FIC: SGA, S2; John Sheppard; 2,190 words.
The Man Next Door
Translation. Transmutation. Transcendence. John's having a very weird couple of days.
Authors' Notes: Co-written with verstehen. Explicit! May squick some. S2 SPOILERS.
>>>>
He'd tried playing some of his initial nervousness away. It'd been good; an all Cash playlist, starting with A Boy Named Sue and Streets of Laredo until he'd hit The Man Comes Around for the fourth time and his new claws started catching on the strings and getting in the way. He stopped before he popped a string. John had never believed in using a pick and he hadn't packed more than five replacements.
Then he'd tried Solitaire and Minesweeper, but neither proved enough of a distraction to block the coolness he felt creeping through him, the feeling of power and fitness, like his muscles were tingling from a good workout he knew he hadn't had yet.
After winning his third game, even multitasking between the two, in a row, John had ended up on the bed, staring at one of the few pictures he brought with him and the only picture he had of himself and his father together.
He stared at the picture for hours, relishing the feel in spite of himself, before Elizabeth had shown up with her pathetic words and grating optimism. She would never do what was necessary; he knew that. She had to be scared into even doubling the detail. He tried to make her understand, tried to describe the way things were changing, the way he could feel it in him, turning him. He was turning into a vampire bug and John couldn't make a single joke about cliche bloodsuckers and turning.
It might have been easier to do if the tall, dark and handsome cliche were applicable here. In the movies the vampires were always attractive, mesmerizing even, with the sort of dark contrasts that John had gotten compliments from women on all his life. The dark hair, light skin thing really did it for a lot of women and the monsters played right into that. In the movies. In the movies they didn't have scales and their, their best friend, for lack of a better attachment, didn't flinch away from them when trying to meet their eyes.
In the movies, vampires didn't have best friends. They had minions. Right now, John wouldn't mind some minions. Some minions like Teyla to spar with, to burn off energy with, to scent.
And he was back to the thoughts that alternately exhilarated and terrified him. The thoughts that made him tell Elizabeth, his only visitor -- and the narrow part of his mind, the part that was still completely lucid, didn't think that was by orders either -- to double his guard because he couldn't know that as the inhibitor Beckett kept injecting into his veins worn off he wouldn't go after what he really wanted. What he was becoming really wanted.
Part of him wondered if Ford had felt like this at all. No wonder the kid had split. No wonder he thought everyone wanted him off the Wraith drug because it was making him better. This was what the Wraith felt like all the time. Or something like it.
John didn't really believe, as he sat and stared at the ceiling of his room, not wanting to look over to what he had been back when he had potential, that this was what the Wraith felt like. The Wraith, see, had the ability of speech and he knew that it wouldn't be long before he didn't. It wouldn't be long before he didn't even have words and while he'd never been much of a talker they seemed all kinds of important now.
He could infect other people with this. And he wouldn't be able to apologize. He wouldn't want to apologize. He wouldn't want to stop himself and he didn't know how far it was he would go.
It seemed like there were so many things he wanted to say, now, in his last hours of lucidity, but there was no one left to say them to. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of his teammates since being locked in this place -- his room, his place -- and he didn't dare ask Elizabeth for permission to go search them out. It was better if he was locked away. It was better if he wasn't a problem for them, so he needed to, had to, stay here.
He knew that they were out there, Rodney probably complaining and whining every step of the way while Ronon mocked him openly and Teyla tried not to smile, looking for a way to help him. But he sort of wished they were here instead. That was a pretty freaky feeling.
Being alone and not liking it. It reminded him that the bugs, those damn bugs, were hive minded. Like the Wraith. Like bugs, and that's what he was turning into. He might be cut off from that hive mind, either the Wraith or the fucking bugs, by being here. Something deep inside him stirred and hissed at the thought. He wanted to have a place within the group.
