Understudy

Author: Cheryl W.

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Chapter 4: Expectations

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At the big guy's pissed off departure, John wheezed out a curse. 'This is why I don't bother to say much…I always manage to say the wrong thing.' But if he was honest with himself, his words weren't random. He was aces at pushing people away, especially the ones stupid enough to believe he could be better than he was. Now he had this guy who thought he could make up for someone he'd lost, someone he had considered a brother?! Come on, his own brother hated his guts and, genetically speaking, David was supposed to actually like him. No way could he live up to this guy's Sheppard. Figured it best to dissuade the guy from thinking that from the start. Fail people right off the bat so they know what to always expect out of him, that was the way to go. That strategy had worked pretty well the last few years, nipped any expectations in the bud that he'd be anything but a loser, was clearly someone to NOT count on.

Now he had complete strangers saying things like he had 'strength of character', accusing him of being heroic. Once he had thought he was both those things…and look how that bit of pride had turned out. Twelve people dead, good people, people who didn't have to die…if he had not tried to have "strength of character" be a "hero". No, he wouldn't fall down that rabbit hole again, people died when he started believing he could be anything but a screw up. He knew what he was…even if these people didn't. He wasn't their Sheppard and the sooner they got that, the better off everything would be.

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A few minutes later, when John's doctor, Dr. Beckett, made his appearance, he turned out to be…kind. It was unexpected and … exactly what John didn't want. Some gruff saw bones would be easier to take. Like the doc who patched him up after his Afghanistan's fubar. He could read that doc's mind, knew he hoped John would do the world a favor and succumb to his injuries. That hate, he absorbed like welcome poison but this doctor…his gentle accented tone, the concerned way he looked at him, tutted over his bullet wound, warned him of his touch before he touched him as if he knew PTSD might be kicking in, it was wrong, undeserved. What no one was putting together was he'd been skipping town with the Wraith's loot, wasn't out all that time searching to take down the alien, stop some alien invasion. The doctor's unexpected words snapped his attention back to the present.

"He's been by your side non-stop since you've come out of surgery, actually never left the waiting area since you were beamed up from the surface."

Knew they were talking about the tall guy, Dex. "He has me confused with someone else."

"Maybe," Dr. Beckett noncommittally allowed. "Ok, easy son, I need to turn you a bit," then gentle hands helped him roll to his side. "Deep inhale, now exhale." There was the press of stethoscope to his back as he did the breathing as instructed, winced as fingers press on his bruised ribs thanks to his Starkey & Hutch slide across the roof of his car. When he was moved again onto his back, the doctor's hands on his shoulder and hip aided him. Then the doctor was giving him that direct eye contact and John braced himself for some medical jargon on his condition that he probably wouldn't understand, instead the man was stuck on talking about his previous visitor.

"Ronon's not…" Carson tried to find the best way to say what he wanted to convey to the injured man without being unkind. "How do I say this….He's not a very warm and fuzzy person. His specialty is killing things. He doesn't talk to anyone besides his teammates, Dr. McKay and Teyla. And even with them he's…." Carson's eyes brightened as he got the right analogy, "My one professor in college would say he's 'more standoffish than a porcupine'."

"Not everyone needs to be Mr. Rogers," John grumbled, didn't know why he was defending the big guy but it just came out of him.

Taken a bit back by his patient's defense of Ronon after their not so amicable parting, Carson stammered a bit nervously, "Ah…. guess not." Checking the man's bullet wound's entrance, he couldn't convince himself to not say what he had intended to. Made himself busy looking at the man's chart when he continued. "I always thought everyone needed someone. But with Ronon…I was starting to believe that he was the exception to that rule…" Here he looked up, met Sheppard's interested gaze. "Until you showed up here. I've seen another side to him. He cares about you. I'd go so far as to say…he needs you."

