Cake or Death Challenge: How to Make a Gold Cake by Barb G
How to Make a Gold Cake: A recipe in five parts, three blow jobs, two penetrative acts, and one jerk off session
by Barb G
He pushed the trigger, and rather than a pulse being sent out, a thin, purple beam of about three feet shot out from the barrel.
“You built a light saber,” John finished.
“Well, more like a light chain-saw, but yes. I did.”
John’s lips were swollen, and Rodney didn’t doubt his jaw was hurting too. Not that he was going to give up, despite having already succeeded twice before. The sheets were gummy with perspiration under Rodney's palms, and the sweat trickled down from the line of hair over his temple and dripped into his ear. “You’re killing me,” he groaned.
John didn’t answer, but flicked his tongue over the head of Rodney’s cock one more time. He wasn’t going any faster despite how much Rodney begged, ordered or cajoled. Rodney tried to twist his hips, to force John to run his hand up and down Rodney’s length, but John just rode it out and kept his fingers still. “Are you listening to me? You’re killing me. I’m dying, right here, right now. You’ll have to write a letter to my next of kin saying that I died because you couldn’t just open your mouth and take me down your throat. And it’s going to be all your fault.”
“Rodney,” John said, and licked his way around the head of Rodney’s cock, tiny little licks that just about brought Rodney off the mattress. “You talk too much.” He put the entire head of Rodney’s cock into his mouth and swirled his tongue again.
Rodney’s fists clutched the sheets again. “And that surprises you how?” he demanded, when his jaw unlocked.
John just laughed, not taking Rodney out of his mouth. He waited for Rodney to relax again, and then ever so slowly began to take him all the way down. John moved his hand to Rodney’s hips, as though he could push himself even further down Rodney’s length, but Rodney waited for John to nod before he tangled his hands in John’s hair, which was still soft from drying naturally outside the shower. It was bliss, pushing John’s head down his length, feeling the soft warmth of John’s mouth as fast as he wanted, as hard as he wanted, and John just took it.
Rodney came, eyes squeezed shut, head back, throat working but not swallowing anything. He was wrecked, completely gone, and barely even noticed John coming up on the bed to join him. John’s erection was hot and damp against Rodney’s thigh. “Tell me how you want it,” Rodney asked, letting his fingers trail along John’s cock.
John didn’t answer, but kissed his shoulder instead, and that was good enough. Rodney knew John wouldn't say the words. Rodney turned over. John squeezed some of Rodney’s homemade lube onto his hand and then slid inside him. Rodney couldn’t come again, not if his life depended on it, but it just felt good, having John moving inside him. They were both on their sides, the only way the two of them could sleep on the bed at the same time, and Rodney hugged the pillow. The fuck was a slow one, its tempo building as John began to concentrate. His nails dug into Rodney’s hips, holding him in place so that each of thrust could be longer, harder and faster. Rodney swore he didn’t have an ounce of spunk left inside him, but still ended up wiping off his stomach.
John groaned, just the once, his body suddenly tense as a board, and then he came with a shuddering sigh. Rodney stayed still, waiting for John, and then there was a sleepy round of pass the moist towellette.
John lay back down first, and Rodney adjusted himself to use the meaty part of John’s arm as a pillow. John ran his hand up and down Rodney’s arm, only touching his fingertips to Rodney’s skin, and normally Rodney would have found it annoyingly quaint, but it was different. He... liked it. “I miss the late night kitchen raid after hot, sticky sex,” Rodney said.
“You’re telling me,” John said, and tried to stop the stroking. Neither one of them mentioned the new cutbacks that had reduced the cooks in cafeteria to powdered alchemy. Rodney cleared his throat, and when that didn’t resume the touch, he grabbed John’s hand and put it firmly on his hip. “I always feel I can eat half my body weight after sex.” John was falling asleep. “Also, you should know we’re out of lube.”
Rodney made a mental note.
The next morning, after a breakfast of substitutions and egg-like substances, he had half an hour to kill before they had to be off world, and he’d just received a new shipment of supplies, including glycerin. It was one thing to put Probe or Astroglide onto the requisitions sheets that had to be signed off by a dozen different people of varying ranks, and another thing entirely to ask for deionized water, glycerin and various polymers. It barely raised an eyebrow. He was half way through whipping up a new batch when Zelenka let himself into the lab.
“Working on a bit of ancient technology?” Zelenka asked, with a slight twist to his lips.
“If you want to call it that, go ahead,” Rodney said. “It’s not like you don’t get your cut.”
“Scraping out your Erlenmeyer Flasks is hardly getting my cut, Rodney.”
“You wouldn’t take it from me if I just gave it to you. Don’t think I don’t know how much you get for it, either.”
“You’re a prince."
Rodney swirled the mixture about. “I just like things going like a well water-based-lubricated machine.”
Zelenka crossed his arms. “And you think you can recreate anything.”
Rodney shrugged. “Well, practically anything commercially available.”
“Anything?”
“If you’re asking me to sell my soul for a Caramilk, I just might take you up on it. If you’re daring me to a chemistry duel, name your terms.”
Zelenka’s smile turned practically evil. Well, as evil as his face could turn considering he perpetually looked like the bumbling scientist in any given Disney film. “One week. My desk. The material should be virtually indistinguishable from the earth counterpart.
“Done.” Rodney said. “What is it?”
“Cake.”
“What?”
“Cake. Golden, yellow, delicious? Not from a packet, not anything that can be described as cake-like, cake. On my desk. One week.”
“Are you serious?”
Zelenka crossed his arms. “Deadly.”
Rodney had never backed down from a challenge. “Done,” he snapped.
