It's almost time.
The pale gold of the sun has nearly shrunk away entirely from the thin rectangle at the top of his cell. He can already faintly hear the prisoners singing today, as they march back from the work gangs. John has no idea how the prisoners choose the song. He just knows that if he can recognize it, it's been a good day; if he can't, it hasn't.
Recently, John hasn't heard anything he knows.
Today, though, as John stands shivering, face turned up like a desperate plant to the receding block of sunlight, he can barely make out the chorus of She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain. And he grins to himself, despite the cold and how hungry he is, because if Rodney has enough strength to lead a bunch of equally cold, hungry men in a children's song, then today was probably all right.
He laughs out loud when he can hear Rodney belting, She'll have to sleep with grandma when she comes! in his aggressive, rasping tenor as they enter the gate to the prison, and then all the other prisoners yelling, Move over! And then it gets to the end of the verse, and just as everyone starts chanting,
Move over!
Scratch, scratch!
Hi, Babe!
Whoa back!
Toot! Toot!
John can hear their footsteps as the group passes by his cell. And like every other evening he makes a running leap and manages to grab the stone bottom of the window and kick his way up the wall until he can just peek over the edge and see the pitted cobbles the prisoners will walk over. And just like every other evening, he'll hang there, shaking with exertion and cold, until he can see the ragged cuff of Rodney's uniform pants and his grey boots among the dirty, staggering throng.
The song's circled back to the first verse, and the noise is deafening. It feels like the entire angry chorus of desperate men is being fed into his cell, into his ears. But John hasn't seen Rodney yet, even though he can hear him still bravely leading the verses, and then he realizes that he didn't recognize Rodney's boots because he doesn't have them anymore. Rodney's bare feet, fish-white except for his bright pink toes, are moving in a sloppy march, the tattered pants slapping against his ankles. There's blood on Rodney's right foot.
The majority of the prisoners are barefoot, but this doesn't make John feel any better.
The singing continues--Toot! Toot!--while John is watching in horror as Rodney limps past, when all of a sudden something slithers out of the bottom of his pant leg. Rodney casually kicks it in the direction of John's little rectangle, and with an enormous effort John manages to heave himself further up the wall so he can snag it before another of the myriad of stomping feet manages to kick it away.
John drops to the floor of his cell and staggers backwards before finally collapsing to his butt on the freezing dirt floor. John still has his boots, and his jacket, but his feet have felt like blocks of ice for so long he's afraid to take his boots off, for fear he'll find blackened ruins where his toes used to be. It doesn't seem to be quite cold enough in his cell for frostbite, but who can tell? All John knows is that he hasn't been warm since he and Rodney woke up here.
Right now, though, his hands are shaking as much with anticipation as because he's freezing. Rodney's gift is a small piece of cloth wrapped around something that gives slightly when John touches it, about the size of his palm. When he unwraps the cloth--it's from Rodney's pants, he realizes, and grimaces, thinking about Rodney's bare ankles--he finds two squares of thick, black bread. And then he has to squeeze his eyes shut, hard, to keep the water in them.
He thinks of Rodney's missing boots, the blood on the cobbles, and he knows what these extra rations cost him.
John makes himself wait until Rodney's song falters and finally dies in the distance as the prisoners are scattered to their cells. He gently places one of the pieces of bread into his jacket pocket, then he breaks off tiny bits of the remaining bread and eats it as slowly as he can. The non-working prisoners only get fed once every other day, and he's so hungry it's all he can do not to make himself sick by wolfing it down. He makes sure to keep the crumbs on the cloth, then carefully picks them off with the tip of his tongue. He realizes, squinting in the fading light, that there's writing on the cloth. It's nearly black against the grey. John blinks at it, blinks again, trying not to know that it's blood.
Rodney's written this:
WL GT U OUT.
John's just tired enough that it takes him an appallingly long time to get this, sounding the letters out though his numb, trembling lips, until he's long-since memorized them and it finally makes sense:
I will get you out.
