bunnies: rodney's mattress edition
# The cracky one where Rodney's been getting propositioned pretty regularly throughout the expedition, in large part because he had the foresight to make a queen-sized prescription mattress a condition of going to another galaxy. That means once they go through and find nothing but narrow little plank beds, Rodney has the only bed it's remotely possible to fuck comfortably on. It's amazing how far that can take you when everyone's millions of light years from home and just wants to sprawl out and touch another human being
Rodney is, of course, happy enough to sleep with whoever hits him up for it, but acutely aware that he's basically accepting sex in exchange for access to a decent bed on which to have it. Which means that when he and John sleep together, Rodney glumly assumes it's just another exchange, and doesn't say anything about it, and John figures that means Rodney just slept with him because Rodney seems to sleep with everybody.
Soon after that, the Daedalus starts bringing cargo, and everyone can have a bigger mattress if they blow their allotment on it, so Rodney picks the woman who seemed most likely to be nice and give him a shot at something serious just because one time they had sex together when he had the only decent bed, and dates Katie, and years pass. When John and Rodney finally do have sex again, it's in John's room on John's ridiculous child-sized bed, and afterward Rodney crabbily makes John stack every scrap of fabric he owns on the floor into a bed-shape and drape all his sheets and blankets over the pile so that they can sleep together on that, side by side.
# Similarly, the one where Rodney has the only decent bed on the expedition, and handles it in a more entrepreneurial fashion, a la The Apartment. Dr. McKay's queen-sized bed is rentable at a rate of three chocolate bars per hour or the Atlantean barter equivalent. Rental is arranged via email and discussing it publically is an automatic ban. There's a stack of guest sheets and a vinyl mattress protector just under the head of the bed, and renters are required to put those on themselves, remove them afterward, and make sure they're washed and returned within one day.
All of which John learns one day when one of the geologists hits on him and promises to get them a room. John goes for it, he's tired and frustrated and fresh off a mission where the locals had a greeting ritual in which everyone had to kiss, and John made sure to stand by Rodney and get paired up with him for an Oklahoma Hello.
In John's fantasies revolving around exactly this kind of situation, Rodney would always open his mouth a little, then jerk back and look embarrassed yet hopeful, and then John would kiss him for real, subtly but unmistakably licking into his mouth, and Rodney would clutch his hand, and they'd spend the rest of the mission burning with anticipation and after the post-mission briefing and infirmary visit, they'd step into the transporter and be all over each other, and John usually changed up the fantasy from there, sometimes they did it up against wall in the transporter, sometimes in a storage room or in a puddlejumper, somehow-- by this point in the fantasy he wasn't usually too concerned with verisimilitude.
In reality, he got a quick dry brush of Rodney's lips and an eyeroll.
So yeah, when the geologist hits on him, he accepts, and tells her when he's free, and showers and shaves before she's due to show up, and glares at his run-down face in the mirror and forbids himself from thinking about Rodney for the next two hours, ZERO MCKAY, none. Which of course becomes impossible when the geologist comes to pick him up and leads him to... McKay's goddamn quarters, because Dr. Geologist rented Rodney's bed for the occasion.
John doesn't want to go through with it, but Dr. Geologist obviously went to some trouble, and she's honest with him and she tells him she had a near-death thing on a gate team mission the other day and she's been feeling unhinged since then, and John knows that feeling way too well, so they have sex, and he makes sure she gets what she needs out of it, and when she goes to strip off the sheets and everything, he tells her he'll handle it.
Maybe he was secretly hoping Rodney would be jealous when he brought everything back, but Rodney's not even there when John drops it off. John's not even sure Rodney went to his quarters at all that night, and realizes this whole stupid bed rental thing is probably why Rodney seems to doze off on the cot in his office pretty regularly.
A few missions and a couple of emergencies later, John lays hands on three chocolate bars and emails Rodney and rents the bed. He gets a completely impersonal reply, and Rodney doesn't say anything or behave any differently at lunch or dinner. John spends his hour sprawled on the bare mattress, staring at the ceiling. At least, that's the idea, except John's pretty exhausted and kind of bad at moping-- it just makes him drowsy-- and he falls asleep.
