Free Trade

Rating: Light NC-17
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay with some Lorne/Parrish and others.
Word Count: ~5000
Summary: Atlantis has an alternate economy. Contains humor and sex, two great tastes that taste great together.
Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me, nor to I derive any profit from them.
A/N: the idea for this was provided by a thread in a post by helenish. Thank you to mrshamill for beta-ing!

It started with the email. Or maybe it started a few months earlier with the library. Rodney found out about that when he overheard Cadman fighting with a female marine whose name he didn't know over a copy of Top Gun.

"It's porn!" said Cadman. "Gay porn, but still porn."

"La-la-la-la-la, I can't hear you," said the other marine. They stopped when they saw Rodney. "Fine, you've already ruined it for me. You can put it in the porn library."

"Ruined?" said Cadman. "I think it makes it better."

Obviously, he had to step in to clear things up. He asked Cadman to call a meeting of a few interested parties in one of the unused lounges. She brought Katie Brown, who Rodney really hoped wouldn't be there, and Rodney passed the word along to some of his scientists.

"First things first. Top Gun does not belong in the porn section. Neither does Pretty Woman or—ew—Hellboy. Seriously? Hellboy? I so don't want to know." He glared at Kavanagh, who gave him a wounded look. "From now on, major studio releases will go in the regular DVD lending library, no matter what pet theories you have about Maverick and Iceman. I've set up some space on the server for everyone to upload whatever internet stuff you smuggled in from Earth. Share and share alike, boys and girls."

Soon that the hard-disk was full and Rodney had to set up some new space. A collection of books by Anonymous found their way into the library, and Rodney observed a brisk trade in erotic stories emailed around the Atlantis network. As long as no one wasted paper by printing them out, he didn't mind, and it was nice to give Sam-Carter-in-a-wet-T-shirt and Sheppard-naked-in-the-shower a rest as masturbation material. Better to save those for special occasions.

He debated whether to tell John about it or not. Surely one of his soldiers would let him know. Cadman, certainly, who felt the urge to share her Top Gun theories with anyone who would listen, and plenty who wouldn't, would have to let something slip.

But he checked the server logs, and John hadn't downloaded anything. His laptop didn't have a DVD player, so Rodney thought he might have to give John a heads up. Subtly, though—they might not be good enough buddies—even though John called him ‘buddy' sometimes, which was pretty awesome—for Rodney just to say "hey, in case you're horny, we've amassed a pile of porn, third floor library, shelf near the back."

So he changed the password, and sent out a mass email with plenty of detail and accidentally-on-purpose included John on it.

"Why did you include me on the science team server email?" asked John at the next senior staff meeting.

"Must have been a mistake," Rodney said. He looked daggers at John and tried to gesture at Elizabeth with his forehead. Zelenka smirked, and Carson did his best to look innocent. Rodney wondered idly if Cadman and Carson watched Top Gun together.

Elizabeth found out next.

"Rodney, I can't believe you didn't tell me about this," she said when she called him into her office. Rodney felt like a high school kid again, getting summoned to the principal's office for dropping a piece of sodium into the chemistry teacher's coffee mug. It had been metal, so it only tore rather than shattering, but they still suspended him for a week.

He tried to think of what he'd been up to that Elizabeth might object to, and drew a blank. "The still in the auxiliary chem. lab? Ethanol has uses other than recreation, you know. And everyone needs to blow off some steam sometimes. It's a lot better than the Athosian's fermented milk. I suspect that stuff could make you blind."

"What? No, I knew about that. I signed the requisition for the extra tubing on the last Daedalus run, remember?"

"Oh yeah, what then?"

"The porn library, Rodney. Really." She tapped her fingertips together, and looked at him just like the principal had: disappointed with a hint of amusement underneath.

"Well, as I was saying, people need to ah—blow off—ah, steam?"

"I'm just insulted you didn't ask me to contribute." She raised an eyebrow at him, and Rodney had to look very hard at a new clay figure on her desk. Then he noticed that the figure had a little, anatomically correct phallus, and looked back at Elizabeth's face.

"By all means, contribute away," he said, rubbing his forehead.

