A/N - This chapter is a bit shorter, but the final two should both be rather long! Once I'm finished posting this story, I have a short, Rodney and John-centric action/adventure all ready to go.

John felt terrible. He'd slept for a while in the middle of the day, after Rodney had refused to keep working on the case, but he'd woken up about an hour ago, feeling much worse than he had earlier. According to Rodney, the fever was back. John didn't feel nearly as sick as he had the other day, but that didn't mean he felt good.

"It's not too high yet," Rodney said worriedly, hurrying around the room frantically and reminding John suddenly of an overexcited ping pong ball. John closed his eyes, the motion making him dizzy.

"Maybe you should eat something," Rodney muttered. "Keller said that you should be eating more."

"Not right now," John told him, risking opening his eyes again. Rodney was pacing now, back and forth from wall to wall.

"C'n you stop that?" John asked, suddenly feeling that if Rodney spent one more second moving around like that, John would scream.

Rodney made a dismissive sort of hiss, but stopped. "Why?" he asked, a note of challenge in his tone.

"I dunno," John said miserably. "Just...stop it. It's drivin' me crazy."

"Fine," Rodney answered, rolling his eyes. He looked and sounded annoyed, but at least he'd stopped.

John rubbed at his eyes with his good hand, wishing he'd handled that differently. He didn't want to fight with Rodney, and he didn't want to care about stupid things like Rodney's pacing. It was just the fever, it was making everything feel like nails on a chalkboard….

John scrubbed harder at his eyes, and startled as one of the machines began beeping loudly and urgently.

"It's one of the wires," Rodney told him, crossing the room. "It's gotten tangled, the machine isn't getting any feedback."

John pulled his wrist away from the machine, twisting it back and forth as he tried to determine what exactly was caught on what. All the wires looked the same, and there were way too many of them, and all of a sudden he felt trapped. The beeping was joined by another alarm, and Rodney sighed heavily.

"It's caught on that stupid sweatband of yours, just let me-"

John yanked his wrist backwards, just as Rodney caught hold of the edge of the sweatband. All of a sudden, the sweatband that John always wore was in Rodney's hand, and John's wrist was bare for the first time in...who knew how long. John froze, hand slowly dropping to his lap. His pulse was thundering in his ears.

John wore the sweatband to cover a thin, straight scar, a few inches long and mostly vertical, that nestled in the crook of his wrist. It truly wasn't...what everyone thought, but keeping it covered was easier than answering the questions.

Shock and horror flashed across Rodney's face, and John braced himself. But Rodney didn't ask the question that John always dreaded. "What happened?" Rodney asked. "Did...did someone do this to you?"

Everyone who saw John without the sweatband always assumed that he'd done it to himself, and the fact that Rodney intuitively knew that he hadn't made John instantly relax. He blew out a slow breath, trying to remember the last time he'd told even a bare bones version of this story. He thought about lying, but then realized there was really no reason to.

"It was a helicopter crash," he said finally. "In Afghanistan. Piece of metal went right into my arm. Barely missed the artery. I got twelve stitches, and this nice scar to show for it."

"Oh," Rodney said mildly. He finished untangling the wires from John's hand.

"It was almost ten years ago now," John said. He didn't want Rodney to feel that John was hiding parts of the story from him, but he also didn't want Rodney to press.

"Why do you cover it up?" Rodney asked absently, clipping John's heart monitor back onto his finger. "I don't think I've ever seen you without that stupid sweatband. I didn't even know you had a scar there."

John raised his eyebrows.

"What?" Rodney asked.

"Because it...looks like I did it with a razor blade?" John finally said.

"Oh. Oh. I didn't even think...I mean, of course I never would have assumed..."

"I know," John said. "Thank you."

He meant it. He relished these small reminders of why Rodney was his best friend. John hated the pitying stares, the veiled questions, which was why he'd started hiding the scar in the first place. But it hadn't even occurred to Rodney to do those things. He knew John. He knew John hadn't done it to himself.

"Do you want to go over the case again?" Rodney asked, voice gentle and a little cautious. "I know we don't have any new information, but maybe with fresh eyes…."

John nodded, suddenly overwhelmingly grateful to Rodney. Everyone, Rodney included, saw the scientist as absolutely terrible with people, and by and large, he was. Still, on the whole, he always seemed to know what John needed.

Rodney bustled around the room, gathering his scribbled notes into a stack, and grabbed his computer as well. He brought everything over to the bed, sitting on the edge of it. John craned his neck to see, doing his best to stay engaged with the case and forget the uncomfortable conversation they'd just had.

"Okay, so our current list of suspects is the five Sam told us about, the Michalka family, and Corin."

"And Janadi," John insisted. Rodney rolled his eyes, but he was smiling a little as well.

"Yes, I added Janadi, even though I think that we should be sticking to the facts." It was practically the same thing he'd said earlier, but any anger in his tone was gone.

"'M gonna be right," John mumbled. "Just watch."

