FIC: Reduced Circumstances, Sheppard/McKay, NC-17
Title: Reduced Circumstances
Author: Kharessa Bloodrose
E-Mail: Kharessa_Bloodroses@yahoo.com
Type: FPS
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Warning: Crack! Hand porn? Finger fucking? You be the judge!
Archive: Wraithbait
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or settings, and I am making no profit from the writing and sharing of this story.
Summary: Poor Rodney has yet another transformative experience.
Author’s Note: Recently I was reading my way through a list of story recommendations. Part of one of the story summaries is, “Rodney becomes shorter and more irritable.” Of course, the author means “short” as curt and easily provoked. I, being secretly eight years old, however, got the giggles as I imagined Rodney literally becoming shorter over the course of the story. This is the result. It’s not a new idea, but taking my turn with it was fun.
*********************************
Rodney had taken over John’s table shortly after he’d shrunk to slightly less than a foot in height. He hadn’t said anything about it, and neither had John. The reason he needed the table was pathetically obvious and therefore didn’t need to be addressed. He’d simply set about organizing his new domain, and John hadn’t said a word about it when he’d returned to his quarters to find that his table had become occupied territory.
Teyla had helped. He’d known what he wanted, but assembling and moving equipment had become tedious, difficult, and dangerous by then. Once upon a time, setting a small serving bowl on a table wouldn’t have been a problem. At a foot tall, moving a Pyrex bowl was a little like attempting to carry a hot tub on his back. Rodney had given Teyla a list and then he’d directed her from his seat atop War and Peace.
He’d stopped shrinking at four inches. By then the table had ceased to be a sparsely furnished, open room and had become something that looked like the first floor of a very determined but underprivileged little girl’s dollhouse. He had two beanbag chairs, both the size of a woman’s fist. Teyla had sewn him a back destroying bed, and had then replaced the cotton stuffing with a block of foam when he’d complained that it was too soft. She’d also made him three pillows, a sheet, two blankets, and a few sets of Athosian style clothing that didn’t quite fit. His clothes went to the wash tied inside of a knee-hi stocking, and when John dropped them off, he folded them and put them away inside of a Sucrets tin at the foot of his bed.
Elizabeth had provided his table. The miniature jade altar was by far the finest piece of furniture he owned, though he could have lived without the alabaster inlaid dragons. Its shallow incense bowl had never been used, and that made Rodney feel better about using it as a dinner plate. An aspirin bottle lid served as a basin, and after washing his hands, he retreated to the safety of the bed while John cleaned up. The wet washcloth would descend from the sky, engulfing the altar and dripping on the table, and with a twist of John’s fingers, the plate would be clean. On some days, John would wipe down the entire altar and the table surface under it. On other days he didn’t.
Zelenka had installed a mechanical lift; the ladder that Teyla had initially brought had ceased to be useful as his size had decreased. At one foot tall, a four-foot climb had been within the bounds of reason even if it hadn’t been pleasant. At four inches tall, four feet had become a dizzying height. Rodney might as well have been marooned on his table, ladder or no ladder. There wasn’t anything on the floor that he needed, and no way to use the transporters alone, and so Rodney had simply quit leaving the tabletop.
Maybe John had noticed and told Zelenka. Maybe Zelenka had thought of it on his own. Rodney didn’t know and didn’t care. He’d nearly leaped out of his skin when Zelenka’s voice had boomed from the headset near one of Rodney’s beanbags, informing Rodney of his intentions. Rodney had responded by climbing into his empty bath bowl, closing the curtains, and then sitting down to wait.
As hiding places went, the curtained bath bowl wasn’t much of one - the giants in charge of the care and feeding of Rodney McKay could look down into his entire territory as if it were a hamster habitat. Still, it wasn’t as if he had a door to close, and it at least expressed that he wasn’t interested in visiting. Zelenka had picked up the hint when he’d arrived. Instead of trying to socialize, he’d muttered in Czech and then gone about securing the lift to a table leg. The entire operation had taken less than fifteen minutes, and then Zelenka had left. Rodney could go down.
He hadn’t. There wasn’t much point in it.
******************************
“Beckett’s made zero progress,” John said, “but the anthropology and linguistics people are saying that the altar inscriptions indicate that the process is supposed to reach a plateau and then reverse.”
“Great,” Rodney mumbled around a mouthful of chicken. The strip John had torn off was roughly the size of a serving tray. Rodney held it in both hands and took another bite before tossing it back on the mayonnaise lid. “My hopes lie in the thoughts of anthropologists.”
“So, hopefully we’ll be seeing a change soon,” John said, unaware of Rodney’s sarcastic comment. Rodney had to shout to make himself heard when John sat on the bed, and John always sat on the bed to eat. Watching John shovel food into his gaping maw was the one sure way to kill Rodney’s appetite. They hadn’t attempted to share the table for meals since the first night of Rodney’s move.
