like holy palmers
{ kissing rodney wasn’t the stupidest thing john had done, but it fell pretty high up on the list}
let us like holy palmers kiss
for lips are false and fickle
but hands speak true
1. Seconds/Minutes
Apparently, not even a kiss was enough to get Rodney to shut up, because the guy’s mouth was still moving and he was making these little mmphing noises. Any minute now he was bound to get a bright idea and bite John’s lip, so John began maneuvering the two of them-still locked in the most fervent kiss he’d experienced in at least eight and a half years-toward a corner/alcove thing he could see out of the corner of his eye. It would’ve been useless for escaping the determined Yannara, but it might contain the damage of Rodney’s impending explosion.
“Mmph mph mmphm MMMPH,” Rodney muffled as his back hit the wall, and John could tell the guy was about two seconds away from kicking him in the knee, so he hastily substituted a hand for his mouth after checking surreptitiously to make sure no one was paying too much attention.
“Look, keep it down, would you?” he muttered.
“Keep it down?” Rodney looked like a angry wet cat-minus the hair sticking up in funny tufts. But he had the same outraged I cannot believe you just did that to me expression. “Major, you just kissed me!” He shook himself loose from John’s grasp and began edging away.
“It wasn’t like I had much choice in the matter,” John said, voice sarcastic but body-language as casually amorous as he could manage under the circumstances. It would have been a lot easier if Rodney hadn’t kept shying away like a spooked horse every time John tried to place a friendly hand on his arm.
“Was someone holding a gun to your head? No? Well then, I don’t see what you could possibly mean by ‘not having much choice’.” He shuddered when John finally managed to catch him again, but at least he stopped trying to fidget his way back into the main room.
“Well,” John said wryly, a tone he’d lost in the desert places and was only beginning to reacquire, “it was either proclaim myself as already yours or get snapped up by the creepy semi-high-tech definitely-not-Amish woman. And since I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize a toothbrush if it bit her,” at which Rodney snorted, “in comparison you seemed like a match made in heaven.”
“Dental hygiene is very important,” Rodney stated stiffly, sounding somewhat less belligerent.
“Yes, it is,” John agreed, all easy affability. “Hence my desire to avoid being kissed by someone who has obviously never heard of the concept.”
“Understandable,” Rodney said, the irritation in his voice negated by the way his body finally, finally began to relax. “Just-don’t make a habit of it. There’s already enough gossip about us, and we don’t need Ford spreading more.” Though really, Teyla, with her incomplete grasp of Earth mores, was more likely to innocently say something unfortunately true where Ford would attempt obfuscation.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” John said, and didn’t tell Rodney that it’d been John who started the first rumor months and months (and all eternity) ago, back on Earth. He couldn’t remember why, only that it’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Which, really, was the reasoning behind a lot more of his disasters that he was willing to admit, even to himself. “C’mon-let’s get out of here before Yannara gets suspicious.”
2. Days/Weeks
Rodney didn’t say anything about the kiss-kisses, plural: that seemed important-when they got back to the city, which was a relief. It wouldn’t have been an actual problem, but John had enough hassles to deal with as it was. However, the silence about the kiss spilled over into silence about everything-around John, at least. After the first day and a half he started keeping track, and two weeks later he could say with certainty that Rodney was speaking just as vociferously as ever, as long as John wasn’t there. Or at least as long as Rodney thought he wasn’t. As soon as he saw John, his diatribes suddenly fluttered away into nothing, leaving Rodney looking like he’d swallowed a jar full of butterflies.
It reminded John of the way Rodney had looked after the second kiss, the one that shut him up and sent Yannara flouncing away. At that memory, John started to wonder, a bit uncomfortably, if he’d been perhaps too successful in his verisimilitude. If, perhaps, Rodney thought there were reasons to keep silent beyond not supplying more ammunition for the already rampant gossip about the two of them.
But that didn’t explain why Rodney was talking to everyone except John. If the kiss(es) were bugging him so much, he should just say so. Or, at the very least, send an email.
After another couple days and a mission that almost went down the tubes because the people they were trying to trade with thought Rodney was afraid of John (prompting Teyla to ask, sotto voce, on their way back, if there was something wrong between the two of them. “Just a misunderstanding,” John said, and hoped he was right), John’d had enough. It took him another day and a half, but he finally managed to corner Rodney while there was no one around.
“Hey, Rodney,” John said, and was almost amused to see Rodney go stiff. But it was pretty obvious that Rodney was still there only because he was currently wedged underneath a sullenly-blinking console, and that took all the fun out of it.
“What do you want, Major?”
“What’re you doing?” John countered, because want was a word he didn’t let himself use anymore.
