lobelia321 | FIC: "Contraflow", continued

Title: Contraflow
Author: Lobelia;

lobelia321

Posted in two parts to accommodate LJ word limits. This is Part Two.
Continued from Part One.

Saturday afternoon

So McKay likes to shave in the afternoons.

"Why don't you shave in the morning?" I ask. "Like normal people?"

"What would you know about it?" he says, with our left cheek puffed out and the razor hovering.

"And while you're at it, could you shave your pits as well, and your legs? I'm sick of having these hairy pins."

"I often don't shave in the mornings," he says, somewhat haughtily, "because I need to get my-- I beg your pardon? No, I am not going to shave my legs!"

He's so easy to get riled up; it's like pressing buttons. I want to laugh so I do. He's not prepared for that, and he yells, "Ow", and we've cut our skin. He curses and swears. You'd think he'd sawn through his jugular, but it's only a tiny nick; we can barely feel it.

And in between my laughing and his swearing, I have to laugh even more because that's weird, right, one minute 'Ow', and the next 'Hahaha'. It's a bit hysterical, this laughing, I can tell it is but I can't stop, I'm jittering around in our head.

"You're not still upset about that Carson business, are you?" he says. That takes me by surprise, and I stop laughing.

"No," I lie. "Me? Not at all."

"Good. Good, good." There's a pause. "He told me you were lovely, you know. And whatnot."

"Yeah, well. I bet he says that to all the girls, right?"

"Oh, don't be so... She doesn't mean anything to him!"

"If that's what you want to believe."

"She was just... there. It was just..."

"A guy thing? Are you telling me it was just some sort of guy thing, is that it?"

"Yes, that's it. Whatever you want to call it."

"Dr Zelenka has a crush on you," I blurt out.

"Nonsense."

"He does. I saw it."

"How can you see that? It's absolute nonsense." And now he's laughing. He actually bursts out in a short, rough laugh, and that feels... new.

"It's true," I say. "I saw him look at you."

"Dr Zelenka is an esteemed colleague," he says primly. "And a complete dunderhead when it comes to trigonometric hyper-calculus, of course."

"I'm worried that I'm actually starting to understand what you just said, and don't you think he's at all attractive?"

He literally snorts. "Attractive? Zelenka? Cadman, he is a man."

"So? You're a man."

"Yes, I know I'm a man. Sort of, anyway. These days. Half of one." He cracks a wry smile.

"You know," I say, "that Katie Brown made the stupidest choice of her life last night."

"Well," he says. We can feel our Adam's apple go up and down, that's one big swallow. "That's very kind of you to say so. Carson, too. Carson too made a very stupid choice."

"For Dr Beckett," I say, "there wasn't really anything to choose. It's not like I'm around for any quickies or anything."

"Ah, Cadman," he sighs. We lean against the basin and then we look up and there is the mirror.

I'm still startled every time I see the mirror. Luckily, and that's one thing you've got to say for McKay, he's not a vain man so he doesn't stare into mirrors an awful lot but he does for shaving, and here I am.

Fucking creepy, that's what it is.

I want to shut my eyes but he won't let me.

"Will you please start behaving inside here?" he says, and it's a bit frightening to hear him because he's not shouting but sort of weary-sounding. "It's sometimes and somewhat problematic how you behave with my body."

"Well, it's problematic for me, too! I'm not used to being trapped in other people's bodies, in other men's bodies. I wasn't given an instruction manual for this kind of thing, you know. And yeah, I can see how it's a bit of a bummer for you but you've got a body!"

We put our head in our hands. "I don't know," he says. "I don't even know if I'm me anymore."

Saturday night

So yeah. This is weird.

I'm asleep. Pretending, that is. I'm not really asleep. I'm just kind of giving McKay a break.

He's not asleep. He's just lying there, real quiet. We're on our back, and that's good because that habit of falling onto his bed face-down, that is a really irritating habit. We're in his room again, and that mattress does feel kind of good against our back; it must be because of our special skeletal structure.

I can tell that he's waiting for me to drop off.

So I curl up quiet, like a mouse inside my own head.

He's moving his hand aimlessly across our chest. I can feel the hairs around my nipples, and the softer bits of skin underneath his ribs. Being so silent, I almost think I can feel his thoughts, pressing up against my own. Almost but not quite.

He's still moving his hand, he's circling it around, like he's waiting for me to do something.

I do nothing.

He puts his hand into our pyjama pants.

"Whoa," I say.

He snatches the hand away, like he's touched a piece of burning toast.

