Advantage by resonant, commentary by ladyvyola 2/2
Title: Advantage
Author: resonant8
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: ladyvyola
Part 1
They couldn't go out on missions, but it turned out that a mission came to them. A loud and scary one with screaming children, which was the very worst kind, and, OK, maybe it was an improvement not having anybody chasing after them trying to shoot them or suck out their life force, but on the other hand, they couldn't get out of this one just by running for the gate.
The shouting of Jinto and the two other half-grown idiots who needed rescuing came over the comm like it was inside Rodney's own head, and the more harnesses and failsafes they strapped on him, the less safe he felt. Wait, what? Rodney's strapping in? Tell me more.
"Are you sure, now," Carson said in a shaky voice, "that you can't take Rodney along as a backup pilot and let me be the one to override the safety on the environmental control system?"
"No time," Sheppard said. "Come on."
"Believe me," Rodney said over his shoulder as he hurried after Sheppard and went on tightening straps across his chest, "I'd rather be in a nice safe jumper than dangling from the few remaining bits of the Level 12 bridge. But the sad fact is that I've got the best chance of getting the air vent open before the rest of the floor collapses under them." Oooo, well done. Just a few paragraphs and I not only understand the crisis but also why this solution makes sense. It's also cool that the whole rescue occurs off-camera. We only get to hear bits and pieces of it. Our focus is all on Rodney -- even though the whole scene is Rodney's POV, Res manages to make us, the readers, play the part of John Sheppard.
Carson and Rodney babbled when they were scared, and Teyla and Ford dropped into their two cultures' different versions of warrior readiness. Sheppard just clammed up and hurled the jumper up out of the bay in total silence.
"Look, Major," Rodney said. "You can't be worrying about me, so I, I order you to go get those kids out of the tower, OK? I'm your second priority until they're out -- is this working at all?"
"Can't tell yet."
"You can fight it for an hour," Rodney said. "I want you to." He wanted those kids alive, and he really, really didn't want to have them and Sheppard on his conscience, to be the one responsible for spoiling Sheppard's concentration. Nightmares forever. Damn it, this slave-owner thing was a lot of responsibility. That's exactly what I've been saying!
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"Sure you're OK?" Sheppard shouted out the open door of the hovering jumper. The tower was canted over in an eleven-o'clock position, and the environmental controls, which had once been easily accessible by a person standing on the bridge, were now in the middle of the downward face of a sheer, leaning wall.
Rodney's fingers were shaking so badly they slipped, and slipped again. Sheppard's expression was frantic. Any second now he was going to leave Carson in charge of hovering the jumper, which would be -- there! On the third try he finally got the last strap attached to the pipe overhead with a satisfying click. He tugged it to be sure. "It's fine!" he shouted over the noise of the wind. "Go!"
Sheppard gave him a longing look -- it was like sending away a dog that loved you -- and then the jumper door slid shut and the whole big unwieldy thing lifted away without stirring the slightest breath of air, and surely the people who made that could be trusted to have made an emergency remote override that Rodney could figure out.
When he leaned back gingerly against the harness, bracing himself with his feet against the wall, the jumper actually paused in mid-air, in violation of numerous laws of physics. Rodney could imagine Sheppard, desperately torn, the virus compelling him to come back and keep Rodney safe and Rodney's own order compelling him to go on. He leaned back hard, heart in his throat. The harness held.
"It's fine," he said out loud, and the jumper moved again, hesitantly. "It's fine. Go on. You know what you need to do." It soared away upward.
Okay, this is about as traumatic a set-up as I can imagine. You know that amusement park ride with the individual swings on long chains that spin around and gradually the whole thing lifts and tilts and you go swinging around in an elliptical path and the jerk ahead of you keeps twisting his seat around and you just know you're going to be the one to come loose and plummet to the ground or maybe just swing out of control and fall out of the harness and plummet to the ground -- I actually ride that ride but it's just on the edge of my thrill-to-panic ratio. But enough about my issues.
Prying off the cover of the environmental control system required a sickening yank with no way to stabilize his center of gravity. "It's fine, it's fine, it's fine," he muttered, no longer sure whether he was talking to Sheppard or to himself. The cover slipped out of his hands and fell, and he did not, did not look down, but for a while he listened to see if he could hear it hitting. "I'm fine. Go on. I'm fine," he said, and wiped his hands on his pants, and concentrated on the panel of crystals.
Warning: Abuse of the word "fine" ahead. I like the idea of Rodney chanting it like a mantra, teeth clenched, the word losing all meaning.
The first six configurations apparently did nothing at all. After the second one, it occurred to him that his muttering was probably getting on everybody's nerves as much as the kids' crying was, so he bent the mike outward, away from his mouth, and went on a two-volume system: I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, "Anything yet?" I'm fine, I'm fine.
He really was very far from fine; his hands were unsteady, and in spite of his vow not to look, he was very aware that he was balanced with his toes on a windowsill and twelve stories of nothing whatsoever under his heels.
Complaining would have been a wonderful way to bleed off some of the tension, but even Sheppard, who was stubborn as hell, might not be able to fight the compulsion to help him if he actually asked for help.
Stay by the vent, be ready, be ready, don't worry about me, he muttered, slotting in two crystals at once, and adding in his audible voice, "Anything?"
"Not yet," Sheppard's voice came in his ear. "You OK?"
He sounded worried. "Fine, I'm fine, you guys just pay attention and be ready to pry that vent open," Rodney said. He pushed a crystal into place, and a grinding noise over the radio told the story, which was a good thing because all Sheppard did was give an inarticulate shout.
And it was at that moment that Rodney's foot finally slipped off its precarious spot and gravity slammed him back hard into the harness, legs swinging free.
Trauma! Trauma! Amusement park trauma! No matter how many times I read this story, I feel this whole scene in my gut.
The harness held. The harness held. For a couple of seconds that was all he was aware of, that he had fallen out to the limit of the straps holding him to the wall and then jerked to a stop, dangling under the tower.
"Rodney!" Sheppard's voice over the radio sounded panicked. Behind him, over the comm, Rodney could hear Teyla calling to the kids and the rumble of breaking masonry.
"Fine, I'm fine, just slipped." He himself had been getting ready to panic, but he couldn't, not yet. "Have you got them out?"
"I -- uh --" Sheppard had to think about it -- focusing on something else was obviously an effort.
"I'm fine." Rodney bounced up and down in the straps to prove the point. "The kids. Focus."
"Right, right. Teyla thinks there's rubble or something in the channel -- it only slides an inch or so -- but that's enough to work a pry bar in, so she and Ford are just going to muscle it open."
"Good, you do that. Think about me after you've got all three of them out."
If the tower had been vertical, he'd probably have swung back and bumped against it when he fell, and if he hadn't broken his nose in the process, all he'd have to do now would be hang onto the straps with his hands and climb back up onto the narrow ledge. Unfortunately the tower wasn't vertical. He'd been clinging, spiderlike, to the underside, and now he was dangling out at an angle -- or, rather, he was vertical and the tower was at an angle to him.
He pawed out with one foot, but he couldn't quite touch the building. Another kick, and the toe of his boot made brief contact, brushing the wall just below the level of the ledge.
He kept up a litany under his voice: I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, beaming it mentally at Sheppard. They hadn't closed the channel, and Rodney could hear the noises -- Ford counting, "One, two, three," and a grinding noise, and panting, and the kids saying, "It moved! It moved!" and Ford saying, "OK, again --"
If he'd started earlier on the ab machine, he'd probably be able to just crunch up and put his feet on the ledge. If I had a buck for every time I've said that…. As it was, he was going to have to swing in the harness, like a pendulum, and eventually his momentum would carry him close enough to get his feet on the ledge. He hoped the amount of speed required to give him that distance wouldn't also have him moving so fast that his feet couldn't get a grip.
"We've got five inches now, Rodney."
Or he could just hang by his armpits and wait for them to finish up and come rescue him. He tried it for a second or two, but as soon as he stopped thinking about the problem of getting back on his feet, he became aware of all sorts of things of which ignorance had definitely been bliss -- the space between him and the ground, and the wind that stirred around him, and how the harness bit into his armpits, and how it was utterly, panic-inducingly unnatural for a human being to feel his feet resting on a very tall column of nothing whatsoever --
Fine. I'm fine. Focus on the vent. I'm fine. He went back to calculating trajectories in his head, and when that had pushed the sour taste of panic back down his throat, he pushed his feet forward, and then backward, and very slowly began to swing.
I think I need to detach with love and stop identifying with Rodney here. I'm pretty sure I'd just be hanging there in utter paralysis, hands clutching white-knuckled at the ropes and eyes tight shut as if that'd make everything go away.
Because I'd be a lousy slave-owner.
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The jumper didn't make any noise; it might as well have materialized out of nothing beside him, and he actually jumped when he saw it there. It was edging slowly closer, coming at an angle, so he could see it by turning his head, and then the hatch was sliding open and he could see Carson in the opening, holding out his hands. Rodney used his last swing to take him backwards through the hatch, and when he began to swing downward again his knees hit the floor and Carson grabbed him and said, "Got him."
Rodney waited patiently for him to undo the clips that held the harness to the straps, because he'd promised himself that when he heard that third click he could pass out.
Only, strangely, he didn't. He shut his eyes, and then he opened them again, and looked past the white-lipped Carson at Ford and Teyla and the kids, who were staring at him, and then past them to Sheppard in the pilot's seat, craned around backward and shaking visibly.
Carson stood up fast. "You get the ship away from the tower, and I'll take it in," he said, and Rodney thought they both must look pretty bad to make Carson volunteer to pilot the jumper.
Rodney tried to stand up, but his legs were unsteady and he went down again, and Sheppard landed beside him with a loud thud and just wrapped both arms around him.
"I'm fine. I told you I'd be fine," Rodney said, and laid his head on Sheppard's shoulder, and closed his eyes.
Res's choice of Rodney POV proves itself again and again. What the hell went on in that jumper?
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"I was never in any real danger," he was saying irritably to Elizabeth fifteen minutes later. "Carson can check me out if he wants to, but I can tell you all he's going to find is sweat and harness bruises, and I'd really like to go lie down now."
Sheppard had let go of him just about the time the clinging would have gotten embarrassing in front of the others, but he still wouldn't get more than an arm's length away. Rodney had to admit it was rather comforting.
