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Rodney doesn't look.
He hopes Sheppard thinks it's out of propriety, a way of offering him privacy that no one else will give. The square they're in is sunny and bright, houses straight out of a Victorian England storybook all looking down at the cobblestone circle—and yet, still called a square—with most of the town's population out so they can see. New comers aren't common.
Given their stargate is seated on a tiny island in the middle of a lake, with no bridge or boat to be seen, Rodney's not very surprised. And grateful they chose to take the Jumper today.
"You must show him honor," a lovely girl who looks of all of sixteen frowns at him. Her name is She-something. Shean, Shecs, She-cake, he doesn't remember. He's never been good at names, no, but it's her who explains what is required of them, what ritual they must undertake to show their willingness to stand fast with new allies.
Of all the rituals they've done, this one, at least, makes the most sense.
"I'm showing him honor," Rodney snaps at the ground. "See? Honor, honor, everywhere." And not a drop for him, Rodney adds in his head, sing-songed like the original rhyme.
The She-girl steps in front of his gaze. There's a queer, curious stillness to her. It's not unlike Teyla's, which is probably why everyone else is easily going along with this. Rodney is too, actually, a weakness he recognizes but doesn't bother questioning right then: they need this alliance. Simple as that.
"You do not look. If you do not look, than how can you honor his sacrifice?"
Rodney tamps down his bark of laughter. "Honor can come in all shapes and sizes," he tries. She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. "I'll look, okay? I'll stare until my eyes water, just. Once it's done."
He's pleading, he knows, cheeks flushed hot enough that he feels sick with it. What others think when they see him he's never known and doesn't bother trying to come up with answers now. They'll be wrong, and therefore irrelevant.
"We are nearly finished," Teyla calls, freeing Rodney of that focused attention. He still gets a parting frown, but off she goes, testing what Teyla has carefully, cautiously wrought.
"Would it not be better for you to do this?" Teyla asks, hefting the soft, winter-green bundle given to her by a girl who looks like she should still be playing with dolls. "You are the one who knows spatial mechanics. You are also the one who—"
Rodney hates her, just a little, and lets that show up in his glare. "The stupid girl who leads them said it didn't matter who it was. You'll be fine, they have a diagram." One Rodney could do better, but that's irrelevant, too. "Just—it can't be me, okay? It can't."
Teyla looks at him, solemn and considering, then eventually nods. "Ronon will assist me," she says, useless information since Ronon's already starting the process while Teyla argues with him. "Rodney... "
"If I thought you would betray my confidence, I never would've been so careless." The words are venomous, low and harsh with anger. She deserves it, too, which is why she only flinches and bows her head before leaving. Teyla does not accept unprovoked anger towards her person without an argument.
A slow, calm, methodical argument.
Rodney's stopped trying to win those. Or even have them.
She joins him now, standing beside him like copper-colored air come to rest. There is no weight to her, sometimes, except when he has to carry her and suddenly she's a lot heavier than she looks. Now, though, when she stands beside him with no more presence than a thought previously dismissed, he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't want to dismiss her—she's Teyla—but he doesn't know how to handle her betrayal.
"You have the detector?" she asks, quietly enough that only the bugs that hum by their ears could hear her. Or Ronon, who doesn't look despite how focused his body is on them.
Rodney's not sure when he got so good at reading their body language. Team, though. Maybe that's why. "Yes, of course. I set it up to vibrate when you were, um. That tricky part."
Several tricky parts, but since Rodney didn't look, he's not supposed to know about them. Teyla makes a soft sigh in agreement, her posture subtly relaxing. The village has no weapons trained on them and they have been, so far, clear and precisely open about their intent.
Rodney isn't relaxed, but as far as internal strife goes, he's relatively comfortable it won't happen. It's not the point.
Ronon joins them a moment later, carrying neatly folded clothes with the weapons lying carelessly on top. It's his own version of calculated defiance and Rodney wishes him much joy of it. No, really, he does. Ronon is their strongest arm, or however the phrase goes, and if he wants weapons left out in the open just in case, then Rodney is not going to question him.
His hands tighten within his pocket, where the life-signs detector beeps comfortingly. If something happens, he'll know.
