Peace and Quiet (is Overrated)
“Hey. Mind if I sit here?”
Radek looked up from his early-morning meal (he’d stopped putting names to meals in their third month on Atlantis) to find the CMO standing over him with a tray and an expectant look. Surprised that the Colonel had asked to sit with him when there was a space at Teyla and Ronon’s table, Radek nodded his consent as he hurriedly swallowed his mouthful. Spending a lot of time with Rodney meant that he had come to think of the Colonel as a friend, but for him to ask to share a table with Radek probably meant he wanted to talk about something in particular. And Radek had a fairly good idea what this was about.
“How’re things going in Geekland?” Sheppard asked through a mouthful of sausage. He was, of course, referring affectionately to the science labs - making small talk, Radek supposed.
“Things are going well,” Radek replied as he attacked the funny orange eggs with a fork. “We have almost figured out what the pulsating spinny purple thing is for. Rodney things it has something to do with water purification.”
“Speaking of which,” said Sheppard, transparently jumping at the opening Radek had provided him, “How’re things with you and Rodney?”
Sighing inwardly, Radek supposed that he should have guessed this would happen. As the first openly “different” relationship in Atlantis, he and Rodney would have to face the curiosity of their friends and colleagues. For someone like Sheppard who lived with the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, they were probably the first homosexual couple he’d really met.
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked Rodney,” he said by way of reply. Hopefully Sheppard would realise that he wasn’t in the mood for a conversation about “how great it is that you can be so open about your love for each other” and “you’re just like a normal couple.”
Unfortunately, his meal companion didn’t seem to take the hint. “Come on, you know how evasive he can be about things that actually matter to him. He thinks that talking about it will actually make it real, and then he’ll fuck it up or something.”
Radek raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Either you have been hiding your insightfulness or you have been replaced with a Replicator. Personally, I am more inclined to believe the latter.”
“I can be… deep and… perceptive, sometimes,” Sheppard retorted. “Come on, Rodney’s my best friend. Is it so wrong for me to-”
“Care about him?” Radek interjected, a smile playing around his lips.
“I was gonna go with ‘take an interest in his well-being.’”
Radek put down his fork. “If you wish to know whether he’s happy with me, I can assure you that everything indicates that it is so.”
“I’d say ‘happy’ is an understatement,” the Colonel said with a grin. “I’ve been talking to some of the scientists, and I’m not the only one who’s freaked out by the sudden onslaught of whistling.”
“Why are you asking me about our relationship then?” Radek asked. This conversation wasn’t going in any of the directions he’d predicted and he wasn’t even entirely sure that it made any sense.
“OK, look. It’s like this,” Sheppard leaned forward and it seemed like he was finally getting to the point. Perhaps Radek would be able to finish his meal before it went cold.
“You and Rodney always seemed, you know, vaguely close,” Sheppard said, not getting to the point at all, “But it’s not like anyone saw this coming. You know. The… holding hands and…”
“Whistling?” Once again, Radek was lost.
Sheppard waved a spoon in agreement. “Exactly. I guess I was wondering how you guys ended up together.”
“I see,” said Radek, who didn’t.
“It just seemed kind of random, you know.”
Picking up his fork again, Radek started to toy with his food. “We started to become more than just friends after the incident with the Ascension machine. Both of us almost died, and I suppose Rodney did quite a lot of thinking while he was contemplating Ascension. It was not a conscious effort, at least not on my part, but we became a lot closer.”
‘A lot closer’ was another understatement - Radek recalled the nights when they’d stayed up so late watching old episodes of Doctor Who that they’d both fallen asleep on Rodney’s bed and awoke the next morning curled up around each other. He wonders exactly how he didn’t realise what they were heading towards, but at the time he’d just thought they were good friends. Then there had been the times when their hands had brushed together as one handed the other an Ancient device, and it was obvious that both of them had felt the attraction that passed between them. Their problem was that both of them were so shy and awkward when it came to such things that it had taken another life-threatening event to actually get them to admit their feelings.