*
3 teaspoons baking powder, 14 grams
Rodney had never made baking powder, but then, who in their right mind had? The recipe he found didn’t say if it cal/led for single or double acting powder, so he assumed it meant double, and why not go for gusto He had to leave to escort more refugees from one camp to another, but before he left he had the low temperature acid salts completed. The aluminum phosphate took him a bit longer, but then it was a simple matter of combining the two with a starch and sodium bicarbonate. Easy peasy. He had over thirty grams of baking powder, all for a low cost of three hundred, forty eight dollars, labour and supplies included.
John came in, just as he was funneling the last little bit into a sample jar. “What are you doing?”
Rodney stowed the jar away. “Oh, I don’t know, making a mysterious white powder from a host of relatively obscure chemicals, what does it look like I’m doing?”
“And what does the mysterious white powder do?” John asked, as Rodney dusted his hands and began undoing John’s slacks. He was already semi-hard, and under Rodney’s ministrations his cock was soon quite erect.
“It gets a rise out of things. See? I must have had some on my hands.”
“I don’t think that’s a reaction to any chemical,” John said, and then groaned as Rodney dropped to his knees. He wasn’t in the same master class that John was, he didn’t feel the need to draw out every possible gasp and sigh from John, although the idea was appealing. Instead, he concentrated on the big picture. He liked John’s hands on his head, guiding him. John’s testicles were sensitive, most men’s were, Rodney knew, but he liked the way they felt when he cupped them in his palm, tenderly regardless of how much force John pushed him down again. He loved the salty taste to John’s skin, the way it moved, and the way even the slightest variation wrung out a new sound from John. Everything was an experiment, and Rodney was perfectly in his element.
But he’d lost his control. John grabbed the back of his head, pulling him so close John’s pubic hair tickled his upper lip. It wasn’t that John was tensing against him, the muscles of his ass as finely chiseled as marble or the way the sounds from the back of his throat went into the supersonic range, but through it all, John still touched the lobe of Rodney’s ear through it all.
Rodney swallowed. John didn’t move for a full moment, still holding him. Rodney eventually climbed to his feet. He went to wipe off his mouth, but then John did it for him, kissing clean the corners. He went to reach for the residue in the flask, but Rodney directed him to the stuff already bottled. It was primo stuff, Rodney knew, cool to start but quickly warming up to body temperature without breaking down, and then John pinned him to the counter. For once he was almost clinical about it, hand so firm on his cock that Rodney almost objected, if it wasn’t for John studying his face and relaxing his hand slightly. From then, even the slightest twitch on his face was studied, analyzed and the grip on his dick adjusted for it.
Rodney had to grab onto John’s shoulders. The smell of him, soap and aftershave, the smell of his semen, the roughness of the five o’clock shadow under his jaw--Rodney pressed his forehead against John’s cheek and let him take him. It felt so good, just letting John support him. It left him weightless, and as the orgasm built, the faster John moved his hand.
John turned his head. “When we get back to the room,” he said, his voice low and gravelly and the vibration went straight down to Rodney's dick.
“Yes?” Rodney asked, managing to work the word out to sound almost normal. He wanted John to say it, but instead John pushed him even harder against the table, holding him up. There were no more words. The orgasm built to an almost uncomfortable level. Rodney clung to him, and when he felt his body start to go over, in that moment that seemed to last forever before it was over too quickly, John kissed his neck and held him.
And that was that.
2 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted, 300 grams
Elizabeth stopped, just for a second. “You want to build a what, now?”
“A mill,” Rodney repeated, making random grinding, windmill motions with his hands. “You know?”
“How are you going to power a mill?”
“Water, sun, wind, nuclear? Pick one. Heck, pick a couple. Hybrid power’s the wave of the future.”
“That is admirable, Rodney. The Althosians certainly could use a mill for their new crop, but why on earth or any other planet does it have to be built in a day and a half?”
Rodney sat down. He tented his fingers. “I’m under significant time restraints, Elizabeth.”
“And may I ask why?”
“I need it done quickly.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I got that, Rodney.”
Rodney exhaled, sharply. “I need to make a cake. You can’t have cake without flour, and you can’t have flour without a mill. The last of the flour was used up several months before, and it hasn’t been replaced.”
“Do you know what building a mill will entail?”
“Yes, Elizabeth, I am somewhat familiar with the requirements. I did build you the plans.”
“The work on the actual mill can be done, granted. But it takes more than that. You have to make the grind plates, and that will take time, even if you had the right equipment, which, I don’t need to remind you that you don’t have!”
“I’m working on it.”
“You’re what?”
“Just okay the plans. I’ll have a cutting device in place before we need to install the plates.”
Elizabeth waved her hands. “You’d be doing a great service. Yes, of course I’ll approve it.”
“That’s all I need,” Rodney said, and bounced to his feet. “I’ll take it from here.”
*
John found him again in the lab. It was late, but he'd just gotten off shift himself. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Why do so many of our conversations begin with you saying those words?”
“Because, in this instance, it appears as though you are modifying Ronon’s gun, and seeing how he feels about that gun, I’m actually asking you if what you are doing is actually what it appears you are doing.”
“I’m modifying Ronon’s gun.”
“What? Are you serious? It’s not an Xbox!”
“Well, actually, a lot of the principles are the same--"
“Rodney!”
“I need something that can cut through stone. And since the energy pulse of the gun is stronger than anything we have--" Rodney didn’t finish, but instead finished taping the modulator onto the gun’s hilt. He pushed the trigger, and rather than a pulse being sent out, a thin, purple beam of about three feet shot out from the barrel.
“You built a light saber,” John finished.
“Well, more like a light chain-saw, but yes. I did.”
John’s hands twitched. It was painfully obvious he wanted to continue dressing Rodney down and play with it at the same time. The latter impulse won, and it was in John’s hand the next second. “Cool,” he said, instead. “Ronon is so going to kill you, but I want you to know I have your back.”
