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facetofcathy
A day of driving found them in Nashville by the afternoon and Rodney’s wallet got them a room that was so eerily similar to the one in Roanoke that it seemed like they hadn’t really driven for almost seven hours. Lunch had been a sinful pile of barbeque at a seedy looking place just off the highway. Rodney had chased it with a sampling of fine southern baking that John had christened the world’s first public piegasm. Rodney was now feeling bloated and stiff, John was pacing around, picking up the TV remote, setting it down and generally doing the caged cat thing he usually reserved for times when the team hadn’t been off-world in too long.
"I need a run," John said suddenly.
"Okay."
"I’ll just go then, change in my room."
"Take the other key card, I’m going to go um, try out the gym actually. I feel like I’m going to succumb to entropy if I don’t move."
Rodney enjoyed the gym, being surrounded by slightly flabby middle-aged business travelers was a world away from trying to exercise in front of the cream of the American Marines and Air Force. He enjoyed the sauna even more. He returned to his room, back stretched and loose, everything warm and happy. The room was golden with the early evening sun slanting in the window and pleasantly cool from the air conditioning whirring away. Rodney tossed his key card and wallet on the table handily placed by the door and turned into the room. John was stretched out on the bed, face down, head pillowed on his arms, naked.
"Oh," Rodney said, "oh my."
"Mmmm," John smiled drowsily. "You were gone a long time."
"Sauna. Felt fantastic, didn’t want to leave." Rodney drifted over to the bed. There was just enough room to sit down beside John. His hand drifted out, no will required and settled softly on the curve of John’s ass. Rodney refused to use words like graceful curve even in his own head, but that was the shape under his palm all the same.
"Mmmm," John said, arching up into the touch. "Warm hand."
Rodney stroked gently, teasing his fingers down the cleft, relishing the change in texture as his palm slid lower to legs covered in black wiry hair. Rodney teased higher again and John spread his legs wide, his face bore a look of serious permission and shy request both. Rodney trailed his fingers deeper, more insistently against the hot skin. "I need a shower first."
"Mmumm," John disagreed with the need for delay.
"No really, I do," Rodney assured him. "But I think I can find something to keep you, hmmm - occupied while you wait."
John watched him as he rummaged in his suitcase and pulled out a small zippered bag that looked like a miniature shaving kit. Rodney tossed it casually on the bed and resumed his seat. He returned his hand to its wanderings over John’s skin, smiling when John was hissing in pleasure and twitching from the occasional scrape of nails. Rodney pulled open the small black back and pulled out the bottle of lube. He popped the top, grinning when the sound made John twitch. He teased John with the tip of one slick finger, really, really enjoying the squirming John was reduced to. He gently let his finger slide in deeper, twisting and pulling back, then deeper yet. He slid in his second finger slowly going deeper.
John was quiet and motionless with eyes closed and breathing ragged. Rodney stilled the fingers inside John and slid his left hand slowly along John’s bare thigh. He could feel the tense muscle beneath the skin as he gently moved his hand, slowly, slowly up and down. He watched John’s face, focus clearly inward, eyes jumping behind closed lids. He kept up the motion of his soft caress. John sucked in a breath, let it out and relaxed. The thigh under Rodney’s hand softened, John’s face lost its tight concentration, and his skin bloomed in goose bumps. Rodney resumed the slow slid of his fingers, deeper and back out, in and twisting and John softened beneath him, spread out and ready.
Rodney pulled out of John again and pulled a smallish plug out of his black bag. The silicone was angled with a knob at the end and flared wide at the base. It was also a really silly looking shade of purple with gold swirls. Rodney slicked it up with more lube and gently pressed the knob against John’s slick opening. Rodney gently eased the plug in, slowing down to allow John to feel the wide base pressing against his tight ring of muscle. When Rodney could see him relax again, he pressed it all the way in.
Rodney cleaned up his hands and wiped the shiny-slick traces of lube from John’s skin and resumed his gentle caress. The skin beneath his hand was hot and flushed pink, John’s face was flush as well and sweat had bloomed on his lip, his neck and in the small of his back. Rodney bent forward and blew softly against the damp skin. John moaned and writhed beneath him. The movement must have triggered the plug to slide over just the right spot because John’s eyes snapped open and he repeated the move, a dirty smile growing on his lips. Rodney laughed at him and placed a soft kiss to one tight round cheek. "You just amuse yourself for a while. I’m going to take my time in the shower."
