--

"I'll have the lemon chicken." John said, peering at the food selection.

"Oh, very funny Major-"

"Colonel!"

"-as if my life-threatening allergy wasn't bad enough, it's time to tempt fate, isn't it?" Rodney ignored his interruption, instead instructing the woman behind the counter to give him whatever was furthest away from the lemon chicken, and she ought to change her gloves and wash her hands, dammit, was she trying to kill him?

John shrugged and took his food back to the table, where Ronon was contentedly eating a gigantic bowl of fruit salad.

--

The thing was, nobody really believed that Rodney was allergic to citrus. He made sarcastic comments, and John threw lemons at him, and basically it was like a huge, Atlantis-wide joke that everybody got.

Rodney wouldn't get upset. That was the thing.

He'd yell and scream if you handed in a lab report with a spelling or grammatical error, and his face would get purple and his veins would bulge out if you talked back to him, and if you ever every challenged his ideas or questioned his competence, he'd be so livid that John would start clearing people out of the room so they'd have less witnesses at the murder hearing - but Rodney would shrug it off when people stole his dessert, claiming that it included lemon zest.

He'd laugh when someone drew pictures of lemons on yellow post-it notes and left them on his laptop. He avoided the botanists the entire month they were attempting to engineer an orange-apple crossbreed in order to prevent scurvy on one of the more isolated planets. But he didn't yell or scream about it.

He was a good guy like that, he really could take a joke.

After all, it wasn't as if they were trying to kill him.

--

One of the newer members of the Atlantis mission took things too far, though. He - and John didn't really remember the guy's name, he'd been sent back on the Daedalus before it had ever even left the planet, so his stay on Atlantis had totalled about sixteen hours. Regardless, he'd immediately taken a dislike to the Chief Scientific Officer.

They'd needed people to go offworld and the guy had volunteered, so John threw him a P-90 and hauled the lot of them through the gate, where Rodney was already hacking into an Ancient Weapons Outpost and attempting to free the four scientists trapped in the inner section of the core matrix before they were liquified by the radiation.

It was probably a hundred and ten fucking degrees out, sweltering in the shade with a breeze, and Rodney was standing in the full blaring heat of both suns, his neck drenched with sweat, bright red with sunburn and exertion.

The military guys - and gals - were mostly useless in situations like these, but Rodney would occasionally order them around although for the most part, they just hung out with their P-90's and prayed to god that McKay would come up with a miracle, because when it came to situations like this, the marines were pretty fucking certain that God and McKay were the same person, and they'd pray to one or the other, indiscriminately. Back on Earth they'd go to church, confession, all that jazz, but when you were up against aliens in another fucking galaxy, it seemed appropriate to go for the one guy who would always do the impossible.

Lorne had handed McKay his canteen, and Rodney had just downed the whole thing in one go, not missing a single drop. The rest of the guys weren't really in any better condition, but they'd brought water and were sitting in the shade and Rodney was doing all the heavy lifting, here.

Everyone had run out of water and it seemed like the scientists were going to die and then that one asshole, fresh of the Daedalus, had handed McKay his canteen and it almost seemed like they were going to get along after all - Rodney had grabbed it, raised it to his lips, and then he'd paused, his nostrils flaring in sudden outrage.

John could see him, covered in sweat and grime, his shirt soaked through, his hair plastered against his face. Sunburned, exhausted, and flushed with heat and stress, he just put the cap back on the canteen and tossed it back. "Lemonade?" He had hissed, looking about as pissed off as a group of ravenous velociraptors.

He turned back to the console and got the scientists out about fourteen seconds before they would have been cooked by gamma rays.

Nobody mentioned it again, but John sent the guy back on the Daedalus. Nobody needed a joker on a mission like that.

--

Thing was, everyone else kind of picked up on the idea. Lemon candy was sent in care packages, people started drinking honey-lemon tea instead of coffee. John walked into a lab once where Rodney was avidly reading the label on a candy bar, looking disgusted instead of happy.

