.fic: Somnolence - McKay/Sheppard (PG13)
.title: Somnolence
.by: HF
.pairing: McKay/Sheppard
.rating/warnings: PG13 for the words.
.disclaimer: so not mine.
.advertisements: sleeping in public places, and not-so-public places too.
Notes: If I could write like this all the time, or actually write the things I'm supposed to write, my sgabigbang fic would be done by now. My papers would have been done weeks ago, possibly before they were assigned. (As it is, they're mostly done, so I'm okay, but it's the principle of the thing.)
This started out as comment!fic over at sheafrotherdon's, but then became six pages of fuzzy science and fuzzy scientists and public cuddling. *eyeroll* Written pretty much off the top of my head. No glasses this time, though.
SOMNOLENCE
It takes one debrief, a staff meeting, and an aborted mission to realize something's going on other than the fact that Elizabeth's typical meeting agendas are kind of like brain death.
The four of them--and this is how Elizabeth's thinking of them already, exasperatedly, "the four of them"--are sitting around the conference table, half asleep. Ronon keeps nodding off, coming to with abrupt and hostile snarls.
"Really hard mission," John tells her between slow, owlish blinks. "Lots of bad guys. Lots of shooting."
"Yeah," Rodney echoes, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "A lot. 'Scuse me." And he gets up and stumbles off, yawning. John says something else about bad guys with guns and follows him.
Elizabeth sighs and writes down "Probably another alien ritual," and lets it go.
Staff meeting: John and Rodney fall asleep halfway through. Elizabeth watches in mute amazement as Rodney sort of... lists to his right and ends up with his face cradled on the precipice of John's collarbone. And John doesn't seem to mind, just somnolently hitches himself closer to Rodney, whuffles softly into Rodney's hair, and goes back to sleep.
The mission, also known as the mission that's supposed to be happening right now, has been cancelled in favor of the marines and gate crew looking at the stargate, each other, the ceiling, their guns, their computers... At anything except Ronon, who had, amoeba-like, completely engulfed Teyla, and especially anything except the military commander and the head of science curled around each other. And not just curled... almost velcro-ed together by their tac vests, a frown creasing Sheppard's brow like sleeping requires the deepest concentration, or maybe it's the holding on to Rodney.
"We should get them to the infirmary," Elizabeth says. It's weird... She's used to saying this after missions.
It takes a lot of work to separate the four of them--Ronon is frightening even in his sleep, and Rodney, whose fingers have been made strong by years of typing, has a death grip on John's sleeve. Elizabeth has to confiscate cameras from Zelenka and Lorne.
Once they're up in the infirmary, Carson runs his battery of tests, commenting on how strange it is to have Rodney and John in at the same time and not have the two of them shouting down the walls. Under the weight of worry, the joke falls flat.
"Distance seems to ameliorate the effects of whatever's causing this," Carson notes. Elizabeth watches, and it's true: the four of them are in separate beds, and seem to be coming around, Ronon shaking his head, lion-like, and Teyla blinking uncertainly. John seems to be having the most difficulty waking up, except for Rodney, who's still unconscious.
"It's not a coma, is it?" Elizabeth asks anxiously, touching Rodney's foot under its blanket.
"No, the EEG shows delta waves--normal Stage Four sleep." Carson points to the meaningless peaks and valleys on the monitor. "The timing of it is odd, and the fact that they all spontaneously fell into such deep sleep is what worries me, as does the fact that Rodney isn't waking up. Still," he frowns at the peaks and valleys some more, "at least Rodney doesn't seem to be in any distress. In fact, this is probably the most rest he's gotten since --"
The rustle and shuff of hospital sheets breaks him off, and Carson hurries over to John, who's finally started to move.
"Colonel?" he asks, a hand on John's shoulder. "Colonel? Can you wake up?"
"No," John says crossly. He blinks at Carson, at Elizabeth, shrugs Carson's hand off his shoulder. "Can I go back to sleep?"
"No," Carson says, even as John sits up and swings his legs over the bed, all uncoordination, which stuns Elizabeth for a moment, long enough for John to push himself up and stagger over to Rodney's bed. Carson tries to intercept him.
"Sleepy," John says, petulant as any five year old. Petulant as Rodney, whom he seems determined to reach. Elizabeth sighs.
