Mojo by Purna (Left Behind Challenge)
Mojo by purna
McKay/Sheppard
~3,800 words
NC-17
Summary: "I," Rodney announced as they entered the infirmary, "have lost my mojo."
Mojo
"So, me having sex with Elizabeth Hurley is out," Rodney mused as they were striding back through the gate.
John quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'd say that's an accurate assessment, Rodney," he said and steered the way to the infirmary. He had a wicked rash from the purple thicket of ivy that surrounded the stargate. "What are we talking about here, besides adding to the growing list of women who'll forever deny you their charms?"
"Oh, ha, very ha, Colonel. There are legions of women who happen to find my unique combination of tremendous intellect and boyish good looks completely irresistible." Rodney shot him a knowing look, his mouth turned up at the corners, and John felt a flush creep up his neck.
"And men," Ronon muttered, which halted John in his tracks.
Rodney sputtered while John was still struck dumb. "What? What? You mean you--"
"No, McKay, not me," Ronon said easily, and John held his breath. "Sergeant Martin. I heard him mention--Sheppard, what are you doing?"
John had clapped his hands over his ears and was saying, "Not hearing this."
"Sheppard?" Ronon's voice was only slightly muffled, so John added a, "la, la, la" for good measure. John stopped when Teyla started giggling at him. Their team dynamic was pretty flexible, filled with mutual respect and good humor, but as team leader, he figured he should maintain some dignity.
"Ronon, I have warned you before," Teyla said patiently, "about the Earth people's odd taboos."
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, yes, that's really more of an American military taboo, isn't it, Colonel, and--oh, Sergeant Martin, with the really big--"
"Rodney," John said, an irrational possessiveness lending an edge to his voice. Yet another close call, Rodney's mouth on his, the taste of coffee and powerbars, gripping each other too tightly, holding everything together through the post adrenaline-rush shakes. Blood rushed to his face, and he bit his lip, shoved the memory into a deep, dark section of his head, where it wouldn't keep tempting him.
They'd both agreed it'd been a mistake, the product of adrenaline and one near-death experience too many. The straw that broke the camel's back, that tripped them over the line from a desperate we're alive hug to something more. They were just friends--who'd kissed, the smell of cordite heavy in the air--just friends--who'd groped each other like teenagers. Just friends, which meant Rodney wasn't really his, although his body seemed to think otherwise.
But it didn't really matter that they'd agreed to keep their hands off each other--bad idea, yes, Colonel, I completely agree, Rodney's face carefully blank--because John's primitive self said mine, mine. It wasn't jealousy, though, no way, just because he didn't want to hear Rodney talk about some random Marine's...attributes.
"--really big biceps, I was going to say." Rodney's gaze on John was arch, a little too intimate. "Anyway, to bring this conversation back to the important thing, namely me, I was just trying to come up with a cure."
"Cure? You are ill?" Teyla asked. They'd started moving again, and John sighed in relief.
"I," Rodney announced as they entered the infirmary, "have lost my mojo."
"You left nothing behind on PX9-731," Ronon said. "I've been keeping an eye out ever since that one time on..."
"We agreed never to mention that again," Rodney said quickly, his hand darting up in a zip-it movement over his lips. John realized the motion was very close to a Satedan rude gesture that Ronon had taught him once, which explained Ronon's growl.
John spoke up before Rodney could dig himself a deeper hole of cultural insensitivity. "Mojo? Who the hell do you think you are, Rodney, Austin Powers?"
He ignored the little pained sigh that Teyla made sure was just audible. It wasn't John's fault that half her team conversed in pop cultural references that flew right past her. Well, it was only half his fault.
Rodney hopped up on one of the beds and snapped his fingers at Dr. Beckett, who had been busy with his microscope. "Carson, leave your toys for a second; I need a brain scan, ASAP."
Beckett looked up with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. "What's wrong now?"
"Well, I've got this rash," John tried to say, but Rodney's voice rolled right over his.
"Don't ask me to do your job for you, Carson. How should I know? Brain tumor, early dementia, oh, my god, I could've had a stroke--"
John patted Rodney's knee. "Easy there, Rodney. Rodney thinks he's lost his mojo," he said to Beckett.
"Which means?" Beckett cocked his head, a puzzled frown on his face. John had left his hand on Rodney's knee, letting it linger there a little too long. Not really a gesture between just good friends, he realized, and pulled his hand away.
Rodney snorted. "C'mon, witch doctor, stay with the program. My mojo, my super-power, what sets the great Rodney McKay apart from his lowly minions."
"Rodney, I assure you, you're just as incredibly annoying as always," Beckett said dryly. He smiled at Rodney's glare. "No worries there whatsoever."
Rodney's mouth did that unhappy little quirk that gave John vague notions of licking it all better, in a very manly and platonic way, of course.
Rodney said, "I'm talking about my astonishing ability to fix any problem, faster than humanly possible."