"What's up?" John asked, leaning against the desk in the way he knew pissed Rodney off to no end.

Rodney didn't seem to notice. he seemed strangely tired. "Natural flavours." He muttered. "What the fuck does that even mean?"

"Okay." John said. He looked at his watch. "It's after midnight, buddy, I think it's time for you to go to bed."

"I hate pineapple." Rodney said in agreement. "It's so hard to tell, sometimes."

"Time for bed, okay?" John managed to muscle him out of the room, manhandle him down the hallway, and shove him into his quarters. "Sleep, McKay."

Rodney just looked at him, bags under his eyes. He was very quiet.

--

Atlantis had gone by for more than three years without having any serious allergic reactions, but then some chef got creative and Rodney was gasping around his salad, his eyes wide, his face flushed. John could see hives over his skin, but that wasn't the worst of it, because Rodney wasn't breathing, he was flopping gently over onto his side.

He felt paralyzed.

Teyla was, in the end, the one who stepped up and calmly produced an epipen from somewhere, popping off the cap and stabbing Rodney in the leg. The medical team took him away, then, and John was left at the table, quietly hyperventillating because one of his friends had almost died, almost died because of a fucking fruit, almost died because some stupid chef hadn't realized that putting mandarin slices on a salad had been a bad fucking idea.

It was just.

Mandarin.

Slices touched lettuce.

And just.

John couldn't think. But. Lettuce? Lettuce and mandarin slices and Rodney had stopped breathing?

It wasn't fair.

--

The next time Rodney had an anaphylactic reaction, he had walked into the mess hall.

That was it.

He walked into the mess hall, past Lorne who had been peeling an orange, past Katie Brown who had been eating a grapefruit with sugar on top like she did for every breakfast, and then he'd paused, right in the middle of the mess hall, and made a weird choking sound.

Ronon had grabbed onto his arm, pulled him away, but Rodney couldn't talk because his tongue was swelling and he had hives and he stopped breathing, stopped moving, and Ronon had given him the epi-pen but he hadn't been able to find a pulse for three minutes, about the same time the med team arrived.

--

Two days in a plastic bubble and Rodney was entirely back to his own self, bitching at the nursing staff and occasionally critiquing literary novels ("Why are you wasting your time on that crap? It's all self-righteous propaganda. Stop it right now and help me finish this house of cards, Ronon.") and once, getting Radek on the radio to discuss his new insights into their naquada generator technology. ("Hey, get Carter on the radio and tell her that she was totally wrong, and next time she wants to do something right she should call me and stop copying inefficient technology from aliens!")

But it didn't really matter that he was his own self, because the second they let him out of his plastic bubble in the infirmary, Rodney immediately took on that tired, hunted look he'd worn for the past few months.

John followed him home, babbling something about inventory and how he'd managed to blow up a rabid squirrel-thing on M8K-R22 and maybe he'd mentioned that he'd gotten ahold of the new Batman movie, because Rodney just waved him into his quarters and then he'd sat down on the corner of the bed and babbled some more until Rodney fell asleep, his breathing soft and easy.

--

Suddenly, it was happening all the time. The kitchen staff cut out all citrus fruit, stopped ordering them and instead managed to come up with some really inventive ways to keep the Atlantis personnell from getting scurvy, but it didn't really help. Half the scientists were used to ordering lime-flavoured jelly bellies and fuzzy peaches and things that had citrus in them, and the ban on citrus food didn't really take.

--

Someone popped a lemon fruit gusher before they used the washroom, and Rodney stopped breathing when he tried to wash his hands. Dr. Parrish found him, a few minutes later, the used Epi-pen on the floor.

--

On the planet with the weird people and the rituals involving waving palm fronds in the direction of the sun every twenty minutes in order to show obsequeince to some deity or the other, Rodney broke out into hives after tasting some meat-in-tomato-sauce thing, and John practically force-fed him Benadryl and loomed around with an epi-pen until Rodney got mad at him and said he'd stab himself in the thigh if he was going to stop breathing, thank you very much.

