[38 Minutes] Nonlinear Progression by Greensilver

36 minutes of typing like mad and two of double-checking a character name, so forgive any possible typos. *g*

Title: Nonlinear Progression
Author: greensilver
Spoilers: through Hot Zone
Pairing: Beckett/McKay, Sheppard/McKay.
Challenge: 38 Minutes

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"You're an idiot," Carson says, and shoves Rodney against the dry erase board with all of its color-coded sketches of Ancient drones. "You're an idiot, and your drawings are crap."

The eraser ledge digs into the backs of Rodney's thighs; the markers clatter to the ground, scattering across the hard-packed ice. "Who said anything about-"

Carson shuts him up with mouth and teeth and tongue, and Rodney's fingers skitter across the board in search of leverage. The drone sketches smear into swirls of color, and when Rodney grabs Carson's jaw with both hands, tiny streaks of red and black smudge over Carson's skin.

-

They don't start sleeping together until Atlantis, until Rodney winds up in the infirmary for the fifth or tenth time and Carson breaks again, giving in. Carson always gives in first.

Rodney stands next to the bed in his boxers, feeling like a complete moron because Carson isn't doing anything, he's just sitting there looking pensive and unhappy and far, far less horny than Rodney would've liked.

"Is this a midlife crisis?" Rodney says, attempting to delay the moment when he either has to take his boxers off or put his pants back on. "There are cars for that sort of thing. I'm sure Major Sheppard-"

Then Carson is off of the bed and everywhere at once, and there's a certain indefinable something in his touch that's almost possessive, almost predatory. Rodney wonders what kink he could possibly have stumbled across, standing there with arms akimbo and boxers askew, but he doesn't question it.

Later, he wishes he had.

-

They stop sleeping together before Perna, before the storm, before John. They stop because Rodney cares, because Rodney worries, and ultimately, because Rodney can't deal with either of those things.

There are ways, myriad possibilities that would allow them to conveniently avoid attending the same briefings, working on the same projects, encountering each other at meals - in the corridors - in the infirmary. Instead, Carson develops a raging appetite and Rodney becomes more injury-prone than ever, and they pick away at one another merely by existing.

Rodney almost gives in after Perna, but by then John is making eyes at him across the briefing table and it's already too late, or so Rodney tells himself. He almost gives in after the storm, but Elizabeth goes through a clingy period and it's all Rodney can do to get a few seconds alone with Carson at a time, or so he pretends.

He kisses John once, just once, and as he's fumbling with John's uncooperative uniform shirt Rodney realizes that Carson saw this, he figured it out long before Rodney ever did.

Rodney doesn't sleep with John, but it doesn't matter. Kissing him once is enough to make Rodney want John, and he can't go back to Carson like that. He can't sleep with John, either - so he settles into the safe inbetweenness of wanting John and missing Carson, and he's comfortable there - or at least, he ought to be.

-

The irony of it all is that John is the real hero of the piece; John risks it all, John saves the day. Carson just watches, is absolutely helpless, does nothing that makes a difference.

But when Rodney is dying, all he can think about is Carson, and the fact that Carson is going to watch as it happens. Later, when the bodies have been disposed of and the populace has had all the sedatives it can take, he winds up on the floor of Carson's quarters with his head in Carson's lap, doing his absolute best not to turn into a gibbering idiot.

"I thought," he says, and there are more words to follow those, lots of them, but his throat closes and his vision blurs and all of the other words are meaningless, anyway.

"Me, too," Carson says, and he sounds just like he did earlier, frightened and relieved and puzzled, all at once.

They stay like that until Rodney's vision is clear and Carson's hands are steady, and then Rodney reaches up to touch Carson's knee and asks, "Should I go?"

Carson's hands settle on Rodney's shoulders, not quite holding him down.

"No," he says. "I don't think you should."