Secondary Aid by liketheriver (first aid challenge)
Title: Secondary Aid
Category: John/Rodney angst, h/c
Word Count: ~ 4,300
Rating: T
Characters: John, Rodney, and a smidge of Ronon
Spoilers: Nothing really but anything up through season 4 is fair game.
A/N: I went on a cruise with lots of water around me... this was the result. Thanks as always to Koschka for the beta.
Summary: A man could die out here in the roiling gray below him, slip silently below the simmering waves and be dead from shock and hypothermia before he even had a chance to swallow icy salt water and drown.
Secondary Aid
by liketheriver
All that was below him was gray. Below him, before him, behind him… nothing but endless gray. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Nothing was truly endless. The mainland lay a few miles back, Atlantis not even a dot to break the horizon line far in the distance, but she was there, he knew. Not even the gray sea below him was endless, but it felt that way, especially when he thought about the fact that a human life wasn’t endless either. Not in the least. Not in the goddamn least.
A man could die out here in the roiling gray below him, slip silently below the simmering waves and be dead from shock and hypothermia before he even had a chance to swallow icy salt water and drown. And if that happened today, John decided he really would learn the meaning of endless… sorrow, pain, grief, take your pick. So he concentrated on the life sign he could still see on the HUD of the Jumper and tried the radio again.
“McKay, this is Sheppard. Can you read me?”
John had bolted for his Jumper with Ronon fast on his heels as soon as the distress call had come in a few minutes before. The transmission was broken, but even the static couldn’t cover Rodney’s panic.
“Shep… ‘ost the divers… no life si… not responding… ‘thing big is… fuck!”
They’d brought a boat from Earth. Could you believe that? A goddamn boat. A new marine biologist had been assigned to the expedition, one who had argued that since the new planet they were on hadn’t been studied to the same extent as the planet Atlantis had originally sat on, they should study it thoroughly. And since the new planet was mostly water, they needed a boat to do it. Never mind that a Jumper could go underwater, you couldn’t collect specimens from a Jumper. For that you needed to dive and to dive you needed a boat. So, she got it on the last Daedalus run and eagerly suggested her supervisor come out on it when she discovered the equivalent of a coral reef system that thrived in the fifty degree waters.
Rodney had managed to put it off for months with every excuse he could come up with except the truth of the matter− the thought terrified him. Very few people knew about McKay’s fears regarding the ocean, and those who did know teased him mercilessly about it. John, however, had cut back considerably after experiencing one of Rodney’s nightmares first hand. Just like before when it had only been a dream, McKay experiencing his worst nightmare in real life was quickly turning into Sheppard’s own. And if they didn’t find Rodney, didn’t reach him in time, it would simply become one more in an endless line of endless fears coming to fruition John had to look forward to. Endless and deep and as deadly as the gray sea he scanned for any sign of the boat.
“Rodney, do you copy?”
Ronon’s brown eyes flicked toward Sheppard when there was nothing but silence on the other end, the Satedan’s own worry evident in the lowering of dark brows over a darker expression. “Did he say what happened?”
“No, just that he lost contact with the divers and something big is… hell, I don’t know… happening or grabbed them or is sitting right below him.”
“This is why we’re here, right?” Ronon reminded. “This is why we went to the Mainland today.”
Rodney had told John two days before he was going out on the boat and John could hear the dread in his voice even if he couldn’t see it in McKay’s expression in the dim moonlight of his room.
“Do you want me to come along?” Because, honestly, there was a touch of dread in Sheppard’s voice, too, at the thought of Rodney on a boat.
“No use both of us sailing to our deaths,” McKay had grumped, resting his chin on John’s chest. “I just wish you hadn’t dubbed it the Minnow. It doesn’t exactly bode well.”
“Would you rather I’d picked the Titanic or the Edmunds Fitzgerald?” Sheppard raised his eyebrows as he brushed sweat-darkened hair away from Rodney’s forehead. “At least everyone survived on the Minnow and they got to sleep in hammocks and hang out with a movie star and an early version of Daisy Duke.”
“Not to mention a professor who was a credit to every community college science instructor out there,” Rodney responded drolly.
John’s fingers moved up to tousle into Rodney’s thoroughly mussed hair. “Come on, admit it, he was your inspiration for going into science.”
“Yes, if we’d only had the forethought to bring coconuts and extra wiring with us when we first came through the gate, we wouldn’t have had to worry that first year that we didn’t have a ZedPM. We could have simply powered the gate back to Earth with some really brisk whisking.” McKay laid his cheek against John’s chest with a sigh, broad fingers running idly along John’s ribcage. “I don’t want you on the boat, but it would be nice if I knew you were close by… closer than the city.”
“I can do close.” Wrapping his arms tight around the man sprawled on top of his, John kissed Rodney’s head. “Close is my favorite place to be.”
But Sheppard was worried that dropping the science team at the docks they’d built on the Mainland and sticking around with a cover story of Ronon wanting a new snake skin belt made from a snake he had killed himself weren’t going to be close enough.
“Rodney, answer your goddamn radio!”
“John? Can you hear me?”
At the sound of Rodney’s voice, Sheppard couldn’t decide between an exclamation of relief or tearing McKay a new one for scaring him so badly. Instead, he settled on demanding, “Rodney, what the hell is going on out there?”
