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Rodney was proud of himself. After 40 some years, he'd finally managed to learn something that he always (and still) thought was 1) a complete waste of time, and 2) ridiculously impossible. To wit, how to appreciate the science-less moments. Of course, back when his then-girlfriend (unfortunately, she'd just considered him her ticket to an easy A) during his undergrad year had told him he should learn just that or he'd have an aneurysm before he turned 17, he'd done two things, 1) panic and have a complete physical, including brain scan, and 2) decided that she might be an ABD GA at MIT, but she would always be ABD because her math was insipid, therefore any information she had to offer was ridiculous and belonged in some housewife---undoubtedly her future profession---magazine like Cosmo. He'd briefly considered her for the role of his housewife, but alas, he didn't want to have to do her math. That, and, well, she refused to be seen with him in public.
But Atlantis, well, the city had a way of teaching people the truth of things they'd never considered before. And Atlantis could do math. Rodney considered himself happily married to Atlantis now, even if there was no sex.
He wandered down a little used corridor, with his hands in pockets and an absurd urge to whistle as he went. He'd finished a ground-breaking set of experiments and had decided to put off the number crunching until the next day. He was Rodney McKay, after all, and his genius was due not only accolades, but chocolate cake and ice cream and some downtime with his favorite comedy on TV. He'd just gotten the latest season of Mythbusters. Rodney checked to make sure no one was around, and then paused long enough to caress Atlantis. The city was great. Not only did it have all the wonders of the universe available for him to discover, it had people who understood why a couple of trained monkeys proving that the laws of physics were actually real to the two-legged lemmings on Earth was comedy gold. Okay, one person on the city. And he only got the humor in the parts involving aeronautics, but he was really the only person on the city that mattered. And Rodney knew that it was more than he'd ever had on Earth. He had a few classic aeronautical episodes---like the one disproving the idea that people could immigrate to the US by crossing a river via a giant slingshot---downloaded on a playlist for the times when John joined him. Daily ground-breaking, Nobel-prize winning discovery and someone who appreciated Mythbusters the way it should be…Atlantis was heaven.
Even he couldn't count all the things he loved about Atlantis. Well, he probably could but it would be a tremendous waste of his incredibly valuable time. So, in a fit of whimsy, he arbitrarily assigned a number. Certainly it would be a prime number, and not just any, but one of value. And large, so numbers such as pi were out. But not too large, so the speed of light was out. After some thought, while lying on his bed one evening and petting his belly in an effort to pretend he was petting his cat, he'd settled on Euler's Mersenne Prime.
Well, there was the one thing. He wasn't certain where it fit in his private Euler Postulate on Atlantis. Despite his appreciation for fine comedy, John was so very, well, John. He claimed that flavored water in American beer cans was the best ever while real beer was disgusting, and then drank all of the stuff Rodney had tucked away in an always locked footlocker. He claimed to prefer ferris wheels, but they always had to get in the roller coaster line at any of the child-packed, torture locations near the San Francisco Bay where John dragged him on forced days off. Ridiculous! He put himself in the position of being Rodney's best friend---Rodney still privately marveled at having one of those since he'd put serious effort into not being BFF material---and then put himself in the most fortuitous positions to get himself killed. Maybe suicidal behavior was a BFF requisite? He brought Rodney chocolate cake every time he left the city, but he'd also gotten his fellow pilot in idiocy, Mitchtwit, to nearly murder Rodney with a lemon.
Maybe John wasn't actually human? Certainly no one human being could have a worse handle on social skills than Rodney. Witness Kavanaugh, the fungus in a lab coat and pony tail. Witness John's appreciation when Rodney had suggested that the biologists test Kavanaugh to see which branch of the fungus family he really belonged to and if they were a replicator style threat, only without true intelligence. That amusement was proof that John had to be something other than human. With his ATA gene and his tentacle-like hair, perhaps he was half ancient, half housewife. Neither of which were very sane, see Exhibit B: Jeannie Miller. Skip Exhibit A, Chaya Sar, until after he'd developed a weapon effective on useless, ascended hussies.
