Fic: When Life Gives You Turtles....
Jan. 13th, 2008 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lierdumoaTitle: When Life Gives You Turtles....
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Post 3x17 "Sunday." John grieves in his own way. 7,626 wds.
A/N: This had been sitting in my WIP folder nearly complete for the past I don't even know how many months and I finally decided to finish it.
Warning: I was too lazy to get it beta'd.
They arrived through the gate in the early morning, the six of them, their overnight supplies in duffle bags, thrown in after them before the closing of the iris. The SGC arranged for a private jet to take them to Scotland with a forty-five minute stopover in Virginia for refueling. Sixteen hours in the air. John had done worse. Once. A solemn return flight from a war torn country straight to a court martial.
Then again, he'd managed to sleep through most of that. And no one had been crying. He, Ronon, and surprisingly Dr. Cole were the most stonefaced of the group, with even Lorne getting a little misty in the eye region. Ronon he could understand. Cole was probably saving it up for the funeral. John, well. It hadn't hit him yet. Yeah.
Which was why he was slouching as deeply as possible into his chair, playing solitaire on the tray table in front of him, avoiding so much as glancing at Rodney's wet, blotchy face for fear of inadvertently grimacing at the sheer awkwardness and trying desperately to think sad thoughts, so no one would realize how cripplingly bored he was.
Who died from an explosive tumor?
Seriously?
Actually John kind of had to give the Ancients props for that. And here he'd thought they never thought outside the box in warfare, but medical advancements in the field of suicide bombing? That was so hardcore. And, well, terrible. It was terrible. Think of Carson. He'd been a good person. A kind person. Very concientious. He'd done his job and lived his life with poise and grace. Like an old Scottish lady.
Lady Beckett of Hartfordshire.
Ronon cleared his throat across the cabin. John glanced up in time to catch a sleepy raised eyebrow and realize he'd been smirking diabolically at his ace of clubs. He put greater energy into thinking sad thoughts, thankful that Teyla wasn't around to read his mind and frown disapprovingly, then doubly guilty as he remembered the reason for her absense. She'd been injured. John really hated it when any member of his team was injured. Particularly if it was from getting caught in a blast radius. Regardless of the inherent ridiculousness of the origin of said blast radius.
The grief could kick in any time now.
Or not, John thought twelve hours later, still too restless to sleep, barely clinging to a pretense of empathy as he watched Zelenka across from him, weeping steadily for what had to be hours as if his Czech ancestry had gifted him with a camel-like hump of water reserves, to be used specifically in the event of the death of a close colleague.
He did drift off to sleep eventually, only to be shaken roughly awake by Ronon what felt like seconds later. They'd landed in Glasgow.
John wasn't a nice guy. He was a pretty good guy, though, which he figured made up for it. At least, that's what he told himself at times like this, when he felt about ready to vibrate out of his seat in sheer boredom. He was terrible with ceremonies, of any kind, really, and yet more terrible with any situation where the people were expected to partake in copious outpourings of emotion. But he was here, showing support.
So maybe he'd been tempted to bark at Rodney to go suck a lemon when the guy's lip had started quivering inexplicably as they carried the casket from the herse into the church. His arm had been starting to cramp, and there was no way he could switch arms without looking like a complete freak and it was possibly the longest he'd ever spent hauling a dead body around even counting Afghanistan and fuck, he just wanted the whole thing to be over with.
It's not like John had actually done any barking. And in any case, John saved lives. Lots of lives. All the time. He had to get points for that.
Only it was pretty clear God wasn't giving him any points at all. At least that's how it felt when he inexplicably ended up in the last place he wanted to be, with his arms around Carson's mother, patting her back awkwardly as she did her best to work mucus and tears through three layers of cotton and polyester and wondering if this was where he was supposed to comment on how beautiful the ceremony was, or if that was just for weddings.
Probably best to say nothing, as the irony of commenting on the beauty of anything while snot was streaking down his lapel would have probably killed him.
He finally managed to escape the chapel somewhere between a speech from Dr. Cole and Ronon sneaking an alarming array of food out of his pockets in bite sized increments. Of course it started raining the moment he set foot outside. John almost started cursing, only he was pretty sure this was God's way of punishing him for being an asshole and didn't particularly want to give the guy any excuses to strike him down with a lightning bolt.
He was huddling under a stone ledge trying to gauge whether he could walk the two miles back to the inn without completely ruining his loafers when the priest found him. "Noticed you wandered off there, lad. How are you holding up?"
They all talked like Beckett here. It was weird.
John plastered on a smile. "I'm really starting to like Scotland," he said, stepping out from under the ledge and turning his face up into the sky. "I think tomorrow I'll go golfing."
"Everyone grieves in their own way," Father Jeremy replied. He rested a hand on John's shoulder, oblivious to John's flinch. He meant well. John manfully refrained from snapping his wrist.
He counted the day as a win.
The night was another matter altogether.
Namely, the matter of getting smashed. Some of their party decided to stay for the wake. Ronon, and surprisingly Rodney, opted instead for some good old Earth booze, ideal for drowning sorrows and possibly fueling the engines of small automotive vehicles.
Which is how John found himself sitting in a pub with a beer and a dinner of chicken prepared according to some local specialty, the most edible looking thing on the menu and yet the least edible looking thing he'd ever eaten outside of a combat situation. Rodney took the stool next to him at the bar. Ronon seated himself at a corner table and stared intently up at the television for a good six or seven minutes before yelling across the room, "Hey Sheppard, I thought football had more throwing."
A crazy eyed man in a soccer shirt with the name Carlyle scrawled across the back started to froth at the mouth and John put on his best "Sheppard who?" expression while Rodney snorted rudely off to the side. After a few tense moments staring around the pub with murder in his eye, the stranger stopped looking quite so homicidal, grabbed a chair next to Ronon and proceeded to school him in the ways of the noble sport of European football. Anonymity preserved and disaster averted, John smacked a still snickering Rodney in the back of the head and turned his attention back to his plate, grunting at the bartender and gesturing for a refill of his drink, avoiding actual words in the hopes he would not be identified as a yank and summarily beaten to death.
Two pints later, Rodney started to talk about his feelings. John did his best to tune him out, or at the very least drink until Rodney transformed into one of those incomprehensible droning characters in a Charlie Brown special.
As typically happened with too much alcohol and not enough conversation, John got to thinking about the state of things. The situation at hand. The probabilities leading up to it. If John were to have imagined what Rodney would have been like in Scotland, he probably would have pictured something similar to their average mission. Rodney would have made some offhand comment insulting the food and John would have given him censoring looks, while secretly agreeing (because seriously, haggis was flat out disgusting) and eventually there would have been some offensive remark regarding coitus with fluffy farm animals, an ensuing brawl with incensed natives, and then running.
Of course, in such imaginings, had such imaginings existed, the eventuality of Dr. Beckett being dead would not have been factored into such, uh, imaginings.
John replayed that sentence in his head for a while, trying to make it less convoluted and redundant. Eventually he gave up and threw back another swig of dark, bitter local beer. It reminded him a little of the booze they'd had back on Callis. Kallas?
That planet with what looked like marijuana plants but turned out to be more like radishes when you dug them up.
The point being, he wouldn't have pictured Rodney alternately sucking on a pint of cheap lager and dribbling into a bowl of cold bread pudding bemoaning the loss of his very best friend in the whole wide space-time continuum, Dr. Beckett. Carson, rather. Rodney seemed perfectly willing to call him by his given name, at least posthumously.
Apparently almost dying, like, twelve hundred times wasn't a good enough qualifier for first name basis with regard to one Lt. Col. Sheppard.
John indulged in a survey of the room and vaguely registered that Rodney was now talking about Katie Brown, directing his conversation to the imaginary drinking buddy in the seat next to him, or possibly the seat itself. Supposedly he'd stood Carson up to hang out with her the day Carson'd died. Apparently she hadn't kicked him to the curb yet, though anyone could see Rodney was only dating her because his biological clock was ticking. Frankly, it was a little creepy watching a guy hit on an attractive if somewhat boring and almost frighteningly thin woman for the sole purpose of having babies.
Alright, so John was a bitter, petulant drunk. He consoled himself with the thought that at least he wasn't bitter and petulant out loud, and Rodney was too pissed (Scottish connotation) and weepy to actually notice John pissed (American connotation) and pouting like a wee lad sent off to bed without dessert by his mum, Lady Beckett of Hartfordshire.
John stared at his half eaten chicken thigh and tried reminding himself he was here to offer support. His mind kept wandering though, along with his gaze, which kept catching on Rodney, still deep in his guilt ridden rambling, mouth wide and wet and sad and crooked and kind of perfect. John's own mouth went a little dry for no good reason and he got a glimmer of an idea that involved going off to bed like the bad metaphor said, but flipping mum the bird and taking his dessert (painfully blatant sexual connotation, and please ignore the mum reference as John has enough issues without piling on an Oedipal complex) with him. He quickly squashed that line of thought, pushing his empty plate away and standing up fast enough to give himself vertigo.
Everybody knew the third level of hell was reserved for hoarders, wasters and two-beer-queers.
He was halfway to the door, determined to trudge back to his room at the inn, collapse into bed, jerk off to the image of Rodney's crooked, perfect mouth and forget that Katie Brown or Carson Beckett had ever existed when Rodney made a loud, wet snivelling noise and mumbled something into his lager about "bros before hos" and John just snapped.
