fic: "The Unexpectedness Of Buttocks" by Tielan, R [Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N Roll challenge]
TITLE: The Unexpectedness Of Buttocks
AUTHOR: tielan
SUMMARY: Rodney dreams of buttocks.
CATEGORY: Gen...uh, sorta. Humour? Drama?
CHARACTERS: Rodney, John, Teyla, Ronon...the rest of Atlantis makes an appearance
NOTES: 4,000 words. O_O I have no idea how this is going to be received. Seriously.
The Unexpectedness Of Buttocks
There were things that Rodney McKay never expected to see upon returning to Atlantis.
Sergeant Adrian Palmer's buttocks weren't at the top of the list, but they were pretty close. If he'd ever thought about Sergeant Palmer's buttocks at all, which, of course, Rodney hadn't and never would have except for the fact that the Sergeant's trousers were clearly around his ankles as he...
Please tell me he's not... Oh god, he is...
Rodney's eyes bugged out of his head as he realised what he was seeing.
I will never, ever look at Hanover the same way again.
"Sergeant! What the hell is going on?" Sheppard's bark resounded through the gateroom, startling the Sergeant and his...partner out of their...activity. They whirled around, apparently shocked at the interruption. The second man - Dr. Ben Hanover, one of the scientists working with Zelenka - yelped as he rolled over, catching his hipbone on the stairs leading up to the control room and wincing in pain.
Rodney caught a glimpse of a purplish-brown thing poking from beneath the Sergeant's fatigues shirt and quickly turned away, resolutely facing the now shut Stargate.
His other two team-mates had halted behind them. Ronon was still staring at the Sergeant and Hanover with the look on his face that Rodney had privately termed, 'those wacky Atlanteans'; but Teyla was staring up at the control room, her eyes wide, her café au lait skin glowing a brilliant pink beneath the brown.
No, not at the control room - at Elizabeth's office.
With a sense of impending dread, Rodney lifted his eyes to the glass enclosure.
Buttocks again.
A different set, of course, and engaged in an activity only marginally less disturbing to Rodney's already traumatised mind but...
Oh. My. God. I'm looking at Elizabeth's...
Rodney looked away, very fast, only half-hearing the Sergeant's stuttered response to Sheppard's incensed question.
"Colonel," Teyla said, her voice tense and clear. "I think... I do not believe this is an isolated incident."
From the corner of his eye, Rodney saw Sheppard turn, look up, stare, and swear. Ronon followed, like a weathervane blown by the winds of his team-mates' astonishment.
Sheppard spun back to the pair hastily clothing themselves. "Sergeant, Doctor, I strongly recommend the both of you pull up your trousers and get the hell out of my sight!"
"Sir!"
Rodney felt there were few things more ridiculous than a man saluting a senior officer with his pants down around his ankles and a very obvious erection, but that might have just been him.
Teyla had already started up towards the control room, and as she reached the landing, she checked so suddenly that Ronon sideswiped her, neatly twisting to the side to avoid more contact than necessary. He gave whatever she'd been astonished by a brief, amused look - 'wacky Atlanteans' again - then continued on toward Elizabeth's office.
Rodney hurried up the stairs to Teyla. "What now...?"
A mêlée of bodies writhed on the control room floor. Men and women that Rodney was more accustomed to seeing fully clothed and seated at their consoles thrust and groped and sucked and...
If he'd had a collar to loosen, Rodney would have loosened it. Is it warm in here?
"This is going to scar me for life," he moaned.
"I believe it may already be too late for that," Teyla murmured as she headed to where Ronon was standing in the entrance of Elizabeth's office. Rodney stared after her, not sure if he'd just been commiserated with or insulted - it was hard to tell with Teyla.
Sheppard took Rodney's arm and shoved him up the stairs. Rodney noted that the other man was very careful not looking at the cluster of techs madly fucking each other like...well, like bunnies. Pink, hairless, human-looking bunnies. In an orgy. Moaning.
Yeah, it was definitely getting hot in here.
"Nothing to see here, McKay, move along."
"Actually, there's plenty to see," Rodney retorted. "I just don't want to see any of it!"
"Well, you're staring at them hard enough!" Sheppard snapped. If it came to that, he looked a little hot under the collar himself. "Teyla!"
She turned from the doorway, where Ronon could be seen speaking with Elizabeth and... Is that Caldwell? Rodney stared at the balding head of Colonel Caldwell, commander of the Daedelus, visible over Elizabeth's bare shoulder.
This gives new meaning to the word 'downtime in Atlantis'. Although Rodney's brain cheerfully and lasciviously took great pleasure in pointing out that for it to actually be 'downtime' would require Caldwell to be on his knees--
Oh God, think of something else, quick! The left-handed particles of the Standard Model starts with the electron, the electron neutrino, the positron...
Rodney was so busy gabbling inside his head, his eyes fixed carefully on Ronon rather than on the two figures who were quite clearly still madly screwing against the glass wall - he hoped to god it wouldn't break beneath the press--
Okay, thinking about the electron antineutrino, the up quark, the down quark, the anti-up quark and the anti-down quark...
--he hardly heard his name mentioned. When it did finally register, he turned to Sheppard who'd been briefing Teyla.
"...head down to the infirmary and get Beckett. Also, check out who else is...involved like this. Keep your radios on and if you get into trouble - any trouble - then you call." Sheppard was looking at Teyla as though he expected her to try to handle everything herself. "Teyla?"
"I will call," she said calmly over the panting and grunting coming from the group on the control room floor. "Rodney?"
"What? We're going? But what...what about if whatever's infected them gets us too?"
