Rodney rolled his eyes but didn't look up from his actions -- the bandage was slowly being dyed a nice crimson color. "If they want me to help so badly they shouldn't have stabbed me in the first place. I refuse to do anything until I've properly cleaned this wound because have you seen those spears?" His head nodded towards the gleaming metal level with his eyes. "They are filthy and I refuse to get septicemia."

Filthy was, unfortunately, the word for it.  The entire planet was one dry, hot dust ball and the natives had evolved accordingly—although Rodney decided they looked more like the gold-bedecked peoples from Central America instead of the long, lean figures he vaguely associated with African cultures.  Maybe it was the noses: almost all the natives had large, hooked noses that would make an eagle cry with envy, pierced and bristling with gold and colored gems.  They were actual primitives, with spears and little round shields, and of course Sheppard had been blithely certain that the team's vests and guns would over-awe them into compliance.  So certain that he’d send Ronon and Teyla back to deal with whatever Weir had been yapping about with a wave and an amused little smirk.

He’d gotten less certain when about fifteen of those primitive natives mobbed them, bodies pressing so close and thick around them that Sheppard hadn’t been able to reach for his P90 because he didn’t want to hurt the people mobbing him—Rodney had not been pleased about that—and Rodney had only managed to get himself sat-on when he tried.

So now they were both weaponless, freed of their vests just in case they were weapons, too—way to go Sheppard, for indirectly implying that—and of all things?  Barefoot.  Apparently shoes were sacrilege here and heavy, army-issue boots had been ninth-circle deals.

Rodney was aware that he probably shouldn’t have ranted about the stupidity of a people who thought shoes were coming to eat them.  By the time they’d established that yes, Rodney was a genius and knew how to fix just about anything including the machine the chief had led them to and was currently gesturing at impatiently, he’d apparently annoyed said chief into ordering one of the big, scary-looking guards to ‘encourage’ Rodney.

A finely-honed piece of metal to the knee was never, ever a good thing.  It hurt, like ice seeping below his skin, and... hang on.  Weren’t wounds supposed to feel hot and fiery, burning into veins and muscles and hot, really hot blood?  Because Rodney wasn’t feeling hot, he was feeling something decidedly not-hot, and his fingers trying to tie a bandage over the wound seemed stiff and cold.

"Okay, okay, hang on." Sheppard's hands swatted his out of the way and finished the job, getting the bandage just a little bit tighter than Rodney would have—enough that it made him whimper, because oh God, he was going to die here on this stupid planet full of savages, and Sheppard might as well be on their side what with his stupid impatient hands and stupid impatient hair and stupid impatient—lips, Sheppard's lips on Rodney's lips, and he had to be hallucinating, because there was no way— "Look at me, McKay," Sheppard ordered, and Rodney blinked and looked into hazel eyes that were commanding and, surprisingly, understanding. "I need you to keep it together here for me, okay?"

Right. Hallucination. Totally a hallucination brought on by blood loss, and when was the last he ate, anyway, because if he went into low-blood-sugar shock right then, he was pretty sure that the natives with their dirty metal spears weren't going to take it kindly.

Also, Sheppard was way too close because Rodney was just realizing that he was really, really cold and Sheppard was really very nicely warm. Leaning forward was probably very bad, but God, Sheppard was like his own personal hearth and Rodney was freezing— 

"McKay." His name was said very firmly with an intensity that anyone who didn't know Sheppard probably wouldn't hear. "Don't go shocky on me yet. All they did was scratch you.” And there was something wrong about that, because Sheppard didn’t sound annoyed and resigned like he usually did when Rodney babbled about his injuries; he sounded worried. “Can you do this?"

"Of course I can do this, Colonel," Rodney snapped, trying to get his eyes to focus properly.  If Sheppard was worried… "Let me just stand up, which I can't do because you're crowding me." Which, in Rodney's head meant: please don't go because I think I'm going to fall over, and also you are so warm.

Sheppard must have been able to hear some of that—and Rodney just had to hope that he hadn't actually said any of it out loud, because he couldn't be sure either way—because he moved back just far enough so that Rodney could get to his feet but stayed close enough so that he could help. The Colonel's hands were hot; Rodney could feel that even through the thick fold of fabric that made up the waistband of his slacks, and it took everything he had not to beg Sheppard to warm him up somehow.

Sheppard hovered beside him as Rodney walked—more like lurching, but it was forward movement without falling, so, walking—over to the weapon or whatever it was the spear-people wanted him to fix. The metal was old and thickly rusted, like copper threads of blood against the silvery-blue metal that the Ancients had refined.

"You know," he said, getting down on one knee again so he could peer underneath the contraption, "I don't think I've ever seen the Ancient materials rust before. What did you do, immerse it acid?"

No one answered, and when Rodney glanced up at the nearest Guy-With-Spear, the man was frowning.

"Let me guess, the question was too difficult for you," Rodney quipped, but apparently the natives could understand tone if not words; he felt the pressure of another spear against his shoulder and froze.

"Apparently staying quiet is too difficult for you," Sheppard said, using one hand to slowly push the spear head away from Rodney. "Easy, fellas. He's a scientist—he can't help himself. Just ignore him, okay?"

