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"I'm fine," Rodney says, the moment he's pushed, stumbling, back into the cell where John and Teyla have been waiting (and getting increasingly agitated). He holds up his hands, and John realizes that both he and Teyla are on their feet, reaching out toward Rodney—who does look remarkably fine, considering he's been gone for hours.
"You sure?" John asks, even though Rodney's not usually too quiet about his own discomfort. He seems a bit twitchy, but that's par for the course with Rodney in a capture situation, and John can't see any visible wounds. Rodney nods, and John relaxes a fraction, sits down on one of the shitty little cots in the cell. "What were—what was happening, then?"
"They, um, they wanted..." Rodney shrugs, makes a vague, fluttering gesture, "tech support."
Teyla frowns, tilts her head. "They want you to fix their technology?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Rodney answers, flip and dismissive, which is his usual baseline for dealing with civilizations that have technology Rodney considers to be beyond their understanding. "They don't know how to use half the stuff they've got, but none of it seems dangerous, so."
"So?" John watches Rodney walk the cell floor, checking for any changes to his gait and not seeing any.
"So, I figure the easiest thing to do is keep helping them out until Ronon shows up with a bunch of Marines and does the jailbreak thing," Rodney says airily, sitting down on another of the cots. "They assured me that we'll be fed and taken care of as long as I'm helping them."
As if on cue, a slot in the door opens, and a tray with three large bowls and three small cups is shoved through, along with a hunk of crusty bread.
"See?" Rodney says, pointing, voice brimming with false cheer. "Now come on, let's eat...whatever the hell this is."
The next day, the guards show up to take Rodney in the morning, and he doesn't come back until it's nearly dark.
"I'm fine," he says when John asks, waving a hand dismissively. "I told them about the hypoglycemia, they kept me fed."
Rodney falls asleep as soon as they've finished their dinner, and John listens to the soft, even sound of his snores, sharing the last of the bread with Teyla.
The third day, John and Teyla are brought a change of clothes about halfway through the day, along with a basin and two washcloths. It's the same grey-black tunic and loose pants they'd been put in before they were thrown in the cell, but at least they're clean, and they wash up and change into them after they finish running through a set of stick-fighting forms, sans sticks.
Rodney's in new clothes when he comes back, too, makes an offhand comment about how they'd been starting to smell, anyway. He's quiet while they eat, and it's Teyla who asks this time, careful and measured, if Rodney's okay.
"I'm fine," Rodney says around a mouthful of bread. He swallows it down, shuddering. "Sick of this food, though."
Rodney looks pale when they bring him back on the fourth day, but he waves off their questions, settling down onto his cot. "I'm fine," he insists, pulling the blanket over himself. "Just...just let me sleep, okay?"
On the fifth day, Rodney winces away when John puts a hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, you try hunching over a console for hours fixing something for people who've imprisoned you," he gripes when John points it out. "I'm just stiff, it's not—I'm fine."
John and Teyla exchange a look, but it's not like Rodney's ever been shy about telling them when something's wrong—or something might become wrong later, or is even the slightest bit uncomfortable—so he shrugs, passes Rodney a bowl of oddly-orange stew.
Late afternoon on the sixth day, the door bangs open, one hinge coming loose, and Ronon's there, the glow of the sun coming in through the cell window painting him golden like an avenging angel.
He looks at John, then Teyla, and then he frowns. "Where's McKay?"
"Tech support," John says, taking a P-90 from one of the marines behind Ronon and passing it back to Teyla. "We don't know where they've been taking him, but he says he's fine."
The murderousness in Ronon's expression dials itself back a few notches, and he nods, slaps a big hand on John's shoulder.
"You good?" He asks, and John nods.
"We were well taken care of," Teyla says, smiling tightly, "under the circumstances."
"Yeah," John drawls, "sure do hate to leave so soon."
They're edgy, all three of them, without Rodney accounted for, but John straightens his spine enough to nod to Lorne and the rest of the extraction team, setting his jaw and saying, "Alright, people, let's find my scientist so we can get out of here!"
Rodney is not fine when they find him.
The door to the lab slides open, and John hears Teyla make a sharp, pained sound, startling him, before the door opens wide enough that John can see, but then he can't move, can't understand what his eyes are showing him, and then he hears the whine of Ronon's gun, the thunk of bodies hitting the floor.
John doesn't need to ask whether it had been set to stun or not—not when the room resolves back into silence and he can hear Rodney whimpering; not when his vision clears and he actually really sees what's in front of him.
