Fic: He shall purify (PG)

[anyanka_eg]

Title: He shall purify
Rating: PG
Pairing: McShep
Summary: John's mom loved to sing

So, here it is. The story that popped into my head when I was at the Halle's performance of Handel's Messiah last Sunday. Of course, as I tried to write it down it appears it didn't arrive fully formed and it's not what I expected it to be. I hope you guys like it. I'm not sure about the title so if you think of something better, let me know.

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John had told him, in a rare moment of openness about his past, that his mom had loved to sing. She sang in house, she sang in the car, she sang at church and she had joined a choir in every town they'd lived. She'd sung in languages she didn't understand, she'd sung in damp churches and open air auditoriums, she'd sung until her throat hurt, all for the love of music. Rodney didn't doubt that it was the thing John remembered most clearly about his mom.

He'd wanted to joke that John must have been a disappointment to her, because the man couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but he knew there were some things you just didn't say. He had his own issues with his family, many of them admittedly of his making, so he knew only too well how easy it was for thoughtless words to cut like a knife.

They'd been together for two years before John told him his mom had died when he was twelve. Rodney counted it as a major victory, even though they both knew he'd hacked John's record before the end of the first week in the Pegasus galaxy. After that the flood gates opened. Well okay, flood gates was too big a word for the tiny trickle of information that John let out about his family but Rodney knew how much it cost him to speak at all.

John had been stoned on sunshine tea on Geltai when he'd whispered, like it was a state secret, that his mom made him French toast every Sunday when he was a kid. He'd only told Rodney about how his mom let him sit on her knee when she played the piano because Rodney was a mournful drunk, sniveling into his beer in a bar in Colorado. They'd been lying together in the dark, naked and sleepy, when John had buried his face in Rodney's neck and told him that it had been his mom's birthday that day. Rodney had just tightened his arms around his lover and kissed his hair.

He checked the date when he got to the lab the next morning and then made sure the team never had a mission on May fifth again. Oh, he always planned something. Something diverting like a test flight for a jumper modification or a day exploring some new section of their city. Just not a mission. John never mentioned it but always smiled his secret I-have-the-best-boyfriend-in-the-world-ever smile and Rodney knew he'd done the right thing.

Without ever using a direct question, because that made the answers stop, Rodney had pieced together a picture of John's childhood over the years, filling in the massive gaps with guesses and suppositions. And maybe just a tiny little bit of hacking.

He knew John's father, and he had never, ever mentioned his name, was from Jackson, Tennessee and had left as soon as he could. He was intelligent, ambitious and charming, and by all accounts could sell snow to the Eskimos. He was also a bully and a snob who was determined to forget his roots at all costs. Rodney was pretty sure John had never even met his father's parents.

He was also fairly sure John's way of saying 'fuck you' to his father, just like all teenagers had to, was to develop a love of country music. Rodney found a perverse pleasure that, even though John had known nothing of his father's history back then, he'd still managed to pick the one type of music that would be guaranteed to drive his father insane. This knowledge was the only thing that kept Rodney sane when he was forced to listen to Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison for the tenth time.

Once he was away from Jackson, John's father set about making sure no one ever knew he'd grown up poor. He determinedly lost his accent, acquired a taste for what he thought were the finer things in life and joined all the best clubs. Rodney guessed he must have spent the rest of his life terrified that someone would guess he hadn't grown up as Emily Post's adopted son.

He must have thought he'd struck gold when he met John's mom, Kathryn, at a social at his golf club. She was an English literature major at collage, loved going to the symphony and happened to be the most beautiful woman Rodney had ever seen, even in the grainy print John finally showed him. What John's father didn't realize until she was already accidentally pregnant with their son, was that she was a scholarship student who queued for hours outside the symphony for cheap returned tickets.

She was the daughter of a decorator from Boston. Not a 'decorator' decorator, but a good old fashioned house painter, who happened to have a eye for art and an ear for music that he passed on to his daughter. John's memories of his maternal grandparents was sketchy, another thing Rodney knew he blamed his father for, but those he had seemed to be filled with books, music and baking. Rodney wished his memories of his own grandparents were as good.

