FIC: Fuzzy Duck Smell (SGA) Sheppard/McKay (original) (raw)

This is all started because of svmadelyn's Badfic Summary Challenge, and an AIM discussion I had with girlinthetrilby while waiting to find out what my assignment was:

DD: i hope i get to write ass babies! Bethy: i hope you know how much work ass babies are! DD: actually, i've already decided that ass babies have been overdone. so i'm writing ass ducklings. Bethy: ... DD: well, they come out as eggs, obviously DD: i mean, i'm not CRAZY Bethy: oh, definitely not

Title: Fuzzy Duck Smell
Summary: "Are you telling me you just laid an egg?" Rodney + John + baby ducks. Crack!Fic. Humor. Mpreg, with an emphasis on the "egg."
Author: Devil Doll
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Reference to "Conversion."
Website: Fan Fiction I Wrote Yay!
Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis and its characters (egg-laying and otherwise) do not belong to me.
Notes: Thanks to girlinthetrilby and musesfool for the beta duties. Everything I know about raising ducks I learned from the internet, and in some cases I bent the information I had to fit the story. Hey, they're *alien* ducks, ya never know.
Words: ~6500
Posted: February 9th, 2006
Sequel: Politics of Dining: A 'Fuzzy Duck Smell' Story written by chicklet_girl for my birthday! Eeeee!

"Thank you! Come again!" the smiling chieftain said, waving at John's team as they left the village.

"You're welcome!" John shouted back. "Absolutely!" And he meant it. Man, the Anatidaens were great.

"Best hostage experience yet," Rodney said cheerfully, pulling another pastry out of the sack in his hand and taking a huge bite.

John nodded. "Definitely."

Teyla had explained beforehand that they weren't really going to be held hostage--it was a ritual they had to go through in order to demonstrate trust and a willingness to bargain. It was a ritual John was prepared to repeat as often as necessary.

Their clothes were cleaned, patched and pressed. They'd been kept in sumptuous quarters, fed the most amazing food, and been pampered by a horde of servants. And that was all before Weir agreed to pay the "ransom." The post-ransom banquet had been epic.

Rodney had spent their five days of captivity like a mini-Caligula, alternately gorging himself and screwing John senseless. John wasn't exactly sure how Ronon and Teyla had passed the time, but Ronon looked as boneless and relaxed as John felt, so he could make a pretty good guess.

"Did you remember to take some of those bon-bons?" Rodney asked, shrugging his bulging pack a little higher.

"Yes. For the fourth time, yes." Rodney had "helped" John fill his pack, which was so full it was threatening to pull him over backwards.

The Anatidaens considered it good manners to take home a doggie bag or two, and Rodney had enthusiastically obliged. Maybe a little too enthusiastically. Teyla and Ronon were equally burdened, but everyone was too rested and happy to complain about being used as Rodney's pack mules.

"Too bad we can't do this every time we go off-world." Rodney's tone was wistful, and John had to admit he felt a little that way himself.

The afterglow lasted approximately forty-eight hours, because that was how long it took Rodney to come down with a mysterious illness.

For all his real and imagined ailments and injuries, Rodney almost never skipped work--the control freak in him won out over the hypochondriac every time. So when he radioed that he was going to miss the afternoon staff meeting, John beat a fast path to Rodney's room to see what was wrong.

The lights were dimmed, which spooked John a little, because the one time he'd been holed up in the dark like this himself, he'd been turning into a bug.

Rodney was still in bed, a sweaty sprawl on top of the sheets. "What's wrong with you?" John asked, perching hesitantly on the edge of the mattress. Rodney wasn't displaying any bug-like qualities, but John wasn't going to abandon caution yet.

"I don't know," Rodney groaned, clutching his stomach. "Something I ate, I think."

John cast a speculative eye on the empty containers that had formerly held a variety of Anatidaen delicacies. "Bon-bons?"

"Don't talk about the bon-bons," Rodney whimpered, then his eyes got very wide and he bolted for the bathroom.

A few seconds later, the screaming started.

John didn't even notice the egg at first.

When he skidded into the bathroom, he was too distracted by the sight of Rodney passed out on the floor with his underwear around his ankles. Rodney's skin was clammy and pale, and he groaned as John slapped his cheek, eyes blinking rapidly.

