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.au fic: The Conferences (John/Rodney) PG13
.The Conferences (John/Rodney, PG13) ~8,000 words
.notes: Hey, more Restoration Hardware! This picks up directly after ficlet #1 also, oddly enough, called Restoration Hardware. Mostly, this is an excuse to write dithering!Rodney, because I have a deep fondness for him, and also, it's always fun to snicker at my profession.
.The Conferences
Rodney calls John after the conference, strategic planning because he refuses to look like a sex-deprived academic who has misread the situation into catastrophe (maybe Sheppard had been offering him a home inspection, never mind that Rodney has a condo and the association pays for those things) and who will, at any moment, take a wrong step in the social minefield and explode in messy humiliation. That he is a desperate sex-deprived academic doesn't help matters; even worse there's something about John Sheppard that disrupts Rodney's higher brain functions, the ones responsible for things like rational assessment and restraint, and John Sheppard has enough to answer for as it is.
Sheppard-centric thoughts had packed themselves in his brain, spiky-haired albatrosses of mental carry-on luggage, and along with the low-grade headache from Wednesday, they had stayed with him throughout the entire conference. This is a Sheppard headache now, Rodney decides, rubbing at his temple as he stares at his cell phone, only one in a growing list of things he's decided to lay at Sheppard's door: his headache, the unfinished state of his graduate seminar syllabus, Radek tormenting him endlessly about the new assistant professor candidates, and his spineless capitulation to the sales associate at the yuppie clothing emporium.
The pants, Rodney decides as he fishes Sheppard's card out of his wallet, had been the worst. He hasn't been accustomed to intimidation, especially from impertinent sales peons, but between his need for decent pants and his preoccupation with John Sheppard and John Sheppard's hair and John Sheppard's dirty thumbprint and what Rodney had begun to suspect was Sheppard's home phone number, Rodney found himself herded away from the grey plaid pants – "but they're dry-clean," he'd protested, that being one of his few fashion requirements – and toward pants that were, in theory, wrinkle-resistant and washable.
He frowns at the pair he happens to be wearing and picks at an invisible thread, flips the phone open.
The person doing the herding had been a skinny, pinched-face battleaxe who resembled Kavanagh at his most clenched-up (not that she looked like Kavanagh, but the glare and the quality of her voice had a certain resonance). Before Rodney could draw breath to excoriate her for insolence, molestation (she had grabbed his sleeve and hauled him around the store), and the evils of commission-based business, she had his arms loaded up with pants and shirts of various persuasions, pushed him into a dressing room, and instructed him to try everything on. And he did, which still horrifies him in the same way that his brush with limoncello cream-flavored death had, with a horror that manages to be both distant and visceral at the same time.
"Turn around," the girl had kept telling him with impatient circular gestures. "What am I, a model?" Rodney had snapped, but the eyes behind thick black frames were fierce, and he had turned around and around obediently.
Only marginally less awful than being bossed around by the impertinent sales peon and being hosed for what almost amounted to his monthly mortgage payment had been at the conference itself. He'd given his paper and publicly lamented the state of theoretical physics with Sheppardian thoughts on a permanent cycle in his head, and worse than that – far worse than clothes shopping – had been when, between panels, Sam Carter had come up to him and leaned in and said "Nice pants, McKay," and Rodney, who had spent six years waiting for her to say something of precisely this nature, hadn't been able to enjoy it.
He finishes entering John's number and glares at the thumbprint on the card while the phone rings and rings and rings some more. Rodney hangs up before the voicemail message starts because, really, he doesn't know what would be worse, listening to the awful mysterious computerized woman who tells him you-have-reached-the-voice-mail-box-of-JOHN-SHEP-PARD-please-leave-a-mess-age or John's drawling voice inviting him to do the same. When he slams the phone shut and tosses it onto the couch, he tells himself it isn't frustration or embarrassment he's feeling, and yeah, everyone has caller ID these days and Sheppard's probably screening his, but Rodney hasn't exploded yet, it's just a flesh wound.
"Your cat's still behind the washing machine, McKay."
"He'll come out eventually," Rodney says absently. Planck usually sulks back there after Rodney returns from somewhere, punishment for Rodney's heartless abandonment. At the moment, Rodney wishes he could join him. "And it's Dr. McKay to you."
"Sure, McKay." A cupboard slams with damning finality and a moment later Laura Cadman, whom Rodney hasn't actually seen since he got home three minutes ago, wanders out of the kitchen. She's fresh-faced and young and doesn't fear him, and even worse, lives next to him. "You can count the silver if you want, but everything's okay."
Rodney eyes his TV and the DVDs stacked around it; everything looks untouched and fairly clean. Laura smirks at him but doesn't say anything, leaving it to Rodney to fill the silence with nervous chatter about the conference, Planck, the insults perpetrated by airlines that now refuse to feed people on anything less than trans-oceanic flights, "and you should be relieved you've graduated already."
"Every day," Laura says solemnly. She's not even in his department, a postdoc in political history who has been sent from the ninth circle to live in the condo next door and torment him and, occasionally, cat-sit. Rodney tries to ignore her as he shoves his carryon under the kitchen island to be dealt with later and goes through the mail piled on the counter; Laura makes soft, meaningful noises until he remembers and writes a check ("I'm a postdoc, not a millionaire, McKay") and she pockets it with a speed Rodney remembers from seven years spent on stipends and fellowships.
"You had some guy stop by on Saturday."
"Jehovah's Witness? Mormon? Any other species of evangelical?" The NO SOLICITING sign would be as effective as if it did not exist, and not for the first time Rodney gives serious thought to the theory and logistics involved in designing and constructing a forcefield around his condo. He would even extend it to Cadman, and possibly others in exchange for a fee because the cost to power the thing would hardly be negligible and Rodney McKay is not a charity, but still, force field, or at the very least he could build a robot programmed to respond to phrases such as, "Do you have Christ in your life?" – hey that would be –
"…. some guy named Jack or John or something?"
"John!" Rodney abandons his indignant perusal of his cell phone bill and his visions of a private robot army. "John Sheppard?"
"Yeah." Laura studies him for a moment, long enough that Rodney looks back down at his cell phone bill. He knows that look, a look possessed by Elizabeth and Teyla when they're speculating, when they know something he doesn't. Radek has that look every now and then. "He said he talked to you on Wednesday about a home inspection. Also, he was pretty hot."
A blush ignites under Rodney's skin, a sudden, fierce burn he can't will away. He can't make himself watch Laura's speculation morph into triumph at whatever she thinks she's discovered, though he's pretty sure whatever it is is damning, along the lines of Rodney McKay has a cru-ush, accompanied by dancing and finger-pointing and terminal humiliation on Rodney's part. And speaking of damning and acute humiliation, he can picture John standing on his doorstep and Laura, pretty and strawberry-blond and wholesome-looking if you weren't paying attention or were an oblivious idiot (which Sheppard may be), answering the door, and how exactly that would look.
Rodney's halfway into the living room in a heartbeat, fishing through the couch cushions in two. The cell phone eludes him, though he finds a long-missing flash drive and a bag of Cheetos he sets aside for future use, and where in God's name is it? At last his fingers slide over smooth metal and oh thank you thank you, Rodney thinks as he flips the phone open and purges the keypad of crumbs and lint, thank you thank you in time to the pulse of the phone ringing.
"Sheppard."
And it's John's voice, hoarse, rougher coming from the other end of a line that is supposed to be crystal clear.
"John?" Rodney asks, and, remembering that Laura is eavesdropping and being shameless about it, hovering in the foyer, "Sheppard? This is um, John Sheppard I'm talking to."
"At the moment," and exasperation pulls John's drawl to painful tautness.
"Yes, um, it's Rodney? Rodney McKay?" He glares at Laura and telepathically threatens her with searing, eternal torment if she doesn't leave on the instant; Laura remains unmoved, and even leans back against wall to emphasize how unmoved she is. "Um, yes," Rodney mumbles. "We talked about the home inspection."
The "home inspection," Laura mouths, air quotes and all, which forces Rodney to hiss LEAVE. LEAVE RIGHT NOW at her. She does, which amazes Rodney enough that he almost misses the better part of John saying something.
"… was that?"
"Who was…" The image of Laura leaning in the doorway, possibly wearing lingerie or a sign reading Part of Rodney McKay's Extensive All-Woman Harem, intrudes. "Oh, you mean..?" John doesn't answer the question. "That was Laura Cadman," Rodney says, and clarifies the nature of Laura's association with him.
"So you're not." John stops; Rodney thinks it's a pause, John searching for a tactful way of saying married or living together or resolutely heterosexual. But the pause stretches on and on, well beyond Rodney's tolerance threshold for silence in conversation, and he fills it the only way he can.
"Um, we're not married. Or living together. Or going out. But we could be, I guess, if I were interested. I mean, not that it would be unethical of me to, because she's not in my department and she's technically affiliated with Columbia, but even if she was a student here, university guidelines don't officially prohibit romantic relationships between professors and graduate students so long as the professor isn't an advisor, which, as I said, I'm not…" This, he realizes from John's stony, static-filled silence, qualifies as digging the grave deeper. "What I mean is, I'm not seeing her. I try not to see her. It's a relationship of completely platonic, mutual inconvenience."
"Oh." Instead of sounding relieved, John sounds perplexed, as though he's practiced exactly what to say but now has to revise on the fly and has no idea how; it doesn't quite square with the confident man who'd so effortlessly taken over Rodney's office and co-opted Rodney's self-control. Another pause, almost long enough to qualify as a full stop and it has Rodney twitching by the time John expels a clearly audible breath and says, "You want… Are you around tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Rodney says immediately, even though he has three hours of meetings and an overzealous first-year doctoral student to deal with. "Yes. Definitely I will be around."
"Cool," and the single word is bare, honest, pleased, and Rodney finds himself smiling. "I'll see you then."