"Mmmm, yeah take your time," John said, shimmying his hips and gasping at the sensation.
Rodney tried to take his time, he really did, but the image of John lying naked and waiting on his bed had a very firm grip on his mind. He scuffed the towel over his hair, his underarms and balls and called himself dry enough to return to the bed.
John was quiescent as Rodney approached, but he shifted his hips up to meet Rodney’s touch, moaning slightly. Rodney forced himself to stop the slow touches; he could lose himself in these caresses, awed a little by the body spread out for him. Rodney pulled one of the pillows down, positioning it beside John and a tug on John’s hip encouraged him to roll over, pillow under his ass. John pulled his legs apart and curled his knees towards his chest. Rodney couldn’t resist a slow drag of hands up and down John’s thighs as he positioned himself.
John watched him through hooded eyes as Rodney thoroughly slicked his very hard cock. Failing to resist again, Rodney reached out with one slick hand and pulled a few strokes up and down John’s own stiff cock. John hissed out a, "Rodney," at that and Rodney grinned at him, probably quite smugly.
Rodney gently tugged at the base of the plug and it slid free easily. Tossing it to one side, he immediately pressed the head of his cock against John. Rodney had to not think about what he was doing, not think about John, lust drunk and offering himself up. He had to forget he was, sweet waltzing Jesus, fucking John Sheppard and just get on with it. He pressed himself forward, holding tight to his own reigns, letting the tight, tight, slick heat envelope him, pull him in. John hooked his hands behind his own knees and pulled his legs up. Rodney rose up on his knees and drove forward as slowly as he could. John was groaning and he was panting trying not to lose control of his breathing and thereby lose control of everything else. He closed his eyes, he could not, could not look at John. He pressed forward and then he could feel his balls nestling against John’s ass.
Rodney took three deep breaths. He counted them, really counting, not usually so difficult. On the third exhale he withdrew, the only way he could bear to leave that hot, tight place was the certainty that he was soon going to be ploughing deep back inside. He was leaning forward, pushing in with more of his mass. John was groaning louder and there were words in there, affirmations and goads and nonsense and Rodney pulled out on a hissed ‘yes’ and thrust back in on a ‘more, oh more’. Rodney fucked John, fucked him as hard as he dared to, finally able to open his eyes. They were both moaning and babbling and when John grabbed his own cock and pulled himself to a wild screaming orgasm with three hard strokes, Rodney followed him letting the clench and release of John’s body tight around him milk him dry.
John was limp beneath him, legs still in the air. Rodney let his softening cock slip free and tried to make his legs work enough to find a landing spot. He collapsed diagonally across the bed and tugged the pillow out from under John so he could uncurl his body and let his legs crash on top of Rodney’s own limbs. Rodney lay still, letting the chill breeze from the air conditioning over his skin contrast with the burn of John’s hot skin against his own.
Suddenly, John was moving, twisting his legs and writhing around to align himself to Rodney. Hands were clutching at him, fingers pressing into his arms and his face and John’s mouth was on him, kissing and biting at his bicep, his shoulder, his neck. Rodney turned his head and John’s mouth was on his, tongue pressing in. John was making gasping, desperate noises and it was as if he was trying to climb inside Rodney. He climbed half on top of Rodney, his hands darting everywhere, mouth and teeth and tongue demanding - something.
Rodney brought his rubbery arms to gently caress John’s fever hot back. He patted and stroked, tried to soothe, let John into his mouth, let him in as far as he could. Finally the frantic fingers and mouth stilled and the tight arch of back under Rodney’s hands stilled against him. John huffed a breath into Rodney’s shoulder and his ragged breathing quieted again. "Sorry," John mumbled into Rodney’s skin. "I got a little crazy again there."
Rodney made soothing noises into John’s hair.
"I think I might be more, well sexually fucked up than I realized," John said quietly, apologetically.
"I don’t see things that way," Rodney said. He really didn’t like the contrite tone John was using he wanted to chase it away. "I don’t separate my fucked up self in bed from my fucked up self the rest of the time. It’s all one continuum of fucked upedness as far as I’m concerned."
John snorted at him. "You should really go for your third PhD Rodney. You shouldn’t deprive the world of that level of psychological insight."