John clutches the cloth in his fist, in the now shapeless darkness of the cell. Rodney gave up his boots for this. Rodney, who because of his broad, strong shoulders and his mind has been condemned to the daily work gangs while John has been condemned to his cell. Rodney gave up his boots for this, this tiny bit of nourishment wrapped in hope written in Rodney's own blood. John wonders if the blood came from his wounded heel, or from a fingertip. How many times Rodney had to suck the clot away to be able to finish the message, all the while doing God-knows-what out there in the frozen waste beyond the prison, and avoiding the sharp, pitiless glare of the guards.
John falls asleep sitting up in a corner, hugging his knees for warmth, the small bundle held tight as home in his hand.
The cell is roughly ten paces long by six paces wide. John is intimately aware of this because that's how he spends his mornings: pacing along the wall until the weak sun finally creeps its indifferent way across the top of his cell through the rectangle. He wakes up every day hours before the dawn, when his body's so cold that he can't sleep anymore. Every time John opens his eyes to the tiny glimmer of starlight he's just optimistic enough to be grateful that he didn't freeze to death.
Then he gropes his way to the small water bucket the guard grudgingly refills when he brings food, and allows himself a few sips, breaking through the thin ice crust with his breath. The water makes his back teeth feel like they're going to explode, and swallowing it makes his mouth and stomach ache.
After that he paces until there's enough light to see by, and he hears the warden or maybe just the guy with the biggest voice start yelling what John's come to call the 'wake up song', as if this were the end of naptime at some kind of giant, glacial kindergarten. He doesn't understand all the words, but the tune is astonishingly bright and happy for such a dismal place, and sometimes John finds himself humming along, or even muttering, Rise up! Rise up! (Something, something) Up! to the same tune, until he can hear the prisoners lurching out of their cells for their rations before it's time to march out of the gates again.
Then he goes completely silent. He tries not to breathe until he can hear Rodney, and then he can relax.
If it's a feeding day, John waits for one of the guards to bring more water and food while a second frowns at him from a safe distance, gun pointed at the center of John's body.
This morning, as soon as there's light John squats on the floor and fumbles the piece of cloth flat, turns it over. Then he bites the tip of his ring finger, tugging off bits of skin until he can taste blood--it's astonishingly warm, considering his fingers are like ice--and he quickly dabs out a message, grimacing in frustration when he starts hearing the wake up song. He has to finish this before the prisoners start walking.
Finally, just as the cells clank open and he can hear the men, his return note is done:
THX. U OK?
The question mark is a bitch, a bloody, blobby mess, and John just hopes Rodney can understand what he's written, if Rodney will even get the thing. Kicking his way up the wall is even harder today, but John manages it. He even manages to shove the cloth out into the curl of sunlight before the prisoners start walking past, but he can't hold himself up there long enough to see if Rodney finds the cloth or not, or if it just gets trampled.
At least he can assume that Rodney will be looking for it.
John drops away from the window and falls to his knees, just in time for the guard to saunter up and slide the gate open with a vicious, ringing clang that momentarily drowns out even the singing coming from outside. It's another song John's never heard before, but he tries not to worry about it. The guard is as tall as Ronon, so Rodney's leather jacket looks ridiculous on him--far too short at the sleeves and hem, but all John can concentrate on is the pounding terror in his chest when he sees it, the fact that he can't remember hearing Rodney this morning.
He doesn't know what he's showing on his face, but the other guard shifts his stance, holds his gun more tightly.
But the big guard just grins at him, gap-toothed and smug in all his layers, and tosses John a threadbare blanket, before shoving the two pieces of black bread into John's hand.
"You must be worth something," he snorts, shaking his head as if he can't imagine what. "'Gives up any more, he'll be naked." The guard chuckles to himself, then nods at the nearly-empty bucket. "Give that here."
John does, wondering once again about throwing it in the guard's face and trying to take them both down, but if the second guard gets a shot off Rodney will be all alone here, and John won't risk that. John picks up the bucket carefully and hands it to the guard, who disappears somewhere to refill it, but not before locking the gate behind him, just in case.
John looks at the second guard, the one with the gun. The kid just frowns more deeply and gestures with it, as if expecting John to lunge for him. John ignores him.