He can see Rodney's back, his pale skin and his broad shoulders, and he's draped over something that looks kind of like those massage chairs they have in malls back on Earth, but Rodney's torso is strapped to it with two wide leather bands, and some sort of strange, mechanical arm is moving rapidly across the line of Rodney's shoulder blades. It's working like a piece of an assembly line, quick and efficient, and with each jerking movement Rodney makes another quiet, half-swallowed sound of pain.
John can track the movement of the arm by the trail of tiny, uniform pinpricks, welling up with blood across Rodney's skin. He can see where it's been, yeah, but even worse is that he can guess where it's going, because there are lines of barely-healed punctures all the way down Rodney's back, across his shoulders, and halfway down his biceps.
He swallows down the urge to throw up and takes a step into the room. "We need—somebody, get—get it off of him, now, we need to—"
Rodney must recognize his voice, because he raises his head, tries to turn around. He sounds weak and bleary when he says, "John?"
And then John's across the room in a heartbeat, kneeling down in front of the chair and balling his hands into fists to keep himself from touching Rodney's too-pale face, smoothing back his sweaty hair. There's some kind of keyboard at Rodney's right hand, attached to a screen with data scrolling quickly past. He takes Rodney's hand, guides it carefully away from the buttons.
"We're gonna get you out of here, buddy," John says, and glances up behind Rodney just in time to see Ronon look at the machine, look at Teyla, and then just grab the mechanical arm and wrench it away from Rodney with a sickening screech of metal bending and circuitry frying. Before the sparks have even stopped flying, Teyla's bending down, loosening the straps that are holding Rodney in place.
"Can you stand up?" Teyla asks, putting a hand gingerly on the lower end of Rodney's bicep.
"Yeah, I," Rodney mumbles, blinking and turning toward her, "I'm fine."
Teyla's mouth is set in a hard line, and John watches her help Rodney to his feet, the words "I'm fine" echoing in his head like church bells, like a death knell.
"What the hell is wrong with you, McKay?" John half-shouts, hating himself when Rodney startles at the volume, flinching away from him. "You tell us you're fine for a week while this is happening?" John waves an arm, encompassing the lab, the machine, the blood. "What even is that thing?"
Rodney takes in a series of quick, shuddering breaths. "It's, it's some kind of, of interface, I don't really know exactly how it, um, works, because it's partly, ha, as you can see, um, biological? In nature, but it apparently requires both technical ability and, um…well, blood."
"This is what you have been doing every day while you were away from us?" Teyla asks, her voice flat and toneless, and Rodney nods. Teyla stiffens. "You told us you were fine."
Rodney swallows hard, and suddenly every single tell, everything that's taught John that Rodney is a bad liar, everything that he'd been hiding, is clear as day when he says, "I was fine."
"No the hell you weren't," John says, unable to control the volume of his voice, the vehemence of it.
Rodney's jaw twitches, and he glares at John, spreading his arms. "I'm standing here, aren't I?"
Teyla makes a sound in the back of her throat, and John's about to protest that Rodney damn well wasn't standing a minute ago, but Ronon steps up, handing Rodney his discarded tunic.
"Seems like McKay did what he had to do," he says, looking pointedly at John and Teyla. "Now can we get out of here?"
Teyla nods tightly, and John shuts his mouth, because Ronon's right, this isn't the time or place. Silently, he watches Rodney pull the tunic over his head, watches fabric slide neatly over the evidence of everything he'd failed to prevent.
In the doorway, Lorne clears his throat, and John remembers abruptly that the four of them aren't alone, that he's the goddamn commanding officer here and he needs to fucking act like it, so he marches over, glances into the hallway.
"How's our route out of here, Major?"
"Should be pretty clear, sir," Lorne says. "Think we can go out the way we came in."
"Good." John nods. He looks back into the room, at Rodney standing between Ronon and Teyla, shifting almost guiltily. "Let's go home."
Back on Atlantis, Rodney's cleaned up, bandaged, run through a battery of tests for bloodborne illnesses, given a tetanus shot and IV antibiotics—all while John and Teyla are put through their own post-mission physicals, and by the time John's free, Rodney's asleep in an infirmary bed with sedatives and fluids slowly dripping into his arm. John looks at Ronon, who's sitting in the chair next to the bed with his arms crossed.
"He told us he was fine," John says miserably. "For—for six fucking days, Ronon."
"Yeah," Ronon says, his voice a low rumble. "You'd've done the same thing."
"'Cause it's my job," John grits out, hands balled into fists. The same helplessness he'd felt in that room is clawing up into his chest, making him want to yell again.
Ronon raises an eyebrow, looks him up and down. John doesn't want to know what it is he sees.
"Sheppard," he says, not unkindly. "Take a shower and go to bed. You can yell at him tomorrow."
