FIC: Symmetry (SGA: S/B, PG-13)
Title: Symmetry
Author: smallwaldo
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis:
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What goes around, comes around. Never make fun of the less fortunate, some day it may be you. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze (and other things your mother taught you.)
Symmetry
by Waldo.
John was reasonably certain that if there was a hell, and he ended up there, he’d have to live in a room full of Iratus bugs, the only food to be found would be broccoli and he’d have a perpetual head cold. The upside, he decided on his more optimistic days, was that at least then he wouldn’t be able to taste the broccoli.
He was in bed with a cold now and he was certain that despite all of Carson’s lectures about germs and viruses and whatnot that head colds were really just a form of higher-being punishment for doing something wrong. He had no idea what he’d done but he was ready to promise to never do it again.
He’d been on all the decongestant Carson would give him, he had a warm steam humidifier running with the local version of eucalyptus oil dumped in it and Carson had also given him some kind of saline solution he was supposed to spray up his nose. The last freaked him out; he was somehow convinced it would corrode his sinus passages and eat his brain from the inside out. He left it on the bedside table.
His mouth tasted like he imagined it would if he’d been chewing on old carpet, since he was stuck breathing through it, and his eyes itched.
He was beginning to wonder if there were, somehow, bigger, badder cold bugs in the Pegasus galaxy than there were on Earth. He didn’t remember a cold ever being this bad at home. He’d tried getting some work done on his computer, hell, he’d tried playing a few video games, but he found that he had the attention span of an ADD gerbil, so the computer lay abandoned on the end of the bed. He’d put on his iPod after a while and was laying in a half-drugged, half-exhausted, half-boredom induced stupor. He was fairly sure there was something wrong with the math there, but he was too sick to care.
He heard his door open and shut again, and he let his head roll on the pillow to see he was coming to check on him. He found a small smile somewhere when he saw that it was Carson himself this time. Several nurses had been in and out over the day, bringing him soup that he’d been unable to taste, or meds that had left him laying around in his mathematically-improbable stupor. He let his head roll back to the other side to check the clock. “You off duty?” he managed to ask, though it sounded more like, ‘Ew off du’ee?” as stuffed up as he was.
Carson tossed his lab coat over the arm of the sofa and sat on the edge of John’s bed, habitually checking his temperature with the back of his hand on the side of John’s face. “Still no fever,” Carson said patiently.
“I fee’ li’e shi’.” John told him.
“I know. You and about a quarter of the population of Atlantis. But it’ll pass in a few days.”
“It will or I will,” John muttered.
“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that, it’s just a wee cold.” He noticed the nasal spray sitting on the table, the protective ring still around the pump. “You might feel a lot better if you actually followed all your doctor’s orders.” He grabbed the bottle and held it out to John as a clear hint.
“Tha’ ting frea’s me ou’.” He pushed Carson’s hand away and burrowed into the covers, wishing breathing weren’t even harder when he lay on his side.
Carson squinted at him for a minute trying to figure out what he’d just been told. After repeating it back the way it sounded he finally understood and said, “You’ll face the Wraith in your skivvies with a pea shooter, but you won’t take a little squirt of medication that’ll make you feel considerably better because it’s in a different delivery system?”
“Da Wraith don’ wanna melt my brains from da insi’e ou’,” John protested.
Carson rolled his eyes. “No, they just want to suck the very life out of you. Now come on, I’ve had to put up with Rodney’s pissing and moaning all day. I really thought I’d be done hearing it when I left the infirmary.” He put a hand on John’s shoulder and pulled him over until he was lying on his back again.
He was pouting when he looked up at Carson. “Sorry. I know I suck a’ bein’ a patient patient.”
Carson ruffled his hair. “You’re not so bad as all that. But seriously, sit up, and try this. It’s quite mild compared to some of the other things I could have given you and it should clear you up enough to give your next dose of decongestants a fighting chance.”
John sat up and took the bottle back from Carson, eyeing it suspiciously like it would attack without warning if he took his eyes off of it. Carson reached over and pulled the little safety ring off and said, “Get on with it, then.”
Squaring his shoulder like he was about to field test a taser from the wrong end, John put the tip of the bottle up to his nose and sprayed. And then shook like a wet St. Bernard. “Ahhh! Yuck! Tha’ sucks!” But privately, he did notice that his nose was completely clear on that side. He also had the worst runny nose he’d had since he was three. He looked up to see Carson already handing him a tissue. He blew his nose and then took another fatalistic breath and did the same thing on the other side.
After going through half a box of tissue as his nasal passages drained, he finally fell back against the pillows. “Ack,” he announced simply. “I swear every square inch of free space on my insides is filled with snot. It’s the only explanation. There’s no way my body can be producing this much snot in this short a period of time. There’s no way,” he reiterated.
Carson went to the small refrigerator across the room and came back with a bottle of orange juice. He pulled a silver foil packet out of his pocket. “Here, take these and then I’ll rub your back for a while.”