“That’s fair enough, but why didn’t anyone else see it coming?” Sheppard asked, snatching the bread roll from Radek’s tray and biting into it. “You weren’t gonna eat it,” he said through a mouthful of food. Gesturing with the rest of the roll, he continued, “One day you were just friends, the next you were all couple-y. In a totally trying-to-be-discreet-and-failing way.”
“Is not my fault he bites his lip when he is concentrating,” Radek muttered.
“So my guess is something happened,” Sheppard said, ignoring him. “Lorne thinks it was Sex Pollen.” He frowned in contemplation. “I got the feeling he was speaking from experience. There’s something weird about how he acts around Parrish…”
“I suggest you don’t ask,” Radek interjected, wondering just how bored the Marines had to be to start speculating about his and Rodney’s relationship. “And he will not tell.”
Sheppard dropped the subject. “Back to the point…”
“You wish to know how Rodney and I got together,” Radek sighed.
“Pretty much.”
-----xxXxx-----
It was Radek’s first time in an offworld prison. Most of the scientists who were on regular offworld teams had been captured at least once, but Radek liked to venture through the ‘gate as little as possible. As he sat in the small, relatively clean cell, he reflected that being captured by natives and rescued by Colonel Sheppard’s team was all part of the Pegasus experience. Like getting drunk and university and waking up next to a stranger, it was something that must be experienced at least once.
Rodney did not seem to share his sentiment, but then he held the highest capture rate out of everyone in the expedition apart from Colonel Sheppard. One would imagine that being held prisoner would become tiring after a while.
“Pancakes.”
After the square root game became boring and prime-not-prime turned into an argument that couldn’t be solved without a calculator, they’d resorted to making conversation, which Rodney’s stomach had predictably steered towards food.
“With maple syrup. Proper maple syrup, of course, not the American version.”
“I like blueberries in mine,” Radek said, his heart not really in it.
“Yes, well, you always were a bit of a freak,” Rodney replied, before turning his attention back to food. Radek decided to avoid another argument by taking it as a compliment.
“Now muffins, there’s something that can benefit from blueberries. Big, juicy berries. If you buy cheap muffins you get shrivelled little things that look like currants.”
“Nothing beats chocolate chip muffins,” Radek pointed out. All this talk of food was making him even hungrier, but if dwelling on the problem helped Rodney cope, he was prepared to keep it up.
“Chocolate, can you smell chocolate?” Rodney started to sniff the air. “Oh my God, I’m starting to hallucinate!”
“Rodney, we have only been here for three hours.” A few minutes before the natives caught them he had definitely seen Rodney munching on a Powerbar. “You cannot possibly be feeling the effects of starvation.”
His friend glared at him indignantly. “Do I have to remind you that I’m hypoglycaemic?”
“Hypochondriac, more like,” Radek muttered, then regretted it immediately as Rodney kicked him in the shin. “Ow!”
“It’s a very serious medical condition!” Rodney insisted. “You won’t be laughing when I die of low blood sugar!”
In other circumstances, Radek would have backed down and apologised, but being stuck in a cell with Rodney’s paranoia and nothing do was making him irritable. “At least then I would get some peace and quiet,” he snapped.
The look on Rodney’s face dampened his anger somewhat. “You don’t really mean that, do you?” his friend asked.
“Of course not,” Radek assured him, taken aback by Rodney’s reaction. “Did you really think I would wish death upon you?”
“Oh.” For the first time in as long as he could remember, Radek found himself unable to interpret Rodney’s facial expression. “Um, no. I guess not.”
“Sorry,” Radek said, not entirely sure what he was apologising for.
“Hmm.”
They fell silent. Radek thought of a number of things to talk about, but wasn’t sure how to break the silence. In the corner of the cell opposite him, Rodney seemed to be thinking about something and he wasn’t sure whether he should interrupt his friend’s thoughts. To be honest, he wasn’t sure whether Rodney was upset with him. In all the time Radek had spent working alongside him or socialising in their spare time, he had never known Rodney to be this quiet. Even on that one occasion when they’d activated a device that had stolen Rodney’s voice, the physicist had compensated by finding other ways to loudly assert himself.
