New Fic: Surprises, by kuonji (PG-13)
Title: Surprises
Author: kuonji
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: vague spoiler for "The Storm"/"The Eye"
Summary: It started with a misunderstanding.
Surprises
by kuonji
It started on the balcony overlooking Grounding Station 3. Rodney wasn't much for the outdoors, but he'd gone there to think after The Storm (capital letters, always), and Sheppard had found him there. After that, they just started to meet up there, accidentally-on purpose.
Rodney had started to gain a certain appreciation for a beautiful moonrise.
It started with a conversation about carrots and cats and Sheppard's fourth grade reading teacher. He leaned toward Rodney, both their voices lowered in the fragile new darkness of nightfall, and Rodney leaned in to catch his words.
There was a pause. It was just long enough for Rodney to wonder what had happened, when all of a sudden soft lips were on his own.
It started with a misunderstanding.
***
This is what Sheppard says about that night: It felt like it was about time someone made a move. Rodney was a total girl about it, of course, but I knew he'd come around.
This is what happened:
Rodney jerked backwards, cracking his head painfully on the wall behind him. "Ow, ow, ow, as if mortally wounding me on missions every week isn't enough for you?"
For a moment, the pain and the indignation he felt erased what had just occurred, but Sheppard's silence in the face of his whining soon prompted him to sputter: "Wait, what was-- You're gay?" he asked.
"Nevermind. My bad," the Colonel replied. It was too dark to really see his expression, but the tone of his voice was one that Rodney had last heard when he'd barged into Sheppard's room unannounced and found him doing a Jimi Hendrix impression -- in the nude.
"Um," Rodney said. Which was pretty much what he had said to Sheppard then, too, staring open-mouthed at where the guitar had been hastily swung into place. He wanted to follow up with what he had said then, too: "You do this often?" But he didn't think it'd be appropriate.
"Look, I'll catch you later, okay?" Sheppard said.
And he was gone.
***
This is what McKay says about that night: My manliness overwhelmed him, I guess. I don't blame him. It happens all the time.
This is what was going through his head:
Sheppard was gay? More importantly, Sheppard wanted to be gay with Rodney?
Rodney didn't pretend to have too much experience with sex. Except, of course, to women he pursued, or colleagues who insisted he was probably a virgin, or, well, most people.
Anyway. Rodney never pretended to himself that he knew too much about sex -- either how to instigate it, or how to accept it (with any measure of grace).
It was one thing, however, to live in anticipation of learning. It was quite another to be blindsided by a perfectly satisfying platonic relationship with his best friend (note: male) threatening to turn into something else.
Rodney knew Sheppard moderately well. He flattered himself that he knew more about Sheppard than most of the people on Atlantis did. Thus, he was fairly certain that Sheppard would attempt to ignore what had happened, would treat Rodney just as he always had and encourage Rodney as well as himself to forget it had ever happened.
Rodney knew himself, however. He could not forget something like this. It would rankle in his mind until he had to pull it out again. Inevitably, he would choose the most inopportune moment to do so, and Sheppard and he would scream at each other, Sheppard wanting to ignore the whole thing and Rodney hanging onto it and hanging onto it until... Sheppard would shut him out.
He saw his friendship with Sheppard falling apart before his eyes. Crumbling, disintegrating, sloughing away in tiny greetings and missing smiles, until it was no more than a polite form of what they had had back in Antarctica -- "Think about the Pegasus Galaxy now." "Sure, doc, hey what was your name again?"
Rodney dropped his forehead onto his fist with a soft smack.
Okay. Could he do the gay thing with John Sheppard?
***
Beckett refuses to talk about what happened that night. But his nurses are always more than happy to oblige.
Rodney barreled into the infirmary at ten past 2100, Atlantis Time.
"Carson!" he said.
"Rodney, what can I do for you?" The man looked slightly wild around the eyes, but Carson has gotten used to seeing Rodney like this. It'd take stronger symptoms before he would put Rodney down for hysteria. Right now he expected it to be simply a splinter (with serious danger of infection and subsequent amputation), or perhaps some obscure disease of the brain (most prevalent in white males in their 30's, incurable except for one highly unusual case in Switzerland).