"Yeah," Rodney tells him, although he doesn't quite know when when will be. "Um, I may not be in my office for a bit?" He calculates the odds of bullying Radek into letting him out of the undergraduate curriculum part of the department meeting; Bill's voice gives him hives, and also it means he'll be able to avoid the last item on the agenda, selecting the new department head. "If it's closed, I'm in meetings trying not to kill people."
He can almost hear John's smile across airwaves, can feel it, something warm low in his chest that makes him smile too.
"I'll see you," John says, and "I'll see you," Rodney says right on top of him, which leads to verbal stumbling and a pause that's two people trying to figure out how to hang up until John says "'Bye," and Rodney forgets John can't see him and nods, and then there's the click and despondent trill of the line disconnecting.
Rodney stares at the phone for a moment and tells himself not to be ridiculous, Rodney McKay is never ridiculous, and only after he's convinced himself of this does he flip the phone shut and place it carefully in a conspicuous place on a side table. It doesn't ring again, which relieves him in some way he doesn't want to examine, and probably is incapable of examining in the first place. Briefly, he imagines John staring at his own phone with a poleaxed expression that will somehow make him no less hot, and has the oddly comforting thought that he has met somebody as bad at this whole thing between people as he is.
* * *
"No." Rodney inflicts Radek with his best glare: chin up, mouth thin, arms crossed. It reduces his students to tears and the department administrator to frustrated threats of losing his reimbursement paperwork. Most of the time it rolls right off Radek, Teflon-coated Czech bastard that he is, but this time – this time, it makes him sigh and rub his forehead. Rodney allows himself a silent moment of gloating but returns to the attack before Zelenka can rally. "And just in case I wasn't clear enough the first time? No."
"Rodney, I have sacrificed myself for three years and I would like to start doing research again."
"And I would like to not stop doing research."
Radek offers up a martyred sigh. "I have no wish to renew my position as department head, Rodney. You know this. And it is either you, or I will ask Kavanagh. He is perhaps too young to be chair, but we all learn through experience, do we not?"
"Okay, that's playing dirty." Keeping up the glare under threat of having Kavanagh in charge of him… Rodney is good, but not that good. "I… Radek, you know I like bossing people around as much as the next person, but I find publishing to be somewhat more exciting than that. Also, my doctor says I should avoid high-stress situations, and having to deal with university administration is definitely high stress. I start shaking, Radek." To illustrate, Rodney holds up a hand the fine tremors that have already begun to manifest.
"Your entire life is a high-stress situation." The light from Radek's desk lamp bounces yellow and unsympathetic off his glasses. "Rodney, please, at least consider it?"
This is the tradeoff for escaping Bill Lee's nattering on about changing degree requirements (really, the man is the most unthreatening undergraduate director ever; how will students ever learn?): facing Radek one-on-one, Rodney thinks glumly as he plods out of the department office, pointedly not checking his mailbox, where a stack of letters and messages has begun to age nicely, marinading with paperwork for the interviews and a few other things. He filches a handful of candy from the secretary's desk, ignores her shrill order for him to take one piece, the limit is one piece at a time, and supposes he has to add Radek next to "impertinent salespeople" on the list of individuals who shouldn't be able to railroad him, but do.
John Sheppard is on that list, Rodney thinks as he pops a mini-Snickers in his mouth; he chews meditatively, but the caramel and nougat and crunch of peanuts don't soothe him the way they usually do. A lifetime of social ineptness has reconciled him to the fact that he will always be bad with people (and petty and arrogant and worse things he doesn't like to contemplate), so he's become accustomed to feeling out of balance when it's people, not science, and Rodney hates having his equilibrium snatched out from under him.
Fortunately for his balance, the semester is still too young for him to have students congregating outside his door, though by midterm there will be desperate flocks of them as they realize exactly how little they know about particle physics and nonlinear dynamics. The cool, quiet air of his office closes around him, the smell of his books and the white noise of his laptop in the corner, the desktop that processes most of the data from his experiments. Sighing, he flops down in his chair, closely examines the white-brick wall for flaws and can't find any.
"Might as well get it over with," he mumbles around another miniature candy bar, and hits the play all messages button on his phone, because the you have messages goddammit light has been blinking accusingly for days, holding in silence the frantic cries of one editor, another editor asking him to soften his criticism in his peer reviews, Jeannie, an ominous message from his cable company, three from the administrator reminding him about today's meetings, another from Jeannie, yes please, delete all. He sits there a while longer and watches the you have messages goddammit light stay dead.
There are things… things to do. Important things. He teaches in two departments and has a clutch of graduate students to persuade out of stupidity, and has a Czech colleague who needs to be browbeaten into seeing sense, or Rodney's point of view (which is better and far more important than sense). Also, there is email, and his brain hurts.
Teyla comes by a couple hours later to tell him that she and Elizabeth are going for coffee tonight and he's welcome to come along if he thinks he can handle discussion of the gender debate in the current presidential elections. She's one of the few people Rodney doesn't laugh at when she refers to her field as political science (Elizabeth is the other), partly because she manages to pack a lot of intimidation into a tiny frame and partly because she'll listen to him talk about his research. That, and Teyla really isn't one of those people you laugh at; it's not necessarily the intimidation, but more something to do with the fact she's Teyla.
And the other thing about Teyla is, she's good at listening. For about point-five seconds, Rodney considers telling her about John, because Teyla's also one of the few people who will offer advice only if Rodney asks for it, but he keeps his mouth shut instead and pretends to consider her offer.
"You spend too much time working," Teyla says, the words reproving but her tone fond. "I will buy you coffee, if it means you won't be working on your book tonight."
"I'm always working on my book." Rodney peers at her suspiciously. "Is there any particular reason why you're bribing me?"
"Simon broke up with Elizabeth," Teyla answers, "and you could come and gloat about how you knew all along he's an ignorant biological sciences asshole who didn't deserve her." She manages a creditable impression of Rodney's original warning.
"No one deserves Elizabeth," Rodney mumbles, not entirely sure which way he means that. "So I get to go along and play the prescient gay friend?"
"You get to come along and have me buy you coffee." Teyla sighs the long-suffering sigh Rodney's grown used to hearing in connection with his recalcitrance. "Call me when you have reached a decision."
Teyla leaves in her usual unobtrusive way, so blink-and-you-miss her that it's easy to forget that she's addressed the UN and NATO and the EU and dozens of other important acronyms. She's even persuaded Rodney into listening to her, most of the time anyway, for all that she's pretty much his antithesis: vegetarian, into yoga and being one with nature, with an inclination toward clothes that are more Earth Mother than power suit. She burns incense and smells like sandalwood and jasmine, and views getting Rodney to meditate as an inevitability that hasn't happened yet.
The phone rings, and Rodney lets it sit until it gives up and stops. After a minute the voice mail light starts blinking again. Feeling virtuous, he presses the button.
Listen, Rodney, I'm not sure what your problem is, if your secretary-person-whoever is just incredibly disorganized or if you're the same insensitive asshole you've always been, so either get a new secretary or get over it and call me. Okay?
Rodney presses the delete button before the woman who lives in his voice mail can tell him his options. He tries not to let himself hear the pleading question at the end, the tilt of Jeannie's voice upward into the interrogative or something like tears. Their parents have been safely dead for a few years now, and if her English major had died or decided to go on a Kerouackian pilgrimage with the family poodle she would have said, and Rodney isn't going to waste brain cells over wondering why now.
He shoves his phone into the corner and all thoughts of Jeannie into the recesses of his mind and turns to his desktop, his old equation W = F x D, where W is work, F is Force (concentration), and D is Displacement (of issues). He finds he needs a lot of force to displace the anxious crack of Jeannie's voice, the nagging disappointment at John not having come to see him.
A rhythm other than the rhythm of his thoughts intrudes, a pounding that isn't his fingers on the keys. Hey, McKay, says a voice that isn't his voice, or the voice that runs along with the thoughts in his head. McKay? Earth calling McKay?
"What?" Rodney spins in his chair, almost too fast for it to keep up, but the vertigo upending his stomach isn't from the rush back to reality or the turning too fast – it's from John Sheppard standing there, a work of disheveled art framed by Rodney's doorway.
"Oh," Rodney says with a nonchalance he doesn't feel and is pretty sure he isn't pulling off. "Hey."
"Hey." John flows into Rodney's office, effortlessly filling up the space Rodney's always thought of as his. He folds himself into an empty chair, a neat compression of form before easing long arms and legs into a sprawl that still manages elegance. "How was the conference?"
"Fine." Rodney stares at the wall and its non-existent cracks. "Good, fine. It was fine." From the corner of his eye he sees John's head dip in silent, okay, it was fine agreement. "So did you have a good day among the termites?"
He refuses absolutely to admit that he'd looked for John, but only the dreadlocked one had been there this morning, leaning against the truck and looking at a sheaf of blueprints, and Rodney had been nowhere near desperate, or desperately stupid, enough to go up to him and ask where John was.
"Office day today," John says, and he looks… a lot more polished than last Wednesday, almost office-worthy, excepting the hair and the boots that are either broken in and worn almost through the soles or else the kind that cost hundreds of dollars because someone did the breaking-in at the factory. "Paperwork." His mouth twists around the word, flexible and managing to make Rodney laugh and want to kiss that mouth at the same time.
It occurs to Rodney that, given John's spent the day in his own office and that it is now safely after five o'clock, John has quite possibly made a trip here for the specific purpose of seeing Rodney. Which is, he decides, a ridiculous proposition because the physical sciences and research building is a quick walk from the faculty parking lot and John has probably come to make sure the termites haven't launched a counterattack. Still, John's here in battered jeans and boots and looking at him with an expression that unsettles Rodney in all sorts of ways.
