John's voice crackled to life in Teyla's ear. "Give me some good news," he said, voice so quiet that his words were a bit difficult to make out.

"John? Can you speak up?"

She heard a soft sigh. "No, I've finally got him...resting. Don't wanna risk waking him up. He's...not doing so well."

"I can tell."

"What have you been able to hear?" John asked.

Teyla covered her eyes lightly with a palm, trying to fight off her headache. She could only make out specific words when John or Rodney were close to the door, but she had heard Rodney loudly declare himself the "King of science," as well as something about his therapist. She was glad to hear that he was resting, finally. He had sounded...strung out, to say the least.

"I have not been able to hear much," she said.

"He's...have you talked to Beckett at all?"

Teyla nodded slightly, then remembered John couldn't see her. She was quite adept at Atlantis technology by this point, but sometimes when she was over-tired the comms in particular confused her.

"Yes," she said. "I spoke to him at the beginning of the night."

"Rodney's not in danger, right? Not really?"

"Doctor Beckett did not believe so. But Rodney has taken more of the stimulant than he was intended to, and the effects are likely to be quite uncomfortable for some time yet. Beckett also said…."

"What?" John sounded both exhausted and nervous, and she hated hearing it in his voice.

"Beckett said Rodney had been taking the stimulant long enough with no breaks that it was possible that his body had developed a...dependency on it."

"You mean he'll go through withdrawal?" John hissed.

Teyla sighed. "Beckett was not sure. But he said it was possible."

"How's Zelenka coming with getting that door fixed?" John asked.

"I am not sure. I do not believe he has made much progress. I will...visit his lab now, and see if there is anything I can report back to you."

"Alright, thanks Teyla," John said. He paused for a second. "Oh, I need to go, I think he's waking up."

The comms clicked off. Teyla hauled herself to her feet, praying that Zelenka would have some better news.

Rodney did not feel good anymore. For a while, he'd been able to ignore the shakes, and the aching, and the overall feeling that every nerve ending was buzzing slightly at exactly the frequency to set his teeth on edge. He'd pushed it to the back of his mind, taking the clarity that came with the discomfort as a worthwhile tradeoff.

But not now. Rodney didn't feel sharp anymore. He'd really thought he'd had something with the Kate thing, but Sheppard hadn't seemed impressed, and now that Rodney thought about it, he really wasn't sure why it was important. Maybe it wasn't. He couldn't tell, and that was the frightening part.

Rodney shuddered and gave up on rest. He opened his eyes and pushed up himself on the couch, noting fuzzily that his limbs seemed weak and shaky.

"Rodney? I thought you were gonna try to get some sleep." John was standing in front of him, looking both exhausted and very worried. Rodney wondered dimly why he was worried, then realized that it was probably because of him.

"Can't," Rodney said, watching his hand tremble. He flexed it, then closed it into a fist. Either way, it still felt weak and not quite attached to his arm. He didn't like that.

"You sure?" John asked, quietly.

"I don't want to be here anymore," Rodney said, all in a rush. He frowned. He hadn't intended to say that. Still, as the sound echoed again and again inside his skull, he realized it was true.

"Me either," John agreed, still talking in the same quiet tone. All of a sudden, his hand was on Rodney's shoulder, and the new sensory input felt like needles in his skin but Rodney somehow didn't mind.

John squeezed his shoulder slightly and continued speaking. "Think you can get the door open?"

That was an excellent question. Rodney started to stand, but his shaky legs gave way suddenly beneath him and dumped him back onto the sofa. He felt...wrong, horribly wrong, like he was too hot and too cold all at once. Like his skin wasn't made of skin anymore. Like time wasn't going forwards, but was instead going sideways, spreading out beneath him.

He took a deep, uneven breath. It didn't help. His lungs couldn't seem to expand all the way.

"I...I don't know that I can," he said breathlessly. He let his eyes slip closed. The world was starting to spin unpleasantly around him. He...he had to be imagining that, right? What if the solar flare had...done something to Atlantis, something Rodney hadn't noticed before. And now it really was spinning, and Rodney was the only one who noticed, and Rodney was going to die, and John was going to die….

He realized his breathing had sped up a little, which wasn't helping any. He was getting a little lightheaded, which...wasn't good. He didn't think it was good. But maybe he had been lightheaded the whole time. It was hard to be certain. Maybe he wasn't even real.

There was a hand on his shoulder again. John's voice. "Hey, Rodney, breathe, come on."