“What, you think I stole it?” Rodney demanded. “Ronon gave it to me.”
John released the trigger, and the blade sniggered back into the hilt. “What? How?”
“You don’t think I have any power of persuasion, do you?”
John continued to stare at him.
Rodney coughed. “All right. I didn’t ask him. Teyla did.”
“And he agreed?”
“She needed to pull out him being a benefactor of the village, but yeah, eventually he caved like a seasoned spelunker.”
John pulled the trigger again. “Cool.”
*
Rodney had heard of barn raisings, but that had nothing on how hard Althosians worked in putting up the mill. They’d found a perfect place by a fast moving river, and by mid morning, the foundations were erect. John and Ronon were busy around the two huge granite stones the Althosians had found, and the light chain-saw was doing an admirable job chipping it off to Rodney’s exact specifications. The part that caused the most friction was Ronon and John fighting over whose turn it was. Lorne lowered the puddlejumper down and Elizabeth joined in with the festivities.
Teyla was amongst the villagers as they, both male and female, put together the feast. Chickens ran under foot, and he needed eggs, but Teyla seemed horrified at the very idea.
“You can’t take the eggs, Rodney. My people are still trying to rebuild. Eight eggs could produce dozens of chickens by the end of the year. It’s simply not possible.”
“But I--" Rodney waved behind him, and the rapidly growing mill.
Teyla’s stare didn’t waver. “Surely you are not placing a price tag on your assistance, Rodney, are you? Perhaps I am confused.”
Obviously Rodney was losing a battle he wasn’t even aware had begun. “No. Clearly. But you can’t count on all eight eggs actually hatching, can you?”
“I suppose that would be unwise,” Teyla said carefully.
“So, suppose one could substitute eight eggs for maybe three chickens?”
“I can assure you our chick mortality rate is much lower than that.”
“Five.”
“Six,” Teyla said.
“Done.”
Teyla nodded. “Rodney, where are you going to get six chickens?”
“Let me worry about that. You just keep eight of your lovely birds away from cock robin, okay?”
“Done,” Teyla said, and they shook on it.
Rodney took back the chain saw in time to mark the grooves into the top stone, and by the afternoon, the first of the fine powdered white flour slid out between the stationary and turning rocks.
*
1 1/4 cup sugar, 300 grams
1/4 teaspoon salt
The salt was no problem, it was one of the only things left out between meal services, and he only needed two little packets. The sugar, however, was rationed to two packets a day and Rodney could have kicked himself for how many times he disdainfully left his on his plate.
Luckily, the entire team donated their daily packets for the day each day, but it was already day four and he only had thirty-two packets. He needed sixty for the recipe, if each packet contained exactly a teaspoon.
By end of service, however, he had exactly six piles of ten sugar packets each. John blinked. “How did you do that?”
“A combination of begging, borrowing, bribing and blackmail,” Rodney said, as modestly as he could. Which wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all himself.
“Mostly the last two?” Ronon asked, but it was good natured. Rodney had promised him some of the cake should it actually materialize.
Rodney shrugged. “You play to your strengths, I’ll play to mine.”
“Well, gather your strengths up,” John said, taking his tray. “The natives are restless.”
The mood to the room had shifted, as by now most of the people knew what he was up to. Rodney scooped the packets into a zip lock bag and followed John out of the hall.
8 egg yolks, beaten, 130 grams
John was already in bed, but Rodney couldn’t stop pacing. “I just need eggs and millk.”
“Just,” John repeated. They’d already used an inch or so of the new lube. Rodney had all but perfected it, but he thought the next batch needed just a touch more of glycerin to make it a bit more long lasting.
“Well, yes. Just.”
“The mess has both powdered eggs and powered milk. Just add water.”
“That won’t work. Rules of the game.”
“The Genii have chickens.”
“I have nothing to buy them with.”
“You don’t know that until you ask.”
Rodney nodded. That was certainly true. His contacts had contacts who had contacts, and eventually, by the morning, one of them brokered the deal.
But first Rodney needed his purchase price.
*
Parrish wasn’t surprised to see him. The greenhouses that Elizabeth had constructed had all kinds of green... things in it. Parrish didn’t look up from individually watering the leaves as Rodney entered the green house. It didn’t take very long for his allergies to act up, and he had to press his finger against the end of his nose.
“You need what?” Parrish demanded.
“Onions. Garlic. Maybe some thyme.”
“May I ask why?”
“I need to trade them for some chickens.”
Parrish stopped his spraying. “Why do you need chickens?”
“I need eggs, and quickly.”
“Any chickens you trade for probably won’t lay eggs for a while. It takes time for them to settle down.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Rodney demanded. He didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. “I’m not using the chickens for eggs, I’m trading them for eggs.”
“For your cake.”
“Yes! For my cake! Can I have them or not?”
“And what are you going to give me in return?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. Everyone was out for something, but he’d come prepared. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another bottle of lube. Parrish’s eyes got really wide. “That’s the good stuff?”
“Made it this morning.”
“Is it raspberry flavoured?”
“Is it what?” Rodney demanded. “No. Ewww.”
Parrish turned his back. “Come back when it’s raspberry flavoured.”
Rodney stalked away. He could have recreated the smell of raspberries using benzenes in a few seconds, but he didn’t know if they would taste very good. When all promises, threats and favours had been pulled in, Rodney had but a single packet of generic raspberry flavoured jello.
And a centrifuge.
An hour later he was back, and thrust the new bottle into Parrish’s hand. “There, are you happy?” he demanded.
Parrish tasted it. “Yum, tastes like fake raspberries,” he said, and gave Rodney over a tray of all the sprouts he requested.