Rodney huffed in irritation, but answered. “Trying to bypass whatever’s screwed up the heat and humidity controls for this sector. Very boring and not something you’d be interested in, so don’t even bother pretending.” He banged something inside the console, making all the lights flash in unison, and at some point John was going to have to find out why Ancient electronics didn’t need to be unplugged before having their innards played with. “And don’t tell me there’s some sort of emergency, because I’ve got my radio on and I know there isn’t.”
“Can’t a guy just hang out with another guy?” John asked, only half-rhetorically.
“Not when one guy is a brilliant scientist like myself, and the other is a slouchy, daredevil, ambush-kissing pilot!” Something sparked, and Rodney swore, the harsh edges of the word blunted by the console.
“Ambush-kissing-?” It didn’t make any more sense when he repeated it out loud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rodney shoved himself out from underneath the console and glared. “What do you mean, ‘what’s that supposed to mean’? You ambush-kissed me! And then ran away, probably laughing at me as you went, and left me standing there looking like an idiot.”
Right. That. So yes, he probably hadn’t handled the situation quite as well as he could have.
“I wasn’t laughing,” he said with care; Rodney was the closest he had to a friend. “And I doubt you looked like an idiot.”
“How would you know?” Rodney asked bitterly. “It’s not like you stuck around long enough to see.”
“Because you’re not an easy person to make look like an idiot.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but if there was a time for judicious lying, this was definitely it. “And I didn’t ambush you.”
“What would you call it, then? A brief flirtation with homosexuality, and I happened to be the only option available?” He snorted, derisive, incredulous, and plunged back underneath the console, leaving John open-mouthed like a fish abandoned upon the shore by some seemingly-friendly wave. “Next time, find someone else to use as your guinea pig. I’m not interested.”
Not interested as in ‘Don’t kiss me again’, or as in ‘Congratulations, you’ve destroyed our fledgling friendship and now I would rather hang out with a wraith even though he’d try to eat me’? But he couldn’t say that, not now, with Rodney apparently determined to misread every word, every action.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, knowing how feeble it sounded despite it being the truth. Rodney started to say something in retort, sarcasm evident even in the first scarcely-formed syllable, but John kept talking because he knew if he didn’t, if he allowed Rodney to careen on in his misunderstanding, that would be it. Finito. That’s all she wrote, folks.
“And no, it wasn’t like that either,” he continued, dropping into a crouch beside the parts of Rodney not buried inside the console. Told himself he didn’t see Rodney flinch when John accidentally bumped his elbow. “You remember Drakka, the head honcho on Norosalim? The one who got to decide if we would continue having breakfast for the foreseeable future?” Rodney didn’t respond, but he went still, either listening or planning how to make John’s life a utter hell; John chose to believe it was the former. “Well, he had a niece who seemed to think I was, in fact, as you have so often accused me of being, this galaxy’s version of Kirk. She wouldn’t take a subtle hint and I couldn’t risk making her relatives mad at me and you were within grabbing distance.” And oblivious to everything not science-related, as always. “And I panicked.” Which was almost true. Close enough for the purpose.
He shuffled back a little, so Rodney could surface if he wanted. “That’s all it was-just me trying to avoid an unwanted lip-lock.”
“So instead you forced one on me.” Rodney squirmed around so he could peer up at John. “Gee, thanks. Great thinking there, Major.” But the almost-blind anger seemed to have faded, leaving just a flush of hurt Rodney probably wasn’t even aware of, and John began to hope he’d been overly pessimistic about Rodney going off to become buddies with the next Wraith he encountered.
“I thought we’d established that I wasn’t thinking.” John settled back against the wall, still within arm’s reach of Rodney, but not obviously so; a grab at this point might ruin things irreparably.
“That’s nothing new,” Rodney said-said, not muttered, and maybe things really would be okay after all.
“Hey,” John protested, a knee-jerk reaction that he regretted immediately. This was supposed to be an apology, after all. “Well, yeah, okay. I guess that’s fair enough.”
This concession was greeted by a painful-sounding thud, closely followed by muffled-not swearing, because Rodney didn’t, but harsh imprecations against the console and its creators, and thumping that suggested some unsuspecting piece of equipment had been press-ganged into serving as a hammer. John took advantage of the commotion to slide close enough to nudge Rodney’s elbow again, although he didn’t.
“Need a hand?” he asked, fully expecting a refusal.
“No,” Rodney snapped, thumping a few more times for emphasis. “...Although I guess you could stick around, if you wanted,” he added uncomfortably.
And while John didn’t let himself want things, not anymore, he couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be at the moment, or anyone still living that he’d rather spend the evening with. So he slumped against the console and listened to Rodney mutter to himself and was content.
