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sga_flashficTitle: Fusillade
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tzi and zaganthi
Pairing: Caldwell/McKay with suspicious Sheppard overtones
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Set after Trinity, which is exhausting in and of itself.
Length: 7,771 words. Give or take. *cough* Sorry.
Fusillade
An e-mail was a fair way to get a thank you, Steven Caldwell supposed, especially from a man who was probably hiding in his quarters by now.
He'd encouraged the experiment. Hell, the Pentagon had wanted that weapon, that power source, and McKay... McKay was a man known for pulling white rabbits out of his ass when the time came, at least since he'd come to the Pegasus Galaxy. There had been just as much of a chance that it would be a failure as a success. Possibly. It would have been worth every moment if it had succeeded, and once it had failed....
Maybe it was cruel to them, Sheppard, Weir, the others. They expected the kinds of miracles McKay had been able to pull off since he came here instead of the flawed attempts he'd made underneath Cheyenne Mountain. Steven already knew McKay was flawed, understood it, didn't have that faith that failure was unlikely for McKay, if not impossible, that they had. He had all the records. He knew what had happened at Area 51, what had happened under the Mountain, what had happened in Siberia, and what had happened in Antarctica. He had made it his business to know.
Steven Caldwell wasn't disappointed in Rodney McKay. Steven Caldwell was disappointed that the weapon hadn't worked out.
The Daedalus was due to ship out within the next twenty-four hours. That left him with a limited amount of time to do something he felt needed to be done, one way or another, and so he steeled himself and rose to head down to the scientific staff quarters.
It was never good to put off something that needed to be done as soon as possible.
He couldn't sleep.
Well, of course he couldn't sleep. He'd blown up five-sixths of a galaxy, and who could possibly just doze off when he had done a thing like that? They hadn't been to every planet, hadn't checked out anything more than Doranda, and. And, he could have killed millions of people aside from, oh, blowing up a whole bunch of empty planets, and that was going to mean a lot of sleepless nights later, Rodney figured. The roiling nausea represented by that look on Sheppard's face had a lot to do with it, never mind the extraordinarily humiliating yelling session to which Elizabeth had subjected him in front of God and everybody. Not that he believed in any god, on the whole, but if there was one, it wasn't his atheist ways that were going to send him to hell, not anymore.
Hell didn't matter when he was already in it, when everyone around him finally realized that he was the massive fuckup that everyone at the SGC had already been convinced he was. The Atlantis mission had been... amazing for that. Nothing had gone seriously wrong and life was good, if dangerous, and he kept reaching and doing things and they worked and he felt at one with the technology. He could play things as fast and as loose as he wanted to. He became the artist he had always wanted to be, except that when he'd said none of them were capable of understanding it at the same level he did, 'none of them' apparently included him and the dead Ancients.
Rodney had known, coming to Atlantis, that he wasn't Superman. He remembered telling them that once, that he wasn't Superman, and they all smirked and assured him that none of them had thought he was, except... Except for the part where they did, all of them, they believed that he would come through no matter what, and finally Rodney had come to believe that, too, to really think that he was capable of doing whatever was necessary to save all of them, to make it work.
He had so far. They weren't going to let him do it anymore, though, and he had no idea what he was going to do now that the turning point had come, because he'd screwed up once in SGC and they'd labeled him Sam Carter's sometimes-helper, sometimes, not really, really a waste of air but sometimes they needed a consult, and he was pretty fucking sure that they only brought people in for a consult so Carter could show them up and so Jackson could make them look like idiots. And now it was going to be Zelenka and Sheppard pulling him in when he could only give the wrong answer. He was going to lose his post and they were going to put him back on the Daedalus and ship him back to Earth posthaste, gene therapy or no.
Maybe, if he was lucky, they'd at least let him go back to Antarctica, wouldn't send him back to Russia. Both of them were cold as hell, but at least in Antarctica, there weren't a whole lot of pushy Russians and the women tended to shave a little more often.
That thought made him give a bitter laugh, and he closed his eyes, leaning back a little further on his bed. So tired. He was so tired, and it had been forever since he had slept and actually rested instead of closing his eyes for an hour or two between coffee and whatever they handed him to eat. His hands were still shaking from all the caffeine, knuckles aching where he had barked them on bits and pieces of equipment as they went along.
It didn't do him any good now. He'd destroyed it all, and all he could think about was sleep. All he could concentrate on was his selfish need to try to sleep when he knew that what he wanted to do was stay in Atlantis forever, and if he wanted to do that then he needed to start work on gaining their trust back right away. He needed to, to, to do something. To fix something so everyone would quietly note, 'Hey, McKay did that,' and possibly hate him a little less.
'I'm sure you can do it, if you really wanna try.' Those words were going to rattle around the inside of his head for eternity. They were already lodged hard against, 'Your plane leaves for Russia in an hour,' and it wasn't as if he could ever, ever forget that, or the way Carter had smiled, just like Sheppard had smirked at him on his way into the transporter.
He'd been wrong. It was all theory, educated guesses, really, just educated insanity at the point they were working at, and he had been wrong and she'd been right, and that had been that. But at least Russia had Naqahdah generators. He'd gotten in on the ground floor of those, and they worked. They were amazing and they were the only things that still kept most of Atlantis going.
No one remembered that. Just his fuckups, because when Rodney McKay fucked something up, he fucked it up spectacularly.
Which was why he was looking crookedly at his alarm instead of sleeping. Why he was...
Why was someone knocking on his door?
It wasn't as if anyone was interested in talking to him. Even Carson's mouth had curved in that little disappointed-in-you way that had made shame course down to the pit of his stomach, replaced anything resembling ego or certainty or.... Well, much of anything, confidence and brazen nerve alike.
"I know you're in there, McKay." Caldwell.
It took a moment for the thought to reach the higher functioning parts of his brain, because if Caldwell was there to see him, then Caldwell was telling him that he was deciding to take Rodney back for a court martial or something, military enrollment or no, and Rodney wasn't in the mood for that. He hadn't had time to handle or face that yet, and it was all he could do to get his feet under his body and lurch towards the door. Caldwell couldn't pick the door open and the city didn't love Caldwell the way it at least grudgingly liked Rodney.
He opened the door, and leaned in the doorway. "I'm sorry, Colonel, what can I do for you?"
"May I come in?" It was polite enough, and Rodney didn't see any MPs standing there with Daedalus patches on their arms, so maybe he wasn't being arrested yet. Maybe he was just going to be yelled at, again, in the privacy of his own space.
Great. Great. Maybe if he put a sign outside the door that said 'yell at McKay now', they'd all file in and get it over with and then he could get some peace and quiet in his skull. "I... sure." Sure. He took a back step, and could hardly be bothered to give the man a flourish of his arm to escort him in. "I was trying to sleep."
"Of course. I, ah, just wanted to come and talk to you in person." So that he could yell, or let Rodney know he'd be going back to Earth or... "I wanted to say that you're welcome. I appreciated the e-mail, and I thought somebody should come by and tell you that you aren't entirely at fault."
Huh.
"I'm not entirely at fault," Rodney echoed, and it was hard not to stare at Caldwell as he let the door close. Unfortunately, he hadn't had the foresight to reach and turn on a lamp, too, but he could navigate towards the desk where it sat. "Well, that's a sentiment I haven't heard in years."
"It's true. Especially in this case." Caldwell fell to parade rest there in the dark, and Rodney turned his back, drawing in a deep breath. "I'm just as much at fault, and the others were as excited about it as you." He cleared his throat. "I, ah. Heard what Dr. Weir had to say."
Yeah. Him and half of Atlantis.
"Second hand, I assume. It might possibly have been loud enough to hear all the way to where the Daedalus was docked." He didn't look for the light after that, no, and he wasn't going to. Rodney didn't want to be looked at and he didn't want to see Caldwell's face and he didn't particularly want anyone in his room but him.
"Mmm." Yes. Well. That was a fabulous response, mmm, that meant ever so much, thanks, and did he really have to stand here like this when what he really wanted to do was crawl into bed and at least try to sleep? That probably wasn't going to work, even with a serious attempt at masturbation. "When was the last time you slept, Dr. McKay?"
What did that have to do with anything?
"Possibly before we discovered Doranda." Possibly. No, he'd slept after the first trip there, but they'd gone back and gotten it working, and then a man had died and he'd sat up and recalculated until it seemed right again, and Sheppard had taken him back and everything had gone to hell in a proverbial hand basket.
"That would explain the thinking out loud part then."
Oh.
Oh sh... Okay. Okay, so everyone did stupid things sometimes, and talking about masturbation to the captain of the Daedalus was a pretty stupid thing.
