Fic: SGA: The Temptation of Adam
Um, yeah, hi. I wrote fic. The first fic in, well, a very long time. Hopefully it does not suck. Feel free to be the judge. :)
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Title: The Temptation of Adam
Pairing: McShep
Rating: Adult Themed
Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit from my storytelling. Much inspiration was taken from the song "The Temptation of Adam" by Josh Ritter.
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The Temptation of Adam
The missile silo is quiet. Cavernously silent. The kind of silence that feels like the weight of the universe pressing down on you if you think about it too much. So, you don’t think about it. Instead, you study the walls, carved from stone and supported by metal, and you watch the soundless sweep of the second hand on the giant wall clock above the control panel, rubbing your thumb over the giant button, ridiculous in its prominence, red and glaring like a single eye, while you keep your back to the giant projectile behind you, huge and upright like an old oak tree, as you wait. And wait. And wait.
::::
Change can happen in the blink of an eye. One minute you’re having dinner, something you’ve dug out of your freezer, watching a rerun of Kate & Allie because you’re just that bored, and the next minute the world has ended.
There are no words to describe the deep chill that settled over you when the initial emergency broadcasts began, the horror and the helplessness, no words to encompass the broken, rising panic when the broadcasts stopped because it was all over, and the world was exploding in a nuclear violence, and you didn’t know who was alive and who was dead anymore.
Three days of wandering in a pack of strangers who suddenly became like family, roving through what was left of grocery stores, and bearing the weight of survivor’s guilt whenever you passed another sobbing mother, another dead child, another person burned and lost to this world. And it’s not even like you knew where you were going anyway.
It had been a shock when the green truck rolled up alongside the creep of the Land Rover you were riding in with Audrey, a woman you’d befriended, your new best friend. The military presence had been miserably lacking in any attempt to maintain order, and you half-realize that is what you were trying to do anyway-get to a military base, try to help, offer yourself for whatever purpose possible. Now, it looked like they’d found you.
The indignity of being dragged into the truck without so much as a hello took a while to wear off, but you manage to finally get some answers when they stop the truck at Cheyenne Mountain, itself half demolished, which is nearly impossible to believe. After all, this is it, the holy grail of secret military bases, and yet it has been penetrated, as though hit by multiple nuclear weapons, an obvious target.
You do get some answers, but they aren’t entirely satisfactory. You’re on a need to know basis, though why any state secret matters at this point is unclear to you, but you’re military and so you just narrow your eyes, push for a bit more info, and then accept your orders. One day, assuming there is a one day, maybe you’ll understand more. For now, the only explanation you have for any of what has happened is that a top secret device held at Cheyenne Mountain was damaged in the attack and has been moved for safe keeping and repair to an even more remote and top secret location and said device must be guarded at all costs. You are informed that you’ve been drafted back into the military on the President’s orders (you spare only a moment to wonder if there even is a president anymore, and if the military actually holds any authority at this point) and that your new orders are to protect the device with your life, and to aid you in that endeavor, you’d be granted an arsenal, and a nuclear warhead set to detonate and destroy the military base, the device, and yourself on your sole command.
“Why?” you ask. “Why me?”
Samantha Carter and Jack O’Neill glance at each other and she offers up a strange and vague explanation. “You have a gene. A special gene that makes you rather unique and this gene might become important at a later date, assuming we can get the device operational again. It could become the key to saving the human race. And, well, you’re the only one with this gene we could find.”
“What kind of gene?”
“We’ll explain it all to you, Major, as it becomes necessary. For now, we have a global crisis on our hands; perhaps you haven’t noticed that it’s the end of the damn world out there?” Colonel O’Neill said.
Fifteen hours later you crawl through the missile silo door alone and you’ve been alone ever since. There is no contact with your superiors, and you’ve been ordered not to contact them. The location of the device is too important to compromise, and so you wait, the radio that would deliver your orders silent and you begin to wonder if you’re alone on this earth, if you are the sole survivor of this apocalypse. You rub the button, and you’re tempted.
But you wait. And you wait. And you wonder what became of Audrey, and you think of your mom and you’re glad that she’s been gone for a long time, and you close your eyes and you dream of ice cream from Baskin Robbins and television programs that you’ll never know the end of now.
It seems like three months, but it is only three weeks when the radio crackles to life and you get the first message. There is a scientist that will be joining you, someone who can hopefully fix the device. You are ordered not to kill him.
“Excuse me?” you ask, certain you didn’t hear them properly.
“Whatever happens, no matter what he says or does, do not kill him.”
“Uh, sure. Don’t kill the scientist. Got it.”
“No, seriously, John,” Samantha Carter says. “You’ll want to kill him-“
“I wouldn’t kill anyone that didn’t need killing.”
“Exactly, John. Things can get kind of dicey when you’re in isolation and…well, I just want to impress upon you that it is imperative that you not kill him. That’s an order. Do you understand? The fate of humanity may depend on it.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand.”
You end the discussion confused and anxious. And you wait some more.
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The sound of the missile silo opening is deafening and you want to cover your ears. You want to cover them again when the scientist drops into view, sturdy in body and babbling complaints about the temperature, the stagnant air, and concerns about the rations.
When he stops talking, you put out your hand and say, “John Sheppard.”
He ignores the hand and narrows his eyes, contemplating you with utter disdain. “Yes, yes, out of my way. The sooner I get started the sooner we can get off this planet. Where’s the gate?”
“The gate?”
“Yes, the gate.” Seeing your blank stare, the scientist sighs heavily, taps the radio that you hadn’t noticed by his ear. “McKay here. This is the idiot I have to spend what is likely to be the rest of my short, and sadly rather pathetic life with? Yes, especially given the unfortunate fact that I never won the Nobel before the entire planet blew up, and that’s only because I was robbed.” He paused for a breath and then snapped, “Yes, obviously I’m here. Do I think this can work? Well, let’s see, keeping in mind that the chances of repairing the damage done by the final nuclear strike are like ten billion to one, I’d say that I need a lot more than that luck you wished me when you sent me on this hopeless errand, but thank you for your misguided attempts at a pep talk, and, no, I don’t think this will work, and, yes, I will do my best anyway. McKay out.”
He turns to you, his mouth thin, waves his hands dramatically and says, “The gate!” At your blank stare, he touches his fingers to the bridge of his nose and says, “The Stargate, the big circle, the thing you’re here to protect--ringing any bells?”
“The device is this way,” you say, stepping ahead of him to lead the way.
“Oh, yes, the device then, whatever, just take me there and then leave me alone so that I can think.”
You grimace but stay quiet, leading him down the corridor to the second largest of the three rooms open to you in this facility. There’s the missile silo, where you sit and contemplate the red button, and to the side of that is the room with two military issue cots, and eighteen boxes representing a sad supply of rations meant to last three years, and finally the room housing the device, an enormous cracked stone circle and a podium with identical markings. The size of it rivals the bomb itself, and you have spent many hours contemplating the mystery of it.
“Here it is.”
McKay mutters something that sounds like an insult wrapped in gratitude, and immediately begins pulling flat, strange crystals from the metal box he’s carried in his hand from the silo door, having left all of his other paltry belongings stacked next to the now sealed opening.
You watch him move around the gate, running his hands over it the way you have already done a hundred times, examining the fissures, and fretting. “This is impossible. Utterly impossible,” he declares more than once, and you watch him with your arms crossed over your chest, and your legs apart, standing in your most commanding way.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in this room-“ you begin.
“Oh, great!” he rolls his eyes, and throws his hands up. “Tell me you didn’t touch anything!” Seeing your immediately guilty expression he goes on, “What did you touch? Don’t touch anything in this room ever again, do you understand? This is ancient equipment, you have no idea what damage you could’ve done, anything you do to it could potentially strand humanity forever, and we’ll all die!”
“Come on,” you begin.
“No! I will not ‘come on’, this is serious. This is the end of the world we’re talking about. In fact, just leave. I can’t think with you here.”
You walk away thinking to yourself that you have no idea how this asshole would survive a nuclear winter; he was abrasive and horrid and he’d never find anyone that would be willing to keep his miserable ass warm.
::::
You are drawn back to the room six hours later, though. He’s still fussing and bustling and tapping on his tiny computer. You lean against the door jamb and watch him work. The way he moves, the sureness of his hands, and the intense expression on his face reminds you of the math nerd you’d had a fling with when you were just a private, the one who’d made you take the Mensa test and then fallen to his knees and sucked your cock with worshipful eyes when you told him you'd passed.
It’s been too long since you’ve had anything but your right hand, clearly, because suddenly you find yourself imagining McKay on his knees in front of you, his eyes wide and impressed, and as he takes your cock into his mouth you whisper your Mensa scores to him over and over again.
Pushing aside the question of whether or not McKay would even be impressed by your Mensa scores, you shake your head and rub your hand over your upper lip. Your movement draws McKay’s attention and he says with a note of sincere gratitude, “Thank God, it’s you. Is there any food in this place, because I’m seriously on the edge of hypoglycemic shock-“
He doesn’t look anywhere near that state, but he sounds entirely serious.
“Sure,” you say and he follows you, talking about his food allergies, and how citrus is like instant death, and the fact that he doesn't even have any epi pens anymore because things had been too chaotic above to get any before coming down here.
“This is it?,” he cries only a few moments later, his state of happy anticipation crashing into disappointment at the sight of the rations.
“Yep. Military rations.” You tear open a Power Bar and bite into it with relish. “Mm-mm, good.”
He narrows his eyes and takes his time choosing between the Power Bars and the MREs, finally biting into a Power Bar and chewing in grim silence.
You toss the wrapper in the waste disposal unit before you ask, “So, it’s a gate, huh?”
McKay nods, not saying anything.
“A gate to what?”
“More like a gate to where,” he says, then looks at you considering. “What’s your clearance?”
You smirk and lift an eyebrow.
“Right,” he agrees. “What’s the point of clearance anyway when the government barely even exists anymore and our enemies are as fried as we are. So, yeah-it’s a Stargate, a gate to other worlds, and, even other galaxies.”
“Other worlds,” you repeat, disbelief warring with wonder.
“Yes, other planets, habitable planets in most instances, which is a bonus considering this planet is now basically not habitable at all.”