John thinks about refusing, but Ronon so rarely tells him what to do that he finds himself nodding—he knows Ronon will be there in case Rodney wakes up, and maybe a good night's sleep will help John get himself under control, make the fizzing painful rage under his skin settle down a bit.
"Alright," John says, taking one last look at Rodney; peaceful, safe, alive, before he turns on his heel and heads back to his quarters.
John sleeps like shit, but he sleeps, and he showers, shaves, dresses, and even makes himself go to breakfast before he goes to the infirmary to look in on Rodney.
Teyla's already there, her expression pinched and grave, shadows under her eyes like she'd had a night's sleep much like the one John did. She looks up when he comes near, her eyes flicking quickly to Rodney's sleeping form, then back to John.
"I am told they will release him this afternoon," she says quietly. "I was hoping to…speak with him, when he wakes."
"Yeah, that makes two of us," John grumbles. "He'll feel like we're ganging up on him if we're both here, though."
"Yes," Teyla agrees, her posture becoming somehow more still, as though she's transformed herself to stone. Her mouth curls in a small smile. "And I was here first."
John knows when he's beaten, so he shifts, tilts his head. "Tell them to radio me when he's let out?"
"Of course," Teyla says, settling back into the infirmary chair. John takes one more look at Rodney, so still and quiet, and then forces himself to turn around.
John writes a report about the mission, capture, and rescue; he double-checks his own shittily filled out requisition forms; he goes for a run and then takes another shower; he eats lunch. He's about to just go to the infirmary his own damn self when his radio crackles with the announcement that Rodney's about to be set free.
He shows up, ostensibly to walk Rodney back to his quarters, and it's tense, everything that passed between them the previous afternoon simmering through the air in the hallways. They get to Rodney's door, and John could leave—John should leave, but he doesn't. He follows Rodney in, watches him sigh and set his backpack down next to his desk. John takes a deep breath, resolves not to yell.
"Why didn't you tell us?" John says, and his voice sounds flat, toneless, but at least he's not shouting this time.
"I couldn't." Rodney shakes his head. "I…you wouldn't have let them keep taking me, so. So I had to tell you I was fine."
"Rodney—" John tries to speak, but Rodney's face crumples in something that looks like a mix of panic and frustration, and then he's talking again.
"They, they said," Rodney starts, shaky and unsure in a way that makes John want to punch something, want to go back and level the entire damn planet, "they had, um, they had a monitor, on, on the cell, where you—where we—and they would watch you, and, and Teyla, and they said they'd—" he shudders, his eyes going blank, seeing something else, something Rodney never should have to see, to think. "They said, if I didn't, didn't do what they needed, give them," one hand flutters in the air, encompassing everything that had been done to Rodney, everything John wants to yell at him for hiding, "give them whatever they asked for, that they'd, that—that, you and Teyla, they would—" Rodney makes a choked sound, like he's about to throw up, and his voice is quiet and deadened when he continues, "They kept…talking about your mouth."
John's blood runs cold, his entire body seeming to lock up all at once, and he barely recognizes his own voice when he growls, "Rodney, did they—did they, you—" and John can't say the words, can't say did they touch you because he knows they did, but not—not like that, or at least he'd thought, and his eyes sting as he says, sandpaper-rough, "Rodney! Did they..."
Rodney shakes his head, reaches out and grabs at John's shoulders, warm and firm. The movement makes him wince, and John feels guilty, knows he should be the one offering comfort here, but he can't stop fucking shaking.
"No," Rodney says, loud and sharp, "they didn't, John, are you listening to me?" John nods, sucks in air, and Rodney squeezes at him. "It was just...just the, um, the stuff with the tech, that they, you know...wanted from me." Rodney lets out a weird, half-swallowed little giggle, a noise John recognizes from imminent explosions and capture on hive ships. "I, well, I suppose I should've been a bit insulted, that they didn't, ha, want me for other...services," he laughs again, his face twisting up into an expression that's gone so fast John can't read it—not that John can read much, since his vision's started to blur a bit. "But, you know, I was mostly glad that I didn't have to, uh, split my focus, as it were."
John wants to say you should have let them, wants to say I could've taken it, but Teyla was there, and, anyway, he knows they would've just found another way to scare Rodney into compliance, but—John shudders again, sways in Rodney's grip—but then at least John would've been suffering too, wouldn't have been sitting in that cell like a fucking moron, waiting for rescue like everything was fine, like Rodney wasn't, wasn't—
"Rodney," John says, scraped and desperate, and then he lets himself reach out, his shaking hands on Rodney's elbows, sliding up his biceps. He remembers exactly where the pinpricks start, and it makes him want to be sick, so he pulls his hands back, circles his fingers loosely around Rodney's wrists. "You shouldn't have to...you should never have to—"
"Have to what," Rodney says, and it's sharp-edged enough that John startles, meets Rodney's eyes. "Have to do what you do?"
