FIC: "Tao of Lust" (SGA) Rodney McKay/Radek Zelenka (REPOST)

[lobelia321]

Title: Tao of Lust
Author: Lobelia; lobelia321
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: Rodney McKay / Radek Zelenka.
Spoilers: 3x14. 'The Tao of Rodney'.
Length: 1,800 words
Summary: Zelenka wants to be healed.
Rating: 18
Disclaimer: I did not invent these characters or this storyworld. No copyright infringement is intended. This is an amateur story, not written for profit.
Feedback: Yes, please, even if it's only word! I love all feedback. I also reply to it all. :-)

Note: A horrible thing just happened. I accidentally deleted the original post of this fic, including all the lovely comments I got (at least 23 so somebody never got a reply). Those comments made me so happy that I ended up writing another fic almost immediately! (This is 'Lift the Burden'). I am very upset about this but am not sure I can undelete or retrieve the post. (I blame this new Upload LJ format...) I am reposting this before I burst into tears. Don't feel you have to repost your feedback but I would be so, so grateful if you would because I found the feedback so very helpful in making me think about my writing, and I loved meeting all the new people and now I can't remember you all. *facepalms*

ETA: I am the world's biggest fool. As lazlet just pointed out, all the comments will still be in my email inbox, so they are not lost! :-)


~~

Tao of Lust
by Lobelia

Zelenka entered the lab. His hair stood up at the back, as if freshly washed and then hairsprayed. He pushed up his glasses.

"Don't," said Rodney, tapping into his keyboard. His tapping was only slightly less furious than usual. This was because he was practising using his left hand as the touchpad-hand.

"Don't what?" said Zelenka.

"Interrupt," said Rodney, without taking his eyes off the screen. His eyes, too, were only slightly less fixedly glued to the monitor than usual. This was because he was practising stereoscopic vision. The kind that made people see three-dimensional cats in two-dimensional Schroederian patterns. So far, it was only making him see his data as blurry mice. But then, he didn't need to see his data. He knew his data off by heart. Rodney was to his data as the deaf Beethoven was to his Ninth Symphony.

"Well," said Zelenka.

"No, not even a 'well'", said Rodney. "No interruption of any kind, thank you."

"It's just that," said Zelenka. A dollop of shaving foam clung to his chin.

"What, what?" said Rodney and looked up. Zelenka looked blurry, his hair pixellated into the weird shape of dendrites on a neuron, magnified by one thousand per cent.

"I wanted to ask you," said Zelenka.

Rodney tried to readjust his eyes to a standard binocular setting. This made his pupils swell and contract, and when Zelenka hove into focus, he had an alarmed expression on his face.

"I wanted to ask you," repeated Zelenka and cleared his throat. "If you could perhaps do me a favour."

"Ah," said Rodney and returned to his laptop. "No." He stroked the touchpad with his left thumb but the cursor hopped all over the place and was disobedient.

"It is an old childhood wound," said Zelenka.

"Hm," said Rodney. He reached for his coffee mug with his right hand. This was not usually his coffee-hand. Usually his left hand was his coffee-hand because his right hand was his touchpad-hand. His fingers curled round the mug handle. He tried not to break stride with the other thumb but that cursor, it was unruly.

"It's always bothering me," said Zelenka. "Nothing major but it would be very helpful, you know."

"Hm," said Rodney. It was a 'hm' directed at his deaf data.

"If you could heal it for me."

Coffee splashed onto Rodney's right middle finger. Luckily, the liquid was only lukewarm. This was because Rodney was training himself to enjoy coffee at all temperatures, from scalding to frozen into an ice lolly impaled on an engine oil dipstick.

"It would only take a minute," said Zelenka in haste. He smelled of aftershave.

"Radek," said Rodney. He swigged coffee, wiped his hands on his flanks, turned to his colleague.

Zelenka pushed his glasses up his nose.

"I've lost my healing powers," said Rodney. "You know that."

"But," said Zelenka.

"Yes, but!" said Rodney. "I would love to heal you but! I can't! So."

"If you could just try."

"This is ridiculous."

"Just once."

"Go and see Carson."

"Auto-suggestion!" all but shouted Zelenka. "The placebo effect!"

Rodney frowned. "Yes, yes, but how will this have a placebo effect if, Radek, if you know in advance that I am the placebo?"

"It does not matter." Zelenka was already stripping off his shirt.