John forced himself to stop staring at Rodney's mouth and frowned. "Is this about the shield generator on our last mission?"
Rodney's hands flapped in the air like frightened pigeons. "Of course, it's about that. And the irrigation system on the mission before that. Are you sensing a pattern here? I couldn't fix them. Two in a row. I've lost my mojo."
"You said they were impossible to fix," John protested.
"I always say that," Rodney yelled. "And I always fix whatever it is anyway."
"Not always," John said, and winced. Smooth, Sheppard, he thought. The comment had been thoughtless not malicious; it wasn't John's fault that Rodney's mouth drove him to distraction.
"I didn't mean it that way..." he said, but Rodney's shoulders had already gone hunched and defensive.
"You're fine. We're fine," John wanted to say, but couldn't, because it sounded weird in his head, too intimate.
Rodney was looking at him with a resigned expression on his face. Then he looked away, turned to Carson. "Brain scan, now, Carson," he said. "And, you, Colonel, shouldn't you and the Wonder Twins be reporting to Elizabeth about now?"
"Twins?" Teyla said. "Ronon and I are not related."
Rodney let out an irritated sound, halfway between a growl and a sigh. "Yes, Teyla, I know. This is me being obnoxious. It's what I do when I'm stressed; you should know that by now. You can beat me with your sticks for it later."
"I would not--" Teyla started to say, but Rodney interrupted.
"Now go, go. Leave me and my no doubt enormous and inoperable brain tumor in peace. I'm sure you all find enormous amusement at my loss of higher level cognition, but I sure as hell don't."
"You don't have a tumor," Beckett tried to say, but Rodney cut him off.
"Theorizing in advance of evidence, Carson? How typical of your tenuous grasp on the fundamentals of the scientific method. Let's take the pictures first, shall we?"
There was just no reasoning with Rodney when he got like this. "How about we go report to Elizabeth and let Carson work on you?" John asked.
Rodney waved them off without a word, and John sighed. He was never going to get someone to look at the damn rash at this rate.
*
John reported in to Elizabeth, then wandered off to the mess. He ate, then wandered back to the infirmary. There was no sign of Carson or Rodney; they must be holed up in one of the back rooms.
He used equal measures of charm and good looks to mooch some hydrocortisone cream off one of the nurses. Back in his quarters, he'd checked his email and had worked his way through most of his backlogged paperwork, when he finally pushed the laptop aside with a disgusted sigh and radioed Dr. Beckett.
"We finished up an hour ago, Colonel Sheppard. He might be in his quarters; he said he was tired."
Rodney answered his door dressed for bed, in flannel pajama bottoms and a gray T-shirt, the collar stretched and shapeless. His hair was wet, and he had a towel around his neck. He frowned when he saw who was at his door.
"No brain tumor?" John asked, trying a smile on. Just good friends. I'm smiling at my good friend. Rodney had that damp, fresh-from-the-shower look, skin still flushed. He was wiping at his forehead with the towel, closing his eyes for a second as he scrubbed at his hair, and John felt his smile get wider.
"No brain tumor," Rodney said, crossing his arms across his chest. He stood there blocking the door, the expression on his face remote.
"You're not just about to go to sleep, are you?" John asked, trying not to sound disappointed and probably not succeeding. He held up the DVD case. "I brought Repo Man."
Rodney rolled his eyes, but seemed to recognize the peace offering for what it was. He stepped back to let John into the room. It was still a little humid from Rodney's shower and smelled clean, like fresh laundry and soap.
They settled on Rodney's bed, a careful distance between them, and Rodney started up the movie on his laptop. This close to Rodney, John could feel the warmth coming from him, could smell clean Rodney mixing in with the soap smell.
Rodney gradually unwound as they watched Otto's wacked-out adventures, even got into it, quoting whole sections of dialogue. The careful distance between them gradually disappeared, and Rodney's arm was right against John's, jostling him when Rodney gestured at the screen. Rodney's thigh kept brushing his, which sent heat to John's face.
This isn't the best way to stay just good friends, John thought, but he'd known the danger when he showed up at Rodney's door, had been courting it, probably. He took in a deep breath through his nose, letting his eyes stay closed for a second, remembering how it had felt, that one adrenaline-filled clench they'd had, Rodney's body against his, hands on his ass, a hardening cock shoved into his thigh.
Rodney reached out to pause the movie, freezing Miller in the middle of the plate of shrimp speech. The movement pressed him more closely against John, who froze, heart racing. Here it is, he thought, as if he'd been waiting for something. Waiting for what exactly, he wasn't sure--maybe the courage to make a move, for Rodney to make the move, taking the pressure off John.
But Rodney wasn't even looking at him, was fidgeting at a worn spot in the flannel covering his thigh.
"I know you thought it was amusing--hah, hah, hypochondriac Rodney--but I really thought there was something wrong with me," he said, looking down at his hand plucking at flannel fuzz. "Some reason why I couldn't do what I always do."