Back on Atlantis, John had developed sort of a habit around Rodney. He'd concentrate on the aspects of Rodney he found unappealing. The slight paunch and the receding hairline were givens. Shoulders and biceps he did his best to avoid entirely when in Rodney's presence. Elbows were always good. Wrinkly and strange looking. Nobody had attractive elbows.
Surprisingly, Rodney's personality didn't even make it on the long list, though in a pinch John could just replay that time Rodney asked John to trust him and nearly got them both killed, over and over, until he felt vaguely nauseous.
If John held grudges, it was only out of self-preservation.
It worked out pretty well, though periodically he'd start finding the strangest things attractive and have to rotate his chosen areas of focus. In any case, it came in handy for that week Rodney was a psychic supergenius on the brink of ascension.
Which isn't to say there wasn't a down side. He did develop an irrational fear that if he actually let himself concentrate on the parts of Rodney he found attractive for any decent length of time while in the same room with the guy, he would unceremoniously come in his pants.
The point being, John had a system. A good system. And some small piece of grey matter at the back of his skull, probably whatever constituted his common sense, wasn't too happy about seeing this system fall completely to shit in the time it took John to prowl back towards the bar, haul Rodney up by his tie and offer the entire limit on his credit card to the bartender if the guy could come up with something roomlike in the next five seconds.
Rodney made a choking noise. John ignored him completely. Two and a half years of serious emotional investment on John's part and now he got to listen to Rodney blubbering on like Carson had owned his pulsing red heart and the rest of his arterial system to boot. Well Carson could have it, John thought savagely. He could fucking have it.
But Goddamnit, that ass was his, and if it had to be over Carson's dead body, well so fucking be it.
Within moments John was dragging Rodney up the stairs, stumbling towards what was probably going to be the tiniest, ugliest room in creation, given that it was sitting on top of a sad little Scottish pub. He stopped in front of the door, shoved Rodney up against the wall, feeling the flex of shoulder muscles under his palms, and smothered all protests with lips and teeth and tongue and sheer force of will. Still, he kind of surprised at the way Rodney, after a few moments protest, melted obligingly against him, hands rising to clutch unconsciously at John's waist.
Yeah, just. Yeah.
John pulled back for a moment to stare at Rodney, heavy lidded, stare at the wreck he'd made of Rodney's composure, the want written all over Rodney's face. John could have this. At least he could have this. He leaned in for more when Rodney's hand slid up to his chest and held him off.
"We can't do this."
John raised an eyebrow and his hand slipped down over the bulge of Rodney's crotch, feeling the press of it under his fingers. "All systems are a go," he breathed, and leaned in again, taking in the stale smell of alcohol and a day of sweat and misery and wanting more.
Rodney shoved him away again. "I mean we shouldn't," Rodney said. "Do this."
John threw him a excruciatingly frustrated look.
Rodney closed his eyes, breathed in deep through is nose in way that was probably supposed to be calming but sounded more like sniffling. "It's just. You're the most important, I mean, you're one of the most important people in my life. You're practically family. And us being practically family would make this practically incest, so—"
"We're not family, Rodney. I'm your military commander."
Rodney's cock jumped under his hand. John raised an eyebrow.
"Do you have some sort of problem with me being your military commander?"
Rodney cock hardened further and he let out a quiet whimper. John grinned like a jackal.
"This is a completely unhealthy way to deal with the death of a colleague."
"Pull another," John said, already leaning in again.
"I just don't want to do anything to ruin our friendship," Rodney bit out, fast and a little bit shrill.
"Friendship?" John said, uncupping his hand to stroke his fingers down Rodney's button fly, slowly undoing the top button. "What friendship?" He let his thumb stroke softly against the skin just above the waistband of Rodney's boxer briefs. "I think you must be confusing me with a dead guy."
Rodney gave John a look torn between deeply appalled and unbearably turned on. John lunged at Rodney's neck, dragging his tongue along the stubbled skin, sliding his fingers up to cup the back of Rodney's head as he sucked a hickey onto the underside of his jaw.
"Just go with it, Rodney."
Rodney let out a whine, high in his throat, then finally, finally John felt him give in, all at once, his entire body arching forward, mouth suddenly everywhere, warm and desperate. "You asshole, he muttered into John's neck. "You motherfucking asshole," only it sounded like "yes" when Rodney said it and God, they were still wearing so many clothes. They hadn't even made it into the room yet. Anyone could walk by.
"Bed," John gasped out, fumbling through his pockets for. But it was Rodney who glared in frustration this time, batting John's hands away impatiently. It was Rodney who shoved his hands into John's coat and snatched up the key and unlocked their room with quick, nimble fingers. Rodney who pulled the door shut behind them as they stumbled their way into the room, his wide, wet mouth never leaving John's neck.
John walked them towards the bed until he heard the backs of Rodney's knees hitting the mattress. Rodney'd somehow gotten his shirt open to the point of falling off, his teeth working their way along John's clavicle, fingers digging into the the spine of his scapula. Things went hazy in John's head. He found himself mumbling broken phrases like "wanted this" and "God Rodney, you have no idea," his fingers slipping into the crease of Rodney's ass.
Clench, release. Rodney's breath stuttered in his throat. He stiffened. "Don't. You. Where is this going?"
"In you," John groaned. It was a bad play on words, but yeah. Yeah. In Rodney. Buried inside him, Christ, he wanted it now.
Rodney closed his legs and shoved John away. "You. You! You're taking advantage of me in my vulnerable state. Don't think I can't see right through you!"
John blinked twice, trying to make sense of that. He rolled his eyes. Taking adv—"Fine, Jesus, I'll bottom."
"That's not what I meant and you know—"
John cut off the rest of the sentence with a hard, wet kiss, then sucked his index and middle fingers into his mouth. Rodney's mouth hung open for a moment. Long enough for John to toe off his shoes. Rodney let out a soft gasp as John shucked his pants and underwear in one easy motion,. The gasp turned into a wheeze as John backed up into the bed and sat down, legs splayed out like a virgin sacrifice.
Another bad metaphor, considering the next thing John did was lift one knee and, without preamble, shove both fingers in up to the second knuckle.
At which point Rodney stopped breathing altogether.
John wondered for a brief moment if he should be worried that Rodney was going a little blue in the face. He dismissed the concern, refocusing on the task at hand, scissoring his fingers a little. Damnit, he hadn't done this in while. It kinda burned. He curled his back into a tighter curve and methodically worked his fingers in deeper, until, until...
Oh yeah, right there.
Rodney let out a squeak somewhere off in the background. John threw out his free hand and fumbled at the bedside table for a moment before remembering he wasn't in his room back in Atlantis.
"Rodney, lube."
"Huh?"
"Rodney!"
He blinked twice, then frowned. "What, I'm supposed to have lube? I'm not the one who initiated the sex. I'm here to grieve, remember?"
John did an impatient writhe against the bed. "Go get some!"
"Right, of course. And how exactly do you expect me to do that? Am I supposed to pull it out of thin air?!"
"Rodney," John breathed, exhaling hard as he worked himself open. "I'm going to come in about two minutes, whether you're inside me or not. Find. Some Goddamn. Lube."
"Oh, and I'm just supposed to do all the work while you sit there, literally with your thumb up your butt."
John pulled said thumb out of said butt and started stroking himself. Firm, and just slow enough to be a tease. "Do you start arguing like this every time you make it to third base, McKay?"
"Only when I don't see it coming," Rodney said in what was probably supposed to be a caustic tone but came out more sex drenched and desperate.
John circled a finger over the damp head of his cock and smirked as Rodney's eyes predictably glazed over. He threw his head back and added in a moan for good measure.
Rodney found some lube. He lost his clothes on the way, thank God.
And then he was reaching under John's hips, pushing in with his own larger, squarer fingers, the smoothed pad of his thumb pressing up into John's perineum as he pushed up into John's body with his usual precision and dexterity. There was no performance in John's actions now, nothing coy about the arch of his back as he shoved himself back against Rodney's hand. God, it felt fucking amazing and it didn't make any sense how Rodney could do that, could just manipulate John like that, like he was in perfect control of all his faculties. It didn't make sense with Rodney listing drunkenly to the side, eyes glazed and sex stupid, mouth a perfect 'o' of surprise.
"I never thought you'd. Never thought I'd—"
"Shut up, shut up, fuck me. Just."
"Yeah." John watched Rodney's hand move towards his own cock, somewhere in the periphery of John's vision. "Can I? Oh—"
And he was there, pushing in, too much, too fast and John took it, just took it, moaning loudly, spreading his legs sluttishly, pushing up into it, joints popping ominously, back spasming, stomach pitching nervously with alcohol. This was going to hurt, tomorrow, it was going to hurt like fuck and no words in the English languge could possibly express the level of John's not-caring.
"Rodney," he gasped out. "Rodney," again, and again, the word sounding hoarse, wet, broken. John wasn't an idiot. He knew this was a bad, bad idea but Christ, it felt like it was worth all the miserable break-ups and court martials in the world and John wasn't about to stop, wasn't going to apologize for it later. He wasn't sorry. He wasn't sorry.
Not even a little.
He just lay there afterwards, come painted liberally across his stomach, thighs cramping, sore and used and pathetically happy for it. Rodney had fallen off to the side taking great, gasping breaths, his torso pressing John's arm into the bedding. It would go numb in a little while, unless he worked up the energy to shove Rodney off before then.
