Bad Karma, Part 1
Title: Bad Karma
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Stargate - Atlantis
Rating: Teens, for this part (for language). Later parts will be rated adult and friends-locked.
Genre: Angst, mostly. Some erotica.
Characters: Peter Grodin, Kavanagh, Bates' team in background, unnamed Genii thugs.
Pairings: Grodin/Kavanagh.
Spoilers: Mild ones for "Underground”.
Summary: Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.
Disclaimer: The characters and the settings don't belong to me. Just the insane story idea.
Author’s note:
Written for abysmal_seraph as an entry to kavtolanon’s 2006 Secret Sancta Kavanagh ficathon. She wanted slash and mild bondage and banter. I hope I have successfully delivered all of them, since she said being tied up in a mission was acceptable. And no, I’m not sure it’s even possible for two tightly bound people to free themselves like that - I just wanted them to have some “fun”. *g*
Beta-read by the ever-helpful planetkiller, the Big Boss of kavtolanon.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sometimes Dr. Calvin Thomas Kavanagh seriously asked himself what he might have done in one of his previous lives to pile up so much bad karma as it came crashing down onto his head at every available occasion. This was a question he’d repeatedly asked in the past, but recently, it had become his daily mantra. It was his first thought in the morning - and morning meant the ungodly hours of dawn here - and his last thought before going to bed, usually way too late and for much too short hours of restless sleep.
Of course, there was such thing as simple bad karma… and then, there was Atlantis. The place where incompetent superiors second-guessed everything he did and dismissed his good, solid work as crap. The place where the military was allowed to break the rules without consequences, hysterical harpies got to make important decisions based on their so-called feelings, and where creepy, vampiric aliens wanted to suck the very life out of him through the palm of their hands.
Atlantis gave the expression "bad karma" a whole new meaning. Several whole new meanings, actually.
It shouldn’t have terribly surprised him then, that when he finally got to go on an off-world mission for Sergeant Bates’ team - after months of sewer maintenance, forced upon him by that arrogant fool McKay - he would end up in some fetid cave, tied up like a smoked ham. The fetid cave was a secret Genii outpost, of course - on a planet that was supposedly uninhibited.
The fact that he got to be tied up in a shared package with Dr. Peter Grodin didn’t do anything to lighten his mood a bit. Having lusted after the man from Day One on Antarctica was bad enough without full-body contact. Having been hard since the moment those filthy Genii had tied them up and not being able to do anything about it was hell.
Particularly as Grodin would most likely have a fit if he knew about it. The man had been Weir’s lapdog all the time, trotting after her with puppy dog eyes - something that was beyond Kavanagh’s understanding, because honestly, being straight was all nice and good, but having such a poor taste in women was depressing - and there was no way in hell that he’d get interested in a fellow (male) scientist instead.
Especially since they were going to be tortured and killed, slowly and very, very painfully, as soon as the Genii managed to get their chief honcho over to this godforsaken planet.
The whole situation made him decidedly unhappy. And when Kavanagh was unhappy, he tended to rant and to complain. Not as much as McKay, of course - nobody could rant and complain half as much as McKay, it was just not possible - but bitching around usually helped.
Unless he was put up with Peter Grodin, of course; he of the unflappable calm and the posh British accent that alone would have been enough to cause him wet dreams. The man with the most annoying ability to sit in the Gate room amidst a crisis and calculate the statistical possibilities of their survival. Which were depressingly low, most of the time, but that didn’t seem to bother Grodin, either, when he could play the always ready, good little Boy Scout.
Gods, he shouldn’t be thinking of being ready, especially not in the context with Grodin. That led to mental images he really, really couldn’t use at the moment. He tried to shift positions, so that his backside wouldn’t press so much against the corresponding parts of Grodin’s anatomy, but it only made things worse. A lot worse.
“Try to make the best of the situation,” the dark-skinned Englishman offered after what seemed eternity but had actually been less than an hour.
Kavanagh deeply regretted not being able to glare daggers at him - that was kinda difficult with their backs pressed against each other. Among assorted other body parts. No, he was so not going there!
“Care to tell me what good could I possibly make of a situation like this?” he snapped. “Perhaps you are into sick bondage games, but they’re certainly not my cup of tea. Not even on a voluntary basis.”