Just at the point when he felt the silence was too much, one of the natives came to take Rodney away. His protestations against being manhandled were almost worth the worry that settled upon Radek as his friend was dragged out of the cell, but then the silence descended upon him once more, made even worse by Rodney’s absence. Radek’s overactive imagination started to conjure up images of torture. In his mind, red hot irons were pressed against Rodney’s flesh as he screamed in agony. If he strained his ears, he could almost hear his friend begging for mercy.
Pressing his hands against his closed eyes, he tried to rub the images away and focus on more positive thoughts. Rodney would be returned to him unharmed. Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla would save them and they’d be back in Atlantis before the day was over.
As the hours dragged on and Rodney did not return, it became harder to keep up these positive thoughts. He wasn’t sure how much torture his friend could withstand. What if it had been too much for him? If they killed Rodney, would the natives come for him next? If Rodney couldn’t survive the torture, would Radek be able to withstand it? He probably wouldn’t even last as long as Rodney had already.
Night fell and Radek was still alone in the cell. He was starting to wish that they would come for him already. Without Rodney to bring him to his senses, he was starting to believe that death would be preferable to this uncertainty. The silence had become deafening, a constant reminder of his friend’s absence that was starting to feel like a needle being slowly pushed into the back of his skull.
This was not the first time he’d had to face the possibility of Rodney’s death. At least last time he’d been able to do something about it, no matter how futile his attempts to fix the machine. There had been some small hope that he’d be able to save his friend.
This time, all he could do was lay on his back in the middle of the cell, his mind buzzing with empty, frustrated thoughts. His hunger had disappeared when Rodney had been taken, but it returned now to gnaw away at his stomach. Thoughts of pancakes and blueberry muffins danced around his mind as the room started to spin around him.
The footsteps were so unexpected that at first Radek thought he was hallucinating them. Then they came closer and he realised that the natives were returning to his cell. Too drained to move, he just lay there and waited for them to take him and do to him whatever they had done to Rodney.
The footsteps stopped when they reached the cell, and Radek heard the sounds of the door opening. He expected hands to grab him and drag him away, so when an unconscious Rodney was unceremoniously dropped on top of him he was surprised, to say the least. A sudden burst of energy rushed through him, inspiring him to sit up and check his friend’s pulse. Rodney was breathing shallowly and his pulse rate was normal, or at least as normal as a highly-strung genius’s pulse could ever hope to be.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Radek started to check for injuries. Bruises marred Rodney’s skin in many places, but none of them looked serious. Slipping a hand under Rodney’s t-shirt to check for broken ribs, he didn’t notice that his friend’s eyes had open until he spoke.
“Can’t resist a chance to feel me up, can you?” Rodney said weakly. His hand reached out and wrapped itself around Radek’s, reassuringly solid. Radek didn’t know whether to smile in relief or succumb to the tears that were weighing down his eyelids. Turning his head away, he blinked back the tears and took a deep breath, not ready to show Rodney what he was feeling.
Unfortunately, his friend was more perceptive that Radek gave him credit for. “You were worried about me, weren’t you?” he said derisively.
Hurt by Rodney’s mocking tone, Radek turned back to face him with a retort on his lips, but fell silent when he saw the hope in his friend’s eyes. A callused thumb was running uncertainly over his wrist and Rodney was looking at him expectantly and Radek was far too emotionally exhausted to resist. He surrendered, turning his hand over so that Rodney could hold it tightly, and moved to lie down next to Rodney so that he could wrap his arms tightly around him and bury his face in Radek’s chest.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” he said to the top of Rodney’s head. “Peace and quiet is very overrated.”