"The door," he whispered, "and it's...spinning…."

"Zelenka can fix the door," John said, and Rodney held onto the sound of John's voice like it was a lifeline. "Lie back down."

Rodney did as he was told, letting John help arrange his trembling frame on the sofa, and as he did so, he realized he was starting to get horribly nauseous. Probably from all the spinning. Maybe from all the stimulant he'd ingested. He swallowed uncomfortably.

"Are you cold?" John asked. He didn't sound too worried, but...a little. That made Rodney's heart start to beat faster again.

Rodney thought about the question. He wasn't exactly sure if he was cold. It was possible that he was very very hot. But then again, he was shaking pretty hard. He nodded his head slightly without opening his eyes. He thought if he had to open his eyes and look at the spinning room again he would vomit.

"Okay," John said. "Okay. I'm going to...find you a blanket."

The sound of rustling. It hurt Rodney's ears. He tried to keep breathing deeply. Eventually, Rodney heard John return, and something was draped over him. It was warmer, certainly, and Rodney was grateful.

"Better?" John asked, and Rodney nodded. He cracked open an eye, trying to thank John with a glance rather than words, and immediately regretted it.

Before Rodney could manage to warn John, or even fully realize what was about to happen, the dizziness spiked and he was emptying the contents of his stomach over the side of the couch. At this point, that was mainly only coffee and stimulants.

"Fuck. Okay, it's okay, Rodney. Umm…."

Rodney squeezed his eyes shut and retched again, dimly registering John's hand on his shoulder.

"You're okay," John told him, and Rodney wasn't sure if the uncertainty in his voice was really there, or if it was in Rodney's imagination. Rodney wasn't sure of much of anything, anymore.

John gave Rodney's shoulder an awkward pat. Rodney didn't respond, just continued to lie with his head hanging over the edge of the couch, panting weakly.

"You done, buddy?"

Rodney made a miserable sort of sound that could loosely be interpreted as a yes. John sighed and tugged at his jacket, trying to get it to cover Rodney's torso a bit more. Rodney still didn't move.

"We gotta get out of here," John muttered to himself.

"Yep," Rodney mumbled, then groaned and closed his eyes again. "Don't like this."

"Of course you don't," John told him. "That's what happens when you overdose."

"Mmff." That, more than anything else, worried John. If Rodney wasn't rising to the challenge to his ego, he must really be feeling sick.

John tapped his earpiece. "Teyla, has Zelenka made any progress?"

He must have caught her while she was in the lab, because John heard her muffled voice asking a soft question on the other side.

"Zelenka has told me to report to you that Rodney is an idiot." She paused, and John heard the faint sound of Zelenka's voice in the background. "And that you should tell him."

John sighed. "That's a no, then?"

"He believes Rodney has...broken the mechanism. He is not sure it can be fixed."

"Great," John said, regretting the sarcasm instantly. It was neither Teyla nor Zelenka's fault that Rodney had decided to destroy Ancient technology in a desperate bid to win over his therapist. "Tell him thanks."

"I will update you if I find out more," Teyla said. The comms disconnected.

"Alright," John said, half to Rodney and half to himself. "We need to...get you out of here. Looks like it's up to us."

Rodney didn't respond. It was unclear if he had heard. He seemed focused on trying to keep from vomiting again.

John thought Rodney had probably crossed the line into withdrawal, and he knew the time for action was now. He didn't want to keep Rodney trapped in the lab, just waiting to see if he got worse. He wanted Rodney to be under Carson's care, and sooner rather than later.

John already had a plan starting to take shape in his mind, and he knew that it was not a plan that Carson would like. He took a deep breath.

"Rodney," John asked, waiting a beat while Rodney's eyes slowly focused on him. "I think I might...know a way that we can get out of this room."

"What is it?" Rodney croaked, voice raw from the vomiting and weak from whatever the drugs were doing to his system.

"We're going to blow the door open. We need to build a bomb."

Rodney lay on the couch shivering, trying not to engage too much with what John was doing unless the Colonel directly asked him a question. He still felt sick, and generally just...wrong. He had protested John's bomb, but it was mostly just a token complaint at this point. John had said he thought Rodney was probably withdrawing from the stimulants, and needed to see Carson as soon as possible. Rodney hated to agree with any sort of plan that involved part of his lab being blown up, but he had to admit that John was probably right. He needed help. And since he had, in his infinite wisdom, destroyed the door, he couldn't really think of another way that he was likely to get it.

