It should have been cold, but actually Rodney McKay was quite pleasantly warm. He had managed to swathe himself in around six or seven layers of various t-shirts and thermal sweaters and jackets, and he'd stolen two pairs of John's gloves. It did make bending his fingers difficult, but he was just about prepared to cope with that.
He was huddling in the shelter of a large tree, with a good view of the river. The soldiers had bridged it with a number of large logs, and, while it looked horribly precarious, it appeared to be doing its job of letting the planet's inhabitants move their huge tent things over the river surprisingly well.
John was standing at the edge of the bridge, wobbling slightly when the next cart was hauled onto the logs. Rodney winced and scrunched through the snow to where Teyla was standing in a fluffy, fake fur lined coat she'd borrowed from one of the female scientists. Ronon stood a few metres away, looking chilled. He hadn't brought a coat, preferring to suffer in a sort of manly silence that was getting him some admiring looks from most of the women and a few men. Rodney caught his eye as a pretty young villager brushed up against him, giggling and cooing. The Satedan did his smug smile thing – a talent he said he'd perfected off Rodney – and Rodney rolled his eyes.
The makeshift bridge lurched alarmingly as the cart cleared the end, and John nearly toppled off it. Rodney sighed and called out, "If you fall in, Sheppard, I am so not diving in to get you!"
Several of the soldiers snickered at that – more at the idea of Dr. McKay diving anywhere than anything else. John narrowed his eyes in mock annoyance and waved Rodney away as another cart rolled onto the bridge.
"And I'm not saving you if some horrible sub-arctic river monster eats you either!" yelled Rodney, running through any other possible situations. He'd come up with about 153 so far, but most of them would take so long to explain they'd be back in Atlantis before he'd finished.
"The river's only two foot deep, Rodney!" John flipped him off, laughing while he did it, and then, as the cart thumped off the logs, gently tipped backwards into the water.
Rodney resisted the urge to do what his younger scientists tend to call a facepalm. He could hear John swearing loudly about how fricking cold the bloody goddamn water was, and knew his favourite colonel was all right. He was proved correct when John hauled himself onto the bank, shivering and dripping wet. A few marines ran to help and got shooed back to the carts. The colonel pulled himself to his feet and trudged through the snow to Rodney.
"Shut up," he said before Rodney could even open his mouth, "Just don't say anything."
Rodney obediently said nothing, and handed over one of his coats. John burrowed into the warmth and allowed Teyla to lead him away by the arm. Ronon exchanged a look with Rodney, turned back to the pretty villager girl who had been twittering her head off at him and the physicist followed Teyla and John back to the Stargate.
Carson poked and prodded and listened and frowned and tutted, and did the whole 'my patient is an idiot' thing; much to Rodney's glee, since most of the time the doctor was doing it to him.
"Go back to your quarters, have a good hot shower and get into bed," he commanded John, using the lofty doctor voice he specialized in. As the colonel shivered his way out of the infirmary, Carson turned to Rodney. "You're in charge of keeping him warm."
Rodney went the long way back to his quarters in order to stop at the labs and check on Zelenka, who had refused anything to do with a planet that spent most of its time with a temperature reading that Siberia would have been proud of. The Czech seemed happy enough, and didn't appear to have blown anything important up or done something which would result in the untimely death of everyone on Atlantis.
When Rodney did make it to their quarters, John was sitting on their bed, hair still dripping wet, and firmly ensconced in the sheets. He was still shaking slightly and glared at Rodney's snort of amusement.
"What?" he snapped.
"Your drowned rat impression is something to be admired."
John growled at the physicist as he disappeared into the bathroom. The shower went on and John frowned in confusion. He'd thought Rodney would hop straight into bed with him – and he kinda wanted Rodney's warm weight curled up tight beside him.
Rodney appeared again five minutes later, rid of his millions of layers of clothes and flushed slightly from the heat of the shower, carrying a few more blankets. He spread them out over John's side of the bed and climbed in, shifting across to lie against John's side. John sighed in bliss – the shower Rodney had taken must have been scalding, and the physicist was like a human radiator.
"Warm enough?" Rodney muttered against John's shoulder, the little puffs of warm air making John's skin goose-bump.
"Yeah," croaked John, "I'm getting there." He paused and then rolled over, pinning Rodney to the bed. "You know what else generates heat?"
"I'm guessing friction," sighed Rodney, pulling John close enough for a long kiss. "Is it beyond you to just say, instead of using the worst double-entendres known to man?"
"Hmmph." John busied himself with nibbling along Rodney's lips, smiling when he leant back to admire his handiwork. It didn't take long to make Rodney looked debauched.
Rodney tilted his head back and whined when John continued his trail down to gently lap at one nipple and then across to suck at the other.
"Ohh… Shouldn't I be doing that?" Rodney stilled John by knotting fingers through the man's soaking hair. "And what possessed a man with possible hypothermia to go to bed with his hair wet?"
Want the porn? See my A/N at the bottom.
"John..?" murmured Rodney eventually.
"Mmm-hmm?"
"Your hair's still wet."
"Whatever."
"John, it's wet and cold. And you're just fallen in a river."
The colonel propped himself up on one elbow to give Rodney a mock glare. "I'll live." He scrunched a handful of his hair in his free hand and added. "It's only damp anyway."
Rodney gave him a long stare and then shrugged. "Just you wait, John. In a couple days time you'll be sneezing and sniffling all over the place, and then I'll be able to say I told you so. And there'll be no waiting on you hand and foot as well. You can suffer on your own."
"McKay, you're never waited on me hand and foot," snorted John, lying back down and snuggling even closer.
"Well, I won't be starting then, will I?"
"Oh, shut up Rodney."
As of the reinforcement of FF's rules about M content, I will be editing the contents of any of my stories containing such goings on. While I don't necessarily agree with this sudden and strangely arbitrary enforcement, I find this site the easiest to use for posting fanfiction on and it supplies me with the greatest audience, so I will maintain my presence here for as long as possible.
If you want to find the M rated parts of my stories, look me up on Archive Of Our Own or LiveJournal, under this same penname.