"Colonel," Carson tries again, but this attempt doesn't work either, and Elizabeth's about to intervene when Carson breaks off.
"Wait," he says, very softly. Elizabeth obeys.
John maneuvers himself onto Rodney's bed, shuffling Rodney over a bit. Rodney mutters something cranky and incoherent but moves over, and there the two of them are again, wrapped around each other, John's face tucked against Rodney's neck and one of Rodney's always-moving hands resting silently on John's hip.
"Well," Carson says. "This is unusual."
"Perhaps not so unusual," Teyla says from across the room.
"Sheppard may have lied about the guns," Ronon adds.
* * *
"The Loti are a very peaceful people," Teyla says. She still looks disoriented, sleepy enough to accept a cup of coffee instead of tea. Ronon is pouring buckets of it down his throat, would probably put it in the IV if possible. "They were very happy to trade with us, and it is a tradition among them to give new trading partners a gift, to confirm their alliance. Very often it is a gift of great value."
"And they gave you sleeping sickness?" Carson asks.
Teyla gives him her Is this meant to be taken seriously? look, but it's Carson, so she goes easy on him. "No," she says after a moment, "they did not. But they did, however, ask Dr. McKay what he wanted the most, as he was the one who fixed their generator."
"I would have asked for a new gun," Ronon adds from the sidelines.
Teyla sighs and picks at imaginary lint on her blanket. "Dr. McKay told Elder Eidos that he would most like a good night's sleep. I believe he was not entirely serious."
"Eidos definitely thought he was, though." Ronon finishes off another cup.
"Or else he was serious, but didn't know it," Carson says. "I don't think Rodney's slept more than five hours straight since we got here."
"Before." Elizabeth remembers Antarctica, when Rodney had been the last to leave and the first to show up, assuming he'd left in the first place.
"I suppose the same thing for Colonel Sheppard," Teyla says, watching the oblivious tangle of John and Rodney. She smiles, quick and fond, before she's all seriousness again. "The two of them do not have the best self-discipline."
"No, they don't." Across the room, John takes a shuddering breath and shifts a bit; Rodney's one visible hand tightens, and John goes still again.
"So how did the Loti manage to give you... uh, sleep?" Carson asks.
"It's in McKay's pants," Ronon says.
In two steps Carson is detangling Rodney from Sheppard and the blankets, fishing through the thigh pocket of Rodney's cargo pants.
"Ronon," Elizabeth says reprovingly. "Why didn't you--"
"He asked me not to tell." Ronon shrugs, but the look in his eyes is resolute. "He's tired, Sheppard's tired..."
Carson tries another pocket, and this time comes up with a small flat black disc.
And two seconds after that Rodney wakes up.
"What the hell?" Rodney's eyes go from asleep to furious in a blink. Beside him, or on top of him, whichever, John stirs and shakes his head.
"The hell?"
"I just asked that question," Rodney snarls. "Try to keep up." His eyes fall on the disc in Carson's hand. "Oh."
"Rodney, what did I tell you about Ancient technology after the chicken incident?"
"We aren't speaking of that, and hand it over. I want to go back to sleep." Rodney snaps his fingers, like Carson's actually going to comply. "Carson, give it. It's not going to work for you, so you might as well give it back."
"What does it do?" Carson asks.
"It's a sleep aid." Rodney enunciates this very slowly for the four idiots and one half-asleep person in the room. "Well, actually, it can induce several different neurophysiological states, but it imprinted on me for sleep, and like I said, it's mine."
"You were carrying this on a mission?" Elizabeth asks incredulously. "Rodney, what were you thinking?"
"You called the mission at the last second," Rodney says. "And I put it in my pocket and forgot about it. I remembered right when the gate started dialing."
"And you were going on a mission to trade for topsoil for the mainland," Elizabeth says slowly. "And you were complaining all last week about how your presence there was completely pointless."
"I may have been, yes." Rodney is staring at something on John's shirt.
"So it responds to intent," Carson says.
"Yes, it responds to intent. I only wish it would respond to my intent to kill you. Now give it back."
"Rodney, calm down." Another party heard from. John uses Rodney's chest to lever himself up, and Rodney grunts indignantly, but he calms down, too. John's hair doesn't look all that different after five hours of sleep than it does during the day. "So, doc, what's the verdict?"
"The verdict is you're playing with some dangerous toys--again--and I'll need to study this to be sure it's safe."
