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Peace will come to you
as a rosewood-colored road paver
in your grandmother’s town, as a trench
scraped into canvas, as a violin bow, a shovel,
an easel, a brushstroke that covers
burial mounds in grass. And love, you say,
is a constant blade, a trowel that plants
and uproots, and tomorrow
will be a tornado, you say. Then war,
a sick wind, will come to part the air
—Jamaal May, “A Brief History of Hostility”
The young man says, “Alan can
do anything he wants”
“Not fly,” I say
The young man returns
a puzzled look
*
Alan has already crushed
the milk carton
with his heel
—R. L. Swihart, “Totem”
Rodney was just sliding on his final shoe when the door chimed. He blinked a few times, then went to it, surprised to find John behind it, grinning a suspiciously wide grin.
It was the kind of smile that made women weak at the knees, that made military men of all kinds desperate to please, that opened sacred doors and signed impossible trade agreements. It was entirely out of place here, on this random Wednesday, in Rodney’s face, and he scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “What?”
“Can I come in?”
“Oh, fine.” Rodney stepped aside, and John followed, the door whooshing closed after him. “What do you want at this ungodly hour?”
“Have you heard the news yet?”
“What news?”
“It came through on the latest email blast,” John said. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. It’s over. Gays can serve in the military now.”
“Okay?”
“I really am so in love with you it’s just disgusting,” John said, and stepped forwards and kissed him.
His lips were warm, moving against Rodney’s own, and a little chapped, and his arm came up to encircle Rodney’s back, firm and warm against his shoulder blade. Rodney was frozen in shock, and John pulled away after a minute, giving him a bewildered look. “Rodney?”
“Colonel?”
John blinked and took another step backwards. “You—I—we can be together now.”
“What on Earth?” Rodney managed, and John’s face fell. “John, I don’t—I’m not gay!”
“I thought you were bisexual,” John said numbly. “You don’t want me?”
“I value your friendship very highly,” Rodney said, and John’s face shuttered. “Um, congratulations. On the repeal.”
“Yeah,” John said tightly, and stepped further away. “Well, I—I’m gonna—”
“See you at the meeting,” Rodney said, and watched in open-mouthed astonishment as John fled.
He spent the whole meeting staring at John, wondering how the hell he’d managed not to notice, how something of such enormous magnitude could have escaped him, how he could have possibly missed the man being in love with him, how he could have missed it being such a given in the man’s life that he would assume Rodney wanted him back, how John could have thought that. Did Rodney seem gay? Did he give off homosexual vibes? Did everyone think that? He knew he was fussy, but he didn’t think he was that fussy.
Rodney headed back to the lab afterwards, and eventually lost himself in work, but when dinnertime came around and John was nowhere to be found—and when exactly had he started expecting John to pull him away for meals anyway?—he felt some pit in his gut grow hungry and multiply.
He just had to ruin everything, Rodney thought, and stomped off to the mess hall. John was there, sitting with Teyla and Ronon and laughing that disgusting smug little laugh of his, and Rodney stomped over to join them once he’d gotten his food, trying not to notice the way John avoided his eyes. He started rambling about work, and Teyla and Ronon feigned polite interest, and John still wouldn’t look at him, and Rodney felt like tearing him open and stomping on his innards.
Which he’d done already, this morning, after that stupid kiss that he simply could not stop thinking about.
John wouldn’t meet his eyes, and wouldn’t meet his eyes, and still wouldn’t meet his fucking eyes, and eventually he stood and grabbed his tray. “Bye.”
“Goodbye, John,” Teyla said, and Ronon said, “Bye,” and Rodney said, “Uh, bye,” and John fled.
It was three in the morning by the time he’d accepted that he wasn’t going to sleep, and he got up and got dressed and stomped to John’s quarters, pounding on the door until the man, bleary-eyed, opened up and gave him a bewildered look. “Rodney? What time is it?”
“Three,” Rodney said. “You’re in love with me.”
“Oh, Christ,” John said, and led him inside. “Rodney—”
“How long have you been in love with me?”
“Since ‘Picture where we are in the solar system,’ thereabouts,” John said. Rodney felt his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Listen—”
“Why did you never say anything?”
“It was illegal. Rodney—”
“You thought I would kiss you back,” Rodney said. “You care about the law now?”
