Work Text:
2004
Four days after John Sheppard discovered aliens were real and one of his ancestors banged one, the brash science guy in the hideous orange fleece turned up at his door.
“Ah, Major Sheppard, can I come in?”
He said it like it was perfectly normal to visit John’s tiny little room, and John was taken aback enough to step aside when the scientist – Doctor Mack Something-or-other – barrelled in without waiting for a reply.
And ominously shut the door, leaving the two of them occupying the tiny floor space in what would easily pass for a monastic cell. Mack and his fleece and his confident energy filled the room, leaving John pressing himself back against the bare, cold, wall.
That really didn’t help, because Mack stepped closer to him, and even though John was taller, somehow the guy seemed like he was looming over John.
“We should fuck,” the scientist said confidently.
And wow, suddenly the room felt a lot less monastic.
John just opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, his brain buffering.
“Like everything I do, I’m a great lay,” Mack continued, his chin up and a look of pure arrogance on his face, “and I know there aren’t many opportunities for military queers in the middle of Antarctica, ergo, let’s screw.”
John was caught between being scandalised, being somewhat amused, and being oddly intrigued by the scientist’s astonishing directness, but this Mack guy was very much barking up the wrong tree.
“Listen, Mack,” he started.
“Rodney,” the scientist corrected, unconcerned. “Rodney McKay.”
“Rodney. I’m not…”
“No, don’t tell me you’re not queer, my gaydar is never wrong.”
“…Interested,” John said firmly.
“Oh,” Rodney responded. “Oh well, your loss.”
He gave an expressive shrug like he never really cared that much anyway and was really just doing John a favour, and then abruptly departed.
John sat heavily on the bed. He might need to retrieve his jaw off the floor in a while. This Rodney guy was a piece of work. John had a strong sense that in time he would come to either hate the man or like him in the kind of ironic way you liked bad movies or anchovies on pizza. The man was an absolute tool, but he certainly left an impression.
2005
“Bisexual, then,” Rodney said to John after Chaya, having not mentioned a word about his sexuality since Antarctica.
John still hadn’t decided whether he hated Rodney or ironically loved him, but he was increasingly concluding that both was perhaps the answer, with a growing side order of unironically fond. He suspected that by now they could even be called friends.
“But I bet you prefer guys,” Rodney continued.
Right in the middle of the mess during lunch hour, no less.
“I’ve been married, McKay,” John evaded.
“Which means nothing at all,” Rodney retorted. “I’ve been to Siberia, but that doesn’t mean I liked it there.”
Well, you couldn’t argue with that logic.
John wasn’t going to explain to Rodney that Chaya was not in fact a human woman but a glowing, sexless energy-being, and that had suited him just fine.
“You’re not supposed to ask this,” he said, “and even if I did, I’m not supposed to tell.”
Rodney just snorted.
“Oh please, I’m a civilian and a Canadian, do not expect me to adhere to your repressive rules. Besides, I happen to know from personal experience just how much gay sex your men are having, and how little they’re worried about discovery. Nobody cares, Major.”
John just slumped in his seat and gave the most noncommittal shrug he was capable of, desperately hoping Rodney would stop trying to pry open this particular can of worms, because labels and John hadn’t got on so well and had decided long ago to part company.
2007
“Okay this has got to stop,” Rodney said, half grumpy, half amused, in the middle of a session of the Ancient game they’d been playing.
“What?” John said, pulling the pen he was sucking out of his mouth.
“That!” Rodney said. “You wearing slinky little tight-fitting outfits and suggestively sucking off pens and lollipops in my line of sight!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John said.
He could feel his face beginning to heat. He wasn’t doing it deliberately, and he hadn’t really been aware he was doing it, but he still felt caught somehow.
“Oh come on, don’t play the innocent. You’ve been baiting me ever since I hit on you that time!”
“I have? News to me.”
John tried to feign nonchalance, but something was stirring under his skin that he didn’t want to think about.
“Oh please. You’re not some blushing virgin, John, you know the effect you have on people!”
John’s face and eartips burned in ill-timed contradiction to the remark, and John cursed at his body’s betrayal.
Rodney took it in instantly, his eyes widening in realisation.
“Really?” Rodney said, with that familiar look of certainty on his suddenly-comprehending face. “You’re a virgin?”
“Technically… sorta?” John mumbled, somehow unable to lie to his infuriating friend.
“Oh. Okay, that explains some things, actually. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Well, because I’ve been working on the assumption that you were just being a dick to me.”
“Thought you meant sorry I’m a virgin,” John said.
“Well, that would be presumptuous,” Rodney said. “It would depend on whether you’re sad about it,” he added, scrutinising John’s face over the monitors.
“I don’t like sex,” John blurted.
Rodney’s gaze was skewering him, and John’s face heated again. Why on earth was he having this conversation? And with Rodney.
“No, that’s not it,” Rodney said, sounding irritatingly sure of himself.
“I think I’d know,” John said, astonished by McKay’s confident dismissal.
This wasn’t exactly how he’d hoped finally admitting this to someone would go.
“Yes, but you’re not giving me the whole truth, are you?” Rodney said, and John felt dissected, peeled back and pinned, everything on show.
“Fuck you, McKay,” he said, slipping out of his chair and leaving.
June 1988
John could not be more delighted to discover for sure that he was gay. He’d had an inkling for a long time, because he just didn’t react to girls the way he should, but now he was finally certain, thanks to Billy Cathcart.
There weren’t many people his father hated more than gays, and anything that pissed off his dad must be good as far as John was concerned. So, sure, there was AIDS to worry about, but Billy was as much of a virgin as John, and the two of them had moved from new friends who hung out on the weekends to hot and heavy necking every chance they got since halfway through senior year in their uptight private boy’s school.
