Kid A by cesperanza, commentary by erda_3 Part 1

[erda_3]

title:Kid A
author : cesperanza
fandom: SGA
commentator: keefaq
Story Alone : Here
Commentary Part 1

I know there is already a very good commentary for this story but I wasn’t around when it was first written so I wanted a chance to talk about it. I’ll try not to repeat a lot of stuff that’s already been said.

This is, in my opinion, about as close to perfection as a story can be, each section illuminating certain motifs the story revolves around, extreme care taken to give just enough but not too much. When I read this I’m reminded of certain vocalists, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in particular, who was able to imbue every syllable he sang with so much emotional intensity that the listener is mesmerized even when not able to speak the language. Every word in this story is supercharged with romantic sentiment.
I’ll mention the writing style only briefly because it is so perfectly written that such considerations never really surface for me. I mean, of course the writing is awesome, that is why I don’t consciously notice it. The writer has a direct line in to the visual center of my brain and I can pretty much just see what is happening. Certainly the sentences filled with numerous short pithy clauses and the use of present tense combine to push the story along at a tremendously rapid pace, creating dramatic tension. But that’s not what I’m interested in here.

He's not sure how it happens. It's just after Darika, right when they come back through the gate, and John feels perversely proud of Rodney, who pulled his gun right when he was supposed to, and shot just the way he was supposed to, firm and high and without hesitation. Rodney even reloaded swiftly and accurately without being told-and John knows that was his influence, knows it was the effect of hours logged at the shooting range, of him muttering in Rodney's ear, Faster. C'mon-faster.

And Rodney was pretty fucking fast on Darika, firing blam blam blam and killing three; reloading and killing another two. John had fast-crawled to his own weapon by then, and had closed his hand on it just as he heard the distinctive crick crick of Rodney's gun jamming, and John only had time for a quick thought- time for an upgrade-before rolling to his knees and firing blindly at the last Darikan, who stumbled like he'd tripped, and crashed face-first into the ground, shot in the back.

In only two paragraphs we see already where this story is going. John calls the shots and Rodney follows, but Rodney protects John and this is not going to be about neurotic Rodney. The writer extrapolates from established canon here with Rodney in a way that is completely logical. As we saw the development of Daniel Jackson in SG1 from nerd to Indiana Jones archetype, we’ve already seen Rodney beginning to move in this direction. So in the best fanfiction tradition, the writer nudges us further down the path into the character’s future. I think of the main theme of this story as RPS (no, not that RPS, this one stands for Rodney Protects Shepherd).

We are also shown that John is totally competent as to military information, facts, things, but clueless as to relationships and emotions. Relationships happen, he doesn’t know how. And may I say this characterization of John is the best I’ve read anywhere. This is like cesperanza pwns the character. Writing from the POV of a character who doesn’t himself have much insight into what is going on has got to be extremely difficult.

John slowly got to his feet, brushing dirt off his pants. Rodney was still standing there, hands clutching at his still-aimed weapon, his chest heaving almost hypnotizingly in and out, in and out.
"Major?" Ford's voice was tinny in his earpiece. "You all right?"
"Fine," John replied; he wasn't able to take his eyes from the six dead Darikans. Rodney was still standing there, hyperventilating. "Breathe, Rodney," John said softly.
"Sorry, Major? I didn't copy."
John looked at Rodney and said, to Ford, "Everything's fine. We'll meet you back at the gate; we're getting out of here," and it's only once they're safely back in Atlantis that John remembers the jammed gun.

Every little line in this is just so right. Of course Rodney hyperventilates after the fact and of course John tells him everything is fine indirectly because he’s so repressed and guarded that he can't say it any other way.

The damn SP-33 always jams during rapid shooting, but it's otherwise a good gun for beginners. Still, Rodney's earned an upgrade, so he elbows Rodney and jerks his head in the direction of the armory. When they get there, John waves his hand over the genetically coded key strip, and the light flashes green.

