Phasing Out, by Quasar (Secret Superpower challenge)
I was working on a completely different (NC-17) superpower story which shares a few features in common with this one, but it bogged down somewhere around the sex scenes. Then this one came together with the greatest of ease. Maybe I should give up on writing sex.
Title: Phasing Out
Author: Quasar
Length: ~2000 words
Pairing: McShep preslash/UST
Rating: PG
Summary: Rodney has a secret.
When they dragged him, bruised and bloody, back to the cell, John was relieved just to hear the heavy metal door clang shut behind him. At least it was between him and their captors.
Rodney caught him before he could fall, lowered him to the little pallet on one side of the cell, and dabbed at his cuts with a piece of John's torn shirt, all the while saying less-than-useful things like "This is all my fault," and "I should have -- god, if I had only --"
Rodney had been weird ever since they were brought here. Admittedly, it was a bad situation: they were not on the planet they had originally gated to, and no one on Atlantis had any way of knowing where they had been taken. But Rodney had been in plenty of bad situations before, and his usual response was to harp upon a theme of agony and certain death. This time, he almost seemed to be dithering over whether or not to do something. Since there was really nothing they could do -- John had searched the cell thoroughly for any weaknesses and hadn't found a way out -- this was definitely weird Rodney behavior.
That night, as he was lying on his side facing the wall (because the ribs on his other side were cracked), John heard strange noises from Rodney's side of the room. Clothes rustling, and heavy panting. One possibility leapt to mind immediately, but it didn't really sound like that. Rodney was moving around a lot more than necessary, and his breaths were really deep as if he couldn't get enough air.
"Rodney, what the hell are you doing?" John asked at last, when he'd considered and discarded several theories.
"What I should have done two days ago," Rodney said tightly. "I'm getting us out of here."
John rolled gingerly onto his back -- which hurt, but then so did lying still -- and stared at his teammate. The yellow lights in the ceiling (too high even for John swaying unsteadily on Rodney's shoulders to reach) were never turned off, so it was easy to see what had caused the rustling noises: Rodney was stripped down to his boxers, which were covered in smiley faces with the words 'I know something you don't know' twining around them.
"You're going to seduce the guards into letting us go?" John guessed. "Mesmerize them with your nipples, maybe?"
Rodney just glared. "I'm going to leave this cell, then I'll let you out and we can go home." He slipped his thumbs under the waistband of the boxers, then stopped as he realized John was watching him.
"How are you going to leave the cell, Rodney?" John was starting to get worried; this went beyond just weird behavior.
"Through the door."
"The door's locked."
"Not through the doorway; through the door. It's thinner than the walls."
John couldn't really think of a way to answer that.
Rodney gave an elaborate sigh. "Fine, I suppose you're going to see it anyway, so I might as well tell you. I can phase."
"Phase," John said slowly.
"I can move through solid matter."
It took a moment to click, and then John tried to sit up too quickly and ended up clutching his ribs. "You can walk through walls?"
"Not walk, precisely."
"Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?" John paused. "And how is it possible, anyway?"
Rodney sighed and slumped onto his pallet. "I worked on some interesting projects at Area 51 before I joined the SGC. This is a leftover from an experiment that . . . wasn't entirely successful."
"Not successful? Walking through walls sounds pretty good."
"It's not like in the comics, Colonel. Or even like the Tollan device the theory was based on. For one thing, it's a much slower process. I don't so much walk through as . . . seep."
John frowned. "Okay. But still, you don't think this would have been good to know before?"
"Such as two days ago. Yes, I know, Colonel, and I'm sorry about that. But it's a little embarrassing. You see, I can't take my clothes with me."
"Oh." That explained the stripping.
"Only living cells are included in the effect." Rodney sighed and contemplated his hands. "I think my fingernails are short enough already. But I'll probably lose a lot of my hair."
"Rodney. You can go through walls and you're worried about your hair?"
"I may have less of it than you do, Colonel Clairol, but that just means every strand is more precious!"