"Do I look like a person who would do anything to jeopardize his brain without studying it first?" Rodney's voice breaks with indignation.
Carson very wisely doesn't say what Elizabeth, and everyone else in the room, wants to say, but acknowledges that Rodney doesn't look like that sort of person, but neither does he look like a medical doctor--"Thank God for that," Rodney says--and clears all four of them to leave.
"It's likely the device will only work for Rodney," Carson tells Elizabeth after his charges leave, "but artificially-induced sleep isn't as healthy as the real thing."
"Then we'll have to make sure he gets more sleep," Elizabeth says, though it's kind of like saying we need to make sure the sun doesn't rise tomorrow--it just isn't going to happen.
On her way out, she confiscates a camera from Biro, who sulks.
* * *
It's broad daylight and he's fucking exhausted. Light comes streaming through the windows, bright and warm, yet oddly oppressive, and Rodney can't focus his thoughts enough to make the windows go opaque.
So Rodney hates the world at the moment. Technically he hates Carson, but he's feeling generous.
He'd gotten sleep, dammit. Real, actual sleep for the first time since before graduate school. And he hadn't had to work for it, which usually means working himself to the point where thoughts fell over themselves and finally stopped altogether, and even then, he'd turn the lights off and his brain would switch on, and the thoughts would start, equations painting themselves across the dark of his room, theories, proofs, counter-theories, calculating light-years between Atlantis and the nearest-known Wraith ship, the probability of how many times he could survive stepping through that gate. The odds increasingly freak him out, and of course that makes it even worse.
Even thinking about it agitates him, but he collapses in bed anyway, not surprised when his brain starts up like hyperdrive engines.
Working on four days after their return from visiting the Loti, and he can't remember much of that day and a half of sleep, but what he can remember is warm blurriness--yeah, comforting thoughts, warm, blurry thoughts McKay--and feeling like floating but anchored, held down by something heavy and firm and warm. Working harder earns him half-memory: stumbling into his quarters, John five steps behind--Hey you mind if I sleep with you? he'd asked, because Rodney had told him what the device could do, and it was already working, so Rodney had nodded and John had reached for him to guide him down, and the memory stops there.
He hasn't slept for the past two nights, other than a catnap in the lab and maybe he had fallen asleep standing up in line for lunch. It's worse now, because he used to be able to ignore it, but now his body knows what sleep is like, real sleep, and had somehow picked up the rhythms of John's body, slow breaths and heartbeat, and associated them with peace.
Hate Carson. Hate.
Rodney's on the verge of giving up, not wanting to relive those half-recalled flickers of warmth and darkness. It sucks, but there it is: back to real life, back to work, back--
His door chimes.
Kill. Rodney's eyelid twitches.
The door slides open, uninvited, and it's John standing there, hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.
"Hey, McKay."
"Hey yourself." Rodney sits up. "Please tell me the city isn't burning down."
"Not yet. Smelled smoke, though." John steps more fully into the room, looking around it as though he hasn't seen it before. Which he has, only, not really, if his memories of two days ago are the same as Rodney's. John examines Rodney's engineering doctorate for a long moment, maybe trying to decipher the Latin.
"So, couldn't sleep?" he says at last.
"Question or statement?"
"Both, I guess." John turns back around now, hands still in his pockets, and the expression on his face is both sleep and hope.
"I am pretty tired," Rodney admits.
John's head tilts, slightly, significantly, the gesture asking to be decoded. Rodney needs a minute to fumble for the answer but comes up with it, oh okay, come on, and moving to the edge of his bed, trying to kick the covers back.
And John just comes, sliding into Rodney's bed, sliding low across Rodney's body, an anchoring arm across his chest and breath warm and sudden at Rodney's neck, muscle and bone under John's track pants fitting close against Rodney, and Rodney kindof-sortof remembers this too: fitting, an odd symmetry to the way their legs tangle together.
"Sleeeeep," John says, loose and drunk and stupid with laziness.
Rodney can feel the vibration of words and laughter in John's chest, and is trying to work out a smartass reply when John's fingers go still on his body, and he turns into Rodney as Rodney turns into him, and the curve of John's neck is humid with sleep, the air between the two of them heavy with the promise of it.
Smartass reply, Rodney thinks, but the last thing he remembers, or the last thing he knows, is dark and warmth and John, and something like flying if it weren't for the holding down.
