TEAM SPACE: under the sun, "Control"
Title: Control
Author: busaikko
Team: Space
Prompt: under the sun
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 9,749
Warnings: (highlight to reveal) torture: non-consensual body modification
Contains: (highlight to reveal) orgasm control
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: John returns from a mission remote-controlled.
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**
For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy or there is none.
If there be one, seek till you find it; If there be none, never mind it.
|=:~*~:=|
John wakes up in a windowless room full of bleeping monitors and ominous-looking machines. The walls are decorated with faded and ragged public-health posters - John doesn't need to know how to read alien to recognize a food pyramid and a healthy-looking cartoon colon. He has to look up at everything, which is worrying, because it's not the infirmary on Atlantis, and he's strapped immobile on a bed in the center of a medlab.
The last thing he remembers is running hard. His head aches and he's seeing halos around the lights, consistent with being stunned, and he guesses the people who ambushed his team brought him here. He may have the wrong impression - maybe they're swell folks - but the restraints make him suspect they don't have good intentions.
He tries to sit up as far as he can, and is utterly unprepared to slam into a wall of pain. He drops back, limp and dazed as he pants through it, and thinks about how utterly fucked he is.
|=:~*~:=|
"Hey, Rodney," John says, leaning in the doorway to Rodney's room. Leaning allows him to look casual in a way he doesn't feel, and it usually bugs the heck out of Rodney. Win-win. "I've got next weekend off - let's go to the beach."
"I don't talk to people who can't commit to one side of a door or the other," Rodney says, not even looking up from where he's meticulously sorting his laundry. There aren't many members of the original expedition left, but they're all instantly identifiable by their inability to throw away clothing that's not on its absolute last legs.
"Nice bathrobe, McKay," John says, wandering in, waving at the door-closer, and shoving his hands into his pockets. Rodney probably put off doing laundry for too long; under his ratty blue bathrobe John sees an awful lot of skin. The belt's tied loosely and the front gapes open, and Rodney doesn't seem to care.
"The beach?" Rodney retorts. He holds up one sock that's so thin the morning light from his window goes right through it. "That ridiculous planet you and Ronon go to for surfing and sunburns?"
"Like you don't have a timeshare in the team cottage," John says, smiling as he pictures it in his head. "Home away from home."
Right after Atlantis returned from Earth, Ronon had proposed making a nice place where Teyla and Kanaan could bring Torren, and their plans escalated from constructing a platform tent to weeks spent creating a Satedan-style dacha. John kind of suspects Ronon was using carpentry as a way of helping John out, but the cottage is gorgeous, a great place to hang out. The gate's only an hour's hike away, and the ocean's just beyond the dunes. John loves falling asleep to the sound of the waves, and he's fairly sure Rodney does, too.
"Ronon says no one's using it until the nineteenth," John cajoles, raising an eyebrow. "Come on."
Rodney goes back to folding laundry, hands brisk with his collection of faded t-shirts. "Fine. Whatever."
John's not sure what to make of that, whether to take victory at face value and gloat, or worry that Rodney caved too fast.
Rodney snaps his last shirt tidy and carries the pile over to plop unceremoniously in a drawer. He scowls at it, as if somehow his laundry's let him down, and shoves the drawer shut with a quick look over at John. His mouth quirks up at the corner, wry.
"Did you ask for the time off, or did your therapist overlord think you needed a break?"
John freezes for a moment, unable to reply, feeling like a car hitting black ice at high speed.
"Hug," Rodney says, and walks over to give John one of his comprehensive embraces. He's not one for gingerly resting palms on shoulders; Rodney hugs with his arms and his chest and his breathing. John always finds it somewhat alarming how quickly his body reacts, zipping past an initial startle reflex into a powerful urge to rest his head on Rodney's shoulder. Rodney doesn't expect John to hug back and doesn't seem to care if he can't; that makes it easier for John to accept the comfort without feeling like he's failed somehow. Which in turn means that these days, most of the time he finds himself hugging back without any recall of agonizing over whether he should or could.
It's weird. He flinches away from the idea that Rodney's training him; he doesn't think he could live with that. But when he managed to explain this one night, with crappy metaphors accompanied by manic pacing, Rodney had frowned and said it wasn't like that at all.
"It's one of our trust things," Rodney had explained. "I admit that trusting someone with your life and health and safety and sanity first, and with sex and touching second is probably opposite to the norm." He gave John an exasperated look. "I never said I liked you because you're normal."
"Oh," John had said, relieved for a moment, before he realized that was equally terrifying, just in different ways. "I never get this stuff right," he warned.
Rodney had shrugged. "Probably. I have contingency plans for when that happens, don't worry."
John worries anyway, but thinking of Rodney as his safety net makes him grin.
So here he is, relaxing into a hug, letting his forehead settle on Rodney's shoulder and his hands on Rodney's back, and he feels pretty good. Happy to be here, happy to be going to the beach.
"If you don't have plans tonight, we could just do this," he says, rubbing his cheek against the threadbare warmth of Rodney's ugly bathrobe.
"Then you're overdressed," Rodney says, and slides one hand up to scratch John's scalp idly. "I expect you to lie around in nothing but revealing swimwear when we're on vacation. In the shade, of course. Possibly sipping a mixed fruit drink through a novelty straw."
"Whatever turns you on," John says, and yawns.
Rodney walks him backwards towards the bed, where he topples John over and removes his pants. John grabs Rodney by the terry-cloth belt and reels him in, only loosening his hold when Rodney stretches to turn the lights off.
"I asked Woolsey for a few days," John says. He settles into a position that's become habitual, one leg over Rodney's, swapping the flat pillow for the comfortable one, walking his fingers up until he finds Rodney's face and kisses him, lazy and sloppy and content. "Neither of us has had a day off since Atlantis arrived back in Pegasus."
"Wraith," Rodney mumbles, his mouth on John's chin. "ZPM, secret labs, spaceships."
"But that's just another day at the office," John says, and Rodney laughs, because even if the joke's years old, it never stops being true.
|=:~*~:=|
John comes out to Rodney way back when Rodney's starting to date Katie Brown. John has just figured out that they are friends as well as teammates and colleagues, and Rodney is going out of his way to be painfully nice through John's recovery from being mutated into a bug. When he thinks back on that evening, John always remembers the way his hands look, like he was wearing a monster suit, inhuman. Rodney plays endless games of video golf with him, and he's so bad at it that John sometimes wins despite how clumsy his hands make him.
John's lying on Rodney's floor - its coolness allays his elevated body temperature - with his arm wrapped around a bag of Doritos. Rodney pauses the game to lean over and grab a handful, and John's so glad not to be treated like a security risk or a freak.
"You know I'm not straight, right?" John says, and twists a little around so he can see Rodney's face. "I mean, I guess you and your brain figured it out a long time ago, but I just thought, you should know."
Rodney's chewing fast through his mouthful of chips, so John snags a bottle of water from the end table and tosses it to him in a slow underhand. Rodney fumbles the bottle but doesn't drop it, and manages to wash the chips down without choking to death.
"Why?" is the first thing Rodney says, and then he waves his own question aside. "I mean, why are you telling me?" He narrows his eyes. "Just because Katie and I like a little light kink on the side, does not mean we're in the market for a threesome. Cadman was bad enough."
"McKay," John protests, sitting up and pointedly moving his chips out of Rodney's reach. "I don't want to hear about your sex life. Ever."
Rodney's expression becomes both knowing and infuriatingly smug. "So you're closeted and repressed?" He nudges John's hip with his foot. "Didn't anyone tell you Hayes repealed the anti-gay regulations for the US military right after he found out about the Stargate?" Rodney asks, amused. "I seem to recall parties. Also cynical theories about how he was going to start a gay draft."
John raises his hand and one eyebrow. "Send all the queers on a one-way trip off-planet?"
Rodney snorts. "Except no one knows about you - do they? I didn't," he adds, though John can tell the admission costs him.
John picks up his game controller, wiping Doritos dust off onto his pants. "I just annoyed the right people once too often."
"A talent of yours," Rodney agrees. He studies John in a way that makes him uncomfortably aware of a keen intelligence with him as its sole focus; John gets the feeling that Rodney's seeing through more than the residual bugginess, seeing John in a way only a very few people do. "If you ever want to talk, you can," he says abruptly. "Okay, you don't want to hear about the spanking or anything else kinky, and I get that, but it's something I don't broadcast, because of people thinking the things they do think, so in that sense I get where you're coming from."
"Great," John says, not able to keep sarcasm out of his tone, and restarts the game.
He loses badly, and after the second game Rodney sighs like a martyr and says, "Go on, I know not asking is just killing you inside."
John hopes a blush isn't visible on his gray bug-skin. "So, who spanks who?" he asks, and then adds, quickly, "Never mind."
Rodney tells him anyway; he makes it sound kind of fun.
|=:~*~:=|
What happens is this.
Atlantis gets cleared to go home to Pegasus. In a few months. John's over-the-moon thrilled but knows better than to give himself away. The SGC keeps asking him to do this or that or the other thing, and he's happy to oblige. There's no guarantee that John will be sent back with Atlantis. Being a team player is important. He knows how to do team, even knows how to not screw up. Toe the line. Say yes.
Rodney's not thrilled about all the time John's asked to spend in Colorado, but he never complains in front of people who are just looking for an excuse to sink John like a stone in a deep lake. Landry makes it very clear John's not his favorite person. To be fair, Jennifer Keller's moved in with Landry's daughter, leading to rumors about nanotechnological breakthroughs, and probably paternal headaches. Landry's year-to-date sucks; John gets that. He keeps his face straight and hopes Landry realizes not sending John back to Pegasus might mean getting stuck with him as a subordinate. To keep John out of his hair and his base, Landry sends him out with one gate team after the next. John sees the sights of the Milky Way galaxy; he gets souvenir t-shirts from planets which have evolved tourist industries and sends them to Torren.
Thirty-six days before John's anticipating settling into the control chair for lift-off, his routine mission to escort inspectors to one of the Icarus Base supply sites is attacked. John thinks his people got through the Stargate before it was shut down; in the sudden chaos of battle, keeping track of the civilians was hard. Their training's pretty bad, and he plans to file complaints when he gets back.
If he gets back. The Stargate shuts down with John still planet-side, and he does what he can to blow up everything the Lucian Alliance shouldn't get their hands on, assuming that's who he's dealing with. He expects the SGC to send someone to get him, any minute now. Except ten minutes go by, and then twenty by his watch, and John's finding it harder and harder to stay ahead of the enemy.
He gets stunned just after taking out the tech tents. It feels the way he imagines a Taser would, a lot of sharp electric pain coupled with immobility and collapse. He wishes he could pass out right up until he does.
He wakes up on a cot, in pain.
|=:~*~:=|
Jennifer dumps Rodney a week after arriving back on Earth. She's got fabulous research opportunities at the SGC and Area 51, her university wants her back to give guest lectures, and Carolyn Lam's trying to recruit her into continuing Poole's work with medical nanites, or so John hears through the grapevine. When she and Rodney were on Earth together the last time, apparently Jennifer spent half the time networking, and it paid off big-time. She tells Rodney she doesn't want to be cruel, but she has to know if she has what it takes to be at the top of her profession, and it wouldn't be fair to Rodney to put him in a distant second place.
Rodney's quiet about the break-up. It makes John feel like he has to do something. He watches a romcom and asks Teyla for advice, and brings a whole cooler of beer with him when he goes to Rodney's quarters.