John dropped his head into his hands. "I swear to you, if shaving my head would get us out of here and keep you from getting beaten to a pulp, I'd do it. You're saying you wouldn't?"
"It's dangerous, too. Did I mention that? While my face is in the door, I won't be able to breathe." Rodney grimaced. "So you can see why I haven't done anything with this before. I can't just walk into a mountain or, or hide inside a boulder while the Wraith go by. The only time I really use it is to get my hands into spaces that are too small for them."
That explained something, actually; John had often thought Rodney was too dextrous for the size of his hands. He shook his head. "You're telling me in all the time we've been here, all the situations we've gotten into, there's never been a time when you could have used this trick of yours before?"
"No! Or, well . . ." Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "If I had known what Griffin planned, I could have closed the bulkhead door from the console and then phased through it. But it wouldn't have worked anyway. The windshield cracked so fast, I would have been drowned or crushed by the water before I got through."
The thought made John shiver. That one had been too damned close, and they both knew it.
"So this is the first time I've thought it would be useful, and I'm going to try it. Now." Rodney stood up, glanced at John, and defiantly pulled down the boxers. There wasn't much to see, since his genitals were clearly very unhappy with the situation. He scooped up his clothes and moved them closer to the door. "I'll need you to pass these to me through the food slot, okay?"
"Rodney, wait. Is it really dangerous?"
Rodney sighed. "It should only take about a minute, maybe a minute and a half to get my head through the door. I can hold my breath that long. It's just, it's been a while since I tried to move my whole body through anything. Now, I need to hyperoxygenate first, so no more questions."
John watched with concern as Rodney breathed deeply for a few minutes, then turned and pressed himself against the door. It was a good view of Rodney's nicely-rounded butt -- the arrow wound, he saw, was only going to leave a small scar -- but John resolutely dragged his attention upward.
Rodney sent his hands through first, maybe because he was more accustomed to phasing them. Then he took one last deep breath and pressed his head into the metal. John watched in fascination as the ends of his short brown hair disconnected and sifted down to the floor.
It was bizarre and disturbing to see Rodney's neck and arms disappearing into the door. John could tell when his face was all the way through because his ribs started expanding again, but there was no sound of breath in the quiet cell. The muscles in Rodney's upper back flexed -- he must be turning his head back and forth to make sure there were no guards in the corridor. Then the rest of his body oozed through. He moved one foot all the way forward before lifting the other from the ground.
When Rodney's second heel disappeared, John crept to the door and peered through the food slot at the bottom. Crouching at that angle made every bruise protest, but he had to see. Rodney was in the corridor all right, just pulling his foot free of the door.
"Wow," John said through the slot. "That's so cool!"
Rodney crouched on the other side, keeping his voice low. "Yes, thank you, Colonel. My clothes?"
John sent them through one by one, but the boots wouldn't fit. When Rodney pulled up the boxers, John saw that the hair at his groin was shorter as well, but his genitals were a little more relaxed now. Not actually happy, though. John had never seen them happy. He sighed.
Rodney looked around nervously as he dressed. "Do you know where they put Teyla and Ronon?"
"No, but --"
"What about where they keep the keys?"
"There's a bank of switches in the guard room that controls all the cell locks." John had seen it when they took him to be interrogated.
"The guard room?"
"At the end of the hall." They hadn't thought this through properly; there was no way that Rodney, barefoot and unarmed, could take out a couple of guards. "Rodney, forget about the damn locks. Just get out of here and get back to Atlantis. Tell Lorne where to find us and leave the rest up to him."
He could only see half of Rodney's expression at this angle, but that half looked pretty stubborn. "We'll see."
"Rodney!" John hissed.
"Just be ready to go, Colonel."
Then there was nothing for John to do but sit back and wait. On second thought, he stood up and tried to stretch out a few of his kinks. He still wasn't going to be good for much in a fight, but maybe he could move a little faster than a pregnant armadillo.
Two gunshots had him rushing to the door with his heart in his mouth. He pressed his hands against the metal, willing himself to press through as Rodney had done. He wanted to look through the food slot again, but he was worried he wouldn't be able to get up quickly if something happened.
