back.

“Cool, right?”

“So cool,” Tony said.

“Sorry about the whole stealing you from DC.”

Tony waved him off.  “Once I figured out it had to be you, it was fine.”  He stared at Rodney.  “Jesus, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Yeah, well, I live here, and now so do you, so we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

“Tony!” came another voice.

Tony looked up and saw a very handsome man head his way.  “No way.  Daniel?  Does being in space make people hot?”  He couldn’t believe the changes in Daniel.  He was really buff, eyes just as blue, and the glasses just made him sexier.  Gone completely was the insecure kid who kept his head down and tried to be invisible.  He was in soldier green pants and jacket, with a black t-shirt.

Now it was the three of them staring at each other.  “It feels like I just saw you guys last week,” Tony said.  “It’s weird.  Except that you aren’t geeks anymore.”

“We just need Blair,” Daniel said with a broad smile.  “Then it would be perfect.”

Gibbs watched the three of them and felt a pang of worry that Tony would want to stay.  Gibbs hadn’t seen him this relaxed and happy, other than when they were home and alone, since the last time he’d been with his frat brothers.  Tony took his friends seriously, and those two men out there were good friends, despite the fact that Tony hadn’t seen either of them for twenty years.

Jack watched the three of them and figured it was Tony that turned Daniel and Rodney’s gay gene on a long time ago, or at least planted the seed.  Daniel was grinning like an idiot, something he rarely did; in fact Jack could probably count on two hands the number of times he’d seen Daniel smile like that in all the years he’d known him.  Of course, he’d gotten Daniel to smile like that more than anyone, but the big smiles were rare.  He wasn’t sure whether to hate or love DiNozzo for putting one on his lover’s face.

John watched the three of them and frowned as Rodney laughed out loud.  Since Tony had called his name, Rodney hadn’t given John a thought.  Not that John expected Rodney to have John on his mind all the time.  Rodney spent a lot of time thinking about things other than John.  The only difference is that when he was thinking about non-science things, Rodney was usually thinking about John.  John had already had to go through the agony of watching Rodney painfully court two women almost to the point of permanence, he was damned if he’d watch Rodney get stupid over some guy.

He turned to the other two.  “Don’t you think they all look a little too cozy?”

 “You worried about your man straying?” Gibbs asked, looking amused.  He wasn’t smiling, so John wasn’t sure how he knew the guy was amused, but he was, and at John’s expense. 

“You’re not?  Tony looks pretty happy out there.”

“No, I’m not.  Tony doesn’t cheat.”  He looked at John.  “Does Rodney?”

John didn’t have enough facts to answer that, but he guessed the answer was no, only because he didn’t think Rodney’s nerves would hold up under the pressure of cheating and lying and having to keep his stories straight.  Then there was the fact that Rodney seemed to think he was the one who’d won the lottery ending up with John.  “No,” he finally said.

“Does Daniel?” Gibbs asked Jack.

“Nope,” Jack said.  “Not his nature.”

“Nothing to worry about then,” Gibbs said.

John glanced at O’Neill and Gibbs, managing not to wince.  “So, we’re not even gonna pretend that we’re, you know, not with them?”  He pointed at the three other men.

“Not much point,” Gibbs said.  “I knew about you.”

“So did I,” Jack said with a grimace.  “Something I would have been so much happier not knowing.”

“Yeah?  Well, I knew about both of you,” John said with a lopsided smug smile, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet.  For all the fact that Rodney pissed people off on a regular basis, he was like a gossip magnet.  John always heard the best stuff from him.  But, he thought, he still had a point to make.  “It’s just that we’re military and there’s that pesky DADT regulation, and we all just sort of told.”

“Not military,” Gibbs said.

“He is,” John said, a thumb jerking in O’Neill’s direction.

“Yeah, but I’ve saved the Earth a shitload of times.  People tend to overlook me being nuts.  Besides, Hammond sends me and Daniel a joint Christmas card every year.”

Even Gibbs looked a little impressed at that. 

John wondered what would really impress the man.  He’d seen two expressions on his face so far, as opposed to Tony who had a different expression on his face every five seconds.  He couldn’t imagine the two of them together.  He watched the three men laugh out in the jumper bay and still thought they looked a little too cozy. 

He really didn’t think Rodney would cheat on him, at least not on purpose.  But this thing between them was still sort of new, and as he stood there watching Rodney laugh in a way he rarely laughed, and watched Tony smile at him in a way that nobody smiled at Rodney except for him, John could easily imagine that if Rodney and Tony were alone, and Tony happened to fall to his knees and put his mouth on Rodney’s cock, that Rodney might just go with it.  Hell, to be fair, John might just go for it, if he couldn’t too easily imagine the hurt look on Rodney’s face if he did.

He blew out a breath and then noticed that Gibbs was watching him with a third expression on his face.  John wasn’t sure what it was, but somehow it made him feel a little better.  Maybe it was because Gibbs wasn’t totally sure Tony wouldn’t cheat.  He snuck a glance at O’Neill and saw that he was watching Daniel with this look of indulgence on his face.  John hadn’t seen that look, ever, on the General’s face, and he thought it might be nice for someone like O’Neill, hell, for all of them, to not have to be careful about what they were giving away.  It made John smile as he turned to watch Rodney some more.

“Colonel,” a voice said in his ear piece.  “We have a situation.”

“What kind of situation?” John asked, wondering if it was a we’re-going-to-die-run-for-your-lives sort of thing, or a Rodney thing, or what.

There was a moment’s hesitation.  He noticed that O’Neill and Gibbs were paying close attention.  “I think you need to come to the control room.”

“On my way.”  John headed out the back of the jumper.  “Rodney.”

He was gratified that Rodney immediately turned to him.  “What?”

“Control room.”

“What is it?” Rodney asked.

“I don’t know.  Chuck wouldn’t say.”

“That’s weird.  He always says something, even if it’s ridiculous.”  Nevertheless, Rodney fell into step next to John, much as Daniel moved next to O’Neill, and Tony was side-by-side with Gibbs. 

John glanced back at them.  “Time for a fast tour.”  He trotted to the closest transporter.

“We call them transporters,” Rodney told Tony with an excited grin.  “They take you anywhere in the city you want to go.”

“Like Willy Wonka’s elevator?” Tony asked. 

“Yeah, except with less broken glass,” John told him, as he pressed the area from the control room.

“This is so cool.”  Tony was almost vibrating, and John saw Gibbs put a hand on his shoulder and it was like Gibbs sucked all that extra energy right off of him.  Not in a bad way, because Tony looked just as excited, except now he wasn’t crazy with it.  John really wished he could do that to Rodney.

Gibbs stayed by Tony as the six of them moved quickly to wherever the hell they were going.  Whatever the control room was.  He still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that he was on an alien city that had been flown here from another galaxy.  Another galaxy.  It bore repeating.

They arrived at a large room with two staircases heading up to a row of monitors, including one large one that was facing in their direction.  To the left of him was a huge ring that Gibbs thought might be the contraption that took them to other worlds.  He was hung up on that phrase, too.  Other worlds.

There was a man at one of the monitors dressed in a uniform with an armpatch identical to Rodney’s.  Two other people came running into the main room, a tall man dressed in leather, his hair in dreads, and a beautiful black woman in a long flowing skirt and a tight top.

“They’re from the Pegasus galaxy, too,” Rodney told Tony, pointing at the two who had just arrived, and then he ran up the stairs after John.

“Someone’s found the shield,” Chuck was telling them.

Tony was gawking at the two new arrivals with an annoying look of appreciation in his eyes.

There were far too many very attractive people in this city.  Not that Gibbs thought that Tony would stray.  He didn’t.  For all that Gibbs got jealous thinking about Tony with anyone else, Gibbs knew how long Tony had wanted him, and none of that want had gone away since they’d gotten together.  Nonetheless, he suddenly found himself empathizing with John Sheppard.

“So what?” Rodney said.  “Let the military deal with it.  Why call us?”

“Because one of them can see through the shield.”

“That’s impossible.”  Rodney was deeply frowning.  “Put up the closest camera.”

They were suddenly looking at a kayak with two men in it, one shorter with shoulder length curly dark hair, and the other much taller and built, his hair cut military short.

“Can we hear them?  Never mind,” Rodney said, shoving Chuck aside, his fingers flying over the consoles until they were hearing the two men speak.

“Okay, okay, I’m buying that there’s something here, because, hey, here it is,” the shorter man said, his hand looking like he was patting air.  Gibbs assumed he was touching the shield.  “But I’m still not seeing anything except water.”

“I’m telling you there’s a city right there.  Right there.” 

“Whatever the fuck it is, Jim, we are in so much trouble right now.”  The short guy was looking around frantically, as if expecting a re-enactment of the invasion of Normandy.  “We need to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a freaking shield around something.  An invisible shield.”

“Hiding my invisible city,” Jim said smugly.  “And I’m not leaving until I figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Wait a minute,” Tony said.  “Hold on.”  He ran up the steps.  “Rodney.  Daniel.  Who does that short guy remind you of?”

Daniel and Rodney furrowed their brows at Tony.  “What?”

“Wasn’t Blair Sandburg’s Sentinel named Jim Ellison?” Gibbs called, following Tony’s train of thought after years of practice.  “It might explain why he can see through the shield.”

“You are totally kidding me!” Rodney exclaimed.  “You think that’s Blair Sandburg?”

“I think that’s Blair Sandburg,” Tony said.  “I mean what were the odds yesterday that today I’d be standing here with the two of you?”

“So that means Blair should just magically appear here, too?” Rodney asked, eyebrows up, although he was staring intently at the screen. 

“He found a Sentinel?” Daniel said.

Tony nodded.  “He found a Sentinel.”

Daniel started to grin and then he let out an incredulous laugh. 

“Sandburg,” Jim said, answering the question for them.  “Stop being an ass, and help me figure out how to get through this.”

“Unbelievable,” Rodney said, grinning just as broadly as Daniel, both of them gaping at Tony.

“How the hell am I supposed to help you get through that?  I don’t even know what it is.  You’d need someone a hell of a lot smarter than me to do that.  Can we leave before we’re arrested?”

“We have to go get them,” Tony said.  “In a puddlejumper.”

“Need I remind you that this is a highly-confidential super-secret base that no one’s supposed to know about?” O’Neill threw out.

Gibbs shot him a look.  O’Neill would end up caving like a wet tissue if Daniel Jackson, Rodney McKay and Tony all started in on him.

O’Neill let out a sigh that sounded like it had started in his toes building up strength until it was expelled from his body.  “Fuck me.”

“We should probably call someone, Jack, so they don’t end up getting shot.”

“Fuck me twice,” O’Neill bit out.  “This is all your fault,” he told Daniel.

Daniel patted his arm.  “I know.”  Then he grinned. 

“And what the fuck’s a Sentinel?”

“If he really is a Sentinel,” Daniel said, “he’s someone we could use, especially if he can see through cloaks.  Jack, he can see through the shield that’s cloaking the city.  That’s someone we want on our side.  Not to mention the fact that he somehow evaded all the eyes and ears out there.”

“You are going to pay for this,” O’Neill said, pointing a finger at Daniel.  “And you,” he added, glowering at Rodney.  “And you, too,” he added with a frown at Tony.  He walked up the stairs.  “Get me Hammond.  Jesus H. Christ, I’m gonna end up court-martialed.”

Gibbs somehow doubted that.

“Never mind,” O’Neill said to Chuck, pulling out his cell phone.  “I keep forgetting we can use these things.”

“Verizon doesn’t cover the Pegasus Galaxy,” Daniel told Tony. 

In response, Tony shot a dazzling grin at Gibbs.  Gibbs almost rocked back on his feet.  Even he wasn’t immune to that particular smile.

“Can we go get them?” Tony begged.

“George?  Jack.  I need another favor.”

Daniel gave Jack another look then nodded.  “He’ll work it out.  Rodney, you want to do the honors?”

“Yeah, but no,” Sheppard said.  “He’d probably run them over.”

“Hey!” Rodney complained. 

“You really think you can maneuver a jumper to pick them up in the middle of the ocean?”

Rodney looked like he wanted to say yes, but he just grumbled at Sheppard instead.

“That’s what I thought.  Come on.  Let’s go meet the last of this foursome of yours.”  He headed off, Rodney right behind him. 

Gibbs was tempted to follow but stayed where he was, waiting to see what Tony did.  He took a second to glance at O’Neill, and when he turned back to Tony, he was almost out of sight, along with Daniel, following Sheppard and Rodney.   “Well, shit,” he said under his breath.

“Welcome to my life,” O’Neill told him, as he shut off his phone.  “I keep meaning to put a damn leash on Daniel.  Where’s Woolsey?” he yelled out.

“Who’s Woolsey?” Gibbs asked.  He reconciled himself to not knowing what the hell was going on for the foreseeable future.

“The civilian administrator of the city,” O’Neill told him.  “This was a civilian op with a military presence for protection.”  He snorted, telling Gibbs what he thought of that idea.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against civilians.”  He shot Gibbs a quick sly smile.  “I’ve got one of my own, you know.  But as soon as they discovered an enemy whose main goal was to find their way to Earth so they could eat us, it should have gone military.”

Gibbs could hardly argue the point.  “Eat us?”

“Well, suck the life out of you.”  O’Neill held up one hand, palm facing Gibbs, as if in explanation, which only confused Gibbs more.  It must have shown on his face because O’Neill said, “I’ll get you the mission reports.  Do you want to start with the Milky Way ones or the Pegasus ones?”

“All of them.”

“It’s not easy reading.”

“I’ll survive.”

O’Neill studied him with an assessing eye.  “Yeah, you probably will.  I’ll ask McKay and Carter to send you the files.”

“Carter?”

“Colonel Samantha Carter,” O’Neill said.  “She’s the other genius on my team.  Sort of McKay’s counterpart, although she’d knee me in the balls if she ever heard me say that.”

“Interesting leadership style you’ve got.”

“It’s astonishing I’m still sane,” O’Neill groused.

Gibbs hadn’t known Jack O’Neill long, but he could guess that he was all about informality until the shit hit the fan, and then all bets were off and you did what the man said or paid the price.  John Sheppard had the same feel to him.  It said a lot about the environment the men served in.  An environment where rules rarely fit the situation, and men and women broke easily if they weren’t given some latitude.  Gibbs had seen a slice of it during the Gulf War, knew that an active battlefield lent itself to an odd mixture of insubordination and blind obedience.  He found himself respecting Jack O’Neill and John Sheppard a little more than he had before.

He saw O’Neill’s eyes on him and, by the look in them, guessed that somehow O’Neill had followed his train of thought.  The man was a whole lot sharper than he let on.  He also saw a look of grudging respect in O’Neill’s eyes that Gibbs was already catching on.  Gibbs wondered how many people wrote O’Neill off, wondering how the hell he’d advanced so far.  Gibbs bet it was never the people who served in the field with him.  “What does Hammond do?” Gibbs asked.

“He’s the Director for Homeworld Security.”

“Homeworld?”

“Yeah.  We’re battling for everyone now.”

Gibbs thought he could do that.

“I just want you to know that after I’m dead, I’m going to haunt your ass so I can say I told you so for eternity.”  Blair splashed Jim with some water with his oar.  “Look around us.”

Blair watched as Jim took in the approaching vessels, zodiacs mostly, no doubt called into service after Jim and Blair had been discovered by either sailboat crew or helicopters.  He even saw a very long dark shape maneuvering near them in the water and while Blair hoped it was a whale, he didn’t think it was.  

Jim wasn’t responding, he just frowned as the boats drew nearer.

“You get how fucked we are?  If they can make cities disappear, they can sure as hell make us disappear.”  Blair didn’t want to think about what he and Jim disappearing might entail.

Then, for no reason that Blair could understand, the boats all veered off until they were left alone, out in the ocean, next to Jim’s invisible city.

“What the fuck?” Blair said.  “Was it something I said?” he yelled out after the boats.

“Blair,” Jim said sharply.

“The only reason they’re leaving is because something worse is coming after us.”  Blair looked down into the water expecting to see a periscope break right through their kayak, dropping them into the water where their trained sharks would eat them.

Jim was suddenly looking up in the air.  “Look up.”

Blair looked up.  “What am I looking at?”  All he could see was blue sky and clouds.

“A ship.  It looks like a small Quonset hut.”

“An invisible ship?” Blair asked with a slightly crazed laugh.  “Jesus, Jim.  Show some mercy, would you?”