Rodney made a muffled sound and sniffed loudly into Radek’s chest. Sighing softly to himself, Radek kissed the top of his head and realised as his eyes began to close of their own accord that worrying about someone you care for is very tiring.
When he woke up, Rodney was on the other side of the cell, watching him with a faint smile on his face. For a second, Radek feared that his friend was going to pretend that nothing had changed between them, but to his relief Rodney slid over to him and kissed him on the cheek. Radek placed a hand against his friend’s face and ran his thumb affectionately over Rodney’s chin.
“How are you feeling?” he murmured, so happy to have Rodney back that he almost forgot they were still being held prisoner.
“Still hungry,” Rodney replied flippantly. When Radek raised an eyebrow at him, he rolled his eyes and said, “I’m OK. Stop worrying.”
Bringing his friend’s face closer, Radek leaned forward and placed a light kiss on Rodney’s lips. He hadn’t intended to get caught in the moment, but Rodney leaned into the kiss and parted his mouth slightly and suddenly Radek’s hands were in Rodney’s hair as their tongues slid together and Rodney moaned softly into Radek’s mouth.
Radek was breathing heavily by the time he managed to get his next words in. “I will never stop worrying,” he told his friend.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to stop giving you cause to worry,” Rodney told him, before pouncing and pinning him to the ground. “You gonna shut up now?”
“Yes please,” Radek managed to gasp before his mouth became occupied with other things. Hands were sliding under his clothes and teeth were grazing his neck and he deliriously wondered whether Rodney was hungry enough to take a bite out of him. The thought made him laugh out loud, and Rodney stopped trying to remove his t-shirt to grin at him happily and kiss him for a third time.
Unfortunately, he never got to explain what had made him laugh, because Ronon chose that exact moment to come bursting in to their cell, gun set to kill. He actually looked a little disappointed at the fact that there was no-one to shoot.
“About time,” was all he said when he saw the state the scientists were in.
“I could say the same,” Rodney complained after taking a second to recover from the sudden Satedan invasion. He and Radek helped each other to their feet and straightened their clothes sheepishly.
“You didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave a second ago,” Ronon grinned, checking outside the cell for people he could shoot. “Come on, Sheppard’s waiting outside.”
-----xxXxx-----
“And then we met up with you, flew back to the ‘gate in the Puddlejumper, sat through a full medical exam from an anxious Dr Beckett and escaped as soon as possible,” Radek finished.
“Yeah, feel free to stop there,” Sheppard told him. He looked thoughtful. “I figured something must’ve happened while you guys were locked up together, but Rodney never told me he was tortured.”
“He refuses to tell me what happened while he was gone,” Radek said softly. “But whatever it was, it had as much effect on him as his absence had on me.”
Sheppard nodded. “You know, it’s not always obvious but Rodney can be brave when he has to.”
“Someone mention my name?”
Radek looked up and smiled when he saw his boyfriend approaching them, tray laden with twice as much food as he’d put on his. Pushing back his seat, Sheppard stood and picked up his own tray.
“That’s my cue to leave,” he said. “Before you two get all-”
“Couple-y?” Radek asked innocently, twining his fingers with Rodney’s as the Canadian started shovelling food into his mouth with his other hand.
His boyfriend looked up questioningly. “What exactly have you guys been talking about?” he asked.
“John was telling me how much he cares about you,” Radek said with a grin as the Colonel headed over to Teyla and Ronon’s table.
“I knew it,” Rodney grinned with a mouthful of food. “Oh, by the way, you need to come down to the labs, the spinny thing’s out of control again…”
The sound of his friend’s voice washed over Radek as he watched him talk and wondered what had happened to him on that planet. There was at least a 90% probability of him getting captured again in the next month and Radek would once again be out of his mind with worry, but one good thing had come out of their incarceration and that was why he was thankful for it.
“I love you,” he said fondly as Rodney paused for breath. His boyfriend stopped for a second as a huge grin spread over his face.
“I know,” Rodney told him, squeezing his hand before continuing with his monologue about life, the universe and why people were morons who shouldn’t be allowed near Ancient technology.