“Something hit the boat. I just now managed to restore power to communications and, I might add, there isn’t a fucking coconut in sight.”
“Coconut?” Ronon frowned in confusion and John could feel his lips quirk in spite of himself.
“What hit the boat?” John asked, trying to get as much information as possible.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have used the term something to describe it,” Rodney snapped irritably.
“Well, give me something to work with, McKay. Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Hell, it could be all of the above for all I know. Or none of them.”
“None? How could it be…?” And that’s when John realized what McKay was getting at. “You think it was manmade? Like a weapon?”
“Whatever it was, it nearly capsized the boat and knocked out every electrical system onboard. I was able to tie my handheld radio into the antenna to transmit further to reach you. And I’m not reading any life signs within at least thirty meters. If it was something alive and big enough to take out a boat you’d think I would see it.”
“What about Kennsi and Bryer? Are they with you?” The two other scientists were supposed to be out there with Rodney diving while he monitored them from the boat.
“They were diving to the reef, reporting back, but I haven’t heard from them since the boat was hit and I’m not picking up any lifesigns on the detector.”
“Do you think you can get the boat out of there?” John suggested. “Head for the Mainland…”
Rodney’s frantic voice cut him off. “Sheppard, you aren’t listening to me. Everything on the boat is dead. Everyone who went in the water is dead. All of it, all of them, they are all dead.”
“You aren’t dead,” John reminded him. “And Ronon and I are two maybe three minutes away from your position. We’re going to get you off of that boat and into the Jumper and you’re going to be safe. Do you understand me? Safe.”
“Oh, God.”
The chill Sheppard felt at Rodney’s tone made him think he’d just fallen into the frigid waters himself. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s coming back. Whatever it is it’s… shit!” A strange roaring buzz cut through in the background. “It’s… John…”
“McKay?” There was popping and static then nothing. “Rodney!” Nothing but gray, an endless stretch of gunmetal that was just a cold and lethal to any man who was unlucky enough to find himself caught in its reach.
“There’s still a life sign,” Ronon pointed out. “He’s still alive.”
Sheppard could only nod in response, nod and cling to that single blinking dot as he pushed a little more speed out of the Jumper and reached the location of the research boat in less than two minutes. Only there wasn’t any boat anymore. All that was there was a debris field, scattered flotsam and jetsam that had once been an Earth-made cabin cruiser, and a sickening knot in John’s stomach.
“There!” Ronon pointed out the window to a bobbing figure in an orange life preserver clinging to a piece of debris…a cooler lid, maybe. One that was to be used to keep the specimens they collected alive until they reached the tanks on Atlantis.
Ronon was already heading toward the back of the Jumper as John brought the craft down until it was resting on the surface of the waves. Sheppard looked over his shoulder to see his teammate open the back hatch and grab a rope.
“Don’t you go for a swim, too,” Sheppard warned as Ronon stepped out on the lowered hatch and tossed the rope.
“McKay!” Ronon yelled as he pulled the rope back in to toss again. “McKay, grab onto the rope!” John couldn’t see what was going on from his angle, but Ronon’s expression didn’t make him feel any better when he pulled the rope in yet again. “I don’t think I’m going to have much choice in the matter. He can’t hold onto it.”
Christ. That meant hypothermia was already setting in. Nodding in understanding, John told him, “I’ll get you as close as I can. Tie yourself off so you can pull the two of you back in if you need to.”
Ronon was way ahead of him, already securing the rope to the bench in the back of the Jumper as he directed Sheppard, “About ten feet straight back and I should be able to reach him.”
John could see the same on the HUD, could still see the blinking light that indicated Rodney’s life sign, but the sound of Ronon yelling, “Hold on, McKay,” helped to confirm that the scientist was still alive enough to have someone offering him encouragement. Problem was, John couldn’t see if Rodney responded. Did he nod silently as his teeth chattered? Did he roll his eyes at the fact Ronon would state the obvious? Or did he slip a little closer to unconsciousness totally oblivious to their presence?
Craning his neck to look behind him, Sheppard watched as Ronon stepped out onto the submerged hatch, quickly up to his thighs in the water as he reached forward and dragged a floating Rodney toward him.
“How is he?”
Ronon’s tense, “Alive,” didn’t help John feel any better. “McKay, you can let go of the cooler now.”
“N…n…no…. can’t.”
John could just make out Rodney on the floor, shivering violently, still clinging with stiff determination to the lid, and tried to tell him, “Rodney, we’ve got you. You’re safe.”
Ronon pulled the piece of plastic from McKay’s hands and without something to grip, the tremors racing through Rodney as his body fought a futile battle to warm itself were even more obvious. John increased the heat in the Jumper as high as it would go. It would be a sauna in here within a matter of minutes, but he didn’t really care if he was soon to dripping sweat if it kept McKay alive long enough to get back to Atlantis. Besides, Ronon was shivering, as well, thanks to his wade into the frigid waters; the large man was trying his best to cover it as he triggered the hatch closed. Upping the heat was pretty much the limit of what John could do for the two sodden men right now. And if it kept Ronon capable of providing the first aid to Rodney that John couldn’t, that’s the best Sheppard could hope for at the moment.