When the big guard comes back, he points at the bread John is holding carefully in his hands. "Eat up--it'll be a cold one tonight, you'll need your strength." He grins again, as if the weather is a great joke, and finally they both leave John alone, clanging the gate shut again.
John puts his precious bread down on the crumpled blanket, then jumps, scrambles up the wall again. But it's too late, all the prisoners have gone, and John still doesn't know the song he can hear receding in the distance.
He finishes half the bread, tucking the second piece into his jacket pocket with the one Rodney gave him. Afterwards, John sits in his corner and pulls the blanket around him. He pretends Rodney's with him, and they talk about anything except how Rodney gave up his boots and his jacket for John, and how it's going to be even colder tonight.
That night it's so cold John can't sleep at all, doesn't dare, because he can feel himself going slow and sleepy, shaking so hard he can barley keep the blanket over his head and around his shoulders as he stumbles along the wall of the cell in the dark. He tries not to think about Rodney, because it wasn't a good day today. When the prisoners came back, someone was singing a mangled version of Alouette, but it wasn't Rodney. John couldn't hear Rodney at all over the AH-AH-AH-AH! the prisoners love screaming at the end of every chorus. And nothing was casually dropped or kicked into his cell. His scrap of cloth wasn't there earlier in the day when John looked, but he doesn't know if that means anything.
Each breath feels like inhaling ice, and it's so dark now that the stars he can barely see are like candlelight hovering on featureless black, so close he can touch them if he just reaches high enough, and John suddenly realizes with a distant terror that he's on his knees somewhere in the cell, stretching his hands towards the stars as if there were some warmth there. His fingers are so cold he can't feel them.
John hauls the blanket around his shoulders and over his head again, shoves himself to his feet with a cry, then clenches his jaw so his teeth won't shatter from his shivering. He starts stumbling along the wall again, the same circuit over and over in the dark.
He starts singing Alouette, but he can't remember the words, so he switches to Oh, Susannah!, changes the lyrics:
'Went through the 'Gate
The day I left.
The planet it was dry.
And if I stop,
I'll freeze to death.
Oh Rodney, don't you cry.
He congratulates himself on his cleverness, his voice shaking over the words, until he realizes it's a little weird that it seems perfectly reasonable to be asking Rodney not to cry for him. But he's too tired and cold and scared to do more than roll that thought over a few times in his mind before it drifts away like the music.
By morning John's careening wildly from wall to wall. His entire body aches, his throat is killing him, and he's whispering, "Rodney had a little John, little John, little John, Rodney had a little John, his hair had lots of cowlicks," over and over again tunelessly, when he finally hears the wake up song.
John shuts up immediately, stands there trembling in the anemic dawn, listening for Rodney as the cells open and the prisoners shuffle into the rations line. It's easy to hear that there're fewer voices this morning. He's sure prisoners have died overnight.
And Rodney doesn't have a jacket.
John clutches the blanket around him and listens, and listens, and he doesn't hear Rodney. Not even when the men line up again, start walking through the gate.
Until someone starts singing, Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John? Brother John? And the voice is thin and strained, like it's hard to sing loudly enough, like it hurts, but it's Rodney, it has to be Rodney. Rodney's never sung that song before. No one else could possibly know it.
It's like Rodney's singing it just for him, the song's a message. John swallows and his throat is tight, tight with relief, and when he finally hears the prisoners marching past he belts out, Ding! Ding! Dong! with Rodney as loudly as he can, which isn't loudly at all, but it's enough, it's got to be enough, to let Rodney know that he made it, that it was worth it, that John's still alive.
John doesn't have the strength to jump for the window, but when the folded cloth skitters over the edge, he drops the blanket to catch it in his trembling hands.
OK. FCK CLD.
John laughs and laughs.
"You've lost men," John says reasonably to the big guard. He keeps his voice as casual as possible considering he can barely speak, makes sure his hands are hanging nice and loose at his sides where the guard can see them. He can't know how much John wants this. "Let me go out there with the workers. Earn my keep here." If he could just get to Rodney, just see him, know he's all right. Together, they could work out a plan...
