The Theory of John
by lamardeuse
Rating: R for sexual situations
Gorgeous title art by the talented berlinghoff79.
Sometimes, Rodney thinks John has the power to make him stupid. He’s this close to getting the man a t-shirt that says I Kill Brain Cells.
There are numerous precedents that Rodney can cite in support of this theory, times when John being run-of-the-mill smart or charming or goofy has actually made Rodney’s IQ dip dramatically. John being abnormally smart or charming or goofy tends to cause every brilliant thought to shoot out of Rodney’s ears like steam in those old Warner Brothers cartoons. And while it’s fine for John to be Bugs Bunny, constantly trying to pull one over on the big, bad universe armed only with a bag of wisecracks and the Up yours, Doc fighting spirit of a scrappy people, Rodney really hates being Daffy Duck. It’s bad enough that Bugs always outwits him, but even when he’s playing the hero, he still ends up with his bill turned sideways.
And then, when he’s a hairsbreadth from stamping his feet in rage at the unfairness of it all, John always shows up at the lab late at night and drags him back to his quarters, where he fucks Rodney so thoroughly and so sweetly that Rodney forgets about the theory and pretty much everything else, because while he expected the thorough, he never saw the sweet coming, and even after four months it has the ability to humble him like nothing else ever has.
They’ll go on for a little while like that, Rodney floating along behind John in semi-befuddled wonder, and then he remembers that he isn’t a twelve-year-old-girl and the doubts start to creep back in.
Rodney hates doubts nearly as much as he hates being Daffy Duck, but he can’t seem to help falling into those familiar patterns, like well-established cognitive pathways leading from one part of the brain to another, electrical impulses leaping effortlessly across synapses, bringing you to the same conclusion every damned time.
One afternoon when he’s sitting at his computer working on his theory of John, he finds his fingers hitting the keys without his conscious consent. When they’re done, he sees:
Maybe you just don’t know how to be happy
in twelve-point Times New Roman.
Rodney snorts and eradicates the sentence with a stroke of the mouse. Like that’s a revelation.
But finally he reaches the point where he has a viable theory. He even has varying equations depending on the origin of the stimulus (it turns out the one involving Ascended priestesses is exponential and yields approximately the same rate of decay as the half-life of one of the more unstable transuranic elements). It’s a measure of how much his intellect had eroded since his first encounter with John that he’s whistling happily as he marches off to John’s quarters with the printout under his arm. This will prove once and for all that John’s an evil influence, and that really, they need to—
Rodney stops cold outside John’s quarters, his heart pounding. They need to what, exactly? He snatches the papers from under his arm and stares at them, disbelief warring with nausea at what he sees.
Dear God. He’s just spent over a month of his free time writing a Dear John letter that employs statistical analysis and asymptotic graphs. He’s just spent a month trying to figure out a logical way to fuck up the best relationship he’s ever had.
Which admittedly isn’t saying much, but that's beside the point.
Rodney stares at the papers for another moment, then spins on his heel and walks to the nearest disintegrator chute, where he opens the hatch and stuffs them in. It’s terribly wasteful, but there’s nothing else for it: the evidence has to be destroyed.
He’ll do the same thing to the CD-ROM—in the morning.
John has programmed his door to recognize Rodney’s brain pattern weeks ago, so that now all Rodney has to do is think at it and it slides open for him easily.
Easy, John whispered right before he kissed him for the first time, as if Rodney might be spooked like a skittish mule. As if a kiss from John might be cause for terror.
But he had been terrified, because he’d never wanted anything more and never expected anything less, and it had been terrifying to let John see that, because even though John groaned and shoved Rodney against the wall and whispered his joy into Rodney’s mouth Rodney still couldn’t quite believe that this was real, that this was his.
He complains almost constantly, but he rarely asks for anything, and he would never have asked for this. He tends not to ask for things he doesn’t think he has a hope in hell of receiving. But John just handed himself over one day, a gift with no birthday or Christmas in sight, without Rodney having to ask, without him having to do anything. It was just that—
—easy.
Rodney blinks. For the first time in months, he smartens up.
Did it ever occur to you, Rodney thinks at himself angrily, as badly disused neurons spark to life and blaze new trails across his cerebrum, that it was a promise and not a warning?
When he steps inside John’s quarters, he hears the hiss of water and almost turns around and walks out again. Surely John wouldn’t want to be interrupted in the shower, and Christ, there he goes again.
He forces his left foot forward, then his right. Yes, good, you remember walking. Congratulations.
The showers on Atlantis are like those old turn-of-the-century showers, or the high-end ones in luxury homes, the water spraying from innumerable small jets all around you. It’s a much more efficient system but it always ends up making Rodney feel a little itchy.
When he opens the door to John’s shower, he feels shaky and cold and itchy all over and the damned water hasn’t even touched him yet.
John spins around at the soft click of the door latch, and for the first time Rodney sees him with completely flat hair, the normally rebellious black mop plastered against his skull, half-hiding his eyes. Rodney watches every flash of emotion on John’s face as he moves through surprise and disbelief and finally arrives at unmasked pleasure, and Rodney breathes for the first time in five minutes.
John’s slow grin warms Rodney right down to his bones, and he says, “Mind if I join you?” as though he actually has every confidence in John’s answer.
John’s smile turns a little wicked and he steps back in silent invitation. Rodney’s knees creak as he steps onto the rough stone that forms the floor of the shower.
“I was just thinking about you,” John says casually as he reaches for the bar of soap, as if they’re talking in the mess hall.
Rodney blinks, momentarily regressing into stupidity again. “You were?”
John nods, gliding the bar of soap over his chest and down his belly in broad circles. Rodney’s eye is drawn by the movement until he reaches—
“Oh. Oh.” Dear God, John’s half-hard, he touches himself in the shower and thinks about Rodney, he jerks off in the shower while thinking about Rodney, he was probably jerking off just now, and—
“Rodney. Rodney, you okay there?”
“Yes, fine, why, what?”
John’s expression is concerned, but his eyes are dancing. “You looked like you were about to have an aneurysm.”
“I’m fine, I just—” and then he shakes his head vehemently because he wants to incinerate his doubts along with that idiotic theory, and there’s no time like the present to throw them down the chute. “Never mind,” he says, slipping to his knees in front of John. The stone is unforgiving to his knees but for once he doesn't care.
John gasps above him and Rodney smiles.
“Easy,” he murmurs, his mouth closing around the head. The sweetness bursts on his tongue; he places his shaking hands on John’s hips and concentrates on giving it right back to him.
End
November 2005
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