"It's an egg," he rasped.

"Right," said John. "Okay. What?"

For a guy who looked as terrible as he did, Rodney sure was able to get pissy in a hurry. He glared at John and pointed an unsteady finger.

Holy shit, it was an egg.

Bright blue and slightly larger than the standard chicken eggs John was familiar with. And John was willing to admit it was possibly his imagination, but there seemed to be something ... sinister about it. The hair on the back of his neck thought so, too.

"Where did that come from?" he asked, resisting the urge to draw his sidearm. He was not going to shoot the egg. Right now.

"From me," Rodney grated out, now a little more conscious and struggling to work his underwear back up where it belonged.

"Are you telling me you just laid an egg?"

"That's exactly what I'm telling you."

"Rodney, if you're fucking with me, I swear ..."

"I'm not fucking with you. I just ...oh, hey, my stomach feels better now." He propped himself up against the wall and sighed.

"How? Where?" John gestured helplessly, not even really sure he wanted to know.

"My ass!" Rodney snapped, sounding more like his usual self every second. "Didn't you hear the screaming?"

"You're shitting--" John saw the look on Rodney's face and swerved. "You're kidding me."

"Yes, because this is a very funny joke ha ha ha!" He looked nervously at the egg. "What do I do?"

John fingered his 9mm. The egg held its position and did nothing.

"What do I do?" Rodney asked again, pitch rising.

It probably wasn't a good idea to shoot Rodney, either, so there was only one other option. "We need to go see Beckett."

"What? No! Nonononono!"

Now John was really worried. Rodney always wanted to go to the infirmary. It was all his fault Beckett had started locking up the band-aids.

"Rodney ..."

John warily wrapped the egg in a towel--just touching it through the cloth gave him the willies--while Rodney got some clothes on, and they raced for the infirmary. They managed to slow to a walk whenever they passed someone else in the hallway, but John couldn't believe they looked anything near calm, cool, and collected. An egg! Out of Rodney!

Once they got there, Rodney marched right up to Beckett and set the bundle down next to his keyboard, opening up the towel.

Carson glanced at it, then went back to his computer screen. "Zoology is down the hall, Rodney."

"No, I really, really think this is more of a medical problem." Rodney sounded like he was just barely holding it together.

Carson stopped typing. "Please don't tell me you've developed an egg allergy."

Rodney shook his head. "That." He pointed to the egg. "Came out of me." He pointed to himself.

John had never seen Beckett's eyebrows go that high. He looked like the victim of a bad facelift. "Out of you?"

Rodney nodded emphatically, and John could see him starting to lose it. His face was turning red and his hands were moving aimlessly, fingers clenching and unclenching. If Carson didn't catch on soon, Rodney was going to have a meltdown.

"Out of where?"

"Take three guesses, and the first two aren't painful enough!"

"Oh, my." Carson reached for the egg and Rodney made a small noise that could have been protest, which seemed to surprise him as much as everyone else. Carson froze, hand hovering. "May I?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Rodney said agreeably, but his hands were twisting the fabric of his pants, and he flinched visibly when Carson picked up the egg.

He turned it over in his hands, looking from it to Rodney and back again. John tried not to fidget as much as Rodney was while they waited for the verdict.

Finally, seconds before John figured Rodney was going to either snatch the egg back or run screaming from the room, or maybe both, the good doctor weighed in with his expert opinion: "This is impossible."

And there went Rodney, right over the edge.

"I know!" he wailed. "I never bottom!"

In the end, they all decided they were stumped.

John would have been happy to leave the egg with Beckett, or maybe toss it off the nearest pier. Rodney was noticeably reluctant to part with it, but also noticeably reluctant to admit it. Beckett proved to be more perceptive to Rodney's distress than John's, and as a result they were sent back to Rodney's quarters with the egg in a cardboard box, nestled alongside a hot water bottle.

Weir was informed, Ronon and Teyla were given the bare details, Rodney was scheduled for another check-up the next day, and everyone was sworn to secrecy until they figured out what the hell was going on.

Two days later, there were three eggs, and Rodney was walking rather gingerly.