He's kind of worried he'll make the guard decide to simply stop feeding him instead, but the guy just pats John amicably on the shoulder and says, "You are earning your keep. Your singer is smart. He knows we'll hurt you if he doesn't do a good job."
John's body jerks as he walks, as much at the sneering implication of 'your singer'--as if John has some proprietary rights over Rodney--at the idea of using him to ensure Rodney's compliance.
Rodney knows he's more important than John to Atlantis. Hell, Rodney's said as much. The idea that Rodney is purposely suffering here just so John won't be beat up makes him very, very angry. He thinks of the first note Rodney sent, 'I will get you out'. John should have written back, 'no'.
"Careful, now," the guard says gently, and taps the cattle-prod thing against John's stomach. The smaller guard isn't here, probably because the corridor is too narrow for projectile weapons. John knows that all it will take is one twitch of the big guard's finger and he'll be in such agony he won't be able to move until long after the prisoners have come back, and then he'll be told gleefully how Rodney's had the shit beat out of him as well.
John tried escaping that way once, and he didn't hear Rodney sing for four days. The hostage aspect of their interment here goes both ways.
John presses his lips together, but he relaxes his hands.
They finally reach the disgusting public toilet John is allowed to use twice a day, and John does his business as quickly and carefully as possible, mindful that the only water he has to wash with is in the bucket in his cell. The guard doesn't watch, which John counts as a small blessing.
"I could bring a message for him," the guard says suddenly when they're back at John's cell. Blandly, like he hasn't just offered the sun and the moon and the stars.
It takes a lot of work not to gape at him. Then John's instantly suspicious. "For what?" he asks, preparing to say 'no', preparing himself to have to fight the guard off him.
But the guard just grins. "Teach me the song," he says. "The one he was singing this morning. About Broter Gon."
It becomes the new wake-up song, after that. John is thoroughly sick of it two days later, because the guards and prisoners love it, holler it back and forth in endless rounds, and they mispronounce the words every single time.
But--if the guard wasn't lying--Rodney got an extra ration of bread, and the words, I'm still here, whispered to him before he went back into his cell. And every time John hears, Broter Gon! Broter Gon! he thinks of Rodney, and smiles.
He tries not to think of Ronon and Teyla much, because the last time John saw them Teyla had just been stunned and Ronon was fighting four men at once and someone was yanking a foul-smelling sack over John's head. And then he had woken up cold in this cell. It had taken him hours of shouting and kicking the bars until he found out from the big grinning guard that only Rodney was there as well, and that Rodney was going to work for them, and John would make sure he did.
It's been sixteen days since then. John keeps track by the prisoners going out to work each morning and coming back each night, and the good days when Rodney's able to sing, and the bad days when he doesn't.
It gets a little warmer, so that John can sleep again at least, but the steady ache in his body won't go away and his throat is so painful that eating the bread is agony. He makes himself eat anyway because he knows he needs to.
He spends a lot of time in his corner shivering, waiting to hear Rodney, because John can't jump as high as the window anymore so he doesn't see him.
Each time he hears Rodney--leading another interminable repetition of Are You Sleeping? or She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain, or The Ants Go Marching--it's like a reward for fighting the boredom and the hunger and pain and the terrible, unrelenting cold for a few more hours. And each time he doesn't, he grits his teeth a little harder and waits: until he hears the prisoners passing his cell again, or until he can ask the guard if Rodney's still alive.
Most of the time, the guard says, "You're still alive, yeah?" But John can't believe him until he hears Rodney again.
Some days, with nothing to do except shake with cold and wait for food he can barely eat, with nothing to look at except a single block of sunlight, John whispers, "You're still alive, yeah?" to himself, and thinks that he doesn't even know.
Only the songs seem real, and only when Rodney sings them.
On what might be the twenty-first day, the guard is wearing Rodney's black t-shirt, and quietly hands John a crumpled piece of actual paper with his bread. He walks away whistling, My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. John is lying on the floor, shivering miserably in his blanket, and his heart is pounding so hard as he smoothes out the note that he's a little worried he might throw up, even though the last thing he ate was one of his saved pieces of bread the night before.
