ride into the sun 1/2 (sga, john/rodney, nsfw, ~15,000)
Title: Ride Into The Sun
Pairing: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Word count: ~15,000
Ratings/Warnings: NSFW, explicit. This story is probably unsafe for people with triggers. ( Skip.) Depicts imprisonment, isolation, severe conditions, and forced drug use. Mentions torture.
Contains: Emotional manipulation and bondage, both alone and with a partner.
Notes: Set shortly after The Prodigal (514), implied AU thereafter. Written for kink_bingo. Thanks to anatsuno for beta. Title from Elliott Smith's "Color Bars."
Crossposted: On Dreamwidth | On AO3
Summary: John's fantasies do a lot for him: they restore his sense of control, express his defiance, celebrate his victories, and connect him with feelings he can't access other ways. He never thought they'd get him what he wants.
*
"Could you pronounce that again?" John asks.
"Certainly, Colonel Sheppard. We call our world Uehlj," says Henda. Or maybe she says "Uhlch," or maybe it's more like "Ewelk"-- it rolls so quickly and instinctively from her tongue that John hesitates again, and finally commits to "Oolgh."
Not that it really matters. It's one of the few dependable constants in John's life: no matter how he notes the pronunciation of local names for his report, the linguists will inevitably submit a study five months later with a completely different romanization of every one of them, and John will have to update his files.
Henda looks at his notepad with interest. "Your glyphs are so many to record so little!" she laughs. "Or are you writing more words than merely what I say?"
"Well, these spell the name of your world, here," John shows her. "And this one is your name."
"I am honored to be committed to memory," she smiles. "Will you let me honor you in return? I would very much like to share something with you."
That kind of invitation can be ominous as much as it's promising, but it's not like John can gracefully refuse. He pockets his notebook. "My team and I would love to see whatever you'd like to show us."
"Refo, Ceterun," Henda calls to the other two guides, "follow as I take our visitors to the dome."
John waits to fall into step beside Teyla, Rodney behind them, Ronon at their six. "So far so good," he says.
Teyla hears the implied question and answers it with a slight nod and a smile. "I believe we will have much to offer the Yuulchnif--" crap, if that's how Teyla says it, John's going to have to change how he spelled the planet name-- "and they can teach us much in return. I look forward to seeing the sights." In other words, risk assessment favorable.
John nods, skirting a crowd of people, most of them carrying the docile, long-limbed pets that a lot of the locals seem to take everywhere.
It's that rarest of missions, a peaceful encounter that isn't boring. Yuulch has a relatively high level of development, more advanced than Earth in some ways.
John's long since internalized all the intel Atlantis has on Wraith hive movements, so he knows that Yuulch is lucky enough to lie in a disputed zone between the territories of two aggressive Hives, each Hive defending Yuulch from the other to prevent their enemies from feeding up and gaining an advantage.
Another lucky break for Yuulch: on the trip from the space gate to the planet's surface, the puddlejumper detected a lot of Hive-hostile radiation from the system's binary suns. Each Hive wards the other off, and neither of them can survive in the solar system long enough to fight it out to a conclusion. Yuulch hasn't been culled in centuries.
The thick atmosphere cuts the harmful radiation and gives Yuulch a perpetually orange-pinkish sky. Possibly because of the double sun, Yuulch has solar power tech that's way ahead of Earth's. Also, they count in base two. Even Rodney put aside his distaste for the soft sciences to take an interest in that. Maybe the math zeroes out the anthropology.
"The dome," says Henda, leading them through an arched doorway.
John scans the place, eyes peeled for signs of Ancient tech, trying to think non-activatey thoughts, just in case. Behind him Rodney mumbles, but he's not piping up with any warnings.
The place doesn't look Ancient at all, too baroque for that, the whole dome-- and wow, it's big, a vast open space above them-- carved with an orchard in bas relief, stone trees heavy with oblong, three-lobed fruit. Teyla compliments the artistry to Refo, who drinks it up like he chisled the place himself.
Henda says, "We have a little time before the dome blossoms. I'll show you something else in the meantime. Here..."
John follows her to a large open window. "Setul is rising," Henda says. "Stand here and lean out, you can just see it between the buildings." She plants her hands on the windowpane and shows him, tilting her head out the window.
He's just about to follow suit when he's pulled back by a sharp yank on his tac vest. "What--?" he starts, but Rodney scowls at him and jerks his chin at the window frame, fingers still hooked behind John's neck.
The windowpane isn't stone but metal, and the wall beneath it protrudes, and then John sees: it's been plastered over, but there's a hint of those characteristic Ancient notches and flowing-angular patterns, wearing through the facade.
John gives him a nod and Rodney lets go. Leaning out next to Henda, John makes sure not to touch the windowpane. The second sun is dawning, boiling up out of the clouds. The evaporating moisture creates a blue haze in the orange sky.
"Beautiful," he says.
She smiles at him as they withdraw back into the dome. "What it must be like on your world," she says, "I can only wonder. Is it so much darker, with only half a sun?"
"We're used to it," John says amiably.
"Do all the people from half-sun worlds have eyes so pale?"
Behind him, Rodney mutters quietly-- for him, anyway-- "Here we go again."
...Right. Little glances, pursed lips, special honors; someday he'll learn to see this coming. Well, let Rodney grumble, they can always use any advantage they can get.
"We come in all kinds," John answers her easily, forcing a more relaxed slouch and returning her smile.
Just then the dome transforms with the sight they must be here to see: the rising second sun lines up with a small triangular slot in the wall, and a knife of sunlight cuts through the dome, splintering on a prism incorporated into the design on the opposite side.
More triangles of light break apart and scatter and reflect onto the foliage of the carved trees, forming tiny glowing white flowers.
*
The team leaves Yuulch, or Uehlj, or possibly Oolgh, with an appointment for the second contact team to visit in a few days, a box of the three-lobed fruit, and a wafer of photodiodes. After the infirmary releases them, Rodney marches the wafer down to Science, already complaining that it's an embarrassment none of his engineers came up with this much more efficient photovoltaic design.
Ronon sticks around to shyly flirt some more with Dr. Keller; Teyla heads home to Kanaan and Torren. The team used to try to have dinners together, but these days it's better for everyone to meet for breakfast or lunch before their missions.
John goes to his quarters and checks his schedule, his email, his network inbox. If he puts in a productive two hours, he's looking at an entire evening to himself. Just the idea makes his stomach lurch with anticipation.
He damn near clears his email inbox. He addresses every flagged action item on the network. Lorne's going to pinch himself.
After one last sweep of check-ins-- Teyla's in her suite, Rodney's in the lab, Ronon's in the mess, two teams out on milk runs, three Marines escorting architectural engineers to approve new areas of the city for exploration, five golden rings-- John grabs stuff out of the bathroom and sets up on the bed.
He considers himself, hesitating. Boots and BDUs on, or off? Off is more comfortable if he dozes afterward, but on... that feeds into the fantasy better, and he wants to treat himself to the full effect this time, so they stay on. The uniform shirt's too warm, he shucks that. He's got a spare tac vest with empty pockets that he doesn't mind cleaning, so he puts that on over his tee and undoes his fly.
He spreads out the towel and settles on the bed, thin leather strap and a jar of Rodney's sunscreen in reach. John would bet good money that Rodney deliberately formulated it to double as lube. In fact, he'd bet that Rodney concocted it as lube first, and used it as a base for sunscreen later.
He got Rodney to make him a jar without the cocoa butter reek. He doesn't want to use the scented stuff for this and then get hard at the smell when Rodney wears it.
Last thing... he lifts the mattress to pull out the stirrup loops on either side of his narrow bed. Rodney's always making snide remarks about how John's never replaced his tiny bunk, but it's the perfect width for this, for John to spread his legs on either side and feel perfectly exposed, perfectly vulnerable.
