Lucid
So I don't know how many of you have had the pleasure of reading shaenie's work before, but she is hands-down one of the best, most vivid, most intensely original writers in fandom, and she's gotten pulled into SGA. She's currently working on a story so long and innovative and well-built that it's all I can do not to harass her for updates every two hours, and so tonight, when she said, "DISTRACT ME WITH PORN," there was no way I couldn't oblige.
Title: Lucid
Summary: Can you make it until 3 a.m.? he'd asked. I should be able to figure something out by then.
Notes: SGA, McKay/Sheppard, explicit, ~1,650 words. Written in just under an hour for shaenie's specifications (voyeurism, John/Rodney, in whatever combination you like). No spoilers, unbetaed.
It's not as fucked up as it should be.
This is the thing about the Ancients: they were fucked. In ways that cut past moral relativism and god complexes straight into deeply fucked. And so John is no longer surprised when the next thing breaks or the next hidden compartment drops open and something deeply disturbing falls into his lap. He's no longer surprised when each new thing he learns about the Ancients makes him like his own genetic heritage a little bit less.
What surprises him is how the things that make him like the Ancients the least are sometimes the things he can't bring himself to pass up.
What surprises him is the deep, addictive tang of doing the wrong thing, over and over, because he can't get enough of it and he can't convince himself to stop.
What surprises him is Rodney.
*
Of course it had been Rodney who he went to when he figured it out. And when John tracked him down in the jumper bay, Rodney hadn't even badgered him, had just taken a look at John's face (the gray tinge to his skin, the dark circles that had taken up residence under his eyes after two weeks of trying not to sleep, the slightly wild expression he'd caught at unguarded moments in the mirror) and set the tools down and waited, almost patient, while John paced and bit his lip and ran his fingers through his hair.
I think it's an Ancient security system, he'd said.
I think it must turn on automatically, when there aren't enough personnel for full city surveillance, he'd said.
I don't know why it picked me, he'd said.
Jesus, Jesus, I can't stop seeing them, he'd said. I can't get it to leave me alone and I can't turn the fucking thing off. I think I'm starting to lose it here.
And Rodney had gone still, thinking so hard that John could watch things flickering through his eyes, 48 frames a second at least.
Sixteen days? he'd asked.
Every night since then? he'd asked.
Only when you're asleep? he'd asked.
Can you make it until 3 a.m.? he'd asked. I should be able to figure something out by then.
And John seriously hadn't known if he could, didn't know if he could make it another half-hour without falling over from sheer exhaustion, but he'd also known he couldn't do another night of it: dreaming the city, mind flickering through corridors and rooms and wide-open plazas, watching everywhere there was movement, everywhere all at once. Seeing things he wasn't supposed to see, things he never wanted to know. The whole city and everyone in it, walls stripped away to leave them all exposed to him, every sound and pixel clinically precise even in the pitch black.
Yeah, he'd said, I can do it.
Good, Rodney said, and he turned and strode out the jumper bay without a backwards glance.
*
When Rodney radios him at 2:48 a.m., John's out on Pier 3 in a wind so cold he can barely feel it anymore, staying a careful distance away from the railing so he won't get tempted to lean on it, to let his eyes close, to toss himself in the freezing salt ocean so he can't possibly fall asleep.
It's going to take a few days to shut it down safely, Rodney tells him. But I've got it locked down to one location, so the input should be a lot lower, and you won't be spying on anyone who moves now. Can you handle that?
One, John thinks: just one place, not twenty, not two hundred going all at once in his head. Only one room he has to watch while he sleeps.
Sheppard?
Yeah, John husks, throat worn down to gravel and tire tracks, tired enough that he could almost lie down right here in the cold and slip away. Yeah, I can handle it.
The thought of sleep so overpowering that he never thought to ask which room it was.
*
So every night now, John goes back to his quarters, strips down, shuts the light off. Closes his eyes.