Boy-touching! Of the kind they could actually do in an episode. Really, the whole rescue, minus the slave-compulsion, could play out exactly the same in an episode.
Elizabeth was giving him that knowing look that usually meant she saw right through him, except that this time she had nothing to see through to. "We're all very grateful for what you did."
"I swapped some crystals, and then I lost my footing, and then I hung around, literally, until my ride came," Rodney said. "Sheppard and Carson and Ford and Teyla carried out the daring rescue, as usual." He looked at her tucked-in mouth and sighed. "All right, fine, everyone in this room has been very brave and deserves the adoration of a grateful populace, ideally in the form of something edible, and I'll be happy to lend out my slave for the greater good any time. Can I go now?" Rodney's always less gracious in victory than defeat.
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Sheppard followed Rodney back to his room, and when they got there, he just sat on the cot and stared while Rodney splashed his face and drank about five glasses of water.
Sheppard was a mess, dust and plaster powdering his hair and sticking to the sweaty places on his skin and clothes, which was pretty much everywhere. He went on staring even when Rodney was quite obviously getting ready for a shower -- boots off, watch off. "Do you mind?" he said, and Sheppard ducked his head apologetically, but didn't look away.
"Take your shirt off," he said instead.
"I -- excuse me?"
"You said you had bruises."
"You must be joking."
He wasn't joking; he was still giving Rodney that can-you-kick-this-puppy look. "I need to see."
Rodney sighed. "I don't suppose I could order you to respect my privacy? No, of course not, what was I thinking, we tried that already. Do you think the Asuthong are tyrannized by their slaves like this?"
"When the Asuthong cause their slaves pain and discomfort, I don't think they care very much," Sheppard said. And the difference is that Rodney, despite using the word, doesn't think of John as his "slave".
Rodney sighed again, went to the mirror, and pulled his shirt off.
There actually wasn't any bruising yet, though he'd be surprised if some didn't come up in the night. His armpits and the fronts of his shoulders, where the harness had taken his weight as he fell, were a bit sore -- he touched them gingerly -- and there was some deep-muscle soreness, too, but nothing showed.
Sheppard came and stood behind him, looking first at his back and then at his reflection.
He'd expected it to be uncomfortable to take off his shirt and let Sheppard look at him. But Sheppard wasn't judging him, and he wasn't being brisk and practical like Carson, either. Rodney remembered the half-finished backrub, and Sheppard's eyes gave him the same feeling now that Sheppard's hands had then: as if his skin, his body, were infinitely precious to him.
More. As if Rodney's body belonged to him, was his to protect and take care of. To, to cherish.
The most seductive thought ever.
Rodney blinked rapidly and focused his attention back on his nonexistent injuries before he could be drawn further into some longing that Sheppard might feel compelled to satisfy. He imagined even the Asuthong would balk at ordering a slave to cherish them. Oh, Rodney. The Asuthong don't even have the concept of "cherish".
On the right side of his neck, where his shirt must have been pulled aside so that the harness touched bare skin, there was a small reddened patch, like rope burn. Sheppard spotted it at the moment he did. Well, naturally; he probably spotted it because Rodney did.
Rodney was just wondering whether Carson might have some lanolin or whether the best option would be chapstick when Sheppard touched it.
He didn't move his fingers, so there was no friction. He was very gentle, so there was no pain. His fingers were cooler than Rodney's skin. He rested his fingertips there for a long moment, as though he was gathering information by touch -- and for all Rodney knew, he could do that now -- and Rodney stood very still and tried to think about anything but his pulse and the flush heating his cheeks and --
Without moving his fingers, Sheppard bent his head over Rodney's shoulder and kissed the side of his neck.
"No," Rodney whispered. He wasn't at all surprised when Sheppard ignored him.
Sheppard kissed another spot, and another, none of them too close to the burn, all of them desperately sensitive and long-ignored, because there were a lot of things you could do for yourself, but you really couldn't nibble your own neck. Rodney had to close his eyes to block out the reflection of Sheppard's dark, bowed head and his own desperate face.
"Please let me," Sheppard said against his neck. "I can be so good to you, Rodney. I'll know exactly what you need, every single thing --"
God, the better it sounded, the more he hated it. "You have no choice but to want to please me," he pointed out, wishing his tone were more commanding and less breathless.
And I'm back to identifying with Rodney 'cause I'm pretty breathless, too. Oh, guh.
"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Let me."
"I can't even begin to describe how screwed up that is."
"But I want to," Sheppard said in his persuade-the-natives voice. "And you want me to." He had kissed a path out to Rodney's shoulder and was working his way back in. Soft lips, no tongue, sticking close to some comfort boundary he'd intuited. Temptation on a silver platter, custom-made.
"You want to because you're on drugs. I want to, yes, and I don't want to think about what that says about me." He craned back to look at Sheppard, who looked back with an expression of dopey sincerity -- another from his persuade-the-natives toolkit. "Look, Major -- John," he corrected in response to a microscopic pout. "I know this is totally antithetical to the spirit of sex, but I'm going to make you tell me the truth, all right?" Rodney got laid plenty at university. I'm just sayin'.
John blinked at him. Evidently this was not what he'd expected to hear. "I guess so."
"Right. Right. You're telling me that you want to have sex with me while you're under a chemical compulsion to fulfill my every need?"
"Yes," John said, fervently, eyes half shut, as if it was the sexiest thing he'd ever heard. Real world: ick. Fic kink: yay!
"Right. Did you want to have sex with me before we went to Suthong?"
That wiped the blissful look off his face, replacing it with a reproachful pout, as though Rodney had brought up a subject that was in terrible taste. Hello, has he met Rodney? "I liked you. You were my friend. I wanted to hang out with you, spend time with --" Yes, we've all read that fic, too.
"John."
"No," he said, dropping his eyes.
"No, I thought not," Rodney sighed. "And if we do this, then when the stupid slave virus goes away and you no longer get pellets pleasure button rat!John FTW every time you do something nice for me, do you think it's likely that you're going to look kindly on this little romantic interlude?"
John was silent for a long time, and then he opened his mouth. Rodney interrupted. "Tell me the truth, not what it would make me happy to hear, please."
John looked at the floor for another long time, and then he looked Rodney in the eye. "I don't know," he said. "I can't predict at all."
"Huh. I was expecting a ringing no," Rodney admitted. Hee!
"I still want to."
"I still think it's a terrible idea."
"No, you don't," John said smugly.
"Yes, yes, I do; I'm just not really all that good at choosing my long-term best interests over short-term pleasure. Though usually the available pleasures are more in the line of speaking my mind freely rather than -- are you even interested in men, normally?" It's not that I don't enjoy the porn. But I'd be perfectly happy with the Rodney Monologues. Really. Oh, look! Porn ahead!
"Used to be," John said, and he seemed to have heard the yes buried in all that blathering, because he'd gone back to kissing Rodney's shoulder. "Had to give that up, though, if I wanted to fly."
"Oh, this, this is the best idea since the Bay of Pigs," Rodney said, but he closed his eyes and let John turn him around. Rodney won't let a little sexin' up get in the way of a little American military bashing.
It wasn't exactly the kiss of his dreams. John smelled even worse than he did, and he kissed like he had to cram everything he could into every second, like there was a time limit on kissing. Rodney thought about how the virus ought to show him how to give the perfect kiss, and then he thought about how knowing it was coming from the virus would have made it less perfect.
And then John pulled back, and gave him a knowing look, and cupped his big hands around Rodney's face, and slowed way, way down, running his parted lips over Rodney's cheek and jaw as if just being permitted to touch Rodney's skin was a privilege he'd longed for but never hoped to deserve.
"Hey, cut that out," Rodney said, and John looked at him and grinned. "I mean it. I'm not going to be able to enjoy this if you're acting like I'm some kind of Roman emperor."
Can we just think a minute about how John manages to make a joke, not just within the confines of the compulsion, but about the compulsion using the compulsion. John Sheppard: made of awesome y/y?
"Now there's a picture," John said, and he unbuttoned Rodney's pants one-handed. "I think you'll enjoy it, all right." And he slid to the floor.
When his tongue touched Rodney's cock, they both groaned, and Rodney thought about a younger John doing this, a teen-aged John maybe, and then giving it up because he wanted to fly. He certainly did it like he'd missed it. He was creative and exploratory, making happy snuffling noises.
Rodney liked the noises, liked them a lot -- brains and beauty were all very well in their way, but what you really wanted in a sex partner was enthusiasm, and it turned him on like crazy to have John going, "Nn -- nnn," like he was almost ready to come just from having Rodney's cock in his mouth.
God. As soon as he thought it, John sucked harder, until they had a nice feedback loop going, with John's pleasure turning Rodney on and Rodney's pleasure turning John on. And then John made a particularly loud "Nnnn!" and Rodney looked down to see him shuddering, panting, almost certainly coming, and still sucking -- god, there weren't even words for what it did to him, knowing John had come just from having Rodney's cock in his mouth -- and Rodney was seconds away from coming himself, seconds, when all at once that beautiful sensation just went away.
Went away? "I dwell in darkness without you" and it went away? < /Willow>
"Wh --" He opened his eyes and tried again. "John?"
"Tell me to take it all the way."
John's voice was low, hoarse, and Rodney could feel his cock leaping against John's face, but he was stymied by an uncharacteristic scruple. "No, I can't." The whole story is about Rodney's characteristic scruples.
"Come on, Rodney." God, it was surreal; it was the same whine as always. "I've always wanted to, but I could never --"
"Ignore a reflex that protects your body from damage? I wonder why." The thought of it made him hot and queasy at the same time, because on the one hand it was, not to put too fine a point on it, shoving his dick down the throat of someone who couldn't say no -- but on the other hand, oh my god, he'd always wondered what it would feel like, and it wasn't a skill that non-professionals tended to have.
And if John enjoyed it like he'd been enjoying the rest --
"There. See? You want to," John said with his favorite winning smile. "C'mon, Rodney. It'll be fun." And he was still stroking Rodney's cock gently with both hands, not even like he was trying to turn Rodney on but just like a person might rub a smooth stone, just for the pure pleasure of it.
"All right," Rodney said, thick-voiced with excitement, "all right, yeah, take it all, if you want to, all the way, do it --"
There was half a second of glorious moving tight wetness, and then John made an awful noise, and Rodney stepped back frantically.