Rodney came to a purposeful stop in front of Carson and demanded, "You have to kiss me."
Perhaps his diagnosis had been premature. "Pardon?"
"Something happened. I have to figure out if I can be gay."
"Despite what some of the media says, I don't think that's a medical condition," Carson supplied, bewildered.
"No, no, of course not. Although, has anyone actually disproved that theory? My great-uncle on my father's side was gay, I'm pretty sure. Or was he schizophrenic? Anyway," Rodney waved off his own segue with an impatient hand, "I just want to do a spot experiment. I need a man to kiss me, and you've done it before."
Dr. Mayfair, the ranking night shift medical staff, and her three nurses turned to stare. Carson cleared his throat.
"First of all, if I remember correctly, you kissed me. And secondly, Rodney! It wasn't even you."
Thankfully, that gave him pause.
"Perhaps you should find someone more... qualified."
"Good point." And suddenly, Rodney was leaving again.
Carson mentally threw his hands in the air and hurried after his inscrutable friend. He would probably regret it, but now he had to know. "What's happened?" he asked, gripping Rodney's arm to get his attention.
"Nothing to worry about." Rodney shrugged, looking somewhere between cheerful and maniacal. "You're right, I just need to find a larger pool of subjects."
***
Stackhouse still has no idea what was happening that night, though he is not liable to forget it. Other people wonder why he shrinks away when Dr. McKay appears.
"Sergeant, just the person I needed to see."
Stackhouse had just come off of his midnight rounds. He ran into McKay in the hallway, and the fretful gleam in the doctor's eye was somewhat frightening.
"Ah... what do you need, Dr. McKay?"
McKay leaned in and despite the empty hallway, Stackhouse felt disturbed. "Command and Conquer, ring a bell?"
"The, uh, computer game?" he hedged. Stackhouse was blushing now, he could feel it.
McKay scowled. "No, Sergeant, the other one. And anything else you might have."
He felt the cool press of technology into his hands. Memory drives. "Just load them onto here. I'll be by your room in an hour to pick them up." He strolled off, muttering what sounded like, "Should have done this from the beginning. Kavanaugh does have his moments of brilliance."
There was no threat in the doctor's voice, but his clear belief that Stackhouse would follow orders made Stackhouse break out into a sweat at the mere thought of what would happen if he disappointed. He scurried back to his quarters and did as he was told.
***
Approximately forty-seven other people think they know exactly what was happening that night and love nothing more than to tell anyone who will listen all about it.
***
The next morning, Rodney had to pull himself to the mess hall for breakfast. His eyes felt like sand and his head was heavy. He hadn't had more than half an hour of sleep the night before. Despite a full night's work, however, he found himself no closer to an answer than he had been right after the balcony.
Well, perhaps marginally closer. Because wow, he'd given Stackhouse 12 gigs to be on the safe side; he hadn't expected Stackhouse to be quite so... resourceful.
A loud bang alerted him to company.
Rodney blinked up sleepily at just the person he wanted to see. Sheppard, in uniform, had both palms flat on the table, a storm in his eyes.
"Oh, hey, Col--"
"Come with me. Now." Sheppard turned and stalked away as soon as the words were out of his mouth. That roused Rodney from his stupor.
"What am I, your lapdog?" Sheppard turned and gave him a glare of such ferocity that Rodney banged his knee getting up to follow.
Woof.
Sheppard took them to a storage room down the hall. He palmed the door open and led the way through, then whirled around and slammed his hands against it on either side of Rodney, causing him to jump in surprise.
"McKay, I am going to kill you."
He couldn't help it. The words slipped out: "That's not what you said last night."
"Is this a joke? Is this a fucking joke to you?"
Rodney sobered. "No. I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, but... no." Had it started already? Were they going to yell at each other now and leave this room as (im)polite strangers? Rodney didn't think he could stand that.
