Observation
by lamardeuse
by lamardeuse
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Warnings (highlight to view): explicit sex, character suffering post-traumatic stress
Set after SGA 2x20, "Allies."
John wasn’t sure how he’d noticed it, but he’d noticed. Rodney was – watching him.
For a guy who was about as subtle as a charging rhino, he actually made an effort to fly under the radar, but John could still tell, because after nearly three years, he knew more about Rodney than he really wanted to know. He knew his habits, his quirks, the fact that he drooled in his sleep but never snored, and the whole story of how he’d met Steven Hawking at fifteen and argued with him for an hour and a half about wormhole physics until Hawking had called campus security. Rodney took great pride in this, bouncing on his heels and smirking, supremely satisfied by his limitless capacity to annoy, even at a tender age.
John also knew that after he was taken by the Wraith, Rodney woke up with nightmares. He didn’t know how often Rodney got them, because Rodney wouldn’t tell him, but he did know they were bad, because on their first offworld mission he woke up screaming and when John tried to wake him, he got clipped on the jaw.
“Oh my God,” Rodney had murmured when he finally awoke, “I’m so sorry, I’m sorry.” He reached for John’s jaw with tentative fingers, but when John flinched at the touch, Rodney pulled back as if he’d been burned. “I’m so – ”
“It’s okay,” John had said gruffly, when he could trust his voice, because Rodney’s last cry had sounded so goddamned lost and helpless that John’s throat had tightened instinctively, “you were asleep. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
Rodney drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.
“Have you, uh, have you seen Heightmeyer?”
Rodney nodded mutely. “I have. I am.” He took a deep breath. “It’s helping.” He didn’t sound the least bit convinced.
John lifted one hand, then curled it into a fist and let it fall to his side. “Well,” he said, stupidly, “good night.”
“Yes, good night, Colonel,” Rodney said stiffly, and John got back into his sleeping bag and rolled over and spent the next hour listening to Rodney breathe evenly in the darkness, body still huddled into a lonely, shuddering ball.
Rodney started watching him not long after they got back from Earth. John didn't know why, but he couldn’t bring himself to call Rodney on it, because it probably wasn’t something he was consciously doing. After a few days, it hit him that maybe Rodney found looking at him reassuring or something. He knew it sounded egotistical, but it was the only thing that made sense. They’d put up with one another through thick and thin, and they were – well, good friends – and so maybe it made Rodney feel better to focus on him.
That was the explanation that prevailed in John’s head until one day about a month later, when he went out on a mission without Rodney and came back a victim of his own stupidity. He hadn’t been paying attention to his footing, too busy yakking with Ronon about the differences between American football and a Satedan game called choritu, when he’d tripped over a rock and split his forehead open against a low-hanging tree branch. It hadn’t been serious, but like all head wounds it had bled a lot, and by the time they got back to the gate he was feeling pretty woozy. Beckett, as usual, insisted on the stretcher, which this time he didn’t mind so much.
He closed his eyes for a few minutes, and when he opened them his heart nearly stopped, because Rodney was looking down at him, his mouth stretched taut, his face pale like he’d been the one to lose the blood. When John said, “Hey,” Rodney took a step forward, his hands outstretched and trembling, and John’s heart flipped over and maybe ran around in a circle a few times, and then a nurse came in and Rodney turned on his heel and fled.
Sixteen hours later he was released with a clean bill of health, and his head hurt and he felt like a damned idiot, so he wasn’t in the best frame of mind when Rodney showed up at his door, body vibrating like an overexcited electron.
“Rodney, I – ” John began, but that was as much as he got out before Rodney shouldered his way into John’s quarters, shoving John backwards along with him. John’s brain sloshed up against the back of his skull when Rodney pushed him into the wall, and you know, he really hadn’t needed that.
“How could you do that?” Rodney demanded, voice low and urgent, the direct opposite to the way he’d gone off on Ford, only John could tell he was just as angry, if not more so. His hands encircled John’s upper arms, holding him captive with only the lightest pressure, and John knew he could easily get free if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to.
“Easy,” John grated. “I was stupid.” He took a deep breath, willing his head to stop throbbing. “Listen, Rodney, I know it looked bad when I came in, and I’m sorry for that, but it was really no big deal.”
Which was totally the wrong thing to say, or maybe the right thing, because Rodney’s hands slid from his arms to his shoulders to his neck until he was cupping his jaw with one hand and cradling the back of his head with the other, and okay, this was new.
“Then neither is this,” Rodney said, leaning in and pressing his mouth to John’s, the kiss lightened by desperation and weighted down by the meaning of Rodney’s gaze on him for the past month, and Jesus, had he ever been wrong about that.