That's everything. John picks up the leather strap and winds it around his wrists, folding the ends under the loops. He won't risk cuffs. It's not smart or safe when he's doing this alone, especially when he's on call 24/7. Anyway, he doesn't need the bonds to be secure, he just wants the sensation. Wrists above his head and bound, legs open, boots through the stirrups, and fresh in his mind, the feeling of Rodney yanking him back by his tac vest-- just from getting everything into place, just from anticipation, he's already nearly hard enough to come.
John doesn't want to settle for just getting off tonight, though. He's already got a hint of it building, that feeling just under his sternum, vibrant, ready to expand. He closes his eyes.
He's been captured, he's-- Rodney yanked him back from the Ancient console concealed under plaster (remembering that sensation makes his face heat, his stomach jump) but Henda noticed, and suspected, and when she flirted with him afterward (Rodney folding his arms jealously with a possessive warning glare) her people used a concealed Ancient artifact to detect the gene and they nabbed him for it.
They've taken him somewhere remote, he's in a cell, like the last time he was captured, PHX-912: he keeps the moist stone walls, but not the wracking cold, and leaves out the freezing water they doused him with during the interrogation.
Fuck them, it was nothing, their dank little cell; it's set dressing. He's in the stone-walled cell but he's warm and dry, locked up, hands tied, feet secured, completely trapped, knees apart and defenseless, yes, he's twenty stories underground and maybe not even on the original planet anymore. It's hopeless, hours pass, they'll never, they'll never find him-- god-- and that third guy, the quiet guy, Ceterun, keeps coming around to tell him the team's long gone, they scanned Yuulch for his sub-q transmitter and didn't find him and they've given up.
John twists against the strap and stirrups, not enough to get free, just enough to feel it, feel it, the doubt, the marrow-deep ache of it: they're not coming for him, they can't, they'll give up on him, his heart's pounding with it, panicking, convinced they're never going to find him, but he still holds on, still hopes-- god, he's harder than anything.
The Yuulchnif plan to use his gene for something stupid, like on PFD-289 when they tried to make him deploy an Ancient weapon that was malfunctioning and ready to blow. (And fuck them and their doomsday device, too.) So he fights-- John pulls against the strap around his wrists, arches and twists and kicks.
He gets one boot out of its stirrup, that's okay, he's struggling now, he's outnumbered with no hope of getting free but he has to try, he has to, but fuck, please, he can't, he needs-- and Rodney shows up, firing a stunner haphazardly, taking down all John's captors and complaining that he jammed his finger on the gun stock as he drags John out--
John wriggles out of the strap and yanks his other boot out of the stirrup, he's too, it's too-- he can't see this fantasy through to the part where Rodney frees him and John breaks the way he never does in real life, reaches out, fists his shirt and kisses him, opens for him-- he needs to skip ahead, now.
John's shoving his BDUs down and grabbing the jar with shaky hands, sinking three fingers in and rolling face down on the bed, reaching awkwardly down and back to wedge his fingertips into himself and shove in, a hoarse groan rattling his throat. His chest feels like the Yuulchnif dome, huge and empty and full of broken light.
He drops that fantasy and skips to the one that always gets him off, reliable and fast. TXG-831, the planet near the Lagrange Point Satellite, where they lost Gaul and Abrams. John feels guilty for using that disastrous mission as fantasy fuel, but he can't help it, it seizes his imagination the same as always: he's pinned down behind an outcropping of rocks in the hot sand, and that fucking uber-Wraith is bearing down on him and he's got nothing, it's over, there's no hope, none, and then Rodney shows up and empties his gun into the thing, and his scared, brave, crazy shout of "What now?!" just makes it even better.
In John's fantasy Rodney reloads and somehow the second round finishes off the uber-Wraith, whatever, whatever, just-- Rodney's hauling him out of cover, kissing him hard, bitching him out for going off alone and they're going down onto the packed dusty earth and Rodney's over him, pushing into him, just like that, like that, and-- please, please, come back for me-- please, come, just come--
His comm chirps, and Chuck's tinny voice says, "Colonel Sheppard, you're needed in the gateroom immediately."
John beats his forehead against his pillow a couple of times and wipes his less-messy hand on the towel, grabbing the comm and hooking it onto his ear. "Sheppard here. Report."
"Emergency with AR-5, sir. They missed a check-in and when we dialed through to contact them, we picked up their beacon. It's a distress call."
"On my way."
Fuck. He just had to try to drag it out as long as possible. Should've known he wouldn't have that much time. He can't go out like this, so he shuts his eyes and tries to get there again, but he can't bring back that live, resonant, open feeling inside him.
His body's still primed, so John tugs himself to a quick anticlimax and rushes to the bathroom, cleaning up fast and ordering his clothes, glad he kept his boots on as he checks himself in the mirror quick and heads out.
*
"Sergeant?"
Stackhouse clears his throat, coughs, clears it again. "Mr. Richard Martin Woolsey, sir, this is Sergeant Nathan Elliot Stackhouse reporting."
John feels the rest of the gateroom wincing along with him. There's a protocol so that anyone taken captive who has a chance to report back can convey as much information about the situation as possible without alerting the hostiles.
The deliberate throat-clearing means that Stackhouse is acting under duress, and might be forced to lie. Addressing Woolsey by title, following his name with "sir," saying Woolsey's first name, giving his own first name, using the fake middle names of "Martin" and "Elliot..." all of it is part of a code that the offworld teams memorize before they step through the gate.
The real message is: the hostiles are armed, organized, and aggressive. They have some advanced technology but nothing Ancient is in play. The threat level is high, though thank god, no injuries.
Stackhouse says, "This is all just a big misunderstanding, sir. The Seutradstvev are a fair people, but we were trespassing. They need proof of our peaceful intentions. They want to resolve this through negotiation."
His tone of voice is too rote and earnest, but the worlds of Pegasus don't have television, they don't live and breathe irony like so many people from Earth. Tone is cultural, as the linguists and anthropologists keep drilling into them. Members of the expedition can communicate things through tone that only other people from their own culture have a chance of interpreting. They take every advantage they can get.
Stackhouse is clearly letting them know that he's reciting what they told him to say, but the Seutradstvev-- boy, John's glad it's not up to him to get the spelling of that one right-- either can't tell Stackhouse is making their coercion obvious, or they don't care.
"Understood, Sergeant," Woolsey says. "What are the terms?"
The terms are ridiculous. They know enough about Atlantis from rumors to know who's in change, and they're demanding Woolsey and John meet them on a neutral planet to "negotiate". Of course they don't expect to get any such thing-- it's an opening gambit to get a counter-offer so they can gauge how much the Atlanteans value the hostages.
John puts a spoke in their wheel by offering to come on over to personally haggle for AR-5's release.
They buy it; they must be some overconfident motherfuckers over there. Of course they want John yesterday, unarmed, maybe giftwrapped with a little bow and a tag that says "Property of Seutradst." Woolsey drags it out, proposing and discarding suggestions for the rendezvous. Ultimately, he'll let them choose a place when they name a world a gate team's already scoped out.
John has time to squish into one of the new ballistic vests, fresh from the Daedalus and still semi-experimental, billed as thinner, lighter and more effective, and designed to be worn against the skin for better concealment. Time to do some field testing.
He's just secured the Velcro straps when Rodney marches into the ready room, slams open his own locker and thrusts a shirt at him. "Here. Even the new vests would show under those painted-on shirts you wear." His mouth stretches tight. "This is a stupid plan, and I look forward to saying I told you so about a million times. I'd rather not sit around in the infirmary to do it. So. Try to resist the temptation to throw yourself in front of every single bullet."
"I'll think about it," John says easily, but Rodney doesn't play along with an eyeroll or a quip. The look he levels at John is tough and unwavering. Something's changed between them, after their last run-in with Michael a few weeks ago; John's not sure how to get that light touch back.
And he needs the lightness, because saying something serious, something real... impossible. It's not that John doesn't want to. He really can't. The words are wrong and they get stuck somewhere besides; he can't excavate them from his throat, can't free them from behind the prison of his gritted teeth. Bullshit's all he has.
