Could Be Raining [SGA]

[fiercelydreamed]

While I like taking on a long, hard, harrowing story as much as the next girl (... okay, maybe more than the next girl), every now and then? I just want to write something with absolutely no bigger purpose or justification than my own enjoyment.

Could Be Raining
Summary: An advanced workshop in human Tetris. No, really.
Notes: ~5000 words of McKay/Sheppard written for sheafrotherdon's Skin Hunger Challenge. Unbetaed, sexually explicit, and a textbook example of how SGA makes me come up with the worst ideas ever and then write them. Consider yourselves warned.



John blinks the last of the dirt out of his eyes as Ronon and Teyla's footsteps recede out of hearing range. There's a rock digging into his ribs. He shifts his shoulder and hip until it's not poking him quite as badly. "Well," he says to the back of Rodney's neck. "This could be worse."

There's a long pause, during which John watches dust filter down from the rocks right above them, catching in the faint lines of light. "You're right," Rodney says.

"I'm -- what?" John scoots his head back an inch, which is about all the room he's got. Since Rodney had landed facing away from him, it doesn't really help.

"I said, you're right." He sounds surprised and faintly annoyed.

Bracing his back against the boulders behind him, John worms around until he gets the arm that's been pinned under his side free, snakes it up through the narrow gap between their bodies, and starts running his fingers rapidly over the curve of Rodney's skull. Rodney jerks under his hands. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Checking for bleeding," John replies, as sarcastically as he can manage, but in the small space he can hear his own heart rate kick up. "I need to know if you hit your head." Goddammit, he should have done this before they sent Ronon and Teyla off. Rodney'd said he was okay, but he could be in shock and they don't have radios anymore. If he's actually hurt, the window to get them both out of this intact has just gotten a lot narrower.

"Of course I did," Rodney says, the muscles of his face twitching under the touch, "an entire cliff face just fell down on us, it'd be a statistical impossibility for me not to have hit my head on something. But on the spectrum of these things, I'm fine." He squirms, shoulders shifting like he wants to get a hand up to fend John off, but then instead he just lifts his head far enough off the dirt to let John check the other side of it for injuries.

The compliance doesn't really reassure John, as Rodney in his natural environment is anything but cooperative. There's a spot above Rodney's ear that feels like it might be swelling up a bit, and a cool trickle of what John is pretty sure is sweat along Rodney's hairline, but no cuts. Now that he thinks about it, this close up, he'd smell blood if there was any. "Satisfied?" Rodney asks, and his eye roll is nearly audible.

"... Yeah," John says. "Thanks." He tries to pull his hand out from under Rodney's head, but can't really find room to do it.

"Wait, are you okay?" For the first time since the cave-in, Rodney actually sounds kind of worried. One of his hands climbs up into view, braced against the wall in front of him. He starts to reach back toward John, and then freezes when his elbow rubs across John's ribs. "Crap. Um, I don't really have a lot of room here, so if you broke something, please tell me know before I start moving around to try and check on it--"

"No," John interrupts. "No, I think I'm good." There's just enough light that he can see Rodney's scalp shift, like his face just went slack with relief, and the prickly ends of his hair brush against the palm of John's hand.

"Oh, thank god." Rodney's shoulder and side settle back down against the ground again. "I can never remember how to do field splints." John wiggles his shoulder but can't manage to get his arm back under his body, so he tries to stretch it out above him instead. Turns out that wall's a lot closer than he thought it was. "You got any room on your side?"

"Not really," John says, hand braced on the wall and arm still mostly under Rodney's head.

"Figures." Rodney wriggles experimentally for a few second without managing to go anywhere at all, then he just shrugs and lets his head drop down so it's pillowed on John's upper arm, like it's a totally normal thing they do all the time. Which it isn't, but then field training doesn't really cover etiquette for getting trapped in tiny spaces together while the rest of your team goes for help, and if it's kind of weird that he and Rodney are now pragmatically playing human Tetris, it's a lot better than being stuck in here while Rodney freaks out.

As soon as the thought crosses his mind, John blinks, because Rodney isn't freaking out and there's something deeply wrong about that. Right as John opens his mouth to ask -- hey, shouldn't you be having a panic attack sometime nowish? -- Rodney sighs and says, "God. This galaxy has ruined me. I'm never going to be the same again."

"... Okay," John says. There's a rock digging into his hip now. He tries to push himself farther backward, but there really isn't anywhere to go, so he gives up and lets his weight ease slightly forward instead. That helps a little.