The first six-pack is gone by the time John broaches the subject of Jennifer, generic condolences and platitudes stumbling alien off his tongue. He's crap at this. He shoves one of Rodney's very expensive pillows up against the wall and slouches backwards on his elbows, remembering at the last second not to spill beer all over the bed.
Rodney doesn't seem to notice. "I can't even be angry," he says morosely. "I'm really happy for her. Atlantis gave her this weird self-esteem thing, and I kept telling her she was a smart cookie. She's happy. The SGC's going to let her publish some of her research."
John hopes Rodney never, ever calls him a smart cookie, and says, "I'm angry at her for hurting you." He doesn't mean to be honest and hopes he can blame the beer in the morning. "But people make choices. Sometimes... it sucks knowing you can do the right thing or you can be with... someone... but you can't have both?" He gets a flashback to the romantic comedy, when the woman with disastrous dates was comforted by her sassy, flamboyantly gay best friend. He wonders what Rodney would say if John came out with But she just wasn't that into you, honey. John would totally deserve to get punched for that, he decides, and then realizes that he's smirking to himself like a dope. His tolerance for alcohol is shot these days.
"Hm," Rodney says, and squints down at John like he's trying to stop his eyes from blurring. So drunk, John thinks, glad it's not just him, and then Rodney says, "And you'd know something about that."
John doesn't get it at first, and then he does. He thinks about pointing out that gay best friends never get happy endings in the movies. In fact, most of them end up dead, so he's cool with his sacrifices. He gets to fly spaceships; he doesn't mind going steady with his right hand.
"You're a good friend," John tells Rodney. He sloshes his beercan, tired of hanging onto it. "You're smart and funny and you can generally hit the target you're aiming for. Which is great," John enthuses, warming to the topic. "Because otherwise, you know, everyone'd be dead."
Rodney plucks John's beer out of his hand very gently and sets it down on the bedside table. "You've saved my life a few times over."
John points at him. "You don't give up." he says, and frowns. Apparently his advice has devolved to quoting old pop songs. "You've got to be you." And he can't stop.
"The only person you leave behind is yourself," Rodney says, and looks at John like that makes him sad. "Don't think I never noticed."
John shrugs. "I'm happy," he says, and thinks about all the fun things that single people get to do that he should totally tell Rodney about. Who needs a girlfriend when you can eat potato chips in bed? For breakfast, even.
"Yeah," Rodney says, and snorts. "That's how I think of you, a happy little ray of sunshine."
John smacks him in the thigh with the back of his hand, and Rodney grabs his wrist, using his weight to pin it to the mattress. John's startled into laughter, the pillow catching his head as he topples backwards. He knows many ways to break the hold, but he's content to let Rodney think he's won.
And then Rodney shifts around, still holding John's wrist down but now climbing on top of him and before John can process whether this is wrestling or something else, maybe yoga, Rodney uses his free hand to tug John's head back by the hair, and kisses him.
Rodney doesn't hesitate at all; he kisses John like a force of nature, and it's all John can do to hang on, open his mouth to Rodney's, and try not to be obvious about grinding himself against Rodney's thigh.
He distinctly remembers, later, being shocked that two drunk middle-aged men got each other so hard, so fast. He remembers sweating through his t-shirt, and his hand on Rodney's ass, and Rodney trying to get his dick out before he came but refusing to break off the kiss, and how John felt Rodney's come mix with the sweat on the bare skin of his stomach where his shirt had ridden up. He remembers being breathless with need, and frantic at being held down, and groaning when orgasm hit like a motherfucking freight train. John twisted around so much Rodney pulled his hair inadvertently.
"What the hell was that?" John gets out when he's capable of speech again.
Rodney grins, smug and sated. "I made you come," he says, obviously full of himself, and then he kisses John again. And John melts into the kiss, drinking Rodney in like he just found water after hiking through a desert.
A lot later, when he's strapped down in the medlab, John remembers this conversation with weird clarity, and wonders if it was foreshadowing, or if the universe is only random chaos that just seems sometimes to mimic literary devices.
In the morning, John wakes naked, tangled with Rodney and cotton-mouthed. He goes to the bathroom, drinks four cups of water fast, pisses, splashes his face just in case that makes things any clearer, and ventures back to look for his underwear.
He's all set to give Rodney excuses when he sees he's awake, to say they were drunk and Rodney was lonely, but John's curious. He has to ask what possessed Rodney to jump him now.
"Because I realized you were never going to act on your feelings beyond vague hints about choices," Rodney says, hanging a set of quotes in the air with crooked fingers. "And I've known how you felt for years but it was that thing we never talked about, because of friendship." He shrugs. "Obviously, dating people who aren't friends didn't work. And you were stretched out like a pin-up model, and I... I thought it was time." He coughs. "Go get me some water."
John goes and gets, because it seems easier than arguing. This time, looking at his reflection, he sees the bite-mark on his shoulder. He pokes it with a finger; it hurts just like any other bruise.
John wonders about spanking, if that's something Rodney only does with women. He had no idea that Rodney was bi. He takes Rodney his water and thinks about what a bad idea it is to sleep with someone on his team. He thinks about Jennifer breaking things off quickly, as soon as she knew it was over, and not letting an impossible situation drag out and accumulate bitterness and resentment over months and years. That's a good way to do it, he thinks. Better than what he did to Nancy.
John tells Rodney that they can have sex, sure, but he's not in the market for a relationship, and Rodney says, fine, great, suck my dick. John does, and Rodney returns the favor, and when John leaves Rodney's quarters after missing breakfast, he's happier than he's been since Atlantis landed on Earth. He doesn't tell Rodney, who'd just get the wrong idea. Again.
|=:~*~:=|
His captors show him a metal box, like a couple of Sucrets tins welded together badly. "We put you in the surgery," one of them says, pointing to the thing in the corner John'd assumed was a CAT scanner-type thing. He makes a nasty, suggestive snipping gesture in the air, which John doesn't understand, and then the stubby guy in front takes the metal box, slides a covering panel to the side, and presses the exposed button firmly.
John gets hard immediately. He gulps in air, vision blurring with pain and sudden unwanted pleasure, and a few minutes later he's coming all over himself.
He can't comprehend what just happened. His captors make him come four more times in a row, which is impossible. By the time they wander off laughing, he's sunk into a small red world of pain.
He doesn't try to get up, snap the restraints, make a break for it. He thinks his odds suck. His mind's going like a hamster on a wheel, thinking about how bad this is. Anticipation is one of the key components of torture, and everything he anticipates he's afraid of. He recognizes that his captors know what they're doing: demonstrate what they have the power to do to him, and give him plenty of time for the fear to saturate his every thought. He really dislikes the implications.
His time-sense is screwy; he thinks he hasn't been here longer than a day or two. They feed him a nasty kind of vegetable gruel, sometimes. He gets occasional toilet breaks; the first time he's able to get a hand on his junk and knows it's all there, the relief is overwhelming, even though it hurts to trace the faint, clean surgical scars, looking for and not finding any infection or gangrene or open wounds. But he learns fast enough that afterward, he can expect to be strapped back down for another round of being shown that he's no longer in control of his dick.
When he wakes from a doze to the sound of gunfire he's flooded with relief-fueled adrenaline. He stuffs the pain down and tells himself he's ready to run as soon as - oh, thank God - Cam Mitchell bangs through the door.
"Nice vacation spot you picked," Cam says, executing a neat stop-and-block in the doorway. John tries to give him a smile and fails. Cam's eyes are sharp, giving John a head to toe inspection, taking everything in, and he turns his head to say over his shoulder, barely audible but firm, If you ladies could give us a minute. Then facing John again, he asks, "You okay? Think you can make it as far as the transport rings?"
"Yeah," John says, no fucking idea how far a walk Cam's talking about but not caring. Cam shrugs. He unbuckles the restraints, and John immediately feels more in control, even if he can't quite bring himself to sit up yet. Cam finds John's clothes in a box under the cot and dresses him, which should be humiliating but isn't, not even when Cam uses John's worn black tee to wipe him clean before helping John into underwear and BDUs.
Cam hauls John up to sitting, and then pulls him onto his feet, John clinging to him for balance, sucking breath through his teeth.
"Hey, slow dancing," Cam says, close by John's ear. "We'll go paint the town when we get home."
"I'm taken," John says, his brain running too slow to understand that Cam's just joking and hasn't really decided that a torture chamber's a good place to hit on him.
"Pity," Cam replies anyway, and then taps his radio to call Sam and Vala.
John has a moment of terror that the wireless radio's going to make him come in his pants, and then the more realistic fear dawns on him. He needs to bring the remote with him because maybe if it gets left behind he's never going to come again, and he hopes to God Sam can fix him before he has to try and explain all this to Rodney.
"It's been a lovely rescue mission," Vala says, walking in heavily armed, brightly rude, "but we really do need to be going. I'm bored." Sam, behind her, gives John a roll of her eyes, wry but not sympathetic; she's showing him her professional face, as a kindness.
"I need you to find something for me," John tells Vala, because he's heard things about her light fingers. And he must look like crap, because she does just that, and hands the remote over without one single suggestive comment.
|=:~*~:=|
John doesn't want to tell Rodney what happened, but lying's only an option if he's planning on... breaking up, or whatever you call it when you go back to being friends without side benefits. Plus, John's already living with one secret - he plans on never telling Rodney that they only slept together the first time because of Rodney taking John's crappy sucks-to-be-dumped speech as a declaration of unrequited love - and that's his quota.
So the first time he's alone in his quarters with Rodney after checking out of the SGC infirmary, he leans back against the desk, crosses his arms over his chest, and rattles out the three sentences he's been practicing: They used alien surgical tech to wire my dick to a remote control. Dr Lam says reversing the process could cause permanent disability. I maybe won't ever be able to come again without flipping a switch.
Rodney sits down on the bed hard, but thankfully gives John a minute of consideration before nodding decisively. "Okay. I can work with that. Only if you want to, of course." He takes a breath and huffs it out in a frustrated-sounding sigh. "I know they didn't do that to you because you replied to their spam ad for alien Viagra. It wasn't misguided altruism: they tortured you."
This is the part that makes John squirm with embarrassment and vulnerability, and it makes his answer aggressively short. "They made me come. A lot." Rodney gives him the thesis-advisor stare, warning John that he's not going to deal with theatrics. John's hands have curled, clutching fistfuls of his shirt at his sides tightly, but he loosens one hand to scrub wearily at his hair. "Just to show me what they could do. They would have tried to get me to talk, or humiliated me publicly, I don't know. Trained me like Pavlov's dog. They could have, maybe. It hurt like fuck, waking up after the surgery, but as soon as they hit the switch I wanted it."
Rodney looks abstracted, like he's trying to solve a problem in his head. "I asked Sam, but she said, blah blah confidentiality, something about respecting your boundaries, dire hints about me not destroying your career - speaking in code. I didn't understand at all. Can I see?"
John flinches. "You have to promise not to touch the button." Carter assured him that she has the schematics and can probably make him a replacement if he needs one, but for now John can't help being overprotective, thinking of the remote as the entire future of his sex life.
Rodney boggles for a second, and then his mouth twists into a rueful smile. "You, John. I want to see what they did to you. Your dick, I guess."
John can feel his face getting hot. He just hopes it doesn't show. "There's, ah. Not much to show. Most of the bruising's gone, and the... wiring stuff's inside." He jerks a shoulder, trying to look diffident. "There are a couple of staples Lam didn't think she should try removing."