Which was a blatant lie, of course, but he really couldn’t let the other man know how much he was turned on already. The last thing he needed was to be labelled as a pervert. He was unpopular enough as it was - and that only because he, alone from all scientists, had the balls to tell Weir the truth!
“What a pity,” Grodin replied calmly, as if they were having tea in the mess hall. “I bet you’d look bloody hot, tied to the bed, bare-arsed naked and all sweaty.”
Kavanagh stiffened - and not in a good way, this time.
“Are you fucking insane?” he hissed when he found his voice again; it had taken some time, to tell the truth.
“Because I’m thinking about naked men tied up to my bed or because I’m hitting on you?” Grodin’s deep, husky voice sounded amused. “You Americans really need a more… relaxed attitude towards sex.”
“It’s hard to relax when you’re all tied up - and not in your kinky way, mind you - trapped in a smelly cave and waiting for some Neanderthals to torture you for secrets you don’t know,” Kavanagh pointed out snippishly, cursing his own choice of words. Hard didn’t even begin to describe his condition.
Grodin tried to shrug but the rope hindered him in the proper execution of his usual, elegant gesture. However, his shoulder did rub against Kavanagh’s in a manner that didn’t help the other man’s condition a bit.
“You worry too much,” he said simply.
Kavanagh rolled his eyes - in vain, of course, as Grodin couldn’t see him. But it felt good to be able to move at least some of his body parts.
“Perhaps you should start worrying a little, too,” he said. “Thinking of a way to escape. Trying to loosen our bonds. That sort of thing.”
Grodin sighed. “Calvin,” he said, deliberately calling the other man by his given name; something that he rarely did, but now he wanted to calm Kavanagh down. “Try to pull yourself together. If you lose it, we won’t get out of here alive. The best thing we can do is to lie low and try to stay unharmed until Bates and his men come for us.”
“Unless they’ve already been killed,” Kavanagh replied darkly. His previous experiences at SGC had taught him how easily that could have happened.
Grodin, on the other hand, was apparently a lot less aware of the very real dangers an off-world team might face… even without the Genii entering the game.
“They haven’t,” he said with the confidence of the honestly clueless. “They’re professionals. They’ve dealt with worse things than such an insignificant little outpost, I’m sure of that. They’ll come for us.”
Kavanagh remained silent for a moment, to keep his rapidly rising anger under control. Secretly lusting after Grodin was one thing; it didn’t mean he’d let the man patronize him.
“You think so, yes?” he asked. “And just when have you become an expert in off-world missions? On how many such missions have you actually been part of?”
“Well,” the question obviously surprised Grodin, “to tell the truth, this is my first one - if we don’t count coming to Atlantis, that is. But we’ve all been thoroughly briefed what we are supposed to do in a hostile situation like this…”
“Yeah, we have,” Kavanagh snorted. “The difference is that I also used to go off-planet with SG-13 on a semi-regular basis for more than a year. And I had to learn the hard way that waiting for a rescue team can be very bad for your health.”
“You mean the scientists of the SG-teams don’t stick to regulations?” Grodin asked in honest surprise. “They won’t sit tight and wait for the military types to rescue them?”
“If we did, neither Simpson nor I would be here today,” Kavanagh replied dryly. “Granted, it was usually Simpson who came up with some creative escape method - she’s an Army brat, after all, and her old man had chased her through survival camp several times - but I learned a lot from her during that time." .”
“You? From Simpson?” One had to forgive Grodin’s surprise, considering that Simpson and Kavanagh were fighting all the time, about everything.
Kavanagh made a futile attempt to shrug.
“We have our differences,” he said; it was an understatement if Grodin had ever heard one. “But I’m not stupid enough to refuse learning basic survival skills. Now, try to shut up and let me think!”
The irate tone of his voice, thankfully, made Grodin shut up at last, and he could focus on the problem of loosening their bonds. It was a good thing that he was bigger than Grodin, his shoulders slightly broader. That meant, if Grodin could manage to wriggle downward while he tried to stand up, they just might get one of the other man’s shoulders free. And once the rope was loosened…
“Listen to me,” he said, “because we need to work on this in tandem. I’ll make an attempt to stand up, and at the same time, you must try to slide downward. If we do it right - and if we are very lucky - we’ll free one of your shoulders.”