If Atlantis was at all fond of him, he would be swallowed by the floor and never, ever have to come back up. He would have become one with the floor, and then someone might have put a plaque over him that read, 'Here lies Rodney McKay, he is much missed because no one will recalibrate our fucking life support now.'
"Oh."
"You know, it's all right, McKay. Everybody does it." Well of course everybody did it. Did he look stupid or something? This was some kind of bizarre high school conversation about dicks now, and Rodney really just couldn't face it. No. This wasn't going to work for him at all, not at all, and his thoughts were interrupted when Caldwell cleared his throat. "I could, ah, help you out with that."
"You could..." Rodney jerked his had up, and even though he could only make out some of Caldwell's face, he didn't seem to be laughing. "I know I haven't had sleep in a while. So could you repeat that? I, uh..."
"I was offering some assistance." There was no way, no, absolutely no way he had actually heard that quite right. Nobody wanted to talk to him at that moment, much less touch him, and that was just, that was just... "If you're interested."
"Interested? Do you have any idea how long it's been since the last time that I--" Oh, god, and there went his credibility as a ladies' man. "Uh, that I was propositioned by, uh, an officer in the Stargate command and I might as well not finish this sentence."
"No, I suspect not." It was obviously amusing to the man and, well, Rodney had to admit that it was enough to take his mind off of his current problem, unless he considered by which officer he really wanted to be propositioned. That was just... "A yes or no is sufficient, Doctor."
"Yes. Yes, I'm, I'm going to go crazy if I don't get some sleep soon if I'm not already there and you aren't a hallucination." In which case, if it was a hallucination, he could win. Rodney took a nervous step towards Caldwell. Steven. Steven Caldwell.
Oh dear God. He'd blown up a solar system and he was going to have sex with Colonel Caldwell.
"Well, I'm glad to know you feel that way." An arm snaked around him, and then he was pulled flush against the man's front, and his brains, whatever was left of them, were automatically scrambled because that was feeling... really weirdly uncomfortable and yet....
He was solid. He was definitely solid and clothed still, yes, but people didn't exactly walk naked through the hallways, and Rodney wondered if he should kiss him. Because he wasn't good at kissing, but he should probably...
It was always good to have the situation taken out of his hands. Who would ever have thought that Caldwell would kiss like that, slow and easy and sucking at Rodney's lower lip in a way that made shudders ripple down his body, made his hands shake.
Right there, the lower lip thing, was something he wanted again because it shot right down to his dick. He tilted his head back a little, trying to kiss him back but the lip thing was so good. And fuck, never mind that it was a one-night stand with the Captain of the Daedalus, he was tired and it felt good. He just needed to participate back, fingers pulling at the fastenings of the man's uniform. It was good, it was so good, one hand rubbing down against his ass, and then he could sleep, he could sleep and maybe forget, and that was worth a hell of a lot.
When Caldwell pulled away, he couldn't help the whine he gave, or the way he kind of humped against the thigh that was pushed against him there. "Don't..."
"I'm not going anywhere." Simple and easy as that, reassurance that he didn't even know he needed. It made him feel... Something. Better. Worse. Something.
"Good. Good." He licked his bottom lip, and it didn't feel half as interesting as what Caldwell had been doing. Rodney pulled at the jumpsuit's easy access zipper, and why did their uniform make for easy access and the Atlantis one was all Velcro and zippers and layers? Maybe it was some bizarre hope that if it took them longer to get undressed, it would make it less likely for them to have sex and breed lots of little Earth babies out of the Milky Way.
The hand on his ass slid around his hip and up to his waist, fingers lingering at the edge of his blue expedition shirt. "Allow me." The tug and pull brought it up, and the scratch of the jumpsuit against his stomach and diaphragm was strangely good in a way that made his breath hitch and his dick twitch. It was okay because he really hadn't needed to be dressed and why did getting the jumpsuit open give him a t-shirt to have to do away with and -- and oh, boxers, the kind where he could just slide a hand in. That was the kind of easy access they didn't want off-world teams to have, but Caldwell dressed to the right and that was a nice piece of weaponry he was sliding his hand around.
It had been much too long since he'd had this kind of opportunity, or even the hope for it. He'd always been loudly about blondes and quietly about dick, and Russia had been the best place to indulge in that, for all that it had sucked because, Russia, land of bad vodka and the loose bolts of Aeroflot, but now, now he was here, and he really should be getting tossed in the brig. He should be, but Caldwell was stripping his shirt up over his head, and there was a hand on the button of his uniform trousers and oh.
Yes. Yes. It was good that Caldwell was even mauling at his dick through the fabric of his uniform, because Rodney was ready to drop to his knees and suck him like a cheap whore if he could just get more than his hand around the man, more than just his hand on warm dick. Even if Rodney was moving his hand, feeling Caldwell up in the dark of his bedroom. "I'm completely incoherent but I want this. I've done it before, it's been a while, yes, but I completely want this, so none of this 'are you sure' girly pussyfooting."
"Don't worry, Doctor." Who really would have thought being called doctor when someone had his dick in hand would be such a great thing? Except of course he had, but it wasn't the kind of thing a man really liked to admit so much. "I wasn't planning on doing any pussyfooting."
And, whoa. Whole room, spinning, and he was on his back with his pants coming off, and who knew a guy Caldwell's age would move that fast? He was nearly old enough to be Rodney's father, and, huh. Who could have known that was going to be such a hot thought, either? Not that he was going to think of it, because fast hands in the dark pulling his uniform pants and underwear off were a great thought. Carefully temperature controlled air on his dick was a great thought. "Wow, where'd you learn that?"
"Here and there." He could almost hear the sharp smile in that voice, the don't ask, and I won't tell edge to it, and that was okay with Rodney, because what was he going to do, anyway? Even if he knew, it didn't matter, and he opened his mouth to say so, but then there was a mouth on his cock and suction and he was pretty sure he was babbling a lot of purely useless nonsense because he just couldn't help it.
He was getting his dick sucked by a pro. There was a little messy slurping that he could hear, but Atlantean walls were soundproof so no one else was going to hear it but him and Caldwell, and why would he be listening to himself sucking Rodney's dick with a slow twisting pressure of tongue against the underside of his cock head, right over the vein and his circumcision scar?
It was going to be a very close thing. Very close, because his breath was hitching and Caldwell was holding Rodney's hands down beside his hips, and the slurping sounds were accompanied by the desperate noises of his own coming orgasm. Even the absolute suck of the day was nearly wiped out of his mind, and, whoa. That was enough to let him stall, to draw him back from the edge, because he was sure that his hell of a day had been more than twenty-four hours long, even with gate activity shifting and warping space-time as they saw fit to want it.
Rodney couldn't move his hands to push Caldwell back or pull him closer, because they were pressed down hard against the mattress, and why hadn't he ever thought of doing that when he gave someone a blowjob? Because it made trying to move them more trouble than they were worth, and now that he'd shocked himself closer to coherency, he was going to be able to last a little longer, he was going to be able to feel the tip of a tongue pressing against his piss-slit, and oh, holy shit that was, that was, that was really incredibly good, and if he had known Caldwell could do that then he....
Elbows shifted, pushing his legs farther apart, and Rodney let him. He let him because it felt good and because there was no point in being difficult. The last time someone had touched him had been too long ago to think about clearly, and it was obvious that nobody was going to want to touch him again in a long time, and when Caldwell's mouth came off of him with a near audible pop, it was all he could do not to protest.
It was really very incredibly close.
"I want you to leave your hands where I have them. Can you do that for me, Doctor?"
"Yeah. Sure, yeah." He loosened his fingers from their fists, but it was just to knot them up again with the added security of the military issued bedding to keep them in place. "See, not moving my hands." Not getting up, not moving his hands, but he had to wonder what Caldwell was going to do. After all, the man had proven damned adept at pretty much everything so far, and really, it had been completely and totally unsuspected if McKay thought about it.
The hands that had been holding his down stroked over a hip, calloused and firm, one on either side, and then his legs were pushed further, knees bending up so that he was tilted a little, and his pants were being shoved under him. That was... incredibly uncomfortable, actually, creases and wads and juts of fabric, and he opened his mouth to say something about it, but then there was a mouth on his balls and oh. Oh, no way was he complaining about it just then because that was just...
It had been him and his right hand for a really long time, too long, and it was going to be that way for a while longer, given what he'd just done, but there was a mouth on his balls, and Rodney shifted to maybe get a little more of that because wet and warm there was almost as good as having Caldwell pretend to be a Hoover vacuum on his dick head.
Rodney was babbling, saying everything, anything, whatever came to mind, really, because God oh God oh God that felt so... So good, and there was a tongue, dirty and hot, slipping and sliding and IN and he was going to come all over the place before they ever got far at all.