Sheppard gave him the look that said he was being an idiot. "Then we'll probably find you and Teyla shacking up somewhere in the city."
"We have not been infected yet, Rodney," Teyla said, a faint smile on her face. "I am not yet feeling the urge to tear the clothing from your back. Or anyone's back."
"Look at it this way," Sheppard clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm letting you go with Teyla instead of leaving you here with Ronon."
Rodney looked at Teyla who was regarding Sheppard with an expression that looked like she wanted to be unamused but couldn't be. Then he looked at Ronon who was watching Elizabeth and Caldwell with one eyebrow stuck somewhere in his dreadlocks. Then he looked at Sheppard who was giving Teyla his best 'who me?' look.
He rolled his eyes. "All right, all right, we're going." At least the corridors of the city would be better than staying here next to the mass orgy. Let Sheppard deal - or not deal - with that.
And he was not going hard.
Well, maybe just a bit. It was disturbing to discover just how...uh...turned on he was getting by all the sex happening around him. Little Rodney was pointing out that everyone else was getting some, so why wasn't he?
It was even more disturbing to discover that the corridors weren't free of couples. Or, in some cases, threesomes, foursomes, and another mass orgy.
"What might have caused this kind of behaviour?" Teyla asked as Rodney took her arm to lead her in detour around the orgy that writhed and wriggled its way across the corridor before them. They stepped over discarded boots and BDUs, someone's panties, and...a small bloody-looking white cylinder thing that made Rodney's brain quiver and shut down in sheer horror.
He answered on automatic as they passed another couple going for it in the corridor. Rodney refused to look at the faces and tried not to notice the bodies. He couldn't even begin to imagine what was going on in the scientists' quarters. Had everyone gone sex-mad? "Well, there could be any number of reasons - from, uh, basic drugging to pheromones." At her querying look, he explained, "Hormones in the air. Sort of."
"And these hormones...where would they have come from?"
"Ah, now that..." Rodney waved a finger at her. "That is the question!"
"You do not know." Teyla gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking - which he was really, really hoping she couldn't since his ass really didn't want a kicking right now. It wasn't Rodney's fault that all this sex had him just the tiniest bit horny and he was walking through the city with a rather attractive woman.
"Actually... No, I don't."
It was all Sheppard's fault.
Hey, it worked in Rodney's mind, anyway.
If the sight of all the people screwing like crazy similarly affected Teyla, she didn't show it. Rodney scowled at her. If all the sex around him was turning him on, then why the hell was he the only one? Instead, she seemed to be thinking - actually thinking. "Might the...drug or hormones have...blown in from somewhere? The mainland, perhaps?"
Rodney dismissed that immediately. "Too far. Look, it would take a really strong cloud to make it from the mainland to here - and we've found nothing that even suggested--"
He broke off.
They'd reached the infirmary.
So far today, Rodney had seen a great many disturbing things. This was a walk in the park by comparison. A highly disturbing walk in the park, full of people on beds in positions that Rodney had never even conceived of - and dear God, but Cadman had a nice pair of-- Carson is going to kill me. That thought only got halfway through his head before he realised that Carson was already in the process of 'appreciating' Cadman's assets.
Teyla turned resolutely towards Rodney, her eyes very wide, and looking like she was a hair's breadth away from laughing - or crying. She clicked her radio and spoke in a too-calm voice - the kind of voice that hid hysteria. "Colonel, I believe Dr. Beckett is...otherwise occupied."
"Shit." Sheppard's expletive was blunt. "Okay. What's the situation down there?"
She glanced at Rodney. "Whatever it is, the whole city appears to be affected. We passed many personnel who were similarly...involved."
"Great. We go away for eight hours and the city becomes the red-light district in the Pegasus galaxy. Do we know what caused this?"
"Not yet," Rodney said, turning on his own radio. "And unless you want to join the control room techs - or Elizabeth and Caldwell - then I'd be more interested in stopping it, not finding what began it."
In the background of Sheppard's radio, there was a slightly electronic noise that sounded suspiciously like... "Stargate," Sheppard said.
"Dialling in?"
"Yes."
A sudden thought seized Rodney. "We're on manual shields, aren't we? Because we came through the Stargate but there was no-one manning the control room - Sheppard, get the shields up!" There was no response. "Sheppard? Sheppard!"
Teyla grimaced and moved quickly through the infirmary, ignoring the grunting, panting couples. A few of them glanced at her, but when she didn't acknowledge them, went back to their...activity. Rodney saw her pull open a few drawers, pulling out various packets and tucking some away while discarding others.
"What are you--?" He only got halfway through his question when the noise up one end of the infirmary got loud. It turned out that one of the nurses was a squealer. Teyla winced and crossed back over to Rodney, following him out of the infirmary.
"Stimulants," she said, holding up the packet. "We may need them for later."
It was a good idea. Rodney took the packet from her hand. "We should head back to the control room-- Sheppard? Come in, Sheppard!"
Silence. Teyla looked like she was about to turn on her toes and sprint for the gateroom.
Then a moment later. "Teyla, do you have any duct tape on you?"
Teyla stared. "Colonel?"
"I need you to duct tape Rodney's mouth shut."
How typically Sheppard! "Oh, very funny, Sheppard. What happened?"
"Well, it wasn't one of our off-world teams - no IDC. By the way, the system's up and running and Ronon seems to have been taking lessons in computers from one of the techs. Just computer lessons?" That was a little fainter, although Ronon's snorting answer came through loud and clear. "Uhuh. Look, I'm going to get you guys to stop by the armoury."