"God damnit, Cadman," he gasps.

We're breathing heavily. And yeah, our cheeks are hot, we must be flushing.

He's put his palm across our eyelids.

"Okay," I say, still breathless. "Don't mind me. Just go on. Go on."

"I will not go on," he says. "This is intolerable. This is hell."

"There's no, you know, no need to be repressed about it. This might be just the thing we need, it might be just the thing to... to relax a little."

"We? Did you say we? Cadman, there is no we here. And this is not about being repressed, thank you. This is about just having a little bit of privacy every now and again, a little bit of human dignity, but you wouldn't understand that, would you? No, you just barge in and trample across whatever you find, you have no--"

"Do you really think there is no we?"

"What?"

I'm whispering now, I don't know why. "Don't you feel it, too?"

"What? Feel what? What are you talking about?"

But then he shuts up.

We stare at the ceiling, dark, with patterns of wavy green where the ocean reflects through the small round window next to his bed.

Then we close our eyes.

He hasn't answered me, really, but I know he knows what I'm talking about. He knows because I can feel it behind his eyelids. You'd never be able to tell if it wasn't happening inside your own eyes.

I haven't been with a man crying, I can't remember in how long.

Not since Dad. That last time in the hospital. "It's not because of the pain, Laurie," Dad said. "It's because I can't control anything anymore. Look, I can't even lift my own hand. It's like I've lost my body even though I'm still in it. Like I've lost myself." The tears just trickled out in two long lines; he couldn't even blink by that stage.

I'm crying too, now. I just don't know what to do.

"Yesterday," he says, and I wish I could see what he looks like but I can't; I can feel it, though, I can feel his mouth in my face, and his heavy tongue, "I tried to calculate the ergonometric radiation equation squared by the multiple of probability factors times twelve. Twelve for the Wraith dart's manoeuvrability, you understand, Zelenka thinks it ought to be twenty-four but that's nonsense, of course it ought to be twelve..." He takes a deep breath. Air flows into our lungs. "And anyway, I couldn't remember how to finish it off. I knew it was Gyga's formula but I couldn't put it together, do you understand? Instead..."

He falls silent.

"What?" I say. I say it out loud. Our voice sounds choked up.

"I remembered what it was like being a woman."

"What?"

We rub our eyes. "I had this sensation of having..." He shrugs our shoulders angrily. "Of having a vagina, if you must know."

"God. Rodney."

"Yes. Exactly." We take our hands away and stare up at the ceiling. We groan. "This is obviously not my memory. It is obviously yours, and there must be stray brainwave contamination going on. I was hoping it was a one-off but if it's happening to you at all, I don't know if it is, then it's not... It's not..."

"It's not looking good," I finish. "Is it?"

We're both silent after that. One tear clings to our left eye lashes.

We blink. The tear rolls down our cheek.

One of us, I don't know who, pokes out our tongue and catches the drop as it slides past the lips.

One of us lifts our left hand and smoothes it along the lower lip, smearing salt into our mouth.

"Listen," I say, in Rodney's hoarse voice. "Can we... you know?"

We shake our head.

"I'm sorry about earlier," I add. "It wasn't, I wasn't. It was surprise. I guess I never thought about you in that way, doing that. You know."

"Oh, thanks." There's actually a little quirk at the edge of our compressed lips now, and that feels not too bad. "That is highly flattering."

"Although I might have guessed, when we were doing the kiss. You know. It was hot. It was a hot kiss."

"Well, it was your kiss."

"She liked it. Couldn't you tell? She really liked it, I'm sure of it. You liked it. I liked it."

"Excuse me, I already told you." Trying to sound annoyed but it's not convincing, our breath is so ragged. "I did not like it."

"You had a hard-on."

"Haven't we..." Deep breath. "...gone over this? Do we have to talk about... anatomy?"

"We had a hard-on," I whisper.

The night is so soft, and the room is so dark. The waves are making patterns on the ceiling.

We're remembering the feel of Katie Brown's tits.

How they pressed against our flat, hard chest. How they were crushed against our chest. Her little round tits, and we were wearing only that shirt, and she was wearing only that top, and we could feel her pert little nipples like raisins against our ribs.

We close our eyes. We sink into the bed. We don't say a word.

Like we don't need to.

And now something happens.

We hold our breath in tandem.

Whoa is on the tip of our tongue but I swallow that word. I swallow everything. I pretend I'm not there, and in a way I'm not there.

It's a big swelling sensation, and there's a tightness in our balls, just underneath where they join the dick, a sort of pulling sensation, and oh, it's gorgeous. The pyjama stretches, the dick nudges the fabric, and me, I can feel it all.

