5 Times John Lost His Pants
Title: 5 Times John Lost His Pants
Author: Corona
Fandom: SGA
Characters: McKay, Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, Sheppard's pants
Rating: PG-13 for innuendo and pantlessness
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: 5 times John Sheppard has been separated from his pants
AN: 5 moments of silliness, written for
master_kogane, who deserved a 'Sheppard loses pants in variety of humourous ways' fic
1: In which John loses his pants
John doesn't remember green ceilings.
He vaguely remembers talking to some short nervous men...and Rodney was complaining about something
Then there was tea - yes, he's almost certain there was tea.
John frowns at the strange ceiling. Which, now he comes to think of it, looks a little more sparkly than it probably should. The possibility that he's been drugged is now looking more and more likely.
Though there is good news, he still has all his clothes, and he doesn't appeared to be tied up. His arms and legs aren't exactly moving but he's pretty sure they're free. His limb's inability to currently move might be a part of the drugging. Because he's sure that's not normally a good sign. He's also missing his gun, and his vest and apparently his hand eye coordination.
Which is about the time it occurs to him that he isn't alone.
There are four women peering down at him. They're smiling in a way that's particularly unnerving. Nothing that smiles that widely can end well. If there's one thing the Pegasus galaxy has taught him, it's that.
The feeling comes back into his limbs, all pins and needles and itching, and he makes some sort of attempt to move, since there's a good chance he will need to move at some point.
"Hi," he says carefully, which seems to be the right thing to say, because they lean a little closer, smiles becoming laughter. There's a tall brunette, who seems to be in charge, if only because she's brave enough to come and examine his hair. "Ok," he adds and it's somewhere between good-natured and 'ready to be freaked out.' One of them starts poking at his uniform jacket to see how it fits together.
He manages to get a hand up, he even manages to feel himself doing it.
"Umm, does anyone know where my friends went?" He sounds slightly drunk, but still understandable.
"Oooh." The woman at the end of the bed has worked out how his boots come undone, and is cheerfully unthreading both of his laces.
"Umm, you don't have to do that," John points out, but now she's got an entire boot loose and removes it with an expression that's almost surprised. One of them has stolen his belt. He only knows this because she's examining the end of it while her two cheerful sisters investigate what's in his pockets and -
"Whoah! Hey that's not allowed..." He's being separated from his pants, in a way that's very friendly yet determined.
"You can stay with us," the tall brunette says sensibly.
"Forever!" The cheerful woman holding his boots adds.
Which is about the time that he decides leaving is the absolute best idea ever.
He falls sideways off of the bed, legs still not exactly paying attention to his commands to 'escape now.' But he manages to half run and half fall out of the front of the tent.
"John!"
Teyla and Ronon have already gotten the village under some sort of control, or at least on the other end of their guns. Rodney looks like he's been shouting at someone, and they have his gear, which is nice because he thinks accidentally leaving guns with these smiling people would be wrong,
The tall brunette appears out of the tent behind him in a sweep of fabric and perfume, and she's not smiling any more.
"Do not let him leave!"
There's finger pointing and a sort of vague surge in his direction, and John really doesn't want to have to shoot any of these nice villagers over a misunderstanding. He figures that demanding his pants back will just aggravate them. So when Teyla throws her arm round his shoulders, he suggests that maybe they should make a sensible retreat.
Which he absolutely refuses to call 'running away,' no matter what Rodney says.
By the time they get back through the gate he can actually walk, and he no longer sounds drunk every time he uses a vowel.
"Did you misplace something?" Weir asks carefully. John tries to look professional without his pants on. It's harder than you would have expected.
"We had to leave in a hurry," he tells her.
"And your pants were...elsewhere at this point?"
"My pants were stolen from me at that point," John reports, his tone of voice is managing to suggest this was a traumatic experience. He doesn't think he quite intended that.
"They stole your pants!" Rodney enunciates each word clearly enough for everyone on Atlantis to hear. "Honestly I don't believe you sometimes."
Weir is clearly not even trying to hold a smile.
"Try not to make a habit of it."
"Believe me I won't," John says, and he means it, he really, really does.