Every night, he falls asleep in his quarters, and as soon as he does, he's in Rodney's.
He can't say he doesn't know why Rodney did it, because after the first night, there was no way to imagine this was an accident or a mistake. This is anything but careless.
Anything but careless, the way Rodney slides quietly in, usually after hours of John watching the silent space of his room, disembodied and rapt and so achingly hard he can almost feel it through the dream.
Anything but careless, the way Rodney will set his things down on the desk, toe his boots off, drape his jacket over the couch, splash water on his face at the tap and come back out in his shirtsleeves and bare feet, eyes wide and intent, like he's looking past the walls for something he can't see but knows is there.
Anything but careless, the way Rodney will shove the covers back and turn to strip his shirt off over his head, broad shoulders flexing as they work against the tight pull of the fabric, skin pale and almost luminous in the ghostly non-light of the camera, dog tags glittering against his chest and throat like an invitation.
It takes him a long time to lie down, to drop his mobile hands to the front of his pants and undo that top snap. That comes after - after long minutes where he stands there, palms sliding over his own skin. It's not a display, not theatrical, but visceral - like he's fixing himself back into his muscles and bones after hours and hours of mental effort, like he's relearning the weight and texture of his physical form, mapping it like a stranger's, like a lover's, like his hands are the proxy for someone else. Like he's showing John where to go, what to do, how to touch. Through the membrane of the dream, John can feel his own breath coming faster, he can tell that his own body is winding up from the way his focus gets sharper, from the strange ghosts of sensations that make him shudder even with no gravity to shudder against. He doesn't know if his own hands are moving over himself, finding the places that Rodney's touching, matching his movements like an echo or a mirror, but he's sometimes found scratches in the morning, nail marks lightly scored down his own chest where Rodney had dug his fingers against his own skin the night before. Rodney doesn't turn and let his weight drop onto the bed until the salt sheen on his skin is visible, until his chest has started to heave and his head is twitching back and forth at the brush and twist and pinch of his own fingers. He doesn't drop his head back against the pillow until he's so hard that John can see the length of him pressed against the front of his trousers, a long thick curve. By the time he's on his back, John knows they're both aching for it, even though neither body is his own, but he knows that if he were really here, his mouth would be watering as Rodney's hips thrust up off the bed at the roll of his zipper, the way Rodney lets his hands press down hard along the thick muscles of his thighs as he shoves pants and boxers down past his knees.
When Rodney fists his own dick, hard and red and leaking at the tip, his eyelids flutter and his jaw tilts upward and his mouth drops open, bitten lips dark and panting. The rhythm he sets himself is slow and firm and merciless and his whole body rolls into it as he thumbs the notch under the head of his dick and runs his free hand over the span of his own chest or slides it in between his legs and tugs his balls, feet flexing and pushing against the sheets. With Atlantis's eyes, John can literally see the heat rolling off Rodney in waves as he winds himself up, can almost feel how that would feel against his own skin, Rodney moving under him, flexing and shifting and desperate. He knows that somewhere out of reach, his own body is twisting and writhing in sympathy, his hands empty and scrabbling, biting down hard enough at the inside of his cheek that he may wake tomorrow to the faint taste of blood. But right now all he can do is watch the pulse in Rodney's throat and the way his collarbone arches back as he shoves his shoulders down into the mattress, the way the muscles of his forearm clench, and every time, right as he comes, his eyes snap open and his mouth shapes a word, just one syllable, and even though the sensors pick up sound there's nothing to be heard but the harsh gasp of Rodney's breath cutting out for just a second before his spine arches and he shudders his release.
*
Every night for three weeks, John's been sleeping with Rodney, and it's not as fucked up as it should be, because he knows this isn't a mistake, the same way he knows that Rodney could have turned the device off by now. That he's just waiting for John to break, to show up at his quarters in the small hours of the night and pound the door open, shove Rodney up against the wall and growl, Goddammit, McKay, quit fucking with me, quit fucking around and do it already. That he's just waiting for John to come to him.