“Well, sometimes I like to at least pretend to try. Look—”
“How could I not have known about this?”
“You’re oblivious. Rodney—”
“John.” John fell silent. “How could this have been going on under my nose for years? You conducted a secret romance with me in your head with me none the wiser! What do you want from me? How are things going to change? When are you going to move on?”
“I get closer every second,” John muttered dryly. Rodney frowned. “I don’t want anything from you, Rodney. And nothing’s going to change. I am perfectly capable of dealing with this on my own time. All I need from you is to calm down.”
“Fat chance!”
John ran a hand over his face. “Yeah. Any more questions?”
Rodney looked down. “Why me?”
There was such a long silence that he looked up. When he did, John shrugged. “Why anybody? Just kind of happened.”
“Oh, that’s flattering.”
“I’m not interested,” John said, through gritted teeth, “in flattering you. I’m interested in getting you to leave so I can go back to sleep.”
“Oh.” Rodney felt himself slump, and realized abruptly that he really was very tired too. “Well, uh—”
“Goodbye, Rodney,” John said, and ushered him all the way back out the door.
They managed to ignore it for three weeks. They were good weeks, by all accounts, productive weeks, weeks where nobody died. John was cordial, but no longer friendly; Rodney hadn’t realized how very large a gulf there was between these two things until the third day in a row that John didn’t approach him. He didn’t approach him to pull him away for lunch, and he didn’t follow him back to his lab after lunch, and after dinner they parted ways yet again, John leaving him to his own devices. After a few days, he realized what was going on, and cursed John again for stealing Rodney’s best friend away.
Because it became clear over the next three weeks that that was, in fact, what had happened. John had lied to his face that nothing would change; things were radically different, and Rodney hated it.
During the fourth week, they were sent out on a mission and ran into the Wraith, and Rodney woke up in the infirmary. He blinked up at the ceiling, then at his bedside, where John was sitting asleep, his hand wrapped around Rodney’s.
“If I’d known all it took to get your attention was getting laid up, I’d have gotten sick weeks ago,” Rodney murmured. John stirred, and Rodney glanced up. “Hello? Anybody? How long have I been in this miserable prison?”
John was fully awake by the time the doctor left, his hand safely in his own lap. “I should go,” he said gruffly. “Sorry, I—”
“You’re acting weird,” Rodney said. “You said you wouldn’t act weird.”
John grimaced. “This is not a discussion we should be having in the infirmary.”
“Your law got repealed, remember?”
John blinked. Then he looked awed, just for an instant. “Shit.”
“You’re acting weird,” Rodney said again. “Stop it. Go back to normal. Start coming and getting me again.”
“It always has been rather one-sided, hasn’t it?”
“Oh, please,” Rodney said. “If you expect me to—”
John laughed. “I don’t. Of course I don’t. I’ll try.”
“Good. And you should stay. Tell me what happened.”
“Yeah,” John said. “Okay.”
Soon Ronon and Teyla were by too, filling out John’s laconic story; the next day, John came and got him around lunchtime. “Come on,” he said. “Sustenance.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
They walked to the mess in total silence, then sat there eating in more silence for five entire minutes. Rodney let out a loud, pointed sigh. “Well, this is awkward.”
“Yep,” John grunted. Rodney watched him. Had he had sex with a lot of men? Was it something that he’d known throughout his life?
“How long have you been gay?”
“I’m bisexual.”
“How long have you been bisexual?”
“Figured it out when I was fifteen.”
“Why on Earth did you join the military?”
“I wanted to fly.”
“Right,” Rodney said. “Okay. Sure. That’s—I suppose there was a lot of… covert action on those military bases.”
“Definitely.”
“But you never tried anything with me?”
“You sound hurt.”
“What? I’m so not.”
“Mattered too much to me,” John said, shaking his head. “Right off the bat. It wasn’t the kind of feeling that’s easy to keep under wraps. I’d have been shouting it from the damn rooftops.”
“Oh.”
John stabbed at the root-tuber-thing they’d gotten on that planet with the carnivorous flowers. “I’m sorry I kissed you,” he muttered. “It was stupid. I thought—I was so sure you felt the same way.”
“You’re in love with me.”
“Whatever. Yeah.”
“What indications have I given you that I—why did you think that?”