I'm still here too. Try to escape.
It's written in ink, rather than blood, and John hopes to hell that Rodney didn't have to trade more than his shirt for it; the shirt's bad enough. He thinks of Rodney trying to work with only two slices of bread a day, and no jacket and no boots, and now not even a t-shirt to protect him. He has no idea how Rodney can still be alive.
But Rodney is, and Rodney wants him to try to escape. John doesn't know what that means--if Rodney's escaping as well, or if this is just part of some larger plan--but just the thought of being able to fight, to do something is like fire nestling in his belly. He spends the rest of the day with his eyes closed, going over and over and over what he's going to do in his head. It keeps him warm.
So, when the big guard's walking him back from the privy, one meaty hand on John's shoulder and the cattle-prod riding against John's stomach like usual, John suddenly slams into his side, bowling him into the wall. The guard grunts, probably more in surprise than pain, but his grip loosens a little on John's shoulder and the cattle-prod moves a bit, and that's all John needs to grab the hand with the prod and wrench it back until the guard howls.
It feels a little bit like John's body's made of lead--freezing cold lead--but he still manages to touch the prod to the guard's chest. Unfortunately, the man's enormous hand is covering the trigger, so John can't fire it. And now the guard has groped his way to John's hair, and he grabs a handful and yanks back so hard that it feels like John's neck snaps. He's able to kick the guard somewhere around his knee, but the guy barely notices. And now John is desperately trying to keep the guard from getting control of the prod back, because if it touches him, it's over. John might as well be dead. And then what they'll do to Rodney--
The guard uses John's hair to crack his head into the wall, and while John's fighting to keep his feet, his hands slip. The cattle-prod jams him in the belly and then there's nothing but agony blotting out the whole world.
There's snow drifting in through the rectangle, soft grey in the rising light of the morning. The blood on the floor of his cell looks almost black where John tore his nails off, trying to crawl out of the pain.
He can hear the prisoners' song as they leave, floating into his cell like the snowflakes. It's too faint to make out the words, but John already knows Rodney's not singing.
Bad day, he thinks.
He doesn't remember being dragged back to the cell, doesn't remember screaming, but his throat's so raw that even the ice water in the bucket feels like knife blades going down, when John is finally able to drag himself over to it. Nearly all of the water ends up on the floor, anyway.
His blanket is in a filthy heap in the corner, covering his bread, but John doesn't have the energy to get that far. He's dimly aware that without either he might die, but he apparently already survived the night without food or warmth, so he just shoves himself away from the empty bucket and rolls onto his back, looking up at the light. It flickers as the prisoners walk past, casting staccato shadows on the wall.
John's a little surprised when the guard hauls the cell door open, since they didn't feed him the last time he tried escaping. But when he lolls his head over to see, Rodney's being shoved into the cell and the sudden, painful burst of adrenaline lets John sit up to catch him as he collapses. Then Rodney's weight drags the both of them back to the floor.
"Rodney?" John can't even force the word out of his mangled throat. Rodney's laying limply over John's arm, pinning it to the floor. His face is flushed, from windburn or fever or both, and already John can see the angles starvation has hacked into his cheeks. And he's been beaten, like John knew he would be: his nose is obviously broken, seeping blood. One eye has disappeared into a lump of bruised flesh, and his lips are swollen and split, his jaw thick and black with blood. At least three of Rodney's fingers are broken.
John doesn't like the sound Rodney makes when he breathes.
Rodney's body is so hot that John is guilty about how good it feels to hold him, because Rodney's sick. But John hasn't been warm in so long.
What's left of Rodney's uniform is a mess, streaked with what looks like coal dust and tattered beyond repair. John doesn't recognize the shirt Rodney's wearing, but there's dried blood on it. John can't tell if it's Rodney's or not, but he doesn't want to move him to find out.
Rodney's feet are wrapped with strips of cloth, bloody around the soles.
"The warden thought you might want a look at him," the big guard says, no smile in his voice now. "See what you done."