The leader of the village stands on the podium, up above John's head. "These travelers have come to us from a far off place. They offer us many gifts, a chance to understand the Wall that keeps us safe and to share the joy of those who shelter under the Wall's blessing. Their leader, Colonel John Sheppard, has agreed to show his trust to us. Honor him."
She does something Rodney really wishes he could see, her pale hands flashing over something—a control? In her hand? On the podium itself, maybe? —and suddenly the hum that lives in the back of his mind loosens, breaking up. A well begins to form around John, rainbow refractions painting on his skin as the Wall, a shield more secure than Rodney's ever seen, more flexible and controllable than he's dreamed of, depresses around him so that he is completely exposed, left alone from the protections all the rest enjoy.
Most of the crowd looks uncomfortable. Rodney palms the detector again and reminds himself that it's okay. He'll know if trouble comes.
Inside a space of nothing, on cobble stones that belong to Dorothy's Wizard, John kneels. He is naked, arms bent so they hang free of his chest, his knees spread to show he is utterly exposed, in compliment to the Wall that hangs ten feet out of range. Green rope binds him, to his position, his location, and to the trust he is willingly showing.
Rodney peeks a single glance, then looks away. "I can't," he whispers, and fumbles out sunglasses that are not aviators but just as expensive. A present from Kaleb the last time he was on Earth. He awkwardly gets them in place and closes his eyes behind their blessed, sheltering darkness. "Teyla, make them believe I'm watching."
"Just watch, McKay, it's not that big a deal."
"No, Ronon. I will do what he asks." It's an apology, and later, Rodney knows they'll have a long conversation about boundaries while she looks at him with that fond, exasperated expression he's seen on every woman who's ever claimed to not loath him. They'll talk. He'll hate it. Things will get resolved.
But that's later. For now, he keeps his eyes firmly closed and starts counting down the minutes.
* * *
"You may bring him food and drink," they're told. This girl looks like she's all of twelve, despite her coming out of a house where children peek past green-tinted blinds. The kids look like her.
She shows them where the banquet tables are, the set up not dissimilar to the mess-hall when the kitchen's closed but people still need to eat. Cold things in trays full of ice, kept out of the sun for longevity, fruit and bread that can be left alone for hours, and carafes of a thick, heavy liquid that turns out to be something like good English tea.
Rodney drinks three cupfuls. It's sort of like coffee, after all.
He's slowed to sipping the third before he realizes that Ronon and Teyla are both giving him gimlet stares. "What? The food's for us, too, she said so!"
"You're eating too much," Ronon says. Rodney tries not to blanch under his stare, because where he's learned to read body language, Ronon's become well-versed in Rodney's eating habits. Or drinking habits. Both. And right now for all he's glaring like an implacable mountain, there's curiosity and a hint of worry in barely visible eyes.
Rodney glares right back. "We can't all have the metabolism of a starving preying mantis," he snaps, grabs himself something that looks kind of like a banana-walnut muffin and stomps back to the square.
There are chairs out, now, for those who wish to watch the sacrifice. Most of the village has dispersed, off about their day, as they go in and out of the square. A few remain, though. Men, mostly, and they look as prepubescent as their women-folk. It's like living in the land of Scandinavian Elves. Or at least, the version Jeanie used to tell him about, back when she didn't really understand the differences between boys and girls.
Rodney sits and eats, safely tucked behind sunglasses he doesn't need. Ronon drifts through a few minutes later, heading out towards Sheppard and kneeling beside him, offering food and drink. They chat, their voices low and formless in the sunlight. Rodney tries not to listen.
"I am sorry for bringing up that which you wished to stay secret."
Or, they could have their talk now, where random strangers could overhear them and Ronon could come back at any time.
Rodney gives her the most frightening glare he knows, ignoring the way her eyes widen; it's not really supposed to work on her, so its success makes him feel hollow and uncomfortable. He ignores that, too. "We are not talking about this. Not now. Not later. I expected you to be better at discretion."
Her breathing is shallow, but she nods.