Whatever he had done to deserve this, he hoped he had done it well. At least well enough to warrant that, hands resting on his hips and sliding under his ass but over the rough rub of his uniform pants which were a really shitty pillow to have sex on top. They were just covered in Velcro and buttons, and.
Tongue. Tongue, which was all twisting wet muscle and pieces of sensory tissue, was sliding back behind his balls and over his perineum, so that nudging he felt against them had to be Caldwell's nose. There were sounds down there, slick and murmured, sounds that would be exciting even if it wasn't him, and fingers, holy fuck, fingers beside tongue and the sounds he made couldn't possibly be human, weren't him, weren't possible, because nothing felt that good, nothing felt good enough to make those noises, and his cock was jerking, jerking, coming suddenly, unexpectedly, unable to stop himself from falling over that surprising edge.
Rodney hadn't wanted to yet, but that tongue, and fingers were still there, still moving in him, slick and making him ache, and he wasn't about to say no, or slow down, because just then the only thing he suspected he could have done was kick Caldwell in the ribs and that was no way to repay that kind of no hands on his cock orgasm.
"Oh fuck, oh fuck. Sir, you, oh fuck."
Eloquent. Really eloquent, and calling him sir in bed, well, that was just kinky. A good kind of kinky, maybe. And then slick. Slick finger, tongue sliding out of his ass, and Rodney wasn't sure how many fingers were in there, but he was so sensitive he wanted to roll over and just collapse, and he never, ever wanted it to stop. He was so tired, so far past the edge of exhausted, and he might just drowse off in the middle of fucking if that sharp edge of almost-discomfort went away.
"May I, Doctor?" Very good kinky.
"Uh-huh. There's lube..." He gestured, and then caught himself putting his hand down where Caldwell had left it, had asked him to put it, but what he wanted to do was roll over, spread his legs, and just see what happened, except Rodney wasn't sure he could roll over when there were, okay, two, maybe three fingers up his ass. Or two fingers and one of the pens that Caldwell carried in his pocket. "There's lube in the dresser." And no condoms, because hey, he wasn't fucking Captain Kirk, who didn't even wear condoms when he'd done whatever he'd done with Chaya.
Not that John would so much as look at him cross-eyed at the moment. That kind of despair should be reserved for moments when he was alone and not so tired, not so desperate for release and relief and sleep.
"It's all right." Funny, funny to hear that from Caldwell, apparently there was no need for Rodney's lube. No need at all, because Caldwell was wet, and it hadn't all been spit, and when the man shoved one knee up towards his shoulder and pushed, Rodney opened with a low, desperate sound.
It was all right. It was, oh, god, Caldwell had to carry lube with him to do that, to be that slick and just in Rodney with one good push forwards, leaving Rodney's ass spasming around Caldwell's dick. Rodney didn't even think he could handle knee to shoulder, bent and pressed open and open like that, but he was pinned and he was damn well going to move his hands. "Move, move, you have to, god, move."
Like it was an order, and oh, oh, oh, yes, military, yes, good with orders, oh, holy fucking hell, YES, and Rodney had thought he was too tired, too spent to get hard again, but he was. He was, and all he could do was sob, bring his hands up so that they fluttered, moved wildly against broad shoulders, tight arms.
"Like this, Dr. McKay?"
Gaaah. Just like that. Just like that, and oh, oh, fuck, oh, shit, oh, hell, it was, he was angled and it hurtfeltgoodfeltsoincredible. It didn't matter if he was hard or soft or what, because his dick was twitching and his ass was full and everything hurt and was tight and oh god, holding on because that was all that he could do, because Caldwell was thrusting hard at him, in him, all in control which was fine because Rodney wasn't. Rodney definitely wasn't the one with any control, wasn't the one who was on the ball here.
It was hard not to giggle -- he'd always had trouble with laughing inappropriately, usually when he was lying, but when the sex was so good that his brains turned into mush, he giggled then, too, and he didn't want Caldwell to pause. Stopping would be bad, so bad, and he was surprised to hear Caldwell laugh and shift him again, a sound of deep, almost dark amusement.
"If I had known sex with you would be this good, or this amusing, I'd have offered sooner."
"Uhn, you can offer again if you don't stop..." He was stretched out, laid out, fucked up, and Caldwell was still moving, his dick was leaking and half hard and soft and aching against his stomach. Every thrust into him made it feel like it was jumping, twitching, and that made him want to laugh more, made him want to jump into the land of sheer hysterical pleasure, and it was really so close to being too much, so close, his breath hitching and catching, and when the first giggle escaped so that he could hear it, his entire body caught, trembled on the edge. He'd never had that kind of experience because he was, he was going to come, he was going to come just from being fucked, Caldwell's cock nudging in so many good places that he wanted to yell.
"Come on... come on....."
He didn't need to be told, and he wasn't sure how Caldwell was doing it, what he'd done to his dick to do that, or what he'd done to Rodney or even what Rodney had done to Rodney, because first it had been the fingers and that mouth, but mostly the fingers and now it was that, it was Caldwell doing pushups into Rodney's ass, and he was never going to complain about the Military's PT inconveniencing him again when people asked him to turn technology on because no one else with the gene was available.
When it hit, it was a wash of electricity that sparkled up his spine and into his brain, and he arched, gasping in desperation. So good, entire body rocking on that cock, hot and hard and so fucking perfect and....
It was easy to slip out, once the spasming stopped. McKay was passed out underneath him, silly little hiccoughs that resembled chortles spilling loose every now and then. If he had realized how interesting it would be to fuck McKay, he might have tried it sooner.
For the moment, it was certainly on his agenda to do it again sometime. Caldwell smoothed a hand down McKay's leg, stretched it out straight instead of bent and loose. Lovely, and that had been fun. Better than anything on the base.
And who knew. Maybe tomorrow would look a little better for him. At least now he knew that someone in Atlantis didn't hate him for doing exactly what had been asked of him, in the long run. It had to make up for something, like the ass Sheppard would make of himself by breakfast. It was a shame, considering what he had in McKay.
He gathered his things -- a shoe tossed off here, jacket there, tucked his cock away. Well. What Sheppard didn't realize wasn't going to bother Caldwell. Not when he made regular trips to back to Atlantis.
It wasn't often that Rodney woke up naked on top of his sheets with a sticky, dried ass and semen on his stomach. On the bright side, it was just as seldom that people bothered to come into his rooms without permission, and even though his alarm was beepbeepbeeping at him, he could remember most of the evening that had led to a crusty, dried lube and semen ass and a crusty stomach.
Caldwell and his amazing wonderdick.
Rodney was pretty sure he'd never been laid like that, not in all his life, and even if he ached from head to toe for the rest of the day the way that he did right at the moment, it was completely worth every last moment of it.
He wasn't sure when he'd last slept the night away like that, face pressed to his pillow, no one interrupting him for anything more important than getting fucked. The reason for it was something that he shoved to the back of his mind, though; along with the heavy knot of... something... that rested where his diaphragm used to be.
Something. There was... something, but he wasn't sure he was going to get a grasp of that until he got out of bed and took a shower. Rodney supposed he could try taking a shower in bed, but it sounded like it would be more work than it was worth. Still, it took him a few moments of grogginess to hit the alarm off, and actually stand.
Why wouldn't Carson come and give him intravenous caffeine when he woke up? It would make life so much easier if he could just perk right up with a quick fix first thing in the morning.
As it was, the shower almost did it most mornings. As well-rested as he was, it would probably take his brains a good hour to kick back in, function again. Hot shower, coffee, one of the crazy berry muffins that tasted like hazelnuts, he'd wake right up. No problem.
The shower helped. The shower started to help, started to unwind him. The water was as hot as Rodney could get it, pelting down on him, cleaning his hair and letting fingers sneak back to play with his ass a little while he cleaned. His dick was apparently still exhausted, but everything seemed in normal working order, not that it was any surprise. Apparently, his body only woke up for wonderdick these days, and huh. That had, ah, really been something of an absolute shocker, hadn't it? He pointedly didn't think about the reason Caldwell might have come calling or what was on his mind or... Well, or anything else. He just didn't want to think about it, and so he didn't.
He got out and brushed his teeth, dripping onto the sink and the towel he'd dropped on the floor. Shaving wasn't much of a problem because, hey, the Daedalus brought sharp new disposable razors these days, the nice ones instead of the cheap ones that he had gotten in Russia, so he slathered his face in gel and hummed while he did it, only drying off once he'd washed his face free of whiskers and the remaining foamy bits.
