Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“McKay!  McKay, open up now! ”

Rodney sat bolt upright in bed, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, trying to calm his frantic heart rate.  For a minute, it had almost sounded like Ronon, yelling at him and pounding on his door.  

“ McKay! ”

It was Ronon.  Before he’d even fully come awake, Rodney was out of bed, stumbling towards his door and swiping it open.  

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Rodney asked crossly.  He wasn’t even sure what time it was, he hadn’t checked his clock because he was too busy being startled by a very loud Satedan.  

“Move,” Ronon said, his voice tense and harsh.  Before Rodney had a chance to be offended, before he could even see Ronon behind the opening door, the Satedan shouldered his way into the room.  

Instantly, all thoughts of sleep fell away.  Someone was bundled loosely into Ronon’s arms, and his face was turned away but Rodney would recognize that stupid mop of hair anywhere.  It was Sheppard, and he was lying in Ronon’s arms, and he wasn’t moving, and there was blood everywhere.

“What happened?” Rodney gasped, staring at John’s limp form as Ronon pushed past him towards Rodney’s bed.  One of Sheppard’s arms flopped downwards, dangling almost lifelessly.  Rodney watched in horror as blood began to drip down his wrist and off his fingers, onto Rodney’s floor.

“He was shot.”  Keller pushed past Rodney as well, and he noted the presence of a newcomer almost dimly, the largest portion of his brain frozen on Sheppard.

By the bed, Ronon laid John down impossibly gently.  Rodney waited for Sheppard to move, to open his eyes and complain about Ronon carrying him, even just to sigh or turn over.  But John didn’t move a muscle, and from here, Rodney couldn’t even see him breathe.  Suddenly, Rodney didn’t feel much like breathing either.

“Is he...?”  Rodney trailed off, alarmed to find his voice wavering.

“Alive,” Ronon said shortly.

Rodney’s ability to breathe suddenly came back, and he let out a great, shuddering sigh of relief.  “You said he’s been...shot?”

“With a crossbow ,” Keller said, blocking John from view as she bent over him.  “He got a bolt through the shoulder, and it knocked him down some stairs.  He was still conscious when Ronon found him.  He says….”

“It was an assassination attempt,” Ronon finished, sounding murderous.  “Someone tried to kill Sheppard.” 

Rodney felt the world narrow to a point.  “Someone...someone from Atlantis?”

Ronon shook his head.  “This was what was in his shoulder,” he said, holding out the crossbow bolt.  It was made of smooth wood, so dark it was almost black, with a black tip, chipped in a few places from its impact with John.

Rodney recognized the look of the design.  “It’s the Jorians,” Rodney whispered.  “That’s one of their bolts.”

Ronon nodded slightly, and Rodney felt his stomach twist.  About a week ago, John and the rest of the team had gone to a planet named Joria, a target of a Wraith culling.  They had tried to evacuate the planet, but they had been too late, arriving in the middle of a horrible attack.  John had put everyone that he could fit into the Jumper, about twenty-five Jorians.  The rest….

They had stayed on Atlantis for the past week or so, while Sam searched for a new planet where they could be safely moved.  Rodney knew the Jorians weren’t particularly happy to be stuck on Atlantis, and more than that they weren’t particularly happy with John, who had only been able to save so many people with the Jumper, and had had no choice but to leave many Jorians to die.  But Rodney never ever ever could have predicted that one of them would try to kill John.  Especially like this, in cold blood...the idea turned his stomach.

“Do we know who did it?” Rodney asked, wincing as something Keller did made John squirm on the bed.

Ronon shook his head.  “No idea.  Could have been any of them.  Teyla’s talking to Sam now, trying to figure out what to do.  That’s why we brought him here though, instead of the infirmary.  Needed to get him somewhere quick.  And we didn’t want them to be able to track him there.”

Rodney nodded tightly - he didn’t love the idea of John bleeding all over his bed, but he would of course rather have John be safe here than in danger somewhere else.  Although, Rodney wasn’t exactly sure how safe John would actually be here, it wasn’t like he had any medical supplies in his room, and transport would end up posing problems since he didn’t have a gurney or anything.

Rodney heard John squirm again, and he turned to stand next to Keller, looking down at his friend.  “He’ll...he’ll be alright, right?”

“I think so,” Keller said, and Rodney felt his hands begin to shake as his anxiety kicked into overdrive.  I think so , that wasn’t a good answer.  That still left a lot of probability that John would, in fact, not be alright.  And that was absolutely unthinkable.

Keller pushed down on John’s shoulder with an already-bloody cloth.  John made a horrible agonized moan, but he was too weak to move away.

“He needs surgery,” Keller said sadly.  “The arrowhead splintered inside his shoulder, and I can’t get it all out without an operation.  And he broke his ankle in the fall, along with some ribs, but of course I can’t tell how many without the proper scanning equipment, which is in the infirmary, which we can’t get to, because it’s too dangerous for him….”

“Surgery?” Rodney squeaked.  “Because an arrow...splintered?  Inside his shoulder?”

“He pulled it out before we got there,” Ronon said, his tone caught halfway between admiration and accusation.  

Keller must have seen the look on Rodney’s face, which he could only imagine was rapidly approaching utter panic, because she turned her gaze from John’s shoulder to Rodney.

“He’ll be okay without the surgery for a bit,” she said gently.  “We’ll just have to keep an eye out for infection.  And as soon as Colonel Carter and I decide that it’s safe, we’ll move him to the infirmary.”

Rodney did not think that this sounded like a good plan, not in the slightest.  He didn’t really think of surgery as something that could be postponed , and granted, he knew very little about that sort of thing, but it still seemed awfully dangerous.

“Are you sure?” Rodney asked, before he could stop himself.  “If there’s shards of...things...inside his shoulder, that’s okay?”

“Maybe it’s like that movie Sheppard showed us,” Ronon said, sounding as nervous as Rodney had ever heard him.  “Iron Man?  That guy had stuff in him, and he never got surgery.”

“And ‘that guy’ would have died if he wasn’t a brilliant inventor,” Rodney snapped.  “That is a terrible analogy.  God, now all I can think about is shrapnel somehow piercing Sheppard’s heart , and that technology isn’t even remotely possible, I should know, I-”

“It is nothing like Iron Man,” Keller said, so loudly that it actually startled Rodney into silence.  “If I thought, even for a moment, that delaying this surgery would put the Colonel at risk, I would have him in the OR in a heartbeat.  Okay?”

Rodney bit back the next “are you sure” and nodded.  Ronon nodded as well, looking sheepish.

“Sorry, Shep,” Ronon mumbled to John’s unconscious form.  “No cool robot suit.”

Rodney watched numbly as Keller stabilized John’s leg as best she could with just bandages from her emergency kit.  She elevated John’s leg on some of Rodney’s pillows, which Rodney certainly didn’t like but wasn’t about to argue with.  

While Keller murmured calming words to John’s unconscious form, and Ronon paced anxiously off to the side, Rodney worried that Sheppard was going to die.  He worried that he was going to bleed more on Rodney’s bed.  He worried that whoever it was who had tried to kill Sheppard was going to burst into his room and try to kill him again.  Or possibly try to kill Rodney.  This whole situation didn’t seem very good at all.

“Alright,” Keller said after a while.  She brushed the hair out of her eyes looking nervous and completely exhausted.  “I think that’s about all I can do with the supplies I have here.  I’m going to talk to Carter, see if it’s safe to move him yet.  If not, I’ll need to bring some supplies back here.  He at least needs an IV, as soon as he can get it.”

Keller turned away and started to exit Rodney’s room.

“Wait!” Rodney squeaked.  “What if he wakes up?”

“I’ve given him some pain medication, so he shouldn’t be in too much pain when he wakes up.  But he’ll probably be pretty disoriented, so just try to keep him calm until I can come back and bring him to the infirmary.”

“But-”

Keller seemed to sense that Rodney was about to start going around in anxious circles, because she left the room before he could say anything else.  Rodney looked back down at John, feeling his heartbeat start to speed up.  John looked terrible.  His face was waxy and pale, dark circles standing out in sharp relief below his eyes.  Keller hadn’t had the supplies to do much with his shoulder, and it was a mess of bloody bandages, with his arm draped awkwardly around his chest.  Rodney could make out his breathing, barely, which was his only indication that John was still alive.  Aside from that, he was completely still.

Rodney heard the faint buzz of Ronon’s comms; he looked back in time to see the Satedan tap his earpiece.

“Carter?” he said.  He was silent for a moment, presumably while Sam explained something to him.

“Yeah,” he said after a moment.  “Will do.”

“That was Sam?” Rodney asked.   “What did she say?” 

“That she needs me to go find out who did this,” Ronon said, suddenly looking very dangerous indeed.  Rodney had to quell the urge to take a step back.  “Also, she wants to talk to you.”

Sure enough, Rodney’s earpiece crackled.  He tapped it on, watching out of the corner of his eye as Ronon stopped by the bed, touching John very carefully on the uninjured shoulder.  He couldn’t hear very well from here, but he thought Ronon said something.  

The Satedan slipped out the door as Sam’s voice came over the channel.  “Rodney?  We need to talk.”

John hurt.   Even before he opened his eyes, he could feel the telltale dull sensation of painkillers, so he knew that he didn’t hurt quite as much as he could have, but he did hurt.   His entire body felt like one giant bruise, and as he shifted, he felt corresponding lances of pain through his shoulder, ribs, and ankle.  He felt stiff and sore, almost like he would have if he’d fallen down the stairs.

And then John remembered that was exactly what had happened, and that he’d fallen down in the first place because someone had shot him with an arrow, and that meant that someone had tried to kill him.

John thought he should probably be worried about that.  After a minute or so of close examination he decided that, even with the cushion from the drugs, he was in fact quite worried about that.  

John opened his eyes and sat up, or at least, he tried.  He got as far as pushing himself up with his good hand before his ribs screamed with pain and he fell back heavily against the pillows, clutching his chest with his free hand.  He blinked.  This wasn’t the infirmary, this was a bedroom.  Not only that, it wasn’t his.  Diplomas all over the walls, framed awards, and cat pictures….

“R’dney?”

The scientist swung around, into John’s field of view.  “Just a second, he’s awake,” Rodney said hurriedly into his comms, and then he was by John’s side.  John blinked up at his friend, feeling very much that he’d missed something important along the way.

“How are you feeling?” Rodney asked, sounding anxious.

“Why’m I in your room?” John countered.  

“Well, umm, Carter was just telling me that,” Rodney began.  “Uhh, you know how you were...shot at?  We, umm, don’t know who did it.  And Sam thinks it would be too dangerous to put you in the infirmary.  So, uhh, she says you have to stay here until we find whoever tried to….”

“Kill me,” John finished automatically, then blinked into silence.  He had to stay here, in Rodney’s room, instead of the infirmary?  It made sense, he supposed, but his brain seemed to be working slowly and he wasn’t sure if it actually made sense or if it was just the drugs talking.  Either way, it didn’t seem like an option he would enjoy very much.  As much as John hated the infirmary, if he was going to feel as bad as he did now, he would rather be near doctors than under the dubious care of McKay.  John suddenly felt rather overwhelmed.

“C’n I talk to Colonel Carter?” he asked.

He heard Rodney ask the question, and then Rodney was fitting his own earpiece into John’s ear.

“Colonel?” John asked slowly.  He thought he might be slurring his words a little.  That didn’t seem good - Sam might be disappointed.  But his tongue felt thick, and rather disconnected from his brain.

“Yes, Sheppard, I’m here,” Sam’s voice said, coming in a little staticky.  “Are you doing alright?”

“Um, no, I don’ think so,” John said softly.  “D’d you know ‘m in Rodney’s room?”

“Yes, I did know that,” Sam said gently.  “In fact, I was just beginning to explain the situation to Mckay.  After talking to Keller and Ronon, I don’t believe that it’s best to move you yet.”

“What?” John asked.

“We’re going to keep you in Mckay’s room for a little while.  In fact, we’re going to announce that you’re dead.  Everyone from Atlantis will know that you’re alive, of course, but the Jorians won’t.  That, along with keeping you out of the infirmary, should greatly minimize the risk of another attack.”

“Oh no,” John said softly.  He wished he could think a little better.  He didn’t understand why he had to pretend to be dead, but it sounded like hard work.  He mostly just wanted to lie here.  And not getting to go to the infirmary...that all sounded pretty bad.

“Is that...alright with you, Sheppard?  I know it won’t be the most comfortable, and it’s not Mckay’s favorite either, but Dr. Keller will be able to visit you twice a day, and she should be back in just a few minutes with a more comprehensive med kit that she can use to make you more comfortable.  Don’t worry, we’re going to figure this out.”

“Oh,” he said, remembering something from a little while ago that he’d been meaning to tell Sam, that it was very important that she understood.  “Carter, I think someone tried to kill me.  They...they shot me with somethin’.”

There was a crackly sigh.  

“I know.  That’s why you need to stay in Rodney’s room for a little while.  So we can figure out who did it, and make sure nothing else happens.”

“Oh no,” John whispered.  He didn’t know if he’d really realized that something else could happen.

“But it’ll be alright,” Sam said quickly.  “We’re working on it.  You’re going to be just fine.”

John thought that she was probably right.  He trusted Sam to do...whatever it was that needed to be done, whatever he was too drugged up to think about.  

John nodded softly, then remembered that Sam couldn’t see that over comms.  “I know,” he whispered instead.

“Okay?  Try to get some rest, Sheppard.  And...don’t let Rodney talk you to death.”

John laughed quietly, then stopped as his ribs ached.  When he got his breath back, the voice in his ear was gone.  Clumsily, he fumbled at the earpiece until it fell out of his ear and into his palm.  Silently, he offered it to Rodney.

Rodney took the earpiece back, looking vaguely upset.  John glanced down at his hand and saw that it was slightly sticky with half-dried blood, which had now transferred to Rodney’s comm.  Unthinkingly, John wiped his palm on the bed, and watched as Rodney’s expression tipped into outright horror.

That’s right, he was in Rodney’s bed, and Rodney hated blood, and now John’s blood was on Rodney’s sheets.  

“S’rry,” John mumbled, blinking at the new smear of blood.  There seemed to be a lot of blood, everywhere.  He didn’t really think that the new spot made any difference.  But since all of the other blood was his as well, he supposed that some sort of apology was warranted.

“It’s alright,” Rodney said, and even through the drugs John was only half-convinced.  Rodney set the earpiece down on the desk behind him, clearing his throat awkwardly as he sank into his desk chair.

“So, uhh, are you okay?  You didn’t look...great...when Ronon and Keller brought you in.  Actually, you looked half-dead.  And you were bleeding everywhere, and….”  Rodney trailed off, looking keenly at John.

“I’m okay,” John answered automatically, and then realized that he had no idea whether or not that was true.  He was in Rodney’s room, for crying out loud, and it seemed as though he might be stuck there for the foreseeable future.  Because he was...dead?

“‘M a bit confused,” John admitted.  

“Didn’t Carter tell you the plan?”

“Yeah.  Think so.  I jus’ forgot some of it,” John said sadly.  “Keller gave me some drugs, huh?”

“The ‘good stuff’,” Rodney agreed.

“I’m going to stay here?” John asked. 

“Yeah.  For a few days.  Until we get everything sorted out.”

“But I need surgery on my arm?”

“Yeah.  But Keller said it would be fine to wait until things are safe.  In fact, I think she’s coming back here in a few minutes, so she can fix you up a little more without moving you.”

“Because I’m...dead?”  That was the part that was really confusing him.  He didn’t quite understand why he was pretending he was supposed to be dead, and what that was actually going to entail.

“You’re not really dead,” Rodney said.  

“But everyone...thinks I am?”

Rodney shook his head.  “Sam is sending an email blast to everyone on Atlantis.  So they know you’re fine.  They just have to publicly pretend you’re dead, because we don’t want the Jorians to come after you.”

“Mmm, okay,” John said softly.  He thought he understood pretty well, and he thought he might fall asleep for a little while instead of continuing to think about it.  He would question Rodney again when he woke up.

Chapter Text

John didn’t think he’d quite fallen asleep, but all of a sudden, he was awake.  The door to Rodney’s room was opening, and Keller was coming in.  She was rolling a collapsible cot, and carrying a larger emergency kit in her other hand.  She set them down and closed Rodney’s door as quickly as possible, and then came over to stand beside John.

“There you are!” she said warmly.  “How do you feel, John?”

“Mmm,” he said softly.  He didn’t want to make her feel bad, but he also didn’t want to lie.  He didn’t feel very good.  

“I’m going to get you set up with an IV, and then we’ll start getting you some fluids.  That should help you feel a lot better.  You can just rest while I do that, alright John?”
“Okay,” he said softly.

“Come here, Rodney,” Keller said.  “Watch me do this.  I hope you won’t have to put an IV in yourself, but...Sam said I should keep my trips to your room as limited as possible.”

“Me?” Rodney squeaked.

“Yes, Rodney,” Keller said.  “You. ”

“I don’t...I don’t think I’m comfortable with that,” Rodney said, backing away slightly.  John watched, beginning to feel vaguely worried.  Whatever was going on, there was something about it that he didn’t like.

“ Rodney? ” John asked, finally processing what Keller was talking about.  “Rodney’s gonna put in ‘n IV?”

“No, no, I’m certainly not,” Rodney said quickly, waving his hands in front of him as if to ward off even the thought of having to put John’s IV in.

“Good,” John mumbled.  “Don’ think I want that.”

“Rodney, you have to learn how,” Keller said sternly.  “I hope you don’t have to either, but you certainly may.  I won’t be able to come back unless something really goes wrong.”

“Fiiiine,” Rodney whined, screwing his eyes shut and coming closer to the bed.  

“Rodney, you have to have your eyes open.”

John allowed Keller to pick up his good hand and point out to Rodney where an IV port went.  He wished that he could think of a good way to protest, but he thought that if he did, he would sound like he was afraid.  And he wasn’t afraid, he just didn’t want Rodney to do things like read monitors and put in IVs and take care of him.

But as horrible as that sounded, Keller and McKay thinking that he was scared sounded worse.  So John kept silent as Keller set up the IV, poking and prodding him this way and that, and hoped that all of this would be over soon.

By the time Keller was done with him, John was half-asleep.  He responded to her chatter as well as he could, but he was exhausted.  

“Alright, I’m just setting the cot up over here.  Is that good?”

“Sure, fine,” Rodney said.  “How are we going to move him?”

John blinked at that, looking across the room at the collapsible cot that Keller was setting up.  That was a good question - the doctor was awfully small, and Rodney wasn’t exactly known for his feats of strength.  And as painful as it was to admit it, even to himself, John didn’t think that he could move by himself much at all.

“We’re not moving him.  The cot is for you.”

“Oh.  He’s staying in...my bed?”  Rodney sounded vaguely horrified again.  John didn’t like the situation too much himself.  He didn’t even want to be in Rodney’s room, much less in his bed.  Besides, now that John had been awake a little longer, he was starting to realize that Rodney’s bed wasn’t very comfortable.  The mattress was hard as a rock, and his pillows were way too flat.

“I don't wan’ to,” John informed the room at large.

“Great, so we’re on the same page about that.  If we could just get Ronon in here, I’m sure he could….”

“ Rodney, ” Keller said sharply.  “The Colonel needs rest.  The kind of rest he can only get in a bed.  He’s staying there.”

Rodney shot John a murderous glare, and John shrugged.  They went over a few more things, but John thought he had gotten another dose of drugs by that point and was really drifting out and didn’t think he quite registered what was happening.  After a while, Jennifer left.  She said she would be back...sometime.  Sometime soon probably.  John couldn’t quite remember.  

John rested in a drugged-up haze for what he thought must be a few hours, because he was brought back to reality by the horrible throbbing in his shoulder and leg as the drugs started to wear off.  He kept his eyes closed, trusting Rodney to tell him if he was up for another dose and not wanting to fully commit to waking up if he wasn’t.  But that plan stopped working when Rodney gave his shoulder a gentle poke.

Instantly, John’s eyes flew open.

“This isn’t looking so good,” Rodney informed him.  “Keller said if it got too swollen, I would have to unwind the top layer of bandages and put an icepack on it.  Do you think it’s gotten too swollen?”

John didn’t know how the hell he would have been able to tell, but Rodney unwinding bandages and putting an icepack on him sounded resoundingly unpleasant so he shook his head.  

“Good,” Rodney said.  “I probably will have to change the bandages later though.”

John didn’t say anything.  Since it was Rodney, he figured more would be forthcoming.

“It’s gonna be really gross,” Rodney continued.  “Even if it’s not too swollen, it is...it is pretty swollen, you know.  And it’s all pink and shiny.  Ew, and I bet there’s pus and stuff underneath the bandages, and so much blood….”

“Stop talkin’ about it,” John said.  The pain was starting to make him queasy, and the last thing he needed was a detailed description of his injured shoulder.

“Well anyways, your blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and temperature are all stable,” Rodney said proudly.  “I’ve been checking the readings.”

He held up a handheld monitor that had been placed on his bedside table, and John nodded his encouragement.

“Can you get me some of my comic books?” John asked.  If he was going to be living in Rodney’s room for the foreseeable future, he was certainly going to need something to do.  Especially considering that he was now in way too much pain to even consider sleeping, with no sign of that letting up.

“I think you’re supposed to be asleep,” Rodney informed him.  “Jennifer said you would probably sleep most of the day.”

“Well I can’t sleep.”

“You should try.”

“ Rodney, ” John said, trying to make his voice sound threatening.  “Please, just get me something to do.”

Rodney scowled, and John scowled right back.  “Jennifer said you should sleep,” Rodney insisted.

John wasn’t about to tell McKay that he was in too much pain to sleep, especially not when Rodney was being so damn difficult.  Instead, he screwed up his face into as commanding an expression as he could muster, giving up when his bruised face protested.

“No,” John said flatly.

Rodney huffed in exasperation, throwing his hands up.  “You’re supposed to be dead.   If I come out of your room with a handful of comics, how am I supposed to explain that?  Aside from looting, which I don’t think is particularly believable coming from me.”

John forced back his laughter at the thought of Rodney looting his valuables in the event of his death, swallowing it down in favor of glaring daggers at Rodney.  The scientist crossed his arms, glaring right back.

Rodney lasted a whole minute before Sheppard got to him.  Yes, the man was already being infuriating, but based on the rundown Keller had given Rodney, John was experiencing a horrifying amount of pain.  

Rodney sighed.  John somehow still managed to look threatening lying flat in a bed, but that wasn’t what was worrying Rodney.  Even with the glare, John looked small and fragile, his shoulder a mess of bandages, the whole side of his face obscured by nasty bruises from his tumble down the stairs.  In fact, almost every inch of exposed skin that Rodney could see was bruised, his arms already mottled black and blue, his broken ankle swollen and discolored around the bandages.  And try as he might, Rodney still couldn’t quite shake the image of John being carried into his room, the horrible moment where he’d thought Sheppard was dead.

“Fine,” Rodney said, uncrossing his arms.  He looked around the room for something Sheppard could do, grabbing the first book he saw.  He dumped it in John’s lap, wincing guiltily as Sheppard tensed.  Had Rodney hurt him?  Was he really that weak?

John picked up the book with his one good hand, turning it to read the cover.  