It doesn't thrill him to know that he can hurt her, really hurt her, now. He loves insults, spends loving hours perfecting the craft of words honed to deadly sharp force. But that's different. That's work, or random stupidity of life. That's... other people. Not Teyla, whom he loves the way he should've always loved his sister, who is smarting under a single sentence, as raw as if she were cut to bone.
But, he thinks meanly, she started it. She's a big girl and she can handle it.
The day slips on. Rodney checks the detector every second or two, despite his certainty that if any one other than the humans he's already accounted for appears, it'll alert him immediately. Just because the Wraith don't come here often doesn't mean they need to be stupid. He's incredibly bored, but he's gotten a lot better at handling it over the years. If there's nothing he can do, like now, he's able to actually sit quietly and work on his mental white board, sketching out equations he'll come back to later, theories he'll footnote more correctly once on Atlantis.
He dozes a little too. Hopefully, without snoring.
"Stop pushing." Ronon's rumble soaks through his half-dreams, distorting them to deep purples and blues as Rodney swims back to consciousness. "You aren't helping."
"This opening could not be better designed."
"Sure. If he wasn't so afraid. You aren't male. You don't understand."
"I see that he hurts, I see that his hopes are not cast on infertile ground, and my wishing to push him towards solace is the problem?"
"He's not ready. Teyla. Don't make him lose what he has, and still not go after what he wants."
She makes a frustrated, unhappy noise, and Rodney firmly wills himself back to sleep. He doesn't want to know who the 'he' is. He doesn't want to know what Ronon guesses, what anyone else guesses, what someone in particular might guess. He's good. He is. He's absolutely not thinking about it.
Unwillingly, his eyes open to narrow slits and he stars out at Sheppard, still naked, still bound, head tipped back with his eyes shut, chest arched in a way that could only be termed inviting. He looks like something Michelangelo could've built, the prostration of man, vulnerable and beautiful and—
Rodney yanks his gaze away and goes back to contemplating the weird lighting issue they've been having. He needs to focus on that.
* * *
By the time night rolls around, Rodney's got the sunglasses off and is actively looking for the She-woman. "It's been long enough," he frets. "That position isn't good."
"Rodney, I was careful. The explanation they gave showed long experience with—"
"With people losing limbs? This is a backwater, Teyla, they don't know what they're doing." And he didn't watch to make sure she did, the way she'd wanted. Rodney scans the houses lit from within, trying to find someone who will meet his gaze, respond to his shouts for someone to let them know how much longer this will be.
Nearly nine hours is fucking long enough, as far as he's concerned.
Not, apparently, the She-woman. When she finally appears, she says, "The sacrifice must go through the night. It will be warm, you need not fear his exposure. We will provide cots for you and any who wish to stay and honor. Here." She gestures, and soft, fluffy looking sleeping bags—at least, Rodney thinks that's what they are—are handed over by more not-children.
"That's not what I'm talking about!" Rodney snaps. "I mean—oh, whatever."
It's stupid. It's foolish. It's dangerous. But still Rodney heads towards the middle of the square and kneels down next to Sheppard.
"Hey, Rodney," Sheppard says, his voice a hissing brush of sound. "Your turn to play?"
Rodney shouts over his shoulder, "Teyla, bring him water. And dinner," and then turns his back. He knows he's being peremptory and doesn't care. He's too busy running his hands over the ropes, checking the knots, the strength in each loop and feeling the skin underneath. Sheppard hisses, watching him with hooded eyes but doesn't object. "Bend your feet," Rodney orders, helping John shift his weight on one leg, then the other. "You're losing feeling, aren't you?"
"It's only for a few more hours."
"It's for thirteen more hours, you moron, and whoever taught them how to tie ropes was a sadist. You need to—here, fine, I'll just do it." The babble is mostly to steel himself, because Rodney knows what he has to do. He's known it since Teyla offered him the rope, trusting him to have the skill they need.
He does, of course. He just really, really didn't want them to know it.
"This is going to hurt," he warns and starts with Sheppard's hands. They aren't too bad, fortunately, but the first hard sweep of his thumbs over his right palm has Sheppard making a noise through his nose, eyes wide as he shivers, arching as sensation painfully returns. "Thought so," Rodney mutters angrily. "You're gonna hurt like hell tomorrow. Probably won't be able to walk."
