sga_flashfic | Blame the Rain, by mahoni (F**king Freezing challenge)

Title: Blame the Rain
Author: mahoni
Pairing/Rating: John/Ronon; R
Note: ~2,600 words
Summary: This was always the way it happened – a close call, some kind of near death experience, plus half a second alone. Every time, they agreed it wouldn’t happen again; but that never really seemed to stick.

John tried to help propel himself forward as Ronon dragged him toward the cluster of tiny, abandoned huts, but he wasn’t very successful. He was frozen to the bone and half numb all over, so all he managed to do was flop his feet around in the muck a little as they went. Not that Ronon ever had any trouble hauling his ass around like he weighed no more than a wet kitten. It was one of the many things about Ronon that would be really intimidating if it didn’t come in handy so often.

Ronon tore aside the tattered cloth hanging across the door of the first hut they came to and glanced inside. They got lucky; there were no territorial carnivores, angry natives, or shriveled, Wraith-eaten bodies inside. The hut was a single room, and there was a grubby, lumpy pallet on the floor by the wall not far from the door. Ronon unhooked John’s arm from around his shoulders and lowered him gently down onto it. He stayed sitting up, perched on the edge. Not that the filthiness bothered him, it was just that he was so damn cold he didn’t think he’d be able to unlock his body from its current position to lie down. He pulled his arms tighter against his chest and hunched forward, shivering. The cold felt like a steel band around his chest, making it hard to breath.

“Teyla?” He had to force the name out, and wouldn’t have bet on Ronon understanding him, but Ronon said,

“She’s okay. McKay said her arm was nearly amputated, and she said it was just a scratch, so I figure she probably got cut up a little, but not too bad.”

A laugh shuddered through John; that sounded about right.

“They found shelter,” Ronon continued. “They’re going to wait until the rain lets up and then head for the gate.”

Which meant he and Ronon were stuck for…how long? It had taken them a good hour to get to the village, and the rain could go on and on… John realized he didn’t even know how long it had actually been raining. He knew it had started when he was lying on the ground, pinned in the grip of an old but very, very effective trap, and it was still raining now. He’d spent at least some of that time passing out from pain and lack of oxygen, though, and the area's previous occupants had booby-trapped the hell out of a huge swath of ground all the way around the village so it could have taken Ronon a long time to get to him, and then get them both the rest of the way through the primitive minefield and into the village…

…and apparently his mind had been wandering, because he had gone suddenly from fully dressed to bootless, vestless and coatless. Also, Ronon’s hands were currently working on his belt.

Startling, since they had agreed last time it happened that they weren’t going to do that again.

“Hey. Um.” Finding the breath to make words was a little easier this time, but his teeth were chattering like crazy. “What are you doing?”

“You’re soaking wet,” Ronon said.

“So are you. Because it’s raining outside.”

“My coat kept me dry,” Ronon said.

“Oh, right.” Ronon’s coat was pretty much awesome. Twice as warm as it looked, indestructible, and, best of all, virtually waterproof. It dawned on him then that Ronon’s coat was also wrapped around John himself at the moment. Ronon must have done that recently; John could still feel the warmth of Ronon’s body heat in it.

That explained why he was feeling warmer, but he was still not clear on why he was becoming increasingly more naked beneath the coat.

“It’ll be worse for you if you sit around in wet clothes,” Ronon was saying. “So they have to come off.”

“Oh. Right.” John gave himself a mental shake. Right. Right, that was basic first aid. And he probably would have figured that out eventually, if his mouth hadn’t started working before his brain.

Ronon was trying to work John’s pants down over his hips, peeling the wet fabric carefully away so that John’s boxers wouldn’t come with them. Then something Ronon did made pain lance through John’s leg and side; he gasped, grabbing Ronon’s hand and yanking it away.

Ronon froze. “What? What is it? What’d I do?”

John shook his head, swallowing down the pain. Okay, he was wide awake now. “Ow,” he wheezed. “Ow.”

Ronon sat back on his heels, and his hands bunched into fists on his thighs. In the spare, gray light coming through the doorway John could see the worry and frustration on Ronon’s face. Ronon dealt better in situations where problems could be solved by shooting them. John understood that; he tended to feel that way, too.

He took a slow, shallow breath, and managed to grind out, “I think – if I lie down –”

He let Ronon help him lie back on the pallet, and through awkward joint effort they managed to get the pants off. The process was not nearly as fun as being undressed by somebody else should be. That first jolt of pain started a cascade of aches he’d been too cold and foggy-headed to notice before. His hip was a screaming, fiery knot; his chest burned; and his shoulder throbbed white-hot in protest whenever he tried to lift his arm.

