I'm not! I'm getting mine from Amazon at whatever time the poor woobie UPS guys manage to make it to my house :D Awww. I love my UPS guys. Maybe I should bake them cookies.
I am passing my time writing more Iowa. And reading my second of five books about smokejumpers :>
One of John's eyebrows lifts. That's all it does, this speaking, silent arch that makes Rodney hear what he just said (I have a couch, and I think it would be great if the two of us could be on it together) and try to take it back.
"Well, I mean, if you want to watch TV. But if you don't I have chairs. In the kitchen."
"Whichever," John says complacently, tapping his girly microbrewery raspberry beer against one thigh and being absolutely no help at all.
And when he stands aside, stops blocking the doorway with his body, John takes it for the invitation it is, steps over the threshold, drifts naturally in the direction of Rodney's den, and all Rodney can do is follow.
John's the kind of guy who has a beer pull on his key chain - of course he is, Rodney thinks a little desperately - and he pops the caps from two beers, falls back onto Rodney's couch, kicks up his feet onto Rodney's coffee table, and all in all makes himself at home as if this is his twentieth late-night visit, not his first.
Rodney finds himself groping desperately between the couch cushions for the remote, until he realizes that he's groping awfully near John's person, at which point he snatches his hand back and holds the remote to his chest like it might somehow protect his virtue, and oh my god, what is wrong with him?
John's smiling at him - smiling almost kindly, which is so unexpected and strange that Rodney's brain goes completely offline - and all he can do is sit obediently when John pats the sofa right beside him.
John's thigh is warm all along where it's pressed to Rodney's, and John's weird raspberry beer isn't actually all that bad, and Rodney stares at John's throat when he swallows, at the hair peeking out of the vee of his shirt collar, at John's hand resting on his knee: his battered knuckles, his crooked middle finger, the black spot on the fingernail of his pinky.
John shifts his hand to Rodney's knee and squeezes a little, sounds exasperated and maybe a little fond when he huffs, "McKay. I don't do this, okay?" John abandons his beer so that he can rub the back of his neck with his other hand. "I don't just show up at people's houses on my route unless I'm bringing them something."
You brought me beer, Rodney thinks. He says, "Then why are you here?"
"That's a new one," Rodney says, painfully aware that John's bewilderment is transmogrifying into annoyance, but he can't help it, and it's embarrassing to explain.
No one wants to get to know me better, unless for purposes of writing on me with lipstick and leaving me drunk and unconscious on the floor, Rodney wants to say. But the words will not come out and John's sitting there, holding his beer with one hand and playing with Rodney's Power Ranger figure with another and waiting.
"Yes, well," Rodney splutters, "I apologize for the unfortunate freak of genetics that wired my brain to be, oh, let's see, brilliant at matters of physics and rather sub-par at matters of flirting with the delivery guy." He tilts his chin in defensive defiance.
"We all have our strengths," John says, that infuriating smirk flirting with the corner of his mouth. He puts the Power Ranger back and picks up the Supreme Court pencil. Its gavel is mostly gone, and it's dented where Rodney's chewed it.
"Oral fixation, much?" John asks, and twirls the pencil between his long fingers. Rodney ducks his head and tries to order his stomach to stop with the fluttery butterly things. When he looks up, John's leaned in closer, and oh god, that's mesmerizing, the shadow of stubble along his jaw and the flecks of gold in his eyes and and and - "So we are flirting, right?" John asks.
I am passing my time writing more Iowa. And reading my second of five books about smokejumpers :>
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One of John's eyebrows lifts. That's all it does, this speaking, silent arch that makes Rodney hear what he just said (I have a couch, and I think it would be great if the two of us could be on it together) and try to take it back.
"Well, I mean, if you want to watch TV. But if you don't I have chairs. In the kitchen."
"Whichever," John says complacently, tapping his girly microbrewery raspberry beer against one thigh and being absolutely no help at all.
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You brought me beer, Rodney thinks. He says, "Then why are you here?"
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No one wants to get to know me better, unless for purposes of writing on me with lipstick and leaving me drunk and unconscious on the floor, Rodney wants to say. But the words will not come out and John's sitting there, holding his beer with one hand and playing with Rodney's Power Ranger figure with another and waiting.
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