The Human Body: Keep Your Head Above Water, Part 3 (Irresistible)
Title: The Human Body: Keep Your Head Above Water, Part 3/3
Author: smallwaldo
Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Words: 3664
Warnings:: This story focuses on the recovery from non-consentual sex.
A/N: This is the third and last part of the Irresistible chapter. You know the part where John's in the cell and Lucius makes that remark about all six wives at once? That was when I realized that he was totally a sexual predator. maisfeeka, ladykoori and kyrdwyn all offered invaluable beta advice on this one. In fact this story is literally 10,000 words longer than it was originally going to be because of their feedback. (Seriously, I thought I was done at 3500 words. They went, Uh... no.)
Summary: “Did he talk you into doing something you didn’t want to do? ... Like getting you into bed with him?”
As was usual for him, John woke at dawn. He never could sleep when it was light out. Carson was still completely unconscious and showing no signs of wanting to move any time soon. John carefully extracted himself from both Carson and the sleeping bag and dug around in his bag to get a sweatshirt, a pair of socks and his tablet.
He slipped out, leaving the tent flap open so Carson would see him when he woke. He set the coffee pot up on the camp stove and found a granola bar. They had eggs and stuff for a real breakfast, but he’d wait until Carson woke up to bother with all that.
He was on his second cup of coffee and his third nasty email to team leaders who refused to fill out their requisitions and reports correctly when Carson stumbled out of the tent. John suppressed a laugh as Carson shoved his feet into his boots and stumbled up the path to the latrine. He had a feeling that Carson’s eyes weren’t even open yet.
He stood and made Carson a cup of coffee and left it on the end of the table near the empty chair before sitting back down in his and pulling up the weather reports he’d downloaded before they left.
When Carson stumbled back towards camp, John thought that he was going to climb back into bed, but Carson managed to find his way to the chair with his eyes still half closed.
“Go back to bed, Carson,” John laughed. “Really, it’s okay.”
“I’m up, I’m up,” Carson muttered.
John handed him the coffee. “If you insist.”
Carson took the coffee and curled into his chair as much as anyone could curl into a collapsible chair. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Not that late. You can go back to sleep. Really.” John studied him from over the top of his own coffee cup. Carson was trying to pry his eyes open, but comically when he got one eye all the way open, the other one closed.
“What time is it?” Carson asked again.
“Not quite nine,” John said consulting his tablet.
“That’s three hours more than I’d be getting back on Atlantis,” Carson said as he sipped his coffee.
“Yeah, but something tells me that the last few nights you may not have gotten much sleep. You probably have some catching up to do.”
“I’m fine,” Carson insisted.
John shrugged and let it go. He turned his tablet around and offered it to Carson, the weather map still displayed. “I downloaded this yesterday. It’s going to be pretty warm this afternoon. I figured we’d get done whatever work we needed to do after breakfast and then go swimming after lunch.”
Carson took the tablet and looked at the display. He was glad the meteorology department had taken to posting the weather updates in both Farenheit and centigrade, because he was reasonably sure he couldn’t do the math at that particular moment. And the idea that it was going to be ninety-one degrees centigrade didn’t make much sense at all. Thirty-three made much more sense. It also meant hot. Swimming would be good if he was awake enough at that point. “Okay,” he finally replied to John’s plan, his eyes slipping shut again.
John watched him for a minute, knowing Carson was oblivious if not asleep. He’d asked John not to treat him as fragile, but he was really starting to think that Carson had dragged himself out of bed simply because John had gotten up. He went to the lock box and found a small tarp and spread it on the ground near the fire scar. He then took the sleepingbags from the tent and folded them over to make additional padding. He took the coffee cup from Carson’s hand and put it on the table. “Come here,” he said softly as he led Carson to lay down on the pile of bedding. “Go back to sleep. I’m going to be right here finishing my reports.”
Curling up on his side, Carson nodded.
John shook his head. It probably would have been easier for them both to have gone back into the tent than for him to drag everything outside, but Carson was dead to the world again, so John figured he’d done the right thing.
He knew it would be a few weeks of finding these little compromises until Carson felt a little more secure and actually believed all the things he’d said that night about understanding that none of what had happened with Lucius not being his fault.
John figured that the afternoon would be interesting - Carson would eventually figure out that John hadn’t packed swim trunks for either of them. He wondered if Carson had ever gone skinny-dipping with anyone before. He guessed he could find out once Carson had gotten a little more sleep.
~~~***~~~***~~~
Carson slept for the better part of another hour. He woke to the smells of bacon and eggs. He eventually dragged himself up off the pile of blankets and stumbled over to where John was reheating the coffee and making breakfast.
