Fic: broaden into boundless day, SGA
Rating: NC-17
Words: ~1800
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
broaden into boundless day
They tell him that there was an accident, and that he’s lucky. Then they tell him his name, and the names of the people he knows, and they tell him to rest and remember.
After two weeks, something comes back to him, fuzzy and almost out of reach but there, as if pushing its way into his consciousness by force. It’s a memory of the man who was introduced to him as Colonel Sheppard - no one’s told him the guy’s first name - holding him against a wall and kissing him, hard and wet, in a small, dark room, a storage room maybe. In Rodney’s memory, it’s intense: the kind of kissing that means nothing but sex and desperation.
He doesn’t mention it, because who knows when that was, or what the circumstances were, or whether it’s something that he and Colonel Sheppard talk about. Maybe it never happened; maybe he’s imagining it.
He keeps quiet until another memory returns: Sheppard kissing him fast, on the lips, close-mouthed and soft. It’s the opposite of the first memory, casual, like saying hello or goodbye. It’s this second kiss that prompts Rodney to ask.
“I remembered something,” he says to Sheppard, when they’re alone in the lab. Rodney has been trying to jog his memory, looking over the work that he does, but so much remains frustratingly out of his grasp.
“Yeah?” Sheppard answers, sounding vague and uninterested as he looks over emails on his PDA.
“I remember being in a storage room with you,” Rodney continues, and that gets Sheppard’s attention: his head snaps up and he looks startled.
The surprise shifts almost immediately to wariness. “Look, Rodney, whatever you think you’re remembering, put it out of your mind until you’re better, okay?”
Rodney only has the image of a quick, dry kiss to tell him that they’re more than that dark, desperate memory; not really enough to rely on. But the way Sheppard’s skin feels beneath his hand when he reaches out to stroke Sheppard’s cheek with his fingertips - that sensation is familiar, too.
“I don’t want to put it out of my mind,” he says, cupping Sheppard’s jaw. His eyes flicker shut for one moment, his brow furrowing, his mouth tilting downward even as he leans into Rodney’s touch.
Then he grabs Rodney’s wrist and pushes him away, not meeting his eyes. “Not here,” Sheppard says, voice cracking.
Rodney nods.
-
In Sheppard’s room, they kiss for long minutes, gently; Sheppard treats him like glass that might break (again), like something precious in his arms. Rodney feels a bit ridiculous - he doesn’t know Sheppard well enough to reciprocate, doesn’t even know - shit.
“Wait,” he says, pulling his mouth away. Sheppard backs up immediately, taking his hands off of Rodney’s body and holding them still at his sides.
Rodney feels himself grin kind of goofily, a little embarrassed. “I don’t - they didn’t tell me your first name.”
The smile that breaks across Sheppard’s face is so grateful, so openly, voraciously happy that it’s almost painful to watch. “John,” he drawls, as if saying his own name is a great pleasure. “My name’s John.”
Rodney nods. “John,” he repeats, and kisses him again.
-
“I only remember the storage room,” Rodney says, hesitantly, “and one other time, in a forest; a really quick kiss.”
“Oh,” John says. They’re lying on their sides in John’s bed, touching lazily, too sated to do more than caress each other haphazardly.
“Where else?” he asks.
There’s a long pause; John strokes his hand easily up Rodney’s back, up and down, over and over, as if he can’t get enough of touching him. Eventually, he speaks.
“Here. In my room.”
Rodney kisses his collarbone. “Where else?”
“I don’t - why do you want to know?” John’s hand stills, cupping his shoulderblade, fingers pressing into skin.
Rodney gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I just want to hear about who we were. Before.”
John nods, then clears his throat and says, “you were - we were, uh, together.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?” Rodney watches John’s hesitant eyes carefully.
John sighs. “We never really talked about it before,” he says eventually. “I’m not good at it.”
Rodney presses another kiss into John’s skin, into the hollow of his throat. “I need you to talk about it now. I need to know.”
