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sga_flashficTitle: Milkweed
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tzi & zaganthi
Pairing: John/Rodney
Warnings: This fic shook hands with raping and pillaging. And maybe even had sex with them. But that's all in the past. Really. We swear.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Earth was hard on Rodney.
Spoilers: Just consider that it's possible through 3x13. Follow-up to Thorn Apples
Length: 10,563 words.
Earth was hard on Rodney.
It hadn't been before, John was pretty sure. He bitched and moaned, but it was just a regular bitch and moan. Nothing like the jitters he got these days, pretty much anytime they encountered a population much larger than Atlantis's.
Apparently there was room in Rodney's head for the ability to cope with a population of around three hundred. That included all Athosians. The SGC itself made Rodney a little more jittery, but at least John had gotten him to admit that just because they were there on leave didn't mean that they might not let him go back through the gate because of some strange, strange he didn't know thing. Fear, John supposed, that they'd never let him go back, period, because of what he'd been through.
As if John was going to let that happen.
They'd been in Pegasus for four years before Rodney had been stolen. They'd been there a year since they got him back. A lot had happened in that time, and the SGC didn't have the balls to try and say no to the man who'd figured out how to re-charge ZPMs, or the lieutenant colonel who kept ending up in charge of Atlantis no matter what. Most of the Cheyenne complex had started calling the military commander position Dark Arts in some obscure fan-reference that John just didn't get.
But one of the rules was that they were supposed to spend X amount of weeks back on Earth, preferably in a large chunk, to keep them from going native. It rotated, and they tended not to allow the entire command structure to go at once, but he always went home with Rodney. Always had, and there was no reason for it not to coincide suddenly. Rodney always did better when John was with him because he knew John wouldn't leave him in the Milky Way.
Carefully, John rested one hand on the small of Rodney's back, thumb stroking slowly over the skin there. He was loose; all of the tension out of him, and that had taken a hell of a lot of work beforehand. He'd even agreed to the blindfold, and that was always hard on him. On the other hand, it was probably easier than being fully aware of where he was. It was easier to trust that John would look out for him.
Working out the kind of relationship that Rodney wanted and what he actually needed in relation to his wants had been hell. The rewards were great, but John had a feeling that it wasn't the best way to learn about the kind of relationship that they had. But what he was good at was not betraying Rodney's trust, soothing him down into a place where he let John make all the decisions.
Even the ones that hurt.
This was one of those, but it was something Rodney wanted, something he needed. It was better than Teyla's Athosian pigments, better than John scrawling sloppy letters along his spine with a Sharpie. It was John's own mark, the one that would transform the previous signs of ownership into something bearable, something Rodney could live with.
At least, that was the goal. He sort of preferred to take things in tiny steps. First, getting Rodney pliant and cooperative, neither of which were words that fit Rodney. Six months of intense 'training' -- torture -- in how to act, and only a few of them had really stuck with Rodney, strange things that didn't deal with his attitude or cripple his personality.
Thank God.
Mostly it was a need to bow to someone else, let somebody give the orders. The first time Rodney had knelt down on John's bed and offered up his ass, fingers clutching at the cheeks, holding himself open, John had almost come in his pants. He'd managed to hold off, but only long enough to drop down on the floor and put his mouth where his mind had gone, and that had been... memorable.
Memorable for the both of them, and possibly, possibly, Rodney's favorite thing ever. That knowledge was the sort of thing that stuck in John's head. The little tricks that made Rodney moan, the little tricks that made him much more compliant, and brought out the Rodney who was less likely to panic and cuss and fight the idea of getting a tattoo.
First there had been the argument about blood poisoning, and the 'do you know what goes ON in those places?' and the 'do you have any idea how much that hurts? Here, let me kick you in the balls a few times and we can roughly simulate the sensation'. And then there'd been mindless fear, if John was honest about it. Rodney, just dead scared, period, full stop, beginning and end. But with some fairly John-style ritualized attention, and having to re-convince himself that it was a good idea, well, he had Rodney in the passenger seat of the truck.
Blindfolded.
He'd done a lot of fast-talking to get the artist to arrange a very quiet space in a back room, had paid an outrageous amount of money to get that, and he'd had to lie like a rug on top of all of it. Well. The lies hadn't been so big -- he'd just claimed that Rodney had been kidnapped in a third world country, that he'd been forced to have the ink put on his skin, that he was more afraid of removal than he was of an alteration.
Despite all of his bitching, John knew Rodney wanted the modification. He wanted to see something on his back besides the mark of that son of a bitch who had managed to steal him out from under their noses.
John wasn't the only one with an embedded tracker anymore.
Beside him in the passenger seat, Rodney was quiet. Passive, except John knew he was keyed up, too, at the same time. He didn't talk when he was like that, didn't babble endlessly and complain creatively. He just curled closer to John, which was the reason for the bench seat, the reason John was driving a truck instead of something smaller, quieter, faster.
Carefully, John made the last turn, pulling into the little tucked-away parking lot and putting the truck in park, cutting the engine.
"We're here," he said, and felt Rodney shudder.
He didn't say anything, though. Just sat there, close against John, like he was straining not to make a run for it. "Okay." Okay, in a he understood way not in a he liked it way.
"I know you want this." Knew it, God, he knew. He knew it because Rodney hated the marks on his back, hated seeing it in a mirror, couldn't look at himself because that was on his back, somebody else's mark. "I want you to tell me, Rodney."
Tell me. Those words were part of John's mark; part of what made John the one in control. Rodney told him what he wanted, and John made sure he got it.
Rodney was still reluctant, and he took his damn time to answer John. "I, I want this. I want to be marked by you." And not the thorn-vines that crawled over his spine now. Those belonged to someone else, trails of green and blue and black that had hurt so much just the thought of having it changed left him shuddering.
"Kiss me." Kisses were grounding. The motherfucker who'd stolen Rodney hadn't done that, even though he'd done everything else under the sun. He wouldn't ever be doing it again, but it was a little late, all things considered.
Even if he'd stolen Rodney back within hours, it would have been too late to fix everything. John was pretty sure he still hadn't done that, hadn't come close, but Rodney was happy again. Rodney smiled and joked and felt less fake and controlled and locked in than he had before he'd finally talked to John. Rodney functioned and no one had threatened to pull him out of the program in a while.
Rodney leaned in to kiss him. He always kissed John softly, hotly, fingers curling in John's hair, touching his neck with a little awe as if he couldn't quite believe John was real.
As if they weren't real together, because they were something else altogether. Something precious. Something priceless.
"There," John whispered against his lips, stroking a thumb along the soft edge of Rodney's jaw, down his throat. "There. This is going to be easy, Rodney. Just you and me and the artist. He does a lot of work for SGC personnel. I've watched him, and he's going to be very, very careful with you. After this, the only mark you'll have on you will be mine. Okay?"
"Yeah." Still monosyllabic, but better than okay, full of more subtext than 'okay'. Rodney's lips parted a little, and he turned his head to try to catch John's hand against his lips. Even if the motion was a little too slow, it was hot, and if he didn't get Rodney out of the truck, something was going to happen, the kind of something that would get them arrested for indecent exposure.
Reluctantly, John shifted, letting go of Rodney to get out of the truck. "I'll open your door on the other side and guide you in." That way, Rodney wouldn't see where they were, wouldn't fret that someone going into the coffee shop in the basement of the building next door might recognize them, wouldn't get ratcheted into a nervous frenzy. At least, any worse than he already was.
John was sort of glad that Rodney liked the blindfold game. It wasn't something they did often, because it was pretty intense, and he'd never thought about using it in a situation that could overlap into going out in public, but it worked. Rodney trusted him not to let him hit anything, trusted him not to abandon him. By the time John was out the truck door, and around to the other side, Rodney had fallen into a position, back straight, palms down on the tops of his thighs. Easy, simple, as if all he had to do in the world was wait for John, when nothing could be further from the truth.
He opened the passenger side door and reached for Rodney. There was no flinch, no motion to say that he had been upset by someone touching him. Rodney wasn't, didn't, when he was as deep as John had placed him. Instead, he was perfectly placid in a way that went against everything Rodney was. Frankly, it was scary as hell in private, and it put John's teeth so far on edge in public that this would be the one and only time they went out with Rodney in that state.
When they got back to the hotel, the first thing he'd do would be to work Rodney out of it in all the best ways. A hot bath, coffee, dinner, maybe a movie in bed, and a lot of touching and bringing Rodney around, the opposite of the pointed concerted control he'd had to enforce over Rodney to get him down in the first place.
At least he could walk, even if he curled his fingers around John's hand a little too tightly while John locked up the truck.
"Be careful. The blacktop's a little rough." There were holes, but he had Rodney's hand and his other elbow, and he could guide him. Ten, twelve, twenty steps, and then he paused, pulled open the back door to the place, and they stepped carefully inside.
With the door shut, the sounds of Colorado Springs were held back, the quiet thread of piano music echoing vaguely from somewhere further back. That was good. God knew John had paid through the nose to have the place to themselves, had asked around until he'd found something he thought Rodney would like, something that would keep him calm while it played.
Piano music. It had been one of the first things Rodney had dumped to DVD from his computer when he backed it up, so the getting and remaking it to a CD hadn't been so hard. Worth it, because Rodney shuffled forwards at John's prompting, still calm. John could feel his easy, only somewhat faster breathing.
"It's okay," John promised him, one hand stroking Rodney's upper arm slowly. "I'm watching out for you." And he was, he did, he always would. That was part of what they were, among so many other things, and it was good. It was very good.
Rodney exhaled, a bare whine of air, and he shifted closer to John, but John kept walking him forwards. They'd be okay. They'd be okay.
"Hey, good. I was wondering if you guys were going to show or not." Will Ellason leaned out of the side workroom, where he'd shown John he kept the autoclave, and smiled at them with only a little wariness.
"Traffic," John said simply, feeling Rodney stiffen just a little beside him. He wasn't coming out of himself, out of the place John had put him, but other people made him nervous. "You have the design ready?"
"Yeah. All worked up. Do, uh. Usually I have the person receiving it sign off on it, and there's a little paperwork..." The man was staring at Rodney, and it wasn't in a rude way, but curious. Curious and unsure of what to do with his own rules.
"Would a verbal confirmation be enough for now?" No way would Rodney be able to handle the removal of the blindfold, the shaky scrawl of his own name. John knew that the way he knew everything about Rodney, and he wasn't willing to chance it. "I can step out of the room..." If he told Rodney he would be back, it would pull him up a little, but not badly. Maybe. "I'd like you to explain the process, too."
"Sure. Sure. Blindfold on, huh? I'll take an oral agreement, if you'll just... you can go on ahead and take a look at the room." And Will pointed him towards the door, still eyeing Rodney.
John put his hand on Rodney's back again, gently. "Rodney? I'm gonna step in here and look everything over. I'm gonna make sure it's all okay. You need to stay here and talk to Will. I'll be fifteen feet away. If you need me, you call me."
There was a pause, and he could almost see Rodney processing the words out of the air itself, and then he nodded. "Yes, John." As if he was reaffirming to himself who was talking to him, but whatever helped. Whatever they had to do to get things going, to make Rodney comfortable in his skin again, and so John moved into the room with a purpose.
Everything was laid out the way John had asked -- the bench was draped with a sheet, and it was pressed against the wall so that John would be able to sit at one end, Rodney's arms wrapped around him. The tools were laid out, the ink in place, and the design they'd agreed on earlier was neatly drawn beside them.
It would work. It wasn't the most beautiful, well thought out thing, but that vine on Rodney's back was going to look a hell of a lot better sprouting wings than it did with those vicious thorns. He'd had the guy do the design from a photograph of Rodney's back, and he'd even managed to come up with a way to fix that knot of thorns at the small of Rodney's back that pointed to his asscrack like an arrow.
"... need your confirmation that you're agreeing to this of your own free will."
"I, I am. I want this fixed."
"Okay. I'm the guy to do that. Would you like to see the design before it's finished, or...?" Okay, so the guy was probably a little weirded out about it, but that's why John was paying out his nose.
"No. John decided on it, and that's... what I want." And Rodney didn't want to take off the blindfold, but it all amounted to the same thing. "I trust him."