He blinked at the bread. “What happened to the toast?” he asked, his voice still scratchy from sleep.
“Nothing happened to it. I cut a hole in it.” John held up the piece he was working on. the middle neatly torn out.
“Why?” Carson poured himself another cup of coffee.
“Haven’t you ever had a toad in the hole?”
“Oh aye, in the creek near my house when I was a boy. What’s that got to do with what happened to the toast?” Carson was trying to hide his grin behind his coffee. He’d seen what John was doing - using the holey bread with bacon under it to contain the egg as he fried everything up at once. Now he was just having fun with him.
“Were they good eating too?” John quipped sliding the concoction onto a plate and handing to Carson while he set up his own. “There’s all kinds of fruit in the cooler,” he said as he flipped his toad in the hole over.
Carson dug out a few oranges from the cooler and handed one to John as John put his egg on a plate. “Feel better?” John asked as he flopped into his chair and dug into his breakfast.
“Aye. Sorry I fell asleep again. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that.” Carson shrugged.
“No big deal. I got two more reports done. And you look a lot better than you did before. You couldn’t even keep your eyes open.”
Carson blushed and hung his head. “I don’t think I’ve slept this much at a stretch since before going to Antarctica in the first place.”
“You needed it,” John said pulling his bowie knife out of his boot and cutting into his orange.
“Oh now that’s not very sanitary,” Carson griped.
John rolled his eyes. “What? Afraid I’ll die of eating foot fungus?” John sliced his orange the other way.
“Now that’s just bloody disgusting,” Carson said tearing into the peel of his orange with his nails.
“I figured if it hasn’t killed me in almost twenty years of active service, it’s not likely to.” John made sure Carson was looking before biting into the orange he’d just cut with his very unsanitary knife.
“I should make you rinse your mouth out with peroxide before you get any grand plans about kissing me.” Carson shook his head and went back to peeling his orange.
“Because I suppose you scrubbed your hands with surgical soap before doing that,” John shot back.
“That’s different. Do you know how many germs live in shoes? You could have at least passed the blade through the fire on the stove. Killed off the surface layer or something…”
John just popped another slice of orange in his mouth. When he was sure Carson wasn’t looking, he bit into the pulp and wrapped his lips around the rind so that it covered his teeth. When Carson looked up again John gave him an orange peel grin.
Carson nearly choked on his own orange at the sight. “You’re a great big six-year-old, you know that?” Carson asked him, still laughing.
John just shrugged, keeping the orange in place and bouncing around in his chair. Carson threw a piece of his orange at him. John looked for something to throw back but had eaten all of his breakfast. He bit off the pulp and swallowed it and spit the peel back onto his plate. “Made you laugh,” he said with a real grin.
“Aye,” Carson said with an answering smile. “I suppose it did.”
They did the dishes and dragged the sleeping bags back into the tent before they both finally climbed out of the clothes they’d slept in and put on jeans and t-shirts. It wasn’t even noon yet, but the day was already promising to be quite warm.
They grabbed the beach towels and headed up to where there was a small grassy meadow a kilometer or so away to get their work done for the day. John had a few more reports to read and sign off on and Carson had patient charts to review and update.
They lay head to head on the towels poking at their computers and occasionally grumbling about people in their various divisions who couldn’t seem to get things right. After about three very productive hours, the heat and the need for lunch brought them back to camp.
Cold sandwiches and chips were sufficient for lunch. Neither of them wanted to stand over the campstove or start a fire. The each got another hour of work done there in camp before deciding they’d done enough for a day they were officially off duty.
Carson stood up to tuck his computer back in its case and John came up behind him and rested his hands lightly on Carson’s hips. “Want to go swimming now?”
Carson straightened up but turned slowly to stay in the circle of John’s arms. “I looked for a pair of shorts in my bag this morning and didn’t see anything.”
John kissed him softly. “Who needs shorts?”
Carson realized what he was saying immediately. “Oh, you are not suggesting…”
“Why not? There’s no one out here.”
Carson took half a step back. John let him go, but kept his hands on his hips. “John,” Carson warned sternly.
“I’ll behave,” John promised. “But come on, when was the last time you got to go skinny dipping?”
Carson studied the dirt under his feet and muttered something.
“What?” John asked, an impish grin still on his face.
“I said,” Carson enunciated clearly looking up to look John in the eye challengingly. “I have never been skinny dipping before. Alright?”
