FIC: Kingdom of Mirrors Part 2/3
Part 1 located here.
Cameron Mitchell looked like a million credits in a tux. It was all John could do to keep his hands to himself as Vala fussed over Mitchell’s bow tie, looking pretty spectacular herself in a sparkling nude-colored dress, ending in a swirl of feathers, her hair all pinned up like Betty Grable’s.
John wore his usual plain black outfit, as favored by the Defenders of the City, Ronon flanking him in an impossibly large purple zoot suit, like something right out of one of the detective story relics.
John surveyed his team. They were actually going to do this. They were going to break into Rodney McKay’s Fortress of Solitude. “So, we ready, guys?”
“As we’ll ever be,” Mitchell replied, still looking doubtful. There was only so much a Loyalty Enhancement could compel.
“Don’t worry,” Dex grumbled, elbowing Mitchell in the ribs so hard that he almost fell over. “John’s got it under control.”
“Whatever you say,” Mitchell remarked, rubbing his side with a wince.
“Well, I think you look lovely,” Vala grinned. “I’d have no problem believing you were . . .” she looked down at where she’d written the ID’s they’d swiped yesterday down on a data tablet. “Mr. Peter Shanahan - attaché to the commissioner’s office, and glamorous boyfriend of Miss . . . Chaya Athar of the Ascension temple.”
“She doesn’t seem much like a priestess to me,” Dex remarked.
John laughed. “The Temples here have a little more . . . Las Vegas to them than Offworld, Ronon. Trust me, Vala will work.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Ronon asked, opening stepping into the transportation elevator that would take them to the personal transport they’d lifted just for this occasion.
John’s hands itched watching Dex at the steering wheel, but he forced himself to open the door for Vala and Mitchell, sliding into the passenger seat and looking out at the city as it disappeared below them. Dex almost crashed them. Twice.
Rodney McKay’s so-called Fortress of Solitude resembled more an urban mansion of Lex Luthor’s than the fortress of ice and crystal, with its towering gothic arches of burnished silvery material and the stained glass popular throughout the city. Henry McKay had it constructed based on some cathedral back on OldEarth
“Good luck,” Dex winked as he drove off into the night, leaving them on an artificial green lawn swarming with well-dressed socialites and their security personnel. The Defenders prowled through the crowd like black-clad ants, slouching their way up and down invisible lanes of traffic.
Mitchell looked at John skeptically, striding up to the two Defenders with a guest-list scanner at the entrance. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered under his breath.
John had long since gotten over seeing his face, impassive and almost severe on the faces of most of the security personnel in the city, but it was still strange to meet his own unblinking eyes as a Defender took his scanner over Mitchell.
John crossed his fingers behind his back - most genetic scanners did not possess the degree of sophistication to process an entire genome in a short enough time to work the door, so they had adopted a sort of genetic shorthand - the Enhancements plus a spread of 13 different genes and checked their coding. Luckily for them, they were able to find someone on the guest list with a match for Cameron, and call in an emergency at the Commissioner’s office that would keep him busy to boot.
Vala, on the other hand, was slightly more difficult. Her genome wasn’t in the database and John didn’t have the equipment to do a scan on her that would help them find a match. Instead they positioned her as a Pegasus Native and devotee of the temple of Ascensions, where the Reverend Daniel Jackson had made his protests against genetics known and forbidden all holy people not yet scanned from being entered into the database on religious grounds. It was the perfect cover.
John just hoped that it would work. Who knew what kind of security systems McKay might be using?
The Defender doing the scan looked down at the log and nodded. “Enjoy your evening.” He didn’t sound particularly enthused.
Once they were safely inside, Mitchell elbowed John in the ribs. “Hey, they say that they can train obedience into you guys, but you can’t breed you to care.”
John snorted. If his sole purpose in life was to check names on a list, he’d be less than excited too.
“Wow, look at all the sparkly!” Vala exclaimed, gripping Mitchell’s arm in a way that looked wholly uncomfortable. The main hall was covered in a soft plush velvet carpet, with a large hardwood dance floor in the center. An array of jewel-like crystals floated above their heads, emitting a soft glow like fireflies. Couples whirled by on the dance floor, waltzing in a bizarre parody of strutting birds, covered in sparkling beads and feathers.
“I’m going to scope out the food cart,” Mitchell said, heading off in one direction.
“And I’ll just be over there, with those purse-sized gold statues, if you don’t mind,” Vala added.
Fine. If they wanted to be that way. “I’ll head up that staircase, see what kind of guards McKay’s got keeping people out of the rest of the house. Back here in five.”
Vala nodded, seemingly distracted by all of the ‘sparkly.’ Why did John even bother?
He made his way up the long winding spiral staircase, the crowd thinning out the higher up he got until he was looking down on the scene from a narrow balcony, supported by a series of baroque mahogany beams.
Down on the stage below, a group of Defenders carrying a variety of Jazz instruments flowed out onto the dance floor below them. It was a testament to wealth and privilege that Rodney McKay could afford to waste the talents of the City’s most trusted (and expensive) bodyguards on something so trivial as the creation of music.
John forced himself to relax, ambling down the corridor past a woman in a green dress that looked remarkably like Ingrid Bergman and the man attached to her face. Another couple - a pair of men this time - was pushed up against a priceless-looking EarthRelic of an engraved cabinet, one of the man’s pants pulled down far enough that a pair of boxers proclaiming “Here’s Looking At You, Kid,” stood out in the meager lighting of the alcove they had chosen. John barely spared them a second glance, moving to the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. A thumbprint identifier slid out of the woodwork, prompting him.
John looked around carefully, noting that the two couples were still rather engrossed and unlikely to notice him before pressing his thumb experimentally to the plate.
“You are not Rodney McKay,” an electron voiced proclaimed, light flashing. You are not Rodney McKay. You are not . . .”
“Shit,” John said, turning and hustling off, trying to look engrossed in something . . . anything else. But the stairway was long and he met two Defenders coming up as he sped down.
One grabbed his arm, hard enough to bruise. “Whatcha doing up there, buddy?” The Defenders all referred to each other as buddy. It was a disgusting habit, in John’s humble opinion.
“Oh, nothing. A little of this, a little of that. Just wanted to check all the possible entrances and exits. My employers pay me to be thorough.”
One of the Defenders looked slightly skeptical, but the other chuckled, a deep braying laugh. John had always hated his own laugh, and tried to restrain it as much as possible. “Ours do the same. I’m sure the place checks out to your standards. All incidental entryways clear for McKay only, and admit other personnel only if the security system is triggered. He makes the rest of us go in and out through the kitchen.”
“You know, he’s kinda a pain in the ass,” the other said.
They both shrugged. “Have a good night.”
“You too . . . buddy,” John tried not to wince at the familiar title. “Well, so much for plan A,” he whispered to himself.
Mitchell and Vala were waiting for him over near a display of genuine Atlantean benthic caviar when he returned. “Trouble, John?” Mitchell asked, smirking.
“No luck on the landing. We have to go through the kitchen.”
“Good,” Vala piped up, halfway through stuffing her face with crackers and caviar. “I just had one of the caterers ask me if I’d blow him in the meat locker.”
“I’m not sure I really want to know the answer, but did you say yes?” Mitchell asked with a grimace.
“I said I’d think about it. I wonder if they have any trinkets in the kitchen areas.”
Mitchell sighed, grabbing Vala by her narrow shoulders and pushing her towards the kitchen area, John following behind her.
“So, what’s the plan?” she whispered in John’s ear, causing a tingle to form at the base of his spine. For Thor’s sake, could she select a dress closer to skin color?
John used the scanner implanted beneath his fingernail to run along the seam of his suit. Sure enough, there was a sample from the Defender who had just accosted him waiting there. “I know how I’m going to get in.”
“And me?”
“You are staying out here.”
“But how am I supposed to steal anything with all of these people watching?”
John chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I just need a distraction that’ll let me slip in without it seeming suspicious.”
“All right. Hey, here he is . . .” she waved to one of the wait staff - a young Negro boy with a particularly guileless smile. “Aiden Ford, well, aren’t I glad to see you . . .”
John nodded to Vala, heading off to take up a stance in one of the corners. Of course, before he knew it, there were gagging sounds coming from one of the large rooms full of stasis fields. As far as John could remember, Vala had a pretty well-tamed gag reflex.
He poked his head in long enough to find Vala rushing out hand over her mouth.
“Defender, do you think you could escort this woman to the nearest bathroom?” one of the chefs was saying, French accent thick with disgust. “Through that door, there.”
John shot Vala a quick glare before scooping her up and heading for the door, which opened on a simple mental command.
John wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Please tell me you didn’t just . . .”
“Oh, I can throw up on command. It works well when you’re getting genotyped - too much extra-corpus genetic material is read by scanners as an attempt at camouflage. Normally, people’d rather just let you go than help you wipe the stuff off before they scan you."
John made a face, pushing them up to the door and through, a Defender stationed there making the identical face to John’s and buzzing them through.
“See?”
“Yeah, well . . . still a little . . . yuck.” If she thought she was getting a kiss with that breath, she was kidding herself.
“Well, we’re in. Aren’t we?” She dragged him down a narrow corridor covered in night-sky patterned carpeting so thick that she struggled through it in high heels. “Now, if I were a well-to-do gentleman with the brain of a genius and a large load of treasure, where would I keep it?”
“Um . . .” there was something about this corridor that looked familiar. “I think this way.”
Vala stopped, swiping a small silver orb off a shelf at the end of the corridor. “Because I think that this way . . .”
John rolled his eyes, yanking her along by the arm. She was kinda boney. “A right and then . . . two lefts,” he whispered.
“So you memorized the floor plans then?”
“No. It’s just a feeling.” John pulled the comic out of his jacket. It was just down here - the mahogany door with the cherubs carved along the rims. And sure enough . . . John threw the door open to find a small bed and a high dresser, the walls an intense shade of blue. Here . . . he knew this place.
Vala spotted a lamp in the shape of an old EarthWar style aircraft. “Hey, do you think this is valuable?”
John didn’t answer, taking in the whole room. He knew this place. He’s played here. This was . . . “Vala, I . . . I think I almost knocked this over playing tag when I was a kid.”
“Yes, but is it worth anything?”
John turned to her, ready to explain how it was all beginning to come together - his time on the streets, the dreams, his irrational obsession with the McKay family, the reason why he wasn’t like all the rest.
Of course, that was when the Defenders walked in.
“Hey,” John raised his hands, letting the comic fall easily to the floor. “We don’t want any trouble.”
There were three of them, dressed all in black. They slunk in like panthers, arranging themselves in an array of casual slouches around the room. Two drew weapons, while the other lit up a cigarette. Everyone always commented on how the Defenders could look so calm - they could smile during an interrogation, slouch through the strictest of punishments, beat you to a pulp with their pretty faces calm and empty like mannequins. People wondered, but John understood. Didn’t mean it still wasn’t fucking creepy, though.
The one with the cigarette stepped forward. “It’s too late for that.” He didn’t even put the thing out before he threw the first punch. John tried to fight back, hearing Vala struggling next to him, but it wasn’t long before he felt the paralyzing tingle of a stunning net.
“Mr. McKay doesn’t like people trespassing on his property,” one said as he took the cigarette from his twin and put it out against John’s cheek.
“But we like people who give our kind a bad name even less,” the third added, throwing John to the ground and leveling a kick to his ribs.