That was when something like a door opened and then there were a couple of guys hanging in the sky.  Blair could make out that they were in something, but they blocked the entrance.

“Hey Blair, remember me?” a cheerful voice said.

Blair blinked as someone said his name.  A someone who was actually in Jim’s invisible spaceship.  He squinted his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked more closely.  In front of him was a very handsome man who did look familiar. 

The guy smiled.  “Come on, I’m insulted you don’t know me.”

“Hey, cut me some slack,” Blair snapped.  “I’m out on the ocean looking for an invisible city that has some sort of invisible dome on it, and now you’re talking to me from an invisible ship.  It’s been a confusing day, okay?  Holy fuck, Tony DiNozzo?”  The name had bobbed up like a cork while Blair had been babbling.  He made as if to stand up, but Jim grabbed his leg and kept him sitting.

“How about me?”  Another man appeared next to Tony, also grinning, but this one’s smile was lopsided.  He had changed enough that Blair might not have recognized him, but standing next to Tony made it all too easy for him to say, stunned, “Rodney.”

Then there was a third man.  “And me.”

Blair could not even begin to wrap his mind around this.  That his three high school friends who he had been thinking about so much lately, ever since getting Tony’s note, were here, in the middle of the ocean, grinning at him like idiots three feet over his head.  “Daniel?”

“That’s me.”

“Either someone slipped some really superb hallucinogens into whatever I had for lunch, or I’m dreaming.  The dreaming thing makes the most sense, actually, because otherwise, well, no, I guess hallucinating makes sense, too, I just, what the fuck?”

Tony laughed.  “You must be Jim Ellison,” he said to Jim.  “I’m Tony DiNozzo.  This guy to my right is Rodney McKay, and to my left is Daniel Jackson.  We decided to have our high school reunion in an invisible city this year.  I hate doing the same old boring thing year after year.”

Jim cocked his head to the side and said, “What is that thing?”

“We call it a puddlejumper,” Rodney said.  “I wanted to call it a gateship.  Because it’s a ship that goes through a gate, but no…”

“Rodney,” came a complaining voice from inside the ship.

“That’s Colonel John Sheppard,” Tony said.  “And we’ve got plenty of room for you two.”

Blair was still staring at the three of them, his mouth open, his brain whirring.  “How is this happening?”  But, even as he was thinking that, he put his hand up, and let Tony and Rodney drag him out of the kayak into the ship.  Then he was busy hugging his old high school friends, not really caring how this had come about.

“Your turn,” Tony said after the hug was done, moving back nearer to the opening.

Blair moved next to Tony.  “Come on, Jim.”

Blair decided it was a good thing Jim hated the ocean, because Jim looked like he was considering taking a dive into the ocean and swimming for it. 

“Where are you taking us?” Jim asked.

“The invisible city,” Tony said. 

“You can really see through the shield?” Daniel asked.

Jim nodded.  “I can see this ship, too.”

“Tell him to get on already.  We can’t afford to attract any attention,” Colonel Sheppard yelled.

“And if I don’t want what you’re selling?” Jim asked.

“Then we drop you off back on shore and go our separate ways after you sign about a thousand confidentiality agreements,” Rodney said.

“And if I don’t want to sign?”

There was a pause as Tony, Daniel and Rodney all stared at each other with a frown on their faces.  Finally Tony said, “Blair will, I promise you that, so I guess the real question is do you go where he goes?”

Jim scowled, but he moved the kayak into a better position until he could grab the ramp.  Then, with some assistance from Blair’s friends, Jim made it into the ship.  “That kayak needs to go back to the rental company.”  He moved until he was standing next to Blair.

“We’ll take care of that,” Tony said.  Then to Rodney, he said, “We can take care of that, right?”

Rodney nodded, already tapping his headset and snapping orders.

“So hot,” Tony said.

Rodney grinned at him.

The back door shut, and then there they were, Rodney, Daniel, and Tony, staring at him.  “You all turned out easy on the eyes,” Blair said.

“So did you,” Tony said.  “Look at you.”

“How is this happening?” Blair asked.  “Seriously.  This sort of defies all the laws of probability.  Unless you three all work together and have been leaving me out all this time?  Which would suck.”

“No,” Tony said.  “I just joined up today as a matter of fact.  Although they’ve been working together,” he added, pointing at Rodney and Daniel.

“Not really,” Daniel said.  “Different locations.  Very.  Like galaxies apart.”  He smirked.

Rodney rolled his eyes.  “Back to the city,” he said to the colonel.

“Back to the highly classified city?” the colonel said back to him.  “The invisible one?”

“He can see it,” Tony said, pointing at Jim.  “And hey!” he added to Blair.  “You found your Sentinel.  That’s awesome!”

“How do you know that?” Jim asked suspiciously.

“I read Blair’s dissertation.”

Blair winced.  “I suppose you saw the whole fraud thing, too?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, patting him on the arm, “but I knew that was a bunch of bullshit.”

“We knew it wasn’t true, Blair,” Daniel agreed.  “We know you would never do anything like that.”

Blair grinned at them.  “Thanks.  That means a lot to me.  I wished you’d been around when it was going on.  Most people were more than happy to throw me to the wolves.”

“Including me,” Jim said.

Blair shook his head.  “Water under the bridge, and you had the right.”  Blair heard the colonel call someone for orders.

“Hey, take us way up, like General O’Neill did,” Tony suggested.  “Let Jim and Blair see the Earth from orbit.  That was amazing.”

The colonel’s eyes opened wide.  “O’Neill took you and Gibbs up?”

Tony nodded.

Blair had no idea what Tony was talking about, but he moved a little closer to Jim, glad he was there, even as he was ecstatic to be with his old friends.  Just as he had when he was twenty years younger, he found himself trusting all of them, looking forward to whatever came next.  And the fact that they knew about Jim, even though Blair knew it had to be making Jim uncomfortable, just made things easier.  “Man, what are the odds?” Blair said again.  “This is wild.”

“Tell me about it,” Tony said.  “We were just saying how if you were here, this would be perfect, and here you are.”

“Okay, sir.  We’ll see you in a few minutes,” the colonel said into his headset.  “Ready for a ride?” he asked, eyeing all his passengers.

Blair nodded, even though he had no idea to what he was agreeing.  But then the ship they were in started rising, up and up, until they were surrounded by blackness and stars like he’d never seen them.  Then the colonel swung the ship around and Blair was staring at Earth.  “Oh, my God,” Blair said.  “Are you kidding me?”  He moved up to the front, standing by Rodney, Jim directly behind him.  “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

A profound silence filled the ship as they looked back at the Earth, the blue of the ocean, the white of cloud coverage, and the brown and green of land masses, all coming together to look like some stunningly jeweled round Faberge egg.

Jim put a hand on his shoulder, and Blair covered it with his own, so glad he was sharing this with Jim. 

He kept tearing his eyes away to look at Tony, Rodney, and Daniel, as awed by their sudden presence in his life as he was at the astonishing view outside the window, or whatever you called it.  Viewport?  Porthole?  He had no idea.

“You guys willing to sign confidentiality agreements?” the colonel asked.

“And by agreements,” Tony said, “he means a stack of papers an inch thick that essentially says they’ll lock you in a cage deep underground and throw away the key if you breathe a word of any of it.”  He grinned.  “I think you should sign it.  Seriously.”

“What am I signing?” Jim asked.  “I already know about your city.”

“Yes, but you don’t know what it is,” Rodney said.

“And we’re not telling,” the colonel added.

Tony snorted.  “Come on, this is kismet.  All four of us together again?  It was totally meant to be.”

“I’ll sign,” Blair said.  “Jim?”

Jim was still staring out at the Earth.  “You sure?” he asked Blair.  “There might be no turning back.”

Blair took a long look at his three old friends and saw only faces he couldn’t help but trust, even if he truly had no reason to.  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Jim said. 

Blair leapt up and gave Jim a hug, then kissed him.  “Oh, yeah,” he said, “Jim and I are together.  That gonna be a problem?  Because I’m not giving him up.”

Tony started laughing, Rodney snorted, and Daniel had a broad grin on his face.  “Not a problem,” Daniel said. 

“You might want to keep a low profile,” the colonel said.  “Even though it’s a civilian base, there’s a large military contingent there.”

To Blair’s surprise, Rodney leaned over and kissed the colonel right on the lips.  “Really not a problem.”

“Rodney,” the colonel complained. 

Blair thought maybe he should be thinking of him as John now.  He grinned at Rodney.  “Nice.”

Rodney smiled smugly.

Once they landed on Atlantis, and Blair and Jim signed their confidentiality agreements, Tony grabbed Blair’s arm with one hand, Daniel’s with the other, and used his knee to prod Rodney out of the conference room.  “Come on, we’ve got some catching up to do.” 

Rodney was the only one that put up a token fuss, but that was about work he needed to do.  A few seconds later, they were out of sight.

Gibbs watched them walk away and, although amused, thought it would take some time to adjust to a world where Tony had other people in his life he wanted to be with as much as he did Gibbs.  He’d meant what he said, that Tony wouldn’t stray, but Gibbs was territorial.  Always had been, and suspected he always would be.  He turned to look at the three men he’d probably be spending more time with and wondered what their stories were. 

John frowned as he watched Rodney leave with his three friends.  They were all really hot.  Especially Rodney.  They just better keep their hands off of him.  He knew where the secret stash of zats was.

Jim kept his eyes, then his senses, on Blair as he walked out of sight.  Even then he listened in as the four of them talked about nothing in particular.  That was when he noticed that the city seemed to be talking to him.

Jack grinned at the expressions of the three men around him.  Here they were, four men shaped by the military, raised on DADT or something similar, and yet, here they were, all gay.  He felt like asking them if they took it up the ass, just to see what they’d do.  Not that he’d have a problem with it.  He took it up the ass about the same amount that he topped Daniel.  The truth of it is that Jack would take Daniel, every inch of him, any way he could get him.  “You think all the men on base will turn gay once they get a look at the four of them?”  The startled looks that garnered made him grin more.

“Okay,” Tony said, once Rodney had directed them to a pier for them to sit on.  It was nice here, he thought.  It would be great to work someplace where every window had an ocean view.  Not that he hadn’t sort of gotten that on the Seahawk, but living on a naval carrier was its own form of hell.  “Where do we start?”

They all looked at each other, grinning, but no one said a word.

“We’ll each pick a question, and we all have to answer,” Tony suggested.  “I’ll go first.  “Best thing in your life?”

“John,” Rodney said.

“Jack,” Daniel said next.

Blair looked at Tony with an eyebrow up.

“Gibbs,” Tony said.  “Well, Jethro.”

Blair started to laugh.  “Wait a minute.  John, Jack, Jim and Jethro?  What the fuck?  Although you blew it, Tony, getting involved with a guy with a two syllable name, but still, all of us with men, military men, unless I read things wrong, and they all have names that start with a ‘J’?”

“Jethro’s sort of ex-military.”

“Yeah, so’s Jim, but he’s still military inside.  Jethro, too, right?”

Tony nodded.

“All in love?” Blair asked.

All four of them nodded, including Blair.

“Loved in return?” Blair prodded.  “No weird military angst, love you one minute- hate you the next.  Fucking random women to prove they’re not really gay.  Anything like that?”

“God, no,” Rodney said.  “Is Jim like that?”

“If he is,” Tony said, “we’ll push him off a pier for you.”

Blair laughed.  “No, no.  He’s great.  He treats me great.  You guys too?”

The three of them nodded yes.

“Four military men,” Daniel said, leaning back on his elbows, face up to the sun.  “Very odd.  Why do you suppose?”

“Were you gay for other guys, or just Jack?” Blair asked Daniel.

“I thought about it, but he’s the first time I did anything about it, and it wasn’t until we’d been friends for years.  In fact, it was watching our friendship fall apart that made me decide I had nothing to lose.”  Daniel smiled at his own words.  “He’d been interested just as long.  A lot of years wasted.”

“It wasn’t until that whole dissertation fiasco that Jim and I got together.  I was packing my bags to leave and things just happened.”  Blair grinned.  “And then we figured out how to fix the mess I made, and here we are, four years later and going strong.”  He glanced at Rodney.  “You?”

“We’re still pretty new,” Rodney said.  “I was involved with a woman here, pretty seriously, actually, but once we got back to Earth, she wanted to leave Atlantis and I didn’t.  I was complaining about it to John one night, and he kissed me.”  Rodney shrugged, a crooked smile on his face.  “We’d both been interested, but I never thought I had a chance.  He was Kirking his way through the Pegasus Galaxy, and, well.”  He spread his hands out in a gesture of ‘there you go’.  “Tony?”

“Fell for him the instant I met him but never gave it a serious thought.  Figured he’d rearrange my face if I tried.  We’ve been working together for about nine years and have been together close to two.”

“Who made the first move?” Blair asked.

“He did,” Tony said, “but a tiny one that I almost missed.  He started inviting me over for dinner after a bad mission, and I thought it was all about being friends, and having an opportunity to talk about a really shitty day with someone who’d understand, you know?”

Nods were bobbing yes all around him.

“I got up to get us some more beer, and I spun around, thinking of something I’d been trying to remember all day that I wanted to tell him, and I saw that he’d been checking out my ass.  He covered pretty well, but by then I was asking the question, and he was grabbing at me, and the rest is history.”  He grinned, lying back on the dock. 

“Any of you out?” Blair asked.

He got a chorus of “No”s. 

“Yeah, us either,” Blair said.  “Sucks.”

“Well, sort of,” Daniel corrected himself, “now that I think about it.  Just not officially.  A lot of people know about me and Jack, or have guessed, although I think the general consensus is that we’ve been together a lot longer than we have.  Jack’s commanding officer sends us a joint Christmas card.”

“Yeah, I guess John and I are in the same situation, at least on Atlantis.  It’s such an international project that the only people who would even care are the Marines, and they’ve watched John and me save their asses so many times that if any of them know about it they keep it to themselves.  We’re not always discreet.”

Blair chuckled.  “I think most of the people we work with know.  Jeez, they come over for poker night, and we have them throw their coats in my old room.  Seeing as they’re all detectives, they’ve probably figured out I don’t use the room anymore.”

Tony sat up again.  “So, in other words, we’re all unofficially out?  At least to some people?  I know there are at least two people we work with who know, but Jethro and I really do our best to keep a low profile, mostly because he’s my boss.  We don’t want to end up on separate teams.”

“Jack struggled with that, too, until I reminded him that I really don’t do anything he tells me,” Daniel said with a small smirk. 

“How the hell did four military men fall for us?” Tony asked.  “We’ve got to drive them completely batty.”  He started laughing, and the other three joined in.

The silence was getting oppressive, Jack thought, as they continued to sit in the conference room saying nothing.  He wasn’t one for caring and sharing, especially with guys he barely knew.  The guy he knew the best was Sheppard, and other than in briefings, he’d barely spoken to the man.  He glanced over at him now.  “What do you think?  Look at some key mission reports?  Enemy and weapons briefing?”

“God, yes,” Sheppard said, almost ejecting out of his seat.  The atmosphere in the room lightened immediately.  He moved to the monitors against the wall and did some fast typing.  “Goa’uld or Wraith?” he asked Jack.

“Let’s start with the Wraith,” Jack said.  “Everything will be a little easier to take after that.”  Jack had never met a Wraith face-to-face, but he’d take on a Goa’uld, an Unas, and a shitload of Replicators at the same time, rather than deal with a Wraith. 

John grimaced, but he nodded agreement.  “I show this to all the new recruits, because they don’t get it otherwise.  It’s me being fed on by a Wraith and it’s pretty grim.  By the way, the two men who set me up?  Both dead.”  He opened the AVI, and all the men looked at the blank wall when the picture started to play.

“Then I’ll show you one where I almost get eaten by Replicators.  That was fun,” Jack said.

They all watched in silence as Sheppard got fed on time and time again, getting progressively older, until he was old and doddering.  Finally it stopped.

“Jesus, John,” Gibbs said, sounding as disturbed as he looked.  “How are you okay after that?”

“We learned a funny thing about Wraith after that,” John said with a pained smile.  “They can give you back life, too.  That same Wraith, he gave it all back to me.  Turns out he was as pissed at those guys as I was.  We helped each other escape.”

“So they’re not all enemies?” Ellison asked.