"No, he doesn't," John irritably rebuffed. "He wants me to be his dead BFF. No one needs me." He'd made sure of that, he wouldn't let someone else down again. That's why he tried so hard to get into the Homicide department, he couldn't do more wrong to a person who'd already been murdered.

"Way I hear it, without you, we'd have a Wraith invasion of Earth on our hands." It was all the buzz in Stargate Command, how this civilian had practically single handedly stopped that disaster. And Carson himself knew the man had done it at great risk to himself, thought he wasn't going to get the chance to praise the lad's bravery when Sheppard was rolled into the Daedalus infirmary coding. It was a hard fight to get him back, harder still to keep him, felt like the lad's heart wasn't vested in the fight for survival.

"Not all scuttlebutt is true, doc," John muttered, wished the fanfare could just get snuffed out.

"Ay…and some of it is," Carson refuted, didn't understand why the man would want to deny something as heroic as saving his planet. Carson sure would be crowing from the rafters if he were in the lad's position. "Either way, true or false, you being similar to Ronon's friend or not, I'm warning you straight up: Ronon doesn't give a fig what anyone thinks, does what he sets out to do and changing his mind, I've never seen it done. So I think you better accept that if the man cares for you, it's a done deal."

That had John tilting his head in surprise at Carson, had that word "deal" spinning in his memories. "Deal?"

Carson chuckled. "Sorry, was using one of Ronon's favorite words."

And that sharped John's recall, mentally replaying the word "deal" into Ronon's low timbre, it came back to him.

".. you're going to fight and live and that's an order, Sheppard. That's our deal, you hear me?!"

" you stick around? …. What do you say, Sheppard, we have a deal? Right. Deal's set."

No, no, no! This Ronon guy was taking his personal lookalike qualities to his dead BFF way too far! Hadn't the guy ever seen an Elvis impersonator in his life?! John, he'd passed hundreds of them in his time in Vegas. They looked like the king, dressed like the king, had a twangy drawl like the king, might even kinda sing like him but none of them were the king. Any more than he was Ronon's lost John Sheppard.

Seeing the look of distress on his patient's features, Carson laid a gentle hand on the man's uninjured shoulder, drawing his attention. "Hey, you alright, lad? Pain getting too bad?"

"Pain's fine," John replied, liked pain, same as he liked drinking and staying awake all night gambling. Liked anything that kept him from rooting around in his memories, of hearing the screams of the dying…the ones he had condemned to death by thinking he could save someone, save her.

The doctor looked at him like he didn't quite believe him about the pain level but then he let it go unchallenged. "Alright then, think it's time for you to get some rest. Your body's been through quite the trauma, it'll take some time for it to heal but it will."

"Am I doing that healing here or somewhere else?" John asked, pretended his gut wasn't suddenly churning at what the future held. Crap he had stumbled onto a seriously covert program, was on their freaking space ship, no way were they going to let him slink away with all that he knew now. That was part of why he took the Wraith's money and made a run for it, didn't want Dr. McKay to realize his blunder in letting him go, that his superiors like Woosley would have ordered him to lock him up so they could keep the alien crazy stuff under wraps.

The doc looked truly stumped at his question. "Honestly, I don't know. They haven't told me their plans for you."

And wasn't that ominous sounding: 'plans for you.' John had known a few soldiers who had opened their mouths about a black op and got sent to a black site for a few weeks to learn the penalty for loose lips. And that was about normal war stuff, Earth stuff…with what he knew now…they'd probably shove him in a black site and throw away the key if they feared that he was a security risk.

Crap, but he should have kept driving to Mexico.

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Haven gotten word that Sheppard was out of danger, even awake, McKay headed to the Daedalus' infirmary with something akin to a jaunty step. It was certainly now a case of all's well that ends well (at least for their universe and right now he kept his focus on that). So he was basking in that victory…not to mention the positive outcome to his conversation with General O'Neill five minutes ago.