John knelt back and wiped his eyes and gave Rodney a calculating look. "OK, here," he said, "go lie down," and he followed Rodney to the bed and lay down beside him in sixty-nine position and tipped his head back and swallowed.
He could feel it every time John made a noise, and John made a lot of noise. Rodney didn't dare move, and he couldn't quite shake his consciousness of what he was doing and how uncomfortable it must be. But evidently his order had made John some kind of instant expert, because he set up a rhythm with great confidence -- in, two, three, out, breathe, breathe, over and over.
"Oh, god, yes, that's -- oh, god, John, that's --" He put out his hand, needing to feel skin, and grabbed John's hairy thigh, and fuck! It wasn't that he'd forgotten he was in bed with a guy, but this made it so much more real, and it turned him on like crazy.
Below him John groaned, and oh, that was amazing, and then there was a soft touch on Rodney's cheek -- oh, that was John's cock, hardening again, dragging its way down the side of Rodney's face.
Rodney closed his eyes and caught the tip on his tongue. His mouth watered suddenly, and every hair on his body stood on end, and before he could make any sort of warning noise he was coming.
"Oh, jesus, Rodney," John was saying. His voice was scratchy, and Rodney didn't entirely like the thrill that gave him. "No, don't, you don't have to, don't --" But Rodney didn't have an obedience virus, and he never took advice; you could ask anybody. So he went on reveling in the great well-being that followed on the heels of the best orgasm he'd ever had in his life, and, slowly and curiously, licking at John's cock.
"Oh," John said. "Oh, god. You like it. You like it?"
"Mm," Rodney agreed, nodding.
John hissed, "Shit," and pulled away. "Hey," Rodney tried to say, but John had grabbed his cock and just managed to aim it away from Rodney's face before he came all over Rodney's neck.
"Oh, god. Oh, my god," John panted, and flopped nimbly up to face him, grinning the same way he did when he'd just done something unwise at maximum speed. "God, that was great." He took Rodney by the back of the neck and shook him gently, and then he shut his eyes, still grinning, and went to sleep so fast it was more like losing consciousness.
Rodney tried to stay awake and freak out, but it had been a long day, with the dangling and the daring rescue and the sex with Sheppard, and he just didn't have the energy. He put it on his mental agenda for the morning.
Was it good for you? It was good for me. Hot porn and hot characterizations and hot plot-driven actions all in one hot hot hot like a hot thing scene.
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But wait! There's more!
The next morning, he would have gotten a nice early start on it, except that he woke up with John licking his neck and looping a nice loose circle of thumb and forefinger up and down his cock. John had clearly been doing this for a while before he woke up, long enough to get himself pretty thoroughly turned on already, breathing hard and rubbing his own hard-on against Rodney's thigh, but when Rodney woke all the way up and said his name, John went crazy, shoving and kissing him frantically like he couldn't care less about morning mouth or anything else.
John's hand was slick -- obviously he'd remembered that Rodney had lube -- and even through this frenzy of kissing and rubbing, he kept his hand moving on Rodney's cock nice and slow, nice and easy. God, it was amazing; John's face was morning-rough to touch, soft-mouthed with arousal, and it was just so good to be doing this with someone who took such obvious pleasure in it, who was this hot for him in particular, even if it was only because he was not in his right mind.
"Rodney," John groaned, deep and husky, and buried his face in Rodney's neck. "Oh, shit, I can't -- tell me not to come." Oh, look. A button I didn't even know I had.
God, he was that close and Rodney hadn't done anything but rub his back and be grateful. That was amazingly hot, too. "Don't come," Rodney said obediently o i c wat u did thar!, and then, "No, hang on, I want -- here." He pulled John on top of him. "No, kneel up -- yeah, good, good."
John knelt over him, balancing on one hand and somehow still stroking Rodney's cock with the other -- well, he already knew the guy could juggle. Rodney looked up at him, blissed out face and head hanging down, cock curving out from his body and shaking with every breath -- and then he wrapped his hand around it and said, "Come now."
"Jesus!" John opened his eyes with a shocked look, and his cock jerked and pulsed in Rodney's hand, and the first jet striped Rodney's body from navel to collarbone. John looked at Rodney's face, and down at his own cock still dripping all over him, and his cock jerked again, like his orgasm just started up again in the middle. Like marking Rodney turned John on as much as it did Rodney.
"Oh, my god," he said as it wound down, "You wanted that? Rodney, you liked that?"
"Hell yes," Rodney said.
John's hand, which had never entirely stopped moving, tightened and redoubled its speed.
"You come on me now," John said, and Rodney obeyed like he was the one with the virus. iz ded.
The key to writing convincing kink, no matter how mild or extreme, is to make sure that it's the character's kink. I've read a lot of things that, personally, don't turn my crank but because the writer convinced me that the character found it hotter than hell, I was right there too. On the other hand, occasionally I've read stuff that would seem to be tailor-made for me but because it came across more like the writer getting her rocks off instead of the character enjoying themselves, I was left out in the cold.
My thoughts on yaoi, let me show you them.
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Afterwards John followed him into the shower without a word. He washed Rodney's back for him, and then washed Rodney's hair for him, and then Rodney washed John's hair. There was a hell of a lot of it. And that's before he started on John's back.
"Were you this coordinated before?" Rodney asked when John was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and scratching his back in an entirely different rhythm with the other.
"No, I don't think so," John said.
"Huh. Maybe we should see if we could get me one of those. I always wanted to be ambidextrous." He looked at John consideringly. "Wonder if you'll keep it when the antibodies kick in?"
John looked away, like that line of thought made him uncomfortable, so Rodney thought as hard as he could about breakfast to distract him. Reality is trying to stick its sneaky head up. Rodney counters with bacon.
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It was amazing what it did for his general sense of well-being, starting his day like that, even though John and Carson together had conspired to cut off his supply of etel. I like the frequent mentions of etal. It's a good distraction from the khama nut references. Even so, he felt relaxed and alert and full of energy and creativity. John looked good, too, like either he too was doing better for sex and company and lots of touching, or maybe he just felt better because Rodney felt better. He still tagged along, but Rodney was getting used to it; he was pretty good company, and it was kind of a kick to give up frowning at an equation and say, "Hey, find the flaws in this plan, will you," and have John smirk, "Well, nothing, if you really want your pressure differential to be 13/5 rather than 5/13." Smart John is smart hot. There. Fixed that for you, Rodney.
Elizabeth and Carson and the rest were still giving Rodney suspicious looks, until finally Rodney towed John over and said, "Hey, tell Elizabeth and Carson if I'm mistreating you or not."
"Well, he's killing me with sarcasm," John said, "just like everybody else, but I'm OK as long as he doesn't sing."
And Rodney, who unlike some people could actually carry a tune, said, "You should be so lucky," and smirked at Elizabeth and Carson. Vindicated.
----------
That night after dinner, when Rodney was frowning over his laptop and rubbing the back of his neck, John said, "Hey, I can give you a backrub now."
It was as good as the first one, and then it was better, and then it was really amazingly good, and then somehow or other he had his fingers in John's ass and John was panting, slack-mouthed, grabbing the sheets and saying, "Fuck me," over and over like they were the only two words he knew.
He knew the theory, but he made John promise to tell him if anything hurt, made it an order. And John grumbled, and sighed, and then began to bite out a high-speed rattle of words, all together without pausing -- "It hurts don't stop! It hurts I like it! God, Rodney, please --" Hot and funny.
Afterwards, blown past 'relaxed' and out the other side into 'manic,' Rodney slicked his hand through the come-sticky hair on John's belly and said, "I want you to do that to me. How soon can you do that to me? How soon can you get hard again?" and John looked at him like he was being a big moron So nothing's really changed then? and said, "As soon as you tell me to."
----------
"Carson thinks I ought to be more upset about being stuck back here on indefinite standby," John said. There were a dozen khama nuts left; he divided them into two piles and pushed the larger pile across the bed to Rodney. "I told him that a normal military operation doesn't send out its leader and its top brain on exploratory missions, but he didn't seem reassured." Meta, meta, who's got the meta? Make it so, Number One!
He put his hand on the back of Rodney's neck, and Rodney leaned into the warm touch. Rodney tried to believe John did all this snuggling for his own satisfaction, but he suspected John had figured out that he was touch-deprived, which was just way too pathetic. So mostly he tried not to think about it. "I can't imagine why not. That's so characteristic of your normal way of thinking."
"The virus is probably making sure I don't worry about anything that doesn't involve keeping you happy." He said it like it ought to make Rodney feel better.
----------
"Rodney. Rodney, yeah. Don't ever stop."
And that was the problem, really. It hit Rodney suddenly that for more than a week now he'd been living like he didn't ever have to stop, like he could have John's cock sliding over his tongue for the rest of his life.
It had been a lot more fun before he thought of that.
John was squirming, twitching, and now he started making distressed noises; the virus made him want to do what Rodney wanted, but the things Rodney wanted were in contradiction with each other. He wanted John to come, wanted him not to, wanted the taste and feel of it, wanted to keep doing this for hours, wanted John soft-eyed and sated and grateful, wanted John hard and desperate and begging for him -- all day, all the time, all of it right now because any minute now the stupid thing could wear off and John wouldn't want this then, and -
And in another universe, John simply disappeared in a puff of smoke as his central processor overheated.
"Rodney, no, no --" John couldn't read his mind, he knew, but he could feel his distress, and he pulled free of Rodney's mouth -- god, he had to be about two seconds from coming, and it was amazing that he'd had the strength to pull back, pull out of Rodney's mouth, go against both of the things Rodney wanted so he could drop down on the floor and give Rodney the one thing he needed, which was comfort.
"If you didn't want --" John broke off. He had to be confused; he'd be able to feel how Rodney had loved it, how Rodney wanted it back even now, and yet this unnamable other emotion had made him stop. "If you don't like it --"
"I love it," Rodney said, burying his face in John's neck and clinging embarrassingly. "I want to suck you for ten years, day and night --" John's hips shoved his cock against Rodney's stomach as he moved. "I just -- I don't want to stop."
"You don't have to stop." John kissed his face, over and over.
"I will," Rodney said. "When it -- when the thing --"
John's face blanked, the way it always did when the subject came up, and it was as much hating that expression as wanting the sex that made Rodney shove him down on his back and take his cock in his mouth again, this time with pure, single-minded purpose: Give it to me. Give me everything.
