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"I was in Rocky Horror," Rodney says miserably. His mouth is so down turned it looks like it's going to slide right off his face, puddling at his feet like something out of Dali. "It was my girlfriend's idea because Linda was insane but so, so hot, I mean, really and she liked me so when she said I should play Frank N. Furter I kind of just did and I was good at it! Well, the ordering around part I was good at, and the fishnets with the heels probably didn't hurt since I was rail thin back then and oh, god, please please please tell me they've figured this out."
He doesn't stop there -- he can't stop, that's kind of the point -- but John can only sit there, too numb and gobsmacked to hear. So far, Rodney's talked about all the things John has come to expect: science, the food, which people he believes should be sent to work on their sewer system, which actually works fine despite rumors to the contrary, how much this sucks and the myriad ways the Ancients should be held accountable for all the things they managed to screw up and never pay for, revered like demi-gods instead of technologically superior humans who had no sense of compassion or empathy.
John's the only one to stay. Rondey looks exhausted, his lips chapped where they aren't pink-shiny from so much use, tongue flickering out between words in a vain attempt to keep himself hydrated. He even talks while trying to drink or eat, ruling out either one of those activities after Keller was forced to clean up after Rodney like a large, humiliated child.
The problem is common enough, in Atlantis. Touching something one shouldn't to unexpectedly bizarre results.
"I believe it has a mental component," Radek said, furtively looking across the room where Rodney has hidden himself in the corner, like a misbehaving student, talking non-stop to the wall. "It is like nightmare, like taking the one thing Rodney fears most -- "
Sam shook her head, careful not to look at Rodney as his voice rose abruptly, echoing against Atlantis' strange metal, the sound losing all coherence like Rodney spoke through water instead of clean, sweet air. "I can't imagine one of Rodney's nightmares is to never stop speaking. Now, to never be able to speak..."
They'd laughed, then, all of them but John who gets it first. Even Radek is swayed by Carter's light jokes and it becomes so easy, so simple to fall into traps Rodney's helped lay himself, intricate work invisible to the naked eye.
John sees, though.
"I -- I've never told anyone," breaks through his thoughts. Rodney wears his emotions for all to see, painted like lurid masks pulled in grotesque shapes, but there's a vulnerability that John's never seen before. Shame from a man who has never truly learned how to feel it. "About the play, I couldn't. I'm sorry I'm telling you, I'd stop if I could, you know that, but I can't just repeat nonsense words, that's part of this too, it's like a monkey's paw, careful what you wish before it's not just words and sounds, god, if it was I'd sing and no one wants to hear me do that, not after the hydrochloride incident ten years ago, but it's not just the action of lips and tongue and voice box, it's all these memories that are suddenly so clear and I have to talk about them, I have to, like the way fishnets did it for everyone but Linda, who broke up with me after she realized half her friends were propositioning me and I turned them down, I turned them down for her and she still -- "
He's stayed while everyone left, giving Rodney the only thing he knows how to offer: an ear and a guard, the surety that no one will come close enough to hear, that no one will ever know the details of what Rodney sketches before John's eyes, stories and theorems intertwining to show the mosaic of Rodney's life, his psyche and soul pour into sound waves.
When John finally moves, Rodney shows both relief and fear -- which remains unchanged, both, when he watches John go over to the energy drink that beads along the sides of the metal carafe it's in, pouring another cup.
"Let's try this again," John says while Rodney babbles on about Linda, still, about the way the skin over her shoulder was always rough and Rodney liked to kiss it there, not disgusted by anyone's body for the first time in his life. Their timing is better this time and Rodney's chest stays dry as John gives him a few sips of the protein-laden drink.
Cleaning his face is oddly intimate, as Rodney still speaks of Linda, of performing something John can't even imagine because to him, Rodney is balding and spreading and loud enough to shake a planet to its core, a bull that can tap its way across a tightrope, so long as it is made up of braided words and corded numbers, metals that loop like fish line, tensile strength hidden in the slender length of it.
He isn't skinny and unsure and eager to please. Or at least, he wasn't. John's not sure how he's ever going to get rid of this image now, though, because he knows beyond a shadow of bombast that it's true.
"I wish I could've seen you."
The whisper catches them both by surprise, but John doesn't regret it.
"Not that you aren't a fine figure of a man now," John continues and rubs the knuckle of his pointer against the corner of Rodney's mouth, listening to a suddenly rasping whisper about how much he'd wanted Brad, not Janet, the way Linda had suspected. His teeth click around words he desperately wants to keep back and it's John's mouth that trembles as Rodney doesn't stop. It's John's eyes that sting because this isn't cute, or silly, the way everyone else had joked, surprised when Rodney never smiled back.
This is horrifying. It's like watching someone take a piece of Rodney's skin one word at a time, exposing not just blood and bone by the steady beat of his heart of hearts, the part of him that no one should know about, not ever.
The others left out of discomfort. John stays because of Rodney's.
It should be unexpected, Rodney's sudden dive for the safety of John's shirt, the warmth of his chest and the scrap of dog-tags against Rodney's lips, but it isn't. John is ready for it, braced. He closes his arms around shoulders that feel thin and breakable, belying their width, and buries his too-silent mouth and nose against Rodney's hair.
He can't hear anything now. He just feels it, vibrations that work him from the inside out, leaving him as shaking and disoriented as he knows Rodney is.
"When this is over," John promises voice hoarse like he's the one who's talked for hours and hours, "I'll tell you everything you want to know."
Rodney shudders against him and mumbles into the kiss, frantic words that John returns the only way he knows how.