Billy was blonde and ugly-beautiful and had the most delicious lips. John loved to tangle around him on his bed and kiss for hours, letting the feelings build and build. It was heaven, and he wanted it forever. He thought he was probably in love. It just didn’t get better than this. He wanted to do all the things he’d been told he’d burn in hell for and honestly hell sounded like a party to John after the suffocating world he grew up in.
A few days after John’s 18th birthday, Billy had rocked up at his place looking devastating in a leather jacket, ripped jeans, a single hoop earring and black eyeliner. John’s dad had looked as though he might keel over and die of terminal disapproval and John knew it was love for real now.
“I bought you the Erasure album, wanna go listen?” Billy said, brandishing the CD victoriously.
Such music was banned in the Sheppard house, of course, but Billy’s people were Very Important and John’s father didn’t say a word about it, just threw entertainingly stormy looks John’s way. John imagined him imploding from all that repressed rage, leaving nothing but a neat little smudge on the hardwood flooring, because we can’t go dying untidily.
John grabbed Billy’s hand right in front of his dad in the hopes it would tip him over the edge and gave the man a triumphant look before dragging Billy upstairs. The cold hate that stared back at him was hilarious. Really, it was.
The moment John’s bedroom door was closed, they were kissing, hot and heavy. Billy pushed John up against the closed door and John melted under his touch. He was insanely hot for this boy.
“Let’s take some clothes off,” Billy said, unbuttoning John’s shirt.
His tongue was in John’s mouth and his hands were brushing over John’s bare chest and John wanted him so badly, he was ready to do anything at all, even if he didn’t have much of a clue what they were supposed to do.
They’d figure it out. Everything came so natural with Billy.
They stripped down to their underwear, and John was torn, because he wanted this just for them, private and sweet, but he also loved the idea of his dad walking in on them like this and finally losing all that remote and disapproving composure. Or just dying on the spot – either would be acceptable. Not that he would walk in, because he never even came into this wing of the house or had any real interest in what John got up to as long as he didn’t have to see it or have it disrupt his perfect family image.
“Let me put the CD on,” Billy said.
Erasure were singing about A little respect and the line I’m so in love with you was pulling at John’s heart as they climbed on the bed. John was all the way gone, head over heels, just like in the movies only with twice the usual number of dicks involved.
They began to kiss deeper, pressing their bodies against each other, both of them hard as rock and breathless. John suddenly knew what he wanted. He straddled Billy’s thighs, pulling down his boxers to reveal his perfect, beautiful cock. He wanted to lick it, suck it, but maybe that was moving too fast, so he just fisted it, same as if it was his own, and watched Billy fall apart before the next song was over, his face slack with pleasure and his come all over John’s hand. And god, John wanted to lick it up, wanted to do so many things, but he just wiped his hand on the counterpane and grinned down at Billy.
Billy was a little out of it, so John just cuddled down against him, pressing close. Basking.
The album had started over when Billy pushed John over on his back, sliding a tongue into his mouth and John wanted to say yes and I love you but his mouth was happily occupied so he just made appreciative little noises.
And then Billy slid a hand inside John’s underwear, wrapped it around John’s cock and John froze. Suddenly everything felt wrong, and he just wanted it to stop. His erection disappeared faster than he would have thought possible, and Billy’s confident and maybe a little smitten face collapsed.
He couldn’t have got out of the bed fast enough.
“I knew you were just doing this to piss off your dad! You’re not like me!”
John could see tears welling in Billy’s eyes and it tore him up.
The comment rang true enough to bind John’s tongue, left him confused and sullen as Billy threw on his clothes and left, Erasure still playing.
John already knew he was never going to be able to hear this song again without his heart breaking.
May 1996
The good thing about not being gay after all was that John had been able to do another thing that would enrage his father – join the USAF. He’d figured himself for someone who just didn’t like sex, well, at least not with other people. He could feel sexual, but he didn’t ever feel want for another person like he had with Billy, and clearly whatever he felt with Billy hadn’t been enough to make something work.
He put the whole episode down to figuring himself out, a youthful experiment. And maybe Billy had been right about him just wanting a way to get to his dad.
Flying very expensive aircraft for Uncle Sam was, in retrospect, a much cooler way to needle the old patriarch in the eye.
It was freeing, to not have to worry about sex anymore. When anyone in John’s life observed that he had no steady partner, he just pretended to be playing the field and nobody questioned it. He got plenty of female attention so a few wry smiles and the occasional “a gentleman never tells” cemented his entirely undeserved reputation as a ladies’ man.
And then Nancy happened.
“My brother always picks the dorkiest friends,” she said to him one night as she beat his ass at Street Fighter EX. “The ones who seem cool on the surface but are awkward nerds if you dig down a nanometre or two.”
John gave her the real smile, because he felt seen, and he didn’t mind at all. He was pretty tight with Marty, but his sister was totally on his level. They’d known each other for three months now and he got warm feelings whenever she was around. They just clicked.
“Hey, you two, it’s 3am, let’s turn in.”
Speaking of the devil, Marty emerged from the kitchen and looked pointedly at John.
Nancy just rolled her eyes.
“You go ahead, Marty, I don’t need a chaperone.”
Their family were uptight religious and it hadn’t entirely shaken free of this generation.
“Seriously Nance, you gotta watch it with John, he’s a player,” Marty warned, only half-joking.
Nancy just looked at John and laughed.
“Oh, he’s not going to play me,” she told him, shooing her brother to bed.
“You’re not really a player, are you, John?” she asked when Marty left.
John scratched at the back of his neck.
“Not as such, no. Just…”
He was going to say not interested, but suddenly it felt like a lie. Feelings he hadn’t had in his entire twenties, and never in his life for a woman were stirring.
“Just?” Nancy’s gaze was suddenly burning into him.
“I’m…” John gulped. “Not experienced with women.”
“You’re experienced with men?”
“Um. Had one experience in my teens. Thought I might be gay. But I wasn’t.”
She didn’t look at all concerned, and that was a relief.