Then the lock clicked and the door swung open. A moment later, all the lights went out.
John stepped into the pitch-black corridor. He could hear muffled noises from other startled prisoners; he thought one of the voices was Ronon's.
A light appeared down the corridor, waving wildly. "Colonel?"
John headed for it and discovered a flashlight in the hand of his teammate. "Rodney! What did you do?"
Rodney gave him something that turned out to be a gun, with a warm barrel. "I peeked into the guard room and it turned out one of them was asleep over the table, and the other was, um, peeing in the corner toilet. So I grabbed the gun from the sleeping guard and, uh . . . well." The flashlight beam trembled a little. "Then I unlocked the cells, and --"
"All of them?"
"They weren't labeled with prisoners' names, Colonel. Do you want Teyla and Ronon to come with us, or not? Oh, there you are, Ronon. Here." Rodney held out another gun. "Then I shorted out the building. It was pitifully easy -- they have no concept of proper circuit design. Ah, Teyla. I'm out of guns, but these look easy to use." He gave her one of the taser-things that John had become all too intimately acquainted with that afternoon. "Between the power outage and all the other prisoners wandering around, I figured it would be easy to escape in the confusion."
That was how John ended up leading another mass prisoner rebellion. When they got back to Atlantis, he told Elizabeth that Rodney had managed to short out the building, without going into any detail about how he'd done it. Ronon frowned suspiciously, having noticed that the doors unlocked before the power went out -- but he said nothing.
After the debriefing, Rodney cornered him in a transporter. "You didn't tell her," he said in a puzzled tone. "After that lecture about how I should have told you earlier . . ."
John shrugged. "Maybe I figured you're right, and it isn't all that useful anyway."
Rodney's eyes narrowed. "Maybe. But I don't think that's it."
John's lips curved in a smile, and he brushed a hand over the short layer of peach fuzz on Rodney's head (which they had told Elizabeth was an attempt by their captors to psych them out -- it was just lucky they hadn't gotten to John's hair yet). "Okay. So maybe I just want it to be our little secret. What good is a superpower if everyone knows about it?" And he winked.
Title: Phasing Out
Author: Quasar
Length: ~2000 words
Pairing: McShep preslash/UST
Rating: PG
Summary: Rodney has a secret.
When they dragged him, bruised and bloody, back to the cell, John was relieved just to hear the heavy metal door clang shut behind him. At least it was between him and their captors.
Rodney caught him before he could fall, lowered him to the little pallet on one side of the cell, and dabbed at his cuts with a piece of John's torn shirt, all the while saying less-than-useful things like "This is all my fault," and "I should have -- god, if I had only --"
Rodney had been weird ever since they were brought here. Admittedly, it was a bad situation: they were not on the planet they had originally gated to, and no one on Atlantis had any way of knowing where they had been taken. But Rodney had been in plenty of bad situations before, and his usual response was to harp upon a theme of agony and certain death. This time, he almost seemed to be dithering over whether or not to do something. Since there was really nothing they could do -- John had searched the cell thoroughly for any weaknesses and hadn't found a way out -- this was definitely weird Rodney behavior.
That night, as he was lying on his side facing the wall (because the ribs on his other side were cracked), John heard strange noises from Rodney's side of the room. Clothes rustling, and heavy panting. One possibility leapt to mind immediately, but it didn't really sound like that. Rodney was moving around a lot more than necessary, and his breaths were really deep as if he couldn't get enough air.
"Rodney, what the hell are you doing?" John asked at last, when he'd considered and discarded several theories.
"What I should have done two days ago," Rodney said tightly. "I'm getting us out of here."
John rolled gingerly onto his back -- which hurt, but then so did lying still -- and stared at his teammate. The yellow lights in the ceiling (too high even for John swaying unsteadily on Rodney's shoulders to reach) were never turned off, so it was easy to see what had caused the rustling noises: Rodney was stripped down to his boxers, which were covered in smiley faces with the words 'I know something you don't know' twining around them.