John was afraid that was what was left of the human in him. Not the instincts of the bug. That was there, under his skin, calling him towards... something he couldn't really feel, a place he didn't really know, but it was the human part, the human part that wanted Elizabeth to come back, wanted his friends and teammates here with him. He didn't want to go join another hive; he wanted to make his own.
This was his place. It even had a queen, of sorts, in Elizabeth. His human part knew that. Atlantis was his.. He felt it in his bones, right along with the creeping power, and she accepted him as easily as he did her. Maybe he was wrong. Elizabeth wasn't the queen here. There was another queen, more subtle and pervasive here, that only he understood they were serving. Everything they did, it was for her, and most of the time none of the others realized it; most of the time he could even push it into the back of his mind, focusing on the here and now and Elizabeth's orders that came as 'suggestions'.
Making conversation about the fact the city wanted you to do something was the best way to get ordered over to Heightmeyer in about two seconds flat, no matter how true it was.
They fixed and they tinkered and she guided them, helping them interface to get what she wanted. Whatever that might be. He had the sinking feeling it was the people. Oh, she wanted to be clean and repaired, but she wanted them living there more.
She controlled them. She controlled him, in his dreams, or when he wasn't paying attention. Sometimes ideas came, desperate acts to protect her and protect her city, her living city of people, and he'd never once not followed through. Never once. They were good ideas. Ideas he might have come up with himself, if he had time. She was quicker. That was why no one questioned John's wacky ideas, the out-of-the-box thinking. It was something he would do.
It made him wonder if she'd give Carson an idea that would save him before it was too late. Would he listen? He wondered if she felt it. What was happening to him. Maybe she was enjoying it vicariously. Enjoying the thrum of the changing.
Damn it. His hands clawed against the bed and he pushed himself up, his eyes still squeezed shut tightly. He needed to stop thinking like this; he needed to stop dwelling. His life sucked right now but it wasn't the first time. He'd nearly died half a dozen times since stepping foot on Atlantis, in horrible, painful ways, and he couldn't stop the feeling that he should be grateful that this didn't hurt, that this wouldn't kill him. He was safe; it was everyone around him that wasn't.
Everyone but her, the thought struck him suddenly and he cocked his head letting his slit eyes slit open themselves a little. The room, the one he knew had the lights turned down, nearly completely off, exploded in brightness and a shine he couldn't quite place, and he shut his eyes again, flopping back down on the bed, as well as he could flop.
This sucked.
He tried to think the lights dim again. The light didn't hurt, nothing hurt, but it was annoying, a reminder that he was turning into a bug. A thoughtless, feral life-sucking vampire bug that would shortly try and kill anything and everything that moved in Atlantis. Anything that he didn't judge suitable for his new hive.
At least John knew who the bug in him wanted as the mating queen. Or maybe that was the human. It was hard to tell.
The fuzzier things became the less it mattered, the less anything mattered, like the bright lights or the creeping feeling, the one starting at his toes, of... something he couldn't identify. It seemed like it should have been familiar but then a lot of things seemed almost familiar right now. It moved up him and it felt like peace and heat, all mushed together in ways that made him confused. But it felt good, really good, as good as the change did, so John wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
No, no, he was going to lie here, just like this, and let the feeling creep all over him, skittering around his skin and washing through his insides, making his breath hitch. That was exactly, exactly, what he was going to do. It was like waves. It *was* waves. Sensation lapping against and over his skin and John shut his eyes, feeling the lights dim, and floated. He was getting hard.
There was something wrong here, twisting in his stomach was the feeling that he shouldn't be doing this, that this shouldn't be happening. It still felt good. God, it felt good. Better than the change, better than a week straight of codeine, better than anything. He let his hips move, warmed, up and down, his ass rubbing against the bed each time and wondered if his hands were too deformed to jerk off.
Not deformed, his head corrected him as he pumped his hips up. Different. Meant to move in different ways, but he still wondered if he grabbed his dick would his hand come back with blood on it? He wasn't willing to take the chance. Besides, he wasn't sure he could undo the buttons on his pants and he wasn't up to ripping the fabric. Easy, he knew. Easy, it'd be easy. Fabric ripped even easier than flesh.
