Heightmeyer caught up with Rodney in the hall to his office. She'd been trying to get hold of the scientist for several days, but he was always in his office, and Elizabeth had told her that no excuse short of an imminent wraith attack was good enough to interrupt Rodney when he was working. She'd already threatened anyone who did with court-martial for disturbing the peace, as the peace would be very much disturbed if Rodney was interrupted.
"Rodney," she said discreetly. "I was wondering if you could swing by my office sometime this afternoon."
"Why?" he asked suspiciously. "What did I do?"
Kate laughed. Rodney's reputation as an arrogant man preceded him ; of course he'd assume it was something he'd done. "You haven't done anything, well, nothing bad," she reassured him. "I was just having a chat to Doctor Weir and she mentioned you. I'd like to follow that." She spoke in general terms on the off chance someone would overhear then and their conversation would see very casual.
Rodney was surprised ; he had known Elizabeth was going to see Kate but he didn't know she'd see her so soon. "Of course," he said, quick to do anything that would help Elizabeth's recovering process quicker. "What time?"
What time? Rodney must care about Elizabeth deeply if he disregarded any other commitments he had. "Um, well we could go to my office now if you'd like," Kate suggested.
"Works for me," Rodney said. He followed Kate to her office, which had spectacular ocean views – not that they were hard to come by in this place. "How's Liz?" he asked as soon as Kate's doors were closed, not even bothering to sit down. "I mean, I know those doctor-patient laws still apply here, but whatever you can tell me…" he looked at her pleadingly. He cared about her a lot, she saw, and wanted to know exactly what was happening with her.
"It's OK, Rodney, she said it was OK for me to tell you what we talked about. She spoke very highly of you, she has a lot of faith in you."
Rodney squirmed with pleasure. He always liked it when people told him how much they needed him – and being told someone had a lot of faith in him wasn't far off – but when it came via Elizabeth, it meant even more to him. Then his expression turned seriously as he remembered why he was here. "How is she?" he asked.
"She blames herself," Kate said. "She spend a lot of time hypothesising about what she could have done differently, if she'd encouraged Koyla in some way, that kind of thing."
"She did no such thing!" Rodney exclaimed indignantly. He hadn't been there but he knew there would have been no way Elizabeth would encourage him.
"I know that and you know that," Kate said, "but she's having trouble accepting there's nothing she could have done."
"The only thing she did that was anything near encouraging him was not to fight him tooth and nail," Rodney said. "And she would have, if she hadn't been worried about me." He would always feel a little guilty about that. It didn't matter that she'd made a strategic choice – she'd saved his life when his death wouldn't have saved her from Koyla's ruthless assault.
Kate looked at him sympathetically. "That was her choice to make," she reminded him. "And she made it because she cares about you. You couldn't have saved her, Rodney, and she knew that. She just took the choice out of your hands. Please, it's important that you understand that. She needs you to help her through this."
Telling Rodney McKay he was needed – especially in a field he was usually considered completely inept in – had the desired affect. He pulled himself together immediately. He would always feel bad about the sacrifice Elizabeth made for him, but he realised there was a greater good – her wellbeing. He couldn't add to her torment even more by making it about him. "What do you need me to do?" he asked.
Kate smiled. "It's not about what I need you to do," she informed him gently. It was easy to overlook the blunder, she was very familiar with Rodney's way of thinking ; what needed to be done to make something work, and what was superfluous. It was more important that he was willing to do anything to help Elizabeth ; he just needed a nudge in the right direction. "You have to work out the boundaries for yourself. But it's important that you respect her boundaries – very important. There are going to be times when she won't be able to stand having you within three feet of her, and others when she'll be all over you. By the way, for what it's worth, you did the right thing there."
"She told you about that, huh?" Rodney asked ruefully.
Kate nodded. "I was impressed by your restraint, a lot of guys wouldn't have," she said. "You must really care about her."
"Well I'm not going to have sex with woman when she doesn't really want it!" Rodney said indignantly. Jesus Christ, what did some people take him for? Just because he hadn't been laid in longer then he cared to think about didn't mean he didn't care whether then woman wanted it or not.
"Hey, I didn't mean to get you worked up," Kate said dryly. It was well known Rodney didn't have the greatest luck with women, there were plenty of people who wouldn't put it past him to sleep with anything that showed the slightest bit of interest. She made a mental note that he was particularly sensitive about that. "My point is, it's important that you be aware of her boundaries at any given times – and they will change a lot. One day she'll be really affectionate and the next she may not want to know you, and it's important that you don't push it when that happens or you'll scare her. She's very vulnerable right now, and if she can trust you, that's a huge first step."