“Yeah, about that. What the fuck happened up there? I mean, I know nothing. No one knows anything. I was watching tv and…”
“The world ended,” McKay finishes for you.
“Boom,” you supply.
“Yes, big boom. Enormous boom.” He smiles, something that was surprisingly innocent on his face, and your heart warms oddly, making you feel odd. You tell yourself that you’re gassy, and that you just need to burp. “I wish I could tell you. The military people I’ve talked with don’t even know for sure, something about some alien race teaming up with the terrorists, but what do I know? All I know is that we’ve got to evacuate, and the only way out of this mess is off.”
“Off.”
“Off-world. Through the gate.”
“Which is broken.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to fix it.”
“Probably not, no.”
“Then-“
“We’re all so very screwed,” he said biting into his Power Bar and sighing heavily.
“So, what you’re saying is this is our last shot and it’s impossible.”
He looks at you like you’re dim witted, which he clearly thinks you are. “The point is that my brain is too important to just die on this world, when I can go somewhere else and use it to its full potential elsewhere and if anyone can make the impossible happen it’s me, though this…well, this truly is impossible. I mean if I pull this off, then they owe me so big, like they should name me Supreme Genius of whatever world we settle on because this? This is impossible. I have a broken gate and some crystals from Antarctica and half of an ancient database. That’s it. What can I possibly do with that? Nothing!.”
You ponder this as he eats the last of his food, and you ask about the state of affairs above.
“The military is trying to get things under control but who knows. They’re trying to organize medical help, supplies, that sort of thing, but it’s all pretty hopeless. Half of the population or more is already lost, and the other half will be dead from exposure or radiation poisoning very soon.”
McKay is subdued as he reports this information, his shoulders slumping forward, and his expression weary. You scrub your hands over your face, not sure if you’re happy to be alive, or if you’re doing anyone any good down below, guarding a broken gate to other worlds. If we’ve destroyed this one, you think, maybe we don’t deserve another one, anyway.
McKay stands up and leaves the room without another word. You go back to staring at the red button, caressing it with your thumb.
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You find later that you are expected to carry McKay’s boxes of supplies from the silo door. “I’ve got a bad back,” he says, amongst a million other excuses when you just stare at him. You do eventually move the boxes because he needs them to work. Several are immensely heavy and filled with what looks like pieces of equipment from an alien ship on Star Trek.
“This is part of the Ancient database,” McKay says in answer to your query. You discover that all of the times he’s said the word ancient it was with a capital A and it meant a race of people from another world. “A team of humans sent to the Pegasus galaxy two years ago sent it to us for unknown reasons in their last transmission before their zed pm failed, or so we assume. Our own zed pm is too close to being depleted, or was, and we can’t contact them ourselves, not until the Dedalus is up and running, anyway, which at this point, you know, hello, end of world and all that, so now it is worth it to use the last of our zed pm, and-“
And in these ways you begin to learn state secrets of aliens, alien races, Ancient seeders, other galaxies, near infinite power sources, and the secret of your own genetic anomaly which is, of course, the reason you’re here in this top secret location three hundred feet under the ground.
You find that McKay is all too willing to give information to you if you shut up and listen, though you remain skeptical of his interpretation of events, biased as they seem to be by his ego and his wounded pride.
“I should have been on that Pegasus expedition; I was absolutely the most qualified for the job, have I mentioned that I have no less than two PhDs and have published more papers than Radek has ever even dreamed of? But, no, they chose him over me because they said that I would be a poor risk to introduce to alien societies; can you believe that? Me? A poor risk? “
“If anyone could enrage some aliens, it’d be you, I’m sure,” you mutter, biting into the tough and tasteless MRE.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” he replies, chewing his own meal slowly. “God, this isn’t even worth eating. I guess I was in the mood for food.” He tossed it in the waste.
“Hey, don’t waste food,” you say. “We have no idea how long we’ll be here.”
“I know exactly how long we’ll be here,” McKay says, leaving the room to work in the gate room again. “Until we die a long, slow death, most likely by starvation, unless we get desperate and find a way to unlock the silo door from the inside, and we make a bid for the faster death by radiation exposure above.”
“Nice,” you say to his retreating back, tilting your head to watch his ass, before returning to your intense analysis of the button.
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The button is red. It is smooth. It is about two and a half inches wide. It stares at you. You stare at it. One day, when McKay isn’t looking, you bend down and you lick it. It tastes like nothing and it is cool on your tongue. Another day, you kiss it.
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Two and a half weeks after McKay arrives, you’ve restrained from killing him three times already, but mostly you find his presence reassuring. He’s annoying, he’s egotistical, but he’s alive, and he wants to stay that way. That is more than you yourself are sure of and you’re drawn to his quest for life like a moth to a fire. His words were about doom, but his hands and mind race forward looking for every possible door, window, or crack that might be a way out of this for not only himself, but for at least some of the humans still alive on the surface.
You find yourself ordering him to shut up, to work harder and faster, because you need his activity to offset that red button which beckons you to just press it a little bit, to just tap in your code, the only one needed, and see what it’s like to die. It is like the serpent in the Garden, tempting you with knowledge you shouldn’t have.
When the radio crackles and you have contact again, it is General O’Neill talking to you. Sam is sick with radiation poisoning, she likely won’t make it. McKay’s mouth opens in clear devastation and you want to touch him, but you don’t. He sinks into the chair next to yours, the panel with the red button between you.
“So, Rodney, you gonna save our asses up here, or what?”
McKay fumbles through his explanation of the situation. “I need the crystal from Antarctica and the information that Daniel had there. I can’t go any further without it.”
There is an awkward silence before O’Neill reports, “Daniel is dead. The crystal is missing. The information was in his head-equations, interpretations, stuff I never really listened to him talk about.”
Rodney closed his eyes, hopelessness sapping that nervous energy that you need.
“Can you find the crystal?” you ask O’Neill.
“I’ll do my best.” He replies. “And, Rodney, keep working. Oh! There was one thing Daniel said about how to fix the gate before he died,” O’Neill sounds strange and broken. “He said something about the number seven. Is that helpful?”
“No, no, it’s not. Not in the least.”
“Ah, well, keep working. O’Neill out.”
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The next day Rodney doesn’t go to the gate room. Instead, he opens up a plaid suitcase, pulls on a t-shirt that says, “Manscaping: It’s Not Just for Porn Stars Anymore”.
You consider this for a long time, noticing, not for the first time, that McKay’s nipples are always hard.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” you reply, and he turns his back to you, fishes something else out of the suitcase and then plops down on his cot.
“Aren’t you going to work on the gate?”
“No,” he says, flipping open what appears to be a book of crossword puzzles.
“What about the ancient database?”
“No, and no, and no, and no, and, again, no-what five letters spell ‘apocalypse’?”
“W.W.I.I.I. and, dammit, why not?”
“Oh, good one, that fits perfectly, and because there is absolutely nothing I can do without that crystal, and even if I finished the equations I’d still need the crystal, and I’m tired, so no, and no, and no, and W.W.I.I.I, perfect.”
You stare at his hands holding the book and you fight the shortness of breath that is overwhelming you. You can feel the button staring at you through the walls, the red eye that never blinks, never says uncle, and never swerves first. “You have to keep working. Get your ass up out of that bed and go work. Now.”
“Or?”
“Or, I’ll get your ass up for you.”
McKay dropped the book. “Look, I told you once and I’ll tell you again, there is nothing I can do without that crystal. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Do you speak English? Are you retarded? Do you not understand that even with the crystal there would still be literally hundreds of interpretations of the data I’ve salvaged from the database and-“
“Get your ass out of bed-“
“Make me.”
You’re across the room and in his personal space before you realize what you’re doing. His arms fit in your hands perfectly and you find yourself holding him down on the bed instead of pulling him up. His nostrils flare and his eyes are wide.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and you shove him into the cot and then release him, storming out of the room, climbing the path up to the missile silo door and banging your hands against it.
You rest your forehead on the cool metal and stand there for a long time, feeling the bomb growing out of the ground in the room below you, stretching up toward the dark of the top of the silo, and you want to see that mountain blow its top.
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There is nothing natural about your life. You are underground, eating something that God never intended for food, breathing and drinking stale but clean water, and feeling guilty because you know that on the surface someone is dying with every second that goes by.
But you have your orders, and you could ignore them but at what cost? You question them daily, and in the weeks after General O’Neill’s last radio call, you start to believe that you and McKay are the last people on earth, that everyone else is dead, and it’s just the two of you.
Does that change things? You don’t know.
Some days McKay works like mad, like he’s onto something, but he just shushes you when you ask, saying, “Thinking here! Thinking!” and you walk away to clean the guns you’ve taken a shine to from the arsenal. “That’s right, Major,” he’ll say later, seeing you stroking the weapons lovingly, “polish your weapons of destruction and leave it to the scientists to save the day.”
One day, he sees you staring up at the missile, and you don’t know why, but you volunteer that it makes you think of the oak tree in your backyard growing up.
“I see the resemblance,” he says, sarcastically, “just carve our names into the side and it’ll be just like home.”
Home. That’s something you haven’t allowed yourself to think about too much. Home once was a warm kitchen in the south of Texas, but then it was a bunk in Afghanistan, until the incident with the chopper and the loss of his man led to the first of several disciplinary actions, culminating in a dishonorable discharge when you and Sam Maniker were found sucking each other’s dick in the infirmary. Interesting how that whole dick sucking thing didn’t seem to matter now that the world had ended.
Speaking of that, it is hard to find a place to jerk off in the bunker. The showers are nothing more than area of the sleeping quarters that has a drain in the floor. The water pumps from a huge supply in the mountain, but there is no telling how long it will last, and the showers are cold, too.
McKay doesn’t make the situation any easier, jerking off seems to cause him no shame, and he does it while showering, or sometimes at night in his cot. The soft sounds in the darkness make you insane with lust, and you have lurid, vivid dreams that leave you embarrassingly sticky in the morning. You leave the room for McKay’s pornographic shower scenes, but on more than one occasion you only go as far as the door, and then watch around the corner, your own hand moving in your pants, licking your own come off your hand as you shudder from orgasm.
After that incident, you vow to spend less time watching McKay, whether he was at work on the gate or working crossword puzzles, and most definitely you vow to stop watching while he’s masturbating. Instead, you will spend more time watching the button.
