trinityofone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trinityofone) wrote2005-09-10 11:10 am
trinityofone) wrote2005-09-10 11:10 am
Fic: Little Things 2/2
Back to Part I
They come for John two days later and it’s like the first time in reverse: him struggling, Rodney scrambling, both of them screaming and straining to hold on. The outcome is the same, too, except instead of Rodney rising, he just drops away.
Up, up, up--they lift him, and John holds on, trying to think of it like an amusement park ride: sweat and grease and rocketing into the air, a little taste, just a taste, of everything you’ve ever wanted. But for once all John wants is back down on the ground--is to be back down on the ground, so he continues to fight against the hands that clutch, but it’s like fighting fate. You can’t.
They carry him into a room so huge and cavernous John can’t even begin to get a sense of it: the walls seem to stretch on for miles; the ceiling is so far above his head, it might as well be the vast blue sky, and him grounded, without wings. If I fell, he thinks, and imagines the long, slow plummet to earth. More rope, he thinks, and it’s almost enough to make him want to laugh.
They put him down on something long and flat and wooden, and if John squints his eyes he can almost pretend it’s a basketball court, the floor of a conference room or concert hall when all the chairs are stacked and put away. For a few minutes they just stare at him--waiting for him to do something, John guesses. But of course, he isn’t going to give them the satisfaction. He wonders what McKay did, whether he yelled and screamed, as John had yelled and screamed, whether he talked their ears off. Or maybe he knew, for once, that it was better to be silent, and he just stood there, and said nothing at all.
After a while they get bored and they take to poking him, prodding him with their fingers, scooting him forward a few inches with the sides of their hands. He endures it stoically, hoping, praying that they’ll lose interest, find some other--
They wrap their fingers around his arms and make his limbs move, jostling him up and down, maybe hoping he’ll take the hint. He tries to stay loose, worried now, a different worry: it would be so easy, far too easy for them to snap something, make him break.
They jiggle him around for a while until he starts to get nauseated; he grits his teeth and tries to hold it in--he’s a pilot, for God’s sake--but his stomach, spoiled by the beautiful, awful jumpers, gives up on him. He pukes, splattering the wooden surface and the toes of his boots, but getting one of them a little, too. He’s pleased about that.
And yet still they don’t let go, and their laughter rolls above him, like a cannonade, like thunder.
*
Rodney’s waiting for him when he gets back: sitting in the living room, on the couch, staring at the silent TV. He’s cleaned up the mess John made the last time, and at first John is furious--wants to scream and yell and shake his fist. But he knows what McKay will say in response, knows almost word for word the conversation that’ll ensue, and John...John doesn’t want to talk.
“Colonel,” McKay says, standing stiffly once the roof has been returned to its rightful position. “Are you-- Is there anything...?”
“Yes,” John says, flush full of new resolve. “Shut up.”
McKay nods, seeming to accept--even expect--this. “I’ll be,” he says, and gestures toward the kitchen.
John grabs his arm. Jerks him around. “I said ‘shut up,’” he says, his voice a low growl he barely recognizes, “not leave.” And those are all the words he has for now, for tonight. Possibly forever.
(McKay, too, is oddly quiet, reduced to little more than gasps and tiny whisper-moans. Funny: John always figured him for a talker. But it’s all right, because nothing, nothing, can silence his eloquent hands.)
Afterward, they lie together on the bed. John’s limbs ache from being jerked around, from spending too much time on this flat, unforgiving surface. And yet, he’s remarkably unwilling to move, to get up. His hands move on Rodney’s back: restless, sweeping motions. Like he’s searching for some small patch of skin he hasn’t yet touched.
“Well,” says Rodney, slowly, some time later. “That was...unexpected.”
John finds his tongue, heavy and thick, lolling at the bottom of his mouth. “Was it?” he asks. “Was it really?”
John can feel the movement of Rodney’s eyelashes against his bare shoulder as he rolls his eyes. “Right, silly me: I forgot that I’m an intergalactic playboy who expects everyone to whom I toss half a smile to try to jump me. No, wait--” Voice slippery with sarcasm yet teasing, gentle. “--That’s you.”
