Damaged Goods (SGA, Sheppard/Dex, 1/?)
Title: Damaged Goods
Fandom/Pairing: SGA, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex
Rating: PG-13 (will go up in future chapters)
Spoilers: Runner, Vegas
Summary: AU: Ronon's immune to the wraith. Detective John Sheppard doesn't die in the Las Vegas desert. It would probably be easier if the opposites of both were true.
A/N: Going ahead and posting the second chapter, too, 'cause I'm excitable like that.
No.
John winces his eyes shut the moment they open, as if it's possible to hang onto the sky when the sterile white hospital ceiling forces itself into his awareness, but it doesn't work. The noises from the hall, the smells, the soreness underneath the painkillers and the haze in his head are too prevalent.
He's pretty sure he's not supposed to be able to do this. But nobody's watching. Nobody's telling him otherwise.
He's getting away with something he's not sure he wants in the first place.
---
He drags himself from the car, away from the wreckage of the silver bullet burning in the Nevada sun, instinct telling him to move but providing no destination. Sand clings his blood to his skin, sticky, but it's not enough to stem the flow that he's thankfully too gone to feel.
He doesn't make it very far.
But he did all right, here. Could've been worse. The world's still standing.
He's allowed to just stop if he wants.
He manages to roll onto his back, his limbs uncoordinated but finally relieved as he squints at the sky. There's no telling if the clouds are in focus or not, and he's losing the energy to try.
It's fine.
---
What happened next, John has to piece together from nurses and doctors, the former too caring and nice, the latter too efficient. The two shots to the chest should've killed him. They didn't. End of story.
It's a few days before he even discovers that he'd actually been transferred from Nellis. Apparently the fact that he hasn't been in the Air Force in over a decade doesn't jar the nurses into revealing anything more. He's not even gone, and his paperwork's being lost in the shuffle.
It's a week before he starts itching nervously about payment. He'd quit the PD- lit off with a few hundred grand in stolen cash, cruising east, no destination in mind- and his insurance should've been cut off by now. At first, he thinks the nurses are coddling him when they tell him not to worry about it. It's not until Rosie- she works afternoons, has a kid named Jared, and that's about all he knows- gets fed up with his questions that she brings him the paperwork.
His treatment's been covered. The account numbers are unfamiliar; he doesn't even recognize the insurance company.
He knows he should relax, and he would. But the traps getting tighter.
---
Captain Hendricks shows up at the end of the first week, awkward and angry. The fact that John's no longer one of his detectives doesn't mean anything, not in the public face of things. The only difference is going to be in the shading. An ex-cop making a mistake, the department can distance itself from. A disgraced cop fucking up on his way out the door, that's a problem. The paperwork on his resignation hasn't even gone through, and Carmen over at the Review Journal doesn't know when to drop a story.
How she's figured out as much as she already has is anybody's guess, but at least he's got warning that she's coming. He has no idea what to tell her; it seems the kind of thing Woolsey or McKay or someone be handling. Why they're not is anyone's guess. Screw them anyway.
By the time she shows up, he's ready to tell her everything. It would serve them right.
By the time he's opening his mouth, though, looking at Carmen sitting cross-legged next to his bed with her legal pad and tape recorder, he just can't do it.
"It was a meth lab," he decides as the words leave his mouth, because that's what it has to be. He's already enough of a joke as it is, and she's known him long enough to know it. The only reason she's here is because she's scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's her story, now, and she'll get it come hell or high water. Her glare is telling him as much.
He capitulates. It's not like he's giving away something he can't afford, for once. "A person of interest in one of my active ongoings was tied up in an FBI investigation. Pretty sure that's all I can tell you. The feds have jurisdiction on this one."
"Seriously?" Carmen shakes her head at him in resigned disbelief. "You're passing the buck on this?"
"I have to," he lies sympathetically. "You know how it is." But hell, it's not like she's going to get anywhere with this. "The agent in charge is a guy by the name of Woolsey. Get a hold of him, you'll have your story."
---
Page three of Sunday's regional section, below the fold. John's name isn't anywhere near it. The FBI corroborated his story. Somehow. Meth lab. Explosion. Ties to a case in Oklahoma that no one would care about even if it does exist. Nobody honestly gives a rat's ass about man blowing himself up in the desert.
He wasn't a man, he was an alien, a wraith, and-
Honestly, page three is easier to believe.
---
It's another week and a half before he's allowed to go home with an armload of instructions, all the things he's not supposed to do. He takes a cab home and has to stop by the manager's place just to get in the door.
Been in the hospital, he explains. Injured on the job. Rent will be a little bit late, but it's coming. It's nothing the manager hasn't heard before.
Finally home again, he stares at the cracks in the ceiling for days. He's practically a ghost. The smell from the kitchen garbage that's been sitting for three weeks has more or a presence here than he does. And there's nothing at all to drink.
John's fucked. No money, nowhere to go, and he can't work, not really, not yet. He's got more markers going out than coming in, and Mikey, at least, will probably be stopping by to collect before the week's out. Maybe enough of his car survived that he can get something for the scrap at salvage, but the engine had been on its last legs for three years already.
Somehow, he's pretty sure he's had this coming.
---
The television's been on all afternoon; he can't remember watching a thing. Maybe he's just been asleep, maybe some part of his soul just bled out of him on the desert floor. When the doorbell rings, it takes too much energy to go and answer, but he does.
It's not Mad Marlene from upstairs, looking again for her cat that died three years ago. Instead it's Rodney McKay, standing squarely on the stoop with John's briefcase in his left hand, and the Johnny Cash poster rolled in his right. He hands both over.
Frowning, John looks inside the suitcase, knowing before it's open that the cash will still be there. How, though, and why- these things are beyond him, but he takes a guess.
"Payment for services rendered?"
"Something like that. Enough to cover your debts and coast for a while." McKay doesn't seem the sort for small talk, even if John was feeling sociable. McKay nods, confident and unimpressed, because guys who hand over suitcases full of cash are like that, John supposes.
"Yeah, well." John's honestly doesn't even know where to start. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Then listen to me. You take some time. Recover, whatever." McKay leans closer insistently. "You pay off your debts, and get yourself cleaned up. And then you call me. We might have some work for you." Getting no immediate response, he shrugs and backs off off the step, and John's voice seems too loud and awkward, echoing off the concrete, getting blown out into the parking lot.
"Doing what? There more aliens out there?" Maybe he's finally as cracked as Mad Marlene.
McKay's spreads his arms, grins widely. "Always, Detective Sheppard. Always."
Chapter 2