But, then, the night he discovers the connection with the seventh symbol he comes to your cot.
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“There are seven!” he exclaims in your ear, waking you from a deep and dreamless sleep.
“What?” you ask, sitting up, bleary-eyed and confused.
“There are seven! And how does your hair do that? I mean, you just woke up and it looks amazing. Do you have a secret stash of product down here or what?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, uh, there are seven symbols! That’s what Daniel Jackson was telling O’Neill. Most gates have six symbols in their address, six symbols to gate to and address, but the Pegasus gate has seven symbols, and so does our earth gate, and that’s how we got to Pegasus to begin with. But, don’t you see, the seventh symbol is unnecessary, we can gate in this galaxy without it. But! With the seventh symbol we can by-pass the damage done to the gate’s communications applications, simply by removing it and rerouting the-look, the science is incredibly complex, but I can do it. I can do it without the crystal from Antarctica!”
“I thought you said there was no work around.”
“There wasn’t! But now there is! Now we just have to determine a location, and we can be out of here, do you understand? We can even gate to Pegasus like we’d hoped. I can make this thing operational after all, assuming that the equations I’ve been working on are right, which they are, and then I can bridge the damage done to the components-“
You put your hand over his mouth and say, “Great, Rodney. Now there’s just one problem. We haven’t heard from O’Neill in almost a month.”
Rodney’s eyes dim, but then they catch fire again. “I know, but I’ve solved the problem. I always knew I could!”
“No, you didn’t. You always said you couldn’t solve it.”
“I was lying. I just didn’t want you to feel bad for being so stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Well, not in comparison to most people, but in comparison to me-“
“Are you a Mensa member?” you say, rubbing your sleep crusted eyes, and missing his reaction, which you immediately regret.
“You are?” he asks, awe in his voice.
“No, but I took the test.” You keep your eyes on his face now, narrowing your gaze until he’s in focus, wanting to ask him what the fuck difference it made now that the world was over, but his expression stops you from speaking.
“And you passed?”
“Of course, I passed. It was easy.”
Rodney’s mouth falls open and you remember your old flame, how you’d eased your cock right on into his gaping mouth while he’d sucked and swallowed. You sit up straighter, trying hide your erection, but the movement just puts you closer to Rodney’s face, and the next thing you know Rodney’s grabbed your head and is kissing you.
God, finally. That’s all you can think, and Rodney’s lips are fierce on your mouth, urgent and desperate, you gasp for breaths between kisses that feel more real than anything has since the day everything changed. Your hands find the back of his neck and you hold him, your mouths sloppy and wet.
When he pulls away, it’s to shove your covers off, push your sweats down and engulf your cock in a greedy slurp. You gasp in shock, grabbing his head, thrusting up and hunching over him at the same time. “Oh, God,” you breath and he’s working away, undeterred by your sudden movements, sucking you hard and fast, his spit drooling down over your balls, and you want to spread your legs, to bring him in even closer, go even deeper into his mouth, but your eyes roll up and you grunt as orgasm uncoils within you, startling and hard.
You gasp for air as he pulls off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and then climbing on top of you, shoving you down into the cot, as he humps against your thighs, face buried in your neck, mouth hot and wet against your skin, and you hold him tight as he jerks and comes, babbling, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh…John.”
::::
You are sure it is going to be embarrassing, but Rodney just lifts up his head, grins, and says, “God, I’m hungry.”
You prepare an MRE while Rodney showers, and then he sits across from you in a t-shirt and sweat pants eating and working on a crossword puzzle like he hadn’t just sucked your cock, and like it wasn’t 2:30 in the morning.
“So, uh-“ you say, scratching the back of your neck.
“Oh, God, you’re not going to try to talk about it, are you? Because, no, let’s not do that, okay? Let’s not analyze and discuss and make a vow not to do it again. Because, I don’t know about you, but I completely plan on doing that again. I haven’t felt this good in weeks, months, years maybe. It’s like-well, it’s like the world ended and so I can have sex with hot guys and there can be no questions asked, okay? So, don’t ask questions. Questions are bad. Questions will make you hate me, and I don’t want you to hate me, because I want to suck your cock again, okay? Is that all right with you?”
You stare, wide-eyed and hard again. “Um, yeah. Yeah, that’s all right by me.”
“Good. So, I was just thinking, did you bring any condoms?”
You choke on the piece of MRE that you’d just put in your mouth. “What?”
“You know, condoms, but forget it. You know-end of the world, have sex with hot guys, fuck the whole STD thing. I mean, you don’t have an STD, right?”
“Uh, Rodney, look-“
“We’re not talking about it!”, he shouts
“I’m trying not to, but you won’t shut up!”, you yell back.
He throws his MRE on the ground and you stab a finger at it saying, “Don’t waste food, Rodney!”
And he’s on you, and you’re kissing, and fuck he’s so good at this, and why on earth would he ever want to use his mouth for talking instead of just doing this all of the time, when he talks he just pisses people off, but when he does this, God, it’s like he should just never stop.
You’re both naked now, kneeling on the floor, your hands all over each other, your mouths kissing and biting. He’s got his mouth next to your ear and he says, “I want to fuck you. Can I fuck you?”
It’s been a few years and there’s nothing here-no lube, no condoms-but yeah, “Yeah, God, yeah. Just-gentle.”
“I can be gentle. I can be really gentle. I’m really good at this, I swear, and you’ll love it. I’ve had a lot of practice, more than you might expect-“
“Rodney, shut up.”
He does, for the most part, though he talks a lot during the sex itself, which is fine, because it’s kind of hot to hear him saying how much he wants to fuck you, how he’s dying to get inside you, how you’re so tight, and it’s nice that you don’t have to say anything in return, just lay back and let him open your ass with his spit-slick fingers.
It’s almost too much, though, you almost tell him to stop, when he’s putting his dick in, but you don’t have to because he’s gentle, just like he said, and he’s talking you through it, and you listen to his voice, focusing on his words, and then he’s there, bent over you, staring into your face, eyes wide, mouth open, face flushed, and buried deep in your ass, and fuck does it burn, you’re not sure you can even breath. But then he moves, slowly, gently, and it turns into something intense and too good to be real. When you’re groaning and moving with him, he bends to kiss you but he can’t reach and you put your hand on the side of his face, holding it there as he closes his eyes, tilts his head back and comes in your ass.
“John,” he says, moaning and jerking a little in the aftermath.
You’re still hard, but you shock yourself by coming as he’s pulling out. He stops with just the head of his dick still in you, scoops up most of your come from your stomach, and licks it from his fingers, and then he pulls out, reaches down and captures his own come as it leaks from your ass. You’re breathless-and he smiles and laughs as he reaches over, grabs his underwear, and wipes his hand on it. “I like dirty sex, but not that dirty.”
You laugh, too, and pull him down on top of you, and you lay there sweaty and content while the red button enjoys its view of the dark sky of the cavernous missile silo.
::::
The next morning you wake alone. Your ass is killing you, and you move gingerly to the shower, swallowing back a yelp at the cold water. You dress slowly, already anxious about the inevitable morning after. You wonder if telling Rodney to shut up will work again.
He’s in the missile silo, his back to the button, his face turned up to the bomb. You stand in the doorway for a long time, so long that you have time to consider putting in your code and ending this entire thing for everyone, condemning yourself and the planet in one fell blow.
You clear your throat and he jumps. “Hey,” you say, and move into the room. “I, uh, could round up a tasty MRE for breakfast if you want.”
He doesn’t turn around and you approach slowly. “Uh, so, listen-“ you begin, beginning a clumsy negation of everything, because, seriously, it’s the end of the world, the last thing you want to worry about was a night of sex with a scientist stranded with you in a missile silo waiting to help evacuate what’s left of mankind or possibly orders to kill yourselves and destroy the only means of escaping the planet. It’s too much bullshit to get all girly about this now.
He interrupts you before you can say anything like that, though. “My sister. She’s probably dead,” Rodney said softly. “I hadn’t seen her in, I don’t know, like four years. Since she had her kid and gave up her career in physics. She was a genius-not as much of a genius as me, but a genius. She got knocked up by some English Major and her priorities all shifted. Don’t get me wrong. I’d checked to see if she’d published, and of course she hadn’t.”
You make a noise, something that you hope is kind of sympathetic, but not overly so because Rodney seems subdued but not in a great deal of grief.
“I…well, I hope she didn’t suffer, you know? I hope it was fast for her. And-I hope she died before her kid. I hope she didn’t have to see her baby suffer,” Rodney murmured, staring up into the darkness.
“Most moms would probably want to be there for their kid to help soothe them,” you say.
“Yeah, well, I hope she wasn’t like that, okay? I can’t stand the thought of her hurting like that.” Rodney snaps, and you’re surprised that he’s more concerned about her emotional pain than physical pain. You find yourself thinking that Rodney may be more bristly on the outside to protect his tender inner core.
“Sure,” you say, and you cross and uncross your arms, consider patting him on the shoulder because you think you ought to offer some comfort.
He turns to you then and walks right over, wrapping his arms around your middle, tucking his head in at your neck. You let him hold you for awhile, put your arms around his back, but you don’t’ move and you don’t say a thing. He pulls away, keeps his eyes averted, and quickly wipes the right one with his fingers, obviously hoping you didn’t notice.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m going to go into shock if I don’t have some breakfast. I am hypoglycemic, you know, and of course then it’s back to the gate room, because a genius’s work is never done. Oh, did I tell you? In my dream, I had an idea…a really great idea. I think I wrote it down somewhere. I remember writing it down.” Rodney walks away patting at his pants pockets, and pulling out a crumbled piece of paper. “Yeah, okay, good. I thought I had it here.”
::::
The next few days are interesting. In fact, this may be the most ideal sexual relationship you’ve ever been in. The only time Rodney talks about the sex is when you’re having it, and while you sometimes have to tell him to shut up, for the most part it’s the kinky kind of talk, and you’re okay with that.
Rodney sucks cock like he can’t get enough of it, and you return the favor with as much gusto and a little more finesse. You spend several hours a day naked, sucking, touching, kissing, eating ass, and then you go monitor the red button, making sure it’s keeping in line, while Rodney goes back to the data base, his calculations, and his crystals, looking them over again for some sign of something.
