It’s night when he wakes up, nowhere near morning, and Sheppard is sitting in his desk chair. A sleek black shape in the muted light of two moons through the window, hands empty on the armrests, simply watching him. Rodney can see the glint of sharp eyes in the shadows, even if it’s too dark to read their expression.
He makes a move to push himself up, but thankfully he remembers his injured hands before he presses palms to mattress, and just stays where he is. Not moving will cause a significantly smaller amount of excruciating pain, overall.
"I’d ask how long you’ve been sitting there, but I suspect the answer would creep me out."
Sheppard shrugs, the motion sending shadows fluttering across the room.
"Keller filled me in on your day when I got back from the mainland with the geologists. You were out cold by the time I got here."
Probably hours, then, unless the geologists have started doing nightshifts. And that should creep him out a lot more than it does, he’s pretty sure of that, but he’s slept so many nights over the last few years with Sheppard keeping watch; what does it really matter if this time it’s in his own room and not in some godforsaken alien wilderness where he‘s likely to be eaten by terrifying fauna? Besides, perhaps he shouldn’t be creeped out at all, considering some of the more recent developments in their relationship. Maybe this is something they do now. Whatever this is.
"Did you want me for anything that can’t wait till morning? Because I know I’m indispensable, but right now I doubt I could get as far as the door without keeling over in an embarrassing heap of aching muscles. Saving the day is all well and good, but remind me that in future I should restrict myself to doing it with my brain - fewer bruises that way."
Sheppard shifts in the chair, his hair enacting a shadow play of the absurd on the wall behind him when he tilts his head.
"Keller wouldn’t have let you out of the infirmary if she didn’t think you’d be all right."
"Tell that to my hands. ‘All right’ is a relative term when you’ve had all three layers of your skin flayed open."
"Yeah," Sheppard says, getting to his feet. It’s a smooth movement, silent and almost predatory in the blue-tinted darkness. He looks very tall, standing there at the foot of Rodney’s bed. "I figured I could help keep your mind off that."
Maybe it’s all the painkillers he convinced Keller to give him that are slowing his brain functions, because at first he doesn’t get it. Then his gaze falls on Sheppard’s hands, unbuttoning his shirt, and he does.
Which, yes, wow. But also, no.
"Waitwaitwait," he says, holding up his bandaged hands. "Severely disabled here, remember?" He wiggles his hands for emphasis and a dull burn slithers up the muscles of his forearms. "It’s not like I can, you know, do anything."
Sheppard shirks his shirt, steps out of his unlaced boots as it drifts to the floor behind him.
"That’s okay," he says. "You’re not going to touch me."
"I’m not?"
Sheppard pulls his t-shirt over his head, a long, slow stretch of his body, and suddenly there’s all this naked skin. It’s entirely possible that Rodney’s eyes have gone ridiculously wide.
"Nope."
The t-shirt joins the shirt on the floor. Sheppard’s thumb flicks open the button on his BDUs.
"That’s, well, okay, yes, but for your information, monosyllabic negatives still don‘t count as explanations, no matter how cool you are, and…" There’s a twist-shimmy-thing that happens with Sheppard’s hips, and then his pants and underwear are gone, too. His cock isn’t hard yet, but it looks heavy, weighted with anticipation. "…and I’m really not a hands-off kind of guy, you know that, right? You seemed to know that yesterday morning. In fact, you seemed intent on encouraging it, with all those…"
"McKay?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
"Yes, right, shutting up. I can do that."
Sheppard rolls his eyes at him - given the light conditions, it shouldn’t be so easy to pinpoint that expression, but it is - and gets on the bed. Crawling up the mattress on all fours like some mesmerizingly deadly animal, one leg on either side of Rodney’s body, stripping the covers away before him as he goes, until Rodney is lying there naked with Sheppard hovering above him. They’re face to face, but Sheppard’s eyes are fixed somewhere on his chest, and all Rodney can see of them are the perfect fans of half-lowered lashes.