“Really, McKay?  ‘Electrical Engineering: Advanced Design for the Discerning Genius’...written by Dr. Rodney McKay, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Rodney bristled, annoyed at the rejection of his olive branch.  “I can’t help that I wrote the defining word on the subject.  You wanted something to do, now you have something.”

“I am not reading this,” John said angrily, tossing it over the side of the bed and onto the floor. 

“Well I guess that’s your choice then,” Rodney snapped.  Part of him knew he wasn’t really angry at John, not at all.  He was just worried.  But he also wasn’t sure how to deal with this.  “You can entertain yourself by staring at the wall.  I have work to do.”

The work that Rodney had planned on doing ended up not getting done.  Firstly, it was impossible to focus because John kept shifting around.  He was clearly struggling to get comfortable, which Rodney could understand, but he thought the whole process would go so much faster if he would just ask for help.  Rodney could also tell that he was in a lot of pain, because every time he moved, he would let out a soft sigh of breath that seemed to catch in his throat.  Rodney was sympathetic towards that as well, but there wasn’t much he could do.

“Are you alright?” Rodney asked after a while, looking up from his laptop.

“Yeah,” John said breathlessly, stilling.  Rodney thought that might be the end of it, but within a few minutes, John was back to squirming again.

And then came the questions.  Every minute or two, John was asking him some inane question about his job or his room or his bed, and then hardly even seeming to listen to the answer.  At this rate, it would be a miracle if Rodney ever finished a single piece of work again as long as he lived without John interrupting it.

John’s pain was starting to get pretty bad.  It had been bad before.  And then it had gotten worse.  And now...every single part of John ached, his arm felt like it was on fire, and every time he moved, shooting pains would radiate up his leg.  His head was starting to throb, he was nauseous enough that no matter how dry his throat got he wouldn’t risk water, and even though he was exhausted, he doubted he would be able to fall asleep for hours.  The only thing he could think of to do was ask Mckay questions, and hold onto the answers like they were a lifeline.

“It’s time for your next dose of drugs,” Rodney eventually said.  John could have hugged him - he didn’t like the thick, heavy feeling painkillers gave him, but anything was better than this.  “And once those kick in a little, do you think there’s any way you could be more quiet ?  I really am trying to get work done, you know.”

John froze, anger and embarrassment swelling.  He lay carefully rigid as Rodney fiddled with his IV, giving him the next dose.  There was no way he was going to tell Rodney that he was in too much pain to sit still, especially not after the way Rodney had been rolling his eyes at him for the past hour.  He’d rather McKay think that he was inconsiderate, or even that he was purposefully trying to annoy him, than admit just how bad he felt.  Right now, it looked like John couldn’t control much of anything, but he could at least control that.

“I don’ have anythin’ to do,” John told Rodney, having finally decided on a tack.  He’d meant it to sound angry, perhaps even accusational, but instead, it came out slightly pathetic.  He glanced away, suddenly not wanting to meet Rodney’s eyes.  The sound of Rodney snapping his fingers called John’s attention back.  

“How about a movie?” Rodney asked.  “You can use my laptop, I suppose that I can do some work on my tablet, at least for now.  It’s not ideal, but one has to make the occasional sacrifice….”

John managed to ignore the last part, and nodded gratefully.  He could feel the drugs hitting his system now, sweeping away the worst of the pain and replacing it with a fragile numbness.  With the addition of a movie to distract him, John thought he actually might be able to stay still.

Rodney brought over his laptop and held it out.  John blinked at it for a few seconds, wondering how he was expected to set up any sort of physical arrangement with the laptop when he only had one good arm, almost no range of motion thanks to his shoulder, ribs, and ankle, and was beginning to be fairly high as well.

Thankfully, Rodney seemed to get the message, and he set up the laptop so John could see it without having to move.  He plugged in a pair of headphones and handed them to John.

“Alright.  I’m going to get some work done.”

“‘Kay,” John said softly, and went to pull the headphones on.  It was hard with only one hand, but John eventually managed to get them properly situated.  He chose one of Rodney’s movies, the first one that looked like it might have explosions instead of science, and settled in as best he could.

He only made it about twenty minutes in before the headphones were a problem.  John hadn’t really noticed it before, since every other part of his body hurt so much worse, but his face was swollen and sore from where he’d hit the ground at the bottom of the stairs.  Rodney’s headphones were big, noise-cancelling, and expensive, and they dug painfully into his tender cheekbones.  He was a little high, so he didn’t think anything of pulling the headphones off and unplugging them from Rodney’s computer, letting the sound wash around him as his eyelids fluttered and he tried not to fall asleep.

“Could you turn that down?” Rodney asked.  

John turned it down a few notches with his good hand, wincing at the movement.

“I meant...is there a reason you aren’t wearing the headphones?”

“Don’t want to.”

Rodney subsided, and John went back to watching the movie in relative peace, letting himself drift in and out as the drugs took the edge off everything.

John and Rodney had of course shared rooms during missions before.  A few times, they had even shared tents.  But as it turned out, that was not the same.  Rodney had never had to go about his daily life with John also living in his room, and he did not like it.  So far, John had managed to ask him a ridiculous number of inane questions, squirm so much Rodney was constantly worried he was going to fall out of the bed, and watch an entire movie, complete with explosions, with no headphones in.  If Rodney wasn’t worried it would kill him, he would have seriously considered strangling the man. 

But around dinnertime, when Rodney was starting to wonder if he was supposed to leave John and get dinner or if he was just expected to starve to death, Rodney could tell something had changed.  John, who had been lying flat on his back and staying mostly silent since his movie had finished up, was now starting to squirm violently.  Rodney didn’t want to ask, since he didn’t think there was anything he could do, but finally, he didn’t think he had a choice.

“Are you alright?” Rodney asked.

“Yeah.”  John’s voice sounded weak and pained.

Rodney waited another minute, not wanting to hurt John’s pride.  John continued to shift uncomfortably.  

“Are you sure?”

“Leg hurts,” John grunted.  “It’s all...stiff.  Or tingly.  Dunno.  Somethin’ bad.”

Rodney lifted up the blankets, so he could look at John’s leg.  Keller had given him a few red flags to look for - discoloration, unnatural heat, too much swelling.  She’d wrapped his leg in nothing but compression bandages - apparently, since John didn’t need to move out of the bed for at least a few days, that would let it heal without losing too much flexibility.  He would need a walking cast once he was walking, but that seemed a long time away.  

Rodney had argued with Keller about that, because he couldn’t imagine not putting a cast on a broken leg.  Keller had reminded him that Rodney wasn’t the doctor, and didn’t know very much about legs.  Rodney firmly agreed, which was why he didn’t think he would be able to do anything at all to help John if the solution wasn’t extremely obvious.  

It was though.  John had moved his leg off the pillow, and it was now more swollen and puffy than it had been when Rodney had checked it two hours earlier.

“Well, it isn’t elevated,” Rodney told him, somewhat relieved that the problem was so much easier to solve than he’d expected.  All John had to do was move his ankle back onto the pillow, and he’d likely feel much better.

“Oh,” John said softly, then grimaced.  It suddenly occurred to Rodney that John probably couldn’t move his ankle back onto the pillow.  Keller had told Rodney maybe two thousand times that between Sheppard’s broken ribs and his wounded shoulder, he wouldn’t be able to move hardly at all.  She’d followed that up with a warning that the drugs that took his pain away would make him weak, almost numb, and his range of motion would shrink even further.  

Even with the endless reminders, Rodney had forgotten.  He felt guilty, so guilty that he momentarily forgot what was now expected of him.  If John couldn’t get his ankle back onto the pillow, Rodney would have to do it for him.  Rodney knew that wasn’t a big deal, both he and Sheppard had practically carried the other one more times than Rodney wanted to count on missions gone wrong, but this was different.  There was no adrenaline rush, no Wraith following behind them, no emergency but Sheppard’s pain.  And as awkward as Rodney felt, he was sure John felt worse.

Carefully, Rodney lifted John’s ankle, freezing at the small hiss of pain John gave.  “Sorry.”

“‘Sokay,” John muttered, sounding thoroughly miserable.  Rodney cast Sheppard an apologetic look that he didn’t see, and propped John’s ankle on some pillows as quickly as he could without hurting him.

“Better?” Rodney asked, wishing that he could sink through the floor.  He and Sheppard didn’t do this, or at least he didn’t do this for Sheppard.  John hated people asking if he was okay, Rodney’s head had been bitten off enough times for him to know that.  Rodney was horribly certain that this situation must be far worse for John than it was for him, and whatever embarrassment he was feeling must be multiplied tenfold for Sheppard.  But there wasn’t much he could do about that, not when he had somehow ended up as John’s sole caretaker.  

John nodded, looking so ashamed that Rodney almost said something.  He might have, if he’d been able to think of anything to say.  But everything that came to mind seemed hollow, and Rodney thought that even mentioning it might call further attention to John’s weakness.  Having Sheppard trapped in Rodney’s room was already difficult, and Rodney didn’t want to make it more so by wounding John’s considerable pride.

So instead, Rodney just retreated back to his bed, where he picked up his tablet and tried to get back to work.  John, for his part, soon fell asleep, head twisted awkwardly to the side, mouth hanging open.  He didn’t say anything to Rodney, and Rodney didn’t want him to.

Chapter Text

“Ronon, for godsake, be quiet for a second and just let me explain….”

John was woken up by the sound of Rodney yelling.  At first, John thought that Ronon might somehow be in the room, but then he remembered that he wouldn’t be able to see any of his other friends in person until this whole mess was sorted out - it would be suspicious to have too many people going in and out of Rodney’s room all the time.

John rolled his head to the side, and saw that Rodney was talking agitatedly into his comm.  

“I’m trying to set up a video chat,” Rodney mouthed to John when he saw that he was awake.  John heard a burst of yelling from Ronon, although he couldn’t make out the words, and Rodney rolled his eyes.

“Alright,” Rodney said.  “I want you to be quiet for a second, and listen carefully.”

There was a pause, presumably for an affirmative from Ronon.

“I want you to take the laptop.  And then I want you to open it up.  Let me know when that’s done, and you’re on the homescreen.”

There was another pause for Ronon to respond.  

“Alright, good.  And now I want you to walk down to my lab, find Zelenka, and ask him to set it up for you.”

John let out a soft snort of laughter, which made Rodney smile too.  A few minutes later, filled with Rodney fielding increasingly stupid-sounding questions from Ronon, Rodney’s laptop lit up with an incoming video call.  

Rodney answered, and Zelenka’s face filled the screen.

“Rodney, I do not have time for these sorts of interruptions.  Since you are looking after…,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “ you know who, I am having to do all of your work.  Please do not send your friends to me again.”

“Whatever, whatever,” Rodney said, waving him aside.  A second later, Ronon and Teyla’s faces appeared on the screen.  They were both smiling, and suddenly John found himself smiling too, for what must have been the first time all day.

“Sheppard!” Ronon said happily.  

Teyla silenced him with a gesture.  “We talked about this, Ronon.  You are not to use his name, or someone may overhear.”

Ronon shrugged.  “They’ll just think I’m talking to his ghost.”

“Just go somewhere private,” Rodney whined.  “Come on, certainly none of the suspects are hanging around Zelenka’s lab ….”

“It is more that it is an important habit we must get used to, we do not know how long-”

“I think I’m used to it, ” Ronon said.  “Why else do you think I’ve been fake crying all day?”

“Can you just give us our update?” Rodney said in a long-suffering voice.  

“We are still in the preliminary stages of the investigation,” Teyla said.  “We are concentrating on the best way to keep the Jorians under guard, and the interviews will begin tomorrow.  Of course, as the crime was committed by one person, we do not want to punish the others unfairly.”

Even with the haze of the drugs, John caught Teyla’s glare at Ronon.  The Satedan scowled back at her.

“If Carter had just left me alone with them-”

“You would have done something that you regret,” Teyla snapped at him.

“No, I woulda got some answers, and Sheppard could be in the infirmary,” Ronon shot back.  

Teyla looked as though she wanted to continue arguing, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  John recognized that look from their own fights, it was Teyla’s “being the bigger person” look.  “Colonel Carter is doing what she believes is best, in order to protect the rights of innocent people.  As well as...our friend.”

Ronon narrowed his eyes, looking mutinous.  John shook his head softly, but Ronon and Teyla didn’t respond.

“C’mon,” John said, as loudly as he could.  “Don’ fight, guys.”

“Of course,” Teyla said apologetically, and even Ronon looked slightly ashamed.  “We are sorry.  It has been a...stressful day.”

Rodney automatically nodded his agreement, then sent John such a panicked guilty look that John couldn’t help but laugh softly.  To his relief, Rodney laughed as well, giving him a smile instead of the annoyed glances John felt like he’d been getting all day.

“So how is being dead?” Ronon asked.  John blinked at him for a few seconds before he remembered what Sam had said, what Ronon and Teyla had been talking about at the beginning of the call.

“Thought it was s’posed to be more interesting,” John mumbled.  “How are my Marines doin’?  Lorne’s workin’ with Carter?”

Ronon made a face.  “Yeah, they’re fine.  They all know you’re not dead, but no one’s listening to me.  I keep saying, they’d all be really sad if you were actually dead, right?  But they aren’t cryin’ or anything.  I’m trying to get Carter to let me do a 21 gun salute off the pier, maybe that’ll do it.  Emotional.  And loud.”

“Ronon seems to be forgetting that the point of this is to ensure that you are safe, not to find out how people would react if you really had died,” Teyla said.  “Sam is just trying to keep the focus on your safety.”

Ronon mumbled something that sounded dark.

Rodney’s comm crackled to life in his ear.  “Sheppard,” he said.  “Keller’s on her way for your nightly check-in.”

“We can go,” Teyla said.  “We also have much work to do.”

“But you better talk to us longer tomorrow,” Ronon added.

“I will, I will,” John said, although truthfully, even that short conversation had exhausted him, and he wasn’t sure how much more he would have been able to take.

“Goodbye, John.  Sleep well.”

“Yeah.  Bye.”

Rodney thought he might have gotten one solitary hour of sleep.  Maybe.  If he rounded up.  First off, his cot was small and terrible and smelled a little musty, and most importantly, it wasn’t his bed.  But second off, trying to sleep in a room with injured John must be some circle of hell.  John was constantly shifting and squirming, making Rodney’s whole bed frame creak.  Sometimes he got himself into an uncomfortable position and moaned or whimpered quietly until he could fix it.  John snored normally, as much as he refused to admit it, but it always got worse with drugs and now he was on a lot of drugs.  And perhaps worst of all, the monitors he was hooked up to beeped softly even when John’s stats were normal.  

Rodney supposed the steady, quiet beeping was better than the loud, aggressive beeping that would occur if something went wrong.  But not by much.

Rodney was proven wrong about ten seconds later, when suddenly one of John’s machines was screaming at him, beeping a high, desperate alarm.  Rodney was out of bed before his brain had even come online, and staggering towards John.

“Oh god, oh god,” he whispered.   If John...if there really was something wrong with him, Rodney didn’t know how much he’d be able to do.

In the dark, Rodney’s fumbling fingers found John’s shoulder first.  He was warm - good sign.  This wasn’t...he wasn’t….

“R’dney?” John asked, voice slurry with sleep.  “What’s that noise?”

“One of your machines,” Rodney said, still panicked.  “Are you alright?”

“Tired,” John muttered, and yawned sleepily.

“It sounds like something is wrong ,” Rodney insisted, but John seemed okay for the moment, so he managed to stumble to the light switch.

“Hey.  Bright,” John whispered as the lights flickered on, screwing his eyes shut.  Rodney could barely hear him over the incessant beeping.  “An’ loud.”

Rodney ignored him for the moment, hurrying over to the machines.  He stared at the readout on the small monitor, his exhausted brain struggling to make sense of what the machine was telling him.

“This says you’re not breathing,” Rodney informed Sheppard, who was clearly breathing.

“I am,” John told him unhelpfully.

Rodney sighed, and John blinked at him as the machine continued to scream its alarm into the air around them.  Carefully, Rodney picked up the wire leading to John’s oxygen monitor, and gave it an experimental tug.  

“You’re lying on your oxygen monitor,” Rodney told John, sounding a bit more accusatory than he meant.

“Oops,” John said, yawning again.

Seeing that Sheppard wasn’t going to do anything to rectify the situation, Rodney poked him slightly in his good shoulder.  “Move.”

John frowned, screwed up his face in what seemed like far too much effort, and shifted perhaps an inch.  As subtly as he could, Rodney helped him roll a little farther, and retrieved the oximeter from where it was trapped under John’s ribs.

“Wasn’t that uncomfortable?” Rodney asked, clipping the device back onto John’s finger.  The machine finally subsided back into its steady, rhythmic, beep.

Sheppard made a face and gave Rodney a one-shouldered shrug.  Even in Rodney’s sleep-hazy state, he managed to translate that to “I’m in too much pain to notice something like that.”

Rodney sighed and flipped the light back off.  “Okay, well, just go back to sleep, I guess.”

“Kay,” John whispered, and Rodney listened in the dark as his breathing evened out in what seemed like seconds.  Within a few minutes, the snoring had started again.  

Rodney lay down on his uncomfortable, too-soft cot with its stupid pillow and tried not to hate Sheppard as his snoring filled the room like a deep-discount white noise soundtrack.

John didn’t think he’d slept very well.  He kind of remembered being woken up by beeping, and Rodney looking scared.  Drugs also tended to give him nightmares, and though it was hard for him to hold onto anything specific he’d dreamt about, he definitely had the sense that his rest had been interrupted.  

He spent the morning drifting in and out, half-listening to Rodney bustling around, getting ready for the day.  Eventually, Keller came in, and he quickly realized that she was going to be doing painful enough things to him that he would be completely unable to stay asleep.

“How are you feeling today, Colonel?” she asked as she lifted his foot off the pillow and completed an excruciating examination of his leg.

The pain was bad, and he was completely exhausted, so the answer was that he was not doing great.  But he just shrugged.  

“Did you eat anything?” she asked.  She had brought food from the mess hall for Rodney, along with lighter fare for John, when she had come last night.  But John hadn’t felt up to stomaching much - everything hurt too much, and the drugs made him a little nauseous.

He shrugged again.

“But you’ve been drinking plenty of water, I hope?”  She was probing his shoulder now, and John bit back a whimper.

“A little,” he managed to grind out. 

“Hey, I have a question,” Rodney interrupted.

Keller paused in her examination and looked up at him.  “And what might that be?”

“I mean...he’s been pretty okay.  He’s sort of in and out, just...you know, doing the sorts of things one does in a situation like this.”

John raised his eyebrows.  He had no idea where this was going.  

“Yes?” Keller said skeptically.

“And I was just wondering when he could...you know, be left alone.  I can’t spend the whole next...who knows how long watching him.  I have work to do!  Zelenka has been doing my work since I’m on Colonel babysitting duty.  And I just...when can I stop watching him all the time?”

“ Rodney ,” Keller said sharply.  “This is your best friend .”

Rodney made a face.  “I know that, but-”

“He is very badly injured, and he needs your help.  If he is awake, you need to be here.  If you think he might wake up, you need to be here.  He can’t get things for himself!  He can’t barely move.”

“I c’n move,” John said, feeling that he should contribute to the conversation somehow.

Keller touched him absently on his good shoulder, and John frowned, beginning to feel somewhat condescended to.

“I can, ” he insisted softly, thinking maybe that he should move to back himself up.  But that seemed nearly impossible right now, as tired and drained as he felt, so he just lay still, trying to look in command.

“It’s out of the question, Rodney,” Keller said, then turned back to John.  “I’ll be back as soon as Sam tells me it’s safe, alright?”

John nodded, watching Keller as she left the room.  Rodney sighed, going over to where he’d left his tablet and bending over the screen.

John tried to stay still and quiet, but he was bored and his shoulder - along with everything else - ached, and a minute after he found a comfortable position, something new would start hurting.  Sheppard let himself drift in the pain, until he was startled by Rodney dropping the tablet with a clatter.

“It’s no use,” Rodney said angrily.  “Zelenka just isn’t treating the power couplets right.  I can’t do anything about it from here.”

“Oh,” John whispered, not sure what Rodney expected him to do about it.  Frankly, he wasn’t even entirely sure what Rodney was talking about.

Rodney was staring at him now, narrowing his eyes at John like he was a problem for Rodney to solve.  John stared back, beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable.

“You know, Keller said I have to be here as long as you’re awake ,” Rodney murmured.

“Uh-huh,” John agreed wearily, too exhausted to pay much attention to whatever was going through Rodney’s head.

“As long as you’re awake,” Rodney repeated to himself, then snapped his fingers, pointing at John.  “It’s time for your next dose about now, isn’t it?”

“Mmm,” John mumbled.  He certainly felt like it was, the pain was once again building towards unmanageable.

Rodney stood up, coming towards him softly, and John was reminded suddenly of Ronon stalking animals.  

“Okay.  I’m just going to give you your next round of drugs.  A bigger dose.  You can sleep, and I can go and get some work done.  It’s perfect.  You’re asleep, I’m working, and you won’t need anything.”

John blinked at Rodney while the scientist’s words worked their way through his brain, and clarity came in a flash of panic.

“Rodney, no ,” John said, as loudly as he could.  “No.”

Rodney snorted.  “It’s easy to see you’re exhausted.  This will probably be good for you.”

“ No ,” John insisted, and he suddenly found the strength to move as he tried to twist backwards, away from Rodney.  But his weakened body betrayed him, and there was nowhere he could go.  John felt his breathing speed up slightly as Rodney began fiddling with the machine, and he shook his head.  This couldn’t be happening, he was already stuck in McKay’s room, he couldn’t move, and now Rodney was drugging him?

“You c’n jus’ leave,” John tried, wishing that he didn’t sound quite so pathetic, but unable to stomach the thought of losing what little control he had left.  “I won’t need anythin’.  Keller won’t know….  McKay, stop it .  Stop it now.”

“This is for your own good, Sheppard.  You didn’t sleep well last night, and you need rest to heal.  Keller said so.”

“Mckay-”

“You’ll feel better when you wake up,” Rodney said, stepping away from John’s IV.  Almost immediately, John felt the heavy pull of drugs in his body, and he gasped as his arms went limp and head went slack. 

“R’dney,” he whimpered, fighting to keep his eyes open.

“Just sleep,” Rodney said.

John didn’t want to, but he did.

Rodney opened the door to his bedroom, feeling guilty and ashamed.  The five hours since he’d left John asleep in his bed, with a walkie-talkie turned on beside him that he could use kind of like a baby monitor, had been far less productive than he’d expected.  Even when John wasn’t with him, he was somehow still a distraction.  Rodney was distracted by the thought of John lying asleep or nearly so in his bed, maybe in pain and unable to move.  He was distracted by his memory of John begging him not to up the dose so much.  He was distracted by the thought of what would happen when John finally did wake up, and Rodney had to go back in and face him.

Eventually, Rodney had decided that there was no point in staying in his lab, not when he couldn’t really get anything done anyways.  So he had packed everything up and started moving it back to his room, hoping that if he could keep an eye on sleeping John, he would be able to at least get a little work done.  

Rodney had half-expected John to be awake but just angry, but instead, he was curled loosely on his side, mouth hanging open, shoulder pinned awkwardly beneath his weight. 