John swallowed, his throat dry enough it hurt, and his voice came out rough when he spoke. "That explains the brain scan, but what's rational about mojo, Rodney?"
Rodney frowned. "So I can be superstitious," he said with a shrug. "Savor this moment, Sheppard, when you can mock the rare primitive expression of my irrational side. Anyone who says he's always completely logical is lying."
"Yeah, even Spock wasn't always logical," John said, baiting Rodney just a little.
"You are such a geek, you know that, right?" Rodney said, poking John in the stomach. "I wore my lucky shirt for every thesis defense, how's that for superstitious? And this galaxy would make any scientist rethink what's rational and logical."
Rodney went quiet, his expression moving from amused to thoughtful, a little sad even.
"You can't solve everything, Rodney." John's hand had found its way onto Rodney's thigh and he let it stay there this time. Rodney didn't say anything, just looked down at it with a smothered half laugh.
"The last time I couldn't solve a problem, I destroyed a solar system."
"Five-sixth, Rodney, or so you kept saying. And the last time you couldn't solve a problem, you were crashed on the sea floor, and Zelenka and I managed to save your ass," John corrected gently and gave Rodney's thigh a squeeze.
Rodney looked down at John's hand. He wet his lips, looking a little startled and turned on. "Oh. You know, I guess you did."
"Of course we did. And this last mission--the shield generator? The Zev were stagnating, hiding behind their shield. They weren't trading with neighboring cities, and frankly their limited gene pool was getting kind of scary."
John stifled a shudder. Nearly identical blond-haired, blue-eyed people--the last time he'd seen anything near as creepy had been on a camping trip that took him through some backwoods town in Minnesota.
"And the irrigation system? No problem, let's just let the Norians starve to death?"
John frowned. "They won't starve to death. We helped them move, remember? They were living in a desert, and they no longer had the technological skills to maintain their agriculture there. The climate change that Dr. Marquez kept talking about meant it was only going to get worse."
"You're quick, I'll give you that," Rodney said, a little grudgingly.
"Not always," John admitted and leaned in. His eyes were locked with Rodney's, and he brushed their lips together.
Rodney allowed it for a moment, then he pulled back.
"Just friends, huh? Hands off, for the good of the team. Right." He sounded tired, and there was something mocking in the twist of his mouth. The mockery would have stung, except that there was also something rueful in Rodney's face, something that said the mockery was directed inward as much as at John.
"This is just such a bad idea," John said, his lips inches from Rodney's.
Rodney's eyes were wide, his breath coming faster. "'Bad idea.' Yes, well. Mixed signals here, Sheppard, what with where your hand is right now. That's...I have no idea what you want me to say." The last word was swallowed up in a gasp as John's hand moved on Rodney.
John smiled at Rodney's confusion. "How about you don't say anything," he said lazily. It really was a bad idea, but it didn't stop him from kissing Rodney. Then again, John's intimate relationship with bad ideas had started at age eleven, when he'd thought that skateboarding down the library stair railing was the greatest plan ever, just before wiping out and breaking his wrist.
John leaned into Rodney, who didn't push him away, just kind of melted under him. Rodney's arms came up around John's shoulders. One hand hesitantly started playing with the short hairs at the nape of John's neck. It made him shiver, and he pressed in closer, tongue teasing Rodney's mouth open. Rodney tasted of toothpaste this time, and they didn't have the brush-with-mortality shakes, but everything else felt much the same, Rodney's solid chest against his, Rodney's mouth demanding and wet.
The angle was starting to make John's neck hurt. He tried to move, to straddle Rodney without taking his mouth away from Rodney's, and managed to kick the laptop off the bed with a clatter.
"Sorry," he muttered, as Rodney yelped and then squirmed over to the edge of the bed. He twisted precariously off the bed to scoop it off the floor, and John had to grab the back of Rodney's shirt to keep him from doing a header out of the bed.
"Jesus, Sheppard," he said, straining to lift himself back onto the bed. He cradled the laptop against his chest. "Don't kill my laptop. I've got valuable scientific material on this baby."
"And porn?" John asked with a raised eyebrow, trying to distract Rodney's attention from the laptop abuse and bring it back to where it belonged, namely sex.
"And porn," Rodney said, his voice deadpan, setting the laptop carefully on the bedside table. "Why? You need a little something to get you going here?"
John tried not to choke. "I'm good, thanks," he managed, and then groaned when Rodney leaned over to cup him through his pants.
"I guess you are at that," Rodney said in a distracted voice, his hand exploring John's cock.
John took in a shaky breath, and then Rodney's mouth found his again. This time Rodney kissed easy, almost too gentle, as if he was intentionally slowing them down, making it last. One of Rodney's hands pushed up under John's shirt, stroking his side. He found one of John's ticklish spots, which made John jerk and snort a laugh against Rodney's mouth.
"Okay, okay," Rodney muttered. "No tickling." His touch firmed up after that.