The sound John made as he came was almost enough to drive that look out of Rodney's head.
Gah! I mean, I know slave compulsion=bad and yet so sad! So tragic! So doomed! Res just twists me up and spits me out.
----------
"Will you for crying out loud eat something that didn't come wrapped in foil?"
"Yes, yes," Rodney said absently, not looking up from his laptop screen. "I'm familiar with this dynamic, where you yell at me because you love me." Ah ah ah!
When John went utterly silent behind him, it took Rodney a second to even remember what he'd said. And then the figures on the screen suddenly lost meaning.
John, when Rodney turned to look at him, had an almost comical expression of guilt, like a kid caught sneaking pie.
Rodney went cold inside. "Oh, no," he said.
"But." He wanted to say more, Rodney could tell, but he couldn't because Rodney didn't want to hear it.
"No, no, no, no, no, no."
John pressed his lips together, doing that righteous-soldier thing he usually saved for higher-ranking officers, when there were any. "You can't tell me not to feel --"
"I can tell you not to mistake compulsion for emotion," Rodney snapped.
"Sorry to cause you such trauma." John actually had the temerity to look hurt. He met Rodney's gaze and then looked away over Rodney's left shoulder, and, god, Rodney hated to see the military body language trotted out to deal with him. "I'm something to you. I can feel it."
I can't even -- I mean, John! Rodney! Talking and not-talking about feelings! Angst! Trauma! Wailings and lamentations! Gnashing of teeth and rending of garments!
"Feel this, then," Rodney said, dangerously close to hysteria. "How the hell am I supposed to have that and then not have it any more? Do you have the slightest notion what that's going to be like? No, you hadn't thought that far ahead, had you?"
It made his head hurt, and for once John didn't step forward to rub his temples for him. Realizing how he'd gotten used to that made his stomach hurt, too.
"You -- just -- keep it to yourself," he said, more calmly, because knowing you'd completely and thoroughly screwed yourself, comprehensively stomped all over your dreams, was the sort of thing that made it pointless to get upset. There came a time when it was just too late to panic. "Whatever emotion it is that the alien supervirus is simulating, just keep it to yourself."
And because Rodney really, really wanted John to go away, John did.
After thirty minutes -- minutes that Rodney spent staring blankly at the laptop screen, unable even to remember what he'd been working on -- he was back, and this time he was heavily armed and had strapped on his "cover me; I'm going in" expression, all narrow eyes and pinched mouth.
"Come on," he said, in that voice that even the scientists obeyed. "We're going back to Suthong."
John wants Rodney's pain to stop. He can't make it stop. But he can lessen it by ending the compulsion. The compulsion is strong enough to override the calm acceptance granted by the compulsion. I have a headache.
----------
John walked right past the welcoming committee of floppy-haired owners without a glance, with Rodney and Teyla and Ford almost running to keep up with him. He headed for the government building again, but instead of going in the front door, he led them around the side. In the back, sure enough, there was a much less fancy structure full of people with tattoos between their eyebrows.
John made a stay-back motion and approached a middle-aged man in colorless homespun. He might even have been the same one who'd been ordered to be the subject of Carson's medical tests the last time; they all had the same short-cropped hair, the same shapeless, colorless clothes, the same utter lack of facial expression, and it was hard to tell them apart except by sex. Rodney remembered seeing masters shout orders in random directions and then wait to be approached. Maybe they couldn't even recognize their own. God, that's depressing.
It would be impossible to lose John in the crowd; among these drably dressed people he was dark and shiny and dangerous as a knife in the linen drawer. Rodney couldn't take his eyes off him. He'd had that sleeping beside him. How could he not have known that it would end with his flesh stripped from his bones?
The first man shook his head at John, and the second. Of course; they had to obey their masters, and would defer to anyone's master, but they were under no obligation to another slave.
"Perhaps I should --" Teyla began.
"Wait," Ford said, never taking his eyes off John. "The major's got a plan."
"How do you know?" Rodney asked him.
"The major's always got a plan." I miss you, Ford.
And sure enough, John had given up on the household slaves and had collared three enormously muscled young men, clearly some sort of laborers. These men didn't seem to have any sort of orders not to talk to him. They were all talking at once, interrupting each other, even shoving each other for a turn.
John's face got more and more forbidding, his body got more and more still, until even Teyla looked wary, and Ford shot Rodney an uncertain look. The big slaves, though, weren't the least bit intimidated. They went away laughing, and John came back with his arms swinging easily, and Rodney wondered when he'd gotten so attuned to his body language that he could see the anger in that. Oh, since about ten minutes after walking through the gate.
"Come on," John said, and they went wordlessly back the way they'd come, and it wasn't until John and Ford were strapped in up front that he said over his shoulder, "It's the goddamned nuts," and then none of them said anything else until they were back in the city.
----------
Stay away, Rodney was thinking with all his conscious mind, but when the door of his room hissed open, he wasn't really surprised to learn that his subconscious desires had overruled him. Usually we don't have someone listening in on them.
John sat down on the cot and stared at the far wall, not looking at him or talking to him but still occupying so much of his mind that he couldn't think of anything else. After a while, John said in a weary voice, "Do you think you could try to want just one thing? It's kind of exhausting."
Rodney spread his hands helplessly. He wanted it never to have happened. He wanted it to go on happening. He couldn't see that he'd done anything wrong, and yet he wanted John to forgive him, and he wanted John to be angry with him so he could be angry back instead of feeling guilty.
He wanted John's hands on him one more time.
He didn't want something else to be sorry for tomorrow.
"All right, look," John said, and he came over and sat beside Rodney on the bed and pulled him down into his arms. Rodney swallowed hard and burrowed into that embrace, pressing his face against the rough surface of John's shirt.
After a moment John reached down and moved just enough to get the button out from under Rodney's cheek. Oh, John. That's just an amazing little grace note.
He hadn't seen John eat a khama nut since this morning at breakfast. If he hadn't had a snack later, the virus might be gone by morning. Maybe his bond to Rodney would loosen little by little. First he had to be in earshot, and then he could be in another room, and then he could be on a whole other planet. First this was love, and then just a nice warm feeling, and then a period of delusion that he'd look back on with disgust, like an ill-advised drunken pickup only without the mercy of a fuzzy memory.
Or maybe it would disappear all at once. Rip it off or pick at it. Which will hurt most?
John's arms tightened around him, maybe responding to Rodney's thoughts, maybe to his own. "Rodney," he said. "I think I -- I need to be someplace else when it happens."
"Yeah," Rodney said, relieved -- god, he couldn't stand to have to see John's face at the moment when the virus stopped making John love him. "You're going to need some time to think, when it -- when you're not --"
John interrupted him with a kiss, a long soft pressure of lips. Rodney closed his eyes, and sighed, and felt John sighing, too.
"I just hope," Rodney said, pressing his face to John's, "that you'll still want to be friends."
"Yeah," John said. "I hope so, too." The same sentiment, from the other side. John's afraid that Rodney won't be interested in him without the whole master-slave dynamic. We have got to work on that boy's self-esteem.
He got as far as the closed door, and then hovered there. "You still have to send me," he said in a scratchy voice.
Rodney wanted to stride across the room and kiss him one last time, but he didn't. "It will probably let me confine you," he said. "Go -- go to your room and stay there. Until you -- until you can come out."
"Yeah," John said, "that works."
Rodney stared at the door for a long time after it closed. Then he got up and washed his face like a child after a good cry and went and stood outside Elizabeth's room until she opened the door.
She didn't ask him any questions, and she didn't tell him everything was going to be fine. She gave him a hug, which surprised him, and then she rested her hand on his shoulder. I like this hint that Elizabeth has some idea of how difficult that has been on Rodney. Not the sexual aspect, but rather the responsibility for John's emotional welfare. Even a cursory glance at the reports describing the Asuthong slaves had to give her the willies.
"I'm not denying that Major Sheppard may have a difficult time with this when he's himself again," she said. "But I think in time he'll come to appreciate how hard you worked not to take advantage of the situation."
You have no idea, Rodney thought, and went back to his empty room, and glared at the cot, and went to sleep like a person falling off a cliff.
----------
He woke up alone, scratchy-eyed and headachy as if he'd stayed up all night instead of falling asleep at nine-thirty on a pillow that still smelled like John.
He was still lying there, trying to think of a good reason to get up, when the door opened, and before it had even finished shutting, John was across the room and leaping on him with enough force to shake the bed. He'd been jogging or sparring or doing something that left his hair and shirt damp with sweat. The mark was gone from his forehead. He smelled incredible. He had a big, slightly bloodthirsty grin on his face.
"What -- are you --"
John ground down against him, and Rodney momentarily lost the power of speech.
"I don't have any compulsion to please you any more," John said, with a little shimmy of his hips that pleased Rodney very much. John! John, you're back! I missed you, John! So did Rodney! "So I think maybe it's time you did a few things to please me, for a change."
Relief made Rodney lightheaded, or maybe it was the smell of fresh sweat. "Like keep you and the rest of your city alive in a dozen ways every day?" he said, and his hands on John's thighs weren't shaking at all. "Or maybe follow you into mortal danger every few days instead of staying in my nice safe lab where there aren't any mysterious alien pseudoviruses and mind-altering snack foods?"
"Not what I had in mind." John went on twisting restlessly against him as Rodney's hands came up without his conscious intent, cupping John's ass. "Unless maybe you only want someone who can come on command?"
And he stopped moving, and Rodney blinked and realized it hadn't been a rhetorical question. See? I told you John had issues. He slid one hand around to the front of John's thigh and then up into the leg of his shorts, rubbing the hair against the grain, and John's cock jumped when he touched it. "You sure you can't?" He could feel his grin getting bigger and stupider with every passing second.
John was smiling, too. He rocked into Rodney's hand, and Rodney's cock rubbed against his ass, and he took a fast breath and said, "I can still juggle." I believe I now have a juggling kink. ::shakes tiny fists at Res::
Oh, god. Rodney hauled him down and said into his open mouth, "Maybe you could teach me."
-end-
Need more? Go to in medias Res for more of resonant8's wonderful stories, including Transfigurations, possibly the best Harry Potter fic ever (Harry/Draco, but that's almost beside the point).