He looked completely still, and Rodney felt his insides freeze.  He dumped his things on his desk and ran to Sheppard’s side, shaking his good shoulder gently and calling his name.

“Sheppard?  Sheppard, wake up!”

John didn’t so much as stir, although now that Rodney was next to him, he could feel that John was breathing faintly.  That was a great relief, there had been a split second where he had been sure he’d somehow accidentally given John too much, and that’s why he hadn’t heard from him in hours. 

“Wake up!” Rodney repeated, but John didn’t.

Rodney continued to shake his shoulder, but John still didn’t stir.  Rodney only succeeded in jostling Sheppard into what looked like an even more uncomfortable position.  He would...he was going to wake up, wasn’t he?

Rodney suddenly felt sick, and he let go of John, closing his eyes and trying to calm his breathing.  He got himself under control, then took hold of John’s shoulder again, trying to shift him back into a position that seemed less painful.

“ Please wake up, Sheppard.  John .  God, this was stupid….”

John didn’t respond, just let out a soft snore.  Rodney didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to hear one of Sheppard’s annoying sounds, but John still didn’t wake.

Rodney didn’t get any work done in his bedroom, either.  John’s pale face seemed to be an accusation, holding his attention and reminding Rodney of his mistake.  Rodney ended up spending the three hours before John awoke simply sitting beside the bed, watching his friend.

By the time John finally opened his eyes, Rodney was ready to do practically anything to undo any damage he might have caused.  John’s eyelids fluttered lazily, his gaze tracking around the room before fixing on Rodney.

“Sheppard, you’re awake,” Rodney gasped.  On the bed, John froze, staring at Rodney with something akin to panic in his eyes.  

“God, John, I’m sorry,” Rodney told him, reaching out without thinking.  John twitched, looking as though he wanted to move away, but the drugs Rodney had given him were weighing him down.  He blinked, and now anger joined the fear in his eyes.

“I really am sorry,” Rodney said miserably, wishing that he could go back in time to eight hours ago and give himself a resounding slap across the face.

John’s jaw clenched, and he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but he was still too deep in the drugs.  Nothing came out.  Instead, he turned his head to the side, away from Rodney.  Rodney sat and watched John’s tense, angry back until Sheppard’s breathing evened and he fell asleep despite himself.

John woke up again a short while later.  Rodney had occupied himself with desperately searching for some way, any way to fix this, and had come up short.  On the bed, Sheppard stiffened, and Rodney hovered uncomfortably beside him.

“Sheppard?  Are you...are you alright?”

“You drugged me,” John whispered, his words still heavily slurred. 

“I know.  I...I shouldn’t have.  I’m so sorry,” Rodney told him.

“Tol’ you not to,” John said softly, and it would have been better if he sounded angry.  Instead, he just sounded...betrayed.

“I know, Sheppard.  It just...seemed like a good idea at the time.”

John frowned, and rolled onto his back.  He still looked exhausted, but Rodney wasn’t sure if it was from the drugs or his numerous injuries.

“Do you...need anything?” Rodney asked cautiously.

John shook his head, not looking at Rodney.

“I could get you water.  Or another pillow.  I just….”

John shook his head and frowned.

After a few more minutes, John seemed to drift out again.  Rodney couldn’t tell if he was really asleep, - he was still lying in what seemed to be a very unnatural position, and his breathing was much more shallow and labored-sounding than it had been before.  

“Sheppard?” Rodney asked cautiously.  “Sheppard?”

John didn’t respond in the slightest, which Rodney might have chalked up to John ignoring him if he weren’t so injured.  But since his friend didn’t even stir, Rodney thought it likely he had fallen asleep again, his system still processing the heavy dose of drugs.

Rodney took this opportunity to call Ronon.

“ What ?” the Satedan growled into the comms.  For a split second, Rodney was sure Ronon knew somehow that he had drugged John.  But that was impossible.  Ronon was clearly angry, but whatever it was about, it wasn’t this.

“I need you to...do me a favor,” Rodney asked tentatively, not sure what sort of thing would set Ronon off when he was like this.

“What is it?” Ronon growled. 

“I...was wondering if you could get me some things from John’s room,” Rodney asked, keeping his voice pitched low in order to keep from disturbing Sheppard.

“What sorts of things?”

“Things to entertain him, mostly.  Comic books - he keeps his favorite ones in the top drawer of his bedside table.  And he has that portable chess set, and a deck of cards, see if you can find those.  And if he has any novels, not War and Peace, but anything smaller, bring those too.”

“What’s War and Peace ?”

“It’s a book,” Rodney explained.  “A very big book.  That Sheppard thought he could read.”

“What do I say if someone sees me?”

Rodney had only been in his room or his lab for the past few days, he kept forgetting that everyone was pretending that John was dead.  “Tell them...you and I wanted some of his things to remember him by.”

There was a short silence from Ronon, and then the Satedan cleared his throat.  “Okay.  When I can.”

The call cut out, and Rodney sat back in his chair, waiting for John to wake up again, and hoping that Sheppard would talk to him this time, and make the sick feeling growing in his stomach go away.

Chapter Text

“Sheppard?”

John blinked awake to the sound of Rodney’s voice, and he almost responded before the memory of drugs flooding his system slammed into his mind.  John squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly feeling a nausea that had nothing to do with the drugs he was on.

“Sheppard, I know you’re awake.”

John kept his eyes closed, unwilling to face Rodney, shame and anger burning inside him in almost equal parts.

“Sheppard, listen….”  That was Rodney’s apology voice.  John had a vague sense of other apologies, but he couldn’t remember them very well, probably because he was very fucking drugged.   

He didn’t want to listen.  Rodney had decided that John was too much work, and he’d drugged him against his will rather than stay trapped in a room with him.  It wasn’t like John wanted to be here either, it wasn’t like he enjoyed being helpless, stuck in Rodney’s bed, unable to do so much as move.  He hated every second of it, and Rodney had made it a million times worse.

“I’m so sorry,” Rodney said, and John had to lie there and listen because he couldn’t go anywhere.   Still, he kept his eyes closed, clinging to the comforting distance that sleep offered.

“I screwed up,” Rodney admitted, and he really did sound sorry.  He sounded almost as upset as John felt, his voice thick and hesitant.  “What I did…I had absolutely no right to do that to you.  I shouldn’t even have left, much less...much less give you that high a dose.  You asked me not to, and I didn’t listen.  I...if I could take it back, I would.  But I can’t, so all I can do is apologize and give you my word that it will never happen again.”

John didn’t respond.  McKay could make a damn good apology, he had to give it to the man, but it wasn’t enough.  Not yet, not while the drugs were still making his limbs heavy, sending him to sleep when all he wanted to do was sit up and interact with the world around him.

Rodney, to his credit, didn’t press.  John heard him sigh, a sad sound that made Sheppard hurt just that much more, but he still couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge McKay’s words.

They remained in silence until John heard a knock at the door, then Rodney’s footsteps crossing the room.  The door clicked closed behind Rodney as he went into the hallway.  John sighed softly, but at least McKay hadn’t drugged him this time.

Contrary to John’s expectations, it was only about thirty seconds before the door opened again, and he heard Rodney cross to the bedside table.

“I know you’re still angry with me.  Which I understand, of course, you have every right, but, umm, I brought you something.  Or, I had Ronon bring me something to give to you.  Yes, I know what you’re thinking, I’m trying to bribe you into talking to me, and all I can say to that is...you’re right.  I am.  But it’s a good bribe.”

John cracked his eyes open and rolled his head to the side, and saw that Rodney had set a cardboard box on his bedside table.  John  couldn’t see everything the box contained, but a few comic books and a deck of cards were poking out the top.  He recognized the things from his room that he had requested earlier, and based on the size of the box, Rodney or Ronon must have identified a few other things he would like too.

“Oh wow,” John said, unable to keep the excitement and gratitude out of his voice.  “But...I’m still mad.  A little.  And tired.”  

“You can go back to sleep if you want,” Rodney suggested.  “I don’t know if-”

“No,” John said.  He had spent the whole day sleeping, and the last thing he wanted to do was go back to sleep.  “I don’t want to.”

Rodney seemed to understand, and he looked sad.  John was still mad, but he didn’t want Rodney to think he was too mad.  

“Is there anything else you need?” Rodney asked.

“I will allow you to play cards with me.”

Rodney’s smile lit up the room.  “Oh you’ll allow me, will you, ever heard of asking for a favor, even sick people aren’t supposed to just make demands, you know….”

John raised one eyebrow.

“I suppose in this case I could make an exception.  But for the future, please goes a long way.”

“Whatever, Mckay.  Just see if you can think of a game I can play with only one hand.”

Rodney had tried for a second time to talk Ronon through setting up a video call, but he had ended up sending him to Zelenka again.  He thought Zelenka was pretty annoyed, probably more annoyed because Rodney had promised a lot more work than he had actually ended up getting done.  But that seemed like not a Rodney problem to Rodney.  As long as the chat was set up, and no laptops ended up destroyed by overenthusiastic Satedans.

Rodney didn’t consider himself someone who was very good at picking up on unspoken signals, but today, the energy between the other half of his team could not have been more obvious.  Ronon and Teyla were clearly angry with each other.  It looked like they had very possibly been fighting right before they got on the call.

John, normally far more adept at picking up those kind of signals, didn’t seem to notice anything unusual.  Rodney, with some level of guilt, thought that that could probably be attributed to the drugs.  

“Hey Sheppard,” Ronon said.  He sounded tense and angry, although Rodney was sure that it wasn’t directed towards John.  Luckily, John didn’t seem to notice that either.

“Hey Ronon.  Teyla.  Wha’s….”  John paused to yawn, and Rodney felt an uncomfortable twist in his stomach.  He wondered when John acting tired would stop making him feel guilty.  Possibly never.  

“What’s th’ sitrep?” John finished, blinking lazily at the screen.  At least he didn’t seem angry at Rodney anymore.  After another awkward hour or two Sheppard had seemed to rally, and he’d essentially been his old self from the afternoon on.  Still, as relieved as Rodney was that John had forgiven him, he hadn’t forgiven himself yet.

On the laptop screen, Ronon was looking positively furious, glaring daggers at Teyla.  “Slow,” he spat.

“What Ronon means is that he is angry that Colonel Carter has not allowed him to torture innocent people,” Teyla hissed back.  Clearly making an effort to compose herself, she turned back to the screen and smiled in John’s direction.  “We have interviewed about half of the Jorians.”

“Carter is going too slow.  And we aren’t any closer to finding out who almost killed my friend,” Ronon growled.

“John is my friend too,” Teyla pointed out angrily.

From his half-prone position on the bed, John frowned.  “‘M friends with both of you,” he said, sounding unhappy.  “An’ with Carter.”

“It’s a stressful situation,” Rodney said, as sympathetically as he felt he could without seeming to take sides.  He wasn’t used to playing the diplomat, especially not in team conflicts.  That usually fell to Sheppard or Teyla, depending on who was involved in the argument, and one of the angry parties was usually Rodney.

Rodney cleared his throat, a little awkwardly.  Ronon and Teyla were still glaring unhappily at one another, and even John had noticed by now.  He was frowning again, doing that wide-eyed sorrowful look that he’d had earlier, after the drugs, and right now Rodney would do just about anything to avoid seeing Sheppard look like that ever again.

“Do you guys want to watch a movie?” Rodney asked, somewhat desperately.  “Sheppard was mentioning earlier that he missed movie night.”

John had said nothing of the kind, but Rodney doubted he’d remember one way or the other.  And how were Ronon and Teyla supposed to refuse Sheppard anything in the state he was in?

Sure enough, John perked up almost instantly, and Rodney saw his bruised face stretch into a crooked, painful-looking smile.  “Movie night?”

“I would like a movie night,” Teyla said.

“Teyla will probably suggest a movie that’s stupid,” Ronon informed them.  

“I’m sure everyone’s movie ideas are good,” John said magnanimously, settling further into the pillows.  “This was a good idea.”

Everyone ended up agreeing that John should be allowed to pick the movie, and John selected some horrible B horror movie that made Rodney need to close his eyes about every ten seconds and was at times gory enough to even make Teyla cringe.  Not that Rodney was about to complain, especially after what he had done to Sheppard earlier, but the movie didn’t even really seem worth it.  John started falling asleep about thirty minutes in, right after the first gruesome killing, and by the last third he was out like a light, not even waking up at the sound of teenage girls screaming in fear.

“Is he okay?” Ronon asked after they were done with the movie.  Rodney was a little touched they had stayed on the call even after the Colonel was down for the count, no matter how disgusting John’s movie choice was.

Rodney looked over at him worriedly.  He was looking a little pale.  That is, a little paler than he had yesterday, which was certainly not a good sign.  He should be getting less pale, as his body...made more blood, or whatever it was that bodies did.  And as much as Rodney wanted to accept all the blame for John’s exhaustion, he really thought the heavy sedatives should have worked their way out of his system by now.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Rodney said.  “And Keller’s coming to check on him in a few minutes, if he’s...you know, not fine, I’m sure she’ll be able to fix it.”

Ronon nodded, and the three friends exchanged pleasantries and hung up the call.  Rodney watched John nervously, making sure to keep an eye on the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest.  Rodney really hoped that Teyla and Ronon would find out who had done this soon.  John needed medical care, real medical care, and Rodney simply wasn’t sure how much longer he would last without it.

When John woke up, he knew that something was wrong.  He had no idea what time it was.  His whole body felt...wrong.  He could barely get a good breath, and he wasn’t sure if he was very hot or very cold but he knew he was very something.  His bones hurt, his teeth hurt, his eyelids hurt.  His shoulder hurt so badly it didn’t even really feel like pain anymore.  

“R’dney,” John whispered, and then all but clapped a hand over his mouth.  He couldn’t see a clock from here, but it was surely the middle of the night; the absolute last thing he wanted to do was wake Rodney up.  And anyways, he could deal with this by himself.  He...he would be fine.

John squirmed down as much as he could, using his good hand to pull the blankets up around his shoulders.  He felt better, but he didn’t think it was very long before he was shivering again, and he was either burning up or freezing, and he could hear his teeth starting to chatter.

For the second time, John considered calling out to Rodney, but this time he managed to stop himself before he said anything aloud.  He...he knew that he was supposed to be able to ask Rodney for help, Rodney had even been very vocal about that before John fell asleep, but he couldn’t quite shake the memory of what had happened the last time he’d annoyed Rodney.

Even through the haze of drugs and pain and whatever else was wrong with him, John knew he was being stupid.  He knew he was being unfair to McKay.  Still, he couldn’t help it.  John wasn’t going to risk it.

After another few minutes, John couldn’t bear to be under the blankets anymore.  Clumsily, he pushed them back, letting out a soft whimper as he accidentally jostled his injured shoulder.  God, it just hurt so much, everything hurt so much, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been in this much pain….

“Sheppard?”

“No,” John whimpered, closing his eyes as Rodney clattered out of his cot and shuffled over to the bed.  Damn it, John had wanted to handle this on his own, he hadn’t wanted to wake Rodney up at whatever ungodly hour this was and force McKay to take care of him.

“What’s wrong?” Rodney asked, suddenly sounding less sleepy.  The light flipped on, and John shrank away from it, suddenly aware that his head was throbbing along with his shoulder.

“God, you look terrible,” Rodney said, and John felt Rodney’s hand on his forehead.  By the time he managed to raise his good hand to push it away, Rodney had already taken it back.

“I think you have a fever,” Rodney muttered, sounding worried.  John just blinked at him, struggling to process any sort of weight Rodney’s words should be carrying.  A fever, that was...new, wasn’t it?

“You’re all pale and sweaty,” Rodney continued, sounding more worried by the second.  “Like, more than you were.  I think you’re really getting sick, Sheppard….”

Sick.  That, John could understand.  He nodded softly.  “Yeah.”

“How long were you awake before me?” Rodney asked, picking up the handheld monitor and squinting at the readout.  “And if you felt that bad, why didn’t you try to wake me up?”

John shrugged his good shoulder.  “Dunno.  I….”  He trailed off, unsure what to tell Rodney.  He still wasn’t even entirely sure why he hadn’t tried to wake Rodney.  All of his reasons made perfect sense to him, but as soon as he opened his mouth to explain one of them to Rodney, it suddenly seemed to lose any meaning.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rodney said simply, starting to bustle around John.  “I’m awake now.  Now, Keller told me how to do some of this stuff.  Your temperature’s on this monitor over here,” he held up the small handheld monitor on his bedside table, “and she said that if it’s between 100 and 103 I could give you something for it, and if it’s above 103 I should call her.”

“What is it?” John asked.  His voice sounded weak and exhausted, even to his own ears - between one breath and the next, it seemed that his throat had gotten impossibly dry.

“It’s...oh.  It’s 104.  Hopefully Keller’s awake at this time of night, or at least she’s easy to wake up, otherwise I...I’m not sure….”

He trailed off, and moved a little ways from John’s bed to call Keller.  John drifted during their conversation, barely registering Rodney adjusting monitors and giving Keller some other readings over the comms.  He did manage to wake up when Keller actually entered the room, breathing hard as if she’d come at a run, but he suddenly found he didn’t have the strength to lift his head.

“Hi, John,” she said, and though her voice was light, it sounded rather forced.  “Rodney told me you aren’t feeling so good anymore.”

John shook his head, and the movement sent a painful shiver down his spine.  His teeth clacked together, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to respond.

“I’m going to need to get a look at your shoulder,” she informed him gently.  “I suspect it’s infected, and that’s why you went downhill so fast.  Don’t worry, I knew there was a good chance of this happening, and a round of antibiotics should fix you up.  I just need to-”

She was pulling his blankets down now, and the frigid air seemed to scrape John’s skin raw.  He gasped, twisting away from her, but she held him flat against the bed and peeled the bloody bandages away from his shoulder.

“This-”  She broke off.

“Is it supposed to look like that?” Rodney asked, sounding both suspicious and disgusted.

“Wh’t does it look like?” John whispered.  He couldn’t see it at all, he didn’t even have the strength to turn his head.

“No, it’s not supposed to look like that,” Keller said worriedly.

“It looks gross,” Rodney informed him.  “Oh, ew, this is so much worse than I imagined.”

“Wha’?” John asked again, trying to move his head to look at his shoulder.  But he was too weak, completely reliant on Rodney for information.

Information which was not forthcoming, as Rodney seemed preoccupied making quiet gagging noises.  John considered, and decided that he might be glad he couldn’t see it.  Still, he did want to know what was going on.

“McKay,” John prompted.  “What is it?  Wha’s happenin’?”

Rodney stared at John’s shoulder in frozen horror.  As Keller had repeatedly told him, as Carson used to tell him too, Rodney did not know much about medicine.  Still, he knew enough to know that whatever was going on with John’s shoulder was bad.

When Keller had removed the bandages, Rodney had expected blood, perhaps even pus.  He’d expected swollen, shiny skin and an irritated edge to the wound.  He’d even expected it to be horribly gross.  It was still worse than he’d expected, much worse.

All the classic signs of infection were there, but even to Rodney’s untrained eye, John’s shoulder was far more swollen than it should be.  The skin around the open wound was bulging, and it looked somehow uneven.  Rodney realized with an uncomfortable turn of his stomach that it was likely the broken shards from the arrowhead, working their way to the surface of the wound.  In fact, Rodney could see a tiny glint of metal through the wound in John’s shoulder.  Radiating outward from the speck of silver, there were sickening streaks meandering across John’s swollen skin.  Rodney knew that was a typical sign of infection, but surely the streaks weren’t supposed to be that horrible purplish-blue color.

Keller touched John’s shoulder, ever so gently, and John jerked away with a hiss of pain.  With that, the spell was broken, and Rodney turned away, fighting back nausea.

“R’dney,” John whispered, his voice thready and almost frightened sounding.  “My shoulder.  Wha…?”

“It...there are...streaks,” Rodney told him lamely.  “It looks like….”

“Poison,” Keller finished grimly.  “I’m going to need to take one of these shards for analysis.”

“Poison, god...right, analysis,” Rodney said, feeling very far away.  Then, her words sank in and he snapped his head back.  “Sorry?  Take one?  You mean, take a shard out of Sheppard’s shoulder? ”

“Oh,” John said softly.  He didn’t react apart from that, but Rodney saw his back go tense.  Without really thinking about it, he put a hand on John's uninjured arm.

Rodney had no choice but to close his eyes while she was actually doing it, otherwise he probably would have thrown up on Sheppard, and then where would they be?  But he could still hear everything that Keller was doing, the faint sliding sound of her slicing through skin, John’s labored breathing as he fought against the pain, his small whimpers as she extracted a shard of...whatever it was.

Rodney heard the sound of the small piece of material clinking into a dish.  He cracked his eyes open.  John was lying flat on the bed, looking pale, shaky, and distinctly green.

“Alright,” Keller said.  “We’re all done.  How do you feel?”

John shook his head slightly.  “H’rts,” he whispered.

“Can’t you knock him out or something?” Rodney cried.  “He can’t...how is he supposed to....?”

“I don’t want to introduce anything new to his system until I’ve gotten this sample analyzed,” Keller said.  

“Wait, you’re leaving ?” Rodney squeaked.  Seeing Sheppard this bad off was horrible enough, but being alone with him sounded completely untenable.

“Rodney, I have to get this analyzed if I’m going to help him, and I don’t know how long it will take me.  Call me if he gets worse, but right now he’s not critical.  You can take care of him here, the same way you’ve been doing the past few days.”

“But I...How do I-”

“He’s probably going to start feeling cold, but don’t pile him up with too many blankets.  Just one blanket and a sweatshirt will be plenty, and keep an eye on the numbers.  Cool washcloths might help if he starts feeling overheated.  I don’t know how much he’s going to want to drink, but try your best to keep hydrating him by mouth.  And I’ll need you to check the wound every hour or so, to make sure it doesn’t get worse.”

“Oh,” Rodney whispered, wishing he had either a pen so he could have written down her instructions or a whole different life.

“And you can call me if you have questions, I’ll be awake, of course,” Keller said, already sounding distracted.  “I didn’t check with Sam before visiting this time, but I’ll do it now, see if she thinks it’s safe for me to come back if he gets worse….”

She swept out the door, and Rodney and John were alone.

“Sheppard,” Rodney croaked.  “I-”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” John informed him.

“What?” Rodney asked frantically, as the situation once again got dramatically worse than he had anticipated.  On top of everything, John was going to throw up?  Aside from being excruciatingly painful for Sheppard, what with his ribs, and his shoulder, and...everything else, it would be gross.   He was in Rodney’s room.  In fact, he was in Rodney’s bed.   “No, no you’re not.”

John grimaced.  “Don’ have much choice,” he whispered, pale and miserable-looking.

Rodney stepped towards him, then away from him, then spun around in a circle looking for something to fix the situation.  This...this was just too much, it had already been too much.  Rodney wasn’t good at this sort of thing.  He’d already managed to drug his best friend into oblivion, and it was only...god, it was only the second night.  Rodney was terrified that he would mess up again, worse this time, and John would die and it would all be his fault.

“R’dney?” John asked, and the note of growing panic in his tone snapped Rodney out of his spiral.  Rodney might not be able to fix this, or heal Sheppard, but he could stop John from throwing up.

