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.three (3!) ficlets: Iowa apocrypha, humor, sex - John/Rodney (various ratings)
Three ficlets, because I am too pathetically lazy to post them all separately and also, I don't want to spam the flist. None of them are related in the least, except for the fact two were written in YM (thank you, as always, to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sheafrotherdon and dogeared for their indulgence) and the Iowa apocrypha was written as a tribute to Cate's lingering malaise :> Also, none of them have titles because, well, I honestly couldn't think of anything.
Arranged in order of smuttiness. More things in life should be arranged that way *sigh*.
A Farm in Iowa: future!apocrypha (100% G) John/Rodney, ~700 words
For the first time in their several years together, John gets what Rodney's talking about when he cites CDC statistics on how many billions of microbes infest the little finger of the average unwashed person, the emergence and proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, and exactly how many ways a person can meet a messy end at the hands of microscopic organisms.
And worse, he understands how Rodney feels, besieged by germs and unsterilized surfaces, because in between feeling sick and miserable, John has been spending his morning trying to figure out if they make infant-sized hazmat suits and how much one would cost, and how much noise Merrie would make when they stuck her in one.
"You washed your hands before feeding her, right?" he croaks at Rodney, who is fussing over the humidifier in the corner.
"In a petri dish seething with diptheria, yes," Rodney snaps. He glowers over his shoulder at John, who's gone a bit pale under the hectic flush of fever. "Hello, hypochondriac you've lived with for almost five years? Are you suffering from fever-induced amnesia that you've forgotten this?"
"Where am I again?" John squints at Rodney. "You... you remind me of someone."
"Har har." The humidifier whirrs back to life, sounding much more efficient than it did before Rodney started messing with it. Rodney turns back to him, arms crossed over his chest, frowning down at John like he's an equation gone wrong, though the slant to his mouth is more unhappy than annoyed. "Do you realize even your hair is flat? I think, aside from the hundred-degree fever, that worries me the most."
Rodney had actually given that to the doctor as a symptom, yes, yes, his hair is flat, that’s what I--what? It usually stands up, and it’s flat, goddammit. When can we come in?
"I'll be okay." Maybe, in a thousand years.
The hell of it is, Finn had brought it home a week ago (Rodney had been overflowing with statistics on the menageries of germs at daycare centers) and had been sick for two days--two days--before recovering enough to tear the house down, and then there’d been a couple days when John had been convinced they’d escaped unscathed… and then. Three days of a cross between influenza and strep throat, and probably, John suspects, the plague.
A heartfelt wail comes from down the hall, and despite reluctant muscles John's halfway out of bed before he remembers they don’t have a Merrie-sized hazmat suit. But fuck, Merrie's crying and he can't see her because of his goddamned cold from hell and he's confused and freaked and in all his confusion Rodney's pushing him back with quick, decisive hands and saying "Don't worry, I've got her" before striding out of the room.
Mercifully, John hears the water in the guest bathroom running and he hopes Rodney’s washing his hands with bleach. More Rodney-footsteps after the water shuts off, keeping rhythm underneath Merrie's steady, incessant cry, which spikes upward once before trailing off in a confused I-forgot-why-I-was-crying gurgle. Rodney’s murmuring takes up where Merrie leaves off, Rodney's version of baby talk, which means reciting Maxwell’s field equations instead of quantum chromodynamics, a stream that, even half-heard, lulls John back into his pillows. He watches the doorway, distantly aware of footsteps coming closer, Merrie’s soft, odd squeaks weaving into Rodney’s explanation of vectors and Lorentz contractions.
"Hey," Rodney says, pausing in the doorway. He points to John. "See him?"
From across the room, Merrie focuses hazily on him and grins, pounds a fist against Rodney’s chest. John waves, his heart twisting weirdly (Merrie’s tuft of dark hair brushing Rodney’s chin, her sudden grin that somehow reminds John of Rodney) and she shrieks and wriggles in Rodney’s arms.
"Hey, kid," John manages, the words more rasp than anything.
"I thought I'd bring her just to show you she is, in fact, still alive and not covered in black spots," Rodney says, but his tone lacks his usual impatience at having to explain reality to the stupid people. He turns back to Merrie. "Do you think whining is genetic, maybe passed on with freakishly active hair? For my sanity, I hope not."
Merrie looks at John again, and grins.
Rodney sighs.
-end-
Tickling! (PG/PG13; 100% odd humor) John/Rodney, ~ 1500 words
Colonel Sheppard came into the staff meeting late, with a limp and a black eye. Rodney came in a few moments later, expression torn between annoyance, self-righteousness, and guilt, mouth and hands moving at light speed as he tried to explain something Elizabeth and the others clearly weren’t privy to.
John collapsed in his seat with a wince and automatic, careful hand to his right knee. Elizabeth looked at him doubtfully. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Sheppard snapped. Rodney started to say something, but John turned on him with the most fearsome look Elizabeth had ever seen and Rodney's mouth clicked shut. She could almost see the words jamming up in Rodney's throat, building and building like water behind a dam, and wondered how long it would be before even the force of John’s glare couldn’t keep them back.
"Forgive me," Carson said from the safety of the opposite end of the table, "but have you taken to fighting Wraith in your bedroom now, Colonel?"
Sheppard turned to glare at Rodney. "Something like that."
"What? What?" Rodney squawked. Elizabeth raised her hand to cut him off but Rodney rode over her. "I told you not to do it, Sheppard, and you did anyway. You were the one who ignored my telling you it would be a really good idea not to do it, and so how is that my fault?"
"What did he do, Rodney?" Elizabeth asked. Not two minutes in and she was rubbing her forehead already. How did they do this?