Author: resonant8
Fandom: SGA
Commentator: ladyvyola
Part 1
They couldn't go out on missions, but it turned out that a mission came to them. A loud and scary one with screaming children, which was the very worst kind, and, OK, maybe it was an improvement not having anybody chasing after them trying to shoot them or suck out their life force, but on the other hand, they couldn't get out of this one just by running for the gate.
The shouting of Jinto and the two other half-grown idiots who needed rescuing came over the comm like it was inside Rodney's own head, and the more harnesses and failsafes they strapped on him, the less safe he felt. Wait, what? Rodney's strapping in? Tell me more.
"Are you sure, now," Carson said in a shaky voice, "that you can't take Rodney along as a backup pilot and let me be the one to override the safety on the environmental control system?"
"No time," Sheppard said. "Come on."
"Believe me," Rodney said over his shoulder as he hurried after Sheppard and went on tightening straps across his chest, "I'd rather be in a nice safe jumper than dangling from the few remaining bits of the Level 12 bridge. But the sad fact is that I've got the best chance of getting the air vent open before the rest of the floor collapses under them." Oooo, well done. Just a few paragraphs and I not only understand the crisis but also why this solution makes sense. It's also cool that the whole rescue occurs off-camera. We only get to hear bits and pieces of it. Our focus is all on Rodney -- even though the whole scene is Rodney's POV, Res manages to make us, the readers, play the part of John Sheppard.
Carson and Rodney babbled when they were scared, and Teyla and Ford dropped into their two cultures' different versions of warrior readiness. Sheppard just clammed up and hurled the jumper up out of the bay in total silence.
"Look, Major," Rodney said. "You can't be worrying about me, so I, I order you to go get those kids out of the tower, OK? I'm your second priority until they're out -- is this working at all?"
"Can't tell yet."
"You can fight it for an hour," Rodney said. "I want you to." He wanted those kids alive, and he really, really didn't want to have them and Sheppard on his conscience, to be the one responsible for spoiling Sheppard's concentration. Nightmares forever. Damn it, this slave-owner thing was a lot of responsibility. That's exactly what I've been saying!
----------
"Sure you're OK?" Sheppard shouted out the open door of the hovering jumper. The tower was canted over in an eleven-o'clock position, and the environmental controls, which had once been easily accessible by a person standing on the bridge, were now in the middle of the downward face of a sheer, leaning wall.
Rodney's fingers were shaking so badly they slipped, and slipped again. Sheppard's expression was frantic. Any second now he was going to leave Carson in charge of hovering the jumper, which would be -- there! On the third try he finally got the last strap attached to the pipe overhead with a satisfying click. He tugged it to be sure. "It's fine!" he shouted over the noise of the wind. "Go!"
Sheppard gave him a longing look -- it was like sending away a dog that loved you -- and then the jumper door slid shut and the whole big unwieldy thing lifted away without stirring the slightest breath of air, and surely the people who made that could be trusted to have made an emergency remote override that Rodney could figure out.
When he leaned back gingerly against the harness, bracing himself with his feet against the wall, the jumper actually paused in mid-air, in violation of numerous laws of physics. Rodney could imagine Sheppard, desperately torn, the virus compelling him to come back and keep Rodney safe and Rodney's own order compelling him to go on. He leaned back hard, heart in his throat. The harness held.
"It's fine," he said out loud, and the jumper moved again, hesitantly. "It's fine. Go on. You know what you need to do." It soared away upward.
Okay, this is about as traumatic a set-up as I can imagine. You know that amusement park ride with the individual swings on long chains that spin around and gradually the whole thing lifts and tilts and you go swinging around in an elliptical path and the jerk ahead of you keeps twisting his seat around and you just know you're going to be the one to come loose and plummet to the ground or maybe just swing out of control and fall out of the harness and plummet to the ground -- I actually ride that ride but it's just on the edge of my thrill-to-panic ratio. But enough about my issues.
Prying off the cover of the environmental control system required a sickening yank with no way to stabilize his center of gravity. "It's fine, it's fine, it's fine," he muttered, no longer sure whether he was talking to Sheppard or to himself. The cover slipped out of his hands and fell, and he did not, did not look down, but for a while he listened to see if he could hear it hitting. "I'm fine. Go on. I'm fine," he said, and wiped his hands on his pants, and concentrated on the panel of crystals.
Warning: Abuse of the word "fine" ahead. I like the idea of Rodney chanting it like a mantra, teeth clenched, the word losing all meaning.
The first six configurations apparently did nothing at all. After the second one, it occurred to him that his muttering was probably getting on everybody's nerves as much as the kids' crying was, so he bent the mike outward, away from his mouth, and went on a two-volume system: I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, "Anything yet?" I'm fine, I'm fine.
He really was very far from fine; his hands were unsteady, and in spite of his vow not to look, he was very aware that he was balanced with his toes on a windowsill and twelve stories of nothing whatsoever under his heels.
Complaining would have been a wonderful way to bleed off some of the tension, but even Sheppard, who was stubborn as hell, might not be able to fight the compulsion to help him if he actually asked for help.
Stay by the vent, be ready, be ready, don't worry about me, he muttered, slotting in two crystals at once, and adding in his audible voice, "Anything?"
"Not yet," Sheppard's voice came in his ear. "You OK?"
He sounded worried. "Fine, I'm fine, you guys just pay attention and be ready to pry that vent open," Rodney said. He pushed a crystal into place, and a grinding noise over the radio told the story, which was a good thing because all Sheppard did was give an inarticulate shout.
And it was at that moment that Rodney's foot finally slipped off its precarious spot and gravity slammed him back hard into the harness, legs swinging free.
Trauma! Trauma! Amusement park trauma! No matter how many times I read this story, I feel this whole scene in my gut.
The harness held. The harness held. For a couple of seconds that was all he was aware of, that he had fallen out to the limit of the straps holding him to the wall and then jerked to a stop, dangling under the tower.
"Rodney!" Sheppard's voice over the radio sounded panicked. Behind him, over the comm, Rodney could hear Teyla calling to the kids and the rumble of breaking masonry.
"Fine, I'm fine, just slipped." He himself had been getting ready to panic, but he couldn't, not yet. "Have you got them out?"
"I -- uh --" Sheppard had to think about it -- focusing on something else was obviously an effort.
"I'm fine." Rodney bounced up and down in the straps to prove the point. "The kids. Focus."
"Right, right. Teyla thinks there's rubble or something in the channel -- it only slides an inch or so -- but that's enough to work a pry bar in, so she and Ford are just going to muscle it open."
"Good, you do that. Think about me after you've got all three of them out."
If the tower had been vertical, he'd probably have swung back and bumped against it when he fell, and if he hadn't broken his nose in the process, all he'd have to do now would be hang onto the straps with his hands and climb back up onto the narrow ledge. Unfortunately the tower wasn't vertical. He'd been clinging, spiderlike, to the underside, and now he was dangling out at an angle -- or, rather, he was vertical and the tower was at an angle to him.
He pawed out with one foot, but he couldn't quite touch the building. Another kick, and the toe of his boot made brief contact, brushing the wall just below the level of the ledge.
He kept up a litany under his voice: I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, beaming it mentally at Sheppard. They hadn't closed the channel, and Rodney could hear the noises -- Ford counting, "One, two, three," and a grinding noise, and panting, and the kids saying, "It moved! It moved!" and Ford saying, "OK, again --"
If he'd started earlier on the ab machine, he'd probably be able to just crunch up and put his feet on the ledge. If I had a buck for every time I've said that…. As it was, he was going to have to swing in the harness, like a pendulum, and eventually his momentum would carry him close enough to get his feet on the ledge. He hoped the amount of speed required to give him that distance wouldn't also have him moving so fast that his feet couldn't get a grip.
"We've got five inches now, Rodney."
Or he could just hang by his armpits and wait for them to finish up and come rescue him. He tried it for a second or two, but as soon as he stopped thinking about the problem of getting back on his feet, he became aware of all sorts of things of which ignorance had definitely been bliss -- the space between him and the ground, and the wind that stirred around him, and how the harness bit into his armpits, and how it was utterly, panic-inducingly unnatural for a human being to feel his feet resting on a very tall column of nothing whatsoever --
Fine. I'm fine. Focus on the vent. I'm fine. He went back to calculating trajectories in his head, and when that had pushed the sour taste of panic back down his throat, he pushed his feet forward, and then backward, and very slowly began to swing.
I think I need to detach with love and stop identifying with Rodney here. I'm pretty sure I'd just be hanging there in utter paralysis, hands clutching white-knuckled at the ropes and eyes tight shut as if that'd make everything go away.
Because I'd be a lousy slave-owner.
----------
The jumper didn't make any noise; it might as well have materialized out of nothing beside him, and he actually jumped when he saw it there. It was edging slowly closer, coming at an angle, so he could see it by turning his head, and then the hatch was sliding open and he could see Carson in the opening, holding out his hands. Rodney used his last swing to take him backwards through the hatch, and when he began to swing downward again his knees hit the floor and Carson grabbed him and said, "Got him."
Rodney waited patiently for him to undo the clips that held the harness to the straps, because he'd promised himself that when he heard that third click he could pass out.
Only, strangely, he didn't. He shut his eyes, and then he opened them again, and looked past the white-lipped Carson at Ford and Teyla and the kids, who were staring at him, and then past them to Sheppard in the pilot's seat, craned around backward and shaking visibly.
Carson stood up fast. "You get the ship away from the tower, and I'll take it in," he said, and Rodney thought they both must look pretty bad to make Carson volunteer to pilot the jumper.
Rodney tried to stand up, but his legs were unsteady and he went down again, and Sheppard landed beside him with a loud thud and just wrapped both arms around him.
"I'm fine. I told you I'd be fine," Rodney said, and laid his head on Sheppard's shoulder, and closed his eyes.
Res's choice of Rodney POV proves itself again and again. What the hell went on in that jumper?
----------
"I was never in any real danger," he was saying irritably to Elizabeth fifteen minutes later. "Carson can check me out if he wants to, but I can tell you all he's going to find is sweat and harness bruises, and I'd really like to go lie down now."
Sheppard had let go of him just about the time the clinging would have gotten embarrassing in front of the others, but he still wouldn't get more than an arm's length away. Rodney had to admit it was rather comforting.