John tugged Carson back in. If Carson balked one more time, John would let him win. But he’d said he didn’t want to be treated as fragile and little innocent skinny dip would be a good way to show that he wasn’t going to do that. And by behaving himself he’d show that he wasn’t going to push either. “Then it’s about damn time you tried it. It’s fun. Come on.”
Carson stood rooted to his spot, clearly thinking about it. “I’m not going to get bit on the arse by some kind of mutant shark or something?”
“If that’s what you’re worried about, do you really think a pair of Speedos is going to matter?” John teased.
“Do you actually think that I’d be caught dead in a pair of Speedos anywhere at any time?” Carson teased back.
“I rest my case. Come on. Grab your towel and let’s go.”
Carson sighed. “The things I let you talk me into.”
John held hands with him as they made their way down the short path to the beach. It was kind of nice to be able to do all the things they couldn’t do in Atlantis without having to worry.
When they got down to the beach, John led them about twenty meters down the beach to where a tree limb grew low and parallel to the ground. “Towel rack,” John said as he tossed his towel over the limb and started stripping out of his clothes.
Carson still thought this idea was a little daft, but he fatalistically shucked his shirt and shoes. John was bareass naked and wading in the surf by the time Carson decided to just grin and bare it.
The water was refreshingly cool as he caught up to John and they both moved out until the water was ebbing and flowing around their chests. When the waves came in, they jumped up letting the wave carry them up and back before being set down gently a little closer to the shore. When they got too far back they waded back out and did it again.
After a bit John noticed the waves coming up a little higher down the beach. “Let’s go down there.”
They half-swam, half-waded a few hundred meters down the beach to where the waves were kicking up higher, but not dangerously so. “On the western shore the waves come up and hit a reef or something - I want to get my surfboard out there some day,” John said as they jumped the waves.
“Have fun. I’ll be on the shore waiting to put you back together when you hit that ‘reef or something’.” Carson had hit his risk-taking limit for a while.
John just smiled at him as the next wave came in. Carson, apparently distracted didn’t jump in time and the wave washed over his head. John reached out and grabbed his arm. The water wasn’t deep enough that Carson wouldn’t be able to get his footing again, and there was no noticeable undertow, but John took advantage of the chance to grab hold of Carson and pull him up against his body. When Carson looped his hands over John’s head and kissed him, John slid his arms down and around Carson’s waist, holding him tight. “Having fun?” he asked when they came up for air.
“Aye. I suppose I am,” Carson said kissing him again.
“Want to go a little further down?” John stepped back just a bit for Carson before he had to deal with his body wanting to do what it usually did when Carson was naked and pressed against him.
“Sure,” Carson said, taking John’s hand as they headed another half-klick down the beach.
They’d lost track of time somewhere and when John looked up again, he noticed that the edge of the sky was starting to turn lovely shades of pink and orange and yellow. He pulled Carson in for another kiss. “We should head back.” He pointed to where the sun had started to slip below the water.
Carson looked up, following John’s finger, but it was what he saw when he turned the other way that made him worry. “Oh bugger. We better do it soon, too.”
John looked up and saw the large dark storm clouds that had started to appear behind them. He’d thought it was only getting dark because it was getting late. “Uh oh… looks like we may get even wetter,” John said fatalistically.
They swam back along the shore at a decent rate, but the storm clouds moved faster and all at once they were getting wet from above and below. When they got back to where they’d left their clothes, everything was soaked, including their towels. “Aw hell,” John said laughing as he collected his sodden things.
“Bugger,” Carson agreed getting his things and shoving his feet into his wet shoes. He wrapped his wet towel across his middle and headed back up the path behind John.
When they got to their camp, John pulled on his wet shorts and t-shirt and ran about making sure the camp stove was collapsed and he tossed the tarp from that morning over the fire scar and the small pile of wood they had collected earlier. Carson struggled into his wet jeans and then took some of the larger rocks he found and pinned down the corners of the tarp.
He folded up the chairs and laid them under the table, not really sure if that would be helpful or not while John dragged the cooler and dry food box next to the tent.
The rain was coming down in torrents when they dove into the tent.
“Oh holy hell,” John laughed as he reached up to fasten the tent flaps. The rain was loud over their heads, but they were safely out of its reach.
Carson quickly kicked his shoes over to the corner and shimmied out of his wet pants before looking around for something he could use to dry off.
John shucked his clothes and then gathered up both his and Carson’s soaked things and tossed them back out into the rain. “We’re going to need to rinse all that off tomorrow and get some plastic bags out of the jumper for them.” He dug through his bag until he found the small towel he’d wrapped his razor and comb and soap bar in. He handed it to Carson. “Here.”