“I do read the e-mails, you know,” Rodney said, gnawing on a corn kernel that fit in the palm of his hand.
“You say something, Rodney?” John said. Rodney flapped his hand in a gesture of exasperated negation, and John nodded before picking up where he’d left off. Something about temple inscriptions, and nothing that Rodney hadn’t read about in more detail while perched on the edge of the keyboard earlier that day.
Six weeks ago, they’d have been sitting on the bed together, and Rodney would have been doing most of the talking. After supper, they would have watched a movie or played a game on the computer, or they might have bypassed both possibilities in favor of more intimate recreation. Their relationship had been too new for either of them to have taken sex for granted, but it had also been too new and unexpected for them to have decided not to have sex if the opportunity presented itself. Rodney wasn’t sure what kind of relationship they’d had, but he knew that he’d wanted to keep it.
The sex had stopped around the time Rodney dropped below five feet in height. Rodney couldn’t say that he blamed John. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel a man’s musculature on a miniature body, or to wake up in the middle of the night holding onto someone the size of an overbuilt nine year old. He could only think that it would be disorienting, horrible, and atavistically shameful. For three weeks before his takeover of John’s table, he hadn’t seen the inside of John’s quarters.
“You about done?” John said, jarring him from his reverie.
He was. One of the few benefits of having been turned into a living miniature was that he always ate his fill. Rodney supposed that was a good thing since he got quite a bit more exercise now than he had before, even taking off-world missions into consideration.
He still did as much work as he could, and using the laptop had become work. Sending an e-mail meant trotting from one side of the keyboard to the other, crawling, and reaching. It meant leaning and balancing to slap his palms down on the keys, or climbing onto the keyboard to step on them. Pushing the mouse wasn’t too bad, and he could right or left click with one hammering fist, but the keyboard was a nightmare. He’d lost weight over the past few weeks, and he slept like the dead.
He rose to his feet, scooted in the cushioned spool chair, and headed for the water cap. John had carved him a block of soap, and he dunked it into the cap with a mighty splash.
“Thought you might want to watch a movie,” John said.
Rodney blinked, and then looked up as John’s shadow fell over the table.
“A movie?” he repeated, raising his voice to be heard. John’s head bobbed as if it was on strings, and then his hand descended. Rodney gave it a blank stare.
“Over there,” John said. He swallowed, and Rodney watched his throat work. “Hop on.”
He wanted to make a caustic, offended comment. Really, he did. He was standing by his tuna-can basin pedestal in a bathrobe that Teyla had botched together from a blue washcloth and a strip of Velcro, and John Sheppard wanted to carry him to bed to watch a movie. It was surreal, and not in an intellectually stimulating way.
He took a step forward. “You’re kidding, right?”
John shook his head. The back of his hand lay flat against the table, and suddenly, Rodney wanted to climb into its palm more than he’d ever wanted to do anything else. It looked warm and inviting, and far more appealing than the bed Teyla had made out of the remnants of a torn skirt.
He’d been three feet tall the last time anyone had touched him. Simpson had ruffled his hair. She’d been intent upon something on her computer screen, and she hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been something low and fuzzy in the periphery of her vision, and she’d absently reached out to pat his head. There had been a scene, and then Rodney had left. He hadn’t been back to the lab since.
“I’ll be careful, Rodney.”
Rodney took another step, and then another. John’s hand wasn’t smooth, but it looked comfortable. He could see the faintest glimmer of moisture in the lines of John’s palm, and a few white scars near his thumb. His hand looked solid, safer than the sloped edges of the keyboard or the lip of Rodney’s bath bowl. It looked healthy and alive and warmed from the inside in a way that Rodney’s sheets and blankets couldn’t simulate.
He didn’t look up as he stepped up onto it, but he heard John’s breath catch. The flesh under his bare feet felt springy, and he dropped to his knees to scoot into the slight cup at the palm’s center. He could smell soap and a hint of salt; underneath both laid a faintly metallic scent that made Rodney’s mouth water.
“Okay,” John said, his voice slow and slightly ragged at the edges. “Now, just lay back. I’m going to curl my fingers around you - carefully! - and then carry you over to the bed. Nice and slow.”
The skin under Rodney’s splayed hands felt damp, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was John’s perspiration and how much was his own. He closed his eyes and leaned back, thinking of John’s hands as his head came to rest in the soft cushion of flesh on the thumb side of John’s lifeline. He thought of John’s hands holding a P90 or a Beretta; he saw John’s fingers curled around the edges of a cafeteria tray or dancing over the laptop’s keys. He thought about John clapping him on the back, hauling him out of harm’s way, and cuffing him upside the head, and he remembered John caressing his bare skin. John’s hands were safe, fearful things - tentatively trusted and hopefully, anxiously anticipated. It didn’t matter that Rodney almost certainly would have climbed aboard any offered hand; this hand was John’s, and to lie down in its palm was more intoxicating and required more resolve than Rodney would have guessed.