2: In which John's pants are sacrificed for the cause
"How many times have we had the discussion about things you've seen on TV not working in real life?"
John isn't going to bother looking over his shoulder because he knows Rodney is still over the other end of the pit, sulking.
Instead he drags his makeshift tool back down for another try.
He's tied his gun to the end of his jacket, which is, in turn, tied to his pants. He's attempting, with a combination of skill and judgement, to hook it round one of the higher branches. Once he's done that he plans to haul himself out. His throws are getting a little more exact...he thinks.
He tosses the gun up again, listens to it clank against the edge of a tree root and tumble back down again. The face full of dirt is unpleasant, the sound of his gun bouncing off of the floor twenty six times in a row isn't exactly fun either.
"I'm refusing to sit and do nothing, unlike some people!"
"Yes yes, you're lost without some sort of hilarious and wildly improbable escape plan. You haven't lost the ability to be wildly optimistic. One thing you have lost though is unfortunately your dignity."
Which is quite obviously a cheap dig at the fact that he's currently not wearing any pants.
"I don't see you sacrificing clothing for the cause."
"Because I'd rather not be sitting here in my underwear when the people-trapping villages come to eat us."
"It's probably a bear trap actually," John corrects.
"Oh, fantastic, maybe we'll get lucky and a bear will fall in here too!"
Which is stupid because a bear is far more likely to jump in and eat them. Only this would be bad because there's no ammo in John's gun (which is why he's currently hurling it over his head.)
"You have no idea how ridiculous you look from over here," Rodney points out.
"You have no idea how unhelpful you look from over here," John counters and flings his clothing escape tool up in an arc, it clatters to a stop and then dangles.
"Yes, oh yes!" John shouts and then regrets it when he gets a mouth full of dirt.
"What?" Rodney is no longer sulking, he's now right next to him.
"It's caught, I'm hooked."
Rodney blinks at him. "You're kidding that actually worked?"
John gives a tug on the material, it goes taut but doesn't pull apart.
"I'm gonna -"
"Yes, come on climb out." Rodney adds frantic hand gestures, in case the enthusiasm wasn't enough.
John is already one step ahead. He lets the material take his weight. The cloth complains quietly but doesn't tear. He can get a pretty good grip on the dirt sides with his boots so he decides that quick but careful is going to be his best shot.
Cheap uniforms are really not designed with scaling your way out of pits in mind. The sleeve he's holding on to isn't exactly the best handhold either. He has it wrapped round his palm and he's still slipping and skidding. But the lip, and it's tangle of roots and grass isn't more than a couple of feet away and he's going to reach it. One more step and he'll be able to catch it.
Something rips and John drops a foot. "Jesus!"
"That's not going to hold," Rodney points out, half helpful and half panic.
John's kind of figured that out for himself.
He can feel his bodyweight very slowly pulling the seams apart and this is really going to be close.
He takes one more step, reaches up with his free hand.
Something tears loudly and finally and John's left spinning by one hand while his gun clatters to the ground (narrowly missing Rodney if the yelp is anything to go by) and the remains of his uniform flutter down after it.
He takes a breath, then another, and hauls himself over the edge.
"Well I don't see any bears up here," John calls down, and Rodney scowls up at him.
"And I'm getting out of her how exactly?"
John does a quick search of the perimeter, and finds a solution, though Rodney isn't going to like it.
He pushes the end of a fallen tree over into the edge of the pit.
Rodney gives him his much-used expression of disbelief.
"Oh thank you yes the tree is much more helpful."
"At least you still have pants," John points out.
3: In which it becomes an ongoing theme
The forest is being bombarded by Wraith blasts, which are shredding the foliage and coming perilously close to shredding John.
Rodney and Teyla are ahead of him, Ronon running behind, and they're both firing into the trees towards their best guess at where their pursuers actually are...which at the moment seems to be everywhere.
John knows for a fact that they're running away from the gate but at the moment it's the only direction that isn't crawling with Wraith.
"Didn't you say there was a river this way?"
"I said there used to be a river," Ronon shouts over his shoulder. "I haven't been here for a while."