But he was hardly going to take all the blame for it when it went down.
"Is this really necessary?"
Sheppard ignored him, leaning forward, emphasizing the fact that he had Rodney trapped between his arms.
"So I get up this morning. I go to the mess. And hey, I hear that there's this fun little story going around. Apparently, you came on to every male scientist and marine you could find last night."
Hm. When he put it like that, it didn't sound so much like the qualitative analysis it had been.
"Only two people said yes," he protested, at which Sheppard looked only slightly less enraged. "It was only kissing. Offered, that is. No actual--"
"McKay!" Sheppard interrupted. He stepped back, running a hand through his hair and staring past Rodney's shoulder. "If you're not interested, just be a man and say so to my face."
Rodney opened his mouth to argue. It was hardly his fault. He hadn't been the one to bring up this can of worms in the first place. But finally, he deflated. "You're right. I can't do it," he admitted, miserable. He couldn't. The two kisses had been meaningless, like kissing a whiteboard. And afterward, "All the, the yelling and the fluids. I don't even own leather boots or a wifebeater."
"What?"
"And before you blame it on me, I really don't think it's a failing on my part if I don't want to rub my face on... or put my thumbs..." he faltered, his face already burning with the memories. A few of the scenes had been unexpectedly hot, and a lot of them had actually gotten him hard, but as soon as he tried to imagine himself and Sheppard together that way, his body rebelled.
He didn't want their friendship to end. He really didn't. But there were limits.
Sheppard, in the meantime, was taking it remarkably well. In fact, when Rodney looked him in the face, there seemed to be a laughter in his eyes that he was clearly trying not to let out. "You watched gay porn for me?" he said.
"It wasn't for you," he snapped, trying to wipe that smirk off Sheppard's face. "It was for myself, obviously. As were the, uh, propositions. I wanted to-- You know, it's important to broaden one's horizons."
"Uh-huh. So you kissed a couple of guys and then watched gay porn. Just for, 'broadening' purposes."
There really wasn't a graceful way to answer that, which was of course why Rodney's mouth automatically tried to: "You wouldn't be laughing so hard if you had been the one to trade spit with Kavanaugh last night."
Sheppard's eyes boggled. "You kissed Kavanaugh for me?"
"It wasn't for you! Like I said!" Rodney felt the need to shout at uncomfortable decibels. He winced slightly at the echo in the small space.
"So you-- and he just...?" Sheppard was snickering now, and while Rodney enjoyed the lack of murderous gleam in Sheppard's eyes, this wasn't too much of an improvement. He crossed his arms.
"You can stop anytime now, thank you. Honestly, I don't know what possessed me to do it in the first place."
"It must be true lurve."
"It's not--" Except. "What?" Sheppard's sing-song tone percolated and Rodney grimaced in preparation for unleashing a suitably pride-recovering rant.
Sheppard foiled that by snorting loudly. And rudely. "You do realize that the stuff in the movies isn't what this is all about, don't you?"
"Isn't...?" Rodney was confuzzled anew. "I mean, porn is obviously the distillation of the sexual experience."
"The 'distillation of'--?! For crying out loud, Rodney! How much of het porn bears a close resemblance to what you actually do with a woman?"
"Um...?" The way the question had been phrased, it was clear that the expected answer was... none?
Sheppard's glare furrowed in apparent confusion. "You're kidding me," he said.
"Well, the, the red nail polish, obviously not," he tried to say. "And needless to say, condoms are a given. Though, now that you mention it, there was this brunette in Colorado who didn't much like the harnesses. That was odd. That's why I go for blondes, generally..."
Sheppard tipped his head up to the ceiling in a gesture of disbelief. This incidentally gave Rodney a clear view of the Colonel's bared throat.
Huh. That was... interesting.
"So, what you're saying is, gay men don't actually bend each other into pretzels over automotive parts and then spit on each other?" Rodney was moderately sure that was what Sheppard was getting at in his roundabout way.
