"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny..."

I've been unable to talk the little evil voice out of posting this--or shutting said voice the hell up through copious application of chocolate. One down, eleven to go...

This is a companion piece to Refraction (aka, "Five Sexual Encounters Rodney McKay Did Have")--in fact, it's the parts that maching_monkey made me pull out of Refraction (which, I have to point out, I wrote long before "Sanctuary" aired, so the short McKay-Grodin conversation in that ep [watch me dance around explicit spoilage!] amused me to no end, in the "I so nailed that" sense *g*). So this is pretty much the antithesis of Leah's fault. This is all me (and the cumulative stress of the Week of In-Laws).

McKay/Ford, McKay/Zelenka, McKay/Bates, McKay/Kavanagh, McKay/Carter. R-NC-17ish. Slash. Het. Borderline non-con. Oblique bondage. Kind of tweaked. Not so much a happy ending.

er, anyone still reading this? real McKay/Sheppard fic on the way, I swear.


Through a Glass Darkly (Five Sexual Encounters Rodney McKay Never Had)

Aiden Ford had hovered about Rodney in a display of conduct most unbecoming a Marine officer, until Rodney had turned to him in exasperation.

"Can I help you with something, Lieutenant?"

The direct question seemed to strengthen Ford's resolve; he stood up straighter and stopped twisting the baseball cap he had clutched in his hands. "I think you can, sir. But we should probably do that--in your quarters." That seemed as far as he could go; he gave Rodney an unblinking stare until Rodney nodded assent. Ford didn't speak at all as they passed through the hallways, just kept mangling the cap. But once the doors closed, he tossed the cap aside and put his pent-up energy to better use.

Rodney had to tell Ford for the third time not to call him "sir" while the lieutenant was straddling him. But it finally sank in.

~

Zelenka--Rodney swears he will remember that name--Zelenka had been so matter-of-fact about the matter that refusing seemed completely illogical. They'd been working late into the night, past tired and into wired-from-exhaustion, mapping out engine control pathways in Jumper Two.

They walked back to the crew quarters, bouncing ideas off one another in an ever-more-delirious fashion. Zelenka had wanted circuit diagrams from his quarters, had distractedly invited Rodney in for coffee (neither of them, of course, being at any risk of caffeine-related sleep deprivation).

Somewhere around 2am, Zelenka took off his glasses, sighed heavily, and dropped the electronic notepad he was working on. "I need a break, to clear my head," he said. "But I don't want to sleep--I feel like we're very close." He paused, looked blearily at Rodney. "I find that, uh," he made what was unmistakably a masturbation gesture, "helps me focus. Do you want...?"

They jerked each other off, then cleaned up and went back to work.

When Rodney finally trundled off to bed, he thought it had been a very productive evening.

~

Sergeant Bates had been slowly coming unglued ever since Colonel Sumner died. That was Rodney's only explanation.

Rodney felt like he should have been disturbed that their head of security was particularly fond of being restrained. But that would have required him to dwell on the incident, and--well, the less he thought about it, the better.

~

Kavanagh had been a mistake; Rodney's still not entirely sure what happened there. Kavanagh was being an ass, and Rodney went off on him for it, telling him that not only was he a self-serving prick, he was a stupid one, to boot.

The sense of deja vu that hit him at that, though Rodney'd been the one on the receiving end of that kind of dressing-down in the past, brought him stuttering to a halt. He lost the momentum he'd built up, and Kavanagh made a comeback, calling him an arrogant bastard who thought he was God's gift to science. He tried to use his height to intimidate Rodney, and that was a mistake, because Rodney'd been menaced by far scarier things than a self-conscious American scientist.

When that didn't work, Kavanagh actually pushed Rodney. Rodney got a chance to use some of those muscles he'd been reluctantly developing out in the field, shoving him up against the wall and telling him off at point-blank range.

Then he'd felt Kavanagh's erection firming up against his stomach.

Rodney didn't kid himself that it was personal--Kavanagh rarely left Atlantis, both through his own inclination and because few people wanted to work with him. This fight was probably the most visceral excitement he'd had in a long time.

Adrenaline did strange things to the body.

When Rodney had started rubbing Kavanagh's erection through his clothing, it had been about power, about proving he was better than Kavanagh in a very physical way, about winning the argument and shutting Kavanagh up. But when it was over and Kavanagh was gasping, head hanging down, hand covering the stain that was already seeping through the front of his pants, Rodney felt ill. He muttered an apology and left Kavanagh alone in the lab.

They weren't so different, really. And while Rodney was, in fact, smarter... he was also apparently a far bigger asshole.

~

Samantha Carter... might not actually have happened. Rodney was never entirely sure.

His most reliable recollection of the event was that the SGC's "Yay, We Saved the Planet--Again" party, after they'd narrowly avoided being vaporized by Anubis's supercharged stargate, was the best-provisioned party he'd ever been to. And that every anecdote he'd ever heard about military types being able to put away alcohol in vast quantities had been validated--in spades.

Rodney had stumbled back to his guest quarters alone. He'd only managed to get a few hours of sleep before the party, which in retrospect was not one of his better ideas. He had no idea how long he lay on the bed, eyes closed and head spinning, before he noticed that someone else was in the room. And that was only because he felt the bed dip as she sat next to him.

Samantha Carter looked incredible when she was drunk. Or, maybe, when only he was. Her eyes were glittering and her cheeks were flushed, and she gave him a tight little grin that managed to be both angelic and wicked. Also, there was a fuzzy halo around her. Rodney squinted up into the fluorescent lights, and she moved away briefly to dim them.

In the mostly-darkness, he felt more than saw her lean in.

"Here's what's not going to happen, McKay." Her breath brushed his cheek, and she smelled like the same high-octane punch he'd been drinking himself. "I'm not going to touch you. Not going to lay a single finger on you. And you're not going to say a word." She shifted closer. "But if you want to touch yourself, feel free." She blew across his lips, and he traced the movement with an unsteady hand.

Her voice dropped to a husky whisper that did incredible things to his insides. "See, that 'sexual tension' thing you think we have... doesn't exist. So I'm not going to unbutton your shirt and run my hands down your chest.

"I'm not going to slowly unfasten your pants. I'm not going to rub my hand over you, firmly..."

When Rodney woke up the next morning, his hand was cramped, his clothes were a mess, and he was alone. And when Major Carter walked him out, she gave him no indication that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Rodney played along, because it was possible he'd imagined the whole thing.

She kissed him on the cheek, and he might have smelled fruit punch on her breath. But he couldn't tell. And he couldn't ask. And the dilemma gave him a new sympathy for gays in the American military.

***