Rodney pulled back, his gaze darting so quickly over John’s face that John had no idea how he could manage to focus. His fingertips were still spread out over John’s scalp and John leaned back into the touch and shivered.
Okay, so he’d kind of missed having someone else’s hands on him. And as hands went, Rodney’s were pretty good – wide and capable and as startlingly gentle as his mouth.
Rodney seemed as soothed by the contact as John was, because he took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths and leaned into him a little, and they stood like that for a minute, pressed together from hip to shoulder.
“Well, this is going better than I’d hoped,” Rodney said conversationally, and John couldn’t help chuckling at that. Experimentally, he settled his hands on Rodney’s hips and pulled him that much closer, and Rodney dropped his head to John’s shoulder and groaned.
“I hate to tell you this,” John murmured, lips against Rodney’s hair, “but I don’t think I’m up for much.”
Rodney rolled his forehead back and forth a couple of times on John’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I wasn’t expecting you to put out on the first date.” He raised his head and hooked a thumb back toward the door. “Well, um, I should – ”
“Come to bed,” John heard himself murmur, and Rodney’s eyes widened, then darkened, and John had no idea how it had suddenly become this easy, but he was damned if he was going to question it now that he had it. He might be stupid about rocks, but life was too short to be stupid about a gift like this, even if it had come out of nowhere.
Rodney nodded dumbly, and John led the way to his bed, where they undressed separately and lay down together, John’s chest against Rodney’s back. As he drifted off to sleep, he felt Rodney finally relax into him, the two of them fitting together like the halves of the simplest puzzle imaginable.
John awoke to Rodney trailing soft, slow kisses over his chest and belly, one arm slung possessively around John’s hips.
“Mmm,” John murmured, “now this is what I call an alarm clock.”
“Thought you might like it,” Rodney said, teeth grazing a nipple, making John shudder. He’d already been getting hard, and that pushed him the rest of the way there.
Rodney’s fingers were teasing the waistband of John’s boxer shorts when John suddenly realized something. “You didn’t have any nightmares last night.”
Rodney froze, and John further realized that voicing this aloud had been even stupider than tripping over the rock. “No,” Rodney said thoughtfully, after the pause stretched past awkward. “No, I don’t suppose I did.” His hand splayed over John’s belly, as if measuring the steady pace of John’s breathing.
Carefully, John rolled onto his side and tugged Rodney up beside him, then pillowed his head on an arm and used the other to stroke Rodney’s neck, his chin, his cheek. Rodney darted a glance at him, then looked away, licking his lips.
“John – ”
“Shhh.” Fingernail scratching over the stubble on Rodney’s upper lip, catching on the soft, damp skin below “I’m watching you.”
Rodney closed his eyes and shivered, and it hit John then that he’d been watching Rodney for a while, probably for as long as Rodney had been watching him. Maybe this hadn’t come out of nowhere after all. Why hadn’t he figured it out before now? Why had he wasted so much time?
More importantly, why was he asking stupid questions when there were much better things he could be doing?
“I want to touch you,” Rodney whispered, eyes screwed shut, breath coming in little pants, muscles taut with anticipation.
“So touch me,” John husked, and Rodney flew into action at John’s invitation, his hands suddenly ravenous on John’s skin. John lifted his hips and Rodney pushed, and then Rodney lifted and John pushed, and when they came together again, Rodney’s cock pressed eagerly into his hip, making John feel fierce and oddly protective at the same time. John shoved Rodney over onto his back and kissed him, heedless of morning breath, while Rodney moved constantly beneath him, his mouth far from gentle now, his fingers strong and sure on John’s cock. When John came, he groaned through clenched teeth, Rodney’s thighs pressed warmly against the inside of his own. He slithered down Rodney’s body and shifted his grip on Rodney’s erection, cupping it to leave room for the wide flat of his tongue to learn the underside, the loping pulse of the vein as Rodney shuddered and fell apart, surprisingly knobby knees jerking helplessly against John’s chest as he came.
John lifted his rubber-muscled body back up the bed and flopped down beside Rodney. Propping himself up on an elbow, he studied his face closely, smiling when he noted that the last of the shadows seemed to have left him. When Rodney smiled sleepily up at him and stroked his fingertips over John’s sternum, John couldn’t help reaching out and smoothing Rodney’s disheveled hair, reveling in the newfound freedom to touch and be touched.
“Don’t tell Heightmeyer about the cure, okay?”
Rodney frowned up at him. “She won’t tell – ”
John shook his head. “It’s not that. I just don’t want her prescribing me as therapy. This bed'll get way too crowded.”
Rodney’s frown slowly eased into a smirk. “Neither do I,” he growled, and John grinned and lowered his head to press the snooze button for a little while longer.
End
July 2006
Cover art by hermine. Feedback her here.
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Stargate: Atlantis fiction