"Yes, yes, thank you so much for your help, Colonel," Rodney muttered, turning his attention back to the device and trying to figure out what the hell it was supposed to do, since knowing that was tantamount to actually being able to repair it. His head spun when he tried to concentrate. Fantastic. He was probably going to pass out any second; if nothing else, he was pretty sure some of the sparkles he was seeing weren’t because of sun reflecting on metal.  They flared too much.

"McKay?" Sheppard said, and a warm hand settled on Rodney's shoulder. "Rodney?"

"I'm fine, Colonel." The natives didn't catch that particular tone, but Sheppard did and he moved a little closer. That was good, in that a blanket of warm enveloped him—but mostly bad because it made his fingers fumble the delicate lines of crystal the Ancients used for wires and he couldn't afford fumbling fingers at the moment.

"Do you need something to eat?" Sheppard asked, voice pitched low like there weren't a crowd of angry natives hovering around them. "I think I've still got an MRE with me."

Was that a ... ? Rodney leaned closer, ignoring the stretch and pull of the bandage around his knee—ow ow ow—to peer at the configurations etched on the crystals inside. The Ancients laced everything they did with that terrifyingly beautiful arrogance of theirs, making the most simple contraptions elegant works of art, but there were certain standard features and symbols that Rodney and the other scientists were starting to identify. Like the loopy, rounded schematic etched into the crystal Rodney detached, cradling it in his palms.

"This is the symbol for water," Rodney said, holding the crystal up to the blinding sun—stupid, as it made the world go from a slow swirl to spin-cycle. "I think it ... makes water? I mean, rain."

"Then it's definitely not working," Sheppard said with what Rodney hoped was sarcasm because if it wasn't that meant that the Colonel wasn't as smart as Rodney thought he was, and that would be very depressing. "Can you fix it?"

Rodney swallowed and tried to stop seeing double. "I don't think it's actually broken, in a technical sense. I think all this corrosion is..." He flicked at some of the rust and it flaked off, leaving shining wire. "Um, Colonel?"

"Yeah?" Sheppard said, crouching down next to him.

"I think this is blood."

Sheppard glanced at the natives, who had moved closer to try and overhear, from the corner of his eyes. "Blood. Well, these do seem to be the shoot-first kind of people."

"That idiom only works if they were actually shooting, and hurling spears at innocent scientists does not actually qualify."

Sheppard gave him a very long, penetrating look and Rodney tried not to worry he was suddenly coming over in spots or his eyes had actually crossed, the way his vision was telling him they had. "It works because they injured first, demanded second. I'm thinking turf war, maybe? This place is drier than Kabul and pretty nearly as hot. If I had a rain-making device I'd want to be king of my own little mountain, too."

It was hot here? Rodney clenched his hands to hide their trembling since he couldn't blame it on being freezing without looking really strange. Stranger. "But that doesn't explain why it's not working now, since I'm not actually finding anything wrong with it."

Other than blood in the section he'd just opened up and did these people not understand that blood, even dried, was sticky and could gum up anything?

"There's a lot of it," Sheppard said. "Maybe if we can get it all cleaned out, that'll do the trick?" He sounded doubtful, but Rodney didn't have any other ideas at the moment, so he nodded—whoa, world lurching—and the two of them got to work with Rodney carefully removing each crystal and handing it to Sheppard to clean.

The natives murmured as they cleaned out the crystals, Sheppard providing extra bandages for Rodney to scrape the insides of the machine with. Rodney glanced back at them, annoyed and hurting and still really, really cold: the natives looked annoyed and angry that Rodney wasn't fixing so much as cleaning.

"Fix!" the chief demanded.

"Yes, we are fixing it! You've got blood all over everything so next time you decide to stab people, please wait until they are not dripping over the very complicated machinery because then it, unsurprisingly, stops working because there is blood all over the inside. What did you do, sacrifice people over it?"

The minute the phrase popped out, Rodney felt himself go green; he clutched whatever was nearest to his hands. Because it was very likely that they had sacrificed some people to the fabulous rain-making machine, like the ancient Aztecs used to, something Rodney really wished he didn't know anything about—soft sciences were stupid, but he'd been required to take a few courses over the years.

It turned out that the warm things he was clutching were Sheppard's hands. "Rodney," Sheppard said, but Rodney was shaking and he was so cold that he could barely manage to concentrate on Sheppard's words, let alone anything else. "Rodney. Okay, just take it easy. McKay?" Sheppard's arms were around him suddenly, and Rodney couldn't help but lean against him, pressing his forehead to Sheppard's shoulder.

Sheppard's collarbone was very hard. Rodney tried to think of another complaint, something to push himself onto his own feet—okay, onto his own knee, anyway—but couldn't. Sheppard was warm, each breath sending another wave of it over Rodney's body, shifting a little to allow Rodney burrow even closer. That took care of the collarbone to the forehead problem, and Rodney was ashamed to hear himself whimper.

Sheppard's arms tightened as he snapped something at the natives, who said something incomprehensible back. That was repeated a few times and the increasingly urgent tone of Sheppard's voice clued him in.

"Oh, God, I've been poisoned," he said. He was trying for tragic and fatalistic but it came out a vibrating mess—his teeth were chattering even with all of Sheppard's glorious warmth. "It's not just that they're unclean savages, they deliberately poisoned me."

"It's okay, it's gonna be okay," Sheppard said, one hand settling at the back of Rodney's neck reassuringly. "It's just temporary. At least, I think that's what they're trying to tell me." The possible answer to the question of why the natives would need a temporary poison was more than Rodney could handle just then.