“You touch me,” John said. “All the time. You even did it on our last mission. We—are you honestly telling me—I should tape our damn conversations. You try listening to that shit and telling me it isn’t flirting. Jesus fucking Christ. You give me this look—I don’t know how to describe it. Like I’m an equation you want to solve. Once in the infirmary you kissed my hand.”
“I did?”
“And there was the week after we got back from being held captive by the Wraith where you slept in my bed,” John says. “And—but I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry I let myself read into things. I was being stupid.”
“I didn’t—I’ve been flirting with you?”
“Big time,” John said gloomily. Rodney shook his head. “I should have known better.”
“I won’t hold it against you,” Rodney promised, and John smiled the first real smile he’d seen from him since the day of the repeal.
John kept getting him again after that, though less frequently than he had before; it took three days for Rodney to stop dead in the hallway in the middle of a bit of banter about their upcoming mission. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, I’m totally flirting with you.”
John gave him a tight smile. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine! I’m not a monster! I can’t just—just lead you on like—”
“You’re not leading me on. I know you’re straight.”
“It’s cruel,” Rodney insisted. John looked away. “I’m not going to act like that.”
“I, uh—okay.”
“You really—this whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, Sheppard, I’m sorry I wasted so much of your time.”
“It wasn’t a waste of time.”
“John—”
“It wasn’t a fucking waste of time, Rodney. Good grief. You think that wasn’t the happiest I’ve ever been? It’s my own fault for fucking it up.”
No kidding, Rodney thought gloomily. Was this why he could never get a woman to stay? Because they thought he was secretly in love with Sheppard?
Rodney sighed. “Well, at least now you can move on.”
“Yeah,” John said. “Awesome.”
They settled into their new routine, this less frequent but still daily occasion of spending time together; about a week after that conversation, he was lying on his couch staring up at the ceiling wondering what John had imagined what would happen after that kiss. Sex? Had he been expecting to have sex with Rodney? They’d been on enough away missions together that he lacked for nothing in terms of details.
Great. Now he was thinking about John’s dick. He was thinking about John, period, incessantly, without any kind of break or escape route. He finally stood up in disgust and grabbed his radio and clicked it on. “McKay to Colonel Sheppard.”
“Sheppard here.”
“Hey. You want to watch a movie?”
A long pause. “Okay. Be there in twenty.”
Sheppard came bearing beer, beautiful man that he was, and seemed happy enough with Back to the Future III, about the least romantic movie Rodney could think of. But he felt himself continually drifting closer to John throughout the movie, and kept moving away, trying not to notice John’s smile grow a little fixed.
He had four beers to Rodney’s two, and was swaying when he stood up. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”
“It’s okay.”
“It obviously isn’t. Or you wouldn’t be treating me like I was diseased.”
“I’m trying to respect your comfort level! You’re the one who wouldn’t come anywhere near me for an entire month.”
“Thought it would go away,” John said, and hiccuped. “But it didn’t, and I realized—you could die anytime. Stupid not to love you while I still can.”
Oh. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Rodney said. “But I did—I liked the way it was before.”
“We can go back to that,” John said. “I don’t mind—I liked it too.”
“You wanted more.”
“But I was happy, too.”
“I’m willing to try it if you are.”
“Okay,” John said, and looked at Rodney and closed his eyes and shook himself once, twice, three times. Then he looked up at Rodney with a gaze that was, he suddenly realized, so incredibly flirtatious it was impossible to mistake it for anything else. It was a look Rodney knew intimately.
Good lord, what was I smoking to not notice that?
“We might as well make it two movies,” John said, flopping down on the couch and making a come-hither gesture. Rodney hesitated, then flopped down across from him and pressed his feet against John’s leg. John patted his ankle, watching him with a punishingly warm look.
“Oh,” Rodney said. “This really is normal for us, isn’t it?” John nodded. “My God, we are dating.”
Unvarnished hope flashed through John’s eyes, then vanished. “We’re an old married couple,” Rodney moaned, and the hope came back, just for an instant. “Let’s—let’s watch Terminator 2.”
John squeezed his ankle. “Okay.”