You don’t fuck again for two weeks. Another two weeks of silence from the above world, and that’s another thing you and Rodney don’t talk about much, because you both know that if you start to talk about the fact that you haven’t heard anything at all, then you have to admit that you aren’t likely to hear anything either. In fact, you might have to talk about the fact that you might be the only ones left who even know you’re both down here.
When you do fuck again, Rodney uses a lot of spit and your own come to ease his way in. This time you’re on your elbows and knees and the angle is great. You can feel the stretch and burn behind your eyes, pinpricks of sweat on your forehead and back, and then the slow drag over your prostate leaves you slack-jawed and grunting like an animal.
Your eyes are rolled back as he slams into you, his balls slapping your ass, and you try to dig your fingers into the stone floor, trying to hold on to the world as it spins out of control.
“John,” he says as he reaches around to your cock, jerking you in the rhythm of his hips. You’re so close, but you don’t want to come yet, and you bat his hand away, wanting this pull and push to go on and on.
“Don’t come yet,” you grind out, arching your back. “Make it last.”
Rodney bends his forehead to your back and you feel him relax into the strokes, like it’s the end of the world, and all you’ve got is time.
::::
Shrieks have you running to the gate room with a gun drawn. You can’t imagine how someone could have infiltrated the missile silo without you noticing, but you have been warned of aliens who could teleport, and so it wasn’t impossible, you suppose.
“I did it!” Rodney screams as you walked in. “I did it!”
You look around for the aliens, gun swinging in the tight control of your arm.
“Oh my God! Put that away! Are you trying to kill me! Have you finally succumbed to cabin fever and I’m going to be the victim of your delusions-“ Rodney babbles hysterically.
You lower the gun and yell, “What the hell, Rodney! I thought you were being killed!”
“Killed? By whom? We’re locked in a bunker 300 feet below ground and only like five people, who are all probably dead, know that we’re here. Oh, my God, you are going delusional. This can happen when in isolation for a long time. I remember learning about it in undergrad in my required Psychology course. And they call that a science?” He scoffs. “However, I would have hoped that my presence would have staved this off, but I know I’m not the best company-“
“Rodney, just shut up and tell me what the hell you’re screaming about.”
The frown of worry and fear evaporated and he smiled, the most brilliant and amazing smile you’d ever seen. “I know what to do. I can fix it. I can get us out of here.”
::::
A week later Rodney activates the gate and you stand mesmerized by the silver lake stretched in the middle of the circle.
At first all you can do is stare, and he stares, too, his face glowing with pride and excitement. Minutes pass and you pull your eyes away from the gate and look at Rodney’s face, watching the excitement slide away, replaced by a gray, sad expression. He looks at you then and says, “John, we need to talk.”
::::
You agree to go against orders and try to contact someone via the radio, but the orders are broken for nothing, there is no answer, no reply, not even when Rodney modifies the radio for a longer distance and changes the frequency to be accessible by anyone with even an old fashioned HAM.
There’s a long and drawn out argument over whether or not to try to open the silo hatch, to go in physical search of someone who could…well, anyone, really. Any other human at all.
“The entire point of fixing the gate is to get people off of this planet, Rodney,” you argue.
“What if there aren’t any people to get off? And even if there are, how are we supposed to find them?”
“I don’t leave my people behind.”
“They aren’t ‘your people’; they’re just people!”
“At this point, what’s the difference?” you cross your arms over your chest.
“Exactly!” he says, throwing his arms up.
That argument continues as you try to force the door, stand next to Rodney glowering, coercing him to attempt an override of the locking mechanism, but even when he successfully breaks the locking code, the door still will not open, as though it has been physically blocked from the other side by an immovable object.
In the end, you’re forced to recognize that this is it, that you and Rodney may very well be the only humans in a position to be saved. It seems pointless, futile, and the button beckons you with whispers of how deeply Rodney sleeps, how he’d never know, it would be so fast, so easy. But you resist, because it isn’t over yet, not when you’ve got Rodney’s cock in your mouth again, and he’s clutching your hair and saying “God, God, God,” just like that.
::::
“This,” Rodney announces, “is a map of a section of the Pegasus galaxy.”
He’s spent three days interfacing the Ancient database with the computer in the silo room.
“Now, I’ve started sorting through the information the Ancients had on each of the gates and the planets around them. The problem being, of course, that without a MALP, we can’t know beforehand if the information in the database is accurate.”
He’s printed out the map on about a million sheets of paper, using up what looks to be half of your paper stores and most of the tape, too, and you almost chastise him about it, but you don’t because you’ve got that button in the back of your mind, and it isn’t like it matters anyway.
The plan is to proceed without command from the military, to assume, until proven wrong, that they are alone in this now.
“This!” Rodney points at a planet on the map. “This is the place the Ancients refer to as Athos, a friendly group of farmers and traders, open to visitors and kind to strangers in need. That’s what the Ancients said, but of course that was thousands of years ago, so they could be vicious cannibals, or life-sucking vampires by now for all we know.”
He’s kind of giddy. You attempt a smile and nod your head. “Good going, Rodney,” you say, knowing he wants to hear it.
“They’re humans, you see. Same species as us. We could, theoretically, go forth and spread our seed with them, pass on a few of these earthly genes.” Rodney grins and your stomach clenches, but you nod gamely. Sure, you’ve been known to fuck a few women. Why not do it for humanity? Besides it’s not like this thing with you and Rodney is-and you stop thinking because that’s not something you’re going to think about.
“That would be good,” you say.
“Now that we’ve decided on a place, all that remains is deciding on a day.”
“We should wait a few more months. Give them time to get to us.”
Rodney considers and then says, “Six weeks.”
You don’t say anything, refuse to agree, but he puts the date on the calendar, circles it in red, the same red he’s been using to circle potential planets.
A few hours later, you take his red pen, walk to the map on the wall, the one of what had been the United States of America, and you put a circle on the map right over your current location, and then you color it in. At night you begin to dream of a serpent with one red eye. The echoes of temptation are everywhere.
:::::
“What are you doing?”
You startle, your hand jerks, and you come this close to detonating the bomb. Quickly you zero out the code you’ve typed in, and you stand up, brushing him aside. “Nothing,” you say.
“Nothing? Nothing? I just came in here to see if you want a blowjob or something and I find you with the code punched in and your thumb on the button. Are you suicidal? Do you want to kill us both? I mean, if you want to die, that’s one thing, but don’t take me along with you! I do not consent to being nuked out of existence, do you understand me?”
You roll your eyes. “I wasn’t doing anything.” And you weren’t, you’d just been…practicing. You walk out of the room and you feel him on your heels. “Listen, Rodney, go away, okay?”
He grabs your arm and pulls you around. “Listen, are you? Suicidal, I mean. Because I don’t think I could stand it if…listen, I don’t want to be alone here. “ He gestured toward the gate room. “I don’t want to be alone anywhere. I…I…listen, I don’t know what to say. I like having sex with you. I like you. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t kill me. I mean, seriously…don’t kill us.”
You think that might be the closest thing to a profession of love you’re going to get and it isn’t like you even wanted or needed one anyway, even though you do love him, and you have since he broke out those damn crossword puzzles, maybe since the beginning. You don’t remember having to learn to love him, just learning not to kill him, which seems like two not entirely separate things.
“I’m not killing anyone, Rodney.”
He looks skeptical, but he kisses you and you know you’ll never talk about it again.
::::
Tomorrow is D-day, the final day of your stay in this bunker, of your stay on this earth. You aren’t surprised when Rodney returns from the gate room and pushes you against the wall, devouring your mouth in harsh, lusty kisses, dropping to his knees and working to open your pants immediately. But, you grab his hands and stop him, saying, “Rodney-“
He looks up at you in surprise, mouth red and open. You pull him up and close to you, kiss his cheek, relishing the scratch of stubble on your lips, and you say, “Slow down, buddy.”
“Slow?” He looks bewildered, but he nods and says, “I can do slow. I’m not as good at slow, but I can do it. Fast has always served me well, get in and get out before the other person can change their mind, but if you want slow-“
You kiss him silent, taking your time, memorizing the taste of him. He’s right, he’s not as good at slow, at least at this stage of the game. He keeps speeding up and then dropping out altogether, until you finally say, “Rodney, I just want this to take awhile, don’t over think it.” And then he kind of hits a stride, calms down, and when he’s opening your ass with his tongue things get really good.
Afterwards, you sit on the floor next to him while he sleeps. He’s on his back, mouth open and snoring. There are only six hours until you leave this place, turning your back on this world forever. There’s no way this…whatever this was with you and Rodney would never have happened on the surface, and you know it’d live a half-life anywhere that wasn’t this missile silo, anywhere that didn’t have a beckoning red button to do battle with.
::::
The pool known as the event horizon shimmers. You and Rodney stand in front of it, both of you loaded down with heavy packs of provisions. He glances down at his hand-held computer again and nods. “Yes, I’m quite sure this is the correct address, though there will be no second chances. If I’m wrong, we could be walking into the vacuum of space-“
“Rodney, let’s do this,” you say, quietly.
He looks at you, eyes wide, and takes a deep breath. “Yes, yes, of course. Let’s go on then. Um, you first.”
You smile. “Together,” you say.
He looks relieved and you step up beside him. You approach the event horizon and reach out to his arm, pull him to you, and kiss his lips. He’s surprised, doesn’t have time to respond, and then you shove him into the even horizon, take off you pack, throw it into the silver pool as well, and then turn, running hard on the stone floor.
The missile is ready like it has been since you arrived. You tap in the numbers for your code, and then you touch the button one last time, feeling the click as it depresses and engages. The countdown begins. Ten…nine…eight…missile launch in seven…six…five…
::::
It’s bright and you can barely see the outline above you, but you feel the punches to your arm, and hear the choked voice yelling, “Bastard! You bastard!”
“Rodney?”
“I thought you…I thought…I hate you, you bastard! God, do you have any idea what you put me through? I thought you were gone, I thought you’d killed yourself, or left me here alone. And don’t’ think I wasn’t going to come back for you, you jackass!”
You pull him down on top of you, his shoulders quaking and his breath harsh in your ear. Over his shoulder you gaze into the bright light, seeing the blue sky and the green grass of your new home.