They were moving. Rodney wasn't sure how and part of him was worried about where that last crystal had gone, the one he'd been holding just before things had shaken to pieces (or maybe it was just his brain that was shaking to pieces, but Rodney really, really hoped not.) For a couple of minutes Rodney couldn't do anything but shiver.

When the violent trembling had subsided into something more like a mild earthquake, Rodney was sitting on some kind of cot—he could feel the edge of it digging in behind his knees, and Jesus his bad knee, the one with the bandage around it, ached—with Sheppard's arms around him again and what felt like at least four or five layers of blankets piled over both of them.  A nice gesture, but Rodney wasn’t really feeling the difference.

"Rodney?" Sheppard was saying. "Come on, Rodney, talk to me here."

"I didn't," he said. It made perfect sense to him, with his hand tight around the missing crystal, so tight he'd be afraid it would break if it wasn't of Ancient materials which meant bouncing a 'jumper on it wouldn't do much, let alone his measly arm-strength. "Didn't."

"Didn't what?" Sheppard still sounded concerned and his arms went a little tighter. "Rodney, you didn't what? Rodney!"

Rodney twitched, burying his face in hollow of Sheppard's neck. "Don't shout," he whined, tasting skin with every syllable. "I'm not deaf, I can hear you fine."

"Okay," Sheppard said soothingly. "Then answer me. You didn't what?" His hand was on Rodney's back, and it felt good even though it wasn't all that big. Nothing about the Colonel was big; well, nothing physical, except maybe his hair. Colonel Sheppard was just regular-sized. Until now, until something went wrong, and then somehow Sheppard seemed larger than life, strong enough to keep things together, to keep Rodney together. Rodney pressed himself even closer to Sheppard's warmth, mouthing at Sheppard's neck, trying to get a hand between Sheppard's shirt and skin.

"M'cold," Rodney muttered, knowing he was supposed to be saying something else.

"I know." The Colonel cradled the back of Rodney's head in his hand and it felt so good that Rodney almost whimpered. "I know you are, Rodney, but I need you to concentrate for me. You didn't what?"

"Leave it?" It came out more questioning than Rodney meant it, but he couldn't seem to control things the way he wanted to. "Sorry."

Sheppard tensed, but that could've been because Rodney's hand—cold, so cold—made contact with his stomach. "Rodney, what didn't you leave? Why are you sorry? Rodney, you have to tell me."

Rodney shook his head and burrowed closer, rubbing his hand against hair and skin that was so warm that he was afraid that he was going to melt, like a snowman under the hot Southern sun, not a cold one like at home, where even in the summer it felt thin and weak. Rodney turned his hand over, rubbing his knuckles Sheppard's belly, enjoying the heat and silken softness where there wasn't hair, and silken texture where there was.

"Kept it," he muttered, bringing his other arm up and pressing it to Sheppard's back—crystal point first.

"Jesus," Sheppard rasped, jerking away from the crystal, which meant that he jostled into Rodney, who just clung tighter. "Rodney, what the hell are you..." It trailed off, and Rodney wasn't sure if it was him not being able to hear it or if it was really Sheppard that had stopped talking. He could feel Sheppard's breath against his ear—faster than it had been before but just as hot—and Sheppard's hands opening and closing on his shirt, but weakly, like he was testing something, unsure. "Rodney?" Sheppard sounded worried, and Rodney let the strangely-wet crystal drop from his ice-cold fingers and kissed Sheppard, who made a low, muttered moan of surprise and kissed back.

More wet was making Rodney's fingers damp, but it was hot—oh, God, hot—and slick and there wasn't a lot of it, which made something important relax inside Rodney's head. He pressed his fingers and palm tight against Sheppard's back, enjoying the damp and the bumps that shifted and moved. Warm. Sheppard was so warm and Rodney wanted to crawl inside him.

Sheppard was making noises against Rodney's mouth, noises that weren't the same as before. Rodney was getting a little light-headed too, so he pulled back. "Christ, Rodney," Sheppard said immediately. "I don't think this is a normal reaction. Are you warming up at all?"

He tried to shake his head, hand scrabbling against Sheppard's back because the cloth between him and skin wasn't warm enough. His lips bumped against Sheppard's again, and Rodney moaned, pressing back in for another kiss and then another. The kisses were nice, and Sheppard's mouth tasted sweet and sharp, the way he imagined citrus would be.

Fingers knotted themselves into the hair at the back of Rodney's head and tightened, holding Rodney still. He made a sound of protest and Sheppard shifted his weight, pulled back a little. "You'd tell me if you thought something was seriously wrong, right?" Sheppard said, licking his oh so warm lips; Rodney couldn't look away from them. "Rodney?"

"Yes," Rodney said. "Yes, yes. But I don't see why it matters.  If there's nothing seriously wrong with me, then we just have to wait it out, and if there is, then I'm probably going to die here and you'll have wasted valuable time in which you could have been comforting me in my last moments, so would you please just shut up and kiss me?"

Sheppard did kiss him, and, even better, he yanked Rodney's shirt free of his waistband and rubbed his hot, hot hands over the skin of Rodney's back and sides and chest, and Rodney groaned in pleasure and relief and fed from Sheppard's mouth in a series of deep, hungry kisses.

