Don't Ask, Don't Tell (Slave Challenge)
Title: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Author: Miriam Heddy
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Light Bondage? (is that even warning-worthy at this point in a slave-themed story?)
Thanks to Zoe Rayne for more than just the....
Summary: McKay finds it more difficult than he would have imagined to indulge John in his little fantasy.



Don't Ask, Don't Tell
by Miriam Heddy


"I just... I don't...."

"What--know? think? No, of course you don't. Too obvious. I could've told you that. No--wait--I've got it--"

"I don't take orders. Okay?"

"Yeah--no--wait--because you do."

"No--I don't. I really don't."

"Yes, you do. I have, in fact, seen you take orders."

"No, I just--don't think I can do this." And now John had gotten up from his position on his knees and was glaring at him with his arms crossed over his chest, attempting to... loom. The effect was somewhat less than threatening, given that John was naked, his penis less erect than one would hope for at this point. He was also a little shorter without his shoes on.

Rodney tugged again at his toga, trying for a little authority. "Stop arguing with me, Major, and hold out your hands so I can put on the damned handcuffs."

"Look, Rodney, you're not my superior officer, and besides which, this is supposed to be separate from work, so lay off with the Major thing."

"And yet you're saying that if I were your superior officer, and you were, say, not a slave but just a plain old ordinary Major with a General telling you to assume the position, you'd follow my orders? But that, for unknown reasons we can't do that because--look, explain to me again why we can't just play it that way?"

"Because I just don't...."

"What--do windows? Finish sentences? Have an imagination? Surely you've heard the old adage, 'When in Rome....'"

"Look, this was a bad idea."

"Your bad idea." Rodney dangled the handcuffs, listening to them jingle. They weren't the padded kind, unfortunately, because no one (that he knew of) had thought to bring a pair (or rather, no one had admitted to having brought a pair through the gate).

Rodney waited, but as nothing more was forthcoming from the naked, impotent slave boy, and as time was indeed ticking by, both in the short term and in the long, he added, "I don't have any great desire to order you around, you know. I'm perfectly content to just fuck around equitably, with or without these charming restraints."

"Please. You live to order people around." And now, John was looking entirely too charming and not a bit subservient.

"Fine, right, as you say. Whereas I order people around who never listen, you selectively take orders, but not in bed. My point is that this isn't my fantasy. It's yours. Isn't it? You certainly sounded convinced last week when you brought it up. Is that it? Do your fantasies have expiration dates, because if I'd known I would have... no, I probably wouldn't have put anything on hold for this, to be honest. Still, you could've highlighted it as urgent--"

"Put it at the top of your 'to-do' list?"

"Yes," he agreed. "Somewhere between 'Save Atlantis from the Wraith' and 'Clean coffeepot in anticipation of surprise bean shipment.' I think I could've squeezed you in."

John sat down on the bed, putting his head in his hands and running his fingers through his hair. Rodney noted that the motion had very little effect, one way or the other. Though the pose did do nice things for the muscles in John's back and shoulders.

"Maybe you could just...."

"Hmm?" Rodney tried to look interested, though at this point, he was frankly starting to think about lab work left undone, and what certain people in the lab managed to accomplish in his absence, little of it any good, and much of it requiring he spend additional hours (again, not having sex, which was getting to be a bit of a theme, here) averting disasters by, yes, issuing orders to men and women who should, by all means, be able to function under their own power and judgment if they weren't all such idiots.

He was starting to reconsider the restraints, actually. Perhaps the Romans had the right idea. If he hoisted Kavanagh up, not too high, and not on a cross, naturally, but--

"Ask me nicely?"

"Ask you nicely? To put on handcuffs and suck me off?"

John looked uncertain, but got on his knees and held out his wrists. "Um... okay. If that's what you want."

"No--is that what you want? Because I wouldn't want to be held responsible for coercing you against your will. Because that would be wrong. Unless you happen to enjoy that kind of thing, in which case, sure, I'll handcuff you and you can, I don't know... suck me off. Yes, that sounds like an idea worth considering."

"No... that's...." And John was thinking, which was apparently difficult.

Rodney couldn't quite see the problem. Either you wanted something, or you didn't want something. This wasn't rocket science, after all. Of course, things were simpler before Heisenberg. Physics was less interesting, certainly. But he suspected people had sex more often. Probably even more often before Freud. "No?"