"Well if we're heading in the right direction it can't be that much - whoah!" The ground is gone, it's literally not there anymore. John drops like a rock, arms wheeling ridiculously. His knee hits dirt, and a second later he hits water, then sinks through that as well.
When John manages to get back to the surface it becomes clear that 'river' is an understatement. It's a furious white freeway of water that's already dragged him about half a mile.
Ronon flies past him in a rush of water and kit, doing his best to swim against the flow. It's clearly a losing battle. John is swallowing more water than he's managing to get through and he's lost a boot and the whole world is soaking and he can't hear a thing.
Something thumps into his back, something that's flailing and coughing and not happy at all.
"Rodney!"
"This is so much better!" Rodney kicks him and John isn't entirely sure if it's on purpose or not. "Your escape plan is going to kill me!"
John's foot smacks into something underwater and he slams to a stop. Rodney only stops as well because he still has a hand tangled round the back of his vest. A wave takes them under when they fail to move with the flow.
Rodney drags him up by the back of his jacket. "What are-"
"I'm stuck, hang on!" John tries to drag his leg out of whatever the hell it's hung up on, and gets a mouthful of water for his trouble.
He takes a breath, goes under long enough to tug his laces open and shake his other boot off.
The moment he's free the water snatches them both up and flings them downstream. Though it quickly becomes clear that 'downstream' is not entirely devoid of problems. Ronon failed to mention the waterfall. In fact there are many things Ronon fails to mention until long after they've become a moot point.
Rodney spots it a fraction of a second after he does.
"This is all your fault," he says simply.
"I didn't put the waterfall there!" John points out.
"This is not better than the Wraith!" Rodney says in a high shrill voice and John really wants to reply but then he's thrown into the air and then he's too busy falling-
It's a long fall, and he's mostly breathing mist but John does eventually hit water.
He goes deep, and when he makes his way back to the surface his head is ringing and his chest hurts, but he's absolutely certain he's not dead.
Rodney is dragging himself towards dry land, and John makes some sort of effort to do the same.
He eventually washes up on the muddy edge of the bank. Where Teyla is coughing and Ronon is looking like a soaked and angry cat. He's so happy that all of them are soaking wet but alive that for a moment he doesn't realise something of importance.
The river appears to have taken his pants.
He tries to be surprised about that...and fails utterly.
4 In which this really isn't funny anymore
It's all Rodney's fault really.
They'd been in a perfectly nice forest, not being killed, not being turned into bugs or sacrificed, or chased by Wraith. Absolutely nothing had happened. Ronon had even stopped glaring at stuff.
Until Rodney had decided to mention that this was about the time something normally tried to kill them.
Ten minutes later and John is shin deep inside some sort of plant creature that's trying to eat him feet first and the damn thing is the size of a house and seems to be made entirely of thorns and attitude.
So really this is all Rodney's fault.
Teyla is trying to untangle the vines from around his legs, bright red droplets welling on her hands every time the thorns snag her while Rodney holds the back of his jacket so the damn thing can't suck him in. And Ronon is attacking the whole mass with a reassuring amount of fury.
Which would have been more reassuring if it was actually having any effect. The plant barely seems to be noticing.
John doesn't have the faintest idea why he's apparently so tasty all of a sudden.
Teyla has dragged enough vines off that John can prise one foot out, which he promptly uses to smack the vines that still have his leg prisoner. But there aren't exactly any large vulnerable spots to aim at and the little vines seem absolutely intent on acquiring his other boot again and adding it to their collection.
McKay is pretty much the only thing preventing him from getting sucked in.
Until suddenly he's not -
"Oh shi - McKay!"
He skids along the floor, before coming to an abrupt stop, and Rodney is no longer holding him, he's dragging him out of his belt and holster -
And then ok, not his belt and holster anymore, his pants, and there are certain things that probably shouldn't merit that much wildly uncontrolled enthusiasm.
"Hey, Hey!"
"Oh like this is new for you!" Rodney complains over the sound of the plant eating his boot, and just like that John gets it, and he feels like an idiot for not getting it in the first place.
He tries to convey in sign language how his boots are going to have to come off before the pants anyway, and he thinks one of them has already been mostly devoured by the foliage.