“Yeah, they are,” John said firmly.  “That one Wraith, I called him Todd, we worked together a few times, but he’s the only one.  They don’t care about us at all.  To them, we’re only food.  The problem is that they know about Earth, they just don’t know where it is.  The good thing is that we’ve done a great job killing most of them off.”  To Jack he added, “It’s why we need to go back, to finish the job.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said.  This time he moved to the monitor and found the AVI where he and Teal’c were about to get eaten by the replicator spiders.  “Here’s another enemy, and this was here on Earth.”

The next few minutes were of grainy footage as the replicators closed off every exit route on the submarine and then came after Jack, and of Jack yanking off his helmet and yelling at Daniel to blow the submarine up.  Jack winced, recalling how pissed Daniel had been about that.  Jack’s ears had rung for a week with all the yelling.

“Why were you telling Daniel to order the torpedoes?” Gibbs asked.

Good question.  Now that Jack was thinking about it, everyone had probably thought he and Daniel were together as far back as then.  “Cuz everyone knew Daniel owned my ass.  Siler told me later that no one ordered the torpedoes until Daniel finally agreed, even though I outranked most everyone in that room.”

“Obviously you survived,” Ellison said.  “What was that light?”

“The Asgard,” Jack said.  “Another alien race.  A great alien race.  They have this beaming technology and a habit of showing up just in the nick of time.”

“Are there more of those things?” Gibbs asked.  “What did you call them?”

“Replicators,” Sheppard said.  “And they are still around.  In the Pegasus galaxy they’ve gotten smarter.”  This time he played a tape of him, Jack, Rodney, and Woolsey while they waited in one of the holding cells on Atlantis.  “They can look human when they want and they can get in your brain and make you think something completely different is going on.”

Gibbs and Ellison grimaced as one of the human-looking replicators shaped its hand into a sharp point and pushed it into Woolsey’s head. 

“This time it was just to read his mind; he didn’t completely mind-fuck him,” Sheppard said dryly.  “They can make you believe you’re in whatever scenario they want.”

Jack shot a quick look at Sheppard, wondering what delightful universe the replicators had put him in at some point that Sheppard had kept to himself.  Not that Jack blamed him.  Some things should never make it into mission reports.  Preferably they should never happen at all, but when they did, the fewer witnesses the better.   “Okay,” he said, “let’s introduce you to the Goa’uld.  They’re all sorts of fun.”

“God, I missed you guys,” Tony said after he managed to stop laughing.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed this hard.  He loved Gibbs to death, but he wasn’t exactly a fall on the floor with the giggles kind of guy.

“Face it,” Blair said, another riff of laughter escaping.  “Rodney is totally the Brain.  I’m actually surprised you haven’t managed to take over the world,” he added specifically to Rodney.

“Unfortunately, my efforts at taking over the world have met with as much success as that damn mouse.  And trust me, John is totally Pinky.” 

“Doing this stuff we do,” Daniel said thoughtfully, “creates a plethora of opportunities to make fools out of ourselves.”

“Let’s talk about that,” Tony said.  “How come you two were working together and me and Blair weren’t a part of it?”

“We really don’t work together,” Daniel said.  “At first, he was at Area 51 in Roswell while I was in Colorado working out of Cheyenne Mountain.  Then, I stayed there...”

“On and off, when you managed to be alive and corporeal,” Rodney interrupted.

“In Colorado,” Daniel finished with a glare at Rodney, “while Rodney went on what was possibly a one-way trip to the Pegasus Galaxy.”

Tony turned back to Daniel.  “What was this being dead then not shit about?”

Rodney snorted.  “They call Daniel the original come-back kid.  People don’t even pay attention when he dies anymore.”

“That’s not true,” Daniel said.

“Sam told me the last time it happened, the general refused to even think about a funeral because he knew you’d be back.”

Daniel winced.  “I die a lot.  I’m not sure why it keeps happening, or why I keep being alive again, but it’s true.”

“Yeah, well, that shit’s gotta stop,” Tony said.

“I died once,” Blair said.  “They pronounced me and everything.”

“What happened?” Tony asked.  He wasn’t happy at all this weird death stuff.  

“Jim brought me back.  He used his spirit animal to draw my spirit back.”

Rodney slapped a hand over his face.  “I hate shit like that.  I don’t want to hear that.”

“What?  That I died?” Blair asked, grinning.

“No, the animal spirit shit.”

“Too soft science for you?” Daniel asked with a laugh.  “Mr. Superhero, able to heal people with a touch of your hand, or move things around with the power of your mind?”

“That was cool,” Rodney admitted.  “But it almost killed me.  Actually it did kill me, for a moment.”

“That leaves you, Tony,” Blair said.  “You ever been dead?”

“Almost,” Tony said.  “I feel like an underachiever.  But,” he said dramatically, “the time I did almost die was from the black plague, so I think that gets me points.”

“Wow,” Blair said.  “How did that happen?”

“Crazy scientist out for revenge, and I got stuck in the middle.”  He pointed a finger at Daniel.  “We probably should go find our military sidekicks, but don’t think we won’t be having a thorough conversation about the repeat death thing.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf,” Daniel promised him.

“Hmph,” Tony said skeptically.  He turned his eye on his three friends.  “So I guess it’s too much to hope for that we’d all get to work together?”

“I have to go back to Colorado Springs,” Daniel said.  “Jack and I are part of a team that explores planets here in the Milky Way and the gate is there.”

“And Jim and I have jobs back in Cascade, Washington.”

“And we still need to talk about you finding a Sentinel,” Tony said.

“I think if Jim is able to see through cloaked spaceships,” Rodney said, “that the government is going to be very persuasive about keeping him on here or in Colorado Springs.”

“Suppose we want to go back?” Blair asked.

“Do you?” Rodney asked.  “Do you?” he asked Tony.  “Now that you know this?  Can you just go back to whatever you were doing?  This is important stuff, stuff that affects the entire planet.  Galaxy.  Universe.”

“Hell, no,” Tony said.  “I want to stay.  But I’m not sure Gibbs will, and if he doesn’t, I will be really unhappy.”

“But you’d go back with him?”

“Yeah,” Tony said.  “I think I would.”

Rodney snorted.

“Oh, come on,” Daniel said.  “Are you trying to tell me that you’d go back to the Pegasus Galaxy if they decided not to send John back with you?”

“Let me remind you that you wanted to come with us to Pegasus and would have left O’Neill behind,” Rodney said.

“That was before we were together the way we are now,” Daniel defended himself.  “I wouldn’t leave him now.  Would you?”

Rodney scowled, but he shook his head.  “No, but they won’t leave him behind.  Not with his gene.”

“Yeah, what is this gene thing?  Is that what happened when I got on the jumper?  It was like I could hear it in my head.”

Rodney stared at Tony.  “What?”  He pulled something out of his pocket, something the size of a double-large iPhone, and handed it to Tony. 

The thing lit up in Tony’s hands.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, taking it back with a roll of his eyes.  “They’re not letting you go either.  Gibbs better get used to the idea that he’s staying here with you.”

“This here,” Jack said, “is a zat.  It has a longer, boring name, but let’s not worry about that now.  This is a super secret weapon that never, ever, leaves the mountain.”

“Until now,” John said.  He’d finally managed to convince the powers that be that having zats to fight the Wraith were a good thing.  A Wraith hit for the third time with a zat was a Wraith who couldn’t rejuvenate and come back to kill you.

“Never, ever, leaves the Mountain or,” Jack qualified with a glare at John, “Atlantis.   Shall I demonstrate on you?”

“Ha ha ha, sir,” John said. 

Jack aimed at an obviously empty carton.  “One shot stuns.  Two shots kill.”  He shot once, then twice.  “Three makes it go bye-bye.”  He shot one more time and the box vanished.  “See why this can’t ever hit the streets?”

“Yes,” Gibbs said grimly.  “In the wrong hands, it could be devastating.”

“In the right hands it could be devastating,” Ellison pointed out.  “How do you protect yourself against an employee who goes postal?”

“We’ve been lucky,” Jack said, and Sheppard nodded.  “Most of the time it’s been us who goes postal because of some wacky alien thing we’ve been exposed to.  I guess we’ve managed to keep our shit together enough to not blow ourselves to smithereens, or to use one of these to kill and disappear anyone who pisses us off.”

“Which is just about everyone on some days,” Sheppard pointed out.

“Amen,” Jack said.

“She died,” Daniel said.

Rodney snorted.

“What?” Daniel asked with a frown.

“She died?  You make it sound so ordinary.  Try she was kidnapped by aliens and then taken over by one.  These disgusting leech things, called Goa’uld, that take over your body and make you become a megalomaniac monster.  Then after looking for her for almost three years, she tries to kill you and one of your teammates has to kill her to save your life.”

“Jesus, Daniel,” Tony said, flinching.  “Is that shit for real?” 

Daniel winced.  “Yeah.”

“Kind of a brutal recitation, man,” Blair said to Rodney.

Rodney had the grace to look embarrassed.  “Sorry,” he said to Daniel.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t, you know, around for any of that.  I should have been, but I…” He left off, his hands flopping in the air.

“Sort of forgot how to be human for a while?” Daniel asked, not unkindly.

“Yeah,” Rodney said.  “I really did.  I’m still not that great at it.  I’ve been told I’m petty, arrogant, and bad with people.”

“You did okay with us when we were kids,” Blair defended him.

“And you really have changed lately,” Daniel told him.  “Atlantis has been good for you.  John’s been good for you.”

Rodney smiled this shy smile that made Tony want to hug him.

“Yeah, he has,” Rodney said.  “Sometimes I don’t have any idea what he sees in me.  Really.”

“You’re hot,” Tony said.  “And really smart, and that’s sexy, too.”

“And you save his life, and this city, about every other day according to his mission reports,” Daniel pointed out.  “That life-saving thing was a fundamental part of Jack and my relationship.”

“Face it,” Tony said.  “We’re all a bunch of babe magnets.”  He frowned.  “Or military men magnets.”  He started to laugh.  “All four of us.  I still can’t get over that.”

“These are an assortment of Wraith stun weapons,” John said, holding up the spear version.  “This one sucks more than the zat if you get stunned, because it takes forever to wake up from it, and once you do you can’t move.  It makes it nice and easy for the Wraith to feed on you.”

“You’ve been shot with one?” Gibbs asked as he picked one up.

“Unfortunately.”

“May I?”

“By all means,” John said.  “Just don’t shoot me.”

Gibbs pulled the trigger and an energy blast surrounded another empty carton John had set up.  “Easy to shoot.”  He handed it to Ellison, who took a shot of his own.

“Do you arm yourself with these routinely?” Ellison asked.

“No,” John said.  “We mostly use rifles, M-5s, P-90s, H&K G36Ks, pistols, Berettas, Para-ordinance P-14s, stuff like that.  Ronon has a cool blaster that I keep trying to get Rodney to reverse engineer, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

“That’s a nice gun,” Jack said wistfully.

“Any of you other jokers ever been married?” Blair asked.  He was enjoying himself tremendously.  It was like he’d seen these guys yesterday, not twenty years ago. 

“I was almost engaged,” Rodney said.  “Twice.”

“What happened?” Tony asked.  “I mean, besides claiming your inner gay and falling for John?”  He grinned at Rodney.

“John tells me I was more in love with the idea of being in love than actually in love.  They were really nice women and I’m not, as we’ve just discussed, a particularly nice man.  Now that I’m on this side of it, I can see I would have eaten them alive and spit them out.  I liked them,” he added with a sad smile, “so I’m glad that’s not going to happen.”

“So this thing with John works because he’s not such a nice guy?”  Blair had only met the guy briefly, but he seemed pleasant enough.

“Mostly it’s that he won’t take any shit from me.  No matter how angry or terrified I am, he can handle it.  But he’s also not as nice as he appears.  John’s all laid back and charming but, when things go bad, he’s scary as all hell.”

“Sort of turns you on, doesn’t it?” Tony said with a smirk.

“Hell, yeah,” Rodney said, “although not until later.  Because when he’s being like that, it means that life, as we know it, is about to end, and I’m usually concentrating on other ways for us not to die.”

“Those are always fun times,” Daniel said.  “How about you, Tony?  Ever been married, gay or otherwise?”

“Nope,” he said. “Although I came close during an undercover assignment.”

“Judging by the look on your face, it doesn’t sound like it ended well,” Blair noted.   

“No, it sucked.  She was in love with a professor named Tony DiNardo, who was madly in love with her.  It was all very real to her, and not so much, at least at first, for me.  Then the lines started to blur.  The worst part was that I’d been thrown to the wolves by Gibbs’ boss, and it ended up that it wasn’t a legitimate undercover assignment.  She was trying to flush someone out to get some revenge and she was using me to do it.  Things did not end well for anyone.”

“Sucks,” Blair said, putting his hand on Tony’s shoulder.  “I’m sorry.”

Tony shrugged.  “I just feel bad about it.  I broke her heart, her father ended up dead, I almost ended up dead, and she tried to get me arrested for murdering her father.  It was a total cluster fuck.”

“Where was Gibbs through all of this?” Rodney asked with an accusatory and somewhat protective tone.

It reminded Blair of Rodney’s completely over the top rescue of Daniel to keep him out of danger, the hotel swarming with secret agents, the hotel room filled with an inhuman amount of snacks to eat.  Rodney had always been the behind-the-scenes protector, while Tony was the upfront one.

“That was another cluster fuck I’ll tell you about later.  He wasn’t around for the first half of it and then, when he got back, I was under strict orders to tell no one.  But, of course, Gibbs knew I was lying to him, which pissed him the hell off, so we were like two angry cats keeping out of each other’s territory.  On the other hand, when it all went FUBAR, he was there to pick up the pieces.”

“And now you’re together,” Blair pointed out.  “So, happy ending?”

“Yeah, Blair,” Tony said with a smile, “happy ending.”  He prodded Blair with his toe.  “How about you, short stuff?  I have no doubt you left a trail of broken hearts behind you.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you,” Blair said with a wry grin, “but Jim’s the first person I’ve ever been in a real relationship with.”

“What?” Tony said disbelievingly.

“You hadn’t slept with anyone until then?” Rodney asked, voice high.

“No, no,” Blair said, laughing.  “I’d slept with plenty of people, both men and women, but I never stayed with any of them.  It never lasted past a few weeks at best.  They were never what I wanted.  Besides,” he added, toeing Tony’s thigh, “You know I wasn’t a virgin.”

“What!” Rodney squawked.  “You two?”

Blair really started laughing.  He managed to gasp out, “Yeah, all through our senior year, me and Tony were fucking behind the bleachers.  You didn’t know?”

Rodney and Daniel were both staring at them now, eyes wide open.

Tony grinned at them.  “It was our first taste of forbidden gay love.  We thought about asking you two to join us, but…”

“You assholes,” Rodney interrupted, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh, the expressions on your face,” Blair said with supreme satisfaction.  “And no, there was no me and Tony, but I told him about my first time.”

“In painful detail,” Tony said.

“Hey!  It was my first time, I was excited!”

“You were almost excited again when you were telling me.”

Blair just lay back and laughed. 

“These are a few of the weapons we’ve confiscated from some of the more crazy people in the Pegasus Galaxy,” Sheppard said.

Gibbs picked up a shotgun.  “I’m assuming there are different levels of technology out there?”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said.  “That looks like an Armsel Pretecta 12-gauge, but it’s nowhere near as reliable.  That’s from the Genii, a crazy-assed group of people who try their best to kill us when they’re not working with us.”

Gibbs put the shotgun down and picked up another gun.  “What kind of levels of technology?  More advanced?”

“Yup,” O’Neill said.  “Although most of those are in this galaxy.  They haven’t had to deal with the Wraith culling their population to shreds.  We’ve met some races that are so far advanced they sort of act as if we’re the squashed bug on the bottom of their shoe.  Except for Daniel.  They all like Daniel.”

“Daniel and Teyla are our secret weapons,” Sheppard said with a lopsided grin.  “Everyone likes them.”

“Teyla?” Ellison asked.

“She’s Athosian,” Sheppard said, “from the Pegasus Galaxy.  She decided to fight with us against the Wraith.  She understands the galaxy and its people, and she’s just someone you tend to trust.”

“They’re both so earnest,” O’Neill said.

Gibbs decided she must have been the attractive woman he saw in the control room.

“What’s this?” Ellison asked as he picked up a rectangular item.  It lit up in his hands.  “Wait,” he said, putting out a hand to keep them from speaking.  “It tells you where people are.”  He held it out and walked away from the other three.  “This is us, these four dots.  Right?”

“Right,” Sheppard said, exchanging a look with O’Neill.

Gibbs wondered what that look meant.  What it meant that this equipment also responded to Tony.  What that meant for the two of them.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice said. 

