Kevi

It finally hits Rodney when he's in the SGC commissary staring at the coffee machines and halfway wondering why there isn't a kevi machine or two.

It had all felt somewhat unreal from the moment they stepped through the gate: returning to the place he hadn't been in 16 years, on the planet he hadn't been on in 16 years despite it being where he was born. Well. Not the SGC, but Earth. It all feels unreal because he hasn't been here in so long, because it isn't the blue of Atlantis or the rustic outdoorsiness of most of the other planets he'd been to, and the fact that he's never going back to Atlantis hasn't hit yet. It hits at the coffee machines.

Kevi had been embraced wholeheartedly by all but the most diehard of the coffee drinkers, and Rodney was no exception. It tasted better and provided effects similar to caffeine without the bad side effects. Rodney had been drinking it rather than coffee ever since Dr. Keller had mandated that he stop drinking anything with caffeine in it (not that anything other than coffee was available on Atlantis) for his health (which meant no coffee, period, because there was no way he was going to start drinking decaf and, as insane as John had managed to make him over the years (death defying heroics, hello), he wasn't going to risk his health more than he had to, especially since he was already doing the diet (small community with very interested doctors and people to watch him) and exercise (running for his life and John's training for running for his life) thing and he might as well not waste it), and they don't even have it on Earth. They don't have it anywhere in the Milky Way, in fact, and that fact hits him suddenly. He's never going back home, except for values of home that are defined as him and John and Jeannie, and he's never going to step through the stargate again, because aging astrophysicists aren't exactly prime choices for gate teams and John's not going to be leading a team, and he'll never taste kevi again.