Fic: Wrapped in a Red Ribbon (3/3)
Title: Wrapped in a Red Ribbon (3/3)
Author: auburnnothenna
Recipient: sly_bone
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard, plus a cast of thousands SGA and SG-1 folks.
Size: ~23,000 words.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Pinch hit for sly_bone, who asked for: an Earth-based high-rated AU with McKay/Sheppard first time, someone undercover as a slave but not heavy BDSM (whew!) fic with Rodney on top, one of the guys freaking out, a happy ending and a Christmas theme. Well, it's set around Christmas time, and sly_bone, if I'd had even another week to work on this, it would probably have doubled in size and included a lot more sex. I hope it works for you anyway.
Betas: Last minute work on this done by mirabile_dictu, lillian13, enname and one who will remain nameless, but is still very much appreciated. They did outstanding work and all mistakes and errors are mine, added subsequently.
Part Two
~*~
John was freezing by the time they left Ascension and it wasn't from the light rain that had started while they were inside. He felt like he might fly apart if he didn't concentrate on holding himself together, shake into pieces. Janet Fraiser's carefully clinical examination back in her office had skirted his breaking point. Hearing that Ronon's people had let Kolya's three 'pets' go hadn't helped, either. He just didn't know what would help. Every one of them had watched. Every one of them had seen him. It would drive him crazy if he kept thinking about it.
They didn't talk in the car. John looked away every time Rodney started to say anything. Rodney drove, one hand at ten o'clock and one hand at two o'clock on the steering wheel except when he shifted. He ground the gears a couple of times, something he did when he was nervous, and something John usually twitted him about. A sports car didn't deserve that sort of treatment. Not tonight.
Tonight, John just sank back in the Mercedes' passenger seat and threaded one hand between the shoulder strap of the seat belt and his chest so it didn't rub against the bandages covering his chest. He hurt all over, enough that the discomfort in his ass barely pinged his radar. Until the next time he shifted and the soreness reminded him of what had happened in that room back at Ascension.
He kept his face turned to the window, watching neon signs and fluorescent-lit storefronts whiz by. Christmas decorations sparkled everywhere, fake snow, false trees, and electric candle light. he thought he might hate Christmas after this night. Have a holly, jolly Christmas...John could smell it on him, under the stinging scent of Fraiser's antiseptic, the musk and sweat of rank sex. The dashboard lights were just bright enough to make the glass a dark mirror that showed him his own face, eyes like dark holes, pale as a ghost, hollowed out.
They weren't one inch closer to catching the Red Ribbon Killer. Kolya was a sadist and, hell, maybe even a murderer, but his MO didn't fit the guy John was after. He kept turning it over in his head, because there had to be a tie and the tie had to be drugs. Kolya and drugs, the killer and drugs, the victims and drugs, Ascension and...the victims? He felt like he could almost fit it together and see the pattern if he could just think. But each time he tried to think about Kolya he felt those damn restraints close around his wrists and he had to fight not to just run, because the minute Kolya had walked into Room Fourteen, all John had wanted was to get away from him.
Kolya and the killer. Kolya and the other men. Kolya and Rodney...John shuddered again. Rodney and what he'd done to John in that room. God. John didn't want to think about it again.
Headlights shone through the Mercedes' interior periodically as Rodney steered them down the streets. The tires hummed over Atlantis City's pavement. Something classical played on the CD player, one of Rodney's mixes. John recognized the melody from hearing it in the labs. He reached over and switched it off, wincing because he had forgotten how stretching hurt. When he sat back he saw Rodney's gaze flick over him.
He couldn't look back. Couldn't look at Rodney without flashing back to it, choking on Rodney's cock with Kolya's hands tight in his hair, and he hadn't been able to do anything.
"Look," he said and his voice cracked. "Just drop me off. We'll have to write something up for the report. In the morning." His stomach churned at the thought and he tasted bile, swallowing repeatedly and praying he wouldn't have to throw up before Rodney could stop the car. He didn't, but it was close and he began shivering all over again.
Rodney didn't say anything but he turned up the heat.
John closed his eyes until he felt the Mercedes come to a slow, smooth stop. "We're here," Rodney said. Headlights from passing car reflected from the rearview mirror into his face, bleaching his eyes electric blue. He looked bruised somehow, as though the light had illuminated invisible damage. One side of his mouth slanted down and his lips were pressed tight together, biting back the stream of words Rodney usually used in any situation, good or bad. The car - a beat up Chevy Nova -- passed and left the interior of the Mercedes dark again, just the faint gleam of the dashboard lights and a diffuse glow from the street lamps outside.
"Thanks for the ride," John said, then choked. Down the street, brake lights flared red as the Chevy that had passed them pulled into a parking spot.
Rodney made a strangled sound and John fumbled for the door, opening it and then nearly garroting himself because he hadn't released the seatbelt. Without thinking anymore, he hit the release and bolted for his apartment.
"John!" Rodney yelled, but he didn't stop until he reached his door and realized he'd left his wallet and keys back in the Mercedes.
He braced on hand against the door and waited, listening, as Rodney caught up and quietly unlocked the door. "Here," he said, and handed John his wallet and badge case, leaving the keys handing in the door lock. "I'll sign whatever report you write up."
Then he was gone and John stumbled into his dark, empty apartment.
~*~
He stripped off the oversized tee-shirt Ronon had provided and the hospital-style scrub bottoms that Ascension apparently stocked as part of some fantasy role-playing scenario. What kind of...John swallowed hard, the nausea back with a vengeance. He made it into the bathroom before heaving up bile and the cup of coffee someone had pushed into his hand at some point. After Kolya. After Rodney. After Fraiser examined him and declared he was asshole whole.
Then he washed every inch of his skin that wasn't bandaged and brushed his teeth for five minutes, before he stumbled back into his bedroom, pulled on a pair of boxers and tumbled into bed.
It was actually still early for him and he couldn't keep his mind from spinning it all around again and again. Finally he dozed, jolting awake whenever he began to dream, sweating and shaking. Hours passed. He got up once and washed down several aspirin with a glass of orange juice. He tried the TV, but couldn't standing watching It's a Wonderful Life one more time, not after the things he'd seen. Eventually, the night ended in a gray and drizzly dawn.
Sometime after first shift began, John called in to the stationhouse and asked for everything they could come up with on Kolya. Background, businesses, relatives, criminal record if he had it. Everything. There had to be a connection he wasn't seeing because he could stop thinking of what he done.
He couldn't believe he had done that, got on his knees, sucked cock, then bent over and got fucked. He didn't want to think about it, except he couldn't stop. Somewhere in him, there was some part of him that had got off on it a little. Not the pain, not the restraints -- he rubbed his wrists compulsively, still feeling the leather -- sure as hell not the threats, but the giving it up. What the fuck did that say about his head? He hated that he'd liked letting Rodney take control. In other circumstances, not with Rodney, but no...Kolya had fondled him, rubbed off against him, and John had felt nothing but cold anger and disgust. But Rodney had made him shiver with arousal. No one else. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could almost feel Rodney's phantom fingers slipping down the crack of his ass and then working into him. He'd expected it to hurt, had been braced for it, braced to be revolted and sick, but Rodney had somehow made it good.
He wasn't gay. He couldn't be. He have known that about himself, wouldn't he?
John rolled over and pressed his face into his pillow, as though that would block out the images in his head better than just closing his eyes.
It didn't, instead he kept imagining how he would have looked, pants pulled down and Rodney between his legs. He clenched his hands in the sheet. Tensed and told himself no, he wasn't going to get hard remembering the way Rodney had carefully opened him and finger-fucked him and how he'd started shoving his ass back onto Rodney's hands because it had felt so good he'd wanted more of it. He'd been biting his lip when Rodney had pulled his hand away, desperate to keep the words in his mouth from spilling out, 'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, Rodney.'
He'd forgotten Kolya and Ford and Ladon at that point, closed his eyes and been lost. The curl of shame and humiliation in his belly expanded until it threatened to choke him. He'd come.
Jesus, he'd come, even with all of them in the room, watching him, wanting to see him submit and lose it. Had come despite that, because Rodney had made him forget them.
He rolled over onto his back. The ceiling cracks hadn't changed. He'd been here all day and nothing had changed inside or out. The day was dying and a deep, almost-red light seeped through his blinds. The acid sting of the bandaged cuts on his chest remained and a dozen wrinkles in the sheets managed to irritate him.
Cuts. Jesus. The whole thing, the whole thing had been Kolya's idea. The bastard had sat there with his knife and his drugs and his 'pets' and watched. John had kept thinking anything was better than Kolya touching him. Getting fucked had to be better than having that knife cutting him again. Then Rodney touched him and the worst thing about it had been that it wasn't all bad. He cringed remembering that he'd gotten hard where they all could see him, that they'd seen him like that. They'd seen that he liked it, liked having Rodney's cock in his mouth and then in his ass. It made his skin crawl hours later, the way Kolya had looked at him, the way the bastard had put his hands on him between cuts from the knife, the way he'd been jerking himself off inside his pants, right in front of John as Rodney pushed into him.
He wished to hell Rodney hadn't made it feel good.
With a muttered curse, he got up and headed for the shower, stopping with another curse as he remembered Janet Fraiser, brown eyes snapping, telling him to keep the bandages dry. "Shit."
John braced his hands against the cool edge of the sink and slowly raised his head enough to stare into the mirror. It took more effort than he liked to look himself in the eye.
He didn't look any different. He'd had gay sex and liked it and he thought he should look different, like it would be tattooed on his forehead in a special fluorescent ink. Instead, he just looked bleary-eyed, unshaven and pale. His shoulders ached unpleasantly and so did his ribs. But he couldn't tell by looking at his reflection that he'd had his lips around Rodney's cock, that cock in his ass, though he could feel it when he moved.
The temptation to just pretend it had never happened hovered at the forefront of his thoughts. He could do it. Shove the whole incident into a mental box, lock it up, bury it and move on. Only that would mean giving up his friendship with Rodney. He knew Rodney wouldn't push the issue, would go along with however John chose to cope, but he knew himself at least well enough to realize he'd never manage to block this memory and still see Rodney every day.
