Placebo
Title: Placebo
Author: Cesare (almostnever)
Pairing: John/Rodney
Word count: ~2200
Ratings/Warnings: Worksafe. This story may be unsafe for people with triggers and/or contain elements that some readers would prefer to avoid: ( skip) Character death described, though it probably doesn't happen.
Contains: Hurt/comfort, heavy on the hurt.
Summary: Adopt-A-Minefield - Landmine Clearance & Support.
*
Rodney lay in the earth. The dirt was a leeched grey color, tinged with blue, gunmetal. It was dry and fine with a subtle mineral gleam, easily displaced, and Rodney's body pressed into it, making ridges around his outlines.
"Oh fuck, oh, oh, jesus, god damn it," Rodney said, the heel of his good foot digging in, pushing, as though he were trying to scoot away from the pain.
"Stop. Rodney! Stop it," John said, and next time Rodney tried to push away, John slid himself under and supported Rodney against his chest and on his lap, bracing him in place to keep him from moving the bad foot any more. "Let Teyla work on it."
Teyla darted a grateful look at John and slowly, carefully peeled Rodney's boot down. Rodney's foot skewed at a horrible angle; John felt his stomach flip and roll, just looking at it. Teyla tried to align Rodney's foot with his leg as she worked.
"Leave it alone, god, don't," Rodney said, throwing back his head, the back of his skull banging against John's collarbone.
"Shh," John wrapped his arm around Rodney's shoulders, braced across his collarbone. The wind whipped up some of the grit around them, and he tried to shield Rodney from the sting of it with his body and his hand.
Teyla finally got the boot off, and some blood dribbled out. John couldn't tell if the injury was a compound fracture, or if the pit trap had gashed open Rodney's skin as well as breaking his ankle.
Ronon crouched nearby, examining the trap. "Stakes in the bottom," he said. "Old though. Real old. Some just rotten." He reached in and uprooted one to show to John. Some kind of thick dried paste covered the sharp end, and the very tip was wet with Rodney's blood.
No telling how long the trap had been there, or why: Wraith, animals, other enemies, could be anything.
No telling how many other traps like it were around here, either. This one was so old that even scouting, alert for exactly this kind of thing, John and Teyla and Ronon had all missed it until Rodney stepped right on it.
Teyla fished a roll of bandage out of her tac vest, winding it just below Rodney's knee and cinching it tight.
"What're you doing," Rodney said, trying to see.
"Lie still, McKay," John held him down.
"Don't cut it off."
"Jesus, we're not cutting anything off," said John, "it's a goddamn tourniquet, standard procedure, you know that."
"You might cut it off... Ronon has knives. You drilled into my head with a, a drill," Rodney said weakly.
Teyla added another tourniquet just above the injury, and the movement made Rodney moan and writhe.
"It's okay, it's almost over, just hang on," John murmured to him.
"I'll go for help," said Ronon, already poised to push off and start running.
"No. If you step into one of these, we're twice as fucked," John said tightly.
"I'll follow our footprints back."
"They've already blown away," John said. Ronon bared his teeth but didn't deny it. John shook his head. "It's twenty minutes to our check-in, they'll send out a jumper when they don't hear from us; that's what we need." It was more like forty-five minutes, and it would feel like forever to Rodney, but it was the call John had to make. He couldn't just think of Rodney.
"Will you just leave it alone, please, please," Rodney said as Teyla very gently rolled off his sock. He tossed his head and his shoulders jerked in John's arms, trying to curl in, heaving, and then Rodney started crying.
"Shh, don't, don't," John said.
"Fff, fuck you, you-- stoic asshole," Rodney stuttered, trembling hard, "It hurts, it really--"
John held on tighter. "I don't mean stop that, I mean don't, don't-- be hurt, don't," he said, and pressed his nose and lips against Rodney's temple.
Ronon glared around them in fury and frustration, and John followed his gaze. Nothing but rolling hills of sandy gunmetal earth. Low scrubby bushes clustered in the low ground, but they were thin and small. There was no cover, nothing anywhere near them to use as a walking stick to prod ahead.
"Just... everybody sit tight," John said. "Ronon, get Teyla's kit out of her pack for her and open it up, let's see what we've got."
"Isn't there morphine," Rodney panted.
"No," John said firmly. There was, but they couldn't risk giving it to Rodney when they didn't know whether he'd been poisoned by whatever coated those stakes.
Rodney made an agonized noise in his throat, more tears spilling down the sides of his face. John fisted the sleeve of Rodney's jacket hard and pressed his cheek against Rodney's hair, trying to comfort him or distract him or just anything, anything.