Rodney’s tone is oddly light, and something in John’s chest rolls over. He’s still feeling strangely bold, however; maybe it’s because he’s naked, or light years away from every person who’s ever known him, save one. “Seriously,” he says, pulling back so that Rodney’s features sharpen, unblur. “You never...?”
“Sometimes,” Rodney admits, his hand on John’s chest, not moving, just resting there. Fingers splayed. “But you know me: when I fantasize, I go the whole nine yards. Or the whole 8.2342177493 meters, I should say.”
John buries his face in Rodney’s shoulder when he laughs. Rodney tentatively threads his fingers through John’s hair and murmurs something against the side of his head. “Still,” it sounds like he says, “why now?”
But McKay’s too smart to have asked a question like that, and John’s not dumb enough to answer.
*
The walls have ears. The roof has eyes. But John’s spent too much time cowering, afraid. If he wants to bend Rodney over the dining room table and fuck him, he will. If he wants to suck Rodney off in the middle of the kitchen, he can. If he wants to pass Rodney in the hall and catch him by the wrist, spin him around, kiss him so hard they both forget how to breathe, well--it’s not like there’s anybody here to stop him.
And it’s not like they have much else to do with their time, anyway.
Both of them are bored out of their minds. “There’s nothing to do!” Rodney complains one morning, after their meal has been delivered, consumed, and put away. Then his expression changes, the corner of his mouth moving just so. It’s a facial adjustment that John must’ve seen a thousand times, back in--before; a thousand times, and he never gave it a second thought, except maybe to roll his eyes, knowing that--“What are we going to do today, Brain?”--once again, McKay was up to something. But now John sees it, that tiny quirk of a lip, and every nerve ending in his body lights up like Christmas. Like...like the city did once, under his touch.
But really: momentary distractions aside, sweet Jesus, are they bored. For a while, they try coming up with mathematical puzzles for each other to solve, but the thrill of problem-->intellection-->solution only works for as long as it can distract them from the larger problem they still haven’t solved. Which is to say, not very long.
Not to mention.
“Well, after all these years working with the military, I guess I’m finally getting to experience what it’s like for your average jarhead,” Rodney says one day, coming back from above, jumpy and jittery and bruised. They’re too smart, their hosts, their captors, to take both of them at once, you see. “You know,” Rodney says, holding up a hand to stave John off a minute longer, “‘Hours of intense boredom punctuated by moments of abject terror.’”
Despite his best efforts to control them, John can see Rodney’s shoulderblades vibrating beneath the fabric of his shirt. John reaches out a hand and lets it hover just outside of what he likes to think of as Rodney’s personal electromagnetic field. He holds it there, not touching (Rodney doesn’t like to be touched, after), but being there, waiting, until Rodney’s breathing has slowed, until he’s calm again.
But Rodney is not calm. Rodney is wide red eyes and stubborn chin and angry slash of a mouth. Rodney is the voice he’s been hearing in his own head from the second this started, from the moment it all began. His hand comes up and catches John’s, the barest contact like a hiss of sparks, and Rodney says, “This has to stop.”
“I have a plan,” John admits. “It’s a really bad plan.” Then he swallows, and forces himself to say it. “Especially for you.”
McKay doesn’t blink. “Tell me.”
*
The next morning, when the ground shakes and the food slides through the front door, they both ignore it with a studied nonchalance that’d make the gods of acting weep. McKay has fashioned a set of chess pieces out of the remains of the wire and wax tchotchkes, and John carves the board directly into the dining room table, his knife-blade sending up thick chunks of taupe plastique. They spend the rest of the day alternately making fun of each other’s efforts (“What’s this one supposed to be? A giraffe?” “I may not be able to fly in a straight line, Colonel, but at least I can draw one!”) and debating different versions of the Sicilian Defence (“The Najdorf variation isn’t tame, it’s sensible. And it’s a hell of a lot better than your accelerated Dragon. Look at you, you’re throwing yourself right into a Marocsy Bind! It’s a needless risk!” “Yes, but that’s half the fun.”). John even wins, once or twice. All in all, he’s had worse days.