Rodney trailed his fingers along the wall in the corridor as he took the turn that headed to his quarters. Perhaps he should have Keller compare the genetics of John and Daniel Jackson. As a former-ascended and certifiable crazy person---honestly, who but a crazy person would waste that kind of intelligence on archaeology---Jackson's genes had to be screwed up.
"Hey, Rodney," John said in his ear.
Rodney jumped three point one four one five nine feet in the air and managed to not break something valuable when he impacted the floor and whirled around. "Don't do that!"
John grinned, hands shoved in his pockets. "Just checking to see if you're okay."
"I was just fine until some idiot with a small, alien animal on his head instead of hair decided to creep up on me and scare five years of life out of me. I've probably just had a minor heart attack, no thanks to you!"
John patted him on the shoulder. "You weathered that heart attack like a real trooper, buddy. Doc Z called Keller and wondered if you were sick. I thought I'd check it out."
Rodney glared. "I am not sick."
"You said you were taking the afternoon off. So, what's up?"
Rodney wasn't sure if he should be offended or feel warm fuzzies over this. He crossed his arms over his chest and sniffed. "Nothing is up. I completed an experimental phase and thought this would be a good time to take a break and watch something funny on TV. I'll start analyzing the data in depth first thing in the morning."
"Taking a day off? No wonder people thought you were dying."
Rodney huffed. "I can't believe this. When I really am dying, people make fun of me. When I'm fine, people think I'm dying. Further proof that I'm surrounded by complete imbeciles."
John peered at him intently for a moment, brows furrowed. Then he grinned. "I get it. You have cake!" John abruptly bounded around Rodney, down the corridor, and into Rodney's quarters before Rodney could get his mouth open.
"Hey! That was locked!" Rodney came into his room to see John lounging on his bed. "This is my room, Colonel Cake Thief!"
"Atlantis loves me. So, what kind of cake are we having?"
"We aren't having cake. You have work to do. I have hard earned relaxation to do because I'll probably be called upon to save the world again tomorrow. So get out."
"What are we watching? I vote Home Improvement." John sat up a bit. "You're taking the afternoon off, so I'm taking the afternoon off, too. You're a genius, so it's gotta be a good idea."
Rodney sniffed. "I'm not sharing my cake."
John shrugged. "Just hand me a beer and we'll be fine."
"And we're not watching Home Improvement. I deal with enough incompetents every day; I don’t want to watch one on TV." Rodney flicked on his TV and powered up his entertainment laptop.
He fiddled around with the laptop a lot more than strictly necessary---he had macros---and tried to scope out his room to find a place to sit. Despite being parked on Earth near one of the largest cities on the planet with regular shopping service, Rodney hadn't managed to do much with his quarters other than add more physics journals, upgrade his entertainment electronics, and put in a secret mini fridge. The only place to sit was his bed because he didn't believe in creating a space that would encourage company. He could have gone to the Ikea store with Radek and Keller after they'd decompressed from the trip to Earth and found out they were staying on the city, but furniture shopping seemed unimportant somehow. Though, he did order the best therapeutic mattress money could buy and had it delivered. Okay, so he had John delegate some of his minions to deliver it because marines had strength and Rodney's minions were either a bunch of useless whiners or physically weak or, on notable occasions, both. That meant he could sit on the floor or sit with John. Not with as in at the same table in the mess, but with as it right next to each other. Practically touching with, maybe even all the way touching with. On the bed and touching with.
John smirked at him when he got the laptop going and the TV running, and diffidently made his way to the bed.
He tried to keep a neutral expression when he settled into the bed next to John, but he didn't think that worked out well for him. His ears were burning, for one, which meant he was blushing from the top of his head on down. Never a good way to make people think you were feeling cool under pressure. John, for once in his life, didn't tease him. He scooted his butt around and tried to figure out what to do with his arms while the theme played and the trained monkeys on TV started their opening spiel. This was weird. TV watching happened in a conference room John had long ago repurposed for "team nights", better known as wasting time nights.