Sheppard's eyebrows hitched up. "Welllll... I wouldn't say that we never do. But that's pretty rare, I would say." Rodney's own eyebrows seized, until he noticed the teasing tone in Sheppard's voice.
"So you'll show me what, ah, what I might like, then," he attempted to demand.
Sheppard's eyes roamed downward and he tugged Rodney closer. "Yeah," he growled. Rodney swallowed, looking at Sheppard almost cross-eyed. Barring hand-to-hand combat training, this was the closest they'd ever been to each other before those pivotal few seconds last night. Rodney could see the flecks of color in Sheppard's eyes and smell his scent, and he felt his own pulse racing, and he was an idiot.
He'd had it all wrong. Instead of picturing Sheppard in white socks and a nose-ring, as he had been trying to, he took a moment to imagine Sheppard just as himself, sweaty, stripped down to the first layer of his uniform, bouncing light on his toes in the exercise room. Rodney would charge, and Sheppard would spin, grip him tight and just this side of painful. He would take Rodney down seemingly without thought, and Rodney would feel the press of hot muscle against his back, or his legs, or his neck, the burn of calluses across his wrist and the teasing, guttural laugh in his ear, and he would whine about it but that vibrating edge of animal intensity always scared him just a bit.
Not scared, Rodney belatedly realized. Thrilled.
Sheppard licked his lips, looking predatory. This time when he leaned in, Rodney knew exactly what he was doing, and he met him halfway.
***
"Wait a minute." John pushed him away.
"What, what?" Rodney gasped. His heart flipped at the downturned tilt to the Colonel's mouth.
"You don't still have any feelings for Kavanaugh, do you?" John said, his face grim. "Because, I wouldn't want to get in between the two of you."
Rodney gaped. "Are you--? You're insane!" Of all the ludicrous ideas to--
Sheppard interrupted any possible reply by bursting out into raucous, adolescent guffaws.
"Oh my god, I HATE you!"
***
It started with a full moon and a kiss on the West balcony. And it continues still.
The Beginning.
Author: kuonji
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: vague spoiler for "The Storm"/"The Eye"
Summary: It started with a misunderstanding.
Surprises
by kuonji
It started on the balcony overlooking Grounding Station 3. Rodney wasn't much for the outdoors, but he'd gone there to think after The Storm (capital letters, always), and Sheppard had found him there. After that, they just started to meet up there, accidentally-on purpose.
Rodney had started to gain a certain appreciation for a beautiful moonrise.
It started with a conversation about carrots and cats and Sheppard's fourth grade reading teacher. He leaned toward Rodney, both their voices lowered in the fragile new darkness of nightfall, and Rodney leaned in to catch his words.
There was a pause. It was just long enough for Rodney to wonder what had happened, when all of a sudden soft lips were on his own.
It started with a misunderstanding.
***
This is what Sheppard says about that night: It felt like it was about time someone made a move. Rodney was a total girl about it, of course, but I knew he'd come around.
This is what happened:
Rodney jerked backwards, cracking his head painfully on the wall behind him. "Ow, ow, ow, as if mortally wounding me on missions every week isn't enough for you?"
For a moment, the pain and the indignation he felt erased what had just occurred, but Sheppard's silence in the face of his whining soon prompted him to sputter: "Wait, what was-- You're gay?" he asked.
"Nevermind. My bad," the Colonel replied. It was too dark to really see his expression, but the tone of his voice was one that Rodney had last heard when he'd barged into Sheppard's room unannounced and found him doing a Jimi Hendrix impression -- in the nude.
"Um," Rodney said. Which was pretty much what he had said to Sheppard then, too, staring open-mouthed at where the guitar had been hastily swung into place. He wanted to follow up with what he had said then, too: "You do this often?" But he didn't think it'd be appropriate.
"Look, I'll catch you later, okay?" Sheppard said.
And he was gone.
***
This is what McKay says about that night: My manliness overwhelmed him, I guess. I don't blame him. It happens all the time.