.by: HF
.pairing: McKay/Sheppard
.rating/warnings: PG13 for the words.
.disclaimer: so not mine.
.advertisements: sleeping in public places, and not-so-public places too.
Notes: If I could write like this all the time, or actually write the things I'm supposed to write, my sgabigbang fic would be done by now. My papers would have been done weeks ago, possibly before they were assigned. (As it is, they're mostly done, so I'm okay, but it's the principle of the thing.)
This started out as comment!fic over at sheafrotherdon's, but then became six pages of fuzzy science and fuzzy scientists and public cuddling. *eyeroll* Written pretty much off the top of my head. No glasses this time, though.
SOMNOLENCE
It takes one debrief, a staff meeting, and an aborted mission to realize something's going on other than the fact that Elizabeth's typical meeting agendas are kind of like brain death.
The four of them--and this is how Elizabeth's thinking of them already, exasperatedly, "the four of them"--are sitting around the conference table, half asleep. Ronon keeps nodding off, coming to with abrupt and hostile snarls.
"Really hard mission," John tells her between slow, owlish blinks. "Lots of bad guys. Lots of shooting."
"Yeah," Rodney echoes, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "A lot. 'Scuse me." And he gets up and stumbles off, yawning. John says something else about bad guys with guns and follows him.
Elizabeth sighs and writes down "Probably another alien ritual," and lets it go.
Staff meeting: John and Rodney fall asleep halfway through. Elizabeth watches in mute amazement as Rodney sort of... lists to his right and ends up with his face cradled on the precipice of John's collarbone. And John doesn't seem to mind, just somnolently hitches himself closer to Rodney, whuffles softly into Rodney's hair, and goes back to sleep.
The mission, also known as the mission that's supposed to be happening right now, has been cancelled in favor of the marines and gate crew looking at the stargate, each other, the ceiling, their guns, their computers... At anything except Ronon, who had, amoeba-like, completely engulfed Teyla, and especially anything except the military commander and the head of science curled around each other. And not just curled... almost velcro-ed together by their tac vests, a frown creasing Sheppard's brow like sleeping requires the deepest concentration, or maybe it's the holding on to Rodney.
"We should get them to the infirmary," Elizabeth says. It's weird... She's used to saying this after missions.
It takes a lot of work to separate the four of them--Ronon is frightening even in his sleep, and Rodney, whose fingers have been made strong by years of typing, has a death grip on John's sleeve. Elizabeth has to confiscate cameras from Zelenka and Lorne.
Once they're up in the infirmary, Carson runs his battery of tests, commenting on how strange it is to have Rodney and John in at the same time and not have the two of them shouting down the walls. Under the weight of worry, the joke falls flat.
"Distance seems to ameliorate the effects of whatever's causing this," Carson notes. Elizabeth watches, and it's true: the four of them are in separate beds, and seem to be coming around, Ronon shaking his head, lion-like, and Teyla blinking uncertainly. John seems to be having the most difficulty waking up, except for Rodney, who's still unconscious.
"It's not a coma, is it?" Elizabeth asks anxiously, touching Rodney's foot under its blanket.
"No, the EEG shows delta waves--normal Stage Four sleep." Carson points to the meaningless peaks and valleys on the monitor. "The timing of it is odd, and the fact that they all spontaneously fell into such deep sleep is what worries me, as does the fact that Rodney isn't waking up. Still," he frowns at the peaks and valleys some more, "at least Rodney doesn't seem to be in any distress. In fact, this is probably the most rest he's gotten since --"
The rustle and shuff of hospital sheets breaks him off, and Carson hurries over to John, who's finally started to move.
"Colonel?" he asks, a hand on John's shoulder. "Colonel? Can you wake up?"
"No," John says crossly. He blinks at Carson, at Elizabeth, shrugs Carson's hand off his shoulder. "Can I go back to sleep?"
"No," Carson says, even as John sits up and swings his legs over the bed, all uncoordination, which stuns Elizabeth for a moment, long enough for John to push himself up and stagger over to Rodney's bed. Carson tries to intercept him.
"Sleepy," John says, petulant as any five year old. Petulant as Rodney, whom he seems determined to reach. Elizabeth sighs.
"Colonel," Carson tries again, but this attempt doesn't work either, and Elizabeth's about to intervene when Carson breaks off.