(“Do you need to eat something?” John asks. “The powerbars, just a piece...”
“No, let’s save them, I can wait a little longer. It hasn’t been that long, I’m barely even irritable.”
“How can you tell?” John asks, and Rodney growls at him in response, growls and pushes him backward onto the bed. His bare shoulders rub painfully against the hard plastic, so he rolls them both onto their sides and reaches a hand down between them. Rodney moans and pushes up against him, into his hot fist. Their legs lock together, a messy tangle of limbs. “You feel that?” John asks, his hand on Rodney’s cock. “D’you feel me, touching you?” And Rodney would surely roll his eyes at that if he weren’t so busy squeezing them shut and coming all over, coating them both with the physical evidence of what John’s done, of what he can do.
“I guess that’s one advantage of a plastic bed,” John says, later. “Easy clean up.”)
The second day is worse. McKay becomes snappish, then sullen, staring at the uneaten tray of food by the door. John tries to distract him, but McKay can no longer concentrate; when he gets up to go to the bathroom, he stumbles--dizzy, drunk. “That’s enough,” John hisses, pulling Rodney into one of the closets, the illusion of privacy. He tears open the wrapper of one of the four remaining powerbars and forces Rodney to eat it, piece by broken-off piece. “Stop,” Rodney says, after half of it’s gone. “No, really, stop. That’s enough for now. I can handle it.”
“I really don’t think you can,” John says, glaring, looming over him in the dark.
McKay pushes past him. “Fuck you, Colonel.”
(“Fuck me,” Rodney says. “Go on. Do it.”
But John doesn’t want to fuck him, not now. Right now he wants--he needs-- And so he says, “Turn over,” pushing Rodney’s shoulder, straddling his thighs. The air smells like cocoa butter, like the beach, and John runs his hand, slick with sunscreen, up the length of Rodney’s cock. “I never thought I’d be grateful for your ridiculous radiation phobia,” he mutters, and Rodney manages an indignant, “It’s not ridiculous!” before John lifts himself up and lowers himself down, and then Rodney’s cock is sliding hot inside his body and all John has to do is move, just move, and they’ll both have their release.)
Powerbars number two and three disappear by the fifth day, and meanwhile, John’s starting to feel it, too, really feel it. They spend more and more time just lying in bed, watching the oddly static shadows projected on the walls. Sometimes they still fuck, but they have less and less stamina, less and less energy to waste. When they touch each other now, it’s to no purpose, and John would wonder why they bother if he wasn’t already so very, very aware of the answer to that.
On the afternoon of the sixth day, John struggles to his feet to fetch them both a drink of water (because this game would be over far too quickly, if they denied themselves even that), and stepping into the living room, he sees: the old tray of food is gone, and for the first time, no new tray has been set in its place.
“Huh,” John says, because his higher thought processes have pretty much taken a vacation. Water, he thinks, and he gets it, and he helps McKay to drink it, and then he says “huh” again and almost starts when through cracked lips, McKay pushes the word, “What?”
“Food’s gone,” he says. Every syllable an effort. “They took it away. Didn’t bring more.”
“Huh,” McKay says, and John thinks of Echo, wasting away to nothing. “So’re we...winning or...losing?”
McKay’s eyes are dry; the thick, dark lashes that John only recently allowed himself to notice crusty with sleep. His irises, once a rich, vivid blue, are milky and tired. Far too ready, far too eager to close. Everything about them screams, Lie to me.
So John does.
“Winning,” he says, heavy tongue slurring the word. “‘S great plan. ‘S gonna work.”
And he says: “Hold on, Rodney. It’s just a little bit longer. Hold on.”