What John really wanted to do was be back there with McKay instead of in the pilot’s seat. He wanted to be back there wrapping a blanket around Rodney, wrapping his arms around Rodney. He wanted to feel the water dripping off McKay onto his neck as Rodney leaned into him, John’s cheek soaking in the chill from Rodney’s skin until he was infused with the same deathly cold until the iciness seeped into his bones and he was the one quaking violently instead of McKay. That’s when John would know Rodney would be okay, that Rodney really was safe. Because sitting behind the controls of the Jumper just wasn’t fucking cutting it. It also wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“You’re safe.” Even when Sheppard repeated the encouragement, it did little to reassure him, especially when McKay didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. “Do you hear me? Rodney?”
Haunted blue eyes finally lifted to look up at the man who had called his name. Ronon dug for a blanket in the storage bins and John twisted a little further around, doing his best to contort his worried grimace into a comforting smile. “Hey. I told you I’d stay close.”
The brittleness in Rodney’s expression softened, but before he could respond, the alarms started sounding in the Jumper.
Ronon looked up from his searching to ask, “What’s that?”
Sheppard squinted at the reading. “Looks like an energy build up below us.”
Rodney was doing his best to stagger to his feet and failing miserably as he ordered, “Go! Go!”
John didn’t even have a chance to lift the Jumper from the surface of the water before they were jarred roughly and the displays flickered but held. “What the hell is that?” he demanded, referring to the long rope-like strands covering the window. “Is that a goddamn… tentacle?”
With a jerk that had Ronon staggering to stay on his feet, the Jumper lurched backwards… once, twice, and they were underwater. “Son of a bitch!” Sheppard exclaimed. “It’s pulling us under!”
Ronon fought to reach the cockpit, managing to clamp a large hand onto the back of John’s seat and steady himself as he looked out the window himself. “What’s pulling us under? You said there weren’t any life signs.”
“Expand… s..s..sensors,” Rodney stuttered, completely giving up on trying to make it to his feet and instead pulling his knees in close to his chest to conserve heat.
Doing as he was told, Sheppard increased the range and finally saw the massive shape pulsating with energy that sat a couple hundred feet below them and that was heading for even deeper waters. Thank God McKay had had the forethought to convert the cloak to a shield just in case the Jumper had run into this predicament. Although, giant electric squid had never crossed Sheppard’s mind as a reason they might find themselves submerged today. But the shield had been enough to protect them from the growing pressure as well as the current that had disabled the electronics on the boat.
John tried to gun it and all he accomplished was slowing their descent into the deepening murkiness. “Did your dad read you 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, too, McKay?”
“M..mom…wouldn’t…let him… after Moby Dick…fiasco.”
“I don’t think you’re going to need childhood trauma to spawn nightmares about sea monsters after today,” John noted before informing them, “I’m giving her all she’s got and we’re still going down.”
“Flip… polarity,” Rodney instructed through chattering teeth. “On the… shield.”
Even half-frozen, McKay was a goddamn genius and the creature’s desire to hang onto its prize vanished with the jolt it received as a result of the change. Finally free of the grasp of the tentacles, Sheppard wasted no time in piloting the Jumper up out of the gloom of the ocean and toward the light rippling above them on the top side of the waves.
As soon as they were soaring through open sky instead of endless water, Rodney mumbled, “Fuck.” Whether in relief or because of the cold or just because he was sick and tired of nearly being eating by sea life, John wasn’t sure.
John ordered Ronon, “Find the blanket and get him warm,” even as he set a course for Atlantis. “How you doing, Rodney?”
“Oh, you know,” Rodney grunted out still shivering. “Shitty.” Ronon helped him remove the life vest and peeled the sopping coat from Rodney’s stiff limbs before draping the blanket around McKay’s shoulder.
Rodney was talking, bitching, complaining and the familiarity of that had the worry easing out of John, at least until Ronon helped the scientist stand and he promptly fell over again, just one more sign that Rodney’s body was still hypothermic and he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“Damn it, Ronon, hang on to him.”
Ronon tried to look abashed when John chastised him, but it was kind of unconvincing given the way his lips quirked as he knelt down to heft McKay to his feet once more. “Sorry.”
“Wha’ happened?” Rodney asked in confusion as Ronon practically carried him to the copilot’s seat when his knees folded under him again. “Legs won’t work.”
“They will,” John promised, gripping the controls tighter to control the urge to reach out for Rodney across the DHD. Ronon… hell, he probably knew what was going on between John and Rodney. If anyone did it would be him or Teyla. But, whether out of respect for their privacy or understanding of the discretion necessary given Sheppard’s position, neither Teyla nor Ronon had mentioned it. They never asked and John never told and that was just the goddamn fact of the life he’d chosen once he’d chosen Rodney to be an integral part of it. “As soon as we get you warmed up, everything will work just fine.”
As soon as Rodney was checked out by Keller and given the green light, John planned to take McKay back to his place and warm him up personally, if for no other reason than to feel Rodney’s breath on his skin to confirm McKay really was still breathing. But he knew that was going to be hours from now, after all the primary medical care and monitoring, after all the paperwork and debriefs and notifications back to Earth related to two of Rodney’s staff being killed in action. Sheppard would run interference as much as possible… brief Stargate command, put off the direct questioning of McKay as long as he could by answering as many questions as he could based on what he’d seen and heard and what Rodney told him, but the fact remained it would be after nightfall before John could do much more than sit in a chair by Rodney’s bed and trade barbs with the man.