It was surreal, getting the crap beat out of you by your own mirror image, but what John really couldn’t get over was the blankness in their eyes, like this was as normal to them as breathing. John wondered if that was the look on his face when he stole.
He coughed, feeling the cloying thickness of blood like a slap to the roof of his mouth, seeming to gurgle over his lips almost involuntarily. His head was reeling, Vala’s shouts and squeaked moans just another part of the cacophony that was the pounding of blood in his ears and in his veins, his own useless grunts of pain. He’d really fucked-up this time.
But then, somewhere he heard an angry shout, a voice cutting through the din like a ship sliding glass-sharp through the mist. “Stop, you Neanderthals!”
And then, there were warm hands slipping down his shoulders, gently plying him loss from where he was curled tight in a ball on the floor. “John?” the voice said from above him, seemingly shrouded in a halo of bright light.
Those eyes seemed familiar somehow, John thought as darkness crept in from the outskirts of his vision.
<<<>>>
John came to wakefulness slowly. There was a bright stabbing light on the edge of his vision, and his nose tickled in the sun. The ache in his body was pervasive, and stretching out just made him cringe, arms pulling in to grip a tender region right around his solar plexus.
Thor’s Chariot, what time was it? John groaned, flipping over and scrubbing his face, only to find his cheekbones were sensitive too - that delicate, scared-to-move feeling and electrolyzed taste of a medical regenerator.
“Mitchell!” John shouted, rolling to the left . . . and right out of what appeared to be an incredibly large red-silk covered bed. “Okay, so no Mitchell.”
The window through which the blinding light was flowing looked down over a vast green lawn, interspersed with hedges and strange-looking marble statues and phallic looking stained-glass turrets. John didn’t know the City even had patches of greenery this large. He was spared the view, however, by a mass of maps and data sheets, innocuous wires about what seemed to be a mix of mundane social functions, meetings, and technical specs.
So last night . . . the McKay mansion. John buried his head in his hands, only now realizing that someone had left him in nothing but a pair of Chinese-embroidered black silk boxers. Of all the ways a robbery (or in this case a stealthy act of returning) could end, this was pretty much the most embarrassing. And he teased Mitchell about his propensity for finishing every desperate situation in his underwear.
The question was, of course, why the hell did whoever caught John suddenly decide to leave him here alone?
A wire flashed up on the window in bright red script. “John is awake.”
“Thanks,” John muttered. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He calmed his thoughts, wading through the hum of data constantly running through the back of his mind - City sensors, warnings, routine maintenance checks.
Atlantis Communications Query: Vala. he asked, half-heartedly. There was no answer.
It wasn’t much later when the door burst open and none other than Rodney McKay himself strode in, graceful hands already in motion and dancing around him like butterflies with an Enzyme habit. “Ah, John, it’s good you’re awake. Don’t worry, I punished those morons that jumped you like that. They’re taking their turn in the band. I know what you’re thinking - music should be fun, but the way they train them. I’ve seen five year olds that were easier to instruct. Stubborn too, you’d think it was an iratus bug and not a trombone . . . but anyhow, I trust everything has healed up nicely. I had Beckett himself over here on a consult. Voodoo, all of it, but if anyone knows Defender physiology, he does. Not that you’re one of them, of course. You’re . . . you’re someone else.” McKay paused in his rant long enough to take a deep breath and fix John with easily the most concerned stare he’d ever been on the receiving end of in his life. “Huh. I can’t believe you’re actually here. I’ve spent a long time searching. . . and there’s so many things I can’t wait to tell you.”
John gaped.
“What? Don’t look at me like that.” Rodney McKay replied, as if he knew John . . . as though one of the most important people in the City and the thief talked regularly. Then suddenly McKay had John’s head in his hands, thumbs stroking through John’s hair in a way that might have made him purr if it wasn’t completely unexpected. “Beckett swore there’d be no permanent brain damage, but you can never be sure with these things.”
That was enough to shake John out of his stunned state, throwing off McKay’s hands and pacing. “What are you talking about? Do I even know you?”
For the first time, John had ever seen him, on univision or otherwise, Rodney McKay looked unsure. “You are John, right? I haven’t gotten somebody else’s pet Defender?”
“Yeah, I’m John,” though how Rodney McKay knew that . . .
“Don’t you remember me? I just assumed you would . . . but then again, childhood is a tricky thing and I have an exceptional memory. I’m sure you’d been through a lot since then.” McKay bit his lip, looking more worried than John could stand. Who knew one of the most important men in the Asgard Empire could look that vulnerable?
“You . . . you were the blue-eyed boy? We played Bat-man.”
McKay’s smile bloomed across his expressive features like the first star announcing itself to the evening. “Yes. Yes. Though you’ve grown up to look even more like Dick Grayson. If I didn’t know the hair was genetic . . .” A hand reached out, combing through John’s mane like something remembered from a long, long time ago. He closed his eyes and leaned into it.
But it didn’t last. Before he knew it, McKay was drawing back, hands playing nervously between them. “Sorry, sorry,” he patted John on the shoulder awkwardly. “I didn’t mean . . . you’re not . . . I don’t own you.” His smile was almost beatific, “Nobody does.”
<<<>>>
McKay’s gardens were sprawling, and John was glad he’d suggested them. He liked nature, what little he could get of it without ever being able to wrangle a Gate-pass. Of course, he had no idea why McKay even bothered to keep a stretch of gardens and green houses if he had to put on three coats of sunscreen, a white UV-resistant leisure suit covering every alin of exposed skin and a ridiculously floppy hat, before he’d set a toe out-of-doors.
“Don’t you think that’s a little excessive?” John wrinkled his nose against the thick aroma of cocoa-butter.
“Never can be to careful. Have you ever seen a cancer cell?”
John shook his head.
“Well, unlike you, I have a delicate immune system. Who knows what kind of problems I could be looking at a decade down the line.”
John laughed. “If you intend to live that long.” John had never seen an aged Defender, after all. Maybe they were like horses in OldEarth literature - put out to pasture on a planet somewhere. But John had never dared imagine even that far. Deep down, he’d always known that he’d get caught long before then. He wasn’t wrong.
“So, now that you’ve defeated the last great threat to the domestic security to the City, what do you intend to do?” he asked, heading off towards what looked like a series of fountains flowing down a hillside like waterfalls.
McKay followed, grumbling something about his knees before catching up to John and yanking him to a stop. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you’ve caught me! Now what?”
“Oh. Well, I hadn’t planned anything specifically. What would you like to do?”
How could McKay take John’s future . . . no, who was he kidding, his life so capriciously? “I’d like not to be Dispensed by the commissioner. That’s what.”
“Oh,” McKay laughed.
John forced his most strained (and menacing) smile. “McKay!”
“Oh, I’m not laughing at you . . . okay, well maybe I actually am. But you think I’d go to all this trouble just to hand you in?”
“I stole from you.”
“And you returned the only thing I really cared about.” McKay reached out, grasping John’s shoulder and guiding them over to a nearby bench - smooth and sun-warm. “John, all of this . . .” he gestured to the opulent gardens and the perfect gothic mansion, and maybe the City covering an entire sea. “everything I’ve done . . . . My father, that bastard, all he ever did was to create the Defenders. All of this wealth is yours. Well, not that I didn’t maintain it of my own right. Not with the same dirty science as my father, but with real discoveries and real work. But without my father’s name, I wouldn’t have gotten a blink from the science minister - not even that trumped-up turkey of a physics chair . . .”
“Representative Hermiod?” The guy was pretty damned creepy, but turkey was not the way John would have chosen to describe him.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Condescending grey bastard. I don’t know how a man with no reproductive organs can possibly manage to be so smug.”
“Yeah. I always wondered how they could get off signing reproductive permits when they can’t even do the deed themselves.” John looked around, just in case someone might be watching.
“All the left over meat went to feed their egos.”
John chuckled at that, rising and pulling Rodney to his feet. This felt right . . . more right than anything had in a long time. “So, you never answered my question. Now that you’ve caught me, what do you plan to do with me?”
“I thought that maybe, after I rescued you from a life of crime, of course . . .”
“Of course . . .”
“Though your Robin Hood-like inclinations were impressive, if not more-or-less suicidal . . . I thought maybe you’d like to pick up where we left off.”
“Yeah?” John asked, moving in closer and forcing McKay to take a step back, onto the marble barrier surrounding the nearest fountain.
McKay’s eyes sparkled. Ascension, they were so blue! “Yeah.”
“So, that’s what . . . back when we were six?”
“Five.”
“Uh-huh.” John smirked, pushing McKay back straight into the fountain.
“What? You can’t! I’m the smartest man in three galaxies! You can’t . . .” McKay’s protests trailed off when he latched on to John’s ankles and yanked him in too.
<<<>>>
When they were safely inside, several models of Housekeep5000s trying not to gape at how they were dripping water all over the hardwood floors, John turned to McKay and grinned. “So, what’d you do with Vala?”
“Oh, I think she’s down in the kitchens. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime,’ I always say. That’s Rogers and Hammerstein, you know? OldEarth stuff - has a different kind of morality to it.”
“So is the crime somehow involving injustice done to poor unsuspecting young hot serving boys?”
“What? No,” McKay scoffed.
“Because to redeem herself, she’s probably got one pounding her into the meat locker at the moment.”
“Eww. That can’t be sanitary.” McKay clicked on his radio. “Lex, Joker, head down to the kitchens and use the nanobots to sterilize the meat locker, would you please?”
“Joker?”
“Oh, Defenders. Calling them by RegNumber seems inhumane.”
“So you pick comic book super-villains instead?”
“Helps me remember them. Speaking of which . . . I’ve got your other friend too - the disgustingly enthusiastic one. He’s out playing Rugby with some of the Defenders. Though I hope he’s not an L.E. because those guys play dirty.”
John winced. So did he, sometimes. “Yeah, well, Cam can handle himself. Wait a minute . . . he’s not like . . . trying to rescue me or anything?”
“Nah. He came in and talked to you when we had you in the regeneration unit. You told him something about B52 bombers and Charlie Chaplin, if I remember correctly.”
“Huh.”
“Care to explain?”
“Not really. Hey, do you happen to know how I got here? I mean, I thought it was an Executive Decision that all Defenders had to be trained in special facilities, for quality assurance purposes.”
“Yes, well . . . that was after . . .”
“After what?”
“John, you were the first."
John had always sort of suspected, what with lack of an identifying protein and all. “And he was just going to raise me here, with his family?”
“No, not exactly. You see, he didn’t just put you together out of random genetic elements - not even the Asgard have advanced that far. He found two people with a dominant ATA gene - how they’d managed to come together on their own, out of all the immigrants to this City, is still a mystery, but my father got lucky. He had the science ministry step in, confiscate you and bring you over to our place for observation.”
“Wait. Hold up. You’re saying that I have real parents? That I’m an Authentic?” John tried not to let himself gape, standing there dripping in Rodney McKay’s beautifully furnished hallway.
“Yes.”
John’s heart was thundering in his chest. He had to force himself to lean back and take deep calming breaths. All his life he’d just been one of thousands, when in actuality, he was unique. No, he was more than unique. He was so special that they’d practically created a whole new race from his DNA. “Where are they? What are their names? So I have a surname?”
McKay shook his head, sadly. “I couldn’t find record of your parents. They disappeared from the Asgard database soon after you were born. If the government didn’t Dispense them, then they were most likely sent back to the Milky Way - one of the planets without Alteran technology. But you do have a surname.”
“What is it?”
“Sheppard. Your name is John Sheppard.”