There had been that moment, before they went to Room Fourteen, when he'd figured Rodney out, figured out that Rodney had wanted him for a long time, maybe since they'd met. But Rodney had never said anything. Because he'd known John didn't swing that way. But in that moment, John had thought he could. Because Rodney had kept how he felt to himself for the entire time John had known him and that meant Rodney cared more about not screwing things up with John than getting in his pants. John hadn't had many people care that much in his life.
Then Kolya had ruined everything.
Because every time he saw Rodney, he was going to remember all of it: Kolya and the fear his life was about to be bled away little by little, cut after cut, and the breathless relief he'd felt for an instant when Rodney came back, before worry took over. John stared at his reflection and then licked his lips. He would look at Rodney and remember how his hands had felt, pushing his cheeks apart, sliding his fingers inside...And when he did, he was going wonder if it would feel even better without the pain and the manacles and the freak watching them.
John stared at himself in the mirror. Out of everything that had happened last night, the only thing that had been bearable was Rodney. His best friend had fucked him, had apparently wanted to fuck him for years if John hadn't read it all wrong, and that should be enough to make sure he never wanted to see Rodney again. Except Rodney was his friend and closer to him than anyone else. He didn't even have anyone else he could even talk about this with except Rodney. Rodney was already so far into John's life, that cutting him out would be like cutting off a hand. He needed Rodney. Oh Jesus.
"I'm so fucked," he told his reflection and then began laughing. He needed Rodney. Rodney wasn't the only one who felt a hell of lot more than John had ever guessed. He couldn't stop laughing until he ended up on the bathroom floor, cold tile against bare skin, shaking and hiccupping --not sobbing because he was dry-eyed and a guy and he wasn't going to fucking cry, -- with his arms wrapped around himself, because he'd been scared as hell too.
He'd been scared and helpless and completely dependent on Rodney figuring something out. Gay? He could be gay. He didn't care. But he couldn't be out of control and at someone else's mercy.
It was all a damn mess.
He had to talk to Rodney. He had to talk to him just to convince him to censor whatever report he wrote up on last night. Having everyone at the station or some sleazoid defense lawyer know what happened would be unbearable.
When he'd pulled himself together enough he didn't think his voice would shake, he found his phone and punched in the number for Rodney's private cell phone.
No answer.
Then he tried Rodney's home number, the landline Rodney insisted was harder to eavesdrop on. It rang and rang until his answering machine picked up. This is Rodney McKay. Prove you're worth talking to and I'll call you back.
"It's John. Pick up."
Nothing.
Rodney always picked up for him. John frowned at his own phone and picked out the number for the lab. He sighed when the phone there picked up. He should known Rodney would go in, no matter what. Rodney found peace and sanctuary in his science. He'd been upset, too, and he'd gone to the lab.
"ACPD Forensic Main Lab. This is Zelenka."
"Radek?" John murmured and his voice cracked as a sick feeling uncurled inside. "This is Sheppard. Where's Rodney?"
"Rodney hasn't been in today or last night. I haven't been able to get in touch with him, only Detective Lorne, who said he was working on a case with you.." Zelenka managed to sound miffed and worried.
"Call him again," John said. He cut the connection and dialed the stationhouse. Something was wrong. His instincts were shrieking louder with every second.
~*~
The sick feeling just got stronger about the time he reached Rodney's house. The chocolate brown Mercedes was parked out front and John could see the door -- the steel core door with a deadbolt, security system electric locks and four other locks -- hanging open from the street. He parked and bolted across the lawn.
He skidded to a stop on the porch and drew his weapon, because Rodney's keys still hung in the lock and the security system's light blinked green.
"McKay?" he yelled. "McKay, it's Detective Sheppard." Rodney would mock him for that, but if there was someone in there, he wanted them to know they would be facing a cop, a presumably armed cop. "Hey, I'm coming in."
Nothing. John moved through the house the same way he would any potential crime scene, watching for anyone still inside, but he could feel the emptiness as soon as he stepped inside. Neither Rodney nor anyone else was there.
John returned to the open front door and stared at Rodney's keys, swallowing back panic. They'd been investigating Ascension because the Red Ribbon Killer's victims all had ties to it. Now Rodney was gone.
Oh, fuck.
He holstered his Glock and called it in: possible crime scene, possible kidnapping.
~*~
John pressed the doorbell then began a steady, loud police knock against the door to Ascension. The club appeared closed up tight for the day, but he knew from the reports that Teyla occupied a penthouse on the fourth floor and that Ronon reported residing at he same address. A small wreath dotted with red holly berries and gold garland hung over the unnecessary brass knocker on the door.
The door opened five minutes later, when John had tried kicking, pacing, and started thinking about shooting out the damned lock. Teyla, dressed in jeans and pale yellow tank top, stood looking at him. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her feet were bare and the nails painted a soft pink. She looked more like a high school girl than a professional dominatrix or refugee from a war-torn Central American country. "John? What are you -- ?"
"Rodney's gone."
"What?"
John pulled himself up and forced the panic down deep. "Look, my name's John Sheppard, I'm a homicide detective with the ACPD, and a murderer's somehow been using your club to pick his victims. Lydia Dumais, your brother, Charles Campbell, Paul Markham, Marin Olles. I think -- I'm afraid Rodney's been taken by him and I need access to your records."
Teyla stared at him, more thoughts than he could track flashing behind her smooth features and dark brown eyes. "Kolya?"
"It isn't him. I wish it was. I thought it was at first, but he's a different kind of crazy." He frowned. "But there has to be some kind of connection. I'm just missing it."
Finally, she nodded and stepped back from the door. "I expect you will produce a warrant that covers this request," she said.
"We'll get it," John gritted out. He would, but every minute lost ate at his composure.
"Good, I'll expect you to show it to me when you get it." She gestured him inside. "In the meantime, we'll go to my personal office. We can access all the records from there and talk to Ronon."
John let out a sigh and followed. "Thank you."
She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes were hard again. "My brother, Detective. I want who did this just as much as you do. Torin was a fool, but he was the only family I had left after our father died. He was the only one of my people who escaped our village after the government troops occupied it."
~*~
John's eyes were burning. He'd managed to access his own computer and the records on the case from Teyla's computer, using tricks Rodney had taught him on slow days at the lab. Teyla and Ronon sat at the same desk with him, combing through Ascension's records, looking for connections, looking for the killer.
"Anyone, anyone at all, ever have any kind of thing for red ribbons?" John asked. The ribbons had been part of the killer's MO they'd kept out of the media. It was a miracle some ambitious reporter hadn't ferreted it out yet, but the papers and TV had both been focused on the Kinsey Scandal. A senator and presidential candidate exposed as being on the payroll of the Gould Crime Syndicate was big news, bigger even than a serial killer operating in a small island city.
"I am not sure," Teyla said slowly. She was thinking about, trying to remember anything useful.
"Lydia," Ronon stated.
John glanced at him. Ronon had a sandwich in one hand, eating on automatic while he scanned through security footage. His brows were drawn together in a fierce frown.
"What?"
"Lydia wore a red ribbon around her throat. I remember."
"Dumais was the first victim," John said. "She has to be the precipitating factor. Teyla, tell me everything about Lydia." He opened up the file on Dumais and began reading it again, hoping something would jump out at him. Teyla's fingers danced over the keyboard of her own laptop as she accessed the club's records on Dumais.
"She bought a membership that included bringing a regular guest," Teyla read out loud. "A considerable financial investment, the less than the amount Dr. McKay paid for your joint membership. A credit check confirmed she could afford it. She had a very high-paying job with ATA and, I have made a note here, that it was Carson Beckett, the founder of ATA, who first introduced her to Ascension."
"Tell me about Beckett," John said, checking through Dumais' financials himself. Something was screwy. She hadn't been spending beyond her generous salary and benefits package according to the records, but she had too many acquisitions. Expensive items she'd apparently paid for in cash. A new Hummer, a two-week stay at a Swiss spa, condo in Aspen, jewelry and designer dresses in her closet. Dumais had had a second income from something.
"Carson Beckett is a gentle man with a ... fetish for being treated as a little boy. He craves punishment and comfort from an older, motherly figure." Teyla paused, then continued, "As far as I can tell, he is neither gay nor heterosexual. Perhaps he channels his libido into his work. He comes to Ascension to relax. I do not believe he could be your killer."
John didn't cross the man off his list, but he took Teyla's assessment seriously. Beckett probably wasn't the killer. He was a researcher, stuck in a lab much of his time, and definitely not tough enough to take down Eugene Bates. Though if he'd used the drugs he had access to...
John sat up straight.
Drugs.
There was a common source of extra income. Lydia Dumais could have been the source of the mysterious enzyme the labs found in the victims. There was the connection to Kolya, too. And someone else.
"You should check out Lydia's boyfriend," Ronon said.
"What boyfriend?" John demanded. There was nothing about a boyfriend in any of the reports on Dumais.
"The one she brought in as a guest," Ronon answered. "She said he was a sub, but he didn't like it. Looked like he was putting up with it to get something from her."
"Ronon," Teyla said. "Why didn't you say something?"
Big shoulders moved in a slow shrug. "None of my business. Figured he knew what he was doing. So did she. Looked like I was wrong last night. He was one of men with Kolya."
"Maybe not," John murmured. His stomach cramped as a flash of the night before played through his mind. Kolya and Ladon and the two others. He remembered the younger one, the black guy, had been jittery. He'd been the one waving around the gun, too. Ford. And he'd said, 'And it was my girlfriend that got you the samples and told you how to make it.' "This guy have a name?"
"Aiden."
"Last name?"
Ronon typed a query into his computer. "Ford." He looked up and grinned a fierce, white-toothed smile. "He worked for ATA too. Night shift security."
Security would be in a perfect position to help a shady drug operation nested in a cutting edge biomedical research company. If Ford had been involved in something like that, partnered with Dumais, he might have killed her over money and found out he had a taste for killing as well as the drug. He'd have access to the enzyme used on the other victims. And Dumais herself had introduced him to Ascension. If he really had disliked the club, he might be targeting members who fit the same bill as Dumais: masters and tops, dominants, successful figures who threatened Ford's vision of himself. If he hadn't had his attention drawn to Rodney, he might have turned his attention to Kolya.