3. Months
“Why’d you kiss me?” Rodney asked abruptly as they left yet another Oh No, We’re All Going To Die staff meeting.
“What?” John said stupidly, exhaustion-fogged brain still chewing through all the ways the expedition was screwed. You’d think the Ancients would have left instructions on how to recharge the batteries for the place.
“You kissed me,” Rodney said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. John stopped walking.
“I did not kiss you.” He was chronically sleep-deprived and slightly hallucinatory, but he wasn’t far gone enough to do that. Probably.
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I think I’d remember.”
“With tongue!”
“That I’d definitely remember.” John started walking again, quickly, half in hope that Rodney would give up, half to lessen the likelihood that he’d fall down before reaching his quarters. At this stage of exhaustion, careful handling of momentum was key.
“You did! Five months ago,” Rodney elaborated, almost skipping to keep up. John considered this for about two seconds before shaking his head.
“Nope, not ringing any bells.”
“The planet with all the spices? Where I sneezed for five minutes straight and Ford mocked me for it?” He was beginning to sound a little desperate, for which John probably should have felt guilty, but he wasn’t intentionally stonewalling Rodney. There just wasn’t any way John would have kissed a guy and . . . then . . . forgotten about it. . . .
Oh.
“There wasn’t any tongue,” he said as repressively as he could manage. He didn’t feel up to being crowed at by a triumphant Rodney. “And in any case,” he continued over Rodney’s Ha! I told you so, “that was months ago. Why bring it up now?” The how stupid are you? look Rodney aimed at him would have . . . would have . . . would have done something hyperbolic, but John was having trouble moving forward in a straight line. Descriptive language was a bit beyond his capabilities at the moment.
“We’re going to die,” Rodney said sourly, triumph gone flat, and yes, John already knew that, but he really didn’t need to hear someone else say it. “I’d rather get this sorted out before the wraith kill us.”
“There’s nothing to sort out,” John retorted, angry mostly because some things shouldn’t be said where others could hear. “I kissed you to avoid having to insult a couple of very important people.” And a little bit angry because Rodney had been thinking-well, whatever he’d been thinking-all those months and had never said a word of it to John so things could be set straight. “Sorry if I got your hopes up,” mean, too mean, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, “but I definitely don’t swing that way, and if I did, it wouldn’t be for you.”
“I didn’t-that’s not-” Rodney visibly crumpled under the force of John’s rejection. “I wasn’t-” He looked and sounded like someone standing on the brink of hysterics, and John realized that he did care after all.
“Yeah, I know,” he sighed after watching Rodney flail verbally and physically for another few seconds. “Me either.” Another thirty feet and he could collapse face-down on his bed and sleep for fourteen hours or until the next catastrophe, which would probably happen five minutes after his eyes closed, given the way things had been going lately. But he couldn’t leave the matter like this, not and be able to look anyone in the face tomorrow, so he forced his knees to stop folding and focused what little attention he had left on Rodney.
Who had given up on flailing in favor of staring at John with an expression suggesting he’d just stepped off a cliff and discovered it was actually four inches high. “Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
“Okay,” John repeated back meaninglessly, and hoped very much that everything would make more sense in the morning.
4. Years
After the break up with Katie, John got Rodney drunk. He didn’t mean to, but somehow Rodney tossed back a (small) bottle and a half of the stuff from Alpasa while John was still digging out his carefully hoarded supply of chips.
“Take it easy, Rodney. That’s all I’ve got.” John dumped the chips between them and rescued the remaining bottles. “Besides, I’ve heard stories of guys going blind from this stuff.” He took a cautious sip of his own and was pleasantly surprised. The last batch had been pretty much horse-piss, but this time it was almost fruity-if he ignored the way it left his mouth numb for a couple seconds after he swallowed.
“Blind? Really?” Rodney studied his half-empty bottle for a moment, perhaps in hope of finding a warning label, then shrugged and downed what was left. Geeze-was the guy trying for alcohol poisoning?
“No, not really, but that’s no excuse for drinking it like Kool-Aid.”
“I liked Kool-Aid when I was a kid. No surprises. Always tasted exactly the way it looked: absolutely artificial.” He shook his empty bottle, frowned when it produced no sloshing noises, and chucked it over the balcony railing.
“Biology’s going to kill you for that,” John commented.
“Only if you rat me out.” Rodney turned a lustful eye to the bottles being guarded by John, and John wished briefly that he could think of some excuse for tossing them over the side as Rodney’d just done. Except Biology really would kill-well, verbally maim-anyone who so carelessly screwed with the pristine ecosystem of New Atlantica.