Boy-touching! Of the kind they could actually do in an episode. Really, the whole rescue, minus the slave-compulsion, could play out exactly the same in an episode.
Elizabeth was giving him that knowing look that usually meant she saw right through him, except that this time she had nothing to see through to. "We're all very grateful for what you did."
"I swapped some crystals, and then I lost my footing, and then I hung around, literally, until my ride came," Rodney said. "Sheppard and Carson and Ford and Teyla carried out the daring rescue, as usual." He looked at her tucked-in mouth and sighed. "All right, fine, everyone in this room has been very brave and deserves the adoration of a grateful populace, ideally in the form of something edible, and I'll be happy to lend out my slave for the greater good any time. Can I go now?" Rodney's always less gracious in victory than defeat.
----------
Sheppard followed Rodney back to his room, and when they got there, he just sat on the cot and stared while Rodney splashed his face and drank about five glasses of water.
Sheppard was a mess, dust and plaster powdering his hair and sticking to the sweaty places on his skin and clothes, which was pretty much everywhere. He went on staring even when Rodney was quite obviously getting ready for a shower -- boots off, watch off. "Do you mind?" he said, and Sheppard ducked his head apologetically, but didn't look away.
"Take your shirt off," he said instead.
"I -- excuse me?"
"You said you had bruises."
"You must be joking."
He wasn't joking; he was still giving Rodney that can-you-kick-this-puppy look. "I need to see."
Rodney sighed. "I don't suppose I could order you to respect my privacy? No, of course not, what was I thinking, we tried that already. Do you think the Asuthong are tyrannized by their slaves like this?"
"When the Asuthong cause their slaves pain and discomfort, I don't think they care very much," Sheppard said. And the difference is that Rodney, despite using the word, doesn't think of John as his "slave".
Rodney sighed again, went to the mirror, and pulled his shirt off.
There actually wasn't any bruising yet, though he'd be surprised if some didn't come up in the night. His armpits and the fronts of his shoulders, where the harness had taken his weight as he fell, were a bit sore -- he touched them gingerly -- and there was some deep-muscle soreness, too, but nothing showed.
Sheppard came and stood behind him, looking first at his back and then at his reflection.
He'd expected it to be uncomfortable to take off his shirt and let Sheppard look at him. But Sheppard wasn't judging him, and he wasn't being brisk and practical like Carson, either. Rodney remembered the half-finished backrub, and Sheppard's eyes gave him the same feeling now that Sheppard's hands had then: as if his skin, his body, were infinitely precious to him.
More. As if Rodney's body belonged to him, was his to protect and take care of. To, to cherish.
The most seductive thought ever.
Rodney blinked rapidly and focused his attention back on his nonexistent injuries before he could be drawn further into some longing that Sheppard might feel compelled to satisfy. He imagined even the Asuthong would balk at ordering a slave to cherish them. Oh, Rodney. The Asuthong don't even have the concept of "cherish".
On the right side of his neck, where his shirt must have been pulled aside so that the harness touched bare skin, there was a small reddened patch, like rope burn. Sheppard spotted it at the moment he did. Well, naturally; he probably spotted it because Rodney did.
Rodney was just wondering whether Carson might have some lanolin or whether the best option would be chapstick when Sheppard touched it.
He didn't move his fingers, so there was no friction. He was very gentle, so there was no pain. His fingers were cooler than Rodney's skin. He rested his fingertips there for a long moment, as though he was gathering information by touch -- and for all Rodney knew, he could do that now -- and Rodney stood very still and tried to think about anything but his pulse and the flush heating his cheeks and --
Without moving his fingers, Sheppard bent his head over Rodney's shoulder and kissed the side of his neck.
"No," Rodney whispered. He wasn't at all surprised when Sheppard ignored him.
Sheppard kissed another spot, and another, none of them too close to the burn, all of them desperately sensitive and long-ignored, because there were a lot of things you could do for yourself, but you really couldn't nibble your own neck. Rodney had to close his eyes to block out the reflection of Sheppard's dark, bowed head and his own desperate face.
"Please let me," Sheppard said against his neck. "I can be so good to you, Rodney. I'll know exactly what you need, every single thing --"
God, the better it sounded, the more he hated it. "You have no choice but to want to please me," he pointed out, wishing his tone were more commanding and less breathless.
And I'm back to identifying with Rodney 'cause I'm pretty breathless, too. Oh, guh.
"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Let me."
"I can't even begin to describe how screwed up that is."
"But I want to," Sheppard said in his persuade-the-natives voice. "And you want me to." He had kissed a path out to Rodney's shoulder and was working his way back in. Soft lips, no tongue, sticking close to some comfort boundary he'd intuited. Temptation on a silver platter, custom-made.
"You want to because you're on drugs. I want to, yes, and I don't want to think about what that says about me." He craned back to look at Sheppard, who looked back with an expression of dopey sincerity -- another from his persuade-the-natives toolkit. "Look, Major -- John," he corrected in response to a microscopic pout. "I know this is totally antithetical to the spirit of sex, but I'm going to make you tell me the truth, all right?" Rodney got laid plenty at university. I'm just sayin'.
John blinked at him. Evidently this was not what he'd expected to hear. "I guess so."
"Right. Right. You're telling me that you want to have sex with me while you're under a chemical compulsion to fulfill my every need?"
"Yes," John said, fervently, eyes half shut, as if it was the sexiest thing he'd ever heard. Real world: ick. Fic kink: yay!
"Right. Did you want to have sex with me before we went to Suthong?"
That wiped the blissful look off his face, replacing it with a reproachful pout, as though Rodney had brought up a subject that was in terrible taste. Hello, has he met Rodney? "I liked you. You were my friend. I wanted to hang out with you, spend time with --" Yes, we've all read that fic, too.
"John."
"No," he said, dropping his eyes.
"No, I thought not," Rodney sighed. "And if we do this, then when the stupid slave virus goes away and you no longer get pellets pleasure button rat!John FTW every time you do something nice for me, do you think it's likely that you're going to look kindly on this little romantic interlude?"
John was silent for a long time, and then he opened his mouth. Rodney interrupted. "Tell me the truth, not what it would make me happy to hear, please."
John looked at the floor for another long time, and then he looked Rodney in the eye. "I don't know," he said. "I can't predict at all."
"Huh. I was expecting a ringing no," Rodney admitted. Hee!
"I still want to."
"I still think it's a terrible idea."
"No, you don't," John said smugly.
"Yes, yes, I do; I'm just not really all that good at choosing my long-term best interests over short-term pleasure. Though usually the available pleasures are more in the line of speaking my mind freely rather than -- are you even interested in men, normally?" It's not that I don't enjoy the porn. But I'd be perfectly happy with the Rodney Monologues. Really. Oh, look! Porn ahead!
"Used to be," John said, and he seemed to have heard the yes buried in all that blathering, because he'd gone back to kissing Rodney's shoulder. "Had to give that up, though, if I wanted to fly."
"Oh, this, this is the best idea since the Bay of Pigs," Rodney said, but he closed his eyes and let John turn him around. Rodney won't let a little sexin' up get in the way of a little American military bashing.
It wasn't exactly the kiss of his dreams. John smelled even worse than he did, and he kissed like he had to cram everything he could into every second, like there was a time limit on kissing. Rodney thought about how the virus ought to show him how to give the perfect kiss, and then he thought about how knowing it was coming from the virus would have made it less perfect.
And then John pulled back, and gave him a knowing look, and cupped his big hands around Rodney's face, and slowed way, way down, running his parted lips over Rodney's cheek and jaw as if just being permitted to touch Rodney's skin was a privilege he'd longed for but never hoped to deserve.
"Hey, cut that out," Rodney said, and John looked at him and grinned. "I mean it. I'm not going to be able to enjoy this if you're acting like I'm some kind of Roman emperor."
Can we just think a minute about how John manages to make a joke, not just within the confines of the compulsion, but about the compulsion using the compulsion. John Sheppard: made of awesome y/y?
"Now there's a picture," John said, and he unbuttoned Rodney's pants one-handed. "I think you'll enjoy it, all right." And he slid to the floor.
When his tongue touched Rodney's cock, they both groaned, and Rodney thought about a younger John doing this, a teen-aged John maybe, and then giving it up because he wanted to fly. He certainly did it like he'd missed it. He was creative and exploratory, making happy snuffling noises.
Rodney liked the noises, liked them a lot -- brains and beauty were all very well in their way, but what you really wanted in a sex partner was enthusiasm, and it turned him on like crazy to have John going, "Nn -- nnn," like he was almost ready to come just from having Rodney's cock in his mouth.
God. As soon as he thought it, John sucked harder, until they had a nice feedback loop going, with John's pleasure turning Rodney on and Rodney's pleasure turning John on. And then John made a particularly loud "Nnnn!" and Rodney looked down to see him shuddering, panting, almost certainly coming, and still sucking -- god, there weren't even words for what it did to him, knowing John had come just from having Rodney's cock in his mouth -- and Rodney was seconds away from coming himself, seconds, when all at once that beautiful sensation just went away.
Went away? "I dwell in darkness without you" and it went away? < /Willow>
"Wh --" He opened his eyes and tried again. "John?"
"Tell me to take it all the way."
John's voice was low, hoarse, and Rodney could feel his cock leaping against John's face, but he was stymied by an uncharacteristic scruple. "No, I can't." The whole story is about Rodney's characteristic scruples.
"Come on, Rodney." God, it was surreal; it was the same whine as always. "I've always wanted to, but I could never --"
"Ignore a reflex that protects your body from damage? I wonder why." The thought of it made him hot and queasy at the same time, because on the one hand it was, not to put too fine a point on it, shoving his dick down the throat of someone who couldn't say no -- but on the other hand, oh my god, he'd always wondered what it would feel like, and it wasn't a skill that non-professionals tended to have.
And if John enjoyed it like he'd been enjoying the rest --
"There. See? You want to," John said with his favorite winning smile. "C'mon, Rodney. It'll be fun." And he was still stroking Rodney's cock gently with both hands, not even like he was trying to turn Rodney on but just like a person might rub a smooth stone, just for the pure pleasure of it.
"All right," Rodney said, thick-voiced with excitement, "all right, yeah, take it all, if you want to, all the way, do it --"
There was half a second of glorious moving tight wetness, and then John made an awful noise, and Rodney stepped back frantically.
