sing this song (and i ain't gonna sing no more)
Title: sing this song (and i ain't gonna sing no more)
Summary: John tried to look annoyed as he added, "I can do this." / Pressing his lips together, Rodney fixed John with a narrow stare. "You're the last person in the galaxy who should do this." Written as a companion to aesc's artwork Hard Time Killing Floor and titled after the same Skip James song.
Details: SGA, McKay/Sheppard, ~4,500 words, adult. Extremely veiled spoilers for S4.
Notes: After receiving two really breathtaking pieces of art from aesc, I feel like I'm finally managing to return the favor. Huge thanks to shaenie, thingswithwings, and anatsuno for a rigorous beta, and to cindyjade and tropes for cheerleading. I should also mention that shaenie instigated me to do this, and that she and cindyjade think I should warn you that two out of two cows cried during the making of this story.
The tiered steps of the Balcain senate held more than fifteen thousand people, but as John sat with Teyla and Ronon in the supplicant's box and watched Rodney walk out across the vast, empty floor, the crowd was so silent that he could hear his own heartbeat as clearly as Rodney's footsteps.
____________
By the time they'd finished working out the fine print with Iala, dread had settled like snow in the pit of John's stomach. The conference table was strewn with notes and documents accumulated over the last three days, everything they'd come here to get spread out in front of them. Across from him, Iala waited in silence, wearing the serenely opaque expression she hadn't used with them since year three, when they'd negotiated the initial alliance.
"Ambassador." He leaned forward, grateful that his voice had come out steady. "I accept the terms of--"
Rodney straightened abruptly, turned to John, and said, "No. You don't."
____________
At the center of the senate, the priestess bowed her head as Rodney approached, but she did not move from her place by the table. The metal implements on it glittered against the dark wood. Hesitating, his hands hovering over the open front of his robe, Rodney tipped his face upward to stare straight at their box. They were too far apart for John to know which one of them he was looking at.
Rodney stripped the robe off his shoulders and dropped it unceremoniously onto the stone floor before turning to settle himself onto the bench.
____________
"Rodney," John said, tense but not quiet, watching Iala's face in his periphery. The Balcai valued transparency above all else in their allies; taking this conversation into another room would set them back months. "We're getting what we wanted. It's just a ceremony, and then we go home with a win." Rodney crossed his arms, and John tried to look annoyed as he added, "I can do this."
Pressing his lips together, Rodney fixed John with a narrow stare. "You're the last person in the galaxy who should do this." Before John could answer, Rodney turned to Teyla. "You're absolutely sure it's safe?"
"I promise," she said emphatically, with the reassuring smile that meant she was trying to defuse the situation. Last night, she'd borrowed a UV light from Iala so she could show the three of them the marks from when she'd undergone the ceremony a decade ago, recementing Athos's status with the Balcai as a sibling planet.
"I mean it -- you are one hundred percent certain this will not pose any kind of security risk," Rodney pressed.
Teyla shook her head. "No. They ..." She hesitated. "They are not those kind of secrets."
Rodney scrubbed a hand over his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine," he said, after a pause. John let out a pent-up breath and turned to Iala, and then Rodney laid both hands flat on the table and said, "I'll do it."
____________
When Rodney braced his arms over the leather-wrapped rest, bare shoulders hunching forward, Teyla took John's hand and squeezed. Rodney pressed his forehead briefly against his crossed wrists. John gripped down hard on Teyla's hand.
Eyes closed, Rodney lifted his head and took a long breath through his open mouth. Behind him, the priestess picked up a long-handled instrument and dipped the tip in a bowl of colorless fluid. As he began to speak, words inaudible even in the silence, she knelt on the cushioned seat behind him, laid a palm on his back for balance, and pressed the tattooing needle to his skin.
____________
"Wait," John said.
Ronon leaned past Teyla and held up his tattooed arm. "Let me," he told Rodney. "I've taken marks before. You haven't."
"Guys, seriously," John said, turning his chair toward them.
"You can't." Rodney jerked a thumb between John and himself. "Earth base, Earth alliance -- it's got to be someone born on Earth, am I right?" He looked impatiently at Iala, who nodded, hands laced in front of her. "Right. I'll do it."
Iala gave him a satisfied smile. "Then with that, we will take Atlantis as our sibling. We thank you for the honor, Dr. McKay."
Making a pained face, Rodney said, "Yes, well, thank me by sterilizing everything twice." There was a shaky edge to his voice.
John grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him around. "Rodney, no," he said, putting the full measure of certainty into the words, willing him to cave. "I'll be fine. You don't need to do this."
Rodney's chin jutted out. "Yes. I do," he said, and pushed himself to his feet. "Because you're not going to."
____________
The first twenty minutes hurt to watch. Rodney twitched under the needle, his hands clenching and flexing where they were wrapped around the brace. His face was flushed, screwed down in a grimace, but he didn't stop talking, even when the priestess started to work in a line up the side of his ribs and he jerked hard enough to rock the bench. John could feel sweat prickling on the skin of his own back, his jaw aching from the way he had it clenched. He knew the physical discomfort wasn't more than Rodney could take -- he'd been hurt worse in the last five years, nearly died, fuck, John had shot him that one time -- but seeing him hunched there, naked to the waist, with thousands and thousands of eyes fixed on him ...