John didn’t know what to do or how to react. It was as though the floor was sliding out from under him. He was both crushed under the weight of this new meaning and light as a feather. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said when I found out. Imagine my surprise when half the bodyguards in the City popped up looking just like grown-up versions of my childhood friend.”
“So everything I remember . . .”
“It happened. Half of it was orchestrated to happen. Remember that time my father was going to punish me for sneaking into the pantries without permission and you lied and said it was your idea?”
John thought back, vaguely remembering the sting of a belt and the blue-eyed boy’s furious protests. “Maybe a little.”
“Well, that’s how he determined that the Defenders didn’t need a Loyalty Enhancement. In fact, agility, defense, self-sacrifice, bravery - none of it had to be added. The only thing Daddy-dearest thought you needed was a good dose of Obedience, but he’d lost his original test subject. Decided to try putting it in with training and rely on your natural sense of loyalty instead.”
“He lost his test subject?”
McKay gaped. “You don’t remember, do you?”
John shook his head.
“He was going to send you off to some laboratory somewhere and then to be trained. I didn’t want . . . I was only a kid. I thought you’d be better off . . .”
John tried to think back. Years spent scraping his life together on the outskirts, later posing as a Defender when he finally looked old enough. He remembered losing the blue-eyed boy in a crowd, watching the sadness color those rosy cheeks. But he’d forgotten that it had been a plan.
“I convinced my father to allow you to come with us on an outing to the market in the Fugee sector. Then I pretended to be sick to distract him while you ran off.”
“I left voluntarily?”
Rodney looked down at his hands, where they were still for the first time. “He didn’t think you were a person. He . . .”
“He beat me.” There was no use in sugar coating it.
Rodney’s eyes flashed up to meet John’s. They were as blue as ever. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” John looked around McKay’s huge house, with its wood paneled floors and its high ceilings. He wondered how life might have been if he’d stayed here - at least for a while. But then again, he was still the only Defender in the City that could still call himself free. “So . . . Mitchell and Vala?”
<<<>>>
They found Mitchell sprawled out on the lawn, panting and looking slightly bruised. He jumped when John kneeled down to pull him up. John tried not to meet McKay’s critical eye when Mitchell snaked a hand through John’s belt loop and whispered in his ear. “You guys might look alike, John. But these guys sure as hell aren’t you.”
John was stuck between demanding to know how Mitchell ever thought people grown in a lab could ever be the same as John and wanting to ask what in the name of Thor these guys had done to him.
“You okay?”
Mitchell nodded. “For places to be held, it’s not bad.”
“Oh, no,” McKay piped up. “You don’t actually have to stay here.” He looked over at John. “I’ve already got what I wanted.”
Mitchell looked between the two of them suspiciously. “You want to tell me what’s going on here, John?”
John shrugged. “Turns out that I used to know McKay as a kid.”
“And how do I know it’s really you and not a Defender pretending at it?”
“We met in a convalescence home after you’d been shot down in the Wraith wars. I was there doing recon for the Independent Wraith Resistance. You wanted to keep fighting.”
Mitchell nodded. “So you were what? Playmates?”
They nodded.
“You’re kidding.”
McKay rolled his eyes. “I’m disappointed in you, Sheppard. I’d expect you’d at least find yourself a few lackeys with at least the illusion of intelligence.” He turned to Mitchell. “You can go now.” He snapped his fingers and a few of the Defenders who had been drowsing laconically on the grass stood and fixed Mitchell with John’s iciest grin. “Though he is pretty, if in a generic Beauty-Enhancement kind of way.”
“Hey, you mind if I walk him out?” John asked.
McKay looked slightly surprised, but didn’t care to enlighten John as to why. He just turned and wandered off, the pack of Defenders slouching after him, not seeming to care what happened to their new guest.
“So,” Mitchell said as he not-so-subtly guided John in the direction of the exit, “you gonna tell the guy that you assassinated his father?”
John looked up fondly at the towering gothic visage of the house, arched wooden doors gaping like mouths, speaking the language and designs of history a galaxy away. He was surprised that he hadn’t recognized it sooner. “He’s Rodney McKay. He probably already knows.”
Mitchell nodded. “When should we be expecting you?”
Generally, Cam wasn’t that perceptive a guy. Enthusiasm almost always required a delicate kind of ignorance of everyone else’s doubts. But he looked hard into John’s eyes now. They both knew the real question: now that John had found the family he’d always seemed to be looking for, did he still need them? How important could the resistance be to a City-bound thief, after all?
“Soon. Tell Dex not to worry. I’ll be there soon.”
<<<>>>
John found Rodney up in the bedroom with the disgustingly large bed and the red silk sheets - apparently Rodney’s own.
“So . . . what now?” he asked, smiling when McKay jumped back from where he was moving control stones across the window display.
McKay spun around, stepping closer. His eyes were blown wide, as expressive as his hands and not bothering to hide anything. On the univision, Rodney McKay only ever appeared impassioned and angry. John had never seen this silent desperation. Rodney wanted to reach out, but he kept his hands almost shaking with tension by his sides, shaking his head defeatedly. “I imagined what we’d say and what we’d do for so long. But now you’re here and so much time has passed . . .”
“Hey, we’ve got the whole future to make up for it.” John was surprised to note that he meant it. There was still the resistance, and a million other things. But if they could keep seeing each other . . . well, Rodney was one of the few people who could honestly regard him as more than just a variation on the familiar genetic archetype.
“What do you want, John?” he asked, giving in to the desire now to reach up and cup John’s cheek. “What do you want this to be?”
But just then, someone with John’s face strolled through in a miniskirt, silk stockings, high-heels and holding a feather duster. “Is that . . .” The tenderness of the moment had evaporated in seconds to turn to an icy outrage. If he did what he’d fantasized about with Rodney, while the man clearly took advantage of an entire menagerie of look-a-likes, how unique or honest could it be? Would he let the man down?
“Oh, he’s being punished.” Rodney explained, upon glimpsing John’s disbelieving look. “Found out he was letting me win at chess - as though I need that kind of deception.”
The Defender rolled his eyes.
“Some punishment, McKay,” John grit out.
“Well, it’s hard to figure out what to do with them. They seem lazy, but they like running and push-ups and some even like being spanked, but I guess you know that, don’t you?”
“So you make them play in a band or be your sex slave?” John was familiar with the practice. He was as sexually open as the next guy, but he had to admit that it creeped him out - that every minute in the City, someone was probably fucking a guy with his face. Still, he expected better from McKay.
“Are you kidding? Sex with Rodney McKay, a punishment? The only real threat they listen to is ‘the box’ but it’s a waste of time they could be using for something more productive - like making music or,” he nodded to the Defender in the high heels, “cleaning.”
“What’s the box?” John didn’t like the sound of that.
“It’s an ATA shielded room. Nothing to do, no contact with the City. Half a day in there and they’re dying of boredom.”
John didn’t quite know why this offended him so much, only that it did. He’d snuck into a training camp once - discipline was achieved through physical violence, psychological torture. They even locked some poor soul up in a room full of bugs as a punishment. “I thought you were for Constructs Rights.”
Rodney sobered. “I am. But everyone has to experience the consequences of their actions and since I can’t fire them . . .”
“Yes, you can.”
“Not these guys. I wouldn’t keep Defenders at all if they weren’t going to be Dispensed.”
“Dispensed?”
“All the ones here are supposedly defective. Reactions too slow, exposed to a strange childhood trauma, on the more rebellious side.” Rodney gestured to the thing lounging around in the high heals. “Can’t get him to take the damned stockings off. I think he does it just to annoy me.”
The Defender leaned over to dust some sort of Asgard award statue and winked. That was really more of himself than John needed to see.
“All right. I’ve had enough with you, Catwoman. Off you go,” McKay motioned, turning back to John the second the Defender had left the room. “Where were we?”
Except John wasn’t done yet. “You slept with them?”
“Yes, I did. But can you blame me?”
Yes, he very well could.
“Fine. But in my defense, I didn’t even know that you were still alive until recently. And you’re gorgeous. And they’re grateful, and also gorgeous and . . . maybe for a little while I could pretend they were you.”
That was very romantic and all. But did John get to soothe his desires with Rodney look-a-likes? Did he have servants in his employ that would indulge every fantasy? And did Rodney ever think it would be anything close to enough?
“I don’t know if I can do this,” John whispered, his body leaning into McKay even though he knew it would be in his best interest to lean away.
“You can do whatever you want,” Rodney replied, something secretive and soft in his gaze and the odd slope of his nose when he tilted his head.
Could it be better this way? Could sex with the real John be that much better than sex with the copies? Would it ever mean as much to Rodney as it did to John? But then again, John wanted this, almost more than he could remember wanting anything. He wasn’t one to seek a life of hedonistic pleasure, but neither was he fully invested in the resistance, never having left the City.
And didn’t he deserve to get what he wanted? As much as any Authentic, wasn’t he entitled to be king of his very own molehill?
John leaned in until their mouths were just alins apart, foreheads pressed together. John would be embarrassed about the panicked rush of his breath and the soft flutter of his heart, if he couldn’t feel Rodney doing the same from where he pressed his palm to the other man’s chest.
Atlantis communications query. Do you accept?
Not now. No.
He’d deal with Vala later.
Except then the door slammed open and that wasn’t really an option. “Hell-oh boys!” she exclaimed with a sly grin, eyes raking over them the same way Dex eyed a particularly juicy slice of meat. “You wouldn’t be having fun without me, now would you?”
Someone had allowed Vala to change from her eveningwear into a red shirtdress, which she had chosen to leave unbuttoned far below the level of common decency - unless she was posing for a pin-up. She moved into the room somewhere between a flounce and a glide, white teeth flashing in a near-predatory smile.
John pulled back, his anger flashing quick and forge-bright. “We’re kinda in the middle of something here, Vala.”
She pouted, leaning back on the statue John’s look-a-like had just dusted in a way calculated to emphasize her bosom. “But I wanna play with you boys.”
John looked to Rodney, ready protest, but his friend looked entranced by the prospect. It figured. “You do?” he stuttered. Then again, he supposed that Rodney’d had plenty of sex with Defenders - one on one with John wouldn’t exactly be exciting new territory for him.
“Sure. How could I pass up a bum like that?” She clapped her hands together in anticipation, steamrolling over John’s many and varied objections. “Well, let’s get down to it then.”
She took the opportunity to rip all the buttons off her dress and John was not surprised in the least that there was nothing on under it. She was a sight to behold, but in truth, John wasn’t interested in that. He’d fantasized about Rodney for nearly all of his life, maybe even loved him - they said that the Defenders were incapable of love, but John was an Authentic, wasn’t he? Didn’t that make him capable of honest emotion, even if it was diluted by the thousands of others who might feel the very same way?
He turned to McKay then, running a hand down that strong jaw line and up into the fine strands of soft brown hair, before drawing him in to a kiss. John melted against him, drowning in it, until he wondered how Rodney could possibly even remember that Vala was standing there. John could barely even remember who he was.
But even as they kissed, John felt deft hands flutter at the waistband of his pants, yanking them down as a head of silky-soft hair pushed itself between them. The feel of a woman’s lips were different - smaller and tighter but not the same raging furnace of heat somehow. There was something in him that held him back, instead of just reaching down and taking like he might with a man. Still, he felt himself grow rock hard in her mouth, though maybe that was just the kiss and the way Rodney’s blue blue eyes stared into his, as though this were the only real thing, regardless of the will of men or nature even, attempts to control something that ultimately belonged to no one to control.