“You’re not going to throw up,” Rodney told John, trying to imbue his voice with the same firm conviction that John used when talking to recalcitrant Marines.  “I have a plan.  A four point plan.”

John blinked at him from the bed, fever sweat beginning to stick his hair to his forehead.  The beads of moisture caught the light, making the skin beneath look even more alarmingly pale.  For a moment, Rodney wasn’t even sure that John had heard him, but then John managed to open his eyes a little wider and fixed his gaze on Rodney.

“Plan?” John asked, and it was hard to tell through the fever and the pain, but Rodney thought he sounded almost hopeful.  “Wha’s th’ plan?”

Rodney realized with a sinking feeling that he hadn’t actually come up with any of the four points he’d promised Sheppard.  Luckily, he was a genius.  He could just make them up on the fly; it couldn’t possibly be that hard.  

“Step one- Distraction,” Rodney told John, cautiously approaching the bed.  It had taken him a while, but eventually, he’d learned that the best way to deal with hurt, sick, or sad Sheppard seemed to be to distract him.  That way, John could deal with whatever he was struggling with on his own, but he wouldn’t be alone, and he’d have something else to focus on.  And if it worked when John was upset, or in pain, Rodney didn’t see why it shouldn’t work on this as well.  “Then you won’t be thinking about your stomach so much.”

“Ugh,” Sheppard said softly.  

“Hmmm,” Rodney said, trying now to think of both how he was supposed to distract Sheppard and what the next part of his unfortunately multi-part plan was going to be.  “And the second, um, the second point is….”

Chapter Text

Rodney was rambling, and John wasn’t really listening.  He was increasingly focused on the pain, and the ever-growing nausea.  Rodney seemed to think that John had no problem at all vomiting in his bed, that it was his next favorite choice if the bathroom wasn’t available.  But in fact, John wanted very desperately not to throw up at all.  He didn’t need Rodney to tell him that, and he didn’t need Rodney’s stupid and horrible four point plan to keep him from trying his hardest not to be sick. 

Step Two had turned out to be “sit up a little.”  John had no idea how Rodney had intended that to help the nausea, but the truth was, it was not helping at all.  He had a few extra pillows propped behind his back, but his head and arms still felt impossibly heavy, his shoulder was sending shivery bolts of pain throughout his whole body, and even the slightest movement of adjusting himself upright had made his stomach churn. 

The distraction was also turning out to be lacklustre.  Seemingly out of ideas, Rodney had taken to reading to John out of the rejected electrical engineering textbook.

“What’s the third point?” John ground out.  If he had to listen to another minute of this, he was pretty sure not even the best laid plan in the world would be able to keep him from vomiting.

“Do you still feel sick?” Rodney asked, looking put-out.  John nodded.

“Alright, I’m going to...oh, Keller said a wet washcloth might help you feel better.”

“I think that’s for a fever.”  John wouldn’t say that he didn’t have a fever, but he certainly wouldn’t say that was his most pressing problem.  

“I’ll put it on your pressure points too.  I’m...pretty sure that’s a thing.  I remember my mom doing that for me when I was a little kid.”

John was pretty sure his dad had done no such thing, but then again, he didn’t really remember his father taking care of him much at all when small John had been sick.  And a wet washcloth sounded...strange, but not wholly unpleasant.  It certainly wasn’t the worst idea Mckay had ever had.

Five minutes later, John was ready to take it back.  Rodney had put a wet washcloth on his forehead, as well as on the inside of each wrist.  It had helped for about three seconds, and then the shivering had started, which had unsettled his stomach even more.  John grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could move well enough to put a hand over his mouth.  

“You’re still feeling nauseous?” Rodney asked, sounding alarmed.  Not wanting to risk opening his mouth, John merely nodded.

“Okay.  Okay, umm, how about Rolaids?  Those always help me with nausea.”

John was well past Rolaids at this point.  The thought of chewing and swallowing anything almost made him throw up on the spot.  “No,” he whispered.

“You’ll feel better once you get them down,” Rodney pleaded.  “Sheppard, I really think it’ll help….”

“Can’t,” John said briefly.

“I’ll crush them up,” Rodney offered.  “I’ll crush them up and put them in water.  That way, you don’t have to chew anything.”

“Don’ want Rolaid water, McKay,” John growled, forcing back bile at the thought.

“But...but it’s the fourth point,” Rodney muttered, beginning to sound unhinged.  “Sheppard, the plan needs four points.  It’s a four point plan.  Without the Rolaids, it’s just a three point plan, and I really can’t be held responsible if you end up throwing up everywhere….”

John cracked open one eye to find Rodney blinking at him with an air of desperation.  John shifted slightly, beginning to feel vaguely guilty.  He knew Rodney, he knew how much McKay hated gross things, and people in his space, and if John threw up in Rodney’s bed , that would probably be Rodney’s worst nightmare.  He probably owed it to Rodney to try his horrible four point plan.  Maybe the Rolaids would help, John was definitely going to throw up without them.  

“Fine,” John whispered.  

“Oh.  Really?” Rodney asked, perking up.  

John nodded and closed his eyes while Rodney prepared his horrible concoction, opening them only when he heard Rodney beside him.  He turned his head as much as he could, getting a glimpse of McKay’s worried face half-concealed behind a milky-looking liquid.

John made a face, then gasped as Rodney slid an arm behind his back and lifted him upright.  

“Sorry,” Rodney muttered, stuffing pillows behind John’s back.  John focused on breathing through the pain, keeping his heavy head upright, and ignoring the embarrassment as best he could.  Rodney let him sag back against the pillows, and John felt his head loll backwards, suddenly too exhausted to sit up even that much.  He tried to lift his hand, to take the chalky mixture from Rodney, but all he managed was a twitch of his fingers.

Rodney’s hand slid behind his head, supporting it, and Rodney lifted the glass to John’s lips.  He tilted it, and horrible, lumpy, faintly peppermint-flavored water slid down John’s throat.  John sputtered, trying to swallow, but there was too much liquid for him to keep up with, and he couldn’t breathe and he was far too weak to push the glass away.

John’s insides gave a sudden, horrible, twist.  He summoned strength he didn’t know he had to shove himself away from Mckay, and then he was leaning to the side and coughing up the rolaid water over the edge of Rodney’s bed.  The coughing quickly turned to vomiting, and it was a long few seconds of painful heaving before he realized that he was actually throwing up onto Mckay’s floor.

“Sheppard!” Rodney yelled, sounding both horrified and scared.  “Sheppard, stop! ”

John panted weakly.  Lunging over the side of the bed had set both his shoulder and leg screaming, and he was terrified that he would black out and fall.  “R’dney, I-”

He was cut off by another round of painful gagging - there wasn’t much in his stomach, as he’d had little appetite the past few days, but it was by no means empty.

“Just...hold it for a second, would you?” Rodney yelled.  John heard the vague sounds of him rummaging around the room, probably for something that John could be sick into.  A moment later, John felt a hand on his good shoulder, guiding him upright with surprising gentleness.

A trash can was thrust into his hands.  “There,” Rodney said.  “Now you can, ew, throw up in that instead of on my floor. ”

“S’rry, Mckay,” John whispered.  His stomach churned ominously, and he didn’t think it would be long before he was using the trash can for its intended purpose.  

He didn’t really understand how this was fair.  His broken leg - that was...terrible, but it was by no means the worst broken leg he’d ever had, and he knew it would heal up fine.  The crossbow bolt in his shoulder - he could also truthfully say that he’d had worse, many times.  But both of them together, along with the broken ribs, terrible bruising, and probable concussion?  That was a lot, even for him.  And now on top of it he had a fever, and he was puking, and his whole body felt achy and fragile and sensitive.  

And he was in Rodney’s room.  In front of Rodney.

If any of the groups Atlantis traded with ever expressed confusion between a medical doctor and a PhD, John was going to have them do a week of this.  They would never forget the difference again.  

John groaned softly and rested his cheek on the rim of the trash can, wishing the world would stop spinning.

“Hey,” Mckay said, voice high and anxious.  “Hey, are you going to be sick again?”

“I don’t know,” John groaned.  “Probably.”

For some reason, this seemed to elicit sympathy from Rodney.  There was a nervous, fluttering touch at his back.  

“I’m gonna...I’m just gonna set some towels down,” he said.  “And then I’m going to put the trash can on the ground, and help you roll over again.  I think you’ll be more comfortable that way, if you’re...you know, doing this for a while.  I can put a pillow under your shoulder.”

John shook his head weakly.  This was beyond horrible, beyond embarrassing, but, “I might throw up on your bed if you do that.  Wh’t if I roll over?”

“Well, I’ll put some pillows behind you,” Rodney said.  John could hear him moving around the room, probably looking for towels.  “And if you roll over, you could asphyxiate, so we’ll have much bigger problems to worry about if that happens.”

A pause.

“Don’t worry about the bed,” he said softly.

“Yeah?” John whispered.  Of course he should worry about the bed, he’d already thrown up on Rodney’s floor, he was damn well going to worry about doing the same in McKay’s bed.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, awkward but gentle.  “Just...worry about yourself, okay?”

John considered for a moment, then nodded.  “Okay.”  

Rodney spread down the towels on the floor, trying very hard not to think about what he was doing.  He pulled the trash can from Sheppard’s grip, setting it down on the floor beside the bed.  John looked as though he’d been trying to resist, but he was so weak that it had taken Rodney essentially no effort to pull the trash can away.

“It’s fine.  Really,” Rodney told him, beginning to rearrange pillows in preparation for John to lie down.  John didn’t seem convinced, and Rodney felt another sharp surge of guilt.  God, why had he yelled at Sheppard when he’d started to throw up?  He hadn’t really been angry, of course not, he was just panicked and grossed out, and in so far over his head that he felt like he was drowning.  Still, he couldn’t exactly tell Sheppard that.  It was too late now anyway.

Once again, Rodney wished he could reverse time and give himself a good slap in the face.  His best friend was trapped in his room, too sick to move and horribly nauseous, and Rodney had made him guilty on top of everything.

“It’s really, really, okay,” Rodney muttered, more to himself than to Sheppard.  “It’s fine.  You’ll be more comfortable this way, and the trash can’s right there….”

Rodney slid an arm behind John’s back, helping him turn over onto his good shoulder.  He felt John stiffen in pain, and Rodney froze.

“Are you alright?  Is it your ribs?  Shoulder?”

John shook his head weakly, his hair brushing against Rodney’s shoulder.  “‘M okay.”

But John was still tense, and Rodney didn’t let go.  Struggling to take John’s weight, Rodney helped him turn until he felt John relax suddenly.

“There,” Rodney said proudly.  He didn’t bother asking if John felt better.  It would just embarrass Sheppard, and Rodney already knew the answer.  Quickly, he propped a few pillows behind John’s back, propping him upright.  John sagged back against them, and Rodney frowned, once again alarmed by how weak John was.

John mumbled something incoherent, and Rodney paused in his pillow-stacking.  “Sorry?  What did you say?”

John retched over the side of the bed, gagging painfully, and Rodney grimaced.  “Oh.  That.”

Rodney tentatively reached out and put a hand on John’s back.  He could feel the muscles in John’s back tense with each painful convulsion, which was gross, but he started rubbing between his friend’s shoulder blades anyways because he could only imagine that however bad it was for him, it was about fifty times worse for John.

“Sorry,” John gasped when he managed to catch his breath for a moment.  “Sorry, sorry….”

“Stop apologizing,” Rodney muttered.

John seemed barely able to catch a break from round after round of heaving - Rodney hadn’t thought there could possibly be this much in his stomach, he’d barely been able to get him to drink water.  Rodney kept a hand on his back, which he hoped was comforting, and tried to ignore how horribly disgusting this all was.  He told himself that maybe Keller would clean up for him.  All he had to do was make sure Sheppard got through the night.

There was a few minutes where John got a break from the vomiting, but was too weak and sick to lift himself up.  Rodney continued to rub his back as he panted helplessly through the nausea, and eventually Rodney started talking to him softly, telling him about a recent trip Ronon had made to his lab that had somehow resulted in the destruction of three different experiments he’d been running.  When John eventually lost the battle with his stomach, Rodney just kept talking.  He couldn’t really tell if it was helping, but it seemed to be relaxing John slightly.

“I think I’m d-done,” John said softly after a few minutes, spitting into the trash can. 

Rodney wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened, but John was trembling like a leaf in the wind.  His face was pale and sunken-looking, and Rodney suddenly had the horrible thought that his IV had fallen out in all the commotion.  He quickly checked John’s good arm, but the IV was still there - he must just be sick enough now that it wasn’t really doing much.  

“Are you cold?” Rodney asked, trying his best to keep his voice light as he sat John up as best he could.  “And tell me if you need to...you know, again.”

John shook his head slightly.  “Nothin’ left for me to throw up.”

“Do you want some water?”

“I’ll throw it up.”

“Oh.”  Rodney paused - John unable to keep down water seemed like a bad sign, although he didn’t think it was something Keller had actually warned him about.  And he supposed Sheppard had just finished getting sick, maybe he’d be able to drink some water later.

“I am c-cold though,” John said softly, his teeth clicking together.

Atlantis was temperature controlled, so Rodney only had access to one additional blanket - the one on his cot.  He quickly spread that over John, wincing slightly when John winced as the blanket settled over his injured leg.  John still looked pale and shivery, so Rodney went about digging through his drawers for a sweatshirt or something he could give to John.  He thought zip-up would be better, so he wouldn’t have to worry about John’s arm, and he wanted something warmer than the Atlantis jackets….

“Here,” Rodney said proudly, digging a hoodie he’d forgotten out of the back of his drawer.  “It might hurt a little, putting it on at first, but it’s warm, and I think it’ll be better than a blanket.  It won’t fall off.”

Rodney brought his find to John’s side.  The Colonel blinked at it woozily, then glanced up at McKay.

“It’s a sweatshirt,” Rodney explained again, in case John had somehow missed that piece of it.

“Why d’you have that?” John asked blearily.

“To put on you,” Rodney reminded him.  “So you’re less cold.”

“No.  I mean, why do you own that sweatshirt?”

Rodney looked down at the hoodie in his hands, a dark maroon zip-up.  On the front of the shirt was a graphic of a box, with a line drawing of a cat on the inside.  Beside it were two checkboxes, one reading “dead” and one reading “alive.”  Both were checked off.

“Ah.  Yes.  It’s a play off of Schrodinger’s cat, see-”

“I know ‘bout Schrodinger’s cat, R’dney,” John mumbled, sounding affronted.  

“I bought it in college,” Rodney answered defensively.

“ You bought it,” John said, suddenly sounding more lively than he had in days.  “Not...not a girlfriend, or somethin’.  You? ”

Rodney frowned.  “Yes, me, but I’ll have you know that this sweatshirt was quite the conversation starter with many a fellow student.”

“Was it t’make fun of you?”

Rodney sputtered his unconvincing denial, then brandished the sweatshirt at John.  “Look, Colonel C4, I’m sorry that I don’t have something with planes shooting at each other, or-or people being punched, or an explosion, or whatever sort of thing you think is appropriate.  Now, do you want the cat sweatshirt, or do you want to be cold?”

John sighed dramatically, suddenly looking much paler.  “If you take any pictures, ‘m kickin’ your ass soon as I c’n move.”

Rodney made a face at his friend, then narrowed his eyes at the sweatshirt, machines, and limp Colonel that would all need to be rearranged before John was warm.  

“I’m going to have to take your IV out, just for a minute, in order for you to get the sleeve over your arm.  But we can leave the port in, and Keller showed me how to...reconnect it after, so we should be...fine,” Rodney announced, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.  He didn’t really want to talk about it, or do it, or even think about it, for that matter, but he didn’t want John to get upset when Rodney started fiddling about with the machines.  He figured that after the sedation incident, he owed Sheppard that much.

Reconnecting John’s IV port was...gross, but he knew it was really only the calm before the storm in terms of gross things that he would have to do, because there was no sign of Keller coming to help clean up.  It took him about a half an hour to take care of John’s mess, and he was practically gagging himself by the end of it.  Luckily, John seemed to have mostly fallen asleep as soon as his stomach had settled, so there was no one to watch Rodney struggle.  

As it turned out, Rodney’s middle-of-the-night adventures in doctoring set the tone for the rest of the day.  Keller had told him he would need to check John’s shoulder every so often, so once things had calmed down some, Rodney did.  He unwrapped it, determined it looked no more horrifying than it had when Keller had been here, and carefully rewrapped it.  Rodney added a careful mix of fluids to John’s IV bag when it got low, he took John’s temperature and heart rate readings about seventy times, and he rearranged John’s leg when it slid off the pillows again.  He put a cool cloth on John’s forehead when his fever spiked, and changed the cloth each time it got warm.  

John spent most of the day either so deeply asleep he looked dead, or semiconscious and writhing in pain.  He would sometimes wake up to answer Rodney’s questions, but sometimes he wouldn’t.  Twice, he woke up to vomit up stomach acid and the little bits of water Rodney had made him drink, but Rodney found it much more concerning than gross.  

Since John was asleep most of the day, Rodney found that he was actually able to get quite a bit of work done, in and around the caretaking.  But now, he was shocked that he had ever even wanted that.  He would much rather have the annoying version of John, watching movies without headphones and asking ridiculous questions and keeping him from getting any work done at all, than this pale, pained version.  This version made his chest hurt and a strange prickle appear behind his eyes. 

Keller better figure out what was wrong, Rodney thought angrily to himself as he put ice on his leg.  She better figure it out, and she better fix him.

Chapter Text

John was a little fuzzy on what was happening, but he thought that there was now an additional person in the room.  He could hear two voices, talking to each other, where before there had only been one voice, talking to him.  

He cracked his eyes open, which hurt because everything hurt.  Keller was standing next to the bed, talking to Rodney in a quiet, worried voice.

“Oh hey, he’s awake,” Rodney said, sounding far more excited than John thought he needed to for something that was an everyday occurrence.  “It’s been a while - Sheppard, how are you feeling?”

“Mmmmf,” John mumbled.  He left it up to Rodney to decide whether that meant “terrible” or “okay.”

“Of course you’re not feeling good,” Keller told him softly, and John grimaced.  She placed a gentle hand on his good hand, and John gasped slightly at the chill.  Her hands were freezing - was that just him?  

“Your fever is up again,” Jennifer said, as though she was reading his mind.  Fever.  Right.  That was why he felt terrible.

“It should be better soon, though,” Keller said, half speaking to him and half speaking to Rodney.  That was probably for the best, John thought.  He was utterly exhausted, only able to process about every other word.

“I analyzed the arrowhead.  It’s definitely poisoned.”

Rodney gasped, and John felt a feather-light touch at his uninjured shoulder.  “Poison?  God, I know that’s what it looks like, but I just thought...maybe.…”

“Believe it or not, that’s the good news,” Keller said grimly.  “I can treat the symptoms now, and he’s going to start feeling better.”

Feeling better, that did sound good.  John would give anything to feel better, to be able to talk, to think, even just to sit up .  He blinked up at Keller, not bothering to conceal the hope in his eyes.

“What’s the bad news?” Rodney asked suspiciously.

“I can’t operate on him yet.  I can manage the symptoms for now, but in a few days, I’m going to have to remove the shards one way or another.”

“What?” Rodney squeaked.  “You’re going to leave poisoned metal in Sheppard’s shoulder?!”

That didn’t sound so good.  John frowned, gathering all of his strength to protest.  Before he could say anything, Keller cut Rodney off, raising her voice over his spluttering panic.

“Rodney.  The Colonel will be just fine for another few days.  As I said, he’ll actually be feeling better.  We’re going to keep a very close eye on him, and I promise that I will have him in surgery the second he needs it.  But we have to give Sam as much time as we can to solve the problem.  If we reveal that John’s alive now….”

“I know,” Rodney grumbled.  “Someone might try again.  But….”

“I know it’s hard,” Jennifer said.  “Believe me, Rodney, I don’t like it either.  But I’m going to get John on the right medications, and he’s going to be doing a lot better.  Okay?”

“Okay,” Rodney said, although from the sound of it, John wasn’t sure how okay with Rodney it really was. 

John allowed himself to drift out again as Keller explained to Rodney all the various medications she was going to put John on, and what they would all do.  He heard fever reducers and anti-emetic, and that was all he really cared about.  Once he didn’t have the achy, fevery feeling and he wasn’t throwing up, he thought he would be feeling a lot better.

It was late, and John was exhausted, so he drifted off before Keller left, and didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her.  Rodney woke him up for Teyla and Ronon’s nightly call, and the medication had already started working enough that he was able to spend the whole call awake and talking to them, although he was getting pretty sleepy by the end.  He learned that they’d finished interviewing all of the Jorians, which Teyla seemed to think was a significant step in the right direction and Ronon seemed to think was pretty much useless.

Rodney forced some water into John before letting him go to sleep for the night, and John was pleased that it didn’t unsettle his stomach, for what felt like the first time in days.  His fever had come down enough that he wasn’t really cold anymore, and he thought he actually might be able to get some real rest tonight, thanks to all Keller’s drugs. 

And then, John was in a prison cell.  Warm, dim light barely illuminated his surroundings.  He was cold again, so cold he could feel it in his bones.  He thought it might be the fever, but no, no, it was the feedings.  A wraith had fed on him - how many times now?  He couldn’t remember.  And it had stolen his warmth just like it had stolen his life, and now he felt like he couldn’t remember how to be warm and he had no control over anything and nothing would ever be the same again.

He woke up with a gasp in Rodney’s room, but the drugs that had been his salvation a few hours ago were now dragging him back towards a terrifying half-sleep.  He peeled his eyelids open, tried his best to fight it, but less than a minute went by before he was dragged back into nightmares again. 

The feeding hand was stretching out towards him, and he squirmed and bucked but he was tied down, and there was no escaping.  He was completely reliant on his friends to save him, but they weren’t, they weren’t.  He kept trying to tell himself that someone was coming, but no one had yet, and he thought he might need to start figuring out how to save himself but he didn’t know how.   

The Wraith’s hand closed over his chest, and John gasped at the searing pain that accompanied the feeding.  He struggled to move, to get away, but he was frozen in place as his life drained away from him.  

Before John’s eyes, his hands withered and shrank.  The skin grew thinner, stretching over swollen and fragile joints.  He was getting older, dying, and there wasn’t a single thing he could do to stop it.  He couldn’t even scream.

John surfaced again, half-conscious and desperate not to go back, but he blinked and the afterimage of a Wraith was behind his eyes.  He tried to move, to snap himself out of it, but he was just as weak here as he had been in his dream and the Wraith was reaching out again.

John’s throat strained as he struggled to scream, but the noise was trapped in his chest and his strength was ebbing with his life force.  His entire body tensed against his bonds, his muscles so tight he feared they would snap.

Scream, he urged himself.  The Wraith’s hand flexed on his chest, and John could tell this feeding would be the last.  

Finally, summoning every last ounce of willpower he possessed, John managed a single strangled cry.  His eyes flew open, and he blinked into the darkness.  His heart was racing out of control, but the rapid beeping that accompanied it grounded him.  He was in Rodney’s room, not in a Genii prison.  He was sick, injured, but he was on Atlantis, and this would pass.

“Sheppard?  Are you okay?  What’s happening, god, your heart rate is insane….  Is it the poison?  Did something happen?”

