sga_santa | Fic: What lies between

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Title: What lies between
Author:

jeddy83
Pairing: McKay/Zelenka
Rating: Adult
Recipient:

rosewildeirish
Spoilers: For Season Two
Summary: Sometimes Radek doesn't understand Rodney at all.
Notes: Huge thanks go to my beta-readers for their effort with this story. The remaining errors are all mine.

What lies between

"Ow. Ow. Ow. Watch it," Rodney said, his arms and legs giving way at a particularly forceful thrust, tipping him face first into the pillow. "Still feeling delicate here."

Radek frowned and ran a hand down the solid breadth of Rodney's body, unblemished skin slipping like silk beneath his fingers. "I understood you were undamaged by the procedure."

Rodney squirmed beneath him, trying to get his arms up and his face out of the pillow. "Yes, yes, but you try having a sadistic harpy living in your body. She took me for a run twice in the last two days. Twice. I mean, this is me we're talking about. What could she have been thinking? And I don't know for certain what she was up to yesterday, but I woke up on one of the benches in the training room, so I have my suspicions--"

Radek tried a longer, smoother stroke, but though Rodney groaned once in apparent appreciation he kept right on talking. Radek took that to mean he wasn't hitting him in quite the right spot, because although Rodney was rarely quiet during sex he was usually a lot less coherent. He hitched Rodney's hips higher, calculating the precise angle required to shut him up, and drove his cock home over and over until the noises Rodney was making became suitably non-verbal.

"Oh, god, you've killed me," Rodney said later, after Radek had sucked him down and finished him off. He straightened his legs with a wince.

Radek stroked a hand down Rodney's bicep, fingers going unerringly to the small Band-aid Carson had left in the crook of his elbow. "Perhaps now you will see sense, yes? And give up this obsession with off-world. No good can come of it."

Rodney raised himself up on one elbow to glare at Radek, a hand pressed tight against his mid-section. "Sense? I'm invariably the only one who does make sense around here, I'll have you know. What's more, denigrating something before you've had a chance to evaluate it objectively is not only illogical, it's stupid. Oh, oh," he said, sinking back down onto the bed and clicking his fingers.

"Rodney," Radek said, not liking the gleam in his eyes.

"No, no, wait," Rodney said, giving him a crooked smile. "I've just had the best idea."

*

There was water everywhere Radek looked, falling in great sheets from the sky, puddling underfoot and dripping from the ends of his hair onto his glasses. He hadn't even been allowed to put up the hood of his rain jacket, as Sheppard was nervous about the reduced visibility. The air was so thick with moisture he could barely see Teyla and Sheppard ahead of him, and Ronon, on point, had long since disappeared from view.

"Oh, this was a fabulous idea, Rodney, thank you," he said, swiping miserably at the lenses of his glasses. A cold finger of rain slid down inside his collar. He didn't understand why Rodney, of all people, would willingly subject himself to these conditions. "Perhaps next time we should just throw ourselves into a large body of water and be done with it."

To be fair, Rodney didn't seem to be any happier about the conditions than he was. But Radek wasn't feeling especially fair at the moment. Despite having dragged him along, Rodney wasn’t paying him any attention; instead he was falling behind, too busy taking readings and trying to keep the instruments dry at the same time to notice how miserable Radek was.

Up ahead, Sheppard paused before the start of a steep downward slope and shared a few words with Teyla, having her wait behind while he headed on down. She gave Radek a sympathetic smile as he passed. "It is only a little farther now, and I am sure you will find the people most welcoming."

Sheppard stopped half-way down the muddy slope and turned to look back at Radek and Rodney, who had just come up behind him. "Watch your step. It's slippery down here."

"Oh, thank you," Radek grumbled, beginning to pick his way down the incline. "Because we are both so stupid as not to realize things get slippery when it rains." He jerked his head up to glare at Sheppard, but as he did so, the large rock he was standing on slid sideways a few inches, his legs whooshed out from under him and he shot down the hill on his back at breathtaking speed, coming to land with a splash in the muddy puddle at the bottom.