Wouldn't that have been a tragedy, John thought.
But what was the tie to Bates? Bates wasn't a member of Ascension, wasn't into any kind of kinky sex, didn't have a tie to ATA or any of the victims. Had he just stumbled on something by chance.
He took out his phone and called the station. Lorne was out trying to find any clue as to what had happened to Rodney and so was most of the day shift, so he went through to Sergeant Stackhouse at the front desk.
"This is Sheppard," he said as soon as the phone picked up. There was Christmas music playing in the back ground, over the sound of phones ringing, and a drunken voice calling someone a son of whore. "I need you to pull up Bates' file and check it over again."
He could hear Stackhouse typing through the phone pickup, the key clack louder than Jingle Bell Rock. Good guy, Stackhouse. "Detective, we'll find Dr. McKay," Stackhouse said. "Everyone's on it. Even Detective Doran came in. And Lt. Landry said something about consulting with the FBI, getting their crime lab to work the case. He says O'Neill owes the department."
"Whatever," John said. He had that feeling in his gut, the sense of almost flying, that he got when he was onto something. "Check Bates' file for anything on Ford, Aiden. I'll want a separate run on him, too. Every damn thing we can dig up -- "
"Aiden Ford?" Stackhouse repeated, his voice rising in surprise.
John froze. "You recognize the name?"
"You bet," Stackhouse said. "He went through the police academy the year I lectured on explosives. Really gungho kid, but he washed out during training. Sgt. Bates was his training officer."
"Sonovabitch," John exclaimed.
Stackhouse was still talking. "Said the kid had weird thing about proving himself to everybody and started using uppers. Came out in a drug test. Bates griped about it, said Ford had all this potential, even if he was a little naive. Jesus."
There was the connection. The whole connection, drugs, resentment, and Bates...not that far from training officer to master. Both had authority over another. Dumais, the first victim, maybe over drugs, maybe over the sex games, maybe even dirty money, and then Ford had slipped the leash of sanity. So he'd immediately gone after Bates, blaming him because he'd kept him from becoming a cop. After that, Ford must have just kept acting out his psychodrama on anyone from Ascension that fit his twisted criteria. Pumping them full of the enzyme was just part of his MO by that point and the effects didn't mean much beyond fulfilling the ritual's demands.
"I want an APB out of Aiden Ford right now," he snapped. "He's the killer and he's got McKay. He was involved with Lydia Dumais, and had potential access to all the other victims."
Yes Sir!" Stackhouse replied.
"Better consider him armed and dangerous. He's working security at a company called ATA and may have access to hazardous materials as well," John warned. He cut the connection and turned to face Teyla and Ronon. "Have you got an address for him in your records?"
~*~
John ended up pacing back and forth through Teyla's living room. She'd decorated it for Christmas and the lights on her tree twinkled, glittering off the tinsel and glass ornaments. Most of the work was being done by the officers out on the streets. All he could do was coordinate over the phone and fume. Officers had been dispatched to Ford's address, to ATA, even to interview his cousin and check out his grandparents' home, since they'd apparently raised him after his parents took off. Nothing had been found anywhere. Ford hadn't been to work at ATA for a week and was already out of a job.
Pictures of what had been done to the other victims kept playing in John's head, only he saw Rodney wound in bloodstained red ribbon, his blue eyes clouded over and blind in death. His heart trip-hammered in his chest every time his phone rang and he answered, waiting to hear that a body had been found in a ditch or construction zone, in an empty field or behind a dumpster.
His body still ached from the abuse he'd endured from Kolya. None of it even compared to what Ford did to his victims. He had been drinking Teyla's midnight dark coffee like he was Rodney and his hands were beginning to shake. He knew everyone at the stationhouse thought Rodney was already dead. The killer hadn't kept any of the other victims alive for long. John had no real reason to be convinced they could still save Rodney, nothing beyond the conviction that it couldn't end this way.
The guilt would eat him. All the victims he couldn't save because he wasn't there in time, he could live with, because he hadn't sent them into danger. It had happened, but it hadn't been him giving out orders. He'd chosen police work over going into the military for just that reason, years before. But he'd gotten Rodney into this.
Ronon loomed suddenly in the doorway to Teyla's personal office.
"I got something."
John was too impatient to wait. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
"I found Ladon. He says there's a condemned tenement on the east side. Kolya's been using it as a cook house, making up Rip," Ronon said.
John headed for the door. "Tell me where."
"Can show you."
"Fine, let's go," John said. He didn't slow down when he spotted Teyla waiting, dressed in commando black and a leather jacket.
"I'm coming, too," she said. He glimpsed the butt of a pistol in a belly holster under her jacket and said nothing. Teyla radiated competence the same way Ronon did and he knew that the ex-Ranger wouldn't tolerate his employer swanning around with a gun if she didn't know how to use it.
John drove, pushing his restored Mustang to its limits, blowing through red lights and around traffic. He punched in Lorne's number while he drove and tersely told him where they were going. "Get me back up," he finished.
"John, you need to wait for us -- " Lorne said.
John cut the connection.
~*~
There were no Christmas decorations out in the east side, nothing but wreckage left by the flooding. "You know how to handle that?" John asked as Teyla clipped up the steps behind him, a .38 in her hands. Ronon had already circled around to the rear entrance.
She raised an eyebrow.
"In my village, we learned to fight before we went to school, Detective. My first gun was an AK-47 given to me by my father," she told.
John shrugged. "Stay behind me."
They slipped into the tenement's foyer by dodging around a rotten section of plywood that had once been nailed over a hole. Inside, shafts of gray winter light reached down from openings in the roof. John waited a beat for his eyes to adapt and then picked his way over the debris-strewn floor. Dirt swirled in random patterns over black and white tiles, bits of garbage left as flotsam when the flood waters sunk away.
It clearly showed the tracks of someone going in and out.
It showed multiple drag marks too.
John caught Teyla's eyes and nodded to the floor. "This is the place." He knew that he should wait for the backup that was on its way. But he couldn't. Something told him if he didn't get to Rodney soon, very soon, it would be too late.
Teyla nodded and they followed the drag marks. It made no sense, but John knew he could trust Teyla to have his back, and Ronon, too. Maybe it was stupid, misplaced gratitude for the way Ronon had barreled into Room Fourteen and disposed of Kolya. Maybe it was the way Teyla hadn't made him wait for a search warrant. Maybe not. He simply felt like he'd known them longer than he had, recognized something in both of them that knew him, too.
They heard Ford's voice first, while they were still on the first floor, words fast and too intense. "You got to believe me, Doc. This stuff will make you feel like a million dollars, better than you've ever been before. It's incredible. You don't think I know who you are, but I recognize you. You work for the forensics lab, you're the head of the night shift. Hah! You thought I was dumb, didn't you? Dumb and crazy..."
John and Teyla steadily worked their way toward the back of the building. It took time, more time than John wanted to waste, to move silently and not give themselves away. At least, they were still on the first floor.
"I never thought you were crazy," Rodney snapped and John blew out a silent breath of relief. If Rodney could talk..."Though now that you mention it, kidnapping and murder are not common denominators of sanity! or intelligence. You idiot, you didn't even wear gloves when you grabbed me. Zelenka will dust the front door and your ID will be all over the city."
"Doesn't matter, we'll be gone by then. I can't get back into ATA, but I figure your boyfriend can. He's got a badge. And once you've tried this stuff, you'll see why I've got to have it," Ford said.
So that was why Rodney was alive, when all the others had been killed within hours of Ford grabbing them. He meant to blackmail John into helping him get more of the drug and he had enough brains to know John would demand proof of life. John crept a little closer to the door and peered around it, catching sight of Rodney duct-taped to a wooden chair next to a rickety table littered with an empty vial and a syringe, along with an ominous roll of red satin Christmas ribbon.
That made John catch his breath. Rodney's lab would need to do a comparison but he already knew it was the same ribbon used to wrap all the victims. Ribbon that might have been used to wrap up Rodney's body if things had gone a little differently.
Ford paced back and forth in front of Rodney. He had a revolver in one fist and waved it at the broken out windows and Rodney indiscriminately. From the fevered, frenetic way he moved, John guessed he was high on whatever it was ATA had been brewing.
He caught a glimpse of motion through another doorway and identified Ronon. A quick dip of the head told him Ronon had seen him too and was ready to go in.
John chanced a second look around the doorway into the room and grimaced, seeing what he'd missed the first time: drums of chemicals, a generator, glass beakers and tubing and burners. No way to tell if Ford had moved the supplies in or if the abandoned building had been in use as a cook house before. Now it was a bomb waiting to go up. One spark in the wrong place...
"Think your boyfriend is looking for you yet, McKay?" Ford asked. He kept the gun in one hand and pulled out a cell with the other. "Give me his number."
"No," Rodney refused.
Ford strode forward and shoved the muzzle of his gun under Rodney's chin. "Give me his number!"
"Call the ACPD! He's a cop!" Rodney yelled back.
"You want to get me arrested!" Ford accused. He jerked back and the gun moved away from Rodney, aiming instead at barrel full of some unknown chemical. "I'll show you!"
"Of course I do, you maniac!"
There was no better moment. Ford's back was to the doorway, all his attention focused on Rodney. John jumped through the doorway and brought his gun to bear on Ford.
"Drop the gun, Ford!" he yelled.
Ford spun and stared at him.
"John!" Rodney shouted. "Get out of here! This place is a death trap! You need to send for a hazmat team!
John ignored him and concentrated on Ford. "Put it down!"
Teyla came in behind him, aiming at Ford too, sidling along the wall to bracket him and force him away from Rodney. Ford's eyes widened as he recognized her. "You're fucking kidding! Where's the rest of the Five-Oh? Couldn't get them out to save your boyfriend, so you had to bring her?"
"Hey! What are you talking about and why is she here!?" Rodney demanded, half hysterical, fighting the tape holding him to the chair and making jump and thump against the floor.
Ronon ghosted into the room behind Ford. He could move incredibly quietly. He reached Rodney and clapped a big hand over his mouth.