"Yes," John says, and he fucking means it. "You're a scientist, Rodney, you're not a soldier, you didn't sign up for—"
"I signed up to be on a team," Rodney snaps, "and I might not have known what that meant at first, but I damn well do by now."
Rodney pulls away, and, shit, he's really angry, John's fucked this up so, so bad, and all he can do is look at his hands, the floor.
"If you're mad that I stole your shtick, Colonel," Rodney's saying, his tone flat and venomous, "I'll be sure to condemn the team to a fate much worse than my own petty discomfort, next time." He breathes out, long and slow, and then mutters, as if to himself, "God forbid I want you to be spared some fucking suffering for once."
"Rodney," John says, blinking rapidly.
"I realize you've never been on the other side of the old John Sheppard ‘I'm Fine' Special," Rodney says, his voice shaking just a little bit, "but maybe now you understand how I feel every damn time."
Rodney's voice breaks on the last word, and John's knees nearly give out.
"Fuck, Rodney, I—" he looks up, meeting Rodney's wide eyes. "I'm sorry."
Rodney flattens his mouth into a line, tilts his chin up, and says, "For?"
John makes a strangled sound—that's not what he expected Rodney to say, but—he can say the words. He can.
"For always…for doing that to you." He runs a hand through his hair, shakes his head. "For yelling at you when you did it to me."
"Yes, well," Rodney says, blowing out a breath. "For my part, I suppose I now have a better understanding of your…motivations, at times like that."
"It's my job," John says, desperate to justify himself but mostly just sounding aggrieved, petulant.
"No it isn't." Quick and sharp, and Rodney holds up a hand before John can protest. "Listen to me, Sheppard, because I'm only going to say this once, and if you ever bring it up again I will deny it vehemently."
Rodney looks expectant, so John nods, not knowing at all what he's about to hear.
"I am not worth more than you," Rodney says, every syllable precise and lecture-hall clear. "None of us are."
John's world tilts slightly on its axis, and he stumbles backward, sits down heavily on Rodney's bed.
"I…" John starts, but he doesn't want to lie to Rodney right now, so he can't say I don't think that, and Rodney seems edgy enough that he might haul off and punch him if John says something like but you are worth more than me.
"I will allow," Rodney says, his chin tilted up and away, "that perhaps I shouldn't have hid what was going on, but—" and then Rodney's looking straight at him, his gaze like a plunge into freezing water, making John swallow down a gasp. "But," Rodney continues, one finger jabbing out in John's direction, "can you honestly say you would've sat quietly and waited for the rescue we knew was coming, if I had?"
John rubs the back of his neck, feeling distinctly lectured. "Prob'ly not."
"Oh, I love when I get to talk to petulant teen Sheppard," Rodney snaps, acidic. "Makes me understand why your COs all hate you."
"Rodney," John says, and it comes out pathetic and more than a little whiny.
Rodney opens his mouth, another snarky comment probably on the tip of his tongue, but whatever he sees on John's face makes him shut it again, and he tilts his head, expectant.
It makes John wince, his eyes darting up and away as breath shudders through him. The words bubble up in his chest, and he wants to say them, needs to say them—
Rodney shifts, his expression scrunching briefly into pain, probably the healing skin pulling under his clothes, and it makes John feel hollowed-out to see that, to see Rodney still waiting for John to speak when he has every reason to tell him to get the fuck out.
"I—I was—" John takes several quick, shallow breaths, trying to will the words out. "I was so angry, when I, when I saw…"
"I thought I'd done the right thing," Rodney says, his voice oddly soft. When John looks up, Rodney's mouth is turned down, lopsided and worried. "But then you and, and Teyla, you were angry with me, and I—"
Rodney cuts himself off, and, Jesus, but John has screwed this up, because Rodney shouldn't sound like that, all wobbly and unsure, not when he'd been so damn brave, when he'd protected John and Teyla like that.
"Not with you, Rodney," John says, shaking his head.
"Could've fooled me," Rodney mutters.
"You—you did good, okay?" John assures, his voice thick, the words choking painfully up out of his throat. And maybe John hadn't thought about how Rodney would feel, Rodney who's been told he's a selfish coward enough times that it's stuck, no matter how far from the truth it is. He breathes in deeply, making sure to meet Rodney's eyes when he speaks. "You did the right thing."
