Stargate AU: The Alexandrian Tablet (10/15)
Pairings: John/Rodney, Rodney/Daniel, Rodney/Lorne, Teyla/Ronon, misc others (mention of whom would be spoilery)
Rating: R-ish
Words: 60K-ish
Genre: AU, Contemporary, No Stargate program
Author's Note: There are 15 chapters and about 60K words to this story, which will be posted at a rate of one chapter per week. Longtime followers of this journal may recognize bits and pieces of this. I was toying with the plot of this story years ago, but could never make it work, until I read the parts I'd written in 2002ish last fall and realized, "Huh. This was always supposed to be a Stargate AU!" Beta'd by the wonderful cathexys. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Previous Chapter
Chapter 10
Despite his misgivings, Rodney picked up Evan for their trip up the coast on Friday morning, and for a while, it even went well--while they were fucking like bunnies instead of actually talking, Rodney couldn't help thinking later. Of course, at his age, the fucking like bunnies part could only last so long before Rodney needed a break.
It was a dumb fight to begin with, something during dinner that escalated beyond all reason. They'd been eating in because Evan had insisted that one of the points of a romantic getaway was staying away from crowds, and besides, Evan was sick of restaurants, so Rodney had agreed. It wasn't that Evan was a bad cook, it was a combination of an unfamiliar kitchen and an ambitious menu that had Rodney poking at his plate and carefully segregating the extremely overcooked vegetables from the rest of his meal and distracting himself by thinking about work.
Evan watched while they ate in silence for a while, before clearing his throat and asking, "Anything wrong with your food, Rodney?"
Rodney had spent enough time living in his mother's house to recognize the inherent danger of answering the question truthfully. "No, of course not," he replied hurriedly. "I just think that maybe...I think I've just worked something out about the tablet."
Evan put his fork down carefully. "That Jackson's been leading you on all along and it really is just gibberish?"
Rodney stopped poking at the sprouts. "Jesus Christ, give it a rest," he snapped.
"Why?" Evan asked. "How would you feel if my ex-boyfriend were sharing an office with us?"
Rodney closed his eyes. "A, we never were boyfriends--" Evan snorted, "and B, it's just an idea. For Christ's sake, are you going to get into a pissing contest with Daniel about who's the better linguist? Because that would just be--"
"Sad? Pathetic?" Evan interrupted.
Rodney sighed. "I wasn't going to say that. Look, you have absolutely no reason to be jealous of Daniel."
"Really?" Evan replied. "I don't? Even if you've spent the past few weeks touching him more than you touch me?"
"Evan--"
"I wasn't done," Evan hissed. "I'm trying to do something nice for us here, trying to give us some couple-time, even if you spend half your day draped all over him and I'm lucky to get kissed once in a blue moon while we're fucking, and it's not like that's happening all that often anymore either--"
"You wanna fuck?" Rodney cut into the tirade, getting up from the table. "Fine, let's fuck. We can fuck for the next 48 hours if you'd like." He unbuckled his belt. "Should we move to the bedroom or would you like me to bend you over the table here for variety?" He unbuttoned his pants, then added, "Are you going to get naked?"
Evan kept his eyes on the floor and wordlessly got up from the table. Rodney half expected him to just walk out of the room--he knew he'd been out of line--but to his surprise Evan didn't leave. Instead, he slowly unbuttoned his own jeans, his eyes still fixed on the ground. Once he'd divested himself of both his pants and his underwear, he raised his head, a strange look in his eyes, and reached out to methodically sweep his arm across the table.
Dishes and glasses clattered to the floor and shattered, shards mixing with food. Evan didn't twitch a muscle, didn't even blink as far as Rodney could make out, just calmly continued moving his arm along the table until it was completely clear of the remnants of their dinner. Then he quirked his eyebrow in a facial expression that was almost mocking and draped himself facedown across the table, arms braced to either side. "Go for it."
Rodney hesitated. He was quite aware that something had just gone terribly wrong and that this was a dreadful idea. On the other hand, his boyfriend stood there bent over the table, bare ass waving in the air, asking to be fucked, and Rodney's dick seemed to really like that image. "Evan--" he began.