"Listen," Rodney says, at the same moment that John says "Hey," and Rodney falls over his own words and John's, trying to get out of the way. At last he makes a sound he hopes is encouraging, indicating John can go ahead, but it only makes John look uncomfortable, forehead scrunching into anxious lines and crow's-feet appearing at the corner of his eyes.
"I should..." John indicates his escape route. Rodney nods to indicate he understands completely, but John's face doesn't go loose with the relief Rodney thinks he should feel; instead, he glances at Rodney's computer screen, the papers on his desk, before looking back at Rodney again. "See you later?"
"Yeah," Rodney mumbles. He tells himself he isn't bitterly disappointed, you can overcome your crippling social handicaps and salvage this, goddammit, and while he reassures himself of both these things, John stands and rubs one hand on the thigh of his jeans and turns.
"Wait!"
The word almost explodes out of him, coming from a place inside that, until this very instant, Rodney never knew he had. It's a stupid place, a brave place where he does things like stand up and grab his laptop without bothering to power it down and say with a stupidity he can't quite credit as belonging to him, "I'm about done anyway, I'll... I'll come with you."
"Okay," John says, and although his face doesn't change much, Rodney has the sense that he's surprised. Rodney hurries through packing before John can change his mind – or before he can – and hits the lights. The building is silent around them, most of the professors in afternoon classes or cleared out for the day, but Rodney has the sense of being watched, some invisible presence waiting to tell someone I saw Rodney McKay leaving with the really hot contractor.
On the way down he crosses "keeping quiet for more than a minute" off his List of Impossible Things; he has everything to say and nothing at all, and a thousand questions to ask, but John alchemizes Rodney's words into silence, a silence that holds as they head down the stairs and out the door, past the den where the department administrator lurks. The campus opens up around them, spacious and nearly deserted in the late afternoon, and something in John seems to unwind, detectable in the loosening of his shoulders.
They walk past John's handiwork, a construct of tarps and signs warning people to stay away. "We're going to redo the exterior too," John says, gesturing to one of the tarps, where nineteenth-century stonework had given way to acid rain and a seige of ivy. "They've let that slide way too long."
"They work in mysterious ways," Rodney agrees, "mysteriously stupid ways," and John smirks and makes a sound that might be a laugh, and like that it's easy, so easy, to tell John about his day and the stupid people infesting it, and his plans for an anti-evangelist force field.
John's eyes light up at that, and he laughs his donkey death-rattle laugh, and Rodney realizes he is very comprehensively screwed, watching the sweet stretch of John's mouth and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the quick, shy duck of his head as though hilarity hasn't blinded him to awareness of being looked at.
And like that they're in the parking lot, a walk Rodney usually doesn't register because he's too busy thinking, or registers as parsecs because he's exhausted. John's truck looms solid and black, recognizable by the S&D logo and the liberal application of dust. Rodney's car crouches in its tidy, fuel-efficient smallness a couple rows away. Rodney fishes for his keys, fumbling for some way to say "see you later" when he really wants to say "come home," or "come have a drink," or "come," all with me.
"You want to grab a drink?" It's John's voice, not his, which throws Rodney for a moment. He wonders if John's psychic, and wonders how John managed to get over to the driver's side of his truck, hiding behind the massive curve of the hood, hand resting on it and fingers laced through his key ring.
"Drink," Rodney echoes, and jumps when John presses a button on his keypad and the door unlocks. John gives him a meaningful look, tips his head in the direction of the door, get in you idiot, and Rodney obeys with alacrity and disbelief.
Age-fuzzed guitar starts up along with the engine. Rodney has to fight the urge to bury his face in his hands, because really, it wasn't fair, he'd been suckered in by the hair and stubble and slouch, lured in like the helpless Rodney McKay he was, to be ambushed by awful laughter and country music.
"Is that Johnny Cash?"
John yodels something about walking the line, and it's paradoxical, it really is, how something so unsexy, something Rodney acknowledges as unsexy (he even says to himself, yes, that is one of the most unsexy things I have heard in my life) makes his insides go still and hot and becomes sexy. He needs the rest of a fairly short drive to ruminate over it, if the horribleness of John's singing is objectively unsexy, or merely subjectively so, and if it's possible to be objectively sexy (or unsexy) when "sexy" is purely a socio-cultural construct, with standards that –
"We're here," John says, and the truck rumbles to a stop. The engine cutting off cuts off Rodney's philosophical soliloquy, and after a slow, disbelieving blink, Rodney realizes where they are.
To Rodney's secret dismay, it's Benedict's, a bar known to be frequented by students.
"You don't go trolling for undergraduates, do you?" he asks as he climbs out. The building has the raffishness Rodney's associated with college bars: built in the '70s, windows plastered over with beer ads and decades of smoke, paint mangy and the neon signs not working. It isn't difficult to picture a flock of lithe, tanned whippersnappers congregating around Sheppard. They would probably coo over his hair and press themselves up really close, and – oh, God. The taste in Rodney's mouth is worse than night-old Miller, thinking of that.
"The Basement," John says, and slides Rodney a reprimanding look. "It's under Benedict's, and they card; no one under 21."
"Yes, because college students these days are on accelerated two-year programs." Rodney ignores John's eyeroll, but follows him around the back of the building and through an entryway that doesn't smell of undergraduate and vomit. Jazz piano – real piano, played by a real, live person – wafts over Rodney along with old smoke and alcohol. Despite himself, Rodney relaxes.
This early the bar is mostly empty, populated only by a couple of professors Rodney doesn't recognize and some graduate students sitting at the grown-up table. The only thing that doesn't fit is the bartender, who looks like he needs to be carded himself, and who, to Rodney's horror, tries to put ice in his scotch.
"Room temperature!" Rodney barks. "Did you fail out of bartending school? How did you manage to get hired here?"
"Some people are weird," the kid says defensively, and with a look that suggests Rodney's in that category, with or without ice cubes. He pours the scotch with some competence, into a proper snifter, no less, and slides it across the counter.
John's already in a booth, positioned slightly toward the back of the room, at the border of the light from a circle of lamps and the shadows. Rodney makes himself walk over and sit down, and stares at the deep, steady amber of his drink. They aren't in the corner where there's privacy, and they aren't in the comfortable-looking chairs under the lamps, either, and what the hell is he supposed to do with that? Casual drink and nothing more or something, the next step into something that's had Rodney distracted since last week?
"So how was your day?" He winces; apparently that's what he's going to do with it – between the darkness and the heavy-hot taste of scotch in his mouth and John looking at him, he can't compute the variables.
"Paperwork," John drawls, and runs his thumb and index finger up the length of his glass. The tips leave lines in the condensation. "So, pretty boring." The pianist in the corner changes over to Fats Waller, pretty good ragtime but with a stiffness to the left hand that says he's either warming up or out of practice.
"You play?" John asks. He's still doing the hand thing, thumb and index finger sliding up and down, up and down.
Rodney reminds himself to remember that interior monologues have to remain in the interior. He swallows another mouthful of scotch, carelessly; it burns the back of his throat, irritated at its rough treatment.
"Not anymore," Rodney says when he can talk again. Piano stopped being a sore spot a while ago, vanishing to a thin scab of regret he picks at every now and then. "I listen a lot, though. And you can tell he's stiff; it's stride piano, the left hand has to walk from the bass register to the tenor, which is why it's called stride in the first place. And you have to be good; he sounds arthritic." Rodney plays a few bars of "Ain't Misbehavin'" to demonstrate, is glad for the darkness because John is watching his hands, the right playing inaudible melody while the left fumbles through an interval.
"I have a guitar I have no idea how to play," John offers after Rodney stops.
"Considering what you listen to, I'm not surprised."
"Hey," John says, only it's heyyyy, the vowels stretched out along lazy indignation. It's a tease in monosyllable. "There's nothing wrong with Johnny Cash. Or Garth Brooks." And he grins, the bastard, when Rodney almost chokes on his own tongue.
"You're kidding, right?" Rodney gazes at John appealingly; weirdly, John's grin wavers for a moment before returning. "I'll buy the next round if you swear on "Folsom Prison Blues" you were kidding."
"Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard," John says, sounding almost penitent. His eyes are warm, collecting the faint light from the lamp, sudden sparks of green here and there. The lamp, Rodney realizes, is one of those that's designed to look like a candle, which he's always thought is kind of dumb; the light it gives off is weak and yellow, but it washes John's skin to bronze, does something to the arc of his cheekbone. "And Sint Bernardus."
"Who?"
"The beer," John says patiently, and makes a shooing gesture that looks pretty dumb, and smiles a pleasant, wholly fake smile when Rodney tells him how dumb it looks.
"Don't monks take a vow of poverty?" Rodney grumbles when he sets down John's glass. Sets, not bangs, because ten dollars for a pint strikes him as vaguely ridiculous in a college town, never mind that it's probably pretty good.
"Technically, it's not Trappist," John studies the glass appreciatively, and just sly enough that Rodney bristles. "They don't brew it in the monastery."
"Technically," Rodney snorts. "And technically, that's my beer, so..." And he's hovering on the fine line between stupid and bold, and taking John's glass and swallowing it, closing his eyes as he does, smoothness rolling into bitterness and back again, the froth soft on his upper lip.
He sets the glass back down, slides it back across to John, whose hand is curled absently on the tabletop, and who is watching him. The glass catches on a flaw in the wood, a groove where maybe other hands have rested and John catches it before it tips, fingers quick and capable on the back of Rodney's hand, a glancing touch that Rodney barely registers before John takes the glass and puts it back on its coaster.
"Nice finish," Rodney whispers.
"Yeah," John agrees softly, voice rough as the scotch Rodney hasn't finished yet, a slow, deep burn in it that snags something loose in Rodney's guts and pulls. He's licked his lips, a moist sheen to them Rodney hadn't noticed before, and he's drawn in on himself, no longer casual, a tension in his shoulders, a waiting that Rodney recognizes.
