Superpower No. 16
by lamardeuse

Rating:  NC-17

Inspired by this drawing by Crysothemis.









As a kid, Rodney had given some thought to what it would be like to have superpowers. Because honestly, what kid wouldn't? He hadn't devoted an inordinate amount of time on the subject, mind you, because he'd had plenty of more important things to think about, even at five. Still, he'd managed to develop a ratings system, an objective ranking of the top forty or so, based on desirability, utility and coolness. Super strength and super hearing and such tended to be low on the list – brawn and the ability to eavesdrop were highly overrated. Superman bored him to tears.

While there were slight changes to his preferred superpowers over time, his favorites remained firmly in place throughout his childhood. Right at the top, unchallenged, was mind control. Why would you ever want to exert yourself leaping tall buildings or clobbering bad guys if you could just convince them that what they truly wanted to go to prison? Not to mention it would be a vast help in his own life, from influencing the huge moron in Grade Six to stick his own head in the toilet for a change to getting his sister to leave him alone to making his parents believe they actually liked one another. When you considered all the other possibilities, there really wasn't any competition.

Rodney was convinced of this until he slammed face-first into puberty, and then, in a move that surprised no one but Rodney, mind control slipped from its top spot for the first time in nearly a decade, to be supplanted by the former number sixteen on the list: X-ray vision. Because – well. The benefits were obvious, and not worth enumerating, especially when doing so usually gave him an inconvenient hard-on in the middle of his advanced physics class.

As Rodney grew to adulthood, those two superpowers remained locked in eternal combat, vying for his favor. Their relative placement depended on whether lust or frustration was the dominant theme in his life at the time. When he'd nearly ascended, the accelerated genius, telekinesis and mind-reading, while undoubtedly cool, had been a disappointment, because at some point he would have liked to get to experience one of his top superpowers, achieve his boyhood dream if only for a short time.

Still, the whole near-death experience tended to shove such disappointments to the back burner, and by the time he was back to normal, the regret had dulled. He continued to feel at loose ends and strangely disconnected from his body for some time afterward, though, and that was annoying. You'd think it would be enough that he was too stupid to understand the new math he'd created, but oh, no, for a while there he couldn't even walk down the damned corridor without having to devote all his concentration to walking in a straight line.

It was on one of these perilous journeys from the lab to the mess hall that he came upon Colonel Sheppard, or rather, stumbled to a halt a few yards from him so as not to careen into him like an idiot. He was talking to Major Lorne, and he was – leaning.

It struck Rodney for approximately the millionth time that he'd never seen an American military officer with worse posture than Sheppard. He was constantly leaning or lounging or slumping; hell, the man could slouch while standing at attention. It wasn't that Rodney really cared all that much about the rules of the US Air Force; the simple truth was that Rodney found it oddly – well, all right, fascinating – to witness Sheppard's various poses and contortions. Somewhere along the way, Rodney had passed through contempt and envy for Sheppard's supple twists and turns into a guarded appreciation for them.

This pose, though, was ridiculous, even for Sheppard. He was nominally leaning against a wall, using one arm fully extended at the shoulder to support himself. His other hand rested on his hip, elbow jutting out. This in itself was not unusual, but his left leg was: it was twisted like strand of spaghetti in front of his other leg, until the toe of his boot finally came to rest on the toe of the other. Even studying it closely, Rodney had no idea how he was managing to stand like that without causing himself permanent injury. It resembled nothing so much as a position out of the Kama Sutra, and Rodney realized too late that his perusal of Sheppard was accompanied by a feeling that dangerously approximated lust.

And then it happened: suddenly, he could see Sheppard in the same position, only this time he was stark naked. Rodney blinked a few times, but the image didn't go away. His mind scrambled for possible explanations for this bizarre turn of events –  many of them involving various forms of mental instability –  but finally it gave up trying to explain much of anything, because God, Sheppard was beautiful.