Rodney stared. Teyla was already moving - and speaking into her radio. "You believe that this is intentional, Colonel?"
He hurried to catch up as Sheppard answered. "It's looking that way. Only one thing came through - it might have been a probe, but there's no telling since we got the shield up."
"I should get back to the control room, to check if the systems have been tampered with--"
"Go with Teyla." There was no leeway in Sheppard's voice. "Get to the armoury and pick up any tranquillisers you can lay your hands on - better them than the stunners. Then get back here. We're going to need to clear this area of people."
They were moving pretty fast through the city, ignoring the people there. "Elizabeth and Caldwell?"
"Them, too."
"So they're still--"
"Yep," Sheppard said. "Still."
Oh, it's going to be interesting around here when they get off this drug or whatever that has them acting like this. Very interesting.
Rodney wondered if the Ancients had any monitoring devices that could be stuck somewhere obscure to record things. The conversation between Elizabeth and Caldwell would be an absolute gem.
"Tranquillisers," Teyla was saying briskly. "Will we need other weaponry?"
"Ronon's presently collecting stunners and guns that have been...discarded down in the gateroom," Sheppard said. "Just in case. Just get the tranks - all the ones the two of you can carry."
They passed several more couples - just couples this time, no orgies, for which Rodney was supremely grateful. For some reason, he could think of couples as 'intimate' and so avoid looking at them. But orgies were...well, free for all. Including viewers.
He was so not going to examine that logic. At all.
The armoury and shooting gallery set up alongside it appeared unattended.
'Appeared' being the operative word.
Teyla crossed the room and opened one of the lockers, her fingers moving nimbly over the keypads. "The tranquillisers are usually kept in here," she said, hauling out a large box and flipping the lid open.
"What would you want tranquillisers for?"
Rodney spun on his heel, his hand reaching for his weapon. Sheppard had trained him well - possibly too well if he was contemplating violence in the middle of Atlantis.
Lorne lounged against the door frame of the armoury, his eyes fixed firmly on Teyla. He was fully dressed - much to Rodney's relief - except for his feet that were bare. On the other hand, he hadn't even given Rodney a glance from the moment he entered the room. It was like Rodney didn't exist - which, if Rodney thought about it, probably made sense since this drug had people fixated on sex. That meant they'd probably be attuned to members of whatever sex they were usually attracted to, which in Lorne's case, evidently meant women.
Like Teyla.
"Major Lorne." Teyla kept unloading tranks from the box, only pausing to examine one with a faint frown. "Are you well?"
"Pretty fine," he answered, moving towards her. Rodney had an instant where he thought of a tiger moving in for the kill, then Teyla's hand moved and there was a quick, buzzing noise.
Lorne collapsed on the floor. Folded up, pretty neat. Teyla crouched down beside him, but didn't actually touch him, then stood and eased the Major to one side of the passage with her booted toe.
Rodney looked from the Major to his team-mate and shook his head.
"Teyla?" Teyla regarded him with a quizzical tilt of her eyebrow. "Remind me never to get you mad."
She smiled faintly, looking back down at the tranks. "I am not angry, Rodney. But if he is infected then it was best not to let him too close. Get one of the bags." Her finger indicated behind him, and Rodney's body turned around to get the bag before his mind could protest that he wasn't her servant to fetch and carry for her. Teyla was a beautiful woman, but for all that he thought of her as more muscle than mind, there were times when she was downright scary.
They jogged back through the city, passing the various couples - some of which Rodney noted were new. Okay, so now he was getting blasé about this - he was actually noticing who was fucking whom. He was pretty sure that red-headed Kylie Horrocks had been doing the dark-skinned marine the last time they passed by - the man she was with now was definitely a whiter shade of pale than the last one. He briefly wondered if Katie Brown was busily screwing someone somewhere in the city.
Lucky her.
Little Rodney was thinking it was the guy who had the lucky stiff. Okay, so it had been a while since Little Rodney - and Big Rodney with him - had gotten any. And Katie was...quite nice. Not Samantha Carter, no, but women like Samantha were one in several billion.
Maybe, after all this was over, he might sit down for a dinner with Katie and try kissing her without Cadman in the back of his head.
Definitely without Cadman in the back of his head.
"Took you long enough," Sheppard said as they raced into the control room. He'd been leaning against the balcony, ignoring the orgy that was still going. How the hell are they sustaining it?
A question for Carson. When he and Cadman came to their senses. Damn, Cadman really did have nice tits. Not that Rodney would ever say anything of the sort anywhere near Cadman. She'd tease the living hell out of him. Or slap him. Probably the latter.
"The routes through the city were often blocked," said Teyla as she handed him a tranquilliser gun and tossed one to Ronon who caught it. "We had to detour in order to avoid the more...enthusiastic revellers."
"I'll bet," Sheppard muttered as he checked the dart cartridge. "Okay. Guess it's time to break up this party."
The really fun part of it was separating all the bodies.
"We could just leave them," Ronon said with a hopefulness that Rodney echoed.
Ronon had been the one to shoot the pair in Elizabeth's office. "I don't have to look them in the face every day," he told Sheppard before he walked in with the stunner. Certainly, he went about it with all the briskness of a man doing an unpleasant business - probably something that Ronon was quite used to after seven years on the run from the Wraith.
Sheppard glanced at Teyla who gave him a 'look'. "Better not," he said. "They'll be stiff in the morning."
"They were 'stiff' before," said Ronon with an almost-grin.