Internally he was practicing his 'We'd like you to join our team' speech. Team being Stargate Command, hopefully the Atlantis expedition and his gate team specifically sometime down the road. Though he hadn't officially gotten the green light to offer Sheppard a position on Atlantis, the new leader Dr. Weir was being hard headed about his civilian status…which was ironic considering she was a civilian herself. But in reality, Rodney knew it wasn't Sheppard's civilian status she was opposed to…it was his past: The twelve dead, the dishonorable discharge. Things Rodney couldn't change, couldn't whitewash but having met John, him risking himself to stop the Wraith sending that beacon home…it should assuage some of Sheppard's sins, did in his eyes.

'But apparently not in Weir's eyes,' he bitterly reminded himself. So General O'Neill was allowing him to offer Sheppard a place in the Stargate program…but Weir had the last word on who came to Atlantis. He didn't know how he'd convince her to change her mind but he was determined to. They needed John Sheppard on Atlantis. Carson had tested the police detective and he had a strong presence of the Ancient DNA just like Ronon's Sheppard and the other John Sheppard McKay had met, so there was that. But that wasn't really what was driving McKay's desire for Sheppard to get the Atlantis posting, I mean they could synthesize the gene. 'But you can't synthesize heroism, bravery or patriotism,' which John Sheppard had in spades so a man with those traits was good for the expedition. And personally…Rodney still wanted a shot at what his counterpart in that other universe had, what Ronon had had and mourned so badly he was clutching onto this universe's Sheppard with a two fisted grip: a friendship, a brotherhood with John Sheppard.

'Don't get ahead of yourself, you've got some work to do before you pick out BFF keychains,' he sarcastically snarked to himself. 'First you have to get him instated into the Stargate Program, then you have to convince Dr. Weir to let him join the Atlantis expedition and then…you can figure out how to get Sheppard to actually like you, think you're not a terrible guy, especially after at all the crap you gave him in the conference room when you met him.' Because replaying his side of that conversation, it kind of made him ill…with himself, not with recounting John's sins and failures. He had been harsh, no, cruel with the man…and now he wanted him to roll out the friendship red carpet for him. 'Crap, Rodney, you just had to go in their trying to impress him with your tough guy act, didn't you?! Had to be all cocky like you learned all the knowledge about him, including the gum he favors, just since Woolsey reported it was a Detective John Sheppard on the Wraith case.'

Which wasn't true, he hadhad all that info long before, a year before, when Ronon arrived, talked about John Sheppard like he was God's gift to the Wraith fight…and then he met a version of John in that other universe and curiosity got the best of him. He dove into all John Sheppards that his own universe offered and when he found the real one…he learned everything he could about him…and no, it wasn't stalking it was….monitoring….just in case Ronon got his wish, that they got the OK to tap this Sheppard for service in the Stargate Program, in case, well, what happened yesterday happened. Without Sheppard's solo standoff with the Wraith, being shot, consequentially dying thing of course. Yeah, in his finding Sheppard scenario, Sheppard didn't get hurt when he introduced him into the world of the stargates. Then again, he wouldn't have planned Sheppard to discover the world of stargates all on his own either by tracking down an earth roaming wraith.

Suddenly that made him uneasy, that John Sheppard wasn't fitting nicely into his formulas, was good at being unpredictable, might not meekly fall in line with how he perceived the future to go. The possibility had him slowing his entrance into the infirmary to a thoughtful stroll. 'With this version of John Sheppard, you don't even know how the next fiveseconds will go?!' Rodney amended. As if to prove how feasible his worries were, when he boldly entered the curtained off area Sheppard was behind, he discovered that the man was mid jail break. His IV was out and leaking on the floor and he was sliding off the bed to land his feet on the sterile infirmary floor.

Rodney's intentions to scold the man were cut short when Sheppard's legs buckled and the detective started to collapse onto the floor. Diving forward, Rodney caught John around the waist mid fall, had to carry all of Sheppard's weight for a few seconds as the man limply fell against him, his head bowed down on his shoulder, his breathing heavy, pained. "I got ya, I got ya," Rodney reassured, felt a strong surge of protectiveness zing through him he was not familiar with, had only experienced the like once before…after Sheppard's interaction with their pet Wraith back in Area 51.