"Wanna bet?" Rodney asked, sounding immediately more invested.

"You know, they got twelve-step programs for that."

"Haha, very funny. So, what'll you give me when you're wrong?"

"You c'n have my Jello," John told him.

Rodney frowned. "I usually eat that anyway. Oh, I don't think I was supposed to admit that. Fine. I'll take the Jello."

"And when I win, you gotta tell Sam I'm smarter than you," John said, feeling better as soon as he saw Rodney's horrified expression. Rodney mumbled something incoherent, turning back to his sheaf of papers.

"Let's just focus on this, okay?"

"Okay," John said, once again tilting his head to an awkward angle to try to see Rodney's tiny print. Rodney rolled his eyes again and made a show of moving closer, until John could see the papers without hurting himself.

"So, on the subject of Elexa…."

"I think you're right about Teragon," Rodney told John. Sheppard nodded, his head dipping forward. Rodney wasn't sure whether or not he was really awake.

"He had the opportunity to get to their weapons, but he was with some of the Marines during your run, so he must have passed it off to someone," Rodney continued. "Are you following?"

"Yep." John nodded again, his head drooping sideways this time and coming to rest just barely on the edge of Rodney's shoulder. Rodney waited for Sheppard to move, but John seemed content to let his head stay where it was.

"Sheppard?" Rodney asked gently. If he needed to sleep, Rodney would like to let him. He had offered the case as...a return to normalcy after the story John had shared, and he was happy to let it go if John didn't want it right now.

"Mmmm," John hummed sleepily, head still resting lightly on Rodney's upper arm.

"You awake?"

"Yeah," he whispered. "Just-"

He trailed off, clearly exhausted. But Rodney was supposed to...what? Rip his shoulder out from under John's head? That was clearly never going to happen. Especially not when John was so sick and fragile-looking….

Rodney scooted down on the bed slightly, so John's head was resting in what Rodney hoped was a slightly more comfortable position. This was uncharted territory for Rodney, and he wondered vaguely if it was allowed.

"I'm not asleep," John informed Rodney. His voice was thick and slurring, so Rodney didn't really believe him.

"Alright," Rodney said anyways.

"I'm not," John insisted.

Rodney peered down at him. His eyes were closed. "Your eyes are closed."

"They're not."

"They are."

"You can keep goin' over the case."

"Alright, um, I think we should keep things limited to our current list of suspects. No reason to keep going round in circles about that. Now it's mostly just a matter of figuring out who has the means to do it, and who could possibly have been there that morning…."

Rodney broke off at the sound of a soft snore from John.

"Sheppard?" he asked again.

No response.

Rodney sighed, and shifted his notes so he could look through them without jostling Sheppard too much. He certainly wasn't intending to stay here all night, but John had had such trouble sleeping, maybe just until Rodney could tell he was really asleep….

Rodney stayed sitting on the bed, trying not to rustle his notes too much. He forced himself to study the papers in silence instead of the normal way, which involved a fair amount of talking to himself.

John snored again, slipping a little more heavily onto Rodney's shoulder. Rodney froze, waiting to see if John was waking up, wondering if Sheppard was going to fall forwards, or backwards. Rodney would have to catch him, but his reflexes weren't very good, what if John...cracked his head on the wall, or damaged his shoulder further, or something else horrible?

But John didn't move any further, and Rodney began to relax by degrees.

"You know, you're very stressful," Rodney said to John, making sure that it was so quiet that John couldn't possibly hear it and wake up.

After about twenty minutes, Rodney was pretty sure that Sheppard was asleep. In fact, he was pretty sure that John was drooling on his shoulder.

"Okay, I think it's time for you to sleep on a pillow," Rodney muttered, carefully supporting John with one arm while reaching around for pillows with the other. When he was satisfied he had somewhere to put Sheppard without him instantly waking up, he gently shifted John over to the pillows. John made a small, gentle sound as he settled into the bed, but aside from that, he didn't stir.

"You did drool on my arm!" Rodney rubbed at his jacket, remembering just in time to whisper. "Ugh, Sheppard…."

John snored again, tilting his face sideways into the pillow. Beneath the bruising, he looked very peaceful.

"I guess it's okay, just this once," Rodney told him softly, collecting his notes from the edge of the bed and bringing them over to the whiteboard. It wasn't really that late yet, not for Rodney. It wouldn't have been late for John either, not usually, but he seemed to be sleeping more and more each day.

Rodney arranged all the new pieces of information they'd managed to come up with in their abbreviated brainstorming session, then stood back and looked at the crime map they'd made. He gasped, clapping his hand over his mouth a moment too late.

"Oh my god, they all did it," Rodney muttered. "None of them separately had the opportunity, each of them had a partial alibi, but if each of them took part of the crime…."

He trailed off, suddenly keenly aware of how crazy he looked, talking to himself in front of a map that looked like a serial killer's idea board, with a suspect list pieced together entirely with secondhand information. He'd been awake too long, barely sleeping the past few nights, and this wasn't an Agatha Christie novel. It was clearly time for him to go to bed.

