sgafic: body memory

Body Memory
by seperis
Sheppard/McKay, PG-13
For the lovely beadattitude for her cheering and enjoyment. If she chooses, related to her fic Caught. Kind of rough, because I am just not as good at writing on the spur as she is.

*thoughtful* I should expand this one day.



Rodney's always found the human body irreparably flawed.

Computers have logic, pattern, created by commands that can be fixed, changed, modified, corrected. Chains of logic create the structure; the logic can be flawed, but then again, it can be *fixed*.

Humans--can't be.

He carries an epipen, correcting for a body that thinks citrus is poison: powerbars, correcting for a body that processes sugars too quickly. His body's betrayed him a thousand times, PE and restaurants, parties and presentations, and humiliation in his failures has never gotten easier.

Atlantis changed everything, but it really changed nothing at all.

He runs with Cadman because he's too slow for Ronon, works out with Lorne because he's too clumsy for Teyla. Too slow, too clusmy, thinks too little, thinks too much, and no matter how many times that Lorne throws him, that Cadman beats him, his body never seems to learn. One mile with feet that don't step where they should; one hour with limbs that fight his control. He goes off-world with a gun that he can shoot, because accuracy is all in the mind.

He's never lived here, in this body with the thousand ways it breaks; his mind's never betrayed him. It remembers.

Bodies are reflexes, instincts, reactions he can't control, doesn't understand, never cared to. He flinches from citrus because his mind knows his body's flaw, from knives because his mind remembers an endless night and rain that spilled down like the end of the world. It knows coffee brings clarity, sugar calms anxiety, sandwiches and meals and sleep keep his body living, breathing, moving. He doesn't care. He has his mind. The rest doesn't, has never mattered.

But sometimes, he thinks he might be wrong.

John's t-shirt is two sizes too large, sleeves brushing low, hiding narrow wrists and dark-haired arms; faded black and age-soft, smoother at the elbow from resting too long on desks, pin-pricks of white from chemicals accidentally spilled. There's fray at the collar, because requisitions are late, forgotten, working too much, no time, no energy, (just don't *care*). They're warm from his body, from the floor, from the bed, buried under the covers before a meeting one of them forgot, pulled out and pulled on and Jesus, God.

Rodney sits a foot away and forgets arithmetic and language when he can smell John, detergent and clean sweat, salty air, himself, on John's skin, his hair, his clothes.

"Rodney?" Elizabeth says, and it's not like he even knows what she thinks he's supposed to say. John tilts his head, grinning while Rodney breathes in their last day, last night, the taste of John's tongue, the hollow of his throat, the bony curve of his hip; memory is burned in scent and taste and touch, and he can't think of power curves when he thinks of John in his shirt, on his shirt, on everything he has, piece by piece until he can't remember if he owns anything that John's never touched.

"Rodney?" John drawls with a sideways smile, and Rodney watches him slowly shift, leaning back, thighs parted; beneath the BDUs are Rodney's boxers; beneath his boots are Rodney's socks. Rodney's hands remember sliding them on John's body, settling low on narrower hips, still warm from his own skin; a waistband that sags enough to see fingertip bruises in purple on John's lower back, the mark of teeth on his belly. Rodney dressed him when he came out of Rodney's shower, boxers and pants, socks and boots on narrow feet, sliding the shirt over skin that smells like Rodney's soap, over bruises from his mouth and scratches from his nails and all the ways he's marking John that he hides beneath his clothes.

His body doesn't remember the pattern of sticks, of swords, how to pace or how to fight. It doesn't know citrus isn't poison, how to metabolize sugar, how to run and how not to fall. But it does remember John, him, them with every look and every breath.

Comments

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*glows* Thanks!