*
As clandestine secret meeting places go, this one was fairly clichéd. The wooden panels and tables emitted no sign of electronic pulse, so Rodney knew he wasn’t going to be bugged, and the few patrons in the backwater planet they’d agreed to meet in didn’t look like they had any interest in anything but the bottom of their cups. The farmer, if that was his real occupation, looked more nervous than he should have been, and kept looking over his shoulder. “This is it?” he demanded.
Rodney waved his hands over the three inches of greenness. He couldn’t have told the onions apart from the thyme, but that wasn’t the point. “Absolutely. You got my birds?”
“If you betray me on this--"
“Like how? Rodney demanded. “Give you up to the illegal onion trade act of 2004? Just give me my damn birds!”
The man shook his head. “They are outside, in sacks.”
“Alive?” Rodney demanded.
“And kicking. Pecking really. I’ll leave first.”
Rodney stood up. “I don’t think so.” He motioned John to go, and they went, carrying three birds each.
Six birds for eight eggs later, Rodney was almost done.
3/4 cup milk, 180 grams
3/4 cup butter 140 grams
For a three quarters of a cup of butter, plus milk for the recipe, Rodney would need five litres of milk. And while all mammals of the female gender lactated, he’d tasted some pretty disgusting ‘milk’ on their journeys. He figured it all came down to local eco-systems that had the most in common with Earth, Midwestern North America.
And if he pushed Elizabeth a little bit stronger than usual to embark on a trade mission with one such village on the perfect longitude and latitude of the planet he’d found most similar to Calgary, Alberta, so be it.
John went to bed with him, actually pulling him into the bed around midnight. Rodney gave up trying to fight and pinned John to the mattress, instead. Not that John particularly fought him, in fact the encouraging noises he was making was practically a mood killer. Still, Rodney rallied back, pinning John down and twisting his thighs apart so that John’s spread.
“So now what?” John asked. His chest hair felt good to Rodney, and raking his fingers down his chest, over his belly and straight to his cock.
“Do you need a diagram?” Rodney asked. The lube felt good on his cock, but even better inside John. His hands on John’s hips became necessary to steady himself. John smiled, closing his eyes.
“I’m good, you go ahead,” John said. Rodney lifted himself off his heels, which lifted John up as well, and John completely gave himself over. The harder he thrust, the wider John’s smile grew. He reached behind him, locking his hands over his own wrists. Rodney gathered up his erection rather than risk it feeling abandoned.
There wouldn’t have been any way, before they left for Atlantis, that Rodney would have been able to support both their weight the way he was, but the conditioning he’d built up made it possible. His thrusts were staccato, sharp, exact, and perfect. He was obviously hitting the right spot, too, because John’s testicles were as tight and up against his body. Rodney straightened even more, all but doubling John over himself, and he didn’t know if he came because he was or if bringing John off brought himself off as well. He gathered up the semen splashed on to John’s chest and licked it off himself. John stroked his head, once, and turned over and went to sleep.
Rodney kissed his shoulder and didn’t last much longer himself.
*
The next morning found them bright and early on a very flat planet. The people on it lived in vast triangular houses that looked like permanent teepees. They raised bovine-like creatures, huge beasts as big as a horse but with split hooves and udders the size of a punching bag. They seemed to live on dairy-like products, the most potent being an alcoholic yogurt-type drink, that was actually pretty good the fifth or sixth time you tried it, and whatever the beasts were, they tasted exactly like beef. But beef the way it was supposed to taste, like a cow that had never known growth hormones, feed lots or by-product food.
Elizabeth was beside herself. So was Rodney. For the cost of medical supplies, they walked back through the Stargate with several hundred pounds of primo meat and four gallons of rich and frothy milk.
Rodney took two of them. Agitating the milk took over an hour. Rodney did it until his hand hurt, so what if that was only five minutes? Ronon took it from him, his hands on the plunger seemed to take most of it. The intense look of concentration on his face never broke one. John looped his arm over his shoulders, whispering things into his ear that were completely inappropriate for the time and the place, and Teyla pretended not to hear as she measured out the rest of the ingredients. There was really nothing to measure out, as Rodney had been careful to make the almost exact amount that he needed, but she was concentrating on it almost as hard as Ronon was, so Rodney didn’t say anything.
“See? You’re learning,” John told him.
Rodney made another disgusted sound. The door opened again and Elizabeth came in. She nodded to them and John left Rodney’s side to take a turn at the churner. “I can’t believe you made this,” Elizabeth said.
“I had some spare time,” Rodney said. She went to Teyla, and together they started on icing. The deal had said nothing about any sort of topping, but Elizabeth had brought a bar of very good dark chocolate, and a small handful of sugar packets. They skimmed off some of the cream, and Elizabeth went to work over a Bunsen burner.
It took over an hour to turn a gallon of milk into a white, lumpy sort of butter, but that was all they needed. Ronon creamed the butter and the sugar together as though it had insulted him in a previous life, and John actually sifted the flour. Rodney jury-rigged up a convection oven in the lab just as Zelenka showed up.
“I can’t believe you managed it.” Zelenka shook his head.
“Are you? Really?” Rodney asked.
“No,” Zelenka said, after a moment. “I suppose not.”
With great pride, Rodney placed the cake on Zelenka’s desk. Between the six of them, there was nothing but crumbs remaining, most of which Rodney had a great deal of pleasure licking off John’s body when they were alone again.
Afterwards, Rodney rested his head on John’s stomach. He was exhausted. He’d only worked on the cake components during his off time, which hadn’t left much time to actually sleep. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” he said.
John groaned, and not just because Rodney’s head may have been uncomfortable. “If you insist. But make it chocolate, next time.”
