Fic: Like Candy from a Baby

“I liked Antarctica,” John told Rodney, again.  He ran his fingers through the drying fluids on his stomach hoping it would distract Rodney from a conversation Rodney dragged up at least once a week, as if drawn by some magnetic force.

“Right,” Rodney snorted, “and I want to go back to Russia.”

John rolled his eyes.

“Really,” he insisted, turning his head on the pillow to look at Rodney, sprawled beside him.

When Rodney turned to look at John, his eyebrows were scrunched together.  “Why?”

John shrugged, bare shoulders rubbing against rumpled sheets.

“It was quiet.  I got to fly,” he paused, “I got along with my C.O.”

That last was probably due to the fact that, in general, Antarctica wasn’t all that dangerous – no enemy combatants, no gunfire, no bombs....

Rodney was staring at him.

“What?”  John asked.

“You slept with him!”

John tensed.  “What?”

“Your C.O.  I can’t believe you slept with your commanding officer!”

John’s hand twitched against his stomach before he could still himself.  He figured this was when he should start denying everything.   Instead he shrugged, and tried to look disinterested.  He’d long since given up trying to follow Rodney’s logical progressions.

“I didn’t think you were that type.”   Rodney was fidgeting on his own narrow strip of bed, his right hand picking at the sheet a careful distance from John’s thigh.

“What type?”  John asked, frowning at the ceiling because Rodney called him `Kirk` all the time.

“The type to further their career though sex.  You know I have no influence in who the military promote, right?  You’d have been better off with Elizabeth.”  John felt heat rising high on his cheeks and in the tips of his ears.  Embarrassment mingled with resentment.  He brushed both feelings aside with a blink.

“It wasn’t like that.  Hadley was the first C.O. to treat me decently since the academy; I didn’t want to mess it up.”

Rodney rolled suddenly onto his side, propping himself on an elbow, his face hovering so close to John’s that John struggled to focus.  When he did, John could tell Rodney’s brain was doing that hopping thing again.

“So,” Rodney’s expression was pinched, “you fucked him because he would have made your life difficult otherwise.  You know one of the reasons the military tries to keep sex out of the chain of command is because of dubious consent.”

John blinked and thought it through, his mind catching up with a jolt.

“Hey!  No!  It wasn’t like that either!”  He would have sat up if Rodney hadn’t been hovering so close.

“Oh,” Rodney was indignant, “so I just imagined you saying that-“

“Look,” John interrupted before Rodney got a really good rant going, and maybe suggest that he visit Heightmeyer, “he was attractive enough, and there wasn’t much else to do.  Plus,” he grinned up at Rodney, hoping to regain the light-hearted post-coitus mood of earlier, “regular sex.”

Rodney didn’t seem convinced.  John sighed.

“There isn’t much opportunity to `fall in love` with men in the military, Rodney.  Women are hard enough, but men...I took what I could get.  There was no,” he scowled, “dubious consent, it was a...a mutually beneficial agreement.”

Unfortunately, Rodney had gone from looking at him like John was some innocent in need of protection, to looking pissed.  John wished he could just give up, roll over and go to sleep, but with Rodney, that was never an option.

“So what am I?”  Rodney asked.

John frowned.

“Am I just handy?  An easy lay?  Because that’s fine!”

His eyes were wide, more white than blue and John could see the pulse beat in Rodney’s throat.  The frantic pace made John’s breath catch and stick as Rodney swung his legs over the side of the bed.  Rodney dragged the sheet with him, bunching it around his waist. 

Atlantis’ air-conditioning was cool against John’s sweat damp skin.

“There’s no need to bother with all the other stuff.  I mean sex is sex!”  John could see the frantic movement of Rodney’s hands, wild and uncoordinated, even past his broad shoulders.

Oh, John smiled slowly, this was good.  He could fix this.

“Rodney,” John propped himself on an elbow, facing Rodney’s back.  He reached out and trailed his fingers across the bare expanse of skin, tracing the bumps of Rodney’s spine.  “You are the most complicated, inconvenient, difficult person I’ve ever met.  If I wanted easy, you’d be the last person on my list.”

John hadn’t even had a list.  The last thing he’d been thinking of when he walked though a wormhole on a one-way trip to another galaxy, had been sex.  Of any sort.  But Rodney - Rodney had been there, standing beside him - ready to take on the galaxy even if most of the time he’d been terrified, and suddenly there had been a list. 

Rodney’s was the only name on it.

Rodney looked over his shoulder, throwing a glare at John.

“Once again, I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”

John’s grin got wider, and he wrapped his hand around Rodney’s hip.  He pressed his thumb hard into the fleshy part at the small of Rodney’s back.  Rodney groaned and leaned into the touch.  John leaned forward and pressed his lips against the curve of Rodney’s spine, a short, firm kiss, and pulled back, nose brushing against Rodney’s soft skin.

“I don’t want easy, McKay."

 

End