“You seem sure.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what are you, John?” she asked, her eyes shining with mischief.
“A very late bloomer, apparently,” John said, as Nancy leaned forward and kissed him.
By the time their lips parted again several minutes later, John was all the way hard. Better still, he knew this was love, that the whole ‘you just have to meet the right person’ was truer than he realised.
From there, they were inseparable. Nancy had a no sex before marriage rule, but that still left a lot of options on the table.
John had never really paid much attention to breasts before, but he was riveted by Nancy’s and he loved how much she enjoyed it when he played with them.
The first time he went down on her, the sounds of her moans got him so hot he came when she did.
It wasn’t long before John was standing at the altar, giddy with adoration for the beautiful woman by his side, and almost at peace with his dad’s satisfied smiles.
He loved her so much. Wanted her so much.
When they couldn’t get anything to happen on their wedding night, Nancy just brushed it off as too much champagne and too much pressure.
“Hardly anyone has sex on their wedding night,” she reassured him, as the strains of Wonderwall tugged at his heartstrings from the wedding party below.
But John felt it in his gut. How he’d got this all wrong again.
After six months they still hadn’t had the right kind of sex and Nancy wasn’t satisfied anymore with all the other things they did, especially when John was so repulsed every time his dick was invited into the proceedings. They toyed with words like impotence and considered Viagra, but it was the way John felt – it hit so wrong and he didn’t understand why. Nancy started to wonder if John was secretly gay, and it unravelled pretty fast from there.
John ran after increasingly dangerous assignments as he ran away from his failure to make the love of his fucking life happy.
Nancy was generous enough to go for a divorce rather than the humiliating annulment she could have requested.
2007
It was a few days of the two of them being brittle around each other before Rodney appeared at John’s door, carrying a peace offering of beer and chocolate.
As grand gestures went, Rodney McKay sharing his chocolate ration was up there with sky-writing and throwing yourself on a grenade.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been such a jerk to you.”
“Yeah,” John said, even though ever since, he’d been berating himself for saying fuck you to Rodney just for him being uncomfortably, tactlessly and confusingly correct.
“I should have been more sensitive.”
“Yup.”
“Beer?”
“Sure.”
“For what it’s worth, you were right,” John unexpectedly found himself saying at the bottom of his third bottle. “It’s more complicated than I don’t like sex.”
“Okay,” Rodney said.
John was so grateful he didn’t hear any smugness or gloating, just curiosity.
“I’m not exactly driven to it,” he went on. “But there are things… I like, and then things I don’t that are kinda dealbreakers for people.”
“Huh,” Rodney responded, “well it sounds to me like ‘people’ lack imagination.” He made finger quotes and everything. “There’s a million ways to have sex.”
That stirred something in John, a rumble of arousal deep in his body, alongside a small ease in the tension about his shoulders.
“Well then I guess by those parameters I’m not a virgin,” John said.
“But what you meant was you’ve never fucked or been fucked.”
John just nodded. Something about Rodney’s blunt straightforwardness was working for him right now, even though other times it just made him cringe.
“Which, by the way, is such a narrow, heteronormative view,” Rodney added. “I mean I once made a partner come by tying him up and gently but thoroughly flogging him. Pretty sure that was sex.”
Oh, now John was aroused, dammit. Not that he liked the idea of being flogged, exactly. God, maybe he liked the idea of Rodney and sex. Fuck.
“I like getting partners off,” John admitted, “but then things… progress, and I go cold. Dunno what’s wrong with me.”
“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you,” Rodney said.
“But…”
“Not everyone’s wired the same, John. Thank fuck. Sex would be dull if we were.”
John felt a knot of tension untangle at those words.
“Never really got the chance to figure this out,” he sighed. “Before getting dumped.”
“You need to treat this like science, not superstition,” Rodney said. “Throw out the stories you think you know and investigate the facts.”
“That sounds… logical,” John said.
Because of course Rodney would treat this like an intellectual curiosity. He didn’t know what he thought of that.
“So, what do we know so far?” Rodney asked after a pause. “You like getting your partners off – any ways in particular?”
John shook his head. They were really going to dissect his disastrous sex life, huh?
“I only had three partners,” he told Rodney, “but I did plenty of things with Nancy, my wife… ex-wife. I just couldn’t manage to fuck her.”
“And the others?”
“Billy and I were teenagers. We made out a lot, and then when things progressed… he bolted on me when I froze up.”
“What made you freeze?”
“Him touching me,” John said.
“You mean him touching your cock?” Rodney clarified, and John nodded, blushing a little at his directness. “But other kinds of touch are okay?”
“Yeah.”
John’s eartips were burning.
“And the third partner? What went wrong there?”
“Nothing,” John said, his eyes stinging a little when he thought of Lyle.
Rodney looked puzzled.
“Apart from the fact that he died before things could progress from me blowing him till his knees gave out on him,” John said.
“I’m sorry,” Rodney responded, looking genuinely sad for John.
“The horrible things is… I can pretend to myself it wouldn’t have gone south with Lyle, but that’s… improbable,” John replied.
“Well, let’s look at it this way,” Rodney said. “If a guy’s dissatisfied with a partner who gives amazing head but has some quirks about other stuff, that’s on him. Maybe Lyle would have been less normative than Nancy and less naïve than Billy?”
But that just made John’s chest ache for Lyle.
“I’m sorry you lost him,” Rodney said, when John went quiet.
John really hadn’t expected this softness from Rodney, nor been prepared for how it would get right under his skin.
Four days later, John found himself sharing a clean but basic room with Rodney in a village offworld that promised to be useful trading partners.
“Maybe I’m just a control freak who’s afraid of letting go,” John said into the dark, a little drunk on the local brew.
“Maybe…” Rodney acknowledged, “but that’s not the impression I get. I’m curious if it’s a ‘don’t like stuff done to you’ thing or a ‘body that doesn’t like certain feelings’ thing, or something else entirely. We need more data.”