As soon as the initial moment of shock had passed, Radek tried to get up but found that he couldn't. Trapped by the suction of the mud and the weight of his pack, he began flailing his arms and legs, like a turtle on its back, in an effort to turn over.

"Need a hand?" Sheppard asked, when he finally -- finally -- arrived.

"No, I would prefer to lie here in the rain until you all come back."

Sheppard gave him a look of poorly disguised amusement and held out his hand.

Radek was back on his feet by the time Rodney arrived at the bottom of the hill. He had mud dripping from every surface, but Rodney didn't appear to notice his condition.

"Huh," Rodney said, and shoved a hand-held scanner under Radek's nose. "The energy readings on the far side of the town are off the chart. What say we take Ronon and check things out while Teyla and Sheppard do the negotiations?" He bounced on the spot and looked expectantly at Radek, who pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, unable to fathom the reason for the change in Rodney's mood.

"Do I look like I want to go on a hike, Rodney?" he snapped. "Because I would say no. What I want is a bath and a good, strong drink." What he wanted was Atlantis and his lab, with its routine and controlled conditions. Science -- real science -- should not be like this. And he had had enough. If he had wanted to be cold, wet and miserable, he would have chosen another discipline.

*

That really should have been the end of that. Radek had sworn to himself he would not be persuaded to go along with anymore of Rodney's mad schemes. But Rodney had the devil on his tongue at times, which was why he was currently orbiting through space in a broken-down jumper.

"Are you nuts?" Rodney yelled, snatching the crystal out of Radek's hand. "You can't disable the life support systems. Oh, no, wait, if we bypass--"

"Yes, exactly," Radek said, and winced at the sound of something heavy colliding with the hull. It was supposed to have been a routine mission for the three of them, a quick trip to an uninhabited planet Teyla thought might contain reserves of naquadah. They hadn't even planned to leave the relative comfort of the jumper, but the power systems had failed before they had reached the orbital gate on the return portion of the trip. "The wires have fused in the jumper pressurization system. If we reconfigure the circuitry--"

"--we should be able to get the power back online." Rodney looked happy, which meant smug. "Well, get to it."

"Wait. Did I hear right?" Sheppard asked, swinging around his chair to look at them. "You're disabling life-support."

"Huh," Rodney said, leaning past Radek and touching an extractor tool to a wire on panel. "Oh, it's not important."

"Not important?" Radek could hear Sheppard's raised eyebrow without having to see it.

"Can you see if you can get them to--"

"Rodney!" Sheppard said.

"It won't be a problem. Life support will go down once we enact the bypass, but the residual effects will enable us to survive for the, oh, thirty seconds or so it will take us to get through the stargate."

"And if it doesn't work?" Sheppard asked.

"Of course it will work," Rodney said. "Now if you don't mind, I've got more pressing things to do than to stand around answering your questions."

They set to work in earnest then, passing equipment back and forth with little or no conversation, as though they were a single organism. Four hands and one brain. That was what Radek loved best about working with Rodney; for a moment, he forgot that he was trapped in a flying coffin, propelled only by their momentum.

"How's it coming, guys," Sheppard asked a few minutes later.

"A few minutes more," Rodney said. "This isn't as easy as it looks, you know."

"Uh, guys, I don't think we have a few minutes."

Radek peered past Sheppard through the viewport. The stargate was coming up fast. Without power they had no means of maneuvering, so there was little to no chance the jumper would thread the needle of the gate, and if they hit the rim at this speed, they wouldn't have to worry about the jumper problems any longer. The explosive properties of the naquadah would take care of that, and them too.

Radek scrambled to get the last of the crystals into the right slot, shouting "Now!" as it clicked into place, and with a whoosh of the stargate's vortex they were home.

