Fine Print, or, Solid Proof That Allergies Are Detrimental To Your Bachelorhood
{ NC-17 | John/Rodney }
WIP, written for ishie’s Marriage Challenge [Redux]
*
The jumper’s controls were unresponsive, and John could feel their weightless fall as the horizon loomed closer in the window.
“I need those thrusters back online!”
Rodney cursed. “All the systems are non-responsive!”
“We’re losing altitude -”
“I can see that, thank you very much, Colonel.”
John gripped the controls tighter. “Rodney…”
“I suggest bracing for impact!”
The men exchanged glances, and as the first tree scraped the bottom of the jumper, they covered their faces and waited for the blow.
–
John awoke to the feeble bleating of the jumper’s controls and a snowstorm outside the window. He felt the welt on his head with tentative fingers which came away with dried blood. With his other hand he grabbed McKay’s shoulder and shook him into consciousness.
“mmmfffphht…Wuh? What?” Rodney blinked owlishly at him and took in his surroundings.
“We crashed,” John explained. Rodney gave him the look of death, which was quite a feat for someone who’d been unconscious for God only knew how long.
“Yes, thank you, Colonel, I had forgotten all about the freak storm and the sudden gravity-induced plummet to the ground.”
John rolled his eyes and staggered to his feet. “Can you fix it?”
Rodney was already pulling panels off the walls and muttering to himself about crystals and conduits, so John wandered off into the back of the jumper for the first aid kit. Without a mirror, John wasn’t certain he had gotten all the blood off, or even how serious the wound was.
John eyed the storm, glared at the white flecks striking the window, and settled in to watch Rodney work.
// 20 minutes later //
FzzzzzttTTTT!!!
Rodney yanked his arms out of the panel as it let out impressive sparks and all the lights in the jumper went out. John grabbed him by the vest and pulled him away from the spitting controls.
“Damn it! Now the circuits are fused, and that big explosion? We just lost half the control crystals!”
Rodney stomped around, yelling at equipment and pointing his screwdriver threateningly at anything that deigned spark at him.
John ran a weary hand through his hair. “Can you fix it, McKay?”
“Can a fish live on land? NO! No, I can’t fix it, we’re screwed, we’re dead in here without a power source to run environmental controls. I can’t salvage the crystals, I definitely can’t use that panel anymore, and there’s so much broken I wouldn’t even know where to start!”
“What did you say about not having a power source?”
Rodney collapsed on the bench and put his head in his hands. “Only that power is running intermittently through the ship because most of the command crystals melted and we’re not going to have air for much longer, let alone heat, so if you’ve got some sort of plan, Colonel, we should probably implement it while we’re still warm and breathing.”
“Well…” John began tossing things into packs. “We passed a large power signature a few miles back - maybe it’s a settlement? Somewhere with shelter?”
“That’s all well and good, but we can’t go out in this weather.”
“We can’t stay here, either, McKay. Unless you can fix the jumper.”
Rodney glared at John. “I already said I can’t,” he snapped.
“Then I guess we’re going with my plan.” He tossed a scanner to Rodney and unfolded two thermal blankets.
–
“Oh my god, I’m freezing. I’m numb. This is the worst plan in the existence of humanity.”
John rolled his yes and continued climbing.
“Look - look at my hands! They’re turning blue for crying out loud!”
“Oh, would you shut the hell up? You’re the one in the back, wrapped up in a thermal blanket, using me as a human shield, and you’re complaining about the cold?”
There was blissful silence for a moment, and then, “Well, yes, but my hands are important! I use them all the time! When I’m working, when I’m eating, when I’m…uh, doing other very important things…”
John huffed a laugh, and Rodney grumped behind him some more.
“You should be bigger. Taller. I wish Ronon were here, he’d block more of this wind.”
John’s boots slipped a little in the snow and was only saved by virtue of Rodney’s death-grip on his tac vest.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately we left Teyla and Ronon back in the nice warm village, half a continent away, where they don’t even know we’re in trouble.”