"I know the pain is great, but you will be all right, Rodney," Teyla said, low and soothing. "It is a clean break."
John looked: she had uncovered the injured ankle and cleaned it a little, and there was no bone showing, just a deep nasty gouge bleeding freely. Teyla drew a thin shard of splinter from the wound and set it aside, letting the blood ooze and drip, with any luck, taking whatever toxins were painted on the stake with it.
"It feels like it's burning," Rodney gasped.
Please, just fucking no, no. "The stake cut into you," John said. "You're probably feeling the scrapes. They're bleeding a little."
Teyla handed him a packet of tissues. John wiped Rodney's face, clearing off the sweat and tears. "It's okay," he said, "you're gonna be okay." He clenched the tissue in his hand and thought of the test tube that supposedly contained Einstein's last breath, and then deliberately balled up the tissue and threw it as far away as he could.
Ronon crouched beside him and just a little back on John's right, so that John could see what he was doing but Rodney couldn't. He flaked away some of the dried pitch from the tip of the stake with the blade of a knife, and rubbed the stuff between his fingers, then showed the residue to Teyla. She held her expression steady, only a momentary pained flicker in her eyes, and dug in her kit.
"Rodney, try to swallow these," she said, passing aspirin tablets to John. He gave Rodney a swallow from the canteen first, Rodney's habit of drinking before taking pills as familiar to him as his own left hand.
Then the pills. Rodney gulped and gasped. John wracked his brain: Pegasus poisons whose effects could be partly countered with aspirin. Quarasi? Wiselva? Both of those could cause blood clotting, disrupt the circulatory system... at some doses, either could kill a man in half an hour.
Tears leaked steadily from Rodney's eyes still, but he didn't seem to be sobbing any more. John didn't know whether to be relieved or more worried.
"Very good, Rodney. That was codeine," Teyla lied fluently, stroking Rodney's uninjured leg. "It will ease the pain, you only have to wait a few minutes longer."
"Why don't we have this stuff in syringes," Rodney said, his voice reedy.
"Sheppard," Ronon said, very quietly. "I should go."
John looked at him, at his grave expression, his tension; he was pitched forward as if to hurtle off at a moment's notice. John recognized the look of him; he might go even if John ordered him not to. He might be right to do it.
"I'll go," John said.
"No," Ronon answered almost before John even shut his mouth, "you move, you'll hurt him. And I'm faster."
John glanced over Ronon's boots, as tough as the expedition's field boots; tougher, maybe. He looked at Rodney's injured ankle and discarded boot. The wooden stake was old, weathered, seasoned hard and splintered sharp, and it looked like it hadn't punched through the leather, but cut in through the bootlaces and speared past the tongue. It was bad luck that it had gotten to Rodney's skin at all, the worst luck. Ronon might have better.
John just couldn't get over it, though. They'd been looking, eyes on the ground because frankly there wasn't much of anything else around here to see, just dirt and more dirt. They'd been looking and hadn't seen the trap til Rodney stepped right in the fucking thing.
Rodney began to shake in his arms, his breath shuddering in and out.
"Sheppard," Ronon said again, low and urgent.
"Be careful," said John. "Don't rush, stay safe. You can't get help if you hit a trap yourself." He met Ronon's eyes. "Good luck."
Ronon laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, then did the same to Rodney, and then he was gone-- moving fast, but nothing close to the speeds John knew he could achieve, keeping his pace light and even.
"Why'd he go," Rodney shivered, "doesn't he know some maniac put traps all over this stupid planet?"
"We don't know that," John said. "For all we know, there was only that one. If anyone could find the one trap on an entire world..."
"It'd be you," Rodney said.
"Yeah, well, au contraire."
"Usual rules apply, okay?" Rodney's voice scraped thin and harsh.
"What?"
"Tell Jeannie... I was saving kids. A nursery."
"I'll tell her you broke your ankle stealing candy from a baby. Teyla's baby."
Rodney's laugh sounded hollow and awful. "Shut up, I think I'm dying."
"You're a famous hypochondriac."
"Yeah," Rodney agreed, which was a bad sign right there; John looked helplessly at Teyla, who gazed bleakly back at him. "But," Rodney said, "I don't think I'm imagining this. I feel really. Peaceful."
"Only you'd assume that's a bad thing."
Teyla's voice was perfect, steady and calm. "The codeine is giving you relief, Rodney. That is all. You will be fine."
"Yeah," John said. "Anyway you're not allowed to die. You've got so many things to tell me I was an idiot about."
Rodney shook his head.
"Like I love you," John said, surprising himself. "For a while, and I never did anything about it. Pretty dumb. C'mon, you're going to need another forty-odd years just to lord that one over me, never mind all the other dumbshit stuff I do."
