Wraithbait

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"You're not going to die, you hear me? You aren't...I won't let you."

John's voice is hoarse and raw and he doesn't care that the medical staff are just beyond the curtain, doesn't care what they might be inferring from this...any of it.

He's been by Rodney's bedside everyday since it happened, since Rodney took a fucking bullet for him, willing his best friend to wake up to just snap out of it already and at the end of every shift Carson has come in and forced him back to his own room to sleep, his eyes a little sadder each night.

Carson's updates on Rodney's condition are less than optimistic and there's that twisting in John's stomach again. He was telling the truth when he told Rodney he was scared; scared at the thought of losing Rodney—his friend—scared at the thought of losing Rodney who could become something more.

But then Rodney wakes up.

John's relieved of course, they all are and Rodney recovers faster than they expected, soon back to berating the minions and everything is...normal again—except it's not.

Rodney's carefully cool around him now. He surreptitiously moves a couple paces away whenever John gets too close. The flinching hurts the most and John doesn't even understand why—why Rodney is suddenly so anxious to stay away, why it hurts so much that it matters at all.

Sure John had his mini-epiphany while Rodney was unconscious but the truth is once he came face to face with Rodney's eyes, watching him warily he...if he's honest with himself, he pushed all the things that epiphany brought, back into the closet he'd held so closely guarded for so long.

And now he feels kind of like he's lost his best friend and he's not sure how to fix things because he doesn't understand what's broken in the first place.

He grits his teeth and tries to ignore the confused and sympathetic looks that the rest of his team throws him; the way Radek eyes him and Rodney like he's trying to figure out a puzzle; the way Elizabeth's mouth tightens when once again Rodney avoids John's eyes, or chooses a seat as far away from him as possible during meetings. It's not like John can explain to them what's going on and he feels like screaming at them that it's not his fault, he hasn't done anything wrong but even as he thinks it something twists inside him and he feels a stab of guilt for some unknown sin.

It's not long before Carson clears Rodney for active duty again, and while John is both relieved that Rodney's fine and that they'll finally be able to go back on missions, the thought of Rodney back in the line of possible fire terrifies him.

It turns out though, that his fears were unfounded and the mission goes off without a hitch. Successful trading, no injuries, and John counts those two in the plus column all the while telling himself that the distance still painfully evident in Rodney's behavior doesn't bother him at all—all the while ignoring the voice screaming 'LIAR' in the back of his mind.

In the end he thinks it's kind of ironic that when Rodney finally gets over whatever the hell has been going on with him it's because John's laid up in the infirmary with a gunshot wound to the chest meant for Rodney. And if he could open his eyes, or move, he'd tell Rodney off for the crap he's pulled the last few weeks but he can't so instead he listens to whispered words of a life he never lived, of a life so perfect it hurts to know it was all just a dream, a life he wishes more than anything that he had shared with Rodney.

When Carson's drugs finally pull him under, darkness creeping in, John silently vowed to make things right with Rodney when he woke up. It was time to stop hiding—time to stop running.