"Good. I don't know why you assumed I wouldn't have anything to add, or be interested in borrowing from the collection. I was the editor in chief of Vulva at Berkley." At Rodney's blank look she said, "It was a sex-positive feminist newsletter. We even had centerfolds."

This was worse than the time he found his mom's vibrator. "I swear I won't do it again. Can I get back to, uh, science, now?"

***

The email wasn't addressed to him, but it had the word ‘coffee' in the body, so one of Rodney's filters directed it his way anyway. If anyone in Atlantis was stupid enough to think their email was private, they deserved what they got. Whoever sent this didn't even bother to encrypt it. He or she had gone to the bother of setting up an anonymous account to send it from, but that anonymity lasted until two seconds after Rodney looked at the header.

"Ah, Parrish," Rodney said to himself. "So you're the one hoarding the coffee." But he wasn't. Something of the opposite.

To: trade-l@lantismail.net
Subject: Coffee

Will give head for coffee or chocolate covered espresso beans. Meet me in the East sublevel showers. 2300 tonight, pull the red ribbon. If it's gone, someone beat you to it.

MBPA2-4

Parrish had put a good deal of thought into this, but who would want to trade precious caffeine for oral sex from some stranger? Best to get to the bottom of this before someone else did and blamed him for it.

He walked down to the showers in the sublevel of the east pier. The area was dark and a little creepy. It had the same huge plate glass windows as the marine biology lab on the West pier, and Rodney saw phosphorescent fish darting around in the darkened waters. When he got to the showers, he didn't see a red ribbon, but he did hear some slurping and gasping and a male voice choked with pleasure calling out affirmatives.

Rodney felt a little dirty eavesdropping, but this sort of thing had to be nipped in the bud before anyone got upset. He crossed his arms and waited for Parrish and the other perpetrator to come out.

"Major Lorne," he said, surprised. Then more firmly, "you two come with me."

They sat in Rodney's tiny office, in the two chairs he usually reserved for incompetent scientists who needed dressing down.

"Who died and made you the sex police?" asked Lorne, before Rodney had figured out what to say. Lorne looked like he was trying to be stern, but a dopey just-got-some grin crept across his features and ruined the effect.

"You're using the Atlantis network to organize prostitution. As Head Scientist, I have jurisdiction."

"It's all consensual," said Parrish, in his most pedantic tone of voice. He and Lorne shared a glance and Lorne started grinning.

"Don't tell me you're homophobic, McKay," said Lorne. "You're Canadian. Anyway, no one has minded so far."

"So far? How long has this been going on?" They exchanged another glance. "I'm just going to look through the email logs and find out, so you might as well tell me. How much coffee are we talking here?" Lorne glanced at Rodney and his grin got a little wider. "Hypothetically, of course."

For some reason that was the question that finally made Parrish blush. "It's kind of negotiated at the point of transaction," he said, looking firmly at McKay's desk.

"You're really cheap, Parrish," said Lorne. "You could charge more."

"Well, maybe I like doing it, did you ever think of that? God. I know you're the only one with a stash of chocolate espresso beans." He got up and stormed out.

"Uh, excuse me Dr. McKay," said Lorne, and ran after him.

"Great, just great," said Rodney to the empty room.

The server logs yielded a string of emails to the trade list that had been going on since right after he organized the porn library.

"You effectively gutted our economy," said Cadman, when Rodney worked up the nerve to ask her for all the details. They sat in the mess; she made Rodney bribe her with his weekly ration of blue jello before she agreed to talk.

"Excuse me?"

"I minored in Poli Sci at Columbia before joining the Marines," she said.

"Unless it was at the Wanda Trossler School of Prostitution, I'm not sure how that qualifies you to—wait, what are you talking about?"

"The porn, Rodney, the porn. Everyone was happily trading it until you had to swoop in with your Communistic Canadian ways—,"

"Can I have my jello back now?"

"Okay, basically it works like this. Everyone has a code for who they are, and who it's appropriate for them to . . . you know."

"What I saw didn't look that appropriate," said Rodney.

Cadman made a phony sad face at him. "Lorne told me you caught him and Parrish," she said. She patted Rodney's hand and he pulled it away.