"That was. Something," Rodney breathed out eventually.
"It was good," John said.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
John woke early to the sound of groaning, coming directly into his ear from maybe half an inch away. Rodney. He cracked an eye open long enough to register a heavy arm flung across his stomach, before wincing and snapping his eyes shut once more. "Shut up, McKay."
There was blessed, blessed silence, for a moment, then a grumbled, "Be nice to me, asshole. I put out last night."
"Funny how it's my ass that's sore."
"You were totally begging for it."
John shoved Rodney onto his back, then rolled on top of him and went still, waiting for the faint swell of nausea to pass. Rodney grunted and tried to shove John off of him, though not before John's thigh came in contact with his morning wood.
Not too hungover, then.
"And you were protesting so hard," John sing songed at him, hitching his hips up a little. Rodney groaned again, this time not entirely from pain.
Things got slippery after that.
John woke up again some hours later to a loud knocking. Rodney jolted under him, then turned his face to John and let out a confused, "Wha—?" his morning breath enough to bring tears to John's eyes. This time it was John who groaned. He moved to sit up only to realize they were glued together, his stomach hairs catching stickly in the mess they'd made earlier.
The knocking was getting louder. Then the doorknob was turning and shit, shit, the door hadn't locked automatically when they'd closed it. What kind of shitty motel room didn't have automatically locking doors?
Oh, right. Pub.
John jumped up, yelping as his stomach hair came unglued from Rodney's. Meanwhile, Rodney scrambled around for the sheet, bunched into a pile at the foot of the bed and neither of them were even approaching decent by the time Ronon stuck his head through the door. Rodney went ten different shades of red. John was sure he was wearing his best hand in cookie jar expression. Ronon's eyes widened for a split second before his expression turned perfectly blank and he dutifully informed them that their jet was leaving in an hour and a half.
"Why didn't you wake us sooner?" Rodney snapped, panicked.
"Didn't realize you needed a babysitter," Ronon snorted. "Lorne and Zelenka packed for you."
Rodney scowled. "Oh great, Zelenka will probably use this as an excuse to take all my good coffee."
"You have our luggage?" John asked, elbowing Rodney into silence. "I'd really rather not spend our transatlantic flight in yesterday's clothes."
"In the trunk," Ronon said, tossed them the keys. He then disappeared back out the door, probably for food. It was lunchtime in any case.
John found a small radio alarm clock on the bedside table. Make that a very late lunch. There was an awkward silence. "I'll get our clothes," John volunteered, and slipped back into his pants and shirt, not bothering with underwear. "You can shower while I'm gone."
Twenty minutes later they were climbing into the car, Rodney in a polo shirt, slacks and yesterday's loafers, John in jeans, a button down and his work boots, the loafers pretty much ruined from yesterday's rain and mud despite the relatively brief amount of time he'd spent outside in the rain during the funeral hiding from the late Dr. Beckett's increasingly leaky mother.
John instinctively moved towards the driver's side only to find it the passenger's side, Zelenka nodding a greeting from the right. Yet another sign that Scotland was just off. Even the puddlejumpers piloted from the left. Rodney squeezed into the back with Ronon, who was of course doing his best to fill the entire back seat of the tiny, fuel efficient European car.
It was forty minutes to the landing pad, after which followed yet another excruciating flight, only this time it was less boredom and more like John had magically transformed into a leper during the ride over. Consequences. He'd known there would be consequences. They weren't anything John wanted to think about, particularly with a hangover. He slept instead, ten solid hours, and woke to a silent cabin, everyone around him curled up in an airplane blanket but Rodney, peering at John over the top of his laptop. He glanced away guiltily the moment John's eyes met his.
And God, he was fucked, because he should have been coming up with ways to fix this and all he could think about was how much he wanted to touch Rodney right then, just crawl into the floorspace in front of him and thumb open the buttons of his fly, or drag him into the airplane bathroom and do everything they hadn't gotten to the night before. Everything he'd be too tired and drunk to feel properly. Everything he might not get ever again.
This was the part where he told himself memories were better than nothing, their friendship was strong enough to survive worse and it wasn't like he was in love with Rodney anyway. Fuck.
Jesus, fuck.
There would be talking. Later. And he would repair this. Or survive it. He always did. For the moment, he fished a sudoku book out of his carry on luggage and flipped straight to the back, trying not to think about whether last night had made him more or less of a whore than Rodney thought he was and if that was better or worse than being an asshole who was bad with funerals, trying not to think about last night at all.
He bit his lip and willed himself into the puzzle, pretending not to feel Rodney's eyes boring into him from two seats away.
They arrived Colorado just before sunrise. It was too much of a strain on the Earth's ZPM to gate directly back to Atlantis, but the gate bridge was still intact, and Lorne would be ferrying across within an hour or so. Only not, as apparently his offworld mission had been extended and Elizabeth had decided to give the six of them an additional day off rather than get a different pilot.
John grimaced at the news. He never could get comfortable in Cheyenne Mountain, which probably had something to do with the fact that nearly every time he ended up here he was in danger of never seeing Atlantis again. He wondered what the hell they were supposed to do for the next twenty-four hours. Play tourist in the crotch of America?
He turned to Rodney. A reflex. He pretty much always turned to Rodney when he was bored. Only this time Rodney gave him a wild eyed look and ran off muttering something about finding Carter, presumably to do. Actually. John had no idea. Probably not have sex, in any case, so really John had no reason to start getting bitter and petulant all over again. No reason at all. He gritted his teeth and headed off to find breakfast. Maybe he could hang out with Mitchell. The guy still worked here, supposedly.
He was halfway to the mess when he sighted one of the former members of his temporary, completely incompetent offworld team at the edge of his peripheral vision and, after a brief moment of indecision, made a sharp right towards the nearest door.
A free area, it looked like. Rodney glanced up from a table, empty but for his laptop and a bag of chips. There was no one else in the room.
"Thought you were going to find Carter."
"That is, uh, no. I lied. I thought we were, you know, avoiding each other."
John blinked, then turned on his heel to leave.
"Wait! We don't have to be avoiding each other. Actually since we have extra time I was thinking I could go check out Carson's old apartment complex and see if he had any. Well, anyway, you should come. With me."
John unclenched his jaw. "Okay," he said.
They borrowed an SGC registered vehicle. It was a two hour drive to Beckett's old place. It was a nice building in a nice area with a nice view of the town plaza, full of nice people just like Carson had been. Before the exploding tumor. "Why are we here? Carson's unrecieved magazine subscriptions a matter of national security and everybody forgot to tell me?"
"You know we left in a bit of a hurry the last time. Carson wasn't ever really happy with the job they did of packing up his apartment. He was missing things."
John honestly couldn't imagine missing anything about his hole of an apartment. About Earth in general, really. He remembered what it was like to miss his Ronon and Teyla, miss the way the ocean smelled against the ten thousand year old polymers that made up Ancient construction. He remembered staring at the bare off-white walls of his government funded living space, trying to mentally transform them into the memory of his Lantean quarters, the funky red and brown art deco stylings that managed somehow to clash with every single one of his possessions, from his bedsheets to his golf clubs to his Johnny Cash poster, ripped in the corner from when he'd thrown a book at it out of frustration, his pupils in slits, his hands claws, unable to focus on the words.
He imagined Carson's place would have felt lived in. Homey. Carson made home out of loved ones, brought home with him wherever he lived. Atlantis had been a facility to him. No doubt his well furnished one bedroom had been a lot harder to pack up than the barely opened cardboard boxes at John's crash pad.
They found the landlord, flashed their very official looking ID and were surprised to find the place hadn't been rented out again. Rodney grabbed the key. John followed.
He headed to the bathroom first. The bath mats were still there, as well as some disposable razor blades that had been knocked to the floor and the end of a roll of toilet paer. No soap to wash his hands with after he got done peeing, so he gave his hands an extra long, extra hot rinse before heading back to the living room.
There was an ugly impressionist painting leaning up against a wall. The carpet needed vacuuming. Otherwise, it was pretty much empty. Really depressingly empty. Rodney glanced around with a lost expression on his face. John hovered behind him, like he did all time in Atlantis or on off-world missions, mostly to make sure he could check anything Rodney was about to touch for potential dangerous vibes. It annoyed the shit out of Rodney. Or it had, anyway. He'd stopped complaining after the first seven months. John gave serious thought to taking a large step back, though, when he found himself fighting the urge to grab onto Rodney's hand and run his thumb over the bone of his wrist.
He didn't step back. He started to reach forward, even, only stopped short when a throat cleared behind them. John realized they'd left the door open. He and Rodney spun around to find a pretty brunette in her early thirties standing by the doorway. "Did you come for the turtles?"
Rodney stared blankly at her. He did that for a while.
John gave Rodney a long look, then turned back to their unexpected guest and stepped forward with a quirk of an eyebrow and one of his better smiles. "Yes. Yes we did."
Everything was back to usual in Atlantis. Conversations were, okay, a tad more stilted, but Rodney wasn't punching John in the face in homophobic freakout, and okay, maybe that was only because John was avoiding him like the plague, but whatever. He needed time to deal. Besides, John was doing such a good job of forgetting all about Rodney or their one night of fantastic sex or his pathetic teenaged unrequited agony and he didn't need Rodney in his face refreshing his memory.