"Cool," Rodney says, voice completely flat, the way he always sounds when John's trying to impress him with something dorky. "Not exactly the nipple rings of my dreams, but I guess that's just the risk of the body modification sweepstakes."
"Yeah, but the US government's letting me keep these," John argues, feeling a little lighter. He reaches for his belt and finds that he's almost smiling.
"Come over here," Rodney says. John goes and is rewarded with a lot of slow, life-affirming kissing while Rodney strips him slowly and arranges him on the bed. Rodney takes greedy wet bites of John's skin all down his throat and sucks at John's nipples to demonstrate just why he thinks they're good candidates for piercing.
"Rings'd probably rip out my hair," John says, shutting Rodney down. "And that doesn't feel like foreplay, which kind of freaks me out."
Rodney raises his head and for a moment John thinks he sees on Rodney's face everything that he's been so grateful Rodney's hiding. Fear, or anger, or sympathy, maybe grief; Rodney apparently hadn't got the news John was missing until he was already safe in the SGC infirmary, but he'd decided it was best for John for him to stay away. John's got guilt about that. But Rodney's expression morphs easily into familiar, comfortable annoyance, which John finds easier to live with.
"Right," Rodney says, and gives John a last lingering kiss before sitting up. He wraps one hand warm around John's wrist, just below his watchband, and John reaches up to grasp Rodney's wrist. One of their better brothers-in-dorkiness moves, John thinks. Very Lord of the Rings, or whatever. "Show me this chastity device of yours."
When he started sleeping with Rodney, John worried about Rodney's thing for kink, and the strong possibility that he was going to be boring to Rodney in bed, comparatively. He'd seen videos, he told Rodney, hoping he didn't need to go into detail. Rodney laughed at him and asked if John'd ever fucked someone in front of a mirror; which, okay, yeah, but everyone does that. One whole wall of John and Nancy's honeymoon suite had been mirrored.
"The hot tub was awesome, too," John had added, trying to make Rodney back off. But Rodney just gave John a raised eyebrow; a moment later, John put together that Rodney had both a hot tub and a huge full-length mirror.
"Kinks are just the things that do it for you and the things you like to imagine doing," Rodney said. "I try to keep an open mind."
John's learned that Rodney has a set of things that do it for him. He likes leaving bruises where they peek out from under John's cuffs and collar, easy enough to pass off as work-related, except for when John glimpses one in a mirror and remembers. Rodney doesn't turn John over his knee and spank him, but he's quick with an impatient slap to John's ass during sex, which John finds makes him surprisingly unembarrassed about being vocal.
But Rodney also likes trying new things out, experimenting, shaking things up. John's learned how to say no, which makes it easier to say we'll try it once, okay and - sometimes - this is what I like.
So now John says, "Sure," and spreads his legs. It's different, he tells himself, from being strapped down in the medlab, or even from Dr Lam telling him to scoot until his feet settle in the stirrups and his ass feels like it's hanging off the end of the bed. This is Rodney, who's had his mouth on John's cock for some of the most mindblowing orgasms of his life, who put in the effort to learn just exactly how John likes his balls sucked and hardly complains at all about hair in his teeth.
Rodney looks at John's crotch, getting the lay of things, and then slides his fingers down from John's hip to trace one of the restraint bruises that's faded to a band of greenish-yellow. John's hair down there had all been trimmed to three-day stubble length and is taking its time about growing back; even so, when he looks at himself he doesn't see anything that different, beneath the bruises. It's just that the kind of touching which used to make his dick stir doesn't do it for him anymore.
Which is a pity, he thinks, propping himself up on his elbows to watch Rodney study his dick, flipping it up to examine the underside and the hair-fine surgical scars there. Rodney runs his thumb along the line of staples, which are made of the same tough synthetic polymer that comprises most of John's new implant. His dick won't set off security systems, he supposes; not on Earth, anyway.
He shares this insight with Rodney, whose expression has clouded over. Rodney doesn't laugh, just gives John a roll of his eyes and then crosses to the desk to grab a marker. "Can I?" he asks, waving it like a baton.
"Go for it," John says, magnanimous.
Rodney leans in, holds John's dick carefully in his left hand, and writes something carefully above and below the staples. Rodney inspects his work, touches it up in two places, and then tosses the marker across the room, where it skids under the bookcase. John trusts Rodney not to have written his name - plus he figures his dick's not big enough for the full glory of the McKay signature - but he's going to pretend that's what it says. He'll ask later.
"You should fuck me," John announces, and sits up to sling an arm around Rodney's shoulders, drags him down into a dirty kiss.
"Is that okay?" Rodney asks, pulling back. "What do your doctors say?" John's sick of being hijacked by random emotions, and he pushes down the wave of red anger that washes over him. Rodney can read him, though, and he puts a hand on John's hip, pressing down hard enough to get John's attention. "Your body, your rules, I get that, but I... really don't want to hurt you today."
"Then give me what I want," John gets out, even though he's practically clenching his jaw.
"Fine," Rodney says. "If you're going to be an asshole about it," and he slaps John on the hip. It doesn't have the usual sting, but John rolls over anyway. He doesn't even think until Rodney's yanking open the sex drawer, and even before John can compose some kind of formal introduction, Rodney goes, "Hm," and sets the remote down right next to John's hand. "I guess you'll need this," he says, and then dangles a dental dam pack and the lube in John's line of sight. "And I'll need this."
Rodney's incredibly good at rimming, but he usually saves his talent up for special occasions, or times when he thinks John can be persuaded into something via mind-melting sex. John's not led that easily by his dick, but Rodney tonguing his ass tends to reduce him to begging and swearing, dropping his shoulders to the bed so he can reach back and hold himself open, full-body shaking and panting like he's running for his life. He loves it.
And today it's completely different. John's aware of the pleasure building, little electric jolts that still feel good enough that he tries to rock back against Rodney's mouth and groans protest when Rodney's strong hands hold him still. But it's like he's in a different country and doesn't understand the language. He's straining for the gears of comprehension to engage, and they don't. He curls his hand around the remote, and without thinking slides the safety panel to the side and presses the button down all the way.
His dick gets hard immediately, and suddenly he's exactly where he wants to be. His shoulders flex and he grabs the sheets in both fists, smothering a shout as best he can, but failing; Rodney leaves off the maddening game of teasing John's hole with quick little dips with the point of his tongue to say, "Ha." John'll give him that, he'll give Rodney anything if he only doesn't stop ever again.
Rodney's always wanted to make John come from assplay alone. Until now, he never has. But once the remote's pressed John has to come, whether he's being tongue-fucked into ecstasy or mocked by his captors. It's easier, John thinks, when he wants the inevitable to come. Easier when Rodney's pushing him over the edge and John can just give everything up and do nothing but feel, letting his thoughts white out, sparks of light in front of his eyes, a perfect stillness resting at the center of his trembling self.
"Hair trigger?" Rodney asks, sitting up and idly sliding his thumb inside John, tracing the ring of muscle with slow turns of his hand. John's dick jumps at the sudden jolt of pleasure, and John says something garbled, some breathless combination of fuck and you and me. And then Rodney shifts, saying "Oh" in sudden comprehension, and that's enough to bring John down fast.
"It doesn't mean you didn't make me want it," John says. He shoves the remote under the pillow for safekeeping as he rolls over to grab Rodney and pull him across his chest. Rodney's weight is familiar and the comforting sort of smothering. "I did." Rodney shifts so his legs are framing John's, rocking his hips, his dick hard and heavy alongside John's. John takes that as a tacit question. "I still want you to come in me."
"Except you just came," Rodney points out, nibbling along the line of John's shoulder until he hits the spot that makes John squirm, his stomach muscles tightening and his head tipping back. Rodney bites harder, and John's going to have a bruise in the morning, and he's going to have to keep his shirt zipped if he wants to hide it. Which he probably won't.
"I can come again," John says. "You want to know what my current record is for orgasms in a row?"
"No," Rodney says firmly, sounding repulsed. John tries to figure out if saying he didn't mean it like that would just be digging himself in deeper. "Do you think you can hold off with the instant self-gratification until I'm ready for you to come?"
And now John's experiencing the same deep, fundamental knee-jerk feeling of no. He bites his lips together and thinks his answer through. "Not today," he says, "but not because I don't trust you or I'm trying to thwart you or something. It just sucks, and - " John shrugs in frustration.
"And you need to be in control," Rodney finishes for him. It's close enough to what John feels that he grimaces in agreement and apology. "I can work with that."
As Rodney folds John up carefully and braces himself on John's folded knees, as he pushes his way into his body with the flush on his face spreading down over his shoulders, John floods with a terrifying fondness. He thinks this is why Rodney, for all his faults, for all the imperfections of their friendship, despite all the reasons that a relationship between them ought to be ridiculous - because for some inexplicable and probably stupid reason, they do keep working at this, long past the point where giving up would be easy and forgivable. He distracts himself with wondering if something like this can be considered love until Rodney pulls John's hips up and John needs to feel the hot pleasure of being fucked deep. He hits the button and practically levitates off the bed as everything snaps into sharp, unbearable focus. He comes nearly immediately, but it's okay, because Rodney follows right after, and holds John sloppy and tight afterward while their breathing synchronizes slow.
|=:~*~:=|
Following Sam's advice, John puts up a front of being cool and unfazed, not letting what happened affect him professionally. She promised him her support in getting him back to Atlantis, and Atlantis back to Pegasus; he just needs to maintain status quo. He accepts that he has to talk to the new therapist, who thankfully is a college football fan, and he deals with gossip mostly by not rising to it, even though word gets out that something was done to him.
John lets it slip in an easily-overheard confidence to Lorne that girls love tattoos. The rumor mill will hopefully take the bait and move on to a new target; Lorne knows exactly what John's playing at, even if he's not in possession of all the facts, either. He asks John, as they move out of earshot, if it's conversely true that tattoos love girls.
John's not about to come out to anyone in the military, especially now, but he appreciates the implicit support in Lorne's jibe. I know that he knows that I know is a time-honored, if stupid, Air Force tradition. He tells Lorne there's no reason to be jealous.
What John knows is that he wouldn't be half as cool without being able to hang out with Rodney nearly every night. He doesn't need to fake anything for Rodney, which is an incredible relief. John can be as sarcastic or snippy or furious as he wants to be, and Rodney will match him annoyance for annoyance, or teach him curses in Russian, or make John lie down for a backrub.
Either Rodney's a terrible masseur or John's no good at relaxing, but John's always just as tense after as before. He loves having Rodney's hands on him, though, and usually by the time Rodney starts bitching about cramps in his fingers they're both shirtless, and Rodney's hands are spanning John's waist, his thumbs rubbing speculatively under the elastic of John's underwear.
Rodney complains that he put months of work into researching what turns John on and now all his data has been invalidated. John says, just this side of ruthless, "Good. Keeps you on your toes."
Which puts him back in the position of being Rodney's ongoing experiment. Part of John wonders if he should find it creepy, but he gives himself permission to bask in the attention. He needs something in his life to go right; he needs touch even if he doesn't know how to accept it. He even needs the way Rodney treats John's symbiosis with his remote control as an intriguingly kinky puzzle. Back at the SGC, Lam told John the technology was probably very effective for erectile dysfunction; Rodney tells him that he finds it incredibly hot watching John push the button.
"Seriously, I got hard the other day when you were doing that PowerPoint thing with Woolsey," Rodney says, pulling John's pants off and dropping them beside the bed.