Tony glanced up and saw a lovely light-skinned black woman with auburn hair, holding a young child. 

“Hello right back,” he said.  “I’m Tony.”  If memory served him right, this was one of the two people Rodney had pointed out as actually being from the Pegasus Galaxy.

“This is Teyla,” Rodney said, moving closer to her.  “She’s a member of my team.  Teyla Emmagan.  And this is Torren, her son.  I delivered him,” he added, bouncing on his toes.

Teyla smiled fondly at him, saying, “Yes, you did.  Dr. Jackson, it is good to see you again.”

“Daniel.”

She smiled.  “And you?” That was directed at Blair.

“Blair Sandburg.  The four of us were best friends a long time ago when we went to school together.  We haven’t seen each other since.”

“Rodney had spoken to me of this school reunion of his.  I did not expect it to be here.”

“This,” Tony said, “us being here, on Atlantis, is a total fluke, and definitely not a high school reunion.”

“It’s better,” Blair said.

“Much better,” Tony agreed.  “Are they all as beautiful as you where you come from?”

She just smiled at him, as if wise to everything about him.  Instead of speaking, she handed him Torren.

“Wait,” he said nervously, hands out, though, to make sure the kid didn’t fall.  “I’m not great with kids.”

“You will learn,” she said firmly, placing Torren in his hands.  “If you are Rodney’s friend and plan to be around, you will be one of Torren’s guardians as well, so you will learn.”

Tony swallowed, but he pulled Torren close to his chest, waiting for the kid to start screaming.

Instead, Torren rested his head against Tony, and watched his mom and the rest of them.  “Ra-ra,” he said.

“That’s me!” Rodney said delightedly.  “That’s his name for me.”

“Yeah?” Tony said, deciding he could get used to this.  He looked down at Torren.  “Hey, kid.  I’m your Uncle Tony.”  He heard several snorts but he ignored them all.

Gibbs noticed the tall dark man strolling into the armory, wearing leather, his hair in dreads. 

“Who are you?” the man asked.

“Gibbs.”

The man grunted.  “Who’re the new guys with McKay?” he asked Sheppard.

“Tony DiNozzo and Blair Sandburg,” Sheppard said.  “Old friends of Rodney’s and Daniel’s.”

The man grunted again.

“Hey, show them your blaster,” Sheppard said.  “Oh, and by the way, this is Specialist Ronon Dex.  He’s from a planet called Sateda that was pretty much wiped out by the Wraith.  He fights with us now.”

Ronon nodded at them and pulled out his gun, handing it to Sheppard.

“When does Rodney get to play with it?” Sheppard asked him.

“I’m not letting McKay take my gun apart.  Suppose he can’t put it back together?”

“Have you ever seen him not be able to put something back together?” Sheppard challenged him.  “Not only will he put it back together, but he’ll put it back together better, and he’ll know how to make more, so if anything happens to yours, he can give you another one.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Sheppard beamed at him, pushing up on his toes and then back down. 

Ronon glanced at Ellison.  “You got the gene?”

“Apparently.  And I’m Jim Ellison.”

Ronon grunted at him.  “Why are these guys here?” he asked Sheppard.  “I recognize the other names, but not these two.”

“They came with them.”

“So who’s the taller guy with McKay?”

“That’s Tony,” Gibbs said.

Ronon gave him a look.  “He’s with you?”

“He’s with me,” Gibbs said. 

“You work together?”

Gibbs saw a flash of speculation in the big man’s eyes.

“He’s with me,” Gibbs said again, clearly.

The speculation turned to a second’s disappointment, then resignation, which ended with a shrug and a smile.  “And you’re with the shorter guy?” he asked Ellison.

Ellison nodded.

Ronon chuckled as he glanced at Sheppard and O’Neill.  “All eight of you?”

Silence filled the room for a long moment.

“Kind of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” O’Neill finally said.

Ronon considered them all for a moment, a moment that gave Gibbs the time to wonder about the man in turn, to try to imagine what it would be like to have your world mercilessly destroyed by an enemy like the Wraith.

 “We need to get back to Pegasus,” Ronon said, interrupting Gibbs thoughts. 

“I know,” Sheppard said, glancing at O’Neill.  “I’m working on it.”

“The Wraith will find us,” Ronon said to O’Neill.  “If one of them did, any of them can.  We need to go finish them off.”

“I know,” O’Neill said, “and I’m working on it, too.”

“Wait a minute,” Ellison said grimly.  “The Wraith have been here?  On Earth?”

That really got Gibbs’ grim attention.  He had gotten the impression they wanted to know where Earth was, not that they already had that information.  Were they already on their way?  Was the human race about to find themselves in a battle for their very existence?

“Yes,” O’Neill said gloomily.  “And they got some lucky shots off, too, killing a lot of good people.  But it was an air fight.  They never landed, and we destroyed their ship.”

“No more ships have arrived?” Gibbs asked.

“Rodney doesn’t think the destination codes for Earth were broadcast to any other Hive ships,” Sheppard responded, “And he’s usually right about stuff like that.  Usually.”

“And Atlantis has the best weapons against the Wraith,” O’Neill said.  “Which is why you’re still sitting right here.”  When Sheppard opened his mouth, O’Neill stopped him with a look.  “John, I get it.  I’m working on it.”

Sheppard frowned, but didn’t say anything.

Later that night, after a lengthy stint in the lab where Rodney tested Tony’s gene, and established that Blair didn’t have it, Rodney, Tony, Blair and Daniel were all relaxing in the mess hall.  “It’s like one of each pair has the gene full-strength.  Jack, John, Tony, and Jim,” Rodney said. 

Tony clicked his tongue.  “I totally blew it for the military contingent of this group.  Without me, it would have been a clean sweep.”

“With the therapy, my gene’s almost as strong as John’s,” Rodney said defensively.  “And Daniel doesn’t have the gene, but the city recognizes him anyway.”

Blair sighed.  “So, I’m the total loser, genetics-wise.  Short, hairy, and I can’t open doors with my mind.  That sucks.”  He grinned at the group.

“We should know by tomorrow if you’ve got the recessive gene, and then we can give you the gene therapy,” Rodney assured him.

“What is this stuff?” Tony asked, pushing his fork into something purple and lumpy.

“That is almost-potatoes from the Pegasus galaxy.  We traded for a ton of them, literally, so we’re still eating them even though we’ve been here for months.”

“Huh,” Tony said with a scrunched look on his face.  “Weird to think I’m eating food from a different galaxy.”  He took another bite.  It had this slightly weird aftertaste, sort of like vanilla, or maybe cinnamon, but salty at the same time.  “They really do almost taste like potatoes.”  Tony liked them.  Especially the part about them coming from another galaxy.

“Yeah, but not quite,” John said, joining them and pulling up a chair with one foot as he laid his tray next to Rodney’s.  “Most of the food from the Pegasus Galaxy is almost like something you can eat here.”

“And some of it is like nothing you’ve ever eaten here, or would ever want to eat,” Rodney warned.

“All right, so I want to hear a Rodney story from when he was a kid,” John said.  “Something juicy.”

“And then I want one about Tony,” Gibbs said, grabbing another chair and positioning himself next to Tony, a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Hey!” Tony greeted him with a smile.  “I was wondering if I was ever going to see you again.  Having fun with guns?”

Gibbs nodded.  “Yeah, actually.  And finding out about what’s out there.”

Tony studied him for a moment.  “It’s bad, I know.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Too bad?  Like going back to Washington, D.C. and pretending this never happened bad?”  Tony didn’t want to go back, at least not yet; he wanted more than a week’s vacation time here.  He had no idea how he was supposed to go back and act like this wasn’t going on, like the Earth wasn’t looking down the throat of a war with aliens that sucked your life away.  Part of the afternoon’s fun in the lab had been watching John get attacked by a Wraith, watching him age decades in a matter of seconds.

Rodney thought they should know what they were getting in for, so he’d set it up, his face like stone, and then walked out of the room.  They’d all been pale and bleak when he’d returned.  With all the ambiguity in the world and flexible moral codes, Tony had never faced a truly evil adversary.  He wanted in, needed to be a part of this.  But he wanted Gibbs to be a part of it, too.

Gibbs put his hand on Tony’s forearm and squeezed lightly.  “Let’s talk about it later, okay?”

Tony nodded, his brief stint of melancholy shifting to humor as he thought of a story.  “Hey, here’s a good one.  Why don’t you guys tell them how you got me into Ohio State on a scholarship.”

“Good old Buckeyes,” Jack said, squeezing in next to Daniel, a slice of pie on a plate.  He also had coffee that he handed to Daniel.  Daniel gave him a gentle smile which Jack returned.

Tony thought Rodney had picked a good time for them all to convene in the mess hall, as it was almost empty.  There were three other people, two of them involved in a spirited conversation, and the third was nose-deep into a book.  Then again, Rodney seemed to think that Atlantis was different, that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell had sort of been replaced by Don’t Get Eaten by a Wraith.  Still, it was nice to see that smile on Daniel’s face, on all his friend’s faces, to see that they had all found someone to love and to be loved by.  And it was even nicer that he didn’t have to sit there consumed with envy, because he had someone of his own that mattered, for the first time in his life.  He turned to Jethro and found the man’s eyes on him.  Tony smiled and got a loving smile in return that proved his point.

Then Tony focused back to the conversation at hand, saying to Jack, “I was a Buckeye.”

“You were?” Jack asked.  “Sweet.”

“You guys have a basketball court here?” Tony asked.

“No,” John said.  “I don’t think the Atlanteans went in for that sort of thing.”  He scowled.  “They’re mostly the laboratory kind, you know?”

“Well, my first official action as Agent Afloat is to get us a basketball court,” Tony avowed.  “No better way to work off aggression, other than sex, of course.  Less aggression, less bullshit.  I created a whole basketball league thing on the Seahawk.”

“I like him already,” Jack said, lifting a fork-full of pie in Tony’s direction as a toast.

“Me, too,” Jim Ellison said, the last to sit, pulling up a chair, turning it around so he could sit backwards in it, crossing his arms over the top crossbar.

“Okay, so tell me how they got you into Ohio State,” Gibbs said.

“I need to set the stage,” Tony started.  “Grades and me?  Not close friends.  It was why I was in summer school to begin with.  I was good at basketball…”

“He was great at basketball,” Blair said staunchly.  “He was their star player.”

Tony grinned at him.  “These guys would come and cheer me on at every game.”  There they’d sit, surrounded by jocks, and cheerleaders, and the players’ parents and families, just the three of them sitting off by themselves.  Tony had felt more buoyed by them than everyone else all together, because they were there for him, not for the game.  Well, except for Blair, he loved basketball, but he was mostly there for Tony.

“Oh, yes, it was lovely,” Rodney said.  “Smelly, loud, filled with Neanderthals who were too busy playing basketball to have an original thought in their head.”  When he saw everyone was staring at him, he waved a hand weakly through the air, “Well, except for Tony.”

Tony laughed, head thrown back.  “No, Rodney was right.  Most of us didn’t have an original thought in our head.  The hours you have to put into practicing sports, especially if you’re hoping to go pro, doesn’t leave a lot of extra hours, and I sure as hell didn’t want to spend them studying.  Most of the players had tutors to help them, and I’m sure my dad would have provided me with some if I’d asked.  But I didn’t need to ask.  I had them.”  Tony gestured at Rodney, Blair, and Daniel.

“There is nothing remotely stupid about you, DiNozzo,” Gibbs growled.

“I’m street smart, Jethro, not book smart.  You know that.  I mean I know the stuff I need to know, but I don’t know much more than that.”

Gibbs frowned at him.  “You’re being too hard on yourself.  You’re one of the best agents I’ve ever worked with, and I don’t work with slouches.  You’re intuitive, you know all the military regulations backwards and forwards, you know every weapon the military uses, you’re one of the best interrogators I’ve seen, and you can hold your own with anyone I’ve met, including the Director of Mossad.  You completely played him.”

“That was awesome,” Tony said happily, even as he was taken aback at Gibbs’ torrent of praising words.  He’d take them out later and appreciate them more fully, and then he’d more fully appreciate Gibbs.  “Thanks,” he told his lover quietly.

Gibbs shot him a ‘so shut up with this putting yourself down crap’ look.

“Director David?” Jack asked.  “How’d you play him?”

“By playing the fool,” Gibbs told him.  “By pissing him off just enough to say something he didn’t intend to say.  But it changed the playing field and put the power back in our hands after a huge cluster fuck on both sides of the ocean.” 

Jack shot Tony an impressed look.  “I like him even more now.”

“Yeah, we get it,” Jim said.  “Tony’s not the ignoramus he’s making himself out to be.  Get on with the story.”

“I’ll let you guys tell it,” Tony said with a mock bow and a hand flourish toward Rodney.

Rodney rolled his eyes.  “Yes, well, the three of us knew Tony’s grades sucked, and we also knew that daddy dearest had cut him off except for one credit card with an uncertain limit.”

“Oh, hey, I have an interesting story to tell you later about daddy dearest,” Tony interrupted.

His three friends looked intrigued, but Rodney pressed on.  “We had to face the fact that Tony either had to get into college on a scholarship or he’d be asking “would you like fries with that?” for the rest of his life.”

“We all took a different tack,” Blair continued with a grin.  “I took on the teachers and did the searches for scholarship information.  I was already a pro at that even at the age of thirteen, for various reasons.”

Jim scowled at him.

Blair nudged him with his shoulder and continued, “Rodney tackled the criminal elements of the caper because we figured he wouldn’t get caught, and if he did, the men in black would bail him out, and Daniel took on the herculean task of tutoring Tony.”

“Herculean,” Daniel repeated.

Tony loved these guys.  He shot them all a broad smile.  “Hey, it wasn’t all one-sided.  I did stuff for you guys, too.”

“Yeah, you did,” Blair said.  “You taught me how to play basketball.”  He turned to Jim.  “This is the guy that taught me how to play.”

“He’s good,” Jim complained to Tony.  “He can run circles around me.”

“I taught him how to play short,” Tony said.  “No sense teaching him how to play like he was tall.”

“And you almost made me and Rodney normal for eighteen months,” Daniel said fondly.  “Not to mention that you kept me from getting pummeled every other week.”

“And you were our friend,” Rodney said.  “And you never told Donovan I’d blown up his car.”

“Where did Donovan end up?” Gibbs asked.  “Tony said he just disappeared one day.  He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

“His dad got a promotion,” Rodney said, putting promotion in quotes.  “The family had to move immediately, though, across the country.”

“I didn’t think you knew about that,” Tony said.  “Did you tell?” he demanded of Blair.

Blair shook his head.  “I just told him we were protecting Daniel.”

“I’m not stupid,” Rodney scoffed but then folded, “Okay, one of the agents told me the next day.”

“Sheesh,” Tony said.  “You can never trust a secret agent to keep secrets.”

“You mean you weren’t protecting me?” Daniel asked, looking put out.

“Oh, yeah, we were,” Tony assured him.  “Donovan was planning on grabbing you to get to Rodney.  We just thought it might be better to tell Rodney that you were the only one in danger, because we didn’t want to hear on the morning news that Donovan’s house had inexplicably exploded.”

Daniel conceded the point.  “Good idea.”

“This was in high school?” Jack asked.

“It was hell,” Rodney said darkly, stopping mid-chew.

“I’m sure you traumatized dozens of assholes while you were there,” Tony promised him.  “They probably haven’t recovered.”

“You think so?” Rodney asked brightly.

Tony nodded.

“Good.”  Rodney went back to chewing happily.

“Exactly what criminal elements were you involved in?” John asked Rodney.

“I hacked the computer system,” Rodney said.  “I couldn’t do anything too dramatic because the system was archaic, so I just shifted all his grades up a little each quarter.  Just enough to get his GPA over a 3.0.  And then I gave him credit for extracurricular activities.”

“I sobbed to all his teachers about how horrible Tony’s life was, and how they should give him a break, and how his smiles and fooling around just covered deep, deep wounds from a tragic childhood,” Blair said.

“Is that why Mrs. Tolliver started patting me on the shoulder so much?” Tony asked.  “I never could figure that out.”

“I’d suggest extra credit projects that I knew me, or Rodney or Daniel could do easily in our sleep,” Blair added.

“Hey, I did some of those,” Tony protested.

“Yeah, while you were watching TV,” Daniel said dryly. 

“Movies are very educational.”

“They are actually,” Gibbs said.  “Tony’s solved a lot of crimes using ideas from movies.”