So yeah. Everything was back to usual.
Then a week after they came back from the funeral, Rodney showed up in his quarters and oh God, John realized. He wanted to talk about it.
"This is breaking and entering. Minus the breaking. Just so you know," John pointed out.
"You were married," Rodney replied, and okay, there was a hell of a non-sequiter.
"How did you know that?"
"My mystical psychic powers."
"McKay."
"Because it's not like it was in your file or I had clearance or anything."
"What's your point?"
"See, when you jumped me in the bar, at first I thought your wife just figured out you were closeted, and that's why your marriage ended so badly, but well, you clearly weren't faking it with Chaya, or that time you went hormone crazed and macked on Teyla—"
"I was turning into a bug!"
"—so it couldn't have been anything so simple as an unbearable aversion to vagina. And after seeing how you act with people you've recently bedded, first hand, I'm getting the sneaking feeling your wife leaving you had less to do with your secret love of cock and more to do with your being a giant douche."
"Douche?"
"I think the metaphor is appropriate. You promise something fresh and clean and new and inevitably suck up all natural warmth, leaving only dry discomfort in your wake, thus rendering your victim vulnerable to further damage. "
John didn't really know how to respond to that. He ogled Rodney with a wide eyed stare until Rodney reddened, then blustered through his embarrassment with the justification, "My aunt was a gynecologist. She did most of the babysitting when I was little. I was subjected to more than one rant on misogynist medical culture propogating the myth of woman's inherent uncleanliness."
"This still doesn't explain what the hell you were doing in my file. Or what you're doing in my quarters."
"Don't distract me. I'm trying to make a point here."
"Which is?" John drawled, exaggerated and long-suffering.
"I'm in love with you."
Wait what? "What?"
"And I have been for a really long time, and I thought you were straight and it was hopeless. I don't know why you thought Carson's funeral was the best time to make a move, but at the time I thought, hey, at least you were making one, better then than never. Only now you're not speaking to me, and I'm starting to think your intention wasn't so much to make a move as it was to completely fuck with my head."
"Rodney—"
"I'm a vengeful person, Sheppard, I am not above making your life a living hell if you continue to fuck with my head like this. My point is if you break my heart I will find. A way. To break you."
"Isn't that threat supposed to come from ... someone not you?"
"Like my best friend? Well, since you threaten your own wellbeing so often I figured I'd take a turn this time."
John opened his mouth.
"If whatever you're planning to say next includes the term best-friend and the name Carson Beckett and even a hint of petulant whining I swear to God, Sheppard, I will punch your fucking lights out."
John closed his mouth.
"We're going to have more sex now."
John nodded obediently.
"I thought it was just me," John said some time later, flushed and sweaty and feeling very well used.
Rodney, gave him a questioning look.
John decided to just blurt the rest out in a rush. "Being in love with you. I thought it was just me. I didn't think you. Didn't think you'd. If I'd known you felt. I would have said something."
John worried at his bottom lip with his teeth, plucked at a loose string in his bedsheets.
"I wasn't trying to fuck with your head," he added, when Rodney didn't respond for a painfully long moment.
Rodney gave John a fond look and reached out to gently cup John's jaw and lean in for a soft kiss.
Then he smacked John unnecessarily hard in the back of the head.
Two days later, it hit John that Carson was perhaps the first death on Atlantis for which John had not at least partially blamed himself.
He was on the way to the gym at the time of the epiphany, and ended up taking a small detour into a supply room to have a breakdown next to a box of fifty caliber artillery shells in full metal jacket.
A short while later Rodney radioed him with the request that he come down to the labs. John replied, "Now is a really bad time," in perfect, measured deadpan, only his voice kind of cracked on the "really" and the next thing he knew Rodney was leaving his lab and demanding to know John's exact location. It freaked John out just a little bit more than he already was, what with the breakdown and all, that the most oblivious man in Atlantis could read him like a open book without even seeing his face.
John hadn't moved since he first sat down, but he did raise his head when Rodney hacked his way through whatever locking command John had thrown psychically at the door and came to stand in front of him, a good half a foot closer than usual.
A couple nights of sex and people lost all respect for your personal space.
Okay, really hot sex.
"Can't you grieve like a normal person?" Rodney whined down at him.
And yeah. John hadn't particularly liked Carson. But Carson was one of them and Carson dying was just one step closer to any of them dying, and it wasn't his fault, this time. It wasn't his fault, and what if it wasn't his fault next time? Because really, "not his fault" was just another way of saying "there's nothing he could have done" and "hell, he wasn't even there" and John. He'd.
He'd better fucking be there if anything ever happened to Elizabeth, or Teyla, or Ronon or Christ, Rodney. Even Rodney. Especially Rodney, who John just might have been a little in love with for the past, oh, two and a half years.
John smiled pathetically up at him and replied, "Nope. I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake."
Rodney huffed a laugh and took a seat next to John on the floor. The side without the giant box of artillery shells. Their knees touched. They stayed that way for a good twenty minutes, after which Rodney patted John twice on the thigh, used said thigh to push himself back up into a standing position and said, "Well, I've got work to get back to. But we should go do something life affirming later. Preferably involving nudity. I'll come by your room after dinner."
Five mintutes after Rodney left, John's thigh was still tingling where Rodney touched it and he felt all of thirteen with his first crush. Which, all things considered, was a fair improvement on feeling like he was going to crack at any second.
He could probably get his legs working again by dinnertime.
Probably.
They tried not to be obvious. Teyla may have given them a few raised eyebrows over lunch, but only because she and Ronon were thick as thieves and Ronon told her everything and who the hell taught Ronon the phrase "in flagrante delicto" anyway?
They kept it quiet. Rodney would occasionally call him out while he was pretending to do paperwork, demanding that John help him test something and it was only a lie maybe one third of the time. It was a nice arrangement.
Nice except for the part where Rodney had no self control and a semi-latent exhibitionist streak. It wasn't that John had anything in particular against furtive maintenance closet quickies, but he soon realized he'd have to start taking the initiative and do some of his own propositioning if he ever wanted to have sex in a bed again.
He cornered Rodney just outside his lab after hours, corridor empty of other personnel. He considered being blatant, but reconsidered as some random botonist rounded the corner and went with subtle instead, opening with a friendly, "Hey, Rodney. I just got hold of the latest season of Dr. Who. We should go back to your room and watch it."
Rodney blinked at him. "You're joking, right? You didn't torture me enough with the Back to the Future trilogy?" Rodney's hands made a few flailing motions. He was just warming up, John could tell. He raised an eyebrow.
Yeah, this would be fun.
"They travel through time in a phone booth," Rodney spat. "A. Phone. Booth. I don't even need to bother mocking it because it's so ridiculous it mocks itself, and just in case it didn't, there's a cheezy 80's Keanu Reeves movie to pick up the slack. Not to mention all the characters are a tad too, shall we say, British looking for my taste. I mean, seriously, they couldn't even—"
"McKay." John took a step forward, moving until his body was nearly flush with Rodney's, curled his fingers around the back of Rodney's neck and trailed a thumb down the line of his jaw. Rodney fell silent, clearly having lost his train of thought entirely.
John took advantage of the respite in monologuing. " Let me rephrase," he said, and leaned in until his mouth was a hairsbreadth from Rodney's ear. He let his voice drop a couple registers until he was practically purring. "I just got hold of a really transparent excuse be alone with you. We should go back to your room and fuck."
"Oh. Uhm. That—"
Rodney cleared his throat.
"—that sounds like a wonderful idea." His hands fluttered at his sides. "I just, ah, love that Dr. Who."
John snorted a laugh.
That seemed enough to snap Rodney out of his awkwardness. He drew away and crossed his arms over his chest, scowling. "Yes, yes, I'm a hopeless idiot when it comes to interpersonal relations. You can put your eyebrows back now."
John laughed again, then leaned in for a brief, wet kiss. "Seriously, though. I did score the second season of the new Battlestar Galactica off Dr. Coleman."
Rodney snorted. "As if the science in that is any better." He began striding quickly out the lab and down the hallway towards the nearest transport.
John fell into step beside him. "Well yeah, but it's got the three hottest blondes on TV."
Rodney smiled, like a kid learning a new secret. "You don't say."
"One of them's even a devil-may-care fighter pilot."
"Oh, like I don't get enough of that here."
[1] This is quite possily the most self-indulgent thing I have ever written, up to and including the time I wrote female!Rodney masturbating and everyone kept telling me how realistic it was. [2] My sincere apologies to dead, dead Carson. [3] By cheezy 80's Keanu Reeves movie, I'm of course referring to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. [4] Speaking of which, additional apologies to David Hewlett for hating all over his shiny happy fandom. [5] The recipe does not belong to me.
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Post 3x17 "Sunday." John grieves in his own way. 7,626 wds.
A/N: This had been sitting in my WIP folder nearly complete for the past I don't even know how many months and I finally decided to finish it.
Warning: I was too lazy to get it beta'd.
They arrived through the gate in the early morning, the six of them, their overnight supplies in duffle bags, thrown in after them before the closing of the iris. The SGC arranged for a private jet to take them to Scotland with a forty-five minute stopover in Virginia for refueling. Sixteen hours in the air. John had done worse. Once. A solemn return flight from a war torn country straight to a court martial.