Radek looked up from his early-morning meal (he’d stopped putting names to meals in their third month on Atlantis) to find the CMO standing over him with a tray and an expectant look. Surprised that the Colonel had asked to sit with him when there was a space at Teyla and Ronon’s table, Radek nodded his consent as he hurriedly swallowed his mouthful. Spending a lot of time with Rodney meant that he had come to think of the Colonel as a friend, but for him to ask to share a table with Radek probably meant he wanted to talk about something in particular. And Radek had a fairly good idea what this was about.
“How’re things going in Geekland?” Sheppard asked through a mouthful of sausage. He was, of course, referring affectionately to the science labs - making small talk, Radek supposed.
“Things are going well,” Radek replied as he attacked the funny orange eggs with a fork. “We have almost figured out what the pulsating spinny purple thing is for. Rodney things it has something to do with water purification.”
“Speaking of which,” said Sheppard, transparently jumping at the opening Radek had provided him, “How’re things with you and Rodney?”
Sighing inwardly, Radek supposed that he should have guessed this would happen. As the first openly “different” relationship in Atlantis, he and Rodney would have to face the curiosity of their friends and colleagues. For someone like Sheppard who lived with the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, they were probably the first homosexual couple he’d really met.
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked Rodney,” he said by way of reply. Hopefully Sheppard would realise that he wasn’t in the mood for a conversation about “how great it is that you can be so open about your love for each other” and “you’re just like a normal couple.”
Unfortunately, his meal companion didn’t seem to take the hint. “Come on, you know how evasive he can be about things that actually matter to him. He thinks that talking about it will actually make it real, and then he’ll fuck it up or something.”
Radek raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Either you have been hiding your insightfulness or you have been replaced with a Replicator. Personally, I am more inclined to believe the latter.”
“I can be… deep and… perceptive, sometimes,” Sheppard retorted. “Come on, Rodney’s my best friend. Is it so wrong for me to-”
“Care about him?” Radek interjected, a smile playing around his lips.
“I was gonna go with ‘take an interest in his well-being.’”
Radek put down his fork. “If you wish to know whether he’s happy with me, I can assure you that everything indicates that it is so.”
“I’d say ‘happy’ is an understatement,” the Colonel said with a grin. “I’ve been talking to some of the scientists, and I’m not the only one who’s freaked out by the sudden onslaught of whistling.”
“Why are you asking me about our relationship then?” Radek asked. This conversation wasn’t going in any of the directions he’d predicted and he wasn’t even entirely sure that it made any sense.
“OK, look. It’s like this,” Sheppard leaned forward and it seemed like he was finally getting to the point. Perhaps Radek would be able to finish his meal before it went cold.
“You and Rodney always seemed, you know, vaguely close,” Sheppard said, not getting to the point at all, “But it’s not like anyone saw this coming. You know. The… holding hands and…”
“Whistling?” Once again, Radek was lost.
Sheppard waved a spoon in agreement. “Exactly. I guess I was wondering how you guys ended up together.”
“I see,” said Radek, who didn’t.
“It just seemed kind of random, you know.”
Picking up his fork again, Radek started to toy with his food. “We started to become more than just friends after the incident with the Ascension machine. Both of us almost died, and I suppose Rodney did quite a lot of thinking while he was contemplating Ascension. It was not a conscious effort, at least not on my part, but we became a lot closer.”
‘A lot closer’ was another understatement - Radek recalled the nights when they’d stayed up so late watching old episodes of Doctor Who that they’d both fallen asleep on Rodney’s bed and awoke the next morning curled up around each other. He wonders exactly how he didn’t realise what they were heading towards, but at the time he’d just thought they were good friends. Then there had been the times when their hands had brushed together as one handed the other an Ancient device, and it was obvious that both of them had felt the attraction that passed between them. Their problem was that both of them were so shy and awkward when it came to such things that it had taken another life-threatening event to actually get them to admit their feelings.