"He tickled me, Elizabeth."
And out of the many thousands of answers to that question, from mishap with Ancient technology to falling down the stairs, "tickling Rodney McKay" had never even registered on Elizabeth’s radar. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it to.
"He...." Elizabeth blinked.
"I would have preferred the Wraith," Sheppard told Carson.
"Yes, well, I'm sure if you tried to tickle a Wraith, it would retaliate too." Rodney leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
"Yeah," John said, "but at least it would just suck my life out instead of trying to break my leg."
"Again: did I not warn you?" Rodney had the bit in his teeth now, and not Elizabeth, Sheppard, or anyone was going to rein him in. "'I'm very ticklish,' I said, 'Don't even think about poking me in the ribs,' I said. Or, for that matter under my arms, my toes, or-- Well, I told you I was ticklish, and I'm pretty sure I told you in words of two syllables or less, and quite possibly in English. Do I need Teyla to translate for you next time? It would be kind of awkward but I'm sure we'd manage somehow."
"I would prefer it if you did not," Teyla said.
"You tickled him?" Elizabeth asked faintly, not sure whether she wanted to look at John, Rodney, or no one at all. She was supposed to have gotten the meeting underway by now – they had a schedule – but Rodney and John were unstoppable like this, like negotiating with a pair of five-year-olds.
Sheppard shrugged, slouched in his chair, and sulked.
"Oh, don't be petulant!" Rodney snapped. "Yes, Elizabeth, we were in bed last night and genius here thought it would be a good idea to ignore the warnings of a self-professed ticklish astrophysicist, and tickled--"
"I didn't even get that far," John barked. "I barely touched you, and you punched me in the eye, and then you kicked me. In the knee."
"Do you want me to apologize?" Rodney asked, eyes wide with incredulity.
"That'd be nice, yeah."
"Then I'm sorry, Sheppard. I'm sorry you're a moron who can't follow basic instructions."
"McKay..."
"Gentlemen!" Elizabeth raised her voice to the pitch that that terrorists and toddlers heeded, and John and Rodney subsided with pouts that did not belong on the faces of forty-year-old men. "Now, other than the fact that we have to call off the mission to MX-1583 and you, Colonel--" she leaned heavily on John’s rank, but John remained unrepentant "--will be visiting the infirmary to have your knee and eye looked at, is there anything in the present discussion that will impact the functioning of Atlantis?"
"Just that I'm going to kill the head scientist," John muttered. Elizabeth shot him a quelling look. "No," John said after a moment.
"Rodney?"
"No, Elizabeth."
"Good." Elizabeth offered them the smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile, and began the meeting.
Of course, she knew, once the meeting ended, the truce would also end, and she knew Sheppard and Rodney knew it – and Carson knew it too. She smiled sympathetically at him, and he rolled his eyes and sighed.
* * *
Although Elizabeth was, naturally, a very busy woman, she found time to visit poor, purple Dr. Godnarski in the infirmary shortly after the staff meeting. Godnarski was pathetically grateful to have visitors – Carson had kicked out most of them when the “purple people-eater” jokes got too repetitive – and seemed happy enough to have anyone listening to him, even though Elizabeth had most of her attention directed to the goings-on on the other side of the privacy screen.
Carson marched past her on the way to the pharmacy, mouth set in a thin line. He didn’t look at her. Elizabeth suppressed a pang of guilt, said something non-committal to Dr. Godnarski and kept listening.
“I’m sorry I kicked you,” Rodney was muttering gracelessly. “That was overkill.”
“You’re all heart, McKay.” John had an icepack on his knee and a cold compress over his eye.
“Yes, well, never let it be said I never repent,” Rodney said. He hitched himself a little closer, eyeing John’s knee carefully. “Does it hurt?”
“What do you think?” Carson had stripped John down to his boxers, and even from halfway across the infirmary, Elizabeth could see puffy, swollen flesh.
“You’re just sulking because I beat you up,” Rodney said.
“I am not,” John said. Sulkily.
“You are!” The one iota of repentance in Rodney’s bloodstream evaporated immediately in the face of exultation. “You so are!”
“Rodney.”
Carson marched past Elizabeth again, gripping a prescription bottle. Elizabeth made encouraging sounds to Godnarski, who launched into a detailed account of… Elizabeth struggled to remember. Plants. Godnarski was a botanist. She nodded and Godnarski beamed.
“Oh my God, Carson!” In the few seconds of Elizabeth’s distraction, Rodney had metamorphosed from reluctantly apologetic to incipient anxiety attack.
“What is it now, Rodney?” Carson asked patiently.
“Shouldn’t you run an MRI or something?” Rodney was standing closer to John now, hovering the way he did with Ancient technology or chocolate pudding, solicitous and possessive. “I mean, what if there’s soft tissue damage? Bone damage? I could have chipped his kneecap. Or… oh my God, nerve damage. Do you think I crippled him for life? And shouldn’t his knee be elevated?” An indignant “Hey!” from Carson and a rattling sound; Rodney had seized the bottle and was inspecting it. “Is aspirin going to be enough? He should be on anti-inflammatories at least. And what about that MRI?”
“Give that back,” Carson snapped, smacking Rodney’s hand and retrieving the prescription bottle. “It’s just a bruise, Rodney, nothing that won’t clear up in a few days with proper rest.”
“You’ll need to keep ice on it,” Rodney told John.
“Thank you, Dr. McKay, MD.”
“At least one of us is looking out for your health.”
“Oh, you mean the one of us who gave me the black eye and kicked me in the knee?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yeah, for the knee.”
Carson stormed back past Elizabeth, muttering about tranquilizers.