John had a vivid image of Rodney gathering additional data personally, and suddenly he was all the way hard.
“Not many people want to be experimented with for data gathering purposes, McKay,” John said carefully.
“More fool them,” Rodney snorted.
John thought that might be an opening, but he wasn’t sure enough to chance it.
“A man whose cock isn’t interested in getting involved in sex is pretty fucking useless,” he said, sighing.
“Nonsense,” Rodney retorted. If that’s the issue, it’s a very simple one – there are so many things you can do without your cock, right?”
“You think so?”
John’s voice may have sounded a little hopeful.
“Of course. One of your marines never even gets hard when I fuck him, but he makes noises like a cat in heat and has prostate orgasms that last for close to a minute. I’m pretty sure I’ve never even touched his cock, but the sex is sensational.”
Jesus. John’s own cock was straining now, and it was interested and that was confusing as heck, because it acted like it wanted in on the proceedings, but he knew it wouldn’t follow through. John and his lying dick were going to need to have words.
“But I guess although we have a solid data point that you don’t want to fuck, the jury’s out on whether you’d like being fucked,” Rodney said.
God.
“We could… we could find out… if you like,” John said, his voice breathless with sudden, overwhelming want.
There was a long silence. John was glad it was dark to hide his near-terminal embarrassment.
“Much as it pains me to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Rodney said at last, “or in other relevant parts… I think you may be a little too tipsy for me to say yes to that offer, Colonel.”
“Not that tipsy,” John tried to take the mild slur out of his voice, but failed.
“Plus… well, if you really did want to experiment with me, which I’m more than open to, I suggest we’d need to be very slow and methodical to gather meaningful data.”
John gave a whole-body shudder, like Rodney had just said the hottest thing ever, rather than being ridiculously logical in the face of his raw need.
“And if I said yes, I do want to experiment?”
“Then come to my quarters, sober, tomorrow night, wearing loose clothing,” Rodney said.
John was perfectly comfortable with touching his own cock, and if he’d wrapped his hand around himself at that moment, he would have gone off like a rocket, but he much preferred to sit with the delicious feelings of arousal and the sudden, sure knowledge that he was about to become Dr Rodney McKay’s science experiment.
And maybe there were a few data points right there that pointed to… something.
Despite second, third and fifty-fifth thoughts on the matter, John had a growing and entirely sober certainty that he should take Rodney up on his offer. Because honestly, who else could he trust to be so refreshingly straightforward about his complications?
So with a gutful of nerves, he turned up at Rodney’s doorway the following evening, ready for the big experiment.
Rodney invited him in with a surprisingly soft smile, and made him a cup of Athosian tea, sitting John down on the bed and pulling his desk chair close so they could talk.
Which was harder by far than taking his clothes off.
“I’d quite like to test the hypothesis that you’re a control freak first,” Rodney said to him at length. “And I think the best way to do that would be for you to give up a little control to me,” he added.
John’s cock jumped, but his stomach churned. He was suddenly more than usually tongue-tied.
“So… what’s your reaction to that idea?”
John still didn’t say anything.
“I know you’d prefer to be thrown into a pit of iratus bugs than talk about your feelings, Sheppard, but if I don’t get feedback, this isn’t going to work,” Rodney said bluntly.
“Scared. Turned on,” John ground out.
“That doesn’t sound like a no. Seems like a promising line of enquiry to me.”
John nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so I’m only going to touch you above the waist tonight. If anything makes you feel at all bad or uncomfortable, don’t you dare be all stoic about it, that will fuck up the data.”
John suddenly felt pinned down and nervous. This was all too cold and objective. He wondered where Rodney’s heart was, and his own.
Rodney must have seen the hesitation in his face.
“I’m sorry, I’m being awfully clinical about this, but you’re my friend and I care about you, John, please don’t forget that.”
John melted a little then, even though he still felt vulnerable and exposed.
“Is there anything that would help you relax?” Rodney asked him.
John wanted to say making out for hours, but that wasn’t what this was.
“Music?” he said instead.
Rodney nodded, and went to his computer. Moments later, Kate Bush was singing King of the Mountain and the familiarity of it eased something in John. The latest album was a favourite among many expedition members, and the sensuality of it fit the mood perfectly without being overtly sexual or romantic.
“Okay, lie on the bed, face down, clothes on,” Rodney bossed.
John did as he was told, relaxing into letting Rodney run things. It was easier than he expected. He pillowed his cheek on his hands, his face turned away from Rodney.
“Okay?”
John nodded.
Sure, firm, fingertips pressed through his T-shirt and drew a line along the top of John’s shoulders. John shivered a little, but not in a bad way. He quickly relaxed, eased by how weirdly not-weird it was to have Rodney scribing shapes onto his body in a casual, detached way, with his deft fingers.
When one sure hand stroked fingertips down John’s spine, John felt something spark inside him. he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched. He knew this was just an experiment, but there was a diligence in Rodney that could easily be interpreted as care.
Rodney’s fingers spread along John’s waistband and then his thumbs returned to press either side of his spine, but this time they began to massage him. God, it felt good.
Rodney took his time, feeling out each of John’s vertebrae through his T-shirt and releasing the tense muscles from John bracing for inevitable hurt, disappointment or failure.
“I’m going to remind you that there are no failed experiments,” Rodney said, as his hands moved to John’s shoulders, only unexpected data.”
John let go of a little more tension at the idea that he could not get anything wrong.
“I’m going to move to your neck, okay?” he said, after the longest time.
John nodded.
He felt a jolt of intense pleasure as Rodney’s fingertips stroked down the back of his neck, the first skin on skin contact. He shivered involuntarily.
“Was that a good shiver or a bad shiver?” Rodney asked.
“Good… feels so good,” John admitted to his friend.