John grins. "It was a bunch of inventory spreadsheet data, McKay." He watches Rodney stand to slide his own pants down, and then wobble on one foot, then the other, yanking off his socks. Rodney's underpants follow.
Rodney drops onto the bed and picks up John's hand, giving it a shake. "Yes, and so boring no one was paying attention. Did you know you have the habit of rubbing your thumb under the clicker thing while you're talking, and then you twist your wrist around and click. Only sometimes you screw up and click past the slide you want - "
"Bite me," John says. He fucking hates PowerPoint; Woolsey adores it.
"And then you bite your lip and put the tip of your tongue just here," Rodney touches the center of John's top lip, "and get frustration lines between your eyes as you try to figure out how to click back, and it's like the hottest remote control handjob porn ever."
John gives him a half-hearted glare. He's safe now from accidental erections, but he knows he'll be thinking about Rodney at the next meeting, watching to see if he squirms, and being overly conscious of his hands and his mouth. Next week he's got his first presentation on information networking and trade relations in Pegasus since Atlantis slipped Earth's surly bondage. Maybe he can adjust the graphs, make them form subtly obscene curves. Rodney deserves it.
"I tell you what," John says, rolling onto his side so he can reach the sex drawer without getting up. He feels like being lazy. Maybe the massage worked this time. "I'll just lie here and you can fuck me, and -" he puts the remote on the bed - "you tell me when you want me to come."
Rodney pauses and then gets the tiny cat-smile that means he has a plan. Which is how John ends up on his back, hands on his stomach, with Rodney very slowly fucking his face, teasing him by pulling out as soon as John starts really getting into it. Rodney uses the hand holding his dick to trace John's lips with the head and John can only try and steal a lick, no matter how he stretches his neck. In the end it's easier just to say, "Give it here, I know you want it, come on."
"Who wants it?" Rodney asks, pulling his hand up slowly so the head of his dick's in the perfect place to be kissed. John kisses, with tongue, and Rodney's hips jerk forward inadvertently.
That makes it easier for John to say, "Me, okay, I'm trying to give you head, here, and I want your damn cock back in my mouth," and when Rodney runs his finger under John's lip, John adds, "Please."
Rodney slides his dick back in, right to the back of John's throat, nearly cutting off his air, and John arches and sucks and calls Rodney a jerk and an asshole and a cocktease. The words are muffled, but Rodney laughs breathlessly, and tells John to shut up, he loves it.
"Do not," John says, and sucks harder.
"Touch yourself," Rodney says, which isn't fair, because John wants to reach back and wrap his hands around Rodney's hips to pull him in and stop fucking teasing already.
But he figures the fastest way to get what he wants is to give Rodney a good show, so he slides one hand down to cup his balls and use the other to rub languid circles around his nipples, first one, then the other. It feels better for some reason when Rodney does this. Maybe next time, John thinks, finding the hot spot behind his balls and rubbing until he feels the electric tingle start to build up.
It would be so easy to reach over and throw the switch, and he wants to, and he knows Rodney wouldn't hold it against him, and he knows he won't, and he never knew frustration was as potent as arousal. He's practically shaking with need, trying to swallow Rodney's dick down like a porn star, screw his gag reflex.
"Coming," Rodney says. John thinks how unfair it is and sucks harder, tipping his head back. He tastes come and hears himself groan, and then Rodney pulls out, which is all kinds of wrong, except that he's still coming, painting John's mouth with it, and his cheeks, and there's come sliding down the line of John's jaw. He hears Rodney's ragged breathing above him, and opens his eyes carefully, reaching for him, finally getting his arms around him like he'd wanted.
"Please," John says again, forehead tucked against Rodney's hip, breathing in the smells of sweat and come.
"Yes," Rodney says, "yes, give me a minute here, and..." He shoves at John's shoulder, pushing him back to the center of the bed. John obligingly scoots, but he doesn't let go. "Can't make anything easy, can you?" Rodney says, tumbling down as if he's sure John's got him. Which John always does, but still. Rodney licks up John's throat, making a smug, contented noise, and then all around John's mouth, and finally settles into purposeful kisses that make John feel like he's been marked and claimed. There's a pleasure in that that kind of makes him want to squirm, press his body up flush to Rodney's, and simultaneously he kind of wants to run. Rodney pulls back and slides two fingers absently into John's mouth for him to suck. "Here," he says, and puts the remote into John's hand, curling John's fingers around it. "Let me just get settled in," and then Rodney moves down, sucking his nipples fast and hard before finally, finally getting to John's dick.
John's not hard, hasn't been hard, can't get hard, and Rodney's mouth closing over him feels more like being suckled than being sucked, the way John's playing with Rodney's fingers. But then Rodney pulls his fingers out and uses the wet tips to circle John's hole, and at the same time says, only a little muffled, "Click."
And the second John hits the button Rodney's fingers slip inside and his dick fills into Rodney's mouth, and John feels like he's being fucked apart, unable to move without sparking off unbearable pleasure. He's desperate, shouting with it, unable to be still. Rodney's hand around the base of his dick is jacking him hard into Rodney's mouth, and the way that tugs the staples in John's skin feels like the low deep throb of a vibrator, shockingly unexpected. John twists, but he can't get away. Then there are more fingers in his ass stretching him to his limit, and he's slammed back into the mattress with the force of an orgasm that turns him inside out and hits him in wave after wave until he's too limp to do more than jerk when Rodney finally pulls his fingers out, and lets John slide free from his mouth.
Rodney says something, but John's too far away to figure out what. He feels Rodney get up and move away, and doesn't like that, but then Rodney's back with a handful of wet wipes. John's not exactly asleep, but waking up's far too much of a bother, so he just shifts over to make room for Rodney on the bed. He's far too lazy to ask Rodney to stay the night, but Rodney seems to understand anyway. Rodney fusses with the pillows and John puts his hand on Rodney's stomach. When he finally manages to open his eyes, morning light is spilling from the windows across the floor, making a halo of Rodney's tousled hair.
John feels the way he does after a day of surfing: deeply and satisfyingly calm inside, and aching in unexpected places that he only discovers when he moves. He stretches as he pads to the bathroom and his shoulders crack, twice on both sides. In the mirror, he sees that he's still got come in his hair, and there are finger-bruises on his collarbone which he doesn't remember getting. His nipples... well, he's done a lot worse to them surfing shirtless, but Rodney could learn to use his teeth less. Maybe.
John decides that a shower's definitely called for, and finds himself whistling through his teeth as he lathers up. It's a beautiful day, he just got laid. What more could a guy want?
|=:~*~:=|
"So," John says, holding the cottage door open for Rodney, who dumps his cooler box - the smaller, lighter one - on the floor and rubs his shoulders. John rolls his eyes pointedly and puts his down next to it, then takes a quick walk around the main room, throwing open the shutters to let the sea breeze in.
The room is bright and airy, with solar-powered ceiling fans that make the Athosian curtains glitter as they dance in the breeze. It's one of John's favorite places in any galaxy. Rodney sets his backpack on the dining table and looks at John expectantly. John realizes suddenly that any attempt he makes to look cool and calm will be defeated by his madras shorts. They hadn't looked nearly so pink when he bought them, years ago. Maybe, he thinks, they faded over the past four years, or maybe it's the glow that the tropical sun gives everything.
He swings his duffel around, unzips, and digs out the shock-resistant carrying case Rodney built him for the remote. He hands it over to Rodney, meeting his eyes for just a moment before needing to look away. "You should hang onto that."
Rodney doesn't say anything immediately, and John drums his fingers on the side of his bag.
"If you never gave this to me, that would be okay," Rodney says abruptly, and sets the case down on the table.
John does not make a grab for it, but he doesn't think Rodney can blame him for twitching.
"And any time you want it back," Rodney goes on, and moves into John's space with an intensity that's practically belligerent, "just ask." He taps a finger back and forth between John's chest and his own. "I trust you to be able to do that."
It feels strangely counter-intuitive for John to know that he can hurt Rodney by giving him this. The whole remote-controlled dick thing was his torture, after all; but he understands that Rodney doesn't want to be a part of that, not purposefully and especially not inadvertently. Rodney's trust... feels a lot like some other emotion he's lucky enough to be given. "You're not going to make me come while I'm out surfing," John points out, sweetly reasonable.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Yes, no, I've never thought I'd do my best work while distracted by the hideous guilt of having caused you to suffer head trauma and drown."
"You're not going to make me come in front of other people," John goes on. "Or when I'm building a fire, or using power tools." He can count on one hand the number of times he said make me come in the first forty years of his life; he says it to Rodney so much now that it nearly sounds mundane.
"I let you stick power tools in my brain," Rodney says, and pokes John in the forehead, in a spot mirroring his own Black and Decker surgery scar.
"So it's okay," John says, and shrugs. Rodney pokes him again, and then slings his arm around John's shoulders like they're co-conspirators. "You've got me all weekend; do what you will."
"Hm," Rodney says, as if dubious, but he puts his free hand thoughtfully over the remote case, stroking the side with his thumb. John finds that gut-wrenchingly sexy. "I suppose... I can do that."
"Please," John says, and smiles. Then, because he's worried about all the things Rodney can probably read on his face, he leans in for a kiss, hands going around Rodney's waist.
It's like the perfect ending to a romantic movie, up until Rodney's stomach growls and he pulls away to stare meaningfully into John's eyes and announce that unless someone makes him lunch right now he's going to die.
John rolls his eyes but goes out to fire up the Barbecue of Death that Rodney engineered for Ronon, because apparently well-charred meat was a Satedan delicacy. Kanaan packed both coolers full of delicious food for their weekend - John's paying him in weeks of babysitting hours - and John grills up Athosian sausage and vegetable pies, and snugs wet-leaf wrapped parcels in to steam for dinner. They're going to need the energy, he hopes.
Rodney's plan seems to be to have sex everywhere at least twice, including the front deck and From Here to Eternity-style on the beach. There's no discernible pattern, as far as John can see. It's more like a kid with a bag full of Halloween candy having the epiphany that he can eat it all. By the second day John's not even bothering to wear more than his boxers, because Rodney's likely to look up from his laptop at any given second and say, "I just realized Schmidt's theories are completely wrong, take off those stupid shorts and let me suck your dick," or pause in the act of giving John another layer of sunblock to announce that it also makes very good lube.
John has no idea when or if he'll be allowed to come; it's weird, but he finds it relaxing, almost freeing. He trusts Rodney. And when John's been pushed over the edge and is in freefall, when Rodney's solid weight is holding him down, the quiet murmur of, "One more, for me" sends him to a quiet, perfect place in his head where everything that he loves in the world Rodney gives to him. He knows it like the truth, so he's not really surprised when he wakes from a nap in the beach sun-shelter with Rodney and the words slip out, his finger tracing Rodney's lower lip.
"You know I love you, right?"
Rodney puts a hand on John's forehead, like he's concerned about sunstroke, and produces a thermos of water. "Stay hydrated," he says, and then, smiling like he can't help himself, "I've known for years."
John's not sure when he started feeling like this, but hey, Rodney might be right, what does he know? He leans over for a kiss, tasting sunblock and salt water.
"And just in case," Rodney says, between kisses, draping his leg over John's to shift closer, "you haven't figured it out, I love you, too."