Not trusting himself to hold Sheppard afloat too long with only his own strength, McKay called over his shoulder "Need some help in here!" an edge of panic in his tone he didn't think would do his reputation any good. But he would make repairs to that ding later, once he was sure Sheppard hadn't damaged anything in his ill-conceived bid for freedom. Then a male nurse popped into the curtained off area, helped him lever Sheppard up to sit on the side of the bed. Rodney was contemplating how to maneuver Sheppard to a prone position when the nurse none to gently jerked Sheppard's legs onto the bed, causing John to give a grunt of pain as the jostling unbalanced him, nearly had him toppling back onto the mattress.

"Easy! He's not the G.I. Joe doll you toted around in your backpack when you were a kid!" Rodney shouted, luckily still had his arm around John's waist, managed to gentle the wounded man's descent, ease him onto his back on the infirmary bed. Rounding on the nurse, he bit out, "Do something you hopefully can't screw up and get his doctor. NOW!" With a bob of his head the nurse disappeared around the curtain. Turning back to Sheppard, Rodney was about to ask the man how much pain he was in, but Sheppard spoke first.

Trying to shift into a less excruciating position on the mattress which, in turn, only caused him more pain, John weakly boasted, "Don't need my doctor. I'm fine." He didn't want more concerned, kind words from the Scottish doc, wanted to be out of the medical ward, desperately wanted off the "ship" he was currently being held on.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Rodney challenged, "Really, you call that being fine, you collapsing."

"I like to start my mornings out slow with a little yoga. This floor was the right space I needed," John quipped.

McKay snorted. "Yes, I am sure you could have done a stellar Tree stance."

"Was actually going for a Eka Pada Koundinvasana II before you interrupted me," because OK, John had dated a Yoga instructed back in college, had told her pigs would fly before he'd ever try to force his body to do that painful acrobatic pose.

Confusion stole across McKay's features, clearly telling John the Doc had no idea what he had just said. If he were in a better mood, wasn't in pain, he might have felt some tinge of satisfaction at that. As it was, it just made him grumpier. 'Seems no one gets me around here." They couldn't even get the 'stay away from me' vibe his fellow cops had been able to read a mile away. "Let me guess, you're here demanding I sign that non-disclosure agreement. Fine, got a pen? Then can you drop me off at the nearest galactic rest stop?"

"Oh, sure, next Sheetz we come to we'll beam you down," Rodney sarcastically drawled even as his nurturing action of pulling the sheet up to cover Sheppard said he had no intentions of dropping the man off anywhere.

Flinging that same sheet off him, John countered Rodney's suggestion, "Make it a Walgreens…beer's cheaper." And yeah, ok, he knew he was pushing McKay's buttons but it eased some of the helplessness choking him, the frustration of having every choice he wanted to make being blocked. "Now can you get me some pants…like my boots back too. I got them worn down just right." Shifting onto his side, he began looking around the curtained off area for a closet, for someplace they could have stuffed his belongs. McKay stepped to the right, purposefully blocking his search grid.

"You died!" Rodney nearly shouted, that horrific fact unforgettable to him, didn't see how Sheppard could overlook it. "So stop trying to get out of bed and rip your stitches or do worse damage to yourself. You might have already with your stupid jail break attempt."

At the scolding reprimand, John's eyes flew up to McKay's and his voice was a deadly challenge, "What do you care?!" He was so sick of the concern, the careful handling, none of which was even about him. Was about the other Johns.

Stunned at the venom in the man's question, McKay stammered, "I….I…"

"Right, you don't care, so just leave me alone," John snarled, wanted that most of all, to be alone. Alone in his pain, in his confusion, in his reeling world that now included honest to goodness alien invaders.