Ronon manages to be incredibly quick on the uptake and refocuses his attention on trying to cut through John's boot laces.
"Up damn it!" Rodney says, in that infuriatingly demanding voice, and John lifts his hips. Together Rodney and Teyla drag him out of his pants, leaving his heels to dig up clods of dirt, until gravity takes them all down. In a very undignified and partially pantless heap.
John suspects that he's going to be ever so slightly embarrassed about that later. Some time when they're not in the path of hungry carnivorous plants.
Which are currently attacking the empty left leg of his pants with all the enthusiasm it had previously focused on him.
Great, nearly eaten by a stupid plant.
Ronon glares at the thing, as if daring it to slither forward and attack him.
John suspects that 'ran away from a carnivorous plant' is something Ronon will not allow onto his list of 'things that happened today.'
"OK," John says carefully. "That's another one of those things we don't talk about."
5: In which this time, it's definitely Rodney's fault
"What is it?"
'It' is a long spindly thing that looks like the bastard love child of a meat thermometer and a whisk.
"This? This is...this is...."
Rodney clearly doesn't have the faintest idea, even if he is physically incapable of admitting it.
"You don't know do you?"
"I can make a more than educated guess," Rodney says tartly. "I think it's medical equipment, I think it targets things that don't belong by their chemical make-up. "
"You think? You mean poking stuff with it hasn't helped?"
Rodney flares his nostrils at him. "It hasn't done anything yet, I think it's broken."
"You think it's broken?"
Rodney drops it on the table, which it promptly decides to roll across and jam into John's pants.
There's a tiny hole in John's pants now.
"McKay?"
"What? It was an accident. Besides it's tiny, you can hardly see it!"
The hole grows very steadily while they watch it.
"Umm?"
John's pants are now very slowly dissolving.
"McKay!"
"Ok that absolutely wasn't supposed to happen...probably."
It feels really, really disturbing, like his pants are being removed molecule by molecule by lots of tiny little ants.
"Does the thing know that my pants aren't in fact some sort of foreign object currently attacking my legs?"
"How can it not know! How can it seriously think that people will want to walk around having their clothes randomly dissolved. That would have to be the most stupid piece of technology ever."
John's pants are coming apart in little streams of carbon.
"We're talking about the ancients here," John reminds him, because yeah, they both know how that usually ends.
Which is about the time he's struck by a really bad thought.
"This thing is going to stop at my pants right?" John adds warily.
"You think it's going to start dissolving the rest of your clothes?"
"No, Rodney I'm worried it's going to start dissolving the rest of my legs!" He corrects.
"That's not going to happen," Rodney says. But John's not buying it for a minute because he's wearing the face that says 'I'm mostly sure that isn't going to happen.'
"I could have been a failed experiment, it could have dissolved all the scientists that tried it out and that's why they never used it!" John complains, and now he's trying vainly to hold his pants away from his legs, in a way he's absolutely certain looks ridiculous. Until there's nothing left of them to hold.
"If it had dissolved the scientists they would have reconfigured it into some sort of weapon they wouldn't have left it lying around in some -"
"In some highly secure database," John points out, and god this is so typical, he's going to be dissolved. "I'm going to be dissolved!"
"You're not going to be dissolved, I think you'd notice if you were being dissolved."
John's pants no longer exist, which is more than a little annoying.
He waits, just in case the 'being dissolved' part takes a minute to kick in.
"What's happening?"
Zelenka is eyeing them both curiously from the doorway.
"Rodney just dissolved my pants," John says flatly.
"Accidentally dissolved your pants, don't make this all out to be my fault."
"It is your fault!"
"Oh, I'm sorry if I sometimes want to look at things. If I'd known accidental dissolution was a possibility I would -"
"I'm running out of pants Rodney!" John snaps.
"I am going to leave and pretend that I never came in," Zelenka says carefully, and he's gone before John can finish making any sort of point.
There's a pause.
"Congratulations, now we're weird," John complains.
"How many times have you lost your pants now?" Rodney sounds honestly curious, which somehow just makes it worse.
There's another pause, this one longer and angrier.
"Five," John says eventually.