Three of John’s fingers closed around him while John’s index finger remained extended. The motion rolled Rodney slightly to the side, but John’s grip was as careful as promised. He lifted Rodney slowly, and Rodney trembled within the valley of John’s palm. Restraining fingers held him imperfectly still, and John’s soap-salt-metal scent enveloped him. His robe felt molded to him, and yes, John’s hand was definitely perspiring, though whether from nervousness or simple heat, Rodney couldn’t tell.
It didn’t matter. Rodney squirmed in John’s grip, testing the security of his confines but not trying to escape them, and he couldn’t help but react to the humid, encircling warmth. For a moment he lay perfectly still. How sensitive were John’s fingers? Sensitive enough to feel a four-inch tall man’s erection through a bathrobe?
Three slow steps to the bed. John turned, and then it seemed to Rodney that he paused. Rodney kept his eyes closed and laid so very still, listening to the susurrus of John’s breath and feeling the pulse in the hand surrounding him. His stomach took a giddy dip as his descent began; John’s bed creaked, and Rodney swung, smooth and steady, as John settled against the propped up pillows. Then, John’s fingers lifted and squeezed carefully, opening and re-closing around him. Rodney sucked in a breath. Yes, John had noticed.
“I have an idea, Rodney,” John murmured, and then slowly rolled his fingers back.
Trembling and damp, Rodney lay still. He felt warm, yielding pressure along the right side of his body, and John’s thumb had tucked beneath his head. He opened his eyes.
Instead of opening completely, John’s hand bent to form a ninety degree angle. Rodney lay against a low, padded wall of calluses, and above it each finger rose toward the ceiling. He pushed up onto his knees, and raising his chin imperiously, he hazarded a glance back at John. .
John nodded his head in the direction of his upraised, stiffly held fingers. “Look at that,” he said. “Keep looking.”
Rodney frowned, but did as John had asked. John’s fingers were neither beautiful nor ugly, but merely long and strong and roughly serviceable. Warm. Rodney thought of that warmth curling around him and tensed against another useless surge of lust. His cock pushed against the closure of his robe, and he gritted his teeth while John turned to rummage in his bedside drawer. Rodney, kneeling in his hand, turned with him, safe and sound at the base of John’s middle finger, glaring at the wall of fingers in front of him.
“I thought we were going to watch a movie,” Rodney finally snapped.
“Patience, Rodney,” John said. His voice sounded brittle - nervous, excited, and unsure. “I’ve got…” his words trailed off, and then picked up again a moment later. “Here it is!”
A cap popped open somewhere behind him, and Rodney flinched at the abrupt, plastic sound. A moment later, John’s middle and ring fingers parted before him, and John’s left index finger appeared in the space between them. Lubricant glistened at its tip.
Live long and prosper, Rodney thought crazily, biting back a surprised laugh. John’s index finger worked back and forth in an abbreviated sliding motion, slicking the delicate webbing at the base of his fingers and the firmer flesh at their inner sides. Under the lights, the clear lubricant magnified each tiny line of texture, turning the soft space between John’s fingers into a fantasy of wet, yielding flesh. Rodney blinked, his initial shocked amusement forgotten.
John’s index finger retreated, and the fingers of his right hand formed into a wall once more. Rodney stared at the slick hollow before him, his own hand moving unconsciously to the front of his robe. He heard the rough purr of John’s zipper sliding down, and he took a deep steadying breath.
“Go ahead, Rodney,” John said. “I am.”
“I- you,” Rodney stammered, but he’d begun to pull at the robe’s Velcro opening. John’s hand moved to the right and gained elevation; Rodney glanced over the side and held his breath. John was trying to work his jeans down, of course, and he was doing it one-handed. Somewhere beyond and below Rodney’s field of vision, he was hitching at the waist of jeans and shorts, and Rodney could hear the movement of material over flesh, could feel the up-and-down tremors of the hand beneath him.
The realization propelled him into a flurry of movement. Shrugging out of the robe, he stepped forward and leaned into the space where middle and ring finger joined, dropping to his knees and sliding down. John’s hand rocked back and lowered, not quite flattening but providing just enough tilt to allow him the necessary angle.
He heard John suck in a sharp breath, and Rodney imagined John’s left hand curling inexpertly around his cock. He’d be finding his grip and setting his rhythm, and no, it wasn’t like trying to write or eat left-handed, but it would take a few seconds of adaptation, and he’d be watching Rodney while he did it. Watching Rodney thrusting into the space between the fingers of his right hand, feeling the tickling slide of Rodney’s cock and the shifting press of Rodney’s knees and thighs against his palm.