His torso was long and lean, bisected by the playful curve of his spine, his legs were at once sturdy and graceful, the thighs muscular, and the bottom of his foot was shockingly vulnerable. Cautiously, Rodney's gaze rose again until it reached the part of Sheppard he'd deliberately skipped on the way down. If questioned, he'd have guessed that Sheppard's ass would have been as skinny as the rest of him, almost nonexistent, but nothing could have been further from the truth. On the contrary, Sheppard's ass was as round and shapely as a Playboy centerfold's, as firm, full and luscious as a sun-ripened peach, and Rodney did not just think about taking a bite out of it.

Of course, Lorne chose that moment to glance at him, and Rodney was sure every X-rated thought about Sheppard's caboose was written across his face in flashing neon letters. Lorne murmured something to Sheppard, who turned around to look at Rodney. Disappointment flared in him when he realized Sheppard now appeared to be fully clothed again, though perhaps that was a blessing.

“Rodney?” Rodney shook himself. Judging by Sheppard's tone, he'd probably said Rodney's name a couple of times while Rodney had been floating along in his lust-induced fugue state. “Hey, buddy, you okay?”

“Yes, I'm, I mean, I was just headed to the mess and you were, I noticed that – um.” Rodney took a deep breath, let it out. “I was headed to the mess.”

Sheppard's eyes twinkled; Rodney was coming to realize that meant Sheppard was laughing with him, not at him. “Okay. I was just headed there myself. Mind if I join you in a couple of minutes?”

“No, of course not. Why would I mind? I don't mind.” Unless you're naked again, Rodney thought. I don't think I could handle that right now.

More of that twinkle, enough that Rodney feared for a moment that he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. “Great. See you in a few,” he said, turning back to Lorne.

Rodney opened his mouth to speak again, then squared his shoulders and headed off down the hall past the two men. As he threw one last glance at Sheppard over his shoulder, he narrowly missed bashing into a doorframe.










Fortunately, Sheppard was fully clothed when he arrived in the mess, but there were other times over the next couple of weeks when Sheppard would show up in Rodney's field of vision without a stitch on. He considered going to visit Carson to see if he could be suffering some residual effects from the ascension machine, but even his limited knowledge of genetics ruled that out as impossible. He next thought about speaking to Heightmeyer, but that would inevitably lead to discussions about his sexuality, and he really didn't want to go there. So far, the only person he'd been able to see naked had been Sheppard (yes, he'd tried with other people, for the sake of science), and that would lead to even more discussions he didn't want to have.

All right, yes, fine, he found Sheppard attractive. But then considering every living being that had encountered Sheppard, from ascended priestesses to pond slime, had made an effort to jump his bones, Rodney didn't think this was necessarily proof of much of anything. Seeing him naked at random moments through the day – that was proof of something, but Rodney wasn't interested in sharing that information with someone who might be qualified to offer theories on the subject. For now, it was only a medium-sized distraction, and it was manageable.

Well, mostly manageable. There were occasions – which perhaps were growing more frequent – when he'd find himself thinking about Sheppard's body when he was supposed to be working. And once, only once, mind you, while jerking off in the shower, he'd found none of his regular fantasies were working, so he'd closed his eyes and pictured Sheppard in there with him, the water sliding down his bare back to his curvaceous, lickable –

Yes, all right, so it wasn't really manageable at all.









The kicker came when they went on a mission to M2D-558, or as it would forever after be known, the Planet of the Stinking Bog. They could smell it as soon as they stepped off the puddlejumper. Rodney gagged, Sheppard fanned at his face, Teyla wrinkled her nose, and even Ronon coughed.

“God, that's just – revolting,” Rodney choked.

“What the hell is that?” Sheppard demanded.

“Don't know, don't care,” Ronon muttered. “Can we go home now?”

“We still have to investigate those energy readings,” Rodney insisted. “Much as I wish we didn't.”

“Okay, so where are we going?” Ronon snapped. Rodney saw that his eyes were watering.

Rodney checked his scanner and pointed. “That way.”

'This way,' naturally, ended up bringing them closer and closer to the stink. Rodney was dismayed to find that the area around the half-ruined Ancient building had flooded, leaving it surrounded on all sides by the bog.