"I'm serious," Rodney answers, and to his credit, he does sound serious. "When I came here, I had a normal, perfectly healthy sense of self-preservation. Then you stick me on your gate team and four years later, it's shot all to hell! I mean, just think about it--" He works one hand up into a small pocket of space above him and starts counting things off on his fingers, and John swallows his grin because really, trust Rodney to find enough room to gesture. "--We're on a strange planet, trapped under who knows how many tons of rock, there's no one within shouting distance, and I am not inconsequentially claustrophobic. And still, all that's going through my mind is: hey, we've got air. Neither of us have any crushing injuries! Ronon and Teyla should be back with those villagers in about an hour--"

"--at least it's not raining," John chimes in, shifting his arm a little farther forward so that Rodney's head stops pinching the muscles running over the bone.

"Right, exactly!" Rodney agrees, raising his head obligingly as his shoulder rolls back to rest against John's chest. "After however many hundred rounds of repeatedly surviving things I really thought were going to kill us, I have somehow turned into someone who can look on the bright side of cave-ins and rock slides. There is something seriously wrong with that. I blame you."

"Just me?" John raises his eyebrows, feeling slightly defensive. "What about the Wraith? Or the Genii? Or the Replicators? Or the--"

Rodney tips his head back farther against John's arm and huffs in exasperation, his breath warm through the rip in John's sleeve. "Yes, fine, I apologize for inadvertently implying that you were solely responsible for my many brushes with death--" He stops mid-sentence and snaps his fingers, also elbowing John in the ribs in a way that might be but probably isn't accidental. "No, wait, I don't, because that's not the point! I'm not saying that you're the one who keeps getting me almost killed -- when you're guilty of reckless endangerment, really, it's usually of yourself. I'm saying that you've somehow convinced me that any situation that does not kill or maim me -- or you, or one of the other people I give two shits about, which is a list that has actually grown since I reached this galaxy -- is by definition at least somewhat okay."

He finishes in a huff, and John stares down at the side of Rodney's head for a moment before saying, "... I'm sorry?"

"Good," Rodney sniffs, head turned just enough that John can see his nose twitch as he does it. "You should be." He's quiet for a moment. It goes on long enough for John to register three key aspects of their situation. One, they are essentially spooning. Two, it's both surprisingly comfortable and a really bad idea. And three, he can't actually move enough to do anything about it. "Apology accepted."

They lay there in the dark for a while, Rodney's head cushioned on John's arm and his legs curled back around John's knees. The two of them have had some weird moments over the years, but they tend to happen right before one of them almost gets killed -- afterwards, they usually end up spending the next eighteen hours in the infirmary or putting out the standard post-crisis fires, and either way there's not a lot of one-on-one interaction involved. Somehow, this is more unsettling than usual. "Keller's doing a first-aid refresher this weekend," John says after a minute. It sounds completely inane even to his own ears. "You could go."

Rodney waves a hand above them in agreement, then lets it drop down onto John's thigh and rest there matter-of-factly, like it's no big deal. Like John's just there, furniture, a couch or a bed -- and John forcibly derails that train of thought, which is heading in the exact direction he least wants it to go. "I probably should," Rodney says. When he laughs, his back twitches against John's chest, close and disturbingly tactile even through their vests. "It's been almost, what, five whole months since any of us actually got shot in the field? At this rate, I'm going to forget -- oh my god." He pokes John in the leg, hard, and then smacks the same spot lightly for emphasis. "Are you listening to me? This is exactly what I'm talking about!"

John darts his free hand out and gives Rodney's wrist a warning squeeze. "McKay," he says. It comes out more strangled than threatening.

"What? Right, sorry," Rodney says, and he pats the place he just poked, the warmth of his broad palm radiating through the fabric of John's pants, and oh fuck, this is not good, this is not good at all. "It's just, I spent twenty years on a career path devoted to the incredibly theoretical, and yet my life has somehow reached a place where I can be blasé about treating trauma injuries under fire. Doesn't that strike you as kind of surreal?"

Two minutes ago, surreal would have been the exact word for the whole situation, but things have taken a decided turn for the worse since then. John takes a deep breath and concentrates on staying still. Very still. "Hey, you think maybe you could move over a little?" he says, casually.

"Uh, not really, but let me check," Rodney says, and shifts over onto his side so he can run his hands over the rocks around him, obviously building a mental map of the available space. This process doesn't put any actual distance between them, of course, because that would make John's life way too easy. John closes his eyes briefly as Rodney moves against him, acknowledging that the universe has found yet another new and creative way to fuck with him.