He could almost hear the next snappy retort Rodney was bound to come back with, something like: So we're talking about feelings, now I know I'm dying. Rodney's mouth even opened and closed, as though he were feinting toward banter and retreating again.
"Me too," he said instead, "all of you. Atlantis. You," finding John's hand and covering it. His fingers were cold. John brought them to his mouth and breathed on them to warm them, pressed his lips to the smooth whorled skin, fingerprints totally unique to Rodney, like no one else across two galaxies.
*
For some reason, later, this will be the close call that'll stick with John the most, the one that he'll dream about more than any other. He'll dream of kneeling there in the sand, looking across at Teyla in despair. He'll dream that between them, Rodney's body fails and betrays him, seizes violently and then goes utterly lax.
He'll dream what it's like to learn, minute by agonizing minute, that this amazing, singular, remarkable person is, as far as the universe is concerned, just a conglomeration of bone and meat, tissues and juices, a flesh sack of bacteria and acid that, no longer mastered by the body that contained them, eat away at what's left in John's arms.
He'll dream the slow, awful realization that he selfishly stole Rodney's last moments to confess his secrets for his own comfort and peace of mind; the realization that by speaking, he anchored Rodney there in that failing body when Rodney could have used that time to ascend and become energy and continue on and on.
He'll dream that they wait for hours, that Teyla keeps him from going crazy by describing the rites they will do for Rodney when they get him back to the city, telling him she'll help him wash Rodney's body and anoint him, lay him out in state and give the physical remains all the honor that Rodney in life deserved.
He'll dream that when Atlantis does finally arrive in the jumper, it's to tell him that Ronon succumbed to another pit trap on the way back to the gate, and died alone.
He'll wake and immediately sit upright, unwilling to risk slipping back into that dream. He'll jostle Rodney, who'll reach for him, sighing and saying, "Everything's okay, we're all fine. Ronon is fine. We're all fine."
He'll say, "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Go back to sleep."
Rodney will scoff and swing his legs out of bed. He'll bend to put on the fabric brace that supports his ankle where the wiselva ate away some of the muscle, but he'll stand comfortably once it's on, and walk to John's side. He'll tip up his face to the light and give John a familiar kiss.
"No," Rodney will say, "I think I'm ready for today."
*
Author: Cesare (almostnever)
Pairing: John/Rodney
Word count: ~2200
Ratings/Warnings: Worksafe. This story may be unsafe for people with triggers and/or contain elements that some readers would prefer to avoid: ( skip) Character death described, though it probably doesn't happen.
Contains: Hurt/comfort, heavy on the hurt.
Summary: Adopt-A-Minefield - Landmine Clearance & Support.
*
Rodney lay in the earth. The dirt was a leeched grey color, tinged with blue, gunmetal. It was dry and fine with a subtle mineral gleam, easily displaced, and Rodney's body pressed into it, making ridges around his outlines.
"Oh fuck, oh, oh, jesus, god damn it," Rodney said, the heel of his good foot digging in, pushing, as though he were trying to scoot away from the pain.
"Stop. Rodney! Stop it," John said, and next time Rodney tried to push away, John slid himself under and supported Rodney against his chest and on his lap, bracing him in place to keep him from moving the bad foot any more. "Let Teyla work on it."
Teyla darted a grateful look at John and slowly, carefully peeled Rodney's boot down. Rodney's foot skewed at a horrible angle; John felt his stomach flip and roll, just looking at it. Teyla tried to align Rodney's foot with his leg as she worked.
"Leave it alone, god, don't," Rodney said, throwing back his head, the back of his skull banging against John's collarbone.
"Shh," John wrapped his arm around Rodney's shoulders, braced across his collarbone. The wind whipped up some of the grit around them, and he tried to shield Rodney from the sting of it with his body and his hand.
Teyla finally got the boot off, and some blood dribbled out. John couldn't tell if the injury was a compound fracture, or if the pit trap had gashed open Rodney's skin as well as breaking his ankle.
Ronon crouched nearby, examining the trap. "Stakes in the bottom," he said. "Old though. Real old. Some just rotten." He reached in and uprooted one to show to John. Some kind of thick dried paste covered the sharp end, and the very tip was wet with Rodney's blood.
No telling how long the trap had been there, or why: Wraith, animals, other enemies, could be anything.
No telling how many other traps like it were around here, either. This one was so old that even scouting, alert for exactly this kind of thing, John and Teyla and Ronon had all missed it until Rodney stepped right on it.
Teyla fished a roll of bandage out of her tac vest, winding it just below Rodney's knee and cinching it tight.