Rodney didn't notice that he had climbed into John’s lap, straddling him, until he was pushed down onto his back and oh, oh that was even better. Because now Sheppard was above him, blanketing him from neck to ankle, and with the actual blankets creating a cocoon over the top, Rodney was finally starting to warm up a little.

He moaned, hands busily mapping Sheppard's back, gasping when Sheppard's hands found the ticklish spot on his shoulder. "Better?" Sheppard asked him, low and amused and filled with a heat Rodney wanted to wrap himself up in.

"Yes. No. Don't s-stop," he ordered, teeth starting to chatter again since Sheppard wasn't there to prevent it with his lips and tongue.

"Nope. Not stopping." Sheppard kissed his mouth, his chin, the underside of his jaw, and it was all hot, hands, lips and tongue practically burning Rodney's skin, but it was a good kind of burning, the kind that felt like it was searing out the icy cold poison inside him.

Rodney rocked up into Sheppard's solid weight, groaning and doing what he could to undress the Colonel, wanting to feel as much bare skin against his own as possible.

"Easy, Rodney," Sheppard murmured, kissing him again. "I'm not going anywhere, okay? Whatever you need, I'm here for you."

Rodney understood, fundamentally, that those words were wrong. Sheppard wasn't supposed to be doing this, both the this and the doing it with Rodney—and that he should stop. That both of them should stop now, when it was just about warmth and comfort and easy to explain away.

But Rodney was cold and Sheppard was living warmth that seared into his skin, kisses that made him moan and melt and God, it sounded so good to have Sheppard say those words to him. Like maybe they weren't even lies.

"No," he moaned when Sheppard pulled away. "Come back, you aren't—you're supposed to be comforting me and lying to me, dammit, not moving away so you can—oh." Sheppard was back, bare torso settling against Rodney's and it was like being immersed in an inferno, so good, with heat and skin and that perfect collarbone above Rodney's mouth that he could suck and nibble on.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Rodney," Sheppard said, a few minutes later, when his hot, hot hands were busy undoing the front of Rodney's pants.

"Yes," Rodney gasped, lifting and thrusting and, "God that's good, yes, perfect, just like that," because if Sheppard was lying to him that was exactly the way to do it, convincing and distracting and with a hand wrapped around Rodney's cold, hard dick.

And then Sheppard slid down and put his mouth on Rodney's cock, sucked it, licked it, breathed on it, and all coherent thought—well, not all coherent thought because most of it had been gone for a while now—fled Rodney's brain in favor of his dick, where things were so much better.

Sheppard made soft, eager little noises with every new move and touch: moans and half-gasps, sighs and even humming a little, like it felt as good to him as it did to Rodney. Rodney wasn't exactly sure how that was possible, since Sheppard was way down there and despite Rodney's babbled requests to get back up there, wasn't swinging his torso around so Rodney could return the favor.

Not that it was a bad thing, especially when Sheppard sank down over Rodney's cock, heat blasting Rodney until he couldn't stop whimpering. "Oh, God," he moaned, glad his hips were still frozen despite Sheppard's hands on them, because then he couldn't thrust. "Air -- Air Force Colonel's sh-shouldn't know how to suck c-cock," he chattered.

"Sure they should," Sheppard murmured. "They just shouldn't talk about it." He was clearly an expert, what with that thing he was doing with his tongue and the way he'd slid his hands around to Rodney's ass. "God, you're freezing." Somehow that was comforting, because Rodney had been starting to wonder if it was just an internal thing, a problem of perception rather than reality.

Well of course I am Rodney wanted to say, but between the cold and his cock firmly down Sheppard's throat, he wasn't speaking so much as making babbled, random noises. Sheppard didn't seem to mind, bobbing over and over, hands clutching with an intensity that Rodney knew he was helpless against.

It was, Rodney thought, like having your body used by someone who was more interested in what he was doing to it than by what it was getting him—okay, and apparently his thoughts were becoming a muddled, useless collection of too many pronouns and too few adjectives and adverbs. Sheppard's tongue was pressed flat to Rodney's dick, riding the base wetly with every downward movement of his head. Rodney wished there was some way for Sheppard to talk to him and suck his dick at the same time, because there was something soothing about Sheppard's voice regardless of whether the words were the truth or a lie.

Just as he was finally started to relax a little, still cold but no longer terrified with the ice creeping through him, Sheppard stopped. "Hey," he said, voice rough and hoarse in ways that had Rodney shivering for completely different reasons. "You feel a little warmer, now. Are you?"

The blankets diffused the light around them, shrouding them in gloom that made Sheppard's eyes shine. Rodney blinked at them and then glanced back down at his dick, wet and shiny and very hard. "You stopped?"

"Rodney, focus. Are you getting at all warmer?"

Rodney nodded, trying to force his brain back toward functional. "I—I think so."

"Good," Sheppard said, and moved up over him, straddling Rodney, warm thighs and—oh God, Sheppard's cock—pressing down against Rodney. When the hell had Sheppard taken off his pants? "Here." Sheppard grabbed Rodney's hand and brought it to his hot mouth, sucking on Rodney's fingers just like he'd been sucking on his cock a minute ago. When Rodney's first two fingers were slick and wet, Sheppard lifted up onto his knees and guided Rodney's hand back. "It's been a while," Sheppard said wryly, grinning, "but I guess we'll have to make do." And he pressed Rodney's fingers to his opening, encouraging Rodney to slick him, to open him up, which meant only one thing.

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard was going to let Rodney fuck him.