On John's left, Ronon was running his thumb over the gauntlet inked onto his wrist. Teyla had pulled her lower lip between her teeth and bitten it. The senate floor was as wide as a football field, with the first rows half a story up. There was no way anyone but the priestess could hear what Rodney was saying. Iala had promised them. She'd promised.
When the drug in the ink hit critical mass in Rodney's system, John saw it sweep him under like a slow current. Rodney's shoulders slipped down, first the one the priestess hadn't gotten to yet, then the one under her hands. His bare feet shifted slowly over the stone as the curl of his legs loosened, his heels touching down for the first time since he'd sat. He took a deep, shuddering breath, head rolling back a little until his face was tipped up toward the arched ceiling. The light poured down over his features and left every line of his expression bare: his hooded eyes, the deep notch between his brows, the slant of his lips as they kept moving. It was as unstated and unmistakable as a song changing key: the liquid moment when Rodney stopped admitting to his secrets and started giving them away.
If the drop from the supplicant's box had been any shorter, all fifteen thousand people couldn't have stopped John from grabbing Rodney up off the bench and hauling him back through the gate at a dead run.
After that, John lost track of the time, the sounds and movements of the crowd his only indication of how long the ceremony had been going. Even as he was powerless to take his eyes off Rodney's face, he was hyper-aware of everyone else on the steps: people coughing, whispering, wandering in and out of the senate. A handful of kids got away from whoever was minding them and wove giggling through the steps on the north side for several minutes before the adults successfully carted them out. A few murmured conversations got loud enough for other people to shush them, the hissed reproaches echoing twice as loud. Someone laughed, braying and casual, and John jerked. Teyla hung onto his hand like she knew he wanted nothing so much as to find the asshole who'd done it and punch them in the face.
For the Balcai, this was like church: a consecrated space to a small handful of people, completely mundane to everyone else. John had been in leading diplomatic missions for five years now, he fucking got it, but it didn't make it any easier to know that it was just a blip in their afternoon: watching Rodney shiver and whisper, an entire lifetime of secrets spilling over his face.
He didn't want to know what Rodney was saying -- god, he didn't, just thinking about being in earshot right now sent adrenaline pouring like cold water through his veins. But it was impossible not to think about it, seeing Rodney's brows twist inward with the ghost of some past emotion -- anger? frustration? -- or his mouth curve upward into a shocked, elated smile. At times his fingers flickered and shifted against the brace, and once he let go of it entirely, hands taking off in agitated flashes; Jesus, what kind of memory could cut through the haze of the drugs but make him disregard the tip of the needle pressing right over his spine? John shut down every question that tried to form. He would not think about what Rodney might be remembering, not when he should be the one down there, shirtless and exposed on the senate floor.
Still, he couldn't help seeing each change in Rodney's face and posture, and they tugged John's own memories upwards to slip around the edges of his thoughts. Things he never talked about. Things he could have ended up saying if Rodney hadn't stepped in to take his place. John didn't want to imagine what might have made him dig his own fingers into the padding like that, or bite his lip and drop his head as he laughed, but there were only so many things he could not think about all at once. Keeping the wall up against the million possibilities of Rodney's secrets meant he didn't have the resources to keep his own from slipping through the cracks.
Rodney's fingers crept up to press against the hinge of his jaw, just in front of his ear, and John remembered the sound of the car windshield shattering inward, the cold edge in Colonel Leighton's voice in the court room, the liquid jangle of the guitar strings under his first homemade slide. The priestess knelt up to work some detail into the reddening flesh of Rodney's shoulder, and John felt his skin break into a frigid sweat as the jump light came on, tight and stinging with sunburn in Cabo, mercilessly abraded by Afghani sand. Rodney wrapped one fist in another and dug his knuckles hard into his forehead, and the pages of the comic book tore under John's fingers as the doctor dropped to one knee and tried to get John to look at him. Costa slammed the training room door shut and locked it, but not before John caught a glimpse of the woman, her face, Costa's big hand at the base of her throat. Kyle's fingers brushed over the center of John's palm, just for a second, in the corridor to the locker room. The girl said something John couldn't understand and fumbled for the headscarf John was using to staunch the gaping wound in her side. Wallace stumbled and John caught his arm as they turned the corner toward the lab's door. Nancy slipped under the sheets behind him and smelled like someone else. Buildings bloomed into flame like flowers. The ink from the proof stained his fingers as he crumpled the page up. The jar broke. "Kashmir" came crackling in over the car stereo. His father stumbled up the stairs mumbling the chorus of "Sloop John B." The canoe flipped and Dave came up laughing. His mother wound her arm back and pitched him the softball.
Down on the senate floor, the priestess set the tattoo needle down on the table and pressed the heels of her hands over Rodney's eyes, tipping his head back until his arms dropped to his side and his chest arched broad and open, rising and falling as he gasped for breath. Then she was helping him stand, half-supporting him as she draped the robe loosely over his shoulders. She was leading him towards the exit, the crowd was braiding up the aisles, and Teyla was kneeling at John's feet with her hands on his knees, saying, "John, John, it is over now, come with me, it's done."
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Eyes fixed on the ceiling he couldn't see in the dark, John said, "Okay, but really."
"Oh for crying out loud," Rodney groaned, and flopped over noisily in the other bed. "Next time you have an outbreak of uncompromising leadership while we're on a mission, I'm switching with Teyla." He got up and walked into the adjoining bathroom, where he ran a glass of water and drank it with loud, pointed slowness. John tossed an arm over his face and tried to get his head to shut the hell up.