Two things I love in this story are the two ways the writer gives us a why. Why would these two characters be so in love with each other? I love the juxtaposition of scenes showing the development of the relationship with scenes that give us glimpses of the why. Here the first reason is being emphasized. The writer shows us two people in an isolated, stressful, very dangerous situation which sets them off from other people. Little details like the way John opens the door to the armory remind us that this is not earth. It seems plausible that the highly charged atmosphere of an outpost on a distant galaxy results in highly charged relationships.

That's when things start to get blurry. The door opens and closes, and he leads Rodney between some high-stacked crates. He stops at a small cache of Glock semiautomatic handguns, picks one up, checks the mechanism, loads it with a clip and checks it again. It smells oily-plastic-y, and he twirls it once, in his hand, partly testing its grip and partly just showing off, then turns to give it to Rodney.
"Give me yours," John says, and Rodney hesitates only a second before unsnapping the little piece of leather that secures the gun in his thigh holster.

I’ll have something to say later about how Rodney reacts when John asks him to do something, here is a small foreshadowing of that theme. Note how Rodney hesitates a second before complying.

Rodney gives him the SP-33, and John replaces it with the Glock. "Glock semi," John explains, and Rodney nods. "It won't jam like that piece of shit you've been using." Rodney turns it over in his hands, and then he checks the mechanism, unloads and reloads the clip, checks it again. John's spent a lot of time watching Rodney's hands; he's seen them flying through the air and typing furiously and rewiring machinery, and lately, he's seen them loading weapons and defusing bombs. Now he stares at Rodney's hands-strong, square, long fingered-as they move over the gun.
Finally Rodney makes a satisfied-sounding noise and shoves the gun back into its holster-that's when it happens, and he can't remember how. He thinks that he must have bumped into Rodney, or maybe Rodney stumbled against him-or maybe it was the gun, maybe he was going to fasten the gun back into Rodney's holster with the little leather strap-but suddenly he's unbuckling Rodney's belt, and Rodney's fumbling at his fly. John pushes Rodney back against an army-green plastic crate, and Rodney's wearing faded gray briefs, but his cock is big and angry-red, the head already glistening. John wraps his hand around it like a joystick and thumbs the smooth, leaking tip. He feels Rodney's hand before he sees it-Rodney's got him, Rodney's-God, good, yeah-and when he finally glances down, he sees that Rodney's grip is upside-down and backwards, that Rodney is using his two little fingers to massage the flared lip of his dick.
John doesn't know how this happened, but he isn't really surprised: this sort of thing happens, has happened, and will definitely happen again. He's been in the military long enough to know that guys console themselves with booze, fighting, and getting off-and John's never been one for drinking or fighting. So he isn't surprised-not that surprised, anyway-to find himself being jerked off by Rodney McKay. He isn't surprised at anything until Rodney grabs his face, turns it, and kisses him.
Slow, slow, so fucking deep and slow-and Jesus, that isn't-that is totally not how it works. Rodney is kissing him slow and soft, and it's a lot stranger than the hand on his cock, because he jerked off last night, but he hasn't been kissed since...well, he's never been kissed; not like this. Cause when he's kissing, he's kissing; it's him doing the kissing; and he's kissed a couple of girls since Atlantis, but Rodney's kissing him like he's in charge, his tongue stroking thick and deep into John's mouth. And John hasn't ever been kissed like that, so he grabs Rodney's shoulder to shove him away-but Rodney moans and leans into the touch, and the hand around John's cock tightens and he is there, world whooshing blue behind his eyelids, that deep dark blue that's the sky beyond cloud range and the color of all his orgasms.
He gives it up, hard and shaking, with Rodney's tongue in his mouth, and Rodney's cock jerks and spurts into his fist. John gasps for breath, and Rodney breaks away just long enough to mumble, "Oh my God, oh my God; God; yes," and then Rodney grabs his face again and pulls him close, and Rodney's kissing the motherfucking life out of him. John doesn't know what to do, doesn't know what the fuck to do in this situation-hit him, or push him away; or explain that, no, no, this isn't; this wasn't what he-but instead John finds himself opening his mouth and pushing his tongue against Rodney's and generally kissing Rodney back as hotly as he can manage, because Jesus, this is good.