Rodney could feel his eyes growing wider, his body tensing even as his fingers breached that first snug ring and sank into heat that had him worried about incineration. "You—" he started. "But—a while—and—make do? There is no way you are experienced enough at this to be okay with just spit!"

"Way to kill the mood, Rodney," Sheppard said, but it hadn't been. Not really. Because Sheppard was still above him, still rocking back when Rodney's fingers pressed forward, automatically continuing the slow dance of in and stretch while Rodney's mind floundered. "Because nothing says romantic like protestations and complaints about what's missing."

But he was smiling, twisted and wry and... wanting? Was that what Rodney was seeing, sparking like fire-crackers in eyes he could only barely see? "I'm not complaining," he snapped even though his voice lacked the required bite. "I'm ... what?"

"Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?" Sheppard asked, then pressed his mouth to Rodney's in what Rodney was fairly certain was an attempt to stifle the moan that vibrated through his lips and into Rodney's, heated and desperate.

Sheppard kissed like he did everything else—as easily as if he'd been born to. On the surface, he was casual and friendly and likeable. But underneath... underneath, once you knew where to look, there was a lot more to him than that. Underneath, John Sheppard was intense and complicated, and Rodney knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted to get in there under Sheppard's skin and figure out what made him tick.

"Christ," Sheppard muttered against Rodney's lips as Rodney pushed his fingers deeper. "Jesus, Rodney. Where'd you learn to—God, yeah."

"I never had Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Rodney murmured. His attention was all on his actions now, eyes half-closed as he slowly, almost languidly opened Sheppard's body. Their lips buzzed together as they panted, and Rodney could feel the rest of him now, could sense nerves firing as he rocking up against Sheppard so everything slipped and slid together.

"Enough," Sheppard said, and the thread of need and desperation there was better than any amount of heat. "Ready, Rodney, I'm—Jesus, you're so good at this. Stop teasing me already."

"But I like teasing you." It was a truth he was just distracted enough to verbalize. "You like being teased."     

The Colonel shuddered and buried his face in the hollow of Rodney's neck and shoulder. "I like being fucked, too," Sheppard whispered. "And I know you want to. So just do it, Rodney. Fuck me."

"You aren't supposed to want that at all," Rodney murmured, but after over a year of obeying Sheppard when it counted, he wasn't going to suddenly refuse now.

He gripped himself, other hand guiding Sheppard down onto him so that they both gasped, both jerked as searing heat suffused them. "Oh," Rodney babbled, his voice as rough as if he'd been sucking cock instead of Sheppard, staring straight up at nothing at all. "Oh, God, this is real, I'm not hallucinating this from whatever poison they gave me, and oh God, oh God."

"This is real," Sheppard agreed, straightening up, and Rodney would have protested the lack of shared body heat if his eyes hadn't chosen precisely that moment in which to focus, revealing how Sheppard looked over Rodney, Rodney's cock sheathed inside him, hard flushed dick in his hand and his lips swollen and abraded from kisses, and Rodney suddenly realized that he wasn't cold anymore.

He still let Sheppard do most of the moving, but that was primarily because Sheppard was so good at it: rising and falling, fucking himself on Rodney's cock and jerking off at the same time. Watching him was like nothing Rodney had ever done before—it took all his concentration just to remember to keep breathing when John looked like that.

"Here," John murmured, sitting back fully so he could pick up Rodney's hand and curl it around his dick. "Yeah, like that."

Rodney didn't have enough neurons functioning to fire out a command, but instinct and memory kicked in and Rodney intertwined his fingers with John's, both of them now stroking that hard, proud cock as John rose up and down in a rhythm that highlighted just how amazing athletic John was. It was beautiful to watch, to know that John looked like that because of him.

Rodney felt sweat, a fond memory only moments before, prickle along his skin and John's cock burning a brand onto his palm with each slow, lazy tug.

"Better?" John asked, pinching one of Rodney's nipples; it made Rodney's cock give an almost violent warning throb, made him gasp. "It's better, right?"

Rodney nodded and settled his free hand on John's hip. "Better's an understatement," he said. His voice wasn’t steady, but Rodney knew it wasn’t an adverse reaction that prompted the wobble. "You're like... a cure. Although I won't be suggesting this particular therapeutic method to Carson. I don't think." He gasped again and squeezed John's cock harder, watched with pride as John's eyes narrowed and went unfocused.

That reminded him that no matter how experienced John seemed to be, Rodney was experienced, too. He began rolling his hips, carefully trying out various angles while John's rhythm stuttered and slowed before finally stopping—John gasping, head back, cock throbbing, as Rodney smiled smugly below him. He looked beautiful like that, still masculine and strong but with a delicacy that made Rodney want to push up into him again, harder.

By the third upward thrust John had caught the rhythm, rising as Rodney settled, slamming down as Rodney rocked upward. They were both breathless, fingers gone white as they stroked John at the same time.

"I dunno," John panted. "This seems like a miracle cure to me."

Rodney's eyes narrowed again. "So you want to sh—"

John dived down, bending practically in half so he could swallow the rest of Rodney's words, muffling them against lips and tongue. "Don't be stupid."

"No, no, of course not," Rodney managed, taking advantage of friction in new places and grinding up into John again. "I think we can both agree that... stupid is one of the things I'm not."