Then again, he'd managed to sleep through most of that. And no one had been crying. He, Ronon, and surprisingly Dr. Cole were the most stonefaced of the group, with even Lorne getting a little misty in the eye region. Ronon he could understand. Cole was probably saving it up for the funeral. John, well. It hadn't hit him yet. Yeah.
Which was why he was slouching as deeply as possible into his chair, playing solitaire on the tray table in front of him, avoiding so much as glancing at Rodney's wet, blotchy face for fear of inadvertently grimacing at the sheer awkwardness and trying desperately to think sad thoughts, so no one would realize how cripplingly bored he was.
Who died from an explosive tumor?
Seriously?
Actually John kind of had to give the Ancients props for that. And here he'd thought they never thought outside the box in warfare, but medical advancements in the field of suicide bombing? That was so hardcore. And, well, terrible. It was terrible. Think of Carson. He'd been a good person. A kind person. Very concientious. He'd done his job and lived his life with poise and grace. Like an old Scottish lady.
Lady Beckett of Hartfordshire.
Ronon cleared his throat across the cabin. John glanced up in time to catch a sleepy raised eyebrow and realize he'd been smirking diabolically at his ace of clubs. He put greater energy into thinking sad thoughts, thankful that Teyla wasn't around to read his mind and frown disapprovingly, then doubly guilty as he remembered the reason for her absense. She'd been injured. John really hated it when any member of his team was injured. Particularly if it was from getting caught in a blast radius. Regardless of the inherent ridiculousness of the origin of said blast radius.
The grief could kick in any time now.
Or not, John thought twelve hours later, still too restless to sleep, barely clinging to a pretense of empathy as he watched Zelenka across from him, weeping steadily for what had to be hours as if his Czech ancestry had gifted him with a camel-like hump of water reserves, to be used specifically in the event of the death of a close colleague.
He did drift off to sleep eventually, only to be shaken roughly awake by Ronon what felt like seconds later. They'd landed in Glasgow.
John wasn't a nice guy. He was a pretty good guy, though, which he figured made up for it. At least, that's what he told himself at times like this, when he felt about ready to vibrate out of his seat in sheer boredom. He was terrible with ceremonies, of any kind, really, and yet more terrible with any situation where the people were expected to partake in copious outpourings of emotion. But he was here, showing support.
So maybe he'd been tempted to bark at Rodney to go suck a lemon when the guy's lip had started quivering inexplicably as they carried the casket from the herse into the church. His arm had been starting to cramp, and there was no way he could switch arms without looking like a complete freak and it was possibly the longest he'd ever spent hauling a dead body around even counting Afghanistan and fuck, he just wanted the whole thing to be over with.
It's not like John had actually done any barking. And in any case, John saved lives. Lots of lives. All the time. He had to get points for that.
Only it was pretty clear God wasn't giving him any points at all. At least that's how it felt when he inexplicably ended up in the last place he wanted to be, with his arms around Carson's mother, patting her back awkwardly as she did her best to work mucus and tears through three layers of cotton and polyester and wondering if this was where he was supposed to comment on how beautiful the ceremony was, or if that was just for weddings.
Probably best to say nothing, as the irony of commenting on the beauty of anything while snot was streaking down his lapel would have probably killed him.
He finally managed to escape the chapel somewhere between a speech from Dr. Cole and Ronon sneaking an alarming array of food out of his pockets in bite sized increments. Of course it started raining the moment he set foot outside. John almost started cursing, only he was pretty sure this was God's way of punishing him for being an asshole and didn't particularly want to give the guy any excuses to strike him down with a lightning bolt.
He was huddling under a stone ledge trying to gauge whether he could walk the two miles back to the inn without completely ruining his loafers when the priest found him. "Noticed you wandered off there, lad. How are you holding up?"
They all talked like Beckett here. It was weird.
John plastered on a smile. "I'm really starting to like Scotland," he said, stepping out from under the ledge and turning his face up into the sky. "I think tomorrow I'll go golfing."
"Everyone grieves in their own way," Father Jeremy replied. He rested a hand on John's shoulder, oblivious to John's flinch. He meant well. John manfully refrained from snapping his wrist.
He counted the day as a win.
The night was another matter altogether.
Namely, the matter of getting smashed. Some of their party decided to stay for the wake. Ronon, and surprisingly Rodney, opted instead for some good old Earth booze, ideal for drowning sorrows and possibly fueling the engines of small automotive vehicles.
Which is how John found himself sitting in a pub with a beer and a dinner of chicken prepared according to some local specialty, the most edible looking thing on the menu and yet the least edible looking thing he'd ever eaten outside of a combat situation. Rodney took the stool next to him at the bar. Ronon seated himself at a corner table and stared intently up at the television for a good six or seven minutes before yelling across the room, "Hey Sheppard, I thought football had more throwing."
A crazy eyed man in a soccer shirt with the name Carlyle scrawled across the back started to froth at the mouth and John put on his best "Sheppard who?" expression while Rodney snorted rudely off to the side. After a few tense moments staring around the pub with murder in his eye, the stranger stopped looking quite so homicidal, grabbed a chair next to Ronon and proceeded to school him in the ways of the noble sport of European football. Anonymity preserved and disaster averted, John smacked a still snickering Rodney in the back of the head and turned his attention back to his plate, grunting at the bartender and gesturing for a refill of his drink, avoiding actual words in the hopes he would not be identified as a yank and summarily beaten to death.
Two pints later, Rodney started to talk about his feelings. John did his best to tune him out, or at the very least drink until Rodney transformed into one of those incomprehensible droning characters in a Charlie Brown special.
As typically happened with too much alcohol and not enough conversation, John got to thinking about the state of things. The situation at hand. The probabilities leading up to it. If John were to have imagined what Rodney would have been like in Scotland, he probably would have pictured something similar to their average mission. Rodney would have made some offhand comment insulting the food and John would have given him censoring looks, while secretly agreeing (because seriously, haggis was flat out disgusting) and eventually there would have been some offensive remark regarding coitus with fluffy farm animals, an ensuing brawl with incensed natives, and then running.
Of course, in such imaginings, had such imaginings existed, the eventuality of Dr. Beckett being dead would not have been factored into such, uh, imaginings.
John replayed that sentence in his head for a while, trying to make it less convoluted and redundant. Eventually he gave up and threw back another swig of dark, bitter local beer. It reminded him a little of the booze they'd had back on Callis. Kallas?
That planet with what looked like marijuana plants but turned out to be more like radishes when you dug them up.
The point being, he wouldn't have pictured Rodney alternately sucking on a pint of cheap lager and dribbling into a bowl of cold bread pudding bemoaning the loss of his very best friend in the whole wide space-time continuum, Dr. Beckett. Carson, rather. Rodney seemed perfectly willing to call him by his given name, at least posthumously.
Apparently almost dying, like, twelve hundred times wasn't a good enough qualifier for first name basis with regard to one Lt. Col. Sheppard.
John indulged in a survey of the room and vaguely registered that Rodney was now talking about Katie Brown, directing his conversation to the imaginary drinking buddy in the seat next to him, or possibly the seat itself. Supposedly he'd stood Carson up to hang out with her the day Carson'd died. Apparently she hadn't kicked him to the curb yet, though anyone could see Rodney was only dating her because his biological clock was ticking. Frankly, it was a little creepy watching a guy hit on an attractive if somewhat boring and almost frighteningly thin woman for the sole purpose of having babies.
Alright, so John was a bitter, petulant drunk. He consoled himself with the thought that at least he wasn't bitter and petulant out loud, and Rodney was too pissed (Scottish connotation) and weepy to actually notice John pissed (American connotation) and pouting like a wee lad sent off to bed without dessert by his mum, Lady Beckett of Hartfordshire.
John stared at his half eaten chicken thigh and tried reminding himself he was here to offer support. His mind kept wandering though, along with his gaze, which kept catching on Rodney, still deep in his guilt ridden rambling, mouth wide and wet and sad and crooked and kind of perfect. John's own mouth went a little dry for no good reason and he got a glimmer of an idea that involved going off to bed like the bad metaphor said, but flipping mum the bird and taking his dessert (painfully blatant sexual connotation, and please ignore the mum reference as John has enough issues without piling on an Oedipal complex) with him. He quickly squashed that line of thought, pushing his empty plate away and standing up fast enough to give himself vertigo.
Everybody knew the third level of hell was reserved for hoarders, wasters and two-beer-queers.
He was halfway to the door, determined to trudge back to his room at the inn, collapse into bed, jerk off to the image of Rodney's crooked, perfect mouth and forget that Katie Brown or Carson Beckett had ever existed when Rodney made a loud, wet snivelling noise and mumbled something into his lager about "bros before hos" and John just snapped.
Back on Atlantis, John had developed sort of a habit around Rodney. He'd concentrate on the aspects of Rodney he found unappealing. The slight paunch and the receding hairline were givens. Shoulders and biceps he did his best to avoid entirely when in Rodney's presence. Elbows were always good. Wrinkly and strange looking. Nobody had attractive elbows.
Surprisingly, Rodney's personality didn't even make it on the long list, though in a pinch John could just replay that time Rodney asked John to trust him and nearly got them both killed, over and over, until he felt vaguely nauseous.
If John held grudges, it was only out of self-preservation.
It worked out pretty well, though periodically he'd start finding the strangest things attractive and have to rotate his chosen areas of focus. In any case, it came in handy for that week Rodney was a psychic supergenius on the brink of ascension.