“And what good would that do to us?” Grodin asked sceptically.
“It would loosen our ropes, so that I might reach the Swiss Army knife in my boots,” Kavanagh replied.
“A Swiss Army knife?” he could almost seen Grodin’s amusedly arched eyebrow. “Who might have suggested you that kind of weapon, I wonder?”
“Colonel O’Neill,” Kavanagh replied curtly. “He never goes off-world without one of those. Now, can we discuss this later? We need to hurry up. They won’t leave us alone for too long.”
“All right,” Grodin said after a pause. “Let’s give it a try.”
And they gave it a try. It was pure agony, on many different levels. The ropes had been pulled so tight that they cut into their flesh deeply, and rubbed their skin raw as Grodin tried to wriggle down Kavanagh back. And they seemed to tighten, rather than loosening, by each new try. But Grodin kept trying, and after much sweating and grunting, the rope was moved up his shoulder, inch by agonizing inch.
Finally, one of his shoulders slid free of the too-tight loop. The rope loosened - not much, but enough for the sensation to return to their numb arms, with the unpleasant intensity of a thousand needle pricks. Save from their hands, that is, as their wrists had been bound with separate ropes and fastened to their ankles.
“Didn’t you say something about a knife?” Grodin carefully pulled his other shoulder out of the loosened loop and turned his face to the side to pull through his head as well. “You were supposed to fish it out of your boots or whatnot.”
“I’m trying,” Kavanagh replied through gritted teeth, “but they’ve bound my hands too tightly. I can’t reach my boots. You’ll have to wriggle out of the loop completely and then try to pull the knife out of my boot.”
Grodin had the common sense not to ask how he was supposed to do that. Instead, he simply went on with the task. There was a lot more wriggling and rubbing against each other - Grodin was practically squirming up and down Kavanagh’s body, seeking for the best position to wind himself out of the bonds. Under different circumstances, that would have been an incredible turn-on. Right now, however, Kavanagh couldn’t wait for it to be over, as it would mean that Grodin had finally freed himself and could go for the knife.
At last Grodin managed to wind himself out of the bonds - well, out of the ones that had fastened him to Kavanagh anyway. That still left his wrist bound tightly to his ankles, so that getting to Kavanagh’s boots required a great deal more wriggling and shuffling. With numb, clumsy fingers, unfeeling due to the too-tight bonds, he felt his way around the other man’s ankles, searching for the knife hidden in his boots.
“The right one,” Kavanagh said in a tight voice, his face flushed, because the feeling of Grodin’s fingers on his ankles was an unexpectedly erotic one. He thanked for the semi-darkness of their prison; it would have been hard to explain why he was so incredibly turned on. Grodin might have made stupid jokes about naked men being tied up to his bed, but he wouldn’t appreciate Kavanagh hitting on him.
He could feel those skilled fingers feel their way into his right boot and nearly came in his pants from the blinding pleasure of that touch. He’d never known the inner side of his feet to be an erogenous zone. Well, I guess one learns new things about oneself every day, he thought dryly.
That, or the panic was doing strange things to his nerve endings.
Finally, he could feel Grodin grabbing the knife and trying to pick it out of its tight confinement. It was extremely frustrating that he couldn’t help in any other way than by holding as still as humanly possible - which, given the circumstances, was not an easy thing to do. Aside from the excitement about Grodin touching him, he was also ticklish… a very unfortunate fact, that he couldn’t do a thing about, either.
“What’s so funny?” Grodin asked in mild irritation as Kavanagh began to giggle involuntarily.
“Nothing,” Kavanagh’s giggles took on a slightly hysteric quality. “It’s just… it tickles, that’s all. Go on.”
Grodin went on, and after a few agonizing moments, the knife left Kavanagh’s boot at last.
“Well, I have it,” the Englishman said unnecessarily, “but it’s snapped closed.”
“Of course it’s snapped closed,” Kavanagh replied irately. “I don’t want any blood vessels severed by accident. That would be a bit unpractical on a mission, wouldn’t it?”