John's eyes were shut tight, one hand working his cock and the other braced on Rodney's shoulder, his lips parted, breathing heavy. "Rodney. God. Oh God." His hand tightened to the point where it was practically bruising Rodney's fingers, moving no faster but stripping his dick with painful force until his face contorted and he came with a series of short, sharp sounds.

Rodney went rigid as John came, watching as long, ropey stripes were painted on his chest. "Oh, God," he whispered because he was fucking John and he'd just made him come.

"Not sure he had anything to do with it," John panted above him.

"Oh, like you weren't just praying as you—Jesus!" Slow and steady vanished, John no longer interested in sharing but practically forcing. John rode him at a frantic pace, pushing back until he was as deeply seated as possible, taking Rodney all the way in. Heat prickled at the small of Rodney’s back, spreading down to his spine before heading up again. "John," he moaned, "I—you need to—we don’t have—" Rodney's face screwed up the way it always did when he was close, his hands scrabbling ineffectually at strong thighs. "Please, you need to—"

"Stop thinking," John ordered, low and gruff, and it was as simple as that. Rodney bit back a cry as he arched, spilling himself within John's body.

"Okay, good. Good." John's voice was gentle as waves of indescribable pleasure rolled through Rodney, his lips millimeters from Rodney's when the last of it had finally faded away, leaving Rodney spent and trembling.

To Rodney's surprise, John didn't get off of him; just hunkered down until their bodies were touching, chest to chest, belly to belly, and kissed him again and again, so slowly that Rodney was able to appreciate all of it—the touches, the warmth, the closeness.

"Do you think this is what those guys with the spears were expecting when they put us in here?" John asked eventually, pulling back just far enough so that Rodney could see the amusement in his eyes.

Mentioning the natives made Rodney remember his knee, which obligingly started throbbing. Talking about that now would be crass even for him, though, so he just smiled against John's mouth. "You're the one who had a conversation with them, Colonel, so that's a question you need to answer."

"I might be able to if I could figure out more than one word in three," John said with regret. He fixed Rodney with a serious look, all soulful worried eyes and thoughtfully lifted brow. "Are you okay?"

Rodney let his head thump back against the mattress—he missed pillows. "Walking might be an issue," he said, voice unusually slow and pensive. "If you're asking am I still suffering from the poison, my gut says yes although afterglow has pretty much wiped away any symptoms. If you're asking if I'm going to freak out ... let me get back to you on that one."

"Uh-huh." Sheppard sounded unusually flat as he got up, using one of the blankets that had fallen onto the dirt floor to wipe their bellies before he pulled his pants on. "Well, you know where to find me. Here, let me take a look at that knee while we've got the chance." He helped Rodney to a sitting position, leaving the blanket that had been draped across Rodney in a place where it more or less preserved whatever modesty Rodney still had left.

"'Well you know where to find me'?" Rodney repeated, incredulous. "Oh, that just makes my day perfect, Colonel, you having a very womanly freak out on me that you know I absolutely cannot understand—and you shouldn't make the mistake of thinking I've forgotten Alina, and—ow!"

Rodney clutched the blanket, not caring that it now gaped and exposed him, because John—Sheppard?—was unbandaging Rodney’s knee to poke at the short, deep-looking cut that ended right before the patella. It hurt a lot worse than such a minor looking wound indicated, particularly since there’d been so much shock and righteous anger at being stabbed that Rodney hadn’t really felt it at first. Now it throbbed, no longer dull and ignorable, but sharp and bright, shivering through his system so that still-sensitized nerves flared into entirely different responses.

It didn't help that Rodney knew John was being gentle. "I'm not sure you can walk on that," John said.

"Oh, thank you for that illuminating insight! I'm sure I never would've noticed the fact that someone stabbed me and poisoned me and now I have giant gaping hole in my leg, preventing me from putting my full weight on it! Truly, Colonel, it would've completely escaped my mind!"

"Deep breaths, Rodney," Sheppard muttered, glancing up with an expression that Rodney was far more used to seeing directed at him, one of frustration and possibly even irritation, which was just rich considering that Rodney was the one sitting there with a serious injury compounded by systemic poisoning. Sheppard pulled some fresh bandages from one of the pockets in his vest and started to wrap Rodney's knee up even more tightly.

"Ow," Rodney said, with a heat that had more to do with his emotional state than his physical one, although he would have denied it vehemently to anyone who had hazarded it as a suggestion. "Ow, ow, ow."

"Keep your shirt on," Sheppard said, then blinked. "Huh. Right." He handed Rodney his shirt. "Look, all we've got to do is keep it together long enough to fix their little rain machine or whatever it is, and then we can go home."

"Are you sure you want to actually keep together with me?" Rodney muttered as he tugged the garment over his head. "What with you acting like I've got cooties—gimme those!"

Sheppard huffed an annoyed, "Fine!" when Rodney snatched boxers and pants out of his hands and began struggling to put them on himself.  He moved to look out the window, studying their surroundings. Rodney could see a small dot of red on his naked upper back, on the left side, where the crystal had broken Sheppard's skin. It seemed to be already scabbed over, or at least not spreading any wider; Rodney tried not to feel grateful for that.  

"They've got a guard on us,” Sheppard said, pulling his shirt on over his head, “but he's not too close. I wonder if we scared him away?" 