"What if it doesn't stop?" he asked, clutching John's arm. "What if I've turned into a chicken? What if I lay an egg every day and never stop?"

John probably would have had more sympathy for him if it hadn't been three in the morning. Because it was three in the morning, he said, "No more powdered eggs in the mess?"

"You can't eat them," Carson said firmly, when Rodney inevitably brought it up the following day. "We have no idea what kind of eggs they are." He cut a look at Rodney. "And given where they came from ..."

"Yes, let's all have a good laugh over my ass eggs." Rodney was even more snappish than usual, and kept giving John looks, like he didn't really trust him not to crack one open and fry it up right there.

"So, what do we do?" John asked, peering down at the eggs, resting comfortably in their nest of hot water bottles and towels.

"Well, Rodney seems quite attached to them, so I suppose we wait for them to hatch."

"We don't even know what's in them," John pointed out, then felt like an idiot when everyone stared at him. "Which is why we're going to let them hatch."

Rodney rolled his eyes in disgust as he picked up the box. "I'll try to keep Hannibal Lecter here from eating his own young."

"Hey! We don't even know--"

"Actually," Carson said thoughtfully, "I've been thinking about the fertilization process, which is still quite a mystery. Did anything strange happen to either of you the last time you were offworld?"

John and Ronon and Teyla went back to Anatidae. Rodney adamantly refused to go ("We're already having triplets!").

Everyone seemed very happy to see them, and there was the usual abundance of ceremonial food and drink, though John and his teammates were reluctant to indulge.

When John finally got a chance to bring up Rodney's eggs, the reaction was immediate. The men grinned and back-slapped, the women wiped their weepy eyes, and the chieftain gave John something that looked suspiciously like a cigar.

John figured that was all the answer he needed.

They had a short debriefing with Beckett and Weir when they got back. The Anatidaens considered it an honor for a man to carry their god's children, but they couldn't really explain why Rodney had been honored. They were adamant, though, that he was not going to suffer any lasting side effects.

"As long as you're feeling fine and Dr. Beckett has cleared you, I don't see any reason to delay your next offworld trip," said Elizabeth, who was never one to let the latest weirdness get in the way for long. "Your team is scheduled to visit--"

Rodney sat up abruptly, as if he'd just been poked. "What? No! John and I can't go offworld together! We're--" John bugged his eyes out at Rodney, silently willing him to notice and shut up. Hoping for a miracle, in other words. Or some newly-forged telepathic egg bond. "--hatching our eggs! We can't take the chance!"

Elizabeth looked at John, visibly startled. She knew about the eggs, obviously, but the news that John and Rodney were egg-hatching life partners was all new.

John was not blushing. He was not blushing.

"I'm not going to do all the work myself," Rodney said firmly. "It's at least partly his fault--"

"Maybe some time off would help," John cut in, before Rodney could get on that track again. "Rodney probably needs a chance to, you know, adjust."

Rodney opened his mouth to protest and John tried the eye-bugging thing again. This time it worked. Rodney subsided, contenting himself with muttering under his breath about orphans and childhood trauma, while John ignored him in favor of being appalled by Beckett's suggestion that they consult zoology about proper egg care.

Rodney started nodding and saying, "Yes, yes, right," but John did not agree at all. Too many people already knew. If they let zoology in on it, the entire city would know within hours.

Rodney accused John of being irresponsible, John accused Rodney of being irrational, and Beckett excused himself, claiming pressing matters in the infirmary.

The meeting ended without resolution, Elizabeth politely suggesting they discuss it again when everyone was "better rested," which meant when they got their heads out of their asses.

John gratefully fled, but Rodney was not to be deterred, and followed him to the jumper bay, ruining John's plan to run away from home and never come back.

"You're ashamed of me, aren't you? You're ashamed of our eggs."

"We don't even know if they're 'our' eggs."

Rodney's indignation was immediate. "Oh, now you're accusing me of cheating? That's just great!"

"I'm not--no! I--"

"I can't believe you would do this! Especially now!"

"Rodney ..."

Rodney got his way, and Zelenka temporarily replaced him on John's team.