THE END
::::
::::
Title: The Temptation of Adam
Pairing: McShep
Rating: Adult Themed
Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit from my storytelling. Much inspiration was taken from the song "The Temptation of Adam" by Josh Ritter.
::::
The Temptation of Adam
The missile silo is quiet. Cavernously silent. The kind of silence that feels like the weight of the universe pressing down on you if you think about it too much. So, you don’t think about it. Instead, you study the walls, carved from stone and supported by metal, and you watch the soundless sweep of the second hand on the giant wall clock above the control panel, rubbing your thumb over the giant button, ridiculous in its prominence, red and glaring like a single eye, while you keep your back to the giant projectile behind you, huge and upright like an old oak tree, as you wait. And wait. And wait.
::::
Change can happen in the blink of an eye. One minute you’re having dinner, something you’ve dug out of your freezer, watching a rerun of Kate & Allie because you’re just that bored, and the next minute the world has ended.
There are no words to describe the deep chill that settled over you when the initial emergency broadcasts began, the horror and the helplessness, no words to encompass the broken, rising panic when the broadcasts stopped because it was all over, and the world was exploding in a nuclear violence, and you didn’t know who was alive and who was dead anymore.
Three days of wandering in a pack of strangers who suddenly became like family, roving through what was left of grocery stores, and bearing the weight of survivor’s guilt whenever you passed another sobbing mother, another dead child, another person burned and lost to this world. And it’s not even like you knew where you were going anyway.
It had been a shock when the green truck rolled up alongside the creep of the Land Rover you were riding in with Audrey, a woman you’d befriended, your new best friend. The military presence had been miserably lacking in any attempt to maintain order, and you half-realize that is what you were trying to do anyway-get to a military base, try to help, offer yourself for whatever purpose possible. Now, it looked like they’d found you.
The indignity of being dragged into the truck without so much as a hello took a while to wear off, but you manage to finally get some answers when they stop the truck at Cheyenne Mountain, itself half demolished, which is nearly impossible to believe. After all, this is it, the holy grail of secret military bases, and yet it has been penetrated, as though hit by multiple nuclear weapons, an obvious target.
You do get some answers, but they aren’t entirely satisfactory. You’re on a need to know basis, though why any state secret matters at this point is unclear to you, but you’re military and so you just narrow your eyes, push for a bit more info, and then accept your orders. One day, assuming there is a one day, maybe you’ll understand more. For now, the only explanation you have for any of what has happened is that a top secret device held at Cheyenne Mountain was damaged in the attack and has been moved for safe keeping and repair to an even more remote and top secret location and said device must be guarded at all costs. You are informed that you’ve been drafted back into the military on the President’s orders (you spare only a moment to wonder if there even is a president anymore, and if the military actually holds any authority at this point) and that your new orders are to protect the device with your life, and to aid you in that endeavor, you’d be granted an arsenal, and a nuclear warhead set to detonate and destroy the military base, the device, and yourself on your sole command.
“Why?” you ask. “Why me?”
Samantha Carter and Jack O’Neill glance at each other and she offers up a strange and vague explanation. “You have a gene. A special gene that makes you rather unique and this gene might become important at a later date, assuming we can get the device operational again. It could become the key to saving the human race. And, well, you’re the only one with this gene we could find.”
“What kind of gene?”
“We’ll explain it all to you, Major, as it becomes necessary. For now, we have a global crisis on our hands; perhaps you haven’t noticed that it’s the end of the damn world out there?” Colonel O’Neill said.
Fifteen hours later you crawl through the missile silo door alone and you’ve been alone ever since. There is no contact with your superiors, and you’ve been ordered not to contact them. The location of the device is too important to compromise, and so you wait, the radio that would deliver your orders silent and you begin to wonder if you’re alone on this earth, if you are the sole survivor of this apocalypse. You rub the button, and you’re tempted.
But you wait. And you wait. And you wonder what became of Audrey, and you think of your mom and you’re glad that she’s been gone for a long time, and you close your eyes and you dream of ice cream from Baskin Robbins and television programs that you’ll never know the end of now.
It seems like three months, but it is only three weeks when the radio crackles to life and you get the first message. There is a scientist that will be joining you, someone who can hopefully fix the device. You are ordered not to kill him.
“Excuse me?” you ask, certain you didn’t hear them properly.
“Whatever happens, no matter what he says or does, do not kill him.”
“Uh, sure. Don’t kill the scientist. Got it.”
“No, seriously, John,” Samantha Carter says. “You’ll want to kill him-“
“I wouldn’t kill anyone that didn’t need killing.”
“Exactly, John. Things can get kind of dicey when you’re in isolation and…well, I just want to impress upon you that it is imperative that you not kill him. That’s an order. Do you understand? The fate of humanity may depend on it.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand.”
You end the discussion confused and anxious. And you wait some more.
::::
The sound of the missile silo opening is deafening and you want to cover your ears. You want to cover them again when the scientist drops into view, sturdy in body and babbling complaints about the temperature, the stagnant air, and concerns about the rations.
When he stops talking, you put out your hand and say, “John Sheppard.”
He ignores the hand and narrows his eyes, contemplating you with utter disdain. “Yes, yes, out of my way. The sooner I get started the sooner we can get off this planet. Where’s the gate?”
“The gate?”
“Yes, the gate.” Seeing your blank stare, the scientist sighs heavily, taps the radio that you hadn’t noticed by his ear. “McKay here. This is the idiot I have to spend what is likely to be the rest of my short, and sadly rather pathetic life with? Yes, especially given the unfortunate fact that I never won the Nobel before the entire planet blew up, and that’s only because I was robbed.” He paused for a breath and then snapped, “Yes, obviously I’m here. Do I think this can work? Well, let’s see, keeping in mind that the chances of repairing the damage done by the final nuclear strike are like ten billion to one, I’d say that I need a lot more than that luck you wished me when you sent me on this hopeless errand, but thank you for your misguided attempts at a pep talk, and, no, I don’t think this will work, and, yes, I will do my best anyway. McKay out.”
He turns to you, his mouth thin, waves his hands dramatically and says, “The gate!” At your blank stare, he touches his fingers to the bridge of his nose and says, “The Stargate, the big circle, the thing you’re here to protect--ringing any bells?”
“The device is this way,” you say, stepping ahead of him to lead the way.
“Oh, yes, the device then, whatever, just take me there and then leave me alone so that I can think.”
You grimace but stay quiet, leading him down the corridor to the second largest of the three rooms open to you in this facility. There’s the missile silo, where you sit and contemplate the red button, and to the side of that is the room with two military issue cots, and eighteen boxes representing a sad supply of rations meant to last three years, and finally the room housing the device, an enormous cracked stone circle and a podium with identical markings. The size of it rivals the bomb itself, and you have spent many hours contemplating the mystery of it.
“Here it is.”
McKay mutters something that sounds like an insult wrapped in gratitude, and immediately begins pulling flat, strange crystals from the metal box he’s carried in his hand from the silo door, having left all of his other paltry belongings stacked next to the now sealed opening.
You watch him move around the gate, running his hands over it the way you have already done a hundred times, examining the fissures, and fretting. “This is impossible. Utterly impossible,” he declares more than once, and you watch him with your arms crossed over your chest, and your legs apart, standing in your most commanding way.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in this room-“ you begin.
“Oh, great!” he rolls his eyes, and throws his hands up. “Tell me you didn’t touch anything!” Seeing your immediately guilty expression he goes on, “What did you touch? Don’t touch anything in this room ever again, do you understand? This is ancient equipment, you have no idea what damage you could’ve done, anything you do to it could potentially strand humanity forever, and we’ll all die!”
“Come on,” you begin.
“No! I will not ‘come on’, this is serious. This is the end of the world we’re talking about. In fact, just leave. I can’t think with you here.”
You walk away thinking to yourself that you have no idea how this asshole would survive a nuclear winter; he was abrasive and horrid and he’d never find anyone that would be willing to keep his miserable ass warm.
::::
You are drawn back to the room six hours later, though. He’s still fussing and bustling and tapping on his tiny computer. You lean against the door jamb and watch him work. The way he moves, the sureness of his hands, and the intense expression on his face reminds you of the math nerd you’d had a fling with when you were just a private, the one who’d made you take the Mensa test and then fallen to his knees and sucked your cock with worshipful eyes when you told him you'd passed.
It’s been too long since you’ve had anything but your right hand, clearly, because suddenly you find yourself imagining McKay on his knees in front of you, his eyes wide and impressed, and as he takes your cock into his mouth you whisper your Mensa scores to him over and over again.
Pushing aside the question of whether or not McKay would even be impressed by your Mensa scores, you shake your head and rub your hand over your upper lip. Your movement draws McKay’s attention and he says with a note of sincere gratitude, “Thank God, it’s you. Is there any food in this place, because I’m seriously on the edge of hypoglycemic shock-“
He doesn’t look anywhere near that state, but he sounds entirely serious.
“Sure,” you say and he follows you, talking about his food allergies, and how citrus is like instant death, and the fact that he doesn't even have any epi pens anymore because things had been too chaotic above to get any before coming down here.
“This is it?,” he cries only a few moments later, his state of happy anticipation crashing into disappointment at the sight of the rations.
“Yep. Military rations.” You tear open a Power Bar and bite into it with relish. “Mm-mm, good.”
He narrows his eyes and takes his time choosing between the Power Bars and the MREs, finally biting into a Power Bar and chewing in grim silence.
You toss the wrapper in the waste disposal unit before you ask, “So, it’s a gate, huh?”
McKay nods, not saying anything.
“A gate to what?”
“More like a gate to where,” he says, then looks at you considering. “What’s your clearance?”
You smirk and lift an eyebrow.
“Right,” he agrees. “What’s the point of clearance anyway when the government barely even exists anymore and our enemies are as fried as we are. So, yeah-it’s a Stargate, a gate to other worlds, and, even other galaxies.”
“Other worlds,” you repeat, disbelief warring with wonder.
“Yes, other planets, habitable planets in most instances, which is a bonus considering this planet is now basically not habitable at all.”
“Yeah, about that. What the fuck happened up there? I mean, I know nothing. No one knows anything. I was watching tv and…”
“The world ended,” McKay finishes for you.
