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Sheppard had a baby. He didn't exactly have it yet, but it was there, growing inside him. Rodney could never wrap his mind around the idea. He'd never understood it even when he'd first received the kangaroos and the bees speech. It didn't make sense all those years living with his father's "business" and it didn't make sense when his ex-girlfriend had finally insisted he go and get Z-tested. Rodney could understand the basics of course - it was biology, not rocket science. But he just couldn't seem to come to terms with the idea that anyone, Sheppard included, simply had a life growing within him. And it was a life, whatever the hell anyone said. It was a life that contained some part of Sheppard, part of John, and therefore it was precious.
And of course there was the matter of how it had gotten in there. John had sex. He'd had sex with a man. Rodney had seen the pouch scar in the few brief glances he'd been able to grab of John's bare, beautiful chest. So John must have had sex with a man at least once before. But as long as Rodney had known him, John only flirted with women. Despite the previous pregnancy, Rodney had always been convinced that John was a Henry, an imperial carrier so determined to love only women that he would ultimately doom his bloodline.
But John obviously wasn't a Henry if he was gestating now. Conception had clearly occurred during their extended "vacation" as John liked to call it, even though they all privately knew it was an exile. So John let a man take him and there were only two explanations: that without Atlantis, John had wanted out of the military and back to his old life of nobility or that there had always been a man back on Earth that John had been willing to give himself to and all the alien bimbos were just him biding his time. Rodney didn't know which reason hurt more.
He'd always thought they had a connection. He'd been content to stew in the romantic tension between them because he believed John was a Henry and they had one of those great platonic love affairs, like something out of Lord of the Rings. But it wasn't like that at all and he just wanted to know why. If John had been willing to carry for the sake of returning to his family, then why not Rodney's child? John knew that Rodney dreamed of passing on his genes someday, even if he wasn't good with children. No, Rodney was wrong, there was a more painful possibility - that John had always been in love with someone else and had just never bothered to tell Rodney.
He ignored to tight feeling in his heart and pushed back the welling of tears in his eyes before heading out to meet Dr. Biro. John might want to do everything on his own as usual, but Rodney was his proxy and he'd take that duty seriously, regardless of whether John truly did love him or not.
***
Rodney stood outside of John's door, pulling on his game face. He needed answers and the last thing he wanted was for John to figure out how much this was bothering him and use that to keep Rodney distracted from the answers he needed.
When Rodney finally got up the courage to ring the chime, John opened it almost immediately. He looked tired, dressed in loose sweatpants and nothing else but the bandages wrapped around his pouch slit. "Rodney," he acknowledged, gesturing for Rodney to come in and take a seat on the bed. "What's up, buddy?"
"I, um, well, you see." There really was no delicate way to put it. "I went to see Dr. Biro. She's a little scary, but I guess the best OBGYNCLO they could find and she said that you'd been diagnosed with labor sickness before, so as your proxy I'd have to be very diligent. There's a note in your file saying you should go on leave two weeks before your labor window. Now, I know you and I know how stubborn you are so I took the liberty of arranging for you to take that leave here. Elizabeth was very sympathetic, and I think she's wiling. I even managed to get tentative approval from O'Neill, so long as I stay on top of things as your proxy. Which means I need to know what happened before."
"You don't have to worry about it, Rodney," John replied, not meeting Rodney's eyes. "It won't happen again."
"You can't know that! Labor sickness is a physiological reaction. It's not something you can control."
"I can control it because it never happened. It was just something my JAG attorney used to get me to Antarctica instead of out on my ass."
Rodney had heard about the black mark. In fact, he'd accused O'Neill of labor sickness himself when Elizabeth said the man had almost denied their request for the man with the strongest ability with the gene in the service. Sure, practically everyone of noble descent had the ATA gene, but Sheppard was the only one who had any skill at using it. Carson explained it with some voodoo about how the gene itself was sex linked but the secondary genes that influenced brain development to send the right signals to the technology with a mental component were not, but Rodney almost preferred to believe that John was meant to be part of the expedition because he was important not just to the future of Pegasus, but to Rodney. Now, he wasn't so sure.
But Rodney swallowed his hurt. John was still his friend and he'd been given the duty of proxy, which he took very seriously, so regardless of John's attitude, he'd have to push him beyond his comfort zone. "That's good. I guess the fact that you never met a crucifix you didn't want to martyr yourself on will give us leverage to say it was more your normal MO than the labor sickness if anyone at the mountain wants to recall you."
John didn't contradict him, but neither did he offer any greater detail. But then again, this was John Sheppard; Rodney would be an idiot if he expected more.
"I need to know exactly what happened."
"Rodney, it's none of your business." John sighed. "No, that's wrong. It is your business because I was stupid enough to make you proxy and think you wouldn't take the job seriously. But, trust me, you don't want to hear it."
"What I do or do not want doesn't matter, so go ahead. Tell me." John was obviously struggling, but as much as Rodney wanted to, he couldn't reach out to him. He'd learned well enough by now that help was the last thing John Sheppard ever wanted when he was hurting.
John grit his teeth, turning away so he didn't even have to look Rodney in the eye. "There's not much to tell. I was engaged to another pilot who flew special ops missions for the army. Under the Noble Families in Service Agreement, both parents stay in until incubation in exchange for paternity leave and simultaneous transfer out of combat zones until their next re-up. I could have used up my leave until labor and then taken an honorable lineage discharge, but we made the decision not to. Leo flew a group of army rangers behind enemy lines and then didn't report back. I snuck away from my proxy, hijacked a chopper and went after him. Simple as that."
That just made Rodney angry. Only the United States would allow so backwards a law that would risk an unborn child's life just for the sake of a few months more military service, but then again the United States had chosen to follow the old ways of the Romans - they were founded by Masons, after all, and enshrine all of the backwards traditions that Canada eschewed in favor of the new doctrine of rights. "I take it the neonate turned out not to be viable."
"I don't know. We were pinned down when I went into labor. It was more important for me to get Leo out than worry about the neonate."
"If that's what your military forced you into, then I don't blame you for not trying again."
"Jesus McKay, I didn't try again because Leo died anyway."
That was just too much. Rodney couldn't accept that amount of tragedy. It just wasn't fair that someone as good as John should have to experience that. After he went back to save a man no matter what, after he left behind a life of luxury to do what he thought was the right thing, after he'd been so good to Rodney when he really had no reason to give a petty, arrogant geek the time of day, John deserved a kid and a house and a dog and a husband who loved him and cherished him like the rare precious thing that he was.
He'd only just realized that he'd been staring blankly at John for countless minutes when John finally stood up, reaching for some of the soothing pouch-cream that Rodney knew so well. "I said you didn't want to hear it."
"I didn't mean that. I just didn't know what to say. You know I'm bad with people. I'm trying to be better, but sometime, you drop a bombshell like that and I have no idea what to say except that I'm sorry that happened and I hate that it happened to you."
John shrugged, his nonchalance so practiced that it made Rodney's heart ache all the more. "There isn't anything else to say. It was years ago in another galaxy. And if I have any similar symptoms out here, the donor will be too far away for me to try to rescue him."
"I'm still sorry." Rodney reached out tentatively to grab John's hand. His fingers felt like ice. Rodney remembered his father. His hands, too, were always cold.
John squeezed Rodney's hand gently back. "I know you are." After a long pause he finally continued. "The stupid slit is itching like crazy, so if you wouldn't mind--"
Rodney grabbed the cream almost without registering it, reaching for John's bandages. He'd done this so many times before, it was almost second nature.
Except this time John's hand was cold steel on his. "What the hell are you doing, McKay?"
Well, if John was maxing out his sharing-quota for the day then Rodney might as well do him the courtesy of reciprocating. He stopped unspooling John's bandages, but held the cream tight in his lap. "My father was a genius physicist. Almost as brilliant as me. He actually came up with some theories that we now use to calculate energy energy fluctuations in wormhole travel, but at that time traversible wormholes were a thing of science fiction. Nobody in the scientific community believed or accepted him."
John looked interested, but wary, wrapping his arms about his chest to keep Rodney from intruding further into his personal space. Rodney didn't blame him, proxy or not, he'd completely crossed the line. The best he could hope for now was to gain John's understanding.
"But he was determined. He knew he was right - and he was. So he looked for something that would pay the bills but not interfere with his research. I happened to be his first surrogate contract for a Henry and his wife, but by the time I was born, the couple had separated and my father was stuck with me. So since legal responsibility for a child follows gestation not incubation, after that he decided to go the route of incubation-only surrogacy for busy nobles and pouch-crowding cases. It was a strain on his body, but he always believed that the body was just a cage for the mind. He would've liked the Ancients, come to think of it. When I was a kid, he used to get me to help him while he worked on the chalkboard. I forgot for a minute and just assumed."
