Fic: I'll Be Home (McKay/Sheppard, PG-13)
Title: I’ll Be Home...
Author: lantean_drift
Recipient: fawkesielady_ed
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They’re not mine, I don’t own them, and I make no money from this.
Author's Notes: I’d like to say thank you to my beta for being awesome, as always; and I’d like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a peaceful new year.
Summary: An alien race think they’re teaching John that scientists are not slaves. What they’re actually doing is pissing off Rodney.
John shifted his weight very carefully. There was a fucking excruciating pain lancing through his left leg and he needed to ease it right now. He tried to twist but his ribs protested and his shoulder ached and holy fuck, why was it always the harmless looking ones that turned out to be complete whack jobs? One minute it was ‘of course our two peoples can be friends. Step this way, Colonel; we’d love to show you the view of our humble city’ and the next minute it was ‘you’re clearly a bad and awful man. Step this way, we’d like to give you a beating.’
John managed to shift some of his weight off his left leg by rolling onto his side and holding his ribs steady by pushing his back carefully against the cold stone wall behind him. It put his hips at a slightly uncomfortable angle but it eased his leg some.
Not for the first time he wondered where the hell Rodney was right now. He’d left him scanning some Ancient technology in a harmless looking lab with a couple of harmless looking Olteri ministers and their top scientist. John had only gone through one door to look through one fucking window that he hadn’t really cared about anyway; and Ronon and Teyla had gone to satisfy Teyla’s unnatural need to look at wheat processing plants everywhere they went. Once again they’d scattered the team and unsurprisingly they’d gotten into trouble. For Christ sake, when would they learn? It’s not like this was new territory for them these days.
John’s leg spasmed again and he cried out into the empty cell. He unashamedly gasped as the muscle seemed to twist and contract, hot and sharp, right down his leg. Fucking hell, whatever that weapon was, it was effective. He glared down at the two burn marks that were visible on his thigh, spreading out from the electrode type devices that the Olteri had attached to him. He’d never be able to make a run for it with this thing still attached and whenever he tried to rip it off the immediate pain was excruciating.
And holy shit did he hope the damage wasn’t permanent. If it was, he was out of the field and behind a desk for the rest of his life and for what? For teasing Rodney about geeking out over the Olteri technology and telling him to get a move on. This was fucking insane.
“Hey!” he shouted at the door. “Hey! You’ve made your point - no teasing scientists, I get it. You gonna let me out now?” No one answered. “When you do you should probably keep my gun,” he added quietly. “Because if you don’t I’m likely to shoot someone in the head!” All right, so they might have heard that last bit.
“God damn it,” he shouted as his leg cramped again and a rough heat seemed to rip through the muscles. It was enough to leave him shaking and seriously considering the direct benefit of hurling all over the cell floor. He instinctively grabbed at the wires snaking down his leg, trying to pull them away and the pain intensified. Crying out, he forced his hands to spread against the cold floor, his fingertips running roughly across the stone, burning as he scraped them over the rough surface; nothing compared to the pain in his leg. When the final pulsing around the knee joint finally subsided, he held himself very still and waited for the nausea to pass. Taking a couple of carefully controlled deep breaths, he rolled and sat up again.
“All right. What do we have?” he muttered to himself. “Three walls - stone; door and fourth wall - bars. No weapon. No radio - great.” He patted down his pockets and pulled out a power bar. “Huh.” Chocolate was Rodney’s favourite, he put it back in his pocket.
“Seriously,” he shouted. “I’m gonna get cranky soon. You need to let me out of here and take me straight to my completely unharmed team or I’m going to go from cranky to pissed - and there’s no need for that. Hey!”
One of the Olteri guards appeared by the bars of his cell door. His black eyes stared at Sheppard. His obstinate expression lost in the pale grey of his skin. The Olteri were all humanoid but oddly drained of colour, all of them had grey skin of an unvarying shade, black eyes and dark grey hair. John shuddered, they were like looking at one of those old black and white horror movies.
“Where are my team?” he demanded. The guard just stared back. “Two of them were looking at your crop processors, one of them was looking at your technology - where are they now? Hey! I’m talking to you - where are my team?” he shouted as the Olteri’s disinterest prevailed and he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving John alone once again.