It was something about the gleam of the mirror that ended up being the undoing of Rodney's denial. A sharp edge of light from the window to the bathroom mirror, like a spark, a flare, and he was there again. He was standing in the base that had survived 10,000 years on its own just before the core went from manually controllable to manually uncontrollable and oh god.
He had... He had... and then Caldwell had come to him and made it better, or at least made him forget, and forgetting was something that he wasn't sure he deserved. Suffering was more like it, some kind of atonement, but everyone else was fairly certain they'd be the ones forcing that on him, so why had Caldwell....?
Oh, who knew. Who knew anything about the military or their habits, the way that they did things? Maybe he had just seemed like an easy screw, and nobody was really gay so long as it wasn't their ass opening up for wonderdick, after all.
And he'd been easy. Exhausted and shaky and there'd been a mouth on his dick, and Rodney hadn't been about to say no to any of it. Which technically did make him an easy screw, but on the other hand, it wasn't going to end up all over the city that McKay was easy when he was tired and since he was always tired, he was probably always easy.
It wasn't a theory he'd had much opportunity to test. Wouldn't, since he'd destroyed five-sixths of a solar system and everyone he worked with was irrationally or maybe rationally angry with him. He couldn't tell because he'd never really been good at understanding his own fuck-ups, at least the human ones, and this was probably one of the biggest fuck-ups ever.
At least if they sent him back on the Daedalus, Caldwell might come visit him in the brig. That'd be something. Maybe not much, but probably better than the sickness welling in him as he dressed slowly, pulling on his shoes and girding his loins, metaphorically speaking.
The only comfort, as he walked down the hall towards the cafeteria, was the knowledge that if they'd been going to send him back on the Daedalus, they would have already told him and had him packed, because most of the city's contingency plans were in his head and they couldn't just make him leave like that because they needed him, and.
And it was a useless fear that he was nursing in himself. Doctor Weir wasn't going to get rid of him. Punish him, yes, probably, but get rid of? No.
On the other hand, maybe going back to Earth... Well, no, he'd be willing to take a lot of suffering to get to stay in Atlantis, actually. Misery and suffering and he really didn't want breakfast now because he could hear all of the voices, and those who hadn't heard Elizabeth yelling at him had certainly heard about it by now.
He could feel his chin notch upward, an automatic reflex from years of living with his parents and a deep, stubborn refusal to bow down to their intense dislike of him, and he took a deep breath. Might as well face the lot of them down and take whatever they dished out as best he could, although Rodney had to admit he'd never been really good at that.
Still, it wasn't as if any of them had ever blown up a solar system, part or most of it, or as if any of them would have had the capability to even know what the project was in the first place and what to do with it. It had been his fuckup, yes, but wholly his.
The cafeteria was really no louder than usual, and no one really seemed to be looking at him, which was both annoying and a relief. On the one hand, thank god. He didn't want them staring or eyeballing him or whispering about how he'd done what he'd done. On the other hand, they really ought to be eyeballing him and whispering about what he'd done, so what, exactly, was the problem?
"Good morning, Rodney."
Ah. There was the problem. Steely-eyed glint, that was precisely what was going on. Apparently, Sheppard was the only one allowed to humiliate him in public. Well, and Elizabeth, and keeping back the bitter sound of laughter was difficult. Sheppard was eyeing Rodney while he grabbed for the 'milk' carafe, and poured a glassful. There were muffins just past Sheppard, waiting for him. Calling to him. He wasn't going to let Sheppard get to him.
"Good morning. So, busy day planned, Colonel?"
"Oh, you know. Just the usual. Paperwork. Laundry. Save the world." Or just one guy who couldn't admit he was wrong and they were all going to die, yes, that was something he was taking personally. "I expect you've got plenty to take care of."
"Mmm. Yes. I heard that one of your men peed in the desalinization tank. Well, actually on it, you know how the control panel is laid out just so the -- well, let's just say I wouldn't drink the water until it's been taken care of." He leaned past Sheppard, closer to him, and snatched up a muffin before scooping some powdered eggs onto a plate.
Sheppard was just blinking at him. It was either the peeing or the thievery of the last muffin, but he felt moderately justified for some very sick reason.
"Good morning, Dr. McKay."
That was very different than the good morning he'd gotten from Sheppard, and when he looked up, Colonel Caldwell was on the other side of the table holding out a cup of coffee.
Wonderdick and coffee?
Rodney wasn't going to turn it down, even if the motion startled him. No, not startled so much as, well, it was nice that he was getting a little eye contact and acknowledgment. Apparently Caldwell wasn't one of those men who cornered people to beat them up and threaten them never to tell.
"Good morning, Colonel Caldwell. It is a good morning." He tossed in a little thanks when he took the cup, and settled into his chair. Rodney could still keep an eye on Sheppard from where he sat, though, see both of them, and that was... interesting.
"Colonel." The last time Rodney remembered seeing that look, it was directed at Hermiod and John had been hissing about naked aliens.
"Colonel," Caldwell greeted, a bland reply. "We'll be out of your hair shortly. Earth wants your report as soon as possible."
"I'm sure they do. It's a shame you won't have better news to give them." Just the news that Rodney had destroyed a solar system, and it was a damn good thing that the SGC hadn't ever bothered with any kind of prime directive shit that he recalled, because that was way past interfering. He started to pick apart the muffin, sweet crusted top first.
"Dr. McKay did his job, which was exactly what they expected of him, and of us, Colonel. It is a shame. It's always difficult to lose personnel, not to mention that much hard work." Hard work on Rodney's part, and the rest of the science department, and that didn't make him feel a hundred percent better, but it helped, just like the other had.
Referring to his own personal porn as the other really just didn't seem to cover things well enough. On the other hand, he could almost hear Sheppard's teeth grinding when Caldwell passed him the pepper.
That, huh. Carson was always nagging him about that, to avoid salt, and he usually really did, but the powdered eggs were blandish in the way that all reconstituted food was. "Mm, thanks. It's..." A shame to lose that life, one of his men, and it had been unpredictable and stupid, yes, and he was going to carry it with him. He wouldn't bury the data and never use it again because someone had died for him to have proof of what creating that kind of field in their own universe instead of a pocket universe could do. They both waited patiently for him to finish the sentence, but he was fumbling a little, uncertain, and the pepper shaker shook in his hand. "Um. It's a tragedy of... incredible magnitude, and..."
"It's all right, Doctor." Just the way he'd said it last night, a little less shaky, perhaps, a little less lustful, but Rodney was even more grateful for it, honestly.
"Huh."
Just that sound made Rodney flinch, but he saw the steady, hard look it gained Sheppard, and that was... that was something, anyway.
Not everyone hated him. Not everyone was holding it against him. If he could just gauge how Zelenka was acting towards him, he could come up with a plan on coping and writing up the fruit and lack of fruit of the Doranda Incident and move... not past it, perhaps. But on. Move on.
He just didn't know what to say to Caldwell. About it being all right, because while it wasn't, it might work out, which wasn't the same as being all right. It would have to do, though, and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Well. They're expecting me aboard the Daedalus for preflight system checks. Colonel Sheppard, I'll expect your report within the next hour or two? Dr. McKay." He nodded, standing with his tray and walking towards the designated area for dirty dishes.
"Did I miss something?"
Sheppard wasn't supposed to ask, but maybe he didn't know what he was asking about, exactly.
Rodney just shrugged his shoulders and picked up his fork. "Not really."
"Oh. Well." Those green eyes were still watching him suspiciously, but at least it was a different look than the one he'd been getting last night. It was a look he could deal with. "I guess I'd better go and work on that report." He was still eyeballing Rodney, though.
Which was fine. Sheppard probably thought they were forming a mutual John disliking club, which they weren't. Not everything was about John.
"I suppose so, yes. Have a good day."
Sometimes it was just about being able to unwind and sleep; to leave guilt and humiliation and frustration behind, if only for a little while. John hadn't let him do that, hadn't been willing to give him that, and Rodney understood, kind of. Caldwell had, though, and that was something to appreciate.
John didn't trust him anymore. John might not ever trust him anymore, and there was no one to blame but himself, really. Despite all of that, despite what he'd done, there was at least one person willing to let him stop thinking, let him close his eyes and... rest. Just rest.
He'd had learned a long time ago to take what he could get when it came to interpersonal relations. Most of the time, it was enough. Occasionally, he forgot that he wasn't good at these things, and the kinds of disasters that he'd created with Sheppard and Doranda happened, and everything crashed down on top of his head.
Rodney sat back in his chair in the cafeteria, and took a sip of the coffee Caldwell had given him. It was nice not to have to deal with that alone, for once.
He hoped the Daedalus's next trip wouldn't take as long as usual.