Rodney nodded. He liked that he was the only person she trusted, but the responsibility scared the crap out of him. What if he said or did something wrong? Kate's warning scared him. How was he supposed to know what she wanted when it changed all the time. If he'd seen her since the day she'd told him about the rape and they'd kissed in her office and then her room – he hadn't, he'd wanted to give her space, and now he was wondering if that had been such a bright idea – he would have assumed it was OK to kiss her again. What if she'd freaked out on him, what if his kisses would have brought back memories of Koyla? He felt the bile rise in his throat. He had no idea of what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to act – let alone how he was supposed to modify his behaviour everytime he saw her – and he was sure he was going to make an absolute hash of things, like he always did when it came to women.
As it turned out, it was easier then he expected. He quickly learned to read her body language, although it involved forgetting about everything else in the room when she entered it, something that amused people to no end. They stopped talking about his hopeless crush on Samantha Carter and started talking about his hopeless crush on Elizabeth Weir. Everytime he heard it, he wanted to shout to the rooftops that she had started it, that she had begged him to sleep with her – twice – and that occasionally, when she was feeling particularly trusting of him she allowed him to kiss her. No, allowed was too passive a word – while she rarely made the move herself, she always responded with passion, her tongue tangling with his, her chest pressed against his, her fingers running through her hair… everytime he heard people say what an ass he was making of himself, pursuing another unattainable woman, he wanted to scream out the truth – that she was very interested in him, thankyouverymuch. But every time he managed to hold his tongue. Elizabeth wanted to keep this under wraps. He would keep it under wraps. And gloat forever more when the truth came out.
He learned to read her body language, though it was the most difficult language he had ever learned, full of subtleties and maddening inconsistencies. Well, as a scientist he knew that there were no such thing as inconsistencies, the problem was you hadn't applied to right formula, and to some degree, that proved to be true. The rest, he had to go by instinct.
He learned to call her name whenever he approached her from behind, because he learnt from the way her body tensed up at the sound of male footsteps that she was slightly intimidated by the sound. He learned from the way her shoulders tensed or relaxed whether it was a good or a bad day – if it was a good day, it was OK, welcome even to come up behind her right into her personal space, to be side by side with her, to rest his hand on the small of her back in an almost possessive way. And if it was a bad day, he learned to walk around her, to face her, preferably with a few feet and something solid between them.
He learned when she wanted to be alone and when she wanted to have him nearby, doing his own thing. He learned when she wanted to be held for an hour – sometimes calmly, sometimes shaking silently as she made the front of his shirt wet with her tears – and when it was OK to rub her back, his fingers caressing her body as platonically as he could manage, although always through her shirt. And, to his great delight and even greater pride, he learned when it was OK to stop rubbing her back, pull her against him gently so her back was pressed against his chest and trail soft kisses along her neck. The soft whimpers of pleasure she'd made and the way she'd grabbed his hand when he did this had had him up most of the night, grinning to himself like an absolute moron.
The next evening she'd come to him in his room. She had never spent time in his room before, it was always him coming to her room. He suspected it was because she was intimidated by the masculine presence, but he didn't say as much to her. She would come in her own time. And she did.
"I just wanted to tell you… I really enjoyed last night," she said.
"So did I," he said calmly, refraining from blurting out that the bags under his eyes were caused by five hours of thinking about it when he should have been sleeping. "Was there, uh, anything else?" he asked when he realised after several seconds that she was looking at him in a way he hadn't learned to decipher on account that he'd never seen it before. She was waiting for something – wanting to know something.
"It was twenty-three days since you kissed me," she blurted out. "Up until yesterday."
He took a little pleasure out of knowing she had been thinking of it in days, not more general weeks. Had she been counting like he had? No, she couldn't possibly have been counting the way he had – there hadn't been a time he'd seen her when he hadn't thought about how damn good it would be to kiss her. He'd been scared out of his wits of making such a bold move so he'd left it… and left it… and left it. "I know," he said calmly. He was getting good at being calm.
"Why did you wait so long?" she asked him.
"I didn't want to scare you. Christ, Liz, there have been times when I thought if I held you too tight you'd break."
Elizabeth stared at the ground. She thought about the hours she had spent in Rodney's arms, sobbing uncontrollably, how patient, how gentle he'd been. Before now, she hadn't thought Rodney capable of that kind of gentleness and patience, and she loved him for it. "I've asked a lot of you, haven't I?" she asked.