The offer of more and better drugs was good, but the backrub was what got John’s attention. Normally John was the sort who actually got more out of touching than being touched, but when he was sick he turned into an overgrown four-year-old who just wanted someone to rub his back and muss his hair and just generally cuddle with him.
He swallowed the pills, noting that it was the stuff that was going to knock him out - the stuff that actually worked, but Carson wouldn’t let him have during the days any more, claiming he was sleeping way too much even for someone who was sick - and rolled on to his belly. Ruefully he acknowledged that before using the nasal spray he would have never been able to breathe while lying on his stomach. But there was no way he was going to admit as much to Carson.
He was just getting settled when Carson tugged on the end of his old gray Air Force Academy t-shirt. “Help me get this off.”
John turned to look back at Carson and saw him holding the jar of heavy skin cream he had somehow convinced the Air Force he needed - something about how often doctors washed their hands and how the standard medical issue stuff not being worth crap. John was sure he had not mentioned the hundred-and-one other uses the two of them had found for it. He shimmied out of the t-shirt as he heard Carson warm the lotion between his hands. He melted into the pillows as he felt warm, strong hands start at the junctions of his neck and shoulders.
Carson was careful not to squeeze as hard as might actually help relieve the tension in John’s neck. He knew that with being sick and sensitive already, it wouldn’t take much to push over that line from relief into spasm-inducing pain. So instead of working intensely, the way John usually preferred after a long day of being tossed around by and tossing around Marines, Carson settled in to work on the steel-tight muscles for as long as it took.
They enjoyed a companionable silence for a while before John started thinking about what Carson had said when he’d come in. “You had to keep Rodney in the infirmary?”
John swore he could feel Carson roll his eyes. “I didn’t have to, not medically anyway, but you know what a hypochondriac he is. He was convinced he was going to sneeze-out that over-sized brain of his. I think he just wanted to be waited on. And theoretically I have no problem with that, and while the infirmary’s more or less quiet, I don’t mind if he takes up space, but if we get an emergency in, I’m booting him out.”
John smirked. Only Rodney would prefer to be hospitalized when he had a cold. John couldn’t get back to his own bed fast enough when Dr. Biro had confirmed what they’d been seeing a lot of - a nasty virus was making its way through Atlantis and it had found its way into John Sheppard. With a mumble about how ‘every fucking bug in the galaxy’ was out to get him, John had crawled home and under the covers, knowing that Carson would come check on him as soon as he got a hold of John’s chart.
Carson leaned forward and pressed a light kiss between John’s shoulderblades. “I think he’s just jealous. He doesn’t have anyone to come home and wait on him hand and foot like some people.”
John shifted enough to grab one of Carson’s wrists and place a kiss on his pulse point. “Don’t think I don’t know how lucky I am. I do.”
Carson smiled and pulled his hand free, mussing John’s hair before going back to the knots that lined the muscles on either side of John’s spine.
John was thoughtful for a minute. “Are you sure Rodney’s just looking to get a little attention from someone?”
Carson furrowed his brow. “It’s not like it’s unheard of where he’s concerned.”
“Yeah, I know,” John conceded, “But I could have sworn he was seeing someone.”
Carson shifted and pulled the blankets a little further down John’s back. “That thing with Katey Brown?” John could feel him shiver and knew he was recalling Cadman’s brilliant plan to entangle Carson in Rodney’s miserable excuse for a love life. “Let’s just say that went nowhere fast.”
John had known that. He’d actually taken quite a bit of pleasure in ribbing McKay about it, knowing from Carson that it really was Cadman’s fault that it had fallen apart. Privately he had wondered if it had been for the best because he had a feeling Rodney would have screwed it up on his own one way or another eventually and then he would have been moping for days. This way he only had to listen to him mutter about the number of ways he could cause Cadman’s shower to malfunction or how he could rewire her curling-iron to electrocute her the next time she was getting ready for a date. But there had been something else that Rodney was only sort-of saying that had taken up residence in the back of John’s mind - Rodney seemed more upset by the spectacle of his relationship with Katey going pear-shaped than he was about the end of the relationship itself. And he’d dragged another name into the conversation more times than was really warranted.
“Yeah, I knew he and Katey weren’t a thing any more - I think that one made the rumor mill almost as fast as him kissing you.” He couldn’t resist ribbing Carson about that whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Carson pushed the tip of his thumb into the knot he was working on just hard enough to make John wince. “Keep it up and we’ll see if I ever kiss you again.”
John just looked up and smiled at the empty threat he’d heard a dozen times before.