Author:
tzi and zaganthiPairing: Caldwell/McKay with suspicious Sheppard overtones
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Set after Trinity, which is exhausting in and of itself.
Length: 7,771 words. Give or take. *cough* Sorry.
An e-mail was a fair way to get a thank you, Steven Caldwell supposed, especially from a man who was probably hiding in his quarters by now.
He'd encouraged the experiment. Hell, the Pentagon had wanted that weapon, that power source, and McKay... McKay was a man known for pulling white rabbits out of his ass when the time came, at least since he'd come to the Pegasus Galaxy. There had been just as much of a chance that it would be a failure as a success. Possibly. It would have been worth every moment if it had succeeded, and once it had failed....
Maybe it was cruel to them, Sheppard, Weir, the others. They expected the kinds of miracles McKay had been able to pull off since he came here instead of the flawed attempts he'd made underneath Cheyenne Mountain. Steven already knew McKay was flawed, understood it, didn't have that faith that failure was unlikely for McKay, if not impossible, that they had. He had all the records. He knew what had happened at Area 51, what had happened under the Mountain, what had happened in Siberia, and what had happened in Antarctica. He had made it his business to know.
Steven Caldwell wasn't disappointed in Rodney McKay. Steven Caldwell was disappointed that the weapon hadn't worked out.
The Daedalus was due to ship out within the next twenty-four hours. That left him with a limited amount of time to do something he felt needed to be done, one way or another, and so he steeled himself and rose to head down to the scientific staff quarters.
It was never good to put off something that needed to be done as soon as possible.
He couldn't sleep.
Well, of course he couldn't sleep. He'd blown up five-sixths of a galaxy, and who could possibly just doze off when he had done a thing like that? They hadn't been to every planet, hadn't checked out anything more than Doranda, and. And, he could have killed millions of people aside from, oh, blowing up a whole bunch of empty planets, and that was going to mean a lot of sleepless nights later, Rodney figured. The roiling nausea represented by that look on Sheppard's face had a lot to do with it, never mind the extraordinarily humiliating yelling session to which Elizabeth had subjected him in front of God and everybody. Not that he believed in any god, on the whole, but if there was one, it wasn't his atheist ways that were going to send him to hell, not anymore.
Hell didn't matter when he was already in it, when everyone around him finally realized that he was the massive fuckup that everyone at the SGC had already been convinced he was. The Atlantis mission had been... amazing for that. Nothing had gone seriously wrong and life was good, if dangerous, and he kept reaching and doing things and they worked and he felt at one with the technology. He could play things as fast and as loose as he wanted to. He became the artist he had always wanted to be, except that when he'd said none of them were capable of understanding it at the same level he did, 'none of them' apparently included him and the dead Ancients.
Rodney had known, coming to Atlantis, that he wasn't Superman. He remembered telling them that once, that he wasn't Superman, and they all smirked and assured him that none of them had thought he was, except... Except for the part where they did, all of them, they believed that he would come through no matter what, and finally Rodney had come to believe that, too, to really think that he was capable of doing whatever was necessary to save all of them, to make it work.
He had so far. They weren't going to let him do it anymore, though, and he had no idea what he was going to do now that the turning point had come, because he'd screwed up once in SGC and they'd labeled him Sam Carter's sometimes-helper, sometimes, not really, really a waste of air but sometimes they needed a consult, and he was pretty fucking sure that they only brought people in for a consult so Carter could show them up and so Jackson could make them look like idiots. And now it was going to be Zelenka and Sheppard pulling him in when he could only give the wrong answer. He was going to lose his post and they were going to put him back on the Daedalus and ship him back to Earth posthaste, gene therapy or no.
Maybe, if he was lucky, they'd at least let him go back to Antarctica, wouldn't send him back to Russia. Both of them were cold as hell, but at least in Antarctica, there weren't a whole lot of pushy Russians and the women tended to shave a little more often.
That thought made him give a bitter laugh, and he closed his eyes, leaning back a little further on his bed. So tired. He was so tired, and it had been forever since he had slept and actually rested instead of closing his eyes for an hour or two between coffee and whatever they handed him to eat. His hands were still shaking from all the caffeine, knuckles aching where he had barked them on bits and pieces of equipment as they went along.
It didn't do him any good now. He'd destroyed it all, and all he could think about was sleep. All he could concentrate on was his selfish need to try to sleep when he knew that what he wanted to do was stay in Atlantis forever, and if he wanted to do that then he needed to start work on gaining their trust back right away. He needed to, to, to do something. To fix something so everyone would quietly note, 'Hey, McKay did that,' and possibly hate him a little less.
'I'm sure you can do it, if you really wanna try.' Those words were going to rattle around the inside of his head for eternity. They were already lodged hard against, 'Your plane leaves for Russia in an hour,' and it wasn't as if he could ever, ever forget that, or the way Carter had smiled, just like Sheppard had smirked at him on his way into the transporter.
He'd been wrong. It was all theory, educated guesses, really, just educated insanity at the point they were working at, and he had been wrong and she'd been right, and that had been that. But at least Russia had Naqahdah generators. He'd gotten in on the ground floor of those, and they worked. They were amazing and they were the only things that still kept most of Atlantis going.
No one remembered that. Just his fuckups, because when Rodney McKay fucked something up, he fucked it up spectacularly.
Which was why he was looking crookedly at his alarm instead of sleeping. Why he was...
Why was someone knocking on his door?
It wasn't as if anyone was interested in talking to him. Even Carson's mouth had curved in that little disappointed-in-you way that had made shame course down to the pit of his stomach, replaced anything resembling ego or certainty or.... Well, much of anything, confidence and brazen nerve alike.
"I know you're in there, McKay." Caldwell.
It took a moment for the thought to reach the higher functioning parts of his brain, because if Caldwell was there to see him, then Caldwell was telling him that he was deciding to take Rodney back for a court martial or something, military enrollment or no, and Rodney wasn't in the mood for that. He hadn't had time to handle or face that yet, and it was all he could do to get his feet under his body and lurch towards the door. Caldwell couldn't pick the door open and the city didn't love Caldwell the way it at least grudgingly liked Rodney.
He opened the door, and leaned in the doorway. "I'm sorry, Colonel, what can I do for you?"
"May I come in?" It was polite enough, and Rodney didn't see any MPs standing there with Daedalus patches on their arms, so maybe he wasn't being arrested yet. Maybe he was just going to be yelled at, again, in the privacy of his own space.
Great. Great. Maybe if he put a sign outside the door that said 'yell at McKay now', they'd all file in and get it over with and then he could get some peace and quiet in his skull. "I... sure." Sure. He took a back step, and could hardly be bothered to give the man a flourish of his arm to escort him in. "I was trying to sleep."
"Of course. I, ah, just wanted to come and talk to you in person." So that he could yell, or let Rodney know he'd be going back to Earth or... "I wanted to say that you're welcome. I appreciated the e-mail, and I thought somebody should come by and tell you that you aren't entirely at fault."
Huh.
"I'm not entirely at fault," Rodney echoed, and it was hard not to stare at Caldwell as he let the door close. Unfortunately, he hadn't had the foresight to reach and turn on a lamp, too, but he could navigate towards the desk where it sat. "Well, that's a sentiment I haven't heard in years."
"It's true. Especially in this case." Caldwell fell to parade rest there in the dark, and Rodney turned his back, drawing in a deep breath. "I'm just as much at fault, and the others were as excited about it as you." He cleared his throat. "I, ah. Heard what Dr. Weir had to say."
Yeah. Him and half of Atlantis.
"Second hand, I assume. It might possibly have been loud enough to hear all the way to where the Daedalus was docked." He didn't look for the light after that, no, and he wasn't going to. Rodney didn't want to be looked at and he didn't want to see Caldwell's face and he didn't particularly want anyone in his room but him.
"Mmm." Yes. Well. That was a fabulous response, mmm, that meant ever so much, thanks, and did he really have to stand here like this when what he really wanted to do was crawl into bed and at least try to sleep? That probably wasn't going to work, even with a serious attempt at masturbation. "When was the last time you slept, Dr. McKay?"
What did that have to do with anything?
"Possibly before we discovered Doranda." Possibly. No, he'd slept after the first trip there, but they'd gone back and gotten it working, and then a man had died and he'd sat up and recalculated until it seemed right again, and Sheppard had taken him back and everything had gone to hell in a proverbial hand basket.
"That would explain the thinking out loud part then."
Oh.
Oh sh... Okay. Okay, so everyone did stupid things sometimes, and talking about masturbation to the captain of the Daedalus was a pretty stupid thing.