“Oh, no! Does that mean - no one knows we’re here? We’re going to die. We’re going to freeze to death and someone’s going to find us, years from now, and we’re going to look like icicles -”
“Hey, I see light ahead.”
Rodney stopped whining and fumbled around with his scanner. “Yes! This is the place, this is definitely the place. Do you think they have fireplaces? Hot showers? Saunas oh my god I hope they have some place to warm up in!”
–
John and Rodney gratefully accepted the warm drinks the Mountain Keeper offered them. The heat seeped into John’s chilled hands and it stung, but there was no way he was going to put it down. In fact, there was a nice cold place in his belly it would fit just nicely.
He took a sip from his cup just as McKay was receiving his, and it took him a moment to realize what the alarms were that were blaring in his head, and when he did he smacked the cup out of Rodney’s hand and it shattered on the floor.
“What the hell Sheppard?!”
A half-dozen spears trained on them, and John held his hands up in quiescence.
“It had citrus in it,” he calmly explained. “You were going to inhale it, and then you were going to die.”
Rodney’s eyes became big blue saucers and he stared around at the sentries, at the broken cup, the hot liquid seeping into the carpet, and then back at John.
“Oh.”
The Mountain Keeper managed to look both offended and sad at the same time. “I do not understand. What is ‘sitris’, and why will he die if it is inhaled?”
John shook his head and Rodney wrapped his arms around himself.
“No, see, it’s got something in it that my friend is allergic to. If he ingests it, he’ll get really sick and he’ll die. He can’t drink that.”
The faces around them grew solemn, and their gazes flicked to Rodney, giving him sympathetic and downright morbid looks.
“It’s really not that big of a deal,” John assured them, “he can just get something warm to drink inside the city -”
…and the spears came down on them again.
“What? What did I say?”
The Mountain Keeper gave John and Rodney an apologetic look. “The Unclean one is not permitted to enter our city.”
They blinked at him, then at the guards, at each other, and at the Keeper again.
“I’m sorry, come again?”
The Keeper gave them a sad smile. “If your friend does not drink the Cleansing Ale, he cannot enter the city.”
–
“They’re going to send me out into the storm!”
John grabbed Rodney’s arm and dragged him off to the side.
“Rodney…”
“I’m going to die here, and it’s all because of some backwards, asinine rule -”
“Rodney!” John gave him a shake. “Calm down. Everything’s going to be fine. They’re not going to throw you out. We’ll think of something.”
“And what if we don’t? Then what?”
John could see that Rodney was well and truly panicking, blue eyes wide and crooked mouth down-turned.
“Then we’ll leave together, okay?”
Rodney didn’t look convinced.
“The Keeper’s going to talk to his superiors and he’s going to come back with an answer.”
“You really believe that?”
I have to. “Of course I do.”
Rodney tilted his chin up. “Fine. Then I do, too.”
“Good.”
The Mountain Keeper came back then, a small horde of servants in tow.
“I have spoken to the consulate,” he announced. “They have agreed to grant passage to the Unclean one on the following terms.”
One of the servants rushed forward and handed a scroll to the Keeper, who unrolled and read it aloud as the end dangled near his feet.
“The Unclean one must be Bonded to a Citizen of the Mountain. A Citizen is defined as anyone who has drunk of the Cleansing Ale or who has been born within these hallowed walls.
The Bond Ceremony, during which both parties shall bathe in the icy water that runs from the top of our city,” (Rodney and John both shifted uncomfortably on their feet) “shall be followed by the Painting and then the Joining.
For those Bond-mates who are able, the product of their labours shall be a child, in agreement with the blessing of the Ancients many centuries ago.”
The servant nudged the Keeper when John put his hand up. The Keeper made a strange motion with his hands that John assumed meant ‘go ahead’ (but it could have been ‘shut up or die‘, John really wasn’t any good at inter-cultural relations), so John asked his question.
“I’m sorry, ‘Bonding’? ‘Joining’? Those are kind of…vague, wouldn’t you say?”
The Keeper cleared his throat and shuffled the scroll further down.
“Bondmates must engage in Joining as frequently as their Bond demands. Should a Bondpair neglect their Bond, it will collapse, and be rendered void. After one year, if the Bond is still active, the Unclean Mate shall be thereafter deemed Clean and a Citizen of the Mountain, and all children of this Bond shall be given these same titles.”
With a smile and a nod, the Keeper rolled up the parchment, motioned for the servants to come forward, and John and Rodney were grabbed and man-handled into the mountain.
“Wait! You didn’t answer my questions!” John shouted.
“All will be known soon enough, my friends,” The Keeper assured them.
The heavy Gates closed ominously behind them, and John and Rodney were separated at the first turn.
–
“No, stop! I can take my clothes off all by myself, I don’t need you to - AH! DON’T TOUCH THAT!”
–
“I swear it’s usually bigger. That water’s just…really cold and…yeah.”
–
“How long do these storms usually last?”
“The last one raged for months.”
“And how long are your months?”
“100 days.”
“…Figures.”
–
John watched intently as the servants painted intricate designs on his skin. Some brushes were wide and thick, for colouring large sections, and others were narrow and pointed, for more detailed work. The paint itself came in red (for the heart), yellow (for the soul), and white (for truth).
The Painting ceremony took most of an hour, and the rest was devoted to allowing the paint to dry. Then robes were carefully arranged around his body.
John thought he should be more disturbed by his level of undress, and the fact that a dozen men and women had just painted his naked body, but he didn’t seem to care.
It was the first bad sign of many.
–
“This is great. This is really, really great. This robe is really soft - HI COLONEL!”
A gaggle of servants brought Rodney into the Ceremonial Chamber, and Rodney tried to make his way over to John but the servants pulled him back and placed a taffeta-like shawl on his head.
It reminded John of a bride’s veil, and he knew he should be worrying, but he was feeling rather mellow.
“Hey, Rodney.” Was he talking slower than normal? John formed the words with his mouth, trying to tell if they felt any different, but his mouth wasn’t cooperating. So he tried to settle for the ever-present smirk, but that didn’t pan out either. Stupid mouth.
Rodney grinned stupidly at John, who was now within clinging distance, and cling he did. He quickly invaded John’s personal space, but John was too content to argue, and truthfully, he was still trying to figure out if there was something wrong with his mouth.
The Mountain Keeper entered then, and he began chanting.
Which was incredibly dull.
“Did you notice how soft these robes are?”
“Yeah. They’re soft.”
“Did your servants undress you? Mine did. They took all my clothes, and they gave me these new soft robes.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“But they painted me first. I thought it should have been weird, all those people touching me when I was naked. And, you know, painting me.”
“Yeah.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Nope.”
“Is that weird? Should I have been concerned about my nakedness?”
John shrugged.
“Well, it doesn’t matter, because they gave me these nice, soft robes…”
–
The ceremony ended, not that the boys had noticed. They were still talking about their robes.
The Keeper allowed all the others to exit the room before leaving himself. At the doors, he turned to them.
“I am uncertain whether either of you have done this before.”
John and Rodney stared at him.
“Perhaps you need advice?”
They looked at each other.
“Well, one of you must be the ranzoun and the other the ranzeal. Do you understand?”
Rodney frowned. “Are we supposed to?”
“That’s gibberish,” John agreed.
“Ah. Well. I will leave you two to muddle through the consummation on your own, then. There is lubricant in that bowl on the table.”
The door closed behind him, and John heard a series of clicks which he assumed were locks sliding into place, but he wasn’t concerned about that.
“Did he say ‘consummation’?”
Rodney slowly pulled out of John’s embrace. “Um. I think we just got married.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
Rodney wobbled over to the bed and put his head in his hands.
“Oh, God.”
John took in their surroundings for the first time. Gauzy drapes, hundreds of candles, big comfy bed…and lube.
“Holy shit.”
“I think the paint - the paint was drugged. To make us more complacent. I mean, it hasn’t exactly worn off, but I think I’m more panicked than blissed out right now, so it’s not working so much.”
“Rodney -”
“This is all my fault. I am so sorry. We don’t have to do this. Well, obviously we’re not doing this, so I’ll sleep on the floor, just give me the sheets, I’ll use those as a blanket -”
“Would you just stop for a second?”