This is what was going through his head:
Sheppard was gay? More importantly, Sheppard wanted to be gay with Rodney?
Rodney didn't pretend to have too much experience with sex. Except, of course, to women he pursued, or colleagues who insisted he was probably a virgin, or, well, most people.
Anyway. Rodney never pretended to himself that he knew too much about sex -- either how to instigate it, or how to accept it (with any measure of grace).
It was one thing, however, to live in anticipation of learning. It was quite another to be blindsided by a perfectly satisfying platonic relationship with his best friend (note: male) threatening to turn into something else.
Rodney knew Sheppard moderately well. He flattered himself that he knew more about Sheppard than most of the people on Atlantis did. Thus, he was fairly certain that Sheppard would attempt to ignore what had happened, would treat Rodney just as he always had and encourage Rodney as well as himself to forget it had ever happened.
Rodney knew himself, however. He could not forget something like this. It would rankle in his mind until he had to pull it out again. Inevitably, he would choose the most inopportune moment to do so, and Sheppard and he would scream at each other, Sheppard wanting to ignore the whole thing and Rodney hanging onto it and hanging onto it until... Sheppard would shut him out.
He saw his friendship with Sheppard falling apart before his eyes. Crumbling, disintegrating, sloughing away in tiny greetings and missing smiles, until it was no more than a polite form of what they had had back in Antarctica -- "Think about the Pegasus Galaxy now." "Sure, doc, hey what was your name again?"
Rodney dropped his forehead onto his fist with a soft smack.
Okay. Could he do the gay thing with John Sheppard?
***
Beckett refuses to talk about what happened that night. But his nurses are always more than happy to oblige.
Rodney barreled into the infirmary at ten past 2100, Atlantis Time.
"Carson!" he said.
"Rodney, what can I do for you?" The man looked slightly wild around the eyes, but Carson has gotten used to seeing Rodney like this. It'd take stronger symptoms before he would put Rodney down for hysteria. Right now he expected it to be simply a splinter (with serious danger of infection and subsequent amputation), or perhaps some obscure disease of the brain (most prevalent in white males in their 30's, incurable except for one highly unusual case in Switzerland).
Rodney came to a purposeful stop in front of Carson and demanded, "You have to kiss me."
Perhaps his diagnosis had been premature. "Pardon?"
"Something happened. I have to figure out if I can be gay."
"Despite what some of the media says, I don't think that's a medical condition," Carson supplied, bewildered.
"No, no, of course not. Although, has anyone actually disproved that theory? My great-uncle on my father's side was gay, I'm pretty sure. Or was he schizophrenic? Anyway," Rodney waved off his own segue with an impatient hand, "I just want to do a spot experiment. I need a man to kiss me, and you've done it before."
Dr. Mayfair, the ranking night shift medical staff, and her three nurses turned to stare. Carson cleared his throat.
"First of all, if I remember correctly, you kissed me. And secondly, Rodney! It wasn't even you."
Thankfully, that gave him pause.
"Perhaps you should find someone more... qualified."
"Good point." And suddenly, Rodney was leaving again.
Carson mentally threw his hands in the air and hurried after his inscrutable friend. He would probably regret it, but now he had to know. "What's happened?" he asked, gripping Rodney's arm to get his attention.
"Nothing to worry about." Rodney shrugged, looking somewhere between cheerful and maniacal. "You're right, I just need to find a larger pool of subjects."
***
Stackhouse still has no idea what was happening that night, though he is not liable to forget it. Other people wonder why he shrinks away when Dr. McKay appears.
"Sergeant, just the person I needed to see."
Stackhouse had just come off of his midnight rounds. He ran into McKay in the hallway, and the fretful gleam in the doctor's eye was somewhat frightening.
"Ah... what do you need, Dr. McKay?"
McKay leaned in and despite the empty hallway, Stackhouse felt disturbed. "Command and Conquer, ring a bell?"
"The, uh, computer game?" he hedged. Stackhouse was blushing now, he could feel it.