John didn't let his aim at Ford waver, despite the distraction of Rodney's eyes going wide.
"Maybe I didn't want to bring the other cops into this, Ford. Maybe I'm pissed off enough to want to just get rid of you. Why mess with a trial?"
"Not you, Sheppard," Ford said. "I heard about you. Bates talked about you. Said you were a good cop."
"Maybe, but you're a cop killer. No one's going to care much if I put a bullet between your eyes."
Ford's eyes widened and suddenly, finally, he seemed to believe it. John didn't know why, he didn't know if he even meant it, but Ford fired at him, and as he dived to the side, toward a stack of barrels, again, wildly. John fired back twice. He saw Ford stumble and then fall behind the barrels, while his second shot ricocheted off a blue metal barrel with a spark and shriek that Rodney echoed, even through Ronon's hand.
Now Ronon was dragging Rodney chair and all, toward the doorway. "Get me out of this!" Rodney shouted, struggling against the tape binding him in place. "You've all got to get out of here now! It's going go up any second! John! Go!"
"No time," Ronon said and simply threw Rodney, chair and all, through the broken-out window.
John realized why as he pulled in a breath to yell. The air was full of chemicals, something spilling from one of the barrels, and they had to get out now. Either one of Ford's shots had hit something or the ricochet from his own shot.
He didn't wait to find out if Ford was dead, alive, wounded or even trying to shoot at them. He grabbed Teyla's wrist and ran for the window. Ronon jumped out with them and they fell, hitting the pavement as the room behind them exploded into flames. Broken glass and debris blew out over their heads, as John covered Teyla and Ronon shielded Rodney's head.
The wail of approaching sirens shocked John back into motion. He rolled off Teyla and stared back at the building. Flames rolled out of the window above them, while black, foul smoke boiled out of a dozen others. He coughed hard and then staggered to his feet.
He made it to Rodney's side, wincing as he saw the bruising and the bloody wound along Rodney's hair line. The chair was broken into pieces, but Rodney was still taped to the arms and legs. John knelt and began tearing the tape off. Rodney blinked his eyes open and stared up at John.
John's hands stilled. He could see the flames behind him reflected in Rodney's eyes. He thought if Ronon hadn't come, if he'd been any slower, Rodney would still be in there. Without Ronon and Teyla, Rodney would likely be dead. So many damn ifs.
That wasn't acceptable, he thought in a detached way, watching as he lifted his hand and cupped Rodney's rough, unshaven cheek, feeling the whiskers prickle against his palm.
Rodney was talking, but John couldn't hear him through the ringing in his ears. John bent and brushed a kiss over Rodney's mouth before he could think himself out of it, muffling the noise.
Behind them, something inside the tenement cracked and then exploded with a boom that flattened John over Rodney. He scrambled off Rodney, dazed, a breath later. A volley of coughs made his eyes blur and water as his lungs clutched and threatened to seize up entirely. They needed to get away from the fire and whatever was burning inside.
Actually, Teyla and Ronon needed to get away from the crime scene entirely.
He tore the last of the tape off Rodney's wrists and ankles and pulled him to his feet. Both of them swayed. Ronon had Teyla up too and they were both looking toward the street and the marked cars rushing toward the site of the explosion.
John kept one arm around Rodney's waist, but held out his other to them. "You guys get out of here. As far as I'm concerned, I came here alone, on a tip from an anonymous phone call."
Ronon looked at him and nodded. Teyla caught his hand and squeezed it. "Be well," she wished them both and then she and Ronon loped away, turning a corner and moving out of sight without looking back.
John squeezed Rodney a little closer, guiding him in the opposite direction, away from the burning building, toward the police and fire department vehicles he'd glimpsed approaching far up the street; lights shining red and blue almost like Christmas.
"C'mon, Rodney."
Rodney leaned into him. "I almost died, you know," he said.
"I know," John told him.
"You figure he's dead?" Rodney asked.
"Ford?" John said. "I don't know."
He hoped so. He really hoped so. He looked at the smoke and flames billowing out the broken windows. No one would be going back in there to find out for some time. If Ford had been wounded or trapped by the explosion, he was dead now, of burns or smoke inhalation. If he somehow escaped...John shuddered and pulled Rodney tighter.
If Ford had escaped, they would know when he killed again.
~*~
A Hazmat team going through the tenement's wreckage pulled a burned body out four days later. Zelenka called Rodney and told him. Biro had pulled a bullet out of the body's femur. Ballistics matched it to John's service weapon. Aiden Ford was really dead and Rodney could finally relax.
He told Zelenka he would relax when he was back on the job. After he put the phone down, he went back to swishing the wine in his glass around. He'd invited John to come over for Christmas Eve, well knowing John would end up in the guest room and they'd share Christmas too before heading in to work. Those plans had been made before. Rodney didn't anticipate sharing his evening or the next day with anyone now.
He hadn't seen or spoken to John since Lorne and the cavalry arrived. He hadn't had the guts to call him, not even to leave message for him.
He never expected John to be on the other side of his front door when he answered it. He'd been braced for anything from carolers to Jehovah's Witnesses, but not John. At least, not John looking sinful and bashful all at once, wearing a moss green sweater and black pants, with a red and white muffler around his neck and brightly wrapped package-- no red ribbon -- clutched in one hand.
John ready to yell at him. John finally exploding in anger over everything that had been done to him, maybe. Maybe that was why Rodney hadn't tried to talk to him.
None of it would have happened if he hadn't left John alone in that room.
"Can I come in?" John asked.
Rodney stepped back and gestured him inside, remembering to close his gaping mouth as he did so.
John shoved the package at him. "Here. Merry Christmas Eve and all that."
"You got me something?" Rodney squeaked. He took it and then held it, not knowing what else to do.
John gave him an odd look. "Well, yeah. Friends, right?" He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Besides, I bought it before... you know."
Of course, Rodney thought. Before they stopped being friends. Only John had just said...Maybe there was still a chance to salvage something. It seemed like it, since John was here. He walked back into the kitchen that he'd spent several hours cleaning since he had nothing better to do, set the package on the sparkling clean counter, and pulled down a second wine glass. He poured it full from the open bottle he'd been morosely working on all by himself. He handed it to John and retrieved his own.
"Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," John echoed and sipped. His knuckles were white where he clutched at the wine glass so hard Rodney worried he'd snap the stem. His eyes widened when Rodney stepped closer to him, though he didn't flinch. Quite.
"Look, we can just pretend it never happened," Rodney said. He'd pretend that for John. He wouldn't forget, but he'd never bring it up. The last few days had been frighteningly empty, especially since he'd been given a mandatory weekend off from the lab. "Just don't think about it."
John shook his head. "Yeah, well, there's a problem with that. I can't stop thinking about it."
"I'm sorry. I -- "
"I liked it, okay?"
Rodney set his glass of wine down and stared. He opened his mouth, didn't say anything, and finally licked his lips. "John."
John ducked his head and made a graceless gesture with one hand. "I -- not the slave shit." He coughed and finished nearly inaudibly, "What you did?" The tips of his ears were red. He gulped down the rest of his wine and set the glass down next to Rodney's. Light splintered through the crystal, dyed pink by the residue of wine in the glass. "When I -- when I remember...that's the only part that makes it okay."
"Okay," Rodney repeated carefully, afraid one wrong word would send John bolting out of the room and his life. He'd done his utmost to make sure John found some pleasure in what they'd been forced to do, but ever since he'd been afraid that that had been the problem. A lot of straight men couldn't deal with knowing they'd gotten off from being fucked. Didn't want to accept that they could have an orgasm whether they wanted it or not. John needed to accept that it had been a physiological response to sexual stimulation, not to mention the adrenaline and endorphins flooding his system that night.
"You know, it's all right." Rodney waved his free hand, trying to semaphore 'everything' without articulating any of it, hoping John understood. "That you liked it. People don't -- that is, people do that because it they like it. Because it feels good."
John gave him an impatient look. "Yes, I know it's all right. Did you think I was a homophobe?"
"No, no," Rodney said, waving his hands. He'd known John too long to think that. But that didn't translate into John wanting gay sex or even being able to deal with having had it.. "I just -- the way -- what happened. And you're straight. You know, Chaya and Mara and Teer and Norina and -- "
"I want to do it again."
Rodney coughed and then stared. John stared back at him, almost expressionless. His throat moved as he swallowed though, giving away just how tense he was.
"Are you going to start experimenting?" Rodney asked. He wished he could take back the words immediately.
"What?" John took a single step closer to Rodney. "Can we just not talk about it anymore? I fucking missed you the last week." He took another step, one that had them within arms' length and set his hands on Rodney's shoulders. Rodney stepped back and found himself leaning against the kitchen counter. The cool edge of the tile cut into the small of his back. John followed.
"John," he said, remembering the only kiss they'd had, the quick, dry brush of John's lips over his in an alley behind a burning building, moments after he had saved Rodney's life. Well, after Ronon and Teyla and John had saved his life. That hadn't been forced or part of any cover.
John hesitated long enough to pull in a deep breath then tipped his head and pressed soft, warm lips to Rodney's mouth. Rodney froze until he felt John's hands tense and then begin to lift away from his shoulders, his mouth start to pull away, and Rodney kissed John back. He closed his eyes while he stroked his tongue into John's mouth and closed his arms around John so tight he would never get away. He kissed John until he was breathless and his dick was hard and pressing uncomfortably against the confines of his pants. Better yet, he could feel John's hard on nudging against his hip as John rocked against him.
He doubted John even knew he was moving against him. His hands were locked tight on Rodney's shoulders. Rodney let John lead and moved with him. This was wonderful, but he didn't doubt John still had more issues than certainties. No one decided to be gay this quick, this easily, even without what he'd been through.
When they finally parted, John rested his forehead against Rodney's and laughed softly as Rodney rubbed his hand against the back of John's neck. "Did I say I liked that?" he asked finally. "Can we just do this for a while?"
Rodney pulled him closer. "Work up to the rest?" he murmured. He felt John relax minutely.
"Yeah."
Rodney smiled. "Slow and easy wins the race."
John frowned at him. "You've never been patient in your life."