“Look-I know you feel pretty crummy about being dumped, but alcohol poisoning won’t improve the situation. Not that I speak from experience.” Technically true. He resisted the urge to down his own bottle as though it were a mere shot-glass, settling for another long sip and the oddly soothing feeling of internal fire.
Rodney pulled a face he probably couldn’t have managed while sober. “I’m pretty sure it would, actually, but just for the record, Katie didn’t dump me. We both agreed that the relationship just wasn’t working and parted amicably.” His aborted reach toward John’s liquid stash suggested another technical truth, but one John wouldn’t let him get away with.
“‘Just wasn’t working?’ You bought her a ring! A very ugly ring, but still.” Nancy would have turned up her nose at him if he’d tried giving her one even remotely similar-which was why he’d gone with his mother’s old ring, trusting the good taste of his parents. It’d been enough to win her, though not to keep her.
“I did it mostly because Jeannie told me to,” Rodney confessed distantly, eyes still fixed on the bottles by John’s knee. “I told myself she was right, but there were things that made me wonder if it was really what I should be doing.”
“‘Things’? Like what?” As far as John’d been able to tell-as far as anyone had been able to tell, Rodney and Katie had been the real deal: not quite made for each other, but pretty close.
“Like this.”
And then somehow John’s mouth was suddenly smashed against Rodney’s-and was that a tongue? He jerked back, reflexively scrubbing his mouth with his sleeve. “Jesus, Rodney, what the hell’d you do that for?”
Rodney wavered a bit, visibly processing the question. “Always wondered if you tasted the way I remember,” he eventually offered, eyes seeing something about two feet in front of and a couple inches to the side of where John actually was.
“I- Wait, what?”
“I wanted to see if you taste the same,” Rodney restated, with the careful enunciation of someone who will slur otherwise.
“. . . Do I?” John asked, despite suspicions that the question made him sound like a teenager. Or possibly someone trapped in a chick flick against his will.
Rodney considered. “No,” he said eventually, just as John began to think he’d forgotten the question. “You taste like booze this time instead of spices.”
Spices? Oh. Oh. “Norosalim. I’d forgotten about that.” Repression, probably. “You do realize I kissed you that time because I about to be jumped by some crazy lady.”
Rodney blinked at him, then grabbed a new bottle and took a large swing like it was mouthwash. But he sounded almost sober when he spoke again. “No, I didn’t.”
“Sorry?” John hazarded, not sure why exactly he was apologizing. “You never said anything, so I figured you’d figured out what was going on and had decided to pretend it never happened, just like I’ve been happily doing until now.”
“Like there was any way that conversation could’ve gone well: ‘hey, does kissing me mean you want to go steady?’ And then you’d break my nose.”
John scowled at the finger pointed accusingly at him. “Well, maybe, if you’d asked like that. But we seem to be doing okay at the moment.” In support of this claim, he offered Rodney a precious, precious bag of chips, which Rodney regarded blankly for a moment before holding up his bottle as a counter-argument.
“Only because I’m all liquored-up and you’re feeling guilty for something that’s not your fault.”
“You did spend the last three years doubting our friendship because of something I did without thinking.” But that was a token protest; John didn’t feel guilty so much as disappointed in both of them. Disappointed that Rodney hadn’t trusted him enough to say something sooner.
“Not doubting it-just wondering whether you wanted it to be something other than that.” And then he drank the remaining contents of the bottle in the most blatant display of defiance John had seen since his brother Dave took Jenny Marloe to the prom over their father’s metaphorical dead body.
“Do you?” Jon countered, putting the chips down where they both could reach them, despite the temptation to throw the bag at Rodney’s head for being such an idiot.
“I asked first.”
“No, you didn’t. Come on-don’t act like a six-year-old.”
“I am not acting like a-don’t make that face at me. I am not avoiding the issue.” But the way Rodney’s gaze skittered away from John’s suggested otherwise. John held his tongue, trusting that the silence would prove more effective than anything he could say. Eventually Rodney sighed and frowned down at his hands, which were fidgeting with his now-empty bottle. “No,” he said, shoulders slumped, not looking up to gauge John’s reaction. “I really, really don’t.” He sounded almost surprised and perhaps faintly disappointed.
“Same here. See? Easy as that.”
And it really, really was.
5. Millennia
He never told Rodney about the things the hologram said as they-as John-slogged back through thigh-high sand to the gate room, about the grief and misery and loneliness evident in its every word, every feigned motion.
Or the things John said in turn, full of half-truths and mostly-false comfort. Those were reserved for a future Rodney who would (o please, God) never exist now, spoken as to a man about to die.