When Rodney padded back in, his footsteps came to a stop in the space between their beds. John waited for him to lie back down, arm still over his eyes.
After a minute, Rodney sighed. When he spoke, his voice was soft around the edges. "It's not going to kill you to watch this one from the bench." There was the clink of a glass of water set down on John's nightstand, and then the rustle of sheets as Rodney climbed back into his own bed.
____________
After the ceremony, John and Teyla and Ronon were the guests of honor at an informal feast, where every Balcai John'd ever met came over to talk to him, plus a couple hundred total strangers besides. Rodney wasn't there. It was customary, Iala explained, for the priests to tend to the consecrated until the drug in the ink wore off. John didn't even try to argue her into making an exception, even though he would have gladly traded a couple of fingers to make sure Rodney was okay. Imagining Rodney having to interact with anyone while he was still under, still vulnerable, knotted John's stomach, and he had no reason to think it would help Rodney at all to see him.
John stayed for the whole thing, way past where he normally would have slipped off, and made time for everyone who sought him out. They'd been building this alliance for two years and Rodney'd paid pretty fucking steeply to close the deal; John would be damned if he'd be the one to screw it up. He finally left when Iala made her own excuses, nearly an hour after Ronon and Teyla tried to get him to head back to the guest quarters with them. The halls were mostly empty except for servants clearing away the debris from the feast. No one tried to talk to him. If he'd been any less exhausted, he would've been grateful.
Back at the room, he stared for a long time at Rodney's empty, made bed. Then he sank down onto the end of his own and sat there with his elbows on his knees, head spiraling and going nowhere.
At around midnight local time, the door to the guest quarters opened and Rodney slipped in, moving slowly in the low light. John looked up from his seat on the bed, heart in his throat. Rodney's hand lingered on the curved metal handle as he pushed the door shut, and his fingers skimmed over the dark wood for a few inches before dropping to hang loosely at his side. He didn't seem to register John at all until he turned, and then his eyes went straight to John's face, as unerringly as when he'd looked up at the supplicant's box from the senate floor.
"Hey," he said, the vowel lingering instead of clipped off like usual. His face looked different, open somehow around his eyes and mouth, but the total focus of his gaze rested on John like a weight. He sketched a loose line in the air in front of him, the axis of John's posture. "Were you waiting for me?"
The straightforwardness of the question threw John. He looked at his boots; he'd thought about taking them off at one point, but it felt so fucking wrong to imagine just stripping down, pulling up the covers, trying to fall asleep next to that other empty bed. He gestured awkwardly, some sort of affirmative. "Did ..." His voice came out hoarse, too many hours talking in too loud a space. He stood up and rubbed his palms against the front of his thighs. "They take care of you?"
Rodney tipped his head to one side, expression changing, like he was looking at something off in the distance. "Yeah," he said. "They did." He moved past John into the space between the beds, one hand tucking itself into his pocket and coming out with a flat, round metal container. He set it down on the night table and ran a finger absently around the rim. "They're good people," he said, out of nowhere. "I mean, really. I think we did good today."
John stared at him helplessly. There was something loose in Rodney's face and voice, as if someone had unwound a crank and the wires that kept him running had all gone slack. He'd spent close to four hours out on the senate floor, all the hidden pieces of his life tumbling up and out into the light. In five messy years of friendship, John had never caught more than a glimpse of half the things he'd watched scrawling themselves over Rodney's face today, with half the capital city staring down at him. But he'd never seen this from Rodney either: this weird laxness, the idly shifting focus, like he didn't even care--
"I'm sorry," John whispered. Nausea swept through him, memories flickering in his mind like confetti. He wiped a hand over his mouth and tried to keep it together.
Rodney's hand stilled on the tin, and a frown swam into slow clarity on his face before he turned to look at John. He looked confused, like he didn't know what John was apologizing for, and Jesus, the sight of Rodney McKay not getting it just took John out at the knees. "Fuck," John said, and he turned blindly away and stumbled to the wall, bracing his hands against it. His head was spinning, full of the hundreds of times he'd really screwed up, and this was maybe one of the worst. "I'm sorry. It should have been me out there, I fucked this up, God, Rodney, I'm so fucking sorry--"
"John," Rodney said from the other side of the room, sounding shocked, sounding there. Then he was closing the gap between them, talking over John, saying, "Knock it off -- John, it's okay, I'm okay." His hand came down on John's shoulder, and when Rodney tried to tug him around, John heard him hiss. He kept pulling, though, breath warm against the back of John's neck. "Come on, John, listen to me, I need you to listen, are you listening?"
John let himself be turned, because Rodney's whole back was raw and he didn't want to do any more damage than he'd already done. Then both of Rodney's hands came up to cup the sides of John's head, thumbs on his jaw, and John's eyes snapped open. Rodney was staring at him with fixed intensity. "Are you listening?" he repeated. "You didn't need to do this." Rodney shook him lightly for emphasis. "Do you get that? You don't have to jump in front of the bullet every time. I took this one, okay, I'm glad I took it, and you have no idea -- it's not the same for me. It didn't mean the same thing for me."
John swallowed hard. "I could have done it," he said, hollowly.
Rodney's face went soft and really sad. "John. Jesus," he whispered. "Not everything has to happen in the worst possible way for you." His thumbs stroked over John's cheeks. Then he stepped all the way into John's space, tipped John's head forward, and kissed him. Rodney's chin was rough with stubble, his lower lip chapped in the middle, but his mouth was all give under John's, the way nothing about Rodney ever was. John started to reach for Rodney's shoulders and stopped himself, ended up with his hands curled around Rodney's upper arms instead.