Obviously this is a majorly hot scene, but what makes it hot is the writer’s ability to side step all the little clichés that seep into fanfiction. This is NOT any two guys. And we see my favorite thing about this story. Rodney from the first encounter is assertive and comfortable taking what he wants sexually. I just love his character here. I don’t see any doormatting of Rodney at all. The writer specifically states that “Rodney's got him”, and that “Rodney grabs his face, turns it, and kisses him.” And in case there is still any question as to who is in charge of the encounter she describes John ’s orgasm with the passive turn of phrase “ John gives it up.”
Ya gotta love Rodney’s reaction to this encounter "Oh my God, oh my God; God; yes,"I feel the same way about it.

It's a while before they break apart, and Rodney kind of grabs the back of his neck and gives him two hard, blunt kisses before finally letting go of him, and when he does, his face is flushed. Rodney doesn't meet his eyes; instead, he looks away, looks down, zips up his pants, then pulls his shirt out over his waistband-and so John numbly does the same, rearranging himself back into something that might even pass for normal.
He doesn't know what to say, exactly; this wasn’t what he was expecting, wasn't the quick, clean, military jerkoff that he's used to: guys under stress, guys just being guys. This was weirdly personal, and kind of emotional-and unresolved, somehow, great orgasm notwithstanding. He doesn't think it's because Rodney's his friend; he's had occasion to jerk off his friends before, and normally, you get past the awkwardness with a grin and a beer. But this, this is-and he searches his mind for the right word, and when he finds it, he groans softly, because Jesus, he's got to clear this up immediately.
"I'm not gay, Rodney," John says, and it's awkward to have to say it, but it really has to be said.

John seems to equate being gay with being effeminate. He’s working hard to differentiate what he does from what he is, but like most of us ordinary mortals, he just gets more confused. The author’s description of this encounter as personal and emotional can be applied equally to every paragraph of this story. Personal and emotional is what makes cesperanza’s writing so superior, it feeds the reader’s desire for a better world in the way that epic poetry did before we all got too sophisticated to buy into that stuff. She lifts the characters above anything the SGA writers could ever imagine.

Rodney jerks to look at him and barks out a laugh, and John's about to be really, really angry when he sees Rodney flinch and quickly look away again, his mouth in a tight, unhappy line.
"Oh, believe me; I know," Rodney says with something like his usual scorn, and things would almost feel normal if Rodney would just look at him. "Gaydar's working fine, thanks; I don't need a memo filed in triplicate-though I do enjoy patronizing post-coital talk as much as the next guy."
John's now sorry he said anything. "Hey, come on. I didn't mean-"
But Rodney sighs and waves that away. "No, no, it's fine; don't worry about it. I've been working for the military since the beginning of time, so whatever: I'm used to it. We won't speak of this again, blah blah."
"Well," John says helplessly, "just so long as we're clear."
"Fine, we're clear. Bell-clear; sunny sky-clear; Pythagorean Theorem-clear, all right?" and Rodney's halfway to the door when he turns and says, "Oh, and hey: thanks for the gun."

The genius of every line in this section blows me away. So many times I think writers fall on WNGWJLEO out of sheer lack of imagination. I seem to recall some comments about StraightJohn , which I don’t read at all in this story. We’ve already been told John has had other same sex encounters, and Rodney is obviously not inexperienced either. The writer manages for me to create a rationale that feeds my OTPness without any need for a trope that I always have a hard time buying. If Rodney and John are not gay in slash fiction I don’t think the constructs gay and straight have any useful meaning. And Rodney’s “Bell-clear; sunny sky-clear; Pythagorean Theorem-clear”, line is so inspired it deserves to have a story written just to incorporate it.