John feels his face go hot; maybe Rodney was right about the sun. "Who wouldn't?" he replies anyway, and wraps his arms around Rodney, and holds on.
|=:~*~:=|
**
Poll
Author: busaikko
Team: Space
Prompt: under the sun
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 9,749
Warnings: (highlight to reveal) torture: non-consensual body modification
Contains: (highlight to reveal) orgasm control
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: John returns from a mission remote-controlled.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the prompt in the header above.
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**
For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy or there is none.
If there be one, seek till you find it; If there be none, never mind it.
|=:~*~:=|
John wakes up in a windowless room full of bleeping monitors and ominous-looking machines. The walls are decorated with faded and ragged public-health posters - John doesn't need to know how to read alien to recognize a food pyramid and a healthy-looking cartoon colon. He has to look up at everything, which is worrying, because it's not the infirmary on Atlantis, and he's strapped immobile on a bed in the center of a medlab.
The last thing he remembers is running hard. His head aches and he's seeing halos around the lights, consistent with being stunned, and he guesses the people who ambushed his team brought him here. He may have the wrong impression - maybe they're swell folks - but the restraints make him suspect they don't have good intentions.
He tries to sit up as far as he can, and is utterly unprepared to slam into a wall of pain. He drops back, limp and dazed as he pants through it, and thinks about how utterly fucked he is.
|=:~*~:=|
"Hey, Rodney," John says, leaning in the doorway to Rodney's room. Leaning allows him to look casual in a way he doesn't feel, and it usually bugs the heck out of Rodney. Win-win. "I've got next weekend off - let's go to the beach."
"I don't talk to people who can't commit to one side of a door or the other," Rodney says, not even looking up from where he's meticulously sorting his laundry. There aren't many members of the original expedition left, but they're all instantly identifiable by their inability to throw away clothing that's not on its absolute last legs.
"Nice bathrobe, McKay," John says, wandering in, waving at the door-closer, and shoving his hands into his pockets. Rodney probably put off doing laundry for too long; under his ratty blue bathrobe John sees an awful lot of skin. The belt's tied loosely and the front gapes open, and Rodney doesn't seem to care.
"The beach?" Rodney retorts. He holds up one sock that's so thin the morning light from his window goes right through it. "That ridiculous planet you and Ronon go to for surfing and sunburns?"
"Like you don't have a timeshare in the team cottage," John says, smiling as he pictures it in his head. "Home away from home."
Right after Atlantis returned from Earth, Ronon had proposed making a nice place where Teyla and Kanaan could bring Torren, and their plans escalated from constructing a platform tent to weeks spent creating a Satedan-style dacha. John kind of suspects Ronon was using carpentry as a way of helping John out, but the cottage is gorgeous, a great place to hang out. The gate's only an hour's hike away, and the ocean's just beyond the dunes. John loves falling asleep to the sound of the waves, and he's fairly sure Rodney does, too.
"Ronon says no one's using it until the nineteenth," John cajoles, raising an eyebrow. "Come on."
Rodney goes back to folding laundry, hands brisk with his collection of faded t-shirts. "Fine. Whatever."
John's not sure what to make of that, whether to take victory at face value and gloat, or worry that Rodney caved too fast.
Rodney snaps his last shirt tidy and carries the pile over to plop unceremoniously in a drawer. He scowls at it, as if somehow his laundry's let him down, and shoves the drawer shut with a quick look over at John. His mouth quirks up at the corner, wry.
"Did you ask for the time off, or did your therapist overlord think you needed a break?"
John freezes for a moment, unable to reply, feeling like a car hitting black ice at high speed.
"Hug," Rodney says, and walks over to give John one of his comprehensive embraces. He's not one for gingerly resting palms on shoulders; Rodney hugs with his arms and his chest and his breathing. John always finds it somewhat alarming how quickly his body reacts, zipping past an initial startle reflex into a powerful urge to rest his head on Rodney's shoulder. Rodney doesn't expect John to hug back and doesn't seem to care if he can't; that makes it easier for John to accept the comfort without feeling like he's failed somehow. Which in turn means that these days, most of the time he finds himself hugging back without any recall of agonizing over whether he should or could.
It's weird. He flinches away from the idea that Rodney's training him; he doesn't think he could live with that. But when he managed to explain this one night, with crappy metaphors accompanied by manic pacing, Rodney had frowned and said it wasn't like that at all.
"It's one of our trust things," Rodney had explained. "I admit that trusting someone with your life and health and safety and sanity first, and with sex and touching second is probably opposite to the norm." He gave John an exasperated look. "I never said I liked you because you're normal."
"Oh," John had said, relieved for a moment, before he realized that was equally terrifying, just in different ways. "I never get this stuff right," he warned.
Rodney had shrugged. "Probably. I have contingency plans for when that happens, don't worry."
John worries anyway, but thinking of Rodney as his safety net makes him grin.
So here he is, relaxing into a hug, letting his forehead settle on Rodney's shoulder and his hands on Rodney's back, and he feels pretty good. Happy to be here, happy to be going to the beach.
"If you don't have plans tonight, we could just do this," he says, rubbing his cheek against the threadbare warmth of Rodney's ugly bathrobe.
"Then you're overdressed," Rodney says, and slides one hand up to scratch John's scalp idly. "I expect you to lie around in nothing but revealing swimwear when we're on vacation. In the shade, of course. Possibly sipping a mixed fruit drink through a novelty straw."
"Whatever turns you on," John says, and yawns.
Rodney walks him backwards towards the bed, where he topples John over and removes his pants. John grabs Rodney by the terry-cloth belt and reels him in, only loosening his hold when Rodney stretches to turn the lights off.
"I asked Woolsey for a few days," John says. He settles into a position that's become habitual, one leg over Rodney's, swapping the flat pillow for the comfortable one, walking his fingers up until he finds Rodney's face and kisses him, lazy and sloppy and content. "Neither of us has had a day off since Atlantis arrived back in Pegasus."
"Wraith," Rodney mumbles, his mouth on John's chin. "ZPM, secret labs, spaceships."
"But that's just another day at the office," John says, and Rodney laughs, because even if the joke's years old, it never stops being true.
|=:~*~:=|
John comes out to Rodney way back when Rodney's starting to date Katie Brown. John has just figured out that they are friends as well as teammates and colleagues, and Rodney is going out of his way to be painfully nice through John's recovery from being mutated into a bug. When he thinks back on that evening, John always remembers the way his hands look, like he was wearing a monster suit, inhuman. Rodney plays endless games of video golf with him, and he's so bad at it that John sometimes wins despite how clumsy his hands make him.
John's lying on Rodney's floor - its coolness allays his elevated body temperature - with his arm wrapped around a bag of Doritos. Rodney pauses the game to lean over and grab a handful, and John's so glad not to be treated like a security risk or a freak.
"You know I'm not straight, right?" John says, and twists a little around so he can see Rodney's face. "I mean, I guess you and your brain figured it out a long time ago, but I just thought, you should know."
Rodney's chewing fast through his mouthful of chips, so John snags a bottle of water from the end table and tosses it to him in a slow underhand. Rodney fumbles the bottle but doesn't drop it, and manages to wash the chips down without choking to death.
"Why?" is the first thing Rodney says, and then he waves his own question aside. "I mean, why are you telling me?" He narrows his eyes. "Just because Katie and I like a little light kink on the side, does not mean we're in the market for a threesome. Cadman was bad enough."
"McKay," John protests, sitting up and pointedly moving his chips out of Rodney's reach. "I don't want to hear about your sex life. Ever."
Rodney's expression becomes both knowing and infuriatingly smug. "So you're closeted and repressed?" He nudges John's hip with his foot. "Didn't anyone tell you Hayes repealed the anti-gay regulations for the US military right after he found out about the Stargate?" Rodney asks, amused. "I seem to recall parties. Also cynical theories about how he was going to start a gay draft."
John raises his hand and one eyebrow. "Send all the queers on a one-way trip off-planet?"
Rodney snorts. "Except no one knows about you - do they? I didn't," he adds, though John can tell the admission costs him.
John picks up his game controller, wiping Doritos dust off onto his pants. "I just annoyed the right people once too often."
"A talent of yours," Rodney agrees. He studies John in a way that makes him uncomfortably aware of a keen intelligence with him as its sole focus; John gets the feeling that Rodney's seeing through more than the residual bugginess, seeing John in a way only a very few people do. "If you ever want to talk, you can," he says abruptly. "Okay, you don't want to hear about the spanking or anything else kinky, and I get that, but it's something I don't broadcast, because of people thinking the things they do think, so in that sense I get where you're coming from."
"Great," John says, not able to keep sarcasm out of his tone, and restarts the game.
He loses badly, and after the second game Rodney sighs like a martyr and says, "Go on, I know not asking is just killing you inside."
John hopes a blush isn't visible on his gray bug-skin. "So, who spanks who?" he asks, and then adds, quickly, "Never mind."
Rodney tells him anyway; he makes it sound kind of fun.
|=:~*~:=|
What happens is this.
Atlantis gets cleared to go home to Pegasus. In a few months. John's over-the-moon thrilled but knows better than to give himself away. The SGC keeps asking him to do this or that or the other thing, and he's happy to oblige. There's no guarantee that John will be sent back with Atlantis. Being a team player is important. He knows how to do team, even knows how to not screw up. Toe the line. Say yes.
Rodney's not thrilled about all the time John's asked to spend in Colorado, but he never complains in front of people who are just looking for an excuse to sink John like a stone in a deep lake. Landry makes it very clear John's not his favorite person. To be fair, Jennifer Keller's moved in with Landry's daughter, leading to rumors about nanotechnological breakthroughs, and probably paternal headaches. Landry's year-to-date sucks; John gets that. He keeps his face straight and hopes Landry realizes not sending John back to Pegasus might mean getting stuck with him as a subordinate. To keep John out of his hair and his base, Landry sends him out with one gate team after the next. John sees the sights of the Milky Way galaxy; he gets souvenir t-shirts from planets which have evolved tourist industries and sends them to Torren.
Thirty-six days before John's anticipating settling into the control chair for lift-off, his routine mission to escort inspectors to one of the Icarus Base supply sites is attacked. John thinks his people got through the Stargate before it was shut down; in the sudden chaos of battle, keeping track of the civilians was hard. Their training's pretty bad, and he plans to file complaints when he gets back.
If he gets back. The Stargate shuts down with John still planet-side, and he does what he can to blow up everything the Lucian Alliance shouldn't get their hands on, assuming that's who he's dealing with. He expects the SGC to send someone to get him, any minute now. Except ten minutes go by, and then twenty by his watch, and John's finding it harder and harder to stay ahead of the enemy.
He gets stunned just after taking out the tech tents. It feels the way he imagines a Taser would, a lot of sharp electric pain coupled with immobility and collapse. He wishes he could pass out right up until he does.
He wakes up on a cot, in pain.
|=:~*~:=|
Jennifer dumps Rodney a week after arriving back on Earth. She's got fabulous research opportunities at the SGC and Area 51, her university wants her back to give guest lectures, and Carolyn Lam's trying to recruit her into continuing Poole's work with medical nanites, or so John hears through the grapevine. When she and Rodney were on Earth together the last time, apparently Jennifer spent half the time networking, and it paid off big-time. She tells Rodney she doesn't want to be cruel, but she has to know if she has what it takes to be at the top of her profession, and it wouldn't be fair to Rodney to put him in a distant second place.
Rodney's quiet about the break-up. It makes John feel like he has to do something. He watches a romcom and asks Teyla for advice, and brings a whole cooler of beer with him when he goes to Rodney's quarters.