With which Rodney began to intimately explore John’s responses to touch on his neck. He was acutely sensitive there, and Rodney’s fingertips brushing and pressing into his hairline had him melting and sighing in bliss. Once again, Rodney took painstaking care and the longest time before he pushed things a little further, slipping his hands under the neck of John’s T-shirt to massage his fingers into John’s shoulders. It felt so good, John may have made an undignified little groan of pleasure.
“I’m going to take your T-shirt off,” Rodney said, his voice thick with something John couldn’t quite name but didn’t sound bad.
Wordless, John nodded, and Rodney peeled his T-shirt up his body.
“Put your arms above your head for me,” Rodney said to him, and John did as he was told, enjoying having someone else taking care of everything for once.
Rodney slid the T-shirt up over his head and untangled it from John’s arms.
“Can you keep them there, maybe cross your wrists?” Rodney said.
When John happily obeyed him, he heard Rodney’s breath catch.
“Oh that’s… very nice. Now, I’m going to just hold your wrists for a moment, just so you can see how it feels, okay?”
John nodded, inexplicably aroused. When Rodney’s hands wrapped around his wrists, he felt a jolt of heat that made him squirm.
“Was that a good wriggle?” Rodney asked.
“Yeah. God, yeah.”
Rodney let go of his wrists but ran fingernails up and down John’s arms, dragging them into the tender places he could reach, and then trailing them back to John’s shoulders, teasing at the edge of his armpits.
John shivered with pleasure. Damn, who knew Rodney’s hands could make him feel so good?
“What if I tied your wrists?” Rodney asked.
“Sure,” John said, suddenly breathless.
He wanted to say yes, please.
Rodney quickly produced a length of rope, and carefully bound John’s wrists in a way he was obviously familiar with. John didn’t think he was particularly kinky, but he trusted Rodney, and he suspected that was what made surrendering to him feel so good.
Rodney stroked a hand down John’s naked back, his other hand holding John’s bound wrists, and John made a happy little noise he couldn’t quite contain.
“Okay, well, preliminary findings would suggest that you’re not a control freak,” Rodney said levelly, “although I think we’d need things to get a little more sexual before we can say the results are conclusive.”
Oh, that did it, John was all the way hard now, and desperate for more of the scientist’s thorough data gathering.
But Rodney just continued to massage John’s back until the album finished, turning him into a puddle of relaxed, aroused mush.
“I think that’s enough for one night,” he said as silence suddenly filled the room, “but how about we pick this up again when we next have an evening off?”
John nodded. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so good.
Rodney untied his wrists and waited for him to put his T-shirt back on.
“You okay?” he asked John, surprisingly earnest. “Did that do anything for you?”
“So turned on I’m gonna need some time before I go out there,” John said, gulping down his fear at the admission.
Rodney let out a breath that he must have been holding.
“Oh God, me too,” he said.
And that didn’t help John’s predicament at all, but it did make him let out a relieved breath.
“So I’m not a control freak,” John said, grinning at his friend.
“No, and you’re not just into pleasing others, although clearly you do like pleasing others…”
“So maybe we could try that next time…” John said.
“Okay, don’t get me wrong here, I would be delighted to have those luscious lips of yours wrapped around my cock,” Rodney said, making John’s erection perk up even more. “But I rather feel we would be gathering data that has already yielded clear conclusions.”
“I spose,” John admitted reluctantly.
“What we need to find out is how far you want to let me go with your body, where your limits are and better still what gives you the most pleasure.”
“Rodney, you’re killing me here,” John said, once again fully hard.
Rodney surprised John by blushing, because John honestly thought it would be impossible to make McKay blush. It was strangely adorable.
“Okay, well, how about we watch an episode of something while we both calm down?” his friend suggested.
The next time they experimented, Rodney tried John in a blindfold. John liked it – it allowed him to let go just that much more, give himself over to the experiment Rodney was turning him into. Rodney had him lay on the bed, face up this time, his once again tied arms crossed above his head, bare-chested, but still wearing his sweatpants. Kate Bush was once again playing. John realised he was going to think of Rodney and sex whenever he heard her voice now.
At first, Rodney just ran his nails along John’s skin and scribed shapes with his fingertips. This slowly gave way to stroking and massaging, once again working loose the tension. It didn’t take too long before he realised John was reacting to the brushes of Rodney’s palms across his nipples, and he began to play with them in earnest, rolling them between his fingertips until they hardened. John was breathing in little pants, already desperately aroused, when he felt a hot, wet mouth on his right nipple and let out a desperate, throaty moan.
“Nice,” Rodney said appreciatively, lifting off for just a moment.
He blew on the skin where his hot mouth had been, making John shudder, and then moved to John’s left nipple, licking it.
He kept up the tease for the longest time, until John was squirming and sighing on the bed, completely gone on what Rodney was doing. Rodney stroked a hand down John’s abdomen, running fingers above his waistband, and John shivered. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he definitely wanted more of something.
“Okay, I’m going to try for some more body contact,” Rodney said, “but get ready to tell me to stop if you need to.”
They’d discussed this. John wasn’t quite sure how he’d feel about body to body contact, but he seemed to remember liking it in the past as long as there was a layer of clothing there.
“Spread your legs for me,” Rodney said.
John was certain McKay wouldn’t have missed the way his cock jumped at this request, and the sharp intake of breath seemed to confirm this. He opened up his legs and Rodney carefully settled between them.
John was a little nervous, because even though he had permission to say stop, he didn’t want to. But Rodney’s weight settling against his thighs was delicious, and the indirect, muted pressure on his cock felt nothing but good.
When he felt Rodney’s mouth back on his left nipple, he felt his body arc up into the sensations, lost in pleasure. Rodney’s hand slid down his side and into the small of his back and he felt held and safe and completely at Rodney’s mercy. Suddenly, he was right on the edge.
“God, Rodney, I’m gonna come,” he confessed, feeling like he’d skipped ahead, but too far gone to care.
