I love writing clueless, grumpy Rodney. I had a lot of fun with this bit. Enjoy!

Chapter 5

What the hell was he supposed to do now? Rodney had dumped John, face down, on his bed in his room and the guy just lay there, looking like you'd expect someone to look after being mauled by a wolf.

Rodney huffed, took off his hooded coat and threw it over the back of a chair. He kicked off his boots, loudly. He huffed with more vehemence, but still the prone man didn't take the hint. For God's sake! He'd taken on the role of conquering hero, risen to the challenge in fine style - what, was he supposed to play nurse now? He didn't do that kind of stuff - that caring stuff. It just wasn't his style. He didn't care, in general - about things, about people, about whether people thought he should care about things or people. His sole focus, for many years now, had been himself, and making the most of what he had. This situation, however, left him bewildered and befuddled, and probably other things which began with 'be' which he couldn't immediately recall.

Rodney had had a girlfriend once who - no, wait… that was the blonde who'd thrown her drink at him (and what that had been about he'd never discovered). It had been the boy he'd dated for a while at grad school who'd wanted all the dotey, carey crap. The boyfriend had caught the flu and expected Rodney to wait on him hand and foot and mop his fevered brow and so on. He'd soon learnt his mistake.

Rodney padded out into the corridor. "Teyla! Radek!" Nothing. You'd think, if they were that concerned about their runaway, that they'd be on hand to help. But no. He huffed again and went back into the room, tripping over his boots and snarling at them.

A soft whimper came from the direction of the bed. He had thought John was unconscious or asleep, but, looking more closely, he saw that his bottom lip was gripped tightly between his teeth and his breathing was fast and shallow.

Rodney was going to have to do something.

"Um…" He didn't fix people - he fixed machines, or built them from scratch. Machines were logical and didn't whimper or make you feel bad for not knowing what the hell you were doing. "Pretend he's a machine," he said, nodding sharply at this bright idea. "Carry out essential maintenance."

So, first he should fix the obvious damage. He viewed the tattered shreds of bloody clothing and, beneath them, the torn, oozing flesh of John's back and the bite mark on his shoulder. Blood had run down and soaked into his pants too. "Ew," was Rodney's repulsed verdict. Fortunately, though, he had a solution to hand, having injured himself now and then over the years and long since run out of antiseptic.

He retrieved an item from beneath the bathroom washbasin. It looked like a hairdryer, for the simple reason that the outer casing was, in fact, from a hairdryer. It was a clever little device of which he was justifiably proud, making use of force field technology which he'd reversed to attract rather than repel. He pressed the button for a cool blowdry, held it about six inches from John's back and moved it slowly up and down. John's breathing quickened further and he groaned and squirmed.

"Keep still," Rodney ordered, continuing his treatment. He could tell it was working because all the blood and dirt was disappearing from skin and shredded cloth. But John kept moving and making small, unhappy noises, which wasn't fair because Rodney was doing his best and the unhappy noises were infectious so that for some reason he felt like making them too. "Be quiet," he said sharply, which seemed to do the trick, although he was glad when all the blood was gone and he could stop.

He flicked a button which would once have given a steady blast of hot air, but which would now eliminate all germs and bacteria. He aimed it at John's back.

John yelled and his back arched. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Lie down! This is for your own good!"

"It hurts, goddamnit!"

"Then you shouldn't have gone out there and got all bitten and scratched up, should you?"

"Because you were going to provide a carriage and four and wave me on my way, right?" John glared over his shoulder and then collapsed and buried his face in the pillow.

"I'm nearly finished." Rodney carried on, trying to ignore John's rigidity and gasps of pain, until he too was sweating and his breathing was nearly as fast as John's. What the hell was that all about? He probably needed to eat.

Muffled swearing came from the pillow.

"There. Done."

He flicked off the hairdryer and put it down. Now what? The shreds of newly clean fabric rose and fell on John's back. He should probably get rid of those. They certainly weren't fixable. And some kind of bandage or dressing was needed to keep dirt out of the teethmarks and long, deeply-raking furrows. Forcefield technology could be applicable there too, in fact. There was a datapad on the nightstand. Rodney picked it up and began tapping away, working through various possibilities to create a portable, flesh-covering forcefield. He sat down on the floor to give the problem some serious consideration.