"Stop dawdling and fuck me," Evan interrupted, his voice edged with hysteria.
Rodney rubbed his temples and tried his best to recall how they'd gotten from overcooked vegetables to breaking a few hundred dollars worth of crockery in the pursuit of sex. He couldn't. "Evan, are you sure--"
"God damn it, Rodney, shut up and fuck me already," Evan shouted.
Against his better judgment, Rodney's dick took matters into its own hands, figuratively speaking, and popped out of his boxer shorts. Rodney had just about enough presence of mind to spit into his hand and give his dick a cursory rubdown with saliva, before taking Evan up on his invitation and pushing into him, his pants still on his hips.
It wasn't gentle or romantic or even skilled sex. But then, Rodney reflected, some of the best sex he'd ever had had been fast and hard and rough and about as romantic as a car wreck, and if rough and dirty fucking was the make-up sex of choice following a singularly silly argument, then who was he to complain? Evan definitely was grunting in what Rodney was almost entirely certain was an appreciative manner.
He was just starting to really get into it--his dick had progressed from sort-of-mostly-hard to really hard. He leaned over and licked a trail up Evan's spine, biting his shoulder at the end of it, when Evan repositioned himself under him, turned his head, and said very clearly, "I think we should break up."
Rodney stopped moving and his erection wilted pretty much instantly. "Pardon?" he asked, a little breathless.
"This isn't working and I think it's time to break up," Evan said, enunciating each word clearly.
Rodney's soft dick slipped out in response, which all in all, was a rather fitting conclusion to the evening.
*****
There had been silence and not-looking-at-each-other-on-purpose as they got dressed and Evan found a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess they'd made on the floor. Later, there had been shouting, which had been bad. After the shouting had run its course, there had been talking-camly-about-things, which had been worse, because Rodney suspected it included a lot of unwelcome truths on top of the insults. After that, they'd lapsed back into silence while Evan packed and eventually went to sleep on the couch for a few hours before driving back down the coast early the next morning in a rental.
Rather than returning home early and facing John, Rodney opted to stay for the rest of the weekend to reflect on his various shortcomings. Or at least he thought long and hard about reflecting on his various shortcomings--in reality, he got drunk and tried very hard to forget all about the breakup, which in essence probably meant that Evan's accusations concerning his emotional availability hadn't been too far off the mark.
On Sunday morning, he drove straight to the office to pack up Evan's personal belongings (it went without saying that during the shouting, Evan had informed Rodney that he had better look for a new assistant, and that during the talking-calmly-about-things part of the proceedings, Rodney had stupidly agreed to courier Evan's personal belongings over from the office).
He was almost done throwing all of Evan's stuff into a couple of UPS boxes when the office door opened.
"Hey, you're back already?" Daniel greeted him. "How was--what's going on?"
"Just packing up some shit to send back to Evan," Rodney said dismissively. "I'm almost done."
"Rodney?"
"I'll get those boxes out of your way in a minute."
Daniel stopped him halfway through stuffing the sweatshirt Evan had kept in the office for when the AC acted up into one of the boxes and pulled his face up, forcing their eyes to meet. "What happened, Rodney?"
"Coitus interruptus mostly." Rodney laughed, or at least tried to.
"Rodney--"
Rodney sighed. "We broke up."
"Why?"
Rodney laughed properly this time. "Where to start?" he asked. "Let's see, I'm an emotionally unavailable, cold-hearted prick."
"You're not--"
"No wait, this gets better," Rodney waved him into silence. "I also suffer massive amounts of internalized homophobia and made Evan's life a living hell by trying to force him to deny who he really is."
"Rodney--"
"Further," Rodney continued, his voice rising, "I have a shitty job and shitty friends who require me to deny everything I am."
"You know that's not--"
"But I think the icing on the cake of relationship death," Rodney was sounding quite shrill now, "was that I am apparently still in love with you. I wish somebody would have sent me a memo."