He felt limp once they had opened the rear door and his adrenaline had drained away, and sagged onto the bench in the back of the jumper. The rear compartment was a mess. He should get up and start stowing the equipment; some of it was too valuable to be left lying about for just anyone to handle, and it had taken him a week's work to calibrate the hand-held oscilloscope to his liking. If nothing else, he should at least get up and go to the debriefing.

But he was still sitting there an hour later, too lethargic to do anything, when Rodney bounded up the ramp and dropped onto the seat next to him. "What on earth are you still doing here? Elizabeth was asking about you."

Radek rubbed his eyes, pushing the tips of his fingers up under his glasses. Rodney slid in close and massaged the pressure point at the base of his skull with one thumb. In the quiet of the jumper bay he felt a measure of peace, but Rodney, apparently still riding his adrenaline high, didn't stay still for long, immediately beginning to coil one of the half-dozen cables they had used in their frantic attempts to fix the jumper. And as he picked up a second, he turned to Radek suddenly and said, "That was something out there today, huh. Wasn't it something?"

He smiled his crooked smile, looking for the world like he expected Radek to agree.

"If by something, you mean stupid and unnecessary, then, yes, I agree." Now he understood why Rodney liked off-world missions. There was no other explanation: clearly, Rodney was insane.

*

He didn't understand just how insane, though, until they discovered Project Arcturus a few weeks later.

Two days after Rodney's return from Doranda, Radek was still stewing about the disaster. Something Rodney obviously did not get, or else he would not be here, waving a laptop in his face and talking to him about variations in scalar wave patterns on the Ereion homeworld.

"You think I have forgiven you," Radek said, pushing aside the laptop. "I have not."

"Excuse me?" asked Rodney, pulling back. He had the same expression on his face he got when a set of calculations didn't add up.

"It was not bad enough that we lost Dr Collins to the energy surge. No, you had to go and risk your own life. And for what? A new technology, a meaningless award, a chance to stroke your massive ego. You are not infallible, and we cannot afford to lose you. Have you ever even considered that?" He drew in a sharp breath, only realizing he had been shouting when he saw the sea of interested faces peering through the window.

"But that's-- I thought we dealt with this. Besides, that's not the point. If you'll just look at these readings you'll see what I mean. The resultant time-density gradient is much greater than the one we found on--"

Radek had had enough, and pushed away from the desk.

"Hey, where are you going?" Rodney called after him, but he didn't stop.

*

Radek didn't go to the gate room to see Rodney off on the mission to Ereia. He was too busy continuing the repairs to the faulty jumper to waste time on something so trivial. And then he was busy adjusting the heating system in sector H and recalibrating the power equations for the connection to the Ancient mainframe, so he really wasn't noticing that it had been six hours, and then seven, since he had departed.

He had rarely been so productive; by mid-afternoon he had already moved on to fixing the glitch in the transporter system that took everyone out the west pier at sunset. Which just went to show what he could achieve when he wasn't being otherwise distracted.

"What?" he asked Miko, and snapped his fingers impatiently at her for a Phillips head screwdriver. If Rodney were here, he wouldn't have had to wait.

She handed him a flathead, forehead creased with concern. "Perhaps if we radioed Dr Weir, she might have some information."

"No, the other Phillips head," Radek said, snatching it out of the toolbox. "If you are not concentrating, you are wasting my time."

Miko's mouth crumpled a little around the edges, but she stopped worrying about anything but the job at hand, and that was that. At least until, Elizabeth's voice came in over his radio.

"Radek, we need you in the gate room. There's a situation with Sheppard's team."

*

It was Rodney. Of course it was. There was no question of staying in Atlantis -- who else was there to send? -- but strangely, that was the last thing on his mind. "He touched nothing before he was trapped, are you sure?"

Sheppard shrugged.

"Well, did he, or didn't he?"

"That's what it looked like. You know, you might want to hurry, instead of asking all these questions."

"This is important. It was blundering around without thinking that-- that--" Radek stopped in his tracks as they entered the low-ceilinged, underground dwelling. He was completely unprepared for the sight of Rodney lying pale and still, suspended in mid-air by a shaft of cold, blue light.