But, then again, with someone digging sharp fingernails into his backside and yanking him deeper in, maybe control was more of an illusion. She was smiling around his cock now, maybe even laughing, her breaths coming out in a moist tickle across his skin. Thor’s Hammer, he was going to come in a pair of seconds if she kept this up.
Luckily for him, Rodney took this moment to push him backwards, down against the silky sheets of the bed. He practically pulled Vala up by her pigtails and shoved her after John.
Of course, all she had to say at the harsh treatment was, “Mwrooow.” She crawled up John’s body, slinking like a cat, breasts hanging down to form a delicate tip thanks to the weight of gravity. John had never had the desire before, but he reached out, smoothing a hand over the soft skin of her back and pulling her close, her navel brushing his chest as he suckled on first one milky white breast and then the other.
Vala leaned her head back, moaning and clutching desperately at him when he ran the edges of his teeth over the sensitive nubs of her nipples, one hand massaging through her thick curls of hair as the other pressed insistently against her hips, edging her on as she rocked against him.
“Oh, Ascension, you two are gorgeous together.” Rodney breathed from somewhere off to John’s right. John reached out blindly for him, even as Vala ratcheted up the pace of her little thrusts. John wasn’t too sure about this whole clitoris business, but he was sure that he could feel something rubbing up against his thigh, even if it was only just a tortuous wetness. He had no idea what to do with it.
But obviously Rodney did, because he was at John’s side now, pulling his head away from Vala’s breast and into a deep kiss, tongue playing over John’s teeth and lips nibbling at John’s own. His hands, too, were roaming, maneuvering Vala with subtle pushes until that strange wetness was rubbing against John’s cock.
“Don’t come until I tell you,” Rodney ordered, pinching John’s thigh. Not that he needed to - after hearing a breathy command like that, John’d die of blue balls before he’d disobey.
Still, the other two weren’t making it easy. “Oh, darling, that’s the spot,” Vala moaned, shuddering, as Rodney’s fingers played over the place where she and John rutted up against each other like a master pianist pours his soul into his instrument.
His kiss with John intensified, until John had forgotten Vala and her perfect breasts altogether and Rodney was the only thing in the world - solid and golden and burning the like purest of fires. John tried to reach for him, but Vala was in the way, almost ignoring John as she rode Rodney’s fingers to a gasping, babbling climax. “Oh, oh, Rodney, that’s so good. You’re a genius, darling . . . oh . . . a genius.”
Yeah, that’s pretty much was John was thinking, with Vala slumped against him, and Rodney now repositioning her until she wasn’t just straddling John, but sinking down onto his aching shaft. She was in a daze from her first climax, but when her eyes opened, there was a sly, blessed out, but devious look on her face. “I’m going to ride you so well, honey, you’ll wish I had a . . . whatsit? . . . oh . . .” she was already riding him good enough to get them both to gasp and bite their lips in an identical expression. “Oh . . . you’ll wish I had a saddle.”
He already wished she did. John groaned, leaning forward to bite her shoulder. He had no idea how long Rodney expected him to hold on, but, damn she was good. She leaned down then, pushing him back against Rodney’s sizable stack of pillows, panting out these harsh little squeaks, completely different than when Rodney had been fingering her. “Oh, gorgeous, your cock . . . baby, you’re on fire.”
John smiled, reaching out again for Rodney, only to be surprised, when Rodney’s hands reached over Vala to push at John’s shoulders, rubbing even as they forced him down until he was laying flat. John released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He thrust up into Vala, keeping his eyes fixed on Rodney’s, trying to say without words, ‘this is what I want to do to you.’
Vala seemed oblivious to the whole thing, of course, pulling her second orgasm out of John with a shudder. He heard a vague mantra of, “Come on, baby, yeah. Just like that, Sunshine.” It was only after she’d shuttered and spasmed around him that she leaned forward and kissed him. She tasted sweet - of lemonade and apple pie and the good old fashioned things that John’d never had a mother to bake for him. Unlike Rodney’s, her lips were delicate and not chapped in the slightest. Her tongue played restlessly with his, darting in just quick enough to taste and then pulling back to make him follow.
“Gods, I want to . . .” Rodney babbled, “you’re so . . . and I . . . John . . . I need . . .” His hand found John’s and squeezed, bone-crushingly tight for a moment before he disappeared, coming back with what appeared to be a jar of lubricant.
John tried to roll over, pushing at Vala, who was now lapping at his nipples speculatively.
“No,” Rodney gripped his shoulder. “Wait. The first time I take you, a want you all to myself.” John smiled at that, squeezing Rodney’s hand to his shoulder, even as Vala made a point to squeeze his cock between her thighs.
“Then at least let me suck it first,” John whined. In all this, he hadn’t even gotten to see Rodney’s cock. He’d completely missed Rodney stripping out of his clothes. Though now his eyes widened at the slogan Rodney still had tattooed to his chest, ‘All Who Question Are Authentic.’ He reached out, tracing the letters through Rodney’s sparse chest hair, before reaching down and tangling his fingers in Rodney’s pubic hair before bringing them back up to his face to sniff and taste. Rodney smelled musky and sweet and so very male.
“Rodney, I want your cock in my mouth. Now!”
Rodney laughed at that. “I’ve never heard a Defender so demanding before. Hold your chariot, Sheppard, I’m coming.”
John grinned, marveling at the flexibility involved to get Rodney practically sitting on his face, while Vala sat up, true cowgirl style, arching her back and riding him again, one hand playing over Rodney’s perineum, while the other fondled John’s balls from behind her.
“Whoever has their finger up my ass, take some lube,” Rodney announced, tactlessly, tossing the pot of lubricant over his shoulder as he changed the angle, allowing John to lick at his balls and at the shaft, but not actually get it in his mouth. It was frustrating, but hot, surrounding in that heady scent, and with Rodney’s thick cock bouncing just a little beyond his reach, the head angry-red and leaking. The smell was driving John wild, encouraging little sporadic bouts of thrusting that Vala took moaning, babbling out encouragements as she crested over another orgasm or two.
John stretched and strained, slapping at Rodney’s ass and pulling at his hips until he finally scooted back enough that John could feel the burn of his cock against he back of his throat. How he hadn’t come yet must have been a gift of the Ascended.
“Oh, Valhalla,” Rodney panted, pulling out. Embarrassingly, John found his lips trying to follow Rodney’s shaft like a baby suckling after its mother’s breast. “If I don’t stop now, I’ll mess up my master plan.”
“You have a master plan for sex?” John asked, incredulously. Not that he cared - everything Rodney’s ordered him to do had worked out so far.
“Of course, doesn’t everybody?” Rodney panted, squeezing at the base of his cock now. “Hey, Pippi Longstocking, what’d you do with the lube?” he demanded, searching around beyond the line of John’s vision. “How’d you like to have both of us fuck you at once?”
“Huh?” Vala looked up, dazed, from where she had been giving John a damned good hicky on the side of his neck.
Rodney held up two fingers. “Two pegs. Two holes.”
She looked confused for only a second before shrugging and going back to the hicky-monster she was clearly trying to make of John.
“Hey,” he joked, “you said you wanted to play with the boys.”
“Oh, I like playing,” she purred, lifting up from John for a second to waggle her ass at Rodney.
Rodney, for his part, made quick work of stretching her out and lubing himself up. It wasn’t long until John felt Vala flatten against him, the weight of two bodies constricting his chest - but in a good way. Erotic asphyxiation didn’t seem like such a bad way to go anyhow.
John had expected this to be disappointing - with Vala a pale medium between the two of them, a nuisance. Instead, it was blazing hot, with Vala making small cries, almost painful mews like this hurt so much she’d fallen in love with it. John could feel Rodney moving against him, through a wall of swollen, heated flesh. It was like sending waves of arousal, through sea and air and soul . . . a domino effect, or a tidal pull, the pure violent friction of it muted by Vala’s weeping pussy.
“Harder, boys, harder! Like you mean it!” she was commanding, her nails digging deep into John’s shoulder. Not that he could feel it, of course, as close the edge as he was. But regardless of how she moaned and cried out and gasped tears of pleasure into John’s shoulder, he only had eyes for Rodney, staring into endless pools of blue that seemed to whisper, ‘feel this - it’s all for you.’
John had no idea how long they stayed like this, Vala a supple cushion between them, easing the bite of the passion and channeling it into something soft and hopeful and true, but it couldn’t have been the eternity it seemed, because John was so close - high on a lip-biting flash of white that only tumbled down into release when Vala shuddered for another countless time that night, sending both John and Rodney over the edge and spilling deep inside of her.
John only protested the weight of the two of them when he realized that part of this light-heading weightless feeling came from not being able to breath. Rodney slid out with a gasp, collapsing beside them and knocking the lube off the bed with a crash. He moaned inarticulately and waved at it dismissively.
Vala carefully pulled herself off of John, looking a little sore already, but sated. Her eyes were slits, like a purring cat to match her Cheshire smile as she leaded down to give John one last lingering lip-lock. “You boys know the best games,” she whispered, moving over to Rodney, and pointing to her lips, demanding a kiss.
John was spent and tired, but he had all sorts of unfamiliar juices sticking to him - not to mention the sheets, so he stood up and staggered to the bathroom.
That was when he heard the shout.
“Rodney!” Post-coital laziness had fled in an instant. What had Vala done to him?! Was he okay? John pounded on the door, uselessly. She must have locked it with one of the staff’s codes. Probably the stupid kitchen boy’s.
John was panicking now, pounding at the door as he heard gasps from beyond it, Vala’s playful voice now trembling with emotion, but soft and deadly. “That was for the things you’ve created. The sex was because I’m sorry.”
“Open the door, you bitch!” John was shouting, though he didn’t think he’d ever called anyone that in his life.
It was a moment before it occurred to him: this veritable fortress was crawling with Defenders.
Atlantis Communications Query: Joker.
Accepted
Thank god. Send someone to the master bedroom now! McKay’s in trouble.
John heard their shouts and the sounds of footsteps almost immediately, but no matter how hard he banged, it seemed like an eternity before the door slid open. Rodney was being rushed away on a hovering gurney, his face and his chest and his hands swollen and bruised almost beyond recognition.
Vala was crouched, still naked, in a corner, a ring of angry Defenders surrounding her. She turned her face into the wall, but John could still see one eye already going black and blue.
“What did you do?!” he shouted, almost angrier than he could every remember being. “How could you do this?!”
She looked up, eyes watering. “By have a thing for, I meant, would like to see dead. Minor detail.” Her smile was apologetic and her teeth filled with blood from where one of the Defenders had obviously hit her. John would’ve done it himself.
“I trusted you!” he raged. “He trusted you too! Even after you tried to steal from him and dirtied his kitchen, he trusted you.” This is why he always insisted on working alone.
“If he’s allowed to live . . .” she began, but the Defenders had no need for it. They were trained never to question. They weren’t Authentics. The answers weren’t for them. They kept the order - no more, no less.
One of the Defenders snapped his fingers and after what John was sure was a fierce mass of communiqués, two grabbed Vala by either arm before lifting her up, still naked and walking out of the room.
John collapsed on the bed, suddenly too tired to follow. What if Rodney died? What if John’d brought Vala into this house like some damned Trojan Horse? He curled on his side, staring at the wide communications monitor that was the window, waiting until the status bar representing Rodney McKay’s health flashed a cool, safe blue before standing and leaving. Once he made sure Rodney was safe, he’d be gone, back to fighting for wrongs and rights that could be plotted and predicted for him.