"Get us some beer, Rodney," John said. "Oh, cool, the catapult one. And the cake. Get the cake."
Rodney's mouth thinned. Jeannie, among a chorus of others throughout the years, had been misguided enough to think he cared when she pointed out how unattractive he looked without any lip showing. "I don't have cake. What makes you think I have cake? There's no cake."
"Cake." John's arm loomed in front of Rodney's face. Rodney's eyes followed it to the pointing index finger, right to the secret mini fridge, hidden in the walls next to the dresser. "You're closer. Got any dark beer?"
Rodney glared at John's face but John was apparently engrossed in watching the trained monkeys jabber on about why the two-legged lemmings believed ridiculous things about catapults. He huffed, climbed out of bed, forced out several heavy, put-upon sighs as he made his way to the fridge, pulled out the cake, huffed loudly to make it clear this was a complete imposition, put the cake on the table by the bed, fished a couple of bottles of dark beer from the footlocker, then added a few more put-upon sighs as he made his way back. He dropped John's bottle in John's lap, barely missing the sensitive place girls liked to kick and or knee.
Rodney sat again, and eventually found himself relaxing. Perhaps eventually took less than a few moments, but since time wasn't linear, moments were malleable enough to be an eventually. The trained monkeys put out what passed for a blue print and started talking materials. Rodney couldn't stop chuckling. That wouldn't work. The whole thing was balanced wrong and it would flip itself over.
John chuckled, too. Then he leaned over and whispered in Rodney's ear, "Why are we laughing?"
Rodney explained the physics.
John nudged a shoulder into Rodney's bicep, which meant that John had to slither down and sprawl on the bed a bit to accommodate the height difference. "So why are catapults funny in Mythbusters but not funny in movies?"
Rodney rolled his eyes and nudged John back. "Because Mythbusters are just showing the idiots in the audience that physics is real and movies pretend that physics doesn't matter."
Rodney smiled when the trained monkeys explained to the viewing audience that the catapult probably wouldn't work but they'd try it anyway.
He didn't notice that John wasn't watching the trained monkeys until John leaned a bit more and kissed Rodney on the cheek. He took his time, too.
Anomaly.
Rodney didn't know a lot about social interaction because it was a bunch of pointless drivel designed to keep people from telling each other the truth, but he did know that men don't kiss other men like that. Not even in the Mafia where men kissing men on the cheeks was a normal greeting. For one, there wasn't leaning and lingering in the mafia, with lips directly applied to the cheek. It was more empty air smacking, over in seconds, and definitely no lingering or leaning. Now, giggly females with dogs and waists both the size of three point five inch floppies did lingering, leaning cheek kisses with their BFFs, in fact these people were the only ones brainless enough to come up with something called a BFF in the first place. Maybe that's what was happening. John certainly had the hair styling fixation for that kind of thinking.
John snuggled into him. Maybe there was a better word for it, because it reminded Rodney of his cat shoving itself into his body to soak up the warmth and purr like the super's unmuffled Briggs and Stratton.
"You know," John said conversationally, barely louder than the trained monkeys on TV. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell has been repealed for a while and it really didn't hit home for me until this morning."
Rodney frowned at John's forehead, which was all he could really see of John's face from that vantage point. That and hair.
"Doc Mallozzi got back today. I was in the gateroom, see who was coming in, make sure they made it back in one piece. Stackhouse was there. I didn't see him until he kissed Mallozzi and damn, it was some kiss. A From Here to Eternity kind of kiss, you know? A rolling around on the floor and ripping clothes off kind of a kiss. I was there. Lorne was there. Bates was there. Woolsey smiled."
"Macaroni's back?" Rodney frowned harder. He was early, that meant he could help with the grunt work on tomorrow's data analysis.
John poked him in the ribs, not too hard, but not too soft, either. "The point is that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is gone, Rodney."
"I know that. I was there in the mess hall when Portgirl jumped on that blonde marine of yours." Rodney frowned. "Too bad they went back to their quarters. They were hot."
John poked him again. "I'm gay, Rodney."