*
There’s a roaring in John’s ears, like a cannonade, like thunder. Sometimes he thinks it's a jumper—Teyla and Ronon, a half-dozen marines, Beckett, maybe, at the controls. The cavalry come, hailing the call of Gondor. Sometimes he thinks it's them, ripping apart the roof, tearing the house down around their ears. Bored of playing, sick of the same old toys. And sometimes he forgets, thinks he’s back in Atlantis and that the Wraith are attacking, or else he’s in Afghanistan again, and the sky around him is turning black. But it doesn’t matter, because he knows he can handle those things and God, is he dying for the chance to pick on someone his own size.
Sometimes...sometimes he thinks he’s back where this all began, following McKay through that thick forest of strange trees with almost no trunks, going into the clearing just a hundred or so paces ahead of Teyla and Ronon. Barely any distance at all. But enough, more than enough, as the hands came down out of the sky and scooped them up, him and McKay both, scooped them up and tucked them away, like a great find, like the tin soldier he once discovered buried in the back yard, covered in mud and rust and the filth of ages. Missing one leg.
They’d been put in separate pockets, and sometimes, even though he can feel the hitching movements of McKay’s chest beside him on the bed, sometimes John thinks he’s back in that horrible moment, and he’s never going to see Rodney, see anything but the choking press of sweat and fabric and alien lint ever again. So he’d counted--he counts--one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four, and he’d told himself that if he just kept his breathing regulated and his head level, he’d find a way out of this, somehow.
Then Rodney was there on the other side, and it became both better and worse, because he’s not alone in this, he’s not alone, and that means he has more than just himself to lose.
*
The last thing he remembers is his arms around McKay’s back; then he opens his eyes, and his arms are empty, and Rodney is gone.
He sits up. His head spins--the hunger’s still there, then, and the dehydration, but the ground underneath him is soft and warm. He is surrounded by green, a verdant tapestry with accents of golden light. Real light, natural light. Sunlight.
His skin prickles, lightly, pleasantly. He is naked and lying in the dirt, and in all respects save one, he has never been more comfortable in his entire life.
But; “Rodney?” he calls--barely more than a whisper, all that he can manage, more than he should allow. Hope, he’s learned, is better left locked away; it only holds you back. But: “Rodney!” On his feet now, this brave new world spinning all around him. “Answer me, goddammit! Rodney!”
Then he sees it, coming at him through the trees, through the waving grass; and at first John thinks it’s a final, hunger-induced hallucination--Get in, Constant--but...but he would never conjure up a Rodney so skin and bone, ragged, with his ribs poking claw-like through his chest. The Rodney he wants is vibrant and whole and unscarred.
But he’ll take what he can get.
“You’re awake,” this Rodney says. Standing staring at each other across the expanse of dirt and shoots of green. “They...they left us food. I ate some. I’m sorry.”
He looks upset, guilty, a shadow of the expression he wore when Kolya cut him. But John shakes his head--no. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he says. “We’re--” And crossing that space is as effortless as breathing.
“Look at us,” Rodney says, laughing, running his hands over John’s arms--compulsive, hungry touches. “Adam and Steve.”
John looks down at the warm press of naked bodies--and yes, that’s it, that’s it exactly. He feels like Adam, like the first man there ever was. Shiny and new.
They’re still holding each other and not saying anything, and it would be a little weird if it weren’t exactly what he thinks he needs right now. Rodney smells like sweat and skin and nothing else, and their foreheads are touching, like Athosians, and John thinks that’s a custom he finally gets.
“Hey,” says Rodney, mumbling, not moving. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get back to the gate, would you?”
John shakes his head. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the answer to that question, or any other, and for once that is fan-fucking-tastic.
He says, “The world was all before them, and Providence their guide.”
Rodney pulls back and gives him a look like he’s a crazy bastard who’s taken to quoting Milton in the nude. Which he is. “Providence?” Rodney says. “Well, personally, I’d prefer a GPS and, I don’t know, a map.” Then he looks down at himself, and back up at John, and it’s clear from his face that it’s okay, that they can be crazy naked bastards together. “But seeing as I wasn’t born with either of those items attached to my person, I suppose we can try it your way, for a little while.”
Blades of grass as tall as redwoods waver and part before them, ushered by an invisible breath.