The first six-pack is gone by the time John broaches the subject of Jennifer, generic condolences and platitudes stumbling alien off his tongue. He's crap at this. He shoves one of Rodney's very expensive pillows up against the wall and slouches backwards on his elbows, remembering at the last second not to spill beer all over the bed.
Rodney doesn't seem to notice. "I can't even be angry," he says morosely. "I'm really happy for her. Atlantis gave her this weird self-esteem thing, and I kept telling her she was a smart cookie. She's happy. The SGC's going to let her publish some of her research."
John hopes Rodney never, ever calls him a smart cookie, and says, "I'm angry at her for hurting you." He doesn't mean to be honest and hopes he can blame the beer in the morning. "But people make choices. Sometimes... it sucks knowing you can do the right thing or you can be with... someone... but you can't have both?" He gets a flashback to the romantic comedy, when the woman with disastrous dates was comforted by her sassy, flamboyantly gay best friend. He wonders what Rodney would say if John came out with But she just wasn't that into you, honey. John would totally deserve to get punched for that, he decides, and then realizes that he's smirking to himself like a dope. His tolerance for alcohol is shot these days.
"Hm," Rodney says, and squints down at John like he's trying to stop his eyes from blurring. So drunk, John thinks, glad it's not just him, and then Rodney says, "And you'd know something about that."
John doesn't get it at first, and then he does. He thinks about pointing out that gay best friends never get happy endings in the movies. In fact, most of them end up dead, so he's cool with his sacrifices. He gets to fly spaceships; he doesn't mind going steady with his right hand.
"You're a good friend," John tells Rodney. He sloshes his beercan, tired of hanging onto it. "You're smart and funny and you can generally hit the target you're aiming for. Which is great," John enthuses, warming to the topic. "Because otherwise, you know, everyone'd be dead."
Rodney plucks John's beer out of his hand very gently and sets it down on the bedside table. "You've saved my life a few times over."
John points at him. "You don't give up." he says, and frowns. Apparently his advice has devolved to quoting old pop songs. "You've got to be you." And he can't stop.
"The only person you leave behind is yourself," Rodney says, and looks at John like that makes him sad. "Don't think I never noticed."
John shrugs. "I'm happy," he says, and thinks about all the fun things that single people get to do that he should totally tell Rodney about. Who needs a girlfriend when you can eat potato chips in bed? For breakfast, even.
"Yeah," Rodney says, and snorts. "That's how I think of you, a happy little ray of sunshine."
John smacks him in the thigh with the back of his hand, and Rodney grabs his wrist, using his weight to pin it to the mattress. John's startled into laughter, the pillow catching his head as he topples backwards. He knows many ways to break the hold, but he's content to let Rodney think he's won.
And then Rodney shifts around, still holding John's wrist down but now climbing on top of him and before John can process whether this is wrestling or something else, maybe yoga, Rodney uses his free hand to tug John's head back by the hair, and kisses him.
Rodney doesn't hesitate at all; he kisses John like a force of nature, and it's all John can do to hang on, open his mouth to Rodney's, and try not to be obvious about grinding himself against Rodney's thigh.
He distinctly remembers, later, being shocked that two drunk middle-aged men got each other so hard, so fast. He remembers sweating through his t-shirt, and his hand on Rodney's ass, and Rodney trying to get his dick out before he came but refusing to break off the kiss, and how John felt Rodney's come mix with the sweat on the bare skin of his stomach where his shirt had ridden up. He remembers being breathless with need, and frantic at being held down, and groaning when orgasm hit like a motherfucking freight train. John twisted around so much Rodney pulled his hair inadvertently.
"What the hell was that?" John gets out when he's capable of speech again.
Rodney grins, smug and sated. "I made you come," he says, obviously full of himself, and then he kisses John again. And John melts into the kiss, drinking Rodney in like he just found water after hiking through a desert.
A lot later, when he's strapped down in the medlab, John remembers this conversation with weird clarity, and wonders if it was foreshadowing, or if the universe is only random chaos that just seems sometimes to mimic literary devices.
In the morning, John wakes naked, tangled with Rodney and cotton-mouthed. He goes to the bathroom, drinks four cups of water fast, pisses, splashes his face just in case that makes things any clearer, and ventures back to look for his underwear.
He's all set to give Rodney excuses when he sees he's awake, to say they were drunk and Rodney was lonely, but John's curious. He has to ask what possessed Rodney to jump him now.
"Because I realized you were never going to act on your feelings beyond vague hints about choices," Rodney says, hanging a set of quotes in the air with crooked fingers. "And I've known how you felt for years but it was that thing we never talked about, because of friendship." He shrugs. "Obviously, dating people who aren't friends didn't work. And you were stretched out like a pin-up model, and I... I thought it was time." He coughs. "Go get me some water."
John goes and gets, because it seems easier than arguing. This time, looking at his reflection, he sees the bite-mark on his shoulder. He pokes it with a finger; it hurts just like any other bruise.
John wonders about spanking, if that's something Rodney only does with women. He had no idea that Rodney was bi. He takes Rodney his water and thinks about what a bad idea it is to sleep with someone on his team. He thinks about Jennifer breaking things off quickly, as soon as she knew it was over, and not letting an impossible situation drag out and accumulate bitterness and resentment over months and years. That's a good way to do it, he thinks. Better than what he did to Nancy.
John tells Rodney that they can have sex, sure, but he's not in the market for a relationship, and Rodney says, fine, great, suck my dick. John does, and Rodney returns the favor, and when John leaves Rodney's quarters after missing breakfast, he's happier than he's been since Atlantis landed on Earth. He doesn't tell Rodney, who'd just get the wrong idea. Again.
|=:~*~:=|
His captors show him a metal box, like a couple of Sucrets tins welded together badly. "We put you in the surgery," one of them says, pointing to the thing in the corner John'd assumed was a CAT scanner-type thing. He makes a nasty, suggestive snipping gesture in the air, which John doesn't understand, and then the stubby guy in front takes the metal box, slides a covering panel to the side, and presses the exposed button firmly.
John gets hard immediately. He gulps in air, vision blurring with pain and sudden unwanted pleasure, and a few minutes later he's coming all over himself.
He can't comprehend what just happened. His captors make him come four more times in a row, which is impossible. By the time they wander off laughing, he's sunk into a small red world of pain.
He doesn't try to get up, snap the restraints, make a break for it. He thinks his odds suck. His mind's going like a hamster on a wheel, thinking about how bad this is. Anticipation is one of the key components of torture, and everything he anticipates he's afraid of. He recognizes that his captors know what they're doing: demonstrate what they have the power to do to him, and give him plenty of time for the fear to saturate his every thought. He really dislikes the implications.
His time-sense is screwy; he thinks he hasn't been here longer than a day or two. They feed him a nasty kind of vegetable gruel, sometimes. He gets occasional toilet breaks; the first time he's able to get a hand on his junk and knows it's all there, the relief is overwhelming, even though it hurts to trace the faint, clean surgical scars, looking for and not finding any infection or gangrene or open wounds. But he learns fast enough that afterward, he can expect to be strapped back down for another round of being shown that he's no longer in control of his dick.
When he wakes from a doze to the sound of gunfire he's flooded with relief-fueled adrenaline. He stuffs the pain down and tells himself he's ready to run as soon as - oh, thank God - Cam Mitchell bangs through the door.
"Nice vacation spot you picked," Cam says, executing a neat stop-and-block in the doorway. John tries to give him a smile and fails. Cam's eyes are sharp, giving John a head to toe inspection, taking everything in, and he turns his head to say over his shoulder, barely audible but firm, If you ladies could give us a minute. Then facing John again, he asks, "You okay? Think you can make it as far as the transport rings?"
"Yeah," John says, no fucking idea how far a walk Cam's talking about but not caring. Cam shrugs. He unbuckles the restraints, and John immediately feels more in control, even if he can't quite bring himself to sit up yet. Cam finds John's clothes in a box under the cot and dresses him, which should be humiliating but isn't, not even when Cam uses John's worn black tee to wipe him clean before helping John into underwear and BDUs.
Cam hauls John up to sitting, and then pulls him onto his feet, John clinging to him for balance, sucking breath through his teeth.
"Hey, slow dancing," Cam says, close by John's ear. "We'll go paint the town when we get home."
"I'm taken," John says, his brain running too slow to understand that Cam's just joking and hasn't really decided that a torture chamber's a good place to hit on him.
"Pity," Cam replies anyway, and then taps his radio to call Sam and Vala.
John has a moment of terror that the wireless radio's going to make him come in his pants, and then the more realistic fear dawns on him. He needs to bring the remote with him because maybe if it gets left behind he's never going to come again, and he hopes to God Sam can fix him before he has to try and explain all this to Rodney.
"It's been a lovely rescue mission," Vala says, walking in heavily armed, brightly rude, "but we really do need to be going. I'm bored." Sam, behind her, gives John a roll of her eyes, wry but not sympathetic; she's showing him her professional face, as a kindness.
"I need you to find something for me," John tells Vala, because he's heard things about her light fingers. And he must look like crap, because she does just that, and hands the remote over without one single suggestive comment.
|=:~*~:=|
John doesn't want to tell Rodney what happened, but lying's only an option if he's planning on... breaking up, or whatever you call it when you go back to being friends without side benefits. Plus, John's already living with one secret - he plans on never telling Rodney that they only slept together the first time because of Rodney taking John's crappy sucks-to-be-dumped speech as a declaration of unrequited love - and that's his quota.
So the first time he's alone in his quarters with Rodney after checking out of the SGC infirmary, he leans back against the desk, crosses his arms over his chest, and rattles out the three sentences he's been practicing: They used alien surgical tech to wire my dick to a remote control. Dr Lam says reversing the process could cause permanent disability. I maybe won't ever be able to come again without flipping a switch.
Rodney sits down on the bed hard, but thankfully gives John a minute of consideration before nodding decisively. "Okay. I can work with that. Only if you want to, of course." He takes a breath and huffs it out in a frustrated-sounding sigh. "I know they didn't do that to you because you replied to their spam ad for alien Viagra. It wasn't misguided altruism: they tortured you."
This is the part that makes John squirm with embarrassment and vulnerability, and it makes his answer aggressively short. "They made me come. A lot." Rodney gives him the thesis-advisor stare, warning John that he's not going to deal with theatrics. John's hands have curled, clutching fistfuls of his shirt at his sides tightly, but he loosens one hand to scrub wearily at his hair. "Just to show me what they could do. They would have tried to get me to talk, or humiliated me publicly, I don't know. Trained me like Pavlov's dog. They could have, maybe. It hurt like fuck, waking up after the surgery, but as soon as they hit the switch I wanted it."
Rodney looks abstracted, like he's trying to solve a problem in his head. "I asked Sam, but she said, blah blah confidentiality, something about respecting your boundaries, dire hints about me not destroying your career - speaking in code. I didn't understand at all. Can I see?"
John flinches. "You have to promise not to touch the button." Carter assured him that she has the schematics and can probably make him a replacement if he needs one, but for now John can't help being overprotective, thinking of the remote as the entire future of his sex life.
Rodney boggles for a second, and then his mouth twists into a rueful smile. "You, John. I want to see what they did to you. Your dick, I guess."
John can feel his face getting hot. He just hopes it doesn't show. "There's, ah. Not much to show. Most of the bruising's gone, and the... wiring stuff's inside." He jerks a shoulder, trying to look diffident. "There are a couple of staples Lam didn't think she should try removing."
