Lorne could hear McKay halfway down the hallway, and as he walked, he couldn’t help but think that when the Ancients had built Atlantis, they obviously hadn’t planned for anyone to live there whose voice had the carrying capacity of Rodney McKay’s. In all honesty, Lorne wasn’t even sure that the SGC’s walls—steel, concrete and mountain--would have been thick enough to keep the scientist’s voice contained, once the man really got going.

"Well, it would have worked," McKay was saying. "It would have worked just fine if the dangerous convicts hadn’t chosen that moment to take us all hostage again."

"I did not say that it would not have worked," someone else said, and Lorne was pretty sure that it was Dr. Zelenka. There were two reasons for that: a) the accent, and b) in the time that Lorne had been in Atlantis, he’d come across very few people willing to tell McKay that there might, in fact, be a better way of doing something.

"All I asked," Zelenka continued, "was whether or not you had considered—"

The specifics of what he was asking were lost, though, because Rodney cut him off, saying, "Yes I considered. Of course I considered. And it wouldn’t have worked. Believe me when I say that it would not have worked. You really had to be there."

Lorne blinked at that, because with those last words, McKay had actually almost sounded like a voice of experience, like someone who knew what he was doing, which pretty much clashed with the version of Rodney McKay that Lorne had in his head.

The one time Lorne had been paired up with him, after all, he’d spent the whole time whining and complaining. He’d been terrified out of his mind, babbling faster than a speeding train, and Lorne hadn’t been expecting that sort of behavior from the first contact team’s resident scientist.

He’d been expecting another Dr. Jackson, he supposed, eloquent and calm and while he preferred to not use weapons, yes, he could if he had to. During his time at the SGC, Lorne had seen Dr. Jackson hit the bullseye at the center of a paper target more than once—and more than one time in a row even. He’d been expecting a Jackson, who nowadays almost seemed to be more comfortable off world than on, who didn’t ever seem to be frightened by all things alien and mysterious, and McKay, well.

McKay was the exact opposite.

McKay was not eloquent. McKay could use a gun, but he wasn’t someone Lorne would want covering his back. All McKay seemed to talk about off world were the new and interesting ways that they were all going to die.

He’d seen the terror in McKay’s eyes when they’d gone after Ford, after all, and it hadn’t just been fluke terror either, because he’d seen it again not two hours before, when they’d returned from the prison planet. McKay had been standing off to the side of the Jumper Bay, his arms crossed over his chest, his skin pale and sweat-slick. Even Lorne, who didn’t know him well at all, had been able to feel the waves of residual terror and adrenaline washing off of him, slowly fading now that he was safe again.

To be that afraid, that terrified… Lorne didn’t know why he would want to do that on a regular basis, because McKay didn’t strike him as an adrenaline junkie at all, and Lorne couldn’t think of any other sorts of people who would find being that scared fun.

What Lorne really didn’t understand, though, was why Colonel Sheppard wanted McKay on his team to begin with. All of that barely constrained fear… it just wasn’t safe. Freezing terror, Lorne knew, could get someone killed almost as easily as a bullet could, and why the Colonel would risk that…

An hour later, though, Lorne began to understand.

He was sitting in on the debriefing, sharing their side of the story with the Colonel, when he made the mistake of saying that they were lucky they’d arrived when they had. Maybe he’d sounded cocky, or maybe he’d sounded like he thought the Colonel and his team should be grateful, but when the Colonel turned to look at him, his gaze was sharp and evaluating, challenging, and not entirely friendly.

"McKay would have figure it out," Colonel Sheppard said. "He would have figured something out."

And everyone nodded, even Dex, which made Lorne wonder what exactly had gone down on the planet. What McKay’s actions had been, beneath the words spoken in the debriefing, that had made them all so sure.

McKay, in fact, was the only one who didn’t nod. "It was an impossible fix to begin with, Colonel," he said. "I wouldn’t have been able to—"

"Oh, don’t give me that, McKay," Colonel Sheppard interrupted. "Don’t think I didn’t already know everything that Torrell said about you back on the planet. We might have had to suffer a few more bruises, a broken bone or two, but you would have eventually figured out something and we would have made it home."

And that, right there, was the reason that McKay was on the team, Lorne realized: the Colonel trusted McKay. With his life, apparently. And given the absolute certainty in his voice as he spoke, he had good reason to do so—even if Lorne still didn’t quite see it, still couldn’t quite picture it.

That still didn’t explain why McKay wanted to be on the team, though. Lorne still didn’t understand that.

But then he saw the look on McKay’s face. Pride mixed with a bit of satisfaction and topped off with trust. He trusted the Colonel just as much as Colonel Sheppard apparently trusted him, and no matter how frightened McKay got, or how annoyed the Colonel might become with him, they trusted each other to get them all home safely.

It was possible, Lorne thought as he looked back and forth between them, that that had been the problem back on Ford’s planet. McKay trusted the Colonel, and he’d been stuck with Lorne, whom he didn’t know at all.

Maybe that made all the difference.

"You would have figured it out," the Colonel said again, and McKay shrugged, almost nonchalantly. Then he grinned.

Lorne smiled, too. Maybe it was because of the Colonel’s empathetic belief in McKay, or maybe it was because Lorne trusted the Colonel with his own life, but he realized that suddenly, at some point in the previous hour, he’d found reason to start trusting McKay, too.

"Well, maybe," McKay said, but it sounded like a ‘yes’ in Lorne’s ears.