"No, no, no, look here," said Rodney. His coffee mug fell to the floor, he must have brushed against it in some fashion. It did not break because it was made of extra-duty space-proof bakelite. All it did was to roll under the benches, roll roll roll, until it clinked against the skirting-board-less wall on the other side of the lab.

Now Zelenka was undoing his belt buckle. Rodney hadn't even noticed that Zelenka had come in wearing a buckle. And a belt. And had a zip on his flies. And red underwear.

"Here," said Zelenka and pointed to his upper inner thigh.

"Uh," said Rodney.

"A dog bit me," said Zelenka.

"A dog?"

"Yes, a dog."

"That," said Rodney, trying to re-activate blurry vision, "does not look like a dog bite."

"It could have been the welt of a whip," amended Zelenka. Another dollop of shaving foam quivered on his left earlobe.

"It also," said Rodney, screwing up his eyes but still not achieving 3-D breakthrough, "doesn't look very old."

"It is a childhood wound."

"Are you sure this isn't from an off-world expedition?"

"I fell off the swings and round-abouts."

"You need to see Carson."

"Remember that time you healed my chest wound?"

"Yes," said Rodney and closed his eyes. Axons danced behind his heavy lids. "But that was when I was still a superhero and a genius. Remember?"

"I remember," said Zelenka. His voice sounded as if coated in shampoo. "You placed your hands on my chest, like so." He encircled Rodney's wrist with his fists and placed Rodney's palms against his naked ribcage.

"Yes?" said Rodney. But Zelenka had stopped talking for the moment, and all that could be heard was Zelenka's heart, badump, against Rodney's lifeline, and it was a much louder heartbeat than the last time that Rodney had held his hands there.

Also, Zelenka's chest was much warmer than that time in the infirmary. Because that time in the infirmary, Zelenka had been practically dead. But now he wasn't dead. Now he radiated life, what with the heat and the circulation of blood and the opening and closing of the aortal valves that batted against Rodney's palms, what with the droplets of sweat collecting under his hooded hands, in the curled hairs dusting Zelenka's chest. What with the hardness of Zelenka's left nipple which just touched the tip of Rodney's right little finger.

Rodney's right little finger seemed to have acquired two hundred extra sensory pads.

"So I thought," said Zelenka, still in that bath-house voice. "If you could..." There was a sound as of somebody swallowing. Rodney's Adam's apple stirred in empathy. But then Zelenka pulled Rodney's left hand down and placed it on the scar on Zelenka's thigh.

"Gg," said Rodney. His Adam's apple got stuck in mid-gear.

Zelenka didn't say anything.

Rodney didn't say anything.

Roll, roll, roll, went the coffee mug, as if they were on a ship and the floor was listing.

"Of course," said Rodney. He swallowed several times in furious succession, to dislodge his Adam's apple.

"Yes," said Zelenka.

"Of course I'll be your," said Rodney. Nubs stiffened against the million sensors in his right little fingertip.

"Healer," said Zelenka and sighed.

"Placebo," said Rodney.

Zelenka was moving Rodney's hand up and down across his jagged scar, and then down along his downy thigh, and then up onto his red underwear, only Rodney couldn't see the colour because his eyes were still closed but he could remember it. The colour of Zelenka's undergarments were to Rodney's eyes as the verse of 'Paradise Lost' was to the blind John Milton.

"I can," said Zelenka, and "shit", said Rodney and let his head fall forward onto Zelenka's chest, his forehead against the back of his own hand, Zelenka's breastbone rising and falling, rising and falling, Zelenka's skin glistening with sweat, and sweat pooling in Rodney's armpits and seeping into the fabric of his top.

"I'm not sure," said Zelenka but Rodney, biting his own hand, dug his fingers into Zelenka's thigh and dragged them across Zelenka's underpants, and yes, Zelenka was alive there, too. Very much alive. Alive, hot, tipped with moisture.

And then Zelenka's groin became to Rodney's blind fingers like braille to a lost Helen Keller. Zelenka's crotch was the touchpad to Rodney's touchpad-hand, and the saliva of Zelenka's mouth was the coffee to Rodney's coffee-hand and to Rodney's coffee-tongue and to Rodney's touchpad-mouth, and it was all a bit wild. It was all a slice of chaos theory come to life in Rodney's body whose organs seemed as if hi-jacked by yet another alien device, breathless, mindless, heated up with urgent lust. Except it wasn't an alien device; it was only Zelenka.

Whose glasses were blurry when Rodney finally did open his eyes, in between kissing Zelenka's mouth and trying to squeeze his hand under the elastic in Zelenka's red underwear and squirming in order to allow Zelenka's hand to do the same to his own underwear.