If Atlantis was at all fond of him, he would be swallowed by the floor and never, ever have to come back up. He would have become one with the floor, and then someone might have put a plaque over him that read, 'Here lies Rodney McKay, he is much missed because no one will recalibrate our fucking life support now.'
"Oh."
"You know, it's all right, McKay. Everybody does it." Well of course everybody did it. Did he look stupid or something? This was some kind of bizarre high school conversation about dicks now, and Rodney really just couldn't face it. No. This wasn't going to work for him at all, not at all, and his thoughts were interrupted when Caldwell cleared his throat. "I could, ah, help you out with that."
"You could..." Rodney jerked his had up, and even though he could only make out some of Caldwell's face, he didn't seem to be laughing. "I know I haven't had sleep in a while. So could you repeat that? I, uh..."
"I was offering some assistance." There was no way, no, absolutely no way he had actually heard that quite right. Nobody wanted to talk to him at that moment, much less touch him, and that was just, that was just... "If you're interested."
"Interested? Do you have any idea how long it's been since the last time that I--" Oh, god, and there went his credibility as a ladies' man. "Uh, that I was propositioned by, uh, an officer in the Stargate command and I might as well not finish this sentence."
"No, I suspect not." It was obviously amusing to the man and, well, Rodney had to admit that it was enough to take his mind off of his current problem, unless he considered by which officer he really wanted to be propositioned. That was just... "A yes or no is sufficient, Doctor."
"Yes. Yes, I'm, I'm going to go crazy if I don't get some sleep soon if I'm not already there and you aren't a hallucination." In which case, if it was a hallucination, he could win. Rodney took a nervous step towards Caldwell. Steven. Steven Caldwell.
Oh dear God. He'd blown up a solar system and he was going to have sex with Colonel Caldwell.
"Well, I'm glad to know you feel that way." An arm snaked around him, and then he was pulled flush against the man's front, and his brains, whatever was left of them, were automatically scrambled because that was feeling... really weirdly uncomfortable and yet....
He was solid. He was definitely solid and clothed still, yes, but people didn't exactly walk naked through the hallways, and Rodney wondered if he should kiss him. Because he wasn't good at kissing, but he should probably...
It was always good to have the situation taken out of his hands. Who would ever have thought that Caldwell would kiss like that, slow and easy and sucking at Rodney's lower lip in a way that made shudders ripple down his body, made his hands shake.
Right there, the lower lip thing, was something he wanted again because it shot right down to his dick. He tilted his head back a little, trying to kiss him back but the lip thing was so good. And fuck, never mind that it was a one-night stand with the Captain of the Daedalus, he was tired and it felt good. He just needed to participate back, fingers pulling at the fastenings of the man's uniform. It was good, it was so good, one hand rubbing down against his ass, and then he could sleep, he could sleep and maybe forget, and that was worth a hell of a lot.
When Caldwell pulled away, he couldn't help the whine he gave, or the way he kind of humped against the thigh that was pushed against him there. "Don't..."
"I'm not going anywhere." Simple and easy as that, reassurance that he didn't even know he needed. It made him feel... Something. Better. Worse. Something.
"Good. Good." He licked his bottom lip, and it didn't feel half as interesting as what Caldwell had been doing. Rodney pulled at the jumpsuit's easy access zipper, and why did their uniform make for easy access and the Atlantis one was all Velcro and zippers and layers? Maybe it was some bizarre hope that if it took them longer to get undressed, it would make it less likely for them to have sex and breed lots of little Earth babies out of the Milky Way.
The hand on his ass slid around his hip and up to his waist, fingers lingering at the edge of his blue expedition shirt. "Allow me." The tug and pull brought it up, and the scratch of the jumpsuit against his stomach and diaphragm was strangely good in a way that made his breath hitch and his dick twitch. It was okay because he really hadn't needed to be dressed and why did getting the jumpsuit open give him a t-shirt to have to do away with and -- and oh, boxers, the kind where he could just slide a hand in. That was the kind of easy access they didn't want off-world teams to have, but Caldwell dressed to the right and that was a nice piece of weaponry he was sliding his hand around.
It had been much too long since he'd had this kind of opportunity, or even the hope for it. He'd always been loudly about blondes and quietly about dick, and Russia had been the best place to indulge in that, for all that it had sucked because, Russia, land of bad vodka and the loose bolts of Aeroflot, but now, now he was here, and he really should be getting tossed in the brig. He should be, but Caldwell was stripping his shirt up over his head, and there was a hand on the button of his uniform trousers and oh.
Yes. Yes. It was good that Caldwell was even mauling at his dick through the fabric of his uniform, because Rodney was ready to drop to his knees and suck him like a cheap whore if he could just get more than his hand around the man, more than just his hand on warm dick. Even if Rodney was moving his hand, feeling Caldwell up in the dark of his bedroom. "I'm completely incoherent but I want this. I've done it before, it's been a while, yes, but I completely want this, so none of this 'are you sure' girly pussyfooting."
"Don't worry, Doctor." Who really would have thought being called doctor when someone had his dick in hand would be such a great thing? Except of course he had, but it wasn't the kind of thing a man really liked to admit so much. "I wasn't planning on doing any pussyfooting."
And, whoa. Whole room, spinning, and he was on his back with his pants coming off, and who knew a guy Caldwell's age would move that fast? He was nearly old enough to be Rodney's father, and, huh. Who could have known that was going to be such a hot thought, either? Not that he was going to think of it, because fast hands in the dark pulling his uniform pants and underwear off were a great thought. Carefully temperature controlled air on his dick was a great thought. "Wow, where'd you learn that?"
"Here and there." He could almost hear the sharp smile in that voice, the don't ask, and I won't tell edge to it, and that was okay with Rodney, because what was he going to do, anyway? Even if he knew, it didn't matter, and he opened his mouth to say so, but then there was a mouth on his cock and suction and he was pretty sure he was babbling a lot of purely useless nonsense because he just couldn't help it.
He was getting his dick sucked by a pro. There was a little messy slurping that he could hear, but Atlantean walls were soundproof so no one else was going to hear it but him and Caldwell, and why would he be listening to himself sucking Rodney's dick with a slow twisting pressure of tongue against the underside of his cock head, right over the vein and his circumcision scar?
It was going to be a very close thing. Very close, because his breath was hitching and Caldwell was holding Rodney's hands down beside his hips, and the slurping sounds were accompanied by the desperate noises of his own coming orgasm. Even the absolute suck of the day was nearly wiped out of his mind, and, whoa. That was enough to let him stall, to draw him back from the edge, because he was sure that his hell of a day had been more than twenty-four hours long, even with gate activity shifting and warping space-time as they saw fit to want it.
Rodney couldn't move his hands to push Caldwell back or pull him closer, because they were pressed down hard against the mattress, and why hadn't he ever thought of doing that when he gave someone a blowjob? Because it made trying to move them more trouble than they were worth, and now that he'd shocked himself closer to coherency, he was going to be able to last a little longer, he was going to be able to feel the tip of a tongue pressing against his piss-slit, and oh, holy shit that was, that was, that was really incredibly good, and if he had known Caldwell could do that then he....
Elbows shifted, pushing his legs farther apart, and Rodney let him. He let him because it felt good and because there was no point in being difficult. The last time someone had touched him had been too long ago to think about clearly, and it was obvious that nobody was going to want to touch him again in a long time, and when Caldwell's mouth came off of him with a near audible pop, it was all he could do not to protest.
It was really very incredibly close.
"I want you to leave your hands where I have them. Can you do that for me, Doctor?"
"Yeah. Sure, yeah." He loosened his fingers from their fists, but it was just to knot them up again with the added security of the military issued bedding to keep them in place. "See, not moving my hands." Not getting up, not moving his hands, but he had to wonder what Caldwell was going to do. After all, the man had proven damned adept at pretty much everything so far, and really, it had been completely and totally unsuspected if McKay thought about it.
The hands that had been holding his down stroked over a hip, calloused and firm, one on either side, and then his legs were pushed further, knees bending up so that he was tilted a little, and his pants were being shoved under him. That was... incredibly uncomfortable, actually, creases and wads and juts of fabric, and he opened his mouth to say something about it, but then there was a mouth on his balls and oh. Oh, no way was he complaining about it just then because that was just...
It had been him and his right hand for a really long time, too long, and it was going to be that way for a while longer, given what he'd just done, but there was a mouth on his balls, and Rodney shifted to maybe get a little more of that because wet and warm there was almost as good as having Caldwell pretend to be a Hoover vacuum on his dick head.
Rodney was babbling, saying everything, anything, whatever came to mind, really, because God oh God oh God that felt so... So good, and there was a tongue, dirty and hot, slipping and sliding and IN and he was going to come all over the place before they ever got far at all.
