Chronicles of Riddick-SGA xover Riddick/Ronon
Title: Freedom Run
Pairing: Riddick/Ronon
Rating: Adult
Fandom: Chronicles of Riddick/Stargate Atlantis
Author's Note: Brandil asked why there was no Riddick/Ronon and ... my brain came up with this. The title and the cut tag are taken from the Kyuss song "Freedom Run".
Legalese: The Chronicles of Riddick and Stargate Atlantis are copyright their respective owners. This bit of crossover whatiffery is done out of love, not love of money.
They finally caught up to him on a desolate, burnt out planet with two suns in the sky.
(Brought back memories, that did.)
Thing was ... being pretty much the only person on a sun scorched lump of rock wasn't a burden to him. Lying in wait for the right moment to turn the trap on those chalk-white motherfuckers who had chipped him and sent him loose as a big game animal? He never felt more alive than when they got wind of him ... or perhaps he should say when he got wind of them. Idly he fingered the choker around his neck. Those bastards had some pretty wicked fingernails. When he got done harvesting thumbnails today, he'd have enough to add a complete next row. Maybe he should start using them to decorate his dreads.
But, as always, God was a motherfucker and had another thing planned for him.
As soon as Richard Riddick saw the powerfully built man with the lion's mane of tawny dreads to match his own strolling straight up the ravine towards his position, the shock of recognition caused his knees to turn to jelly as he stood.
Only one kind of person could have tracked him and known exactly where he'd spring his trap. It showed in the way he carried himself, the set of his jaw, the look in his eyes.
Riddick spoke first. "I got three of them fishbelly whites on my trail." His voice sounded strange and rusty in his ears. He hadn't spoken to another person in ... quite a while now that he thought about it.
A vicious smile snaked across the Runner's face. "It was four Wraith, and not any more you don't."
Wraith. Riddick thought about that and decided it was as good a word as any for them. "You cost me my trophy." He smiled and continued, "You're good."
The man shrugged. "Thanks, but I didn't come alone."
Figured.
Hands on hips, the man said, "We've been hearing rumors about a Runner for about two years now. One that's really mobile. Then we came across a Wraith with his hands hacked off," he made a chopping motion mid-forearm, matching where Riddick had brought the machete down on one of them who had been particularly arrogant and taunting, so he had chosen to give him a slow death by starvation. "He told us of a Runner the Wraith had regretted chipping."
Riddick smiled and chortled at that. He liked to remind them from time to time of just who they had chosen to fuck with.
"How long you been Running?" The man asked.
Riddick scratched idly at the scraggly beard on his face. "Don't know," he finally replied. "I keep losing count 'cause I'm on the move so much. Day on one planet, night on the other. Summer becomes Spring, and sometimes Winter becomes Summer. A howling windstorm becomes a calm day." He tossed his head, causing his sun-streaked locks to cascade about his shoulders. "Long enough to grow these from nothing."
The man cocked an eyebrow in admiration. "About as long as I Ran. Bit longer, actually."
They studied each other for several heatbeats before the other Runner took the last few steps over and held out his hand. "Ronon Dex. Call me Ronon."
Riddick looked at the hand for a moment before he remembered what he needed to do here. He carefully placed his own hand in it and shivered slightly at the alien sensation of touching another person, even casually. Ronon's hand had calluses that spoke of long hours training with weapons, and his flesh seemed strangely warm to Riddick. "Richard Riddick," he replied and swallowed hard as that warmth coiled through him, awakening something that had long lain dormant. "Call me Riddick."
"We could use a man like you."
And I could use a man like you, Riddick thought.
"How about I call in the others and we see about getting you unchipped?"
"And ruin all my fun," Riddick half-deadpanned.
Ronon blinked at him, then threw back his head and laughed. "No. The fun's just starting." He clapped Riddick on the back. "You'll see."
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick refused a painkiller when they cut into his back to remove the chip. He didn't bother to explain that stunning or sedating him never put him fully out, nor did he mention that he welcomed a certain amount of pain. It reminded him that he was all the way alive, not part-dead like a Necromonger.
