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"We have to do *what*?" When Rodney shrieked like that, he sounded just like a girl. If they got off this planet alive, John was going to milk that for all it was worth at the debriefing.
"The temperature's dropping fast, and we have to get out of the wind. There's no kind of shelter around here, so we're going to dig a cave in a snow drift."
"A cave! This is your brilliant idea! A cave made of *snow*. How the fuck do you build a cave out of snow?" Rodney scrubbed snow out of his face with his glove-covered hand.
"You were stationed in Antarctica. Didn't you go through the survival training?"
"I was a little busy advancing the sum total of human knowledge by figuring out how to travel to another galaxy so I could *die* in a *snow cave*."
"Rodney. Shut the hell up and help me look for a hill or something." It was almost impossible to see anything, with the blizzard howling around them. It had appeared with no warning at all, cutting them off from Teyla and Ronon and the village they'd been visiting. Next time, John thought, he was sending the two of them to do the exploring, and he would stay inside drinking the local equivalent of a hot toddy.
"There!" Rodney yelled over the noise of the wind, pointing at a shape about twenty feet away. They fought their way over to it, tramping through the knee-deep snow.
"Yeah, that'll work. Start digging."
It took them about twenty minutes to make a hole deep enough for both of them, and another five to convince Rodney that the roof wouldn't come down on them, nor would they suffocate. John climbed into the hole, scooted around so he was lying on his side, and helped Rodney climb in. Inside, it was still freezing, but at least they were out of the wind. Rodney shivered next to him, and John inched closer. "You'll warm up in a few minutes."
Rodney shook his head and thumped it into John's shoulder. "It's not that. It's just...this is a really small snow cave, and I'm trying very hard not to think about the fact that the ceiling is about six inches from my head."
"So don't think about it."
"Thank you so much. If denial were an effective cure for claustrophobia, don't you think I would have tried it by now?"
"I meant you should think about something else, Rodney."
"I can't. God, I can't." His breath was getting faster, and John could tell he was actually on his way to a genuine panic attack. And if he panicked, he might decide he had to get out of the cave, blizzard or no blizzard, and then John would have to stop him, and everything would go to hell.
So instead, he pushed Rodney back against the wall of the cave and kissed him. Rodney let out a startled little "mmf!" and shoved him away.
"Now? Now is when you choose to make a pass at me, when we're trapped outside on the planet that summer forgot, crammed into a snow cave the size of a *coffin*?"
"Well...yeah," John said.
"Your timing *sucks*." He lunged forward and kissed John again. Their foreheads bumped together, and John started reconsidering this whole plan, but then Rodney's mouth softened and opened, and his hand was warm on John's cheek. Tongues got involved, and the kiss got hotter until Rodney was breathing heavy for a whole new reason.
"You know," Rodney said, sucking on John's earlobe, "I would climb on top of you if we had any room to move."
"See?" John said. "Now you're thinking about something else."