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Wind sounds different from underground. Or under the ice, as it is. It’s still whipping away, gusting and bumping its way around the domed roof of the facility, but from here, it’s muffled and distant, but still somehow echoing in John’s ears.
“Hey.” McKay’s voice is loud in comparison. “You’re not zoning out, are you?”
John blinks his eyes open, looking down at his wrist. McKay’s fingers are wrapped around his forearm, two of them shoved up under his sweatband. Focusing on the gentle weight of McKay’s fingers on his skin settles something inside him, like stepping out of a chopper onto solid ground after a rough flight. Maybe he had been on the edge of zone out. Maybe that’s what bonding is about.
“Just listening to the wind.” He can’t tear his eyes away from McKay’s hand.
McKay shifts. Out of the corner of his eye, John can see the way he tips his head up towards the ceiling. “You can hear it?” McKay’s voice is clear, nothing like the rest of the sounds trapped here under the ice. “We’re so far from the surface.”
“Sure.” John can hear everything down here, if he tries. There are just a few dozen people and all their gadgets. That's all there is for miles and miles—aside from the wind.
McKay squeezes at his wrist, pressing his fingers into the pulse point there. John feels dizzy with the steady thrum of mine, mine, mine he can feel beating through him, stronger by the second. Maybe McKay can feel it, too.
“Is that why you agreed to be stationed at McMurdo?” McKay asks. The sound of his voice, the question itself—it drowns out everything else. “Some quiet after being in a warzone?”
There’s no way that McKay’s read his file. There hasn’t been enough time. McKay hadn’t known he existed before the chair and this exam room. He can’t know the impossible position the Air Force had put him in, a twisted ultimatum for anyone, let alone a Sentinel. Discharge and civilian life—no responsibility, no people of his own—or the vast emptiness of Antarctica—complete removal from his territory, from the frayed remains of his team.
At least Antarctica offered a handful of scientists—people to protect, people who were his, even if the Air Force wouldn’t classify it that way. Even if those scientists would never even know he was there.
The weight of the past 11 months, the fraught weeks before that, sit heavy in the back of John’s throat. He can’t talk about it—doesn’t know how. “It’s not very quiet,” he says instead. “Not even under the ice.”
John lets himself be carried away by the sound of his own pulse, by the way McKay’s heart is beating the same rhythm. The wind is distant, along with the sounds of the infirmary outside their door, the growing bustle of the scientists beyond as they uncover more and more from whatever data John had called up from the Ancient chair. None of that seems to matter, except that it does, except that it’s starting to feel like it belongs to him in the same way McKay is settling under his skin.
“I thought escaping the world would feel good,” McKay says, startling John back out of his head, away from the brink. It should be wistful, but instead McKay sounds annoyed, frustrated with himself. “I thought it would mean getting away from the city and everybody’s messy emotions. But it’s worse here. With fewer people, it all feels… brighter I guess. I can’t ignore it as easily as I could before. Siberia was worse, but that’s not saying much.”
It’s the opposite for John. Everything on the ice is predictable, the same way the desert had been—the bright sun and sharp wind and winter gear numbing it all down. He can dial his senses to match here, something that’s impossible in a city. He’s never really considered how that might translate for a Guide, though.
“What’s it like—” he asks, turning towards McKay—“empathy?”
McKay gives a derisive little snort, self-deprecating again in a way John’s struggling to understand. “It’s like,” he waves his free hand in front of him, expansive, “emotions are colors, I guess. That’s the best way to describe how I see it.”
John blinks, trying to picture it. “You mean we have auras?”
“No, I do not,” McKay says with a spiteful little glare. “Please. Anyway, it’s different with you. I can, I don’t know, feel what you’re feeling.”
“So—the definition of empathy.”
McKay puffs out a frustrated breath. “No,” he says. Then, “Yes. No. It’s not just a color with you. I can feel that you think me floundering like this is funny. I can feel it right here—” he puts his hand on his stomach, right in the same spot where John feels light and warm and amused, which is embarrassing. Having someone know exactly how he’s feeling—where he’s feeling—it leaves him more than a little self-conscious.
“And that!” McKay exclaims, waving the hand still wrapped around John’s wrist, dragging John along with him. “You feel embarrassment here—” this time his free hand goes to his chest, where John feels burning, slippery embarrassment. “I usually feel it here—” he rubs his throat. “So I know this is you. It's disconcerting, really. I’m not used to it.”
