#rodney's a very crunchy character to chew on so there's a lot to pick apart with him

[texasdreamer01]

:campfire-emoji: (cuz I can't get them up on my keyboard haha) for misit orare, ut venirem!

So my original plans for that fic was circulating around the tag "Friends to Lovers to Married" after an episode where Rodney McKay, uh, blew up a fair portion of a solar system mostly by accident.

...In his defense, he was trying to replace a faulty energy system that some people a long, long time ago had developed (think battery but not rechargeable) and he was feeling super guilty about getting some scientists working for him killed over some mistakes in the data (replacement attempt is also from the people from long, long time ago) and he was really pushing himself to Get It Right because they're technically in the middle of a war and really, really need that.

Unfortunately he gets rather ostracized for it, but John Sheppard (military commander and pseudo-canonical love interest, the other half of the McShep ship) gave him shit for it on top of the leader of the expedition (Elizabeth Weir, who... usually is rather indulgent on Rodney doing whatever science he wants but this time was Big Mad).

I was on track for this, being a sort of 5+1 kind of deal that digs up all of the little emotional underpinnings between Rodney and John and why both acted the way they did, but then I remembered the whole deal with Rodney being deathly allergic to citrus and how the mess hall... only served food with lemons (and presumably other citrus) in it for a while.

So now I have their other friend - and also team mate - Teyla being (rightfully) pissed off about this, and Ronon (also friend, also team mate) is involved and now I feel like this is going to be still a #Friends to Lovers to Married but kind of with a matchmaking tilt to it? I'm still in the middle of resolving that plot point and I'm not sure where it's gonna end up (hopefully I can get it back on track lol).

Initial summary that's probably gonna stay thrown-out:

They had learned, carefully, to ask.