John knelt back and wiped his eyes and gave Rodney a calculating look. "OK, here," he said, "go lie down," and he followed Rodney to the bed and lay down beside him in sixty-nine position and tipped his head back and swallowed.
He could feel it every time John made a noise, and John made a lot of noise. Rodney didn't dare move, and he couldn't quite shake his consciousness of what he was doing and how uncomfortable it must be. But evidently his order had made John some kind of instant expert, because he set up a rhythm with great confidence -- in, two, three, out, breathe, breathe, over and over.
"Oh, god, yes, that's -- oh, god, John, that's --" He put out his hand, needing to feel skin, and grabbed John's hairy thigh, and fuck! It wasn't that he'd forgotten he was in bed with a guy, but this made it so much more real, and it turned him on like crazy.
Below him John groaned, and oh, that was amazing, and then there was a soft touch on Rodney's cheek -- oh, that was John's cock, hardening again, dragging its way down the side of Rodney's face.
Rodney closed his eyes and caught the tip on his tongue. His mouth watered suddenly, and every hair on his body stood on end, and before he could make any sort of warning noise he was coming.
"Oh, jesus, Rodney," John was saying. His voice was scratchy, and Rodney didn't entirely like the thrill that gave him. "No, don't, you don't have to, don't --" But Rodney didn't have an obedience virus, and he never took advice; you could ask anybody. So he went on reveling in the great well-being that followed on the heels of the best orgasm he'd ever had in his life, and, slowly and curiously, licking at John's cock.
"Oh," John said. "Oh, god. You like it. You like it?"
"Mm," Rodney agreed, nodding.
John hissed, "Shit," and pulled away. "Hey," Rodney tried to say, but John had grabbed his cock and just managed to aim it away from Rodney's face before he came all over Rodney's neck.
"Oh, god. Oh, my god," John panted, and flopped nimbly up to face him, grinning the same way he did when he'd just done something unwise at maximum speed. "God, that was great." He took Rodney by the back of the neck and shook him gently, and then he shut his eyes, still grinning, and went to sleep so fast it was more like losing consciousness.
Rodney tried to stay awake and freak out, but it had been a long day, with the dangling and the daring rescue and the sex with Sheppard, and he just didn't have the energy. He put it on his mental agenda for the morning.
Was it good for you? It was good for me. Hot porn and hot characterizations and hot plot-driven actions all in one hot hot hot like a hot thing scene.
----------
But wait! There's more!
The next morning, he would have gotten a nice early start on it, except that he woke up with John licking his neck and looping a nice loose circle of thumb and forefinger up and down his cock. John had clearly been doing this for a while before he woke up, long enough to get himself pretty thoroughly turned on already, breathing hard and rubbing his own hard-on against Rodney's thigh, but when Rodney woke all the way up and said his name, John went crazy, shoving and kissing him frantically like he couldn't care less about morning mouth or anything else.
John's hand was slick -- obviously he'd remembered that Rodney had lube -- and even through this frenzy of kissing and rubbing, he kept his hand moving on Rodney's cock nice and slow, nice and easy. God, it was amazing; John's face was morning-rough to touch, soft-mouthed with arousal, and it was just so good to be doing this with someone who took such obvious pleasure in it, who was this hot for him in particular, even if it was only because he was not in his right mind.
"Rodney," John groaned, deep and husky, and buried his face in Rodney's neck. "Oh, shit, I can't -- tell me not to come." Oh, look. A button I didn't even know I had.
God, he was that close and Rodney hadn't done anything but rub his back and be grateful. That was amazingly hot, too. "Don't come," Rodney said obediently o i c wat u did thar!, and then, "No, hang on, I want -- here." He pulled John on top of him. "No, kneel up -- yeah, good, good."
John knelt over him, balancing on one hand and somehow still stroking Rodney's cock with the other -- well, he already knew the guy could juggle. Rodney looked up at him, blissed out face and head hanging down, cock curving out from his body and shaking with every breath -- and then he wrapped his hand around it and said, "Come now."
"Jesus!" John opened his eyes with a shocked look, and his cock jerked and pulsed in Rodney's hand, and the first jet striped Rodney's body from navel to collarbone. John looked at Rodney's face, and down at his own cock still dripping all over him, and his cock jerked again, like his orgasm just started up again in the middle. Like marking Rodney turned John on as much as it did Rodney.
"Oh, my god," he said as it wound down, "You wanted that? Rodney, you liked that?"
"Hell yes," Rodney said.
John's hand, which had never entirely stopped moving, tightened and redoubled its speed.
"You come on me now," John said, and Rodney obeyed like he was the one with the virus. iz ded.
The key to writing convincing kink, no matter how mild or extreme, is to make sure that it's the character's kink. I've read a lot of things that, personally, don't turn my crank but because the writer convinced me that the character found it hotter than hell, I was right there too. On the other hand, occasionally I've read stuff that would seem to be tailor-made for me but because it came across more like the writer getting her rocks off instead of the character enjoying themselves, I was left out in the cold.
My thoughts on yaoi, let me show you them.
----------
Afterwards John followed him into the shower without a word. He washed Rodney's back for him, and then washed Rodney's hair for him, and then Rodney washed John's hair. There was a hell of a lot of it. And that's before he started on John's back.
"Were you this coordinated before?" Rodney asked when John was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and scratching his back in an entirely different rhythm with the other.
"No, I don't think so," John said.
"Huh. Maybe we should see if we could get me one of those. I always wanted to be ambidextrous." He looked at John consideringly. "Wonder if you'll keep it when the antibodies kick in?"
John looked away, like that line of thought made him uncomfortable, so Rodney thought as hard as he could about breakfast to distract him. Reality is trying to stick its sneaky head up. Rodney counters with bacon.
----------
It was amazing what it did for his general sense of well-being, starting his day like that, even though John and Carson together had conspired to cut off his supply of etel. I like the frequent mentions of etal. It's a good distraction from the khama nut references. Even so, he felt relaxed and alert and full of energy and creativity. John looked good, too, like either he too was doing better for sex and company and lots of touching, or maybe he just felt better because Rodney felt better. He still tagged along, but Rodney was getting used to it; he was pretty good company, and it was kind of a kick to give up frowning at an equation and say, "Hey, find the flaws in this plan, will you," and have John smirk, "Well, nothing, if you really want your pressure differential to be 13/5 rather than 5/13." Smart John is smart hot. There. Fixed that for you, Rodney.
Elizabeth and Carson and the rest were still giving Rodney suspicious looks, until finally Rodney towed John over and said, "Hey, tell Elizabeth and Carson if I'm mistreating you or not."
"Well, he's killing me with sarcasm," John said, "just like everybody else, but I'm OK as long as he doesn't sing."
And Rodney, who unlike some people could actually carry a tune, said, "You should be so lucky," and smirked at Elizabeth and Carson. Vindicated.
----------
That night after dinner, when Rodney was frowning over his laptop and rubbing the back of his neck, John said, "Hey, I can give you a backrub now."
It was as good as the first one, and then it was better, and then it was really amazingly good, and then somehow or other he had his fingers in John's ass and John was panting, slack-mouthed, grabbing the sheets and saying, "Fuck me," over and over like they were the only two words he knew.
He knew the theory, but he made John promise to tell him if anything hurt, made it an order. And John grumbled, and sighed, and then began to bite out a high-speed rattle of words, all together without pausing -- "It hurts don't stop! It hurts I like it! God, Rodney, please --" Hot and funny.
Afterwards, blown past 'relaxed' and out the other side into 'manic,' Rodney slicked his hand through the come-sticky hair on John's belly and said, "I want you to do that to me. How soon can you do that to me? How soon can you get hard again?" and John looked at him like he was being a big moron So nothing's really changed then? and said, "As soon as you tell me to."
----------
"Carson thinks I ought to be more upset about being stuck back here on indefinite standby," John said. There were a dozen khama nuts left; he divided them into two piles and pushed the larger pile across the bed to Rodney. "I told him that a normal military operation doesn't send out its leader and its top brain on exploratory missions, but he didn't seem reassured." Meta, meta, who's got the meta? Make it so, Number One!
He put his hand on the back of Rodney's neck, and Rodney leaned into the warm touch. Rodney tried to believe John did all this snuggling for his own satisfaction, but he suspected John had figured out that he was touch-deprived, which was just way too pathetic. So mostly he tried not to think about it. "I can't imagine why not. That's so characteristic of your normal way of thinking."
"The virus is probably making sure I don't worry about anything that doesn't involve keeping you happy." He said it like it ought to make Rodney feel better.
----------
"Rodney. Rodney, yeah. Don't ever stop."
And that was the problem, really. It hit Rodney suddenly that for more than a week now he'd been living like he didn't ever have to stop, like he could have John's cock sliding over his tongue for the rest of his life.
It had been a lot more fun before he thought of that.
John was squirming, twitching, and now he started making distressed noises; the virus made him want to do what Rodney wanted, but the things Rodney wanted were in contradiction with each other. He wanted John to come, wanted him not to, wanted the taste and feel of it, wanted to keep doing this for hours, wanted John soft-eyed and sated and grateful, wanted John hard and desperate and begging for him -- all day, all the time, all of it right now because any minute now the stupid thing could wear off and John wouldn't want this then, and -
And in another universe, John simply disappeared in a puff of smoke as his central processor overheated.
"Rodney, no, no --" John couldn't read his mind, he knew, but he could feel his distress, and he pulled free of Rodney's mouth -- god, he had to be about two seconds from coming, and it was amazing that he'd had the strength to pull back, pull out of Rodney's mouth, go against both of the things Rodney wanted so he could drop down on the floor and give Rodney the one thing he needed, which was comfort.
"If you didn't want --" John broke off. He had to be confused; he'd be able to feel how Rodney had loved it, how Rodney wanted it back even now, and yet this unnamable other emotion had made him stop. "If you don't like it --"
"I love it," Rodney said, burying his face in John's neck and clinging embarrassingly. "I want to suck you for ten years, day and night --" John's hips shoved his cock against Rodney's stomach as he moved. "I just -- I don't want to stop."
"You don't have to stop." John kissed his face, over and over.
"I will," Rodney said. "When it -- when the thing --"
John's face blanked, the way it always did when the subject came up, and it was as much hating that expression as wanting the sex that made Rodney shove him down on his back and take his cock in his mouth again, this time with pure, single-minded purpose: Give it to me. Give me everything.