John will. Soon.
But Rodney is achingly beautiful, alone in his room and shaking under his own hands in the dark, and for now, John wants to watch.
Title: Lucid
Summary: Can you make it until 3 a.m.? he'd asked. I should be able to figure something out by then.
Notes: SGA, McKay/Sheppard, explicit, ~1,650 words. Written in just under an hour for shaenie's specifications (voyeurism, John/Rodney, in whatever combination you like). No spoilers, unbetaed.
It's not as fucked up as it should be.
This is the thing about the Ancients: they were fucked. In ways that cut past moral relativism and god complexes straight into deeply fucked. And so John is no longer surprised when the next thing breaks or the next hidden compartment drops open and something deeply disturbing falls into his lap. He's no longer surprised when each new thing he learns about the Ancients makes him like his own genetic heritage a little bit less.
What surprises him is how the things that make him like the Ancients the least are sometimes the things he can't bring himself to pass up.
What surprises him is the deep, addictive tang of doing the wrong thing, over and over, because he can't get enough of it and he can't convince himself to stop.
What surprises him is Rodney.
*
Of course it had been Rodney who he went to when he figured it out. And when John tracked him down in the jumper bay, Rodney hadn't even badgered him, had just taken a look at John's face (the gray tinge to his skin, the dark circles that had taken up residence under his eyes after two weeks of trying not to sleep, the slightly wild expression he'd caught at unguarded moments in the mirror) and set the tools down and waited, almost patient, while John paced and bit his lip and ran his fingers through his hair.
I think it's an Ancient security system, he'd said.
I think it must turn on automatically, when there aren't enough personnel for full city surveillance, he'd said.
I don't know why it picked me, he'd said.
Jesus, Jesus, I can't stop seeing them, he'd said. I can't get it to leave me alone and I can't turn the fucking thing off. I think I'm starting to lose it here.
And Rodney had gone still, thinking so hard that John could watch things flickering through his eyes, 48 frames a second at least.
Sixteen days? he'd asked.
Every night since then? he'd asked.
Only when you're asleep? he'd asked.
Can you make it until 3 a.m.? he'd asked. I should be able to figure something out by then.
And John seriously hadn't known if he could, didn't know if he could make it another half-hour without falling over from sheer exhaustion, but he'd also known he couldn't do another night of it: dreaming the city, mind flickering through corridors and rooms and wide-open plazas, watching everywhere there was movement, everywhere all at once. Seeing things he wasn't supposed to see, things he never wanted to know. The whole city and everyone in it, walls stripped away to leave them all exposed to him, every sound and pixel clinically precise even in the pitch black.
Yeah, he'd said, I can do it.
Good, Rodney said, and he turned and strode out the jumper bay without a backwards glance.
*
When Rodney radios him at 2:48 a.m., John's out on Pier 3 in a wind so cold he can barely feel it anymore, staying a careful distance away from the railing so he won't get tempted to lean on it, to let his eyes close, to toss himself in the freezing salt ocean so he can't possibly fall asleep.
It's going to take a few days to shut it down safely, Rodney tells him. But I've got it locked down to one location, so the input should be a lot lower, and you won't be spying on anyone who moves now. Can you handle that?
One, John thinks: just one place, not twenty, not two hundred going all at once in his head. Only one room he has to watch while he sleeps.
Sheppard?
Yeah, John husks, throat worn down to gravel and tire tracks, tired enough that he could almost lie down right here in the cold and slip away. Yeah, I can handle it.
The thought of sleep so overpowering that he never thought to ask which room it was.
*
So every night now, John goes back to his quarters, strips down, shuts the light off. Closes his eyes.
Every night, he falls asleep in his quarters, and as soon as he does, he's in Rodney's.
He can't say he doesn't know why Rodney did it, because after the first night, there was no way to imagine this was an accident or a mistake. This is anything but careless.