“Dammit,” Rodney growled. The remaining area of dry land wasn't big enough to land the puddlejumper.

“I could fly close to it and hover while you jump down,” Sheppard offered.

Rodney glared at him. “Have you ever, in three years, known me to be a jumper?”

And there was that twinkle again. “So what's your plan?”

“I don't have a plan,” Rodney shot back, as he madly scanned the bog. Oh, wait, right over...there. “Yes, I do.”

“I don't think I want to know,” Ronon grunted.










“I knew I didn't want to know,” Ronon bit out, as he squelched his way back to the jumper.

“For the millionth time, the scanner didn't show it as being that deep,” Rodney snapped, or tried to snap; snapping required he inhale more air than he was willing to suck into his lungs right now.

“I've got slime in my shorts,” Sheppard whined.

“Nobody asked you two to come to my rescue,” Rodney sniffed. “I would have extricated myself – eventually.”

“I thought you were being attacked by something under the surface!” Sheppard flared. “You were screeching so much – ”

“I was not screeching – ”

“Yeah, you were,” Ronon supplied. “Sounded like something was chewing your leg off.”

“The mud was cold! I don't like cold mud on my nether regions, all right? It's not exactly a character flaw.”

“Boys,” Teyla said, smiling over her shoulder as she walked upwind of them. “We are almost at the jumper. Shortly after that you will be home, and shortly after that you will be clean and dry again.”

“You're telling us to look on the bright side?” Rodney asked.

“Yes,” Teyla agreed. “And to convince myself that I will be able to survive another twenty minutes without retching.”









Teyla made it home without throwing up, but the hapless med tech assigned to their decontamination scan wasn't so lucky. After that, Rodney felt pretty queasy himself, and when they were finally given permission to strip, he practically tore off his clothes in his haste to get to the shower.

The decontamination showers were similar to the locker room facilities, six showers retrofitted into what had once been an Ancient communal bath.  Rodney didn't have much experience of either, preferring the perfectly adequate bathroom in his own quarters to the mano a mano towel-slapping atmosphere of shared showers, which reminded him unhappily of high school gym class. However, there was no escape this time, and he didn't much care if it meant he could finally wash the stink off himself.

John and Ronon joined him a minute or two later; Rodney didn't notice, as he was too busy scrubbing almost violently at his head with the antiseptic soap.

“Jeez, if you're not careful, you're gonna rub off what's left of your hair,” Sheppard said from somewhere right behind him, and Rodney jumped nearly a foot into the air. He felt his feet begin to slide out from under him on the tiles, and his heart leapt into his throat. The irony of dying of a cracked skull in the bathroom was a little too much for him to deal with after everything he'd been through lately.

“Hey, whoa,” Sheppard said, grabbing at his biceps with strong hands, steadying him. His voice was a palpable thing about three inches from Rodney's right earlobe, and Rodney tensed to avoid shivering in Sheppard's arms like a teenage girl.

“Thank you,” Rodney managed to croak, putting every effort into standing on his own two feet. It was difficult to resist the temptation to lean back against Sheppard's very warm, very solid, very naked body. Rodney shut his eyes and began constructing Pascal's triangle in his head; he was on the seventeenth row by the time he felt Sheppard's hands leave him.

Rodney resumed washing, listening to the easy banter between Sheppard and Ronon as they scrubbed at the mud and slime. The bottle of disinfectant shampoo was passed around, and Rodney couldn't help glancing at Sheppard as he took it from him. Sheppard's hair was finally nearly flat, though there were a couple of defiant strands still standing proudly at attention. It was ridiculous and strangely endearing, and Rodney cleared his throat and murmured his thanks and tried to ignore the prickling heat in his fingertips when Sheppard's hand brushed against his as they passed the bottle.

“How're you doing?” Sheppard asked, solicitous.

“Fine,” Rodney answered, concentrating on keeping his gaze level as he answered. “I think I scoured away my entire epidermis, but otherwise, I'm fine.”