"Yeah, come on," Rodney murmured, all reassurance, and John took a breath and kissed him back, mouth slipping open. Rodney's mouth had the lingering taste of something faintly sweet, like chicory and honey, and he pressed in close to John, pressed a kiss to John's cheek, kissed his way down John's scratchy jaw. He found the soft spot there and sucked against it, the tip of his tongue pushing lightly down, and John shuddered, hands tightening around Rodney's sleeves. Rodney let out a pained ah as the robe pulled tight over his shoulders. John flinched and his hands jumped away, and Rodney pushed his face hard against the side of John's and sighed with unmistakable annoyance.
"Promise me we'll do this later," he said, low and close in John's ear. "Okay? I really want us to do this later -- promise me." John closed his hands over Rodney's hips and kissed the angle of his jaw, breathing unsteadily, then nodded. Rodney slid one of his arms behind John's back and held him close, like this was something they did all the time, or like he didn't remotely care that it wasn't. John found he couldn't care either.
Rodney stepped back, shoulders rolling stiffly under the robe, and John caught him by the hand and took half a step forward, following him. "Did they give you anything to put on it?" he said, and he couldn't quite look Rodney in the face yet, but he ran a thumb over the wide bones of Rodney's wrist. Rodney leaned toward John like there was a gravitational pull.
"The tin over there," he said, waving his free hand back toward the night stand. "It's an antiseptic, with some kind of numbing agent."
John nodded and licked his lips. "Will you let me do it?" Rodney's breath puffed out, that small sound that meant he'd broken into a smile, and he reached up to touch John's shirt, tug on his collar, run his palm down the front of it. His thumb slipped under the space between the second and third buttons before his hand dropped way.
"If you want." He pulled gently out of John's grip, easing the robe off his shoulders as he turned away. He flipped his blankets back, climbed onto the bed and lay down carefully on his stomach with his arms folded under his head. John's mouth went dry at the sight of Rodney's pale, broad back framed against the dark sheets, the solid slope of his muscles shifting under the reddened loops and swirls of the tattoo. Sitting down on the edge of Rodney's bed, taking care not to shift the mattress too much, John took his boots off, then reached for the tin. The lid came off easily, and the sharp astringent smell of the salve inside wreathed the air. He scooped some of it out and rubbed it in circles between his fingertips and thumb, warming it, testing the consistency. Setting the open tin down on the bed, John climbed onto his knees and swung one thigh over Rodney's, straddling his hips. A slow shudder rolled up Rodney's spine, and he let out a shaky laugh and pushed his face against the back of his hands. His ears flushed red, and John's dick twitched hard against the front of his pants, but he just braced his hand on the bed and leaned down to rub his slick fingertips in a circle at the base of Rodney's neck, barely skimming the upper edge of the tattoo.
"Oh yeah," Rodney groaned, shifting up into the touch. "God, you have no idea how good that feels." The vibrations of his voice rumbled under John's fingertips, and John closed his eyes, hips dipping forward in the air above Rodney's. He opened his eyes again and let his fingers slip down lower, working the salve in slow loops over the skin of Rodney's shoulders. He could have followed the tattoo blindfolded; its surface was raised under his fingers and hot to the touch, gently ridging Rodney's back and skin. It was hard to tell exactly what it looked like, the details of the needle-marks obscured by the halo of red skin around it, but John could make out an intricate pattern of interlocking circles, tangent lines and radii cutting long diagonals from the breadth of Rodney's left shoulder down toward his right hip. It looked like orbital charts, like math. Like it might be beautiful.
Rodney sighed, head rolling a little as his muscles loosened, and John dipped his fingers back into the salve and spread it onto both of his hands. When he slid both palms lightly down the long muscles bracketing Rodney's spine, Rodney drew in a long, unsteady breath, and he reached back to palm John's knee, squeezing once. His fingers slid halfway up John's thigh and he pressed down until John gave in and let his weight settle onto the back of Rodney's thighs. Rodney's hips twitched against the mattress, and John felt a sudden flush of relief at the certainty that Rodney was hard, too. He swept his thumbs in a wide arc under Rodney's shoulder blades and spent a minute thinking about lying down naked next to him afterwards, pulling Rodney's thigh up to cover his and jerking them both off with a slick hand. He thought maybe he could do it carefully enough. He was pretty sure Rodney would let him try.
Smoothing his fingertips carefully inward around one of the reddest spots, a cluster of nestled circles right near Rodney's sciatic nerve, John breathed deep through his nose and let his head drop. "Before I went to Afghanistan," he started.
"Stop that," Rodney said immediately, voice muffled by the sheets. "If I wanted your secrets I'd hack your confidential records." His hand tightened around John's thigh, warm and unyielding, and John let his hands stop moving, eyes squeezing shut against the memory.
After a moment, he curled his palm over Rodney's side, and Rodney let out a breath John hadn't known he'd been holding. His grip on John's thigh relaxed, but he didn't pull his hand away. "Later, okay?" Rodney told him. "If you still want to, you can tell me later."
"Okay," John whispered, and then he swallowed and turned his attention back to the constellation of marks worked into Rodney's skin. When he reached the center of the reddest spot, Rodney made a low noise of gratitude in his throat. John could feel him shiver through his fingers and the insides of his thighs, and he traced the lines and planes of the tattoo like a star map until his head finally, finally went quiet.