“I’m – I’m – ” Rodney was on the edge of choking, face faintly red and mouth a thin, agitated line. “Okayokayokay, fine, I’m sorry I punched you in the eye. Happy now?”
In answer, John reached out and gripped Rodney’s wrist, pulled him in close against the exam table. Rodney’s eyes widened in surprise (Elizabeth’s did too, because it was one thing to know the two of them were sleeping together and another thing to see the evidence of it) but he went with it, careful of John’s knee. With his free hand he took the compress from John’s and lifted it from his eye, winced, and reapplied it with a care Elizabeth had never thought to associate with Rodney before.
By this point, Godnarski had stopped talking, Elizabeth realized, and was listening too.
“Say it again,” John whispered, mouth close against Rodney’s.
“What? I’m sorry?” Rodney leaned back in order to glare more effectively. “What else do you want? Ten Hail Marys? A hairshirt?”
“Just say it,” John said, pulling him close again.
“Sorry,” Rodney muttered, the word half-suffocated against John’s mouth.
Elizabeth caught the beginning of John’s slow, answering grin before glancing hastily away. Godnarski was slightly red under the purple.
“I love your accent,” John said, voice low, rough, a promise that had Elizabeth shivering.
“What? My accent?” Rodney’s voice spiked upward with annoyance, but something (John’s mouth, John’s mouth, they were kissing) softened its sharpness, and in that moment Carson came out and Elizabeth had to grab him by the arm, point to Godnarski and ask if he was looking any less purple than before.
-end-
More of the Leather Jacket (100% self-indulgent porn) John/Rodney, ~1900 words
FOR REFERENCE
It's been a day. A boring day, which is sometimes as exhausting as a day filled with universe-saving and near death. Ultimately they're less rewarding; John's never heard of anyone receiving medals for filling out paperwork on time.
Rodney's obsessing over something in the lab, something that mercifully doesn't require John to think it on and off, and given the amount of universe-saving they've done recently, Rodney's behind on his lab work and is likely to obsess all night. John tries not to be irritated at that, because he's bored and has been bored off his ass all day. He wonders what the world's coming to when it's possible to live in another galaxy--a galaxy populated by life-sucking space vampires--and have a boring evening.
Or maybe it's just him, and John doesn't know which is worse.
He wanders into their quarters, at loose ends and oddly restless, the space confining and far too small for the two of them: their barely-wider-than-regulation bed, his guitar and surfboard stashed in a corner, Rodney's wall of Testament To His Genius, Rodney's desk overflowing with electronics and miscellaneous gadgets, his desk chair with his leather jacket draped over the back of it.
John looks at the jacket for a moment before picking it up, and he imagines that it still holds some of the heat from Rodney's body, though Rodney never wears it in the labs, because the leather is soft and just starting to break in, and is pliant under his fingers. He ignores the brief flash of you are being an ass and holds the jacket to his face, drags in a deep, deep breath of leather and Rodney.
And apparently what they say about smell being the strongest trigger of memory is true, because arousal is so swift and unexpected that it hurts, a bright, fierce burn up his spine, pooling thick in his belly, and hey, he has something to do tonight after all. He presses the heel of his hand against his cock, hitching awkwardly into his own touch, face still buried in the folds of Rodney's jacket, and his breath catches on the inhale, stutters out when his hips rock forward.
Flash of Rodney wearing it, stretch of it over his shoulders, the gleam of it dull in Lantean light or the sun of some alien world, how the smell of it holds on to Rodney's skin after Rodney takes it off, stronger sometimes when the two of them are twined together, sweat-sticky skin and humid breath between them--it stays, mostly, in the curve of Rodney's neck, where the collar brushes him sometimes.
John fumbles with his belt buckle--no way he's going to be able to manage his thigh holster--and finally he has his pants open and slides a hand inside his boxers, muscles locking against pleasure, trying to hold off release even though the only thing he can smell is Rodney and leather, and half his mind is imagining it's Rodney touching him, and in the black space behind closed eyes he sees Rodney standing there, can hear Rodney asking
--"John?"
and fuck, shit, fuck it's Rodney standing there like John's imagination has summoned him, gray-shirted, arms crossed, and the light in his eyes is appraising, smile teasing the corners of his mouth before spreading, and Rodney saw it, and it was good.
"You like my jacket?" Rodney asks, stepping closer. He reaches out to touch, fingers skimming over the contours of it, running down to John's arm, teasing bare skin, and John shivers and nods, not trusting himself to speak.
"How much do you like it?" Like he doesn't know the answer, and Rodney glances down at John's unfastened pants, the boxers stretched awkwardly around his wrist and over his cock.
"I think you know," John says hoarsely. He strokes his cock once, shudders--elastic across his wrist, fabric, slick, hot skin, a breath in that has texture: heavy, thick, smooth like skin or blood.
Rodney steps closer, herding John back, back, back, and when John's knees hit the edge of their bed he can't keep his balance and stumbles--is caught by Rodney, strong hand on his arm to steady him, lower him down to rumpled sheets. And Rodney stares down at him for a moment, eyes shadowed in their evening-dim room, almost a stranger the way faint light catches the planes of his face, his jaw, strong curve of shoulder. And the moment draws out, draws out to the point of pain, John's entire body--no, not body, everything in him--wanting the next moment, wanting Rodney to say, ask, do anything--
--to kneel, hands sliding down John's flank, his hips, soft click of him removing John's sidearm and setting it to the side, a ghost-touch through cotton and nylon against the hypersensitive skin of John's thigh. Rodney leaves the holster where it is--quick grin, a flash of clarity, at John's consternation--traces a path back up under John's shirt, nails across muscles that shudder and jump in answer and anticipation both. Rodney's hands low on his hips now, his ass, lifting him awkwardly (but nothing awkward on Rodney's face, only steadiness, methodically working them through this, working John through this) and gathering fabric as they go, belt leather, pulling down until Rodney has him bared to mid-thigh, bare and trapped with Rodney's body over him and Rodney's scent in his nostrils.