It turned out that Ronon had also had his chip removed in the field under similar circumstances. He said nothing, just held out his hand to Riddick at the start of the procedure, and beyond a certain tightening of his jaw when Riddick clenched it hard enough to break a lesser man's bones, he made no other reaction. Just met Riddick's gaze with a calm and level "been here, done this, know exactly how it feels" look of his own.
~oo(0)oo~
Strangely enough, the command of this "Stargate" organization scarcely batted an eye when Riddick told them that he had "fallen through a hole in reality" and ended up in this 'verse.
"We'll try to get you back, no promises, though," Sheppard said to him during his last debriefing.
Riddick snorted with amusement. "Don't bother. I like it here a lot better."
Sheppard leaned back in his chair and whistled long and low. "Being a Runner was better?" A certain twinkle in his eye revealed that he spoke in jest.
Riddick leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "Hell is other people," he explained, voice low and tight.
It didn't quite get the reaction he expected. "Existentialist philosophy?" Sheppard asked, clearly amused.
Whatever that was. "No." He leaned back. "Just something I overheard Zelenka say after he and McKay had a spat." Pause. "But it pretty much sums up how I feel."
~oo(0)oo~
A life spent mostly in slams (with short jaunts in the military or on the lam) taught a person lots of things. How to turn anything into a weapon. How to pick a fight and win. How to settle a score. How to hustle. But above all? How to read another person.
McKay talked too much. Only the fact that he had saved everybody's life several times over (or so Riddick had heard from Ronon) kept Riddick from shanking him.
Teyla might be everything a man wanted to look at, all curves and soft skin, but one glance into her eyes showed him that she was hard where it mattered. Riddick wanted to be there the day some fool put an unwanted hand on her. (If it weren't for Ronon, he'd want in her bed.)
Riddick made Keller nervous. He liked her despite the fact that she smelled like a hospital, an odor that Riddick associated with death and the smell of Necromonger ships. But she knew how to heal. And if she had figured out that the handprint on his chest meant he wasn't garden variety human, she hadn't told anybody else.
Sheppard was that rare senior officer -- one who knew his shit. Ironically, Riddick figured the extent of this out by watching Ronon interact with him. Ronon's respect had to be earned. Not only did Ronon respect Sheppard, he deferred to him and accepted his orders without question or complaint and carried them out without hesitation ... but not in a whipped dog, lickspittle sort of way.
For a guy who had been a Runner to give over to a guy who didn't look half as dangerous? Yeah. Sheppard was a dangerous man.
(And then one of the marines told Riddick about Sheppard and the Genii attempt to take over Atlantis. Yeah. Riddick could accept Sheppard's orders in the field. 'Cause the man wouldn't ask you to do anything he couldn't or wouldn't do himself.)
And Ronon?
For all of his swagger, bravado, and ability to put foot to ass? He was the kind of person who needed to know that there were limits, boundaries, and that there was a person to back them, make them real. Knowing the boundaries helped him find his ground.
Riddick wanted to be the other man Ronon gave over to, wanted to show him boundaries that Sheppard never dreamed of.
Ronon wanted it, too.
(Riddick could smell it on him.)
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick rarely took his goggles off. Mostly it was because of too-bright light. But when he did, the way his eyes shimmered in dim light unnerved everybody but Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla so badly that they couldn't look him in the eye.
The goggles also gave Riddick an advantage in the sense that he could read everyone around him -- most of them had no idea how to hide what showed in their eyes -- and they had no way to read him. Only Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon could interpret his body language with any degree of accuracy.
~oo(0)oo~
On Sheppard's orders pretty much everybody left him alone, which suited Riddick fine. (And it certainly kept him from racking up a body count when not in the field.)
For now, Riddick had the run of an unused section of the city. Sheppard thought that, given time, he could bring Riddick into the fold, the way he had brought Ronon in. Privately, Riddick scoffed at the notion.
He didn't need time.
He needed a person worth giving a damn about, a person who got him in ways that no one else here did.
He needed Ronon.
Only Ronon fought it every step of the way.