Rodney experienced something that had never happened to him before. His mind went blank. There was nothing in it, no words, no numbers, no images, no noise. Nothing. He had no idea how long he lay there, staring at John's forehead, with his magnificent brain behaving like a chain saw that hadn't been primed before pulling the cord.
John started to pull away.
When his brain finally started back up, all that came out was a shocked, "You kissed me!"
John sat up abruptly. "Yeah."
Rodney sat up too. "You kissed me!"
John shifted his weight. Away.
Rodney wrapped a hand around John's arm to stop him, not that he ever had any illusions that he could stop John if John really wanted to get away. He felt suddenly hot and cold, like a windshield in January with the defrost pouring heat on one side and the winter pouring cold on the other side. "You like me?"
John looked at him then, directly in the face. John's expression was set to carefully neutral, but his eyes were different, deep even. "Yes."
"People don't like me," Rodney whispered. He had no idea why he was whispering, but it seemed to make the most sense. "Not like that." His face scrunched up. "Even Katie thought I was an acquired taste."
John was suddenly pressed against him again, the full heat of his body seeping into Rodney, all the way to the bone. The bottles of beer were just as suddenly gone, plucked from the bed and placed on the side table next to the cake. "I like you like that."
"But why?"
"Because you make my world beautiful, Rodney."
Rodney felt his ears burn again. John smiled a kitten-fur soft kind of a smile that everyone else always got from people who cared about them, but Rodney never did. Not even with Katie. "I like you, too," Rodney admitted.
"Good."
Rodney found himself laying down again, John sprawled over him like his cat did, with that space-time anomaly only cats and John could do, the one that let them take up the entire surface area of any given bed despite an average mass of point three five six eight eight seven nine kilograms. John made more sense because he was larger.
John smiled at him. Rodney could tell because the skin around his eyes crinkled just so.
"I'm going to kiss you," Rodney said. "After that, no more alien princesses and ascended hussies for you."
"No more for you, either."
"I've never had an alien princess or---"
John's mouth fit over his the same way time and space fit together. John's mouth was another dimension of Rodney's body. Maybe it wasn't just John's mouth. Maybe it was John entirely. Rodney decided to test this theory and got grabby. Everyone else had always hated it when Rodney got grabby, frequently leaving in indignation before getting to anything good. Katie hadn't left, but she'd made it clear that he wasn't allowed to grab. John wasn't allowed to leave in indignation, though. He'd sworn off alien princesses and ascended hussies and that made him all Rodney's and Rodney would not let go, even if he had to change physics to do it.
John didn't seem indignant, though, unless thrusting and rocking was John's version of indignation.
And grabby hands, too. John had grabby hands! God, they felt good. He had no idea why those idiots he'd dated and Katie complained.
Rodney opened his mouth, then, but not to speak. Or worry about germs. The human mouth was one of the filthiest places in the universe. Contact with it frequently required antibiotics. But not with John because there was no biting, just tongues sliding together frictionlessly heating Rodney up in all contravention of the laws of thermodynamics.
Apparently, John planned on changing physics for Rodney.
Rodney shifted a little. John shifted a little. One of John's legs slid between Rodney's legs. And then John made friction. Or Rodney made friction. Maybe they both did. He couldn't tell because there was so much heat and the way John's mouth felt and tasted got in the way of thinking. But not feeling. He was hard and John was hard. John was pressed against his thigh, arching and rocking like he was trying to body surf Rodney's body. Rodney was pressed against the cradle of John's hip which wasn't as bony as he might have expected. Rodney pushed himself up against that hip, and then back down against the bed, and then back up, like a cat's kneading. John fell into the rhythm easily, gliding up and down Rodney's thigh.
And then they became a singularity. John's hip compressed gravity into Rodney's erection which compressed electro-magnetic force near Rodney's thigh which compressed weak nuclear force against John's erection which compressed strong nuclear force.
And then, just as they flew past Planck's Epoch, John made their singularity explode and the stars in Rodney's eyes spanned an entirely new universe where the only matter that mattered was what he could see in John's eyes.