It was Sheppard's turn to give the 'look'. Ronon shrugged and caught Rodney's eye with a smirk, then began to help their team mate haul people out of the pile of bodies. After a moment, Teyla sighed and assisted, tactfully covering the exposed parts with the various pieces of clothing that had been discarded in what must have been the initial undressing before the orgy.
Rodney tried not to look too hard at the breasts of the woman he was trying to disentangle from Sergeant Miller, but Little Rodney kept distracting him. He glanced at the others, but other than some redness in their faces, it didn't look like they were suffering any undue effects.
He wondered if that meant they were getting some and so didn't feel as strong an urge. And if his team-mates were getting laid, then who were they sleeping with?
The last man had just been laid out along the back wall of the control room when the Stargate began dialling.
Rodney eased himself into the chair in front of the main panel, tossing someone's panties into a corner before putting up the shield. "Connected." Anxiously, they watched the Stargate, saw the shield flash, once, twice, three times...
The wormhole died.
Running through the city system diagnostics, Rodney was vaguely aware of the others closing in around the console.
"Trying to get through," Sheppard sounded grim; Rodney didn't bother looking up from the diagnostics chart. Everything seemed fine, no glitches, and no issues. "It was a set-up from the start."
"But how did they produce this...effect through the city?" Teyla asked, resting her hands lightly on the console. "Surely Dr. Weir would have noticed anything out of the ordinary."
"Up until the point where Caldwell had her up against the wall," muttered Ronon.
"Oh, thank you so much for the wonderful imagery," Rodney snapped. "Now I'm just going to have that image in my brain all night."
Ronon gave him the cynical eye of doom. "You didn't have to haul them apart."
"No, but I got an eyeful - and more than an eyeful in the infirmary! And on the way there!" Rodney scowled at the screen. "Teyla knows."
"Teyla is trying not to remember," she said. "And you are not helping."
"There's not much that's going to make anyone forget that," Rodney said.
"More sex?"
They all looked at Ronon, who just shrugged.
Sheppard shook his head and exchanged a glance with Teyla. "I can see it's going to be a long night."
--
It was a long night.
Seventeen hours, four more attempts to breach the gate, twenty-seven lust-filled expedition members (shot with the trank guns), and a stimulant tablet apiece later, Rodney and his team-mates were found playing cards on the control room floor by a rather embarrassed and now-clothed Carson Beckett.
"Strip poker," Sheppard said.
"Obviously without the stripping," said Rodney, deliberately not looking up at Beckett.
"I've got five panties," declared Ronon, holding up his 'spoils of war'. They'd ended up using the panties as 'currency' - one of those crazy whims that made more sense when... Well, okay, which never really made sense now that Rodney thought about it. "Sheppard's got none."
"It's just a bad run of luck," said Sheppard with exaggerated dignity. "Don't you worry - I'll get them back."
Teyla managed to haul herself up into a sitting position and scraped one hand through her hair. "Are you well, Dr. Beckett?"
"Fine, my dear. Fine. But I think you'd better get some rest," he pronounced after one sweeping glance that took in them, the bedrolls they'd brought out, the card game, complete with panty collection, the blanket-covered techs on the other side of the room, and the two people still supine in Elizabeth's office. "Go on, then. There's enough of us in our right minds to deal with the city now."
Rodney yawned. It was one thing to stay awake for so long on stimulants and adrenaline, but things had been pretty quiet, with only the occasional interruption to keep him alert. This wasn't a siege, or a hostage situation - this was just a long night. "The Stargate's locked down," he explained as the others hauled themselves up, collecting their bedrolls.
"Are there any military teams awake yet?"
"I met Major Lorne coming out of the showers," Carson said. "You think it's necessary to have him on duty?"
"Yeah, get him in." Sheppard twisted a little, cracking joints loud enough to make Carson wince. "Sorry, doc. Come on, guys."
As they trundled through the halls of Atlantis, Rodney noticed how the infirmary personnel weren't minded to look him or his team-mates in the eye as they attended to the exhausted and mostly-naked bodies who'd fallen asleep where their orgies had taken them. There were probably others who were waking up to discover they had unexpected bedmates right about now.
Rodney was very glad he wasn't in their shoes. Or their beds, come to think of it.
He'd really have to make a date with Katie.
Somehow - Rodney wasn't entirely clear on this point, his brain was going muzzy - they ended up in Teyla's room, which was the closest and apparently had the biggest bed. Exactly how Sheppard knew this, Rodney wasn't minded to ask at this exact moment since somewhere out of the way where he could sleep for several hours before having to look all those formerly-naked people in the face again was more attractive than the prospect of even an argument with Sheppard.
"I am not sharing my bed," was all Teyla said as she unlaced her boots and kicked them off.
"Spoilsport," came Sheppard's retort as he flopped down on the floor.
"You can always share Ronon's," Rodney murmured as he rolled himself onto his back and hoped to sleep without dreaming. Certainly not of Sergeant Palmer's buttocks, thrusting rhythmically...
Oh, God.
Little Rodney twitched. Big Rodney thought about the guy who'd tried to feel him up one time when they were off-world trading. Little Rodney settled right back down again.
Ronon, already sprawled out on the floor, made an indeterminate noise that might have been agreement or derision. Or possibly a snore.
"And I thought Lorne was kidding when he said my team was, and I quote, 'incestuous'," Sheppard muttered.
There was something like a snort from the bed. "Unlikely, Colonel."
Rodney was already mostly asleep when Sheppard retorted, "Only 'cause you keep turning me down, Teyla."
This time, she only managed a, "Mmhm," noise.
Sheppard sighed and rolled onto his side. "Sweet dreams, guys."