"Here's to many more, right?" he tries, but Rodney just snorts derisively and stomps out.
John puts on the shirt. It fits fine, looser than his usual, but not by all that much. Rodney looks broader and bigger than him, but a lot of that comes from the high defensive set of his shoulders and his crappy posture.
Later he'll let himself enjoy the idea of wearing Rodney's clothes. For now he just checks that the vest doesn't show and gets back to the gateroom.
The Seutradstvev have gated to PJX-8U4 in the meantime, and Woolsey sends a MALP to verify that AR-5 are all there and unharmed. It also shows at least a good thirty soldiers over there, armed and ready, but sensors detect no other life signs in the area.
Too soon, John's strolling through the gate into... well, it can't really be called an ambush when everybody involved knows it's going to happen.
As advertised, the Seutradstvev have industrial technology, weapons at a similar level of development as the Genii's guns: they're obviously mass produced and automatic, but clunky, with heavy drum magazines. On the other hand, heavy drum magazines mean they've got a hell of a lot of bullets, and a tommy gun can kill a guy just as dead as an M9.
The Seutradstvev have decent weapons, but not much imagination, or they wouldn't have let Atlantis keep the gate open between sending the MALP and sending John. Just because they didn't see anything come through doesn't mean there isn't a cloaked jumper poised right over their heads.
So when the predictable occurs-- the Seutradstvev decide they're not interested in negotiating after all and cut the wormhole before they've even secured John-- the hovering jumper drops a payload of flashbangs and smoke grenades and uncloaks under cover of the smokescreen. John drops and rolls in the same moment, expecting heavy fire since half the Seutradstvev had guns sighted on him, but only a couple of bursts ring out and the shots go wild, pitting rocks a dozen yards away from him.
Marines charge out and just keep on charging, the jumper unloading like a clown car. There's a weird shortage of fire from the Seutradstvev, nothing but short pulses when it stands to reason at least a couple of them ought to be spraying automatic fire, if only to lay down cover.
John's instincts tell him these guys are low on ammo, that they're advanced and they're organized, but supplied: maybe not. And that revises his earlier estimation too. Maybe they're not overconfident. Maybe they're desperate.
John holds his breath against the smoke and crabwalks to meet Sgt. Chaowarat at the DHD, who's dialing out, and per their hasty plan, has a second stunner ready to hand off to John.
The wormhole to Atlantis engages. Still scuttling toward the DHD, John sees Stackhouse and Dr. Gvero surrounded by a solid phalanx of Marines, and the other two members of AR-5 are running, bent low, to join them while Ronon covers them, his particle magnum strobing in one hand, P-90 rattling in the other.
Fast and hard, they'll be home in two minutes, except that's when two VTOLs strafe over.
The Marines and the VTOLs exchange fire, except no, the VTOLs aren't aiming for the smokescreen or the Marines: they're flying directly over, and aiming for, the Seutradstvev.
Stackhouse didn't use any code signals for aerial armament, so this is, what, someone else? The Seutradstvev tommy guns start firing for real, John gets shot, goes down, sees something hit the ground that throws up an enormous fountain of earth. He feels a rain of dirt pattering down on him all over before he checks out.
*
John comes to when his kneecap fucking explodes, and also he bites his tongue.
He gets his other leg under him fast and pants hard, sides heaving, gut aching. His hands are cuffed together in front of him, weird metal cuffs that look like they were screwed on rather than locked. He's still dressed, but his feet are bare.
He's in... a pipe. A cylinder, anyway. Looks metal, gives John less room than he'd have in a coffin. He tests his first guess, and sure enough, the pipe's too narrow for him to even crouch down, let alone sit.
Pretty fucking diabolical if they plan to leave him in here long. He toes the floor, which seems to be layered with dirt, or maybe something like sawdust. About three inches of it, and then more metal. He digs with his toes and kicks dust up, but there's nothing else under there.
John feels his face. He's something like twenty hours past a shave. He had the mission to Yuulch, time in his quarters, ninety minutes in the gateroom: that makes it maybe two, three, four hours he's been unconscious. It might've taken that long just to get him here, wherever here is.
John looks up and then kind of wishes he hadn't. The pipe's open at the top but the top looks far, far away.
No time to waste, though. Standing here is only going to make him weaker. Not only is it a tight fit with no way to rest, it's hot. He's already sweating. He tries slipping out of the cuffs; he folds his thumb in tight, wiping sweat from his face onto his hands to make his skin more slippery. No good. He can, just barely, twist his wrists and get his fingertips on the mechanism, grateful for the millonth time that his fingers are double jointed. The more he looks, though, the more sure he is that he can't undo the screws without tools.
Up, then. Shit. John rolls up his pantlegs; bare skin's going to give him more purchase than his BDUs. He tries to use the folded fabric to pad the busted knee a little.
He manages to get about ten feet up before he really has to put his weight on the bad knee to give his other leg a break. Hurts like fuck, but he lets himself think ahead: someday he's going to be in his quarters thinking about this mess, constructing a jerkoff fantasy using some of it, and he'll skip right over the busted knee. He might not even remember it by then.
He wriggles and inches his way up. There don't seem to be any breaks in the pipe, nowhere it could come apart or open, no hatches or seams.
About six feet from the top, he wriggles up and right away slides back down a few inches, skidding a little.
They fucking greased it. Okay, points to them for that. They're not dumb. John wedges himself as securely as he can (fucking ow, goddamn knee) and squints up. The sky's blazing through the hole and killing his vision, but from here, he can see what wasn't visible from the bottom: there's a metal mesh over the top.
It's not surprising, but it's still disappointing. It looks like it's attached in four places, so maybe it's not that secure, though if they thought to grease the pipe, they probably thought to lock down the top.
Slowly, John contorts and wrenches himself and rests his weight on his bad knee for an infinite few seconds, and eventually manages to tear the t-shirt off his back and into his hands, snagging on the handcuffs. It has a hole in the front, a fist-sized shredded area right where his gut's sore, because... okay, that's where he got shot.
The new ballistic vest has nanotech fibers, microengineered so that bullets spin themselves into fragments against the bulletproof fabric. Looks like it worked, because there's no slug John can see, just a rough patch on the otherwise smooth vest, and the giant hole in Rodney's t-shirt: it's a write-off. He's going to be hearing about that.
He can hardly wait.
John balls the shirt, wipes his face, and laboriously begins scrubbing grease off the metal above his head, and then another stripe up the opposite side for his legs. Inch up, wipe frantically while the bad knee complains and throbs. Inch up, wipe.
Once he's up top, he puts the t-shirt against the metal mesh in case it's electrified, and pushes.
There's no give at all. Now that he's up here, he can see that the four attachments are really more like four ridges that extend several feet down and end in nozzles. In a moment of weakness, he hopes to god they're for spraying water, but he shuts that thought off quick. He can't think about water.
He touches the mesh-- it's not live, so he explores with his fingers over his head, feeling everywhere the mesh meets the pipe, finding no weaknesses; he pushes more on the mesh, strikes up with the heel of his hand. He also slips down some and has to inch his way back up again twice, all just to verify that he's not getting out this way. Not that he had any bright ideas about how to climb down the outside of the pipe anyway, but if he could knock the top open he could tear off part of the shirt and hang it out, make himself more visible for potential rescue.
Going down is almost as rough as going up, because it's really, really fucking hot in here now, and he's slick with sweat all over. The ballistic vest is smooth and he got some of the grease on him despite his efforts with the shirt and his legs and feet are slippery-damp.
He descends in a series of heart-stopping plunges punctuated by the squeak of his sweaty skin as he jams his limbs against the metal until the friction bites in enough to stop him, abrading some hair off his arms and legs.
Once he's at the bottom again, it seems impossible he ever made it to the top. He's sapped. The heat is unreal. He has to piss. The metal of the pipe feels like it's burning him, but he can't avoid touching it.