“There.  See?” Tony said, beaming at Jethro.

“He also has an annoying habit of doing bad imitations from movies at inappropriate times,” Gibbs added.

“You were doing so well talking me up,” Tony told him.  “It’s the couch for you.  Hey, speaking of that, where are we sleeping?”

“Chuck is working on that,” John said.  “Don’t worry, you’ll have beach front property.”

“And doors and lights that operate with your mind,” Jack said.  “I love that.”

“Not for me, or at least not all the time.  If I’m not thinking hard, the doors don’t automatically open,” Daniel complained.

“Or me,” Blair said.

“Excuse me,” Jack said to Daniel.  “There are times when you’re not thinking hard?  When does that happen?  And let me know next time, so I can give you shit about it.”

Daniel made a face at Jack.

“I worked on that volcano project,” Tony pointed out.

“Only because Rodney promised it would actually spew a pryoclastic flow,” Daniel said.

“Did it?” Gibbs asked.

“Definitely,” Tony said.  “We totally trashed the sun porch at my house.  It blew out half the windows.”

“It was great,” Rodney said, a wide and somewhat evil smile on his face.

“My dad was kind of pissed, though.  But we got it all on video and the teacher gave me an A, so it was all good.”  He sighed.  “It was amazing.”  He bit his lower lip for a moment.  “I wish I still had a copy of it.”

“I have one,” Rodney said.  “I kept it.”  He pulled his laptop off the next table and pulled up a file.  “It really was cool.” 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Tony said.  “You still have a copy?  How do you still have a copy?”

Rodney’s face reddened.  “It was easy enough.  I kept the video.  When the technology changed, I made a copy.”

“I’m not asking how you did it,” Tony said.  “But why?”

Face still red, Rodney’s chin went up in a belligerent jerk.  “It was all I had, okay?  You all went away, and it was all I had.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment, and then he started to smile.  If he didn’t think Rodney would die of embarrassment, he’d give his friend a hug.  “Rodney, you old softie.”

“Shut up,” Rodney snapped.

“I get it,” Tony said.  “I do.  I kept that picture of the four of us, and despite all the times I moved, I never lost track of it.”

“I kept our graduation program,” Blair told him.  “And I have all of our names highlighted.”

Tony glanced at Daniel.  “How about you?”

Daniel rolled his eyes but admitted, “Every ticket stub to every movie we went to.”

“That’s what those are,” Jack said in satisfaction.  “I couldn’t figure out why you kept those.”

“See?” Tony said to Rodney.  “We’re all a bunch of sentimental teenage girls.”  He laughed at the disgruntled look on Rodney’s face.  “Come on, let’s watch it.”

Rodney turned his laptop so the other seven men could see it.

First the camera panned on a side profile of a young Tony making some minute adjustments to a mock village with huts and fake trees and village people who mostly seemed to consist of little green army men.  In the middle of the village was a four foot mountain.

“Ready?” a Rodney asked, off camera.

“Ready,” Tony said with a wild grin, moving out of camera range.  The view returned to the mountain and the shadow it cast on the village below.

“Oh my God, this is gonna be so cool!” Blair said excitedly.

“Are you sure we should be doing this here?” Daniel asked.  “I still think we’re too close to the windows.” 

“Too late,” Rodney said.  “Thar she blows.”

The volcano started to smoke and tremble and, after a minute of that, the top blew off, slamming into the ceiling.  Something lava-like began to flow down the steep sides.

“Whoa,” Blair yelled.  “Awesome!”

“Wait for it,” Rodney said.  “Now!”

There was another explosion and half the mountain blew apart decimating the village and shattering the large windows next to the volcano, as well as pitting the walls with debris and knocking down an entire shelf of knick-knacks.

“Fuck!” Tony said.  “That was great!”

All four of the boys were yelling and whooping, and the camera caught them all for a moment before going back to the village.

“Anthony DiNozzo!” came an adult women’s punitive voice.

“Crap,” said Tony.

There was another pan of the village, now covered with mountain debris on top of the fake lava which was dripping off the table onto the carpet below.  Nothing remained of the trees, huts, or the green army men. 

Then the tape ended.  Tony let out another whoop.  “God, that was great!”

Jack snickered.  “Someone got in trouble.”

Tony huffed out a laugh.  “It was so worth it.  Besides, that was the housekeeper and she liked me, even if she did make me clean that shit up.  Rewind it to the four of us, Rodney.”

Rodney did as ordered and stilled the picture on the four of them.

“God,” Tony said.  “There we are.  The Four Musketeers.”

They were so much as Tony remembered, Rodney’s normal belligerency somewhat tempered by the successful destructive experiment, Daniel looking pleased, but also worried about the collateral damage, and Blair back-slapping them all, talking non-stop.  Tony’s younger self was still grinning madly, eying everything with extreme satisfaction. Despite getting grounded and losing the use of his credit card for a month, it had been a good day.  Him and his three crazy way-too-smart friends.  “Will you send me that file?” he asked Rodney.

Rodney nodded and shut the laptop.  “Long story short: Blair bullshitted all of Tony’s teachers with sob stories, Daniel spent hours trying to cram some facts into Tony’s head, and I messed around with Tony’s grades.  Blair found the perfect scholarship program and he filled out the application, Daniel wrote the application essay, and I forged daddy dearest’s name.”

“Ohio State never knew what hit them,” Tony said.

“Did you know all that was going on?” Gibbs asked.

“Nope.  Well, except for the tutoring.  They told me all this crap the night after we graduated and presented me with the scholarship award.  Between that and the basketball scholarship I got, it paid for almost everything.  Of course, I had to get through college on my own, because we lost touch.”  Tony frowned.  “How did that happen, anyway?”

“You weren’t around to pull me out of the lab,” Rodney said honestly.

“Or to pull me away from my books,” Daniel added.

“And my mom swooped in and took me off on a whirl-wind tour of the far east, and when I came back you were gone and even your family was gone, and I didn’t know how to get hold of you.”

“Yeah, my dad moved to Florida that year.  I think it was right after he married Barbi.  Or maybe Tammy.  Maybe Elaine.  It was recently brought to my attention that I’ve missed a few of them.”  He sighed.  “Well, losing track of you guys sucked, and it’s not happening again.”  Tony picked up his glass of water and held it up.  “Here’s to keeping in touch.”

There was a round of “hear-hear’s” around the table, and Daniel, Rodney, Blair and Tony all clinked their glasses together, echoed by their partners.

Two weeks later:

Jim Ellison sat on the bleachers watching the basketball game on the floor below.  Tony had been as good as his word and, with Jack’s and John’s help, had chosen a room and then had it outfitted as a basketball court.  Jim had been there when Jack had signed the request forms, saying, “I love signing this sort of thing.  I get this.  Basketball, it’s a good thing.  It makes sense to me.”  Then Jack had frowned at Daniel.  “Why don’t you bring me things like this to sign?”

Jim grinned at the memory.  Jack liked to play a fool, a lot like Tony did, but Jack was as sharp as they came, just like Tony.  He liked them.  He liked them all.  He liked that they knew what he was, and that he and Blair were together, and that it didn’t faze them.

Two teams of Marines were playing a game, shirts versus skins.  Tony was coaching-slash-mocking them from the sidelines.  Jim hadn’t been sure how the Marines would take Tony: a civilian, a way-too-handsome civilian, and a probable gay one to boot, but they just razzed him back, something Tony had no problem dealing with.  On the plus side, he was a big guy, and he was funny, plus he knew the game backwards and forwards and was a good coach. 

Maybe John and Rodney were right, and people here on Atlantis had bigger fish to fry than who was sleeping with whom; amazing how a common enemy brought people together.  Not that soldiers couldn’t be idiots, even here in Atlantis.  But if Tony couldn’t work the stupid out by having the soldiers in question legitimately pummel it out of each other on the basketball court or the gym, Gibbs took over.

They were a powerful one-two jab, the two of them. 

“Just like us,” came Blair’s mental and amused thought.

“Just like us,” Jim thought back at him.  Actually just like them all.  Tony and Gibbs, Jack and Daniel, John and Rodney, and he and Blair.  They were all deadly duos.

“You watching basketball, or watching Tony?” Blair teased.

“Both,” Jim said honestly.  Tony was easy on the eyes, and Jim knew Blair thought so, too.  Not that it mattered.  Jim had who he wanted.

He felt Blair’s happy response to his thought,and then felt Blair get distracted away.

It had been an unexpected side effect of Blair getting the gene therapy.  From one second to the next, as soon as Blair’s ATA gene came on-line, they could speak telepathically with each other as well as pick up projected thoughts and emotions.  It had startled Jim at first, not sure he wanted Blair in his head, or to be in Blair’s, but he’d rapidly gotten used to it, especially when he’d also developed the ability to know where his partner was.  Rodney had done tests and Jim had better accuracy than one of Rodney’s life sign detectors.

Rodney, Radek and Dr. Lam--currently filling in until they could find a replacement for Dr. Keller--were flummoxed by it and, unless Jim missed his bet, Rodney was envious.  Rodney didn’t like other people being better at things that mattered to him.

Jim found it amusing, especially as Rodney could do about a thousand things better than Jim could ever even think of doing.  He figured Rodney would get over it. 

And the sex?  Jim let out a whistle.  Sex with someone who knew what you wanted?  Nothing like it.  He’d almost short-circuited the first time after the combination of Blair’s talented tongue and fingers.  When he was conscious again, Blair was lying next to him, laughing.  Jim had given him a taste of his own medicine that had Blair breathless and cross-eyed, too worn out to laugh.

“Keep thinking like that and I’ll be breathless and cross-eyed right here,” Blair warned him with a laugh.  “And I’m with company.  Daniel just asked me why I’m sweating.”

Jim smiled.  But he didn’t apologize.

“Time to make decisions,” Jack said. 

Gibbs looked up from his desk.  “About?”

“The military part of the equation needs to talk.  We need to round the other two up.”

“Where’s the non-military part of the equation?”  Gibbs had lost track of Tony at some point today.  Tony was in his element playing Activities Director for a group of very bored Marines.

“Visiting with Rodney’s sister, Jeannie.  She beamed in a little while ago.”

“Beamed in?”  When, Gibbs wondered, had his life turned into a science fiction television show?

Jack shot Gibbs a lopsided smile.  “She, and the geeks, will meet us for dinner.  We’re going out.  At least so Daniel informed me this morning.  He’s tired of almost potatoes.  He wants Thai.”  Jack’s expression looked as if he’d be just as happy with French Fries.

“A field trip?” Gibbs asked with a wry grin.

“With Daniel around?  More like an adventure in anthropology.”

“Or sociology,” Jim said from behind Jack.  “If Blair is around.”

John was behind Jim.  He came in and sat down on the couch in Gibbs’ office.  “Or an exercise in trying to figure out how everyone’s trying to kill Rodney with citrus.”

Jack snorted.

“How about Tony?” Jim asked.  “What’s dinner out mean for him?” 

“Having a good time,” Gibbs said.  Tony, if given a choice, would mostly just be looking for a good time.  Gibbs needed the reminder that good times were there for the taking.  He’d forgotten that for a while, until he’d gotten Tony into his bed.

“Looks like you all rounded yourself up,” Jack observed, looking pleased that he wouldn’t have to go find anyone.  He made himself comfortable on the couch near John.  Jim sat in the chair in front of Gibbs’ desk.

Gibbs liked his office.  He especially liked how it was attached to their living quarters.  Tony’s office entered into the same quarters so they were actually living together.  On a base filled with military personnel.  Not that it was advertised, or even obvious from the hallway, but anyone with an ounce of curiosity and the computer skills to look up blueprints would be able to figure it out.

John had told him that he and Rodney had a similar set up.  Jack and Daniel were set up in adjoining suites, and Jim and Blair shared their quarters openly.

“How did this happen again?” Gibbs asked. 

“What?” John responded.  “How did what happen?”

“The four of us, the eight of us, all here, all living with each other on what is, for all intents and purposes, a military base.  How is that possible?”

John shrugged.  “Beats the hell out of me.”

“Me, too,” Jack said.

“Blair says it’s kismet,” Jim said, his grin saying that he knew that answer didn’t help at all.

“And it won’t end up being eight of us,” Jack said.  “Daniel and I will be going back to Cheyenne Mountain sooner or later.  And you,” he added, looking at Gibbs, “and you,” looking at Jim, “have some decisions to make.”

No one said anything.

“Okay, then,” Jack said.  “Let’s start with you.”  He turned to Jim.  “You’ve got the military all excited.  They’re out there looking for other Sentinels, hoping they all have an active gene.  Are they going to find any?”

“I don’t know anything about how the gene factors in, but I do know that Blair only found two Sentinels in all the time he was looking.”

“Two?” Jack asked sharply.

“Yeah,” Jim said grimly.  “Alex Barnes.  She’s gorked out in some sanitarium.”

“That gonna happen to you?”

Gibbs appreciated Jack’s complete lack of bullshit style of asking questions, even if he internally winced on Jim’s behalf.

“Not as long as Blair’s around.”

“Package deal?”

“Package deal.”

“A Sentinel always needs a Guide?”

“I don’t know that for sure.  It’s not like two Sentinels are an adequate sample size for any conclusions.  I just know what happens to me whenever Blair isn’t around.  And I know how much better my senses work with him around.  And I think Alex lost it because she didn’t have a Guide.”

“Hmm,” Jack said.  “Okay.  You have three choices, but I’ll tell you up front that the military won’t be happy with choice number one.  Just being honest, okay?”

“I’m assuming choice number one is me and Blair going back to Cascade and pretending this never happened?” Jim asked.

“You got it.”

Jim scowled.  “What are the number two and three choices?”

“Two, you stay on Atlantis.  Three, you come back with me to Cheyenne Mountain and become part of the program there.”

Jim looked surprised.  “They’re not talking about just conscripting me back into the army?”

“I’ll be honest; there was talk of that.  But I made it clear that you’re in a non-negotiable and necessary relationship with another man, your Guide, so unless the US Government wanted to do away with DADT, they’d have a problem on their hands.”

Jim shot Jack a grateful look.  “How’d they take that?”

“Badly, but it shut them up.  And that leaves us with your two choices.”

“Blair needs to be a part of that choice,” Jim said.

“I know, but I wanted us to talk first.  While you’re mulling that over, you,” he said to Gibbs, “have a decision to make, too.  Vance is pissed you haven’t come back yet.”

“I know,” Gibbs said with a small grin.  It was killing Vance that he didn’t know what was going on.  Gibbs had called him and essentially told him he’d let him know when and if he and Tony were coming back.  Vance’s response hadn’t been pleasant but it had tickled Gibbs.  “What are our choices?”

“Stay here while Atlantis is on Earth and go back to NCIS when the city leaves, or stay on Atlantis even when she goes back to the Pegasus Galaxy.”

“You guys have done a great job,” John said.  “I’d be thrilled if I didn’t need to deal with the bullshit of batshit crazy Marines.  And both of you have experience dealing with terrorists and other threats.  Not that we’re going to run into an Al-Qaeda cell in Pegasus, but the enemies we do have out there are worse, and I could use your expertise.”

Gibbs believed that.  Not the expertise part; John and Rodney had been dealing with them for five years and were alive to tell the tale.  The terrorists Gibbs dealt with on Earth were deadly, but they didn’t want the entire human race destroyed, or cocooned as food stores.  “So we can stay if we want.”

John and Jack both nodded.  “I think the Marines would mutiny if we sent Tony away,” John said.  “They like the basketball league.”

Gibbs snorted. 

“And to answer your other question,” Jack said, “Atlantis is an international base.  DADT was never part of the rules and regs here.”

“You might have let me know that,” John groused.

“You really think no one noticed when you and the CSO started shacking up together?” Jack asked him with a roll of his eyes.  “We really try not to assign stupid people to programs like this.”

“Someone reported us?” John asked sharply.

“No,” Jack said, “they all tried too hard not to, dancing around the subject like professional tap dancers.  Your people are loyal to you, John.  And while he still pisses people off on a regular basis, they’re loyal to Rodney, too.  Everyone here knows they owe their lives to the both of you a hundred times over.  No one here wants either of you replaced.”

John smiled smugly at that.  “My people like me,” he said to the three of them, like they hadn’t just heard Jack say it.

“Well?  Thoughts?” Jack asked.

“I need to talk to Blair,” Jim said.

“And I need to talk to Tony,” Gibbs echoed.  “I know Tony wants to stay, though.”