Though Rodney shifted on his feet, he didn't flee. Quietly, almost gently posed, "Would it be so horrible if I did care, if someone cared?"

"I don't need someone to care!" John railed back, didn't want that burden, ever again. For someone to care about him…for him to care about someone else. He was done with all that. Forever.

"Why, because you don't care about yourself?" Rodney perceptively demanded, pissed that Sheppard's response was to sink back on the bed, stare at the ceiling but not offer up one single protest to his insight. "After everything I told you, seeing the wraith up close and personal, knowing their strength, that you were no match…why did you engage him!?" Because that was the question ping ponging around in his head ever since Sheppard had called him, said he had found the Wraith, ever since he had gotten the video feed from the drones, the medical report from the Daedalus. All proof that John had unequivocally engaged the Wraith…just as unequivocally lost to it.

That question had John's eyes swiveling to McKay's, thought the answer should be obvious. "I thought him playing ET phone home with his buddies in that other galaxy might be worth a chat with him."

"He shot you! NO, he killed you!" hated that Sheppard was being flippant when he had freaking died out there in the desert because of his decisions to "chat" with the wraith.

"Yeah, wel, he didn't kill me," John brazenly corrected in a bit of a huff, didn't expect the reaming out from McKay, in that moment kind of missed that Dex guy's hero worshiping of his actions.

But McKay was shaking his head, pointed at Sheppard, as his voice rose, "No, he did. You were dead, Sheppard. Dead. If not for the Daedalus beaming you on board, our extraordinary medical team, our unconventional treatments…"

"What do you want? Me to settle up my copay?!" John snarkily cut across McKay's rant.

"I want you to admit you went on a one way trip and you didn't care!" Because Rodney knew this John, he wasn't stupid, was the direct opposite, would have known his odds of survival…that he really didn't have any odds for surviving his confrontation with the Wraith.

At McKay's demand, John pulled on a 'don't give a crap' smirk. "Guess I wanted to go out in a blaze of glory…course you screwed that up for me, so thanks for that."

McKay looked close to physical violence, settled for another yelling fit. "Blaze of glory! Really original, all you flyboys have that mentality!?"

"Not a flyboy!" John bitterly corrected, quietly tacked on, "Not anymore."

McKay knew that was his opening, the very best he could ask for. He straightened his stance into the one holding the power in the room, regally offered, "That could change…if you wanted it to." Felt a flicker of guilt that the word "leverage" was merrily and grimly floating around in his head as he used what Sheppard wanted most in the world against him.

The offer knocked the air out of John's lungs like a kick to the chest. Had him fighting back excitement, telling himself it wasn't possible, what McKay offered, what he wanted. "Even some offbook helicopter service wouldn't hire me after the Air Force burned me."

McKay's smile was smug as he realized he had gotten John's full attention. "I have something a little more….exciting… in mind than you ferrying tourists who want a cheap, illegal flight."

Suspicion crept into Sheppard's tone, "Exciting how?"

"Another galaxy, flying a spaceship…that exciting enough for you," Rodney knowingly dangled a dream come true to any pilot but didn't go too far, wouldn't promise Sheppard could fly Atlantis, not yet, not until he swayed Weir into letting Sheppard join their expedition.

"You're talking about joining the fight against the Wraith," John realized, stunned at the offer, of McKay…or anyone wanting him to be at their side in a combat situation.

Dodging the promise that it would be wraith and not some Milky way villains Sheppard would be tangling with, Rodney put on a salesmanship persona as best he could manage, "I'm talking about being able to use your skill set to do some good…like you did out there in that desert."

McKay's reference to what happened in the desert soured John's gut and sliced through his happy delusion that he could fly again. That that was really the option on the table. "Skill set…getting shot and nearly fed on and apparently dying, you mean that skill set?" he acridly challenged, pissed that he had gotten drawn into McKay's trap, thought for even a second that he could get back in the sky again. That was a pipe dream, nothing more. Was bait McKay was fishing with but he couldn't be fooled by it. "Apparently you have low recruitment standards."