John’s head was spinning and he was having trouble keeping up.
“Okay, so, we’re married. And they want us to - to have sex - or the Bond won’t…Bondify, right?”
Rodney glared at him half-heartedly. “You just make up words to piss me off, don’t you. And, um, yeah. But we can’t do that, so I’ll sleep on the floor, and I’ll leave tomorrow.”
John sighed. “We’ve been through this, McKay. You’re not leaving.”
“The only way I can stay is if we have sex, and continue to do so on a regular basis, by the sounds of it, and that’s not going to happen!”
“Why not?”
Rodney stared at John. “Are you suggesting…” His voice trailed off and he made a helpless little gesture that encompassed the two of them.
“I think I just did.”
John self-consciously licked his lips and Rodney’s eyes followed his tongue. “We can’t - I can’t ask you to do that for me.”
He licked his lips again, slower this time, and he watched in fascination as Rodney forced himself to look away. “I don’t want to go back into the storm, Rodney.”
John rose and crossed the room to the bed and stood near Rodney, who looked everywhere but at him. “You don’t have to. You can stay here and I’ll go back to the jumper.”
As the panic left him, the drugs took over, and a happy contentment spread through him. “That’s not going to happen.” He reached out and caressed Rodney’s arm. “You’re overlooking the most obvious solution, here.”
Rodney looked up at him. John saw hope, fear, and lust in his eyes. But most of all, he saw guilt.
“John. You’re drugged.”
He had never heard Rodney call him by his first name, and that should have been enough to change John’s mind, but damn it! This was his decision, and they had nowhere else to go, and he was really horny. And by the look of things, so was Rodney. So John licked his lips again.
“You’re drugged, too. We’ll say it was out of our control.”
“But it’s not.”
John pushed Rodney onto the bed and straddled him.
“Is this because you’re straight? Or because you’re trying to save my reputation? Or because you just feel guilty?”
John fumbled in the folds of Rodney’s robes until he touched skin. Rodney jumped at the contact, and John grinned like a shark. He leaned down, mouth centimetres from Rodney’s. “Because a straight man would have walked out the door by now. And I don’t have much of a reputation for doing things by the book, now do I?”
“…No.”
“Then I guess that’s settled.”
John tentatively touched Rodney’s lips with his own, just a light brushing. Their breath mingled while John waited for Rodney to respond. He felt a hand on his thigh, creeping past the edge of his robe, so John pressed his lips to Rodney’s and was kissed back. He used the lightest stroke of tongue against Rodney’s mouth…
…and it reluctantly opened to him. They kissed softly, hesitantly, hands slowly peeling away fabric. John leaned back to look at Rodney and found himself distracted by all of Rodney’s glorious skin.
He pressed his lips to Rodney’s collarbone and licked at the white paint that blossomed across his chest, following it down Rodney’s broad chest until he found himself shuffling back and circling his tongue around a belly button.
John paused and glanced up at Rodney, who was staring back at him with impossibly wide eyes, bottom lip worried between his teeth.
“Stop thinking,” he said, and shrugged fully out of his robe. He tossed it off the side of the bed, and Rodney watched it fall to the ground.
“I can’t,” Rodney insisted, his voice cracking.
“Then I’ll make you.”
John pushed at Rodney until he was moving further up the bed, and John yanked open Rodney’s robe, revealing more paint, more skin, and, most importantly, a half-hard cock.
He gave a weak protest when John reached out and licked the head, but when he went so far down on him that his cock nudged the back of John’s throat, Rodney’s hand only hovered at John’s shoulder a moment before submitting and wrapping tightly in John’s hair.
If his mouth hadn’t been full of Rodney’s cock, he would have grinned. Instead, he undulated his tongue against the sensitive underside and made Rodney groan.
He could tell Rodney was saying something, low and desperate, John’s name, and everything was turning soft and grey around the edges. He used one hand to hold down Rodney’s hips while he reached out and fumbled the bowl of lube towards them.