Whatever he had done to deserve this, he hoped he had done it well. At least well enough to warrant that, hands resting on his hips and sliding under his ass but over the rough rub of his uniform pants which were a really shitty pillow to have sex on top. They were just covered in Velcro and buttons, and.
Tongue. Tongue, which was all twisting wet muscle and pieces of sensory tissue, was sliding back behind his balls and over his perineum, so that nudging he felt against them had to be Caldwell's nose. There were sounds down there, slick and murmured, sounds that would be exciting even if it wasn't him, and fingers, holy fuck, fingers beside tongue and the sounds he made couldn't possibly be human, weren't him, weren't possible, because nothing felt that good, nothing felt good enough to make those noises, and his cock was jerking, jerking, coming suddenly, unexpectedly, unable to stop himself from falling over that surprising edge.
Rodney hadn't wanted to yet, but that tongue, and fingers were still there, still moving in him, slick and making him ache, and he wasn't about to say no, or slow down, because just then the only thing he suspected he could have done was kick Caldwell in the ribs and that was no way to repay that kind of no hands on his cock orgasm.
"Oh fuck, oh fuck. Sir, you, oh fuck."
Eloquent. Really eloquent, and calling him sir in bed, well, that was just kinky. A good kind of kinky, maybe. And then slick. Slick finger, tongue sliding out of his ass, and Rodney wasn't sure how many fingers were in there, but he was so sensitive he wanted to roll over and just collapse, and he never, ever wanted it to stop. He was so tired, so far past the edge of exhausted, and he might just drowse off in the middle of fucking if that sharp edge of almost-discomfort went away.
"May I, Doctor?" Very good kinky.
"Uh-huh. There's lube..." He gestured, and then caught himself putting his hand down where Caldwell had left it, had asked him to put it, but what he wanted to do was roll over, spread his legs, and just see what happened, except Rodney wasn't sure he could roll over when there were, okay, two, maybe three fingers up his ass. Or two fingers and one of the pens that Caldwell carried in his pocket. "There's lube in the dresser." And no condoms, because hey, he wasn't fucking Captain Kirk, who didn't even wear condoms when he'd done whatever he'd done with Chaya.
Not that John would so much as look at him cross-eyed at the moment. That kind of despair should be reserved for moments when he was alone and not so tired, not so desperate for release and relief and sleep.
"It's all right." Funny, funny to hear that from Caldwell, apparently there was no need for Rodney's lube. No need at all, because Caldwell was wet, and it hadn't all been spit, and when the man shoved one knee up towards his shoulder and pushed, Rodney opened with a low, desperate sound.
It was all right. It was, oh, god, Caldwell had to carry lube with him to do that, to be that slick and just in Rodney with one good push forwards, leaving Rodney's ass spasming around Caldwell's dick. Rodney didn't even think he could handle knee to shoulder, bent and pressed open and open like that, but he was pinned and he was damn well going to move his hands. "Move, move, you have to, god, move."
Like it was an order, and oh, oh, oh, yes, military, yes, good with orders, oh, holy fucking hell, YES, and Rodney had thought he was too tired, too spent to get hard again, but he was. He was, and all he could do was sob, bring his hands up so that they fluttered, moved wildly against broad shoulders, tight arms.
"Like this, Dr. McKay?"
Gaaah. Just like that. Just like that, and oh, oh, fuck, oh, shit, oh, hell, it was, he was angled and it hurtfeltgoodfeltsoincredible. It didn't matter if he was hard or soft or what, because his dick was twitching and his ass was full and everything hurt and was tight and oh god, holding on because that was all that he could do, because Caldwell was thrusting hard at him, in him, all in control which was fine because Rodney wasn't. Rodney definitely wasn't the one with any control, wasn't the one who was on the ball here.
It was hard not to giggle -- he'd always had trouble with laughing inappropriately, usually when he was lying, but when the sex was so good that his brains turned into mush, he giggled then, too, and he didn't want Caldwell to pause. Stopping would be bad, so bad, and he was surprised to hear Caldwell laugh and shift him again, a sound of deep, almost dark amusement.
"If I had known sex with you would be this good, or this amusing, I'd have offered sooner."
"Uhn, you can offer again if you don't stop..." He was stretched out, laid out, fucked up, and Caldwell was still moving, his dick was leaking and half hard and soft and aching against his stomach. Every thrust into him made it feel like it was jumping, twitching, and that made him want to laugh more, made him want to jump into the land of sheer hysterical pleasure, and it was really so close to being too much, so close, his breath hitching and catching, and when the first giggle escaped so that he could hear it, his entire body caught, trembled on the edge. He'd never had that kind of experience because he was, he was going to come, he was going to come just from being fucked, Caldwell's cock nudging in so many good places that he wanted to yell.
"Come on... come on....."
He didn't need to be told, and he wasn't sure how Caldwell was doing it, what he'd done to his dick to do that, or what he'd done to Rodney or even what Rodney had done to Rodney, because first it had been the fingers and that mouth, but mostly the fingers and now it was that, it was Caldwell doing pushups into Rodney's ass, and he was never going to complain about the Military's PT inconveniencing him again when people asked him to turn technology on because no one else with the gene was available.
When it hit, it was a wash of electricity that sparkled up his spine and into his brain, and he arched, gasping in desperation. So good, entire body rocking on that cock, hot and hard and so fucking perfect and....
It was easy to slip out, once the spasming stopped. McKay was passed out underneath him, silly little hiccoughs that resembled chortles spilling loose every now and then. If he had realized how interesting it would be to fuck McKay, he might have tried it sooner.
For the moment, it was certainly on his agenda to do it again sometime. Caldwell smoothed a hand down McKay's leg, stretched it out straight instead of bent and loose. Lovely, and that had been fun. Better than anything on the base.
And who knew. Maybe tomorrow would look a little better for him. At least now he knew that someone in Atlantis didn't hate him for doing exactly what had been asked of him, in the long run. It had to make up for something, like the ass Sheppard would make of himself by breakfast. It was a shame, considering what he had in McKay.
He gathered his things -- a shoe tossed off here, jacket there, tucked his cock away. Well. What Sheppard didn't realize wasn't going to bother Caldwell. Not when he made regular trips to back to Atlantis.
It wasn't often that Rodney woke up naked on top of his sheets with a sticky, dried ass and semen on his stomach. On the bright side, it was just as seldom that people bothered to come into his rooms without permission, and even though his alarm was beepbeepbeeping at him, he could remember most of the evening that had led to a crusty, dried lube and semen ass and a crusty stomach.
Caldwell and his amazing wonderdick.
Rodney was pretty sure he'd never been laid like that, not in all his life, and even if he ached from head to toe for the rest of the day the way that he did right at the moment, it was completely worth every last moment of it.
He wasn't sure when he'd last slept the night away like that, face pressed to his pillow, no one interrupting him for anything more important than getting fucked. The reason for it was something that he shoved to the back of his mind, though; along with the heavy knot of... something... that rested where his diaphragm used to be.
Something. There was... something, but he wasn't sure he was going to get a grasp of that until he got out of bed and took a shower. Rodney supposed he could try taking a shower in bed, but it sounded like it would be more work than it was worth. Still, it took him a few moments of grogginess to hit the alarm off, and actually stand.
Why wouldn't Carson come and give him intravenous caffeine when he woke up? It would make life so much easier if he could just perk right up with a quick fix first thing in the morning.
As it was, the shower almost did it most mornings. As well-rested as he was, it would probably take his brains a good hour to kick back in, function again. Hot shower, coffee, one of the crazy berry muffins that tasted like hazelnuts, he'd wake right up. No problem.
The shower helped. The shower started to help, started to unwind him. The water was as hot as Rodney could get it, pelting down on him, cleaning his hair and letting fingers sneak back to play with his ass a little while he cleaned. His dick was apparently still exhausted, but everything seemed in normal working order, not that it was any surprise. Apparently, his body only woke up for wonderdick these days, and huh. That had, ah, really been something of an absolute shocker, hadn't it? He pointedly didn't think about the reason Caldwell might have come calling or what was on his mind or... Well, or anything else. He just didn't want to think about it, and so he didn't.
He got out and brushed his teeth, dripping onto the sink and the towel he'd dropped on the floor. Shaving wasn't much of a problem because, hey, the Daedalus brought sharp new disposable razors these days, the nice ones instead of the cheap ones that he had gotten in Russia, so he slathered his face in gel and hummed while he did it, only drying off once he'd washed his face free of whiskers and the remaining foamy bits.