John would give anything, anything, up to half his soul, to keep from ever having to tell such lies again.
let us like holy palmers kiss
for lips are false and fickle
but hands speak true
1. Seconds/Minutes
Apparently, not even a kiss was enough to get Rodney to shut up, because the guy’s mouth was still moving and he was making these little mmphing noises. Any minute now he was bound to get a bright idea and bite John’s lip, so John began maneuvering the two of them-still locked in the most fervent kiss he’d experienced in at least eight and a half years-toward a corner/alcove thing he could see out of the corner of his eye. It would’ve been useless for escaping the determined Yannara, but it might contain the damage of Rodney’s impending explosion.
“Mmph mph mmphm MMMPH,” Rodney muffled as his back hit the wall, and John could tell the guy was about two seconds away from kicking him in the knee, so he hastily substituted a hand for his mouth after checking surreptitiously to make sure no one was paying too much attention.
“Look, keep it down, would you?” he muttered.
“Keep it down?” Rodney looked like a angry wet cat-minus the hair sticking up in funny tufts. But he had the same outraged I cannot believe you just did that to me expression. “Major, you just kissed me!” He shook himself loose from John’s grasp and began edging away.
“It wasn’t like I had much choice in the matter,” John said, voice sarcastic but body-language as casually amorous as he could manage under the circumstances. It would have been a lot easier if Rodney hadn’t kept shying away like a spooked horse every time John tried to place a friendly hand on his arm.
“Was someone holding a gun to your head? No? Well then, I don’t see what you could possibly mean by ‘not having much choice’.” He shuddered when John finally managed to catch him again, but at least he stopped trying to fidget his way back into the main room.
“Well,” John said wryly, a tone he’d lost in the desert places and was only beginning to reacquire, “it was either proclaim myself as already yours or get snapped up by the creepy semi-high-tech definitely-not-Amish woman. And since I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize a toothbrush if it bit her,” at which Rodney snorted, “in comparison you seemed like a match made in heaven.”
“Dental hygiene is very important,” Rodney stated stiffly, sounding somewhat less belligerent.
“Yes, it is,” John agreed, all easy affability. “Hence my desire to avoid being kissed by someone who has obviously never heard of the concept.”
“Understandable,” Rodney said, the irritation in his voice negated by the way his body finally, finally began to relax. “Just-don’t make a habit of it. There’s already enough gossip about us, and we don’t need Ford spreading more.” Though really, Teyla, with her incomplete grasp of Earth mores, was more likely to innocently say something unfortunately true where Ford would attempt obfuscation.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” John said, and didn’t tell Rodney that it’d been John who started the first rumor months and months (and all eternity) ago, back on Earth. He couldn’t remember why, only that it’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Which, really, was the reasoning behind a lot more of his disasters that he was willing to admit, even to himself. “C’mon-let’s get out of here before Yannara gets suspicious.”
2. Days/Weeks
Rodney didn’t say anything about the kiss-kisses, plural: that seemed important-when they got back to the city, which was a relief. It wouldn’t have been an actual problem, but John had enough hassles to deal with as it was. However, the silence about the kiss spilled over into silence about everything-around John, at least. After the first day and a half he started keeping track, and two weeks later he could say with certainty that Rodney was speaking just as vociferously as ever, as long as John wasn’t there. Or at least as long as Rodney thought he wasn’t. As soon as he saw John, his diatribes suddenly fluttered away into nothing, leaving Rodney looking like he’d swallowed a jar full of butterflies.
It reminded John of the way Rodney had looked after the second kiss, the one that shut him up and sent Yannara flouncing away. At that memory, John started to wonder, a bit uncomfortably, if he’d been perhaps too successful in his verisimilitude. If, perhaps, Rodney thought there were reasons to keep silent beyond not supplying more ammunition for the already rampant gossip about the two of them.
But that didn’t explain why Rodney was talking to everyone except John. If the kiss(es) were bugging him so much, he should just say so. Or, at the very least, send an email.
After another couple days and a mission that almost went down the tubes because the people they were trying to trade with thought Rodney was afraid of John (prompting Teyla to ask, sotto voce, on their way back, if there was something wrong between the two of them. “Just a misunderstanding,” John said, and hoped he was right), John’d had enough. It took him another day and a half, but he finally managed to corner Rodney while there was no one around.
“Hey, Rodney,” John said, and was almost amused to see Rodney go stiff. But it was pretty obvious that Rodney was still there only because he was currently wedged underneath a sullenly-blinking console, and that took all the fun out of it.
“What do you want, Major?”
“What’re you doing?” John countered, because want was a word he didn’t let himself use anymore.