"You - really get off on . . ." John swallows, his mouth dry, his breath hitching. He feels exposed and vulnerable and god, wants Rodney so badly--it makes him churlish, even as his hips are rocking into empty air. ". . bein' in charge."
"And you're surprised by this how?" Rodney's hands--his wide, smart, wonderful hands--stroke up his thighs, running from rumpled cotton to skin, the crease of John's groin, his wrist.
"Or," Rodney asks, bending closer, breathing in--smelling him, John thinks a little wildly--"are you just stating the obvious again?"
"Rodneeeeey," John whines. He's not sure why he feels so out of sorts, when he really wants this.
"Stating the obvious, of course," Rodney mutters, and then he's leaning forward, forearm across John's chest to push him down and back, into sheets that smell like the two of them. John's still holding Rodney's jacket, every unsteady breath laced with leather and salt, gathered as it is on his chest, one sleeve bunched in the curve of his arm.
And then Rodney's mouth, oh god in fucking heaven,, his mouth on John's cock, wet, hot, knowing him so well, pulling something strangled and desperate from John's chest. Pulls away everything, his defenses, denial, and gives him back exactly what he needs as well as a dozen things he wasn't anticipating when he picked up Rodney's jacket . . . and he pulls the jacket up to his face, not knowing if he's covering himself or inhaling the scent or hiding or seeking comfort but oh god, so good, all of it: Rodney's mouth, the weight of him across John's thighs, keeping him from moving up into beautiful, beautiful heat, into the tongue Rodney works across him, down him--soft sounds that are maybe his, maybe Rodney's, John doesn't know,
Rodney's hand's on John's wrist, keeping his hand trapped against his belly, tight around the bone and pressing into the pulse point, thumb walking the soft rise of the palm, and all the anchor John has to hold him down, together, to keep him from breaking apart into light and air is the heavy, tangible scent of the jacket in his lungs, and Rodney's body over him.
(Broad shoulders, chest, solid between John's knees.)
He almost shatters with want, frustration, when Rodney draws back, when Rodney looks at him from the horizon of John's chest (shaking, unsteady, oh god please, he wants), lips wet and swollen, cheeks flushed. Something like an echo of John's wanting glazes Rodney's eyes, dark, dark, with a mad glint overpainting them, and everything stretches between the two of them: confusion, desperation, need--and like that it breaks, breaks when Rodney surges back against him, mouth swift and demanding and deep-deep-deep and John cries.
There isn't another word for it--not scream, not shout, because it isn't a word, or a name, or anything, just incoherent, half-obliterated breath that burns his throat and paints his vision fierce red and white.
And he's coming, coming, orgasm a knife like cutting him loose, something necessary he's long held back, Rodney's fingers almost cruel on him to remind him where he is and who's done this to him, keeping him from dissolving. His spine locks tight, straining up into hands that won't let him go anywhere, heat and brilliance all up and down his body, a storm and Rodney's the still, solid point in the center of it.
Rodney licks him slowly, carefully and even that hurts--the good hurt, what a ridiculous qualification--and when he leans back, John forces his vision clear enough to see his shoulders are shaking, face red like he's run a mile, like he's--
"You made me come in my pants," Rodney gasps, and the light in his eyes is amazement now. "Fucking hell, John. You made me come in my pants."
"Yeah, well..." John licks his lips, tries to find coherence. "Deserve it."
"Oh, and who was perving over whose leather jacket?" Rodney rolls his eyes, but the smile--starting slow, growing wider, brighter--smoothes out the rough edges of his annoyance.
A moment still while Rodney's shoulders shake with exertion and laughter, hands unsteady on John's thighs. When he moves again, his fingers are graceless on the buckles of John's thigh holster, finally managing to get it off after three tries. John's pants follow a moment later, sweep of cool air across John's skin that makes him shiver. He watches, vision still hazy with release (everything slow, smoother at the edges, not as distinct) as Rodney pulls off his own clothes, making a face at his pants and boxers as he tosses them aside, and yeah--and John can't help grinning--he had come in his pants.
"Oh, shut up and make yourself useful," Rodney snaps, gesturing for John to sit up. Despite his liquified spine, John does, and Rodney gathers up his shirt, pulls it over John's head, soft thwap of the shirt landing on something in the far shadows of the room.
And then Rodney's kissing him, thorough, deep, dirty enough to be foreplay if they weren't forty years old, taste of the two of them, salt and the memory of leather on John's tongue. Hands on John's face, his neck, his chest, but these are soothing, Rodney touching him for the sake of touching--painting reality back into a situation John almost can't believe actually happened. He stretches a little, liking the soft burn of overtaxed muscles, how Rodney feels against his skin.
"Please tell me you're not going to start sleeping with it," Rodney says.
John needs a moment to figure out Rodney's talking about the jacket, which John's still holding, clutched in his right hand like a lifeline.
"Well..." And in the ellipses, Rodney snorts and extracts his jacket from John's grip, tosses it into the shadows near his desk. Kisses him again, light, careful, not enough, so John's newly-free hand has to cup his face and pull him closer.
"Good," Rodney says afterward, and the word is satisfaction against John's mouth.
