Strangers on a Six Train pt. 2
I stayed up very late for this; I hope no one is disappointed :S
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Intellectually, Rodney knew that exercise lowered stress. Theory, however, was often distinct from practice. Besides, the whole brain-clearing endorphin rush that he was going for was probably out of reach for a weekday Manhattan pedestrian who had hit every red light from Madison to 1st, and had narrowly avoided being run over on his third (and final) attempt at jaywalking. Strangely enough, the fact that Rodney had absolutely nowhere to be just made the delays more irritating.
He started looking around halfheartedly for a place to eat lunch, thinking wistfully of bland cafeteria food and his comfortably anonymous corner of the second floor faculty lounge. He didn’t know how the university expected him to spend his vacation time relaxing if they were going to disrupt his meal patterns; for a radically adventurous scientist, Rodney was in most other aspects a creature of habit.
He turned around halfway to York and started back again, thinking that his luck with the traffic lights would change with his direction (it didn’t). He weaved between streets as he made his way back, lengthening the trip even as he mulled over the tedium of aimless walks, because why keep moving if you aren’t aiming for anything? The thought was so humiliatingly maudlin that Rodney stopped short and banged his head against the 3rd Avenue bus stop shelter a couple of times.
“Excuse me. Are you well?” Clearly, whoever had asked this question was an idiot of the highest order and deserved to be viciously sacrificed on the altar of Rodney’s misery. But when he lifted his head and turned around, the idiot turned out to be a really, really beautiful woman who, on top of being all dark and gorgeous and exotic-looking, seemed sort of genuinely concerned. Rodney bit back at least three eviscerating comments and smiled nervously.
“Fine, I’m fine. I’m just… thinking.” The woman raised an eyebrow in elegant disbelief. “Thinking *very hard*,” Rodney clarified. “I’m a violent thinker.”
“Clearly,” said the woman, nodding diplomatically. “Of course, such habits must become very… strenuous. Physically as well as mentally. I am Teyla Emmagen,” she announced with another deep nod. “If you allow me, I could help you.”
Rodney gaped. “You can… you… what?” He rubbed the sore spot on his head.
“I can help you. To relax, heal yourself,” she explained. “No charge, for your first session.”
“Oh my god, are you a hooker? No, look, I know I look like the kind of guy who would pay for sex but actually, I have a persistent romantic streak. And also, I’m terrified of STDs, and…”
The woman was glaring at him with a tired, irritated expression in her pretty eyes. “I am only trying to promote the studio,” she sighed, handing Rodney a flyer with more scorn than he felt was strictly necessary. “Yoga,” she added when he continued staring at her instead of reading the flyer. “It is a yoga studio. There is no sex involved.”
“Oh.” He realized, somewhat belatedly, that in addition to holding a stack of flyers in her hand, Teyla was also standing next to a hand-lettered poster that clearly read *ATLANTIS YOGA: FIRST LESSON FREE!* The sign was taped up in a window next to an open door, in front of which Teyla had been hovering, a fact he might have noticed sooner had he not been trying to dislodge his own brain. “Uh… sorry.”
She smiled ironically. “Do not worry. It actually happens quite often.” She narrowed her eyes. “I do not know why my employer keeps making me approach people in this manner; I suspect he finds it funny.”
“I’m not paying you to slander me in the presence of future customers,” drawled a suspiciously familiar-sounding voice from just inside the studio. “And it’s only happened three times. I told you, if you’d just give them the flyer straight off and lay off some of that meditation-serenity-chakra talk you wouldn’t keep having this prob---”
The voice stopped short as the man it belonged to appeared in the doorway. Rodney breathed in sharply (because he absolutely did not gasp. Gasping was for girls in soap operas and romance novels). The other man’s eyes widened in trepidation. He grinned sheepishly and ducked his head in a stupidly endearing way.
“Hi Rodney,” said John Sheppard. “Nice sweatpants.”
Rodney narrowed his eyes.
“You know each other?” Teyla glanced back and forth between them before looking at John intently. “John? You have other friends?”
“I have friends,” John said defensively. “Rodney’s a friend.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” grumbled Rodney. John’s face clouded and Rodney’s heart twisted. “Yeah,” he amended. “I’m Sheppard’s friend. For some unknown and deeply mysterious reason.” He held out a hand. “Dr. McKay. Astrophysicist.” When introducing himself to beautiful women, Rodney reflexively brought out the big guns.
She took his hand in a near-painful grip, which Rodney found both threatening and kind of hot. “Your friend,” she said, looking at John, “thought I was a prostitute.”