Since there was no hope of getting out of it (as was explained to him loudly and at length by Rodney), John agreed to go along and talk to the zoologists.

The first thing he did was wearily put forth a request for some kind of incubator, because they had to constantly change the water in the bottles to keep the eggs warm. Rodney had, of course, insisted John shoulder his share of the "parenting," as he'd started to call it, which frightened John on more levels than he knew he had.

He was expecting a box with a light bulb, but two of the zoologists, Morris and Abramovich, came through in the form of a climate-controlled box with lights and gauges and humidity settings and lots of other stuff Rodney labeled with "DO NOT TOUCH!" sticky notes. They set it up in one of the labs, and John breathed a sigh of relief. No more getting up at two in the morning to change the water bottles.

He had a silent laugh over that at two the next morning, when Rodney turned over for the millionth time that night, thus forcing John to completely rearrange his limb placement to avoid falling off the bed.

"I can't sleep," Rodney said, as if John hadn't noticed all the squirming.

"I keep thinking about the eggs," Rodney said, as if John had actually asked him why he couldn't sleep.

"I don't know," Rodney said, as if John had asked him to explain it. "It's like I have to see them. Like I'm worried they're okay."

John sat up. There was no point in trying to get any sleep here. He was going back to his own room.

Rodney instantly scrambled out of bed. "Yes, good idea, we'll go get them."

John sighed as he searched around for his clothes. Rodney patted him on the shoulder and said, "It's okay, you'll feel better once we bring them back here."

"Oh, I'm sure I will," John said, jabbing a leg into his pants, which may have been inside out. He couldn't seem to care.

Rodney trundled off to his lab with the cart the next morning, and John actually managed to put the eggs out of his mind for most of the day. He spent the morning scrambling to get ready for a meeting with Lorne and the other team leaders, making up for time lost to egg duty.

Everything was going fine, and he'd actually forgotten his life was now completely surreal, when Rodney barged into the team leader meeting, pushing the incubation cart.

"Zelenka and I are testing the new jumper protocols, so it's your turn. Don't forget we're meeting Abramovich at 6pm for their daily check-up. Bye!" the blur that was Rodney said on its way out of the room.

John stared at the cart, which beeped cheerfully at him. He set his jaw and looked around the table, daring anyone to say anything.

Everyone was suddenly very interested in their notes.

Word of Rodney's eggs--and of John's role in the whole freaky deal--set a new speed record as it spread through Atlantis. There was no use in trying to keep it contained, because Rodney kept bitching to everyone who would listen that John had "knocked him up."

Requisition requests for condoms went through the roof.

The move began with an email attachment from Rodney cataloging seven different prospective living quarters for them, with detailed lists of the pros and cons, and frequent use of the word "nursery."

The decision was easy, because John didn't much care where he lived, and sharing a place made the egg-sitting a lot easier. Plus, they pushed two of the narrow beds together and made one big bed, and even though it had a little ditch right down the middle, it was awesome.

It was in a part of the city that had only recently been okayed for habitation, so it was quiet, and it had a suite of rooms and a nice balcony and a huge bathroom. They put a single bed in the second bedroom as a nod to regulations, but John figured once you and another guy had a nursery full of eggs, you were about as out as you could be.

One advantage to having a buttload of scientists around (not that John would ever utter the word "buttload" in front of Rodney again), was no matter what you needed information on, someone knew. Between the zoologists and the personnel who had grown up on farms, they were able to make some pretty good guesses as to how to take care of the eggs, and how long it would take something of that size to hatch.

Now all they had to do was wait.

The lights came up full blast, burning through John's eyelids like napalm. He hadn't even known they could get that bright. He blinked up at Rodney. "What?"

"One of the eggs is hatching!"

John bolted out of bed in spite of himself, following Rodney full-tilt to the nursery.

"Which one?" he asked, frowning down at the eggs, which all looked exactly the same as they had a couple hours ago.

"That one, right there," Rodney said, pointing a shaky finger. He was quivering.

Sure enough, one of the eggs had a tiny chip in it, barely the size of a grain of rice. John was unimpressed, but tried to hide it for Rodney's sake.

"How long until it's out?" he asked, after they stood there watching the egg do nothing for several minutes.