"Okay." It was obvious that the whole thing was a little weird to Will, but he was going to let it go. That was good. John wasn't sure how he'd manage to deal with Rodney if he went from giving in to freaking out.
Making a little noise, he strolled back into the room. "Hey, buddy. You ready to go?"
Rodney jerked a little in the direction of John's voice, and his body went tense. "Yeah."
And Will looked from him, to John, and then back to Rodney, and like any guy who was getting paid too much money, kept his mouth pretty shut. He'd done work for guys in the SGC before, so he'd probably run across some weird guys wanting equally weird stuff inked onto their bodies. Weirder than normal. Tributes to lost comrades, friends, and occasionally, whole ships.
Carefully, John stepped forward and put his hand on Rodney's elbow. "C'mon, then. We'll go have a seat, and let Will here take care of business. It's gonna be okay, Rodney." Okay, because Will was going to fix it, and maybe then Rodney would be able to handle it a little better.
Maybe.
Even if he was probably going to be messed up at least a little, for the rest of his life, it would... help. The marks really meant something to him, and for them to mean that he wasn't owned by someone he hated was pretty important.
"Okay."
"Great. If you could just go in there and uncover the area..."
That was easy enough. John had Rodney's elbow, and led him gently into the room next door. "Okay. I’m gonna help you off with your clothes, Rodney. That all right with you?" His shirt first. His pants would have to be lowered, and John knew he wasn't wearing any underwear.
He'd helped Rodney dress after their session. Everything came off easy, had gone on easy, because the less complicated motion Rodney had to be involved in, the better. "Yeah." It was easy to get Rodney into the next room, because he tagged along with John like a puppy dog, like panting along at John's heels was what he was meant to do. It was a lie, at best, but it was how they handled things, how they made things work, and they could both live with that.
Carefully, long fingers caught in the hem of Rodney's t-shirt, first the short-sleeved one, pulling it up over his head, and then the long-sleeved one. Rodney was all about layers, and that wasn't anything new, not really. It made him comfortable, and that was important for the moment. For the long-term. If Rodney wanted to wear two shirts and run circles around Radek and Sam Carter and maybe sometimes his own sister, then that was fine. But moments like that, where Rodney was sublimated, pushed down and mellow like that, where Rodney really let go, it struck John as self-protective of Rodney. Strangely vulnerable.
He hadn't been that way before, not often, not visibly. Not ever. John had seen it maybe twice, maybe three times. The video he'd sent back to Jeannie in that first data burst to Earth, the look on his face when he'd blown up most of a solar system. When he'd thought they might replace him with Rod.
When Jeannie might have replaced him with Rod.
"It's okay," John promised him quietly, reaching up to stroke Rodney's face. "I swear, Rodney. It's gonna be all right."
"I know." Rodney pressed his cheek against John's palm, and his free arm curled out to linger unsteadily against John's side, beneath his ribs and a couple of inches above his belt. Belt, right. He'd just shimmy Rodney's pants down and settle onto the chair-thing with him. Nice. Easy.
He worked open the button and then lowered Rodney's zipper. He could feel the response against his hand, and there was no way to keep himself from smiling, at least a little. "C'mon, buddy. I've got you." Got the pants down low enough, and he shifted Rodney, helped him get closer to the bench. Chair. Thing. God only knew what they called it, and it wasn't like it mattered. "Here you go. Lie down. Just.. yeah. Just like that."
Lie down, and he wouldn't let go of John, which was exactly what John expected. Will shot him an almost sympathetic look, just briefly, before he went back to doing whatever he was doing with that medical tray of equipment, the second tray of inks.
John jostled into position, helping Rodney down, straddling the head of the bench, legs dangling on either side. They'd probably go numb before too much time passed, but he'd live with it. Rodney would need him too much for him to get up.
It was going to hurt like hell, after all. John hadn't lied or tried to play that down for Rodney, when Rodney knew what it felt like. But it should be a lot less crudely done, and it would end up cleaner in the long run. No more thorns sticking into Rodney's flesh in his own mind. Just wings, beautiful wings. Rodney seemed to have given up protesting for the moment, and laid his head on John's stomach, arms sliding around his waist.
"Are you comfortable?"
"We're fine," John answered, stroking Rodney's hair. "We're gonna be just fine. And when it's over, it's gonna be beautiful." He was speaking more to Rodney than to Will, and he saw, felt, heard Rodney draw in a deep breath, let it out in a steady sigh. If he'd been naked, it would have tickled against his stomach, but as it was he could feel the puff, the vague heat of it, Rodney open-mouthed against his t-shirt.
"It will be. Everything's cleaned and ready to go. If you need to take a break, just let me know. I'll probably need to take a break at some point, so everything turns out just right."
"No problem." None, because Rodney was taking steady, deep breaths, shivering just a little against John even as he seemed to tense in preparation. "Rodney's gonna relax, and you're gonna make this look better."
"The old one looks like a nasty piece of work." Will shifted, pulled a stool on wheels up to the chair, and his table on wheels that reminded John every bit of a dentist's office, now. Except he'd never had Rodney breathing against him at the dentist. Never had Rodney touching him like this at the dentist.
Reaching out, John stroked his shoulders slowly. "It's a long story," he said simply. Easy, as if it wasn't a six month long story that had landed them in some fresh hell that jumped up to bite them periodically, except that it did. Every once in a while, it did rise up and John was never sure what triggered it all.
Hell, for all John knew, it could've been something in his sessions with Heightmeyer. It was always subtle, too. Rodney got a little more snappish about their imminent deaths, and a lot more pushy in bed, like he was trying to test John's limits and get him to do something hurtful. All of his worst habits seemed to grow by leaps and bounds in contrast to the more formal way he carried himself, the positions he sat in. Usually, John ended up calling Rodney on his shit, and it.... Well, it worked out. It worked out because John made sure it did. There were -- things. Things lay between them, careful and precious, and they didn't say it or talk about it, but in the end, those things made Rodney come around, made John coax him into calming down, into centering himself again.
He loved those frenzied moments, touching and petting and Rodney whining against his throat, desperate in a way he wasn't always when they were in bed. John wasn't sure how it worked, but it did. Neither of them had to lay things out hard-core, and neither of them had to really talk about it, but it was there. The sun rose and set, and John called Rodney on his shit and Rodney eventually turned to John when he needed help.
Hugged tight to him when he was getting his back worked on.
Will started with some kind of pen, drawing out the pattern before he ever went to needles and ink. Even that was enough to make Rodney tense, but the look of it was something pretty special, John thought. Every stroke seemed to tease something loose, some image that might not have been originally intended. The lay of Rodney's back was different from paper, but Will was an artist.
An artist who knew what he was doing. Rodney shifted not at all, one of those half-stiff positions that John knew he fell into when he didn't know what else to do and sometimes even when he did. One day, John figured he'd work out how Rodney seemed to have a position for everything, and how he kept them straight in his head.
For the time being, there were other things to worry about. Other things to think about, like the way Rodney rubbed his thumb repeatedly, desperately, against the slice of skin just above John's waistband. The stiffness was there, the strangeness of Rodney's held position, but that combined with the steady, worrisome rub of that digit would be enough, John thought, enough to keep Rodney together even when Will began.
He just wished he knew what Rodney was thinking.
But since no Ancient device they'd found yet had turned out to be a mind-reading device, he just wasn't going to get to find out, unless Rodney told him later. Unless he asked. John knew he should only ask when he wanted the answer, and he didn't need to know why Rodney was doing that thing with his thumb. Didn't need to ask to understand that whatever it was, it offered Rodney comfort. Offered something that made him feel better.
Offered something that made this easier.
Will worked for a long time. There was starting and stopping, the sound of Rodney's hitching breaths, slow, steady, shuddering. It lasted forever, or maybe it didn't last very long at all, or maybe just a few hours. John couldn't tell, and he was pretty sure Rodney wouldn't have any idea when it was over, either.
His not-knowing was for the best. He'd stop on the way back to the hotel, get Rodney fast food at a drive-through instead of all the things he'd considered before. Something warm, protein rich and bread-filled. Get him fed when they got to the hotel, work him back into himself and take care of his back. It wasn't something that John had thought he'd enjoy as much as he did. Making sure Rodney was okay, that he was doing well, it wasn't the chore Rodney sometimes suggested that it was. It made John feel useful; made him feel good because he stabilized Rodney in a way that Rodney needed. It stabilized John, too. The six months John had been without Rodney, searching for him, he'd gone off-kilter, off-center. It had taken a long time to find his center again, and it had been a surprise to realize that it was Rodney. That Rodney was what helped him stay balanced, kept him from going off the wrong edge entirely the way he had more than once.
So, okay, there was still the occasional suicidal plan, but at least they were all involved. The more people, the less a chance they all had of dying. Particularly if Rodney was involved, because he was still the master of pulling a save out of god knew where because his ass had to be out of them by then.
"Hnnn." Rodney shifted a little when Will leaned back, cracking his knuckles, face pressed harder against John's stomach.
"Okay. There's a little more work to do, maybe some touch-up that's needed," Will said. "But the basic design's laid down, and there's not much more I can do this trip."
That filled John with all sorts of questions, like when he could get the rest done, and it had to be before they went back, but he and Rodney were back on a pretty long leave. Apparently they were the most at risk of going native, or something, spending all of that time off world, working with aliens. Not that anyone accused SG-1 or the Daedalus of being close to going native, what with their constantly working with aliens.
It was probably that whole separate galaxy thing that scared them.
Instead of asking questions, he leaned a little, looking down along Rodney's back. It was...
It was amazing.
Each thorn had been lightly touched up to create tiny feathers, thickening slowly as they went down his spine until they arched out in wide wings that covered the thatched knot of an arrow that had so crassly pointed at Rodney's ass. They were black, and blue, and almost iridescent, and John couldn't see anything that needed touching up at all.
Will smiled, rolled some of the stiffness out of his shoulders. "It doesn't look anything like it did when you came in. Now, it'll take a month or so to heal up. For a few days it's probably going to be sore and itchy, and the skin gets pretty dry. Since it is such a large area, and I don't usually do something this big in one shot, you should clean it gently a couple of times a day, and put on a thin layer of baccitracin over top of it, for about a week. Then switch to a plain moisturizer. Keep it clean, moist, and no sunlight." His eyes dropped to Rodney's back, and he added with a little bit of a grin, "Not that I think that needs to be said. Hey, you okay down there?"
"Uh-huh, drifty fine."
Drifty fine and still blindfolded, and since John wanted to keep him the former, he was going to continue with the latter. "Thanks. Do we owe you anything else?" Just to be sure. He'd pay for the touchup and the arrangements when the time came. Maybe on the next jaunt to Earth. As it was, everything was so perfectly changed that John didn't know if Rodney would care, so long as the previous tattoo was covered.
"No, you settled up up-front." Will nodded, and gestured to the front door. "I'll be out there while you guys get yourselves together."
"Thanks." Easy to say again, his fingers curling gently at the nape of Rodney's neck, careful to avoid the ink that was the furthest up the way. "Hey, buddy. It's a good thing you're doing all right. I was thinking. It's kind of dark out, and putting on your shirts might not be such a good idea, considering. What say I help you out to the truck and I keep the shirts?"
"Hnn..." Rodney exhaled in a soft whine. "I..." He didn't like the idea, but if John pushed a little, he'd do it.
"I promise it's dark enough that nobody will notice. It's probably better for the ink, too. We won't even stop anywhere." John could get something delivered. Pizza, Chinese. Something.
"Okay. We're going ho... to the, hotel?" Rodney lifted his head a little, fingers shifting against John's skin.
"Mhm." Rodney felt good, felt limp and sated the way he usually only got when John was fucking him. "Yeah. We're gonna go to the hotel, unless you've got some kind of crazy craving, or....?"
"No." He shifted his shoulders, squirmed up against John's stomach. He'd have to lever Rodney up, and it'd be a miracle if he managed to get him to the truck. The way he was moving implied that cooked spaghetti might be made of stiffer stuff.
"I'm gonna slide out from under you, Rodney. Help you get up."
"Mkay." He had to shift, squirm out from under Rodney and Rodney was slow to let go, reluctant and muzzy. His hands clung, stuck to John's skin until John was standing up.