When John blurted out his mom had sung in Handel's Messiah as Rodney distractedly hummed 'He shall purify', he'd expected that to be all he got. But that night in his room, John had told him how his mom had auditioned for the La Jolla Symphony Chorus when he was nine. He could tell when John's face softened as he spoke just how much it meant to his mom, how much it meant to John even after all these years, that she was accepted. The fact that he could see John's face at all told Rodney this revelation was somehow different from the others.

John told him how every Tuesday and Thursday for two months he'd run out of school to his mom's waiting car so she could drive the thirty miles to La Jolla. They'd given John permission to sit in the rehearsal room because he was so quiet, something that didn't surprise Rodney one bit. He could imagine John as a boy, all serious eyes and gangly legs, pretending to do his homework but really just soaking up everything that happened around him.

And he still remembered most of it. Rodney felt a sudden stab of anger at the injustice of John's lack of ability because he so obviously wanted to be able express all the music he could still hear in his head. It seemed so unfair that he should be denied this connection to his mother and Rodney felt impotent because he wanted to do something, fix it somehow, but he knew he couldn't.

The night of the first performance, John had had an early dinner with his father at an upmarket restaurant in La Jolla, and then he'd held his father's hand as they walked to the auditorium through the December mist that rolled off the ocean. Rodney could see on his face the echoes of his boyish happiness and excitement, and he almost couldn't bear the knowledge that most of that died with his mom.

John didn't describe the performance to him and Rodney was kind of glad. Neither of them were good with words, not when they were about feelings, and he knew just how powerful his own emotions were about some pieces of music. Having them all tied up with love and grief, and probably a touch of guilt because it was John after all, was something he really wasn't sure he knew how to deal with.

Instead John told him how on the way back home in the car he'd had fallen asleep curled up in his mom's lap and had only woken up when his father had carried him inside to bed. It was the first and only time Rodney had ever seen him smile, even a little, when he spoke about his father.

His father moved them to Houston in the following February and his mom had to quit the choir. There was something in his voice that made Rodney think that the piece of John's psyche that was still a hurt little boy thought that maybe quitting the choir made his mom ill. Rodney knew better than to ask him if his guess was correct.

When John came back home from his father's funeral, he had drunk himself talkative with what had been Carson's favorite bottle of whiskey and told Rodney how, even as a child, he'd worked out there was something resentful about his parents marriage. John might be terrible at spotting when women were about to throw themselves at him but he could take on other people's hurt like a sponge and Rodney wondered how he'd survived his childhood.

That night Rodney saw John cry for the first time. He knew that he wasn't crying for his father, well not because he was dead, at least. Maybe there were a few tears for what could have been if he and his father had been very different people. Rodney was sure there were some of the tears for his mom that John had hoarded over the years, as if shedding them would make her memory fade. Mostly, Rodney thought, John was crying for the twelve year old whose mom died and left him with a father for whom he would never be good enough.

Rodney couldn't help thinking that Carson would have been glad to see his precious Glen Ord drunk in such a good cause.

So, when they were planning their first Christmas time vacation on Earth and Rodney spotted that the Vancouver Symphony were performing the Messiah, and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. He'd made Jeanie book the tickets so he could surprise John and then could barely keep the secret he was so pleased with himself.

Once they were in Canada he started to have doubts. What if John hated it? What if he didn't want to be reminded of his dead mom at Christmas? Rodney didn't like being reminded of his parents at any time but then he didn't have some shining, perfect image of either of them. What if going to the performance somehow tarnished the memory for John?

By the time the day of the performance came round he knew John thought that something was horribly wrong because he was casting worried glances across the breakfast table. Jeanie just rolled her eyes and shook her head as she brought John a plate of pancakes. By the time they had to leave that evening for their 'surpwise', as Madison called it, Rodney was very surprised John even got in the car with him.

When they arrived at the symphony hall and John realized what they were there for, he didn't say anything and Rodney really began to worry. He knew he'd never, ever be able to laugh at the irony of he situation if they split up because of this, this stupid thing he'd tried to do for John. He couldn't believe he'd been dumb enough to think that he'd somehow get the grand emotional gesture right with John, when he'd failed so miserably with his few other relationships. Especially as John was as much of an emotional screw up as he was.

So, when the hairs on the back of Rodney's neck stood on end as the sopranos' voices soared over the rest of the chorus, singing 'King of Kings, Lord of Lords', it wasn't so much about the music, as the fact that John had squeezed his hand, turning to smile his secret smile even though there were tears in his eyes. Maybe Rodney had done the right thing after all.