"Yes, well. You’d do well to listen to me. I know from fucked up and your unnatural apologetic attitude is weirding me out. It’s interfering with my natural tendency to mock."
"Oh, can’t have that, can’t get between Rodney McKay and a good mocking. Or a pie."
Rodney aimed a hard slap to John’s ass and prodded him up and to the bathroom. "We need to shower, again. I’m getting hungry too, you can buy me dinner to make up for taking the name of pie in vain." Rodney watched John waddle into the shower and tried not to think about the chances of John agreeing to a little recreational spanking.
They hit the road early the next morning, opting out of a greasy breakfast and instead going straight to mainlining coffee and ibuprofen. Their dinner the night before had included a visit to the hotel bar. A very nice tip to the bartender got them a bottle of scotch to smuggle up to their room at slightly less than room service prices. Some naked drunken making out had ensued. Rodney counted it a plus that they had actually slept in the bed this time instead of just on it.
Rodney huddled under the brim of his dark blue Nashville Predators hat and John hid behind his sunglasses. They got on highway 40 and headed west with the top down. The third time someone pulled up beside them in a silly tricked out Honda and made aggressive revving noises through their coffee can pipes, John swung the car sharply onto the next off-ramp. He wandered around on some back roads, looking happier than he had all morning, reversing sharply and changing directions when the pavement ran out and generally enjoying himself.
Rodney was getting tense and his third serving of coffee and painkillers was souring in his stomach. The real cause of the ache in his neck was the pod person driving the car. John was tapping away to the radio, right hand loose on the stick smiling in the sunshine. He was also intermittently reaching out and squeezing Rodney’s left knee. He had a system; he would tap the shifter ball lightly, reach out land his hand on Rodney’s leg and slide his hand down, squeeze once and return his hand to the stick. Rodney was trying not to flinch every time the hand descended, but he was not maintaining a very high success rate. John Sheppard did not touch people at random. He didn’t touch Rodney at random. Hell, they had spent hours together, naked hours in hotel rooms and not once had Rodney been the recipient of any sort of casual touch outside of bed.
John finished another one of his tap, reach, squeeze and retreat routines, except he wasn’t retreating. He turned his head to Rodney, an enigma behind his shades and goofy grin. He reached up and ran a finger along Rodney’s neck, flicked an ear. "Might want to lather on some more sunscreen. Getting a little pink."
"All right, that’s it, just what is wrong with you?" Rodney exploded at him.
John flicked a glance back to Rodney, back at the road, back to Rodney again and then the car was slowing down and pulling over. John got out, ambled around to Rodney’s door, and pulled it open. "Out, out, out," he carolled at Rodney in a suspiciously happy singsong.
Rodney yanked his way out of the seat belt and erupted out of the car intent on explaining just how much John’s cheery, smiling knee squeezing carrying on was freaking him the fuck out. He got his mouth open, changed the opening salvo of his diatribe to a startled, "Hey", when John snatched his cap off his head, and lost the whole will to rant when John got a good grip on him and kissed him hard. John had him pressed up against the door of the car and was not letting him up for air. A car whooshed by, horn honking; female sounding catcall drifting back and Rodney could feel John raise his hand to wave. When John decided they could breath again, Rodney started up with and nice coherent, "What…"
John pushed away and grinned at him. "Thought you seemed a little tense. Wanna drive for a while?"
"What, what, you’re joking. You’d let me. Let me drive?"
"Sure, you can drive stick can’t you?"
It was a testimony to how fucked up fucking John Sheppard could make him that Rodney couldn’t even make a bad joke out of that straight line. Instead he scampered around the car before John could change his mind. Rodney took a couple of miles of empty road to relearn the rhythm of driving a stick and then they were off and really, he did feel much less tense. "We going anywhere in particular?" Rodney asked after a while.
"Thought we could take it easy today, head to Memphis, drive around, maybe drive by Graceland, gotta do that once I guess."
"And Memphis would be where exactly?"
John waved vaguely to the south of west. "Over there somewhere."
Rodney started turning down roads in a random zigzag and soon enough they found signs pointing back to the highway and the way to Graceland. They toured Memphis, found some more sinfully delicious food, drove by Graceland and pushed on to Little Rock since Rodney was having fun driving and didn’t want to stop.