“Yeah,” says John. “Let’s do that.”
*************
They come for John two days later and it’s like the first time in reverse: him struggling, Rodney scrambling, both of them screaming and straining to hold on. The outcome is the same, too, except instead of Rodney rising, he just drops away.
Up, up, up--they lift him, and John holds on, trying to think of it like an amusement park ride: sweat and grease and rocketing into the air, a little taste, just a taste, of everything you’ve ever wanted. But for once all John wants is back down on the ground--is to be back down on the ground, so he continues to fight against the hands that clutch, but it’s like fighting fate. You can’t.
They carry him into a room so huge and cavernous John can’t even begin to get a sense of it: the walls seem to stretch on for miles; the ceiling is so far above his head, it might as well be the vast blue sky, and him grounded, without wings. If I fell, he thinks, and imagines the long, slow plummet to earth. More rope, he thinks, and it’s almost enough to make him want to laugh.
They put him down on something long and flat and wooden, and if John squints his eyes he can almost pretend it’s a basketball court, the floor of a conference room or concert hall when all the chairs are stacked and put away. For a few minutes they just stare at him--waiting for him to do something, John guesses. But of course, he isn’t going to give them the satisfaction. He wonders what McKay did, whether he yelled and screamed, as John had yelled and screamed, whether he talked their ears off. Or maybe he knew, for once, that it was better to be silent, and he just stood there, and said nothing at all.
After a while they get bored and they take to poking him, prodding him with their fingers, scooting him forward a few inches with the sides of their hands. He endures it stoically, hoping, praying that they’ll lose interest, find some other--
They wrap their fingers around his arms and make his limbs move, jostling him up and down, maybe hoping he’ll take the hint. He tries to stay loose, worried now, a different worry: it would be so easy, far too easy for them to snap something, make him break.
They jiggle him around for a while until he starts to get nauseated; he grits his teeth and tries to hold it in--he’s a pilot, for God’s sake--but his stomach, spoiled by the beautiful, awful jumpers, gives up on him. He pukes, splattering the wooden surface and the toes of his boots, but getting one of them a little, too. He’s pleased about that.
And yet still they don’t let go, and their laughter rolls above him, like a cannonade, like thunder.
*
Rodney’s waiting for him when he gets back: sitting in the living room, on the couch, staring at the silent TV. He’s cleaned up the mess John made the last time, and at first John is furious--wants to scream and yell and shake his fist. But he knows what McKay will say in response, knows almost word for word the conversation that’ll ensue, and John...John doesn’t want to talk.
“Colonel,” McKay says, standing stiffly once the roof has been returned to its rightful position. “Are you-- Is there anything...?”
“Yes,” John says, flush full of new resolve. “Shut up.”
McKay nods, seeming to accept--even expect--this. “I’ll be,” he says, and gestures toward the kitchen.
John grabs his arm. Jerks him around. “I said ‘shut up,’” he says, his voice a low growl he barely recognizes, “not leave.” And those are all the words he has for now, for tonight. Possibly forever.
(McKay, too, is oddly quiet, reduced to little more than gasps and tiny whisper-moans. Funny: John always figured him for a talker. But it’s all right, because nothing, nothing, can silence his eloquent hands.)
Afterward, they lie together on the bed. John’s limbs ache from being jerked around, from spending too much time on this flat, unforgiving surface. And yet, he’s remarkably unwilling to move, to get up. His hands move on Rodney’s back: restless, sweeping motions. Like he’s searching for some small patch of skin he hasn’t yet touched.
“Well,” says Rodney, slowly, some time later. “That was...unexpected.”
John finds his tongue, heavy and thick, lolling at the bottom of his mouth. “Was it?” he asks. “Was it really?”
John can feel the movement of Rodney’s eyelashes against his bare shoulder as he rolls his eyes. “Right, silly me: I forgot that I’m an intergalactic playboy who expects everyone to whom I toss half a smile to try to jump me. No, wait--” Voice slippery with sarcasm yet teasing, gentle. “--That’s you.”