And for a few moments, Daniel didn't say anything at all now that Rodney was finally done talking, even though Rodney wished he would.
Finally, Daniel pulled him close and awkwardly put his arm around Rodney's neck.
And it was probably testament to how many brain cells Rodney had destroyed the previous day while trying to drown himself in alcohol, that he completely misread the situation and started kissing Daniel while his fingers were already fumbling with Daniel's fly. He got as far as shoving one hand halfway into Daniel's boxers, before Daniel pushed him away quite forcibly.
"We're not doing that, Rodney," he said a little breathlessly.
Rodney laughed. "That's what you came here for, isn't it?"
"Oh, fuck." Daniel said. Then, straightening his clothes, he took Rodney's arm and pulled him toward the door. "Come on. We've got to have the conversation we didn't have ten years ago, and I'm not having it here."
Rodney was too exhausted to put up a fight and let himself be dragged right out of the office and to Daniel's car. When they arrived at his house, John took one look at them and excused himself. Daniel smiled at him faintly, even while he pushed Rodney into the living room and down onto John's god-awful couch.
"Don't move," he said, fetching the Scotch and a couple of glasses from the sideboard. He poured Rodney a generous measure. "Here."
Rodney shook his head. "I don't think I can."
Daniel pursed his lips. "Well, I hope you don't mind if I--?"
Rodney shook his head again.
Daniel took a sip, grimaced, and then downed he shot. "I didn't come here because I wanted to sleep with you, Rodney," he said. "I came here because I know you're the best Egyptologist in North America today, even if you settled for a second-rate university, and I want to crack that code."
"Fine," Rodney said, crossing his arms.
"And whatever self-esteem issues Evan was having, they were nothing to do with me. I never gave you, or him, any indication that I was even remotely interested in starting up again where we left of."
"Understood."
"Is it?" Daniel asked. "Because I want to be absolutely clear about this: I don't want to sleep with you."
"Yes, I got that."
"And I probably shouldn't have been sleeping with you back then either, because you weren't any more available then than you are now."
"Yes, thank you, my emotional unavailability has already been pointed out to me at length," Rodney said. "Now, having established that I am an emotional cripple--and that you're not presumably--I do find myself wondering why you stayed with me for three years."
Daniel sighed. "Because I was in love with you, stupid."
"You had a funny way of showing it," Rodney said.
Daniel ignored him. "I was in love with you and it absolutely killed me that you weren't."
"That is such a load of bullshit," Rodney said. "I wasn't the one who was whoring his way around New Jersey. And I'll have that drink now, if you don't mind."
Daniel poured a couple of fingers full and handed him the glass. "I was twenty-one! If that wasn't what you wanted, you should have said something, like, maybe, 'Hey, can we be exclusive.' Damn it, Rodney, you were supposed to be the grownup. If you'd asked--"
"Instead of fucking around in front of me, you'd have gone behind my back?" Rodney sputtered.
Daniel threw up his hands. "How would you know? You never asked."
"You never indicated that you were amenable to having your 'style' curtailed."
"You were supposed to figure it out," Daniel shouted.
"I did. I left."
Daniel nodded. "Yeah, you did. You had two people head over heels in love with you, and you fucked us both over in the process."
"You--" Rodney blinked. "Are you trying to imply that John was in love--"
"Is, Rodney, and I'm not implying," Daniel interrupted. "For God's sake, he's only been living in your spare room for the past three months."
"He's my best friend and he's in the middle of an ugly divorce, of course he's been staying in my spare room."
Daniel slumped down on the edge of the ottoman. "Rodney, John and you have been together for twenty years. There never was space in that relationship for anyone either of you were fucking on the side, and I include myself in that count."
"But..." Rodney began and shut his mouth, at a complete loss as to what to say.
"Anyway, I'm seeing someone. Have been for a while."
"Good for you."
"Thanks."
"I think I'd like you to leave now, no offense."
"None taken," Daniel said, getting up. "Just, please, think about what I said."
Rodney nodded at the bottle. "Hand me that on your way out."