“Hey, don’t tear my head off,” Grodin said defensively. “I was just pointing out that we can’t get very far with a closed pocket knife, now can we?”
“Nah,” Kavanagh said, “which is why we’ll have to open it.”
“But if you couldn’t reach your boots with your hands, you won’t be able to open the knife, either,” Grodin pointed out logically.
“I know,” Kavanagh said. “That’s why I’m gonna open it with my teeth. We need to shift positions for that; and you need to hold the knife very tight.”
God, can’t I even think of any other adjective than tight, in any context? the inner voice asked in growing desperation.
“That would be… interesting,” Grodin commented dryly, imagining the classic sixty-nine position they would need for that maneuver.
“Do you have any better idea?” Kavanagh snapped at him in extreme frustration. “Or do you want to stay here and wait for the interrogators to come?”
Grodin had no other idea; besides, Kavanagh was very right about the interrogation. They had no time to waste. So the Englishman began to wriggle again, to assume the best position for the complicated task.
I don’t think I need to fear the Genii investigators, Kavanagh thought, nibbling on Grodin’s fingers involuntarily, trying to catch the small slice of the blade with his teeth. I’m gonna die from blue balls before they ever arrive.
It was a torturous task - he even bit his lower lip clean through by a failed attempt - but finally the strong blade snapped open, its sharp point nicking his face in the process. But since he was bleeding already, it didn’t really matter. He let go of it, collapsing on the dirty floor as well as his bounds allowed, painting heavily from the effort… among other things. All he could do was to roll the way that wouldn’t make him land face down on Grodin’s groin.
“Well, that was phase two,” Grodin commented, and for some reason, his voice was strangely strained, too. “What about going straight to phase three? Can you hold still, so that I may cut through your bonds?”
“Small, sewing movements,” Kavanagh warned, “or you’d cut my wrists.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Grodin muttered darkly. “That would save the Genii the effort to torture you… and you the pain.”
But he obeyed nonetheless. He was very clumsy, having barely any feeling left in his too-tightly bound hands, and there were moments when Kavanagh was scared shitless that he would accidentally hit an artery and make him bleed to death. But they must have had a guardian angel extraordinaire, because none of Grodin’s awkward movements caused any serious damage.
After about two lifetimes or so, finally came the glorious moment when the rope was indeed sewn through - and Kavanagh howled in pain as the feeling returned into his numb fingers. That didn’t keep him from opening and closing his fist a few dozen times in quick succession to increase blood circulation, and after half a minute or so, he felt his hands steady enough to cut through the ropes around his ankles, and then free Grodin, too.
The Englishman moved his hands and feet, too, hissing in pain as well, until the feeling returned to his extremities.
“We should try to leave here,” he then said. “Any ideas how to do it?”
“Depends,” Kavanagh said. “How loud can you scream?”
“What?”
“I need you to scream. Really loud, as if I’d be trying to kill you. If they left any guards, they will come in.”
“And then what? You’ll kill them with your pocket knife?” Grodin asked with biting sarcasm.
“No,” Kavanagh replied coldly, “there are other methods. If there’s only one of them, I’ll deal with him. If there are two, you’ll have to ram a knee into the groin of the other one, as hard as you can. I’ll do the rest.”
There was something in his voice that made Grodin shiver.
“You’re planning to kill them in cold blood?” he asked. Kavanagh shrugged.
“I’m not planning it,” he answered. “But if there’s no other way out… well, yes, I hope I’ll be able to kill them. It’s them or us, in case you haven’t realized yet. And I’m not gonna put their survival before ours. They won’t hesitate to kill us, either.”
That was very true, of course; still, the thought of having to kill someone - humans, not Wraith, that was a different pair of boots - made Grodin sick in his stomach. Nonetheless, he admitted that from the two of them Kavanagh was the one with the off-world experience, and that in order to survive, he’d have to listen to the other man. Moral considerations aside, he didn’t want to die. Or to be tortured, should Bates’ team reach them too late.
“All right,” he said, “how are we going to do this?”
The phrasing of the question woke… unfortunate associations in Kavanagh, but he shook himself like a wet dog and tried to concentrate on what needed to be now.
“Pay attention,” he said, “we’ll only have one shot at this.”