“Boom,” you supply.
“Yes, big boom. Enormous boom.” He smiles, something that was surprisingly innocent on his face, and your heart warms oddly, making you feel odd. You tell yourself that you’re gassy, and that you just need to burp. “I wish I could tell you. The military people I’ve talked with don’t even know for sure, something about some alien race teaming up with the terrorists, but what do I know? All I know is that we’ve got to evacuate, and the only way out of this mess is off.”
“Off.”
“Off-world. Through the gate.”
“Which is broken.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to fix it.”
“Probably not, no.”
“Then-“
“We’re all so very screwed,” he said biting into his Power Bar and sighing heavily.
“So, what you’re saying is this is our last shot and it’s impossible.”
He looks at you like you’re dim witted, which he clearly thinks you are. “The point is that my brain is too important to just die on this world, when I can go somewhere else and use it to its full potential elsewhere and if anyone can make the impossible happen it’s me, though this…well, this truly is impossible. I mean if I pull this off, then they owe me so big, like they should name me Supreme Genius of whatever world we settle on because this? This is impossible. I have a broken gate and some crystals from Antarctica and half of an ancient database. That’s it. What can I possibly do with that? Nothing!.”
You ponder this as he eats the last of his food, and you ask about the state of affairs above.
“The military is trying to get things under control but who knows. They’re trying to organize medical help, supplies, that sort of thing, but it’s all pretty hopeless. Half of the population or more is already lost, and the other half will be dead from exposure or radiation poisoning very soon.”
McKay is subdued as he reports this information, his shoulders slumping forward, and his expression weary. You scrub your hands over your face, not sure if you’re happy to be alive, or if you’re doing anyone any good down below, guarding a broken gate to other worlds. If we’ve destroyed this one, you think, maybe we don’t deserve another one, anyway.
McKay stands up and leaves the room without another word. You go back to staring at the red button, caressing it with your thumb.
::::
You find later that you are expected to carry McKay’s boxes of supplies from the silo door. “I’ve got a bad back,” he says, amongst a million other excuses when you just stare at him. You do eventually move the boxes because he needs them to work. Several are immensely heavy and filled with what looks like pieces of equipment from an alien ship on Star Trek.
“This is part of the Ancient database,” McKay says in answer to your query. You discover that all of the times he’s said the word ancient it was with a capital A and it meant a race of people from another world. “A team of humans sent to the Pegasus galaxy two years ago sent it to us for unknown reasons in their last transmission before their zed pm failed, or so we assume. Our own zed pm is too close to being depleted, or was, and we can’t contact them ourselves, not until the Dedalus is up and running, anyway, which at this point, you know, hello, end of world and all that, so now it is worth it to use the last of our zed pm, and-“
And in these ways you begin to learn state secrets of aliens, alien races, Ancient seeders, other galaxies, near infinite power sources, and the secret of your own genetic anomaly which is, of course, the reason you’re here in this top secret location three hundred feet under the ground.
You find that McKay is all too willing to give information to you if you shut up and listen, though you remain skeptical of his interpretation of events, biased as they seem to be by his ego and his wounded pride.
“I should have been on that Pegasus expedition; I was absolutely the most qualified for the job, have I mentioned that I have no less than two PhDs and have published more papers than Radek has ever even dreamed of? But, no, they chose him over me because they said that I would be a poor risk to introduce to alien societies; can you believe that? Me? A poor risk? “
“If anyone could enrage some aliens, it’d be you, I’m sure,” you mutter, biting into the tough and tasteless MRE.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” he replies, chewing his own meal slowly. “God, this isn’t even worth eating. I guess I was in the mood for food.” He tossed it in the waste.
“Hey, don’t waste food,” you say. “We have no idea how long we’ll be here.”
“I know exactly how long we’ll be here,” McKay says, leaving the room to work in the gate room again. “Until we die a long, slow death, most likely by starvation, unless we get desperate and find a way to unlock the silo door from the inside, and we make a bid for the faster death by radiation exposure above.”
“Nice,” you say to his retreating back, tilting your head to watch his ass, before returning to your intense analysis of the button.
::::
The button is red. It is smooth. It is about two and a half inches wide. It stares at you. You stare at it. One day, when McKay isn’t looking, you bend down and you lick it. It tastes like nothing and it is cool on your tongue. Another day, you kiss it.
::::
Two and a half weeks after McKay arrives, you’ve restrained from killing him three times already, but mostly you find his presence reassuring. He’s annoying, he’s egotistical, but he’s alive, and he wants to stay that way. That is more than you yourself are sure of and you’re drawn to his quest for life like a moth to a fire. His words were about doom, but his hands and mind race forward looking for every possible door, window, or crack that might be a way out of this for not only himself, but for at least some of the humans still alive on the surface.
You find yourself ordering him to shut up, to work harder and faster, because you need his activity to offset that red button which beckons you to just press it a little bit, to just tap in your code, the only one needed, and see what it’s like to die. It is like the serpent in the Garden, tempting you with knowledge you shouldn’t have.
When the radio crackles and you have contact again, it is General O’Neill talking to you. Sam is sick with radiation poisoning, she likely won’t make it. McKay’s mouth opens in clear devastation and you want to touch him, but you don’t. He sinks into the chair next to yours, the panel with the red button between you.
“So, Rodney, you gonna save our asses up here, or what?”
McKay fumbles through his explanation of the situation. “I need the crystal from Antarctica and the information that Daniel had there. I can’t go any further without it.”
There is an awkward silence before O’Neill reports, “Daniel is dead. The crystal is missing. The information was in his head-equations, interpretations, stuff I never really listened to him talk about.”
Rodney closed his eyes, hopelessness sapping that nervous energy that you need.
“Can you find the crystal?” you ask O’Neill.
“I’ll do my best.” He replies. “And, Rodney, keep working. Oh! There was one thing Daniel said about how to fix the gate before he died,” O’Neill sounds strange and broken. “He said something about the number seven. Is that helpful?”
“No, no, it’s not. Not in the least.”
“Ah, well, keep working. O’Neill out.”
::::
The next day Rodney doesn’t go to the gate room. Instead, he opens up a plaid suitcase, pulls on a t-shirt that says, “Manscaping: It’s Not Just for Porn Stars Anymore”.
You consider this for a long time, noticing, not for the first time, that McKay’s nipples are always hard.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” you reply, and he turns his back to you, fishes something else out of the suitcase and then plops down on his cot.
“Aren’t you going to work on the gate?”
“No,” he says, flipping open what appears to be a book of crossword puzzles.
“What about the ancient database?”
“No, and no, and no, and no, and, again, no-what five letters spell ‘apocalypse’?”
“W.W.I.I.I. and, dammit, why not?”
“Oh, good one, that fits perfectly, and because there is absolutely nothing I can do without that crystal, and even if I finished the equations I’d still need the crystal, and I’m tired, so no, and no, and no, and W.W.I.I.I, perfect.”
You stare at his hands holding the book and you fight the shortness of breath that is overwhelming you. You can feel the button staring at you through the walls, the red eye that never blinks, never says uncle, and never swerves first. “You have to keep working. Get your ass up out of that bed and go work. Now.”
“Or?”
“Or, I’ll get your ass up for you.”
McKay dropped the book. “Look, I told you once and I’ll tell you again, there is nothing I can do without that crystal. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Do you speak English? Are you retarded? Do you not understand that even with the crystal there would still be literally hundreds of interpretations of the data I’ve salvaged from the database and-“
“Get your ass out of bed-“
“Make me.”
You’re across the room and in his personal space before you realize what you’re doing. His arms fit in your hands perfectly and you find yourself holding him down on the bed instead of pulling him up. His nostrils flare and his eyes are wide.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and you shove him into the cot and then release him, storming out of the room, climbing the path up to the missile silo door and banging your hands against it.
You rest your forehead on the cool metal and stand there for a long time, feeling the bomb growing out of the ground in the room below you, stretching up toward the dark of the top of the silo, and you want to see that mountain blow its top.
::::
There is nothing natural about your life. You are underground, eating something that God never intended for food, breathing and drinking stale but clean water, and feeling guilty because you know that on the surface someone is dying with every second that goes by.
But you have your orders, and you could ignore them but at what cost? You question them daily, and in the weeks after General O’Neill’s last radio call, you start to believe that you and McKay are the last people on earth, that everyone else is dead, and it’s just the two of you.
Does that change things? You don’t know.
Some days McKay works like mad, like he’s onto something, but he just shushes you when you ask, saying, “Thinking here! Thinking!” and you walk away to clean the guns you’ve taken a shine to from the arsenal. “That’s right, Major,” he’ll say later, seeing you stroking the weapons lovingly, “polish your weapons of destruction and leave it to the scientists to save the day.”
One day, he sees you staring up at the missile, and you don’t know why, but you volunteer that it makes you think of the oak tree in your backyard growing up.
“I see the resemblance,” he says, sarcastically, “just carve our names into the side and it’ll be just like home.”
Home. That’s something you haven’t allowed yourself to think about too much. Home once was a warm kitchen in the south of Texas, but then it was a bunk in Afghanistan, until the incident with the chopper and the loss of his man led to the first of several disciplinary actions, culminating in a dishonorable discharge when you and Sam Maniker were found sucking each other’s dick in the infirmary. Interesting how that whole dick sucking thing didn’t seem to matter now that the world had ended.
Speaking of that, it is hard to find a place to jerk off in the bunker. The showers are nothing more than area of the sleeping quarters that has a drain in the floor. The water pumps from a huge supply in the mountain, but there is no telling how long it will last, and the showers are cold, too.
McKay doesn’t make the situation any easier, jerking off seems to cause him no shame, and he does it while showering, or sometimes at night in his cot. The soft sounds in the darkness make you insane with lust, and you have lurid, vivid dreams that leave you embarrassingly sticky in the morning. You leave the room for McKay’s pornographic shower scenes, but on more than one occasion you only go as far as the door, and then watch around the corner, your own hand moving in your pants, licking your own come off your hand as you shudder from orgasm.
After that incident, you vow to spend less time watching McKay, whether he was at work on the gate or working crossword puzzles, and most definitely you vow to stop watching while he’s masturbating. Instead, you will spend more time watching the button.