“Damn it. McKay! McKay! You here?! Wherever the fuck ‘here’ is. McKay?”
A tearing pain shot through his leg and John found himself face-first on the floor again as he desperately tried to breathe through it. Gasping and incapacitated and fucking furious with himself, he lay still and willed the pain to pass.
~*~
“Yes, I’m certain. I’m absolutely certain I’m certain and if I don’t see him in the next sixty seconds I’m going to let my huge friend Ronon, here, do everything he’s threatened to do to you. Then I’ll let Teyla have her turn - and believe me you’ll wish Ronon had got you when she does. John? John!”
Like that could be anybody but Rodney.
“McKay - in here!” he shouted. He raised his head and saw them just as the Olteri stopped the group outside his cell. Rodney was standing at the front of the group his mouth set in a grim frown, his eyes furious. Ronon and Teyla hovered just behind him and John was struck by how much Ronon’s control had improved over the last few years.
“Open it,” Rodney said. His voice was quiet and flat and John was shocked by how clearly the anger sounded through. “Open it right now.”
One of the Olteri guards stepped forward and started fumbling with the complicated chain sequence that keyed the bars open. Rodney watched impatiently, eying the structure of the cell and the set up of the bars that passed as a door.
“Ronon,” Rodney snapped. “Pressure here and here, please.”
John was impressed when Ronon stepped up and put his hands on the bars where Rodney had showed him. He pushed forward once then with a shout, yanked the bars back toward him. The door came off in his hands. He turned and shoved it at the Olteri guards who caught it and fumbled with it clumsily.
“John.” Unsurprisingly, Rodney was first into the cell. “John?”
John felt a wave of relief that felt an awful lot like dizziness pass over him as Rodney’s hand reached out and carefully carded through his hair.
“Are you hurt?”
John rolled onto his back, hissing as he did so. “Ow, fuck. Leg. They attached some sort of electrode thing that hurts like hell.”
“Get this off him,” Rodney demanded, turning to glare at the Olteri.
Ronon bodily hauled one of them into the cell and shoved him towards John.
“Remove the device from the Colonel’s leg immediately,” Teyla said with an icy calmness that left John grateful that it was directed at somebody else.
The Olteri kneeled down next to John and sorted through another small set of chains with shaking hands. When he found the one he wanted, he pressed the end into a small hole in the box part of the device and the electrodes disengaged and the wires reeled themselves back into the box. John shuddered as he felt the wires slithering away. Carefully, he stretched his leg; stopping suddenly when the pain hit.
“Not good.”
“Okay,” Rodney said, his voice worryingly soothing. “We’ll sort it out.”
John had every confidence they would. Rodney’s hand didn’t move from stroking John’s hair as he turned to Ronon and Teyla. “Get these idiots out of here, we don’t need an audience,” he snapped, nodding at the shocked looking Olteri. “And we need to get to the ‘Gate, radio through to Carson and make sure he has a team standing by.”
“I will do that, Rodney,” Teyla offered as Ronon started glaring the Olteri into retreat. “Colonel?”
“Go. Be careful.” John nodded at her gratefully.
“I always am.” She smiled at him and turned to leave. “Look after him, Rodney,” she added quietly.
“Of course,” Rodney answered. Teyla left pausing only to touch Ronon’s shoulder as she passed him, herding the Olteri out of the way.
“I can’t leave you to your own devices for two minutes, can I?” Rodney asked, his voice clearly shaking.
“They promised me a cool view,” John whined. “You okay?” he asked, sobering at the thought of what they could have done to Rodney in John’s absence.
“I’m fine. Angry and worried, but uninjured. I turned around and you were nowhere to be found. I really hate it when that happens. So, next time someone promises you a cool view don’t just take them at their word, okay?”
Rodney’s hand cupped his cheek and John leaned into the touch. “Sorry,” he murmured.
Rodney glanced behind him to check they were alone in the cell before leaning down and roughly catching John’s mouth with his own. John kissed him back, always grateful that they had this.