John can't speak. Damn you, Rodney, he thinks. You told me. You told me! He touches Rodney's face as gently as he can, smoothes the hair back. His mangled fingernails leave streaks of dirt and blood, adding to what's already there.
"Rodney," he says again. It feels like choking out stones, but the word finally creaks out over his tongue. "Rodney, you okay?" It's a ridiculous question, but he can't say anything else, not with the guard right there and Rodney looking like he's already dead--the perfect object lesson.
"God, Rodney," John whispers. "I'm sorry."
Rodney's one useable eye slides open. Blinks. It's almost astonishingly blue.
"Wow," he croaks, as John stares at him. "You look like crap."
John laughs, a single, astonished burst that has him squeezing his eyes shut in pain. He feels Rodney's hand on his neck, the side of his face.
"John! John, are you okay?"
It's exactly what John just said to Rodney, and it almost makes him laugh again, except that Rodney's already worried and John couldn't stand the pain. So instead he nods and opens his eyes, and smiles.
"Yeah." He sounds like an old hinge. "Just fine."
"I can see that," Rodney says, wheezing. But he's smiling too.
"I'm sorry," John says again. He means, I'm sorry I didn't make it. I'm sorry I got you hurt. But Rodney just shakes his head, as if John doesn't understand.
"No," Rodney says seriously. "You did great." And he leans in and kisses him, a dry rasp of lips at the corner of John's mouth.
John's still blinking when Rodney's grabbed under the arms like a doll.
"Time's up," the guard says.
"No!" The word tears his throat, and he's grabbing at Rodney, his shirt, his arms, his hands, trying to hold on as Rodney is pulled away from him. "No! No!"
Rodney reaches into his pocket, quickly presses something hard and cold into John's grasping hands. And then he's yanked away.
John surges up after him, still reaching, and then the smaller guard, the one John's completely forgotten about, fires his gun. It sounds like an explosion, echoing against the stone. The sudden, tearing burn across John's side throws him to the floor.
When John can breathe again, the guards and Rodney have gone.
The blood is warming his hand, seeping through his fingers. Whatever Rodney gave him is still clenched in his other fist. John hopes dully that he didn't break it when he fell, considering Rodney let himself get beaten half to death just to be able to hand it to him.
It's a small, innocuous square of metal, with a long wire wrapped around it, and obviously cobbled together out of God-knows what Rodney found out there. John unwinds the wire, getting blood on everything, then crawls over to the corner and slips the square under the blanket. He lays the wire flat along the wall. It's dark enough to be almost invisible.
He binds the gunshot wound as best he can with strips of the blanket, and then more-or-less passes out, because he doesn't remember much after that except for the prisoners returning. He knows Rodney won't be singing, but he listens for him anyway.
John's not sure how many days go by after that.
The wound gets infected almost immediately, going puffy and red, leaking awful-smelling fluid John tries not to touch. He can tell he's got a fever, but it only makes him colder somehow, and he can't use the blanket now because the transmitter is hidden underneath it. He thinks maybe the cold is what's keeping him from becoming delirious. He's not really sure. Sometimes he's convinced he's delirious anyway--the bucket slides towards him, taunting because he's so thirsty, but it's always empty. The window grows and grows until it's a doorway, leading out to fields dappled in summer sunlight. But it's always gone when John tries to crawl to it.
Sometimes he's convinced he hears Rodney singing, and he hates that most of all because it can't be true. Rodney was in no shape to sing when John saw him. But John listens and pretends that it's real, that it's Rodney's voice. And for a little while he lets himself believe that Rodney's tiny, pathetic transmitter will work, that they're actually going to get out of this.
Sometimes he sings along, breathing out the words into the frozen air.
Oh Rodney, don't you cry.
He's curled in a ball on the floor, whispering, 'Went through the 'Gate the day I left, the planet it was dry, when the entire cell vibrates with the force of a distant explosion. Then there's another one, and one after that. And then what sounds a lot like P90 fire.