Summary: John tried to look annoyed as he added, "I can do this." / Pressing his lips together, Rodney fixed John with a narrow stare. "You're the last person in the galaxy who should do this." Written as a companion to aesc's artwork Hard Time Killing Floor and titled after the same Skip James song.
Details: SGA, McKay/Sheppard, ~4,500 words, adult. Extremely veiled spoilers for S4.
Notes: After receiving two really breathtaking pieces of art from aesc, I feel like I'm finally managing to return the favor. Huge thanks to shaenie, thingswithwings, and anatsuno for a rigorous beta, and to cindyjade and tropes for cheerleading. I should also mention that shaenie instigated me to do this, and that she and cindyjade think I should warn you that two out of two cows cried during the making of this story.
The tiered steps of the Balcain senate held more than fifteen thousand people, but as John sat with Teyla and Ronon in the supplicant's box and watched Rodney walk out across the vast, empty floor, the crowd was so silent that he could hear his own heartbeat as clearly as Rodney's footsteps.
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By the time they'd finished working out the fine print with Iala, dread had settled like snow in the pit of John's stomach. The conference table was strewn with notes and documents accumulated over the last three days, everything they'd come here to get spread out in front of them. Across from him, Iala waited in silence, wearing the serenely opaque expression she hadn't used with them since year three, when they'd negotiated the initial alliance.
"Ambassador." He leaned forward, grateful that his voice had come out steady. "I accept the terms of--"
Rodney straightened abruptly, turned to John, and said, "No. You don't."
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At the center of the senate, the priestess bowed her head as Rodney approached, but she did not move from her place by the table. The metal implements on it glittered against the dark wood. Hesitating, his hands hovering over the open front of his robe, Rodney tipped his face upward to stare straight at their box. They were too far apart for John to know which one of them he was looking at.
Rodney stripped the robe off his shoulders and dropped it unceremoniously onto the stone floor before turning to settle himself onto the bench.
____________
"Rodney," John said, tense but not quiet, watching Iala's face in his periphery. The Balcai valued transparency above all else in their allies; taking this conversation into another room would set them back months. "We're getting what we wanted. It's just a ceremony, and then we go home with a win." Rodney crossed his arms, and John tried to look annoyed as he added, "I can do this."
Pressing his lips together, Rodney fixed John with a narrow stare. "You're the last person in the galaxy who should do this." Before John could answer, Rodney turned to Teyla. "You're absolutely sure it's safe?"
"I promise," she said emphatically, with the reassuring smile that meant she was trying to defuse the situation. Last night, she'd borrowed a UV light from Iala so she could show the three of them the marks from when she'd undergone the ceremony a decade ago, recementing Athos's status with the Balcai as a sibling planet.
"I mean it -- you are one hundred percent certain this will not pose any kind of security risk," Rodney pressed.
Teyla shook her head. "No. They ..." She hesitated. "They are not those kind of secrets."
Rodney scrubbed a hand over his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine," he said, after a pause. John let out a pent-up breath and turned to Iala, and then Rodney laid both hands flat on the table and said, "I'll do it."
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When Rodney braced his arms over the leather-wrapped rest, bare shoulders hunching forward, Teyla took John's hand and squeezed. Rodney pressed his forehead briefly against his crossed wrists. John gripped down hard on Teyla's hand.
Eyes closed, Rodney lifted his head and took a long breath through his open mouth. Behind him, the priestess picked up a long-handled instrument and dipped the tip in a bowl of colorless fluid. As he began to speak, words inaudible even in the silence, she knelt on the cushioned seat behind him, laid a palm on his back for balance, and pressed the tattooing needle to his skin.
____________
"Wait," John said.
Ronon leaned past Teyla and held up his tattooed arm. "Let me," he told Rodney. "I've taken marks before. You haven't."
"Guys, seriously," John said, turning his chair toward them.
"You can't." Rodney jerked a thumb between John and himself. "Earth base, Earth alliance -- it's got to be someone born on Earth, am I right?" He looked impatiently at Iala, who nodded, hands laced in front of her. "Right. I'll do it."
Iala gave him a satisfied smile. "Then with that, we will take Atlantis as our sibling. We thank you for the honor, Dr. McKay."
Making a pained face, Rodney said, "Yes, well, thank me by sterilizing everything twice." There was a shaky edge to his voice.
John grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him around. "Rodney, no," he said, putting the full measure of certainty into the words, willing him to cave. "I'll be fine. You don't need to do this."
Rodney's chin jutted out. "Yes. I do," he said, and pushed himself to his feet. "Because you're not going to."
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The first twenty minutes hurt to watch. Rodney twitched under the needle, his hands clenching and flexing where they were wrapped around the brace. His face was flushed, screwed down in a grimace, but he didn't stop talking, even when the priestess started to work in a line up the side of his ribs and he jerked hard enough to rock the bench. John could feel sweat prickling on the skin of his own back, his jaw aching from the way he had it clenched. He knew the physical discomfort wasn't more than Rodney could take -- he'd been hurt worse in the last five years, nearly died, fuck, John had shot him that one time -- but seeing him hunched there, naked to the waist, with thousands and thousands of eyes fixed on him ...
On John's left, Ronon was running his thumb over the gauntlet inked onto his wrist. Teyla had pulled her lower lip between her teeth and bitten it. The senate floor was as wide as a football field, with the first rows half a story up. There was no way anyone but the priestess could hear what Rodney was saying. Iala had promised them. She'd promised.