John’s hand moves from his back to stroke lightly across Rodney’s face. “You do, don’t you?” he mutters. “That’s the same; you can’t stand not knowing things.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, as if accessing the memories behind them.
“We used to take days out on the mainland,” John begins. “We’d bring sandwiches, build a fire, sleep on the beach. You always said we needed to go so that you could calibrate the equipment we have out there, but then you’d spend most of the day sleeping, or watching me surf.”
“What did we do at night?” Rodney asks, smiling at the image.
John kisses the corner of Rodney’s mouth, fast. “That,” he says, breathlessly. “Or,” he kisses Rodney’s neck, just below the ear, “that. All sorts of things, really.”
“I can imagine.”
He shifts a little closer to Rodney so that they’re pressed together from ankle to chest. He opens his mouth again, clearly warming to his subject. “Sometimes we’d watch movies together, in your room. You’d get bored during the exposition scenes and start - ” he stops and bites his lip.
“Start what?” Rodney prompts, after a long pause.
“Start sucking my dick,” John says, all in one breath like a confession.
“Mmmm, we can do that,” Rodney agrees. He drops another kiss on John’s shoulder, then leaves his head there, closing his eyes. He smells so good, and is so warm against him. Rodney wraps his arms around John, burrowing his face deeper into his collarbone, feeling John’s arms around his back and a soft kiss in his hair.
“What else?” he demands, sleepily.
“After missions sometimes we’d be desperate for it,” John whispers. “We’d come back sweaty and dirty and full of adrenaline, and we’d fuck in the first private place we could find.”
Rodney thinks about his storage-room memory, and nods against John’s shoulder.
“And sometimes, when the city was really quiet, we’d take our time with it, go slow, spend hours in bed together. You’d fuck me so slow, Rodney.” Another kiss in Rodney’s hair, another pause.
“What about when we were happy?” Rodney asks.
John’s laugh is low and rough. “One time,” he says, “this one time when we saved the universe together, you kissed me in the puddlejumper. You were so happy, you couldn’t wait to get back, and it wasn’t even about sex - it was just, this great thing we did together. We’re so goddamn good together.”
“Yeah,” Rodney says. He feels himself sinking into sleep by inches, deliciously. He dreams of John: on the beach, during a movie, in the puddlejumper, John kissing him and touching him and keeping him safe.
-
Kate shakes her head. “I’m impressed by the rapidity with which you’ve regained your procedural and scientific knowledge; you seem almost able to go back to work, at this rate.” Rodney beams. “But you still haven’t remembered anything from childhood, anything that’s happened in your life?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t even remember university. I just know how things work.”
“Well,” she says, “that’s something, at least. Perhaps your memories will come back with time, but it’s been nearly four months; I would have expected them to start resurfacing by now.”
Rodney doesn’t mention the two memories that have come back; those he hoards inside himself, miserly. John has told him a lot about their lives together before the accident, but these two images are his alone.
-
“And remember,” Major Lorne says, laughing as he twirls the spaghetti around his fork, “remember that planet where we all had to kiss before we could enter the village?”
Doctor Zelenka grins at him. “That was an interesting mission, I must say. Rodney, it is a pity that you cannot remember how Colonel Sheppard blushed when he kissed you.”
Zelenka’s grin comes to focus on Rodney, wanting to let him in on this joke, to let him be part of the group even though he’s forgotten their friendship, but Rodney can’t find it in himself to smile. His skin feels suddenly cold; sweat prickles on his neck.
“In a forest?” he asks, aware that he sounds too loud, too serious. “Did that happen in a forest, with weird little purple bushes?”
Zelenka’s grin widens. “Yes, yes! You must remember! Rodney, that is wonderful.”
“Maybe you’re getting your memory back after all, Doc,” Lorne adds, nodding at him encouragingly.
“Maybe,” Rodney agrees, and gets up to leave.
-
That night, as he works a third slick finger into John’s ass, Rodney watches the pure, grateful joy on John’s face and feels his heart break open in his chest.