What? he wants to ask, or maybe let's go, only the stillness in their small space keeps him silent, the noise of the bar growing distant, and he doesn't ask these things and has no idea if John really wants to be asked or what he's doing here. And when he opens his mouth to ask, or more likely to stumble over awkward words, his phone plays the Star Wars theme song.
Rodney jumps and fumbles for it, and John grins. It's a sudden flash, brilliant in the gloom of the Basement, before he looks away. A relief, and Rodney answers with his own shaky grin.
Fuck, he thinks when he sees the caller ID. Teyla. He's supposed to be talking about feminism and politics, and watching Elizabeth be stoic and accepting into her cappucino and telling her that Simon was an ignorant biological sciences asshole. Instead, he's sitting in a bar with his phone ringing, and watching John tilt his head back to drink, mouth matched close to the mark that says where Rodney's had been, and graphing the curve of his neck.
"I... I have to get this," Rodney says weakly and, on autopilot, flips his phone open.
"Okay," John says, the word muffled by the way his lips mold themselves to the rim of his glass.
Rodney stares for a moment before remembering Teyla and forcing himself to stand up and walk into the quiet of the entryway. It's not much quieter here, but it has the advantage of giving Rodney a chance to spy on John, who is rearranging his impossible limbs and running a hand through his hair.
"Rodney, where are you?" Impatience clips Teyla's words short.
"I'm... I'm out with a friend," Rodney says, which he has to admit is kind of a large claim. "Oh, thank you for your confidence, Teyla."
"I did not say anything."
"Yes, well, you didn't need to." Rodney glances around the corner; John hasn't vanished, is still distributed in a lazy unfurling of arms and legs across the booth, swishing the swizzle stick in Rodney's drink. Rodney takes a moment to shudder in horror at the bartender (ice in whiskey? Clearly American youth were more degenerate than he thought), and a moment to consider that he had taken the swizzle stick out for a reason – it was pointless – and that John had put it back in and is now using it to toy with Rodney's whiskey.
For that, Rodney is prepared to forgive the bartender for the swizzle stick.
"Rodney," Teyla snaps, "are you coming to Lola's or not?"
"Um, not," Rodney says, and almost laughs hysterically. He studies himself in the dimly reflective surface of a mirror, hair a little wild, eyes a lot wild, the eyes of a man who has seen something he'd never thought he'd see. A woman who looks uncomfortably like Katie slips past him with a murmur of apology. "Sorry."
"Very well." He can hear Teyla's smile through the words and the background noise. "I wish you good night, then."
"Me too," Rodney says to Teyla's soft laughter, and hangs up.
He makes his way back to John – the bar's filled up, some faculty and other professionals, but noise is noise and the place is starting to smell like a bar again – and John grins lazily up at him. Rodney flops into the very uncomfortable booth, sliding across the vinyl padding.
"Your turn," John says, nodding to indicate his empty glass and – fuck, Rodney's empty glass. He'd had two swallows left, three if he hoarded, and he says this to John, who shrugs.
"Seeing as it's your fault I have accomplished very little this week, you should buy for the rest of the night." Rodney leans back and scowls the scowl that has reduced colleagues to whimpering piles of anxiety. It occurs to him that he has no idea how long the "rest of the night" is going to be.
"My fault?" John leans back too, and his eyebrows do something improbable but he doesn't seem particularly cowed.
"Yes, with the termites and the banging while I was trying to get work done, and then harassing me in my office."
"You were the one who kept my secretary on the phone for twenty minutes trying to get me fired."
"Sadly, that's twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back." Rodney draws in a breath that tastes like smoke and old scotch. It's an accelerant, throwing rocket fuel on the fire: "You also left me your business card without explaining why, and I spent the entire weekend wondering if you were offering home inspections or... or... things, or wanting to know if I had a building that needed restoring, and none of that is conducive to concentrating on the very important things I'm supposed to be concentrating on."
"Sorry," is what John has to say to that. His eyebrows are still trying to climb up his forehead so they can start the final ascent to the top of his cowlicks. Rodney stares narrowly at him, but decrypting John isn't easy in the shadows, never mind that Rodney feels like he has only small, unexpected bits of code.
He doesn't figure John out, and he probably never will, and while Rodney tries to decide if he's okay with that, John buys him another scotch, and one more, and while they talk and listen to the piano player wander through Thelonious Monk to Harry Connick the air thickens with words and teases with alcohol and smoke.
"We should get going," John says at last. His eyes wear a fine glaze made from a long day and multiple pints of high-acohol beer, but he stands with a maddening competence, still smooth. "We need... Your car." And that isn't smooth, the words stumbling over what maybe John had wanted to say, but didn't.
"Right, yes," Rodney says, "good idea." It is, a sound idea, eminently logical. "I have seminar tomorrow." He wouldn't want to be in his graduate students' shoes, or his own for that matter; his head is working its way up to a temper tantrum of agony, resentful of the smoke and the noise. "You have termites."
"Yeah." And how it is John fits so much into the one word, the simple agreement, Rodney has no idea. There's anticipation, good humor, something Rodney supposes would be interest, the aural equivalent of John's eyes. "Come on."
They navigate their way through the bar, and escape the herds of undergraduates waiting to get into Benedict's. Fortunately no one shouts "Hey, Dr. McKay!" but someone manages to grope his ass even with John almost plastered to his back. Sweat and perfume and smoke, an unpleasant stew that Rodney bitches about on the way back to the truck while he secretly exults over John warm and close and walking next to him.
The university and attached medical center put out enough light to block most of the stars, but Rodney rests his forehead against the cool glass of the truck's window and looks up anyway. All he can see are the circumpolar constellations.
"Nice night," John says over the bass rumble of the truck engine.
"Great night," Rodney says softly, and finds he's okay to leave it at that for the rest of the way back to campus. He tells John which car is his – "Like you need to be asked? Out of the two possible choices, a Camry and a Hummer, which do you think is more likely mine?" and John snorts.
"You can obliterate stupid drivers with a Hummer," John points out, which is true, Rodney agrees, crush them like cockroaches, which makes John shudder. "I hate bugs," John tells him, and Rodney can relate to that and changes the subject to the possibility of retrofitting his Camry with a rocket launcher so he can be fuel-efficient and destroy the idiotic at the same time.
They need ten minutes leaning against the back of John's truck to talk out the details.
"Superlight armor," John says, eyes alight, sketching out the Camry's profile with his hands. His legs are stretched out, crossed, the heel of one foot balancing atop the other. "Laser targeting. If you reinforce the side mirrors, you could mount small-caliber machine guns under them."
Rodney sighs wistfully and contemplates the Camry and John barely six inches away from him.
And, he realizes, he should go. John smells like sweat and smoke, and he's warm and flawed and perfect, with his country music and terrible laugh, and the line of his body that invites Rodney to lean in. Reluctantly and trying to tell himself virtue is its own reward (which is why so few people like being virtuous), he straightens and waves his keys.
"The graduates won't teach themselves," he says, and coughs, and makes himself start walking. Don't turn don't turn don't turn, he does have willpower, dammit, keep going, walk walk –
"Rodney?"
Rodney pauses and turns. "Yeah?"
"Just so you know," John says around some difficulty, a hesitant half-step and another that brings him close, "it was – "
And whatever John's going to say Rodney has no idea, and whether he takes the necessary step or John does, he doesn't have any idea of that, either. He knows, with sudden certainty, the skim of quartz light across John's lower lip – how it would taste, feel, the subtle texture where the skin is rough from John worrying at it, the glide into damp silk.
He traces out the taste of expensive beer and the scotch undertones on John's lips, the quick, grateful huff of John's breath against his mouth. The angle doesn't work at first, but then John shifts, and they slide together, easy easy easy, smooth despite John's runaway stubble at the margins of Rodney's lips, and god, the broken, pleased sound deep in John's throat, and his hand just there on Rodney's, stroking to match how John licks at him, into him, deep and in and drawing Rodney down, and yeah, Rodney doesn't mind.
It's good, so good, and he doesn't have the breath to tell John that, so he hopes the hand splayed on the sinuous hitch of John's hip speaks for him, so good, better, best – and –
And over, so sudden.
John stares at him, shadowed and spooked and stepping away, one hand hovering indecisively before he lowers it. Rodney can't move, too breathess, shaken, shaken.
"I'll... I'll be around tomorrow, McKay," John says, voice rough with too much trying to come out along with the words.
"Termites," Rodney says, and John's lips move in something that might be a smile but in the uncertain light Rodney can't tell. John stares at him, mute and desperate, and why isn't there such a thing as telepathy Rodney has no idea, because now would be the perfect time for it, to ascertain the precise nature of John's silent freaking-out instead of standing like a stoned moron and watching as John shuffles, walks backward for two steps before he turns to climb into his truck, and then, as a sort of reward, still watching as he gets a faceful of exhaust.
Somehow Rodney can't make himself care about inhaling extravagant quantities of carcinogens; staring mindlessly seems to be more important, in addition to the fact that remembering he needs to go home and go to bed requires a lot of work.
Very likely, he thinks as he fumbles with the keyless entry, he shouldn't be driving; two scotches isn't anywhere near enough to make him drunk, and they're only a small part of the haze coating his brain. Most of the rest is the improbability of the day, of John, the memory of rough fingertips, night-cool but warm underneath, on the inside of his wrist. Enough coherence remains that he drives home without incident, unreality riding shotgun with him. It follows him inside, through the routine of feeding an irritated Planck, turning on music to calm himself down, Mozart reconstructing stability in a world that's now matched to the crooked angle of John's smile. There's a message, probably Teyla from earlier in the night, demanding to know where he is.
He presses play.
Look, Rodney... Jeannie says, I have no idea what I did – no, I know what I did, and I'm not sorry about it. Grow up, okay? Please grow up and call me.
"Grow up, okay?" Rodney mutters uncomfortably, and presses the DELETE button. The woman who lives in his machine tells him he has no more messages, and the red light fades.