Rodney takes an annoyed breath. "Ironically, I think there's actually more space down at our feet, not that we've room to turn around -- no, wait a minute--" Before John can say anything, Rodney braces his hands and feet against the rock and pushes himself straight back into John, like he's trying to create enough space to execute some maneuver John's positive neither of them has the flexibility to pull off. John clamps his hand down tight on Rodney's arm and shoves his own back hard against the rocks in reckless disregard of the fact that he's got no idea how stable the walls of their small space actually are. It's a stupid and desperate move that doesn't result in them getting crushed but also doesn't work at all, because Rodney freezes, his arm going tight under John's hand and his ass pressed right into the angle of John's hips.

Really, head injury is starting to sound better by the second.

John tries really hard to think of something flippant to say. He can't. The space around them feels a lot warmer than it did a few minutes ago, and maybe flippant is shooting a little too high. Right now he'd settle for inane, or awkward, or really anything to distract them both from the knowledge that they're pressed together from shoulders to ankles and that is not, in fact, John's sidearm that Rodney's feeling. He'd settle for being able to take one good breath, which he can't with his face pushed right up against the back of Rodney's neck.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Rodney hisses quietly, and John grits his teeth because maybe this couldn't be worse. Then Rodney's squirming around and rolling over, and he's not normally someone John would worry about in a fight -- he's not normally someone John worries about fighting, period, and could this mission have gone downhill any faster (answer: no, it already did) -- but right now John is pinned against the wall and if Rodney wants to take a shot at him, there's really not a damn thing John can do to stop him. He tries to get himself braced in a way where a punch won't knock him backwards, because the only thing that could make this more of a disaster is if Rodney hits him and the rocks come down, and then it registers that Rodney isn't rolling out of John's space, he's rolling further into it.

Wait, what? John thinks, and then Rodney, who's now facing him, wraps his fist around John's collar and drags John's mouth down onto his.

Rodney doesn't bother with any of the preliminaries, just goes for it -- opened mouth and John's lower lip sucked in between his teeth, tongue sliding over it, zero to sixty in about a second and a half. He tastes like the dirt they both inhaled when the hill fell down, and the astringent tea they'd drunk back at the village, and under those dry and bitter flavors is something sweet, something that must be the taste of Rodney himself. The slide of his mouth under John's is pushy, entitled, like they do this all the time and not at all like it's something that's never happened outside of John's head -- John's, and possibly Rodney's. It's crazy, totally out of the blue, but John doesn't waste any time in getting with the program. He shoves his hand up under the edge of Rodney's vest and presses his palm against the small of Rodney's back, licks into Rodney's mouth, grinds their hips together. If there's one thing he's always been good at, it's seizing opportunities in rapidly changing situations -- and really, when it comes down to it, he's always been pretty good at crazy too.

Rodney makes a gratifyingly startled noise and ducks his head to slide his mouth along the angle of John's jaw, breath humid, his chin scratchy from what must have been a really cursory shave. He finds the line of muscle on the side of John's neck and sucks hard, tongue moving over the skin, and John shudders and hears himself groan. It's one of the many places he banged on the way down, and the dull ache of the bruise flares to life under Rodney's demanding mouth -- it simultaneously hurts like hell and makes his leg muscles twitch and his eyes roll back in his head. Jesus, it's such a bad idea, and John would probably stop Rodney if he had room to pull away, if they weren't stuck down here for another hour at least, if they weren't both so scuffed up already that no one will ever be able to pick out another mark or two. He'd stop Rodney, except for the part where he really doesn't want to.

"I hope you realize how disruptive this is going to be for me," Rodney mutters against John's neck as he tugs at the zipper of John's jacket, trying to get his collar further open. He runs his fingers greedily over John's collarbone, thumbs skimming the hollows of his throat.

"Yeah?" John says breathlessly, allowing his head to be tipped back. He's never thought of his neck as an erogenous zone, but then again, he's never had anyone pay this much attention to it, and Rodney seems to be making up for all the places he can't currently reach by applying his full technical expertise to all the places he can. John gets his hand under Rodney's jacket and starts yanking at the fabric of his shirt, because there's skin under there and he'd really, really like to get to it. "How's that?"

Rodney uses his grip on John's collar for leverage and rolls their bodies together, rubbing his hips across John's in a move that would probably be devastating if their cramped position wasn't preventing all the really important parts from making contact. With a frustrated huff, he shifts his grip to John's vest, trying to get it open. "I've been working really hard at embracing my fear of enclosed spaces as a healthy manifestation of good adaptive instincts," he explains, "only now, thanks to the principles of Pavlovian conditioning, I think I'm doomed to spend the rest of my life getting inappropriately hard every time I'm stuck in a slow elevator."