Instead he twisted over, slithered over onto his stomach, trapping his hard-on between his pants, the mattress and his scaled skin. The weight of his body was followed by the weight of the waves, sloshing against him, over him, as he spread his hands out and pressed them flat against the bed. For balance. As if the whole world wasn't spinning around him.
This was the best way to not think. The best. He rubbed against the bed, like a fucking twelve year old afraid of getting caught out by the nuns that did midnight checks and got pissed when they found you with your hand down your pants even though it felt good, and he tried not to think of that either. He was a long way from then and this wasn't there.
There, the bed didn't reach up like it was trying to caress you. This was lasting, not going away, he felt like he was getting harder and harder, until he felt ready to explode from the feel of the fabric wrapping around him, encasing him, but he didn't. It just got more intense. It was like, like with Chaya, where he'd come in his pants by the end of it and shuffled out, embarrassed that she hadn't touched him, not the way he knew of having a woman's hands on him, and he'd come in his pants anyway.
That'd been intense; it was nothing in comparison to this.
He wanted to make a noise, groan, scream, cry even, but nothing was coming out. It was a silent communion and, god, it was good. If the body was a temple, this pleasure, this connection and heat and wet rapture was a Papal Mass. He hadn't had religion since he was twenty-three years old and his faith in God had been decimated by the last great disappointment he could stand, but this was everything he'd loved about it, understood about it, twisted and bucked into his body, making him a vessel.
This wasn't God, but it was her and in his little world she was the only fucking divinity that mattered.
Now his throat was working, gasping, as he worshipped her. "Oh god --" he managed and came. Oh, god. And nothing like it at all.
He was such a mess, wasn't he? But she'd heard him, he was sure of it now. She understood. 'Thanks,' he mouthed into the sheets and realized the waves weren't going away. They never went away completely.<<<<
Thoughts? Comments? Feedback?
- Andrea.
Translation. Transmutation. Transcendence. John's having a very weird couple of days.
Authors' Notes: Co-written with verstehen. Explicit! May squick some. S2 SPOILERS.
>>>>
He'd tried playing some of his initial nervousness away. It'd been good; an all Cash playlist, starting with A Boy Named Sue and Streets of Laredo until he'd hit The Man Comes Around for the fourth time and his new claws started catching on the strings and getting in the way. He stopped before he popped a string. John had never believed in using a pick and he hadn't packed more than five replacements.
Then he'd tried Solitaire and Minesweeper, but neither proved enough of a distraction to block the coolness he felt creeping through him, the feeling of power and fitness, like his muscles were tingling from a good workout he knew he hadn't had yet.
After winning his third game, even multitasking between the two, in a row, John had ended up on the bed, staring at one of the few pictures he brought with him and the only picture he had of himself and his father together.
He stared at the picture for hours, relishing the feel in spite of himself, before Elizabeth had shown up with her pathetic words and grating optimism. She would never do what was necessary; he knew that. She had to be scared into even doubling the detail. He tried to make her understand, tried to describe the way things were changing, the way he could feel it in him, turning him. He was turning into a vampire bug and John couldn't make a single joke about cliche bloodsuckers and turning.
It might have been easier to do if the tall, dark and handsome cliche were applicable here. In the movies the vampires were always attractive, mesmerizing even, with the sort of dark contrasts that John had gotten compliments from women on all his life. The dark hair, light skin thing really did it for a lot of women and the monsters played right into that. In the movies. In the movies they didn't have scales and their, their best friend, for lack of a better attachment, didn't flinch away from them when trying to meet their eyes.
In the movies, vampires didn't have best friends. They had minions. Right now, John wouldn't mind some minions. Some minions like Teyla to spar with, to burn off energy with, to scent.