“Tell me again,” he says, hoarsely, moving his hand slowly.
“Oh, jesus, Rodney,” John pants, squirming and shoving his body ineffectually against Rodney’s fingers.
“Tell me.”
“You - ” John arches against the bed, a little whine escaping his throat. “You used to kiss me before dangerous missions,” he says, in a rush of breath. “You’d find me in the bathroom or the locker room or the jumper bay, and you’d get me alone and kiss me.”
Rodney takes his fingers out and slicks his cock again, starts to sink slowly into John’s body.
“More,” Rodney says, gasping himself now, holding as steady as he can while he’s surrounded by John’s heat.
“Fuck, oh god, fuck me, oh,” John exhales. “You’d - oh - you’d wake me up, sucking my dick, or my n-nipples, or, christ, kissing me - Rodney, harder - ”
Rodney goes a little harder, letting himself thrust for real now, bending down to lap at one of John’s nipples. When he straightens up again, takes one of John’s thighs in his hand and holds on tightly, more words spill from John as if of their own accord. As if he can’t stop talking once he’s started.
“Oh, yes, just like that, you always knew how to fuck me, Rodney, you know me better than anyone, oh god - ”
Rodney thrusts in, hard, and holds there just for a moment, buried deep.
“We were in love,” he says, quietly, before pulling out and sliding slowly in again. John meets his eyes.
“Yeah,” John breathes, moans, as he tightens his hand on his dick.
“I remember,” Rodney says, and bends to kiss him, kiss him, straight on till morning.
-
End Note: the title is from Tennyson's In Memoriam, section XCV:
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall'n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro' memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd
The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease,
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field:
And suck'd from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said,
"The dawn, the dawn," and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
-
-
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Words: ~1800
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
broaden into boundless day
They tell him that there was an accident, and that he’s lucky. Then they tell him his name, and the names of the people he knows, and they tell him to rest and remember.
After two weeks, something comes back to him, fuzzy and almost out of reach but there, as if pushing its way into his consciousness by force. It’s a memory of the man who was introduced to him as Colonel Sheppard - no one’s told him the guy’s first name - holding him against a wall and kissing him, hard and wet, in a small, dark room, a storage room maybe. In Rodney’s memory, it’s intense: the kind of kissing that means nothing but sex and desperation.
He doesn’t mention it, because who knows when that was, or what the circumstances were, or whether it’s something that he and Colonel Sheppard talk about. Maybe it never happened; maybe he’s imagining it.
He keeps quiet until another memory returns: Sheppard kissing him fast, on the lips, close-mouthed and soft. It’s the opposite of the first memory, casual, like saying hello or goodbye. It’s this second kiss that prompts Rodney to ask.
“I remembered something,” he says to Sheppard, when they’re alone in the lab. Rodney has been trying to jog his memory, looking over the work that he does, but so much remains frustratingly out of his grasp.
“Yeah?” Sheppard answers, sounding vague and uninterested as he looks over emails on his PDA.
“I remember being in a storage room with you,” Rodney continues, and that gets Sheppard’s attention: his head snaps up and he looks startled.
The surprise shifts almost immediately to wariness. “Look, Rodney, whatever you think you’re remembering, put it out of your mind until you’re better, okay?”
Rodney only has the image of a quick, dry kiss to tell him that they’re more than that dark, desperate memory; not really enough to rely on. But the way Sheppard’s skin feels beneath his hand when he reaches out to stroke Sheppard’s cheek with his fingertips - that sensation is familiar, too.
“I don’t want to put it out of my mind,” he says, cupping Sheppard’s jaw. His eyes flicker shut for one moment, his brow furrowing, his mouth tilting downward even as he leans into Rodney’s touch.
Then he grabs Rodney’s wrist and pushes him away, not meeting his eyes. “Not here,” Sheppard says, voice cracking.
Rodney nods.
-
In Sheppard’s room, they kiss for long minutes, gently; Sheppard treats him like glass that might break (again), like something precious in his arms. Rodney feels a bit ridiculous - he doesn’t know Sheppard well enough to reciprocate, doesn’t even know - shit.