Coninued in Part 2
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Stargate - Atlantis
Rating: Teens, for this part (for language). Later parts will be rated adult and friends-locked.
Genre: Angst, mostly. Some erotica.
Characters: Peter Grodin, Kavanagh, Bates' team in background, unnamed Genii thugs.
Pairings: Grodin/Kavanagh.
Spoilers: Mild ones for "Underground”.
Summary: Be careful what you ask for. You might get it.
Disclaimer: The characters and the settings don't belong to me. Just the insane story idea.
Author’s note:
Written for abysmal_seraph as an entry to kavtolanon’s 2006 Secret Sancta Kavanagh ficathon. She wanted slash and mild bondage and banter. I hope I have successfully delivered all of them, since she said being tied up in a mission was acceptable. And no, I’m not sure it’s even possible for two tightly bound people to free themselves like that - I just wanted them to have some “fun”. *g*
Beta-read by the ever-helpful planetkiller, the Big Boss of kavtolanon.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sometimes Dr. Calvin Thomas Kavanagh seriously asked himself what he might have done in one of his previous lives to pile up so much bad karma as it came crashing down onto his head at every available occasion. This was a question he’d repeatedly asked in the past, but recently, it had become his daily mantra. It was his first thought in the morning - and morning meant the ungodly hours of dawn here - and his last thought before going to bed, usually way too late and for much too short hours of restless sleep.
Of course, there was such thing as simple bad karma… and then, there was Atlantis. The place where incompetent superiors second-guessed everything he did and dismissed his good, solid work as crap. The place where the military was allowed to break the rules without consequences, hysterical harpies got to make important decisions based on their so-called feelings, and where creepy, vampiric aliens wanted to suck the very life out of him through the palm of their hands.
Atlantis gave the expression "bad karma" a whole new meaning. Several whole new meanings, actually.
It shouldn’t have terribly surprised him then, that when he finally got to go on an off-world mission for Sergeant Bates’ team - after months of sewer maintenance, forced upon him by that arrogant fool McKay - he would end up in some fetid cave, tied up like a smoked ham. The fetid cave was a secret Genii outpost, of course - on a planet that was supposedly uninhibited.
The fact that he got to be tied up in a shared package with Dr. Peter Grodin didn’t do anything to lighten his mood a bit. Having lusted after the man from Day One on Antarctica was bad enough without full-body contact. Having been hard since the moment those filthy Genii had tied them up and not being able to do anything about it was hell.
Particularly as Grodin would most likely have a fit if he knew about it. The man had been Weir’s lapdog all the time, trotting after her with puppy dog eyes - something that was beyond Kavanagh’s understanding, because honestly, being straight was all nice and good, but having such a poor taste in women was depressing - and there was no way in hell that he’d get interested in a fellow (male) scientist instead.
Especially since they were going to be tortured and killed, slowly and very, very painfully, as soon as the Genii managed to get their chief honcho over to this godforsaken planet.
The whole situation made him decidedly unhappy. And when Kavanagh was unhappy, he tended to rant and to complain. Not as much as McKay, of course - nobody could rant and complain half as much as McKay, it was just not possible - but bitching around usually helped.
Unless he was put up with Peter Grodin, of course; he of the unflappable calm and the posh British accent that alone would have been enough to cause him wet dreams. The man with the most annoying ability to sit in the Gate room amidst a crisis and calculate the statistical possibilities of their survival. Which were depressingly low, most of the time, but that didn’t seem to bother Grodin, either, when he could play the always ready, good little Boy Scout.
Gods, he shouldn’t be thinking of being ready, especially not in the context with Grodin. That led to mental images he really, really couldn’t use at the moment. He tried to shift positions, so that his backside wouldn’t press so much against the corresponding parts of Grodin’s anatomy, but it only made things worse. A lot worse.
“Try to make the best of the situation,” the dark-skinned Englishman offered after what seemed eternity but had actually been less than an hour.
Kavanagh deeply regretted not being able to glare daggers at him - that was kinda difficult with their backs pressed against each other. Among assorted other body parts. No, he was so not going there!
“Care to tell me what good could I possibly make of a situation like this?” he snapped. “Perhaps you are into sick bondage games, but they’re certainly not my cup of tea. Not even on a voluntary basis.”