Taking advantage of Sheppard's obvious distraction, Rodney allowed himself to stop for a moment and just breathe. His knee hurt and he probably could've benefited from Sheppard helping him dress, but the implied helplessness and worse, the knowledge that something was wrong and he had no idea what, made him angry. He knew he became unreasonable when he was angry, but he was also usually at his most brilliant and productive so he let it work for him.

Besides. It was easier to feel anger than flailing, pointless upset.

Struggling to put his shoes on, Rodney glanced up to see Sheppard fully dressed and watching him with fathomless dark eyes.

"Listen..." Sheppard crossed his arms over his chest, and it struck Rodney that it was a protective gesture. "If this was a bad idea, I'm sorry. I was just trying to help."

He swayed slightly as he got to his feet, but he did manage to hobble into Sheppard's personal space. "If what was a bad idea, you acting like a moron and then treating me like I was made of china? Yes, those were very bad ideas! Those were stupendously horrible ideas, even for you, Colonel."

Sheppard took a step back and Rodney swayed, grabbing onto Sheppard's shoulder so he was the same scant inches away as before, so close he could smell the result of their... whatever it was ... on both of them. "If, however, you were implying that what happened back there," his arm flapped towards the low mattress and yes, he was a chicken because he couldn't say 'sex' or 'comfort' or whatever the appropriate euphemism was out loud, "was a bad idea then ..."

He ran out of steam. He hadn't been able to think too clearly before with the cold freezing his brain matter, but he hadn't ever thought bad idea. Mostly he'd thought oh, God, really? with a smattering of please, please, I want this so much.

Releasing Sheppard's shoulder, Rodney bent to pick up the previously dropped crystal before he stumbled to the door. "Fine," he said. "Bad idea. Please be reassured that I have no intention of blowing your secret to God and your military commanders. Now, if you don't mind, I have a machine I was rudely interrupted from fixing." The crystal was cold and dull in his hand, and he very deliberately didn’t wipe the single smear of blood from one of the curved edges.

With a remarkable amount of determination, Rodney was able to get through the next half hour—repairing the rain machine, which lit up like something from a made-for-the-Sci-Fi-channel movie or maybe a cheap drug store Christmas tree. The natives seemed happy enough that they didn't require a demonstration—of course, they probably had brains the size of lentils—and gave them back their boots, weapons, and their radios, allowing the Colonel to contact Atlantis, reassure them that everything was fine despite the hour and a half communication black-out, and then let them leave, much to Rodney's shock.

It wasn't until they were back in Atlantis, with Rodney complaining loudly about Beckett's rough treatment of his knee as it was bandaged for the third time in as many hours—blood samples already taken and off to be analyzed—that he realized that the Colonel was leaning over against the wall, silent, watching him. Somehow, that shut Rodney up.

Beckett patted Rodney on the shoulder and left them there. Not alone, of course, because it was the infirmary and no one was ever really alone in the infirmary.

Rodney glared ineffectually at the curtain hanging open around his bed. Beckett might close it if Rodney complained vociferously enough, but knowing Sheppard, he'd probably just barge right through it and continue to stare. It made Rodney feel naked the way actually being naked with Sheppard hadn't. Like Rodney was a bug or a fascinating bit of something that went bing.

He had a sudden, unexpected sympathy with the puddle jumpers. Although they usually got a stare of unabashed adoration, not this quietly inscrutable blankness.

Rodney closed his eyes and hoped very hard that when he opened them he'd be alone with the nurses and poor Sergeant Lincoln, sleeping behind his curtain across the way.

He tried calculating pi to as many digits as he could, but he kept getting distracted somewhere around the hundredth and after the third time he gave up in exasperation and opened his eyes to find that Sheppard had moved and was standing over him.

"Do you want me to go?" Sheppard asked, and there was something that almost hurt to look at on his face, something pained and sensitive, like someone had dissected him and left him there, open and bleeding, for Rodney to gleefully poke at.

Only, seeing the Colonel like that, Rodney didn't feel gleeful.

"I want to understand what's going on, because clearly I don't." Rodney kept his voice low, hoping that if something unfortunate got said that no one would be able to hear definition, just the fuzz of their voices. "It was—good.  Really good.  But then you started—"

He sighed, leaning back onto a pillow that curled around his head comfortingly. The contrast between the familiar infirmary beds and the pallet he'd lain on not two hours before was startling—he almost wished he was back on the pallet. It'd been easier, when he was too cold to think or complain or even understand just how impossibly broken everything could be.

"So is that a no?" Sheppard asked hopefully. He reached out and curled his hand around Rodney's forearm; the touch was different than it had felt before, but no less wanted, and that was enough to confuse Rodney even further. He didn't get attached to people, especially not hero-type Air Force Colonels with stupid hair, even if they were smarter than they had any right to be, even if they treated Rodney like he was already worth something regardless of whether or not he saved the day. "Because I could stay. We could talk."

"Are we actually going to talk this time, instead of playing the 'I'm so hurt but I'm not telling you why and it hurts me more that you haven't read my mind' game? Because I have a couple ex-girlfriends I could call up if I wanted that."

When Sheppard just continued looking at him, Rodney shifted his arm, letting Sheppard's hand slide down to brush against his own. His fingers may have even curled a little, just brushing against the vein distended on the back of Sheppard's hand. Holding hands wasn't something he was ever interested in, but, like attachments, Sheppard seemed to be a law unto himself.

"Yes," Rodney said quietly. "You can stay."