And Rodney did, indeed, dream of buttocks.
- fin -
AUTHOR: tielan
SUMMARY: Rodney dreams of buttocks.
CATEGORY: Gen...uh, sorta. Humour? Drama?
CHARACTERS: Rodney, John, Teyla, Ronon...the rest of Atlantis makes an appearance
NOTES: 4,000 words. O_O I have no idea how this is going to be received. Seriously.
The Unexpectedness Of Buttocks
There were things that Rodney McKay never expected to see upon returning to Atlantis.
Sergeant Adrian Palmer's buttocks weren't at the top of the list, but they were pretty close. If he'd ever thought about Sergeant Palmer's buttocks at all, which, of course, Rodney hadn't and never would have except for the fact that the Sergeant's trousers were clearly around his ankles as he...
Please tell me he's not... Oh god, he is...
Rodney's eyes bugged out of his head as he realised what he was seeing.
I will never, ever look at Hanover the same way again.
"Sergeant! What the hell is going on?" Sheppard's bark resounded through the gateroom, startling the Sergeant and his...partner out of their...activity. They whirled around, apparently shocked at the interruption. The second man - Dr. Ben Hanover, one of the scientists working with Zelenka - yelped as he rolled over, catching his hipbone on the stairs leading up to the control room and wincing in pain.
Rodney caught a glimpse of a purplish-brown thing poking from beneath the Sergeant's fatigues shirt and quickly turned away, resolutely facing the now shut Stargate.
His other two team-mates had halted behind them. Ronon was still staring at the Sergeant and Hanover with the look on his face that Rodney had privately termed, 'those wacky Atlanteans'; but Teyla was staring up at the control room, her eyes wide, her café au lait skin glowing a brilliant pink beneath the brown.
No, not at the control room - at Elizabeth's office.
With a sense of impending dread, Rodney lifted his eyes to the glass enclosure.
Buttocks again.
A different set, of course, and engaged in an activity only marginally less disturbing to Rodney's already traumatised mind but...
Oh. My. God. I'm looking at Elizabeth's...
Rodney looked away, very fast, only half-hearing the Sergeant's stuttered response to Sheppard's incensed question.
"Colonel," Teyla said, her voice tense and clear. "I think... I do not believe this is an isolated incident."
From the corner of his eye, Rodney saw Sheppard turn, look up, stare, and swear. Ronon followed, like a weathervane blown by the winds of his team-mates' astonishment.
Sheppard spun back to the pair hastily clothing themselves. "Sergeant, Doctor, I strongly recommend the both of you pull up your trousers and get the hell out of my sight!"
"Sir!"
Rodney felt there were few things more ridiculous than a man saluting a senior officer with his pants down around his ankles and a very obvious erection, but that might have just been him.
Teyla had already started up towards the control room, and as she reached the landing, she checked so suddenly that Ronon sideswiped her, neatly twisting to the side to avoid more contact than necessary. He gave whatever she'd been astonished by a brief, amused look - 'wacky Atlanteans' again - then continued on toward Elizabeth's office.
Rodney hurried up the stairs to Teyla. "What now...?"
A mêlée of bodies writhed on the control room floor. Men and women that Rodney was more accustomed to seeing fully clothed and seated at their consoles thrust and groped and sucked and...
If he'd had a collar to loosen, Rodney would have loosened it. Is it warm in here?
"This is going to scar me for life," he moaned.
"I believe it may already be too late for that," Teyla murmured as she headed to where Ronon was standing in the entrance of Elizabeth's office. Rodney stared after her, not sure if he'd just been commiserated with or insulted - it was hard to tell with Teyla.
Sheppard took Rodney's arm and shoved him up the stairs. Rodney noted that the other man was very careful not looking at the cluster of techs madly fucking each other like...well, like bunnies. Pink, hairless, human-looking bunnies. In an orgy. Moaning.
Yeah, it was definitely getting hot in here.
"Nothing to see here, McKay, move along."
"Actually, there's plenty to see," Rodney retorted. "I just don't want to see any of it!"
"Well, you're staring at them hard enough!" Sheppard snapped. If it came to that, he looked a little hot under the collar himself. "Teyla!"
She turned from the doorway, where Ronon could be seen speaking with Elizabeth and... Is that Caldwell? Rodney stared at the balding head of Colonel Caldwell, commander of the Daedelus, visible over Elizabeth's bare shoulder.
This gives new meaning to the word 'downtime in Atlantis'. Although Rodney's brain cheerfully and lasciviously took great pleasure in pointing out that for it to actually be 'downtime' would require Caldwell to be on his knees--
Oh God, think of something else, quick! The left-handed particles of the Standard Model starts with the electron, the electron neutrino, the positron...
Rodney was so busy gabbling inside his head, his eyes fixed carefully on Ronon rather than on the two figures who were quite clearly still madly screwing against the glass wall - he hoped to god it wouldn't break beneath the press--
Okay, thinking about the electron antineutrino, the up quark, the down quark, the anti-up quark and the anti-down quark...
--he hardly heard his name mentioned. When it did finally register, he turned to Sheppard who'd been briefing Teyla.
"...head down to the infirmary and get Beckett. Also, check out who else is...involved like this. Keep your radios on and if you get into trouble - any trouble - then you call." Sheppard was looking at Teyla as though he expected her to try to handle everything herself. "Teyla?"
"I will call," she said calmly over the panting and grunting coming from the group on the control room floor. "Rodney?"
"What? We're going? But what...what about if whatever's infected them gets us too?"