“Hey!” Rodney dropped her hand and backed up a step. “My brain is on serious overload here, you have to cut me some slack!”
“I think,” she continued, “he is a bit slow for an astrophysicist.”
John looked him up and down and grinned. “You noticed that, too?”
“Yeah, okay, as hilarious as my humiliation must be for you and your-- your non-hooker employee--”
John snorted. Teyla’s mouth twitched slightly.
“--I have things to say to you,” Rodney finished, pointing at John threateningly. “Many, many things. So you are going to buy me coffee and then you are going to listen.” Good, he thought. That was good. Decisive. Perhaps not the ‘hey-I’m-a-sensitive-friend-so-talk-to-me’ speech he’d rehearsed with Jeannie, but that stuff wasn’t really his style.
“Rodney, look, I…” John sighed and did the adorable head-ducking thing again, which made Rodney want to claw his own eyes out. “I have to work right now, I’ve got a class to teach. Will you hang around until I’m done? There’s a café across the street.”
“Oh, no. I’m not letting you weasel out of this. You‘ll probably escape out the back and disappear to Mexico.”
“I wasn’t going to--”
“I’ll wait in the studio.”
“John and I have a strict policy against spectators during lessons,” Teyla chimed in. “It disrupts the focus.”
“Oh for god's sake, fine,” groaned Rodney, grabbing a flyer savagely out of Teyla’s hand. “I’ll take your voodoo glorified stretching class. And yoga had damn well better be as relaxing as everyone says or my head is going to explode all over both of you.”
“So we win either way,” John said brightly, pulling Rodney by his sleeve into the studio.
____________________________________________
“I… am going…” Rodney began, lying like a quivering heap of jelly on his yoga mat. “I… am going to…kill…”
“Problem, Mckay?” said Rodney’s new friend Ronon, whom Rodney was going to murder as soon as his limbs started working again.
He should have known this would happen; as soon as John had said “Hey buddy, this is an intermediate class, so I’m going to have Ronon work with you separately,” his eyes had sparkled and his grin had been evil, and Rodney could have sworn he’d heard the stereotypical ominous clap of thunder foretelling the pain and humiliation in his future.
Ronon Dex was a large, well-muscled, dreadlocked, terrifying man; when he grinned, Rodney honestly couldn’t tell whether the man was being friendly or preparing to eat him alive. For a man his size, Ronon was hideously flexible; he had also been extremely zealous in his instructional duties (“Arch your back more.” “I can’t arch my back any more, my spine will snap and I’ll die.” “Ok, arch your back more or I‘ll snap your spine.”) Rodney really couldn’t imagine what had drawn a guy like Ronon to something as new-agey as yoga in the first place (“McKay, find your center or I’ll find it for you and rip it out”); it seemed like he’d be more comfortable in another scene, like a seedy bar or the military or pro-wrestling.
“So,” Rodney had panted, trying to fold his legs into something approximating what Ronon had done with his, “what brought you down the exciting career path of bogus spiritualism?”
“Flexible chicks.”
“Ah.” That explained it then.
Rodney was, in fact, not flexible, or all that focused. While holding one of his ankles and attempting to make it go up over his thigh like Ronon’s, he’d made the mistake of glancing over at John, who was in the middle of a serpentine arching movement that ended in his arms flexed and extended and his head tipped back, his throat displayed, his eyes closed, his mouth open very slightly-- not much, just enough for John’s tongue to dart out unconsciously, moistening his lips-- what the hell? The man exercised for a living, didn’t he know to keep hydrated? Then Rodney had overbalanced and toppled sideways, and Ronon’s helpful little grab at his arm had been hard enough to bruise.
Half an hour later, he was incapable of even threatening Ronon properly (which, given the man’s size and questionable morals, was probably for the best). “Death,” he tried anyway, pointing a shaking finger in the general direction of Ronon’s looming, grinning form. “Slow and horrible… death… your entire family.”
“You didn’t have to do everything I did, McKay. You’re not in very good shape.”
“You… you said ‘do exactly as I do or I’ll hurt you.’”
Ronon smiled serenely. “I did say that. Huh. Well, good to meet you.” He leaned down and patted Rodney heartily on the shoulder. Rodney winced and tried to hit back, but his arms still weren’t moving very well.
“Ronon?” John’s voice was suddenly directly overhead. “I told you not to break Dr. McKay.”
“He’s not broken. He’s resting.”
“Broken,” Rodney put in feebly, throwing an arm over his eyes.