The view from where he was, looking down at Rodney's back for a moment, was beautiful; all colored ink and feathers and skin gone red from the irritation of the work itself. It was a thousand times better than the vines had been, and it left John just a little breathless. It marked Rodney -- made him John's, made him perfect in a way that John hadn't really expected.
It was something Rodney would marvel at, when he woke up, shook himself back up to the top of his consciousness. John would definitely have to take him into the hotel bathroom so he could look at it.
Rodney seemed to guess he was looking down at him, because he shifted, moved his back, lifted his hips a little, falling into some position. Something someone else had taught him, but John was the one who reaped the fruits, the one Rodney gave everything to with all of his being.
"Beautiful." Beautiful because it was, and because Rodney needed to hear it, to know. Rodney wasn't conventional. Rodney wasn't Ancient or a traffic-stopping beauty or sweet-natured.
Rodney was just everything.
He was hot, and he was intense, and the muscles on his back shifted minutely when Rodney stretched his hands out in front of him. He was beautiful holistically, body, mind, and heart all together, because he did give everything to John. Trusted him, once he stopped being afraid of rejection.
"Yours."
"Yeah." His, all his, every last square inch. "When we get back, what would you like?" He enjoyed hearing it. He wanted to know what Rodney wanted, loved to hear Rodney tell him what to do to him. Rodney always made it sound good.
"Dunno?" Rodney lifted his head a little, pressing his cheek against the arm of the chair. "I want... I want..."
"You can have it," John promised, and began trying to help Rodney up from where he'd lain for so long. "Come on, McKay. Up and at 'em. We can leave your pants slung down there, too." It wasn't like Rodney looked bad. He was, however, desperately, weirdly twitchy about being seen even partially naked.
Cadman assured them that it was nothing new.
Still, it made John wonder if she was right or not. Because he could be so comfortable naked with John and not at all around anyone else, sensual like he knew what he was doing and just how to drive John wild.
"Sore." Rodney's hands stayed on John once he got him up and standing, fingers loose. Yeah, getting him back to the hotel would be a subdued thing. It would be easy, be slow, and the chances were high that Rodney would try to blow him on the way back to the hotel.
The chances were even higher that John wouldn't object all that much.
"Yeah, and tomorrow'll be a bitch, but you're gonna love this once you get to see it," John promised him. It really was beautiful. Rodney probably wouldn't ever want to get it touched up, either. Probably.
He'd wait and see if Rodney ever brought it up again, about getting extra work done at the site. He'd probably be preoccupied enough when it started to heal, bitching and complaining that it itched or scabbed, but caring for it was something John was looking forwards to. Caring for Rodney, and his mark on Rodney, where the asshole aristocrat who'd had Rodney hadn't.
It was easy to pull Rodney close, to pick up his shirt absently and herd him out the door. Taking him home was easy. Taking care of him... that was the hard part, but John thought it was probably the best part of all, and he was going to make sure that he did a good job of it.
Rodney couldn't remember the last time the world had been this fuzzy at the edges, all good feeling and light-headedness in a way that rippled out from the ache down his spine unreasonably. It shouldn't feel that way, shouldn't feel good. He ought to feel like hell, shaky and worried and afraid.
He didn't. He really didn't, and that had been the strangest thing.
He felt supported, he felt safe and home, because home was a feeling of comfort along with the large shiny city that loved and tried to kill them all on a regular basis. Home was an abusive relationship with a semi-sentient city in a less than sentient galaxy, and it was John beside him in bed, breath smelling like pancakes and syrup, hair mashed against the pillow, mouth lax and unconscious.
His back hurt, but even that was good. His ass ached, and that was better.
Mmm, and John didn't look like he was waking up any time soon. He really didn't, and maybe Rodney had worn him out, maybe he wore him out a lot, because he was sort of demanding. He knew that, and he couldn't help it, and John always just dealt with it so that it was okay. John was... he was good to Rodney, and Rodney wasn't stupid. He realized it. He realized that things between them had changed, and then changed again, and then changed again, and that it was for his benefit these days.
They managed pretty well, Rodney knew. John had pushed and talked him into it, and he'd needed to be pushed into it, but the tattoo, that was something he wanted. He wanted it fixed, and that had been all the permission John had needed to drag him the rest of the way.
He still needed to see it, sore back and ass or not, whether he wanted to wallow forever in bed while John finally slept or not.
Carefully, he rolled to the edge of the bed and slipped out of it. His lower back caught for a moment, and he hissed slightly. It didn't wake John, and he managed to stand the rest of the way, stretching so that his back cracked, the skin stretching and pulling in a way that made him gasp. Okay. So. Ow. That was very unpleasant, and his head ached despite the fact that he was pretty much as high as a kite on his own blood chemistry.
He'd been there before. He'd felt that kind of pain before, more than once, so stretching after a decent nap wasn't something that Rodney was going to let throw him for a loop. Heightmeyer recommended against doing a thousand things that she thought could 'trigger' him, and getting a fresh tattoo was probably the top of that long list that she was always willing to offer him.
Mostly, Rodney ignored what she had to say. Sometimes, it was good to have a willing ear just to talk, even if she was getting paid to listen. Most of her advice was pretty shitty, though, so he ignored it.
Quietly, he moved to the dresser across from the bed and picked up the hand-held mirror John had bought sometime between yesterday morning and them getting back to the hotel. Rodney had no idea when, and it wasn't like it mattered. What mattered was the overwhelming need to see his own back, with or without John there to hold his hand.
It bothered a few of the others, Rodney supposed. Not Teyla, or Ronon, or Radek, because they knew he hadn't been subsumed by John. He was still him, he was still Rodney M. McKay, with more degrees than a couple of the marines who'd been put out of rotation had fingers, and he would still tell an idiot where to shove their opinion.
It was all Rodney McKay who wanted to see the tattoo, too, so he positioned himself with his back to the large dresser mirror, and held the hand mirror up.
The light was bad, a vague wash of illumination coming from the half-open bathroom door that made it possible to see the vaguest outlines against his back. It made ignoring the redness surrounding the changes easier, made seeing the details more difficult, but...
Oh. But.
What he could see was different and amazing. What he could see was his back, reclaimed, recreated. No more knotted vines, but twisting patterns that sprouted wings, feathers and air, a whole different look over top of marks that he'd hated. It wasn't even recognizable now, and better than budding flowers and anything else they tried to cover the mark with.
Better than Teyla's Athosian pigment experiments. Better than John's clumsy thumb-bruises, painted in shades of yellow and pale blue and fading green and brown. Better than anything, ever.
John's voice spoke from the shadowed head of the bed, gravelly with sleep. "'s beautiful. He did a good job."
"You did a good job." He didn't stop looking at it right away. When the redness went down, when his skin healed, he'd be able to appreciate it. As it was, the doctors at the SGC would look at him funny when he went in for his medical exam before they went back, and he expected there was going to be some chiding.
He didn't care.
"You know I can't draw for shit, Rodney." No. He couldn't, occupying Rodney with stick figures passed back and forth on tablets during meetings. The year Teyla had borne Magnai, he'd carefully drawn a Teyla-figure, sticks in hand, with a round belly outlined in her center containing a baby stick figure.
Ronon still had a printed copy pinned where the baby could see it.
The fact that he couldn't draw meant less than nothing, though. He'd been the one to design, to see what needed to be there.
"So? I can't, either, but I can still engineer machinery." Rodney waved one hand a little, his free hand, staring at the picture for a moment longer. It was Perfect, simply and purely. "I, this, it's right."
It was right, John's mark on him, John's mark replacing the one he'd hated. John's mark letting him be himself, letting him be Rodney, letting him be everything real and right.
He turned slightly, laid the mirror on the dresser. It hurt, but it was such a relief. It was like being able to breathe again, and when John beckoned him from the dark, he moved forwards.
He wanted to, really wanted to, just like he had when he'd reached over in the truck and had started to paw John's dick through his jeans. He felt more like himself than he had then, even if that was part of him, too. Everything felt more like the him that had been before, like Rodney was in control now, in control because John let him be. It was a relief, a release, and he let out a shaky breath, sliding into the bed from the foot and up into John's arms.
"I'm glad."
Sheppard had fantastic arms. Muscles that could take the recoil of almost any gun he laid his hands on, biceps that were enough to make Rodney feel inferior except they were really hot, and John squirmed like a girl if Rodney kissed over the muscles, traced veins with his tongue. "This is how I prefer to be marked."
Rodney could feel the shake that worked through one of those arms even as John let him do what he wanted, let him shift John onto his back so that Rodney could find the spots he liked best. "Good." The statement was just a little breathy, still marked by that newly-awakened sound in John's voice. God, Rodney loved that, could never resist the urge to do something about it.
He always wanted to pin John to the bed -- or the sleeping bag, or the wall, whatever was handy -- when he sounded like that, groggy and fake-alert, rough-voiced. Rodney applied suction, then bit gently against the vague outline of a vein on John's arm. "Yeah. More good than...." Than anything else, than being reluctantly marked by someone else. God, so good.
John stretched underneath him, slow and steady, erotic in a way that broke Rodney where pure sexuality didn't. "That's it. Just do what you want, McKay." What he wanted.
Anything he wanted.
He wanted to mark John, kiss him all over, taste him. He'd never be able to mark John the way he was, and it wasn't his place -- hah, and John would stare at him if he ever said that thought aloud -- to really seize the day and swear he could protect John, because if he was the self-defense sort, he wouldn't have spent six months on his stomach as a cum-dump for a complete sexual freak.
That was a thought he needed to shove aside, a thought he needed to push back when he pressed his face against John's abdomen and sighed. The motion of muscles going lax was just erotic. "So many possibilities."
Dozens of things he wanted to do, loved to do, but he couldn't seem to make up his mind. He heard John's steady breathing above him, edging on sleep again, but still wakeful, still paying attention, and then he yawned. "Hm. You're warm." Warm, and touching John, sliding a hand between his thighs. Maybe he'd mark him there, bite just a little, just enough to leave his own mark because he could. John wouldn't mind.
It was transient. Transient and transitory and his head was full of social science words for things that didn't matter in reality, which Rodney supposed was why they were all so long and had fifty viable definitions per word. He shifted, pressing kisses against John's stomach. John tasted warm, a little like the waistband of his pants had clung tight to skin.
Fingers slipped against his neck, cupping slowly, warmly, and John massaged just a little. "Hm. I don't know what's hotter. You down there doing nothing, or you down there doing something."
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Rodney sighed, pressed his cheek against John's stomach and the dampness he'd left there. It really felt good not to have to do anything, and his back ached and he just felt sated, lazy. He could take his time and make the decisions, because John's hand on his neck felt wonderful. "Mmm, there's just so much choice. It's like standing in that huge candy store downtown."
"The one with the really good candied cherries," John agreed, and of course he'd think about those. He'd fed them to Rodney, liquored up versions that had left them laughing two nights ago.
They definitely had to take some of those back to Atlantis with them.
"It was just an example of the sheer magnitude of the problem I'm facing." He could have spited John and gotten up to find that bag of cherries, he supposed. Except, warm inviting skin, and god, John shifted one thigh and that got Rodney squirming down again. He loved John's legs. They were surprisingly muscular, considering how skinny John was, and when they shifted so that one rested over his shoulder, Rodney couldn't resist nuzzling against the spot where thigh met groin. The skin was soft and warm, the smell a little musky with sleep.
"Hm. You looking for suggestions, Rodney?"
"I might be open to suggestions," Rodney murmured against John's skin, just before he kissed the inside of John's thigh, feeling muscles go tight. That was accompanied with a low, throaty moan that made Rodney hum.
John's fingers tightened. "I wouldn't mind if you wanted to suck me. Or, you know. Pretty much anything else."
"There's not much you mind." He repeated the gesture, sliding his lips over John's skin before he bit, gently. The sound he raised from that one easy nip gave him goose bumps.
"Hey. I only mind if it's not you."
There wasn't anyone not-Rodney anymore. Not even the intimation of it. No more flirting with alien priestesses, John was all polite smiles now, really honestly clueless. He kept his Kirk in his pants, which went a long way to making Rodney feel less like a fool. He wasn't a fool, but it always helped not to feel like one.
