SGA FIC: The Right Relationship to Gravity
Title: The Right Relationship to Gravity
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: John/Rodney/Teyla
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Rodney expects people to care about his safety, that's what it means to be vital to a mission. But this concern is startlingly personal, and he's already hard from just that one kiss.
Notes: This is for moonlash_cc, although it didn't turn out quite the way I'd planned. At least, there is porn, finally!
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The Right Relationship to Gravity
by Lenore
In the aftermath, it feels like a dream, weightless and without logic, certain moments blaring out at Rodney like off-key notes, although he tries not to think about it, tries and fails. He remembers the way the weapon dug into his temple, metal-cold and deadly, the monotone of the female alien's voice explaining the nature of their offense, entering the holy city, unclean beings who had not renounced the pleasures of the flesh. He clearly recalls thinking, "Why does every advanced race we meet hate us?" and also, "Could there be a worse time for Ronon to have stayed home with the flu?" Whenever he closes his eyes, he has Sheppard's voice in his head, more desperate than Rodney has ever wanted to hear him, "Wait! Let's work something out. Don't kill him."
"Perhaps there is another way to atone," the alien leader says after some consideration.
In the city center is a raised platform where they are led. The alien inhabitants with their heavy robes and icy eyes gather to watch, and Rodney has sudden, gory visions of public execution. But then the alternative is offered, the acting out of a cautionary tale, humiliation in lieu of blood. The female alien keeps the weapon on Rodney and orders Sheppard and Teyla to undress. When they hesitate, the alien tightens her finger, and Rodney's eyes fly shut. Sheppard shouts, "Okay, okay!"
"You are to commit no actual transgression of the flesh, merely to simulate it. So all here may be reminded why we have chosen to repudiate such base carnality."
Teyla shivers in the cool air, and Sheppard brushes a quick kiss of apology to her temple. Another of the aliens knocks him to his knees with the butt of a rifle. "Rut like the animals you are."
It's wrong in the most profound way, an equation that doesn't add up, the two most beautiful people Rodney knows and the ugliest kind of hypocrisy. These aliens are sanctimonious perverts, each and every one of them, sneering with their mouths, not looking away for an instant.
Rodney is desperate not to watch, not to add his gaze to the burden, but the female alien forces his head back around whenever he tries to turn away. He will live the rest of his life with the image of Sheppard on his knees, jerking his hips, pretending to fuck, the fall of Teyla's hair in her eyes as she glances back, "it is all right, John, we will be all right." Rodney's mouth keeps forming words, "I'm sorry," but the clench in his throat won't let them out.
When it's finally over, Sheppard turns his back, shielding Teyla while she dresses, and then he pulls on his own clothes. "We kept our part of the bargain. We expect you to do the same." His expression is disturbingly blank.
It's only when Rodney is finally released that he realizes he's shaking like he's about to fly apart. Sheppard pulls him behind him, shielding both him and Teyla now. "Hate to break up the party," Sheppard's words bite with sarcasm, "But it's time we were going." The surprise is that no one tries to stop them.
They say nothing on the way back to Atlantis. They don't need to. They're all on the same, denying page when it's time to brief Elizabeth.
"The Annarrans have very strict religious beliefs," Teyla says in her careful way. "We were not welcome among them."
Sheppard sprawls in his chair so casually Rodney could almost believe nothing happened. "Probably want to mark that off our list of vacation spots."
Elizabeth frowns. "And their technology? The readings indicated they have advanced power sources. Isn't it worth trying to get to know them better, figure out a way to make ourselves welcome?"
"Must have been a malfunction with the MALP," Rodney lies. "There's nothing there that we can use."
Elizabeth nods at last. "I'll have it flagged in the database as unfriendly."
There's a moment afterwards when none of them seems to know what to do, but then Teyla bows her head and takes her leave, and John straightens his shoulders and says, "See you around, Rodney," and Rodney heads off to the lab in search of a renewed relationship with gravity.