But Rodney was all on board with that.
“Yeah, John, come on, wanna see you let go,” he said, redoubling his mouth’s attention on the other nipple.
John gave a low groan, his body pushing up against Rodney’s and shuddering as he came. Rodney’s hands stroked and gentled him carefully as he came down off the high, and then Rodney shifted out from between John’s legs but stretched along the side of John. He was relieved not to lose the contact. He would have given anything to be able to kiss Rodney right now. He felt good, but so vulnerable it was excruciating.
“Close your eyes,” Rodney said, and when John did so he removed the blindfold. “Are you okay, John?”
“Yeah. That was intense, but yeah.”
“Did it feel good though?”
“Rodney, I have jizz in my underwear.”
“Bodies are idiots and minds are complicated,” Rodney retorted. “Getting off and feeling good aren’t the same thing. I’m trying to establish if it felt right, or more to the point, that it didn’t feel somehow wrong.”
John felt a huge wave of fondness for the other man engulf him. Which was most likely a massive fucking problem in its own right, but John refused to get bogged down with thinking about any inconvenient feelings that might happen to arise here.
“It felt good, Rodney. Real good.”
“Well then, I’d say the control freak hypothesis is disproven, as is the theory that you just don’t like sex.”
He was generous enough not to add an I told you so in there, but he did sound smug as fuck. John found himself feeling fond of that too, which was so ridiculous of him.
“Seems like,” John said. “Now, how bout I return the favour?”
Rodney’s face clouded for a moment.
“Um, that would seem to be outside the parameters of these experiments,” he said.
“You don’t think it’s worth verifying my previous findings?” John asked, his tone suggestive.
Rodney took a deep breath that told John he was tempted – so not a control freak in his own right, perhaps – but then he shook his head.
“I don’t want to complicate my, er… scientific objectivity,” Rodney said firmly.
God, John wanted to kiss the objectivity right off his face and wrap his lips around the blatant evidence of bias currently tenting Rodney’s pants, but he let it be.
Suddenly he wasn’t at all sure what was going on here, but he also knew he wasn’t going to stop it for all the world.
“Maybe I’m over it,” John said, the next time he saw Rodney alone. “Maybe I’m just gay and I freaked out with Billy and never had a chance to find out with Lyle.”
“Want to test that theory?” Rodney said, looking somewhat sceptical.
He got John down to his underwear and lay down beside him on the bed, running sure hands over him until John was stirring with arousal. Rodney already knew exactly how to get John going, which gave him a power John really didn’t mind him having.
“Yeah, god, yeah, Rodney, touch me!”
Rodney ran his hand up the insides of John’s thighs, trailing fingers into the hair at the top of his legs, and then he brushed his knuckles over John’s covered erection.
John shivered, but it was a good shiver. This was promising.
Rodney began stroking John, the flat of his palm massaging over John’s clothed hardness. It wasn’t long before he had John right on the edge, and John was convinced all his past hangups had evaporated.
“I’m going to try direct touch now,” Rodney said.
“Yeah, do it,” John responded, feeling desperate.
Rodney reached inside John’s underwear, his fingers tentatively curling around John’s cock.
John froze, wanting nothing more than for the feeling to stop. He pulled away from Rodney, his cock already shrinking.
“Well, that’s pretty conclusive,” Rodney said calmly.
John was out of the bed and back in his clothes in seconds.
“God, I’m so sorry,” John said, his cheeks burning. “I really thought I was over this.”
“Okay, can you please explain to me what you need to be sorry about? Because I’m pretty sure we agreed this wasn’t going to be a problem if it happened. In fact, this is useful data, right?”
“Maybe,” John said, but all he could think of was Billy, and Nancy, and how history was repeating itself. He was broken, after all. “I should go,” he said.
“You can, but I don’t think you should. I think you should stay with me and let yourself get past this.”
“I’m not in the mood to try again, McKay.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant you need to know that it’s okay. I’m not Billy, I’m not Nancy. I don’t feel rejected or take it personally and I don’t think there’s something wrong with you just because there’s a sex thing you don’t like. I mean, not everyone likes the things I like, but I don’t go treating them like shit for it. Maybe because liking a good spanking’s not on the Compulsory Heterosexual Activity list, but still.”
“I don’t think letting another man touch my cock’s on the Compulsory Heterosexual Activity list either,” John said, finally cracking half a smile.
“Well, no, so you’re sure to be preserved from the wrath of a homophobic jerk of an imaginary deity by the fact you only enjoying cocksucking and frottage with other men.”
“With anal sex very much a line of inquiry we’ve yet to explore,” John said with a grin, feeling suddenly okay again.
God, Rodney made everything better. Dammit.
“Is that a line of inquiry you want to explore, though?” Rodney asked.
John’s cock was stirring again. So that was a yes.
“Not today, but… yeah, I want to, if you’re game.”
“Oh, I’m game,” Rodney said enthusiastically. “I mean… anything for science.”
“For science, then,” John smirked. “Maybe next week?”
“Yes. But only if you’re sure you’re ready.”
“Rodney. I’m thirty-seven years old. I think I’m ready to lose my virginity.”
“I thought we’d already established that virginity is an unworthy and unscientific term.”
“Yeah, but still. I’m ready to try getting fucked,” John retorted.
“You know you might not like it. There are plenty of gay guys who don’t do anal at all, right? It doesn’t make you less anything if that’s not your bag.”
“Yeah, you’ve told me that several times now,” John reassured him.
“It’s just you seem quite hung up on this virginity nonsense, and I am not going to put anything inside you unless you absolutely love it, are we clear?”
“Crystal,” John said, noting his cock perking up once more.
It didn’t matter how many times Rodney told John to ditch the idea of losing his virginity, John still felt very much like a thirty-seven-year-old virgin about to be deflowered. His responses to Rodney, his feelings about what they were doing made him feel hopeful and excited and, in all honesty, in a permanent state of teenage-esque horniness.