"But determined I can do," Rodney said. "Let's go back into the living room. I'd like to try kissing you some more."
End
Author: auburnnothenna
Recipient: sly_bone
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard, plus a cast of thousands SGA and SG-1 folks.
Size: ~23,000 words.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Pinch hit for sly_bone, who asked for: an Earth-based high-rated AU with McKay/Sheppard first time, someone undercover as a slave but not heavy BDSM (whew!) fic with Rodney on top, one of the guys freaking out, a happy ending and a Christmas theme. Well, it's set around Christmas time, and sly_bone, if I'd had even another week to work on this, it would probably have doubled in size and included a lot more sex. I hope it works for you anyway.
Betas: Last minute work on this done by mirabile_dictu, lillian13, enname and one who will remain nameless, but is still very much appreciated. They did outstanding work and all mistakes and errors are mine, added subsequently.
Part Two
~*~
John was freezing by the time they left Ascension and it wasn't from the light rain that had started while they were inside. He felt like he might fly apart if he didn't concentrate on holding himself together, shake into pieces. Janet Fraiser's carefully clinical examination back in her office had skirted his breaking point. Hearing that Ronon's people had let Kolya's three 'pets' go hadn't helped, either. He just didn't know what would help. Every one of them had watched. Every one of them had seen him. It would drive him crazy if he kept thinking about it.
They didn't talk in the car. John looked away every time Rodney started to say anything. Rodney drove, one hand at ten o'clock and one hand at two o'clock on the steering wheel except when he shifted. He ground the gears a couple of times, something he did when he was nervous, and something John usually twitted him about. A sports car didn't deserve that sort of treatment. Not tonight.
Tonight, John just sank back in the Mercedes' passenger seat and threaded one hand between the shoulder strap of the seat belt and his chest so it didn't rub against the bandages covering his chest. He hurt all over, enough that the discomfort in his ass barely pinged his radar. Until the next time he shifted and the soreness reminded him of what had happened in that room back at Ascension.
He kept his face turned to the window, watching neon signs and fluorescent-lit storefronts whiz by. Christmas decorations sparkled everywhere, fake snow, false trees, and electric candle light. he thought he might hate Christmas after this night. Have a holly, jolly Christmas...John could smell it on him, under the stinging scent of Fraiser's antiseptic, the musk and sweat of rank sex. The dashboard lights were just bright enough to make the glass a dark mirror that showed him his own face, eyes like dark holes, pale as a ghost, hollowed out.
They weren't one inch closer to catching the Red Ribbon Killer. Kolya was a sadist and, hell, maybe even a murderer, but his MO didn't fit the guy John was after. He kept turning it over in his head, because there had to be a tie and the tie had to be drugs. Kolya and drugs, the killer and drugs, the victims and drugs, Ascension and...the victims? He felt like he could almost fit it together and see the pattern if he could just think. But each time he tried to think about Kolya he felt those damn restraints close around his wrists and he had to fight not to just run, because the minute Kolya had walked into Room Fourteen, all John had wanted was to get away from him.
Kolya and the killer. Kolya and the other men. Kolya and Rodney...John shuddered again. Rodney and what he'd done to John in that room. God. John didn't want to think about it again.
Headlights shone through the Mercedes' interior periodically as Rodney steered them down the streets. The tires hummed over Atlantis City's pavement. Something classical played on the CD player, one of Rodney's mixes. John recognized the melody from hearing it in the labs. He reached over and switched it off, wincing because he had forgotten how stretching hurt. When he sat back he saw Rodney's gaze flick over him.
He couldn't look back. Couldn't look at Rodney without flashing back to it, choking on Rodney's cock with Kolya's hands tight in his hair, and he hadn't been able to do anything.
"Look," he said and his voice cracked. "Just drop me off. We'll have to write something up for the report. In the morning." His stomach churned at the thought and he tasted bile, swallowing repeatedly and praying he wouldn't have to throw up before Rodney could stop the car. He didn't, but it was close and he began shivering all over again.
Rodney didn't say anything but he turned up the heat.
John closed his eyes until he felt the Mercedes come to a slow, smooth stop. "We're here," Rodney said. Headlights from passing car reflected from the rearview mirror into his face, bleaching his eyes electric blue. He looked bruised somehow, as though the light had illuminated invisible damage. One side of his mouth slanted down and his lips were pressed tight together, biting back the stream of words Rodney usually used in any situation, good or bad. The car - a beat up Chevy Nova -- passed and left the interior of the Mercedes dark again, just the faint gleam of the dashboard lights and a diffuse glow from the street lamps outside.
"Thanks for the ride," John said, then choked. Down the street, brake lights flared red as the Chevy that had passed them pulled into a parking spot.
Rodney made a strangled sound and John fumbled for the door, opening it and then nearly garroting himself because he hadn't released the seatbelt. Without thinking anymore, he hit the release and bolted for his apartment.
"John!" Rodney yelled, but he didn't stop until he reached his door and realized he'd left his wallet and keys back in the Mercedes.
He braced on hand against the door and waited, listening, as Rodney caught up and quietly unlocked the door. "Here," he said, and handed John his wallet and badge case, leaving the keys handing in the door lock. "I'll sign whatever report you write up."
Then he was gone and John stumbled into his dark, empty apartment.
~*~
He stripped off the oversized tee-shirt Ronon had provided and the hospital-style scrub bottoms that Ascension apparently stocked as part of some fantasy role-playing scenario. What kind of...John swallowed hard, the nausea back with a vengeance. He made it into the bathroom before heaving up bile and the cup of coffee someone had pushed into his hand at some point. After Kolya. After Rodney. After Fraiser examined him and declared he was asshole whole.
Then he washed every inch of his skin that wasn't bandaged and brushed his teeth for five minutes, before he stumbled back into his bedroom, pulled on a pair of boxers and tumbled into bed.
It was actually still early for him and he couldn't keep his mind from spinning it all around again and again. Finally he dozed, jolting awake whenever he began to dream, sweating and shaking. Hours passed. He got up once and washed down several aspirin with a glass of orange juice. He tried the TV, but couldn't standing watching It's a Wonderful Life one more time, not after the things he'd seen. Eventually, the night ended in a gray and drizzly dawn.
Sometime after first shift began, John called in to the stationhouse and asked for everything they could come up with on Kolya. Background, businesses, relatives, criminal record if he had it. Everything. There had to be a connection he wasn't seeing because he could stop thinking of what he done.
He couldn't believe he had done that, got on his knees, sucked cock, then bent over and got fucked. He didn't want to think about it, except he couldn't stop. Somewhere in him, there was some part of him that had got off on it a little. Not the pain, not the restraints -- he rubbed his wrists compulsively, still feeling the leather -- sure as hell not the threats, but the giving it up. What the fuck did that say about his head? He hated that he'd liked letting Rodney take control. In other circumstances, not with Rodney, but no...Kolya had fondled him, rubbed off against him, and John had felt nothing but cold anger and disgust. But Rodney had made him shiver with arousal. No one else. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could almost feel Rodney's phantom fingers slipping down the crack of his ass and then working into him. He'd expected it to hurt, had been braced for it, braced to be revolted and sick, but Rodney had somehow made it good.
He wasn't gay. He couldn't be. He have known that about himself, wouldn't he?
John rolled over and pressed his face into his pillow, as though that would block out the images in his head better than just closing his eyes.
It didn't, instead he kept imagining how he would have looked, pants pulled down and Rodney between his legs. He clenched his hands in the sheet. Tensed and told himself no, he wasn't going to get hard remembering the way Rodney had carefully opened him and finger-fucked him and how he'd started shoving his ass back onto Rodney's hands because it had felt so good he'd wanted more of it. He'd been biting his lip when Rodney had pulled his hand away, desperate to keep the words in his mouth from spilling out, 'Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, Rodney.'
He'd forgotten Kolya and Ford and Ladon at that point, closed his eyes and been lost. The curl of shame and humiliation in his belly expanded until it threatened to choke him. He'd come.
Jesus, he'd come, even with all of them in the room, watching him, wanting to see him submit and lose it. Had come despite that, because Rodney had made him forget them.
He rolled over onto his back. The ceiling cracks hadn't changed. He'd been here all day and nothing had changed inside or out. The day was dying and a deep, almost-red light seeped through his blinds. The acid sting of the bandaged cuts on his chest remained and a dozen wrinkles in the sheets managed to irritate him.
Cuts. Jesus. The whole thing, the whole thing had been Kolya's idea. The bastard had sat there with his knife and his drugs and his 'pets' and watched. John had kept thinking anything was better than Kolya touching him. Getting fucked had to be better than having that knife cutting him again. Then Rodney touched him and the worst thing about it had been that it wasn't all bad. He cringed remembering that he'd gotten hard where they all could see him, that they'd seen him like that. They'd seen that he liked it, liked having Rodney's cock in his mouth and then in his ass. It made his skin crawl hours later, the way Kolya had looked at him, the way the bastard had put his hands on him between cuts from the knife, the way he'd been jerking himself off inside his pants, right in front of John as Rodney pushed into him.
He wished to hell Rodney hadn't made it feel good.
With a muttered curse, he got up and headed for the shower, stopping with another curse as he remembered Janet Fraiser, brown eyes snapping, telling him to keep the bandages dry. "Shit."
John braced his hands against the cool edge of the sink and slowly raised his head enough to stare into the mirror. It took more effort than he liked to look himself in the eye.
He didn't look any different. He'd had gay sex and liked it and he thought he should look different, like it would be tattooed on his forehead in a special fluorescent ink. Instead, he just looked bleary-eyed, unshaven and pale. His shoulders ached unpleasantly and so did his ribs. But he couldn't tell by looking at his reflection that he'd had his lips around Rodney's cock, that cock in his ass, though he could feel it when he moved.
The temptation to just pretend it had never happened hovered at the forefront of his thoughts. He could do it. Shove the whole incident into a mental box, lock it up, bury it and move on. Only that would mean giving up his friendship with Rodney. He knew Rodney wouldn't push the issue, would go along with however John chose to cope, but he knew himself at least well enough to realize he'd never manage to block this memory and still see Rodney every day.