The glasses were blurry because their lenses were misted up and Zelenka's eyes lost in a fog.

"You have," said Rodney. Because now that his eyes were open he felt he ought to say something but nothing in particular came to mind. He floundered between predicate and direct object.

"You, too," said Zelenka.

Rodney breathed on Zelenka's glasses. That made them mist up even more so Rodney licked his tongue across the glass and behind the trails of his own spit, there emerged the pupils of Zelenka, first one, then the other, both of them big and black and dilated.

Rodney took his hand away from Zelenka's nipple and pushed up Zelenka's glasses.

"Thank you," said Zelenka and gasped because Rodney's other hand had found the glans of Zelenka's cock.

"You're, um, yes," said Rodney and moaned because Zelenka's fist had found the shaft of Rodney's cock.

It was difficult to converse after that. This was because Mandelbrot fractals started to erupt in Rodney's head, and synapses joined up with neurons while fatal attractors exploded into butterfly effects. The data got all mixed up, violins screeched much too high, Satan laughed, and the colour of Rodney's orgasm was red. The red of blood, the red of life. The red of Zelenka's sperm-stained underwear.

"God," Rodney gasped irrelevantly into Zelenka's unruly hair, "fuck, God."

"Hergot, hovno," said Zelenka. His chest heaved against Rodney's chest.

Roll, roll, went the coffee mug. Badump, went twin hearts in twin breasts.

"Okay," said Rodney. He tried to straighten up but swayed and had to grab hold of Zelenka's upper arm.

"I swear," said Zelenka. He smelled of sweat and deodorant.

"Right," said Rodney. He looked at Zelenka. Zelenka's glasses had become dislodged; one sidearm hung onto one ear but the other dangled at an angle. Zelenka's eyes peered at Rodney in lopsided asymmetry.

Rodney lifted his semen-besmeared hand to right Zelenka's glasses. He hooked the sidearm over Zelenka's ear. He pushed the bridge of the glasses up onto Zelenka's nose.

"You have," he said.

"Yes, what?" said Zelenka, his fingers playing a hesitant melody on the skin Rodney's hip, where Rodney's shirt had become untucked.

"Big," Rodney said. "Big. Pupils."

"You, too," said Zelenka and kissed Rodney.