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick felt it most keenly every time Sheppard or Teyla called for Ronon to spar against him.
Everybody loved to watch them spar -- when word got out, the room quickly reached capacity. People said it was like watching two big cats go at it. (Big cats. Heh. A pity these folk had never seen the Hellhounds of Crematoria, now those were some creatures as magnificent as they were deadly.)
McKay griped and claimed he didn't care about watching them fight, thought it was something "only a Troglodyte would appreciate", but Riddick overheard him talking with Zelenka about the physics of the moves he and Ronon had pulled -- the "axis of rotation" and the "practical application of force equals mass times acceleration."
Ronon was the one opponent that Riddick didn't have to hold back against. He gave Ronon his all, slashing, swooping, feinting, kicking, punching, and finally, grappling on the floor, the two of them rolling and twisting ... foreplay.
Only, Ronon would go to the edge and then no further. In public, Riddick understood. But in private, when it was the two of them having a midnight go-round?
But it wasn't just on the mat that Ronon took it to the edge with Riddick. He often slipped into Riddick's section unbidden, knowing that it would lead to games of cat and mouse (or should that be Wraith and Runner?) in the dark corridors and service tunnels. He claimed it was to keep his blind fighting skills sharp, to keep Riddick on edge for action in the field.
As. If.
It always ended the same: sweaty, body to body, panting, hard, wanting ... and then Ronon would find a reason to leave.
(And Riddick might have killed a lot of people in his life, but he had never raped anybody who hadn't raped or tried to rape him first.)
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick laughed out loud when he realized what he needed to do to finally have Ronon.
~oo(0)oo~
The next time Ronon entered his sector, Riddick decided to make it a lesson to him.
He glided down the hallways freshly shaven. No extra scent. No hair for Ronon to grab. (That was for him, and him alone to do.)
Gone was Riddick the Runner, Ronon's almost-twin.
Ronon had the moves. Ronon had the fire. But Ronon lacked the see-in-the-dark-eyes, the hear-a-pin-drop hearing, and bloodhound sense of smell.
And, he wasn't a Furyan with a mission.
~oo(0)oo~
It ended with Ronon pressed face first into a wall, a fistfull of dreads in Riddick's left hand, the knife in Riddick's right hand at his throat.
Riddick leaned in and sniffed at the nape of Ronon's neck -- the scent was strongest there.
(So close ... so close. His blood hammered in his ears.)
Ronon gave a hissing breath and shifted his weight as if to push off from the wall, so Riddick twisted the dreads tighter, the pain making Ronon's eyes water.
"Ouch," Ronon said calmly, letting Riddick know that he had made the point.
Riddick withdrew the knife. "You're worth the hunt."
Ronon gave an ambivalent grunt in reply.
"Say yes."
Ronon closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. "You know I --"
He dropped his voice a notch. "Stop fighting yourself and say yes."
Silence except for the soft hum of distant machinery.
Riddick leaned hard into Ronon, pinning him to the wall with his shoulder. Again sniffing deeply, he drank in the scent of Ronon, a mixture of the leafy green soap Ronon liked, the salt of clean sweat, a man's muskiness, all blended with an an overarching note of want.
Slowly, deliberately breathing in and out, Riddick pursed his lips and watched the reaction as his breath ghosted over the flesh exposed by a torn shirt collar. He saw as much as felt a series of fine tremors rippling across the broad expanse of Ronon's shoulders.
Unable to restrain himself any longer, Riddick's tongue darted out, cat-quick, and lapped at the nape of Ronon's neck. He closed his eyes and rolled the taste over in his mouth, savoring it, as Ronon made a sound that came from the depths of his being.
Easing off slightly, but not releasing his firm grip, he murmured, "Say yes, or I walk away. It's now, or not at all."
Ronon rested his forehead against the wall and swore softly under his breath before whispering, "Yes, damn it. Yes."
Riddick instantly latched on to Ronon's neck, licking, sucking, mouthing, tasting him the way he had longed to for weeks. Making connections, mapping Ronon into the deepest parts of his brain. He sent both hands down and around and unbuckled, unbuttoned, and unzipped. Ronon gasped and shook when Riddick's hand wrapped around his hard length and set an almost brutal pace.
