Fic: Yes and No, Part I (Sheppard/Beckett)
Title: Yes and No
Author: smallwaldo
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Words: 2712
A/N: Beta'd by the awesome Sithdragn (who now owes me a story since I did the porn :) and the equally awesome maisfeeka. Any resulting errors are the result of me ignoring them. This story makes brief references to a pair of stories called On Multiple Levels and The Unfuzzy End. You don't need to read them to understand this, but they do the ground work for setting up the social structure of Movie Club.
Summary: In which the Ancients believed in sex as a recreational activity, Carson discovers that not everything activated by the ATA gene hates him and John is good... mostly.
John fairly bounced into Carson’s quarters that evening.
“Aren’t we in a good mood?” Carson asked with an eyebrow quirked. “For all your moaning and complaining this morning, going off with Rodney and his scientists into those unexplored labs must not have been all that bad.”
John collapsed onto the end of the bed and held his hand out to Carson, who abandoned the desk chair and the patient notes he’d been working on, and went to join him.
Smiling wickedly, he pulled Carson down onto his lap. “It could have been worse. Look what I found.” He held up a thin, clear, flexible tube that seemed to be made of silicon or the Ancient equivalent. In Carson’s mind it looked like a finger cot with the tip cut off. It glowed softly in John’s hand, different patches turning purple and red and blue and then changing as John’s hand moved, apparently sensitive to movement, or heat or pressure.
Carson instinctively leaned away from it. “Has that thing been checked and cleared?”
John rolled his head back and forth slowly. “Yes… and… no…”
Carson stood up and stepped back a few feet. “Get back to me when you’ve cleared up that ‘no’ part.”
John set it on the bed behind him and then leaned forward and captured Carson’s hand again. “Come back here.” Carson reluctantly let himself be pulled back to John. “Do you really want me running this past Rodney of all people?” Before Carson could answer, John pulled out one of the hand-held Ancient computers. “For once, they left a manual.”
The first thing Carson saw on the screen was an image of how the device was… worn. He knew he blushed scarlet when he realized what he was looking at. He glanced back up at John. “No, I suppose not.” He studied the illustration for another second before asking, “And exactly where’d you get this?”
“We found what looked like it might have been a quartermaster’s store or something. There were a couple of… interesting things on the back shelf. These were the ones that fit in my tac-vest in such a way that no one would notice me walking off with them,” he said, bouncing his eyebrows up and down a few times.
“These?” Carson asked, taking note of the plural.
John reached into his vest again. He came out with what looked like three small rubber-bands - one red, one blue and one purple - with small silver and iridescent circles around the inside of each one. He hit the ‘page down’ command on the hand-held and handed it back.
Carson’s eyes bugged out as he read down and discovered how the whole thing worked. “I think I need to study this,” he said slowly, moving back to the relative safety of the desk chair.
John knew when it was time to back off. He’d let Carson run his tests and read the data and instructions and maybe then he’d feel comfortable enough to try them out. He leaned down and began unlacing his boots. “You should have seen Rodney when he realized that next to the piles of shirts and boots and computer screens and these little hand held computers there was a supply of sex toys. I mean, you’d think no one ever gave him the birds and the bees and the glowy-octopuses story as a kid.”
Carson smiled, but kept reading.
John was encouraged.
“I think he thought little Ancients came out of test tubes,” John continued as he toed off his boots and scooted back against the headboard, making himself at home.
“Some of them did,” Carson said without glancing up.
John made a face. “Oh, come on, test-tube-Ancients?”
“Aye, I found some equipment in the infirmary when we first arrived.”
“Well, at least they understood the benefits of sex as a recreational activity.”
Carson was now turning the screen sideways and back and squinting at what he saw. “Apparently…” he agreed.
~~~***~~~***~~~
Carson studied the notes for another half an hour and then went back to the charts he’d been finishing up when John came in. John was watching a DVD when Carson closed his laptop and crawled up onto the bed with him. “I know you think I’m paranoid, but let me bring those things down to the infirmary tomorrow and run a few tests. The last thing we need is to find out that 10,000 years has caused a short in the circuitry and then one of us ends up with an electrical burn in a very inconvenient place.”
John pulled Carson back against his chest, his arms settling loosely around Carson’s waist. “Okay.”
Carson twisted back to look at him. “What? Just ‘okay’? No comments about my paranoia about Ancient technology?”
“Nah, I think I’ve pushed hard enough for tonight. Besides, that’s what we brought Rodney along for.” John snuggled Carson closer to him, letting his hand sneak under the hem of Carson’s t-shirt.