Not deterred, Rodney countered Sheppard's insinuations with an entirely different take on the happenings in the desert. "If not skill set, then heroism. Unflinching in the face of unsurmountable odds, achieving victory over defeat when the consequences were of an apocalyptic scale."

John couldn't help snorting at the over the top ragsheet headline McKay was announcing in a tone he probably used when he awarded some smuck a metal for surviving a conversation with their pet Wraith back in their compound. "Again, doesn't sound much like me."

"Really," Rodney smugly challenged before he revealed, "That's how you…your actions were described to the President in his debriefing of the situation."

That statement had John shifting upright in the bed and he had to ask even as he knew he was falling into McKay's trap… "President? Of the…"

"United States, yes," Rodney drawled regally. "He knows your name now, might even be the one to hand you your medal, in a very hush hush secret ceremony of course. Stargate Command is highly classified. I'm sure you recognize the need for that necessity."

Sinking back into the bed, John tried to get his head around the President of the United States knowing his name…and not in the 'guess how badly this Air Force guy screwed up' way. Numbly he replied back to McKay's secrecy proclamation, "Yeah, haven't read about Aliens Among Us in any papers except the National Inquirer."

"And thanks to you, we don't have to make plans to protect our world from a Wraith Invasion. When their darts started flying into our cities, it would have been a little hard to deny the existence of aliens," Rodney said it with a tinge of humor but how close they had come to that reality put a chill down his spine.

"Yeah, I bet," John replied but was on autopilot, hated that he wondered if his dad would be proud of him now, if he knew the President knew his name. But then he could almost hear his dad's dark chuckle, "For a couple million dollars of contribution I can buy a seat at the President's dinner table and we'll be golf buddies before dessert.' Recalled his father's words a year ago, "My money can get me more than you'll ever achieve and you could have had that power but you spit on it. On our family, on me. And now you need my money…to pay off some gambling debts?! I kept you out of a military prison, me and my money. That's the last thing you'll ever get from me and I didn't do it for you, did it for our family's reputation. So if this bookie thinks a threat to you will make me pay your debts, he's wrong. David's the only son I have left because, as far as I'm concerned, my oldest son had the decency to die in Afghanistan and take his shame with him.'

So caught up in memories, John almost missed McKay's pitch.

"So, you ready to trade in your detective badge for your Air Force uniform again? We would reinstate you with your rank intact," McKay offered, all wide smile, thought he might have to hold Sheppard back from actually hugging him.

"You're acting like I have a choice, but I don't, do I?" John caustically contested, refused to get tricked, to think this was anything more than a 'keep your mouth shut' maneuver. "I know your little secret organization exists, know about the Wraith you haven't told the general population about and I didn't sign your non-disclosure. I've been down this road before. It's Leavenworth or it's join your little crusade, right? I think three squares a day and free gym membership doesn't sound so bad."

Stunned at Sheppard's so wrong take on his generous gift, Rodney stammered, "What? No?! It isn't like that. This is your choice but I think you'd be crazy to.."

"What's crazy is this offer!" John angrily flung back at McKay. "No one in their right mind would sanction me rejoining the Air Force, allowing me to fly a military copter ..and certainly not any spaceship. My last tour, I got 12 people killed, remember!? But…course you do, how'd you word it: "You somehow avoided jail time and the courts sealed your record for political reasons.""

McKay paled as his words came back to bite him on the butt like he feared they would. "Ok, I might have come on a little strong…."

But John shook his head, didn't want to hear McKay's defense. "Wasn't anything but the truth. I sign on for this "assignment" you're talking about and I know I won't ever fly anything but a desk. Probably be some officer's gofer. So I pass."

"But you can't!" Rodney's voice was almost edging toward a tantrum tone of surprised insistence.