When the drug in the ink hit critical mass in Rodney's system, John saw it sweep him under like a slow current. Rodney's shoulders slipped down, first the one the priestess hadn't gotten to yet, then the one under her hands. His bare feet shifted slowly over the stone as the curl of his legs loosened, his heels touching down for the first time since he'd sat. He took a deep, shuddering breath, head rolling back a little until his face was tipped up toward the arched ceiling. The light poured down over his features and left every line of his expression bare: his hooded eyes, the deep notch between his brows, the slant of his lips as they kept moving. It was as unstated and unmistakable as a song changing key: the liquid moment when Rodney stopped admitting to his secrets and started giving them away.
If the drop from the supplicant's box had been any shorter, all fifteen thousand people couldn't have stopped John from grabbing Rodney up off the bench and hauling him back through the gate at a dead run.
After that, John lost track of the time, the sounds and movements of the crowd his only indication of how long the ceremony had been going. Even as he was powerless to take his eyes off Rodney's face, he was hyper-aware of everyone else on the steps: people coughing, whispering, wandering in and out of the senate. A handful of kids got away from whoever was minding them and wove giggling through the steps on the north side for several minutes before the adults successfully carted them out. A few murmured conversations got loud enough for other people to shush them, the hissed reproaches echoing twice as loud. Someone laughed, braying and casual, and John jerked. Teyla hung onto his hand like she knew he wanted nothing so much as to find the asshole who'd done it and punch them in the face.
For the Balcai, this was like church: a consecrated space to a small handful of people, completely mundane to everyone else. John had been in leading diplomatic missions for five years now, he fucking got it, but it didn't make it any easier to know that it was just a blip in their afternoon: watching Rodney shiver and whisper, an entire lifetime of secrets spilling over his face.
He didn't want to know what Rodney was saying -- god, he didn't, just thinking about being in earshot right now sent adrenaline pouring like cold water through his veins. But it was impossible not to think about it, seeing Rodney's brows twist inward with the ghost of some past emotion -- anger? frustration? -- or his mouth curve upward into a shocked, elated smile. At times his fingers flickered and shifted against the brace, and once he let go of it entirely, hands taking off in agitated flashes; Jesus, what kind of memory could cut through the haze of the drugs but make him disregard the tip of the needle pressing right over his spine? John shut down every question that tried to form. He would not think about what Rodney might be remembering, not when he should be the one down there, shirtless and exposed on the senate floor.
Still, he couldn't help seeing each change in Rodney's face and posture, and they tugged John's own memories upwards to slip around the edges of his thoughts. Things he never talked about. Things he could have ended up saying if Rodney hadn't stepped in to take his place. John didn't want to imagine what might have made him dig his own fingers into the padding like that, or bite his lip and drop his head as he laughed, but there were only so many things he could not think about all at once. Keeping the wall up against the million possibilities of Rodney's secrets meant he didn't have the resources to keep his own from slipping through the cracks.
Rodney's fingers crept up to press against the hinge of his jaw, just in front of his ear, and John remembered the sound of the car windshield shattering inward, the cold edge in Colonel Leighton's voice in the court room, the liquid jangle of the guitar strings under his first homemade slide. The priestess knelt up to work some detail into the reddening flesh of Rodney's shoulder, and John felt his skin break into a frigid sweat as the jump light came on, tight and stinging with sunburn in Cabo, mercilessly abraded by Afghani sand. Rodney wrapped one fist in another and dug his knuckles hard into his forehead, and the pages of the comic book tore under John's fingers as the doctor dropped to one knee and tried to get John to look at him. Costa slammed the training room door shut and locked it, but not before John caught a glimpse of the woman, her face, Costa's big hand at the base of her throat. Kyle's fingers brushed over the center of John's palm, just for a second, in the corridor to the locker room. The girl said something John couldn't understand and fumbled for the headscarf John was using to staunch the gaping wound in her side. Wallace stumbled and John caught his arm as they turned the corner toward the lab's door. Nancy slipped under the sheets behind him and smelled like someone else. Buildings bloomed into flame like flowers. The ink from the proof stained his fingers as he crumpled the page up. The jar broke. "Kashmir" came crackling in over the car stereo. His father stumbled up the stairs mumbling the chorus of "Sloop John B." The canoe flipped and Dave came up laughing. His mother wound her arm back and pitched him the softball.
Down on the senate floor, the priestess set the tattoo needle down on the table and pressed the heels of her hands over Rodney's eyes, tipping his head back until his arms dropped to his side and his chest arched broad and open, rising and falling as he gasped for breath. Then she was helping him stand, half-supporting him as she draped the robe loosely over his shoulders. She was leading him towards the exit, the crowd was braiding up the aisles, and Teyla was kneeling at John's feet with her hands on his knees, saying, "John, John, it is over now, come with me, it's done."
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Eyes fixed on the ceiling he couldn't see in the dark, John said, "Okay, but really."
"Oh for crying out loud," Rodney groaned, and flopped over noisily in the other bed. "Next time you have an outbreak of uncompromising leadership while we're on a mission, I'm switching with Teyla." He got up and walked into the adjoining bathroom, where he ran a glass of water and drank it with loud, pointed slowness. John tossed an arm over his face and tried to get his head to shut the hell up.
When Rodney padded back in, his footsteps came to a stop in the space between their beds. John waited for him to lie back down, arm still over his eyes.