But, then, the night he discovers the connection with the seventh symbol he comes to your cot.
::::
“There are seven!” he exclaims in your ear, waking you from a deep and dreamless sleep.
“What?” you ask, sitting up, bleary-eyed and confused.
“There are seven! And how does your hair do that? I mean, you just woke up and it looks amazing. Do you have a secret stash of product down here or what?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, uh, there are seven symbols! That’s what Daniel Jackson was telling O’Neill. Most gates have six symbols in their address, six symbols to gate to and address, but the Pegasus gate has seven symbols, and so does our earth gate, and that’s how we got to Pegasus to begin with. But, don’t you see, the seventh symbol is unnecessary, we can gate in this galaxy without it. But! With the seventh symbol we can by-pass the damage done to the gate’s communications applications, simply by removing it and rerouting the-look, the science is incredibly complex, but I can do it. I can do it without the crystal from Antarctica!”
“I thought you said there was no work around.”
“There wasn’t! But now there is! Now we just have to determine a location, and we can be out of here, do you understand? We can even gate to Pegasus like we’d hoped. I can make this thing operational after all, assuming that the equations I’ve been working on are right, which they are, and then I can bridge the damage done to the components-“
You put your hand over his mouth and say, “Great, Rodney. Now there’s just one problem. We haven’t heard from O’Neill in almost a month.”
Rodney’s eyes dim, but then they catch fire again. “I know, but I’ve solved the problem. I always knew I could!”
“No, you didn’t. You always said you couldn’t solve it.”
“I was lying. I just didn’t want you to feel bad for being so stupid.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Well, not in comparison to most people, but in comparison to me-“
“Are you a Mensa member?” you say, rubbing your sleep crusted eyes, and missing his reaction, which you immediately regret.
“You are?” he asks, awe in his voice.
“No, but I took the test.” You keep your eyes on his face now, narrowing your gaze until he’s in focus, wanting to ask him what the fuck difference it made now that the world was over, but his expression stops you from speaking.
“And you passed?”
“Of course, I passed. It was easy.”
Rodney’s mouth falls open and you remember your old flame, how you’d eased your cock right on into his gaping mouth while he’d sucked and swallowed. You sit up straighter, trying hide your erection, but the movement just puts you closer to Rodney’s face, and the next thing you know Rodney’s grabbed your head and is kissing you.
God, finally. That’s all you can think, and Rodney’s lips are fierce on your mouth, urgent and desperate, you gasp for breaths between kisses that feel more real than anything has since the day everything changed. Your hands find the back of his neck and you hold him, your mouths sloppy and wet.
When he pulls away, it’s to shove your covers off, push your sweats down and engulf your cock in a greedy slurp. You gasp in shock, grabbing his head, thrusting up and hunching over him at the same time. “Oh, God,” you breath and he’s working away, undeterred by your sudden movements, sucking you hard and fast, his spit drooling down over your balls, and you want to spread your legs, to bring him in even closer, go even deeper into his mouth, but your eyes roll up and you grunt as orgasm uncoils within you, startling and hard.
You gasp for air as he pulls off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and then climbing on top of you, shoving you down into the cot, as he humps against your thighs, face buried in your neck, mouth hot and wet against your skin, and you hold him tight as he jerks and comes, babbling, “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh…John.”
::::
You are sure it is going to be embarrassing, but Rodney just lifts up his head, grins, and says, “God, I’m hungry.”
You prepare an MRE while Rodney showers, and then he sits across from you in a t-shirt and sweat pants eating and working on a crossword puzzle like he hadn’t just sucked your cock, and like it wasn’t 2:30 in the morning.
“So, uh-“ you say, scratching the back of your neck.
“Oh, God, you’re not going to try to talk about it, are you? Because, no, let’s not do that, okay? Let’s not analyze and discuss and make a vow not to do it again. Because, I don’t know about you, but I completely plan on doing that again. I haven’t felt this good in weeks, months, years maybe. It’s like-well, it’s like the world ended and so I can have sex with hot guys and there can be no questions asked, okay? So, don’t ask questions. Questions are bad. Questions will make you hate me, and I don’t want you to hate me, because I want to suck your cock again, okay? Is that all right with you?”
You stare, wide-eyed and hard again. “Um, yeah. Yeah, that’s all right by me.”
“Good. So, I was just thinking, did you bring any condoms?”
You choke on the piece of MRE that you’d just put in your mouth. “What?”
“You know, condoms, but forget it. You know-end of the world, have sex with hot guys, fuck the whole STD thing. I mean, you don’t have an STD, right?”
“Uh, Rodney, look-“
“We’re not talking about it!”, he shouts
“I’m trying not to, but you won’t shut up!”, you yell back.
He throws his MRE on the ground and you stab a finger at it saying, “Don’t waste food, Rodney!”
And he’s on you, and you’re kissing, and fuck he’s so good at this, and why on earth would he ever want to use his mouth for talking instead of just doing this all of the time, when he talks he just pisses people off, but when he does this, God, it’s like he should just never stop.
You’re both naked now, kneeling on the floor, your hands all over each other, your mouths kissing and biting. He’s got his mouth next to your ear and he says, “I want to fuck you. Can I fuck you?”
It’s been a few years and there’s nothing here-no lube, no condoms-but yeah, “Yeah, God, yeah. Just-gentle.”
“I can be gentle. I can be really gentle. I’m really good at this, I swear, and you’ll love it. I’ve had a lot of practice, more than you might expect-“
“Rodney, shut up.”
He does, for the most part, though he talks a lot during the sex itself, which is fine, because it’s kind of hot to hear him saying how much he wants to fuck you, how he’s dying to get inside you, how you’re so tight, and it’s nice that you don’t have to say anything in return, just lay back and let him open your ass with his spit-slick fingers.
It’s almost too much, though, you almost tell him to stop, when he’s putting his dick in, but you don’t have to because he’s gentle, just like he said, and he’s talking you through it, and you listen to his voice, focusing on his words, and then he’s there, bent over you, staring into your face, eyes wide, mouth open, face flushed, and buried deep in your ass, and fuck does it burn, you’re not sure you can even breath. But then he moves, slowly, gently, and it turns into something intense and too good to be real. When you’re groaning and moving with him, he bends to kiss you but he can’t reach and you put your hand on the side of his face, holding it there as he closes his eyes, tilts his head back and comes in your ass.
“John,” he says, moaning and jerking a little in the aftermath.
You’re still hard, but you shock yourself by coming as he’s pulling out. He stops with just the head of his dick still in you, scoops up most of your come from your stomach, and licks it from his fingers, and then he pulls out, reaches down and captures his own come as it leaks from your ass. You’re breathless-and he smiles and laughs as he reaches over, grabs his underwear, and wipes his hand on it. “I like dirty sex, but not that dirty.”
You laugh, too, and pull him down on top of you, and you lay there sweaty and content while the red button enjoys its view of the dark sky of the cavernous missile silo.
::::
The next morning you wake alone. Your ass is killing you, and you move gingerly to the shower, swallowing back a yelp at the cold water. You dress slowly, already anxious about the inevitable morning after. You wonder if telling Rodney to shut up will work again.
He’s in the missile silo, his back to the button, his face turned up to the bomb. You stand in the doorway for a long time, so long that you have time to consider putting in your code and ending this entire thing for everyone, condemning yourself and the planet in one fell blow.
You clear your throat and he jumps. “Hey,” you say, and move into the room. “I, uh, could round up a tasty MRE for breakfast if you want.”
He doesn’t turn around and you approach slowly. “Uh, so, listen-“ you begin, beginning a clumsy negation of everything, because, seriously, it’s the end of the world, the last thing you want to worry about was a night of sex with a scientist stranded with you in a missile silo waiting to help evacuate what’s left of mankind or possibly orders to kill yourselves and destroy the only means of escaping the planet. It’s too much bullshit to get all girly about this now.
He interrupts you before you can say anything like that, though. “My sister. She’s probably dead,” Rodney said softly. “I hadn’t seen her in, I don’t know, like four years. Since she had her kid and gave up her career in physics. She was a genius-not as much of a genius as me, but a genius. She got knocked up by some English Major and her priorities all shifted. Don’t get me wrong. I’d checked to see if she’d published, and of course she hadn’t.”
You make a noise, something that you hope is kind of sympathetic, but not overly so because Rodney seems subdued but not in a great deal of grief.
“I…well, I hope she didn’t suffer, you know? I hope it was fast for her. And-I hope she died before her kid. I hope she didn’t have to see her baby suffer,” Rodney murmured, staring up into the darkness.
“Most moms would probably want to be there for their kid to help soothe them,” you say.
“Yeah, well, I hope she wasn’t like that, okay? I can’t stand the thought of her hurting like that.” Rodney snaps, and you’re surprised that he’s more concerned about her emotional pain than physical pain. You find yourself thinking that Rodney may be more bristly on the outside to protect his tender inner core.
“Sure,” you say, and you cross and uncross your arms, consider patting him on the shoulder because you think you ought to offer some comfort.
He turns to you then and walks right over, wrapping his arms around your middle, tucking his head in at your neck. You let him hold you for awhile, put your arms around his back, but you don’t’ move and you don’t say a thing. He pulls away, keeps his eyes averted, and quickly wipes the right one with his fingers, obviously hoping you didn’t notice.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m going to go into shock if I don’t have some breakfast. I am hypoglycemic, you know, and of course then it’s back to the gate room, because a genius’s work is never done. Oh, did I tell you? In my dream, I had an idea…a really great idea. I think I wrote it down somewhere. I remember writing it down.” Rodney walks away patting at his pants pockets, and pulling out a crumbled piece of paper. “Yeah, okay, good. I thought I had it here.”
::::
The next few days are interesting. In fact, this may be the most ideal sexual relationship you’ve ever been in. The only time Rodney talks about the sex is when you’re having it, and while you sometimes have to tell him to shut up, for the most part it’s the kinky kind of talk, and you’re okay with that.
Rodney sucks cock like he can’t get enough of it, and you return the favor with as much gusto and a little more finesse. You spend several hours a day naked, sucking, touching, kissing, eating ass, and then you go monitor the red button, making sure it’s keeping in line, while Rodney goes back to the data base, his calculations, and his crystals, looking them over again for some sign of something.