-end-
In vaguely related news, those of you who have read the commentaries on Se Narsaugir and the Cash Poem and want to know more about some of the terminology the author uses to discuss the texts, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to provide you with a quick explanation of terms in the form of a .doc file.
sheafrotherdon and dogeared for their indulgence) and the Iowa apocrypha was written as a tribute to Cate's lingering malaise :> Also, none of them have titles because, well, I honestly couldn't think of anything.Arranged in order of smuttiness. More things in life should be arranged that way *sigh*.
A Farm in Iowa: future!apocrypha (100% G) John/Rodney, ~700 words
For the first time in their several years together, John gets what Rodney's talking about when he cites CDC statistics on how many billions of microbes infest the little finger of the average unwashed person, the emergence and proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, and exactly how many ways a person can meet a messy end at the hands of microscopic organisms.
And worse, he understands how Rodney feels, besieged by germs and unsterilized surfaces, because in between feeling sick and miserable, John has been spending his morning trying to figure out if they make infant-sized hazmat suits and how much one would cost, and how much noise Merrie would make when they stuck her in one.
"You washed your hands before feeding her, right?" he croaks at Rodney, who is fussing over the humidifier in the corner.
"In a petri dish seething with diptheria, yes," Rodney snaps. He glowers over his shoulder at John, who's gone a bit pale under the hectic flush of fever. "Hello, hypochondriac you've lived with for almost five years? Are you suffering from fever-induced amnesia that you've forgotten this?"
"Where am I again?" John squints at Rodney. "You... you remind me of someone."
"Har har." The humidifier whirrs back to life, sounding much more efficient than it did before Rodney started messing with it. Rodney turns back to him, arms crossed over his chest, frowning down at John like he's an equation gone wrong, though the slant to his mouth is more unhappy than annoyed. "Do you realize even your hair is flat? I think, aside from the hundred-degree fever, that worries me the most."
Rodney had actually given that to the doctor as a symptom, yes, yes, his hair is flat, that’s what I--what? It usually stands up, and it’s flat, goddammit. When can we come in?
"I'll be okay." Maybe, in a thousand years.
The hell of it is, Finn had brought it home a week ago (Rodney had been overflowing with statistics on the menageries of germs at daycare centers) and had been sick for two days--two days--before recovering enough to tear the house down, and then there’d been a couple days when John had been convinced they’d escaped unscathed… and then. Three days of a cross between influenza and strep throat, and probably, John suspects, the plague.
A heartfelt wail comes from down the hall, and despite reluctant muscles John's halfway out of bed before he remembers they don’t have a Merrie-sized hazmat suit. But fuck, Merrie's crying and he can't see her because of his goddamned cold from hell and he's confused and freaked and in all his confusion Rodney's pushing him back with quick, decisive hands and saying "Don't worry, I've got her" before striding out of the room.
Mercifully, John hears the water in the guest bathroom running and he hopes Rodney’s washing his hands with bleach. More Rodney-footsteps after the water shuts off, keeping rhythm underneath Merrie's steady, incessant cry, which spikes upward once before trailing off in a confused I-forgot-why-I-was-crying gurgle. Rodney’s murmuring takes up where Merrie leaves off, Rodney's version of baby talk, which means reciting Maxwell’s field equations instead of quantum chromodynamics, a stream that, even half-heard, lulls John back into his pillows. He watches the doorway, distantly aware of footsteps coming closer, Merrie’s soft, odd squeaks weaving into Rodney’s explanation of vectors and Lorentz contractions.
"Hey," Rodney says, pausing in the doorway. He points to John. "See him?"
From across the room, Merrie focuses hazily on him and grins, pounds a fist against Rodney’s chest. John waves, his heart twisting weirdly (Merrie’s tuft of dark hair brushing Rodney’s chin, her sudden grin that somehow reminds John of Rodney) and she shrieks and wriggles in Rodney’s arms.
"Hey, kid," John manages, the words more rasp than anything.
"I thought I'd bring her just to show you she is, in fact, still alive and not covered in black spots," Rodney says, but his tone lacks his usual impatience at having to explain reality to the stupid people. He turns back to Merrie. "Do you think whining is genetic, maybe passed on with freakishly active hair? For my sanity, I hope not."
Merrie looks at John again, and grins.
Rodney sighs.
-end-
Tickling! (PG/PG13; 100% odd humor) John/Rodney, ~ 1500 words
Colonel Sheppard came into the staff meeting late, with a limp and a black eye. Rodney came in a few moments later, expression torn between annoyance, self-righteousness, and guilt, mouth and hands moving at light speed as he tried to explain something Elizabeth and the others clearly weren’t privy to.
John collapsed in his seat with a wince and automatic, careful hand to his right knee. Elizabeth looked at him doubtfully. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," Sheppard snapped. Rodney started to say something, but John turned on him with the most fearsome look Elizabeth had ever seen and Rodney's mouth clicked shut. She could almost see the words jamming up in Rodney's throat, building and building like water behind a dam, and wondered how long it would be before even the force of John’s glare couldn’t keep them back.
"Forgive me," Carson said from the safety of the opposite end of the table, "but have you taken to fighting Wraith in your bedroom now, Colonel?"
Sheppard turned to glare at Rodney. "Something like that."
"What? What?" Rodney squawked. Elizabeth raised her hand to cut him off but Rodney rode over her. "I told you not to do it, Sheppard, and you did anyway. You were the one who ignored my telling you it would be a really good idea not to do it, and so how is that my fault?"
"What did he do, Rodney?" Elizabeth asked. Not two minutes in and she was rubbing her forehead already. How did they do this?
"He tickled me, Elizabeth."
And out of the many thousands of answers to that question, from mishap with Ancient technology to falling down the stairs, "tickling Rodney McKay" had never even registered on Elizabeth’s radar. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it to.
