Disclaimer: Currently saving my money for Season 2 of Atlantis, so there's no way I'm going to be able to own the characters yet…

Spoilers: Small ones for "Conversion", "The Last Goodbye", and "Irresistible"

A/N: Although I wasn't so keen on the episode in question, I decided that John being sick needed some more back story (probably because he's so dang cute when he's sick). This is a fluffy, Sparky-centered explanation I've created to delve deeper into the shocked/horrified look that John had when Lucius informed our favourite flyboy that Liz was making him something to eat. Enjoy!

- - -

If you treat a sick child like an adult, and a sick adult like a child, everything usually works out pretty well

- Ruth Carlisle

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Betrayal of the Culinary Kind

- - -

John was miserable.

There was no other way to describe the disgusting, slimy feeling that currently inhabited his usually tolerant system. It was amazing really—he had been beaten to a pulp plenty of times, nearly bug-ified, danced at the edge of death's door a couple times too many, and inhabited by an alien consciousness, to mention a few. He had sustained injuries of every variety and location and had had Carson exclaiming more than once to God and the heavens above at the creativity of it all.

But nothing that had happened so far could compare to this.

Muttering incoherently, he tried to dig himself a nest in his twisted blankets and only succeeded in feeling worse. God almighty, this was the most damning, frustrating situation he'd been in yet! The sweat was trickling down his sticky shirt, his throat was on fire, and one of his two breathing options was no longer available. And somewhere between the coughing and the aching and the dizziness, he had come to the logical conclusion that he was truly in Hell.

Distantly, through the hazy world he had descended to, John heard the doors to his quarters open. Struggling with his cage of linen, he wrestled himself a small hole to poke his head through.

Through slits in his eyelids, he recognized the person walking towards his tortured body and croaked hoarsely, "Put me out of my misery. Kill me now."

Even with the little lighting in the room, he saw the person's eyes roll skyward.

"Someone's a little melodramatic this afternoon."

His brow furrowed in confusion. "It's the afternoon?"

Elizabeth studied him carefully for a minute, before taking the final few steps to his bedside. "Tell me you're joking."

Pathetically, he shook his pounding head, closing his eyes against the pain. "Not being funny."

"You've been asleep since last night? That's a whole day gone by!"

"Like sleep," came the muffled reply as he dug deeper into his pillow in an effort to quell the aching behind his eyes. "Wish I could go back to sleep."

"You really are sick, aren't you?"

John coughed then, closely mimicking the sound of someone hacking up a lung. "You think?"

Rolling her eyes once more, Elizabeth took a seat at the edge of the bed, looking at the prone, sulking, sickly form of her normally lively second-in-command. "It somehow doesn't surprise me that your sarcasm is still around even when you're sick. I just hope you're not contagious, or else I'll have to deal with an entire city of moping personnel. And if that does happen, then rest assured, Colonel, you will be held entirely responsible."

It was an empty threat—made to lighten the mood—but still she found herself under the scrutiny of one half-lidded eye that had peeked out from the squashed pillow. "Threatening the sick guy? Low, 'Lizabeth, really low."

"Just trying to work on my motivational skills," she said cheerfully, trying hard to repress the urge to ruffle his hair, which was sticking up even more than usual. "Although I do believe my bedside manner is beginning to improve. You've been giving me a lot of practice in that area."

"Try my best," he mumbled. The half-opened eye narrowed on her, and she could see frown lines appear on his forehead. "Why are you here?"

"I came to see how you were doing," she replied, her smile growing into one of concern. "Carson said you were looking worse for wear when you stumbled out of his lab, and if he wasn't so afraid that you'd make good on your threat to hand him over to the next bloodthirsty species we meet, he'd be here himself." Raising an eyebrow, she fixed him with a stern look. "You really have to start limiting your threats to my medical staff, John. They only want to help."

Shoving the sheets off of his face, he managed to wriggle his top half free of the confining linen and muster an indignant frown. "Helping means being nice, giving me some cold syrup and letting me to back to my quarters," John said hoarsely, his voice sounding strained and gravelly. "It is not trying to keep in an uncomfortable hospital bed and trying to use me as another study subject. Despite what they think, needles are not the answer to everything."

Another bout of coughing hit him hard from all of his talking, and his shoulders shook violently with the effort. The concern grew on Elizabeth's face, and she got up, took the empty cup from his bedside table, and went into his bathroom. She returned with a full glass of water, taking a seat at his side as she handed him the liquid.

His eyes said their 'thank you' even if he couldn't voice it. The compassion she was so well known for rose in her breast; so did her sympathy for seeing her friend in this forlorn situation. As he sipped at the water, she rested one hand on his shoulder, the other one slowly rubbing his back to ease the aches that the coughing had no doubt caused as he downed the soothing drink.

"Did that help?" She asked softly, all of the humour having quickly vanished from her eyes as she regarded him worriedly.

The lines on his forehead smoothed out, his eyes closed, and he leaned imperceptibly into her touch. "A lot."

"If I'd known it was this bad, I would have made you take sick leave sooner. Why didn't you tell me?"