"Wait," he says, very softly. Elizabeth obeys.
John maneuvers himself onto Rodney's bed, shuffling Rodney over a bit. Rodney mutters something cranky and incoherent but moves over, and there the two of them are again, wrapped around each other, John's face tucked against Rodney's neck and one of Rodney's always-moving hands resting silently on John's hip.
"Well," Carson says. "This is unusual."
"Perhaps not so unusual," Teyla says from across the room.
"Sheppard may have lied about the guns," Ronon adds.
* * *
"The Loti are a very peaceful people," Teyla says. She still looks disoriented, sleepy enough to accept a cup of coffee instead of tea. Ronon is pouring buckets of it down his throat, would probably put it in the IV if possible. "They were very happy to trade with us, and it is a tradition among them to give new trading partners a gift, to confirm their alliance. Very often it is a gift of great value."
"And they gave you sleeping sickness?" Carson asks.
Teyla gives him her Is this meant to be taken seriously? look, but it's Carson, so she goes easy on him. "No," she says after a moment, "they did not. But they did, however, ask Dr. McKay what he wanted the most, as he was the one who fixed their generator."
"I would have asked for a new gun," Ronon adds from the sidelines.
Teyla sighs and picks at imaginary lint on her blanket. "Dr. McKay told Elder Eidos that he would most like a good night's sleep. I believe he was not entirely serious."
"Eidos definitely thought he was, though." Ronon finishes off another cup.
"Or else he was serious, but didn't know it," Carson says. "I don't think Rodney's slept more than five hours straight since we got here."
"Before." Elizabeth remembers Antarctica, when Rodney had been the last to leave and the first to show up, assuming he'd left in the first place.
"I suppose the same thing for Colonel Sheppard," Teyla says, watching the oblivious tangle of John and Rodney. She smiles, quick and fond, before she's all seriousness again. "The two of them do not have the best self-discipline."
"No, they don't." Across the room, John takes a shuddering breath and shifts a bit; Rodney's one visible hand tightens, and John goes still again.
"So how did the Loti manage to give you... uh, sleep?" Carson asks.
"It's in McKay's pants," Ronon says.
In two steps Carson is detangling Rodney from Sheppard and the blankets, fishing through the thigh pocket of Rodney's cargo pants.
"Ronon," Elizabeth says reprovingly. "Why didn't you--"
"He asked me not to tell." Ronon shrugs, but the look in his eyes is resolute. "He's tired, Sheppard's tired..."
Carson tries another pocket, and this time comes up with a small flat black disc.
And two seconds after that Rodney wakes up.
"What the hell?" Rodney's eyes go from asleep to furious in a blink. Beside him, or on top of him, whichever, John stirs and shakes his head.
"The hell?"
"I just asked that question," Rodney snarls. "Try to keep up." His eyes fall on the disc in Carson's hand. "Oh."
"Rodney, what did I tell you about Ancient technology after the chicken incident?"
"We aren't speaking of that, and hand it over. I want to go back to sleep." Rodney snaps his fingers, like Carson's actually going to comply. "Carson, give it. It's not going to work for you, so you might as well give it back."
"What does it do?" Carson asks.
"It's a sleep aid." Rodney enunciates this very slowly for the four idiots and one half-asleep person in the room. "Well, actually, it can induce several different neurophysiological states, but it imprinted on me for sleep, and like I said, it's mine."
"You were carrying this on a mission?" Elizabeth asks incredulously. "Rodney, what were you thinking?"
"You called the mission at the last second," Rodney says. "And I put it in my pocket and forgot about it. I remembered right when the gate started dialing."
"And you were going on a mission to trade for topsoil for the mainland," Elizabeth says slowly. "And you were complaining all last week about how your presence there was completely pointless."
"I may have been, yes." Rodney is staring at something on John's shirt.
"So it responds to intent," Carson says.
"Yes, it responds to intent. I only wish it would respond to my intent to kill you. Now give it back."
"Rodney, calm down." Another party heard from. John uses Rodney's chest to lever himself up, and Rodney grunts indignantly, but he calms down, too. John's hair doesn't look all that different after five hours of sleep than it does during the day. "So, doc, what's the verdict?"
"The verdict is you're playing with some dangerous toys--again--and I'll need to study this to be sure it's safe."