PART 3
Cameron Mitchell looked like a million credits in a tux. It was all John could do to keep his hands to himself as Vala fussed over Mitchell’s bow tie, looking pretty spectacular herself in a sparkling nude-colored dress, ending in a swirl of feathers, her hair all pinned up like Betty Grable’s.
John wore his usual plain black outfit, as favored by the Defenders of the City, Ronon flanking him in an impossibly large purple zoot suit, like something right out of one of the detective story relics.
John surveyed his team. They were actually going to do this. They were going to break into Rodney McKay’s Fortress of Solitude. “So, we ready, guys?”
“As we’ll ever be,” Mitchell replied, still looking doubtful. There was only so much a Loyalty Enhancement could compel.
“Don’t worry,” Dex grumbled, elbowing Mitchell in the ribs so hard that he almost fell over. “John’s got it under control.”
“Whatever you say,” Mitchell remarked, rubbing his side with a wince.
“Well, I think you look lovely,” Vala grinned. “I’d have no problem believing you were . . .” she looked down at where she’d written the ID’s they’d swiped yesterday down on a data tablet. “Mr. Peter Shanahan - attaché to the commissioner’s office, and glamorous boyfriend of Miss . . . Chaya Athar of the Ascension temple.”
“She doesn’t seem much like a priestess to me,” Dex remarked.
John laughed. “The Temples here have a little more . . . Las Vegas to them than Offworld, Ronon. Trust me, Vala will work.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Ronon asked, opening stepping into the transportation elevator that would take them to the personal transport they’d lifted just for this occasion.
John’s hands itched watching Dex at the steering wheel, but he forced himself to open the door for Vala and Mitchell, sliding into the passenger seat and looking out at the city as it disappeared below them. Dex almost crashed them. Twice.
Rodney McKay’s so-called Fortress of Solitude resembled more an urban mansion of Lex Luthor’s than the fortress of ice and crystal, with its towering gothic arches of burnished silvery material and the stained glass popular throughout the city. Henry McKay had it constructed based on some cathedral back on OldEarth
“Good luck,” Dex winked as he drove off into the night, leaving them on an artificial green lawn swarming with well-dressed socialites and their security personnel. The Defenders prowled through the crowd like black-clad ants, slouching their way up and down invisible lanes of traffic.
Mitchell looked at John skeptically, striding up to the two Defenders with a guest-list scanner at the entrance. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered under his breath.
John had long since gotten over seeing his face, impassive and almost severe on the faces of most of the security personnel in the city, but it was still strange to meet his own unblinking eyes as a Defender took his scanner over Mitchell.
John crossed his fingers behind his back - most genetic scanners did not possess the degree of sophistication to process an entire genome in a short enough time to work the door, so they had adopted a sort of genetic shorthand - the Enhancements plus a spread of 13 different genes and checked their coding. Luckily for them, they were able to find someone on the guest list with a match for Cameron, and call in an emergency at the Commissioner’s office that would keep him busy to boot.
Vala, on the other hand, was slightly more difficult. Her genome wasn’t in the database and John didn’t have the equipment to do a scan on her that would help them find a match. Instead they positioned her as a Pegasus Native and devotee of the temple of Ascensions, where the Reverend Daniel Jackson had made his protests against genetics known and forbidden all holy people not yet scanned from being entered into the database on religious grounds. It was the perfect cover.
John just hoped that it would work. Who knew what kind of security systems McKay might be using?
The Defender doing the scan looked down at the log and nodded. “Enjoy your evening.” He didn’t sound particularly enthused.
Once they were safely inside, Mitchell elbowed John in the ribs. “Hey, they say that they can train obedience into you guys, but you can’t breed you to care.”
John snorted. If his sole purpose in life was to check names on a list, he’d be less than excited too.
“Wow, look at all the sparkly!” Vala exclaimed, gripping Mitchell’s arm in a way that looked wholly uncomfortable. The main hall was covered in a soft plush velvet carpet, with a large hardwood dance floor in the center. An array of jewel-like crystals floated above their heads, emitting a soft glow like fireflies. Couples whirled by on the dance floor, waltzing in a bizarre parody of strutting birds, covered in sparkling beads and feathers.
“I’m going to scope out the food cart,” Mitchell said, heading off in one direction.
“And I’ll just be over there, with those purse-sized gold statues, if you don’t mind,” Vala added.
Fine. If they wanted to be that way. “I’ll head up that staircase, see what kind of guards McKay’s got keeping people out of the rest of the house. Back here in five.”
Vala nodded, seemingly distracted by all of the ‘sparkly.’ Why did John even bother?
He made his way up the long winding spiral staircase, the crowd thinning out the higher up he got until he was looking down on the scene from a narrow balcony, supported by a series of baroque mahogany beams.
Down on the stage below, a group of Defenders carrying a variety of Jazz instruments flowed out onto the dance floor below them. It was a testament to wealth and privilege that Rodney McKay could afford to waste the talents of the City’s most trusted (and expensive) bodyguards on something so trivial as the creation of music.
John forced himself to relax, ambling down the corridor past a woman in a green dress that looked remarkably like Ingrid Bergman and the man attached to her face. Another couple - a pair of men this time - was pushed up against a priceless-looking EarthRelic of an engraved cabinet, one of the man’s pants pulled down far enough that a pair of boxers proclaiming “Here’s Looking At You, Kid,” stood out in the meager lighting of the alcove they had chosen. John barely spared them a second glance, moving to the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. A thumbprint identifier slid out of the woodwork, prompting him.
John looked around carefully, noting that the two couples were still rather engrossed and unlikely to notice him before pressing his thumb experimentally to the plate.
“You are not Rodney McKay,” an electron voiced proclaimed, light flashing. You are not Rodney McKay. You are not . . .”
“Shit,” John said, turning and hustling off, trying to look engrossed in something . . . anything else. But the stairway was long and he met two Defenders coming up as he sped down.
One grabbed his arm, hard enough to bruise. “Whatcha doing up there, buddy?” The Defenders all referred to each other as buddy. It was a disgusting habit, in John’s humble opinion.
“Oh, nothing. A little of this, a little of that. Just wanted to check all the possible entrances and exits. My employers pay me to be thorough.”
One of the Defenders looked slightly skeptical, but the other chuckled, a deep braying laugh. John had always hated his own laugh, and tried to restrain it as much as possible. “Ours do the same. I’m sure the place checks out to your standards. All incidental entryways clear for McKay only, and admit other personnel only if the security system is triggered. He makes the rest of us go in and out through the kitchen.”
“You know, he’s kinda a pain in the ass,” the other said.
They both shrugged. “Have a good night.”
“You too . . . buddy,” John tried not to wince at the familiar title. “Well, so much for plan A,” he whispered to himself.
Mitchell and Vala were waiting for him over near a display of genuine Atlantean benthic caviar when he returned. “Trouble, John?” Mitchell asked, smirking.
“No luck on the landing. We have to go through the kitchen.”
“Good,” Vala piped up, halfway through stuffing her face with crackers and caviar. “I just had one of the caterers ask me if I’d blow him in the meat locker.”
“I’m not sure I really want to know the answer, but did you say yes?” Mitchell asked with a grimace.
“I said I’d think about it. I wonder if they have any trinkets in the kitchen areas.”
Mitchell sighed, grabbing Vala by her narrow shoulders and pushing her towards the kitchen area, John following behind her.
“So, what’s the plan?” she whispered in John’s ear, causing a tingle to form at the base of his spine. For Thor’s sake, could she select a dress closer to skin color?
John used the scanner implanted beneath his fingernail to run along the seam of his suit. Sure enough, there was a sample from the Defender who had just accosted him waiting there. “I know how I’m going to get in.”
“And me?”
“You are staying out here.”
“But how am I supposed to steal anything with all of these people watching?”
John chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I just need a distraction that’ll let me slip in without it seeming suspicious.”
“All right. Hey, here he is . . .” she waved to one of the wait staff - a young Negro boy with a particularly guileless smile. “Aiden Ford, well, aren’t I glad to see you . . .”
John nodded to Vala, heading off to take up a stance in one of the corners. Of course, before he knew it, there were gagging sounds coming from one of the large rooms full of stasis fields. As far as John could remember, Vala had a pretty well-tamed gag reflex.
He poked his head in long enough to find Vala rushing out hand over her mouth.
“Defender, do you think you could escort this woman to the nearest bathroom?” one of the chefs was saying, French accent thick with disgust. “Through that door, there.”
John shot Vala a quick glare before scooping her up and heading for the door, which opened on a simple mental command.
John wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Please tell me you didn’t just . . .”
“Oh, I can throw up on command. It works well when you’re getting genotyped - too much extra-corpus genetic material is read by scanners as an attempt at camouflage. Normally, people’d rather just let you go than help you wipe the stuff off before they scan you."
John made a face, pushing them up to the door and through, a Defender stationed there making the identical face to John’s and buzzing them through.
“See?”
“Yeah, well . . . still a little . . . yuck.” If she thought she was getting a kiss with that breath, she was kidding herself.
“Well, we’re in. Aren’t we?” She dragged him down a narrow corridor covered in night-sky patterned carpeting so thick that she struggled through it in high heels. “Now, if I were a well-to-do gentleman with the brain of a genius and a large load of treasure, where would I keep it?”
“Um . . .” there was something about this corridor that looked familiar. “I think this way.”
Vala stopped, swiping a small silver orb off a shelf at the end of the corridor. “Because I think that this way . . .”
John rolled his eyes, yanking her along by the arm. She was kinda boney. “A right and then . . . two lefts,” he whispered.
“So you memorized the floor plans then?”
“No. It’s just a feeling.” John pulled the comic out of his jacket. It was just down here - the mahogany door with the cherubs carved along the rims. And sure enough . . . John threw the door open to find a small bed and a high dresser, the walls an intense shade of blue. Here . . . he knew this place.
Vala spotted a lamp in the shape of an old EarthWar style aircraft. “Hey, do you think this is valuable?”
John didn’t answer, taking in the whole room. He knew this place. He’s played here. This was . . . “Vala, I . . . I think I almost knocked this over playing tag when I was a kid.”
“Yes, but is it worth anything?”
John turned to her, ready to explain how it was all beginning to come together - his time on the streets, the dreams, his irrational obsession with the McKay family, the reason why he wasn’t like all the rest.
Of course, that was when the Defenders walked in.
“Hey,” John raised his hands, letting the comic fall easily to the floor. “We don’t want any trouble.”
There were three of them, dressed all in black. They slunk in like panthers, arranging themselves in an array of casual slouches around the room. Two drew weapons, while the other lit up a cigarette. Everyone always commented on how the Defenders could look so calm - they could smile during an interrogation, slouch through the strictest of punishments, beat you to a pulp with their pretty faces calm and empty like mannequins. People wondered, but John understood. Didn’t mean it still wasn’t fucking creepy, though.
The one with the cigarette stepped forward. “It’s too late for that.” He didn’t even put the thing out before he threw the first punch. John tried to fight back, hearing Vala struggling next to him, but it wasn’t long before he felt the paralyzing tingle of a stunning net.
“Mr. McKay doesn’t like people trespassing on his property,” one said as he took the cigarette from his twin and put it out against John’s cheek.
“But we like people who give our kind a bad name even less,” the third added, throwing John to the ground and leveling a kick to his ribs.
It was surreal, getting the crap beat out of you by your own mirror image, but what John really couldn’t get over was the blankness in their eyes, like this was as normal to them as breathing. John wondered if that was the look on his face when he stole.