McKay scowled. "No, Sergeant, the other one. And anything else you might have."
He felt the cool press of technology into his hands. Memory drives. "Just load them onto here. I'll be by your room in an hour to pick them up." He strolled off, muttering what sounded like, "Should have done this from the beginning. Kavanaugh does have his moments of brilliance."
There was no threat in the doctor's voice, but his clear belief that Stackhouse would follow orders made Stackhouse break out into a sweat at the mere thought of what would happen if he disappointed. He scurried back to his quarters and did as he was told.
***
Approximately forty-seven other people think they know exactly what was happening that night and love nothing more than to tell anyone who will listen all about it.
***
The next morning, Rodney had to pull himself to the mess hall for breakfast. His eyes felt like sand and his head was heavy. He hadn't had more than half an hour of sleep the night before. Despite a full night's work, however, he found himself no closer to an answer than he had been right after the balcony.
Well, perhaps marginally closer. Because wow, he'd given Stackhouse 12 gigs to be on the safe side; he hadn't expected Stackhouse to be quite so... resourceful.
A loud bang alerted him to company.
Rodney blinked up sleepily at just the person he wanted to see. Sheppard, in uniform, had both palms flat on the table, a storm in his eyes.
"Oh, hey, Col--"
"Come with me. Now." Sheppard turned and stalked away as soon as the words were out of his mouth. That roused Rodney from his stupor.
"What am I, your lapdog?" Sheppard turned and gave him a glare of such ferocity that Rodney banged his knee getting up to follow.
Woof.
Sheppard took them to a storage room down the hall. He palmed the door open and led the way through, then whirled around and slammed his hands against it on either side of Rodney, causing him to jump in surprise.
"McKay, I am going to kill you."
He couldn't help it. The words slipped out: "That's not what you said last night."
"Is this a joke? Is this a fucking joke to you?"
Rodney sobered. "No. I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, but... no." Had it started already? Were they going to yell at each other now and leave this room as (im)polite strangers? Rodney didn't think he could stand that.
But he was hardly going to take all the blame for it when it went down.
"Is this really necessary?"
Sheppard ignored him, leaning forward, emphasizing the fact that he had Rodney trapped between his arms.
"So I get up this morning. I go to the mess. And hey, I hear that there's this fun little story going around. Apparently, you came on to every male scientist and marine you could find last night."
Hm. When he put it like that, it didn't sound so much like the qualitative analysis it had been.
"Only two people said yes," he protested, at which Sheppard looked only slightly less enraged. "It was only kissing. Offered, that is. No actual--"
"McKay!" Sheppard interrupted. He stepped back, running a hand through his hair and staring past Rodney's shoulder. "If you're not interested, just be a man and say so to my face."
Rodney opened his mouth to argue. It was hardly his fault. He hadn't been the one to bring up this can of worms in the first place. But finally, he deflated. "You're right. I can't do it," he admitted, miserable. He couldn't. The two kisses had been meaningless, like kissing a whiteboard. And afterward, "All the, the yelling and the fluids. I don't even own leather boots or a wifebeater."
"What?"
"And before you blame it on me, I really don't think it's a failing on my part if I don't want to rub my face on... or put my thumbs..." he faltered, his face already burning with the memories. A few of the scenes had been unexpectedly hot, and a lot of them had actually gotten him hard, but as soon as he tried to imagine himself and Sheppard together that way, his body rebelled.
He didn't want their friendship to end. He really didn't. But there were limits.
Sheppard, in the meantime, was taking it remarkably well. In fact, when Rodney looked him in the face, there seemed to be a laughter in his eyes that he was clearly trying not to let out. "You watched gay porn for me?" he said.
"It wasn't for you," he snapped, trying to wipe that smirk off Sheppard's face. "It was for myself, obviously. As were the, uh, propositions. I wanted to-- You know, it's important to broaden one's horizons."
"Uh-huh. So you kissed a couple of guys and then watched gay porn. Just for, 'broadening' purposes."