“And I know Blair wants to stay as well, so I don’t think you’ll need to worry about option one,” Jim said. 

Jack looked at John.  “I’m staying,” John vowed.  “Unless you tell me I can’t.”

Jack frowned.  “There are people, who shall remain nameless, who would like to replace you, John, but I’m not one of them and neither is Hammond or Woolsey.  With the three of us on your side, you’re not going anywhere.  You fit here.”

Gibbs watched as John put his hand out to touch Atlantis’ walls, as if reassuring her that he would be staying.  Tony had tried to explain what it felt like, to have the city humming in his head, this sense of her being excited to have her people living on her.  Gibbs had, to this point, refused to even be tested for the gene.  He had decisions to make before he went down that road.

 “Is Woolsey staying on?” John asked.  “He did good.  Better than I thought he would.”

“I don’t know.  That’s open for debate, too, whether a civilian should be leading the expedition.”

As the conversation switched to this new topic, Gibbs thought to himself that you couldn’t escape politics even in another galaxy,. 

“It’s weird, but I don’t want to leave the city,” Tony said, even as he buttoned up his shirt, preparing for the eight of them to go out for dinner.  It was supposed to be nine, but Madison had called in tears about some crisis, so Jeannie had left.  It had been great to see her.

“Afraid they won’t let you back on?” Gibbs teased.

Tony made a face at him.  “No, it’s just I like having her in my head, and John says she’s not there when you leave, unless you’re in one of the puddle-jumpers.”

Gibbs frowned at him.  “Should I be worried about that?”

“Why?  Jealous?”

“No,” Gibbs said seriously.  “Concerned.  How do we know what her intentions are?   Does being in your head give her some control over you?”

“Not according to John and Rodney,” Tony told him.  “They’ve been living on her for over five years, and John says Rodney’s as much of an asshole as ever.”  He grinned at that last bit.

“So there’s no hope for you?”

“Ass,” Tony said fondly.  He sat on the bed to pull his socks on; Gibbs was already dressed.  Tony didn’t know how he did it.  It’s like he slid out of bed into his clothes.  “So we can stay if we want?”

“That’s what Jack said.”

“I wish Daniel was staying.  It sucks that he has to go back to Colorado.”

“That’s not the real issue here, DiNozzo.  What do you want to do?”

Tony tightened his lips.  He knew what he wanted to do.  No doubt in his mind.  “I think the bigger question is what do you want to do?”

“How about your dad?” Gibbs asked.

Tony shrugged.  “I’ve seen him once in almost five years.  Not a lot to stay for.  How about your dad?  You’ve just started to get friendly with him again.” 

Gibbs shrugged in turn.  “If I said I wanted to go back to NCIS, what would you say?”

Tony’s heart skipped a beat.  “Do you?”  He hated how plaintive he sounded, but he didn’t want to have to choose.  Although he knew what his choice would be, and maybe Gibbs needed to hear it.  He put up his hand to keep Gibbs from answering his question.  “I’d go back with you.”

Gibbs eyebrows shot up.  “You would?”

Tony chuffed out an exasperated laugh.  “Come here.”  He yanked at Gibbs’ arm and pulled him until he stood between Tony’s legs, and Tony rested his cheek on Gibbs’ stomach.  “Yeah, I would.  You matter more.  You matter the most.  So, I’d go back with you.”  He looked up, pleased and a little saddened at the shocked expression on Gibbs’ face.  “What aren’t I doing right, that that’s such a surprise to you?”

Gibbs shook his head.  “It’s just that I’ve seen how you fit in here, how much this place means to you.  You don’t even want to leave the city to go into San Francisco.  You’d just walk away?”

“If it meant I’d lose you.  In a heartbeat.  Jethro, I love you.  More than anything.”

Gibbs cupped Tony’s cheek with one hand and leaned down to kiss him.  Then he straddled Tony’s legs on the bed and just held him tightly for a long time.

“What do you think?” Jim asked Blair.

“I hate that we can’t all be together, and I hate the thought of Daniel ending up being odd man out, but I think you’d do better on this city than twenty-eight floors down in an underground bunker.  Don’t you think?”

“I asked what you think.  What do you want?”

“To not be going off to war,” Blair said.  “Because we will be.  Rodney’s made that clear, and I think you’ve been hearing the same message, right?”

Jim nodded.  “We can go back to Cascade.  They’ll make a fuss, but maybe if I agree to do some consulting for them, they’ll let us go.”

“That sounds nice,” Blair said, a tight smile on his face.  “Go back to Cascade and put my head in the sand.  There’s this great poem I heard once.  It goes something like this: It is three o’clock in the morning, and I am awake.  The words of my grandchildren echo in my ears.  What did you do, grandfather, as the world lay dying?  Surely you did something.”  Blair sighed.  “It’s much longer, but I can’t remember the rest.  But it’s about the choices we make today impacting the world tomorrow.  How can I go back home and pretend I don’t know anything about this?  If I could go home and start preparing the world for an alien invasion, I might think about it, but I can’t.  I won’t even be able to talk about it.”

“That doesn’t mean that our lives aren’t important.  People still commit crimes, they still murder and rape, and ordinary people need to be protected from that.  What we did mattered,” Jim said.

“I know, Jim, I know that.  And I don’t mean to demean it at all.  You made that part of our world safer,” he stopped at the look on Jim’s face, and amended his statement: “we made it safer.”  He reached for Jim’s hand.  “Have you spoken with Teyla?  With Ronon?  Their families, their planets, were destroyed.  Wiped out.  Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions dead because of these things.  They make me feel that I’m barely acquainted with loss.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  I just…” Blair wrapped his arms around Jim, needing to be close.  “I want to help.  And I’m not sure I can, or that one person can make a difference, but I want to try.”  He leaned back, resting securely in Jim’s arms, holding him close.  “But only if you want to, too.  I need you with me, no matter what.”

“We could die out there.  The survival stats of this expedition aren’t very good.”

“Which is why they need someone like you,” Blair said simply.  “Most of the time I don’t think you even understand how extraordinary you are.  You have to curb your senses so often so you don’t give yourself away.  Here, you wouldn’t have to.  Any team you’re with will be safer; they’ll have a much better chance of coming back alive and whole.”

Jim pulled Blair close again.  “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You haven’t lost me yet,” Blair said, looking up at him, loving his partner with everything he was.  “Let’s see what we can really do, what we’re capable of.  I can’t help but believe that we’ve barely scraped the surface of what you can do.”

“Of what we can do, Chief.  Of what we can do.”

John sat on the bed and watched Rodney pace.  “What if none of them decide to stay?” Rodney said worriedly.

“They’ll stay.”

“Maybe.  But maybe they shouldn’t.  Maybe they’ll end up dying, and it will be my fault.”

John wished he could reassure Rodney, but any of them dying was a real possibility.  It was kind of a miracle that he and Rodney were still alive.  Or maybe not.  It was the two of them working together that made them strong.  Like Jack and Daniel, and Tony and Gibbs, and Jim and Blair.  He hadn’t heard all their stories, was, in fact, just starting to hear Blair’s and Tony’s, but he knew they all faced death in their jobs.  “We’ll be safer together,” John found himself saying.

“What?” Rodney stopped pacing.  “You sound like a bumper sticker.”

“It’s true, though.  None of us will let any of the others die.  I know you won’t.  You’re stubborn like that.”

Rodney whined and snorted at the same time.  “I have to be, given how often you try to get yourself killed.  You’re all like that.  You and Jack, and Jim and Jethro.  All of you are just the sort to throw yourselves on the hand-grenade.  You’ll be pushing each other out of the way to get to the front of the stupid line.”

“You’ve been at the front of that line a time or two,” John pointed out.

“Don’t remind me.”

John leaned back on his elbows and took a moment to appreciate Rodney’s ass.  Something to be grateful about being alive.  He wanted Tony and Jim to stay.  He wanted more people with a strong gene who could pilot the jumpers and fly the city if necessary.  He bet both of them could, Jim for sure.  He wanted to hedge their bets so they all stayed alive.  “All the Marines are scared of Gibbs,” he mentioned.  “It’s great.”

“We could have used him when Michelson went nuts that time,” Rodney mused.  “Or when Trotters went postal.”

“Or how about when Arneberg did that thing,” John said with a wince.

Rodney grimaced back.  “He totally would have deserved anything Gibbs did to him.”

“It’s like having my own personal pit bull, but he walks himself, and I don’t have to feed him.”

“And hey, how about that time when all that stuff got stolen?  He and Tony would have figured that out.”

“Maybe they still can.  I never did find any of it.  I’m not much of a detective,” he admitted.

“You know what would be cool about Jim?” Rodney said.

“What?”  John thought a lot of stuff was cool about Jim, like the idea of him being able to hear the enemy when they were still a mile away.

“He’d always be able to find a cloaked jumper.”

“True,” John said.  It had never made it into a mission report, but there were one or two times when his team had been a little worse for wear after a mission, or courtesy of some local brew, when they hadn’t been able to find the jumper until one of them walked into it.  “Although it was pretty funny when Ronon knocked himself out that one time.”

Rodney snickered.

“I like your friends,” John said.  And he did.  It felt good to have friends like this, in addition to Teyla and Ronon.  “And I like their military boyfriends,” he added with a grin.

“Go figure,” Rodney said.  “All four of us?  What are the odds?” 

John glanced at his watch.  “I don’t know.  But we have to go.”

“Okay, but we’re having sex when we get back.”

“You’re so bossy,” John said with a grin.  “It’s hot.”

Rodney grinned and blushed at the same time.  John thought that was hot, too.

“I know you want to stay, Daniel, and I’m sorry.”

Daniel sighed.  “I know.  And I have no intention of staying on here without you, especially if they head back to Pegasus, but I wish we didn’t have to leave.”

Jack watched Daniel as he stared out at the water.  “I can try to swing more visits.”

Daniel shook his head like he was clearing it.  He smiled at Jack.  “Don’t mind me.  I’m already missing my friends and I haven’t even left yet.”

“I know you wanted to be on the original Atlantis expedition.  You should have been the civilian lead, instead of Elizabeth.”

Daniel shot him a wry grin.  “Something I should probably thank you for, considering how that turned out for Elizabeth.  Besides,” he added, moving close to Jack and touching their foreheads, Athosian style, “you and I never would have happened.  You probably would have ended up with Sam.”

“Perish the thought,” Jack said with a mock shudder.  “She’d be calling me General in bed.”

“You like it when I call you General in bed,” Daniel teased him.

“Not the same thing.”

Daniel laughed quietly, mouthing at Jack’s beard.  He hadn’t shaved yet for their dinner out.  “Don’t shave.”

“It’s all gray,” Jack complained.

“It’s sexy,” Daniel countered.  “I like it when you look scruffy.”

“I thought you hated that me who ran a boat and looked all scruffy.”

“That you wasn’t my you,” Daniel said.  “That you belonged to Sam.”

“And may they be very happy.”

Daniel chuckled again.  “Have you heard from Hammond?”

“Not a peep.”

“Not that I’m complaining, but I’m sort of surprised he hasn’t called you back to Colorado.  Not that Landry isn’t doing a fine job, at least according to Sam and Bill, but he’s not you.”

“Hammond must be grooming him for something.”

“He’s definitely not sending you to Washington, right?” Daniel asked with a hint of worry in his voice.

“He said he wasn’t.  And he also said that he wouldn’t separate us, remember?”

“I can’t believe you said that to him,” Daniel said, moving into the bathroom to turn the shower on.

“You’re the one who told me he sends us a joint Christmas card.  You meant it, right?”

“Yes, Jack, I meant it.  You know you never look at the cards you get.  I don’t understand why all those people keep sending you cards, seeing as you never send any out.”

“Who has time to send out Christmas cards, for crissakes?  I barely manage to get a tree up, and I haven’t even done that a time or two.”

Daniel glanced at the clock.  “We better hurry or we’ll be late.”  He grabbed at Jack’s hand.

“You actually think us taking a shower together will save us time?” Jack asked incredulously.

“I’ll give you the world’s fastest blow job.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“You’ll feel great,” Daniel told him.  “I promise.”

Tony sat back in his chair, in a private dining room at the Chart House, and grinned at the men around him.  “Hey,” he said, interrupting several smaller conversations.  “A toast.”  He lifted up his glass of Pineridge Wineries cabernet.

Everyone obediently lifted up their various glasses holding wine, beer, and a couple of scotches, and waited for Tony to speak.

“To old friends and new friends.”  He saluted them all with his glass.  “And to a new, gayer military.”

He got laughs, snorts, and an elbow from Gibbs for that.  “Nice, DiNozzo.”

“It’s the audience for it,” Tony protested.  “All you big, tough, macho military men with your sexy, hot, young, and very male lovers.”

“Rodney’s older than me,” John said.

“Not by much,” Rodney snapped back, wounded.

“Still hot and sexy, though,” John reassured him.

“All right then,” Rodney said primly.  “You’re forgiven.”

“Is it wrong that I’m in love with the puddle-jumpers?” Tony asked.  He’d been allowed to fly it out of the city and part way across the bay.  John had done the landing, but still.  It had felt amazing.

“No,” Rodney said.  “They’re like the other woman for John.”

“They sure as hell don’t bitch the way you do,” John pointed out.

“How many have you christened?” Blair asked.  When John hesitated, he laughed.  “Come on, tell the truth.”

“Six of them,” Rodney said.

“We’ve only done two,” Jack complained, frowning at Daniel.  “We have some catching up to do.”

“We’ve only done one,” Blair said, laughing.

Tony held up three fingers, smirking.  Tony would get to them all, sooner or later.  He was making a list and, so far, Gibbs wasn’t arguing.

“Gibbs,” Jack said.  “You dog.”

Gibbs just cocked his head, as if receiving his just due.

“Okay,” Rodney said.  “This is just disturbing.  I’m never going in another jumper without Clorox wipes.”

The wait staff chose that moment to arrive with an assortment of dinners: steaks, fish, Alaskan crab, and a couple of lobsters.

“Everyone keep your lemons away from me,” Rodney warned everyone.  “I still can’t believe we came to this death trap to eat.”  He had ordered steak.

“We’ll try not to murder you with lemon juice,” John told him.  He had ordered steak, as well. 

Tony tied his bib around his neck.  “I’m going in,” he said, picking up his lobster cracker and clicking it at everyone.

“Stop playing with your utensils, DiNozzo,” Gibbs said.

Tony used it to snap at Gibbs a couple of times.  Gibbs tried to snatch it from him but Tony was too fast for him, letting out a laugh and a “Ha!”

Gibbs rolled his eyes and glanced at his three comrades-in-arms.  “Do you guys have to put up with this shit?”

“Yes!” came in concert from Jack, John, and Jim.

Gibbs sent Tony a speaking glance.

“Nothing is going to come between me and my lobster,” Tony remarked, loftily ignoring all four of them.  “I bet the food at our reunion would have consisted of crackers and cheese and celery sticks.”

“Cherry tomatoes,” Blair added, “with ranch dressing.”

“Punch,” Daniel said with a wince. 

“That some asshole we can’t remember tries to spike,” Tony agreed.  “This is much better.  Besides, you guys are the only ones I wanted to see.  I don’t even remember anyone else, do you?”

“Donovan,” Rodney said with a mouth full of food.

Tony snickered.  “Somehow I don’t think he’d have been thrilled to see the four of us.  And especially you,” he said to Rodney.

“I know,” Rodney said happily.

“Shh,” Jim said suddenly, holding up his hand for silence.

All the men around the table stopped talking.

“Someone’s coming to see you,” he told Jack.  “Someone named Hammond.”

Jack looked surprised, but not unhappy, and he stood as a general in full uniform appeared in the doorway.  “George,” Jack welcomed him.  “Come to meet the motley crew?”  All the men in the room stood as well.

“I have,” Hammond said.

“Everyone,” Jack said, “This is Major General George Hammond, one of the best bosses around.”  He glanced at the door, saw it was shut, and added, “And Director of Homeworld Security.  He used to have my job.”

“And I was lucky enough to have someone trustworthy to hand it off to,” Hammond said.

Tony liked that they liked each other.  Hopefully that meant less bullshit.

“This is Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Tony DiNozzo, our Agents Afloat.”

“Good to see you again, Gibbs,” Hammond said.  “And please have a seat, gentlemen.”

“Likewise, General,” Gibbs said.  A waiter brought in another chair and everyone easily shifted around to make one more place.  In seconds, Hammond had a full place setting in front of him.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” Tony asked, holding up the bottle.