He coughed, feeling the cloying thickness of blood like a slap to the roof of his mouth, seeming to gurgle over his lips almost involuntarily. His head was reeling, Vala’s shouts and squeaked moans just another part of the cacophony that was the pounding of blood in his ears and in his veins, his own useless grunts of pain. He’d really fucked-up this time.
But then, somewhere he heard an angry shout, a voice cutting through the din like a ship sliding glass-sharp through the mist. “Stop, you Neanderthals!”
And then, there were warm hands slipping down his shoulders, gently plying him loss from where he was curled tight in a ball on the floor. “John?” the voice said from above him, seemingly shrouded in a halo of bright light.
Those eyes seemed familiar somehow, John thought as darkness crept in from the outskirts of his vision.
<<<>>>
John came to wakefulness slowly. There was a bright stabbing light on the edge of his vision, and his nose tickled in the sun. The ache in his body was pervasive, and stretching out just made him cringe, arms pulling in to grip a tender region right around his solar plexus.
Thor’s Chariot, what time was it? John groaned, flipping over and scrubbing his face, only to find his cheekbones were sensitive too - that delicate, scared-to-move feeling and electrolyzed taste of a medical regenerator.
“Mitchell!” John shouted, rolling to the left . . . and right out of what appeared to be an incredibly large red-silk covered bed. “Okay, so no Mitchell.”
The window through which the blinding light was flowing looked down over a vast green lawn, interspersed with hedges and strange-looking marble statues and phallic looking stained-glass turrets. John didn’t know the City even had patches of greenery this large. He was spared the view, however, by a mass of maps and data sheets, innocuous wires about what seemed to be a mix of mundane social functions, meetings, and technical specs.
So last night . . . the McKay mansion. John buried his head in his hands, only now realizing that someone had left him in nothing but a pair of Chinese-embroidered black silk boxers. Of all the ways a robbery (or in this case a stealthy act of returning) could end, this was pretty much the most embarrassing. And he teased Mitchell about his propensity for finishing every desperate situation in his underwear.
The question was, of course, why the hell did whoever caught John suddenly decide to leave him here alone?
A wire flashed up on the window in bright red script. “John is awake.”
“Thanks,” John muttered. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He calmed his thoughts, wading through the hum of data constantly running through the back of his mind - City sensors, warnings, routine maintenance checks.
Atlantis Communications Query: Vala. he asked, half-heartedly. There was no answer.
It wasn’t much later when the door burst open and none other than Rodney McKay himself strode in, graceful hands already in motion and dancing around him like butterflies with an Enzyme habit. “Ah, John, it’s good you’re awake. Don’t worry, I punished those morons that jumped you like that. They’re taking their turn in the band. I know what you’re thinking - music should be fun, but the way they train them. I’ve seen five year olds that were easier to instruct. Stubborn too, you’d think it was an iratus bug and not a trombone . . . but anyhow, I trust everything has healed up nicely. I had Beckett himself over here on a consult. Voodoo, all of it, but if anyone knows Defender physiology, he does. Not that you’re one of them, of course. You’re . . . you’re someone else.” McKay paused in his rant long enough to take a deep breath and fix John with easily the most concerned stare he’d ever been on the receiving end of in his life. “Huh. I can’t believe you’re actually here. I’ve spent a long time searching. . . and there’s so many things I can’t wait to tell you.”
John gaped.
“What? Don’t look at me like that.” Rodney McKay replied, as if he knew John . . . as though one of the most important people in the City and the thief talked regularly. Then suddenly McKay had John’s head in his hands, thumbs stroking through John’s hair in a way that might have made him purr if it wasn’t completely unexpected. “Beckett swore there’d be no permanent brain damage, but you can never be sure with these things.”
That was enough to shake John out of his stunned state, throwing off McKay’s hands and pacing. “What are you talking about? Do I even know you?”
For the first time, John had ever seen him, on univision or otherwise, Rodney McKay looked unsure. “You are John, right? I haven’t gotten somebody else’s pet Defender?”
“Yeah, I’m John,” though how Rodney McKay knew that . . .
“Don’t you remember me? I just assumed you would . . . but then again, childhood is a tricky thing and I have an exceptional memory. I’m sure you’d been through a lot since then.” McKay bit his lip, looking more worried than John could stand. Who knew one of the most important men in the Asgard Empire could look that vulnerable?
“You . . . you were the blue-eyed boy? We played Bat-man.”
McKay’s smile bloomed across his expressive features like the first star announcing itself to the evening. “Yes. Yes. Though you’ve grown up to look even more like Dick Grayson. If I didn’t know the hair was genetic . . .” A hand reached out, combing through John’s mane like something remembered from a long, long time ago. He closed his eyes and leaned into it.
But it didn’t last. Before he knew it, McKay was drawing back, hands playing nervously between them. “Sorry, sorry,” he patted John on the shoulder awkwardly. “I didn’t mean . . . you’re not . . . I don’t own you.” His smile was almost beatific, “Nobody does.”
<<<>>>
McKay’s gardens were sprawling, and John was glad he’d suggested them. He liked nature, what little he could get of it without ever being able to wrangle a Gate-pass. Of course, he had no idea why McKay even bothered to keep a stretch of gardens and green houses if he had to put on three coats of sunscreen, a white UV-resistant leisure suit covering every alin of exposed skin and a ridiculously floppy hat, before he’d set a toe out-of-doors.
“Don’t you think that’s a little excessive?” John wrinkled his nose against the thick aroma of cocoa-butter.
“Never can be to careful. Have you ever seen a cancer cell?”
John shook his head.
“Well, unlike you, I have a delicate immune system. Who knows what kind of problems I could be looking at a decade down the line.”
John laughed. “If you intend to live that long.” John had never seen an aged Defender, after all. Maybe they were like horses in OldEarth literature - put out to pasture on a planet somewhere. But John had never dared imagine even that far. Deep down, he’d always known that he’d get caught long before then. He wasn’t wrong.
“So, now that you’ve defeated the last great threat to the domestic security to the City, what do you intend to do?” he asked, heading off towards what looked like a series of fountains flowing down a hillside like waterfalls.
McKay followed, grumbling something about his knees before catching up to John and yanking him to a stop. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you’ve caught me! Now what?”
“Oh. Well, I hadn’t planned anything specifically. What would you like to do?”
How could McKay take John’s future . . . no, who was he kidding, his life so capriciously? “I’d like not to be Dispensed by the commissioner. That’s what.”
“Oh,” McKay laughed.
John forced his most strained (and menacing) smile. “McKay!”
“Oh, I’m not laughing at you . . . okay, well maybe I actually am. But you think I’d go to all this trouble just to hand you in?”
“I stole from you.”
“And you returned the only thing I really cared about.” McKay reached out, grasping John’s shoulder and guiding them over to a nearby bench - smooth and sun-warm. “John, all of this . . .” he gestured to the opulent gardens and the perfect gothic mansion, and maybe the City covering an entire sea. “everything I’ve done . . . . My father, that bastard, all he ever did was to create the Defenders. All of this wealth is yours. Well, not that I didn’t maintain it of my own right. Not with the same dirty science as my father, but with real discoveries and real work. But without my father’s name, I wouldn’t have gotten a blink from the science minister - not even that trumped-up turkey of a physics chair . . .”
“Representative Hermiod?” The guy was pretty damned creepy, but turkey was not the way John would have chosen to describe him.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Condescending grey bastard. I don’t know how a man with no reproductive organs can possibly manage to be so smug.”
“Yeah. I always wondered how they could get off signing reproductive permits when they can’t even do the deed themselves.” John looked around, just in case someone might be watching.
“All the left over meat went to feed their egos.”
John chuckled at that, rising and pulling Rodney to his feet. This felt right . . . more right than anything had in a long time. “So, you never answered my question. Now that you’ve caught me, what do you plan to do with me?”
“I thought that maybe, after I rescued you from a life of crime, of course . . .”
“Of course . . .”
“Though your Robin Hood-like inclinations were impressive, if not more-or-less suicidal . . . I thought maybe you’d like to pick up where we left off.”
“Yeah?” John asked, moving in closer and forcing McKay to take a step back, onto the marble barrier surrounding the nearest fountain.
McKay’s eyes sparkled. Ascension, they were so blue! “Yeah.”
“So, that’s what . . . back when we were six?”
“Five.”
“Uh-huh.” John smirked, pushing McKay back straight into the fountain.
“What? You can’t! I’m the smartest man in three galaxies! You can’t . . .” McKay’s protests trailed off when he latched on to John’s ankles and yanked him in too.
<<<>>>
When they were safely inside, several models of Housekeep5000s trying not to gape at how they were dripping water all over the hardwood floors, John turned to McKay and grinned. “So, what’d you do with Vala?”
“Oh, I think she’s down in the kitchens. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime,’ I always say. That’s Rogers and Hammerstein, you know? OldEarth stuff - has a different kind of morality to it.”
“So is the crime somehow involving injustice done to poor unsuspecting young hot serving boys?”
“What? No,” McKay scoffed.
“Because to redeem herself, she’s probably got one pounding her into the meat locker at the moment.”
“Eww. That can’t be sanitary.” McKay clicked on his radio. “Lex, Joker, head down to the kitchens and use the nanobots to sterilize the meat locker, would you please?”
“Joker?”
“Oh, Defenders. Calling them by RegNumber seems inhumane.”
“So you pick comic book super-villains instead?”
“Helps me remember them. Speaking of which . . . I’ve got your other friend too - the disgustingly enthusiastic one. He’s out playing Rugby with some of the Defenders. Though I hope he’s not an L.E. because those guys play dirty.”
John winced. So did he, sometimes. “Yeah, well, Cam can handle himself. Wait a minute . . . he’s not like . . . trying to rescue me or anything?”
“Nah. He came in and talked to you when we had you in the regeneration unit. You told him something about B52 bombers and Charlie Chaplin, if I remember correctly.”
“Huh.”
“Care to explain?”
“Not really. Hey, do you happen to know how I got here? I mean, I thought it was an Executive Decision that all Defenders had to be trained in special facilities, for quality assurance purposes.”
“Yes, well . . . that was after . . .”
“After what?”
“John, you were the first."
John had always sort of suspected, what with lack of an identifying protein and all. “And he was just going to raise me here, with his family?”
“No, not exactly. You see, he didn’t just put you together out of random genetic elements - not even the Asgard have advanced that far. He found two people with a dominant ATA gene - how they’d managed to come together on their own, out of all the immigrants to this City, is still a mystery, but my father got lucky. He had the science ministry step in, confiscate you and bring you over to our place for observation.”
“Wait. Hold up. You’re saying that I have real parents? That I’m an Authentic?” John tried not to let himself gape, standing there dripping in Rodney McKay’s beautifully furnished hallway.
“Yes.”
John’s heart was thundering in his chest. He had to force himself to lean back and take deep calming breaths. All his life he’d just been one of thousands, when in actuality, he was unique. No, he was more than unique. He was so special that they’d practically created a whole new race from his DNA. “Where are they? What are their names? So I have a surname?”
McKay shook his head, sadly. “I couldn’t find record of your parents. They disappeared from the Asgard database soon after you were born. If the government didn’t Dispense them, then they were most likely sent back to the Milky Way - one of the planets without Alteran technology. But you do have a surname.”
“What is it?”
“Sheppard. Your name is John Sheppard.”