Fuck them. So what. He's absolutely using this as a setting for a fantasy later. He'll make the pipe a little bigger, big enough that Rodney can wedge in here with him. That'd be amazing, confined and mashed comprehensively against Rodney with nowhere to go, and then John will kiss him and it'll just be a curve of cool metal at his back and Rodney everywhere, rutting against him and telling him off for ever thinking they wouldn't come for him.
John stops it there, because that's for later. Right now he can't anticipate help. He has to assume he's on his own until he gets out of this himself.
For now all he can do is save his strength. He tries to find a position that lets him rest. The filthy t-shirt hangs from his wrists, trapped on by the cuffs; if someone comes to get him out, maybe John can whip it up into their faces unexpectedly and get a moment's advantage. And he's got the vest, he can take a body shot, that's a point in his favor.
The vest seems less advantageous later, when the sun climbs high enough to pierce straight down the pipe and somehow it gets impossibly even hotter. The nanotech fibers don't breathe, and the thick, heavy straps that keep it on him are awkwardly positioned.
Between the narrow confines and his cuffed hands, John can't get the straps open, and he'd almost rather get shot than keep the vest on in this heat. His BDUs are soaked with sweat, with more seeping constantly out from under the vest. He's going to have some substantial criticism for those poorly placed straps in his field testing notes.
The need to piss is back, and it's painful enough that he's got to let loose, even though he can't really afford to lose the liquid. He can get his BDUs open, anyway, enough for this, and there's just enough space to move his feet out of the way. The sawdust at the bottom is obviously there for just this purpose.
More evidence for the worst case scenario. This isn't some ad hoc thing. He has no idea why their idea of a solitary prison cell is a metal pipe, but he can't think of any other reason for the grate up top and the sawdust down here.
The pipe's a new one by him, but the principles here are universal: isolation, physical discomfort, deprivation. It's systematic to break him down, likely for interrogation, maybe to force his cooperation. But if they're going to some effort to break him, they probably aren't planning to kill him. He just has to keep his head.
Easier said. It's hot and tedious, and his legs are cramping up. He's hugely tempted to yell something, end the suspense, break up the monotony. But they're doing all this to get to him and provoke him. The best resistance he can offer is silence.
He mentally practices his golf swing. Tries to retell himself the plot of what he's read so far of War and Peace. Puts himself in the cockpit for some of his favorite flights; in an F-16 soaring over the Atlantic, in his chopper looking down on the snow plains of Antarctica.
When he's really hurting, he imagines giving the ruined t-shirt back to Rodney, grinning ruefully to think that Rodney's first reaction will probably be short-sighted annoyance that John tore up his shirt, and he liked that shirt. Then he'll register the hole and insist on checking John over for damage from the gunshot.
He imagines Rodney tracing the edges of the inevitable bruise, covering it with the warmth of his hand.
This thing with Rodney... John's not stupid. It's a long shot, but it's not hopeless. Rodney puts a toe outside the closet now and then. It's subtle by Rodney standards, which means it's not, very. And he gives it away every time by glancing nervously to clock John's reaction whenever he just happens to casually mention that Christian Bale's definitely been the sexiest Batman to date-- if he had to choose-- or that the film Aragorn wasn't much like Rodney always imagined the character from the books, since he'd never pictured Aragorn being as attractive as Viggo Mortensen, objectively speaking.
When Rodney was sick with the Second Childhood parasite, he told everyone close to him that he loved them: Teyla, Ronon, Jeannie, Radek, Keller. He didn't say it to John. He called for John whenever John backed off to give other people time with him, he clung to the jacket John gave him, he grabbed John's hand and huddled next to him while John held tight, his ribcage hollowing out with grief and rage. Rodney never said it, though.
Maybe it was a fluke, no significance. Or maybe it was a kindness, the last one Rodney could offer even as he got sicker and sicker. This thing between them's always gone unvoiced. For so long, John didn't think it could go anywhere. And he saw the stiff, unnatural way Rodney behaved whenever relationships were on the table. He never wanted Rodney to act that way around him. Just another reason why it wasn't a good idea, on top of the million other reasons John already knew by heart.
These days, though, after everything they've been through... it would take more than a million and one reasons to make John believe it shouldn't happen. If Rodney ever makes a move, he'll go for it.
But John's also seen Rodney's potential future, and in it, Rodney was with Keller. And Rodney and Keller both know about it.
John can't step into the middle of that. He has to hang back until Rodney decides whether he's going to pursue that possible future. Probably he will. Probably he's just building up his courage to make a move with Keller.
Or maybe not. It's a long shot. But Rodney still hasn't given John's jacket back.
About ten million years later, the sun passes over, finally, but the heat doesn't ease up. John's been in saunas that were cooler than this-- he's sorry as soon as he thinks it, because the idea makes him want to moan aloud, steam, moisture, the cup and bucket to throw water on the hot stones. If it rained right now, John would probably sizzle just like sauna rocks. For a second, he thinks he even hears hissing.
Then he realizes he does hear hissing, and tells himself firmly that it's not water. Good thing, too, because when he looks up, it isn't. Thin grayish gas ripples down in a slow stream from one of the nozzles up there.
"Great," he rasps out loud. "Bring it," and uses sweat from his face and throat to wet down Rodney's t-shirt, and holds the damp fabric over his face, his mouth and nose.
It's hard to breathe, though, and it just keeps getting harder until it hits him, this isn't tear gas or pepper spray, doesn't seem to be a nerve agent or intoxicant. It's just inert: carbon dioxide, maybe, or nitrogen. It's crowding out the oxygen while he gasps more and more deeply, a terrifying sensation, sucking in lungfuls of air and still feeling like he's suffocating.
It's almost funny, though, he thinks, trying to scrunch down and trap himself a pocket of better air. Because it's like... dry-drowning. And that's funny for some reason. He'd laugh if he could get a breath.
The hissing stops, and starts again. He's giggling quietly when he realizes nothing's funny, but meanwhile there's oxygen again; he sucks in one deep breath after another, his head pounding.
That was... fucked up. And they could do it again any second. Probably will.
Seriously, fuck them. They think they're scaring him? In a few weeks, he'll be beating off thinking about this place. He'll put the gas in his fantasy, too; he'll smother his face against the pillow to mimic it, a little low-rent autoerotic asphyxiation.
He's going to get out of this, and he won't just get out of it: he'll get home and shove slick fingers up his own ass and get off on it. There's nothing they can do to him that he can't turn around.
That thought carries him through the next round a while later, when they really do drop down something like tear gas. It burns like a son of a bitch and John can't stop coughing til his throat is raw, but Rodney's sweat-soaked shirt against his face helps, and John's been maced worse. Small favors.
Sometime after recovering from that, John feels his face again. His stubble's thicker: it might've been eight hours, ten, twelve. His spit's like paste in his mouth, his tongue glued down, he's dizzy and his vision's whiting out intermittently.
But it takes a full day for dehydration to really do damage, and even with the heat, he's not moving, he's not exposed, there's no dry wind. He breathes slowly through his nose, in, out, in and out, and tries to relax the knots in his legs, flexing up onto the balls of his feet and down again until the cramping eases up some. His head's still throbbing painfully, but it's manageable. He's fine.
When the third round of hissing starts, John buries his face in the damp, stinking shirt again and huddles as small as he can get in the space he has. The gas sinks down around him in greenish wisps, but breathing it, John just feels tired. Maybe he can grab some sleep right here, standing up, like a horse. Maybe he does; he's out of it for a while.
The air's almost clear again when a new noise starts, mechanical, and the pipe begins to vibrate. John's slipping against the sides-- is the pipe lifting up? How the hell--? And then he realizes, no, he's going down. The floor under his feet is lowering.
He gets the shirt hanging loose again and rotates his wrists in the cuffs to turn out the bulk of the metal locking mechanism, preparing to swing his arms up and bash the lock into someone's face. Go for the nose, keep his head down, hunch over and present the vest as a target: ready.