When John had imagined this, which had been often enough and in such obsessive detail that he'd started to creep himself out, Rodney had been pragmatic about sex, impatient and grabby, feeding this need in much the same way as he would scarf down a powerbar.
And John would have been totally down with that, because, hey, grabby and impatient sex with Rodney apparently pressed his sexual fantasy buttons. This was good, though, this--Rodney's mouth had moved to John's neck, and John couldn't stop his groan. Rodney's teeth scraped against his stubble, and then Rodney was sucking at the junction of his jaw and neck. John arched into it, tilting his head just so, because Rodney was almost there, was just missing the sweet spot.
"Here?" Rodney gave a tentative lick to John's iratus bug scar, which now seemed to have twice as many nerve endings as the rest of John's neck.
It sent a jolt right through John, and he stiffened. "Yeah," he breathed. "Not too hard, though."
"Sensitive, huh?" Rodney said into John's neck, breath warm on John's skin.
"There's gotta be a better word," John teased. Then Rodney's lips and tongue were on the scar, and John was kind of incoherent for a while.
"We should take our clothes off," Rodney said. It was Rodney's scientist voice, the one he used when giving a report or adjusting the ballast tanks of Atlantis. Dry, detached, but it was enough to make John feel hot and itchy inside his clothes.
John had managed to shuck his boots and shirt, and was pulling off his pants and boxers, when Rodney spoke up again.
"This could fuck us up so much." It was matter of fact and still Rodney's scientist voice, but somehow not so much with the turn-on factor, in John's opinion.
"And they say romance is dead." John had tried for a light tone but just sounded frustrated. He threw his tangled pants and boxers to the floor with more force than necessary. "Rodney, it's a little late to stop now."
Rodney pulled him down on the bed and rolled on top of him. It felt great, acres of naked Rodney, pinning him down, lining up their groins together. "I'm not stopping; I don't think I could. But I'm just saying."
"Shut up, Rodney. Don't."
Rodney looked down at him, his eyes dark with lust, but a little sad too, as if already predicting a worst-case scenario for them.
John growled and bucked up against Rodney, trying to erase that sadness the best way he knew how, the only way he knew how. He pulled Rodney's face down to his, his hand gripping Rodney's neck too hard probably. It was just rough enough, and no talking, just this, skin to skin, mouth to mouth.
Rodney ground against him, and John sucked in a harsh breath--it felt fantastic, it'd been way too long since he'd done this. Nothing complicated, just rutting against each other, rubbing and thrusting, their hands exploring, charting new territory.
It was clumsy like all first times--wait, wait, okay, yes, there and ow, Rodney and sorry, sorry and perfect like all first times--oh, my god, he's letting me do this and learning what Rodney looked like when he came.
After, in the dark, Rodney's arm draped over his chest, John thought about leaving. Heading back to his quarters was probably the smart thing to do. No shared morning-after jitters, a better chance that nobody would see Atlantis' military commander leaving Dr. McKay's quarters.
He thought about it, and started to ease out from under Rodney's arm, which twitched across his chest. Rodney was asleep or was pretending to be, and the movement could have just been Rodney shifting in his sleep. John settled back down anyway, because it felt nice here, and he could choose to read Rodney's twitch as a request to stay if he damn well wanted to. John closed his eyes and listened to Rodney's breathing as he fell asleep.
It felt early still when John's eyes cracked open, pre-dawn. Something had startled him awake, and he realized it was Rodney's low voice and the light from the desk lamp. He looked over and smiled. Rodney was standing at his desk, bare assed and leaning over to scrutinize something on his laptop.
Rodney was talking on his headset. "No, no, no, Radek, it's not the fail-safe that's tripping us up here. It's gotta be the control circuitry." Rodney paused, shifting his weight. John couldn't take his eyes off the intriguing movements of Rodney's ass, and then Rodney was talking again.
"Look, just switch out that control crystal. I know it looks perfectly fine, but my guess is that it's not." A moment more, then, "That did it? Good, great. I'll refrain from saying 'I told you so.' Never mind, my will is not that strong. I told you so. Yes, Radek, I am an asshole, thanks for sharing. I'll see you in the lab later."
Rodney tossed the headset onto the desk and came back to the bed. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."
"You got it back."
"What?" Rodney burrowed back into bed, plastering his cold feet against John's.
"Jesus, Rodney," John winced, but managed to finish his thought. "Your mojo. You got it back. You solved Zelenka's problem for him."
Rodney snorted a laugh. "I did, didn't I? Maybe my sex hypothesis had something to it, after all."
"Or not. Wasn't like your hypothesis included having sex with me. I'll go out on a limb here and say I'm not Elizabeth Hurley."
Rodney smiled, warm and crooked. It wasn't an expression John had seen all that often. If John had been disgustingly gooey about Rodney--which he most certainly was not--he'd say it felt like a smile just for him. But he wasn't, so it wasn't, and that was the story he'd be sticking to.
Rodney kept smiling that smile and reached over for a quick grope. "Nope, definitely not Elizabeth Hurley. But you'll do."