His hips slapped against yielding flesh. Rodney’s fingers tightened into claws, leaving tiny, white fingernail crescents just below John’s second ring and middle finger joints. The palm beneath him was no longer relaxed - its uneven surface had become rigid, schooled to specific stillness even as the whole of it jittered and bobbed chaotically.
John’s breathing shifted into low, panting growls, and Rodney hung on, flying and fucking, driving inward in a way that he’d never quite dared with John’s body. He imagined John’s cock arching out of John’s fist, skin stretched back and dew tipped at its slit. He imagined what it would be like to stand on John’s knuckle, arms wrapped around that hard column of flesh, slicked and glistening and ineffectually scrabbling upward until it stiffened and spasmed, sending him to its base on a warm tide of gray white viscousness.
John shuddered, and Rodney thrust forward and down one last time. Lying flat in John’s hand, he filled the warm pocket of flesh between fingers, riding the last convulsive tremors of his release and the shaking rise and fall of John’s hand. He gasped, tasting salt and metal, and finally John lowered him to the mattress.
He made no objection when John rolled him to one side a few minutes later. By the time John had finished wiping between his fingers with Rodney’s bathrobe, Rodney was sound asleep.
*********************
Two months later, Rodney lay beside John, naked and still slightly damp from the shower. The evidence of his brief occupancy of John’s tabletop had been erased weeks earlier. Rodney had kept the beanbags and Elizabeth had her altar, but he had no idea what John had done with the rest of it.
John had lost interest in him when he’d passed the 1’ limit, and as expected, he’d regained it when Rodney exceeded 5’. Rodney hadn’t seen much of John during that interval, and he hadn’t asked him about it.
Asking him about it might have led to other questions, which would in turn have led to conversations that Rodney didn’t want to have. He’d spent close to a month of his life as John Sheppard’s favorite toy - a fully functional Rodney Doll in an open dollhouse - but John had never pushed. He’d never asked Rodney to do anything, and that was what Rodney didn’t want to discuss. .
He didn’t want to talk about how he’d begun turning off his radio so that he could sleep undisturbed until afternoon, or explain that John’s quarters hadn’t just felt hot - they’d been hot. He’d called Kusanagi and asked her to raise the temperature, but he’d failed to mention to her that he felt more comfortable nude in a warm room.
No one had cared when he’d given up the laptop, and Heightmeyer hadn’t reported him as depressed or anxious. By then he’d begun to realize that he was regaining size; he hadn’t had any reason to be depressed. It had been safe to temporarily give up, but he hadn’t told Heightmeyer anything about that.
How had it been to do nothing but sleep and eat and sprawl naked on one of his beanbags, stroking his cock and staring into John’s enrapt eyes from under his eyelashes? Rodney couldn’t quite remember. It had been a long, sensuous dream that had lasted for weeks instead of a single night. In it, he’d stripped and crawled and twisted against the hard, ungiving surface of John’s table; he’d posed and bent and had occasionally wallowed in a bath bowl full of blue jello or pudding. He’d fulfilled his first fantasy and quite a few beyond it, and John had never asked, never suggested, never done anything but nodded his head before setting Rodney where Rodney wanted to be.
It had stopped when Rodney could sit in a chair on a stack of books, once again capable of switching between keyboard and mouse without moving anything but arms and hands. At that point he’d moved back to his quarters and eventually he’d returned to his lab. Even with his attention fully focused on the project, however, no one had been able to determine the purpose of the alien device that had set the shrinking cycle into motion. The device had been put away, and Rodney doubted that anyone would bother with it again.
“Ready?” John murmured, propping himself up on one elbow. Aside from his dog tags, he was naked. His cock glistened with clear lubricant; like Rodney, he’d prepared himself before Rodney had come out of the bathroom.
Rodney nodded against the pillow, rolling onto his side, and John scooted up against him. His cock pushed between Rodney’s cheeks, sliding into pre-prepared wetness with only a minimum of shifting. Rodney bent one knee, and John slotted into place. He shuddered, and John’s arm tightened around him with careful, almost incongruous delicacy, pulling Rodney close.
“I know what you need,” he murmured into Rodney’s hair. His right hand slid down to encircle Rodney’s cock. “Go ahead,” he said from between gritted teeth. “Do it, Rodney. C’mon”
Rodney could hear himself keening as he rocked between cock and hand, breathing in the scent of soap and sweat and metal. He rocked and John held as still as he could, growling against Rodney’s neck, and this was their discussion of tabletops and champagne baths, unwinged fairies and voyeur fantasies. Rodney thrust into John’s damp right hand. He pushed and pulled back and cried out his release, and it was exactly what he needed.