“I would, thank you.” 

Tony poured him a glass and handed it over to him.

“This,” Jack continued, “is Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg.  And you know the rest of the slackers at this table.”

Hammond chuffed out a soft laugh and smiled kindly at everyone.  “From what I understand, there’s an impressive amount of talent at the table.  I hear good things.”  He picked up his wine glass.  “Dr. Jackson, it’s good to see you, son.”

“You too, General,” Daniel said, smiling at him.  “We miss you.  Jack tries, but…”

“Hey,” Jack pouted.

Daniel grinned at him.  “Just kidding.”

Hammond declined to order any food.  “I’m not staying for dinner,” he said, “I’ve still got another meeting to attend.  But I’ll be joining you on Atlantis tomorrow as there are decisions that need to be made.  I just thought I’d come meet you tonight and let you know that whatever you decide, any of you, I’ll support you.  And unless you decide to return to your civilian lives, the programs you’ll be working with report to me.  Now that we have a much clearer idea of what’s out there in the Pegasus Galaxy, and the possible threat to Earth, the expedition will be reporting to me.  So if you were wondering where the buck stops, you’re looking at it.”

Tony liked him already.  And he knew Gibbs liked him.  Jack and Daniel were fans, and John didn’t look unhappy with the news. 

“Not the IOA?” John asked.  “Because that’s been kind of a drag.”

“There will always be IOA oversight,” Hammond said.  “We can’t escape that, but I’ll be the military oversight.”

“Good,” Rodney said.  “We need more zats.”

Hammond smiled.  “General O’Neill’s already made that clear, Dr. McKay.”

Tony snorted at Rodney’s disgruntled face, watched as John patted his hand saying, “There, there, Rodney,” with a teasing smile.  He turned to look at Daniel speaking earnestly to Blair about something as Jim watched his lover with an indulgent look on his face; Jack had one contented eye on Daniel as he spoke to Hammond.  Tony wondered if the man had any idea he was sitting with the gay military and found himself grinning as Gibbs turned and smirked at him.

The next day, Rodney was feeling anxious.  He knew it was decision day, and he didn’t want any of his friends to leave.  Even Daniel.  In fact, Rodney was kicking himself that he hadn’t tried to reestablish the friendship he’d had with Daniel a long time ago.  Then again, maybe it wouldn’t have worked without Tony.  Rodney, Blair and Daniel had been acquaintances, thrown together by circumstance, but they hadn’t really become friends until Tony had come along.

Rodney could feel change in the air.  He hoped that meant that they could take Atlantis back to Pegasus, where she belonged.  Not that he was looking forward to regular death-defying adventures, but the longer they stayed here, the more sure he was that some idiot government agency would boot them all out and take over Atlantis, and he’d be stuck working on normal physics in some boring lab filled with sycophants, and John would end up being discharged and drinking too much, and probably falling out of love with Rodney.

“What are you guys going to do?” he finally blurted out.  He, Tony, Blair, and Daniel were heading for a lab that Daniel was interested in seeing.  Rodney had been there already, so John had okayed the four of them going off by themselves.  Rodney had felt like kicking him for his over-protectiveness, but then decided not to, because, ironically, it also made him feel protected, and he liked that.  Besides, Tony was armed.

“Jack can’t stay, so I can’t either,” Daniel said.  “But you knew that.”

Rodney whined a little, but he nodded.  “Maybe we can find more ZPMs so you can visit.”

“We’ll definitely have to plan reunions,” Tony said.  “I’m not going another twenty years without all of us together.  Once a year, at least.  No excuses.  Even if you’re dead,” he told Daniel.  “Suck it up and make it there anyway.”

Daniel rolled his eyes even as he let out a laugh. 

“What do you mean about reunions?” Rodney said nervously to Tony.  “Does that mean you’re leaving?”

“No,” Tony said.  “I think we’re staying.  Gibbs isn’t completely sold on the idea of going to Pegasus, but we’re staying at least until then.  I’m working on him.”

A part of Rodney relaxed, even if most of him was poised for further misery.  “Blair?”

“This is a sucky decision to make,” he complained.  “I would rather stay here on Atlantis.  This place is good for Jim.  This city is good for Jim.  But, Daniel,” he said, as he turned to his friend, “I don’t want you to be without anyone in Colorado.  That sucks.”

Daniel shook his head.  “Do not make your decision based on me.  I don’t want that responsibility.  Yeah, it will suck not to have any of you around, but I’ll deal.  I’ll have Jack, and I have some truly excellent friends back there.  Besides, you’ll be seeing me at least once a year.”  He put his hand on Blair’s arm.  “Really, Blair, do what you and Jim want to do.  That’s what I want for you.”

“Then I think we’ll stay here,” Blair said, although he didn’t look completely happy about it.  “But it blows you won’t be here.  Can’t Jack transfer?”

“They don’t exactly need a general here,” Daniel said.  “And if they did bring him in, he’d outrank John, and John would stop being the base commander, and that’s not fair to him.”

“No, it’s not,” Rodney said clearly.  Not that it wouldn’t be nice to have someone competent around to help.  Besides Lorne.  Rodney knew better than anyone how the decisions John had to make sat heavy on his shoulders.  The two of them were so freaked so much of the time it was amazing they hadn’t destroyed each other, rather than establishing first a solid friendship, and then so much more.

There was a sharp sound up ahead, like a cut-off shriek and then a thump. 

“What was that?” Tony asked as he drew his weapon.

“John’s still having the Marines patrol,” Rodney said as he pulled out his life signs detector.

“Hello?” Daniel called ahead.  “Is someone there?”

“One life sign,” Rodney said.  He pointed a little to the left.  “That way.” 

They walked a few yards down the hallway and came face to face with a Wraith.

Jim surged to his feet.  “They’re in trouble.  There’s a Wraith.”

The others, Jack, John, Gibbs, and General Hammond got to their feet as well.  “Damn it,” John said.  He yelled at some Marines, “Secure Hammond.”  Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thought to himself.

“You know where Blair is?” Jack asked Jim, who was already racing for the door.

“Yes.”

Jim led the parade but the other three were right behind him.  John snapped orders into his headset.  “Find Rodney,” he ordered at Chuck.  He yelled for Teyla and Ronon to join them and tugged on Gibbs to get weapons.  He and Gibbs grabbed enough to arm them all, and then raced after Jim and Jack.

“Holy fuck!” yelled Tony as he came to a halt, his heart tripping in his chest.  A dead, and very old Marine, lay on the floor.

The Wraith grinned at them, long jagged teeth with drool dripping from them.  He was tall, almost seven feet, with long white dreads, dressed in a long black leather coat.  His feeding hand was up, and he was looking at the four of them like they were dinner, and all he had to decide was what course he wanted first.

Tony emptied his gun into him, shot him thirteen times, and the fucker jerked back at each shot but kept coming.  The Wraith came straight for him, shoving Blair and Daniel to the side like they were curtains, his eyes as determined as a shark.  Tony saw his death in them.

“They’re coming!” Blair yelled to him.  “Jim and the rest of them.”

Tony thought that would come in handy, having Blair and Jim connected like that.  Too bad he might not be alive to reap the benefit.  Tony scrabbled for a second clip, releasing the first, registering the clang as it hit the floor.

He half noticed Blair hitting the Wraith over the head with something—sadly, to no effect-- and saw the Wraith start to turn.  No fucking way that thing was going after Blair.  “Hey, ugly,” Tony yelled.

Just as he got the new clip loaded and his gun raised, the Wraith swept out his other arm and Tony’s gun went flying and he slammed into a wall, hard enough to stun and keep him from moving for a second.  Long enough for the Wraith’s feeding hand to start toward his chest.

Even as he knew it was over, weirdly wondering if Gibbs was attracted to older men, Tony scrabbled for his knife, flipped it open and rammed it into the Wraith’s forearm, through the leather, slicing sharply in and down.  Then the sharp claws of the Wraith were digging into his chest and Tony couldn’t stop the yell that escaped.

He saw Rodney and Daniel both yanking on the Wraith’s arm, Blair on the guy’s back, going for his eyes, but the Wraith wasn’t moving.

And then he heard a blessed voice yell, “Down,” and he was very glad his friends were well-trained, because they all hit the deck, and then machine gun bullets were flying into the Wraith, jerking him left and right hard enough to dislodge the feeding hand and Tony sank to the ground clutching at his chest, thinking: ow, ow, ow.  Fuck, that hurt.

It was all over in seconds.  The Wraith was on the ground, dead, and Gibbs was at his side, moving his hand, checking his chest.

“He fed on him,” Rodney said in anguish.  “We couldn’t stop him.”

“He’s not any older,” Gibbs told him.  “So he couldn’t have fed on him long.”

“Long enough to kill him,” Rodney said, crouching down next to Tony.  “Why aren’t you old?”

Tony lifted his hand with the knife.  “I cut through his enzyme feeding tube.  I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I figured if the straw was cut, he couldn’t suck through it, right?”

“Jesus,” John said, smacking Rodney.  “Why didn’t we know to do that?”

“Hey!” Rodney bellowed, smacking John back.  “I never autopsied one of these guys.  Go yell at the medical staff.  Besides, they usually have armor on to protect their arms, don’t they?”

“The guards do,” John said.  “I’m not sure about these guys.”  He sounded disgusted with himself, as he looked down at the dead Wraith.

“Good thinking,” Gibbs told Tony, cupping his face.  “I’ve gotten used to the way you look.”

Tony smiled as best he could, but his fucking chest was killing him.  “I really look okay?”

“Yeah, you do,” Gibbs reassured him.

“Where the fuck did that Wraith come from?” John snapped out, one hand on his weapon, the other fisted tight.

“This way,” Jim said.  John followed him, making sure Rodney was right behind him.  “Gibbs, you got Tony?” he called over his shoulder.

“Yup.”

“Blair’s got me, too,” Tony called.  “He’ll hit any Wraith that shows up over the head.”

“Hey!” Blair complained. 

“Thanks,” Tony said in answer.  “You were all awesome.”  He watched as Daniel scooped up his gun and stood half way between where Tony was on the floor and where the other men had gone.  He looked dangerous; Tony thought it was a good look on him.

“Not that we did any good,” Blair said, suddenly sitting down.  “Jesus, Tony, if you hadn’t known to cut that thing, you could be dead right now.”  He glanced at the now dead Wraith that Jack and Daniel had pulled to the far wall.  “Those things suck.”  He snorted.  “No pun intended.”  He blew out a breath.  “How did you know how to do that?”

“I read this guy’s report on the Wraith.  Some doctor named Carson Beckett.  He’d done an autopsy on one of the fuckers.  It was just luck I thought of it before it was too late.” 

“You did good,” Gibbs told Tony.  He leaned in and rested his cheek against Tony’s.  “Thanks for not dying,” he whispered in Tony’s ear.

“Anytime,” Tony said, his hand wrapping around Gibbs’.

“Feel free to kiss,” Blair told them.  “Don’t mind me.”

“Jeez,” Tony complained.  “You’re just like Roger Rabbit, except without the hearts in your eyes.”

Gibbs looked confused, but Blair smiled. 

There was the sound of gunfire, and Gibbs was on his feet in a second, standing over Tony.  Daniel moved closer to them, staying out of Gibbs’ line of sight, but pistol ready to fire.  Blair picked up the long gun the Wraith was carrying.  “How does this work?”

“It’s a stun gun,” Gibbs told him.  He took a second to check the settings.  “I know you work with a cop, but you’re not one, are you?”

Blair shook his head.  “Consultant.”

“You fire a gun before?”

Blair nodded with a grimace.  “Too many times.”  As if to prove his point, he held the stun gun up with a practiced air.  “This only stuns, right?” he asked, anxiously.

“Yup,” Gibbs said. 

“Good.”

There was the sound of stomping feet and Blair spun around but dropped the weapon when he saw a large group of Marines, led by Evan Lorne, heading their way. 

“Tony, you okay?” Lorne asked.

“Peachy.  They went that away,” Tony said, waving them on.  “I got Gibbs and these guys.  I’m good.”

Lorne obviously chose not to believe him and left four Marines with Gibbs.

“I feel like such a pretty princess,” Tony complained.

“Shut up, DiNozzo,” Gibbs said.  “You’re wounded.”

“You’re bleeding a lot,” Blair noticed, pulling off his outer shirt and lifting Tony’s.  He used his shirt to put some pressure on the wounds.  “I remember something about anticoagulants.  I think that’s why it’s bleeding so much.  Maybe we should get you to the infirmary.”

There was some more gun-fire.

“As soon as we’re clear,” Tony told Blair.  “I promise not to bleed to death.”

Blair frowned at the floor and Tony looked down and saw that there was a sizeable puddle of blood.

“Shit, Tony,” Gibbs said, “is that all from you?”

“Huh,” Tony said.  “I guess.”  A short manic laugh escaped.  He noticed that Gibbs was about to freak out.  “Hey, Boss, don’t worry.”

“Don’t tell me when to worry, DiNozzo.”

“Right,” Tony said.  He didn’t feel like he was dying, so he wasn’t going to worry. 

Then John, Jim, and Jack came around the corner, followed by a herd of Marines, and Gibbs barked, “How many?”

“Three more,” John said grimly.  “They were hibernating; that’s why we didn’t pick them up.”

“Can they communicate to others in the Pegasus Galaxy?”

“They can’t,” John said, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder.  “We killed them while they were still hibernating.”  He gestured then to Jim.  “He smelled them.”

“Handy,” Tony said.

“That blood yours?” Jim asked.

“Yeah, but Blair’s got it handled,” Tony said.

Gibbs called for medical assistance now that the danger was passed.  “How about this one?” he asked, pointing at the dead Wraith who clearly hadn’t been hibernating.

“I don’t know,” John said.  “Rodney, you’ll need to check him for any communication devices.”

“On it.” 

“Bag him and take him wherever Rodney wants him,” John told two of the Marines.  “Then I want every inch of this city checked for any more Wraith.”

Lorne nodded and began to make work assignments through his headset and to the Marines around him.

“Are we going?” Tony asked.  “Please tell me we’re going now, because I want some pain medicine.”

“We’re going as soon as a gurney shows up,” Gibbs told him.

“I can walk.”

“Shut up,” came at Tony from at least three places.  He narrowed his eyes at Gibbs, Jim and John.  He was pretty sure they were the ones yelling at him.

“And no more going off to labs by yourself,” John threw in, with a pointed look at Rodney.

“Hey,” Daniel protested.  “We’re all alive.  And you can thank Blair and Tony for that.  And you’ll notice, astonishingly enough, that neither Rodney nor I are unconscious or being kidnapped.”

“That is astonishing,” Jack said dryly.  “And thank you for all being alive.  That would have ruined my day.”

“All the paperwork?” Daniel asked, with a pat to Jack’s arm.

“It sucks,” Jack complained.  “Dead civilians are the worst.”

Tony started to laugh, followed by Daniel, and then Blair.  Rodney was too busy glaring at everyone, although a corner of his mouth was turned up.  “So that’s a Wraith, huh?” Tony finally said.

“That’s a Wraith,” Rodney said.  “Still want to stay?”

“Are you kidding?” Tony asked.  “That was fun for me.”  He looked down at himself.  “I didn’t wet myself, did I?”

The two Marines bagging up the Wraith snorted.

Blair did too.  “No, that’s your blood you’re sitting in.”

Tony heard wheels and was delighted when a gurney appeared along with a pretty doctor.  “Did you bring drugs?”

“No,” Dr. Lam said.  “I need to see what’s going on before I start pumping you with drugs.”

“Damn,” Tony said.  Gibbs, Daniel, and two other Marines hoisted Tony up and onto the gurney.  When he saw the look on Gibbs’ face, Tony looked down.  There was an impressive puddle of blood on the floor.  “I’m fine, Gibbs.  I’m not even dizzy.”

“You’re lying flat on your back,” Gibbs snarled.

Tony decided there was nothing to be done by arguing, so he just said, “Home, James,” to whoever was driving the bus and closed his eyes.  Gibbs would see he was just fine in a little while.

“They all do that,” Jack said.

“Do what?” Gibbs snapped.

“Say they’re fine when they’re not.”

“Right,” Daniel said.  “Like you guys fess up to however you’re feeling.  Please.”  He followed behind Tony.

“I am fine,” Tony called back.

“He seems fine,” Jack told Gibbs.  “Usually Daniel’s unconscious and without a limb when he’s telling me he’s fine.  You’re way ahead of the game here.”