"Nothing I didn't want to give," he reassured her. Gently he cupped her chin and forced her head up so she was looking him in the eyes. "Liz, I love you far too much to hurt you, you know that, don't you?" he asked. She nodded, and tears filled her eyes. Goddamnit, why was she always so teary around him? Because she trusted him enough to let down her guard around him. "Hey, don't cry," he urged when the tears starting falling down her face. Instinct told him it was the right thing to do, so he leaned in to kiss her, wedging her between the door and his body for leverage.
She should have felt frightened to be so restrained. These rooms were soundproof, and Rodney was a lot stronger then she was – there was nothing to stop him doing what he wanted to her – like Koyla had done. But she knew Rodney wouldn't hurt her. She trusted him implicitly. And his kiss was wonderful. For three weeks, she had been anticipating this kiss – sometimes more then others – and she wasn't disappointed. He knew how to kiss, or maybe it was just that he knew how to kiss her. She opened her mouth to his, savoured the taste of his lips on hers, met his tongue, first playfully, then passionately. She ran her hands across his chest, through his hair, down his back ; he supported her head with one hand, twirling her dark locks through his fingers, his free hand resting on her hip. Slowly, he moved that hand upwards to her breasts. She tensed up very slightly, she probably wasn't aware of it herself, but he picked it up and settled his hand back on her hip. She relaxed.
He withdrew from her slightly so he could meet her eyes. "I love you," he said shakily. He had kind of said it before, but only in passing. For some reason that had no logic to it, he wanted Elizabeth to know he loved her. "I would never hurt you."
She hugged him. "I know," she said. "I love you too."
They were the words he had been longing to hear, the words that made him instantly forget all the frustration that had come from learning how to be patient. He leaned in to kiss her again. He loved kissing her. He'd never really appreciated kissing all on its won before Elizabeth – he'd learned to approach sex as a science (a science he excelled at, no less) and as such, saw kissing as a means of foreplay. But Elizabeth wouldn't let him go further then a kiss, or rather, he wouldn't let himself go further then a kiss for her sake. So a kiss had come to mean a whole lot more to him. He savoured the taste of her, the feel of her mouth pressed close and hot against his, her fingers through his hair…
Shakily, he pulled away. "What's wrong?" Elizabeth asked.
"I think we should stop… before I can't stop," he mumbled, feeling a little ashamed of himself. Kate kept telling him it was natural for him to have urges, especially since he was spending so much time with Elizabeth, most of it platonic, but he still felt bad about it. Elizabeth had enough to worry about without him reducing her to a sex object by jerking off over her.
She caressed his cheek gently. God, she loved him so much. She couldn't believe how patient he had been with her in these last three weeks. It must be hard for him to spend so much time with her without actually getting anything out of it – at least, not the kind of thing any red-blooded male would want. She wanted so badly to be able to pay him back for all he'd given her that her desire to make it up to him – and her desire for him – almost overcome her apprehensions. "I think I can –" she began in a small voice.
He placed two fingers over her mouth gently. "Don't be stupid," he said firmly. "I'm not going to let you do anything you don't feel comfortable doing. And I knew you don't feel comfortable." He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her apprehensive words.
"But you must be –" she began.
He withdrew from her completely, walking over to his bed. "I must be desperate to get into your pants?" he offered. She nodded. "Maybe, but I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to."
Tentatively, she sat down beside him. "I want to make you happy," she said.
"I want you to be happy," he returned. "I love you Liz, and I'm not going to do anything to jeopardise your wellbeing."
She started to cry again. Goddamnit, why couldn't she be stronger around Rodney? Because she could be teary around him, that was why. She rested her head against his shoulder. "You've been so good to me," she said.
"Well, it's not like I had a colourful sex life before this happened," Rodney admitted wryly. "Seriously, Liz, I'm not going to do anything to jeopardise us. I'll do whatever it takes to make you better." He kissed the top of her head. "I don't care how hard it is."
And it was hard, as he admitted to Kate once, when he was feeling particularly frustrated. The night before they'd gotten into a heavy making out session and it had been going great until he'd felt her tense up slightly when slipped a hand between her thighs. He'd slowed down, knowing he could have gone all the way if he'd wanted to – she would have let him in the sense that she would have been pretty passive but she wouldn't have resisted him either. For a brief moment he'd been so goddamn horny he thought seriously about passive sex as an option. Then his love for her had gotten the better of his hormones, but he'd felt deeply ashamed of himself. He'd lain awake for most of the night with a raging hard-on, unable to bring himself to jerk off over her like a fantasy in a men's magazine. She wasn't some whore in a picture, she was Elizabeth Weir who had already been used by a man, she didn't need to be used by another man. At least, that was how he saw it.