McKay/Sheppard
~3,800 words
NC-17
Summary: "I," Rodney announced as they entered the infirmary, "have lost my mojo."
Mojo
"So, me having sex with Elizabeth Hurley is out," Rodney mused as they were striding back through the gate.
John quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'd say that's an accurate assessment, Rodney," he said and steered the way to the infirmary. He had a wicked rash from the purple thicket of ivy that surrounded the stargate. "What are we talking about here, besides adding to the growing list of women who'll forever deny you their charms?"
"Oh, ha, very ha, Colonel. There are legions of women who happen to find my unique combination of tremendous intellect and boyish good looks completely irresistible." Rodney shot him a knowing look, his mouth turned up at the corners, and John felt a flush creep up his neck.
"And men," Ronon muttered, which halted John in his tracks.
Rodney sputtered while John was still struck dumb. "What? What? You mean you--"
"No, McKay, not me," Ronon said easily, and John held his breath. "Sergeant Martin. I heard him mention--Sheppard, what are you doing?"
John had clapped his hands over his ears and was saying, "Not hearing this."
"Sheppard?" Ronon's voice was only slightly muffled, so John added a, "la, la, la" for good measure. John stopped when Teyla started giggling at him. Their team dynamic was pretty flexible, filled with mutual respect and good humor, but as team leader, he figured he should maintain some dignity.
"Ronon, I have warned you before," Teyla said patiently, "about the Earth people's odd taboos."
Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, yes, that's really more of an American military taboo, isn't it, Colonel, and--oh, Sergeant Martin, with the really big--"
"Rodney," John said, an irrational possessiveness lending an edge to his voice. Yet another close call, Rodney's mouth on his, the taste of coffee and powerbars, gripping each other too tightly, holding everything together through the post adrenaline-rush shakes. Blood rushed to his face, and he bit his lip, shoved the memory into a deep, dark section of his head, where it wouldn't keep tempting him.
They'd both agreed it'd been a mistake, the product of adrenaline and one near-death experience too many. The straw that broke the camel's back, that tripped them over the line from a desperate we're alive hug to something more. They were just friends--who'd kissed, the smell of cordite heavy in the air--just friends--who'd groped each other like teenagers. Just friends, which meant Rodney wasn't really his, although his body seemed to think otherwise.
But it didn't really matter that they'd agreed to keep their hands off each other--bad idea, yes, Colonel, I completely agree, Rodney's face carefully blank--because John's primitive self said mine, mine. It wasn't jealousy, though, no way, just because he didn't want to hear Rodney talk about some random Marine's...attributes.
"--really big biceps, I was going to say." Rodney's gaze on John was arch, a little too intimate. "Anyway, to bring this conversation back to the important thing, namely me, I was just trying to come up with a cure."
"Cure? You are ill?" Teyla asked. They'd started moving again, and John sighed in relief.
"I," Rodney announced as they entered the infirmary, "have lost my mojo."
"You left nothing behind on PX9-731," Ronon said. "I've been keeping an eye out ever since that one time on..."
"We agreed never to mention that again," Rodney said quickly, his hand darting up in a zip-it movement over his lips. John realized the motion was very close to a Satedan rude gesture that Ronon had taught him once, which explained Ronon's growl.
John spoke up before Rodney could dig himself a deeper hole of cultural insensitivity. "Mojo? Who the hell do you think you are, Rodney, Austin Powers?"
He ignored the little pained sigh that Teyla made sure was just audible. It wasn't John's fault that half her team conversed in pop cultural references that flew right past her. Well, it was only half his fault.
Rodney hopped up on one of the beds and snapped his fingers at Dr. Beckett, who had been busy with his microscope. "Carson, leave your toys for a second; I need a brain scan, ASAP."
Beckett looked up with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. "What's wrong now?"
"Well, I've got this rash," John tried to say, but Rodney's voice rolled right over his.
"Don't ask me to do your job for you, Carson. How should I know? Brain tumor, early dementia, oh, my god, I could've had a stroke--"
John patted Rodney's knee. "Easy there, Rodney. Rodney thinks he's lost his mojo," he said to Beckett.
"Which means?" Beckett cocked his head, a puzzled frown on his face. John had left his hand on Rodney's knee, letting it linger there a little too long. Not really a gesture between just good friends, he realized, and pulled his hand away.
Rodney snorted. "C'mon, witch doctor, stay with the program. My mojo, my super-power, what sets the great Rodney McKay apart from his lowly minions."
"Rodney, I assure you, you're just as incredibly annoying as always," Beckett said dryly. He smiled at Rodney's glare. "No worries there whatsoever."
Rodney's mouth did that unhappy little quirk that gave John vague notions of licking it all better, in a very manly and platonic way, of course.
Rodney said, "I'm talking about my astonishing ability to fix any problem, faster than humanly possible."
John forced himself to stop staring at Rodney's mouth and frowned. "Is this about the shield generator on our last mission?"