There had been that moment, before they went to Room Fourteen, when he'd figured Rodney out, figured out that Rodney had wanted him for a long time, maybe since they'd met. But Rodney had never said anything. Because he'd known John didn't swing that way. But in that moment, John had thought he could. Because Rodney had kept how he felt to himself for the entire time John had known him and that meant Rodney cared more about not screwing things up with John than getting in his pants. John hadn't had many people care that much in his life.
Then Kolya had ruined everything.
Because every time he saw Rodney, he was going to remember all of it: Kolya and the fear his life was about to be bled away little by little, cut after cut, and the breathless relief he'd felt for an instant when Rodney came back, before worry took over. John stared at his reflection and then licked his lips. He would look at Rodney and remember how his hands had felt, pushing his cheeks apart, sliding his fingers inside...And when he did, he was going wonder if it would feel even better without the pain and the manacles and the freak watching them.
John stared at himself in the mirror. Out of everything that had happened last night, the only thing that had been bearable was Rodney. His best friend had fucked him, had apparently wanted to fuck him for years if John hadn't read it all wrong, and that should be enough to make sure he never wanted to see Rodney again. Except Rodney was his friend and closer to him than anyone else. He didn't even have anyone else he could even talk about this with except Rodney. Rodney was already so far into John's life, that cutting him out would be like cutting off a hand. He needed Rodney. Oh Jesus.
"I'm so fucked," he told his reflection and then began laughing. He needed Rodney. Rodney wasn't the only one who felt a hell of lot more than John had ever guessed. He couldn't stop laughing until he ended up on the bathroom floor, cold tile against bare skin, shaking and hiccupping --not sobbing because he was dry-eyed and a guy and he wasn't going to fucking cry, -- with his arms wrapped around himself, because he'd been scared as hell too.
He'd been scared and helpless and completely dependent on Rodney figuring something out. Gay? He could be gay. He didn't care. But he couldn't be out of control and at someone else's mercy.
It was all a damn mess.
He had to talk to Rodney. He had to talk to him just to convince him to censor whatever report he wrote up on last night. Having everyone at the station or some sleazoid defense lawyer know what happened would be unbearable.
When he'd pulled himself together enough he didn't think his voice would shake, he found his phone and punched in the number for Rodney's private cell phone.
No answer.
Then he tried Rodney's home number, the landline Rodney insisted was harder to eavesdrop on. It rang and rang until his answering machine picked up. This is Rodney McKay. Prove you're worth talking to and I'll call you back.
"It's John. Pick up."
Nothing.
Rodney always picked up for him. John frowned at his own phone and picked out the number for the lab. He sighed when the phone there picked up. He should known Rodney would go in, no matter what. Rodney found peace and sanctuary in his science. He'd been upset, too, and he'd gone to the lab.
"ACPD Forensic Main Lab. This is Zelenka."
"Radek?" John murmured and his voice cracked as a sick feeling uncurled inside. "This is Sheppard. Where's Rodney?"
"Rodney hasn't been in today or last night. I haven't been able to get in touch with him, only Detective Lorne, who said he was working on a case with you.." Zelenka managed to sound miffed and worried.
"Call him again," John said. He cut the connection and dialed the stationhouse. Something was wrong. His instincts were shrieking louder with every second.
~*~
The sick feeling just got stronger about the time he reached Rodney's house. The chocolate brown Mercedes was parked out front and John could see the door -- the steel core door with a deadbolt, security system electric locks and four other locks -- hanging open from the street. He parked and bolted across the lawn.
He skidded to a stop on the porch and drew his weapon, because Rodney's keys still hung in the lock and the security system's light blinked green.
"McKay?" he yelled. "McKay, it's Detective Sheppard." Rodney would mock him for that, but if there was someone in there, he wanted them to know they would be facing a cop, a presumably armed cop. "Hey, I'm coming in."
Nothing. John moved through the house the same way he would any potential crime scene, watching for anyone still inside, but he could feel the emptiness as soon as he stepped inside. Neither Rodney nor anyone else was there.
John returned to the open front door and stared at Rodney's keys, swallowing back panic. They'd been investigating Ascension because the Red Ribbon Killer's victims all had ties to it. Now Rodney was gone.
Oh, fuck.
He holstered his Glock and called it in: possible crime scene, possible kidnapping.
~*~
John pressed the doorbell then began a steady, loud police knock against the door to Ascension. The club appeared closed up tight for the day, but he knew from the reports that Teyla occupied a penthouse on the fourth floor and that Ronon reported residing at he same address. A small wreath dotted with red holly berries and gold garland hung over the unnecessary brass knocker on the door.
The door opened five minutes later, when John had tried kicking, pacing, and started thinking about shooting out the damned lock. Teyla, dressed in jeans and pale yellow tank top, stood looking at him. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. Her feet were bare and the nails painted a soft pink. She looked more like a high school girl than a professional dominatrix or refugee from a war-torn Central American country. "John? What are you -- ?"
"Rodney's gone."
"What?"
John pulled himself up and forced the panic down deep. "Look, my name's John Sheppard, I'm a homicide detective with the ACPD, and a murderer's somehow been using your club to pick his victims. Lydia Dumais, your brother, Charles Campbell, Paul Markham, Marin Olles. I think -- I'm afraid Rodney's been taken by him and I need access to your records."
Teyla stared at him, more thoughts than he could track flashing behind her smooth features and dark brown eyes. "Kolya?"
"It isn't him. I wish it was. I thought it was at first, but he's a different kind of crazy." He frowned. "But there has to be some kind of connection. I'm just missing it."
Finally, she nodded and stepped back from the door. "I expect you will produce a warrant that covers this request," she said.
"We'll get it," John gritted out. He would, but every minute lost ate at his composure.
"Good, I'll expect you to show it to me when you get it." She gestured him inside. "In the meantime, we'll go to my personal office. We can access all the records from there and talk to Ronon."
John let out a sigh and followed. "Thank you."
She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes were hard again. "My brother, Detective. I want who did this just as much as you do. Torin was a fool, but he was the only family I had left after our father died. He was the only one of my people who escaped our village after the government troops occupied it."
~*~
John's eyes were burning. He'd managed to access his own computer and the records on the case from Teyla's computer, using tricks Rodney had taught him on slow days at the lab. Teyla and Ronon sat at the same desk with him, combing through Ascension's records, looking for connections, looking for the killer.
"Anyone, anyone at all, ever have any kind of thing for red ribbons?" John asked. The ribbons had been part of the killer's MO they'd kept out of the media. It was a miracle some ambitious reporter hadn't ferreted it out yet, but the papers and TV had both been focused on the Kinsey Scandal. A senator and presidential candidate exposed as being on the payroll of the Gould Crime Syndicate was big news, bigger even than a serial killer operating in a small island city.
"I am not sure," Teyla said slowly. She was thinking about, trying to remember anything useful.
"Lydia," Ronon stated.
John glanced at him. Ronon had a sandwich in one hand, eating on automatic while he scanned through security footage. His brows were drawn together in a fierce frown.
"What?"
"Lydia wore a red ribbon around her throat. I remember."
"Dumais was the first victim," John said. "She has to be the precipitating factor. Teyla, tell me everything about Lydia." He opened up the file on Dumais and began reading it again, hoping something would jump out at him. Teyla's fingers danced over the keyboard of her own laptop as she accessed the club's records on Dumais.
"She bought a membership that included bringing a regular guest," Teyla read out loud. "A considerable financial investment, the less than the amount Dr. McKay paid for your joint membership. A credit check confirmed she could afford it. She had a very high-paying job with ATA and, I have made a note here, that it was Carson Beckett, the founder of ATA, who first introduced her to Ascension."
"Tell me about Beckett," John said, checking through Dumais' financials himself. Something was screwy. She hadn't been spending beyond her generous salary and benefits package according to the records, but she had too many acquisitions. Expensive items she'd apparently paid for in cash. A new Hummer, a two-week stay at a Swiss spa, condo in Aspen, jewelry and designer dresses in her closet. Dumais had had a second income from something.
"Carson Beckett is a gentle man with a ... fetish for being treated as a little boy. He craves punishment and comfort from an older, motherly figure." Teyla paused, then continued, "As far as I can tell, he is neither gay nor heterosexual. Perhaps he channels his libido into his work. He comes to Ascension to relax. I do not believe he could be your killer."
John didn't cross the man off his list, but he took Teyla's assessment seriously. Beckett probably wasn't the killer. He was a researcher, stuck in a lab much of his time, and definitely not tough enough to take down Eugene Bates. Though if he'd used the drugs he had access to...
John sat up straight.
Drugs.
There was a common source of extra income. Lydia Dumais could have been the source of the mysterious enzyme the labs found in the victims. There was the connection to Kolya, too. And someone else.
"You should check out Lydia's boyfriend," Ronon said.
"What boyfriend?" John demanded. There was nothing about a boyfriend in any of the reports on Dumais.
"The one she brought in as a guest," Ronon answered. "She said he was a sub, but he didn't like it. Looked like he was putting up with it to get something from her."
"Ronon," Teyla said. "Why didn't you say something?"
Big shoulders moved in a slow shrug. "None of my business. Figured he knew what he was doing. So did she. Looked like I was wrong last night. He was one of men with Kolya."
"Maybe not," John murmured. His stomach cramped as a flash of the night before played through his mind. Kolya and Ladon and the two others. He remembered the younger one, the black guy, had been jittery. He'd been the one waving around the gun, too. Ford. And he'd said, 'And it was my girlfriend that got you the samples and told you how to make it.' "This guy have a name?"
"Aiden."
"Last name?"
Ronon typed a query into his computer. "Ford." He looked up and grinned a fierce, white-toothed smile. "He worked for ATA too. Night shift security."
Security would be in a perfect position to help a shady drug operation nested in a cutting edge biomedical research company. If Ford had been involved in something like that, partnered with Dumais, he might have killed her over money and found out he had a taste for killing as well as the drug. He'd have access to the enzyme used on the other victims. And Dumais herself had introduced him to Ascension. If he really had disliked the club, he might be targeting members who fit the same bill as Dumais: masters and tops, dominants, successful figures who threatened Ford's vision of himself. If he hadn't had his attention drawn to Rodney, he might have turned his attention to Kolya.