"Do I look like a person who would do anything to jeopardize his brain without studying it first?" Rodney's voice breaks with indignation.
Carson very wisely doesn't say what Elizabeth, and everyone else in the room, wants to say, but acknowledges that Rodney doesn't look like that sort of person, but neither does he look like a medical doctor--"Thank God for that," Rodney says--and clears all four of them to leave.
"It's likely the device will only work for Rodney," Carson tells Elizabeth after his charges leave, "but artificially-induced sleep isn't as healthy as the real thing."
"Then we'll have to make sure he gets more sleep," Elizabeth says, though it's kind of like saying we need to make sure the sun doesn't rise tomorrow--it just isn't going to happen.
On her way out, she confiscates a camera from Biro, who sulks.
* * *
It's broad daylight and he's fucking exhausted. Light comes streaming through the windows, bright and warm, yet oddly oppressive, and Rodney can't focus his thoughts enough to make the windows go opaque.
So Rodney hates the world at the moment. Technically he hates Carson, but he's feeling generous.
He'd gotten sleep, dammit. Real, actual sleep for the first time since before graduate school. And he hadn't had to work for it, which usually means working himself to the point where thoughts fell over themselves and finally stopped altogether, and even then, he'd turn the lights off and his brain would switch on, and the thoughts would start, equations painting themselves across the dark of his room, theories, proofs, counter-theories, calculating light-years between Atlantis and the nearest-known Wraith ship, the probability of how many times he could survive stepping through that gate. The odds increasingly freak him out, and of course that makes it even worse.
Even thinking about it agitates him, but he collapses in bed anyway, not surprised when his brain starts up like hyperdrive engines.
Working on four days after their return from visiting the Loti, and he can't remember much of that day and a half of sleep, but what he can remember is warm blurriness--yeah, comforting thoughts, warm, blurry thoughts McKay--and feeling like floating but anchored, held down by something heavy and firm and warm. Working harder earns him half-memory: stumbling into his quarters, John five steps behind--Hey you mind if I sleep with you? he'd asked, because Rodney had told him what the device could do, and it was already working, so Rodney had nodded and John had reached for him to guide him down, and the memory stops there.
He hasn't slept for the past two nights, other than a catnap in the lab and maybe he had fallen asleep standing up in line for lunch. It's worse now, because he used to be able to ignore it, but now his body knows what sleep is like, real sleep, and had somehow picked up the rhythms of John's body, slow breaths and heartbeat, and associated them with peace.
Hate Carson. Hate.
Rodney's on the verge of giving up, not wanting to relive those half-recalled flickers of warmth and darkness. It sucks, but there it is: back to real life, back to work, back--
His door chimes.
Kill. Rodney's eyelid twitches.
The door slides open, uninvited, and it's John standing there, hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels.
"Hey, McKay."
"Hey yourself." Rodney sits up. "Please tell me the city isn't burning down."
"Not yet. Smelled smoke, though." John steps more fully into the room, looking around it as though he hasn't seen it before. Which he has, only, not really, if his memories of two days ago are the same as Rodney's. John examines Rodney's engineering doctorate for a long moment, maybe trying to decipher the Latin.
"So, couldn't sleep?" he says at last.
"Question or statement?"
"Both, I guess." John turns back around now, hands still in his pockets, and the expression on his face is both sleep and hope.
"I am pretty tired," Rodney admits.
John's head tilts, slightly, significantly, the gesture asking to be decoded. Rodney needs a minute to fumble for the answer but comes up with it, oh okay, come on, and moving to the edge of his bed, trying to kick the covers back.
And John just comes, sliding into Rodney's bed, sliding low across Rodney's body, an anchoring arm across his chest and breath warm and sudden at Rodney's neck, muscle and bone under John's track pants fitting close against Rodney, and Rodney kindof-sortof remembers this too: fitting, an odd symmetry to the way their legs tangle together.
"Sleeeeep," John says, loose and drunk and stupid with laziness.
Rodney can feel the vibration of words and laughter in John's chest, and is trying to work out a smartass reply when John's fingers go still on his body, and he turns into Rodney as Rodney turns into him, and the curve of John's neck is humid with sleep, the air between the two of them heavy with the promise of it.
Smartass reply, Rodney thinks, but the last thing he remembers, or the last thing he knows, is dark and warmth and John, and something like flying if it weren't for the holding down.