“You know, Rodney, it was only your first lesson. You didn’t have to do everything Ronon did.”
Rodney removed his arm and glared as hard as he could. “He made me,” he said accusingly, tilting his head toward Ronon. John raised his eyebrows.
Ronon shrugged. “I like watching him get annoyed and turn colors. He’s funny. I don’t think I did any permanent damage.”
Rodney sputtered. John rolled his eyes and grinned. “Be that as it may, I think you should go get the heating pad.”
“He’ll never toughen up if you coddle him,” Ronon retorted as he turned and lumbered away.
“You alright, Rodney?” John asked gently.
“Not in any sense of the word. And what the hell? Yoga? You told me you were a physics teacher.”
“This is sort of physics. Elasticity. Surface tension. ‘Objects at rest tend to stay at rest,’” John said airily, nudging Rodney gently in the calf.
Rodney groaned. “Thank you, Sheppard. Thank you. I will no longer have chronic nightmares about dying without a Nobel. Now every night I’m going to wake up screaming from dreams of yoga-yetis with probable criminal records forcing me into the plow pose.”
“I saw your plow pose,” John said, nudging him again. “Not bad.”
“Oh, shut up. I thought I’d never get out of it. I’d have to spend the rest of my life bent in half.”
John laughed and dropped gracefully into a crouch by Rodney’s mat, smiling at him so sweetly that Rodney was a little freaked out. “What? What are you grinning at? Are my ligaments pulsing right out of my skin, because that’s what it feels like to me.”
“I missed you, Rodney,” John said simply, lowering his eyes. Rodney’s chest tightened, his heart swelled; he almost laughed out loud with the joy of it-- John had missed him. Then remembered riding the train alone for a week and the joy morphed into fury.
“You missed me? Are you serious?” Rodney hauled himself into a sitting position and pushed John, hard, in the middle of his chest, watching with satisfaction as graceful, catlike, beautiful Sheppard fell backwards and landed very ungracefully on his skinny ass. “You missed me. Where the hell were you? I haven’t seen you in almost a month!”
John was still sprawled on the floor where he‘d fallen, holding himself up on one elbow and looking up at Rodney with wide, guilty eyes. “I…”
“No, you know what? I don’t even want to hear it. Because I was going to apologize to you, my stupid sister had me convinced this was all my fault--”
“You talked Jeannie about me?” John asked with a tiny smile. “How is she?”
“You can’t trick me into changing the subject, I’m smarter than you.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Would you be serious for once? Jesus.” Rodney was breathing faster for no real reason; he had a sudden sense-memory of the first time they’d met, of panic melting into blue skies, of John’s arms and John’s warmth and John’s voice. His eyes stung and he blinked rapidly. “You just left. I thought I was-- I thought we were--”
“Rodney.” John rolled onto his knees and leaned forward, “You are. We are.”
“You were my best friend,” Rodney admitted, voice breaking in a really humiliating way. “You got me all… I got used to you being around and then you-- you just--”
“You’re my best friend too, Rodney,” John said sincerely, putting a hand carefully on Rodney’s arm. Rodney, who had never heard that sentence before in his life, gaped at him like a goldfish. “I’m… sorry, alright?” John continued, agitated, brushing sweat-dampened bangs off his forehead.. “I was dealing with something… personal, and I thought I could deal with it better on my own. I was wrong,” he quickly added when he saw Rodney gearing up for a rant. “Can’t we just go back to the way it was? You know, before I was a jerk?”
Rodney averted his eyes and swallowed hard. “Yes. Well. It wasn’t entirely… I never actually asked what was going on with you so maybe… possibly in the future I could maybe be more… sensitive to you and your… feelings and…” John was biting his lip, looking suspiciously near laughter. “What?”
“We’re not women, McKay,” he pointed out.
“Oh please,” Rodney snapped, stung. “I’m not the one wearing cropped pants.”
“These are yoga pants,” John insisted, plucking at them.
“Plus, you’re the one who threw a fit because I wasn’t paying enough attention to you. I’m trying here, make up your mind.”
John blushed. Like a total girl. “That’s not exactly…” He sighed. “You don’t have to change, Rodney,” he said, suddenly completely serious. “That’s not what I-- you shouldn’t change.” He coughed. “But thank you. You know, for… trying. It… yeah.”
“Yeah,” Rodney agreed, staring at the ground. He played with a corner of his mat and stared at John’s bare ankle.
“We’re not very good at this,” Rodney realized aloud.