John loomed a little bit quieter, after that, but he refused to let Rodney out of his sight for a single moment.

--

Tired, exhausted, looking beat, Rodney had stumbled down the hallway towards his quarters and then when he finally arrived, the doors wouldn't open.

He tried to override the lock, but instead he got a quick alert - danger, medical assistance required - and then the door had refused to open. He tried to override the override, and then to hack the system and change the programming - but Atlantis locked him out. Atlantis had never, ever locked him out before, so his feelings were kind of hurt, but every time he got the same message - danger, medical assistance required - and so he finally got up and went to John's room, stumbling in the darkness and then thinking the lights on.

John rolled over, bleary eyed (it was four thirty in the morning) and mumbled something.

"I need sleep too, you know." Rodney said, pushing him over so he had enough room to flop down. "Atlantis won't let me into my room. Don't wake me up until dinner, okay? Actually, wake me up for every meal because I don't want to go into hypoglycaemic shock, but don't make me do anything tomorrow. Also, tell Radek he's an idiot and that I fixed all those calculation errors he tried to hide from me, and if he ever decides to be incompetent again I'm going to make him design a translation matrix and an Ancient Google page so we can search the database properly. Night."

He started to snore, and John finally figured out that Rodney had crawled into his bed because he wanted to go to sleep - and John wanted to go to sleep to, so that was fine - and then he thought off at the lights and resumed dreaming about the high-stakes poker game against the soft-skinned green octopus.

--

Atlantis refused to let Rodney into his room. He finally got Radek to work on it, and the doors opened smoothly, letting him into the room.

Radek looked around and realized that some sick fucker had decorated Rodney's room with slices of oranges, hidden in his bookshelf and under his sheets and one, even, on the floor of the bathtub.

He had everything cleaned six times before Atlantis thought it was safe for Rodney to go back into his quarters.

--

John stopped drinking fruit punch the first time Rodney had taken a sip and then gotten that funny look on his face.

"What's wrong?" He'd asked, but by then it was too late because Rodney was pulling out his epipen - he'd gone through far too many in the past few months - and John had reached over to help him, stabbing through his jeans into the place on his thigh that must be permanently bruised.

Rodney made a choked, sad noise.

John dragged him to the infirmary.They always took to long to respond, anyways.

--

"I'm going back to Earth." Rodney said, the second time that Atlantis locked him out of his room for a dangerous medical reason.

"Whhmm?" John mumbled inarticulately, from his positon on the ground. It took him a few seconds to realize that Rodney had just pushed him out of bed, and that he should totally be pissed off, before the meaning of the words hit him and he sat up, to see Rodney perched on his bed, looking exhausted and pissed off.

"Earth. It's a nice little planet, lots of pollution, assholes everywhere, screaming children covered in ice cream and filth and snot. You'd probably like it, they have helicopters there." Rodney said.

"No." John said. "No, you're staying... here. We need you."

"People hate me." Rodney said, very calm. "And I really like sleep. I like sleep and not fearing for my life if someone accidentally uses the wrong salad dressing, you know? I like not having permanent needle marks and having to be afraid of fruit punch and pineapple. I'm sick of this, John."

"You need sleep." John said, still tired as fuck and wondering why Rodney always felt the need to have these heart-to-hearts at indecent times like three-eighteen in the fucking morning.

"Yes, I need sleep." Rodney agreed. "But I thought... you should know. That I'm resigning."

"No." John said stubbornly.

"Yes." Rodney said.

--

John may have been a bit of an asshole, after that. He refused to let the Daedalus return until they'd brought specific items, one of which was a redheaded voodoo witch doctor from California, who was exactly five foot three.

Where the hell they found her, John didn't know, but he totally didn't regret the additional three weeks that the delay provided him, to convince Rodney to stay.