John gave a one-shouldered shrug, his senses lulled into a haze of security at her gentle ministrations. He hadn't been touched like that in a long time, and it was beginning to relax his sore muscles, as well as his aching head. "Didn't want to scare you. Wasn't bad at first. Got worse after the mission."

"Probably because you got caught in a snowstorm for two days," Elizabeth pointed out. "Luckily it's nothing more than the old Earth common cold from the Daedelus, or else we might have had to figure out another quarantine situation."

"Wouldn't want that," he murmured, his head nodding precariously close to her shoulder.

Biting back a smile, she widened the circles on his back, running her hand across his shoulder blades and kneading the base of his neck. Though she had mercifully avoided getting sick in the last few years, she still remembered the kinds of comfort illness required. Dealing with strange alien viruses was one thing—dealing with the usual flu was another situation entirely.

She stole a quick glance at the Colonel's face, and the smile she was trying to hide erupted on her lips. With his eyes closed and the strain slowly disappearing from his face, John was beginning to look a little less like death warmed over. Surely there could be something else she could do for him, particularly something less damning if any of her expedition members happened to walk in on the scene…

The idea struck suddenly, and she quickly put her plan into action.

"John, why don't you lie back down there and rest? I'm going to go whip up something to help with your cold in the kitchens. I shouldn't be more than a fifteen minutes."

"Don't want you to leave," was his whispered response, and—though rather touched by his plea—Elizabeth instantly recognized the signs of someone on the verge of sleep. Lifting her hand from his shoulder, she brushed it through his hair in a soothing motion, and gently pushed him back down to the bed. "Fifteen minutes. That's all. I'll be back before you know it."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Her smile warmed as she left him to his rest while she ventured off down the hallway. Once she was certain she was well out of hearing range from his ears, her hand went to the microphone at her ear as she shared her brilliant idea with the one person that would be able to help.

- - -

Roughly twenty minutes later, John was devising the many ways in which he could put himself out of this misery, most of such scenarios encompassing some form of pain delivered to the idiot sergeant who had brought the virus to Atlantis in the first place. His only consolation was that he wasn't going to be the only one suffering—he had already heard a few other sniffling personnel, and whilst walking back to his quarters last night, he had caught Major Lorne hacking up one of his own lungs. Unlike a certain Lieutenant Colonel though, Lorne didn't quite have the threatening capabilities to scare the medical staff off. The poor sucker was probably still strapped down to one of Carson's beds and being poked and prodded like a lab rat.

He snickered. Well, he tried to. It ended up sounding something akin to what a dying, asthmatic cat might squeak out, but the effort was there. And Elizabeth came back just in time to catch the trail end of this unearthly sound, which bolstered her pity for her ailing friend and gave him the pleasure of having her worried face hovering over his as she took a seat on the bed once more.

"You know, maybe you should miss out on tomorrow's mission," She suggested carefully, putting aside a suspicious looking bowl to free her hands up as they returned once more to his back. "You really don't sound too good."

John adamantly shook his head. "A stupid cold isn't going to kill me, and I won't let it get in the way of our mission. Besides, it sounds worse than it actually is."

His attempt at defending himself only received a highly skeptical look in return.

"John, if you're going to be a moron about this, then I can always pull rank and order you off the mission. Carson's already signed off on some more sick leave just in case you happen to change your mind."

"You can tell the good doctor Beckett that he can shove that sick leave right up his—" The last few words were mercifully drowned out by another round of coughing that left his eyes watering at the edges and an ache in his shoulders.

When the last few droplets had been blinked out of his vision, he found that Elizabeth was offering him the bowl as she stared worriedly into his eyes. "Here. I hope this helps."

John eyed the bowl warily, looking at the brown-ish liquid with something affiliated to disgust. "What the hell is that?"

She paused for a moment before answering the question. "An old family recipe."

"For what? Dog crap?"

The look she sent him was not one of amusement. "Are you insulting my cooking skills?"

Even though his mind and body were battered, his brain cells hadn't taken such a beating that he was stupid enough to voice his true thoughts on the matter to his currently grim friend. Mustering a pathetic, fake smile—which, to Elizabeth, reminded her of a mentally unstable Wraith—John hesitantly took the bowl in his hands. Perfectly aware of his boss' careful scrutiny, he ever so slowly took the spoon and filled it with the offending liquid.

Even the sight of the stuff was making his stomach churn. With a pleading look, he tried to escape the figurative noose one last time. "You know…I'm not feeling so good…might not be able to eat this after all…"

"That's the best you can do?" She shook her head at his pitiable effort. "Look, just a few spoonfuls—that's all I ask. Do that, and I can promise that you'll be back to your old self in no time."

He raised a disbelieving brow, and she wondered if they really did spend too much time in each other's company. It looked like a perfect imitation of her usual questioning expression.

"John…" This time it was a warning—he could hear it clearly in her tone. And when Doctor Weir took on that tone, he knew that there was nothing he could do but comply.

Knowing full well that he would regret this later, John downed the first spoonful as if it were a shot of strong liquor, then closed his eyes as an odd burning sensation traveled down his equally fiery throat. She was right on one account—he couldn't taste the stuff. But the fumes did enough work on their own to make him damn glad he had no working taste buds.