"You know about that?"

"Lorne's hogging all the chocolate covered espresso beans, so Parrish has to get them from only him. Kind of like Kavanagh with the popcorn flavored Jelly Bellies."

Rodney put his head in his hands. "Please tell me Parrish isn't doing him too. I know he has a sweet tooth, but—oh God—forget I said anything."

"No, it's not like that. Kavanagh only does women, and since he gives the best head on Atlantis and he likes Jelly Bellies, everyone's been hoarding their collections, and there was almost a bidding war the other night."

"Please go away," said Rodney. "This is way more information than I needed."

"You need to loosen up Rodney, everyone's enjoying themselves. If you're worried, I'll send you the spreadsheet."

Rodney took way more time than the project merited to sort though all the emails, match them up with the chart, and figure out how the system worked. Every email had a code indicating the sex of the person making the offer, the sex of who they were willing to perform an act upon, a code for their name, and a code for the level of who they could trade with within Atlantis's loose hierarchy.

"Great, just great," he said to Cadman when he saw her next in the mess.

"What's wrong now, McKay?" she asked.

"The only other person at my level is Colonel Sheppard. That isn't fair."

Cadman smirked at him. "Well, since you insisted in the last senior staff meeting that marines should obey you unless your order countermands an order given by Colonel Sheppard, or goes against our primary duties, you took yourself out of the game."

"It's only logical since I am the head scientist, you should have to listen to me," Rodney crossed his arms over his chest.

"Poor Rodney, is it lonely at the top?"

"Shut up," he said. Cadman grinned back at him. "Fine," he continued, "if I'm not going to benefit from this, then I'm not going to take the heat. Someone needs to tell Dr. Weir and make sure she doesn't have a problem with it."

"She already knows. The idea of dividing up levels based on the chain of command was hers—to keep things fair, she said."

"Well it's not very fair to me," yelled Rodney.

***

After that Rodney didn't pay much attention to the emails, except when John's name started showing up in them. It was never him requesting anything, but a brisk trade sprung up in his old T-shirts. Simpson, especially, was good at stealing them and trading them out again, probably for Twinkies, Rodney deduced when he broke into her desk drawer to borrow one.

"Rodney, do you think you could send someone to check into the Ancient washers and driers?" asked John when he visited the labs next. "They look just like the ones on Earth, but I think there's something wrong with them."

"What? Laundry is more important than fixing this generator? I don't think so," said Rodney without turning his head.

"My T-shirts keep disappearing," said John. "I only have two left, and this one is falling apart." Rodney sighed and looked up from his tablet. The shoulders of John's shirt did look a bit threadbare, and it wasn't long enough either. When John raised his arms the shirt pulled up and revealed a thin line of stomach, covered with fine dark hairs. Rodney heard some of the lab techs behind him sigh audibly. "Also, both of the ones that are left have shrunk," explained John.

"Rub it in, why don't you," said Rodney. "Stop distracting my scientists." He put an ironic emphasis on the word ‘scientists' in hopes it would communicate to them just how little he thought of their skills at this moment.

Rodney was in a foul mood for a few days after that. John was obviously playing some kind of game with the T-shirts—it must be how he was negotiating his favors—so now everyone on Atlantis was getting laid except Rodney.

***

"Did you know about this?" asked John a few months later. He held in his hand an email between Dr. Heightmeyer and Kavanagh. Rodney suspected she had cornered the market on Jelly Bellies. No one wanted to argue with the woman who had dirt on everyone.

"What, Dr. Heightmeyer trading candy for sex? She's not the only one. At least Kavanagh's been more pleasant now that he's getting laid on a regular basis."

"Cadman told me everyone's doing it," said John. He crumpled up the piece of paper into a tight ball and flung it into a trashcan.

"Yeah, it's been going on for a while," said Rodney.

"Really? Everyone's okay with this?" John asked. He wrinkled his forehead fetchingly. "Even Elizabeth?"

"Especially Elizabeth. She wants everyone to sign a release so she can write a paper about the evolution of a sexual free-market in a money-free society."

"This is terrible. I can't believe people are using each other like that. Rodney, we have to put a stop to it."