"What're you doing," Rodney said, trying to see.
"Lie still, McKay," John held him down.
"Don't cut it off."
"Jesus, we're not cutting anything off," said John, "it's a goddamn tourniquet, standard procedure, you know that."
"You might cut it off... Ronon has knives. You drilled into my head with a, a drill," Rodney said weakly.
Teyla added another tourniquet just above the injury, and the movement made Rodney moan and writhe.
"It's okay, it's almost over, just hang on," John murmured to him.
"I'll go for help," said Ronon, already poised to push off and start running.
"No. If you step into one of these, we're twice as fucked," John said tightly.
"I'll follow our footprints back."
"They've already blown away," John said. Ronon bared his teeth but didn't deny it. John shook his head. "It's twenty minutes to our check-in, they'll send out a jumper when they don't hear from us; that's what we need." It was more like forty-five minutes, and it would feel like forever to Rodney, but it was the call John had to make. He couldn't just think of Rodney.
"Will you just leave it alone, please, please," Rodney said as Teyla very gently rolled off his sock. He tossed his head and his shoulders jerked in John's arms, trying to curl in, heaving, and then Rodney started crying.
"Shh, don't, don't," John said.
"Fff, fuck you, you-- stoic asshole," Rodney stuttered, trembling hard, "It hurts, it really--"
John held on tighter. "I don't mean stop that, I mean don't, don't-- be hurt, don't," he said, and pressed his nose and lips against Rodney's temple.
Ronon glared around them in fury and frustration, and John followed his gaze. Nothing but rolling hills of sandy gunmetal earth. Low scrubby bushes clustered in the low ground, but they were thin and small. There was no cover, nothing anywhere near them to use as a walking stick to prod ahead.
"Just... everybody sit tight," John said. "Ronon, get Teyla's kit out of her pack for her and open it up, let's see what we've got."
"Isn't there morphine," Rodney panted.
"No," John said firmly. There was, but they couldn't risk giving it to Rodney when they didn't know whether he'd been poisoned by whatever coated those stakes.
Rodney made an agonized noise in his throat, more tears spilling down the sides of his face. John fisted the sleeve of Rodney's jacket hard and pressed his cheek against Rodney's hair, trying to comfort him or distract him or just anything, anything.
"I know the pain is great, but you will be all right, Rodney," Teyla said, low and soothing. "It is a clean break."
John looked: she had uncovered the injured ankle and cleaned it a little, and there was no bone showing, just a deep nasty gouge bleeding freely. Teyla drew a thin shard of splinter from the wound and set it aside, letting the blood ooze and drip, with any luck, taking whatever toxins were painted on the stake with it.
"It feels like it's burning," Rodney gasped.
Please, just fucking no, no. "The stake cut into you," John said. "You're probably feeling the scrapes. They're bleeding a little."
Teyla handed him a packet of tissues. John wiped Rodney's face, clearing off the sweat and tears. "It's okay," he said, "you're gonna be okay." He clenched the tissue in his hand and thought of the test tube that supposedly contained Einstein's last breath, and then deliberately balled up the tissue and threw it as far away as he could.
Ronon crouched beside him and just a little back on John's right, so that John could see what he was doing but Rodney couldn't. He flaked away some of the dried pitch from the tip of the stake with the blade of a knife, and rubbed the stuff between his fingers, then showed the residue to Teyla. She held her expression steady, only a momentary pained flicker in her eyes, and dug in her kit.
"Rodney, try to swallow these," she said, passing aspirin tablets to John. He gave Rodney a swallow from the canteen first, Rodney's habit of drinking before taking pills as familiar to him as his own left hand.
Then the pills. Rodney gulped and gasped. John wracked his brain: Pegasus poisons whose effects could be partly countered with aspirin. Quarasi? Wiselva? Both of those could cause blood clotting, disrupt the circulatory system... at some doses, either could kill a man in half an hour.
Tears leaked steadily from Rodney's eyes still, but he didn't seem to be sobbing any more. John didn't know whether to be relieved or more worried.
"Very good, Rodney. That was codeine," Teyla lied fluently, stroking Rodney's uninjured leg. "It will ease the pain, you only have to wait a few minutes longer."
"Why don't we have this stuff in syringes," Rodney said, his voice reedy.
"Sheppard," Ronon said, very quietly. "I should go."
John looked at him, at his grave expression, his tension; he was pitched forward as if to hurtle off at a moment's notice. John recognized the look of him; he might go even if John ordered him not to. He might be right to do it.
"I'll go," John said.
"No," Ronon answered almost before John even shut his mouth, "you move, you'll hurt him. And I'm faster."