"We'll never speak of this again," Rodney promised, and boy, he wasn't kidding; Rodney's better than the most jaded, careerist military officer John's ever worked with at keeping a secret. Not only doesn't he ever mention his jerk-off session with John, but he doesn't let it affect his body language-not even when they're standing close together, not even when they're standing close together and talking about guns. You would never in a million years guess that Rodney's had his hand on John's dick, that Rodney's tongue has been in John's mouth. Rodney's still the same, pushy, in-your-face guy he's always been, and John realizes with dismay that he's radically underestimated Rodney's capacity for subtlety-either that, or he's losing his mind and nothing happened between them at all.
It's weird how easy it is to doubt his own blurry memory: Rodney kissed him, didn't he? or does John just wish he had? The whole thing begins to take on the character of a daydream, a ghost of a memory that vanishes every time he tries to match it up to concrete detail: Darika, Rodney shooting and killing four (five?) Darikans before his gun jammed. John taking him to get a new one and then pushing him up against the stack of army-green crates and kissing him-or does he just wish he had? John stares at Rodney, looking for some indication, some clue in his face, but Rodney gives him no sign at all. There's no flicker of guilt-let alone heat-in his eyes when he catches John looking at him. Rodney just says, "Hm? What?" and John shakes his head: nothing. "What is it?" Rodney insists, and when John doesn't answer, Rodney frowns and checks his teeth with his tongue. It's enough to make John wonder if maybe he's been hallucinating, if maybe the Darikans had psychedelic air or something. Eventually, he checks the logs just to make sure they actually went to Darika-which they had, so score one for him.

First of all, I have to laugh every time I read this. Rodney is so brilliant. Of course he sees he has no chance to hang onto John unless John has plenty of time and space to see how careful, reliable, and discreet Rodney can be. He's the chief officer of a military outpost in another galaxy. He can’t really have an ordinary relationship; he can’t afford any relationship that is going to interfere with his job. John is not going to become a different person and Rodney lets him know that he doesn’t expect him to change. Also Rodney is emotionally too mature in this story to grovel by running after John begging for a relationship. He waits for John to work it through.

"I wanted to be an explorer," John says, staring into the brilliant purple-blue sky of Kotuna, which seems to stretch out forever. The rope is cutting into his wrists, and his wrenched shoulder hurts. "But everything seemed to have been explored already-except for the sky. That's why I became a pilot."
"You think small," Rodney says from behind him, and John feels more than hears Rodney's grunt of effort as he manages to work a finger into the loop of slack John's just made. "I wanted to go to Mars-well, initially; I pretty much got over that when I was ten or so," and John imagines what Rodney must have been like as a kid: model of the solar system on his desk, glow-in-the-dark constellations mapped out on the ceiling, and a closet full of identical shirts, like Charlie Brown. "Actually, I was over most of the Milky Way by then. Too local-wait, yes, there, I've-" and Rodney's fingers are doggedly undoing the knots.
There's blinding pain as the rope runs through the raw, deep grooves in his wrists, but then they're free and scrambling up on numb, shaky legs.

This combines both of the author’s rationales for the relationship. The closeness of combat and danger on the one hand and the similarity in geek factor on the other. It’s almost impossible to have a close relationship with someone if your geek factors are too far apart. The author is always placing emphasis on the romantic aspects of the relationship. The dreamy, intimate confiding conversation contrasts with and is highlighted by the gritty details of their situation. Plus Charlie Brown shirts=funny.

"Oh," Rodney says softly, and John tenses, thinking the Katuni are back. But Rodney's just staring at John's mangled wrists and the bloody rope, and right then, John knows he didn't dream anything.
The look's gone in a flash, but John knows what he saw, and after he returns to Atlantis and makes his report and gets his wrists seen to by Carson, he goes to Rodney's room. Rodney frowns but lets him in, and John takes his face in his hands and kisses him before he can say anything. But Rodney twists away and pushes at his shoulders, holding him at a distance; he looks startled and deeply suspicious.
"What-" Rodney says. "What are you-" and John doesn't say anything, just lets his hunger and desperation show on his face, and after a moment, Rodney says, "Oh, all right," and pulls him back toward the bed.