"No one would thank you. Even Lo—well, you'd be surprised who is involved. It's all consensual."

"Did you participate in this?" John still looked very worried.

"No, everyone thought it would be inappropriate for the senior staff to get involved except with each other. You're the only person at the right level for me to trade favors with, and obviously that's not going to happen. I was pretty sure you were getting around it with all the T-shirts."

"People were stealing my T-shirts and you thought I had something to do with it?"

"Well, why else did you keep on leaving them around? I was working on cracking whatever code you were using, but you didn't have enough T-shirts for sufficient sample data."

"I wasn't leaving them around. What do you mean the right level?"

"Level in the command structure—it's not a perfect system, but basically, you're a six, and I'm a six, and no one else is. Elizabeth is a seven, which means she can't trade with anyone. Except, theoretically, Teyla, who is also a seven, being a foreign leader, but she's also on your team, which means you can't trade with her. Someone has a spreadsheet, but stopped paying attention once I realized how unlikely it was that I would benefit from the arrangement."

"People are trading sex for my t-shirts? That's weird. Why don't they get their own from requisition?"

Rodney gave John a look as if he were a particularly stupid child. "They think you're sexy, God knows why, and since a t-shirt is as close as they're going to get . . ."

John perched on the edge of his desk, and Rodney did a quick scan to make sure he wasn't sitting on anything fragile, but no, John was too graceful and self-aware to do that. Well, aware of his body, anyway. Aware of anything else was another story. "Don't be too sure about that," said John, wearing an expression Rodney thought was supposed to be a leer, but it wasn't working very well.

"You can try that, but I think goofy and oblivious suits you better."

"So you haven't, uh, traded with anyone?"

"No, as per the system worked out by our dear Lt. Cadman—can you give her more work to do, please?—I am not allowed to trade with anyone but you."

John bit his lower lip and wouldn't meet Rodney's eyes.

"Yeah, exactly," said Rodney. "So now you know, and now I need to get some work done." John picked up the red and black ends of an oscilloscope and touched them to each other. "And if you must stay, don't touch anything. You're going to short out my equipment. Getting replacements isn't exactly easy."

"It's not even on, McKay."

"Yeah, well, it could have been."

Rodney wasn't really doing anything, just looking at the power signatures for various control crystals to see which ones were more likely to interface with earth technology and the DC power of the naquadah generators. Some of the crystals stopped conducting if they were improperly powered for too long. John stayed seated on the end of his bench, ignoring all the chairs, lounging about as if he were in a bar and not a lab.

"What?" said Rodney finally. "Don't you have anything to do? Because if you don't, can you hand me some needle-nose pliers? The drawer between your legs."

John spread his legs so Rodney was sitting directly between them and John could get to the drawer without getting up, blissfully unaware of the effect his movements had on Rodney. He swallowed hard and tried to fight the heat rising in his face.

"So, what would you trade for?" asked John. He put the pliers into Rodney's hand.

Rodney leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, considering. "I would give head to just about anyone for some Kona coffee."

"Even Kavanagh?" John's smile grew unfriendly.

"Well, you have to draw the line somewhere," said Rodney. John still looked at him expectantly, and Rodney sighed. "It would have to be a lot of coffee. And real Kona, not that crap they sell at the Honolulu airport. That stuff is like ten percent at best."

"How much coffee for me?" asked John. Rodney looked very closely at the control crystal he was working on, and adjusted the vises to hold it at a slightly different angle. He could see his face reflected in its surface. He couldn't imagine a way this conversation could end well; John would notice his crush, and then make even more fun than he did about Allina. It wasn't like everyone else on the base didn't have a crush on John as well. Rodney hated to follow the crowd, but in this case, the crowd was onto something.

"Less than for Kavanagh," he said, praying John would leave it at that.

"I'm curious, what's the going rate?"

"There's a sliding scale based on the participants. It's negotiated at the time."

"I have a lot of coffee. I don't know if it's Kona, though."

"And of course you didn't share with me." Rodney sighed. John wouldn't even need coffee to get into the game, just his pretty, pretty face. "I'm sure everyone would turn a blind eye to you getting involved. Just don't let Elizabeth know."