He used two fingers to scoop out some of the gel, which immediately warmed to his touch, and pressed them against Rodney’s opening. Rodney jumped, clearly coming out of the drug’s haze, and when John looked up at him he was worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.
John let Rodney’s cock slip from his mouth on an up-stroke and rubbed soothingly at the hip he had been forcing down.
“Hey,” he started, but his throat was scratchy and his jaw ached. Rodney’s eyes darkened, and John barely held back his smirk. “You know I won’t hurt you, right?”
Rodney didn’t respond, just watched as he slowly pushed a finger into his ass. John saw his expression waver briefly, a flash of guilt, before he bent his head and took Rodney in his mouth again.
John couldn’t think about the repercussions now, he had a Bond to solidify.
Gentle strokes of his finger matched soothing strokes of his tongue, head bobbing slightly, suction steady, while he pushed deeper into Rodney’s ass. When Rodney started moving, thrusting into his mouth again, he withdrew his finger far enough to add the second, and eased them in.
“Wait -” Rodney started, but John sucked him in deeper, faster, and pushed forward until he could feel his prostate, and then he pressed…
Rodney’s hips lifted off the bed and John forced them back down. His scalp ached from where Rodney had practically torn his hair out, but he had the reaction he was looking for, and just kept massaging, kept sucking, kept pushing, until Rodney was gasping his name and begging for him.
“Fuck, fuck, please! John, please…”
John once again pulled away from Rodney’s cock. “One more,” he promised.
“Oh, god.”
John shifted, slung Rodney’s leg over his shoulder, and put his weight into holding him down. Rodney’s hands grabbed at his shoulders, seeking something to cling to, and John pushed his fingers into Rodney’s hole, feeling it stretch around his intrusion, and nails dug painfully into his flesh.
Rodney’s cock jumped, smeared pre-come on John’s chest, and he couldn’t help the open mouthed kiss he pressed to the crook of Rodney’s elbow. He felt more than heard the hitch of breath, and then Rodney was cupping the back of his head and dragging him down for a desperate kiss.
John pushed his fingers as far as they would go and Rodney pressed back, moaning deep in his throat. They moved like that for several frantic heartbeats before Rodney tore his mouth from John’s to demand more, harder, now, and John was pulling his fingers from Rodney’s ass and Rodney was putting lube on John’s aching cock (which he had somehow forgotten about entirely), and braced his hand on the bed near Rodney’s head and he was pressing in and -
“Oh my fuck!” John gasped, and Rodney winced in pain. He had to force himself to go slow, to ease in, and by the time he was fully seated Rodney was arching up against him. He tried to thrust slowly, to give Rodney time to adjust, but John discovered that Rodney knew the precise way to make him lose control (lips fused to the skin beneath his ear, fingers clutching his hair painfully, nails gouging furrows down his back) and he couldn’t stop himself from taking what Rodney was finally offering.
John shoved against him with every thrust, forcing grunts and gasping moans from him, and he stroked Rodney’s cock with his slick hand, jerking him fast and hard. Rodney babbled into his ear, whimpered his name, and John knew he wasn’t supposed to hear his voice crack at the end, knew it wasn’t supposed to be that hot, knew he shouldn’t be moaning Rodney’s name in return, so he shoved his tongue in Rodney’s mouth to shut them both up, and if it felt a little desperate, it didn’t matter, because Rodney came, whining and trembling, gasping against his mouth.
And then suddenly John was there, too, thrusting mindlessly into him, brain fuzzed over, and soothing hands were bringing him down, stroking his back, and he practically collapsed on top of Rodney.
They laid that way for several minutes, catching their breath, before John moved and let his soft cock slip from Rodney. He rolled over, and they were no longer touching, and it really sucked, but Rodney didn’t seem to notice because he was getting out of bed and slowly pulling his robe back around his shoulders.
John felt the barrier come up between them, so when Rodney found the bathroom and turned on whatever passed for a shower around here, he silently stripped the bed, grabbed his robe and rubbed off the come and sweaty paint, and found a tablecloth and a spot on the floor to sleep.
to be continued