Circumstantial Evidence by nudaydreamer (secret superpower challenge)
Title: Circumstantial Evidence
Author:
nudaydreamer
Rating: R
Word Count: ~1100
Warnings: slash, ridiculousness, kinda vague references to things from seasons 1&2
Disclaimer: I don't own SGA or Forever Knight. All vampire information comes from years of watching too much TV and wikipedia.
A/N: This came out of a random comment I made while betaing a fic for
theemmer. If anyone wants to make me vampire!John art, I will love you forever.
domtheknight, thanks for the readthrough and not letting me call it this “Vampire!John YAY” and the whole 'letting me stay at your apartment while I have no place to live and no job' thing - I already love you forever. ;)
It started on some planet or another - the usual bumpkinly natives with their patriarchal values and their blond, flirtatiously modest village elders' daughters and their low-cut, breast-enhancing embroidered gowns.
Same old Pegasus galaxy.
Except this time, instead of rolling his eyes and looking away when John began playfully romancing his latest groupie, Rodney decided that it was time he took a scientific interest in the proceedings. Everyone knew that sociology and anthropology and all of those social sciences were crap, but it couldn't hurt to collect some data.
What he saw wasn't particularly impressive. John gave his standard c'mon, pretty please smile - the same one Rodney ended up on the receiving end of any time John wanted something he couldn't get anywhere else, which was pretty often if you believed John's whining - and the alien ingénue melted into a big pile of simpering, metaphorical goo.
There was no finesse to his strategy, no method or technique that Rodney could discern. Sheppard wasn't even incredibly good-looking, if you really took the time to study his features carefully and individually. His eyes weren't some normal driver's license color like “blue” or “brown,” but some mottled Crayola shade Jeannie would call “hazel” or “avocado.” The ears were just weird, bespeaking some kind of minor genetic defect. His nose wasn't straight, and it was kind of pointy. His lips were all full and pouty in a way that was just wrong on a guy, and although Sheppard seemed to do this odd lip-licking thing a lot, they didn't seem particularly shiny or kissable. Even if you were into that sort of thing. Plus, Rodney had seen enough on hot days and in shared tents to know that John's chest was probably a bit too hairy for a the average woman's taste, and his tanned skin was marred with the pale souvenirs of old injuries large and small.
No, there was something intangible going on here, something under the West Coast vowels of his I'm just humoring you all drawl, some kind of otherworldly mesmerizing undertone operating on a frequency not detectable by human ears but surreptitiously broadcasting hey, it's okay, you can trust me, take off all of your clothes to anyone in range. Well, the alien women, at least.
It just wasn't natural. And in that moment, the answer seemed so obvious that Rodney wondered how he'd missed it before: John Sheppard was a vampire.
Admittedly, Rodney's knowledge of vampire lore was entirely based on bad horror flicks and episodes of Forever Knight, usually playing in the background while he was (unsuccessfully) trying to make it with some girl, and a few occasions when he'd left PBS on after Antiques Roadshow and caught part of some documentary. He knew that the vampire legend actually took a variety of forms, appearing in most of the world's cultures at one time or another. He didn't remember whether the magnetic personality and hypnotic voice were from the former or the latter, but they definitely indicated vampire status.
After that, he started gathering his evidence.
The hair was a supernatural entity in and of itself. A little finagling with the crystals and a lot of sweet-talking Atlantis had him inside Sheppard's quarters, where he found no coffin or vials of blood, but also a complete lack of styling product. There had to be another explanation for the least movable hair since Princess Leia.
Also, John looked WAY too young to be over thirty-five. Much closer to, say, 335 but with the gift of eternal youth.
The childlike love of flying machines would make a lot more sense if John had spent a lifetime quashing his natural ability to fly in human or bat form., and he could totally picture Sheppard wearing a cape or a trench coat leaping off the the South Pier.
John didn't seem to have any particular aversion to sunlight, and he definitely wasn't pale, but he was awfully strong for a guy with such a lean build, and gave every indication that his physical safety wasn't a concern, which it wouldn't be if he were immortal, and he totally had some kind of extrasensory perception thing because he always seemed to know exactly where everyone on his team was and whether they were subtly observing his skin's reaction to the spray from the natives' holy fountain.
Plus, Rodney was pretty sure he'd caught Sheppard staring at his neck on more than one occasion. Definitely some vampiric interest there.
Except that Rodney didn't actually believe in vampires. Obviously, there was no such thing a vampire. Of course, there were also no life-sucking aliens, machines you could turn on with your mind, sentient mist, evil snakes that lived in people's stomachs, or giant blue tentacled insects, so he wasn't taking any chances with his life. He wasn't a religious man, but he started wearing a small silver cross under his shirt. He thought maybe Sheppard could sense it, because he seemed a little distracted one day when Rodney wore a particularly thin shirt, so he resolved never to take it off again, just in case.
When he started bugging the botanists for the Pegasus equivalent of garlic, Rodney realized that things had gotten out of hand. There were real, actual space vampires after them, and he was worried that his coworker was a supernatural being? He was a scientist. Not to mention, genius. John, a bloodsucking vampire? WTF? If anything, the colonel was an incubus. There had to be another possible explanation for the given data.
Again, the answer came to him suddenly, about three days later.
It wasn't that he thought Sheppard was a vampire. He wanted Sheppard to be a vampire, because the idea of the Colonel as an unnaturally strong flying undead creature who could mesmerize you with his voice (depending on which culture's mythology you believed) was... hot. God, the fangs alone... he could get hard just thinking about that hot mouth on his neck, tongue laving, sharp pressure just there and oh, he really needed to touch himself right now.
Except Rodney wasn't alone in his quarters with his pants around his ankles. He was, in fact, in Sheppard's quarters, ostensibly borrowing a DVD but in reality staring very, very obviously at John's mouth. So obviously, in fact, that Lt. Colonel “I Never See This Coming” seemed to be getting the picture loud and clear.
At least, Rodney hoped that was why Sheppard was advancing on him hungrily, pressing him back against the wall and locking their mouths together, tongue and lips greedily seeking Rodney's.
When John moved to his neck and bit down gently, Rodney moaned, and felt Sheppard's smirk as he continued the teasing scrape of teeth. “Like that, huh?” he murmured between nibbling bites.
Rodney shuddered. “You have no idea.”