Rodney huffed in irritation, but answered. “Trying to bypass whatever’s screwed up the heat and humidity controls for this sector. Very boring and not something you’d be interested in, so don’t even bother pretending.” He banged something inside the console, making all the lights flash in unison, and at some point John was going to have to find out why Ancient electronics didn’t need to be unplugged before having their innards played with. “And don’t tell me there’s some sort of emergency, because I’ve got my radio on and I know there isn’t.”
“Can’t a guy just hang out with another guy?” John asked, only half-rhetorically.
“Not when one guy is a brilliant scientist like myself, and the other is a slouchy, daredevil, ambush-kissing pilot!” Something sparked, and Rodney swore, the harsh edges of the word blunted by the console.
“Ambush-kissing-?” It didn’t make any more sense when he repeated it out loud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rodney shoved himself out from underneath the console and glared. “What do you mean, ‘what’s that supposed to mean’? You ambush-kissed me! And then ran away, probably laughing at me as you went, and left me standing there looking like an idiot.”
Right. That. So yes, he probably hadn’t handled the situation quite as well as he could have.
“I wasn’t laughing,” he said with care; Rodney was the closest he had to a friend. “And I doubt you looked like an idiot.”
“How would you know?” Rodney asked bitterly. “It’s not like you stuck around long enough to see.”
“Because you’re not an easy person to make look like an idiot.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but if there was a time for judicious lying, this was definitely it. “And I didn’t ambush you.”
“What would you call it, then? A brief flirtation with homosexuality, and I happened to be the only option available?” He snorted, derisive, incredulous, and plunged back underneath the console, leaving John open-mouthed like a fish abandoned upon the shore by some seemingly-friendly wave. “Next time, find someone else to use as your guinea pig. I’m not interested.”
Not interested as in ‘Don’t kiss me again’, or as in ‘Congratulations, you’ve destroyed our fledgling friendship and now I would rather hang out with a wraith even though he’d try to eat me’? But he couldn’t say that, not now, with Rodney apparently determined to misread every word, every action.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, knowing how feeble it sounded despite it being the truth. Rodney started to say something in retort, sarcasm evident even in the first scarcely-formed syllable, but John kept talking because he knew if he didn’t, if he allowed Rodney to careen on in his misunderstanding, that would be it. Finito. That’s all she wrote, folks.
“And no, it wasn’t like that either,” he continued, dropping into a crouch beside the parts of Rodney not buried inside the console. Told himself he didn’t see Rodney flinch when John accidentally bumped his elbow. “You remember Drakka, the head honcho on Norosalim? The one who got to decide if we would continue having breakfast for the foreseeable future?” Rodney didn’t respond, but he went still, either listening or planning how to make John’s life a utter hell; John chose to believe it was the former. “Well, he had a niece who seemed to think I was, in fact, as you have so often accused me of being, this galaxy’s version of Kirk. She wouldn’t take a subtle hint and I couldn’t risk making her relatives mad at me and you were within grabbing distance.” And oblivious to everything not science-related, as always. “And I panicked.” Which was almost true. Close enough for the purpose.
He shuffled back a little, so Rodney could surface if he wanted. “That’s all it was-just me trying to avoid an unwanted lip-lock.”
“So instead you forced one on me.” Rodney squirmed around so he could peer up at John. “Gee, thanks. Great thinking there, Major.” But the almost-blind anger seemed to have faded, leaving just a flush of hurt Rodney probably wasn’t even aware of, and John began to hope he’d been overly pessimistic about Rodney going off to become buddies with the next Wraith he encountered.
“I thought we’d established that I wasn’t thinking.” John settled back against the wall, still within arm’s reach of Rodney, but not obviously so; a grab at this point might ruin things irreparably.
“That’s nothing new,” Rodney said-said, not muttered, and maybe things really would be okay after all.
“Hey,” John protested, a knee-jerk reaction that he regretted immediately. This was supposed to be an apology, after all. “Well, yeah, okay. I guess that’s fair enough.”
This concession was greeted by a painful-sounding thud, closely followed by muffled-not swearing, because Rodney didn’t, but harsh imprecations against the console and its creators, and thumping that suggested some unsuspecting piece of equipment had been press-ganged into serving as a hammer. John took advantage of the commotion to slide close enough to nudge Rodney’s elbow again, although he didn’t.
“Need a hand?” he asked, fully expecting a refusal.
“No,” Rodney snapped, thumping a few more times for emphasis. “...Although I guess you could stick around, if you wanted,” he added uncomfortably.
And while John didn’t let himself want things, not anymore, he couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be at the moment, or anyone still living that he’d rather spend the evening with. So he slumped against the console and listened to Rodney mutter to himself and was content.
3. Months
“Why’d you kiss me?” Rodney asked abruptly as they left yet another Oh No, We’re All Going To Die staff meeting.
“What?” John said stupidly, exhaustion-fogged brain still chewing through all the ways the expedition was screwed. You’d think the Ancients would have left instructions on how to recharge the batteries for the place.
“You kissed me,” Rodney said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. John stopped walking.
“I did not kiss you.” He was chronically sleep-deprived and slightly hallucinatory, but he wasn’t far gone enough to do that. Probably.
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I think I’d remember.”
“With tongue!”
“That I’d definitely remember.” John started walking again, quickly, half in hope that Rodney would give up, half to lessen the likelihood that he’d fall down before reaching his quarters. At this stage of exhaustion, careful handling of momentum was key.
“You did! Five months ago,” Rodney elaborated, almost skipping to keep up. John considered this for about two seconds before shaking his head.
“Nope, not ringing any bells.”
“The planet with all the spices? Where I sneezed for five minutes straight and Ford mocked me for it?” He was beginning to sound a little desperate, for which John probably should have felt guilty, but he wasn’t intentionally stonewalling Rodney. There just wasn’t any way John would have kissed a guy and . . . then . . . forgotten about it. . . .
Oh.
“There wasn’t any tongue,” he said as repressively as he could manage. He didn’t feel up to being crowed at by a triumphant Rodney. “And in any case,” he continued over Rodney’s Ha! I told you so, “that was months ago. Why bring it up now?” The how stupid are you? look Rodney aimed at him would have . . . would have . . . would have done something hyperbolic, but John was having trouble moving forward in a straight line. Descriptive language was a bit beyond his capabilities at the moment.
“We’re going to die,” Rodney said sourly, triumph gone flat, and yes, John already knew that, but he really didn’t need to hear someone else say it. “I’d rather get this sorted out before the wraith kill us.”
“There’s nothing to sort out,” John retorted, angry mostly because some things shouldn’t be said where others could hear. “I kissed you to avoid having to insult a couple of very important people.” And a little bit angry because Rodney had been thinking-well, whatever he’d been thinking-all those months and had never said a word of it to John so things could be set straight. “Sorry if I got your hopes up,” mean, too mean, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, “but I definitely don’t swing that way, and if I did, it wouldn’t be for you.”
“I didn’t-that’s not-” Rodney visibly crumpled under the force of John’s rejection. “I wasn’t-” He looked and sounded like someone standing on the brink of hysterics, and John realized that he did care after all.
“Yeah, I know,” he sighed after watching Rodney flail verbally and physically for another few seconds. “Me either.” Another thirty feet and he could collapse face-down on his bed and sleep for fourteen hours or until the next catastrophe, which would probably happen five minutes after his eyes closed, given the way things had been going lately. But he couldn’t leave the matter like this, not and be able to look anyone in the face tomorrow, so he forced his knees to stop folding and focused what little attention he had left on Rodney.
Who had given up on flailing in favor of staring at John with an expression suggesting he’d just stepped off a cliff and discovered it was actually four inches high. “Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
“Okay,” John repeated back meaninglessly, and hoped very much that everything would make more sense in the morning.
4. Years
After the break up with Katie, John got Rodney drunk. He didn’t mean to, but somehow Rodney tossed back a (small) bottle and a half of the stuff from Alpasa while John was still digging out his carefully hoarded supply of chips.
“Take it easy, Rodney. That’s all I’ve got.” John dumped the chips between them and rescued the remaining bottles. “Besides, I’ve heard stories of guys going blind from this stuff.” He took a cautious sip of his own and was pleasantly surprised. The last batch had been pretty much horse-piss, but this time it was almost fruity-if he ignored the way it left his mouth numb for a couple seconds after he swallowed.
“Blind? Really?” Rodney studied his half-empty bottle for a moment, perhaps in hope of finding a warning label, then shrugged and downed what was left. Geeze-was the guy trying for alcohol poisoning?
“No, not really, but that’s no excuse for drinking it like Kool-Aid.”
“I liked Kool-Aid when I was a kid. No surprises. Always tasted exactly the way it looked: absolutely artificial.” He shook his empty bottle, frowned when it produced no sloshing noises, and chucked it over the balcony railing.
“Biology’s going to kill you for that,” John commented.
“Only if you rat me out.” Rodney turned a lustful eye to the bottles being guarded by John, and John wished briefly that he could think of some excuse for tossing them over the side as Rodney’d just done. Except Biology really would kill-well, verbally maim-anyone who so carelessly screwed with the pristine ecosystem of New Atlantica.