On a rational level, he knew he had been lucky. If the trap had been in good working condition, the heavy wooden beams would have crushed him to the ground with bone-shattering force instead of just knocking him down and pinning him there.

Still. Ow.

Once the pants were off and Ronon’s coat was draped over him, he let himself go limp with a groan.

Ronon lifted the edge of the coat and gently pulled the waistband of John’s boxers down over his hip.

“Damn,” he said. “No wonder it hurt.”

John lifted his head to try to see through the dimness. “That bad?”

“Can you move your leg?” Ronon said.

John gritted his teeth and managed to bend his knee a little.

Ronon grunted. “Okay. Could be worse, anyway. What else hurts?”

It took John a moment to catch his breath. “Shoulder,” he said finally. “But don’t –” he put his hand up as Ronon reached out. “Don’t touch it. It doesn’t feel dislocated, so there’s not a damn thing we can do about it right now, except just leave it alone.”

Ronon had picked up on the way he was taking care to breathe shallowly, though, and insisted on checking for broken ribs. His touch was light beneath John’s t-shirt – a little too light at first. John jerked and the resulting spasm of pain turned what would have been a really unmanly giggle into a strangled yelp. Ronon twitched his hand away.

“Sorry,” John said breathlessly. “Tickles.”

Ronon scrubbed a hand across his face, his shoulders set and tight. “No, I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

He slipped his hand beneath John’s shirt again, adjusting his touch. Instead of the light stroke of fingertips, he flattened his palm carefully around the curve of John’s ribcage.

John closed his eyes and tried again to relax. Ronon moved his hand with the gentlest pressure slowly down John’s side, pausing as he went to lightly shift the weight of his hand, feeling for unevenness or give. Neither of them spoke; Ronon concentrated on what he was doing, and John concentrated on not making embarrassing noises when Ronon hit sore spots.

The sound of the rain rushed into the silence. Outside the open door rain spattered against the wet ground, and it pounded the low, sloping shell of the hut with a deep thrum. John could hear the constant, rapid drip from leaks in the clay-and-thatch roof. He wondered how long the people of this village had been gone, and how much longer it would be until the tiny houses collapsed in on themselves; how many rains like this until everything that showed that people had lived here rotted away.

“The booby traps must have been set out to protect them from the Wraith,” he said. He spoke softly to avoid having to breathe deeply, but his voice sounded loud in the windowless, empty hut even despite the rain.

Ronon reached the expanse of skin at John’s waist and let his hand rest there, and leaned across to explore John’s other side with his free hand. “Lot of good it did them,” he said.

“Sound idea,” John said, gritting his teeth as Ronon jostled his sore arm. “If the Wraith soldiers can’t get to the village on foot, and people can hide from the dart beams indoors… I wonder if it worked at first.”

He could imagine it. There would have been the elation of triumphing over their enemy. There would have been relief, and joy, that, finally, every one of their sons and daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters had survived a culling.

“Yeah, maybe,” Ronon said. “Until the Wraith just started beaming foot soldiers right into the village.”

“Yeah.” John didn’t have to imagine that. He’d seen it happen in person a couple times; he knew how it would have gone.

“You’re okay,” Ronon said. “You’ve probably got some ugly bruises, but I didn’t feel any breaks.”

He didn’t sit back, though; he didn’t move his hands from where they rested, incredibly warm, on the chilled skin of John’s waist. This was always the way it happened – a close call, some kind of near death experience or horrific encounter, plus half a second alone – every time they agreed it wouldn’t, and dammit, shouldn’t happen again, and every time they meant it. Or at least, John meant it. Ronon was part of his team, for God’s sake. Besides being against the rules, it was just a very bad idea.

And if the slide of Ronon’s hand across his stomach would quit reminding him how it felt to have those hands roaming the rest of his body, he’d have no problem at all telling Ronon to knock it off.

He didn’t have to say anything, though. Ronon pulled his hands away then and tugged the coat back up to John’s chin. John immediately, perversely, missed the contact. The rain blew a cold breeze through the doorway that seemed to go right through him; he shuddered and wrapped his good arm across his stomach and told himself he was an idiot.

Ronon had gone to the door. He leaned against the low frame, ducking his head so he could look out at the rain as he switched on his comm to contact Teyla and Rodney.