He couldn't concentrate. He brushed a hand over an itch on his forehead. He discarded a power-hungry solution and tried another approach. He rubbed irritably at a tickle on his scalp, and then he looked up.

A bleary, bloodshot eye stared back at him and, even at this angle Rodney could tell its eyebrow was shaped into an angry curl.

"What?"

The curl became more pronounced and was accompanied by a growl.

"What?" he said again.

"A little help here might be nice."

"What, more? What do you want now?"

"I'm cold. My pants are wet from the snow. My back hurts like hell."

"Well, how am I supposed to know that? What am I, a mind reader?"

"Can't you just use your imagination?"

"No. Can't you just ask for what you need instead of glaring and growling like one of those wolves?"

John glared and growled, so apparently he couldn't.

Rodney put down the datapad (just when he was getting somewhere). "What do you want first?"

More growling.

"So… " He huffed, making it a long, pointed huff. "Cold, wet, pain. Pain... He snapped his fingers. "Got just the thing."

He retrieved another device from the bathroom. It had been a ladies' shaver in a previous life.

"I don't need my legs done, thanks."

Rodney ignored this facetiousness, pressed a button and hovered the pink curvy thing to and fro over the wounds. The sharp lines of John's body slowly relaxed. Tense muscles in Rodney's neck released, so maybe the device had an effect on its user as well, which seemed highly unlikely, but why else would he be feeling better?

"Mmmff… Yeah… s'good," said John.

Rodney found himself humming, an unusual reaction which must be because he was pleased that his device worked, even though he'd already known it worked because he'd used it when getting thorns out of his fingers loads of times. Still, more data was always good.

"You coulda done that before the cleaning thing."

The good feelings swept themselves off to lurk in a corner and Rodney's shoulders crept back up his neck. "Oh, that is just so typical. I do my best to help and all you can do is bitch and whine."

"It hurt. A lot."

"Well you should've -"

"I know! I shoulda stayed in my cell like a good prisoner."

"You would've been doing us both a favour if you had!"

John turned his head so that he was face down into the pillow again. Rodney looked at the long, ugly wounds. He'd scratched his arm on one of the fruit bushes once. It had burned like fire before he'd used the ex-shaver. Something moved in the pit of his stomach. Probably an absence of sandwich.

"What were the other things?"

"Cold. Wet." John slid his legs off the bed and squirmed around until he was sitting, hunched and shivering on the edge. He began plucking at the rags of his shirt and waistcoat.

Rodney's fingers twitched and he shuffled nervously. Clothes. Clothes would come off, clothes needed to go on. He ransacked his drawers, pulling out some sweatpants, a shirt, a hoodie and some fluffy pink socks. They'd been Miko's, and he didn't feel guilty about taking them, or any of the other pairs of socks he'd taken from their owners' rooms over the years. His feet got cold easily and it wasn't as if they could wear them. The tables could, he supposed, but he didn't imagine tables minded the cold.

He turned around to find John shirtless and pantless and in the process of removing his underwear. Rodney threw the clothes onto the bed and dived into the bathroom. He spent a while rifling through the contents of his first aid kit and then cautiously peered into the bedroom. His sweatpants were covering the appropriate area, which was a big relief.

That was as far as John had got, however. He was all hunched up and shivering, with one elbow on one thigh and his head in his hand.

His shoulders and arms were as tanned as his face. Rodney looked at his own hand, which was pale from spending so much time indoors. John must spend a lot of time outdoors, working with his shirt off, because that was what uneducated hicks did. Although, thinking about it, hicks were surely by their very definition, uneducated. Oh well, when he'd stopped making such an almighty fuss about his injuries, even an uneducated hick could be useful. Rodney would set him to work - and he was the one who'd said the city was untidy, so he should be the one to set that right.

John looked up. His eyes were shadowed, his jaw hadn't seen a razor in a while and his hair was even more unlikely than usual. "Don't feel so good."

"No, well, that's only appropriate, given how you look." Rodney dropped a slew of dressings and tape on the bed and proceeded to cover John's wounds as best he could, closing up the deeper bits with sticky little butterfly things. The surgical tape kept sticking to his fingers and getting stuck to itself. And he didn't have enough hands, so that when he'd got a section of dressing in place, there was never a piece of tape ready and then the dressing fell off. It was like wrapping Christmas presents, except with none of the satisfaction of buying precisely cuboidal gifts and wrapping them with mathematical efficiency. Finally, he was satisfied.