"You don't want my coffee?"

"If you're trying to get me to admit that I would give you a blow job for some decent source of caffeine, I would," said Rodney impatiently, trying to cover his growing nervousness.

Just then Zelenka wandered in to the lab. "I'd give anyone head for coffee," said Rodney, "not just Colonel Sheppard."

"I'm glad I do not have any, then," said Zelenka. He picked up a spool of wire and walked out again.

"You would?" asked John. "Would you, you know, for my coffee?"

"Are you propositioning me?" asked Rodney. He frowned at John—what the hell kind of game was he playing now?

"I guess so."

"Um, okay, this is weird. Where?"

"In there?" John tilted his head toward the supply closet behind them.

"Okay." Rodney gave him a quizzical look, but John wouldn't meet his eye. "I thought you said this whole thing was a bad idea. The trade thing, I mean."

John opened the door to the closet and Rodney followed him in. Rodney wasn't great at reading people, but he could tell that John was incredibly uncomfortable, and as John closed the door behind them, Rodney sighed again.

John raised his eyebrows at Rodney, questioning, and Rodney walked forward and undid the snaps that held John's thigh holster on. Oh, that was the stuff of fantasies, but not like this, stilted and awkward. John's face looked like a brick wall, and Rodney stepped back.

"Fine, you've made your point."

"What?" said John.

"Your point. The point that you were trying to make, that this trade thing is a bad idea."

"I wasn't trying to make a point."

"You want me to give you—you don't—you're just trying to fuck with me."

"No, I'm really not."

"Whatever." He put his hand on the door handle and found John blocking his way. "I have work to do."

"You'd give anyone else head but not me? You'd give Kavanagh head?"

"Apparently not." Rodney glanced up at John's face, which still looked angry. "You want this?" asked Rodney. "I just never pictured—I mean I did picture—oh, what the hell. You're sure?"

"Yes." John's voice was hard.

John leaned toward him suddenly, and brought his hands up near Rodney's face, then clenched them into fists and dropped his arms to his sides again.

"What?" asked Rodney. "What is this really about?"

"You can have the coffee, okay?" said John.

"Okay . . . you're freaking me out. Do you want to do this or not?"

"I'm just not used to this."

"Who is?" Rodney shrugged.

"This is too creepy," said John suddenly. "This isn't how I wanted it."

"How did you want it?"

"Like this," said John, and he grabbed the back of Rodney's neck and pressed an open-mouthed kiss on him. Their teeth banged together. John's tongue was in his mouth and his lips were bruising Rodney's. It was a hard, angry kiss, a salvo in a war that couldn't be waged any other way.

The kiss broke something open in the strained atmosphere between them. Rodney shoved John back against the shelves, even as John kept hold of Rodney's head with his hands, Rodney's lips with his teeth.

"You want this? Fine," said Rodney, when John let him up for air for a moment. "Fine," he kept on saying, and he didn't know why. He undid John's trousers and this time it was easy. He pushed them to the floor so they pooled around his ankles. Rodney noticed that John's boxers had little starfish on them, before shoving those down too.

John's cock sprang free from the elastic waistband and bounced up—a good size, a nice mouthful, thought Rodney as he took it in his mouth. Nothing more depressing than giving head to a small cock. Rodney got into it hard and fast, responding to John's anger with some of his own. What—up—the hell—down—was John's—up—problem?

John's cock thickened in his mouth, and Rodney became aware of the noises John was making—small, strangled noises like he was trying to contain something he couldn't stand to let out. The sounds went straight from Rodney's ears to his dick, as his body finally registered that he was giving head to John. No mater what the circumstance, this was still closer than Rodney had ever hoped to get. He eased off and teased the ridge running down the underside with his tongue. John put his hand on the back of Rodney's head. Pushy much? thought Rodney, and although John didn't exert any pressure, Rodney got the message.

Fine, you want it fast, thought Rodney, I'll give you fast. He swirled his tongue around John's cock, and it thickened up again. He pushed his mouth down hard enough on just to the edge of gagging.