"Maybe if we started this over?"

"Look, I've got--" Rodney checked his watch, which gave him, at most, a half hour to wrap this up. "Thirty minutes, here, maximum. Less, if Zelenka figures out how to unlock the supply closet."

That got a smile, at least. Rodney had gone along with this whole fantasy thing because of that smile. "It'll be fun," John had said, which so far? Not so much.

Maybe they were going at this all wrong. Maybe what John really wanted was to be Spartacus. Which would make Rodney... what? Tony Curtis?

He could probably live with that. They'd need a whirlpool bath. And some eyeliner.

"Look--let's just meet somewhere in the middle, shall we? I'll be an unusually enlightened Roman General with an interest in breaking the will of my sexy but defiant slave."

"So basically, you order me around?"

"Yes, Major. And in this universe of make believe, we'll just pretend I outrank you, which, if your military career is any indication, should make absolutely no difference."

"Hmm. So I--what--ignore you and get sent to Antarctica?"

"Yes. Precisely. In a toga, which would be rather cold and uncomfortable. Hence your interest in sharing a warm bath with me while I break your spirit and make you come."

"So basically, we're just ourselves, only with handcuffs."

"And a whirlpool, yes. By Jove, I think he's got it!" Rodney noted that his erection was, at long last, stirring with faint hope. Sex was, if not imminent, then at least a vague possibility now.

And John grinned up at him, one hand going down to touch himself. "Y'know, I think I can manage that."

"Oh, good. At last, progress. Let's see now... right. There."

And now John's hands were in handcuffs, which didn't get in the way of his pulling himself to a nice, hard erection.

Rodney, meanwhile, worked on getting his dick out of his bedsheet without having to retie the thing. "Good. Now suck me off, slave."

"No, I don't think I will, General."

"You won't?" Rodney sighed. "What now?"

"No. Not until you release me."

"Release you? I just put these--oh, fine. Now where's the key."

"In the mug on the--"

"Right. Got it. Okay. There, you're free."

"Free?"John shook his head, looking a bit too pouty for a slave, but Rodney wasn't going to quibble with his acting at this point. If the handcuffs were a problem (and those, too, had been John's idea), the handcuffs could come off. But it was strange how "Me Master, you Slave" had turned into John ordering him around and Rodney playing mind-reader to a man who had yet to demonstrate he had one when it came to the bedroom.

"Not free, no.... of course not. Now your hands are free and you can... uh...."

"Rub your feet, Master."

"Rub my.... Look, John, we've got less than twenty minutes--"

"And it takes you twenty minutes to come?"

"Well, no, I don't--what are you implying?"

"I'm not implying anything. I'm just saying that we have time for a little foreplay."

"No--we would have had time for foreplay. Now, we're lucky if we have time for--nevermind. Whatever. You, slave, rub my feet."

And he sat down on the edge of the bed, awkwardly waiting until John placed one of his feet in his lap, and, despite his protests, that was good, yes, because with his toes, he could do a little rubbing of his own.

"Hmm," John said, as Rodney's foot nudged his cock, stroking his balls. John's eyes were closing and his chin tipping up a little, like a cat wanting a chin rub. Rodney obliged, stroking the stubbled skin of John's jaw with his fingertips, tracing around to his ears, and John seemed to suddenly remember the foot rub he'd planned, and pressed in hard at Rodney's arch, right where it did, actually, ache a little, and he moaned, and John moaned, and then Rome pretty much fell as John got up and pushed him back on the bed, climbing on top of him and doing a full-body massage through Rodney's sheet.

"Take my toga off," he ordered, not quite liking how ridiculous that sounded, but John murmured, "Busy," and he was, with one hand on each of their dicks. So Rodney struggled with the knot that John had insisted was historically accurate, and John did his best to get in his way, and then, at last, they were equitably fucking, with John sliding an arm around his back and holding him close, kissing him like he always did, and yes, it was all familiar stuff, the kind of sex Rodney didn't have to think about, which was nice as it left his mind free to think about other things while his body did its thing, and that wasn't as unromantic as it sounded. It was more like working out a problem while you slept, only more... tiring.