"I am just sick of this." Rodney said. "I'm used to people forgetting or not beleiving me - I've had so many reactions at restaurants that I normally just don't bother eating out - and I'm used to having lemon poured over every conceivable type of seafood that I can't eat any of it, I can just look longingly because I really, really like shrimp - and I'm used to people not noticing that some of the natural flavouring in candy is orange or lemon or lime or grapefruit or even something unusual like a kumquat."

John wasn't sure what to say.

"I used to hate it, on Earth, that I couldn't eat fruit loops and my sister could, and I couldn't have a margarita or a pina colada or even a screwdriver. I couldn't drink corona even without the lime, I couldn't touch most white wines because they'd add something and I'd have a reaction. I hate not being able to eat what I wanted because I was afraid I'd stop breathing. I was terrified, you know, because I'd sometimes go hours without eating and my brain would stop working, because my blood sugar would be dangerously low. Once I was so messed up I ate a fruit salad because I was going into hypoglycaemic shock, and then I woke up and realized that I was really fucking lucky they hadn't put any citrus in the salad." Rodney continued. "But here, it's worse, okay? People are doing it on purpose. And they believe me, which makes it even worse. I don't care about the pictures or the threats or anything, but when I can't even go to sleep in my own room because someone rubbed a lime on my pillowcase? That's going too far, you know?"

"My room's nicer." John said.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"My room." John pointed around. "It's nicer than yours. Mine's bigger, too."

"Yeah, okay, you have a point." Rodney agreed.

--

John gathered together all of the military personnel. "Our Chief Scientific Officer," he said, loudly. "Is deathly allergic to citrus. And before you decide to think this is funny, let me explain something to you. Doctor McKay is a brilliant fucking astrophysicist, and a brilliant fucking engineer. And, through leaps of brilliance too complicated for me to explain or even understand, he has managed to save our fucking asses too many times to count. He's thrown himself into the line of fire, he's done the impossible too many times to count, and he's taken a hit for us all one time too many. So I'm going to say this exactly once."

He paused. Lorne loomed angrily behind him, in his own supportive way. John took a deep breath. "If any one of you decides to purposely antagonize Dr. McKay about his allergy, in any way that threatens his life, you will be considered guilty of treason. He is our only saviour, and we will die without him. If you so much as eat an orange on this planet, I will feed you to the wraith."

Everyone kind of looked at him. Lorne added, quietly, and with equal amounts of force "And afterwards, we'll tell your families you deserted."

There was a very loud chorus of "Sir, yes, sir!"

--

Radek gave the same speech to the scientists, although whatever threat he used must have been much more intimidating than the wraith, because the scientists were wide-eyed and scared, scurrying through the hallways and ostentatiously eating lots of coffee-flavoured products, which they immediately offered to share with their boss.

--

Rodney decided to stay.

--

The next time John was woken up at an obscene time in the morning, it was because Rodney had just proven one of Radek's theories about minute particles was wrong, wrong, wrong, and he was so right that he was going to write a paper about it and then he was going to steal Radek's Nobel from right under his nose, and he really wanted to gloat about it.

John was wrapped up in his blanket, his arm still clutching the pillow he'd been strangling before Rodney had pushed him off the bed, and then he kind of closed his eyes and tuned it out, because Rodney was excitedly pacing up and down the room, and the look in his eyes was excited and triumphant instead of exhausted and wary, and his hands were moving in broad, hypnotic gestures and John didn't really need to stay awake in order to realize that Rodney was going to be okay.

"Go to sleep, Rodney." He mumbled as he dragged himself back into bed.

"But you haven't heard the best part yet!" Rodney said, bouncing forward on the balls of his feet. "Look, you have to consider it from a four-dimensional point of view. Move over, I'll draw a diagram -"

John may have fallen asleep on Rodney's arm as the other man attempted to explain higher physics to John at four - fifty two in the morning, drawing diagrams with a pink highlighter on the back of an old memo about lettuce and the irrigation ditches on P2K-976, but that was okay. It meant that Rodney was back to normal.

--

Fin