“That’s fair enough, but why didn’t anyone else see it coming?” Sheppard asked, snatching the bread roll from Radek’s tray and biting into it. “You weren’t gonna eat it,” he said through a mouthful of food. Gesturing with the rest of the roll, he continued, “One day you were just friends, the next you were all couple-y. In a totally trying-to-be-discreet-and-failing way.”
“Is not my fault he bites his lip when he is concentrating,” Radek muttered.
“So my guess is something happened,” Sheppard said, ignoring him. “Lorne thinks it was Sex Pollen.” He frowned in contemplation. “I got the feeling he was speaking from experience. There’s something weird about how he acts around Parrish…”
“I suggest you don’t ask,” Radek interjected, wondering just how bored the Marines had to be to start speculating about his and Rodney’s relationship. “And he will not tell.”
Sheppard dropped the subject. “Back to the point…”
“You wish to know how Rodney and I got together,” Radek sighed.
“Pretty much.”
-----xxXxx-----
It was Radek’s first time in an offworld prison. Most of the scientists who were on regular offworld teams had been captured at least once, but Radek liked to venture through the ‘gate as little as possible. As he sat in the small, relatively clean cell, he reflected that being captured by natives and rescued by Colonel Sheppard’s team was all part of the Pegasus experience. Like getting drunk and university and waking up next to a stranger, it was something that must be experienced at least once.
Rodney did not seem to share his sentiment, but then he held the highest capture rate out of everyone in the expedition apart from Colonel Sheppard. One would imagine that being held prisoner would become tiring after a while.
“Pancakes.”
After the square root game became boring and prime-not-prime turned into an argument that couldn’t be solved without a calculator, they’d resorted to making conversation, which Rodney’s stomach had predictably steered towards food.
“With maple syrup. Proper maple syrup, of course, not the American version.”
“I like blueberries in mine,” Radek said, his heart not really in it.
“Yes, well, you always were a bit of a freak,” Rodney replied, before turning his attention back to food. Radek decided to avoid another argument by taking it as a compliment.
“Now muffins, there’s something that can benefit from blueberries. Big, juicy berries. If you buy cheap muffins you get shrivelled little things that look like currants.”
“Nothing beats chocolate chip muffins,” Radek pointed out. All this talk of food was making him even hungrier, but if dwelling on the problem helped Rodney cope, he was prepared to keep it up.
“Chocolate, can you smell chocolate?” Rodney started to sniff the air. “Oh my God, I’m starting to hallucinate!”
“Rodney, we have only been here for three hours.” A few minutes before the natives caught them he had definitely seen Rodney munching on a Powerbar. “You cannot possibly be feeling the effects of starvation.”
His friend glared at him indignantly. “Do I have to remind you that I’m hypoglycaemic?”
“Hypochondriac, more like,” Radek muttered, then regretted it immediately as Rodney kicked him in the shin. “Ow!”
“It’s a very serious medical condition!” Rodney insisted. “You won’t be laughing when I die of low blood sugar!”
In other circumstances, Radek would have backed down and apologised, but being stuck in a cell with Rodney’s paranoia and nothing do was making him irritable. “At least then I would get some peace and quiet,” he snapped.
The look on Rodney’s face dampened his anger somewhat. “You don’t really mean that, do you?” his friend asked.
“Of course not,” Radek assured him, taken aback by Rodney’s reaction. “Did you really think I would wish death upon you?”
“Oh.” For the first time in as long as he could remember, Radek found himself unable to interpret Rodney’s facial expression. “Um, no. I guess not.”
“Sorry,” Radek said, not entirely sure what he was apologising for.
“Hmm.”
They fell silent. Radek thought of a number of things to talk about, but wasn’t sure how to break the silence. In the corner of the cell opposite him, Rodney seemed to be thinking about something and he wasn’t sure whether he should interrupt his friend’s thoughts. To be honest, he wasn’t sure whether Rodney was upset with him. In all the time Radek had spent working alongside him or socialising in their spare time, he had never known Rodney to be this quiet. Even on that one occasion when they’d activated a device that had stolen Rodney’s voice, the physicist had compensated by finding other ways to loudly assert himself.