The next morning John wanted to run again and then he drove them to Amarillo, Texas complaining about the detrimental effects of exhaust fumes on runners until they stopped for lunch. They got a late start leaving Amarillo when Rodney insisted he fulfill a life-long dream of committing sodomy in the state of Texas. John hadn’t needed much convincing and subsequently smiled all the way to Albuquerque. Rodney smiled right along with him until he saw the signs for the turnoff for I-25 and Colorado Springs. The thought of driving into the mountain and stepping through the gate to home was leaving him with decidedly mixed feelings. Rodney took the wheel for the drive through the desert to Flagstaff and hoped John would take his silence for concentration on his driving.
Flagstaff meant decision time. Keep going west or turn north to tour the Grand Canyon and follow up with a visit to Las Vegas. Rodney was feeling rubbed raw by too much desert and too many uncomfortable thoughts and suddenly found himself screaming at John about his total lack of fucking interest in the Grand Fucking Canyon, Las Fucking Vegas or anything else in the entire fucking continental U.S. of A. He punctuated all this by storming out of the room, his own fucking room, and applying himself to getting drunk in the hotel bar.
John let him be for a few hours and then came and sat silently beside him nursing a beer. When Rodney got up to leave, John silently followed him. Back in the room, their room, John silently pushed a plate of sandwiches at him and set a bottle of water down beside it. Rodney ate himself sober and stripped down to his underwear and sat on the bed, back against the headboard, taking occasional pulls at the water bottle. John stripped down and sat beside him and looked at the TV remote and then set it down again.
"Elizabeth," Rodney said into a silence that had gotten comfortable again sometime between the food and the undressing. John looked startled by the name. "I know you were friends, and I was her friend too in my fashion, but sometimes, well sometimes she was the wrong person to not lead exactly, but the wrong person to shape Atlantis I guess. I don’t know if you knew about it when we came to Earth, that first time. She was engaged, I suppose in effect, to Simon."
John nodded recognition of the name.
"She wanted him to come back with us," Rodney continued. "She pushed Carson to accept him on his staff when really he could have, should have been senior to Carson. It was all set - all the paperwork done. Problem was, he had moved on. He had a new girlfriend, younger of course, someone he was not likely to leave to move to a different galaxy and he waited over a week to admit that to Elizabeth."
John looked up at that, shocked. Rodney had thought maybe Elizabeth had kept that part of the story amongst the three of them, herself, Rodney and Carson. "Yeah, a week to plan the rest of her life in the brave new world of Atlantis, her and Simon. She probably had herself married to him and moved into new quarters in her mind. Rug pulled out doesn’t quite convey the level of shock she must have felt." Rodney mused into his water bottle, wishing it were scotch, wishing he were drunk still. "I’ve thought, more than once, that she took that, what - betrayal I guess, she took it in and made it part of herself, and then she made it part of Atlantis as well."
"How do you mean?" John turned fully to him, set his hand on Rodney’s leg. The shock of skin on skin tore a gasp from Rodney. Maybe not so sober after all.
"I sat in the mess hall one day, feeling like I was back in high school again and it hit me, it’s not high school, it’s a nunnery. Some weird co-ed nunnery. Chastity enforced by overwork and fraternization rules."
John snorted at him, "If you think Atlantis is chaste, you haven’t been paying attention."
"No, no, I’m not blind, I know what goes on, but is anybody married? Has anybody even joined hands with someone else and happily gated back to Earth to get a picket fence and a dog? Anybody actually a couple in any openly defined way? Anybody sleeping in a fucking bed that’s big enough for more than one small adult? Christ no one’s even gotten pregnant before Teyla. That’s unprecedented for a base with that many civilians on it."
"It is a war zone, Rodney."
"Yeah and how many service personnel became or got someone pregnant in Iraq last year, hell last month?"
"Point." John frowned down at his hand, dark against Rodney’s pale leg. "I was shocked by Teyla’s pregnancy. Still am. I don’t think I’m handling it well. Maybe I fit right in with Elizabeth’s nunnery. Maybe you’re right about it all and maybe it’s as much my doing, my influence, as hers."
"I didn’t say that. John I’m not blaming you, I’m not blaming Elizabeth…"
"I’ve been looking, Rodney. Looking at you and not touching for years. There’s more to that than just some uncharacteristic rule following on my part."
"Yeah well that’s a two way street and don’t ever think differently, maybe we all need a bit of a rethink on our assumptions."
John tapped Rodney on the shin, scooted a little closer. "What does all that have to do exactly with flipping out at me about the Grand Fucking Canyon?"