And he was back to the thoughts that alternately exhilarated and terrified him. The thoughts that made him tell Elizabeth, his only visitor -- and the narrow part of his mind, the part that was still completely lucid, didn't think that was by orders either -- to double his guard because he couldn't know that as the inhibitor Beckett kept injecting into his veins worn off he wouldn't go after what he really wanted. What he was becoming really wanted.
Part of him wondered if Ford had felt like this at all. No wonder the kid had split. No wonder he thought everyone wanted him off the Wraith drug because it was making him better. This was what the Wraith felt like all the time. Or something like it.
John didn't really believe, as he sat and stared at the ceiling of his room, not wanting to look over to what he had been back when he had potential, that this was what the Wraith felt like. The Wraith, see, had the ability of speech and he knew that it wouldn't be long before he didn't. It wouldn't be long before he didn't even have words and while he'd never been much of a talker they seemed all kinds of important now.
He could infect other people with this. And he wouldn't be able to apologize. He wouldn't want to apologize. He wouldn't want to stop himself and he didn't know how far it was he would go.
It seemed like there were so many things he wanted to say, now, in his last hours of lucidity, but there was no one left to say them to. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of his teammates since being locked in this place -- his room, his place -- and he didn't dare ask Elizabeth for permission to go search them out. It was better if he was locked away. It was better if he wasn't a problem for them, so he needed to, had to, stay here.
He knew that they were out there, Rodney probably complaining and whining every step of the way while Ronon mocked him openly and Teyla tried not to smile, looking for a way to help him. But he sort of wished they were here instead. That was a pretty freaky feeling.
Being alone and not liking it. It reminded him that the bugs, those damn bugs, were hive minded. Like the Wraith. Like bugs, and that's what he was turning into. He might be cut off from that hive mind, either the Wraith or the fucking bugs, by being here. Something deep inside him stirred and hissed at the thought. He wanted to have a place within the group.
John was afraid that was what was left of the human in him. Not the instincts of the bug. That was there, under his skin, calling him towards... something he couldn't really feel, a place he didn't really know, but it was the human part, the human part that wanted Elizabeth to come back, wanted his friends and teammates here with him. He didn't want to go join another hive; he wanted to make his own.
This was his place. It even had a queen, of sorts, in Elizabeth. His human part knew that. Atlantis was his.. He felt it in his bones, right along with the creeping power, and she accepted him as easily as he did her. Maybe he was wrong. Elizabeth wasn't the queen here. There was another queen, more subtle and pervasive here, that only he understood they were serving. Everything they did, it was for her, and most of the time none of the others realized it; most of the time he could even push it into the back of his mind, focusing on the here and now and Elizabeth's orders that came as 'suggestions'.
Making conversation about the fact the city wanted you to do something was the best way to get ordered over to Heightmeyer in about two seconds flat, no matter how true it was.
They fixed and they tinkered and she guided them, helping them interface to get what she wanted. Whatever that might be. He had the sinking feeling it was the people. Oh, she wanted to be clean and repaired, but she wanted them living there more.
She controlled them. She controlled him, in his dreams, or when he wasn't paying attention. Sometimes ideas came, desperate acts to protect her and protect her city, her living city of people, and he'd never once not followed through. Never once. They were good ideas. Ideas he might have come up with himself, if he had time. She was quicker. That was why no one questioned John's wacky ideas, the out-of-the-box thinking. It was something he would do.
It made him wonder if she'd give Carson an idea that would save him before it was too late. Would he listen? He wondered if she felt it. What was happening to him. Maybe she was enjoying it vicariously. Enjoying the thrum of the changing.
Damn it. His hands clawed against the bed and he pushed himself up, his eyes still squeezed shut tightly. He needed to stop thinking like this; he needed to stop dwelling. His life sucked right now but it wasn't the first time. He'd nearly died half a dozen times since stepping foot on Atlantis, in horrible, painful ways, and he couldn't stop the feeling that he should be grateful that this didn't hurt, that this wouldn't kill him. He was safe; it was everyone around him that wasn't.