They started hanging out at their usual frequency after that, John coming and getting him at all hours, and Rodney found himself touching him even more than he apparently had before, fixing his hair, rubbing his shoulder, trying desperately not to give in to the urge to take his hand. He didn’t know what the hell was going on in his own head, except that he was terribly unnerved.
But he couldn’t make himself stop, either. He was addicted to John’s touch, to his company, and thought about quitting as often as a real addict. He was leading John on, and he knew it, but the thought of pulling back was completely unbearable. He hadn’t realized how devastatingly bleak those weeks without John had been until they were over. It was like he’d been trapped underwater, hallucinating an alternate reality where he was no longer loved unconditionally, or at all. And now, suddenly, everything was good again; it was impossible for him to even want to let John go.
They continued in this holding pattern until John got injured on an away mission. They’d split up with Ronon and Teyla for whatever ungodly reason, even though it never ended well, and they were both in a primitive cell, enforced by a not-so-primitive force field, John bleeding all over the dirt floor. Rodney did what he could to escape, failed miserably, and collapsed on the ground next to John, bringing his head into his lap and cupping his face in his hand. “Hey. Hey, John. You with me?”
“R’ney?”
“I’m here, John.”
“’M cold, R’ney.”
“I know. I know.” Rodney ran his fingers up his face and through his ridiculous hair. “It’s all going to be okay, John. I promise. I won’t let anything else hurt you.”
“Mm. I know.” John nuzzled into his hand. “Really love you.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
John made a pleased, drowsy noise. “You love me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Not like me.” John shivered. “But still good.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You deserve better than not like me.”
“’M happy.”
“Oh, John.” Rodney leaned down and pressed their foreheads together. “You have to—when we get out of this. Promise me. Promise me you’ll move on.”
John laughed, coughing up blood in the process. “N’ver gonna happen.”
John was out cold by the time Teyla and Ronon saved them, and this time Rodney was the one who fell asleep holding John’s hand in the infirmary. When John woke up, he met Rodney’s eyes, then smiled the smallest little half-relieved, half-awed half-smile, and something brittle and unnamed broke inside Rodney, and he leaned down sharply and kissed John’s hand. “You can’t keep doing this to me,” he said roughly. “My heart can’t take it.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be.” Rodney kissed his hand again, no ignorance of his own actions available to explain the act away. He had wanted to, so he’d done it. Twice. “You’re a thorn in my side, is what you are.”
John let out a happy little sigh. “I know.”
A week later, John came by for a movie night. Rodney’s TV crashed, and after fifteen minutes of fiddling with it and determining that it needed Ancient parts from one of the lower tiers he said, “Let’s just watch it on my laptop.”
They spread out on his bed with snacks and blankets, one draped over both of them, their legs touching from thigh to calf. Rodney leaned into John, and John leaned back, and they brushed hands as they went in for popcorn, giggling over the movie, though Rodney would never admit to giggling about anything but science. Then he turned his head at the same time John turned his own, and their lips were centimeters apart, hot air pouring out of their mouths into one another’s.
Rodney glanced up at John’s lips, then his eyes; his gaze was affixed firmly on Rodney’s mouth. What are you doing? he scolded himself fiercely, and pulled away.
The movie took a sharp downward turn, and soon they were both drowsy, lying next to each other with the last notes of the credits streaming towards them. Rodney closed his eyes. “It would be so easy,” John whispered after a few minutes. “I promise you wouldn’t have to try at all. You wouldn’t have to change.”
Oh, Rodney thought, dizzy with sleep and directionless want. After another minute, he felt John cleaning off the bed, then coming to him and running a hand along Rodney’s cheek. He wondered if he should feel violated, but he didn’t. “Goodnight, Rodney.”
Rodney pretended to wake up. “Stay,” he murmured. John yanked his hand away. “Gets lonely. Just me here.”
“Rodney, I—”
“You want to.”
John’s voice was broken, and came out in a low, hoarse whisper. “Of course I want to.”
“So stay.”
John was trembling. “Rodney, I—this is cruel. You were right. It’s cruel.”
Rodney sat up, shedding all pretense of sleep, then rubbing the last of it away. “Sit down.”
John stayed standing. “Look,” Rodney said. “I can’t offer you sex. But I can—I can offer you this. So let me.”
“You’re vain,” John said, bitterly amused, and sat down at the edge of the bed by Rodney’s feet. “I should have known all this would just serve to inflate your ego.”