Just at the point when he felt the silence was too much, one of the natives came to take Rodney away. His protestations against being manhandled were almost worth the worry that settled upon Radek as his friend was dragged out of the cell, but then the silence descended upon him once more, made even worse by Rodney’s absence. Radek’s overactive imagination started to conjure up images of torture. In his mind, red hot irons were pressed against Rodney’s flesh as he screamed in agony. If he strained his ears, he could almost hear his friend begging for mercy.
Pressing his hands against his closed eyes, he tried to rub the images away and focus on more positive thoughts. Rodney would be returned to him unharmed. Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla would save them and they’d be back in Atlantis before the day was over.
As the hours dragged on and Rodney did not return, it became harder to keep up these positive thoughts. He wasn’t sure how much torture his friend could withstand. What if it had been too much for him? If they killed Rodney, would the natives come for him next? If Rodney couldn’t survive the torture, would Radek be able to withstand it? He probably wouldn’t even last as long as Rodney had already.
Night fell and Radek was still alone in the cell. He was starting to wish that they would come for him already. Without Rodney to bring him to his senses, he was starting to believe that death would be preferable to this uncertainty. The silence had become deafening, a constant reminder of his friend’s absence that was starting to feel like a needle being slowly pushed into the back of his skull.
This was not the first time he’d had to face the possibility of Rodney’s death. At least last time he’d been able to do something about it, no matter how futile his attempts to fix the machine. There had been some small hope that he’d be able to save his friend.
This time, all he could do was lay on his back in the middle of the cell, his mind buzzing with empty, frustrated thoughts. His hunger had disappeared when Rodney had been taken, but it returned now to gnaw away at his stomach. Thoughts of pancakes and blueberry muffins danced around his mind as the room started to spin around him.
The footsteps were so unexpected that at first Radek thought he was hallucinating them. Then they came closer and he realised that the natives were returning to his cell. Too drained to move, he just lay there and waited for them to take him and do to him whatever they had done to Rodney.
The footsteps stopped when they reached the cell, and Radek heard the sounds of the door opening. He expected hands to grab him and drag him away, so when an unconscious Rodney was unceremoniously dropped on top of him he was surprised, to say the least. A sudden burst of energy rushed through him, inspiring him to sit up and check his friend’s pulse. Rodney was breathing shallowly and his pulse rate was normal, or at least as normal as a highly-strung genius’s pulse could ever hope to be.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Radek started to check for injuries. Bruises marred Rodney’s skin in many places, but none of them looked serious. Slipping a hand under Rodney’s t-shirt to check for broken ribs, he didn’t notice that his friend’s eyes had open until he spoke.
“Can’t resist a chance to feel me up, can you?” Rodney said weakly. His hand reached out and wrapped itself around Radek’s, reassuringly solid. Radek didn’t know whether to smile in relief or succumb to the tears that were weighing down his eyelids. Turning his head away, he blinked back the tears and took a deep breath, not ready to show Rodney what he was feeling.
Unfortunately, his friend was more perceptive that Radek gave him credit for. “You were worried about me, weren’t you?” he said derisively.
Hurt by Rodney’s mocking tone, Radek turned back to face him with a retort on his lips, but fell silent when he saw the hope in his friend’s eyes. A callused thumb was running uncertainly over his wrist and Rodney was looking at him expectantly and Radek was far too emotionally exhausted to resist. He surrendered, turning his hand over so that Rodney could hold it tightly, and moved to lie down next to Rodney so that he could wrap his arms tightly around him and bury his face in Radek’s chest.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” he said to the top of Rodney’s head. “Peace and quiet is very overrated.”
Rodney made a muffled sound and sniffed loudly into Radek’s chest. Sighing softly to himself, Radek kissed the top of his head and realised as his eyes began to close of their own accord that worrying about someone you care for is very tiring.