"Probably a day or two, according to Abramovich," Rodney said, staring in rapture.

Fuck Rodney's sake. "So, I could have looked at it in the morning?"

"I knew it was too much to hope you'd be a devoted father," Rodney sniffed.

It took almost three full days, but one by one the eggs hatched. Rodney took off work for the entire process, pacing and proving his "I eat when I'm nervous" claim all too true. As the first one hatched, Carson, Abramovich, and Ronon gathered to witness the beautiful event and offer their support.

Everyone was peering over Rodney's shoulder in the final moments, except for John, who had seen every Alien movie more times than he could count; he was hanging back, one hand on his gun, the other surreptitiously covering his mouth.

Finally, the shell split, and a tiny, wet thing flopped out.

They all stared in silence and then Rodney said, in a panicked voice, "What do I do now?"

The tiny wet thing slowly uncurled the rest of the way and lifted its head, as if responding to Rodney's voice.

"Holy crap!" Carson said. "It's a duck!"

Three ducks, when all the hatching was over. Three bright yellow ducklings, wobbling around the incubator.

"That one reminds me of you," Rodney said, pointing to one that looked exactly like the other two to John.

"In what way?"

"Look at him. He's ...fluffier than the others."

"He's probably just drier."

"I say family resemblance."

Rodney never got tired of the hair jokes. John, unfortunately, didn't feel the same.

They were cute, though, and John sorta wanted to pick them up and hold them, but Rodney was taking over-protective to pathological levels, and John wasn't sure even he was allowed to touch them.

He settled for sneaking in a few quick touches while Rodney was busy mashing up some duck food pellets. They were soft and warm and incredibly fragile, and their heartbeats raced under his fingers. One of them bumbled over and slumped into his palm, then stared up at him adoringly until John started to worry he'd get caught and put it back down.

"Morris used to raise ducks and rabbits for his 4H club," Rodney said, adding some water to the pellet mash. "He says if we start using their names right away, they'll probably start to recognize them."

"Names?" It hadn't occurred to him that they'd have names, but then almost everything that had happened in the past month or so had never occurred to him, so ...

"Oh, I already named them," Rodney said. He pointed to them one at a time. "Huey, Dewey, and Louie." The one that supposedly resembled John was Dewey.

"You named them after the Disney ducks?" he asked, heroically refraining from making the obvious Uncle Scrooge joke. "Don't I get a say?"

"I laid the damn eggs. Huey, Dewey, and Louie."

John, who always tried to avoid giving Rodney even more opportunities to be an egg martyr, backed down. "Fair enough."

Rodney set the shallow pan of food down in the incubator, and the ducklings all tromped over to investigate. Huey gulped a mouthful down, then stood on his tippy toes and flapped his little wings, unleashing a flurry of squawks at his brothers. The other two abandoned the dish and huddled together in the corner, thoroughly cowed.

"Well," John said. "Someone takes after his mother."

Life with ducklings wasn't really so bad, it turned out.

Zoology took them for the better part of each day to weigh and measure them, and make painstakingly detailed records of their behavior. With the absence of pets in the city, just about everyone wanted to see them and hold them at least once, which meant it was easy to find help when they needed it.

Much to his embarrassment, John turned out to be the softie when it came to discipline, letting Huey nip at his fingers and Dewey climb all over Rodney's laptop, and numerous other offenses that earned him long, lecturing emails from Rodney:

Subject: DO YOU WANT THEM TO GROW UP TO BE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS??

Subject: RE: My watch =/= duck toy

Subject: I don't think it's a good idea for them to see their parents nude.

John couldn't help it, though. It had been obvious while they were in egg form that Rodney felt some kind of parenting instinct toward them, but John--who was still not convinced he'd played any biological part in the whole thing, even if the idea was more and more appealing--had assumed he was immune. He hadn't really felt any urges when it came to the eggs, beyond being responsible toward them in order to keep Rodney happy.

But once they hatched, it was a whole different story.

They were cuddly and sweet, and liked to take naps on his chest. They seemed to immediately identify him as the second parent, and were just as willing to follow him around their quarters as they were Rodney, which he found endlessly amusing. They recognized his voice when he showed up in the zoology lab to take them home at the end of the day, and ran to him when Rodney talked too loudly and scared them. Louie even seemed to prefer him over Rodney, which was John's own little secret, petty happiness.