He turned his head, nipped at the inside of John's other thigh, feeling the muscles quiver. God, that was good, and he couldn't help lapping over that bite carefully, ignoring the squirm that John gave.
"Oh, God, yeah." That rippling shudder could only be considered a good thing in Rodney's book, especially in combination with the way John's hand curved around the back of his head, fingers sliding through short, fine strands of hair, ruffling them.
He liked pleasing John. It wasn't about domination, about who won out, about how John could use Rodney best. It was about enjoyment. It was about those shudders and the delight he got out of being marked as John's. "What do you want?"
"Whatever makes you happy," John said, but he'd already asked Rodney to suck him. He was right there, after all, and being that close certainly had its advantages. He could just shift, move, lap out his tongue, and....
The deep groan that worked its way out of John made Rodney smile even as he moved his way up the long, lean length of John's body, pausing to lick, tasting random samples of John's skin along the way.
"Probably not the best answer you could have given," Rodney hummed. He let John's dick bump against his collarbone, let it press and make itself aware but no touch of mouth, no. That was saved for his navel, for the trail of hair leading up to his chest, and Rodney fairly hummed over it. John tasted good, and he wanted... Well. He wanted everything, and he felt like he could get it, could ask for it, could have whatever he wanted just that easily.
The fact that the thorns on his back had become feathers, wings, probably had a lot to do with that. It was strange, maybe, but true; so true, and he bit again, a sharp motion of teeth that made John groan.
It was 800% all in Rodney's head, and he didn't care.
John tasted like heaven, hot and alive and groaning beneath him, and Rodney could only taste, bite and suck and lick, working his way back up John. "I think I want to fuck you."
The stillness those words brought on was surprising, still and stiff, and then John melted into the mattress beneath him, knees parting even further around Rodney. "Jesus, fuck, yes."
"Scared me for a minute there." Rodney huffed that against John's neck. It was easy to drop his hips to press them hard against John's. Sex... Sex took lube, a lot of it, because that was personally how Rodney liked it best, but it also meant getting out of bed when his back twinged.
"Yeah, well. Never exactly thought you'd ask for that." Want it, or anything, Rodney figured, and he could see why John would think that. He'd never asked for it, never gave any implication of wanting it, so maybe it was just that. Just a surprise, and there were firm hands on his back, stroking up his spine. "I'm good with it. You have no idea..."
"Some idea." John's fingers pressed over skin that was sore, ached, slick with antibiotic ointment. It felt like heaven, made his dick twitch against John. "I have some idea how much you want it. And I have to get the lube."
There was a heady push upward, John's cock rubbing against his, head slick as it grazed Rodney's belly. "Yeah, the problem with you getting up is that we have to stop touching. That part kind of sucks."
"It does." He liked John touching him, liked the way his hands roamed freely, didn't have to stop and ask if it was okay, all right, is this good, that good, but he didn't claim, either, not unless Rodney gave signals, and it was all... It was all perfect. Balanced. "Where's the lube? Bathroom?"
"I packed it in with the toiletries, so probably. I only grabbed out the toothbrushes and the Crest when we got in." John shifted, leaned up, captured Rodney's mouth in a kiss that nearly seared him all the way up to his brain cells.
Clean teeth being a priority before sex was wrong. Right, sometimes, but mostly wrong and he'd rub John's face in that later, when his balls weren't tingling because of what John could do to the roof of his mouth when he slipped his tongue in just like that.
"We could always just use the spit and hope method," John suggested, voice lust-rough now instead of rusty with sleep. The thought made Rodney shudder, more in a bad way than a good one. No. No, that wouldn't work, but it didn't endanger the wild desire filling him from his toes upwards. Not with John pressing against him like that
"No, I uh, no, no, I'd uh, are you trying to kill my hard on?" He managed to laugh when he said it, and pressed himself against John's hips.
"Nah, just, you know. I'm afraid if you get up, you might change your mind," John admitted, breath catching as Rodney pushed down again.
"Look, I want to. Getting lube won't make me want to less. In fact, I'll want it more. And I promise not to use toothpaste." Rodney brushed his lips against John's chin. The pressing and touching and rubbing was getting him even more hot and bothered.
The mention of toothpaste was enough to make John gasp, a ripple working its way through him. "Jesus fuck." He licked his lips, tongue darting against Rodney's chin. "Okay. Okay, just... yeah." Rodney felt him shift, his foot planted on the mattress so that he could push up. "Ngh."
"So, are you going to let go of me so I can...?" Rodney leaned back a little, jerking his chin towards the bathroom door. He shifted a little, squirming to slide off of John and out of the bed.
Reluctantly, John let him go, leaned back into the shadows. "Yeah, well. Hurry back, Rodney." One hand reached down, idly stroked along his cock. It was tempting, made Rodney want to slide right back into bed and lay his hands on John as well.
John knew how to work with Rodney, work him up to almost anything. "Hurrying." He swallowed, and set bare feet on the carpet before he moved towards the bathroom. All he needed was to get the lube, no dickering, and then he could be back in bed with John. It was bound to be in plain sight, right?
Well. Plain sight if he was John, apparently, because he had to scrabble through half of the gunk on the counter to find it, and really. Did one man need that many hair products? Rodney didn't think so, not in the least.
"Coming?"
"Yes. You're lucky I don't want to spread Manipulator in you -- it does have a pleasant coconut smell, though..." Rodney pushed the canister aside, and palmed the lube -- and the antibiotic ointment -- before twisting to pad back to the bed.
"I'd be kind of worried about your dick sticking in my ass. Manipulator gets a little gluey after a while." John still had his hand on his dick, though, and the other had slid down while Rodney was gone, reaching back to lightly finger between his cheeks.
That was hot. That was really -- god, John had one leg pulled up, to give Rodney the best view, and he was lifted up about two inches off of the bed. His finger, fuck, Rodney couldn't do that to himself dry, and seeing John do it made him want to race over there to do it to him, made him want to slick his trembling fingers and slide them in, in, in.
He was almost surprised when he felt John close around the first one. He didn't remember doing it, just wanting to, and John was arching, head dropped back, ass pushing, reaching, begging for more. Words tumbled out, jumbled, or maybe he was just hearing them that way. He wasn't sure.
Rodney wasn't sure, but he wanted to, wanted to fuck John, wanted to make him part under his slick fingers, around his slick dick, because John's voice was amazing when it broke like that, when he rambled and sighed and cussed. Sharp words were bitten off, and John just kept moving, and he was beautiful, and God. God, he wanted so much. Rodney wasn't sure if he'd ever wanted to fuck someone so much, and he definitely hadn't wanted it any time in the last year or so.
"C'mon, Rodney, you've gotta... please. Please. Fuck!"
There were different levels and tones of begging. Rodney had done the whole range; pleading and choking to whining and rocking his hips wildly like that. That was a good place to be. That was the place where he couldn't think and didn't have to and where everything felt amazing when John pushed in and overwhelmed him, made his ass stretch perfectly. "Yeah, yeah, just..."
Just open, sprawl his knees apart so that Rodney could hook his elbows, and John's hands were between them, touching Rodney's cock, and then he was there and he was sliding in and John was tight. John was perfect, and he was groaning wildly underneath Rodney, and the people in the next room were banging hard against the wall.
Rodney didn't care.
He hoped they knew that he and John had saved their asses more times than they'd probably ever had sex, the people next door, not him and John because they had a pretty good sexual activity level for guys their age and god, John had a perfect ass. He was tight around the base of Rodney's dick, hot, and his hands were sliding up to touch himself. That was even hotter than Rodney had imagined it would be, and yeah, he'd definitely imagined it. Thought about it, wanted to see it, and it was just perfect.
"Fuck. Fuck," John moaned, and Rodney held still, but then John moved, and there wasn't a chance in hell that he'd manage to keep from moving after that. He pulled back an inch and then pushed back inside, deep and firm, and the resulting sound was pure sex. It slid down his spine, curled around the base of his cock. He wanted to stay there, wanted to stay pushed in deep, but John moved again, made Rodney pull his hips back to push into him. It was stuttering, shaky, but Rodney couldn't be smooth, not when all he wanted was to stay still and get himself together.
John didn't want that, wanted more, and his feet were solidly placed on the mattress, helping him to push up, up, up, and into Rodney's thrusts, his head dropped back against the white of the pillows. Rodney had never seen anything more gorgeous. There was nothing that looked better in the world than John laying like that, mouth slack, hair wild against the pillows. His breath looked like it caught every time Rodney shoved into him, lips moving, exhaling, gasping, when Rodney felt like he couldn't do anything but gasp back at John when he rocked down against him.
He'd try for smooth the next time. For now, he'd have to make due with ragged, desperate shoves, in deep and back again, shaking arms holding him above John so that he could see everything. John practically glowed in the faint light from the bathroom, and they were sweating, overheated, wild.
He was almost there. He was almost there, and that was John's fault because he'd kept Rodney in bed for too long, rubbing against him, letting himself get all worked up. But Rodney could enjoy it, the pressure of John's legs against his sides, the way the mattress moved, the way John looked. The way John rocked up to him, hard, steady, and he was jerking off, hand frantic between their bodies. Rodney could understand that, could understand that desperation. Seeing it in John was almost unbearable, it was so beautiful.
He saw it coming before he actually felt it; that look on John's face was one he knew as well as he knew his own name, the shaking that started with his mouth and seemed to spread lower until John was clenching around him, coming in spurts while his ass clamped down tight on Rodney's cock.
It was, it was something there were no words for, wonderful and hot and god, John's leg muscles were amazing against his hips, and John's hand stuttered like Rodney's hips stuttered against John's ass, like his ass stuttered around Rodney's cock, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that but it felt so, so good. Mind-numbing, vision-blackening good, and he couldn't support his weight anymore, slumping down on John's chest as he came and came and came.
Stop and start and jerking motions, face pressed hard against John's chest because god, he wanted to stay twisted up like that forever even if his back did hurt, even if John had to be scrunched up beneath him, because that was amazing. That was better than flying, and that felt like release. Real release, no strings attached, nothing.
Perfect. Perfect, and John's hands were on him, fingers twisted in his hair, holding him close, and nothing, nothing, had been this good in so long. So long. John whispered, murmured, in his ear, and it was everything Rodney had ever wanted.
He had never really thought he'd get it.
If and when he inevitably thought about it, everything he'd ever wanted, it was and wasn't what he had. He didn't have a Nobel Prize, no, not yet, but when the government declassified his work, it was his and he would not share it with Sam Carter, but he might share it with his sister. He did not have a fast car or a hot trophy wife or a really fantastic skate university position with a lot of funding.
And he had been kidnapped and it wasn't something he thought about, his time like that, because as much as Heightmeyer suggested that it was like lancing a wound, poking a stick into an open sore was a pretty stupid idea. He had Teyla, and Ronon, and their little warrior-to-be, and John, and he lived in a mythical city, and it was amazing. Life, life and friends, and having both of them again, was amazing. People he trusted and loved who helped him and didn't mind and....
John's fingers curling at the nape of his neck, and a gentle nudging to get him to move, their bodies separating slowly, but only the insert tab A into slot B part.
He had John's mark, now.
He never really had to let go.
Authors:
tzi & zaganthiPairing: John/Rodney
Warnings: This fic shook hands with raping and pillaging. And maybe even had sex with them. But that's all in the past. Really. We swear.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Earth was hard on Rodney.
Spoilers: Just consider that it's possible through 3x13. Follow-up to Thorn Apples
Length: 10,563 words.
Earth was hard on Rodney.
It hadn't been before, John was pretty sure. He bitched and moaned, but it was just a regular bitch and moan. Nothing like the jitters he got these days, pretty much anytime they encountered a population much larger than Atlantis's.
Apparently there was room in Rodney's head for the ability to cope with a population of around three hundred. That included all Athosians. The SGC itself made Rodney a little more jittery, but at least John had gotten him to admit that just because they were there on leave didn't mean that they might not let him go back through the gate because of some strange, strange he didn't know thing. Fear, John supposed, that they'd never let him go back, period, because of what he'd been through.
As if John was going to let that happen.