“‘M okay,” John whispered as he regained his breath, McKay’s voice helping to center him even more.  Rodney stared at him, hair standing up in half-asleep panic, clearly needing more information to go on.  “Jus’ a nightmare.”

“Oh.  Umm, are you sure?  It sounded….” Rodney trailed off, looking uncomfortable.  

John gave Rodney a one-shouldered shrug.  He wouldn’t consider himself nightmare-prone, per se, but no one could do what he did on a daily basis and expect to never get nightmares.  John was used to nightmares.  He would wake up, calm down, and get back to sleep quickly.  

“What...I mean, um, was it about your….?”  Rodney gestured to his shoulder, looking, if possible, even more awkward.

John shook his head.  “Wraith,” he said succinctly, hoping that was enough for Rodney.  He didn’t want to go any further into the matter.  He closed his eyes, regulating his breathing and beginning the process of going back to sleep.

Rodney shifted on the edge of his bed, feeling that he wasn’t quite doing enough.  Sheppard’s nightmare had seemed...bad.  It had been bad enough to wake them both.  But John was shaking it off as though it were nothing, and Rodney wasn’t sure if he should let him, or if he should continue to push.  It was hard to tell with Sheppard, sometimes, between what was really not an issue and what was John hiding something bigger for fear of seeming weak.

But he really did seem used to the nightmares.  As far as Rodney could tell, he was already asleep again.  And being trapped in a room, poisoned, in pain, with an assassin after him...Rodney could understand how that would make anyone a little more prone to bad dreams.  Sheppard had very little agency right now, and he was sure the dream had reflected that.

So Rodney allowed himself to go back to sleep.  He had meant to not sleep as deeply, in case Sheppard woke up and needed him, but that didn’t work.  Rodney didn’t open his eyes again until sunlight was streaming in through his window, and as soon as he rolled to look at Sheppard, he saw that his friend was awake and watching him.

“Hey,” Rodney said.  He knew he sounded a little sleepy, but John would have to forgive him.  He was a little sleepy.  He hadn’t thought about it, but this was the first good night’s sleep he’d had in days.  “How do you feel?”

“Better,” John said.  He sounded better too, and Rodney felt a knot loosen in his chest.  There had been a small part of him that wasn’t convinced he would ever get this version of John back.

“No more nightmares?” 

John shrugged. 

“How long have you been awake?”

“An hour or so.”

“An hour!  Why didn’t you wake me?” Rodney demanded.  “You’ve just been sitting there for an hour… Sheppard!   You must be in pain.”

“It’s not so bad,” John mumbled.  “And you looked tired.”

But he didn’t protest as Rodney got out of bed and began fiddling with John’s IV, dosing him with the cocktail of painkillers and fever reducers that Keller had prescribed.  Rodney watched John visibly relax as the drugs hit his system, but even before he’d had his morning dose, his color was better than Rodney had seen it in days.  A night of more or less uninterrupted sleep seemed to have done wonders.

There was a soft knock at the door, and Rodney blanched.  It must be Keller, here for her morning check-up, but Rodney was still in his pajamas, hair and teeth unbrushed.  He grimaced before letting her in, and heard John chuckle quietly at his discomfort.

As soon as Rodney ushered Jennifer into the room, it was clear that he had nothing to be worried about.  It was obvious that Rodney’s appearance was the farthest thing from her mind.  She looked harried and exhausted and maybe a little scared.  It hadn’t previously occurred to Rodney that he should be glad he wasn’t having to deal with the strain this whole situation was putting on the rest of Atlantis, but now, looking at Keller, he was almost grateful he was confined to his room.

“Good morning, John,” Keller said, switching quickly into cheerful doctor mode.  “How are you feeling today?  Better, I hope?”
“What’s happening out there?” he asked immediately.

Keller gave him a somewhat harried smile.  “You are feeling better,” she said as she began to check him over.

John endured the indignity of being examined with an air of long-suffering resignation.  After what couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, he cleared his throat.  “So, what’s going on?”

Keller sighed, looking almost as exhausted as Sheppard.  “I’m not entirely sure.  It’s all been fairly hush-hush, especially since I’ve still got some of the Jorians in the infirmary.  Sam doesn’t want to risk saying too much in front of them, and she’s been so busy, and Ronon….”

She trailed off, and John looked crestfallen.  

“Don’t you know anything? ” he asked sadly.  “What has Ronon been doin’?  Teyla?”

Keller frowned.  “I...I’m not sure.  Umm, nothing good, I don’t think?  I’ve heard...yelling.  A lot of it.  From Ronon, mostly.  Sometimes from Sam, even Teyla once?”

“Oh,” John said blankly.

“Umm, who are they yelling at?” Rodney asked, thinking of the tension that had been pervading the team video chats.

“The Jorians?  Each other?  Both at the same time?  I heard yelling about Ronon hurting someone, I think Sam was trying to stop him, but he might have already done it….”

Rodney cast a glance at Sheppard, who was beginning to look more and more upset.  Rodney hoped, for his sake, that Keller was more confused than she was accurate.  Still, he knew that Ronon had been causing problems, and it was entirely possible that Jennifer was giving them a fairly exact account of the situation.

Keller must have noticed John’s distress, because she quickly changed the subject to John’s improving health and the small changes she was making to his medications.  Within fifteen minutes, she was gone, leaving John and Rodney to their own devices once again.

“Are you hungry?” Rodney asked John when she was gone, hoping desperately the answer would be ‘yes’ and Rodney would have an excuse to go to the mess hall.  “You must be hungry, you’ve barely eaten anything the past few days….”

John considered, then nodded cautiously.  “I think maybe?”

“Great,” Rodney said fervently, dropping a radio and his laptop into the bed beside John.  “I’ll just get ready, and then I’ll go get us some food….  Maybe they still have pancakes….”

Ronon called John about a minute after Rodney left.  John hadn’t been wearing a comm set, but his ear piece was still resting on Rodney’s bedside table, and he heard the telltale buzz.  He lunged for it with his good arm, a painful motion that set his teeth on edge, and then fitted the radio to his ear.

“Sheppard?” a very familiar voice said.

“Hey, big guy.  What’s up?”

“I want you to tell Carter-”

John closed his eyes softly.  “Hey, no.  I’m hurt, remember?  I’m not involved with this, and I’m not tellin’ Sam anything.”

“But-”

“What’s she doin’?” John asked.  He didn’t really care what she was doing, he still had absolutely no intention of talking to her about anything.  But he was desperately curious about what was going on on the outside, and Keller’s information had been less than helpful.  

This was, apparently, the right question.  Ronon immediately launched into a tirade about Sam Carter and all of the things she wouldn’t let him do.  Ronon obviously found John much more lenient and reasonable under all circumstances, although listening to him, John was pretty sure Ronon didn’t have a good handle on what John would or would not let him do.  For example, one of the things Ronon was most upset about was the fact that Sam wouldn’t let him “question” the Jorians, something that John would never have let him do either.

“It’s not torture, ” Ronon explained for what felt like the ninth time.  “I wasn’t even going to bring any tools.  Nothing would happen, it’s just that they think it might happen.  And then we could get this whole thing solved much faster.  If Elizabeth were here, you’d already be in the infirmary.”

“Don’t say that,” John said, knowing he was coming across more exhausted than angry.  

“And Teyla’s on her side,” Ronon continued as if John hadn’t spoken.  “It’s like they don’t even care, I can’t keep dealing with….”

John allowed himself to tune Ronon out, just listening to the comforting sound of his friend’s voice.  It abruptly occurred to him that that was probably why Ronon had called him in the first place.  He hadn’t really expected John to talk to Sam for him.  As much as John missed Ronon, Ronon missed John that much too.

“Can you tell me about what you’ve actually found out?” John asked once he could get a word in edgewise.  He didn’t particularly want to hear about all the ways Teyla was failing Ronon as both a friend and as a person, and would much rather end up with some actual information.  

“Nothing,” Ronon grumbled petulantly, but he amended it when John pointedly cleared his throat.  “Fine.  We’ve ‘interviewed’ all of the Jorians, with Carter’s stupid Earth rules, and she’s narrowed it down to five.  I coulda done it faster, but….”

John made a sympathetic sound, which seemed to cheer Ronon up.  Looking marginally happier, Ronon cleared his throat and continued.  

“Malachai, the leader, he can’t give a good enough alibi.  Geneera, she’s the woman who lost her husband and her mother in the attack.  Todashi, Geneera’s son.  I got a bad feeling about that kid, but they won’t let me do anythin’ about it….”

Ronon trailed off, looking murderous.  John let him stew for a few seconds before clearing his throat and prompting Ronon again.

“Right.  The last two are Rosaya and Locklynn.  Rosaya, I dunno if you remember, she’s the baker that McKay was drooling over, and she doesn’t have a good alibi either.  Locklynn, she lost her entire family, and she’s s’posed to have an alibi but I don’t trust it.  I don’t trust any of ‘em.”

John nodded distantly.  He didn’t like hearing about all the reasons the various Jorians might have to kill him, but even having just this much information was making him feel better.  He might be trapped in a bed, but at least he wasn’t in the dark about the situation anymore.

“I wish you weren’t stuck in McKay’s room,” Ronon said, surprisingly.

“Me too, buddy,” John replied.

The Satedan sighed, looking down.  “You’re good at all this stuff.  You know, solvin’ things.  You coulda figured it out by now.”

John brightened, flashing Ronon a smile.  “Thanks, big guy.  Don’t worry too much, though.  I know you got my back.”

Ronon nodded back, seeming somewhat calmer.  “Yeah.  I won’t let you down.  Even if I do have to… question people.”

John opened his mouth to tell Ronon that he didn’t think he wanted Ronon to torture probably-innocent people in John’s name, but Ronon was already steamrolling on.

“Hey, Sheppard, I forgot to tell you, probably ‘cause Teyla thinks it’s stupid, but guess who I got to cry in front of Rosaya.”

John blinked in confusion at Ronon, wondering why Ronon was trying to make anyone cry, much less in front of their suspects.

“You know, ‘cause you’re supposed to be dead?  Classic guilt trip?”

“Oh, righttt,” John said, beginning to laugh.  Suddenly, the idea of the entirety of Atlantis pretending that he was dead seemed very funny indeed.  “Who?  Please tell me it was Lorne.”

“Nah, but he’s next on my list.  Maybe if I spray somethin’ in his eyes….  It was Zelenka .  Either he’s a better actor than I’m giving him credit for, or I scared him really, really bad.”

The painkillers John was on were making his muscles relax and his thoughts seem to vibrate slightly, and suddenly the idea of Zelenka crying over John because Ronon had scared him that badly was the silliest thing John had ever heard.  He couldn’t stop laughing, for what felt like the first time in days, and he was endlessly glad to have such a hilarious friend.

“You should...you should see if you can make more people cry,” John giggled.  

Ronon seemed to like this idea.  “I will.  I bet the Jorians are getting suspicious that we haven’t had a funeral yet, and soon Sam’s gonna have no choice.  She’s gonna have to do one.  And I bet I can get a bunch of people to cry during that.”

“Keep me updated,” John said, and for some reason the idea of him receiving updates about his own death made him start laughing again.  

Ronon laughed too, a bit more uncertainly.  And then John’s ribs started to hurt, so he forced himself to calm down. 

“Oh,” John said, as an idea suddenly occurred to him.  “I have to go, buddy.  But I’ll talk to you again soon.”

“Bye, Shep.”

Ronon hung up, and John immediately called Rodney.  He could tell from the background noise on Rodney’s call that he was currently in the Mess Hall.

“Hey, Sheppard, did you think of something else you want to eat?” he said distractedly.  “I was thinking maybe oatmeal, I can’t remember if oats are gentle on your stomach or not, but I think they maybe might be….”

“Ew, no,” John said quickly.  “Don’t care about food.  I want you to bring a whiteboard back to your room.”

“A whiteboard?”  

Rodney sounded suspicious, and John felt suddenly unsure.  “Or...it doesn’t have to be a whiteboard.  I...I don’t remember if they have those here.  It can be...an Ancient board.  Or whatever.”

“That...I mean, why do you need one?  Also, how do you think I’m supposed to get one back?”
“I don’t know how you can get it back here, Mckay.  Just...say you need to solve equations in your room or somethin’.  Everyone’s gonna believe that.”

“But what’s it for ?” Rodney pressed.

“To solve the mystery,” John whispered.  

“To what ?”

“To...to figure out who shot me.”

About an hour later, Rodney was struggling to get the whiteboard through his door while simultaneously struggling with a huge plate of gross bland food that he thought might be able to tempt John.  He cursed softly, wondering how someone who was so ridiculous and annoying had managed to so thoroughly worm his way into Rodney’s life.

“Happy now?” Rodney asked, managing to shove the whiteboard in front of Rodney’s own bed, still containing John.

“Yes!” John said.  He did sound happy.

“Oh,” Rodney said.  “Well, good….”

“Yeah!”

Rodney peered at John, slightly unnerved by the sudden shift in his mood.  Still, he didn’t want to question it too much, this vaguely manic Sheppard was much closer to his friend than the weak, barely conscious version he’d had for the last few days.

“Are you high?”

John grinned and - there was really no other way to describe it - giggled softly.  “Yep.  I feel great.  Long as I don’ move too much.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s...good, I think?”

“Yep.  We gonna solve th’ mystery!”

“How?” Rodney asked, staring at the whiteboard, the plate of food in his hands, and John’s pale-but-excited face.

“Ronon called me.  He’s kinda pissed about everythin’, but I managed to get the names of th’ suspects.”

Rodney blinked at his friend, wondering how they could possibly solve a mystery alone in a room, while one of them was badly injured and mildly high, and the other was sleep-deprived and overstressed.

“C’mon, McKay, you c’n be just like Batman.  You’re the one who’s always sayin’ he’s a detective.”

“He is a detective,” Rodney answered automatically, then paused as John flashed him a smirk.  Even when Sheppard was high, he could outmaneuver Rodney.

“Okay, okay, let’s solve the mystery,” Rodney grumbled.  John smiled again, and Rodney couldn’t help but smile back.  He was fairly sure that they had absolutely no chance of solving anything, especially since their only information came from Ronon and was filtered through high John, but that didn’t really matter.  Apparently, it would keep Sheppard entertained, and Rodney was happy to play along.  

“So how are we going to do this?” Rodney asked, and John’s eyes lit up with the familiar “Sheppard has a madcap scheme” glint.

“We’ll start….  By reenacting the crime,” John said dramatically.

Rodney frowned.  “You want me to shoot you through the shoulder and push you down a flight of stairs?”

John rolled his eyes impatiently at Rodney.  “No.  You’re gonna have to be me, McKay.  I don’ think I c’n move that much.”

“Fine, Captain - sorry, Colonel Obvious - so what do I do?”

John frowned, apparently thinking.  “Okay, so I was on my run, an’ I was facin’ that way….”  He paused, pointing towards Rodney’s door with his good hand.  Rodney obediently turned to face it, still not quite able to believe that he was really willing to do this for anyone , much less an infuriating and demanding space pilot.

“Wait, no, it was that way, I think….”

“I’m not quite sure this is the best way to solve this,” Rodney said gently.  “How about we start by just writing down the names of the suspects?”
Rodney diligently wrote out the names of all the suspects Ronon had given John.  He added in the information they’d gotten from Ronon, as well as anything else they could remember about the Jorians they had interacted with.  Then, John had Rodney draw out a diagram of the assassination itself, since a reenatcment was thankfully out of the question.  Then, they brainstormed a few specific questions to ask Ronon and Teyla during their nightly check-in.

If everything were created equal, this is not how Rodney would be spending his day.  But John was sitting mostly upright and talking animatedly, so Rodney figured it was worth it.  

In the mid-afternoon, Rodney realized that John hadn’t had either breakfast or lunch.  Despite the fact that some of his color had returned, he still looked vaguely ill at the mention of food.  Rodney didn’t really want a repeat performance of a few nights before, but he also didn’t exactly want John wasting away in front of him because he refused to eat anything.

“Jello?” Rodney asked hopefully.  Jello was one of the few foods that could tempt Rodney regardless of how nauseous he was, and he thought there was a chance it would do the same for John.  He had gotten some from the Mess Hall in the morning.

John paused to consider.  “Okay,” he finally agreed.  “Jello, and then I want to see if we can draw a family tree for the remaining Jorians.”

Rodney checked the tray where he’d set John’s food earlier, and found that there was only empty Jello cups.  That...Rodney had eaten maybe one or two cups of the Jello he’d gotten for John, maybe three, but there should still be...surely there was….

Rodney had eaten all the Jello.

“Fuck, Sheppard, I’m sorry, there’s no Jello.  I guess they...weren’t serving it this morning….”

John, thankfully, didn’t seem too put out, and he agreed to nibble on a piece of toast instead.  Rodney felt that he had accomplished something.

Chapter Text

Teyla called before long, using the video chat software that Ronon hadn’t yet been able to master.  Rodney had a panicked moment where he was sure something else had happened, but surely if there was a problem, it would be Sam who notified them.

“Rodney?” she said once he had answered.  “I was wondering if I might talk to you and John for a moment?”
Rodney looked over at John.  He had abandoned his lunch, and was now lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Um, let me check with Sheppard,” Rodney said.  “He might be...asleep.”

Rodney went over to John and shook him slightly.  John’s eyes slowly blinked over to focus on Rodney.  Rodney felt a rush of both horror and pride at the fact that he could differentiate between John’s fevered gaze and his drugged out one.  Right now, John was fine, just high and exhausted.  Rodney didn’t think he’d be much help with...whatever it was Teyla wanted to talk to them about.

“Sheppard, do you wanna say hi to Teyla?” Rodney asked.

“Hi, Teyla,” John said obediently.

Rodney sighed.  “No, Sheppard, she’s on the...nevermind.”

“Nevermind,” John agreed softly.

“You’ve got me,” Rodney informed Teyla.  “What is it?”

Teyla made a hissing sound through her teeth that Rodney recognized as a very dangerous sound indeed, then shook her head.  

“Ronon,” she said, biting off the end of the name with a venom that Rodney hoped never to see turned on him.  “He is being... difficult. ”

Rodney nodded in sympathy, opening his mouth to respond, but Teyla continued before he could get a word in edgewise.

“I understand that he is worried about Colonel Sheppard,” Teyla said agitatedly, her volume rising.  “But he seems to forget that everyone else is, as well.  And the rest of us are not acting like children- ”

Rodney let Teyla rant until she ran out of steam, rather overwhelmed at the extent to which the team clearly depended on John’s presence.  Not that he’d ever tell Sheppard that, the man’s ego was big enough already….

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said diplomatically, when he thought that Teyla was probably done.  “It’s...hard.  But, but you’ll figure it out, I’m sure.  Really.  And, you know, don’t tell Carter I said this, but she’s got brains in that blonde head of hers.  She’s...she’s good at this sort of thing.”

“Colonel Carter,” Teyla said grimly, “is not the problem.”  Still, the Athosian seemed marginally more relaxed than she had been when the call had begun.  As much as Rodney wanted to give himself the credit for talking Teyla down, he suspected that she had just missed the rest of her team.

“Well, if that’s all-”

“Thank you, Rodney.”  Teyla sounded much more like herself now, and Rodney let out a quiet sigh of relief.  “I am sorry, it is just….”

“Don’t be sorry,” Rodney said quickly.  “It was nice to talk to you.  Uhh, do you want me to see if Sheppard’s awake, so you can say goodbye?”

Teyla nodded, smiling gratefully, and Rodney picked up the laptop and brought it over to where Sheppard had entangled himself in the blankets.  

“Sheppard?  Are you asleep?”

“Mmm...yep,” John whispered, his eyes closed.

“Umm, alright.  Do you want to say goodbye to Teyla?”

“Where’s Teyla?” John asked softly, cracking open one eye and staring blearily up at Rodney.

“Hello, John,” Teyla said, waving from the screen.  John smiled back, flopping his head around slightly until he could see her.

“Hey,” John said, and his eyes drooped shut again.  Rodney took the laptop back, flipping it around so that he could see the screen.

“Sorry, he’s pretty out of it….  I think he’ll be better by tonight, though, with the way the doses are working out.  We, um, tried to solve the mystery today, and he wants to watch some kind of crime movie, you know how he gets with that sort of thing….”

The crime movie - they picked an old black and white Sherlock Holmes - proved to be slightly too ambitious for John.  He kept falling asleep, and then waking up and demanding that they explain to him what had happened.  This proved difficult, because Ronon spent the whole movie sharpening his knives and didn’t even seem to be trying to follow the plot, Teyla kept getting confused by Earth references she didn’t understand, and Rodney was pretty distracted by John.  By the time they’d finished the film, Rodney had no idea who the bad guy was or why he’d committed crimes.  Not all that different from Rodney’s real life, to be honest.  At least Ronon and Teyla seemed happier.

By the time the movie was over, John was well and truly out.  Rodney didn’t bother waking him back up, just took away one of the pillows behind his back so he could lie down more comfortably, and drew the blanket up around his shoulders.  It seemed like the drugs were still keeping him pretty comfortable, so Rodney couldn’t complain.

Rodney fell asleep, and, for the third night in a row, was awoken in the middle of the night by John.  This time, it was by the sudden, rapid beeping of his heart monitor.  Rodney sat bolt upright on his cot, trying to figure out what was happening.  At first, he thought that John had somehow disconnected the monitor again.  But it wasn’t indicating that John was flatlining, just that John’s heart was beating very, very fast.

“Sheppard?”

No answer.  Rodney stumbled out of bed and flipped the light on.  John immediately flinched away from it - so he was awake.  His face was grey and waxy looking, and for a horrible second Rodney thought he was going to be sick.

“Sheppard, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” John said, voice hoarse.  “Go back to sleep.”

John’s heart rate was already settling back into something resembling normal.  Two years ago, Rodney might have taken John at his word, and gone back to bed.  But not now.  Not when John was like this.  

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing,” John growled.  “I said it was nothing.  Go to bed.”

“Is it the nightmares again?” Rodney asked.  He’d slept near Sheppard enough on missions to know that  nightmares, at least the ones like he’d been getting the past week, were not a frequent occurrence for him.  But if the past few nights were any indication, that just wasn’t true right now.

John sighed, closing his eyes.  Suddenly, he looked beyond exhausted.  He nodded, once, and for a moment Rodney thought he wasn’t going to elaborate.

“They’re usually not this bad,” John said quietly, as though he were trying to defend himself.  “I...it’s worse on drugs.  I-I never have this many.”

Rodney didn’t know what to say.  It almost seemed as if John was worried that Rodney would somehow think less of him, just for being human.  In Rodney’s book, Sheppard was still the toughest person he’d ever met (even including Ronon), but he couldn’t exactly say something like that.

He settled for handing Sheppard a glass of water and sitting in the chair next to the bed.  “I know,” Rodney told him.

“‘Kay,” John mumbled.  “This...it’s not normal for me.  It’s just ‘cause-”

“Because you’ve been shot full of poison and locked in my room with a killer running loose around Atlantis,” Rodney finished.  “I should think that would give anyone a few nightmares.”

John actually cracked a half-smile at that.  “Yeah.  I mean, bein’ trapped with you…. ”

Rodney poked him lightly in his uninjured shoulder.  “Careful, Sheppard.  You are in my room, remember.”