"Cool," Rodney says, voice completely flat, the way he always sounds when John's trying to impress him with something dorky. "Not exactly the nipple rings of my dreams, but I guess that's just the risk of the body modification sweepstakes."
"Yeah, but the US government's letting me keep these," John argues, feeling a little lighter. He reaches for his belt and finds that he's almost smiling.
"Come over here," Rodney says. John goes and is rewarded with a lot of slow, life-affirming kissing while Rodney strips him slowly and arranges him on the bed. Rodney takes greedy wet bites of John's skin all down his throat and sucks at John's nipples to demonstrate just why he thinks they're good candidates for piercing.
"Rings'd probably rip out my hair," John says, shutting Rodney down. "And that doesn't feel like foreplay, which kind of freaks me out."
Rodney raises his head and for a moment John thinks he sees on Rodney's face everything that he's been so grateful Rodney's hiding. Fear, or anger, or sympathy, maybe grief; Rodney apparently hadn't got the news John was missing until he was already safe in the SGC infirmary, but he'd decided it was best for John for him to stay away. John's got guilt about that. But Rodney's expression morphs easily into familiar, comfortable annoyance, which John finds easier to live with.
"Right," Rodney says, and gives John a last lingering kiss before sitting up. He wraps one hand warm around John's wrist, just below his watchband, and John reaches up to grasp Rodney's wrist. One of their better brothers-in-dorkiness moves, John thinks. Very Lord of the Rings, or whatever. "Show me this chastity device of yours."
When he started sleeping with Rodney, John worried about Rodney's thing for kink, and the strong possibility that he was going to be boring to Rodney in bed, comparatively. He'd seen videos, he told Rodney, hoping he didn't need to go into detail. Rodney laughed at him and asked if John'd ever fucked someone in front of a mirror; which, okay, yeah, but everyone does that. One whole wall of John and Nancy's honeymoon suite had been mirrored.
"The hot tub was awesome, too," John had added, trying to make Rodney back off. But Rodney just gave John a raised eyebrow; a moment later, John put together that Rodney had both a hot tub and a huge full-length mirror.
"Kinks are just the things that do it for you and the things you like to imagine doing," Rodney said. "I try to keep an open mind."
John's learned that Rodney has a set of things that do it for him. He likes leaving bruises where they peek out from under John's cuffs and collar, easy enough to pass off as work-related, except for when John glimpses one in a mirror and remembers. Rodney doesn't turn John over his knee and spank him, but he's quick with an impatient slap to John's ass during sex, which John finds makes him surprisingly unembarrassed about being vocal.
But Rodney also likes trying new things out, experimenting, shaking things up. John's learned how to say no, which makes it easier to say we'll try it once, okay and - sometimes - this is what I like.
So now John says, "Sure," and spreads his legs. It's different, he tells himself, from being strapped down in the medlab, or even from Dr Lam telling him to scoot until his feet settle in the stirrups and his ass feels like it's hanging off the end of the bed. This is Rodney, who's had his mouth on John's cock for some of the most mindblowing orgasms of his life, who put in the effort to learn just exactly how John likes his balls sucked and hardly complains at all about hair in his teeth.
Rodney looks at John's crotch, getting the lay of things, and then slides his fingers down from John's hip to trace one of the restraint bruises that's faded to a band of greenish-yellow. John's hair down there had all been trimmed to three-day stubble length and is taking its time about growing back; even so, when he looks at himself he doesn't see anything that different, beneath the bruises. It's just that the kind of touching which used to make his dick stir doesn't do it for him anymore.
Which is a pity, he thinks, propping himself up on his elbows to watch Rodney study his dick, flipping it up to examine the underside and the hair-fine surgical scars there. Rodney runs his thumb along the line of staples, which are made of the same tough synthetic polymer that comprises most of John's new implant. His dick won't set off security systems, he supposes; not on Earth, anyway.
He shares this insight with Rodney, whose expression has clouded over. Rodney doesn't laugh, just gives John a roll of his eyes and then crosses to the desk to grab a marker. "Can I?" he asks, waving it like a baton.
"Go for it," John says, magnanimous.
Rodney leans in, holds John's dick carefully in his left hand, and writes something carefully above and below the staples. Rodney inspects his work, touches it up in two places, and then tosses the marker across the room, where it skids under the bookcase. John trusts Rodney not to have written his name - plus he figures his dick's not big enough for the full glory of the McKay signature - but he's going to pretend that's what it says. He'll ask later.
"You should fuck me," John announces, and sits up to sling an arm around Rodney's shoulders, drags him down into a dirty kiss.
"Is that okay?" Rodney asks, pulling back. "What do your doctors say?" John's sick of being hijacked by random emotions, and he pushes down the wave of red anger that washes over him. Rodney can read him, though, and he puts a hand on John's hip, pressing down hard enough to get John's attention. "Your body, your rules, I get that, but I... really don't want to hurt you today."
"Then give me what I want," John gets out, even though he's practically clenching his jaw.
"Fine," Rodney says. "If you're going to be an asshole about it," and he slaps John on the hip. It doesn't have the usual sting, but John rolls over anyway. He doesn't even think until Rodney's yanking open the sex drawer, and even before John can compose some kind of formal introduction, Rodney goes, "Hm," and sets the remote down right next to John's hand. "I guess you'll need this," he says, and then dangles a dental dam pack and the lube in John's line of sight. "And I'll need this."
Rodney's incredibly good at rimming, but he usually saves his talent up for special occasions, or times when he thinks John can be persuaded into something via mind-melting sex. John's not led that easily by his dick, but Rodney tonguing his ass tends to reduce him to begging and swearing, dropping his shoulders to the bed so he can reach back and hold himself open, full-body shaking and panting like he's running for his life. He loves it.
And today it's completely different. John's aware of the pleasure building, little electric jolts that still feel good enough that he tries to rock back against Rodney's mouth and groans protest when Rodney's strong hands hold him still. But it's like he's in a different country and doesn't understand the language. He's straining for the gears of comprehension to engage, and they don't. He curls his hand around the remote, and without thinking slides the safety panel to the side and presses the button down all the way.
His dick gets hard immediately, and suddenly he's exactly where he wants to be. His shoulders flex and he grabs the sheets in both fists, smothering a shout as best he can, but failing; Rodney leaves off the maddening game of teasing John's hole with quick little dips with the point of his tongue to say, "Ha." John'll give him that, he'll give Rodney anything if he only doesn't stop ever again.
Rodney's always wanted to make John come from assplay alone. Until now, he never has. But once the remote's pressed John has to come, whether he's being tongue-fucked into ecstasy or mocked by his captors. It's easier, John thinks, when he wants the inevitable to come. Easier when Rodney's pushing him over the edge and John can just give everything up and do nothing but feel, letting his thoughts white out, sparks of light in front of his eyes, a perfect stillness resting at the center of his trembling self.
"Hair trigger?" Rodney asks, sitting up and idly sliding his thumb inside John, tracing the ring of muscle with slow turns of his hand. John's dick jumps at the sudden jolt of pleasure, and John says something garbled, some breathless combination of fuck and you and me. And then Rodney shifts, saying "Oh" in sudden comprehension, and that's enough to bring John down fast.
"It doesn't mean you didn't make me want it," John says. He shoves the remote under the pillow for safekeeping as he rolls over to grab Rodney and pull him across his chest. Rodney's weight is familiar and the comforting sort of smothering. "I did." Rodney shifts so his legs are framing John's, rocking his hips, his dick hard and heavy alongside John's. John takes that as a tacit question. "I still want you to come in me."
"Except you just came," Rodney points out, nibbling along the line of John's shoulder until he hits the spot that makes John squirm, his stomach muscles tightening and his head tipping back. Rodney bites harder, and John's going to have a bruise in the morning, and he's going to have to keep his shirt zipped if he wants to hide it. Which he probably won't.
"I can come again," John says. "You want to know what my current record is for orgasms in a row?"
"No," Rodney says firmly, sounding repulsed. John tries to figure out if saying he didn't mean it like that would just be digging himself in deeper. "Do you think you can hold off with the instant self-gratification until I'm ready for you to come?"
And now John's experiencing the same deep, fundamental knee-jerk feeling of no. He bites his lips together and thinks his answer through. "Not today," he says, "but not because I don't trust you or I'm trying to thwart you or something. It just sucks, and - " John shrugs in frustration.
"And you need to be in control," Rodney finishes for him. It's close enough to what John feels that he grimaces in agreement and apology. "I can work with that."
As Rodney folds John up carefully and braces himself on John's folded knees, as he pushes his way into his body with the flush on his face spreading down over his shoulders, John floods with a terrifying fondness. He thinks this is why Rodney, for all his faults, for all the imperfections of their friendship, despite all the reasons that a relationship between them ought to be ridiculous - because for some inexplicable and probably stupid reason, they do keep working at this, long past the point where giving up would be easy and forgivable. He distracts himself with wondering if something like this can be considered love until Rodney pulls John's hips up and John needs to feel the hot pleasure of being fucked deep. He hits the button and practically levitates off the bed as everything snaps into sharp, unbearable focus. He comes nearly immediately, but it's okay, because Rodney follows right after, and holds John sloppy and tight afterward while their breathing synchronizes slow.
|=:~*~:=|
Following Sam's advice, John puts up a front of being cool and unfazed, not letting what happened affect him professionally. She promised him her support in getting him back to Atlantis, and Atlantis back to Pegasus; he just needs to maintain status quo. He accepts that he has to talk to the new therapist, who thankfully is a college football fan, and he deals with gossip mostly by not rising to it, even though word gets out that something was done to him.
John lets it slip in an easily-overheard confidence to Lorne that girls love tattoos. The rumor mill will hopefully take the bait and move on to a new target; Lorne knows exactly what John's playing at, even if he's not in possession of all the facts, either. He asks John, as they move out of earshot, if it's conversely true that tattoos love girls.
John's not about to come out to anyone in the military, especially now, but he appreciates the implicit support in Lorne's jibe. I know that he knows that I know is a time-honored, if stupid, Air Force tradition. He tells Lorne there's no reason to be jealous.
What John knows is that he wouldn't be half as cool without being able to hang out with Rodney nearly every night. He doesn't need to fake anything for Rodney, which is an incredible relief. John can be as sarcastic or snippy or furious as he wants to be, and Rodney will match him annoyance for annoyance, or teach him curses in Russian, or make John lie down for a backrub.
Either Rodney's a terrible masseur or John's no good at relaxing, but John's always just as tense after as before. He loves having Rodney's hands on him, though, and usually by the time Rodney starts bitching about cramps in his fingers they're both shirtless, and Rodney's hands are spanning John's waist, his thumbs rubbing speculatively under the elastic of John's underwear.
Rodney complains that he put months of work into researching what turns John on and now all his data has been invalidated. John says, just this side of ruthless, "Good. Keeps you on your toes."
Which puts him back in the position of being Rodney's ongoing experiment. Part of John wonders if he should find it creepy, but he gives himself permission to bask in the attention. He needs something in his life to go right; he needs touch even if he doesn't know how to accept it. He even needs the way Rodney treats John's symbiosis with his remote control as an intriguingly kinky puzzle. Back at the SGC, Lam told John the technology was probably very effective for erectile dysfunction; Rodney tells him that he finds it incredibly hot watching John push the button.
"Seriously, I got hard the other day when you were doing that PowerPoint thing with Woolsey," Rodney says, pulling John's pants off and dropping them beside the bed.