Rodney's hands flapped in the air like frightened pigeons. "Of course, it's about that. And the irrigation system on the mission before that. Are you sensing a pattern here? I couldn't fix them. Two in a row. I've lost my mojo."
"You said they were impossible to fix," John protested.
"I always say that," Rodney yelled. "And I always fix whatever it is anyway."
"Not always," John said, and winced. Smooth, Sheppard, he thought. The comment had been thoughtless not malicious; it wasn't John's fault that Rodney's mouth drove him to distraction.
"I didn't mean it that way..." he said, but Rodney's shoulders had already gone hunched and defensive.
"You're fine. We're fine," John wanted to say, but couldn't, because it sounded weird in his head, too intimate.
Rodney was looking at him with a resigned expression on his face. Then he looked away, turned to Carson. "Brain scan, now, Carson," he said. "And, you, Colonel, shouldn't you and the Wonder Twins be reporting to Elizabeth about now?"
"Twins?" Teyla said. "Ronon and I are not related."
Rodney let out an irritated sound, halfway between a growl and a sigh. "Yes, Teyla, I know. This is me being obnoxious. It's what I do when I'm stressed; you should know that by now. You can beat me with your sticks for it later."
"I would not--" Teyla started to say, but Rodney interrupted.
"Now go, go. Leave me and my no doubt enormous and inoperable brain tumor in peace. I'm sure you all find enormous amusement at my loss of higher level cognition, but I sure as hell don't."
"You don't have a tumor," Beckett tried to say, but Rodney cut him off.
"Theorizing in advance of evidence, Carson? How typical of your tenuous grasp on the fundamentals of the scientific method. Let's take the pictures first, shall we?"
There was just no reasoning with Rodney when he got like this. "How about we go report to Elizabeth and let Carson work on you?" John asked.
Rodney waved them off without a word, and John sighed. He was never going to get someone to look at the damn rash at this rate.
*
John reported in to Elizabeth, then wandered off to the mess. He ate, then wandered back to the infirmary. There was no sign of Carson or Rodney; they must be holed up in one of the back rooms.
He used equal measures of charm and good looks to mooch some hydrocortisone cream off one of the nurses. Back in his quarters, he'd checked his email and had worked his way through most of his backlogged paperwork, when he finally pushed the laptop aside with a disgusted sigh and radioed Dr. Beckett.
"We finished up an hour ago, Colonel Sheppard. He might be in his quarters; he said he was tired."
Rodney answered his door dressed for bed, in flannel pajama bottoms and a gray T-shirt, the collar stretched and shapeless. His hair was wet, and he had a towel around his neck. He frowned when he saw who was at his door.
"No brain tumor?" John asked, trying a smile on. Just good friends. I'm smiling at my good friend. Rodney had that damp, fresh-from-the-shower look, skin still flushed. He was wiping at his forehead with the towel, closing his eyes for a second as he scrubbed at his hair, and John felt his smile get wider.
"No brain tumor," Rodney said, crossing his arms across his chest. He stood there blocking the door, the expression on his face remote.
"You're not just about to go to sleep, are you?" John asked, trying not to sound disappointed and probably not succeeding. He held up the DVD case. "I brought Repo Man."
Rodney rolled his eyes, but seemed to recognize the peace offering for what it was. He stepped back to let John into the room. It was still a little humid from Rodney's shower and smelled clean, like fresh laundry and soap.
They settled on Rodney's bed, a careful distance between them, and Rodney started up the movie on his laptop. This close to Rodney, John could feel the warmth coming from him, could smell clean Rodney mixing in with the soap smell.
Rodney gradually unwound as they watched Otto's wacked-out adventures, even got into it, quoting whole sections of dialogue. The careful distance between them gradually disappeared, and Rodney's arm was right against John's, jostling him when Rodney gestured at the screen. Rodney's thigh kept brushing his, which sent heat to John's face.
This isn't the best way to stay just good friends, John thought, but he'd known the danger when he showed up at Rodney's door, had been courting it, probably. He took in a deep breath through his nose, letting his eyes stay closed for a second, remembering how it had felt, that one adrenaline-filled clench they'd had, Rodney's body against his, hands on his ass, a hardening cock shoved into his thigh.
Rodney reached out to pause the movie, freezing Miller in the middle of the plate of shrimp speech. The movement pressed him more closely against John, who froze, heart racing. Here it is, he thought, as if he'd been waiting for something. Waiting for what exactly, he wasn't sure--maybe the courage to make a move, for Rodney to make the move, taking the pressure off John.
But Rodney wasn't even looking at him, was fidgeting at a worn spot in the flannel covering his thigh.
"I know you thought it was amusing--hah, hah, hypochondriac Rodney--but I really thought there was something wrong with me," he said, looking down at his hand plucking at flannel fuzz. "Some reason why I couldn't do what I always do."
John swallowed, his throat dry enough it hurt, and his voice came out rough when he spoke. "That explains the brain scan, but what's rational about mojo, Rodney?"