Carson snorted and snuggled back into him. “I do take your point about not wanting to give it to him to clear, though. It’d be a mite awkward to ask for it back when he was done.”
“Exactly,” John said, starting to trace light patters with his fingertips over Carson’s belly. After a few minutes, once he felt Carson relax into the gentle, comforting touches, John whispered, “Can I ask you something, though? Something I probably should have asked a long time ago?”
Carson stiffened. Any question John felt the need to preface was one that should make him nervous. “Um… alright.”
“What is it that makes you so nervous around anything ATA activated?”
Carson made an incredulous face and turned to look at him, “What? Other than the fact that I damn near killed you with a drone back in Antarctica?”
John hugged him tight, not letting him wiggle away as he was wont to do during conversations he that made him uncomfortable. “Nice try, but I’ve asked Rodney and he said you were nervous about sitting in the chair before you actually launched the drone. Besides, by then, you had already isolated the ATA gene and knew what it did and that you had it and Rodney didn’t. So you must have had some other clue about why things lit up and did things for some people and not for others. Ergo, something happened before the chair.”
Carson pouted, neatly out-logic-ed. “You fancy yourself quite the Sherlock Holmes tonight, don’t you?”
John just kissed the back of his neck.
Carson sighed. “We found these things we called Memory Modules in Antarctica. We found shards that would have made up at least five or six hundred, but only about eight were intact. I picked one up, it started to glow and before I could say anything to anyone I was… attacked… by the memories of whomever had … programmed it, used it, whatever." He turned on his back studying the ceiling as if he was seeing something between it and himself.
His voice was even lower when he finally continued. " I saw battles with Wraith, though I didn’t understand who they were. There were the births and deaths of people important to whoever’s memories were stored there and there was some sort of battle plan. At least that’s what I’ve come to think it was, now, but back then it was just a lot of numbers and data and maps. It was a bit overwhelming, to say the least, and I blacked out. The sphere hit the ground as hard as I did and shattered. I have no idea what kind of information I could have destroyed, what information we might now have against the Wraith if I hadn’t broken that … that thing.”
John sighed and stroked Carson’s cheek. “It’s not your fault. You weren’t prepared for what it did to you. It’s not like you did it on purpose.”
“Aye, just like I didn’t launch the drone on purpose, but I still very nearly killed you. I’m not good with things like that. Who knows what other kind of havoc I might wreak on the galaxy if Rodney continues to shove that stuff at me?”
John kissed the back of Carson’s head again. “I’ll tell him to back off. But you need to remember, too, that not everything blows up on you. You seem to have a really good grip on that scanner in the infirmary and the little tricorder doohickey you take off-world.”
Carson shrugged under John’s hand. “I know what those devices are designed for. It’s the odd ones that Rodney can’t figure out the extent of that end up getting me in trouble.”
Steering the conversation back to a lighter track, John grabbed the silicon tube from the nightstand and dangled it in front of Carson’s face. “We know what this is for. They actually left a manual.”
Smiling shyly, Carson shook his head. “Aye, and tomorrow I’ll make sure it’s safe.” The things John Sheppard could talk him into.
“Can you imagine what would happen if we actually logged and reported on stuff like this? The looks on people’s faces if we sent that report to the SGC? ‘Found in section 43D: One set of sex toys that apparently allows one partner to literally feel what the other is feeling. Field research conducted by Colonel J. Sheppard and Doctor C. Beckett.’”
Carson laughed, imagining. “So exactly what department would that report be filed with? Medical? Psychological? Archeological?”
“I say weapons R and D. Dump a load of really cool sex toys on your enemies and they’ll be so busy screwing each other they’ll forget about trying to hose you.”
They both laughed at that silly idea, appreciating the rare uncrazy night where they could laze around and make bad jokes and not worry about saving the city. After a long quiet, but comfortable moment, Carson rolled into a sitting position. “I’m going to clean up and head to bed.” He nodded to the DVD player, “Are you going to be long?” he asked as he padded across the room.
“I suppose that’s up to you,” John called back.
From the bathroom John heard something that sounded distinctly like, “I would have to come eighty-billion light years just to fall in love with a bloody pervert.”
~~~***~~~***~~~
John was bouncing again when he came over to Carson’s, already changed out of his uniform and into his civvies. He reminded Carson of a kid in a toy shop. Carson shook his head to clear it of the image of John in an adult toy shop. It was bad enough he was bringing home one of the few Ancient devices he found. He shuddered to think what the man might be like back on Earth where they had warehouse size shops full of this sort of thing. Well, not exactly this sort of thing…
“So…?” John asked rocking back and forth on his heels.