It didn't take long before Ronon shuddered and arched, hips bucking, pulsing into Riddick's hands, and then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, his body went slack, and he slumped against the wall, panting heavily. He finally turned to look at Riddick just as Riddick finished licking the last of him from his hands. "That ... that wasn't what I expected," he said in a dazed and breathy voice. He started to go to his knees, but Riddick stepped back and stayed him with a shake of his head.
"My place. Tonight."
Ronon reacted with a sharp intake of breath.
(It took everything in Riddick to refuse right now -- his cock throbbing insistently between his legs -- but he had to. He had to show Ronon his strength of will. His self-discipline.)
Ronon studied him in the near dark, cocking his head this way and then that before giving Riddick an almost imperceptible nod.
Riddick responded by darting in for a quick wet kiss, smiling on the inside when Ronon reflexively licked his lips and paused in mid tongue swipe as he tasted himself.
With studied nonchalance Riddick turned and started down the hall. When he got several strides away, he paused and said over his shoulder, "Oh, and bring some slick."
Ronon cursed under his breath in reply -- but there was no heat in it -- as he turned and left.
But as his footsteps echoed down the hall, Riddick knew that he would.
He had Ronon Dex now.
He had his armor against the hell of other people.
And a vibrantly alive man like Ronon Dex was worth far more than a throne, and empire, and an army of people in any 'verse who had chosen an existence of shuffling around with the best parts of them deadened, any day.
-----
Author's Note part 2:
Also, I know that there has been considerable discussion over using inappropriate and/or offensive animal imagery in stories focused on people of color and I say two things:
1) Dreadlocks are linked to the Lion of Judah, thus the lion imagery.
2) Animal imagery/symbolism and Riddick is canonical.
And yes, I'm making use of it after thinking long and hard about the choices and possible fallout. Imagery/Symbols/Metaphor are powerful tools in the writer's arsenal, and good workmen never quarrel with their tools.
They should, however, know how to use them.
Pairing: Riddick/Ronon
Rating: Adult
Fandom: Chronicles of Riddick/Stargate Atlantis
Author's Note: Brandil asked why there was no Riddick/Ronon and ... my brain came up with this. The title and the cut tag are taken from the Kyuss song "Freedom Run".
Legalese: The Chronicles of Riddick and Stargate Atlantis are copyright their respective owners. This bit of crossover whatiffery is done out of love, not love of money.
They finally caught up to him on a desolate, burnt out planet with two suns in the sky.
(Brought back memories, that did.)
Thing was ... being pretty much the only person on a sun scorched lump of rock wasn't a burden to him. Lying in wait for the right moment to turn the trap on those chalk-white motherfuckers who had chipped him and sent him loose as a big game animal? He never felt more alive than when they got wind of him ... or perhaps he should say when he got wind of them. Idly he fingered the choker around his neck. Those bastards had some pretty wicked fingernails. When he got done harvesting thumbnails today, he'd have enough to add a complete next row. Maybe he should start using them to decorate his dreads.
But, as always, God was a motherfucker and had another thing planned for him.
As soon as Richard Riddick saw the powerfully built man with the lion's mane of tawny dreads to match his own strolling straight up the ravine towards his position, the shock of recognition caused his knees to turn to jelly as he stood.
Only one kind of person could have tracked him and known exactly where he'd spring his trap. It showed in the way he carried himself, the set of his jaw, the look in his eyes.
Riddick spoke first. "I got three of them fishbelly whites on my trail." His voice sounded strange and rusty in his ears. He hadn't spoken to another person in ... quite a while now that he thought about it.
A vicious smile snaked across the Runner's face. "It was four Wraith, and not any more you don't."
Wraith. Riddick thought about that and decided it was as good a word as any for them. "You cost me my trophy." He smiled and continued, "You're good."
The man shrugged. "Thanks, but I didn't come alone."
Figured.