That probably explained why John insisted on helping Rodney out of the Jumper once they were back in the docking bay instead of waiting for the medical team to come inside. It was the first chance he’d had to actually touch the waterlogged man since Ronon had pulled Rodney from the ocean. McKay’s knees were still wobbly, but he was at least able to move out the back hatch under his own power, leaning into John more out the same need Sheppard had for physical contact than anything else. With one arm around Rodney’s shoulder, John could feel the occasional tremor still pass through McKay’s body and he tightened his hold minutely.
“Christ, Rodney, what it is with you and sinking sea craft?” John ran his hand briskly along Rodney’s arm in an attempt to warm him.
“Technically, the Jumper that sank wasn’t meant to be a sea craft,” McKay corrected. John’s other hand gripped Rodney’s bicep for the additional leverage in case Rodney went down. It wasn’t necessary, but McKay placed his hand over John’s, concealed by the blanket still twisted around him, and John shuddered himself at the touch of icy fingers.
“Oh, well, then, in that case, forget that I said anything,” John scoffed as he eased Rodney onto the waiting gurney.
“On the plus side,” McKay conceded as he lay back, “my fingers are too stiff to fill out any paperwork right now.”
Giving a pat to McKay’s shoulder, John told him, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
“Stall tactics, Colonel. That’s all they’ll be.”
“Then we’ll take them,” John assured as the medics started wheeling Rodney down the hall. “I’ll see you in the infirmary in a few minutes.”
With that promise, Sheppard turned to make his way toward Elizabeth’s office. Funny, Dr. Weir hadn’t stepped foot in it in a couple of years, but no matter who sat in there it would always be Elizabeth’s office. Just as the labs would always be McKay’s if something happened to him. That thought had John looking back to see Rodney’s gurney turning down the corridor in the distance and almost following after it. But he knew this was the best way to help Rodney now. Leave the medical care to the experts and buy McKay a little time to mend before he had to face the really hard job of explaining why there were two less members of the expedition as of today. Sheppard knew from personal experience that answering those sorts of questions, making the notifications home and arrangements for personal effects could seem harder than clinging to life in a frigid ocean ever could. So, maybe John couldn’t give Rodney the first aid that he’d needed in the Jumper, but this was his way of providing secondary aid, John’s way of limiting the jagged edges of the raw wounds McKay never let anybody see. And later, after all the medical care and questioning Sheppard couldn’t prevent, John set to work smoothing out the sharp edges that remained.
“We’ll make a map,” John told him, lips playing slowly along Rodney’s neck. “Mark it like the pirates used to do.”
When Rodney had first arrived at John’s door that night, he was still cool to the touch and he tasted of briny gray water that had threatened to swallow him whole. John had wasted no time in stripping Rodney down, pulling him into a hot shower, and scrubbing away that taste of endless sorry that lingered on Rodney’s skin. And he was very liberal in his taste testing to ensure it truly was gone. Afterward, John had designated himself Rodney’s personal blanket, covering him in an attempt to keep the heat of the shower in and the chill of the ocean from seeping back to the surface.
“Here there be sea monsters?” Rodney asked, nuzzling with sated laziness into John’s temple and kissing still damp hair.
“Exactly.” John ran his nose behind Rodney’s ear, exhaling warm breath against the skin there, before noting firmly, “And that way we’ll know where you aren’t allowed to go.”
Rodney sighed contentedly as Sheppard nipped and kissed and he ran his hands leisurely along John’s back. “It’s a pretty damn big ocean out there and we only know of one giant electric squid. Who’s going to map the rest of the deadly dangerous spots?”
“Anyone but you,” John told him with no room for argument. If Rodney never stepped into so much water as a half-full bathtub for the rest of his life, John would be happy.
“Or you,” Rodney countered with a small pinch to John’s side.
The truth be told, at times like this when they were together, warm limbs tangled in cool sheets, John sometimes forgot there were actually two separate entities in the bed. Terms like you and me became as interchangeable as their breaths when John lifted his head and kissed Rodney slow and deep then looked into his eyes. Rodney’s blue eyes turned gray in the moonlight, sometimes stormy, sometimes calming, but always the type of place John could slip into and be lost forever… endlessly lost and he wouldn’t complain for one second of the eternity he spent there.
Now those gray eyes were confused and it took McKay asking a wary, “John?” to bring him out of his contemplation of how he would like to spend the rest of his existence.
With a small shake to clear his head, John agreed, “Fine, neither one of us. We’ll just stay here where it’s warm and dry.”
“What about hot and steamy?” Rodney asked, crinkles forming around the mischievous gray eyes when he smiled. It was the first smile John had seen from McKay all day, and Sheppard felt the tension in his muscles unknot a little more at the mere sight of it.
“Hot and steamy is even better.” John returned the grin with a kiss, pressing his body even closer to Rodney’s in response to the tightening of McKay arms around him.
Rodney was alive. He was alive and here in John’s bed and that’s where he would stay… at least until the black sky took on the lightening shade of a gray dawn and Rodney would dress in the pale hints of sunlight, kiss John softly, before slipping soundlessly out the door. But at least for now they had tonight to give each other the restoring touches and healing murmurs they both so desperately needed after a day like to today.
And if tonight could somehow be as endless as the sea had seemed earlier, John wouldn’t complain one goddamn bit.