"I…" Rodney's mouth twists and quirks, and he sighs, shrugs. "Sort of wishing I hadn't, now, but."
John lets out a breath, feeling like he's been holding it since they walked into that room and saw Rodney there. "Here," he says, standing up, "you should—you need to rest. Beckett gave you stuff for the pain, right?"
Rodney nods, holds up a little plastic bag with a pill bottle and a tube of some kind of cream. "Plus something I'll have absolutely no hope of applying on my own."
"Well, then, lemme help you," John hears himself say. He really doesn't want to see Rodney's skin marred over with red pinpricks again, but this isn't about what John wants; it's about what Rodney needs, maybe about what both of them need.
"Alright," Rodney agrees, shrugging off the scrub top. John's bracing himself, but it looks a lot less bad than it had yesterday, with none of the little spots of red actively bleeding. It still makes his stomach churn, makes rage boil through his veins, but—but Rodney did the right thing, John reminds himself, fishing the cream out of the bag.
There's a moment of charged, awkward silence, but then Rodney flops, face-down, onto his bed. "God, I missed my mattress," he sighs, rubbing his cheek against his pillow.
John swallows around a dry mouth, his response to seeing Rodney spread out in bed undeniable, no matter the extenuating circumstances. He twists open the cap on the cream, sharp antiseptic smell flooding his nose, and sits down on the edge of the bed. Rodney is still, waiting, and John squeezes some cream out onto his palm, testing the texture before reaching, tentative, to swipe it across the curve of Rodney's shoulder.
Rodney hisses, and John tugs his hand back like he's been burnt, freezing in place as he stares down at Rodney's skin. "Sorry, fuck, sorry, I—"
"No, it's—" Rodney shakes his head. He lets out a low, self-deprecating chuckle. "I guess ‘fine' isn't a word I'll be able to say to you for a while, huh?"
John makes a choked sound in the back of his throat. "Uh, yeah."
"Right," Rodney says. "It's…the cream helps, you weren't hurting me."
This time, when John touches him, Rodney lets out a slow, soft sigh. John spreads the cream down Rodney's bicep, then up over his shoulder, across his shoulder blade. It feels almost meditative, with Rodney breathing quietly under his hands, warm and alive.
"I—" Rodney starts, when John's palm is pressed right at the middle of his back. "They…they assured me it would never take too much blood, that I wouldn't be, um, egregiously harmed, I guess." His voice is quiet, almost tentative, like he thinks maybe John's going to yell at him again, so John says nothing, keeps rubbing the cream in slow, gentle circles over Rodney's reddened skin. "So it was just…you know, the pain, that I had to deal with, and I kind of got used to that?"
John breathes slowly, in and out, before he speaks. "Wanna nuke the planet from orbit?" he asks, and it probably sounds like a joke, but if Rodney said yes, well.
Rodney just huffs out a laugh, though. "Typical American military mindset," he teases, the joke well-worn at this point. "It's Pavlovian, I swear." He sighs, the broad plane of his back softening and relaxing under John's palms—the anxious feeling of touching the small bumps of healing wounds contrasts with the lazy, seeping warmth of Rodney's skin.
Time stretches out, until John's almost totally abandoned the pretense of applying the cream and is just touching, just putting his hands on Rodney, like some kind of fucked up self-soothing, but Rodney's letting it happen, too, breathing soft and deep and quiet underneath him.
John keeps it up for a while, definitely longer than he really should, until he finally pulls his hands back.
"I should let you sleep," he says, and his voice comes out too low, too rough.
"Mmph," Rodney says: his face is mashed against the pillow; John thinks he might've actually been asleep. "Stay."
Rodney's hand flails out, groping next to him until he hits John's knee. He squeezes, warm and firm, and John sighs—pathetic as it might be, he knows he's pretty much powerless to say no to a request like that.
"Alright," he murmurs, bending to pull off his boots. Rodney makes another inarticulate sound, then wriggles, scooting over to one side of the bed so there's room for John. Carefully, John pulls the sheet up to Rodney's shoulders, letting it settle over him as he breathes out a soft sigh.
I'll just stay till he falls asleep, John tells himself, pulling his legs up onto the bed and sitting up against the wall. Rodney reaches out blindly again, this time curling his fingers up under the hem of John's shirt, like he's holding him there. John looks down, bites his tongue against the stinging in his eyes. He must've been so scared, John thinks, the realization gut-punch sharp—scared and alone.
He stays long after Rodney's asleep, stays through Rodney twitching and whimpering with a nightmare, John there to stroke his hair, to whisper, "shh, it's fine, you're fine"—and it's okay, saying that, because now John knows it's true.