.notes: Hey, more Restoration Hardware! This picks up directly after ficlet #1 also, oddly enough, called Restoration Hardware. Mostly, this is an excuse to write dithering!Rodney, because I have a deep fondness for him, and also, it's always fun to snicker at my profession.
.The Conferences
Rodney calls John after the conference, strategic planning because he refuses to look like a sex-deprived academic who has misread the situation into catastrophe (maybe Sheppard had been offering him a home inspection, never mind that Rodney has a condo and the association pays for those things) and who will, at any moment, take a wrong step in the social minefield and explode in messy humiliation. That he is a desperate sex-deprived academic doesn't help matters; even worse there's something about John Sheppard that disrupts Rodney's higher brain functions, the ones responsible for things like rational assessment and restraint, and John Sheppard has enough to answer for as it is.
Sheppard-centric thoughts had packed themselves in his brain, spiky-haired albatrosses of mental carry-on luggage, and along with the low-grade headache from Wednesday, they had stayed with him throughout the entire conference. This is a Sheppard headache now, Rodney decides, rubbing at his temple as he stares at his cell phone, only one in a growing list of things he's decided to lay at Sheppard's door: his headache, the unfinished state of his graduate seminar syllabus, Radek tormenting him endlessly about the new assistant professor candidates, and his spineless capitulation to the sales associate at the yuppie clothing emporium.
The pants, Rodney decides as he fishes Sheppard's card out of his wallet, had been the worst. He hasn't been accustomed to intimidation, especially from impertinent sales peons, but between his need for decent pants and his preoccupation with John Sheppard and John Sheppard's hair and John Sheppard's dirty thumbprint and what Rodney had begun to suspect was Sheppard's home phone number, Rodney found himself herded away from the grey plaid pants – "but they're dry-clean," he'd protested, that being one of his few fashion requirements – and toward pants that were, in theory, wrinkle-resistant and washable.
He frowns at the pair he happens to be wearing and picks at an invisible thread, flips the phone open.
The person doing the herding had been a skinny, pinched-face battleaxe who resembled Kavanagh at his most clenched-up (not that she looked like Kavanagh, but the glare and the quality of her voice had a certain resonance). Before Rodney could draw breath to excoriate her for insolence, molestation (she had grabbed his sleeve and hauled him around the store), and the evils of commission-based business, she had his arms loaded up with pants and shirts of various persuasions, pushed him into a dressing room, and instructed him to try everything on. And he did, which still horrifies him in the same way that his brush with limoncello cream-flavored death had, with a horror that manages to be both distant and visceral at the same time.
"Turn around," the girl had kept telling him with impatient circular gestures. "What am I, a model?" Rodney had snapped, but the eyes behind thick black frames were fierce, and he had turned around and around obediently.
Only marginally less awful than being bossed around by the impertinent sales peon and being hosed for what almost amounted to his monthly mortgage payment had been at the conference itself. He'd given his paper and publicly lamented the state of theoretical physics with Sheppardian thoughts on a permanent cycle in his head, and worse than that – far worse than clothes shopping – had been when, between panels, Sam Carter had come up to him and leaned in and said "Nice pants, McKay," and Rodney, who had spent six years waiting for her to say something of precisely this nature, hadn't been able to enjoy it.
He finishes entering John's number and glares at the thumbprint on the card while the phone rings and rings and rings some more. Rodney hangs up before the voicemail message starts because, really, he doesn't know what would be worse, listening to the awful mysterious computerized woman who tells him you-have-reached-the-voice-mail-box-of-JOHN-SHEP-PARD-please-leave-a-mess-age or John's drawling voice inviting him to do the same. When he slams the phone shut and tosses it onto the couch, he tells himself it isn't frustration or embarrassment he's feeling, and yeah, everyone has caller ID these days and Sheppard's probably screening his, but Rodney hasn't exploded yet, it's just a flesh wound.
"Your cat's still behind the washing machine, McKay."
"He'll come out eventually," Rodney says absently. Planck usually sulks back there after Rodney returns from somewhere, punishment for Rodney's heartless abandonment. At the moment, Rodney wishes he could join him. "And it's Dr. McKay to you."
"Sure, McKay." A cupboard slams with damning finality and a moment later Laura Cadman, whom Rodney hasn't actually seen since he got home three minutes ago, wanders out of the kitchen. She's fresh-faced and young and doesn't fear him, and even worse, lives next to him. "You can count the silver if you want, but everything's okay."
Rodney eyes his TV and the DVDs stacked around it; everything looks untouched and fairly clean. Laura smirks at him but doesn't say anything, leaving it to Rodney to fill the silence with nervous chatter about the conference, Planck, the insults perpetrated by airlines that now refuse to feed people on anything less than trans-oceanic flights, "and you should be relieved you've graduated already."
"Every day," Laura says solemnly. She's not even in his department, a postdoc in political history who has been sent from the ninth circle to live in the condo next door and torment him and, occasionally, cat-sit. Rodney tries to ignore her as he shoves his carryon under the kitchen island to be dealt with later and goes through the mail piled on the counter; Laura makes soft, meaningful noises until he remembers and writes a check ("I'm a postdoc, not a millionaire, McKay") and she pockets it with a speed Rodney remembers from seven years spent on stipends and fellowships.
"You had some guy stop by on Saturday."
"Jehovah's Witness? Mormon? Any other species of evangelical?" The NO SOLICITING sign would be as effective as if it did not exist, and not for the first time Rodney gives serious thought to the theory and logistics involved in designing and constructing a forcefield around his condo. He would even extend it to Cadman, and possibly others in exchange for a fee because the cost to power the thing would hardly be negligible and Rodney McKay is not a charity, but still, force field, or at the very least he could build a robot programmed to respond to phrases such as, "Do you have Christ in your life?" – hey that would be –
"…. some guy named Jack or John or something?"
"John!" Rodney abandons his indignant perusal of his cell phone bill and his visions of a private robot army. "John Sheppard?"
"Yeah." Laura studies him for a moment, long enough that Rodney looks back down at his cell phone bill. He knows that look, a look possessed by Elizabeth and Teyla when they're speculating, when they know something he doesn't. Radek has that look every now and then. "He said he talked to you on Wednesday about a home inspection. Also, he was pretty hot."
A blush ignites under Rodney's skin, a sudden, fierce burn he can't will away. He can't make himself watch Laura's speculation morph into triumph at whatever she thinks she's discovered, though he's pretty sure whatever it is is damning, along the lines of Rodney McKay has a cru-ush, accompanied by dancing and finger-pointing and terminal humiliation on Rodney's part. And speaking of damning and acute humiliation, he can picture John standing on his doorstep and Laura, pretty and strawberry-blond and wholesome-looking if you weren't paying attention or were an oblivious idiot (which Sheppard may be), answering the door, and how exactly that would look.
Rodney's halfway into the living room in a heartbeat, fishing through the couch cushions in two. The cell phone eludes him, though he finds a long-missing flash drive and a bag of Cheetos he sets aside for future use, and where in God's name is it? At last his fingers slide over smooth metal and oh thank you thank you, Rodney thinks as he flips the phone open and purges the keypad of crumbs and lint, thank you thank you in time to the pulse of the phone ringing.
"Sheppard."
And it's John's voice, hoarse, rougher coming from the other end of a line that is supposed to be crystal clear.
"John?" Rodney asks, and, remembering that Laura is eavesdropping and being shameless about it, hovering in the foyer, "Sheppard? This is um, John Sheppard I'm talking to."
"At the moment," and exasperation pulls John's drawl to painful tautness.
"Yes, um, it's Rodney? Rodney McKay?" He glares at Laura and telepathically threatens her with searing, eternal torment if she doesn't leave on the instant; Laura remains unmoved, and even leans back against wall to emphasize how unmoved she is. "Um, yes," Rodney mumbles. "We talked about the home inspection."
The "home inspection," Laura mouths, air quotes and all, which forces Rodney to hiss LEAVE. LEAVE RIGHT NOW at her. She does, which amazes Rodney enough that he almost misses the better part of John saying something.
"… was that?"
"Who was…" The image of Laura leaning in the doorway, possibly wearing lingerie or a sign reading Part of Rodney McKay's Extensive All-Woman Harem, intrudes. "Oh, you mean..?" John doesn't answer the question. "That was Laura Cadman," Rodney says, and clarifies the nature of Laura's association with him.
"So you're not." John stops; Rodney thinks it's a pause, John searching for a tactful way of saying married or living together or resolutely heterosexual. But the pause stretches on and on, well beyond Rodney's tolerance threshold for silence in conversation, and he fills it the only way he can.
"Um, we're not married. Or living together. Or going out. But we could be, I guess, if I were interested. I mean, not that it would be unethical of me to, because she's not in my department and she's technically affiliated with Columbia, but even if she was a student here, university guidelines don't officially prohibit romantic relationships between professors and graduate students so long as the professor isn't an advisor, which, as I said, I'm not…" This, he realizes from John's stony, static-filled silence, qualifies as digging the grave deeper. "What I mean is, I'm not seeing her. I try not to see her. It's a relationship of completely platonic, mutual inconvenience."
"Oh." Instead of sounding relieved, John sounds perplexed, as though he's practiced exactly what to say but now has to revise on the fly and has no idea how; it doesn't quite square with the confident man who'd so effortlessly taken over Rodney's office and co-opted Rodney's self-control. Another pause, almost long enough to qualify as a full stop and it has Rodney twitching by the time John expels a clearly audible breath and says, "You want… Are you around tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Rodney says immediately, even though he has three hours of meetings and an overzealous first-year doctoral student to deal with. "Yes. Definitely I will be around."
"Cool," and the single word is bare, honest, pleased, and Rodney finds himself smiling. "I'll see you then."