John glanced over Ronon's boots, as tough as the expedition's field boots; tougher, maybe. He looked at Rodney's injured ankle and discarded boot. The wooden stake was old, weathered, seasoned hard and splintered sharp, and it looked like it hadn't punched through the leather, but cut in through the bootlaces and speared past the tongue. It was bad luck that it had gotten to Rodney's skin at all, the worst luck. Ronon might have better.
John just couldn't get over it, though. They'd been looking, eyes on the ground because frankly there wasn't much of anything else around here to see, just dirt and more dirt. They'd been looking and hadn't seen the trap til Rodney stepped right in the fucking thing.
Rodney began to shake in his arms, his breath shuddering in and out.
"Sheppard," Ronon said again, low and urgent.
"Be careful," said John. "Don't rush, stay safe. You can't get help if you hit a trap yourself." He met Ronon's eyes. "Good luck."
Ronon laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, then did the same to Rodney, and then he was gone-- moving fast, but nothing close to the speeds John knew he could achieve, keeping his pace light and even.
"Why'd he go," Rodney shivered, "doesn't he know some maniac put traps all over this stupid planet?"
"We don't know that," John said. "For all we know, there was only that one. If anyone could find the one trap on an entire world..."
"It'd be you," Rodney said.
"Yeah, well, au contraire."
"Usual rules apply, okay?" Rodney's voice scraped thin and harsh.
"What?"
"Tell Jeannie... I was saving kids. A nursery."
"I'll tell her you broke your ankle stealing candy from a baby. Teyla's baby."
Rodney's laugh sounded hollow and awful. "Shut up, I think I'm dying."
"You're a famous hypochondriac."
"Yeah," Rodney agreed, which was a bad sign right there; John looked helplessly at Teyla, who gazed bleakly back at him. "But," Rodney said, "I don't think I'm imagining this. I feel really. Peaceful."
"Only you'd assume that's a bad thing."
Teyla's voice was perfect, steady and calm. "The codeine is giving you relief, Rodney. That is all. You will be fine."
"Yeah," John said. "Anyway you're not allowed to die. You've got so many things to tell me I was an idiot about."
Rodney shook his head.
"Like I love you," John said, surprising himself. "For a while, and I never did anything about it. Pretty dumb. C'mon, you're going to need another forty-odd years just to lord that one over me, never mind all the other dumbshit stuff I do."
He could almost hear the next snappy retort Rodney was bound to come back with, something like: So we're talking about feelings, now I know I'm dying. Rodney's mouth even opened and closed, as though he were feinting toward banter and retreating again.
"Me too," he said instead, "all of you. Atlantis. You," finding John's hand and covering it. His fingers were cold. John brought them to his mouth and breathed on them to warm them, pressed his lips to the smooth whorled skin, fingerprints totally unique to Rodney, like no one else across two galaxies.
*
For some reason, later, this will be the close call that'll stick with John the most, the one that he'll dream about more than any other. He'll dream of kneeling there in the sand, looking across at Teyla in despair. He'll dream that between them, Rodney's body fails and betrays him, seizes violently and then goes utterly lax.
He'll dream what it's like to learn, minute by agonizing minute, that this amazing, singular, remarkable person is, as far as the universe is concerned, just a conglomeration of bone and meat, tissues and juices, a flesh sack of bacteria and acid that, no longer mastered by the body that contained them, eat away at what's left in John's arms.
He'll dream the slow, awful realization that he selfishly stole Rodney's last moments to confess his secrets for his own comfort and peace of mind; the realization that by speaking, he anchored Rodney there in that failing body when Rodney could have used that time to ascend and become energy and continue on and on.
He'll dream that they wait for hours, that Teyla keeps him from going crazy by describing the rites they will do for Rodney when they get him back to the city, telling him she'll help him wash Rodney's body and anoint him, lay him out in state and give the physical remains all the honor that Rodney in life deserved.
He'll dream that when Atlantis does finally arrive in the jumper, it's to tell him that Ronon succumbed to another pit trap on the way back to the gate, and died alone.
He'll wake and immediately sit upright, unwilling to risk slipping back into that dream. He'll jostle Rodney, who'll reach for him, sighing and saying, "Everything's okay, we're all fine. Ronon is fine. We're all fine."
He'll say, "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Go back to sleep."
Rodney will scoff and swing his legs out of bed. He'll bend to put on the fabric brace that supports his ankle where the wiselva ate away some of the muscle, but he'll stand comfortably once it's on, and walk to John's side. He'll tip up his face to the light and give John a familiar kiss.
"No," Rodney will say, "I think I'm ready for today."
*