Hands on hips, the man said, "We've been hearing rumors about a Runner for about two years now. One that's really mobile. Then we came across a Wraith with his hands hacked off," he made a chopping motion mid-forearm, matching where Riddick had brought the machete down on one of them who had been particularly arrogant and taunting, so he had chosen to give him a slow death by starvation. "He told us of a Runner the Wraith had regretted chipping."
Riddick smiled and chortled at that. He liked to remind them from time to time of just who they had chosen to fuck with.
"How long you been Running?" The man asked.
Riddick scratched idly at the scraggly beard on his face. "Don't know," he finally replied. "I keep losing count 'cause I'm on the move so much. Day on one planet, night on the other. Summer becomes Spring, and sometimes Winter becomes Summer. A howling windstorm becomes a calm day." He tossed his head, causing his sun-streaked locks to cascade about his shoulders. "Long enough to grow these from nothing."
The man cocked an eyebrow in admiration. "About as long as I Ran. Bit longer, actually."
They studied each other for several heatbeats before the other Runner took the last few steps over and held out his hand. "Ronon Dex. Call me Ronon."
Riddick looked at the hand for a moment before he remembered what he needed to do here. He carefully placed his own hand in it and shivered slightly at the alien sensation of touching another person, even casually. Ronon's hand had calluses that spoke of long hours training with weapons, and his flesh seemed strangely warm to Riddick. "Richard Riddick," he replied and swallowed hard as that warmth coiled through him, awakening something that had long lain dormant. "Call me Riddick."
"We could use a man like you."
And I could use a man like you, Riddick thought.
"How about I call in the others and we see about getting you unchipped?"
"And ruin all my fun," Riddick half-deadpanned.
Ronon blinked at him, then threw back his head and laughed. "No. The fun's just starting." He clapped Riddick on the back. "You'll see."
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick refused a painkiller when they cut into his back to remove the chip. He didn't bother to explain that stunning or sedating him never put him fully out, nor did he mention that he welcomed a certain amount of pain. It reminded him that he was all the way alive, not part-dead like a Necromonger.
It turned out that Ronon had also had his chip removed in the field under similar circumstances. He said nothing, just held out his hand to Riddick at the start of the procedure, and beyond a certain tightening of his jaw when Riddick clenched it hard enough to break a lesser man's bones, he made no other reaction. Just met Riddick's gaze with a calm and level "been here, done this, know exactly how it feels" look of his own.
~oo(0)oo~
Strangely enough, the command of this "Stargate" organization scarcely batted an eye when Riddick told them that he had "fallen through a hole in reality" and ended up in this 'verse.
"We'll try to get you back, no promises, though," Sheppard said to him during his last debriefing.
Riddick snorted with amusement. "Don't bother. I like it here a lot better."
Sheppard leaned back in his chair and whistled long and low. "Being a Runner was better?" A certain twinkle in his eye revealed that he spoke in jest.
Riddick leaned forward, resting his arms on the table. "Hell is other people," he explained, voice low and tight.
It didn't quite get the reaction he expected. "Existentialist philosophy?" Sheppard asked, clearly amused.
Whatever that was. "No." He leaned back. "Just something I overheard Zelenka say after he and McKay had a spat." Pause. "But it pretty much sums up how I feel."
~oo(0)oo~
A life spent mostly in slams (with short jaunts in the military or on the lam) taught a person lots of things. How to turn anything into a weapon. How to pick a fight and win. How to settle a score. How to hustle. But above all? How to read another person.
McKay talked too much. Only the fact that he had saved everybody's life several times over (or so Riddick had heard from Ronon) kept Riddick from shanking him.
Teyla might be everything a man wanted to look at, all curves and soft skin, but one glance into her eyes showed him that she was hard where it mattered. Riddick wanted to be there the day some fool put an unwanted hand on her. (If it weren't for Ronon, he'd want in her bed.)
Riddick made Keller nervous. He liked her despite the fact that she smelled like a hospital, an odor that Riddick associated with death and the smell of Necromonger ships. But she knew how to heal. And if she had figured out that the handprint on his chest meant he wasn't garden variety human, she hadn't told anybody else.
