Hold, by solvent90
Title: Hold (Left Behind challenge)
Author:
solvent90
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Hold
When the rope ladder first started to break, slowly at first, just traces of give, and then with a chunk of dirty twine coming away in Rodney’s hand, another falling away at his feet, he’d thought Oh my God and I’m going to die and Help help help. He’d said “John!”
Then he was clutching an uneven stone jut about halfway down the mine shaft, little pebbles falling away under his scraped palms, and John’s voice sharp in his ear.
“Rodney! Where-”
and static.
It was very dark below him. The neat ray of the light on the helmet the Lirai had given him showed only jagged stone in front of and above him, the useless trail of rope about five inches above his head.
The air was thick with rock dust. He tried to keep his breathing shallow; if he coughed, he’d let go, and the readings had suggested there was about 400 meters to fall. The stretch in his shoulders was already painful. His knuckles hurt, his back hurt, and there was a rough line of throbbing pain at his knee that suggested he’d scraped it somewhere.
“Sheppard. Colonel?”
There wasn’t even static anymore, just a rushy sort of silence. The comm was broken, of course the comm was broken, but talking into space was an acceptable sort of crazy for when you were about to die (“You just go splash!” Jeannie had said with eleven-year-old relish, resting her palms and forehead against the glass of the twelfth floor window) and he needed something to distract him from the way his fingers were cramping.
“The ladder broke, I’m in shaft number 42, holding on to a, to a kind of, a ledge. I don’t think I can for very long, so I, I hope. I hope you’re on your way.”
Nothing. Dust, more pebbles falling with a little skittering sound. The light in his helmet flickered a little, went steady again.
“John.”
*
After the big rescue, three of the Lirai’s massively muscled warriors clambering down on three separate rope-ladders and hauling him carefully, together, to where Sheppard and Teyla and Ronon were waiting with strained faces (Sheppard’s arm impersonally firm over his shoulders, holding him up) it all felt kind of anti-climatic.
Once Carson had confirmed that he was, as he’d said all along, fine, just a few scrapes and bruises, the almost angry worry in Elizabeth’s face dissipated to the usual resignation. Sheppard gave him a little conspiratorial smile at the meeting, amused relief, and, in his quarters that night, the best blow-job he’d had in weeks, John’s careful, heated mouth working him with a perfect sort of hunger in the dark.
After, his fingers skated carefully over Rodney’s hips, rubbed at his uninjured knee; he said “Nah” when Rodney offered to reciprocate, brushed his lips lightly over Rodney’s hipbone and forehead, and left. It wasn’t an unusual night, after a mission.
The shower stung a little and there was a sore feeling lingering in his shoulders and arms, but it didn’t last long. His fingernails looked rough and broken for a few weeks, a little residual grit, but that was all. It was hardly even the most dramatic way he’d nearly died.
*
Three weeks later, on a routine mission, John’s voice in his ear suddenly turned to static again. He’d been with their scientists, working to repair what seemed to be their equivalent of the combine harvester as a good-faith gesture; John was supposed to be off charming their equivalent of the Senate. He’d been asking something about how it was going when his voice crackled and vanished, and the tools slid out of Rodney’s hands.
“Colonel?” he said, and then, panic spiking through his stomach, “John!”
and John’s voice came back, startled,
“McKay? Everything all right?”
“Fine,” he said, swallowing, tasting salt (dust). “Fine.”
Sheppard didn’t say anything more then, but he watched him, narrow-eyed and sharp, for the rest of the mission, and when they were walking out of the meeting, he caught Rodney lightly by the shoulder, pulled him into an empty lab. He had his concerned Team Leader face on; Rodney obscurely wanted to punch him in it.
“McKay -”
“I’m fine,” Rodney said hurriedly, pre-emptive strike. “I just, it’s just a little residual -”
Sheppard’s hands were on his wrists, hard and firm and very warm.
“Your hands were shaking.”
The room was very bright, white-lit, and Sheppard’s eyes were green and focused, right there. He had to breathe in, briefly, before he could get his voice quite right.
“I appreciate your concern, Colonel, but” - he pulled at his hands a little, not hard enough to actually slacken Sheppard’s grip but enough to make the point - “I am fine.”
“You’re fine. You freaked out completely, for no reason, but you’re -”
“It wasn’t - I’m - you were gone.” He hadn’t meant to say that, and Sheppard’s eyes widened briefly, his grip on Rodney’s wrists turning and tightening, the concerned Team Leader look fading into something narrower and more curious. It made his mouth look a little softer, his eyes hazier.
“I was - Rodney?”
“You were gone,” he said again, stupidly, hearing his voice thicken, and it was too much, Sheppard was too close, and the only thing he could think to do was to twist his wrists viciously free, grab at his shoulders and haul him into a kiss.
It was impossibly reckless, the lights bright and sharp around them, voices still buzzing down the corridor outside, but Sheppard met him like he’d been waiting for it, instantly hungry, pushing his body up into Rodney’s hands, bringing his hands round over Rodney’s shoulders to pull him closer in.
“Rodney,” he said, breathless, when Rodney finally pulled out of the kiss, and then, more urgently, “Rodney. I have to - we can’t -”
He was due in the lab in ten minutes time; he had at least seven hours of work to get done before the briefing. Sheppard’s body was warm and strained under his hands, real, heat in the palms of his hands.
“Yeah, yes, me too,” he agreed, letting go reluctantly. Sheppard held on a moment longer, his face strangely, nakedly hungry, and then he said “Tonight” and straightened his face again, let go.