Which was a blatant lie, of course, but he really couldn’t let the other man know how much he was turned on already. The last thing he needed was to be labelled as a pervert. He was unpopular enough as it was - and that only because he, alone from all scientists, had the balls to tell Weir the truth!
“What a pity,” Grodin replied calmly, as if they were having tea in the mess hall. “I bet you’d look bloody hot, tied to the bed, bare-arsed naked and all sweaty.”
Kavanagh stiffened - and not in a good way, this time.
“Are you fucking insane?” he hissed when he found his voice again; it had taken some time, to tell the truth.
“Because I’m thinking about naked men tied up to my bed or because I’m hitting on you?” Grodin’s deep, husky voice sounded amused. “You Americans really need a more… relaxed attitude towards sex.”
“It’s hard to relax when you’re all tied up - and not in your kinky way, mind you - trapped in a smelly cave and waiting for some Neanderthals to torture you for secrets you don’t know,” Kavanagh pointed out snippishly, cursing his own choice of words. Hard didn’t even begin to describe his condition.
Grodin tried to shrug but the rope hindered him in the proper execution of his usual, elegant gesture. However, his shoulder did rub against Kavanagh’s in a manner that didn’t help the other man’s condition a bit.
“You worry too much,” he said simply.
Kavanagh rolled his eyes - in vain, of course, as Grodin couldn’t see him. But it felt good to be able to move at least some of his body parts.
“Perhaps you should start worrying a little, too,” he said. “Thinking of a way to escape. Trying to loosen our bonds. That sort of thing.”
Grodin sighed. “Calvin,” he said, deliberately calling the other man by his given name; something that he rarely did, but now he wanted to calm Kavanagh down. “Try to pull yourself together. If you lose it, we won’t get out of here alive. The best thing we can do is to lie low and try to stay unharmed until Bates and his men come for us.”
“Unless they’ve already been killed,” Kavanagh replied darkly. His previous experiences at SGC had taught him how easily that could have happened.
Grodin, on the other hand, was apparently a lot less aware of the very real dangers an off-world team might face… even without the Genii entering the game.
“They haven’t,” he said with the confidence of the honestly clueless. “They’re professionals. They’ve dealt with worse things than such an insignificant little outpost, I’m sure of that. They’ll come for us.”
Kavanagh remained silent for a moment, to keep his rapidly rising anger under control. Secretly lusting after Grodin was one thing; it didn’t mean he’d let the man patronize him.
“You think so, yes?” he asked. “And just when have you become an expert in off-world missions? On how many such missions have you actually been part of?”
“Well,” the question obviously surprised Grodin, “to tell the truth, this is my first one - if we don’t count coming to Atlantis, that is. But we’ve all been thoroughly briefed what we are supposed to do in a hostile situation like this…”
“Yeah, we have,” Kavanagh snorted. “The difference is that I also used to go off-planet with SG-13 on a semi-regular basis for more than a year. And I had to learn the hard way that waiting for a rescue team can be very bad for your health.”
“You mean the scientists of the SG-teams don’t stick to regulations?” Grodin asked in honest surprise. “They won’t sit tight and wait for the military types to rescue them?”
“If we did, neither Simpson nor I would be here today,” Kavanagh replied dryly. “Granted, it was usually Simpson who came up with some creative escape method - she’s an Army brat, after all, and her old man had chased her through survival camp several times - but I learned a lot from her during that time." .”
“You? From Simpson?” One had to forgive Grodin’s surprise, considering that Simpson and Kavanagh were fighting all the time, about everything.
Kavanagh made a futile attempt to shrug.
“We have our differences,” he said; it was an understatement if Grodin had ever heard one. “But I’m not stupid enough to refuse learning basic survival skills. Now, try to shut up and let me think!”
The irate tone of his voice, thankfully, made Grodin shut up at last, and he could focus on the problem of loosening their bonds. It was a good thing that he was bigger than Grodin, his shoulders slightly broader. That meant, if Grodin could manage to wriggle downward while he tried to stand up, they just might get one of the other man’s shoulders free. And once the rope was loosened…
“Listen to me,” he said, “because we need to work on this in tandem. I’ll make an attempt to stand up, and at the same time, you must try to slide downward. If we do it right - and if we are very lucky - we’ll free one of your shoulders.”