Listening to Rodney talk about this really shouldn't be this much of a turn-on, but then most of the times he's had sex with other men, they've been strangers at bars or other active-duty soldiers -- and either way, the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. "You and me both," John says. No amount of tugging is going to get Rodney's shirt out of the way, not with both of them pinned down like this, so he gives up on that and goes to work on Rodney's belt instead. The angle is so bad that he can't keep his grip on the buckle and pull the damn thing open at the same time, especially not with Rodney gasping and twitching every time John's hand brushes the front of his pants. "This is ridiculous," he growls. Four years of wrestling his increasingly unruly crush into some approximation of professional behavior, and now he's got Rodney here, under his hands, ready and willing and pressed so tightly against him that he cannot do a goddamn thing.

"No, really?" Rodney pants, hips twisting as he yanks at the buttons of John's shirt, and right now John is firmly of the opinion that whoever decided their uniform needed this many layers should be taken outside and shot. "Because I've got to tell you, your timing sucks."

"My timing?" John demands as he runs his hand down Rodney's thigh, feeling the muscles bunch and jump under his hands. "You were the one who kissed me."

"Don't act like you didn't start this, because you so did." Rodney slides a hot hand under the collar of John's shirt and squeezes his shoulder. His fingers are thick and sweaty as they run restlessly over the knobs of John's spine, unable to reach farther than a few inches down his back. "This is what, our two-hundred-and-somethingth mission together -- you couldn't have picked any other as the right time to rub your dick against my--"

John hooks his hand around the strap of Rodney's thigh holster and yanks Rodney's leg up over his own, rolling forward before Rodney's knee hits the ceiling or something equally stupid goes wrong -- and god, that's it, right there, that's the angle John was looking for. He buries his face in the bend of Rodney's neck, tasting dirt and salt there as he rides his hard-on against Rodney's broad thigh. Half underneath him, Rodney makes a bitten-off sound and hooks his boot around the back of John's calf, gets his dick rubbing up hard against John's hip, oh fuck. Rodney tangles one hand in John's hair, right where one of the bruises is, and the painful clench of his fingers sets off sparks across John's vision.

John clamps his own hand around the back of Rodney's head, other hand still knotted around the strap of the thigh holster, and uses his weight and his grip to run the show, finding all the spots Rodney's trying to hit and working them into his own rhythm. The pocket of air around them is hot and stifling, thick with the smells of dirt and sweat and John's getting light-headed. Maybe there's less ventilation than he thought, or maybe it's the way Rodney's radiating heat like a goddamn furnace, or maybe it's just the friction, Rodney's thigh flexing and rolling in between John's, the thick solid line of his dick under John's hip. They're arching and bucking and gasping and grinding down into each other through all six or eight layers of clothes, tangled together and constrained by the lack of space. John was probably fourteen the last time he got off like this, fully clothed and rubbing up against someone else's body, but he's pretty sure that at fourteen it wasn't anywhere near this good.

There are straps and buttons and grommets in the way, fabric bunching up between then, and they're going to be chafed raw by the time they're done here -- all the cuts and bruises they picked up on the way down, and then the extra layer of damage they did once they got here. It all melds together, pleasure and discomfort and small spikes of actual pain, a confusion of sensation that drives John higher and higher. The rocks under his knees and digging into the knuckles of the hand under Rodney's head, the slick skin of Rodney's neck and his fingers biting into the curve of John's ass, both of them groaning and grunting and swearing. The incredible bitten-lipped sounds Rodney makes right up until he starts to lose it, hips jerking erratically under John's, gasping open-throated, the two of them ground together so tight that John can feel Rodney's dick pulsing against him, Rodney shaking and coming, Jesus, oh fuck. John pins him flat and just shoves down against him, over and over, and Rodney's fingers knotted in John's hair are the only thing that keeps his head from snapping back and into the ceiling when he comes.

As the last of it shudders through him, John sags down onto Rodney, letting his face flop sideways so he can catch his breath instead of accidentally smothering himself on Rodney's chest. Rodney makes a small noise of protest when John's full weight sinks onto him, and his hand twitches where it's curled over John's ass, but he doesn't manage an actual complaint. John draws in deep lungfuls of the stuffy air, which very slowly starts to clear as their rate of consumption drops back down toward the natural inflow through the cracks between the rocks, and listens to Rodney's heart rate settle like a car engine ticking down. The inner layers of John's uniform are heavy with sweat, he and Rodney are all tangled up in a way they may or may not be able to undo before everyone shows up to dig them out. He's bruised and scraped up and wrung out and, all things considered, pretty content.