After a minute, Rodney sighed. When he spoke, his voice was soft around the edges. "It's not going to kill you to watch this one from the bench." There was the clink of a glass of water set down on John's nightstand, and then the rustle of sheets as Rodney climbed back into his own bed.
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After the ceremony, John and Teyla and Ronon were the guests of honor at an informal feast, where every Balcai John'd ever met came over to talk to him, plus a couple hundred total strangers besides. Rodney wasn't there. It was customary, Iala explained, for the priests to tend to the consecrated until the drug in the ink wore off. John didn't even try to argue her into making an exception, even though he would have gladly traded a couple of fingers to make sure Rodney was okay. Imagining Rodney having to interact with anyone while he was still under, still vulnerable, knotted John's stomach, and he had no reason to think it would help Rodney at all to see him.
John stayed for the whole thing, way past where he normally would have slipped off, and made time for everyone who sought him out. They'd been building this alliance for two years and Rodney'd paid pretty fucking steeply to close the deal; John would be damned if he'd be the one to screw it up. He finally left when Iala made her own excuses, nearly an hour after Ronon and Teyla tried to get him to head back to the guest quarters with them. The halls were mostly empty except for servants clearing away the debris from the feast. No one tried to talk to him. If he'd been any less exhausted, he would've been grateful.
Back at the room, he stared for a long time at Rodney's empty, made bed. Then he sank down onto the end of his own and sat there with his elbows on his knees, head spiraling and going nowhere.
At around midnight local time, the door to the guest quarters opened and Rodney slipped in, moving slowly in the low light. John looked up from his seat on the bed, heart in his throat. Rodney's hand lingered on the curved metal handle as he pushed the door shut, and his fingers skimmed over the dark wood for a few inches before dropping to hang loosely at his side. He didn't seem to register John at all until he turned, and then his eyes went straight to John's face, as unerringly as when he'd looked up at the supplicant's box from the senate floor.
"Hey," he said, the vowel lingering instead of clipped off like usual. His face looked different, open somehow around his eyes and mouth, but the total focus of his gaze rested on John like a weight. He sketched a loose line in the air in front of him, the axis of John's posture. "Were you waiting for me?"
The straightforwardness of the question threw John. He looked at his boots; he'd thought about taking them off at one point, but it felt so fucking wrong to imagine just stripping down, pulling up the covers, trying to fall asleep next to that other empty bed. He gestured awkwardly, some sort of affirmative. "Did ..." His voice came out hoarse, too many hours talking in too loud a space. He stood up and rubbed his palms against the front of his thighs. "They take care of you?"
Rodney tipped his head to one side, expression changing, like he was looking at something off in the distance. "Yeah," he said. "They did." He moved past John into the space between the beds, one hand tucking itself into his pocket and coming out with a flat, round metal container. He set it down on the night table and ran a finger absently around the rim. "They're good people," he said, out of nowhere. "I mean, really. I think we did good today."
John stared at him helplessly. There was something loose in Rodney's face and voice, as if someone had unwound a crank and the wires that kept him running had all gone slack. He'd spent close to four hours out on the senate floor, all the hidden pieces of his life tumbling up and out into the light. In five messy years of friendship, John had never caught more than a glimpse of half the things he'd watched scrawling themselves over Rodney's face today, with half the capital city staring down at him. But he'd never seen this from Rodney either: this weird laxness, the idly shifting focus, like he didn't even care--
"I'm sorry," John whispered. Nausea swept through him, memories flickering in his mind like confetti. He wiped a hand over his mouth and tried to keep it together.
Rodney's hand stilled on the tin, and a frown swam into slow clarity on his face before he turned to look at John. He looked confused, like he didn't know what John was apologizing for, and Jesus, the sight of Rodney McKay not getting it just took John out at the knees. "Fuck," John said, and he turned blindly away and stumbled to the wall, bracing his hands against it. His head was spinning, full of the hundreds of times he'd really screwed up, and this was maybe one of the worst. "I'm sorry. It should have been me out there, I fucked this up, God, Rodney, I'm so fucking sorry--"
"John," Rodney said from the other side of the room, sounding shocked, sounding there. Then he was closing the gap between them, talking over John, saying, "Knock it off -- John, it's okay, I'm okay." His hand came down on John's shoulder, and when Rodney tried to tug him around, John heard him hiss. He kept pulling, though, breath warm against the back of John's neck. "Come on, John, listen to me, I need you to listen, are you listening?"
John let himself be turned, because Rodney's whole back was raw and he didn't want to do any more damage than he'd already done. Then both of Rodney's hands came up to cup the sides of John's head, thumbs on his jaw, and John's eyes snapped open. Rodney was staring at him with fixed intensity. "Are you listening?" he repeated. "You didn't need to do this." Rodney shook him lightly for emphasis. "Do you get that? You don't have to jump in front of the bullet every time. I took this one, okay, I'm glad I took it, and you have no idea -- it's not the same for me. It didn't mean the same thing for me."
John swallowed hard. "I could have done it," he said, hollowly.
Rodney's face went soft and really sad. "John. Jesus," he whispered. "Not everything has to happen in the worst possible way for you." His thumbs stroked over John's cheeks. Then he stepped all the way into John's space, tipped John's head forward, and kissed him. Rodney's chin was rough with stubble, his lower lip chapped in the middle, but his mouth was all give under John's, the way nothing about Rodney ever was. John started to reach for Rodney's shoulders and stopped himself, ended up with his hands curled around Rodney's upper arms instead.