"Oh, God," said John. His voice sounded guttural, hardly his own. Rodney cupped John's balls, then slid his fingers behind them, as John spread his legs a bit to allow him more access. Just as Rodney put a finger against John's entrance, he felt John's leg spasm against his shoulder, and John came. He held on to Rodney's head, making sure he had to swallow even if Rodney hadn't intended on it.

He stayed there licking gently until John's cock stopped throbbing, and then stood up and wiped off his mouth. "You happy?" he said, sneering.

"You've obviously done that before."

"Yes, I've done that before," said Rodney, imitating John's tone back to him. "I'm not going to offer something I can't deliver."

"I thought you said you weren't trading."

"I'm not. I've just . . . what, you thought you were my first?"

"No," said John, not very convincingly.

"If that's what you thought, why did you want this?"

"You want your coffee now, or not?"

"Maybe you should pull up your pants first." John did so and they left the supply closet. Rodney's lips felt bruised from John's, and he wondered if he looked as rumpled as he felt.

"You coming?" asked John from the doorway of the lab. He looked tousled and still angry, and Rodney wanted to shake some answers out of him.

"No, I'll get it later."

***

Later he found a bag of Kona coffee on the desk in his quarters. No note, just the coffee.

"Did you leave that coffee for me?" he asked John when they passed in the hall the next day.

"Yes, unless you've got another source."

"Oh good, you wouldn't put anything in it." Rodney frowned. "Would you?"

"It's just coffee, McKay."

"Spoken like a man who's never had ex-lax ground up in his coffee by a jealous co-worker."

John wrinkled his forehead again. "I wouldn't do that. Look, that's all the coffee I have. But I'm sure I can get some if you need more. You don't have to trade for it." Rodney looked at him, confused. "Just let me know if you need anything, okay?" continued John. "I'll get it, then you won't . . ."

Rodney saw John's throat work as he swallowed hard. "I appreciate your concern," said Rodney, frowning at him, "but I wouldn't really mind that much."

"You seemed to mind."

"You seemed to mind."

John shrugged and said "see ya," and walked out of the lab. Rodney turned on his tablet and started running diagnostics on the naquadah generator on his bench. The power levels were fluctuating chaotically, but not decaying, so it couldn't be running low on fuel.

***

One of the things Rodney valued most about his brain was its ability to work things out on its own, without conscious thought. Sometimes he'd wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to a problem he hadn't even thought about during the day. Sometimes he'd spend all day getting nowhere on one problem just to have the solution to another problem appear unbidden in the front of his mind, like a present all tied up with a neat bow.

John's jealous, his brain told him as he ran calculations on the probable effects of well-known naquadah impurities. No, he's not, he told himself, you're the geeky buddy who's useful because you save his life every so often.

He is jealous, insisted that other part of his mind. No other way to explain the available data. John didn't seem to be worried about anyone else trading sexual favors for coffee, only Rodney. For a moment Rodney weighed the possibility of an infinite supply of coffee, which John would provide to safeguard Rodney's virtue against the possibility of having more sex with John, this time in a bed and not a supply closet.

He didn't think about it for long. Carson could synthesize caffeine, and one of the worlds they visited would probably have an analogue for coffee, but there was only one Colonel Sheppard.

Rodney took off running down the hall, and found John in his room, looking out the window over one of their boring sunsets. Atlantis had no pollution, and on cloudless days, the sun dipped under the edge of the horizon with little fanfare.

"Can I come in?" Rodney said.

John stared at Rodney's face for a long second, and bit his lip. "No."

"Why were you so worried about the trading thing, really?" Rodney asked.

"Just want to make sure everyone's okay with it," said John.

"No, why were you worried about me?"

"Can we not talk about this?"

Usually Rodney shut up when John got that tone of voice, but not this time. "Okay, fine. We don't have to talk about this. But if you ever want to trade for nothing but . . . more of the same, just let me know."

"I don't have any coffee left." John licked his lips and his voice grew softer.

"I have enough coffee, for now, anyway."

"What's the going rate for a good fucking?" John asked, smiling hesitantly.

Rodney fought the grin which rose up and wanted to split his face in half. "For you? Free."


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