Rodney shifts a little, like there's a rock digging into him somewhere, and absently slides his fingers down the back of John's collar. "Not that I want to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything," he says, "but next time we do this, I really think we need to be naked."

John pushes himself up onto his elbow and smacks his head into a rock. "Ow, fuck," he says, trying to get a hand up to touch the spot, and then, "oh shit," because right then a percussive noise starts above them, small impacts gradually accumulating into a low rolling noise. It's exactly like the sound of the pebbles that had started falling right before the rocks had come down. They freeze, staring at each other with what John thinks are probably identical looks of dismay, and the sound gets closer. Rodney's mouth starts working, like he's trying to think of what to say before they both get crushed to death for real, and just then the first drop of rain makes it down through the rocks and hits Rodney square in the face.

Rodney sputters indignantly, and about twelve different trickles start up over John's back, and John just loses it. He shoves his face down onto Rodney's shoulder, snickering uncontrollably as Rodney tries to squirm around and get his face out from under the drip, and then John gasps and snorts as the change in position directs the stream straight down the neck of his jacket instead. "God, no wonder you usually limit yourself to smirking," Rodney grumbles, trying to shove him off, "you laugh like a moron," which of course only makes John laugh harder.

Outside, the sound of jogging feet emerges out of the general white noise of the rainstorm. "Colonel Sheppard!" Teyla calls from somewhere above them. "John! Are you there?"

Rodney waves a disbelieving hand next to John's face, and John's shoulders shake as he swallows his laughter, because Jesus, where else would they be? He gets his voice under control and yells back, "Yeah, Teyla. We're here."

"I have brought about a dozen of the Liani, and the children are getting the others from the fields," she says. He can hear a slight scuffing from the direction of her voice, like she's starting to test the outer layer of the rocks for stability. "We will start work immediately, but it may take some time to get you out of here safely."

"No problem," John answers, feeling Rodney's thigh shift farther in between his as Rodney scoots clear of a new drip that's started up just next to his ear. "Take your time."

"How's McKay?" Ronon rumbles from somewhere to the other side.

John looks down at Rodney, who blinks back up at him. He's dirt-streaked and a little flushed, with a good-sized abrasion over one cheek and a deep red mark that John is pretty sure is his fault coming up on the side of his neck. "Oh, he's fine," John says, grinning. "He's been a real trooper." Rodney rolls his eyes and digs his fingers hard into the back of John's thigh, and John drops his hip to pin Rodney's forearm against the rocks until he lets up.

There's a muffled conference overhead, and then Teyla calls down, "I am glad to hear it. We are ready to begin digging here -- please let us know immediately should anything around you shift."

"Roger that," John calls, still looking down at Rodney. There's water coming down pretty much everywhere now, and though John's catching most of it, there's a fair amount still dripping straight down into Rodney's face. John gets his elbow planted in the dirt next to Rodney's head and raises himself up a little, and Rodney immediately scoots down and curls over a little so that he's got his face tucked under John's shoulder, out of the wet.

All around them, John can hear the sounds of the first few rocks being rolled or tossed away, metal tools starting to clang against the stone, things shifting as the Liani brace up the weak points. "You know," John says to the top of Rodney's head, "the shower in my quarters is pretty big. I bet two people could fit in it."

"I think it's pretty optimistic to assume we won't end up in the infirmary with pneumonia," Rodney answers immediately, the words muffled against John's chest, but his whole body twitches under John's as he says it. John feels Rodney's hand slide up under his jacket, thumb running warm along the side of his waist, and he knows they're picturing the same thing right now: both of them climbing out from the rocks in an hour or so, muddy and torn and marked all to hell. Back at Atlantis, it'll be the infirmary for a run through a scanner and some ibuprofen, then a debrief with Carter -- or maybe not, she may just give them the night off instead. They'll grab something hot from the mess, split off to their own quarters to clean up -- and then, later, Rodney will slip over to John's, and they'll take the clean clothes they've changed into and strip each other down to skin. Turn the hot water all the way up, get the last of the dirt out of the cuts and scratches they can't reach themselves. Run their hands over each other in the light. Really take their time.

Just thinking about it is enough to get John's blood moving a little faster, and his back is pretty wet now but Rodney is solid and warm underneath him. John slides his hand into Rodney's back pocket and feels Rodney turn his head and skim his mouth over the base of John's throat, his breath hot in the open notch of John's collar, and really, there are worse ways a mission could end.