“Help me up would you?” John asked, trying to sit up, gasping with the effort. “Ribs,” he managed to point out as Rodney’s hands tugged him by the shoulders.
“For god’s sake, John.”
John knew that tone, knew the exasperation barely covered the worry and the fear.
“They’re fine, just bruised - and painful. It’s fine.”
“It’s really not,” Rodney sighed and slid around behind him. He fitted his chest against John’s back and gently guided him to lean back against him. “This is all your fault.”
“I didn’t ask to be dragged away and kicked about, Rodney.”
John felt Rodney’s hold tighten slightly.
“You wandered off on your own,” Rodney snapped but his mouth skimmed over John’s cheek, pressing his lips against John’s overly warm skin.
“You were busy geeking about with the Ancient toys.”
“Yes, that’s right - and of course, I wouldn’t panic to find you gone because I was geeking about with the Ancient toys. You come first, John. Before anything. You shouldn’t have wandered off - they told me they’d taken care of you for me. They said I didn’t have to worry because they’d saved me from you. You didn’t answer your radio so I radioed Teyla and she and Ronon came straight back. I demanded to see you and started yelling a bit - ”
John raised a brow at him.
“Okay, a lot; but they’d told me they’d taken you away to fix your ways because your behaviour was unacceptable to the Olteri. They thought I was your slave and that I was only travelling with you because I was forced.”
“That’s crazy. Just because I told you to hurry up?”
“I seems you should be nicer to me,” Rodney said lightly. John manfully ignored the slight tremor in his voice and turned his head so that he could kiss Rodney again.
“I’m plenty nice to you. And when we get home and Carson has fixed me up, I’m gonna show you just how nice I can be.”
“I’d like that.” Rodney almost smiled but he leaned in for another kiss so John counted it as a win.
Teyla coughed subtly from the doorway and John pulled back from the kiss with a totally unsubtle grin.
“Carson and his team are standing by, Colonel,” Teyla said with a smile of her own. “It is time for us to return to Atlantis, I think.”
“I agree,” Rodney answered; helping John very carefully to his feet. “Home; come on.”
“Home sounds good,” John added quietly and leaned into the warmth of Rodney’s hold.
THE END.
Author: lantean_drift
Recipient: fawkesielady_ed
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: They’re not mine, I don’t own them, and I make no money from this.
Author's Notes: I’d like to say thank you to my beta for being awesome, as always; and I’d like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a peaceful new year.
Summary: An alien race think they’re teaching John that scientists are not slaves. What they’re actually doing is pissing off Rodney.
John shifted his weight very carefully. There was a fucking excruciating pain lancing through his left leg and he needed to ease it right now. He tried to twist but his ribs protested and his shoulder ached and holy fuck, why was it always the harmless looking ones that turned out to be complete whack jobs? One minute it was ‘of course our two peoples can be friends. Step this way, Colonel; we’d love to show you the view of our humble city’ and the next minute it was ‘you’re clearly a bad and awful man. Step this way, we’d like to give you a beating.’
John managed to shift some of his weight off his left leg by rolling onto his side and holding his ribs steady by pushing his back carefully against the cold stone wall behind him. It put his hips at a slightly uncomfortable angle but it eased his leg some.
Not for the first time he wondered where the hell Rodney was right now. He’d left him scanning some Ancient technology in a harmless looking lab with a couple of harmless looking Olteri ministers and their top scientist. John had only gone through one door to look through one fucking window that he hadn’t really cared about anyway; and Ronon and Teyla had gone to satisfy Teyla’s unnatural need to look at wheat processing plants everywhere they went. Once again they’d scattered the team and unsurprisingly they’d gotten into trouble. For Christ sake, when would they learn? It’s not like this was new territory for them these days.
John’s leg spasmed again and he cried out into the empty cell. He unashamedly gasped as the muscle seemed to twist and contract, hot and sharp, right down his leg. Fucking hell, whatever that weapon was, it was effective. He glared down at the two burn marks that were visible on his thigh, spreading out from the electrode type devices that the Olteri had attached to him. He’d never be able to make a run for it with this thing still attached and whenever he tried to rip it off the immediate pain was excruciating.