The End
Category: John/Rodney angst, h/c
Word Count: ~ 4,300
Rating: T
Characters: John, Rodney, and a smidge of Ronon
Spoilers: Nothing really but anything up through season 4 is fair game.
A/N: I went on a cruise with lots of water around me... this was the result. Thanks as always to Koschka for the beta.
Summary: A man could die out here in the roiling gray below him, slip silently below the simmering waves and be dead from shock and hypothermia before he even had a chance to swallow icy salt water and drown.
Secondary Aid
by liketheriver
All that was below him was gray. Below him, before him, behind him… nothing but endless gray. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Nothing was truly endless. The mainland lay a few miles back, Atlantis not even a dot to break the horizon line far in the distance, but she was there, he knew. Not even the gray sea below him was endless, but it felt that way, especially when he thought about the fact that a human life wasn’t endless either. Not in the least. Not in the goddamn least.
A man could die out here in the roiling gray below him, slip silently below the simmering waves and be dead from shock and hypothermia before he even had a chance to swallow icy salt water and drown. And if that happened today, John decided he really would learn the meaning of endless… sorrow, pain, grief, take your pick. So he concentrated on the life sign he could still see on the HUD of the Jumper and tried the radio again.
“McKay, this is Sheppard. Can you read me?”
John had bolted for his Jumper with Ronon fast on his heels as soon as the distress call had come in a few minutes before. The transmission was broken, but even the static couldn’t cover Rodney’s panic.
“Shep… ‘ost the divers… no life si… not responding… ‘thing big is… fuck!”
They’d brought a boat from Earth. Could you believe that? A goddamn boat. A new marine biologist had been assigned to the expedition, one who had argued that since the new planet they were on hadn’t been studied to the same extent as the planet Atlantis had originally sat on, they should study it thoroughly. And since the new planet was mostly water, they needed a boat to do it. Never mind that a Jumper could go underwater, you couldn’t collect specimens from a Jumper. For that you needed to dive and to dive you needed a boat. So, she got it on the last Daedalus run and eagerly suggested her supervisor come out on it when she discovered the equivalent of a coral reef system that thrived in the fifty degree waters.
Rodney had managed to put it off for months with every excuse he could come up with except the truth of the matter− the thought terrified him. Very few people knew about McKay’s fears regarding the ocean, and those who did know teased him mercilessly about it. John, however, had cut back considerably after experiencing one of Rodney’s nightmares first hand. Just like before when it had only been a dream, McKay experiencing his worst nightmare in real life was quickly turning into Sheppard’s own. And if they didn’t find Rodney, didn’t reach him in time, it would simply become one more in an endless line of endless fears coming to fruition John had to look forward to. Endless and deep and as deadly as the gray sea he scanned for any sign of the boat.
“Rodney, do you copy?”
Ronon’s brown eyes flicked toward Sheppard when there was nothing but silence on the other end, the Satedan’s own worry evident in the lowering of dark brows over a darker expression. “Did he say what happened?”
“No, just that he lost contact with the divers and something big is… hell, I don’t know… happening or grabbed them or is sitting right below him.”
“This is why we’re here, right?” Ronon reminded. “This is why we went to the Mainland today.”
Rodney had told John two days before he was going out on the boat and John could hear the dread in his voice even if he couldn’t see it in McKay’s expression in the dim moonlight of his room.
“Do you want me to come along?” Because, honestly, there was a touch of dread in Sheppard’s voice, too, at the thought of Rodney on a boat.
“No use both of us sailing to our deaths,” McKay had grumped, resting his chin on John’s chest. “I just wish you hadn’t dubbed it the Minnow. It doesn’t exactly bode well.”
“Would you rather I’d picked the Titanic or the Edmunds Fitzgerald?” Sheppard raised his eyebrows as he brushed sweat-darkened hair away from Rodney’s forehead. “At least everyone survived on the Minnow and they got to sleep in hammocks and hang out with a movie star and an early version of Daisy Duke.”
“Not to mention a professor who was a credit to every community college science instructor out there,” Rodney responded drolly.
John’s fingers moved up to tousle into Rodney’s thoroughly mussed hair. “Come on, admit it, he was your inspiration for going into science.”
“Yes, if we’d only had the forethought to bring coconuts and extra wiring with us when we first came through the gate, we wouldn’t have had to worry that first year that we didn’t have a ZedPM. We could have simply powered the gate back to Earth with some really brisk whisking.” McKay laid his cheek against John’s chest with a sigh, broad fingers running idly along John’s ribcage. “I don’t want you on the boat, but it would be nice if I knew you were close by… closer than the city.”
“I can do close.” Wrapping his arms tight around the man sprawled on top of his, John kissed Rodney’s head. “Close is my favorite place to be.”
But Sheppard was worried that dropping the science team at the docks they’d built on the Mainland and sticking around with a cover story of Ronon wanting a new snake skin belt made from a snake he had killed himself weren’t going to be close enough.
“Rodney, answer your goddamn radio!”
“John? Can you hear me?”
At the sound of Rodney’s voice, Sheppard couldn’t decide between an exclamation of relief or tearing McKay a new one for scaring him so badly. Instead, he settled on demanding, “Rodney, what the hell is going on out there?”