There really wasn't a graceful way to answer that, which was of course why Rodney's mouth automatically tried to: "You wouldn't be laughing so hard if you had been the one to trade spit with Kavanaugh last night."
Sheppard's eyes boggled. "You kissed Kavanaugh for me?"
"It wasn't for you! Like I said!" Rodney felt the need to shout at uncomfortable decibels. He winced slightly at the echo in the small space.
"So you-- and he just...?" Sheppard was snickering now, and while Rodney enjoyed the lack of murderous gleam in Sheppard's eyes, this wasn't too much of an improvement. He crossed his arms.
"You can stop anytime now, thank you. Honestly, I don't know what possessed me to do it in the first place."
"It must be true lurve."
"It's not--" Except. "What?" Sheppard's sing-song tone percolated and Rodney grimaced in preparation for unleashing a suitably pride-recovering rant.
Sheppard foiled that by snorting loudly. And rudely. "You do realize that the stuff in the movies isn't what this is all about, don't you?"
"Isn't...?" Rodney was confuzzled anew. "I mean, porn is obviously the distillation of the sexual experience."
"The 'distillation of'--?! For crying out loud, Rodney! How much of het porn bears a close resemblance to what you actually do with a woman?"
"Um...?" The way the question had been phrased, it was clear that the expected answer was... none?
Sheppard's glare furrowed in apparent confusion. "You're kidding me," he said.
"Well, the, the red nail polish, obviously not," he tried to say. "And needless to say, condoms are a given. Though, now that you mention it, there was this brunette in Colorado who didn't much like the harnesses. That was odd. That's why I go for blondes, generally..."
Sheppard tipped his head up to the ceiling in a gesture of disbelief. This incidentally gave Rodney a clear view of the Colonel's bared throat.
Huh. That was... interesting.
"So, what you're saying is, gay men don't actually bend each other into pretzels over automotive parts and then spit on each other?" Rodney was moderately sure that was what Sheppard was getting at in his roundabout way.
Sheppard's eyebrows hitched up. "Welllll... I wouldn't say that we never do. But that's pretty rare, I would say." Rodney's own eyebrows seized, until he noticed the teasing tone in Sheppard's voice.
"So you'll show me what, ah, what I might like, then," he attempted to demand.
Sheppard's eyes roamed downward and he tugged Rodney closer. "Yeah," he growled. Rodney swallowed, looking at Sheppard almost cross-eyed. Barring hand-to-hand combat training, this was the closest they'd ever been to each other before those pivotal few seconds last night. Rodney could see the flecks of color in Sheppard's eyes and smell his scent, and he felt his own pulse racing, and he was an idiot.
He'd had it all wrong. Instead of picturing Sheppard in white socks and a nose-ring, as he had been trying to, he took a moment to imagine Sheppard just as himself, sweaty, stripped down to the first layer of his uniform, bouncing light on his toes in the exercise room. Rodney would charge, and Sheppard would spin, grip him tight and just this side of painful. He would take Rodney down seemingly without thought, and Rodney would feel the press of hot muscle against his back, or his legs, or his neck, the burn of calluses across his wrist and the teasing, guttural laugh in his ear, and he would whine about it but that vibrating edge of animal intensity always scared him just a bit.
Not scared, Rodney belatedly realized. Thrilled.
Sheppard licked his lips, looking predatory. This time when he leaned in, Rodney knew exactly what he was doing, and he met him halfway.
***
"Wait a minute." John pushed him away.
"What, what?" Rodney gasped. His heart flipped at the downturned tilt to the Colonel's mouth.
"You don't still have any feelings for Kavanaugh, do you?" John said, his face grim. "Because, I wouldn't want to get in between the two of you."
Rodney gaped. "Are you--? You're insane!" Of all the ludicrous ideas to--
Sheppard interrupted any possible reply by bursting out into raucous, adolescent guffaws.
"Oh my god, I HATE you!"
***
It started with a full moon and a kiss on the West balcony. And it continues still.
The Beginning.