Rodney waited until he heard the front door close before carefully setting the bottle down on a side table and burying his face in his hands. Alcohol wasn't going to fix this, and he didn't have the time for extensive therapy to work out whether Daniel was screwing with his head in payback. Fucking A.
He still hadn't moved when John came home later in the evening, flicked the lights on, and carefully peered into the room. He spotted Rodney and raised an eyebrow. "You're alone?"
"He turned me down," Rodney said morosely. "And Evan's sort of dumped me."
"Sort of?"
"Maybe it was more of a mutual thing. I really don't want to talk about it."
John nodded. "Okay. Wanna watch 'Alexander' instead? I picked it up just so I can listen to you ranting at the screen."
****
A dreadfully inaccurate movie, two bowls of popcorn, and many, many glasses of Scotch later, Rodney turned to John and blurted, "Are you in love with me?"
"You're drunk," John said, quite superfluously.
"Duh," Rodney replied. "It's still a valid question." Though that last part sounded more like, 'ssilavalikweshon.'
"Come on, time to take you to bed," John said brightly, pulling him up from the couch and taking a mostly empty glass from is hand.
Rodney lurched a little, the room no longer entirely stable now that he was standing, and grabbed onto John's biceps to steady himself. And suddenly, John's face was very close, and all Rodney had to do was lean forward a bit and hope that he was aiming for the right pair of lips he was seeing, and--
John pushed him away. Not roughly or meanly or even flustered, all of which would have been far better than the gentle shove. "Let's not break a fine tradition of never having rebound sex with each other," John said kindly, his hands settling on Rodney's forearms. "Come on, I'll help you up to your room."
"'m perfectly capable of going up my own stairs," Rodney mumbled and then promptly tripped over his own feet trying to turn toward the door. He caught himself on a lamp and held on to keep from falling.
John chuckled. "Sure you don't want any help?" he asked.
"Fine," Rodney huffed. "You can help me."
It took a while, but they eventually did make it up the stairs, even though the steps kept on trying to move out from underneath Rodney's feet. Once they'd navigated the treacherous hallway (Rug? What complete idiot had put a rug there?) and successfully made it into Rodney's bedroom, John let go and Rodney fell facedown onto the bed.
Rodney was vaguely aware of John slipping his shoes off, and tried to turn around when a comforter was pulled around his shoulders.
"Don't," John said. "Harder to pull a Hendrix while you're face down."
"Stay with me?" Rodney said into the sheets.
"Sure, after I get a bucket," John replied.
It took Rodney just about as long to turn around and slip his foot to the floor to stop the room spin, as it took John to head down to the kitchen to get a bucket. At least Rodney thought it did, because when he opened his eyes, John was standing next to the bed, looking at him quizzically. Rodney pulled himself up to lean against the headboard. He'd never really believed in old wives' tales, but keeping the one foot on the ground really did seem to help. "You never answered my question."
"Think you'll be able to reach the bucket if I put it over there?" John replied, pointing at the space between the nightstand and the chest of drawers.
"'m not going to be sick and I insist you answer my question."
"What question was that, Rodney?"
"Come over here," Rodney said, patting the mattress next to him. "I don't want to talk to you looming over me like that."
John sat down. "Better?"
Rodney handed John a pillow. "Yes, now answer my question."
"What question, Rodney?" John asked, sighing.
"Are you in love with me?"
"Aren't you sleepy yet?" John asked in response.
Rodney swatted at John, but somehow completely failed to make contact. "Will you stop evading?"
"Probably not," John replied.
Rodney sighed dramatically. "Fine, but we're going to have this conversation. Maybe not now, because you could just run away and I'm not sure I'd be able to follow you without doing considerable damage to myself, but don't think I'm going to forget about it, because I won't."
"Yes, Rodney," John said.
Even in his rather befuddled state of drunkenness, Rodney couldn't help thinking that John's tone was an awful lot like Ronon's when he said 'Yes, dear' to Teyla, and he was trying to come up with an appropriate jab in that regard, but he was suddenly having trouble keeping his eyes open, and next thing he knew, the room was pitch-black and he felt very, very sick indeed.