“It’s about time!”

Rodney’s voice came across loud and clear; John winced and dialed down the volume on his earpiece.

“It’s been hours! What happened? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Ronon said. “Hurt, but he’ll live.”

“Are you sure?" Rodney said. "Wait, is he listening to you? Is he actually dying but you don’t want to come out and say so because he’s listening, so what you just said is actually code for, for, he’s dying?”

“I’m not dying, Rodney,” John said firmly. Unfortunately, his voice came out gravelly and weak.

“Oh right, that sounded very, very, that sounded very convincing,” Rodney said.

“I said he’s fine,” Ronon said. “That means he’s fine.”

John rolled his eyes. Rodney was talking faster than usual, which was saying something, and the words were rattling around in his mouth. John deduced he must be cold.

“Are you guys going to be able to stay warm?” John said.

“Yes, yes, we’re in a cave, and Teyla found some petrified – petrified animal corpses and, and made a fire. It smells horrific, but it’s starting to warm up very nicely, actually.”

“We will be fine, John.” Teyla’s voice was amused, and, thank god, sounded strong. “We felt we should wait until the rain slowed before we made the journey back to the gate. Are you well enough to wait a while?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You go hiking in this rain you’ll just catch pneumonia. Stay put. Stay warm.”

“The two of you stay warm as well. We will contact you again in a while.”

John stifled a sigh out of respect for his aching ribs and looked around for his vest. If he was going to be here a while, aspirin was definitely called for. The vest was laid out with the rest of his wet clothes nearby. He got his arm disentangled from the coat, but he couldn’t reach it.

“Hey, could you,” he said, pointing at the vest. “There’s some aspirin...”

Ronon fished out a couple of packets, tore them open, and dropped the tablets into John’s hand. “The water’s in McKay’s pack.”

“I know.” Swallowing aspirin dry was revolting, but he could do it.

Crouched beside him, Ronon wrapped his arms around his knees, and John thought he saw him shiver.

“Is there anything in here we could burn?” he said.

Ronon looked around. “Maybe. It looks like…there’s a couple of chairs. Some tools with wood handles. And a woven picture, on the wall over there.”

He didn’t move to get any of them, though. And, John realized, he really didn’t want him to, either.

“Or…,” he said, looking around for alternatives.

“Or,” Ronon said, and unfolded, nudging onto the pallet beside John. He started to stretch out against him, careful not to press too close where he knew it would hurt.

So maybe this was the point at which John should object. Cuddling was not, in itself, against the rules, and in cases like this where hypothermia was a real possibility it would generally be encouraged. That could be all that Ronon had in mind, too. On the other hand, John knew what was on his own mind, and that was definitely against the rules.

But Ronon was already beside him, radiating heat, and it really was fucking cold in the little hut. And John couldn’t just take the guy’s coat and then leave him to freeze.

“Or, that works too.” He lifted up the coat and let Ronon burrow in.

Ronon immediately slid his hand beneath John’s t-shirt again and tucked his chin on John’s shoulder. He could feel Ronon’s breath against his neck, and when he let his head fall to the side a little, his cheek brushed Ronon’s brow. He could lay down some boundaries; he could say, okay, anti-hypothermic cuddling is all right, but that’s it.

He really didn’t want to, though. Given everything that hurt, it wasn’t the most comfortable position in the world, but it was so much better than the alternative. He was completely warm, and the strong fingers tracing soothing, tentative designs on his stomach meant he didn’t have to just lay there and listen to the echo of the rain billowing through the vacant, lifeless village.

“Sheppard.” Ronon’s mouth moved against John’s neck just below his ear. “Don’t be stupid and get caught in traps anymore.”

And it wasn’t as though they could do much, with John all banged up like he was.

“Hey, now,” he said. He meant to reach for Ronon’s face, but he got sidetracked by accidentally getting his hand caught under Ronon’s shirt. Not that there was nothing to do under there, though. “That’s entirely unfair. None of us knew about the booby traps until they started attacking me and Teyla – not even you –”

Okay, this really is it, he told himself as Ronon kissed him. Last time. No more. Because, rules. Professionalism. And...stuff.

It would have been easier to believe himself if Ronon hadn’t been so gentle and so damned thorough even with John all banged up like he was.

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From:

helens78

I liked this. :) Any kind of "oh, man, we really shouldn't, but..." fic is a favorite of mine, and I liked the way you worked the challenge -- freezing and cold and muddy all at once! The poor guys.

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