Carson had been mortified and had spent two days apologizing to John for something Rodney had done. He was fairly sure Carson understood that his teasing him about it was his way of saying he wasn’t at all mad at anyone about it. It had actually been Cadman, not Rodney who had done it, and she only did it because she had thought that it was very possible that she was going to die. John knew not to ever give Carson crap about having to very obliquely explain to Laura that while she was a very nice girl, he wasn’t in a position to date her. That had been a difficult conversation for Carson, who felt that perhaps he’d been leading her on without knowing it - especially in hindsight when he’d finally realized who had come into his lab when he’d been working that evening and ‘Rodney’ had asked him to ride shot-gun on his date with Katey.
John pulled himself out of his musings, realizing that the ADD gerbil was back and he couldn’t maintain a train of thought for more than three minutes. “Anyway, I was starting to get the impression that there might be something between him and Zelenka.”
Carson arched an eyebrow. “Really?” He thought about the possibility. “Well, he did come down and visit with Rodney for about an hour and half this afternoon.”
John shrugged under Carson’s hands. “Dr. Z. does put up with an awful lot of Rondey’s crap.”
“You put up with an awful lot of Rodney’s crap, so I don’t think that’s a very good guideline to base who he’s dating on.” There was a thoughtful pause before Carson added, “At least it bloody well better not be.”
John shivered a little. “We have officially devolved into high school girls. My head is full of snot and the rest of me is full of drugs. What’s your excuse?”
“You’re my excuse. You started this ridiculous rumor-mongering.”
John smiled and reached back, tugging on Carson’s arm until Carson lay next to him. He leaned in to kiss him, but Carson leaned back. “Your contagious,” Carson reminded him and kissed John’s forehead. “And if I end up with this damn bug, then who’s going to take care of you?”
John pouted, “Like sleeping with my face pressed up against your neck for the past three nights hasn’t already exposed you. You were the one who said it was an air-borne pathogen.”
Realizing that John probably had a point. He’d been thoroughly exposed to the damn thing, if he was going to get sick it would be anytime now, since the incubation period, as best they could figure, was a little less than a week. And before John had become symptomatic… he’d been thoroughly exposed to anything John could possibly be spreading.
He relented and leaned in to kiss him. And John sneezed.
Carson fell back against the pillows next to John, reaching back for a tissue from the nightstand. He wiped his face and then grabbed a fresh tissue and handed it back to a mortified John. “Well, I guess I’m good and exposed now.” He waited until John had wiped his face and blown his nose before leaning in to kiss him, to show that he wasn’t mad.
“I am so sorry about that.” John was blushing and Carson found it absolutely endearing.
“Ah, not like it hasn’t happened to me before. And it’s a wee bit better than some of the projectile vomiting and diarrhea I’ve been targeted with.”
John made a face. “Can we change the subject now?”
Carson took the tissues and tossed them in the trash before telling John to roll back over. “Come on, I’m not done.”
However the caplets John had taken were starting to set in and he felt himself starting to drift. “Yeah, well… I think I may be.”
~~~***~~~***~~~
The day after John had been cleared for active duty, Teyla had asked him to run her to the mainland with some of the tea she and Lorne’s team had negotiated for while John and Rodney had been under the weather. The virus had made it to the Athosian village, so Dr. Biro had given Teyla a box of supplies and medicines for the worst cases. For the most part the Athosians had their own way of dealing with the various viruses that popped up, but the smallest children needed to be protected and the larger ones - which included a few of the adults - needed to be made more comfortable than the Athosian home remedies were capable of doing.
When they’d gotten back the next afternoon, John was surprised to find Carson in bed. He was curled up in a little ball and the room was back to its former eucalyptus-rainforest mode with the humidifier running full blast. He could hear Carson breathing from across the room. John tried not to laugh. It wasn’t that it was funny, exactly, but there was a certain symmetry that he found amusing.
He dropped his vest and jacket on the chair and sat down on the bed. Carson opened one eye and squinted at him. “You’re ho’e,” he whispered.
“So are you,” John observed rhetorically. “I’d ask why, but I think that’s fairly apparent.”
“My i’iot nurthes thaid I wathn’t fi’ for du’y.”
John rolled the words around in his head. He loved Carson’s brogue most days, but trying to understand him through the cold and the brogue was going to be something of a challenge. “Well, you know, you don’t exactly project an aura of health and wellness right now.”
“fuh you,” Carson muttered and turned his back on John.
John just snickered. Carson wasn’t much given to base swearing, mostly because people like John laughed at him when he tried. Which in turn caused John to laugh even harder when Carson attempted it. “I don’t think you have the strength, but you’re welcome to try.”
Carson pulled the blanket up over his head.
Not sure if Carson was acting petulant in the way that John had when he’d first come down with the virus as payback or if he’d actually pissed him off, John lay down behind him, one arm around his waist. He pulled the blanket down and kissed the back of Carson’s neck. “Okay, I’m done picking on you. Do you need anything?”
Sighing, wondering if he’d ever truly be able to be mad at John Sheppard, Carson tugged the hand on his belly up to his chest and held it there, keeping John in place along his back. “Just you.”