"Yeah, come on," Rodney murmured, all reassurance, and John took a breath and kissed him back, mouth slipping open. Rodney's mouth had the lingering taste of something faintly sweet, like chicory and honey, and he pressed in close to John, pressed a kiss to John's cheek, kissed his way down John's scratchy jaw. He found the soft spot there and sucked against it, the tip of his tongue pushing lightly down, and John shuddered, hands tightening around Rodney's sleeves. Rodney let out a pained ah as the robe pulled tight over his shoulders. John flinched and his hands jumped away, and Rodney pushed his face hard against the side of John's and sighed with unmistakable annoyance.
"Promise me we'll do this later," he said, low and close in John's ear. "Okay? I really want us to do this later -- promise me." John closed his hands over Rodney's hips and kissed the angle of his jaw, breathing unsteadily, then nodded. Rodney slid one of his arms behind John's back and held him close, like this was something they did all the time, or like he didn't remotely care that it wasn't. John found he couldn't care either.
Rodney stepped back, shoulders rolling stiffly under the robe, and John caught him by the hand and took half a step forward, following him. "Did they give you anything to put on it?" he said, and he couldn't quite look Rodney in the face yet, but he ran a thumb over the wide bones of Rodney's wrist. Rodney leaned toward John like there was a gravitational pull.
"The tin over there," he said, waving his free hand back toward the night stand. "It's an antiseptic, with some kind of numbing agent."
John nodded and licked his lips. "Will you let me do it?" Rodney's breath puffed out, that small sound that meant he'd broken into a smile, and he reached up to touch John's shirt, tug on his collar, run his palm down the front of it. His thumb slipped under the space between the second and third buttons before his hand dropped way.
"If you want." He pulled gently out of John's grip, easing the robe off his shoulders as he turned away. He flipped his blankets back, climbed onto the bed and lay down carefully on his stomach with his arms folded under his head. John's mouth went dry at the sight of Rodney's pale, broad back framed against the dark sheets, the solid slope of his muscles shifting under the reddened loops and swirls of the tattoo. Sitting down on the edge of Rodney's bed, taking care not to shift the mattress too much, John took his boots off, then reached for the tin. The lid came off easily, and the sharp astringent smell of the salve inside wreathed the air. He scooped some of it out and rubbed it in circles between his fingertips and thumb, warming it, testing the consistency. Setting the open tin down on the bed, John climbed onto his knees and swung one thigh over Rodney's, straddling his hips. A slow shudder rolled up Rodney's spine, and he let out a shaky laugh and pushed his face against the back of his hands. His ears flushed red, and John's dick twitched hard against the front of his pants, but he just braced his hand on the bed and leaned down to rub his slick fingertips in a circle at the base of Rodney's neck, barely skimming the upper edge of the tattoo.
"Oh yeah," Rodney groaned, shifting up into the touch. "God, you have no idea how good that feels." The vibrations of his voice rumbled under John's fingertips, and John closed his eyes, hips dipping forward in the air above Rodney's. He opened his eyes again and let his fingers slip down lower, working the salve in slow loops over the skin of Rodney's shoulders. He could have followed the tattoo blindfolded; its surface was raised under his fingers and hot to the touch, gently ridging Rodney's back and skin. It was hard to tell exactly what it looked like, the details of the needle-marks obscured by the halo of red skin around it, but John could make out an intricate pattern of interlocking circles, tangent lines and radii cutting long diagonals from the breadth of Rodney's left shoulder down toward his right hip. It looked like orbital charts, like math. Like it might be beautiful.
Rodney sighed, head rolling a little as his muscles loosened, and John dipped his fingers back into the salve and spread it onto both of his hands. When he slid both palms lightly down the long muscles bracketing Rodney's spine, Rodney drew in a long, unsteady breath, and he reached back to palm John's knee, squeezing once. His fingers slid halfway up John's thigh and he pressed down until John gave in and let his weight settle onto the back of Rodney's thighs. Rodney's hips twitched against the mattress, and John felt a sudden flush of relief at the certainty that Rodney was hard, too. He swept his thumbs in a wide arc under Rodney's shoulder blades and spent a minute thinking about lying down naked next to him afterwards, pulling Rodney's thigh up to cover his and jerking them both off with a slick hand. He thought maybe he could do it carefully enough. He was pretty sure Rodney would let him try.
Smoothing his fingertips carefully inward around one of the reddest spots, a cluster of nestled circles right near Rodney's sciatic nerve, John breathed deep through his nose and let his head drop. "Before I went to Afghanistan," he started.
"Stop that," Rodney said immediately, voice muffled by the sheets. "If I wanted your secrets I'd hack your confidential records." His hand tightened around John's thigh, warm and unyielding, and John let his hands stop moving, eyes squeezing shut against the memory.
After a moment, he curled his palm over Rodney's side, and Rodney let out a breath John hadn't known he'd been holding. His grip on John's thigh relaxed, but he didn't pull his hand away. "Later, okay?" Rodney told him. "If you still want to, you can tell me later."
"Okay," John whispered, and then he swallowed and turned his attention back to the constellation of marks worked into Rodney's skin. When he reached the center of the reddest spot, Rodney made a low noise of gratitude in his throat. John could feel him shiver through his fingers and the insides of his thighs, and he traced the lines and planes of the tattoo like a star map until his head finally, finally went quiet.