Ride Into The Sun 2/2
Pairing: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Word count: ~15,000
Ratings/Warnings: NSFW, explicit. This story is probably unsafe for people with triggers. ( Skip.) Depicts imprisonment, isolation, severe conditions, and forced drug use. Mentions torture.
Contains: Emotional manipulation and bondage, both alone and with a partner.
Notes: Set shortly after The Prodigal (514), implied AU thereafter. Written for kink_bingo. Thanks to anatsuno for beta. Title from Elliott Smith's "Color Bars."
Crossposted: On Dreamwidth | On AO3
Summary: John's fantasies do a lot for him: they restore his sense of control, express his defiance, celebrate his victories, and connect him with feelings he can't access other ways. He never thought they'd get him what he wants.
*
"Could you pronounce that again?" John asks.
"Certainly, Colonel Sheppard. We call our world Uehlj," says Henda. Or maybe she says "Uhlch," or maybe it's more like "Ewelk"-- it rolls so quickly and instinctively from her tongue that John hesitates again, and finally commits to "Oolgh."
Not that it really matters. It's one of the few dependable constants in John's life: no matter how he notes the pronunciation of local names for his report, the linguists will inevitably submit a study five months later with a completely different romanization of every one of them, and John will have to update his files.
Henda looks at his notepad with interest. "Your glyphs are so many to record so little!" she laughs. "Or are you writing more words than merely what I say?"
"Well, these spell the name of your world, here," John shows her. "And this one is your name."
"I am honored to be committed to memory," she smiles. "Will you let me honor you in return? I would very much like to share something with you."
That kind of invitation can be ominous as much as it's promising, but it's not like John can gracefully refuse. He pockets his notebook. "My team and I would love to see whatever you'd like to show us."
"Refo, Ceterun," Henda calls to the other two guides, "follow as I take our visitors to the dome."
John waits to fall into step beside Teyla, Rodney behind them, Ronon at their six. "So far so good," he says.
Teyla hears the implied question and answers it with a slight nod and a smile. "I believe we will have much to offer the Yuulchnif--" crap, if that's how Teyla says it, John's going to have to change how he spelled the planet name-- "and they can teach us much in return. I look forward to seeing the sights." In other words, risk assessment favorable.
John nods, skirting a crowd of people, most of them carrying the docile, long-limbed pets that a lot of the locals seem to take everywhere.
It's that rarest of missions, a peaceful encounter that isn't boring. Yuulch has a relatively high level of development, more advanced than Earth in some ways.
John's long since internalized all the intel Atlantis has on Wraith hive movements, so he knows that Yuulch is lucky enough to lie in a disputed zone between the territories of two aggressive Hives, each Hive defending Yuulch from the other to prevent their enemies from feeding up and gaining an advantage.
Another lucky break for Yuulch: on the trip from the space gate to the planet's surface, the puddlejumper detected a lot of Hive-hostile radiation from the system's binary suns. Each Hive wards the other off, and neither of them can survive in the solar system long enough to fight it out to a conclusion. Yuulch hasn't been culled in centuries.
The thick atmosphere cuts the harmful radiation and gives Yuulch a perpetually orange-pinkish sky. Possibly because of the double sun, Yuulch has solar power tech that's way ahead of Earth's. Also, they count in base two. Even Rodney put aside his distaste for the soft sciences to take an interest in that. Maybe the math zeroes out the anthropology.
"The dome," says Henda, leading them through an arched doorway.
John scans the place, eyes peeled for signs of Ancient tech, trying to think non-activatey thoughts, just in case. Behind him Rodney mumbles, but he's not piping up with any warnings.
The place doesn't look Ancient at all, too baroque for that, the whole dome-- and wow, it's big, a vast open space above them-- carved with an orchard in bas relief, stone trees heavy with oblong, three-lobed fruit. Teyla compliments the artistry to Refo, who drinks it up like he chisled the place himself.
Henda says, "We have a little time before the dome blossoms. I'll show you something else in the meantime. Here..."
John follows her to a large open window. "Setul is rising," Henda says. "Stand here and lean out, you can just see it between the buildings." She plants her hands on the windowpane and shows him, tilting her head out the window.
He's just about to follow suit when he's pulled back by a sharp yank on his tac vest. "What--?" he starts, but Rodney scowls at him and jerks his chin at the window frame, fingers still hooked behind John's neck.
The windowpane isn't stone but metal, and the wall beneath it protrudes, and then John sees: it's been plastered over, but there's a hint of those characteristic Ancient notches and flowing-angular patterns, wearing through the facade.
John gives him a nod and Rodney lets go. Leaning out next to Henda, John makes sure not to touch the windowpane. The second sun is dawning, boiling up out of the clouds. The evaporating moisture creates a blue haze in the orange sky.
"Beautiful," he says.
She smiles at him as they withdraw back into the dome. "What it must be like on your world," she says, "I can only wonder. Is it so much darker, with only half a sun?"
"We're used to it," John says amiably.
"Do all the people from half-sun worlds have eyes so pale?"
Behind him, Rodney mutters quietly-- for him, anyway-- "Here we go again."
...Right. Little glances, pursed lips, special honors; someday he'll learn to see this coming. Well, let Rodney grumble, they can always use any advantage they can get.
"We come in all kinds," John answers her easily, forcing a more relaxed slouch and returning her smile.
Just then the dome transforms with the sight they must be here to see: the rising second sun lines up with a small triangular slot in the wall, and a knife of sunlight cuts through the dome, splintering on a prism incorporated into the design on the opposite side.
More triangles of light break apart and scatter and reflect onto the foliage of the carved trees, forming tiny glowing white flowers.
*
The team leaves Yuulch, or Uehlj, or possibly Oolgh, with an appointment for the second contact team to visit in a few days, a box of the three-lobed fruit, and a wafer of photodiodes. After the infirmary releases them, Rodney marches the wafer down to Science, already complaining that it's an embarrassment none of his engineers came up with this much more efficient photovoltaic design.
Ronon sticks around to shyly flirt some more with Dr. Keller; Teyla heads home to Kanaan and Torren. The team used to try to have dinners together, but these days it's better for everyone to meet for breakfast or lunch before their missions.
John goes to his quarters and checks his schedule, his email, his network inbox. If he puts in a productive two hours, he's looking at an entire evening to himself. Just the idea makes his stomach lurch with anticipation.
He damn near clears his email inbox. He addresses every flagged action item on the network. Lorne's going to pinch himself.
After one last sweep of check-ins-- Teyla's in her suite, Rodney's in the lab, Ronon's in the mess, two teams out on milk runs, three Marines escorting architectural engineers to approve new areas of the city for exploration, five golden rings-- John grabs stuff out of the bathroom and sets up on the bed.
He considers himself, hesitating. Boots and BDUs on, or off? Off is more comfortable if he dozes afterward, but on... that feeds into the fantasy better, and he wants to treat himself to the full effect this time, so they stay on. The uniform shirt's too warm, he shucks that. He's got a spare tac vest with empty pockets that he doesn't mind cleaning, so he puts that on over his tee and undoes his fly.
He spreads out the towel and settles on the bed, thin leather strap and a jar of Rodney's sunscreen in reach. John would bet good money that Rodney deliberately formulated it to double as lube. In fact, he'd bet that Rodney concocted it as lube first, and used it as a base for sunscreen later.
He got Rodney to make him a jar without the cocoa butter reek. He doesn't want to use the scented stuff for this and then get hard at the smell when Rodney wears it.
Last thing... he lifts the mattress to pull out the stirrup loops on either side of his narrow bed. Rodney's always making snide remarks about how John's never replaced his tiny bunk, but it's the perfect width for this, for John to spread his legs on either side and feel perfectly exposed, perfectly vulnerable.
