Azimuth (means the direction you fly)

by Tesserae

Summary:

Two colonels walk into a bar.

Notes:

No spoilers; set on Earth sometime after Pegasus Project. Beta by idyll.

Chapter 1

The restaurant was small, just a back room off the bar, really, and during the year it was popular enough that Henry let people eat in the bar if there weren't any tables open. Watching people eat hamburgers annoyed him, though, so when Cheyenne Mountain quieted down around Christmas, he banished them all to the back room.

"You shouldn't serve those things if they piss you off," John told him, when Henry waved him toward the back.

"They don't piss me off," Henry replied. "I like making money off 'em. I just don't like watching people eat 'em."

John pondered this for a moment and decided that asking any more questions would be foolhardy. He wandered into the back room and sat in a corner. Somebody – Henry's wife? Did Henry have a wife? – had put some effort into decorating the place, hanging little strings of white lights around the room and setting up a small tree in the corner closest to the door. John was pleased not to see any fake snow or angels flying overhead, but he thought the red candles on the tables looked festive, and liked the way the little white lights around the windows seemed to hold in the warmth.

Not that John Sheppard came here often – even for the best hamburger in Colorado Springs, it was a long drive from the Pegasus galaxy. But after his uncle's funeral there was no reason to stay in Phoenix, so he'd hitched a flight back to SGC to wait for the Daedalus to leave on New Year's Day. Which gave him two more days to rattle around the Springs, feeling like a red-headed stepchild and missing Rodney and his team more than he thought he would.

Henry came back with a glass of water and a basket of bar snacks. John ordered a hamburger with extra cheese and an order of fries.

Henry scowled at him. "If you'd order the calamari you could come sit at the bar."

"I don't want the calamari," John replied. "Besides, it's Christmassy back here."

Henry rolled his eyes. "Happy fucking holidays. Everybody's out of town and I should be in Florida. You want a beer?"

"Florida's over-rated," John said. "And yeah, bring me a Molson."

"What are you, Canadian?"

John just smirked at him and didn't bother to explain. Pulling the bar snacks close, he started picking out the spicier-looking Chex and setting them on a napkin. He hated those things.

When his beer arrived, it was in a glass instead of the familiar green bottle.

"What's this?" he asked, without looking up from his pile of snacks. "I ordered a Molson."

A voice not Henry's replied: "We shipped it all to Atlantis. There's some guy threatening to go on a hunger strike or something –"

John laughed, and looked up to see Cameron Mitchell grinning down at him. So SG-1 was back in town. Cool. "McKay would *never* threaten to stop eating. Somebody might call his bluff. What the hell is this?"

"Microbrew. Breakfast of champions. Try it."

"I've just ordered dinner."

"Yeah, that's what Henry said. You'll end up on his shit list, you keep ordering those burgers." Mitchell sat down next to him and pushed the glass closer. "Try it, you'll like it."

"And you'll drink it if I don't?"

"Something like that," Mitchell said lightly, and John reached for the glass, his fingers brushing lightly against Mitchell's. When Mitchell's fingers didn't move, John looked over at him, meeting pale blue eyes and feeling his own widen in recognition of something he hadn't thought he'd be seeing here.

Curious, John picked up the glass and took a long swallow. Mitchell's eyes darkened and dropped to his throat, and when he looked back up, there was a flush staining the fair skin over his cheekbones. So, Mitchell hadn't tracked him down out of some odd Southern notion about hospitality – although he did look like he was prepared to offer John a bed for the night.

John mentally whacked himself on the head. One of these days, he really needed to start paying more attention in class.

"You want to stay and have a couple fries?" He caught Mitchell's eyes, deliberately, and felt his heart rate speed up when Mitchell slid closer in the booth, letting his leg fall against John's.

Mitchell held his gaze, blue eyes gleaming. "Sure," he said. "Although I've always been more of an onion rings man myself."

John shuddered. "Too greasy. Skinny fries, lots of salt, ketchup on the side."

Deliberately, he pressed his knee into Mitchell's, then tilted his head back and drank again, wiping foam from his lips with the back of his hand before putting the glass down. Beside him, Mitchell curled his hands into fists and took a deep breath, and John was suddenly grateful for the Rudolph-pattered tablecloth that hung down into his lap.

"Mitchell…" he started to say as Henry slid his hamburger in front of him and set a basket of fries on the table between them.

"I gave you extra pickles," Henry said. "You guys want another beer?"

"Two," he said to Henry, dumping salt onto his fries and squeezing a glob of ketchup onto his hamburger. He dipped a handful of fries into it.

"God, I love fries," he moaned around a mouthful of them, and then dropped a casual hand onto Mitchell's knee and gripped it lightly, feeling the muscles and tendons flex under worn denim. Mitchell opened his mouth and closed it again.

"I - " he croaked, and cleared his throat. John smirked.

Henry picked up John's glass. "That the microbrew?"

"Yeah." Henry headed back into the bar.

Next to him, Mitchell closed his eyes and dropped his head onto the back of the booth. The clean lines of his face were blurred by exhaustion, but there was desire there, too, in the pulse beating strongly in his throat and in the fast rise and fall of his chest, and this would be so easy, John thought. Stupid too, maybe, but he'd been called an idiot before. He ran one finger up the seam of Mitchell's jeans. "You on duty tomorrow, Mitchell?"

"Cam. And no, we just got back this afternoon. Sam's gonna take a couple days, go visit her – " He shut his mouth with a snap. John grinned again, wondering if anyone knew that all it took was a hand on his leg to start Cameron Mitchell babbling like McKay.

McKay. Dammit. John slammed back into himself.

"Sheppard?" Mitchell's raspy tenor held an invitation that John's dick clearly wanted to say yes to, but he lifted his hand off Cam's thigh and sat up.

McKay.

Damn it all to hell.

There were forty-six hours till the Daedalus left and plenty of motels in Colorado Springs, but.

But.

As much as John wanted to see how fast he could get Cameron Mitchell down to incoherent noises, the words he did manage on the way there would be the wrong ones, and the shape of his hands on John's ass would be wrong, too, and it was suddenly, blindingly clear to John, who usually missed these things, that he needed to wait for right.

"No," John said softly, looking out the window, where the snow had started to fall. Antarctica was the last time he – or any of them, he thought - had seen snow. From inside, through the lights, it was pretty. "I can't, I'm sorry."

Next to him, Mitchell put his hands flat against the tablecloth, his long fingers trembling slightly. A muscle jumped in his jaw, and he didn't look at John when he finally spoke.

"McKay?"

"Yeah."

"Does he – does he know how you feel?"

"No, not yet." John grimaced. "One more thing I need to do when I get home, I guess."

"You think!" Mitchell said sharply, and John winced. "Sheppard…"

"No, Cam, just - no. I'm sorry," he said again, feeling clear-headed for the first time since the news had come in about his mother's black-sheep younger brother who, it seemed, had managed to leave John something after all.

Mitchell scrubbed a hand over his face and blew out a breath. "Yeah, me too. Look, you still want that beer?"

John looked at him, considering. He hated going straight back to his quarters after missions, and suspected that the same restlessness was why Mitchell had shown up in the first place. "They got football in the bar?"

Mitchell gave him a thoughtful grin. "We can always ask."

John grinned back. He had three weeks to figure out what to say to Rodney. Tonight, he wanted another beer. "Let's watch the game, then."

They headed into the bar. Outside, the snow continued to fall.

 

::end::