“Speak for yourself. I’m good at everything,” John said with a grin. Rodney rolled his eyes, John stuck out his tongue, and Rodney could tell they were friends again by the way the world tipped back onto its axis and resumed spinning.
“Heating pad,” Ronon interjected gruffly. He threw the pad down to Rodney and took a bite out of the huge sandwich he’d somehow acquired. “And you’re both acting like girls.”
John laughed. Rodney fell back on the mat and groaned. Ronon chewed his sandwich.
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On the way out, John told Teyla she didn’t have to hand out flyers anymore (she was so relieved she looked like she was going to hug him, but ended up just squeezing a shoulder and grinning) and Rodney apologized again. She shook his hand more gently this time and even smiled at him with very little irony, so he figured they were okay.
“So,” he said to John on the way to the café. “Teyla. Not a hooker, but do you think she would go out with me?”
John laughed derisively. “I wouldn’t try it.”
“Hey! I know she’s insanely hot, but she seemed to like me well enough, and I’m okay to look at, and--”
“Whoa, Rodney, I just meant that Ronon would probably tear your arms off if you touched her. Otherwise, I’d say sure.”
“…Oh.” Rodney’s indignation fizzled. “Really? You don’t think she’s out of my league?”
“No way,” John said, and it was the kind of thing a *best friend* was supposed to say, but it still sounded honest. “Anyway,” he added, locking eyes with Rodney,“I don’t think she’s exactly the right one for you.”
“Huh,” said Rodney, unbelievably flattered that John thought he had actual standards. “Well, I’ll never know, I guess. God. I’m always chasing the wrong people.”
“Yeah, I know how that goes,” John sighed.
Rodney looked at him, stopping suddenly in his tracks. “Huh,” he said again.
John stopped a few paces ahead, looking back at him warily. “What?”
“It’s just… I just realized I’ve never seen you in the *sun* before,” Rodney explained, thoughtfully. “Hmm.”
“Oh,” said John. “Well.” He did a slow turn and leaned rakishly, one hand on his hip. “What do you think?”
“Oh, shut up,” mumbled Rodney, who mostly thought ‘GUH.’ “We all know you’re gorgeous, quit posing already.”
John bit his lip and grinned.
Rodney didn’t ask about Teyla again. He didn’t much think about her, either.
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“Alright, you knuckle-draggers, listen up.” It was not the wisest way to address his engineering students on his first day back from mandatory leave, but Rodney had to stick to what he knew. Plus, he was pretty sure most of them knew by now that the derogatory name-calling was just his way of showing affection. “You all have a final project due at the end of this week, and a test in two days, an extremely difficult test, which I have warned you will include painful essay portions and near-impossible practical equations. Yet you have all refrained from asking for a study guide, and why is that? You, Cadman, why is that?”
“Because of you,” said Laura Cadman, an intimidating freshman with an unhealthy interest in explosives. “Your syllabus says in gigantic bold letters that study guides are for weak minds and literature students.”
“Does it? Well, what do you say we all take a step backward in our intellectual development for the sake of all your grades, which are seriously starting to depress me.”
The silence in the room was palpable. Ford raised his hand, very slowly. “Dr. McKay?” he asked cautiously.
“Yes, sorry, I’ll be very clear, so that even you clowns can understand me. Study guides. For your exam. Here.” He pulled a huge packet out of his briefcase and waved it at his students before setting it on the podium. “Now, my lectures this semester have been… on the dense side, so nothing really remains but to review the material. I will be holding a mandatory review session on Wednesday--”
“Professor, the test is Wednesday,” Ford pointed out confusedly.
“Don’t be stupid, the test is next Monday,” Rodney said brusquely.
“But you just said--”
“Do you want to study for the test and complete your project during the same week? Because that’s completely ridiculous, Ford, but you’re more than welcome to try it. By the way, I don’t particularly feel like immersing myself in mediocrity this week or the next so you might as well turn your projects in on the twenty-first instead of the seventh.”
Half of the class was looking a little freaked out. The other half --the half including Ford and Laura and the other students who weren’t a total waste of Rodney’s time-- was wearing huge, disbelieving grins.
“Now take a study guide --single file line, act like civilized humans!-- everyone take one and study the hell out of it, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
The grins got bigger. Rodney kept scowling at all of them, but it was a challenge. “And for God’s sake, if any of you still fail my class after this I am going to hurl myself off the roof of this building and my ghost will haunt you relentlessly all the way through summer school. Now get out.”
“You rock, Dr. McKay!” Ford called out, and Rodney just barely managed to hide his smile behind a stack of study guides.
___________________________________
“Let’s not go to work today.”