Anything but careless, the way Rodney slides quietly in, usually after hours of John watching the silent space of his room, disembodied and rapt and so achingly hard he can almost feel it through the dream.
Anything but careless, the way Rodney will set his things down on the desk, toe his boots off, drape his jacket over the couch, splash water on his face at the tap and come back out in his shirtsleeves and bare feet, eyes wide and intent, like he's looking past the walls for something he can't see but knows is there.
Anything but careless, the way Rodney will shove the covers back and turn to strip his shirt off over his head, broad shoulders flexing as they work against the tight pull of the fabric, skin pale and almost luminous in the ghostly non-light of the camera, dog tags glittering against his chest and throat like an invitation.
It takes him a long time to lie down, to drop his mobile hands to the front of his pants and undo that top snap. That comes after - after long minutes where he stands there, palms sliding over his own skin. It's not a display, not theatrical, but visceral - like he's fixing himself back into his muscles and bones after hours and hours of mental effort, like he's relearning the weight and texture of his physical form, mapping it like a stranger's, like a lover's, like his hands are the proxy for someone else. Like he's showing John where to go, what to do, how to touch. Through the membrane of the dream, John can feel his own breath coming faster, he can tell that his own body is winding up from the way his focus gets sharper, from the strange ghosts of sensations that make him shudder even with no gravity to shudder against. He doesn't know if his own hands are moving over himself, finding the places that Rodney's touching, matching his movements like an echo or a mirror, but he's sometimes found scratches in the morning, nail marks lightly scored down his own chest where Rodney had dug his fingers against his own skin the night before. Rodney doesn't turn and let his weight drop onto the bed until the salt sheen on his skin is visible, until his chest has started to heave and his head is twitching back and forth at the brush and twist and pinch of his own fingers. He doesn't drop his head back against the pillow until he's so hard that John can see the length of him pressed against the front of his trousers, a long thick curve. By the time he's on his back, John knows they're both aching for it, even though neither body is his own, but he knows that if he were really here, his mouth would be watering as Rodney's hips thrust up off the bed at the roll of his zipper, the way Rodney lets his hands press down hard along the thick muscles of his thighs as he shoves pants and boxers down past his knees.
When Rodney fists his own dick, hard and red and leaking at the tip, his eyelids flutter and his jaw tilts upward and his mouth drops open, bitten lips dark and panting. The rhythm he sets himself is slow and firm and merciless and his whole body rolls into it as he thumbs the notch under the head of his dick and runs his free hand over the span of his own chest or slides it in between his legs and tugs his balls, feet flexing and pushing against the sheets. With Atlantis's eyes, John can literally see the heat rolling off Rodney in waves as he winds himself up, can almost feel how that would feel against his own skin, Rodney moving under him, flexing and shifting and desperate. He knows that somewhere out of reach, his own body is twisting and writhing in sympathy, his hands empty and scrabbling, biting down hard enough at the inside of his cheek that he may wake tomorrow to the faint taste of blood. But right now all he can do is watch the pulse in Rodney's throat and the way his collarbone arches back as he shoves his shoulders down into the mattress, the way the muscles of his forearm clench, and every time, right as he comes, his eyes snap open and his mouth shapes a word, just one syllable, and even though the sensors pick up sound there's nothing to be heard but the harsh gasp of Rodney's breath cutting out for just a second before his spine arches and he shudders his release.
*
Every night for three weeks, John's been sleeping with Rodney, and it's not as fucked up as it should be, because he knows this isn't a mistake, the same way he knows that Rodney could have turned the device off by now. That he's just waiting for John to break, to show up at his quarters in the small hours of the night and pound the door open, shove Rodney up against the wall and growl, Goddammit, McKay, quit fucking with me, quit fucking around and do it already. That he's just waiting for John to come to him.
John will. Soon.
But Rodney is achingly beautiful, alone in his room and shaking under his own hands in the dark, and for now, John wants to watch.