Sheppard was that rare senior officer -- one who knew his shit. Ironically, Riddick figured the extent of this out by watching Ronon interact with him. Ronon's respect had to be earned. Not only did Ronon respect Sheppard, he deferred to him and accepted his orders without question or complaint and carried them out without hesitation ... but not in a whipped dog, lickspittle sort of way.
For a guy who had been a Runner to give over to a guy who didn't look half as dangerous? Yeah. Sheppard was a dangerous man.
(And then one of the marines told Riddick about Sheppard and the Genii attempt to take over Atlantis. Yeah. Riddick could accept Sheppard's orders in the field. 'Cause the man wouldn't ask you to do anything he couldn't or wouldn't do himself.)
And Ronon?
For all of his swagger, bravado, and ability to put foot to ass? He was the kind of person who needed to know that there were limits, boundaries, and that there was a person to back them, make them real. Knowing the boundaries helped him find his ground.
Riddick wanted to be the other man Ronon gave over to, wanted to show him boundaries that Sheppard never dreamed of.
Ronon wanted it, too.
(Riddick could smell it on him.)
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick rarely took his goggles off. Mostly it was because of too-bright light. But when he did, the way his eyes shimmered in dim light unnerved everybody but Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla so badly that they couldn't look him in the eye.
The goggles also gave Riddick an advantage in the sense that he could read everyone around him -- most of them had no idea how to hide what showed in their eyes -- and they had no way to read him. Only Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon could interpret his body language with any degree of accuracy.
~oo(0)oo~
On Sheppard's orders pretty much everybody left him alone, which suited Riddick fine. (And it certainly kept him from racking up a body count when not in the field.)
For now, Riddick had the run of an unused section of the city. Sheppard thought that, given time, he could bring Riddick into the fold, the way he had brought Ronon in. Privately, Riddick scoffed at the notion.
He didn't need time.
He needed a person worth giving a damn about, a person who got him in ways that no one else here did.
He needed Ronon.
Only Ronon fought it every step of the way.
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick felt it most keenly every time Sheppard or Teyla called for Ronon to spar against him.
Everybody loved to watch them spar -- when word got out, the room quickly reached capacity. People said it was like watching two big cats go at it. (Big cats. Heh. A pity these folk had never seen the Hellhounds of Crematoria, now those were some creatures as magnificent as they were deadly.)
McKay griped and claimed he didn't care about watching them fight, thought it was something "only a Troglodyte would appreciate", but Riddick overheard him talking with Zelenka about the physics of the moves he and Ronon had pulled -- the "axis of rotation" and the "practical application of force equals mass times acceleration."
Ronon was the one opponent that Riddick didn't have to hold back against. He gave Ronon his all, slashing, swooping, feinting, kicking, punching, and finally, grappling on the floor, the two of them rolling and twisting ... foreplay.
Only, Ronon would go to the edge and then no further. In public, Riddick understood. But in private, when it was the two of them having a midnight go-round?
But it wasn't just on the mat that Ronon took it to the edge with Riddick. He often slipped into Riddick's section unbidden, knowing that it would lead to games of cat and mouse (or should that be Wraith and Runner?) in the dark corridors and service tunnels. He claimed it was to keep his blind fighting skills sharp, to keep Riddick on edge for action in the field.
As. If.
It always ended the same: sweaty, body to body, panting, hard, wanting ... and then Ronon would find a reason to leave.
(And Riddick might have killed a lot of people in his life, but he had never raped anybody who hadn't raped or tried to rape him first.)
~oo(0)oo~
Riddick laughed out loud when he realized what he needed to do to finally have Ronon.
~oo(0)oo~
The next time Ronon entered his sector, Riddick decided to make it a lesson to him.
He glided down the hallways freshly shaven. No extra scent. No hair for Ronon to grab. (That was for him, and him alone to do.)
Gone was Riddick the Runner, Ronon's almost-twin.
Ronon had the moves. Ronon had the fire. But Ronon lacked the see-in-the-dark-eyes, the hear-a-pin-drop hearing, and bloodhound sense of smell.
And, he wasn't a Furyan with a mission.