Rodney really shouldn't have been surprised at this point, but he was woken in the early hours of the morning by something going wrong with John. He sat bolt upright, brain rapidly trying to wake up enough that he could process the sudden beeping and shifting sounds.

His mind finally supplied the answer - nightmare. He stumbled out of bed, glad there was an easy fix. He would just wake John up, remind him where he was and that he was safe, and then they could both go back to sleep.

Except that wasn't what happened. Last night, John had woken up on his own as soon as Rodney had started moving around, but tonight, even when Rodney flicked the lights on, John stayed asleep. He was curled on his side, breathing shallowly. His wrist was tucked into his chest, so Rodney had a pretty good idea of what the nightmare was about. Guilt ripped its way through Rodney- if he hadn't pulled the sweatband off earlier, this wouldn't be on Sheppard's mind at all.

Rodney reached a hand out to Sheppard, but automatically yanked it back when he felt the heat radiating off John's skin. Rodney was no doctor, but he thought John's fever felt nearly as bad as it had the worst night, when John had spent the whole night whimpering and being sick. Now that Rodney knew what to look for, he could see that there were two fever spots set high in John's pale face, and a thin sheen of sweat covered his skin.

"Sheppard!" he said, loudly as he dared. "Sheppard, wake up!"

Sheppard stirred slightly, body twisting across the bed. Rodney grabbed his shoulder, not sure if he was trying to wake John up or just keep him still. John made a small sound in his throat and squirmed away from the touch. His eyelids flickered open, but it didn't seem that he recognized Rodney at all.

"Sheppard!" Rodney said again. "It's okay, it's just a nightmare. You'll be alright. Wake up."

John turned slightly at the sound of his name. His eyes opened, and he stared sightlessy at Rodney for a second before moaning and curling up tighter. His eyes slid closed again.

Rodney grabbed his shoulder again. Sheppard squirmed, but Rodney gave him a small shake, hoping to jostle him back to awareness. His eyes slid open, and Rodney leaned in close, hoping to take advantage of even the briefest moment of lucidity.

"It's alright, it's me," he said. "You're dreaming."

"Dreaming?" Sheppard whispered, voice hoarse.

"Yeah," Rodney said, breathless with relief. "Your fever is up again."

"Yeah," John breathed.

Rodney waited for the beeping from the machines to slow down, now that John was awake, but after a few seconds, John's heart rate hadn't calmed.

"It was a dream," Rodney reminded his friend, and John nodded slightly, but his eyes were wide, darting back and forth around the room.

"Jus' a dream," John whispered, sounding as though he wasn't entirely sure.

"Yeah," Rodney agreed, giving John's shoulder a slightly awkward pat. Still, Sheppard seemed to appreciate it, and finally, the beeping slowed.

John's eyes drifted closed again, Rodney watching in concern. If John was having nightmares, nightmares bad enough that he couldn't tell when he'd woken up, it seemed likely that he would keep having them. Rodney could almost feel the heat rolling off John's skin from where he was standing by the edge of the bed. He wasn't sure if that was due to his overactive imagination or if John was really that sick, but he didn't want to risk it either way.

Rodney scooped up his headset from where he'd put it on the bedside table before going to sleep, retreating to the far corner of the room so he didn't disturb Sheppard. But as difficult as it had been to rouse John from his nightmare, Rodney didn't think he needed to worry about that.

Rodney opened a channel to Keller and waited with mounting anxiety until he heard the doctor's sleep-fogged voice.

"Rodney? Is the Colonel alright?"

"He most certainly is not," Rodney hissed indignantly. "His fever's rising again, and he's having these nightmares, really bad ones, worse than they have been. He's not waking up properly after them. It's...not good."

Keller made a sympathetic sort of sound into the headset. "I'm sorry to hear that, Rodney."

"What are you going to do about it?" Rodney demanded.

"There's not really anything I can do," Keller told him, sounding infuriatingly reasonable. "We don't have a cure for nightmares, and a rise in temperature during the night time is to be expected. I-I wish I had a better answer for you, but I can't risk any more visits than I have been."

Rodney sighed, glancing at Sheppard as he mumbled something and curled tighter, tangling himself into the sheets.

"There's really nothing you can do?" he asked sadly.

"Give him another dose of his meds, and then all I can suggest is that you keep him awake for a little while. Give the medication time to do its job. Maybe then he'll be able to sleep more easily."

"Alright," Rodney said. "Bye, I guess."

He tried to keep the anger out of his voice. It wasn't Keller's fault that John was so sick, that he was having nightmares, that he couldn't go to the infirmary, that he was still in danger. It was just...it was starting to be a lot, and Rodney was at the end of his rope. He couldn't keep staying up all night every night, dealing with John's medical emergencies. He couldn't keep trying to moderate Ronon and Sam's relationship from a distance. And he couldn't keep watching Sheppard struggle like this.