Rodney frowned. "So I can be superstitious," he said with a shrug. "Savor this moment, Sheppard, when you can mock the rare primitive expression of my irrational side. Anyone who says he's always completely logical is lying."
"Yeah, even Spock wasn't always logical," John said, baiting Rodney just a little.
"You are such a geek, you know that, right?" Rodney said, poking John in the stomach. "I wore my lucky shirt for every thesis defense, how's that for superstitious? And this galaxy would make any scientist rethink what's rational and logical."
Rodney went quiet, his expression moving from amused to thoughtful, a little sad even.
"You can't solve everything, Rodney." John's hand had found its way onto Rodney's thigh and he let it stay there this time. Rodney didn't say anything, just looked down at it with a smothered half laugh.
"The last time I couldn't solve a problem, I destroyed a solar system."
"Five-sixth, Rodney, or so you kept saying. And the last time you couldn't solve a problem, you were crashed on the sea floor, and Zelenka and I managed to save your ass," John corrected gently and gave Rodney's thigh a squeeze.
Rodney looked down at John's hand. He wet his lips, looking a little startled and turned on. "Oh. You know, I guess you did."
"Of course we did. And this last mission--the shield generator? The Zev were stagnating, hiding behind their shield. They weren't trading with neighboring cities, and frankly their limited gene pool was getting kind of scary."
John stifled a shudder. Nearly identical blond-haired, blue-eyed people--the last time he'd seen anything near as creepy had been on a camping trip that took him through some backwoods town in Minnesota.
"And the irrigation system? No problem, let's just let the Norians starve to death?"
John frowned. "They won't starve to death. We helped them move, remember? They were living in a desert, and they no longer had the technological skills to maintain their agriculture there. The climate change that Dr. Marquez kept talking about meant it was only going to get worse."
"You're quick, I'll give you that," Rodney said, a little grudgingly.
"Not always," John admitted and leaned in. His eyes were locked with Rodney's, and he brushed their lips together.
Rodney allowed it for a moment, then he pulled back.
"Just friends, huh? Hands off, for the good of the team. Right." He sounded tired, and there was something mocking in the twist of his mouth. The mockery would have stung, except that there was also something rueful in Rodney's face, something that said the mockery was directed inward as much as at John.
"This is just such a bad idea," John said, his lips inches from Rodney's.
Rodney's eyes were wide, his breath coming faster. "'Bad idea.' Yes, well. Mixed signals here, Sheppard, what with where your hand is right now. That's...I have no idea what you want me to say." The last word was swallowed up in a gasp as John's hand moved on Rodney.
John smiled at Rodney's confusion. "How about you don't say anything," he said lazily. It really was a bad idea, but it didn't stop him from kissing Rodney. Then again, John's intimate relationship with bad ideas had started at age eleven, when he'd thought that skateboarding down the library stair railing was the greatest plan ever, just before wiping out and breaking his wrist.
John leaned into Rodney, who didn't push him away, just kind of melted under him. Rodney's arms came up around John's shoulders. One hand hesitantly started playing with the short hairs at the nape of John's neck. It made him shiver, and he pressed in closer, tongue teasing Rodney's mouth open. Rodney tasted of toothpaste this time, and they didn't have the brush-with-mortality shakes, but everything else felt much the same, Rodney's solid chest against his, Rodney's mouth demanding and wet.
The angle was starting to make John's neck hurt. He tried to move, to straddle Rodney without taking his mouth away from Rodney's, and managed to kick the laptop off the bed with a clatter.
"Sorry," he muttered, as Rodney yelped and then squirmed over to the edge of the bed. He twisted precariously off the bed to scoop it off the floor, and John had to grab the back of Rodney's shirt to keep him from doing a header out of the bed.
"Jesus, Sheppard," he said, straining to lift himself back onto the bed. He cradled the laptop against his chest. "Don't kill my laptop. I've got valuable scientific material on this baby."
"And porn?" John asked with a raised eyebrow, trying to distract Rodney's attention from the laptop abuse and bring it back to where it belonged, namely sex.
"And porn," Rodney said, his voice deadpan, setting the laptop carefully on the bedside table. "Why? You need a little something to get you going here?"
John tried not to choke. "I'm good, thanks," he managed, and then groaned when Rodney leaned over to cup him through his pants.
"I guess you are at that," Rodney said in a distracted voice, his hand exploring John's cock.
John took in a shaky breath, and then Rodney's mouth found his again. This time Rodney kissed easy, almost too gentle, as if he was intentionally slowing them down, making it last. One of Rodney's hands pushed up under John's shirt, stroking his side. He found one of John's ticklish spots, which made John jerk and snort a laugh against Rodney's mouth.
"Okay, okay," Rodney muttered. "No tickling." His touch firmed up after that.
When John had imagined this, which had been often enough and in such obsessive detail that he'd started to creep himself out, Rodney had been pragmatic about sex, impatient and grabby, feeding this need in much the same way as he would scarf down a powerbar.
