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John shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Rodney was bi, except he was. He was because Rodney was all ‘big boobs’ and ‘firm ass’ and ‘hot blondes’. Although, other than talking about boobs, Rodney tended to be a little gender non-specific about his ideal partner. When Rodney casually said ‘one of the guys I dated in college’ in a story he was regaling Ford with, John tripped over air. One of the guys he dated in college. One, of the more than one guy. So, it wasn’t a one-off event, he liked guys and he’d kept dating guys. John didn’t even remember what the story was about.
John wasn’t bi… or gay, and he was quick to follow it up with ‘I don’t have a problem with anyone that is’, but maybe that wasn’t exactly true because it took him three weeks to feel comfortable around Rodney after that.
John had no gaydar whatsoever, see aforementioned lack of gayness, and he was constantly caught off guard when someone turned out to be gay. He’d be minding his own business. Someone would come over to shoot the shit. They’d talk and everything would be going fine. Then he was being invited to ‘have some fun’ in a storage closet or a dark corner.
The first time it happened, John had been genuinely confused, and when he’d asked, ‘what do you mean by that?’ the guy had gone so pale and frightened that John didn’t even try to stop him when he fled. When he mentioned it to Rodney, he laughed so hard and long that he nearly puked.
“Wow,” Rodney said, “I can’t believe you’ve never been cruised before. Look, just, stay away from the fourth-floor balcony outside of the botany lab after 2100 and you should be fine.”
John narrowed his eyes at Rodney, wondering how he could know that John was at that particular balcony when it happened, but Rodney walked off before he’d gotten the chance to ask.
It happened again in random spaces, mostly when there were festivities happening, to the point where he asked Rodney during one of their gaming sessions if he gave off a ‘gay vibe’. Rodney just looked at him flatly for long enough that John felt like squirming before saying, ‘not particularly’ and going back to the game as if that was the end of it. What did ‘not particularly’ mean?
It meant, according to Rodney, that John had a way of looking at people, once he got familiar with their face, that said he might be interested if they asked.
John scoffed, “If that were true, why didn’t you hit on me.”
Rodney laughed and said he’d tried, but John was too stupid to realize that Rodney was hitting on him. Rodney figured that John was really and truly straight, not on the ‘DL’, and gave up. John spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to think back through their interactions to see if any of them felt like Rodney was flirting with him. He came up with maybe a handful of times where the way Rodney spoke to him could have been seen as flirtatious but could just as easily be nothing at all.
It wasn’t until Major Lorne entered the picture that John worried that he wasn’t as chill about the whole ‘gay thing’ as he’d hoped he’d become. Or maybe it was just that John didn’t like the way Rodney was suddenly very clearly flirting with Lorne. Rodney was calmly casual with it in a way John didn’t expect, though John had never seen Rodney flirt with a man before. Or just never noticed it. Honestly, Rodney flirting in general he could have dealt with, it was the way Lorne didn’t shut him down that John didn’t like.
Lorne seemed to have an endless supply of patience, which John was sure he syphoned directly from him because the more patient Lorne was, the testier John got. At first, John had been amused when Lorne seemed to find Rodney’s vitriol, ego, and cutting barbs annoying. When he had to bite his fist to keep from saying something mean back to Rodney. It was funny because Lorne was getting a crash course in Doctor Rodney McKay, the smartest man in two galaxies. Lorne was irritated and frustrated but not coming up with scarily serviceable plans to ambush and murder Rodney. Those guys were rotated out of the city pretty damn fast.
Lorne’s begrudging patience turned to amusement around the same time John realized that Rodney was flirting with him.
“As much as I would love to stare at your ass all day, I actually need to get in there. Move,” Rodney said in his acidic, non-nonsense tone.
John waited for Lorne’s typical response, but he just looked over his shoulder and grinned at Rodney while the tips of his ears pinked. When he stepped back to let Rodney crawl into the hole, Lorne ogled Rodney, and John’s irritation flared brightly. It was just a quick moment before Lorne looked away and scanned the horizon. When his eyes met John’s, he looked sheepish. John didn’t want him to look sheepish. He wanted Lorne to look defiant. If he was going to ogle his goddamn scientist right in front of him, he could at least have the balls to look like he didn’t care if John was angry.
Lorne did care, because he had to care, because John had the ability to have him discharged. Or at the very least, have an inquest started. They had a multicultural military on Atlantis, but John and Lorne were subject to the American military code of ethics. John wouldn’t though, didn’t, but he imagined he did. He imagined himself writing up an email detailing every instance, every lingering look or touch. Every flirtatious moment between them. He imagined writing it all down and sending it off to begin the inquest that would end Lorne’s career and get him away from Rodney.
It was that realization, more than any moral sensibility, that kept John from writing the email. He wasn’t mad that Lorne might be gay, or bi, just that he was interested in Rodney… and that Rodney was interested in him.
John didn’t want to look very deep into that realization, so he ignored it. All of it.
He ignored the way Rodney and Lorne looked at each other. He ignored the way they suddenly sat side-by-side in briefings, at meals, during downtime. He ignored the way it felt to turn a corner and suddenly see Lorne pressing Rodney against a wall and kissing him like his life depended on it.
He ignored the relief he felt when they finally broke up, which turned out to be short lived. When Lorne was gone, there was another person more than willing to take his place, and John had to bite back on cruelly acidic remarks. He didn’t say that Rodney was being passed around. He didn’t ask if Rodney was planning to fuck the entire Atlantis military. But he was mad about it.
He was mad at the new guy more than he’d been at Lorne. The new guy, Willis, was just some guy. He didn’t know Rodney. He’d never even met Teyla. They had no history with him. The two months Rodney spent with him made no sense.