“Now who’s being cruel?” John looked away. “I don’t—you’re the one who refuses to move on.”
“How the hell am I supposed to move on from you?” John stood up and started pacing. “From you? It amazes me that any human being ever could! You’re funny and mean and so wickedly intelligent it takes my breath away. You’re awkward and pedantic and headstrong and terrifically cowardly and so brave I don’t know what to do with it. You’re impossible! Impossible in every sense of the word. It astounds me every day that you even exist. It’s—it’s a miracle.” He shook his head. “And now you want me to sleep with you?”
“Yeah.”
John deflated. “Oh.” He sat back down, resting his hand on Rodney’s bare ankle. “Rodney, that’s—I don’t—” He pulled away and buried his face in his hands. “I’ll take it. God help me, I’ll take it.”
Rodney yawned. “Okay.”
John’s things started migrating to his quarters after that, a shirt here, a DVD there; then all of a sudden it had been a month and he was living in Rodney’s room, and Rodney was realizing he hadn’t so much as looked at a woman in weeks. He and John always woke up tangled together, John’s arms wrapped around him, his nose buried in Rodney’s hair; he kept having elaborate, horrible fantasies that John would flip him over and kiss him and trap him in his strong arms so Rodney was powerless to escape, but so far, the most extreme thing that had happened was John kissing his forehead before they went to sleep, the top of his head as he woke up. Domestic, certainly; sexual? Not hardly.
He started seeing gay couples emerge from the American military contingent, mixing with the Athosians and the rest of the crew, and wondered if that was what people thought was happening with him and John. It wasn’t worth thinking about, really. Who cared what assumptions people made? He knew the truth, and that was what mattered.
And what is the truth, exactly?
The truth was that John had made it clear he had no intention of or capacity to get over Rodney. The truth was that Rodney loved him back, even if he didn’t want to screw him, and he was giving him as much as he could. The truth was that John was accepting it from him. The truth seemed to be, he realized gloomily, that they were together, and he wasn’t even getting any orgasms out of it.
He and John laid down in bed at the end of the day Rodney had his revelation that they were living together, their bare arms brushing. “What all do you want?” Rodney asked, and John went still. “If we were gonna—what would you want me to do? What would be different?”
John went silent for a long moment. Then he said, hoarsely, “Kissing.”
“Kissing?”
“All the time. Everywhere. Love to be able to shut you up.” Rodney bit his lip. “See you put that clever tongue of yours to good use.”
“You—you want me to blow you?”
“Or the other way around. I love it when you make noise, too. I bet you get so damn bossy.”
“I, uh—may have been accused of that. Once or twice.” Silence. “What else do you want?”
“You sure you want to know?”
Rodney realized he was half-hard at the same time he realized John was half-hard, and he scrambled up and out of bed, the moment broken. “Gonna—I’m gonna take a shower, I’m gonna—”
“Right, uh, I—you do that, and I’ll—”
“Right, yeah—”
Rodney fled. When he got back, John looked distant, and didn’t say anything as Rodney crawled in next to him and buried his face in his shoulder, breathing in. “John,” he whispered, and John didn’t say anything. “John.”
The moment stretched and distorted, and at last John wrapped an arm around him and squeezed hard. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Me neither.”
“God, Rodney, you just keep—” John laughed, something brittle in the sound. “What is it you want?”
“I don’t want you to be in pain.”
“You think I’m in less pain now?”
Rodney recoiled. John grappled for him. “Rodney, wait, I’m sorry—come back to bed, I’m sorry—”
“If I’m—if I’m hurting you worse, then—”
“You’re not. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s my fault for—I’m sorry. Will you please come back to bed?”
“I—okay.” Rodney crawled back up it and next to him. John made a point of pulling down the covers, and they slid in next to each other, their sides pressed together. “John, if what we’re doing now is hurting you worse than before, I don’t—if you need to move back out, or to—”
“I don’t need to move back out.”
“John—”
John erupted. “Jesus, Rodney! Are you going to fucking take this from me too?”
Rodney felt himself go still. “Too?”
“You think I wasn’t—wasn’t living every day carried by the hope that—the certainty that—you think that shit didn’t sustain me?”
“Oh, John.”
John trembled against him. “Shut up. Just shut up.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be that for you.”