"Can you think of anything I can use to hold these wires in place, I can't find-"

"I'm not an electrical engineer," Rodney grumbled. His head hurt, his stomach hurt, opening his eyes made him feel like he was being wounded by the dim overhead lights. He wanted John to just shut up and solve this problem on his own.

"This isn't an electrical problem, it's definitely a mechanical one," John said, but he didn't follow it up with any further questions so Rodney figured he was off the hook. A few moments later, he heard the sound of rustling.

"Got it," John said. Rodney didn't move. He hoped he wouldn't have to. Maybe, whatever bomb John had made was a small one, and it would nicely blow a hole in the door and Rodney would be perfectly fine all the way over here….

"Can you get behind the couch?" John asked from by the door. "This is gonna be big."

Of course Sheppard wasn't going to make a small bomb. Rodney should have guessed.

Rodney shook his head, just slightly enough to stave off nausea. "Attached to the wall."

"Course it is," John said, sighing heavily. "Okay, try to kinda hide in the corner between it and the wall?"

Rodney tried. Really, he did. But no matter how hard he thought about moving, his limbs didn't seem to want to cooperate. And after a few seconds of concentration, both his nausea and his headache spiked and Rodney groaned.

"Okay," John said, and Rodney heard him cross the room again and then John was helping him sit up, supporting his exhausted muscles as he helped slide Rodney to the floor.

Rodney collapsed into a heap facing the wall, moaning as his head bounced gently off the hard tiles.

"Sorry, Rodney," John said quietly, sounding surprisingly sincere. "We're almost out of here. Keep your head down."

And before Rodney had time to raise any further concerns about the bomb, before he really even processed what was happening, John was gone. Footsteps crossed the room, and then there was a pause. Was it Rodney's imagination, or had he actually heard John's lighter click open?

"Fire in the hole!"

One. John sprinted back across the lab as fast as he could, wishing the room was bigger, wishing that he'd had more to work with, wishing he'd been able to work something out with a timer, or a detonator, or anything but the short fuse he'd had to rely on.

Two. He'd managed to give himself about five seconds, and even that was a luxury.

Three. The count in his head was going faster than he'd expected, or maybe the lab was bigger than he'd given it credit for. Either way, he had more ground to cover and he was running out of time.

Four. John had to make it to Rodney, he wasn't sure how far the debris would reach and Rodney was in no condition for any additional injury. He was trying to rescue Rodney, not blow him up. He was almost there, just a few more steps-

Five. John leapt.

The blast caught him in the small of the back, hurling him forward. John's forehead bounced off the back wall of the lab, and he crumpled, instinctively curling in on himself. In the process, he somehow managed to block Rodney from the worst of the blast. For a long few seconds, he just stayed as still as he could as debris rained down around him, trying to keep Rodney safe. Aches and pains prickled over his skin, but he wouldn't be able to tell if he were seriously injured until he was able to move around. He could feel the heat from the explosion on his back, but until he felt safe enough to open his eyes and turn his head, he also wouldn't be able to tell if the lab was on fire.

"Is that-" Rodney stirred slightly beneath John, and trailed off without finishing his sentence. He sounded weak and exhausted.

John tried to quiet his breathing, and spent a moment listening for the sound of rubble hitting the ground. Everything was - more or less - quiet. John felt that it was safe to pick his head up and look around, still keeping one hand on Rodney's shoulder, whether to comfort him or keep him in place even John wasn't sure.

The plan had...worked seemed like a rather strong word, although that was more a fault of the plan itself than its execution. The lab was in ruins, although John had no doubt that Rodney would somehow find a way to repair it, given time. Computers and other equipment lay strewn across the floor, some shattered, some blackened and bubbling, some still smoking slightly. The air was hazy with smoke, and John's lungs contracted unhappily. However, nothing appeared to be actively on fire, so he supposed he should count himself lucky.

The door had a hole in it that seemed perfectly human-sized, once the twisted edges of metal cooled down enough to touch. Teyla's worried face peeked through - she must have returned from Zelenka's lab just in time for the explosion. John gave her a sheepish smile, although he wasn't sure she could see it through all the smog.

"John?" she called. "Are you...alright? What has happened?"

"I just made a little bomb," John said, getting slowly to his feet. Everything hurt, but no pain seemed sharper than the rest. He supposed that was a good sign. He would be sore for a few days, but that he could handle.