“Look-I know you feel pretty crummy about being dumped, but alcohol poisoning won’t improve the situation. Not that I speak from experience.” Technically true. He resisted the urge to down his own bottle as though it were a mere shot-glass, settling for another long sip and the oddly soothing feeling of internal fire.
Rodney pulled a face he probably couldn’t have managed while sober. “I’m pretty sure it would, actually, but just for the record, Katie didn’t dump me. We both agreed that the relationship just wasn’t working and parted amicably.” His aborted reach toward John’s liquid stash suggested another technical truth, but one John wouldn’t let him get away with.
“‘Just wasn’t working?’ You bought her a ring! A very ugly ring, but still.” Nancy would have turned up her nose at him if he’d tried giving her one even remotely similar-which was why he’d gone with his mother’s old ring, trusting the good taste of his parents. It’d been enough to win her, though not to keep her.
“I did it mostly because Jeannie told me to,” Rodney confessed distantly, eyes still fixed on the bottles by John’s knee. “I told myself she was right, but there were things that made me wonder if it was really what I should be doing.”
“‘Things’? Like what?” As far as John’d been able to tell-as far as anyone had been able to tell, Rodney and Katie had been the real deal: not quite made for each other, but pretty close.
“Like this.”
And then somehow John’s mouth was suddenly smashed against Rodney’s-and was that a tongue? He jerked back, reflexively scrubbing his mouth with his sleeve. “Jesus, Rodney, what the hell’d you do that for?”
Rodney wavered a bit, visibly processing the question. “Always wondered if you tasted the way I remember,” he eventually offered, eyes seeing something about two feet in front of and a couple inches to the side of where John actually was.
“I- Wait, what?”
“I wanted to see if you taste the same,” Rodney restated, with the careful enunciation of someone who will slur otherwise.
“. . . Do I?” John asked, despite suspicions that the question made him sound like a teenager. Or possibly someone trapped in a chick flick against his will.
Rodney considered. “No,” he said eventually, just as John began to think he’d forgotten the question. “You taste like booze this time instead of spices.”
Spices? Oh. Oh. “Norosalim. I’d forgotten about that.” Repression, probably. “You do realize I kissed you that time because I about to be jumped by some crazy lady.”
Rodney blinked at him, then grabbed a new bottle and took a large swing like it was mouthwash. But he sounded almost sober when he spoke again. “No, I didn’t.”
“Sorry?” John hazarded, not sure why exactly he was apologizing. “You never said anything, so I figured you’d figured out what was going on and had decided to pretend it never happened, just like I’ve been happily doing until now.”
“Like there was any way that conversation could’ve gone well: ‘hey, does kissing me mean you want to go steady?’ And then you’d break my nose.”
John scowled at the finger pointed accusingly at him. “Well, maybe, if you’d asked like that. But we seem to be doing okay at the moment.” In support of this claim, he offered Rodney a precious, precious bag of chips, which Rodney regarded blankly for a moment before holding up his bottle as a counter-argument.
“Only because I’m all liquored-up and you’re feeling guilty for something that’s not your fault.”
“You did spend the last three years doubting our friendship because of something I did without thinking.” But that was a token protest; John didn’t feel guilty so much as disappointed in both of them. Disappointed that Rodney hadn’t trusted him enough to say something sooner.
“Not doubting it-just wondering whether you wanted it to be something other than that.” And then he drank the remaining contents of the bottle in the most blatant display of defiance John had seen since his brother Dave took Jenny Marloe to the prom over their father’s metaphorical dead body.
“Do you?” Jon countered, putting the chips down where they both could reach them, despite the temptation to throw the bag at Rodney’s head for being such an idiot.
“I asked first.”
“No, you didn’t. Come on-don’t act like a six-year-old.”
“I am not acting like a-don’t make that face at me. I am not avoiding the issue.” But the way Rodney’s gaze skittered away from John’s suggested otherwise. John held his tongue, trusting that the silence would prove more effective than anything he could say. Eventually Rodney sighed and frowned down at his hands, which were fidgeting with his now-empty bottle. “No,” he said, shoulders slumped, not looking up to gauge John’s reaction. “I really, really don’t.” He sounded almost surprised and perhaps faintly disappointed.
“Same here. See? Easy as that.”
And it really, really was.
5. Millennia
He never told Rodney about the things the hologram said as they-as John-slogged back through thigh-high sand to the gate room, about the grief and misery and loneliness evident in its every word, every feigned motion.
Or the things John said in turn, full of half-truths and mostly-false comfort. Those were reserved for a future Rodney who would (o please, God) never exist now, spoken as to a man about to die.
John would give anything, anything, up to half his soul, to keep from ever having to tell such lies again.