He wakes up when Rodney comes home, and freezes because he's got no fucking clue what to do. Rodney pauses for a while, and then he goes into the other room and brings out a blanket and puts it over John, and maybe his hand just brushes up against John's hair or maybe that's intentional, who knows. It's enough that John thinks, fuck it, he's got enough plausible deniability here to make a move, and he puts his hand over Rodney's, and tugs him down, and Rodney comes to bed.
In the morning, though, Rodney realizes John had rented the bed for an hour rather than just showing up, as Rodney assumed the night before. Because of course all the rental stuff is completely automated on Rodney's end, with automatic form letters and an automatically generated schedule with the names stripped off; all Rodney sees is the chocolate or coffee or whatever that's left as payment. The system strips the names from the emails and sends them to the door lock to let those people inside, without Rodney ever having to know who it is.
So in the morning when he sees the stupid chocolate bars in the appointed place, Rodney thinks John rented the bed for an assignation and the other person couldn't make it after all, so John just-- what, slept with Rodney instead? What an asshole. So Rodney storms around huffy and hurt and checks his door records and finds out that John entered the room with Dr. Geologist during an hour when the room was rented out, and seethes hugely, and acts so much like a jilted lover that it becomes obvious, as if it wasn't before, that he's crazy about John.
And John tries to explain, and sucks at it, but Rodney looks at his records for the day before, and sees that John only put down his own name when he rented the room-- so the door lock wouldn't have let anyone else in. Either John didn't follow the pathetically simple instructions in the form letter, or John really didn't intend to meet anyone else there. Cue resolution, and John logs into Rodney's email and deactivates all the automatic form letter and scheduling stuff, because from now on, Rodney's going to need full use of his bed himself.
# The one that's MST3K, only I can't figure out how to do it quite like MST3K, so instead, it's like this: after his black mark, instead of Antarctica, John is offered a chance to fly a spaceship that's usually in low earth orbit. The catch is, it's part of an experiment to see how well a single pilot can function without physical human contact over time. Meanwhile, the Pegasus project is delayed because they don't have enough strong gene carriers to make the expedition a success, so Rodney's cooling his heels in Antarctica as head of science & research there, and the experiment involving John reports to Rodney. Rodney, discouraged about Atlantis and kind of unchallenged, takes an interest in the experiment, and checks in with John from time to time. Eventually, sympathetic to John's stir-craziness, Rodney sends him some bad movies to pass the time... and builds him a couple of sarcastic robots to keep him company... and then another robot to augment the ship's autopilot... and another to hold the camera for John and Rodney's ever more frequent video conversations. Eventually, John's spaceship is ordered to intercept a bit of space junk that turns out to be Ancient technology, and when John activates it, the isolation experiment is immediately scrapped and John's brought back to Earth to be part of the Atlantis expedition... along with Rodney, four robots and a digital video projector.
# The one that's set in the Venture Brothers universe. John is a superhero, duly registered as a genius soldier-pilot with super-scientist Zelenka backing him up with gadgets. John regularly teams up with superheroes Teyla and Ronon for adventures and daring rescues.
Everything's POW and ZAP until Dr. McKay shows up out of the blue, claiming to be John's archenemy, even though he's totally not authorized by the Guild of Calamitous Intent. They don't even recognize him as a villain, since he never hurts anyone or destroys much of anything. Eventually McKay admits that he was just trying to show off his super-science and demonstrate he should have Zelenka's job, but he got ornery when everyone told him he wasn't a big enough deal to be John's archenemy, so he got caught up in proving himself. Also, he was pretty offended that John's registration lists him as a genius, a rarified term that really ought not be bandied around so casually, etc. etc. etc.
John's gotten pretty fond of McKay after all their grandiose super-battles, especially since McKay always managed to create a lot of fuss and explosions without doing any damage-- compared to John's usual adventures, facing off against McKay was a fun way to stay sharp and blow off some steam. So John convinces Rodney that he doesn't need Zelenka's job; he should set up as a super-scientist superhero on his own, and he and John can team up. Maybe eventually get registered as a duo, something John couldn't really do with a super-scientist under his direct employ. Rodney, wide-eyed and gratified, and maybe blushing just a little at the thought of becoming an official duo, agrees it's a good plan, and maybe John is sometimes, under some circumstances, in a generous sense of the word, a little bit of a genius after all.