They'd been in Pegasus for four years before Rodney had been stolen. They'd been there a year since they got him back. A lot had happened in that time, and the SGC didn't have the balls to try and say no to the man who'd figured out how to re-charge ZPMs, or the lieutenant colonel who kept ending up in charge of Atlantis no matter what. Most of the Cheyenne complex had started calling the military commander position Dark Arts in some obscure fan-reference that John just didn't get.
But one of the rules was that they were supposed to spend X amount of weeks back on Earth, preferably in a large chunk, to keep them from going native. It rotated, and they tended not to allow the entire command structure to go at once, but he always went home with Rodney. Always had, and there was no reason for it not to coincide suddenly. Rodney always did better when John was with him because he knew John wouldn't leave him in the Milky Way.
Carefully, John rested one hand on the small of Rodney's back, thumb stroking slowly over the skin there. He was loose; all of the tension out of him, and that had taken a hell of a lot of work beforehand. He'd even agreed to the blindfold, and that was always hard on him. On the other hand, it was probably easier than being fully aware of where he was. It was easier to trust that John would look out for him.
Working out the kind of relationship that Rodney wanted and what he actually needed in relation to his wants had been hell. The rewards were great, but John had a feeling that it wasn't the best way to learn about the kind of relationship that they had. But what he was good at was not betraying Rodney's trust, soothing him down into a place where he let John make all the decisions.
Even the ones that hurt.
This was one of those, but it was something Rodney wanted, something he needed. It was better than Teyla's Athosian pigments, better than John scrawling sloppy letters along his spine with a Sharpie. It was John's own mark, the one that would transform the previous signs of ownership into something bearable, something Rodney could live with.
At least, that was the goal. He sort of preferred to take things in tiny steps. First, getting Rodney pliant and cooperative, neither of which were words that fit Rodney. Six months of intense 'training' -- torture -- in how to act, and only a few of them had really stuck with Rodney, strange things that didn't deal with his attitude or cripple his personality.
Thank God.
Mostly it was a need to bow to someone else, let somebody give the orders. The first time Rodney had knelt down on John's bed and offered up his ass, fingers clutching at the cheeks, holding himself open, John had almost come in his pants. He'd managed to hold off, but only long enough to drop down on the floor and put his mouth where his mind had gone, and that had been... memorable.
Memorable for the both of them, and possibly, possibly, Rodney's favorite thing ever. That knowledge was the sort of thing that stuck in John's head. The little tricks that made Rodney moan, the little tricks that made him much more compliant, and brought out the Rodney who was less likely to panic and cuss and fight the idea of getting a tattoo.
First there had been the argument about blood poisoning, and the 'do you know what goes ON in those places?' and the 'do you have any idea how much that hurts? Here, let me kick you in the balls a few times and we can roughly simulate the sensation'. And then there'd been mindless fear, if John was honest about it. Rodney, just dead scared, period, full stop, beginning and end. But with some fairly John-style ritualized attention, and having to re-convince himself that it was a good idea, well, he had Rodney in the passenger seat of the truck.
Blindfolded.
He'd done a lot of fast-talking to get the artist to arrange a very quiet space in a back room, had paid an outrageous amount of money to get that, and he'd had to lie like a rug on top of all of it. Well. The lies hadn't been so big -- he'd just claimed that Rodney had been kidnapped in a third world country, that he'd been forced to have the ink put on his skin, that he was more afraid of removal than he was of an alteration.
Despite all of his bitching, John knew Rodney wanted the modification. He wanted to see something on his back besides the mark of that son of a bitch who had managed to steal him out from under their noses.
John wasn't the only one with an embedded tracker anymore.
Beside him in the passenger seat, Rodney was quiet. Passive, except John knew he was keyed up, too, at the same time. He didn't talk when he was like that, didn't babble endlessly and complain creatively. He just curled closer to John, which was the reason for the bench seat, the reason John was driving a truck instead of something smaller, quieter, faster.
Carefully, John made the last turn, pulling into the little tucked-away parking lot and putting the truck in park, cutting the engine.
"We're here," he said, and felt Rodney shudder.
He didn't say anything, though. Just sat there, close against John, like he was straining not to make a run for it. "Okay." Okay, in a he understood way not in a he liked it way.
"I know you want this." Knew it, God, he knew. He knew it because Rodney hated the marks on his back, hated seeing it in a mirror, couldn't look at himself because that was on his back, somebody else's mark. "I want you to tell me, Rodney."
Tell me. Those words were part of John's mark; part of what made John the one in control. Rodney told him what he wanted, and John made sure he got it.
Rodney was still reluctant, and he took his damn time to answer John. "I, I want this. I want to be marked by you." And not the thorn-vines that crawled over his spine now. Those belonged to someone else, trails of green and blue and black that had hurt so much just the thought of having it changed left him shuddering.
"Kiss me." Kisses were grounding. The motherfucker who'd stolen Rodney hadn't done that, even though he'd done everything else under the sun. He wouldn't ever be doing it again, but it was a little late, all things considered.
Even if he'd stolen Rodney back within hours, it would have been too late to fix everything. John was pretty sure he still hadn't done that, hadn't come close, but Rodney was happy again. Rodney smiled and joked and felt less fake and controlled and locked in than he had before he'd finally talked to John. Rodney functioned and no one had threatened to pull him out of the program in a while.
Rodney leaned in to kiss him. He always kissed John softly, hotly, fingers curling in John's hair, touching his neck with a little awe as if he couldn't quite believe John was real.
As if they weren't real together, because they were something else altogether. Something precious. Something priceless.
"There," John whispered against his lips, stroking a thumb along the soft edge of Rodney's jaw, down his throat. "There. This is going to be easy, Rodney. Just you and me and the artist. He does a lot of work for SGC personnel. I've watched him, and he's going to be very, very careful with you. After this, the only mark you'll have on you will be mine. Okay?"
"Yeah." Still monosyllabic, but better than okay, full of more subtext than 'okay'. Rodney's lips parted a little, and he turned his head to try to catch John's hand against his lips. Even if the motion was a little too slow, it was hot, and if he didn't get Rodney out of the truck, something was going to happen, the kind of something that would get them arrested for indecent exposure.
Reluctantly, John shifted, letting go of Rodney to get out of the truck. "I'll open your door on the other side and guide you in." That way, Rodney wouldn't see where they were, wouldn't fret that someone going into the coffee shop in the basement of the building next door might recognize them, wouldn't get ratcheted into a nervous frenzy. At least, any worse than he already was.
John was sort of glad that Rodney liked the blindfold game. It wasn't something they did often, because it was pretty intense, and he'd never thought about using it in a situation that could overlap into going out in public, but it worked. Rodney trusted him not to let him hit anything, trusted him not to abandon him. By the time John was out the truck door, and around to the other side, Rodney had fallen into a position, back straight, palms down on the tops of his thighs. Easy, simple, as if all he had to do in the world was wait for John, when nothing could be further from the truth.
He opened the passenger side door and reached for Rodney. There was no flinch, no motion to say that he had been upset by someone touching him. Rodney wasn't, didn't, when he was as deep as John had placed him. Instead, he was perfectly placid in a way that went against everything Rodney was. Frankly, it was scary as hell in private, and it put John's teeth so far on edge in public that this would be the one and only time they went out with Rodney in that state.
When they got back to the hotel, the first thing he'd do would be to work Rodney out of it in all the best ways. A hot bath, coffee, dinner, maybe a movie in bed, and a lot of touching and bringing Rodney around, the opposite of the pointed concerted control he'd had to enforce over Rodney to get him down in the first place.
At least he could walk, even if he curled his fingers around John's hand a little too tightly while John locked up the truck.
"Be careful. The blacktop's a little rough." There were holes, but he had Rodney's hand and his other elbow, and he could guide him. Ten, twelve, twenty steps, and then he paused, pulled open the back door to the place, and they stepped carefully inside.
With the door shut, the sounds of Colorado Springs were held back, the quiet thread of piano music echoing vaguely from somewhere further back. That was good. God knew John had paid through the nose to have the place to themselves, had asked around until he'd found something he thought Rodney would like, something that would keep him calm while it played.
Piano music. It had been one of the first things Rodney had dumped to DVD from his computer when he backed it up, so the getting and remaking it to a CD hadn't been so hard. Worth it, because Rodney shuffled forwards at John's prompting, still calm. John could feel his easy, only somewhat faster breathing.
"It's okay," John promised him, one hand stroking Rodney's upper arm slowly. "I'm watching out for you." And he was, he did, he always would. That was part of what they were, among so many other things, and it was good. It was very good.
Rodney exhaled, a bare whine of air, and he shifted closer to John, but John kept walking him forwards. They'd be okay. They'd be okay.
"Hey, good. I was wondering if you guys were going to show or not." Will Ellason leaned out of the side workroom, where he'd shown John he kept the autoclave, and smiled at them with only a little wariness.
"Traffic," John said simply, feeling Rodney stiffen just a little beside him. He wasn't coming out of himself, out of the place John had put him, but other people made him nervous. "You have the design ready?"
"Yeah. All worked up. Do, uh. Usually I have the person receiving it sign off on it, and there's a little paperwork..." The man was staring at Rodney, and it wasn't in a rude way, but curious. Curious and unsure of what to do with his own rules.
"Would a verbal confirmation be enough for now?" No way would Rodney be able to handle the removal of the blindfold, the shaky scrawl of his own name. John knew that the way he knew everything about Rodney, and he wasn't willing to chance it. "I can step out of the room..." If he told Rodney he would be back, it would pull him up a little, but not badly. Maybe. "I'd like you to explain the process, too."
"Sure. Sure. Blindfold on, huh? I'll take an oral agreement, if you'll just... you can go on ahead and take a look at the room." And Will pointed him towards the door, still eyeing Rodney.
John put his hand on Rodney's back again, gently. "Rodney? I'm gonna step in here and look everything over. I'm gonna make sure it's all okay. You need to stay here and talk to Will. I'll be fifteen feet away. If you need me, you call me."
There was a pause, and he could almost see Rodney processing the words out of the air itself, and then he nodded. "Yes, John." As if he was reaffirming to himself who was talking to him, but whatever helped. Whatever they had to do to get things going, to make Rodney comfortable in his skin again, and so John moved into the room with a purpose.
Everything was laid out the way John had asked -- the bench was draped with a sheet, and it was pressed against the wall so that John would be able to sit at one end, Rodney's arms wrapped around him. The tools were laid out, the ink in place, and the design they'd agreed on earlier was neatly drawn beside them.
It would work. It wasn't the most beautiful, well thought out thing, but that vine on Rodney's back was going to look a hell of a lot better sprouting wings than it did with those vicious thorns. He'd had the guy do the design from a photograph of Rodney's back, and he'd even managed to come up with a way to fix that knot of thorns at the small of Rodney's back that pointed to his asscrack like an arrow.
"... need your confirmation that you're agreeing to this of your own free will."
"I, I am. I want this fixed."
"Okay. I'm the guy to do that. Would you like to see the design before it's finished, or...?" Okay, so the guy was probably a little weirded out about it, but that's why John was paying out his nose.
"No. John decided on it, and that's... what I want." And Rodney didn't want to take off the blindfold, but it all amounted to the same thing. "I trust him."
"Okay." It was obvious that the whole thing was a little weird to Will, but he was going to let it go. That was good. John wasn't sure how he'd manage to deal with Rodney if he went from giving in to freaking out.
Making a little noise, he strolled back into the room. "Hey, buddy. You ready to go?"
Rodney jerked a little in the direction of John's voice, and his body went tense. "Yeah."
And Will looked from him, to John, and then back to Rodney, and like any guy who was getting paid too much money, kept his mouth pretty shut. He'd done work for guys in the SGC before, so he'd probably run across some weird guys wanting equally weird stuff inked onto their bodies. Weirder than normal. Tributes to lost comrades, friends, and occasionally, whole ships.
Carefully, John stepped forward and put his hand on Rodney's elbow. "C'mon, then. We'll go have a seat, and let Will here take care of business. It's gonna be okay, Rodney." Okay, because Will was going to fix it, and maybe then Rodney would be able to handle it a little better.
Maybe.