Rodney’s tone is oddly light, and something in John’s chest rolls over. He’s still feeling strangely bold, however; maybe it’s because he’s naked, or light years away from every person who’s ever known him, save one. “Seriously,” he says, pulling back so that Rodney’s features sharpen, unblur. “You never...?”
“Sometimes,” Rodney admits, his hand on John’s chest, not moving, just resting there. Fingers splayed. “But you know me: when I fantasize, I go the whole nine yards. Or the whole 8.2342177493 meters, I should say.”
John buries his face in Rodney’s shoulder when he laughs. Rodney tentatively threads his fingers through John’s hair and murmurs something against the side of his head. “Still,” it sounds like he says, “why now?”
But McKay’s too smart to have asked a question like that, and John’s not dumb enough to answer.
*
The walls have ears. The roof has eyes. But John’s spent too much time cowering, afraid. If he wants to bend Rodney over the dining room table and fuck him, he will. If he wants to suck Rodney off in the middle of the kitchen, he can. If he wants to pass Rodney in the hall and catch him by the wrist, spin him around, kiss him so hard they both forget how to breathe, well--it’s not like there’s anybody here to stop him.
And it’s not like they have much else to do with their time, anyway.
Both of them are bored out of their minds. “There’s nothing to do!” Rodney complains one morning, after their meal has been delivered, consumed, and put away. Then his expression changes, the corner of his mouth moving just so. It’s a facial adjustment that John must’ve seen a thousand times, back in--before; a thousand times, and he never gave it a second thought, except maybe to roll his eyes, knowing that--“What are we going to do today, Brain?”--once again, McKay was up to something. But now John sees it, that tiny quirk of a lip, and every nerve ending in his body lights up like Christmas. Like...like the city did once, under his touch.
But really: momentary distractions aside, sweet Jesus, are they bored. For a while, they try coming up with mathematical puzzles for each other to solve, but the thrill of problem-->intellection-->solution only works for as long as it can distract them from the larger problem they still haven’t solved. Which is to say, not very long.
Not to mention.
“Well, after all these years working with the military, I guess I’m finally getting to experience what it’s like for your average jarhead,” Rodney says one day, coming back from above, jumpy and jittery and bruised. They’re too smart, their hosts, their captors, to take both of them at once, you see. “You know,” Rodney says, holding up a hand to stave John off a minute longer, “‘Hours of intense boredom punctuated by moments of abject terror.’”
Despite his best efforts to control them, John can see Rodney’s shoulderblades vibrating beneath the fabric of his shirt. John reaches out a hand and lets it hover just outside of what he likes to think of as Rodney’s personal electromagnetic field. He holds it there, not touching (Rodney doesn’t like to be touched, after), but being there, waiting, until Rodney’s breathing has slowed, until he’s calm again.
But Rodney is not calm. Rodney is wide red eyes and stubborn chin and angry slash of a mouth. Rodney is the voice he’s been hearing in his own head from the second this started, from the moment it all began. His hand comes up and catches John’s, the barest contact like a hiss of sparks, and Rodney says, “This has to stop.”
“I have a plan,” John admits. “It’s a really bad plan.” Then he swallows, and forces himself to say it. “Especially for you.”
McKay doesn’t blink. “Tell me.”
*
The next morning, when the ground shakes and the food slides through the front door, they both ignore it with a studied nonchalance that’d make the gods of acting weep. McKay has fashioned a set of chess pieces out of the remains of the wire and wax tchotchkes, and John carves the board directly into the dining room table, his knife-blade sending up thick chunks of taupe plastique. They spend the rest of the day alternately making fun of each other’s efforts (“What’s this one supposed to be? A giraffe?” “I may not be able to fly in a straight line, Colonel, but at least I can draw one!”) and debating different versions of the Sicilian Defence (“The Najdorf variation isn’t tame, it’s sensible. And it’s a hell of a lot better than your accelerated Dragon. Look at you, you’re throwing yourself right into a Marocsy Bind! It’s a needless risk!” “Yes, but that’s half the fun.”). John even wins, once or twice. All in all, he’s had worse days.