John went still too, and then his head fell to rest on Rodney’s shoulder. “Me too.”
A week later, he woke up with John’s hard-on nestled in his ass crack. It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up to John hard against him, but it was the first time he’d woken up hard too, and he realized he’d had to have been moving in his sleep to get John this up close and personal with his asshole.
If he just—just moved my briefs to the side a little and pressed up, his dick would be inside me—
Rodney was so hard, Jesus, he was so hard—
“John,” he croaked, and without his conscious intention he was moving, back and down and he was wrapping his arm around his back, fisting it into John’s hair, and John made a sleepy little moan and moved against him and kissed his neck, and Jesus, it had been years and John was right there, in love with him, and that snapped him back to reality, and he wrenched away.
John’s hands made to follow him, then fell away, and he blinked in obvious confusion. “Rodney?”
“Sorry,” Rodney choked out. “I have to—excuse me.” And he fled to the bathroom and turned on the shower and jerked off into his hand, covering his mouth when he felt the word John struggling to escape it.
John wasn’t there when he got back, thank God, and that night he didn’t come to bed until Rodney was almost asleep. He was gone in the early morning, which Rodney absorbed with absolute and total displeasure; at some point over the past five weeks he’d gotten used to waking up to John’s arms around him, getting his morning kiss to the head, hearing his rich laugh as Rodney burrowed in deeper for five more minutes of warmth.
Right, he thought bitterly, and tried not to think about it. John came to him as usual that day, as he had yesterday, and he tried not to think about John’s cock, about having John’s cock inside him, about how easy it would have been. He wasn’t even into that anyway. There was nothing wrong with being into that, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t.
The next morning, John was gone again. This continued for a week, and then on Saturday he woke up with John’s arms around him, and let out a long exhale and turned around and wrapped his arms around him back, shoving his face in his neck and breathing in.
John was still asleep, but Rodney could feel it when he woke, the way his even breaths turned into absolute stillness. Rodney nudged him with his face and said, “You left me alone for a week.”
“I did.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“Rodney—”
“Hated waking up alone.”
John’s voice was choked. “You missed me.”
“Mm. Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about the other day.”
“Me too.” Rodney sighed. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. You made it into this whole huge thing when it really isn’t.”
“I kissed your neck.”
“Because I woke you up by dry-humping you.”
Now John sounded cautious. “You did do that.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t thinking. I had just woken up, and I was—well, I’m sorry I didn’t—I should have thought about what it would mean. To you. I just—anyway, I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“It’s okay, John. You can come back to bed now.”
John relaxed against him. “Okay.”
And he figured that was the end of it until he woke up to a hard cock rutting slowly against his ass a week and a half later. He was half-asleep, and found himself moving with it, up and down, trying to induce some friction. He brought his hand to his own dick, caught in the throes of his dream, a beautiful brunette with hard, sharp muscles and a flat chest and flashing hazel eyes, and he clung to it, feeling hardness against him, John’s hardness, from John’s cock—
What am I doing? he thought, and pulled his hand away and stayed where he was, feeling John’s hard-on against his ass, wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t reacted the way he had when John had first come to him, if instead he’d let that kiss turn into—turn into—
John started to move with all the muscular reassertions of waking, and Rodney tried to seem asleep, breathing as regularly as he could, and John sighed and stilled and kissed the top of Rodney’s head and pulled away. It happened again a week after that, though this time Rodney pulled away first; a week after that, they woke up at the same time, John’s cock nestled into his ass, his hand dangerously close to Rodney’s aching cock.
“Hey,” Rodney said, and John froze. He closed his eyes and reached behind him and pulled John closer to him, and John let out a low moan and pressed his face against the side of Rodney’s head and his hand further into his hip, and Rodney felt himself grow hoarse. “You know how easy it would be for you to fuck me right now?”
“Rodney—”
“You could just—just push inside right now, before I could even stop you—you could fuck me until—”
“Rodney, please—”
“You could—could—”
John let out an animalistic growl and turned Rodney’s face towards himself and kissed him, hard, their teeth clashing, and Rodney kissed back, turning his whole body towards John, wrapping his arms around his neck, his leg around his ass, pulling John in closer, deeper, consuming the man in every way he knew how—
And then John wrenched away, a wild look in his eyes. “Rodney, what—”
“Oh, come here.” And Rodney grabbed his face and kissed him again.