Sheppard gave him the look that said he was being an idiot. "Then we'll probably find you and Teyla shacking up somewhere in the city."
"We have not been infected yet, Rodney," Teyla said, a faint smile on her face. "I am not yet feeling the urge to tear the clothing from your back. Or anyone's back."
"Look at it this way," Sheppard clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm letting you go with Teyla instead of leaving you here with Ronon."
Rodney looked at Teyla who was regarding Sheppard with an expression that looked like she wanted to be unamused but couldn't be. Then he looked at Ronon who was watching Elizabeth and Caldwell with one eyebrow stuck somewhere in his dreadlocks. Then he looked at Sheppard who was giving Teyla his best 'who me?' look.
He rolled his eyes. "All right, all right, we're going." At least the corridors of the city would be better than staying here next to the mass orgy. Let Sheppard deal - or not deal - with that.
And he was not going hard.
Well, maybe just a bit. It was disturbing to discover just how...uh...turned on he was getting by all the sex happening around him. Little Rodney was pointing out that everyone else was getting some, so why wasn't he?
It was even more disturbing to discover that the corridors weren't free of couples. Or, in some cases, threesomes, foursomes, and another mass orgy.
"What might have caused this kind of behaviour?" Teyla asked as Rodney took her arm to lead her in detour around the orgy that writhed and wriggled its way across the corridor before them. They stepped over discarded boots and BDUs, someone's panties, and...a small bloody-looking white cylinder thing that made Rodney's brain quiver and shut down in sheer horror.
He answered on automatic as they passed another couple going for it in the corridor. Rodney refused to look at the faces and tried not to notice the bodies. He couldn't even begin to imagine what was going on in the scientists' quarters. Had everyone gone sex-mad? "Well, there could be any number of reasons - from, uh, basic drugging to pheromones." At her querying look, he explained, "Hormones in the air. Sort of."
"And these hormones...where would they have come from?"
"Ah, now that..." Rodney waved a finger at her. "That is the question!"
"You do not know." Teyla gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking - which he was really, really hoping she couldn't since his ass really didn't want a kicking right now. It wasn't Rodney's fault that all this sex had him just the tiniest bit horny and he was walking through the city with a rather attractive woman.
"Actually... No, I don't."
It was all Sheppard's fault.
Hey, it worked in Rodney's mind, anyway.
If the sight of all the people screwing like crazy similarly affected Teyla, she didn't show it. Rodney scowled at her. If all the sex around him was turning him on, then why the hell was he the only one? Instead, she seemed to be thinking - actually thinking. "Might the...drug or hormones have...blown in from somewhere? The mainland, perhaps?"
Rodney dismissed that immediately. "Too far. Look, it would take a really strong cloud to make it from the mainland to here - and we've found nothing that even suggested--"
He broke off.
They'd reached the infirmary.
So far today, Rodney had seen a great many disturbing things. This was a walk in the park by comparison. A highly disturbing walk in the park, full of people on beds in positions that Rodney had never even conceived of - and dear God, but Cadman had a nice pair of-- Carson is going to kill me. That thought only got halfway through his head before he realised that Carson was already in the process of 'appreciating' Cadman's assets.
Teyla turned resolutely towards Rodney, her eyes very wide, and looking like she was a hair's breadth away from laughing - or crying. She clicked her radio and spoke in a too-calm voice - the kind of voice that hid hysteria. "Colonel, I believe Dr. Beckett is...otherwise occupied."
"Shit." Sheppard's expletive was blunt. "Okay. What's the situation down there?"
She glanced at Rodney. "Whatever it is, the whole city appears to be affected. We passed many personnel who were similarly...involved."
"Great. We go away for eight hours and the city becomes the red-light district in the Pegasus galaxy. Do we know what caused this?"
"Not yet," Rodney said, turning on his own radio. "And unless you want to join the control room techs - or Elizabeth and Caldwell - then I'd be more interested in stopping it, not finding what began it."
In the background of Sheppard's radio, there was a slightly electronic noise that sounded suspiciously like... "Stargate," Sheppard said.
"Dialling in?"
"Yes."
A sudden thought seized Rodney. "We're on manual shields, aren't we? Because we came through the Stargate but there was no-one manning the control room - Sheppard, get the shields up!" There was no response. "Sheppard? Sheppard!"
Teyla grimaced and moved quickly through the infirmary, ignoring the grunting, panting couples. A few of them glanced at her, but when she didn't acknowledge them, went back to their...activity. Rodney saw her pull open a few drawers, pulling out various packets and tucking some away while discarding others.
"What are you--?" He only got halfway through his question when the noise up one end of the infirmary got loud. It turned out that one of the nurses was a squealer. Teyla winced and crossed back over to Rodney, following him out of the infirmary.
"Stimulants," she said, holding up the packet. "We may need them for later."
It was a good idea. Rodney took the packet from her hand. "We should head back to the control room-- Sheppard? Come in, Sheppard!"
Silence. Teyla looked like she was about to turn on her toes and sprint for the gateroom.
Then a moment later. "Teyla, do you have any duct tape on you?"
Teyla stared. "Colonel?"
"I need you to duct tape Rodney's mouth shut."
How typically Sheppard! "Oh, very funny, Sheppard. What happened?"
"Well, it wasn't one of our off-world teams - no IDC. By the way, the system's up and running and Ronon seems to have been taking lessons in computers from one of the techs. Just computer lessons?" That was a little fainter, although Ronon's snorting answer came through loud and clear. "Uhuh. Look, I'm going to get you guys to stop by the armoury."
Rodney stared. Teyla was already moving - and speaking into her radio. "You believe that this is intentional, Colonel?"