"I can pass and I am," John steely vowed, then goaded, "Go ahead, do your damnest to ruin my life. I'll sit back, do my time in prison and you can let me out after your top secret program goes public and the Wraith are living out in the open among us."

Rodney's blood pressure spiked at that mental picture. "I think the point is we don't want that happening! And you can help us achieve that."

But John was done arguing the point with the guy. "You want me to sign that non-disclosure, fine. I'll sign. But that's the only signature I'm giving to you."

Having stopped on the other side of the curtain a few minutes ago instead of interrupting the tense conversation, Carson saw the current break in the conversation to be his chance to intervene. Coming into the curtained off area, he announced, "Rodney, the detective should be resting. Maybe you can come back tomorrow."

"But Carson…" Rodney stammered like a school boy ordered to go to his room.

"Shoo, on your way," Carson ushered Rodney from Sheppard's side, got into a few hushed but terse words with McKay before he returned to John's side. He reinserted John's IV without a word of recrimination and began checking his under his bandages for pulled stitches.

"Thanks, Doc," John offered because he had sensed the other man's presence beyond the curtain, knew the doctor had pointedly made his entrance to cut off McKay's attempt to brow beat him into submission. Suspected the doctor he had tossed McKay out of the infirmary for the same reason.

A little surprised that Sheppard was perceptive enough to know he had interrupted and shoved Rodney away from him in a desire to protect him and even more stunned to be thanked for it, Carson gave his patient a conspirator smile. "You're welcome, lad." Then he decided to press his luck by making Rodney's case too. "I know Rodney can be….insistent and has a one track mind but…his heart's in the right place. And he keeps his word so if you says he'll reinstate your rank and you'll get to fly, his offer is genuine."

Before Sheppard could rail at Beckett for changing sides on him, the doc gently squeezed his shoulder. "Now rest up and save the daring escapes for dingy gulags not spotless healing infirmaries or I will borrow the handcuffs you had in your pocket when you got here and lock you to your bed."

But the man's takeaway wasn't the doctor's threat but the clue about the fate of some of his belongings. "Wait, you have my jeans?! My boots too, right? And my gun, it's a pearl handled …."

"Yes, yes, your arsenal is nice and safe and you'll get it back when…." Carson began but the man cut him off.

"Let me guess, when I've signed the damn non-disclosure." And wasn't that just like a top secret government agency, to hold even your pants for ransom until they got what they wanted.

"Oh for pity sake, I don't give a fig whether you sign some piece of paper or not. I'm not giving your clothing back because they were not good for anything but the trash and if I give you back your boots, I bet you'll try your escape attempt again."

Refusing to let the doctor's well-meaning actions improve his mood, John goaded, "And my gun, you not giving that back because you're afraid I'll take hostages on my next escape attempt?"

"No, I'm not giving it back because you're weak as a kitten and couldn't hold the bloody thing! Probably drop it and shoot me by mistake," Carson heatedly railed back at his pig headed patient.

John fought back a smirk at the doctor's rant, assured, "Don't worry doc, I'm an expert marksman, hit only what I aim for." Carson gave him a funny, tilt headed expression. "What?" he demanded before he made a leap of logic and sighed. "Let me guess, that's what the other Johns all say?!"

Carson's eyes glittered with humor then. "Nope. That's what Ronon's always bragging, that he hits only what he aims for. Guess you two have more in common than you thought. And Rodney too…whenever he's been injured it's his gadgets he wants to make sure are in one piece more than his own body. Maybe you'd fit in here better than you give yourself credit for."

With that, the doctor made his exit, leaving the words echoing in John's head. Crap but it was a long time since he fit in anywhere, that he allowed himself to want to fit in somewhere with someone. 'Yeah, well, don't go getting needy, John,' he chastised himself because he was just visiting, was practically being held captive, was not "fitting in" anywhere, certainly not there with these people.

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TBC

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Thanks for reading and your wonderful reviews!

Have a great day!

Cheryl