Sheppard’s hand comes up, his fingertips tracing an oddly irregular line across Rodney’s collar bone, down his left pectoral. The caress is feather-light, barely there at all. It’s the only point where they’re actually touching.
"You don’t usually sleep in the buff," Sheppard says. His tone is conversational, but there’s something off about it, something strained.
"Yes, like you can do that here, where some people will barge in on you with 3 a.m. emergencies five nights out of ten. Not to mention how I’m not all that partial to the idea of leaping naked from my bed when the Wraith inevitably try to take the city again. A man needs to preserve some shred of dignity. But the feat of somehow getting into a new set of clothes after I’d miraculously managed to clean up without ruining my bandages seemed a bit beyond me tonight."
Sheppard’s fingers slide slowly back up the same path, the softness of the touch near hypnotic. When Rodney breathes in, his chest presses up into it; when he breathes out, he has to focus to hold on to it.
"The Wraith are not going to beam down into your bedroom without warning, McKay. We do have sensors. And whatever your ego might tell you, it’s not exactly the most strategically valuable spot."
"Yes, and that’s why the city’s military commander has spent the last few hours on watch here."
Sheppard’s hand stills, but he doesn’t look up from where it not quite rests against Rodney’s skin.
"Rodney. What happened to shutting up?"
"Yes, well, bad plan. I can’t not touch you and shut up at the same time, that’s just cruel and unusual. Especially when you’re doing…" Sheppard’s fingers are moving again, trailing along that peculiar, asymmetrical line, and Rodney lifts his head from the pillow to get a look at what’s actually going on. "…whatever it is you’re… Oh."
Oh.
On the upper left side of his chest, a massive, vicious-looking bruise has bloomed over night, its dark color brutal against his pale skin. Sheppard’s fingers are carefully, meticulously tracing out its contours.
He’s never wanted to just reach out and grab Sheppard more in all the years he’s known him, and it’s like a stab somewhere deep inside that he can’t.
"John." Sheppard has ducked his head just that little bit further, so that the only thing visible is his mess of impossible hair. Rodney’s hands hover ineffectually in the air above it, wanting to latch hold. Clearly not knowing what’s good for them. "You know, surprisingly enough, there are actually places on my body that aren’t burnt and bruised, and my face happens to be one of them. And if you don’t come up here and kiss me, oh, let’s say, right now, I’m going to have to try and make you, and considering the shape I’m in, that will lead to multiple varieties of unbearable pain, and completely justified manly screaming, and I don’t think that’s what you…"
Sheppard looks up then, straight into his eyes, fingers settling on his lips. The gesture is commanding, but the touch is a delicate caress. The sheer volume of what he sees in Sheppard’s gaze knocks the air out of Rodney’s lungs.
"Okay," Sheppard says. "We’re back to shutting up now."
His lips replace his fingers on Rodney’s mouth.
The kiss isn’t delicate at all. It’s hungry and forceful and searching, searing in a way that slices deeper than the rope. Rodney opens up to it, turns it back. Tries to make it give all the reassurance that his battered body can’t. It hurts to keep his arms up, but his loosely curled fists have somehow ended up on Sheppard’s shoulders, resting there. It’s an awkward embrace, and his fingers itch with frustration at not being allowed to dig in, but at least he’s touching Sheppard, even if it’s mostly through several layers of gauze. And Sheppard might think he doesn’t need that, but he’s always been an idiot.
Eventually, the kiss lets up. Sheppard’s lips soften, and though his mouth on Rodney’s is still dizzyingly possessive, the harsh aggression seeps away, little by little. They kiss, and keep kissing, until the warmth of Sheppard’s naked body feels as palpable around him as if they were lying skin to skin. The noises he makes around Sheppard’s tongue sound ragged and needy to his own ears, pleading, and he wants nothing so much as to flip them over, rub himself all over the hard planes of Sheppard’s muscled frame. He can hear a matching need in the rough rhythm of Sheppard’s breathing, and then Sheppard breaks the kiss, his lips trailing down the side of Rodney’s neck, his tongue tracing soft patterns along his collar bone, sliding lower.