Rodney exhaled, already more asleep than he should have been and still able to have a conversation. “Is that a dare?"
by Barb G
He pushed the trigger, and rather than a pulse being sent out, a thin, purple beam of about three feet shot out from the barrel.
“You built a light saber,” John finished.
“Well, more like a light chain-saw, but yes. I did.”
John’s lips were swollen, and Rodney didn’t doubt his jaw was hurting too. Not that he was going to give up, despite having already succeeded twice before. The sheets were gummy with perspiration under Rodney's palms, and the sweat trickled down from the line of hair over his temple and dripped into his ear. “You’re killing me,” he groaned.
John didn’t answer, but flicked his tongue over the head of Rodney’s cock one more time. He wasn’t going any faster despite how much Rodney begged, ordered or cajoled. Rodney tried to twist his hips, to force John to run his hand up and down Rodney’s length, but John just rode it out and kept his fingers still. “Are you listening to me? You’re killing me. I’m dying, right here, right now. You’ll have to write a letter to my next of kin saying that I died because you couldn’t just open your mouth and take me down your throat. And it’s going to be all your fault.”
“Rodney,” John said, and licked his way around the head of Rodney’s cock, tiny little licks that just about brought Rodney off the mattress. “You talk too much.” He put the entire head of Rodney’s cock into his mouth and swirled his tongue again.
Rodney’s fists clutched the sheets again. “And that surprises you how?” he demanded, when his jaw unlocked.
John just laughed, not taking Rodney out of his mouth. He waited for Rodney to relax again, and then ever so slowly began to take him all the way down. John moved his hand to Rodney’s hips, as though he could push himself even further down Rodney’s length, but Rodney waited for John to nod before he tangled his hands in John’s hair, which was still soft from drying naturally outside the shower. It was bliss, pushing John’s head down his length, feeling the soft warmth of John’s mouth as fast as he wanted, as hard as he wanted, and John just took it.
Rodney came, eyes squeezed shut, head back, throat working but not swallowing anything. He was wrecked, completely gone, and barely even noticed John coming up on the bed to join him. John’s erection was hot and damp against Rodney’s thigh. “Tell me how you want it,” Rodney asked, letting his fingers trail along John’s cock.
John didn’t answer, but kissed his shoulder instead, and that was good enough. Rodney knew John wouldn't say the words. Rodney turned over. John squeezed some of Rodney’s homemade lube onto his hand and then slid inside him. Rodney couldn’t come again, not if his life depended on it, but it just felt good, having John moving inside him. They were both on their sides, the only way the two of them could sleep on the bed at the same time, and Rodney hugged the pillow. The fuck was a slow one, its tempo building as John began to concentrate. His nails dug into Rodney’s hips, holding him in place so that each of thrust could be longer, harder and faster. Rodney swore he didn’t have an ounce of spunk left inside him, but still ended up wiping off his stomach.
John groaned, just the once, his body suddenly tense as a board, and then he came with a shuddering sigh. Rodney stayed still, waiting for John, and then there was a sleepy round of pass the moist towellette.
John lay back down first, and Rodney adjusted himself to use the meaty part of John’s arm as a pillow. John ran his hand up and down Rodney’s arm, only touching his fingertips to Rodney’s skin, and normally Rodney would have found it annoyingly quaint, but it was different. He... liked it. “I miss the late night kitchen raid after hot, sticky sex,” Rodney said.
“You’re telling me,” John said, and tried to stop the stroking. Neither one of them mentioned the new cutbacks that had reduced the cooks in cafeteria to powdered alchemy. Rodney cleared his throat, and when that didn’t resume the touch, he grabbed John’s hand and put it firmly on his hip. “I always feel I can eat half my body weight after sex.” John was falling asleep. “Also, you should know we’re out of lube.”
Rodney made a mental note.
The next morning, after a breakfast of substitutions and egg-like substances, he had half an hour to kill before they had to be off world, and he’d just received a new shipment of supplies, including glycerin. It was one thing to put Probe or Astroglide onto the requisitions sheets that had to be signed off by a dozen different people of varying ranks, and another thing entirely to ask for deionized water, glycerin and various polymers. It barely raised an eyebrow. He was half way through whipping up a new batch when Zelenka let himself into the lab.
“Working on a bit of ancient technology?” Zelenka asked, with a slight twist to his lips.
“If you want to call it that, go ahead,” Rodney said. “It’s not like you don’t get your cut.”
“Scraping out your Erlenmeyer Flasks is hardly getting my cut, Rodney.”
“You wouldn’t take it from me if I just gave it to you. Don’t think I don’t know how much you get for it, either.”
“You’re a prince."
Rodney swirled the mixture about. “I just like things going like a well water-based-lubricated machine.”
Zelenka crossed his arms. “And you think you can recreate anything.”
Rodney shrugged. “Well, practically anything commercially available.”
“Anything?”
“If you’re asking me to sell my soul for a Caramilk, I just might take you up on it. If you’re daring me to a chemistry duel, name your terms.”
Zelenka’s smile turned practically evil. Well, as evil as his face could turn considering he perpetually looked like the bumbling scientist in any given Disney film. “One week. My desk. The material should be virtually indistinguishable from the earth counterpart.
“Done.” Rodney said. “What is it?”
“Cake.”
“What?”
“Cake. Golden, yellow, delicious? Not from a packet, not anything that can be described as cake-like, cake. On my desk. One week.”
“Are you serious?”
Zelenka crossed his arms. “Deadly.”
Rodney had never backed down from a challenge. “Done,” he snapped.