John grins. "It was a bunch of inventory spreadsheet data, McKay." He watches Rodney stand to slide his own pants down, and then wobble on one foot, then the other, yanking off his socks. Rodney's underpants follow.
Rodney drops onto the bed and picks up John's hand, giving it a shake. "Yes, and so boring no one was paying attention. Did you know you have the habit of rubbing your thumb under the clicker thing while you're talking, and then you twist your wrist around and click. Only sometimes you screw up and click past the slide you want - "
"Bite me," John says. He fucking hates PowerPoint; Woolsey adores it.
"And then you bite your lip and put the tip of your tongue just here," Rodney touches the center of John's top lip, "and get frustration lines between your eyes as you try to figure out how to click back, and it's like the hottest remote control handjob porn ever."
John gives him a half-hearted glare. He's safe now from accidental erections, but he knows he'll be thinking about Rodney at the next meeting, watching to see if he squirms, and being overly conscious of his hands and his mouth. Next week he's got his first presentation on information networking and trade relations in Pegasus since Atlantis slipped Earth's surly bondage. Maybe he can adjust the graphs, make them form subtly obscene curves. Rodney deserves it.
"I tell you what," John says, rolling onto his side so he can reach the sex drawer without getting up. He feels like being lazy. Maybe the massage worked this time. "I'll just lie here and you can fuck me, and -" he puts the remote on the bed - "you tell me when you want me to come."
Rodney pauses and then gets the tiny cat-smile that means he has a plan. Which is how John ends up on his back, hands on his stomach, with Rodney very slowly fucking his face, teasing him by pulling out as soon as John starts really getting into it. Rodney uses the hand holding his dick to trace John's lips with the head and John can only try and steal a lick, no matter how he stretches his neck. In the end it's easier just to say, "Give it here, I know you want it, come on."
"Who wants it?" Rodney asks, pulling his hand up slowly so the head of his dick's in the perfect place to be kissed. John kisses, with tongue, and Rodney's hips jerk forward inadvertently.
That makes it easier for John to say, "Me, okay, I'm trying to give you head, here, and I want your damn cock back in my mouth," and when Rodney runs his finger under John's lip, John adds, "Please."
Rodney slides his dick back in, right to the back of John's throat, nearly cutting off his air, and John arches and sucks and calls Rodney a jerk and an asshole and a cocktease. The words are muffled, but Rodney laughs breathlessly, and tells John to shut up, he loves it.
"Do not," John says, and sucks harder.
"Touch yourself," Rodney says, which isn't fair, because John wants to reach back and wrap his hands around Rodney's hips to pull him in and stop fucking teasing already.
But he figures the fastest way to get what he wants is to give Rodney a good show, so he slides one hand down to cup his balls and use the other to rub languid circles around his nipples, first one, then the other. It feels better for some reason when Rodney does this. Maybe next time, John thinks, finding the hot spot behind his balls and rubbing until he feels the electric tingle start to build up.
It would be so easy to reach over and throw the switch, and he wants to, and he knows Rodney wouldn't hold it against him, and he knows he won't, and he never knew frustration was as potent as arousal. He's practically shaking with need, trying to swallow Rodney's dick down like a porn star, screw his gag reflex.
"Coming," Rodney says. John thinks how unfair it is and sucks harder, tipping his head back. He tastes come and hears himself groan, and then Rodney pulls out, which is all kinds of wrong, except that he's still coming, painting John's mouth with it, and his cheeks, and there's come sliding down the line of John's jaw. He hears Rodney's ragged breathing above him, and opens his eyes carefully, reaching for him, finally getting his arms around him like he'd wanted.
"Please," John says again, forehead tucked against Rodney's hip, breathing in the smells of sweat and come.
"Yes," Rodney says, "yes, give me a minute here, and..." He shoves at John's shoulder, pushing him back to the center of the bed. John obligingly scoots, but he doesn't let go. "Can't make anything easy, can you?" Rodney says, tumbling down as if he's sure John's got him. Which John always does, but still. Rodney licks up John's throat, making a smug, contented noise, and then all around John's mouth, and finally settles into purposeful kisses that make John feel like he's been marked and claimed. There's a pleasure in that that kind of makes him want to squirm, press his body up flush to Rodney's, and simultaneously he kind of wants to run. Rodney pulls back and slides two fingers absently into John's mouth for him to suck. "Here," he says, and puts the remote into John's hand, curling John's fingers around it. "Let me just get settled in," and then Rodney moves down, sucking his nipples fast and hard before finally, finally getting to John's dick.
John's not hard, hasn't been hard, can't get hard, and Rodney's mouth closing over him feels more like being suckled than being sucked, the way John's playing with Rodney's fingers. But then Rodney pulls his fingers out and uses the wet tips to circle John's hole, and at the same time says, only a little muffled, "Click."
And the second John hits the button Rodney's fingers slip inside and his dick fills into Rodney's mouth, and John feels like he's being fucked apart, unable to move without sparking off unbearable pleasure. He's desperate, shouting with it, unable to be still. Rodney's hand around the base of his dick is jacking him hard into Rodney's mouth, and the way that tugs the staples in John's skin feels like the low deep throb of a vibrator, shockingly unexpected. John twists, but he can't get away. Then there are more fingers in his ass stretching him to his limit, and he's slammed back into the mattress with the force of an orgasm that turns him inside out and hits him in wave after wave until he's too limp to do more than jerk when Rodney finally pulls his fingers out, and lets John slide free from his mouth.
Rodney says something, but John's too far away to figure out what. He feels Rodney get up and move away, and doesn't like that, but then Rodney's back with a handful of wet wipes. John's not exactly asleep, but waking up's far too much of a bother, so he just shifts over to make room for Rodney on the bed. He's far too lazy to ask Rodney to stay the night, but Rodney seems to understand anyway. Rodney fusses with the pillows and John puts his hand on Rodney's stomach. When he finally manages to open his eyes, morning light is spilling from the windows across the floor, making a halo of Rodney's tousled hair.
John feels the way he does after a day of surfing: deeply and satisfyingly calm inside, and aching in unexpected places that he only discovers when he moves. He stretches as he pads to the bathroom and his shoulders crack, twice on both sides. In the mirror, he sees that he's still got come in his hair, and there are finger-bruises on his collarbone which he doesn't remember getting. His nipples... well, he's done a lot worse to them surfing shirtless, but Rodney could learn to use his teeth less. Maybe.
John decides that a shower's definitely called for, and finds himself whistling through his teeth as he lathers up. It's a beautiful day, he just got laid. What more could a guy want?
|=:~*~:=|
"So," John says, holding the cottage door open for Rodney, who dumps his cooler box - the smaller, lighter one - on the floor and rubs his shoulders. John rolls his eyes pointedly and puts his down next to it, then takes a quick walk around the main room, throwing open the shutters to let the sea breeze in.
The room is bright and airy, with solar-powered ceiling fans that make the Athosian curtains glitter as they dance in the breeze. It's one of John's favorite places in any galaxy. Rodney sets his backpack on the dining table and looks at John expectantly. John realizes suddenly that any attempt he makes to look cool and calm will be defeated by his madras shorts. They hadn't looked nearly so pink when he bought them, years ago. Maybe, he thinks, they faded over the past four years, or maybe it's the glow that the tropical sun gives everything.
He swings his duffel around, unzips, and digs out the shock-resistant carrying case Rodney built him for the remote. He hands it over to Rodney, meeting his eyes for just a moment before needing to look away. "You should hang onto that."
Rodney doesn't say anything immediately, and John drums his fingers on the side of his bag.
"If you never gave this to me, that would be okay," Rodney says abruptly, and sets the case down on the table.
John does not make a grab for it, but he doesn't think Rodney can blame him for twitching.
"And any time you want it back," Rodney goes on, and moves into John's space with an intensity that's practically belligerent, "just ask." He taps a finger back and forth between John's chest and his own. "I trust you to be able to do that."
It feels strangely counter-intuitive for John to know that he can hurt Rodney by giving him this. The whole remote-controlled dick thing was his torture, after all; but he understands that Rodney doesn't want to be a part of that, not purposefully and especially not inadvertently. Rodney's trust... feels a lot like some other emotion he's lucky enough to be given. "You're not going to make me come while I'm out surfing," John points out, sweetly reasonable.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Yes, no, I've never thought I'd do my best work while distracted by the hideous guilt of having caused you to suffer head trauma and drown."
"You're not going to make me come in front of other people," John goes on. "Or when I'm building a fire, or using power tools." He can count on one hand the number of times he said make me come in the first forty years of his life; he says it to Rodney so much now that it nearly sounds mundane.
"I let you stick power tools in my brain," Rodney says, and pokes John in the forehead, in a spot mirroring his own Black and Decker surgery scar.
"So it's okay," John says, and shrugs. Rodney pokes him again, and then slings his arm around John's shoulders like they're co-conspirators. "You've got me all weekend; do what you will."
"Hm," Rodney says, as if dubious, but he puts his free hand thoughtfully over the remote case, stroking the side with his thumb. John finds that gut-wrenchingly sexy. "I suppose... I can do that."
"Please," John says, and smiles. Then, because he's worried about all the things Rodney can probably read on his face, he leans in for a kiss, hands going around Rodney's waist.
It's like the perfect ending to a romantic movie, up until Rodney's stomach growls and he pulls away to stare meaningfully into John's eyes and announce that unless someone makes him lunch right now he's going to die.
John rolls his eyes but goes out to fire up the Barbecue of Death that Rodney engineered for Ronon, because apparently well-charred meat was a Satedan delicacy. Kanaan packed both coolers full of delicious food for their weekend - John's paying him in weeks of babysitting hours - and John grills up Athosian sausage and vegetable pies, and snugs wet-leaf wrapped parcels in to steam for dinner. They're going to need the energy, he hopes.
Rodney's plan seems to be to have sex everywhere at least twice, including the front deck and From Here to Eternity-style on the beach. There's no discernible pattern, as far as John can see. It's more like a kid with a bag full of Halloween candy having the epiphany that he can eat it all. By the second day John's not even bothering to wear more than his boxers, because Rodney's likely to look up from his laptop at any given second and say, "I just realized Schmidt's theories are completely wrong, take off those stupid shorts and let me suck your dick," or pause in the act of giving John another layer of sunblock to announce that it also makes very good lube.
John has no idea when or if he'll be allowed to come; it's weird, but he finds it relaxing, almost freeing. He trusts Rodney. And when John's been pushed over the edge and is in freefall, when Rodney's solid weight is holding him down, the quiet murmur of, "One more, for me" sends him to a quiet, perfect place in his head where everything that he loves in the world Rodney gives to him. He knows it like the truth, so he's not really surprised when he wakes from a nap in the beach sun-shelter with Rodney and the words slip out, his finger tracing Rodney's lower lip.
"You know I love you, right?"
Rodney puts a hand on John's forehead, like he's concerned about sunstroke, and produces a thermos of water. "Stay hydrated," he says, and then, smiling like he can't help himself, "I've known for years."
John's not sure when he started feeling like this, but hey, Rodney might be right, what does he know? He leans over for a kiss, tasting sunblock and salt water.
"And just in case," Rodney says, between kisses, draping his leg over John's to shift closer, "you haven't figured it out, I love you, too."
John feels his face go hot; maybe Rodney was right about the sun. "Who wouldn't?" he replies anyway, and wraps his arms around Rodney, and holds on.
|=:~*~:=|
**
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