John looks at their paper airplanes across the room, anything to distract himself from the overwhelming intimacy of the bond. The two winning planes are pressed together in the corner, the room too short to really test their abilities. When he squints, he can see the tiny imperfections in the folds, the mistakes that will cause them to fail. He can see the fine print on the wing of McKay’s plane, —se call the Sentinel and Guide Board hotline fo—
“Stop that,” McKay says, pulling John back into focus once more. McKay’s heart is racing, his grip tight on John’s wrist, but John feels fine. Aside from a little lightheadedness, it’s nothing like the way coming off the edge of zone normally makes him feel.
McKay’s thumb digs painfully into John’s skin. “You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep slipping away like that.”
John should be more concerned. It’s not normal. He hasn’t had such a tenuous grasp on his senses since he first came online. He feels fine, though. He feels right. This is what the bond is supposed to do. Maybe if he and McKay were lost in a haze of passion, cycling through his senses right up to the brink might feel more natural, less alarming. But that’s not who they are.
Curling his fingers into his palm, John wishes McKay would hold his hand again. He wishes he knew how to ask. Part of him even wishes that they were normal—that passion and desire would lay a clearer foundation for whatever it is that’s happening inside them.
“Uh oh,” McKay says, rubbing an open palm on his thigh. John can feel the sweat gathering on McKay’s other hand where it’s pressed into his skin. “You’re not—changing your mind, are you? I mean, I could probably give it a shot—boobs or no boobs—”
John shakes his head. That isn’t what he wants at all.
“You’re just like everyone else,” he says, but that’s not right. “Your heartbeat, the way it matches your breathing, the way you smell—it’s all normal. But it makes me feel different. Just your fingers on my arm like this—just your voice. They make me—” he searches for a word, because it seems impossible to explain—“calmer. More grounded.”
“We should be telling all of this to Carson,” McKay says. He doesn’t move, though—doesn’t do anything but adjust his grip on John’s arm so it’s his thumb up under the wristband, his fingers now four bands around John’s wrist.
Swallowing against the sudden anger burning in the back of his throat, John tries to school himself. His whole head feels hot, but he forces himself to focus on the pads of McKay’s fingers, the way they’re warm against his skin. He can’t even be bothered by the fact that McKay can probably see right through him, feel exactly what he’s feeling.
“You really don’t like him, do you?” McKay asks. He might be teasing or he might be genuinely curious. John’s having a hard time caring at this point.
“I don’t know him.” That’s only part of it. Dr. Beckett has some sort of connection with McKay and John fights against the humiliating fury that it stirs in him. The thrum of mine, mine, mine is back in the pounding of his heart, echoing through McKay in answer. “He’s just—not part of this.”
McKay, however, doesn’t seem to notice. “He’s a doctor,” he says. “And medicine isn’t exactly what I’d call a science, but Carson has the right attitude when it comes to research. He’d eat this up. Besides, we’ll have to tell him something.”
“Not yet,” John says. It comes out choked, catching at his throat, because this is theirs, no matter what any doctor has to say. It feels dangerous to even think about sharing this. John’s grasp on the moment, on McKay, seems too fragile in the face of his past.
He’d lost Mitch and Dex and most of their crew first, and then there was nothing he could do to save Holland, even though the attempt had cost him his command. The Air Force had stripped him of everything and stranded him here at the bottom of the Earth. And somehow, impossibly, he’s found his Guide. It could slip through his fingers again. If he looks too closely—if someone else weighs in—it might just disappear.
“I’m not in a hurry,” McKay says, jostling John with a shrug of his shoulders. It feels good—settles something deep in John’s chest and cools the anger simmering there. “Well, I hope they hurry and bring us some dinner.”
Pushing back at McKay, John says, “I could use a beer myself.”
McKay groans softly, dropping his head back against the wall. “Dinner and a beer would be perfect right now. Don’t think Carson will approve, though.”
“Maybe they’ll let us go back to our quarters. This barely counts as a bonding suite—and that exam table definitely does not count as a bed.”
Shifting his grip again, McKay threads their fingers together. “The bed argument might convince Carson—I do have a bad back, you know. But there’s no beer in my quarters. And yours are miles away at McMurdo. It’s probably not advisable for you to fly under the circumstances—or… ?”
John almost misses the question, already distracted by just how well their palms fit against each other, which is an answer to McKay’s question in itself. But the words catch after a moment, and John’s almost dizzy with the idea. He wants to take McKay flying—wants to show him what it’s like as the world falls away, the rumble of the engine, the way the earth is different from above, how even the air is different.
McKay grumbles irritably, rubbing at his stomach—right at the same spot where John feels light, buoyant joy at the thought of flying. It’s embarrassing all over again to be reminded of McKay’s abilities like that—and terrifying to be known so intimately—but there’s a little smile at the corner of McKay’s mouth and John doesn’t need to focus at all to hear McKay’s heartbeat, steady and comforting. Mine, mine, mine.