"Uh." Sheppard swallows wetly. "Ow."
"Yeah. It's going to get worse before it gets better, too, so try not to make stupid noises."
He's trying to be brusque and impersonal about it. Just a massage, one that's medically necessary, like the physical therapy almost all of them have had throughout the years. Uncomplicated.
Except. Except except.
Except it's Sheppard, who smells like male musk and sweat and something indescribable that Rodney wants to huff, maybe lean down so he can run his nose along Sheppard's skin to find out the complexities inside of it. The skin, too, holds dangers, since it's warm and supple, pliant except where Rodney runs into scars, and even those move more freely than he expects. The hair on Sheppard's forearms stands up as he works over the muscles there, pushing the heel of his hands in deep, thumbs leaving whitened indentations as his fingers catalog where the veins distend and how to smooth each electrified hair back down, the scratch of it against Rodney's palms, against calluses that don't feel as much detail as he'd like.
And worse, though, is when Rodney brushes up against the ropes that keep Sheppard still. The material is soft, not meant to roughen, just hold, and each glance of it against his skin, with Sheppard's warm beneath, is like a jolt of heat and memory. Rodney tries to push it down, ruthlessly tries to focus on the here and now, but it's impossible. Skin and ropes and this type of massage, it's familiar, sensation that combines with pleasant memories—mostly pleasant—and Rodney can't help it.
It feels good. Sheppard is trusting him, completely at ease as Rodney touches him all over, and there are ropes, dammit, and his head is lolling in a half daze while Rodney works up and down his thighs, and he's so close, so damned close—
"I. I've got to go," Rodney babbles, jerking backwards and falling on his ass. He refuses to look down. It's just a reaction to blood flowing where it's supposed to go after hours of blockage. That's all. That's all it can be, and Rodney has to get out of there right then before he embarrasses himself anymore.
"Nice of you to listen to me," he snaps at Teyla, who has not come to bring John anything while Rodney was there. She has food and drink waiting with her and is sitting with the air of someone who had been pleased to wait, and is surprised to be jolted out into darker emotions.
Rodney doesn't give a damn. "Go, feed him," he snaps. "I'm taking a nap. Leave me alone."
He rolls himself into the blankets provided, aware that they are soft and comfortable mostly because he doesn't want soft or comfortable right now. He wants something physically uncomfortable, something to punish him for coming so close to taking what isn't his to have.
He rolls so that his back is facing the square—Sheppard—and hates this whole damn planet and their Wall and his own certainty that they need the technology. Hates it all.
* * *
It's full dark when he wakes up, muttering. His own issues aside, Sheppard has got to be hurting badly by now, and since he knows what to do, he needs to just go and do it. This isn't an unfamiliar feeling.
Two moons hang low in the sky, shimmering an oddly blue color as they slip past stars that twinkle merrily. He stares at them for a moment, wondering what chemical refracts to blue, then checks his watch. Three am. The days here are roughly equivalent to those on Earth, so Sheppard has six more hours.
The whole town is sleeping, the steady rhythm of breathing in and out echoing off cobblestones as Rodney picks his way past sleepers—only his team and two of the villagers remain, and he's certain those are guards just in case—over to where Sheppard is.
He isn't sleeping.
"McKay," he says, warily, eyes nothing but a wash of reflected light as he squints upward. "Look, about before—"
"It's nothing, forget about it. I. I'm sorry. I should've finished. You're probably hurting pretty badly."
The night isn't cool, precisely, but the wetness on Sheppard's face makes his, "Nah, I'm good," into a lie.
Rodney reacts without thinking: reaches down and cups Sheppard's stubbled cheek, running his thumb across his brow. "Liar," he whispers. He should offer platitudes or reassurances here, remind Sheppard that, much like everything else in the Universe, Rodney knows how to do this, too.
He says nothing.
On his knees, he starts with Sheppard's feet. The rope has enough length for him to help Sheppard shift onto his buttocks—"Jeez, cold!" "I can't bring any blankets over, you know that." "I do know that, was I asking, McKay?" —and stretch it out straight. "Oh, god, that's good," Sheppard breathes when his heel is firmly pushed on, eyes half-closed.