"Yeah," Rodney tells him, although he doesn't quite know when when will be. "Um, I may not be in my office for a bit?" He calculates the odds of bullying Radek into letting him out of the undergraduate curriculum part of the department meeting; Bill's voice gives him hives, and also it means he'll be able to avoid the last item on the agenda, selecting the new department head. "If it's closed, I'm in meetings trying not to kill people."
He can almost hear John's smile across airwaves, can feel it, something warm low in his chest that makes him smile too.
"I'll see you," John says, and "I'll see you," Rodney says right on top of him, which leads to verbal stumbling and a pause that's two people trying to figure out how to hang up until John says "'Bye," and Rodney forgets John can't see him and nods, and then there's the click and despondent trill of the line disconnecting.
Rodney stares at the phone for a moment and tells himself not to be ridiculous, Rodney McKay is never ridiculous, and only after he's convinced himself of this does he flip the phone shut and place it carefully in a conspicuous place on a side table. It doesn't ring again, which relieves him in some way he doesn't want to examine, and probably is incapable of examining in the first place. Briefly, he imagines John staring at his own phone with a poleaxed expression that will somehow make him no less hot, and has the oddly comforting thought that he has met somebody as bad at this whole thing between people as he is.
"No." Rodney inflicts Radek with his best glare: chin up, mouth thin, arms crossed. It reduces his students to tears and the department administrator to frustrated threats of losing his reimbursement paperwork. Most of the time it rolls right off Radek, Teflon-coated Czech bastard that he is, but this time – this time, it makes him sigh and rub his forehead. Rodney allows himself a silent moment of gloating but returns to the attack before Zelenka can rally. "And just in case I wasn't clear enough the first time? No."
"Rodney, I have sacrificed myself for three years and I would like to start doing research again."
"And I would like to not stop doing research."
Radek offers up a martyred sigh. "I have no wish to renew my position as department head, Rodney. You know this. And it is either you, or I will ask Kavanagh. He is perhaps too young to be chair, but we all learn through experience, do we not?"
"Okay, that's playing dirty." Keeping up the glare under threat of having Kavanagh in charge of him… Rodney is good, but not that good. "I… Radek, you know I like bossing people around as much as the next person, but I find publishing to be somewhat more exciting than that. Also, my doctor says I should avoid high-stress situations, and having to deal with university administration is definitely high stress. I start shaking, Radek." To illustrate, Rodney holds up a hand the fine tremors that have already begun to manifest.
"Your entire life is a high-stress situation." The light from Radek's desk lamp bounces yellow and unsympathetic off his glasses. "Rodney, please, at least consider it?"
This is the tradeoff for escaping Bill Lee's nattering on about changing degree requirements (really, the man is the most unthreatening undergraduate director ever; how will students ever learn?): facing Radek one-on-one, Rodney thinks glumly as he plods out of the department office, pointedly not checking his mailbox, where a stack of letters and messages has begun to age nicely, marinading with paperwork for the interviews and a few other things. He filches a handful of candy from the secretary's desk, ignores her shrill order for him to take one piece, the limit is one piece at a time, and supposes he has to add Radek next to "impertinent salespeople" on the list of individuals who shouldn't be able to railroad him, but do.
John Sheppard is on that list, Rodney thinks as he pops a mini-Snickers in his mouth; he chews meditatively, but the caramel and nougat and crunch of peanuts don't soothe him the way they usually do. A lifetime of social ineptness has reconciled him to the fact that he will always be bad with people (and petty and arrogant and worse things he doesn't like to contemplate), so he's become accustomed to feeling out of balance when it's people, not science, and Rodney hates having his equilibrium snatched out from under him.
Fortunately for his balance, the semester is still too young for him to have students congregating outside his door, though by midterm there will be desperate flocks of them as they realize exactly how little they know about particle physics and nonlinear dynamics. The cool, quiet air of his office closes around him, the smell of his books and the white noise of his laptop in the corner, the desktop that processes most of the data from his experiments. Sighing, he flops down in his chair, closely examines the white-brick wall for flaws and can't find any.
"Might as well get it over with," he mumbles around another miniature candy bar, and hits the play all messages button on his phone, because the you have messages goddammit light has been blinking accusingly for days, holding in silence the frantic cries of one editor, another editor asking him to soften his criticism in his peer reviews, Jeannie, an ominous message from his cable company, three from the administrator reminding him about today's meetings, another from Jeannie, yes please, delete all. He sits there a while longer and watches the you have messages goddammit light stay dead.
There are things… things to do. Important things. He teaches in two departments and has a clutch of graduate students to persuade out of stupidity, and has a Czech colleague who needs to be browbeaten into seeing sense, or Rodney's point of view (which is better and far more important than sense). Also, there is email, and his brain hurts.
Teyla comes by a couple hours later to tell him that she and Elizabeth are going for coffee tonight and he's welcome to come along if he thinks he can handle discussion of the gender debate in the current presidential elections. She's one of the few people Rodney doesn't laugh at when she refers to her field as political science (Elizabeth is the other), partly because she manages to pack a lot of intimidation into a tiny frame and partly because she'll listen to him talk about his research. That, and Teyla really isn't one of those people you laugh at; it's not necessarily the intimidation, but more something to do with the fact she's Teyla.
And the other thing about Teyla is, she's good at listening. For about point-five seconds, Rodney considers telling her about John, because Teyla's also one of the few people who will offer advice only if Rodney asks for it, but he keeps his mouth shut instead and pretends to consider her offer.
"You spend too much time working," Teyla says, the words reproving but her tone fond. "I will buy you coffee, if it means you won't be working on your book tonight."
"I'm always working on my book." Rodney peers at her suspiciously. "Is there any particular reason why you're bribing me?"
"Simon broke up with Elizabeth," Teyla answers, "and you could come and gloat about how you knew all along he's an ignorant biological sciences asshole who didn't deserve her." She manages a creditable impression of Rodney's original warning.
"No one deserves Elizabeth," Rodney mumbles, not entirely sure which way he means that. "So I get to go along and play the prescient gay friend?"
"You get to come along and have me buy you coffee." Teyla sighs the long-suffering sigh Rodney's grown used to hearing in connection with his recalcitrance. "Call me when you have reached a decision."
Teyla leaves in her usual unobtrusive way, so blink-and-you-miss her that it's easy to forget that she's addressed the UN and NATO and the EU and dozens of other important acronyms. She's even persuaded Rodney into listening to her, most of the time anyway, for all that she's pretty much his antithesis: vegetarian, into yoga and being one with nature, with an inclination toward clothes that are more Earth Mother than power suit. She burns incense and smells like sandalwood and jasmine, and views getting Rodney to meditate as an inevitability that hasn't happened yet.
The phone rings, and Rodney lets it sit until it gives up and stops. After a minute the voice mail light starts blinking again. Feeling virtuous, he presses the button.
Listen, Rodney, I'm not sure what your problem is, if your secretary-person-whoever is just incredibly disorganized or if you're the same insensitive asshole you've always been, so either get a new secretary or get over it and call me. Okay?
Rodney presses the delete button before the woman who lives in his voice mail can tell him his options. He tries not to let himself hear the pleading question at the end, the tilt of Jeannie's voice upward into the interrogative or something like tears. Their parents have been safely dead for a few years now, and if her English major had died or decided to go on a Kerouackian pilgrimage with the family poodle she would have said, and Rodney isn't going to waste brain cells over wondering why now.
He shoves his phone into the corner and all thoughts of Jeannie into the recesses of his mind and turns to his desktop, his old equation W = F x D, where W is work, F is Force (concentration), and D is Displacement (of issues). He finds he needs a lot of force to displace the anxious crack of Jeannie's voice, the nagging disappointment at John not having come to see him.
A rhythm other than the rhythm of his thoughts intrudes, a pounding that isn't his fingers on the keys. Hey, McKay, says a voice that isn't his voice, or the voice that runs along with the thoughts in his head. McKay? Earth calling McKay?
"What?" Rodney spins in his chair, almost too fast for it to keep up, but the vertigo upending his stomach isn't from the rush back to reality or the turning too fast – it's from John Sheppard standing there, a work of disheveled art framed by Rodney's doorway.
"Oh," Rodney says with a nonchalance he doesn't feel and is pretty sure he isn't pulling off. "Hey."
"Hey." John flows into Rodney's office, effortlessly filling up the space Rodney's always thought of as his. He folds himself into an empty chair, a neat compression of form before easing long arms and legs into a sprawl that still manages elegance. "How was the conference?"
"Fine." Rodney stares at the wall and its non-existent cracks. "Good, fine. It was fine." From the corner of his eye he sees John's head dip in silent, okay, it was fine agreement. "So did you have a good day among the termites?"
He refuses absolutely to admit that he'd looked for John, but only the dreadlocked one had been there this morning, leaning against the truck and looking at a sheaf of blueprints, and Rodney had been nowhere near desperate, or desperately stupid, enough to go up to him and ask where John was.
"Office day today," John says, and he looks… a lot more polished than last Wednesday, almost office-worthy, excepting the hair and the boots that are either broken in and worn almost through the soles or else the kind that cost hundreds of dollars because someone did the breaking-in at the factory. "Paperwork." His mouth twists around the word, flexible and managing to make Rodney laugh and want to kiss that mouth at the same time.
It occurs to Rodney that, given John's spent the day in his own office and that it is now safely after five o'clock, John has quite possibly made a trip here for the specific purpose of seeing Rodney. Which is, he decides, a ridiculous proposition because the physical sciences and research building is a quick walk from the faculty parking lot and John has probably come to make sure the termites haven't launched a counterattack. Still, John's here in battered jeans and boots and looking at him with an expression that unsettles Rodney in all sorts of ways.
"Listen," Rodney says, at the same moment that John says "Hey," and Rodney falls over his own words and John's, trying to get out of the way. At last he makes a sound he hopes is encouraging, indicating John can go ahead, but it only makes John look uncomfortable, forehead scrunching into anxious lines and crow's-feet appearing at the corner of his eyes.