*
3 teaspoons baking powder, 14 grams
Rodney had never made baking powder, but then, who in their right mind had? The recipe he found didn’t say if it cal/led for single or double acting powder, so he assumed it meant double, and why not go for gusto He had to leave to escort more refugees from one camp to another, but before he left he had the low temperature acid salts completed. The aluminum phosphate took him a bit longer, but then it was a simple matter of combining the two with a starch and sodium bicarbonate. Easy peasy. He had over thirty grams of baking powder, all for a low cost of three hundred, forty eight dollars, labour and supplies included.
John came in, just as he was funneling the last little bit into a sample jar. “What are you doing?”
Rodney stowed the jar away. “Oh, I don’t know, making a mysterious white powder from a host of relatively obscure chemicals, what does it look like I’m doing?”
“And what does the mysterious white powder do?” John asked, as Rodney dusted his hands and began undoing John’s slacks. He was already semi-hard, and under Rodney’s ministrations his cock was soon quite erect.
“It gets a rise out of things. See? I must have had some on my hands.”
“I don’t think that’s a reaction to any chemical,” John said, and then groaned as Rodney dropped to his knees. He wasn’t in the same master class that John was, he didn’t feel the need to draw out every possible gasp and sigh from John, although the idea was appealing. Instead, he concentrated on the big picture. He liked John’s hands on his head, guiding him. John’s testicles were sensitive, most men’s were, Rodney knew, but he liked the way they felt when he cupped them in his palm, tenderly regardless of how much force John pushed him down again. He loved the salty taste to John’s skin, the way it moved, and the way even the slightest variation wrung out a new sound from John. Everything was an experiment, and Rodney was perfectly in his element.
But he’d lost his control. John grabbed the back of his head, pulling him so close John’s pubic hair tickled his upper lip. It wasn’t that John was tensing against him, the muscles of his ass as finely chiseled as marble or the way the sounds from the back of his throat went into the supersonic range, but through it all, John still touched the lobe of Rodney’s ear through it all.
Rodney swallowed. John didn’t move for a full moment, still holding him. Rodney eventually climbed to his feet. He went to wipe off his mouth, but then John did it for him, kissing clean the corners. He went to reach for the residue in the flask, but Rodney directed him to the stuff already bottled. It was primo stuff, Rodney knew, cool to start but quickly warming up to body temperature without breaking down, and then John pinned him to the counter. For once he was almost clinical about it, hand so firm on his cock that Rodney almost objected, if it wasn’t for John studying his face and relaxing his hand slightly. From then, even the slightest twitch on his face was studied, analyzed and the grip on his dick adjusted for it.
Rodney had to grab onto John’s shoulders. The smell of him, soap and aftershave, the smell of his semen, the roughness of the five o’clock shadow under his jaw--Rodney pressed his forehead against John’s cheek and let him take him. It felt so good, just letting John support him. It left him weightless, and as the orgasm built, the faster John moved his hand.
John turned his head. “When we get back to the room,” he said, his voice low and gravelly and the vibration went straight down to Rodney's dick.
“Yes?” Rodney asked, managing to work the word out to sound almost normal. He wanted John to say it, but instead John pushed him even harder against the table, holding him up. There were no more words. The orgasm built to an almost uncomfortable level. Rodney clung to him, and when he felt his body start to go over, in that moment that seemed to last forever before it was over too quickly, John kissed his neck and held him.
And that was that.
2 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted, 300 grams
Elizabeth stopped, just for a second. “You want to build a what, now?”
“A mill,” Rodney repeated, making random grinding, windmill motions with his hands. “You know?”
“How are you going to power a mill?”
“Water, sun, wind, nuclear? Pick one. Heck, pick a couple. Hybrid power’s the wave of the future.”
“That is admirable, Rodney. The Althosians certainly could use a mill for their new crop, but why on earth or any other planet does it have to be built in a day and a half?”
Rodney sat down. He tented his fingers. “I’m under significant time restraints, Elizabeth.”
“And may I ask why?”
“I need it done quickly.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I got that, Rodney.”
Rodney exhaled, sharply. “I need to make a cake. You can’t have cake without flour, and you can’t have flour without a mill. The last of the flour was used up several months before, and it hasn’t been replaced.”
“Do you know what building a mill will entail?”
“Yes, Elizabeth, I am somewhat familiar with the requirements. I did build you the plans.”
“The work on the actual mill can be done, granted. But it takes more than that. You have to make the grind plates, and that will take time, even if you had the right equipment, which, I don’t need to remind you that you don’t have!”
“I’m working on it.”
“You’re what?”
“Just okay the plans. I’ll have a cutting device in place before we need to install the plates.”
Elizabeth waved her hands. “You’d be doing a great service. Yes, of course I’ll approve it.”
“That’s all I need,” Rodney said, and bounced to his feet. “I’ll take it from here.”
*
John found him again in the lab. It was late, but he'd just gotten off shift himself. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Why do so many of our conversations begin with you saying those words?”
“Because, in this instance, it appears as though you are modifying Ronon’s gun, and seeing how he feels about that gun, I’m actually asking you if what you are doing is actually what it appears you are doing.”
“I’m modifying Ronon’s gun.”
“What? Are you serious? It’s not an Xbox!”
“Well, actually, a lot of the principles are the same--"
“Rodney!”
“I need something that can cut through stone. And since the energy pulse of the gun is stronger than anything we have--" Rodney didn’t finish, but instead finished taping the modulator onto the gun’s hilt. He pushed the trigger, and rather than a pulse being sent out, a thin, purple beam of about three feet shot out from the barrel.
“You built a light saber,” John finished.
“Well, more like a light chain-saw, but yes. I did.”
John’s hands twitched. It was painfully obvious he wanted to continue dressing Rodney down and play with it at the same time. The latter impulse won, and it was in John’s hand the next second. “Cool,” he said, instead. “Ronon is so going to kill you, but I want you to know I have your back.”