You don’t fuck again for two weeks. Another two weeks of silence from the above world, and that’s another thing you and Rodney don’t talk about much, because you both know that if you start to talk about the fact that you haven’t heard anything at all, then you have to admit that you aren’t likely to hear anything either. In fact, you might have to talk about the fact that you might be the only ones left who even know you’re both down here.
When you do fuck again, Rodney uses a lot of spit and your own come to ease his way in. This time you’re on your elbows and knees and the angle is great. You can feel the stretch and burn behind your eyes, pinpricks of sweat on your forehead and back, and then the slow drag over your prostate leaves you slack-jawed and grunting like an animal.
Your eyes are rolled back as he slams into you, his balls slapping your ass, and you try to dig your fingers into the stone floor, trying to hold on to the world as it spins out of control.
“John,” he says as he reaches around to your cock, jerking you in the rhythm of his hips. You’re so close, but you don’t want to come yet, and you bat his hand away, wanting this pull and push to go on and on.
“Don’t come yet,” you grind out, arching your back. “Make it last.”
Rodney bends his forehead to your back and you feel him relax into the strokes, like it’s the end of the world, and all you’ve got is time.
::::
Shrieks have you running to the gate room with a gun drawn. You can’t imagine how someone could have infiltrated the missile silo without you noticing, but you have been warned of aliens who could teleport, and so it wasn’t impossible, you suppose.
“I did it!” Rodney screams as you walked in. “I did it!”
You look around for the aliens, gun swinging in the tight control of your arm.
“Oh my God! Put that away! Are you trying to kill me! Have you finally succumbed to cabin fever and I’m going to be the victim of your delusions-“ Rodney babbles hysterically.
You lower the gun and yell, “What the hell, Rodney! I thought you were being killed!”
“Killed? By whom? We’re locked in a bunker 300 feet below ground and only like five people, who are all probably dead, know that we’re here. Oh, my God, you are going delusional. This can happen when in isolation for a long time. I remember learning about it in undergrad in my required Psychology course. And they call that a science?” He scoffs. “However, I would have hoped that my presence would have staved this off, but I know I’m not the best company-“
“Rodney, just shut up and tell me what the hell you’re screaming about.”
The frown of worry and fear evaporated and he smiled, the most brilliant and amazing smile you’d ever seen. “I know what to do. I can fix it. I can get us out of here.”
::::
A week later Rodney activates the gate and you stand mesmerized by the silver lake stretched in the middle of the circle.
At first all you can do is stare, and he stares, too, his face glowing with pride and excitement. Minutes pass and you pull your eyes away from the gate and look at Rodney’s face, watching the excitement slide away, replaced by a gray, sad expression. He looks at you then and says, “John, we need to talk.”
::::
You agree to go against orders and try to contact someone via the radio, but the orders are broken for nothing, there is no answer, no reply, not even when Rodney modifies the radio for a longer distance and changes the frequency to be accessible by anyone with even an old fashioned HAM.
There’s a long and drawn out argument over whether or not to try to open the silo hatch, to go in physical search of someone who could…well, anyone, really. Any other human at all.
“The entire point of fixing the gate is to get people off of this planet, Rodney,” you argue.
“What if there aren’t any people to get off? And even if there are, how are we supposed to find them?”
“I don’t leave my people behind.”
“They aren’t ‘your people’; they’re just people!”
“At this point, what’s the difference?” you cross your arms over your chest.
“Exactly!” he says, throwing his arms up.
That argument continues as you try to force the door, stand next to Rodney glowering, coercing him to attempt an override of the locking mechanism, but even when he successfully breaks the locking code, the door still will not open, as though it has been physically blocked from the other side by an immovable object.
In the end, you’re forced to recognize that this is it, that you and Rodney may very well be the only humans in a position to be saved. It seems pointless, futile, and the button beckons you with whispers of how deeply Rodney sleeps, how he’d never know, it would be so fast, so easy. But you resist, because it isn’t over yet, not when you’ve got Rodney’s cock in your mouth again, and he’s clutching your hair and saying “God, God, God,” just like that.
::::
“This,” Rodney announces, “is a map of a section of the Pegasus galaxy.”
He’s spent three days interfacing the Ancient database with the computer in the silo room.
“Now, I’ve started sorting through the information the Ancients had on each of the gates and the planets around them. The problem being, of course, that without a MALP, we can’t know beforehand if the information in the database is accurate.”
He’s printed out the map on about a million sheets of paper, using up what looks to be half of your paper stores and most of the tape, too, and you almost chastise him about it, but you don’t because you’ve got that button in the back of your mind, and it isn’t like it matters anyway.
The plan is to proceed without command from the military, to assume, until proven wrong, that they are alone in this now.
“This!” Rodney points at a planet on the map. “This is the place the Ancients refer to as Athos, a friendly group of farmers and traders, open to visitors and kind to strangers in need. That’s what the Ancients said, but of course that was thousands of years ago, so they could be vicious cannibals, or life-sucking vampires by now for all we know.”
He’s kind of giddy. You attempt a smile and nod your head. “Good going, Rodney,” you say, knowing he wants to hear it.
“They’re humans, you see. Same species as us. We could, theoretically, go forth and spread our seed with them, pass on a few of these earthly genes.” Rodney grins and your stomach clenches, but you nod gamely. Sure, you’ve been known to fuck a few women. Why not do it for humanity? Besides it’s not like this thing with you and Rodney is-and you stop thinking because that’s not something you’re going to think about.
“That would be good,” you say.
“Now that we’ve decided on a place, all that remains is deciding on a day.”
“We should wait a few more months. Give them time to get to us.”
Rodney considers and then says, “Six weeks.”
You don’t say anything, refuse to agree, but he puts the date on the calendar, circles it in red, the same red he’s been using to circle potential planets.
A few hours later, you take his red pen, walk to the map on the wall, the one of what had been the United States of America, and you put a circle on the map right over your current location, and then you color it in. At night you begin to dream of a serpent with one red eye. The echoes of temptation are everywhere.
:::::
“What are you doing?”
You startle, your hand jerks, and you come this close to detonating the bomb. Quickly you zero out the code you’ve typed in, and you stand up, brushing him aside. “Nothing,” you say.
“Nothing? Nothing? I just came in here to see if you want a blowjob or something and I find you with the code punched in and your thumb on the button. Are you suicidal? Do you want to kill us both? I mean, if you want to die, that’s one thing, but don’t take me along with you! I do not consent to being nuked out of existence, do you understand me?”
You roll your eyes. “I wasn’t doing anything.” And you weren’t, you’d just been…practicing. You walk out of the room and you feel him on your heels. “Listen, Rodney, go away, okay?”
He grabs your arm and pulls you around. “Listen, are you? Suicidal, I mean. Because I don’t think I could stand it if…listen, I don’t want to be alone here. “ He gestured toward the gate room. “I don’t want to be alone anywhere. I…I…listen, I don’t know what to say. I like having sex with you. I like you. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t kill me. I mean, seriously…don’t kill us.”
You think that might be the closest thing to a profession of love you’re going to get and it isn’t like you even wanted or needed one anyway, even though you do love him, and you have since he broke out those damn crossword puzzles, maybe since the beginning. You don’t remember having to learn to love him, just learning not to kill him, which seems like two not entirely separate things.
“I’m not killing anyone, Rodney.”
He looks skeptical, but he kisses you and you know you’ll never talk about it again.
::::
Tomorrow is D-day, the final day of your stay in this bunker, of your stay on this earth. You aren’t surprised when Rodney returns from the gate room and pushes you against the wall, devouring your mouth in harsh, lusty kisses, dropping to his knees and working to open your pants immediately. But, you grab his hands and stop him, saying, “Rodney-“
He looks up at you in surprise, mouth red and open. You pull him up and close to you, kiss his cheek, relishing the scratch of stubble on your lips, and you say, “Slow down, buddy.”
“Slow?” He looks bewildered, but he nods and says, “I can do slow. I’m not as good at slow, but I can do it. Fast has always served me well, get in and get out before the other person can change their mind, but if you want slow-“
You kiss him silent, taking your time, memorizing the taste of him. He’s right, he’s not as good at slow, at least at this stage of the game. He keeps speeding up and then dropping out altogether, until you finally say, “Rodney, I just want this to take awhile, don’t over think it.” And then he kind of hits a stride, calms down, and when he’s opening your ass with his tongue things get really good.
Afterwards, you sit on the floor next to him while he sleeps. He’s on his back, mouth open and snoring. There are only six hours until you leave this place, turning your back on this world forever. There’s no way this…whatever this was with you and Rodney would never have happened on the surface, and you know it’d live a half-life anywhere that wasn’t this missile silo, anywhere that didn’t have a beckoning red button to do battle with.
::::
The pool known as the event horizon shimmers. You and Rodney stand in front of it, both of you loaded down with heavy packs of provisions. He glances down at his hand-held computer again and nods. “Yes, I’m quite sure this is the correct address, though there will be no second chances. If I’m wrong, we could be walking into the vacuum of space-“
“Rodney, let’s do this,” you say, quietly.
He looks at you, eyes wide, and takes a deep breath. “Yes, yes, of course. Let’s go on then. Um, you first.”
You smile. “Together,” you say.
He looks relieved and you step up beside him. You approach the event horizon and reach out to his arm, pull him to you, and kiss his lips. He’s surprised, doesn’t have time to respond, and then you shove him into the even horizon, take off you pack, throw it into the silver pool as well, and then turn, running hard on the stone floor.
The missile is ready like it has been since you arrived. You tap in the numbers for your code, and then you touch the button one last time, feeling the click as it depresses and engages. The countdown begins. Ten…nine…eight…missile launch in seven…six…five…
::::
It’s bright and you can barely see the outline above you, but you feel the punches to your arm, and hear the choked voice yelling, “Bastard! You bastard!”
“Rodney?”
“I thought you…I thought…I hate you, you bastard! God, do you have any idea what you put me through? I thought you were gone, I thought you’d killed yourself, or left me here alone. And don’t’ think I wasn’t going to come back for you, you jackass!”
You pull him down on top of you, his shoulders quaking and his breath harsh in your ear. Over his shoulder you gaze into the bright light, seeing the blue sky and the green grass of your new home.
THE END
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