Rodney blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Let’s not go to work today,” John repeated, slowly and clearly.
“We can’t not go to work. It’s Thursday, what kind of person takes a day off on Thursday? It makes no sense, Sheppard.”
“I didn’t say we should take today off,” said John, grasping the bar overhead with both hands and letting his body sway nonchalantly with the motion of the train. “I said we should not go. There’s a difference.” He bounced a couple of times on the balls of his feet, vibrant with suppressed enthusiasm. “Did you happen to notice that it’s the most perfect day ever outside, right this minute? Seventy-five, low humidity, light breeze, little swirly clouds-- do you really want to miss out while you sit at your desk grading papers?”
“Jesus, John,” Rodney sighed, knowing full well that John had referred to cirrus clouds as ‘little swirly’ ones purely to annoy him, “we’re nearly forty, we are responsible adults.-- well, I am, at least, and we cannot just cut class, are you twelve?!”
John let go of the bar with one of his hands and swung around a smooth arc, bumping Rodney’s chest with his own. “Chicken,” he whispered with a wicked grin, waggling his eyebrows ridiculously, three inches from Rodney’s face.
“Oh, please,” Rodney retorted lamely, his throat closing up a little as his heart sped up; it was always exhausting, being with someone who was simultaneously the most alluring person in the world and also the most appallingly moronic.
“Chick-en,” he said again, louder, punctuating the two drawn-out syllables with sharp pokes at Rodney’s shoulder.
“Ow,” Rodney protested. “Quit it.”
John started to cluck, a full-out, playground chicken-clucking that Rodney had never heard from anyone over four feet tall.
“Alright, that’s it,” Rodney groaned dramatically, lunging forward and clapping his hand over John’s mouth. “There will be other perfect days, Sheppard. Perfect days on weekends, during which you can frolic through the meadow or whatever it is you were planning on doing without getting me in more trouble at work.”
“Bmmm mumble mmph unm,” said John from under Rodney’s hand. His lips caught and dragged softly against Rodney’s palm. Rodney shivered and let go.
“Come again?”
“I said, I want this one,” he repeated insistently, looking straight into Rodney’s eyes. His hand still gripped Rodney’s wrist, gently. His thumb stroked once, twice, against the inside of Rodney’s wrist.
Something shattered in Rodney’s brain and reassembled itself, clearer than before, and he had the sudden, strange, elating impression that what John actually wanted was a perfect day for the two of them.
The train pulled into a station; Rodney caught sight of the station number over John’s shoulder and grinned as inspiration struck.
“We’re getting off here,” he announced, pulling out of John’s grasp only to grip his wrist instead and haul him off the train.
“Rodney, what--”
“Just trust me,” he said imperiously, dragging John through the terminal with a single-minded intensity.
He was through missing out on perfect days.
_______________________________________
Rodney made John close his eyes as soon as they boarded the Q.
“This is stupid,” John announced, as he swayed sightlessly and clutched the bar for dear life.
“Quid pro quo,” Rodney said in a sing-song voice, thoroughly enjoying the fact that loss of eyesight seemed to rob Sheppard of his ethereal balance. Now he was tripping and flailing all over the place like a normal person on a moving vehicle.
“Bastard,” said John, smiling. The train lurched and Rodney caught John, for once, closing big hands over John’s arms and holding him steady. He didn’t let go until they got to their stop forty minutes later, because nothing would ruin this day more thoroughly than John’s brains being splattered on a subway floor.
“Okay, can I open them now?” John asked, bouncing slightly.
“Not yet… not yet…” Rodney led him carefully up the stairs, courageously allowing himself to rest one of his hands over the small of John’s back. “And… ok. Now.”
John opened his eyes and blinked. “Um. It looks like we’re in… Brooklyn?” He turned to Rodney and raised an eyebrow. “Why are we in Brooklyn?”
“Because, you idiot, I hear there’s a pretty good ferris wheel around here somewhere,” Rodney answered with mostly-feigned exasperation. He broke into a huge, foolish grin as he watched comprehension dawned on John, his whole face lighting up from the inside.
“Cool,” said John reverently, mirroring Rodney’s dopy grin with one of his own. Then he snapped out of it abruptly, clapped Rodney on the back, and jogged toward the boardwalk. “Skeeball first!” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll bet you a corndog I can kick your ass.”
“Never bet with a physicist when projectiles are involved,” Rodney yelled back, jogging laboriously after him.