The shirt dangled from John's slack fingers. "Give me that." Rodney plucked it from his weak grasp, gathered it up and pulled it over John's head, flattening his hair down. "Arm," he demanded, holding the gathered sleeve out. John threaded his arm through. "Other arm." John repeated the action.

Rodney stepped back. "Right, you're done. Can I go now? I'm hungry. Starving, in fact. Blood sugar at rock bottom."

"Yeah." Like a tower block being demolished, John slowly collapsed sideways. His head made it to the pillow, but his legs stayed where they were.

The pink socks lay, like two lurid snakes, on the end of the bed. Rodney picked up John's legs and swung them up. He pulled the fluffy socks over the pale, untanned feet. So, he must wear shoes to do his rustic yokelling then. Perhaps he wasn't a complete savage. The rustic yokel was still shivering. Rodney pulled the comforter up over him.

Then, feeling he'd gone far above and beyond the call of duty, he left, determined to seek out and destroy the largest sandwich ever created.

oOo

A couple of winters ago, John had caught the fever that was going round the village. He'd woken up feeling sore and irritable and, during the course of the day, had developed alternating chills and hot flashes and a pounding headache. To each of the General's enquiries, he'd replied that he was 'okay' or 'fine' until the exasperated old man had finally lost patience. "Go to bed, son. That's an order!" John had reluctantly done as he was told, and then the following morning had stubbornly decided he was well, had got up to feed the animals and had made it as far as the field before he'd fallen, face-first into the water trough. The General had not been pleased and had threatened forcible restraint, going so far as to describe the numerous methods of tying up captives that he'd learnt during his long and varied career.

John did not do dependence well. And, judging by Rodney's efforts so far, his carer wasn't completely at home in his role, either. He had left the room at a brisk pace, listing to himself the many and varied ingredients he intended to pack into his sandwich. That had been hours ago. Probably. It might have been just a few minutes. John wasn't sure. He lay carefully, on his side, the comforter pulled tightly around his shivering shoulders, apart from when it was flung impatiently aside as furnaces were stoked beneath his skin.

Sleep wouldn't come, although his eyes were heavy and full of grit. Shapes and colours danced behind his eyelids and wolves prowled about the shadows of the room, until he opened his eyes to let in the yellow flicker of the lamp on the nightstand and the wolves and other nightmare creatures fled.

"Hey," he rasped, but the lamp didn't respond. Had he really eaten a dinner cooked by a clock, ably assisted by a candelabra and a coffee pot and somewhat hindered by a lively young teacup? The cauliflower cheese had been rich and creamy - the best he'd ever tasted. Better not to think about food now, though. Drink, however… The bathroom was a long way away. There'd be a faucet, with cold, delicious, trickling, dribbling, sloshing water; water like a mountain stream just thawed in the spring, or like fresh rainwater caught in the cup of a leaf. It would splash, cool and refreshing, against his face, stemming the rising tide of his fever-heat, damping down the flames that had erupted beneath his skin. He pushed the comforter down again, thought about turning onto his other side to face the door, and gave up the idea. His back felt hot and tight and the effect of the curvy pink thing was wearing off.

When would Rodney come back? Would he come back at all? Why did John even want him to come back? John would be over this fever by the morning. He'd be fine and he'd sneak out and the wolves would be asleep in their dens and he'd be fine; absolutely fine. But Rodney had been gone a long time.

There was a swish and a swirl of fresher air, followed by the sound of someone tripping over, swearing and kicking something.

"Stupid boots! Always in the goddamn way! Got minds of their own!" (A pause). "Oh. Um. You're still here."

John stayed where he was because he'd already given up on the idea of turning over and wasn't about to revive the whole debate now just when his back had joined in with the general raging fire that flickered over his skin.

Rodney shuffled into view. The sight didn't shock John anymore and wouldn't have done at this point anyway, his vision fluctuating between swirling, sickening, spinning patches of colour and over-sharp, jabbing clarity. In fact, he welcomed the vagueness of Rodney's features and thought he could pick out some lively blue shades, somewhere in the mix.

"You've got blue eyes."

The not-face hovered closer. "Wow. You're really out of it, aren't you?"

"Sky blue. Like the sky. Like to fly. But I can't. No one can."

"What, fly? Of course they can. This whole place can fly if you give it enough juice."

"Not juice, water."