But John pulled away again. “Rodney, I don’t—you’re obviously confused. And I can’t—”
Rodney groaned and rolled away, and John let out a harsh breath. “I should move back into my own quarters.”
“No!” Rodney grappled for him. “John, don’t—I’m sorry I—I just—”
“I can’t take this. I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t take you fucking—fucking toying with me and—”
“Jesus, I’m not toying with you!”
“Yeah,” John said, and stood. “You are.”
“John—”
“I’ll see you later, Rodney.” And John left.
He didn’t come to Rodney at all that day, and didn’t come back to his room to sleep that night; by day three, Rodney was exhausted and irritable, and he went to John’s room around three that morning, banging on the door until it finally slid open.
John met his eyes, his own defeated. “Hello, Rodney.”
“Hello.” Rodney strode past him, then turned on his heel and shoved a finger into John’s face. “You are something else, you know that?”
“Rodney?”
“You claim to be in love with me, and then I kiss you, and you run away? What the fuck, John?”
“Rodney—”
“I can’t claim that I’m in love with you too,” Rodney said. “I can’t claim I ever thought about it before all this. You and me. I can’t claim to be certain or confident or anything but scared shitless. But I know that when I kissed you, I felt something. And now you won’t even come near me? Aren’t you supposed to be glad I want you back?”
“You want me back?”
“Of course I want you back!” Rodney exploded. “Jesus Christ, John. Of course I want you back. What exactly do you think the past month has been about? Do you really think—you think the other morning was the first time I ever thought about you fucking me? Jesus!”
“What?”
John looked so hopeful that Rodney felt all his anger leave him, and he leaned back against the wall and said, “Come here, John.”
John came to him. “I guess you’re my exception, or something,” Rodney said. John’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know. All I know is—”
He kissed John. John, thank God, kissed back. They stood there against the wall, John’s arms bracketing him in place, and Rodney reached down and cupped John’s cock through his boxers. John gasped, and Rodney said, “I know my own mind.”
“You really don’t.”
Rodney sighed and looked away. “You know me too well.”
“Why exactly do you think it’s so hopeless?”
“Look.” Rodney pulled his hand away. “I can’t promise everything will work out. And I can’t promise not to change my mind. But I do—I think the next step might be for us to try. Because the way it’s going now isn’t working. And I don’t want to go back.” He reached out and squeezed John’s hand. “Come home, John.”
“Okay,” John said. “Okay.”
John moved back in after that; he’d sort of expected them to immediately start having vast quantities of sex after that, and wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that they didn’t. Both? It would be nice to get an orgasm from someone else for once.
He had to excuse himself to go stare at himself in a bathroom mirror after that thought occurred to him. “What,” he asked himself, very slowly, very calmly, “the fuck is wrong with you?”
How could he just use John like that? The man was right; Rodney was toying with him. He didn’t know what the hell he wanted, and he was taking it out on John.
It’s his fault for falling in love with me, he told himself, but he was still staring into his own eyes; it was impossible to make himself believe it. John didn’t seem like he’d had any choice at all in the matter, and Rodney was doing everything in his power to lead him on instead of helping him move on. He could have requested a transfer to Earth, and instead he’d transferred John to his own quarters.
He was still brooding over it as they laid down for bed that night, and Rodney realized that not only had they not been fucking, they hadn’t even been kissing. “Do you want to make out?”
“What?”
“Do you want to make out?”
“Yes,” John said fervently, and Rodney dragged John on top of him and kissed him, hard. John kissed back, and the whole thing got very involved, though neither of them ever got more than half-hard. At last, John pulled away, flopping down next to Rodney, letting out a dreamy, girlish sigh. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“Okay.” John reached out and squeezed his hand, hard, and then just kind of kept holding it. Rodney let him.
They kept making out after that, though John never initiated it; Rodney tried not to feel hurt by this, and failed. What was John’s problem? Wasn’t he supposed to be attracted to Rodney? Why wouldn’t he just kiss him?
He started kissing John more, in the mornings, before bed, when he got back to their quarters after a long day; John kissed back, but never pressed him, never fought for him. He never had. He had given up over and over, letting Rodney be the one who tried. He fought for everything else in his life. Why wouldn’t he fight for Rodney?