Everyone but her, the thought struck him suddenly and he cocked his head letting his slit eyes slit open themselves a little. The room, the one he knew had the lights turned down, nearly completely off, exploded in brightness and a shine he couldn't quite place, and he shut his eyes again, flopping back down on the bed, as well as he could flop.
This sucked.
He tried to think the lights dim again. The light didn't hurt, nothing hurt, but it was annoying, a reminder that he was turning into a bug. A thoughtless, feral life-sucking vampire bug that would shortly try and kill anything and everything that moved in Atlantis. Anything that he didn't judge suitable for his new hive.
At least John knew who the bug in him wanted as the mating queen. Or maybe that was the human. It was hard to tell.
The fuzzier things became the less it mattered, the less anything mattered, like the bright lights or the creeping feeling, the one starting at his toes, of... something he couldn't identify. It seemed like it should have been familiar but then a lot of things seemed almost familiar right now. It moved up him and it felt like peace and heat, all mushed together in ways that made him confused. But it felt good, really good, as good as the change did, so John wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
No, no, he was going to lie here, just like this, and let the feeling creep all over him, skittering around his skin and washing through his insides, making his breath hitch. That was exactly, exactly, what he was going to do. It was like waves. It *was* waves. Sensation lapping against and over his skin and John shut his eyes, feeling the lights dim, and floated. He was getting hard.
There was something wrong here, twisting in his stomach was the feeling that he shouldn't be doing this, that this shouldn't be happening. It still felt good. God, it felt good. Better than the change, better than a week straight of codeine, better than anything. He let his hips move, warmed, up and down, his ass rubbing against the bed each time and wondered if his hands were too deformed to jerk off.
Not deformed, his head corrected him as he pumped his hips up. Different. Meant to move in different ways, but he still wondered if he grabbed his dick would his hand come back with blood on it? He wasn't willing to take the chance. Besides, he wasn't sure he could undo the buttons on his pants and he wasn't up to ripping the fabric. Easy, he knew. Easy, it'd be easy. Fabric ripped even easier than flesh.
Instead he twisted over, slithered over onto his stomach, trapping his hard-on between his pants, the mattress and his scaled skin. The weight of his body was followed by the weight of the waves, sloshing against him, over him, as he spread his hands out and pressed them flat against the bed. For balance. As if the whole world wasn't spinning around him.
This was the best way to not think. The best. He rubbed against the bed, like a fucking twelve year old afraid of getting caught out by the nuns that did midnight checks and got pissed when they found you with your hand down your pants even though it felt good, and he tried not to think of that either. He was a long way from then and this wasn't there.
There, the bed didn't reach up like it was trying to caress you. This was lasting, not going away, he felt like he was getting harder and harder, until he felt ready to explode from the feel of the fabric wrapping around him, encasing him, but he didn't. It just got more intense. It was like, like with Chaya, where he'd come in his pants by the end of it and shuffled out, embarrassed that she hadn't touched him, not the way he knew of having a woman's hands on him, and he'd come in his pants anyway.
That'd been intense; it was nothing in comparison to this.
He wanted to make a noise, groan, scream, cry even, but nothing was coming out. It was a silent communion and, god, it was good. If the body was a temple, this pleasure, this connection and heat and wet rapture was a Papal Mass. He hadn't had religion since he was twenty-three years old and his faith in God had been decimated by the last great disappointment he could stand, but this was everything he'd loved about it, understood about it, twisted and bucked into his body, making him a vessel.
This wasn't God, but it was her and in his little world she was the only fucking divinity that mattered.
Now his throat was working, gasping, as he worshipped her. "Oh god --" he managed and came. Oh, god. And nothing like it at all.
He was such a mess, wasn't he? But she'd heard him, he was sure of it now. She understood. 'Thanks,' he mouthed into the sheets and realized the waves weren't going away. They never went away completely.<<<<
Thoughts? Comments? Feedback?
- Andrea.