“It seems harmless enough,” Carson admitted, gesturing to the bedside table where he’d left all the pieces and parts sitting in a small box that said “4X4 Sterile Gauze Pads”
John poured the parts into his hand and then went up and locked his arms around Carson’s waist from behind. He rested his chin on Carson’s shoulder. “Still planning to go to Movie Club tonight?” he asked softly before lightly biting Carson’s ear.
Carson shivered against him. “I take it you have a better idea…”
“Yes and no,” John answered, kissing his way down Carson’s neck.
Eyes closed and neck arched to give John better access, Carson moaned, “I’m really starting to hate that answer.”
John put the tube in Carson’s hand. “Put this on before we go.”
Carson turned and gaped at him. “You’re out of your bloody mind!” But he was grinning, so John took that as permission to push.
“Maybe. But do it anyway. I promise to be good… mostly,” John told him with a cheeky grin.
“I must be just as daft if I’m actually considering it.”
John set the toy back on the table and reached around to unbutton and unzip the fly on Carson’s khakis. “It’ll be fun,” he whispered as he pushed Carson’s boxers out of the way. When Carson didn’t object, John threaded two fingers into the tube, stretching it out and then carefully sheathing Carson’s flaccid cock in the tight silicon. He watched as it seemed to mold itself to Carson’s shape and size, leaving just the very tip exposed. There was a slit along the bottom and John pulled it back away from Carson’s skin and looped the highly elastic material around and behind his balls. “How’s that feel?” John asked as he ran his fingers over the tight material.
Carson shivered under the caress. “Uh… a little like a surgical glove - tight but not too tight.”
John fixed Carson’s clothes; buttoning and zipping him back up. “Good?”
Carson nodded and then turned and looked at him. “Everyone’s going to know,” he complained somewhat seriously.
“So maybe they’ll know we’re up to a little something. I highly doubt anyone will have the first clue as to the specifics. And besides, if anyone around here deserves to have a sex life, it’s you and me.”
Carson laughed at that. He couldn’t help but agree. They had what could arguably be called the worst and most hectic schedules on Atlantis. Any emergency that was going to wake people up in the middle of the night was bound to be medical and/or security related. He wondered when the last time there was a linguistics emergency or an urgent need for all botanists to rush to their labs in the middle of the night. He sighed. Most people on Atlantis knew they were together, but both of them had chosen to keep things relatively quiet. He supposed the worst that could happen was that people who hadn’t yet figured things out for sure would get their suspicions confirmed.
“Fine,” he said sharply. “Your turn.” He picked up the three colored bands from where John had dropped them on the table and held them out to him.
Having been to military boarding schools since he’d been nine and then going straight into the Air Force from there, John thought nothing of just dropping trou right there in the middle of the living room. “Something’s wrong when I drop my pants and you blush,” John mused aloud.
Carson sighed. “I know, I know, you’d think I’d be more comfortable with the human body, being a doctor and all, but… I just don’t think I’ll ever have the confidence in my body the way you do in yours.”
“With as many times as you saw me naked even before we started seeing each other… I really have nothing left to hide,” John said as he shook the bands in his hand.
“You’ve got nothing to hide, regardless,” Carson said softly as he took in John’s lithe body, knowing he’d never have that same slimness and grace.
John smiled at the compliment. “You’re no slouch yourself, you know?” he said pulling Carson in for a kiss.
When they broke the kiss, Carson took the bands from John. “Alright, lets get on with this insanity then.” He studied them for a minute. “Which one goes first?”
“I don’t think it matters,” John told him.
“You don’t think it matters,” Carson repeated. “Remember, shall we, that I’m on the receiving end here. I’d hate to find out the hard way that putting them on the wrong way around causes … I don’t know - some sort of malfunction.”
“You were the one who spent half an hour last night reading the manual. Did it say anything about needing to go in a specific order?”
Carson had to concede the point. “No. Right then.” He took the purple band and stretched it over two fingers and his thumb and settled it snuggly around John’s sac. The blue band went around the base of his cock and the red band just under the head.
As soon as the third one was set, Carson felt an odd warmth and pressure on his own cock. “Oh…”
John smiled and reached up to brush Carson’s cheek. “Works?”
Carson squeezed John’s cock softly in experiment and felt the same sensation himself. “Oh, aye. I’d say it does.”
John reached down and pulled up his pants. “This is going to be fun.”