He was the one who let them sleep in the bed sometimes, when they wouldn't settle down and spent the night fussing and whimpering. Rodney insisted one of them would roll over and commit duck infanticide in their sleep, but the babies settled into the crack down the center of the bed and got to snoozing, and John was happy.

He was also the one who sat up all night in the nursery when Huey ate half a bag of Gummi Bears. And he didn't even send Rodney an email and bitch him out for leaving them where the babies could get them, which he figured qualified him for Father of the Year, or at least a sexual favor of his choosing.

It wasn't all fun and duck parades, though.

Rodney had a PDF document on one his laptops with a detailed duckling schedule, and had converted one of his precious whiteboards to a calendar, marked with times, dates, and cryptic notes ("Grit!"). It dictated what they did and when, every hour of every day, and seemed to become more crammed with information as time went on.

John really hated the whiteboard sometimes, and once the need for it was gone, he had a nice one-way trip to the shooting range planned for the damn thing.

Sadly, it was actually one of Rodney's saner parenting ideas.

Convinced they were showing early signs of brilliance, Rodney built a little maze for the ducklings, baited with carrot pieces, and spent the better part of an afternoon putting them through their paces.

Huey raced through it over and over again to devour the food, then stood in the middle making the funny little whistle-snort noise that meant "More now!" Dewey took a little longer to figure it out, then immediately lost interest in it after his first success and couldn't be bothered to do it again. Louie disdained it entirely, instead clambering up onto John's boot and sitting there in a downy little heap until John picked him up.

John thought it was a big waste of time, and a little weird. He mostly wanted to snuggle with them and watch them play, and didn't really care about mazes and flashcards and educational DVDs.

He didn't dare say anything, though. He didn't want to get another email.

It had been John's least favorite kind of day, the kind involving meetings from start to finish, a disciplinary problem he felt like a hypocrite dealing with, and tuna casserole in the mess at lunchtime.

All he wanted was a few minutes to himself, to just get some fresh air and--

"We don't have time to stand around gawking at the sunset, you know." Rodney came out onto the balcony, the ducklings trailing behind him in wiggly line.

The lowest rail was just high enough for them to slip under, which meant Dewey always made a beeline for it. John nudged him back to safety with his toe, then briefly considered throwing himself off the balcony instead, just for the few extra seconds of solitude.

"We need to set up the pool," Rodney said.

John groaned and rubbed his face with his hand. "Do we have to talk about the kids right now? I had a hard day."

"It's on the schedule. This Thursday. Abramovich says they're actually ready now."

"Can we just talk about it later?"

"Yes, certainly, let's put it off. We'll just hope it doesn't retard their development too much." Rodney crossed his arms and looked even more superior than usual. "I guess it's a good thing one of us is a responsible parent."

Louie waddled over and stood at John's feet, blinking up at him until John picked him up and nestled him under his chin. John closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar fuzzy duck smell, and felt a little better.

Then he opened one eye and used it to glare at Rodney, because Louie smelled suspiciously like Gummi Bears.

"Rodney ..."

The pool was blue molded plastic, and almost looked like something you could buy at any Wal-Mart back on Earth. Rodney built a little ramp for the ducklings so they could get in and out on their own, and John lugged about seven hundred buckets of water out to the balcony to fill it.

When it was finally ready, Huey wouldn't get in. After several minutes of fruitless coaxing, John picked him up and set him gently in the water. Huey squawked loudly, sprayed water all over everyone with his pinwheeling feet, and gave John a deeply betrayed look before paddling off.

John shook his head as he flicked the water off his dripping hand. Huey was the king of duck drama, and getting more like Rodney every day.

When he looked over, Rodney was glaring at him. "If you say it, you are never getting laid again."

John put on his best innocent face. "Wasn't even thinking it."

If he hadn't been staring at the whiteboard, fantasizing about how it would look with a neat row of bullet holes in it, John probably wouldn't have noticed that they seemed to have missed a step in the duck raising process.