And holy shit did he hope the damage wasn’t permanent. If it was, he was out of the field and behind a desk for the rest of his life and for what? For teasing Rodney about geeking out over the Olteri technology and telling him to get a move on. This was fucking insane.
“Hey!” he shouted at the door. “Hey! You’ve made your point - no teasing scientists, I get it. You gonna let me out now?” No one answered. “When you do you should probably keep my gun,” he added quietly. “Because if you don’t I’m likely to shoot someone in the head!” All right, so they might have heard that last bit.
“God damn it,” he shouted as his leg cramped again and a rough heat seemed to rip through the muscles. It was enough to leave him shaking and seriously considering the direct benefit of hurling all over the cell floor. He instinctively grabbed at the wires snaking down his leg, trying to pull them away and the pain intensified. Crying out, he forced his hands to spread against the cold floor, his fingertips running roughly across the stone, burning as he scraped them over the rough surface; nothing compared to the pain in his leg. When the final pulsing around the knee joint finally subsided, he held himself very still and waited for the nausea to pass. Taking a couple of carefully controlled deep breaths, he rolled and sat up again.
“All right. What do we have?” he muttered to himself. “Three walls - stone; door and fourth wall - bars. No weapon. No radio - great.” He patted down his pockets and pulled out a power bar. “Huh.” Chocolate was Rodney’s favourite, he put it back in his pocket.
“Seriously,” he shouted. “I’m gonna get cranky soon. You need to let me out of here and take me straight to my completely unharmed team or I’m going to go from cranky to pissed - and there’s no need for that. Hey!”
One of the Olteri guards appeared by the bars of his cell door. His black eyes stared at Sheppard. His obstinate expression lost in the pale grey of his skin. The Olteri were all humanoid but oddly drained of colour, all of them had grey skin of an unvarying shade, black eyes and dark grey hair. John shuddered, they were like looking at one of those old black and white horror movies.
“Where are my team?” he demanded. The guard just stared back. “Two of them were looking at your crop processors, one of them was looking at your technology - where are they now? Hey! I’m talking to you - where are my team?” he shouted as the Olteri’s disinterest prevailed and he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving John alone once again.
“Damn it. McKay! McKay! You here?! Wherever the fuck ‘here’ is. McKay?”
A tearing pain shot through his leg and John found himself face-first on the floor again as he desperately tried to breathe through it. Gasping and incapacitated and fucking furious with himself, he lay still and willed the pain to pass.
~*~
“Yes, I’m certain. I’m absolutely certain I’m certain and if I don’t see him in the next sixty seconds I’m going to let my huge friend Ronon, here, do everything he’s threatened to do to you. Then I’ll let Teyla have her turn - and believe me you’ll wish Ronon had got you when she does. John? John!”
Like that could be anybody but Rodney.
“McKay - in here!” he shouted. He raised his head and saw them just as the Olteri stopped the group outside his cell. Rodney was standing at the front of the group his mouth set in a grim frown, his eyes furious. Ronon and Teyla hovered just behind him and John was struck by how much Ronon’s control had improved over the last few years.
“Open it,” Rodney said. His voice was quiet and flat and John was shocked by how clearly the anger sounded through. “Open it right now.”
One of the Olteri guards stepped forward and started fumbling with the complicated chain sequence that keyed the bars open. Rodney watched impatiently, eying the structure of the cell and the set up of the bars that passed as a door.
“Ronon,” Rodney snapped. “Pressure here and here, please.”
John was impressed when Ronon stepped up and put his hands on the bars where Rodney had showed him. He pushed forward once then with a shout, yanked the bars back toward him. The door came off in his hands. He turned and shoved it at the Olteri guards who caught it and fumbled with it clumsily.
“John.” Unsurprisingly, Rodney was first into the cell. “John?”
John felt a wave of relief that felt an awful lot like dizziness pass over him as Rodney’s hand reached out and carefully carded through his hair.
“Are you hurt?”
John rolled onto his back, hissing as he did so. “Ow, fuck. Leg. They attached some sort of electrode thing that hurts like hell.”
“Get this off him,” Rodney demanded, turning to glare at the Olteri.
Ronon bodily hauled one of them into the cell and shoved him towards John.
