I Dyed in the Field (SGA: Sheppard/Beckett)
Title: I Dyed in the Field
Author: smallwaldo
Words: 3132
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Summary: John was purple. “Dare I ask?” Carson wondered out loud. “No,” Rodney told him definitively. “No you don’t.”
A/N: From the crack(ed) mind that gave you Stoned by the Villagers... So there's this drabble tree over at beckettsheppard. And someone ended with the word 'eggplant'. Which was then picked up with someone writing about someone being purple. Then it was given up as a plot bunny. 3100+ words and two hours later..."
Carson knew he should have been somewhat surprised at the sight that greeted him shortly after the control room called to say that John’s team was on their way to the infirmary for their post-mission exam.
He wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn Chuck was trying not to laugh as he conveyed the message.
Now, staring at the sight in the doorway to his infirmary, he understood why.
Teyla had smudges of something bright red across her cheeks and forehead. Ronon was yellow from nose to jaw.
All visible skin on Rodney was green and he was carefully holding his arms away from his body like he could keep the tint from spreading. His dark gray jacket seemed almost black.
John was purple.
“Dare I ask?”
“No,” Rodney told him definitively. “No, you don’t.”
Carson just raised an eyebrow as he grabbed a box of alcohol preps from a shelf. “Teyla, Ronon, there’s sinks in the surgery scrub. I’ll send a nurse to help you.” He pointed to where they’d finally put together a real scrub room when the infirmary had been expanded. Ronon said nothing, just took a handful of the wipes and headed off. Teyla, looking like her patience had been exhausted entirely, at least managed to say ‘thank you’ as she followed him.
“Now, you two look a little worse for wear.” He fixed John and Rodney with a level gaze.
“You know what really sucks about this?” Rodney asked, apropos to nothing. “Zelenka was in the gateroom when we came through. I’ll never be able to give him a hard time about those kids on M7G-677 again.”
John rolled his eyes. “No, Rodney, what really sucks about all this is that either they use something like poison ivy in their fruit juice or I’m allergic to this crap!”
Rodney had the good sense to look cowed by that remark. “Still itches, huh?”
John just gave him a level glare.
Carson stood up from the bed he’d been leaning on. “Itches?” He grabbed some gloves and moved forward and began examining the uneven patches all over John’s face and neck, pushing up his sleeves and examining his arms. “Rodney, how do you feel?”
“Like the Kermit the Frog,” he answered, but as Carson looked, he didn’t see any swelling or irritation developing.
“Fine, into the shower with you, then. Get some scrubs and be sure your clothes are marked for full decontamination.” Carson pointed to the large shower room at the other end of the infirmary. He turned to John. “You, up on the bed.”
John was moving stiffly as he pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
“How far down does this go?” Carson asked as he rubbed the end of his stethoscope on his hands.
John couldn’t seem to meet his eyes and he didn’t say anything.
“John?”
“Uh…”
“Are you about to tell me you’re completely purple? Head to toe?” Carson bit his lip. It would have been funny if John hadn’t been reacting to the dye.
“Everywhere I could check in full view of everyone, and it’s starting to itch. Everywhere.”
“Don’t scratch,” Carson warned him. “Let’s get your shirt off.” John was still moving stiffly and awkwardly and now that he was closer, Carson could see the hives erupting on his arms. Once they got his vest and t-shirt off, Carson pulled back the waistband of his pants and noted that the rash went as far down as he could see. “Well, I can’t wait to see how you explain this to Elizabeth.”
Carson listened to John’s lungs and heart. “Your breathing sounds okay. You feeling light-headed or anything?”
John shook his head.
“Alright, we’re going to start with some Benadryl and a shower. Loosen your belt.”
John rolled his eyes, but hopped off the bed and did as he was told as Carson pulled the medicine and a syringe out. After swabbing John’s rear with the alcohol prep, Carson was a little alarmed to see how much of the stain remained and hoped that the others were having more luck in returning to their natural shades.
Shot delivered, Carson took John by the elbow and steered him into the other shower. “Use this,” he said handing him surgical soap. Wash everywhere that stain is, but be careful not to scrub at the hives. The Benadryl’s going to do two things in short order: stop or at least reduce the itching and knock you on your arse. So scrub up and we’ll get you in bed.”
John knew he looked sheepish and was a little - but just a little - glad the purple dye was hiding his blush.
~~~***~~~***~~~
The surgical soap was only moderately successful. Turning him more of a lavender shade than an eggplant. The itching had subsided a little and he was starting to feel a little dizzy from the hot water and the meds when he stumbled out of the shower.
Carson was there with a towel and a set of scrubs.
“Don’t you have any more of the white scrubs? I’m gonna clash horribly with these red ones,” John remarked.
“Oh, you’re the funny one today,” Carson said, shaking his head. “How do you feel?”
Sobering, John sighed. “A little light headed now, actually. How’s everyone else?”
“Teyla and Ronon are fine. Seems they basically had tinted mud on their faces. Rodney isn’t allergic to whatever they doused him in - miracle of miracles - but it looks like it may be a few days before he’s actually his right color again. He says he’s not coming out of his quarters until it wears off.”