//Requisition form 66c- Request for new uniform pants, Lieutenant Colonel, Sheppard J: Denied//
Author: Corona
Fandom: SGA
Characters: McKay, Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, Sheppard's pants
Rating: PG-13 for innuendo and pantlessness
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: 5 times John Sheppard has been separated from his pants
AN: 5 moments of silliness, written for
master_kogane, who deserved a 'Sheppard loses pants in variety of humourous ways' fic
1: In which John loses his pants
John doesn't remember green ceilings.
He vaguely remembers talking to some short nervous men...and Rodney was complaining about something
Then there was tea - yes, he's almost certain there was tea.
John frowns at the strange ceiling. Which, now he comes to think of it, looks a little more sparkly than it probably should. The possibility that he's been drugged is now looking more and more likely.
Though there is good news, he still has all his clothes, and he doesn't appeared to be tied up. His arms and legs aren't exactly moving but he's pretty sure they're free. His limb's inability to currently move might be a part of the drugging. Because he's sure that's not normally a good sign. He's also missing his gun, and his vest and apparently his hand eye coordination.
Which is about the time it occurs to him that he isn't alone.
There are four women peering down at him. They're smiling in a way that's particularly unnerving. Nothing that smiles that widely can end well. If there's one thing the Pegasus galaxy has taught him, it's that.
The feeling comes back into his limbs, all pins and needles and itching, and he makes some sort of attempt to move, since there's a good chance he will need to move at some point.
"Hi," he says carefully, which seems to be the right thing to say, because they lean a little closer, smiles becoming laughter. There's a tall brunette, who seems to be in charge, if only because she's brave enough to come and examine his hair. "Ok," he adds and it's somewhere between good-natured and 'ready to be freaked out.' One of them starts poking at his uniform jacket to see how it fits together.
He manages to get a hand up, he even manages to feel himself doing it.
"Umm, does anyone know where my friends went?" He sounds slightly drunk, but still understandable.
"Oooh." The woman at the end of the bed has worked out how his boots come undone, and is cheerfully unthreading both of his laces.
"Umm, you don't have to do that," John points out, but now she's got an entire boot loose and removes it with an expression that's almost surprised. One of them has stolen his belt. He only knows this because she's examining the end of it while her two cheerful sisters investigate what's in his pockets and -
"Whoah! Hey that's not allowed..." He's being separated from his pants, in a way that's very friendly yet determined.
"You can stay with us," the tall brunette says sensibly.
"Forever!" The cheerful woman holding his boots adds.
Which is about the time that he decides leaving is the absolute best idea ever.
He falls sideways off of the bed, legs still not exactly paying attention to his commands to 'escape now.' But he manages to half run and half fall out of the front of the tent.
"John!"
Teyla and Ronon have already gotten the village under some sort of control, or at least on the other end of their guns. Rodney looks like he's been shouting at someone, and they have his gear, which is nice because he thinks accidentally leaving guns with these smiling people would be wrong,
The tall brunette appears out of the tent behind him in a sweep of fabric and perfume, and she's not smiling any more.
"Do not let him leave!"
There's finger pointing and a sort of vague surge in his direction, and John really doesn't want to have to shoot any of these nice villagers over a misunderstanding. He figures that demanding his pants back will just aggravate them. So when Teyla throws her arm round his shoulders, he suggests that maybe they should make a sensible retreat.
Which he absolutely refuses to call 'running away,' no matter what Rodney says.
By the time they get back through the gate he can actually walk, and he no longer sounds drunk every time he uses a vowel.
"Did you misplace something?" Weir asks carefully. John tries to look professional without his pants on. It's harder than you would have expected.
"We had to leave in a hurry," he tells her.
"And your pants were...elsewhere at this point?"
"My pants were stolen from me at that point," John reports, his tone of voice is managing to suggest this was a traumatic experience. He doesn't think he quite intended that.
"They stole your pants!" Rodney enunciates each word clearly enough for everyone on Atlantis to hear. "Honestly I don't believe you sometimes."
Weir is clearly not even trying to hold a smile.
"Try not to make a habit of it."
"Believe me I won't," John says, and he means it, he really, really does.
2: In which John's pants are sacrificed for the cause
"How many times have we had the discussion about things you've seen on TV not working in real life?"