The sound John made as he came was almost enough to drive that look out of Rodney's head.
Gah! I mean, I know slave compulsion=bad and yet so sad! So tragic! So doomed! Res just twists me up and spits me out.
----------
"Will you for crying out loud eat something that didn't come wrapped in foil?"
"Yes, yes," Rodney said absently, not looking up from his laptop screen. "I'm familiar with this dynamic, where you yell at me because you love me." Ah ah ah!
When John went utterly silent behind him, it took Rodney a second to even remember what he'd said. And then the figures on the screen suddenly lost meaning.
John, when Rodney turned to look at him, had an almost comical expression of guilt, like a kid caught sneaking pie.
Rodney went cold inside. "Oh, no," he said.
"But." He wanted to say more, Rodney could tell, but he couldn't because Rodney didn't want to hear it.
"No, no, no, no, no, no."
John pressed his lips together, doing that righteous-soldier thing he usually saved for higher-ranking officers, when there were any. "You can't tell me not to feel --"
"I can tell you not to mistake compulsion for emotion," Rodney snapped.
"Sorry to cause you such trauma." John actually had the temerity to look hurt. He met Rodney's gaze and then looked away over Rodney's left shoulder, and, god, Rodney hated to see the military body language trotted out to deal with him. "I'm something to you. I can feel it."
I can't even -- I mean, John! Rodney! Talking and not-talking about feelings! Angst! Trauma! Wailings and lamentations! Gnashing of teeth and rending of garments!
"Feel this, then," Rodney said, dangerously close to hysteria. "How the hell am I supposed to have that and then not have it any more? Do you have the slightest notion what that's going to be like? No, you hadn't thought that far ahead, had you?"
It made his head hurt, and for once John didn't step forward to rub his temples for him. Realizing how he'd gotten used to that made his stomach hurt, too.
"You -- just -- keep it to yourself," he said, more calmly, because knowing you'd completely and thoroughly screwed yourself, comprehensively stomped all over your dreams, was the sort of thing that made it pointless to get upset. There came a time when it was just too late to panic. "Whatever emotion it is that the alien supervirus is simulating, just keep it to yourself."
And because Rodney really, really wanted John to go away, John did.
After thirty minutes -- minutes that Rodney spent staring blankly at the laptop screen, unable even to remember what he'd been working on -- he was back, and this time he was heavily armed and had strapped on his "cover me; I'm going in" expression, all narrow eyes and pinched mouth.
"Come on," he said, in that voice that even the scientists obeyed. "We're going back to Suthong."
John wants Rodney's pain to stop. He can't make it stop. But he can lessen it by ending the compulsion. The compulsion is strong enough to override the calm acceptance granted by the compulsion. I have a headache.
----------
John walked right past the welcoming committee of floppy-haired owners without a glance, with Rodney and Teyla and Ford almost running to keep up with him. He headed for the government building again, but instead of going in the front door, he led them around the side. In the back, sure enough, there was a much less fancy structure full of people with tattoos between their eyebrows.
John made a stay-back motion and approached a middle-aged man in colorless homespun. He might even have been the same one who'd been ordered to be the subject of Carson's medical tests the last time; they all had the same short-cropped hair, the same shapeless, colorless clothes, the same utter lack of facial expression, and it was hard to tell them apart except by sex. Rodney remembered seeing masters shout orders in random directions and then wait to be approached. Maybe they couldn't even recognize their own. God, that's depressing.
It would be impossible to lose John in the crowd; among these drably dressed people he was dark and shiny and dangerous as a knife in the linen drawer. Rodney couldn't take his eyes off him. He'd had that sleeping beside him. How could he not have known that it would end with his flesh stripped from his bones?
The first man shook his head at John, and the second. Of course; they had to obey their masters, and would defer to anyone's master, but they were under no obligation to another slave.
"Perhaps I should --" Teyla began.
"Wait," Ford said, never taking his eyes off John. "The major's got a plan."
"How do you know?" Rodney asked him.
"The major's always got a plan." I miss you, Ford.
And sure enough, John had given up on the household slaves and had collared three enormously muscled young men, clearly some sort of laborers. These men didn't seem to have any sort of orders not to talk to him. They were all talking at once, interrupting each other, even shoving each other for a turn.
John's face got more and more forbidding, his body got more and more still, until even Teyla looked wary, and Ford shot Rodney an uncertain look. The big slaves, though, weren't the least bit intimidated. They went away laughing, and John came back with his arms swinging easily, and Rodney wondered when he'd gotten so attuned to his body language that he could see the anger in that. Oh, since about ten minutes after walking through the gate.
"Come on," John said, and they went wordlessly back the way they'd come, and it wasn't until John and Ford were strapped in up front that he said over his shoulder, "It's the goddamned nuts," and then none of them said anything else until they were back in the city.
----------
Stay away, Rodney was thinking with all his conscious mind, but when the door of his room hissed open, he wasn't really surprised to learn that his subconscious desires had overruled him. Usually we don't have someone listening in on them.
John sat down on the cot and stared at the far wall, not looking at him or talking to him but still occupying so much of his mind that he couldn't think of anything else. After a while, John said in a weary voice, "Do you think you could try to want just one thing? It's kind of exhausting."
Rodney spread his hands helplessly. He wanted it never to have happened. He wanted it to go on happening. He couldn't see that he'd done anything wrong, and yet he wanted John to forgive him, and he wanted John to be angry with him so he could be angry back instead of feeling guilty.
He wanted John's hands on him one more time.
He didn't want something else to be sorry for tomorrow.
"All right, look," John said, and he came over and sat beside Rodney on the bed and pulled him down into his arms. Rodney swallowed hard and burrowed into that embrace, pressing his face against the rough surface of John's shirt.
After a moment John reached down and moved just enough to get the button out from under Rodney's cheek. Oh, John. That's just an amazing little grace note.
He hadn't seen John eat a khama nut since this morning at breakfast. If he hadn't had a snack later, the virus might be gone by morning. Maybe his bond to Rodney would loosen little by little. First he had to be in earshot, and then he could be in another room, and then he could be on a whole other planet. First this was love, and then just a nice warm feeling, and then a period of delusion that he'd look back on with disgust, like an ill-advised drunken pickup only without the mercy of a fuzzy memory.
Or maybe it would disappear all at once. Rip it off or pick at it. Which will hurt most?
John's arms tightened around him, maybe responding to Rodney's thoughts, maybe to his own. "Rodney," he said. "I think I -- I need to be someplace else when it happens."
"Yeah," Rodney said, relieved -- god, he couldn't stand to have to see John's face at the moment when the virus stopped making John love him. "You're going to need some time to think, when it -- when you're not --"
John interrupted him with a kiss, a long soft pressure of lips. Rodney closed his eyes, and sighed, and felt John sighing, too.
"I just hope," Rodney said, pressing his face to John's, "that you'll still want to be friends."
"Yeah," John said. "I hope so, too." The same sentiment, from the other side. John's afraid that Rodney won't be interested in him without the whole master-slave dynamic. We have got to work on that boy's self-esteem.
He got as far as the closed door, and then hovered there. "You still have to send me," he said in a scratchy voice.
Rodney wanted to stride across the room and kiss him one last time, but he didn't. "It will probably let me confine you," he said. "Go -- go to your room and stay there. Until you -- until you can come out."
"Yeah," John said, "that works."
Rodney stared at the door for a long time after it closed. Then he got up and washed his face like a child after a good cry and went and stood outside Elizabeth's room until she opened the door.
She didn't ask him any questions, and she didn't tell him everything was going to be fine. She gave him a hug, which surprised him, and then she rested her hand on his shoulder. I like this hint that Elizabeth has some idea of how difficult that has been on Rodney. Not the sexual aspect, but rather the responsibility for John's emotional welfare. Even a cursory glance at the reports describing the Asuthong slaves had to give her the willies.
"I'm not denying that Major Sheppard may have a difficult time with this when he's himself again," she said. "But I think in time he'll come to appreciate how hard you worked not to take advantage of the situation."
You have no idea, Rodney thought, and went back to his empty room, and glared at the cot, and went to sleep like a person falling off a cliff.
----------
He woke up alone, scratchy-eyed and headachy as if he'd stayed up all night instead of falling asleep at nine-thirty on a pillow that still smelled like John.
He was still lying there, trying to think of a good reason to get up, when the door opened, and before it had even finished shutting, John was across the room and leaping on him with enough force to shake the bed. He'd been jogging or sparring or doing something that left his hair and shirt damp with sweat. The mark was gone from his forehead. He smelled incredible. He had a big, slightly bloodthirsty grin on his face.
"What -- are you --"
John ground down against him, and Rodney momentarily lost the power of speech.
"I don't have any compulsion to please you any more," John said, with a little shimmy of his hips that pleased Rodney very much. John! John, you're back! I missed you, John! So did Rodney! "So I think maybe it's time you did a few things to please me, for a change."
Relief made Rodney lightheaded, or maybe it was the smell of fresh sweat. "Like keep you and the rest of your city alive in a dozen ways every day?" he said, and his hands on John's thighs weren't shaking at all. "Or maybe follow you into mortal danger every few days instead of staying in my nice safe lab where there aren't any mysterious alien pseudoviruses and mind-altering snack foods?"
"Not what I had in mind." John went on twisting restlessly against him as Rodney's hands came up without his conscious intent, cupping John's ass. "Unless maybe you only want someone who can come on command?"
And he stopped moving, and Rodney blinked and realized it hadn't been a rhetorical question. See? I told you John had issues. He slid one hand around to the front of John's thigh and then up into the leg of his shorts, rubbing the hair against the grain, and John's cock jumped when he touched it. "You sure you can't?" He could feel his grin getting bigger and stupider with every passing second.
John was smiling, too. He rocked into Rodney's hand, and Rodney's cock rubbed against his ass, and he took a fast breath and said, "I can still juggle." I believe I now have a juggling kink. ::shakes tiny fists at Res::
Oh, god. Rodney hauled him down and said into his open mouth, "Maybe you could teach me."
-end-
Need more? Go to in medias Res for more of resonant8's wonderful stories, including Transfigurations, possibly the best Harry Potter fic ever (Harry/Draco, but that's almost beside the point).