And yes, definitely, he can see where this is heading, and his body likes the destination, always does, but Sheppard is licking ever so lightly, almost reverently, along that same path from before, and he’s moving away, and soon Rodney won’t be able to hold him, however awkwardly, won’t be able to see his face.
"Nonono, you don’t," he says, and he wants to yank Sheppard back up, but if he can’t do that, at least he can unfold his hands, lay his palms almost flat against Sheppard’s back, even if he has to bite down against the sting of it. Sheppard grows absolutely still under his touch. "Stay," he says.
Sheppard looks up at him, lifts a hand to run it up Rodney’s forearm, circle Rodney’s bandaged wrist, thumb rubbing gently over the pulse-point.
"You really suck at following orders," he says. "Now what happened to not touching me?"
"I only follow orders that make sense. And now would really be a good time to get on with the part where you touch me."
Sheppard makes an exasperated face, but Rodney feels the corner of his mouth twitch against his skin as he presses a kiss to the hollow of his throat.
"I was going to blow you," Sheppard says. "Make this easy on you."
"Yes, well, here we are, on an alien planet in another galaxy, embroiled in a war with creatures that want to eat us, and I’m in bed with you. I know you’re a bit slow on the uptake, but what on earth made you think I’d want easy?"
There’s a sharp nip of teeth as Sheppard bites him, then a shiver of heat as he soothes the spot with his tongue.
"I’ll remember you said that," Sheppard says, and moves.
Shifts his legs somehow, lowers his hips, and then his hard cock bumps against Rodney’s and the rush of pleasure makes the ache in Rodney's muscles and the burn in his palms seem suddenly distant, eclipsed by lust. Rodney lets out a sound that could be a moan but is probably more like a whimper, and Sheppard squeezes his wrist, once, firm and reassuring, before moving his hand down between them.
Sheppard’s cock pressed against his, Sheppard’s hand around both of them, Sheppard all around him, shaping the air in all the places where their bodies don’t touch, and he’s got his arms around Sheppard, because Sheppard is an idiot and Rodney doesn’t know how not to hold on to him. When Sheppard comes, a heartbeat before he does, he’s looking at Rodney’s face, not at the bruises covering his skin, and his eyes are blindingly bright in the moonlight.
Afterwards, Sheppard collapses on his side next to Rodney on the mattress, carefully stretching his legs out, pulling the covers up over both of them. He’s probably going to ache in the morning, too, after holding himself up like that, which is ridiculous enough to make Rodney smile. It’s not as if they actually need more cripples around the place at the moment.
Sheppard’s body doesn’t touch him, which is a bit of a feat in the narrow bed, but his hand settles over Rodney’s where it’s resting on his stomach.
"So," he says, "you really built a cannon?"
Rodney rolls his eyes at the ceiling. Trust Sheppard to home in on the part of his near-death experience that involved projectile weapons.
"I’ve built nuclear bombs right in front of you, and you doubt that I could build a cannon?"
"Nah, I was just thinking… I let you go off-world without me one time, and I miss out on all the cool stuff."
"Yes, because ‘cool’ is the word you’d use to describe the experience of falling thirty feet through a hole in the ground and nearly breaking your back. Must be such a disappointment for you to miss out on that. Maybe you should consider never letting me out of your sight again."
Sheppard’s hand tightens around his.
"Believe me," he says, "I am."
"Control freak," Rodney says. "Go to sleep."
He shifts closer, until he feels Sheppard’s face against his shoulder, and closes his eyes. Maybe tomorrow, if he manages to get out of bed, he’ll have a look around for things he could use to build Sheppard a cannon. Sick leave has to be good for something.