Very slowly, we spread our legs a bit. Very slowly, we breathe. It pulses between our legs, hot and urgent, and so hard. So tight. The balls, these things that usually just wobble around and don't do anything much, all of a sudden, they're like two hard nuts, screwed tight. And our dick, it rubs against our belly, I haven't felt it like that before, pointing up; it's so warm against our skin. Or no, I have felt it a hundred times, it's like the oldest, most familiar sensation.

And our hands, creeping, creeping, eyes closed, pretending we're asleep.

Come on, I will them, come on. Further down, they creep, our hands, both of them. And then the right one touches flesh. I can feel that both in my palm and in my dick, unbelievable, smooth and hot.

This.

I haven't felt our dick like this. I haven't touched our hard-on. It's not too big, not too small, it's got a vein down the outside, we trace that vein with our index finger, and our whole hand is firmly around the rest of the dick now, firmly grasping, holding it just so.

And it's so surprising, and so, so...

That we moan. We can't help it.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe that was just me who moaned.

Because the hand stops. We lie very still on the bed. Our breath goes in through our mouth, and out of our mouth.

"You know," I whisper, and there's sweat on our forehead, "Katie's got really pretty breasts. I've seen them."

"I don't," he says, in a voice that just barely manages to get past our teeth, "I really don't think you should tell me about that."

Don't you remember? I open our memory and let the image spill through. And I describe it, too:

"They're kind of round and pale, and they've got little pink nipples. And there's a dip in between them. And it feels so nice to have breasts, you can't imagine. They're really soft. They really like being touched."

"Stop," he whispers, "stop. You don't have to do this. You don't have to show me this. Just... Just."

We lie there for another breathful, then we keep going. We keep touching, and we keep stroking. Lights dance on the inside of our eyelids, wavy lights, shimmery lights, and our mind does slow, lazy flips. We're seeing all kinds of things, numbers travelling past from left to right against the shimmery lights, strings of digits, equations hotter than anything.

Another stroke down and another stroke up, more numbers in whirling formation, and a vision of Katie Brown's breasts, creamy pink, and then our other hand, down in the crease where leg and belly meet, pubic hair against our wrist, the thick thatch of it. Our fingers just reach our balls, they stroke them, they run their fingernails along the ridges standing out. We haven't felt those ridges in so long.

"Oh, god." It's his voice but we can't even tell which one of us said that just now, we're going, going, almost gone.

There are more numbers, and our eyes are being squeezed shut, so tight, and then more breasts, Rodney's hands squeezing the breasts. And that's all going on in our heads, it must be because I haven't got breasts, have I? I've never squeezed breasts, I've never had breasts, I've got a dick and two balls and god, god, god.

The bed is shaking, no, it can't be the bed.

It must be us.

And all that noise, like a gale, that must be us, too. Breathing. Huffing. Gasping for air.

The sheets are sweaty against our skin. The pillow has slipped off to one side. Our heartbeat is like a trampoline, thump thump.

We've got come on the inside of the pyjama pants. On our hand, too, and sticky in our pubes. A lot of it came out, it felt like a vat full of the stuff, hot and fast, and it was shooting out with the force of a fucking Wraith dart.

We've still got our hand around our dick. Which is limp now. Nice and soft, and fantastic-feeling, really. And it seems we don't care about the come all over ourselves because we're not opening our eyes, we're just keeping them shut. Not squeezed shut, no, just lightly shut, just lightly.

In our sleep, our thoughts nudge each other.

Sunday morning

It's like we've been having sex or something. It's like the morning after. Except he can't kick me out of his bed, and I can't say, 'well, it's been good, see ya', and nobody needs to go away and wait for the other one to call.

I'm getting good at the shaving. I'm learning when to puff out our cheek and when to lift our chin so we can get at the neck underneath. We rinse the razor under the faucet, and then we lean on the basin and look at our tired face.

"Hi," I say.

"Hello", he says. His face looks sort of odd, sort of out of kilter. Oh, I see why: it's a smile.

"Hi, Rodney," I say.

"Well, yes, hello."

And then the face goes back to the way it always looks. We rub our hands down our face and come to think of it, it's not so much Dr Zelenka's eyes that look lost. It's Rodney's, and maybe those were his eyes that were reflecting off Dr Zelenka's glasses.

It's my eyes that look lost. Our eyes.

"One thing," he says and lifts his finger.

And, "yeah, yeah," I agree. Like I would. Like I would ever tell anybody.