Rodney laughed, at himself as much as John. "I’m not sure even I have that much insight into the workings of my own mind. I don’t know, just feeling antsy." Rodney paused, thinking that wasn’t quite true. "And well, too I did fall right in with the culture Elizabeth promoted. Fuck, I sound like a fucking anthropologist. I let myself get lost, I guess. Let myself sink into the work and the pace and the sheer unmitigated terror and wonder of living there and I changed. Not all for the worse necessarily, but not consciously either. Believe it or not I used to have a life, even in Russia it wasn’t all work."
"Seeing Teyla pregnant, and Jeannie, of course, and some other things lately, I thought maybe I might like a life again. But you, I didn’t expect you and this is, okay, I follow you. I follow you in the field and sometimes other places, other ways, and okay maybe not quietly, but I do defer to you and I was feeling like that, like I could lose myself again, lose myself in you. This isn’t even making sense to me now, sorry."
"Trust me, I fully realize the desire to drive your own life," John said quietly.
"Also, maybe I was counting on the fact that you seem to be mostly immune to the more negative aspects of my personality."
"Safe to yell at." John grinned at him. "I used to, not yell, no yelling in my house, but start arguments with my father. Make him go away. Make him leave me alone."
"If you want me to go away, you’ll have to come right out and tell me. Just being an asshole won’t do it." Rodney smiled at him.
"This is not news," John said, scooted a little closer and kissed Rodney chastely on the cheek. Rodney kissed him back, much less chastely.
Much later, twined together in the bed John said, "Let’s just head straight for the ocean. I’m sick of deserts and I don’t really want to drive by Nelles and watch planes I’ll never fly again scream by overhead."
"A sound plan," Rodney murmured into his shoulder.
The next day, they traded off the driving and pushed through to Bakersfield and then on to Highway 101 and north finally. When they started seeing signs for Salinas, John sang a few verses of Me and Bobby Magee and Rodney didn’t even roll his eyes.
They rolled out of bed in a crappy roadside motel the next morning grabbed some coffee, piled into the car and headed to Monterey. They spent the whole day playing at the beach, eating California food, and watching the sun sink into the sea. That night as John sank deep into Rodney, he resolved to quell the voice in his head that kept whispering, 'all be over too soon.'
They dawdled up the coast, sticking to the Cabrillo Highway eyes hungry for the sea. They stopped to swim, or just walk on the beech. They ate bright fresh food and switched to drinking green and gold California wine. Rodney bitched about the California lime conspiracy and redoubled his efforts at questioning waiters. John happily munched on tacos of dubious provenance and gobbled seafood smothered in lemon butter.
In San Francisco, Rodney made John come into the Good Vibrations Store with him, where they laughed like loons, blushed scarlet and spent a lot of money. They both whooped like kids, or well tourists really, as they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge with the top down.
At the Oregon border, tired of the requests to put the top up, John herded Rodney into a clothing store, made him buy a hoodie and a bright blue long-sleeved tee shirt that was so tight his nipples looked ready to poke through in the cold ocean breeze. John made him wear the shirt all day and happily stripped it off him in the hotel that night.
They reluctantly left the ocean behind and turned inland to Portland and then I-5 north to Seattle, where Rodney bought a ton of coffee. Then just like that they were at the border. Rodney glared at the border guard; handed over cash for the duty on the bag of sex toys and the coffee and John tried very hard not to laugh. John took his turn glaring when the guard raised a dubious brow at John’s American Military ID. A few dollars poorer and they were in the land of colourful money, round vowels and gay marriage.
Rodney pulled out his phone, called Jeannie to warn her they were on their way and got another set of directions to the right address. Beaming down was so much easier than fighting Vancouver traffic.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 01:49 am (UTC)Awww, c'mon! Vancouver traffic is not nearly so bad as Seattle traffic!
And hey, question! Is there import duty on sex toys? Rodney can bring back $300 worth of stuff if he's been out of Canada for at least 7 days. And please just ignore me, it's totally hilarious to think of John laughing at Rodney having to go into the Peace Arch border crossing office and stand there while an agent goes through his stuff and tallies up the duty. Yis. This would be nothing short of hysterical.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 08:45 pm (UTC)Rodney and his toys, John and his military ID - hmmmm.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-16 08:04 am (UTC)