That's everything. John picks up the leather strap and winds it around his wrists, folding the ends under the loops. He won't risk cuffs. It's not smart or safe when he's doing this alone, especially when he's on call 24/7. Anyway, he doesn't need the bonds to be secure, he just wants the sensation. Wrists above his head and bound, legs open, boots through the stirrups, and fresh in his mind, the feeling of Rodney yanking him back by his tac vest-- just from getting everything into place, just from anticipation, he's already nearly hard enough to come.
John doesn't want to settle for just getting off tonight, though. He's already got a hint of it building, that feeling just under his sternum, vibrant, ready to expand. He closes his eyes.
He's been captured, he's-- Rodney yanked him back from the Ancient console concealed under plaster (remembering that sensation makes his face heat, his stomach jump) but Henda noticed, and suspected, and when she flirted with him afterward (Rodney folding his arms jealously with a possessive warning glare) her people used a concealed Ancient artifact to detect the gene and they nabbed him for it.
They've taken him somewhere remote, he's in a cell, like the last time he was captured, PHX-912: he keeps the moist stone walls, but not the wracking cold, and leaves out the freezing water they doused him with during the interrogation.
Fuck them, it was nothing, their dank little cell; it's set dressing. He's in the stone-walled cell but he's warm and dry, locked up, hands tied, feet secured, completely trapped, knees apart and defenseless, yes, he's twenty stories underground and maybe not even on the original planet anymore. It's hopeless, hours pass, they'll never, they'll never find him-- god-- and that third guy, the quiet guy, Ceterun, keeps coming around to tell him the team's long gone, they scanned Yuulch for his sub-q transmitter and didn't find him and they've given up.
John twists against the strap and stirrups, not enough to get free, just enough to feel it, feel it, the doubt, the marrow-deep ache of it: they're not coming for him, they can't, they'll give up on him, his heart's pounding with it, panicking, convinced they're never going to find him, but he still holds on, still hopes-- god, he's harder than anything.
The Yuulchnif plan to use his gene for something stupid, like on PFD-289 when they tried to make him deploy an Ancient weapon that was malfunctioning and ready to blow. (And fuck them and their doomsday device, too.) So he fights-- John pulls against the strap around his wrists, arches and twists and kicks.
He gets one boot out of its stirrup, that's okay, he's struggling now, he's outnumbered with no hope of getting free but he has to try, he has to, but fuck, please, he can't, he needs-- and Rodney shows up, firing a stunner haphazardly, taking down all John's captors and complaining that he jammed his finger on the gun stock as he drags John out--
John wriggles out of the strap and yanks his other boot out of the stirrup, he's too, it's too-- he can't see this fantasy through to the part where Rodney frees him and John breaks the way he never does in real life, reaches out, fists his shirt and kisses him, opens for him-- he needs to skip ahead, now.
John's shoving his BDUs down and grabbing the jar with shaky hands, sinking three fingers in and rolling face down on the bed, reaching awkwardly down and back to wedge his fingertips into himself and shove in, a hoarse groan rattling his throat. His chest feels like the Yuulchnif dome, huge and empty and full of broken light.
He drops that fantasy and skips to the one that always gets him off, reliable and fast. TXG-831, the planet near the Lagrange Point Satellite, where they lost Gaul and Abrams. John feels guilty for using that disastrous mission as fantasy fuel, but he can't help it, it seizes his imagination the same as always: he's pinned down behind an outcropping of rocks in the hot sand, and that fucking uber-Wraith is bearing down on him and he's got nothing, it's over, there's no hope, none, and then Rodney shows up and empties his gun into the thing, and his scared, brave, crazy shout of "What now?!" just makes it even better.
In John's fantasy Rodney reloads and somehow the second round finishes off the uber-Wraith, whatever, whatever, just-- Rodney's hauling him out of cover, kissing him hard, bitching him out for going off alone and they're going down onto the packed dusty earth and Rodney's over him, pushing into him, just like that, like that, and-- please, please, come back for me-- please, come, just come--
His comm chirps, and Chuck's tinny voice says, "Colonel Sheppard, you're needed in the gateroom immediately."
John beats his forehead against his pillow a couple of times and wipes his less-messy hand on the towel, grabbing the comm and hooking it onto his ear. "Sheppard here. Report."
"Emergency with AR-5, sir. They missed a check-in and when we dialed through to contact them, we picked up their beacon. It's a distress call."
"On my way."
Fuck. He just had to try to drag it out as long as possible. Should've known he wouldn't have that much time. He can't go out like this, so he shuts his eyes and tries to get there again, but he can't bring back that live, resonant, open feeling inside him.
His body's still primed, so John tugs himself to a quick anticlimax and rushes to the bathroom, cleaning up fast and ordering his clothes, glad he kept his boots on as he checks himself in the mirror quick and heads out.
*
"Sergeant?"
Stackhouse clears his throat, coughs, clears it again. "Mr. Richard Martin Woolsey, sir, this is Sergeant Nathan Elliot Stackhouse reporting."
John feels the rest of the gateroom wincing along with him. There's a protocol so that anyone taken captive who has a chance to report back can convey as much information about the situation as possible without alerting the hostiles.
The deliberate throat-clearing means that Stackhouse is acting under duress, and might be forced to lie. Addressing Woolsey by title, following his name with "sir," saying Woolsey's first name, giving his own first name, using the fake middle names of "Martin" and "Elliot..." all of it is part of a code that the offworld teams memorize before they step through the gate.
The real message is: the hostiles are armed, organized, and aggressive. They have some advanced technology but nothing Ancient is in play. The threat level is high, though thank god, no injuries.
Stackhouse says, "This is all just a big misunderstanding, sir. The Seutradstvev are a fair people, but we were trespassing. They need proof of our peaceful intentions. They want to resolve this through negotiation."
His tone of voice is too rote and earnest, but the worlds of Pegasus don't have television, they don't live and breathe irony like so many people from Earth. Tone is cultural, as the linguists and anthropologists keep drilling into them. Members of the expedition can communicate things through tone that only other people from their own culture have a chance of interpreting. They take every advantage they can get.
Stackhouse is clearly letting them know that he's reciting what they told him to say, but the Seutradstvev-- boy, John's glad it's not up to him to get the spelling of that one right-- either can't tell Stackhouse is making their coercion obvious, or they don't care.
"Understood, Sergeant," Woolsey says. "What are the terms?"
The terms are ridiculous. They know enough about Atlantis from rumors to know who's in change, and they're demanding Woolsey and John meet them on a neutral planet to "negotiate". Of course they don't expect to get any such thing-- it's an opening gambit to get a counter-offer so they can gauge how much the Atlanteans value the hostages.
John puts a spoke in their wheel by offering to come on over to personally haggle for AR-5's release.
They buy it; they must be some overconfident motherfuckers over there. Of course they want John yesterday, unarmed, maybe giftwrapped with a little bow and a tag that says "Property of Seutradst." Woolsey drags it out, proposing and discarding suggestions for the rendezvous. Ultimately, he'll let them choose a place when they name a world a gate team's already scoped out.
John has time to squish into one of the new ballistic vests, fresh from the Daedalus and still semi-experimental, billed as thinner, lighter and more effective, and designed to be worn against the skin for better concealment. Time to do some field testing.
He's just secured the Velcro straps when Rodney marches into the ready room, slams open his own locker and thrusts a shirt at him. "Here. Even the new vests would show under those painted-on shirts you wear." His mouth stretches tight. "This is a stupid plan, and I look forward to saying I told you so about a million times. I'd rather not sit around in the infirmary to do it. So. Try to resist the temptation to throw yourself in front of every single bullet."
"I'll think about it," John says easily, but Rodney doesn't play along with an eyeroll or a quip. The look he levels at John is tough and unwavering. Something's changed between them, after their last run-in with Michael a few weeks ago; John's not sure how to get that light touch back.
And he needs the lightness, because saying something serious, something real... impossible. It's not that John doesn't want to. He really can't. The words are wrong and they get stuck somewhere besides; he can't excavate them from his throat, can't free them from behind the prison of his gritted teeth. Bullshit's all he has.