"Hang on," he says. "How did you know what I was going to say?"

"What were you going to say?" I ask.

"About not telling anybody."

"It's kind of obvious. I was just going to ask you the same, if you want to know."

"You were?"

"Yeah. Absolutely."

"How do you know that it was really you who wanted to ask that and not you catching my own thought and beaming it back at me?"

I shut up. I stare into our eyes. I try and find myself in those eyes. You'd think that would be possible, somewhere in those enlarged pupils. You wouldn't think someone could stay hidden so well, wouldn't look out now and again.

I try and find Rodney in those eyes.

"But, you know," I say.

And he nods, and he looks at me with these eyes of ours. I'm starting to see why Dr Zelenka goes all mooshy over these eyes of ours.

"At this rate," he says, after a while, after squeezing out toothpaste and brushing all our molars and incisors, after shaking out the toothbrush and placing it carefully back in its toothpaste glass, "we soon won't be needing to talk at all anymore. We'll be well on our way to telepathic communication."

"That would be a pity," I say. "'Cause, you know. I like hearing our voice."

"Laura", he says, and the basin grows warm under our hands, we're pressing down so hard.

Sunday, noon

There's been a breakthrough. Rodney has come up with something. I knew he would. Something to do with interfacing a gate crystal with the Wraith machine. We're in the hangar, and everyone else is there, too: Dr Beckett and Colonel Sheppard and Dr Weir, and Dr Zelenka, of course. But it's all so busy, it's all so urgent, action stations and emergency positions, that I don't get a chance to check up if Dr Zelenka is still looking. He seems perfectly okay, not put out at all, he's typing stuff into his laptop and then, yeah, just before we have to go in, he does look up and into our eyes.

Oh, yeah. He knows a good thing when he sees one.

'Cause we might not come back and all. This might not work.

Though I can't believe it won't. This is Rodney's idea, after all.

Before I know it, we're looking back at Dr Zelenka. And then we wink.

Dr Zelenka goes as red as a beetroot.

That wink seemed to be for Dr Zelenka but yeah, I am sure that wink was actually meant for me.

And now we're standing in front of this sheet reflector they've rigged up. Everything's tense. It occurs to me that I never asked Rodney about those people, the ones in his photo. Everyone's looking at us. I'm trying not to look at Carson. I'm trying not to think about anything.

I'm thinking, Mom.

And, Dad. Maybe I'll see you real soon, Dad.

Real soon.

Now.

No, not now. Rodney holds up a finger. What is he doing?

Oh, no. We're off the platform and we're walking, no, we're heading towards, no! I tug at our insides but no chance, this time I can't make him stop, the distance is too short, we're there already. No, I shout inside our head, no, what are we doing?! But it's too late, we're already kissing Carson.

Oh my. Whoa.

No, way beyond. Way beyond double whoa.

We kiss, and we kiss, it feels like we're kissing for an eternity, like time's been stretched. We grab onto Carson's shirt, it's wet with our sweat, we've never done anything like this before, we've never kissed a man, we've kissed dozens of men, never like this, though. Never like this.

It's not like I'm kissing Carson at all. It's like I'm kissing Rodney.

It's Rodney's tongue in our mouth. It's Rodney's lips, moving against our teeth. It's Rodney's little dry moan, right at the back of our throat, you'd never know it was there unless you were inside him. It's our little moan, oh. There's no grunting at all, and no slobbering, and oh, but it's sweet. I'm weaving in and out of the kiss, hard to tell when it's me and when it's him and when it's just us, everything's confused. And in our minds, too, there are numbers on strings and there's my dad, smiling and saying, 'not long now', and we've got a hard-on, and we've got a swollen clit, and then we stagger back, and there's Carson, looking stunned.

We lurch back onto the platform. I put our hand over our eyes, I'm still reeling. But inside here, somewhere right at the back of our mind, there's Rodney, grinning like mad and going, see? See? And then I'm trying not to grin myself because, after all, it's death we're facing here, but yeah, and we move our tongue across our teeth in memory, and into the pocket of our cheeks, and up around the gums, we kiss in secret, and nobody's grinning now.

And then, zap.

-----

THE END.
8 March 2006-18 May 2006.
All original elements of this story are © to Lobelia.
Feedback? I would love some. One line, even -- anything at all!
Thanks so much for reading.

Page 1 of 2 << [1] [2] >>

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ladyvyola.livejournal.com

I use this icon to hide the fact that I am a secret Cadman/McKay shipper.

So I say, yay for secret kisses!

From:

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags