.fic: A day of salt and newspapers (John/Rodney) R
A day of salt and newspapers John/Rodney (R) | ~2,960 words
A follow-up to The Hard Sel (aka selmelier!Rodney), and a busy day at Atlantis.
A day of salt and newspapers
John doesn’t open Folsom Prison on Mondays and Tuesdays, a side-effect of a youth spent marching to his father’s nine-to-five six days a week drum. Most of his business comes in on Friday and Saturday, anyway, and Sundays after teenagers and middle-aged men like John escape from church to come look at vintage Gibson acoustics and Strats. Walking past it on the way from his apartment to Atlantis makes him smile and shudder a little in relief; he loves his store, but sometimes needs freedom from it.
Mondays used to be for getting stuff done, or pretending to help Ronon clean up Sateda in exchange for drinks Ronon insists aren’t payment. When it’s a shot of thirty-year-old Glenfiddich - laid down, Ronon likes to say, when he wasn’t even around yet - probably it isn’t. Tuesdays were for random things, going downtown or going upstate to see Teyla, who comes down to the city only when absoutely necessary, either to visit restaurants or visit Rodney, who has (so John has learned) a pathological fear of highway driving and only goes up to Athos if Ronon goes.
Rodney. Mondays are for Rodney already, a routine that John doesn’t examine too closely. He almost doesn't need to, because the implications of that aren't implications so much as huge screaming neon signs informing him he's traded whiskey older than Ronon for hanging out with a guy who sells salt.
Atlantis is a few blocks from Folsom Prison, with its blue awning and the two small dogwoods that flank its doors. Not much outside tells you anything about what it is - according to Rodney, he’s had stoners wander in looking for their headshop and exotic dancers and a bunch of goth girls into "the occult" - but walking in is like walking into a Carlsbad Caverns that's been bottled up and labeled and boxed, or cut into slabs of rose and salmon and put on display. The prices, as much as the sudden dimness after a bright spring day, still make John blink.
His official job description, according to Rodney, is "to sit over there - not there, yes, behind the desk, next to the caramels - and look hot. You wouldn't believe what you've done for my repeat clientele in the past three weeks - not," he'd added, "that I'm keeping you around for that reason."
"Of course not," John had said.
The fourth Monday after meeting Rodney finds John in his appointed chair, flipping through the Village Voice and swiping caramels whenever Rodney's back is turned. Today that happens to be more or less constant, which means John can't look at caramel - Hawai'ian volcano salt be damned - after his seventh piece. There's a rush on, restaurant buyers coming in to renegotiate some contracts and a caterer with a Bridezilla breathing fire behind her who need thirty minutes and two near-coronaries on Rodney's part to decide the Himalayan salt platters won't go with the flowers.
"No," Rodney says in response a question. His voice has gone small and tight, a warning sign to those who know him. Clearly, the caterer and Bridezilla don't. "You cannot… you can't dye them."
"They aren't right, though," Bridezilla says petulantly. "What about bleaching them? Could they be lightened?"
"These are Himalayan salt platters." From across the store, John can still see the rhythmic, indignant quiver in Rodney's shoulders. "They are, unlike your hair, apparently, un-dyeable and un-bleachable."
The caterer tries again. "What about the finger bowls?"
"What part of Himalayan salt do you not understand? Do you think that maybe, by some miracle, the chemical makeup of the plates and finger bowls is different enough to allow you to dye them Vibrant Apricot, or whatever it is you want to do? Or, as is more likely, have you not been paying attention to a single word I've said?" By the final syllable, Rodney's voice has reached a pitch usually attained only by dolphins and small children. "Please, please go away now. You could try Salt and Peter down on Fifth, they might be dumb enough to let you try."
"Thank you," the Bridezilla huffs as she gathers up her purse and cell phone. John tries to summon up a scrap of sympathy, but finds it too difficult and stops trying. "We'll do that."
"My condolences to your fiancé," Rodney mumbles. The Bridezilla's eyes go wide - not unlike Rodney's, really - but the caterer takes her arm and, with a final glower in Rodney's direction, shepherds her out the door.
From there the day only gets worse and Rodney only gets testier and more snappish. John knows the feeling, the belief - no, the conviction - that every idiot and psychotic person in the world has conspired to make your life hell for the day. A man comes by looking for "no-sodium salt" and gets a lecture taken from Chemistry for the Terminally Moronic on the difference between edible salt and salt that will kill you ("You could try cocaine hydrochloride, but I highly doubt that will help your blood pressure"). A woman looking for African-imported salt keeps wandering out of the "African salt" section and picking up random bottles and asking "Is this African?" ("Does it say African?" "No." "I am not being paid enough to give lessons in logical deduction"). A flock of the cerebrally-challenged comes in at once, voiciferously demanding attention that, once Rodney directs it on them, they're sorry to get.
The only bit of normality in the first part of the day, other than the few restaurateurs, is a man in a trench coat who comes in with a vaguely puzzled expression, as though he's not entirely sure why he's here. He buys a few jars of Alaea salt and asks for it gift-wrapped. The gift-wrapping destroys the normality, but it's so weird that Rodney's knocked off his snark enough to be polite and get out the ribbon and gift bags.
That's pretty much the last bit of "calm" for the next hour, with another group of customers coming in on their lunch break. John gives up on the Voice and sits back to watch.
"No! No no no no no, for the last time, you do not ever ever use smoked salt on margarita glasses." Rodney shakes a glass vial of Halen Môn in the faces of the latest customers, a married pair of self-proclaimed "foodies." They had oozed into the store on a thin veneer of self-importance, and John had seen the trainwreck coming as soon as the man had picked up a box of Breton smoked salt and mangled the name into Sell Grease ow Bretton, and then looked at the price.
"The taste," Rodney continues wrathfully, "the taste and texture are completely wrong; it would be like drinking bacon-flavored tequila. Also, on a related topic, do you have any idea how obnoxious I find that word 'foodies,' and that I, in fact, wanted to cram a jar of Marazul down your throat the second I heard that word come out of your mouth? Similarly, did you know that Isaac Newton wrote the Principia, the greatest and purest expression of human thought, in Latin specifically so completely clueless people who thought they knew about mathematics wouldn't harass him? Well, now I know how he felt." He pauses. "Actually, I've always known how he felt, but meeting you two has only reinforced that conviction."
The foodies leave, the wife clutching her husband's hand and the husband's mouth working silently in a reply John knows he won't be able to find for another week. The bell jingles in the sudden silence, and the door swings shut. Rodney sighs in relief.
"I would be okay with this if it wasn't for the damned customers sometimes," he grumbles. "I honestly don't know how Teyla does it. Probably she foists all the morons off on Halling."
"You could ask Ronon for advice." John picks up the Voice again but doesn't look at it. He's too busy with Rodney, who is rumpled and mussed, still buzzing with irritated adrenaline.
"If I actually looked like I could crush someone's skull with my bare hands, I would," Rodney says dryly. He sighs, and the tension subsides a little. "Seriously, did you hear those people?"
John tries to imagine what it would be like, coming in here for the first time and thinking he knew something about something. Rodney would probably end him, John concludes, "ridiculously, and I mean, really, preposterously" good-looking as he is. Most people don't have what it takes to stand up to a McKaysian tirade - then again, most people have the sense to tell Rodney what they're looking for and listen to his suggestions, which are really orders.
"You know," John drawls, "they do say 'the customer is always right.''"
"Who's 'they', and have they been pubicly discredited?" Rodney asks suspiciously. He starts to move around the store, straightening and checking inventory, replacing the box of sel gris the foodies had knocked over earlier. "Seriously, what submoronic asshat came up with that piece of doctrine? The customer is almost always wrong because they have no idea what they're talking about pretty much all of the time. Did you hear them? They wanted to use alder smoked salt for margaritas. How am I supposed to condone that?"
"Good customer service, Rodney." John smirks at him, and Rodney scowls. "When we went to that place Ronon suggested you were bitching about its absence."
"Yes, well, in the majority of applications, it's a ridiculous doctrine." Rodney sniffs. "And between Chez Overdone Filet and dealing with my cable company, I suspect 'good' customer service is, like most religions, based on a concept that is completely mythical."
"Mmm-hmm." John turns a page and starts scanning the classifieds. His lease is up in a few months, and the economy means people aren't snapping up vintage guitars like they used to. Unfortunately, the neighborhoods are all insanely expensive, or would require a roommate. He doesn't do roommates, not since the Air Force. "I'm just sayin', Rodney… Tact might be nice."
"World peace and a cure for cancer might also be nice, but you don't see me asking for the impossible." Rodney stalks into the back of the store, around the counter. Everything in Atlantis is gently honey-colored, worn edges, not much like Rodney at all. It came like this had been Rodney's explanation. It came with the long oak display counter, too, worn shiny on top so the wood is almost as smooth as the glass that encases rows of chocolates, sweets, and salt-decorated pastries. Rodney leans against it, bracing his weight on his forearms, and it's easy to tilt into his warmth, the energy that comes off him like a magnetic field.
He looks good like this, his color up, fingers drumming something quick and classical on the cashdesk. Like, John thinks, the way he'd looked at the convention barely a month ago, animated and preening, the focus of everyone's attention; this is how he is after, still coming down, but still up and riding a high that John thinks might be like what flying might once have been for him.
"Maybe it'll be quiet for a while," John offers. "You know, mid-day lull, people back in their offices… nice and quiet" He trails off, watches for the few seconds needed for his words to penetrate Rodney's skull and work through the several layers of obliviousness surrounding his brain.
"It should be," Rodney says, his voice suddenly unsteady. "That's usually how it is."
"That's a good thing, then."
Leaning in the rest of the way is easier with Rodney turning to him, sliding into a kiss that's natural and terrifying, how easy it happens. Dimly, he hears the Voice shuff softly to the floor, dropped when he reaches up to grip Rodney's shoulder. The muscle and bone of it is firm under his hand, product of lifting slabs of salt, or maybe just Rodney being sturdier than he usually gives himself credit for being. He smells like the peat and hickory from the smoked salts, and he tastes omnipresently of salt, too many kinds to filter through, and coffee and the caramels.
"'S good," Rodney mutters against his lips. Usually John doesn't go for talking during making out, especially when he's twisted uncomfortably on his bar stool and Rodney's feet keep knocking into the legs as he tries to get closer. John tries to lean back and his elbow bumps into the cash register. "Come here," Rodney orders, satisfaction traded for bossiness, and his hand cradling John's head keeps him still, encourages him up and open and oh god, right there like that.
Breath doesn't matter so much like this, or the ache low in his long-abused spine. It's the getting closer, and rediscovering the texture of Rodney's lips and snatching breath when he can, when Rodney lets him up and John can pull himself away.
"You've been stealing caramels," Rodney informs him solemnly before kissing him again, slow, intent stroke of his tongue across John's lower lip that turns to a glide into John's mouth.
"Pay you back," John says, and then sighs something he hopes Rodney understands as shut up. Arousal tightens, heats, unfurls in his gut, so good he can't imagine how he'd gone without it for so long, and without Rodney and the dependable press of his body, and how he kisses: mercurial, quick, but with dedication John can answer. He's practical with his hands, fingers teasing at the collar of John's shirt, wandering up under it (the inconvenience of t-shirts, John sort of resents them at the moment). The pressure's just right, scratch and rub of fingertips across John's belly, where middle age is doing its best to soften him.
Rodney's shirt is a different matter, buttoned, easy to undo enough for John to dip his head and lick and nip and Rodney's neck. And Rodney's skin is soft, already familiar; he's ticklish, or else John's fingers are the right kind of rough, between years with a gun and then years with guitars, building calluses against the strings. Probably, John thinks hazily, he could keep playing Rodney up to coming, if they had tissues or anything, or maybe a blow job if he's still limber enough to slide off his chair and onto the floor.
It sounds good, really good, enough for his lungs to lock and his head to go dizzy and both these things having nothing to do with Rodney methodically stealing his coherence.
"I could…" He licks his lips, moist and salty but already chapped from Rodney's stubble. "I could suck you off."
The offer hangs there a moment, Rodney's eyes glassily blue and drinking it in, his brain needing a heartbeat that his body doesn't: pretty much all of him shouts agreement, yes yes yes written in the long shudder and the impulsive, sloppy kiss he offers John in payment. It's tongue and teeth, and distracting, Rodney trying to defy gravity to straddle him, and the hands John wants to push him back end up grasping Rodney's shirt to pull him closer. His forearm slides across wood, across glass, and his back protests feebly, but that's not much, not next to Rodney's hands sliding low across his back, under the loose waist of his jeans.
"Let me," he gasps when Rodney lets him up, "let me…" Rodney nods wordlessly and steps back, and oh god, this is going to be -
The bells jingle, and close behind them comes "Rodney? Oh, oh my god-" and the sound of something almost falling over.
"Elizabeth!" Rodney yelps. He rockets backward, one hand coming perilously close to John's nose. Wild-eyed, disheveled, flailing, and he looks good, John decides, way too good to be stuck here for the next four hours. His own body hums the way it does when he's exposed to too much Rodney at once, like it's on overload and can't process, and all the energy, the come on, now I want you has to go somewhere.
"Oh. Oh my god," Elizabeth stammers. Her hands have locked around the strap of her purse as though for dear life; Rodney looks like he needs something to hold onto as well. John tries to keep the freak-out inside - and really, it's not alarming so much as it is pretty fucking funny. He can't quite keep back a smirk, but manages not to laugh, says c'mere and uses Rodney's frozen moment of open-mouthed puzzlement to rebutton Rodney's collar.
"I was just coming by to ask you if you had more of the Australian salt… Diplomatic dinner, some envoys from Australia…" Elizabeth glances at John and offers him a tremulous smile when she realizes he's looking at her. "Do you have any more? Of the salt, I mean?"
"Yes, the salt," Rodney says absently. He rubs at his neck, tries to glance furtively downward, and winces. "I have it."
"Why don't you go get it, then?" John suggests. He does some shifting of his own, hopes it looks more graceful than it probably does.
"The customer is always inconvenient," Rodney grumbles in reply. He makes a futile effort at straightening his shirt, then, careful to remain behind the counter, turns to face Elizabeth, who has gone alarmingly red in the dimness of the store. "Salt," is all he has to say to that before shutting up.
John retrieves the Voice and returns to his chair. He tries to push wanting to the back of his mind, where it doesn't want to go, and thinks about roommates, and plays absently with the wrapper of a chocolate that's coated, so Rodney says, with the finest golden smoked salt from Wales.
-end-
If anyone wants to write the inevitable conclusion, they can… I am just not feeling terribly porny lately. (I knowwww, it's tragic.)
A follow-up to The Hard Sel (aka selmelier!Rodney), and a busy day at Atlantis.
A day of salt and newspapers
John doesn’t open Folsom Prison on Mondays and Tuesdays, a side-effect of a youth spent marching to his father’s nine-to-five six days a week drum. Most of his business comes in on Friday and Saturday, anyway, and Sundays after teenagers and middle-aged men like John escape from church to come look at vintage Gibson acoustics and Strats. Walking past it on the way from his apartment to Atlantis makes him smile and shudder a little in relief; he loves his store, but sometimes needs freedom from it.
Mondays used to be for getting stuff done, or pretending to help Ronon clean up Sateda in exchange for drinks Ronon insists aren’t payment. When it’s a shot of thirty-year-old Glenfiddich - laid down, Ronon likes to say, when he wasn’t even around yet - probably it isn’t. Tuesdays were for random things, going downtown or going upstate to see Teyla, who comes down to the city only when absoutely necessary, either to visit restaurants or visit Rodney, who has (so John has learned) a pathological fear of highway driving and only goes up to Athos if Ronon goes.
Rodney. Mondays are for Rodney already, a routine that John doesn’t examine too closely. He almost doesn't need to, because the implications of that aren't implications so much as huge screaming neon signs informing him he's traded whiskey older than Ronon for hanging out with a guy who sells salt.
Atlantis is a few blocks from Folsom Prison, with its blue awning and the two small dogwoods that flank its doors. Not much outside tells you anything about what it is - according to Rodney, he’s had stoners wander in looking for their headshop and exotic dancers and a bunch of goth girls into "the occult" - but walking in is like walking into a Carlsbad Caverns that's been bottled up and labeled and boxed, or cut into slabs of rose and salmon and put on display. The prices, as much as the sudden dimness after a bright spring day, still make John blink.
His official job description, according to Rodney, is "to sit over there - not there, yes, behind the desk, next to the caramels - and look hot. You wouldn't believe what you've done for my repeat clientele in the past three weeks - not," he'd added, "that I'm keeping you around for that reason."
"Of course not," John had said.
The fourth Monday after meeting Rodney finds John in his appointed chair, flipping through the Village Voice and swiping caramels whenever Rodney's back is turned. Today that happens to be more or less constant, which means John can't look at caramel - Hawai'ian volcano salt be damned - after his seventh piece. There's a rush on, restaurant buyers coming in to renegotiate some contracts and a caterer with a Bridezilla breathing fire behind her who need thirty minutes and two near-coronaries on Rodney's part to decide the Himalayan salt platters won't go with the flowers.
"No," Rodney says in response a question. His voice has gone small and tight, a warning sign to those who know him. Clearly, the caterer and Bridezilla don't. "You cannot… you can't dye them."
"They aren't right, though," Bridezilla says petulantly. "What about bleaching them? Could they be lightened?"
"These are Himalayan salt platters." From across the store, John can still see the rhythmic, indignant quiver in Rodney's shoulders. "They are, unlike your hair, apparently, un-dyeable and un-bleachable."
The caterer tries again. "What about the finger bowls?"
"What part of Himalayan salt do you not understand? Do you think that maybe, by some miracle, the chemical makeup of the plates and finger bowls is different enough to allow you to dye them Vibrant Apricot, or whatever it is you want to do? Or, as is more likely, have you not been paying attention to a single word I've said?" By the final syllable, Rodney's voice has reached a pitch usually attained only by dolphins and small children. "Please, please go away now. You could try Salt and Peter down on Fifth, they might be dumb enough to let you try."
"Thank you," the Bridezilla huffs as she gathers up her purse and cell phone. John tries to summon up a scrap of sympathy, but finds it too difficult and stops trying. "We'll do that."
"My condolences to your fiancé," Rodney mumbles. The Bridezilla's eyes go wide - not unlike Rodney's, really - but the caterer takes her arm and, with a final glower in Rodney's direction, shepherds her out the door.
From there the day only gets worse and Rodney only gets testier and more snappish. John knows the feeling, the belief - no, the conviction - that every idiot and psychotic person in the world has conspired to make your life hell for the day. A man comes by looking for "no-sodium salt" and gets a lecture taken from Chemistry for the Terminally Moronic on the difference between edible salt and salt that will kill you ("You could try cocaine hydrochloride, but I highly doubt that will help your blood pressure"). A woman looking for African-imported salt keeps wandering out of the "African salt" section and picking up random bottles and asking "Is this African?" ("Does it say African?" "No." "I am not being paid enough to give lessons in logical deduction"). A flock of the cerebrally-challenged comes in at once, voiciferously demanding attention that, once Rodney directs it on them, they're sorry to get.
The only bit of normality in the first part of the day, other than the few restaurateurs, is a man in a trench coat who comes in with a vaguely puzzled expression, as though he's not entirely sure why he's here. He buys a few jars of Alaea salt and asks for it gift-wrapped. The gift-wrapping destroys the normality, but it's so weird that Rodney's knocked off his snark enough to be polite and get out the ribbon and gift bags.
That's pretty much the last bit of "calm" for the next hour, with another group of customers coming in on their lunch break. John gives up on the Voice and sits back to watch.
"No! No no no no no, for the last time, you do not ever ever use smoked salt on margarita glasses." Rodney shakes a glass vial of Halen Môn in the faces of the latest customers, a married pair of self-proclaimed "foodies." They had oozed into the store on a thin veneer of self-importance, and John had seen the trainwreck coming as soon as the man had picked up a box of Breton smoked salt and mangled the name into Sell Grease ow Bretton, and then looked at the price.
"The taste," Rodney continues wrathfully, "the taste and texture are completely wrong; it would be like drinking bacon-flavored tequila. Also, on a related topic, do you have any idea how obnoxious I find that word 'foodies,' and that I, in fact, wanted to cram a jar of Marazul down your throat the second I heard that word come out of your mouth? Similarly, did you know that Isaac Newton wrote the Principia, the greatest and purest expression of human thought, in Latin specifically so completely clueless people who thought they knew about mathematics wouldn't harass him? Well, now I know how he felt." He pauses. "Actually, I've always known how he felt, but meeting you two has only reinforced that conviction."
The foodies leave, the wife clutching her husband's hand and the husband's mouth working silently in a reply John knows he won't be able to find for another week. The bell jingles in the sudden silence, and the door swings shut. Rodney sighs in relief.
"I would be okay with this if it wasn't for the damned customers sometimes," he grumbles. "I honestly don't know how Teyla does it. Probably she foists all the morons off on Halling."
"You could ask Ronon for advice." John picks up the Voice again but doesn't look at it. He's too busy with Rodney, who is rumpled and mussed, still buzzing with irritated adrenaline.
"If I actually looked like I could crush someone's skull with my bare hands, I would," Rodney says dryly. He sighs, and the tension subsides a little. "Seriously, did you hear those people?"
John tries to imagine what it would be like, coming in here for the first time and thinking he knew something about something. Rodney would probably end him, John concludes, "ridiculously, and I mean, really, preposterously" good-looking as he is. Most people don't have what it takes to stand up to a McKaysian tirade - then again, most people have the sense to tell Rodney what they're looking for and listen to his suggestions, which are really orders.
"You know," John drawls, "they do say 'the customer is always right.''"
"Who's 'they', and have they been pubicly discredited?" Rodney asks suspiciously. He starts to move around the store, straightening and checking inventory, replacing the box of sel gris the foodies had knocked over earlier. "Seriously, what submoronic asshat came up with that piece of doctrine? The customer is almost always wrong because they have no idea what they're talking about pretty much all of the time. Did you hear them? They wanted to use alder smoked salt for margaritas. How am I supposed to condone that?"
"Good customer service, Rodney." John smirks at him, and Rodney scowls. "When we went to that place Ronon suggested you were bitching about its absence."
"Yes, well, in the majority of applications, it's a ridiculous doctrine." Rodney sniffs. "And between Chez Overdone Filet and dealing with my cable company, I suspect 'good' customer service is, like most religions, based on a concept that is completely mythical."
"Mmm-hmm." John turns a page and starts scanning the classifieds. His lease is up in a few months, and the economy means people aren't snapping up vintage guitars like they used to. Unfortunately, the neighborhoods are all insanely expensive, or would require a roommate. He doesn't do roommates, not since the Air Force. "I'm just sayin', Rodney… Tact might be nice."
"World peace and a cure for cancer might also be nice, but you don't see me asking for the impossible." Rodney stalks into the back of the store, around the counter. Everything in Atlantis is gently honey-colored, worn edges, not much like Rodney at all. It came like this had been Rodney's explanation. It came with the long oak display counter, too, worn shiny on top so the wood is almost as smooth as the glass that encases rows of chocolates, sweets, and salt-decorated pastries. Rodney leans against it, bracing his weight on his forearms, and it's easy to tilt into his warmth, the energy that comes off him like a magnetic field.
He looks good like this, his color up, fingers drumming something quick and classical on the cashdesk. Like, John thinks, the way he'd looked at the convention barely a month ago, animated and preening, the focus of everyone's attention; this is how he is after, still coming down, but still up and riding a high that John thinks might be like what flying might once have been for him.
"Maybe it'll be quiet for a while," John offers. "You know, mid-day lull, people back in their offices… nice and quiet" He trails off, watches for the few seconds needed for his words to penetrate Rodney's skull and work through the several layers of obliviousness surrounding his brain.
"It should be," Rodney says, his voice suddenly unsteady. "That's usually how it is."
"That's a good thing, then."
Leaning in the rest of the way is easier with Rodney turning to him, sliding into a kiss that's natural and terrifying, how easy it happens. Dimly, he hears the Voice shuff softly to the floor, dropped when he reaches up to grip Rodney's shoulder. The muscle and bone of it is firm under his hand, product of lifting slabs of salt, or maybe just Rodney being sturdier than he usually gives himself credit for being. He smells like the peat and hickory from the smoked salts, and he tastes omnipresently of salt, too many kinds to filter through, and coffee and the caramels.
"'S good," Rodney mutters against his lips. Usually John doesn't go for talking during making out, especially when he's twisted uncomfortably on his bar stool and Rodney's feet keep knocking into the legs as he tries to get closer. John tries to lean back and his elbow bumps into the cash register. "Come here," Rodney orders, satisfaction traded for bossiness, and his hand cradling John's head keeps him still, encourages him up and open and oh god, right there like that.
Breath doesn't matter so much like this, or the ache low in his long-abused spine. It's the getting closer, and rediscovering the texture of Rodney's lips and snatching breath when he can, when Rodney lets him up and John can pull himself away.
"You've been stealing caramels," Rodney informs him solemnly before kissing him again, slow, intent stroke of his tongue across John's lower lip that turns to a glide into John's mouth.
"Pay you back," John says, and then sighs something he hopes Rodney understands as shut up. Arousal tightens, heats, unfurls in his gut, so good he can't imagine how he'd gone without it for so long, and without Rodney and the dependable press of his body, and how he kisses: mercurial, quick, but with dedication John can answer. He's practical with his hands, fingers teasing at the collar of John's shirt, wandering up under it (the inconvenience of t-shirts, John sort of resents them at the moment). The pressure's just right, scratch and rub of fingertips across John's belly, where middle age is doing its best to soften him.
Rodney's shirt is a different matter, buttoned, easy to undo enough for John to dip his head and lick and nip and Rodney's neck. And Rodney's skin is soft, already familiar; he's ticklish, or else John's fingers are the right kind of rough, between years with a gun and then years with guitars, building calluses against the strings. Probably, John thinks hazily, he could keep playing Rodney up to coming, if they had tissues or anything, or maybe a blow job if he's still limber enough to slide off his chair and onto the floor.
It sounds good, really good, enough for his lungs to lock and his head to go dizzy and both these things having nothing to do with Rodney methodically stealing his coherence.
"I could…" He licks his lips, moist and salty but already chapped from Rodney's stubble. "I could suck you off."
The offer hangs there a moment, Rodney's eyes glassily blue and drinking it in, his brain needing a heartbeat that his body doesn't: pretty much all of him shouts agreement, yes yes yes written in the long shudder and the impulsive, sloppy kiss he offers John in payment. It's tongue and teeth, and distracting, Rodney trying to defy gravity to straddle him, and the hands John wants to push him back end up grasping Rodney's shirt to pull him closer. His forearm slides across wood, across glass, and his back protests feebly, but that's not much, not next to Rodney's hands sliding low across his back, under the loose waist of his jeans.
"Let me," he gasps when Rodney lets him up, "let me…" Rodney nods wordlessly and steps back, and oh god, this is going to be -
The bells jingle, and close behind them comes "Rodney? Oh, oh my god-" and the sound of something almost falling over.
"Elizabeth!" Rodney yelps. He rockets backward, one hand coming perilously close to John's nose. Wild-eyed, disheveled, flailing, and he looks good, John decides, way too good to be stuck here for the next four hours. His own body hums the way it does when he's exposed to too much Rodney at once, like it's on overload and can't process, and all the energy, the come on, now I want you has to go somewhere.
"Oh. Oh my god," Elizabeth stammers. Her hands have locked around the strap of her purse as though for dear life; Rodney looks like he needs something to hold onto as well. John tries to keep the freak-out inside - and really, it's not alarming so much as it is pretty fucking funny. He can't quite keep back a smirk, but manages not to laugh, says c'mere and uses Rodney's frozen moment of open-mouthed puzzlement to rebutton Rodney's collar.
"I was just coming by to ask you if you had more of the Australian salt… Diplomatic dinner, some envoys from Australia…" Elizabeth glances at John and offers him a tremulous smile when she realizes he's looking at her. "Do you have any more? Of the salt, I mean?"
"Yes, the salt," Rodney says absently. He rubs at his neck, tries to glance furtively downward, and winces. "I have it."
"Why don't you go get it, then?" John suggests. He does some shifting of his own, hopes it looks more graceful than it probably does.
"The customer is always inconvenient," Rodney grumbles in reply. He makes a futile effort at straightening his shirt, then, careful to remain behind the counter, turns to face Elizabeth, who has gone alarmingly red in the dimness of the store. "Salt," is all he has to say to that before shutting up.
John retrieves the Voice and returns to his chair. He tries to push wanting to the back of his mind, where it doesn't want to go, and thinks about roommates, and plays absently with the wrapper of a chocolate that's coated, so Rodney says, with the finest golden smoked salt from Wales.
-end-
If anyone wants to write the inevitable conclusion, they can… I am just not feeling terribly porny lately. (I knowwww, it's tragic.)