John isn't going to bother looking over his shoulder because he knows Rodney is still over the other end of the pit, sulking.
Instead he drags his makeshift tool back down for another try.
He's tied his gun to the end of his jacket, which is, in turn, tied to his pants. He's attempting, with a combination of skill and judgement, to hook it round one of the higher branches. Once he's done that he plans to haul himself out. His throws are getting a little more exact...he thinks.
He tosses the gun up again, listens to it clank against the edge of a tree root and tumble back down again. The face full of dirt is unpleasant, the sound of his gun bouncing off of the floor twenty six times in a row isn't exactly fun either.
"I'm refusing to sit and do nothing, unlike some people!"
"Yes yes, you're lost without some sort of hilarious and wildly improbable escape plan. You haven't lost the ability to be wildly optimistic. One thing you have lost though is unfortunately your dignity."
Which is quite obviously a cheap dig at the fact that he's currently not wearing any pants.
"I don't see you sacrificing clothing for the cause."
"Because I'd rather not be sitting here in my underwear when the people-trapping villages come to eat us."
"It's probably a bear trap actually," John corrects.
"Oh, fantastic, maybe we'll get lucky and a bear will fall in here too!"
Which is stupid because a bear is far more likely to jump in and eat them. Only this would be bad because there's no ammo in John's gun (which is why he's currently hurling it over his head.)
"You have no idea how ridiculous you look from over here," Rodney points out.
"You have no idea how unhelpful you look from over here," John counters and flings his clothing escape tool up in an arc, it clatters to a stop and then dangles.
"Yes, oh yes!" John shouts and then regrets it when he gets a mouth full of dirt.
"What?" Rodney is no longer sulking, he's now right next to him.
"It's caught, I'm hooked."
Rodney blinks at him. "You're kidding that actually worked?"
John gives a tug on the material, it goes taut but doesn't pull apart.
"I'm gonna -"
"Yes, come on climb out." Rodney adds frantic hand gestures, in case the enthusiasm wasn't enough.
John is already one step ahead. He lets the material take his weight. The cloth complains quietly but doesn't tear. He can get a pretty good grip on the dirt sides with his boots so he decides that quick but careful is going to be his best shot.
Cheap uniforms are really not designed with scaling your way out of pits in mind. The sleeve he's holding on to isn't exactly the best handhold either. He has it wrapped round his palm and he's still slipping and skidding. But the lip, and it's tangle of roots and grass isn't more than a couple of feet away and he's going to reach it. One more step and he'll be able to catch it.
Something rips and John drops a foot. "Jesus!"
"That's not going to hold," Rodney points out, half helpful and half panic.
John's kind of figured that out for himself.
He can feel his bodyweight very slowly pulling the seams apart and this is really going to be close.
He takes one more step, reaches up with his free hand.
Something tears loudly and finally and John's left spinning by one hand while his gun clatters to the ground (narrowly missing Rodney if the yelp is anything to go by) and the remains of his uniform flutter down after it.
He takes a breath, then another, and hauls himself over the edge.
"Well I don't see any bears up here," John calls down, and Rodney scowls up at him.
"And I'm getting out of her how exactly?"
John does a quick search of the perimeter, and finds a solution, though Rodney isn't going to like it.
He pushes the end of a fallen tree over into the edge of the pit.
Rodney gives him his much-used expression of disbelief.
"Oh thank you yes the tree is much more helpful."
"At least you still have pants," John points out.
3: In which it becomes an ongoing theme
The forest is being bombarded by Wraith blasts, which are shredding the foliage and coming perilously close to shredding John.
Rodney and Teyla are ahead of him, Ronon running behind, and they're both firing into the trees towards their best guess at where their pursuers actually are...which at the moment seems to be everywhere.
John knows for a fact that they're running away from the gate but at the moment it's the only direction that isn't crawling with Wraith.
"Didn't you say there was a river this way?"
"I said there used to be a river," Ronon shouts over his shoulder. "I haven't been here for a while."
"Well if we're heading in the right direction it can't be that much - whoah!" The ground is gone, it's literally not there anymore. John drops like a rock, arms wheeling ridiculously. His knee hits dirt, and a second later he hits water, then sinks through that as well.