“Remove the device from the Colonel’s leg immediately,” Teyla said with an icy calmness that left John grateful that it was directed at somebody else.
The Olteri kneeled down next to John and sorted through another small set of chains with shaking hands. When he found the one he wanted, he pressed the end into a small hole in the box part of the device and the electrodes disengaged and the wires reeled themselves back into the box. John shuddered as he felt the wires slithering away. Carefully, he stretched his leg; stopping suddenly when the pain hit.
“Not good.”
“Okay,” Rodney said, his voice worryingly soothing. “We’ll sort it out.”
John had every confidence they would. Rodney’s hand didn’t move from stroking John’s hair as he turned to Ronon and Teyla. “Get these idiots out of here, we don’t need an audience,” he snapped, nodding at the shocked looking Olteri. “And we need to get to the ‘Gate, radio through to Carson and make sure he has a team standing by.”
“I will do that, Rodney,” Teyla offered as Ronon started glaring the Olteri into retreat. “Colonel?”
“Go. Be careful.” John nodded at her gratefully.
“I always am.” She smiled at him and turned to leave. “Look after him, Rodney,” she added quietly.
“Of course,” Rodney answered. Teyla left pausing only to touch Ronon’s shoulder as she passed him, herding the Olteri out of the way.
“I can’t leave you to your own devices for two minutes, can I?” Rodney asked, his voice clearly shaking.
“They promised me a cool view,” John whined. “You okay?” he asked, sobering at the thought of what they could have done to Rodney in John’s absence.
“I’m fine. Angry and worried, but uninjured. I turned around and you were nowhere to be found. I really hate it when that happens. So, next time someone promises you a cool view don’t just take them at their word, okay?”
Rodney’s hand cupped his cheek and John leaned into the touch. “Sorry,” he murmured.
Rodney glanced behind him to check they were alone in the cell before leaning down and roughly catching John’s mouth with his own. John kissed him back, always grateful that they had this.
“Help me up would you?” John asked, trying to sit up, gasping with the effort. “Ribs,” he managed to point out as Rodney’s hands tugged him by the shoulders.
“For god’s sake, John.”
John knew that tone, knew the exasperation barely covered the worry and the fear.
“They’re fine, just bruised - and painful. It’s fine.”
“It’s really not,” Rodney sighed and slid around behind him. He fitted his chest against John’s back and gently guided him to lean back against him. “This is all your fault.”
“I didn’t ask to be dragged away and kicked about, Rodney.”
John felt Rodney’s hold tighten slightly.
“You wandered off on your own,” Rodney snapped but his mouth skimmed over John’s cheek, pressing his lips against John’s overly warm skin.
“You were busy geeking about with the Ancient toys.”
“Yes, that’s right - and of course, I wouldn’t panic to find you gone because I was geeking about with the Ancient toys. You come first, John. Before anything. You shouldn’t have wandered off - they told me they’d taken care of you for me. They said I didn’t have to worry because they’d saved me from you. You didn’t answer your radio so I radioed Teyla and she and Ronon came straight back. I demanded to see you and started yelling a bit - ”
John raised a brow at him.
“Okay, a lot; but they’d told me they’d taken you away to fix your ways because your behaviour was unacceptable to the Olteri. They thought I was your slave and that I was only travelling with you because I was forced.”
“That’s crazy. Just because I told you to hurry up?”
“I seems you should be nicer to me,” Rodney said lightly. John manfully ignored the slight tremor in his voice and turned his head so that he could kiss Rodney again.
“I’m plenty nice to you. And when we get home and Carson has fixed me up, I’m gonna show you just how nice I can be.”
“I’d like that.” Rodney almost smiled but he leaned in for another kiss so John counted it as a win.
Teyla coughed subtly from the doorway and John pulled back from the kiss with a totally unsubtle grin.
“Carson and his team are standing by, Colonel,” Teyla said with a smile of her own. “It is time for us to return to Atlantis, I think.”
“I agree,” Rodney answered; helping John very carefully to his feet. “Home; come on.”
“Home sounds good,” John added quietly and leaned into the warmth of Rodney’s hold.
THE END.