“Who better to rebound with,” Teyla said, accenting the word ‘rebound’ as if unsure if she’d used it correctly, “than someone you have no connection to.”
John scoffed, but he had to agree that it made sense. He’d thought that Rodney would just move on, and move on, and move on, from person to person, woman to man. Rodney would never settle down, and John would never have to try and figure his confusing feelings out. Rodney’s life was his own. Rodney made his own decisions that didn’t take into account John or his tumultuous, amorphous feelings that he didn’t want and didn’t want to work out. It felt a little touch and go when Rodney started dating Jennifer. It seemed like that relationship might stick, but it hadn’t.
It hadn’t for the worst reason.
Jennifer had been a catalyst, and John really hated her for that. Really hated her. He laid all his frustrations with himself and the situation at her feet. She caused it.
When John first came into the briefing room and saw Ronon and Rodney sitting beside each other it hadn’t seemed off. They were on a team. They got along some of the time. There was something different in the way Ronon smiled at Rodney, though. The way he leaned over to whisper directly into Rodney’s ear. The way Rodney’s eyes went a little unfocused and Ronon pulled back with a devilish grin on his face.
It was the sudden appearance of casual touches between them. When Ronon reached over and wiped a smudge of dirt off Rodney’s cheek one day absentmindedly. Rodney removing Ronon’s gun holster with sure, deft motions when Ronon got hurt. Then staying behind to pace and worry while doctors worked on him.
It was good, John told himself. It was a good thing that Ronon and Rodney could find each other. They were his friends, his family, and he wanted them to be happy.
It was a bitter pill to swallow when they were finally allowed in to see Ronon, and Rodney kissed him, right on the lips, in front of god and everybody.
John shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled like he was supposed to. Wished Ronon a speedy recovery and left with Teyla, leaving Rodney behind to hold Ronon’s hand and gently touch his face. Casual. Like they’d done it a million times.
John half hoped, half dreaded that they would break up, and soon. But a year passed and he watched as Ronon and Rodney fell into an easy camaraderie. A partnership. He helped Ronon move his things into Rodney’s room.
“You want me to move? Okay, Colonel. You wanna lug my bed halfway across the city?” Rodney said when John mentioned it wasn’t fair for Ronon to give up his space.
Ronon wasn’t bothered, though. Ronon just looked happy to be there with Rodney. John went to their ‘housewarming’. He brought a small, carved, wooden horse figurine just to annoy Rodney and smiled while the man sputtered and yelled that it was a useless and unnecessary gift and why the hell would John even think they would want it.
John gathered up every strange feeling he had for Rodney. Every proprietary urge. Every half-formed inkling. Then compressed them into an imaginary ball and buried them deep in his mind. He felt a twinge of something when Rodney hugged him. He felt a tiny ache when Rodney smiled at him. It was nothing. It was nothing and John could handle it.
“I didn’t know you had a thing for Rodney,” Lorne said.
He was drunk and he knocked an elbow into John’s side as if they were old friends. They were old friends. John glared at him anyway. Lorne smiled at him while he explained that he’d figured it out slowly, over the years. He said that John hung like a ghost over his relationship with Rodney. That, even though it was good, John was always there in a way that kept Rodney from being available.
Rodney, he said, had been crazy about John.
John wanted to believe that he was a good guy. That when it came down to it, he did the right thing. The thing you were supposed to do, because it was the right thing.
He wasn’t.
He wasn’t the good guy when he found Rodney after the party, stumblingly making his way towards his room in an empty corridor.
He wasn’t the good guy when he pushed Rodney against the wall.
He wasn’t the good guy when he kissed him.
Or when he let Rodney kiss him back.
It would have been easy to kiss Rodney and walk away. To leave Rodney with the rationalization that at least he hadn’t kissed John back, but John couldn’t. He kissed Rodney like he wanted to, like he’d been waiting a decade to do. The way he’d been refusing to let himself admit he wanted.
He only stopped when Rodney’s hand fisted in his hair and tugged sharply until John’s lips came away.
“What’re you doing?” Rodney asked, his voice rough and words slurring.
John apologized, and apologized, and walked away when Rodney raised a shaking hand to his lips.
Nothing changed. Either Rodney didn’t remember or wanted to pretend like he couldn’t remember, and John wanted to be the good guy. So, he pretended he couldn’t remember either.
John was nearly forty-three when he finally accepted that he was not totally straight. Rodney threw a surprise ‘coming out’ party in the mess hall with multicolored streamers, balloons, and confetti poppers that made John drop to the ground like he was being shot at. The guests laughed and John glared at them, but no one seemed cowed by it. There was cake, with ‘Congratulations!’ written on it in fancy script, a five-layer rainbow cake.
It was embarrassing, and unnecessary, and John thought he might burst into tears if he thought about it too hard. It was nice to be accepted by the people he cared about. Accepted without a second thought.
Ronon pulled him into a bear hug and picked him up, shook him until John wheezed, then set him down on the ground. John wasn’t even sure if Ronon understood what the party was for, other than a way for Rodney to annoy John, but he was enthusiastic about it.
Rodney found him while John was staring at the ocean and the night sky, enjoying the breeze on his flushed skin. They stood together in companionable silence for a long moment.
“You know, I used to hope you would realize you were bi and in love with me.” Rodney flashed him a crooked smile, the gesture taking on a self-deprecating slant over their long time in the Pegasus galaxy together. “Why wouldn’t you? I’m a catch.”
They chuckled and Rodney slapped him on the shoulder before leaving. John pretended it didn’t hurt to realize too late what he could have had.
There was a slow song playing when John made his way back in to the winding down party and John watched Rodney and Ronon dance together. For the first time, it didn’t feel like a knife to his heart.
John smiled.