He thinks he's all right, filling himself up with work, what he does best, but then he looks up and Radek is staring at him. "I've been calling your name for the last three minutes."
It takes him just a second too long to snap back, "Yes, and that's exactly how long I've been ignoring you."
Radek gives him a small, kind smile. "Perhaps it has been enough for one day."
Rodney lets out a heavy breath. "Yeah. Maybe."
He goes to his quarters with the intention of forgetting everything in sleep, but it doesn't seem to matter that he's weary down to the bone. When he closes his eyes, he sees things that make his stomach lurch, that lance him shamefully with heat. At last, he kicks off the covers.
His first stop is Sheppard, but there's no answer, so he goes to Teyla. There he finds the missing colonel, the two of them sitting on the bed, leaning close, Sheppard's hand on Teyla's back. Rodney hovers in the doorway, because he knows he's intruding, knows he should just turn around and go, but the idea of being alone in his room, drowning in that silence sticks him to the spot. Teyla smiles gently and pats the bed next to her. Rodney unhitches himself from the wall, gratefully.
"I'm sorry," he says as he sits down. The words sound feeble, but at least he finally has them out.
Teyla pulls him in, presses their foreheads together, lingers solemnly. He lets out a shaky breath and touches her hair, whispers "thank you" in a kiss to her temple.
Sheppard watches them with a funny expression, his eyes dark and unfathomable, and then he hooks a hand around the back of Rodney's head. Rodney thinks, "oh, shit, he's pissed," but then their mouths meet, open, and there's tongue and spit and need, Sheppard's fingers tightening on his neck.
Sheppard is panting harshly by the time he pulls away. "I really thought that bitch was going to kill you."
Teyla reaches for Rodney's hand. "I feared so, as well."
He expects people to care about his safety, that's what it means to be vital to a mission. But this concern is startlingly personal, and he's already hard from just that one kiss. He cracks under the pressure, blurts out the confession he never intended to make, "I hated them, hated what they did, but you're both so-- and now I can't help--"
I'm a bad person.. The realization comes as an utter surprise. He doesn't usually stop to consider such issues.
Sheppard gives him a look of bruised understanding. "I came here to say I'm sorry, too."
Teyla tilts her head in a chastising fashion. "I have told you that this is not necessary." She brushes her lips against Sheppard's. "And now I will tell you as well, Rodney." She kisses the corner of his mouth. "My people have a saying. What turned to dust in one pair of hands may flower in another."
Rodney and Sheppard exchange speculative glances, and Rodney is almost afraid to ask, but then he doesn't have to, because Teyla pulls her shirt up over her head, tosses it to the floor.
"Um--" He is already starting to sweat.
Teyla slides her hand along his cheek, kisses him again, more thoroughly. "Let us take back what they tried to take from us."
"Are you sure?" Sheppard asks softly, and she smiles, leans in to him, fingers in his hair as she kisses her answer.
Sheppard grins, a tipping point, the high wire tension in the room easing at last. "Well, all right then."
He starts to strip out of his clothes, and Rodney distractedly follows suit, paying what is probably an unseemly amount of attention, even under the circumstances, to Teyla's breasts. Her eyes sparkle, and he clears his throat, "I just, uh--" She takes his hands, places them on her, and he chuffs out a breathless, "God!"
Her breasts fit his palms perfectly, firm and round, and the way Teyla shivers when he skims his thumbs over her nipples makes his cock ache to be touched.
"Hey." Sheppard's mouth against Rodney's ear makes him start. "How about you lose this?" He tugs at the hem of Rodney's shirt, and Rodney lifts his arms, lets Sheppard peel it off him.
Teyla leans back, arms braced on the mattress, and Rodney bends down, breathes kisses over her breasts. Sheppard runs a hand, exquisitely slowly, all the way up Rodney's back.
"Is this okay?" he murmurs, laying kisses on Rodney's shoulder.