“Wait,” he says, pulling his mouth away. Sheppard backs up immediately, taking his hands off of Rodney’s body and holding them still at his sides.
Rodney feels himself grin kind of goofily, a little embarrassed. “I don’t - they didn’t tell me your first name.”
The smile that breaks across Sheppard’s face is so grateful, so openly, voraciously happy that it’s almost painful to watch. “John,” he drawls, as if saying his own name is a great pleasure. “My name’s John.”
Rodney nods. “John,” he repeats, and kisses him again.
-
“I only remember the storage room,” Rodney says, hesitantly, “and one other time, in a forest; a really quick kiss.”
“Oh,” John says. They’re lying on their sides in John’s bed, touching lazily, too sated to do more than caress each other haphazardly.
“Where else?” he asks.
There’s a long pause; John strokes his hand easily up Rodney’s back, up and down, over and over, as if he can’t get enough of touching him. Eventually, he speaks.
“Here. In my room.”
Rodney kisses his collarbone. “Where else?”
“I don’t - why do you want to know?” John’s hand stills, cupping his shoulderblade, fingers pressing into skin.
Rodney gives a one-shouldered shrug. “I just want to hear about who we were. Before.”
John nods, then clears his throat and says, “you were - we were, uh, together.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?” Rodney watches John’s hesitant eyes carefully.
John sighs. “We never really talked about it before,” he says eventually. “I’m not good at it.”
Rodney presses another kiss into John’s skin, into the hollow of his throat. “I need you to talk about it now. I need to know.”
John’s hand moves from his back to stroke lightly across Rodney’s face. “You do, don’t you?” he mutters. “That’s the same; you can’t stand not knowing things.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, as if accessing the memories behind them.
“We used to take days out on the mainland,” John begins. “We’d bring sandwiches, build a fire, sleep on the beach. You always said we needed to go so that you could calibrate the equipment we have out there, but then you’d spend most of the day sleeping, or watching me surf.”
“What did we do at night?” Rodney asks, smiling at the image.
John kisses the corner of Rodney’s mouth, fast. “That,” he says, breathlessly. “Or,” he kisses Rodney’s neck, just below the ear, “that. All sorts of things, really.”
“I can imagine.”
He shifts a little closer to Rodney so that they’re pressed together from ankle to chest. He opens his mouth again, clearly warming to his subject. “Sometimes we’d watch movies together, in your room. You’d get bored during the exposition scenes and start - ” he stops and bites his lip.
“Start what?” Rodney prompts, after a long pause.
“Start sucking my dick,” John says, all in one breath like a confession.
“Mmmm, we can do that,” Rodney agrees. He drops another kiss on John’s shoulder, then leaves his head there, closing his eyes. He smells so good, and is so warm against him. Rodney wraps his arms around John, burrowing his face deeper into his collarbone, feeling John’s arms around his back and a soft kiss in his hair.
“What else?” he demands, sleepily.
“After missions sometimes we’d be desperate for it,” John whispers. “We’d come back sweaty and dirty and full of adrenaline, and we’d fuck in the first private place we could find.”
Rodney thinks about his storage-room memory, and nods against John’s shoulder.
“And sometimes, when the city was really quiet, we’d take our time with it, go slow, spend hours in bed together. You’d fuck me so slow, Rodney.” Another kiss in Rodney’s hair, another pause.
“What about when we were happy?” Rodney asks.
John’s laugh is low and rough. “One time,” he says, “this one time when we saved the universe together, you kissed me in the puddlejumper. You were so happy, you couldn’t wait to get back, and it wasn’t even about sex - it was just, this great thing we did together. We’re so goddamn good together.”
“Yeah,” Rodney says. He feels himself sinking into sleep by inches, deliciously. He dreams of John: on the beach, during a movie, in the puddlejumper, John kissing him and touching him and keeping him safe.