"Here's to many more, right?" he tries, but Rodney just snorts derisively and stomps out.
John puts on the shirt. It fits fine, looser than his usual, but not by all that much. Rodney looks broader and bigger than him, but a lot of that comes from the high defensive set of his shoulders and his crappy posture.
Later he'll let himself enjoy the idea of wearing Rodney's clothes. For now he just checks that the vest doesn't show and gets back to the gateroom.
The Seutradstvev have gated to PJX-8U4 in the meantime, and Woolsey sends a MALP to verify that AR-5 are all there and unharmed. It also shows at least a good thirty soldiers over there, armed and ready, but sensors detect no other life signs in the area.
Too soon, John's strolling through the gate into... well, it can't really be called an ambush when everybody involved knows it's going to happen.
As advertised, the Seutradstvev have industrial technology, weapons at a similar level of development as the Genii's guns: they're obviously mass produced and automatic, but clunky, with heavy drum magazines. On the other hand, heavy drum magazines mean they've got a hell of a lot of bullets, and a tommy gun can kill a guy just as dead as an M9.
The Seutradstvev have decent weapons, but not much imagination, or they wouldn't have let Atlantis keep the gate open between sending the MALP and sending John. Just because they didn't see anything come through doesn't mean there isn't a cloaked jumper poised right over their heads.
So when the predictable occurs-- the Seutradstvev decide they're not interested in negotiating after all and cut the wormhole before they've even secured John-- the hovering jumper drops a payload of flashbangs and smoke grenades and uncloaks under cover of the smokescreen. John drops and rolls in the same moment, expecting heavy fire since half the Seutradstvev had guns sighted on him, but only a couple of bursts ring out and the shots go wild, pitting rocks a dozen yards away from him.
Marines charge out and just keep on charging, the jumper unloading like a clown car. There's a weird shortage of fire from the Seutradstvev, nothing but short pulses when it stands to reason at least a couple of them ought to be spraying automatic fire, if only to lay down cover.
John's instincts tell him these guys are low on ammo, that they're advanced and they're organized, but supplied: maybe not. And that revises his earlier estimation too. Maybe they're not overconfident. Maybe they're desperate.
John holds his breath against the smoke and crabwalks to meet Sgt. Chaowarat at the DHD, who's dialing out, and per their hasty plan, has a second stunner ready to hand off to John.
The wormhole to Atlantis engages. Still scuttling toward the DHD, John sees Stackhouse and Dr. Gvero surrounded by a solid phalanx of Marines, and the other two members of AR-5 are running, bent low, to join them while Ronon covers them, his particle magnum strobing in one hand, P-90 rattling in the other.
Fast and hard, they'll be home in two minutes, except that's when two VTOLs strafe over.
The Marines and the VTOLs exchange fire, except no, the VTOLs aren't aiming for the smokescreen or the Marines: they're flying directly over, and aiming for, the Seutradstvev.
Stackhouse didn't use any code signals for aerial armament, so this is, what, someone else? The Seutradstvev tommy guns start firing for real, John gets shot, goes down, sees something hit the ground that throws up an enormous fountain of earth. He feels a rain of dirt pattering down on him all over before he checks out.
*
John comes to when his kneecap fucking explodes, and also he bites his tongue.
He gets his other leg under him fast and pants hard, sides heaving, gut aching. His hands are cuffed together in front of him, weird metal cuffs that look like they were screwed on rather than locked. He's still dressed, but his feet are bare.
He's in... a pipe. A cylinder, anyway. Looks metal, gives John less room than he'd have in a coffin. He tests his first guess, and sure enough, the pipe's too narrow for him to even crouch down, let alone sit.
Pretty fucking diabolical if they plan to leave him in here long. He toes the floor, which seems to be layered with dirt, or maybe something like sawdust. About three inches of it, and then more metal. He digs with his toes and kicks dust up, but there's nothing else under there.
John feels his face. He's something like twenty hours past a shave. He had the mission to Yuulch, time in his quarters, ninety minutes in the gateroom: that makes it maybe two, three, four hours he's been unconscious. It might've taken that long just to get him here, wherever here is.
John looks up and then kind of wishes he hadn't. The pipe's open at the top but the top looks far, far away.
No time to waste, though. Standing here is only going to make him weaker. Not only is it a tight fit with no way to rest, it's hot. He's already sweating. He tries slipping out of the cuffs; he folds his thumb in tight, wiping sweat from his face onto his hands to make his skin more slippery. No good. He can, just barely, twist his wrists and get his fingertips on the mechanism, grateful for the millonth time that his fingers are double jointed. The more he looks, though, the more sure he is that he can't undo the screws without tools.
Up, then. Shit. John rolls up his pantlegs; bare skin's going to give him more purchase than his BDUs. He tries to use the folded fabric to pad the busted knee a little.
He manages to get about ten feet up before he really has to put his weight on the bad knee to give his other leg a break. Hurts like fuck, but he lets himself think ahead: someday he's going to be in his quarters thinking about this mess, constructing a jerkoff fantasy using some of it, and he'll skip right over the busted knee. He might not even remember it by then.
He wriggles and inches his way up. There don't seem to be any breaks in the pipe, nowhere it could come apart or open, no hatches or seams.
About six feet from the top, he wriggles up and right away slides back down a few inches, skidding a little.
They fucking greased it. Okay, points to them for that. They're not dumb. John wedges himself as securely as he can (fucking ow, goddamn knee) and squints up. The sky's blazing through the hole and killing his vision, but from here, he can see what wasn't visible from the bottom: there's a metal mesh over the top.
It's not surprising, but it's still disappointing. It looks like it's attached in four places, so maybe it's not that secure, though if they thought to grease the pipe, they probably thought to lock down the top.
Slowly, John contorts and wrenches himself and rests his weight on his bad knee for an infinite few seconds, and eventually manages to tear the t-shirt off his back and into his hands, snagging on the handcuffs. It has a hole in the front, a fist-sized shredded area right where his gut's sore, because... okay, that's where he got shot.
The new ballistic vest has nanotech fibers, microengineered so that bullets spin themselves into fragments against the bulletproof fabric. Looks like it worked, because there's no slug John can see, just a rough patch on the otherwise smooth vest, and the giant hole in Rodney's t-shirt: it's a write-off. He's going to be hearing about that.
He can hardly wait.
John balls the shirt, wipes his face, and laboriously begins scrubbing grease off the metal above his head, and then another stripe up the opposite side for his legs. Inch up, wipe frantically while the bad knee complains and throbs. Inch up, wipe.
Once he's up top, he puts the t-shirt against the metal mesh in case it's electrified, and pushes.
There's no give at all. Now that he's up here, he can see that the four attachments are really more like four ridges that extend several feet down and end in nozzles. In a moment of weakness, he hopes to god they're for spraying water, but he shuts that thought off quick. He can't think about water.
He touches the mesh-- it's not live, so he explores with his fingers over his head, feeling everywhere the mesh meets the pipe, finding no weaknesses; he pushes more on the mesh, strikes up with the heel of his hand. He also slips down some and has to inch his way back up again twice, all just to verify that he's not getting out this way. Not that he had any bright ideas about how to climb down the outside of the pipe anyway, but if he could knock the top open he could tear off part of the shirt and hang it out, make himself more visible for potential rescue.
Going down is almost as rough as going up, because it's really, really fucking hot in here now, and he's slick with sweat all over. The ballistic vest is smooth and he got some of the grease on him despite his efforts with the shirt and his legs and feet are slippery-damp.
He descends in a series of heart-stopping plunges punctuated by the squeak of his sweaty skin as he jams his limbs against the metal until the friction bites in enough to stop him, abrading some hair off his arms and legs.
Once he's at the bottom again, it seems impossible he ever made it to the top. He's sapped. The heat is unreal. He has to piss. The metal of the pipe feels like it's burning him, but he can't avoid touching it.