"Good thing you can fly with your mind," Rodney tries to quip. It's so dark, like they're wrapped up in baby-blue blankets, muffled away from the rest of the world. "You'll need a hot bath and a chance to stretch out normally before you should be really walking anywhere."
"Yeah, Shea’an said they have hot springs here."
Shea’an. That was her name. "Good. Are you drinking enough? I know Teyla's been over to see you a few times."
"You could tell, with all that vigorous sleeping?" Sheppard's eyes are still half-closed, but there's more intent in them as they look at Rodney. "Yeah, relax, I'm hydrated. Even ate dinner. She sat with me, for a while, despite the custom."
"Custom?" Sheppard's legs weren't nearly as hairy as Rodney had expected, given the rest of him. His knees are sensitive, though, and Rodney takes deep, even breaths as he switches from one leg to the other.
"Only one person is supposed to be left out, exposed. Not anybody else. They don't actually want people hurt, here."
"Just leaving someone tied up in the worst position for twenty four hours. That's okay," he grumbles. "Because hey, a little rope-tying never resulted in permanent injury before. Claim to have experience when you make someone kneel for this damn long, it's—what?"
Sheppard can't lean forward, but he's got his head cocked like he wants to. "You sound like you want to bring them up in front of some kind of board or panel," he says in a weird tone of voice.
"Nothing so official," he snorts, trying to stay light and impersonal. Sheppard's thighs twitch under his touch and he ignores that, too. "Just a class or eight on the proper way to tie someone up." His fingers slide under the knot along the thick, outer muscle, scratching lightly where he knows sweat has gathered, and wills himself not to think of similar situations and react predictably. He can't. This is Sheppard.
Who is making soft, grateful noises as he arches in relief. "Oh, hell, yeah. Do that more than the rubbing. The rubbing hurts."
"Shall I scratch your nose, too? You need the, um, rubbing more, if you want to stop hurting."
"I'm pretty numb."
"So how can you feel when I do this?" Without really thinking about it, Rodney fits his hands under the complicated weave over Sheppard's hips, using the back of his hand to lift the ropes up enough that they rub along his skin as he scratches and lightly caresses Sheppard's.
The sense-memory of doing just that is so powerful he doesn't hear Sheppard's moan over his own.
"You have done this before." Sheppard's eyes are all the way open now, staring at Rodney. He doesn't look shocked, just triumphant that he'd been right.
"Win a bet, did you, Colonel? How vanilla or not is McKay?"
"What? No, fuck, don't be—don't stop," he adds, frantic when Rodney tries to pull his hand away. "Please, please don't stop," he rasps, low and pleading and it goes straight to Rodney's dick.
It sounds so good. Just like it should, just like Rodney wants him to.
A knot rises in the back of his throat, a lump he has trouble swallowing around. He knows he's exposed, now, as naked as Sheppard is. No cutting insult is going to save him, because it may be dark out, but not dark enough for his reaction to be missed.
"It's not a problem," he says. The words burn in his throat, a caustic contradiction to the way his fingers move in gentle circles. "I mean. It's not a big deal, just ignore it. Don't worry about... whatever you're thinking." He's not looking down, not at all. He can't. He doesn't want to know how he's going to be mocked.
"Rodney. Rodney, look at me."
No, thank you. He really doesn't need to see Sheppard's disgust, or his dismay, or whatever else it might be, whether it starts with 'd' or not.
"Look at me," Sheppard says in his commander's voice.
Rodney looks.
"Whatever you're thinking, stop it. So you like to tie people up. So what. You know how to not hurt them, or you wouldn't be doing this for me. Why the hell would I care about anything else?"
It's an out, more generous than he imagined, and Rodney nods. "Yes, yes, that's right. I just never expected you to, well, not that I never expected, I just wasn't sure how you'd actually take it, and anyway, it's private, it's not anyone business what I do with my."
Lovers always sounds clichéd. Boyfriends is too much of a slap after Sheppard's phrasing. Submissives is a word he'd never used and won't start now. So he looks down a narrow strip of Sheppard's chest and starts massaging there. It's awkward, even after Sheppard gets his legs back under him, rising up so Rodney has a better angle.