"You're an expert then?" To Rodney's astonishment, John reached for his bandages, unwrapping them slowly to reveal more of his chest. Rodney had never seen much of it. In retrospect that was most likely due to John hiding his scar, not any closeted heterosexuality.
Rodney gulped, shifting and hoping to god John didn't notice him hardening in his pants. He'd never been excited by pouch-porn, but to sight of John reaching out to him, finally allowing him to see a small amount of vulnerability, was just overwhelming. "I'm a genius." He moved to lean back against John's headboard. "This'll be easier if you sit in front of me and I reach around from behind."
John smirked at the innuendo, making Rodney hard-on go to full mast so quickly that Rodney felt a dizzy spell coming on. But against all expectations, John was actually sitting between Rodney's legs. Rodney could lean forward two inches and they'd be touching. But he kept his distance. He was here to help John out, not molest him. Rodney reached out a shaky hand coated in cream. He felt along John's chest at first, locating the hard skin of the slit among the soft hair on John's chest. Rodney's father kept the area around the slit shaved for efficiency's sake, and countless incubations had left his skin soft and flexible. In order to cater to wealthier clients, he'd kept his body in optimum shape for carrying - just enough muscle covered by a small layer of fat.
John, on the other hand, was all wiry muscle, the skin on the developing pouch hard from only one labor, years ago. Heat radiated from the area, his body working hard to reopen the slit. Rodney dug his fingers in to the hard swollen flesh, massaging the cream in to get the blood flowing and encouraging the process of separation. John gasped, his hands trembling where they rested on the bed.
"Too much?" Rodney asked. His father's pouch had rarely been closed, so Rodney wasn't as experienced at this particular massage.
"No. Just sensitive. It was like this before."
Rodney nodded even though John couldn't see. "Did your fiancee do this for you?"
John laughed, quickly followed by a hitching gasp as Rodney lightened his touch to feel along the slight ridge where the pouch opening would start, spreading the cream between. "No. He was plebeian. The whole process amazed him. I didn't want to make him feel stupid reminding him of all the little customs I barely even remember learning myself."
John sounded sad, wistful. He'd really loved the donor of his first child and it sounded as though he'd wanted to carry then. Rodney wondered if his current reluctance was due to the tragedy of the first labor or the fact that he didn't love the donor. He thought it was probably cruel of him to wish for the latter, but he then John let out this deep moan and Rodney didn't care if it was cruel, he wanted John no matter if he was carrying someone else's child or not. He knew he was risking everything, but after another series of seemingly involuntary moans, he let his fingers trail up from the pouch slit to brush lightly against John's nipples, noting that they were already hard. Maybe he could pass it off as an accident.
"Oh god, Rodney, please tell me you didn't do that for your father." Or maybe not so much an accident.
Instead of responding, Rodney tweaked the nipple, letting his other hand skim down John's chest, giving him enough time to say stop if he wanted. John didn't say anything, just pushed back into Rodney's arms, letting his head fall back on Rodney's shoulder and practically writhing in pleasure. If Rodney though he was hard before, he could pound nails now. "John," he gasped, pulling him into a tight embrace and breathing in the sweet smell of his skin, letting that crazy hair tickle at his nose. God, it had been so long that he'd wanted this. When his hand finally trailed down and below the waistband of John's pants, John gasped, surging up into Rodney's grasp then back down so Rodney's cock was nestled right against that perfect ass. "You have no idea how much I want you right now," Rodney told him. It was true. John would never know. Rodney couldn't imagine him being so desperate for someone. If John asked right now, Rodney would do absolutely anything for him.
"As much as you want, Rodney. I need--" he finished with another inarticulate sound of pleasure, pushing back against Rodney to pull his pants off. Rodney hated to break the contact so he pulled himself up to a kneeling position to unzip and pull his pants down before John leaned back against him, turning his head for a kiss as Rodney slowly jerked him off, trailing light touches against his pouch scar as he went. "Knew this would be good," John whispered, kissing Rodney's cheek and his nose and the side of his mouth before spinning around and taking Rodney's straining cock in his hand, cushioning Rodney's head from slamming back against the headboard as he practically straddled him, pushing him down. "Your hands. You always talk so much with your hands."
Rodney talked with his hands now, running his fingers up and down John's erection like playing a piano's keys, teasing him until John gasped brokenly, kissing Rodney again and again. It was a revelation, that John could be so tender compared to his usual shuttered self. Rodney loved him even more, though he preferred not to admit he loved him at all. His thighs started to ache, so Rodney carefully pushed John to one side to pull his pants off all the way before stretching out on top of him, their erections brushing and John's pouch-slit tender between them. Rodney had never slept with anyone carrying, but he could finally see the appeal. John pupils were dilated nearly black, panting and shaking with pleasure every time Rodney thrust against him.