Carson passed it over his hair to keep it from dripping into his eyes any more than it had and then dried his face. He flopped back on the sleepingbag. “Well, that was a rather unexpected end to our swim.”
John took the towel and dried his hair and face as Carson had and then tucked laid it over his bag to dry. “You’re covered in goosebumps,” John observed, tracing one finger over Carson’s arm.
“It got a mite chilly when that rain started,” he answered.
“Come on, crawl in,” John said as he scooted into his own side of the sleeping bag. Carson did the same and curled up against John’s chest. He was shivering from the cold, such a stark contrast to when they’d been in the meadow hot under a bright sun.
John ran his hands up and down Carson’s back trying to warm him. “Well, I’d say that put a dampener on our day, but that would be a bad pun.”
“And of course, you’d never make a bad pun,” Carson agreed sarcastically, pulling the thermal blanket closer around himself and John.
“Of course not,” John said and just as he leaned into kiss Carson, Carson let out a jaw-cracking yawn. “Tired?” he asked instead.
“I know I shouldn’t be. I slept all bloody morning,” Carson said as he covered his mouth from yet another yawn.
“It was a bit of an exciting afternoon. Long swim followed by a mad dash.” John shrugged, still rubbing Carson’s back trying to warm him up. “You want me to get you some dry clothes? You’re still cold.”
“I’ll warm up in a minute,” Carson said plastering himself against John even tighter.
John wrapped his arms tightly around Carson. “You want me to grab you something to eat before you fall asleep?” John asked as Carson yawned yet again.
“I don’t know what my problem is,” Carson complained.
John kissed his forehead. “You didn’t sleep for four days is what your problem is. Don’t worry about it. It’s not like we can go out and do something right now anyway. Go to sleep,” John said quietly settling them into a more comfortable position.
The rain beat a steady tattoo on the dome of the tent for most of the night. John lay still until he was certain that Carson was sound asleep again before he grabbed his computer and balanced it on his bag and played Solitaire until he felt himself lulled into the same calm, drowsy place the rain had led Carson to.
They had two more days to lay around and talk. Maybe go swimming again if they walked down to the jumper and checked to be sure there weren’t any more flash storms brewing. And, he hoped, Carson would be in a better place when he got back. The talking they’d done the night before seemed to have made a world of difference in Carson’s mood. John shut his computer and curled back up with Carson, tugging Carson’s arm around his back as he settled Carson’s head on his shoulder again.
He squeezed him tight and dropped a kiss onto his temple. He could feel the softness of the muscles in Carson’s shoulders and back. Such a stark contrast to the way he’d been when John had held him the night before - all tension and anxiety. John let his hands drift over the smooth, warm skin. Carson mumbled in his sleep, shifting a little before getting comfortable and dropping back off.
He knew that recovery from something like what Lucius had done wasn’t accomplished with one conversation and a few days on the beach. But it looked like those things could make for a very good start. And Carson was resilient as hell, he’d get past this soon enough. He took heart that Carson was ready to run to him now instead of away from him as he had at first.
Kate would be back on the Daedalus tomorrow and if Elizabeth hadn’t filled her in on the insanity that had been life around Lucius Lavin, John and Carson could bring her up to speed when they got back. And then Carson would have at least three people he could talk to when he needed to: Kate, Teyla and himself.
John hadn’t realized how much the whole situation had made him tense. He could feel a looseness in his muscles that he hadn’t felt in days. It was good to be getting back to normal. For whatever passed as ‘normal’ in the Pegasus galaxy, anyway.
He kissed Carson’s shoulder. “I love you,” he whispered and he swore he felt Carson’s arm tighten around him in response even though the other man never woke.
The Human Body: the stories so far...
Somewhere in Season 1: HB I: A Pain in the Ass
The Siege (3): HB II: Put Your Head on My Shoulder
The Intruder: HB III: A Slip of the Tongue, Part 1, Part 2
Runner: HB IV: Getting Into Your Genes
Duet: HB V: Killing Off a Few Liver Cells
Condemned: HB VI: Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
Trinity: HB VII: Got Your Back
Instinct/Conversion
Aurora
The Lost Boys/The Hive
Epiphany
Critical Mass
Grace Under Pressure: Heart to Heart, Part 1| Part 2
Grace Under Pressure: AU ending More than Just a Sympathetic Ear
The Tower: HB VIII: Do We Need a Rabbit?
The Long Goodbye
Coup d'Etat
Michael: HB IX: Delete
Inferno
Allies
Season 3
No Man's Land
Misbegotten
Irresistible Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3