Even if he was probably going to be messed up at least a little, for the rest of his life, it would... help. The marks really meant something to him, and for them to mean that he wasn't owned by someone he hated was pretty important.
"Okay."
"Great. If you could just go in there and uncover the area..."
That was easy enough. John had Rodney's elbow, and led him gently into the room next door. "Okay. I’m gonna help you off with your clothes, Rodney. That all right with you?" His shirt first. His pants would have to be lowered, and John knew he wasn't wearing any underwear.
He'd helped Rodney dress after their session. Everything came off easy, had gone on easy, because the less complicated motion Rodney had to be involved in, the better. "Yeah." It was easy to get Rodney into the next room, because he tagged along with John like a puppy dog, like panting along at John's heels was what he was meant to do. It was a lie, at best, but it was how they handled things, how they made things work, and they could both live with that.
Carefully, long fingers caught in the hem of Rodney's t-shirt, first the short-sleeved one, pulling it up over his head, and then the long-sleeved one. Rodney was all about layers, and that wasn't anything new, not really. It made him comfortable, and that was important for the moment. For the long-term. If Rodney wanted to wear two shirts and run circles around Radek and Sam Carter and maybe sometimes his own sister, then that was fine. But moments like that, where Rodney was sublimated, pushed down and mellow like that, where Rodney really let go, it struck John as self-protective of Rodney. Strangely vulnerable.
He hadn't been that way before, not often, not visibly. Not ever. John had seen it maybe twice, maybe three times. The video he'd sent back to Jeannie in that first data burst to Earth, the look on his face when he'd blown up most of a solar system. When he'd thought they might replace him with Rod.
When Jeannie might have replaced him with Rod.
"It's okay," John promised him quietly, reaching up to stroke Rodney's face. "I swear, Rodney. It's gonna be all right."
"I know." Rodney pressed his cheek against John's palm, and his free arm curled out to linger unsteadily against John's side, beneath his ribs and a couple of inches above his belt. Belt, right. He'd just shimmy Rodney's pants down and settle onto the chair-thing with him. Nice. Easy.
He worked open the button and then lowered Rodney's zipper. He could feel the response against his hand, and there was no way to keep himself from smiling, at least a little. "C'mon, buddy. I've got you." Got the pants down low enough, and he shifted Rodney, helped him get closer to the bench. Chair. Thing. God only knew what they called it, and it wasn't like it mattered. "Here you go. Lie down. Just.. yeah. Just like that."
Lie down, and he wouldn't let go of John, which was exactly what John expected. Will shot him an almost sympathetic look, just briefly, before he went back to doing whatever he was doing with that medical tray of equipment, the second tray of inks.
John jostled into position, helping Rodney down, straddling the head of the bench, legs dangling on either side. They'd probably go numb before too much time passed, but he'd live with it. Rodney would need him too much for him to get up.
It was going to hurt like hell, after all. John hadn't lied or tried to play that down for Rodney, when Rodney knew what it felt like. But it should be a lot less crudely done, and it would end up cleaner in the long run. No more thorns sticking into Rodney's flesh in his own mind. Just wings, beautiful wings. Rodney seemed to have given up protesting for the moment, and laid his head on John's stomach, arms sliding around his waist.
"Are you comfortable?"
"We're fine," John answered, stroking Rodney's hair. "We're gonna be just fine. And when it's over, it's gonna be beautiful." He was speaking more to Rodney than to Will, and he saw, felt, heard Rodney draw in a deep breath, let it out in a steady sigh. If he'd been naked, it would have tickled against his stomach, but as it was he could feel the puff, the vague heat of it, Rodney open-mouthed against his t-shirt.
"It will be. Everything's cleaned and ready to go. If you need to take a break, just let me know. I'll probably need to take a break at some point, so everything turns out just right."
"No problem." None, because Rodney was taking steady, deep breaths, shivering just a little against John even as he seemed to tense in preparation. "Rodney's gonna relax, and you're gonna make this look better."
"The old one looks like a nasty piece of work." Will shifted, pulled a stool on wheels up to the chair, and his table on wheels that reminded John every bit of a dentist's office, now. Except he'd never had Rodney breathing against him at the dentist. Never had Rodney touching him like this at the dentist.
Reaching out, John stroked his shoulders slowly. "It's a long story," he said simply. Easy, as if it wasn't a six month long story that had landed them in some fresh hell that jumped up to bite them periodically, except that it did. Every once in a while, it did rise up and John was never sure what triggered it all.
Hell, for all John knew, it could've been something in his sessions with Heightmeyer. It was always subtle, too. Rodney got a little more snappish about their imminent deaths, and a lot more pushy in bed, like he was trying to test John's limits and get him to do something hurtful. All of his worst habits seemed to grow by leaps and bounds in contrast to the more formal way he carried himself, the positions he sat in. Usually, John ended up calling Rodney on his shit, and it.... Well, it worked out. It worked out because John made sure it did. There were -- things. Things lay between them, careful and precious, and they didn't say it or talk about it, but in the end, those things made Rodney come around, made John coax him into calming down, into centering himself again.
He loved those frenzied moments, touching and petting and Rodney whining against his throat, desperate in a way he wasn't always when they were in bed. John wasn't sure how it worked, but it did. Neither of them had to lay things out hard-core, and neither of them had to really talk about it, but it was there. The sun rose and set, and John called Rodney on his shit and Rodney eventually turned to John when he needed help.
Hugged tight to him when he was getting his back worked on.
Will started with some kind of pen, drawing out the pattern before he ever went to needles and ink. Even that was enough to make Rodney tense, but the look of it was something pretty special, John thought. Every stroke seemed to tease something loose, some image that might not have been originally intended. The lay of Rodney's back was different from paper, but Will was an artist.
An artist who knew what he was doing. Rodney shifted not at all, one of those half-stiff positions that John knew he fell into when he didn't know what else to do and sometimes even when he did. One day, John figured he'd work out how Rodney seemed to have a position for everything, and how he kept them straight in his head.
For the time being, there were other things to worry about. Other things to think about, like the way Rodney rubbed his thumb repeatedly, desperately, against the slice of skin just above John's waistband. The stiffness was there, the strangeness of Rodney's held position, but that combined with the steady, worrisome rub of that digit would be enough, John thought, enough to keep Rodney together even when Will began.
He just wished he knew what Rodney was thinking.
But since no Ancient device they'd found yet had turned out to be a mind-reading device, he just wasn't going to get to find out, unless Rodney told him later. Unless he asked. John knew he should only ask when he wanted the answer, and he didn't need to know why Rodney was doing that thing with his thumb. Didn't need to ask to understand that whatever it was, it offered Rodney comfort. Offered something that made him feel better.
Offered something that made this easier.
Will worked for a long time. There was starting and stopping, the sound of Rodney's hitching breaths, slow, steady, shuddering. It lasted forever, or maybe it didn't last very long at all, or maybe just a few hours. John couldn't tell, and he was pretty sure Rodney wouldn't have any idea when it was over, either.
His not-knowing was for the best. He'd stop on the way back to the hotel, get Rodney fast food at a drive-through instead of all the things he'd considered before. Something warm, protein rich and bread-filled. Get him fed when they got to the hotel, work him back into himself and take care of his back. It wasn't something that John had thought he'd enjoy as much as he did. Making sure Rodney was okay, that he was doing well, it wasn't the chore Rodney sometimes suggested that it was. It made John feel useful; made him feel good because he stabilized Rodney in a way that Rodney needed. It stabilized John, too. The six months John had been without Rodney, searching for him, he'd gone off-kilter, off-center. It had taken a long time to find his center again, and it had been a surprise to realize that it was Rodney. That Rodney was what helped him stay balanced, kept him from going off the wrong edge entirely the way he had more than once.
So, okay, there was still the occasional suicidal plan, but at least they were all involved. The more people, the less a chance they all had of dying. Particularly if Rodney was involved, because he was still the master of pulling a save out of god knew where because his ass had to be out of them by then.
"Hnnn." Rodney shifted a little when Will leaned back, cracking his knuckles, face pressed harder against John's stomach.
"Okay. There's a little more work to do, maybe some touch-up that's needed," Will said. "But the basic design's laid down, and there's not much more I can do this trip."
That filled John with all sorts of questions, like when he could get the rest done, and it had to be before they went back, but he and Rodney were back on a pretty long leave. Apparently they were the most at risk of going native, or something, spending all of that time off world, working with aliens. Not that anyone accused SG-1 or the Daedalus of being close to going native, what with their constantly working with aliens.
It was probably that whole separate galaxy thing that scared them.
Instead of asking questions, he leaned a little, looking down along Rodney's back. It was...
It was amazing.
Each thorn had been lightly touched up to create tiny feathers, thickening slowly as they went down his spine until they arched out in wide wings that covered the thatched knot of an arrow that had so crassly pointed at Rodney's ass. They were black, and blue, and almost iridescent, and John couldn't see anything that needed touching up at all.
Will smiled, rolled some of the stiffness out of his shoulders. "It doesn't look anything like it did when you came in. Now, it'll take a month or so to heal up. For a few days it's probably going to be sore and itchy, and the skin gets pretty dry. Since it is such a large area, and I don't usually do something this big in one shot, you should clean it gently a couple of times a day, and put on a thin layer of baccitracin over top of it, for about a week. Then switch to a plain moisturizer. Keep it clean, moist, and no sunlight." His eyes dropped to Rodney's back, and he added with a little bit of a grin, "Not that I think that needs to be said. Hey, you okay down there?"
"Uh-huh, drifty fine."
Drifty fine and still blindfolded, and since John wanted to keep him the former, he was going to continue with the latter. "Thanks. Do we owe you anything else?" Just to be sure. He'd pay for the touchup and the arrangements when the time came. Maybe on the next jaunt to Earth. As it was, everything was so perfectly changed that John didn't know if Rodney would care, so long as the previous tattoo was covered.
"No, you settled up up-front." Will nodded, and gestured to the front door. "I'll be out there while you guys get yourselves together."
"Thanks." Easy to say again, his fingers curling gently at the nape of Rodney's neck, careful to avoid the ink that was the furthest up the way. "Hey, buddy. It's a good thing you're doing all right. I was thinking. It's kind of dark out, and putting on your shirts might not be such a good idea, considering. What say I help you out to the truck and I keep the shirts?"
"Hnn..." Rodney exhaled in a soft whine. "I..." He didn't like the idea, but if John pushed a little, he'd do it.
"I promise it's dark enough that nobody will notice. It's probably better for the ink, too. We won't even stop anywhere." John could get something delivered. Pizza, Chinese. Something.
"Okay. We're going ho... to the, hotel?" Rodney lifted his head a little, fingers shifting against John's skin.
"Mhm." Rodney felt good, felt limp and sated the way he usually only got when John was fucking him. "Yeah. We're gonna go to the hotel, unless you've got some kind of crazy craving, or....?"
"No." He shifted his shoulders, squirmed up against John's stomach. He'd have to lever Rodney up, and it'd be a miracle if he managed to get him to the truck. The way he was moving implied that cooked spaghetti might be made of stiffer stuff.
"I'm gonna slide out from under you, Rodney. Help you get up."
"Mkay." He had to shift, squirm out from under Rodney and Rodney was slow to let go, reluctant and muzzy. His hands clung, stuck to John's skin until John was standing up.
The view from where he was, looking down at Rodney's back for a moment, was beautiful; all colored ink and feathers and skin gone red from the irritation of the work itself. It was a thousand times better than the vines had been, and it left John just a little breathless. It marked Rodney -- made him John's, made him perfect in a way that John hadn't really expected.
It was something Rodney would marvel at, when he woke up, shook himself back up to the top of his consciousness. John would definitely have to take him into the hotel bathroom so he could look at it.
Rodney seemed to guess he was looking down at him, because he shifted, moved his back, lifted his hips a little, falling into some position. Something someone else had taught him, but John was the one who reaped the fruits, the one Rodney gave everything to with all of his being.
"Beautiful." Beautiful because it was, and because Rodney needed to hear it, to know. Rodney wasn't conventional. Rodney wasn't Ancient or a traffic-stopping beauty or sweet-natured.
Rodney was just everything.