They fuck twice-the first time fast and sloppy, kissing messily with their hands in each other's pants, and the second time at a more leisurely, exploratory pace. John has a bad moment when Rodney's hands first worm their way under his clothes, but he tells himself not to be chickenshit and lets Rodney undress him and touch him and kiss his throat. It's weird, but having Rodney's fingers sliding across the small of his back feels gay to him, even though he came in Rodney's hand not five minutes ago. He has another bad moment when Rodney breathlessly guides John's hand to his nipple, but this works out okay, because it turns out that Rodney really, really likes having his nipples played with, and Rodney totally loses it when John bends his head to suck one into his mouth. Rodney returns the favor in spades by sliding down his body at John's first, hopeful nudge downward and giving him the best blowjob of his life-longer, and slower, and more expert than anything John's ever gotten from a guy-or from a girl, for that matter.

Again we see Rodney comfortable with and asserting his sexuality. He really controls the relationship, but his own desires are tempered by his desire to help John along gently. We will see John ask something of Rodney several times in the story. Rodney always weighs John’s desires against his own sense of self before deciding to go along with him. John is still struggling to cling to his not gayness, still equating gayness with effeminacy, with weakness, with ineffectiveness. Rodney’s increasing toughness is obvious evidence that this is not so, but John doesn’t get it.
The author emphasizes over and over the characters’ love for each other and it is this emphasis that makes cesperanza so loved by her readers. Here she shows us John’s love for Rodney. (he has a bad moment when Rodney guides his hand to his nipple, but he is ok because Rodney really, really likes it.)

Even before he crashes into sleep, he knows that this thing with Rodney is going to be A Thing With Rodney, because it's just too good not to be. Once becomes twice becomes a semi-regular thing, and then it's more of a regular, semi-committed, semi-exclusive thing. They don't talk about it, but then again, they don't have to, because Rodney seems instinctively to know what's in John's comfort zone and never pushes him past it. Rodney himself seems happy with having his nipples kissed and getting handjobs, though he does once ask if he can watch John jerk off. John thinks about it and decides he's okay with that, and afterward, Rodney says in a strange, cracked voice, "That was-yes. Very-thank you," and John tucks his arm behind his head and feels smug.
John had been positive that Rodney's thoughts were written all over his face, but now he wonders if that's some kind of diversionary tactic; he sure can't see himself there. Rodney's face never changes, and neither does his voice, or the way he talks to John when they're offworld, not even the morning after Rodney first whispers, "You can fuck me. If you want," and Christ, of course John had wanted, and it had been crazy fucking hot and a hell of a power trip to have Rodney underneath him, moaning and sweating, to rub Rodney's hips with his thumbs and have his cock up Rodney's ass. But Rodney's the same as always the next morning, arms crossed and getting snippy with Zelenka over the radio about some miscalculation or other-and goddamn it, John's not used to being the weak link in the chain. But he is, because he's the one who's finding it hard to pretend that there's nothing between them, and he worries people will look at him and guess.

I get tired of people saying Rodney is not good at deception. I mean, come on, canon moved beyond that idea long ago. Of course Rodney can lie and deceive. This also rings true to me in another way in that at least in the world I live in, people compartmentalize their sex lives all the time. There are loads of people who do really kinky stuff sexually and still live perfectly unremarkable lives. I really don’t think you can tell what people do sexually by observing them in their daily lives. If we had that much real insight into human behavior we wouldn’t have serial killers living amongst us for years. Oh, and Rodney getting snippy with Zelenka over the radio=funny.

So he overcompensates, goes too far the other way, saying cutting things to Rodney when they're offworld or in front of other people. Rodney seems to know what he's doing and just rolls his eyes.

I’m frequently offended by the way the SGA writers often have their male characters saying things to Rodney that to me as a woman are just over the line and mean. I know that it’s the way men often act, but it’s not how I want Sheppard to be. So I’ll take this explanation gladly.

No one thinks he's gay. They just think he's an asshole.

Haha. That’s hilarious. And sad.