John snorted softly.  There was still a bit of panic lingering around his eyes, but the heart-rate monitor had slowed to almost a normal pace, and some of the color had come back into his face.  “Whatcha gonna do?  Read a physics textbook at me?”
“I might,” Rodney said darkly.  

John made a face, and his eyelids began fluttering.  “‘M gonna go t’sleep,” he muttered.

“I suppose physics can wait until the morning,” Rodney conceded.  Sheppard’s only response was a snore, as he drifted off again.  

Rodney went back to his bed, but pulled out his laptop until Sheppard’s breathing was deep and even.  Eventually, he fell asleep as well, the quiet tone of Sheppard’s heartbeat serving as white noise in the background.

John blinked awake, shaking the dregs of sleep away.  He couldn’t remember any specifics of his dreams, but he had a vague sense of disquiet.  He knew his night had not been restful, and he was a little nervous about trying to sleep more during the day, in case the nightmares came back.  He knew it was mostly just an effect of the poison and painkillers, but still.  He didn’t like having nightmares.  Knowing that it was just a temporary state didn’t make it easier to bear.

At first, he wasn’t sure what had woken him up, but then he realized that Rodney’s computer was buzzing with the sound of an incoming video chat.  Rodney had clearly also been asleep, but John watched as he stumbled out of bed to hit the lights, then settled back down in front of his computer to answer the call.

Sam’s face appeared on the screen.  “Good morning,” she said.  “I know it’s early, and I’m sorry if I woke you.  Things have just been so...this was the only time today I knew I would have time to talk.  I’m sorry I haven’t checked in earlier.”

“That’s...that’s fine,” Rodney said quickly, looking both excited and relieved to get a chance to talk to Sam.  “How...have things been?”

“Is John there?” she asked.

Rodney tilted the laptop so John could give Sam a half-hearted wave - he was happy to see her, but he was still half-asleep and processing slowly.  He hoped Rodney would be paying attention to everything she was saying, because John certainly wasn’t.

“Hello, John.  Jennifer told me you were feeling worse a few nights ago, but now you’re feeling a little better.”

“Yeah,” John said.  He wasn’t feeling much better right at this moment, but he knew he was on a general upward trend for the time being.

Sam nodded slightly, looking satisfied.  “That’s good to hear.  We’re still working as fast as possible to identify the Jorian who did this to you, so we can make sure that nothing like this happens again.  We’re keeping them confined to a specific area of Atlantis, although there are so many children involved that actually enforcing boundaries has been...difficult, to say the least.  We also have a few teams scouting for planets that we can relocate the remaining Jorians to.  In a worse case scenario, once we find a suitable home for them we can get them off Atlantis and you’ll be able to move around freely.  Although we haven’t found a good home for them yet, and since a few of them are still being cared for in the Infirmary, I think that’s at least a week or two away.”

John sighed softly - a week or two trapped in Rodney’s bed, drugged out and in pain, sounded like literal hell.  But he supposed it was better than being dead, which is exactly what he would be if he tried to leave too soon and was hunted down again.

“Why hasn’t the investigation been moving faster?” Rodney demanded.  “I thought Ronon and Teyla finished talking to everyone...I don’t know, a long time ago….”

Sam blew out an exhausted breath and shook her head.  “The first round of questioning is done, yes.  But there were a lot of people to get through, and it took a few conversations even to narrow it down to the five we have.  Before what happened to Sheppard, we were watching the Jorians, but we didn’t have them under constant guard.  It’s very difficult to determine exactly who was where during the Colonel’s morning run, especially since we can’t exactly rely on testimony from the other Jorians.  And there’s a number of inconsistencies, it seems almost impossible that any of them could have done it, if we take their statements at face value….”

John blinked softly.  This seemed...important, probably, but way too many things for him to follow currently.  Hopefully, Rodney was listening better than he was managing.  Maybe Sam wouldn’t mind if he just closed his eyes for a minute, maybe he could manage to process things a little better if he just focused on listening.  John yawned, as quietly as he could, and let his eyes slip closed.

Rodney looked over at John, who seemed to be drifting in and out of a doze.  He wished John would just let himself fall fully asleep.  Sheppard must be exhausted, what with the nightmares that had kept him up half the night.

“So what’s the next step?” Rodney asked, after Sam finished outlining the current state of the investigation.  “Ronon and Teyla do more interviews?  Will that help?”

Sam’s mouth thinned into an angry line at the mention of Ronon’s name, and Rodney was suddenly very glad that he was confined in his room, far away from Sam and Ronon.

“I doubt it,” Sam said sharply.  “Seeing as how Ronon-”

John’s eyes drifted open, and he tilted his head towards the screen.  “Ron’n?  How’s he doin’?”

In the fraction of a second, any anger in Sam’s face was gone.  “Ronon is fine,” she told John pleasantly.  

“Good,” John mumbled, and turned his head away again.

“Frustrated?” Rodney asked sympathetically, when he was fairly sure that John wasn’t listening.

“Oh boy,” Sam muttered.  “Everything is a battle.  And about the strangest things, yesterday he-”

Sam broke off, shooting a glance at John, who was watching them sleepily through half-lidded eyes.  Clearly, she didn’t want to complain about Ronon in front of John.  That was kind of her, Rodney thought, especially considering how problematic Ronon was being.

“It’s just a stressful time for all of us,” Sam said politely, after taking a moment to compose herself.  

“It’s okay, he’s asleep now,” Rodney told her, as Sheppard began to snore softly.

Sam let out an exhausted sigh.  “I know he’s just worried about John, and wants things to be moving quickly.  But he’s...proving himself to be something of a wild card, and it’s making him impossible to work with.  He won’t drop the idea of questioning the Jorians, even though everything else aside, answers they give during torture wouldn’t be anymore reliable than the answers we already have from them.  And he’s taking the bit of John’s death way too far.  He seems to have taken it upon himself to get as many of John’s men to cry as possible, and he won’t stop asking about a funeral for him….”

“That does sound like Ronon,” Rodney said.  There was a part of him that was glad he was stuck inside the room, doing a job he knew he could do well, as opposed to trying to balance working with Ronon and Sam.  He wasn’t at all surprised that Ronon was being impossible.  “You can complain to me though.  I won’t tell anyone.”

“I thought working with you was hard,” Sam said with a sigh.  Rodney smiled wryly - he knew she didn’t mean anything by it, not anymore.  “Turns out, that was nothing.”

“He’s worried about Sheppard,” Rodney said.  He figured Sam knew this, but it didn’t hurt to be reminded.  “He isn’t very good at processing feelings in a way that’s...helpful, and he can be kind of destructive when he’s stressed.  But he doesn’t really have anything against you.  And he’s...I mean, he’s big, but he would never really do anything, no matter how agitated he got….”

“I know.  It’s just a lot to deal with, especially now, with everything else.”

Rodney let Sam complain about Ronon until she ran out of things to complain about.  By the end of their call, she really did seem to be feeling better.  Rodney thought most people underestimated the wonders a good long session of complaining could do for the spirits.  They said their goodbyes, and Sam promised to try her best to contact them more often. 

Rodney let John sleep as long as he wanted, which turned out to not be particularly long.  Within the hour, John was starting to stir again.  When he woke up, Rodney could tell that he was doing slightly better, although not quite so well as he’d been doing yesterday.  He managed some crackers and enough water that even Keller was satisfied when she came by to check on him.

By the time she left, John seemed well and truly awake, as well as slightly drugged and somewhat happier.

“So, what are we doing today?” Rodney asked John, dimly shocked to remember a time when he’d had a job outside of entertaining Sheppard.

“First, what’d Carter say?” John asked, looking a little embarrassed.  “Think I might’ve fallen asleep.”

Quickly, Rodney relayed the information Sam had given him, relieved that John seemed to be following it this time around.

“Wow,” John said quietly, once Rodney was finished.  “That’s a lot more helpful ‘n anythin’ Ronon’s been sayin’.”

“Isn’t it?” Rodney agreed.  “Not that I don’t love hearing about his plans for your funeral, but….”

John giggled softly, shaking his head.  “My funeral….  Bet you’d cry, McKay.”  He looked up at Rodney, eyes glittering mischievously.

“I would not, ” Rodney answered automatically, but the thought of Sheppard’s funeral, even a fake one, sent a chill straight through his heart.  He never wanted to have to find out whether or not he would actually cry at John’s funeral.

“So, what are we doing today?” Rodney said quickly, before John could pick up on his discomfort.  Luckily, all the drugs in John’s system seemed to be making him more distractible, and Sheppard willingly dropped the subject of his own funeral.

“Solvin’ the mystery,” John said, as though Rodney had missed something obvious.  “Colonel Carter jus’ gave us more clues.”

Rodney didn’t particularly want to spend yet another day fruitlessly trying to solve an impossible crime, but if it would keep John distracted, so be it.  All he had to do was display enough interest to keep John occupied.  Surely, he could manage that.

Three hours later, Rodney was pacing around the room, jabbing at the air with a pencil.  “No, see, Janadi can’t possibly have been involved, he was in the infirmary the whole time!”

“Yeah, so he knew when I usually go on my run,” John insisted, trying to work himself more upright with his one good hand.  “Ronon called me from the infirmary t’tell me he couldn’t make it on the run, ‘cause he got a bit banged up in the extraction.”

“No, no, that’s all supposition,” Rodney said impatiently, turning back to the whiteboard.  Their tentative diagram of suspects, motive, and opportunity had grown into a mass of papers and notes, connected by strands of twine that Rodney had found in a bottom drawer, and punctuated by the occasional angry scrawl of whiteboard marker.

“Write it down ,” John insisted, trying to push himself up again and sagging back against the pillows in frustration.  Rodney had noticed him steadily declining over the course of the day, but had chosen not to say anything.  He was now looking pale, drawn, and exhausted, but still seemed determined to solve the case.  Who was Rodney to try to put a stop to that?  

For a while, Rodney had tried to tell himself that he was only trying to solve the case to shut John up.  But at this point, Rodney was pretty sure that ship had sailed.  Regardless of how tired and sick John was, if John kept making up facts and treating them like reality, Rodney was going to strangle him.

Rodney, very grudgingly, added Janadi to the list of suspects.  He tried to show John how annoyed he was by including suspects with no basis in fact by making his handwriting look angry, but John didn’t seem to pick up on that.

“I put him on the list,” Rodney said when he was done, “even though he had an alibi and including him is completely ridiculous.”

“Hey!” John said.  “Like everyone on the list has an alibi.  It’s really easy to have an alibi with no evidence on Atlantis, since there’s no security cameras or anything.”

“There was evidence .”  It took all of Rodney’s effort not to scream at John.  “Keller saw him in the infirmary.  While the attack was happening.  She remembers filling out his chart when she got the phone call from Ronon.”

“But still,” John insisted.  “It just seems...I mean, probably there’s someone who thinks they saw pretty much everyone on the list that morning, but someone has to be lying, or...or mistaken, I mean...that’s just common sense-”

Rodney took a step towards John, and he realized just in time that he had been half-prepared to take his friend by the shoulder and shake him.  

“I think we should take a break from this,” he said, as gently as he could manage.  “We’ve...we’ve done enough for today.”

“ Rodney, ” John said, sounding for all the world like a whiny child.  “We’re not done, we need to….”

Rodney was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to be having anywhere near this many emotions about a case that it wasn’t even their job to solve, and there was absolutely no point in both of them getting so worked up over it.  

“But we didn’t even talk about Elexa yet, and I’ m also pretty sure we need to revisit Teragon, I mean, Ronon said he seemed a little crazy during the interview and Sam said Zelenka was the only person who saw him near the mess hall….”

“We will,” Rodney said.  “But you need to get some rest first.”

“But-”

“We’re done for now,” Rodney said, as firmly as he could.  He didn’t want this to even dance along the edge of turning into an actual fight.

“Fine,” John hissed, and looked like he very much wanted to storm out of the room.  Instead, he slipped slowly down his stack of pillows, closing his eyes and crossing his uninjured arm across his chest slightly.  The effect was somewhat ruined by the overlarge sweatshirt, and the fact that he couldn’t move his other arm, but Rodney let it go.  Within a few minutes, John’s scowl had relaxed, and he was asleep again.

Chapter Text

John felt terrible .  He’d slept for a while in the middle of the day, after Rodney had refused to keep working on the case, but he’d woken up about an hour ago, feeling much worse than he had earlier.  According to Rodney, the fever was back.  John didn’t feel nearly as sick as he had the other day, but that didn’t mean he felt good.

“It’s not too high yet,” Rodney said worriedly, hurrying around the room frantically and reminding John suddenly of an overexcited ping pong ball.  John closed his eyes, the motion making him dizzy.

“Maybe you should eat something,” Rodney muttered.  “Keller said that you should be eating more.”

“Not right now,” John told him, risking opening his eyes again.  Rodney was pacing now, back and forth from wall to wall.

“C’n you stop that?” John asked, suddenly feeling that if Rodney spent one more second moving around like that, John would scream.

Rodney made a dismissive sort of hiss, but stopped.  “Why?” he asked, a note of challenge in his tone.

“I dunno,” John said miserably.  “Just...stop it.  It’s drivin’ me crazy.”

“Fine,” Rodney answered, rolling his eyes.  He looked and sounded annoyed, but at least he’d stopped.  

John rubbed at his eyes with his good hand, wishing he’d handled that differently.  He didn’t want to fight with Rodney, and he didn’t want to care about stupid things like Rodney’s pacing.  It was just the fever, it was making everything feel like nails on a chalkboard….

John scrubbed harder at his eyes, and startled as one of the machines began beeping loudly and urgently.  

“It’s one of the wires,” Rodney told him, crossing the room.  “It’s gotten tangled, the machine isn’t getting any feedback.”

John pulled his wrist away from the machine, twisting it back and forth as he tried to determine what exactly was caught on what.  All the wires looked the same, and there were way too many of them, and all of a sudden he felt trapped.  The beeping was joined by another alarm, and Rodney sighed heavily.

“It’s caught on that stupid sweatband of yours, just let me-”

John yanked his wrist backwards, just as Rodney caught hold of the edge of the sweatband.  All of a sudden, the sweatband that John always wore was in Rodney’s hand, and John’s wrist was bare for the first time in...who knew how long.  John froze, hand slowly dropping to his lap.  His pulse was thundering in his ears.

John wore the sweatband to cover a thin, straight scar, a few inches long and mostly vertical, that nestled in the crook of his wrist.  It truly wasn’t...what everyone thought, but keeping it covered was easier than answering the questions. 

Shock and horror flashed across Rodney’s face, and John braced himself.  But Rodney didn’t ask the question that John always dreaded.  “What happened?” Rodney asked.  “Did...did someone do this to you?”

Everyone who saw John without the sweatband always assumed that he’d done it to himself, and the fact that Rodney intuitively knew that he hadn’t made John instantly relax.  He blew out a slow breath, trying to remember the last time he’d told even a bare bones version of this story.  He thought about lying, but then realized there was really no reason to.

“It was a helicopter crash,” he said finally.  “In Afghanistan.  Piece of metal went right into my arm.  Barely missed the artery.  I got twelve stitches, and this nice scar to show for it.”

“Oh,” Rodney said mildly.  He finished untangling the wires from John’s hand.

“It was almost ten years ago now,” John said.  He didn’t want Rodney to feel that John was hiding parts of the story from him, but he also didn’t want Rodney to press.

“Why do you cover it up?” Rodney asked absently, clipping John’s heart monitor back onto his finger.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without that stupid sweatband.  I didn’t even know you had a scar there.”

John raised his eyebrows. 

“What?” Rodney asked. 

“Because it...looks like I did it with a razor blade?” John finally said.

“Oh.  Oh.  I didn’t even think...I mean, of course I never would have assumed....”

“I know,” John said.  “Thank you.”

He meant it.  He relished these small reminders of why Rodney was his best friend.  John hated the pitying stares, the veiled questions, which was why he’d started hiding the scar in the first place.  But it hadn’t even occurred to Rodney to do those things.  He knew John.  He knew John hadn’t done it to himself.  

“Do you want to go over the case again?” Rodney asked, voice gentle and a little cautious.  “I know we don’t have any new information, but maybe with fresh eyes….”

John nodded, suddenly overwhelmingly grateful to Rodney.  Everyone, Rodney included, saw the scientist as absolutely terrible with people, and by and large, he was.  Still, on the whole, he always seemed to know what John needed.

Rodney bustled around the room, gathering his scribbled notes into a stack, and grabbed his computer as well.  He brought everything over to the bed, sitting on the edge of it.  John craned his neck to see, doing his best to stay engaged with the case and forget the uncomfortable conversation they’d just had.

“Okay, so our current list of suspects is the five Sam told us about, the Michalka family, and Corin.”

“And Janadi,” John insisted.  Rodney rolled his eyes, but he was smiling a little as well.

“Yes, I added Janadi, even though I think that we should be sticking to the facts .”  It was practically the same thing he’d said earlier, but any anger in his tone was gone.  

“‘M gonna be right,” John mumbled.  “Just watch.”

“Wanna bet?” Rodney asked, sounding immediately more invested.

“You know, they got twelve-step programs for that.”

“Haha, very funny.  So, what’ll you give me when you’re wrong?”

“You c’n have my Jello,” John told him.  

Rodney frowned.  “I usually eat that anyway.  Oh, I don’t think I was supposed to admit that.  Fine.  I’ll take the Jello.”

“And when I win, you gotta tell Sam I’m smarter than you,” John said, feeling better as soon as he saw Rodney’s horrified expression.  Rodney mumbled something incoherent, turning back to his sheaf of papers.

“Let’s just focus on this, okay?”

“Okay,” John said, once again tilting his head to an awkward angle to try to see Rodney’s tiny print.  Rodney rolled his eyes again and made a show of moving closer, until John could see the papers without hurting himself.

“So, on the subject of Elexa….”

“I think you’re right about Teragon,” Rodney told John.  Sheppard nodded, his head dipping forward.  Rodney wasn’t sure whether or not he was really awake.

“He had the opportunity to get to their weapons, but he was with some of the Marines during your run, so he must have passed it off to someone,” Rodney continued.  “Are you following?”

“Yep.”  John nodded again, his head drooping sideways this time and coming to rest just barely on the edge of Rodney’s shoulder.  Rodney waited for Sheppard to move, but John seemed content to let his head stay where it was.

“Sheppard?” Rodney asked gently.  If he needed to sleep, Rodney would like to let him.  He had offered the case as...a return to normalcy after the story John had shared, and he was happy to let it go if John didn’t want it right now.

“Mmmm,” John hummed sleepily, head still resting lightly on Rodney’s upper arm.

“You awake?”

“Yeah,” he whispered.  “Just-”

He trailed off, clearly exhausted.  But Rodney was supposed to...what?  Rip his shoulder out from under John’s head?  That was clearly never going to happen.  Especially not when John was so sick and fragile-looking….

Rodney scooted down on the bed slightly, so John’s head was resting in what Rodney hoped was a slightly more comfortable position.  This was uncharted territory for Rodney, and he wondered vaguely if it was allowed.  

“I’m not asleep,” John informed Rodney.  His voice was thick and slurring, so Rodney didn’t really believe him.  

“Alright,” Rodney said anyways.

“I’m not,” John insisted. 

Rodney peered down at him.  His eyes were closed.  “Your eyes are closed.”

“They’re not.”

“They are.”

“You can keep goin’ over the case.”

“Alright, um, I think we should keep things limited to our current list of suspects.  No reason to keep going round in circles about that.  Now it’s mostly just a matter of figuring out who has the means to do it, and who could possibly have been there that morning….”

Rodney broke off at the sound of a soft snore from John.

“Sheppard?” he asked again.

No response.

Rodney sighed, and shifted his notes so he could look through them without jostling Sheppard too much.  He certainly wasn’t intending to stay here all night, but John had had such trouble sleeping, maybe just until Rodney could tell he was really asleep….

Rodney stayed sitting on the bed, trying not to rustle his notes too much.  He forced himself to study the papers in silence instead of the normal way, which involved a fair amount of talking to himself.

John snored again, slipping a little more heavily onto Rodney’s shoulder.  Rodney froze, waiting to see if John was waking up, wondering if Sheppard was going to fall forwards, or backwards.  Rodney would have to catch him, but his reflexes weren’t very good, what if John...cracked his head on the wall, or damaged his shoulder further, or something else horrible?

But John didn’t move any further, and Rodney began to relax by degrees.  

“You know, you’re very stressful,” Rodney said to John, making sure that it was so quiet that John couldn’t possibly hear it and wake up.

After about twenty minutes, Rodney was pretty sure that Sheppard was asleep.  In fact, he was pretty sure that John was drooling on his shoulder.

“Okay, I think it’s time for you to sleep on a pillow,” Rodney muttered, carefully supporting John with one arm while reaching around for pillows with the other.  When he was satisfied he had somewhere to put Sheppard without him instantly waking up, he gently shifted John over to the pillows.  John made a small, gentle sound as he settled into the bed, but aside from that, he didn’t stir.

“You did drool on my arm!”  Rodney rubbed at his jacket, remembering just in time to whisper.  “Ugh, Sheppard….”

John snored again, tilting his face sideways into the pillow.  Beneath the bruising, he looked very peaceful.

“I guess it’s okay, just this once,” Rodney told him softly, collecting his notes from the edge of the bed and bringing them over to the whiteboard.  It wasn’t really that late yet, not for Rodney.  It wouldn’t have been late for John either, not usually, but he seemed to be sleeping more and more each day.

Rodney arranged all the new pieces of information they’d managed to come up with in their abbreviated brainstorming session, then stood back and looked at the crime map they’d made.  He gasped, clapping his hand over his mouth a moment too late.

“Oh my god , they all did it,” Rodney muttered.  “None of them separately had the opportunity, each of them had a partial alibi, but if each of them took part of the crime….”

He trailed off, suddenly keenly aware of how crazy he looked, talking to himself in front of a map that looked like a serial killer’s idea board, with a suspect list pieced together entirely with secondhand information.  He’d been awake too long, barely sleeping the past few nights, and this wasn’t an Agatha Christie novel.  It was clearly time for him to go to bed. 

Rodney really shouldn’t have been surprised at this point, but he was woken in the early hours of the morning by something going wrong with John.  He sat bolt upright, brain rapidly trying to wake up enough that he could process the sudden beeping and shifting sounds.

His mind finally supplied the answer - nightmare.  He stumbled out of bed, glad there was an easy fix.  He would just wake John up, remind him where he was and that he was safe, and then they could both go back to sleep.

Except that wasn’t what happened.  Last night, John had woken up on his own as soon as Rodney had started moving around, but tonight, even when Rodney flicked the lights on, John stayed asleep.  He was curled on his side, breathing shallowly.  His wrist was tucked into his chest, so Rodney had a pretty good idea of what the nightmare was about.  Guilt ripped its way through Rodney- if he hadn’t pulled the sweatband off earlier, this wouldn’t be on Sheppard’s mind at all.

Rodney reached a hand out to Sheppard, but automatically yanked it back when he felt the heat radiating off John’s skin.  Rodney was no doctor, but he thought John’s fever felt nearly as bad as it had the worst night, when John had spent the whole night whimpering and being sick.  Now that Rodney knew what to look for, he could see that there were two fever spots set high in John’s pale face, and a thin sheen of sweat covered his skin.