Wouldn't that have been a tragedy, John thought.
But what was the tie to Bates? Bates wasn't a member of Ascension, wasn't into any kind of kinky sex, didn't have a tie to ATA or any of the victims. Had he just stumbled on something by chance.
He took out his phone and called the station. Lorne was out trying to find any clue as to what had happened to Rodney and so was most of the day shift, so he went through to Sergeant Stackhouse at the front desk.
"This is Sheppard," he said as soon as the phone picked up. There was Christmas music playing in the back ground, over the sound of phones ringing, and a drunken voice calling someone a son of whore. "I need you to pull up Bates' file and check it over again."
He could hear Stackhouse typing through the phone pickup, the key clack louder than Jingle Bell Rock. Good guy, Stackhouse. "Detective, we'll find Dr. McKay," Stackhouse said. "Everyone's on it. Even Detective Doran came in. And Lt. Landry said something about consulting with the FBI, getting their crime lab to work the case. He says O'Neill owes the department."
"Whatever," John said. He had that feeling in his gut, the sense of almost flying, that he got when he was onto something. "Check Bates' file for anything on Ford, Aiden. I'll want a separate run on him, too. Every damn thing we can dig up -- "
"Aiden Ford?" Stackhouse repeated, his voice rising in surprise.
John froze. "You recognize the name?"
"You bet," Stackhouse said. "He went through the police academy the year I lectured on explosives. Really gungho kid, but he washed out during training. Sgt. Bates was his training officer."
"Sonovabitch," John exclaimed.
Stackhouse was still talking. "Said the kid had weird thing about proving himself to everybody and started using uppers. Came out in a drug test. Bates griped about it, said Ford had all this potential, even if he was a little naive. Jesus."
There was the connection. The whole connection, drugs, resentment, and Bates...not that far from training officer to master. Both had authority over another. Dumais, the first victim, maybe over drugs, maybe over the sex games, maybe even dirty money, and then Ford had slipped the leash of sanity. So he'd immediately gone after Bates, blaming him because he'd kept him from becoming a cop. After that, Ford must have just kept acting out his psychodrama on anyone from Ascension that fit his twisted criteria. Pumping them full of the enzyme was just part of his MO by that point and the effects didn't mean much beyond fulfilling the ritual's demands.
"I want an APB out of Aiden Ford right now," he snapped. "He's the killer and he's got McKay. He was involved with Lydia Dumais, and had potential access to all the other victims."
Yes Sir!" Stackhouse replied.
"Better consider him armed and dangerous. He's working security at a company called ATA and may have access to hazardous materials as well," John warned. He cut the connection and turned to face Teyla and Ronon. "Have you got an address for him in your records?"
~*~
John ended up pacing back and forth through Teyla's living room. She'd decorated it for Christmas and the lights on her tree twinkled, glittering off the tinsel and glass ornaments. Most of the work was being done by the officers out on the streets. All he could do was coordinate over the phone and fume. Officers had been dispatched to Ford's address, to ATA, even to interview his cousin and check out his grandparents' home, since they'd apparently raised him after his parents took off. Nothing had been found anywhere. Ford hadn't been to work at ATA for a week and was already out of a job.
Pictures of what had been done to the other victims kept playing in John's head, only he saw Rodney wound in bloodstained red ribbon, his blue eyes clouded over and blind in death. His heart trip-hammered in his chest every time his phone rang and he answered, waiting to hear that a body had been found in a ditch or construction zone, in an empty field or behind a dumpster.
His body still ached from the abuse he'd endured from Kolya. None of it even compared to what Ford did to his victims. He had been drinking Teyla's midnight dark coffee like he was Rodney and his hands were beginning to shake. He knew everyone at the stationhouse thought Rodney was already dead. The killer hadn't kept any of the other victims alive for long. John had no real reason to be convinced they could still save Rodney, nothing beyond the conviction that it couldn't end this way.
The guilt would eat him. All the victims he couldn't save because he wasn't there in time, he could live with, because he hadn't sent them into danger. It had happened, but it hadn't been him giving out orders. He'd chosen police work over going into the military for just that reason, years before. But he'd gotten Rodney into this.
Ronon loomed suddenly in the doorway to Teyla's personal office.
"I got something."
John was too impatient to wait. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
"I found Ladon. He says there's a condemned tenement on the east side. Kolya's been using it as a cook house, making up Rip," Ronon said.
John headed for the door. "Tell me where."
"Can show you."
"Fine, let's go," John said. He didn't slow down when he spotted Teyla waiting, dressed in commando black and a leather jacket.
"I'm coming, too," she said. He glimpsed the butt of a pistol in a belly holster under her jacket and said nothing. Teyla radiated competence the same way Ronon did and he knew that the ex-Ranger wouldn't tolerate his employer swanning around with a gun if she didn't know how to use it.
John drove, pushing his restored Mustang to its limits, blowing through red lights and around traffic. He punched in Lorne's number while he drove and tersely told him where they were going. "Get me back up," he finished.
"John, you need to wait for us -- " Lorne said.
John cut the connection.
~*~
There were no Christmas decorations out in the east side, nothing but wreckage left by the flooding. "You know how to handle that?" John asked as Teyla clipped up the steps behind him, a .38 in her hands. Ronon had already circled around to the rear entrance.
She raised an eyebrow.
"In my village, we learned to fight before we went to school, Detective. My first gun was an AK-47 given to me by my father," she told.
John shrugged. "Stay behind me."
They slipped into the tenement's foyer by dodging around a rotten section of plywood that had once been nailed over a hole. Inside, shafts of gray winter light reached down from openings in the roof. John waited a beat for his eyes to adapt and then picked his way over the debris-strewn floor. Dirt swirled in random patterns over black and white tiles, bits of garbage left as flotsam when the flood waters sunk away.
It clearly showed the tracks of someone going in and out.
It showed multiple drag marks too.
John caught Teyla's eyes and nodded to the floor. "This is the place." He knew that he should wait for the backup that was on its way. But he couldn't. Something told him if he didn't get to Rodney soon, very soon, it would be too late.
Teyla nodded and they followed the drag marks. It made no sense, but John knew he could trust Teyla to have his back, and Ronon, too. Maybe it was stupid, misplaced gratitude for the way Ronon had barreled into Room Fourteen and disposed of Kolya. Maybe it was the way Teyla hadn't made him wait for a search warrant. Maybe not. He simply felt like he'd known them longer than he had, recognized something in both of them that knew him, too.
They heard Ford's voice first, while they were still on the first floor, words fast and too intense. "You got to believe me, Doc. This stuff will make you feel like a million dollars, better than you've ever been before. It's incredible. You don't think I know who you are, but I recognize you. You work for the forensics lab, you're the head of the night shift. Hah! You thought I was dumb, didn't you? Dumb and crazy..."
John and Teyla steadily worked their way toward the back of the building. It took time, more time than John wanted to waste, to move silently and not give themselves away. At least, they were still on the first floor.
"I never thought you were crazy," Rodney snapped and John blew out a silent breath of relief. If Rodney could talk..."Though now that you mention it, kidnapping and murder are not common denominators of sanity! or intelligence. You idiot, you didn't even wear gloves when you grabbed me. Zelenka will dust the front door and your ID will be all over the city."
"Doesn't matter, we'll be gone by then. I can't get back into ATA, but I figure your boyfriend can. He's got a badge. And once you've tried this stuff, you'll see why I've got to have it," Ford said.
So that was why Rodney was alive, when all the others had been killed within hours of Ford grabbing them. He meant to blackmail John into helping him get more of the drug and he had enough brains to know John would demand proof of life. John crept a little closer to the door and peered around it, catching sight of Rodney duct-taped to a wooden chair next to a rickety table littered with an empty vial and a syringe, along with an ominous roll of red satin Christmas ribbon.
That made John catch his breath. Rodney's lab would need to do a comparison but he already knew it was the same ribbon used to wrap all the victims. Ribbon that might have been used to wrap up Rodney's body if things had gone a little differently.
Ford paced back and forth in front of Rodney. He had a revolver in one fist and waved it at the broken out windows and Rodney indiscriminately. From the fevered, frenetic way he moved, John guessed he was high on whatever it was ATA had been brewing.
He caught a glimpse of motion through another doorway and identified Ronon. A quick dip of the head told him Ronon had seen him too and was ready to go in.
John chanced a second look around the doorway into the room and grimaced, seeing what he'd missed the first time: drums of chemicals, a generator, glass beakers and tubing and burners. No way to tell if Ford had moved the supplies in or if the abandoned building had been in use as a cook house before. Now it was a bomb waiting to go up. One spark in the wrong place...
"Think your boyfriend is looking for you yet, McKay?" Ford asked. He kept the gun in one hand and pulled out a cell with the other. "Give me his number."
"No," Rodney refused.
Ford strode forward and shoved the muzzle of his gun under Rodney's chin. "Give me his number!"
"Call the ACPD! He's a cop!" Rodney yelled back.
"You want to get me arrested!" Ford accused. He jerked back and the gun moved away from Rodney, aiming instead at barrel full of some unknown chemical. "I'll show you!"
"Of course I do, you maniac!"
There was no better moment. Ford's back was to the doorway, all his attention focused on Rodney. John jumped through the doorway and brought his gun to bear on Ford.
"Drop the gun, Ford!" he yelled.
Ford spun and stared at him.
"John!" Rodney shouted. "Get out of here! This place is a death trap! You need to send for a hazmat team!
John ignored him and concentrated on Ford. "Put it down!"
Teyla came in behind him, aiming at Ford too, sidling along the wall to bracket him and force him away from Rodney. Ford's eyes widened as he recognized her. "You're fucking kidding! Where's the rest of the Five-Oh? Couldn't get them out to save your boyfriend, so you had to bring her?"
"Hey! What are you talking about and why is she here!?" Rodney demanded, half hysterical, fighting the tape holding him to the chair and making jump and thump against the floor.
Ronon ghosted into the room behind Ford. He could move incredibly quietly. He reached Rodney and clapped a big hand over his mouth.
John didn't let his aim at Ford waver, despite the distraction of Rodney's eyes going wide.