He's closer, now. More intimate.
And Sheppard is so damned smooth to the touch.
He's careful not to go near Sheppard's nipples, but there's a knot resting hard almost on the left one. When he tries to skip it, Sheppard makes a soft, protesting sound, and how is Rodney supposed to ignore that? He tries to compensate by being incredibly delicate in his touch, adopting his nuclear-bomb hands, the ones that are rock-steady and impersonal as he fixes whatever needs to be fixed before it explodes. The sound of nails on skin and hair feels incredibly loud in the night, louder than all the breathing—
Breathing. Sheppard's breathing. No, Sheppard's panting.
Rodney closes his eyes tightly and wills himself not to respond. He loves the sounds of sex, the way air rasps hot and needy through a bound body, skin and rope twisting in uncomfortable harmony. He loves when his lovers try to hide their sounds, providing a starter's loud pistol because Rodney loves a challenge and he wants to know exactly how successful he is at whatever technique he uses.
To hear Sheppard, tied up and naked and panting, with an occasional little huff of pleasure/relief when Rodney finds the right place to scratch, or when he tries to swallow back sounds that could be moans or grunts of discomfort when he's massaging blood back into starved muscle...
His hands start to shake.
"Rodney."
"Just, um. Just a minute. I think my leg's fallen asleep."
"No, it hasn't."
"What, and you're an expert on my circulation? It has, actually, fallen asleep!" It has, too, deadened feeling Rodney hadn't even noticed until suddenly it's all he can think of, a respite he's grateful for because if he tries to touch Sheppard again, he's not going to stay impersonal. Not at all. "Maybe I should get Teyla to finish this. If I explain what needs to be done—"
"I swear to god, Rodney, if you leave right now I will break these damned ropes and tie you up, technology be damned."
"Um. I'd rather you didn't," Rodney says, faintly. How else is he supposed to respond to that, with Sheppard glaring him, face carved in lines that try to say fury but really say need?
"Rather I didn't tie you up, or didn't waste our chance to figure out how to reproduce their Wall? Hey, Rodney!" he whisper-barks when Rodney takes too long. "The tying or the technology?"
Oh, god. "Both?"
Sheppard nods, serious, but a slow, syrupy smile brightens the darkness and even calms some of Rodney’s confused mental circling. "Only like it when others are bound, huh?"
"No, actually, I just prefer something different for—you're insane. The sitting here naked has gone to your head, and you're crazy, and we need to get Keller here, now." Because the idea of Sheppard suggesting what Rodney thinks he might be is out of one of his fevered fantasies, a lie he tells himself when it's dark, and he's lonely, and he wants the comfort of then and what could be now. "Let me go get my radio, I'll wake up Teyla and—"
"I asked for you to do it. I wanted you to.” The words tumble out fast, breathless, like if Sheppard doesn’t say them right now he won’t ever say them at all. “Your hands, Rodney, I've watched them since before we came to Atlantis. I've wanted to feel them, and this was like something out of a dream. Or Hustler."
"You're a Flynt man?" Rodney says, stupidly, because he can't trust he's hearing right.
"Teyla said you didn't want to, but you did. I knew you did, and dammit, Rodney, I wanted you to. To let each knot you made sink in until I could feel it every time I breathed, knowing it was you touching me no matter where you were, I—" Sheppard breaks off to breathe in ragged gasps, his hips arching so that moonlight caught on what Rodney has been afraid to look at. He can't look at Sheppard's face, of course. Not when he's saying—things. "I think I was glad you didn't, though."
"What? But you just said!" Giving Rodney mental whiplash has always been a specialty of Sheppard’s, but come on.
Sheppard just says, "'Cause then I would've been hard with everyone to see me." It's low, a whispered taunt, so full of sex that Rodney finally has to look up. Sheppard isn't looking at him, which is bizarre, and even in the moonlight Rodney can see his cheeks are flushed, hell, his chest is flushed, right up along the ropes that curve over his collarbones. “Then everybody would see I liked it. You.”
"You—"
"Please, I'm going crazy, just touch me the way you want—"
"No."