Sheppard's smile was surprisingly open, and Rodney's heart did something funny at the sight of it. "I wasn't doing that," Sheppard said. "Playing that game. At least, I didn't mean to. It was just... one of those things. I didn't want you to think that what we did had to mean something, if you didn't want it to."

Rodney let that thought settle, absently turning his palm so that it brushed against Sheppard's. "Nope, still not making any sense. You were acting like it was a mistake. Not just like it was something you were doing to keep me alive, which is, by the way, much appreciated. But like you regretted it."

Dealing with people was never something he excelled at, a trail of broken relationships and friendships turned sour had taught him that thoroughly enough. That somehow it was happening again, with someone he'd honestly liked...

"I didn't regret it, Rodney."

Rodney, now, and not McKay. Their fingers were curling together. "Do you now?"

"Regret it?" Sheppard shook his head. "Uh-uh. No way. Though you should probably consider asking Heightmeyer for some classes in psychology, because you really suck at reading what I'm thinking. I was worried that you thought it was a mistake, Rodney. And I might start to take it personally if you don't believe me."

Rodney narrowed his eyes. Being bad with people was one thing, but he thought he knew Sheppard pretty well by this time—the clipped words, the closed off face, the protective attitude ...

Okay, it possibly could've been Sheppard waiting for a blow to fall. But it also could've been Sheppard being homophobic, or really Rodney-phobic, because nobody who could take Rodney on spit and some stretching was allowed to be homophobic—not that Rodney hadn't met self-hating people before, and whoa was he off topic.

"Well, good," he said lamely, because he wasn't sure what else to say. It was good that Sheppard didn't hate him and wasn't regretting anything. But that was a past-tense good, because this was Atlantis and the present. "That's ... good. Um. I didn't, either. Don't. Regret it."

Now Sheppard looked confused. "But you... if you don't regret it, then what was that thing you said? About getting back to me on whether or not you were going to freak out?"

Rodney tried to replay the conversation over in his head, but it wasn't that easy. He was clear-headed now, but most of his memories from inside the hut were fuzzy. "Oh, for—Colonel, I’d been poisoned.  You were expecting rational and coherent from me? I was—” Rodney’s voice broke slightly. “I didn't mean it like that."

"Okay," John said.

Frowning, Rodney said, "Okay, what?"

"Okay, I forgive you." John's fingertips stroked lightly over the palm of Rodney's hand, making him shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the poison that Beckett had said was mostly out of his system anyway.

"There's nothing I need to be forgiven for," Rodney snapped. It sounded lame and entirely childish, but John didn't stop tracing his love- and life-line, which felt good.

John's expression turned long-suffering. "Of course not, Rodney."

Yes, yes, that way led the fighting Rodney was pretty sure they'd never give up because it was too much fun. Instead, Rodney darted a glance around the infirmary—almost entirely empty, except for some distant murmuring. "I'm feeling cold, again," he said, voice low since maybe this wasn't what John had been hinting toward.

"Yeah?" Sheppard didn't seem overly worried, but he sat down on the side of the bed and pulled the thin medical blanket higher. "Too bad we can't fix that the way we did before. I guess you'll just have to settle for the warmth of my sparkling conversation." His fingertip pressed against Rodney's pulse in a way that was strangely erotic. "Unless you want to try to get Carson to let you go back to your quarters, in which case I think I could be... persuaded to share my body heat." Sheppard's tone was low, erotic, and pitched so that no one but Rodney could have heard it.

Normally being right made Rodney feel smugly superior and normal, because he was almost always right. Now, though, it made him blink and any second he was going to start grinning like a maniac.

Strike that. Given John's sardonic half-smirk, he was already grinning like a maniac.

Oh, God, he was right and John didn't want this to be just a one-time save-Rodney kind of thing. Thank God.

Attempting to control himself at least a little bit, Rodney cleared his throat. "Give me twenty minutes and I'll be confined to quarters. Carson! Carson, stop reading your entrails and come out here."

"I think I'll wait in the hallway." Sheppard beat a hasty retreat—he was definitely a hell of a lot smarter than he let on, a trait which Rodney found utterly perplexing considering he himself wore his intelligence like a nice loud beacon.

Twenty minutes later, as promised, Rodney was released to hobble on his own recognizance, Beckett muttering death-threats in between making Rodney promise not to leave his room and actually rest.

"Your knee's not bad, but it needs to be elevated and left alone to heal!"

"Yes, yes, Carson, elevated and quiet time resting. I get it, now I am leaving. I'll have Radek bring me a laptop."

That earned him something that was probably in Gaelic, since the spat of consonants and vowels were in no patterns that Rodney recognized, but that was okay. Rodney was in the hall now and he could see John slouched against the wall by the transporter, eyes half-closed and glittering as they watched Rodney move ever closer.

"You could help, you know," Rodney accused when he finally reached John.

"I am helping, Rodney," was the drawled response. "Come on." Inside the transporter, John slid an arm around Rodney's waist, silently encouraging Rodney to lean as heavily as he wanted. "See?"

And for once, Rodney was pretty sure he did see. As John helped him down the hallway, Rodney tried to decide if maybe he was getting better with people or if John was just getting better at reading him—and then decided he didn't care. Because John was helping him into bed and moving over him just like before, covering him from neck to ankle with the solid weight of his body. "Warm?" John asked him.

"Mm," Rodney said thoughtfully, letting his hands settle on John's hips. "You know, I think I could be warmer."