"He...." Elizabeth blinked.
"I would have preferred the Wraith," Sheppard told Carson.
"Yes, well, I'm sure if you tried to tickle a Wraith, it would retaliate too." Rodney leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
"Yeah," John said, "but at least it would just suck my life out instead of trying to break my leg."
"Again: did I not warn you?" Rodney had the bit in his teeth now, and not Elizabeth, Sheppard, or anyone was going to rein him in. "'I'm very ticklish,' I said, 'Don't even think about poking me in the ribs,' I said. Or, for that matter under my arms, my toes, or-- Well, I told you I was ticklish, and I'm pretty sure I told you in words of two syllables or less, and quite possibly in English. Do I need Teyla to translate for you next time? It would be kind of awkward but I'm sure we'd manage somehow."
"I would prefer it if you did not," Teyla said.
"You tickled him?" Elizabeth asked faintly, not sure whether she wanted to look at John, Rodney, or no one at all. She was supposed to have gotten the meeting underway by now – they had a schedule – but Rodney and John were unstoppable like this, like negotiating with a pair of five-year-olds.
Sheppard shrugged, slouched in his chair, and sulked.
"Oh, don't be petulant!" Rodney snapped. "Yes, Elizabeth, we were in bed last night and genius here thought it would be a good idea to ignore the warnings of a self-professed ticklish astrophysicist, and tickled--"
"I didn't even get that far," John barked. "I barely touched you, and you punched me in the eye, and then you kicked me. In the knee."
"Do you want me to apologize?" Rodney asked, eyes wide with incredulity.
"That'd be nice, yeah."
"Then I'm sorry, Sheppard. I'm sorry you're a moron who can't follow basic instructions."
"McKay..."
"Gentlemen!" Elizabeth raised her voice to the pitch that that terrorists and toddlers heeded, and John and Rodney subsided with pouts that did not belong on the faces of forty-year-old men. "Now, other than the fact that we have to call off the mission to MX-1583 and you, Colonel--" she leaned heavily on John’s rank, but John remained unrepentant "--will be visiting the infirmary to have your knee and eye looked at, is there anything in the present discussion that will impact the functioning of Atlantis?"
"Just that I'm going to kill the head scientist," John muttered. Elizabeth shot him a quelling look. "No," John said after a moment.
"Rodney?"
"No, Elizabeth."
"Good." Elizabeth offered them the smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile, and began the meeting.
Of course, she knew, once the meeting ended, the truce would also end, and she knew Sheppard and Rodney knew it – and Carson knew it too. She smiled sympathetically at him, and he rolled his eyes and sighed.
Although Elizabeth was, naturally, a very busy woman, she found time to visit poor, purple Dr. Godnarski in the infirmary shortly after the staff meeting. Godnarski was pathetically grateful to have visitors – Carson had kicked out most of them when the “purple people-eater” jokes got too repetitive – and seemed happy enough to have anyone listening to him, even though Elizabeth had most of her attention directed to the goings-on on the other side of the privacy screen.
Carson marched past her on the way to the pharmacy, mouth set in a thin line. He didn’t look at her. Elizabeth suppressed a pang of guilt, said something non-committal to Dr. Godnarski and kept listening.
“I’m sorry I kicked you,” Rodney was muttering gracelessly. “That was overkill.”
“You’re all heart, McKay.” John had an icepack on his knee and a cold compress over his eye.
“Yes, well, never let it be said I never repent,” Rodney said. He hitched himself a little closer, eyeing John’s knee carefully. “Does it hurt?”
“What do you think?” Carson had stripped John down to his boxers, and even from halfway across the infirmary, Elizabeth could see puffy, swollen flesh.
“You’re just sulking because I beat you up,” Rodney said.
“I am not,” John said. Sulkily.
“You are!” The one iota of repentance in Rodney’s bloodstream evaporated immediately in the face of exultation. “You so are!”
“Rodney.”
Carson marched past Elizabeth again, gripping a prescription bottle. Elizabeth made encouraging sounds to Godnarski, who launched into a detailed account of… Elizabeth struggled to remember. Plants. Godnarski was a botanist. She nodded and Godnarski beamed.
“Oh my God, Carson!” In the few seconds of Elizabeth’s distraction, Rodney had metamorphosed from reluctantly apologetic to incipient anxiety attack.
“What is it now, Rodney?” Carson asked patiently.
“Shouldn’t you run an MRI or something?” Rodney was standing closer to John now, hovering the way he did with Ancient technology or chocolate pudding, solicitous and possessive. “I mean, what if there’s soft tissue damage? Bone damage? I could have chipped his kneecap. Or… oh my God, nerve damage. Do you think I crippled him for life? And shouldn’t his knee be elevated?” An indignant “Hey!” from Carson and a rattling sound; Rodney had seized the bottle and was inspecting it. “Is aspirin going to be enough? He should be on anti-inflammatories at least. And what about that MRI?”
“Give that back,” Carson snapped, smacking Rodney’s hand and retrieving the prescription bottle. “It’s just a bruise, Rodney, nothing that won’t clear up in a few days with proper rest.”
“You’ll need to keep ice on it,” Rodney told John.
“Thank you, Dr. McKay, MD.”
“At least one of us is looking out for your health.”
“Oh, you mean the one of us who gave me the black eye and kicked me in the knee?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yeah, for the knee.”
Carson stormed back past Elizabeth, muttering about tranquilizers.
“I’m – I’m – ” Rodney was on the edge of choking, face faintly red and mouth a thin, agitated line. “Okayokayokay, fine, I’m sorry I punched you in the eye. Happy now?”