Still, the combination of secrecy and guilt drives John out of his comfort zone a little, because he wants to make it up to Rodney somehow. He doesn't get to see the look on Rodney's face the first time he kisses his way down past Rodney's belly to his cock, but Rodney inhales sharply and the muscles in his thighs flex hard. John's own neck and shoulders are aching with tension as he grips Rodney's cock and slowly kisses the rounded tip. A drop of fluid wells, and John darts out the tip of his tongue and decides it's all right. From there, he tentatively moves to licking the shaft, and then the crown, and he hasn't had it in his mouth for long when Rodney shoves him away with a swift, hard push to the forehead. John's just about to complain when he sees that Rodney's cupping his cockhead against his belly and come is leaking out through his fingers. Rodney's gasping, half-sitting up and still coming, and John's torn between disappointment (it's over too soon) and relief (because he wasn't really up for swallowing yet.)

We see here John showing his love for Rodney in an adorably bumbling way, of course. But what blows me away is how effortlessly the author shows us how strongly Rodney feels about John. And again with the protectiveness when “Rodney shoves him away with a swift, hard push to the forehead.”

When he offers to try again the next night, Rodney's gesture of goodwill ("Look, you don't have to." "It's okay. I want to.") turns into an argument ("Seriously, you don't have to." "Are you actually arguing against getting your dick sucked?") which worsens ("I just want to make sure you-" "I know, I know! Jesus, like you could make me.") and then takes a surprising left turn: ("Oh, I could make you.") John's taken aback, and suddenly he realizes that he and Rodney are standing very, very close, and they're both breathing hard. ("You think so, huh?") Rodney tilts his chin up and knots his hand in the collar of John's shirt. ("I know so. I could totally make you.") and that's how John ends up on his knees, struggling to breathe and more turned on than he's ever been in his life. Rodney's hands tighten in his hair, and Jesus, that's good --and he lets his mouth slacken so that Rodney can fuck his face. But it's not enough, it's not-Rodney's being-it's all still too damn gentle, and so John wraps his arms around Rodney's thighs and yanks him off balance. Above him, he can hear Rodney say, "What-what are you-?" but by the time Rodney's cock slips out of his mouth and he can speak, he doesn't have to, because Rodney's bent his knees to keep his balance and John easily takes him down. Rodney lands on his ass, and John pins him down on the floor, crawls between his sprawled thighs, and sucks him off hard and fast.
"Oh, sure. That was me making you, " Rodney snorts, but he sounds more breathless than ironic. "Trust you to invent X-treme cocksucking," and John grins and finds that he likes the idea.

This section really captures the goofy playfulness of the characters that we love to see in both canon and fanon.

He's fuelled to new extremes by Rodney's desperate-sounding whimpers and slow, groaning pleasure-noises-and it's nobody's business anyway, what he likes to do in bed and with whom.

Ok, John is very defensive here, but he’s also starting to make his own decisions about what he wants or doesn’t want. I also feel a personal connection to this sentence in my relationship to slash fiction because it’s nobody’s business anyway, what or whom I like to read or write about.

Still, he's surprised by how much he likes it; it's its own kind of power trip, reducing Rodney to broken-sounding gasps, but he also likes the way Rodney's hands card through his hair and stroke his temples. He even likes the shiver of powerlessness he gets when Rodney's cupping his jaw and fucking his face; maybe that especially.
He feels safe enough to fall asleep over at Rodney's more nights than not; when people want him, they use the radio, and so it doesn't much matter where he is. He tells himself that it's just to avoid waking Rodney up after sex-Rodney works hard, and he's usually pretty zonked out by the time he finally falls asleep-but the truth is that he could probably give Rodney a good shove and Rodney would just roll over onto his face and keep sleeping. John's a light sleeper himself, and sometimes, lying awake and listening to the ocean, he can admit that he really likes having Rodney there beside him, warm limbs all tangled up with his.

John is obviously making real progress here, mostly due to the safe zone Rodney has made for him.

Elizabeth stops him at the end of a meeting one day and says, in a serious-sounding voice, "John, do you have a minute?"
"Sure," John replies. "What's up?" and Elizabeth looks him in the eye and says, "I want to talk to you about Rodney."
He doesn't remember sitting down at the conference table; his mind is too busy shuttling through tactics. He considers straight out denial ("I don't know what you're talking about"), vehement denial ("Whoever told you that is full of shit"), accusatory denial ("Where the hell do you get off?"), sorrowful denial ("Jesus, Elizabeth, I thought you knew me better than that"), and just copping a plea ("Okay, it happened, but it's over, and it won't ever happen again, Elizabeth, I swear"). Having examined his cards, John relaxes into the chair and casually drapes his arm over its back while he waits for her to make her play.