Author: Kharessa Bloodrose
E-Mail: Kharessa_Bloodroses@yahoo.com
Type: FPS
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Warning: Crack! Hand porn? Finger fucking? You be the judge!
Archive: Wraithbait
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or settings, and I am making no profit from the writing and sharing of this story.
Summary: Poor Rodney has yet another transformative experience.
Author’s Note: Recently I was reading my way through a list of story recommendations. Part of one of the story summaries is, “Rodney becomes shorter and more irritable.” Of course, the author means “short” as curt and easily provoked. I, being secretly eight years old, however, got the giggles as I imagined Rodney literally becoming shorter over the course of the story. This is the result. It’s not a new idea, but taking my turn with it was fun.
*********************************
Rodney had taken over John’s table shortly after he’d shrunk to slightly less than a foot in height. He hadn’t said anything about it, and neither had John. The reason he needed the table was pathetically obvious and therefore didn’t need to be addressed. He’d simply set about organizing his new domain, and John hadn’t said a word about it when he’d returned to his quarters to find that his table had become occupied territory.
Teyla had helped. He’d known what he wanted, but assembling and moving equipment had become tedious, difficult, and dangerous by then. Once upon a time, setting a small serving bowl on a table wouldn’t have been a problem. At a foot tall, moving a Pyrex bowl was a little like attempting to carry a hot tub on his back. Rodney had given Teyla a list and then he’d directed her from his seat atop War and Peace.
He’d stopped shrinking at four inches. By then the table had ceased to be a sparsely furnished, open room and had become something that looked like the first floor of a very determined but underprivileged little girl’s dollhouse. He had two beanbag chairs, both the size of a woman’s fist. Teyla had sewn him a back destroying bed, and had then replaced the cotton stuffing with a block of foam when he’d complained that it was too soft. She’d also made him three pillows, a sheet, two blankets, and a few sets of Athosian style clothing that didn’t quite fit. His clothes went to the wash tied inside of a knee-hi stocking, and when John dropped them off, he folded them and put them away inside of a Sucrets tin at the foot of his bed.
Elizabeth had provided his table. The miniature jade altar was by far the finest piece of furniture he owned, though he could have lived without the alabaster inlaid dragons. Its shallow incense bowl had never been used, and that made Rodney feel better about using it as a dinner plate. An aspirin bottle lid served as a basin, and after washing his hands, he retreated to the safety of the bed while John cleaned up. The wet washcloth would descend from the sky, engulfing the altar and dripping on the table, and with a twist of John’s fingers, the plate would be clean. On some days, John would wipe down the entire altar and the table surface under it. On other days he didn’t.
Zelenka had installed a mechanical lift; the ladder that Teyla had initially brought had ceased to be useful as his size had decreased. At one foot tall, a four-foot climb had been within the bounds of reason even if it hadn’t been pleasant. At four inches tall, four feet had become a dizzying height. Rodney might as well have been marooned on his table, ladder or no ladder. There wasn’t anything on the floor that he needed, and no way to use the transporters alone, and so Rodney had simply quit leaving the tabletop.
Maybe John had noticed and told Zelenka. Maybe Zelenka had thought of it on his own. Rodney didn’t know and didn’t care. He’d nearly leaped out of his skin when Zelenka’s voice had boomed from the headset near one of Rodney’s beanbags, informing Rodney of his intentions. Rodney had responded by climbing into his empty bath bowl, closing the curtains, and then sitting down to wait.
As hiding places went, the curtained bath bowl wasn’t much of one - the giants in charge of the care and feeding of Rodney McKay could look down into his entire territory as if it were a hamster habitat. Still, it wasn’t as if he had a door to close, and it at least expressed that he wasn’t interested in visiting. Zelenka had picked up the hint when he’d arrived. Instead of trying to socialize, he’d muttered in Czech and then gone about securing the lift to a table leg. The entire operation had taken less than fifteen minutes, and then Zelenka had left. Rodney could go down.
He hadn’t. There wasn’t much point in it.
******************************
“Beckett’s made zero progress,” John said, “but the anthropology and linguistics people are saying that the altar inscriptions indicate that the process is supposed to reach a plateau and then reverse.”
“Great,” Rodney mumbled around a mouthful of chicken. The strip John had torn off was roughly the size of a serving tray. Rodney held it in both hands and took another bite before tossing it back on the mayonnaise lid. “My hopes lie in the thoughts of anthropologists.”
“So, hopefully we’ll be seeing a change soon,” John said, unaware of Rodney’s sarcastic comment. Rodney had to shout to make himself heard when John sat on the bed, and John always sat on the bed to eat. Watching John shovel food into his gaping maw was the one sure way to kill Rodney’s appetite. They hadn’t attempted to share the table for meals since the first night of Rodney’s move.