"Maybe I didn't want to bring the other cops into this, Ford. Maybe I'm pissed off enough to want to just get rid of you. Why mess with a trial?"
"Not you, Sheppard," Ford said. "I heard about you. Bates talked about you. Said you were a good cop."
"Maybe, but you're a cop killer. No one's going to care much if I put a bullet between your eyes."
Ford's eyes widened and suddenly, finally, he seemed to believe it. John didn't know why, he didn't know if he even meant it, but Ford fired at him, and as he dived to the side, toward a stack of barrels, again, wildly. John fired back twice. He saw Ford stumble and then fall behind the barrels, while his second shot ricocheted off a blue metal barrel with a spark and shriek that Rodney echoed, even through Ronon's hand.
Now Ronon was dragging Rodney chair and all, toward the doorway. "Get me out of this!" Rodney shouted, struggling against the tape binding him in place. "You've all got to get out of here now! It's going go up any second! John! Go!"
"No time," Ronon said and simply threw Rodney, chair and all, through the broken-out window.
John realized why as he pulled in a breath to yell. The air was full of chemicals, something spilling from one of the barrels, and they had to get out now. Either one of Ford's shots had hit something or the ricochet from his own shot.
He didn't wait to find out if Ford was dead, alive, wounded or even trying to shoot at them. He grabbed Teyla's wrist and ran for the window. Ronon jumped out with them and they fell, hitting the pavement as the room behind them exploded into flames. Broken glass and debris blew out over their heads, as John covered Teyla and Ronon shielded Rodney's head.
The wail of approaching sirens shocked John back into motion. He rolled off Teyla and stared back at the building. Flames rolled out of the window above them, while black, foul smoke boiled out of a dozen others. He coughed hard and then staggered to his feet.
He made it to Rodney's side, wincing as he saw the bruising and the bloody wound along Rodney's hair line. The chair was broken into pieces, but Rodney was still taped to the arms and legs. John knelt and began tearing the tape off. Rodney blinked his eyes open and stared up at John.
John's hands stilled. He could see the flames behind him reflected in Rodney's eyes. He thought if Ronon hadn't come, if he'd been any slower, Rodney would still be in there. Without Ronon and Teyla, Rodney would likely be dead. So many damn ifs.
That wasn't acceptable, he thought in a detached way, watching as he lifted his hand and cupped Rodney's rough, unshaven cheek, feeling the whiskers prickle against his palm.
Rodney was talking, but John couldn't hear him through the ringing in his ears. John bent and brushed a kiss over Rodney's mouth before he could think himself out of it, muffling the noise.
Behind them, something inside the tenement cracked and then exploded with a boom that flattened John over Rodney. He scrambled off Rodney, dazed, a breath later. A volley of coughs made his eyes blur and water as his lungs clutched and threatened to seize up entirely. They needed to get away from the fire and whatever was burning inside.
Actually, Teyla and Ronon needed to get away from the crime scene entirely.
He tore the last of the tape off Rodney's wrists and ankles and pulled him to his feet. Both of them swayed. Ronon had Teyla up too and they were both looking toward the street and the marked cars rushing toward the site of the explosion.
John kept one arm around Rodney's waist, but held out his other to them. "You guys get out of here. As far as I'm concerned, I came here alone, on a tip from an anonymous phone call."
Ronon looked at him and nodded. Teyla caught his hand and squeezed it. "Be well," she wished them both and then she and Ronon loped away, turning a corner and moving out of sight without looking back.
John squeezed Rodney a little closer, guiding him in the opposite direction, away from the burning building, toward the police and fire department vehicles he'd glimpsed approaching far up the street; lights shining red and blue almost like Christmas.
"C'mon, Rodney."
Rodney leaned into him. "I almost died, you know," he said.
"I know," John told him.
"You figure he's dead?" Rodney asked.
"Ford?" John said. "I don't know."
He hoped so. He really hoped so. He looked at the smoke and flames billowing out the broken windows. No one would be going back in there to find out for some time. If Ford had been wounded or trapped by the explosion, he was dead now, of burns or smoke inhalation. If he somehow escaped...John shuddered and pulled Rodney tighter.
If Ford had escaped, they would know when he killed again.
~*~
A Hazmat team going through the tenement's wreckage pulled a burned body out four days later. Zelenka called Rodney and told him. Biro had pulled a bullet out of the body's femur. Ballistics matched it to John's service weapon. Aiden Ford was really dead and Rodney could finally relax.
He told Zelenka he would relax when he was back on the job. After he put the phone down, he went back to swishing the wine in his glass around. He'd invited John to come over for Christmas Eve, well knowing John would end up in the guest room and they'd share Christmas too before heading in to work. Those plans had been made before. Rodney didn't anticipate sharing his evening or the next day with anyone now.
He hadn't seen or spoken to John since Lorne and the cavalry arrived. He hadn't had the guts to call him, not even to leave message for him.
He never expected John to be on the other side of his front door when he answered it. He'd been braced for anything from carolers to Jehovah's Witnesses, but not John. At least, not John looking sinful and bashful all at once, wearing a moss green sweater and black pants, with a red and white muffler around his neck and brightly wrapped package-- no red ribbon -- clutched in one hand.
John ready to yell at him. John finally exploding in anger over everything that had been done to him, maybe. Maybe that was why Rodney hadn't tried to talk to him.
None of it would have happened if he hadn't left John alone in that room.
"Can I come in?" John asked.
Rodney stepped back and gestured him inside, remembering to close his gaping mouth as he did so.
John shoved the package at him. "Here. Merry Christmas Eve and all that."
"You got me something?" Rodney squeaked. He took it and then held it, not knowing what else to do.
John gave him an odd look. "Well, yeah. Friends, right?" He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Besides, I bought it before... you know."
Of course, Rodney thought. Before they stopped being friends. Only John had just said...Maybe there was still a chance to salvage something. It seemed like it, since John was here. He walked back into the kitchen that he'd spent several hours cleaning since he had nothing better to do, set the package on the sparkling clean counter, and pulled down a second wine glass. He poured it full from the open bottle he'd been morosely working on all by himself. He handed it to John and retrieved his own.
"Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," John echoed and sipped. His knuckles were white where he clutched at the wine glass so hard Rodney worried he'd snap the stem. His eyes widened when Rodney stepped closer to him, though he didn't flinch. Quite.
"Look, we can just pretend it never happened," Rodney said. He'd pretend that for John. He wouldn't forget, but he'd never bring it up. The last few days had been frighteningly empty, especially since he'd been given a mandatory weekend off from the lab. "Just don't think about it."
John shook his head. "Yeah, well, there's a problem with that. I can't stop thinking about it."
"I'm sorry. I -- "
"I liked it, okay?"
Rodney set his glass of wine down and stared. He opened his mouth, didn't say anything, and finally licked his lips. "John."
John ducked his head and made a graceless gesture with one hand. "I -- not the slave shit." He coughed and finished nearly inaudibly, "What you did?" The tips of his ears were red. He gulped down the rest of his wine and set the glass down next to Rodney's. Light splintered through the crystal, dyed pink by the residue of wine in the glass. "When I -- when I remember...that's the only part that makes it okay."
"Okay," Rodney repeated carefully, afraid one wrong word would send John bolting out of the room and his life. He'd done his utmost to make sure John found some pleasure in what they'd been forced to do, but ever since he'd been afraid that that had been the problem. A lot of straight men couldn't deal with knowing they'd gotten off from being fucked. Didn't want to accept that they could have an orgasm whether they wanted it or not. John needed to accept that it had been a physiological response to sexual stimulation, not to mention the adrenaline and endorphins flooding his system that night.
"You know, it's all right." Rodney waved his free hand, trying to semaphore 'everything' without articulating any of it, hoping John understood. "That you liked it. People don't -- that is, people do that because it they like it. Because it feels good."
John gave him an impatient look. "Yes, I know it's all right. Did you think I was a homophobe?"
"No, no," Rodney said, waving his hands. He'd known John too long to think that. But that didn't translate into John wanting gay sex or even being able to deal with having had it.. "I just -- the way -- what happened. And you're straight. You know, Chaya and Mara and Teer and Norina and -- "
"I want to do it again."
Rodney coughed and then stared. John stared back at him, almost expressionless. His throat moved as he swallowed though, giving away just how tense he was.
"Are you going to start experimenting?" Rodney asked. He wished he could take back the words immediately.
"What?" John took a single step closer to Rodney. "Can we just not talk about it anymore? I fucking missed you the last week." He took another step, one that had them within arms' length and set his hands on Rodney's shoulders. Rodney stepped back and found himself leaning against the kitchen counter. The cool edge of the tile cut into the small of his back. John followed.
"John," he said, remembering the only kiss they'd had, the quick, dry brush of John's lips over his in an alley behind a burning building, moments after he had saved Rodney's life. Well, after Ronon and Teyla and John had saved his life. That hadn't been forced or part of any cover.
John hesitated long enough to pull in a deep breath then tipped his head and pressed soft, warm lips to Rodney's mouth. Rodney froze until he felt John's hands tense and then begin to lift away from his shoulders, his mouth start to pull away, and Rodney kissed John back. He closed his eyes while he stroked his tongue into John's mouth and closed his arms around John so tight he would never get away. He kissed John until he was breathless and his dick was hard and pressing uncomfortably against the confines of his pants. Better yet, he could feel John's hard on nudging against his hip as John rocked against him.
He doubted John even knew he was moving against him. His hands were locked tight on Rodney's shoulders. Rodney let John lead and moved with him. This was wonderful, but he didn't doubt John still had more issues than certainties. No one decided to be gay this quick, this easily, even without what he'd been through.
When they finally parted, John rested his forehead against Rodney's and laughed softly as Rodney rubbed his hand against the back of John's neck. "Did I say I liked that?" he asked finally. "Can we just do this for a while?"
Rodney pulled him closer. "Work up to the rest?" he murmured. He felt John relax minutely.
"Yeah."
Rodney smiled. "Slow and easy wins the race."
John frowned at him. "You've never been patient in your life."
"But determined I can do," Rodney said. "Let's go back into the living room. I'd like to try kissing you some more."
End