___________________________________________
Later, after Rodney insisted on calling the school to claim illness (an action John reacted to by clucking like a chicken again until Rodney smacked him in the arm) and they were strolling down the boardwalk in the gentle May sunlight, Rodney was surprised to learn that John hadn’t been to Coney Island in almost twenty years.
“But this was my favorite place in the world when I was younger,” John said, positively glowing as he ate his corndog.
“Younger, and much less mature,” Rodney deadpanned, eyeing the fluffy purple elephant that John had won after he creamed Rodney at Skeeball, which John was currently cradling in one arm.
“Oh, this? I won this for you.” He stuffed the toy into Rodney’s arms and winked. “Consolation prize.”
Rodney rolled his eyes, but he held onto the stupid thing anyway. He was thinking of naming it Newton and keeping it on his desk.
They hadn’t come prepared for swimming, but John wanted to hit the beach anyway. He stripped off his T-shirt and spread it over the sand, flopping onto it with a contented sigh.
“You’re going to end up like a lobster that has melanoma,” Rodney warned, staring inappropriately at John’s chest, his mouth gone dry.
“I don’t burn easily,” John answered drowsily, his eyes closed and his mouth turned up at the corners. “Sit down. Breathe. Relax. Feel the sun, Professor McKay.”
“I’m in a suit,” Rodney pointed out. “Plus, I can’t sit down and relax until you’re protected from skin cancer,” he added stubbornly, producing a small bottle from his briefcase.
John opened his eyes and laughed. “Wow. You carry sunscreen with you? All the time?”
“I have very fair and sensitive skin.” He dropped the bottle on John’s chest. “Put it on or I’ll never be able to relax.”
“Yes, mom.”
While John was busy with the sunscreen, Rodney tugged off his tie, undid the buttons on his collar, and took off his very nice and very expensive jacket so that he could spread it out on the sand next to John.
“Happy?” he huffed, lowering himself carefully onto his back and glancing at the man next to him.
John reached over and smeared a bit of the sunscreen across Rodney’s cheek. “Yeah,” he said.
________________________________________________
Later, after renting a locker for Rodney’s briefcase, his sand-covered jacket, and Newton the Elephant, they wandered around rediscovering the amusement park. Parts of their clothing were still damp from when they had rolled up their pants to wade into the ocean and John had gotten them in a splash fight with four belligerent nine-year-olds.
“I still say we won, technically,” John was saying.
“Oh, definitely. That kid pulled that water gun out of thin air, it was a clear violation of the unspoken rules of engagement. No weapons unless agreed upon beforehand. And spraying us in the eyes was a total cheap shot.”
“Ooh, bumper cars!” said John.
John picked the red car, and Rodney picked the #7. He was rear-ended quite a lot by a raucously-laughing John, but near the end he got in one good broadside hit to John’s car (he suspected, from the indulgent look on his face, that John had let him do it).
From there it was the spinning gravity-ride that had Rodney both grinning and struggling not to be sick (“I can tell you how much force we’re exerting on the wall right now, Rodney,” yelled John as he lifted his feet gingerly off the floor), the flying swings, and every roller coaster they could find-- and when Rodney found himself uttering a breathless “Let’s go again!” after their second Cyclone ride, he blamed John’s influence.
They even took a turn on the carousel, a nostalgically old-fashioned contraption with tinkling music and a diverse herd of four-legged mounts.
“I’m not even going to make fun of you for picking that one,” Rodney declared, shaking his head. “It’s just too easy.”
“What?” John scrunched his eyebrows at Rodney from atop his white, curly-tailed unicorn. “I like the ones that go up and down.”
They circled the park for hours, until the sun began to set and Rodney had that wrung-out, exhausted feeling one tends to get at the end of the best day ever. Soon they found themselves drawing toward the gigantic ferris wheel, which for some reason, they had yet to ride.
“Hey,” Rodney said suddenly, nudging John by sort of *leaning* into him, pressing his whole side with his own. “Where you planning on hitting the wheel or not? We can’t come here every Thursday, you know. I suspect the novelty would wear off.”
“Mmm,” said John, nudging back. He checked his watch. “I was just waiting for the right time. Yup… check it out.”
He pointed. The sky behind the wheel was grey-violet, nearly dark. As if on cue, the wheel lit up, from the center out, bursting into vast, twinkling stripes of red and yellow.
Rodney whipped back around to face John. “How the hell did you manage that?”
He grinned. “They always turn the lights on at the same time. My mom used to pretend she could light it up at will. I thought she had magical powers until I was eleven.”