Rating: R-ish
Words: 60K-ish
Genre: AU, Contemporary, No Stargate program
Author's Note: There are 15 chapters and about 60K words to this story, which will be posted at a rate of one chapter per week. Longtime followers of this journal may recognize bits and pieces of this. I was toying with the plot of this story years ago, but could never make it work, until I read the parts I'd written in 2002ish last fall and realized, "Huh. This was always supposed to be a Stargate AU!" Beta'd by the wonderful cathexys. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Previous Chapter
Chapter 10
Despite his misgivings, Rodney picked up Evan for their trip up the coast on Friday morning, and for a while, it even went well--while they were fucking like bunnies instead of actually talking, Rodney couldn't help thinking later. Of course, at his age, the fucking like bunnies part could only last so long before Rodney needed a break.
It was a dumb fight to begin with, something during dinner that escalated beyond all reason. They'd been eating in because Evan had insisted that one of the points of a romantic getaway was staying away from crowds, and besides, Evan was sick of restaurants, so Rodney had agreed. It wasn't that Evan was a bad cook, it was a combination of an unfamiliar kitchen and an ambitious menu that had Rodney poking at his plate and carefully segregating the extremely overcooked vegetables from the rest of his meal and distracting himself by thinking about work.
Evan watched while they ate in silence for a while, before clearing his throat and asking, "Anything wrong with your food, Rodney?"
Rodney had spent enough time living in his mother's house to recognize the inherent danger of answering the question truthfully. "No, of course not," he replied hurriedly. "I just think that maybe...I think I've just worked something out about the tablet."
Evan put his fork down carefully. "That Jackson's been leading you on all along and it really is just gibberish?"
Rodney stopped poking at the sprouts. "Jesus Christ, give it a rest," he snapped.
"Why?" Evan asked. "How would you feel if my ex-boyfriend were sharing an office with us?"
Rodney closed his eyes. "A, we never were boyfriends--" Evan snorted, "and B, it's just an idea. For Christ's sake, are you going to get into a pissing contest with Daniel about who's the better linguist? Because that would just be--"
"Sad? Pathetic?" Evan interrupted.
Rodney sighed. "I wasn't going to say that. Look, you have absolutely no reason to be jealous of Daniel."
"Really?" Evan replied. "I don't? Even if you've spent the past few weeks touching him more than you touch me?"
"Evan--"
"I wasn't done," Evan hissed. "I'm trying to do something nice for us here, trying to give us some couple-time, even if you spend half your day draped all over him and I'm lucky to get kissed once in a blue moon while we're fucking, and it's not like that's happening all that often anymore either--"
"You wanna fuck?" Rodney cut into the tirade, getting up from the table. "Fine, let's fuck. We can fuck for the next 48 hours if you'd like." He unbuckled his belt. "Should we move to the bedroom or would you like me to bend you over the table here for variety?" He unbuttoned his pants, then added, "Are you going to get naked?"
Evan kept his eyes on the floor and wordlessly got up from the table. Rodney half expected him to just walk out of the room--he knew he'd been out of line--but to his surprise Evan didn't leave. Instead, he slowly unbuttoned his own jeans, his eyes still fixed on the ground. Once he'd divested himself of both his pants and his underwear, he raised his head, a strange look in his eyes, and reached out to methodically sweep his arm across the table.
Dishes and glasses clattered to the floor and shattered, shards mixing with food. Evan didn't twitch a muscle, didn't even blink as far as Rodney could make out, just calmly continued moving his arm along the table until it was completely clear of the remnants of their dinner. Then he quirked his eyebrow in a facial expression that was almost mocking and draped himself facedown across the table, arms braced to either side. "Go for it."
Rodney hesitated. He was quite aware that something had just gone terribly wrong and that this was a dreadful idea. On the other hand, his boyfriend stood there bent over the table, bare ass waving in the air, asking to be fucked, and Rodney's dick seemed to really like that image. "Evan--" he began.