"You don't need to beat yourself up about it," Kate reassured him. "To be honest, I'd be more concerned if you didn't have any desire for her. You're a healthy adult male, Rodney, and you're spending a lot of time with a woman who you're attracted to and not sleeping with. It's normal for you to have urges and fantasies. What matters is you're not acting on them."
It was hard for Rodney to be convinced. It was just one more thing to add to his general fear of upsetting her somehow. He was doing everything in his power to help her and it felt like it wasn't enough. But as the weeks went by and she opened up to him more – emotionally, physically, sexually – it got easier to deal with his attraction to her, and he felt less guilty about fantasising over her to relieve his sexual desires.
Until things went very pear-shaped.
Things had been progressing nicely. They were spending a lot of time together, as much as they could manage without raising more then just a few eyebrows. Teyla had mentioned a few things in passion, but Teyla was an insightful woman and more to the point, she knew how to keep her mouth shut. For the first time in his life, Rodney McKay was actually worried about people finding out he was in a relationship with a beautiful, intelligent woman. He himself wanted to shout it to the rooftops, but Elizabeth wanted to keep it under wraps a little while longer and he would have given Elizabeth practically anything that she asked for.
So they kept things quiet, and their relationships progressed, emotionally and sexually. He was learning to read her very well and was exercising considerable restraint in their blossoming relationship.
And she knew it. She knew how patient he'd been, she knew how much restrain he was exercising. She knew it was hard for him to take things so slowly. She knew how badly he wanted her. He was getting good at reading her – and she was getting good at reading him. She could see the was his eyes flashed briefly with disappointed when she tensed up slightly when he slipped his hand a little too high on her thigh. She could see the hunger and disappointment when she told him, with her body language, that he was taking things too far. He would have to be a eunuch not to be frustrated with such an arrangement, and Elizabeth knew from the way he touched her that he was far from a eunuch.
She wanted to give him what he wanted. She loved him for how patient he had been with her, how patient he continued to be with her. He said he didn't mind that all they did was make out, but she knew him better then that. She didn't think she was ready to have sex with him yet, but she felt confident she could meet him halfway – although convincing him of that would be another thing entirely.
One day they were in her room enjoying a particularly steamy makeout session – by their standards, anyway – with him sitting on the bed, his feet on the floor and her straddling him, and she started working her way down his body until she was on her knees on the floor in front of him. She ran her hand over her crotch provocatively, and began working on the buckle of his pants.
Reluctantly he pushed her away. "You don't have to," he said. His voice betrayed just how badly he wanted her to. It had been almost two months and he was finding it harder and harder to respect the boundaries. X-rated fantasies crept into his head and he was very reluctant to stop her.
She smiled up at him. It was easy to be loving with her smile, that was a sentiment she already felt ; it was hardly to appear calm, but she was a diplomat, it was her job to appear calm. Privately she felt a little apprehension, but she told herself that was because it had been a while since she had done anything so sexual and her last experience had hardly been a good one. "I want to," she said reassuringly.
He liked the way her eyes sparkles with love and calmness. He had a vauge idea that as a diplomat, it was her job to appear calm regardless of how she actually felt, but he chose to overlook that. He wanted her too badly to bother himself with such minor details. She said she wanted to, she looked like she wanted to, he wouldn't argue with that.
Seeing his consent, she went back to the buckle of his pants, easily freeing him of the material. His desire was already very obvious before she'd properly touched him. Yes, Rodney had been very, very patient and if she wasn't ready to go all the way with him just yet, she could make it up to him in other ways.
Rodney groaned when Elizabeth took him in her mouth. "Ooooh, baby that feels good," he said gutturally when she took him in as much as she could. His hands flew to the back of her head and he began working his fingers through her hair as she worked on him. "Liz, Liz," he cried out as she used her fingers and mouth to drive him completely wild. He was whimpering uncontrollably like a child, and she loved that she could do that to him. She didn't particularly like the feel of him in her mouth, but she loved the way he was responding to her. This was a cinch.
And then it suddenly went bad. Giving out a roar of pent-up desire when he passed the point of no return, he grabbed the back of her head and pushed her right against his crotch so she was forced to take in the entire length of his considerable erection. She gagged and tried to pull away from him but he held her securely against him as he thrust hard and fast. This was definitely not what she had planned. She felt the bile ride in her throat and the feeling of dread she'd felt with Koyla wash through her body. She felt terrified and was two seconds away from biting down hard…
Rodney came hard, screaming as he spurted warm bitter liquid into her mouth. Shaking from the magnitude of the event – he hadn't realised until then just how badly he needed a release – he let her go and she dropped onto her hands on the floor so she was on all fours, crying and spitting out onto the floor.