John smiled. “I doubt he has enough Powerbars stashed away to get him through a week. He’ll come out.”
Carson smiled. “I’m sure he will. Much to the delight and ridicule of Radek and several others on his team, I’m sure.”
Carson listened to John’s chest again before John pulled on the scrub top. “Ach, you’re starting to wheeze a little. Let’s get you in a bed and give you some epinephrine and then you can sleep off the Benadryl.”
Feeling drowsy and dizzy, John let Carson steer him over to the nearest bed. He grit his teeth through yet another shot and then let his eyes slide shut. “How long are you gonna make me stay here?” he asked, his words slurring, even as he began to drift off.
“Until your breathing is normal. Then we can start you on some steroids for the hives and send you home,” Carson said listening to his chest once again. “That’s getting better. Have a nice nap. I’ll let Elizabeth know you’ll be here for a bit. And that you and Rodney may want to stick close to home until you’re back to your usual way of being some of Atlantis’ most colorful characters.”
John made a face at him. “Hey, I thought I was the comedian here.”
~~~***~~~***~~~
John was just starting to debate whether or not it was worth it to open his eyes when he heard someone fussing near his bed. He let his head roll to the side, and cracked one eye open.
“Oh, so you are awake. I was just about to leave a note on your chart to have someone call me back when you finally decided to join the world of the living.” Carson perched on the edge of John’s bed. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. A little itchy, but it’s not as bad as it was.” He pulled up one hand to shade his eyes, and found that he’d somehow forgotten that he was various shades of purple. He stared at his own hand, frowning.
Carson pulled a tube out of his labcoat pocket. “Why don’t you finish sleeping off the meds at home. We can put some cortisone cream on those hives once you’re in bed.”
Going home - going home with Carson - sounded like an excellent idea. John sat up quickly, but almost as quickly lay back down. “Oh… dizzy.”
“Try moving a little slower,” Carson suggested, gently helping him sit up.
John nodded as the dizziness passed. “Better.”
“Come on, then.” Carson helped him stand and maneuvered around so that John could lean on him as they walked. John looked like he was saddle sore, the way he tried to move without irritating the hives on the insides of his thighs. Carson shook his head. “No doubt of it, you’re going to be miserable for a few days.”
“Great,” John muttered, most of his attention still focused on trying to walk without making his situation worse. Unfortunately, he couldn’t wear his boots because of the hives, which would mean going down the hall with bare, very purple feet. He wondered why that bothered him, given that his face, his neck and his arms were also quite the fetching shade of lavender.
~~~***~~~***~~~
Once they finally reached John’s quarters and had locked the door behind them, John let out a great sigh of relief. Then he looked at his sheets. “I’m going to turn my sheets purple, aren’t I?”
Carson shrugged. “You might as you start to shed this stuff. When you sweat it might finally start to come off your skin.”
John just shook his head. This was never going to end.
“Come on, strip down. Let’s get some cream on those hives.”
John shucked the scrubs and crawled onto the bed, laying on his front. The sheets were cool against his irritated skin and he found himself getting drowsy again. He could hear Carson changing out of his uniform and into the jeans and t-shirt he’d started leaving at John’s a few weeks ago. John let himself smile at the fact that their relationship had finally gotten to that point. They’d not needed to make any grand announcements to anyone or anything, but they’d eventually just stopped compulsively hiding what they were doing. No more sneaking home at four in the morning to change before anyone saw them, no more pretending to be somewhere they weren’t when paged in the middle of the night. They weren’t ready to actually move in together, as a few of the Atlantis couples had done in the past few months, but they were certainly moving toward that direction.
Carson sat next to him, on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch him or rub against him.
“I’m a giant hive,” John muttered into the pillow.
Carson let his eyes trail from John’s hairline, down his back, over his bottom and down his legs. “It’s not so bad as that anymore. You’re down to patches… just a lot of them.”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” John complained.
“I know,” Carson said sympathetically, leaning down to kiss one of the clearer spots on his face, near his temple. “How about I coat you in this stuff while you tell me how in hell you ended up like this.”
“Sadist,” John accused.
“What?” Carson sat up, affronted, jolting John.
“This is lose/lose for me. Either I itch to death or I get to be embarrassed to death!”
Carson unscrewed the tube and set the lid on the bedside table. “It can’t be that bad, can it?” he asked as he began to lightly stroke John’s neck, working the cream in without aggravating the irritation.
John turned his head away from Carson and mumbled, “They got pissed because… because I peedontheirtree. Okay? Happy?”
Carson’s hands froze on John’s neck. “Excuse me? You what on their tree?”
John sighed theatrically. “I peed on it. Alright?”
“First of all, why did you do that? And second of all, why would they turn you purple for it?” Carson moved down, his hands heralding the cooling, moisturizing medicine and a little more mobility. John flexed his shoulders a little under his hands, relieved to find that they didn’t protest nearly as much.