Sheppard chuckled. “You do look a little pinker than usual,” he said, reaching out to briefly run the pad of his thumb over Rodney's cheek. It was a hint of a ghost of a touch, but it caused Rodney to suck in a breath and stare at him, flabbergasted and frozen and foolishly, impossibly turned on.

Sheppard frowned, as though he were just now remembering something, then dropped his hand and took a step back. “I, uh,” he said.

“Yes,” Rodney said, mind sucked dry of every intelligent thought. “Good point.”

Sheppard nodded solemnly. “Well, I'm pretty much done, I guess. I think I'd better – ” He jerked his head in the direction of the exit.

“Sure,” Rodney said, flapping a hand. “See you later.”

Sheppard stared at him for a few moments more, then turned and headed for the exit. As though pulled by a powerful gravity, Rodney's gaze lowered until he was staring right at Sheppard's ass.

Oh, god, it was as gorgeous as he'd imagined. What the hell was he supposed to do with that?









Rodney dried off, dressed in the clean change of clothes that had been provided for them, then stumbled off to his quarters. They'd been told to take the rest of the night off and prepare for a debriefing in the late morning, and Rodney was looking forward to spending the next twelve hours in a semi-comatose state.

He was most of the way to blissful unconsciousness when he heard the door chime. Groaning, he flopped over onto his back and called out, “What the hell do you want?”

The door slid open to reveal none other than Sheppard silhouetted in the doorway; despite the darkness, Rodney recognized him right away, his hair having fully recovered from the shower. Heart slamming against his ribs, he pushed himself up on his elbows and blinked to clear his vision.

“Oh,” Sheppard said, taking a hesitant step inside the room. Up to now, Rodney had had no idea Sheppard could be hesitant. “Sorry. Didn't realize you'd be asleep.”

“I wasn't. Not quite, anyway.” Sheppard shifted from one foot to another. “What can I do for you?”

“What can you – oh, uh, no. I was just checking to make sure you were okay.”

Rodney stared at him, but it wasn't doing much good considering Sheppard was nothing more than a vague shape in the gloom. Sighing, he flipped on a light. “I'm fine. Despite my shrieking, as you call it – ”

“I said screeching.”

“What?”

“Screeching.” Sheppard scratched behind his ear. “It's, uh. Not as bad as shrieking.”

Rodney stared at him. “Yes, thank you for that. Anyway, despite that, I'm fully recovered from the ordeal. Or at least I will be after a full night's sleep.”

Sheppard took another step toward him. “It's just that you've been – kind of weird lately.”

Rodney frowned, then flung off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. If he was going to have this conversation, he needed to at least be sitting up. “'Kind of weird.' Is that your expert analysis, Doctor Jung?”

“Come on, Rodney,” Sheppard wheedled, “don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. The bumping into furniture, the way you stare off into space sometimes in the mess – are you sure you're not suffering any residual effects from that ascension machine?”

Rodney opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I thought about that, but I ruled it out.”

“You ruled it out. You mean you haven't seen Carson about it?”

Rodney had been having a really shitty couple of weeks, compounded by the hallucinations he'd been having about the man in front of him. He was exhausted, cranky and sexually frustrated, and while he supposed it was theoretically possible for him to have been less in the mood for this conversation, he was damned if he could fathom how it would be. “What are you, my mother?” Rodney snapped. “Because if you are, I have four and a half years of therapy bills I'd like you to pay for.”

Sheppard remained motionless for a second or two, and then he moved so quickly Rodney didn't even realize he'd been hauled to his feet until he felt the cool breeze against the backs of his knees and the rough brush of Sheppard's uniform pants against his thighs. Sheppard's hands dug into his bared arms, fingers denting Rodney's flesh. Before he could react, Sheppard yanked him forward until Rodney's face was mere inches from his.

Rodney sucked in a startled breath. He'd never seen Sheppard this angry before, and that included Doranda.