He'd read somewhere that penetration was especially good for imperial carriers while gestating, because a second embryo could be fertilized and held in wait for the very second labor was complete. He didn't know if John had gotten to feel that before, but Rodney wanted it for him now. He wanted to make John feel as much pleasure as he could, strip the last traces of worry and guilt from his features until he felt nothing but the pleasure of being loved. "So beautiful," he gasped, breaking another passionate kiss, "I want to take you. Let me take you."
John froze for a moment. "Last thing I need right now is another neonate." One of the biggest problems with imperial carriers was that they were fertile all the time, with no method of hormonal birth control that didn't lead to premature sterility.
"Have any condoms?"
"Maybe in the bathroom," John sighed, panting down from the brink of orgasm they'd been at earlier. "It's been a while."
Rodney wanted to remind him that it hadn't been a while since he'd actually had sex, hence their current predicament, but he figured the comment wouldn't be welcome. He spared a moment to wonder if John was turned off by his slightly flabby ass as he practically dove into the bathroom to find John's medical kit. He knew for a fact that Carson stocked them with spermicidal condoms.
"Ha, ha! That quack is good for something after all." He almost ran back into the bedroom, unwrapping the condom as he went. He couldn't possibly leave a hot Air Force colonel alone in bed for too long.
But when he returned, he found John absently fingering his belly, a look of regret on his face. The look brought Rodney screeching to a halt. He still had no idea about the circumstances of John's gestation. Maybe he was stepping into a minefield by sleeping with the man now when he was vulnerable.
"John, we don't have to if you don't want to."
John finally met his eyes, a slow, mysterious half smile spreading across his features. That one look held more allure than any look Rodney had ever received from a lover. Before he knew it, Rodney was back on the bed, kissing John almost painfully softly now, trying to give him whatever reassurances John needed. Rodney would give him anything.
When they finally came up for air, John breathed, "I want you inside me," and that was it. All Rodney's higher brain functions shut off as he fumbled with the condom. While he'd been in the bathroom John had apparently been busy, because he'd already spread himself out and slicked himself up. "I liked what we were doing before."
So even though it made Rodney's thighs twinge in protest, he kneeled, embracing John as he lowered himself onto Rodney's aching cock. They both gasped at the sensation, Rodney thrust up while holding John's hips down and fingering his pouch slit. The heat coming off him was incredible, matched only by the slick heat of John clenching around him. Rodney gasped brokenly, biting down on John's shoulder almost involuntarily. His senses were overloaded. Touch, smell, taste, it was a thousand times better than he'd ever imagined.
"Yeah, Rodney, like that," John chanted, sinking back to meet Rodney's every thrust like they were made for this, the muscles of his stomach clenching rhythmically beneath Rodney's fingers. It was too much and not enough. Rodney wanted John on his back. He wanted to meet John's eyes and feel the rest of the world fade away in a wave of pleasure. He wanted John inside him. He wanted to feel him without a condom even. He wanted to carry John's child. He wanted a tender slit to open on his stomach. He wanted to be as hypersensitive and desperate for John's touch as John was now. He wanted everything.
He mumbled something, a crude expression of all that he wanted, spoken like a secret into the fine hairs on the back of John's neck. John was gasping now, panting like a roaring panic attack, softened only by small whimpers of want and the barely audible rhythm of flesh sliding against flesh that Rodney felt like an earthquake for all its lack of sound. Too soon, John was letting out a choked cry, grunting and clenching and collapsing back against Rodney as Rodney thrust up one last time, holding John tight to him, hard enough to bruise.
It didn't take long for the ache in Rodney's thighs to make itself known and he was forced reluctantly to push John off him and to the side, collapsing back on the bed with his calves stinging of pins and needles. It felt wonderful, but he turned to John and complained, "You killed me. I think I pulled a muscle. Thanks to you I'll be in sex-related traction for a week."
John grinned, rolling over to kiss Rodney again. "Thanks, buddy, I really needed that," he replied, yawning and rolling over. Before Rodney could process the meaning of that, John was already snoring peacefully beside him.
Rodney had no idea if John intended for him to go or not, but he decided he'd indulge himself for just a second, spooning up behind John and resuming his slow massage of his pouch slit. Rodney fell asleep dreaming that the child growing within John was his.