It was incomprehensible--Rodney lived and died by the whiteboard. But John knew he wasn't wrong. It was right there in green marker.

Rodney was sitting cross-legged on the balcony, the babies tottering around him. John, tired of thrice-daily heart attacks, had finally strung some chicken wire along the railing. Dewey was trying his best to strangle himself with it.

"I told you he takes after you," Rodney said as John gently disentangled Dewey's head.

"Yeah, yeah." Once free, Dewey shook his little butt, then ran off in search of more trouble.

"So," John said, trying to sound casual. "Think we should take them to the mainland tomorrow?"

"What? No!" Rodney picked up Louie and held him protectively to his chest, petting his fluffy head with one finger. "Do you know how dangerous that is? Anything could happen!"

Ah. Mystery solved.

"They can't live here forever, Rodney. They're ducks. They need to be outside."

"Not yet. And they have a pool."

"They need to eat grass and chase bugs and swim in a real lake." Seeing he was getting nowhere, he brought out the big guns. "Keeping them inside all the time is cruel."

"They're too young," Rodney said stubbornly.

"The board says--"

"I know what the board says! I made the board!" Huey, always sensitive to any change in Rodney's tone of voice, flapped his wings and made a distressed noise. "They're too young," Rodney said again. He picked Huey up and put him in the circle of his legs, shushing him.

John sighed and went to go rescue Dewey, who had gotten stuck behind the patio chair.

Raising kids was hard.

The mainland trip debate went on for several tense days, branched off into a screaming match about wet towels on the floor, morphed into a knock-down drag-out over a broken life signs detector, and sadly never got to the makeup sex stage.

Finally, John cornered Morris in the mess hall and dragged him over to their table, hoping for some back-up. It turned out to be a strategic misstep.

Morris stammered and looked uncomfortable, which Rodney immediately took to mean that he was on Rodney's side, which annoyed John. They started squabbling again, right at the table, while Morris continued stuttering, and Ronon and Teyla kept eating and looked amused.

Then Morris started talking about "damaging the ecosystem with non-native species," and "planet-wide impact," and "destroying the specimens," and John knew it would be bad form for the military commander of Atlantis to grab the guy by his shirt and tell him to shut the fuck up, so he was really glad when Ronon did it for him.

Predictably, once Rodney was told he couldn't take the ducklings to the mainland, he was all for the idea.

He insisted on doing a full scan of the area from the air, which John didn't really mind, because cruising around aimlessly in the jumper wasn't much of a hardship. After several hours of thorough reconnaissance and copious note-taking, Rodney found what he claimed was the perfect spot. A small pond with some trees; a nice mixture of water, sun, and shade.

The first time out, Rodney was nervous and talkative in the jumper, and kept getting up to go check on the babies, fussing over the straps that held the crate to the seat. Once they landed, he did another scan, and then made John do a perimeter check while he unloaded the crate.

"They're ducks, Rodney, not the freakin' Hope diamond," John called back to the jumper, but he drew a bead on a squirrel thing with his P90 anyway, and seriously contemplated shooting it until it saw him and bolted.

Once the crate was open, Dewey's head peeked out first. Then Huey spotted a bug and nearly knocked his brothers over diving for it. From there it was duckling insanity. John gave up early and let Rodney run around and panic all on his own.

Eventually, everything in sight had been climbed on or chewed up, and the babies slipped into the pond and paddled out to the middle. Probably to get away from their crazy mother, John thought.

Once the ducklings didn't die immediately, Rodney settled down a notch, and it turned out to be a pleasant afternoon. John managed to distract him with some sandwiches and a couple bottles of root beer, and after a while the babies came waddling back up the bank to get dried off and have a snack.

They flew back to Atlantis, John satisfied their mission had been accomplished, Rodney exhausted and dirty, and the boys a fluffy, drowsing ball of duck in their crate.

The mainland trips became a regular thing. The babies got bigger and braver, and Rodney got more comfortable letting them wander around, or at least better at pretending it didn't bother him. John never did get lucky on the blanket under the tree, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Soon down became actual feathers, beautiful grays and blues, and Louie surprised everyone by turning a solid cream color, which meant he was a girl.

"I should have known," Rodney said. "The way she's completely enamored with you was the first clue. Any female that gets within ten feet of you falls for your stupid charm."