"I should..." John indicates his escape route. Rodney nods to indicate he understands completely, but John's face doesn't go loose with the relief Rodney thinks he should feel; instead, he glances at Rodney's computer screen, the papers on his desk, before looking back at Rodney again. "See you later?"
"Yeah," Rodney mumbles. He tells himself he isn't bitterly disappointed, you can overcome your crippling social handicaps and salvage this, goddammit, and while he reassures himself of both these things, John stands and rubs one hand on the thigh of his jeans and turns.
"Wait!"
The word almost explodes out of him, coming from a place inside that, until this very instant, Rodney never knew he had. It's a stupid place, a brave place where he does things like stand up and grab his laptop without bothering to power it down and say with a stupidity he can't quite credit as belonging to him, "I'm about done anyway, I'll... I'll come with you."
"Okay," John says, and although his face doesn't change much, Rodney has the sense that he's surprised. Rodney hurries through packing before John can change his mind – or before he can – and hits the lights. The building is silent around them, most of the professors in afternoon classes or cleared out for the day, but Rodney has the sense of being watched, some invisible presence waiting to tell someone I saw Rodney McKay leaving with the really hot contractor.
On the way down he crosses "keeping quiet for more than a minute" off his List of Impossible Things; he has everything to say and nothing at all, and a thousand questions to ask, but John alchemizes Rodney's words into silence, a silence that holds as they head down the stairs and out the door, past the den where the department administrator lurks. The campus opens up around them, spacious and nearly deserted in the late afternoon, and something in John seems to unwind, detectable in the loosening of his shoulders.
They walk past John's handiwork, a construct of tarps and signs warning people to stay away. "We're going to redo the exterior too," John says, gesturing to one of the tarps, where nineteenth-century stonework had given way to acid rain and a seige of ivy. "They've let that slide way too long."
"They work in mysterious ways," Rodney agrees, "mysteriously stupid ways," and John smirks and makes a sound that might be a laugh, and like that it's easy, so easy, to tell John about his day and the stupid people infesting it, and his plans for an anti-evangelist force field.
John's eyes light up at that, and he laughs his donkey death-rattle laugh, and Rodney realizes he is very comprehensively screwed, watching the sweet stretch of John's mouth and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the quick, shy duck of his head as though hilarity hasn't blinded him to awareness of being looked at.
And like that they're in the parking lot, a walk Rodney usually doesn't register because he's too busy thinking, or registers as parsecs because he's exhausted. John's truck looms solid and black, recognizable by the S&D logo and the liberal application of dust. Rodney's car crouches in its tidy, fuel-efficient smallness a couple rows away. Rodney fishes for his keys, fumbling for some way to say "see you later" when he really wants to say "come home," or "come have a drink," or "come," all with me.
"You want to grab a drink?" It's John's voice, not his, which throws Rodney for a moment. He wonders if John's psychic, and wonders how John managed to get over to the driver's side of his truck, hiding behind the massive curve of the hood, hand resting on it and fingers laced through his key ring.
"Drink," Rodney echoes, and jumps when John presses a button on his keypad and the door unlocks. John gives him a meaningful look, tips his head in the direction of the door, get in you idiot, and Rodney obeys with alacrity and disbelief.
Age-fuzzed guitar starts up along with the engine. Rodney has to fight the urge to bury his face in his hands, because really, it wasn't fair, he'd been suckered in by the hair and stubble and slouch, lured in like the helpless Rodney McKay he was, to be ambushed by awful laughter and country music.
"Is that Johnny Cash?"
John yodels something about walking the line, and it's paradoxical, it really is, how something so unsexy, something Rodney acknowledges as unsexy (he even says to himself, yes, that is one of the most unsexy things I have heard in my life) makes his insides go still and hot and becomes sexy. He needs the rest of a fairly short drive to ruminate over it, if the horribleness of John's singing is objectively unsexy, or merely subjectively so, and if it's possible to be objectively sexy (or unsexy) when "sexy" is purely a socio-cultural construct, with standards that –
"We're here," John says, and the truck rumbles to a stop. The engine cutting off cuts off Rodney's philosophical soliloquy, and after a slow, disbelieving blink, Rodney realizes where they are.
To Rodney's secret dismay, it's Benedict's, a bar known to be frequented by students.
"You don't go trolling for undergraduates, do you?" he asks as he climbs out. The building has the raffishness Rodney's associated with college bars: built in the '70s, windows plastered over with beer ads and decades of smoke, paint mangy and the neon signs not working. It isn't difficult to picture a flock of lithe, tanned whippersnappers congregating around Sheppard. They would probably coo over his hair and press themselves up really close, and – oh, God. The taste in Rodney's mouth is worse than night-old Miller, thinking of that.
"The Basement," John says, and slides Rodney a reprimanding look. "It's under Benedict's, and they card; no one under 21."
"Yes, because college students these days are on accelerated two-year programs." Rodney ignores John's eyeroll, but follows him around the back of the building and through an entryway that doesn't smell of undergraduate and vomit. Jazz piano – real piano, played by a real, live person – wafts over Rodney along with old smoke and alcohol. Despite himself, Rodney relaxes.
This early the bar is mostly empty, populated only by a couple of professors Rodney doesn't recognize and some graduate students sitting at the grown-up table. The only thing that doesn't fit is the bartender, who looks like he needs to be carded himself, and who, to Rodney's horror, tries to put ice in his scotch.
"Room temperature!" Rodney barks. "Did you fail out of bartending school? How did you manage to get hired here?"
"Some people are weird," the kid says defensively, and with a look that suggests Rodney's in that category, with or without ice cubes. He pours the scotch with some competence, into a proper snifter, no less, and slides it across the counter.
John's already in a booth, positioned slightly toward the back of the room, at the border of the light from a circle of lamps and the shadows. Rodney makes himself walk over and sit down, and stares at the deep, steady amber of his drink. They aren't in the corner where there's privacy, and they aren't in the comfortable-looking chairs under the lamps, either, and what the hell is he supposed to do with that? Casual drink and nothing more or something, the next step into something that's had Rodney distracted since last week?
"So how was your day?" He winces; apparently that's what he's going to do with it – between the darkness and the heavy-hot taste of scotch in his mouth and John looking at him, he can't compute the variables.
"Paperwork," John drawls, and runs his thumb and index finger up the length of his glass. The tips leave lines in the condensation. "So, pretty boring." The pianist in the corner changes over to Fats Waller, pretty good ragtime but with a stiffness to the left hand that says he's either warming up or out of practice.
"You play?" John asks. He's still doing the hand thing, thumb and index finger sliding up and down, up and down.
Rodney reminds himself to remember that interior monologues have to remain in the interior. He swallows another mouthful of scotch, carelessly; it burns the back of his throat, irritated at its rough treatment.
"Not anymore," Rodney says when he can talk again. Piano stopped being a sore spot a while ago, vanishing to a thin scab of regret he picks at every now and then. "I listen a lot, though. And you can tell he's stiff; it's stride piano, the left hand has to walk from the bass register to the tenor, which is why it's called stride in the first place. And you have to be good; he sounds arthritic." Rodney plays a few bars of "Ain't Misbehavin'" to demonstrate, is glad for the darkness because John is watching his hands, the right playing inaudible melody while the left fumbles through an interval.
"I have a guitar I have no idea how to play," John offers after Rodney stops.
"Considering what you listen to, I'm not surprised."
"Hey," John says, only it's heyyyy, the vowels stretched out along lazy indignation. It's a tease in monosyllable. "There's nothing wrong with Johnny Cash. Or Garth Brooks." And he grins, the bastard, when Rodney almost chokes on his own tongue.
"You're kidding, right?" Rodney gazes at John appealingly; weirdly, John's grin wavers for a moment before returning. "I'll buy the next round if you swear on "Folsom Prison Blues" you were kidding."
"Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard," John says, sounding almost penitent. His eyes are warm, collecting the faint light from the lamp, sudden sparks of green here and there. The lamp, Rodney realizes, is one of those that's designed to look like a candle, which he's always thought is kind of dumb; the light it gives off is weak and yellow, but it washes John's skin to bronze, does something to the arc of his cheekbone. "And Sint Bernardus."
"Who?"
"The beer," John says patiently, and makes a shooing gesture that looks pretty dumb, and smiles a pleasant, wholly fake smile when Rodney tells him how dumb it looks.
"Don't monks take a vow of poverty?" Rodney grumbles when he sets down John's glass. Sets, not bangs, because ten dollars for a pint strikes him as vaguely ridiculous in a college town, never mind that it's probably pretty good.
"Technically, it's not Trappist," John studies the glass appreciatively, and just sly enough that Rodney bristles. "They don't brew it in the monastery."
"Technically," Rodney snorts. "And technically, that's my beer, so..." And he's hovering on the fine line between stupid and bold, and taking John's glass and swallowing it, closing his eyes as he does, smoothness rolling into bitterness and back again, the froth soft on his upper lip.
He sets the glass back down, slides it back across to John, whose hand is curled absently on the tabletop, and who is watching him. The glass catches on a flaw in the wood, a groove where maybe other hands have rested and John catches it before it tips, fingers quick and capable on the back of Rodney's hand, a glancing touch that Rodney barely registers before John takes the glass and puts it back on its coaster.
"Nice finish," Rodney whispers.
"Yeah," John agrees softly, voice rough as the scotch Rodney hasn't finished yet, a slow, deep burn in it that snags something loose in Rodney's guts and pulls. He's licked his lips, a moist sheen to them Rodney hadn't noticed before, and he's drawn in on himself, no longer casual, a tension in his shoulders, a waiting that Rodney recognizes.