When John manages to get back to the surface it becomes clear that 'river' is an understatement. It's a furious white freeway of water that's already dragged him about half a mile.
Ronon flies past him in a rush of water and kit, doing his best to swim against the flow. It's clearly a losing battle. John is swallowing more water than he's managing to get through and he's lost a boot and the whole world is soaking and he can't hear a thing.
Something thumps into his back, something that's flailing and coughing and not happy at all.
"Rodney!"
"This is so much better!" Rodney kicks him and John isn't entirely sure if it's on purpose or not. "Your escape plan is going to kill me!"
John's foot smacks into something underwater and he slams to a stop. Rodney only stops as well because he still has a hand tangled round the back of his vest. A wave takes them under when they fail to move with the flow.
Rodney drags him up by the back of his jacket. "What are-"
"I'm stuck, hang on!" John tries to drag his leg out of whatever the hell it's hung up on, and gets a mouthful of water for his trouble.
He takes a breath, goes under long enough to tug his laces open and shake his other boot off.
The moment he's free the water snatches them both up and flings them downstream. Though it quickly becomes clear that 'downstream' is not entirely devoid of problems. Ronon failed to mention the waterfall. In fact there are many things Ronon fails to mention until long after they've become a moot point.
Rodney spots it a fraction of a second after he does.
"This is all your fault," he says simply.
"I didn't put the waterfall there!" John points out.
"This is not better than the Wraith!" Rodney says in a high shrill voice and John really wants to reply but then he's thrown into the air and then he's too busy falling-
It's a long fall, and he's mostly breathing mist but John does eventually hit water.
He goes deep, and when he makes his way back to the surface his head is ringing and his chest hurts, but he's absolutely certain he's not dead.
Rodney is dragging himself towards dry land, and John makes some sort of effort to do the same.
He eventually washes up on the muddy edge of the bank. Where Teyla is coughing and Ronon is looking like a soaked and angry cat. He's so happy that all of them are soaking wet but alive that for a moment he doesn't realise something of importance.
The river appears to have taken his pants.
He tries to be surprised about that...and fails utterly.
4 In which this really isn't funny anymore
It's all Rodney's fault really.
They'd been in a perfectly nice forest, not being killed, not being turned into bugs or sacrificed, or chased by Wraith. Absolutely nothing had happened. Ronon had even stopped glaring at stuff.
Until Rodney had decided to mention that this was about the time something normally tried to kill them.
Ten minutes later and John is shin deep inside some sort of plant creature that's trying to eat him feet first and the damn thing is the size of a house and seems to be made entirely of thorns and attitude.
So really this is all Rodney's fault.
Teyla is trying to untangle the vines from around his legs, bright red droplets welling on her hands every time the thorns snag her while Rodney holds the back of his jacket so the damn thing can't suck him in. And Ronon is attacking the whole mass with a reassuring amount of fury.
Which would have been more reassuring if it was actually having any effect. The plant barely seems to be noticing.
John doesn't have the faintest idea why he's apparently so tasty all of a sudden.
Teyla has dragged enough vines off that John can prise one foot out, which he promptly uses to smack the vines that still have his leg prisoner. But there aren't exactly any large vulnerable spots to aim at and the little vines seem absolutely intent on acquiring his other boot again and adding it to their collection.
McKay is pretty much the only thing preventing him from getting sucked in.
Until suddenly he's not -
"Oh shi - McKay!"
He skids along the floor, before coming to an abrupt stop, and Rodney is no longer holding him, he's dragging him out of his belt and holster -
And then ok, not his belt and holster anymore, his pants, and there are certain things that probably shouldn't merit that much wildly uncontrolled enthusiasm.
"Hey, Hey!"
"Oh like this is new for you!" Rodney complains over the sound of the plant eating his boot, and just like that John gets it, and he feels like an idiot for not getting it in the first place.
He tries to convey in sign language how his boots are going to have to come off before the pants anyway, and he thinks one of them has already been mostly devoured by the foliage.
Ronon manages to be incredibly quick on the uptake and refocuses his attention on trying to cut through John's boot laces.