John grinned at him. "You fell for my stupid charm."

"I fell for your blowjob skills," Rodney said. "Don't fool yourself."

Feathers meant flying, which was even more traumatic for Rodney than outdoor playtime, especially when Dewey took a nosedive off the balcony before anyone realized he could get airborne.

They started taking them out to one of the piers every day so they could practice take-offs and landings, though Rodney fretted endlessly that they'd be eaten by some ocean-dwelling creature with a taste for duck. John spent a lot of time rubbing the back of Rodney's neck and reminding him that this had nothing to do with John's genes at all--ducks were supposed to fly.

On the upside, their markings indicated they were a native species (Abramovich: "How they got in Rodney's butt, I'll never know."), which meant their fate was no longer in question, and that Rodney could stop calling Morris "homicidal maniac" and "child killer."

Took John a little longer, though.

Release Day, as it was known, went up on the whiteboard in red marker, and it wasn't so much seeing the words there that bothered John as the fact that all the days after it were completely blank.

No playtime, no naps, no practice flights. No more straw in his hair, no more Gummi Bears in his shoes. Just him and Rodney alone in their big new apartment, with plenty of time to read and play video games and all that other stuff he'd thought he'd miss but really hadn't.

Rodney postponed Release Day three times for incredibly transparent reasons. John didn't have the heart to argue.

On their way back to the city, they firmly agreed that if anyone asked, it had all gone well and they had both been perfectly manly about the whole thing, and of course they hadn't gotten emotional over a bunch of ducks, for chrissake. And if Rodney's lower lip quivered a little when he picked up the empty crate, well, John was certainly too busy clearing his suddenly scratchy throat to notice.

There was a small, unexpected crowd waiting for them when they came out of the jumper bay. Rodney stuck his chin in the air and announced, "The first person to make an empty nest joke gets stabbed in the face."

Really, John figured, he couldn't have asked for it to go much better than that.

One Year Later

The beach wasn't anywhere near the old duck pond, so it didn't really make any sense to get nostalgic, but John couldn't help it. Once the makeshift volleyball game was over and the food was eaten, he wandered down the shore, away from the picnic and the rest of the Atlantis crew.

The lake, discovered a few months back, had become a popular recreation spot, but John and Rodney hadn't had a chance to check it out until now. Rodney, who was still mooning over the barbecue, probably hadn't even realized he was on a beach yet.

John was slowly working his way back to the group when he heard something rustling in the grass and had a moment of panic. He was alone, separated from the others, with no weapon. Stupid stupid stupid.

Then a sleek head poked out of the bushes, and John knew it was Louie as soon as he saw her, even before she waddled over to let him pick her up and tuck her under his chin. Then he nearly fell down from shock when five tiny ducklings trundled out of the grass and started milling around and hooting nervously, baffled by their mother's disappearance.

There was an undignified squawk that sounded like it could have come from Louie, but John knew was really Rodney--there was something in the world that could distract him from roast pork after all. John turned and grinned at him as he barreled down the beach.

Rodney's eyes were huge as he reached out and stroked his hand down Louie's back. "Is that ...? It is, isn't it?"

John nodded. "Careful," he said, dipping his chin at the babies wobbling around his bare feet.

"Oh, my God," Rodney said, and went to his knees. He scooped them up in his arms and buried his face in the squirming bundle, eyes closed in bliss. He looked like John felt.

"Good smell," John said, and Rodney said, "Yeah," and nuzzled them some more, until one of them bit him on the nose.

He blinked up at John. "Oh, my God," he said again. "We're grandparents."

The End

You can read the sequel to this story, Politics of Dining: A 'Fuzzy Duck Smell' Story written by chicklet_girl for my birthday! Eeeee!

Family Portrait by gweneiriol. So cute!

Director's Cut B.S.

Scene that got cut:

"Should we open one?" John asked.

"That would most likely kill whatever is inside," Abramovich warned, and Rodney looked horrified.

"Why are you so anxious to know?" he asked John, scooting the box a little closer to himself. "Do you really care what kind of eggs they are?" John opened his mouth to answer. "And don't say Cadbury."