“Sheppard!” he said, loudly as he dared.  “Sheppard, wake up!”

Sheppard stirred slightly, body twisting across the bed.  Rodney grabbed his shoulder, not sure if he was trying to wake John up or just keep him still.  John made a small sound in his throat and squirmed away from the touch.  His eyelids flickered open, but it didn’t seem that he recognized Rodney at all.  

“Sheppard!” Rodney said again.  “It’s okay, it’s just a nightmare.  You’ll be alright.  Wake up.”

John turned slightly at the sound of his name.  His eyes opened, and he stared sightlessy at Rodney for a second before moaning and curling up tighter.  His eyes slid closed again.

Rodney grabbed his shoulder again.  Sheppard squirmed, but Rodney gave him a small shake, hoping to jostle him back to awareness.  His eyes slid open, and Rodney leaned in close, hoping to take advantage of even the briefest moment of lucidity.

“It’s alright, it’s me,” he said.  “You’re dreaming.”

“Dreaming?” Sheppard whispered, voice hoarse.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, breathless with relief.  “Your fever is up again.”

“Yeah,” John breathed.

Rodney waited for the beeping from the machines to slow down, now that John was awake, but after a few seconds, John’s heart rate hadn’t calmed.

“It was a dream,” Rodney reminded his friend, and John nodded slightly, but his eyes were wide, darting back and forth around the room.  

“Jus’ a dream,” John whispered, sounding as though he wasn’t entirely sure.  

“Yeah,” Rodney agreed, giving John’s shoulder a slightly awkward pat.  Still, Sheppard seemed to appreciate it, and finally, the beeping slowed.

John’s eyes drifted closed again, Rodney watching in concern.  If John was having nightmares, nightmares bad enough that he couldn’t tell when he’d woken up, it seemed likely that he would keep having them.  Rodney could almost feel the heat rolling off John’s skin from where he was standing by the edge of the bed.  He wasn’t sure if that was due to his overactive imagination or if John was really that sick, but he didn’t want to risk it either way.

Rodney scooped up his headset from where he’d put it on the bedside table before going to sleep, retreating to the far corner of the room so he didn’t disturb Sheppard.  But as difficult as it had been to rouse John from his nightmare, Rodney didn’t think he needed to worry about that.

Rodney opened a channel to Keller and waited with mounting anxiety until he heard the doctor’s sleep-fogged voice.

“Rodney?  Is the Colonel alright?”

“He most certainly is not, ” Rodney hissed indignantly.  “His fever’s rising again, and he’s having these nightmares, really bad ones, worse than they have been.  He’s not waking up properly after them.  It’s...not good.”

Keller made a sympathetic sort of sound into the headset.  “I’m sorry to hear that, Rodney.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Rodney demanded.

“There’s not really anything I can do,” Keller told him, sounding infuriatingly reasonable.  “We don’t have a cure for nightmares, and a rise in temperature during the night time is to be expected.  I-I wish I had a better answer for you, but I can’t risk any more visits than I have been.”

Rodney sighed, glancing at Sheppard as he mumbled something and curled tighter, tangling himself into the sheets.

“There’s really nothing you can do?” he asked sadly.

“Give him another dose of his meds, and then all I can suggest is that you keep him awake for a little while.  Give the medication time to do its job.  Maybe then he’ll be able to sleep more easily.”

“Alright,” Rodney said.  “Bye, I guess.”

He tried to keep the anger out of his voice.  It wasn’t Keller’s fault that John was so sick, that he was having nightmares, that he couldn’t go to the infirmary, that he was still in danger.  It was just...it was starting to be a lot, and Rodney was at the end of his rope.  He couldn’t keep staying up all night every night, dealing with John’s medical emergencies.  He couldn’t keep trying to moderate Ronon and Sam’s relationship from a distance.  And he couldn’t keep watching Sheppard struggle like this.

Chapter Text

Rodney disconnected the call to Keller, and changed over John’s IV.  He couldn’t believe that less than a week ago, he’d been nervous to do this.  Now, adjusting John’s meds was the easiest and least offensive thing he’d had to do in days.  John watched him with glassy, half-lidded eyes, and Rodney’s heart ached over how sick he seemed to be.

“How do you feel?” Rodney asked once the IV was set up.

“Hot,” John breathed.

“Well, yeah,” Rodney said.  “That would be the fever.  I imagine you feel hot.”

Last time John’s fever had spiked, Keller had told Rodney he could put a cool cloth on John’s forehead.  John had been wracked with chills the last time, so that had been only dubiously helpful and certainly unpleasant, but if he was feeling hot then….

Rodney fetched a washcloth from the bathroom, ran it under cold water, and returned to drape it over John’s forehead.

“Ew,” John said softly.

“What?” Rodney asked.  He could imagine a cold washcloth on one’s forehead being many different things, but gross wasn’t usually one of them. 

John mumbled something that Rodney couldn’t hear.

“What was that?”

“Please g’t th’t off of me,” he whispered.

“Oh.  No, I’m not going to do that.  It’s helping with your fever.  It’ll make you feel better.”

“Makin’ me feel weird. ”

“I think it’s the fever that’s making you feel weird,” Rodney said reasonably.

John frowned, but didn’t say anything.  He didn’t make any attempt to remove the washcloth himself.  

“Makin’ me feel sick,” he mumbled after a few minutes.

Rodney froze as he tried to determine whether John actually felt sick, or whether he just didn’t like the washcloth.

“Sick like…?”

John groaned and flopped his head sideways.  The washcloth slipped down over his eyes, and he gave an outraged moan, but was either unwilling or unable to move his good hand enough to take it off.

“Sheppard?”

John’s throat worked in a way that Rodney was now horrifyingly familiar with, and he whimpered quietly.

“Sheppard?  Sick like what?” Rodney asked, aware that he sounded panicked and unsure how he was supposed to change that.

“Like ‘m gonna throw up,” John mumbled, and his lips thinned to a tight line.

“Why do these sorts of things always happen to us? ” Rodney whined, retrieving the trash can and telling himself sternly that this time, even if John threw up on his floor again, he was not going to yell at him.  “We’re nice people.  Well, nice enough.  I’m not, but you are, that should balance it out enough, shouldn’t it?  This isn’t fair… ”

“Isn’t,” John agreed with him, then shut his eyes and moaned again.  His good hand went to his stomach, and Rodney saw his face twist in pain.

Rodney hurried over with a new towel and hurriedly repeated his previously established nauseous-Sheppard routine.  John watched him blearily out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you going to throw up on me if I turn you over?” Rodney asked him.  “I won’t yell at you if you do, but, I mean, I’d rather you didn’t.  I’d very much rather you didn’t, in fact.  But I realize you may not have a choice in the matter.”

John didn’t respond, preoccupied as he was with a high fever and, Rodney assumed, trying very hard not to throw up on himself or Rodney.

“Okay,” Rodney said, sighing.  “Here goes.  Umm, if you do throw up on me, I forgive you.”

Rodney gathered his strength and heaved Sheppard partially upright.  John’s eyes went wide with pain, and he sagged heavily against Rodney.  Rodney struggled to support his friend’s weight, alarmed by how weak John had suddenly gotten.  Before he’d fallen asleep, he hadn’t been strong, but he’d at least been able to take some of his own weight.  Now, Rodney felt like he was trying to support something with the muscle control of a sack of flour.

John muttered something.  At first, Rodney didn’t even really realize that what he’d said was actually words, but then Sheppard started tapping his arm, trying to get his attention.

“Trash can,” he whispered.  “R’dney-”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rodney said, proud of how well he kept the panic out of his voice.  He settled John back on the bed, and then grabbed a trash can and nestled it into John’s arms.  

John, apparently, could not support the weight of the trash can.  It started to tip, and Rodney realized with some alarm that he was going to have no choice but to keep it steady.

“R’dney,” John whined.  Rodney didn’t know what he wanted.  He didn’t even know if Sheppard knew what he wanted.  All he knew was that his friend was scared and weak and in pain, and there was nothing that Rodney could do about it.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney whispered, rubbing John’s back as John stared mournfully into the trash can.  “I’m sorry.  I...I know you don’t feel good, and this isn’t very comfortable.  But I’m not sure how else I can help.”

“It’s okay,” John whispered, panting for breath.  He started to say something else, but was cut off when he started retching.

Rodney took a deep breath, steeling himself, and kept running his hand across John’s shoulders. 

“Don’t...w’nt this,” John mumbled pathetically.  

“Hey, it’s okay,” Rodney whispered, wondering where he had found the reserves to stand next to a vomiting Sheppard, holding his trash can and rubbing his back.  “It’s going to be alright, I know this isn’t...it’s not fun, but I’m here, and soon Ronon and Teyla and Sam will figure this out, and then we can get you into surgery, and...and you’re going to start feeling better pretty soon.”

John’s stomach was, unsurprisingly, almost completely empty - Rodney had barely been able to get him to eat anything the past few days, and it had been a struggle even to get him to drink water.  But even after he seemed to have gotten up everything he’d eaten, he was wracked with painful-looking dry heaves that hardly allowed him to catch his breath.

“Water,” John gasped when he was done.

“Sheppard, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea-”

“Please,” John whimpered, and Rodney wasn’t sure how he was expected to say no to him at a time like this.

“Okay,” Rodney agreed, awkwardly propping the trash can against Sheppard and retrieving his water bottle from the bedside table.  He looked at John, who blinked pathetically back, but didn’t move another muscle.  Realizing that John was not about to drink by himself, Rodney untwisted the cap and tilted the plastic to John’s lips.  

John took a few tiny sips, then shook his head slightly.  Rodney took the bottle back, capped it, and replaced it on the nightstand.  

John lasted two whole minutes before he was back to writhing on the bed, and Rodney had to grab hold of the trash can to stop him from tipping it over.  Whimpering weakly, John gestured for the trash can, and Rodney put it back in its place just in time.

Sheppard retched into the trash can again, spitting up the water he’d just managed to swallow.  He groaned miserably, and Rodney returned to rubbing his back.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney whispered.  He knew it wasn’t his fault, it was whichever Jorian had shot Sheppard with a crossbow, but it seemed like a nice thing to say.

Eventually, John subsided, and Rodney helped him lie back down as he removed the trash can.

“Don’,” John mumbled, reaching out for the trash can.  “‘M...sick.”

“It’s right here,” Rodney reassured him, putting the trash can out of Sheppard’s reach so he couldn’t knock it over, but well within Rodney’s.  “It’ll be okay.”

John whimpered softly, curling in on himself.  Rodney closed his eyes, desperately overwhelmed for what felt like the millionth time since Ronon had laid Sheppard on his bed.  How was he expected to deal with this?  How was he supposed to look at his best friend this sick, this injured, this unlike John, and just...keep going?

“Water?” John whispered, sounding heart-wrenchingly hopeful.  Rodney gritted his teeth, trying to make the horrible choice between withholding water from his sick friend and giving it to him, knowing it would just make him be sick again.

“You can’t keep it down,” Rodney told him miserably.  John looked up at him through his hair with the wide-eyed expression he sometimes used to use on Weir, only this was much worse because Rodney didn’t think John was doing it intentionally this time.

“Thirsty,” John whimpered.

“God, Sheppard, you won’t be able to keep it down,” Rodney said, his voice starting to shake.  “It’ll make you throw up again, and-and you’ll be in more pain, and...neither of us want that.”

“Okay,” John whispered, exhaling faintly, and the naked trust in John’s eyes was almost harder to bear than the pain had been.  

“Thank you,” Rodney said, patting his good shoulder again.  “I think...we can try again with water in a few minutes, alright?”

“Alright,” John whispered.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“Bad.  The meds...not helpin’....”

John trailed off, eyes slipping closed.  

“Once your fever comes down, it might not hurt so much.”

“Think...think I’m dyin’....”

Part of Rodney knew that Sheppard was no more dying than he had been earlier in the day, but it was still hard to hear.  “Sheppard, you’re not dying, Keller...Keller said you would be fine as soon as she can get the shrapnel out, and everyone’s trying to figure this out as fast as they can….”

John just groaned, curling more tightly into himself. 

Rodney adjusted the trash can, so it was within easier reach of John if he needed to get sick again, and then retreated slightly from John’s bed.  He knew he couldn’t call Jennifer again, she was clearly trying to get some rest and there was nothing else she could do to help.  Unless John’s symptoms got worse, which Rodney thought was in fact a distinct possibility at this point, he didn’t want to bother her.  Could he call Sam?  He just felt...he felt like he needed someone to talk to.  He couldn’t get through this alone.

Ronon and Teyla would probably both be asleep.  Ronon didn’t keep his comms near his bed, no matter how many times John asked him to, but Teyla did, and if Rodney called, she would be woken up.

He didn’t really want to bother her either, but watching John writhe on the bed as his nausea mounted again convinced him that he needed to talk to someone else.

He tapped his comms.  It took Teyla a moment to answer, but when she did, she sounded more alert than Jennifer had.

“Rodney?  Is something wrong?”

“I-”  He didn’t know what to tell her.  He had really just wanted to hear someone’s voice.

But before Rodney could gather his thoughts enough to respond, there was a knock at Teyla’s door, barely audible through the comms.  

“One moment,” Teyla said.  Rodney heard a faint voice come through the comms - female, he thought it might be Sam.  It was impossible to make out what the person was saying.

“Oh,” Teyla gasped, suddenly sounding afraid.  Sam said something else, and then there was the soft sound of a door shutting.

“What?  What is it?” Rodney demanded.

“One of the suspects...is missing,” Teyla told him, her voice halting.  “Locklynn is gone.  We think...we think that she is the one who shot John.  Somehow, she must have discovered that the Colonel is still alive.  She...she may try again to-”

“Oh,” Rodney squeaked, wishing that he hadn’t called Teyla after all.  It was better to know that he and Sheppard might be in danger, he supposed, but just barely.  He hadn’t wanted to call Teyla and discover that a maniac with a crossbow was hunting for them, he’d wanted someone to tell him that everything was going to be okay.

“Why were you calling?” Teyla asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Rodney said, embarrassed now that Teyla was actually on the line, now that he had something bigger to worry about.  “It’s...it’s nothing.”

Rodney looked back at the bed, at Sheppard, covered in sweat and doubled over, his good arm wrapped tightly around his stomach.  Rodney could only imagine how bad the cramps felt on top of Sheppard’s broken ribs.

“Rodney,” Teyla said gently.  “What is it?”

“It’s just that Sheppard’s worse,” Rodney blurted out.  “A lot worse.  He keeps throwing up, and his fever is way too high, I’m sure it’s dangerous but Keller says she can’t do anything about it.  And he’s having these horrible nightmares, and Keller can’t do anything about that either, and he’s just in so much pain….  He should have had surgery already, and now he probably won’t be able to because Locklynn is trying to kill him and she’s going to kill Sheppard and probably kill me too and I can’t do ANYTHING!”

Teyla sighed sadly through the comms, and Rodney could picture her face, gentle and sad and reassuring.

“Do not worry, Rodney.  I know that this must be very difficult for you, but we will not let Locklynn hurt you or the Colonel.  I promise you that.  You just...you just have to hold on for a little while longer.”

“But-”

“Now that we know who attempted to kill John, we can let Ronon do as he wishes,” Teyla pointed out.  Rodney was surprised by how much better that made him feel, at least about the whole John getting shot again piece.  He was still alone with a very ill Sheppard, and he still wasn’t sure what to do.

“You are doing very well,” Teyla said, as if she was reading his mind.  “Hopefully, it will all be over soon.”

“Okay,” Rodney said.  “Alright.  I...I can do this.  Umm, I better get back to Sheppard….”

“And I must go help Colonel Carter look for Locklynn,” Teyla agreed.  “Good luck, Rodney.”

John was in pain.  He didn’t know much, but he knew that.  He could hear Rodney talking to him, something about an escaped suspect, and this would all be over soon.  He didn’t want to hear it.  He didn’t care that this would all be over soon, what he wanted was for it to be over now.  He felt like he was falling apart, and there was nothing Rodney could do or say to fix it.

Nausea churned through his stomach, cramps tearing at his abdominal muscles.  He curled himself up as much as he could, but the movement made his shoulder and leg scream in pain.  He panted, wishing he could just pass out already.

“It’s okay, you’ll be okay,” Rodney whispered. 

John opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by a round of dry-heaving.  He couldn’t seem to get his stomach muscles to relax.  He had a moment of horror that he was going to throw up on Rodney’s bed, but he soon realized there was nothing left in his stomach.  Now it was just a matter of getting his insides to untwist enough that he could go to sleep, answer Rodney, even just catch his breath.  

“This is gross,” Rodney whispered, but there was no malice in his voice at all, only worry.

“Sorry,” John whimpered, a gag catching in his throat.

“Hey, one second, I have an idea,” Rodney said.  John tried to squirm away from Rodney - his last ideas to help with John’s nausea had not been very pleasant at all.  He heard Rodney fumbling for something, and then a gentle hand was flattening him out somewhat, easing him backwards on the bed.

“Here you go,” Rodney said, and then something warm was being placed over John’s abdomen.  “Carson gave me this that time I had to eat that weird root during the Athosian holiday ceremony and it gave me food poisoning.  Couldn’t keep anything down, so he couldn’t give me any medication, and….”

“I remember,” John croaked.  They’d been off missions for a whole week.  He didn’t want to think about it.  “Whatdya do to me?”

“It’s a heating pad,” Rodney said.  “It’ll help relax the muscles in your stomach.”

“Hot,” John whispered, looking down at the simple red heating pad that Rodney had placed over his middle.  He squirmed, trying to dislodge it.  He couldn’t remember why Rodney had set it would help.

“It’s supposed to be hot,” Rodney said quickly, spreading one hand over the heating pad and placing the other on John’s shoulder.  “Stop moving, leave it on there for a second and see if it helps.”

The heat was helping, John thought.  He could almost catch a full breath now, at least, and that was certainly better than it had been before.

But marginally better just meant that he wasn’t in so much pain that the only sound he could make was a pitiful whimper.  It didn’t mean that he felt like anything even remotely approaching “good.”  And even though Rodney’s heating pad was helping, John’s stomach was still cramping so intensely that he couldn’t lie still through it. 

John squirmed again as the next cramp hit, sending a horrible twisting sensation through his stomach and causing all of his abdominal muscles to go rigid.  He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could stop moving, wishing he could just let the heating pad do its job and make him feel better.  

John rolled over and curled into himself, choking back a whimper.  And when he stopped moving, he realized the warmth was still gentle against his midsection.  The cramps eased up slightly, and he let himself flop onto his back.  The heating pad came with him, and as John’s mind cleared from the unforgiving pain, he became aware of Rodney’s hand, spread across his stomach, keeping the heating pad in place.  John would have been mortified, if he wasn’t so busy being grateful to his best friend.

After a few more minutes, John found that he could lie still without the cramps forcing him to move.  Rodney took his hand away from John’s stomach, but left the one on his shoulder.  

“Better?”

John didn’t open his eyes, but managed a nod.  The pain was still there, still everywhere, but the warmth at his core had spread to his limbs and he could focus on that instead.  Suddenly, he felt very, very tired.

“Th’nks,” he managed, and he felt Rodney’s hand give his shoulder a squeeze.  Within a few more minutes, John was asleep.

Rodney had originally been planning on going to bed himself as soon as Sheppard went to sleep, but that plan had changed when he’d seen John unable to lie still from cramps.  What if he rolled in the night, and knocked off the heating pad?  The cramps had looked incredibly painful, they would probably wake him up, and then John would have to fight through the pain all over again.

Besides, Rodney was fairly sure that heating pads carried a warning that you weren’t supposed to leave them on unattended.  He was also fairly sure that it would be fine, but he wasn’t completely sure, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he set his best friend on fire.

He also wasn’t really tired.  He felt wired with the nervous, horrible sort of energy that he could now recognize as adrenaline.  Even if he got onto his cot again, he didn’t think he would be able to sleep.

The night passed like that, feeling both shorter and longer than it really was.  John never came fully awake, although occasionally he would squirm or mumble in his sleep.  Rodney got him to drink a few tiny sips of water.  They stayed down, although it seemed touch and go for a moment.  John’s fever continued to rise.  It never got quite as bad as it had the first night, but a week of lying injured in bed had weakened John greatly, and he didn’t seem much better off. 

Rodney knew there were guards outside his room.  He could hear them talking as they...switched posts, or reported it in, or did whatever it was that military men did when their commander was too sick to lead them.  He knew they were carefully positioned to always have a line of sight on Rodney’s door, but not look like they were carefully guarding Rodney’s door.  According to Teyla, Locklynn seemed to have vanished, and could be anywhere on Atlantis.  Sam didn’t want to send anyone to Rodney’s room until she had been found.  

Hearing Zelenka’s voice suddenly crackle through the comms was a horrible surprise.  For a moment, Rodney was confused - why was Zelenka calling him in the middle of the night?  Then, he realized it wasn’t the middle of the night anymore.  It was about seven in the morning, and Zelenka, like everyone else on Atlantis, had started working.

“What is it?” Rodney snapped.  He hadn’t exactly meant it to sound so mean, but god, when had he gotten this tired?  He didn’t want to deal with...what was it that Zelenka wanted to talk about?  He should probably figure it out, because he knew by this point Rodney himself was desperately and irrevocably behind on his work and Zelenka was almost certainly the one picking up the slack.

“I’m trying to get ahead on your...it looks like you were trying to adjust the power output to the Gateroom?

“Make it more efficient, yeah,” Rodney said, remembering this time to keep his voice down to avoid waking Sheppard.  He could have kicked himself for snapping at Zelenka, he was trying to help, and his work was going to keep Rodney from falling too far behind and possibly getting in trouble.

“Yes, well, I’m having some trouble understanding the base readings.  I think they might be...wrong?  It looks like perhaps you misplaced a decimal, and then that threw everything else off….”

Rodney had done these charts the day he had drugged Sheppard to get some work done in his room - he’d been pretty distracted, so there was a good chance they were wrong.  He didn’t like that Zelenka had pointed it out, though.

“I’ll share them with you,” Rodney promised.

“Wonderful.  I also had some other questions about-”

Rodney stopped paying attention, because John had just whimpered slightly.  Zelenka continued talking into Rodney’s earpiece, but Rodney’s full attention was focused on Sheppard.  John whimpered again, beginning to squirm on the bed.  A few more pained sounding noises, and Rodney recognized the telltale signs of a nightmare.

“Rodney?  Are you listening to me?”

Rodney disconnected the call without a second thought, already hurrying to John’s side.  If Sheppard was having a nightmare, Zelenka could wait.  He would have to wait.

“Sheppard?”  Rodney shook John’s shoulder, but John whined softly and twisted away from Rodney.  His eyes didn’t open.

“Sheppard.  John.”

Rodney shook his friend again, a little harder this time.  John’s breathing was harsh and ragged in his chest, the accompanying machines speeding up and out of control.

“ John.   Wake up!”  Rodney didn’t want to shake John too hard, for fear of hurting him, but from the look on John’s face, whatever he was dreaming about was plenty painful already.  Rodney shook John one last time, and his friend’s eyes finally flickered open.