“What, you think I stole it?” Rodney demanded. “Ronon gave it to me.”
John released the trigger, and the blade sniggered back into the hilt. “What? How?”
“You don’t think I have any power of persuasion, do you?”
John continued to stare at him.
Rodney coughed. “All right. I didn’t ask him. Teyla did.”
“And he agreed?”
“She needed to pull out him being a benefactor of the village, but yeah, eventually he caved like a seasoned spelunker.”
John pulled the trigger again. “Cool.”
*
Rodney had heard of barn raisings, but that had nothing on how hard Althosians worked in putting up the mill. They’d found a perfect place by a fast moving river, and by mid morning, the foundations were erect. John and Ronon were busy around the two huge granite stones the Althosians had found, and the light chain-saw was doing an admirable job chipping it off to Rodney’s exact specifications. The part that caused the most friction was Ronon and John fighting over whose turn it was. Lorne lowered the puddlejumper down and Elizabeth joined in with the festivities.
Teyla was amongst the villagers as they, both male and female, put together the feast. Chickens ran under foot, and he needed eggs, but Teyla seemed horrified at the very idea.
“You can’t take the eggs, Rodney. My people are still trying to rebuild. Eight eggs could produce dozens of chickens by the end of the year. It’s simply not possible.”
“But I--" Rodney waved behind him, and the rapidly growing mill.
Teyla’s stare didn’t waver. “Surely you are not placing a price tag on your assistance, Rodney, are you? Perhaps I am confused.”
Obviously Rodney was losing a battle he wasn’t even aware had begun. “No. Clearly. But you can’t count on all eight eggs actually hatching, can you?”
“I suppose that would be unwise,” Teyla said carefully.
“So, suppose one could substitute eight eggs for maybe three chickens?”
“I can assure you our chick mortality rate is much lower than that.”
“Five.”
“Six,” Teyla said.
“Done.”
Teyla nodded. “Rodney, where are you going to get six chickens?”
“Let me worry about that. You just keep eight of your lovely birds away from cock robin, okay?”
“Done,” Teyla said, and they shook on it.
Rodney took back the chain saw in time to mark the grooves into the top stone, and by the afternoon, the first of the fine powdered white flour slid out between the stationary and turning rocks.
*
1 1/4 cup sugar, 300 grams
1/4 teaspoon salt
The salt was no problem, it was one of the only things left out between meal services, and he only needed two little packets. The sugar, however, was rationed to two packets a day and Rodney could have kicked himself for how many times he disdainfully left his on his plate.
Luckily, the entire team donated their daily packets for the day each day, but it was already day four and he only had thirty-two packets. He needed sixty for the recipe, if each packet contained exactly a teaspoon.
By end of service, however, he had exactly six piles of ten sugar packets each. John blinked. “How did you do that?”
“A combination of begging, borrowing, bribing and blackmail,” Rodney said, as modestly as he could. Which wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all himself.
“Mostly the last two?” Ronon asked, but it was good natured. Rodney had promised him some of the cake should it actually materialize.
Rodney shrugged. “You play to your strengths, I’ll play to mine.”
“Well, gather your strengths up,” John said, taking his tray. “The natives are restless.”
The mood to the room had shifted, as by now most of the people knew what he was up to. Rodney scooped the packets into a zip lock bag and followed John out of the hall.
8 egg yolks, beaten, 130 grams
John was already in bed, but Rodney couldn’t stop pacing. “I just need eggs and millk.”
“Just,” John repeated. They’d already used an inch or so of the new lube. Rodney had all but perfected it, but he thought the next batch needed just a touch more of glycerin to make it a bit more long lasting.
“Well, yes. Just.”
“The mess has both powdered eggs and powered milk. Just add water.”
“That won’t work. Rules of the game.”
“The Genii have chickens.”
“I have nothing to buy them with.”
“You don’t know that until you ask.”
Rodney nodded. That was certainly true. His contacts had contacts who had contacts, and eventually, by the morning, one of them brokered the deal.
But first Rodney needed his purchase price.
*
Parrish wasn’t surprised to see him. The greenhouses that Elizabeth had constructed had all kinds of green... things in it. Parrish didn’t look up from individually watering the leaves as Rodney entered the green house. It didn’t take very long for his allergies to act up, and he had to press his finger against the end of his nose.
“You need what?” Parrish demanded.
“Onions. Garlic. Maybe some thyme.”
“May I ask why?”
“I need to trade them for some chickens.”
Parrish stopped his spraying. “Why do you need chickens?”
“I need eggs, and quickly.”
“Any chickens you trade for probably won’t lay eggs for a while. It takes time for them to settle down.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Rodney demanded. He didn’t, but that wasn’t the point. “I’m not using the chickens for eggs, I’m trading them for eggs.”
“For your cake.”
“Yes! For my cake! Can I have them or not?”
“And what are you going to give me in return?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. Everyone was out for something, but he’d come prepared. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another bottle of lube. Parrish’s eyes got really wide. “That’s the good stuff?”
“Made it this morning.”
“Is it raspberry flavoured?”
“Is it what?” Rodney demanded. “No. Ewww.”
Parrish turned his back. “Come back when it’s raspberry flavoured.”
Rodney stalked away. He could have recreated the smell of raspberries using benzenes in a few seconds, but he didn’t know if they would taste very good. When all promises, threats and favours had been pulled in, Rodney had but a single packet of generic raspberry flavoured jello.
And a centrifuge.
An hour later he was back, and thrust the new bottle into Parrish’s hand. “There, are you happy?” he demanded.
Parrish tasted it. “Yum, tastes like fake raspberries,” he said, and gave Rodney over a tray of all the sprouts he requested.