“I do read the e-mails, you know,” Rodney said, gnawing on a corn kernel that fit in the palm of his hand.
“You say something, Rodney?” John said. Rodney flapped his hand in a gesture of exasperated negation, and John nodded before picking up where he’d left off. Something about temple inscriptions, and nothing that Rodney hadn’t read about in more detail while perched on the edge of the keyboard earlier that day.
Six weeks ago, they’d have been sitting on the bed together, and Rodney would have been doing most of the talking. After supper, they would have watched a movie or played a game on the computer, or they might have bypassed both possibilities in favor of more intimate recreation. Their relationship had been too new for either of them to have taken sex for granted, but it had also been too new and unexpected for them to have decided not to have sex if the opportunity presented itself. Rodney wasn’t sure what kind of relationship they’d had, but he knew that he’d wanted to keep it.
The sex had stopped around the time Rodney dropped below five feet in height. Rodney couldn’t say that he blamed John. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel a man’s musculature on a miniature body, or to wake up in the middle of the night holding onto someone the size of an overbuilt nine year old. He could only think that it would be disorienting, horrible, and atavistically shameful. For three weeks before his takeover of John’s table, he hadn’t seen the inside of John’s quarters.
“You about done?” John said, jarring him from his reverie.
He was. One of the few benefits of having been turned into a living miniature was that he always ate his fill. Rodney supposed that was a good thing since he got quite a bit more exercise now than he had before, even taking off-world missions into consideration.
He still did as much work as he could, and using the laptop had become work. Sending an e-mail meant trotting from one side of the keyboard to the other, crawling, and reaching. It meant leaning and balancing to slap his palms down on the keys, or climbing onto the keyboard to step on them. Pushing the mouse wasn’t too bad, and he could right or left click with one hammering fist, but the keyboard was a nightmare. He’d lost weight over the past few weeks, and he slept like the dead.
He rose to his feet, scooted in the cushioned spool chair, and headed for the water cap. John had carved him a block of soap, and he dunked it into the cap with a mighty splash.
“Thought you might want to watch a movie,” John said.
Rodney blinked, and then looked up as John’s shadow fell over the table.
“A movie?” he repeated, raising his voice to be heard. John’s head bobbed as if it was on strings, and then his hand descended. Rodney gave it a blank stare.
“Over there,” John said. He swallowed, and Rodney watched his throat work. “Hop on.”
He wanted to make a caustic, offended comment. Really, he did. He was standing by his tuna-can basin pedestal in a bathrobe that Teyla had botched together from a blue washcloth and a strip of Velcro, and John Sheppard wanted to carry him to bed to watch a movie. It was surreal, and not in an intellectually stimulating way.
He took a step forward. “You’re kidding, right?”
John shook his head. The back of his hand lay flat against the table, and suddenly, Rodney wanted to climb into its palm more than he’d ever wanted to do anything else. It looked warm and inviting, and far more appealing than the bed Teyla had made out of the remnants of a torn skirt.
He’d been three feet tall the last time anyone had touched him. Simpson had ruffled his hair. She’d been intent upon something on her computer screen, and she hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been something low and fuzzy in the periphery of her vision, and she’d absently reached out to pat his head. There had been a scene, and then Rodney had left. He hadn’t been back to the lab since.
“I’ll be careful, Rodney.”
Rodney took another step, and then another. John’s hand wasn’t smooth, but it looked comfortable. He could see the faintest glimmer of moisture in the lines of John’s palm, and a few white scars near his thumb. His hand looked solid, safer than the sloped edges of the keyboard or the lip of Rodney’s bath bowl. It looked healthy and alive and warmed from the inside in a way that Rodney’s sheets and blankets couldn’t simulate.
He didn’t look up as he stepped up onto it, but he heard John’s breath catch. The flesh under his bare feet felt springy, and he dropped to his knees to scoot into the slight cup at the palm’s center. He could smell soap and a hint of salt; underneath both laid a faintly metallic scent that made Rodney’s mouth water.
“Okay,” John said, his voice slow and slightly ragged at the edges. “Now, just lay back. I’m going to curl my fingers around you - carefully! - and then carry you over to the bed. Nice and slow.”
The skin under Rodney’s splayed hands felt damp, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was John’s perspiration and how much was his own. He closed his eyes and leaned back, thinking of John’s hands as his head came to rest in the soft cushion of flesh on the thumb side of John’s lifeline. He thought of John’s hands holding a P90 or a Beretta; he saw John’s fingers curled around the edges of a cafeteria tray or dancing over the laptop’s keys. He thought about John clapping him on the back, hauling him out of harm’s way, and cuffing him upside the head, and he remembered John caressing his bare skin. John’s hands were safe, fearful things - tentatively trusted and hopefully, anxiously anticipated. It didn’t matter that Rodney almost certainly would have climbed aboard any offered hand; this hand was John’s, and to lie down in its palm was more intoxicating and required more resolve than Rodney would have guessed.