He was hot, and he was intense, and the muscles on his back shifted minutely when Rodney stretched his hands out in front of him. He was beautiful holistically, body, mind, and heart all together, because he did give everything to John. Trusted him, once he stopped being afraid of rejection.
"Yours."
"Yeah." His, all his, every last square inch. "When we get back, what would you like?" He enjoyed hearing it. He wanted to know what Rodney wanted, loved to hear Rodney tell him what to do to him. Rodney always made it sound good.
"Dunno?" Rodney lifted his head a little, pressing his cheek against the arm of the chair. "I want... I want..."
"You can have it," John promised, and began trying to help Rodney up from where he'd lain for so long. "Come on, McKay. Up and at 'em. We can leave your pants slung down there, too." It wasn't like Rodney looked bad. He was, however, desperately, weirdly twitchy about being seen even partially naked.
Cadman assured them that it was nothing new.
Still, it made John wonder if she was right or not. Because he could be so comfortable naked with John and not at all around anyone else, sensual like he knew what he was doing and just how to drive John wild.
"Sore." Rodney's hands stayed on John once he got him up and standing, fingers loose. Yeah, getting him back to the hotel would be a subdued thing. It would be easy, be slow, and the chances were high that Rodney would try to blow him on the way back to the hotel.
The chances were even higher that John wouldn't object all that much.
"Yeah, and tomorrow'll be a bitch, but you're gonna love this once you get to see it," John promised him. It really was beautiful. Rodney probably wouldn't ever want to get it touched up, either. Probably.
He'd wait and see if Rodney ever brought it up again, about getting extra work done at the site. He'd probably be preoccupied enough when it started to heal, bitching and complaining that it itched or scabbed, but caring for it was something John was looking forwards to. Caring for Rodney, and his mark on Rodney, where the asshole aristocrat who'd had Rodney hadn't.
It was easy to pull Rodney close, to pick up his shirt absently and herd him out the door. Taking him home was easy. Taking care of him... that was the hard part, but John thought it was probably the best part of all, and he was going to make sure that he did a good job of it.
Rodney couldn't remember the last time the world had been this fuzzy at the edges, all good feeling and light-headedness in a way that rippled out from the ache down his spine unreasonably. It shouldn't feel that way, shouldn't feel good. He ought to feel like hell, shaky and worried and afraid.
He didn't. He really didn't, and that had been the strangest thing.
He felt supported, he felt safe and home, because home was a feeling of comfort along with the large shiny city that loved and tried to kill them all on a regular basis. Home was an abusive relationship with a semi-sentient city in a less than sentient galaxy, and it was John beside him in bed, breath smelling like pancakes and syrup, hair mashed against the pillow, mouth lax and unconscious.
His back hurt, but even that was good. His ass ached, and that was better.
Mmm, and John didn't look like he was waking up any time soon. He really didn't, and maybe Rodney had worn him out, maybe he wore him out a lot, because he was sort of demanding. He knew that, and he couldn't help it, and John always just dealt with it so that it was okay. John was... he was good to Rodney, and Rodney wasn't stupid. He realized it. He realized that things between them had changed, and then changed again, and then changed again, and that it was for his benefit these days.
They managed pretty well, Rodney knew. John had pushed and talked him into it, and he'd needed to be pushed into it, but the tattoo, that was something he wanted. He wanted it fixed, and that had been all the permission John had needed to drag him the rest of the way.
He still needed to see it, sore back and ass or not, whether he wanted to wallow forever in bed while John finally slept or not.
Carefully, he rolled to the edge of the bed and slipped out of it. His lower back caught for a moment, and he hissed slightly. It didn't wake John, and he managed to stand the rest of the way, stretching so that his back cracked, the skin stretching and pulling in a way that made him gasp. Okay. So. Ow. That was very unpleasant, and his head ached despite the fact that he was pretty much as high as a kite on his own blood chemistry.
He'd been there before. He'd felt that kind of pain before, more than once, so stretching after a decent nap wasn't something that Rodney was going to let throw him for a loop. Heightmeyer recommended against doing a thousand things that she thought could 'trigger' him, and getting a fresh tattoo was probably the top of that long list that she was always willing to offer him.
Mostly, Rodney ignored what she had to say. Sometimes, it was good to have a willing ear just to talk, even if she was getting paid to listen. Most of her advice was pretty shitty, though, so he ignored it.
Quietly, he moved to the dresser across from the bed and picked up the hand-held mirror John had bought sometime between yesterday morning and them getting back to the hotel. Rodney had no idea when, and it wasn't like it mattered. What mattered was the overwhelming need to see his own back, with or without John there to hold his hand.
It bothered a few of the others, Rodney supposed. Not Teyla, or Ronon, or Radek, because they knew he hadn't been subsumed by John. He was still him, he was still Rodney M. McKay, with more degrees than a couple of the marines who'd been put out of rotation had fingers, and he would still tell an idiot where to shove their opinion.
It was all Rodney McKay who wanted to see the tattoo, too, so he positioned himself with his back to the large dresser mirror, and held the hand mirror up.
The light was bad, a vague wash of illumination coming from the half-open bathroom door that made it possible to see the vaguest outlines against his back. It made ignoring the redness surrounding the changes easier, made seeing the details more difficult, but...
Oh. But.
What he could see was different and amazing. What he could see was his back, reclaimed, recreated. No more knotted vines, but twisting patterns that sprouted wings, feathers and air, a whole different look over top of marks that he'd hated. It wasn't even recognizable now, and better than budding flowers and anything else they tried to cover the mark with.
Better than Teyla's Athosian pigment experiments. Better than John's clumsy thumb-bruises, painted in shades of yellow and pale blue and fading green and brown. Better than anything, ever.
John's voice spoke from the shadowed head of the bed, gravelly with sleep. "'s beautiful. He did a good job."
"You did a good job." He didn't stop looking at it right away. When the redness went down, when his skin healed, he'd be able to appreciate it. As it was, the doctors at the SGC would look at him funny when he went in for his medical exam before they went back, and he expected there was going to be some chiding.
He didn't care.
"You know I can't draw for shit, Rodney." No. He couldn't, occupying Rodney with stick figures passed back and forth on tablets during meetings. The year Teyla had borne Magnai, he'd carefully drawn a Teyla-figure, sticks in hand, with a round belly outlined in her center containing a baby stick figure.
Ronon still had a printed copy pinned where the baby could see it.
The fact that he couldn't draw meant less than nothing, though. He'd been the one to design, to see what needed to be there.
"So? I can't, either, but I can still engineer machinery." Rodney waved one hand a little, his free hand, staring at the picture for a moment longer. It was Perfect, simply and purely. "I, this, it's right."
It was right, John's mark on him, John's mark replacing the one he'd hated. John's mark letting him be himself, letting him be Rodney, letting him be everything real and right.
He turned slightly, laid the mirror on the dresser. It hurt, but it was such a relief. It was like being able to breathe again, and when John beckoned him from the dark, he moved forwards.
He wanted to, really wanted to, just like he had when he'd reached over in the truck and had started to paw John's dick through his jeans. He felt more like himself than he had then, even if that was part of him, too. Everything felt more like the him that had been before, like Rodney was in control now, in control because John let him be. It was a relief, a release, and he let out a shaky breath, sliding into the bed from the foot and up into John's arms.
"I'm glad."
Sheppard had fantastic arms. Muscles that could take the recoil of almost any gun he laid his hands on, biceps that were enough to make Rodney feel inferior except they were really hot, and John squirmed like a girl if Rodney kissed over the muscles, traced veins with his tongue. "This is how I prefer to be marked."
Rodney could feel the shake that worked through one of those arms even as John let him do what he wanted, let him shift John onto his back so that Rodney could find the spots he liked best. "Good." The statement was just a little breathy, still marked by that newly-awakened sound in John's voice. God, Rodney loved that, could never resist the urge to do something about it.
He always wanted to pin John to the bed -- or the sleeping bag, or the wall, whatever was handy -- when he sounded like that, groggy and fake-alert, rough-voiced. Rodney applied suction, then bit gently against the vague outline of a vein on John's arm. "Yeah. More good than...." Than anything else, than being reluctantly marked by someone else. God, so good.
John stretched underneath him, slow and steady, erotic in a way that broke Rodney where pure sexuality didn't. "That's it. Just do what you want, McKay." What he wanted.
Anything he wanted.
He wanted to mark John, kiss him all over, taste him. He'd never be able to mark John the way he was, and it wasn't his place -- hah, and John would stare at him if he ever said that thought aloud -- to really seize the day and swear he could protect John, because if he was the self-defense sort, he wouldn't have spent six months on his stomach as a cum-dump for a complete sexual freak.
That was a thought he needed to shove aside, a thought he needed to push back when he pressed his face against John's abdomen and sighed. The motion of muscles going lax was just erotic. "So many possibilities."
Dozens of things he wanted to do, loved to do, but he couldn't seem to make up his mind. He heard John's steady breathing above him, edging on sleep again, but still wakeful, still paying attention, and then he yawned. "Hm. You're warm." Warm, and touching John, sliding a hand between his thighs. Maybe he'd mark him there, bite just a little, just enough to leave his own mark because he could. John wouldn't mind.
It was transient. Transient and transitory and his head was full of social science words for things that didn't matter in reality, which Rodney supposed was why they were all so long and had fifty viable definitions per word. He shifted, pressing kisses against John's stomach. John tasted warm, a little like the waistband of his pants had clung tight to skin.
Fingers slipped against his neck, cupping slowly, warmly, and John massaged just a little. "Hm. I don't know what's hotter. You down there doing nothing, or you down there doing something."
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Rodney sighed, pressed his cheek against John's stomach and the dampness he'd left there. It really felt good not to have to do anything, and his back ached and he just felt sated, lazy. He could take his time and make the decisions, because John's hand on his neck felt wonderful. "Mmm, there's just so much choice. It's like standing in that huge candy store downtown."
"The one with the really good candied cherries," John agreed, and of course he'd think about those. He'd fed them to Rodney, liquored up versions that had left them laughing two nights ago.
They definitely had to take some of those back to Atlantis with them.
"It was just an example of the sheer magnitude of the problem I'm facing." He could have spited John and gotten up to find that bag of cherries, he supposed. Except, warm inviting skin, and god, John shifted one thigh and that got Rodney squirming down again. He loved John's legs. They were surprisingly muscular, considering how skinny John was, and when they shifted so that one rested over his shoulder, Rodney couldn't resist nuzzling against the spot where thigh met groin. The skin was soft and warm, the smell a little musky with sleep.
"Hm. You looking for suggestions, Rodney?"
"I might be open to suggestions," Rodney murmured against John's skin, just before he kissed the inside of John's thigh, feeling muscles go tight. That was accompanied with a low, throaty moan that made Rodney hum.
John's fingers tightened. "I wouldn't mind if you wanted to suck me. Or, you know. Pretty much anything else."
"There's not much you mind." He repeated the gesture, sliding his lips over John's skin before he bit, gently. The sound he raised from that one easy nip gave him goose bumps.
"Hey. I only mind if it's not you."
There wasn't anyone not-Rodney anymore. Not even the intimation of it. No more flirting with alien priestesses, John was all polite smiles now, really honestly clueless. He kept his Kirk in his pants, which went a long way to making Rodney feel less like a fool. He wasn't a fool, but it always helped not to feel like one.
He turned his head, nipped at the inside of John's other thigh, feeling the muscles quiver. God, that was good, and he couldn't help lapping over that bite carefully, ignoring the squirm that John gave.
"Oh, God, yeah." That rippling shudder could only be considered a good thing in Rodney's book, especially in combination with the way John's hand curved around the back of his head, fingers sliding through short, fine strands of hair, ruffling them.
He liked pleasing John. It wasn't about domination, about who won out, about how John could use Rodney best. It was about enjoyment. It was about those shudders and the delight he got out of being marked as John's. "What do you want?"
"Whatever makes you happy," John said, but he'd already asked Rodney to suck him. He was right there, after all, and being that close certainly had its advantages. He could just shift, move, lap out his tongue, and....
The deep groan that worked its way out of John made Rodney smile even as he moved his way up the long, lean length of John's body, pausing to lick, tasting random samples of John's skin along the way.