~oo(0)oo~
It ended with Ronon pressed face first into a wall, a fistfull of dreads in Riddick's left hand, the knife in Riddick's right hand at his throat.
Riddick leaned in and sniffed at the nape of Ronon's neck -- the scent was strongest there.
(So close ... so close. His blood hammered in his ears.)
Ronon gave a hissing breath and shifted his weight as if to push off from the wall, so Riddick twisted the dreads tighter, the pain making Ronon's eyes water.
"Ouch," Ronon said calmly, letting Riddick know that he had made the point.
Riddick withdrew the knife. "You're worth the hunt."
Ronon gave an ambivalent grunt in reply.
"Say yes."
Ronon closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. "You know I --"
He dropped his voice a notch. "Stop fighting yourself and say yes."
Silence except for the soft hum of distant machinery.
Riddick leaned hard into Ronon, pinning him to the wall with his shoulder. Again sniffing deeply, he drank in the scent of Ronon, a mixture of the leafy green soap Ronon liked, the salt of clean sweat, a man's muskiness, all blended with an an overarching note of want.
Slowly, deliberately breathing in and out, Riddick pursed his lips and watched the reaction as his breath ghosted over the flesh exposed by a torn shirt collar. He saw as much as felt a series of fine tremors rippling across the broad expanse of Ronon's shoulders.
Unable to restrain himself any longer, Riddick's tongue darted out, cat-quick, and lapped at the nape of Ronon's neck. He closed his eyes and rolled the taste over in his mouth, savoring it, as Ronon made a sound that came from the depths of his being.
Easing off slightly, but not releasing his firm grip, he murmured, "Say yes, or I walk away. It's now, or not at all."
Ronon rested his forehead against the wall and swore softly under his breath before whispering, "Yes, damn it. Yes."
Riddick instantly latched on to Ronon's neck, licking, sucking, mouthing, tasting him the way he had longed to for weeks. Making connections, mapping Ronon into the deepest parts of his brain. He sent both hands down and around and unbuckled, unbuttoned, and unzipped. Ronon gasped and shook when Riddick's hand wrapped around his hard length and set an almost brutal pace.
It didn't take long before Ronon shuddered and arched, hips bucking, pulsing into Riddick's hands, and then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, his body went slack, and he slumped against the wall, panting heavily. He finally turned to look at Riddick just as Riddick finished licking the last of him from his hands. "That ... that wasn't what I expected," he said in a dazed and breathy voice. He started to go to his knees, but Riddick stepped back and stayed him with a shake of his head.
"My place. Tonight."
Ronon reacted with a sharp intake of breath.
(It took everything in Riddick to refuse right now -- his cock throbbing insistently between his legs -- but he had to. He had to show Ronon his strength of will. His self-discipline.)
Ronon studied him in the near dark, cocking his head this way and then that before giving Riddick an almost imperceptible nod.
Riddick responded by darting in for a quick wet kiss, smiling on the inside when Ronon reflexively licked his lips and paused in mid tongue swipe as he tasted himself.
With studied nonchalance Riddick turned and started down the hall. When he got several strides away, he paused and said over his shoulder, "Oh, and bring some slick."
Ronon cursed under his breath in reply -- but there was no heat in it -- as he turned and left.
But as his footsteps echoed down the hall, Riddick knew that he would.
He had Ronon Dex now.
He had his armor against the hell of other people.
And a vibrantly alive man like Ronon Dex was worth far more than a throne, and empire, and an army of people in any 'verse who had chosen an existence of shuffling around with the best parts of them deadened, any day.
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Author's Note part 2:
Also, I know that there has been considerable discussion over using inappropriate and/or offensive animal imagery in stories focused on people of color and I say two things:
1) Dreadlocks are linked to the Lion of Judah, thus the lion imagery.
2) Animal imagery/symbolism and Riddick is canonical.
And yes, I'm making use of it after thinking long and hard about the choices and possible fallout. Imagery/Symbols/Metaphor are powerful tools in the writer's arsenal, and good workmen never quarrel with their tools.
They should, however, know how to use them.
(Anonymous)
Devo