Fuck them. So what. He's absolutely using this as a setting for a fantasy later. He'll make the pipe a little bigger, big enough that Rodney can wedge in here with him. That'd be amazing, confined and mashed comprehensively against Rodney with nowhere to go, and then John will kiss him and it'll just be a curve of cool metal at his back and Rodney everywhere, rutting against him and telling him off for ever thinking they wouldn't come for him.
John stops it there, because that's for later. Right now he can't anticipate help. He has to assume he's on his own until he gets out of this himself.
For now all he can do is save his strength. He tries to find a position that lets him rest. The filthy t-shirt hangs from his wrists, trapped on by the cuffs; if someone comes to get him out, maybe John can whip it up into their faces unexpectedly and get a moment's advantage. And he's got the vest, he can take a body shot, that's a point in his favor.
The vest seems less advantageous later, when the sun climbs high enough to pierce straight down the pipe and somehow it gets impossibly even hotter. The nanotech fibers don't breathe, and the thick, heavy straps that keep it on him are awkwardly positioned.
Between the narrow confines and his cuffed hands, John can't get the straps open, and he'd almost rather get shot than keep the vest on in this heat. His BDUs are soaked with sweat, with more seeping constantly out from under the vest. He's going to have some substantial criticism for those poorly placed straps in his field testing notes.
The need to piss is back, and it's painful enough that he's got to let loose, even though he can't really afford to lose the liquid. He can get his BDUs open, anyway, enough for this, and there's just enough space to move his feet out of the way. The sawdust at the bottom is obviously there for just this purpose.
More evidence for the worst case scenario. This isn't some ad hoc thing. He has no idea why their idea of a solitary prison cell is a metal pipe, but he can't think of any other reason for the grate up top and the sawdust down here.
The pipe's a new one by him, but the principles here are universal: isolation, physical discomfort, deprivation. It's systematic to break him down, likely for interrogation, maybe to force his cooperation. But if they're going to some effort to break him, they probably aren't planning to kill him. He just has to keep his head.
Easier said. It's hot and tedious, and his legs are cramping up. He's hugely tempted to yell something, end the suspense, break up the monotony. But they're doing all this to get to him and provoke him. The best resistance he can offer is silence.
He mentally practices his golf swing. Tries to retell himself the plot of what he's read so far of War and Peace. Puts himself in the cockpit for some of his favorite flights; in an F-16 soaring over the Atlantic, in his chopper looking down on the snow plains of Antarctica.
When he's really hurting, he imagines giving the ruined t-shirt back to Rodney, grinning ruefully to think that Rodney's first reaction will probably be short-sighted annoyance that John tore up his shirt, and he liked that shirt. Then he'll register the hole and insist on checking John over for damage from the gunshot.
He imagines Rodney tracing the edges of the inevitable bruise, covering it with the warmth of his hand.
This thing with Rodney... John's not stupid. It's a long shot, but it's not hopeless. Rodney puts a toe outside the closet now and then. It's subtle by Rodney standards, which means it's not, very. And he gives it away every time by glancing nervously to clock John's reaction whenever he just happens to casually mention that Christian Bale's definitely been the sexiest Batman to date-- if he had to choose-- or that the film Aragorn wasn't much like Rodney always imagined the character from the books, since he'd never pictured Aragorn being as attractive as Viggo Mortensen, objectively speaking.
When Rodney was sick with the Second Childhood parasite, he told everyone close to him that he loved them: Teyla, Ronon, Jeannie, Radek, Keller. He didn't say it to John. He called for John whenever John backed off to give other people time with him, he clung to the jacket John gave him, he grabbed John's hand and huddled next to him while John held tight, his ribcage hollowing out with grief and rage. Rodney never said it, though.
Maybe it was a fluke, no significance. Or maybe it was a kindness, the last one Rodney could offer even as he got sicker and sicker. This thing between them's always gone unvoiced. For so long, John didn't think it could go anywhere. And he saw the stiff, unnatural way Rodney behaved whenever relationships were on the table. He never wanted Rodney to act that way around him. Just another reason why it wasn't a good idea, on top of the million other reasons John already knew by heart.
These days, though, after everything they've been through... it would take more than a million and one reasons to make John believe it shouldn't happen. If Rodney ever makes a move, he'll go for it.
But John's also seen Rodney's potential future, and in it, Rodney was with Keller. And Rodney and Keller both know about it.
John can't step into the middle of that. He has to hang back until Rodney decides whether he's going to pursue that possible future. Probably he will. Probably he's just building up his courage to make a move with Keller.
Or maybe not. It's a long shot. But Rodney still hasn't given John's jacket back.
About ten million years later, the sun passes over, finally, but the heat doesn't ease up. John's been in saunas that were cooler than this-- he's sorry as soon as he thinks it, because the idea makes him want to moan aloud, steam, moisture, the cup and bucket to throw water on the hot stones. If it rained right now, John would probably sizzle just like sauna rocks. For a second, he thinks he even hears hissing.
Then he realizes he does hear hissing, and tells himself firmly that it's not water. Good thing, too, because when he looks up, it isn't. Thin grayish gas ripples down in a slow stream from one of the nozzles up there.
"Great," he rasps out loud. "Bring it," and uses sweat from his face and throat to wet down Rodney's t-shirt, and holds the damp fabric over his face, his mouth and nose.
It's hard to breathe, though, and it just keeps getting harder until it hits him, this isn't tear gas or pepper spray, doesn't seem to be a nerve agent or intoxicant. It's just inert: carbon dioxide, maybe, or nitrogen. It's crowding out the oxygen while he gasps more and more deeply, a terrifying sensation, sucking in lungfuls of air and still feeling like he's suffocating.
It's almost funny, though, he thinks, trying to scrunch down and trap himself a pocket of better air. Because it's like... dry-drowning. And that's funny for some reason. He'd laugh if he could get a breath.
The hissing stops, and starts again. He's giggling quietly when he realizes nothing's funny, but meanwhile there's oxygen again; he sucks in one deep breath after another, his head pounding.
That was... fucked up. And they could do it again any second. Probably will.
Seriously, fuck them. They think they're scaring him? In a few weeks, he'll be beating off thinking about this place. He'll put the gas in his fantasy, too; he'll smother his face against the pillow to mimic it, a little low-rent autoerotic asphyxiation.
He's going to get out of this, and he won't just get out of it: he'll get home and shove slick fingers up his own ass and get off on it. There's nothing they can do to him that he can't turn around.
That thought carries him through the next round a while later, when they really do drop down something like tear gas. It burns like a son of a bitch and John can't stop coughing til his throat is raw, but Rodney's sweat-soaked shirt against his face helps, and John's been maced worse. Small favors.
Sometime after recovering from that, John feels his face again. His stubble's thicker: it might've been eight hours, ten, twelve. His spit's like paste in his mouth, his tongue glued down, he's dizzy and his vision's whiting out intermittently.
But it takes a full day for dehydration to really do damage, and even with the heat, he's not moving, he's not exposed, there's no dry wind. He breathes slowly through his nose, in, out, in and out, and tries to relax the knots in his legs, flexing up onto the balls of his feet and down again until the cramping eases up some. His head's still throbbing painfully, but it's manageable. He's fine.
When the third round of hissing starts, John buries his face in the damp, stinking shirt again and huddles as small as he can get in the space he has. The gas sinks down around him in greenish wisps, but breathing it, John just feels tired. Maybe he can grab some sleep right here, standing up, like a horse. Maybe he does; he's out of it for a while.
The air's almost clear again when a new noise starts, mechanical, and the pipe begins to vibrate. John's slipping against the sides-- is the pipe lifting up? How the hell--? And then he realizes, no, he's going down. The floor under his feet is lowering.
He gets the shirt hanging loose again and rotates his wrists in the cuffs to turn out the bulk of the metal locking mechanism, preparing to swing his arms up and bash the lock into someone's face. Go for the nose, keep his head down, hunch over and present the vest as a target: ready.
Ride Into The Sun 2/2