*
As clandestine secret meeting places go, this one was fairly clichéd. The wooden panels and tables emitted no sign of electronic pulse, so Rodney knew he wasn’t going to be bugged, and the few patrons in the backwater planet they’d agreed to meet in didn’t look like they had any interest in anything but the bottom of their cups. The farmer, if that was his real occupation, looked more nervous than he should have been, and kept looking over his shoulder. “This is it?” he demanded.
Rodney waved his hands over the three inches of greenness. He couldn’t have told the onions apart from the thyme, but that wasn’t the point. “Absolutely. You got my birds?”
“If you betray me on this--"
“Like how? Rodney demanded. “Give you up to the illegal onion trade act of 2004? Just give me my damn birds!”
The man shook his head. “They are outside, in sacks.”
“Alive?” Rodney demanded.
“And kicking. Pecking really. I’ll leave first.”
Rodney stood up. “I don’t think so.” He motioned John to go, and they went, carrying three birds each.
Six birds for eight eggs later, Rodney was almost done.
3/4 cup milk, 180 grams
3/4 cup butter 140 grams
For a three quarters of a cup of butter, plus milk for the recipe, Rodney would need five litres of milk. And while all mammals of the female gender lactated, he’d tasted some pretty disgusting ‘milk’ on their journeys. He figured it all came down to local eco-systems that had the most in common with Earth, Midwestern North America.
And if he pushed Elizabeth a little bit stronger than usual to embark on a trade mission with one such village on the perfect longitude and latitude of the planet he’d found most similar to Calgary, Alberta, so be it.
John went to bed with him, actually pulling him into the bed around midnight. Rodney gave up trying to fight and pinned John to the mattress, instead. Not that John particularly fought him, in fact the encouraging noises he was making was practically a mood killer. Still, Rodney rallied back, pinning John down and twisting his thighs apart so that John’s spread.
“So now what?” John asked. His chest hair felt good to Rodney, and raking his fingers down his chest, over his belly and straight to his cock.
“Do you need a diagram?” Rodney asked. The lube felt good on his cock, but even better inside John. His hands on John’s hips became necessary to steady himself. John smiled, closing his eyes.
“I’m good, you go ahead,” John said. Rodney lifted himself off his heels, which lifted John up as well, and John completely gave himself over. The harder he thrust, the wider John’s smile grew. He reached behind him, locking his hands over his own wrists. Rodney gathered up his erection rather than risk it feeling abandoned.
There wouldn’t have been any way, before they left for Atlantis, that Rodney would have been able to support both their weight the way he was, but the conditioning he’d built up made it possible. His thrusts were staccato, sharp, exact, and perfect. He was obviously hitting the right spot, too, because John’s testicles were as tight and up against his body. Rodney straightened even more, all but doubling John over himself, and he didn’t know if he came because he was or if bringing John off brought himself off as well. He gathered up the semen splashed on to John’s chest and licked it off himself. John stroked his head, once, and turned over and went to sleep.
Rodney kissed his shoulder and didn’t last much longer himself.
*
The next morning found them bright and early on a very flat planet. The people on it lived in vast triangular houses that looked like permanent teepees. They raised bovine-like creatures, huge beasts as big as a horse but with split hooves and udders the size of a punching bag. They seemed to live on dairy-like products, the most potent being an alcoholic yogurt-type drink, that was actually pretty good the fifth or sixth time you tried it, and whatever the beasts were, they tasted exactly like beef. But beef the way it was supposed to taste, like a cow that had never known growth hormones, feed lots or by-product food.
Elizabeth was beside herself. So was Rodney. For the cost of medical supplies, they walked back through the Stargate with several hundred pounds of primo meat and four gallons of rich and frothy milk.
Rodney took two of them. Agitating the milk took over an hour. Rodney did it until his hand hurt, so what if that was only five minutes? Ronon took it from him, his hands on the plunger seemed to take most of it. The intense look of concentration on his face never broke one. John looped his arm over his shoulders, whispering things into his ear that were completely inappropriate for the time and the place, and Teyla pretended not to hear as she measured out the rest of the ingredients. There was really nothing to measure out, as Rodney had been careful to make the almost exact amount that he needed, but she was concentrating on it almost as hard as Ronon was, so Rodney didn’t say anything.
“See? You’re learning,” John told him.
Rodney made another disgusted sound. The door opened again and Elizabeth came in. She nodded to them and John left Rodney’s side to take a turn at the churner. “I can’t believe you made this,” Elizabeth said.
“I had some spare time,” Rodney said. She went to Teyla, and together they started on icing. The deal had said nothing about any sort of topping, but Elizabeth had brought a bar of very good dark chocolate, and a small handful of sugar packets. They skimmed off some of the cream, and Elizabeth went to work over a Bunsen burner.
It took over an hour to turn a gallon of milk into a white, lumpy sort of butter, but that was all they needed. Ronon creamed the butter and the sugar together as though it had insulted him in a previous life, and John actually sifted the flour. Rodney jury-rigged up a convection oven in the lab just as Zelenka showed up.
“I can’t believe you managed it.” Zelenka shook his head.
“Are you? Really?” Rodney asked.
“No,” Zelenka said, after a moment. “I suppose not.”
With great pride, Rodney placed the cake on Zelenka’s desk. Between the six of them, there was nothing but crumbs remaining, most of which Rodney had a great deal of pleasure licking off John’s body when they were alone again.
Afterwards, Rodney rested his head on John’s stomach. He was exhausted. He’d only worked on the cake components during his off time, which hadn’t left much time to actually sleep. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” he said.
John groaned, and not just because Rodney’s head may have been uncomfortable. “If you insist. But make it chocolate, next time.”
Rodney exhaled, already more asleep than he should have been and still able to have a conversation. “Is that a dare?"