(“Do you need to eat something?” John asks. “The powerbars, just a piece...”
“No, let’s save them, I can wait a little longer. It hasn’t been that long, I’m barely even irritable.”
“How can you tell?” John asks, and Rodney growls at him in response, growls and pushes him backward onto the bed. His bare shoulders rub painfully against the hard plastic, so he rolls them both onto their sides and reaches a hand down between them. Rodney moans and pushes up against him, into his hot fist. Their legs lock together, a messy tangle of limbs. “You feel that?” John asks, his hand on Rodney’s cock. “D’you feel me, touching you?” And Rodney would surely roll his eyes at that if he weren’t so busy squeezing them shut and coming all over, coating them both with the physical evidence of what John’s done, of what he can do.
“I guess that’s one advantage of a plastic bed,” John says, later. “Easy clean up.”)
The second day is worse. McKay becomes snappish, then sullen, staring at the uneaten tray of food by the door. John tries to distract him, but McKay can no longer concentrate; when he gets up to go to the bathroom, he stumbles--dizzy, drunk. “That’s enough,” John hisses, pulling Rodney into one of the closets, the illusion of privacy. He tears open the wrapper of one of the four remaining powerbars and forces Rodney to eat it, piece by broken-off piece. “Stop,” Rodney says, after half of it’s gone. “No, really, stop. That’s enough for now. I can handle it.”
“I really don’t think you can,” John says, glaring, looming over him in the dark.
McKay pushes past him. “Fuck you, Colonel.”
(“Fuck me,” Rodney says. “Go on. Do it.”
But John doesn’t want to fuck him, not now. Right now he wants--he needs-- And so he says, “Turn over,” pushing Rodney’s shoulder, straddling his thighs. The air smells like cocoa butter, like the beach, and John runs his hand, slick with sunscreen, up the length of Rodney’s cock. “I never thought I’d be grateful for your ridiculous radiation phobia,” he mutters, and Rodney manages an indignant, “It’s not ridiculous!” before John lifts himself up and lowers himself down, and then Rodney’s cock is sliding hot inside his body and all John has to do is move, just move, and they’ll both have their release.)
Powerbars number two and three disappear by the fifth day, and meanwhile, John’s starting to feel it, too, really feel it. They spend more and more time just lying in bed, watching the oddly static shadows projected on the walls. Sometimes they still fuck, but they have less and less stamina, less and less energy to waste. When they touch each other now, it’s to no purpose, and John would wonder why they bother if he wasn’t already so very, very aware of the answer to that.
On the afternoon of the sixth day, John struggles to his feet to fetch them both a drink of water (because this game would be over far too quickly, if they denied themselves even that), and stepping into the living room, he sees: the old tray of food is gone, and for the first time, no new tray has been set in its place.
“Huh,” John says, because his higher thought processes have pretty much taken a vacation. Water, he thinks, and he gets it, and he helps McKay to drink it, and then he says “huh” again and almost starts when through cracked lips, McKay pushes the word, “What?”
“Food’s gone,” he says. Every syllable an effort. “They took it away. Didn’t bring more.”
“Huh,” McKay says, and John thinks of Echo, wasting away to nothing. “So’re we...winning or...losing?”
McKay’s eyes are dry; the thick, dark lashes that John only recently allowed himself to notice crusty with sleep. His irises, once a rich, vivid blue, are milky and tired. Far too ready, far too eager to close. Everything about them screams, Lie to me.
So John does.
“Winning,” he says, heavy tongue slurring the word. “‘S great plan. ‘S gonna work.”
And he says: “Hold on, Rodney. It’s just a little bit longer. Hold on.”
*
There’s a roaring in John’s ears, like a cannonade, like thunder. Sometimes he thinks it's a jumper—Teyla and Ronon, a half-dozen marines, Beckett, maybe, at the controls. The cavalry come, hailing the call of Gondor. Sometimes he thinks it's them, ripping apart the roof, tearing the house down around their ears. Bored of playing, sick of the same old toys. And sometimes he forgets, thinks he’s back in Atlantis and that the Wraith are attacking, or else he’s in Afghanistan again, and the sky around him is turning black. But it doesn’t matter, because he knows he can handle those things and God, is he dying for the chance to pick on someone his own size.