“Apparently it’s some kind of holy … thing. I’d love to send a botany and sociology team down there to study these people’s weird relationships with their plants. But we all came back looking like a box of Crayola crayons, so that may not be such a good idea.” John was starting to relax, his body not so tense, not afraid that being touched would hurt, as Carson made his way down his back. He decided that he’d made the right choice. Much better to tell the story and get the relief than not. Not that he really thought Carson would hold out on him, but this was much more expedient than having the argument and ending up having to tell the story anyway.
“Maybe you need to start at the beginning.”
“Right,” John conceded and then thought back. Exactly when had everything gone to hell? “Okay, so their stargate is about twenty klicks from the village. The village is buried in the most incredibly dense tropical rainforest I’ve ever seen. There was no way there was going to be any way I was going to be able to land the jumper closer to town. So we set down by the gate and walked in.” He wiggled a little as Carson moved his hands over his behind. “Oh, I wish I were in any kind of condition to appreciate that more,” he said turning back to Carson and winking at him.
Carson gave him the lightest of slaps. “That would be bloody brilliant. Get you all sweaty, not to mention the friction of the sheets and…”
“I know, I know,” John cut him off before he decided ‘to hell with his skin’ and jumped him anyway. “I’m just saying…”
Carson smiled and kissed his neck. “When you feel better.”
“Mm’kay,” John agreed.
“So, you were walking into the village.”
“Right,” John picked up the story. “We were walking into the village and I had to… you know… I had to go. So I told everyone to keep walking and I’d catch up in a second. Found a convenient tree and -“
“Yes, you can skip the details,” Carson cut in, knowing that John had no modesty and tended to give him details that even as a doctor he didn’t particularly want or need.
“Well anyway, apparently they had scouts up in the canopy who’d been watching us come in. One of them saw me and before I knew it, they had me by both arms, everything else still swinging in the breeze, and they’re yelling about some God’s Gift Tree and desecration. So now my team comes running back and before we know it, there’s like thirty of them and four of us.”
Having finished with all the visible patches of hives, Carson commanded John to flip over. And with that same lack of modesty, John did, settling himself into the sheets as the cream soothed the skin he was laying on.
“What no one apparently knew before sending us in is that, like I said, these people have some very strange relationships with their plants. They brought me up to this vat and basically said that if I thought it was necessary to coat the tree with my fluids, then it would be necessary to coat me with the tree's. The vat was full of the juice of the fruit from that tree. They pushed me in it.” John shrugged. “At first I was … annoyed, but I didn’t think any harm had been done. It wasn’t until we were on our way back the gate that I started to itch.”
Carson kept working the cream into his skin, not looking at him, trying not to laugh. Like John had said, if he’d not been allergic to it, coming home looking like a giant grape would have been pretty funny. “And everyone else?”
“Rodney was busted for eating something from some vine, so along the same lines, they dumped a bucket of green stuff over his head. Teyla and Ronon smashed some kind of flowers as they ran back to see what had happened to me so they had the flowers of the crushed plants smeared on their faces.” John stretched, not realizing how stiffly he’d been holding himself in order to not irritate his skin. “That stuff’s good,” he said nodding at the tube. “Will the hives go away now?”
“No, you’re going to need a full course of steroids for this to completely work out of your system. It’ll help when you finally get the dye all out of your skin. The cream has an analgesic in it. We’re going to need to apply each morning and each night until this thing runs its course.”
John cocked an eyebrow and gave Carson a smug grin. “Poor me.”
Carson rolled his eyes at John’s indefatigable charm, “You know, I could just prescribe this stuff for you and leave you to it on your own. Or turn you over to my nurses. I know of several who’d do any amount of night shifts to get their hands on you like this.”
John sat up part way and grabbed Carson’s shirt in his fist, pulling him down and kissing him hard. “But you won’t.”
Trying to look cross, Carson folded his arms across his chest. “Cheeky bugger.”
“I try,” John told him proudly.
“What have I gotten myself into?” Carson asked himself as he capped the tube and went into the bathroom to wash his hands. When he came out, John had pulled the top sheet around himself to ward off the chill in the room. Carson pulled the lighter of the two blankets out from under him and wrapped it around him over the sheet. He rubbed John’s arm lightly through the covers. “I suppose now you’ll want me to go to the mess and get us some dinner.”
“Well, I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion.”
Carson shook his head. “You’re going to be unbearable for the next few days aren’t you?”
John made a show of peeking into the sheets. “I’m completely bare-able. Wanna see?” He knew he was riding the endorphins, but it was also just fun to wind Carson up. He tried to keep a straight face, but just couldn’t as he said, “You know what all this means? I dyed in the field!”
“I think that stuff has soaked into your brain,” Carson said as he lightly thwapped him with a pillow.
“You love me anyway,” John said, pulling the pillow down and hugging it to his chest. He couldn’t help but notice that it smelled like Carson.
“Aye,” Carson agreed as he stood up and grabbed his shoes so he could go get their dinner. “And some days I really wonder what that means for my own mental state.”
John just laughed and pulled him in for one more kiss before Carson set out to get them some food.