"You're going to seduce the guards into letting us go?" John guessed. "Mesmerize them with your nipples, maybe?"
Rodney just glared. "I'm going to leave this cell, then I'll let you out and we can go home." He slipped his thumbs under the waistband of the boxers, then stopped as he realized John was watching him.
"How are you going to leave the cell, Rodney?" John was starting to get worried; this went beyond just weird behavior.
"Through the door."
"The door's locked."
"Not through the doorway; through the door. It's thinner than the walls."
John couldn't really think of a way to answer that.
Rodney gave an elaborate sigh. "Fine, I suppose you're going to see it anyway, so I might as well tell you. I can phase."
"Phase," John said slowly.
"I can move through solid matter."
It took a moment to click, and then John tried to sit up too quickly and ended up clutching his ribs. "You can walk through walls?"
"Not walk, precisely."
"Why the hell didn't you tell me this before?" John paused. "And how is it possible, anyway?"
Rodney sighed and slumped onto his pallet. "I worked on some interesting projects at Area 51 before I joined the SGC. This is a leftover from an experiment that . . . wasn't entirely successful."
"Not successful? Walking through walls sounds pretty good."
"It's not like in the comics, Colonel. Or even like the Tollan device the theory was based on. For one thing, it's a much slower process. I don't so much walk through as . . . seep."
John frowned. "Okay. But still, you don't think this would have been good to know before?"
"Such as two days ago. Yes, I know, Colonel, and I'm sorry about that. But it's a little embarrassing. You see, I can't take my clothes with me."
"Oh." That explained the stripping.
"Only living cells are included in the effect." Rodney sighed and contemplated his hands. "I think my fingernails are short enough already. But I'll probably lose a lot of my hair."
"Rodney. You can go through walls and you're worried about your hair?"
"I may have less of it than you do, Colonel Clairol, but that just means every strand is more precious!"
John dropped his head into his hands. "I swear to you, if shaving my head would get us out of here and keep you from getting beaten to a pulp, I'd do it. You're saying you wouldn't?"
"It's dangerous, too. Did I mention that? While my face is in the door, I won't be able to breathe." Rodney grimaced. "So you can see why I haven't done anything with this before. I can't just walk into a mountain or, or hide inside a boulder while the Wraith go by. The only time I really use it is to get my hands into spaces that are too small for them."
That explained something, actually; John had often thought Rodney was too dextrous for the size of his hands. He shook his head. "You're telling me in all the time we've been here, all the situations we've gotten into, there's never been a time when you could have used this trick of yours before?"
"No! Or, well . . ." Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "If I had known what Griffin planned, I could have closed the bulkhead door from the console and then phased through it. But it wouldn't have worked anyway. The windshield cracked so fast, I would have been drowned or crushed by the water before I got through."
The thought made John shiver. That one had been too damned close, and they both knew it.
"So this is the first time I've thought it would be useful, and I'm going to try it. Now." Rodney stood up, glanced at John, and defiantly pulled down the boxers. There wasn't much to see, since his genitals were clearly very unhappy with the situation. He scooped up his clothes and moved them closer to the door. "I'll need you to pass these to me through the food slot, okay?"
"Rodney, wait. Is it really dangerous?"
Rodney sighed. "It should only take about a minute, maybe a minute and a half to get my head through the door. I can hold my breath that long. It's just, it's been a while since I tried to move my whole body through anything. Now, I need to hyperoxygenate first, so no more questions."
John watched with concern as Rodney breathed deeply for a few minutes, then turned and pressed himself against the door. It was a good view of Rodney's nicely-rounded butt -- the arrow wound, he saw, was only going to leave a small scar -- but John resolutely dragged his attention upward.
Rodney sent his hands through first, maybe because he was more accustomed to phasing them. Then he took one last deep breath and pressed his head into the metal. John watched in fascination as the ends of his short brown hair disconnected and sifted down to the floor.