"Stop dawdling and fuck me," Evan interrupted, his voice edged with hysteria.
Rodney rubbed his temples and tried his best to recall how they'd gotten from overcooked vegetables to breaking a few hundred dollars worth of crockery in the pursuit of sex. He couldn't. "Evan, are you sure--"
"God damn it, Rodney, shut up and fuck me already," Evan shouted.
Against his better judgment, Rodney's dick took matters into its own hands, figuratively speaking, and popped out of his boxer shorts. Rodney had just about enough presence of mind to spit into his hand and give his dick a cursory rubdown with saliva, before taking Evan up on his invitation and pushing into him, his pants still on his hips.
It wasn't gentle or romantic or even skilled sex. But then, Rodney reflected, some of the best sex he'd ever had had been fast and hard and rough and about as romantic as a car wreck, and if rough and dirty fucking was the make-up sex of choice following a singularly silly argument, then who was he to complain? Evan definitely was grunting in what Rodney was almost entirely certain was an appreciative manner.
He was just starting to really get into it--his dick had progressed from sort-of-mostly-hard to really hard. He leaned over and licked a trail up Evan's spine, biting his shoulder at the end of it, when Evan repositioned himself under him, turned his head, and said very clearly, "I think we should break up."
Rodney stopped moving and his erection wilted pretty much instantly. "Pardon?" he asked, a little breathless.
"This isn't working and I think it's time to break up," Evan said, enunciating each word clearly.
Rodney's soft dick slipped out in response, which all in all, was a rather fitting conclusion to the evening.
*****
There had been silence and not-looking-at-each-other-on-purpose as they got dressed and Evan found a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess they'd made on the floor. Later, there had been shouting, which had been bad. After the shouting had run its course, there had been talking-camly-about-things, which had been worse, because Rodney suspected it included a lot of unwelcome truths on top of the insults. After that, they'd lapsed back into silence while Evan packed and eventually went to sleep on the couch for a few hours before driving back down the coast early the next morning in a rental.
Rather than returning home early and facing John, Rodney opted to stay for the rest of the weekend to reflect on his various shortcomings. Or at least he thought long and hard about reflecting on his various shortcomings--in reality, he got drunk and tried very hard to forget all about the breakup, which in essence probably meant that Evan's accusations concerning his emotional availability hadn't been too far off the mark.
On Sunday morning, he drove straight to the office to pack up Evan's personal belongings (it went without saying that during the shouting, Evan had informed Rodney that he had better look for a new assistant, and that during the talking-calmly-about-things part of the proceedings, Rodney had stupidly agreed to courier Evan's personal belongings over from the office).
He was almost done throwing all of Evan's stuff into a couple of UPS boxes when the office door opened.
"Hey, you're back already?" Daniel greeted him. "How was--what's going on?"
"Just packing up some shit to send back to Evan," Rodney said dismissively. "I'm almost done."
"Rodney?"
"I'll get those boxes out of your way in a minute."
Daniel stopped him halfway through stuffing the sweatshirt Evan had kept in the office for when the AC acted up into one of the boxes and pulled his face up, forcing their eyes to meet. "What happened, Rodney?"
"Coitus interruptus mostly." Rodney laughed, or at least tried to.
"Rodney--"
Rodney sighed. "We broke up."
"Why?"
Rodney laughed properly this time. "Where to start?" he asked. "Let's see, I'm an emotionally unavailable, cold-hearted prick."
"You're not--"
"No wait, this gets better," Rodney waved him into silence. "I also suffer massive amounts of internalized homophobia and made Evan's life a living hell by trying to force him to deny who he really is."
"Rodney--"
"Further," Rodney continued, his voice rising, "I have a shitty job and shitty friends who require me to deny everything I am."
"You know that's not--"
"But I think the icing on the cake of relationship death," Rodney was sounding quite shrill now, "was that I am apparently still in love with you. I wish somebody would have sent me a memo."
And for a few moments, Daniel didn't say anything at all now that Rodney was finally done talking, even though Rodney wished he would.