Sometimes...sometimes he thinks he’s back where this all began, following McKay through that thick forest of strange trees with almost no trunks, going into the clearing just a hundred or so paces ahead of Teyla and Ronon. Barely any distance at all. But enough, more than enough, as the hands came down out of the sky and scooped them up, him and McKay both, scooped them up and tucked them away, like a great find, like the tin soldier he once discovered buried in the back yard, covered in mud and rust and the filth of ages. Missing one leg.
They’d been put in separate pockets, and sometimes, even though he can feel the hitching movements of McKay’s chest beside him on the bed, sometimes John thinks he’s back in that horrible moment, and he’s never going to see Rodney, see anything but the choking press of sweat and fabric and alien lint ever again. So he’d counted--he counts--one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four, and he’d told himself that if he just kept his breathing regulated and his head level, he’d find a way out of this, somehow.
Then Rodney was there on the other side, and it became both better and worse, because he’s not alone in this, he’s not alone, and that means he has more than just himself to lose.
*
The last thing he remembers is his arms around McKay’s back; then he opens his eyes, and his arms are empty, and Rodney is gone.
He sits up. His head spins--the hunger’s still there, then, and the dehydration, but the ground underneath him is soft and warm. He is surrounded by green, a verdant tapestry with accents of golden light. Real light, natural light. Sunlight.
His skin prickles, lightly, pleasantly. He is naked and lying in the dirt, and in all respects save one, he has never been more comfortable in his entire life.
But; “Rodney?” he calls--barely more than a whisper, all that he can manage, more than he should allow. Hope, he’s learned, is better left locked away; it only holds you back. But: “Rodney!” On his feet now, this brave new world spinning all around him. “Answer me, goddammit! Rodney!”
Then he sees it, coming at him through the trees, through the waving grass; and at first John thinks it’s a final, hunger-induced hallucination--Get in, Constant--but...but he would never conjure up a Rodney so skin and bone, ragged, with his ribs poking claw-like through his chest. The Rodney he wants is vibrant and whole and unscarred.
But he’ll take what he can get.
“You’re awake,” this Rodney says. Standing staring at each other across the expanse of dirt and shoots of green. “They...they left us food. I ate some. I’m sorry.”
He looks upset, guilty, a shadow of the expression he wore when Kolya cut him. But John shakes his head--no. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he says. “We’re--” And crossing that space is as effortless as breathing.
“Look at us,” Rodney says, laughing, running his hands over John’s arms--compulsive, hungry touches. “Adam and Steve.”
John looks down at the warm press of naked bodies--and yes, that’s it, that’s it exactly. He feels like Adam, like the first man there ever was. Shiny and new.
They’re still holding each other and not saying anything, and it would be a little weird if it weren’t exactly what he thinks he needs right now. Rodney smells like sweat and skin and nothing else, and their foreheads are touching, like Athosians, and John thinks that’s a custom he finally gets.
“Hey,” says Rodney, mumbling, not moving. “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get back to the gate, would you?”
John shakes his head. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the answer to that question, or any other, and for once that is fan-fucking-tastic.
He says, “The world was all before them, and Providence their guide.”
Rodney pulls back and gives him a look like he’s a crazy bastard who’s taken to quoting Milton in the nude. Which he is. “Providence?” Rodney says. “Well, personally, I’d prefer a GPS and, I don’t know, a map.” Then he looks down at himself, and back up at John, and it’s clear from his face that it’s okay, that they can be crazy naked bastards together. “But seeing as I wasn’t born with either of those items attached to my person, I suppose we can try it your way, for a little while.”
Blades of grass as tall as redwoods waver and part before them, ushered by an invisible breath.
“Yeah,” says John. “Let’s do that.”
*************
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