“Something hit the boat. I just now managed to restore power to communications and, I might add, there isn’t a fucking coconut in sight.”
“Coconut?” Ronon frowned in confusion and John could feel his lips quirk in spite of himself.
“What hit the boat?” John asked, trying to get as much information as possible.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have used the term something to describe it,” Rodney snapped irritably.
“Well, give me something to work with, McKay. Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Hell, it could be all of the above for all I know. Or none of them.”
“None? How could it be…?” And that’s when John realized what McKay was getting at. “You think it was manmade? Like a weapon?”
“Whatever it was, it nearly capsized the boat and knocked out every electrical system onboard. I was able to tie my handheld radio into the antenna to transmit further to reach you. And I’m not reading any life signs within at least thirty meters. If it was something alive and big enough to take out a boat you’d think I would see it.”
“What about Kennsi and Bryer? Are they with you?” The two other scientists were supposed to be out there with Rodney diving while he monitored them from the boat.
“They were diving to the reef, reporting back, but I haven’t heard from them since the boat was hit and I’m not picking up any lifesigns on the detector.”
“Do you think you can get the boat out of there?” John suggested. “Head for the Mainland…”
Rodney’s frantic voice cut him off. “Sheppard, you aren’t listening to me. Everything on the boat is dead. Everyone who went in the water is dead. All of it, all of them, they are all dead.”
“You aren’t dead,” John reminded him. “And Ronon and I are two maybe three minutes away from your position. We’re going to get you off of that boat and into the Jumper and you’re going to be safe. Do you understand me? Safe.”
“Oh, God.”
The chill Sheppard felt at Rodney’s tone made him think he’d just fallen into the frigid waters himself. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s coming back. Whatever it is it’s… shit!” A strange roaring buzz cut through in the background. “It’s… John…”
“McKay?” There was popping and static then nothing. “Rodney!” Nothing but gray, an endless stretch of gunmetal that was just a cold and lethal to any man who was unlucky enough to find himself caught in its reach.
“There’s still a life sign,” Ronon pointed out. “He’s still alive.”
Sheppard could only nod in response, nod and cling to that single blinking dot as he pushed a little more speed out of the Jumper and reached the location of the research boat in less than two minutes. Only there wasn’t any boat anymore. All that was there was a debris field, scattered flotsam and jetsam that had once been an Earth-made cabin cruiser, and a sickening knot in John’s stomach.
“There!” Ronon pointed out the window to a bobbing figure in an orange life preserver clinging to a piece of debris…a cooler lid, maybe. One that was to be used to keep the specimens they collected alive until they reached the tanks on Atlantis.
Ronon was already heading toward the back of the Jumper as John brought the craft down until it was resting on the surface of the waves. Sheppard looked over his shoulder to see his teammate open the back hatch and grab a rope.
“Don’t you go for a swim, too,” Sheppard warned as Ronon stepped out on the lowered hatch and tossed the rope.
“McKay!” Ronon yelled as he pulled the rope back in to toss again. “McKay, grab onto the rope!” John couldn’t see what was going on from his angle, but Ronon’s expression didn’t make him feel any better when he pulled the rope in yet again. “I don’t think I’m going to have much choice in the matter. He can’t hold onto it.”
Christ. That meant hypothermia was already setting in. Nodding in understanding, John told him, “I’ll get you as close as I can. Tie yourself off so you can pull the two of you back in if you need to.”
Ronon was way ahead of him, already securing the rope to the bench in the back of the Jumper as he directed Sheppard, “About ten feet straight back and I should be able to reach him.”
John could see the same on the HUD, could still see the blinking light that indicated Rodney’s life sign, but the sound of Ronon yelling, “Hold on, McKay,” helped to confirm that the scientist was still alive enough to have someone offering him encouragement. Problem was, John couldn’t see if Rodney responded. Did he nod silently as his teeth chattered? Did he roll his eyes at the fact Ronon would state the obvious? Or did he slip a little closer to unconsciousness totally oblivious to their presence?
Craning his neck to look behind him, Sheppard watched as Ronon stepped out onto the submerged hatch, quickly up to his thighs in the water as he reached forward and dragged a floating Rodney toward him.
“How is he?”
Ronon’s tense, “Alive,” didn’t help John feel any better. “McKay, you can let go of the cooler now.”
“N…n…no…. can’t.”
John could just make out Rodney on the floor, shivering violently, still clinging with stiff determination to the lid, and tried to tell him, “Rodney, we’ve got you. You’re safe.”
Ronon pulled the piece of plastic from McKay’s hands and without something to grip, the tremors racing through Rodney as his body fought a futile battle to warm itself were even more obvious. John increased the heat in the Jumper as high as it would go. It would be a sauna in here within a matter of minutes, but he didn’t really care if he was soon to dripping sweat if it kept McKay alive long enough to get back to Atlantis. Besides, Ronon was shivering, as well, thanks to his wade into the frigid waters; the large man was trying his best to cover it as he triggered the hatch closed. Upping the heat was pretty much the limit of what John could do for the two sodden men right now. And if it kept Ronon capable of providing the first aid to Rodney that John couldn’t, that’s the best Sheppard could hope for at the moment.
