Ficlet: And Time

[trinityofone]

dar_jeeling was saying that the Wraith aren’t very scary. She’s right; they’re not. But they should be.

Title: And Time
Rating: PG
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Length: 525 words
Summary: It’s only a second.

And Time

It’s only a second. Less than. A little pinch, any actual pain subsumed by fear, and by the rapid flurry of movement: Sheppard’s strong hands, Sheppard’s set mouth, Sheppard pulling the trigger again and again until the Wraith is little more than a stain on the ground.

Rodney touches his chest, and his hand comes away wet.

“It...i-it...” he says, and Sheppard catches him as he falls.

*

Sheppard waits with him in the infirmary, sits beside him as Beckett walks off frowning and comes back smiling, shocked into laughter by his relief. “It’s nothing,” Carson says.

“Nothing?” echoes Rodney.

“Nothing,” breathes Sheppard, hand a steady weight against his arm.

He feels light-headed when he stands, but then that’s adrenaline for you.

*

Walking Rodney back to his room, Sheppard says, “I’m sorry.”

Rodney’s still a little out of it, either coming up or coming down. Not sure which. “Sorry?” he says. “Why are you sorry? Don’t be sorry, you saved me. Colonel, you--oh, God,” because that’s when it truly sinks in, how close he came, what that second meant. What another one would have. Or another.

He gropes at the wall, finds Sheppard’s hand. Stares up into his hooded eyes, the shadows there. Hears him whisper, “But I let it get you, first.”

When they come together, it’s not especially good or hot or even all that nice. It’s frantic and desperate, and as vital to them as breathing.

*

Rodney can’t sleep. Can’t, doesn’t want to: it’s all tied together in an illogical conviction that going to sleep will be like giving up. Will be mind and body slowing down, even as time marches onward, onward, inexorably on--

“Shh,” John whispers, “it’s all right, you’re all right.”

Rodney swallows, rolls to face him. “Whole?” he says.

John splays a hand lightly across Rodney’s naked chest. “There’s no hole,” he says. “You’re fine.” He didn’t even need a bandage.

Rodney pushes himself up. “I should--”

John shakes his head. “You don’t have to do anything. Just rest.” A breath, a heartbeat. “I’ll stay.”

“Okay,” Rodney says. “Okay.” Moves his head into the hollow of John’s shoulder; eagerly accepts the arms around his back. Allows himself to be lulled by John’s breathing, the easy push of air through lungs that will expand and contract, expand and contract, tasting the breeze on a thousand different planets for decades still to come.

Finally, his own breathing slows. He sleeps.

*

John caresses Rodney’s face like a blind man, reading lips and chin and oddly delicate lashes like a book of raised letters, coded messages conveyed to fingers educated enough to know. He tries to blink away the image of the Wraith leaning in, that single second of contact in which Rodney’s eyes went wide, but John’s heart was the one that stopped.

Fingers threaded through the thin thatch of Rodney’s hair, one arm thrown casual-tight around his waist. In the dark, John thinks bold thoughts about never letting go.

When he finds the grey hair, he tries to tell himself it’s just a trick of the light. A little pinch; a second only, and then it’s gone.

Comments

[wychwood]

I like that. Nice atmosphere to it.

People have said to me that the Wraith aren't scary; on the whole, I tend to agree - but I never doubted that the people in Atlantis thought they were scary, and that does enough for me. It's less convincing this season, but back in S1 when they first found out what the Wraith were? I really bought into their terror. And in The Siege, too.

This for me summons up that same sense of terror, the realisation of how horrible it really is, sucking out someone's life...

I like the way the language echoes, too, from the start to the end - a little pinch, just a second...