Three of John’s fingers closed around him while John’s index finger remained extended. The motion rolled Rodney slightly to the side, but John’s grip was as careful as promised. He lifted Rodney slowly, and Rodney trembled within the valley of John’s palm. Restraining fingers held him imperfectly still, and John’s soap-salt-metal scent enveloped him. His robe felt molded to him, and yes, John’s hand was definitely perspiring, though whether from nervousness or simple heat, Rodney couldn’t tell.
It didn’t matter. Rodney squirmed in John’s grip, testing the security of his confines but not trying to escape them, and he couldn’t help but react to the humid, encircling warmth. For a moment he lay perfectly still. How sensitive were John’s fingers? Sensitive enough to feel a four-inch tall man’s erection through a bathrobe?
Three slow steps to the bed. John turned, and then it seemed to Rodney that he paused. Rodney kept his eyes closed and laid so very still, listening to the susurrus of John’s breath and feeling the pulse in the hand surrounding him. His stomach took a giddy dip as his descent began; John’s bed creaked, and Rodney swung, smooth and steady, as John settled against the propped up pillows. Then, John’s fingers lifted and squeezed carefully, opening and re-closing around him. Rodney sucked in a breath. Yes, John had noticed.
“I have an idea, Rodney,” John murmured, and then slowly rolled his fingers back.
Trembling and damp, Rodney lay still. He felt warm, yielding pressure along the right side of his body, and John’s thumb had tucked beneath his head. He opened his eyes.
Instead of opening completely, John’s hand bent to form a ninety degree angle. Rodney lay against a low, padded wall of calluses, and above it each finger rose toward the ceiling. He pushed up onto his knees, and raising his chin imperiously, he hazarded a glance back at John. .
John nodded his head in the direction of his upraised, stiffly held fingers. “Look at that,” he said. “Keep looking.”
Rodney frowned, but did as John had asked. John’s fingers were neither beautiful nor ugly, but merely long and strong and roughly serviceable. Warm. Rodney thought of that warmth curling around him and tensed against another useless surge of lust. His cock pushed against the closure of his robe, and he gritted his teeth while John turned to rummage in his bedside drawer. Rodney, kneeling in his hand, turned with him, safe and sound at the base of John’s middle finger, glaring at the wall of fingers in front of him.
“I thought we were going to watch a movie,” Rodney finally snapped.
“Patience, Rodney,” John said. His voice sounded brittle - nervous, excited, and unsure. “I’ve got…” his words trailed off, and then picked up again a moment later. “Here it is!”
A cap popped open somewhere behind him, and Rodney flinched at the abrupt, plastic sound. A moment later, John’s middle and ring fingers parted before him, and John’s left index finger appeared in the space between them. Lubricant glistened at its tip.
Live long and prosper, Rodney thought crazily, biting back a surprised laugh. John’s index finger worked back and forth in an abbreviated sliding motion, slicking the delicate webbing at the base of his fingers and the firmer flesh at their inner sides. Under the lights, the clear lubricant magnified each tiny line of texture, turning the soft space between John’s fingers into a fantasy of wet, yielding flesh. Rodney blinked, his initial shocked amusement forgotten.
John’s index finger retreated, and the fingers of his right hand formed into a wall once more. Rodney stared at the slick hollow before him, his own hand moving unconsciously to the front of his robe. He heard the rough purr of John’s zipper sliding down, and he took a deep steadying breath.
“Go ahead, Rodney,” John said. “I am.”
“I- you,” Rodney stammered, but he’d begun to pull at the robe’s Velcro opening. John’s hand moved to the right and gained elevation; Rodney glanced over the side and held his breath. John was trying to work his jeans down, of course, and he was doing it one-handed. Somewhere beyond and below Rodney’s field of vision, he was hitching at the waist of jeans and shorts, and Rodney could hear the movement of material over flesh, could feel the up-and-down tremors of the hand beneath him.
The realization propelled him into a flurry of movement. Shrugging out of the robe, he stepped forward and leaned into the space where middle and ring finger joined, dropping to his knees and sliding down. John’s hand rocked back and lowered, not quite flattening but providing just enough tilt to allow him the necessary angle.
He heard John suck in a sharp breath, and Rodney imagined John’s left hand curling inexpertly around his cock. He’d be finding his grip and setting his rhythm, and no, it wasn’t like trying to write or eat left-handed, but it would take a few seconds of adaptation, and he’d be watching Rodney while he did it. Watching Rodney thrusting into the space between the fingers of his right hand, feeling the tickling slide of Rodney’s cock and the shifting press of Rodney’s knees and thighs against his palm.