Rodney immediately realised something was wrong. He got her a glass of water and tissues and sat down beside her. She gulped down the water and he wiped her mouth gently. Now that the moment was over and he wasn't so preoccupied with sex, guilt crept into him. He should have known she wasn't ready for it.
"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked.
She looked at him accusingly, her eyes filled with tears. "How could I?" she asked. "You were holding my head down with your dick down my throat."
He cringed at her words ; he'd always hated to hear sex put so crudely, and to have it come from the mouth of the woman he loved about him… "I'm sorry," he said helplessly, horror at himself growing. He kept telling himself I should have known – I should have known. Girlfriends in the past had complained about the way he climaxed ; he should have known it would freak her out. He shouldn't have let her go ahead with it. He should have known she wasn't ready. But no, his dick had thought for him. He was a selfish, rotten bastard. "Do you want me to go?" he asked.
Elizabeth knew Rodney was beating himself up over it. She knew she shouldn't be so harsh on him, after all, she had insisted on going down on him. But right now she was reliving the memories of Koyla, still feeling the pressure of Rodney's hard, ruthless penis forced down her throat. In her present state of mind, she could barely separate the two men. "Yes," she said.
Rodney forced back the tears. He would not cry in front of Elizabeth, not when it was his fault. What he really wanted to do – desperately wanted to do – was take her in his arms and tell her over and over that it was alright, he was sorry and he'd never do it again. But she wanted him to go, and he had to at least respect that. He left her in her room, his heart breaking for her, feeling like the biggest cad in the world, feeling little better then Koyla.
He went to bed but was unable to sleep, his mind weighed down with his guilt. He had gotten Elizabeth to do something she really hadn't wanted to do. He knew this wasn't the same as forcing her, but in Elizabeth's current state of mind, he wasn't sure if she would make that distinction – and that was really what mattered. He should have known it was only something she was doing to make him happy. He should have made her stop. He should have – he tossed and turned for hours, his guilt growing as insomnia set in.
At three in the morning there was a knock on Rodney's door. At first he ignored it, but it grew more insistent until it became apparent that whoever was on the other side was not going to go away. "Who is it?" he asked irritably.
"It's me, Liz," Elizabeth's tearful voice came. "Can I come in?"
Was she kidding? If she wanted to come in, of course he would let her. He sat up in bed. "Come in, Liz," he said.
She opened the doors to his room and entered. Even in the half-light he could see she'd been crying a lot. Well, he'd left her crying and she probably hadn't stopped. His heart went out to her. He loved her and he couldn't bear to see her so unhappy – and to have been the cause of it, too. He scooted over in bed so there was room for her and she gratefully climbed into bed with him, clinging to him tightly, crying.
He stroked her hair gently. He was worried about exactly how intimate to be with her but she had come to him and she seemed to want his affection. "It's OK," he whispered to her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let you. I should have known better."
"I wanted to make you happy," she cried into his chest.
"You do make me happy," he insisted. "I love you, Liz. I'd do anything for you, you know that."
"Not sexually I don't make you happy," she pointed out tearfully.
He sighed. She had a point and there was no denying it. But at the same time, she was missing a very important point and he told her so. "I don't care about sleeping with you nearly as much as I care about you," he said. "I'll wait as long as it takes but I don't want you to do anything you don't want to."
She cried harder into his chest. "You're too good to me," she said.
"I don't want to hear you say that again," Rodney ordered her. He forced her to look into his eyes. "I love you, how many times do I have to say it?" He lowered his head to kiss her gently. "As long as it takes," he murmured lovingly.
His reassuring words and secure hold had a calming effect on her, and she started drifting off to sleep. He nudged her awake. "You should go back to your own room," he told her. "If we're found in the morning…" he didn't need to spell out what ramifications that would have.
She curled up to him even more snugly. "Wanna stay with you," she mumbled. "Don't care what people say."
"OK," Rodney said, leaning over to set his alarm for two hours in case he fell asleep. He had no intention of letting Elizabeth make a decision like that, he'd wake her up in a few hours and make her leave. He wanted her to stay, of course, but not like this, not when she wasn't thinking right to make that decision – her relationship with Rodney versus what people would say if they were found together.
It didn't take long for Elizabeth to fall asleep after that. Rodney lay awake feeling her in his arms. He vowed he wouldn't hurt her like that again. He loved her too much.