John rolls onto his back, blinking stupidly up at the window, thinking that the boots standing in front of it look really familiar. Then their owner crouches down so that his face is even with the rectangle, and John realizes why.
"Sir?" Lorne asks, tense. "Colonel Sheppard?"
"Yeah," John says. He doesn't quite have the energy to smile. "Still here."
He's still trying to get to his hands and knees when Teyla unlocks the gate.
Apparently he wouldn't stop asking for Rodney, all the way to the Jumper, then all the way back to Atlantis, then all the way to the infirmary. John thinks it's highly possible, he just doesn't remember any of it.
What he does remember is the way Rodney looked, when John was finally lucid enough to notice--too thin, too vulnerable, too beat up, too much of him just not there, like they'd left half of him back on that fucking planet. Rodney had pneumonia, Ronon said, pronouncing it 'new-moan-ya'. Not that John had any trouble knowing what he meant.
John had insisted on sitting next to Rodney, even though he was still pretty much out of his mind and didn't realize he had enough lines attached to him to tether the Hindenburg. Carson, the cagey bastard, had told him, 'sure', but that John would have to wait five minutes. And about two seconds later John had fallen asleep again and stayed out for roughly a zillion years.
But he's awake now, and his fever's broken and he's stitched up and clean and warm, and he's not even hungry because Elizabeth brought him soup and sat with him while he ate it. And John lies back in his bed and flexes his bandaged fingers, and thinks about what Elizabeth told him: how they'd been scouring possible gate addresses for weeks, going nuts with frustration and hopelessness, until the tiny, spit and bailing-wire transmitter Rodney made and stashed on John led them right to John's cell.
Then John thinks about Rodney trading away things he desperately needed, so he could write a note and make sure John got an extra ration of bread. And how much a difference it made when he could hear Rodney singing. That those were all the good days, no matter what.
And John thinks about Rodney kissing him, how it felt--the catch of stubble and sudden bloom of heat, like a brand at the corner of John's mouth. And he thinks about how much he'd like to feel it again.
"Hey," John says softly. He's sitting next to Rodney's bed while Rodney's blinking himself awake. They're still both in the infirmary, both still attached to more tubes than John is comfortable thinking about, but John's at least ambulatory, dragging a wheeled IV stand around, and he relishes every second he can spend out of bed and the fact that he's been upgraded from a hospital gown to scrubs.
Rodney's still in a hospital gown, though his lungs don't sound like a gravel truck when he breathes anymore. But half his face is still too-big and badly bruised, and some of his fingers are splinted and his ribs taped, and he has to keep his feet elevated to make sure the stitched-up lacerations drain. John's pretty sure Rodney'd be grumpy as hell if he didn't have to sleep so much, but right now Rodney sees John and he smiles.
"Hey," he responds. He raises a hand listlessly in a little wave, then frowns. "What day is it?"
John's mouth quirks in sympathy. "It's Tuesday."
Rodney sighs. "God, what happened to Monday? Did I sleep through it?" John nods, and Rodney's face falls in almost childlike dismay. "All of it?" He drops his head back onto his pillow with a sad huff. "Jesus. Hear that? That's the sound of my research slipping into obscurity. I'm never going to catch up at this rate."
"Sounds like the air circulation system to me," John says, then smiles sweetly when Rodney glowers at him.
Then Rodney's eyebrows go up. "You shaved your beard."
"Yup," John says proudly. It wasn't easy to do with bandaged fingers. He can't help but touch his chin. The smooth skin there feels like him, right in a way he can't explain. He'd let his beard grow once before, but only because he'd been sure he'd never see Atlantis again.
He grins. "Brushed my teeth, too."
"I hate you." Rodney signs with envy. His chin is still mossy with patches of uneven beard, and John is sure Rodney's mouth feels like something died in it, because that's how his felt until this morning.
But John just grins again, deciding he'll wheedle one of the nurses to at least bring Rodney a basin and a toothbrush. "You don't hate me," he says, then realizes it didn't quite come out like he meant when instead of rolling his eyes, Rodney's face goes sad.