"No, I mean power." The blue swirled madly.

"Water."

"Oh, it's going to be a barrel of laughs trying to penetrate your intellect! When I said juice it was a euphemism for power! I didn't mean any form of actual liquid. Chuh!"

John had been a junior officer in a rich man's army long enough to know when he was being patronised, even through the fog of sickness. "Water. Please. Thirsty," he rasped.

"Oh." The not-face backed off. "Oh. Yes, well, of course. I see."

He disappeared. In the distance, that fresh mountain spring trickled and chattered over the rocks and then shut off. And Rodney was there again. There was a clunk on the nightstand.

"There you are."

"Huh?"

"A glass of water."

John blinked and squinted. The lamplight shimmered and shook through the glass. He reached out, but his arm was too heavy and wouldn't go where he aimed it.

There was yet another huff of irritation. "Do I have to do everything?"

Then the glass of water was in front of his face and John pushed himself up, groaning. The cool rim was against his lip and then water was running into his mouth and quite a lot was running down his chin and splashing over his chest, which he didn't mind at all. Then he did mind, because suddenly he was freezing. He fell back to the pillow and snatched at the discarded comforter, which slithered onto the floor. He may have whimpered, but would strenuously deny that in future.

The glass clunked down on the nightstand and then warmth covered him. John closed his eyes.

"Well, this is fun. Not."

If Rodney went away again the wolves would come back. John still suspected the lamp of being a person, but he really needed someone who could talk because talking helped to keep the wolves away and he couldn't do it - he didn't seem to have any words handy.

"If only you'd stayed in the brig. Or locked in that room with Heightmeyer and Parrish. That would have been fine. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure Outhouse is in there too. No, not Outhouse." There was a snapping of fingers. "Stackhouse, that's the one. He's a knuckle-headed Marine. You'd get on like a house on fire. Well, you would if he wasn't a wastepaper basket."

A wolf howled and John's eyes snapped open. In the swirl of Rodney's features was a dark patch. It disappeared. Then appeared again, accompanied by another howl.

"Well, seeing as you've got my bed, I'm going to go next door. Even though it'll be dusty and cold and there'll be things living in there that shouldn't be. Huh. This is what you get for caring." Rodney stood up.

"Don't."

"What? Care? I don't. I'm just not that kind of person. I'm a lone wolf, or no, maybe that's the wrong expression, given the circumstances. Let's say an island in an ocean of ignorance, a rock that stands alone, a man head and shoulders above his peers."

"Don't go." That weakly pleading tone was another thing John would have to strenuously deny when he was feeling better.

"Oh." The roiling mass of features stilled for a moment and John thought he'd actually seen a pair of clear blue eyes, surprised into roundness. "You want me to stay?"

"Please."

There was some shuffling. "I suppose you're expecting me to sleep on the floor now. I tend your wounds, wait on you hand and foot and now I have to sacrifice my health on the altar of your fever-addled whims. Well I can't. My back won't stand for it."

"It's a big bed," John whispered. He closed his eyes. Rodney would go next door. John would have to fend the wolves off himself. He could do it. He was fine, really.

"Hmm."

The 'hmm' came from the foot of the bed. A huff followed it. Then the sound of clothes being dropped on the floor. Then the bed dipped and stayed dipped. The comforter lifted to let in a cold blast, but was then firmly pinned down. John shuffled backward ever-so-slightly, just so that he could feel a presence, a warmth behind him.

The wolves wouldn't get near him now. He was safe.

oOo

Rodney was in bed with another man.

He had been just fine on his own. Like he'd said to John, he was that kind of person. He was better on his own, because then he didn't have to deal with anyone being offended for whatever incomprehensible reason they randomly selected from an old-fashioned revolving card index file. People were offended so easily - when he told them what to do, when he told them they were doing it wrong, when he shoved them out of the way and did it himself, and even when he gave them a detailed list of why they'd been wrong and exactly how he'd just averted yet another catastrophe and how they would all have died if it hadn't been for him. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. It seemed as if, whenever he opened his mouth, he was giving offense.

So, when everyone had been transformed into assorted 'antiques' (for which, read 'junk'), he'd been glad. Really, he had, he told himself. Finally, he could get on with his work in peace Of course, there was the problem that he'd been left with only one nearly-depleted ZPM, but he had been sure he'd get around that pretty soon, given the time and opportunity, which he had in abundance.