The response surprises both of them.
"I mean." What the hell does he mean? He knows he's certain that 'no' is the right answer, but why? "Not here?" he tries.
Sheppard lets out a growl that has, in previous situations, sparked Rodney into obedience. It is never going to work that way again. "Rodney."
"No. If you w-want to do this, then we're doing it right. With my ropes, and my knots," he doesn't stutter there only because he's forcing himself, "and when we aren't in the middle of an alien planet with people sleeping fifty yards from us."
The look Sheppard gives him wants to be a pout, but reality is slowly reasserting itself. He sighs, moderately heavily and frowns down at his erection. It’s impressive, curving upward and bobbing lightly with each breath. "Dammit."
There’s no way Rodney can leave him like this, and not just because his hands are tied. "Can you be quiet?"
"I've spent most of my life in combat, Rodney, and lived in barracks."
Point. Grateful that Sheppard didn't ask why, Rodney drops his hand unceremoniously to Sheppard's hard, waiting cock and curls his fingers around it. "Then be quiet," he orders, which makes Sheppard shiver agreeably.
"Yeah. I can do that."
He tries, too, biting his lip and tilting his head back while Rodney thumbs over the tip, spreading wetness everywhere so he doesn't strip either of them raw. This needs to be fast, but the faster he goes, the heavier Sheppard's breathing gets, frantic, fast pants that come with noises that escape despite his best effort. His eyes are open, glued to the silver-gilt fist that moves over his cock and his throat moves, distracting underneath stubble Rodney wants to kiss so badly.
And then he moans. Loudly.
"Shit," Rodney whispers. If his hands were free he'd be biting his fist, Rodney knows, but his hands aren't free, which makes this so much hotter. So Rodney leans forward and shoves his tongue into Sheppard's mouth, fucking it so that Sheppard can barely breathe, let alone moan, jerking his cock with fast, efficient strokes that aren't really for pleasure, even though he knows they feel so, so good. Their mouths are wet and loud together, but Rodney has to pretend to ignore it because there's nothing else he can do, and he wants Sheppard to come, he wants it now.
A sudden, hard breath into his mouth has Rodney backing off in time to see Sheppard arch like he's going to break, body shuddering and silent as he comes all over his stomach, the ropes, and Rodney's fist.
For a long time they just breathe together.
Eventually, Rodney uses the corner of his shirt and wipes them up. The stain it leaves is going to be something to behold in the morning, but he's got his tac vest and hopefully that'll cover it. Sheppard is loose to the point of being mostly asleep as he's cleaned and then methodically massaged and scratched and eased. He stays awake, though, sometimes muttering soft sounds that might have been thanks, from someone who is more verbal than Sheppard.
Rodney chooses to take them that way, at least.
By the time he's finished light is just touching the lake where the stargate rests, way off in the horizon. "Only a few more hours."
"Mm. Can't wait."
"Go to sleep," Rodney says, disgustedly fond and knowing it, pushing awkwardly up to his feet.
Halfway there, John bumps his head into Rodney's arm; the only part of him with enough give to reach. His eyes are clear and perfectly aware. "You're gonna come with me to the hot springs," he says, yawning a little, which is gross. But familiar. "They said I could have someone 'attend' me, and that's you, Rodney."
He folds his arms. "Oh?" If Sheppard wants another massage...
But Sheppard just grins, full of lazy hunger, coals that glow in wait for morning’s need for fire. "Yeah, oh. I wanna suck you off in the springs."
Oh. Rodney swallows and thinks frantically of his third grade English teacher, the one who resembled a large vampire bat and was just as mean. His erection had been fading, leaving him almost sated just from Sheppard's orgasm. "You are a cruel, cruel man."
"Just didn't want you getting ideas," Sheppard drawls and settles back almost casually into his pose. "Few more hours."
"No, really, you are more of a sadist than I am," which is maybe a little bit too revealing, but Sheppard just grins, sweet and expectant, and there's nothing Rodney can do but kiss him goodnight and go back to his bedroll. He sleeps deeply until Teyla shakes him awake, saying that they are about to release Sheppard.
“Oh, already?” he asks. “It’s about time.”