“You. Are. An asshole,” Sheppard breathed, each word punctuated by a short, sharp shake. “You are the most clueless – you make me – you were dying, you died, and I – ”

“I'm – ” Rodney began.

“Shut up,” John growled, and then he yanked him forward again, only Rodney had nowhere to go so his nose crashed into John's, and then John growled again and tilted his head and oh. Oh.

“I'm sorry,” Rodney managed, when Sheppard finally let him up for air.

“You're still an asshole,” Sheppard murmured, hands gentling on Rodney's arms, palms sliding up and over his shoulders.

“Point taken,” Rodney said, leaning in to bump into Sheppard's face again.








The first thing Rodney saw when he woke up was Sheppard's naked body. It took him three full seconds to realize he wasn't imagining it.

The heat of Atlantis' summer was upon them, and even with the climate control, the strength of the morning sun heating the side of the tower raised the temperature to the brink of discomfort. He usually slept without covers, but never without clothes. This morning, though, his clothes and his sheets seemed to be nowhere to be found, not that Rodney minded overmuch. Sheppard really was as stunning as he'd imagined and then some, because now Rodney had permission to look, to touch, to have, maybe even to –

“Stop staring,” Sheppard murmured. Rodney looked up, startled. Sheppard's eyes were still closed, his expression unreadable.

“I wasn't staring,” Rodney said defensively.

Eyes still closed, Sheppard raised an eyebrow.

“All right, maybe I was,” Rodney grumbled. “I'm sorry, I didn't know I wasn't allowed.”

Sheppard slowly stretched his arms over his head; his hips twisted on the bed, curving his spine into a lopsided S, and goddamn it, that just wasn't fair. “You're allowed,” Sheppard said, cracking an eye open. “I just – 'm not used to it.”

“How can you be not used to people staring at you?” Rodney demanded, incredulous. “You – ” he flapped a hand at him. “You're – well, you're – you.”

Sheppard reached up and curved an arm around the back of Rodney's neck, tugging him down. “C'mere,” he said. “'S too early for this.” Apparently it wasn't too early for kissing, though, because Sheppard proceeded to do just that, heedless of morning breath. Rodney didn't mind one bit, especially when kissing turned to fondling, which turned to groping, which swiftly devolved into all-out rubbing.

“Oh, god,” Rodney breathed, “I just want to go on record as saying I really like this a lot.”

Sheppard's only answer was a breathy grunt as he licked up the underside of Rodney's cock. Rodney slammed his head back against the pillows and babbled a long stream of something that might have been Genii or Ancient or binary code, and within an embarrassingly short period of time he was on the brink of coming.

“Don't – oh, wait, I – ” Rodney reached down and tugged at Sheppard's shoulder, urging him up. Sheppard slithered up his body like a snake, all undulating spine and toothy grin, and then he was kissing Rodney with his slightly salty mouth and grinding his own erection against Rodney's and that was it, Rodney wound his arms around Sheppard's smooth back and held on until the bed drifted back to earth.

"Hey," Rodney said, when he could actually remember how to speak, "what was your favorite superpower?"

"Hmmmph?" Sheppard said, obviously still relearning the language.

"Your favorite superpower. What superpower did you want to have most when you were a kid?"

Sheppard's face broke into a goofy grin. "Flying."

Rodney snorted. "Figures."

Sheppard nosed against Rodney's shoulder, snuffling a little. "Well, that and X-ray vision when I was a teenager. Why?"

Rodney smiled and shook his head. "No reason."

"Mmmkay," Sheppard said affably, planting a kiss on Rodney's shoulder before rising and heading for the bathroom. Rodney listened to the sounds of water running and closed his eyes. He didn't register when the water stopped, but he felt the dip in the mattress that told him Sheppard had returned. Sheppard didn't make any move to lie back down, though, just remained sitting on the edge of the bed, and it took Rodney's drowsy brain a few seconds to figure out  what he was doing.

Rolling onto his side, Rodney murmured, “Stop staring.”

“I'm allowed,” John countered, and Rodney grinned into his pillow and drifted off to sleep under John's gaze.




End



March 2008

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