Finally, Daniel pulled him close and awkwardly put his arm around Rodney's neck.
And it was probably testament to how many brain cells Rodney had destroyed the previous day while trying to drown himself in alcohol, that he completely misread the situation and started kissing Daniel while his fingers were already fumbling with Daniel's fly. He got as far as shoving one hand halfway into Daniel's boxers, before Daniel pushed him away quite forcibly.
"We're not doing that, Rodney," he said a little breathlessly.
Rodney laughed. "That's what you came here for, isn't it?"
"Oh, fuck." Daniel said. Then, straightening his clothes, he took Rodney's arm and pulled him toward the door. "Come on. We've got to have the conversation we didn't have ten years ago, and I'm not having it here."
Rodney was too exhausted to put up a fight and let himself be dragged right out of the office and to Daniel's car. When they arrived at his house, John took one look at them and excused himself. Daniel smiled at him faintly, even while he pushed Rodney into the living room and down onto John's god-awful couch.
"Don't move," he said, fetching the Scotch and a couple of glasses from the sideboard. He poured Rodney a generous measure. "Here."
Rodney shook his head. "I don't think I can."
Daniel pursed his lips. "Well, I hope you don't mind if I--?"
Rodney shook his head again.
Daniel took a sip, grimaced, and then downed he shot. "I didn't come here because I wanted to sleep with you, Rodney," he said. "I came here because I know you're the best Egyptologist in North America today, even if you settled for a second-rate university, and I want to crack that code."
"Fine," Rodney said, crossing his arms.
"And whatever self-esteem issues Evan was having, they were nothing to do with me. I never gave you, or him, any indication that I was even remotely interested in starting up again where we left of."
"Understood."
"Is it?" Daniel asked. "Because I want to be absolutely clear about this: I don't want to sleep with you."
"Yes, I got that."
"And I probably shouldn't have been sleeping with you back then either, because you weren't any more available then than you are now."
"Yes, thank you, my emotional unavailability has already been pointed out to me at length," Rodney said. "Now, having established that I am an emotional cripple--and that you're not presumably--I do find myself wondering why you stayed with me for three years."
Daniel sighed. "Because I was in love with you, stupid."
"You had a funny way of showing it," Rodney said.
Daniel ignored him. "I was in love with you and it absolutely killed me that you weren't."
"That is such a load of bullshit," Rodney said. "I wasn't the one who was whoring his way around New Jersey. And I'll have that drink now, if you don't mind."
Daniel poured a couple of fingers full and handed him the glass. "I was twenty-one! If that wasn't what you wanted, you should have said something, like, maybe, 'Hey, can we be exclusive.' Damn it, Rodney, you were supposed to be the grownup. If you'd asked--"
"Instead of fucking around in front of me, you'd have gone behind my back?" Rodney sputtered.
Daniel threw up his hands. "How would you know? You never asked."
"You never indicated that you were amenable to having your 'style' curtailed."
"You were supposed to figure it out," Daniel shouted.
"I did. I left."
Daniel nodded. "Yeah, you did. You had two people head over heels in love with you, and you fucked us both over in the process."
"You--" Rodney blinked. "Are you trying to imply that John was in love--"
"Is, Rodney, and I'm not implying," Daniel interrupted. "For God's sake, he's only been living in your spare room for the past three months."
"He's my best friend and he's in the middle of an ugly divorce, of course he's been staying in my spare room."
Daniel slumped down on the edge of the ottoman. "Rodney, John and you have been together for twenty years. There never was space in that relationship for anyone either of you were fucking on the side, and I include myself in that count."
"But..." Rodney began and shut his mouth, at a complete loss as to what to say.
"Anyway, I'm seeing someone. Have been for a while."
"Good for you."
"Thanks."
"I think I'd like you to leave now, no offense."
"None taken," Daniel said, getting up. "Just, please, think about what I said."
Rodney nodded at the bottle. "Hand me that on your way out."