“Huh. I never believed in magic when I was little. A magician came to my sixth birthday party and I berated him until he admitted that the bouquet came from up his sleeve.” He frowned. “He didn’t do any parties in my town after that.”
John snorted. “Seriously. Only you, Rodney,” he chuckled, shaking his head and smiling in a way that made Rodney’s knees feel rubbery. “Come on, the line’s not long; I bet we can make it on for the next go-around.”
________________________________________
“Oh God,” said Rodney faintly, not for the first time.
“I’m telling you, we’re perfectly safe.”
“Oh God.” He clutched the safety bar desperately, his eyes shut tight. “High. Up.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Rodney, it’s okay.”
“How can you like these things? People die on these things, you know!”
“Not very many people,” said John soothingly. Rodney opened his eyes and glared at him.
John was watching him, one arm looped over the seat behind them and the over draped loosely over the safety bar. “Hi,” he said softly, smiling. “We’re still alive.”
“Well, probably not for long,” grumbled Rodney mutinously, relaxing a fraction, until the wheel gave a mighty lurch and stopped short. The car swung violently, forward and back, and an embarrassing sound escaped Rodney’s throat as he shut his eyes again.
“Hey,” said John, quietly. “Stop that. You’re going to be fine.”
“Why does it keep doing that?”
“To let people on and off,” John explained. “It’s actually a great system, it means the ride is twice as long, and sometimes when it stops…” He shook Rodney’s shoulder with the hand he had been resting on the back of the seats. “Seriously, open your eyes. You’ll like it.”
Rodney did open his eyes, if only because he could never yell at people properly without staring them down. “Quit invalidating my phobias, Sheppard; I’ll have you know…” he trailed off, eyes wide. “Oh. Wow.”
They had been stopped precisely at the top, and the angle of their position created the illusion, for a moment, that they weren’t just part of a wheel making limited, grounded up-and-down cycles, but hovering on their own, high above the ground and the hazy-bright lights of Coney Island and the glittering outline of the city over the water.
“Kind of like flying, isn’t it?” John said breathlessly, turning his face away from Rodney’s for a moment into the breeze that gently buffeted the front of their car.
Rodney was a mile high on a creaky metal deathtrap, but now John was looking back at him and giving him that smile, his hair a mess and his cheeks ruddy from the wind, and Rodney felt it, too-- the part where it was kind of like flying.
The wheel lurched again as it started to move, but this time Rodney’s reaction was less like terror and more like disappointment.
John didn’t look away. Neither did Rodney.
“So,” John began, a little awkwardly. “What do you think so far?”
“It’s nice,” Rodney allowed, his voice dripping with feigned condescension. “I liked the part where we didn’t disconnect from the wheel and plunge to our deaths. That was lovely.”
John laughed. “I aim to please.”
“Well, to be honest,” Rodney said, shifting around and rubbing at his shoulder with one hand, “these seats are brutal on my back. And my muscles are still all sore from when you rammed me from behind.”
John’s eyes shot wide, and then he looked like he might be having a stroke, trying to keep from laughing. Rodney flushed brilliantly.
“In the bumper cars,” he clarified, unnecessarily. “From when you rammed me with your bumper car. From behind.” He sighed grumpily. “You absolute child.”
“Aw, you know you love me, Rodney,” John teased, hugging him close, one-armed, and letting him go again, gaze wandering dreamily over the ground stretched under them.
The weird thing was, Rodney did know that, had known for a while-- and he wasn’t quite sure if it was altitude sickness or the way the ferris-wheel lights were outlining John’s silhouette, or possibly a combination of the two, but suddenly he was feeling pretty okay with knowing.
He was overcome with scientific euphoria, the sort of hot, fierce rush that always came over him when he figured out how to make an equation work, how to complete a proof, how to make two components fit together and work together and become something better.
Naturally, this was the sort of discovery that needed to be made public, immediately.
“John,” Rodney said importantly, nudging him with an elbow. “Hey, John.”
“Mm?” John murmured lazily, turning toward him, and it was like he was turning into the sun, and wow, Rodney had been stupid.
“I just figured out…” Rodney’s heart raced, the thrill of discovery mingling with the crippling fear of acting on it. “The thing is, I need to…“ He trailed off, frustrated. “You know that thing where we’re both incapable of expressing emotions properly?”
John raised his eyebrows. “Uh huh,” he said, slowly.
“Well, I--” He sighed heavily and fixed John with a determined gaze. “Okay.”
Then Rodney leaned forward, so abruptly that the car rocked, and kissed John with all the fervor and enthusiasm that he usually put into fantastic new discoveries-- maybe a bit more, because this was John, after all, and John was probably the most fantastic thing ever discovered by anyone.