John’s manic terror has never been better written. How is it possible to come up with so many compelling images in a single story?

"Rodney's invaluable in the field-well, I don't have to tell you that." Elizabeth's hands are folded together in front of her; sometimes Elizabeth reminds him of his sixth grade teacher, Miss Peterson. He had a massive crush on Miss Peterson. "He was good to start with and he's only gotten better; thanks to you, I suppose. And I'd like him to devote more of his energies to making offworld explorations with you and your team, but that's going to require reassigning some of his projects to Zelenka, and, well-" Elizabeth stops and sighs, then shows John a rueful look. "You know how touchy Rodney can get about that."
Oh, he knows. He knows all about it; boy, yeah, Rodney sure can be touchy, you got that right.
"-advise me how to approach him," Elizabeth is saying. "Because it's a compliment, John, if only he would see it that way." She hesitates and then adds: "Maybe he would take it better coming from you. You seem to have a way of managing his-" and with a frustrated wave of her hand, Elizabeth sketches out the shape of his general, truculent Rodney-ness. "Will you talk to him?"
Sure, he will. No problem; he'll talk to Rodney. Don't worry about it. Consider it done.
"Thanks, John," Elizabeth says gratefully, and John shows her his most charming smile. Later that day, he sits down next to Rodney in the mess hall and says, between mouthfuls, "You've gotten good on your feet and you're starting to think like a soldier. You're going to work more with me, now."
Rodney pauses, mid-forkful, to consider this, and then says, "Yes, all right, fine."

Rodney again considers what John wants before agreeing. I get the feeling Rodney runs everything through his powerful brain to see how far he can follow John without compromising his sense of himself. As long as John’s ideas do not negatively impact Rodney’s core, he will go along. And again we see the theme of “you and me against the world” which draws them together.

That night, he fucks the living daylights out of Rodney. He hadn't planned to; it had been late, and he was thinking maybe he'd just suck Rodney's nipples for a while and then ask for a blowjob, but Rodney pulls him down on the bed and kisses him slow and deep, and suddenly John's desperate to fuck.
"Turn over," he says, and pushes at Rodney's shoulder.
"No," Rodney says, breathlessly. "Fuck me on my back."
"But I want-" John begins; Christ, he's so hard he can't think. "Believe me, you'll want-"
"Oh, well," Rodney says, rolling his eyes. "I didn't realize you had a vision, " and yeah, okay, John does have a vision: he wants Rodney up against the wall and coming his brains out. He puts Rodney on his knees facing the wall, and Rodney leans forward, braces his hands, and lets his head drop down, exposing the nape of his neck. John takes a moment to run his hands over Rodney's broad, milky-smooth back, and Rodney shivers and spreads his knees further apart. "Christ, hurry."

Again we see how invested Rodney is in John.

John, clumsy with lust, somehow manages to slick himself up and then he's pushing the blunt head of his cock into Rodney, who groans and pushes back against him, pushing him in. That's just-and John holds on tight and lets his cock go on autopilot, and as he goes wilder, Rodney meets him there, until he's practically pistoning forward and Rodney's arms are straining to the point of buckling-and then John drags Rodney down, pins him to the bed beneath him, and fucks him one, two, three until pleasure explodes up his spine like fireworks and blinds him, and Rodney's convulsing beneath him.
Rodney finally lifts his head groggily, looks around, and puts it down again. "Jesus," he mutters into the pillow. "Remind me never to question your vision," and John, who's collapsed on top of him, smiles faintly into his shoulderblades and wonders exactly how much mileage he can get out of a promise like that.

John is clearly getting more comfortable with the relationship and his sexuality as a whole. In the safe zone of just the two of them he begins to have some inkling of positive feelings about his sexuality. Also for some reason I love the phrase “John, clumsy with lust.”