"I'm sorry," Rodney says all of a sudden. "I just realized I never said that. I never apologized for telling you to escape." He presses his lips together, eyes big and bright, like he's gathering the courage to say more. "I was almost certain that you wouldn't be able to, and I knew how badly they...they would hurt you, if you tried. But I had to. I had nowhere else to hide the transmitter, and I knew they'd make you see what they did to me." His voice drops. "They liked telling me about it, threatening me."
"Rodney," John says.
"No!" Rodney says, angry now, but John's sure it's at himself. "I mean it. I told you to throw yourself to the wolves just so I could get the transmitter to you. I set you up!"
"Rodney!" John says, loudly enough that Rodney's jaw snaps shut, though his eyes are still too big and miserable. "I knew it probably wasn't going to work." He smiles. "But I did it anyway. Because I knew you had a plan. Because I trusted you." He moves his hand so that it's resting on top of Rodney's, just a friend comforting another friend.
"I trust you," he says.
Rodney looks at their hands for a long time, and he doesn't say anything. Then he slowly turns his hand so that their fingers catch, slide between, and now John's bandaged fingers are in between Rodney's splinted ones, and this can't really be considered just-a-friend stuff anymore.
"Um," John says. He's staring at their hands too, but he doesn't move his away.
"I sang those songs for you," Rodney says. "Every single stupid one of them." He looks up at John's face, and his eyes are like pieces of sky, blue like home. "Because I knew you'd be listening, and it was the only thing I could do for you. You were in that damn hole, and I couldn't get you out." Rodney swallows. "But I could let you know that you weren't alone."
John nods. His throat is a little tight. "Brother John," he says, and Rodney nods too.
"You kissed me," John says quietly.
Rodney's eyes go impossibly wider. He tries to pull his hand back, like a reflex, but John tightens his grip, won't let him. "Right," he says, a little breathlessly, "I did. That was...That was, um..."
"That was good," John says.
Rodney stops. He blinks. "Oh," he says very softly. His mouth curls up, hopeful and tentative, then falls back into a somber line. "I thought I wasn't going to see you again."
John nods, remembering how it felt: Rodney being ripped out of his hands, the long days afterwards when he didn't hear him. He has to look away--at his legs in the burgundy cloth, at the smooth metal floor, anything. But this time it's Rodney, tugging awkwardly on his hand with his nearly immobile one, that pulls John back.
"I'm still here," Rodney says.
"Yeah," John says, and maybe the word's a little rough, but at least he can find another smile.
They don't mention the kiss again, but it hangs there between them, a promise. But while John doesn't mind silence he knows Rodney does, so he says, "What were you doing out there, anyway?"
Rodney looks puzzled. "Out there? You mean, outside the prison?"
John nods. "Yeah. I mean, how were you able to build a transmitter?"
"Oh." Rodney tries to look like it's no big deal, but his ego doesn't manage it. It makes John's smile bigger. "It wasn't much, really--we were digging a tunnel for their useless, desperately inefficient version of a freight train, but the foremen," he grins smugly, "such as myself were allowed ridiculously primitive radios. I cannibalized one of them." He shrugs with false modesty. "Nothing special."
John knows exactly how special it was, considering they're both here and breathing because of it. But instead he widens his eyes, all innocence, and says, "You've been working on the railroad?"
Rodney stares at him for a moment. Then his mouth twitches. "All the live-long day."
It's really not that funny, but John starts laughing anyway, and then Rodney starts laughing too, and then they can't really stop.
Carson has to break them up eventually, because they're disturbing the other patients.
END
Summary: John has no idea how the prisoners choose the song. He just knows that if he can recognize it, it's been a good day; if he can't, it hasn't.
Categories: Slash Pairings > McKay/Sheppard
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Genres: Angst, First Time, Hurt Comfort, Pre-slash
Warnings: Adult themes
Chapters: 1 [Table of Contents]
Series: None
Word count: 6829; Completed: Yes
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay
Genres: Angst, First Time, Hurt Comfort, Pre-slash
Warnings: Adult themes
Chapters: 1 [Table of Contents]
Series: None
Word count: 6829; Completed: Yes