He hurried to catch up as Sheppard answered. "It's looking that way. Only one thing came through - it might have been a probe, but there's no telling since we got the shield up."
"I should get back to the control room, to check if the systems have been tampered with--"
"Go with Teyla." There was no leeway in Sheppard's voice. "Get to the armoury and pick up any tranquillisers you can lay your hands on - better them than the stunners. Then get back here. We're going to need to clear this area of people."
They were moving pretty fast through the city, ignoring the people there. "Elizabeth and Caldwell?"
"Them, too."
"So they're still--"
"Yep," Sheppard said. "Still."
Oh, it's going to be interesting around here when they get off this drug or whatever that has them acting like this. Very interesting.
Rodney wondered if the Ancients had any monitoring devices that could be stuck somewhere obscure to record things. The conversation between Elizabeth and Caldwell would be an absolute gem.
"Tranquillisers," Teyla was saying briskly. "Will we need other weaponry?"
"Ronon's presently collecting stunners and guns that have been...discarded down in the gateroom," Sheppard said. "Just in case. Just get the tranks - all the ones the two of you can carry."
They passed several more couples - just couples this time, no orgies, for which Rodney was supremely grateful. For some reason, he could think of couples as 'intimate' and so avoid looking at them. But orgies were...well, free for all. Including viewers.
He was so not going to examine that logic. At all.
The armoury and shooting gallery set up alongside it appeared unattended.
'Appeared' being the operative word.
Teyla crossed the room and opened one of the lockers, her fingers moving nimbly over the keypads. "The tranquillisers are usually kept in here," she said, hauling out a large box and flipping the lid open.
"What would you want tranquillisers for?"
Rodney spun on his heel, his hand reaching for his weapon. Sheppard had trained him well - possibly too well if he was contemplating violence in the middle of Atlantis.
Lorne lounged against the door frame of the armoury, his eyes fixed firmly on Teyla. He was fully dressed - much to Rodney's relief - except for his feet that were bare. On the other hand, he hadn't even given Rodney a glance from the moment he entered the room. It was like Rodney didn't exist - which, if Rodney thought about it, probably made sense since this drug had people fixated on sex. That meant they'd probably be attuned to members of whatever sex they were usually attracted to, which in Lorne's case, evidently meant women.
Like Teyla.
"Major Lorne." Teyla kept unloading tranks from the box, only pausing to examine one with a faint frown. "Are you well?"
"Pretty fine," he answered, moving towards her. Rodney had an instant where he thought of a tiger moving in for the kill, then Teyla's hand moved and there was a quick, buzzing noise.
Lorne collapsed on the floor. Folded up, pretty neat. Teyla crouched down beside him, but didn't actually touch him, then stood and eased the Major to one side of the passage with her booted toe.
Rodney looked from the Major to his team-mate and shook his head.
"Teyla?" Teyla regarded him with a quizzical tilt of her eyebrow. "Remind me never to get you mad."
She smiled faintly, looking back down at the tranks. "I am not angry, Rodney. But if he is infected then it was best not to let him too close. Get one of the bags." Her finger indicated behind him, and Rodney's body turned around to get the bag before his mind could protest that he wasn't her servant to fetch and carry for her. Teyla was a beautiful woman, but for all that he thought of her as more muscle than mind, there were times when she was downright scary.
They jogged back through the city, passing the various couples - some of which Rodney noted were new. Okay, so now he was getting blasé about this - he was actually noticing who was fucking whom. He was pretty sure that red-headed Kylie Horrocks had been doing the dark-skinned marine the last time they passed by - the man she was with now was definitely a whiter shade of pale than the last one. He briefly wondered if Katie Brown was busily screwing someone somewhere in the city.
Lucky her.
Little Rodney was thinking it was the guy who had the lucky stiff. Okay, so it had been a while since Little Rodney - and Big Rodney with him - had gotten any. And Katie was...quite nice. Not Samantha Carter, no, but women like Samantha were one in several billion.
Maybe, after all this was over, he might sit down for a dinner with Katie and try kissing her without Cadman in the back of his head.
Definitely without Cadman in the back of his head.
"Took you long enough," Sheppard said as they raced into the control room. He'd been leaning against the balcony, ignoring the orgy that was still going. How the hell are they sustaining it?
A question for Carson. When he and Cadman came to their senses. Damn, Cadman really did have nice tits. Not that Rodney would ever say anything of the sort anywhere near Cadman. She'd tease the living hell out of him. Or slap him. Probably the latter.
"The routes through the city were often blocked," said Teyla as she handed him a tranquilliser gun and tossed one to Ronon who caught it. "We had to detour in order to avoid the more...enthusiastic revellers."
"I'll bet," Sheppard muttered as he checked the dart cartridge. "Okay. Guess it's time to break up this party."
The really fun part of it was separating all the bodies.
"We could just leave them," Ronon said with a hopefulness that Rodney echoed.
Ronon had been the one to shoot the pair in Elizabeth's office. "I don't have to look them in the face every day," he told Sheppard before he walked in with the stunner. Certainly, he went about it with all the briskness of a man doing an unpleasant business - probably something that Ronon was quite used to after seven years on the run from the Wraith.
Sheppard glanced at Teyla who gave him a 'look'. "Better not," he said. "They'll be stiff in the morning."
"They were 'stiff' before," said Ronon with an almost-grin.
It was Sheppard's turn to give the 'look'. Ronon shrugged and caught Rodney's eye with a smirk, then began to help their team mate haul people out of the pile of bodies. After a moment, Teyla sighed and assisted, tactfully covering the exposed parts with the various pieces of clothing that had been discarded in what must have been the initial undressing before the orgy.