"You...you caused this?" Teyla asked tentatively, staring around at the smoking wreckage of the lab.

"Yeah," John said unselfconsciously. "You heard Zelenka, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get the door open. And I had to get Rodney out. He-"

John trailed off, reaching a hand down to Rodney. "Hey," he said gently, ignoring Teyla for the time being. "How are you doing? Are you alright? It's time to get you out of here."

Rodney appeared relatively unscathed. He was still pale, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, but there was no obvious blood or broken limbs.

"Am I dead?" he asked, blinking rapidly. Usually, this would just be a typical McKay complaint, but for all John knew, Rodney was actually out of it enough for it to be unclear.

"Nope," John informed him. "There was a teensy little explosion. But, hey, I fixed the door...well, sort of."

Rodney didn't really seem to process John's words. He glanced around the smoking ruins of the lab, finally landing on John's face. His eyes widened, although at this point it was hard for John to tell.

"Are you dead?"

John followed Rodney's sightline to his forehead and touched his fingers to his temple. It was aching from his impact with the wall, but John hadn't noticed anything more than that. They came away red, and Rodney looked even more panicked.

"I'm not dead either, McKay. It's not bad. I bet I don't even need stitches."

Rodney looked like he was about to protest, or cry, or possibly faint. John didn't love any of those options, and he hurriedly cleared his throat.

"Let's get out of here, huh, buddy?" John closed his hand around Rodney's and hauled him to his feet, steadying him as he swayed. Together, they made their way through the blackened machinery to the doorway.

Rodney sat and shivered miserably, trying to tune out the angry Scotsman scolding him.

"Really, Rodney, I warned you. This is a powerful stimulant, and the dosage I gave you was very strict, and you-"

"I know," Rodney interrupted wearily. "You've been telling me for the past thirty minutes."

Cason rolled his eyes and turned back to fiddling with Rodney's IV. Rodney felt much better now than he had thirty minutes ago, seeing as how he didn't really even remember the journey to the infirmary. Teyla had John had had to support him for the last leg, something which Rodney thought was slightly embarrassing and didn't want to think too hard about. Luckily, once Carson had Rodney settled on a bed, he had immediately sent Teyla back to her room to get some sleep. Unfortunately, John had had to stick around to get his head fixed or something.

"Lay back now," Carson instructed him. "I've got you on fluids, and I'll monitor your life signs. Other than that, the only thing left is for you to finally get some sleep."

As horrible as Rodney felt, shaky, drained, and freezing, he still didn't feel tired.

"Rodney-" Carson sounded so exhausted that it almost made Rodney sleepy. Almost.

"I'll try," Rodney said grudgingly, letting his head fall back onto the pillow and groaning as every single one of his muscles protested. He felt like he'd been hit by a cement roller, or possibly gone a few rounds with Teyla. Muscle groups that he hadn't even been aware of were aching.

"How is he?"

Rodney cracked an eye open to see John sidle past Carson and slump into a chair. There was a cut on his forehead, neatly closed with a few butterfly bandages. Rodney frowned. He vaguely remembered….

"You blew up my lab."

"You're welcome," John retorted. "Now your heart isn't beating three times as fast as normal and you can go to sleep. Finally."

Rodney wanted to sleep. Really, he did. But every nerve ending in his body still felt like a live wire, and sleep felt a million miles away.

"Colonel, if that cut's all taken care of, Rodney needs to get some sleep now," Carson said, finally finishing whatever he was doing with the IV and hovering by the doorway.

"I can't," Rodney protested, frustration building inside him. Sheppard was going to leave, and so was Carson, and Rodney would be miserable and alone and unable to sleep and all of a sudden that sounded worse than being trapped in the lab.

"I think I'll stick around," John said, sinking deeper into the chair. "Til he's asleep, anyway. I figure he'll be totally out, maybe I can draw a moustache or something-"

"None of that," Carson said firmly, but he was smiling, and Rodney was still a bit too out of it to fully follow what was happening but he thought Sheppard might have just done something nice for him.

"Try to sleep, Rodney." With that, Carson vanished, and Rodney was left with the distinct impression that he should be thanking John.

"Sheppard-"

John was already asleep, draped uncomfortably over the arm of the chair, and quietly snoring. So much for that. Rodney smirked slightly, and closed his eyes. Much to his surprise, he found himself drifting off.