When he woke up, Rodney was on the other side of the cell, watching him with a faint smile on his face. For a second, Radek feared that his friend was going to pretend that nothing had changed between them, but to his relief Rodney slid over to him and kissed him on the cheek. Radek placed a hand against his friend’s face and ran his thumb affectionately over Rodney’s chin.
“How are you feeling?” he murmured, so happy to have Rodney back that he almost forgot they were still being held prisoner.
“Still hungry,” Rodney replied flippantly. When Radek raised an eyebrow at him, he rolled his eyes and said, “I’m OK. Stop worrying.”
Bringing his friend’s face closer, Radek leaned forward and placed a light kiss on Rodney’s lips. He hadn’t intended to get caught in the moment, but Rodney leaned into the kiss and parted his mouth slightly and suddenly Radek’s hands were in Rodney’s hair as their tongues slid together and Rodney moaned softly into Radek’s mouth.
Radek was breathing heavily by the time he managed to get his next words in. “I will never stop worrying,” he told his friend.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to stop giving you cause to worry,” Rodney told him, before pouncing and pinning him to the ground. “You gonna shut up now?”
“Yes please,” Radek managed to gasp before his mouth became occupied with other things. Hands were sliding under his clothes and teeth were grazing his neck and he deliriously wondered whether Rodney was hungry enough to take a bite out of him. The thought made him laugh out loud, and Rodney stopped trying to remove his t-shirt to grin at him happily and kiss him for a third time.
Unfortunately, he never got to explain what had made him laugh, because Ronon chose that exact moment to come bursting in to their cell, gun set to kill. He actually looked a little disappointed at the fact that there was no-one to shoot.
“About time,” was all he said when he saw the state the scientists were in.
“I could say the same,” Rodney complained after taking a second to recover from the sudden Satedan invasion. He and Radek helped each other to their feet and straightened their clothes sheepishly.
“You didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave a second ago,” Ronon grinned, checking outside the cell for people he could shoot. “Come on, Sheppard’s waiting outside.”
-----xxXxx-----
“And then we met up with you, flew back to the ‘gate in the Puddlejumper, sat through a full medical exam from an anxious Dr Beckett and escaped as soon as possible,” Radek finished.
“Yeah, feel free to stop there,” Sheppard told him. He looked thoughtful. “I figured something must’ve happened while you guys were locked up together, but Rodney never told me he was tortured.”
“He refuses to tell me what happened while he was gone,” Radek said softly. “But whatever it was, it had as much effect on him as his absence had on me.”
Sheppard nodded. “You know, it’s not always obvious but Rodney can be brave when he has to.”
“Someone mention my name?”
Radek looked up and smiled when he saw his boyfriend approaching them, tray laden with twice as much food as he’d put on his. Pushing back his seat, Sheppard stood and picked up his own tray.
“That’s my cue to leave,” he said. “Before you two get all-”
“Couple-y?” Radek asked innocently, twining his fingers with Rodney’s as the Canadian started shovelling food into his mouth with his other hand.
His boyfriend looked up questioningly. “What exactly have you guys been talking about?” he asked.
“John was telling me how much he cares about you,” Radek said with a grin as the Colonel headed over to Teyla and Ronon’s table.
“I knew it,” Rodney grinned with a mouthful of food. “Oh, by the way, you need to come down to the labs, the spinny thing’s out of control again…”
The sound of his friend’s voice washed over Radek as he watched him talk and wondered what had happened to him on that planet. There was at least a 90% probability of him getting captured again in the next month and Radek would once again be out of his mind with worry, but one good thing had come out of their incarceration and that was why he was thankful for it.
“I love you,” he said fondly as Rodney paused for breath. His boyfriend stopped for a second as a huge grin spread over his face.
“I know,” Rodney told him, squeezing his hand before continuing with his monologue about life, the universe and why people were morons who shouldn’t be allowed near Ancient technology.