Rodney is, of course, happy enough to sleep with whoever hits him up for it, but acutely aware that he's basically accepting sex in exchange for access to a decent bed on which to have it. Which means that when he and John sleep together, Rodney glumly assumes it's just another exchange, and doesn't say anything about it, and John figures that means Rodney just slept with him because Rodney seems to sleep with everybody.
Soon after that, the Daedalus starts bringing cargo, and everyone can have a bigger mattress if they blow their allotment on it, so Rodney picks the woman who seemed most likely to be nice and give him a shot at something serious just because one time they had sex together when he had the only decent bed, and dates Katie, and years pass. When John and Rodney finally do have sex again, it's in John's room on John's ridiculous child-sized bed, and afterward Rodney crabbily makes John stack every scrap of fabric he owns on the floor into a bed-shape and drape all his sheets and blankets over the pile so that they can sleep together on that, side by side.
# Similarly, the one where Rodney has the only decent bed on the expedition, and handles it in a more entrepreneurial fashion, a la The Apartment. Dr. McKay's queen-sized bed is rentable at a rate of three chocolate bars per hour or the Atlantean barter equivalent. Rental is arranged via email and discussing it publically is an automatic ban. There's a stack of guest sheets and a vinyl mattress protector just under the head of the bed, and renters are required to put those on themselves, remove them afterward, and make sure they're washed and returned within one day.
All of which John learns one day when one of the geologists hits on him and promises to get them a room. John goes for it, he's tired and frustrated and fresh off a mission where the locals had a greeting ritual in which everyone had to kiss, and John made sure to stand by Rodney and get paired up with him for an Oklahoma Hello.
In John's fantasies revolving around exactly this kind of situation, Rodney would always open his mouth a little, then jerk back and look embarrassed yet hopeful, and then John would kiss him for real, subtly but unmistakably licking into his mouth, and Rodney would clutch his hand, and they'd spend the rest of the mission burning with anticipation and after the post-mission briefing and infirmary visit, they'd step into the transporter and be all over each other, and John usually changed up the fantasy from there, sometimes they did it up against wall in the transporter, sometimes in a storage room or in a puddlejumper, somehow-- by this point in the fantasy he wasn't usually too concerned with verisimilitude.
In reality, he got a quick dry brush of Rodney's lips and an eyeroll.
So yeah, when the geologist hits on him, he accepts, and tells her when he's free, and showers and shaves before she's due to show up, and glares at his run-down face in the mirror and forbids himself from thinking about Rodney for the next two hours, ZERO MCKAY, none. Which of course becomes impossible when the geologist comes to pick him up and leads him to... McKay's goddamn quarters, because Dr. Geologist rented Rodney's bed for the occasion.
John doesn't want to go through with it, but Dr. Geologist obviously went to some trouble, and she's honest with him and she tells him she had a near-death thing on a gate team mission the other day and she's been feeling unhinged since then, and John knows that feeling way too well, so they have sex, and he makes sure she gets what she needs out of it, and when she goes to strip off the sheets and everything, he tells her he'll handle it.
Maybe he was secretly hoping Rodney would be jealous when he brought everything back, but Rodney's not even there when John drops it off. John's not even sure Rodney went to his quarters at all that night, and realizes this whole stupid bed rental thing is probably why Rodney seems to doze off on the cot in his office pretty regularly.
A few missions and a couple of emergencies later, John lays hands on three chocolate bars and emails Rodney and rents the bed. He gets a completely impersonal reply, and Rodney doesn't say anything or behave any differently at lunch or dinner. John spends his hour sprawled on the bare mattress, staring at the ceiling. At least, that's the idea, except John's pretty exhausted and kind of bad at moping-- it just makes him drowsy-- and he falls asleep.