He had been pretty sure, almost positive --the empirical evidence was staggering-- but still there was a moment, while John was frozen and unresponsive, when Rodney felt cold, sharp panic rising in his chest, and maybe he’d read this whole thing wrong and it really was all in his head--
And then John made a quiet sound deep in his throat and melted, cradling Rodney’s face in his hands with a gentleness that was completely at odds with the ferocity of his mouth, which was hungry and devouring and everywhere at once. Rodney happily lost all control of the situation, helplessly clutching handfuls of worn-soft T-shirt as John licked into his mouth, traced his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, hauled Rodney as close as he could get him so when they broke for air, they were wrapped around each other.
“Jesus,” said John, roughly, his breathing labored. He nuzzled the spot where Rodney’s neck met his shoulder and rested there, his hair tickling Rodney’s chin. “So. How long have you wanted to do that?”
“Pretty much since the day we met,” Rodney said truthfully, sliding a hand into John’s ridiculous hair and kissing his temple.
John groaned into his neck. “You’re kidding me, right? You’d better be kidding me, because otherwise I’m going to kill you.” He was shaking a little. Rodney smiled and tightened his hold.
“Yeah, well, I have poor social skills,” he explained reasonably, stroking his thumb underneath John’s shirt at the waist.
John half-chuckled, half-exhaled and attacked, licking and nibbling at Rodney’s neck in a way that was probably supposed to be vindictive. “You complete… and utter… bastard,” he growled between kisses, but Rodney wasn’t really listening, at that point.
After twenty minutes the operator made them get off the ride, but Rodney was a hundred feet in the air the whole ride home, leaning against John, and they didn’t really need a ferris wheel to fly, anyway.
________________________________________
Rodney was sure he had never felt so good at 6:30 on a weekday morning. “I’m hungry,” he told John happily as he sat up and stretched. He looked over at his best friend, who was standing sleep-flushed and tousled and shirtless beside the bed, buttoning his pants. “And horny,” Rodney added, tugging on John’s belt loops. “Really, really horny.”
John laughed and let Rodney reel him in for a sleepy kiss. “I’ll buy you breakfast, but we both need to head for the station pretty soon. We’re going to be late.”
He tried to reach for his shirt --which was crumpled on the floor under Rodney’s desk chair-- but Rodney tightened his grip and pulled him down onto the bed.
“You’re not just going to pick up some other guy off the subway now that you’ve had your way with me, are you?” Rodney was mostly kidding, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to check.
“Nah.” John yawned. “After you, I feel like I can’t trust my gaydar at all anymore.”
“Well, I was a little bit gay,” Rodney said consolingly. “If anything, your gaydar is too finely calibrated.”
“Better than yours, anyway. I probably could have sat on your lap in a pink tie-dyed tank top that had BOY CRAZY written on it in glitter and you wouldn’t have noticed I had a thing for you.”
“Hey! That is completely-- well, yeah, that’s fair,” Rodney admitted grudgingly. His eyes narrowed. “Wait. You don’t actually own a shirt like that, do you?”
“Very funny,” said John, rolling his eyes, and that totally wasn’t a ‘no’ but Rodney chose to leave it alone for now.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you could be the gaydar for both of us now. You know, like next time we’re on the six and there’s a hot guy cruising me, you can point him out.”
“Like hell,” John said.
“Oh, don’t worry, I wouldn’t actually sleep with him. Unless he’s hotter than you.”
John’s eyes darkened.
“Seriously, though, whole new horizons are opening up for me,” Rodney continued, because he really dug the way John’s face was going all intense and possessive. “My days of sexual dissatisfaction are at an end!”
“Uh, yeah,” agreed John, raising his hand pointedly.
“Now that you’ve opened my eyes to the gay public transit scene,” Rodney continued blithely, “there’s no end to the action I could get. Okay, here’s the plan: tomorrow you can help me pick up tricks on the crosstown busses, and then we’ll hit the ferries.”
John growled and pounced, tackling Rodney back against the pillows and pinning his wrists by his head.
“Airplanes,” suggested Rodney gleefully. “Monorails. Ocean liners. Possibly a rickshaw or two, and maybe--”
John kissed him fiercely, laughing against his mouth, and Rodney triumphantly set to work re-unbuttoning John’s pants.
Some time later, Rodney managed to call NYU to let them know that his illness was showing no signs of clearing up; they’d better give him a couple more days.
Being indispensible had its perks, here and there.