But he couldn’t help fearing that he was setting himself up for more feelings of disappointment.
He tried not to think too hard about the common factors that made Billy, Nancy, Lyle and Rodney exceptions in a long life of not being all that interested in sex. There was no question about how interested he now was in sex, specifically with Rodney. He reminded himself firmly this was just an openhearted and generous experiment with a friend, at least from Rodney’s perspective.
From his own perspective? Well, maybe he was beginning to come down with a mild case of feelings – of some sort or other – for the absurd and brilliant entity that was Dr Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD. But he probably needed to keep a lid on them.
He arrived in Rodney’s room for their scheduled experiment feeling nervous but already aroused. Kate Bush was playing, and John had a sudden surreal picture of him finally giving it up to the strains of her warbling washing machine, washing machine. His amusement calmed his nerves somewhat.
Rodney pulled him inside the room, looking uncharacteristically flustered in this setting, his eyes darting to John’s lips as if he might want to kiss them as much as John wanted to be kissed, but he didn’t follow through, and John didn’t have the confidence to step outside the parameters of their experiment. John decided the sensible thing was just to peel himself out of his clothes and lie on the bed, face down but propped up on one elbow, twisted to look at Rodney expectantly.
Because okay, maybe he wanted to see if he could stir up some feelings other than scientific curiosity in the other man.
It worked, because Rodney’s face went slack as he took in John’s nakedness.
“Jesus, Sheppard, you’re hot stuff,” he said.
“I think you can call me John if you’re about to put your cock in me, Rodney,” John teased.
“Sorry, John,” Rodney said, even more flustered. “Er, should I…” he made an unambiguous undressing mime and John grinned.
“Seems only fair,” he said.
Rodney shyly disrobed and moved towards the bed, but not before John had the chance to take in Rodney McKay naked. He was prettier than John expected, the thickness of his body – and his cock – stirring heat in John. And John had always had a thing for Rodney’s arms and shoulders. He realised he might be catching a thing for his soft belly too.
“So, in the interest of scientific enquiry, I’d like to get you nicely worked up before I start playing with your ass, so we know clearly if we hit any of your off buttons,” Rodney said.
“I’m well on my way, Rodney,” John confessed. “Hard as nails.”
“Oh, well, maybe I can…”
“C’mere,” John said assertively, guiding Rodney to stand closer to his head. “May I?”
Rodney nodded.
He leaned forward slowly and took Rodney’s semihard cock into his mouth.
“Oh my good God!” Rodney said as John began to languidly suck him off.
He lifted off for a moment.
“Can you come twice?” he asked.
“Yes. Fuck, yes!”
John pulled Rodney down on the bed and arranged himself between his spread legs, taking his cock into his mouth once again, his hand wrapping around the thick shaft and jacking it with intent.
“Oh God, your mouth, John, your damn sinful, perfect mouth!” Rodney babbled, as John worked him hard towards a climax, hand and mouth working together to wring the pleasure out of him.
“Fuck, yeah, fuck! I’m gonna come…”
John made an approving noise in his throat and sucked harder, and that was it, Rodney was groaning and filling John’s mouth with his seed, which John greedily gulped down, delighted by the taste of Rodney’s shattered scientific objectivity.
And yeah, that had got him as worked up as he needed to be.
“I’m sorry but no virgin was ever that filthy with their mouth,” Rodney said to him, and John just grinned.
Rodney put him on his front, but with his hips propped up by pillows and his thighs spread.
He realised with a shock that he no longer felt afraid of being vulnerable around Rodney, he was as safe as he could be with anyone. All he could feel was desperate want.
“I’m going to take this slow. I want you to let me know if anything feels off, even slightly,” Rodney said.
John nodded.
Rodney started just stroking hands over John’s ass, and John liked that, he liked that a lot. When Rodney put his oh so clever hands over the globes of John’s cheeks and parted them, John gave a delicious shiver.
“Is this okay?”
“So fucking okay.”
Rodney’s fingers trailed into his crack, brushing gently across his hole. John had no idea the skin there would be so sensitive, he found himself wanting to push back onto Rodney’s fingers, needing more. It wasn’t long before Rodney was lubing those fingers up and massaging around his hole with more purpose, and John wanted him inside so fucking badly.
“Please, Rodney,” he said, “I need…”
One finger slid slowly inside of him, and John held his breath, waiting for the bad reaction, but it didn’t happen.
“Okay?” Rodney checked in.
“Yeah, feels good,” John said, astonished.
Jesus, he should’ve just let Billy fuck him all those years ago, he thought sadly. Maybe he should have asked Nancy to peg him.
Rodney was taking his time as usual, massaging into him sensually. The man was good with his hands, and John was soon squirming with pleasure. He slid a second finger inside John, quickly finding John’s prostate, and John couldn’t hold back a moan at the sensation.
John had no idea it could be like this. All these years, he’d been convinced his dislike of fucking would extrapolate to being fucked and here he was falling to pieces on Rodney’s fingers, knowing through to his bones how much he needed Rodney’s cock. By the time Rodney was done slowly opening John up he was almost sobbing from a mixture of mind-blowing pleasure and emotional release.
“John? Are you okay?
“Yes!” John said, “please Rodney just fuck me – need your cock in me.”
He heard the sound of a condom wrapper tearing and the next thing he knew, Rodney’s cock was sliding inside him like it was meant to be there and John had never felt so right about anything in his whole damn life. When Rodney was all the way inside him, his body pressed close along John’s back, John felt like he was home.
“John?”
Rodney’s fingertips traced John’s tears, but his voice was soft, there was no judgment.
“I’m okay,” John said. “More than okay.”
Rodney started pressing soft bites and kisses into John’s neck and shoulders, and John melted beneath him, turned on beyond reason and more than a little emotional about it. Rodney began rocking his cock gently into John and John groaned with pleasure.