'But I really didn't want to be interrupted', said Rodney, 'and I really can't heal anyone' but he said it tongue-to-tongue, and the meaning of it got confused with the meaning of Zelenka's hand on Rodney's nape, and the sound of it got swallowed in the deaf-and-blind butterfly-beat of his heart.

~~~

THE END
All original parts of this story © to Lobelia.
14 December 2006
1,800 words

A neuron.


Rodney heals Radek. From 3x14.


Radek/Rodney. From 3x14.


Rodney/Radek. From 3x14.


Screencaps from the wonderful Nightelf. Thanks to cesperanza for gushing about 3x14 and hence causing me to watch it. This fic was started within minutes of the end credits of 'Tao of Rodney': a truly inspirational episode. :-)

Url of this page: http://lobelia321.livejournal.com/532004.html

Comments

[abbylee]

The accidental delete is just horrible!!!

I keep all my comments "organized" by saving them in gmail. It makes me very very happy. And is actually one of the things that forces me to want to comment on fics, because it means that I can search for them again through my email. Although it's a pretty primitive search function.

So, here's my own repost:

Your premise is just wonderful, but what really sells this fic for me is the imagery and sentence structure. It's this fantastic combination of distraction and attention that just works perfectly. :)

And then you made me feel like it was totally helpful feedback by saying:

Darling, that is the nicest of feedbacks! Thank you! *smooches* Ah, how happy your note of imagery and sentence structure made me. Maybe all that experimental writing I did back in the spring was good for something after all, eh? It's funny what happens when a fic is out in the world and split off from its author. It shows itself to you (i.e. me) with a new face through the feedback of readers. While writing I ricocheted among the 'distraction and combination', but I would never have noticed this so consciously as you did. I was also somewhat scared by it! But ploughed on because didn't really know what else to do. :-)

Now, go comment on my own latest post.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Thank you! What a weird way to deal with feedback. Well, as I said in an ETA, lazlet has just pointed out that the comments should all still be in my email inbox. I never check my email but duh and double-duh!! They will not be lost after all!

*smooches you a hundred times, anyway*

Do you think our butterflies will mate?

[blue-raven.livejournal.com]

And I was going to reply to your comment too, about your clever metaphors and how metaphors that awesome should be used always, and that scientific prose wins everything (geek lit!), and I also read in your journal you learned Czech for a year, and I'm like 'ooh, can I touch you, or something less creepy, but just as reverent?', because there is nothing cooler than that. I think I may be stalking you now. :)

I think that was the main gist of it, just not so crudely slapped together with rampant comma abuse. And I even had a joke, too. You deserved all that lovely feedback, and it's such a shame to lose it all. *kicks LJ in the pants*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

But (*duhs self in brain*), as lazlet pointed out, all the comments will probably still be in my email inbox wot i never check so yes, zero points for stupidity, but 100 points for yay, the comments are not lost!!

*dances you around happily*

And um, yes with the touching. *giggles* *tries to remember some remnants of Czech* God, the memory is hopeless. And I could read Vaclav Havel and everything! Vilnost!

[blue-raven.livejournal.com]

WICKED. :D

I seriously wish I could learn it here, all I have is a wee little phrasebook, which only goes so far. Most of the Czech I know I now is from fandom. The swearwords, mostly, heee. Havel! I read Havel! Only in English! And really slowly, because I lose at life, but yay anyway! *twirls*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Is that Prague in your icon? You flirt!

[blue-raven.livejournal.com]

What, this old thing?. *bats eyelashes*

:D

[blue-raven.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am a 'tard who should be in bed now, but I kept your original post in a seperate tab on my browser, so if you really want, I can copy them and pass them along? Just remind me to *not* refresh the page. :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

YES!!!! What is on this tab? Whenfrom does it date or time? Wow.

*is in awe of geekdom and the world of tabbing*

[blue-raven.livejournal.com]

I automatically open a new tab for things I need to go back when I peruse my flist each morning, and at the moment I have about 38. *fails* Whoo, Opera. Possibly the only good thing going for it. I'm technologically impaired when it comes to other nifty tricks, so being able to tab things is the about the pinnacle of my 'net geekdom. :)

(incidentally, the time and date I have for it is 2006-12-14 17:55:00, according to the all-knowing greatness that is LJ.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ooh. We live in different timezones but it would be interesting for me to see that tab. Er, but how?

[blue-raven.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I have to dash off to work now, but maybe I can figure something out when I get back. A few screencaps might do the trick...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

P.S. Your icon! It's so gorgeous!

[torakowalski.livejournal.com]

Rodney breathed on Zelenka's glasses. That made them mist up even more so Rodney licked his tongue across the glass and behind the trails of his own spit, there emerged the pupils of Zelenka, first one, then the other, both of them big and black and dilated.

Wow, I love that paragraph, have had to read it a half dozen times already!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You are so sweet to be giving such lovely feedback. And to pick that quote, too -- makes me go all wibbly. Thank you!

[eve-took.livejournal.com]

I just had a single syllable to say about the story, and that was

YUM!

And YUM! again.

:D

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I remember! And I found it in my email intray! Duh. I never check my email but there were all the comments!

*stares at your icon which is strangely perverse*

[eve-took.livejournal.com]

That's my mouth. *blush* *grin*

M took the picture in the park, this summer.

Hmmmm, cherries... :)

[ria-kukalaka.livejournal.com]

ooooh lovely, lovely fic. I feel like I should say something pretty and wonderful to match the beautiful prose...but I'm kinda dazed by it! *g*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! You did say something pretty and wonderful (to my ears, anyway) so consider yourself hugged and squeezed in thanks! :-) This is such lovely feedback; it warms my heart.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

what you do with the words here leaves me weak at the knees and breathless. Absolutely loved it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

It is one of the loveliest things imaginable to get feedback weeks after something has been posted. Thank you so much! I am intrigued how you stumbled upon this, :-) And thank you for liking my words, it means a lot.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

I stumbled across this via various routes really. I'm a member of the community and remember seeing this fic posted at the time but I only saw the episode a few days ago so didn't read before. This was also recced to me by cinaed as a good ep-tag to read. And then I admin the McKay/Zelenka thematic fic index over at Crossroads (http://sga.fictionresource.com/) and remember including your fic on the Episode Related list... Mysterious and complex are the paths of fandom!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you. I hadn't heard of Crossroads before and have now delicioused it -- what a trove! :-)

[dirty-smudge.livejournal.com]

This fic is awesome. I like the sound effect of the coffee mug and the way he licked the mist off of Radek's glasses.
And...
...everything else about it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! It's so happy-making to get fb on a fic a while after it's been posted. And thanks for giving details of what you specifically liked; that's really helpful! :-)