What John really wanted to do was be back there with McKay instead of in the pilot’s seat. He wanted to be back there wrapping a blanket around Rodney, wrapping his arms around Rodney. He wanted to feel the water dripping off McKay onto his neck as Rodney leaned into him, John’s cheek soaking in the chill from Rodney’s skin until he was infused with the same deathly cold until the iciness seeped into his bones and he was the one quaking violently instead of McKay. That’s when John would know Rodney would be okay, that Rodney really was safe. Because sitting behind the controls of the Jumper just wasn’t fucking cutting it. It also wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
“You’re safe.” Even when Sheppard repeated the encouragement, it did little to reassure him, especially when McKay didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. “Do you hear me? Rodney?”
Haunted blue eyes finally lifted to look up at the man who had called his name. Ronon dug for a blanket in the storage bins and John twisted a little further around, doing his best to contort his worried grimace into a comforting smile. “Hey. I told you I’d stay close.”
The brittleness in Rodney’s expression softened, but before he could respond, the alarms started sounding in the Jumper.
Ronon looked up from his searching to ask, “What’s that?”
Sheppard squinted at the reading. “Looks like an energy build up below us.”
Rodney was doing his best to stagger to his feet and failing miserably as he ordered, “Go! Go!”
John didn’t even have a chance to lift the Jumper from the surface of the water before they were jarred roughly and the displays flickered but held. “What the hell is that?” he demanded, referring to the long rope-like strands covering the window. “Is that a goddamn… tentacle?”
With a jerk that had Ronon staggering to stay on his feet, the Jumper lurched backwards… once, twice, and they were underwater. “Son of a bitch!” Sheppard exclaimed. “It’s pulling us under!”
Ronon fought to reach the cockpit, managing to clamp a large hand onto the back of John’s seat and steady himself as he looked out the window himself. “What’s pulling us under? You said there weren’t any life signs.”
“Expand… s..s..sensors,” Rodney stuttered, completely giving up on trying to make it to his feet and instead pulling his knees in close to his chest to conserve heat.
Doing as he was told, Sheppard increased the range and finally saw the massive shape pulsating with energy that sat a couple hundred feet below them and that was heading for even deeper waters. Thank God McKay had had the forethought to convert the cloak to a shield just in case the Jumper had run into this predicament. Although, giant electric squid had never crossed Sheppard’s mind as a reason they might find themselves submerged today. But the shield had been enough to protect them from the growing pressure as well as the current that had disabled the electronics on the boat.
John tried to gun it and all he accomplished was slowing their descent into the deepening murkiness. “Did your dad read you 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, too, McKay?”
“M..mom…wouldn’t…let him… after Moby Dick…fiasco.”
“I don’t think you’re going to need childhood trauma to spawn nightmares about sea monsters after today,” John noted before informing them, “I’m giving her all she’s got and we’re still going down.”
“Flip… polarity,” Rodney instructed through chattering teeth. “On the… shield.”
Even half-frozen, McKay was a goddamn genius and the creature’s desire to hang onto its prize vanished with the jolt it received as a result of the change. Finally free of the grasp of the tentacles, Sheppard wasted no time in piloting the Jumper up out of the gloom of the ocean and toward the light rippling above them on the top side of the waves.
As soon as they were soaring through open sky instead of endless water, Rodney mumbled, “Fuck.” Whether in relief or because of the cold or just because he was sick and tired of nearly being eating by sea life, John wasn’t sure.
John ordered Ronon, “Find the blanket and get him warm,” even as he set a course for Atlantis. “How you doing, Rodney?”
“Oh, you know,” Rodney grunted out still shivering. “Shitty.” Ronon helped him remove the life vest and peeled the sopping coat from Rodney’s stiff limbs before draping the blanket around McKay’s shoulder.
Rodney was talking, bitching, complaining and the familiarity of that had the worry easing out of John, at least until Ronon helped the scientist stand and he promptly fell over again, just one more sign that Rodney’s body was still hypothermic and he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“Damn it, Ronon, hang on to him.”
Ronon tried to look abashed when John chastised him, but it was kind of unconvincing given the way his lips quirked as he knelt down to heft McKay to his feet once more. “Sorry.”
“Wha’ happened?” Rodney asked in confusion as Ronon practically carried him to the copilot’s seat when his knees folded under him again. “Legs won’t work.”
“They will,” John promised, gripping the controls tighter to control the urge to reach out for Rodney across the DHD. Ronon… hell, he probably knew what was going on between John and Rodney. If anyone did it would be him or Teyla. But, whether out of respect for their privacy or understanding of the discretion necessary given Sheppard’s position, neither Teyla nor Ronon had mentioned it. They never asked and John never told and that was just the goddamn fact of the life he’d chosen once he’d chosen Rodney to be an integral part of it. “As soon as we get you warmed up, everything will work just fine.”
As soon as Rodney was checked out by Keller and given the green light, John planned to take McKay back to his place and warm him up personally, if for no other reason than to feel Rodney’s breath on his skin to confirm McKay really was still breathing. But he knew that was going to be hours from now, after all the primary medical care and monitoring, after all the paperwork and debriefs and notifications back to Earth related to two of Rodney’s staff being killed in action. Sheppard would run interference as much as possible… brief Stargate command, put off the direct questioning of McKay as long as he could by answering as many questions as he could based on what he’d seen and heard and what Rodney told him, but the fact remained it would be after nightfall before John could do much more than sit in a chair by Rodney’s bed and trade barbs with the man.
That probably explained why John insisted on helping Rodney out of the Jumper once they were back in the docking bay instead of waiting for the medical team to come inside. It was the first chance he’d had to actually touch the waterlogged man since Ronon had pulled Rodney from the ocean. McKay’s knees were still wobbly, but he was at least able to move out the back hatch under his own power, leaning into John more out the same need Sheppard had for physical contact than anything else. With one arm around Rodney’s shoulder, John could feel the occasional tremor still pass through McKay’s body and he tightened his hold minutely.
“Christ, Rodney, what it is with you and sinking sea craft?” John ran his hand briskly along Rodney’s arm in an attempt to warm him.
“Technically, the Jumper that sank wasn’t meant to be a sea craft,” McKay corrected. John’s other hand gripped Rodney’s bicep for the additional leverage in case Rodney went down. It wasn’t necessary, but McKay placed his hand over John’s, concealed by the blanket still twisted around him, and John shuddered himself at the touch of icy fingers.
“Oh, well, then, in that case, forget that I said anything,” John scoffed as he eased Rodney onto the waiting gurney.
“On the plus side,” McKay conceded as he lay back, “my fingers are too stiff to fill out any paperwork right now.”
Giving a pat to McKay’s shoulder, John told him, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
“Stall tactics, Colonel. That’s all they’ll be.”
“Then we’ll take them,” John assured as the medics started wheeling Rodney down the hall. “I’ll see you in the infirmary in a few minutes.”
With that promise, Sheppard turned to make his way toward Elizabeth’s office. Funny, Dr. Weir hadn’t stepped foot in it in a couple of years, but no matter who sat in there it would always be Elizabeth’s office. Just as the labs would always be McKay’s if something happened to him. That thought had John looking back to see Rodney’s gurney turning down the corridor in the distance and almost following after it. But he knew this was the best way to help Rodney now. Leave the medical care to the experts and buy McKay a little time to mend before he had to face the really hard job of explaining why there were two less members of the expedition as of today. Sheppard knew from personal experience that answering those sorts of questions, making the notifications home and arrangements for personal effects could seem harder than clinging to life in a frigid ocean ever could. So, maybe John couldn’t give Rodney the first aid that he’d needed in the Jumper, but this was his way of providing secondary aid, John’s way of limiting the jagged edges of the raw wounds McKay never let anybody see. And later, after all the medical care and questioning Sheppard couldn’t prevent, John set to work smoothing out the sharp edges that remained.
“We’ll make a map,” John told him, lips playing slowly along Rodney’s neck. “Mark it like the pirates used to do.”
When Rodney had first arrived at John’s door that night, he was still cool to the touch and he tasted of briny gray water that had threatened to swallow him whole. John had wasted no time in stripping Rodney down, pulling him into a hot shower, and scrubbing away that taste of endless sorry that lingered on Rodney’s skin. And he was very liberal in his taste testing to ensure it truly was gone. Afterward, John had designated himself Rodney’s personal blanket, covering him in an attempt to keep the heat of the shower in and the chill of the ocean from seeping back to the surface.
“Here there be sea monsters?” Rodney asked, nuzzling with sated laziness into John’s temple and kissing still damp hair.
“Exactly.” John ran his nose behind Rodney’s ear, exhaling warm breath against the skin there, before noting firmly, “And that way we’ll know where you aren’t allowed to go.”
Rodney sighed contentedly as Sheppard nipped and kissed and he ran his hands leisurely along John’s back. “It’s a pretty damn big ocean out there and we only know of one giant electric squid. Who’s going to map the rest of the deadly dangerous spots?”
“Anyone but you,” John told him with no room for argument. If Rodney never stepped into so much water as a half-full bathtub for the rest of his life, John would be happy.
“Or you,” Rodney countered with a small pinch to John’s side.
The truth be told, at times like this when they were together, warm limbs tangled in cool sheets, John sometimes forgot there were actually two separate entities in the bed. Terms like you and me became as interchangeable as their breaths when John lifted his head and kissed Rodney slow and deep then looked into his eyes. Rodney’s blue eyes turned gray in the moonlight, sometimes stormy, sometimes calming, but always the type of place John could slip into and be lost forever… endlessly lost and he wouldn’t complain for one second of the eternity he spent there.
Now those gray eyes were confused and it took McKay asking a wary, “John?” to bring him out of his contemplation of how he would like to spend the rest of his existence.
With a small shake to clear his head, John agreed, “Fine, neither one of us. We’ll just stay here where it’s warm and dry.”
“What about hot and steamy?” Rodney asked, crinkles forming around the mischievous gray eyes when he smiled. It was the first smile John had seen from McKay all day, and Sheppard felt the tension in his muscles unknot a little more at the mere sight of it.
“Hot and steamy is even better.” John returned the grin with a kiss, pressing his body even closer to Rodney’s in response to the tightening of McKay arms around him.
Rodney was alive. He was alive and here in John’s bed and that’s where he would stay… at least until the black sky took on the lightening shade of a gray dawn and Rodney would dress in the pale hints of sunlight, kiss John softly, before slipping soundlessly out the door. But at least for now they had tonight to give each other the restoring touches and healing murmurs they both so desperately needed after a day like to today.
And if tonight could somehow be as endless as the sea had seemed earlier, John wouldn’t complain one goddamn bit.
The End