It was bizarre and disturbing to see Rodney's neck and arms disappearing into the door. John could tell when his face was all the way through because his ribs started expanding again, but there was no sound of breath in the quiet cell. The muscles in Rodney's upper back flexed -- he must be turning his head back and forth to make sure there were no guards in the corridor. Then the rest of his body oozed through. He moved one foot all the way forward before lifting the other from the ground.
When Rodney's second heel disappeared, John crept to the door and peered through the food slot at the bottom. Crouching at that angle made every bruise protest, but he had to see. Rodney was in the corridor all right, just pulling his foot free of the door.
"Wow," John said through the slot. "That's so cool!"
Rodney crouched on the other side, keeping his voice low. "Yes, thank you, Colonel. My clothes?"
John sent them through one by one, but the boots wouldn't fit. When Rodney pulled up the boxers, John saw that the hair at his groin was shorter as well, but his genitals were a little more relaxed now. Not actually happy, though. John had never seen them happy. He sighed.
Rodney looked around nervously as he dressed. "Do you know where they put Teyla and Ronon?"
"No, but --"
"What about where they keep the keys?"
"There's a bank of switches in the guard room that controls all the cell locks." John had seen it when they took him to be interrogated.
"The guard room?"
"At the end of the hall." They hadn't thought this through properly; there was no way that Rodney, barefoot and unarmed, could take out a couple of guards. "Rodney, forget about the damn locks. Just get out of here and get back to Atlantis. Tell Lorne where to find us and leave the rest up to him."
He could only see half of Rodney's expression at this angle, but that half looked pretty stubborn. "We'll see."
"Rodney!" John hissed.
"Just be ready to go, Colonel."
Then there was nothing for John to do but sit back and wait. On second thought, he stood up and tried to stretch out a few of his kinks. He still wasn't going to be good for much in a fight, but maybe he could move a little faster than a pregnant armadillo.
Two gunshots had him rushing to the door with his heart in his mouth. He pressed his hands against the metal, willing himself to press through as Rodney had done. He wanted to look through the food slot again, but he was worried he wouldn't be able to get up quickly if something happened.
Then the lock clicked and the door swung open. A moment later, all the lights went out.
John stepped into the pitch-black corridor. He could hear muffled noises from other startled prisoners; he thought one of the voices was Ronon's.
A light appeared down the corridor, waving wildly. "Colonel?"
John headed for it and discovered a flashlight in the hand of his teammate. "Rodney! What did you do?"
Rodney gave him something that turned out to be a gun, with a warm barrel. "I peeked into the guard room and it turned out one of them was asleep over the table, and the other was, um, peeing in the corner toilet. So I grabbed the gun from the sleeping guard and, uh . . . well." The flashlight beam trembled a little. "Then I unlocked the cells, and --"
"All of them?"
"They weren't labeled with prisoners' names, Colonel. Do you want Teyla and Ronon to come with us, or not? Oh, there you are, Ronon. Here." Rodney held out another gun. "Then I shorted out the building. It was pitifully easy -- they have no concept of proper circuit design. Ah, Teyla. I'm out of guns, but these look easy to use." He gave her one of the taser-things that John had become all too intimately acquainted with that afternoon. "Between the power outage and all the other prisoners wandering around, I figured it would be easy to escape in the confusion."
That was how John ended up leading another mass prisoner rebellion. When they got back to Atlantis, he told Elizabeth that Rodney had managed to short out the building, without going into any detail about how he'd done it. Ronon frowned suspiciously, having noticed that the doors unlocked before the power went out -- but he said nothing.
After the debriefing, Rodney cornered him in a transporter. "You didn't tell her," he said in a puzzled tone. "After that lecture about how I should have told you earlier . . ."
John shrugged. "Maybe I figured you're right, and it isn't all that useful anyway."
Rodney's eyes narrowed. "Maybe. But I don't think that's it."
John's lips curved in a smile, and he brushed a hand over the short layer of peach fuzz on Rodney's head (which they had told Elizabeth was an attempt by their captors to psych them out -- it was just lucky they hadn't gotten to John's hair yet). "Okay. So maybe I just want it to be our little secret. What good is a superpower if everyone knows about it?" And he winked.