John didn’t know what to do or how to react. It was as though the floor was sliding out from under him. He was both crushed under the weight of this new meaning and light as a feather. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I said when I found out. Imagine my surprise when half the bodyguards in the City popped up looking just like grown-up versions of my childhood friend.”
“So everything I remember . . .”
“It happened. Half of it was orchestrated to happen. Remember that time my father was going to punish me for sneaking into the pantries without permission and you lied and said it was your idea?”
John thought back, vaguely remembering the sting of a belt and the blue-eyed boy’s furious protests. “Maybe a little.”
“Well, that’s how he determined that the Defenders didn’t need a Loyalty Enhancement. In fact, agility, defense, self-sacrifice, bravery - none of it had to be added. The only thing Daddy-dearest thought you needed was a good dose of Obedience, but he’d lost his original test subject. Decided to try putting it in with training and rely on your natural sense of loyalty instead.”
“He lost his test subject?”
McKay gaped. “You don’t remember, do you?”
John shook his head.
“He was going to send you off to some laboratory somewhere and then to be trained. I didn’t want . . . I was only a kid. I thought you’d be better off . . .”
John tried to think back. Years spent scraping his life together on the outskirts, later posing as a Defender when he finally looked old enough. He remembered losing the blue-eyed boy in a crowd, watching the sadness color those rosy cheeks. But he’d forgotten that it had been a plan.
“I convinced my father to allow you to come with us on an outing to the market in the Fugee sector. Then I pretended to be sick to distract him while you ran off.”
“I left voluntarily?”
Rodney looked down at his hands, where they were still for the first time. “He didn’t think you were a person. He . . .”
“He beat me.” There was no use in sugar coating it.
Rodney’s eyes flashed up to meet John’s. They were as blue as ever. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” John looked around McKay’s huge house, with its wood paneled floors and its high ceilings. He wondered how life might have been if he’d stayed here - at least for a while. But then again, he was still the only Defender in the City that could still call himself free. “So . . . Mitchell and Vala?”
<<<>>>
They found Mitchell sprawled out on the lawn, panting and looking slightly bruised. He jumped when John kneeled down to pull him up. John tried not to meet McKay’s critical eye when Mitchell snaked a hand through John’s belt loop and whispered in his ear. “You guys might look alike, John. But these guys sure as hell aren’t you.”
John was stuck between demanding to know how Mitchell ever thought people grown in a lab could ever be the same as John and wanting to ask what in the name of Thor these guys had done to him.
“You okay?”
Mitchell nodded. “For places to be held, it’s not bad.”
“Oh, no,” McKay piped up. “You don’t actually have to stay here.” He looked over at John. “I’ve already got what I wanted.”
Mitchell looked between the two of them suspiciously. “You want to tell me what’s going on here, John?”
John shrugged. “Turns out that I used to know McKay as a kid.”
“And how do I know it’s really you and not a Defender pretending at it?”
“We met in a convalescence home after you’d been shot down in the Wraith wars. I was there doing recon for the Independent Wraith Resistance. You wanted to keep fighting.”
Mitchell nodded. “So you were what? Playmates?”
They nodded.
“You’re kidding.”
McKay rolled his eyes. “I’m disappointed in you, Sheppard. I’d expect you’d at least find yourself a few lackeys with at least the illusion of intelligence.” He turned to Mitchell. “You can go now.” He snapped his fingers and a few of the Defenders who had been drowsing laconically on the grass stood and fixed Mitchell with John’s iciest grin. “Though he is pretty, if in a generic Beauty-Enhancement kind of way.”
“Hey, you mind if I walk him out?” John asked.
McKay looked slightly surprised, but didn’t care to enlighten John as to why. He just turned and wandered off, the pack of Defenders slouching after him, not seeming to care what happened to their new guest.
“So,” Mitchell said as he not-so-subtly guided John in the direction of the exit, “you gonna tell the guy that you assassinated his father?”
John looked up fondly at the towering gothic visage of the house, arched wooden doors gaping like mouths, speaking the language and designs of history a galaxy away. He was surprised that he hadn’t recognized it sooner. “He’s Rodney McKay. He probably already knows.”
Mitchell nodded. “When should we be expecting you?”
Generally, Cam wasn’t that perceptive a guy. Enthusiasm almost always required a delicate kind of ignorance of everyone else’s doubts. But he looked hard into John’s eyes now. They both knew the real question: now that John had found the family he’d always seemed to be looking for, did he still need them? How important could the resistance be to a City-bound thief, after all?
“Soon. Tell Dex not to worry. I’ll be there soon.”
<<<>>>
John found Rodney up in the bedroom with the disgustingly large bed and the red silk sheets - apparently Rodney’s own.
“So . . . what now?” he asked, smiling when McKay jumped back from where he was moving control stones across the window display.
McKay spun around, stepping closer. His eyes were blown wide, as expressive as his hands and not bothering to hide anything. On the univision, Rodney McKay only ever appeared impassioned and angry. John had never seen this silent desperation. Rodney wanted to reach out, but he kept his hands almost shaking with tension by his sides, shaking his head defeatedly. “I imagined what we’d say and what we’d do for so long. But now you’re here and so much time has passed . . .”
“Hey, we’ve got the whole future to make up for it.” John was surprised to note that he meant it. There was still the resistance, and a million other things. But if they could keep seeing each other . . . well, Rodney was one of the few people who could honestly regard him as more than just a variation on the familiar genetic archetype.
“What do you want, John?” he asked, giving in to the desire now to reach up and cup John’s cheek. “What do you want this to be?”
But just then, someone with John’s face strolled through in a miniskirt, silk stockings, high-heels and holding a feather duster. “Is that . . .” The tenderness of the moment had evaporated in seconds to turn to an icy outrage. If he did what he’d fantasized about with Rodney, while the man clearly took advantage of an entire menagerie of look-a-likes, how unique or honest could it be? Would he let the man down?
“Oh, he’s being punished.” Rodney explained, upon glimpsing John’s disbelieving look. “Found out he was letting me win at chess - as though I need that kind of deception.”
The Defender rolled his eyes.
“Some punishment, McKay,” John grit out.
“Well, it’s hard to figure out what to do with them. They seem lazy, but they like running and push-ups and some even like being spanked, but I guess you know that, don’t you?”
“So you make them play in a band or be your sex slave?” John was familiar with the practice. He was as sexually open as the next guy, but he had to admit that it creeped him out - that every minute in the City, someone was probably fucking a guy with his face. Still, he expected better from McKay.
“Are you kidding? Sex with Rodney McKay, a punishment? The only real threat they listen to is ‘the box’ but it’s a waste of time they could be using for something more productive - like making music or,” he nodded to the Defender in the high heels, “cleaning.”
“What’s the box?” John didn’t like the sound of that.
“It’s an ATA shielded room. Nothing to do, no contact with the City. Half a day in there and they’re dying of boredom.”
John didn’t quite know why this offended him so much, only that it did. He’d snuck into a training camp once - discipline was achieved through physical violence, psychological torture. They even locked some poor soul up in a room full of bugs as a punishment. “I thought you were for Constructs Rights.”
Rodney sobered. “I am. But everyone has to experience the consequences of their actions and since I can’t fire them . . .”
“Yes, you can.”
“Not these guys. I wouldn’t keep Defenders at all if they weren’t going to be Dispensed.”
“Dispensed?”
“All the ones here are supposedly defective. Reactions too slow, exposed to a strange childhood trauma, on the more rebellious side.” Rodney gestured to the thing lounging around in the high heals. “Can’t get him to take the damned stockings off. I think he does it just to annoy me.”
The Defender leaned over to dust some sort of Asgard award statue and winked. That was really more of himself than John needed to see.
“All right. I’ve had enough with you, Catwoman. Off you go,” McKay motioned, turning back to John the second the Defender had left the room. “Where were we?”
Except John wasn’t done yet. “You slept with them?”
“Yes, I did. But can you blame me?”
Yes, he very well could.
“Fine. But in my defense, I didn’t even know that you were still alive until recently. And you’re gorgeous. And they’re grateful, and also gorgeous and . . . maybe for a little while I could pretend they were you.”
That was very romantic and all. But did John get to soothe his desires with Rodney look-a-likes? Did he have servants in his employ that would indulge every fantasy? And did Rodney ever think it would be anything close to enough?
“I don’t know if I can do this,” John whispered, his body leaning into McKay even though he knew it would be in his best interest to lean away.
“You can do whatever you want,” Rodney replied, something secretive and soft in his gaze and the odd slope of his nose when he tilted his head.
Could it be better this way? Could sex with the real John be that much better than sex with the copies? Would it ever mean as much to Rodney as it did to John? But then again, John wanted this, almost more than he could remember wanting anything. He wasn’t one to seek a life of hedonistic pleasure, but neither was he fully invested in the resistance, never having left the City.
And didn’t he deserve to get what he wanted? As much as any Authentic, wasn’t he entitled to be king of his very own molehill?
John leaned in until their mouths were just alins apart, foreheads pressed together. John would be embarrassed about the panicked rush of his breath and the soft flutter of his heart, if he couldn’t feel Rodney doing the same from where he pressed his palm to the other man’s chest.
Atlantis communications query. Do you accept?
Not now. No.
He’d deal with Vala later.
Except then the door slammed open and that wasn’t really an option. “Hell-oh boys!” she exclaimed with a sly grin, eyes raking over them the same way Dex eyed a particularly juicy slice of meat. “You wouldn’t be having fun without me, now would you?”
Someone had allowed Vala to change from her eveningwear into a red shirtdress, which she had chosen to leave unbuttoned far below the level of common decency - unless she was posing for a pin-up. She moved into the room somewhere between a flounce and a glide, white teeth flashing in a near-predatory smile.
John pulled back, his anger flashing quick and forge-bright. “We’re kinda in the middle of something here, Vala.”
She pouted, leaning back on the statue John’s look-a-like had just dusted in a way calculated to emphasize her bosom. “But I wanna play with you boys.”
John looked to Rodney, ready protest, but his friend looked entranced by the prospect. It figured. “You do?” he stuttered. Then again, he supposed that Rodney’d had plenty of sex with Defenders - one on one with John wouldn’t exactly be exciting new territory for him.
“Sure. How could I pass up a bum like that?” She clapped her hands together in anticipation, steamrolling over John’s many and varied objections. “Well, let’s get down to it then.”
She took the opportunity to rip all the buttons off her dress and John was not surprised in the least that there was nothing on under it. She was a sight to behold, but in truth, John wasn’t interested in that. He’d fantasized about Rodney for nearly all of his life, maybe even loved him - they said that the Defenders were incapable of love, but John was an Authentic, wasn’t he? Didn’t that make him capable of honest emotion, even if it was diluted by the thousands of others who might feel the very same way?
He turned to McKay then, running a hand down that strong jaw line and up into the fine strands of soft brown hair, before drawing him in to a kiss. John melted against him, drowning in it, until he wondered how Rodney could possibly even remember that Vala was standing there. John could barely even remember who he was.
But even as they kissed, John felt deft hands flutter at the waistband of his pants, yanking them down as a head of silky-soft hair pushed itself between them. The feel of a woman’s lips were different - smaller and tighter but not the same raging furnace of heat somehow. There was something in him that held him back, instead of just reaching down and taking like he might with a man. Still, he felt himself grow rock hard in her mouth, though maybe that was just the kiss and the way Rodney’s blue blue eyes stared into his, as though this were the only real thing, regardless of the will of men or nature even, attempts to control something that ultimately belonged to no one to control.