“And what good would that do to us?” Grodin asked sceptically.
“It would loosen our ropes, so that I might reach the Swiss Army knife in my boots,” Kavanagh replied.
“A Swiss Army knife?” he could almost seen Grodin’s amusedly arched eyebrow. “Who might have suggested you that kind of weapon, I wonder?”
“Colonel O’Neill,” Kavanagh replied curtly. “He never goes off-world without one of those. Now, can we discuss this later? We need to hurry up. They won’t leave us alone for too long.”
“All right,” Grodin said after a pause. “Let’s give it a try.”
And they gave it a try. It was pure agony, on many different levels. The ropes had been pulled so tight that they cut into their flesh deeply, and rubbed their skin raw as Grodin tried to wriggle down Kavanagh back. And they seemed to tighten, rather than loosening, by each new try. But Grodin kept trying, and after much sweating and grunting, the rope was moved up his shoulder, inch by agonizing inch.
Finally, one of his shoulders slid free of the too-tight loop. The rope loosened - not much, but enough for the sensation to return to their numb arms, with the unpleasant intensity of a thousand needle pricks. Save from their hands, that is, as their wrists had been bound with separate ropes and fastened to their ankles.
“Didn’t you say something about a knife?” Grodin carefully pulled his other shoulder out of the loosened loop and turned his face to the side to pull through his head as well. “You were supposed to fish it out of your boots or whatnot.”
“I’m trying,” Kavanagh replied through gritted teeth, “but they’ve bound my hands too tightly. I can’t reach my boots. You’ll have to wriggle out of the loop completely and then try to pull the knife out of my boot.”
Grodin had the common sense not to ask how he was supposed to do that. Instead, he simply went on with the task. There was a lot more wriggling and rubbing against each other - Grodin was practically squirming up and down Kavanagh’s body, seeking for the best position to wind himself out of the bonds. Under different circumstances, that would have been an incredible turn-on. Right now, however, Kavanagh couldn’t wait for it to be over, as it would mean that Grodin had finally freed himself and could go for the knife.
At last Grodin managed to wind himself out of the bonds - well, out of the ones that had fastened him to Kavanagh anyway. That still left his wrist bound tightly to his ankles, so that getting to Kavanagh’s boots required a great deal more wriggling and shuffling. With numb, clumsy fingers, unfeeling due to the too-tight bonds, he felt his way around the other man’s ankles, searching for the knife hidden in his boots.
“The right one,” Kavanagh said in a tight voice, his face flushed, because the feeling of Grodin’s fingers on his ankles was an unexpectedly erotic one. He thanked for the semi-darkness of their prison; it would have been hard to explain why he was so incredibly turned on. Grodin might have made stupid jokes about naked men being tied up to his bed, but he wouldn’t appreciate Kavanagh hitting on him.
He could feel those skilled fingers feel their way into his right boot and nearly came in his pants from the blinding pleasure of that touch. He’d never known the inner side of his feet to be an erogenous zone. Well, I guess one learns new things about oneself every day, he thought dryly.
That, or the panic was doing strange things to his nerve endings.
Finally, he could feel Grodin grabbing the knife and trying to pick it out of its tight confinement. It was extremely frustrating that he couldn’t help in any other way than by holding as still as humanly possible - which, given the circumstances, was not an easy thing to do. Aside from the excitement about Grodin touching him, he was also ticklish… a very unfortunate fact, that he couldn’t do a thing about, either.
“What’s so funny?” Grodin asked in mild irritation as Kavanagh began to giggle involuntarily.
“Nothing,” Kavanagh’s giggles took on a slightly hysteric quality. “It’s just… it tickles, that’s all. Go on.”
Grodin went on, and after a few agonizing moments, the knife left Kavanagh’s boot at last.
“Well, I have it,” the Englishman said unnecessarily, “but it’s snapped closed.”
“Of course it’s snapped closed,” Kavanagh replied irately. “I don’t want any blood vessels severed by accident. That would be a bit unpractical on a mission, wouldn’t it?”