He wakes up when Rodney comes home, and freezes because he's got no fucking clue what to do. Rodney pauses for a while, and then he goes into the other room and brings out a blanket and puts it over John, and maybe his hand just brushes up against John's hair or maybe that's intentional, who knows. It's enough that John thinks, fuck it, he's got enough plausible deniability here to make a move, and he puts his hand over Rodney's, and tugs him down, and Rodney comes to bed.
In the morning, though, Rodney realizes John had rented the bed for an hour rather than just showing up, as Rodney assumed the night before. Because of course all the rental stuff is completely automated on Rodney's end, with automatic form letters and an automatically generated schedule with the names stripped off; all Rodney sees is the chocolate or coffee or whatever that's left as payment. The system strips the names from the emails and sends them to the door lock to let those people inside, without Rodney ever having to know who it is.
So in the morning when he sees the stupid chocolate bars in the appointed place, Rodney thinks John rented the bed for an assignation and the other person couldn't make it after all, so John just-- what, slept with Rodney instead? What an asshole. So Rodney storms around huffy and hurt and checks his door records and finds out that John entered the room with Dr. Geologist during an hour when the room was rented out, and seethes hugely, and acts so much like a jilted lover that it becomes obvious, as if it wasn't before, that he's crazy about John.
And John tries to explain, and sucks at it, but Rodney looks at his records for the day before, and sees that John only put down his own name when he rented the room-- so the door lock wouldn't have let anyone else in. Either John didn't follow the pathetically simple instructions in the form letter, or John really didn't intend to meet anyone else there. Cue resolution, and John logs into Rodney's email and deactivates all the automatic form letter and scheduling stuff, because from now on, Rodney's going to need full use of his bed himself.
# The one that's MST3K, only I can't figure out how to do it quite like MST3K, so instead, it's like this: after his black mark, instead of Antarctica, John is offered a chance to fly a spaceship that's usually in low earth orbit. The catch is, it's part of an experiment to see how well a single pilot can function without physical human contact over time. Meanwhile, the Pegasus project is delayed because they don't have enough strong gene carriers to make the expedition a success, so Rodney's cooling his heels in Antarctica as head of science & research there, and the experiment involving John reports to Rodney. Rodney, discouraged about Atlantis and kind of unchallenged, takes an interest in the experiment, and checks in with John from time to time. Eventually, sympathetic to John's stir-craziness, Rodney sends him some bad movies to pass the time... and builds him a couple of sarcastic robots to keep him company... and then another robot to augment the ship's autopilot... and another to hold the camera for John and Rodney's ever more frequent video conversations. Eventually, John's spaceship is ordered to intercept a bit of space junk that turns out to be Ancient technology, and when John activates it, the isolation experiment is immediately scrapped and John's brought back to Earth to be part of the Atlantis expedition... along with Rodney, four robots and a digital video projector.
# The one that's set in the Venture Brothers universe. John is a superhero, duly registered as a genius soldier-pilot with super-scientist Zelenka backing him up with gadgets. John regularly teams up with superheroes Teyla and Ronon for adventures and daring rescues.
Everything's POW and ZAP until Dr. McKay shows up out of the blue, claiming to be John's archenemy, even though he's totally not authorized by the Guild of Calamitous Intent. They don't even recognize him as a villain, since he never hurts anyone or destroys much of anything. Eventually McKay admits that he was just trying to show off his super-science and demonstrate he should have Zelenka's job, but he got ornery when everyone told him he wasn't a big enough deal to be John's archenemy, so he got caught up in proving himself. Also, he was pretty offended that John's registration lists him as a genius, a rarified term that really ought not be bandied around so casually, etc. etc. etc.
John's gotten pretty fond of McKay after all their grandiose super-battles, especially since McKay always managed to create a lot of fuss and explosions without doing any damage-- compared to John's usual adventures, facing off against McKay was a fun way to stay sharp and blow off some steam. So John convinces Rodney that he doesn't need Zelenka's job; he should set up as a super-scientist superhero on his own, and he and John can team up. Maybe eventually get registered as a duo, something John couldn't really do with a super-scientist under his direct employ. Rodney, wide-eyed and gratified, and maybe blushing just a little at the thought of becoming an official duo, agrees it's a good plan, and maybe John is sometimes, under some circumstances, in a generous sense of the word, a little bit of a genius after all.