But he couldn’t make himself say any of it, and he didn’t want to disturb their fragile peace. So he let things continue as they were, though now if they both woke up hard it usually turned into a makeout session. His hands started wandering; he touched John’s face, his sides, his waist, his ass. John let him, but his own hands never wandered back, and Rodney wondered over and over if John really did want him, why he wasn’t taking what was on offer.
Just touch me, he thought at night, with John’s arms around him. It was ridiculous; John touched him all the time. But he’d never gone anywhere near Rodney’s dick. Why the fuck not? Was he afraid of shattering some fantasy?
He’s afraid of driving me away, Rodney realized, watching as John looked away and winced after a somewhat suggestive comment. He grabbed John by the front of his shirt and dragged him in close and said, “You don’t have to be afraid to touch me.”
John went still. “Rodney—”
“It doesn’t feel like you’re respecting my boundaries. It feels like you’re not interested.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know what to call this,” Rodney said. “But I’m not going to be turned off if it feels like you want me. I know you want me, John. Will you fucking act like it already? How long is it going to take us to get to sex, a million years?”
John lunged, crawling on top of him, pinning him to the bed, and Rodney fisted his hands in his ridiculous hair and held on. “There we go,” he murmured, as John started stripping him of his shirt and kissing his nipples and biting his neck and tugging on his earlobe. “There we go.”
Atlantis’s first gay wedding was between two Marines. It was held in the mess hall, with the Athosians helping decorate and cater; he and John went together, though John didn’t take his hand. Rodney thought about it, and by the third drink was draping himself over the man to such an extent that it hardly mattered anyway. John seemed warmly amused, and looked around and then pressed a short kiss into his hair. “You doing okay?”
“We should dance.”
“You want to dance?”
“I want to show you off. I win.”
“I think it’s Marks and Freeman who win today.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
A long pause. “You wouldn’t mind? If they knew?”
“Hey, you’re hot. It’s pretty good for my reputation if someone as hot as you is interested in me.”
“Right.” John sighed. “Tell me that when you’re sober.”
“I will.”
John’s eyes met his, then retreated again. “You’ll be the death of me, you know that?”
“You love me anyway.”
“I guess,” John muttered, and Rodney wanted to kiss him, and he dragged him out into an empty hallway and did.
John stopped him after a few seconds, laughing when Rodney pouted. “Come on,” he said. “Back to it.”
Rodney thought a lot about it, coming out, but he never said anything to John about it; ultimately, it was Woolsey who made it clear they were about as closeted as he’d suspected.
“We were thinking we might offer your old room to important visitors,” Woolsey said, and John turned bright red. “You are done with it, correct? Could you clean out the last of your things?”
“He’s done with it,” Rodney said. After a second, John nodded jerkily. “We’ll get that done by…”
“Next few weeks is great.”
“Okay.” Rodney squeezed John’s arm. “Sounds good.”
John tugged him into a closet after that, shaking him a little. “God damn it, Rodney!”
“What?”
“You—you—” John buried his face in Rodney’s shirt. “Everybody is going to pity me when you leave me. They’re going to make comments about it. I won’t be able to pretend it isn’t happening.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“You are,” John moaned. “I know you are.”
“Why do you think that?”
“You don’t love me.” John breathed in and out, raggedly. Rodney wrapped his arms around him. “You never have. You just want sex, but once you remember that you’re straight it’ll all be over. You’ll leave me. I’ll be alone again.” John hiccuped on a sob, starting to pull back. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Rodney sighed and pulled him back in, and John—thank God—came to him. “Don’t apologize.”
Another hiccup. “I should have just kept my big mouth shut.”
“I have no intention of leaving you, John.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“When have you ever known me to dole out platitudes?”
John went still, then sniffled. “That’s true.”
Rodney rubbed circles onto his back. “I can’t say I ever expected to end up married to you,” he said. “But it does seem to have happened.”
“Rodney, that’s—” John pulled back just enough to kiss him. “You’re not leaving?”
“I love you too, John.”
John’s eyes widened, and then he laughed, and embraced him, and Rodney laughed too, and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing or how he’d ended up here, but now, in this moment, he was happier than he’d ever been. And for now, that was enough.