“You were dreaming,” Rodney said, sighing with relief.  He waited for John’s breathing to calm, but John’s exhales kept ripping their way out of his chest, and his eyes didn’t seem to be focusing on much of anything.

“Sheppard?”

John’s breathing was almost at a whine now, and Rodney grabbed his friend’s shoulder and held it tight.  He recognized this territory, or at least he would have if he was alone with himself.  This looked an awful lot like the precursor to one of his own panic attacks, but John….  John didn’t get those.  Not like Rodney.  If John was on the edge of hyperventilating, trapped in a half-dream and unable to calm himself, he must be very, very sick indeed.

“Hey...hey, Sheppard.  Umm, John.  It’s...it’s okay.  It’s just a dream.  A dream, okay?  Can you hear me?”

Rodney wasn’t sure if it was due to the fever, the panic, or the nightmare, but it took almost two minutes to get John’s eyes to lock onto his.

“Can you hear me?” Rodney asked again, for what felt like the hundredth time, and finally, John nodded.

“It wasn’t real.  Sheppard, I promise, it wasn’t real.  You’re safe here.”
John nodded again, but he didn’t look totally convinced.  His eyes were still wide with panic, darting frantically around the room, and Rodney’s chest twisted.  He kept one hand on John’s good shoulder, and used his other to tap his comms - Keller was going to fix this, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Chapter Text

“Rodney, what is it?” Keller asked when she answered Rodney’s call.  She sounded exhausted.

“Sheppard...he’s still having nightmares.  Bad ones.  I gave him his medication, but his fever keeps going up.  He can barely talk.  He hardly knows where he is.  I need you to...do something.”

“Rodney-”

“Keller, please.”

He heard a small sigh.  “Rodney, I don’t want him to be in pain anymore than you do, I promise.    But Sam told me it’s still not safe for me to move him to the infirmary, we run the risk of another attack, especially with our main suspect missing ….”

“We could guard the infirmary.”

“It’s not safe….”

“He’s not safe here!” Rodney practically yelled.  Sheppard jumped slightly at the noise, although Rodney didn’t think he really registered the words.  “He’s...he keeps getting sicker.  He’s probably dying, and there’s nothing I can do.  He’ll...I know he won’t be safe if we stop hiding him.  But he’s...I can’t just watch….”

“You’re right,” Keller said softly.  “I knew there was a chance he would deteriorate enough that we would have to operate even without finding the assassin.  I don’t want to do that unless there’s literally no other choice, because not only does it put him at risk, it puts me and everyone else in the infirmary at risk too.  But I am not going to let John die without even trying to save him, and we’re coming up on the point where we may not have a choice.”
“Okay,” said Rodney, much more quietly now.  That was mostly all he’d wanted to hear.  “What...what do I do?”

“I want to keep him in your room as long as possible, to try to give the others a chance to find the assassin.  But if his fever keeps rising, that won’t be possible.  I want you to call me if it gets above 104, and I’ll pull him out.”

Rodney glanced down at the temperature reading - 101.8.  “Alright,” Rodney said.  “Bye.”

He hung up.  Sheppard turned towards him with bleary, half-closed eyes.

“You might have to go to the infirmary, you know,” Rodney informed him.  

John shook his head, but Rodney wasn’t fully sure he understood.

“It’s too dangerous,” Rodney insisted.  “You don’t want to die, do you?  Don’t bother answering that, I know you don’t.  You’re going to have to go sooner or later.”

John blinked glassily at him, then shook his head again.  He looked at Rodney with a question in his eyes, as though waiting for Rodney to tell him if he was doing the right thing.

Rodney sighed.  For a moment, things had felt almost normal.  He was arguing with Sheppard about Sheppard’s health and safety, and Sheppard was, as usual, ignoring him.  Of course, usually John was actually awake and aware.

“Do you understand a word I’m saying?” Rodney asked him, much more gently.  

John frowned, his exhausted, fevered brain struggling to make sense of the words.  Finally, far too late to be convincing, he nodded, looking almost proud of himself.

“If you say so,” Rodney told him sadly, slumping back into the chair he’d placed at John’s bedside.  He glanced back at the machine.  101.9.  

Rodney dropped his head into his hands, squeezing his palms against his temples.  He didn’t know if he was waiting for Sheppard’s temperature to go up or to hold steady.  Of course he didn’t want to put John or anyone else in any danger, but he didn’t think that either of them could take this much longer.  Maybe it was for the best if they all got this over with.

John drifted in and out of fever-misted dreams and visions.  Some of them were terrifying, others were just...strange.  Sometimes, he knew he was dreaming, and he could wake himself up.  Other times, he wouldn’t know where he was until he felt Rodney’s hand on his arm and heard his friend’s voice guiding him back to reality.  

He didn’t know what time it was.  He thought he’d heard Rodney talk to Keller at some point, something about moving him to the infirmary, something about his fever.  John wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he was awake now.

“Sheppard?”

John’s eyelids felt very, very heavy.  He struggled, trying to open them, but he couldn’t move a muscle.  He felt hot, so hot, and he panted for air with what little strength he had.

“Sheppard, can you hear me?”

Finally, John managed to wrench his eyes open.  A blurry Rodney was floating next to him, saying words that John couldn’t manage to make out.

“Your fever’s reached 104.  I’m going to call Keller.”

Rodney reached his hand out and laid it across John’s forehead, and John gasped in shock at the cold.  If he could have summoned the energy to move away, he would have.  

“Oh god, you’re burning up, is this…this is very bad, right?  I’m calling Keller.”

Keller.  Rodney was calling Keller.  It took John a moment to remember what that meant.  They were going to move him, they were going to take him to the infirmary.

John couldn’t remember why that was bad, now.  If it would stop him from feeling like this, he’d do almost anything.

He lost time, trapped in a haze of heat and pain.  He squirmed on the bed, wondering if he was dying.

“She’s on her way,” Rodney said.  “Just...hold tight a few minutes.”

“Water,” John gasped.  He knew he’d been nauseous earlier, and now he couldn’t figure out whether or not that was still true.  All he knew was that he was so hot, so dry, and he didn’t think he could last another second without a sip of water to wet his lips and throat.

But, to John’s horror, Rodney shook his head.  “I’m sorry, Sheppard, I can’t give you anything by mouth.  Keller just told me not to, because she’s bringing you in for surgery as soon as she gets you to the infirmary.  Your stomach needs to be empty for the anesthesia to work.”

“Water,” John whimpered.  “Please….”

John knew he could never explain this to Rodney, but his chest was starting to seize up, his dry, sore throat refusing to properly let air past.  He was still taking in oxygen, but he...needed water.  He needed water.  He needed water, or he was surely going to suffocate.

Rodney started apologizing again, but John couldn’t pay attention to him.  He was too focused on carefully keeping the air moving in and out of his lungs.  He was starting to feel a bit lightheaded, although he thought that might be from the fever.

And then, he heard the unmistakable sound of a gunshot outside of the room.  

At first, he thought it might be a hallucination.  But Rodney froze too, slowly turning towards the door.

“Was that what I think it was?” Rodney asked.  Sheppard wasn’t sure if he was expecting an answer.

And then Rodney’s comms crackled to life.  

Keller was yelling, so John could make out her voice just fine, although she was out of breath and sounded horribly panicked.

“They...followed me...right outside,” she gasped.  “They can’t get in yet...Atlantis locks.  Tried...shooting it...sparks...don’t know if it’s working.”

“Are you alright?” Rodney demanded, and even through the fever John had a momentary flash of pride, that Rodney was more worried about his friend than he was about his own safety.

“For...now.  They don’t...care about me.  But they’re...coming in.”

“Oh god, oh god,” Rodney whispered, putting a shaking hand to his mouth.  “There must be a way I can...lock the door from the inside, or...or barricade it somehow…..”

There was the sound of more gunshots, this time accompanied by an angry scream in an unmistakable voice.

Ronon had joined the fight.  John heard the familiar sound of Ronon’s gun, and the noise outside the room increased.

“Oh thank god,” Rodney muttered.  “Ronon’s here, and probably all of this will be over soon.  Then Keller can come, and you’ll get surgery, and everything is going to be alright.  Okay?”

John wasn’t sure if Rodney expected a response.  He wasn’t sure what response to give him, or if he could even come up with something vaguely relevant.  And he never found out, because as soon as he tried to start forming words, he began coughing instead.  

John tried to catch his breath, but his chest was tensing up and his throat was so dry that it felt like it was stuck closed.  John was choking and nauseous in turns, and he couldn’t stop coughing long enough to solve either problem.

“Sheppard?  Sheppard, oh god-”

Rodney’s hand hovered around his good arm, the other coming to rest on his chest.  John paid them no mind, completely preoccupied with his inability to draw breath.  The noise outside receded, and all he could hear was the sound of his own coughing.

Rodney was saying something that John couldn’t hear, and then his hands slid under John’s back and John felt himself being lifted.  He tried to help, but what little of his strength remained was focused on not passing out, and he sagged against Rodney.

“Come on, breathe,” Rodney ordered through the rushing in John’s ears.  To his surprise, he found that he could.  Cautiously, John sucked in a shallow breath, then another, and another.

“Better?” Rodney asked, and John nodded, still struggling slightly to draw breath.  The battle outside continued, the shouts blending with the sounds of his own ragged breath.

Rodney’s arms were starting to hurt.  Sheppard had finally stopped coughing when Rodney had pulled him upright, and now John was trembling against him, struggling to breathe and clearly unable to hold himself up.  His eyes were closed, the skin underneath them horrifyingly dark against his ashy skin, and the only sounds he made were his harsh inhales and exhales.

Rodney sighed.  Sitting upright didn’t seem to be very comfortable for Sheppard, but Rodney was afraid that lying down would cause him to choke to death.  Maybe if Rodney propped him up against the pillows….

But as soon as he got the pillows stacked behind Sheppard’s trembling back, John’s eyes flew wide and his breathing worsened.  He began slipping sideways off the pillows, coughing and gasping and completely unable to stop himself.

Rodney hauled John upright again, wondering if there was anything more he could do.  Should he rub John’s back?  Force him to drink some water?  Get him some different medication?  Rodney was completely out of his depth, and too many horrible allergic reactions over the years had taught him that once breathing was impaired, time was of the essence.

Rodney used one hand to tap his comms on.  “Keller!” he yelled.  “Can you get in here?”

“Not yet!” she yelled back.  He could hear the gunshots in both ears, terrifyingly loud and separated from him by only a thin wall, and tinny and echoey through the comms.

Rodney could only assume that Keller didn’t understand the importance of the situation.  Sure, there was a gunfight going on outside, but she was a doctor and John was dying too.  “He can’t breathe!”

“Oh god....,” Keller whispered.

“What’s going on out there?” Rodney demanded.

“I don’t...I don’t know,” she was out of breath still, but her voice was a little clearer than it had been before.  “I was about to go into your room when I saw that there was someone behind me.  I turned, and they...they shot at me.  They tried to force their way in through your door, but Ronon was patrolling, and he must have heard the gunshots.  He told me to hide, and now I’m...I can’t see as well.  But he’s here, and Teyla too.  A few other Marines.  Maybe Sam.”

“What?” Rodney said.  He must have misunderstood - it was, after all, difficult to pay attention to Jennifer when he was also focused on keeping John’s head tilted up, running a calming hand up and down his shoulder, counting his breaths in the back of his mind.  But it had sounded like Ronon, Teyla, a host of John’s soldiers, and Sam Carter were all failing to take down a single Jorian.  An armed Jorian, granted, but...still.  “Why haven’t they killed him yet ?”

“Rodney, it’s...not just one.  It seems like...a bunch of the Jorians were in on it.  I’m sure you can hear it, it’s...turned into a firefight out here.  There must be at least ten, it’s a miracle none of our people are hurt….”

John gave a particularly nasty wheeze, and mumbled something that Rodney couldn’t make out.  

“What was that?” Rodney asked.

“Need...help….”

“I know, Sheppard, Keller’s...it sounded like she’s pinned down right now, but she’ll be here as soon as she can….”

“No,” John whispered, and even the single word sounded like it had scraped its way out of his throat.  “They...need...help….”

Rodney blinked down at John, a little unsure what he was trying to say.  “They can handle it?” he eventually hazarded.

“Ronon…Teyla,” John whispered.  “Need help.”

Sheppard twitched, his head sliding forward, away from where Rodney had managed to prop it against his shoulder.  John coughed again, the sound raw and painful, and he twitched again.

“Stop moving,” Rodney told him gently.  

John shook his head, his cough thickening.  “Gotta...help,” he gasped, and managed to push himself away from Rodney.

Rodney gaped at his friend.  Surely, John couldn’t be saying what Rodney thought he was saying.  It was the fever, or the gunshots, or even Rodney’s own panic that was clouding John’s true meaning.  He couldn’t possibly think that he was in any kind of condition to affect the fight in any other way than bringing it to a quick end by his immediate death.

And then John moved again, looking longingly to the door, and Rodney remembered who it was that he was dealing with.

“No,” Rodney said sharply, grabbing John’s good shoulder.  It felt thin and bony beneath his hand, the heat from John’s skin warming Rodney’s fingers.  John tried to pull away, failing miserably.

“Leggo,” John coughed, and Rodney felt him tremble as his breathing came in stops and stutters.

Rodney knew that Sheppard would hate him for it later, might even hate him for it now if he was aware enough to process it, but Rodney would rather have his best friend alive and angry at him than choking to death in the middle of Rodney’s floor.  Tightening his hold on John’s shoulder, Rodney pulled John back towards him, his back against Rodney’s torso, his head falling backwards against Rodney’s shoulder.

“Nnno,” John breathed, trying to squirm away from Rodney again.

“You can’t go out there, Sheppard,” Rodney insisted, wrapping his arm across John’s chest.  Sheppard was weak enough at this point that he was effectively pinned, which was worrisome in and of itself.  Rodney wasn’t exactly known for his feats of strength.

“But….”

“If you can’t push me away, you’re not going to help in a fight against ten armed aliens who want to kill you,” Rodney pointed out.  “And that’s assuming you could even make it to the door.  Which I really, really doubt you can.”

John coughed again, but it sounded less defiant this time and more defeated.  “You...go...then….”

If the situation had been any less dire, Rodney might have laughed.  John wanted him to join a firefight?  How did John think that was going to help?  But John was clearly worried and desperate, which Rodney completely understood.  Rodney could hear the gunshots outside, along with occasional grunts of pain or shouts in voices that he recognized.  It painted the sketchy beginnings of a picture that was frankly rather terrifying.  It was impossible to tell whether or not his friends were winning, and there was a chance that at any moment, someone could shoot through the door.

But that wasn’t Rodney’s most pressing concern.  “I can’t leave you,” he whispered, not entirely sure if John could even hear him over the sound of his own labored breathing.  “You’ll die.”

John slumped backwards, not getting enough air but too weak to even pretend to hold himself up.  He tilted his head slightly and looked at Rodney desperately - Rodney could tell he wanted to say more, but couldn’t draw enough breath to form words.

Rodney realized, suddenly, that John’s lips were turning blue.  A pit of horror grew in his stomach.  John was dying, really and truly, not in some indeterminate future but now.  He needed more medical assistance than Rodney could give him to survive the next few minutes, and he needed the poisoned shrapnel removed from his shoulder.  If he didn’t get that, he...he was going to die in Rodney’s arms.

Rodney tapped his comms on again and screamed into the open channel.  “I don’t know who can hear me,” he yelled, “but I need Keller in here now !”

“Rodney, we are trying to make it safe!”  That was Teyla’s breathless, panicked-sounding voice.  “We are-”

“He can’t breathe!” Rodney yelled, sure they must not understand.  “He’ll be dead by the time you’re here.”

He heard a sharp intake of breath.  The comms clicked off.  There was another volley of gunshots, and Rodney recognized the distinctive sound of Ronon’s gun again. 

Then, silence.

“I’m getting Keller!” Ronon yelled through Rodney’s door.  “They’re all dead.”

A second later, he heard small hands pounding on his door.  “Rodney, they damaged the lock!” Keller yelled.  “You need to let me in!”

Even knowing John was about to receive medical attention, it was hard to leave him.  But Rodney carefully eased him backwards onto the pillows, wincing when the wheezing instantly got worse.  He ran to his door and threw it open, and before he had time to even process what he was seeing, his room was suddenly buzzing with people. 

Rodney was pushed back, against the wall, as Keller shoved past him towards the bed.  Rodney took a half-step forward as John struggled for breath, but he checked himself as Keller began bustling around him.  As much as Rodney wanted to stay near Sheppard, he would just be getting in the way.  He’d wanted Keller in here, and now he had to let her do her job.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ronon demanded, leaning over John and obscuring him from Rodney’s view.  “Sheppard?  You okay?”

“His fever’s too high,” Keller muttered anxiously.  “We have to move him.  Now.  Get him upright-”

The machines by John’s bed began beeping insistently, and at first Rodney assumed that Keller had just disconnected the wires, but from Teyla’s sharp intake of breath, that wasn’t the case.

“Sheppard?”  Rodney couldn’t stop himself from starting forward, now.

“Oh god, he’s not breathing,” Keller whispered.  “Ronon, pick him up.  The gurney’s in the hallway, we have to go now. ”

Ronon scooped John into his arms and left the room at a dead sprint.  Rodney’s question - Will he be okay? - died on his lips as Keller followed.  John...John would be okay, he had to be, there was no way they’d gone through this terrible week for nothing.  He was always okay.

Numbly, Rodney began to follow.  He grabbed the first thing that came to hand, one of John’s comic books, and brought it with him.  If he had this, if he brought something to entertain Sheppard when he woke up, then he would have to wake up.  Nothing else would make sense.

Rodney clutched the comic in his fist, and left his room for the first time in a week.

John hadn’t been in Rodney’s room since the surgery, so it was a little strange to be back.  He didn’t remember much of the last day of his stay, but from the way everyone had talked about it, it had been a very close call.  The last time he’d been here, he had almost died.

John had thought he might have to wait in the hallway - Mckay sometimes took a while to answer his door, depending on what he was doing.  But instead, it had only taken about ten seconds for the door to swing open, which was a relief, because John was pretty uncomfortable with a crutch tucked under his good arm, his other arm in a sling.

John would have thought that after a week stuck in Rodney’s room, he would have liked nothing better than to get a little distance.  But as it turned out, he missed Rodney.  He knew the scientist had come by to visit him in the infirmary, but even after Keller had removed the poisoned shrapnel from his shoulder, it had taken quite a while for John’s body to fight off the infection.  Most of the past few weeks was a blur of drugs and pain and half-sleep, and he remembered Rodney’s presence without really recording anything specific.  

“Hey,” Rodney said, gesturing towards the bed.  He looked a little alarmed, and John understood why. 

“You can say it,” John said.  “I look like hell.”

He’d only been let out of the infirmary that morning, and he knew he looked pale and thin and fragile.  His leg was in a walking cast, and he had a crutch tucked under his arm to take some of the weight off it.  He really probably should have two crutches, but that was impossible because his injured shoulder was still in a complicated-looking sling.  

Keller had suggested a wheelchair, but John had resoundingly refused.

“You do look like hell,” Rodney conceded.  “Are you sure you’re supposed to be up and about just yet?”
“Keller gave me permission,” John said with an accidental shrug that sent a bolt of pain through his arm.  “I’m just here to return this.”

He held out his hand, which contained the sweatshirt that Rodney had lent John when he was sick.

“Oh this, thanks,” Rodney said.  “I forgot I gave you this.”

Rodney looked like he possibly expected John to leave, but John didn’t want to.  The sweatshirt hadn’t really been his reasoning for visiting Rodney, instead, it was more of an excuse.  He couldn’t go on missions yet, probably wouldn’t be able to for a while.  But bothering Rodney while he was trying to do work - that was the next best thing.  

He plopped himself down on Rodney’s bed.  “See you washed the sheets,” he said.

“I replaced them,” he said with a grimace.   “Even Dr. Keller’s super high-powered cleaning solution couldn’t get all the blood and stuff out.”

“Ew,” John said. 

“I’ll say.  Now I have to sleep on this bed knowing your...bodily fluids were all over it, but, well, at least it’s better than sleeping in a cot, and hey, it’s probably better than sleeping in the infirmary too, all that...beeping and stuff….”

John pulled a face - they’d both spent enough time in the infirmary to know how hard it was to get a good night’s sleep there.  John was exhausted, and he thought that once he was finished talking to Rodney, he would probably go back to his own room for a nap.

“Oh!” Rodney said excitedly.  “Did you hear about who ended up being the assassin?”
John shook his head.  He’d asked Keller, once he’d been aware enough to process information, but she’d said that Rodney had wanted to tell him and she didn’t really understand the whole thing much herself anyways. 

“All of them,” Rodney said dramatically.  “All of our suspects.  We got it right.”

“They were working together?” John asked, the thrill cutting through his exhaustion.  “All of them?”

Rodney nodded, looking very smug.  John shot a glance towards where the board had been, but sometime in the past few weeks, Rodney must have taken it down.

“Oh, don’t worry, I have pictures,” Rodney said proudly.  “I made sure to get the proper proof, before I took everything down.  Sam…well, Sam’s been very busy sorting out what to do about the Jorians, and she wasn’t as vocal as she could have been.  But she’s very impressed.  Deep down.”

“She should be,” John agreed.  “Really.”

“Exactly.  We solved the whole thing, without talking to any of them, and you were high as a kite most of the time.”

“Sherlock and Watson,” John said, thinking of the half-remembered movie they’d watched while attempting to solve the crime.

“I suppose I do make a good Sherlock, don’t I?” Rodney muttered.

John frowned at him.  “Why do you get to be Sherlock?”

“I - I am a genius,” Rodney sputtered.  

John swallowed a smile and risked a one-armed shrug.  “Me too.”

“Watson is sometimes considered to be very intelligent too, you know,” Rodney mumbled, then, somewhat surprisingly, backed down.  “Fine, fine, you can be Sherlock.  But only because you almost died.”

John graced Rodney with a smile and shifted to a more comfortable position on Rodney’s bed.  “So, what else did I miss?”

Rodney brightened.  “Speaking of you almost dying, guess what Ronon did.”

John could not even begin to guess what the Satedan might have done, and he said as much.  Rodney made a sort of undignified snort that John thought might be a giggle, and sat down in his desk chair.

“He actually tried telling people that you rose from the dead.”

“I thought all of Atlantis knew I was alive.”

Rodney giggled again, nodding.  “Exactly.  That was the best part, watching Carter’s face when Ronon tried to make an unauthorized announcement to the Marines.”

John could only imagine.  “I’m sorry I missed it,” he said.

“Me too,” Rodney said quietly.  There was silence for a moment, and then Rodney stood up awkwardly, fiddling with his laptop.

“Want to, uhh, watch a movie or something?”
John had been planning on sleeping, but that could wait.  He had a horrible feeling that over the next few weeks, he’d be doing a lot of sleeping and not much else.

“Sure.  Maybe something with zombies.  In honor of Ronon.”

Rodney rolled his eyes.  “Or ridiculously indestructible pilots.”

“Or brilliant detectives.”

Rodney glared at him, dropping the laptop on the bed.  “I didn’t miss you, you know.”

“I know,” John said smugly, knowing full well that Rodney meant exactly the opposite.  “C’mon.  Let’s watch the movie.”