"Up damn it!" Rodney says, in that infuriatingly demanding voice, and John lifts his hips. Together Rodney and Teyla drag him out of his pants, leaving his heels to dig up clods of dirt, until gravity takes them all down. In a very undignified and partially pantless heap.
John suspects that he's going to be ever so slightly embarrassed about that later. Some time when they're not in the path of hungry carnivorous plants.
Which are currently attacking the empty left leg of his pants with all the enthusiasm it had previously focused on him.
Great, nearly eaten by a stupid plant.
Ronon glares at the thing, as if daring it to slither forward and attack him.
John suspects that 'ran away from a carnivorous plant' is something Ronon will not allow onto his list of 'things that happened today.'
"OK," John says carefully. "That's another one of those things we don't talk about."
5: In which this time, it's definitely Rodney's fault
"What is it?"
'It' is a long spindly thing that looks like the bastard love child of a meat thermometer and a whisk.
"This? This is...this is...."
Rodney clearly doesn't have the faintest idea, even if he is physically incapable of admitting it.
"You don't know do you?"
"I can make a more than educated guess," Rodney says tartly. "I think it's medical equipment, I think it targets things that don't belong by their chemical make-up. "
"You think? You mean poking stuff with it hasn't helped?"
Rodney flares his nostrils at him. "It hasn't done anything yet, I think it's broken."
"You think it's broken?"
Rodney drops it on the table, which it promptly decides to roll across and jam into John's pants.
There's a tiny hole in John's pants now.
"McKay?"
"What? It was an accident. Besides it's tiny, you can hardly see it!"
The hole grows very steadily while they watch it.
"Umm?"
John's pants are now very slowly dissolving.
"McKay!"
"Ok that absolutely wasn't supposed to happen...probably."
It feels really, really disturbing, like his pants are being removed molecule by molecule by lots of tiny little ants.
"Does the thing know that my pants aren't in fact some sort of foreign object currently attacking my legs?"
"How can it not know! How can it seriously think that people will want to walk around having their clothes randomly dissolved. That would have to be the most stupid piece of technology ever."
John's pants are coming apart in little streams of carbon.
"We're talking about the ancients here," John reminds him, because yeah, they both know how that usually ends.
Which is about the time he's struck by a really bad thought.
"This thing is going to stop at my pants right?" John adds warily.
"You think it's going to start dissolving the rest of your clothes?"
"No, Rodney I'm worried it's going to start dissolving the rest of my legs!" He corrects.
"That's not going to happen," Rodney says. But John's not buying it for a minute because he's wearing the face that says 'I'm mostly sure that isn't going to happen.'
"I could have been a failed experiment, it could have dissolved all the scientists that tried it out and that's why they never used it!" John complains, and now he's trying vainly to hold his pants away from his legs, in a way he's absolutely certain looks ridiculous. Until there's nothing left of them to hold.
"If it had dissolved the scientists they would have reconfigured it into some sort of weapon they wouldn't have left it lying around in some -"
"In some highly secure database," John points out, and god this is so typical, he's going to be dissolved. "I'm going to be dissolved!"
"You're not going to be dissolved, I think you'd notice if you were being dissolved."
John's pants no longer exist, which is more than a little annoying.
He waits, just in case the 'being dissolved' part takes a minute to kick in.
"What's happening?"
Zelenka is eyeing them both curiously from the doorway.
"Rodney just dissolved my pants," John says flatly.
"Accidentally dissolved your pants, don't make this all out to be my fault."
"It is your fault!"
"Oh, I'm sorry if I sometimes want to look at things. If I'd known accidental dissolution was a possibility I would -"
"I'm running out of pants Rodney!" John snaps.
"I am going to leave and pretend that I never came in," Zelenka says carefully, and he's gone before John can finish making any sort of point.
There's a pause.
"Congratulations, now we're weird," John complains.
"How many times have you lost your pants now?" Rodney sounds honestly curious, which somehow just makes it worse.
There's another pause, this one longer and angrier.
"Five," John says eventually.
//Requisition form 66c- Request for new uniform pants, Lieutenant Colonel, Sheppard J: Denied//