“So good, Rodney, Jesus,” he said.
Rodney tried pumping a little harder and John dissolved into desperately aroused liquid underneath the other man’s hard body. He couldn’t get over how good it all felt – Rodney’s cock was meant to be inside him, and he didn’t want him to leave. Rodney’s body close against his was breathtaking, and he could feel the hidden power of the man as his thrusts built up speed.
Rodney McKay, sex god. Not quite where John had expected a sexual awakening to come from, but he’d take it. And take it.
“Harder, god, yeah,” John encouraged as Rodney began to lengthen and strengthen his thrusts.
John was pushing back against Rodney, trying to make it harder still, take him deeper, arching his body to heighten the feelings.
“Damn, you’re amazing, John, so fucking hot! Can’t hold on much longer,” Rodney said.
He changed the angle of thrust and suddenly John’s prostate was taking direct fire and John couldn’t help but moan in pleasure.
“Yeah, go on, god, want you to come in me so bad,” John said.
He was close himself, so close; he thought he might just come right along with Rodney.
“You first,” Rodney said, doing something devastating with his hips that made John nearly yell with pleasure. A couple more thrusts like that and John was coming harder than he’d ever done in his life, and Rodney was groaning above him, clearly coming right along with him.
Rodney collapsed against him, and that was quite possibly as good a feeling as the orgasm that was ebbing from John’s body. The heavy weight of Rodney covering him, the closeness… but then Rodney was moving, pulling out of John, and John almost couldn’t bear him to leave.
Rodney took care of the condom, and then came back and knelt on the floor next to John’s head, one hand curled around John’s bicep.
“How’re you doing?”
All John knew was he was suddenly profoundly unhappy. They’d exhausted all lines of inquiry. John had his cold, hard facts about his sexuality. The experiment was over.
“Oh. Er, you don’t look so good… I thought…”
“Rodney. It was good. Incredible. I’m just… having a comedown. I guess this experiment is over, huh? All data is in.”
“Um, yes, I suppose so.”
Rodney didn’t exactly sound happy himself.
“Well, thanks. I appreciate the assist. It’s been…” amazing, intimate, hot, comforting, life-changing, “…helpful.”
“Oh, well, I’m… glad to be of help?”
Things were suddenly so awkward John couldn’t bear it. He reached for his clothes, dressing hurriedly.
“I should go,” he said, fleeing before Rodney had a chance to respond.
John had discovered things about himself, but he couldn’t help feeling like he’d still lost. He was in a pit for days, missing Rodney and what they’d been to one another, as if he’d gone through a breakup. Which was stupid.
Then, a couple of weeks after their last experiment, Rodney turned up at John’s room, looking agitated.
“May I come in?”
“Sure.”
“You see, I’m still going over the data, and I picked up something I think I might previously have missed.”
“Oh?”
“Why me?” Rodney said.
“What do you mean, why you? You offered,” John evaded.
Rodney looked a little impatient, like John was being dumb.
“Well, yes, but why did you say yes when you so rarely feel attraction for people?”
“You think I’m attracted to you?” John said, trying desperately to sound cool.
“On some level yes, because it wouldn’t have been a successful experiment otherwise.”
“Rodney, I’m not attracted to my right hand, but we have a whole lotta sex together,” John said.
“Oh, trust me, I get that, but I’ve been going through the data and you’re not someone who does that – hooks up with people just to get off. I do that, but you don’t. I suspect you can’t.”
Damn. Rodney was right, of course. Always Mr fucking Right.
“And you were flirting with me – which I got distracted from considering because you introduced the whole 37-year-old virgin thing into the conversation and I forgot why we ended up there.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” John said, his eartips colouring.
“I can believe that. And it wasn’t just to be cruel, like I thought at the time,” Rodney said.
John had an inkling that statement revealed Rodney wasn’t quite as confident as he made out.
“Why would I be cruel to you?”
“Well, it can’t have escaped your notice that I… lack expertise at the soft sciences. Relationships, human dynamics, and so forth,” he said, painfully earnest suddenly.
“I’d say you were doing soft sciences pretty well lately,” John said with a smirk, his voice suggestive.
“No,” Rodney corrected, “sex is a hard science, at least it feels that way to me. I missed the soft data because it’s not my field.”
“So, doesn’t it strike you as a little mean to be pinning down my feelings like it’s an academic point when you’re not interested in soft science?” John said defensively.
“I didn’t say not interested, I said not good,” Rodney told him. “I miss things. Like, I missed the fact that you’re only into sex with people you have some sort of feeling for.”
John had figured out that one just lately too. He didn’t get attracted to people he didn’t… like. Quite a bit.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“And I’m a total slut who’ll fuck anybody,” Rodney said.
“Well, thanks for that confirmation, McKay,” John said bitterly.
“So, ummm, you wouldn’t have any reason to know it was different with you. Despite my efforts to keep the science hard, it went soft on me.”
John smirked.
“Are you sure you wanna run with this metaphor?” but something inside him was bouncing around like an excitable puppy about to get his favourite chewtoy.
“Oh har de har. You see? I’m hopeless at this.”
“Rodney, just shut up and kiss me already,” John said.
“Oh, um…”
Rodney stepped towards John, looked lost for a moment, took a deep breath and grabbed John by the front of his open jacket, pulling him close. His kiss was intense, needy and hard and passionate. John melted like butter on a skillet, sinking his body against Rodney’s and returning the kiss with equal heat.
When Rodney broke for air, he put a hand up to John’s cheek, softer than anything John had known him to do.
“So, um, I realise there are a considerable number of lines of scientific enquiry I’ve failed to follow up on.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, but there’s just one snag…”
“Go on,” John said.
“I’ll require your ongoing collaboration… indefinitely.”
“Oh, I don’t see that being a problem,” John said, grinning so hard it made his face hurt.