"Probably not the best answer you could have given," Rodney hummed. He let John's dick bump against his collarbone, let it press and make itself aware but no touch of mouth, no. That was saved for his navel, for the trail of hair leading up to his chest, and Rodney fairly hummed over it. John tasted good, and he wanted... Well. He wanted everything, and he felt like he could get it, could ask for it, could have whatever he wanted just that easily.
The fact that the thorns on his back had become feathers, wings, probably had a lot to do with that. It was strange, maybe, but true; so true, and he bit again, a sharp motion of teeth that made John groan.
It was 800% all in Rodney's head, and he didn't care.
John tasted like heaven, hot and alive and groaning beneath him, and Rodney could only taste, bite and suck and lick, working his way back up John. "I think I want to fuck you."
The stillness those words brought on was surprising, still and stiff, and then John melted into the mattress beneath him, knees parting even further around Rodney. "Jesus, fuck, yes."
"Scared me for a minute there." Rodney huffed that against John's neck. It was easy to drop his hips to press them hard against John's. Sex... Sex took lube, a lot of it, because that was personally how Rodney liked it best, but it also meant getting out of bed when his back twinged.
"Yeah, well. Never exactly thought you'd ask for that." Want it, or anything, Rodney figured, and he could see why John would think that. He'd never asked for it, never gave any implication of wanting it, so maybe it was just that. Just a surprise, and there were firm hands on his back, stroking up his spine. "I'm good with it. You have no idea..."
"Some idea." John's fingers pressed over skin that was sore, ached, slick with antibiotic ointment. It felt like heaven, made his dick twitch against John. "I have some idea how much you want it. And I have to get the lube."
There was a heady push upward, John's cock rubbing against his, head slick as it grazed Rodney's belly. "Yeah, the problem with you getting up is that we have to stop touching. That part kind of sucks."
"It does." He liked John touching him, liked the way his hands roamed freely, didn't have to stop and ask if it was okay, all right, is this good, that good, but he didn't claim, either, not unless Rodney gave signals, and it was all... It was all perfect. Balanced. "Where's the lube? Bathroom?"
"I packed it in with the toiletries, so probably. I only grabbed out the toothbrushes and the Crest when we got in." John shifted, leaned up, captured Rodney's mouth in a kiss that nearly seared him all the way up to his brain cells.
Clean teeth being a priority before sex was wrong. Right, sometimes, but mostly wrong and he'd rub John's face in that later, when his balls weren't tingling because of what John could do to the roof of his mouth when he slipped his tongue in just like that.
"We could always just use the spit and hope method," John suggested, voice lust-rough now instead of rusty with sleep. The thought made Rodney shudder, more in a bad way than a good one. No. No, that wouldn't work, but it didn't endanger the wild desire filling him from his toes upwards. Not with John pressing against him like that
"No, I uh, no, no, I'd uh, are you trying to kill my hard on?" He managed to laugh when he said it, and pressed himself against John's hips.
"Nah, just, you know. I'm afraid if you get up, you might change your mind," John admitted, breath catching as Rodney pushed down again.
"Look, I want to. Getting lube won't make me want to less. In fact, I'll want it more. And I promise not to use toothpaste." Rodney brushed his lips against John's chin. The pressing and touching and rubbing was getting him even more hot and bothered.
The mention of toothpaste was enough to make John gasp, a ripple working its way through him. "Jesus fuck." He licked his lips, tongue darting against Rodney's chin. "Okay. Okay, just... yeah." Rodney felt him shift, his foot planted on the mattress so that he could push up. "Ngh."
"So, are you going to let go of me so I can...?" Rodney leaned back a little, jerking his chin towards the bathroom door. He shifted a little, squirming to slide off of John and out of the bed.
Reluctantly, John let him go, leaned back into the shadows. "Yeah, well. Hurry back, Rodney." One hand reached down, idly stroked along his cock. It was tempting, made Rodney want to slide right back into bed and lay his hands on John as well.
John knew how to work with Rodney, work him up to almost anything. "Hurrying." He swallowed, and set bare feet on the carpet before he moved towards the bathroom. All he needed was to get the lube, no dickering, and then he could be back in bed with John. It was bound to be in plain sight, right?
Well. Plain sight if he was John, apparently, because he had to scrabble through half of the gunk on the counter to find it, and really. Did one man need that many hair products? Rodney didn't think so, not in the least.
"Coming?"
"Yes. You're lucky I don't want to spread Manipulator in you -- it does have a pleasant coconut smell, though..." Rodney pushed the canister aside, and palmed the lube -- and the antibiotic ointment -- before twisting to pad back to the bed.
"I'd be kind of worried about your dick sticking in my ass. Manipulator gets a little gluey after a while." John still had his hand on his dick, though, and the other had slid down while Rodney was gone, reaching back to lightly finger between his cheeks.
That was hot. That was really -- god, John had one leg pulled up, to give Rodney the best view, and he was lifted up about two inches off of the bed. His finger, fuck, Rodney couldn't do that to himself dry, and seeing John do it made him want to race over there to do it to him, made him want to slick his trembling fingers and slide them in, in, in.
He was almost surprised when he felt John close around the first one. He didn't remember doing it, just wanting to, and John was arching, head dropped back, ass pushing, reaching, begging for more. Words tumbled out, jumbled, or maybe he was just hearing them that way. He wasn't sure.
Rodney wasn't sure, but he wanted to, wanted to fuck John, wanted to make him part under his slick fingers, around his slick dick, because John's voice was amazing when it broke like that, when he rambled and sighed and cussed. Sharp words were bitten off, and John just kept moving, and he was beautiful, and God. God, he wanted so much. Rodney wasn't sure if he'd ever wanted to fuck someone so much, and he definitely hadn't wanted it any time in the last year or so.
"C'mon, Rodney, you've gotta... please. Please. Fuck!"
There were different levels and tones of begging. Rodney had done the whole range; pleading and choking to whining and rocking his hips wildly like that. That was a good place to be. That was the place where he couldn't think and didn't have to and where everything felt amazing when John pushed in and overwhelmed him, made his ass stretch perfectly. "Yeah, yeah, just..."
Just open, sprawl his knees apart so that Rodney could hook his elbows, and John's hands were between them, touching Rodney's cock, and then he was there and he was sliding in and John was tight. John was perfect, and he was groaning wildly underneath Rodney, and the people in the next room were banging hard against the wall.
Rodney didn't care.
He hoped they knew that he and John had saved their asses more times than they'd probably ever had sex, the people next door, not him and John because they had a pretty good sexual activity level for guys their age and god, John had a perfect ass. He was tight around the base of Rodney's dick, hot, and his hands were sliding up to touch himself. That was even hotter than Rodney had imagined it would be, and yeah, he'd definitely imagined it. Thought about it, wanted to see it, and it was just perfect.
"Fuck. Fuck," John moaned, and Rodney held still, but then John moved, and there wasn't a chance in hell that he'd manage to keep from moving after that. He pulled back an inch and then pushed back inside, deep and firm, and the resulting sound was pure sex. It slid down his spine, curled around the base of his cock. He wanted to stay there, wanted to stay pushed in deep, but John moved again, made Rodney pull his hips back to push into him. It was stuttering, shaky, but Rodney couldn't be smooth, not when all he wanted was to stay still and get himself together.
John didn't want that, wanted more, and his feet were solidly placed on the mattress, helping him to push up, up, up, and into Rodney's thrusts, his head dropped back against the white of the pillows. Rodney had never seen anything more gorgeous. There was nothing that looked better in the world than John laying like that, mouth slack, hair wild against the pillows. His breath looked like it caught every time Rodney shoved into him, lips moving, exhaling, gasping, when Rodney felt like he couldn't do anything but gasp back at John when he rocked down against him.
He'd try for smooth the next time. For now, he'd have to make due with ragged, desperate shoves, in deep and back again, shaking arms holding him above John so that he could see everything. John practically glowed in the faint light from the bathroom, and they were sweating, overheated, wild.
He was almost there. He was almost there, and that was John's fault because he'd kept Rodney in bed for too long, rubbing against him, letting himself get all worked up. But Rodney could enjoy it, the pressure of John's legs against his sides, the way the mattress moved, the way John looked. The way John rocked up to him, hard, steady, and he was jerking off, hand frantic between their bodies. Rodney could understand that, could understand that desperation. Seeing it in John was almost unbearable, it was so beautiful.
He saw it coming before he actually felt it; that look on John's face was one he knew as well as he knew his own name, the shaking that started with his mouth and seemed to spread lower until John was clenching around him, coming in spurts while his ass clamped down tight on Rodney's cock.
It was, it was something there were no words for, wonderful and hot and god, John's leg muscles were amazing against his hips, and John's hand stuttered like Rodney's hips stuttered against John's ass, like his ass stuttered around Rodney's cock, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done that but it felt so, so good. Mind-numbing, vision-blackening good, and he couldn't support his weight anymore, slumping down on John's chest as he came and came and came.
Stop and start and jerking motions, face pressed hard against John's chest because god, he wanted to stay twisted up like that forever even if his back did hurt, even if John had to be scrunched up beneath him, because that was amazing. That was better than flying, and that felt like release. Real release, no strings attached, nothing.
Perfect. Perfect, and John's hands were on him, fingers twisted in his hair, holding him close, and nothing, nothing, had been this good in so long. So long. John whispered, murmured, in his ear, and it was everything Rodney had ever wanted.
He had never really thought he'd get it.
If and when he inevitably thought about it, everything he'd ever wanted, it was and wasn't what he had. He didn't have a Nobel Prize, no, not yet, but when the government declassified his work, it was his and he would not share it with Sam Carter, but he might share it with his sister. He did not have a fast car or a hot trophy wife or a really fantastic skate university position with a lot of funding.
And he had been kidnapped and it wasn't something he thought about, his time like that, because as much as Heightmeyer suggested that it was like lancing a wound, poking a stick into an open sore was a pretty stupid idea. He had Teyla, and Ronon, and their little warrior-to-be, and John, and he lived in a mythical city, and it was amazing. Life, life and friends, and having both of them again, was amazing. People he trusted and loved who helped him and didn't mind and....
John's fingers curling at the nape of his neck, and a gentle nudging to get him to move, their bodies separating slowly, but only the insert tab A into slot B part.
He had John's mark, now.
He never really had to let go.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 01:13 am (UTC)Stick-figure-Teyla-pregnant-with-stick-baby! Squee!
And, because I spent too much time as a beta-reader for my sins, I noticed that
seems to need a punctuation mark somewhere in there.
Oh, and the ending. The ending. Wow.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 01:17 am (UTC)We're so happy you liked it *^_^*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 01:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 01:51 am (UTC)Your craft is excellent, your characterizations, given the strictures in question, are sound.
And the plot, the plot is just wonderful.
Well done.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:02 am (UTC)This was a perfect summary of the fic, the way you guys wed the psychological/emotional with the physical/sexual, showing how they're interconnected, how one feeds on and supports the other. I love the way Rodney's functioning state is not "noemal" but is working nontheless, how their relationship may be weird tooutsiders yet is exactly what he needs and wants, what John needs and wants.
Thank you for a wonderful followup, hot and smart!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:13 pm (UTC)We're glad you enjoyed it *^_^*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 03:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 03:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 04:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 05:26 am (UTC)Also? The sex was way hot. HOT! (Hey! where's the rest of the John sleeps with underaged Rodney and then runs away to the airforce story? Did I miss the gripping conclusion?)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:15 pm (UTC)As for the other, it's still on our plate, we just haven't actually found a challenge that fitted it yet =D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 05:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:19 pm (UTC)Thank you, though? ^_~
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 02:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 09:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-09 11:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:20 pm (UTC)(p.s. pretty icon!)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 12:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:21 pm (UTC)Thank you. ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 12:15 am (UTC)i'm overwhelmed...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 02:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:25 pm (UTC)Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 03:34 am (UTC)Hot and ouchy, like poking at a bruise. Lovely.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 05:00 am (UTC)I'm now off to find more of your fic! Thanks so much for sharing this.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 05:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-10 08:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-12 10:04 pm (UTC)And while I'm at it (and you're here!), may I say that "Unspoken" is one of my favorite pick-me-up reads? It just really makes me feel better about a bad day somehow.
(no subject)
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