-
Kate shakes her head. “I’m impressed by the rapidity with which you’ve regained your procedural and scientific knowledge; you seem almost able to go back to work, at this rate.” Rodney beams. “But you still haven’t remembered anything from childhood, anything that’s happened in your life?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t even remember university. I just know how things work.”
“Well,” she says, “that’s something, at least. Perhaps your memories will come back with time, but it’s been nearly four months; I would have expected them to start resurfacing by now.”
Rodney doesn’t mention the two memories that have come back; those he hoards inside himself, miserly. John has told him a lot about their lives together before the accident, but these two images are his alone.
-
“And remember,” Major Lorne says, laughing as he twirls the spaghetti around his fork, “remember that planet where we all had to kiss before we could enter the village?”
Doctor Zelenka grins at him. “That was an interesting mission, I must say. Rodney, it is a pity that you cannot remember how Colonel Sheppard blushed when he kissed you.”
Zelenka’s grin comes to focus on Rodney, wanting to let him in on this joke, to let him be part of the group even though he’s forgotten their friendship, but Rodney can’t find it in himself to smile. His skin feels suddenly cold; sweat prickles on his neck.
“In a forest?” he asks, aware that he sounds too loud, too serious. “Did that happen in a forest, with weird little purple bushes?”
Zelenka’s grin widens. “Yes, yes! You must remember! Rodney, that is wonderful.”
“Maybe you’re getting your memory back after all, Doc,” Lorne adds, nodding at him encouragingly.
“Maybe,” Rodney agrees, and gets up to leave.
-
That night, as he works a third slick finger into John’s ass, Rodney watches the pure, grateful joy on John’s face and feels his heart break open in his chest.
“Tell me again,” he says, hoarsely, moving his hand slowly.
“Oh, jesus, Rodney,” John pants, squirming and shoving his body ineffectually against Rodney’s fingers.
“Tell me.”
“You - ” John arches against the bed, a little whine escaping his throat. “You used to kiss me before dangerous missions,” he says, in a rush of breath. “You’d find me in the bathroom or the locker room or the jumper bay, and you’d get me alone and kiss me.”
Rodney takes his fingers out and slicks his cock again, starts to sink slowly into John’s body.
“More,” Rodney says, gasping himself now, holding as steady as he can while he’s surrounded by John’s heat.
“Fuck, oh god, fuck me, oh,” John exhales. “You’d - oh - you’d wake me up, sucking my dick, or my n-nipples, or, christ, kissing me - Rodney, harder - ”
Rodney goes a little harder, letting himself thrust for real now, bending down to lap at one of John’s nipples. When he straightens up again, takes one of John’s thighs in his hand and holds on tightly, more words spill from John as if of their own accord. As if he can’t stop talking once he’s started.
“Oh, yes, just like that, you always knew how to fuck me, Rodney, you know me better than anyone, oh god - ”
Rodney thrusts in, hard, and holds there just for a moment, buried deep.
“We were in love,” he says, quietly, before pulling out and sliding slowly in again. John meets his eyes.
“Yeah,” John breathes, moans, as he tightens his hand on his dick.
“I remember,” Rodney says, and bends to kiss him, kiss him, straight on till morning.
-
End Note: the title is from Tennyson's In Memoriam, section XCV:
A hunger seized my heart; I read
Of that glad year which once had been,
In those fall'n leaves which kept their green,
The noble letters of the dead:
So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine.
Vague words! but ah, how hard to frame
In matter-moulded forms of speech,
Or ev'n for intellect to reach
Thro' memory that which I became:
Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd
The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease,
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees
Laid their dark arms about the field:
And suck'd from out the distant gloom
A breeze began to tremble o'er
The large leaves of the sycamore,
And fluctuate all the still perfume,
And gathering freshlier overhead,
Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung
The heavy-folded rose, and flung
The lilies to and fro, and said,
"The dawn, the dawn," and died away;
And East and West, without a breath,
Mixt their dim lights, like life and death,
To broaden into boundless day.
-
-
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