Title//Wrecked
They’d been running and fighting and frantically waiting for so long now, that to step through the ‘gate to SCG and stand there, listening calmly while General Landry did his soft shoe routine, felt like running into a brick wall. Then there was the medical teams and the psych teams and the debriefing and Rodney just couldn’t tolerate being stuck hundreds of feet underground, breathing in recycled air that contained god-knows how many chemicals his body hadn’t been used to for two years. He brushed past Elizabeth and Radek and Sam on his way to the elevator, nodding and mumbling ‘two weeks, dammit, two weeks’ then stood in the corner while the walls did that shift rumble thing that the transporters never did unless there was a catastrophic failure somewhere in the near future, pushing first one shoulder blade against the wall then the other until the doors finally opened and he could step out into the black night air with the stars in all the wrong places and one moon too far away and everything was just…not right. The roads were paved, huge T-shaped poles rose up into the air with their flat gray lines hooking them all together, and Rodney wondered for a moment if he was actually on some alien planet and nobody told him. Somewhere a car horn bleated, shocking Rodney back into recognition. This really was that mythical, never believed to be seen again planet Earth and he hated it already. Getting more than six hours of sleep in 48 was a bonus though, and he thoroughly intended to take advantage of that. The air was dry and tainted with chemicals and pollutants, Rodney could almost pick them out from the striated clouds hovering around the moon. His throat instantly felt like left-over sandpaper, rough when he tried to swallow down the lump that developed when he recognized a magpie crying out from one of the tall pine trees. His car pulled up, complete with a driver, because a Rodney-in-a-car was about as fun as a Rodney-in-a-puddlejumper, and he took just a moment to marvel at being able to step-step-step into the car rather than run-run-jump through a closing hatch. Time got hazy after that, as Rodney just sat back and breathed like a normal human being, closing his eyes and leaning his head back without having to have a concussion first. The car smelled like artificial pine and genuine fake leather, instead of two-day old marine sweat and dried blood, and somebody apparently forgot to include inertial dampeners when they were putting the shocks on, since the car seemed to hit every pothole and bump on the freeway. The driver, a sharp dressed twelve year old Airman, didn’t initiate a conversation, and Rodney didn’t invite any. They took all the twists and turns into Denver at a nice sedate speed, and not once did Rodney have visions of being a huge red splat on an Ancient-designed control panel, or bleeding out on the ridged-pseudo-aluminum floor. Then the car was pulling to a stop under a huge wooden awning, and the sharp dressed twelve year old Airman was holding the door open, giving Rodney a blandly pointed look until he climbed out. The Airman was nice enough to remember the luggage that Rodney forgot he had, one flight bag and his laptop, and escorted Rodney as far as the front desk, murmuring to the dough-faced girl about comped presidential rooms and the need to humor the close-to-a-nervous-breakdown-top-secret-scientist and to dismiss anything said after a fifth of Stolly and a New York strip. The bellboy didn’t actually take Rodney’s luggage, not after Rodney growled and bared his teeth like he’d seen Ronon do off-world, but he did lead the way. Rodney had gotten out of the habit of lagging behind, so when the bellboy stopped in front of a solid wood door with a stupid metal handle sticking out, Rodney thanked his new-found almost quick reflexes and didn’t run into him. But it was close. ~*~ Eighteen hours later and it was dark again, the pounding on the door made Rodney flip off the bed and scramble for his boots. Only one boot was lying on its side under the pre-fab round table and the other was under his flight bag in the closet. And he wasn’t in Atlantis, and nobody was dead or dying or flying off into the great unknown again to be vaporized by some long haired whack job with a penchant for bad puns and even worse fashion sense. It was just somebody pounding on the door in the middle of the night, even though he was sure somewhere along the way the desk clerk and all the rest of the toadies were told not to bother him. The news that morning had predicted a dry summer storm, and while Rodney was familiar with the concept, he’d never actually been in one that he wasn’t too busy to experience. Now he knew why. The air was thick and wet, static jumping from one charged particle to the next, making the sky outside the open window seem to spark and flash. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning would strike somewhere across the horizon, accompanied by a low rumble of thunder that didn’t really sound like anything, but made his bones ache and his hair stand on end. And of course Rodney wasn’t surprised at all to yank open the door to find one John Sheppard, Lieutenant Colonel U.S.A.F standing in the hallway. And even less surprised to see John make a face like a rabid cat had just climbed into his non-regulation –how-the-fuck-did-he-breath-in-those blue jeans. And John obviously wasn’t surprised at seeing Rodney standing there in his sleep-rumpled khaki t-shirt with pillow creases on his cheek and his hair scrubbed up into sagebrush-like tufts. Because John had knocked on his door, and was now just…standing there. “Well? Come in if you’re coming in. Letting all the dark out.” And John follows him back into the hotel room, gathering up that invisible tether that had kept them together for the past two years, and seemed to be getting shorter and shorter by the minute. Rodney doesn’t turn on the light, something unspoken shouting between them, just tugs the curtains open until John is standing in a puddle of hazy moonlight, staring at Rodney like he’d never seen him before. “I…” John doesn’t want to be there, Rodney can tell that John doesn’t want to be there. “Just shut up. When it really matters, just shut up.” And Rodney is on his knees, sharing John’s puddle of moonlight, fingers pulling shoe laces loose, fast and slick, and this is something he’s good at. John is staring down at the top of Rodney’s head like it’s something alien, something so foreign that he just can’t understand it, and Rodney really wishes that John would get over it already. When his shoes are done, Rodney leans up, leans in and pushes John’s shirt up. Fingers dragging against skin and bone until John lifts his arms and just…lets. Lets Rodney strip him down, lets Rodney push and prod and manipulate him back onto the bed. Lets Rodney mouth the inside of his thighs, the bumps of his hips, the head of his cock. Rodney’s fingers twist his nipples, roll and tug on his balls, stroke the line of muscle from hip to knee until John settles back into his skin, until John pushes his head back into the pillow and his own fingers deep into the bedding. “Yeah.” And that’s it, that’s all that John gives up, that’s all that Rodney gets. That’s the only concession that Rodney gets for having his mouth wrapped around John’s dick and his fingers soothing the tension from his body. So Rodney sucks John off, doesn’t even get hard any more because what’s the use? Watches John roll off the bed and gets dressed. Not even a thanks or a so long and John is out the door. And Rodney goes back to sleep. |
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