Rodney tried not to look too hard at the breasts of the woman he was trying to disentangle from Sergeant Miller, but Little Rodney kept distracting him. He glanced at the others, but other than some redness in their faces, it didn't look like they were suffering any undue effects.
He wondered if that meant they were getting some and so didn't feel as strong an urge. And if his team-mates were getting laid, then who were they sleeping with?
The last man had just been laid out along the back wall of the control room when the Stargate began dialling.
Rodney eased himself into the chair in front of the main panel, tossing someone's panties into a corner before putting up the shield. "Connected." Anxiously, they watched the Stargate, saw the shield flash, once, twice, three times...
The wormhole died.
Running through the city system diagnostics, Rodney was vaguely aware of the others closing in around the console.
"Trying to get through," Sheppard sounded grim; Rodney didn't bother looking up from the diagnostics chart. Everything seemed fine, no glitches, and no issues. "It was a set-up from the start."
"But how did they produce this...effect through the city?" Teyla asked, resting her hands lightly on the console. "Surely Dr. Weir would have noticed anything out of the ordinary."
"Up until the point where Caldwell had her up against the wall," muttered Ronon.
"Oh, thank you so much for the wonderful imagery," Rodney snapped. "Now I'm just going to have that image in my brain all night."
Ronon gave him the cynical eye of doom. "You didn't have to haul them apart."
"No, but I got an eyeful - and more than an eyeful in the infirmary! And on the way there!" Rodney scowled at the screen. "Teyla knows."
"Teyla is trying not to remember," she said. "And you are not helping."
"There's not much that's going to make anyone forget that," Rodney said.
"More sex?"
They all looked at Ronon, who just shrugged.
Sheppard shook his head and exchanged a glance with Teyla. "I can see it's going to be a long night."
--
It was a long night.
Seventeen hours, four more attempts to breach the gate, twenty-seven lust-filled expedition members (shot with the trank guns), and a stimulant tablet apiece later, Rodney and his team-mates were found playing cards on the control room floor by a rather embarrassed and now-clothed Carson Beckett.
"Strip poker," Sheppard said.
"Obviously without the stripping," said Rodney, deliberately not looking up at Beckett.
"I've got five panties," declared Ronon, holding up his 'spoils of war'. They'd ended up using the panties as 'currency' - one of those crazy whims that made more sense when... Well, okay, which never really made sense now that Rodney thought about it. "Sheppard's got none."
"It's just a bad run of luck," said Sheppard with exaggerated dignity. "Don't you worry - I'll get them back."
Teyla managed to haul herself up into a sitting position and scraped one hand through her hair. "Are you well, Dr. Beckett?"
"Fine, my dear. Fine. But I think you'd better get some rest," he pronounced after one sweeping glance that took in them, the bedrolls they'd brought out, the card game, complete with panty collection, the blanket-covered techs on the other side of the room, and the two people still supine in Elizabeth's office. "Go on, then. There's enough of us in our right minds to deal with the city now."
Rodney yawned. It was one thing to stay awake for so long on stimulants and adrenaline, but things had been pretty quiet, with only the occasional interruption to keep him alert. This wasn't a siege, or a hostage situation - this was just a long night. "The Stargate's locked down," he explained as the others hauled themselves up, collecting their bedrolls.
"Are there any military teams awake yet?"
"I met Major Lorne coming out of the showers," Carson said. "You think it's necessary to have him on duty?"
"Yeah, get him in." Sheppard twisted a little, cracking joints loud enough to make Carson wince. "Sorry, doc. Come on, guys."
As they trundled through the halls of Atlantis, Rodney noticed how the infirmary personnel weren't minded to look him or his team-mates in the eye as they attended to the exhausted and mostly-naked bodies who'd fallen asleep where their orgies had taken them. There were probably others who were waking up to discover they had unexpected bedmates right about now.
Rodney was very glad he wasn't in their shoes. Or their beds, come to think of it.
He'd really have to make a date with Katie.
Somehow - Rodney wasn't entirely clear on this point, his brain was going muzzy - they ended up in Teyla's room, which was the closest and apparently had the biggest bed. Exactly how Sheppard knew this, Rodney wasn't minded to ask at this exact moment since somewhere out of the way where he could sleep for several hours before having to look all those formerly-naked people in the face again was more attractive than the prospect of even an argument with Sheppard.
"I am not sharing my bed," was all Teyla said as she unlaced her boots and kicked them off.
"Spoilsport," came Sheppard's retort as he flopped down on the floor.
"You can always share Ronon's," Rodney murmured as he rolled himself onto his back and hoped to sleep without dreaming. Certainly not of Sergeant Palmer's buttocks, thrusting rhythmically...
Oh, God.
Little Rodney twitched. Big Rodney thought about the guy who'd tried to feel him up one time when they were off-world trading. Little Rodney settled right back down again.
Ronon, already sprawled out on the floor, made an indeterminate noise that might have been agreement or derision. Or possibly a snore.
"And I thought Lorne was kidding when he said my team was, and I quote, 'incestuous'," Sheppard muttered.
There was something like a snort from the bed. "Unlikely, Colonel."
Rodney was already mostly asleep when Sheppard retorted, "Only 'cause you keep turning me down, Teyla."
This time, she only managed a, "Mmhm," noise.
Sheppard sighed and rolled onto his side. "Sweet dreams, guys."
And Rodney did, indeed, dream of buttocks.
- fin -