It was something about the gleam of the mirror that ended up being the undoing of Rodney's denial. A sharp edge of light from the window to the bathroom mirror, like a spark, a flare, and he was there again. He was standing in the base that had survived 10,000 years on its own just before the core went from manually controllable to manually uncontrollable and oh god.
He had... He had... and then Caldwell had come to him and made it better, or at least made him forget, and forgetting was something that he wasn't sure he deserved. Suffering was more like it, some kind of atonement, but everyone else was fairly certain they'd be the ones forcing that on him, so why had Caldwell....?
Oh, who knew. Who knew anything about the military or their habits, the way that they did things? Maybe he had just seemed like an easy screw, and nobody was really gay so long as it wasn't their ass opening up for wonderdick, after all.
And he'd been easy. Exhausted and shaky and there'd been a mouth on his dick, and Rodney hadn't been about to say no to any of it. Which technically did make him an easy screw, but on the other hand, it wasn't going to end up all over the city that McKay was easy when he was tired and since he was always tired, he was probably always easy.
It wasn't a theory he'd had much opportunity to test. Wouldn't, since he'd destroyed five-sixths of a solar system and everyone he worked with was irrationally or maybe rationally angry with him. He couldn't tell because he'd never really been good at understanding his own fuck-ups, at least the human ones, and this was probably one of the biggest fuck-ups ever.
At least if they sent him back on the Daedalus, Caldwell might come visit him in the brig. That'd be something. Maybe not much, but probably better than the sickness welling in him as he dressed slowly, pulling on his shoes and girding his loins, metaphorically speaking.
The only comfort, as he walked down the hall towards the cafeteria, was the knowledge that if they'd been going to send him back on the Daedalus, they would have already told him and had him packed, because most of the city's contingency plans were in his head and they couldn't just make him leave like that because they needed him, and.
And it was a useless fear that he was nursing in himself. Doctor Weir wasn't going to get rid of him. Punish him, yes, probably, but get rid of? No.
On the other hand, maybe going back to Earth... Well, no, he'd be willing to take a lot of suffering to get to stay in Atlantis, actually. Misery and suffering and he really didn't want breakfast now because he could hear all of the voices, and those who hadn't heard Elizabeth yelling at him had certainly heard about it by now.
He could feel his chin notch upward, an automatic reflex from years of living with his parents and a deep, stubborn refusal to bow down to their intense dislike of him, and he took a deep breath. Might as well face the lot of them down and take whatever they dished out as best he could, although Rodney had to admit he'd never been really good at that.
Still, it wasn't as if any of them had ever blown up a solar system, part or most of it, or as if any of them would have had the capability to even know what the project was in the first place and what to do with it. It had been his fuckup, yes, but wholly his.
The cafeteria was really no louder than usual, and no one really seemed to be looking at him, which was both annoying and a relief. On the one hand, thank god. He didn't want them staring or eyeballing him or whispering about how he'd done what he'd done. On the other hand, they really ought to be eyeballing him and whispering about what he'd done, so what, exactly, was the problem?
"Good morning, Rodney."
Ah. There was the problem. Steely-eyed glint, that was precisely what was going on. Apparently, Sheppard was the only one allowed to humiliate him in public. Well, and Elizabeth, and keeping back the bitter sound of laughter was difficult. Sheppard was eyeing Rodney while he grabbed for the 'milk' carafe, and poured a glassful. There were muffins just past Sheppard, waiting for him. Calling to him. He wasn't going to let Sheppard get to him.
"Good morning. So, busy day planned, Colonel?"
"Oh, you know. Just the usual. Paperwork. Laundry. Save the world." Or just one guy who couldn't admit he was wrong and they were all going to die, yes, that was something he was taking personally. "I expect you've got plenty to take care of."
"Mmm. Yes. I heard that one of your men peed in the desalinization tank. Well, actually on it, you know how the control panel is laid out just so the -- well, let's just say I wouldn't drink the water until it's been taken care of." He leaned past Sheppard, closer to him, and snatched up a muffin before scooping some powdered eggs onto a plate.
Sheppard was just blinking at him. It was either the peeing or the thievery of the last muffin, but he felt moderately justified for some very sick reason.
"Good morning, Dr. McKay."
That was very different than the good morning he'd gotten from Sheppard, and when he looked up, Colonel Caldwell was on the other side of the table holding out a cup of coffee.
Wonderdick and coffee?
Rodney wasn't going to turn it down, even if the motion startled him. No, not startled so much as, well, it was nice that he was getting a little eye contact and acknowledgment. Apparently Caldwell wasn't one of those men who cornered people to beat them up and threaten them never to tell.
"Good morning, Colonel Caldwell. It is a good morning." He tossed in a little thanks when he took the cup, and settled into his chair. Rodney could still keep an eye on Sheppard from where he sat, though, see both of them, and that was... interesting.
"Colonel." The last time Rodney remembered seeing that look, it was directed at Hermiod and John had been hissing about naked aliens.
"Colonel," Caldwell greeted, a bland reply. "We'll be out of your hair shortly. Earth wants your report as soon as possible."
"I'm sure they do. It's a shame you won't have better news to give them." Just the news that Rodney had destroyed a solar system, and it was a damn good thing that the SGC hadn't ever bothered with any kind of prime directive shit that he recalled, because that was way past interfering. He started to pick apart the muffin, sweet crusted top first.
"Dr. McKay did his job, which was exactly what they expected of him, and of us, Colonel. It is a shame. It's always difficult to lose personnel, not to mention that much hard work." Hard work on Rodney's part, and the rest of the science department, and that didn't make him feel a hundred percent better, but it helped, just like the other had.
Referring to his own personal porn as the other really just didn't seem to cover things well enough. On the other hand, he could almost hear Sheppard's teeth grinding when Caldwell passed him the pepper.
That, huh. Carson was always nagging him about that, to avoid salt, and he usually really did, but the powdered eggs were blandish in the way that all reconstituted food was. "Mm, thanks. It's..." A shame to lose that life, one of his men, and it had been unpredictable and stupid, yes, and he was going to carry it with him. He wouldn't bury the data and never use it again because someone had died for him to have proof of what creating that kind of field in their own universe instead of a pocket universe could do. They both waited patiently for him to finish the sentence, but he was fumbling a little, uncertain, and the pepper shaker shook in his hand. "Um. It's a tragedy of... incredible magnitude, and..."
"It's all right, Doctor." Just the way he'd said it last night, a little less shaky, perhaps, a little less lustful, but Rodney was even more grateful for it, honestly.
"Huh."
Just that sound made Rodney flinch, but he saw the steady, hard look it gained Sheppard, and that was... that was something, anyway.
Not everyone hated him. Not everyone was holding it against him. If he could just gauge how Zelenka was acting towards him, he could come up with a plan on coping and writing up the fruit and lack of fruit of the Doranda Incident and move... not past it, perhaps. But on. Move on.
He just didn't know what to say to Caldwell. About it being all right, because while it wasn't, it might work out, which wasn't the same as being all right. It would have to do, though, and he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Well. They're expecting me aboard the Daedalus for preflight system checks. Colonel Sheppard, I'll expect your report within the next hour or two? Dr. McKay." He nodded, standing with his tray and walking towards the designated area for dirty dishes.
"Did I miss something?"
Sheppard wasn't supposed to ask, but maybe he didn't know what he was asking about, exactly.
Rodney just shrugged his shoulders and picked up his fork. "Not really."
"Oh. Well." Those green eyes were still watching him suspiciously, but at least it was a different look than the one he'd been getting last night. It was a look he could deal with. "I guess I'd better go and work on that report." He was still eyeballing Rodney, though.
Which was fine. Sheppard probably thought they were forming a mutual John disliking club, which they weren't. Not everything was about John.
"I suppose so, yes. Have a good day."
Sometimes it was just about being able to unwind and sleep; to leave guilt and humiliation and frustration behind, if only for a little while. John hadn't let him do that, hadn't been willing to give him that, and Rodney understood, kind of. Caldwell had, though, and that was something to appreciate.
John didn't trust him anymore. John might not ever trust him anymore, and there was no one to blame but himself, really. Despite all of that, despite what he'd done, there was at least one person willing to let him stop thinking, let him close his eyes and... rest. Just rest.
He'd had learned a long time ago to take what he could get when it came to interpersonal relations. Most of the time, it was enough. Occasionally, he forgot that he wasn't good at these things, and the kinds of disasters that he'd created with Sheppard and Doranda happened, and everything crashed down on top of his head.
Rodney sat back in his chair in the cafeteria, and took a sip of the coffee Caldwell had given him. It was nice not to have to deal with that alone, for once.
He hoped the Daedalus's next trip wouldn't take as long as usual.