Rodney waited until he heard the front door close before carefully setting the bottle down on a side table and burying his face in his hands. Alcohol wasn't going to fix this, and he didn't have the time for extensive therapy to work out whether Daniel was screwing with his head in payback. Fucking A.
He still hadn't moved when John came home later in the evening, flicked the lights on, and carefully peered into the room. He spotted Rodney and raised an eyebrow. "You're alone?"
"He turned me down," Rodney said morosely. "And Evan's sort of dumped me."
"Sort of?"
"Maybe it was more of a mutual thing. I really don't want to talk about it."
John nodded. "Okay. Wanna watch 'Alexander' instead? I picked it up just so I can listen to you ranting at the screen."
****
A dreadfully inaccurate movie, two bowls of popcorn, and many, many glasses of Scotch later, Rodney turned to John and blurted, "Are you in love with me?"
"You're drunk," John said, quite superfluously.
"Duh," Rodney replied. "It's still a valid question." Though that last part sounded more like, 'ssilavalikweshon.'
"Come on, time to take you to bed," John said brightly, pulling him up from the couch and taking a mostly empty glass from is hand.
Rodney lurched a little, the room no longer entirely stable now that he was standing, and grabbed onto John's biceps to steady himself. And suddenly, John's face was very close, and all Rodney had to do was lean forward a bit and hope that he was aiming for the right pair of lips he was seeing, and--
John pushed him away. Not roughly or meanly or even flustered, all of which would have been far better than the gentle shove. "Let's not break a fine tradition of never having rebound sex with each other," John said kindly, his hands settling on Rodney's forearms. "Come on, I'll help you up to your room."
"'m perfectly capable of going up my own stairs," Rodney mumbled and then promptly tripped over his own feet trying to turn toward the door. He caught himself on a lamp and held on to keep from falling.
John chuckled. "Sure you don't want any help?" he asked.
"Fine," Rodney huffed. "You can help me."
It took a while, but they eventually did make it up the stairs, even though the steps kept on trying to move out from underneath Rodney's feet. Once they'd navigated the treacherous hallway (Rug? What complete idiot had put a rug there?) and successfully made it into Rodney's bedroom, John let go and Rodney fell facedown onto the bed.
Rodney was vaguely aware of John slipping his shoes off, and tried to turn around when a comforter was pulled around his shoulders.
"Don't," John said. "Harder to pull a Hendrix while you're face down."
"Stay with me?" Rodney said into the sheets.
"Sure, after I get a bucket," John replied.
It took Rodney just about as long to turn around and slip his foot to the floor to stop the room spin, as it took John to head down to the kitchen to get a bucket. At least Rodney thought it did, because when he opened his eyes, John was standing next to the bed, looking at him quizzically. Rodney pulled himself up to lean against the headboard. He'd never really believed in old wives' tales, but keeping the one foot on the ground really did seem to help. "You never answered my question."
"Think you'll be able to reach the bucket if I put it over there?" John replied, pointing at the space between the nightstand and the chest of drawers.
"'m not going to be sick and I insist you answer my question."
"What question was that, Rodney?"
"Come over here," Rodney said, patting the mattress next to him. "I don't want to talk to you looming over me like that."
John sat down. "Better?"
Rodney handed John a pillow. "Yes, now answer my question."
"What question, Rodney?" John asked, sighing.
"Are you in love with me?"
"Aren't you sleepy yet?" John asked in response.
Rodney swatted at John, but somehow completely failed to make contact. "Will you stop evading?"
"Probably not," John replied.
Rodney sighed dramatically. "Fine, but we're going to have this conversation. Maybe not now, because you could just run away and I'm not sure I'd be able to follow you without doing considerable damage to myself, but don't think I'm going to forget about it, because I won't."
"Yes, Rodney," John said.
Even in his rather befuddled state of drunkenness, Rodney couldn't help thinking that John's tone was an awful lot like Ronon's when he said 'Yes, dear' to Teyla, and he was trying to come up with an appropriate jab in that regard, but he was suddenly having trouble keeping his eyes open, and next thing he knew, the room was pitch-black and he felt very, very sick indeed.