John was murmuring now, thrusting against him, still holding Rodney in place beneath him, but now with his right hand, still sticky from precome, digging into Rodney's waist, sort of kneading there, and it was no longer as strange as it had been the first few times, when Rodney had been worried John was making some sort of point about his excess weight, but it turned out John was just sort of grabby, and liked doing that to his ass, too. The grabbing and kneading didn't really do much for him besides making him a little self-conscious, but he'd never really said that to John, because they didn't, as a rule, talk much about sex. And really, look what happened when they did. It was clearly counterproductive to actually having sex.

Rodney, meanwhile, liked to tangle their legs together, hooking himself and John at the ankles, and then rolling them both over and pressing his weight down into John, who really seemed to get off on that, if the sounds he made were any indication. John would always speed up his thrusts, then, and bury his face in Rodney's neck, with John's panting a nice little counterpoint to Rodney's own gasping and moaning. John was always trying to get him to go running with him, but Rodney had already decided that he was entirely satisfied with the cardiovascular benefits of fucking, and if he was going to sweat this much and look this silly, he was going to do it naked and in private.

John was kissing his neck, and licking him, which meant that John had about thirty seconds left in him before he came. Which was good, because Radek had probably just about freed himself, which meant that if Rodney came soonish, he had just enough time for a shower and a bite to eat before the lab was again thrown into chaos.

So he set aside the problem of improving the efficiency of the desalinization tanks and focused on the feel of John's long, hairy, muscled thighs gripping his own, and the way his cock fit in just there, sliding under John's balls, and when John reached under him and grabbed his ass hard with both hands, he counted down, anticipating.

And then John came, with one finger slipping inside of him, a sort of promise for later, and Rodney answered in kind, working his own finger in to the knuckle and thrusting hard and holding on, as he rode his own climax just a few centimeters from John's asshole.

It was a shame, really, that they didn't have time for intercourse right now, but maybe, if John got the jumper back from the mainland before morning....

Except that they'd both, apparently, fallen asleep. He still had enough time for a shower, and a powerbar.

"Hey--Spartacus. Sheppard. Major."

"Hmm? What?" John's eyes barely opened, and he rubbed his sticky penis against Rodney's thigh. Rodney frowned and used his toga to tidy up a little.

"John, I've got to clean up now."

"Damn." John stretched, which Rodney watched with interest. Despite his assumption that he could be intentionally sexy, John was actually more attractive when he wasn't flirting and looking up from underneath his eyelashes, and pouting. Not that those things were unattractive. But John did that with everyone. Whereas this--the long, naked stretches and bleary-eyed smiles... these were his.

But John was already waking up and flirting again, though Rodney noticed that he sounded a little unsure--a little more human than he usually did once the eyelashes started batting. "Look, McKay--if you want to, um...."

"What?"

"Do your thing. Later. Tomorrow."

"Thing?"

"Fantasy. Your--we could, y'know. Try it. Low-gravity sex. It's creative, I'll give you that."

Rodney pretended to think about it, stroking low on John's belly, where the short curly hairs were still sticky with come. "No. Let's hold on to that one until I work out the kinks."

John's cock was coming up again, and he smiled a slow, easy smile that found an echo in Rodney's own penis. Then John nearly ruined it by stroking Rodney's flesh just above his hip, where he was most noticably soft.

Rodney edged away only to have John roll after him, still intent on stroking him there. "Kinks? I like the sound of that."

"Well, you won't if you find yourself suddenly falling in midair." And with that, he stood up, and John dropped his hands to fold them over his own belly, which was nearly concave when he was on his back.

"Naked. Ouch. Well, keep working on it, McKay." And John waved dismissively at him, his right hand edging down to take himself in hand, his eyes drifting shut again.

"Yes. Quite. So, you're on the Mainland 'till morning?"

"Probably. And you're in the lab until--"

"At least three. And then I'll figure out something for the whirlpool."

John's eyes came open as he arched an eyebrow at Rodney, his hand still wrapped around his dick and giving it slow, easy pulls that were echoed in the rise of his hips each time.

The sad fact was, Rodney wasn't entirely unmoved by the display, but there was work to be done, and besides which....

"Look, Major. Somewhere in that head of yours is a slavery-related fantasy I can fulfill, and in due time, I'm going to figure it out if it kills you. So--hold onto that thought."

"You are my fantasy, Rodney."

"I'm sure," he answered, turning away from John's clever hands and thrusting hips and going to take a shower before John's languorous smile got to him and he did something incredibly sappy and humiliating. Because it was probably just low blood sugar and lack of sleep that was making him feel like he could fly.

The End.