"For me?" Rodney puts all the incredulousness he feels into the words. "But for you--" The military, and its quaint regulations, and what the hell is Sheppard thinking?
Sheppard gives him a lopsided smile. "You going to turn me in?"
"No!" And then he gets that Sheppard is laughing at him. "Oh. Right. Well, in that case--" The kiss is sloppy and indulgent.
Teyla watches them, an eyebrow delicately raised, and Sheppard declares, "Tag team."
He starts to pull at one leg of her pants, and Rodney goes at the other, and Teyla makes a noise that Rodney would call a giggle if it came from someone else. He and Sheppard lose the rest of their clothes and clamber onto the bed. Teyla's face lights up with happy anticipation, erotic and innocent at the same time, and Rodney leans over to kiss her.
Sheppard palms Teyla's delicate feet, strokes the arches, and then his fingers glide up her calves, past the knee. Rodney stretches on his side, toys with her breasts, and reaches out to brush a hand over Sheppard's shoulder, through his hair. Sheppard starts to kiss a strategic path upwards, and Teyla gasps encouragement, and Rodney licks her lovely bottom lip, the breathy sighs tickling his mouth.
They kiss more fiercely as Sheppard works in earnest between Teyla's thighs. She wraps her hand around Rodney's cock, and he teases a nipple, and Sheppard flicks a gaze up at them, a mischievous light grinning in his eyes. He does something with his fingers, and then Teyla is bucking up, eyes wide, fingers curling into the coverlet as she comes.
Sheppard rests his head against Teyla's hip, looking inordinately pleased with himself, and Rodney shifts his body to string kisses across Sheppard's chest and down his arm. Sheppard catches Rodney's chin and pulls him back, and Rodney can taste the salt-sweet of Teyla in his mouth.
Rodney is thinking he'd like more of that. Hell, maybe he even says it out loud, because Sheppard grins, scoots up the bed, shoulder to shoulder with Teyla, leaving the way clear. Rodney splays his hands over Teyla's hips, fits his thumbs in the hollows of her bones, and Teyla whimpers, already, before he's even done anything. Sheppard rubs his hand over Teyla's belly, long, blunt fingers, pale against milky coffee skin, and Rodney kisses a trail in their wake. Teyla grabs for his shoulder and pulls him down to her.
He hums while he eats her out, enjoying every hitch and tremor he can coax out of her. Sheppard rests against her side, kissing luxuriously, her small hand strong and capable looking as she works his cock.
Rodney likes making her come, and by the time he finishes, Teyla is sprawled and flushed, wisps of her hair dark with sweat, her lips a sharp pink where she's worried them with her teeth. Their joint handiwork, this sensual undoing, and Rodney and Sheppard kneel on either side of her to admire it. She's still panting, and they reach for one another across her, mouths coming together, hands sliding over chests, bellies, thighs. Palm around cock, they explore, "like this, or this, or do you like this," and eventually fall into a rhythm, a slow, getting-to-know-you waltz, and then it's not so slow, and then it's a frantic tango, trying to pull the orgasms out of each other. Teyla stares up at them, tip of her tongue peeking out between her lips, her hand moving between her legs. When John and Rodney come, they do it with their foreheads pressed together, sweating and gasping all over each other, their semen falling softly onto Teyla's belly.
Rodney slumps on the bed afterwards, breathing into the multi-colored Athosian quilt. Sheppard somehow finds the strength to go fetch a washcloth and cleans them up. Teyla tugs on Rodney's arm until he scoots around the right way on the bed and gets under the covers. Sheppard settles on the other side of Teyla, leans across to Rodney for one last kiss, and curls against Teyla to sleep.
Teyla is warm on Rodney's shoulder, and her hair tickles his neck, and he feels heavy all over, in the most reassuring way, as if all the proper laws of physics have him firmly in their grasp once more. He lets out a breath and closes his eyes and thinks that Teyla was right after all. They're going to be fine.
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