In answer, John reached out and gripped Rodney’s wrist, pulled him in close against the exam table. Rodney’s eyes widened in surprise (Elizabeth’s did too, because it was one thing to know the two of them were sleeping together and another thing to see the evidence of it) but he went with it, careful of John’s knee. With his free hand he took the compress from John’s and lifted it from his eye, winced, and reapplied it with a care Elizabeth had never thought to associate with Rodney before.
By this point, Godnarski had stopped talking, Elizabeth realized, and was listening too.
“Say it again,” John whispered, mouth close against Rodney’s.
“What? I’m sorry?” Rodney leaned back in order to glare more effectively. “What else do you want? Ten Hail Marys? A hairshirt?”
“Just say it,” John said, pulling him close again.
“Sorry,” Rodney muttered, the word half-suffocated against John’s mouth.
Elizabeth caught the beginning of John’s slow, answering grin before glancing hastily away. Godnarski was slightly red under the purple.
“I love your accent,” John said, voice low, rough, a promise that had Elizabeth shivering.
“What? My accent?” Rodney’s voice spiked upward with annoyance, but something (John’s mouth, John’s mouth, they were kissing) softened its sharpness, and in that moment Carson came out and Elizabeth had to grab him by the arm, point to Godnarski and ask if he was looking any less purple than before.
-end-
More of the Leather Jacket (100% self-indulgent porn) John/Rodney, ~1900 words
FOR REFERENCE
It's been a day. A boring day, which is sometimes as exhausting as a day filled with universe-saving and near death. Ultimately they're less rewarding; John's never heard of anyone receiving medals for filling out paperwork on time.
Rodney's obsessing over something in the lab, something that mercifully doesn't require John to think it on and off, and given the amount of universe-saving they've done recently, Rodney's behind on his lab work and is likely to obsess all night. John tries not to be irritated at that, because he's bored and has been bored off his ass all day. He wonders what the world's coming to when it's possible to live in another galaxy--a galaxy populated by life-sucking space vampires--and have a boring evening.
Or maybe it's just him, and John doesn't know which is worse.
He wanders into their quarters, at loose ends and oddly restless, the space confining and far too small for the two of them: their barely-wider-than-regulation bed, his guitar and surfboard stashed in a corner, Rodney's wall of Testament To His Genius, Rodney's desk overflowing with electronics and miscellaneous gadgets, his desk chair with his leather jacket draped over the back of it.
John looks at the jacket for a moment before picking it up, and he imagines that it still holds some of the heat from Rodney's body, though Rodney never wears it in the labs, because the leather is soft and just starting to break in, and is pliant under his fingers. He ignores the brief flash of you are being an ass and holds the jacket to his face, drags in a deep, deep breath of leather and Rodney.
And apparently what they say about smell being the strongest trigger of memory is true, because arousal is so swift and unexpected that it hurts, a bright, fierce burn up his spine, pooling thick in his belly, and hey, he has something to do tonight after all. He presses the heel of his hand against his cock, hitching awkwardly into his own touch, face still buried in the folds of Rodney's jacket, and his breath catches on the inhale, stutters out when his hips rock forward.
Flash of Rodney wearing it, stretch of it over his shoulders, the gleam of it dull in Lantean light or the sun of some alien world, how the smell of it holds on to Rodney's skin after Rodney takes it off, stronger sometimes when the two of them are twined together, sweat-sticky skin and humid breath between them--it stays, mostly, in the curve of Rodney's neck, where the collar brushes him sometimes.
John fumbles with his belt buckle--no way he's going to be able to manage his thigh holster--and finally he has his pants open and slides a hand inside his boxers, muscles locking against pleasure, trying to hold off release even though the only thing he can smell is Rodney and leather, and half his mind is imagining it's Rodney touching him, and in the black space behind closed eyes he sees Rodney standing there, can hear Rodney asking
--"John?"
and fuck, shit, fuck it's Rodney standing there like John's imagination has summoned him, gray-shirted, arms crossed, and the light in his eyes is appraising, smile teasing the corners of his mouth before spreading, and Rodney saw it, and it was good.
"You like my jacket?" Rodney asks, stepping closer. He reaches out to touch, fingers skimming over the contours of it, running down to John's arm, teasing bare skin, and John shivers and nods, not trusting himself to speak.
"How much do you like it?" Like he doesn't know the answer, and Rodney glances down at John's unfastened pants, the boxers stretched awkwardly around his wrist and over his cock.
"I think you know," John says hoarsely. He strokes his cock once, shudders--elastic across his wrist, fabric, slick, hot skin, a breath in that has texture: heavy, thick, smooth like skin or blood.
Rodney steps closer, herding John back, back, back, and when John's knees hit the edge of their bed he can't keep his balance and stumbles--is caught by Rodney, strong hand on his arm to steady him, lower him down to rumpled sheets. And Rodney stares down at him for a moment, eyes shadowed in their evening-dim room, almost a stranger the way faint light catches the planes of his face, his jaw, strong curve of shoulder. And the moment draws out, draws out to the point of pain, John's entire body--no, not body, everything in him--wanting the next moment, wanting Rodney to say, ask, do anything--
--to kneel, hands sliding down John's flank, his hips, soft click of him removing John's sidearm and setting it to the side, a ghost-touch through cotton and nylon against the hypersensitive skin of John's thigh. Rodney leaves the holster where it is--quick grin, a flash of clarity, at John's consternation--traces a path back up under John's shirt, nails across muscles that shudder and jump in answer and anticipation both. Rodney's hands low on his hips now, his ass, lifting him awkwardly (but nothing awkward on Rodney's face, only steadiness, methodically working them through this, working John through this) and gathering fabric as they go, belt leather, pulling down until Rodney has him bared to mid-thigh, bare and trapped with Rodney's body over him and Rodney's scent in his nostrils.