Which isn't to say there wasn't a down side. He did develop an irrational fear that if he actually let himself concentrate on the parts of Rodney he found attractive for any decent length of time while in the same room with the guy, he would unceremoniously come in his pants.
The point being, John had a system. A good system. And some small piece of grey matter at the back of his skull, probably whatever constituted his common sense, wasn't too happy about seeing this system fall completely to shit in the time it took John to prowl back towards the bar, haul Rodney up by his tie and offer the entire limit on his credit card to the bartender if the guy could come up with something roomlike in the next five seconds.
Rodney made a choking noise. John ignored him completely. Two and a half years of serious emotional investment on John's part and now he got to listen to Rodney blubbering on like Carson had owned his pulsing red heart and the rest of his arterial system to boot. Well Carson could have it, John thought savagely. He could fucking have it.
But Goddamnit, that ass was his, and if it had to be over Carson's dead body, well so fucking be it.
Within moments John was dragging Rodney up the stairs, stumbling towards what was probably going to be the tiniest, ugliest room in creation, given that it was sitting on top of a sad little Scottish pub. He stopped in front of the door, shoved Rodney up against the wall, feeling the flex of shoulder muscles under his palms, and smothered all protests with lips and teeth and tongue and sheer force of will. Still, he kind of surprised at the way Rodney, after a few moments protest, melted obligingly against him, hands rising to clutch unconsciously at John's waist.
Yeah, just. Yeah.
John pulled back for a moment to stare at Rodney, heavy lidded, stare at the wreck he'd made of Rodney's composure, the want written all over Rodney's face. John could have this. At least he could have this. He leaned in for more when Rodney's hand slid up to his chest and held him off.
"We can't do this."
John raised an eyebrow and his hand slipped down over the bulge of Rodney's crotch, feeling the press of it under his fingers. "All systems are a go," he breathed, and leaned in again, taking in the stale smell of alcohol and a day of sweat and misery and wanting more.
Rodney shoved him away again. "I mean we shouldn't," Rodney said. "Do this."
John threw him a excruciatingly frustrated look.
Rodney closed his eyes, breathed in deep through is nose in way that was probably supposed to be calming but sounded more like sniffling. "It's just. You're the most important, I mean, you're one of the most important people in my life. You're practically family. And us being practically family would make this practically incest, so—"
"We're not family, Rodney. I'm your military commander."
Rodney's cock jumped under his hand. John raised an eyebrow.
"Do you have some sort of problem with me being your military commander?"
Rodney cock hardened further and he let out a quiet whimper. John grinned like a jackal.
"This is a completely unhealthy way to deal with the death of a colleague."
"Pull another," John said, already leaning in again.
"I just don't want to do anything to ruin our friendship," Rodney bit out, fast and a little bit shrill.
"Friendship?" John said, uncupping his hand to stroke his fingers down Rodney's button fly, slowly undoing the top button. "What friendship?" He let his thumb stroke softly against the skin just above the waistband of Rodney's boxer briefs. "I think you must be confusing me with a dead guy."
Rodney gave John a look torn between deeply appalled and unbearably turned on. John lunged at Rodney's neck, dragging his tongue along the stubbled skin, sliding his fingers up to cup the back of Rodney's head as he sucked a hickey onto the underside of his jaw.
"Just go with it, Rodney."
Rodney let out a whine, high in his throat, then finally, finally John felt him give in, all at once, his entire body arching forward, mouth suddenly everywhere, warm and desperate. "You asshole, he muttered into John's neck. "You motherfucking asshole," only it sounded like "yes" when Rodney said it and God, they were still wearing so many clothes. They hadn't even made it into the room yet. Anyone could walk by.
"Bed," John gasped out, fumbling through his pockets for. But it was Rodney who glared in frustration this time, batting John's hands away impatiently. It was Rodney who shoved his hands into John's coat and snatched up the key and unlocked their room with quick, nimble fingers. Rodney who pulled the door shut behind them as they stumbled their way into the room, his wide, wet mouth never leaving John's neck.
John walked them towards the bed until he heard the backs of Rodney's knees hitting the mattress. Rodney'd somehow gotten his shirt open to the point of falling off, his teeth working their way along John's clavicle, fingers digging into the the spine of his scapula. Things went hazy in John's head. He found himself mumbling broken phrases like "wanted this" and "God Rodney, you have no idea," his fingers slipping into the crease of Rodney's ass.
Clench, release. Rodney's breath stuttered in his throat. He stiffened. "Don't. You. Where is this going?"
"In you," John groaned. It was a bad play on words, but yeah. Yeah. In Rodney. Buried inside him, Christ, he wanted it now.
Rodney closed his legs and shoved John away. "You. You! You're taking advantage of me in my vulnerable state. Don't think I can't see right through you!"
John blinked twice, trying to make sense of that. He rolled his eyes. Taking adv—"Fine, Jesus, I'll bottom."
"That's not what I meant and you know—"
John cut off the rest of the sentence with a hard, wet kiss, then sucked his index and middle fingers into his mouth. Rodney's mouth hung open for a moment. Long enough for John to toe off his shoes. Rodney let out a soft gasp as John shucked his pants and underwear in one easy motion,. The gasp turned into a wheeze as John backed up into the bed and sat down, legs splayed out like a virgin sacrifice.
Another bad metaphor, considering the next thing John did was lift one knee and, without preamble, shove both fingers in up to the second knuckle.
At which point Rodney stopped breathing altogether.
John wondered for a brief moment if he should be worried that Rodney was going a little blue in the face. He dismissed the concern, refocusing on the task at hand, scissoring his fingers a little. Damnit, he hadn't done this in while. It kinda burned. He curled his back into a tighter curve and methodically worked his fingers in deeper, until, until...
Oh yeah, right there.
Rodney let out a squeak somewhere off in the background. John threw out his free hand and fumbled at the bedside table for a moment before remembering he wasn't in his room back in Atlantis.
"Rodney, lube."
"Huh?"
"Rodney!"
He blinked twice, then frowned. "What, I'm supposed to have lube? I'm not the one who initiated the sex. I'm here to grieve, remember?"
John did an impatient writhe against the bed. "Go get some!"
"Right, of course. And how exactly do you expect me to do that? Am I supposed to pull it out of thin air?!"
"Rodney," John breathed, exhaling hard as he worked himself open. "I'm going to come in about two minutes, whether you're inside me or not. Find. Some Goddamn. Lube."
"Oh, and I'm just supposed to do all the work while you sit there, literally with your thumb up your butt."
John pulled said thumb out of said butt and started stroking himself. Firm, and just slow enough to be a tease. "Do you start arguing like this every time you make it to third base, McKay?"
"Only when I don't see it coming," Rodney said in what was probably supposed to be a caustic tone but came out more sex drenched and desperate.
John circled a finger over the damp head of his cock and smirked as Rodney's eyes predictably glazed over. He threw his head back and added in a moan for good measure.
Rodney found some lube. He lost his clothes on the way, thank God.
And then he was reaching under John's hips, pushing in with his own larger, squarer fingers, the smoothed pad of his thumb pressing up into John's perineum as he pushed up into John's body with his usual precision and dexterity. There was no performance in John's actions now, nothing coy about the arch of his back as he shoved himself back against Rodney's hand. God, it felt fucking amazing and it didn't make any sense how Rodney could do that, could just manipulate John like that, like he was in perfect control of all his faculties. It didn't make sense with Rodney listing drunkenly to the side, eyes glazed and sex stupid, mouth a perfect 'o' of surprise.
"I never thought you'd. Never thought I'd—"
"Shut up, shut up, fuck me. Just."
"Yeah." John watched Rodney's hand move towards his own cock, somewhere in the periphery of John's vision. "Can I? Oh—"
And he was there, pushing in, too much, too fast and John took it, just took it, moaning loudly, spreading his legs sluttishly, pushing up into it, joints popping ominously, back spasming, stomach pitching nervously with alcohol. This was going to hurt, tomorrow, it was going to hurt like fuck and no words in the English languge could possibly express the level of John's not-caring.
"Rodney," he gasped out. "Rodney," again, and again, the word sounding hoarse, wet, broken. John wasn't an idiot. He knew this was a bad, bad idea but Christ, it felt like it was worth all the miserable break-ups and court martials in the world and John wasn't about to stop, wasn't going to apologize for it later. He wasn't sorry. He wasn't sorry.
Not even a little.
He just lay there afterwards, come painted liberally across his stomach, thighs cramping, sore and used and pathetically happy for it. Rodney had fallen off to the side taking great, gasping breaths, his torso pressing John's arm into the bedding. It would go numb in a little while, unless he worked up the energy to shove Rodney off before then.
"That was. Something," Rodney breathed out eventually.
"It was good," John said.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
John woke early to the sound of groaning, coming directly into his ear from maybe half an inch away. Rodney. He cracked an eye open long enough to register a heavy arm flung across his stomach, before wincing and snapping his eyes shut once more. "Shut up, McKay."
There was blessed, blessed silence, for a moment, then a grumbled, "Be nice to me, asshole. I put out last night."
"Funny how it's my ass that's sore."
"You were totally begging for it."
John shoved Rodney onto his back, then rolled on top of him and went still, waiting for the faint swell of nausea to pass. Rodney grunted and tried to shove John off of him, though not before John's thigh came in contact with his morning wood.