"Oh…god…damn almighty…" Cursing, he rubbed at his suddenly watering eyes, gasping a little at the fire that was currently traveling through his digestive tract. "What…is…that…?"

"Like I said, an old family recipe."

"Was your family…satanic? 'Cause that stuff…is straight from hell…"

He managed to blink away the last of the vapor-induced tears just in time to see Elizabeth scoot a few inches over, so that her face was only inches from his own. "Normally, I would be greatly insulted to hear that you think my background is in the occult, but under the circumstances, I'll let it go. Now, a few more spoonfuls of this and I'll leave you alone."

"It's not you I want gone," he muttered under his breath, glaring purposefully at the bowl in his hands. "This stuff on the other hand…"

"Will I have to spoon feed you?" She demanded, and although he said nothing to that comment—proving once more just how sick he truly was—she saw the gears in his head creaking to life.

Knowing what it must have cost him to not drop one of his usual witty remarks about that, she relented a little with her authority. "Fine, can we compromise on this?"

He shrugged miserably. "I'm going to lose either way."

"Two more spoonfuls, and then I'll take the stuff away," Elizabeth stated, ignoring the self-pity in which he was obviously mired down. Men, she grumbled to herself, never could handle being sick. "Deal?"

Feeling somewhat like a mother talking to her indignant, sick child, the leader of the Atlantis expedition fixed her second-in-command with a no-nonsense eye and watched his resolve slowly break.

"Deal," he sighed eventually. The last thing he needed was dealing with an angry Doctor Weir tomorrow. Grimacing, he dipped the spoon back into the murky puddle of gunk that had settled into the bowl, and went about making sure that this deal went by as quickly as humanly possible.

When he finally surfaced from the nightmare that was the Weir family's idea of nutrition, he was more than pleased to see that the bowl had disappeared from his general vicinity and that Elizabeth had decided to play nurse for a few minutes more.

I could get used to this, he thought with an inward smile, enjoying the feeling of being tucked into bed by the woman whom he regarded not only as a leader but as a close friend. A woman he wouldn't mind having in his bed with him too, if the circumstances were different…

"There now, that wasn't so bad. Try to get some sleep. I need you to be coherent tomorrow." She brought the blanket up to his chin, her hand resting longer than necessary on his shoulder. "I expect you to be at the de-briefing in the morning. If you don't show up then that extended sick leave is getting shoved up somewhere unpleasant in you."

"Fine by me," he murmured, feeling the black edges of sleep eating away at his mind. " 'Lizabeth…"

"Yes?" Her hand had reached up to smooth back the hair on his forehead, and the soft touch lulled his senses even closer to the oblivion his mind needed.

"Thanks."

She smiled softly then, much to his dulled surprise, and pressed a brief, fleeting kiss just above his brow where her fingertips had strayed. "You're welcome."

He was dimly aware of her movement as she left the room, but he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. Resigning himself to his fate, John dozed off, as his last thoughts—not surprisingly—concerned a certain temporary nursemaid.

Well that wasn't so bad…wish she could've stayed longer…her cooking skills though…suck something awful…

- - -

The chuckle she had been fighting back erupted as the door to John's quarters slid shut, and she leaned momentarily against the wall as her shoulders shook with laughter. The look on his face when he had seen the stuff in the bowl had been priceless! If only she had had a camera on hand…

"How is the patient doing?" Teyla's voice came to life over the radio, and Elizabeth fought back her laughter long enough to reply.

"He should be okay. He wasn't too thrilled about his meal though."

"Neither was I when Charin would force me to drink it as a child," Teyla answered, and Elizabeth could hear the smile in her voice. " It is an unpleasant experience, but it will benefit him in the end. Major Lorne is already awake and able to speak without too much trouble. He even managed to drink half of the bowl. He is most determined to get better."

"Probably so he can escape the medical lab," Elizabeth commented drily. " But it's good to hear he's making an effort. John only managed a few spoonfuls, but from what you and Carson told me about its healing effects, it should be enough to clear up the worst of it." The sun was starting to set through the stained glass windows in the corridor and she quickly checked her watch. "I'll drop in to check on Lorne, and give Carson my full medical report. Then do you want to meet for dinner in fifteen minutes? You can fill me in on some more Athosian remedies that might come in handy."

"I would be glad to," the Athosian woman replied. "We may want to hurry before Ronon finds out that they are serving those chocolate brownies for dessert. He will eat all of them if he gets the chance."

"I wouldn't put it past him. See you soon."

As she turned in the direction of the medical labs, she couldn't help but smirk a little at her triumph over John Sheppard. He wouldn't be too pleased to know he was, once again, used as a guinea pig. Especially without his knowledge or consent.

Oh well, I'll just have to make it up to him, she decided. If he lives through this flu, he probably deserves an example of true Weir family recipes. I think I have that old lasagna recipe tucked away somewhere in my room.

Then on afterthought, she laughed to herself. That is, of course, if he still trusts my culinary skills…

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end