"You - really get off on . . ." John swallows, his mouth dry, his breath hitching. He feels exposed and vulnerable and god, wants Rodney so badly--it makes him churlish, even as his hips are rocking into empty air. ". . bein' in charge."
"And you're surprised by this how?" Rodney's hands--his wide, smart, wonderful hands--stroke up his thighs, running from rumpled cotton to skin, the crease of John's groin, his wrist.
"Or," Rodney asks, bending closer, breathing in--smelling him, John thinks a little wildly--"are you just stating the obvious again?"
"Rodneeeeey," John whines. He's not sure why he feels so out of sorts, when he really wants this.
"Stating the obvious, of course," Rodney mutters, and then he's leaning forward, forearm across John's chest to push him down and back, into sheets that smell like the two of them. John's still holding Rodney's jacket, every unsteady breath laced with leather and salt, gathered as it is on his chest, one sleeve bunched in the curve of his arm.
And then Rodney's mouth, oh god in fucking heaven,, his mouth on John's cock, wet, hot, knowing him so well, pulling something strangled and desperate from John's chest. Pulls away everything, his defenses, denial, and gives him back exactly what he needs as well as a dozen things he wasn't anticipating when he picked up Rodney's jacket . . . and he pulls the jacket up to his face, not knowing if he's covering himself or inhaling the scent or hiding or seeking comfort but oh god, so good, all of it: Rodney's mouth, the weight of him across John's thighs, keeping him from moving up into beautiful, beautiful heat, into the tongue Rodney works across him, down him--soft sounds that are maybe his, maybe Rodney's, John doesn't know,
Rodney's hand's on John's wrist, keeping his hand trapped against his belly, tight around the bone and pressing into the pulse point, thumb walking the soft rise of the palm, and all the anchor John has to hold him down, together, to keep him from breaking apart into light and air is the heavy, tangible scent of the jacket in his lungs, and Rodney's body over him.
(Broad shoulders, chest, solid between John's knees.)
He almost shatters with want, frustration, when Rodney draws back, when Rodney looks at him from the horizon of John's chest (shaking, unsteady, oh god please, he wants), lips wet and swollen, cheeks flushed. Something like an echo of John's wanting glazes Rodney's eyes, dark, dark, with a mad glint overpainting them, and everything stretches between the two of them: confusion, desperation, need--and like that it breaks, breaks when Rodney surges back against him, mouth swift and demanding and deep-deep-deep and John cries.
There isn't another word for it--not scream, not shout, because it isn't a word, or a name, or anything, just incoherent, half-obliterated breath that burns his throat and paints his vision fierce red and white.
And he's coming, coming, orgasm a knife like cutting him loose, something necessary he's long held back, Rodney's fingers almost cruel on him to remind him where he is and who's done this to him, keeping him from dissolving. His spine locks tight, straining up into hands that won't let him go anywhere, heat and brilliance all up and down his body, a storm and Rodney's the still, solid point in the center of it.
Rodney licks him slowly, carefully and even that hurts--the good hurt, what a ridiculous qualification--and when he leans back, John forces his vision clear enough to see his shoulders are shaking, face red like he's run a mile, like he's--
"You made me come in my pants," Rodney gasps, and the light in his eyes is amazement now. "Fucking hell, John. You made me come in my pants."
"Yeah, well..." John licks his lips, tries to find coherence. "Deserve it."
"Oh, and who was perving over whose leather jacket?" Rodney rolls his eyes, but the smile--starting slow, growing wider, brighter--smoothes out the rough edges of his annoyance.
A moment still while Rodney's shoulders shake with exertion and laughter, hands unsteady on John's thighs. When he moves again, his fingers are graceless on the buckles of John's thigh holster, finally managing to get it off after three tries. John's pants follow a moment later, sweep of cool air across John's skin that makes him shiver. He watches, vision still hazy with release (everything slow, smoother at the edges, not as distinct) as Rodney pulls off his own clothes, making a face at his pants and boxers as he tosses them aside, and yeah--and John can't help grinning--he had come in his pants.
"Oh, shut up and make yourself useful," Rodney snaps, gesturing for John to sit up. Despite his liquified spine, John does, and Rodney gathers up his shirt, pulls it over John's head, soft thwap of the shirt landing on something in the far shadows of the room.
And then Rodney's kissing him, thorough, deep, dirty enough to be foreplay if they weren't forty years old, taste of the two of them, salt and the memory of leather on John's tongue. Hands on John's face, his neck, his chest, but these are soothing, Rodney touching him for the sake of touching--painting reality back into a situation John almost can't believe actually happened. He stretches a little, liking the soft burn of overtaxed muscles, how Rodney feels against his skin.
"Please tell me you're not going to start sleeping with it," Rodney says.
John needs a moment to figure out Rodney's talking about the jacket, which John's still holding, clutched in his right hand like a lifeline.
"Well..." And in the ellipses, Rodney snorts and extracts his jacket from John's grip, tosses it into the shadows near his desk. Kisses him again, light, careful, not enough, so John's newly-free hand has to cup his face and pull him closer.
"Good," Rodney says afterward, and the word is satisfaction against John's mouth.
-end-
In vaguely related news, those of you who have read the commentaries on Se Narsaugir and the Cash Poem and want to know more about some of the terminology the author uses to discuss the texts, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to provide you with a quick explanation of terms in the form of a .doc file.
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And your icon... mmm! Love!
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