“I need to help sweep the city,” John told them.

“I’ll help,” Jim said.

“Use your nose,” Blair told him.  “I’ll come with you to keep you from zoning.”

“I better go speak to George,” Jack remarked.  “He won’t be happy.”

“I’ll be with the dead Wraith,” Rodney said with a wince.  “Lucky me.”  He tapped his headset and started snapping orders.

“I’ll go with Gibbs to the infirmary with Tony,” Daniel said.

Tony counted heads and decided that was everyone accounted for.  “I think I’ll take a nap.”  He was feeling sleepy.  Not dying sleepy, just a post-adrenaline rush crash.  “Gibbs?”

“What?”

“Don’t let this change your mind.”

There wasn’t an answer.

Tony turned his head until he was looking up at Gibbs.  “I almost died several times back in D.C.; you know that.”  He turned the other way toward Rodney, who was keeping pace with the gurney.  “Any bubonic plague in the Pegasus Galaxy?”

“Not that I know of,” Rodney said.  “Of course, it’s not like the bubonic plague is exactly common on Earth, either, but that didn’t stop you.”

The smaller corridor made way into a larger corridor and then he was being pushed into a transporter with the doctor, Gibbs, and Daniel.  A push of a button and then they were in a different corridor and then in the infirmary.  Lam started barking out orders, and Tony closed his eyes, deciding he was in good hands.  He felt fingers wrap around his and he opened his eyes and saw Gibbs looking fiercely down on him.

“I’m fine,” he told Gibbs.  “I mean it.  I almost bled out when I was at the BPD, so I know what it feels like, and this isn’t it.”

“He is fine,” Dr. Lam said.  “He’s way too alert to have lost a significant amount of blood.  We’ll get a couple units in him and he’ll be good as new.”

“And pain meds would be good,” Tony suggested.

A nurse was starting an IV, and Dr. Lam said, “Open your shirt, let me see the damage.”

Gibbs unbuttoned his shirt for him, removing the flannel shirt Blair had put over Tony’s wounds.  On his chest were five puncture wounds, all oozing blood.

“You want scars?  If not, I should stitch those closed.”

“Stitch away,” Tony said.

“We’ll need to shave your chest.”

“Shit,” Tony said.  “The itching will drive me crazy.”

“Okay, now I believe you’re okay,” Gibbs said with a roll of his eyes.

There were Marines by the door, no doubt put there by John, so Tony told Gibbs, “Go.  I know you want in on the hunt.”

Gibbs nodded, patted Tony’s shoulder, and left, tapping his head set as he walked through the door.

“Alone at last,” Tony told Dr. Lam.  She rolled her eyes.

“Alone at last,” Tony next told Daniel.

Daniel grinned at him.  “Thank God.  Those military men are a little overbearing, aren’t they?”

“Totally.”

After Jack filled Hammond in on the situation, they sat there in Woolsey’s office.  “I know there are some who think Atlantis is keeping Earth safe by staying here, but I think she’s putting Earth in danger.  If those Wraith had gotten loose.”  Jack didn’t finish that thought.  “At least back in Pegasus, John can get intel on the Wraith.  Here, we’re just sitting ducks.  We need to destroy the Wraith one ship at a time, not wait until they’ve built an armada and are overhead.”

Hammond considered Jack for a moment and then said, “The IOA is still insisting on a civilian lead for this expedition.”

“Fucking unbelievable,” Jack burst out.  “Sorry, sir.”

“I’m thinking the same thing even if I’m not saying it out loud.”

“But they have agreed Atlantis can go back?”

Hammond nodded.

“I appreciate the civilian expertise and leadership here, but what, by all that is holy, is their rationale for not putting a military leader here?  Don’t they understand the risk the Wraith pose?”  Jack shook his head, mystified at how the IOA thought.

“I think they’re more afraid of allowing the United States to have control over Atlantis than they are about the Wraith invading.  They won’t accept US military leadership, and we won’t accept any other country’s right to it, either.  We’re in a stalemate.”

“What are you going to do?” Jack asked.

“Ask you for my favor.  I still have the right to pick who the civilian lead will be.”

“Daniel?” Jack almost squeaked out.  “Not that he wouldn’t do a hell of a job, but I’m not sure how I fit into that.”  And no way was he letting Daniel leave on Atlantis without Jack with him.

“I want you to retire, Jack.”

Jack stared at Hammond, eyebrows raised, as he let that thought percolate.

“I know it’s a lot to ask.”

“You want me to be the civilian lead here?”

Hammond nodded.  “I want to promote Colonel Sheppard to full bird Colonel, and then bring you in to replace Woolsey.  I’m sure Dr. McKay would welcome Dr. Jackson as part of his science team.”

“Are you kidding?” Jack asked.  “Rodney would shove anything he considers a soft-science at Daniel in seconds and put him in charge of it.”

Hammond smiled.  “Do you need some time to think things over?  I have to warn you that I don’t have a lot to give you.”

“Nah,” Jack said, still thinking furiously.  “If it wasn’t for Daniel, I would have retired a long time ago.  Not that this is really retiring.  More like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.”  He considered Hammond.  “The IOA won’t like it.”

“No, they won’t.  But I’ll have you out of here before they can stop it.  You have a go for a week from this Saturday if you and Colonel Sheppard can get everything ready by then.”

Jack thought about staying on Atlantis.  He liked the city.  He liked how it sang to his gene, how the city seemed to read his mind.  He knew Daniel was dying to stay, and not just because of the unexplored challenge of the city.  He also wanted to be with his friends. 

Jack had to admit that had appeal for him, too.  He liked these friends of Daniel’s, and he liked the guys who came with them.  He’d always liked John, even if it had mostly been on paper, and Jim and Gibbs were icing on the cake.  He’d be surrounded by good people.  The real challenge would be not stepping on John’s toes, but he suspected they’d figure it out.

“Do you want my letter of resignation now?  I think there’s a napkin around here somewhere.”

That got a snicker out of Hammond.  “I’m depending on you to help keep these people safe, Jack.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Your best is why I’m asking you to do this.  Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay have done a fine job, but they’d do better with a voice of experience behind them.  Someone they could trust.  I think you’re it.”

Jack acknowledged the praise with a head nod.  High praise considering the source.  “How about Jim and Blair, and Tony and Gibbs?  Do they get to stay?”

“Yes,” Hammond said.  “I think they’ve all proven to be valuable assets.  Did I understand you to say that Mr. Ellison found the Wraith by his sense of smell?”

“Not only that, but he and Blair can talk telepathically to each other, which is how we knew something was going down.”

“Remarkable.  And so is Agent DiNozzo.  That was clever thinking on his part in an emergency.”

“No kidding.  I think we all need a refresher course on how to incapacitate a Wraith.”  Jack was truly impressed with Tony.  He’d been studying the Wraith ever since the first mission report crossed his desk, and he’d never thought of doing something like that.

“I need answers from everyone tonight,” Hammond told him.

Jack nodded.  “I’ll let you know what everyone says.  A week from Saturday?”

Hammond nodded. 

“Unless Dr. Lam is staying, we’ll need a doctor.  Two of them, maybe.”

“I’ll put some thought into that.  Dr. Lam will definitely not be going.  Hank would never forgive me.”

“Is he who you’ll keep in charge?”

“Yes.  He’s a good man.”

Jack agreed.

Hammond stood up and Jack rose with him.  “I’d appreciate if someone could give me a ride back to San Francisco.  I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do.”

“I’ll take you.”  Side by side, they left what would soon, possibly, be Jack’s office.  He was totally getting a new desk.  That glass thing would never hold Daniel.

They convened that evening in sick-bay, where Dr. Lam was keeping Tony hostage.  He frowned at her, even as he was appreciating her very fine ass.  Gibbs smacked him on the back of the head; he was sitting on the bed by Tony’s hip. 

“I’m just looking,” Tony complained.  “I can look.”

“Focus,” Jack said, quelling Tony with a look.   

Tony was impressed.  His quelling look was almost as good as Gibbs.  Not that Tony was often quelled.  He grinned at Jack.

Jack rolled his eyes.  The rest of them were sitting in chairs around Tony’s gurney.

“What happened with the search?  Any more Wraith?”  Tony had taken a long nap, and Gibbs hadn’t had the chance to fill him in. 

“No,” John said.  “Jim’s nose led us to those three we killed, and then he and the rest of the Marines searched all over and came up empty.”

“What woke that one Wraith up?  What was their plan?” Gibbs asked.  “Even if they consider us food, do they think enough like us to be able to determine their game plan?”

“Most of them are pretty stupid,” Rodney said.  “They’re arrogant and rarely expect to encounter serious opposition.  We’ve been a nasty surprise.”

“All you can really count on is that they can’t be trusted, and the only good Wraith is a dead one,” John added.

“Had you done a search already?” Gibbs continued to probe.  “Are they that able to avoid detection?”

“The flight here from Pegasus wasn’t exactly a cake walk,” Rodney told him.  “We were facing certain death almost the whole way here.”

“And yes,” John said, “we had done a search, but clearly not a thorough enough of one.  Now with Jim, we’ll have a better chance to find them.  Teyla can sense them, too, but they have to be awake for her to do that.  She can’t find them if they’re hibernating.”

“I wonder how long they’ve been there?” Rodney asked with a shiver.  “And how they got on Atlantis?  I’ll have to look at all the transmissions during our fight with the Wraith and see if somehow I missed something.  We might find an energy signal we can trace from now on.”

“They have beaming technology?” Tony asked.  “And how cool is it that I can even ask that question?”

“Yes,” Rodney said, “or at least their darts do.  So that meant a dart had to fly by and beam them down.  I couldn’t see anything on the dead Wraith, or in the area they were hibernating in, that looked like something capable of intergalactic communication, but I’d feel better if we were going back to Pegasus sooner than later.”

“I agree,” John said.  “They’re up to something, I know it.”

There were a few seconds of silence.

“Okay,” Jack said, interrupting the moment.  “I need decisions and I need them now.  Atlantis goes back to Pegasus in twelve days.”

John’s eyebrows rose.  “For real?”  Then he frowned, looking insulted.  “Why am I just hearing this now?”

“I outrank you, so I was told first.”  Jack tossed him a small box.  “Drown your wounded feelings in these.  Congratulations.”

John opened up the box and whatever he saw made him smile broadly. 

“Everyone,” Jack said.  “Meet full bird Colonel John Sheppard.”

“Congratulations, Colonel,” Gibbs said sincerely.

“You deserve it,” Rodney said, but then his eyes narrowed.  “What’s that mean, by the way?  That’s not supposed to make him feel better about not going, is it?”

“No, he’s going.  You’re all going if you want.  John’s base commander.”  Jack leaned back in his chair, looking very smug.  “Guess who your new civilian lead is?”

“Woolsey isn’t coming back?” John asked.

Tony was watching Daniel who was grinning like a cat who got into the cream.  “You,” Tony said to Daniel.  “It’s you, right?”

Daniel shook his head, pointing a mock surreptitious finger at Jack.

Everyone looked at Jack in surprise.

“How’s that happening?” John asked. 

“Since when are you a civilian?” Rodney demanded.

“Since about two hours ago,” Jack told him.  “So you’re all stuck with me and Daniel.”

“Thank God,” Rodney said.  “You get all the soft sciences.”

Daniel huffed out a laugh, and Jack snorted. 

“You retired?” John asked.  “Just like that?”

“No, I retired because George Hammond asked me to.  Let me ask you a question, John.  Do you think this expedition should be a primarily civilian one?”

“Hell, no,” John said.  “Once we’re out there, we’re at war, and we’re in the trenches.”

“Exactly.  But the IOA is insisting on a civilian lead.”

John eyed Jack speculatively. 

Time passed, and Rodney started to fidget.

Finally John nodded.  “Welcome aboard.  We’re glad to have you.  I’ll be glad to have you here.”

“The IOA is going to flip when they find out Hammond assigned you,” Rodney said, looking pleased at the thought.

“All of you got a taste of the Wraith today.  And the Wraith almost got a taste of one of you,” Jack added, with a look at Tony.  “I’ll understand if any of you want to cut and run, but now’s the time to do it.  If you’re staying, you’ve all got a lot of work to do to be ready to leave in twelve days.  Good news is that you won’t be limited to whatever you can carry on your backs, so go buy all the movies, candy bars and Fruit Loops you can find.”

“I’m in,” Tony said, with a beseeching look at Gibbs.  Gibbs hadn’t given him a definitive answer yet, and Tony was on tenterhooks. 

“You sure?” Gibbs asked.

Tony nodded.  “This is huge.  Save the cheerleader, save the world huge.”

“Save the cheerleader?” Gibbs asked with a frown.

“I’ll explain later,” Tony told him.

Gibbs pursed his lips, then nodded.  “I’m in.” 

Tony let out a sigh of relief and sagged back down on the bed.  All that left was Blair, and they’d all be together.

“We’re in,” Blair said, grabbing Jim’s hand.  “We’re probably crazy, but we’re in too.”

“Four military men and their hot sexy boy toys,” Tony said.  “The Pegasus Galaxy will never know what hit it.” 

Rodney looked scandalized for a second but then his mouth slanted in a grin.  “Boy toy?”  He wiggled his eyebrows at John.

“You realize we are unleashing Tony and his geeks on the universe, right?” John asked, as if he wasn’t sure that was a wise idea.

“The universe will survive,” Jack said.  He glanced at Daniel, who was still smiling.  “If the universe hasn’t crumpled under the combined mental weight of Daniel and Rodney, I think it will survive the addition of Blair and Tony.”

“So what do we call you?” Tony teased.  “Mr. O’Neill?”

“That’s my dad,” Jack growled.  “You’ll call me Jack.”

“Maybe you should finish your doctorate,” Daniel suggested.  “Then we can call you doctor.”

“Kinky,” Blair said. 

“Just as long as I don’t have to go back to school,” Tony said.  “Although with you three around, I could probably manage it.”

“I could hack into any university you want and create a master’s degree for you,” Rodney offered.

“Thanks,” Tony said dubiously. 

“You could get a degree in fashion,” Blair teased him.

“Or cooking,” Daniel said.  “You still make a mean lasagna?”

“I do,” Tony said at the same time Gibbs said, “He does.”

“How about a degree in mountaineering?” Gibbs said.

“You guys are all hysterical,” Tony said.  “I think I might have to go back to school and get my doctorate.  I feel left out because I don’t have a Ph.D.”

“Please don’t do it in something I’ll have to tutor you in,” Rodney said.  “I’m not sure our friendship would stand the strain, because I’d probably end up killing you.”

“You’re not even the one who did the tutoring,” Daniel complained.  “I did.”

“It’ll be hard to talk to your teachers if we’re in a different galaxy,” Blair mentioned.  “Also I’m not sure what I can do to bribe teachers in fabrics and fashion design.”

“You mock me,” Tony said, “But I’m thinking a degree in military strategy, something like that.  And I’ll just ask the military men for help this time.”

“I’d help with that,” Gibbs said, sounding intrigued.

“Me too,” Jack and John both said.

“Ha,” Tony said to Daniel, Blair, and Rodney.  “See?  I can do this without you guys.  Although I’ll probably still need Rodney to change my grades.”

“No cheating on my watch,” Gibbs told him.

“Damn it,” Tony said.  “That’s okay.  You can come up with some sort of incentive plan for good grades.”  He leered at Gibbs. 

“I might finish up that doctorate if you set up the same sort of incentive plan,” Jack said to Daniel.

“Makes me want to start up a new doctorate program,” Blair said wistfully.

“Me too,” Daniel said.

“Not me,” Rodney said.  “Although,” he said to John, “it might be incentive for you to get your doctorate.”

“Right, in my free time,” John said sarcastically.  “It’s cute that you all think you’ll have time to write a dissertation.  Good luck with that.”

“Nice reality check,” Tony said with a grin.  “I was already getting a headache thinking of all that studying.”  He glanced around at the eight of them.  “I feel like I should send the reunion committee a thank you letter.  Who’d have thought an invitation would have ended up with all of us here?”

“To high school,” Blair said, holding up a fake glass.

“To long-time friends,” Daniel added, including Jack in that.

“To best friends,” Rodney said, with a glance at John.

“To having each other’s backs,” Gibbs added, with a meaningful look at Tony.

“To trust,” Jim threw in, nudging Blair.

“To the eight of us,” Tony said. 

“To the eight of us,” they all said in unison.

The End!!!

If you enjoyed the story, please let me know:  Ladyra11@yahoo.com

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