His hips slapped against yielding flesh. Rodney’s fingers tightened into claws, leaving tiny, white fingernail crescents just below John’s second ring and middle finger joints. The palm beneath him was no longer relaxed - its uneven surface had become rigid, schooled to specific stillness even as the whole of it jittered and bobbed chaotically.
John’s breathing shifted into low, panting growls, and Rodney hung on, flying and fucking, driving inward in a way that he’d never quite dared with John’s body. He imagined John’s cock arching out of John’s fist, skin stretched back and dew tipped at its slit. He imagined what it would be like to stand on John’s knuckle, arms wrapped around that hard column of flesh, slicked and glistening and ineffectually scrabbling upward until it stiffened and spasmed, sending him to its base on a warm tide of gray white viscousness.
John shuddered, and Rodney thrust forward and down one last time. Lying flat in John’s hand, he filled the warm pocket of flesh between fingers, riding the last convulsive tremors of his release and the shaking rise and fall of John’s hand. He gasped, tasting salt and metal, and finally John lowered him to the mattress.
He made no objection when John rolled him to one side a few minutes later. By the time John had finished wiping between his fingers with Rodney’s bathrobe, Rodney was sound asleep.
*********************
Two months later, Rodney lay beside John, naked and still slightly damp from the shower. The evidence of his brief occupancy of John’s tabletop had been erased weeks earlier. Rodney had kept the beanbags and Elizabeth had her altar, but he had no idea what John had done with the rest of it.
John had lost interest in him when he’d passed the 1’ limit, and as expected, he’d regained it when Rodney exceeded 5’. Rodney hadn’t seen much of John during that interval, and he hadn’t asked him about it.
Asking him about it might have led to other questions, which would in turn have led to conversations that Rodney didn’t want to have. He’d spent close to a month of his life as John Sheppard’s favorite toy - a fully functional Rodney Doll in an open dollhouse - but John had never pushed. He’d never asked Rodney to do anything, and that was what Rodney didn’t want to discuss. .
He didn’t want to talk about how he’d begun turning off his radio so that he could sleep undisturbed until afternoon, or explain that John’s quarters hadn’t just felt hot - they’d been hot. He’d called Kusanagi and asked her to raise the temperature, but he’d failed to mention to her that he felt more comfortable nude in a warm room.
No one had cared when he’d given up the laptop, and Heightmeyer hadn’t reported him as depressed or anxious. By then he’d begun to realize that he was regaining size; he hadn’t had any reason to be depressed. It had been safe to temporarily give up, but he hadn’t told Heightmeyer anything about that.
How had it been to do nothing but sleep and eat and sprawl naked on one of his beanbags, stroking his cock and staring into John’s enrapt eyes from under his eyelashes? Rodney couldn’t quite remember. It had been a long, sensuous dream that had lasted for weeks instead of a single night. In it, he’d stripped and crawled and twisted against the hard, ungiving surface of John’s table; he’d posed and bent and had occasionally wallowed in a bath bowl full of blue jello or pudding. He’d fulfilled his first fantasy and quite a few beyond it, and John had never asked, never suggested, never done anything but nodded his head before setting Rodney where Rodney wanted to be.
It had stopped when Rodney could sit in a chair on a stack of books, once again capable of switching between keyboard and mouse without moving anything but arms and hands. At that point he’d moved back to his quarters and eventually he’d returned to his lab. Even with his attention fully focused on the project, however, no one had been able to determine the purpose of the alien device that had set the shrinking cycle into motion. The device had been put away, and Rodney doubted that anyone would bother with it again.
“Ready?” John murmured, propping himself up on one elbow. Aside from his dog tags, he was naked. His cock glistened with clear lubricant; like Rodney, he’d prepared himself before Rodney had come out of the bathroom.
Rodney nodded against the pillow, rolling onto his side, and John scooted up against him. His cock pushed between Rodney’s cheeks, sliding into pre-prepared wetness with only a minimum of shifting. Rodney bent one knee, and John slotted into place. He shuddered, and John’s arm tightened around him with careful, almost incongruous delicacy, pulling Rodney close.
“I know what you need,” he murmured into Rodney’s hair. His right hand slid down to encircle Rodney’s cock. “Go ahead,” he said from between gritted teeth. “Do it, Rodney. C’mon”
Rodney could hear himself keening as he rocked between cock and hand, breathing in the scent of soap and sweat and metal. He rocked and John held as still as he could, growling against Rodney’s neck, and this was their discussion of tabletops and champagne baths, unwinged fairies and voyeur fantasies. Rodney thrust into John’s damp right hand. He pushed and pulled back and cried out his release, and it was exactly what he needed.