“Hey, don’t tear my head off,” Grodin said defensively. “I was just pointing out that we can’t get very far with a closed pocket knife, now can we?”
“Nah,” Kavanagh said, “which is why we’ll have to open it.”
“But if you couldn’t reach your boots with your hands, you won’t be able to open the knife, either,” Grodin pointed out logically.
“I know,” Kavanagh said. “That’s why I’m gonna open it with my teeth. We need to shift positions for that; and you need to hold the knife very tight.”
God, can’t I even think of any other adjective than tight, in any context? the inner voice asked in growing desperation.
“That would be… interesting,” Grodin commented dryly, imagining the classic sixty-nine position they would need for that maneuver.
“Do you have any better idea?” Kavanagh snapped at him in extreme frustration. “Or do you want to stay here and wait for the interrogators to come?”
Grodin had no other idea; besides, Kavanagh was very right about the interrogation. They had no time to waste. So the Englishman began to wriggle again, to assume the best position for the complicated task.
I don’t think I need to fear the Genii investigators, Kavanagh thought, nibbling on Grodin’s fingers involuntarily, trying to catch the small slice of the blade with his teeth. I’m gonna die from blue balls before they ever arrive.
It was a torturous task - he even bit his lower lip clean through by a failed attempt - but finally the strong blade snapped open, its sharp point nicking his face in the process. But since he was bleeding already, it didn’t really matter. He let go of it, collapsing on the dirty floor as well as his bounds allowed, painting heavily from the effort… among other things. All he could do was to roll the way that wouldn’t make him land face down on Grodin’s groin.
“Well, that was phase two,” Grodin commented, and for some reason, his voice was strangely strained, too. “What about going straight to phase three? Can you hold still, so that I may cut through your bonds?”
“Small, sewing movements,” Kavanagh warned, “or you’d cut my wrists.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Grodin muttered darkly. “That would save the Genii the effort to torture you… and you the pain.”
But he obeyed nonetheless. He was very clumsy, having barely any feeling left in his too-tightly bound hands, and there were moments when Kavanagh was scared shitless that he would accidentally hit an artery and make him bleed to death. But they must have had a guardian angel extraordinaire, because none of Grodin’s awkward movements caused any serious damage.
After about two lifetimes or so, finally came the glorious moment when the rope was indeed sewn through - and Kavanagh howled in pain as the feeling returned into his numb fingers. That didn’t keep him from opening and closing his fist a few dozen times in quick succession to increase blood circulation, and after half a minute or so, he felt his hands steady enough to cut through the ropes around his ankles, and then free Grodin, too.
The Englishman moved his hands and feet, too, hissing in pain as well, until the feeling returned to his extremities.
“We should try to leave here,” he then said. “Any ideas how to do it?”
“Depends,” Kavanagh said. “How loud can you scream?”
“What?”
“I need you to scream. Really loud, as if I’d be trying to kill you. If they left any guards, they will come in.”
“And then what? You’ll kill them with your pocket knife?” Grodin asked with biting sarcasm.
“No,” Kavanagh replied coldly, “there are other methods. If there’s only one of them, I’ll deal with him. If there are two, you’ll have to ram a knee into the groin of the other one, as hard as you can. I’ll do the rest.”
There was something in his voice that made Grodin shiver.
“You’re planning to kill them in cold blood?” he asked. Kavanagh shrugged.
“I’m not planning it,” he answered. “But if there’s no other way out… well, yes, I hope I’ll be able to kill them. It’s them or us, in case you haven’t realized yet. And I’m not gonna put their survival before ours. They won’t hesitate to kill us, either.”
That was very true, of course; still, the thought of having to kill someone - humans, not Wraith, that was a different pair of boots - made Grodin sick in his stomach. Nonetheless, he admitted that from the two of them Kavanagh was the one with the off-world experience, and that in order to survive, he’d have to listen to the other man. Moral considerations aside, he didn’t want to die. Or to be tortured, should Bates’ team reach them too late.
“All right,” he said, “how are we going to do this?”
The phrasing of the question woke… unfortunate associations in Kavanagh, but he shook himself like a wet dog and tried to concentrate on what needed to be now.
“Pay attention,” he said, “we’ll only have one shot at this.”
Coninued in Part 2