Not too hungover, then.
"And you were protesting so hard," John sing songed at him, hitching his hips up a little. Rodney groaned again, this time not entirely from pain.
Things got slippery after that.
John woke up again some hours later to a loud knocking. Rodney jolted under him, then turned his face to John and let out a confused, "Wha—?" his morning breath enough to bring tears to John's eyes. This time it was John who groaned. He moved to sit up only to realize they were glued together, his stomach hairs catching stickly in the mess they'd made earlier.
The knocking was getting louder. Then the doorknob was turning and shit, shit, the door hadn't locked automatically when they'd closed it. What kind of shitty motel room didn't have automatically locking doors?
Oh, right. Pub.
John jumped up, yelping as his stomach hair came unglued from Rodney's. Meanwhile, Rodney scrambled around for the sheet, bunched into a pile at the foot of the bed and neither of them were even approaching decent by the time Ronon stuck his head through the door. Rodney went ten different shades of red. John was sure he was wearing his best hand in cookie jar expression. Ronon's eyes widened for a split second before his expression turned perfectly blank and he dutifully informed them that their jet was leaving in an hour and a half.
"Why didn't you wake us sooner?" Rodney snapped, panicked.
"Didn't realize you needed a babysitter," Ronon snorted. "Lorne and Zelenka packed for you."
Rodney scowled. "Oh great, Zelenka will probably use this as an excuse to take all my good coffee."
"You have our luggage?" John asked, elbowing Rodney into silence. "I'd really rather not spend our transatlantic flight in yesterday's clothes."
"In the trunk," Ronon said, tossed them the keys. He then disappeared back out the door, probably for food. It was lunchtime in any case.
John found a small radio alarm clock on the bedside table. Make that a very late lunch. There was an awkward silence. "I'll get our clothes," John volunteered, and slipped back into his pants and shirt, not bothering with underwear. "You can shower while I'm gone."
Twenty minutes later they were climbing into the car, Rodney in a polo shirt, slacks and yesterday's loafers, John in jeans, a button down and his work boots, the loafers pretty much ruined from yesterday's rain and mud despite the relatively brief amount of time he'd spent outside in the rain during the funeral hiding from the late Dr. Beckett's increasingly leaky mother.
John instinctively moved towards the driver's side only to find it the passenger's side, Zelenka nodding a greeting from the right. Yet another sign that Scotland was just off. Even the puddlejumpers piloted from the left. Rodney squeezed into the back with Ronon, who was of course doing his best to fill the entire back seat of the tiny, fuel efficient European car.
It was forty minutes to the landing pad, after which followed yet another excruciating flight, only this time it was less boredom and more like John had magically transformed into a leper during the ride over. Consequences. He'd known there would be consequences. They weren't anything John wanted to think about, particularly with a hangover. He slept instead, ten solid hours, and woke to a silent cabin, everyone around him curled up in an airplane blanket but Rodney, peering at John over the top of his laptop. He glanced away guiltily the moment John's eyes met his.
And God, he was fucked, because he should have been coming up with ways to fix this and all he could think about was how much he wanted to touch Rodney right then, just crawl into the floorspace in front of him and thumb open the buttons of his fly, or drag him into the airplane bathroom and do everything they hadn't gotten to the night before. Everything he'd be too tired and drunk to feel properly. Everything he might not get ever again.
This was the part where he told himself memories were better than nothing, their friendship was strong enough to survive worse and it wasn't like he was in love with Rodney anyway. Fuck.
Jesus, fuck.
There would be talking. Later. And he would repair this. Or survive it. He always did. For the moment, he fished a sudoku book out of his carry on luggage and flipped straight to the back, trying not to think about whether last night had made him more or less of a whore than Rodney thought he was and if that was better or worse than being an asshole who was bad with funerals, trying not to think about last night at all.
He bit his lip and willed himself into the puzzle, pretending not to feel Rodney's eyes boring into him from two seats away.
They arrived Colorado just before sunrise. It was too much of a strain on the Earth's ZPM to gate directly back to Atlantis, but the gate bridge was still intact, and Lorne would be ferrying across within an hour or so. Only not, as apparently his offworld mission had been extended and Elizabeth had decided to give the six of them an additional day off rather than get a different pilot.
John grimaced at the news. He never could get comfortable in Cheyenne Mountain, which probably had something to do with the fact that nearly every time he ended up here he was in danger of never seeing Atlantis again. He wondered what the hell they were supposed to do for the next twenty-four hours. Play tourist in the crotch of America?
He turned to Rodney. A reflex. He pretty much always turned to Rodney when he was bored. Only this time Rodney gave him a wild eyed look and ran off muttering something about finding Carter, presumably to do. Actually. John had no idea. Probably not have sex, in any case, so really John had no reason to start getting bitter and petulant all over again. No reason at all. He gritted his teeth and headed off to find breakfast. Maybe he could hang out with Mitchell. The guy still worked here, supposedly.
He was halfway to the mess when he sighted one of the former members of his temporary, completely incompetent offworld team at the edge of his peripheral vision and, after a brief moment of indecision, made a sharp right towards the nearest door.
A free area, it looked like. Rodney glanced up from a table, empty but for his laptop and a bag of chips. There was no one else in the room.
"Thought you were going to find Carter."
"That is, uh, no. I lied. I thought we were, you know, avoiding each other."
John blinked, then turned on his heel to leave.
"Wait! We don't have to be avoiding each other. Actually since we have extra time I was thinking I could go check out Carson's old apartment complex and see if he had any. Well, anyway, you should come. With me."
John unclenched his jaw. "Okay," he said.
They borrowed an SGC registered vehicle. It was a two hour drive to Beckett's old place. It was a nice building in a nice area with a nice view of the town plaza, full of nice people just like Carson had been. Before the exploding tumor. "Why are we here? Carson's unrecieved magazine subscriptions a matter of national security and everybody forgot to tell me?"
"You know we left in a bit of a hurry the last time. Carson wasn't ever really happy with the job they did of packing up his apartment. He was missing things."
John honestly couldn't imagine missing anything about his hole of an apartment. About Earth in general, really. He remembered what it was like to miss his Ronon and Teyla, miss the way the ocean smelled against the ten thousand year old polymers that made up Ancient construction. He remembered staring at the bare off-white walls of his government funded living space, trying to mentally transform them into the memory of his Lantean quarters, the funky red and brown art deco stylings that managed somehow to clash with every single one of his possessions, from his bedsheets to his golf clubs to his Johnny Cash poster, ripped in the corner from when he'd thrown a book at it out of frustration, his pupils in slits, his hands claws, unable to focus on the words.
He imagined Carson's place would have felt lived in. Homey. Carson made home out of loved ones, brought home with him wherever he lived. Atlantis had been a facility to him. No doubt his well furnished one bedroom had been a lot harder to pack up than the barely opened cardboard boxes at John's crash pad.
They found the landlord, flashed their very official looking ID and were surprised to find the place hadn't been rented out again. Rodney grabbed the key. John followed.
He headed to the bathroom first. The bath mats were still there, as well as some disposable razor blades that had been knocked to the floor and the end of a roll of toilet paer. No soap to wash his hands with after he got done peeing, so he gave his hands an extra long, extra hot rinse before heading back to the living room.
There was an ugly impressionist painting leaning up against a wall. The carpet needed vacuuming. Otherwise, it was pretty much empty. Really depressingly empty. Rodney glanced around with a lost expression on his face. John hovered behind him, like he did all time in Atlantis or on off-world missions, mostly to make sure he could check anything Rodney was about to touch for potential dangerous vibes. It annoyed the shit out of Rodney. Or it had, anyway. He'd stopped complaining after the first seven months. John gave serious thought to taking a large step back, though, when he found himself fighting the urge to grab onto Rodney's hand and run his thumb over the bone of his wrist.
He didn't step back. He started to reach forward, even, only stopped short when a throat cleared behind them. John realized they'd left the door open. He and Rodney spun around to find a pretty brunette in her early thirties standing by the doorway. "Did you come for the turtles?"
Rodney stared blankly at her. He did that for a while.
John gave Rodney a long look, then turned back to their unexpected guest and stepped forward with a quirk of an eyebrow and one of his better smiles. "Yes. Yes we did."
Everything was back to usual in Atlantis. Conversations were, okay, a tad more stilted, but Rodney wasn't punching John in the face in homophobic freakout, and okay, maybe that was only because John was avoiding him like the plague, but whatever. He needed time to deal. Besides, John was doing such a good job of forgetting all about Rodney or their one night of fantastic sex or his pathetic teenaged unrequited agony and he didn't need Rodney in his face refreshing his memory.
So yeah. Everything was back to usual.
Then a week after they came back from the funeral, Rodney showed up in his quarters and oh God, John realized. He wanted to talk about it.
"This is breaking and entering. Minus the breaking. Just so you know," John pointed out.
"You were married," Rodney replied, and okay, there was a hell of a non-sequiter.
"How did you know that?"
"My mystical psychic powers."
"McKay."
"Because it's not like it was in your file or I had clearance or anything."
"What's your point?"
"See, when you jumped me in the bar, at first I thought your wife just figured out you were closeted, and that's why your marriage ended so badly, but well, you clearly weren't faking it with Chaya, or that time you went hormone crazed and macked on Teyla—"
"I was turning into a bug!"