And John would have been totally down with that, because, hey, grabby and impatient sex with Rodney apparently pressed his sexual fantasy buttons. This was good, though, this--Rodney's mouth had moved to John's neck, and John couldn't stop his groan. Rodney's teeth scraped against his stubble, and then Rodney was sucking at the junction of his jaw and neck. John arched into it, tilting his head just so, because Rodney was almost there, was just missing the sweet spot.
"Here?" Rodney gave a tentative lick to John's iratus bug scar, which now seemed to have twice as many nerve endings as the rest of John's neck.
It sent a jolt right through John, and he stiffened. "Yeah," he breathed. "Not too hard, though."
"Sensitive, huh?" Rodney said into John's neck, breath warm on John's skin.
"There's gotta be a better word," John teased. Then Rodney's lips and tongue were on the scar, and John was kind of incoherent for a while.
"We should take our clothes off," Rodney said. It was Rodney's scientist voice, the one he used when giving a report or adjusting the ballast tanks of Atlantis. Dry, detached, but it was enough to make John feel hot and itchy inside his clothes.
John had managed to shuck his boots and shirt, and was pulling off his pants and boxers, when Rodney spoke up again.
"This could fuck us up so much." It was matter of fact and still Rodney's scientist voice, but somehow not so much with the turn-on factor, in John's opinion.
"And they say romance is dead." John had tried for a light tone but just sounded frustrated. He threw his tangled pants and boxers to the floor with more force than necessary. "Rodney, it's a little late to stop now."
Rodney pulled him down on the bed and rolled on top of him. It felt great, acres of naked Rodney, pinning him down, lining up their groins together. "I'm not stopping; I don't think I could. But I'm just saying."
"Shut up, Rodney. Don't."
Rodney looked down at him, his eyes dark with lust, but a little sad too, as if already predicting a worst-case scenario for them.
John growled and bucked up against Rodney, trying to erase that sadness the best way he knew how, the only way he knew how. He pulled Rodney's face down to his, his hand gripping Rodney's neck too hard probably. It was just rough enough, and no talking, just this, skin to skin, mouth to mouth.
Rodney ground against him, and John sucked in a harsh breath--it felt fantastic, it'd been way too long since he'd done this. Nothing complicated, just rutting against each other, rubbing and thrusting, their hands exploring, charting new territory.
It was clumsy like all first times--wait, wait, okay, yes, there and ow, Rodney and sorry, sorry and perfect like all first times--oh, my god, he's letting me do this and learning what Rodney looked like when he came.
After, in the dark, Rodney's arm draped over his chest, John thought about leaving. Heading back to his quarters was probably the smart thing to do. No shared morning-after jitters, a better chance that nobody would see Atlantis' military commander leaving Dr. McKay's quarters.
He thought about it, and started to ease out from under Rodney's arm, which twitched across his chest. Rodney was asleep or was pretending to be, and the movement could have just been Rodney shifting in his sleep. John settled back down anyway, because it felt nice here, and he could choose to read Rodney's twitch as a request to stay if he damn well wanted to. John closed his eyes and listened to Rodney's breathing as he fell asleep.
It felt early still when John's eyes cracked open, pre-dawn. Something had startled him awake, and he realized it was Rodney's low voice and the light from the desk lamp. He looked over and smiled. Rodney was standing at his desk, bare assed and leaning over to scrutinize something on his laptop.
Rodney was talking on his headset. "No, no, no, Radek, it's not the fail-safe that's tripping us up here. It's gotta be the control circuitry." Rodney paused, shifting his weight. John couldn't take his eyes off the intriguing movements of Rodney's ass, and then Rodney was talking again.
"Look, just switch out that control crystal. I know it looks perfectly fine, but my guess is that it's not." A moment more, then, "That did it? Good, great. I'll refrain from saying 'I told you so.' Never mind, my will is not that strong. I told you so. Yes, Radek, I am an asshole, thanks for sharing. I'll see you in the lab later."
Rodney tossed the headset onto the desk and came back to the bed. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."
"You got it back."
"What?" Rodney burrowed back into bed, plastering his cold feet against John's.
"Jesus, Rodney," John winced, but managed to finish his thought. "Your mojo. You got it back. You solved Zelenka's problem for him."
Rodney snorted a laugh. "I did, didn't I? Maybe my sex hypothesis had something to it, after all."
"Or not. Wasn't like your hypothesis included having sex with me. I'll go out on a limb here and say I'm not Elizabeth Hurley."
Rodney smiled, warm and crooked. It wasn't an expression John had seen all that often. If John had been disgustingly gooey about Rodney--which he most certainly was not--he'd say it felt like a smile just for him. But he wasn't, so it wasn't, and that was the story he'd be sticking to.
Rodney kept smiling that smile and reached over for a quick grope. "Nope, definitely not Elizabeth Hurley. But you'll do."