"There has been no change in his condition, Dr. Zelenka," Teyla said.

"And you would know this how, if he can't speak?"

"It is true his is unable to speak to us, but I believe he is still conscious. He seems to respond to us by blinking when we speak to him."

Radek connected the laptop up to the main panel. "Oh, this is bad."

"How bad?" Sheppard asked, leaning over his shoulder to read the laptop display.

"It is an Ancient device for interstellar communication. I have seen the specifications back in Atlantis."

"That's good, right? You'll know how to fix it."

"Maybe. Maybe not," Radek said, with a shaking his head. "Problem is, it isn't working correctly. Initial energy to power-up the device is drawn directly from the subject. After that it should be self-sustaining, but Rodney's brain is not sufficiently similar enough to an Ancient's brain for the device to engage correctly. The machine is draining more and more energy from him each time it tries to initialize."

"Can you fix it?"

"I am trying to work that out now, thank you."

It took a lucky break, six trips back to the jumper for parts and thirty long, drawn-out minutes for Radek to free Rodney.

His skin was clammy and cold when they took him down, his breathing shallow, but he was conscious enough to remain on his feet when supported.

"Right let's go." Sheppard indicated that Ronon should take Rodney's other side, but Radek was reluctant to let him go.

"Can we stop?" Rodney said when the jumper came in sight. "I feel a little--" Then he sagged forward at the waist and threw up in spectacular fashion all over Radek's shoes. His head lolled from side to side as they got him upright. "Sorry," he mumbled, clutching tight to the collar of Radek's shirt.

Radek sighed. "It is only to be expected."

*

It was two days before Carson released him from the infirmary, and Rodney was so worn out by the short trip from the infirmary he didn't even complain when Radek stripped him, put him to bed and climbed in after him.

Radek had only meant to stay until Rodney fell asleep, but Rodney smelled so good, and felt so whole and unbroken, he couldn't stop touching him. His hands skimmed up and down his body, stroking his soft belly and the line of his jaw, tweaking his nipples. He kissed the spot on the back of Rodney's neck that made him shiver, and then out along his shoulder, revisiting well-loved pleasure spots, until Rodney was humming like an engine in perfect working order, and the cold had been driven away.

Only then did he reach for Rodney's cock. It twitched impatiently in his hand, and Rodney made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and said, "Fuck me." But then that was the way Rodney did everything -- bull at a gate and damn the consequences. Little wonder he needed protecting from himself.

"No, like this," Radek said, sliding his own cock between Rodney's thighs. "You are enough to deal with. I do not need a problem with Carson as well."

He made it slow, like a rolling ocean wave, ignoring the way Rodney squirmed and tried to force the pace. Radek wanted it to last a lifetime, or as long as they were allowed in this place, which was, all things considered, likely to come nowhere even close. Coming was both pleasure and pain, but all things eventually came to an end.

"I'm not going to stop," Rodney said, in the quiet afterward. "It's of vital importance to the mission."

"No," Radek agreed. He daren't even have hoped for that. He pushed his face up between Rodney's shoulder blades and held on tight.

*

True to his word, Rodney was agitating for a return visit as soon as Carson declared him fit.

"Ah," said Radek, when he arrived in the gate room to meet Rodney afterward and found him covered in bright orange algae. He couldn't stop his face from twitching with suppressed laughter. "I am beginning to understand how vital these missions are to the welfare of Atlantis."

"Oh, laugh it up, chuckles, while you still can," Rodney said, fending off the more enthusiastic advances of the half-dozen chattering botanists clustered around him. "I've got the perfect job for you. M7G-677. They're having a little trouble with their EM field generator. It'll be a cakewalk."

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From:

filenotch.livejournal.com

"Oh, thank you," Radek grumbled, beginning to pick his way down the incline. "Because we are both so stupid as not to realize things get slippery when it rains."

Great Zalenka voice, and good vignettes. Thanks.

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It's like finding Ronon under your tree...

Fic: What lies between

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