What? he wants to ask, or maybe let's go, only the stillness in their small space keeps him silent, the noise of the bar growing distant, and he doesn't ask these things and has no idea if John really wants to be asked or what he's doing here. And when he opens his mouth to ask, or more likely to stumble over awkward words, his phone plays the Star Wars theme song.
Rodney jumps and fumbles for it, and John grins. It's a sudden flash, brilliant in the gloom of the Basement, before he looks away. A relief, and Rodney answers with his own shaky grin.
Fuck, he thinks when he sees the caller ID. Teyla. He's supposed to be talking about feminism and politics, and watching Elizabeth be stoic and accepting into her cappucino and telling her that Simon was an ignorant biological sciences asshole. Instead, he's sitting in a bar with his phone ringing, and watching John tilt his head back to drink, mouth matched close to the mark that says where Rodney's had been, and graphing the curve of his neck.
"I... I have to get this," Rodney says weakly and, on autopilot, flips his phone open.
"Okay," John says, the word muffled by the way his lips mold themselves to the rim of his glass.
Rodney stares for a moment before remembering Teyla and forcing himself to stand up and walk into the quiet of the entryway. It's not much quieter here, but it has the advantage of giving Rodney a chance to spy on John, who is rearranging his impossible limbs and running a hand through his hair.
"Rodney, where are you?" Impatience clips Teyla's words short.
"I'm... I'm out with a friend," Rodney says, which he has to admit is kind of a large claim. "Oh, thank you for your confidence, Teyla."
"I did not say anything."
"Yes, well, you didn't need to." Rodney glances around the corner; John hasn't vanished, is still distributed in a lazy unfurling of arms and legs across the booth, swishing the swizzle stick in Rodney's drink. Rodney takes a moment to shudder in horror at the bartender (ice in whiskey? Clearly American youth were more degenerate than he thought), and a moment to consider that he had taken the swizzle stick out for a reason – it was pointless – and that John had put it back in and is now using it to toy with Rodney's whiskey.
For that, Rodney is prepared to forgive the bartender for the swizzle stick.
"Rodney," Teyla snaps, "are you coming to Lola's or not?"
"Um, not," Rodney says, and almost laughs hysterically. He studies himself in the dimly reflective surface of a mirror, hair a little wild, eyes a lot wild, the eyes of a man who has seen something he'd never thought he'd see. A woman who looks uncomfortably like Katie slips past him with a murmur of apology. "Sorry."
"Very well." He can hear Teyla's smile through the words and the background noise. "I wish you good night, then."
"Me too," Rodney says to Teyla's soft laughter, and hangs up.
He makes his way back to John – the bar's filled up, some faculty and other professionals, but noise is noise and the place is starting to smell like a bar again – and John grins lazily up at him. Rodney flops into the very uncomfortable booth, sliding across the vinyl padding.
"Your turn," John says, nodding to indicate his empty glass and – fuck, Rodney's empty glass. He'd had two swallows left, three if he hoarded, and he says this to John, who shrugs.
"Seeing as it's your fault I have accomplished very little this week, you should buy for the rest of the night." Rodney leans back and scowls the scowl that has reduced colleagues to whimpering piles of anxiety. It occurs to him that he has no idea how long the "rest of the night" is going to be.
"My fault?" John leans back too, and his eyebrows do something improbable but he doesn't seem particularly cowed.
"Yes, with the termites and the banging while I was trying to get work done, and then harassing me in my office."
"You were the one who kept my secretary on the phone for twenty minutes trying to get me fired."
"Sadly, that's twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back." Rodney draws in a breath that tastes like smoke and old scotch. It's an accelerant, throwing rocket fuel on the fire: "You also left me your business card without explaining why, and I spent the entire weekend wondering if you were offering home inspections or... or... things, or wanting to know if I had a building that needed restoring, and none of that is conducive to concentrating on the very important things I'm supposed to be concentrating on."
"Sorry," is what John has to say to that. His eyebrows are still trying to climb up his forehead so they can start the final ascent to the top of his cowlicks. Rodney stares narrowly at him, but decrypting John isn't easy in the shadows, never mind that Rodney feels like he has only small, unexpected bits of code.
He doesn't figure John out, and he probably never will, and while Rodney tries to decide if he's okay with that, John buys him another scotch, and one more, and while they talk and listen to the piano player wander through Thelonious Monk to Harry Connick the air thickens with words and teases with alcohol and smoke.
"We should get going," John says at last. His eyes wear a fine glaze made from a long day and multiple pints of high-acohol beer, but he stands with a maddening competence, still smooth. "We need... Your car." And that isn't smooth, the words stumbling over what maybe John had wanted to say, but didn't.
"Right, yes," Rodney says, "good idea." It is, a sound idea, eminently logical. "I have seminar tomorrow." He wouldn't want to be in his graduate students' shoes, or his own for that matter; his head is working its way up to a temper tantrum of agony, resentful of the smoke and the noise. "You have termites."
"Yeah." And how it is John fits so much into the one word, the simple agreement, Rodney has no idea. There's anticipation, good humor, something Rodney supposes would be interest, the aural equivalent of John's eyes. "Come on."
They navigate their way through the bar, and escape the herds of undergraduates waiting to get into Benedict's. Fortunately no one shouts "Hey, Dr. McKay!" but someone manages to grope his ass even with John almost plastered to his back. Sweat and perfume and smoke, an unpleasant stew that Rodney bitches about on the way back to the truck while he secretly exults over John warm and close and walking next to him.
The university and attached medical center put out enough light to block most of the stars, but Rodney rests his forehead against the cool glass of the truck's window and looks up anyway. All he can see are the circumpolar constellations.
"Nice night," John says over the bass rumble of the truck engine.
"Great night," Rodney says softly, and finds he's okay to leave it at that for the rest of the way back to campus. He tells John which car is his – "Like you need to be asked? Out of the two possible choices, a Camry and a Hummer, which do you think is more likely mine?" and John snorts.
"You can obliterate stupid drivers with a Hummer," John points out, which is true, Rodney agrees, crush them like cockroaches, which makes John shudder. "I hate bugs," John tells him, and Rodney can relate to that and changes the subject to the possibility of retrofitting his Camry with a rocket launcher so he can be fuel-efficient and destroy the idiotic at the same time.
They need ten minutes leaning against the back of John's truck to talk out the details.
"Superlight armor," John says, eyes alight, sketching out the Camry's profile with his hands. His legs are stretched out, crossed, the heel of one foot balancing atop the other. "Laser targeting. If you reinforce the side mirrors, you could mount small-caliber machine guns under them."
Rodney sighs wistfully and contemplates the Camry and John barely six inches away from him.
And, he realizes, he should go. John smells like sweat and smoke, and he's warm and flawed and perfect, with his country music and terrible laugh, and the line of his body that invites Rodney to lean in. Reluctantly and trying to tell himself virtue is its own reward (which is why so few people like being virtuous), he straightens and waves his keys.
"The graduates won't teach themselves," he says, and coughs, and makes himself start walking. Don't turn don't turn don't turn, he does have willpower, dammit, keep going, walk walk –
"Rodney?"
Rodney pauses and turns. "Yeah?"
"Just so you know," John says around some difficulty, a hesitant half-step and another that brings him close, "it was – "
And whatever John's going to say Rodney has no idea, and whether he takes the necessary step or John does, he doesn't have any idea of that, either. He knows, with sudden certainty, the skim of quartz light across John's lower lip – how it would taste, feel, the subtle texture where the skin is rough from John worrying at it, the glide into damp silk.
He traces out the taste of expensive beer and the scotch undertones on John's lips, the quick, grateful huff of John's breath against his mouth. The angle doesn't work at first, but then John shifts, and they slide together, easy easy easy, smooth despite John's runaway stubble at the margins of Rodney's lips, and god, the broken, pleased sound deep in John's throat, and his hand just there on Rodney's, stroking to match how John licks at him, into him, deep and in and drawing Rodney down, and yeah, Rodney doesn't mind.
It's good, so good, and he doesn't have the breath to tell John that, so he hopes the hand splayed on the sinuous hitch of John's hip speaks for him, so good, better, best – and –
And over, so sudden.
John stares at him, shadowed and spooked and stepping away, one hand hovering indecisively before he lowers it. Rodney can't move, too breathess, shaken, shaken.
"I'll... I'll be around tomorrow, McKay," John says, voice rough with too much trying to come out along with the words.
"Termites," Rodney says, and John's lips move in something that might be a smile but in the uncertain light Rodney can't tell. John stares at him, mute and desperate, and why isn't there such a thing as telepathy Rodney has no idea, because now would be the perfect time for it, to ascertain the precise nature of John's silent freaking-out instead of standing like a stoned moron and watching as John shuffles, walks backward for two steps before he turns to climb into his truck, and then, as a sort of reward, still watching as he gets a faceful of exhaust.
Somehow Rodney can't make himself care about inhaling extravagant quantities of carcinogens; staring mindlessly seems to be more important, in addition to the fact that remembering he needs to go home and go to bed requires a lot of work.
Very likely, he thinks as he fumbles with the keyless entry, he shouldn't be driving; two scotches isn't anywhere near enough to make him drunk, and they're only a small part of the haze coating his brain. Most of the rest is the improbability of the day, of John, the memory of rough fingertips, night-cool but warm underneath, on the inside of his wrist. Enough coherence remains that he drives home without incident, unreality riding shotgun with him. It follows him inside, through the routine of feeding an irritated Planck, turning on music to calm himself down, Mozart reconstructing stability in a world that's now matched to the crooked angle of John's smile. There's a message, probably Teyla from earlier in the night, demanding to know where he is.
He presses play.
Look, Rodney... Jeannie says, I have no idea what I did – no, I know what I did, and I'm not sorry about it. Grow up, okay? Please grow up and call me.
"Grow up, okay?" Rodney mutters uncomfortably, and presses the DELETE button. The woman who lives in his machine tells him he has no more messages, and the red light fades.
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