And yes, he had revived a few selected… he supposed he'd call them companions. But that was only because he needed someone to bounce ideas off occasionally, someone to be wrong so he could yell at them, some minions to do his bidding, that kind of thing. He hadn't done it because he was lonely; definitely not. No. Meredith Rodney McKay Phd Phd, lonely? The very thought was ridiculous.

But, here he was in bed with a man. An actual man-shaped, human-bodied, breathing, presumably thinking, man.

Earlier, when John's arm had been around his shoulders and John's weight was dragging him down, he'd been focussed on shedding his burden as quickly as possible. But now, in the silence (apart from his companion's uneven breath and his occasional muttered unintelligible nonsense), the sense-memory of the warmth and weight and simple humanity returned to him. It had been so long, so very, very long since he'd been anywhere near a human, unless you counted his brief contact with General Thief, which Rodney didn't. So many long, dark, solitary years. And of course he hadn't been lonely, because he'd been busy and people would've got in the way and interrupted his focus. But this living, solid presence in front of him was so real.

John muttered and twitched. He shifted toward Rodney, squeaked as his back came in contact with the bed and resumed his former position, still muttering. Something about wolves.

There was that man-smell, too. That mix of warm skin and hair, sweat and horses and, yes, this lump in his bed really needed a shower, but - who knew? - maybe Rodney did too. It wasn't as if Radek or the others had noses, so presumably they couldn't smell. Although Woolsey's cooking always turned out pretty good, so maybe he stank to high heaven and they were too polite to say. No. Teyla would say, even if the others were too scared.

Rodney inhaled deeply. It wasn't actually that unpleasant.

John's breathing quickened again and he groaned. Rodney freed a hand from the bedding and held it a safe six inches from the surface of the man's shoulder. If a machine was putting out this much heat he'd be worried - the fan had got clogged or something. He'd take its casing off and have a look inside.

He lowered his hand and pinched the edge of the comforter between his finger and thumb, then flicked it down so that it folded back, exposing John's t-shirt-clad torso. The shirt had ridden up. And the sweatpants had ridden down over hips that were narrower than Rodney's, so that there was an expanse of John's lower back uncovered. His very lowest of the lower back: actual human skin, other than his own, right there in front of him.

There was a tan line, where John's waistband would be. And a few scattered dark hairs. When Rodney had dressed John's wounds he'd been hunched over on the bed and Rodney had been focussed on his back anyway. But some part of Rodney's retentive brain had stored away the fact that the man's chest was covered in curling whorls of hair. If John turned onto his back, which he wouldn't because that would hurt too much, but if he did, Rodney would see that hair. It would be damp with sweat, stuck together in thicker curls. Maybe a few of those curls would have joined together in a rippling line down the centre of his chest, marking the halfway point between his nipples.

At this point Rodney mentally slapped himself and was tempted to do it physically. Because yes, obviously he could go for some kind of sexual encounter, having been deprived for so long; but it was a bit creepy to be lusting over someone who was hurt and sick and who hated Rodney for imprisoning the old man and then himself and who would be revolted by the idea. Wouldn't he? He'd said he didn't think Rodney looked so bad. But that was when he was dependent on Rodney for help. Anyway, lust? What that was this was? Or just the effect of the organic, animal intensity of having a man, lying right next to him in his bed?

John moaned again and sighed and puffed out a long, whining breath. He wriggled and muttered and carried on wriggling and muttering and moaning and didn't seem about to stop any time soon. What did that mean? What was Rodney supposed to do now? He hovered his hand over John's shoulder again, at a distance of perhaps four inches this time. The warmth against his hand was like a fully-charged ZPM. He lowered his hand another two inches. John muttered something else about wolves; the man was obsessed. Slowly, Rodney brought his hand down the remaining two inches until his palm just touched the sweat-damp fabric. Then he slid it further down John's arm, so that his palm overlapped the boundary between t-shirt sleeve and bare, overheated skin and his fingers curled around John's bicep.

John sighed. And murmured. And then he relaxed, motionless but for the steady, still-slightly-too fast up and down of his body as he slept his fevered sleep.

And after a while, Rodney slept too. But he left his hand where it was.

So, Rodney wasn't lonely, he doesn't care and he's just totally fed up at having to look after John. Really. In denial? No! (Chuckle.) More coming up on Wednesday!