But, then again, with someone digging sharp fingernails into his backside and yanking him deeper in, maybe control was more of an illusion. She was smiling around his cock now, maybe even laughing, her breaths coming out in a moist tickle across his skin. Thor’s Hammer, he was going to come in a pair of seconds if she kept this up.
Luckily for him, Rodney took this moment to push him backwards, down against the silky sheets of the bed. He practically pulled Vala up by her pigtails and shoved her after John.
Of course, all she had to say at the harsh treatment was, “Mwrooow.” She crawled up John’s body, slinking like a cat, breasts hanging down to form a delicate tip thanks to the weight of gravity. John had never had the desire before, but he reached out, smoothing a hand over the soft skin of her back and pulling her close, her navel brushing his chest as he suckled on first one milky white breast and then the other.
Vala leaned her head back, moaning and clutching desperately at him when he ran the edges of his teeth over the sensitive nubs of her nipples, one hand massaging through her thick curls of hair as the other pressed insistently against her hips, edging her on as she rocked against him.
“Oh, Ascension, you two are gorgeous together.” Rodney breathed from somewhere off to John’s right. John reached out blindly for him, even as Vala ratcheted up the pace of her little thrusts. John wasn’t too sure about this whole clitoris business, but he was sure that he could feel something rubbing up against his thigh, even if it was only just a tortuous wetness. He had no idea what to do with it.
But obviously Rodney did, because he was at John’s side now, pulling his head away from Vala’s breast and into a deep kiss, tongue playing over John’s teeth and lips nibbling at John’s own. His hands, too, were roaming, maneuvering Vala with subtle pushes until that strange wetness was rubbing against John’s cock.
“Don’t come until I tell you,” Rodney ordered, pinching John’s thigh. Not that he needed to - after hearing a breathy command like that, John’d die of blue balls before he’d disobey.
Still, the other two weren’t making it easy. “Oh, darling, that’s the spot,” Vala moaned, shuddering, as Rodney’s fingers played over the place where she and John rutted up against each other like a master pianist pours his soul into his instrument.
His kiss with John intensified, until John had forgotten Vala and her perfect breasts altogether and Rodney was the only thing in the world - solid and golden and burning the like purest of fires. John tried to reach for him, but Vala was in the way, almost ignoring John as she rode Rodney’s fingers to a gasping, babbling climax. “Oh, oh, Rodney, that’s so good. You’re a genius, darling . . . oh . . . a genius.”
Yeah, that’s pretty much was John was thinking, with Vala slumped against him, and Rodney now repositioning her until she wasn’t just straddling John, but sinking down onto his aching shaft. She was in a daze from her first climax, but when her eyes opened, there was a sly, blessed out, but devious look on her face. “I’m going to ride you so well, honey, you’ll wish I had a . . . whatsit? . . . oh . . .” she was already riding him good enough to get them both to gasp and bite their lips in an identical expression. “Oh . . . you’ll wish I had a saddle.”
He already wished she did. John groaned, leaning forward to bite her shoulder. He had no idea how long Rodney expected him to hold on, but, damn she was good. She leaned down then, pushing him back against Rodney’s sizable stack of pillows, panting out these harsh little squeaks, completely different than when Rodney had been fingering her. “Oh, gorgeous, your cock . . . baby, you’re on fire.”
John smiled, reaching out again for Rodney, only to be surprised, when Rodney’s hands reached over Vala to push at John’s shoulders, rubbing even as they forced him down until he was laying flat. John released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He thrust up into Vala, keeping his eyes fixed on Rodney’s, trying to say without words, ‘this is what I want to do to you.’
Vala seemed oblivious to the whole thing, of course, pulling her second orgasm out of John with a shudder. He heard a vague mantra of, “Come on, baby, yeah. Just like that, Sunshine.” It was only after she’d shuttered and spasmed around him that she leaned forward and kissed him. She tasted sweet - of lemonade and apple pie and the good old fashioned things that John’d never had a mother to bake for him. Unlike Rodney’s, her lips were delicate and not chapped in the slightest. Her tongue played restlessly with his, darting in just quick enough to taste and then pulling back to make him follow.
“Gods, I want to . . .” Rodney babbled, “you’re so . . . and I . . . John . . . I need . . .” His hand found John’s and squeezed, bone-crushingly tight for a moment before he disappeared, coming back with what appeared to be a jar of lubricant.
John tried to roll over, pushing at Vala, who was now lapping at his nipples speculatively.
“No,” Rodney gripped his shoulder. “Wait. The first time I take you, a want you all to myself.” John smiled at that, squeezing Rodney’s hand to his shoulder, even as Vala made a point to squeeze his cock between her thighs.
“Then at least let me suck it first,” John whined. In all this, he hadn’t even gotten to see Rodney’s cock. He’d completely missed Rodney stripping out of his clothes. Though now his eyes widened at the slogan Rodney still had tattooed to his chest, ‘All Who Question Are Authentic.’ He reached out, tracing the letters through Rodney’s sparse chest hair, before reaching down and tangling his fingers in Rodney’s pubic hair before bringing them back up to his face to sniff and taste. Rodney smelled musky and sweet and so very male.
“Rodney, I want your cock in my mouth. Now!”
Rodney laughed at that. “I’ve never heard a Defender so demanding before. Hold your chariot, Sheppard, I’m coming.”
John grinned, marveling at the flexibility involved to get Rodney practically sitting on his face, while Vala sat up, true cowgirl style, arching her back and riding him again, one hand playing over Rodney’s perineum, while the other fondled John’s balls from behind her.
“Whoever has their finger up my ass, take some lube,” Rodney announced, tactlessly, tossing the pot of lubricant over his shoulder as he changed the angle, allowing John to lick at his balls and at the shaft, but not actually get it in his mouth. It was frustrating, but hot, surrounding in that heady scent, and with Rodney’s thick cock bouncing just a little beyond his reach, the head angry-red and leaking. The smell was driving John wild, encouraging little sporadic bouts of thrusting that Vala took moaning, babbling out encouragements as she crested over another orgasm or two.
John stretched and strained, slapping at Rodney’s ass and pulling at his hips until he finally scooted back enough that John could feel the burn of his cock against he back of his throat. How he hadn’t come yet must have been a gift of the Ascended.
“Oh, Valhalla,” Rodney panted, pulling out. Embarrassingly, John found his lips trying to follow Rodney’s shaft like a baby suckling after its mother’s breast. “If I don’t stop now, I’ll mess up my master plan.”
“You have a master plan for sex?” John asked, incredulously. Not that he cared - everything Rodney’s ordered him to do had worked out so far.
“Of course, doesn’t everybody?” Rodney panted, squeezing at the base of his cock now. “Hey, Pippi Longstocking, what’d you do with the lube?” he demanded, searching around beyond the line of John’s vision. “How’d you like to have both of us fuck you at once?”
“Huh?” Vala looked up, dazed, from where she had been giving John a damned good hicky on the side of his neck.
Rodney held up two fingers. “Two pegs. Two holes.”
She looked confused for only a second before shrugging and going back to the hicky-monster she was clearly trying to make of John.
“Hey,” he joked, “you said you wanted to play with the boys.”
“Oh, I like playing,” she purred, lifting up from John for a second to waggle her ass at Rodney.
Rodney, for his part, made quick work of stretching her out and lubing himself up. It wasn’t long until John felt Vala flatten against him, the weight of two bodies constricting his chest - but in a good way. Erotic asphyxiation didn’t seem like such a bad way to go anyhow.
John had expected this to be disappointing - with Vala a pale medium between the two of them, a nuisance. Instead, it was blazing hot, with Vala making small cries, almost painful mews like this hurt so much she’d fallen in love with it. John could feel Rodney moving against him, through a wall of swollen, heated flesh. It was like sending waves of arousal, through sea and air and soul . . . a domino effect, or a tidal pull, the pure violent friction of it muted by Vala’s weeping pussy.
“Harder, boys, harder! Like you mean it!” she was commanding, her nails digging deep into John’s shoulder. Not that he could feel it, of course, as close the edge as he was. But regardless of how she moaned and cried out and gasped tears of pleasure into John’s shoulder, he only had eyes for Rodney, staring into endless pools of blue that seemed to whisper, ‘feel this - it’s all for you.’
John had no idea how long they stayed like this, Vala a supple cushion between them, easing the bite of the passion and channeling it into something soft and hopeful and true, but it couldn’t have been the eternity it seemed, because John was so close - high on a lip-biting flash of white that only tumbled down into release when Vala shuddered for another countless time that night, sending both John and Rodney over the edge and spilling deep inside of her.
John only protested the weight of the two of them when he realized that part of this light-heading weightless feeling came from not being able to breath. Rodney slid out with a gasp, collapsing beside them and knocking the lube off the bed with a crash. He moaned inarticulately and waved at it dismissively.
Vala carefully pulled herself off of John, looking a little sore already, but sated. Her eyes were slits, like a purring cat to match her Cheshire smile as she leaded down to give John one last lingering lip-lock. “You boys know the best games,” she whispered, moving over to Rodney, and pointing to her lips, demanding a kiss.
John was spent and tired, but he had all sorts of unfamiliar juices sticking to him - not to mention the sheets, so he stood up and staggered to the bathroom.
That was when he heard the shout.
“Rodney!” Post-coital laziness had fled in an instant. What had Vala done to him?! Was he okay? John pounded on the door, uselessly. She must have locked it with one of the staff’s codes. Probably the stupid kitchen boy’s.
John was panicking now, pounding at the door as he heard gasps from beyond it, Vala’s playful voice now trembling with emotion, but soft and deadly. “That was for the things you’ve created. The sex was because I’m sorry.”
“Open the door, you bitch!” John was shouting, though he didn’t think he’d ever called anyone that in his life.
It was a moment before it occurred to him: this veritable fortress was crawling with Defenders.
Atlantis Communications Query: Joker.
Accepted
Thank god. Send someone to the master bedroom now! McKay’s in trouble.
John heard their shouts and the sounds of footsteps almost immediately, but no matter how hard he banged, it seemed like an eternity before the door slid open. Rodney was being rushed away on a hovering gurney, his face and his chest and his hands swollen and bruised almost beyond recognition.
Vala was crouched, still naked, in a corner, a ring of angry Defenders surrounding her. She turned her face into the wall, but John could still see one eye already going black and blue.
“What did you do?!” he shouted, almost angrier than he could every remember being. “How could you do this?!”
She looked up, eyes watering. “By have a thing for, I meant, would like to see dead. Minor detail.” Her smile was apologetic and her teeth filled with blood from where one of the Defenders had obviously hit her. John would’ve done it himself.
“I trusted you!” he raged. “He trusted you too! Even after you tried to steal from him and dirtied his kitchen, he trusted you.” This is why he always insisted on working alone.
“If he’s allowed to live . . .” she began, but the Defenders had no need for it. They were trained never to question. They weren’t Authentics. The answers weren’t for them. They kept the order - no more, no less.
One of the Defenders snapped his fingers and after what John was sure was a fierce mass of communiqués, two grabbed Vala by either arm before lifting her up, still naked and walking out of the room.
John collapsed on the bed, suddenly too tired to follow. What if Rodney died? What if John’d brought Vala into this house like some damned Trojan Horse? He curled on his side, staring at the wide communications monitor that was the window, waiting until the status bar representing Rodney McKay’s health flashed a cool, safe blue before standing and leaving. Once he made sure Rodney was safe, he’d be gone, back to fighting for wrongs and rights that could be plotted and predicted for him.
PART 3