"—so it couldn't have been anything so simple as an unbearable aversion to vagina. And after seeing how you act with people you've recently bedded, first hand, I'm getting the sneaking feeling your wife leaving you had less to do with your secret love of cock and more to do with your being a giant douche."
"Douche?"
"I think the metaphor is appropriate. You promise something fresh and clean and new and inevitably suck up all natural warmth, leaving only dry discomfort in your wake, thus rendering your victim vulnerable to further damage. "
John didn't really know how to respond to that. He ogled Rodney with a wide eyed stare until Rodney reddened, then blustered through his embarrassment with the justification, "My aunt was a gynecologist. She did most of the babysitting when I was little. I was subjected to more than one rant on misogynist medical culture propogating the myth of woman's inherent uncleanliness."
"This still doesn't explain what the hell you were doing in my file. Or what you're doing in my quarters."
"Don't distract me. I'm trying to make a point here."
"Which is?" John drawled, exaggerated and long-suffering.
"I'm in love with you."
Wait what? "What?"
"And I have been for a really long time, and I thought you were straight and it was hopeless. I don't know why you thought Carson's funeral was the best time to make a move, but at the time I thought, hey, at least you were making one, better then than never. Only now you're not speaking to me, and I'm starting to think your intention wasn't so much to make a move as it was to completely fuck with my head."
"Rodney—"
"I'm a vengeful person, Sheppard, I am not above making your life a living hell if you continue to fuck with my head like this. My point is if you break my heart I will find. A way. To break you."
"Isn't that threat supposed to come from ... someone not you?"
"Like my best friend? Well, since you threaten your own wellbeing so often I figured I'd take a turn this time."
John opened his mouth.
"If whatever you're planning to say next includes the term best-friend and the name Carson Beckett and even a hint of petulant whining I swear to God, Sheppard, I will punch your fucking lights out."
John closed his mouth.
"We're going to have more sex now."
John nodded obediently.
"I thought it was just me," John said some time later, flushed and sweaty and feeling very well used.
Rodney, gave him a questioning look.
John decided to just blurt the rest out in a rush. "Being in love with you. I thought it was just me. I didn't think you. Didn't think you'd. If I'd known you felt. I would have said something."
John worried at his bottom lip with his teeth, plucked at a loose string in his bedsheets.
"I wasn't trying to fuck with your head," he added, when Rodney didn't respond for a painfully long moment.
Rodney gave John a fond look and reached out to gently cup John's jaw and lean in for a soft kiss.
Then he smacked John unnecessarily hard in the back of the head.
Two days later, it hit John that Carson was perhaps the first death on Atlantis for which John had not at least partially blamed himself.
He was on the way to the gym at the time of the epiphany, and ended up taking a small detour into a supply room to have a breakdown next to a box of fifty caliber artillery shells in full metal jacket.
A short while later Rodney radioed him with the request that he come down to the labs. John replied, "Now is a really bad time," in perfect, measured deadpan, only his voice kind of cracked on the "really" and the next thing he knew Rodney was leaving his lab and demanding to know John's exact location. It freaked John out just a little bit more than he already was, what with the breakdown and all, that the most oblivious man in Atlantis could read him like a open book without even seeing his face.
John hadn't moved since he first sat down, but he did raise his head when Rodney hacked his way through whatever locking command John had thrown psychically at the door and came to stand in front of him, a good half a foot closer than usual.
A couple nights of sex and people lost all respect for your personal space.
Okay, really hot sex.
"Can't you grieve like a normal person?" Rodney whined down at him.
And yeah. John hadn't particularly liked Carson. But Carson was one of them and Carson dying was just one step closer to any of them dying, and it wasn't his fault, this time. It wasn't his fault, and what if it wasn't his fault next time? Because really, "not his fault" was just another way of saying "there's nothing he could have done" and "hell, he wasn't even there" and John. He'd.
He'd better fucking be there if anything ever happened to Elizabeth, or Teyla, or Ronon or Christ, Rodney. Even Rodney. Especially Rodney, who John just might have been a little in love with for the past, oh, two and a half years.
John smiled pathetically up at him and replied, "Nope. I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake."
Rodney huffed a laugh and took a seat next to John on the floor. The side without the giant box of artillery shells. Their knees touched. They stayed that way for a good twenty minutes, after which Rodney patted John twice on the thigh, used said thigh to push himself back up into a standing position and said, "Well, I've got work to get back to. But we should go do something life affirming later. Preferably involving nudity. I'll come by your room after dinner."
Five mintutes after Rodney left, John's thigh was still tingling where Rodney touched it and he felt all of thirteen with his first crush. Which, all things considered, was a fair improvement on feeling like he was going to crack at any second.
He could probably get his legs working again by dinnertime.
Probably.
They tried not to be obvious. Teyla may have given them a few raised eyebrows over lunch, but only because she and Ronon were thick as thieves and Ronon told her everything and who the hell taught Ronon the phrase "in flagrante delicto" anyway?
They kept it quiet. Rodney would occasionally call him out while he was pretending to do paperwork, demanding that John help him test something and it was only a lie maybe one third of the time. It was a nice arrangement.
Nice except for the part where Rodney had no self control and a semi-latent exhibitionist streak. It wasn't that John had anything in particular against furtive maintenance closet quickies, but he soon realized he'd have to start taking the initiative and do some of his own propositioning if he ever wanted to have sex in a bed again.
He cornered Rodney just outside his lab after hours, corridor empty of other personnel. He considered being blatant, but reconsidered as some random botonist rounded the corner and went with subtle instead, opening with a friendly, "Hey, Rodney. I just got hold of the latest season of Dr. Who. We should go back to your room and watch it."
Rodney blinked at him. "You're joking, right? You didn't torture me enough with the Back to the Future trilogy?" Rodney's hands made a few flailing motions. He was just warming up, John could tell. He raised an eyebrow.
Yeah, this would be fun.
"They travel through time in a phone booth," Rodney spat. "A. Phone. Booth. I don't even need to bother mocking it because it's so ridiculous it mocks itself, and just in case it didn't, there's a cheezy 80's Keanu Reeves movie to pick up the slack. Not to mention all the characters are a tad too, shall we say, British looking for my taste. I mean, seriously, they couldn't even—"
"McKay." John took a step forward, moving until his body was nearly flush with Rodney's, curled his fingers around the back of Rodney's neck and trailed a thumb down the line of his jaw. Rodney fell silent, clearly having lost his train of thought entirely.
John took advantage of the respite in monologuing. " Let me rephrase," he said, and leaned in until his mouth was a hairsbreadth from Rodney's ear. He let his voice drop a couple registers until he was practically purring. "I just got hold of a really transparent excuse be alone with you. We should go back to your room and fuck."
"Oh. Uhm. That—"
Rodney cleared his throat.
"—that sounds like a wonderful idea." His hands fluttered at his sides. "I just, ah, love that Dr. Who."
John snorted a laugh.
That seemed enough to snap Rodney out of his awkwardness. He drew away and crossed his arms over his chest, scowling. "Yes, yes, I'm a hopeless idiot when it comes to interpersonal relations. You can put your eyebrows back now."
John laughed again, then leaned in for a brief, wet kiss. "Seriously, though. I did score the second season of the new Battlestar Galactica off Dr. Coleman."
Rodney snorted. "As if the science in that is any better." He began striding quickly out the lab and down the hallway towards the nearest transport.
John fell into step beside him. "Well yeah, but it's got the three hottest blondes on TV."
Rodney smiled, like a kid learning a new secret. "You don't say."
"One of them's even a devil-may-care fighter pilot."
"Oh, like I don't get enough of that here."
Commander's Palace Turtle Soup au Sherry
* 10 ounces (2-1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
* 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 pound turtle meat, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
* 1 cup minced celery (4 stalks)
* 2 medium onions, minced (2 medium)
* 1-1/2 teaspoons garlic, minced
* 3 bay leaves
* 1 teaspoon oregano
* 1/2 teaspoon thyme
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1-1/2 cups tomato purée
* 1 quart beef stock
o NOTE: If turtle bones are available, add them to the beef bones when making the stock for this dish
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, as needed
* 1/2 cup lemon juice
* 5 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped
* 1 tablespoon minced parsley
* 6 teaspoons dry sherry
Melt 8 ounces (2 sticks) butter in a heavy saucepan. Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat until the roux is light brown. Set aside.
In a 5-quart saucepan, melt the remaining butter and add turtle meat. Cook over high heat until the meat is brown. Add celery, onions, garlic and seasonings, and cook until the vegetables are transparent.
Add tomato purée, lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the roux and cook over low heat, stirring, until the soup is smooth and thickened. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon juice, eggs and parsley.
Remove from heat and serve. At the table, add 1 teaspoon sherry to each soup plate.
[1] This is quite possily the most self-indulgent thing I have ever written, up to and including the time I wrote female!Rodney masturbating and everyone kept telling me how realistic it was. [2] My sincere apologies to dead, dead Carson. [3] By cheezy 80's Keanu Reeves movie, I'm of course referring to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures. [4] Speaking of which, additional apologies to David Hewlett for hating all over his shiny happy fandom. [5] The recipe does not belong to me.
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Date: 2008-01-14 06:54 pm (UTC)It's just so wrong it's right, you know? I have a matching desktop wallpaper, though I'm not using it at the moment. It was one of those things I found in the newsletter and was like, oh my God, I need this in my life.